Did you (I) know?

Is this work?

Courtesy of Igor Komarov, Unsplash

I started 2025 quietly, almost cautiously. Last Christmas I hit a burnout so hard it landed me in the hospital two days in a row.
So I walked into the new year timid, shaken, and honestly a little scared.

And then the year unfolded in so many ways I can’t even remember everything it brought.

I published Patches, a book I kept polishing for at least another 600 hours, even though I had already finished it the year before. I remember I lost ten whole hours fighting with Scrivener just to get the right compile. And I don’t want to think about how many more hours I spent applying for reviews on BookSirens, BookSprouts, Reedsy, and anyone else who might read my book. Or how much time I dedicated to figuring out the best marketing approach, what I should do (or not do) across the half-dozen apps I somehow taught myself to use.

I wrote over 100,000 words of critique (which means I read the equivalent of twenty novels), and I probably digested just as many critique notes on my own chapters. Oh boy, how hard it is to let go of words I’ve chosen so carefully, only to realize they don’t resonate the way I imagined.

I also spent over thirty hours in courses, conferences, and events—most of them online—and somewhere along the way I realized there’s a corner of the world where I genuinely want to exist: Substack. I’m here, and I want to be here. And that’s not a small thing for someone who spent twenty years wearing as a badge of honour the fact that she avoided social media because she couldn’t stand inconsistent approaches (sorry about this)

I started writing short stories.

I also admitted to myself that the novel I had planned to query this year is so bad it needs to be shelved. I know, painful decision, especially since the idea still feels brilliant to me. I just couldn’t find the right voice for it, no matter how much I tried.

But then I rediscovered an old manuscript I had forgotten about… and I’m absolutely in love with it (still a secret).

If I really counted, I think I worked more than 5,000 hours this year (who can even keep track anymore?). But I have so many ideas that the thought of working fourteen-hour days again in 2026 doesn’t scare me at all.

Merry Christmas, fellow writers! And an inspired and lucky 2026!