I’m now almost eight weeks into my new life, and for a while I was despairing about being able to pick the writing back up. But then, all of a sudden, it picked back up dramatically — to the point that, in December 2025, I logged my third-highest monthly word count in 2025 at 28,079.
Click for a larger/clearer version.
What the graphic in this post doesn’t reflect is that virtually all of that word count came on or after December 16th. Nearly eleven thousand of it happened between the time I signed off the day job on December 24th and the time I signed back in on December 29th.
That is definitely a comeback — and with a roar! It wasn’t quite enough to make up for the deficit I accumulated in October and November, but it came close. Given the reasons for the deficit, I’m calling the month a win, particularly since I hit another goal: finishing up Never But Maybe before the end of the year.
Even better, I’m now about 15,000 words into the first draft of All That Mattered, with an initial goal of 75K-90K. Or, in other words, I knocked out close to 20% of it during the month of December alone.
That’s a lot of writing, and I’m much better off for it. While I realize the pace I hit in December isn’t one I can maintain — I don’t usually have long stretches of time available the way I did across the holidays — it does give me good reasons to believe that I can hit my annual goal for 2026. This is even though I won’t have the “crutch” of the Fan Fiction Rewrites project the way I did in 2025. (Closing out Never But Maybe finished that project.)
There are other reasons I’m optimistic about hitting the goal. During December I was able to:
- Revamp and fix outlining issues with Headwaters.
- Write a series bible for the entire Restless Hearts series. I’ve now “locked” it at 9 books.
- Redo this web site to be easier to administer and, hopefully, easier to navigate.
Much of this is because I’ve made some changes to my writing process, which have addressed some of the things that used to slow me down. I’ll be addressing that in another post, later this month.
The biggest news, though, and the bit I’m most excited about, is that I was able to put together a brand new original fiction idea. It’s based on some brainstorming I did back in May, and I’m calling the universe in general Magic & Malone. The first book (of four planned) is called Zero Potential and it’s also now fully outlined.
This gives me three firm, novel-length items to be working on in 2026: one fan fiction novel, and two original novels. That’s enough to completely fill up my usual annual pace of 225K-ish words per year, particularly given that there are other projects I will be working on.
The most significant of those is the blog that I set up, under my real name, in my professional field. I’ve been able to pick that back up, too, and while it’s still in its infancy I am starting to develop a rhythm: I primarily write posts on Saturdays to appear the following Wednesday. I have promised myself that if I can keep that rhythm going through the one-year anniversary in October, I can begin promoting it more aggressively. I can also consider moving it to Substack.
There are some smaller projects, too, including a short story I want to have ready to go in time for submission to the Reedy Branch Review‘s 2027 edition. (I submitted “The Tobacco People” for 2026.) I’ve also lightly rewritten the end of “Whitewood” and plan to be submitting that to literary magazines during the first quarter of 2026.
And that’s just what I know about now, on New Year’s Day. If the past is any precedent, other projects will present themselves throughout the year.
I can’t wait to see how this new year is going to go!