I don’t want to do constant updates when things change daily, weekly, and monthly. I’m sure nobody wants to read that many updates either. So I decided to break up the year in quarters with a type of progress report every three months.

This idea won’t replace my original end of the year wrapped or reading challenge wrapped. This will just be on a smaller scale, allowing me to be more in-depth on some parts if I want.

So how has the start of 2025 been treating me?

Well, much like last year, it’s been a roller coaster already with some really great things that I didn’t see coming. I’ve had a few firsts this year, too. Exciting firsts.

As you may have seen in a previous post, 2025 came in with a bang for the Writing Community. Packed with pitch events scattered across Bluesky, Twitter, and even their own platforms now. In January and February, I joined in on just five of the many pitch events, and something amazing happened for the very first time among two of those events. Happened, actually, right before the first event of 2025.

Like many writers on Twitter and Bluesky, I’m in the habit of leaving my pitch from whatever event I joined in last pinned to my profile. You just never know when an agent or an editor or even a small press might be perusing author profiles and looking for something new. I never dreamed it would happen to me after an event, but lo and behold, on January 12th — the day before the first pitch event — I got my first ever coveted agent like on my old pinned pitch.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. Little old me, who didn’t even have five hundred Twitter followers yet at the time, managed to get a coveted agent like, on my work in progress novel no less. The best thing about it? It was an agent I had been following for a while. One that I had in the back of my mind as potential to query down the road.

Suddenly the world was opening up before me.

Maybe what I had in this dusty, half-baked novel wasn’t crap after all.

And then it happened again during #P2PPit five days later.

And again at the very start of February with #questpit.

I was speechless. I had been pitching this novel since early 2024 with no success on this front and no real drive. Now here I was with not one, not two, but three agent likes in a matter of two and a half weeks. I see why the Writing Community says there is magick in the air to querying at the start of the year now. It isn’t just the massive number of writers that have gone vague and become agented in these last three months, it is stuff like this, too.

These five pitch events were some of my best ever, too. #YouDeservepIt at the end of January gained me my first tweet to ever surpass one hundred likes. (Well, unless you count the “Agent like!! Agent like!!” tweet that I had during #P2PPit as being my first plus one hundred likes.)

I was rethinking everything about 2025 at this point, and this tiny little bit of success is ultimately what changed my whole trajectory for rest of the year.

Sadly, one of those coveted agent like highs came to a crashing halt in early March when that first agent announced she was unfortunately leaving agenting in May. Alas, I am back down to two agents instead of three that I can query with surety when I am ready. I was slightly devasted by this news, but I am still grateful that she was the first agent to give me a much-needed confidence boost. I will forever remember her for that. And who knows? Maybe one day she will return to agenting.

With some newfound hope, and a personal mentality shift, I have managed to find my way back to writing this month for the first time in a very, very long time, too. It isn’t much yet. I am taking it slow and trying not to rush or burn myself before I barely begin. It has been promising thus far though. There are a few hundred words on a shiny new Word doc page, new back up email chains to myself, and a brand new rough bullet point outline for the rewrite of my DeathWiP. A new direction that I am much happier with compared to the original draft as ideas changed over the years. If you read my last post, you know I am making a, potentially insane, drive to have this novel completed and query ready by the first few months of 2026.

I have those few agents, a giveaway contest win for a first chapter pass in March, and a new personal routine to thank for these newfound phoenix wings.

And that isn’t even the end of the goodness to these last three months. I surpassed some new follower goals on both Twitter and Bluesky, I had my first Wednesday Words Reborn participant in February, revived my #WhatchaReadinWed segment, and I have officially rediscovered my love of reading. Of which I have already accomplished my 2025 Reading Goal thanks to reading ten books in March alone. Ten! It’s hard for me to believe the things I am typing even now, as if I am waking up from a decade long nightmare finally able to breathe.

None of this is to say there weren’t other setbacks in these first three months. I’m definitely calling my #FastDraftFeb attempt an epic fail. The positives have outweighed the negatives so far though.

The second quarter of 2025 is going to have a lot to live up to already.