It’s that time of year again. The time where everyone shares their yearly updates of what they accomplished in anticipation of the coming new year and its new goals. I’m jumping on that train once again with the rest of the Writing Community.

2025 was another rollercoaster of a year for me.

Things went right for a little, then became a clusterfuck of hell in the second half of the year. This seems to be a recurring trend for me over the years. The first half of the year holds optimism and forward movement with decent, hopeful vibes, then it’s all downhill from there as things spiral and go south into a depressy messy state. The last five months especially of 2025 had me in a dark place with little to no spots of sunlight.

Unlike 2024, I didn’t pursue any literary magazines or anthology submissions in 2025. I think I had intentions to and just never got around to working on any short stories or resubmitting the one piece I would like to get in something new. I did, however, actually write real words! I picked up a neglected draft I’ve been poking at for several years now and started a second (third?) rewrite on TFG. At one point during pitch events in mid-2025, I was delulu enough to start marking them as “coming to the #amquerying trenches in early 2026!” I was feeling good about my progress on the novel. Things were flowing for the first time in years. I was actually excited again. As you can probably guess, it didn’t last. Sadly, I didn’t finish the draft, start on edits, or even begin to think about building a beta reader/query agent list as I had hoped to, but I got two-thirds of the way through my ninety thousand wordcount goal. That’s more progress than I’ve had in a long time. I’m disappointed that I didn’t keep at it all the way through the year. It’s hard to feel good about the little bit of progress I made when I continually lose that spark.

Despite my disappointments on that front, I did successfully grow my follower count across Twitter, Bluesky, and Facebook. By a good bit, too. A shockingly good bit for me. I participated in eleven pitch events with my aforementioned WiP mythological fantasy novel, as well as several monthly writing events (though I bombed most of them). I received three literary agent likes on my pitches and three legitimate agent follows this year! I continued my writing prompt series #WWReborn after my friend’s passing to honor her memory. I managed to read forty-five books in 2025! And lastly, I fulfilled a tiny little horsewoman dream by getting to ride bareback for the first time this past holiday season.

I suppose on the writing front 2025 was a decent year for me. In reality, only half of the year was decent on all fronts and all accounts. I wish I could figure out why I constantly lose that spark and why things fall apart so easily for me. Hopefully 2026 will provide some answers on that front, but that’s not something I’m ready to talk about openly just yet.

So, what did my year actually look like with this absolute one-eighty of six months? Well, I’m glad you asked, because I’m going to break it down:

January – We kicked off the New Year with a bunch of pitch events in 2025. January brought me three different events: #BluePit, #P2Ppit, and #YouDeservepIt. All of which gave me decent interaction, and more unbelievably, agent likes! I actually received my first ever agent like before the pitch events even kicked off on my pinned post! Then another one followed right after. Sadly, one of those agents would later in 2025 resign from agenting, but it was still a confidence boost in the moment. January also brought me some new follower milestones. I surpassed six hundred and then seven hundred Bluesky followers, as well as five hundred Twitter followers. I started my Goodreads 2025 Reading Challenge off strong with two books in the first month.

February – February is typically a shitty month for me. 2025 February was a mixture of shit and spots of sunlight. We had one more pitch event in February, #questpit, which did my best yet. It also garnered me my third agent like! Color me shocked by this point. February also saw me surpass eight hundred Bluesky followers and six hundred Twitter followers, much of which I owe to these pitch events. I received my first participant of my #WWReborn writing prompts over on Bluesky. It was a comfort in its own right to know that my friend’s legacy was continuing in a fashion that wasn’t just posting to the void of the internet on a weekly basis. There happened to be a community lead writing event dubbed #FastDraftFeb. An attempt to draft an entire novel in twenty-eight days. I consider that to be more madness than NaNoWriMo! I made a half-ditch effort to join but since February is a low mood month for me, I didn’t even get off the ground on this front. I also only managed to read one book.

March – Now March… March started to poke out the sun more. Something about March just shifted things for me. I gave working on a novel a new attempt for the first time in years. I opened that elusive document for The Forgotten God and even tried to rejoin my local library’s writer’s group to find some motivation. Progress was slow to start since I decided to start the novel over once again, but it was a start. My spark for reading suddenly became a flame in March. Not only did I revive my #WhatchaReadinWed segment again, but I managed to read eleven books in one month. That was more than I had read in all of 2024! I even had enough courage to enter a giveaway on Twitter and, believe it or not, I actually won that giveaway for a positivity pass on my first chapter of TFG, as well as a query letter critique. I surpassed nine hundred Bluesky followers and seven hundred Twitter followers. Lastly, I found myself back on a horse farm where my soul is most at home.

April – April shocked me. Not only was there another pitch event that blew me out of the water, #PosterPit, but a new writing community challenge presented itself. #WriteToberSpringFest was a challenge meant just to get it done. With my confidence on the rise thanks to pitch events, giveaway wins, and agent likes, I made a true effort at joining this event. I set a small goal, just twenty-five thousand words, and believe it or not, I actually made that goal. I was almost one-third of the way through this new rewrite. I even celebrated with some bougie cupcakes. Somehow my luck kept getting better for in April I received my first ever agent follow on Twitter. The reading slowed down thanks to all my writing, but I still managed two books.

May – If I thought I was lucky in the beginning of the year so far, May only increased my luck. (Oddly enough, the same thing happened last year in this fashion. I’m really starting to see some patterns here.) May had another two pitch events: #questpit once more and #WIPPIT. My participation wasn’t great on the latter, but I did alright by my standards in them. In an attempt to keep my newfound writing habit going, I set myself a personal challenge I dubbed #MakeItHappenMay. My goal was to hit sixty thousand words, or minimally fifty thousand. I was determined to draft this novel in three months time before I lost that momentum or forgot what was happening in the story. I surpassed fifty thousand by a few thousand words, and I figured that warranted another bougie cupcake round. Yum! I even started taking myself to coffee shops and libraries for write-ins, as well as joining some Discord sprint sessions with friends. I entered two more giveaways in May: one for a query critique and character art, and one for a chapter critique. I won one of the two and got myself some positive feedback on an already strong query and my first ever piece of character art! I was on top of the moon by this point. I surpassed two more follower milestones, breaking eight hundred on Twitter and now three hundred on Facebook. Somehow among all the writing and luck, I even managed to read five books in May. There was something in the air this month! Unnotably, I received my first agent DM scam, which I found to be comical among the success.

June – We’re nearly halfway through the year, and this is where it all began to fall apart, as per normal it seems. I made a new personal writing challenge dubbed #JustKeepGoingJune to try and finish out the draft of TFG. Unfortunately, I did not make that goal. I bombed out hard. I hosted a Pride edition of #WWReborn, though I still don’t really know how well it was received. I got my notes back from my first giveaway win of the year with some really postive feedback on my first chapter. Subsequently, the giveaway I didn’t win in May, I re-entered in June and won a fifteen thousand big picture critique. This, I wholly admit, provided me with some valuable feedback, but it still didn’t keep me writing. You’d think the positivity would keep me going, but nope, I had begun to crash out again. I entered a few more giveaways in June but nothing came of those ones. The biggest moment of June, besides the positive feedback, had to be the fact that I surpassed that elusive one thousand follower mark for the first time in my life. It happened on Bluesky, where I get less traction, but it still happened. Though I hardly wrote any words in June, I kept reading at least with nine books in total.

July – Things continued to go downhill in July. #WriteToberSunFest happened, and I thought that might be the final kick in the ass I needed to finish that draft. Start the draft with its spring fest, finish with its sun fest. It seemed fitting. Alas, that was not the case. I jumped into two more pitch events, #UnhingedPit and #BluePit, though I hardly participated and the results portrayed my waning interest and confidence. I tried joining a couple fellow writer’s street teams and vague teams, trying to hype myself out of the slump, but I even fell short on them. I managed to break four hundred Facebook followers and read another nine books in July, but in the end, that was all I was back to accomplishing.

August – Up until now, I had spent the majority of the year searching for another job. I finally found one in August. It wasn’t the ideal job, but it was an okay job and at least it was income I needed. Because of it and the farm, I had no time for anything else. Not writing. Not even really reading. Not anything. I didn’t even get the chance to interact on my only pitch event of the month, #questpit, though I threw a pitch up hoping for something. In the end, I barely managed to finish reading one book. But at least I surpassed five hundred Facebook followers now.

September – It’s all downhill here from, baby. September brought literally nothing. I thought I had found a dream job in September. I ended up leaving the aforementioned August job for a new one, and I almost quit within the first two weeks. In fact, I should have. I should have trusted my gut and the red flags and stayed with the previous job. By this point, there is nothing on the writerly front happening. My mood was shot. I was out of luck and not in a good place. Out of pure spite just to keep my streak going, I read one book this month, and that was literally it.

October – By October, I was in a dark place. It had now been a year since my dear friend and unofficial mom passed suddenly. I wasn’t okay. The job front was terrible. My confidence in writing was again completely gone. I had no motivation. I had no anything. The only comfort to October was finally bringing home her ashes. I somehow managed to garner an agent follow during October, and break nine hundred Twitter followers, but that bit of relief didn’t last long. Still, I read one more book out of pure spite.

November – November… I quit the new job before Thanksgiving, bringing me back to square one for the umpteenth time. I got sick as a dog from stress. It was not a month I want to talk about or remember. But hey, one more book read for spite.

December – The final month of 2025 proved to be no better than November. I gave those hopes to finish drafting this damned novel and the hope to be query ready in early 2026 one last split-second attempt by creating another personal challenge dubbed #JustDoItDecember. It failed in a matter of three days. The only brightness to December turned out to be the holiday barn party where I got to fulfill a tiny wish of riding bareback. Oh, and instead of one book for spite, I read two books for spite. Good riddance, 2025.

So, yeah, there’s my 2025 Publishing Wrapped recap. Sprinkled in with a little bit of other news, too. One massive roller coaster of crazy highs and some of the worst lows I’ve experienced in a very long time.

And if you’re comparing your accomplishments to my own, just remember, even the smallest of wins are worth celebrating in this industry. If all you did was write this year, celebrate that. If all you did was think about writing or make friends amongst the #WritingCommunity, celebrate that, too. I’m proud of you for whatever you accomplished, no matter how small.

How does your 2025 wrapped look? What will you be celebrating from this year?