We’ve reached the end …of 2025

Hi everyone. It has been an interesting year. Looking back is always interesting. This year I started off with Bob vs. the Alien Slug Monsters as my Fifteen Minute Novel. It Lasted until about June when the story wrapped up. It reached about 58K words by the time I reached the conclusion. Will it need editing Oh my yes, massive massive editing. But it was fun to write and I am glad I got it written.

Incidentally, I am in the process of editing and finishing several of my past years Fifteen Minute Novel Projects and am looking at releasing them as novels later in 2026 and into 2027. There are a lot of them as I have been doing this for quite a few years. Some require far more editing than others but I have been slowly working on them in between other projects.

The Fifteen Minute Project has been interesting. The main format is always the same, I take an idea and write for fifteen minutes on it each morning, starting each day’s writing with the sentence from the previous year. Each year I learn a bit more about how I write and how I put stories together. I’ve also noticed a bit of a difference in how I write when I have zero outline as to how I write when I have at least a brief outline. I have found pros and cos to each actually. Not sure if it is just the way my brain works or if there is something universal and scientific about it, but I can write a post detailing it if you are interested. It would take too long to include here so I will just say that each one of these projects teaches me something and reinforces the write everyday habit.

Last year I started with Bob and an outline, then I finished and Started with Penelope. I began with the writing from a prompt I liked and absolutely no outline. As the year draws to a close I realized I am not finished with Penelope and so this year I decided to continue writing until I reached some sort of end to the story. I did jot down a quick list of points I want to cover before I will consider the story done, mostly so I don’t meander through the story for all of 2026 and just aim for a conclusion. I didn’t add too much other than a list of points to cover because I still want to finish it with out an outline. Mostly because that is how I started.

There will be massive edits required as I spend a little too much time on side paths I can easily shorten, but I also like where some of those side paths went and will be reworking them. That is of course for the edits. For now, I have a list of bullet points to cover and once Penelope is done I will start a new story. I am rolling the numbers over so hopefully it won’t be too confusing for anyone following along.

This year I also started my day with a morning writing prompt. I love doing that and while some of the writings were no more than a mental throat clearing and of no real use other than to get my brain into writing mode, others produced story ideas, settings, characters and concepts that I will be using in various writing pieces moving forward. I will be continuing the morning prompts through 2026 (and probably well beyond).

In 2025 I also added daily writing exercises focusing on different things from vocab to presenting scenarios. I enjoyed them and now have a file full of things I can draw from for other projects. I think the emotion exercises are going to be really useful for me moving forward.

This coming year instead of going with individual exercises I am going with one big one. I’m calling it the 2026 Novel Writing Challenge. Each weekday thee will be a new task up to work on one singular project. There are 50 tasks involved in the planning stage (the 50th being the setting up of a writing schedule). Then we write! Followed by resting the document, editing the document and eventually seeing out readers for our semi polished draft. I will be writing along and my tasks as well as the rough draft writing will be in the members section if you want to see the entire process of novel creation. Or at least my version of it. I hope some of you will join me in the morning challenge tasks. I actually had fun setting up the tasks and I have a story idea I have been just waiting for the chance to jump into.

And of course at the beginning of December I started adding the Friday Chapters into the members section as well for those interested. Membership is $2 per month if you are interested. The membership category is something I am trying this year. We will see how it goes but I am committed to using it all year. If you are a member, let me know how you like it and if there is anything you might change or want to see added to the section. I plan to have a bit of fun with it as the year goes on. So we will see what works.

And that is a recap of 2025 as well as a look forward into 2026. I always love the 31st as it is that moment where you look back and see that you really did accomplish a lot in the prior year. Sometimes with a daily slog it is hard to see. But up here perched on the edge of a new year it is a little easier to look back before sliding down the slope into the new year. I hope you are happy with your past year and looking forward to a new one. Have a fantastic new Year’s eve and I look forward to seeing everyone back safe and sound as we roll into 2026. Happy New Year!