It's the end of the year... can you believe it? It always feels like yesterday that we were starting a new year and then you blink and it's already over.
On January 1st of this year, I was still in recovery from my ovarian cyst surgery. However, I wasn't letting that bring me down and I had big plans for 2021. What were my plans? Well, I was starting to write a forbidden romance standalone and my goal was to publish 3 new books.
Did I manage to achieve that goal?
Nope. Not by a long shot.
Did I try?
You bet I did!
It was a tough year for me writing-wise. I started and stopped story after story. Honestly, it became extremely frustrating when I would make headway on a new story, and then bam! There would be an issue with the plot or the characters. Sometimes it was the fact that I wasn't feeling inspired enough to tell the story or there was something lacking in it that I couldn't pinpoint.
On top of this, I almost had to have another surgery (the cyst grew back, but then shrank within 2 months) and that really brought on a lot of stress. At that point, writing and publishing something by the end of the year was going to be too much pressure, so I decided to press pause.
Publishing takes a lot of work. It's not only writing the story but the long list of tasks in between there and when you click publish. It's not just time and energy but also costs money. While I do a lot of it myself (the covers, graphics, formatting, etc), I still have some expenses. Since I have a year's worth of medical bills to pay off, I couldn't afford to invest much into my books.
Despite all of the setbacks, I still had an okay year!
Also, I have finally gotten back into writing again! I "participated" in NaNoWriMo in November with the hopes of getting back to writing regularly. I knew there was no chance of me writing 50,000 words in a month given how little I had been writing the previous months. However, I had confidence that I could manage to knock out some words for the month, and I did! I ended the month with 6,904 words and spent part of December writing more words.
Even though 2021 wasn't the year I wanted it to be, I'm still grateful for all I have accomplished. All the stories I started were more experience and allowed me to hone in on my skills. The medical scare was a moment to reevaluate my author career (among other things) for the better. There's always something positive we can take out of not-so-great circumstances.
As far as my plans for 2022 go, well... you'll have to come back tomorrow to read all about them!
See you again in the new year!
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