Hey there!
Every once in a while I’ll update you on my progress: it’ll help me keep myself accountable and reflect on how my projects are going, while also being a (hopefully) interesting behind-the-scenes-peek for you.
🗓️ Weekly rotation
I dedicate every week to a different project, following this order:
Week 1: ✍🏼 Rewrite
Week 2: 📫 Newsletter
Week 3: ✍🏼 Rewrite
Week 4: 🗒️ Short Fiction
[You can find more details about this schedule in the entry How to schedule time as a part-time writer.]
Beginning 2025
I’m writing this entry on January 16th, and I still haven’t made a plan for the new year.
I adore January. December tends to be busy and sometimes stressful because of the festivities—organizing to do, meeting up with family, traveling—but everything quiets down in the first month of the year: January is mine. I get to sit down and reflect on the last year and dream about the new year, all of it topped off by the chance to set up my new planner. I love it.
I also like to take my time, though, and my beginning-of-the-new-year ritual can take me weeks. So, here I am, still busy re-reading my 2024 journal and setting up my new planner, but still without a game plan for 2025.
Welp, they say that 50% of the New Year’s resolutions are abandoned within the first 2 weeks of the year. Follow my trick: set them after those two weeks 🤣
Writing-wise, 2024 has been a mixed bag. On one side, I’m proud of what I did:
✅ I analyzed the books that I had set myself to and learned a lot from them;
✅ I started this very newsletter and published posts regularly;
✅ I wrote a couple of short stories that I’m proud of;
✅ I started putting together ideas for my second draft.
On the other, I haven’t started writing the second draft, yet 😵💫 That stings.
In November I found an interesting method on how to fix the first draft: I took pen and paper and free-wrote about the aspects I wanted to iron out. I started by focusing on the main characters and allowed myself to write about everything that came to mind about their backstory, beliefs, motives, and development.
It’s fascinating to notice how differently my mind works when I’m writing instead of thinking. Ideas and connections that I couldn’t see before blossom in my head—it’s still a process to weed out the good ones from the bad ones, but it’s exciting anyway. Writing helps me to think.
I am very happy with this method I’ve found, but the week before Christmas (the last week in which I could realistically still work on this before the end of the year) I kinda panicked. Even though I was making progress, I could tell that there was still so much to go through, and the sheer amount of thinking and researching and fixing that still needed to be done overwhelmed me.
I’m not yet done with putting together the strategy. It’s disheartening, but what can I do? I can’t snap my fingers and have it done. I need to calm down and take it step by step. If anything, this whole writing journey has taught me that writing is putting down one word after another—just like walking is putting a foot in front of the other. If you keep on doing it, you may arrive somewhere.
Of course, it’s also important to set a destination and reflect on how long I want to take to get there. This is my goal for the next few days—hopefully, I’ll have my yearly plan done by the time this entry is published.
How’s January treating you so far? How is it going with your 2025 resolutions? Let me know by simply replying to this email, writing me at ryeyoubs@gmail.com, or leaving a comment!
Take care,
Rye Youbs
Everything on Rye & Writing is currently free—nothing is behind a paywall. But if you like what I’m doing and you’d like to support me, feel free to drop a little donation. You’ll have my eternal gratitude!
Oh, I like the idea of setting New Year's resolutions after the first 2 weeks in January! I think it's fine that you took your time. I feel many people rush into their resolutions after eating too much for the holidays or coming back from vacation. As a result, these goals may have been more abstract ideas when they were set rather than actual achievable results. If people waited to set these goals in January, like you suggest, they would likely have a more grounded and practical view of how to achieve their goals by taking daily and consistent steps.
"writing is putting down one word after another—just like walking is putting a foot in front of the other" : nice Expression! I remember as a child, when the distance was too long, I sometimes would just playfully think about where to step next. And eventually I was almost there.