2025 Writing Report
1-9-26
First and foremost, I would like to wish you all a happy new year, and I hope that all of your goals and ambitions find themselves matured and reaped beyond your wildest imaginations.
Now, this post will be as short as I can make it, but it will be a review of sorts of what I did during 2025. Somehow I was able to complete two novels this past year, an unprecedented accomplishment for me. The first one I believe I have posted about here, and I referred to it as Agony Rift. It was finished in August of 2025, and immediately I began work on another novel I’ll call Leaf Blade, which I have just completed a second draft on. 2025 has been a huge year for me as a new writer and aspiring author. I’ve focused on my characters more than ever, my vocabulary, and my outlining, all aspects that I’ve embarrassingly neglected in the past.
Agony Rift is the second novel I’ve written in the Shifting Memory series, and Leaf Blade is the latest in the Gatherer’s Bounty series. Both can be read without any prior knowledge of my other works, and both have potential for sequels.
Agony Rift was another huge undertaking for me, and required so much work before I even began writing a single word, as that series was until now the least developed, and demanded a ton of work behind the scenes in order to make sure the story had roots. I’ve yet to take another pass at it as of now, and there are other things tugging at my mind, but I plan to get a second draft of it ready for editorial review within the next few months.
On to Leaf Blade now. This novel was a happy little unexpected kernel that popped up right after Agony Rift had left my brain and fingers. This novel I began in August of 2025 and I completed in December, the fastest I’ve ever began and completed a novel, and it is also the shortest novel I’ve written, another huge accomplishment for me. I’ve always struggled keeping my works to around 90-100k words, and this one falls just a hair above that. It is also a story that I have had on my mind for years now, really ever since the first stories popped up in my head, and I am proud to say that I have finally been able to get it out of my head, and to give it the love and attention I believe it deserves.
In summation, this past year will go down as a monumental year for me. While I have still many, many milestones I have yet to reach, I think I am continuing toward them, that I am churning my way in the right direction with a pen in my teeth and my nails raked with the plastic from the keyboard of my laptop. 2026 will be yet another year that I will keep after the pursuit of becoming a professional writer, and while I want desperately to jump back at querying and at pitching in person at workshops, I can feel it deep inside of myself that I still need one more good year of writing and self-reflection before I am ready to put myself and my stories out there again.
Thank you, as always, for your readership, your kindness, your trust. I am but another meritless voice in a field of louder, prouder voices, a field over-encumbered—and if you’ve played Fallout or Elder Scrolls, you’ll know that often you’ll find yourself ditching the extra weight just to move freely again. All I can ask is that you find my junk worth carrying a little longer, at least until you make it to the next stash box or chest.
With all the love and thanks of a year’s worth of writing,
JMB
