It’s 2025, and I’m in my annual social media detox, which, combined with the ever-present darkness, has left me with a lot of time for thoughts. Yes, I did this on purpose, being desirous of having thoughts, getting back to writing those thoughts in a blog form, and also making words on the page. Also, I perhaps miscalculated just how much scrolling mindlessly on TikTok learning about weird facts and people’s happy little bits of life and art techniques was a load-bearing bit of mental health support structure. Oops. In any case, I’m holding it together with books and metaphorical duct tape.
Everybody has to reprogram occasionally, and, assuming that TikTok isn’t banned entirely soon, I can always get back to watching other people’s toddlers do cute things at a later date. I certainly am not missing out on cute toddlers in real life. The spawn continues to get bigger, fail to eat quite as much as I would like, and find new ways to donk his head on things daily. There is never a lack of entertainment in the real world at the moment.
This year I have some goals I’ve made for myself, as usual. Slowing down is one, which…is in direct conflict with other goals so should be entertaining. Mostly I’d like to be more intentional in my life and less panicky, preferably with some yoga time occasionally. I am quite strong from carting around a 20+ lb weight for hours each day on negligible sleep, but no longer very balanced or flexible, and the heartburn is sort of unreal. Relaxed stretching sounds precisely the speed I would like to achieve in the New Year.
On the writing end, I am hopeful to have a first draft of the current project by December. This will necessitate actually finishing the rough draft and then going back through and adding in some scenes and seeing if that leaves me with a book-length situation or some uber-book-behemoth. And I’d like to be slightly more active on the blog. I’m making zero other drafting goals for 2025 because I fully expect that to be a pointless endeavor. At some point presumably I will be doing a revision project from my editor. That will obviously be a priority and when it happens I fully expect to shunt everything else to the backburner and hit the ground running. I’m very excited for that time. (And a little nervous!)
I am still largely taking a break from self-publishing projects and, while I do hope to query again soonish, I’m not putting pressure on it. Until I am getting quality sleep again, I feel that any pressure is unnecessary. That is to say, there’s plenty of pressure right now, and while some pressure is helpful to give you polish, too much gives you cracks. Likewise, I’m not currently doing any submissions of short stories or anything excruciating like that. No doubt I will get back to generating rejections someday, but for now I am focusing on maintaining my relative sanity and meeting my current obligations.
I recognize I have the luxury to make these choices now in my writing career, and I’m grateful for that. I do hope to do more in coming years, but everything has its season. And who knows? More opportunities may pop up in 2025. Plans tend to sort of fall apart on the march.
I hope you all survive until the light gets a firmer footing.
Amanda J. McGee, Author 
I too have been having ungodly heartburn. But I love the idea of slowing down and stretching. I hope your toddler starts eating to your satisfaction, and I hope you ALL start sleeping through the night soon. I think pausing on querying and self-publishing until you feel more balanced across the board is SO WISE. You’re doing SO WELL. I’m glad every time I read your blog. It means, in my mind, that you are beginning to have a few quiet spaces of your own.
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Thank you! I hope so! I definitely feel like I’m writing more the past few months.
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