I always like to take a little time in December to take stock of my writing life. My process, below, is a great way to do an End-of-Year Review. If you don’t already do this, I highly recommend the practice. It can bring clarity to what’s been working and what hasn’t.

I believe it’s so important to celebrate your successes as you begin thinking about your goals for next year. Looking at your creative journey, assessing your progress throughout the year, and reflecting on your wins and losses can help you prepare and organize your writing life for 2025.

First, let’s take a look at what it means to take stock of your writing life.

Taking stock means looking at your achievements and evaluating the progress you made on the goals you set for yourself throughout the year. If you’re not on deadline, now is the perfect time to step away from your actual writing so you can review your writing journey. Whatever level you are at with your writing—published or not, professional or aspiring—or how experienced you are, taking time to reflect can help you recognize all you’ve accomplished, what fell short for you, and what you want to focus on moving forward. 

Reflection is a way to maximize your transition into the New Year and ensure your continued growth and success as a writer. This means acknowledging your achievements, taking care of yourself, organizing writing materials, and beginning the process of thinking about new goals. Let’s break it down into steps.

Reflection

Taking time to really consider the year in your rearview mirror is the first step in being able to come out of the gate strong in the new year.  As you look at your written pieces from this past year, consider your growth as a writer. 

• Can you identify tangible ways you improved? 
• Did you seek out classes, content, or other ways to grow in your craft? 
• What were your major accomplishments in 2024? Which pieces or projects made you most proud?
• Did your work resonate with readers? How do you know?
• Did you pitch, query, or otherwise move forward toward your next step?
• What challenges did you face with your writing this year?
• Were there pieces that were difficult to research or to write? How did you get through that?
• Can you identify any areas in your writing that you feel require further improvement? 

Asking these reflective questions and analyzing what worked for you this past year and what didn’t can provide you with valuable insights that can help lead you into next year. 

Organization

Some creatives have right-brain organization skills. Others are pure left-brain thinkers. Use this month to set yourself up for success wherever you fall on that spectrum. Given all the ideas, drafts, deadlines, and activities involved with the writing profession, having some form of order in your creative life can be incredibly helpful. 

• Evaluate your workspace – clear out old notes, organize resources, and declutter digital files. Make sure your space is ready and prepared for another year of writing. 
• Organize your digital files
  • Delete unneeded files.
  • Clear out your downloads folder.
  • Consolidate and categorize various writing projects, for example, as completed or in progress.
  • Create a system or protocol for saving your pieces, assets, and other documents in Dropbox, the Cloud, Google, or whatever service or app you use. This can be tedious, but it is SO worth the time.
• Organize your physical workspace – having an orderly writing place will open creativity!
• Examine your writing routine—did it work for you, or could you be more productive with a different schedule? 
• Evaluate your writing tools, software, or apps. Are you lacking in a tool that could help? Is there something that hasn’t worked for you, and is it time to ditch it? Which tools optimized your efficiency during the writing process?

Organizing your physical and virtual spaces can definitely lead to increased productivity and decreased stress in the future.  It can provide a clear view of what has been completed so far and what still needs to be accomplished.

In-depth Review

An in-depth review can be incredibly insightful. Take some time to calculate metrics such as:

• Number of articles written
• Total word count
• Published works
• Rejected pieces 
• Income generated through writing

Doing this type of in-depth review can provide you with a pretty clear snapshot of what your career looked like this year. One of the benefits of this exercise is that it can help you plan objectively for next year.

Celebrate!

Once you’re finished taking stock of 2024, I encourage you to take time to reward yourself! Celebrate all your hard work as a writer, from rejections to reader feedback or reaching your target word count. Celebrating small victories can renew your motivation and set you up for next year. Taking the time to acknowledge your successes – no matter how large or small – plays an incredibly important role in your personal growth as a writer.

Overall, closing out a year as a writer involves reflection, organization, reviews, planning goals for the year ahead, and, yes, rewards. Embrace the closing of 2024 not as an end but as an opportunity to start fresh with your writing journey in 2025. 

Ready to set your goals for the new year? Go here!

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