Another New Year

A look back and a peek at the future

Wow! 2025 is gone.

Thanks for sticking with me for another year. Especially if you’re here for the stories - which I haven’t been delivering that consistently.

I’d like to promise that’s all going to change in 2026. But you know what happens to resolutions made at the beginning of a new year.

A Look Back at 2025

Writing didn’t look like I hoped in 2025. But I’m a big dreamer, so this doesn’t surprise me.

What did surprise me was the collaboration with three other local writers. I’ve been praying for a collaboration opportunity since 2022. This one looks nothing like the one I pictured in my head.

Again - most of reality fails to match my imagination.

Anyone who can make up elaborate worlds rarely finds anything close in the real one.

I intended to write a short story for an anthology I’d planned with a critique group. Early in 2025, that group disbanded. The start of that story remains in limbo in a Scrivener folder.

I did NOT intend to create an anthology with local writers.

I did however say to my author friend, Ellen Jacobson, at our write-in last January, “Wouldn’t it be cool if local authors contributed to an anthology? We could all use it as a giveaway and promote each other’s work that way.”

And Ellen ran with the idea. Straight to two local writing groups. A few months later, HIDDEN WORLD was in the works.

I’ve been talking a bit about it in other posts. Check those out here, here, and here.

I was “informed” that each organizer had to contribute to the anthology. So I dreamed up this portal story about a hidden world accessed in the bottle return room of the local Fred Meyer.

That story didn’t get written.

But two other flash fiction pieces were written, edited, copyedited, and submitted before the September 1 deadline.

You’ll soon be able to read “Not Now Flies” and “Do You Like It, Father?” in the HIDDEN WORLD anthology.

A Sneak Peek at 2026

In December, I take a look back at the year and consider what I’d like to accomplish in the next year.

I was supposedly “semi-retired” in 2025, but I’ve decided to stop pretending that’s true. I might not be doing a lot of paid work, but I’ve been working as many hours on volunteer projects as I’d worked on my editing and coaching business in 2024.

Check out this marker drawing I did during my hours of reflection in December. See that word on the left? Simplicity.

Yeah, that was my word for the year in 2025. And it petered into nothingness by May. Because there’s nothing simple about organizing an anthology from the ground up.

Based on how last year went, I’ve decided that choosing a word of the year doesn’t serve me these days. Neither does planning an entire year.

So, I’ve set a few objectives and intentions (notice I didn’t say GOALS) for the first three months of 2026.

Here are a few of them:

• Teaching a workshop at the newly established annual local event, Stories by the River Festival

• Leading the 2027 local writers anthology (because you didn’t think HIDDEN WORLD was a one-off, did you?)

• Writing 500 words at least five days per week

Yeah, that last one might be tricky. But I’ve decided to change things up a bit.

I’m not going to write in my office. Or at a computer. I’m going to try using pen or pencil on paper. Sitting in my favorite recliner or maybe in a coffee shop.

And I’m not planning what I’ll write in advance. I’m going to sit down and write whatever feels right for that day. Poetry - maybe. Nonfiction or a bible lesson - why not?

But I am hoping to write a bunch of short form fiction. I plan to submit flash fiction again, and enter the Short Shorts contest the Writer’s Digest holds each December.

Hopes. Dreams. But not expectations. Those buggers derail me every single time.

Are you a planner? Do you have goals for the new year? I’d love to hear about your process and your plan.

Don’t forget, I do have fiction available. Find it here.