On this bright and beautiful New Year’s Day, I thought I’d share what I’m planning for writing goals for 2025. I already mentioned that I hope to finish drafting the two novels I’ve got in progress, but if my predictions on the actual length are correct for both of them, that only needs 300 words per day all year. If my planning is good, that’s fifteen minutes or less at a time.
Since I’d like to think I will have more writing time available than that for the first time in several years (and in the last two I haven’t felt like I’ve had even that most of the time), I need bigger goals. Or at least more goals, and I’d still like them to be potentially achievable. I’m also feeling the need to branch out a bit beyond my usual haunts so I’ve decided to try something a little different each month. To amuse myself, I’m calling them themes and giving them fun names. While the word count needed for each is variable in a broad range, the overall daily goal should come in under 1000 words in every case but one.
But even when the word count goal is low, that doesn’t necessarily mean the amount of time and effort involved is less. Some things require more effort per word.
January – Back to Basics
One short story per week, which leaves a little wiggle room in a 31-day month. I do hope to write more than four short stories this year, but returning to my first serious writing love seems like a good place to start the year.
February – Flash February
Ten pieces of flash fiction, 1000 words or less each. Capping this at ten for the challenge doesn’t seem unreasonable. I ran an experiment several years ago writing single draft flash (actually, one draft and one read through to tidy up) and wrote one a day for a week. Managing about one every three days feels doable for the month, especially without the added pressure to get everything right in one go.
March – Hyperspace and Hypertext
I’ve been interested in the idea of hypertext fiction for a while but haven’t yet come across one I found really satisfying. The linked stories usually wind up feeling like interruptions or heavy footnotes. I want to try writing a hyperlinked story that I’d enjoy reading. My thought is a fairly beefy central Science Fiction story with 5-10 hyperlinked flash/micro pieces that will ideally add to the experience instead of annoying the reader. We’ll see how it turns out.
April – The Spring of the Screen Play
For a few years a decade or two back, April was Script Frenzy month in certain areas of the internet, often shortened to Screnzy. The idea was to write a movie-length screenplay, targeting at least 100 pages, in 30 days. I don’t have a lot of screenplay experience in my background, but I’ve done a little for fun. I think I’d like to try something full-size.
May – May Micro
A daily piece of micro-fiction. There are a lot of definitions here, but I’m going to call it a maximum of 250 words and consider all the way down to six-word stories. One a day for the whole month.
June – Will You Survive?
I loved Choose Your Own Adventure books when I was in the target age group, and when I was in the target age group, they were still a new idea. Scholastic book fairs always brought at least a couple of new ones and the school librarian made sure we were well stocked. I’ll need to do a little research and analysis, but I’d like to try a story in this style, and it will almost certainly be either Science Fiction or Fantasy.
July – Songs of Summer
I’ve written the odd song here and there, but I’m thinking I’d like to try to stretch my legs here and write two songs per week for the month, again leaving a little wiggle room in a 31-day month. Not the music, mind you – I don’t understand music well enough to write it effectively – but the lyrics.
August – Memories
The objective here will be to pushing as far as I can manage towards the completion of whatever volume of the Memory Project I’m working on when we get there. I suspect this will still be Volume 3, covering my time as a young university student, but it’s possible I might have made enough progress that I’m looking at moving into the pre-fatherhood adult years.
September – All the World’s a Stage
Four one-act plays, one each week. It’s possible at least some of these will wind up being speculative, but the ideas I have for the first couple don’t currently look that way. I’ll use what I think is a fairly standard definition, looking at a 15-ish minute play which apparently translates into 9-12 pages, depending on number of characters and direction given.
October – There’s Stories In Them Thar Hills
Four short stories outside my normal genres. So, no Science Fiction and no Fantasy. My impulse is Historical, Mystery/Noir, Spy Thriller, and Western but we’ll see how things go.
November – NaNoWriMo
National Novel Writing Month is every November. The objective is to draft a 50k-word novel in 30 days, though putting 50,000 words into a novel that you start on November 1st is generally considered acceptable. You can do as much pre-work and plotting as you like. I don’t do NaNo every year and actually haven’t attempted it seriously in a number of years, but I’ve “won” twice in the past. Another win would be nice.
December – Blog a Day
I’m not sure how much of a challenge this one will be other than maybe coming up with something to write about every day. Blogging is usually an easy excuse for me to ramble on about something, and I’m a skilled rambler.
So there we are, the 2025 writing themes. Again, these are all in addition to getting the two novels done that I’m slowly drafting right now. And I want to get a few story submissions out every month as well as making a few fresh indie projects available.
A particular note; every month is a new one, so every goal is a new one. What that means is if I struggle really hard with the goal for a particular month, when that month is over I’m moving onto the next goal regardless of how far I actually got with the last one. That freedom is necessary to keep the year rolling, I think.
Be well, everyone.
Life, Writing, Weirdness 
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