Well, once again it is the time of year when I’d like to post up how my writing progress has gone for the year.  For past years, the posts are at:  2024,  2023.

This year I’ve been kind of dreading putting this post together, because 2025 has not been a good writing year for me.  Instead 2025 has been a lot in terms of life events, especially in the first half of the year, and that has translated on the writing front into: I sit down to write…and am greeted with a ringing silence.  It has started to get a little better in this second half of the year, but not so much so that I want to make myself any promises for 2026.

I like to organize these writing-progress posts around the different ‘realms’ that my writing falls into, so I’ve continued to do that below.  But the short version is that I only managed the bare minimum, which currently is: 1) keeping up with new/future SSCS installments; 2) very occasional blog posts.

Wished-for Realm: Multi-piece-story maybe-#1

No progress on this story this year, which still has yet to be started in terms of actual words.  If I don’t manage any words on it next year, I’ll have to put it down as a cool idea that never-the-less drifted off into the ether (as they sometimes do).

Progress in 2025:  Some wistful but not at all focused preliminary research.

Next Realm: Big Story #1 – The Dark Queen’s Reign

Nothing done on this one this year.  That’s not unexpected, but I had hoped to perhaps get back to this story in 2026 (really need to take a crack at book 3), and that’s looking pretty doubtful from here, alas.

Progress in 2025:  None.

Next Realm: Big Story #2

Nothing done on this story either.  What is needed, currently, is a big sit down for revisions, and this year my brain has not been up to a task like that.  I wish I will make progress on it in 2026, but I am trying hard not to flog myself with promises.  Flogging seems to be the opposite of helpful right now.

Progress in 2025:  None.

Next Realm: Small-stories Assortment #1 – Wildflowers

No new stories or even new story ideas for this realm this year.  There are some old story ideas that sometimes want to jump up and wave their hands around, but this year they’ve been pretty well smothered by that ringing silence, for the time being.

Progress in 2025:  None.

Next Realm: Serial Stream-of-Consciousness Stories (Small-stories Assortment #2)

This year this was the writing realm that I managed to keep up with.  These stories really are designed to be written one installment at a time, their scopes are clearly defined, and mostly they’ve already got some momentum built up from past years.  So, all of that gave me just enough of a support structure that I was able to keep moving forward with them, one step at a time.

On the not-great side, I will note that half of this year’s installments were written in the last 4 months, so even these were very, very difficult for me to make progress on in the first half of the year.

On the more-hopeful side: the one SSCS out of the current set I’d been most struggling with finally turned into something I think might be kind of cool; the one that I’d always thought was pretty cool stayed cool; and the new one I just started in 2025 has been having me rubbing my hands together in hopeful glee all year.

And, of course, in 2025, I got to publish SSCS-03 to the blog (‘Those Monsters We Have Dreamed About’), and I had been really looking forward to sharing that story with you all (yay!).  (The first installment of SSCS-04 will post Friday, January 2^nd, and I’m pretty excited to share that one too!)

Completed so far:  5 independent short stories made up of serialized installments
Published so far:  3; all on my blog
Still needs:  1 more serialized short story almost done being drafted (at least!)
Progress in 2025:  As of this posting, wrote 38 installments (adding up to over 30,000 words)

Final Realm: Blog Posts

My blog posts are my only non-fiction writing, and, as any regular readers are all aware, I did not manage very much of that this year.  (About half as many regular posts as last year, but less than half as much if you go by word count.)

I’ve still got plenty of ideas for blog-post material.  But again, when I sit down to write, it’s rather like I’ve been wrapped up in wool batting, setting a barrier between me and words.  I’m hoping the barrier will thin a bit next year.  You’ll see if it does.

Progress in 2025:  As of (and including) this post, 11 regular-post posts (adding up to 12,700 words) + 13 fly-by posts.

Grand-Total Net Word-count for 2025

Combining fiction and non-fiction (i.e. SSCS installments + general blog posts):
just under 43,000 words.

Which is more than zero, so I’ll take that as a win.