Annual Writing Goal Progress in Q4, 2024 – What’s Worked This Year and What Hasn’t?

We’re almost at the end of 2024. You might remember that after Q3, I wrote that I was running behind where I wanted to be with my writing.

Spoiler alert: I did not catch up in Q4!

I’ll take you through how my writing goals went in October, November, and December … and I’ll share some overall thoughts about what’s worked for me this year and what hasn’t.

I hope this is helpful as you think about setting your own goals for 2025.

I’d love to hear about your 2024 and your plans for 2025 too, so do leave a comment at the end of the post, or email me at ali@aliventures.com to share what you’re up to.

Recap: My Writing Goals for 2025

I posted my goals for the year in January. They were:

1. Write 250+ words of fiction every day
2. Finish and publish my novel Reaper
3. Write four short stories
4. Write weekly blog posts and newsletters

So how did it all go? I’ll share the progress on those goals, then come onto some other writing-related failures and achievements.

Progress on Goal #1: Write 250+ Words/Day of Fiction

As I mentioned in my last goals update, I let this goal go in mid-September.

But … I’ve plugged all my wordcounts into my spreadsheet and I wrote a grand total of 84,413 words of new fiction during 2024 as a result of this goal, despite stopping early.

There was only one day when I wrote more than 1,000 words. Most days were around 250–300 words.

That’s a lot of writing (though sadly split across several different projects, so I don’t have anything like a full novel draft out of it). I’m thinking about how I could take this kind of goal forward in 2025.

The main obstacle was that I wasn’t building in time to outline and plan, and so I felt like I was often spinning my wheels a bit with the writing itself.

Progress on Goal #2: Finish and Publish Reaper

This quarter was still slow progress on Reaper. I also changed my goal! Instead of self-publishing it, I’m going to start by send it out to agents and see if it gets anywhere with traditional publishing.

(Sidenote: I think both self-publishing and traditional publishing are great options. But since I’ve already self-published a trilogy of novels plus a novella, I’m keen to see what things are like on the other side of the fence.)

This quarter, I wrote a synopsis and cover letter for Reaper and made a list of eight agents to approach initially.

I still need to make final tweaks to the first 3 chapters, then I’m hoping to contact all those agents before the end of the year.

Progress on Goal #3: Write Four Short Stories

I didn’t write any new short stories this quarter.

Not much to say on this goal, really! I haven’t been feeling very inspired and struggled to have any ideas I wanted to write about when it came to short fiction.

I’d definitely like to do more short stories next year: it’s a fun way to try out different genres, styles, ideas, and approaches to fiction.

Progress on Goal #4: Write Weekly Posts and Newsletters

I’ve mostly kept up with the Aliventures weekly posts and newsletters this quarter. This is something I want to be more ahead with in 2025!

New Goal – What Was I Thinking?!

In early September, I was feeling enthusiastic about a new goal: outlining and drafting a whole novel.

Did I do it?

No. 😂

I did go through the outlining course that I mentioned in my last update (Anne Helmstadter’s course Immersed in Story). I felt like it was worth the price, and Anne clearly knows her stuff, but it didn’t give me as much of a “process” as I was hoping for.

One good thing with this goal was that I did a lot more outlining than I’ve done in the past for a novel project, and I actually liked it more than I expected! I’d like to shake up my novel-writing process a bit next year and outline ahead of time.

What didn’t work with this goal was that the idea I had was maybe a 7/10 for me, and in a different genre from my usual contemporary fantasy. I got a few thousand words in and decided it just wasn’t a good fit.

Next year, I’d love to take enough time to explore ideas until I have something that’s a 10/10 … something I’m really keen to write. And ideally something that’s reasonably marketable.

Another huge issue with this goal is that I’d planned to do a bunch of writing in November, which is traditionally the month my son comes down with some horrible coughing and vomiting bug.

Every November, I think maybe he’ll avoid it… and every November, I’m wrong.

November 2024 was no different. (Except that he had an extra round of some kind of bug in mid-September, which was around the time I gave up on the 250 words/day goal for good.)

Fellow parent-writers, I see you and I get it. Sometimes it’s really, really tough to keep up with writing around the inevitable disruption that comes with having kids!

Unexpected Q4 Writing Achievement: Two New Freelancing Clients

Despite slow/no progress on several of my goals, some things actually went really well with my writing in Q4.

One of the biggest successes for me over the past three months was landing two new long-term freelancing clients.

If you’re a freelance content writer, you’ll know that AI has been more than a little disruptive this past 12 months or so. It’s not been nearly as easy as in the past to land work (or to keep clients … I lost two great ones this year) so I’m really pleased to be ending the year on a freelancing high.

Tip: One of the clients came through a really handy round up of freelance writing jobs I found: Write Jobs PLUS+. It’s a small monthly fee for access, but the quality and curation of writing gigs has been great. (I’m not affiliated with them in any way, I just thought it could be useful to some Aliventures readers too.)

Other 2024 Highlights

Some other writing-related highlights of 2024 were:

• Creating How to Write Faster and Editing Essentials – two new products that address issues I see coming up for a lot of writers.
• Offering writing coaching (for the first time in several years) – I’ve absolutely loved working one-on-one with writers and seeing their stories develop.
• Launching Writers’ Cafe – it’s been so much fun to watch this writing community come together, and I have lots of plans for it in 2025!

In a couple of weeks, I’ll be blogging about my goals for 2025. I’d love to hear about how your 2024 went and any writing goals you’ve already got for next year … just leave a comment below, or email me any time at ali@aliventures.com.