2024 - reflections towards the end of a year I would like erase from memory

As the year approaches its end, I am doing my annual reflection on the year that has been and its impact on my writing process, and setting my writing goals for the year ahead.

It has not been a good year generally from a global perspective. The world is a tinderbox of geo-political instability right now and it’s fair to say that my reading of this book during the year past - https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/repeat probably alarmed me a little too much given so many parallels now with the post-WWI period.  I did try to balance this alarm by reading this book - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humankind:_A_Hopeful_History but it was not quite enough to lift my spirits to a level of optimism around what 2025 might bring. The skies full of black clouds spinning around the Earth.

On a more personal note, the year past has been perhaps one of my most challenging in decades on my well-being that has impacted negatively and too heavily on my writing process.  The black clouds swirling over me pouring down a deluge of pelting hard heavy rain.

I have had severe writer's block on the drafting of my next novel - One Way Street - for most of the year (largely the result of being emotionally drained because of a series of serious bullying incidents perpetrated by a narcissistic sociopath that I had to manage as part of my day job). And, while there was a good turn around resumption of drafting through a month off work in October that almost got me back on track, it came undone towards the end of the year.   As I mentioned at the start of this post, the impact on my bandwidth to concentrate on the ideas I want to write about in the novel drafting has taken a beating. It is so much harder to write when exhaustion is at play and sleep deprivation plagues the witching hour on an all too regular basis. 

In spite of the challenging year, I somehow managed to meet my annual poetry contribution commitment to the e-publication I've been writing for over the last few years - with the 2024 theme of nostalgia providing me with plenty of fodder of ideas that translated to some of the most powerful poetry I've written in a while.  The nostalgia themed poems were interspersed with a handful of other poems processing emotions. I expect poetry writing will feature heavily again in 2025. As I have previously reported, creative writing generally and the poetic form specifically has long been a channel for me to work through my feelings - I have been writing poems since junior high school - and in the last few weeks I have written close to a dozen pieces.

Writing Goal 1 for 2025 - it will be sensible for me set aside drafting One Way Street and in its place return to drafting the third part of my dystopian fiction Peitho series – the Peithosian Legacy – as an alternative novel writing goal for next year given the horror of the world in that story may be easier to write in these circumstances. My publisher will accommodate this shift given there are readers wanting to know how that trilogy ends.

Writing Goal 2 for 2025 - The year 2025 will no doubt continue to help with my coping in the moment, but only a little. If I can write a dozen poems in two weeks, I'm sure many more will pour out of me. I will return to the nostalgia theme generally as well as it is a good way to lift my spirits.

To close out my reflection on the year that has been, here's one piece of music that is resonating for me in this moment - The National - your mind is not your friend. 

Do I believe 2025 will be better? Do I believe I will be here this time next year to reflect on another year passed?  Whether it is a global disaster or a personal one - I'm not optimistic.