I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions. They never actually make a difference in my life because I can’t stick to any of them for very long. But I do believe in celebrating all the accomplishments of the past year and setting personal goals. I like that goals are better focused and don’t have to have a looming completion date.

As a writer, I can’t think of a better way to set goals and celebrate my accomplishments of the past year than to make it into a fun writing exercise. Anyone who knows me, knows that I love Broadway. I even wrote an entire novel set at a theater camp. Which is why I had to write a “Sincerely, Me” letter inspired by Dear Evan Hansen as a way of keeping myself accountable for these goals. I promised myself I would give more insight and reflection into my writing journey on this blog to help other writers who might feel similarly, so here it goes…

Dear Me,

In the past year, you did a whole lot to be proud of despite being in year two of a pandemic. You wrote an entire novel that you love for your masters thesis. You were able to go back to New York for graduation. You graduated with your MFA and a perfect GPA. You realized your passion is in writing for a young adult audience. You wrote another novel that you love even more than the last one and finished it in just two months. You queried these two novels to literary agents with a twenty-five percent request rate on both. You managed to read twenty-five young adult/adult contemporary/romance novels and six writing craft books (more than double the amount of books you read the year before. On another note, maybe twenty-five is a new lucky writing number for you?) You made more talented and cool friends in the Twitter Writing Community. You even helped more than a few of them with their queries and pitches and they actually found your comments and tips helpful. You also got over 1,200 Twitter followers and wow all those people really want to know about your writing journey, so you must be doing something right!

Those were all good things, but they also came with plenty of obstacles. You started writing a fourth novel during National Novel Writing Month and re-started it towards the end of the month. Actually you re-started it over and over and over again (hopefully third times the charm?) You hopelessly watched the rejections from those queries kept rolling in. You realized you’ve been querying novels to literary agents and watched the imposter syndrome set in the more the rejections stacked up. You never wanted to let the rejections make you believe that maybe your writing isn’t good enough, but they started to get to you despite your best efforts. You felt the anxiety from not being as far along in your publishing journey as you wanted to be by now, especially once you saw the publishing successes of others who graduated with you (you were happy for them, but also wished you could be as successful as them.) You spent the last month of the year barely being able to write because that fourth novel just wasn’t coming together as fast as the last novel had. You wondered how long it would be before you started writing something you loved again (thanks imposter syndrome!) You let the writer’s block get the best of you for a while and it really sucked.

This year, all you really have to do is keep writing because that’s the only thing you really have control over. It’s impossible to control all the other things if you don’t write. You can’t succeed or fail at something if you don’t keep working towards it. You can push through that pesky writer’s block and immerse yourself in the magic of the fictional worlds you create. You can channel Taylor Swift in her reputation era and try not to let the rejections get to you. You can banish the imposter syndrome while still recognizing that sometimes it’s really hard to do that and there will be days when it hits hard. You can give yourself a break and stop worrying about not being where you wanted to be in your writing journey. You can put yourself first and stop comparing the progress of your writing journey with the writing journeys of others. You can believe that you’ll get to where you want to be in your writing journey soon enough, when you’re meant to. Until then, you can impatiently continue to be patient for that agent offer of representation and book deal. You can make sure you celebrate that some agents are actually excited to read words that you wrote. You can continue to write knowing that someone is going to love your words as much as you do one day. You can finish that fourth novel and more and continue to query them until you get that one yes. You can remember that it only takes one yes to change the course of your writing journey. Until then, keep giving that yes to yourself and keep writing stories that you love and are excited to share with the world. You can be honest with yourself if you start to forget about these goals and work hard to maintain them to the best of your ability. Finally, you can be understanding with yourself if you sometimes struggle to maintain these goals.

This is going to be a good year and here’s why… no matter what else, this year, you’re going to keep writing. Let go of imposter syndrome. Talk yourself out of being anxious over aspects of your writing journey you can’t control. Don’t allow writer’s block get the best of you. Just… write and create fictional words that you love. And that’s more than enough.

Sincerely,

Me