Last week’s check-in post served as a bit of a look back over my writing in 2025.  Beyond looking at how the writing of my two main characters have changed, I think what has been the most striking for 2025 is how much easier it has gotten to write.  I started this website to help me build my writing into a regular habit and that has certainly happened.  It’s natural for me now to hop on my computer either as I’m winding down a day, or in the mornings on weekend, and get to writing.  While I still have a few days a month where I don’t write, those are days I chose and not because “I just didn’t get to it.”  That consistency is something I’m really happy about as, at the end of the day, the hardest part about writing is the act of sitting down to do it.  Along with my increased regularity of writing, I have also found that my writing stamina has increased.  

That is to say when I sit down to write it has gone from being a bit of a struggle to write my desired 400-500 words to now being a relatively easy to knock out 600-800 words (though I do certainly still have my struggle days).  A good chunk of that progress came back in November when I strove to write 25,000 words that month.  Admittedly, I haven’t quite reaped the full benefits of being able to achieve larger word counts yet.  One reason is December has had more days where I’ve skipped writing as I’ve enjoyed several holiday plans.  The other though is because the length of my stories have gotten longer.  Longer stories are nice, I get to explore whatever I’m writing about a bit more, but it does mean they take more time.  As a result, I haven’t been able to build up quite the backlog I was hoping to have going into the end of the year, nor have I had time to work on my novel to the level that I want to.

Which brings me to the other half of getting to the end of the year.  We’ve looked back and now it’s time to look forward.  For the website itself, I’d like to spend some time getting the Illithiust page updated, and work on some better formatting in general.  I think a stretch goal would be to get in the habit of either taking a photo or using screenshots from games and such as a way to have a visual representation for each story.  It would help to add a bit of flare to the site (and maybe give me an excuse to spend some more time in Baldur’s Gate 3).  I should probably consider working on the social media presence of the site, especially to help it grow, but I kinda doubt that I will.

For the stories themselves, I’ve got two goals.  I’ve mentioned before that I want to run a bit of a “monster of the week” set of stories delving into Quartes and Keto dealing with Fey.  It’ll be fun and give me more time developing the Fey, which are one of the key aspects of Illithiust.  In addition, I’d like to write some more stories touching on some other characters.  Certainly it would be fun to spend some more time with Airka but we’ve given hints of characters like Brokel and Aramil that I’d like to do some work with.

For my writing in general, I also want to get to where I’m spending more time working on my novel as I’d very much like 2026 to be the year where I get the bulk of that done.  I’ve got some idea of each month being two or three Fey stories and then other one or two stories, such as lore/journal articles or spent with other characters.  I’ve got a bit of an idea for a sci-fi novel as well but I don’t think that’ll be ready for showing off anytime soon.

Ultimately, thank you to those who spent this year with me.  Fey and Bard has been a great source of joy for me, and certainly something that contributed to me getting though a tough year.  I wish you all the best going into 2026 and would love to hear what you’re hoping to achieve as we head into the new year.

Go forth and do good things,

Sean