TRUE INDIE: How to Evaluate Your Writing Progress This Year
What matters is that you showed up to write, even if you didn’t quite reach the goals you had set for yourself.
2025—you were a firecracker of a year. (Take that to mean whatever you like.) Like a psychological thriller, this year had plenty of twists, turns, and surprises. However it went for you personally, it’s crazy to think that 2025 is nearly over, and the new year is almost upon us.
With the end of the year comes my annual tradition of writing a list of the progress I’ve made as a writer. Some years this process is easy and light—years when I’ve had screenwriting assignments, films in production, festival screenings, and distribution deals. Then there are the dry years. The years when barely any money trickled in, work was sparse, and the rejection letters piled up in my inbox.
You may be thinking: why torture myself during the dry years, when I already know I didn’t reach my goals?
Because, honestly, I’ve always made more progress than I thought I did, even in the dry years.
In December, it’s hard to think ten or twelve months back and remember everything you did and didn’t do. As the months and years blend together, it’s easy to lose track of the actual work you put in versus how you feel about where your writing career currently stands.
What matters is the actual work you put in. What matters is that you showed up to write, even if you didn’t quite reach the goals you had set for yourself.
2025 has been very heavy for me, personally. I’m sure many of you out there can say the same. So, this year, I’m changing it up by starting off with a list of how often I showed up:
- I showed up to write even after I got a terrible norovirus over the holidays last year, and other extenuating circumstances made us have to cancel Christmas and New Years.
- I showed up to write even as I had three surgical procedures over the spring to try to correct a defect in my trachea that makes it hard to breathe.
- I showed up to write even when it was hard to breathe.
- I showed up to write even while frightened about the state of our country, and through inflation and a suffering economy.
- I showed up to write even while working and homeschooling my daughter full-time.
- I showed up to write even as ongoing issues in our neighborhood made us need to sell our house and move.
- I showed up to write even through the stress of selling a home, buying a new home, packing and moving during the holidays.
I want to add that I’m saying I showed up to write—not that I always hit my word count, nor that I always made the progress I wanted. I didn’t write every day or even every week. Yet today I want to give myself credit for all the times that I sat down and opened my laptop or put pen to paper when I didn’t want to, when I was sick, and when I was exhausted.
Because I showed up this year—challenging as it was at times—I actually found myself accomplishing goals. Especially a goal that has been eluding me for years.
- After eight years, I finally finished a young adult novel, and have done a full year’s worth of edits on it.
- I have started working with an editor on the novel to get it ready to query to agents.
- I have written a query letter and synopsis.
- I worked to get one of our short films into a festival, and it screened at Lincoln Center in New York in October!
- I continued work on a Christmas script that I’ve been writing for a few years.
- I wrote two short stories that I’m submitting to a contest.
- I completed a series of eight screenwriting tutorials for Writer’s Digest University.
- I taught eleven screenwriting classes for Writer’s Digest University.
- I wrote six articles for Script Magazine (including this one)!
I had honestly forgotten about some of those accomplishments because they were earlier in the year. I had forgotten about the weeks spent perfecting my query in the winter, and the work I did on my Christmas script before life got in the way in spring. I had even forgotten about the two short stories I had written over the summer—and the contest deadline is in two weeks! (Whew! Glad I typed out this list!)
I encourage you to take a few quiet moments over the holidays and think back over the year in its entirety. Write down every time you showed up to create even when it felt impossible. Jot down every obstacle you overcame to sit at your computer to get a scene or page or chapter written. Then note what you accomplished because you showed up.
And if you weren’t able to show up much this year, don’t despair. You can make a list of how you plan on showing up in the new year. Not just goals and accomplishments you want to accumulate, but how you plan on carving out time in your life to show up to make what only seems like a dream right now into your reality.
Friends, we’ve got this.
2026—we see you, and we are ready.
Rebecca Norris Resnick is a screenwriter, filmmaker, instructor for Writer’s Digest University, and columnist for Script Magazine. Distributed features include Cloudy With a Chance of Sunshine (Indie Rights and House Lights Media) and short films On Becoming a Man (Shorts International) and Toasted, which won the Canadian Film Centre’s ShortsNonStop competition. Rebecca’s films have screened in festivals worldwide including Cannes, Dances With Films, Hollyshorts, Manhattan Film Festival, Breckenridge Film Festival, and the Julien Dubuque Film Festival, and have won and been nominated for numerous awards. Rebecca is also an alumna of the ABC/Disney Television Discovers program, where her script Misfortune Cookies was performed in both New York and Los Angeles. When not working on her newest project, Rebecca stays on her toes chasing both her adorable daughter and her tuxedo cat, Sox.
Learn more about Rebecca at rebeccanorrisresnick.com.
