Creative Ambition: Mid-Year Reflection

Reflection, growth, and creative ambition. An introspective journey of a writer.

June 2025. Mid-year. I can’t help but re-focus my mind on the past six months. All that’s come to fruition, and all that lies on the unpaved path ahead. What feels like rocks and stones—words and ideas—pelting me in the back, urging me to write their stories, to birth them the way a flower opens to the sunlight.

This year, I had promised to progress with a third round of edits fine-tuning loose ends, loose character development, loose plot points that pockmark my novel-in-progress, a coming-of-age thriller about an unhinged teenage girl who believes the death of her toddler brother was no accident. A manuscript I carry with me, strapped to my soul.

I can’t help but reflect on this same time period last year, when my goals included writing short stories and flash fiction and submitting them for publication in a variety of literary magazines, all while attacking round two of edits for my drafted novel.   

By year’s end of 2024, eight of my short stories published in eight different literary journals. I wrote and compiled a collection of twenty-one fiction narratives and submitted this 30,000+ word manuscript to several independent publishers for consideration. I didn’t manage to complete round two of edits for my 80,000-word novel until April 2025. A mere two months ago. Work that defies all of space and time.

Today, I wrote a 400-word flash fiction. Last week, I wrote an 800-word flash fiction. Both of which I am submitting for publication consideration. Last month, in May, I wrote two lyrical flash-fiction pieces that I posted in the blog section of my website. The Sea Between Us. Beneath the Rain: Not Yet, Not Yet. I recorded myself reading Beneath the Rain: Not Yet, Not Yet. The first of more to come.  

Today, I reflect on the past and plan for tomorrow. Six months until year’s end, and my heart fills with so much more to write. Characters unleashed. Characters birthed by pen, ink, and suffering.

Be true to yourself as a writer and continue to persevere. Your voice matters, always.

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