By ROSEMARY LORD
Do you ever feel that you’ll never catch up before the year ends?
Meanwhile all around, folks are panicking at not having enough time to complete their yearly goals, year-end deadlines, working to bring in much-needed last-minute, additional income after a slow financial year and wrap up assorted 2025 ventures.
At the same time, people want to make the most of the Holiday Season: Hanukkah, Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
Many are adding travel to their already over-packed timetables, to visit relatives, distant friends, escape to warmer climes as winter weather encroaches – or just a New Year getaway on the schedule.
Some of us are asking ourselves, is this all a bit overwhelming? Have I taken on too much? Have I added too many incidental items to my accomplishment wish-list?
As writers are we pushing ourselves to finish that book before the year end, when we really need to give ourselves more time to investigate the timelines, plotlines, deepen our characters? Are we rushing to complete that article before the January 1st deadline, just to get it out of the way?
I think that sometimes today, in our busy, rather overwhelming lives, we miss the point of the satisfaction of totally immersing ourselves in the creative pleasure that we’re privileged to do for a living. Just writing. Be it with pencil and pad, or the latest computer programs. Without the cacophony of social media expectations and the fear-of-missing-out, we would calmly (well – not always…) focus on the task at hand. We could focus on what we were writing, even when the deadlines loomed. We did not get distracted by today’s outer craziness. We researched, we wrote, we completed the assignment in a more centered way.
We were at the helm. None of the pressure from outside nudging us to keep posting things on social media or keeping up to date by reading everything on Facebook and Instagram, so we know what everyone and their cousin is doing or thinking. Being sure to read the ‘right’ blogs, attend the ‘right’ events, use the ‘right’ words, keep in touch with the ‘right’ people that may be able to boost our career or our ‘online presence,’ – or not.
What happened to the basic, simple goals we had carefully planned?
Our aim used to be to write an (almost perfect) article, book, novel, investigative report, children’s book. Something we would be fastidious in researching, writing and editing. Maybe running it by our beta-reader friends before sending it off.
But today we seem to have become distracted and overwhelmed by the outside influence of a thousand chattering voices telling us we’re not doing enough. That we should have this ‘online presence’ and become a social media darling so that everyone recognizes our faces and our logo. Everyone should have a distinctive logo, they say. Who is ‘they’?
Yes, I appreciate that is today’s way to sell more of our books, our articles, get more advertising revenue. But I can’t help thinking that, if it’s the money you’re after and if your goal is to become a millionaire and get a million ‘clicks,’– there are a lot easier ways to do that than through the writing world.
When we started out, it was our writing that we wanted people to read, enjoy, appreciate, even applaud. Somewhere along the road that seems to have gotten lost.
Originally, we each felt we had something to say. A voice to be heard and enjoyed. But then some got caught up in the rush of outside influences, instead of listening to that calm, still voice inside our writers’ brain.
Some of us got too busy listening to everything and anything and lost our way, then found ourselves thinking, ‘Is this how I really want to spend my life?’
And this is a wonderful time, over these festive holidays, to calmly step back and remember what we came in for. Where is our time best spent? Rushing around following the crowd? Or finding our way back to our original writing goals?
So, as we have our overfill of eggnog in the next couple of weeks, let’s take a deep breath and quietly plan for a wonderful year ahead of writing what WE want to write, in the way WE want to write it. Dust off our writing dreams – and tell Santa Claus what we really want for Christmas…
Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year to all of you writers and readers out there.
The Writers in Residence 
You are so right, Rosie. We do need to slow down, re-evaluate our goals, and keep on writing. Somewhere in the hustle and bustle is another story waiting to be written.
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Gayle – you’re right. I think we miss some of the things we could be writing – because we’re distracted by all this outside chatter.
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I love your perspective even if I see it differently. This time of year, I always put my writing aside and focus on my “real” life – family, friends and the meaning behind the celebrations. Partly because I get overwhelmed with responsibilities, like planning travel to see family, buying and wrapping gifts, sending out holiday cards and donations, etc. Yet it all brings pleasure, seeing those I love, enjoying their delight when they open their gifts (even if they don’t send a thank you card), and remembering so many friends I don’t see anymore, but stay in touch with this time of year. Come January, I’ll get back to my fictitious friends – the characters in my books.
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Your holiday time sounds wonderful! I’m glad you can put aside your writing until the New year! Happy Holidays!
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Rosemary, I could have written this post—every word! I’m spending way less time on social media, but apparently more busyness has taken its place. I need to remember that advice I often hear, to write every day, if only for 15 minutes. Thanks for your very welcome and timely post, Rosemary–we all need the reminder. Happy Holidays!
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Oh Maggie – I hear you! How do we stop this ‘busyness’ hamster-wheel? And I, too, need to remember that timely advice of writing even 15 minutes a day. Happy Holidays!
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I really enjoyed this post, Rosie, and how it caused me to contemplate what’s going on in my life now and what’s to come, in my writing and otherwise. Do I know for sure? Not hardly, but I’ll continue to plot my stories and my life.
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Thanks, Linda, I think it’s the best time to re-evaluate what we’re doing with time and our lives. Especially with your enviable, prolific literary output. That old saying: “What is life if, full of care, we have no time to stop and stare…” comes to mind. Happy plotting!
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