Reflections of 2024
As the end of the year approaches many of us take the oppportunity to reflect on what has been acheived, highlights and lowlights of the year just gone. Reflective Practice is also the way I learn from my experiences. The process I use is to describe what happened and then ask myself a series of questions. How I felt about the experience, what was good and what was bad, what I have learned from it and what would I do differently next time.
In 2024 I finished my third book. I am very proud to be have persisted when it got tough, (as they all do) in order to get to the end. It doesn’t seem to get any easier and this one seemed too difficult at times. But I like the story and I now know that the process of writing a full length novel doesn’t really get any easier even after three attempts.
In August I attended the Romance Writer’s Of Australia Conference in Adelaide with my neice (who actually writes romance). It was a wonderful experience, meeting many authors that I had met online for the first time IRL (in real life). But it was also daunting. I don’t write romance, so I wondered why I was there. I remember vividly, feeling quite lost at the first night cocktail party, watching on as everyone seemed to be having such a good time and I felt on the outer. Until a lovely person came up and spoke to us and introduced us to to another group. Then we were off, meeting and chatting to many wonderful authors. Even though it was rather uncomfortable not knowing many attendees, I learned a lot about writing romance which will help me to include more romantic elements in my writing. I still need to learn to push myself more to simply say hello and start up a conversation.
One of my goals for 2024 was not to take on any additional work that was not writing related. However I accepted an offer to do some mentoring for adult educators. This ended up being a very rewarding role and I will be continuing in 2025. But whilst this new role meant that I didn’t achieve the goal of not taking on any new work, I did finish up all my other external projects which has allowed more space for writing and building my writing business.
Another highlight of the year was an amazing book tour in the Riverina, NSW. I gave talks at five libraries and was warmly welcomed by good numbers of book loving people at each library. It was a complete joy talking to these people who were so clearly interested in what I had to say and I loved listening to the stories many of them had to tell. I will definitely be writing to more libraries asking for the opportunity to give a talk.
So much more has happened in the last 12 months, but I like to keep my posts short. So I am signing off for 2024 and looking forward to a productive 2025. Watch this space for my goals and dreams for 2025 coming up in my January post.
Do you use reflective practice to learn from your experiences? Let me know about your process in the comments.