2025 Wrapped - Writer Edition

Craft Improvements for 2025

After publishing new stories for the past six years, life finally forced me to take a pause in 2025. This was a year of writing growth rather than publishing growth. Because of that, I want to talk about craft instead of publishing data in my 2025 “wrapped”.

These are still things I’m working on, but below are the areas I saw the most growth in:

I. Precision & Directness

• Identified and removed hedging.

  • “almost sweet”, “more than a few ways”, “felt like a deep truth”.

• Trimmed meta introspection.

  • “Deep down inside me, I should have felt repelled by the scene in front of me. I knew that. Except I just didn’t, no matter how long I stared at them.” —> “I should’ve been disgusted. I wasn’t. Oops.”

• Revised vague statements.

  • “People were becoming more familiar to me.” —> “Faces were starting to stick.”

• Removed repeated concepts in paragraphs (aka stop saying the same idea three different ways).

II. Voice Authority & Confidence

• Took out qualifiers.

  • “almost”, “sort of”, “maybe”

• Stated emotional truths instead of circling around them.

  • “I probably should have known” —> “I knew.”

• Cut the throat-clearers (aka discourse markers).

  • “of course,” “I guess,” “however.”

III. Micro Pacing & Story Beat Control

• Shortened punchlines.

• Compressed internal realizations.

• Alternated internal beats with external beats (aka cut long introspection up).

• Let setting and action carry the emotional movement.

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Self-Reflection

My biggest craft epiphany: strong ideas are direct. When I stack thoughts or dance around the point, the sentences grow thin, and the reader has to pull it all back together. It muddies what I’m trying to say.

So if less is more, why did I think more is better? Three reasons:

1. I’m neurodivergent.

   1. Turning my thoughts into words is an act of translation. My first draft is going to be indirect, meta, and fumble for organization. This helps me find clarity while writing, but (I’ve realized) doesn’t help others while reading.

2. I’m a genre author trained by literary authors.

   1. I was taught complexity meant depth. Metaphors, stacking ideas, and craft playfulness were considered more important than clarity.

3. I’m a woman.

   1. Qualifiers, hedging, and softening are socially embedded in women. 😬

Understanding the why behind it helps me avoid spiraling. I know I’m not alone in these issues—they’re common with certain people, and no one is stuck with them forever. Skill plateaus are normal, but they don’t have to be permanent.