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Year in Review: Triumphs, Struggles, and Facing My Dragons - How 2025 Shaped My Creative Courage12/4/2025
 2025 taught me something I thought I already knew: the most powerful magic isn't in the extraordinary moments. It's in the ordinary ones that keep us grounded. End of the year review time! Looking back at what I've accomplished in 2025, survived, and learned, I'm struck by how the big wins, such as publishing 3 books, and getting in 46K words for another, were now what saved me this year. It was the quiet, consistent, beautifully normal things that held me together while I faced my biggest dragons. The Triumphs: Three Books, One (Still) Grieving Heart2025 was a publishing year:
Here's what moved me: "Blood Money" received 68 ratings and reviews. Sixty-eight people read our story about Miles and Warren—a story born from my own grieving journey—and people connected with our characters deeply enough to leave their thoughts. Some say pain is art. Some might say this is the evidence. I believe it's how you transform that pain. I wrote 46,000 words on "The 19th Prince" and outlined "His Out Of Office Romance." The work continued. The stories kept coming. Those characters in my head won't leave me alone and I have to put them down on the screen, or paper, or somewhere. Otherwise, I get no sleep. The Struggles: The Real Cost of CreationThe triumphs don't tell the whole story. Writing challenges were real. Balancing a full-time job with deep creative work meant some weeks I couldn't find my rhythm. Some days, 5 hours of writing yielded only 1,000 words—and that's okay, but it's also exhausting. Switching between S.N. McKibben and Penn Scripter projects meant my brain was constantly context-switching (something I love). There were abandoned projects that didn't work out. There were weeks after breaks where building momentum felt like climbing a mountain. Publishing obstacles frustrated me. I've published 13 books, but revenue remains at $0-1k/month when my goal is $2k-4k/month. My backlist isn't generating the passive income I hoped for yet. I'm 95% dependent on Amazon, which means limited control and limited reach. Only 4% of my readers are international. The lead magnet that was supposed to convert isn't working like I expected. Okay, I could try harder with the lead magnet because they don't sell themselves. Newsletter growth has stalled short of my 5k-10k subscriber goal. Marketing felt like throwing spaghetti at the wall. I spend $300/month on marketing, but without robust tracking systems, I don't always know what's actually working. Which promo channels drive real sales? Which social media efforts convert? I was posting daily across multiple platforms, but the connection between effort and results felt murky. And then there was the personal stuff. 2024 took my husband, Donald. After a year of feeling numb, going through the motions, and figuring out my life, 2025 was the year I learned to live without him. Some days that meant showing up for work helping other authors while waves of grief hit unexpectedly. Some days it meant writing through exhaustion because the characters needed their story told. Some days it meant hosting Thanksgiving, baking bread from scratch, creating joy for my family while my heart was still learning how to beat differently. In October, the burnout dragon was circling. Q4 always drains me, but this year I recognized the pattern. By November, I hit a wall so hard I took Thanksgiving Thursday through Sunday completely off. No guilt. No "catching up." Just rest. The Dragons: What I Faced Down in 2025The Fear of Not Being Enough Publishing 13 books but still struggling to reach my income goals whispered a dangerous lie: maybe my stories don't matter. Maybe I should quit. But then 68 people rated "Blood Money." They left reviews. They said my words mattered. They said my grief-soaked story about power and vulnerability and redemption resonated with THEM. That silenced the lie. The Fear of Burnout I knew Q4 would be hard. I saw the pattern for the very first time. But I pushed anyway, thinking rest would come during Thanksgiving, and it did. But, it's not enough. Resting isn't failure. Boundaries aren't weakness. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is say "I need to stop" and actually mean it. The Fear of Vulnerability Writing "Blood Money" meant writing about grief. It meant exploring trauma and redemption while I was still living it. It meant putting my pain on the page and hoping readers would understand instead of judge. They understood. They connected. They saw themselves in Miles' journey. It actually made me believe in humanity again. How Normal Things Kept Me GroundedThis is the surprise of 2025: It wasn't the big wins that saved me. It was the ordinary moments. It was my dogs demanding their morning walk. If I didn't want whining puppies during writing time, it meant I had to move my body first, which meant I showed up to my desk clearer and calmer. It was my bees teaching me about boundaries. (Yes, I got stung because I didn't wear my bee suit. The lesson was immediate and painful: protection isn't optional.) It was my parents, my friend Lea in Canada, my friend Bethany, and even my Sintra helpers showing up when I needed support. It was taking Saturdays completely off—not as "catch-up days," but as real rest days. It was celebrating small wins: 707 words written in a week. 22+ client calls completed. Hosting Thanksgiving. All of it counted. It was the quiet consistency of showing up, even when I was tired. Even when the words came slowly. Even when grief ambushed me, or my body woke me up from the pain of leg cramps at 3AM. The Courage I DiscoveredI re-learned that vulnerability is strength. My grief informed my art. The trauma and redemption themes in "Blood Money" are richer, deeper, more real because I lived them while writing them. That wasn't a weakness—that was authenticity. I re-learned that asking for help isn't failure. Working with my support system, being transparent about my struggles, letting people help carry the weight—that's wisdom, not weakness. I re-learned that realistic goal-setting is an act of self-love. Instead of forcing myself to write 4,000 words a week, I admitted: "I may need to build up to that." And you know what? That honesty lifted a weight off my shoulders to actually write more, not less. I re-learned that honoring my body is a strategy. Walking my dogs. Resting when I need to. Saying no to guilt. These aren't luxuries—they're necessities for sustainable creativity. I re-learned that writing has helped me understand who I am inside. The process of creating Miles and Warren, of exploring power dynamics and redemption, of channeling grief into art—that's strengthened me. That's made me braver. That's made me more myself. Facing the Burnout Dragon in 2026The dragon I'm facing now is burnout. It doesn't whisper. It doesn't say anything. It's this feeling. a disappointment when I see I've been writing for 5 hours and only have 1k words to show for it. That's when the accusations come. The ones that whispers, "you're not efficient enough" and "you should be further along" and "why aren't you writing more?" But I know its tricks. Rest isn't laziness. Sustainable creativity beats sprint-and-crash every single time. 2025 taught me something crucial: the most powerful magic isn't in pushing harder. It's in showing up consistently, with boundaries, with grace, with the understanding that normal, grounded moments are what keep us alive. What 2025 Taught Me2025 taught me that creative courage. I wrote and publishing three books while grieving. Getting 68 reviews validated my vulnerability. Facing burnout, hitting a wall, and choosing rest without guilt are my take-aways. Ordinary moments—morning walks with dogs, bee lessons about boundaries, rest days that are actually restful, friends who show up, parents who believe in you are the real magic. As I step into 2026, I'm carrying this with me: I am enough. My stories matter. My grief is fuel, not failure. And the dragons I face are just teachers in disguise. Thank you, 2025, for teaching me how to be brave enough to stay grounded. Here's to 2026—may it be filled with more normal moments, more authentic stories, and more of the quiet courage it takes to keep showing up. Until next time... ...happy reading! ~ Stephy P.S. This is going to be my last blog post (aside from maybe a Merry Christmas blog) of 2025. I'll return with a vengeance in January 2026!  Comments are closed.
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Welcome to The Enclave Thanks for taking a look at my little hodgepodge of a blog. The format and subjects of my blog has changed through the years as it's my log of S.N.McKibben's writing journey. You've now been sufficiently forewarned, happy reading! Categories
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