It’s the first Wednesday of the month and time for another posting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.

I’m co-hosting this month! My awesome co-hosts are: Tara Tyler, Pat Garcia, Liza, and Natalie Aguirre!

It’s the last month of the year. I can barely believe it. But a good way to end the year is to look at what I did and what I had wanted to accomplish at the start of it.

A look at what I planned and what I completed:

• My folklore podcast episodes went as planned.
• I moved around some of the books I planned to read as shiny ones on my TBR stole my attention, but I read and reviewed as many (more?) books than planned. (Especially ARCs.)
• I finished a series. Yeah, I totally finished “The Irascible Immortals Series“. So awesome! Okay, so some of the translations and audio still need to be published, but I’m sure it will be done by the end of 2025.

Surprising things that happened:

• I started reading books discussed in-depth on the Ink and Magic Podcast and thus learned more about writing (some things I understood about story but not how to use it properly, etc.).
• I started a Booktube podcast (sharing my reviews on YouTube) on the same channel I use for everything. I call it: Reviews with Ronel.
• I started a Substack. I call it: Ronel the Raconteur. I basically just share my two podcasts there.
• I also published book 5 in the Origin of the Fae series. Only in English, but in all 3 formats I usually publish in. So cool!

Writing and publishing wise…

I wanted to do Kickstarter, but it turns out I’m ineligible to be a creator on the platform as I’m South African (they only allow certain countries to participate on the creator side of things). I did research alternatives, but none of them have the kind of built-in audience for books the way Kickstarter does. Bummer. I did find Jumpstarter, a South African alternative crowdfunding model similar to Kickstarter. But honestly, there’s so much to work through to get something like this to work, that I felt overwhelmed.

I learned so much this year: using different technology and apps; from book clubs and reading challenges; listening to podcasts and reading papers on psychology. It’s like I did a degree on how to be a super entrepreneur, author and person. It was fun. I believe in being a life-long learner, and by diversifying what I learned this year (though not outside my comfort zone), I did start looking at things in a different light (or angle or whatever).

I rewrote a couple of stories in my closet and even published some of them (exclusive to my newsletter subscribers). You can read about this spring cleaning endeavour here.

The idea that anything you do takes exactly as long as you budget time for it was probably the biggest AHA! moment I had this year.

Eye of the Tiger – Just a woman and her will to survive.

I said in January that this is my song for the year. Man, I needed the inspiration a time or two. Things got rough as I redefined my author career; not just professionally but personally, too. The economics of time, knowing that saying “yes” to something means saying “no” to something else, sometimes seemed harsh. Why can’t I spend a bit of time researching this shiny new idea?

Yeah, looking back at what I was able to accomplish this year because I budgeted my time is quite amazing. And knowing what I can still do in 2025 because I practiced self-care, just makes me hungry for more.

So that’s been my year. What did you accomplish this year? You can learn loads more on my For Authors page here.