Honestly, I have very little idea at this point.
The second half of 2021 was one long mental health crisis for me, even more so than 2020 with my slow recovery from COVID. I stopped working on my current novel. I didn’t participate in NaNoWriMo for the first time in seven years. Yes, I did bounce back from my spring reading slump earlier in the year, books were interesting again and helped somewhat with my stress levels, but beyond keeping up with reviewing those, my creative spirit was completely drained.
It still mostly is. I’m an author with almost no will to write.
But it will come back with time. Or it won’t, and I’ll hang up my hat, though I don’t think that’s likely in the long run. I’ve been at this gig for six full years now, and four novels later, it’s clear that this has not and will not become a real career for me, only a really passionate hobby that doesn’t make me any money. I’ve accepted that, but I’m not giving up on writing entirely.
That does mean, however, that I shouldn’t feel nearly as much pressure to maintain a consistent blog schedule (not that I have since the pandemic, I totally haven’t) or to market myself. It’s time to just be me, and this is me admitting that I have no idea if I’m going to write anything worth sharing this year. The idea of trying to publish another novel in that time frame is laughable.
I can promise I’m still a reader and a book reviewer.
I’ve been tackling my owned book backlog for the last few years, as a consequence of discovering the joys of book bag sales in nearby towns, and the always-overflowing sale room at my local library branch. At one point I remember my unread backlog being something over 300 books. Today, I counted, and across three years (2019-2021) it’s down to just 65 books. I can totally read 65 books this year!
So that’s the only major goal I’m setting myself: completely clear my backlog and continue to post reviews. Intermixed with that I’m sure I’ll be buying new books to keep up with series I’m in the middle of, though I’ve nixed that post series because it got unwieldy, tracking everything and worse, listing everything I’d struck off my TBR for whatever reason. It’s useful to me, certainly, but not all that interesting to anyone else.
When I have ideas for other posts, I’ll write and post them. But no promises there.
I know I have some loyal readers who faithfully hit “like” every time, and I appreciate that. I’ve never gotten a lot of comments, and that’s okay too, I know you’re there anyway. I want to thank you all for hanging around even as my ability to produce new and interesting content has faded.
elena johansen 