Reflect, Reset, and Reignite Your Year: Let’s turn the page to your most productive year yet
The KidLit Creator’s Chronicle – Issue #01
Hi,
At the end of each year, I take time out to reflect on the year just passed. I look over the goals I set for the year—which ones I achieved, which ones I didn’t, why I didn’t achieve them, what I could have done better, and also take time to celebrate my wins.
Then, I look to the new year and set my goals for the year ahead, covering all areas of my life: professional, personal, family, and so on. This is a powerful exercise I believe everyone should do.
I’m lucky enough to do this while taking a couple of weeks off in the beautiful Gordon’s Bay, near Cape Town, South Africa.
A new year always feels full of possibility—like opening a brand-new notebook, ready to fill with your ideas. But before we leap into the exciting unknown, it’s valuable to take a moment to pause and reflect.
The truth is, the most successful creative journeys start with understanding where you’ve been and envisioning where you want to go. Reflection provides insight and the opportunity to learn from both successes and challenges, so you can build on strengths and avoid repeating mistakes.
Then, resetting your focus gives you a fresh start, strengthening your inspiration and drive, and developing a clear vision gives you direction.
Today, I want to guide you through an actionable process to help you reflect, reset, and reignite your creativity and motivation for 2025 as an author. Feel free to apply this to all areas of your life!
Reflect, Reset, and Reignite Your Year
1. Reflect: Look Back to Move Forward
Start by assessing 2024. Ask yourself:
- What were my wins? Which author goals did I achieve or make progress on?
- Which challenges taught me the most?
- Which projects brought me the most joy?
Celebrate the wins, learn from the hurdles, and let go of anything that didn’t serve you. Each experience—good or bad—helps you grow as an author (if you let it).
2. Reset: Clear the Clutter
Before you can take on new goals, it’s important to make space for them.
This might mean:
- Taking a break! This has been proven to be extremely important for you to be able to reset and get the headspace needed to start fresh.
- Wrapping up unfinished projects that you’re still excited about (or need to complete).
- Shelving ideas that no longer spark joy (it’s okay to do this!).
- Organizing your creative space—whether it’s tidying your desk or decluttering your digital files.
Resetting is about creating clarity, so your energy is fully focused on what matters most this year.
3. Reignite: Dream Boldly for 2025
Now comes the fun part—dreaming about what’s next. Think about:
- Your Big Goals: What would you love to achieve by this time next year? Maybe it’s finishing your manuscript, finding an illustrator, or finally hitting “publish.”
- Your Creative Habits: What small steps will move you closer to your dreams? Perhaps it’s writing for 20 minutes every day or attending a workshop that inspires you.
- Your Impact: What impact would you like your books or writing to have? What do you want them to mean to the children who read them? How many children would you love to reach?
Write these dreams down. Big or small, they’re the guiding lights that will keep you moving forward.
And, talking about guiding lights, if you’ve never done a North Star Vision, I highly recommend it!
4. Write Your North Star Vision
To me, this is the most exciting part of the process—envisioning your ideal life three years from now. Your North Star Vision is your guiding light, showing you what’s possible and giving you direction for everything you do.
I do this exercise with members of my Children’s Book Mastery Author Coaching program and have told them how amazing it’s been to see parts of my North Star Vision come true, down to uncanny details.
Write your North Star Vision in present tense, as if you are describing a snapshot of your ideal life three years from now. So don’t write, “I will be a published author.” Write, “I am a published author.”
Do this for your author career, but I recommend doing it for all parts of your life, including personal, family, financial, health and legacy.
Here’s how it works:
1. Picture Your Ideal Future (Three Years From Now)
Imagine your life in January 2028. What does your author career look like?
Consider questions like:
- How many books have you written, published, or sold?
- What impact are your stories having on readers?
- What does a typical day as an author look like?
2. Be Specific and Visual
Make your vision vivid and detailed. Instead of saying, “I want to be a successful author,” write something like, “I have three beautiful published picture books, and I sell 2,000 copies a month. I visit schools and events 2-3 times a month to inspire young readers.”
You can write as many things as you like. I like to divide it into the different areas of life (personal, family…) and then make a bullet list for each one, noting everything I want my life to be in three years.
3. Write It Down
Write your North Star Vision (remember, in the present tense, as if it’s already happening). Write each part fully, and keep it somewhere where you can review it whenever you want. I recommend looking at it from time to time to keep you inspired and on track.
Forget Perfection, Focus on Progress
As a perfectionist, two quotes that changed my life are:
Done is better than perfect.
You win or you learn.
Focusing on actually completing things, rather than obsessing over getting them perfect, is liberating and boosts your morale. Plus, you become much more productive!
And realising that if you don’t get the outcome you were aiming for, you didn’t fail, you gave yourself an opportunity to learn and take that knowledge with you moving forward, is both a relief and empowering.
If you’re a perfectionist, here’s a gentle reminder:
Progress is more important than perfection.
And it’s not just more important—progress is the foundation of success. Striving for perfection can lead to stagnation, while embracing progress over perfection allows for growth, learning, and, well, progress!
Why perfectionism holds us back:
- Perfectionism often leads to procrastination. When we fear not getting it “right,” we avoid starting altogether.
- It discourages experimentation, which is vital for creativity. If we only aim for perfect outcomes, we miss the lessons learned from trial and error.
- Perfectionism creates burnout. Constantly trying to meet unrealistic standards can drain your energy and enthusiasm for your work.
Instead of perfection, focus on a system that encourages consistent progress:
1. Break Goals into “Micro Commitments”
Big goals can feel overwhelming, but breaking them into smaller, achievable steps reduces the pressure to get everything perfect.
Ask yourself, “What is the next step I can take that is so small, it would be impossible to fail?”
For example, instead of: “Finish my manuscript this week,” try: “Write one scene or spread each day.”
Micro commitments ensure you keep moving forward, even when life gets busy.
This approach aligns with the Japanese philosophy of kaizen, which focuses on continuous improvement through small, consistent actions. By identifying and taking the next smallest possible step, you can build momentum and confidence, making it “impossible to fail” because each step is deliberately designed to be achievable.
2. Redefine Success
Reframe success as showing up and trying, rather than striving for perfection.
- Celebrate effort rather than just outcomes. Even if you don’t like the results of your 20 minutes of writing, you’ve still made progress just by making the effort.
- To show how little steps pile up over time, keep track of your progress. A notebook or habit tracker, for instance, can help make small victories feel important.
Remember: Creativity isn’t about perfection—it’s about experimenting, learning, and improving.
What’s Your Word for 2025?
As part of my yearly goal setting and planning, I choose a single word to guide my focus for the year ahead. It’s a simple yet powerful way to stay aligned with what truly matters, especially when life throws its inevitable curveballs.
One of my favourites is a fantastic book called The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller. It emphasises the importance of identifying your “one thing,” by asking yourself:
What’s the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?
It’s about focusing on a single, most important task that can simplify and enhance all other aspects of your work and life.
Another relevant quote from the book:
Extraordinary results are directly determined by how narrow you can make your focus.
While the book isn’t about choosing one word, I’ve found that simplifying to the max and honing in to what really matters is extremely powerful. That’s why I like to choose one word to keep me on track when distractions come my way that could derail me from the path to my goals.
For me, my word for 2025 is…
Consistency
This word has a lot of meaning for me, because consistency is the foundation of everything we achieve. Without consistency, even the best ideas and most magnificent goals remain dreams. With it, progress happens—not all at once, but steadily and surely.
Why consistency matters:
- For writing: It’s not about waiting for inspiration to strike—it’s about showing up every day, even when it’s hard.
- For publishing: Success in this industry rarely happens overnight. It’s built on consistent effort, whether you’re refining your craft, self-publishing books or submitting manuscripts, or growing your audience.
- For personal growth: The biggest transformations happen not from one big leap but from small, consistent steps over time.
This year, I’m focusing on building better habits in my personal and work life, so that I can achieve steady progress. I encourage you to do the same.
Over to You!
What’s one thing you’d like to reflect on, reset, or reignite this year? Or what’s your one word for 2025? Comment and let me know. I’d love to hear about your word or creative goals for 2025!
I hope you’ve enjoyed the first edition of The KidLit Creator’s Chronicle!
Stay tuned for next week’s edition, where I’ll cover the three simple ingredients you need for every great story, plus a game-changing writing strategy for you to use.
Let’s make this the year we stay consistent and make our lives and stories shine!
