Writing roundup of 2025

I didn't realize I'd been writing it on and off for a year, but I hope to finish my cozy narrowboat mystery either this week or the next. All that remains is the wrap up.

I've been kind of writing it around MDZS, which is why it's taken so long. I didn't mean to write anything for MDZS and the next thing I knew I had 80k words or whatnot, but it's meant that the cozy had to take the back foot.

Now, however, I'm closing in on the end of the first draft, and I see that I have in fact got a finished book on my hands.

Only the first draft, of course. It needs a little while to rest before I can begin a first major edit - fitting the journey to the waterways, remembering everyone's names and the names of their boats, and settling on the final form of the quarrel between Susan and Emily.

In that resting time, I'm going to continue the world-building and plotting on the cozy Fantasy I will be writing next, with the plan to start a first draft of that before I go back to editing The Boat of Small Mysteries.

Thanks to my 7+ years of writer's block, I've realized that I stall out, badly, when I come to the end of a writing project and have nothing else to move on to. So this time I'm attempting to close the gap between one book and the next until there is a seamless transition between them.

I would like to touch wood and say that my long period of being unable to write is over. I need to mind the gap rather than falling into it. Wish me luck!