2025 Goals and Word of the Year
The First Edition | Vol. III - Iss. 1
NOTE: This email may get cut off due to its length. If so, just click HERE to read it online.
Dear Reader,
I originally had a fairly dry email where I listed what I’m planning for this year. But it seemed all rather boring and basic. In truth, I’ve got some pretty fantastic plans for my fiction in 2025 and they deserve more than just a few bullet points here and there! I love lists as much as the next person (possibly even more than the next person…) but some things need a bit of pizzaz to get the point across!
Starting with my main newsletter: Erica Drayton Writes
100 Word Stories [The Ending of a Saga] - January 2026 is when I’ll reach the ultimate milestone. 1,000 100 word stories is a lot! And at this moment I’ve resigned myself to wanting to hit that number and essentially scale back what I’ve been doing. When I started this journey I honestly didn’t have an end goal in mind. I wanted to write 100 word stories and before I knew it, writing one every single day became a habit I just couldn’t kick. But there are more days where I’m dissatisfied with the stories than days where I feel like I’m putting out bangers and I can’t keep doing this. I much rather put my attention where I’m most excited these days.
My goal, if nothing else sticks in 2025, is to be known for my horror. It’s the genre I write the most and I think that my 100 word story craze has overshadowed the fact that horror is my wheelhouse. Heck, I would say that 99.99% of my 100 word stories are horror-focused. But somewhere along the way I have lost my horror-edge and so, the gloves are coming off in 2025 in the form of three short story collections:
Let’s start with Anatomy of Typewriters. I love typewriters. And even though I only ever owned one when I was a pre-teen (yes, I was born before the advent of computers in the home), I’ve always been fascinated by them. But not in the way you might think. Each story will feature, some more prominently than others, a typewriter, in a setting that is less than happy and most definitely, terrifying.
When it comes to Return to Twilight I’m spending some much needed time with my love of The Twilight Zone original five seasons. Near the tail end of 2024 I immersed myself in TZ, pouring over whatever I could find about every single episode, picking the best ones suited for my special brand of reimagining. I’ve selected ten that I think you’ll really like. I hope you’re prepared to return to the Twilight Zone with me.
What Big Teeth is the title of some hand-picked short stories that I wrote back during the pandemic. With nothing much to do but work and stay in-doors, writing stories was a much needed outlet. Not every story I wrote was good but the ones I really resonated with are getting a new coat of paint and for the first time, published together into a very special collection.
2025 is all about the fiction. This means I’m likely only going to release my updates email on the 1st of every month and that’s it.
WORD OF THE YEAR
I love this word because this year unlike any other year prior I’m truly leaning into storytelling. Fiction can be timeless. Someone reading it today could love it (or hate it) just as much as someone reading it a decade from now. I want to get my fiction right so that it can be timeless. Have no restrictions, no beginning or ending. How cool would that be?
ONE MORE THING
A brief note on Paid Subscriptions. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought and I’m making the following change:
My 100 word stories #1 - #500 will be behind a paywall. Stories #501 - #1,000 will be free to read. My reasoning for this is because the first 500 are available for purchase. Since I’m not looking to publish the second 500, at least not any time soon, I’m okay with leaving them free to read.
All short stories that I share will be completely behind the paywall, and for a similar reason as the 100 word stories. The intention is to put them into a collection for purchase. But unlike my 100 word stories, these collections will be available in paperback, hardcover, and ebook.
Semi-Retired Substacks
The Pickwick Club & Beyond the Wizard - I hope to bring these back in 2026. But for now, 2025 has to be a year of writing fiction and helping the fiction community. These two were more of a passion project for me that I have to step back from.
MicroZine - Due to time constraints and the fact that I want to really work on my short stories in 2025, I am forced to shutter MicroZine…for now! I hope to maybe bring it back some day as writing micro fiction will always be a love of mine.
My aim - consistent with 2024 - is to have no goals. I work better with instinctiveness, waiting for a story to tug at my coat tail. I got back into 100-word tales for 30 days in December. I will peck away at the odd 100-word and 50-worders by the campfire with Justin but I know that if I tried anything approaching a ‘streak’ the quality wouldn’t hold up. I’m ‘less but better’ this year. I’m going to nibble at the edges of ‘Against the Tide’, my dystopian manuscript but I may well reach a point where I bin it. I have two non-fiction ‘projects’ in mind. A ‘Book of Encouragement’ and a travelogue based on the 3 month rail trip we’re making in the Autumn. I might shake up the genre by peppering it with fiction based wherever we’ve ended up. So, big handful ideas, not goals. I better save these words and check in on myself along the way.
A hefty pile of goals. May you reach them all. Happy New Year.