Writer's Life Audit: How to Conduct a Writing Annual Review
In the corporate world—where goals, benchmarks, and achievements are highly valued—an annual review serves by aligning our own ambitions with our company's broader mission. It's typically led by the human resources department, and ideally, you sit with your manager to have a productive and reflective conversation about the year ahead. But something I learned about my writing life while working for others is that I’m in charge of my own growth and development. The problem is, we rarely sit down to reflect on where we’ve been and where we’re headed.
New Ritual: Conduct a Writing Life Audit
This ritual has evolved from my years of corporate work experience and I’ve adapted it liberally to serve my creative life. Essentially, it supports you to become your own director HR, creatively speaking. Whether you’re foregoing grad school but want to create that experience for yourself or you’re starting to work on a novel and want some extra support, it’s really important that you set aside some time to think about where you’re at in your writing life, take stock of what you’d like to focus on in the months ahead, and determine what you need to move forward.
There are a few reasons I love this annual ritual…
First, it helps you see the big picture. The practice invites you to pause and prepare for the year ahead, and in doing so, reflect on everything. The rejections piled up in your inbox. The projects that fizzled. But also, the writing that lit you up, and the progress you made, even if it was incremental.
Second, this ritual helps you sort out your feelings. You might have an inkling of where you want to go next (a writing retreat!), maybe you’re really frustrated with how something is going (or not going), or you’re questioning everything about your novel-in-progress. This is a chance to see it and sit with it.
Third, you can make important decisions about where to allocate your time by getting clear on priorities, thinking through the support you need, and planning. Ultimately, it’s a recipe for building momentum.
Elements of a Writing Annual Review
Here’s how I tend to structure it. I start by taking stock of what I’ve written. This can include everything from blog posts to emails, an entire manuscript, or articles. It’s also worth thinking not only about your personal creative life, but anything you might do professionally. I once had a job in philanthropy that didn’t have much to do with writing, but for a couple years in a row I wrote a 20-page report about an organization I helped evaluate. That all counts. A friend of mine did this once and shared that between her blog and newsletter, she wrote more than 30,00 words one year. If you’re in a season of liminal space, not writing as much, that’s fine too. This isn’t a competition with yourself or worth giving yourself a hard time about, the whole point is to just notice and acknowledge.
Next, once you have a list of the things you’ve written, you can think about how they made you feel. Did some give you energy, did others deplete your energy? Did one feel really frustrating where another felt more easeful? Try to assign some emotions to each of these projects to again, just notice and acknowledge how they affected you. This is also a chance to look at anything you started and didn’t finish, maybe ask why, and decide if it’s something you want to put on your list for the upcoming year.
After that, you can start planning for the year. Before I prune it, I like to make a list of anything top of mind, both big and small, that I think I might be interested in working on. I also like to note any subjects I’d like to learn more about, or books I already know I want to read. Once you start getting a rough idea of the kind of work you want to do, it’s time to do a bit of a schedule audit, which is really just a formal way of saying you need to figure out what’s realistic and what’s not.
Once of the fastest ways I know to become hard on myself is when I have expectations that don’t line up with the reality of my circumstances. For example, let’s say you want to write the first draft of your novel in six months, but you also have a full-time job, and maybe a couple of kids, or an aging parent, or you travel for work a lot—whatever it is. Six months might be too aggressive, so if you extend it, give yourself a buffer and some grace. You can also use this time to think about how you can shift your schedule, where you might need help, and make a loose plan about where your writing margins will live in your week.
