Episode 98: Looking Back to Look Forward

It’s something you’re encouraged to do at the end of each year.

Do you have to do it?

Well, it’s really up to you.

And it doesn’t have to look the same as what everyone else is doing.

In this week’s episode, we share some of our strategies for reflecting on where we’ve been and where we’re going.

You’ll hear about Elizabeth Wilson's annual journal review.

Stephanie Oswald shares about the importance of celebrating, even the small moments, after a year of curve balls. 

It’s amazing how easy it is to forget about what you’ve accomplished. 

Maybe take some time to review your photos.

Skim through your calendar.

Look at your journal.

Whatever method you use to keep track of important thoughts or moments. 

You’ve done amazing things this past year, and even if you’ve had some tumbles, you’re back on your feet and taking the next step.

So, when you look back, what did you learn about yourself from this year?

What are you ready for this year?

 Welcome to the Inspired Writer Collective podcast. If you've ever felt the pull to write your truth, to shape the chaos of real life into something meaningful and to share your journey with the world, you're in the right place. We're your hosts, Elizabeth and Stephanie, writers, coaches, and entrepreneurs who believe in you and know how important it is to find a writing community to guide you on your path to self-publishing.

You're invited to join us January 17-18, 2026 for a virtual writing retreat. It's all on Zoom and it's no cost to you! 

Join our Embodied Writing Experience where you’ll get a writer’s retreat directly to your inbox on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays each week. This is an invitation to slow down, tune in, and write with embodied intention.

Get on the waitlist for the Memoir Master Plan cohort here.

If you prefer to watch our conversations, you can find all of them on our YouTube channel.

You can find us on Instagram and Threads

Transcript

1:15

Welcome back listeners to the latest season of the Inspired Writer Collective. We are your co-hosts, Elizabeth. Stephanie, and we're doing this mini series again for the month of January. Coming back with these shorter, more bite sized episodes. You've just made it through the holidays. You may not have time to be digging into a podcast. Maybe you've got some aggressive writing goals that you're using your time for instead. Uh, don't worry. We've got you covered. If that's you, we are hosting our free quarterly Virtual Writer's retreat coming up this month in January. On, I believe it's the 14th and 15th. Yes. So that's a Saturday and Sunday. Um, like we've done before, there's a morning time and an afternoon time. You join our Zoom, we'll send you the, the link if you're on our email list and hop in with any project that you wanna work on, you'll have the soft accountability of having a group there, plus that community aspect. So if you're looking for more of that around your writing goals, we invite you to join us coming up for that. But today I wanna talk about a practice that I have done at the end of each year. Now this is the second time I've done it and it has been really influential in helping me craft my writing goals and, and understand where I'm come from, how much I've accomplished, make sure that I'm acknowledging that as well. And that is the annual journal review. Now, I know people feel all kinds of ways about journals. Some of you may be really inconsistent with when you journal. Sometimes people don't journal at all. But I know there are you, those of you out there that like me, will journal, you know, consistently though, not daily. And so much of the focus around journaling is always about like how it serves you in the present moment, right? Like, oh, it helps you tap into a different. Uh, frame of mind or perspective, or you can get your feelings out on paper. I know you do morning pages sometimes, Stephanie, just as like a mind declutter. Exactly. There's so much value in like. Journaling in the moment. But what we're talking about today is something that I think gets overlooked way too much. And that's going back to look at what you've written to recognize areas of growth, habits that you've started or stopped that you may want to refresh or continue or get rid of. Um, hidden patterns, like the things that you only can notice because something, a theme keeps coming up over and over again. Uh, and I. My journal review is always influencing like how I set up my writing for the next year. That was one of the big things that I noticed as I did this year's review. Stephanie, have you ever done anything like that? Well, I, I definitely appreciate this topic because thinking about this beginning of the new year, it is definitely something that I have not sat down to do myself, but that I know is a valuable practice and one that I'm inspired by what you've done with yours to sit down and look at my writing, though not consistently every day, um, over the past year, again, to revisit. All of the progress that I have made. And I think another way that, you know, someone listening could look at their year two is, you know, go back and look at your year in pictures. You know, get out your phone, scroll through, see, you know, where you were, what you were doing, how you were spending your time. And that, that even if you weren't, you know, per se, journaling every day, that can definitely remind you. Mm-hmm. Um, I know for me, I'm. Often taking pictures of when I'm at the coffee shop, when I'm writing, you know, I take a picture of my notebook, I take a picture of when I'm sitting down. And so those are also reminders to me of like, oh yeah, I spent time that day writing, or I spent time that day doing something for myself. And I think, you know, the insights that you can find from going back and reflecting on your year, especially with journaling is. Is incredible.'cause I know you found some really great insights that you weren't expecting at all. Gosh, guys, every time. Okay. Both the years that I've done this, I have realized that I made some massive accomplishments in my writing that I was not giving myself credit for. The first year I did it, I forgot that I'd had a short story published in an online literary magazine. Like I literally forgot that, that April I had had, I had published my first thing as an author and. This year, the thing that really surprised me was I knew I had set a goal in the first quarter of 2025 to do this bigger writing sprint for my rewrites of my memoir, and Stephanie and I were on the computer on Zoom all the time, sitting down, getting that writing done. I knew that I had stuck with it through March, but in my mind, in the narrative I was telling myself I had stopped that habit. And it had completely fallen apart by summertime. And then I, you know, twiddled my thumbs through the summer as my editor had my manuscript. And then I finally picked it back up in October to start the edits. But I could see through reading my journal that that was not true at all. And that is not how I remembered it. But yes, I had stuck with the writing goal through March, then I had reset another 90 day goal to make sure that my manuscript was. Edited and ready to hand off to my editor by the summer. Of course I did. How else was it ready for her? Right. But I've totally brushed over that whole period of time where I, after doing my rewrites, where I did another full round of edits through the manuscript, and I devoted at least 60 days I think to it. Plus, during that downtime where I wasn't doing anything, quote unquote, I was doing massive amounts of. Prep work for the memoir, master plan cohort that was gonna run in the fall. Um, plus I had some travel both with family and internationally and like I was running all these other things in the background, so there wasn't really no downtime and the part that was taken away. The time that I was not spending on my memoir was a time period where, one, it was with my editor, and two, I was focused on a very relevant creative project for the business. So, you know, it's like I have to give myself some grace and some gratitude, and obviously my default is to not do that. And you may be falling into that same trickery from your memory in your mind if you're not looking back at that. Um, that's certainly the way that it's in influenced my writing the most. Mm-hmm. I could see clearly from my like kind of self conversation on the page how proud I was of making those accomplishments. How much more effective having a very specified goal and what particular scenes or stories I needed to write each week was for me. And so I've already done that for this year. I have a calendar, I put up a reel. If you're not. Following us on an Instagram or, or threads yet. Um, I put up a reel a few weeks ago of my previous calendar when I had done this method with the Post-it notes, and then I also put in that later part of the video is my fresh, clean post-it notes ready for work. So follow us if you're not already doing so. So you don't miss any of that, you know? Day-to-day writing stuff. Yeah, we're at Inspired Writer collective, um, on both Instagram and Threads, so make sure to hop on there and follow along with what we're doing. We have a lot of exciting things coming up for the year. Uh, but again, going back to the journaling, what I find so fascinating is. You know, the stories that our brains tell us or that we tell ourselves about, oh, I'm not getting anything done, or, you know, I didn't accomplish a lot. And for me, I had a lot of life events that disrupted a lot of my flow. And I thought, oh, I haven't accomplished a lot. But then when I look back at what I have done. There. There is a lot there and I mean, it's beyond a lot. It's impressive guys. Given the amount of like personal stuff that you went through this year, Stephanie, like, I know all the listeners aren't totally aware of all the details of everything, but it was a lot and I mean, and and most of it was totally unplanned. Exactly, yeah. So the fact that you got, that you still continued to come back to your writing when you had the time, when you had the mental space and the wherewithal and the creative energy. Like that's commendable. Yeah, and I think it's definitely something, you know, that we're both celebrating here is recognizing how far we've come over this last year and where we are because it really. Is important to remember to celebrate what you've accomplished. I don't think we do it enough in our culture, and especially as writers and creatives, I think we're often so much harder on ourselves than you know, another person might be. And so. You know, if you've listened to us for a little bit, you've heard other episodes of ours where we make sure to celebrate and reflect on our year. And again, you know, we definitely encourage journaling, um, if it's something that you enjoy. And as Elizabeth mentioned, I often do morning pages if you're. Familiar with Julia Cameron, and, you know, yes. She says to do it every day. Do I do it every day? Not always every day, but when I do, I do notice it's effectiveness for, you know, clearing out my mind and just allowing space for the creative ideas to come in. Um, but yeah, listener, there's, there's so much that, uh, you can gain from taking the time to stop. Mm-hmm. And pause. And go back and look at, you know, where you were, January of 2025 to, you know where you are today, January, 2026. And, mm-hmm. And think about all that you've done. And I think it goes beyond celebration in the sense of, as you're trying to set your writing goals for this new year, for 2026, take a look back, see what worked for you, see where you got derailed. I, at this point, just know that the beginning of the school year in August and September is not a massive writing time for me. That's not a time. I mean, I can work on other like side projects, but that's not a time in my year where I have the mental capacity to dig in in a big way to a project. Whereas what I've seen over and over again is those colder winter months where it's dark all the time from January to March have historically been my. Strongest periods of intensive writing, being not just willing but eager to go sit down on my desk and, and get that kind of stuff done. Whereas like summertime, I have to really be focused on a goal in order to co consistently get my butt in the seat.'cause I'd rather be out enjoying the beautiful weather or going on trips with family and stuff like. So it's, it's beyond even looking for celebration. Yes, we should absolutely make sure that we're celebrating ourselves and it's a good, you know, catch of if you haven't celebrated something yet, like here's your chance again to revisit that and do that. But also as you're looking into this new year and you're trying to figure out what's feasible for me? Am I gonna publish this year? Am I going to get a full. First draft completed this year. Um, whatever that looks like for you. This, it's, it's so helpful to look back if you had this resource and if you don't have a journal but you think this would be really helpful for you next year, then this is a great opportunity at the beginning of this year to go ahead and just start bringing that into your practice. It doesn't have to be very long. Mm-hmm. Um, I had a coworker who asked me, she was curious. You know, oh, I've always wanted to journal, but like, I don't know what to journal about. I don't think I have something to write about every day. And I, I showed her my journal and I was like, well, here's some examples. Like, here's a place where I wrote to my past self. Here's a place where I'm writing. You know, from my future self, like channeling from my future self to my present day self, like what advice do I need to hear right now? Or here's a place where I listed all the ways that I'm showing up for myself and my family, because I just needed some gratitude. I needed some of that, like grounding and so that's what I wrote that day. Or here's another place where I was highly emotional and I was wrestling with some of my feelings and trying to figure out what, where it was coming from and what I needed to do about it. You know, so it's, it's all of those things and it, it doesn't have to be, you know, always very emotional or even about the particulars of the day. It can be just where you feel like you are. Where do you feel like you're falling behind? Where would you like to go? Any of that, so Well, and it can start as simply as, you know, a gratitude practice of at the end of the day, you know, writing down three things that you're grateful for, or you could write one sentence a day on a calendar page to talk about, you know, something about the day. Um, you know, just simple little steps. Mm-hmm. That don't have to feel like, you know, if you feel like your days are overwhelming or you're not sure how to fit it in mm-hmm. Or you feel it's taking away from your other writing time, uh, to, to simplify. And again, you know, we definitely talk about being consistent, but. Consistency is different for everybody and looks different, and it's not meant to, you know, be encouraging to overwhelm you and throw something else on your plate and say, oh yes, this is a, this is a must. It's really a, you know, a nice to nice thing to do so that you can come to the end of the year and say like, wow. Look at what I, look at what I did and, you know, boost yourself up. Um,'cause that's an important part of the process as well. Mm-hmm. And if you use like the story Worthy by, was that Matthew Hicks? Um, he talks about how he does a daily journaling practice where he just simply writes a line or two about. Some moment during his day that he thinks has the basics for a future like short story. So it's just some little thing that happened where you had a moment of realization or. You know, I mean it really doesn't have to be super significant. It could be something really comical. It could be something that relates to a bigger pattern or trend that you're experiencing in your life at the moment. But that's another fun practice for, especially if you are a memoirist for being able to capture those little moments that later you could go back to and like fully flesh out, like a short story about if you're interested. Yeah, that's definitely, you know, finding different resources, you know, finding other, you know, talking to, like Elizabeth said, you know, talking to other people who are journaling and, and again, I think it really comes down to the reflection piece. Mm-hmm. Um, because as we've found, it just encourages us to keep showing up, to keep moving forward. I know it, I know it does for me.'cause I know that when I look back and go. Wow. Like, look at how much I've written, or you know, how far I've come with a particular writing project when I think like, oh, I haven't been doing anything. Well, no, that's not true because there's so many different layers to what that, what that looks like. And, and it might be for you too.'cause it's so easy for us in our day-to-day lives. And if you're busy and have a lot of things that you're juggling that you know, you forget that like, oh yeah, I did take that 15 minutes here. Or I took, I got 45 minutes here. Oh my goodness. I took a whole weekend for myself that I don't even remember because then life got crazy and you know, you forgot about. So, you know, we encourage you to, uh, you know. Get a journal if you don't have one or, you know, keep up the practice and, and we also invite you to share with us if, you know, if you get on our email list and you know, hit reply to any of our email. You know, we, there's no AI bot coming from, from here. You know, we're, you know, we just try to respond as, you know, as quickly as we can and, you know, get back to you because, you know, building community is such an important part of our journey and what keeps us showing up to keep talking to all of you. Yeah. So leave your goal for 2026 in the comments. Let's support one another and if you're interested. If you are not already on our list, there'll be a link in the show notes where you can hop on Happy writing.