New Year's Resolutions 2025

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!

These are the goals I want to achieve for my online projects in 2025. On the one hand, I want to make these genuinely achievable goals, but on the other hand it’d be pointless if they were too easy. Without further ado:

1. Finish My First Novel

This is probably my main goal for the year. I plan to outline every detail so I don’t write myself into a corner again, and I am determined to finish it this year. I’ve lost count of how many novel-writing attempts I’ve failed because I didn’t know the direction I wanted the story to take after a certain point, because I couldn’t connect point A to B. I just kept adding more elements plot and character elements until I inevitably forgot some details, and then it becomes impossible to say whether one part of my novel contradicts another without doing more re-reads which led me to add yet more stuff. If I were an AI, I guess you could say my brain just ran out of tokens and then I forgot my own novel except the chapter or scenes I was working on.

I hesitated to create an outline before now for ideological reasons, such as the belief that a novel should be a simulation, or in other words that novel plots should unfold naturally based on character and setting interactions. However, those interactions are infinite, which leads to indecision. There isn’t an obvious outcome, so a novel for me is not a simulation which runs itself, it’s a series of deliberate choices. Choices which I cannot make effectively if I can’t remember the previous choices. Hence, the outline.

2. Read More Light Novels

I want to read more light novels, partly to learn how other novelists write. I’ve wondered whether I should write about light novels since it’s a niche yet to be fully explored in blogs or newsletters. However, I’ve decided against it. Light novel series don’t lend themselves well to blogs. Writing posts for every volume of a series, especially when popular ones have 20+ volumes, is impractical. Waiting until the last volume to review the series also doesn’t work, as I might forget important details from earlier volumes.

For now, I’ll focus on reading and enjoying light novels rather than viewing them as a content-creation avenue.

3. Get Back into Podcasting

Podcasting was fun initially, but I’ve realised it needs to be more organised. This means I’ll need to learn how to create PowerPoint presentations and take on the role of presenter rather than just reacting to others. While this will mean fewer podcasts, I hope they’ll be more engaging and polished and therefore more satisfying both to me and hopefully any viewers.

Instead of ambitiously trying to make podcasts about light novels, I’ll stick to my comfort zone of anime podcasts, if I do any books expect them to be single volume ones.

---

That’s all, folks!

Any more New Year’s resolutions would be overambitious, and achieving them all would be impossible. I suppose we’ll see on 1 January 2026 if I’ve managed to accomplish any of these goals.

What Does This Mean for the Newsletter?

For now, nothing. I’ve decided to write about whatever I feel like, whenever I feel like, without imposing any rules. In many ways, this Substack serves as a Decompression Chamber for me. In other words, I’ll only review a light novel or manga if I have something meaningful to say about it. I won’t force myself to comment on every piece I read. Trying to write about things I have nothing to say about has been a failed approach. As for my novel writing, I already attempted to write a kind of Writing Blog but I felt like it was purely performative because it actually got in the way of writing the novel. It’d be like making a movie just for the sake of making a documentary about what it’s like to make a movie. Perhaps when I am done writing, no not even then.

The End.