Or, How I Failed to Finish Writing My Book Last Year

At the end of 2024, I set a goal to finish a shitty first draft of my book in 2025.

Now, at the start of 2026, I’m here to announce I failed to meet that goal.

Before I dive into what failing that goal meant for me, and what I learned about myself in the process, let me share the goals I did meet last year:

Get a story or two published –
1) “The Water Girl” (March 2025);
2) “Late-Night Calls” (April 2025)
Get “The Water Girl” published –
See 1., above
Write more poetry —
78 notes app poems in 2025
Get a poem published –
“History” (Sept. 2025)

I met four of my nine stated goals in 2025; less than half, but who’s counting? (Answer: Me.) One accomplishment met two goals: the publication of my short speculative fiction story “The Water Girl” in Black Fox Literary Magazine, which was very meaningful to me—I wrote about why on Instagram on March 22, 2025.

“The half-started draft sat untouched in my documents folder until 2021. One dull day of quarantine, I pulled it up and finished it in one sitting. It was the first story I wrote for myself after years of only writing for others.”

— @amandabintz on Instagram

In 2025, I also started running again. It’s been a long road of injuries since that first gasping, break-heavy, 1.44 mile run on January 29, 2025. Looking back, I can tell you why that first run was so hard: I ran at an average pace of 14 minutes, 24 seconds per mile.

This past Sunday, I ran 3 comfortable miles at an average pace of 14 minutes, 42 seconds per mile. A year later, and I’ve gotten 18 seconds slower. Not because I’ve actually gotten slower, but because I was going way too fast before. I spent a year pushing myself and punishing myself because I was slower than I wanted to be. I gave myself shin splints from overstriding; from trying to run faster than my legs would carry me. My last few runs have gone smoothly, without injury, because I finally accepted I’m slower than I want to be.

I run a 15-minute mile; I wrote less than 50,000 words this year.

You may remember that in November 2024, I wrote about why I wasn’t doing #NaNoWriMo after all, even after having publicly announced my intention to do so in May 2024. Ultimately, I chose not to participate in this challenge to write 50,000 words in one month because I was happy with the pace I’d been keeping since I had finally started writing my book again; I didn’t want to push myself too hard and end up with writer’s block. But when I calculated my total word count for the end of 2025, it was devastating to see it totaled less than 50,000 words; to think about the fact that some writers—many writers, in fact—regularly write more than that in one month.

The cover of Issue 28 of *Black Fox Literary Magazine*, which featured my story “The Water Girl”

It hurts to want something so much and not make the progress you hope toward it. But that’s the thing about goals: If there’s no chance you might fail, it’s not a good goal to set. I’ve always been afraid of failure. This year, I failed to meet my goal, and somewhat publicly. The last few months of 2025, I felt constantly as if I were failing. I was failing everyone I told I was going to finish my book in 2025. I was failing my book, my main character, Calla—failing once again to tell her story, to finish it once and for all. I was failing myself and my dreams.

But when I dig beneath the flayed outer layers of superficially wounded skin to the deep, unchanging core of inner truth within me, I know I am proud. I failed, and I’m proud of myself.

I’m proud of what I accomplished in 2025: more than 40,000 words; more than 300 pages total. I’m so much farther in the story than I’ve ever gotten before; all the way to the Star and beyond, after more than 10 years of world-building, of character development and discovery, decision-making and soul-searching, creating, imagining, believing: believing in my heart of hearts that this story will be told and that one day, people will read it. In 2026, I will finish a shitty first draft of my book.

Page 30 of *The Fellowship of the Ring* by J.R.R. Tolkien; the line in question is (digitally) highlighted

Recently, I started rereading my favorite trilogy, The Lord of the Rings. In chapter one, we learn how old Frodo is at the start of this story we’re all reading: “Frodo was going to be thirty-three, 33, an important number: the date of his ‘coming of age’.”

33: An important number. I’d like to believe that. 3, 13: these have always been lucky numbers for me. I was born on January 13, 1993, at 3:13 a.m., the 3rd of my siblings; I turned 13 on Friday the 13th. On January 13, 2026, I turned 33.

This year, I’d like to try to remember that when Frodo turned 33, his story hadn’t even really started yet.* 33 is not a deadline; it is a beginning.

Adventure still awaits.**

- – - – -

*I know hobbit years are different than human years; this is poetic, not literal.

**At a tortoise’s, or perhaps a hobbit’s, or rather my, pace.