Between the Years
The magical week when the ideas come
2025 Intro:
To wrap up the year in 2025, I’m pulling another post out of the archive to share. As you read this, I’ll be in my last week of my hibernation break. This is when I have the most exciting ideas for the coming year.
Having been self-employed since moving to Germany, I’ve had over seven years to learn the rhythms of my creative year. One essential is quiet time for reflection during the darkest days of the year. After we cross the solstice, and the days lengthen again, the ideas pop up.
You’ll see below that I’ve updated my goals for 2026 in the prompts. I’m holding these intentions lightly, as I’m writing them in early December and know there are shifts coming. The unknown can be scary in so many contexts, but taking a break knowing it will fuel me as I journal, spend time away from the computer, and refill with more reading, sewing, knitting and taking part in holiday rituals is an unknown I crave as soon as the fall gets close to winter.
If you’re able to steal an hour or two between Christmas and New Year, whether or not these are holidays you celebrate, I hope you find the prompts and reflections below helpful to envision a year that fosters your creative self.
After all, we need creativity to keep this world safe and nourishing for all of us.
I’ll see you back here in the new year. Thank you so much for being part of this community.
I never took special notice of the week between Christmas and New Year’s until we moved to Germany. This is likely because I’d never experienced having this time off in the US, land of two weeks’ holiday1 a year, if you’re lucky. When I worked for other people, this was as lucky as it got.
But once settling in Berlin, suddenly there was a window for reflection and consideration between “second Christmas” aka the 26th. While the British and Canadians (and maybe Australia??) celebrate the 26th as Boxing Day, Americans call the 26th, back to work day. Most Germans spend the 26th visiting with family. They’re all definitely at home because everything is still closed.
Every good idea I’ve had arrived during a pause.
A novel hit me when on my honeymoon. It downloaded into my brain as if an idea fairy poured it from above. No coincidence that my three-week honeymoon was the longest break I’d had in my adult working life.
The Germany of my acquaintance moves much more slowly than the US. This is a mixed blessing, and sometimes more of a curse than a blessing. Don’t believe that nonsense about Germany being efficient. What it is, is detail-oriented. Not at all the same thing, and sometimes directly opposing efficiency, but I digress.
The positive side of this respect for a slower pace is at its apex between Christmas and New Year. Berlin is about 50% foreign, and given that every Brit I know who lives here is sucked back to the UK as if by a magnet sometime by December 22nd, the crowd thins dramatically. Other non-native Berliners head to other destinations for the holiday, too. The Christmas markets wind down. The streets are a bit quieter.2
And here we are, zwischen den Jahren or “between the years,” which is very much how it feels. The current year has had all its major holidays3, but the new one hasn’t yet arrived.
This is the time I ponder the previous year as a whole.
What worked?
What didn’t feel as satisfying?
What would I like to try instead?
What do I need going forward?
Unless we pause and ask these questions, things are unlikely to shift.
But often by simply asking, shifts begin immediately.
I have long made a more formal process of reflection during this time, hugely helped by my friend Susannah Conway’s Unravel Your Year planner, which gently helps you dive into these questions with some guidance and enticing design. My husband and I have done this together since we met nearly ten years ago, as he was kind enough to submit to my insisting this was how we did New Year’s weekend, or at least part of it.
More recently, I’ve broken my reflection into personal life, professional life, and writing. Much like the time between the years, writing fiction lives between my personal and professional life.
Personally, I’m a creative hanging onto the tail end of my mid-40s as I write this. To live as a creative, health is more of a focus than it was in my 20s and 30s. There is also a need for a personal life to have enough input and fuel to feed my fiction with the flavor of real life.
Professionally, I coach writers and run courses to support writers in reaching their goals. This is how I keep the lights and the heat on. And, while in 2020 everyone was lining up for online education, things have shifted. We have to be innovative, so this area gets its own planning time now.
And then… fiction writing. My great love, but the one who has to wait the longest to get my energy and attention. Perhaps you can relate?
It’s so easy for us to call everything other than writing urgent.
But during this week, looking at the year that’s passed, the most glaring change needed is to give my own writing more space and energy.
What have you sacrificed this year by putting your writing last?
I am a much kinder person, a better friend, partner, relative, and coach when I’m writing actively on the schedule that feels right for me.
We know these things, and yet. When we make exceptions, the boundaries spring leaks and then flood.
The writing year ahead
I’m sharing my 2026 commitments here to hold myself accountable to all of you:
I will work on my book and personal writing before doing business writing on weekdays.
I will complete my novel manuscript.
I will seek representation for my nonfiction book proposal
What about you?
What are your commitments for the coming year?
Sometimes, writing answers to these questions helps you to find out what they are
May 2026 become a turning point for your writing.
Are you ready? This is your year.
Resources to help:
The Your Writing Year planner for 2026 is available now! All paid members: get your copy here, complete with more reflection questions, tracking templates and — new for this year — Slow Read reflection pages, and journal questions.
If you’re not yet a member, this is an excellent time to join us — I’m running a companion workshop for members to plan 2026 on January 9, too! (Details and RSVP for that here)
Each year in December, I open the doors to my writing intensives.
Join for one ten-week writing intensive, or get all four for 2026 with special pricing and bonuses. Each intensive includes an online study hall4 with the community so you actually get writing done, community calls to set goals and connect with other writers, AND a workshop session to learn fun writing skills, like keeping a useful writing notebook, making writing software work for you, and more.
The first session begins January 12!
And by “two weeks” they actually mean ten days. One week = five business days.
It’s a miracle I got out of there alive.
Heavily dependent on where you live in Berlin. This peace ends abruptly on December 31, when everyone-and-their-mother starts shooting fireworks in the street, off balconies, and in every conceivable direction until we all go deaf and our pets have lost all their fur from shaking. Happy New Year! Oof.
Except my brother’s birthday, which comes between the years, and has launched festivals in multiple countries.
European, North American, and Australian time zone friendly sessions available