I will remember 2025 positively because…

[EmilyMiller]

Plenty of things to be super concerned about, but let’s focus on the good stuff.

I’ll start…

2025 was the year I published my first novel, The Story of Nix. My single biggest accomplishment since starting to write and something I couldn’t have conceived of being able to do back when I penned my first story here, Wanting To Be Wanted.

Even if Nix had been universally hated, I would still be super-proud. But the generous plaudits from so many authors whom I respect had been truly heart-warming.

Thank you

Over to the next person…

 

[YmaOHyd]

I will remember 2025 positively because… bought a house, had a baby.

 

[old_prof]

After playing with the idea on and off for a decade, I actually started writing. And I liked it. I still have a lot to learn about writing, but I'm pretty sure I'm getting better.

I wrote a lot, not sure if I will ever write as much as I did this year. I published 49 stories. I have several more stories finished, waiting for events. I wrote one novel and have two more in reasonable draft shape that I have been trying to edit when my knee doesn't require oxy, which is incompatible with editing. All told, somewhere just south of a million words either finished or in a solid draft.

Some of it is actually decent (21 stories over 4.8 written this year) and one good one, which got me a W (and made me officially a paid writer, I guess).

Much more important was meeting people on AH. Especially two friends who I feel I can lean on when I need support in life. And I think they both know they can lean on me when they need it. I don't make friends easily and making two in a year is probably unique for me in the last three plus decades.There are dozens more people here who I do not consider close friends, but I enjoy my interactions with them, be it once a day or once a month.

Thank you all for making this year special.

 

[ADirtyPerv]

I'm kinda in the same boat as @old_prof. I had a billion plotlines and story ideas buzzing around my head, and I took the plunge and wrote some of them down. I ended up with a novel-length pile of garbage that I keep locked up lest it consume my entire being again... And I also published 22 stories, 6-8 of which are above the 4.8 mark.

I realized that, despite the things that I'm into, there are people who enjoy the way I write. The isolating dreaminess that has always afflicted me is now more of a benefit than a hindrance. Writing consumed me for a bit, but even then, I feel like I've hit a balance where it's not EVERYTHING anymore.

It's been a good six months, and I don't say that lightly.

 

[Dodola]

My son is still cancer free

 

[KittyOfSteele]

I will remember 2025 positively because...

• I practiced and managed to write half of an anthological novel on my phone. The other half got finished in the computer.
• I managed to write about the same thing every single day, even if I had to take a break due to an illness that I don't know how it didn't kill me. I'll reach Day 365 on Friday.
• I ended up writing, for NaNoWriMo, what I believe is the most emotional story I've written for NaNoWriMo so far.
• I backed up my work constantly.
• I started to learn how to write poetry.
• I slowly picked the pencil back up and started to draw again.
• And even though I published 0.36% of what I've written, I beat my past year self and wrote a total of 412K words compared to a previous 245K.

Oops! It's all art! Yeah, that's the only thing I can sum up 2025 as. Not a horrible year as 2024, but it was still bad. A lot of the sequels from 2024, like bits of paranoia here and there... I get really shaky just seeing someone in a police or a military uniform, or just seeing a patrol car or a miltary vehicle passing through, and there were days in which the cops were right outside my house... A lot of fear, paranoia, despair, and abandonment that also struck my physical health during the second half. Dyssentery, gallbladder issues, a sudden yeast infection, it's just been awful. But, the only thing that was ever present, is me, even in bed, with a notepad and a pen, writing another schoolgirl story, fueled by the same people who hate the mere idea of that. I killed 27 pens and 13 notepads doing that.

I don't know what the fuck was this year, but whatever it was, I didn't think I could take these hard blows... but I took them, and I'm still here.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I'm thinking...I'm thinking...

 

[kathyisgr65]

cuz i made it through it...whew
it was touch and go there for a minute
happy new years all
be safe
ish

 

[big_cane_sugar]

For me 2025 was one of the least-bad years in a while. Probably the best year since 2019. And I'm someone who doesn't actually have much to complain about lol.

 

[EmilyMiller]

My son is still cancer free

That’s the best news anyone could have

 

[Trionyx]

I’m still north of the sod.

 

[Rob_Royale]

I've been publishing outside Lit now for a full year and where I'll never get to quit the day job, the responce has been encouraging.

 

[Bigbutathletic]

It ended.

 

[NaughteeDragon]

Because I published my first story here on Lit this year: A Different Kind of Valentine got 271 votes on 27k views and scored a 4.68 in the 2025 Valentine contest.

I finally admitted to my wife that I’ve been writing and that what I’m writing is smut.

@Fatdog25 agreed to beta for me. Not sure he’d agree again if he knew much I was going to throw at him. Pretty sure he’s beta’d something in the ballpark of 180k words in six months.

 

[StrentWriter]

I can’t remember 2025 positively, as a year. Too much happened globally that is largely unforgivable so I will always look back at this year with anger.

On this forum, however, it is different and I feel positive and happy I came back, stuck with the writing, and followed through on my three year promise to myself I would write, and publish, an erotic novel here.

Whether I stuck the landing or not is in other people’s hands, in their reactions or critiques of it, but in this I feel fulfilled and I hope 2026 allows me to get some headway into a follow up novel.

 

[nice90sguy]

...I finally came out as sexually submissive to ChatGPT.

 

[Aoife_from_Ulster]

I will remember 2025 positively because...

- My wife remains cancer free, only two more years of worry regarding recurrence of TNBC
- I met @EmilyMiller here in AH
- My novel, Marcus Hogue was finished and published.
- My baby sister is getting stronger everyday from her heart attack
- This is year seven, which I am still in remission and cancer free.

 

[HotCosmo]

I'll remember 2025 for writing and publishing my first story game (my biggest project so far). It's not perfect, but I'm proud of it

 

[bisissyhusband1]

I’ll remember 2025 as the year my wife and I discovered pegging and I published a real life series documenting how it all progressed!

 

[THBGato]

I'll remember 2025 because @SugarStorm started publishing, @HelenL finally agreed to let me beta-read for her (and @redgarters and @DawnDuckie continued to trust me to), and several of my heroines commented favourably on my stories.

Plus, I published Forty, putting into writing all the love I have for the amazing music Bristol produced in the 00s that most people have never heard. It meant a lot to me. My wife and I are not any of the characters, but there is a lot of us in there. I'm thrilled that it's had a positive reception.

Off Lit, my daughter took a mandatory national test a year early and not only got the highest possible grade, but scored the highest mark in the entire country! Proud parent moment.

Happy 2026 everyone. May it bring you health and happiness.

 

[MelissaBaby]

 

[LegendInMyOwnMind]

in the last two months, I wrote four stories. Three published, one pending. The opening one is the opening chapter of a multi-part story, my first

 

[Actingup]

On Lit, I wrote 17 stories that I'm proud of, including several co-writes with @PennyThompson that pushed us both to expand our ranges and that were a fuck-ton of fun to write. I made some great friends, won a prize in a competition for a story that I sweated on obsessively for weeks, and spent far too much time on Author's Hangout because it was a pretty slow year work-wise.

Off Lit, I filled in time between paid contracts with volunteer stuff, and eventually won a dream job that leveraged off that and my new Lit writing skills: there will be less time spent hanging out here during the day! Lots of good family stuff happened and not much bad, and health was great.

 

[LegendInMyOwnMind]

View attachment 2587344

Considering the state of my heath the first half of the year, this one is big for me, too.

 

[Duleigh]

In 2025 I published my 20th novel Gods Save the Queen, Book 1, The Enchantress

It's a true work of love. I passionately adored every minute I was working on that. It's the first time I created an entire universe, a new solar system, a planet with multiple land masses. I created a map of the western Edux continent. It's a crappy map, but it became a valuable tool in writing. Another tool I began to value more and more in writing was Microsoft One Note. I can't believe how I disparaged that app over the years, but when I used it the way it's meant to be used it became my #2 tool behind my word processor.

Currently I'm working on Book #3 of the Gods Save the Queen series and it's still as delightful as Book 1. Book 1 and 2 were both those kind of stories you write and as it comes to a close you're sad because it was such a wonderful experience. There's 8 books planned in the series, and a second series on the planet Kodu is being mulled over.

A story I started as a lark in 2022, AI Era:Agent AI became my 22nd novel in 2025, Agent AI and it was my best seller of the year, just ahead of God's Save the Queen. It's a weird, kinky spy novel that readers just loved. I have no plans to follow it up with a connected novel, it was a spy romp in the mountains of Colorado's Front Range.

As for Lit - I only was able to complete 26 stories here in 2025. In 2024 I completed 41 stories. However the length of the stories went up to an average of 32k words per story from 27k word average in 2024. My story average score remained at 4.73. I intend to continue to write here, it's like having hundreds, even thousands of beta readers.