2025: my work year in review
I know I start this post the same way every year but I truly cannot believe that 2025 has almost come to an end! What a year.
At the end of last year, I set out my ‘three words’ for 2025 - three things I wanted to focus on in the year ahead.
I have to confess to not really taking the time to check in with these often enough - in fact, I had basically forgotten what they were 😬 but I’ve just re-read my blog post from January and I’m really pleased to discover that despite this, I have broadly managed to - albeit subconsciously - stay in line with their values.
So, to recap…
My three words for 2025 were: Health, Stability and Optimism.
I’m going to start this blog post with the first one: Health. It was a focus for 2024 too. I read recently that it actually takes 10 years to recover from having a child (!), and given that my daughter recently turned 10, I can actually see how this makes sense.
The truth is, up until recently, I had spent years neglecting my own health.
At the end of last year, I’d finished Couch to 5k and finally run a 5k. But then I hurt my knee. So I had a break. And I didn’t go back to running for about six months.
In that time, my health took another nosedive. I was still going to a weekly bootcamp-style class, and Pilates once a week too, but it wasn’t really enough to make much of a difference.
I was also working like an absolute maniac.
But this summer (the summer my daughter turned 10!), I decided I had to do something about it, and so:
1) I gave myself (almost) the whole summer off;
and
2) I JOINED A GYM
I haven’t belonged to a gym since before my daughter was born. I don’t know why really? I think it was a time thing more than anything else - I had this feeling that whenever my daughter was in childcare or at school I just had to be working which meant I didn’t have time to spend fannying about driving to a gym etc. Realistically, an hour’s gym session would take nearly two hours out of my - already short - working day.
In fact, this is a good point in which to segue into another massive realisation I had this year: my nervous system was shot.
Because over the last ten years, I have become an insane workaholic. I work All The Time.
I am incredibly lucky because I genuinely love my work, but even so, this year I began to realise that there was very little ‘fun’ or ‘relaxation’ in my life. The most I ever did ‘for me’ was go out for dinner with friends from time to time.
Otherwise, every second that I wasn’t with my daughter, I was either writing a book or working on my web design business.
I basically behaved as though I had two full-time jobs, but then tried to fit them both into school hours.
The thought of taking time ‘off’ to go to the gym during the working day seemed impossible. But my body had begun to suffer. I am getting old, and my hormones are less forgiving than they used to be. I knew that I needed to move my body more, and, most importantly, work on my strength.
Anyway, this is SO boring and cliche but in the end, I joined the cheapest and least fancy gym in my town in August, with very low expectations of myself or it.
And yet, I have been at least twice a week ever since!
And - unsurprisingly - I feel so much better. SO MUCH BETTER.
So much better that I have also started running again! I’m only going once a week, on Sunday mornings - but I’ve been doing regular 5ks (at a snail’s pace, but never mind) most weeks ever since September - without injury!
Obviously all that stuff about cross training is true. I am stronger than I have ever been, I have actual muscles on my arms and I can run 5k without stopping.
I know this is nothing to do with work, but for someone who has always, always struggled with sport and activity - ever since my first PE lesson - it’s a massive achievement and I’m just so proud of myself.
And yes, I’m also wishing I had started all this sooner.
So if you, like me, put your own physical fitness so far down your to-do list that it’s not even on your to-do list, take this as a sign from the universe to do something about it.
My second 2025 word: Stability
My second work for 2025 was ‘stability’. My most important goal of 2025 was to build financial stability.
I have been freelance now since I was 29, which means - eeek - around 16 years since I got sick pay.
In that time, my income has fluctuated quite dramatically and has been pretty unpredictable. And I’ve just… let it? I never really stopped to take the time to think about it.
I’ve always been incredibly ‘reactive’ when it came to my income. If I had a good few months, I’d be booking holidays. If things went quiet, I’d be cutting back.
I never really thought much about planning ahead. I basically spent my entire freelance career winging it. It always worked out somehow, didn’t it?
But last year, a little voice kept creeping into my head, repeating the same, ominous phrase: ‘no one is coming to save you’.
I decided it was time to stop behaving like a 22-year-old with no responsibilities and start trying to act like a grown-up.
And so, in 2025, I took my web design business more seriously than ever before.
Over the years since 2018, when my first novel came out, I have learnt the hard way that relying on a publishing career for financial stability is insane.
No matter the six-figure deals (I’ve had one), the film options (had one of those too), the foreign rights etc etc… there is no stability whatsoever in a novelist’s career, unless you are one of those rare unicorns who are such global bestsellers that you make so much money you probably won’t ever have time to spend it all.
It’s wonderful to be a career novelist. But it’s also important to have a Plan B.
In fact, if you value your mental health, I’d make the novel writing the Plan B, and something else the Plan A.
At the beginning of 2025, I raised my prices for web design. Quite significantly, in fact. I was nervous. But then I had my busiest quarter ever!
I set a target monthly income that I wanted to hit, and I not only hit it, I exceeded it by more than a third.
It was then that I realised that if I didn’t ever sell another book, I’d be OK.
I had a job! A proper job and a business and it could sustain me!
And then… Squarespace got in touch to tell me that I’d been ‘promoted’ to a Platinum level member of Circle, their professional partnership program.
I’ve already blogged about that here, but honestly, it was a real thrill when they reached out to me. And it was so nice to feel successful at something, after my last two novels didn’t perform as well as everyone had hoped.
I built 22 websites from scratch this year, which is nuts! 😱
There were still quieter months - the late summer was particularly nerve-wracking as my enquiries dried up for a while, but looking at my accounts now (within Squarespace, because it’s all easy to manage inside the platform - I use it for all my contracts, billing and invoicing!) I can tell you that I have literally doubled my web design income from last year, and I am so, so happy and proud of myself.
I might even look into opening a pension, finally.
I’m also bloody relieved. Because something else happened this year. Or rather, didn’t happen:
I didn’t sell a new book.
So yeah, on that note…
My writing
Not only did I not sell a new book to a publisher this year, I also didn’t release one!
It’s the first year since 2018 when I’ve had no new books out.
And I have to say, I have loved having a break from the endless promotion cycle.
I’m a bit of a weirdo as I don’t actually enjoy that side of being an author much. I LOVE writing books, I quite enjoy editing them, but I don’t really enjoy talking about them once they’re done, or being the centre of attention.
That doesn’t mean books weren’t a huge part of my year though. I am always working on a book - in some capacity!
This year, I had copyedits for my 2026 book, Connie, but I also really enjoyed being back in my writing cave, just writing for myself.
At the end of last year, I finished a short draft of something very different - a novel that I wanted to write just for me, out of contract and with no thought to the ‘market’.
And then I worked on it at the beginning of this year before sending it to my agent around May.
She liked it, suggested some edits, and we worked on it some more.
And then she said it was ready to submit to publishers.
And I… got cold feet.
Really cold feet.
It’s a very different book from my other books. Slightly speculative, very personal, a little bit weird. It certainly wasn’t the kind of book that could be published under my ‘Charlotte Duckworth’ brand.
It might have been appropriate for my ‘Charlotte Rixon’ brand, except that she’s been such a flop that no publisher would want to touch her stuff ever again (sounds brutal but tis true, publishing is a capitalist industry after all).
So we were looking at a whole new pen name, a whole new start.
But even so, I wasn’t sure. I felt very weird about this book. I was so proud of it. I didn’t know if I wanted to send it out into the world for the publishing industry to chew up and spit out.
I was also very nervous about certain elements in the book and whether or not I had pulled them off well enough.
So I did something I have never done before: I paid a very experienced external editor to read it and do a report on it.
It cost a lot. But it felt like a good idea. I wanted someone else’s impartial perspective. Not that I didn’t trust my agent, but she’s always liked my writing and I know there are people out there who, well, do not.
I wanted to get an idea of what a complete outsider might think of this book - a book that meant so much to me, before throwing it to the publishing wolves for their brutal feedback.
I was so anxious waiting for the report to come back, but when it did, it was pretty glowing. Which was lovely. Lots of praise for my actual writing (which is always my favourite type of praise 😆)
Except… the editor hadn’t addressed any of the things that I was actually concerned about, the things I worried in my gut maybe weren’t quite working.
Instead, she’d done more of a thorough line edit, which was fine and there were lots of things that she picked up that were helpful, but I was concerned it still needed a deeper, structural edit that really got to grips with the heart of the story.
The report was a little disappointing, if I’m honest. A little too nice, almost. But it did teach me that I know more than I maybe think I know. Which was a useful lesson!
Anyway, I can’t say any more about that book at the moment (sorry, I know!). But as soon as decisions have been made and I can share more, I will.
In the meantime, I started to think about writing a new suspense.
I have my sixth psych suspense coming out in January!
I can’t believe Connie will finally be hitting the shelves after such a long and painful gestation (how’s that for a mixed metaphor?). I have already blogged about that book here so I won’t say too much more about it now, but I’ve been so relieved to see all its early positive reviews.
Some honest thoughts on the book that nearly broke me →
The sad news is that my editor - the same one who acquired my debut all those years ago - has now left Quercus, my publisher. So it’s all change!
I really like my new editor and she has been involved with my books alongside my original editor for a few years now, but even so, it’s never quite the same when your original champion leaves.
I have an idea for a new suspense, and I started writing the first draft in November, with the hope of finishing a draft before Christmas. But then, I decided that actually, I didn’t want to rush it. I had so much other work booked in before the end of the year and it was becoming really stressful. And the truth is, there is no rush. There was only my stupid workaholic personality shouting at me to get it done.
So I decided to ignore it. I decided to carry on going to the gym during the day and to enjoy the run up to Christmas without burning out completely.
I decided that, for once, the writing could wait.
I will come back to that book in January. And it will get written! Just maybe not as quickly as the others.
All my published books!
I have written and edited nine complete novels since 2017. That’s a lot of books.
I know there are writers out there who are more prolific than me, but there are also writers out there who are a lot less prolific.
What I have come to understand this year is that it’s OK to have a break from the relentless treadmill. Especially now I have the financial stability of my web design business. I was always rushing to get the next publishing contract because I not only needed the money, but also felt a bit superstitious that if I stopped then I’d never write again. However, deep down I know that’s total nonsense.
My final word for 2025: optimism
My final word for 2025 was optimism. I wanted to become more positive in general. And I think, on the whole, despite a few rocky moments when Big Life Stuff happened, I’ve managed it.
Exercising more has had a huge impact on my mental wellbeing. As did having the whole summer off! I only built two websites in July and August - and I wasn’t writing at all. And I had the best time. It helped that we had such good weather in the UK this summer, but it was one of the happiest summers I’ve had in years.
Fun and games at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival in July
I’m turning 45 in January, and I’ve had quite a few major shifts in the way I think over the course of this year.
I know I’ve been saying this for a few years, but I really want to enjoy my life more, and cut back on the incessant work. My daughter is 10 now - soon she won’t want to spend any time with me at all. I want to make the most of this age when she still likes my company, and I don't want to be constantly distracted by work to make the most of my time with her.
In my blog post last year, I also wrote that I wanted to remind myself that things always work out somehow, and to stop worrying. And while I don’t think I managed to stop worrying completely (there was one particularly tricky period where I was super stressed and anxious about something else and it tipped over into worrying about everything), I have definitely got better. And everything has worked out.
I thought if I didn’t sell a book this year, I’d be stressing about how to pay the mortgage etc. But actually, I’ve earnt twice as much as last year, without earning a single penny from books.
Things do always work out somehow! I’m still working on the optimism, but the stability my web design business has given me (I’m currently fully booked until March - what?!) has certainly made it easier to feel less stressed and more positive about the future.
Interestingly, I don’t know what the future holds for my writing. After Connie comes out in January, I will be officially out of contract for the first time in years.
Publishing is in a strange place at the moment - especially in the UK. It’s becoming harder and harder to get a book deal. Super talented friends are languishing on long submissions to editors, where previously they would have been snapped up. There are no guarantees anymore.
Having a long-term author career often involves making a decision between writing what you want to write and writing what the market wants.
Last year, I fully embraced writing what I wanted to write, and to date, I have no book deal to show for that decision. But the truth is, I’m not sure how I feel about publishing getting their hands on that book. I only know that I don’t regret writing it. I am so proud of it and personally, I think it’s my best book yet.
Even if it doesn’t get me a book deal, I feel weirdly confident that it will find its readers somehow and at some point. At the right time.
Next year, I’m going to try writing what I think the market wants from me. It will be interesting to see how that turns out too.
As ever, this blog post is epically long, so it’s probably best I stop the navel-gazing here.
Thank you to everyone who has read my blog over the past year, and especially to those of you who have replied to my newsletters or got in touch on social media. I love hearing from you and I’m so happy to hear when my advice or random musings have been of help!
The blog will be having a well-earned break over Christmas, as always, but I’ll be back in January to share my three words for 2026 with you!
I hope you’ve had a wonderful 2025, and I wish you a very relaxing Christmas and New Year with your loved ones ❤️
