My 2024: The Year of Returning to Fiction

Seeking soft delights, joy and magic as a professional writer with creative hobby projects on the side

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At the end of every year, I write about my creative year. This is my review of 2024.

I step softly into 2024. A few years of starting, running, changing and finally stepping away from my own creative business lay behind me.

The big shifting, reorganising and rethinking is done. I’ve landed. A full-time employed content and copywriter, with my own creative hobby projects.

I pick the word Delight for 2024. Feminine, soft, light and delicate. A far cry from the years of pushing towards goals. Instead, a feeling. To delight in my new life.

Alongside my word, I choose three intentions.

Look for the delight and joy in my processes. Shift from what to how, and put the joy of the process at the heart again.

Write fiction for the magic, joy and delight. Find my way back to the joy of working on a novel project.

Be a little extra this year. Create the magic in the everyday.

I also decide that 2024 will be the year to break out of my reading slump, finally, and set a goal of reading 25 books.

And so, with soft steps, I enter 2024.

Beginning the right way

My first weeks of the year, I keep my intentions close. I make weekend brunch, relish in the sunshine when the sun dares to peek out. Have fun with my new semi bullet journal planner, make a wardrobe mood board, and lay tarot spreads.

My job moves to a new office building with a spectacular view. I read the Swedish novel Jag for ner till bror by Karin Smirnoff and The Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel and love them both. It’s cold, it’s winter, but the vibe is good.

I go back over my years of writing fiction to try to figure out what worked well. Through old blog posts, word count spreadsheets, Instagram stories and notebooks, I dig up eight lessons learned to guide me in my new novel project.

For the second year in a row, my fiancé and I go for a weekend to Amsterdam in February. This time, we have friends going there as well, and have a splendid time in hidden away cocktail bars and cosy brunch places.

I go back to the wonderful café I visited one year prior, where I wrote my first Substack post. Now, I write the first scene of my new novel idea. It feels amazing.

But coming back home to Sweden, trouble awaits.

Losing touch with myself in the fogginess of illness

At the end of February, life throws me a curve ball in the form of a pelvic infection. One of my endometriosis cysts rupture, I’m hospitalised, and get really, really sick. Hooked up to IV antibiotics, barely able to eat, I spend a miserable week in the hospital before my doctor decides on surgery. Post surgery, my blood tests finally show improvements and I get to go home.

Weak and shook up and a little traumatised, I recover on the sofa with the cats and Emily Henry’s Book Lovers. I lean on soft creativity in my recovery.

I’m able to go back to work after a week, and physically I feel more or less normal. But now, looking back at the end of the year, I can see the mental effects linger for much longer.

Spring is cold this year and I feel disconnected. From myself, from the intentions and ideas I had for the year. I forget to journal. I move on, skirting around on the surface of life, keeping my feelings at arms length.

I try to pick up my novel project again, and face resistance. This story involves two perspectives, and I struggle mightily with one of them. Nothing flows and I keep running into dead ends. The joy, magic and delight I’m looking for in my fiction writing feels far away.

Towards the end of April, I attend a talk given by Elizabeth Gilbert. She talks about presence. To be present in our lives, our creativity, in our processes. She reminds the audience that it’s not about the outcome. Not about the product of creativity, but about creating itself.

Her words make me tear up a little. I inch closer to myself.

Rediscovering the importance of introspection, vision and direction

May comes, and with it, finally, proper spring weather. The frost in the ground and inside of me melts. I fiddle with my novel project a little, and I pick up my journal again.

I think about my creative life as a room of my own. Ponder how so much of my creative process has been about reflecting and connecting with myself, with my ideas, visions, feelings and thoughts.

Things are better. I read Elif Batuman’s The Idiot and enjoy it. I draw tarot cards and marvel at how spot on they are. I order a new journal.

I turn 35 and celebrate with dear friends. I sow seeds and plant flowers in the garden. I make plans and visions for my summer. Life is good again.

Summer arrives with ups and downs, I go on a road trip in the Norwegian mountains, I love the audio version of Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend quartet, and start reading David Foster Wallace’s infuriating Infinite Jest, which I will still be at the beginning of when the year ends, not quite given up on it, not quite committed to finishing it.

Having had an unsatisfactory spring in my fiction project, I vow to write more in summer. But when creative weeks during my summer vacation come around, something else is occupying my attention.

I feel an urge to define my creative vision, as it looks now in my new balance. I decorate a reading nook in my little creative studio and define how my creative life supports my love of literature. I update my website and feel at peace. I devour fast-paced The Wicked King by Holly Black and enjoy quiet All the Lovers In the Night by Mieko Kawakami.

Uncovering my fiction writing process

In August, I refocus on fiction writing. I feel strongly that I need to change my approach.

I miss the feeling of a project. My attempt at beginning my novel just feels like scattered sessions and overwhelm.

Speaking with creative friends, thinking back to past projects, I start writing down what makes something feel like a project. I note down things like momentum, accountability, structure, phases, direction, milestones, habits and tracking.

I realise I have practically none of that in my novel project.
So I get to work.

I define a novel writing ecosystem. I draw up project phases. And I order a new journal, dedicated to only my fiction writing.

This will prove to be a big turning point.

I choose to dedicate September and October to backstory and character development. I’m not ready to write yet - that’s why I’ve struggled so much. Then, in November, I plan to write again.

Autumn arrives. I bake an apple pie, go thrifting, and have a novel work day with my friend. At the end of September, my fiancé and I go to Croatia and spend blissful days in the sun. I fall in love with a café called Fyaka and read my favourite author Sally Rooney’s new novel Intermezzo.

Getting home, autumn is intense and I again forget, and then re-remember to slow down and connect with myself.

I think about how mindfulness is a key to both well-being and creativity. I ponder the mental switch needed to step out of productive workweek Elin, and into mindfully reflective and creative weekend Elin.

Inspired by the idea of a weekend switch, I have breakfast the last Saturday in October at a café quite close to where I live. The café is packed and the only seats free are at the bar table facing the big window. Sitting there sipping tea, it strikes me.

It’s the perfect writing spot.

Beginning the story for real

November rolls around, we have rain and snow and rain again, and I read J.D. Salinger’s Franny & Zooey. With November also comes NaNoWriMo. The writing challenge I used to attend back when I first started writing fiction.

I don’t plan on following the challenge, but I piggyback on its energy and define November as my novel project phase The NaNoWriMo Experiment.

It’s simple enough: I want to write, test out the structure backstory and character development has given me, and build gentle habits and momentum.

Four times spread evenly over four weekends, I go to the café and write, sat facing that large window. I watch leaves fall off the tree outside and its branches go bare. I see the ground wet from the first snow melting away.

And it flows.

It feels like complete magic, finally, for the first time in so long. My intention of writing fiction for the magic, joy and delight has taken me almost the whole year to reach, but I get there in the end.

December brings a little snow, short, dark days, bustles and celebrations. I fall head over heels for the Swedish novel Jävla karlar by Andrev Walden, and enjoy a slew of wintry reads in Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clarke and The Queen of Nothing by Holly Black.

A year of returning to fiction and understanding the value of soft delights

In 2024, I wanted to find the joys and delights of being a professional writer with beloved hobby creativity on the side. I set out to bring fiction writing back into focus and find my joy in that process once again. I didn’t have any expectations on number of words written or projects completed.

I’ve deleted large sections of what I wrote the first half of the year. My novel draft word count sits at a modest 7 000 words. It’s not much, but I don’t care. I’m proud and happy and in love with my story. I’m eager to continue. And that matters more than any arbitrary number I could have chosen.

I wanted to read more and enjoy my reading more. And I have. There is no doubt I’ve left the reading slump behind me. I reached my reading goal of 25 books, but more importantly, I read many books I loved and found a good rhythm with reading again.

2024 became a year of returning to fiction, both in writing and reading. I’ve integrated my love of reading more clearly into my creative life again, and I love it.

Has 2024 been a year of delight? Maybe not quite. For long stretches, I’ve forgotten my word of the year, I’ve forgotten to seek out little moments of joy, to delight in my processes, to be a little extra.

But then, now and again, I’ve remembered it. I’ve connected back to my intentions, to the feeling I was seeking at the start of the year.

And I’ve realised something about that light, soft energy.

I’ve recognised that those moments require a different lens on the world. It’s difficult to see the delight when the mind is all busy and focused and productive. Life rises to the surface when emotions, pleasant or unpleasant, are kept at a distance.

Without mindful introspection and reflection, intentionality slips away. Minutes, hours, days, weeks keep on rolling, and you with them. At least, that’s how it is for me.

It’s not until I remember to connect with myself that I can see my needs, my wishes, the quiet beauty, and shape my life to delight myself. That’s when I take scenic routes, when I get the idea to buy tulips, when I marvel at beautiful sunsets, and spend time with my journal. That’s when I connect with my words and get lost in stories and find my creative voice. It’s the soft side of happiness. It’s delight.

Heading into 2025, I take with me one big lesson. The key is to weave in the moments that help me enter a mindset of mindful reflection and introspection. Journaling, walks, lit candles, planner check-ins, tarot spreads… these rituals are essential. If I make sure they exist in my life, much of what I need will flow from that energy.

And for that insight, I thank 2024, with both its light and dark. I close my beloved planner and gaze ahead.

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This review is based on end of the year reflections made in my planning guide Four Seasons of Creative Work. If you so wish, you can check it out here.