January 2026

Happy New Year!

Around this time last year, I said that in 2025 I wanted to write at least one blog post a month. Since my last post was from June, I clearly didn’t meet that goal. BUT. It’s for a really good reason.

I decided that instead of small blog updates, I needed to pour all my creative energy into my rewrite of Veritas. Any extra time I had went into writing, and let me just say… I’m really proud of what I accomplished in 2025. There’s not a ton of measurable success, but I almost completely re-wrote my novel. As I tore it apart and put it back together, I realized that I had all the right puzzle pieces, but they were in the wrong spots. I also realized that so much of it had remained unchanged in several years and no longer matched my current writing style. 

When I first sat down to write Veritas, I didn’t know where the plot was headed. I sat down with a blank piece of paper and began. Once I finally knew where the story was taking me, I had to keep going back to make the front match, and the middle, and then the front again, and then carry all those edits through to the end. Then once I let it sit for a while and looked at it again with fresh eyes (and with my critique group), more and more of those issues became apparent. 

All that to say… Figuring out the best way to tell this story has always been a challenge for me, and this latest revision process hasn’t been easy. It’s been an emotional rollercoaster. Some days, I was so bogged down by self doubt that I couldn’t work on it. Other days, I was so excited about what I was doing that I took time off work to spend entire days at my computer. 

Every time I thought that I wanted to quit, I was hit with encouragement from out of the blue. Whether that was my critique group really liking an edit I’d made, or people randomly reaching out to check in. There were quite a few instances of being out to dinner with friends where someone turned to me out of the blue and said, “Britnie! What’s the update with your book?” As I write this post, there’s still some work to be done on the last handful of chapters. But this is the climax of the book, so I really want to make sure it’s right. 

More importantly though… Veritas feels like a book to me. The pacing finally feels right. The characters are more three dimensional than they’ve ever been. The plot is super solid, and I’ve leaned into some different elements that really bring the entire story together. Finally the story on the page resembles the story that’s lived in my head all these years.

At one of the writing conferences I attended back in 2024, the literary agents said that their job was to “get your manuscript to a microwaveable form.” Editors want manuscripts that are about 90% ready to go. At the time, I remember thinking that Veritas probably wasn’t even close to 90% done, but I was at a point where I wasn’t sure what percentage it was at–or how to get it to 90%. I was too close to the project to be able to see any of the issues clearly. And now? Now, I’m feeling like it’s sitting comfortably at about 85%, and I feel really good about that. 

So what’s the plan?

The short answer is to start pitching again. I took a break from pitching since I was doing so many major revisions. I didn’t want a request for more pages to come through and not have good pages to submit.

The longer answer is that I need to finish up my revisions on the last few chapters, hand those over to my critique group, make edits, and work on updating my query letter and synopsis. I also want to run the new and improved story by a few trusted beta readers for feedback. But the eventual goal is to get back to querying agents, and start working on my next novel.

I want to end this post with a huge “THANK YOU” to the people who have encouraged me over the last year. My critique group has been the exact right thing this story needed, and their feedback is truly exceptional. The friends who are excited to someday read this book (I hope it lives up to your expectations!) and who ask me for updates when they see me. The people that I’ve sent early chapters to and asked for feedback, and whose responses are “AH!! I need more!” The student (who attended a creative writing class that I spoke at) who found this blog and sent me a note of encouragement. There were many points throughout the year that I wanted to quit. I wanted to shelf this project indefinitely, but you all helped me remember how to be excited about it, too. 

I’m not sure what 2026 has in store for me or my writing, but I’m feeling hopeful.