How Did 2019 Go, Anyway?

Hey everyone!

This is my first post on my brand new (ish) blog, and I’m super excited! I can’t wait to share more awesome posts with you. But this first post is a boring one just talking about the MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN THE WORLD, THE AMAZING KELLYN ROTH.

Okay, you’ve got me – I’m not really the most important person in the world. But hey, I got you to click on this blog post. *shrugs* That was cool. Don’t know how it happened, but it did.

Now that I’ve got you here, want to hear about my year?

Good, because you have absolutely no choice but to read on because … um … I have something I haven’t told many people about which I shall share more about in this post.

Okay, but seriously, my boyfriend is not clickbait. He’s a human being. Also, you’ve already clicked.

THIS IS WHY I DIDN’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT THIS (& it’s new, too, so I haven’t gotten a single chance to, but you know).

I thought I was going to keep this aspect of my life private (maybe even forever) (well, not literally) (but as years from now I’ll announce I’m pregnant or my husband died or something, and you all would be like, “I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW YOU KNEW A MAN!”) (or alternately nothing would come of it, and I just wouldn’t say anything), but he said it was okay, and I’m already very guilty.

Relationships are serious, especially relationships like this, and people on the internet don’t understand that. *glares at you, expecting you to take this all very seriously even though I have cracked way too many jokes already*

I feel like I’m already developing tone issues, and I’m just 200 words in. Why am I blogging again? I can’t blog. Blogging is hard, and wrapups are hard, and I’ve already told you the only thing about 2019 that wasn’t either ironically dramatic or sadly floppy.

Let’s just talk about 2019.

What did I say I was gonna do in 2019?

It’s best to start with promises I never should have made. (How could you do this, babe?) (man, that was the most obscure reference I could have made.)

I frankly did not do well on my goals! Which is something new for me. I always have done well with my goals – and so it was shocking to pull them up (for my guy, actually) and realize – wow, I didn’t do them.

(Apologies for the blurriness – it’s just screenshots on my phone with text written over them.) (I’m writing this post long after midnight, okay?)

At first this made me sad – well, I had known all along that I didn’t do what I wanted to in 2019 (shocker!), but this was a confirmation.

But when I think about it, at least I know now what I can’t do – and I know that I can weather a storm. Or 50 storms. In fact, y’all are welcome to throw storms at me (please don’t), because I can take ’em as long as God exists! (Which He always will.)

It’s also taught me that I can’t do everything (more on that later) and even when I feel like everything and everyone is against me, and I just want to give up and die already, there is always something to look forward to. (And even if there’s not, there is a God, and He does love us.)

What did I do in 2019?

That was my rough estimate of what I did and didn’t do over the year, but here’s what I did do overall:

Wrote & edited Flowers in Her Heart (35k).

Took waaayyy too long. Like three or four months longer than I intended?


Edited The Lady of the Vineyard (40k).

This actually went well.


Edited Souls Astray (65K).

Okay, this went really well, too.


Wrote & edited From Now ‘Til Forever (10k).

Again took me too long, but yeah.


Wrote Love Once Lost (70k-ish).

Ohhhhh, boy! This first draft is such a hot mess. Not even sure I can stick with the (somewhat daring for Christian fiction) plotline I chose. Eesh.


Wrote A LOT of Alone in Berlin and A Broken Loyalty, and bits of Ivy Introspective, At Her Fingertips (mild rewrite), A Prayer Unanswered, and a bunch of other stories.

Did not finish any of them.


Wrote a bazillion outlines.

I always have ideas. I don’t always finish the ideas, but I do have ideas.
IDEAS A-PLENTY. (I wanted you to read that in an old prospector voice, as in mining for ideas, but as I tried to figure out how to do that, my brain exploded, so pardon me for not making that clearer.)
I need to sit down and write them in the future, though.


Rewrote The Dressmaker’s Secret basically from scratch (70k) & prepared it for publication.

It took too long. Like, literally, how was I working on this for so long?
This was probably the best thing I did all year, and I am immensely pleased. Everything about it makes me smile.