12 Inspiring Prompts for Writers, Day 1

Hello and welcome! If you're new, thank you so much for being here! I’m Chelsea Counsell—a Creative Writing MFA student at Simmons, who writes MG, YA, and adult fantasy novels. I was recently inspired by Julie Hedlund's 12 Days of Christmas to reflect on the past year as a writer, and I wanted to create my own series of prompts that could bolster reflection and inspiration for other writers. With twelve prompts over the next few days, I will guide you through simple reflections to inspire you and encourage stronger writing efforts in 2025. I hope you enjoy!

DAY ONE—Successes

We’re in the dark days of Winter now, and if you’re anything like me, you’re spending a lot of time inside, hiding from the cold and mulling peevishly over all the stuff you didn’t quite get around to doing last year. Well I have a solution for that, and it is the first of our prompts!

The first prompt is ✨successes! ✨ If you’re a goal-setter like I am, you might make a bunch of sky-high dreams that don’t always get achieved, despite your best interests. It’s important to focus instead on the successes you did have—no matter how small—rather than just the negative. As a writer, these successes can be many. Maybe you published a short story, maybe you finished a manuscript, maybe you made a new, really cool writer friend. Whatever you accomplished, list those bad boys out, even if they seem small! You might be surprised how much you accomplished.

Before I wrote anything down for mine, I was a total negative Nancy. I said, “What did I accomplish, anyway?” because I was mad that I didn’t finish any of my novel drafts in 2024. But I pushed myself to write down every possible thing that could be considered a success, and even though maybe the list didn’t include any career-defining moves, there was a lot of value on there, and in a lot of ways I hadn’t thought about before.

My Successes in 2024:

• Sold two physical copies of Skies of Wonder, Skies of Danger at farmers markets

• Supported a local, independent bookstores by buying two hardcovers

• Made a pinterest board for a new book idea (and an old book idea)

• Wrote 37,000 words on a werewolf romance

• Actually revised some chapters in said werewolf romance (this one was a hard one!)

• Started my MFA program at Simmons (Creative Writing for Children) and finished the semester with good grades

• Felt like my dreams were important enough to spend government loans on my education

• Made new writer friends

• Attended 4^th Street Fantasy convention in Minneapolis

• Went on an indie bookstore crawl with Lauren Hougen

• Discovered I like gothic literature a lot more than I realized (and maybe always have)

• Learned about ekphrastic art

• Had an idea for a blog post about craft (can you guess what it’s about?)

• Got a shout-out from Casey at Rulerless and gained new newsletter followers

• Read works in progress from TEN unpublished writer friends on my writing discord

• Wrote a feminist theory analysis of Twilight

• Wrote a new MG intro (Clara Northastar and the Thousand Gales) and revised

• Wrote a new YA intro (Untitled Harpies manuscript) and revised

• Wrote text for a picture book about the loss and grief of Alzheimer’s 😔😔

• Learned how to read 🎵music🎵 on the treble clef!!!! 🎵

• Read 26 novels, multiple novel excerpts, and something like two dozen picture books

As you can see, these aren’t all “I won an award and my book sold a million copies”—some of them are small on the surface, but, like, every person who goes and buys a hardcover from their local store is helping that store. And I’m sure that everyone whose work I read in my writer community is happy that I took the time to read their work.

I am the first person to get really bent out of shape about not accomplishing goals, but I found this exercise really helpful because it’s showing me the incremental changes and progress I am making in my writing career—the signs on the career roadmap that they don’t tell you to watch out for. I mean, nobody’s come to me crying saying they love my work yet, but there’s always next year.

What successes have you accomplished over the past year?