Writing goals for 2026
Ambitious, yet achievable, will be my theme for the coming year
A couple of weeks ago, I took a look back at my goals for 2025 and how I did. I accomplished most of them and at least learned about achievable goals from the one that I didn’t. With that in mind, here’s what I expect to do in the coming year.
Goal 1: Write 300,000 words. This is the same goal I had in both 2024 and 2025. I came close in ‘24 and hit it in ‘25. It’s a number that I think strikes a balance between ambitious and achievable. I’d love to say that I’m going to up the ante and write a half million words in 2026, but unless the universe decides that I don’t need a full-time job, that would be setting myself up for failure.
Goal 2: See “Sons of Gold and Fire” in print. OK, I’m giving myself a bit of a layup on this one since I turned it over to the editors at Rac Press last week, but there’s still a good bit of work to be done to get it across the finish line.
Goal 3: Write “Knight of Gold and Fire.” The third book will close the arc begun in “Dreams of Gold and Fire.” I’d like to get this done in the first half of the year. I won’t say that it will be the last book of the Gold and Fire series because I do have a vague idea for at least one more. But any books I write beyond this one will be stand-alone adventures.
Goal 4: Write a new book for adults. Depending on how things go with the books that I currently have written and am shopping around, this could be a sequel to one of them or something completely different.
Goal 5: Put together and self-publish a collection of my short stories. I don’t plan to write many shorts this year. I only have one on my schedule. I hit them hard in 2025 and got slapped down hard on most of the submissions. But I have a few tales with rights reverted and quite a few unpublished. It will also be a good experiment in case I want to try my hand at self-publishing one of my novels in the future.
Goal 6: Keep trying to find a home for the books that I’ve finished. In addition to “Sons of Gold and Fire,” I’d love to see “No Man’s Son” or “Day of the Dragons” or my other kids’ adventure book published in 2026. I won’t make that a goal, though, because I learned about goals that are out of my control last year.
Goal 7: Work on my marketing. It’s something I hate, and something I think most writers hate, but it’s something you’ve got to do. I suck at it. I need to get better. How I’ll do that, I don’t quite know yet, but I’ll figure it out.
I think that should be more than enough to keep me busy for the year. As I did last year, I’ll hold a couple of pipe dream goals close to the vest, which I’ll be happy to talk about this time next year if I achieve one of them. Good luck with whatever your goals are for the year.