As I look ahead to 2026, I reflect on my intentions of past—what worked and what didn’t? it’s from that place of reflection that I craft my writing goals for the next year. Here are seven questions authors should ask themselves before making those writing goals.
1. What is your reason for writing?
Ask yourself, “what is my why? Your why is the foundation. It’ll sustain you through rejections, poor sales, sudden successes and those creatively dry periods. My why is what keeps me going through the good times and the bad times—through the six figure deals, the trips to NYC, getting dumped by my agent, the disappointment. I have been an author for years and as I look ahead to my new chapter, I have to keep my why at the forefront of my mind.
2. Is this a practical goal or a delusional goal?
It’s okay to have both. In fact, it’s preferable to have both! Practical goals are “safe”. They keep you grounded in a consistent, workhorse kind of way. They feel good. Attainable.
Delusional goals are exciting, risky and emotionally uplifting. When you daydream about your delusional goals, don’t think, “I’ll never achieve that.” Instead, think, “Wouldn’t it be so fun if XYZ happened?” The energy is completely different and, well, energizing! Consider astronauts—only form a place of safety, (science backed technology), were they able to reach for the stars.
The key is to create both practical and delusional goals.
3. How will you make sitting down to write FEEL good?
Writing is hard, people. Sometimes I am excited to sit with my hands on the key board, creating words, sentences and stories. Other times, I’d rather have wisdom teeth extracted. So it’s important for me to romanticize my writing time. How I do this depends on the book , how much I need to write, and even the time of day. The goal is to shift my energy into excitement and expectation. When I wrote Born of Illusion, I played a lot of 1920’s era jazz. For my Lizzy Borden book, Fall River, I liked the room to be candle lit, and darker classical music softly in the background. The point is to consider how you are going to make writing fun even on those days when it doesn’t feel fun.
4. Are your goals you dependent?
Make sure your goals are dependent on you, not anyone else. I once made the mistake of making one of my goals to score a publishing deal. At the end of the year, I realized my error. It was a goal that neither myself nor my agent had any control over. We both worked as hard as we could, but we couldn’t control the market or the industry. Financial goals are similar. Not that I don’t make them, but they are similarly risky because we can’t control sales or the economy.
5. How are you going to refill the well?
In Julia Cameron’s book, The Artists Way, she writes extensively about a concept called the artist’s date. Do something that inspires creativity. This can be as simple as walking in the woods or heading to a coffee shop with a cool, creative vibe to fill up on caffeine and people watch. Or it might be as involved as heading to the museum or experiencing something new. For me, doing something completely out of the ordinary energizes me. I have gone to a sound bath and soaked in a float tank just to fill that creative well.
6. What are your challenges and strengths?
Do you struggle with time management? Then maybe a daily word count isn’t the goal for you. And honestly, daily goals/habits are the most difficult to reach because they take a level of consistency that most of us can’t maintain. Then we have to deal with the sense of failure when we miss a day and it’s incredibly hard to get back on track. In this case if you start with a large goal, say a weekly word count, you are building flexibility into the goal. Maybe you are awesome at time management but have a serious inner editor problem that makes moving forward difficult. In that case, it may help to set a time and see how many words you can write in five minutes or so. Having an awareness of your strengths and challenges will help you create goals that build on your assets, as well as give you opportunities to strengthen the areas you struggle with.
7. What will make this a successful writing year even if nothing “big” happens?
Before the year begins, define what success actually looks like for you, separate from validation, sales, or industry milestones. Is it finishing a draft? Returning to the page after burnout? Rebuilding trust in your voice? Falling back in love with storytelling? If the year ends without a book deal, a viral moment, or a bestseller list—what would still make you proud of how you showed up as a writer? When you define success on your own terms, you give yourself something powerful: a way to win no matter what the industry does. And those quiet wins—the finished pages, the consistency, the courage to keep going—are often what lead to the “big” moments anyway.
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