I took that at a writing retreat sixteen years ago. Sixteen! Time is so weird, you guys…
The fact that time is so slippery is one reason why I make these goal-setting posts for the year. I know from experience that if I am not careful time will just slip away on me and I won’t get things done. And while there is definitely something to be said for not over-structuring your life and time, I think some intentionality is important as well. Most of us only have a few thousand weeks in this life — about, what? eighty years? — I don’t want any of them to just slip past without my noticing.
Each year my husband and I spend some time looking back over the last year, seeing what we said was important to use and comparing that to what we actually spent our time and energy on. And then we take what we’ve learned from that to sort of set our intentions and our priorities for the year to come. In addition to that, I also enjoy creating these blog posts — mostly focused on my work, but not exclusively — and sharing them online. The sharing of them gives me a little feeling of accountability, and also gives me an easy place to check-in at every now and then in the coming months to see if I am on track for my goals or if I’ve drifted off course.
Sometimes, if I don’t check-in, I manage to forget about goals altogether. Sometimes that’s okay, it means whatever that thing was it’s no longer important to me, but sometimes it’s pretty frustrating. So I’ve actually started putting ‘Check in on goals’ in my yearly planner every couple months to try and stop that from happening. We’ll see how successful it is at the end of the year when I do a ‘Looking Back’ post LOL
Without further rambling here are my goals for 2026:
500 words a day
But not actually. Every couple years I re-read On Writing by Stephen King. The main reason I do that isn’t for the memoir aspect of it, or even the sort of ‘how to write’ lessons. The main reason I do it is because I find Stephen’s commitment to story and to writing really inspiring — especially his focus on consistency and writing every day. Writing every day is not something I have ever been able to pull off — consistency is not my jam, I’m more of a feast or famine type writer LOL — but I would like to.
Still, I know myself and there is no way that I will be able to write 500 words a day every day. I just won’t. Except with some few exceptions I don’t work on Sundays (and the only work I do on Saturdays is a two hour write-in, which is really a social event disguised as work). So.
My goal is to write 500 words of new fiction on a novella (or longer project) every workday (that is Monday – Friday, excluding holidays).
It is important that I specify that the words be new, because otherwise I can get caught in a cycle of endless revisions or edits and calling that writing, and it’s important that I specify that it be on a longer work because I do want to put my focus there this year — on longer works. That’s why I set the goal at only 500 words, because it’s a floor not a ceiling. And that’s a number which should be doable and still leave space in my mind and schedule to work on shorter things like poems and short stories for my Patreon.
3x First Drafts
Related to the 500 words a day, I am aiming to complete the first draft of three different novella+ projects. I expect one to be a novella, one to be a short novel and one to be a novel. But we’ll see how it goes — I am often surprised by the final word counts of projects.
One of the books is Hexe which I am currently working on, one is a haunted house story and the third is sort of up for grabs but will probably be the third book in the Gods and Giants / Wing Things series.
Family Dinners
In the spirit of putting my time where my values are, I want to host a monthly family dinner (in addition to our other get-togethers). I actually started doing this last year but I am putting here in writing that I want them to continue because I think they are important for a myriad of reasons.
Low(er) Fat
Related to dinners, Jo and I are going to try and reduce the amount of fat we consume. Our strategy for that is that we will each plan and cook two low(er) fat meals a week. We’re being really liberal in our definition of ‘low(er) fat’ here, to be honest, because we ate a lot of take-out last year. Some of it for legit reasons (we were both extra busy) but some of it just from habit and laziness. Almost anything we cook ourselves is going to be lower in fat than take-out or delivery, hence the liberal definitions we’re going with.
Increased Mobility
As my mobility continues to improve, I continue to crave more. As it should be. I want to continue to increase my mobility via continued physio, massage and exercise. One way I will measure my progress is by how long and far I am able to walk the dog. As a ‘side quest’ to this, then, I would like to continue to
Improve Freyja’s Reactivity
so that our walks can be calm and enjoyable for both of us. Even if there is another dog nearby.
Increased Hobbies
Lastly, I want to spend more time on my neglected hobbies. I would like to:
- Take at least three photo safaris this year
- Complete two quilts
- Return to tumbling rocks in the spring
That feels like a really nice group of goals. Challenging, but nothing that is going to turn my life into one great big chore list.
See you back here at the start of next year to see how well I’ve done at achieving them 🙂
