Life, Writing, Weirdness

Every year needs goals. For me, that needs to include writing goals.

I’m fond of the SMART Goal method, which I’m not going to go over here other than expanding the basic acronym: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound. This is where I’m going to share what those are for my writing for 2026 (well, really, the intent is for year that I’ll spend being 55, but there’s only a two-day slide to have that, so it always winds up being the calendar year anyway).

I should say up front that for the last few years I’ve set four levels goals. I’ll then adjust the next year’s set based on how a year finishes.

1. Standard Goals – the ones I commit to out loud. These are built to hit the SMART criteria and be manageable with time to spare, assuming the rest of my life works out as I expect it to. That hasn’t been the case for the last several years in a row.
2. Secret Goals – the ones I’m actually shooting for. The Time-bound piece for each of these is the last day of the year in question.
3. Stretch Goals – if the year goes amazingly well and I can maintain the momentum. This is, roughly, [Standard + Secret] + 10% if we’re looking at word count.
4. Super-stretch Goals – essentially if I keep picking up speed throughout the year. This is, roughly, [Standard + Secret] + 25% if we’re looking at word count.

Now, these are for drafting. I don’t set specific goals for editing or publishing anymore, although I may pick some submission targets for this year. Editing can be extremely variable by what draft I’m looking at and by the story in question. Publishing is set up as an ordered list and I’ll get the next item out as I’m able.

So, this year’s drafting goals are:

1. Novel Plotting: 1
2. Novel Drafting: 2
3. Flash: 25
4. Short Stories: 10
5. Non-Fiction Book: 1
6. Blog Posts: 52
7. Songs: 10
8. Poems: 40

There’s also one category that only has goals set under Secret and Super-Stretch goals.

This gets turned into a daily word count goal through a series of rounding up exercises. Based on historical data, I can roughly estimate what each of these means in terms of word count, founding up a bit for each category, which will give me a general idea of how many words to shoot for each day. I’ll take a total of that for all the categories and round up a little bit more. Knowing my basic typing while composing speed lets me figure out the time dedication needed, and I’ll round up a little one more time. Then I’ll try to budget that amount of time each day. Then I’ll watch while life laughs at me and I have to fight to get enough of it to actually get some typing in.

For 2026, just using the Standard + Secret goals, I’m looking at a target of 900 (Mon-Fri) or 1000 (Sat-Sun) words per day. Feels manageable, but I’ve said that before. We’ll see how things go.

The goals are set and the plan is in place. It just remains to be seen if the time management skills are also present.

Be well, everyone.