I normally do 2 writing goal updates a year in addition to the final update of the year and next year’s goal setting. Due to a major change to my publication plan, I missed my April update.
You can go back and review my 2026 Goals, but I’ll cover them as I do my update. If you’re interested in previous goals and updates, you can always check my Goals tag. Spoilers: it’s always a mix whether I’ve met goals or not.
Photo by Adria Bailton
Short Stories
Short Stories Written
My goal for the year is 4, so ~3 is about on time. I drafted 3 in January with the Codex contest. I just need to draft one more. If I start writing soon, I’ll get one more drafted.
Short Stories Polished
Goal: 6 But I haven’t polished any. My goal had been to polish between novel revisions, but, again, things went south. It seems unlikely I’ll meet this, but this review is good to catch up on things. I really do need to polish some of the drafts I have for submissions.
Short Stories Submissions
Goal: 34/52
It’s a little bit of a cheat because I submitted a bunch of haikus. I considered adding a poetry goal mid-year, but I didn’t solidify it and I don’t really have enough poetry written and polished for it. But looking at next year! (And taking the wins I can right now.)
Short Stories Rejections
I always have a goal for 100% rejection. To be honest, I have had only rejections the short fiction responses, but not for all those haikus. So, a fail. But this is a win either way. I either make my goal or I have publications!
Novels
Drafting Goal: No drafting goal for novels. I haven’t drafted anything new, so I guess goal met?
Revision Goal: 2 novels. I haven’t returned to the novel I was revising. Unfortunately, when I tried to revise the other novel that is on my list for this year, I was unable to do anything and had a bit of a meltdown on BlueSky. I’m still hoping to get back to revisions on novels soon.
Querying/Submission Goal: Query if ready. Start submitting the other YA SF novel.
I’m obviously not ready to start querying the novel I didn’t manage to revise yet.
But I have started submitting the other YA science fiction, A COLLISION OF REALITIES to small presses! I started at the beginning of August and it is currently submitted to ~15 presses (with one rejection already.) This book has been submitted to a couple of places before and I queried it right up until I had offers of publication on WORLDS DIVIDE. Querying ended because it got tied up with that publication in some ways. This goal is met.
Debut novel published. Well, that didn’t work out. I thought it was a safe goal, but obviously it was not. I did decide to get my rights back, so this is a decision I made.
That’s about it for my updates. Not very exciting this year. Thanks for hanging out while I reviewed my writing and publishing goals for the year. Maybe the final third of the year will be kind and good and I’ll have amazing things to report at the end.