It is the last Friday of the year and time to assess my goals from this year and set new ones for next year. Spoilers: I fell way off my writerly goals in 2025.
Click my Goals category to read previous goal setting and updates. I’ll review the previous year’s throughout so you don’t have to go back.
If you haven’t seen one of my goal setting and reviewing posts before, here’s the plan: I go through the goals I set at the end of last year and see how many I’ve accomplished. As both a short story write and novelist, I break my goals up by length.
Short Stories: Goal Review
Short Stories Written and Polished in 2025
Drafting Goal: six (6)
Because I participate in a Codex Writers writing context for flash fiction, I met this goal right at the beginning of the year. 🧚🏻♀️
Polish Goal: twelve (12)
I didn’t even come close on this. I managed to revise a single story last year. 🧌
Submissions Goal: 150
Clearly, I fell off the wagon about a third of the way through. I do have a goal to make a couple more submissions before the end of the year. My goal of 150 was the culmination of a 5-year submissions goal plan.
In 2021, my goal was to submit 39 stories and I submitted 40.
In 2022, my goal became a stretch goal of sixty (60) submissions. I submitted sixty-six (66) times.
In 2023, my goal was to submit ninety (90) stories, and I submitted ninety-five (95).
In 2024, my goal was 120 submissions. I blew that number out of the park with 133.
The 150 for 2025 didn’t seem that far off even though that 120 in 2024 was difficult. I was on track in my first goal update of the year. Unfortunately, my April and May was very stressful and I slowed down on my submissions. I hoped to recover, but in June, my day job search picked up and getting a new day job and moving cross-country (and all the entails) plus some other stuff, meant I never got back on the submissions horse. 🧌
However, writing this blog post did get me working on my submissions before the end of the year and I got a few more in.
Rejections Goal: 100%
My rejection goal is always 100%. This way, if I meet it, I win, and if I don’t, it means I had acceptances, and I win.
Last year I mentioned my 13-month ‘no acceptance’ drought in 2023-2024. I’ve gone 12 months and will hit 13 month on January 9. However, that’s using my offers of publication on a novel. If we go strictly by short story sales, I broke that streak by an additional 2 months plus as of the posting of this blog. Again, the things going on with my novels and Big Life Changes means that I haven’t really felt that length in the past 6 months.
I still have several outstanding submissions from 2025 (and some from 2024), but this is pretty much 100%. 🧚🏻♀️
Acceptances:
I don’t make acceptance goals. This year, I had no acceptances. At the end of the year, I learned that two stories published in 2024 are appearing in an anthology, which was very nice.
The lack of acceptances made the first part of the year a little tough, except I had other writing stuff (and life stuff) going on, so my focus was elsewhere.
Publications in 2025:
My sole publication in 2025 was a self-published audiobook for my novelette, Arcing, which was published in print by Pulp Lit Mag.
2025 Earnings:
Last year I posted all my writerly earnings for all time. As I’ve said in several places, I write for the joy of writing. I submit because I want my words to find readers. I appreciate being paid because then I can justify spending money on my writing (like attending cons, workshops, and craft classes.)
In short fiction (aside from my self-published audiobook that I feel goes into a different category), I had no earnings in 2025. This is the first year since submitting that I haven’t earned anything.
This isn’t great. But I suppose everyone has a set-back and while I’d hoped year 5 would be my best yet, it might be the whole take a step back thing. It’s disappointing, but I’m just moving forward at this point.
Short Story Goals for 2026
Goal: Short Stories Written and Polished in 2026
Write: I plan to participate in the same Codex Writers flash fiction contest. However, I might be moving (again) during it. So, I’m going to make a goal to write four (4) new short stories in 2026.
Polish: I really should aim high because I need more short stories for submissions. I only have eight (8) reprint and eleven (11) never published polished stories currently. However, I almost always miss this goal. While I have a large number of stories on my revise list, I’m going to stick with six (6). One every 2 months seems somewhere in the realm of feasible.
Goal: Short Story Submissions in 2025
52 – You might think this is a huge step back from the goal of 150 this past year. It is. That is because I need something achievable. I need to meet my goals in 2026. One submission per week on average should be doable. It’s the lowest goal I’ve had since 2021 and even the lowest number of actual submissions since then. Like usual, I intend to kick of the year with several submissions and get a jump start on the year’s goals.
Goal: Short Story Rejections in 2026
100%
Novels
Novel goals for 2025:
I had very vague novel goals for 2025 that I never specified or elaborated. So, goal met? 🧚🏻♀️
Novel goals for 2026:
Drafting Goal: No drafting goal for novels. I tend to be struck to draft more than having a goal. I don’t need to draft a novel in 2026. You’ll see why.
Revision Goal: 2 novels. This winter, I started revising the first novel I polished for querying. It’s a major revision. I still have the novel I wrote in 2024 that I need to revise. I want to get through both of these this year. Six (6) months for each revision seems reasonable (with breaks for some short story revisions.)
Querying/Submission Goal: Querying–if I am happy with one of my novel revisions (or both), I will query them. But I don’t have a firm querying goal.
Submissions–I plan to start submitting my other YA science fiction novel that is polished to small press.
Debut novel published! This isn’t quite within my control and my goals are usually within my control, but since it’s scheduled and I’ve been marketing, I feel this is a “safe” goal.
Bonus Goals
These were goals that I can’t directly control. They appear separately from the rest of my goals. These are more like wishes and dreams.
Bonus Goal: Publications in 2025: 5
I did not achieve this goal. I had the one self-published audiobook. I don’t have publication goals per se in 2026. I’d be cheating a little bit because I expect 3 (my debut YA sci-fi novel and my two Worlds of Possibility publications in the anthology.) This year, I’d just like to see what publications 2026 brings.
Bonus Goal: Earnings in 2025: More than 2024
Erm, well, also not achieved since 2024 was my highest year of earnings and I earned close to nothing in 2025.
Bonus Goal: Earnings in 2026
I’ll re-up this one: my goal is to earn more than 2025 (shouldn’t be too hard because I’ll hopefully get some royalties for my debut novel publication). But even then, my goal is to earn more than 2024, my highest earning year yet.
Bonus Goal carried over from last year: Earn enough by end-of-year 2026 to become a Full Member of SFWA.
This one is more complicated. I’ll keep it for the monetary value it has. Unfortunately, I don’t know if I will be renewing my Associate membership for SFWA in April, let alone applying for full membership once I qualify. This isn’t the space for going into details, but if you are at all familiar with SFWA’s recent Nebula-related announcements and other org mis-steps, then you may have some idea why.
Writerly BINGO
In 2024, at Flights of Foundry, I made a writerly BINGO card. These are either goals that are huge or things I have no control over. I updated them yesterday.
No BINGO yet! Maybe 2026.
My goal post always takes a bit to get through due to reviewing what I established in the previous year and expressing new goals. Thanks for reading through. I’ll be back with (hopefully) two updates before the end of next year.