2026 Writing Goals

I know, I know, I’m really late in posting my writing goals! But I have already started working on them; it’s only this blog post that is late. So let’s talk about how my writing went in 2025 and what my goals are for 2026.

2025 Writing Recap

Let’s start with a 2025 recap. I had five writing goals: 

• Read draft 4 of Project Prehistory
• Write and revise draft 5 of Project Prehistory
• Prepare for querying
• Try to get one short story published
• Write draft 2 of Pride and Prejudice retelling

Project Prehistory is my current work in progress that I’ve been working on since 2017. It's a coming-of-age story set in a prehistoric matriarchal society. I finished draft four in late 2024, and last year my goal was to write the fifth (and final) draft. What I do after finishing a draft is to let it rest for a couple of months, print it out, and read it three times. I find that this is really helpful for me, because with each read-through I pick more things to fix. Luckily, in draft five only minor things needed fixing. This time instead of printing the manuscript out, I actually ordered a proof copy from Amazon. Even though I’m not planning on self-publishing the book, it was fun to see the manuscript in a book format.

My biggest problem with the manuscript was that it was still too long. Draft three was over 158K words, and even though I cut 20K during draft four, it was still sitting at 138K. If you didn’t know, agents prefer books under 120K from debut authors. Unfortunately, I only managed to cut about two thousand words more, leaving draft five at 136K.

Editing and revising usually takes me a really long time. I find drafting a lot easier and faster. This time, the editing process was rather painless, and after I started the edits in mid-February, I was done with the edits (and draft five) by mid-June. I had been prepared to work on the draft much longer, so four months is a win in my books!

As I hope to get an agent and publish Project Prehistory through a traditional publisher, I wanted to do some query prep. Querying, in case you didn’t know, is the process where you send a short query letter, usually a sample of your manuscript, and possibly also a synopsis to a literary agent. Over the years, I’ve learned something about how the process works, but I still had a lot to learn. I spend July and majority of August watching hundreds of YouTube videos about querying. After that, it was time to write my own query letter and update and spice up the synopsis I had written a few years earlier.

I also wanted to get my query letter professionally critiqued to make sure that it was in as good a shape as possible. In November, I had by query letter critiqued by Gina Denny. She posts videos on YouTube on querying, and her videos were incredibly helpful as I was preparing my own query letter. She gave me some invaluable feedback on my query letter, especially on comp titles. I can highly recommend her services if you’re looking for someone to give you feedback on your query package.

I also wanted to take a shot at publishing a short story in a literary magazine. I sent a literary fiction short story to several magazines, and I edited a cozy fantasy short story and sent it to a few others. No luck so far, but the response times from these magazines can stretch to several months, even closer to a year.

My stretch goal was to write draft 2 of a modern Pride and Prejudice retelling. As I finished draft five of Project Prehistory so early, I had plenty of time to work on the retelling, and I not only finished the draft but also sent it to beta readers for feedback.

While the retelling was at beta readers, I went back to Project Prehistory to do a final read-through. I managed to delete another thousand words or so, and thus the final word count of the manuscript is 135K. Still way too long, and I’m sure a lot of agents are going to auto-reject it based on the word count alone. But I’m hoping some agent somewhere falls in love with the story.

 

2026 Writing Goals

That takes us to 2026 and my writing goals for this year. This year, I want to:

• Query Project Prehistory
• Edit Pride and Prejudice retelling (draft 3)
• Prep for draft 2 of an urban fantasy (codename GoM)

My main goal this year is to query Project Prehistory. If nothing else gets completed, I’m happy. Because the only reason why the other goals would not get completed is if I get an agent and have to get back to working on Project Prehistory. In that case, everything else would obviously have to give way.

But as querying takes a long time, I’m certain I have time for other projects as well. I started querying in early January, and I’ve sent a batch of about five query letters each week. Some agents have already gotten back to me, but so far, I’ve only gotten form rejections. Other agents have said that their response may take eight to twelve weeks.

My second goal is to write the third draft of the Pride and Prejudice retelling. I started by reading the beta reader feedback I got, and now I’m reading the second draft myself, noting all the changes I want to make. Like with my other writing projects, I read the draft three times. During the first read, I try not to make any notes on the margins unless it’s something I’ll easily miss in subsequent reads, such as typos, wrong pronouns, and wrong character names (I had accidentally called one of my characters ‘Jane’ even though that’s not her name in the retelling!). The first read gives me a big picture idea of what needs to be changed. Luckily, I don’t have to make major changes to the manuscript this time.

After the first read, I read the book again more slowly and with more attention to all the things I should change. My third read-through of the manuscript is also slow and detailed-oriented. I’ve noticed I become more nit-picky as I read, and the third read-through is for all the things that have slipped through the cracks previously.

I should be done with the read-through by early February, after which I can transcribe all my handwritten notes to a Word document and start working on draft three. Hopefully, I can make the edits by the end of April. I don’t know if my plan makes any sense considering that I’m simultaneously querying another novel, but it would be fun to self-publish the retelling this year.

My third goal is to get back to a writing project I started during the 2021 NaNoWriMo. I wrote an almost complete first draft of an urban fantasy novel. I think it had over 60K words. The final word count should be closer to 80K, so it’s clearly missing a lot of things. But it has a beginning, an end, and some kind of middle. I also have tons of notes about things I want to add or change in the manuscript.

Unfortunately, when I was writing the first draft, I wasn’t very good at outlining the book, so I’m sure the middle of the book is a complete mess. I need to read the draft and see what measures I must take before I can start working on draft two. I probably need to outline the whole book again now that I know better what I’m doing.

I could add a fourth goal to the list: continuing to send the short stories to literary magazines. Querying and publishing are slow processes, and just because one agent or magazine says no, doesn’t mean the next one won’t say yes. If you’re in the querying trenches with me, try to stay positive and let me know how you’re doing.

Big things are happening this year! Stay tuned to see how my goals and plans turn out.