Episode Six: How to hit your writing goals in 2026 (even if you feel behind...)
2025 is almost over, and if you’re anything like me, you’re feeling behind as a writer. This was a big year for me, but it was also an insanely unproductive year for my writing. In this episode, I’m sharing what I used to do to fit writing into my busy life as a full-time high school teacher. These are the habits I’m recommitting to in 2026 laid out so you can steal them and move forward on your writing goals this year!
You can listen to the full epsiode here. Or, watch here.
Links Mentioned:
Subscribe to the Better Writer Weekly newsletter here
Check out Sarah Elizabeth Sawyer’s work on Fictation here
Check out my blog post on setting flexible writing goals here
Check out my blog post on setting non-word count writing goals here
Key Takeaways
For me, 2025 was a pretty incredible year. It was also an incredibly busy year. I got a lot done, but my writing unfortunately took a backseat to everything else. In 2026, I’m recommitting to my writing.
Here are my top tips for making writing a part of your life, even if you’re super busy.
First, set goals that mix flexibility and accountability. For me, that meant setting a strict monthly goal (e.g., 10,000 words) and flexible weekly/ daily goals. I would aim to write an average number of words per week (e.g., 2,500) but adjusted the specific number depending on how busy each week was. The same was true for my daily goals. I had a number to aim for, but if I missed the goal, I moved on and used other days to catch up.
I also tracked my goals, but I only focused on what I’d actually accomplished, not how far above or below my goal I was on any given day. That analysis was saved for the end of the week when I assessed my progress and adjusted the remaining weekly goals accordingly.
Second, be realistic about your constraints. I prefer to set goals based on how much time I have, not try to fit an unrealistic goal into my life after setting it.
Microgoals (e.g., 8 words per day) are also great for keeping yourself mentally focused on a goal, even if you don’t have enough time for a serious writing session.
You can also embrace shorter writing sessions or writing sessions that look different from the norm. For example, dictating your fiction can be a great way to sneak in a writing session while doing something else, like driving.
If you’re feeling behind going into the new year, stop it! As long as you’re making progress, you’re better off now than you were one year ago and you’ll be even better off next year compared to right now. Be realistic, set goals that make sense for your life, and enjoy the process.
Transcript
Please Note: This is an automatically generated transcript that has not been edited.
Olivia Bedford (00:00)
my goal this year is to bring back some of the stuff I was doing and to try to make writing a part of my life again, because even though working with clients and helping my clients write books is my priority, I still love writing. I still love creating stories myself, and I want to do more of that in twenty twenty six. So I'm making this episode for you, but I'm also really making this episode for myself. So as I was thinking about what was happening in the past when I was writing consistently, even though my life was busy,
versus now, I realized that there are a few things that I did in the past that really worked and I got away from them and now I want to bring them back.
let's talk about what those things are and how you can use them for yourself this year.
Welcome to episode number six of the Better Writer podcast and the final episode of 2025. I cannot believe that we have already reached the end of this year. It feels like time is moving so quickly. a lot of great things happened for me in 2025. And I was also very busy in 2025.
Just to give some context, I got a puppy this year. We had wanted a dog for so long. We finally got our landlord to say yes and we got a puppy. She's wonderful, but oh my goodness, having a puppy is so much work, which if you're a dog person, you know that having a puppy is a lot, but she is so sweet and so worth it. I also got engaged this year just a couple of weeks ago. I haven't really started planning anything for a wedding.
We've dated for eight years, so we're not in a huge rush. Clearly, we're taking our time. But I have started looking into all of the things that go into a wedding. And that's just another thing that it's great, it's wonderful, it's a lot of work.
I also had some not so great things happen this year.
talked about this before on the show, but I was formerly a high school English teacher and my partner still works in a school. He is now a school administrator. And to make a long story short, he had two English teachers quit over the summer. One of those was the ninth grade English teacher. And I basically said, I'm not going to let those ninth graders start.
their first year of high school with just a random series of subs. And so I agreed to step in. I went back into the classroom. It was only supposed to be for a short period of time while they were looking for a teacher. The first two weeks with the ninth graders were amazing. I loved them. They found a great teacher very quickly. I then transitioned into the 11th grade and that was so much harder because it wasn't just
back to school fun stuff anymore. It was real content and you know, I was there for a month and that was a lot longer than I thought it would be than I was hoping it would be. And I was still editing full time. I was still doing client work, keeping up with all those deadlines and it was really difficult to balance running the business and teaching full time. I was glad.
that I was able to step in. was really, really glad that the ninth graders had an amazing start to the school year in English. And I don't think that would have happened if it was just random teachers getting called in to lose their break for the day. So I'm really proud of that. I'm so glad I did it. But it was a lot.
even though I was only really subbing for about six weeks, the impact felt much more significant than that. In twenty twenty five, I also became.
a certified book coach. finished author accelerators program. I got certified, which was so exciting and I'm so proud of that. As a result, I started changing things in my
I have started changing some of my offers
I start to adopt a more coaching centric model. I am rolling out a new revision course that I'm so excited about. I started this podcast. So many fantastic things are happening in my business, in my life, things that I am
proud of things that I am celebrating as we go into the new year. But one thing that really did not happen for me this year was writing. I'm to be honest, writing has not been a major priority for me over the last couple of years. I am way more excited about helping other people write their books at this point. And honestly, I think I'm much better at helping other people write their books. If no one's ever said this to you before, editing
Other people's work and writing your own are two very different skills and editing other people's work just comes more naturally to me. I love it. It lights me up and it's something I'm really good at, ⁓ is what I found over the last few years. honestly, my writing has not been a huge priority, but 2025 in particular was unproductive for me as a writer. so this episode is for everyone else in that camp.
who feels like they are behind on their writing, who feels like they have not accomplished enough as a writer, this episode is for you. If you're someone who has accomplished everything you wanted to accomplish as a writer, that is amazing. Congratulations. Keep going. Hit me up on Instagram. Tell me how you have managed to balance writing and everything in your life, because I would love to hear how other people are doing it. But my goal with this episode is to ⁓
talk about what worked for me in the past because as I was reflecting I realized that part of the reason I haven't gotten any writing done this year is because I stopped doing all of the things that allowed me to write while I was teaching full-time. Because, I was just as busy as a teacher when I wrote my first book as I am now, but I still managed to write and I think it's because I was doing things differently, I was approaching things differently.
And my goal this year is to bring back some of the stuff I was doing and to try to make writing a part of my life again, because even though working with clients and helping my clients write books is my priority, I still love writing. I still love creating stories myself, and I want to do more of that in twenty twenty six. So I'm making this episode for you, but I'm also really making this episode for myself. So as I was thinking about what was happening in the past when I was writing consistently, even though my life was busy,
versus now, I realized that there are a few things that I did in the past that really worked and I got away from them and now I want to bring them back.
let's talk about what those things are and how you can use them for yourself this year. All right, the first thing that I did in the past was I set very specific goals for myself, but I made them flexible.
And I think that duality was incredibly important. So I would have a very strict monthly goal and then I would set very loose weekly and daily goals. So that means if I wanted to write 10,000 words in the month, my 10,000 word goal was set in stone. So I would say I'm going to write 10,000 words in January. That goal is not going to change. To hit that 10,000 word goal,
I would then set a weekly goal. Let's say it's a four week month, my goal is going to be 2,500 words per week. But I held that goal very loosely because maybe one week is busier, so I'm only going to write 1,000 words and then the next week is going to be less busy, so I'm going to write 5,000. Or I don't think the math there actually worked, but you get the point. So I would have a very strict monthly goal.
and then flexible weekly goals that changed depending on how much time I had. The same was true for each daily goal. I would say I'm going to try to write X number of words each day, but if I miss a day, if a day is totally unproductive, then I can shift those words the next day. If a day is super, super productive, then maybe I can take a day off later in the week when I have less time. again, I try to balance
accountability for myself with flexibility by having that set monthly goal and then very flexible daily and weekly goals that I could adjust as needed to accommodate days that were busy, days that I wasn't feeling well, days that just didn't work out with days where I put the pedal to the metal and really go for it.
second thing that I used to do was I was super realistic about my constraints. I set goals that were completely based on what I thought was realistic for the month, not what I thought I should be doing for the month. So that means that I would actually look at my calendar first. I would...
find the days that were just not going to work for writing because I knew I had something going or I had a big deadline or grades were going to be due or something like that and I would just cross them out. Those days did not exist. Then I would look at the number of days remaining, decide what was a good reasonable average for those writing days, and set my goal that way.
instead of saying, I'm going to write 20,000 words this month because I think I should, I would look at the calendar and say, I've got 20 writing days, I think I can write about 500 words per day, and so my goal is going to be 10,000 because that feels realistic. I might, you know, adjust it slightly higher to push myself, or I might say,
This month is going to be a little iffy. There are some things that I'm not certain about whether or not they're going to happen. So I'm going to adjust this goal a little bit lower just in case. So again, it's about being realistic, not having no accountability for yourself, but just acknowledging that life happens, you're busy, and you only have so many hours in the day. And if you set a goal that is unachievable, most likely you're not even going to get close because you are going to give up, burn out, beat yourself up.
Whereas if you set a very realistic goal, an achievable goal, you're much more likely to stick with it because it doesn't feel impossible.
Another thing I did is I treated different days differently. I did not have one set daily word count goal that I was trying to hit every time. Instead, I adjusted based on whether it was a weekday or a weekend, whether I had something going or not, or whether it was just a day in the week that I tended to have more energy for writing. So Tuesdays, for whatever reason, tended to be a really good day for me, even though it was a weekday. So I would set a higher goal.
the rest of the week had a slightly lower goal for each weekday. Sometimes I decided not to write on Fridays too, it just depended on how the week was going. Then I would do the bulk of my writing on Saturdays and Sundays because that's when I had time and flexibility and I would do an all-out sprint, sometimes writing 2,000 words or more on a single day. That number is not to say that that's what you should be doing, there are no shoulds, but that is what I was personally able to do on those weekends. And those add up.
It is totally possible for you to write 10, 20, 30, 40,000 words a month even, not writing every day. And I know this because I did it when I was writing consistently in the past. these are things that I know I know how to do and I just got away from them because I think life got a little chaotic and a little busy. like I said, client work
priority, but I am trying to fit more of my writing back into my life. Client work is still the priority, just so you know, but.
I'm trying to make a little bit more space by again, being flexible, being realistic.
The other thing that you need to do is accept when things change. And I think this is the mistake that I made. I didn't realize that being an editor and running a business was going to feel and be completely different than being a teacher. When you own your own business, the work never stops. I don't have an office. I don't leave the house to go to work. So there is no transition between.
personal time and business time. That is something I am definitely trying to work on. I'm trying to better boundaries in my life. But again, I was a teacher. So honestly, being a workaholic comes naturally. That is basically what my entire professional life has been. So I am working on it, but I think that I didn't recognize that my approach to writing would need to change when I no longer had set transition points in my day, when I no longer had
workspace versus home space, because I think a big part of my writing practice was in the transitions. And I would write a little bit before going to school, I would write a little bit after school, and now there is no before and after work because I'm always home, So I needed to change up my process and that's what I'm going to be working on in 2026 is figuring out how do I be an editor and a writer at the same time because that's going to look different.
than being a teacher and a writer at the same time. My other suggestion is to be creative in how you approach the writing process. And again, this is something I used to do really well. one thing that I used to do is if I was in a really busy season, I would set micro writing goals. And by micro, I literally mean my goal would be to write
eight words a day. That's like one sentence or less takes about a minute. And I used to be really committed to that. this was for really busy seasons where I wasn't really trying to get words on the page. I wasn't really trying to make progress. I was just trying to stay in the habit, stay in the mindset of my project. And I used to write anywhere, all the time, bathrooms, especially, I know TMI, but I was really committed to staying in the habit.
And I got away from
thinking that writing needed to be these long sessions,
think part of that came from working from home. And I was like, you know, I should have so much more time. I should be able to sit down and write for an hour every day. And it's still not realistic. I'm still working a lot and I need to get back into the mindset of writing can look different and it doesn't need to look.
perfect or be an hour or two hours every day to be successful and move me forward. Something else that I am trying to work on as well is letting go of my idea of what writing means. And specifically, I have been getting really into dictation as a writing style. I'm already dictating editorial letters, emails, blog posts, all kinds of things. And my goal for 2026 is to embrace dictation in fiction writing as well.
you've never heard of it, dictation basically means I am speaking into a speech to text app and it is converting what I say into text. You can speak punctuation, you can speak words, dialogue, all that stuff. It's great. I love dictation. If you are interested in exploring how it works, how to do it well, Sarah Elizabeth Sawyer has an amazing class called Fictation.
and it's on dictation for fiction authors. It's amazing. Highly recommend. will link in the show notes. But basically, I am trying to embrace dictation because it just opens up the possibilities for where and when you can write because you can go mobile. One of my favorite ways to dictate is to hook my phone up to my car and just speak while I'm driving. And it's surprisingly accurate.
super easy and it allows me to multitask. So the next time you are driving somewhere running errands, instead of that driving time just being empty, wasted, it can turn into a writing session. So this is definitely something that I am trying to embrace in 2026. Like I said, I'm already doing that for a lot of non-fiction applications, but I'm excited to start exploring how to use it for fiction this year.
finally, addition to rethinking what a writing session can look
also want to encourage you to be creative about the types of goals that you set. Oftentimes we get stuck in a word count rut. And don't get me wrong, word count is a great thing to track when you are drafting, when you are trying to get something done, but it isn't your only option. And
Sometimes tracking word count exclusively can lead to burnout, it can lead to us putting quantity over quality, and it can generally be unhelpful if we are trying to do something like revise where actually word count is the last thing we should be worried about, especially if we need to cut things from the story. So, alternatives you can think about using are tracking time, tracking chapters that you've worked on, tracking pages or something like that.
You can also decide to stop tracking quantitatively altogether. That means letting go of the numbers and instead tracking something like how you feel about your writing. You could give yourself a quick rating on how well you think you writing that day. There are other options and it does not need to be just word count.
Another thing that I recommend and something that I used to do religiously is tracking. If you have a goal that you're trying to accomplish, you have to track progress toward that goal. Otherwise, how do you know how you're doing? How do you know if you need to change things? How do you know if you're getting there or even exceeding your goal? I know tracking can be difficult. It can definitely open up some negative feelings, especially if we are not as close to our goal as we want to be. But I do think it is an important part of keeping yourself accountable and making sure that your process is actually working.
And like I said, used to track word count religiously when I was drafting, when I was getting things done. I wasn't always tracking word count. There were other things that I kept track of as well, depending on where I was the writing process. But that tracking element, I think, was essential because it gave me a way to know if what I was doing was working. And when I said that my goals were flexible, only the daily and weekly goals were. So that monthly goal, I really tried to hold myself to.
And the only way to know if I needed to adjust, move faster, move slower or whatever was to keep track of what I was doing on a daily and weekly basis. And I think that there's a way to track that doesn't have to feel bad. And what worked for me is that I set goals, but then I only kept track of what I was actually accomplishing. So what that means is I would have a calendar on my wall in my office and every
day would get a sticker with the number of words that I intended to write. If it was a day that I wasn't going to write at all, the sticker would have an X on it to signal that it was a non-writing day, but there would still be something for every day on the calendar. Then I had a set of those little dot stickers, and every day after a writing session was done, I would write my actual word count and I would put that on top of the original sticker. So the only thing that actually showed on the calendar by the end was what I actually accomplished.
whether that was higher or lower than what I intended. There was no comparison, no keeping track of how close or far away from the goal I was. I simply documented what I actually got done. The benefit of doing that is that I was tracking, but I was tracking without guilt because the old goal no longer mattered. I was simply keeping track of what actually happened or not on that particular day. And
then at the end of the week, I could calculate everything up, see if I was ahead, behind, and then think about what I needed to change for the week ahead. So I made sure that those original goals were also written on stickers that were erasable so I could change things if I needed to. The dot stickers were not erasable because you can't change the past when something is done. the key point here is that I focused on what I did, not what I didn't do.
I focused on what actually happened. I tried not to beat myself up, again, by covering up that original goal. So the only thing that I could see going forward was a record of what I accomplished without paying attention to how far above or below that goal was because the calendar only showed those weekly goals. And then eventually I would put the total for the month at the end. Again, once everything was done, not focusing on whether that was greater or lower than my original goal.
just what was.
All right, those are the things I'm recommitting to and trying this year. I hope this episode was helpful. And once again, if you're feeling like you were behind, like you're not moving fast enough, you're not, you are making progress. You are working on your writing. And as long as you're moving forward, that's what counts. You are further along than you were one year ago. And at this time next year, you're gonna be further along than you are right now. And again, as long as we're making progress, we are moving forward.
Life is busy, life is crazy, life is chaotic, life is beautiful,
And it's not a race. It's not a race. So do what you can this year to make your goals happen by being realistic, being flexible, keeping track. Do not beat yourself up over what you should have done in 2025. The only thing that matters is what you can do in 2026. And I hope this podcast helped you think about how to set goals that are going to support your writing and not get in your way.
Thank you so, so much for making me part of your writing journey in twenty twenty five. Here is to an amazing twenty twenty six. I hope you will stick around. Keep listening to the podcast and keep getting better one episode at a time. If this episode helps you in any way, please leave a review. Let me know what you thought.
And if you're willing, share this episode with a friend or share it on social media. Help other writers find me and get the advice they need to keep moving forward as well. Again, thank you so, much for listening. Happy writing. Have a wonderful day and keep getting better one word at a time. See ya.
