As an author, I think it’s important to set goals for myself, analyze my progress, and reflect so I can make adjustments. As I write this at the end of 2025, looking at what I’ve accomplished this year and how I hope to build off of what I’ve done into 2026, I thought I’d share this look into my goal setting process.
Main takeaways:
- Attended 7 Author Events: I love attending events because it gives me a chance to connect with readers face-to-face but also with other authors. 5 of these events were super local, one was the Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books, and one was Sports Romance Con. I also attended a conference for authors (IYWM) and several local writer group events that really helped motivate me not just to write but to think more critically about how I’m writing.
- Published 2 Books and 2 Anthology Stories: I started the year intent to build on my writing habits and momentum, and I feel like there was some definite payoff. I published two hockey romances – “Drop the Gloves” and the short story “The Devil’s in the Details” – and two historical fantasy stories – “Tessa of Hundrfeld” and “A Charmed Life.” And of course I wrote some short stories that pair with my hockey romances, all available on my itch.io 🙂
- Wrote 300,000+ words: This is hard to track because I really don’t do a lot of tracking outside Novel November, but looking across the two novels, the short stories, the newsletters, the social media posts, all of it adds up to a lot of words.
Reflection: Looking at My Goals
I like to set goals. It helps me focus and it gives me something concrete to measure myself against. I’m not super hard on myself – I’m not a full-time author, so sometimes other things need to take priority – but I think it’s a useful tool.
Looking back at the goals I set for myself at the beginning of 2025, I think I was extremely optimistic in what I hoped to do. I do think it was all doable, but it would be hard and require me to lock in for parts of it. And I was locked in… up until I changed jobs. I teach full time and moved not only schools, but changed districts, age levels, and content areas. It’s been great and I love the new job, but it’s eaten up a lot of my mental space and time. I didn’t know about this career shift when I started the year, but I’m definitely taking it into account for 2026.
That being said… I still think I kicked butt. Two novels in a year is no joke, especially since it was writing over 100,000 for each, then editing, plus all the marketing, setup, etc. I didn’t get that novella out, but I’m still proud of what I accomplished.
I do want to be more consistent with my writing going into this year. Instead of having months where I’m writing A TON and some months with nothing, I want to keep that writing habit going. I’m planning on using short stories to help with that, since I do feel I’m behind with where I want to be with those hockey romance extras.
Moving Forward: New Years, New Goals
Taking into account where I fell short last year and what I want to focus on, I started putting together my draft of writing goals for this year.
Part of me is very much “well the last two years I’ve gotten two books out, I’m not going below that this year” as kind of my baseline, but I’m also trying to be mindful of my energy and time.
This is a hopefully *knocks on wood* achievable list that helps me push forward without burning out. Over several years of writing, I’ve got a good idea of what I’m able to do and how/when to push myself. Time to dust off my weekly planner and get to work 🙂
A.L. Heard 
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