A quick survey for the crowd: About how long do those super ambitious, goal-oriented New Years resolutions usually last before “one hour at the gym every day” becomes “I keep forgetting to cancel my membership?” If you’re anything like me, it’s not very long. The good news is that you’re not alone. Trying to stick steadfast to a strict goal with a pass/fail threshold is a recipe for failure.

But if you’re still lamenting over what was not achieved in 2025, you may feel the need to push harder. Perhaps, however, what you need is a reset or a reframe for 2026, not a a fresh batch of resolutions that put you into fight or flight.

The focus will be on writing. On falling in love with the process again. On giving your creative energy time to heal and emerge.

Let’s tamp down the goals to publish, hire an editor, and get a six-figure book deal. Instead, let’s try resetting our relationship with writing to fall back in love with the art of it again.

Reset Number One: Toss Out Your Daily Word Counts.

If you gave yourself a goal of 1000 words a day last year and then sat in front of your computer scrolling on your phone, the actual word count isn’t the real issue. What if you don’t have enough ideas to fill a thousand words? What if you write too slowly, or the words come out all wrong? Well, “what if,” right? The thousand words (or however many you’ve set for yourself, I’m not in your planner) aren’t a finish line you’re bounding towards in a sprint. In reality, it’s a wall you’ve built for yourself that you need to climb over (or knock down). Each grasp at another stone is more exhausting than the last, and every single step must be perfect to avoid slipping off and falling to your death. Narratively, that is. Writing a bad sentence won’t literally kill you unless you’re Rory Gilmore. If you don’t reach a thousand words, you’ve fallen off the horse and everything is terrible forever, so why even try? And if you’re experiencing a creative burst, it might even tell you to step away when you should keep going with the flow.

Instead what we need to do is focus on the act of writing itself. You don’t need to write a thousand words every single day, but you do need to write with regularity. That’s all. Whether you write a single sentence or hit a stride and pump out five thousand, both days are an equal success. This can look like establishing a daily routine in the new year. Maybe you set aside technology for an extra hour before bed, make a cup of tea, and just write. Eventually, it will become as natural a part of your day as brushing your teeth in the morning. So long as you’re dedicating time, you’ve succeeded. Besides, even if you only write ten words on a random day, you’re way closer to finishing that draft than you would have been if the “thousand words a day” goal scared you away from it entirely.

Reset Number Two: Find a Buddy.

It’s a lot easier to find a friend than an agent. Besides, an agent is for when the book is done and dusted (as much as you can on your own, that is). Writing is such a solitary act, and a lot of us writers really buy into the introvert-borderline-hermit mentality and hide ourselves away until it’s time for our work to shine, but that’s not really what you want, is it?

Successfully landing an agent is a huge step towards getting your work published, but let’s dig a little deeper. It might also be the first time you’ve let someone else look at your work, or it might be the first time someone else has gotten just as excited over your story as you have. How exciting is that feeling? For someone to look at this work that you’ve poured yourself into, and kick their feet in joy just as much as you have?

Writers who want to publish have something in common: they want people to love their work. Having an agent who loves your story and will champion it is amazing, but so will having friends who you can stay up with, arguing ceaselessly about whether or not your MC should or shouldn’t make the choice she’s about to make. Having a friend in writing will help connect you to that little kid in your heart who doodled totally-not-rip-off characters in the margins of notebooks.

Maybe, just maybe, that little kid had some good ideas you could learn from when it comes to why you’re sitting down to write.

Reset Number Three: Maybe Don’t Focus on Publishing this year.

Obviously the end goal is to get your work out there for people to read, but sometimes that over-focus on the end product will have you missing out on the journey. It’s easy to get distracted researching self-publishing or combing through agent’s MSWL when you don’t even have a finished manuscript. This is not to say “ignore the end goal entirely” but if you’re spending more time daydreaming about what could be and not as much time living in the reality of where your draft is at, you can spend a lot of time and energy on a part of the process you haven’t quite arrived to yet.

So instead of spending your keyboard hours on researching the latter part of the process, dedicate yourself to just finishing the draft. And consume education that helps you learn more about story and prose and dialogue. Next, editing! Move your “learning hours” towards how to self-edit. And then, when you feel you can polish no more, dive head first into the publishing process, whether that’s indie or traditional. It’s important that each phase gets its time to shine.

The publishing world creates a false sense of urgency.

“I want to be published by [arbitrary] age.”

“I want to catch this wave of a genre trend.”

“Oh my gosh, my top agent might be closing to queries soon.”

Have a little trust in the universe that when your book is ready, the right path will be waiting for you. There will always be a need for books, authors and stories. (Don’t worry, AI won’t be taking over any time soon.) So give yourself the opportunity to create something truly great and believe that the best story you can write will find a home when it is ready.

Reset Number Four: You Don’t Need to be an Influencer.

You just don’t. I promise. In fact, forget follower counts altogether with me for a second, and live in a world where grass is green and cafes have no WiFi. Take the word “platform” out of your vocabulary right now for the rest of the year. You can have it back in 2027. Isn’t that more peaceful?

This reset reminds us that we don’t need to do all the things at once. Some authors land a book deal because of a platform, sure. But many do it with no website, no Instagram and no connections at all. What will really lift you up as a writer is community. All over the internet and in real life there are forums and spaces made for readers and writers alike (and all good writers should be both) to celebrate the kinds of books that are near and dear to their hearts. Find people who love to read what you love to write, who will rally behind you in the act of creation. It’s beautiful, what you can do when you have a village behind you. Platform is so sterile and slippery in its definition, but community is something we can all understand. If you feel compelled to share about your journey, do it, and the right people will find you. If, however, it’s just another thing on the to-do list, let it go while you’re drafting and trust that a good book beats a big follower count any day.

Instead of searching your notifications for an uptick in followers, try to fill your social calendar with writers and readers meet-ups in your area! Try to find writing groups online and build your personal web of peers! Let the right people find your book and celebrate it with you.

Reset Number Five: Don’t Worry About “Finishing” Your Book.

Remember in Reset Three where I said that was the most aggressive reset? I lied. It’s this one. Much like all third act twists, I’ve got to keep you on your toes until the very last word. I mean it, though. This year doesn’t need to be about finishing your book if your book isn’t meant to be finished this year. What is “finished” to you, anyways? That means something different to every author depending on where they are in the process, and how far they’ve moved the goal post for themselves. Do you want to finish your first draft, or finish the developmental edits to revision draft five? Does finishing it mean getting a set launch date from your publisher so you can start work on your next manuscript?

Only you know the answer for sure. There is an answer, though, and that’s the thing. It’s all in service to the same goal, what you’ve really wanted to do all along.

Instead of trying to “finish your book,” just tell the story that’s in your heart. Tell it however you need to. Is it by pantsing your way through a first draft, or by getting into the gritty details of your third to carve your story’s details out of stone? Again, only you can really know that answer. Still, your story is in the dirt somewhere, waiting to be dug up by the only one who can: you.

When we stick ourselves in a box as writers and decide that the only path toward success is hitting harshly-defined goals and obtaining commercial acclaim, we lose the love of the art. We lose the story that made us want to sit down and put pen to paper in the first place. If our craft is like a bird, why are you sticking it in a cage and only rewarding it when it sings in one specific tune? Birds, and stories, are beautiful creatures that need the freedom to just exist. Otherwise, you become a stressed-out parrot yanking out its feathers and chewing the cage with its beak. The metaphor is wearing thin, but it still stands.

2026 will not be a year of failure, it will be the year you take the opportunity to fall back in love with writing again, to love the craft for what it is and what you can do with it. It’s good to set expectations for yourself, and growth only happens when we push ourselves past what we think we can achieve, but the fear of failure is what keeps so many of us stuck in the same rut we were in in 2025, 2024, 2023, etc. This year is a full authorial reset, so what will you do with your blank slate?