Late January 2026: 2 Goals Accomplished

I had my 22 writing goals heading into the year of 2026, 13 I had total control over, 9 that I did not. I had everything all laid out in the order I wanted to work on it... of course, that is subject to change... but I was ready to go.

Of course, as is always the case, I am always submitting stories to publications. Always. Always have dozens of them pending. I honestly try to keep 15 or more pending at all times, lately, it's been more like 60 or more pending at all times. So, there's always rejections coming in, new submissions going out. I keep working on my projects while all that is going on... and then... I get a notification. A short story was accepted by Sci-Fi Shorts!

That was the first goal I had accomplished for 2026. Getting published in 1 publication. I have been published in Sci-Fi Shorts a handful of times before, love that publication. I've submitted to them many times, and most times when I submit they give me notes and tell me to edit the story and try submitting again. I always do that, and then more than half the time the story still isn't to their liking and they don't accept it... but I appreciate that they give me the chance! But there were 5 times that after the edits, they DID like the story and accepted it. This was the 6th time they accepted a story from me, however, they didn't ask for edits. They made some grammatical edits and punctuation edits on their end as they informed me, but other than that, the story was good to go as it was!

Shortly after they accepted the story, they scheduled it for Tuesday, January 27th, so you can go read "Someone's Calling" right now.

This was a story idea that I had last year and I kept meaning to work on it, but it kept getting pushed because of other projects. That happens, other things come up, got to work on them. So, I eventually got to this story early this year. In fact, this fell into my "Free Time" theory... how we have a lot of free time available to us that we don't do anything with... and if you're able to do something with it, you should try. This was a situation where I was waiting for my partner Evelyn to finish up with an appointment. I could sit, watch something on my phone, play a game... sure. Or, why not work on that story idea that was just sitting there? So, I did. I wrote the whole rough draft while waiting during my "Free Time." Went back and did some edits at a later time, and voila!

Felt like a good use of my time. Like I managed to grab extra time right out of the air and use it to my advantage. I try to do that more often these days and increase my productivity.

Well, that was a great morning on Tuesday, waking up to see that my story was already published. And when I got to work on my big project that I had been working on, I was reminded just how close I was to finishing. My novel which was originally titled "Greenies" that I was working on last year, that I realized was going to need to be split into two novels due to its length. Quite alright. The idea was for this to become a series if at all possible. So, the idea for the first volume just became two volumes. There was a natural split in the middle so it worked out well.

I finished the 2nd draft of the first volume at the end of last year, and got to work on the 2nd draft of the second volume starting in January. And come Tuesday, January 27th... in the evening... I finished that too.

So, in the same day, I had a story published, and I finished the draft of my novel that I had been working on. Two goals accomplished in the same day. They had both been in the works for a while. They just happened to reach their finality on the same date. A pretty fun day. Thank goodness I already had donuts in the house, because the jelly donut became the treat for getting published, and the custard-filled, chocolate-topped donut became the reward for finishing my novel.

I felt accomplished and allow myself to savor that moment. I ate, I relaxed, I watched a Bond movie... I cherished that feeling. On to the next day, today, Wednesday... and it's on to the next project. I already got the next idea lined up... something that has been burning a hole in my brain a lot as of lately, what with all the atrocities going on in the U.S. Things that I need to talk about.

So, I can't wait. Yesterday, I savored that moment, and I savored those donuts. Today, I move on to the next project... and I pull the exercise mat and the dumbbells out of the closet.