2026 Writing Goals Bingo

Last year, I set a number of short fiction writing goals for myself that I represented in a bingo card as a fun bit of motivation and to have a snazzy graphic for blog posts. Though, at the end of the year, I did okay, I may have been a little too ambitious. Anyway, I’m doing the writing goals bingo thing again for 2026, but I’m being a tad more conservative with how high I set the bar in certain areas. So, without further ado, here’s the 2026 goals.

So, the five goals, which are each broken up into five sperate tiers above, are:

• 120 Submissions
• 100 Rejections
• 15 Acceptances
• 12 Pro Sales
• 30 New Stories

Each of the goals is pretty straight forward, but I’ll discuss each one and give you my reasoning for where I set the bar.

120 Submissions – Last year, I set this goal at 150, and I managed 122 submissions. I’m setting it at 120 this year because though it is a very steady pace, it’s not breakneck. That said, this is one of the goals I think I can easily hit or exceed since it’s entirely within my control.

100 Rejections – For me, hitting 100 rejections means I’m a) sending a lot of submissions and b) writing a lot of new material. So, it’s kind of gauge for how I’m doing other goals, and if I hit those, I should hit this one almost by default.

15 Acceptances – In 2025, I set this mark at 25 acceptances, which is, admittedly, bananas. I don’t regret doing it since I have flirted with 20 acceptances in a single year in the past, but in the current literary environment, and since I primarily submit to pro markets, 15 feels a lot more doable, and, hey, I WANT to succeed. 😉

12 Pro Sales – This is probably the most ambitious of my goals, as pro sales are pretty tough to come by. Last year, I had five pro sales, which was half of my ten total. I did, however, have A LOT of final-round rejections from pro markets, so I feel like ten or twelve is possible with a little luck. So, yeah, twelve is ambitious, but I think doable.

30 New Stories – Last year, I set another ambitious writing goal, which was to write a new story every week. I didn’t succeed, but I did manage 35 new stories, which is a good number, I think. I set the bar a little lower this year because I’ve got some other projects I want to work on. But if I can manage 30 new stories, I should have pretty good shot at hitting my other goals.

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And those are my short story submission goals for 2026. Although I backed off a bit from last year’s goals, I think these are more than respectable, and if I can hit them all, that’ll be a hell of a good year.

What are your writing goals in 2026? I’d love to hear about them in the comments.