210: How to Write Your Book in 2026

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How to Write Your Book in 2026

Hi friend, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you for being here. I am excited to talk to you about how you're going to finally write your book in 2026. But before we do that, I have two announcements for you. Number one, if you are listening to this episode the week that it comes out, I want to tell you about a free training that I'm doing. I mentioned this in the episode last week. It's happening Friday, December 12th at 1pm Eastern time. And this is a training that will be about an hour. We're going to talk strategy, logistics around goal setting. We're going to to talk finding writing time, developing a writing routine. We're also going to talk about some mindset things. And then I'll share some common pitfalls that new writers can experience, like mistakes to avoid that I've just seen, both because I've made these mistakes myself, but also because I've seen this over my years working with clients. So again, it's happening Friday, December 12th at 1pm. You can register at the link in the show notes.

And this training is going to be There are free tickets available, but you can also pay what you want if you would like to. If you think of it as like a donation or you're like, hey, I've gotten a lot of value out of the podcast or social media. I'm going to pay 10 bucks or 30 bucks or whatever you want to pay for the hour workshop. That's awesome. But there also are free tickets if you're like, money's a little bit tight, a little bit tight right now. I just can't swing it. That's totally fine. But you do have to register in order to get the ticket and get the link because there's a cap of how many people can attend. in the Zoom like workshop. So I just want to make sure you do need to register to get the link and everything. But there are plenty of free tickets available and also the pay as you go or pay what you want option as well. So when you click on the link, you'll be taken to the event page. And then there are two different types of tickets. You'll see, you can just pick the one that you want. And there's also going to be time for some questions at the end of the workshop as well. So that is announcement #1.

Announcement #2 is I have one opening currently for my six-month program, a six-month coaching program. It's a combination of coaching and editing. so that you get feedback on your pages as you're writing your novel. There are coaching calls. You get access to me Monday through Friday on this app that we use where you can check in, use it for accountability, ask questions, whatever you need. And there's a lot more that's included. The link, if you want to get more information, there's a link in the show notes about ways to work with me, and you can just click on the six-month coaching page. And if you're like, yes, I want to work with Katie, but like the holidays are coming up, I'm not sure. What you can do if you want to start in January, let's say, is you can always fill out the form. I'll e-mail you back and we can set up a time to chat on Zoom about working together. It's very informal. Basically, I just like to kind of chat with clients before we agree to work together so that we can make sure we're a good fit and that our goals are aligned and I feel like I can help you. But what we can do at that point is you can just, we'll sign a contract and you can do a deposit. to reserve your spot. If you want to work with me slightly in the future, but you're not ready to start right that day, that's totally fine.

We can just do it that way if you want to start in January. So you can get more information at the link in the show notes about that as well. Okay, so I want to share a couple of just tips, I suppose, about how to write your book in 2026. These are a couple of things I'm pulling out from the content from the workshop that's happening. Okay, number one, tip number one is to set a SMART goal around your writing. SMART meaning specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Okay, so an example of a non-SMART goal would be like, I just want to focus on my writing more in 2026. great. But what does that mean? Like, how are you going to know if you've achieved that or not? Because it's not specific. It's not measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound. Like, it's just, well, maybe it's time-bound because you're saying next year, but we want to try to set a SMART goal that you can measure. So I'm going to give you 3 examples of SMART goals that you could set related to your book. Okay, number one, I will write three times a week. Number 2, I will complete the first draft of my novel by June 19th, 2026. I will write 2 chapters a week. Awesome. All of those goals are very specific and measurable and achievable and relevant and time-bound. You are going to know if you hit those goals or not. It's going to be very easy for you to track that and measure that. And they're also achievable.

I think that's another thing that's important to highlight here because Listen, I love a lofty, ambitious, wild kind of goal of like, I'm going to write my first draft in three weeks. Love that. But also you have to be a bit realistic too and think, okay, is this something that I can realistically do? And a goal should stretch you. It should be something that you have to hustle a bit to achieve, but it shouldn't be so far outside the realm of possibility that you're just going to give up on day two because you realize, wait a second, this is way too insane. Like, why did I agree to do this? So if it's your first book you're going to be writing in 2026, you've never gone through this process before, a three-week goal for you to get your rough draft out is super ambitious. So you might want to just set yourself up for success and lengthen that a little bit, just to be realistic about it. Again, not to, like, crush your dreams or your goals, but I think it's important to find that balance here. Okay, so I want to talk about reverse engineering your goal and the word count as well, if that's helpful for you, if you are someone who likes to track your word count, if you're someone who wants to keep yourself on track because you have a certain word count goal, and it's helpful to kind of know, like, if you're on track or not, especially if you've got a goal like, oh, I want to get my first draft out in six months.

So let's just say that you are going to complete the first draft of your novel in six months. Okay. I'm recording this right now. Actually, no, I'll do it from the date that this episode is released. So this episode is being released on December 9th, 2025. So six months from December 9th is June 9th, 2026. Okay. Let me go back to my notes here. Okay. Word count, it is kind of tricky to know ahead of time exactly what your word count is going to be, but 75,000 to 100,000 is a good word count range for most adult fiction. Obviously, if you're writing any kind of speculative fiction, like... fantasy or sci-fi, you can get away with a little bit longer. And it also, of course, depends on your publishing path. Because if you're planning to query to try to get an agent to try for traditional publishing, the word count matters a lot more than it does if you are self-publishing. But let's just say you aim for 80,000. Let's just call it a solid 80,000 word goal. Of course, in the editing process, you might be way above that, a little below that. You might be at 95 or 87 or 77. But let's just say you're aiming for 80,000 words for your first draft. Okay, we, let's see how many days. How many days are in between summer 9th and June 9th? 182 days. All right, 26 weeks, six months, 182 days. be now and then.

Okay, that works out to 3,077 words a week or 13,300 words a month or 440 words a day. If you are someone who wants to set a writing routine and a habit and it's very important to you that you develop this skill of like writing every single day, then maybe setting a word count goal for every day is going to be helpful for you. So you're like, okay, every day I've got to hit 440 words. Awesome. If not, if you're like, I only have three days a week to write, so that feels kind of aggressive and I don't want to do that, that's fine. Maybe for you setting a weekly word count goal would be better. There's no correct way to do this. It's just going to depend on your schedule. It's going to depend how much you can write when you sit down to write. That's fine. For me, if I were doing this, I would probably do, I think I would probably do a weekly goal. Just because I don't write every day, I don't want to put pressure on myself to have to write every single day. And I'd prefer to just track it weekly. But some people, you might even want to do like a monthly tracking session. That's totally fine. I just want to check my math here. 440. I guess I rounded up. Okay. I don't know. I just have a suspicion. All of a sudden, that wasn't quite right.

So anyways, the point though is, you see how you can reverse engineer your word count to know how much you need to write to keep yourself on track to know if you're hitting that or not. And look, you might get three months into this and realize that you need to adjust, and that's fine. I mean, especially if you've never written a book before, you might not know how much time it's going to take you to get out those 440 words. You might have to extend that. You might be like, whoa, this is a lot harder than I thought. Or maybe it's going a lot better than you thought. And you're able to get more words out quickly. And you're like, actually, I think I can revise this. I think I can get my first draft out in four months instead. So you can tweak this. You're not married to it. But yeah, that can help you just get an idea of how much you need to be writing. Okay, so tip #2, tip #2 was reverse engineer word count and steps. Okay, so we talked about that. A couple of mindset traps. This is tip #3, a couple of mindset traps that I want you to watch out for. These are things that can be very common for like all kinds of writers, even writers who are writing their 10th book, but especially for new writers.

Number one, waiting for motivation. There is so much discourse about writing and creativity. And there are some people who believe that it's important to wait for the muse to hit, that you have to be divinely inspired and struck with an idea and you have to be in flow and you can't force it. Like you can't just force words when you're not feeling it. I don't agree with that because if you want to publish, If you are on a deadline, sometimes you do have to just sit down and work on your book when you're not necessarily like super thrilled to do it. By the way, that's okay. That's normal. It's normal to have a bit of procrastination or resistance in the creative process. Like it's hard and it takes a lot of time to write a book. So of course, we're going to probably want to do something else some days. Like that's just normal. If you don't care about publishing, you just want to write, and it is important to you to only write when you're feeling lit up and inspired in the flow, that's fine. But if you do want to publish, you have to clock in sometimes, even when you're not feeling it. So that's mistake number one.

Number 2 is being stuck on originality. Meaning. It's not a good use of your time and energy to read every book ever written in your genre or research every book ever written in your genre to try to make sure that you have an idea that is literally, literally never in the history of literature been done before. There are almost no news stories right now. So instead of going that route and obsessing about like, oh, well, this book over here takes place in a fantasy world with Seven Kingdoms. So therefore I can't have Seven Kingdoms in my book because that's just, even though you might be doing something completely different. And that is literally the only point of commonality between those two things. Don't copy. This is not, I'm not giving you permission to copy because, oh, it doesn't matter. You do want to make sure that you're not accidentally or on purpose just combining, copying and pasting ideas from other books in your genre. But my point is, Focus on writing the best story that you possibly can because your characters, your world, the details, the setting, the conflict, your writing style, and even your lived experience as a person is all going to make your book unique because it's you telling the story.

So don't worry so much about that. Just focus on telling the best story you can, writing the story that you want to write. That's important. Number 3 is having a perfectionist mindset. Meaning wanting it to be perfect, but also feeling shame and guilt for not being perfect. This is why I recommend for new writers, especially, to focus on getting the first draft out before you go back to edit. Let it be messy. No one will see this first draft. And if you're not sure of the process, let me just tell you, that's what I recommend. I don't recommend sharing a half-finished book or a very early draft with someone. I mean, you can, there are alpha readers who will consult on the story with you. But I think if it's your first book and you're figuring out the story and figuring out your process, give yourself permission to just do that. And like, it might feel like you're muddling your way through it. might feel super rough and messy. That's okay. No one will see this version, this draft. It's going to get better the more that you work on it. But give yourself that gift of just, as Stephen King calls it, writing with the door closed. You know, No first draft is perfect. Even the most prestigious, incredible, successful authors have a draft that needs to be edited.

So you are not going to sit down and write perfection, especially if it's your first book. You will continue to get better the more that you write, but just go into it with that mindset. It's not going to be close to perfect. And in fact, that's a good thing, that it's not perfect, because it means you're just discovering the story, you're letting it be messy, and you're not going back to edit as you're writing. Meaning that if you complete one page or one chapter, you're not going back to the beginning to polish and tweak and adjust what you've written before. Don't go back to look at things, just keep moving forward in the draft. That's something that's really important. And finally, I just want to say, if you're very new and you have not heard the concept of plotters and pantsers, I want to just introduce that for a second. More than anything, to say that there's no one correct way to write a book. Like, that just doesn't exist. I think sometimes writers have heard authors talk about their process and they think that that's the one correct way to do it. And let's be honest, there are like scammy people on social media who are like, this is the correct way. And if you're doing it different, you're doing it wrong. Buy my course to tell you how to do it the right way. Barf. They're wrong.

So plotters are people who like to do a ton of outlining. They really want to brainstorm the book before they start. It's very important to them to figure things out before they start writing so that they know where the story goes. And then pantsers are people who write by the seat of their pants. They're just like, I don't know. I have an idea. Let me just start writing and see where it goes. Both are fine. Both are valid ways to write. You might have to do a bit more in the editing process if you're a pantser than a plotter, but maybe not. Who knows? Because you never know the direction that things are going to take when you start writing. And of course, it's a spectrum. You could be somewhere in the middle like me. I'm kind of a hybrid of those two. But the point in saying that is just to reassure you, in case you're caught up about the right way to do it and planning everything perfectly, that doesn't exist. And if it's your first book, you might try something on this book and then realize this isn't working for you and you want to try something different, or maybe your next book is something different. I've done something different for all of my books.

And a lot of my clients have as well. They have a different, slightly different process, at least for everything they write. So it's a trial and error process. You're going to figure it out. Don't put so much pressure on yourself to figure it out before you start writing. Because I say this a lot, but like you learn how to write a book by writing a book. Because you have to learn your process. You have to learn your own version of your inner critic and what that voice is telling you and how you prefer to write, when you prefer to write, all that stuff. You have to learn as you go. There's no way to know all of that ahead of time without getting that experience. So I think that's important as well. Okay, so I'm going to wrap it up there. I want to keep this episode short, partly because I do want you to sign up for that workshop if it works for your schedule. Oh, and one thing I didn't say, if it doesn't work for your schedule, that's totally fine. You don't have to show up live. I will send the replay out and then the replay will be available for 30 days so you can watch it if you would like, if that time just doesn't work. I know a lot of y'all have work or you're on different, you know, time zones or whatever. That's totally fine. Again, I'll just make sure you sign up though, because that's how you're going to get the replay, because I'll e-mail it out like the next. day after it's done. Okay, so I hope to see all of you at the workshop. Good luck with all of your goal setting and your planning. Come Friday, because we'll do a little bit more of that then. But if not, good luck with all of your planning. You've got this.

You can write a book. I know it can seem daunting and overwhelming, but You can do this. You really can. You just learn as you go. You do it one page at a time. It's absolutely possible for you to do this next year, especially if it's something you've been putting off. Like, this is your time. This is your time to do it. All right. Thanks, y'all. Thank you so much for listening. For more tips, advice, and motivation, check out at Your Big Creative Life on Instagram, or you can follow me at Katie Wolf Writes on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. If you enjoyed this episode, the best way to show your support is to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to help other people discover the show. See you next week.

Katie WolfDecember 9, 2025