I'm not usually one to make New Year's resolutions, but I have a big project to work on (obviously), and setting goals has been working for me recently. So in the year of 2026, I want to:
Finish drafting Book 2 of A Tale of Ice and Smoke
My current (probably conservative) estimate is that the book will round off around 95 chapters, and I'm currently working on Chapter 79, so that would mean I'd have to average around one chapter every two weeks. Between a couple of month-long writing challenges and pushing through a few hundred words of drafting a day outside of those months, I think that's manageable
Maintain my every-two-weeks posting schedule for A Tale of Ice and Smoke
That would mean posting Chapter 54 - 79 in 2026. I've got a 2-ish chapter editing buffer at the moment, so if I can keep up the momentum up to edit a chapter every two weeks (or move a little faster and expand the buffer), I can probably do this without too much issue
Outline the sticky beginning bits of Book 3 of A Tale of Ice and Smoke
For the sake of giving myself a public, concrete goal without spoiling anything, I'm going to say that the "sticky beginning" goes right from Chapter 1 through to the... colored lantern bit. This is less labor-intensive than the other two goals since the outline will probably only be a couple of thousand words total, even with a lot of detail included, but there are a lot of tangles in the plot that need to be worked out so I don't end up in the "I know what to do with this character but not the other one, so I'm just going to write ALL the scenes for the first character" boat that I was in at the start of Book 2
Wish me luck, I guess! I think this is all doable as long as I don't crash headfirst into burnout or anything, but encouragement would be appreciated!
