Books on Writing: Setting Writing Goals, Developing Better Habits, and Giving up on Perfection

A break from crime fiction today to talk about writing goals.

I tend to do better with five- or ten-year goals than with New Year’s resolutions. A year is a brief period of time in which to accomplish anything of note, but it is a decent time-frame for changing habits. And that’s what I did last year: I changed my habit around writing.

For decades, I was a reluctant writer who procrastinated. The only exception was when I was writing to deadline, and here it was more helpful to write for U of T’s Varsity or the now-defunct Theatrum, which expected my reviews by 9AM the morning after I saw a play. Some writing needs to be timely, or there isn’t any point in doing it.

But much of the time I had longer horizons for writing projects, and this is fatal to me. So much time to obsess over how imperfect the developing draft is; so many opportunities to change the project completely, when it’s nearly finished, or give up, because it’s too hard, and no one will want to read it, and shouldn’t I really be mopping the floor?

Writing is a practice.

This finally makes sense to me.

I started writing every day in 2025, no matter what (which included writing through viruses and house-guests, and while travelling or waiting for appointments–all of the bits and pieces of time in a real, messy life) and it has made me ten times more productive.

No hyperbole. I did a word count, and I produced just over ten times more words last year than I did the previous year.

And all that it required was that I write. Every day, no excuses. (Full disclosure: I set my minimum at five minutes, and there were a few–but not many–days when I stopped there.)

And another caveat: there were many years of my life when writing every day was less feasible than it was in 2025, and juggling work, raising children, and participating in community while sustaining a daily writing practice is daunting. I know people who have achieved it, but they’re very organized and very committed.

My own approach was much less methodical and involved a lot of research about how to write, or be a writer, while not actually writing.

This isn’t entirely a bad thing. Over the years I’ve read dozens of writing guides, absorbing ideas ranging from Julia Cameron’s “morning pages” to Joan Bolker’s helpful and humane approach to Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day, which I’ve given to a handful of grad students over the years, typically those whose fervent desire to write a brilliant dissertation–or Master’s Thesis, or Honours Paper–had paralyzed their writing muscles.

And I still read writing guides, although I neglect the creative exercises, most of the time.

Some book recommendations, old and new: John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction, Eliza Clark’s Writer’s Gym, Stephen King’s On Writing, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, Jami Attenberg’s 1000 Words, and Ursula K. Le Guin’s Steering the Craft.

Because I drafted a mystery novel a few years ago, I read a lot of books about writing crime fiction. Gail Bowen’s was by far the best: Sleuth uses the material she developed to teach crime fiction writing, and it’s succinct and specific.

But the book, while very useful, was less helpful to me than the writing course I took with Bowen, who provides tremendously good feedback. Taking writing courses forced me to develop a writing practice, and I was worried that when I finished my program, I’d lapse back into bad habits (sloth, lethargy, aimless scrolling). Instead, I’m applying for MFA programs, because after more than forty years of writing, I’m finally ready to admit that I can’t live happily without a daily writing practice, and I want to learn more, so that I can write and teach writing effectively.

The biggest surprise to me has been that developing chronic illnesses has been (mostly) good for my writing. I need to rest more, and writing in bed feels like rest. I need to do less for other people, and that helps me prioritize the time I put into writing, which used to feel selfish.

So what habit will you change in 2026 that will make all the difference in your life?