Nine Ways to Reach Your Goals in ‘09

Happy New Year. If you are serious about your writing career, chances are you’ve been thinking about your writing aims for the year to come. Perhaps you want to finish that novel, sell a manuscript, or promote your published works more. That’s great. Hopefully, when December comes round you’ll be able to look at your goals and see that you’ve achieved some of them.
Whoah there! You’ve set aims for a whole year and you won’t know how you’ve gone till December? While December might be your end date, don’t leave it till then to check your progress. In fact, if you have several goals for the year, it’s a good idea to set different end dates for them. Here are nine things you can do to keep those goals in sight and to reach the end of 2009 with the list complete.
1. Set realistic goals. If you are an unpublished writer, for example, setting the goal of selling ten novels to major publishers might be unrealistic, especially if none of those novels are written yet. Instead, perhaps aiming to have one novel written and revised might be an achievable goal, depending on your genre, your current writing skills, and your other commitments.
2. For tangible goals, set realistic end dates. For example, if you plan to have the first draft of your picture book written, your midgrade novel revised and your polished novel submitted to five publishers, you can set end dates. Perhaps the picture book might be finished by March, the revisions by September and the novel by October. Of course, you might want to work on two or more projects at once, in which case your end dates might overlap.
3. Try to quantify less tangible goals, so that you can assess your progress. For example, aiming to promote your published books more is an admirable (and worthwhile) aim, but it’s difficult to measure. You could, however, have ideas about how you are you going to promote, and these ideas might be measurable. If your promotion includes a blog and writing articles for newsletters, your aim might be: Publish 50 blog posts and submit 4 articles to Pass It On.
4. Be willing to revise your goals. A year is a long and both writing and nonwriting events in your life might have an impact. If you have planned, for example, to have your novel finished by March but you break your arm in February, you could decide that November is a better date to aim for. Alternatively, as you progress with your novel, you might find a new project deadline comes up which takes precedence, or find that in spite of your consistent efforts the novel doesn’t progress. Rather than viewing this as a failure, take a look at your aims. Is there another project you can work on instead?
5. Share your writing goals. Not, perhaps with the whole world, but with your writing friends. Encourage them to share their gaols with you – then you can both share your successes and also encourage each other to strive towards those goals.
6. Don’t stop at annual goals – make mini goals for yourself – each day, week, or month. What do you want to achieve today? How will that help you meet your target for the month and, ultimately, the year? If, for example, you want to write a 50 thousand word novel by June, break that down into smaller monthly targets, and then daily targets. It is much easier to keep track of your progress. Keep a notepad or whiteboard in your work area where you write down the things you want to achieve this week – then cross them off as you achieve them. The process of crossing an item off a list is very fulfilling, and a great way to see what you’ve achieved.
7. Write Your Goals down – and put them where you can see them. Whilst putting them into a file on your computer is a useful way of not losing them, it is easy to forget those aims. Having your goals staring you in the face when you sit in your workspace each day is a great way to stay focussed.
8. Plan and take steps to achieve your goals. There is no point aiming to get a hundred thousand word novel written unless you actually plan when and how you’ll do the writing. Set up a work space. Set aside time to write. Work with your partner or children to set up the conditions where you can write. Then, if you want the novel written by December, don’t leave it to November to get started.
9. Lastly, reward yourself. What are you going to do for yourself when you have achieved your goals? It doesn’t have to be a promise to buy yourself a Lamborghini when you sell your next manuscript (not a realistic goal, anyway, given the sizes of most advances). But what about rewarding yourself with some quality ‘me’ time? A walk on the beach after reaching your day’s quotas? Time away from writing to read a trashy novel after you’ve finished your literary masterpiece? Knowing there’s a treat at the end can help lift your work rate.

So, what are you waiting for? Get out that list and start working on it. Before you know it, it will be 2010 and time to start on the next list! Good luck and, again, happy new year.