Making Time to Write Monday: Making Writing Goals

It’s that time of year again, the end of the year. We often reflect on our thankfulness of our blessings in the past year. But around this time I anxiously anticipate the new year. I’m not one for making New Year’s Resolutions, but I do like to create writing goals for myself.

For 2012, I created 13 goals for my writing. Here are some of the topics I wrote goals for:

* Submitting poetry and/or stories to contests

* Submitting articles in writing magazines

* Increasing my professional knowledge of writing for children

* Writing, revising, and submitting picture books

* Querying agents

* Working on my middle grade mystery

* Researching for nonfiction picture books

* Improving my plotting

* Reading craft related books

* Developing a web presence and platform

Some of the goals I was able to meet and really go beyond my original expectations for myself. There were 3 goals I didn’t accomplish. I actually made goals for too many projects. I made goals for breadth, but I wrote for depth. So I spent more time writing and revising existing projects instead of starting new things.

In my day job we have to make SMART goals:

Specific

Measurable

Attainable

Realistic

Timely

While I don’t adhere strictly to this form in my writing goals, I do try to make sure I am specific.

For instance, one goal I’d love to have is to GET AN AGENT. However, I have no control over whether an agent accepts me or not. However, I did create a goal about querying agents and which agents to query.

GOAL: I will query a minimum of 15 agents (in sets of 5) for my young adult novel. 

After I create the specific goal, I make a list of STEPS I can take to complete this goal.

STEPS: 

1) Write a query letter for young adult novel project.

2) Take a class on query writing through Writer’s Digest.

3) Make a list of 15 agents who might be interested in young adult novel.

4) Send out queries to 5 agents at a time. 

I use these steps to help me create my weekly to-do lists.

Then I create an ACTION/RESULT chart where I actually record what steps I took, the date I did them, and what was the result. This is where I’m recording rejections, requests for pages, or other notes.

Every few months I review ALL of my goals to see if I need to make adjustments for the year. Am I heading toward the goals or do I need to refocus? This year I had several things that didn’t get done, but I also had writing opportunities present themselves that I didn’t even anticipate. I embraced them and readjusted my goals.

Because I’m very specific in my goal writing, I couldn’t publicly share some of my goals because they have names of stories still in progress and names of editors and agents. So, I’m going to share a goal that doesn’t have anyone’s names on it.

Making goals can not give you MORE time to write, but they can help you focus the time you have. If I’m at the end of one project, then I pull out my goals and take a look at where I need to be headed next. They prevent wasted writing time.

I’m currently reading about creating STRATEGIC CAREER GOALS and STRATEGIC MARKETING GOALS in Kristen Lamb’s book, WE ARE NOT ALONE. Bob Mayer also recommends doing these types of career goals in his book WARRIOR WRITER. Having career goals can help you create your yearly goals.