Goal Setting in Writing
Like with all endeavours, it is important to have something to strive towards in order to stay on task.
Writing is no different.
Goals are especially important when you have multiple interests, and sub interests within those interests all competing for attention – along side all of the procrastinating distractions in the world today.
Ahem, Apex Legends has not been taking up a lot of my time lately I swear…
Your goals should be just out of reach enough so that you have to grow in order to reach them, but also not quite so far out of reach that you are indefinitely failing to reach them and becoming disheartened.
Case in point, my first project Shadowcaster
The goal was “Publish a successful novel”. For someone who had never actually attempted to write a novel before, not even a good short story before… well this was problematic and unsurprisingly – unsurprisingly now at least – it took me four years to “finish” it.
While publishing a successful novel in itself is a worthy goal to aim towards, it was too large. And thus is should have been broken down.
Instead I just muscled through the arduous process, dragging my skull across a cheese grater every step of the way.
Now my goal has shifted (somewhat) to something that will eventually bring me more fulfilment and joy: “Make a decent living from my writing.”
Right now that is still WELL out of reach. So let’s break it down.
- Create a body of work that people can enjoy for free on this platform, building an audience: The next step for this is to write a separate yet universally connected group of short stories that I am referring to as “The Sci-myth Stories”… name pending. There are also plans for a The Symbicate sequel down the line.
- Continue to work on my current WIP The Unchosen, and hopefully have it ready to send out to agents by the end of this year
- Prepare to sell the Sci-fi novelette I have in the wings, learning the ropes of marketing and publishing a smaller work for the experience
- Create other short works worthy of self publishing along the way – I have some inklings of cool ideas to draw from
So, pick the ultimate goal for the area of life you are working towards. Break it down, and slowly work towards them doing a little bit each day (if you can). You will eventually knock off those milestones and achieve that goal.
Then you pick the next one and continue to grow.
This has been a pep talk for myself, hopefully those who read it can take something from it as well.
Sean 🙂