Welcome back! I hope you’ve been enjoying the season. And the weather! Brrr!
I’ve always thought the holidays shouldn’t end until New Year’s Day. Then I discovered Twelfth Night and realized I could make the holidays last another five days. I think this is an excellent plan. So again, Happy Holidays to you!
This is a very good time of year to reassess your goals and your plan for making them happen. Some people call this making New Year’s Resolutions, and they dread it. But if you want to accomplish anything, you need goals, and you need a plan for accomplishing them. (I’m a big fan of formal goal setting. Write it down! Make a plan! What things do you need to do every day to accomplish that big goal five or ten years out? And not just in writing, but in your whole life. Want to own a house in five years? What are you doing now, day by day, to make that happen?)
Writers talk a lot about setting goals, because writing and publishing lend themselves very well to step-by-step goals. You do all the steps — writing every day, finishing a novel, finding a critique group, sending out x number of query letters per month, etc. — the “getting published” almost takes care of itself. But equally important is the need to reassess your goals because your situation changes. If your biggest goal until now was “sell a novel” and you actually sold your novel this year, what are you going to do next? I think this is where a lot of newly published writers fall down a bit — they lose momentum because they were working so hard for that one milestone, that once they passed it, they didn’t know where to go next. This is also the reason I think this business actually gets harder after you make your first sale, rather than easier — because you have to keep working, but you no longer have that shining beacon of a first sale to inspire you. You have to come up with something else to work for.
Since 1995, one of my more important goals was to submit to a short story market every week. This forced me to keep my short stories in circulation, research new markets, and write new material. Well, this year, I let that goal go. I had a hard time accomplishing it last year, and this year I just couldn’t. And it was strange, because I’d been doing it for so long and I saw it as a big part of my success. But my situation has changed — I’m getting a lot of requests/invitations now, so while I’m still writing short stories, they’re usually meant for a specific market. I don’t have time to write short stories and research markets when I’ve got deadlines for two or three novels hanging over me — and novels pay a whole lot better, so I know where I ought to be spending my time. Also, a few years ago I said yes to everything because I was just so pleased that people were asking. Now, I can’t do that. I’ve had to learn to say no, which has made me look at what I really want to write, what projects I want to say yes to, and what are good reasons to turn down a project.
It’s been a pretty big mental shift, realizing that the goals that served me well when I was just breaking in — worrying about getting my work out there, and building momentum — just aren’t working anymore. My new goals: managing my time so that I can meet my deadlines, don’t be afraid to say no, don’t compare myself and my career to others, try new things, continue to challenge myself. And “write every day” That one hasn’t gone away.
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in this business is that it never gets easier. You trade one set of challenges for another, and situations are always changing. That’s why it’s important to always be thinking about your goals and what you need to do to accomplish them.
What are some of your writing goals for the new year? How have your goals changed over time? How often do you reassess?
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I understand having to give up something… I looked at writing a newsletter for a local non-profit. Something I believed in but didn’t have a connection with. I just couldn’t find the time. So I declined the request. And I feel so much lighter now that I did. I realized that I wasn’t doing it because I wanted to but more because I felt I should.
I’ll be formalizing my goals this week.
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Change is good. Growth is good. Maybe just change the short story a week to one every 6 months? That way you can still keep the goals that served you well, it’s just shifted a bit, the same way your career has shifted and grown.
I haven’t figured out my goals fro this year yet. I’m in such a wierd place with writing and life in general, they goals seems to be constantly shifting. I will build a list this week though.
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Normally I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions. Mostly because I figure I’d disappoint myself.
This year I’ve been giving serious thought to outlining a couple of goals. I have to have something to drag my butt out of the rut its fallen into. I’m at the beginning of a UF that I think is going to be terrific. I’m excited about it, but getting that butt into the chair and writing is becoming a challenge.
Soooo … I’ll give myself a goal and stick with it.