What are your writing goals? Do you have dreams of winning the Pulitzer prize? Writing a bestseller or an Academy Award winning screenplay? These are admirable aspirations, but it’s important to remember that when we put the result ahead of the process, we tend to get stuck.
Maybe you’ve just finished a college writing course and you’re looking forward to decades of wrestling with the written word. Or you’re an actor trying your hand at writing your first screenplay or stage play. It could be that you’re a retiree in a writing group, and they’re eager to see your short stories turn into a full book. Perhaps you’re a quantitative analyst with the heart of a poet.
In this article, I’ll give you guidance on setting achievable writing goals, and offer a way to keep yourself accountable. Lastly, I’ll give you a Story Weapon to help you fit writing time into your schedule.
Set sustainable writing goals by focusing on process over outcomes and using the SMART framework to stay accountable. It encourages writers to create realistic routines, embrace creative growth, and adapt goals to fit their lives instead of chasing perfection. The piece also offers practical questions and strategies to help turn writing goals into a lasting creative practice.
Establishing your writing goals
The first thing you should remember is to focus on the process and not the outcome. Allow the thrill of creation to be your reward. Frankly, every writer knows this dirty little secret: writing is fun.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to be a best-selling author, but when you focus on the process rather than the dollar signs, your writing has a chance to develop and breathe, and you will be more inclined to create something people will actually want to read.
Start small. Set daily and weekly progress goals, and you’ll experience small victories more frequently.
Try new things.Take risks, open your heart, and court the muse.
Look beyond what you “want” to see what you truly “need”
The approach is similar for your characters. They have a “want” and a “need.” What the character “wants” may illustrate their ambition and be dramatized as an external goal. Then there’s the “need,” the deeper impetus for growth concealed by the want until your character undergoes a transformation to reframe their perspective. The need is always within, such as self-trust, self-acceptance, or self-respect.
As authors, we all want to write well and be appreciated for it. We need to evolve through our writing, whether we admit that to ourselves or not. When we give ourselves the time and space to revel in the joy of language and story, we grow as writers.
There’s no other reason to engage in the weighty, beautiful, and often bloody work of creative storytelling.
“How shall we measure success? It isn’t popularity, money, or critical esteem. Success occurs in the privacy of the soul. It comes in the moment you decide to release the work, before exposure to a single opinion. When you’ve done all you can to bring out the work’s greatest potential. When you’re pleased and ready to let go.”
– Rick Rubin
The SMART framework
One way to get better at setting goals is to use the SMART framework. Originally created by George Doran in 1981, this mnemonic device gives you five criteria to use when evaluating goals. If you check all five boxes, you’re likely on the way to success, however you choose to define that for yourself.
SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. Let’s take a look at these points.
Specific
Specificity is how you can take a goal from an unclear aspiration to a concrete goal.
Goals and ideas tend to start out vague. Let’s take a look at how you might initially frame a goal and how you can specify it.
- Unclear: “I want to write a book.”
- Specific: “I will start working on the first draft of my book on this date, aiming to finish on this date, and promise myself that I’ll work steadily on the idea in between.”
Measurable
Now you need to set some standards for success. This is how you’ll know if you’ve been true to your goal or if you need to reframe how you’re thinking about this. Let’s try changing a nebulous goal into a measurable one.
- Nebulous: “I want to write a book by this date.”
- Measurable: “I will finish a draft of my book by this date with a clear beginning, middle, and end. I’ll keep track of how easy or difficult it was to keep consistent. I’ll start by mapping out a writing schedule and, when the draft is finished, I’ll make changes to that for the next period.”
Achievable
While your writing goals should push you to grow, you also want to be realistic about what you can do.
To make sure you’re not biting off more than you can chew, edit your goals to be doable.
- Aiming too high: “Though I’ve never written a book, in two weeks I’ll finish a polished draft of this book through the use of coffee, Adderrall, and all the legal stimulants I can get my hands on.”
- Aiming too low: “In two years, I’ll finish my outline of this story. This way I’ll never be burned out.”
- Achievable: “Being conscious of my commitment to being a good parent and being successful at my job, I will commit to writing 500 words a day. I know I can block off the time for that at work or in the morning. I’ll do this at least five out of seven days in the week.”
“The secret of successful writing lies in striking the right keys on the typewriter.”
– Evan Esar
Relevant
You also want your goals to connect to your sense of purpose and your highest ambitions. There’s plenty of busywork to keep you distracted and ambling about the comfortable parts of the process. Keep your goals relevant.
- Irrelevant: “I will purchase the best typewriter available and experiment with different pens. I will research every writer who’s written on the subject I’ve chosen to write about.”
- Relevant: “While not denying myself fun writing accessories, I’ll pick a writing method that’s simple and reliable. I’ll make a list of stories that I think relate to mine (that I’ve already read) and get started on writing.”
Time-Bound
A deadline is a great gift. It can help you focus and steer you away from the doldrums of boredom.
Try to give yourself soft, short-term deadlines to break up bigger projects into digestible sections. This is what we do in my 90-Day Workshops. The first month is spent doing a series of stream-of-consciousness writing exercises to allow an outline to emerge. And the next two months are spent writing the rough draft of your manuscript.
Here’s an example:
- Untimely: “I want to write a book.”
- Time-bound: “I will finish my outline by this date. I will use that outline to write a first draft, spending about twenty days on each act of the story.”
Your story weapon: Fitting writing into your life
Choosing your writing goals means being conscious of your working habits and your schedule. There’s no use setting a goal to write two hours a day if you’re only consistently free for one hour. Berating yourself when you don’t reach 3,000 words every day isn’t a helpful goal if you find yourself struggling to write 500.
When framing your writing goals, be realistic and kind to yourself. As you think about what your goals might be, be conscious of finding the right balance.
Here are some questions to ask yourself as you set your writing goals:
- How much time do I have to write?
- How do deadlines make me feel? Do I get excited or stressed? Can I be flexible?
- Which constraints make me more productive? (These are things like: no phones, no internet connection, or even just closing the door to where you write.)
- How can I make a writing routine part of a healthy life? Can I include walking, making tea, meditating, or stretching?
- When in my life have I enjoyed writing most or been most successful? What aspects of my life then were conducive to productivity and can I recreate them?
- Why am I writing?
With these questions in mind, you can start sketching out your goals. They might take the form of a writing schedule or an outline of when you’ll work on each part.
Try to give yourself soft deadlines and time to evolve your goals as well. If you come back in three months and haven’t been able to keep to any of these goals, odds are they don’t fit your life. That’s a chance to avoid beating yourself up and instead reframe your writing goals accordingly.
If you are ready to translate your goals into a sustainable writing practice and bring structure to your creative work, join one of my next workshops: The 90-Day Novel, The 90-Day Memoir, Story Day.
