As each day passes us by, we often wonder what we’ve accomplished from day to day. Many of us are simply trying to stay above water. Keep all the pieces in place–whether it’s that demanding job with ridiculous deadlines or food on the table and kids delivered to soccer games. Those of us who are also writers, worry about the words we’ve put on paper. Have we accomplished any more than an outline? How can we squeeze in our writing goals among the many demands facing us from day to day?
Let’s not let that happen when 2018 dawns (right around the corner, I might add). When my niece told me she wanted to go to nursing school, she said, “But, it will take me so long. I’ll be thirty by the time I’m finished.” My response to her, “You’ll be thirty anyway. You may as well be thirty and a nurse than thirty without realizing your dream.”
Sometimes, we become discouraged because we have such a long road ahead. As a novel writer, I know all about long roads. If I wrote short stories, that would be different.
To accomplish the goal of writing that novel, we must say, “Do I want to face the next year still saying I want to write a novel? or Do I want to face that year saying I did it?” The new year will come anyway.
Here are my goals for 2017:
- Finish the current manuscript I’m working on which is the third installment in the Jenna Scali series. The working title is A Painting to Die for. My goal is to get a clean, completed copy to my publisher by the end of January and to see it published by the fall of 2017.
- Finish my current work-in-progress. It’s a stand-alone mystery, working title Five Cans of Crazy. Complete the first draft by the end of February and prepare it to send to my beta readers by the first week in March. See it published by January 2018.
- By fall of 2017, draft another installment (perhaps the last) in the Jenna Scali series.
- Go to one major writers conference during the year.
There you have it. Now, that I’ve written them down, I have no excuses.
Let’s hear them.
I absolutely love your response to your niece! I’ve blogged about my 2017 goals and why they are more meaningful in more detail, but to sum it up I have goals for the new year and that is definitely a step in the right direction. Good luck to you, Joan and happy, happy new year.
Hey there,
Thanks for stopping by. Before I started writing full-time, I was a coach. I still have a few clients. One of the key things I do is help clients set goals. Then, I hold them accountable for their goals. So, setting goals is the first step. Being accountable for those goals to someone else is the second step. I’ll talk about that more in another post. My guess is, Kai, you’re pretty accountable to yourself because you’ve published so many books and you have so many completed projects!