Setting Writing Goals for 2012...How are Your Goals Working for You?



Writing takes planning and implementing, reviewing and revising. In nursing we learn to assess, plan, implement, and evaluate for a patient problem. That process can apply to many things outside of delivering nursing care. It can also apply to your writing goals for 2012.

Assess: Sit down and make a list of what you have accomplished in  2011 against what you wanted to accomplish. This activity is the time for assessing what has worked for you this year and what has not related to your writing goals. Assuming we want to be published and to sell our work means the honest assessment of how much we published and how much we sold. This is crucial to setting goals for 2012. After you have assessed where you are and where you want to be as an author, list 3 or 4 major writing/publishing goals for the New Year.

Plan: Now to make a workable plan, your smaller action steps must be actions that work towards one of your major goals. The actions you took in the past year that led to more submissions and acceptances needs to be placed in the plan again. The marketing actions that you took that produced successful sales needs to be added and tweaked for the coming year. The things you assessed that did not work or that hindered your writing need to be deleted. Sometimes that means deleting an activity unrelated to writing but that takes time away from your writing. Keep in mind if the actions you want to take don't move you towards your goals, they are not part of this plan.

Implement: January 1st will be here before you know it so try to have your assessment and your plan figured out before the first of the year, or at least the first week of the New Year. Then decide what day your plan will start and begin implementing the actions you have decided on. If I want to monetize my blog for instance, I may put something in my plan that lists the actions I will take to do this. Here is a sample for January if one of my major goals would be to monetize the blog-
  • Week 1- research products to incorporate on the blog/affiliate products
  • Week 2- add links to my blog with 2-4 affiliate links with posts about each product
  • Week 3- post at least once about the products, send out newsletter to remind readers about products
  • Week 4- post at least once about how one of the products has helped me with my writing career
 This is just an example, but you get the idea.

Evaluate: Set up time in your writing schedule to evaluate your goals and your actions steps at least 3 or 4 times a year. Many writers evaluate weekly and set up a new plan for the next week. Awesome if you can do that, but realistically many of us are lucky to jot a few notes every week. In some ways we evaluate every day about what we did and what we need to do. A serious evaluation every 3-4 months includes looking at what you have circulating out with publishers, what you need to resubmit, what needs revisions, and what are the next target markets on your list. However you decide to evaluate your goals, make sure the new changes will be action steps that will make your writing soar.

Keep in mind that the rule for goals is this:

Goals should be specific.
Goals should be realistic.
Goals should be attainable.
Goals should be measurable.

Remeber that you also may need to hone your skills as one of your major goals in order to make your writing and publishing goals attainable and realistic.

Now, looking at your goals for last year, be honest in deciding what is working for you. Can you expand your career this next year? Do you need more education? Do you need to focus on submissions? Do you want to attend a conference? Do you want to become active in a critique group to help hone your skills? Do you want to publish a novel? Be specific in what you want and go for it. There is no time like the present to take actions steps towards making your writing and marketing career soar for 2012. My writing mentor, Suzanne Lieurance always tells us to write like the wind, and I will add soar like an eagle. Make this next year your best.

6 comments:

elysabeth said...

Terri,

Thank you for posting this, especially for someone like me who really didn't set goals this past year and really should have. As soon as I can sit down and figure out what my goals are - what events I plan on participating in, realistic sales goals, et cetera - I will post on my blog - http://elysabethsstories.blogspot.com -

This was probably perfect timing for this posting since I'd just been talking about some of my goals for next year, working with a couple of other writers on some sales goals as we will be participating in a couple of events together (sharing a booth, et cetera).

I've tweeted, facebooked and blogged this posting - hopefully lots of my author friends will weigh in or at least stop by to read the posting - E :)

Elysabeth Eldering
Author of Finally Home, a YA paranormal mystery
"The Proposal" (an April Fools Day story), a humorous romance ebook
"The Tulip Kiss", a paranormal mystery ebook
"Bride-and-Seek", a paranormal mystery ebook
"Butterfly Halves", a YA fantasy ebook
http://elysabethsstories.blogspot.com
http://eeldering.weebly.com

Ma America, The Travelin' Maven
Author of the JGDS, 50-state, mystery, trivia series and "Train of Clues" (a mystery destination story and predecessor to the state series)
Where will the adventure take you next?
http://jgdsseries.blogspot.com
http://jgdsseries.weebly.com

Mary Jo Guglielmo said...

Great post. I think it's important to set out your intention and your goals for your writing. Breaking your goals down into manageable pieces is really important.

Aileen said...

Awesome strategies! Thanks for posting this, Terri.

Karen Cioffi said...

Terri, great tips for getting your goals in focus. I read over and over that writing your goals is essential if you want to reach them.

This is the time to set 'time' aside and actually evaluate where you've been and where you want to head.

Thanks for the reminder!

Karen Cioffi Writing and Marketing

D. Jean Quarles said...

Terri, you are so right. It's critical to set goals each year.thanks for a great post!

Suzanne Lieurance said...

Hi, Terri,

Great article!

I think it's fun to evaluate what has worked in the past 12 months in order to decide what new actions to start taking in the New Year. Here's to the BEST year yet for all of us writers in 2012!

Suzanne
The Working Writer's Coach
http://www.workingwritersclub.com

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