SMART goals for writers

It's 2015 you guys! Whatever happened to 2014? I mean seriously. It's like 2013 was the day before yesterday.

Anyway. I'm personally not one for New Year's resolutions. Mostly because I end up breaking them by February. But every year around this time I do review my goals and try to recognize the steps I need to take to achieve them which is a completely different beast. While the New Year is certainly an arbitrary marker for the movement of time, it is however no more made up than most of human society and thus a good time to think about one's goals. I'm a fan of SMART goals, mostly because they're designed to be - relatively speaking - easier to achieve. Which is why I thought I'd take this post to share some ideas for setting SMART writing goals.

Specific

It's all well and good trying to make stuff happen by resolving to "write" or "lose weight" this year. Because our brains apparently work that way, it's much more likely that you'll be able to actually make things happen if you decide to "finish a novel" or "lose 5 kg". "Writing" is an amorphous mass that makes it hard to see the actual steps leading up to it whereas "finish a novel" is a specific goal with easy to see steps leading up to achieving it.

Trying to get your goals into a specific form also helps you with figuring out what you really want to accomplish. If you can't pin down a specific goal, maybe you don't really want it as badly as you thought?

Measurable

Once you've pinned down your specific goal how do you know if you've reached it? Take the goal of "finish a novel". When is a novel finished exactly? When there's a first draft? First pass of edits? Beta-reader comments? Accepted by an agent (assuming one is heading toward traditional publishing)? When it's published? Never?

You need to be able to tell when you've accomplished any particular goal that you've set for yourself. Partly for the same reasons you need to set specific goals. But more than that your brain actually releases dopamine when you complete a task and if you can't tell when a task is completed you'll never get that release. So instead of "finish a novel" go for a goal like "finish the first draft of a novel".

Achievable

To keep yourself motivated it's also important to make sure your goals are achievable. You can set a goal to write 1,000,000 in the next year all you like but if the best you can manage in a day is around 250 words, you'll never achieve it and you'll be demoralized by day 2.

The same goes for goals that you have no actual control over. While I would of course encourage you to dream about selling your novel to Tor for a $1,000,000 advance, I don't think you should set it as a goal for yourself because it contains a mountain of moving parts that you don't actually control. Maybe the market's glutted with the kind of books you're trying to sell. Maybe the editor who might buy it just bought a similar book the day before yours landed on her desk. Maybe they want it at a $6,000 advance but definitely no higher. Maybe it goes into a bidding war between multiple publishing houses and you realize that it has a much better home somewhere else.

No matter the reason, you should make sure that your goals are achievable. But you should also stretch yourself a little. If you can do 250 words/ day with effort, try making a goal to write an average of 350 words every day. Something that's still achievable but slightly challenging.

Relevant

So let's say that your ultimate dream is to become a published author. There are many goals to achieve on the road to that success. First draft, first sale, first published. Marketing, editing, education and so on. So maybe setting a goal like "master the author signature" isn't a good idea. In order to determine if a goal is relevant to you right now you should be asking yourself questions like: "does this seem worthwhile?" or "is this the right time?". I'm sure you, dear reader, are smart enough (pun intended and I'm sorry for it) to figure out the rest.

Time-bound

Last but not least your goals need to be time-bound. Humans in general seem to work better when they're working on a deadline, however made up. In general I find that adding a due date to a goal creates a sense of urgency that motivates me to take action right now instead of waiting 'till tomorrow to start. It's important to make sure this date is also realistic.

Having your goal be time helps it from being swept up in the various little emergencies that everyone has in their life. Dog peed on the rug? Still gotta get those words in! As Neil Gaiman says: Make Good Art.

If you're working on more than one goal this will also help you prioritize work. Need to finish a novel and a short story but the short story needs to get done in two weeks but the novel is three months away? Keep chipping away at that novel but put most of your work toward finishing that short story.

Bonus point: Accountability

This is not really a part of the SMART goals phenomenon but I find that I work better and more consistently when there's someone to check in with. If no one besides me cares about whether or not my work gets done it is shamefully easy to decide that I'll just create one more civilization. Having regular check-ins keeps my projects in my mind. This is probably also why NaNoWriMo works so darn well for me. It's millions of accountability partners also working toward the same goal. Try to check in with your accountability partner at least once a week and even more often if you can find a way to work it in. Just make sure that you're not replacing actual writing time with time spent your accountability partner.

Additional bonus point: Character goals

You can also use SMART goals as a plotting device. Your characters need concrete, measurable and especially time-bound goals as much, if not more than you do.

Karen's Writing Goals: 2015 version

For whatever reason, I'm dreading this post. I'm having trouble staying motivated as a writer. It's been a hard slog the last few years and writing down what I want to do is sometimes demoralizing, if I compare it to the list of things I wanted to do last year and realize it's 50% the same, for example.

But I've also made a pretty good run of doing New Year's Resolutions related to writing (it was a NY Resolution that initially got me into writing, in 2007.) So time for a new batch. What's on your list of things to do for 2015? Any places where we can overlap or share resources?

Photo credit: Flikr user: Dafne Cholet
https://www.flickr.com/photos/dafnecholet/

Straight out writing goals:

• Finish Jak the AI killer short story, send to F&SF via CC Findlay's e-submissions
• Finish Guide Me Through the Deep Space Night, 2014's nano project and the sequel to a prior Nano project, A Star to Lead Me (which is actually complete!) These books are very fun space-set SF and in Guide Me I've introduced aliens for the first time (even though I write a lot of SF, I have avoided aliens because so much of their treatment in SF is cliche. Let's hope I can avoid the traps.) 
• Finish False Magic (another unfinished Nano project.) This is my only fantasy novel and has a really interesting magic system and I'm very excited about it. At World Fantasy Con 2014 I had a conversation with a researcher/lecturer in warfare and I got several ideas for how to manage the final conflict in this one. The book is 90% done, I stopped right before the final conflict. My thinking at the time was something like, "Oh, I know what will happen now. Plus this is such an exciting spot. No WAY I won't get right back to this project." Um. er. (this was my 2012 Nano project, I believe…) 
• Finish Abnormals. What, another Nano project that isn't quite complete? How *strange*! This is my superhero story from 2013. A writer/artist friend has a great piece of art that I was planning to license to use as a cover, so the motivation here would be to finish this book and then publish it myself. 
• One more pass on Adrift. This is the only novel I wrote at a time OTHER than National Novel Writing Month aka Nano. I wrote it one summer a couple of years ago. It's a middle grade SF novel and takes place in the same "universe" as my other space-set SF novels (Convergence, A Star to Lead Me, Guide Me, etc.) It's a cute story, it's finished but I keep going back to it because I know it could be stronger than it is. I have shopped this around traditional publishing and received some encouraging rejects, but rejects all the same. I'm not sure what I hope to achieve with another pass on this, but I'm midway through it so I might as well complete the pass. Afterwards I need to decide if I want to try submitting it again or if I should just publish it myself. My awesome cover designer has a cover about 80% of the way finished for it that I *adore.* 

Whew. I'm exhausted already. ;) Each of these projects alone isn't a huge amount of work. They need 5,000-10,000 new words, but I will have to re-read the books to get to where I'm ready to write the new words. While I'm re-reading I might as well do my first pass mark-up edit (I edit on paper, so this is an amusing phase where I carry a binder around with me everywhere for a month or two, mostly not reading the novel but just carrying it with me like a boat anchor. The ways we torture ourselves as writers are many and sundry.) 

In addition to all those goals, which I'm having difficulty sorting into an appropriate order of which comes first, I also need/want to be doing more to sharpen my writing and keep myself in a creative mindset. 

To that end, some "sharpen the saw" (if you don't know about Steven Covey's 7 Habits stuff, go check it out at the link. Hugely supportive and positive life coachy stuff from way before there were people whose job titles were Life Coach.) goals and activities for 2015:

• Maintain my involvement in my online writing group. Get back into the saddle w/my in person writing group (I've missed our meetings for several months due to incredibly bad overlaps in schedule. February I should be able to get back into these twice monthly meetings.)
• At least one writing-related thing each day. Options include:
• New words
• New story ideas (sketched out roughly)
• Reading about writing (I have several very good books about writing that I should be reading and am not…like for instance:)
• Wonderbook by Jeff VanderMeer
• Shadows Beneath by the Writing Excuses crew
• Listening to podcasts about writing
• Watching videos of writing (particularly the Write About Dragons stuff of Sanderson's. He seems to have outlining down to a science and that's my kryptonite, so I'd like to get through more of this material and see what I can pull into my own process.) 
• Journaling, with some eye toward documenting progress on writing goals or other meta-writing
• Another writing class, probably a virtual class. I don't anticipate traveling for writing workshops or conferences this year but that may change as the second half of the year takes shape. I'm most strongly considering a Dave Farland class, but there are many others. If I were to go to an in-person workshop, I'd probably consider the Superstars Writing Seminars first. The Writing Excuses cruise sounds great, but I can't take that much time away from my family. 

My mind blown, self-publishing style

I've been reading and re-reading this completely fantastic post by Hugh Howley this week. Over and over. I have shown it to all my writing friends (except you guys - so now you're in the loop!) I keep sharing it and thinking about it and talking about it and…

Fundamentally the only conclusion I can reach is this.

In 2014, I just need to publish my own stuff.

You see, I've been looking to go traditional for many years. I have an agent who has sent around a novel of mine and I've had a very good, detailed rejection from at least one excellent house that publishes the kind of thing I write (but it would require a detailed rewrite of THAT book to meet the concerns of that editor. Instead of the rewrite I took her feedback to heart and try to resolve those issues proactively in the books I've written since. I already know that editing is the Pit of Despair for me. I do my best to avoid spending too much time in it.)

I have an agent, I have completed novels (my agent has read another of my novels but it ends on a cliffhanger and he suggests, rightfully so, that he can't pitch it well as-is without at least the second book in the series. Which I haven't written yet. Details, details.) And yet, it's been a year and I haven't sold anything. More than, now that I think of it.

I think it's time for me to do something different.

So I'm telling you, dear readers, here and now I resolve in 2014 to just put my fiction out into the world via the typical channels (amazon, bn.com, apple) and see what happens.

Wish me luck. I have a feeling I'm going to need it!

If you'd like to support me in this endeavor (I would REALLY appreciate your support!) you can find my existing books for sale on the typical platforms under the author name Karen T. Smith, or go to my website (which I am hopefully updating right as soon as I finish this post, I'll include a mailing list signup and would very much love your subscription!) I have a free short story, MOON CLIQUES, available on all platforms, as well as two other 99c short stories (LIBRARY OF THE APOCALYPSE and APPLES ON THE MOON) and a $2.99 novel (CONVERGENCE.) I mostly write upbeat kid-friendly science fiction, with a particular emphasis on girls who are good at tech. The kinds of books I wanted to read when I was a geeky girl in 7th grade, the only one who played video games.

At any rate, wish me luck! And check out Hugh's post. If you're a writer, too, please comment and let me know if his post has changed your thinking on trajectory or plans for your career.

Art in dark times

Writing, to me, can become all about the details, the little bits and pieces of technique that make up an impressive story. It's becoming a common theme for me in this blog to step back and try to remind myself of the bigger picture every once in a while. Like what MaryAnn talked about in her post, I wonder if I have a life-changing story in me. How few books change the world, anyway?

But there's a bigger question I had about my writing, something that I didn't often think about because I was kind of scared of the answer. It is, in a way, THE big question of life:

What does this all, the writing and the story telling, what does it matter?

Well, after this week, I'm not quite so worried anymore.

A few weeks ago, as I was making dinner, I listened to a story by Elif Shafak, a Turkish writer. It was part of The Moth podcast, which features people telling true stories to a live audience. Elif tells the story of working on one of her novels in a tiny apartment in Istanbul.  You can listen to the podcast here, if you want. If you have fifteen minutes, listen to it first, because the story is most powerful when she tells it rather than a summary from me.

Listening to it a second time tonight, I'm struck by how great of an oral storyteller Elif is. Many of these podcasts can turn into rambles. But her podcast is almost like a well constructed novel on its own, with plot, character, place, and a sense of humor.  And, like many really great stories, it has a twist. In this case, it's the 1999 earthquake that killed thousands of people. The earthquake causes Elif to worry about the very question I posted above. 

As Elif says, 

 "I looked at the manuscript in my hands, you know? All of the sudden it seemed so small, so trivial. What difference did it make if I finished this chapter, whether I found the twist in the plot? ...It was something like a loss of faith… "To this day, it was one of the toughest dilemmas in my work: to have the faith, the belief, that stories matter, that words make a difference and connect us across the boundaries.  And the sneaky suspicion that all art in vain in the face of larger, darker world events. Between this optimism and pessimism, my heart is a pendulum."

 At this point, I'd turned off the stove and was listening with all my attention. I found myself desperately frightened about what the answer could be, because what could one story do when so many people are suffering? How could the answer to this possibly be positive for writing and art? 

Elif continues the story talking about how she comes through the earthquake, and starts her book again.  Most importantly, she finds that not all changes from the earthquake have been negative, that some sense of closeness has developed between her and her neighbors that wasn't there before. At the very end, that connection between neighbors inspires her. And she says: 

"And perhaps, at the end of the day, this is what we writers want to achieve with our stories:something to remain. A spontaneous bonding, a speck of empathy, and also, the possibility of change."

Wow. It wasn't the easy, unqualified answer. I love it all the more for that. 

As I said at the start of this post, a world changing story seems out of my reach. Thinking about it makes me dizzy and nervous. I love this answer much better, the idea that a story can make a human connection, the spontaneous bonding. The idea that I could write a story that could live in someone's memory, even for a little while.

It's not saving the world. But it's something almost as important, in its own way. And that thought, that goal, it doesn't make me nervous or insecure.

It makes me want to write.

I Have A Fever Dream: Making peace with limits

Illness brings out
my inner child.

I am blogging with a moderately high fever. This should be illegal.

I recently finished The Lotus Blossom, by D.M. Kenyon. It was a wonderful read that planted thoughts in my mind like seeds—images and ideas that have kept growing beyond the last page. One of those seeds was a scene in which Madison (now called Lhamo) endures a grueling test at her dojo. She has to fight off a continual onslaught of attackers as long as possible before collapsing into unconsciousness.

Rinchen says that most people never know failure because they quit way before they fail. Quitting is choosing to surrender. It is the choice to stop before you are at the end of yourself. Failure is letting go of a need to reach the end, giving it your all and accepting whatever happens. It is a beautiful place, failure. Almost nobody ever really knows it.

-D. M. Kenyon, The Lotus Blossom                                    

I read this and thought: Have I ever pushed myself to my physical limit? I don't think so.

Growing up, I believed I was the kid who wasn't strong enough to really push herself, and I thought my character must be as weak as my body.

I was the kid who ended up gasping for air in the nurse’s office every time she had to run a mile in gym class. I was the kid who would be out for two weeks because of a cold, with doctors shrugging and saying, “That’s just you, kiddo.” I was the kid whose sister named her Kermit for the color of her snot.

I was the kid who fell out of the raft not once, but twice, on a Class I river.

I was the adult who slowly worked her way up from being a walker to a runner over the course of three months, only to end up with an angry sciatic nerve that, four years after the return to walking, still holds a grudge.

I'm a walker. That's me.
I'm a walker. Yippee.

I was the adult who finally found out she had asthma, then learned to stand up to doctors while she searched for the great ones who would take her seriously and help her take care of herself.

I am the adult who has been wanting to join a paranormal YA book club, but just had to cancel for the fourth month in a row (the second time for illness). I had to admit defeat, again, and all I can do is hope that the friend who invited me doesn't think I'm a freak, or a liar, or both.

Above all else, I am the adult who has to be an adult about her limits, because if I push past them, the aftermath affects my kids and my husband and anyone else who counts on me.

There’s a woman in my Pilates class who broke her knee from repetitive stress by running twenty miles on a treadmill.  She’s that kind of athlete—one who pushes on no matter what. She said she’d torn an achilles tendon on a mountain bike the same way, pushing through. It healed in six months and she went right back to training hard.

I’ve always believed that’s the kind of person you need to be if you want to be successful in life. If I were that kind of person, I’d probably have gone to medical school. I’d be thinner. I’d be richer. I’d be closer to perfect in every way. I should be like her… but I'm not.

Yesterday, at Kid #1’s baseball practice, I sat in the grass with Kid #2, feeling sorry for myself because I was short of breath and Kid #2 wanted to do something active and I just wanted to go to bed. I saw something move on my hand and stifled a little scream, and Kid #2 freaked out. He has inherited my fear of bugs. I forced myself to calm down and let the bug stay on my hand. I showed it to him. He scooted away from me, but he kept his eyes trained on the critter inching its way across my wrist. It looked a little like a caterpillar, but shorter and not very cute.

I Googled and found out it was a lady beetle larva, basically the juvenile form of the most beloved bug of all time. But I didn't know that! I was totally bluffing when I told Kid #2 it wasn't going to bite me. BLUFFING, I say!

Photo By Sanjay Acharya

Kid #2 didn’t get over his fear of bugs in one afternoon, nor did I. Eventually we had to move if I wanted him to sit in the grass again. Still, we had shared a moment.

In the grand scheme of things, I get disappointed in what my body can do, but I also don't take my good-enough health for granted. Maybe I really do need 8 hours of sleep. Maybe while my kids are young and acting as germ mules, I’ll end up canceling a lot of social events and feeling lame every time.

Maybe I accomplish things more slowly than I’d like. Maybe fighting that head-on is like trying to move the tide back out with a bucket.

We celebrate people who push themselves physically, but maybe I need to start thinking about other ways to push myself. I want to let go of my need to reach the end. To give it my all and accept whatever happens. To reach that beautiful place that Lhamo planted in my mind.

I want to take my kids camping and teach them not to be afraid of the creepy crawlies. I want to hear my husband’s worries or a child’s sadness and swallow my own feelings long enough to be their rock the way they are mine. I want to open my Scrivener file, panic that I have no idea what I’m doing and this writing thing was a huge mistake, and keep working anyway. And then I want to send it to my critique partner and say: This is me. This is the best I could do, but I’m not giving up.


After I get my full night’s rest, take two Sudafed, do my sinus rinse, steam my lungs, and sip chicken broth… I will still have choices. There will still be limits worth pushing and victories worth claiming.

But first, I need more soup.

~Sarah

Resolving the New Year

Merry After Christmas and a Happy Almost New Year! 

The days between Christmas and New Years are always a little odd for me.  The insanity leading up to Christmas is over, and the short burst of New Year’s cheer hasn’t yet arrived. Since I’m fortunate enough to stay home with the kids, the intervening days between the two holidays seem to sprawl into one another like a giant, comfortable yawn. There may be a little sale shopping, but it’s not really mandatory. The decorations don’t need to come down yet. I can spend quality time with the fam, or alternately ignore them and spend some quality time with a book or two. Not so much worry, not so much stress. I like these cocooning days and guard them jealously.

However, I know that there are people with far more gumption than I. And for them, these are the days they make their New Year’s Resolutions and check them twice, polish and plot and post their goals on their shiny new 2012 calendars.

And what are the most common New Year’s Resolutions?
In no particular order, the top ten are:

Eat healthier

Exercise more

Get Organized

Spend Less, Save More & Get Out of Debt

Learn Something New

Spend More Time with Family & Friends

Help Others

Manage Stress Better

Quit Smoking and/or Drinking

Fall in Love

Don’t those sound wonderful? A brand new you in twelve short months. As writers, of course, we’d add a slew of authorly goals in there, too.

Sadly, the empirical data is also in - by the end of January – yes, before Groundhog's Day - only a third of the people who made resolutions will still be sticking to them.  And unlike Phil Connors, with an eternity of do-overs, when next year rolls around, 80% of people will have fallen off the self-improvement wagon.

Most years I would be reclining in my easy chair shaking my head at all those poor folk trying to better themselves. Except that this year, I really want to be one of them. Several very personal things have brought forcefully to my attention that this is the only time we’ve been given. How will we use it?

So, in honor of me making a resolution to become a resolution junky, here are five things* that can greatly increase your chances of reaching your goals (and since this is the Prosers, let’s think of it in writerly terms):

• Plan a series of specific smaller goals– this alone will raise your chances of success to 35%. How do you envision this working into writing goals? Daily word counts? Chapters or short stories finished per week? Submissions?
• Reward Completion – take time to celebrate small and large milestones toward larger goals. What do you do when you have plotted that story, reached the inciting incident, or slogged through that rough patch of editing?
• Visualize success – looking at the benefits of reaching a goal is more motivating than focusing on the consequences of failure. What will it feel like when you type ‘The End’? Or receive that acceptance letter? Or have millions of squeeing fans?
• Keep a Journal – hmm. Do any of you do this? Do you write about how you feel about writing, or do you just write?
• Tell Someone Close to You – having a support system is pretty integral for writers. I love having a group who understands this bizarre compulsion to create with words (thanks Prosers!). Do you think there’s a difference between online support and face to face support you’d get from family and friends?

Well, there you have it. Measurably bump up your success by using some pretty simple, positive techniques.

Let's check back February 2nd, shall we, and see how we're doing?

*Source:  this very inspiringly titled piece from the Guardian: New Year’s Resolutions Doomed to Failure, Say Psychologists

~ Susan