Scribes & Archers

As we near the end of the year, many of us are already turning our attention toward goals for next year. (If you’re like me, you started thinking ahead all the way back in September or October!) Whether you have what feels like an overwhelming list of goals, or just a few big goals that you’re trying to prioritize well, this post is all about how to set the right kind of goals as an author–and how to ensure that those goals serve the purpose you need them to serve.

The Purpose of Goals

First, it’s important to define what your purpose is for setting goals. If you’re someone who needs to complete every task on the list, then you want to be very clear on what you can or can’t achieve in a given time-frame so that you’re not causing yourself undue frustration. If you set goals so that you have something to push toward but you don’t expect to complete every goal off the list (or even any of them), only make progress, then you may have more freedom to set a lot of goals all at once. Essentially, you should know whether you view goals from a perspective of progress or completion and adjust your goal-planning accordingly.

Evaluating Past Goals

I always start a new goals list on the basis of the previous list, adjusting and adding as necessary but using the previous list to inform my new goals. With this approach, you’ll start off with about three categories of goals: goals you accomplished last time, goals left unfinished from last time, and new goals you’re adding on.

Goals you accomplished last time fall into two categories: ongoing or stackable. This would be like the difference between “read 52 books this year” and “finish the first draft of my novel.” The first goal is one that can be repeated, it’s an ongoing goal that you work on over the goal’s entire time-span; the other is something that you would stack a new goal on top of, like “revise my novel.”

If you accomplished an ongoing goal, you know that the goal you chose fit well into the time-frame you were working with and you could probably set it the same way again–or adjust for new variables, if you know of something that will impact your time and energy for the coming time-frame, with the original as a baseline to work from.

If you accomplished a stackable goal, ask yourself how much of a break is necessary between the accomplished goal and the next step, and whether or not that project is still a priority for you this time around. If the break is short enough and the project is still a priority, then the next step logically goes onto the new goal list. Note that the next step of a stackable goal does not always have to be the next “big” step; maybe you’re not ready to add “revise my novel” to next year’s goals, but you want to set a goal of writing 20,000 words’ worth of worldbuilding to get a firm grasp on that before you dive into revisions.

If a goal was unfinished from the last list, evaluate why so that you can adjust accordingly. Some goals fall victim to changing priorities, some weren’t articulated in a way that was easy to keep track of, some didn’t have enough of a plan behind them, and some just didn’t quite fit within the time-frame of the goal list.

If a goal no longer suits your priorities, it doesn’t need to go back on the list; if your priorities have shifted back to something that makes sense with the goal, then maybe it makes sense to add it back in.

If a goal wasn’t written in such a way that you could keep track of it, then you might need to rethink how you wrote it. Maybe “make progress on developing my coaching program” doesn’t work, but “prepare three months of coaching program content” does the job.

If you didn’t have a sufficient plan for accomplishing a goal, maybe it would help to focus on the planning this time around–whether that means repeating the goal but making a plan to accomplish it, or actually making the planning the goal itself for this particular list. Let’s say I wanted to sell 50 books this year. That’s great, but it won’t happen on wishful thinking alone; a goal like that needs a marketing plan behind it. So I might say again, “sell 50 books,” but set up a sales funnel for my email list to help make that happen, or I might scratch the “sell 50 books” goal in favor of goals like “set up a sales-specific email funnel,” “update welcome sequence according to written plan” (if I’ve already brainstormed such an update), “publish my next book,” etc.

If a goal just didn’t fit within the time-frame, then you might set a goal to finish the project at hand within the next time-frame (if it’s not ongoing) and try to adjust other, similar goals accordingly (whether ongoing or stackable). For example, you might have not quite finished a draft, and you may not only put “finish the draft” on the next list, but also adjust the goal of “write the entirety of the next book’s draft” to just “reach the midpoint of the next book’s draft.” If you’re just a few chapters away from finishing a first draft, “finish my first draft” might be a no-brainer goal. If you weren’t quite able to read 52 books in a year, maybe you set this year’s goal to 45 instead. Of course, this depends on how much effort you think you put into the goal last time, and how much you’re willing to put in this time around; maybe you want the challenge of reading 52 books even if you didn’t quite make it this year, or you want to increase your drafting speed so you still put “draft a new book” on your list even though you didn’t quite make it last time. For progress-oriented people, especially, these can still be very helpful goals!

Some goals just aren’t helpful to us, personally. I have learned (over many frustrating years) that I hate sales-based or financially-based goals. I’m bad at planning to accomplish them, I never get close, and they just leave me depressed and frustrated as a result. But I still need ways to keep track of whether I’m actually growing in those areas and keeping my business afloat, so this year I plan to focus on more task-oriented goals that are designed to benefit my business’s financial well-being–along the lines of the examples earlier. You may find that there are categories of goals that consistently leave you frustrated, too; some of these you might be able to throw out because they’re not actually serving you or don’t actually align with your priorities, and others you may need to find a new perspective on.

Types of Goals for Writers

When you’re thinking about new goals, it can be helpful to think in categories so that you can be sure you have a well-rounded list. Some of these may be more or less relevant depending on your specific situation and priorities, and you may like to do multiple goals in various categories or just one per category.

Reading goals

Reading goals can take different forms depending on what you want to prioritize and how much you want to intentionally direct your reading. I participate in the Goodreads reading challenge every year, so I have an annual goal of (usually) 52 books; I’ve also been trying to read more classics over the past few years, so I have an annual goal of making 10 of those books classics I’ve never read before. You might aim for a minimum number of books from a certain genre, on a certain topic, published a certain way, or just generally for the duration of the goal list. Maybe you want to read a certain number of books you own but haven’t read, or check out a certain number of books from the library, or read a certain number of books specifically for analysis or review.

Looking for recommendations? Sign up for genre-specific recommendation lists and my sortable running database of book recommendations!

Learning goals

It’s important to continue learning and growing over time–both in your writing craft, specifically, and in other areas that can (and will) naturally inform your work.* Whether you want to take (or complete) a particular course, read up on a certain element of the craft, read a certain number of writing craft books, enroll in a mentorship program, reach out to a potential writing mentor on a more personal level, etc.–or whether you just make additional goals that extend beyond your writing into life experience–make sure you’re creating room for growth and learning in your goal lists.

* Not sure how to integrate your broader skill set and interests into your work with intention? Get the “worldview focus questions” worksheet!

Writing goals

Obviously, as writers, this is a big category! You might aim to draft a new book, finish a draft in progress, write a certain number of chapters, write a certain number of short stories, write a certain number of articles, etc. Whatever it is you’re writing, set a goal for it! I would also categorize pre-writing goals here, such as doing a certain amount of worldbuilding, outlining a certain number of chapters, etc.

Editing goals

These may be set in addition to or in place of writing goals, depending on the time-frame of your list and how you find you need to balance projects. Any edits or revisions fall into this category, which I’m counting as separate because 1) it tends to be a very different sort of process from writing/creating and 2) it can involve additional collaborators, depending on where you are in the process. One editing goal, for example, might be to research editors or assemble a beta-reading team!

Publishing goals

If you have publishing goals for the coming time-frame, they may include sending out a certain number of queries, writing up a book proposal, getting your book formatted, acquiring a cover, etc., depending on which route you’ve decided to take.

Going indie and not sure what goals to set? Grab the self-publishing checklist!

Marketing/Sales goals

If you’re a published author (or you’re going to be soon), you might have goals for how many books you’re hoping to sell, how many reviews you ask for, what means you want to have in place for selling automatically, how you want to optimize your book page, etc. This category might also include things like setting up a bookshop on your website, running a Black Friday sale, or launching a new course.

Setting Effective Goals

Once you know the categories you’re looking at, you can think about how you might create effective goals within those categories. Not all goals are created equal, as we’ve already seen!

First and foremost, your goal should align with your priorities. If you’re setting a goal to write a short story per month because you feel like you “should,” but you’re not actually interested in short stories and haven’t enjoyed writing a short story in months, then that’s probably not a goal that really aligns with your priorities right now and it probably shouldn’t be taking up space on your list. Or maybe you need to make the goal more specific and say you want to write a certain number of short stories connected to a particular project you’re interested in, so the goal has more direction keeping it more in line with your priorities. As an extension of this, your goal should align with your longer-term goals; if one of your goals is to publish a collection of short stories in the next three years, then maybe pushing yourself to write more short stories makes sense even if you’re not “feeling it” right now.

Your goal should fit the time-frame. As we discussed, some goals might be good to set a little outside of what you think you can accomplish, for the sake of the challenge. (Not so far out that you’ll feel like you didn’t even get close when the time-frame ends!) But even that requires you to know how much you can currently accomplish within the time-frame–or at least to have a ballpark idea. In general, your goals should be suited to the time-frame for which you’re setting them–or at least stay close.

Your goal should be measurable. I know you’ve heard this one before, but it’s true. If your goal is ethereal and can’t be measured, then you’re setting yourself up to be confused and/or frustrated later. You need to be able to look at a goal and design a way to accomplish it. “Write something cool every month” is way too vague to do anything with, because what you think is “cool” could change from month to month; “write something every month” or “complete a piece of writing every month” are measurable goals. Maybe you have a personal writing hall-of-fame where you keep pieces of writing you’re really proud of, in which case “write something each month that gets into the hall-of-fame” might actually be a measurable goal. But all of those are more specific and achievable than “write something cool every month.” Keep specificity in mind!

Your goal should be something you’re responsible for making happen. This is another easy pitfall of sales-related goals, for an example. You can’t make people buy your book (and would you really want to, anyway?); you can only provide opportunities for people to buy your book. The outcome is out of your hands. Goals in which the outcome is out of your hands are not productive goals. Your goals should be things that you are able to do–or at least make a great deal of the effort toward–on your own. This does not mean that all collaborative goals are bad; if you want to do a blog collaboration each quarter, you have a great deal of power over making that happen, by reaching out to potential collaborators and having enough of a list that the goal isn’t completely shot if one person says no. Even more specific collaborative goals can be useful–if, say, you want to collaborate with Brandon Sanderson specifically–though in such cases it might be more productive to make your goal “Reach out to Brandon Sanderson about a collaboration” rather than “Collaborate with Brandon Sanderson” so that the goal measures your productivity/initiative and is not dependent on a particular outcome from someone else (especially someone as busy and popular as Brandon Sanderson!). Again, this will help prevent frustration when your goal’s time-frame expires!

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There are my best tips for setting writerly goals! If you’ve already started setting your goals for next year, I’d love to hear which goal you’re most excited about–and which one intimidates you most. If you’re willing to share (one or both), comment below!

My list isn’t finished yet, but right now the most exciting goal is to launch the Worldbuilders Guild–and that’s also the most intimidating, lol. I know that life circumstances are going to make that goal more difficult in the coming year, so it will be a matter of God’s will and timing!