What does it mean to be a “professional” or “career” writer?
For most people, it’s when you make enough money to live off your writing.
But a lot of full-time authors still have day jobs, since writing isn’t always the
most lucrative career path.
Even if you don’t plan on pursuing writing full-time, setting long-term goals can inspire
you to improve your craft.
Let’s walk through one process for developing a writing goal plan.
I’ve provided a simple Google Doc template you can download in the video description
if you’d like to follow along.
You’ll identify your values, choose a mission statement, set goals using the acronym SMART,
and outline milestones you can use to achieve those goals.
First, what are your values?
What do you genuinely care about, both as a person and as a writer?
That list might include introspection, entertainment, or creative freedom.
Pick the three that matter most to you.
My top three values are personal development, helping others, and enjoyment.
I want to keep cultivating my writing skills while also benefiting others by sharing what
I’ve learned, and I want to do things that inspire me to jump out of bed in the morning,
excited to tackle a new creative project.
These values should guide your goals and ensure you’re staying true to who you really are.
Next, write a one-sentence mission statement.
In the writing world, what do you hope to achieve or become?
How do you want to make a difference?
Your mission can be lofty and aspirational.
Maybe you want to improve your craft and write like your idols or to become a respected author
of sci-fi/fantasy short stories or to publish romance novels that bring joy to readers’
lives.
I have two interrelated mission statements: I want “to become a better writer and help
others become better writers” and “to inspire others to create through my videos
and stories.”
Clarifying your mission can help you narrow down your focus to the achievements that are
most important to you.
With your values and mission statement in mind, think about what SMART goals would help
you build a clear path toward achieving those.
The acronym SMART, in this case, stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant,
and Time-bound, as defined in many self-help books.
To design a SMART goal, you can ask yourself these five questions:
1.
Specific: What actions will you take?
2.
Measurable: What data will show you’re progressing toward this goal?
3.
Achievable: Do you have the needed resources?
4.
Relevant: How does this align with your larger mission?
5.
Time-bound: What’s the time frame for achieving this?
A goal should be specific.
“To improve my craft and write like my idols” is good for a mission statement but too vague
for a goal.
What would improving your craft and writing like your idols actually mean?
I could narrow it down to a specific skill and author: I want to write soulful science-fiction
like Ted Chiang.
Being specific is all about defining what your version of success looks like.
To make a goal measurable, you need to think about what action you can measure to determine
if you’re making progress.
It needs to be quantifiable.
I could measure my example goal in terms of writing output and aspire to write ten soulful
sci-fi short stories.
I could also submit each story to at least five publications.
One way to measure the “soulful” aspect of my stories would be by assessing the type
of feedback I receive from readers and editors.
If most people talk about how they like the grit and action with no mention of the “soul”
or “emotion” in the story, then I might not be achieving what I set out to do, and
I could revisit my approach to this goal.
You can never truly “master” writing, and no one can write like Ted Chiang, but
the point is to target a specific skill, whether that’s writing a novel with a strong first-person
voice or learning to craft a satisfying short story.
Now, is this goal achievable?
This is a relatively attainable goal, as opposed to trying to win a Hugo Award.
You can’t control whether or not you win an award, but you can control writing and
submitting stories.
If you’ve already written a few short stories in the genre, the goal is closer to achievable,
but if you haven’t written or submitted a short story anywhere before, this goal is
likely too big to start with.
Achievability is also about the resources you need to accomplish this goal.
For this task, I would need a knowledge of the sci-fi short story market—meaning that
I should be reading stories in that genre, perhaps at least two per week.
I also need the time and discipline to write, revise, and submit several short stories per
year, which might require cutting back on certain hobbies, like drawing or watching
TV shows.
You can connect your goal back to your mission statement to make sure it’s relevant.
If my mission is “to become a respected author of sci-fi short fiction,” then writing
and publishing sci-fi stories likely signifies that I’ve reached “respected” status
as an author.
On the other hand, if my mission is “to become a best-selling novelist,” then focusing
too much on short stories might not help me achieve that.
Whether a goal is relevant to your mission or not depends on your personal perspective.
The point of this “relevance” metric is to weed out any goals that are tangential
to your actual long-term goals.
I might really want to learn how to design my own book covers, but if I haven’t even
written a novel yet and my ultimate goal is to become a published author, that goal seems
like putting the cart before the horse.
This is your reality check to test if you’re working toward what you really want or just
procrastinating.
It’s easier to start learning something new than it is to finish a difficult task.
We still need to address the “time-bound” aspect.
How long should you give yourself to complete this goal?
Well, given it takes time to write and revise stories for submission, and literary magazines
are highly selective and can take over four months to respond, this goal will require
much longer than a year.
Perhaps writing ten sci-fi short stories and submitting them to fifty publications in two
years would be feasible.
But let’s be real here—people suck at estimating how long it will take them to reach
a given goal.
That’s just human nature.
In her book Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception, Claudia Hammond calls
this the Planning Fallacy—the tendency to believe a task will take less time than it
eventually does.
November comes around and I go, “Sure, I can write a novel in a month!”
But then November 15 rolls past, and I’m a measly 5,000 words in and not moving any
faster.
As Hammond says, the problem is that “The further into our own future we look, the more
we ignore the details.”
However, “we do consider the details when contemplating someone else’s future.”
And that’s the ticket to realistic time estimation: we can ask someone else to assess
how long they think the project will take us to finish.
Or, if you want to decide for yourself, Hammond suggests listing every concrete step in the
process and “deliberately thinking back to all similar past occasions and comparing
them with the present circumstances before you make your estimate.”
She also advises, “Then add on some time for the types of disruptions you’ve encountered
in the past and a little more for the fact that unfortunately you are not suddenly going
to be transformed into a super-organized person who doesn’t need to sleep.”
As a rule of thumb, it might help to take your original estimate and double it.
So, the final version of my hypothetical SMART goal, with some added time cushioning, becomes
“Write ten sci-fi short stories similar in feeling to Ted Chiang’s work and submit
them to fifty magazines within four years.”
You can have multiple goals going on at once, but keep in mind that the more you add, the
harder it will be to achieve all of them, so try to focus on what matters most to you.
We can break up this larger goal into smaller “milestones.”
If a goal is the destination, then milestones are the signposts guiding our path.
For my example goal, the milestones don’t need to be performed in a particular order.
I’d need to study Ted Chiang’s work and perhaps that of other sci-fi short fiction
writers who have a similar vibe.
That might entail annotating those stories or writing craft essays that analyze the author’s
storytelling techniques.
What makes their writing “soulful”?
What sci-fi ideas do they explore?
How might my own writing be in conversation with theirs, building upon or challenging
their thoughts?
I’ll also have to come up with interesting sci-fi ideas.
I might try brainstorming exercises, like listing “what if” questions about humanity
that interest me, or I might research a controversial type of technology and build a story around
that.
I could find ways to experiment with form, structure, and style: one story might be told
in the collective “they,” and another might feature an unreliable narrator.
Most importantly, I need to draft the short stories—and I likely can’t depend on the
first few I write being total gems.
Then I’ll need to revise my stories based on feedback from critique partners.
It’d probably help to research magazines ahead of time and read their submission guidelines.
If I write an 8,000-word short story, I might struggle to find it a good home if most markets
want stories under 5,000 words.
Being aware of all these milestones makes me glad I went with a four-year window for
my goal rather than two, because when I break it down, there are a lot more time-intensive
steps involved.
Some writers set quarterly goals for the year, which are three-month increments.
If you want to get into the nitty-gritty, you can break those goals into weekly and
daily milestones.
This type of time division is a good way to create “check-in” points for yourself
at the end of each quarter to celebrate the goals you’ve met and reassess your goals
for the next quarter.
It’s perfectly normal to have a dozen milestones for one quarter and only achieve two of them,
but make sure you’re prioritizing the one or two goals that are most valuable to you.
These check-ins are also opportunities for you to reflect on what obstacles prevented
you from meeting your quarterly goals, what mistakes you made, and how you can go about
conquering those problems in the next quarter.
Now, you might be saying, “Diane, I don’t give a crap about short stories.
I’m here to write novels.
What kind of goals should I set for that?”
The reason I didn’t want to use writing a novel as my main example is because that’s
one of the goals that varies the most from writer to writer.
It depends on your typing speed, your target word count, the complexity of the novel, the
amount of free time you have, and a thousand other factors.
There’s no one right way to do it.
You can set a word count or duration goal (“I will write 10,000 words,” or “I
will write for one hour”) and specify the time period (every month or five times per
week).
But the problem is avoiding that habit of overestimating how much we can achieve in
a given time—and especially how much we can write.
In an article for Psychology Today, author and psychologist Dr. Melissa Burkley suggests
using an adjustable goal when it comes to writing a novel:
“…if you are a writer struggling to find time to write, start with a goal of 500 words
a day (or if you prefer time, 30 minutes a day).
Once you consistently hit that goal, ratchet it up to 750 or 1,000 words.
And if you struggle to even hit 500 words, lower the bar a bit and strive for 200 words.
It may take you longer to finish your novel but even with a small goal like that, you
will eventually finish if you stick with it.
Sometimes slow and steady is the only way you can finish the race, and that’s okay,
so long as you actually finish.”
Dr. Burkley also advises writing down your goal on a Post-It or a notecard and sticking
it in a location you’ll see every day, like the bathroom mirror or your laptop.
You’ll be more likely to achieve your goals when you’re reminded daily of their importance
to you.
There’s one more thing that’s super helpful in setting long-term writing goals—and it’s
a gross word I hate to use—networking.
It’s not really about networking in solely a business sense but about finding friends
in different parts of the community who can help you and whom you can help in return.
That sense of camaraderie is what makes the writing world go ’round.
This industry won’t survive if we’re not in it together, reading, buying, reviewing,
encouraging, and talking about each other’s work.
You can start off by creating a network web.
List all the categories of people in your life who might be able to support you in your
goals.
This includes family, friends, and coworkers as well as critique partners, beta readers,
literary agents, editors, publishers, artists, cover designers, local booksellers, librarians,
and professional writing organizations.
Within each category, list the people you can connect with in that sphere.
Look for places where you’d like to branch out more.
I noticed recently that my network mostly includes writers and editors, but not enough
book bloggers or general readers who aren’t writers.
Knowing more readers could help me connect with the target audience for my stories.
Find opportunities to expand your network by forging genuine connections with people.
Start up a conversation about their interests.
Be a cheerleader of their work and hobbies.
Attend conferences or mentorship programs.
When I spoke with Langley Hyde, author of the steampunk novel Highfell Grimoires, she
emphasized the importance of building a writing community.
She’s published a number of short stories and frequently mentors aspiring authors (including
me) through the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
She told me: “When I build relationships with other writers,
I hope to create the type of writing community I want to participate in.
I have found support and care and friendship through my relationships with other writers,
and the type of unique understanding that can only come from people who share an undertaking.
The writing community can be generous, filled with people who share their knowledge and
experience.
For me, giving what I can, being in this community, and supporting other writers is an ends of
itself.”
When you need help, it’s good to have a listening ear, and you can in turn give back
to the writing community by becoming a mentor or supportive reader.
The purpose of setting goals is to help you pursue what you’re most passionate about,
but be careful about overtaxing yourself and taking on too much.
Don’t sacrifice your mental or physical health—or your relationships—in the pursuit
of a writing career.
For some people, it’s healthier to treat writing as a hobby or intense creative pursuit
rather than a career ambition because working so hard and seeing little “results” in
the form of publication can drain all enjoyment from writing.
We all fall short of our goals sometimes, but aspiring toward greater heights can make
us challenge our limitations.
Also keep in mind that publishing through the traditional route is largely outside your
control because it depends on someone else’s opinion or the market.
While the dream is to get all your stories published, you might be happier if you set
goals based on internal rather than external factors.
You have control over how many pages you read or how many words you write in a year.
You can choose how many submissions you send out, but not how many acceptances you’ll
receive.
So, I advise against relying solely on external validation.
Yes, it would be great to win awards, but writing more than ten publishable stories
in four years would be a fantastic personal achievement.
That’s enough content to self-publish a short story collection, or to start a blog
or YouTube channel—all of which are goals that you could personally control.
Success is subjective, and you don’t need to be published to consider yourself successful.
Author Kameron Hurley talks about her personal struggles with rejection in pursuing a writing
career: “…what’s my measure of success?
Is it money?
Copies sold?
Or is it the act of persistence itself, the act of continuing to write when everybody
tells you it’s a bad deal, and you should just suck it up and stop?
Persistence, I realized, was not the end goal.
It was the actual game.”
You are the one setting the goal posts, and how you define success will affect how you
feel about yourself and your writing.
As you learn more about your personal limits, you might need to adjust your timeline or
scale down your goal, which is a natural part of the process.
Celebrate your small achievements as much as your massive wins, and you’ll feel more
motivated to create.
What writing goal will you pursue in the next two weeks?
Share it with me in the comments.
Whatever you do, keep writing.