Assessing Your Writing Goals

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You’ve written down some goals in a notebook, but then what did you do? Close the book and go do the washing up? Have you taken any steps towards realising those goals? Or have they lain forgotten in the hustle and bustle of daily life?

It is not enough to write your writing goals down. It’s a good start. You’ve given the matter some thought. Now you need to think it through a bit more.

Go back to where you’ve written your goals. Rewrite out the first goal again. Now, underneath it write out two or three actions that you need to take in order to make that goal happen.

For example, you might have a goal to have a piece of your own writing printed in a magazine. In order to achieve this, you might:

Write in to an Editor on a Letters’ Page for a local or national magazine

Decide to write two queries a week to magazines that you read and are interested in

Decide to buy a book on querying magazines and read it through, acting on two pieces of advice.

You will notice that my ideas for acting on your goal are quite specific. Breaking it down into small steps will help you have an incentive to act towards achieving your goal.

The initial goal was vague, just a possibility. The ideas for achieving that goal make it more likely that you will achieve your goal and gives you not just one, but three different ways of making your goal happen.

Give yourself a time frame where you will come back to your goal and assess where you need to take it next. Queries to magazines take time to compose and many are rejected. In order to increase your chances of being accepted, then you will need to keep sending them out.

Now, go. Write!

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Writing Goals for 2010

I am a writer. I have known that as long as I can remember. I wrote sketches and songs while at school. I wrote stories in English classes that went on for pages and pages. It’s not work to me because I love writing.

I also love reading. I love to read a wide variety of books, including non-fiction, biographies, romance, adventure and not too gory murder mysteries. Reading opens new worlds to my imagination and I often think, ‘how could I possibly do that?’

Here’s something that may never have occurred to you before: these authors once thought that too! They did not just sit down one day and think, ‘I’m going to write a book and its going to be a best seller!’ They started with the conviction that this post started with: I am a writer.

When that conviction got too big to contain any more, they began to write, and write and write some more. As they wrote, they began to gain confidence in their writing, perhaps allowing a close friend to look at it. They took the suggestions on board and wrote a second draft. Then perhaps a third draft or even more. When they were finally happy with their work then they began to submit the manuscript to agents, or publishers. This process can take a long time. There can be many rejections before acceptance. Finally, however they were accepted and more revisions were undertaken before the finished novel hits the shelves.

How do you start this process? Where do you begin? You start to write. You start to plan and you start to dream.

Setting goals can help you on your way to achieving your dreams. It’s not January any more, but you can still set a goal to be achieved in a year’s time. Where do you want to be in a year? Do you want an article published? Do you want to making money from writing? Do you want to  join a creative writing course for the support and help you get there? You decide.

Then think of two or three steps you need to take to get there. You could subscribe to a writing magazine, either online or from the news stands. You might look for a writing course and possibly a friend to go with. You could decide to put some time aside for yourself to investigate the possibilities, reading websites and blogs to find out what you want to do.

Once you have decided what your goal is and how you want to achieve it, then make time to write.

Find a notebook or open a Word document then write. Write regularly. Keep notebooks by your bed to jot down ideas. Look for opportunities to write. Write some more.

Never let go of the thought: I am a writer.

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