One thing people remark on frequently is my productivity. Throughout the year, I oversee two electronic publications (a montly eMagazine and the Children's Writer eNews), write for magazines, write about writing for print publications, speak at my local conference (most years), and now, write middle grade novels for a packager. Plus, I teach writing, and I do the wife and mommy thing daily. I find the key to meeting all these commitments is planning and careful goal setting. Now that the new year is upon us, I'm looking at last year and planning for this year. Have you been thinking about your goals for 2007?

Goals Vs. Wishes

As writers, we all have goals (even if we haven't created an organized list of them) and we all have wishes -- things we would love to see happen as soon as possible. Can you tell the difference between the two? Many of us set goals for the year that sound like this: sell 2 stories a month or get book contract or get more respect for my writing from my family. Those are great things to hope for, but they depend upon someone other than you. Therefore, they aren't goals, they're wishes or hopes.

A goal is something completely within your control. You can control how many stories you write. You can control how many stories you submit. But you cannot control how an editor will react to your stories. You can decide to conduct yourself like a professional, but you cannot control how your family will react to that. Therefore, your goals should focus on things within your control completely.

Obtainable Goals

The first step to setting good goals is to analyze how you've done in the past. How many stories did you write last year? Look over the months of the year -- which was your most productive month? How much did you write? Did something dramatic happen that allowed you to reach that level or was it simply a matter of commitment to your writing. If your most productive month last year was completely something you controlled -- perhaps you could make it a goal to repeat that level for 6 out of 12 months this year. Or you might feel really bold and set it for every month this year. But you wouldn't likely meet the goal of doubling your most productive month last year and setting that as your monthly goal this year.

Consider a complicated sliding scale for your production goals. If you fail to meet your goals right away, it's easy to give up and simply muddle through this year with no more success than last year. So you may wish to begin with a goal of meeting your average production last year and work up to meeting your top production by spring. Again, the key is to see steady increase while keeping workable goals.

Goals that aren't at all challenging tend to leave you feeling like you're not getting ahead. Goald that are too challenging to be met, leave you feeling defeated. So it's important to strike that balance.

Bribes Work For Writers Too

One way to keep incentive high for meeting goals (especially in such a challenging business) is to plan a monthly reward for meeting goals. If you are using the sliding scale plan for goal setting, the rewards to increase with the goals. Rewards can be small like a snazzy new pen (if you have a major pen fetish like I do) or larger like writing books, newsletter subscriptions, or even conferences or classes.

1. Goals that are totally dependent upon me.
2. Challenging but workable goals developed by analyzing past work production.
3. Rewards along the way to keep up morale.