Setting Writing Goals
Setting goals as an author is a fine balancing act, because there are a lot of things that are outside of your control. You could set a goal to have stories published in certain markets, find an agent for your novel, or win a prestigious award, but you can’t entirely control those things happening. Sure, you can write stories that you submit to those markets, send your novel to agents, and ask people to consider your work for awards, but the end results can be elusive.
For me, setting writing goals as opposed to author goals is more practical, because I have more control over my personal output of writing. I can tell myself that I’m going to write sixteen stories in a year by spending three weeks on each story, followed by some revisions after they’ve sat for a bit. I can plan to outline and write a novel in about three months, which means I could buckle down and write four first draft novels in a year. I can self-publish multiple books each year, whether those are some of the novels I’ve written or collections of short stories or poetry. Those are all attainable goals, if I work toward each of them. And they can help lead to reaching the goals in the first paragraph, but not necessarily in an orderly progression. But I find that by focusing on the attainable, writing output goals, you can wind up reaching those author goals. It just takes a lot of perseverance and time!
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