What’s your plan for 2024?
In the next few weeks, you’re going to probably see a lot of things about goal setting.
Whether they’re calling it resolutions, or planning out next year, or asking “what are your goals for 2024?” it all amounts to the same thing:
“What do you want to do in the coming year?”
Some people love this. They see it as a chance to start fresh. They’re going to do things differently this year. They’re going to embrace all the things they feel they should have been doing, but didn’t, in the prior year.
That’s why gym memberships skyrocket in January.
That’s also why I tend to see a bump in client consults. This is the year that they’re going to write that book. This is the year they’re going to take their writing careers seriously. This is the year they’re going to get published.
You should absolutely pursue these things.
If you want to write a book, take your writing career seriously, even get published, you’ve certainly got a good shot. You can definitely get closer than you are now.
The trick is to be very clear on how you’re going to approach it, how you’re going to prepare for it, and how you’re going to keep track of it.
How you approach it.
Hopefully you’re still working on building your support network and your mindset. You’ll also be armed with your personal GMC: what you want, why you want it, and what you think you need to do, realistically, to get it.
You’re then going to set your goal for the first quarter, based on that GMC… based on what’s currently standing in the way, let’s say. Your first steps.
If you want to, say, become a New York Times bestselling author for high fantasy? If you haven’t written a novel yet, well, writing the novel is your first step.
Since high fantasy tends to run 80-100k words, that’s probably not going to happen in three months. Although it might – you’re going to know what your writing process/speed is already, or you’re going to learn.
So if you feel, on a good day, you write 1000 words a day, theoretically you could get the book written in eighty to one hundred days, right? If there are about ninety days in a quarter, that means you could just about be done with a draft in that time?
In theory, sure.
In reality? Hold on there!
Build a buffer.
Most people approach goal setting with the assumption that they’ll be doing what they’re able to on their best day, when everything lines up, when they’re well rested, when they’re inspired. Basically, when nothing goes wrong.
We both know that’s hardly ever the case.
So what you’re going to do is build in a buffer. You’re going to assume that things are going to jump the rails from time to time. Your kid’s going to come down with stomach flu. Your dog is going to eat a hard drive. Your day job is going to have an all-hands-on-deck crunch. Beyond that, you’re going to need rest and replenishment.
Whatever you think you can accomplish?
Cut that in half.
I am serious.
This isn’t what you want to hear, I imagine. But trust me: setting a smaller goal and accomplishing it is training your brain to believe you when you say you’re going to do something. Better to aim low and overshoot than to aim way too high and “keep failing.”
So you’re going to set smaller goals than you’re used to, in a smaller time frame than you’re used to. If you hit that goal, then you can go for the bigger ones. (And don’t think I don’t see you out there, saying “okay, I’ll just write 40k words” but secretly think “but really I’m writing 80k! Ha ha!” If you can, great, but set it small first!)
Choose only one goal. Two, max.
If you’re working a day job, have relationship and/or family obligations, have social obligations… basically, if you can’t treat writing like a day job, then you probably won’t have the mental, emotional, or physical bandwidth to tackle “all the things.”
Your goals need to reflect that. Again, we’re looking at capacity, we’re being realistic, and we’re aiming for grounded goals.
This is not sexy. This can be frustrating. You might feel despair that you’re never going to get where you want to go at this rate.
At which point I drag out the cliché: it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon. Manage your energy and your expectations. This is how you get to the finish line, and ultimately, that’s what you want.
If you are writing full time, or you’re self-publishing or under contact in addition to the other obligations, then I’d suggest one writing goal and one promotion goal.
What does a quarterly goal look like?
It can be an umbrella goal with separate parts.
For example, if you’re going to write 40k words of your high fantasy, maybe that means doing the world building and fleshing out the magic system; doing the character work; brainstorming plot points; then writing the words. (Keep in mind, if you’re doing all that, you may want to drop your word count after considering how long the pre-writing might take.)
Or… you might just dive in there. Maybe you have the foundation work done already. Maybe you don’t! But you’re just going to write an exploratory draft. That’s fine, too. Just be clear.
For a promotion goal, it depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.
If you’ve got, say, a book launching in February, then you’ll probably want to do the launch ramp-up in January (and, hopefully, you’ve done stuff already.)
You could set a promotion goal of I want to sell x books in the first month as an umbrella goal. Then you’d have a cascade of steps beneath that. You could create a calendar and schedule social media posts; write newsletters; possibly buy ads. Things that you believe, in theory, will move the needle and accomplish that sales goal.
Note: some people don’t believe in setting goals with variables they can’t control. For example, you can’t set a goal of, say, getting an agent or getting a pub contract – it’s not under your control. Alternatively, you can’t control how many of your books you sell. You can, say, send out a hundred queries, or write however many words, or post on social media every three days or whatever. If you feel this way, that’s fine! But you’re not querying for the hell of it… you want to get the agent/contract. So it’s a bit semantic, in my opinion. Know what you want, and then test the theory of what’s going to get you there.
Which brings us to our next bit.
Create measurements and track them.
Management consultant Peter Drucker famously said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”
With any goal you set up, you’re going to choose a few key indicators, to see if your theories – what you attempt – pay off. If not, whether you should adjust, or scrap. If they do, maybe amplify and lean in.
What that looks like for writing.
So if you’ve got a goal of writing 40k words, you need to track how many words you’ve written. Ideally, tracking how long it took you to write those words helps, too.
Personally, I use a pre-writing document for all my novels. If you use Scrivener, you could create a notes section or similar. I use it to help me keep track of how long it took me to write a scene, as well as brainstorming and getting over starting friction before “facing the blank page.” (I strongly recommend Rachel Aaron’s 2k to 10k – I’ve created a variation with the time tracking, but she details the concept.) I also use it as a journal. If something is going on in my life, I jot a little note, like “car is in shop, ugh” or “stuck on this scene – is the set up wrong?” That way, if I don’t write much, I’ll know why later on.
Then I can track how much I wanted to get written vs. how much I did get written – and have a record as to what contributed to my productivity (or lack thereof!) and a way to figure out a rough average.
What that looks like for promotion.
Obviously, if you’re trying to increase sales, tracking sales is key.
If you’re trying to see if your theory is working, then you need to track the performance indicators that make a difference.
For example, if you chose to post on social media every three days as your promotion goal, with an eye towards selling x books during launch month… but your books didn’t sell the way you’d hoped. Do you just scrap social media entirely? What’s the measurement there?
You’d probably look at followers, insights, engagement.
Let’s say you wanted to sell 1,000 books in your launch month. (I’m just using random, easily conceptualized numbers, don’t necessarily use these!)
You theorize that social media will help with that. So you religiously post every day on Instagram, leading up to the launch.
You only sell 100.
Does that mean that social media is a bust and you should abandon it?
Not necessarily, although I would suggest perhaps a different approach next quarter. The important thing is to look at your insights. On Instagram, if you go to your profile and click on “insights” it tells you your reach. How many followers you have. How many followers saw your stuff, how many non-followers saw your stuff. How much engagement you have, again by followers vs. non-followers. When your followers are most active.
I’m not doing a deep dive into Instagram. But if you only have, say, 250 followers on Instagram, and little engagement despite all that posting, and maybe 2 non-followers interacting… then yeah, this maybe isn’t the best approach. If you are going to continue, maybe cut the number of posts to the times when followers are most active, look at what content got the most comments/likes/whatever, and then adjust your social media strategy.
But you wouldn’t know to do any of that without tracking.
Make it as easy as possible. You don’t have to track absolutely everything – just the stuff that relates to your goal.
Write it down, make it happen.
This is the last bit of advice.
Write your goals down.
That’s a book title, a constant Tony Robbins quote, and it’s used in any number of motivational speeches. It’s also something that successful people toss around in TED talks. They’ll achieve some monumental thing, then they’ll be cleaning out their desk only to find a hand-written note that showed how a decade ago, they’d written that exact thing. Isn’t that amazing!
Which, yeah, it is. But it’s also a matter of focus.
You write it down. Especially if it’s somewhere you see it constantly. (Not to slam the note-lost-in-desk thing!)
Then you take steps towards making it happen. Even better, your subconscious starts working on it, while you consciously aren’t.
So for 2024, I’m going to suggest:
Set your small, achievable quarterly goal.
Write it down.
Track it.
I’m rooting for you!
That’s it for me in 2023!
2023 has been both challenging and rewarding.
Personally, there have been some family health issues and other tough emotional spots.
Professionally, my book Role Playing (the one I did the case study on) garnered great reviews, and has been on several Best of 2023 lists, including the NYT’s for romance. (Believe me, I screamed in my kitchen at that one!)
It’s been a study in opposites. I’m grateful for all of it, especially as I get older and see that nothing’s promised. My own mindset has improved, and it has made everything easier and more rewarding.
I’m looking forward to working with you and sharing with you in the coming New Year.
I’m taking next week off, but don’t worry… we’ll start January off strong.
Let’s do this thing!