Making the Leap toward Serious Writer: Setting Goals

Writing is a lot like playing a sport. In order to improve at a sport you have to practice a lot. You have to put in the effort, learn techniques, and get assistance from a coach. You study the greats to see what they did. So with writing. Also like playing a sport, you have to set goals. If you don’t set goals (improve batting average, make two three-point shots in the next game, make the varsity team) then you might as well be simply standing still, dribbling a ball in place. Goals are a necessary process to improvement and to being our best.

In setting goals, you want to consider short-term, long-term, and middle-ground goals.

1.  Long Term Goals are far out, multi-step accomplishments that have to be met by progress over time. A long term goal could be to publish a book, get five stories placed in top literary magazines, or to write and promote a weekly comic strip. Your long term goals should be at least a year distant, but can be as far away as five years. The bigger the goal, the longer the time you allow yourself. If you accomplish your goal before the time allotted, you win. If it takes you longer, you reassess.
2.   Middle-distance Goals are the steps that help you to reach your long term goals. To determine your middle-distance goals, think realistically about what has to happen in order to reach your goal of publishing a novel. If you have yet to write said novel, start there. How much time might you need to write the novel? Does it require research? Will it have chapters? Realistically plan an outline and set goals for each step in the process. Giving each step a time limit is helpful, such as, complete first draft in 18 months. Complete second draft in 6 months.
3. Short Term Goals are the individual bricks that help you reach your middle-distance goals. Your middle-distance goals might need to be split into several pieces, and you might set daily, weekly, and monthly goals. You might need to create yourself a chart of some sort, or use an app, or find some other way to hold yourself accountable, such as reporting progress to a writing group.

As you begin to reach your short-term goals (or not reach your short-term goal) it is important to reassess. You might have decided to set out at a pace that is too strenuous for you, and you need to go from a goal of five written pages a day down to two written pages. Or, perhaps your goal of writing one poem a week is not challenging enough, and you already find yourself writing two or three first drafts a week. Perhaps you will change your goal to two first drafts and at least one revision.

Your goals should be challenging, but not impossible. There is nothing wrong with revising them. You must have some kind of accountability, whether that means self-review or reaching out to others. Making goals and reaching them is not an easy part of the process, but if you wish your writing to be something more than some scribbles in your private diar, then you want to commit to something bigger. Setting goals makes your dreams real. No longer are you a wide-eyed kid making up rhymes in your math notebook: you are a serious writer who wants to share ideas with the world.

Take the leap and set your goals high.

5 Ways to Stay Involved with the Writing World

A Writer without Her Community

Let’s suppose that you are one of those writers who falls outside of the literary loop. One of those writers who works outside of a university, in a full-time, Monday through Friday 8:30 to 5:00 PM job, and you no longer live anywhere near where you got your MFA. But you’re not done with writing. You tap away long after the rest of the family is asleep, or long before the rest of the family is awake, or you send them all on errands so you can get some alone time with your laptop. But you miss workshops, you miss going to readings and talking poetry, you miss the late-night disagreements over coffee or beer about who was the better writer: Hemingway or Welty.

Sure, if you were one of these people with boundless energy, you could create a writing group, either online or in person, exchanging work monthly. Which I absolutely recommend, but if you are that kind of motivated person, you probably also wash your clothes before you completely run out of socks. Good for you. You do exist. For the rest of us, we need to find ways to maintain at least a tenuous connection with the literary world.

 Facebook it.

The omnipresent Facebook. There are many writing groups, MFA alumni groups, and pages for journals, writers, and publishers. You can see what everyone else is publishing on a regular basis, and offer encouragement by liking, heart-ing, and sharing. An easier way to create a more manageable, virtual writing group.

There’s an App for That

There are great writing and poetry apps out there. Two of my favorites (both free) are Poetry Daily and Poetry (as in The Poetry Foundation and Poetry Magazine). Poetry Daily, with its new poem every day, keeps me in the habit of reading at least one new poem a day, and since it always includes where the poem first appeared, I also find out about journals and recently published books. 

Poetry has a great archive of poems, so if I want to read a favorite again, most likely it will be in the archives. It also has a fun feature where you can “spin” to match two themes, and then the app produces a list of poems which include these two themes, like “Humor & Youth” and you’ll get hilarious poems such as, “Dear Amy Nehzooukammyatootill,” a hilarious compilation of quotes from student letters to Aimee Nezhukumatathil.

Podcasts & Lectures

Since we are allowed to work with headphones in, I will often listen to lectures or podcasts about writing. i-Tunes U (another app) includes offerings such as Open Yale courses. One of my favorites is Dr. Amy Hungerford’s American Novel Since 1945. Lectures from the course fulfill my aching appetite for a higher, analytical literary discussion. Of the podcasts, one of my favorites is Poetry off the Shelf, also from The Poetry Foundation. Hosted by producer Curtis Fox, the episodes include readings, discussions with poets and critics, and a constant awareness of the politics of poetry.

Subscribe

Subscribing to literary journals and magazines should be a requirement for every writer. Not only is this another way to find the new writers and writings first, money is the greatest show of appreciation in the United States, so we should show our appreciation of the written word by paying for it. Journals are steadily moving to an online presence, where there is less overhead and the ability to feature more work. The new format is financially prudent and convenient, but if we want to keep the printed journals around, we are going to have to pay for them. If you don’t know where to start, hit your local library or bookstore—Barnes & Noble has a literature section in their periodicals. Choose one to start with and order the hard copy.

Cultivate the Conversation

Often, we crave the conversation of other literary nerds, who either are writers of serious literature themselves, or who share our perhaps slightly elitist taste in poetry and non-genre fiction. However, you are probably not going to live next door to a published writer, you will probably live next door to someone who read and loved Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train and Jojo Moyes Me before You. Maybe your synagogue or church has a book club, or perhaps your local library has one. There is no law that says you cannot read what everyone else is reading, including best sellers. Grow relationships with other readers, even if they do not have the same tastes as you. I joined by work book club, and I love having the opportunity to talk to my normal people coworkers about books, even when I am not completely in love with the choices.

She Can Get by with a Little Help from Her Friends