by Stephanie Morrill
Stephanie writes young adult contemporary novels and is the creator of GoTeenWriters.com. Her novels include The Reinvention of Skylar Hoyt series (Revell) and the Ellie Sweet books (Playlist). You can connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and check out samples of her work on her author website including the free novella, Throwing Stones.
On December 31st, I settled at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, a notebook, and a pen. My seven-year-old daughter spotted me, retrieved a notebook and pen of her own, and asked, “What are we doing?”
I explained that because tomorrow would be the first day of 2015, I was thinking about goals and how I want to spend my time in the coming year. She told me about a show they had watched at school where the girl’s goal was to read 30 books that year and the robot’s goal was to take over the world. “Is that what you mean?” she asked, and then she set to work with a list of her own goals.
The only thing I love more than making a list of goals and plans is making a list of writing goals and plans. Depending on what I anticipate my year being like, I have two methods I like to use:
If you have a lot of structure in your schedule (or if you have writing contracts with hard deadlines) then this is a great way to make sure you’re giving yourself enough time to get the work done.
Read proofs of book one
Create marketing plan for book one
Line up book signings and marketing plan stuff for release of book one
Launch book one of series
Create proposal for new book idea
Then I break it down by month:
And last, I break it down by what needs to happen each week. If I need to write 30k by January 31st, I would look at how much needed to be written per week. I personally like weekly goals because I typically only write four days a week, but that’s just a preference.
When I have deadlines, this is a really effective way for me to make sure I’m spreading the work out well. I’m not the type who does particularly well when writing under pressure, so it’s helpful to me to think ahead about how divide up the work.
Let’s talk about the growth thing first. Instead of setting a goal of reading five books a month, I’ll instead decide that I’m going to listen to audio books on my iPod whenever I’m in the car by myself. This way I don’t get “penalized” if I choose to read The Goldfinch one month versus if I read The Giver. It’s not about how fast I’m reading, just that I’m doing it.
But I also like to make one big goal and create a system for getting it done that doesn’t put a time limit on things. Last year at this time, my son was regularly in and out of the hospital, and I knew this wasn’t the type of year to make the super detailed goals list.
I had no writing deadlines on my calendar, and I had a book that I’d been burning to write for months, and I finally had time to do it. Theoretically, anyway. Some weeks I was only getting a few hours of work time, and I had no idea when it might get better. So instead of saying, “I want to have an outline by the end of January and a first draft by the end of March, etc.” I told myself that when I had writing time, this was the project I was going to plug away at. Even if it took me all year to write it (and it did) I would just make whatever progress I could in whatever time I had.
This year, since my life is shifting under my feet a bit more than I’d like, I chose to draft an email to my agent about how I would spend my time this year if it was solely up to me. It was a really helpful way to crystallize what projects are most important to me, and what I would ideally accomplish. It’s also helpful for her to see what kind of pace I’m comfortable with and how I view success.
My daughter, McKenna, is learning to sew right now, and I encouraged her to think not just about what she wants to sew, but also what it will take to accomplish those projects. Here’s what she wrote for goals:
