Goals: Rewarding yourself.

This month I’m talking about something super important to me as a writer: Goals!  So far we’ve discussed the importance of goals, setting achievable goals, keeping ourselves accountable, setting deadlines, being goal-depressed, and writing challenges.  Today, we’re talking about the good stuff.

Rewarding yourself.

Life can’t be all stick and no carrot.  I like to give myself little rewards for accomplishing things.  For sprints I will sometimes keep small pieces of candy at my desk.  When I over shoot my hourly sprint goal, I earn a piece of candy or a Dr Pepper or tea with real sugar.  When I finish a novel I might earn a new pair of jeans or some other thing I’ve been wanting.

I don’t think that rewards are a necessary part of goals, but they help.  Writing is a lonely process, it’s also one that is slow to bare fruit so it’s nice to get something in your hands that’s tangible.  I know the self-bribery system works wonders for me.   I know I can twist the rules and get what I want anyways (because who is going to stop me?) but if I do I’ll have a pang of goal-depression and it’s not worth that.

How do you reward yourself?

Goals: Participating in group challenges.

This month I’m talking about something super important to me as a writer: Goals!  So far we’ve discussed the importance of goals, setting achievable goals, keeping ourselves accountable, giving yourselves deadlines, and rebounding from goal-depression.  Whew!  Today I want to talk about something I touched on when I talked about accountability.  Today is all about group challenges.

I’m a highly competitive person.  Putting me head to head with someone else when I think I can win is a guaranteed way to make me double my efforts.  You can set up challenges with your friends or people you know.  My friends and I actually met thanks to a writing challenge, NaNoWriMo.  These group efforts stir up a lot of encouragement and frenzy to do things.

Here’s a list of writing challenges that can help you meet your goals:

• #1k1hr – These are sprints done on Twitter.  This isn’t so much a challenge as a way to make a focused effort on writing for a solid hour with the end goal being to have written 1,000 words.  You can do these at any time, just twitter with the hash tag!
• NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month is a division of Office of Letters and Light that challenges participants to write 50,000 words in a month.  Many people who have never written a novel join NaNo and write more than they’ve ever written in their life.  This is held annually in November.  The OLL team has a NaNoWriMo forum, and volunteers that moderate each region, setting up local events for writers.  It’s very exciting!
• Story a Day in May – This is going on it’s second year in 2011.  The challenge is to write a short story a day, every day in May.  I’m not participating in it this year, but I’m going to be sponsoring a prompt challenge.
• April Fools – This is similar to NaNoWriMo, but smaller.  Participants can set their own goals.  There is a forum, but it lacks the regional face-to-face interaction.
• A Round of Words in 80 Days – This just started on April 4th.  Participants sign up on the blog and create their own goals.  Unlike the other challenges that have goals set for you, you set your own.
• Savvy Author Boot Camp (paying members only   ) – I recently signed up for a Savvy membership.  In May they are separating us into teams of about five people, and we write or edit pages.  The team who does the most wins a workshop credit.

Do you know of any other writing challenges?

Goals: What do you do when you get goal-depressed?

This month I’m talking about something super important to me as a writer: Goals!  So far we’ve talked about the importance of goals, setting achievable goals, keeping ourselves accountable, and giving yourself deadlines.  That’s a lot to do.  I’m kind of tired just thinking about it.  In fact, I might need a Dr Pepper just to move on with my day!

If you set goals, no matter how achievable they are, you’re going to miss them sometime.  Life will get busy, stuff will happen, or you’ll just let them slide.  Remember that sticky note I used to jot my goals down on and forget about?  Towards the end, about the time when I ‘accidentally’ knocked it off the wall and threw it away was usually when I was goal-depressed.  I wasn’t doing what I wanted, and I felt guilty about it.

So how do you bounce back from goal depression?

I like to first ask myself:

• Why I didn’t meet my goals?
• Was there something going on in my life that kept me from doing it?
• Was I just not feeling it?
• Was I not interested in my goals?
• Did something else come up?

When I was in college I missed writing a really major paper for a class – because my dad was in the hospital because of a heart attack.  I completely forgot about it.  Thankfully my professor understood and I got an extension.  This last month I wanted to finish writing my novel by the end of March, I finished it the first week in April.  I got distracted by a new short story idea, and I struggled with motivation for a while.  The basic fact is that our goals should be flexible.  Life happens.  We lose creativity, something else snags our attention, and that’s okay.

I’m a big supporter of the IED plan.

1. Identify why you didn’t meet your goal.
2. Embrace the fact that, yes, you are bummed you didn’t do everything you wanted to do.
3. Decide on a new set of goals or method of attack.

A lot of people forget about Step 2 because they want to run before they walk.  Accepting the goal-depression or being bummed about not meeting your expectations is important.  Give yourself permission to wallow in your disappointment.  And then move on.  Let it go.

Once you’ve evaluated the reasons why you didn’t meet your goals you can set new goals or new deadlines.  I think the big thing is to not let goal-depression stop you from moving forward.  You’re going to run into disappointments in life, but you can’t let it stop you.

Some things I do when I get goal-depressed to get my creativity going again:

• go for a drive
• take a shower
• reread a favorite book
• read a new book
• free write or brainstorm

Everyone will deal with their goal-depression differently.  What works for me might not work for you.  Do you have coping mechanism to deal with your disappointments?

Goals: Time tables.

This month I’m talking about something super important to me as a writer: Goals!  So far we’ve discussed the importance of goals, setting achievable goals, and keeping ourselves accountable.  Today I want to talk about time tables, or setting deadlines for your goals.

How many times have you thought about something and said,

“Oh, I’ll do that later.”

Or,

“I’ll do that tomorrow/this weekend/next month/another year.”

You know what the likelihood of doing those things?

Not very good.

Deadlines light the proverbial fire under your booty.

So why not use them to get yourself motivated?

Think about the list of goals you wrote down last Friday when we talked about accountability and evaluate them.  Do you have dates for when you would like to achieve them?

Setting deadlines for yourself cuts down on the ‘Someday’ mindset.  “Someday I’ll…”  Instead of that, you know that you will, because you’ve been working on it.  Share these deadlines with friends, blog about them, write it on a sticky note, or stick a huge red dot on a calendar you see often to remind yourself that your progress is due then.

There will be some people who will argue with me that deadlines steal time from their creativity because they’re so focused on the deadline.  There will be others who are driven by the deadline, and still yet others who find deadlines depressing.  I personally think they are a good thing.

Here’s a practical application of setting deadlines from how I do things.  Each month I make a monthly goals blog wherein I list what I wanted to do the previous month, I discuss what I really did, and then I set goals for the new month.  This for me is my statement of intent; my goals.  Each week I check in as a means to keep myself accountable and blog about my progress.  Sometimes I realize that what I wanted to do that month just isn’t possible and I correct my goals.  It’s not worth beating myself up over realizing I can’t do a certain thing this month, or that I would be better prepared to deal with it in a month or two.

Are you a ‘Someday’ mindset kind of person?  Or do you set deadlines for yourself?

Goals: Keeping yourself accountable.

This month I’m talking about something super important to me as a writer: Goals!  Last week we talked about the importance of goals and Wednesday about setting achievable goals.  Today I want to talk about the evil A word: accountability.

I don’t know about you, but I’m naturally lazy. L-a-z-y with a capital L!  When I began making goals, I never met them.  I would write them down on a sticky note, ignore it, pretend it didn’t exist, and then ‘accidentally’ knock it off the wall when I was cleaning and tossed it in the trash.  Not a very good way of getting something done.

When I was in college I learned about the power of lists.  I made them, and discovered that I got a rush out of crossing things off my list.  Then last year I started blogging monthly about my goals.  I’ve gone to weekly and monthly because that’s what works for me.  I don’t really need people to encourage me or make sure I’m on track.

But maybe you do.

I have a group of friends, Team Awesome, who help me with the more unsavory goals.  One of my goals for this month is to tidy up a manuscript I wrote last year and give it to them to read.  I’m not going to publish it, I just want to share it with them for kicks.  But then I started working on it and it’s terrible!  I want to shove it in a drawer and pretend we never talked about it.  But my friends won’t let me.  They are keeping me accountable – against my will.

Having check points for your goals keeps them in your mind.  Maybe you don’t need weekly goals, maybe you need daily ones, or maybe quarterly goals work for you.  Whatever works for you is great, but find out what works for you.  Here are some suggestions for ways to keep yourself accountable.

• Lists.  I like lists because I can scratch things off and see a visual comparison of what I’ve accomplished as opposed to what I still have to do.
• Blogs.  Sharing my goals with other people makes me feel like I now have a promise to people to do those things.
• Calendar.  Say you want to accomplish something by a certain day.  A lot of calendars have reminder options.  You can plug-in the date you want to have everything done by, and set up periodic reminders.  I have a calendar cloud computing system that will actually send me text messages.
• Make a pact.  If you have friends, make a pact to keep one another accountable and check in with each other.
• Challenges.  I’m talking about this in a week or so, but I’ll add it to this list.

So how do you keep yourself accountable?

Goals: Setting achievable goals.

This month I’m talking about something super important to me as a writer: Goals!  Last week I talked about why it’s important to set goals.  If you know me, you know I’m all about setting goals and achieving them.  They motivate me!  Today I want to talk about setting achievable goals.

Last week I used the analogy of a ladder.  Each rung is a goal to achieve, and each time you accomplish it you climb just a little bit higher.  But what if your goals are set too high?  What if the next rung on the ladder is six feet up there and you’re only five feet tall?  What good does that do you?!?

I hear a lot of people talk about setting goals that are too high, too much, or too demanding.  I think that keeping a few of these goals on your list is good because it gives you a lofty goal, but if all of your goals are that high the chances of accomplishing anything are slim.  I don’t know about you, but when I can’t meet my goals I get blue and really down on myself.  So what good do those goals do me?  None.  None at all!

Achievable goals are things you can do.  They are that next run on the ladder.  Some of them are more difficult, but they are things that you, on your own, can accomplish.  I talk to people a lot about their goals and I hear plenty of lofty goals that are in no way achievable.

Unachievable goals are things that you as a person have no control over.  Examples of unachievable goals are things like:

• Publish a book. Unless you’re self publishing, you have no control over the publishing process.
• Get an Agent. They don’t sell agents at my local Wal-Mart.
• Be a Best Selling Author. I want the mind control to make people buy my books!

Achievable goals, on the other hand, are things like:

• Writing a book. – This is a big achievement for a lot of people.  It’s not a bad goal!  In fact, setting daily/quarterly/yearly writing goals are a good thing.
• Editing the manuscript until it sparkles. – Editing is an art.  I’m learning now more about it, and it takes a lot of skill!
• Writing a killer query. – This takes skill!
• Crafting a synopsis that captures the heart of my novel.
• Building a platform.
• Learn about publishing.

I know I’m probably killing some people’s dreams.  Let me say this now, your dreams are yours.  Keep those dreams, but set realistic goals.  Find things that will get you one step closer to your dream and do those.  Write daily.  Read blogs.  Network with agents and editors on social media.  Go to conferences.  Learn your craft.

For me, my goals are fluid and always changing.  Each month I evaluate where I am and what I want to do.  This month, for example, I want to:

• Finish Casual Love. Write “The End” and stick it on a shelf.  I’m 100% committed to this project, but I know that the amount of
• work the first 1/3 of the book needs is going to be excruciating unless I separate myself from it a little.
• Add new scenes to Blood Bound.
• Go through my completed novels (Absolutely and Maliginus, mainly) and evaluate them for revision worthiness.  I think they’re both worth looking at and working with but we’ll see!
• Side project short stories.  Write a few.  Get them out of my system.

These are things I have control over.  These are achievable goals.  Each week I make a small list of things I want to do, like write daily, read a book on craft, get through a manuscript.  This year, I have four big goals I set for myself.  They are:

• I want to revise something, polish it until it shines and submit it.
• I want to read and actually put into practice what I learn from technique books.
• I want to write three novels this year.
• I want to work on having a ‘professional’ platform, which means better blogging, smarter twittering, attending local writer’s things and when I have the $ joining a professional association (RWA probably).

Think about your dreams.  Write them down even!  Now come up with one to two achievable goals for each dream you have.  What are some goals you can make for yourself for this next week to get you on your way?

Goals: Why are goals such a big deal?

This month I’m talking about something super important to me as a writer: Goals!

If you’re a writer, published or not, take a moment and count up the number of times you’ve heard someone say one of the following things:

• I want to write a book someday.
• I have an idea that would make a great book.
• Someday I’ll have enough time to write.
• When I sell that book I want to write…

There’s a term for people who want to write, talk about writing and generally never put pen to paper; they’re called writer masturbaters.   I’m stealing the term from Suzan.  It’s a colorful way to describe those people who never finish anything.  They don’t have goals, they have a pie in the sky attitude about writing and the reality is that they’ll never accomplish half of what they want to.

Think of goals like rungs on a ladder.  Each one you accomplish takes you up just a little bit more.  How can you climb a ladder with no rungs?  Sure, some people can pants their way through things, but at some point you need a game plan.  Every sports team has plays, knitters have patterns, writer’s have plots – and you need goals!

I’m a goal addict.  I like setting lots of goals and working on them.  Next week I’m going to talk about how to set goals and the difference between them.  Yes, there is an anatomy to a goal, but for this week I want to leave you with this thought.

A goal without a plan is just a wish.

What do you wish for?

April Topical Blogging

If you’ve spent any amount of time around my blog or me, you probably know I’m a big fan of setting goals and achieving them.  For me setting those goals is a big part in how I acomplish even a fraction of what I do in a day, week, month or year.  So why not share my goal setting process and whyI think it’s so important?

April is going to be all about Goals!

• April 8th:  Why are goals such a big deal?
• April 13th:  Setting achievable goals.
• April 15th:  Keeping yourself accountable.
• April 20th:  Time tables.
• April 22nd:  What do you do when you get goal-depressed?
• April 26th:  Participating in group challenges.
• April 29th: Rewarding yourself.

I know I’m breaking it down into a lot of smaller pieces and that’s a lot of blogs talking about goals, but I feel very strongly about setting goals for your writing.