It’s a New Year which means either your excited or you feel blah thinking about everything you want to accomplish this year. Whichever camp you’re in I’m sure you have goals! Specially I mean writing goals.
Motivation is unreliable. Yep, I’m right of out the gate with this one. Everyone’s heard this before don’t rely on motivation and that’s because it’s true if you rely on motivation, you’d never get anything done. Trust me. So just start writing.
Alright, I get it this is easier said than done. So, I advise using the two-minute rule. It’s simple and works. Basically, how the two-minute rule works is you set a timer for two minutes and you write for those two minutes, but you have to write until those two minutes end. If you feel like continuing after the timer rings that’s great, if you don’t that’s okay too, at least you got a little bit done.
2. Keep your goals list short, and to the point.
If you have ten things on your list and realistically you can only achieve three of them, you’ll feel overwhelmed trying to complete them all, and in the end, you’ll feel like crap by not completing them all by your set deadline, which I’m assuming is the end of the year.
3. Get the Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi, I personally recommend the second edition this has many more entries then the first. This book will flush out character emotions and enhance you writing. They also have other books in this series which I also recommend but start with The Emotion Thesaurus first.
4. What is You Why?
If you take nothing else from this post, take this. Something that can keep you going when you reach that point of wanting to give up is remembering why you started this project that being with. Why is it important to you?
5. Smart Goals
I’ll take a guess, since you’re reading this that your dream is to write and publish a book. That’s where smart goals can help. If you haven’t heard of smart goals I’ll explain, smart is an acronym for:
S stands for specific. Make the goal you want to achieve clear. For example, want to finish the first draft of my manuscript by June. What steps would you take to make that a reality.
M is for Measurable. Track your success as your progress in your journey. Because let’s face it, if you feel like you’re not succeeding you won’t want to progress further. And if you want to give yourself a reward every time you reach a new milestone. Like, you get to watch your favorite movie when you finish a scene or chapter.
A is for Attainable remember to be realistic set as much if not more time than you need to reach your goal.
R is for Relevant make sure the goal has a purpose to you and you over goal.
T is for Time. Make sure you have specific deadline. Take the example I want to finish my first draft. When do you want to finish you first draft?