Creating Meaningful Writing Goals

When it comes to being a productive writer, creating goals will help you stay focused and on track. However, creating goals that will actually help you achieve what you want to achieve requires some thought and planning. It’s easy to come up with a list of aims, or things you’d like to accomplish in your writing, but without putting more effort into fleshing these out, it will be all too easy to ignore them.

So how can you create meaningful writing goals and ensure that you stick to them? Here are some helpful tips.

Have deadlines

One of the most important things you can do when creating your writing goals is to give each one a deadline. Without a deadline, there is no timeframe, and the goal itself becomes indefinite and endless. Be very careful when giving yourself deadlines. Too far in the future and you’ll keep putting the work off, to close to the present and you could send yourself into a panic, find it too difficult to stick to them and then become disheartened with the process altogether.

Break them down

When it comes to meaningful goal setting writing down the goal itself simply isn’t enough. Start with the big picture, sure, but then make sure your goals have been broken down into manageable, bitesize chunks. If you don’t do this, the goal could seem too overwhelming. By giving yourself smaller tasks, you’ll be able to note your progress and feel so much better about what you are achieving.

Figure out the ‘how’

Having massive, life-changing writing goals such as getting ones book finished and published are brilliant. However, by not figuring out how you are going to achieve this, it’s all too easy to become stressed and worried about the enormity of such a task. To make your goals meaningful, you need to create a plan of exactly how you are going achieve what you want to achieve. This will take some thought, but doing so means you are left with a clear set of instructions to yourself, and you’ll know exactly what you need to do to get to where you need to be!

Be realistic

Being realistic about your goals is also essential. As writers, we must face certain facts. There are some things that are simply out of control and while having a dream of being an international bestseller is brilliant, we must accept that there is a huge amount of competition and many writers remain working away for years and year before they see any kind of success - even then there are no guarantees. Being realistic about what you want to achieve and modifying your goals, so they are based on things you know, with hard work and effort, you can definitely reach, will make the process so much more satisfying and rewarding when you get there,

Be flexible

Remember you might find during your writing project that your goals change. Make sure your goals are flexible and take the time to review them regularly to make sure they are in line with what you actually want, and you haven’t outgrown them. If something is no longer part of your plan, just change it.

Remember your goals are there to give you a sense of focus and make you feel great when you have achieved them. They are your goals, and no one else’s - so as long as you are happy with them and working towards them, that’s all that matters!

Bethany Cadman -author of 'Doctor Vanilla's Sunflowers'

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