How do you set your goals?

Exactly. I have 5 from 3 to 16, and it's nearly constantly either,"Daddy. Daddy. Daddy? Daddy!" or someone somewhere is screaming at someone else. My wife wants my whole attention when she's home from work. It's just tough. I'm here right now, because I want to write, but everytime I bring up word, someone comes with a question or demand. lol

 

I'm there with you guys. I have an 8 y.o. and an almost 3 y.o. The 3 y.o. goes to daycare 3 days a week. Right now I am a SAHM, not really by choice -- more by the fact that I moved years ago, and then couldn't find a job, ended up doing contract work, which was fine with me since I then had my first son. Then when I had my second son, there was almost no contract work anymore and it's too hard to find something with a reasonable commute and pick up my kids from daycare or aftercare. That's partially why I started writing.

I haven't so much had a huge problem finding time to write -- I wrote my first novel back in November/December and since then I've been trying to get feedback, etc. on it. (That's been very frustrating.) I ended up writing 2 others, when I had spare time or at night after everyone was asleep. But since I was kind of doing those for fun, I didn't have a real deadline or time crunch, so I didn't worry too much about it. Since my writing is my fun time, or escape, I don't worry so much about finding the time to do it -- I end up doing it when I can, either after everyone's asleep or before everyone's up, or when my younger one is napping and my older one is either in school, camp or out playing. The school year is obviously much easier.

For me, though, I kind of made a promise that I would do *something* related to writing every day. That doesn't necessarily mean writing my novel (I actually have a harder time stopping myself than starting). Lately, that's meant reading books on the craft of writing. I find I can edit better when I've let something marinate for a while. I posted the beginning of my novel on another site and I got some kind of distressing feedback. So right now I've been focusing on that, trying unsuccessfully to fix it, and reading what I can find on beginnings.

What I've always heard is that people who really want to write find the time to do it -- they go to bed an hour later or get up an hour earlier and just do it. I've heard writers say that if they've devoted themselves full time to writing and spend 8 hours at the computer just writing and end up with trash, that it was still worthwhile because they were thinking and even the writing of stuff that didn't work helped them work though what needed to be done in order to get to their story.

I completely understand the frustration. It is especially difficult when my 2 year old insists on sitting on my lap and "pushing the buttons" on my computer when I'm trying to type a response to something I saw on a forum. I wish I had some better advice for you, but all I've ever heard on this topic was just that you have to make the time, taking time away from sleep, television, or other hobbies.

 

Oh, I know this, too. My husband considers any time I spend in front of my computer to be me "wasting time." It doesn't matter if I'm on facebook (which I admit, I sometimes am -- especially with not getting to go to an office everyday, it keeps me kind of socially connected to other adults), reading the news (which I think is a worthwhile endeavor), reviewing my email (which can go either way, but often does deal with some legitimate issue I need to address) or reading/revising my story. To him, it's all the same.

And sure, every time I sit down, someone's demanding something. Sometimes it's all I can do to not say "WTF is it now????"

 

Liz (can I call you that?), I wish I could write at night, or even get up early to do so. I am just SO tired come evening, by the time my toddler is in bed, I'm pooped. Zero motivation for writing, no creative juices flowing and all I want to do is curl up on the couch and relax. As the alarm goes off at 5:30 as it is and my kids don't sleep in, I can't see myself getting up even earlier to write. Ten years ago I did that though, before going into work....but now that I'm in my coughlatethirtiescough, I need more sleep than I did in my twenties.

For me I know that once school starts back up, it'll go back to normal. Plus my husband is VERY supportive of me finding time to write. Yesterday I went up to our room with the door closed and spent a few hours wrapping up something I've been working on that could bring some money in. I just need to find more weekends like that to do so. It's the time of year where there's a lot of family bbqs, or just swimming in the afternoons. I admit I'd rather go swimming than anything else though, as I love it and winters are long here.

 

Steph, you certainly can call me Liz. I get what you're saying. I have the *exact* same issue with respect to working out. Since I don't have any writing so far that's made me any money, and I don't have any sort of external deadline, and since I have my main story finished and I'm just kind of spinning my wheels right now, I don't have a current need to set a particular goal as far as number of words or pages or scenes or time spent writing.

I also have the philosophy that if I really don't feel like writing and am totally unmotivated and have nothing to say, that whatever I write will be useless crap anyway, so I'm not too concerned about it. It'll be a different story after I sell my three book deal with the movie rights ;-) If I had some sort of deadline, I'd be forced to carve out some time somehow.

 

The gym is my haven these days. My kids love the daycare there though, so it works for all three of us.

That's so funny, I'm going to be selling a three book deal with movie rights too!

And we've steered way off topic....to the OP, if you NEED goals in order to get things accomplished, then I suggest doing a small goal of X words a day. Maybe 300-500 words, which is only about 1-2 pages in Word, Times New Roman, 12 pt Font, double spaced.

 

It's that time again.

 

An excellent idea Although it's a bit early for me to start my New Years drinking just yet, I suppose we can do this sober

Alright; what were my goals for 2017? To shop around my first teen book, finish my second one, have another one to edit. I didn't get published obviously, but I was selling my manuscript around this time last year and finally started to get some traction there even if not quite the meteoric rise to success I had been hoping for I did indeed finish my second teen book that I am now selling. It took me so long because I wrote two not just one before I came back to do my editing and submissions on the present book, so it put me back a bit. Still; the past year has seen me through the end of my first vaguely commercial project, completed one whole book and written two more, each one a step closer to commercial viability.

So where does that leave me for 2018? Well, broadly speaking to carry on as before. Honestly when I went back to edit this book I was not that convinced it could be sold at all and I was looking more forward to finishing the next two projects which are definitely more mainstream, less weird and more, you know, plausible for a commercial entity to release. So I want to finish those two books, even if I have to edit them back to back, and then I have two strong ideas to get written. I guess we'll see if fame and fortune intervenes with those plans, but in a general sense it's just to finish more books and sell one of them. My problem has never been producing material, it's been writing stuff that other people want to buy. That's really my big goal for next year; get something published or die trying.

 

In 2017, I wrote and self-published 7 new short nonfiction books under another name (a couple of them really short). I wanted to also do at least one more Carly Berg book but didn't get around to it. And now I am in a lazy mood so that's probably it for 2017. I'd say I reached my goals about 75%. That's more than I'd have probably done if I hadn't set the goals, so I'm pretty happy with it.

Next year, I want to keep up the momentum under the other name and also write at least a couple of novels. I also want to upgrade a little all around, with new author photos, and better SEO and covers for the self-published titles.

And, I want to think more commercially. I've been doing whatever I feel like doing but now that I make a steady couple hundred a month from it, it seems dumb to not try to turn the income trickle into a stream. I still want to write what I want but will try to find things that also seem to have decent financial potential.

So with the fiction, I plan to try YA novels, most likely. For the nonfiction, I'm looking up trends. Hopefully, I'll find something there that is new and that I care enough about to enjoy living with for a few weeks. I don't have all the specifics worked out but that's the gist of it.

 

2018 Goals for reading and writing.

Writing: I'd like to complete my Paradise Mourned series, six short stories about a magical tapestry and the individuals unfortunate enough to come into possession of it. I have 1 of the 6 stories written and am plotting out the second.

Reading/study goals: I'd like to read the complete works of Clive Barker (horror writer), Kate Light (poet), and re-read some introductory books on the poetry before putting them into storage.

Publishing goals: My Tattoo artist wants to illustrate the first story of my Paradise Mourned series and use the art for it in a competition. Excited to see how well the final product turns out, and see if it could possibly win. (If it does well, we plan on Illustrating the other five.)

 

My 2017 goals were to see From Blood to Roses published (done), get my short story Kneadful Things accepted for the anthology I wrote it for (done), finish Gravity (done) and submit it for publication (gonna miss that one but should be happening in early 2018), and create an author website (done).

2018 goals would be to see submit Gravity for publication and have it accepted/published, and write the UTK sequel Food Truck Edition from start to finish. I'd also like to write another short story if I can find an anthology submission call that seems like a good fit.

 

We finished half of what we'd hoped to complete this year, but I'm very pleased with the half that's done. I found a writing partner that can keep up with me and understands the creative process, and is fearless going about it. We are so different it's not even funny. I, the consummate bohemian, and her, a young woman from a rustic village in Serbia with a more conservative upbringing.

The story we set off writing in February has become something of a passion and almost writes itself; so much so that we make a cameo appearance in chapter four, that is we become real characters in the story taking on the roles of a Stage Designer and his Assistant. Though we are not long in these roles; in chapter eight we find ourselves on the scaffold with Madame Guillotine. Ah yes, to die for one's art. 'Tis very romantic indeed.
This next year I've resolved to be a more disciplined, productive writer. I've divided my time between writing and illustrating, and spent far too much time doing the latter. I resolve to spend no more than two weeks per illustration, and once completed, not picking up pencil or brush until such time as the chapter is written and in the bag.

 

2017 - I didn't really have any goals but to write. Write anything. Just write! I've written quite much these past two months, so I think we can say it went alright.

2018 - I need to get in the habit of reading more.
I want to come up with the story I want to write. At the moment I'm just writing for the sake of writing, and for my own amusement - but for next year I want to come up with an actually story to focus on.

 

If my writing were a species of animal, its conservation status would be somewhere around "critically endangered". My goal for 2018 is to raise that to just "endangered".

 

2017 Goals:
I don't think I actually started out the year with writing goals. Those probably came in around March-April. I got 14 chapters (so far) of my current draft done this year. Right now I'm trying to fit in one or two more before the year is over.
2018 Goals:
Finish this draft. Go through and see what I can do to make it better when I finish it. Perhaps get someone to beta read it?

 

2017 is not over. I hope to have enough polish on my book to submit it to Angry Robot by the 31st.

If it's not for them, then my 2018 goals are to polish some more, get more beta feedback and write a decent query and synopsis.

That query and synopsis are not easy to do, my book is quite complex. But there are threads there which are key to the story. I know them in my head. Verbalizing them on the other hand, is a different beast.

 

Write more. Write better.

Hopefully finish and publish my first novella-length work.

 

Continue to find a home for my first novel, revise and polish my second, write a new one, package the first season of my web serial to sell as an ebook and write the second season.

For this year, just finish the first draft of my second novel before Christmas. I'm shooting for 80k words and have about that many plotted. 21k to go.

 

My overall goals for 2018 are the same as they were for 2017: have more work accepted/published than last year. Not that difficult. I had three stories published and two accepted but not yet published this year, as opposed to two in 2016, and I think I can beat 2017 without a great deal of trouble.

More specifically, I hope to find homes for a couple novelettes that star a character I've been developing for a while. I might also try and write a novel in 2018; we'll see how the schedule works out.

 

My goals for 2018 are as follows:

1. Finish writing my current WIP
2. Start editing my current WIP
3. Generally just improve my writing (especially my poetry).

I didn't really have any goals for last year, so I can't really say much about that

 

Morning All,

I'm unsure where this belongs, so please move if required.

I'm just wondering, do any of you have any writing goals for 2018? Do you find having some goals would motivate you, or pressurise you and therefore put you off a bit?

Thanks,
M

 

I do find goals motivating, although I need them to be flexible because I don't write consistently - e.g. I can't stick to a daily word count, but I can commit to finishing a manuscript by a certain date.

My goal for 2018 is to finish two manuscripts.

 

That's what I'm like too, especially as plans change and so the goals have to shift too at times.

Do you mind me asking, how much of a word count do you have per manuscript?

 

I aim for 85k, give or take a few thousand. Although the one I'm planning next may work best as category length, so more like 60k. That would be a new challenge for me!