If you want to make serious progress as a writer, you need to treat your craft like any other serious area of your life. It’s not enough to treat writing as a haphazard hobby that you dip into and out of whenever the urge takes you. Instead, if you want to grow and evolve both your skillset and your level of output, you need to set clear writing goals to move you forward.
For some writers, the idea of setting goals is antithetical to their romanticized notion of what a writing life looks like. These are the same kind of writers who lie to themselves that one day they’ll get a book done when the stars align and they are free of distraction during a magical writer’s retreat in a woodland cabin. Newsflash – that is never going to happen.
Instead, if you’re a serious, realistic writer who wants to make tangible progress with your writing, we have just the article for you. Using this framework will allow you to set meaningful and manageable writing goals to drive your career forward. Ready? OK, let’s go.
What are writing goals?
A writing goal is any clearly defined objective related to your writing career. It can be a large, long-term goal, such as releasing over 20 novels within your lifetime, or a shorter, more short-term goal, like spending at least half an hour each morning on writing prompts over the next month.
To better understand what writing goals are, it’s good to have a solid understanding of what they are not.
A vague aspiration is not a writing goal. So, for example, thinking to yourself ‘one day I’d like to be a better writer ’ is not a goal. It’s an aspiration or dream but is not specific or clear enough to be considered a goal.
Within this article, we’ll provide you with a complete, proven framework to set writing goals that stick and make a meaningful difference in your career. First, let’s get clear on why this process is worth your time and how it will benefit you.
How do writers benefit from setting writing goals?
Perhaps you’re feeling a little bit of resistance or discomfort at the idea of setting writing goals. If so, that’s understandable.
You might be thinking something along the lines of ‘well, I barely have enough time to write as it is. Shouldn’t I spend the very limited time I have outside of work and family on actually writing? Isn’t setting a writing goal just another form of procrastination that will distract me from my projects?”.
Setting the wrong type of goals might be a form of procrastination, but that’s not what we will be doing here. Truthfully, if you feel resistance to the thought of setting meaningful and effective writing goals, it’s actually due to a desire to stay inside your comfort zone.
When you write without clearly defined aims and objectives, you allow yourself the freedom to never fail. There’s no challenge and nothing at stake. That allows you to protect your ego from being hurt, but it also stunts your growth.
The benefit of setting intentional goals for your writing is it allows you to not only grow and improve as a writer but to do so in a way that is aligned with your wider aims and objectives. If you’re not making the progress you’d like, your writing goals will flag that up and allow you to reconsider what you’re doing and correct course if needed.
Ultimately, the choice to either set or not set writing goals is what separates professionals from amateurs. Which type of writer do you want to be?
When you’ve decided you’re ready to step up, read on! We’ll be using the SMART framework for the next section. This will allow you to set writing goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-limited.
Step 1 – Make your goals specific
One of the major mistakes people often make when setting goals of any type, including writing goals, is making them too vague or general to be useful.
Some examples of vague writing goals include ‘becoming a better writer’ or ‘taking writing more seriously ’. These might be worthy objectives, but they aren’t specific enough to be useful as a goal.
If you have a vague aim initially, such as those described above, you can try and narrow it down into a more specific writing goal. For example, ‘becoming a better writer’ might be narrowed down into ‘improving my first draft score on Grammarly by 10 points on average ’. Or ‘taking writing more seriously might translate into ‘spending 5 out of 7 evenings on writing instead of watching Netflix’.
The exact goal you set is entirely down to you. Only you know what will be most useful in driving your career forward. If you aren’t sure what to choose, you have a few options open to you. The first is to think of the major roadblock or challenge you have in your current writing life and set a goal that specifically addresses it. The second is to set as many goals as possible, and then eliminate some and prioritize others based on comparisons. Finally, if you have a writing coach or mentor, or other trusted ally, you could get their take on what they see as being the most impactful writing goal for you.
Setting a specific objective is just the first step! There’s a lot more to meaningful writing goals than being specific, but without that starting point, it’s impossible to move on.
Step 2 – Set a measurable goal
Now that you have a specific idea of what you most want to achieve as a writer, it’s time to make it measurable.
Just as being specific is needed to ensure your writing goal is something worthwhile, making it measurable is needed to be able to say if you are on track or not. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that being behind on your writing goal is ‘bad’ or a reflection on you. It isn’t. It’s merely an indicator that something needs to be adjusted – whether that’s your approach to the goal, or perhaps the goal itself might need to be scaled back.
All of that is to say that there’s nothing to fear by making your goal measurable. It’s not intended to make you harsh on yourself or negative in any way at all. Instead, it’s just a way of helping you stay on track.
An example of a measurable goal would be taking the specific goal of ‘make progress on the word count of my novel’s first draft’ and changing that to ‘write 750-1000 words of my novel at least five times a week’. See the difference? Both goals are specific but the second one allows you to say whether you are on pace or off the pace at any given time.
Making a writing goal measurable also allows you to set deadlines and plan. For example, if you know you are capable of writing 1000 words at least five times a week, can anticipate a realistic deadline for finishing your draft, and schedule editing, cover design, formatting, and everything else accordingly. Without a measurable goal, none of that is possible.
Step 3 – Ensure your writing goals are attainable
It might sound obvious to ensure your writing goals are attainable, but a lot of people don’t!
Just as with fitness and health goals, people often overestimate what they are capable of. This can be down to several factors. First, if you don’t have a clear schedule of when you write and how much you are capable of writing within that time, you won’t have a realistic idea of what’s attainable for you. Second, people often underestimate the impact of motivation and other psychological factors. For example, you might have a strong drive to get up before dawn and smash out 2000 words for the first couple of weeks, but that might lessen after some time. Life happens.
If you’ve been writing a long time, you might well have a solid idea of which goals are and aren’t attainable for you. If you’re newer and less sure, you have a couple of options open to you. First, you can ask around. Question your fellow writers as to whether they think your intended goal is or isn’t realistic. Second, you can try for a certain goal, but schedule a period of assessment and possible adjustment once you’ve determined whether it is or isn’t something you’re capable of achieving.
At this point in the process, you should have specific, measurable, and attainable goals in mind. Next, let’s make sure they’re best suited to serving the aims of your writing career.
Step 4 – Choose relevant writing goals
One easily overlooked part of the goal-setting process is ensuring your chosen aims are the ones most relevant to your writing career.
There are two major ways in which writers tend to either set irrelevant or less relevant goals.
First, you might be tempted to set a goal that you genuinely believe will move your career forward the most, but in truth wouldn’t be the biggest needle mover. For example, you might want to add five words per minute to your typing speed, when in fact, focusing on learning the fundamentals of book marketing might be far more beneficial.
Second, you might set a writing goal that is unrelated to where you are as a writer. For example, you might decide to focus on learning worldbuilding for a series of epic fantasy novels that span tens of books, when in fact, you should focus on the fundamentals of writing dialogue.
This should be caveated by the understanding that you are free to set whichever goals you want. However, do so with the knowledge that you can only focus on so many things at any given time. Therefore, setting the most relevant writing goals to your career aims and objectives is the best way to move forward fastest.
Step 5 – Set a time limit on achieving your goals
The final stage of the process is setting a time limit on when your goals will be achieved. Without this, you run the risk of endless procrastination and delay. A deadline helps you hold yourself accountable and keep your progress on track.
One way of thinking about a time-limited goal is simply seeing it as a dream with a deadline!
Some examples of time-limited goals include ‘writing x words on my project by x date’, and ‘completing such and such writing course by the end of x month’. Or ‘finishing my new author website and sending it live by x time’.
If you follow this fifth and final step, you now have everything you need to set SMART writing goals that will move your career forward.
If you’ve made it this far in the article, congratulations! Don’t let the momentum slip. Instead, before you do anything else, take a moment to draft out at least one or several writing goals most pertinent to your aims and objectives.
The Write Life team would like to wish you every success and we hope this framework makes a real difference to your career!
