| Goal Setting 101 |
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Writing Goal 1: Setting Your Goals by Roxyanne Young Ready... In August 2006 I joined the faculty at a local technical college as a writing instructor. As part of my course planning, I adapted a Tony Robbins goal setting exercise that I would like to share with you all. It's an easy free writing exercise, so go get some paper and a pen, or open a new document on your computer. You'll also need a clock with a five-minute timer. Set... Here's what I want you to do: for a full five minutes, list everything you want to accomplish in your writing life. Every task you want to complete. Every action you'd like to take. Every thing you'd like to learn. Every person you'd like to meet. Nothing stands in your way. Money is not a factor. Experience, or lack of experience, doesn't matter. Geography is not a challenge here. Time is irrelevent to this list. Nothing stands in your way. List as many writing-related goals as you can think of. Don't dwell on details. Just hit the highlights, unless your goal involves something really specific. One caveat: focus on things which YOU control. You might want to win a major award or competition, for instance, but you don't control the awards committee or the judges. You can, however, make sure you've submitted your very best work to that competition. Similarly, you can't grant yourself a book contract, but you can make sure your manuscript gets seen by the best, most qualified editors at the houses most likely to publish your work. Thing big, think small, but don't stop writing. Five minutes. Go! And stop. Time's up. Okay, now that you've got a nice, long list, take a look at each item and assign an "I can do this in X amount of time number." If it's writing your new novel, it might be one year. If it's writing a character profile, it might be one week. If it's learning a new language, well, that could take you a couple of months or a couple of years, depending. If it's attending a particular writing workhop or conference, that's dependent on when the event takes place. Give every item a number. Now organize them by those dates. If you've got your calendar for the month, for the year, for the decade, fill it out and get going. It helps, too, to put these things in writing on a list you can hang above your work space. Schedule a monthly or quarterly meeting with yourself to review your goals and make adjustments if you need to. Your future is your own to create! Good luck, and happy new year!  Roxyanne Young is Editorial Director of SmartWriters.com, co-author of Tales of the Cryptids: Mysterious Creatures That May or May Not Exist (Darby Creek, 2006), and a working freelance writer and editor, writing instructor, and children's librarian. |
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