Angela Booth's Writing Blog: Writing Success: Achieve Your Goals by Setting Deadlines

Books: Write Fiction

Angela Booth: Short Fiction Secrets: How To Write And Sell Short Stories (Selling Writer Strategies Book 2)
Writing short stories is a fun and easy way to get started writing fiction — you can get paid to write, in your spare time. If you're new to writing fiction, you can learn the elements of writing fiction — short stories are much easier to control than longer fiction.
Angela Booth: Master Fiction Writing: Craft A Novel in 31 Days: Selling Writer Strategies 4
This program began as a 30-day challenge which I organized in 2010. Hundreds of writers joined the challenge; they wrote novels. You can write a novel in 31 days too.
Angela Booth: Step By Step To Fiction Which Sells: Plotting And Scene Magic
What if you could leave boring fiction forever behind you, so that the story in your head becomes the story on the page? You CAN, when you discover the magic of story, plotting, and scenes.

Do you set writing goals?

I hope you do, and that you ensure that every goal you set has a deadline. A goal without a deadline is simply a dream.

Here's a simple goal setting process.

1. Write down five goals you want to achieve

2. Pick one of your goals and create a deadline for it

You can't do goals, you can only do tasks, so create a list of tasks which will take you to your goal. You may not know exactly what your tasks should be, but as long as you can think of ONE task, you can start working toward achieving your goal.

For example, perhaps you want to write a book. Writing a book is a huge project. Let's say that you set a deadline of one year for the project's completion. Now all you need to do is to create some tasks. Your first task could be: write an outline.

Writing an outline however isn't just a task; it's an entire project on its own. Therefore you'll need to chunk your outline down into tasks which take you no longer than half an hour each.

Here's a simpler example. Let's say you've just been commissioned to write five Web articles. "Write 5 articles by ___________(date)" is your goal, so now you need to create some tasks.

These tasks could include:

1. Find keywords for the articles

2. Write five article titles

3. Plan the first article

4. Write a quick draft of the first article

5. Etc

Big tip: don't get too bogged down in worrying about tasks. Writing is always a process of discovery. Be happy with one task -- tasks tend to breed. :-) So before you know it one task has turned into ten tasks. If you keep your goal in mind, your tasks will appear of their own accord. Before you know it, you'll have achieved your goal -- before your deadline.