Plan for Success, Part 1

Now that NaNoWriMo is over, I am thinking about the year ahead. I’ve gotten back into a routine, and now I need to keep up with it. An occasional polishing or revising of routines won’t hurt either. So how do I begin? Since NaNo is so close to January, post-NaNo usually begins my annual planning. I buy a new calendar (either paper or laminated) and start marking it up. (You can print monthly and annual calendars for any year, with or without holidays for various countries, here.) This is how I proceed.

STEP 1 – Cross off all the days I don’t expect to work.

I only work Monday through Friday, so I could X out the weekends, but it makes the calendar too messy, so I don’t. I cross off birthdays, our wedding anniversary, holidays, vacation time (as soon as I know it), etc. As soon as I make a doctor appointment or anything else that must be done during the work day, I write it on this calendar so I can plan around potentially fewer words that day.

If you only have Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, for instance, you might want to cross off all the other days so you are focusing on just those two columns. If you have children, you may be crossing off days with school events. Think about your own life and schedule and decide how you want to do this step.

Though you still may get a bit of writing done on days you originally crossed off, they will be “extra” days and the words will be in addition to your planned writing. This is better than having a goal and not meeting it or feeling guilty because you didn’t write in a corner at your daughter’s birthday party. (We need to have days we relax and have fun without guilt!) This also gives you a cushion for days that you didn’t hit your goal.

STEP 2 – Count how many days are left.

Now I go back through the year and count the number of days that are left, the days I plan to write. Say I have 224 days not crossed off. Then I give myself 1 mental health/sick day each month (I’m a generous employer!), so I subtract 12 days from the 224 – but since I don’t know when I’ll take my sick days, I don’t cross anything off on the calendar.

Think about your past year, or what you think to be your average month and see if there is any other number of days you should subtract. I will often subtract an additional 5-10 days (1 to 2 weeks) to make sure I have room for things I forgot. (In my initial planning for 2010, I forgot to subtract the days I’ll be at my RWA writers conference.) The reason I try to make the number as accurate as possible, but on the low/conservative side, is that I want to meet or exceed my goals!!

If you prefer, you can subtract fewer days and give yourself a high-reaching goal. Many people work better when pushed. I can be one of those people, but only if I’ve been meeting goals lately and need a push. Right now, I want to make some goals I believe I can achieve because I haven’t hit my goals for the last 2-3 years.

STEP 3 – Estimate how much you can write on an average day.

If you just finished NaNo, you may have an idea of how much you can write on average. I went through my chart and saw I had one day that I wrote 0 words, and the other days I wrote between 105 and 4104 words. I know I can write about 1000 words per day if I’m pushing myself a bit without neglecting the rest of my life.

However, after reading Jim’s blog yesterday, I decided to schedule my writing a little differently for 2010. I’m going to schedule 500 words a day on new work. Then I’m going to use the rest of the time to edit the previous book. This is closer to how many professional writers work. So I’ll work on a new book in the morning, then edit the book I just finished in the afternoon. I’m really excited about this because now I have my NaNo novel to begin editing! I hope 2010 becomes for me The Year of Writing Professionally!

If you don’t know what your average output is or can be, use December and January to figure it out. On a calendar or in your journal, write the number of words you wrote and the time it took you to write them on each day. In the next six weeks, you’ll have holidays, vacations, kids out of school, kids in school, “normal” days – by the end of January, you’ll know about what you can do in most any situation.

Work on these three steps this week, and next week I’ll tell you what I do next. In the next few days, think about what your goal is for 2010. Write a polished book and send it out? Or two books? Get all the way through a first draft and finish a book for the first time? Meet the deadlines for the contracts you have because in the past you’ve been late?

Nearly every morning I get myself out of bed by reciting a sentence from the Bible – “His mercy is new every morning.” It gives me energy because today is a new day, with new opportunities to accomplish great things. No matter how yesterday went, today I have a fresh start. I feel that way about new years, too, but to a greater degree. 

Get ready for a great new year!