A Performance Review for Writers—The Three A’s

It’s that time of year again when we roll out our goal-setting routines. If you want to be ready to run with those New Years Resolutions you need to start making your plans now.

In yesterday’s blog you’ll see Kitty already has her calendar out and is marking off days. I’m a little bit behind her, still reflecting on this last year. I’m wondering if I got enough done this year. Am I a better writer now than I was last year? Am I more organized? Here’s the biggie—am I more disciplined? And, how do I know?

I love a good routine, so this is the one I have come up with so far for my end-of-year-thinking-about-starting-goal-setting time.

A Writer’s Performance Review:

Step 1 – Accumulate
Step 2 – Analyze
Step 3 – Act

Step 1 – Accumulate

Gather the facts. Here are some ideas to get you (me) started; pick what is relevant:

Productivity:

-words written
-days/hours spent writing
-queries sent out
-work completed
-contests entered/results
-partials/fulls requested
-???

Craft/Education

-number of writing books/lectures read
-number of conferences
-critique group meetings attended
-number of classes taken
-list specific topics worked on
-???

Marketing:

-number of blogs posted
-blog/facebook/twitter followers
-number of postcards, bookmarks, business cards, freebies etc given out
-number of media interviews
-number of book signings
-number of media mentions
-number of speaking engagements
-???

Step 2 – Analyze

If you have some of these numbers from last year, pull them out and see what the changes are. Highlight the items you did well with and circle the ones you want to improve upon. Don’t blow past this step too quickly. Looking at these items will help you to see patterns in your working habits. Maybe you took five classes, but you only got nine chapters written in your novel. Look at both the raw numbers and the quality of each item in order to figure out the effectiveness of each activity. Do you need to do more or cut something out that is not working?

Step 3 – Act

Not the full-blown goal sheet yet. This step is only to focus on those areas you need to improve on from the past year so you make sure you incorporate the changes into your overall plan. Pinpoint the areas you need to work on. Decide on what routines you can put in place to make sure you will do it.

Still working on my list here. Anyone else have a favorite way to do a year-end review?

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