Plan for Success, Part 2

Last week I told you how I start planning out my new year with a calendar. I figure out how many days I think I can write out of the 365, mark off the ones I don’t expect to write, and figure out how to meet my goals with the remaining days.

There are two ways to look at your goals – 1) how much can you get done at a nice easy pace, or 2) what do you really want to get done and what pace will you need to set to get there? The second option is the somewhat necessary way of looking at your next year if you already have deadlines you have to meet. It also happens to be the way I used to plan my year when I had no other ideas for planning. “I’m going to write and polish and send out a book this year!” Or “I’m going to write two books and twelve articles this year!”

That’s all well and good, but how are you going to accomplish that? (The question I never asked myself.) And for me, one of the more important questions – how are you going to feel if you don’t meet your goals?

For me, the answer is “awful!” So after hearing lots of other writers talk about their goals and their planning methods, I decided to start making goals I really could reach. (Duh! LOL!)

STEP 4 – Calculate how much you can write next year.

So after I finished the first three steps I mentioned last week, I took the number of days left times the number of words per day to get a total. When I did my calendar, I had 238 open days for writing. But I told you I want to offer myself 1 sick day per month, so that gives me 226 days. I decided I wanted to do some writing on a new book every day, and editing on the previous book every day to try to create a schedule that will continue to work after I start selling, so I’m setting 500 words a day as my goal. That’s a total of 113,000 words for the year.

STEP 5 – Figure out what to write.

Now that I have an idea of what I can write if I stick to my routines and schedule, I can plan what to do with my time. For 2010, I am going to try to write two more first drafts of category romance books. At 50,000 to 60,000 words per book, that should be an achievable goal. If I change my mind part-way through the year, I can still re-evaluate at that time and figure out how much of a single title book I can write before the end of the year. So even though I’m giving myself some solid goals now, there is enough flexibility in the system to change my mind.

That means I can also make changes after grad school starts in March. If focusing on a single project every six months is too difficult, I can change my goals to write articles and one book, or whatever seems to work for me at the time. I do believe there is a certain amount of consistency that will be necessary to keep up the discipline, so I will continue with my current goal (two category romances) until something happens that really shows me my goals aren’t workable. Like anything else, I believe goals should be a balance of choosing not to quit and knowing when to make a change for the better. That being said…

STEP 6 – You’ve planned your work, now work your plan.

If you’ve taken the time to work this out, and if you have been honest with yourself about what you can really achieve without stressing out, the new year should be looking bright and shiny to you right now! Be sure to keep balance in mind where possible. Balance focusing on your work with regular time with other writers. Both will help you to succeed.

I hope this helps you figure out how you want to plan your writing for 2010. Tweak and change and ignore anything that isn’t working for you, and combine it with other things that do work for you. And let us know how it’s going!

NOTE: When I bought my 2010 laminated calendar, it came with sheets of little round stickers in 6 different colors. I really want to find a way to use the colors to stay organized, or to track progress, or… but I don’t know what would be a good way to use them. What do you think? What would you use them for?