Purposeful Daydreaming: Part 2

Part 2 Daydreaming For the Future.

Last week I started a series on Purposeful Daydreaming. The first category was Daydreaming for ideas. Today, I am revisiting goal setting with Daydreaming for your Future.

It’s been over six months since you may have made any New Years Resolutions about your writing.

Let’s evaluate.

Think about all the writing/editing/critiquing/blogging, etc you did. <throws confetti; mini-celebration; yay you!>

What’s next on the list? Do you need to make some adjustments? Change some deadlines? Wait, here’s your chance to up the stakes. This is daydreaming, so think big. Super big. You are a better writer than you were six months ago so dream bigger.

Handy exercise: Pretend you are at the end of your career looking back at all the writing you have done. What do you see? A series author? A one-hit wonder—but it was a NYT Bestseller wonder! A slow-and-steady-wins-the-race kind of writer? The kind of writer that makes people go to a midnight release party because they want to be the first to have your latest book?

Are you on track for those big dreams? Here’s some quick (simplified) math.

Let’s work the timeline backwards. Say you’d like to be working on your career for the next 20 years. You’d like to publish 10 books. That means you can take two years to write each book. Or, say it takes the first ten years to get your grove and make your first sale. (Ten years! Yeah, I know. Crazy, but it happens.) That means you now have to write a book a year, but by now you should be able to write faster.

So, let’s talk your current WIP. Given your timeline, when should you finish your WIP? What do you have to do today to finish it? Yes, it all comes down to finishing that book—and not just the first draft. Finish means multiple drafts. Query-ready drafts.

Faced with the numbers you might want to go back to daydreaming! Instead, I hope you shore up your writing routines and get working with renewed vigor. You can get to those places you dream about, but you’ve got to start with today, keeping your fingers on the keyboard and your eye to the future.

Part 1:  Daydreaming for Ideas