Defining and redefining your writing goals
Goals. They’re important for success in any endeavour or line of work. That includes freelance writing. In fact, I’d say that for the freelancer goals are essential. Having goals not only enables us to grow as writers and as professionals, but also drives us to increase our incomes.
Setting goals is easy. When I was starting out in this wacky business, my goals were (in my mind, anyway) pretty modest. I just wanted to earn a living by writing. And it was a struggle. Probably more of a struggle than it should have been. The problem wasn’t me or the goal. It was how the goal was defined.
Although setting goals is easy, it isn’t as easy at it seems. That’s not to say it’s an incredibly difficult process, but defining a goal like I want to make more money this year is one thing. We all define vague goals. What you really need to do is define a specific goal and work from there.
Defining goals
A specific goal might be, for example, This year, I want to earn $5,000 more than I did last year. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? That simplicity is a bit deceptive. And I’ll discuss that a little later.
How do you define your goals? Grab a sheet of paper or two and a pen. Find a quiet corner and for the next 10 to 30 minutes start thinking about everything that you want accomplish as a writer for the next 12 months. Think about the articles or stories or books that you want to write. Think of the markets that you want to break into. Think about income. Think about what you want to learn.
Then, write all of it down. You should have quite a few goals listed on paper. Now, narrow it down to three or five goals that you’re confident that you can accomplish. And why not throw a wildcard in there while you’re at it? A goal that might seem out of reach, but which gives you something extra to strive for.
Focusing your goals
Even specific goals sometimes need to be narrowed down further. Take the example I mentioned a few paragaphs ago: increasing your income by $5,000 this year. That’s a good starting point, but you really need to focus goals like that even futher. You’ll not only get a better idea of what you want to do, but what you need to do to realize the goal.
Let’s go back to the example of increasing your income. Say you want to make an additional $5,000 this year. How are you going to do that? Consider what you’re doing now, and ask yourself whether the kind of work that you’re doing now can be ramped up to increase your income. If not, then think about other types of writing. From there, develop a breakdown based on type of writing, and the amount that you want to earn from each of those types.
Here’s a sample breakdown:
- Article writing: $2,500
- Blogging: $1,000
- Copywriting: $1,500
Overlapping goals
As you focus one goal, you might discover that it overlaps with one or more of your other goals. A couple of years back, two of my goals were to:
- Earn an extra amount writing articles that year
- Break into three new markets
The overlap there is pretty obvious — I could leverage my existing article markets (by contributing to them more often), and bring in a little more from those three new markets. While I was only able to crack two new markets that year, I did manage to pull in the amount I set. And, no, I’m not going to tell you what that amount was …
Refining and redefining your writing goals
Things don’t always go the way that you want them to. Sometimes, work in one area dries up. Or, you get far more work from one type of writing than you do with others. You might find an area of writing (or a skill) that you want to learn more about, or you might find that something you’ve been focusing on is a dead end.
You need to regularly look at your goals and, if necessary, redefine some or all of them. If, for example, you’re finding that your blogging income won’t be anywhere near your goal then shift more of your focus to something else.
Think about both short term and long term goals. And think about how you’re going to achieve them. If you want to write short fiction, how will you get started? What books should you read, and what courses should you take? If you want to supplement your income with speaking or WordPress consulting, think about the skills that you need to acquire and how to do that.
I try to look at my goals every two or three months. That gives me a pretty good snapshot of where I am and where I might be heading. With that snapshot, I can refine and redefine my goals if I need to.
What if you can’t achieve all of your goals?
Don’t worry about it. You probably won’t achieve all of your goals; either fully or partially. There’s no shame in that, and there’s no point in beating yourself up about it. Look at what went wrong (often, it’s not your fault), and try to correct that if possible. Refine and redefine your goals. And if you don’t achieve certain goals in a year, move them to your list of goals for next year.
What are your thoughts on this? Feel free to leave a comment.
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