Setting Effective Goals

There are a lot of amazing writers generously offering to share their work experience and training- for free. I'm thinking of Archetype, H.L. Dyer, and Where Romance Meets Therapy to name a few.

I started thinking about how fabulous these bloggers are for doing this. Which got me wishing I had a job cool enough to share my training and experience with all of you. Working for a bank for 10 years just does not give you the cool factor that being a therapist does. I mean, want to know about simple interest loans, credit agencies, or fraud rings and I'm your gal...but who really needs or wants to hear about that? But then I decided that I have learned a few things worthy of sharing.

So I'm going to blog about what I learned from my years of management, customer service, fraud, and collection training.

Career Development
Career development is part of the reason we want an agent. They'll coach us to move from aspiring to published authors, from mid-list to NYT Bestsellers.

In my world- Career Development is the best part of my job. Hand and hand with career development is setting goals. A lot of time goal setting sounds like this:

Goal:

Get published

Actions Needed:

Finish novel

Improve writing skills

Network with writers and agents

A solid start. But still not as powerful as you can be. What about this?

Goal:

Get published

Action Needed:

Finish novel

1. Write 80,000 word novel

2. Create interesting characters

3. Edit novel

Improve writing skills

1. Decrease use of passive voice

2. Balance dialogue, description, and narration

Network with writers and agents

1. Create and maintain blog

2. Comment on agent blogs

Even better, right? But how are you going to know when you succeed in reaching these goals?

Goal:

Get published

Action Needed:

Finish novel

1. Write 80,000 word novel

Plan: Write for 2 hours daily

Tracking: Novel completed

2. Create interesting characters

Plan: Create character sheets to keep character traits and flaws consistent

Tracking: Feedback from Beta Readers

3. Edit Novel

Plan: Send to beta readers for feedback

Tracking: Positive feedback with no recommendations for improvement.

Improve writing skills

1. Decrease use of passive voice

Plan: Search within Word shows few uses of was, is, am.

Tracking: Only conscious use of passive voice

2. Balance dialogue, description, and narration

Plan: Highlight dialogue, description, and narration with different colored
markers

Tracking: No page is marked with all of one color.

Network with writers and agents

1. Create and maintain blog

Plan: Write 3 posts every Saturday and schedule them to publish the following week.

Tracking: Number of posts actually posted per week.

2. Comment on agent blogs

Plan: Read and Comment on (Specific Agent Name) that represents my genre 4 days per week.

Tracking: Number of comments actually posted per week.

Do you see how much more manageable each goal and sub-goal is when there's a plan and a method of tracking your progress? It's no longer a matter of getting published. It's about writing on your blog, removing passive voice, and creating character sheets- all much less daunting than just stating you need to finish a novel and find an agent.

By creating a method of tracking- you keep yourself accountable. Did you meet your goals? No? Why not and by how much?

Write down your specific goals and update them regularly (I recommend bi-weekly or monthly). Doing so will help keep you focused on developing yourself into a NYT Bestselling Author.

How do you write and keep your goals? What tricks have you found that helps you
stay focused?

Next Up: Professionalism