How to Smash Your 2021 Writing Goals - Starting Now

To end this year, I’m going to write a couple of posts on goals for 2021. I know a lot of people, myself included, hate the dreaded “new year resolutions,” having too often experienced a few days or weeks of early optimism soon torpedoed by boredom or difficulty. This is different, I promise! Setting goals is actually a good thing to do, if you do it right. 

But still, isn’t it fine to wait until January to plan for 2021? 

No, it isn’t. 

If you want to start the new year strong, plan for it now. Why? Because: 

• Come January, you won’t waste time wondering what to do. You will have thought about it, made a plan, figured out a schedule. 

•  You’ll have more motivation. Anticipation has a powerful effect on the brain. By the time you can actually do what you plan to, you’ll be chomping at the bit to get going. 

How can you start to plan now for a successful 2021? 

The trick is to plan backwards, from biggest goal to smallest action that will get you there. Too often, people leave out the “smallest action” part and focus solely on the Big Goal. The don’t specifically plan how to reach it, though, on a day-to-day basis. It’s the small actions we take daily that make the biggest difference in whether or not we actually achieve our larger goals.  

1.     Create a Writing Goal – What’s your big goal for 2021? Write the first draft of a novel? Edit the draft you completed for NaNoWriMo (yaay, you!)? Write one picture book or short story or essay every month? You might have several goals. For now, write them all down. The next two steps will help you decide your priorities.

2.     Create a timeline – for each goal, decide the date by which you want to finish it. Some may not have a specific deadline, but might be ongoing. This is where you also start to think about how much writing fits into your life. A realistic timeline will depend on whether you are writing for a living, or adjusting your schedule to fit it in around other work.  

3.     Create a schedule – once you know what your timeline is, you can think about your day-to-day or weekly schedule. When will you write? How much time do you have? This is where it gets real: how much of a priority is it for you? Don’t beat yourself up if you can only squeeze out 15 minutes or a half hour a day. Do what youcan do. The important thing is to be consistent. Small, steady steps will make progress, and you’ll end the year with something tangible to show for your efforts. 

• It is important to be realistic though: if you pledge to get up at 5 every morning and write for two hours, will you do that? Or are you setting yourself up for a week or so of effort and then weeks where you bury your head in the blankets and feel badly about your failure? It’s better to start small and then grow into a practice. Choose a time you know you can commit to. 

• To make it a habit, you should feel free to start with something ridiculously tiny: “Today I will open Word on my computer.” Or even, “Today I will sit at my desk for five minutes.” And not even open the computer. You are trying to create the habit of going to your workspace at a particular time. If you already have the habit of writing for your goal amount of time, great, but don’t feel bad if you’re not there yet. The beauty of tiny actions is that pretty soon you start adding to them automatically. They’re small enough not to scare your “Lizard brain” – the most ancient part of the brain that responds to any threat with the fight or flight response. As far as it’s concerned, writing practice is just another wild beast trying to eat you for dinner. So doing the equivalent of tip-toeing around it can lull it into thinking you’re not doing anything scary.  

• An accountability partner can also be a godsend to keep you committed and motivated even when you don’t feel like doing anything. Pledge to check in every week – or every day – to help each other work toward your goals.

I strongly encourage you, sometime over the next week, to sit down and figure out your Goals, Timeline, and Schedule. Write them down. Think about them. Tweak them. Post them somewhere you will see them. And come January, you will be prepared to actually achieve your writing goals next year, and accomplish far more than you ever thought possible. If you’’d like to, share them with us in the comments!