Happy New Year! Let’s Set Some Goals!

First, I acknowledge that I fell out of the habit of posting regularly again. (I went on a cruise in May and came home with a virus that took me out for two weeks, and I feel like I’ve been playing catch up ever since.) But I hope to rectify this soon!

My publishing schedule here will probably continue to be sporadic, but I’m working on a bunch of essays that may be relevant to your interests; I hope to start publishing those this month. Topics include: AI, conflict, historical romance, spice in books, and a few other things.

Second, we’ve arrived at the beginning of a new year, which is a good time to consider your goals.

My former RWA chapter used to do a yearly “time capsule” wherein every January we wrote our goals for the year on a slip of paper and put it in a container not to be opened until the next January. Then, when the capsule was opened again, we’d all review our goals and reflect on how we did.

I love this activity! I’m not a member of RWA anymore, but I’ve kept doing it by writing my goals on a page in my planner or journal for that year and then just not looking at it until the end of the year. I’m about to commit my goals for this year to paper, so I figured I’d talk a little about what makes a good goal.

A good goal needs three things:

1. It should be something within your control.

If part of your goal is outside of your control, it may not be achievable. Examples of such goals are things like sell a specific project to a publisher, sign with an agent, or sell X copies of new book. These are all things you can work toward, but you ultimately don’t have control over them. Instead, think about what steps you can take toward these things, and set those as your goal. These could be things like: Send 20 query letters or Submit manuscript to publishers or Self-publish a book this calendar year.

2. It should be something specific, with at least one action step.

Vague goals are hard to achieve. They’re too nebulous to evaluate. A good goal should have an action step, or something specific to do. Maybe you have an unfinished manuscript you aim to finish this year. Maybe you plan to hire an editor to help you evaluate a manuscript. Vague goals include things like “improve writing” or “write more” but don’t give you something specific to do. Choose a goal that is specific and calls on you to do something.

3. It should be a least a little bit challenging.

A goal is something you have to put effort into, that isn’t just part of your normal routine, so it should be something you have to try harder to achieve. These could be things like increasing your average daily word count, finishing one more manuscript than you normally write in a year, or finally committing to starting something you’ve always wanted to write but have been postponing.

I’ll add the caveat that goals should be challenging but also something you can reasonably achieve. So, for example, I am under contract to write two novels in 2025, so I know that will take up a significant chunk of my year. Given when the deadlines are and my average writing pace, I don’t see myself having time to work on many other projects until those are submitted. So that is a factor in what my goals will be.

I like to write down 3–5 goals at the beginning of every year. Most of these pertain to specific projects—finishing an incomplete draft, sending a specific manuscript out on sub, etc. But a year is a surprisingly long time, and my priorities tend to shift and change depending on what happens. So sometimes I arrive at the next year with at least one goal being something I completely forgot about.

Full disclosure: I typically nail a couple of my goals, spectacularly fail at one, and then there’s often one that I don’t remember anything about. So, in 2024, of the five goals I wrote down, I achieved 2, failed at 1, and the other two were, well, bad goals that were too vague and didn’t provide adequate action steps. And even then, “fail” is relative; I wanted to revise the YA novel I’ve been working on for a while, but aside from writing a new outline, I didn’t do much work toward that goal. But there’s no reason I can’t do that in 2025. The project isn’t dead, I just sidelined it to work on other things.

I keep my writing goals separate from my personal goals/resolutions, although I suspect in a lot of cases these things feed into each other. For example, I set a somewhat arbitrary goal on Goodreads every year to read a set number of books. In 2024, it was 35 books; I ended up reading 42. So, for 2025, I have a goal to read 40 books. I made a reading bingo card for last year that I pretty swiftly abandoned, although I like that approach, too; it can force me to read outside of what I normally gravitate toward. I also think one of the best ways to improve one’s writing is to read a lot, so this is a goal that helps my writing also. (And a goal could be to read in, say, a genre you don’t normally read. I’m not a fantasy reader generally, but I read a lot of fantasy novels in 2024, and I journaled about what worked for me and what didn’t, which in turn informs my writing.)

But even stuff like fitness and self care can benefit your writing. I write better when I’m in a good place, mentally.

So there’s your food for thought. New essays on a variety of topics coming soon!