Keep It SMART in 2015

Tomorrow is the beginning of a new year.  Instead of making an unrealistic resolution for the next year, apply the SMART methodology and set your goals with the intent of actually reaching them.

I don’t remember the first time I heard about SMART goals, but from the first time I used the methodology, it worked.  Applying it to my writing goals was equally successful, and it’s something I do every year.

SMART goals are simply this:  Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely.  Let me give you an example from my 2014 writing goals.

“By December 31st, I will have submitted no less than twenty stories to markets worldwide and will notch my first professionally paid sale.”

Using my goal as an example, here’s how I apply the methodology simply by asking and answering the following questions:

Is my goal Specific?  Yes.  I clearly defined what the goal was with a specific number of stories to submit and one professional sale.

Is my goal Measurable?  Yes.  I had a yardstick of twenty submittals to measure my progress against throughout the year, as well as the one professional sale.

Is my goal Attainable?  Yes.  Caution – attainability is highly subjective.  Did I think my goal was attainable?  Yes.  I’ve submitted more than twenty stories in a year before, but a professionally paid short fiction sale eluded me.  I felt I was ready to do so, and therefore the goal was attainable.

Is my goal Realistic?  Again, this is a subjective goal but I felt I could submit the number of stories.  Was it realistic to believe I was ready for a professional sale?  To me, yes.  I’ve been writing professionally for five years and I felt it was time.  Could I have been wrong?  Sure, but it was a realistic goal.  Saying I would submit fifty times and make ten professional sales would have been unrealistic.

Finally, is my goal Timely?  Yes, I put a date on it.  Having that mark on the wall helped me stay focused on short fiction sales while I worked my day job, raised my kids, was a supportive husband, and sold a debut novel.  The date is not a measurement.  It’s an accountability tool and without it, I may not have been able to reach my goal.  To date, I’ve submitted stories to contests and markets twenty-one times this year.  I’ve had three sales, and one of them was a professionally qualifying sale.

Using the SMART methodology allows me to set and manage goals by making myself accountable to the specific requirements of the goal and forcing me to look realistically at where I am as a writer not where I think I should be.  When I apply SMART to what I want my goals to be, I can stop thinking about the “what if” possibilities and focus on what I know that I can do.  The rest will take care of itself.

Stay away from resolutions that will fade as January passes.   Set SMART goals and make the most out of 2015.


 

 

Kevin Ikenberry writes after his kids go to bed. His day jobs for the last twenty years have revolved around space, so it’s no surprise he writes primarily science fiction. Kevin’s debut novel will be published by Red Adept Publishing in late 2015. You can find him online at www.kevinikenberry.com or on Twitter @TheWriterIke

 

 

What I Set Out to Do: Closing the Door on 2014

With one day left in the year, I think it’s safe to say I will not achieve the goals I set out for myself in 2014. I was hoping to complete three books, and instead I completed precisely zero. This suggests that I failed rather spectacularly, though the truth is not nearly so dire when I drill down to the amount of work I actually completed. The primary book I intended to write was supposed to be finished at approximately 100,000 words, and indeed I wrote 110,000 words—so I’m not done yet, but not for lack of trying. There’s just more story than I anticipated when I started it back in January. The other two books are already written more or less in full, and only require some polish to get ready. And therefore, with great confidence, I am able to predict that I will not only write, but also publish, three books minimum in 2015. A fourth book is not out of the question.

A year ago, I think I might have found a year in which I published no new titles discouraging. As important as it is to be releasing new material as often as possible, though, it’s also important to realize that one must devote the necessary time to producing quality writing. For me, 2014 was just such a year, and I expect to reap the rewards starting in the spring. So despite my seeming failure, the past twelve months have in reality been very productive. I’m enthusiastic about the coming months as I creep closer to the finish line on these multiple projects.

My primary novel-writing endeavour this year was getting through The Law of Radiance, the still somewhat tentative title of the third and final book in my Watchers Chronicle trilogy. In past years, I’ve adopted some pretty solid techniques for maintaining productivity and discipline, but this year the challenge was more about bringing a long-form story like this one to a close in as satisfying a manner as possible. Tying up the various plot and character threads of a single novel is challenging enough, so tying up three novels’ worth is a tall order. I’ve definitely learned a few things I’ll be taking into account next time I attempt a story on this scale.

Other lessons learned: don’t let yourself lose momentum when you reach a difficult yet critical juncture in your work in progress. My tendency is to work my way up to those big difficult moments, then back away for a few weeks, using the excuse, “I need to think this through before I move on.” The end result is that I typically go back and write it according to my first instinct anyway, so I don’t gain much by the delay and lose quite a lot of time in the process.

And as usual, the biggest professional obstacle standing in my way is my handling of the day job, which I routinely allow to take precedence over my writing. Which is, of course, a common scenario. This always seems to make sense at the time, but looking back over the past year, my biggest regrets revolve around not taking full advantage of the short periods of free time between my day job hours. It seems to me I could have squeezed out several more chapters if I’d made myself fill in all the cracks in my schedule that way.

Well, there’s always next year!

Cracking the Whip: Hard Enough, But Not Too Hard

A Guest Post by Travis Heermann

Discipline.

A professional writing career lives and dies by discipline—or the lack thereof.

Maybe you have talent, but talent is only the beginning.

There’s honing one’s craft (got to practice and study until professional-level prose is automatic). There’s learning how to deal with rejection (growing a callus on one’s heart). There’s learning how to market one’s work effectively (most writers revile, loathe, and despise self-promotion). There’s connecting with a community of other writers, finding your tribe (who will sustain you through the long, dark nights of the soul).

And then there’s the simple fact that one has to insert one’s backside (Tab A) into the chair (Slot B), apply one’s hands to scribing tools (Assembly C), and wiggle them around until beauty and pathos are released into existence.

It all sounds so simple. But if it were, the world would harbor more professional writers.

It’s easy to pour something onto the page when the flush of inspiration is hot and new, when the Muse is sitting in one’s lap with a martini in one hand, stroking your hair with the other, and whispering thrills into your ear. Call it what you will—The Muse, inspiration, your subconscious, whatever—I’m talking about those moments when you realize two hours have passed and there are many more words on the page now than there were before, artful words poured forth from the chalice of your amazing subconscious.

However, the Muse is a fickle tart and simply doesn’t show up every day.

But you’re the professional. You have to show up to work even when the Muse doesn’t. You have to slog it out, even when the Muse is out there draping her(him)self over the lap of some other writer. The bottom line is this: the Muse most often visits writers who are working.

It is working that’s the hard part. Carving out a writing schedule when other demands on your time swarm like rabid termites out of the woodwork, and then guarding that time like a snarling, viciously aroused mama tiger, is where the discipline to finish books comes from.

One of the best ways to develop writing discipline is to set daily goals.

  • A paragraph.
  • A page.
  • A thousand words.
  • A chapter.

These are all good starts. A thousand words a day is a great round number, because it means in 60-90 days you will have a completed novel draft. If you write 250 words a day, a single page, you’ll have a novel draft in a year.

Regularly meeting a simple, achievable goal helps develop good, steady production habits. After a while, you may find that it becomes easier and easier to meet your production goals. In that case, try ramping up a little. Challenge yourself. Instead of a thousand words a day, try 1,500.

You will find, once you establish reasonably regular butt-in-chair discipline, that the Muse finds you increasingly sexy and comes over for trysts more frequently.

Nevertheless, there are limits. You should push those limits, yes, but you must make sure your goals are achievable. If there is no way you can write 3,000 words in a day, making that your goal, only to fail every single day unless you skip showering and sleep and feeding the kids, is a fabulous way to dive headfirst into the crazy pool. It will destroy your confidence like those dreams where you’re walking around naked at work. The Muse likes you best if you’re properly groomed and smelling nice.

For the last two years, I have successfully completed NaNoWriMo. This year was a real struggle, because I lost more than a week of writing time to travel and household emergencies. But I succeeded—51,000 words in about three weeks. It was a struggle. I had to make sacrifices. Friends and family saw me less often, because I had a goal. And I made it. That success alone was a tremendous confidence boost.

Fortunately I have learned to surround myself with people who understand and support my goals. They miss me, but they’ll get over it when the book is done.

In the coming months, I have a number of goals.

  • Finish the third volume of my Ronin Trilogy, Spirit of the Ronin.
  • Write seven short stories for various anthologies.
  • Launch, promote, and oversee the Spirit of the Ronin Kickstarter campaign.

Creating and running a Kickstarter campaign relates squarely to goal setting, but that’s a topic for another time, except to say I would really appreciate your support. The campaign will launch in mid-January, 2015. Please follow this link to view the Kickstarter campaign, and consider supporting this project.

Then go put your butt in the chair and invite the Muse over for a booty call.

Goal Setting: Another Perspective

“There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, and every single one of them is right!”

—     Rudyard Kipling, winner of the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature, first native English-speaker to attain that prize.

The above is taken from a poem entitled ‘In the Neolithic Age’, which is a piece of comic poetry.  Kipling was good at comic poetry.  For that matter, he was good at a number of styles of writing.  Look up the Nobel committee’s motivation for giving him the prize to see what they thought.

The reason I led off with this quote, though, is because, comic or not, it is a solid truth about writing.  You’ve probably gathered that already if you’re a regular reader here at Fictorians:  there are many different ways of practicing our craft and art.

What does this have to do with this month’s theme of goal setting and attainment?  Only this—I don’t do the whole goal setting thing.  So I’m writing today from the position of heretic, or at least Devil’s Advocate.

Do I have no goals at all about my writing?  Of course I do.  That’s not what I mean when I say I don’t set goals.  I agree that everything living has at least some goals in their lives, even if it is nothing more than to survive until sundown.  But I follow goals in a personal manner.

I do not set out at the beginning of a year (or any other regular time period) and establish a defined set of goals to keep in the forefront of my mind.  I do not try to shape my productivity and my behavior to attain those goals.  I don’t have a list of bullet points pinned to the wall above my desk, nor do I have them serving as wallpaper on my laptop or tablet or phone.  I don’t have yellow sticky notes with hand scrawled encouragements stuck up in my workspace.  I don’t review my performance daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly to determine how well I am performing in attaining the ‘current’ goals.

Why not?  Well, I’m not really sure.  I haven’t really thought about it much.  One possible explanation is that I am by nature an introvert, and the establishment of a rigid structure of goals feels to me like something imposed from outside.  Artificial, you might say.

Another explanation might be that I am a seat-of-the-pants (or organic, if you prefer) writer, given to much flexibility in my compositional styles and processes, so that I would find a lack of flexibility in other areas of my writing career somewhat distasteful.

A third explanation could be that I feel that all the brainstorming and monitoring sucks up energy that I would much prefer to pour into the creative processes.

And last, let’s not ignore the fact that I am a champion procrastinator, as well as just a smidge on the lazy side.

So if I have goals, but I don’t do the detailed specific kinds of goals that are very measurable, what are the goals I do have?

 

  1. Write. This, more than anything.  Just plant my posterior in my chair, put my fingers on the keys, and start flowing words.  If this doesn’t happen, nothing else is of import.

 

  1. Tell good stories. Tell stories that make people feel the emotions of my characters.  Tell stories that make people laugh; tell stories that make people cry; tell stories that make people say, “Damn, I wish I could have seen/heard/felt/experienced that!”

 

  1. Keep my promises. If I tell someone I’m going to write something for them, then do it.

 

  1. Have some fun along the way, even if it’s just imagining the look on the face of my alpha reader when he gets to this scene.

 

  1. Finish what I start. I can’t sell incomplete stories.  I can’t present my craft and art to readers if it hasn’t been brought to fruitful culmination.  And, not-so-incidentally, I won’t get paid for unfinished work.

 

Those are my goals.  I may come up with more as I mature in my craft, my art, and my career, but that’s what they are today.

 

How well am I doing in following them?

 

—     Since 2004, I have written and sold over 400,000 words of short fiction, all but one story of which have been published.

 

—     Last year Baen Books published a story collection and a novel.  Let’s just say that sales are good.

 

—     My co-author and I just turned in to Baen a novel in an established series which should be published next year.  (Approximately 175,000 words.)

 

—     The one short work which hasn’t been published?  A 33,000 + word novella sold to a hardcover anthology.

 

I currently have four projects in progress:  one on the front burner, one simmering on a back burner, and two have been started but are waiting for my limited mental creative space to open up for them to be further developed.

 

My approach seems to work for me.

Remember Mr. Kipling’s words above, “. . . every single one of them is right!”  If the rigid detailed goal setting doesn’t work for you, that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you, just like it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you if you write organically rather than by outline.  It just means you need to explore other approaches until you find one that will work for you.

 

But goal #1 always has to be “Write.”  Otherwise, the whole exercise is worthless.

 

Have fun.