Happy New Year! So, are you ready to kick your 2017 writing goals in the butt?
I'm willing to bet money you had one of two reactions to that: 1. YES. 2. AAAAH.
Deep breaths. I'm here to give you some tips that will help you get your 2017 writing off to a good start—and keep it going.
I Know You Don't Have Time For This
Before I explain further, let me address the number one issue: yes, I know you don't have time for this.
Our world is filled with good things to do. Very few of us have “free” time, and I write this article knowing that. Here's the thing: in order to succeed, you will have to choose what “good thing” to fill your time with.
That means that to write well, you'll sometimes need to give up one good thing to do another. I'm not telling you to give up bad habits. Some of you have those, sure, but most writers I know don't. We fill our time with things that are important.
Well, in order to be a writer, you're going to have to make a hard choice: you need to choose which things are more “good” than others. Following are three good things you can do to write well in 2017.
Step One: Fill Your Creative Well
Okay, I know you've heard me say this before. This is a hard one because it requires intentional effort; it requires you to carve out time and dedicate yourself to certain things.
It's still really important.
Here's why: When we create, we pour ourselves onto the page. If we do not refill ourselves, we will eventually find ourselves running empty.
Your number one challenge in 2017 must be to refill your creative well. This means reading good things, watching good things, listening to good things. It means spending some energy on things other than writing—cooking, exercise, painting, reading. It means making sure that you invest in more than one thing.
I know this sounds counterintuitive, but it's just the truth. If you're willing to invest yourself in different creative ventures, your writing will flourish.
This year, make time to experience beauty. Make time to explore. Do creative things other than writing, and experience other people's creations. Your writing will only flourish if you do.
Step Two: Set Realistic Writing Goals
This is a particular pitfall I've stumbled into many times: eager to write and determined to write, I set myself writing goals that I can't actually achieve, and when I miss them, I feel like I've failed. I've had amazing writing days, producing thousands of words. I've also made the mistake of setting “three thousand words a day” as my goal.
You may roll your eyes now. It went about as well as expected.
Here's the thing: life is messy. It's unpredictable, and it's complicated, and it leaves you unable to promise yourself six hours at a time to write. But here's what you can do: weekly goals.
Ideally, you'll write every day. If you set that number to something small, you have a good chance of achieving it. If course, you can't really predict what each day will bring. Life is weird. It changes. The good news is it's my experience that you CAN achieve a weekly goal.
Let's say your goal is 2100 words a week. That averages out to 300 words a day. (This is on the REALLY LOW end, just to be clear.) Some days, you'll write 0 words. Some days, you'll write 1200 words. If you focus on a weekly goal, you are likely to reach it—and that's what I'm encouraging you to do.
See, part of the key to writing well through the year is momentum. Have you ever sprinted? It's a great feeling to run as fast as you can, but nobody can do that for very long. I'm not asking you to sprint in your writing. Instead, I want you to learn how to marathon.
A marathon requires a steady pace. It requires knowing one's self and listening to one's body. For you, this may not mean writing every day.
What it does mean is setting a goal you can reach. You'll be more likely to keep it. You'll also be more likely to forgive yourself if you blow it. (We all need permission to suck, after all.)
In fact, that brings me to my last point.
Step 3: Give Yourself Permission to Suck
I know, I know. Those very words seem horrible. Anti-inuitive! Self-defeating!
Nope. They're actually empowering. Here's what that looks like in bullet form:
- It's 2017. You want to write well this year.
- You will set goals and do your best. But some days, you're going to suck. (It's part of being human.)
- In order to get past those days and NOT GIVE UP, you need to give yourself permission to have days like that.
- Why? Because permission to suck means that on those days you blew it, you did not fail.
That last point deserves repeating. Giving yourself permission to suck means that when you blow it, you can acknowledge you did not fail, and that means you can pick up the next day and keep going.
Giving yourself permission to suck means no failure.
Whoa. Crazy concept. Perfectionism is your enemy? Yep. Or, as Neil Gaiman puts it:
You Can Do This: Write in 2017
You've got a lot to do this upcoming year. You need to write. That takes a lot, but I know you can do this. What it's going to take is making choices on your part.
This year, fill your creative well.
This year, set yourself realistic goals.
This year, allow yourself to make mistakes and keep on going.
You can do this, fellow writer. Let's make 2017 our best writing year yet!
What are your writing goals for 2017? Let us know in the comments.
PRACTICE
You can do this. 2017 can be your year for writing well. Let's start by taking time now (even if it means setting aside another good thing) to create a game plan for the year. In the comments, I want to hear from you:
- Tell me how you plan to fill your well.
- Tell me your weekly goal.
- And most important of all, tell me you give yourself permission to suck.
Don't forget to encourage three other writers. See you in the comments!
I love your advice to set a weekly goal! I’m not sure how this has not occurred to me yet, as I set weekly running goals every week. I think the same method can and should be applied to exercise, because as you said, life is so unpredictable. I can’t wait to try this out! Thanks!!
I agree, Ellie – and I hadn’t thought of applying it to exercise! Thanks so much for sharing that comment! 🙂
That weekly goal tip is some of the best advice I’ve gotten in a while. I beat myself up quite a lot last year about missing my daily goals. So thanks for that. & ill do my best to truly fill my creative well this year. I read daily before bed but Ill try to set a time during the day for my reading, sketching, and photography. I also think I’ll actually cook recipes a little more instead of just throwing food together lol I think i’ll start with a weekly goal of 600 words, and try to increase it from there. Thanks for the article.
I’m so glad to hear that, Charles! I know it pretty much saved my sanity. I’m really hoping it’ll help you, too.
Cooking is a GREAT thing to do! Fantastic goals! You can do it!
2016 was a very eventful year… actually so was 2015. I practiced none of these things and so got very little writing done. I started a writing blog yesterday and now today have read this article. I am so encouraged!
Some things I plan to do to fill my well are to take walks with my five year old grandson, read more (I am a voracious reader, but lacked much time for it lately) and discover at least two new authors this year. I am also going to take my hobbies of quilting and baking back up.
My weekly goal, I think will be on, as you say, the low end. I’m going to try 2000 words a week, but for sure will write every day. Even if only in my blog.
And OK… I have permission to “suck”.
Thank you Ruthanne! (lovely name!)
I love your goals and your plans! This sounds like a realistic set of desires. I think you can do it. Don’t give up for anything! 🙂 (And thank you!)
From the middle of 2015 to December 2016, I wrote and self-published a middle-grade novel. Now I’m waiting for an ‘idea’ to bubble out of me as my debut novel did. I am not so concerned with number of words as I am with the discipline of writing every day – a piece that has a beginning, middle and end. When I’m not writing for children, I drag some memory out of the grey matter for my memoir. A wonderful exercise. I fill my cup by reading children’s books, working with my critique group and exercising. I find many an idea gets fleshed out on the elliptical. So far my goal of just ‘writing’ every day is on track and I do, do, do give myself permission to be anything other than perfect.
This sounds really powerful, Janet. Giving yourself permission to be imperfect is absolutely crucial! (Also, congrats on that novel!)
1. I plan to read more to fill my creative well. I want to focus on short stories and essays, as there is no pressure to finish a longer work. I also plan to watch a movie or television episode once per week, something I haven’t been giving myself permission to do lately.
2. My weekly goal is 2500 words per week, which works out to 500 per day with weekends off. Definitely doable as a weekly goal.
3. I already suck. For 2017, the gloves are off. I plan to bring my writing to a whole new level of suckage! Seriously, why not? I’ve read many a book that probably started out as a silly exercise which the author then realized had potential. Also, a lot of writing I don’t like is remarkably commercial. So, I not only give myself permission to suck, I challenge anyone reading this to suck more than I in 2017.
Bruce, this is terrific. Well-stated and honest. I accept your challenge, sir! 🙂
First of all I never planned to be a writer, friends and family suggested I write because I can tell a good story. Writing is a learning process one that I did not focus much in my life. Everyday i sit, start, and work at honing a new skill. Too many ideas, I found it hard to write on a subject as too many ideas would flow through my head and cloud my subject, so i created a whole bunch of title pages in word and file those thoughts there for the time being, freeing my concentration on the subject at hand.
Weekly goals. I am driven so that means i have to concentrate and set deadlines, and some days commit over other priorities. I seek out free sites to file my daily writing as blogs, seeking feedback, I have not found any great sites to post, so most of the post comments from different demographics are negative. Trying to find a site where people can see their way out of the fire is not at my grasp yet, replying to those that respond negatively and suggesting a positive approach simply creates alienation or opens the door for more written abuse. I can believe we live like this!
I suck the big one. If I would of put out my blog and everyone embraced it, I would of felt like Frank Sinatra “I did it my way”. The opposite happened and that gives me purpose to find ways to restate my blogs to gain peoples appeal. The great thing about doing it on a computer is I can’t get discourages seeing my garbage can fill up, I just cut or delete and keep walking through the fire!
I’ve been buying YA books since it’s a great market and I’ve never written in first person. I especially enjoy the Maximum Ride series by James Patterson; when Max is in a scene, it’s written first person; when the focus is on another member of the “flock”, it’s written in 3rd person. I’m learning a lot.
Besides this, I’ve also allowed myself some movie watching and episodic tv watching to help me with crafting short stories. I don’t know if that’s working for me or not, yet.
These 2 ways I can find to “fill my well”.
I actually have to say I’m going to try and read less. I feel incomplete if I’m not reading in my “free” time, but the last few years I’ve greatly put my writing on the back burner. Well, 2017, I’m turning up the heat.
I promise myself to write again. Paint pictures with words and at some point have a concrete writing project boiling away.
I’m starting out with playing with an outside source of writing prompts to get the juices bubbling.
The suckiest part has already been accomplished in my lack of writing, so I can only go up from here.
One of my writing goals for 2017 is to write one short story outside my genre. My work is usually in the General Fiction genre. This year, I want to try something different, like Science Fiction or Romance. I know that’s going to take a lot of reading to get a feel for what I like and what I don’t. It also means taking a class or two to get an understanding of what I need to do.
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