News
I had something funny happen to me this week. You know how I set the goal to finish editing and assembling all the way through Chapter 43 of Frostfire this week? Well, I basically finished that on Monday. Oops? This is why the secret to success is setting the right goals. I could have just celebrated my good luck and started cashing in on a lot of stretch goals, but that would have wasted almost an entire week of work just because I’d failed to set the right goals. I don’t want to take it easy! I want to just keep writing! I’m all about putting the work in, as you might have guessed.
At this point in my career my motto is “Just keep writing!” Neil Gaiman gets to “make good art,” but at this point my aspirations are much lower. I want to just keep writing until I can get skilled enough to start making halfway decent art! (I’m being a little facetious here. I really agree with the sentiment of his speech, but sometimes it feels like I need to write another million words or so before I’ll be good enough for what I write to count as “art”. In the meantime, I’ll try to keep writing and having fun with it!)
Writing Tip: So, how can setting the right goals help me to just keep writing?
Clearly my goal to compile a certain number of chapters had the issue that some chapters needed substantial revision, some needed only a little revision, and some needed no revision at all. Under those circumstances, it’s all too easy to guess how many chapters you can finish and be wildly off-target. This is a problem because not reaching goals can be frustrating while reaching them too easily doesn’t motivate you to keep writing as much as you can.
I think that one reason why the secret to success is setting the right goals is because setting the right goals can give you the daily motivation to just keep writing a little more, to just keep trying a little harder, stretching you to achieve success. I know that by writing down daily goals on paper and reworking my schedule to better match how I write, I’ve accomplished far more in the last few months of writing than in the previous half year, and more in the last half-year than in all of 2022. Setting the right goals and working to achieve them can make all the difference.
Options for setting the right goals:
One option for setting the right goals is just to try setting your goals and then adjusting those goals up or down as needed so you always have a reason to push yourself to write a little more. I updated my goal to reach chapter 50 (a harder goal that I nearly achieved), and while that helped me to keep writing, it was probably not the best type of goal to help me stay motivated.
Another option is to use a standard hourly goal. Time spent matters more than inspiration, so using hourly goals can be a great way to motivate me to just keep writing when other goals don’t make sense. Still, it’s possible to spend hours spinning your wheels without motivation to accomplish things, so I prefer goals that are oriented around hitting specific milestones.
In this case, another type of goal I’ve been toying with is the number of heavy revision chapters I complete each day. This is still imperfect, as some chapters take days to revise while others take an hour or less, but it at least ensures that the validity of my goal won’t get thrown wildly out of whack by a string of chapters that are either incredibly difficult to revise or that need no revision at all.
Basically, bad goals fail because they fail to motivate you, either by being too hard, too easy, or too arbitrary. The whole point of setting goals is for motivation! Their incredible power to motivate is why the secret to success is setting the right goals! Start setting the right goals today so you can reach your potential.
Let me know if you have found any good goals that help motivate you during the revision process!
Have a great week, and Just Keep Writing!
Timothy Kuhn