Goal Planning Part II: Creating Goals for 2022

Last week, we talked about questions you should ask yourself to review your 2021, giving yourself a good idea of where you are at now. The good, the bad, and the in between.

So now we get to move on to the fun part – creating goals for 2022!

I broke the year review questions down into writing, author, business, and overall goals, so we’re going to stick with that for this week. But feel free to drill it down even further into subcategories if that works best for you.

Writing goals:

This is what authors tend to focus on the most – how much can you write, how quickly can you write, and what are you writing.

And it is a good starting point.

So based on your answers from last week, look at what you want your goals to be for next year:

1.     If you are focused on pushing yourself to write more this year and you figured out how much you were writing a day or a week last year, what is your new goal? Remember to scale slowly.

So if you were writing 2,000 words a day, consider if your new goal should be 2,500 words? Or 3,000 words?

Or maybe you should look at changing your writing schedule. If you were committed to writing three days a week, should you up it to five days?

Or if you don’t think you can manage more days out of your busy schedule, consider committing to making those days writing days in your ideal setting, whatever shape that takes for you —three hours at the local coffee shop? Alone in your office with music going? Early mornings, late evenings?

2.     I asked you to take a look at what stories, scenes, or characters were your favorite from last year, both that you wrote and that you read. Based on that, what are you planning to write this year? And—jumping a bit ahead into author goals—do these stories, characters, and scenes still fit with your established author brand?

3.     What were some issues in your writing that you identified as something you want to work on? Did you struggle with telling versus showing? Do you want to get better at introducing new characters? Establishing backstory without info dumping?

And how can you turn that into a goal? Should you look at taking a course? Use writing prompts to practice? Read more comps (comparable titles) to study what you love about them and how to adapt that to your own style?

These goals can get a bit vague, so again you want to remember to keep your goals quantifiable and realistic. Do you want to take one class this next year? Use writing prompts twice a week to practice? Read three comparable titles this quarter?

Author Goals:

1.     Last week, I asked you to evaluate your author brand, if you have one. If not, to consider what your author brand should be. So now, looking at your above answers as to the stories and characters you want to write in 2022, do they still fit in that author brand? Do you need to re-evaluate the stories, tropes, characters? Or has there been a shift in your brand that you need to account for?

2.     Based on your favorite and least favorite parts of being an author—because let’s be real, everyone has things they love and avoid—what are you aiming to focus on in 2022 to push your author career to the next level?

Do you want to go to two conventions this year instead of one? Post more to social media? Or less! For some, it is better to schedule three quality posts a week instead of throwing out seven random photos.

3.     How can you make more author connections this year? Do you want to join a new writing group? Join an association? Collaborate with authors on a project?

Business Goals:

1.     After evaluating your time and where you spent it in 2021, what does that tell you for 2022? Do you want to focus more time on writing and less on other author activities? Maybe your goal should be to hire an assistant. I know that sounds scary, but even hiring someone part-time could revitalize your schedule and your writing life.

Or maybe the writing is going great, but you want to spend more time on marketing and sales to get your stories into readers’ hands. What does that mean in hours and money?

2.     How does that affect your budget? Are you spending enough? Too much? If you didn’t have a budget this year, create one! There are some phenomenal templates online as well as recommendations for what is realistic to spend.

Overall Goals:

1.     Last week, I asked what you’d do differently if you could? What scares you the most, but you know would be a great writing/author/business move? Make that a goal! Maybe that means trying to write in third person versus first person since that fits in your genre more even though it is against what you are used to. Or it could be committing more money to your author career, even though that is terrifying because there are no guaranteed book sales? It also could be dedicating more time to the front-facing part of the business—talking with readers, doing more book signings, going to more conventions, even though it is way easier to continue to write, plot, and plan behind the scenes.

What does that look like for you?

2.     And finally, where do you want to be at the end of 2022 and will these goals get you there? Use this question as a lens as you decide on what goals you want to set, how many you think you can achieve in the next year, and how they can combine to push you to the next level in your career.  

Now, for the biggest part: Scheduling!

If you are a planner like me, the number one thing you need to do after planning your goals is setting them on a schedule.

Take each goal and assign a date. So if you are looking to write two books this year, your end goal is probably going to be December 31, 2022. Give yourself as much time as possible! Or for smaller goals, assign shorter dates. If you want to create a budget, you’ll probably want that done relatively soon, so a good date might be January 15th.

Then, once you have realistic dates set, work backwards. What do you need to do each month, each week, each day, to make sure you hit your goals.

How can you break them down into manageable pieces to make each one feel more achievable?

If you go into 2022 saying you want to write a 90,000 word novel, that sounds like a huge goal. And it is! But what if I were to tell you that you only needed to write 250 words today? Just a paragraph. And 250 words tomorrow. And to keep writing 250 words each day. That sounds much more manageable, right?

That is what you should look to do for all your goals. Aim big, but then break them down into doable chunks so as not to overwhelm yourself.   

All that said, there are so many different ways you could take your goals for 2022, but the most important things to remember are:

1.     Make sure they are realistic to where you are now and scale slowly.

2.     Make them quantifiable. Maybe you want to write three books this year, you want to read five books a month, you want to spend $2,000 on marketing and sales, etc… Have firm numbers to make it clear when you’ve met your goal—when you can check it off your list.

3.     Break your goals down into manageable steps—don’t try to take on big goals all at once.

4.     Finally, always keep in mind that your goals can change. Be flexible. If something isn’t working, evaluate why and pivot. Adjust as needed. Character goals change mid-story—why can’t yours?

You’ve got this.

Hopefully this has been helpful. Best of luck planning your goals, and I can’t wait to see what you do in 2022!