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Marketing - Nine: Setting Your Writing Goals

© Joanne Reid

INTRODUCTION

In the past few days, you've been looking at what you like to write, what your interests are, possible markets for your writing and thinking about the kind of money you'd like to make from your writing.

Now it's time to set goals.  In Lesson One, you described your vision. That is your ultimate goal. How do you get from here to there?

Well, I can tell you how not to reach your goal:  make it so overwhelming that it's unachievable and then you can feel really badly, and quite guilty, about not being successful.  I have a personally painful story about this very thing.  As I have mentioned, I have long wanted to write a big old novel.  When my first freelance career bit the dust, I took the job as a newspaper reporter.  I had freedom from worrying about when my next cheque would arrive and a nice steady routine of work.  This was it, I said.  I will write my novel.  So I sat down and outlined it.  About that time, I was reading about Janet Dailey who wrote her romance novels in about 10 days.  Later I learned that she did the research and had the plot figured out and then she simply sat down and let it roll for about 14 hours a day for 10 day or thereabouts.

So I worked it all out, a 60,000 word novel (okay, it wasn't a big blockbuster size novel) would have 20 - 3,000 word chapters.  I would plot it and then write a chapter a day and it would take 20 days.  I allowed myself about twice as long as Janet took because I was working at the paper.

Hah!  I know you can see what is wrong with this scenario.  I was suffering from what I call Novel-In-A-Day Syndrome.  Huge, unrealistic plan doomed to failure.  I missed the first day, and then felt that I had to write 2 chapters the next day to keep on schedule.  And then one of the kids got sick and then I had a party and then my sister came to visit and then it was time to do the fall housecleaning and then...well, you can see where that went.  I'd just think about that project and get tired.

Last year, I was cleaning out my files and I found the outline for that novel and the

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