Ian Dawson's Blog - Posts Tagged "creative-projects"
Five Ways to Set Writing Goals for 2025
We’re in the final days of 2024, and if you haven’t thought about your writing or creative goals for 2025, now would be a good time. It’s essential to establish a few goals as we enter the new year so you can plan how to achieve them before the end of the upcoming year.
Let’s talk about it!
#1 - Set Achievable Goals
This seems logical, but it’s easy to get carried away and overreach with your goals at the start of the year. Much like the classic New Year’s Resolution, if you aim too high, you could grow frustrated and stop working toward your chosen goal if it’s too large.
If you’ve never written a novel before and want that to be your primary goal this coming year, that’s great. That’s an achievable goal. Then, once you know the steps and how to achieve writing one novel, you can add more goals the following year. The key is not to overwhelm yourself or self-sabotage before the goal starts.
#2 - What’s Your Schedule?
Along with setting achievable goals, it’s important to look at your schedule to see how much time you have to work toward your writing goals.
Be honest with yourself: How much time do you actually have to get things done?
Assess your schedule and see where you can fit writing time during the week. Plenty of hours are available to all of us, most of which are spent on our phones, binge-watching shows, or wasting time in other ways. Using these wasted hours and turning them into productive time to create can help you move toward your goals.
Can you swap out watching an hour of TV for working on your writing? Yes, you can.
If you have the drive to do it, you’ll find the time to make it happen.
#3 - Break It All Down
Planning out smaller tasks and aspects of the project that add up to a larger goal can help you stay focused and reduce stress. All projects have dozens of components that must be completed before the finished product is achieved.
When you sit down to plan, think about the varied tasks you can work on daily or weekly to help you move forward with the project and complete it by the end of the year. Having a big goal is excellent; smaller goals over time are the best way to reach it.
#4 - Set Milestones
Give yourself deadlines to reach specific project milestones. By breaking the work into manageable chunks, you can see where you’ll be in the project three, six, or nine months in advance.
Could you complete your novel's outline in three months, a first draft by the six-month mark, and a polished draft within nine months? Absolutely. These are achievable goals, but you need to plan out how you will reach these milestones.
It’s also important to reward yourself when each milestone is completed. Even if it’s something small, it’s nice to incentivize yourself to get things done.
#5 - Enjoy the Process
It’s easy to look at all the completed novels and screenplays and get intimidated, but remember that all these writers started where you are right now.
Completing a writing project is a great feeling, but you must train yourself to enjoy the writing and creative process to keep that momentum going to get you to the finished work. This will ensure you are motivated to attack your projects and goals each day and that your milestones and writing objectives are completed.
Happy Goal-setting, and I’ll see you next time!
Let’s talk about it!
#1 - Set Achievable Goals
This seems logical, but it’s easy to get carried away and overreach with your goals at the start of the year. Much like the classic New Year’s Resolution, if you aim too high, you could grow frustrated and stop working toward your chosen goal if it’s too large.
If you’ve never written a novel before and want that to be your primary goal this coming year, that’s great. That’s an achievable goal. Then, once you know the steps and how to achieve writing one novel, you can add more goals the following year. The key is not to overwhelm yourself or self-sabotage before the goal starts.
#2 - What’s Your Schedule?
Along with setting achievable goals, it’s important to look at your schedule to see how much time you have to work toward your writing goals.
Be honest with yourself: How much time do you actually have to get things done?
Assess your schedule and see where you can fit writing time during the week. Plenty of hours are available to all of us, most of which are spent on our phones, binge-watching shows, or wasting time in other ways. Using these wasted hours and turning them into productive time to create can help you move toward your goals.
Can you swap out watching an hour of TV for working on your writing? Yes, you can.
If you have the drive to do it, you’ll find the time to make it happen.
#3 - Break It All Down
Planning out smaller tasks and aspects of the project that add up to a larger goal can help you stay focused and reduce stress. All projects have dozens of components that must be completed before the finished product is achieved.
When you sit down to plan, think about the varied tasks you can work on daily or weekly to help you move forward with the project and complete it by the end of the year. Having a big goal is excellent; smaller goals over time are the best way to reach it.
#4 - Set Milestones
Give yourself deadlines to reach specific project milestones. By breaking the work into manageable chunks, you can see where you’ll be in the project three, six, or nine months in advance.
Could you complete your novel's outline in three months, a first draft by the six-month mark, and a polished draft within nine months? Absolutely. These are achievable goals, but you need to plan out how you will reach these milestones.
It’s also important to reward yourself when each milestone is completed. Even if it’s something small, it’s nice to incentivize yourself to get things done.
#5 - Enjoy the Process
It’s easy to look at all the completed novels and screenplays and get intimidated, but remember that all these writers started where you are right now.
Completing a writing project is a great feeling, but you must train yourself to enjoy the writing and creative process to keep that momentum going to get you to the finished work. This will ensure you are motivated to attack your projects and goals each day and that your milestones and writing objectives are completed.
Happy Goal-setting, and I’ll see you next time!
