It’s that time of the year when authors reflect over the past year and start focusing on their future, making it the best time to start planning your author goals.
WHAT ARE AUTHOR GOALS?
Author goals list out your desires, helping you to work out the steps you’ll need to take towards achieving them.
It's where you map out a way to turn your dreams into realities.
And it’s not that hard.
DID YOU KNOW THAT THERE ARE THREE TYPES OF AUTHOR GOALS?
According to some goal-setting geniuses, there are three types of goals. For an author we have:
- The author processes goals—it's the number of books you want to write. This goal type is controlled by what you can do as an author such as setting up a daily word count goal.
- An author's performance goal—is to have a book draft completed and ready for submission to either an editor or a publisher. It’s when a project is completed.
- Author outcome goals—is that dream of becoming a bestseller, or winning an award, or getting that publishing contract? It’s also known as a big-picture goal.
To achieve number 3 (the author outcome goal), you start at number 1, working towards completing number 2.
For example:
- You write daily to achieve your daily word count goals.
- Finish the book for submission, and then…
- Get the publishing contract.
WHY HAVE AUTHOR GOALS?
Writing a book takes a long time to complete, it's easy to lose motivation. Authors are notorious for procrastination (*raises hand*), we all have the best intentions to sit and write, but life gets in the way.
Having a set of author goals helps you to stay on track.
Every amazing author out there has a unique reason to want to sit in front of a screen and type at all hours. Do you know your reason?
Where would you like to be in 2023? Can you turn that dream into workable goals?
If you want to learn more, check out the short book Your Author Goals. It's made for authors, by authors that comes with a free goal planning kit to help you achieve success.
Happy goal setting.
This is for the writer who stares at the blinking cursor.
This is for the writer with five manuscripts half-finished and thinking about starting number six.
This is for the writer who wipes down their keyboard with cotton-tips, in between rearranging their pens for the twenty-ninth time that day, without writing a single word.
The writer who does their spring cleaning in autumn, taxes before they’re due, walks their neighbour’s goldfish around the block, and many other imaginative forms of writer’s procrastination.
This is for you.
This is about giving you the tools to write your own author goals to help motivate you, taught from one author to another, without sounding like a beauty pageant contestant promising world peace. Which we all want.
Authors have dreams and desires, so let’s transform them into actionable goals today. Tap now – you know you want to.
Melissa Rowe helps aspiring authors build their author platforms through her books, courses, and kits. She’s an award-winning blogger, an international bestselling fiction author, and team leader at: THEAUTHORPLATFORM.COM
**This post is a condensed version from the original article: “Is it worth creating author goals?” printed with permission by the author, for THEAUTHORPLATFORM.COM **