Make it so!

Happy New Year!

Join me on a goal-achieving adventure this year!

Believe it or not, I’m not big on new year’s resolutions. Why? They tend to be impossibly big, vague, and requiring a drastic change with little to no preparation before-hand.

That doesn’t mean I don’t make any plans or goals for the new year, and I expect you’re the same way. Why don’t we accomplish them together?

Over the next several months, on this blog, I’m going to walk through what needs to be done to achieve our goals. I want you to be a big part of this community. Comment on the posts, participate in the challenges, let me know what is working for you, and what isn’t working for you. With your participation, you will help keep me accountable, and I promise to do the same for you.

To start this adventure, let’s talk about our goals for the year.

Setting goals is one thing. To actually achieve them—to put in the work, to make the time—is a different beast. You’ve probably heard the saying that knowledge is power. Perhaps you’ve also heard that using that knowledge is the real power. I’ve talked more than enough about setting achievable and exceedable goals. You can see yourself the achievable goal of writing one word a day, but if you do nothing different to make that happen, then even that one word a day goal isn’t achievable.

The first thing we need to do to make sure we can accomplish our goals, is to make them specific. Remember my problem with new year’s resolutions being too vague? We don’t want that. We want to be as specific as possible. But like resolutions, make them big. I want us to push ourselves this year. We don’t have to worry about them being too drastic a change, because we have all year to accomplish them.

Aim high.

What are your writing goals for this year?

I’ve got an ambitious year planned. I have a first draft of a novel written that I need to have fully edited and out the door, hopefully in March, or June at the latest. I also want to outline, draft, and edit a second novel by the end of December. And my stretch goal is to outline a couple more novels.

Now it’s your turn. Share your goals in the comments. Telling others what your goals are is a great start to keeping each other accountable and making those goals happen.

Let’s make this year OUR most successful year yet!