goals

New Year’s Prep: Writing Goals for 2016

Nephele Tempest

We’re nearly half way through December, and by now I hope many of you have discovered how capable you are of putting your writing high on your list of priorities. No matter how busy you are, you should be able to find the time to do those things that are truly important to you. It can be so easy to fall out of the habit, even with something we want to do, but if you write daily — even for a short while — you keep that momentum going. Not only do you feel good in the moment, but when you reflect back on the year, you’ll see that you’re finishing 2015 in an excellent, productive way.

This week is the perfect time to start reflecting. Did you set writing goals for the year? How did you do? Was there a particular part of the year where you felt you went off track? What things did you accomplish that maybe weren’t on your original to-do list?

Why do we look back? There’s plenty of advice saying you should just look forward and not dwell on that past, but I believe you can only move forward successfully once you’ve assessed your previous actions. That doesn’t mean you should beat yourself up for perceived failures; we all fall down on the job occasionally, or have something that doesn’t turn out the way we imagined it would. The key is to take inventory and see what was in your control, and determine a new plan of attack for the future.

Once you’ve thought about the past year and your accomplishments, you’ll be ready to set goals for 2016. I don’t like the term resolutions. They bring to mind weight loss ambitions that die out by mid-February. Instead I believe in setting goals and then laying out a plan.

So, a few things to think about this week as you go about your business:

What are one or two year-long goals you’d like to achieve pertaining to your writing? These should be sizable and consist of actionable steps that you can break down over the course of the year. If you’re part of the way finished with writing a book, your ultimate goal could be to have it out on submission to agents, something that can be broken down into finishing the draft, revisions, writing a synopsis and pitch letter, etc.

Are there smaller goals you can set deadlines for at different points during the year? For instance, something you plan to complete by the end of January, or the end of March? Aim to send out a specific number of query letters by a set date, or spend a month learning a new-to-you social media platform or useful computer program. Not everything needs to start on January 1st, either. You might want to participate in NaNoWriMo come November, for example.

Don’t make every goal directly related to publication and becoming a professional writer. Allow yourself to set some fun goals, or to learn skills that have other applications as well. Aim to treat yourself to a weekend getaway somewhere you want to visit that might be a setting for a future book. Try your hand at writing in a different genre or format as a side project, just to see if you enjoy it.

Think ahead for bigger goals that might not take place this year but which require some advance planning. Do you want to attend a certain writer’s conference but feel it’s too costly? Put it on your goal list for 2017 and start saving now. Would you like to visit your editor in New York City when you finally get a book deal? Again, that might require you start setting aside a bit of money.

Stay flexible. Remember, these are your goals. You are making them for your own benefit, so you don’t need to answer to anyone or explain yourself if you don’t complete them all in the time you set. Sometimes things take longer, or less time, or you decide that you’d rather do something else entirely. You only have to answer to yourself, and only you can determine if a goal is important to you.

These ideas should just get you started. You’ve got a couple of weeks before the new year kicks in, so spend a few minutes each day considering what you’d like to do with it. Be a little ambitious. Let yourself stretch. Reach for a couple of stars. You can do it.

 

 

Friday Links: Setting Writing Goals and Leveling Up

Nephele Tempest

Happy Friday! It’s been a ridiculously busy week, as evidenced by the crickets chirping around here, but I have several things planned for next week that I hope will make up for the quiet.

As I mentioned last week and a few times on Twitter, we’re into the final quarter of the year now, so it’s a great time to reassess your writing goals if you haven’t had the chance yet. It doesn’t need to be a big deal. If you made goals for the year, pull them out and see how you’re doing, where you might need to focus more time or effort, or — if you’re ahead of the game — change things around a bit to give yourself a challenge in the coming months.

If you didn’t make goals for the year, even easier. Think about where you are with your writing and what you would like to achieve before 2016 rolls around. Keep in mind holidays and such make this time of year busy, but don’t just let yourself off the hook and think you can procrastinate on all the big stuff until January. Break things into bite-sized pieces and figure out what you can tackle now, even if it’s just an aim to write a little each day. And don’t forget that National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is coming in November, a great way to recommit to your writing.

To help inspire you, I’ve got this week’s links, a broad range I hope you find intriguing and entertaining, and that might give you some ideas on how to level up with your writing. Enjoy, and have a wonderfully productive weekend!

Anatomy of a Discovery: How a Literary Magazine Editor Finds New Writers – Some food for thought for those of you submitting shorter work to the lit mags, or considering it.

53 Wonderfully Pointless Facts about the English Language – For a chuckle.

My Paradoxical Quest to Build a Personal Brand – More food for thought. Ever more pertinent, whether you’re writing novels or freelancing or just designing your blog.

Immigration, Dislocation, and the Search for Home – How immigration and the economy have affected one writer’s work, and outlook. Another good argument for reading diversely in a global sense.

Win a Writer’s Retreat in Iceland – Details for a scholarship covering flight and attendance to the April 2016 program.

Friday Links

Nephele Tempest

Happy fall, northern hemisphere! Of course here in SoCal, as predicted, we’re still waiting for the weather to catch up with the season, but sometimes I think fall is just a state of mind. All those years of heading back to school each September have me brainwashed; new notebooks, new school books, new books to read, and then a nice fall housecleaning before the craziness of the holidays hits. Okay, that last one was less school related and more about my mother, but you get the idea.

As we near the end of September, it’s also a good time to assess your writing year and set or modify your goals for the last quarter of 2015. How are you doing? Accomplish what you’d hoped to? Gone off track along the way? Take a few minutes this weekend or early next week to give your progress a good looking over and maybe peek at the calendar for October through December. Mark your goals so you know what’s on your plate. Maybe there’s a contest you intend to enter or you have a deadline looming. Get your ducks in a row and then write, write, write.

Of course, feel free to take a little break now and then to check out some of these links. I hope they inspire you to some wonderful levels of productivity. Enjoy!

What Every Successful Novel Opening Must Do: Myth vs. Reality – An interesting look at the dos and don’ts of writing the opening paragraphs.

An Interview of Jessa Crispin – The creator and publisher of Bookslut.com gets interviewed on her own site about her new book (which I have already read and loved) and her fascinating travels through Europe.

Nom de Vie: Literary Social Media in the Age of Ferrante – What it means to have a pen name and refuse to self-promote in this social-media-obsessed world.

15 Short Story Competitions to Enter Before the End of the Year – Pretty much as written.

4,000-Year-Old Egyptian Manuscript Found – Fascinating little write up on this ancient text believed to pre-date the Book of the Dead.

Reading More Diversely: Mid-Year Update

Nephele Tempest

DiverseBooks

Back in December, I did a quick review of my personal reading for 2014, and decided I wanted to make a concerted effort to read more diversely. My stats for last year included a chart that showed I read slightly more women authors than men, and about 25% of the books I read were by authors of color. I also read predominately authors of American or British origin, with very little in translation. While those numbers were not terrible, they were not as well-rounded as I’d like, so I knew I wanted to work at changing them this year.

But how to change? There were a number of challenges going around at the start of the year — suggestions of how to diversify your reading habits no matter what demographic you were seeking to increase. One of the most notable was K. Tempest Bradford’s reading challenge, where she suggested readers go an entire year without reading a single book by white male, cis, straight authors.

I thought the challenge sounded fabulous, but a little extreme for my personal taste, simply because I knew I would trip over books during the course of the year that excited me and that I would want to read immediately, and sometimes they would not fall into the challenge parameters. Instead I decided I would let her challenge inspire me to be more mindful of what I read in general, and make a concerted effort to choose more books by a variety of different authors. They were certainly on my radar — and on my shelves. It was just a matter of pushing them higher up on my to-read list.

Because I did own so many books by authors of color and different backgrounds, I physically pulled a bunch off of my bookcases and made an actual pile. This way, when I’m ready to read a new book, these titles are some of the first I consider. New books by authors of color get added to the stack when I acquire them, as well, keeping them in the forefront of my mind.

So how am I doing? Better, but there’s still room for improvement. As of today, my ratio has increased and approximately 35% of my reading this year has been by writers of color. I’ve read fewer books overall than I’d have liked, but there’s still more than four months left in 2015, so I have plenty of time to catch up in all respects. I’m pretty pleased with my system, but I’ll definitely reassess at the end of the year to determine if I’ll continue this way in 2016, or if I will find a more aggressive way of meeting my goal.

The beauty of reading challenges is that they serve as a spring board. If they fit with your goals, and seem like something you want to try for, terrific! If they seem a little too ambitious for you, tailor them for your own needs. Some readers already read diversely in terms of authors of color but would like to check out more books in translation, or simply by non-American authors. Other readers want to read more women authors, or more nonfiction.

Although I sometimes joke that I’d like to read “all the books,” in reality I know that’s both impractical and simply not true. Not all books appeal to me. There are plenty of titles out there that I’m happy to skip. But with so many millions of books to choose from, there are definitely many I’ve yet to discover that I no doubt will adore. It’s a matter of scratching around and being open to all of the many sources, and widening my scope when it comes to the places where I go to learn about both back lists and new releases.

For instance, despite knowing of Tempest’s challenge, I only recently came across her YouTube channel where she recommends different books by a range of authors, all of which fit her challenge parameters. Even though I’m not following the challenge precisely, this serves as a fabulous source for reading recommendations. I’m also a frequent visitor to Book Riot, where they are actively discussing diversity in publishing and make an effort to talk about a broad range of books. I follow the We Need Diverse Books campaign, and learn about great authors of color writing for kids and young adults.

For me, it’s not sufficient to read more by authors of color. I also want to be more aware of the books that are out there and — I hope — help more great books by authors of color find their way into bookstores and the hands of readers. I’m not just a reader, but a person working in the industry, and so part of reading more diversely for me is about making strides toward diversifying publishing as a whole.

Assessing Your Goals: The Halfway Mark

Nephele Tempest

Believe it or not, we are halfway through the year, which makes this week an excellent time for you to sit down and take a few minutes to assess where you stand in terms of your goals for 2015. How is your writing going? Have you accomplished what you wanted to in the last six months? What sort of changes would you like to make moving forward?

The idea of this sort of check in is not to make you feel terrible if you haven’t made as much progress as you’d like. It’s really just a touchstone, a moment to readjust your course and to remind yourself why you’re doing what you do. With that in mind, I’d like you to ask yourself a few questions while you’re checking in with your word count or the number of query letters you sent into the world:

Are my goals challenging but reasonable? Make sure you’ve given yourself something to reach for, but don’t set the bar so high that you need to don your cape and take flight in order to reach it. Everyone faces some failures, but a steady diet can be discouraging so you want to make at least a portion of your goal something that you absolutely know you can do.

Are my goals something over which I have control? You want your goals to be actionable. It’s great to say you plan to have a three-book publishing deal by the end of the year, but not every variable in that particular milestone is something you can make happen. Luck and timing also come into play. Instead break that goal down into the parts that are entirely up to you: Revising your manuscript, sending query letters, working on your social media platform to show agents and editors that you plan to be an active participant in marketing your work.

Am I getting in my own way? Self-sabotage can creep into your life when you least expect it. Sometimes it’s simply procrastination, but others it’s allowing impatience or frustration to convince you to make an impulsive choice that is contrary to your carefully laid out plan for your career. This could be anything from signing a suspect contract with a small, unknown publisher just to get your book out there, to giving up on your social media efforts after just a few weeks because you feel you aren’t making inroads. Try to pause and determine if your impulsive decision is more likely to help or hinder in the long run.

Don’t forget to look forward, too. It’s great to see how far you’ve come and whether you’re working well toward your goals for the year, but it’s also an excellent time to assess those goals for the next six months. Is there anything you want to change? To scale back or ramp up? Maybe an opportunity has come along and you’d like to veer off on a tangent. Build these things into your plan for the future. The best goals are flexible, after all.

Happy writing, and good luck ticking off those goals between now and the end of the year!

Reading Diversely: Reflecting on the Year

Nephele Tempest

If anything seemed to characterize this year in reading, it was the ongoing discussion about the importance of reading more diversely, whatever that meant for you as an individual reader. The conversation touched on a number of points, but focused primarily on reading women authors, reading authors of color, and reading books where the characters themselves were more representative of the diverse population of the world. Reading diversely is especially important for writers, because of all the ways it provides you with a broader outlook, greater empathy and understanding, cultural insights, and more scope for your imagination.

Like many dedicated readers, I like to think I’m pretty broad in my choices of reading material, but I made a point of paying more attention to what I was reading this year, mostly because I had the nagging feeling I could do better. While I still have a couple of books in progress, and I may finish one or more of them before we ring in the new year tonight, I think we’re close enough that I can take a general look at the shape of my reading for 2014.

I’ve never tracked my reading choices beyond noting the title, author, and date I’ve finished reading the book, but it’s easy enough to run through the list of authors and determine how they fall in terms of gender and race. As has been the case the past few years, I read much less than I’d have liked this year, but certainly enough that I can share my percentages.

In terms of gender of authors, 55% of the titles were written by women, and 45% by men. These percentages include one book that had three authors, one female and two male, which was weighted accordingly. This is actually a more equal distribution than the last few years, when I read more books by women than men by a much larger margin, something I know is partly due to the fact that I read a fair amount of romance and young adult fiction for work reasons, and those genres seem to boast more women authors than male authors.

As for racial/cultural diversity, approximately 25% of the books I read were by authors of color (male and female), which isn’t a horrible percentage but is certainly smaller than I would like it to be. One of the two partly read books currently on the nightstand is by an author of color, but I have a bit more left than I’m likely to get through tonight. The upside is that it will be the first book finished in 2015 and thus get me off to a good start for next year’s reading goals. Reading more diversely has become part of my ongoing reading objectives, not simply something to think about for one year and trade for a new goal the next. I loved that my efforts to read a bigger variety of authors in 2014 led me to finally read James Baldwin, after years of meaning to pick up one of his books; to delve into Roxane Gay’s emotional novel An Untamed State; and to discover Zadie Smith’s wonderful essays.

Thinking about reading in 2015, I’m recommitting to my standard “read more books” goal, and also to reading more diversely. In addition, I’m going to try and get through more of the books I own rather than continuing to buy books that end up collecting dust for years before I get around to them. I’m considering a number of writing challenges that I’ve discovered around the bookish internet as a way to focus my personal reading efforts. Of course there are the standards, that involve setting a goal of a certain number of books read for the year, or reading books only by women or only by authors of color. However, there appear to be many more specific challenges, addressing every facet of reading you can imagine, from tackling more classics to reading regionally. I’ve linked to a few that sound intriguing below, and I’d love to hear about any others you might be giving a try.

So how was your year in reading? Did you have a specific goal in mind for 2014? Have you discovered any wonderful new reads simply because you opened yourself up to books outside your traditional comfort zone? What are you excited to read in the year ahead?

Reading Challenges for 2015

The Classics Club – Commit to reading at least 50 classics (of your choice) over a 5-year period.

2015 TBR Pile Challenge – Commit to reading 12 books that have been on your TBR pile for a year or more.

Reading England 2015 – Travel England by reading one book per county for as many as you choose to tackle.

The Pre-Printing Press Challenge – Read some serious oldies, such as Beowulf or History of the Peloponnesian War.

The Literary Movement Challenge – Read a book (or more) each month for that month’s assigned literary movement, such as Romanticism, Post-Modernism, etc.

Victorian Bingo Challenge – Read Victorian novels that fulfill a Bingo card of statements, one book per square.

Popsugar Reading Challenge 2015 – Read books to fulfill the 50 statements/categories on the challenge listing.

Review, Reflect, and Ramp Up

Nephele Tempest

pen_and_pencil

Just two weeks remain to 2014, which makes now an excellent time to pause and think about the year coming to an end. How was your year? Did you meet the goals you set for yourself? Are you pleased with your writing progress? Where did you exceed your plans and where did you fall short?

I’m not big on resolutions because all too often they seem like vague wishes for things with very little planning behind them. Oh, not always. People who want to lose weight know they should watch their intake and exercise. Writers who want to publish understand it’s important to finish a manuscript, revise, submit. But there’s often a disconnect between the daydream and the planning part of achieving those resolutions. It’s easy to lose track of the plan unless you actually determine what you will do, how your actions will change in order to make your ultimate goal come to pass.

So as I said, now is a great time to look back, just for a moment, to see what went well and what didn’t go so well in the last twelve months. And then think about why. What steps did you take that allowed you to meet your goals, and what distractions or problems cropped up that railroaded those you failed to achieve. What could you have done better? Understanding the hows and whys, your motivations behind your actions, will help you to set new goals for the year ahead, and also determine how best to approach them.

Keep the successes and the goofs in mind as you figure out where you go next.

A few tips for goal setting for 2015:

1. Set goals outside your comfort zone, that force you to reach. They should be achievable, but not so easy that they fail to challenge you or allow you to slack off because you can handle them in a rush at the end of the year.

2. Make sure you set goals that you really want to achieve, not just things you think you should do, or that sound good if someone asks about your resolutions. Tackle things that matter, because your emotional investment will serve to motivate you.

3. Break your goals down into measurable components and/or actions. What steps do you need to achieve to meet your goal? How much time will each step or action require? Schedule regular check-ins for yourself over the course of the year (or however long your goal will take) to make sure you’re on track.

4. Determine what’s at stake. What do you stand to gain if you meet your goal? What will you lose if you don’t? Know the value of your actions long term, because that will help you resist the temptation to procrastinate in the short term. Post the stakes somewhere you will see them often enough to keep your focus.

5. Try setting some shorter-term goals and some big picture goals. Having a few goals of the year that you can finish by March or May will bolster you over the course of the year, and encourage you as you work on the longer term projects.

No matter what stage you are at in your writing career, there are always new goals to set, new hurdles to tackle. A writer can always improve their craft, hone their story-telling skills, or master a new facet of self-promotion. Other goals can include publishing a short story, getting an agent, signing a book deal, hitting a certain mile-marker for sales figures. Or you might approach tasks that are more straightforward, such as redesigning an author site or starting a newsletter. Think about what you’ve been doing, then consider how you can improve upon it. Mix and match your goals to meet your current needs. Don’t beat yourself up over things that haven’t gone well; instead allow yourself to plan out a new strategy for the year to come, and get excited about putting it into action. Good luck!

Goal Check: Assessing Your Year-in-Progress

Nephele Tempest

Farewell to March! It’s the last day of the month, and also of the first quarter of the year, which makes today an excellent time to assess your writing progress and see where you want to go next. Remember those goals and/or resolutions you made around January 1st? How are those working out for you? Never mind your visits to the gym or your promise to eat more fiber; I’m interested in your writing goals, and how you’re working toward building your career.

Perhaps you’ve had a great few months, and you’re right on target for the goals you set. If so, congratulations! Toast yourself, or grab a cupcake — whatever little reward makes you smile — and then face forward and continue to charge ahead. What goals have you set for yourself for the second quarter? What needs to happen in April to keep you on track? Are there any adjustments you would like to make based on what you’ve accomplished so far? Have any new opportunities come up that change your game plan? Goals and resolutions should be fluid, altering as your writing progresses, new ideas come to mind, and you master both your craft and the business.

On the other hand, you might be feeling a little behind right now. Maybe you didn’t get as much writing time in as you’d hoped, or you’re not completely pleased with your latest project. That’s fine. Just take a deep breath and an honest look at what you’ve been doing. Have you been procrastinating or simply busy with things outside your control? Are you being too hard on your WIP? Any draft is better than a blank page, after all. Get it all down, and then go back and revise. Books are made during the editing process; no one should expect a first draft to be golden. Then decide where to go next. What would you like to accomplish going forward? How can you carve out more writing time? Maybe take a writing class for inspiration, or see if you can join a new writing group to get some fresh feedback. Assess your goals for the year, and see what you need to do in the next three months to point yourself back in the right direction.

If you swore to write 1,000 words a day starting January 1st, and kept to that resolution, you could be finishing off the first draft of a 90,000 word novel today. Maybe it would be a shitty first draft, but that’s okay, because we all know that draft is just the kicking-off point — something to work with, beyond the scary blank page. If you start April 1st and write 1,000 words a day, you can have a first draft by the end of June. Don’t beat yourself up for something you failed to do in the past. Just recommit to your writing and do the best you can each day. And don’t forget that, depending where you are in your career development, you can also make goals pertaining to getting published, improving your self-marketing skills, and more.

Some potential goals for April through June:

  • Commit to writing every day (either a set word goal or a specific amount of time)
  • Finish a work-in-progress
  • Revise a first draft
  • Write and polish three short stories
  • Research agents and make a list of potential representation for your nearly finished project
  • Send out ten query letters a month
  • Brainstorm 50 ideas for potential projects; write the first sentence for each of them
  • Set up a blog tour for an upcoming release
  • Redesign your author site
  • Learn one new form of social media and engage through it regularly (frequency to be determined by the platform)
  • Start a quarterly newsletter for your readers and include a sign-up on your author site home page

The New Year in Reading

Nephele Tempest

2014-01-06 08.51.48

Now that 2013 is truly behind us, with its numerous end-of-year book lists, we can get down to the important stuff — Most Anticipated: The Great 2014 Book Preview. Every year, The Millions publishes this list at the start of the year and again at roughly the halfway point, giving a round up of anticipated titles — primarily literary fiction, with a few nonfiction volumes thrown in — set to be published in the next six-to-eight months. I look forward to and dread the arrival of this list in equal measures.

It’s no secret around here that I never feel like I have enough time to read. In part that’s a hazard of the job; much of my reading time is devoted to client manuscripts and submissions, which aren’t quite the same thing as curling up with a published novel. But the truth is I would wish for more reading time no matter what I did for a living. I just love books and there will never be sufficient hours in my day, days in my lifetime, for me to read all the books that interest me. That doesn’t mean I won’t try, however.

I like to have a plan. I’m the sort of bookworm who has always kept track of what she reads. That used to mean a fresh sheet of notebook paper tucked into the front of my diary every January, where I’d keep a running list of the titles and authors of the books I read, along with the date I finished reading them. At the end of the year I’d examine the list (generally stretched to a second, and sometimes third, sheet of paper) to see if I’d read more books than the previous year, and what sorts of books I read the most. Then I’d set a goal for the next year that generally went along the lines of “read more books, and read more good books.”

Then I got older and the reading list shifted to an Excel spreadsheet. (Yes, I realize I’m a geek.) The new format allowed me room to rate the books, and also track number of pages — which became a balm of sorts in the first years I worked as a literary agent when I felt terrible at the drop in the number of non-work books I was reading; at least I could comfort myself that they were long books. My reading goals also shifted away from quantities, since I rarely have control over how much time I can devote to personal reading, and more toward titles. Now at the start of the year I will look at the new books scheduled to come out and pick a couple that I really want to read. Those get prioritized and I plan around them. Generally they’re something by a favorite author, or something that’s gotten an unusual amount of buzz that has me curious.

I don’t make up my reading plan just from The Millions‘ list, obviously, since I read more broadly than their focus would allow. I scour websites and publisher catalogs for genre and young adult titles, as well. Last year was difficult because my list of want-to-reads was extremely long; it felt like a really strong year for good books, whatever else the industry might be doing. This year, I’ll admit I’m a little relieved that I’ve only got a few titles tugging at me so far. Because, unsurprisingly, I have a backlog of books from previous years I really want to read.

How about you? Do you plan ahead at all when it comes to your year’s reading? Are there a couple of authors you anticipate months in advance? Or do you just play it by ear, let your mood sway you, see what friends recommend?