60. Crafting your writer's resolution: 6 steps to writing success in the new year

It’s that time of year again when we ponder what we want to achieve in the new year. For parents who write, our lives are exceptionally busy, so planning our writing goals is crucial to our success. However, we also need to intentionally set writing goals that we can realistically achieve. 

So if you haven’t already sat down to plan out your writing goals for the new year, use this template that is tried, tested, and true. Help set yourself up for success and ensure that whatever story is living inside of you does, in fact, come to life.

Topics discussed in this episode: 

• Digging deep into why you write
• Setting realistic goals
• Tracking your progress
• Planning ahead
• Identifying potential obstacles and solutions
• Finding the right accountability community
• Conquering self-doubt
• Telling your inner judge to wait their turn
• Identifying your audience
• Connecting with one person
• Redefining what it means to be a writer

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Transcript

Erin P.T. Canning: 0:00

Hey, Erin here. What you're about to hear is an episode I published one year ago, and the reason why I'm republishing it today is because it's super relevant to this time of year, especially given what I've learned by working with numerous writers and authors. What I've seen repeatedly is that the writers who take the time to do the steps you are about to hear are the writers who make substantial progress with their writing goals for the year and complete their projects. So if you've heard this before, I think it's time to hear it again. And if you haven't heard this yet, it's also going to be really beneficial to you because of what you'll learn. So many times I've heard writers say, my writing isn't good enough, or I don't have enough time in the day, or I'm going to finally finish my first draft this year. They've got so much drive and passion. But too many times, they don't achieve their goals. Because their goals were too vague or too big, or self doubt and other priorities got in the way. I don't want that for you. I want you to succeed, to achieve your writing dreams, to know where you're going in 2024, and how you're going to get there. So without further ado, enjoy this episode of Parents Who Write. It's that time of year again when you've probably started hearing about New Year's resolutions. But in terms of writing, have you ever asked, what's the point, and how do I even go about creating a resolution that I'll follow through with? In this episode, you'll learn six realistic steps you can take not only to set yourself up for success, but also to help you overcome self doubt and redefine what it means to be a writer. And knowing which traps and pitfalls to avoid will better prepare you to achieve your writing goals this new year. This is Parents Who Write. I'm your host, Erin P. T. Canning. I'm a mom of two young boys, a writer, editor, and writing coach. My mission is to help you regularly make time for your writing. Find your voice again and confidently share your stories so that you can own your identity as a writer and be a happier, more patient parent. Hey friend, today I want to talk to you about your writing goals in terms of New Year's resolutions because so many people out there want to start a new writing habit or get back into writing or finally write that first book and I want to help set you up for success. So I'm going to talk about six specific reasons why New Year's resolutions tend to fall through and we're going to apply that to writing so that you'll know how and why doing these six specific things will help you to succeed. One, digging deeper into why you write. Two, setting realistic goals. Three, tracking your progress. Four, planning ahead by identifying potential obstacles and solutions. Five, finding the right accountability community. And six, conquering self doubt. So let's jump right in. The first point, how to define your reason to write. And this comes down to what we call the big why. A lot of times when our New Year's resolutions fall through, it's because we haven't taken the time to define why this is important to us. And I know on a surface level, you could be thinking, it's important to me because I want to write a book, right? But ask yourself these questions and write them out. Think them through. What do you love about writing? Why is this something that you feel called to do? What does writing make possible for you? For me, it makes me happier. I feel more like myself. I get to share my ideas with the world, I feel like my voice is being heard. I like to use fiction to talk about real world issues. When I'm writing for my blog, it's because I'm trying to reach other parents and help them to feel less alone. If you take the time to really think about what writing makes possible for you, and you start listing this stuff out, when you start to lose your way, when you start to lose motivation, where you start to get stuck, you can go back to your big why, and that is going to help push you through. Another question you want to ask is, what does writing make possible for your family? For me, when I write, Mama's a lot happier. And when mama's a lot happier, the rest of the family is a lot happier. And ask yourself also, why do you keep coming back to this story or this theme or this idea? Like I said, a lot of my blog focuses on trying to help parents. Why? Because I remember how depressed and alone I felt when I had no idea who I was anymore beyond being a parent. So I kept coming back to those story ideas to help other parents feel less alone. The novel that I am writing right now with Adeline, I keep coming back to this story because I love being able to talk about the cultural conflict between elves and humans, but I'm using fiction to look at real world issues. So again, if you come back to your big why, you won't get lost. Okay, point number two. Another reason why New Year's resolutions tend to fall through is because we're setting unrealistic goals. You want your goals to be clear, with defined boundaries, and also you want your goals to be measurable, right? They should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time focused goals. You don't want to go into the new year saying, I'm going to write a book by the end of the year. What book? How many words? What genre? When do you want to be done with this? Let's say you go into the new year thinking, I am going to start writing articles and submitting them to places so that my work is out on websites. Cool. When are you going to start doing this? When are you going to find these websites? So again, you want specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time focused goals. So for your novel, start off slower. Even just start off with, I am going to write for 10 minutes every day for 30 days. And just start with building your writing habit. You can also say, I'm going to write 100 words Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays for 30 days. Those are more realistic goals. Telling yourself that you're just going to write 100 words feels way more achievable than I'm going to write a book by the end of the year. If you want to write blog posts or short stories, instead it could be I'm going to write one short story a month, and I'm going to draft my short story in the first week, and the second week is going to be editing it. The third week is going to be finding places to submit it. The fourth week is going to be revisions and tracking my submissions. So again, just very specific, measurable goals that also are chunked down so they just don't feel so massive. Numbers three! You need to track your progress. It's hard to stay motivated if you're not tracking your progress throughout. One of the ways that you can track your progress is by tracking your word count every day that you write. So when you open up a new Word document, write down the word count before you start writing. Time however long it is that you write, and then when you are done, get your word count again. And subtract the difference between those two numbers, and then track those numbers on a 30 day printed out calendar, in a notebook, in a notes app on your phone. This way you can keep track of how many words that you're writing every single day, and you'll be able to see, you will be able to visually see your word count piling up, how much progress you're making in your document every day, and you'll also be able to see that your daily word count goal is going up. Because you'll be reinforcing that writing habit, you also want to just use a, an Excel sheet to track your submissions. Let's say you have an article that's already written and your goal is to submit it to one place once a day. Keep an Excel sheet of that so you can track your submissions and you can see that accumulation of progress. Number four is lack of planning. You want to take a moment to identify what some of the potential obstacles are going to be. That might derail you. Let's say you planned that you were going to write Monday, Wednesdays, Fridays, and then a month later your kid signs up for karate class and now that's Wednesday nights. You know, you want to have a plan in place of, okay, if my nights get interrupted and I can't do them, what's my backup plan going to be? What are the solutions that I will have available to overcome those types of obstacles? If Wednesday nights aren't an option anymore, then How am I going to motivate myself to be satisfied with Mondays and Fridays or to dedicate another night to writing? And having your big why that I talked about for the first point is going to help you overcome those obstacles. Maybe that's one of your solutions. So you want to identify potential obstacles and solutions. It could be something even just as simple as every time I want to write, I don't have access to my laptop. My ideas keep popping in my head when I'm out somewhere and I don't have my laptop nearby. Solutions you could identify that would be keeping a journal in your purse or in your car, downloading Google Docs so that you have easy access. to the cloud where you can record your ideas and save them in a single document because, you know, I have 20 million notes floating around that are really hard to, like, then get into a document. So I finally abandoned my notes and went to Google Docs. That has made life a lot easier for me. Um, but. If you take the time to just think about the obstacles that have derailed you in the past and then how you can overcome them, you will be better prepared this time round. Ooh, here's a good one. It is easier to attach a new habit to a habit that's already in place. So you can plan that you're gonna write after lunch. So let's say it is just such a habit for you that you always get another cup of coffee at lunch. Well If you're at home, because you know, I've been stuck at home for like the last three years, um, you could put your journal on top of the coffee maker so that you know, oh, as soon as I go get my coffee, I have to stop and write for 10 minutes. Again, attaching a habit, a new habit to a habit that's already established makes it so much easier to integrate that new habit into your schedule. Number five, no accountability. There's something to be said about peer pressure, my friends. You want to find your people who are going to really support and encourage you. And I don't mean necessarily a spouse or a best friend if they're not necessarily a writer, right? I'm not saying that they can't encourage you. I have lots of friends whose spouses are like, Hey, shouldn't you go write right now? I think that's your thing that you're supposed to be doing, and that's phenomenal. But you just want to make sure that the people that you're finding, if they're in Facebook groups, that it's the type of people who are going to be encouraging you to keep writing. For example, in my own Facebook group, Parents Who Write, we have at least weekly write in tandem sessions. And we show up together and we write together and we have a little laugh here and there, but it's a dedicated writing time where people want to be there together so it doesn't have to be a solo experience. And we have that accountability of like, hey, I didn't see you. So, at the writing session last time, like, it's been a while, what's going on? How are you doing? So, we can check in with each other and encourage each other. The other benefit of accountability is that it's not just you finding people whom you will rely on, but also finding the people who rely on you. It's that dual relationship, so that if you know that there's other people who also want to write and these are their goals, and they're like, yes, let's buddy up on that, you don't want to let them down. It's easier for us to show up for other people sometimes than it is for us to show up for ourselves. My last point, self doubt. For a lot of people, this is actually the number one obstacle that comes up for them. How many times I run into people who say, Oh, I'm not really a writer. Or I want to write, but my writing's not good enough. Or why would anybody want to hear my story? Our mindset is a huge part of this puzzle of being able to conquer Our New Year's resolutions are really just to follow through with our goals, to not lose our motivation. So, here's the thing, especially when we're talking about first drafts, you need to let go of your inner judge. If your inner judge is just coming through and all you're doing is saying, Oh, I hate what I'm writing. It's not good enough. You are blocking your creativity. You are shutting down your creative flow. So you need to tell your judge, Hey, I know you're looking out there for me. You'll have your turn at the end when I get down to the editing process. But right now, this is about. Freedom of creativity, a chance for me to just be myself and have fun and experiment without judgment, and you will unlock your creativity. And when you allow your creativity to breathe and to just keep going, it will get stronger and stronger and stronger. But if you keep judging it, you're gonna shut down that before you even get the chance to see what you can do. All right. And then as for the whole, why me? Why my story? Why would anybody care to hear what I have to say? Here's one of the best bits of advice that I got. The whole world is not your audience. You are not writing for every single person out there, but there is at least one person out there who's waiting for your story, your voice, your ideas, your experience, and you're going to connect with them. And that's what it's about. That's what it's about. Have you ever had that moment when you're talking with a really good friend, you're having that moment of intimacy where you're opening up, you're being honest, you are sharing an experience, something that happened, you are retelling a story of your day with your kids, whatever the case may be, maybe it was a moment from your past, but you're just opening up and talking to a friend and you connect. You can feel that connection of the listener really understood me. Like, if you've been on the opposite end of that, where your friend is opening up to you, and you're like, Oh, yes, I get that. I empathize with that. Oh my gosh, I felt the same way. I didn't realize that anybody else felt the same way. That's what you are doing when you share your stories as a writer. It's about that connection with that one person. That's why your story and your voice matter. And then, also fun note, Jennifer, whose podcast episode came out last week, Jennifer pointed out that the word writer, which ends with ER, right, er, literally means one who does. So if you are a writer, you are literally one who writes. That's it. That's the definition of a writer. So if you write, no matter what it is. You are a writer. It doesn't matter if you are only writing letters. It doesn't matter if you are writing blog posts that really connect with people, okay? It doesn't matter if you are journaling every day just for yourself. It doesn't matter if you are writing short stories that are sitting in the drawer of your desk. That's me. Okay. It doesn't matter if you are rewriting the same first book. Side note, if you're rewriting the same first note, please come talk to me. Okay. Cause we'll help get you to the next level. Okay. But the point is, it doesn't matter. what you are writing or where it's going. You are writing, you are a writer. It's that simple. There's no other benchmark that you need to hit to call yourself a writer. So there you have it, friends. Forget about setting your New Year's resolution, all right? These are the six ways that you are going to embrace your identity as a writer. And you are going to know why you need to tell these stories and how you're going to make it achievable and realistic and not feel so overwhelming. I want you to actually answer these questions for yourself. Take the time to do it because it will make such a huge difference. Take care, friends, and happy holidays! Bye! You've been listening to Parents Who Write, a show for parents by parents. Did you enjoy this episode? Please subscribe and leave a review. Doing so is how you can help other parents who write to find this show too.