OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna Penn
A few days ago, I shared some generic writer's New Year's Resolutions that I think people need to consider.
Here are my personal goals for the year, both for my own writing and for TheCreativePenn.com blog.
I share these to make myself accountable to you as well as to inspire you to add your own. I'll be sharing my progress throughout the year so you can see how I am going. If you don't have a target, you will never hit it!
- Keep to the blogging schedule and answer all the questions from my blog survey – all 401 of them!
- Complete my first novel, Mandala, by the end of 2010. Learn a lot along the way and share it with you!
- Become no. 1 on Australia's Top Writing Blogs (currently at no. 4)
- Relaunch updated Author 2.0 – Build Your Online Platform with Web 2.0 Tools
- Become a full Member of the National Speakers Association. (You can only become a member when you have a specific number of paid speaking gigs).
- Become an international speaker with my first writers teaching retreat in Bali
- Create videos weekly for YouTube and expand my video presence in 2010.
- Create an iPhone app for my writing books and the blog
I will also maintain my regular blog posts, podcast audio series, my twitter posts and my Facebook page.
These are core content producing and social networking activities that build my author platform over time. A little every day helps! If I am going to find an agent this time next year for my book, then I want to have a great online platform when I pitch.
Yes, I will also continue to work 4 days a week as a business IT consultant as well as having a happy marriage. We all have to find the time for these things! I will be getting up at 5 am several times a week to write the novel. It's the only way I see it happening.
Thanks for sharing! You seem to have endless energy and I’m sure you’ll reach your goals even though I don’t really understand how you manage your time 🙂 I’m making my own list of goals now, thanks for the inspiration.
Great goals – man you are a busy woman!
Bali sounds very tempting…
I want to edit the novel I wrote in november and have a publisher accept it. 🙂
Those are great goals, Joanna! And awesome that you’ve posted them!
My goals are many and scattered, but I’d be thrilled if I could wrangle in my many “almost finished” projects to completion.
Hi Joanna and a very interesting list of goals. As an aside, I´d be curious to know what tips you may have for the procrastinators amongst us that have a never ending list of todos for 2010 – listing them was the easy bit for me – but putting them in to practice has always been another matter. I wondered if you wanted to share any suggestions about how you get hings done? How you translate the thought in to the action?
You will enjoy NSA membership!
My goals are 50 speaking engagements this year and a big send-off for the last book in my YA series on March 16.
Jo, I am going to complete my 30th book, this time a novel. I will do this by writing one page a day for the year.
Joanna,
Very inspiring goals you’ve set. I saw out the last year facing a bungy fear and I going to use 2010 conquering the fear of getting my writing into the public domain.
Teapotmonk – on the procrastination thing, I have a special podcast coming next month looking at this issue as it is a very common question. How do you actually break through and get on with these goals!
Thanks all for sharing! Joanna
Procrastination: Its a tricky one. The more you follow a a given method- GTD, 7 Habits, 4 hr work week etc the more you realise that you are spending your time organising and planning rather than actually doing. What always sounds so easy and attractive to the Ferris’s and Allens of the world are not always what suits you or I.
I seem to have ploughed through most of them at one time or another and have ended up a little sceptical – a not unlike what happened to Merlin Mann of 43 Folders a while back where you end up believing that the only useful method is to not have one.
Having said that, I’ve found the iPhone to be a useful deposit of ideas – camera, audio notes, sketches, written notes, saved articles and rss feeds etc etc. These can then be “sorted” and “filed” into projects with dates and tags each week in any number of 3€ apps. Or posted directly to my blog or audioboo, Twitter etc directly from the phone itself.
And of course the damn thing is always with you 🙂
Technology doesn’t let you off the daily grind of writing though. It just broadens the definition.
Brave goals. I’m also trying to finish a novel this year.
Reaching no. 1 on Australia’s Top Writing blogs is pretty ambitious, not that I don’t think you can get there. It’s just might competitive up the top. I’m at no. 13 and will be happy to get in the top 10
Joanna,
Don’t set goals. Make commitments. All of the things you have set as goals are measurable actions to which you can firmly commit. Stating them as goals gives you implicit permission to fail. Commitment is different. Seriously.
See http://www.startwithmoxie.com/2009/09/goalsetting-the-ugly-secret.html.html