How did your 2019 writing go? Did you have any writing goals that you met, or not quite? I fully endorse the idea of creating writing goals for yourself, and I often like a yearly goal to give myself a fairly long stretch. If something comes up and I don’t end up writing for a few weeks or months, I can usually get myself back on track, because I’ve given myself this long period of time in which to meet my goals.
Currently, I’m not working on a travel writing project, but instead a novel. As you might imagine, this novel does indeed involve travel, foreigners in foreign places. In order to assess what my yearly goal should be and what I could reasonably accomplish, I took a look at my life. I have a partner, two small children and a full time job. I also exercise for about half an hour most mornings. My husband and I like to cook healthy meals, and we generally like to keep a tidy house. 🙂 There’s not a lot of time to squeeze in for extra writing, unless I consistently want to miss out on some sleep.
Realistically, looking at my working and household duties schedule, most weekday nights I realised I could squeeze in half an hour to potentially an hour of writing time. Now, that means giving up random internet searches on ebay or whatever else takes up my time, and it also means less Netflix. I asked myself: am I willing to give up these distractions? If I’m honest with myself, the answer is yes. Creating something, while risky and painful at times, is also very much worth the effort and time sacrifice, even if publishers eventually reject it.
So, what can I accomplish in half an hour most weekday nights? The answer is quite a lot. For me, setting up this loose schedule allowed me to create momentum. When you think about something, it starts to take up space in your brain, and your brain returns to it more and more. I would find myself coming up with an idea of something to add, or a new development in the plot, riding home from work, or on my morning runs. When I got to my computer most nights, I knew what I wanted to write about, and I didn’t worry about perfection. Making the paragraphs and sentences sound more beautiful was something that would come later, once I got down my ideas fairly coherently.
Beyond setting up a loose daily schedule, I also created large yearly goals. For the first year of my novel writing, I said I would just write the first third of the book, about 20 to 30 thousand words. That year, in 2018, I took a few wrong turns, and things came up and I didn’t end up writing for a few months, but I did end up meeting that modest goal. The next year, 2019, I exceeded my expectations. I had aimed to write the middle third, but ended up finishing the whole draft. I think that was because I spent so much time laying the foundation of the novel, that first third of it, that I was able to much more clearly see what should happen next, and how the book should end. While I still dealt with a few wrong turns, they were less major than the year before, and I had a much clearer idea of where my story was headed. 2020 is all about revising and refining.
That’s just my example for my particular circumstance. I had to fit my writing into my current life, because nothing else was going to budge. But what are your circumstances? What would work for you? Writing during your lunch hour at work? Taking three hours every Saturday morning? Meeting with your writing critique partner every Wednesday night? Whatever it is, set up your loose schedule.
Then think about your goals. What do you want to accomplish this year, and what do you think is achievable? Do you want to write an outline for your travel memoir book, and the first three chapters? Do you want to publish a travel story in the Best Travelers’ Tales? Do you want to finish your travel memoir manuscript and send out queries to literary agents?
Obviously, you have control over the amount of your output, but you don’t have control over whether or not editors decide to publish it. But to help your chances, if your goal is indeed to get publication in a particular book or magazine, then part of your plan should involve researching that publication and the kinds of stories they prefer. And if your goal is to publish your book, part of your process needs to include time to research how to put together those query letters, and generally understand the publishing process. Whatever your goal, think about what you might need to do to achieve, and remember to take it step by step, half hour by half hour, if necessary.
I hope you found my own example helpful for ways to think about how to fit more writing into your life, and not feeling guilty for missing a day or a week or a month of your writing time. Things come up. But if you give yourself a whole year, and a fairly achievable goal, the odds are in your favour. Best of luck in your writing in 2020!
And as an extra boost, check out my Travel to Memoir program. You can purchase my travel writing book, a feedback session with me, or the extended course.
