How Goals Change

Every time I go from one month to the next, I take a moment to look over what my goals were, versus what they became, versus what I focused on. It happens, quite often, that those things are very, very different.

Setting goals and planning is always important because it gives me an idea of where I want to put my energy BUT, it’s just as important to me that I don’t glue myself to that path. I know as I start working through a writing project that if I stick to what I had planned and I don’t allow myself to go where a story needs me to go, that I will be limiting my stories and my characters. As I was working last week and quickly concluded that trying to get the chapters done while my girls were on vacation was something I didn’t want to do, I decided to revisit my original goals document. I realized that moving anything meant I would be diving into March timeframes and leaving February behind meant I would be ending my third quarter writing goals and moving into my fourth quarter. (This post explains how I do my writing goals and what my calendar for my writing goals look like.) I realized that the goals I’d set for myself for the third quarter back in June of 2020 were very different than what I actually accomplished. This was partially true because in December of 2020, I made a decision to use 2021 to complete as many of my open manuscripts as possible. That meant realigning most of the goals I’d set for the first half of 2021 to get that job done.

This week I need to do some heavy lifting to catch up to where I’d like to be. By the end of this month I plan to have the first draft of MS:L finished and to have completed 100 queries for MS:SB. That means I’ve got about 40,000 words to write and 15 queries to complete to get there in the next four weeks. 😳 It will be a lot of work, but totally worth it. I started using a Kanban board after watching Sarra Cannon’s Heart Breathings YouTube channel in conjunction with my other goal setting tools and I love it. It’s a great visual reminder of where I’m at and what I want to accomplish. I set my board for one week’s worth of goals at a time and then refresh it every Sunday. My PowerSheets planner has my goals for the month and together the whole system works beautifully.

Are you working on any goals lately? What writing idea are you excited about working on? In case you haven’t been told today, you are more than enough. Let someone you care about know that they are too.

Happy Writing!