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More On Challenges For 2022
A Goal vs A Challenge… Right about now, here on the 6th of December, it is a great time to start looking at the year ahead. For many writers, setting a challenge is not a good idea. But in any business or art, setting a goal can really help. So tonight I thought I would talk about the difference between a goal and a challenge. I believe both are good. And by setting a challenge, you are also setting a goal. But often goals are not challenges. Last night I listed four things that I thought were important when deciding on a challenge. They are: 1… It actually has to…
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New Challenge Update
Nothing Changed… Just Some Focus… With all the world events, it has been damn near impossible for most of us to focus over the last two months. Still, going into 2021 with the vaccine coming on and the chaos-in-chief leaving, I figured the future was solid enough to make some goals and to push myself for 2021. And I still believe that. Just didn’t know that 2020 was going to have a 13th month. So lost a bunch of days and a bunch of focus, as many of us did over the last 20 days. And the waiting and wondering what was going to happen next just puts an underlying…
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Friday Night In The Fall…
So For Me That Means An Early Run in the Morning… In fact, up at 6:30 am or so tomorrow, three or more hours before I normally get up. And tomorrow I am running a 10K (little over six miles) instead of my normal 5k runs. Seems like all fall there are runs on the weekends. Great fun, actually. My time goal is under 70 minutes, although I would love, love, love to get it under an hour. But got a hunch I will do a little too much walking to hit that. And I am still a little too heavy. We shall see how it goes. 70 minutes is…
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Getting Ready for 2018
Sort of a Look Forward… A Really Long Post Part of this is new, part of this is an older post from 2012 that I thought still made sense today. So once again, the way back machine strikes again. Every time I do this post, or talk with writers at the end of the year, I hear goals being set that are seemingly impossible when you do the math. I’ve set a few of them myself, to be honest, over the decades. I honestly have no problem at all with impossible goals. None, as long as the person setting the goal understands that the likely failure can also be deemed…
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Being Behind And Setting Goals
Yup, We Are All Behind… I sort of talked to myself last week in a few blog posts about the stress that often goes with being behind. And the freedom of this new world that causes that feeling of never enough time. Well, in an effort to continue to talk to myself and let you guys listen in on my ramblings, I’m going to try to get a solution to being behind at the moment. If my solution works in some form for your writing projects, great. First, not going to look back. That solves nothing. Like rewriting a story. A complete waste of time. Today, here in the middle of…
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Got Your Goals?
New Year Firing Up… The key is to set some goals. Not talking about some sort of silly New Year’s Resolution. I’m talking about real production goals with your writing. You can and should also set business goals, but for this post let me just stay focused on production, the most important aspect of any writing business. Remember: Goals are something that are in your control and that push you toward a desired objective. How to Set a Goal? Start with the objective. Then backtrack to set the daily and monthly goals. Example: Say your objective is to write four novels in 2017. Each novel around 60,000 words. So back that…
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The New World of Publishing: How to Keep Your Writing Going for All of 2014
This an almost complete update of a post I had here in late 2012. I figured it was worth my time and energy to get this updated and out again, especially since so many of you have been watching me with my “Writing in Public” posts and some of you are even subscribing to Smith’s Monthly to read what I actually write. Thank you, everyone, for that support over the last year. It’s made this all great fun. Some basics to start: Any business and production plan you decide to set up for yourself is made up of goals that can be attained with work. The focus of the goals…