That Time of Year—2012 Writing Goals

Yesterday I liked reading author and high school pal Michelle Davidson Argyle’s post on staying clear on what your goals are and why you want them.

In a similar vein, I remember a friend telling me that Holly Black taught a session at SCBWI a few years ago about deciding the kind of writing career you want and planning for it. (Forgive me, Holly, if I’m getting it wrong—I wasn’t there.) The gist of what my friend got out of that class is that it’s okay to want to be a billionaire bestselling author if you are willing to plan well and work for it and pay the price, and it’s also totally fine to plan to be a quiet, part-time, midlist kind of author if that’s what you want. But you have to evaluate the pros and cons, select a path, and go for it. What follows may not be exactly what you planned for, but it’s more likely to at least partly match your vision if you have a vision.

The idea of planning for a writing career had never occurred to me. I figured I would write a few books, send them out into the world, and how they sold would determine the trajectory of my career without any thought on my part. True, there is a *lot* in this business that is beyond our control, and evaluating the business side of things is rarely fun for the creative writer type. But I’ve come to believe it’s good to make an effort to write by design and not by default.

My new year resolution is to be more realistic and purposeful in what I’m pursuing. 2011 was spent pressuring myself to write better, faster, more, and make it big before the baby came. The result, as you know, was time spent stressing and a wrong-headed first draft that may never go anywhere.

That’s why I recently made the really tough decision to leave my awesome agent and take some time to figure out what role I want writing to have in my new family-oriented life and prove to myself that I can really do this consistently before I get anyone else on board. It may have been an extreme move, but I know that pressuring myself to publish before I’m ready has not helped.

For 2012, I would like writing to be my “jobby.” (Thanks, Larry Hiller, for coining the phrase when he asked if I still had a job and I told him it had become more like a hobby.) That means I’ll be taking writing more seriously than a hobby, always carving out time for it even when I may not feel like it, but I won’t allow myself to think of it as my job—I already have a few of those. I don’t want to be seduced by hopes of book deals, dollar signs, or sky-high blog reader stats. This year, it’s all about the craft—finishing what I start and finishing it well. And my method for doing that this year involves . . . outlining. *Gasp.* Successful and efficient Dean Hughes convinced me of the need for outlining when you’re writing in an environment of constant interruptions.

So. Outlining. Writing a solid four hours a week. That’s how 2012 is looking for me. After I’ve consistently written books I’m proud of, maybe I’ll start drafting my plan for becoming a bestselling billionaire author in 2013. Mwa ha ha!

What are your writing goals this year?

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