The SMART Method: How To Achieve Your Annual Writing Goals
By Delaney Diamond
A new year has started, and achieving your writing goals might seem like a daunting task, but there's a system that can help. I highly recommend using the SMART method, which has helped me sustain a full-time writing career. Whenever I'm goal planning, I stop to think if my plans fit within those guidelines.
That wasn’t always the case. I started my writing career thirteen years ago, and at first I had plenty of time to write. My only goal was to complete a book and move on to the next one. But as time passed, my responsibilities increased. I had to do marketing, administrative work, social media management, etc. etc. Juggling all those tasks meant less time for writing.
Eventually, I realized that I needed to balance all those important responsibilities of being an authorpreneur with the most important one—the writing. If I didn’t have a book, I had nothing to sell, so I had to get better at getting words on paper if I wanted to continue my career as a full-time writer.
SMART was the method I chose to stay on track. The acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound, and was first coined by consultant George T. Doran. He believed goals should be measurable and achievable for businesses to grow and move forward.
Below, I lay out the system so you can see why it makes sense for authors.
Goals Should Be Specific
What does that mean? It means being precise in what you want to achieve each year. I don’t use terms like "I will write more books in 2024" or "I will increase my word count." The more specific you are, the better your chance of achieving your goal. Instead, I say something like, "I will write three books in 2024" or "I will write 240,000 words this year."
Much better. The lack of ambiguity gives a quantifiable end result, which means you'll know when you achieve it.
Goals Should Be Measurable
To measure your goals, you need to have a way to determine when you've made progress. In the above example, if you want to write three books a year, you could decide to write the first book in the first three months. By April, if you have already completed a book, then you'll know you're one-third of the way done and have two more books to go.
Or, if you want to write 240,000 words this year, divide that number by 12 and challenge yourself to write an average of 20,000 words per month. After month one, you'll have 220,000 words to go toward your goal. After month two, you'll have 200,000 words to go toward your goal. By making your goals measurable, you can create benchmarks to assess your progress, which in turn gives you a better chance of achieving them.
Goals Should Be Achievable
I used to envy authors who write eight or more books a year, but I had to be realistic. That’s not possible for me. Four or five books is much more realistic and less stressful.
Having realistic, achievable goals will make it easier to stay on track. Ask me how I know.
Achievable goals keep you motivated. Aiming too high can be demotivating and an all-around killer of joy. The end result is a slow-down of your progress, or even worse—giving up prematurely.
Consider how much time you have to devote to writing that aforementioned 20,000 words per month and the resources at your disposal. In terms of time, do you have two hours per week or two hours per day? Those are vastly different timeframes that affect how many words you get on the paper.
In terms of resources, do you have a dedicated computer to write on, or do you share the computer with a spouse and your kids? Regular access means getting in the word count at just about any time during the day. If you have to share a computer, you might have to consider an alternative but much slower option: pen and notebook.
As you're planning, keep in mind which tools you have at your disposal—a computer or pen and paper. Also consider how fast you type, whether you’re writing long hand, or using dictation.
Goals Should Be Relevant
Ask yourself why this goal at this time. Is there a financial reason for trying to accomplish the goal? Can you accomplish the same result in a different, less taxing way? Make sure your goals fit into your long-term plans or objectives and are not an unnecessary distraction from other projects and commitments.
Goals Should Be Time-bound
Deadline. Deadline. Deadline.
Have a target date or end period in which to achieve your goal and hold yourself to it.
You're not just trying to write 240,000 words. You're writing 240,000 words this year. You're not just trying to write 20,000 words. You're writing 20,000 words per month.
Deadlines create a sense of urgency and prompt us to complete what we've set out to do.
By the way, as you're working toward achieving your writing goals, don't beat yourself up if you fall short of your benchmarks. Celebrate your achievements! If you only manage to write 11,000 words instead of 20,000 words in a month, that's 11,000 more words than you had the month before! Not bad.
The truth is, goal-setting is easy, but sticking to the progression of those goals is where the real work comes in. Accountability partners and spreadsheet tracking can help. I can't be your accountability partner, but you’re welcome to download the FREE 2024 word count tracker spreadsheet like the one I use to track my annual progress.
There are individual tabs with each month of the year, but above you'll see part of the summary page, which includes a graph and the running total of the words you've written for each month.
All you have to do is enter your annual goal, and the word count tracker will calculate your monthly benchmarks. It's never too late to start. (If you find any calculation errors, use the contact form to let me know, and I'll fix it right away.)
If you find you're consistently falling short of your benchmarks, go back to the Goals Should Be Achievable step. Maybe you're being too ambitious. Maybe you don't have the time and resources necessary this year. Recalibrate and come up with a new end goal to work toward.
Wishing you much success in achieving your annual writing goals!
Delaney Diamond is the USA Today Bestselling Author of more than 50 contemporary romance and romantic suspense novels, and dozens of romance short stories. When she’s not spinning tales of romantic fiction, she enjoys learning about time management and ways to increase productivity. She shares her recommendations on the For Authors page at delaneydiamond.com, where she lists tools and resources to help her fellow indie authors save time and improve their processes to attain the elusive work-life balance we all crave.