Setting Writing Goals

Welcome to Writing Week on Author Audience.

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message, create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

Today is day three of Writing Week. If you haven't jumped in and joined us yet, I encourage you to join us@writingweek.com It's a free seven day nonfiction writing challenge to help you jumpstart your writing and to get more writing done. Whether you're a blogger, you are an author, you're a business owner, you can benefit from this challenge. So day three is all about goal setting. The goal of Writing Week and my seven day challenge is not necessarily to finish a book, although some may do that, because when you're focused and when you have a goal, you may be able to finish a short Kindle book in that amount of time. But the goal actually of this challenge is to get you in the habit of writing every day. So my hope is you will create a writing habit that will last far beyond these seven days. But I encourage you not to be afraid to start small and build up over time. So I encourage at least a 15 minute writing session every day, you know, because that's better than not writing at all. So many times we have this mind block where you think, and I've been there too, where you think, oh, I don't have enough time to write today. I have too much going on. But what if you start changing your mindset into thinking, I have this 15 minute slot of time? It could even be while you're waiting for your child at school. It could be your car you're dictating on your phone in Evernote. Or it could be a 15 minute slotted time that you decide to get up 15 minutes earlier. So you have that 15 minutes in the beginning of the day. Maybe you take 15 minutes on your lunch break to write. Maybe you have more time that you can devote and you can devote one or two hours to writing every day. Whatever your schedule is, I encourage you to at least consider a 15 minute writing session. And when you're thinking about writing goals, I encourage you to get specific. So you've probably heard this before. Smart goals are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. And so when you're setting goals, like I practiced as a physical therapist for 12 years and I set a lot of goals, every single patient I saw, I had to set short term and long term goals for them. So. So I'm very comfortable with goal setting. But some of you may not have that background or may not be comfortable in setting specific goals. And so here are a few examples. During my next writing session on Fill in the blank for the date time, I will write the introduction for my book in one and a half hours. That's just an example. Or during my next writing session on Fill in the blank with your date and time, I will finish the next email in my autoresponder series, 500 words or less in 20 minutes. Or another example, during my next writing session on Again fill in the blank with the date and time, I will write my guest blog post of 1,000 words in two hours. And so these just give you some specific ideas of how to set these goals. And when you're first doing this, you may not have any idea how much you can accomplish in what amount of time. So it takes trial and error. It takes actually doing the challenge, going through day by day. And in day one you download my tracking worksheets and so you can download those sheets or use the Microsoft Office document and just, you know, type in there. But you'll be tracking every day. So you'll be able to start to see trends and you'll be able to see what you are capable of and then you'll be able to set more realistic goals. And if you don't meet your goal, don't worry about it. Don't beat yourself up. 500 words is better than 0 words. Even if your goal was a thousand. Whatever you get accomplished if you get 100 words, 100 words is is one more step towards your goal of whatever you're writing. So celebrate however many words you write, but you'll be able to set more realistic goals as you go because you'll be able to see what you are capable of. I encourage you to check out Writing week. It's@writingweek.com Join us. I would love to connect with you. You can comment in the members area and this is a way for you to get some account to get a jump start on a writing project you're working on right now. And I'd love for you to hear a little bit from one of the Writing Week finishers. Her name is Patricia and she'll share a little bit more with you.

Hello, I'm Patricia Ann Todd, award winning author of self coaching books and programs for creative entrepreneurs and the founder of coachingleadstosuccess.com today I'm excited to share a couple of wins gained when I took part in the Nonfiction Writing challenge created by Shelley Hitz. First of all, I found the technique of tracking helpful. Tracking the word count is not new, but to track where I actually wrote and the mood I was in that day added to my productivity. Another win for me were the comments in the members area that flowed in seamlessly after each daily tutorial. By reading how my fellow members approached the writing challenge gave me insights and comparisons that motivated me. This was particularly useful as the life of a writer can be quite lonesome and frustrating at times. I believe Shelley Hitz has created an inspirational tool to support and challenge non fiction writers and I'm delighted to have taken part. Thank you Shelley for putting this together. I'm Patricia Ann Todd, award winning author of self coaching books and programs for creative entrepreneurs and the founder of Coaching Leads to Success.

I encourage you to come and join us. You have nothing to lose by joining for free@writingweek.com that's W R I T I N G w e e k.com and I'll see you on the inside. So this is a special week of podcast. I'm sharing a daily podcast for seven days all about this challenge. I hope you'll join us and I'll see you next time.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelley's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her Six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.