Many writers are dissatisfied. They’re dissatisfied because they’re not getting the success they think they deserve. They want to write a book, but somehow they don’t get it done. They want to get an agent, but an agent won’t return their emails. They want to publish a book but the houses aren’t buying. If they self-publish, they don’t see the sales numbers they want.

There is a simple reason for this problem: Writers are setting the wrong goals.

IF YOU SET THE WRONG GOALS, YOU’RE NOT GOING TO FIND SUCCESS.

Let me give you an example. On January 1st a writer—let’s call her Ziggy Snapp—gets caught up in the fever of New Years Resolutions and makes a writing goal. She writes it down in a black sharpie and plants it on her refrigerator, where she will see it daily. Her goal? To write her book this year. If you want to write a book, then this sounds like a good goal, right?

Wrong.

If you want to write a book, your written down goal should never never never be “Write a Book.” I can guarantee you this is a recipe for disaster.

Researchers of psychology and goal-creation experts know that people are 75% more likely to fail at goals if they approach it head-on.

Why is this? Because a goal written like this is a fantasy. There are no concrete steps to reach it. It seems like an insurmountable task, and tasks of this magnitude invite procrastination.

So what kind of goal should Ziggy Snapp make?

She should make a small goal to accomplish daily.

F Her goal should be to write at a certain time every morning or evening.

F Her goal should be to write for a half hour or hour every day. Every. Single. Day.

F Her goal should be to write 300 or 500 or 1000 words a day.

Can you see how all of those goals are much better goals than the vague “Write a book”?

THE WRONG GOALS OF ZIGGY SNAPP

3

Every day you can accomplish them. Every day is a new day, a chance for success.

But guess what? Even daily goals are not the best goals to make.

To figure out how to make an even better goal, Ziggy Snapp would have to ask herself: what would prevent me from writing every day? What are the obstacles in my life that trip me up and prevent me from writing?

How can Ziggy Snapp do that? How can you do that? I’ll tell you.

But first, let me tell you my story.

MY STORY

4

I worked on a short story collection for seven years, wrestling with every word, every sentence, every paragraph.

I threw away stories multiple times. I rewrote them multiple times. I was the slowest writer on the planet. A single monkey at a typewriter could have created my stories by chance in half the time.

I wasn’t lazy. I did all the shadow activities of writing: I went to conferences, I went to writing retreats, I wrote a blog, I joined two writing groups, I workshopped my stories, I tweeted about writing, I read lots of books, I wrote reviews of books, I submitted to literary journals, I pitched agents.

YOU KNOW WHAT ALL THESE ACTIVITIES AREN’T? THEY’RE NOT WRITING.

Shadow activities are what the writer and motivator Todd Henry calls all the activities surrounding your central activity. I was prioritizing all the peripheral activities of writing and not focusing on the core event of being a writer: writing.

Guess what? Shadow activities weren’t getting me what I wanted. I wanted to be a writer, and shadow activities helped me to fake being a writer, but didn’t get me what I wanted most: to publish books.

Essentially, I was a poseur. An imposter. Other people might call me a writer, and I might think of myself as a writer, but these were as fake as the main street props in Western movies.

I was getting old. I had thought of myself as a writer since I was nineteen and decided that was my life goal, but I was in my mid-thirties and still hadn’t published a book. That’s fifteen years without getting the results I wanted. It was time to change tack.

FOR YEARS I CALLED MYSELF A WRITER BUT I WASN’T DOING MUCH WRITING.

5

Here was the trouble: I came to this realization about the same time that my twin boys were born.

If there’s anything that can put a kibosh on your writing energy, it’s having a newborn.

If there’s anything that jinxes you into never writing again, it’s having two newborns at the same time.

Now, trust me: it was wonderful that we had twins. My wife and I had been struggling with infertility for years, and two boys were an answer to our prayers we never could have imagined. We had tried all sorts of medical interventions, but not until we did IVF did we finally get pregnant.

But with two newborns waking us at every moment of the nighttime—we never got more than two hours consecutive sleep, a sleep deprivation technique on par with what militants do as torture—I knew this would really test my plan.

This was like a stress test for my new goal-making strategy. The greatest hurdle that any new plan could ever come up against.

IF MY PLAN WAS GOOD ENOUGH, I KNEW IT WOULD WORK EVEN WITH TWO NEWBORNS.

If it wouldn’t work now, then it wouldn’t work at any point.

With twin newborns on my hands, this was my writing plan:

F I would buy a calendar. Every day I would record how many words I wrote.

F My goal was to write 1000 words every day. If I hadn’t written a thousand words by night, I would sit down in front of my computer and not go to bed until I had finished.

F I would write in the morning before they woke up. That meant I would have to wake up at 5 a.m. every morning.

Did my plan work for me? Was I able to accomplish my goal?

I’ll tell you, but first let’s continue the story of Ziggy Snapp.

ZIGGY’S STORY

6

What kind of obstacles are preventing Ziggy Snapp from writing daily? Because her true goal is not to write a novel, and it’s not even to write every day, but to stop doing whatever stops her from writing, and to do whatever that enables her to write.

Let’s say that Ziggy Snapp spends too much time on the internet. She’s a mad hatter around Pinterest, snooping on Facebook, Instagramming every recipe and concert, and even drifts by Twitter every once in a while to jump on a hashtag bandwagon. She is a professional time waster. She could compete on an international level at the Worldwide Procrastinators Tournament.

She spends more time on the internet than writing.

UNFORTUNATELY, HER HIGHEST DREAM IN LIFE IS NOT TO BE A PROFESSIONAL INTERNET USER. IT’S TO BE A WRITER.

But if she keeps spending that amount of time on the internet, she will have Professional Internet User inscribed on her tombstone, and the word “writer” or “author” will not appear.

When she feels extra guilty about this imbalance between writing time and internet time, she will convince herself that she’s doing “research” for her nonfiction or stories. This usually involves one hour of research and two hours of aimless web surfing. She will not end up using hardly any of the research, either.

So let’s get back to goal setting. We’ve already figured out what her goals shouldn’t be:

F Write a Novel F Write every day

Write every day is actually a pretty good goal, but if she wants to accomplish it, she needs to make a Catalyst Goal: a goal that helps her to accomplish the goal.

Here it is: Her goal should be to avoid her writing Kryptonite.

WHAT IS HER WRITING KRYPTONITE?

7

Maybe her goal should be to limit her internet usage.

Maybe she could try not using any internet other than email on Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

Maybe Ziggy Snapp has the luxury of going cold turkey off the internet. I did this. I would go off internet for a month, and use it in a limited manner the next month. One year I spent four non-consecutive months not using the internet at all. I mean really not at all. I deleted the browsers off my computer. My online interaction was checking my email on my phone.

Maybe Ziggy could use internet extensions to help curb her time. Freedom is wonderful. It will block the internet for any period of time. If she uses Chrome, she could use StayFocusd, which is the absolute best productivity aid. You can block certain websites, or allow yourself only 30 minutes a day on certain websites, or go nuclear and block the whole internet. You can also set certain times of the day when internet will not be available (to preserve those precious writing hours).

Or maybe her Kryptonite is location-based.

Maybe she doesn’t do her best writing in the house. Because there is always laundry and children and television. Then get the hell out of dodge, Ziggy!

F Go to a coffee shop. F Find a lonely bench at a park. F Join a writers collective, rent nearby office space, and split the rent.

F Buy a backyard shed and outfit it with a desk and a chair.

F If a friend works in a spacious office, sneak in with them and grab a desk. (I’ve done this with a friend who works for a university).

BUT IF YOU ONLY AVOID YOUR WRITING KRYTONITE, YOU’RE ONLY REMOVING THE OBSTACLES. THAT’S ONLY HALF THE BATTLE. YOU ALSO NEED TO SUPERCHARGE YOUR WRITING.

Ziggy Snapp needs to figure out her writing Pixie Dust.

When you’re making Catalyst Goals, Pixie Dust is what enables you to write. It’s about creating the perfect conditions for writing. Everybody has a few Pixie Dust elements that get them into fighting shape for writing.

The best way Ziggy Snapp can figure out her Pixie Dust is to imagine a writing lab. If she

8

was in charge of a scientific writing lab, a lab with the sole goal of ensuring she’s in top writing form, how would she construct it?

Let’s say she really needs eight hours of sleep for top form. She also needs to eat better—her brain works better when she eats fewer carbs and more vegetables.

Maybe she finds out that if she meditates for ten minutes every morning, she is much better at writing. Or if she runs a few miles.

How would you construct your writing lab? Imagine all the perfect conditions. Write them down.

See this? Now we’ve gotten past Ziggy’s fantasy goals and are drilling down to Ziggy’s actual goals, the goals that will actually help her to write.

These are her five writing goals, the writing goals that will actually help her to write every day and to write a book:

F Kryptonite: Activate StayFocusd to block the internet between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. every morning. Limit activity on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest to a half hour every day.

F Kryptonite: Get out of the house and go to a coffee shop every day for at least two hours.

F Pixie Dust: Buy 3 vegetable cookbooks and cook from them.

F Pixie Dust: Go to bed at 10:15 p.m. every night.

F Pixie Dust: Meditate in the mornings.

DO YOU REALIZE NONE OF THESE FIVE GOALS ARE DIRECTLY ABOUT WRITING? BUT THEY ARE ACTUALLY ABOUT WRITING—THEY ARE PAVING THE WAY FOR HER TO WRITE.

If Ziggy accomplishes these five goals, she will nail her writing dreams for sure. It will be no problem. In fact, she’ll probably end up writing a lot more than she even intended. It will be that effective.

But what happens when she starts to fumble on these goals? She gets sloppy and deletes StayFocusd, or she starts cozying up in front of the television instead of going to the coffee shop?

Well, that’s a huge problem. But it’s one we can solve. We’ll figure out that problem in a second, right after we talk more about my story.

MY STORY

9

In two and a half months I wrote a 115,000 word novel.

It was the first book I’d finished since my Master’s thesis a full decade ago.

You can do the math: some days I wrote more than 1000 words, because I was on a roll. But with 1000 as my baseline, everything after that was gravy.

Now I was faced with a new problem: I needed to edit my novel. But you can’t edit a novel by counting words. If I had a really good day, I might delete three hundred words. -300 doesn’t look very good in the ledger book. So I came up with a new system: I counted hours.

My goal was to edit two hours a day. No matter what. So I made sure every week had at least 14 hours a week, and sometimes more.

F I kept track on my calendar how many hours I wrote every day. I rounded off to 15 minute increments. So I wrote 2 ¼ hours, or 3 ½ hours.

F Every week I tried to write more than the previous week. Every month I tried to write more than the previous month. I was only competing against myself, which is the only competition that will make a writer healthier.

F I made a goal of how many hours I wanted to write for the year. It was 100 hours more than I guessed I had written last year.

You know what else I did? I quit my job.

Yeah, that’s right.

You’re probably thinking that I’m an idiot, and you’re probably right. But only people who are crazy would attempt to write a book anyway, so I’m in good company.

REMEMBER MY PLAN TO WRITE 1000 WORDS A DAY? WELL, I ACTUALLY WROTE MORE THAN THAT.

10

Now, I’m not telling you to quit your job. That might be drop-jaw foolish. But I will tell you that my job was holding me back.

I HAD DEVOTED SO MUCH MENTAL ENERGY AND SPACE TO TEACHING THAT THERE WAS NOTHING LEFT OVER FOR WRITING. I HADN’T EVEN REALIZED THAT TEACHING WAS A LEECH UPON MY WRITING MOJO.

I’d been teaching college writing classes for exactly one decade—ten long years—and

the month I handed in grades for the last class, I started my novel.

Two and a half months later, I had a rough draft on my desktop.

Quitting my job also made my book more important. This was it. I had no other options. This was my only career now. That tricked me into being incredibly productive.

I stayed at home taking care of my twin newborns, and wrote whenever I could.

But I made one colossal error that threatened to destroy everything that I’d accomplished.

I’ll tell you about that error soon. But first, Ziggy Snapp needs our assistance.

ZIGGY’S STORY

11

ZIGGY SNAPP FELL OFF THE WAGON. DON’T WE ALL?

She was doing so well. She was getting out of the house, she had limited her internet, and she had started eating better and sleeping better and meditating in the morning, and even started exercising once a week. And all of those things let her be incredibly productive on her book—she had written three chapters in only a month!

But then: all her dedication evaporated.

There was a sickness. There was a weekend vacation. There was a family emergency.

And it all fell apart.

She stopped writing.

Ziggy’s already learned the important lesson of Catalyst Goals, the goals that pave the way to accomplish your goals. And she knows how to divide them into Kryptonite goals and Pixie Dust goals. She had a good goal set. What happened?

First, Ziggy shouldn’t beat herself up, and neither should you.

IT’S NOT ABOUT WHETHER YOU FALL OFF THE WAGON, IT’S WHETHER YOU PICK YOURSELF UP QUICKLY.

Everyone has bumps in the road, but quitters let them be permanent derailings.

All you have to do is limit the guilt and self-recrimination, and don’t sweat it. If you get off your schedule, get back on it quickly. That’s it.

After some time, you’ll get better at re-mounting your goal plans. That is the only rule: you have to restart the goals right away.

But maybe she wouldn’t have fallen off the goal wagon if she had done one simple thing: vary her goal set.

12

Let’s take a time machine back to her inspiration on January 1st. What should she do over in her goal creation?

Not only should she have avoided gigantic goals like “write a book,” and not only should she have generated those five “Catalyst Goals,” she also should have made different types of goals.

That way, when she fell off the wagon, it would be easier for her to pick herself back up.

Ziggy Snapp should have made Month-Long goals for throughout the year.

F A January goal to spend at least 80 hours writing.

F A February goal to read three books as research for her next writing piece.

F A March goal to improve her internet and social media presence.

F An April goal to avoid all trashy reading.

F A May goal to go to a local writers meet-up group.

F A June goal to avoid all internet. F A July goal to write that essay about her family she’s been meaning to write forever.

F An August goal to go to a writing conference.

F A September goal to write 20,000 words, or even 50,000 words like NaNoWriMo.

F An October goal to keep a daily journal of interesting people and occurrences.

F A November goal to read five or ten books.

F A December goal to write two hours per day, every single day.

SEE WHAT THIS DOES? IF ZIGGY FAILS AT ONE GOAL, IT’S NOT A BIG DEAL. SHE HAS A NEW CHALLENGE THE VERY NEXT MONTH.

It’s less intimidating to do something for a month, too, rather than for a full year. You can do almost anything for a month.

Whenever you make a year-long resolution, you fail at it 90% of the time. But month-long resolutions have a much higher success rate, about 70%. It’s only 30-odd days!

Even if she only wins eight of the twelve months, that means she’s accomplished

13

eight of her major writing goals for the year. That’s incredible!

And for each of these month-long goals, she once again needs to take them through the Catalyst process, and figure out her Kryptonite and Pixie Dust goals that will clear the way for her. Don’t try to read a bunch of books in a month. Create the space in your

life so that reading so many books will seem easy.

But writing a novel is only one goal of Ziggy’s. How will she accomplish other goals? How can she, for instance, get an agent or publicize her self-published novel or sell her book?

That’s the next step we’ll talk about.

MY STORY

14

THIS WAS MY HUGE MISTAKE: I WAS THINKING OF MYSELF LIKE A MACHINE.

I thought I could keep up that crazy pace of writing. I thought I could make my mind into a production line. I thought I could write a novel every three months.

But the truth is that we’re human. We can’t pound out novels every few months. And that’s good and fine. In fact, it’s what makes us human.

We need cycles of activity, ebbs and flows. And your goals should accommodate those ebbs and flows. If you plan for them, you’re more likely to make use of all the different phases of your writing, rather than falling into despair when your writing isn’t chugging away at full steam.

If I could take a time machine back to when I set up my plan, I would take myself through a Goal Generation Matrix.

A Goal Generation Matrix is a system to help you generate writing goals.

Here’s a verb-based system.

VERB GOALS:

1. Learn

2. Stop

3. Start

4. Change

5. Do

WHAT IS ONE THING I WANTED TO LEARN ABOUT WRITING THIS YEAR?

I wanted to learn how to improve my dialogue. All my characters sounded the same. None of my lines were snappy or memorable. How would I improve my dialogue?

F asking someone to read my work and circle the best lines of dialogue

F picking five books with great dialogue and writing down my favorite lines and studying them every morning before writing

F signing up for an online class

15

WHAT DID I WANT TO STOP THIS YEAR?

I wanted to stop blogging. I had been blogging for seven years at Bookfox, and even though it was wonderful, blogging was siphoning all my fiction-writing energy.

I thought that if I stopped blogging, then I could shift all that writing energy toward writing novels.

After I stopped teaching and blogging, I blazed through a novel in only two and a half months. Clearly this was the right thing to stop.

WHAT DID I WANT TO START THIS YEAR?

To write out of my subconscious. Too much of my writing was planned out and stiff, because I was writing with my conscious mind.

I wanted to write subconsciously, to tap into the wisdom of my deep inner mind. The best way to do that was to write before I was fully awake.

So I would wake at 5 a.m. and write before I was awake or any of the family was awake or anyone sane was awake.

My subconscious got up, but my inner editor didn’t. I wrote without anyone looking over my shoulder, not even myself. I just spilled onto the page.

I never thought I could wake up early. I was a night owl. I stayed up past midnight every night. But to my surprise, radically changing my sleeping schedule helped spur me onto better writing.

NEVER BE AFRAID TO MAKE RADICAL CHANGES IN YOUR LIFE.

WHAT DID I WANT TO CHANGE THIS YEAR?

To start writing out of the house. When I was in the house, I wandered and got a snack, I talked on the phone more, I got distracted by family.

That’s because my house represented fun. It was a place to relax, not a place for work.

I needed a place that my brain could exclusively identify with work. That way, whenever I went there, it would trigger my brain to think in work mode. Place is an incredibly powerful psychological modifier.

I started doing all my writing at a coffee shop. I wore earplugs and didn’t talk to anyone. And my production increased dramatically, because all I did there was work.

16

WHAT DID I WANT TO DO THIS YEAR?

I wanted to write every day. Not every weekday, not six days a week. Every. Single. Day.

My college professor told me fifteen years ago that the only secret to becoming a writer was to write every day, but I thought I was an exception. I thought I could be a writer who could write three days a week.

It took me fifteen years to figure out that I was not nearly as smart as I thought I was.

Hordes of other people are trying to write too, and you’re in competition with all of them. If you write three days a week and they write seven, guess who’s going to win?

I call this the Lance Armstrong test.

Imagine you are in a bike race with Lance Armstrong. If you both have an hour to bike, who’s going to get farther? He’s going to kill you, right? He was amazing, and not just because he took lots of drugs, but also because he trained like a killer. He was one of the best cyclists of all time.

But let’s change the rules. What if he only has one hour to bike, and you can spend five hours biking? Well, now it becomes more of a competition. I’m only an okay biker in decent physical shape, but I think if I had five hours I could give Lance Armstrong a run for his money. Maybe I could even bike farther than him.

If another writer spends one hour writing daily, and you spend five hours writing, it doesn’t matter if they’re a genius. You’re going to beat them.

But if you spend one hour daily, and they spend five hours, it doesn’t matter if they’re downright stupid. They’re going to beat you.

Write every day. Rack up the hours. You’ll never become a writer any other way.

MY SUCCESS:

Because I wrote every day, I wrote a novel every year for the next three years after my twin boys were born.

That’s right. A novel every year. For three years.

There was one other secret to my success, though, one that is essential to every writer.

THE LANCE ARMSTRONG TEST

ZIGGY’S STORY

18

She’s made the same goals every year:

F Write a book F Get an agent F Sell her book to a publisher F If she doesn’t sell her book, then self-publish it

Here’s Ziggy’s mistake: She keeps making the same goals. She should never make the same goal twice. There’s a reason she failed it last year, and that’s because she wrote it wrong.

It wasn’t a failure of willpower. It was a failure of aim.

Have you ever made the same resolution multiple times? Maybe to lose weight? Well, you’re setting yourself up for failure if you keep making the same goals. Change your goal. Try these instead, all of which will have the effect of weight loss, but are much better things to aim toward:

F To lower your resting heart rate below 70 beats-per-minute

F To convince family members to run a 10K with you

F To exercise 10 minutes longer than normal

F To find three new exercise routines F Take lessons to learn something new: swimming, battle ropes, Crossfit

Okay, back to writing. We’ve already figured out how to rewrite Ziggy Snapp’s goal of “Writing a Book” by figuring out the Catalyst Goals and dividing them into Kryptonite Goals and Pixie Dust goals.

NOW LET’S HELP HER REWRITE HER OTHER GOALS.

She’s failing on her goal to get an agent because it’s not under her control. Instead, her goal should be to write ten query letters and submit her book to ten agents. See? A number. It’s quantifiable. Either she sent it to ten agents or she didn’t. If she did, then she completed her goal. Whether agents signed her or not is out of her hands.

SO, ZIGGY SNAP NEEDS TO DIVERSIFY HER WRITING GOALS.

19

She’s failing on the goal to sell her book to a publisher because that’s also a goal not in her control. She can write the book, she can send the book out, but it’s other people who decide whether or not to publish it. Never make goals that require other people to do something. You can only control what you do.

She’s failing on self-publishing because she’s not breaking the action down into steps.

F Do research on self-publishing F Hire a copy-editor, and maybe a content editor as well

F Hire a graphic designerZIGGY SNAPP SHOULD ALSO TALK ABOUT HER GOALS.

She should make a coffee date with one of her writing friends and they could craft writing goals together. The act of conversation will help her to discover goals that she hadn’t considered, fine-tune her own goals, and inspire her friend.

Ziggy should also make a secret goal, one that her friend will have to guess at in a few months or at the end of the year.

Secret goals are awesome. By not telling anyone else about your goal, but requiring them to have to guess it, you work twice as hard to make it obvious.

SECRET GOALS WORK REALLY WELL WHEN YOU HAVE WHAT I CALL A “SOFT GOAL,” A GOAL THAT ISN’T EASILY QUANTIFIABLE.

“Become kinder” would be a soft goal. There’s no way to tell at the end of the year whether or not you’ve accomplished it, until you tell someone close to you that you have a secret goal and you want them to guess it.

Ziggy Snapp has four soft goals that she has posted above her desk. These are the four virtues she thinks she needs to become a better writer.

ZIGGY’S FOUR VIRTUES FOR WRITERS:

F Courage F Humility F Patience F Perserverance

Virtues are a great example of soft goals, and therefore the type of goals perfect to be secret goals. You have to have these virtues to be a good writer, but hardly anyone works at them (or makes goals for them).

20

ZIGGY SHOULD CHOOSE THE MOST DIFFICULT ONE FOR HER.

She’s actually terrible at Patience. Whenever she sends a story or article to a journal or magazine, she’s chomping her fingernails the day after she sends it, but she has to wait for weeks or months for a reply.

What’s more, she constantly complains to her writing friend about how long it’s taking. And how her writing career is going so slowly.

If Ziggy made a secret goal, she would tell her writing friend that she had a secret goal

and wanted her to guess it. Then she’d stop complaining, take deep breaths whenever she started to get impatient, and try to help other writers to become more patient, too.

Ziggy would achieve her goal if her friend could guess that Ziggy’s secret goal was patience.

Awesome. Well, there is only one more secret for Ziggy to learn.

Once she learns this, then she will have earned a Ph.D. in goal setting and be ready for the best writing year of her life.

Remember George Bailey from “It’s a Wonderful Life”? Clarence the angel showed him how life would be if he had never existed.

Every year of your writing life, you should look back on the previous year and ask yourself how the world would be different without you as a writer.

F What fellow writers would have missed your inspiration? F What authors would have regretted that you didn’t buy their book? F What people in your household would have missed an excellent example of dedication?

F What people would have missed your great book recommendations? F What friends would have missed the articles on writing you shared? F Who would have missed reading that article or short story you published?

You don’t have Clarence the angel to show you an alternate universe, but you can imagine the change you’re making.

You can also make plans for how you can be a bigger change-maker next year.

THE GEORGE BAILEY TEST

MY STORY

22

I’d managed to write three books in their first three years of life. But all my goals were very self-centered.

Being self-centered isn’t good in any part of life, and it’s not good for a writer, either.

I needed to make goals that could help other people. I needed to make goals that would help me be a Good Literary Citizen.

A Good Literary Citizen helps other writers achieve their goals as well. A Good Literary Citizen participates in the writing community.

Are you a good literary citizen? The best way to find out is to do the George Bailey Test.

I wanted to become a better literary citizen and stop only focusing on myself.

GOAL #1 OF MY GOOD LITERARY CITIZEN PLAN: I DECIDED TO WRITE ONE ENCOURAGING EMAIL TO A WRITER EVERY SINGLE MONTH.

Twelve encouraging emails a year. That’s not too hard of a goal, is it?

I wasn’t writing to super-famous writers, just writers I liked. And do you know what? Every single one of them wrote back to tell me thank you, and to tell me how much they appreciated the pick-me-up.

God knows writing can be a lonely, depressed business. Let’s make it cheerier!

GOAL #2 OF MY GOOD LITERARY CITIZEN PLAN: I PLANNED TO BUY AT LEAST 20 NEW BOOKS ANNUALLY.

I can’t even tell you how essential this is for the book industry. If you buy all used books from bookstores or from Amazon, you’re making sure no writers earn any money. Did you realize that? No writer ever gets a penny from used books.

Do you want to earn money as a writer? Then you better buy new books.

What’s wonderful is a goal like this helps you stay current with literary trends. Plus, it builds wonderful karma. You buy other people’s books - people will buy your book.

EVEN AFTER HAVING TWINS, I’D GOTTEN A LOT OF SUCCESS IN WRITING.

23

GOAL #3 OF MY GOOD LITERARY CITIZEN PLAN: EVERY BOOK THAT I LIKED, I WOULD RECOMMEND IT.

On Goodreads, on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram, on Pinterest—everywhere.

You’re helping two people here: the writers of the books and the people who receive your recommendations.

And it’s so easy for you to do. Seriously. This is so easy it’s hardly a goal. But it makes a big difference for other people. And wouldn’t you want people to do the same for your book?

CREATE THE TYPE OF LITERARY COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO BELONG TO.

So I started interacting with people on Twitter more. I asked questions. I retweeted other people’s successes. I liked people’s posts. And you know what? By trying to take care of other people, it worked out for me! I got loads of new followers. This is a fantastic lesson: being a good literary citizen is one of the best ways to help your career.

GOAL #4 OF MY GOOD LITERARY CITIZEN PLAN: TO READ DIVERSELY.

I wasn’t reading enough women. I wasn’t reading enough international voices. I wasn’t reading enough young voices.

A narrow reading regiment is a great way to read yourself into obscurity.

I made three goals out of this:

F To read as many women as men (and I kept track!).

F To read at least five translated books. F To read at least five debut authors (who tend to be younger, at least).

GOAL #5 OF MY GOOD LITERARY CITIZEN PLAN: TO DEFEND BANNED/PERSECUTED WRITERS.

I sympathize with persecuted writers of all stripes. Those who are exiled from their homeland, those who have their books banned, those who are targeted by Muslim extremists.

I mean, imagine if this was you? Wouldn’t you want support from your literary community?

To help them, I vowed to:

F buy their books F defend them on social media F support groups like PEN America, who fight for persecuted writers

24

THE RESULT FROM KEEPING THESE FIVE GOALS?

I got wonderfully connected with my literary community. I inspired others to become better Literary Citizens. I did unto others as I would want them to do unto me. By trying to help others with writing, I became a better writer.

And by writing this piece I’m being a good literary citizen, too. I hope you enjoy it and become a better writer because of it. Look at the next section to find out the conclusion of my story.

ZIGGY’S STORY

25

ZIGGY HAS WRITTEN A WHOLE SET OF NEW GOALS, AND THIS TIME SHE’S GOING TO BLAST THROUGH THE ROOF.

There’s one last secret she has to learn, though: How to evaluate her new goals.

I’ll make it easy for her: she should pass all new goals through the Goal Master. If her goals can make it through all 6 gauntlets of the Goal Master, it’s a worthy goal for her to aim at.

THE SIX GOAL MASTER GAUNTLETS:

F Is the goal measurable? How will you know it’s accomplished?

F If you have failed on it previously, how can you come at it in a new way?

F Are you going to accomplish it anyways, even if you don’t make it a goal?

F Is it too idealistic? F Is it too ambitious or not ambitious enough?

F Is it couched in a grand, long-term vision or does it require you to do a small daily task?

Before Ziggy makes her new goals, she should look at her previous goals.

Her first step should be to toast her successes. If she focuses on her successes, she’ll cultivate a spirit of optimism. She should celebrate!

She should also look back at previous goals to figure out where she went wrong. It’s possible, when she looks over everything she’s failed to achieve, that she’ll get depressed.

Medieval monks used to practice various forms of asceticism to punish themselves for sin—whipping themselves, wearing thorns around their waists, putting rocks in their shoes. This is a bad idea.

Ziggy shouldn’t punish herself for unmet goals. She shouldn’t even feel guilty. She should treat them as a Successful Failure (That’s called an oxymoron, folks). A Successful Failure is one that teaches you more than you’re hurt by it.

If Ziggy can learn how she wrote the goal badly, and improve on how she writes it next

26

time, then she turns that run-of-the-mill failure into a Successful Failure.

Okay—Ziggy runs her goals through the Goal Master . . . And Voila! Her goals have passed!

THESE ARE SOME OF HER NEW GOALS:

F Read 20 books for the year F Read four books that teach writing F Read four brand-new fiction books F Read four books about scuba diving (for her scuba-diving novel)

F Read four books of poetry F Read four business/social media books (writers are entrepreneurs! Learn the business!)

WRITE 28 DAYS OUT OF EVERY MONTH.

F Write at least 500 words per day for her book (or spend 2 hours revising)

F Write at least 80 hours during February

F Do NaNoWriMo and win F Write an essay about her family and submit it to markets

SUBMIT HER BOOK TO 10 AGENTS

F Research the agents and the clients

they represent

F Write a query letter and workshop itAnd then the goals we listed previously:

WRITING ENABLERS:

F Kryptonite: Activate StayFocusd to block the internet between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. every morning. Limit activity on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest to a half hour every day.

F Kryptonite: Get out of the house and go to a coffee shop every day for at least two hours.

F Pixie Dust: Buy 3 vegetable cookbooks. F Pixie Dust: go to bed at 10:15 p.m. every night.

F Pixie Dust: meditate in the mornings.MONTHLY GOALS:

F A January goal to spend at least 80 hours writing.

F A February goal to read three books as research for her next writing piece.

F A March goal to improve her internet and social media presence.

F An April goal to avoid all trashy reading.

27

F A May goal to go to a local writers meet-up group.

F A June goal to avoid all internet. F A July goal to write that essay about her family she’s been meaning to write forever.

F An August goal to go to a writing conference.

F A September goal to write 20,000 words, or even 50,000 words like NaNoWriMo.

F An October goal to keep a daily journal of interesting people and occurrences.

F A November goal to read five or ten books.

F A December goal to write two hours per day, every single day

MY STORY

28

THIS IS THE END OF MY STORY HERE, BUT THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF MY REAL STORY.

I don’t have it all figured out. In fact, every year when I make my writing goals I learn something new.

Everything I’ve shared with you in this piece, both my journey and Ziggy Snapp’s journey, has been something I’ve learned from personal experience.

Over the last seven years I’ve had a goal-making summit on December 28 – 30.

Three days every year devoted to evaluating the last year and planning for the next one.

I’VE MADE A LOT OF MISTAKES, BUT I’VE GOTTEN MUCH BETTER AT IT.

I go out of town with my wife for three days—leaving the kids with the grandparents—and my wife and I talk about goals.

Not just about writing, though. We make goals for every category of life:

F Finance F Health F Family F Social F Spiritual F Parenting

I think you’d get great benefit from doing the same. Do it for every part of your life, or just stick to writing. Either way, if you follow the guidelines I’ve listed above, you’re going to have a fantastic year.

HERE ARE MY LAST WORDS:

I believe success will come to those who work hard.

The happy ending is in my future.

It’s in your future, too.

FINAL NOTES

If you’d like more literary encouragement, I have a newsletter for writers that I call “Writamins.” Sign up at Bookfox: thejohnfox.com/writamins

Follow me on Twitter: @bookfox

Follow me on Pinterest

I moderate a Facebook group called “Resources for Writers”

Thank you!

Happy goal-setting and godspeed with writing,

John Matthew Fox of Bookfox

http://thejohnfox.com/writaminshttps://twitter.com/bookfoxhttps://www.pinterest.com/johnfox7/writing-and-books/https://www.facebook.com/groups/996355790472011/

WRITING GOALS WORKSHEET

Write down a writing goal you want to accomplish this year.

Write down small, daily goals that will help you accomplish that goal.

Now come up with your Kryptonite that will stop you from accomplishing that goal. How can you neutralize that Kryptonite?

Now come up with your Pixie Dust that will propel you toward accomplishing that goal. How can you make sure to use that Pixie Dust?

What monthly goals would you like to accomplish?

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Verb Goals:

What would you like to learn?

What would you like to stop?

What would you like to start?

What would you like to change?

What would you like to do?

How do you plan to be a Good Literary Citizen?

Where do you want to be in three or five years, and what steps will get you there?