What are your writing goals for 2024? A book proposal, a Substack launch, a journaling practice? Below are a few tips to help you reach your writing goals.
#1 Connect with your values.
There are lots of time management tips out there, but one I think cuts through a lot of the “I don’t have time to write” noise is to connect your writing time to your values. What are the nitty gritty basics of what motivates and drives you? How do those values connect to your writing? For example, maybe you value financial stability and writing a weekly newsletter will help you grow your business. Or you value self-expression and working on your poetry collection will bring you joy. Or you value service, so crafting a nonfiction book proposal for a book you think could help a lot of people will be deeply satisfying. When you connect your writing to your values, it becomes harder to deny yourself the time to write. Here’s a list of values from Brené Brown’s website to get you started.
#2 Let go to make space.
There’s no way around it. There are 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, 365 days in a year. You’re probably thinking, “Yes, Britt, I know that.” But do you? Do you really accept that time is finite? That in order to add something, you have to let something go? It can be hard to let things go, especially if you are a creative person. Creative people have A LOT of ideas — more than they can possibly realize. Part of creative maturity is focusing how you spend your time and energy. Prioritizing how you spend your time based on your values will help you decide what to let go of and what to add.
#3 Make your own rules.
Sometimes when we get stuck, it’s because we think we’re supposed to do things a certain way (e.g. write a certain number of words a day every day). Or that there is a “right” way to write for a particular medium or genre. Maybe you took a class about how to write fiction, but your writing isn’t like other students’ writing, so you think it’s no good. Or you took a webinar on how to write a newsletter and you don’t like how they say you “have” to do it, so you don’t do it all. Let yourself make your own rules about how, when, and how much you write. It will increase your motivation.
#4 Release perfectionism.
Perfectionism is sort of related to following the rules. We’re tricked into believing that if you follow x rules, everything will work out, but perfectionism is about more than following rules, it’s about holding yourself to idealistic (unrealistic) standards. It could be a standard you came up with, or that someone else did. That perfection is unrealistic is not a big aha. And yet, because the ultimate goal is for someone to read our writing, we keep striving for it. So what do you do? Keep 1-2 kind readers in your mind as you write. People who you know will find your work interesting, or helpful, or whatever you want them to feel. Writing for those 1-2 people not only focuses your writing to a specific audience, it also removes the pressure to be perfect because you already know it is going to an excited and generous reader.
#5 Choose the easy path.
I once had a client who hired me to coach her around creating and using an editorial calendar to write articles regularly for her website. Her progress was slow. Very slow. It was clear that she had a lot to say and was excited to share it, but she wasn’t writing. After weeks and weeks of trying, she offhandedly said, “What I’d really love to do is create videos.” And there it was, the real block. She’d never wanted to write regularly, she wanted to create videos regularly. Another client, who also had a lot to say, struggled with writing, but was a natural speaker. She found that recording herself talking with someone about her ideas, transcribing the recording, and then shaping it into a piece helped her turn her thoughts into writing. If you find yourself hitting the same roadblock over and over with your writing, try a new way — an easier way — to express what you have to say.
One thing the pandemic taught us is that the future is unpredictable. Don’t put things off until “someday.” If there’s something you want to write, make and keep your 2024 writing goals as best you can (not perfectly!). If you’d like someone to walk beside you, sign up for a complimentary 30-minute Big Vision coaching call.
Photo of a bee in a flower by me (
