What’s the one and only key to winning National Novel Writing Month? For that matter, what’s the key to writing a novel to its finish and being a successful writer, day in and day out, for the rest of your life? If you cheated by peeking at the title, then you’re probably already guessing “writing goals.”

Well, you’re wrong.

Okay, only partly wrong—because the title isn’t lying. We are going to talk about the importance of writing goals and how you can implement them into your daily and weekly writing schedules. But before we can talk about writing goals, we first have to talk about your math skills.

If you’re now groaning, then know I feel your pain, since high school Algebra and I were pretty much mortal enemies. We’re writers, man. We don’t need no stinkin’ math! Except that we totally do. Why? Because successful goals are totally about numbers.

Today, we’re going to find out what it takes to set successful writing goals that will carry you through NaNo—and beyond. (And I promise that if I can do the math, so can you.)

What Specific Value Do Writing Goals Bring to the Table?

First, we have to ask: What’s the point of writing goals in the first place? I’m talking about specific writing goals, the kind that challenge us—the kind that are sometimes a little uncomfortable, even downright hard.

The answer to that depends entirely on you. Because here’s a secret you don’t always hear: über-specific goals aren’t inherently valuable.

Although I’m definitely a productivity-oriented person (my end-of-day gratitude prayers inevitably begin, “thank You for everything I was able to get done today”), I’m surprisingly not prone to setting high goals. I never have been. Since I know I’ll work at more or less top speed toward the end of production regardless, I prefer to avoid the extra stress of placing myself under deadlines.

For most of my writing life, I’ve chosen not to compromise the fun and the flow of my naturally steady production level in order to ramp up the output. In all truth, there isn’t always going to be a good reason to put the clamps on the Muse and rev her into the red zone. In our productivity-obsessed world, it’s important to recognize that.

However, there comes a time for all of us (and for many writers, that time is November), when we just plain need the good firm kick in the pants that a solid set of goals can provide. That’s what NaNo is all about: encouraging the sort of steady and challenging writing output that allows us to move through our overall goals of finishing and writing books with consistency and efficiency.

That sort of motivation is only provided by goals that are a leetle more specific than: Finish book … someday.

Ask Yourself: What Is Your Overall Writing Goal?

There are two different types of specific writing goals you can use, separately or in conjunction, to help you maximize your writing time and effort. They are:

1. Time Goals

This is the one I use when I can trust myself not to be a lollygagging, space-gazing daydreamer. As I hinted above and wrote about more thoroughly here, productivity-specific goals can sometimes end up compromising both the quality and the overall experience of writing. Instead of focusing on the amount we’re writing, we can put the focus on the amount of time we’re writing each day. Set yourself a daily writing time—and discipline yourself to write for the whole of it.

2. Production Goals

These are “word-count goals.” We set ourselves a word count and write to the end of it no matter how much time it takes. This is a much higher-stakes game. Depending on how steep a goal you’re setting yourself, this can really up the ante—and the stress level—and force you to keep writing past all time limits, past even the point of mental and physical exhaustion.

The great thing about NaNo is that it’s all about utilizing the best of both of these goals.

3. Time + Productivity Goals

When you set yourself a time limit and a projected word goal within that time limit, that’s when your ability to produce has the potential to fly off the charts. And that’s what NaNo is all about. It provides both the time goal (30 days) and the productivity goal (50,000 words). You can easily use this same system all year long to keep your productivity consistently high.

Big Writing Goals Got to You Intimidated? Here’s the Secret

Writing is full of big goals. A book is a huge end product to get your mind around all at once. It’s downright scary. No wonder we sit down before our computer’s blank screen and stare like a deer in the headlights. For that matter, the idea of writing approximately 1,700 words every single day for 30 days! is a pretty scary thought in its own right.

So stop thinking about it.

I used to jump rope every morning (until I bone-bruised my big toe–and also wore a hole in the carpet). My initial goal was fifteen minutes of fast skipping. But my wimpiness knew no bounds. Fifteen minutes of sweating and wheezing was an eternity. My body probably could have handled it right from the start, but my brain was a big fat cream puff. So I played nice and started out with a goal I knew I could handle: one minute the first day. (Yeah. Don’t judge.)

Then two minutes the next day and three minutes the day after that. I climbed my way up to the full goal painlessly.

Writing goals work in exactly the same way. The first thing you need to do is ask yourself: What level of productivity are you at now? It’s okay to be a honest wimp. One minute a day? Ten words a day? (I definitely won’t judge.)

Start there. Then slowly start adding as much as you know you can handle. Add ten minutes a day. Ten minutes is painless. Do that consistently and before you know it you’ll be skipping through massive goals without breaking a sweat.

Smaller and Smaller Goals: The Secret to Productivity

Remember how I said that non-specific, time-oriented goals are often less mentally taxing that “tighter” goals that focus on specific productivity objectives? There’s a reason for that. General goals you aim to complete “sometime off in the future,” with perhaps a vague idea that “sometime” will be “oh, late next year,” are totally misleading.

When I use goals like this, I’m inevitably surprised to discover my productivity is nowhere near as good as I think it is. This is because, even though I may be working steadily every day, I have no yardstick by which to measure my progress. I might think, Yeah, I’ve been writing almost every day for six months now. I’m doing great. But if I then do the math (dun-dun-da-dunh–told you we were going to talk numbers), I’m usually stunned to realize how little I’ve actually accomplished in those months–and how much longer it’s actually going to take me to finish my project.

If you’re planning to be productive day in and day out–whether it’s just during NaNo or for the rest of forever–you’re going to need to get in the habit of breaking down your big, general goals into smaller and smaller integers. Again, NaNo is a great incentive for this. If you have the large goal of writing 50k words in 30 days, then you can (painlessly) put your latent math skills to work and figure out that you’re going to have to write 1,666 words every single day.

Boom. Suddenly, you don’t just have a goal, you have a daily action plan for achieving that goal. Small goals like this keep you focused on a daily basis. You always know exactly where you are in relation to the big goal. You know how much work you’ve already accomplished and how much you still have left to do. You’re never left to flounder in the blinding “bigness” of the overall goal.

But the rabbit hole goes even deeper.

Here’s How to Create Super-Productive Writing Goals–That Are Surprisingly Painless

Facing down the mammoth idea of 50,000 words in 30 days can be gaze-glazing. Even just the idea of taking it day by day and having to somehow create 1,700 words out of nothing–not just once, but thirty times–can be more than scary enough in its own right to freeze your muse.

So let’s say you have two hours a day in which to write (which I was I do). Okay, so that’s 850 words an hour. I know I can knock that out relatively painlessly, but, even still, the sheer bulk of the words, when faced by the blank page I’m starting with, can be a little intimidating.

Fine. Let’s forget hourly goals. An hour’s way too much time for my roaming and highly distractible brain (squirrel!) to get lost in anyway. Let’s just make things easy for everybody and focus on writing 15 minutes at a time. That’s a measly 212 words. That’s only 50 more words than I’ve already written in this section of this post. Three paragraphs.

Let me say that again: three par-a-graphs. Does it get any more manageable than that?

Nope. And then all you have to do is put four fifteen minute sprints together into one hour–two hours together into one day’s writing session–and thirty days worth of writing sessions together into a NaNoWriMo victory.

Still Overwhelmed? Here’s the Next Step: Incentivize Your Writing Goals

The time + productivity goal of 212 words per 15 minutes is easy, but bet on it: there will still be days when it’s tough to get it done. This is where I bring in the incentives: punishments and rewards.

Punishments are admittedly harder (I tell myself no ice cream after supper, but somehow I just never listen). I also just plain don’t like the idea. Why turn the joy of writing into a guilt trip? Still, one über-effective method you might want to try is Dr. Wicked’s Write or Die app, which offers a number of nasty hand-slaps when you fail to meet your goals–everything from blowing your eardrums with loud and obnoxious noises to literally deleting your writing one word at a time. Ouch.

On the happier end of the spectrum, we have rewards. My hands-down favorite method is jelly beans. If I’m having trouble staying focused on a difficult project, I’ll bribe myself with a jelly bean after every small goal met. It’s a small reward, but if I know I can’t reach into the jelly bean bowl until I write another 200 words, guess what? You got it: I write another 200 words.

Train Yourself to Look Beyond Your Current Goal

You know what motivates me more than anything else to conquer my current writing goals? The next goal. The sooner you finish this goal, the sooner you can begin the next one.

You do have a next one, right?

Start thinking beyond NaNo right now. What happens December 1st? (Other than It’s a Wonderful Life reruns, of course.) Will you have 50,000 more words to write? Will you edit the 50,000 you’ve already written? Will there be another book? Writing workshops to attend? An author mailing list to build?

I keep a list of all my writing goals (which, basically, is a glorified to-do list). Seeing that list and knowing how much I still have to do is what keeps me focused on accomplishing my current goals and tuning up my productivity every single day. If you do the same, you’re not only going to kill NaNo (and do your high-school Algebra teacher proud), you’re also going to be one of the most productive writers on the planet. No lie.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinion! What are your overall and daily writing goals right now? Tell me in the comments!

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