Eating the Elephant (Or Setting Realistic Goals)

Nancy Smay

We have all heard this advice – don’t think about eating an entire elephant. Focus on one bite at a time.

Okay, maybe that’s not the advice we’ve all heard… How about this instead: don’t think of losing twenty pounds. Think about losing one pound each week for twenty weeks. Or instead of thinking about building your savings to one thousand dollars, think about saving one hundred dollars every two weeks for twenty weeks.

Bite-sized goals (or pieces of an elephant) are manageable, whereas the bigger ones seem monumental.

You know this.

So why is it so hard when it comes to setting bite-sized goals for your writing?

There could be any of a few reasons...

1) The comparison game.

If your goal is to “be like [insert famous author name or idol here],” I can tell you right now you will fail. Why? Because this is not a specific or realistic goal. Being like another person is easy enough in some ways – does she wear Adidas sneakers? There you go, goal achieved. But that’s not what you mean, is it?

Having an ambitious goal is not the problem with striving to be like someone else. Not having a specific, measurable, achievable goal is the issue.

If Author A wants to “be” like Author B, let’s go ahead and compare.

Say Author A is writing her third book. It’s a romcom. She has a Facebook group of about three hundred readers, and makes about three hundred dollars a month in Kindle Unlimited.

Now let’s look at Author B. She has twenty-five books out, most of them romantic suspense, and half are in KU. She has a reader group of over 5k, and makes several thousand dollars a month from her wide and KU books.

You know what I’m going to say. Apples and apples, this is not.

But, we can fix this.

Instead of: “I want to be like Author B.”

Why not: “I want to try writing romantic suspense like Author B.” (we can talk about the wisdom of switching genres later, Author A).

If that’s the goal, then we can whittle it down to specific projects and tasks that will certainly allow Author A to meet it. And that’s what we’ll talk about next.

2)     Nebulous goals.

Writing a book is a goal. And it’s achievable, depending on a lot of factors. But it’s not a good goal because it sets no expectations or plan in place.

“I want to write a book” is a fear-based goal. People who are pretty sure they will never actually write a book will set this goal, knowing that without defining what kind of book (and therefore how long it will need to be), figuring out how fast they can write, or deciding when they’ll fit writing into their schedules, they will never write the book.

So instead, why not: “I want to write a book, so I’m going to spend this week understanding how fast I can write and when I can fit writing into my schedule.” That’s a project.

Next, they might say, “I want to write a book, so to understand how fast I can write and when it will fit into my schedule, I will:

-   Pencil in one-hour blocks in at least three places in my calendar before or after work this week

-   Spend that one-hour writing the first chapter of the book I have planned

-   Analyze how many words I have been able to write in each of the one-hour blocks at the end of the week, take the average and arrive at my words-per-hour rate.

-   Next, I will divide the expected word count of my finished book by this rate to see how many hours it will take me to write.

It’s a lot, right? But do you see how writing a book suddenly became something you do in an accumulation of specific hours rather than over a lifetime? Force yourself to set goals and then PLAN toward them using projects and tasks. Write these down.

3)   No accountability.

What happens if you don’t write the book?

Right. Nothing.

Is nothing what you’re hoping for out of life? Me either.

So why not try holding yourself accountable? Take those tasks and projects you set for yourself above, and put them on an actual timeline. Evaluate your progress.

Don’t beat yourself up if you plan to write five thousand words one week and it doesn’t happen. But go ahead and schedule the next set of goals. Adjust as needed, but keep driving your plan forward. Because what will you have at the end of it?

Your book.

We’re talking about goal setting on this week’s episode of Story Strategy Live, and Dawn and Nancy are always available to coach you through setting up your own writing plans!