S.M.A.R.T. Goals

Welcome back to The Writing Road as we celebrate a new year!
That's 365 days bursting with possibilities. And a fresh start is a chance to make resolutions and achieve new goals. If past failure has kept you from making resolutions this year, banish those negative thoughts. You don't need to walk in discouragement or despair any longer. God has already taken care of that.

God's mercies are new every morning!
"The LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness." (Lam. 3:22-23)

Get S.M.A.R.T.
You may shake off any self-defeating attitudes, but how can you ensure success in 2010? First, be S.M.A.R.T. when setting goals. Make sure your goals are:

*Specific
*Measurable
*Attainable
*Realistic
*Time-Bound

You've written down your goals, right? After all, you are a writer.

Quotes on goals:
A goal without a plan is just a wish. ~ Larry Elder

A goal is a dream with a deadline. ~ Napoleon Hill

Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan.~ Tom Landry

Good news:
Word counts, page counts, deadlines, contest submissions, agent/editor contacts are all quantifiable and can all easily become S.M.A.R.T. goals.

Let's hear your New Year's resolutions? What do you hope to accomplish in 2010? What's your plan to get there? Leave a comment and I'll put your name in for a drawing for a cute little notebook.

~Roxanne Sherwood

Setting Goals -- Reach for the Stars

The victory of success is half won when one gains the habit of setting goals and achieving them. Even the most tedious chore will become endurable as you parade through each day convinced that every task, no matter how menial or boring, brings you closer to fulfilling your dreams. ~ Og Mandino (1923 - 1996)

It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it. ~ Arnold Toynbee (1889 - 1975)

Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity. ~ Louis Pasteur (1822 - 1895)

To will is to select a goal, determine a course of action that will bring one to that goal, and then hold to that action till the goal is reached. The key is action.
~ Michael Hanson

The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don't define them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them. ~ Denis Watley

Reach high, for the stars lie hidden in your soul. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal. ~ Pamela Vaull Starr


Debbie Macomber, keynote speaker at the 2009 American Christian Fiction Writers Conference and author with more than 100 million copies of books in print, shared her story as a dyslexic child who barely graduated from high school and later as the mother of four young children who wrote her stories on a rented typewriter. Though she struggled for five years to get published, she never lost sight of her dream.

Today, demand for her books have exceeded her wildest dreams . . . but not her wildest goals. 74 SEASIDE AVENUE, the latest in her Cedar Cove series, scored #1 on the NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, and Publishers Weekly, and her books are translated into twenty-three languages.

Through the years, Debbie has recorded her goals in her many journals. As she achieved each goal, she quickly penned another one. At the ACFW conference, she challenged the writers to list their wildest goals imaginable. Isn't it time you made your own list?

A goal without a plan is just a wish. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

~ Roxanne Sherwood

Signs Along the Writing Road: What's Your Goal?

"Write for the Father’s enjoyment. I’ve found that when I write to please man—that editor or critique partner—I set myself up to only feel good about my writing if someone is applauding it. I would stall unless I had some compliments to “fuel” my writing. It put me in a very insecure place and I found that I was always looking outward for my confidence.

Learn to draw from the well of God and feel his pleasure in you and your writing. It removes the pressure to perform. Rather than writing under the stress and fear that your best effort won’t be good enough, you’ll find joy in writing, editing, and being critiqued. Okay, joy in being critiqued might be stretching things a tad."



~Sherri Sand, author of Leave It to Chance