Setting New Year's Goals for Your Writing--Tips, Ideas, and Why It's Fun and Helpful

In a past post, I wrote about the helpful triad of the creative artist's life: will, vision, and comfort. I heard about this from a songwriter friend many years ago, and it's helped me make sense of the sometimes-crazy artist life I lead.

Will is the drive, the push to do, the action part of the creative process. Actually sitting down in the chair in front of the laptop or notebook. Sketching out scenes, writing pages, organizing your book structure, all the activities that are required to actually produce a book. Not enough will and nothing gets done. We've all been there!

(Writer's block, though, which some feel is purely procrastination, isn't a problem of will but of the other two aspects. Read on!)

Comfort is the time spent contemplating ideas, reading and researching, getting filled up with the inspiration that you'll need to drive the actions. Not enough comfort and I usually end up with very negative thoughts about myself and my work--I haven't allowed rest breaks (see last week's post) or time to step back and consider the "why" of a story.

Comfort is all about going deeper. And it's about nurturing the creative part of yourself so you can. I remember Julia Cameron (of The Artist's Way fame) calling this "filling the well." It walks in definite balance with will.

The third element is available to me when I achieve this balance. The drive to work is harmonized with the well-filling of reading, talking with other writers, taking classes, learning and exploring. Vision, this third element, surfaces from a part of me that I can't always access. It's the far-seeing part that brings me purpose and good goals.

January 1 is New Years Day in the States and I traditionally set aside time to vision. I like to begin with a list of what I know is working--often this includes my life as well as my writing. If I try to start with what I want, I can get burdened by the "how"--I am not sure I can achieve it, and I don't have the steps yet. So starting with what works is a perfect entry for building my confidence.

Here are some of the questions I use to get started. I enjoy freewriting the answers, either longhand in my journal or on the laptop or iPad.

What do I already love about my writing?
About my writing life?
About the place and way I write?
What am I proud to have done, explored, experimented with, experienced with my writing this past year?
What's my favorite part of being a writer?
What supports my writing right now? Friends, colleagues, writer's groups, classes, accountability partners?
What did I learn the most from this past year, in terms of my writing and writing life?

Next, I begin to ask the future-seeing questions, such as:

If I were to change or add one thing, what would it be? (Think: writing space, privacy, equipment, practice, support, etc.)
What have I longed for that I might want to give myself this coming year?
What might make my writing practice more fun and fulfilling?
What craft skills do I most need to improve?

From here, I go into specifics--the "how" part of visioning:

What are three ways I might get more support with my writing?
How could I improve my craft skills?
If I were to read five books in my genre this coming year, what might they be?
What are first steps to make needed changes to my writing space?
If I could envision the perfect equipment for my writing life, what might that be? Where would I get it? What would it cost?

Obviously, customize this to your particular needs and interests. You might already have one area of your writing life in perfect shape--be sure to spread the happiness of that through the first set of questions, then focus on areas that are less ideal.

Although we're all writers, and we work primarily with words, we can also benefit from the visual artist's technique of vision boards or collage. Another part of my New Years Day ritual is an hour spent with cut-up magazine photos (or downloaded and printed images from online) to create a cover for my new journal or writing notebook, a character collage, or an overall vision board for my current project. As you already know, working with images taps a different part of the brain and helps us access even more of the vision of the new year.