CHAPTER 40

Starting With the End in Mind: Setting Your Personal and Professional Goals

THE GOLDEN RULE FOR SETTING YOUR GOALS

Create goals that keep you motivated and inspired.

ENVISIONING YOUR FUTURE

A maxim on Maui says, “The unaimed arrow never misses.” That's okay if you're an unaimed arrow, but not if you want to be a successful author. In this case, you must hit the tiny bull's-eye of a small, distant target in a world with endless possibilities.

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey writes: “Begin with the end in mind.” If you want to be successful, you must know your goals. The more clearly you see them, the more likely you are to achieve them. You can draw a portrait of yourself and your future on a blank piece of paper or your computer screen by summing up your personal and professional literary and financial goals, and how you will reach them.

Your answers will determine the kinds of books you write, how you write them, how many you write, and what you do to promote them and build your platform and your career. There are no wrong answers; make them whatever you want. The criteria for your answers are the following:

• Do your goals strike a realistic balance between writing for yourself and writing for the marketplace? If you want to earn a million dollars a year, and you want to write haiku, you've got a problem!
• Do the criteria motivate you to do everything you can to write and promote your books and to build your career?

Own your answers to these questions by starting them with the word I.

• Why do you want to write?
• In which literary forms do you want to write: nonfiction, poetry, novels, screenplays?
• In which media do you want to share your work — blogs, articles, talks, podcasts, audio, video, poetry, novels, nonfiction, screenplays?
• Which books are models for what you would like your books to be?
• Which authors are models for whom you would like to become?
• What do you want your books to communicate?
• What do you want your writing to achieve (a possible goal hook)?
• Which groups of readers do you most want to reach?
• How many books do you want to write each year?
• How many people do you want to read your blog and visit your website, and how many people do you want to connect with on social networks?
• Do you want to self-publish or be published by a publisher?
• Do you want to be published by a small, midsize, or large house?
• What advances would you like for your books?
• How much money do you want to earn a year from your writing?
• How many copies of your books do you want to sell every year?
• What position would you like to have as an author in your field?
• How many years will it take you to reach that position?
• How will you do it? (Sue Grafton advises writers to have a five-year plan.)
• How involved do you want to get with the writing process? Do you want to write your books yourself, work with an editor or collaborator, or hire a ghostwriter?
• How will you support your writing until it supports you?

Also consider your personal goals.

• How do you want to live?
• Where do you want to live?
• Do you want a family?
• How large do you want that family to be?
• What kind of a house do you want?
• What possessions do you want most?
• How many vacations do you want a year?
• How do you want to spend your vacations?
• How much income do you want when you retire?

Put your answers up where you write, and read them to keep you going. Change them whenever and however you wish. One way to verify your answers: Assume you've reached your goals. What's your life like?

Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen believe in having giant goals. Their goal is to sell a billion books by 2020. Inventor Charles Franklin Kettering said, of the Wright brothers, that they “flew right through the smoke screen of impossibility.” Writers who can't write as well as you and aren't as articulate or as good-looking as you are successful authors. If they can do it, so can you!

Life is indeed a journey, and you are both the traveler and the destination. As you approach the horizon of your possibilities, you will grow into them and become a more capable you. May your journey be filled with goals you reach and horizons that continue to recede as you advance into the best future you can imagine. Believe the words of Samuel Johnson: “Your aspirations are your possibilities.”

Chapter twenty-one has suggestions for test-marketing your goals.

The following chapter offers building blocks for getting your book published.