Writing Goals: 2012 [Part 1] — Looking Back
I thought I would try something with GITS readers with the hope it would benefit as many of you as possible in taking concrete steps forward next year with your writing aspirations. It’s a very simple thing, really — setting goals — but for many, if not most people, it is an invaluable part of their creative process. You can go here to read some background on why setting goals is important and how to be S.M.A.R.T. about it.
You may be someone who likes to set goals. Or someone who hates it. Maybe you’ve never really tried to formalize the process.
Whatever your inclinations or prior experience has been, I encourage you to try it for 2012. Three big reasons why:
#1: With all its distractions, life has a way of dissipating our positive energy. We may have some general sense of what we’d like to accomplish, but the mere fact we live with the gigantic time-suck that is the Internet, that alone has a way of squandering countless hours of time when we could be writing. One of the best ways I know to deal with this natural tendency toward dissolution of focus is to take a definitive stand: Declare your intentions, and stay fixed on those goals every day.
#2: I don’t know Script Girl, I’ve never met Script Girl, I’ve only seen some of her videos, but her tagline offers one of the most fundamental truths about the screenwriting business there is: “You can’t sell it, if you don’t write it.” You have to finish that script. In fact, to maximize your chances at success, let me amend that last statement: You have to finish those scripts. As in plural. The more scripts you write, the more you understand the craft, the better you get as a writer, and the more you prepare yourself for a possible career as a screenwriter. Plus you have more content to show to agents and managers. And each of those scripts represents a story you can sell potentially. But if you don’t write them… cue Script Girl.
#3: There’s an anecdote I believe is in William Goldman’s memoir “Adventures in the Screen Trade,” still one of the best books about the movie business even twenty plus years after its publication. As I recall the story, Goldman was friends with a top NBA basketball player, a man renowned for the amount of time he spent practicing. Even after he had become a successful professional athlete, he was the kind of guy who would be shooting jump shots in a lonely gym after midnight. Goldman asked him, “Why do you practice so much.” The player’s answer: “Because when I’m not practicing, someone else is.” The screenwriting version: If you’re not writing, someone else is. Screenwriting is an incredibly competitive field. To give yourself an edge over the competition, you simply have to spend time — a lot of it! — writing.
Three reasons for you to be serious about setting writing goals for 2012. I’m sure you could provide even more.
With that as a frame, here is what I’m thinking about this series of Writing Goals: 2012 posts: I will share my own year-end process with you. Not only that, at some point I will make a public declaration what my writing goals are for 2012. I’m hoping at least some of you will have the courage to do likewise.
Again just to be clear, all I’m trying to do is to motivate you to be productive next year (i.e., get your ass-on-chair every day and write).
Thus each day this week (Monday-Friday) and as well as next week, I will be posting something about setting goals as well as tips and inspirational observations to achieve them, sharing my own process, and inviting any of you to join in.
Today: Looking Backward
An important first step in setting writing goals is to look back at what you accomplished in the last twelve months. If you’ve achieved a lot, great. By reviewing your accomplishments, you can use that as a springboard to propel you into the New Year. You can also assess what you’ve done to provide a logical transition from these projects this year to the ones you choose to write in the upcoming year.
On the other hand, if you look back at this year and realize you did not get nearly enough done on the writing front, that should serve as motivation as well. You don’t want to let another year slip by without making significant progress, correct? All the more reason to try establishing some simple, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely goals for 2012.
For instance, last year at this time, I was busy preparing to launch a new venture Screenwriting Master Class. My partner Tom Benedek and I laid out an audacious slate of online courses, all of which needed to be created from scratch. Among them eight Core classes (Plot, Concept, Character, Style, Dialogue, Scene, Theme, Time), a Prep workshop, a Pages I: The First Draft workshop, a Pages II: Rewriting Your Script workshop, plus several Craft courses such as Handling Exposition and From Loglines to Beat Sheets. All told that translated into just about 100 written lectures. So that was my really big goal for 2011: Write those lectures. I did all but six of them [I decided to carry those over to 2012]. All told, I wrote about 500 pages of lectures this year.
In addition I mentored dozens of writers through numerous online classes and workshops, providing extensive written and verbal feedback on their assignments and script pages. I kept a rough running total for about half the year and projecting from that, I probably wrote another 1000 pages of script analysis, comments and suggestions.
Then there was this little thing known as GITS. My goal was to continue with what had evolved into a routine: At least 6 posts per day. Granted many of those are pretty simple: Daily Dialogue, On Writing, Screenwriting 101, and the like. But of the 2,000+ posts on the site this year, several hundred of them were comprised of analysis and opinion. Add to that the many conversations we had in Comments. I can’t even hazard a guess how many pages all of that equaled, but it is certainly a lot.
Also there’s my gig teaching at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (I just received word I’m getting some fancy title which has an interesting connection for any of you “Star Trek” fans… more on that with the formal announcement). Again lectures, feedback, and so forth.
With all of that, something had to take a back seat and that was my fiction-writing. In committing to everything I did this year, especially launching a new business venture in Screenwriting Master Class, I made a conscious decision to set aside a spec script and a novel I had been developing.
In looking back, I am not only proud of what I accomplished, I am amazed. And one of the main reasons I was able to do what I did was this simple thing: I set clear writing goals for the year. I knew what I wanted and needed to do, and I kept those goals in mind every single day in 2011.
Now that’s just me. Every writer is different. I imagine if you were launching a business that involved writing, you would accomplish at least as much if not more than I did. Besides sheer page count is not necessarily the best way to assess what one accomplishes, the quality is hugely important. It’s entirely possible you could write one short story and sell its movie rights which in fact happened with a number of writers who published works at Popcorn Fiction.
Which is to say, don’t compare what you do to what I do. I’m on my path, you’re on yours.
But while you’re here, why not take the time to look back at your year in writing? I invite you to head to Comments and share with us what you accomplished in 2011. How many scripts did you write? How many story concepts did you generate? How many short stories or poems did you write? Maybe you signed with an agent or manager. Maybe you sold a script. Maybe you started your very first script. Anything you accomplished is worth celebrating, so I encourage you to share that with us so we can celebrate together.
The next step in this process of setting writing goals for 2011: Assessing where you are as a writer. Sit down with yourself and take a critical, honest look at where you are, what you’ve done, and where you want to be. Zero in on finding those areas about which you feel really passionate. That’s where we’ll start when we pick up the process tomorrow.
Bottom line: Set some specific, achievable goals for 2012.
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