Road Map for Writing Goals

It’s okay if you haven’t set your writing goals yet. Before you do, it’s important to take stock of your strengths and weaknesses. Once you have those nailed down, you will have a roadmap to improve your writing. 

Inventory

The first step is to inventory your skills and assign them a value of strong, medium, or weak. What do I mean? Look at the chart below:

In this example, it is clear that improving punctuation should be one of my writing goals. Because punctuation doesn’t come naturally to me, I avoid thinking about it, but this inventory reminds me that attention to punctuation through coursework, reading, or other means will improve my writing.

On the other hand, writing dialogue is one of my strengths. Does that mean I never have to take a class or attend a conference session on dialogue again? Of course not. But if my choice of conference sessions is between writing dialog and character development, I’ll pick character development because I recognize it as the weaker of the two.    

Writing Goals

Now that you have inventoried your strengths and weaknesses, think about that other part of writing, where will your work find a home? Whether your goal is to publish a best-selling novel, stick to a daily journalling routine or something in-between, include it as a writing goal.

Know who your ultimate audience is. Are you crafting a novel for the masses, or an article for a niche market? Will your work go through an extensive editorial process, or is it a low-key family newsletter? A traditional publishing house will have different expectations than Auntie Sue. Set your writing goals accordingly.

January

This the month for setting goals. But in order to set writing goals, you must know two things: where you are and where you want to be. As a writer, that means taking an honest look at your skills and determining where you hope your writing will appear.

Share your 2023 writing goals in the comments.