Happy New Year! Another year, another series of goals—writing or otherwise. Some people like plunging ahead without a specific plan and see where Life takes them. I admire that spontaneity. But for me, I prefer to have a road map. It keeps me organized and it provides a vision of where I want to go and how to get there. Sounds like outlining a novel, right?
For those of you who like road maps and setting your writing goals for the year, try creating a Vision Board. Check out these tips on how to create one:
Make a Vision Board,
Epreneur, and
Pinterest Samples. You can use very simple tools such as a white board or cork board or large poster paper with markers. You can also create them with your normal desktop publishing programs or word processing programs such as Word or Pages then print out and post on your wall.
If you're like me, and love online tools, try creating a
Pinterest Vision Board or use
Canva. Don't want to create from scratch? Check out
Foto Talisman and
Betty Vision for vision board templates.
Here's one I created 3 years ago.
However, annual goals, I found out, didn't work that well for me. I have to break them down into daily or even monthly or quarterly tasks. So, I've been using
Week Plan to create my goals. What I like about Week Plan is that I can list some longer term goals as well as create daily tasks. I can also assign different roles (which I do with a different color) for writing, personal, Mom tasks etc. so I can keep track of the different goals for different aspects of my life.
The key though, as with writing or anything else, is do what works for you. Most New Year resolutions fail because people create resolutions or try to meet their goals using approaches that simply aren't productive or doable for them.
So, try kicking off your writing with new goals and new visions, but if goal-setting isn't your cup of tea or hampers your writing style or creativity, then by all means, plunge ahead and see where your writing takes you this year!
What goals/visions/plans have worked for you?
