By Francine Puckly
 
Here we are. Two weeks into the New Year. How’s it going? According to statisticbrain.com, only 68.4% of resolutions make it to the end of week two. And the percentage of people who report success in achieving their resolutions? A whopping 9.2%.
 
Like soaring over a lovely green meadow, our goals and resolutions are colorful, pristine and doable when we’re flying at a bird’s eye view. But it looks a whole lot different when we’re in the trenches doing the work. There’s a lot of mud.
 
So two weeks in, when one third of all people have given up on their goals for the year, let’s talk about some basic tools to keep us on track in 2017.
 
CHALLENGING BUT DOABLE GOALS
How do your annual goals look and feel now that you’ve launched the new year? Even the most thoughtful goals are set to challenge us. After all, it wouldn’t be a resolution to improve our craft or elements of our daily lives if we thought we were already perfect. But if you feel your goals are slipping away after a mere two weeks, it might be time to regroup and revise. It’s better to adjust than to abandon. Check out two of Annie’s goal-setting blogs:  (Take Control of Your Goals in the New Year) and (The SMART Key to Your Carrots). Be sure your goals are completely within your control and not relying on divine intervention or other miracles from the publishing industry!
 
ROUTINE
Staying on track is tough work. Daily life can derail the best intentions. Children aren’t the only ones who benefit from routine! I’ve come off a very busy and highly disruptive ten weeks, but I realized last week that I had exactly 30 days without any scheduled travel or guests in my home. It presented the perfect starting point for a 30-day challenge to reestablish a routine that I crave and need. As Twyla Tharp insists in her book The Creative Habit: Learn It and Live It For Life, creativity is “augmented by routine and habit.” Our routines are repeatable and doable, and we’re far less likely to skip doing important daily tasks that feed our creativity, projects and goals.
 
FOCUS
Once we have a schedule it’s still difficult to stay on track with our goals if we’re constantly distracted by…well, everything. Phones and computers ding and demand our immediate attention. Laundry piles whisper to us. But, good news! We can shut them out.
 
The Timer
My number one go-to tool is the timer on my phone. Over and over, day after day, it is the one thing that picks me up by my plot-straps and gets me back to the page. With a clock ticking, I have permission to focus. And the timer works for everything from plotting to decluttering my workspace to free-writing to help me break through writer’s block. You can also time energy-draining habits such as Twitter, television breaks, or those cute little videos on Facebook that suck up precious time.
 
Lockouts
For laundry, you just have to shut the door. But for people trying to reach us about anything and everything, here are just a couple of electronic solutions:

• Silence your cell phone during your work time and, even better, tuck it away. At a minimum, you can set it to airplane mode to stop the dings while you’re hard at work.
• Manually turn off the Wi-Fi on your computer, tablet or phone.
• Put a lockout app to use. Some of these apps include, but aren’t limited to, Cold Turkey, SelfControl, and FocusMe.

 
TRACKING
Research shows habits are formed in 21 days, and the best way to make a change is to hold yourself accountable.
 
Pens, Stickers and Charts
The easiest trackers of all—red pens, stickers, and the like—can be used to mark daily accomplishments and provide visual satisfaction of having completed your tasks. Good old-fashioned charts have come to my rescue more than a few times as well. I used a chart to track my progress during NaNoWriMo, and I have a 30-day chart for the next few weeks to make sure I’m re-establishing routine. Keep those goals in front of you.  
 
Apps
While I prefer the paper method for tracking a streak, Kelly showcased Habit List in December (Make 24 Carrot a Habit - Get the Habit List App). There are several other tracker apps out there in the electronic world, including Twords, Productive, Coach.me, Momentum, and Habatica (which includes tracking your rewards! How cool is that?!).
 
With appropriate and challenging goals, a conscious commitment to routine and focus, as well as a tracking method, you’ll be able to keep a tight rein on your goals. This year, let’s blow past the 9.2% success rate!
 
~ Francine
​

by Annie Cronin Romano​
Ahh, here we are again. Weren’t we here last January…staring over the cusp of a newborn year into its canyon of vast potential? (Yes, that tiny squirrel in the picture is you, and that gigantic chasm is a whole heck of a lot of potential.) It’s quite overwhelming, that sense of unknown possibilities. What does the New Year hold for me? you wonder. No, wait. Let’s rephrase that. What will I put into action to make this year spectacular? That’s better! Don’t leave it to the fates of the New Year to do something for you. Sit at the controls of your life. Push the buttons. Turn the dials. Determine your goals and see them through to the best of your ability. Will you achieve all the goals you set for yourself this year? Maybe. Maybe not. But if you do not set them, you certainly have no chance of reaching them. 

One key to meeting your goals is to make them challenging yet still within your power. (Yup, I said power. You are powerful, you know.) For instance, setting a goal of landing a book deal probably isn’t the wisest objective, because you’re not the only person who controls that decision. But a goal of researching and submitting to three agents a month? Writing a chapter a week? Registering for your first writing conference? Or beginning that writing project you’ve been tossing around your brain for a few years? Those are goals you have the power to achieve. Those are challenging and doable.
 
Last year I set a goal for myself to write one picture book draft a month. I started the year strong, with four picture books drafted in four months. I was a rock star! I was unstoppable. (Just ask my critique group. I got pretty arrogant.) Then an unexpected life event happened, and I was thrown off track for several months. This event derailed the possibility of meeting my goal, as I hadn’t built in any time for unexpected occurrences. I also realized, as the year progressed, that I hadn’t allowed sufficient time to revise those drafts. I had several half-shaped mounds of clay which I’d submitted to my critique group but no schedule to rework them. Not the smartest plan. So this year I again have a picture book goal, but I have built in more time. I now realize that life has a habit of getting in the way, and those ideas are by no means finished once they’re drafted. So this year I plan to draft, submit to my critique group, revise, resubmit to my critique group, revise again, glaze, polish, buff—you get the idea—three to four picture books. It's a far more reasonable goal which builds in some time for unexpected twists in the road as well as the revision that produces far better writing in the end.

So, yes, here were are again at the start of a new year of unlimited potential. What goals will your set for yourself? Take a seat at the control panel, assess your current position, and start planning. Use your power! Before you know it, you’ll be pushing the buttons and turning the dials on your writing goals for 2017! Happy New Year, and Happy Writing!
~Annie 

~by Amanda Smith
Usually we share our best writing advice, inspire you to set goals, and help you find strategies to meet those goals. We’ll be back to that soon enough, but it is December. Snow has fallen. Trees are decorated, cookies baked, gifts wrapped, and candles lit. So grab a cup of hot chocolate and a candy cane because December is a time of…

​Reflection:
This season let’s take time to ponder our accomplishments and the goals checked off the list, our disappointments, and our triumphs in writing. Also, let’s reflect on what worked and why. Thomas Carlyle said, “The greatest of faults is to be conscious of none.” Let’s look into our mirrors, acknowledge what we see, and start planning new writing goals for 2017.

 Family:
 That being said, this season is also a time for family. Let’s trust our work, our  characters, and our muse to still be there in the new year. For a few glorious  days let’s enjoy the small moments with our families – the movies, the baking,  the games, the songs, and celebrations. Let’s allow ourselves guilt-free time  away from writing so that we can soak up all the precious expressions; gleeful  laughter; teenage snark; fiercely frustrating, absolutely infuriating, delightfully  humorous family interactions. (And don’t be surprised if some of those show up  in future writing projects.)

​We look forward to a productive new year filled with goals and writing tips, but for now, from our 24 Carrot Family to yours, Happy Holidays!

by Kelly Carey

Mid-December is a time of great anticipation. Little sugar plums anticipate Santa's arrival, bigger gingerbreads await college admission news, and for me, it’s a time when I purchase a new calendar full of empty squares.  It’s a time to think about a whole new year ahead – a time to map out my writing goals, and set some writing New Year's resolutions.



This year, I'm enlisting a secret weapon to move my resolutions from goals to habits. I'm going to use Habit List - a high- tech, but easy to use app ($3.99 on I-Tunes, http://habitlist.com/) that will track my goals, remind me to meet them, and give me cool stats on my success.

At 24 Carrot Writing we advocate setting two writing goals a month – one craft goal and one butt in chair writing goal. We encourage you to reward yourself for hitting your goals with well-deserved carrots or rewards.  The Habit List app can be a fantastic asset in helping you become a 24 Carrot Writer. 
 
Let me run you through how Habit List would work using a daily craft goal.

Let's set a goal to read one picture book or one chapter of a middle  grade or young adult novel every day:

1. Set that goal or “habit” in Habit List.

2. Select the frequency "Every day" (you can pick options like weekly, monthly, every 3 days, or every Tuesday).

3.  Ask Habit List to remind you to complete your goal at a set time every day (in my case by 8pm every night – right before I might have opted to turn on the TV!). 

Habit List becomes my own little sugar plum fairy. Maybe pinging my phone instead of dancing visions in my head, but helping me hit my goals nonetheless.

Now you get to revel in every success.

When you complete a habit or goal, mark it off for that day, and Habit List will track your progress.  

The satisfaction of checking off a daily target is invaluable. In a career where we can wait months for feedback, and face rejection more than acceptance, being able to hit “completed” on Habit List becomes balm for the writing soul.

You did it. You accomplished a writing goal. Success!

Habit List will even let you gloat. It tracks your total completions, your current running streak of success and  - for those competitive types - it  shows you your longest successful streak.

Habit List lets you see how often you've met your target on a weekly basis or a monthly basis.

If daily goals aren't you thing. No worries. You can use Habit List to set weekly goals, or monthly goals. For example you may want to work on a PB revision at least 3 days per week. Or maybe you want to make sure you send out 3 submissions a month.  You can set each of these goals in Habit List, let your little Habit List Sugar Plum fairy remind you to hit your goals, and feel great satisfaction tracking your progress on the Habit List stat page.

This steady practice of goals will shift your plans from targets you anticipate hitting, to habits you automatically accomplish every day.

Set two attainable habits for January – one craft and one writing. Then, assess your progress on your Habit List app and add a second set of habits for February – keep adding and building on your successes each month. 

This time next year, you will open your Habit List app to discover that you have made being a 24 Carrot Writer a wonderful habit.

by Francine Puckly
 
For a few years now, I’ve been contemplating hopping on the NaNoWriMo bandwagon. I’ve held off for a number of reasons. First, I compose my initial drafts longhand, pen to paper, which makes tracking word count a bit tricky. Second, it’s No-School-November, a month in which school administrators conspire against writers by slotting in numerous half days or complete days off for everything from parent-teacher conferences to elections to holidays. The final reason, not to be taken lightly, is that immersing myself in an international phenomenon with social media chats, blogs, and the like would most likely make me less productive when I hear that hundreds or thousands of other people are writing faster than I am.
           
That said, I had been researching my next book on and off for six months and had muddled over the plots, subplots, characters and setting. I was ready to tackle the next novel, and I desperately wanted to have a large chunk of the book on paper before the holiday season hit. There were no good excuses not to dive in.

I decided to customize a NaNoWriMo challenge. As a longhand writer, I determined how many pages I could write in one day. I created a monthly calendar with the goals written in, first by week then by day, with an overarching monthly goal as well. Those goals were all well and good, but I knew I couldn’t go it alone. I’ve tried that. When things get tough, I fall off the writing. First one day. Then another. Then another.
           
Instead, enter my accountability partner. Now, I probably should have asked her first before I made her my partner, but since we’ve been having weekly phone chats and setting goals together for three or four years, she gladly accepted the appointed position. I asked nothing of her except to receive daily texts stating that I had completed that day’s goal.
           
Only eight days into my challenge, her presence has saved my writing day three or four times already. My energy is flagging. Small (and big) crises that have hit my life this week would have been excuses to adjust my goals. But my accountability to her is priceless. She responds to every text, congratulating me, encouraging me to keep going. It’s a beautiful thing to be on this journey with her.  
           
If you have aggressive goals for a future project, don’t go it alone. Ask a trusted colleague to be your accountability partner. Everyone benefits from having a cheerleader who understands the game. And the flip side of that, offer to be someone else’s rock for their project.
           
​Hold someone’s hand. Or ask someone to hold yours. You’ll be amazed at the “impossible” things you will accomplish when someone’s waiting for you to check in.
 
Francine

by Kelly Carey

Nothing gets me more motivated than a snappy little acronym and a manageable task list.  With that in mind, I've decided to give my writing the WRQS!

Pronounced “works”, WRQS stands for Write, Revise, Query and Submit. These four tasks are the Four Horsemen of Writing Success. (By the way, they are much better than the Four Horseman of the Writing Apocalypse; Waiting, Regretting, Quitting and Sobbing. Don’t do those!)

Every month you can apply the WRQS to your writing in an easy weekly focus.

Week One - Writing

Your writing endeavors during the first week of every month will focus on “W” - Writing. This is a beauty of the blank page week. Open a new file and write a fresh sentence, the first draft of a picture book or a new chapter for your middle grade novel. The key this week is to write something brand new.

You can bounce off an idea you jotted down during PiBoIdMo or perhaps one you wrote in the condensation on the bathroom mirror (where do you think WRQS was born?).  Give yourself the first week of every month to create freely. Let go of marketing distractions and the pressure to revise. Instead, find your happiest writing self and put your wonderful words down on paper. This is your week to indulge in creating.  (See Amanda’s post http://www.24carrotwriting.com/-blog/writing-a-purposeful-luxury. )
 
Week Two – Revise

During the second week of every month you will concentrate on “R” – Revise.  This is a week where you become your own critical editor and with a ruthless purpose, cut, paste and re-imagine an existing manuscript.

I recommend that you pull out a manuscript you’ve let steep for a few weeks or more. Don’t pick the new piece you worked on during week one. That gem needs time away from your brain before you can look at it with a fresh perspective. Besides, that writing was your major accomplishment last week, don’t trash it already! Enjoy that victory. Pick a different manuscript to trash .... err, I mean careful revise.

Week Three – Query  

Week three of every month should be set aside for “Q” – Query or Inquiry. This is the week for either writing query letters to agents and/or editors or doing some research or inquiry into what agents or editors may be a good fit for you and your manuscript.

If you have a submission ready manuscript, and you’ve done your research and found an agent or editor that would like your piece, use this week to write a query letter. However, if your manuscripts still need a little R&R (rest and revision), this is the perfect week to troll the webpages and blogs of agents and editors to discover who they are and what they want.  

While weeks one and two of WRQS focused on you and your writing, week three is a time to look outward and find your publishing match.  
 
Week Four - Submit

You will never be published if you don’t submit your work. Use the last week of every month to put yourself and/or your writing out into the universe by making it an “S” – Submit week. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways.

The biggest leap is to submit a manuscript to an agent or editor. A word of caution, don’t do this until your manuscript has already received your best WRQ (work); write, revise, query. If your manuscript isn’t ready for submission, use this week to send your manuscript to a critique group.

If you don't have a manuscript that you are ready to share, you can embracing the “S” – Submit week by marketing yourself. Work on a blog or your webpage or open yourself up by taking a class or workshop.  Either way, the theme for this week is to put yourself out there and be ready for some feedback.  This is your take-a-leap week.

Go ahead. You can do it.  Next week the month starts over and you can snuggle back into the writing cocoon and “W” – Write because you are back to week one!

The WRQS method asks you to focus on a different aspect of your writing endeavors each week of the month, BUT you should be writing every week. The WRQS is a way to manage the balance of a successful writing career. 

I hope you join me in giving your writing the WRQS this year. We can celebrate at the end of each month with a treat (what we at 24 Carrot Writing call a carrot) - like an ice cream sundae. Just be sure to order it with the WRQS - you earned it!

~ by Amanda Smith
When I first started writing, it happened very haphazardly. For years I wanted to write, wished I had time to write, took courses and even became a member of SCBWI, but the actual writing part was sporadic. Oh, I had ideas. I had characters. I had badly written first drafts. What I didn’t have was motivation and direction.

24 Carrot Writing started as four writers who wanted to write more and better. Once a month we would get together and along with catching up and tons of laughter, we would share our goals. It started with “This month I want to…”. When we first started sharing our goals, mine were not very thoughtful. I was still fumbling in the dark, without a clear course, and I kind of pulled some goals out of thin air right there at the coffee shop. But as the months progressed I saw something happening to my goal setting. It was shifting into focus, and my writing became more purposeful.

In 2015 my goals became my writing GPS. I no longer started my writing day wondering what I was going to work on, aimlessly twittering away precious minutes. I had a route and a target. And as I followed this GPS over the next twelve months, I reached destination after destination.

I finished multiple picture book manuscripts and queried more agents than ever before.
I streamlined my agent research so that it was meaningful and functional.
I submitted to magazines, something that I previously felt I had no time to figure out.
I attended multiple workshops.
I purchased Scrivener, completed the tutorial, and used it to make my revision process more efficient.
And most importantly, this year, I finished drafting the YA novel I started four years ago.

BUT, I didn’t stop there. Where in the past I would have pitched a tent at that accomplishment, I dove right into revision. Because I had set thoughtful goals, I knew what the next step was and I was excited to take it.

When Francine first shared her goal setting and reward system, I had thought that it could never work for me. I had thought I am a fly by the seat of my pants kind of writer. But giving my pants some structure made them a better fit.

There are as many different ways to set goals as there are goal setters, but if you need a manageable method to organize your career, or a jumping off point, I am happy to share what I did to make 2015 my bravest and most productive writing year to date.

• Set some practical yearly goals for 2016. Make sure you include writing goals, submission goals and craft goals and give yourself deadlines. (You can see our 2015 goals here. 2016 goals will be going up soon.)
• As you set your monthly goals, consult your yearly goals to make sure you stay on track.
• At the end of each month, assess how you did throughout the month. Set new goals for the next month. I write these down on an index card and pin it next to my yearly goals on a cork board above my desk. Make sure your goals are specific and in a visible place.

by Francine Puckly

Congratulations! You’ve made it to the fourth and final chapter of our long-term planning process! This month we’re going to put the entire view together.

Last month we talked about your annual plan (http://www.24carrotwriting.com/-blog/planning-part-three-your-one-year-roadmap). Planning is great, but we need to get to work! And the best way to break up your annual work is to divide the estimated volume or hours of work by the four quarters in the year—making sure to shift your workload if one quarter is expected to be less productive than another based on personal and day-job demands. This is a guestimate, of course. Do you write long fiction? If so, you can estimate the number of pages a draft might be and set word-count or page goals for each quarter. Or if you’re writing shorter pieces like magazine articles or picture books, you can estimate how many drafts or ideas you might generate in three months.

Once you have the first quarter of work laid out, divide that work into three months, allocating about a third of the work per month. You probably guessed the next step—dividing that first month into four weeks!  All of a sudden, you have the first week of work in front of you, and it’s time to get cracking!

I’ve attached examples of my five-year and annual plans.  

Five-Year Goals:

Quarterly Goals:
Once I have my annual goals listed, I took these long-range goals and plugged them into quarterly and weekly charts. Here is my third quarter layout, as well as the guestimate of my fourth quarter, beginning October 1st. While I've provided you pretty charts to use, mine were originally completed on loose-leaf notepaper!  

I hope this gives you an idea of how work is being boiled down from that long-term vision into workable and tangible quarterly, monthly and weekly plans. I keep my quarterly plan posted in my work area at all times. While it lists my weekly targets in the monthly sections, I often write a weekly list of what I hope to accomplish on an index card. It helps me keep focus. This weekly evaluation also allows me to accommodate schedule changes. If something big is going on in my personal life that week, I list that on my chart and index card as a reality check. Each morning I glance at my weekly goals and jot down a few must-do’s for the day. 

Final Thoughts on Long-Term Planning:
We can’t always predict the pace of creating a manuscript, painting, or picture book dummy from scratch. My current manuscript has taken a full year longer than I’d originally planned. I could beat myself up about being slow, but at the end of the day, I did all the writing hours I said I would. That story just took a little longer to finesse. 

The critical thing to remember is that it’s more important to show up than to hit specific targets (they were estimates to begin with!). You can’t call it a missed goal if you’ve shown up for all the hours you anticipated writing. 

Happy planning (and accomplishing!) this quarter!

-  Francine

P.S. Remember you can find the other three long-term planning sections in our blog archives:
http://www.24carrotwriting.com/-blog/anything-but-ordinary
http://www.24carrotwriting.com/-blog/planning-part-two-charting-your-5-year-plan
http://www.24carrotwriting.com/-blog/planning-part-three-your-one-year-roadmap

By Francine Puckly

Are you still with me on this long-term planning journey? I hope so! This month I’d like to share Step 3 (of 4) of the planning process – the one-year plan. We dreamed big in June (http://www.24carrotwriting.com/-blog/anything-but-ordinary) and charted our five year goals in July (http://www.24carrotwriting.com/-blog/planning-part-two-charting-your-5-year-plan). Now it’s time to take that five-year plan and map out the first year, looking at the first large project or set of smaller projects you’d like to undertake.

As I’ve said before, the fall is the perfect time of year for planning and goal setting. We’re rejuvenated from our holidays and vacations (or just plain ecstatic the extended family has gone home!) and the humidity is finally dropping. This leaves us with enthusiasm and renewed energy for our tasks.

Assessing Your Time
The first step in laying out an annual plan is to think about how much time you have to devote to your writing or other creative pursuits in the twelve months ahead of us. It’s important to be honest and realistic about what lies ahead. Family demands, buying or selling a house, hosting visitors, workshops and conferences, and “real job” requirements all drain your time. These events must be factored into your plan as accurately as possible.

For me, I write 20 minutes a day, not matter what. During the school year, I have an additional 20 hours a week, which ends up being more like 15-18 hours once I factor in errands, doctor’s appointments, and unexpected demands. I make sure to flag certain weeks I know I won’t be productive. My daughter has a tech week for a musical? Forget it. I might only get 8-10 hours of writing in those weeks because of last minute errands, visitors, etc. The organizations for which I volunteer also have predictable events that require more of my time, so I go lighter on writing those weeks. I also block off the week before Christmas. In each of those weeks, I do my minimum 20 minutes of writing each day, but they’re not weeks I should plan to finish any drafts! Keeping in mind these variables in my life, I make a guestimate for the year.

Once you have an idea of how many of the 52 weeks will be productive weeks and how many hours you think you can devote to your craft, now look at those projects. Remember, these estimates must include research time, any number of drafts, simmer or resting time, critique time, and any editor/agent research or submission tracking that might happen. All of these steps take time.

Laying it out
Now it’s time to lay out your plan. Ask yourself the following questions:
·      At the end of twelve months, what are you expecting to have accomplished? Write that under the heading “One year from now.”
·      What is halfway for that goal? That will be your six-month target. Write that under “Six months from now.”
·      What is halfway to your six-month goal? That will become your three-month goal or quarterly target. 
·      From there, the quarterly goal is broken down into monthly goals (one third of the goal for each month). We'll talk about the quarterly and weekly plans next month!  

And there you have it. A year at a glance! 

It’s important to do this when you have a couple of hours of uninterrupted time. Brew a cup of coffee or tea and sit down with your notepad. Look at those dreams from June and your five-year plan from July. Then think about what comes first in your priorities. 

I’ve attached a couple forms that might be helpful in laying out an annual plan, but quite honestly, a pad of paper is all you need! Write a one-year header, followed by six months, then three months, and you have a plan in place to get started. 

As I mentioned above, next month we’ll talk about making weekly plans and really getting to work! Until then, happy planning! And have a great month!

Francine