This is not an all-inclusive list and you and your partner may think of other aspects of your writing career that you want to share with each other

Encourage Goal Setting

One of the primary things you and your writing partner will want to do is set goals. Setting goals is the first step to turning your dreams into reality. Do you want to be a successful published author? Do you want to improve your writing? Begin by asking yourself what your writing aspirations and dreams are. Dream big. Small dreams produce small results. Big dreams produce miracles.

As writing partners, you would want to encourage each other to establish their goals. Remember, to be a published author is more than putting creative words to paper. There is a business side of writing. This is a career, even if it is a part time one. Writers are usually self-employed, meaning you own your own business. Anyone who goes into business without a set business plan is doomed for failure.

Your writing goals become your business plan. You start with the dream, fill in the steps on how you will achieve those dreams, revise as you go along, and you have your business plan.

Before we go any further in talking about your goals and dreams, I want to restate something from the last chapter. Goals, like your schedule, need to be written down. I found this quote on the Internet (author unknown), “Write it down. Written goals have a way of transforming wishes into wants: cant’s into cans; dreams into plans; and plans into reality. Don’t just think it––ink it.

Don’t just think it ––ink it!

Two separate university studies emphasize the importance of writing goals down. All members of the 1964 graduation class of Harvard Business School stated that at the time of their graduation, they had clear goals they wanted to accomplish in life. Five percent of the class took the time to write the goals down the remaining ninety-five percent did not. Twenty years later, in 1984, a follow-up study was performed of the ninety-five percent who had not written down their goals. Only five percent reported having achieved the goals they had at graduation. Of the five percent that had written down their goals, ninety-five percent had achieved their goals.

A similar study was done earlier by Yale University with its 1953 graduation class. In that study, only three percent of the graduates put their goals in writing. Twenty years later, the same three percent had accomplished more than the other ninety-seven percent combined.

As you write out your goals, it is important to remember to make them concrete and identifiable. Don’t simply write down, “I want to be a successful author.” That is too abstract. Instead, you might write, “I want to author a book of poetry.” That is an identifiable goal and one that can be measured. In chapter one, we discussed the five reasons most people fail at their dreams. Reason number three is because they do not have concrete goals.

Your goals should also be realistic. This is an area where you and your writing partner can check each other’s goals. If one of your writing partner’s goals is to write ten full-length novels within the next six months, it becomes your job to tell her she needs to reassess her goals. It is important to set goals that are obtainable. When you set realistic goals, you are increasing your chances for success.

Just as you should not set your goals too high, do not set them too low. People tend to do this because of “fear of failure.” However, by not reaching for your full potential, you have failed before you start. Sometimes it is difficult to know when our goal is too lofty or too small. This is where Partnering for Greater Writing will help you. You and your writing partner become a sounding board for each other. You use your writing partner to get objective feedback.

While it’s true that you could ask a good friend or a family member to review your goals, if they are not a writer, they will not have a good idea of the amount of work that each of your writing goals will require. Remember our quote from Chapter One: “Nobody but a writer knows how exhausting it is to write.”

Your goals should also be unique. They need to fit you and your dreams. It is easy to be swayed into making goals that do not fit us. A good friend may tell you that you need to write inspirational Amish fiction, because that is what is “hot” in today’s market. Your spouse may suggest that you have a goal to write for a certain publication because he heard they pay well. Your parents might say that you’ll be a successful writer when you make over six figures in a year.

It is your job to find out what you want from your writing career. Your goals should not be set by anyone else, including your writing partner. However, because your writing partner is more tuned in to the life of a writer, he or she will be able to suggest realistic goals. Therefore, you and your writing partner will help each other shape your goals until they are uniquely yours and truly reflect your dreams.

You and your writing partner will have different dreams, therefore different goals. You may write within the same genre, target the same markets, and even have the same writing style. But dreams are personal. Your goals should be personal also. This does not mean that many of your goals will or will not be the same as your writing partner’s. In fact, if you are a good match, you’ll probably see several overlapping goals.

If your goals are not unique to you, you will have little motivation to try to reach them. The reason we set goals is to achieve what WE want to do.

When writing about our goals, you should make them time-related. A goal of “someday” will never produce a dream realized. Unless you make your goals time-related, they are nothing more than wishful thinking. Be specific when you set the deadline for each goal. Rather than say, “I want to write ten magazine articles,” say “I want to write ten magazine articles by December 1^st.” The time factor now makes this goal measurable by a certain date.

While we are talking about time relations for our goals, we’d like to explain something about setting your goals. Start with long-range goals. Put to paper the writing goals you want to accomplish within the next five years. Then analyze those goals and begin to break them down. Where should you be in the process of achieving those goals in four years? In three years? In two years? In one year? What do you need to do in the next 6 months so that you are on track to fulfill your five-year goals? What do you need to do in the next three months? The next month? Next week? Ah…you just identified your weekly schedule that you will be sharing with your writing partner.

Another part of writing your goals down has to do with different areas of business tasks and principles. It is not enough to say you want to write ten magazine articles within the next year. Remember that two of the five reasons people failed at achieving their dreams are because they do not apply business principles to their career and they stop learning.  That’s why you want to continue learning about current styles of magazine writing, novel writing, non-fiction writing, agents, publishers, etc., as part of your business plan. You’ll also want to break down your ideas into research and other job tasks that will need to take place to complete your goals.