061: The Ultimate Guide to Setting Writing New Year's Resolutions
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The ultimate guide to setting writing new year’s resolutions
Okay, y'all, I'm so excited about this episode, I freaking love talking about New Year's resolutions. I don't know what it is. I never used to be this way. In the past, I would always like half heartedly set maybe one resolution that was something impossible and then be like, Eh, this is stupid by like January 5. Now I think of New Year's resolutions as more intention setting. And instead of this panicky feeling like oh crap, I didn't do this thing I wanted to do this year, I've got a, I've really got to make it happen and force it in 2023. And I've got to overhaul my whole life and all these different areas. And instead of that anxiety, inducing panicky pressure, there's a sense of expansiveness, I get this sense of excitement about what's to come in the next year. And it really helps me set my priorities for the year as well, like, what's important to me? What do I want to focus on? And what do I want to let go of, and that, to me feels a lot more expansive than then how I've thought about it in the past.
So whether you are someone who is rigorous about goal setting, and does a ton of new year's resolutions every single year, or you're someone who's like, I don't know, I don't feel is kind of forced in high pressure, I don't want to do it. I still think there's going to be wherever you are in that spectrum, I still think there's gonna be some helpful tips in this episode, at least it for you to set some intentions for the upcoming year. And again, get clear on your priorities, like what is important to you, where do you want to spend, spend your time and energy, I think that's a good activity to do anytime, is to evaluate and assess your life and how you're spending your time and make sure that it matches up with what, how you want to be spending your time. For the most part, I mean, obviously, we have to do things we don't want to do.
But and I also want to share with you too, before we dive into this, this process and what this looks like, I am doing a completely free training that's happening Thursday, January 19, at 12pm Central Time, and it's a training that is going to be perfect for you, if one of your resolutions or intentions something you're working towards, is writing your book in 2023, or finishing your book, this is the training for you. Not only are we going to talk more about setting resolutions, and making sure that you actually achieve the resolutions, and intention setting, we're going to do a visualization together, make space for the things that you want to create as far as your book, we're also going to break down my nine part framework of how to actually write a book. So we're going to talk about the goal setting and the intention setting and how to actually do this in 2023. But I'm also going to give you a lot of practical steps for how to do this. My suggestions based on my own experience as a writer, but also the suggestions and things that I've learned from working with writers in my business, I'm compiling all of that, and I'm going to share it with you again Thursday, January 19 at 12pm Central time, there's going to be a link to sign up in the description of this episode.
And if you can't make that time live, if that doesn't work for you, no sweat, still sign up for it, I will send you the replay when it's available. And then you'll have 48 hours after the training to watch the replay. Again, totally free, come and hang out with me, it's going to be awesome. The way that I think about intention setting versus goal setting is that to me, a goal is something that's external, it's something you can check off a list. It's it's attainable outside of yourself and intention is a lot more it's softer. It's related to how you feel about something, it's a little bit more internal usually. So let's look at what this might be the difference in intention setting versus goal setting when it comes to you writing a book in 2023. The the goal might be to write a book in 2023. So by the time December 31, 2023 rolls around, you will have written and edited a book. That is the goal, that is something that you are achieving. That is something external that you are working on that you can measure that's achievable. That's the outcome. That's the goal.
Whereas intention setting might be working on your perfectionist tendencies so that when you sit down to write this book work that you desperately want to write, this idea that you've had in your head for months, or even years or even decades. When you sit down to do it that you don't let that inner critic that voice tell you that your writing isn't good enough, or no one's ever going to run or want to read this, or why even bother writing this because this author over here writes very similar books. And so there's no space for your book in the world. And you only write, you only write when you feel like conditions are perfect. And you force yourself to get the sentence exactly perfect, like exactly the way you want it before you move on. Those are all perfectionist behaviors and perfectionist mindset. The other thing about the perfectionist mindset is that you feel guilt, and shame, for not being perfect. So there's guilt and shame piled on top of all of this swirling around. So maybe that's your intention. Maybe your intention for 2023 is just to be kind to yourself, when you write, to stop beating yourself up and expecting perfection. If it's your first book, if it's your first attempt at writing, why would you be expecting perfection? I mean, even if it was your 10th book, Why would you be expecting perfection but so maybe that's the intention for 2023. So see if that's helpful to think about, like an external goal versus an internal kind of more softer, emotion based thing that you want to work on, right? An intention can also be something that you want to embody, right? So an intention that I have for 2023, and haven't fully articulated this, I'm recording this in mid December. So I have a little bit of time before the new year. And I want to I want to think about how to word this exactly. But it's something along the lines of like, stepping into my power on social media and not being afraid to share my opinions, and my thoughts and to create content that is more risky. Right. I think I've played it safe in some respects, just because of some fear, you know, fear of what people will think of me how they'll view me, and I've done a lot better this year, that was actually something that I kind of set an intention for last year for 2022.
And I think I've grown a lot and I've done a lot better, but there's still room to really own what I'm saying to really stand behind the content that I'm creating, to own my voice and to just share what I think and what I feel online. So that's, that's something that I want to embody. That's something that I want to feel. And it's not it's more intangible, right, I'm talking about embodying something, I'm talking about feeling something as opposed to, I'm going to create this many pieces of content and get to this many followers and dadadada da. Yeah, sometimes, goals might feel more appropriate or resolutions might feel more appropriate. And sometimes intentions might feel better. So try both of those on if you're undecided about what you want to do. If you want to create some resolutions, try one of those on so you see if one of the other feels better.
Now, if you are going to set goals, you want to set goals for 2023 related to your writing, make sure that they are SMART goals. It's an acronym SMART, stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound. This is something that we'll talk about one of the pieces that we'll talk about in the in the training that's happening in January. But for now, I think I'll just talk about a couple of important pieces around goal setting. So one of the most important things to do is to make it attainable. This is not putting a damper on your big dreams, I want you to have crazy dreams, I want you to try to aim for the sky. But it is about like, okay, is this goal that I'm setting actually possible? Is it possible for me to do all of this or to achieve this thing in 2023, you also have to look at what's in your control versus what's outside of your control. So it's December right now I signed with my agent, we're doing revisions, and we're probably going to go on submission and send my book out to publishers in like January or February of 2023. I can't control getting a book deal. In 2023. I can do my damnedest to make sure that my book is solid, that my book is ready. I trust my agent, I hope that I'll get a book deal. But that's not something I can get. That's not something that I can control. I'm not going to set a resolution to get a book deal in 2023 because there are so many things that go into that. There's so much that's outside of my control. So that for me would not be good resolution to set it would not be a good goal for me to set for myself. It's a dream. Absolutely. And I think about that a lot and I embody it and I imagine what it's going to Be like to get a call or an email for my agent telling me that we got an offer. Oh, absolutely. I dream about that all the time.
But in terms of like an actual attainable goal, you know, there is a difference. The other thing that I think that's, that's important to think about when you are setting a resolution or a goal is to make it specific, which is the essence of SMART goals. It's not enough to just say, I want to write more in 2023. I mean, you can, there's nothing wrong with that. But if you actually want to make progress, if you want to achieve something, make it specific. So it's not just that I want to write more in 2023, maybe it's I'm going to write three times a week, maybe it's I'm going to finish the book that's been sitting half completed on my computer for six years, maybe it's I'm going to self publish my book, by the end of the year, like get a specific goal in mind, that is achievable that you can do. And that's going to, that's going to help you be just so much more likely to achieve it. And if your goal is something a little bit more vague, like I want to write more, yeah, that you might work towards that. And maybe you have like a sort of vague idea about what that means. But again, I just highly recommend being specific with what that is actually going to look like, what does it mean to write more.
Another thing I want to touch on is something for those of you who did set resolutions for last year, so if December of 2021, or January of 2022, you set some resolutions, take some time to look at what those resolutions were and to see if you accomplish them if there were things that you achieved, or if you didn't achieve them do a little audit and figure out okay, what happened? Was this specific enough? Was this something that was actually within my control and something that was achievable? Was this maybe too big or too crazy? Was it a goal that I set that actually I just decided wasn't that important to me. And so by March, I just discarded it because it didn't matter anymore. Think about why you set those resolutions in the first place and why you think you were able to either achieve them or not achieve them. Last year, I set three resolutions for my life and my business related to writing but also a little bit. Well, yeah, it related to writing. So one of the one I'll just read through what they were no social media first thing in the morning, follow my intuition in my business and my writing, and then stop qualifying my content.
And what I meant by qualifying my content is on tick tock. It used to be the case a year ago, I don't think this is so much the case anymore, because the algorithm has changed. But at least a year ago, it was all about short videos, right? It was like 10 seconds, 15 seconds, maybe 20 seconds at most. So when I would record a tech talk that had a writing tip, I would try to be snappy, I would try to be really quick, really punchy, have a hook, get into it, boom, that's done. There's not a lot of room for explanation and nuance. In a short video like that I might make a different video after that goes into more detail. But at least you know, a lot of of the videos that I was creating a lot of content I was creating, they were quick. And I would sometimes get comments from people who were like, Well, you didn't mention this. And what about this, or I don't think this is helpful. This won't work for me. Or like this is only helpful for I don't know, all of these, all of these, these comments. And for a while I started doing this thing where I would say, Here's a tip to create strong characters, for example.
And then I would say, you know, but you know best and this can work if this is the case, or if this doesn't resonate with you, that's okay, keep scrolling. And I would just add all of this explanation and all of this, like all of these disclaimers before I actually got to the tip. And what would happen is it would water down the video. So by the time I actually got to the tip, it was like 30 seconds of me being like, well, if this doesn't work for you, that's okay, just keep scrolling or, you know, maybe this will only work for this type of writer and just all of this stuff. And I was driving myself crazy. I was driving myself crazy. And I started recognizing when other people were doing that on social media. And that also drove me crazy. And the thing is, like I know why they were doing it and I know why I was doing it. I was doing it to try to prevent negative comments. And I was trying to please everyone by including all of these disclaimers and qualifying it and it's like in a 15 second tiktok like you just can't, you just can't do that. You know. And I think about myself when I consume content on Tik Tok or other social media platforms if someone sharing a tip or an idea or a suggestion that I don't think is going to be helpful for me, I just keep scrolling. Like, it's not a big deal. The video is not for me, it's fine.
Anyway, so those are the last resolution was to stop qualifying my content, I've had varying degrees of success with these, I did get better towards the second half this year about not going on social media first thing in the morning, I really have done a great job, I think of following my intuition and my business this year and it was part of what enabled me to quit my nine to five job and take the business full time. And also follow intuition in writing as well, that's something I'm still working on is listening to my own inner voice about a character or a direction that I want something to go in. But I made a lot of progress on that this year. And then the qualifying my content, again, I mixed, I think it's a mixed bag. Part of it is I've worked with a lot more writers this year and there's rarely a tip, or suggestion that fits for every single person. There's just a lot of nuance, and so part of part of it is like navigating How do I share a suggestion or something, while recognizing that it won't work for everyone. And part of this is just me developing resilience and being like, people can dislike me, people can not like my content, and people can think that it's not helpful and stupid. That's fine. I don't need to change my content to please user 67427 who says this is stupid. It's not going to work. So yeah, that's something I'm still working on.
But yeah, just doing that practice, even spending a couple of minutes like I just did thinking through, okay, what were my resolutions this year? What kind of progress did I make on those things? And is this something that I want to continue working towards? So for me, like I mentioned, I still want to work on my content. And I want to it's part of the resolute the intention that I mentioned setting where I'm like, stepping into this more powerful, powerful version of myself who is Okay, speaking my truth and having people not like me, and leave me negative comments and whatever, like, that's fine. So that's something I still want to set for 2023. So now we're to the actual action part of this. Whether you want to set goals or intentions, I'm gonna encourage you after you listen to this episode, find a time that feels good for you. And you can really get like vibey. With this, you can put on candle you can put on some cool music, you can get a fun drink a glass of wine, if you drink, some kombucha, tea, whatever. And get out a journal, if that feels good, or do it on your phone, whatever. And just list out some things I there was a statistic somewhere that you're I don't know, 87% more likely to achieve your goal. If you write it down. I'm making up that number. That's not actually what this what the number is, but it's something like that they've done research on habits and goal setting. And you are a lot more likely to achieve it if you write it down.
And I think the same thing is true with intention setting. So write them down. Think about what you want to accomplish next year, but also what you want what you want your writing life to be like. And then set it aside and don't obsess over it. That's the hard part for me, where I work towards something, I'm really invested. I want to set an intention for something I want to achieve something and then it's it's very easy for me to obsess over it and be like, Why isn't this happening yet? Why am I not doing everything I can do to make this happen? Like I just obsess over it. So part of this is learning to let go turning things over and being like, Okay, I've done my work. I've I've gotten clear on what I'm hoping for in this next year. I've had, you know, the other part of this is gratitude as well like being grateful for things that happened this year, being grateful for all the things that are going to come in 2023. And maybe you had a shit year, maybe 2022 is just shit in a lot of ways. I'll be honest, I think 2022 There were some things that happened this year that I did not expect that did not go according to plan I had in January 2022, I had a vision for how this year was going to go. And some of the things matched up like being able to quit my job in March. But some things didn't. I thought I would have accomplished certain things.
And they didn't. One of those things was me getting a book deal. I thought at the beginning of January 2022 that I was going to work with my old agent on revising my book, and then we would send it out on submission and actually made the decision to leave that agent. So then I had to query and find a different agent and that was not part of my plan in January 2022. So you know, of course, that's just life though we can plan and we can set intentions and things always Go differently than they think they will. This is getting a little bit philosophical y'all. That wasn't my intention for this episode. But, you know, it's just part of talking about resolutions and goal setting is being reflective and looking at the previous year looking at what you want to accomplish in the next year and, yeah, so. Okay, so good luck with setting your resolutions.