What’s Your Plan for 2015?

By Kerry Schafer

God knows I’m a pantser by birth and inclination, but I’ve learned that sometimes I need a plan. In writing as well as the rest of my life, there is a time for pantsing and a time for planning and it’s important to get this straight.

Do you need a Writing Plan for 2015?

That depends.

Do you want to just have fun and create stuff for pleasure? Great. Kudos to you. No planning required and I hope you have a lovely time. (I might be a little bit jealous)

But if you want a writing career, you need a plan.

Stay with me here. A plan doesn’t have to involve flow charts and spread sheets and hours of tedious details, although it certainly can. Some of you organized minds out there totally get off on this sort of thing. My crit partner, I know, has a spreadsheet that includes detailed timelines of not only WHAT she plans to accomplish this year, but WHEN each component will be completed.

This just makes me shudder. And want a nap. And ice cream, chocolate, and a bottle of wine. Or two.

On the other hand, I know that if I don’t set some goals and some timeline markers, I’m not going to accomplish everything I want to do. Time is not linear for me. It expands and shrinks according to its own irrational whims, and if I don’t pay attention I’ll suddenly look at a calendar and it will be November and I won’t have moved any closer to my ultimate writing career goals.

In case planning is not your forte, I’ve included pantser-friendly steps to help you get this done.

1. Start with the big picture. Think about what you want to have accomplished by the end of the year. Pretend it’s New Year’s Eve and you’re looking back on all of your accomplishments. What do you want to be able to say you have done at the end of 2015? Finish that novel you’ve been working on? Write ten short stories? Find an agent? Get published?

I like to write this up as if I’ve already accomplished it all, something like this:

“It’s been a fabulous year. The draft of XXX came out awesome and is on my agent’s desk, ready for submission….” That sort of thing.

2. Figure out what is actionable. Okay, I sort of hate the word actionable, but it makes its point. There are things YOU can do, and things you can’t. For example, if one of your goals is to get an agent this year, you can’t actually force an agent to sign on with you. You CAN write a good book, draft an awesome query letter, research agents, and send out queries. So take a few minutes to break your goals down into smaller steps of things you are going to do this year to get you where you want to go.

3. Set deadlines. I don’t know about you, but I can get a hell of a lot done when I’ve got an impending deadline. If you don’t have an agent or a publishing contract to do this for you, it’s tricky. This is the position I was in this year. It’s much harder to make myself get up at 0-dark-thirty to write when there is no deadline. Who cares? says the voice in my head. It’s not like there’s anybody out there waiting on your words.

The solution – or at least a solution – is to set your own deadlines. Choose a weekly word count goal, number of revision pages, how many queries you’re going to send, whatever. Pick a date you’re going to do this by. Write your deadlines on a calendar or sticky notes or your bathroom mirror. Tell a bunch of people. Broadcast it on Twitter.

I have to confess that I did not meet my self imposed deadlines for The Nothing. In fact, I was at least a month behind where I wanted to be when I finally finished the sucker and flipped it over to my freelance editor. But you know what? Without a deadline and a goal I’d still be writing it. Or maybe I wouldn’t have bothered with it at all, because that book was a struggle for me.

4. Celebrate Everything. And I mean EVERYTHING. This is so important I consider it part of planning. This writing business is hard. It chews writers up and spits them out on a regular basis. Part of motivation and sticking with the plan comes from marking milestones. So live it up. If you made your weekly word count or your daily word count even, reward yourself. Sent out queries? You ROCK. Give yourself a cookie or a piece of chocolate or at the very least a pat on the back. You didn’t just sit there, wishing. You did something to make it happen.

5. Recalibrate as needed. Things change. If it looks like your original plan is a bust, revise it. If you’re a pantser, you’re already good at this. The whole point and purpose of a plan is to be looking down the road a little so you know where you’re headed.