The Writer’s Guide to Goal Setting and Time Management

December 2022 AMA

Welcome to the first Craft with Kat AMA! At the end of every month, I answer subscriber questions about writing craft, personal development, and the business of writing.

Here are the questions covered in this month’s AMA:

1. What is considered a draft? How can counting drafts help the writing process?

2. What are some time management strategies for writing?

3. What sticky note system do you use for your novel print out?

4. What is the “Break into Act II” in three-act story structure?

December 2022 AMA

1. What is considered a draft? How can counting drafts help the writing process?

I count my drafts because I use George T. Doran’s SMART goal setting strategy to guide my writing life. The definition of SMART goals will change depending on who you ask, but this is the definition that works for me.

SMART Goals:

• Specific: A goal should be concrete and clearly defined.

  • Vague Goal: I want to write.

  • Specific Goal: I want to write for two hours every day.

• Measurable: You should be able to track your progress toward your goal and definitively know when you’ve achieved it.

  • Unmeasurable goal: I want to write a novel.

  • Measurable goal: I want to write a 50,000-word novel about a college student who falls in love with a woman in a cult. (This is The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwon.)

• Achievable: The goal should be possible given your time and resources.

  • Unachievable goal: I work full-time. It’d be impossible for me to take a novel from ideation to a submission-ready draft in less than a year.

  • Achievable goal: But I know that I can write approximately one draft a year while working full-time, so I could more reliably take a novel from ideation to submission in ~3 years.

• Relevant: Your goal should align with your values, identity, and long-term interests.

  • Irrelevant Goal: Right now, there’s a trend in publishing for YA thrillers. It doesn’t make sense for me to chase a trend by working on a YA thriller novel when I identify as an adult literary fiction writer.

  • Relevant Goal: Since I identify as an adult literary fiction writer who writes about the Black experience in South Korea, I work to spend my writing time on projects that align with that identity.

• Time-bound: Goals should have a planned out timeline and predetermined deadline so that you can stay motivated and actually finish what you started.

  • Unbound Goal: One day, I will write a novel.

  • Time-bound Goal: By December 2023, I will finish my 70,000-word novel and submit it to publishers.

For me, it’s most important to make sure that the goal is measurable and time-bound. These two aspects help me:

1. Break a long-term project like a novel into smaller milestones.

2. Focus on the task at hand with concrete deadlines.

3. Stay motivated because I can see my progress and know when I’ll achieve my goal.

I count my drafts because each draft, act, chapter, and scene measures my progress. Counting drafts also breaks the intimidating task of writing a whole book down into manageable, short-term goals. If you want to learn more about how I count my drafts, check out my Twitter thread on revision. If you like craft books, I recommend reading

Matt Bell

's brilliant book, Refuse to be Done.

2. What are some time management strategies for writing?

For me, time management and goal setting are deeply entwined. I set concrete long-term, midterm, and short-term goals along with deadlines for meeting those goals. Here are some guiding questions to help you get started on goal-oriented time management.