How to make a writing goal in 2021 (and stick to it)

Every last few days of December, I see the same old social media posts:

“I’m not gonna make any resolutions.”
“Resolutions are dumb. Just don’t make any and you won’t break any,”
“I’m good yo”

Alright, cool. Do your thing. Stay exactly where you are. Me and everyone else I know who have big dreams and aspirations will be busy getting our resolves on.

To start, let me tell you about something I carry around with me everywhere I go. Folded up in a little pocket of my wallet is a document called “The 5 year plan.” I wrote it on my birthday back in 2019 and check in on it periodically.

Now I’m not taking a picture of the actual contents, because it’s full of personal things, but know that there’s a nice sizeable chunk on there for writing goals. A few I’ve crossed off this year alone, but more at that at the bottom of the post. Once a month, I pull this pup out and review it. It keeps me on track and honest about the things I hope to achieve in what will undoubtedly be not a long life. Macabre? TELL THAT TO MY HIGH SCHOOL DOCTOR THAT TOLD ME BEING OVER 6 FEET WILL TAKE A DECADE OR TWO OFF MY LIFE

I’ll cut to the chase, here’s how I attack my writing goals:

1)Make it a daily habit.

I won’t rehash the Seinfeld thing everyone knows about his daily calendar with a “never break the chain” practice rule, so I’ll tell you about this instead. Even on days where you absolutely don’t want to do it, write 100 words. Write 10. Write 1. The legendary Rick Rubin was on The Tim Ferriss podcast and he talked about working with a musician who had been out of the game for a long time (I’m thinking it was Damien Rice based on the story he told, but that’s just me) and he tells the following story:

So do that! The most annoying thing from the new Star Trek: Picard series was the constant “How do you eat an elephant?” “One bite at a time” mantra that they beat to death…but it’s true.

Be gentle with yourself as well. We’re not saving lives in the ER. We’re writing stories to entertain. So don’t get down about not doing 2k a day in writing. Seriously. A few words a day. How else will it get done?

This ties into one of my favorite things from Tony Robbins–

2) Make it a must. Not a should.

We get our musts. We get done the things we must do every day.

JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter in a cafe in between her newborn’s nap time.

Robert Ludlum and Simon Kinberg wrote/write their stories out in long-form, by hand. We find the time, whether that means getting up earlier or staying up later.

I’ve crawled out of bed at 11 pm to get er done. That makes it a must. Not a should.

Look, if you say “I should write, I should write” and don’t, you’ll end up “shoulding” all over yourself.

And we call that a blowout.

As I always say “If it’s important to you, you’ll find a way. If it’s not, you’ll find an excuse.”

Just watch this real quick okay?

3) Make a to-do list. Check it twice.

The good people at NASA make checklists for literally every single procedure they have. The least you can do is make one for the day. We have a saying in our house: “We can only do today what we can do today. Everything else can wait for tomorrow.” To break that down, what my wife means is that there’s only so many hours in the day, and rather than be fearful of the visitors we’re having in the next month, or the laundry we haven’t folded or the meals we haven’t prepped is, we can only do what we have time for in the day. The rest we can set aside for a checklist tomorrow.

At the top of my daily checklist IS my daily writing. I hold off everything else until I get that done. No video games, no youtube, no nothing. Even if it’s just a few words I STILL WRITE. So write a checklist for the day and stick to it.

4) Make it part of your conversations.

You can tweet about it, you can status update, you can talk about it when you’re in line at the store. A little bit of accountability [I find] goes a long way.

This breaks another rule that other writers love to harp on. “Don’t tell anyone what you’re doing! They might steal it!” or “If you tell people what you’re working on, you won’t actually do it!”

…Well okay, how about when family asks what you’re up to lately you can say “I’m working on this script I’m really excited about. Next time you see me, ask me about it.” I actually have an accountability partner when it comes to things like this. We talk once a week and we’re super open about where we are in our projects and we end our little convo with “next time we talk, remind me about that character who is lacking and I’ll tell you what I did to fix it.”

I’m looking to start a writing group with some friends over at the tracking board starting next year. Maybe join us?

If all else fails, do what I do for the dog–

5) Make yourself a little treat.

The most recent draft of my animated spec was a tough one that included multiple rewrites and several big scenes being rearranged which then meant they had to be completely rewritten. So it wasn’t even so much writing as it was pulling nails out of the wall.

What do you do in times like these?

Give yourself a lil treat.

My treat was ALL 3 LORD OF THE RINGS EXTENDED EDITIONS in one big glorious binge watch. That’s right. I actually took my extended DVDs, ripped them, and re-edited them into one giant LOTR bonanza I call ‘NoNoNotheBigOneEdition.mp4’ and no I’m not joking. It’s 10 hours and 55 minutes of seamless Lord of the Rings goodness with no credits or title sequences.

Maybe you’ll get a new app you’ve been eyeing or a new screenwriting book you’ve been itching to read or maybe you just go get a dang dinner. Whatever it is, dangling a carrot at the end of the stick WILL help you get to the finish line. Or at the very least, it has helped me.

That’s all for today’s post. 

Now to payoff a lil set up I had earlier…

In my 5-year plan document, I had a little line in there about “getting published.” It was always a dream I’ve had ever since I was in the 2nd-grade writing really terrible Star Trek fanfiction.

One of the contests I submitted to last year featured getting published as a prize, so I went for it. Now I didn’t place top 3, which had monetary prizes, but I was a finalist (or 4th place, whatever) which meant I got published in a book!

So here’s my unboxing on the day I got it.

(by the way, if you could like and subscribe to my new, official youtube channel I’d REALLLLYYY appreciate it!)