It’s the second month of 2025 and if you’re like most people, you’ve probably made some resolutions to lose weight, take up yoga, stick to your budget—or even make a budget for that matter—drop a bad habit, join a club, or plan something grand like jetting off to a dream destination. It’s a brand-new year! A fresh start. Anything is possible. What better time to get the ball rolling and set yourself some writing goals?
Setting goals is not only great at the dawn of a New Year, but also for writing too. Instead of puttering around in your pajamas waiting for inspiration to strike, it’s amazing how making specific writing goals can jumpstart your energy, motivation, and success.
One Hundred Manuscripts
When I took ICL’s Writing for Children and Teens magazine writing course many years ago and sold my last assignment to a publisher, I set a new goal. A grand goal. I would sell 100 manuscripts! I didn’t announce it to the world. After all, just because one publisher bought something didn’t mean anyone else would. But maybe, just maybe, they might. My goal became my secret sauce that revved my writing imagination. Long, short, fiction, nonfiction. I wrote them all and sent my manuscripts off. Week by week, month by month, I chased my tantalizing goal. To my happy surprise, my manuscripts began to sell. Here a little. There a little. In time, I reached and exceeded my goal. I stopped counting when I passed 500.
What would have happened if I hadn’t set that grand writing goal? No doubt, I could have tapped away at my computer in a casual way. But that particular goal was energizing, specific, and measurable. It was like a carrot dangling in front of my nose—or in my case, a decadent chocolate cupcake loaded with sprinkles! Each day was an opportunity to tackle it, look at the numbers and try to grasp it in my determined, out-stretched hands. If I could sell 100 manuscripts, I told myself, maybe I could be a writer.
Selling 100 manuscripts was a grand, far-reaching writing goal. But within that lofty goal, were many other smaller goals.
Time to Write
Finding time to write on a consistent basis was challenging. What it really came down to was deciding what snippet of time worked best and then trying to stick to that. Sometimes, I got up early, other times I stayed up late. Sometimes twenty minutes snatched here or there added up to finished pieces. I began doing some serious writing when my last child began kindergarten. Suddenly, there was a three-hour window that was never there before. Most writers have to make an effort to find that writing time. If they wait until the timing is perfect, they’ll never write anything. Need time to write? Make it a goal.
Study the Market and Magazines
Before I took the writing for magazines course, I always imagined that writers sat down, diligently typed a manuscript, then began hunting in the publishing haystack for somewhere to send it. Or, as many still do, send it out to everyone in a gigantic scattershot blast. But as I later learned, there is a better, smarter, more successful way. Research the publishers first, study what they publish, and then write your manuscript to fit their needs. What a concept, right? It’s like a diamond sparkling in plain sight.
Once you study and market, and zero in on a specific publisher, read lots of back issues and see what they publish. For example, do they publish personal essays? Fiction? Nonfiction? Are they written in first, second, or third person? Do they have columns written by freelancers? What’s the publisher’s tone? Light, fun, informative? Or is it edgy, contemporary, and controversial? Do they have a motto that shapes their publishing goals? Knowing the answers to these questions and shaping your manuscript to meet those parameters immediately increases your chance of acceptance. Want to sell your manuscripts? Make studying the market and the magazines a goal.
The Power of Writing Goals
Goals are powerful. The most successful goals will be ones that ignite a fire in you—the ones that launch you out of bed. Over the years, I’ve made all sorts of writing goals. One time, I joined up with some other like-minded writers and we concentrated on writing a specific, short, children’s magazine genre—rebuses—and formed a critique group around it. As we concentrated on that very specific format, each of us developed an eye for it and succeeded. We stayed together until we’d satisfied that goal and set off in new directions with new goals. I could have set a goal to write many different kinds of formats, such as personal essays, stories, biographies, how-to’s, etc. But the driving factor was setting a goal that got me moving. 
What are your writing goals? Do you want to write and sell a specific genre? Do you want to be published in a specific magazine? Do you want to shoot for a certain number of sales like I did? (One hundred is a great number!) Maybe you want to tackle specific writing elements, such as opening hooks, underlying themes, or satisfying endings. Whatever it is—you know what to do! It’s no secret. Decide what you want, make some grand goals, and chase them!
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