Successful people in virtually any field usually have at least this one skill in common: They visualize where they want to be five, ten, or more years in the future, then they work their way back to figure out what steps they need to take to get there. For aspiring writers, the long-term goal may be one published book, several books, or even the celebrity that comes with publishing a bestseller. Whatever your dream is, the trick to making it come true is planning the best way to get there, and then sticking to your plan.

Goals and Projects

There's an important difference between goals and projects. Goals are broad in nature, and there may be several ways to achieve a given goal. Projects are smaller in scope and usually have an ordered method, a series of steps, that will lead to completion. If you want to own a house someday, that's a goal. If you want to add a sunroom onto your house, that's a project.

Most writers prefer projects to goals, because they like knowing the steps to follow to finish a project. That's why books about writing give you advice on developing your plot, creating characters with depth, and so forth; each of these is a step that, taken in the correct order, moves you toward completion of your project, and each in turn moves you closer to achieving your goal.

Your goal is to be a published book author. Your project is the book you're working on. You might reach your goal in a number of ways. Even if you're a fiction writer, you might land a contract for a nonfiction book before you can sell your science fiction novel. In this way, you'll have achieved your goal of becoming a published book author, though not the way you envisioned it. Meanwhile, your science fiction novel is a project for you to work on, and your chances of selling that project increase dramatically if you already have a book credit in your portfolio.

Time-Based Goals

People who work creatively, whether they are writers, actors, musicians, or painters, sometimes set time limits for themselves to achieve their dreams. You might think in terms of publishing your first book by the time you're twenty-five, for example, or you might give yourself three years to get your book published. These kinds of internal deadlines help keep many people motivated to pursue their goals. And it is certainly a valid way to avoid the “someday” trap and stay focused.

Unfortunately, time-based goals also have a down side, especially when they're too broad or used as stand-alone goals. The down side is failure. If you don't have other ways to track your progress, the ability to meet a self-imposed deadline becomes your only measure of success. This can be devastating when your twenty-fifth birthday passes or three years go by and you don't have that first book contract. If your overall plan doesn't include other ways to gauge your progress, you are likely to feel like a failure — even if you have racked up other publishing credits in the meantime.

If you've said, more than once, “One of these days I'm going to write a book,” but haven't taken any steps toward realizing that ambition, you're caught in the “someday” trap. Giving yourself time-based goals — like a deadline for finishing your outline or your first chapter — can help you break the “someday” cycle.

If you stop to think about it, the time-based goals you give yourself are completely arbitrary, no matter what they're based on. Any number of factors might prevent you from getting your first book published before your twenty-fifth birthday or within three years of finishing your manuscript, none of which may be within your control. Self-imposed deadlines work best when matched with smaller, realistic goals — ideally ones that are within your power to control.

Accomplishment-Based Goals

Goals based on completing specific tasks — especially specific tasks within a larger project — are usually more realistic and more satisfying, especially for the beginning writer. Even published pros can be daunted by the idea of sitting down and writing a whole book; it's too large a job to get your mind around all at once. That's why so many writing books advise you to break big projects down into smaller, more manageable elements.

Any writing project, whether it's a magazine article or book-length work, can be broken down into smaller parts. A novel, for instance, needs a plot, settings, and characters; instead of just starting at page one and forging ahead, you can write a short narrative of your plot that will serve as a sort of roadmap to help you stay on course when you write. You can write a descriptive piece about the settings in your story to help you visualize them more clearly. And you can write mini-biographies for each of your main characters, which gives you a chance to focus properly on each of them before you toss them all together into your story.

Nonfiction projects can be broken down in similar ways. A mission statement for your book tells you what you want to accomplish with your writing. A chapter-by-chapter outline helps you define the material to be covered and how it is to be organized. A list of resources or questions that need to be answered helps focus your research efforts.

Publishing in general is highly competitive, and fiction markets are especially difficult for new authors to break into. You can improve your chances of getting published if you stay open to other opportunities, even if they're out of your favored genre. A nonfiction book credit is still a book credit, and it will probably help you as you market your fiction.

Smaller goals like these serve two purposes: They help you progress toward your overall goal of writing a book, and they help keep you motivated and on track. When you finish your plot narrative or your nonfiction outline, you get to revel in a sense of accomplishment that otherwise would be postponed until you completed the entire book. And when you feel like you're making progress toward your overall goal, you are more likely to stick with it instead of feeling stuck.

Accomplishments and Deadlines

Time-based goals work best when they are combined with accomplishment-based goals. Tie your self-imposed deadlines to the smaller elements in your book project. Instead of pressuring yourself to get a book published before the next Leap Year, resolve to have your nonfiction outline done in the next thirty days. Give yourself a week to write the mini-bio for your protagonist, then devote the following week to the mini-bio of your protagonist's love interest, and so on.

Combining these elements gives you a tangible measurement of your progress; you can look at what you've done and know that you've used your time wisely to move a step or two closer to your goal of getting published. You're less likely to get discouraged in the long run, because you direct your energy at taking charge of the things you can control rather than at the things that are beyond your control.

Working against your own deadlines is good practice for when you do get a publishing contract with legally binding deadlines. By setting your own deadlines to complete various writing tasks, you learn more about how you write — the kind of pace you're comfortable with, for example — and will be better able to judge whether you can meet deadlines requested by publishers.