How to Get Clear on What You Want from Your Writing Career

When you first started out writing,
you probably had a general idea of what you wanted.

It might have been a publishing contract, a way to work from home, or books that branched into coaching.

But then as you went along, things changed. You gained experience, grew professionally, and overcame challenges.

Over time, your worlds both inside and outside of writing began to look different. Then one day maybe you looked up and realized that your wants had changed, too, or at least, become less clear.

What do you want from your writing career at this point in your life? If you’re not sure, or if you haven’t thought about it in a while, try the following exercises.

Signs You May Not Be In Alignment with What You Want

First, a few clues that you may not be living your best writing life right now. How can you tell? Ask yourself if any of these statements ring true for you.

• You’ve lost your passion for what you’re doing.
• You’re going through the same motions over and over again and getting the same (disappointing) results.
• You feel disconnected from who you are as a writer, and tied to being who you think you’re supposed to be.
• When you reach a goal, it doesn’t really fulfill you.
• You feel like you haven’t made any progress in your career for awhile.

If any of these statements describe where you are right now, it probably means that you’ve lost touch with what you really want in your writing career.

Even if you didn’t relate, you may still need to gain clarity on what you want if you feel slightly disconnected from your career, or like it doesn’t excite you as much as it used to.

5 Exercises to Help You Gain Clarity on What You Want as a Writer

Get out a piece of paper or document and do the following exercises to better determine where you want to go next.

1. Don’t-Want Lists

Take a piece of paper or document and split it into two halves. On the top of one half, write “Don’t want,” and on the other, write “Want.”

Start with the “don’t want” list as that’s usually easier. Write down everything that you don’t want to do as a writer or no longer want to do.

Then on the other side, write down those things you want to do. Often this list builds off of your first one—look at what you don’t want, then use that information to write down what you do want.

Here’s an example:

Don’t Want	Want
To travel all the time	To travel once a month or so
To work as many hours as I am	To work about 5-6 hours a day
To work on projects I don’t enjoy	To work on projects I’m passionate about
To spend time on marketing tactics that don’t work	To market in ways that are efficient and make good use of my time

Keep going until you exhaust all of your “don’t wants,” then pick the top three that bother you most right now. Figure out how you can get rid of these in your writing life.

2. Your Most Enjoyable Moments

Now think back on your writing career so far, and allow your memory to drift to those experiences that stand out for you. What experiences, achievements, or goals brought you the most joy and fulfillment? Which would you most like to repeat?

Write down at least five. Here’s an example:

When I self-published my book.
When I conducted a workshop at a conference.
When I helped a coaching student achieve his/her goals.
When I produced a successful book launch.
When my article appeared in a magazine I admired.

Now look at all those experiences and write down the things they have in common. For example, do they all involve:

Helping other people to succeed
Diving deeper into your own creativity
Sharing what you know with others
Challenging yourself with something new
Fighting for a cause you believe in
Other

Use your answers to steer you toward doing more of the types of projects you want to do.

3. Digging for Gold

Write down your answers to the following questions:

What makes you happy as a writer?
What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?
Think of other writers you admire. What three qualities stand out?
If you had to focus on just one type of project, which would it be?

Now examine your answers for words or phrases that leap out at you as important or impactful. Write those words and phrases down in a different place. Your results may look something like this:

Writing novels. Publish two novels a year. Prolific. Detailed. Stories.

Whatever your list looks like, examine it for clues about what you’d most like to focus on in the future.

4. Make a Mind Map

You’ll probably do best with a regular pen and paper on this one. Draw a circle in the middle, and in that circle, write down what you want to experience more of in your writing life. Limit it to three things.

For example:

Passion
Creativity
Freedom

Now draw lines to other circles coming out of that central circle, somewhat like this image shows.

In each of the other circles, write down ways you might get more of what you wrote in the central circle. Simply brainstorm possibilities. Some examples might include:

Start working on projects I’ve had in mind
Attend conferences or other events where I can network
Take a course to learn a new skill

Keep brainstorming until your ideas run out, then leave the map resting nearby in case another idea occurs to you.

5. Take Small Steps

Your next step is to take small actions toward those goals you discovered you “may” want.

Go back and determine three actions you can take, based on your work here, that can help inch you toward your new goals. As you move forward, you’ll feel either you’re going the right way or that you need to go back and do some more thinking.

Do be sure to take at least some action. Thinking only gets you so far—you have to take action to really determine what you want next. When you figure it out for sure, don’t let anything hold you back.

Do you know what you want next in your writing career?