How to Give Yourself a Mid-Year Writing Progress Checkup
It’s hard to believe, but we’re already more than halfway through the year.
Before you know it, we’ll be doing our holiday shopping and celebrating the arrival of 2020.
How is your year going so far? Are you reaching your writing goals? Do you feel like you’re moving forward?
Or do you feel like your motivation has waned, along with your energy and zeal for your work?
Rather than wait for the end of the year to reflect on questions like these, it’s best to take advantage of the mid-year point to do a quick check-up on your writing progress. Below is a simple guide to help you do just that.
Head out to the park, the library, or another quiet place where you won’t be disturbed and consider how you’re doing in the following three areas. Be prepared to write down your thoughts so you can form a clear picture of how your writing business is doing.
1. Your Writing Goals—Are You Getting Words Down on the Page?
I’m assuming you set some writing goals at the beginning of the year. Maybe you wanted to finish your latest book, try a nonfiction book, or start a new writing project you hadn’t tried before. Or maybe you simply wanted to complete so many words per day.
This is the time to revisit those goals and see how you feel about them now. Have you made good progress, or do these goals no longer excite you? Are you still focused on these goals, or have other concerns gotten in the way?
Maybe you haven’t been writing as much as you wanted to. If so, how can you adjust your schedule so you have a bit more time to do so? Or maybe your story isn’t going as well as you hoped. What can you do to help yourself? Is it time to hire a writing coach or editor? Or do you need to head out for the weekend to jolt your creative brain out of hiding?
When you’ve finished reflecting on this question, write down the following:
1) Your new (or a restatement of the original) writing goal.
2) Times in your weekly schedule when you will attend to this writing goal.
3) One to three remedies to any problems you may be experiencing when working on this goal. (Perhaps you need to hire an editor, find more time in your schedule, boost your motivation, etc.)
2. Your Author Platform—Are You Gaining Visibility?
While it’s most important to be working on your writing, it’s equally important to continue to build your platform as you do so. Did you set goals for this part of your writing career at the beginning of the year? If so, now is the time to re-evaluate them. If not, you can set some now.
Start by taking a look at your website. Is it performing optimally for you? Is it easy to read and navigate? Is the traffic to your website increasing, or decreasing? Why?
Take a look at the posts or pages that have performed best (using Google Analytics or another similar measuring tool), then see if you can create more posts or pages like those to boost your traffic. Ask yourself whether your site needs a redesign, or perhaps just some new images to spruce it up.
Then check your social media channels. Do they all line up with your author brand? (If you don’t have a brand yet, check out Writer Get Noticed! for help in creating one.) Are you making it clear to readers what they can expect when they visit your online home?
Finally, examine your email list. Is it growing? Can you boost that growth with a new freebie, or by making your sign-ups more visible?
When you’ve finished reflecting on these questions, write down the following:
1) Any changes you need to make to your website and steps you’ll take to get them completed by December.
2) Any changes you need to make to your social media channels and deadlines for getting them completed.
3) Any changes needed to boost sign-ups to your email list, with accompanying deadlines.
3. Your Motivation—Does Your Writing Business Excite You?
Without a clear sense of purpose, your motivation for writing is bound to wane. Building a writing business requires a lot of concentrated, hard work, and you need to maintain a high level of motivation to have any hope of accomplishing your goals.
How are you feeling now that over half of the year has passed? Are you still strongly motivated to succeed, or has a new sense of hopelessness overcome you? Has life interfered with your goals to the point where you’ve neglected them completely? Or have you lost confidence in yourself and your writing skills?
The most important thing a writer needs to determine is how to personalize his or her business so that it is uniquely fulfilling, no matter the outside rewards. The beauty of running your own business is that you can fashion it however you like so that it works for you.
Many writers, for example, advocate producing two or more books a year for maximum visibility and profitability, but if that pace doesn’t work for you, there’s no sense in trying to force yourself to do it. There are too many other options available, including freelance writing and editing, online courses, one-on-one coaching, magazine writing, nonfiction and fiction book writing combined, and much more.
If you’re not jumping out of bed in the morning eager to get to work on your writing business goals, take some time to find out why. Write down your answers to these questions:
1) What aspects of my writing business do I find particularly rewarding?
2) How can I shape my business so that I can experience these aspects more often?
3) What’s most important to me to accomplish as a writer, and how can I do that every month?
Looking Ahead to December
Finally, take a look down the road and ask yourself where you want to be by December 31st of this year. Choose just one goal—the one that’s most important to you—and make a promise to yourself that you will accomplish that one goal no matter what.
Write that goal down.
My most important goal to achieve by December 31st is:
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Good luck!
How do you regroup at mid-year for end-of-the-year writing success?
