Happy New Year. A writing resolution abandoned in February turns into guilt for the remaining ten months, and writers usually blame their willpower for it. I think they’ve got the wrong suspect, since most people are less busy than they think and the trouble is a vague promise with no structure behind it.
I set goals instead of resolutions, and the distinction matters.
Every December I sit down and define six to eight goals for the coming year. They’re always SMART goals: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. But I don’t treat them as a rigid structure that produces guilt when life intervenes. They set the direction and tone of the year. They tell me where I’m heading so that daily decisions have context.
Some years I hit all of them. Some years I hit four out of seven. The ones I miss still served their purpose because they shaped what I worked on and how I allocated my time. A goal that sets direction is useful even when the destination shifts.
Some of my goals run longer than a year. I’ve set out to write a novel in each of about 20 fiction genres, and I mean a real novel of 300 pages or more, not a novelette. I’m about halfway there, with a bunch of them already published, and I’m going to finish. I also have a goal of writing a bestseller, and that one depends more on promotion than on writing. I have to sit down and do the promotion.
I’ve watched too many writers carry the same unfinished manuscript from one January to the next, and it’s needless, because the failure was built into the goal from the start.
“Finish my novel” is a hope. “Write 500 words a day on the novel manuscript, Monday through Friday, with a complete first draft by August” is a goal. Writers who never learn the difference end up blaming their own discipline for a problem that was always about structure.
I produce 10,000 to 12,000 words a day across multiple projects, and I’ve published 113+ books. None of that came from vague intentions. It came from systems that convert goals into daily actions with measurable output, and the same systems will carry your manuscript to the end if you set them up with real numbers.
Why Do Writing Goals Need Numbers?
Resolutions are vague promises with no structure behind them.Share on X
“Finish my novel” is a hope. A goal has a number, a timeline, and a daily action that connects today’s work to the finished product. A 70,000-word novel at 500 words per day, five days a week, takes 28 weeks. That’s your goal: 500 words a day, Monday through Friday, for seven months.
Now you know exactly what today’s writing session needs to produce. You know whether you’re on pace or behind. You know when the first draft will be complete. At 1,000 words per day the same novel takes 14 weeks. At 300 words per day it takes 47 weeks. Arithmetic doesn’t care about motivation, inspiration, or how you feel about the process. It only cares whether you hit the number. I track my daily output because ADHD brains respond to concrete measurable targets in a way they don’t respond to vague intentions. But this is a finishing strategy for any writer. Writers who track their daily word count finish books. Writers who write “when they feel like it” mostly don’t.
How do you plan a book backward from a deadline?
Professional ghostwriting works on contractual deadlines. When a client is paying for a manuscript delivered by a specific date, “I didn’t feel inspired this week” isn’t an option. The deadline structures every day between now and delivery. Apply the same discipline to your own projects. Pick a completion date. Work backward. How many words do you need per day to hit that date? What does each month need to accomplish? What does each week need to deliver?
If the math produces a daily number that’s unrealistic for your schedule, move the deadline. But don’t abandon the deadline entirely. A project with no end date is a project that never ends.
I’d rather see a writer move a deadline three times than never set one at all. A moved deadline still points at a finished book. A book with no deadline turns into the manuscript you mention at parties for a decade and never open.
My coaching clients set deadlines in our first session. I’m not rigid about timelines. A deadline transforms “someday” into “by then.” The psychological difference between a project with a deadline and a project without one is the difference between a book that exists and a book that lives permanently on a hard drive.
Why use daily writing targets instead of weekly ones?
Weekly word count goals allow you to procrastinate until Saturday and then try to write 3,500 words in a panic.
A book with no deadline turns into the manuscript you mention at parties for a decade and never open.
Daily targets eliminate that failure pattern. A daily target is small enough to be achievable and frequent enough to build momentum. Five hundred words is thirty minutes of focused writing. One thousand words is an hour. These are sessions that fit into any schedule, including schedules already full of work, family, and obligations.
I write in 45-minute blocks with 15-minute breaks.
That structure works for my ADHD brain, but the principle works for any brain: defined sessions with clear start and stop times produce more output than open-ended “write for a while” sessions. When the block starts, you write. When the block ends, you stop. Tomorrow you do it again.
The streak matters. Ten consecutive days of hitting your daily target creates psychological investment in not breaking the streak. Twenty days deepens it. Thirty days makes it a habit. The streak becomes its own motivation, more reliable than inspiration and more sustainable than willpower.
Separate Planning From Writing
A very common reason writers miss their daily targets is that they sit down to write and spend the entire session deciding what to write. Planning and writing are different cognitive tasks. Doing both produces neither.
Before your writing session, know what you’re writing.
Which chapter. Which scene. What happens. What information the reader receives. If you outline the night before or at the start of your day, the writing session becomes execution instead of invention. The words come faster because you’re not making structural decisions and sentence-level decisions at the same time.
I don’t usually outline first myself. I get an idea, write the first chapter, then outline, then write whichever chapters strike my fancy in whatever order and connect them together.
I call it the ink blot method. The planning still happens away from the drafting, and I think that separation matters far more than the order you do things in.
My Plot Handbook and Novel Handbook cover outlining and structure in depth. The Writer’s Block Handbook addresses the cognitive problem of stalling during writing sessions, including ADHD-specific strategies.
The Right Goals for Your Situation
Not everyone’s goal is a novel. The system works regardless of the project.
If you’re writing a business book to establish authority in your field, the goal might be a 40,000-word manuscript in four months. That’s 500 words a day with weekends off. A business book at that pace is finished before most people abandon their New Year’s resolutions.
If you’re writing a memoir, the goal might be different because memoir requires more emotional processing than other genres. You may need lower daily targets with built-in recovery days. My Memoir Course Bundle covers the challenges of memoir writing, including pacing yourself through difficult material.
If you want to write but don’t have time to write, the goal might be hiring help. Book coaching gives you a collaborator who helps you build the structure, maintain momentum, and finish what you start. Ghostwriting produces a professional manuscript while you focus on your career. Both are legitimate paths to a finished book.
What Should You Do When You Miss a Writing Day?
You’ll miss days. The question is whether a missed day becomes a missed week becomes a missed month becomes an abandoned project. The answer is simple: hit the target tomorrow.
Don’t try to make up yesterday’s words, and don’t raise tomorrow’s target to compensate. Just hit the normal target. I resent the punish-yourself school of productivity advice, because the guilt spiral after a missed day kills far more books than the missed day ever does.
Professional writers miss days. I miss days. The difference between professionals and hobbyists is the ability to return to the work after an interruption without turning the interruption into permission to quit. My Writer’s Productivity Handbook covers the psychology of maintaining momentum, including managing perfectionism, completion phobia, and the resistance that builds around long projects. The ADHD Writing Handbook covers these challenges for neurodivergent writers. Start with a conversation if you want help building a plan for your project. A writing goal that doesn’t produce a finished book by the end of the year was a wish with a calendar attached, and nobody should spend another twelve months carrying one.
| Failure | Fix |
|---|---|
| A vague hope like “finish my novel” | Set a number, a timeline and a daily action |
| No end date | Pick a completion date and work backward; move it if needed, never drop it |
| Weekly word counts that invite a Saturday panic | Set a small daily target |
| Open-ended “write for a while” sessions | Write in defined blocks with clear start and stop times |
| Deciding what to write during the session | Know the chapter, scene and what happens before you sit down |
| One target for every project | Fit the goal to the project; memoir may need lower targets and recovery days |
| A missed day | Hit the normal target tomorrow; no makeup words, no raised bar |
My take
Set goals with numbers and a deadline, and plan the book backward from the date. A resolution with no structure behind it is dead by March. When you miss a day, hit the normal target tomorrow. Don’t make up yesterday’s words or raise the bar to punish yourself, because the guilt spiral kills more books than the missed day ever does. Professionals miss days too, and they’re back at the desk the next morning.
Writing Goals FAQ
- Developing SMART Goals for Your Organization, University of Florida IFAS Extension
