writing goals

One of my professors, Lee McClain, led a discussion the other day about writing goals and how to meet them. One thing she said was you should have a variety of writing goals from huge to small. She said you should have giant goals (like winning a national writing award) and visualize them, to help you focus.

You should have big, but achievable goals, to work towards, and you should visualize completing them. You should also have smaller monthly, weekly, and/or daily goals and complete them. One way to meet goals is to break them down into smaller goals. And if they're still too big, break them down further. For example, say your goal is to write 5 pages a day. If you try and fail, don't beat yourself up, halve your goal: write 2.5 pages a day, etc.

The class as a whole had a lot of good ideas, too. Some people advocated writing 5 (or 10 or 15) minutes a day--no matter what. One person kept their laptop next to their bed and wrote every morning before she got out of bed. Generally, the consensus was writing, or at least thinking, about one's WIP every day was important.

How about you? What are your writing goals? How do you meet them?