If you're like me, maybe some of the goals you set earlier in the year did not pan out. And you're looking at these final three months and you're like, well, what am I gonna do now? Also, okay. Sometimes life happens and we have to re-jigger. We have to, you know, move our goalpost. That is okay. What is not okay is to feel defeated when you still have time to make progress. So I like the saying, we can either make excuses or we can make an effort. And it does not need to be all or nothing, it can be all or something. Welcome to the Write It Scared podcast. I'm your host, Stacey Fraser, a formerly repressed creative soul, turned fiction writer, story editor, and author accelerator certified fiction book coach. At Write It Scared, we tell the truth about why writing a novel is so hard by acknowledging that most writers grapple with two stories: the one they want to put on the page to the best of their ability, and the often subconscious internal story that prevents them from doing it. This show is designed to help you identify and rewrite the internal narrative holding you back while you discover and write the story you want to tell and learn all the tools to help you do that successfully. Join me each week for a new episode where we'll talk about writing to deepen our understanding of the craft and of ourselves as writers. Writing a novel is an inside job that we do not do alone. Welcome to Write It's Scared. I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in. Hey writer, welcome back to the Ride It Scared Podcast. I'm your host, Stacey, and today's episode, don't know, gonna figure that out later. Today is an impromptu episode, and we're gonna talk about how to set achievable writing goals for the last quarter of the year. Because how is tomorrow the last day of September? If you're listening later on in the week, I recorded this on a Sunday, Sunday the 29th of September, and it's like I blinked and the month was over. So today we're going to talk about setting realistic year-in goals. So it's the final quarter, the last three months to achieve our 2024 writing goals. And if you're like me, maybe some of the goals you set earlier in the year did not pan out. And uh that's okay. That's okay. And you're looking at the these final three months and you're like, well, what am I gonna do now? Also, okay, but here's the deal: it doesn't have to be all or nothing. Sometimes life happens and we have to rejigger, we have to, you know, move our goalpost. That is okay. What is not okay is to feel defeated when you still have time to make progress. So I like the saying, we can either make excuses or we can make an effort. And it does not need to be all or nothing, it can be all or something. So I was talking with one of my clients uh about a week ago about how to approach drafting their book in this final quarter. We had just finished working through their story development phase and they were super excited, they were really ready to go, fired up, which was fantastic. And they were so excited that they said they wanted to finish their first draft by the end of this year, by the end of 2024. And I was like, great, that's fantastic. I love the energy, but let's make sure that's a really reasonable goal for you. Because if our goals are unrealistic, then we set ourselves up for disappointment. And we've all been there. We've all been fired up. We're gonna go do this thing, we're gonna go full out, and then life happens and we don't meet our lofty goal. And sometimes, a lot of times, we feel like crap about it. And I call it this is the another year without a book blues. Sometimes we say things like, Well, at least I did XYZ, so I'm proud of myself for that. But in truth, that statement is serving more like a consolation prize. It's not a real win because we didn't set ourselves up for that. This is the result of doing the math without a reality check. That's what I like to call it. So I'm gonna get really granular. Don't hate me, but there are technically 91 days left till the end of the year. 91 days to make those writing goals. It might sound like a lot, or maybe not, but either way, it's not an accurate number. There are not 91 days left in the writing year. Not if you subtract weekends and the winter holidays that are coming up. So for me, there's more like 52 possible writing days. But I'm not a full-time fiction writer, and I have another job or two, or four, and I don't write every day. That's my reality. So what's yours look like? If your reality is similar to mine, then how can we set ourselves up to make reasonable progress given the constraints of our lives, avoid disappointment, and make some room for when things go haywire? My answer is be very clear about the bite you can realistically take to achieve your goals, then lower your bar. So, case in point, my client, who I mentioned earlier, is drafting a YA contemporary novel, which all said and done, should land somewhere between 65 and 85K. So for ease, we're gonna split the difference, just call it 70K, that's our target. And I'll walk you through the math we did together on our last coaching call to make sure that the goal of drafting their book by the end of the year was reasonable and attainable. So 70K of fresh words in not 91 days. For this writer, it was also more like 52 possible writing days. Now, if you break it down, that's 1,346 words a day. Which actually doesn't sound horrible. It's less than NanoRimo's word count goal of 1,666 words per day if they were to write every single one of those 52 days. That would get them to a finished rough draft. Now, here's the problem. The lens of reality is missing. Like most of us, this writer doesn't write every day either. There's lots of other things going on in their life, work, family, living. Typically, they have three writing sessions per week. So we redid the math, given the constraints of life. So three writing sessions over about nine and a half-ish weeks, because remember we took out all the weekends and for the fall winter holidays. So that boiled down to about 27 total writing sessions for the remainder of the year. Now we divide that by 70,000 words, and that is 2,600 words per writing session. Ouch. That's a steep ask, even for a seasoned writer. And we're not taking into account the days where shit happens or the days when the words don't come. So what does a reasonable and achievable goal look like when we apply the lens of reality and we add in a buffer for the shit happens days? Here's the new math I did with my client. So 27 writing sessions over the next three months. Let's make it 24, give ourselves a little padding for the, you know, the I didn't wake up early enough or I'm sick or I don't wanna, or the really, really crappy situation, which is where you say, I sat there for an hour and nothing happened. Okay, so 24 writing sessions. Now, if you're a word count person, consider how many words you write on average during a typical writing session. If you don't know because this is your first novel, no worries, just lowball it, say 250 or 500 words per writing session. That's one or two pages. But do keep track. Then multiply that by the number of writing sessions you have. So let's say my client averages 500 words in a 45-minute writing session. Remember, we're keeping it low, we're lowering the bar here. That's 12,000 words, or about or about 20% of the book, considering the genre. That is the lens of my writer's reality. And every time, it never fails, every time I sit down to talk with the drafting writer and do the math on what's realistic goal-wise, their eyes get pretty big, like, oh shit, I I really didn't think about that. I didn't realize. Yeah. We don't, you know. We get very excited about the big goal, and so we just, you know, dive in. But without making a realistic plan, we definitely set ourselves up for disappointment. So, given all of that, the writer and I decided that the smarter, more achievable goal would be to have the first act of the story drafted by the end of the year. That's doable, and that is the key. Now, I'm not gonna be surprised if my writer blows that out of the water. But how good is it gonna feel to be ahead of the game versus scrambling and not making it to the first mile marker? Especially if that first mile marker was finish the first draft. Okay, writer, so that was a lot. But here are the takeaways. What I want you to think about as you consider what your writing goals are for the next three months. Apply your reality to your writing game. Set yourself up to be successful by being very clear about the time you have to work with and factor in the this is hard and life is unpredictable pieces so that you can achieve what you're aiming for. Not only that, but you'll probably make it happen way faster than you expected, and that's gravy. Setting writing goals that factor in the constraints of your life and planning for off days is how you avoid disappointment and discount the work that you did. You know, all honesty here, doing the math through the lens of reality is not a foolproof method, but it's gonna help you set more realistic writing goals and avoid disappointment. And so maybe you're saying to yourself, okay, this is all great, but A, I hate math, and two, I don't give two winks about word count. I get it, no worries. I mean, you might be a writer who feels like they get stressed out with word count. Uh, it's just not for you. Or maybe you're not in a place where word count is a realistic marker to measure because you're noodling your story, you're or you're getting back into it. Um, you're doing some character development, you're working on backstory, you're world building, or what have you. Or maybe you just don't like the idea of measuring your progress that way. Fine, it's totally understandable. And perhaps your reasonable goal is just to spend time on your story. If that's the case, then I would say consider doing a manuscript time block to help you set goals and measure progress. So figure out how many potential writing sessions are available to you over the next three months. Factor in a buffer for when life happens. So sorry, I guess there is a tiny bit of math there. Then the goal just becomes making those writing sessions. And it doesn't matter what you do during this time, it could be writing backstory, noodling over the plot, or doing character sketches or reshirt. It all counts and it's all progress and you will get there. And then when you look back over the last three months, you're gonna feel good about it because you can see that you showed up when you wanted to and you stayed true to your values, you stayed true to your goals, and you aligned your action with your intention. So I would love to know what your quarter four writing goal is and what does your math or your non-math look like? So please send me an email and let me know what you're working on and what your goals are. You can reach me at my email, Stacy at writeitskear.co. This episode was really off the cuff, so thanks for hanging in there with me. I wanted to get it out there because I think it's something we need to talk about this time of year. And it took me a long time to learn how to set realistic goals for myself and learn that it was okay to move mile markers around when I needed to, when life got in the way. And you know, it still disappoints me. It's still, I I still hate having to take smaller bites, and sometimes I still forget to do that. But when I do remember to take those small bites and set realistic goals, I don't shoot myself in the foot. So I hope this episode helps prevent you from doing that too. If you found the episode helpful, I would really appreciate it if you go give it a rating and a review on Apple. Or if you're a Spotify listener, just go ahead and leave a rating. It will help more writers find the podcast and the voices and messages they need to keep moving forward. And I will talk to you next week. Thank you for listening to the Write It Scared Podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please make sure to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode. And please leave a review. Reviews help other writers like you find the voices and messages they need to hear to continue to write their stories. Let's lift each other up. Remember, you can be scared and still be unstoppable. I'll see you next week.