How to plan a writing project
Charlotte Booth • 4 May 2021
So, you want to write a book?
How to plan a project
We all have our skills. Mine is being ridiculously organized and planning to within an inch of my life.
I like to plan everything and write down all the steps required to achieve a specific goal.
I learned professional goal- or objective-setting when I was training to teach in Adult Education. Every lesson had to have three objectives and then each minute of the class (no exaggeration) had to be planned in relation to that objective.
A five-hour teaching day could take a week to plan to this level, but it taught me a valuable skill which can be used to plan any project.
SMART Goals
I always hated the acronym SMART in relation to goals, but it does work and is the backbone of every well-laid plan. So, what do the letters stand for?
- S - Specific. You need to know exactly what you want to achieve.
- M – Measurable. You need to know whether you have achieved the goal.
- A – Achievable. You need to be aiming for something that is achievable.
- R – Relevant. Why do you want to achieve this goal?
- T – Timely. By setting a time goal you are able to provide parameters for achieving them.
So, think about when you set New Year’s resolutions. These rarely work as they are not SMART. The most common New Years’ resolutions are to lose weight or to cut down on alcohol. But these are so vague as to be meaningless – if you lose ½ kg in a year you have achieved your goal of losing weight, and you could cut your alcohol consumption down by one shot a year – neither of which is a great achievement.
But if you set the goal of losing 12 kg in a year, at a rate of 1 kg a month you have a measurable, specific and attainable goal – one that you can easily work towards.
One small step
The key to a successful project therefore is to break the goal down into smaller steps. And this is what I do when planning a writing project.
To achieve the major goal - write a 70,000-word book for example – I break it down into workable chunks – e.g. write 10,000 words a month.
Then within those 10,000 words it is broken down further into smaller sections for example, 5,000 words on “common writing mistakes,” then broken down further into five sections of 1,000 words on each writing mistake.
It then becomes much easier to work towards the main goal, one step at a time.
Lists Lists Lists
Many coaches scream: “No lists – they mess with your head,” but personally I love a good list.
There is little more beautiful than a project list with the main objective at the top, followed by smaller sub-projects which will help reach that goal, followed by individual tasks to achieve the sub-projects. Every ticked item is a visible marker that you are on the path to your main goal.
Schedule
Having a date for when you want to achieve the main goal is useful and is essential to SMART goal setting.
So, if the 70,000-word book will be written at 10,000 words a month that is a first draft completion target of 7.5 months. Put that in the diary.
This is then broken down into a weekly target of 2500 words, or 500 words a day five days a week. This should be added to your daily to-do lists.
Diarizing these dates helps to keep you on track whilst not feeling overwhelmed at the thought of “I have to write a book by …”
No project is so big that it can’t be broken down into bite-size chunks.
Next steps
Planning is my favourite thing, so if you have a plan for your writing project and you are not sure how SMART it is or you don’t have a plan at all, why not book a £99 ‘writing power hour’ with me. Let me guide you through the planning process, so by the end of the hour you will have the tools to create a personalised writing plan that you can stick to.
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