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Brainstorming Tactics for Your Strategic Plan

December 10, 2018 in Writing for Life with 0 Comments

In continuation from last week’s post reviewing the key points of strategic planning, we’re going to look at how to formulate a simple, approachable strategy to help you reach those writing goals and big dreams you have for your career.

We took a look at what a writing vision considers: what you want to be, what you want to have, and what you want to do. If you haven’t laid down that vision, come up with sample statements similar to the ones in that post.

Now that you have listed all those things you hope to achieve by the end of 2019, you’ll want to come up with a clear game plan so you can reach those goals. Set up benchmarks for the various steps you need to take to get to the finish line. Once you figure out the steps, you can then decide how long it will take you to complete each step.

One great way to figure this all out is to brainstorm all your ideas. I have numerous posts on ways writers can brainstorm using mind maps, so consider using it for strategic planning as well!

Get out that big piece of tag board and your markers and start listing all the dreams and goals you have. You can then draw lines (as discussed in the previous posts) to the milestones you need to reach to get to each goal. And with each milestone, you can connect all the little tasks you have to accomplish to make that milestone. Continue Reading…

Breaking Down the Strategy for Writing Success

December 3, 2018 in Writing for Life with 2 Comments

We’re continuing our re-visitation of some posts I wrote years ago on strategic planning for writers. I highly recommend that, at the end of every year, you assess and reassess your writing career. Look at how far you’ve come, what goals and milestones you’ve reached, and what goals still lie ahead.

To reach your ultimate goals that speak of a successful writing career, you have to break the process down into chunks.

In the last two posts (start here) I introduced the components writers need in order to formulate a practical, usable strategic plan for their writing career. Instead of wandering aimlessly, writers can envision what they want their careers to look like in a year, two years, even five years, and reach a specific destination: the realization of their vision.

Last week I looked at the first element needed to consider in strategic planning: the vision itself. Hopefully you filled in the blanks for all those vision statements and now are ready to tackle the next step: creating your strategy. I’m also going to touch on milestones a bit here and continue on in next week’s post. Continue Reading…

The Writer’s Vision for 2019

November 26, 2018 in Writing for Life with 4 Comments

As 2018 winds up, I’m revisiting an in-depth look at strategic planning for writers that I published six years ago. It’s all still perfectly relevant. In last week’s post, I introduced the four things we need to look at when planning our writing careers: vision, strategy, tactics, and action. Rather than have a nebulous idea of what we want to achieve as writers, it’s helpful and wise to think about the goals we want to reach.

Then we want to take our vague vision and form it into something not only specific but laid out with reasonable milestones to reach at certain steps along the way.

By transforming our vision into doable steps, we can measure our success, reevaluate the milestones and goals as we go along, and hone that vision into a reality with its resultant rewards. Continue Reading…