Do you know your writing goals?: Thinking about impact
Hi, writer!
What are your writing goals?
This is one of the very first things I ask my writers, and the answers I hear are one or a combination of three things:
impact goals, like “I want to use writing to improve the credibility of my company” and “I want to be a thought leader.” Impact goals include metrics like, “I want to net 1,000 new followers through my LinkedIn posts by Q2,” because that is the impact you want your writing to have.
project goals, like “I want to hold a book I wrote in my own two hands,” “I want to start a newsletter,” and “I want to publish to my blog consistently, every two weeks.”
and 3D goals, which are goals that fall within the three dimensions of practice, process, and craft. They’re related to practices like, “I really want to get better about journaling,” process improvements like, “Learn how to move from first idea to outline” and skills like, “Use my authentic voice.” 3D goals are things you want to prioritize, challenges you want to overcome, and skills you want to develop.
When people come to me with an impact or project goal, they often say they know they need to “write” or “write more” or “get better at writing” in order to reach that larger goal. These are too vague to be good starting points—3D goals are the bridge to your first steps. Setting them will help you figure out how to begin and make progress.
Any impact or project goal can be broken down into 3D goals, and unlike impact and achievement goals, 3D goals are completely within your control. If you have a larger goal in mind, you can think of 3D goals as ‘things I will prioritize and things I want to improve at that will support this larger goal.’
Setting 3D goals at the start of a new writing project, like launching a newsletter or writing that book, will help you maintain your motivation for the work, because you’ll be able to track your improvement over time instead of just focusing on the achievement of the end product. If you’re ‘producing’ and ‘shipping’ but not improving, you can get bored and frustrated at best—burnt out by the work, at worst. Not setting 3D goals can also mean you’re missing out on ways to learn and improve as you work toward impact or project completion.
If you don’t have a project you’re actively working on, setting 3D goals for a ‘season’ is a great way to move forward in your writing without feeling stifled by ‘lack of defined project.’ Or, maybe your project goal is ‘figure out what my project is’. In this case, you could focus your 3D goals in the Practice category—putting your effort for a few months into your journal, reading, and other creative experiences will lead you to the project you’re meant to be working on.
3D goals can also help you decide between competing projects—if there’s no chance of you learning anything new by choosing a certain project, is that project worth your time right now?
You may notice that while you can certainly track your improvement at everything on this list, some of the items can be clearly measured, but most cannot. ‘Achieving’ 3D goals isn’t the point—rather, focusing on 3D goals is what allows us to achieve project and impact goals. In fact, once you begin to take action on some of these 3D goals, those actions might turn into habits that outlast any project or season, and keep on giving.
Practice
What practices do you want to prioritize [to support X project or for a season of time]?
Journaling every day / journaling more often
Reading every day / more often
Expanding my reading diet
Getting curious about other people
Using my imagination
Perspective-shifting
Getting quiet
Empathy for other people’s stories and experiences
Asking more questions
Seeing / finding ideas in the wild
Taking notes
Seeking out creatively inspiring experiences
Having more conversations about writing
Creating or participating in a writing group
Getting comfortable sharing
Process
What process challenges do you want to address and improve at?
Getting ideas
Clarifying my complex ideas
Turning ideas into a thesis or subject
Scoping ideas or subjects
Free writing / first drafts — I have trouble letting go of my internal editor
Setting aside time for my writing
Getting into flow
Writing longform or shortform
Knowing when I’m done
Creating outlines / how to structure
Turning outlines into a draft
Developmental editing to improve my drafts
Doing research / bringing in support for my arguments
Conducting interviews
Using research in my storytelling
Citing my work properly
Understanding my audience
Writing for my audience
Craft
What craft skills do I want to develop, experiment with, or understand?
Descriptive writing
Write more vividly / more ‘alive’
Include dialogue naturally
Using metaphor / other literary techniques
Narrative / storytelling
Bringing in personal stories / being more vulnerable
How to finish a piece / write better conclusions
How to start a piece / write better intros
Understanding and using my authentic voice
Define my personal style / create a style guide for my work
Grammar skills
Using punctuation for affect
Setting the tone or mood of a piece
Become a better self-editor
Once you’ve set some goals along each of the three dimensions, record them.
This week, write about them in your journal, making a list and writing a few sentences about why you’ve chosen this goal (you can give it a bit more detail than the generic version above) and what you’re going to do to achieve it. Each of these goals can be broken down into action steps you can take immediately—see how many you can identify or come up with, including the next step or first step you’ll take. (I’ll be covering everything listed above in this newsletter, so you can take the first step rn just by subscribing 🤭)
Here’s an example of what you can write for yourself this week:
“Over the next six months, my goal is to become better at writing descriptively. I want to do this because I love storytelling, and I feel like my storytelling will improve if I can write more vividly and put my readers ‘in the story’—I’ve gotten some feedback that my writing can be dry. I also think it would be fun to be able to write more poetically and do some scene-setting and dialogue, but I read mostly straightforward non-fiction, so I don’t really have any inspiration for this yet. Not even sure what I really mean. So I’m going to expand my reading diet to include more lyrical work—I can stop by the local bookstore this weekend and ask for some recommendations. I’m also going to subscribe to PPC and try all the creative writing exercises to get more confident at pushing my boundaries.”
The list I provided above above includes the most common examples of 3D goals that I hear from writers. If you come up with something outside this list, tell me about it! You don’t have to know whether it’s ‘practice,’ ‘process’ or ‘craft’—just something you want to improve at, learn, or prioritize in the life of your writing. Email me at rachel@racheljepsen.com, I’d love to cover your goal in a future post.
My next post will come out on Friday, a prompt focused on stretching the imagination by using your senses.
Happy writing :)
