New year, new writing goals
BY Katie Smart
1st Jan 2023
The new year always brings a period of renewal and reflection – it is a great time to refresh your creative goals. We’d like to encourage you to look at where you're at on your writing journey – and think about where you’d like to be. Perhaps you want to dust off a long-forgotten project, start something new, or maybe even give writing daily pages a go? The key to sticking with any resolution is to make sure the goals you set are attainable and sustainable. Start small and work your way towards your ‘big’ goal – whether the aim is to write a complete book, edit a manuscript or start writing something (anything) every week. If you’re looking for some inspiration, here are some goals and ideas designed to kick-start your creativity and energise you for the year ahead. Plus, read to the end of the blog to find out about our January discount.
SET YOUR ‘BIG’ GOAL FOR 2023
Do you want to finish the first draft of your novel by the end of the year? Perhaps you’d like to get to work on your memoir? Maybe you want to turn your notebook thoughts and ideas into poetry? Or write at least four new short stories and submit them to competitions? Whatever your ‘big’ goal is, write it down. Put your ‘big’ goal on a post-it and stick it somewhere you can see every day or lock it away in a drawer and return to it when you need motivation. Now you can make a plan and work out what small steps you should take to make your bigger goal a reality. Set yourself more manageable goals along the way to reach it and establish the habits that will help you get a bit a closer to your dream. This could be anything from word count targets, sticking to a writing routine or taking a writing course to help you on your way. Read on for more advice to help you with the smaller steps of your big plan.
DEVELOP A WRITING ROUTINE
If you’re serious about working on a book or collection of poems/stories, the best way to show yourself and your writing respect is to find a regular time you can dedicate to it. A writing project can be both exhilarating and, at times, a difficult slog. It’ll completely fall away if you don’t keep it up. It’s hard to hold your whole story in your head, so that you can get down to work quickly and easily – if you leave long gaps between writing sessions and work erratically, you’ll be giving yourself an uphill struggle and you’re much more likely to give up. What a writing routine actually looks like will vary from person to person. It could be the famous dawn session that many people wake up to each day. It might mean grabbing an hour to write every afternoon while your child sleeps, or taking your laptop or notebook on your train journeys to and from work. Perhaps you can manage three hours on a Sunday afternoon but none during the week at all. Regularise those writing hours as much as you can – stick to the schedule and make sure that others around you understand that it’s important for you to be able to do this.
READ WIDELY
Great writers should also be great readers. You need to understand trends and know what’s working in the market, as well as learning your craft by examining how the experts do it. Why not make yourself a long list of books to read this year? Include the latest prize-winners and bestsellers, classics you haven’t got around to yet, novels that have been turned into films. Ask friends what their favourite books are and add those to the list. Be sure to read within your chosen genre, but also remember to read outside of it. You never know what helpful techniques you’ll discover and be able to borrow for your own work. Note how language and sound are used for effect in poetry, how worlds are constructed in fantasy, how suspense is created in crime/thrillers…
TRY DAILY PAGES
Take the pressure off writing and return to the joy of it. Try some automatic writing exercises – for example, set aside ten minutes a day to write, without the goal being for it to be read by anyone else. You could use this time for anything: you might find that your daily pages become regular journal entries, a place to jot down half-formed thoughts and ideas, puzzle out problems on the page or even the origins of poems or short stories. You’ll be surprised what gems you’ll discover when you write just for yourself – rather than aiming for something polished or finished. Some solid ideas for bigger projects may even start to take form from these daily scribblings. If not, it's still a great way to get the creative juices flowing. By writing what comes to your head without stopping to edit or criticising, you’ll stretch your writing muscles. Daily pages will help lift the filter that sits between your head and your writing hand and will set you up for your ‘real’ writing (a bit like stretching before a run).
If you want support as you embark on the mission to writing every day, join us for our new 30-Day Writing Bootcamp. For £30 you’ll get an energising and enriching 30 days of writing, supported by online lessons. This bootcamp comprises teaching videos, tasks, writing tips and prompts – created, designed and delivered to you by CBC’s founder and MD, Anna Davis. Begins 16 Jan.
FIND YOUR WRITING COMMUNITY
If you’re feeling a bit stuck, writing courses are a great way to find a group of fellow writers who are actively engaged in honing their skills – you never know you might just find a beta reader for life. You could also consider joining a local or online writing group or reaching out to other authors on social media.
As well as providing moral support, connecting with other writers might help you to discover a new writing process or gain useful feedback on your work. Receiving critical comment can be difficult but it’s a vital part of learning to write well. Listen to what your readers say they like and don’t like. Ultimately, it’s your work and their ideas might not resonate with you at all, in which case you can ignore them. But if they’re questioning something, it’s always good practice to ask yourself why.
£20 NEW YEAR DISCOUNT
We are also currently running a special New Year Discount, to help you put pen to paper this year. For a limited time only, you can get £20 off selected courses when you use code NY2023. This code is valid for £20 off the full price of our four-, six- and ten-week online courses. Offer excludes 30-Day Writing Bootcamp. Not to be used in conjunction with any other offer. Offer ends midnight, 31 Jan 2023.