Goals and Success

I've been thinking over the last few days about goals. Somebody commented recently (sorry, I can't remember who) about meeting their writing goals. I was impressed that they actually had writing goals. I mean, I have goals, but they are huge things - publish a novel, sell more short stories, etc. The comment reminded me that goals need to be broken down and written down, and they need to be flexible.

Publishing a novel is a great thing to aim for, but what are all the steps to getting there? I can't just sit down one morning and say to myself, "Today, I am going to write a novel." I think that has been most of my problem lately. I get up every morning with the need to write, but it is such an abstract thing.

Og Mandino said, "The victory of success is half won when one gains the habit of setting goals and achieving them. Even the most tedious chore will become endurable as you parade through each day convinced that every task, no matter how menial or boring, brings you closer to fulfilling your dreams."

So to be successful as a writer I need to set more concrete goals. They can be things like writing a certain number of words each day, making a daily entry on my blog, editing previous work for a certain amount of time. It always seems by breaking down the dream into smaller puzzle pieces, things start to fit together and pretty soon, the bigger picture starts to emerge.

So my achievable goal for today is that I am going to come up with a list of concrete little goals to hang near my computer and refer to every time I get distracted by the bigger picture. And like Mandino says, my success will be half won by the goals I set and achieve. What kind of smaller goals do you set for yourself to keep you going?