Use S.M.A.R.T. Goals for Writing

It’s the Smart Thing To Do

SMART Goals, a popular tool for helping companies, teams, and entrepreneurs, also works well for Writers: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely.

How to Write S.M.A.R.T. Posts

You probably remember when S.M.A.R.T. Goals were all the rage: in team meetings, at workshops, even for New Year’s Resolutions. You may still remember Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely.

S.M.A.R.T. Goals apply equally to writing as to goal setting. Or to put it another way, your writing goal should be SMART. You’ll get more readers, more recognition, even more money if your goal is to get paid for writing.

Specific: Choose a topic. Write about that topic. Put in details which are specific. Don’t change midstream and start writing about another topic. Tell a story that’s relates to your topic.

Measurable: Maybe you’re writing a blog post. You can measure it by the number of comments, questions, and responses you get. How many times did someone else link to it?

Measure it by finding it in Google which is a measure of how effective your SEO is. If you’re writing for money, how much did you make?

Assuming you repurposed your post to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other places, what was the response? Did you get comments? Did other people link to it. Did they like it?

Achievable: My goal is to write a post everyday. Doesn’t have to be long, but I will write everyday. My goal is not to write two posts everyday — once in awhile I do that, but it’s not my goal. Twice every day isn’t achievable for me.

Every day might not be achievable for you or not something you want to do. But could you write three times a week? How about once a week? Choose how often you’ll write. Keep a calendar to keep track of your writing goal.

Tell others what it is. You’ll be amazed at what an incentive it is if someone, especially your spouse or teenager, asks if you met your writing goal today!

Realistic: Realistic is often related to Achievable. If your goal is realistic, it will probably be achievable.

Last year I had a fabulous idea to write a book called The Grandmothers: Homesteading in Nebraska and Colorado. I had four great-grandmothers who homesteaded plus dozens of interview tapes and 100s of documents about a women homesteader I’m not related to.

The book would be the stories of these five women, interwoven with the general history of women homesteaders in the west — something I’m familiar with thanks to my PhD dissertation.

I envisioned a great, sprawling book of several hundred pages to be published by the University of Nebraska Press. But wait . . . do I have time to do this? To devote myself to this project day in and day out for several years? NO!

I need to earn money from writing. Books published by university presses do not make money for their authors. And they take a very long time to complete.

Is it achievable? Yes. Is it realistic? No. So much for achievable and realistic being related!

Timely: I suppose you’re asking what an historian knows about timely? Some old woman with gray hair who thought it would be fun to write a book about a bunch of women who died in the early 19th century?

A woman who loves history. Whose favorite author, Willa Cather, died in 1947. Whose favorite composer, Bach, died in 1750.

Good question, but I understand that people read what’s timely. I’ve learned to write for readers while still feeding my passion for the past. I recently put up a post about teaching in an a Black School in 1967. (I’m white.)

It’s possible you’re one of my readers who wasn’t born yet during this event. I wove that “old” story into today’s Black Lives Matter protests and the segregation that still exists in some Denver schools where I live.

Here’s my story about teaching in a Black school. It’s Specific about one experience. It’s Measurable in the context of what my students gained. It’s Achievable. I wrote a short essay, not a 500 page book. It’s Realistic, a true story. It’s Timely as it relates to Black Lives Matter and the concern for racial justice.

For Father’s Day I wrote a tribute to my Father who died in 1965. I wrote about his life — he was born in 1904. I wrote about his grandparents who came to Colorado during Gold Rush in 1859.

My grief over losing my father in 1965 is timely in 2020. I still miss him, celebrate wonderful memories, and ruminate over perceived wrongs.

This is his story:

Run your story through S.M.A.R.T. Goals for writing, and you’ll have a winner.