Bonus BP10: How to set your own goals, and meet them.

You’ve got everything you need to write this book—so what now? You may be feeling pumped and ready to dive in, or you may be feeling overwhelmed. I know that the truth is that you’re all at somewhat different stages of this. Some of you were working with totally new material, others imposing a better structure on a project you’ve been working on for a long time and others somewhere in between. But wherever you are, this is a hard moment—because you’re going to have to take off the training wheels and pedal this bike on your own.

For many of us, these assignments, while challenging, also offer kind of a crutch. They’re things to check off a list, signs of progress, short achievable goals. They’re real and so is the progress they represent but they’ve also made things a little easier by providing structure—and now you need to provide that structure for yourself.

In the episode, we talked about moving your project forward—the book, the chapters, the scenes, the story. Right now I want to talk mechanics. It’s one thing to know it’s time to write the book and another to know how—in terms of tools and timing—you’re going to do it. This bonus suggests you create your own goals and measurements to help you to both move forward—and to see yourself making that progress. Hours, words per day, specific in-book goals … they all work. The trick is setting them ahead of time and them meeting them.

And—that’s it! You’ve blueprinted. Huge congrats are in order for getting this done. Hope to see you at the AMA in two weeks.

Here’s the link for the End of Blueprint AMA on Friday September 16 at 12PM Eastern: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89290223042?pwd=QkUrbkpoWm51REFLbkdiaTdPZENPZz09

How to listen: if you’ve listened to any previous Bonus episodes or Minisodes, this one should already BE in your podcast feed. If not, click on the link to listen and you’ll find yourself at amwriting.substack.com. You COULD listen there, but we’re guessing you’d rather get all subscriber episodes, from now on, in your usual podcast-listening app. It’s easy, and you only have to do it once to get every #Minisode from now on right where you want it.

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