Tag: Do writing goals work

GB Ralph on Deadlines and Pre-Orders

This month’s special guest GB Ralph reveals the importance of deadlines, and why he sets up a book for pre-order before it’s even written…

TRANSCRIPT

MARK: What small thing has made a big difference to your writing process?

GB RALPH: A small thing that has made a big difference in my creative process is having a deadline. No deadline, nothing happens. Deadline: Let’s go. I work well to a deadline, which is something I learned back in school. But as an indie author, there’s not really such a thing as a deadline, so I had to create one myself, which is… the main one is setting up a preorder for the next book, which forces me to get going through that, don’t you?

MARK: Because if you get that wrong, certain online retailers get very upset with the authors.

GB RALPH: Oh yeah. I know, I know which is is motivating. It can be stressful, but I think it’s a good kind of stress, the motivating kind, not the debilitating kind. It’s still deadline. It can be a year away, which is forever. And I need to constantly remind myself that I need to make little deadlines along the way. Ones that have consequences. Otherwise, I’ll pull a Douglas Adams and enjoy the wooshing sound as deadlines go by.

LISTEN TO THE WHOLE PODCAST

Writers: Join me in the Green Room on 9th & 30th October

The Green Room is a twice-monthly Zoom session with me and a bunch of wonderful writers where you can ask me questions about the craft of writing, your WIP, or the business of publishing. Step backstage and let’s figure out practical solutions to your writing problems!

It’s all run through my Ko-Fi page and costs just £20 a month.

ENTER THE GREEN ROOM

Join us in the Green Room tonight…

Tonight is the first Green Room session for writers and it’s not too late to get involved.

I’ve already had great questions on editing a first draft, finding agents, writing for TV, collating research, writing series summaries and more! Even if you don’t have a question, do please come along as something might occur to you in the moment and those can be the best questions of all.

All you need to do is pop over here and become a Green Room member for £20 a month.

Twice a month, I’ll be running a 30-minute live session on Zoom where you can ask me questions about the craft of writing, your WIP, or the business of publishing. The sessions will be fun and informal and chatty. You can send me questions in advance. They’ll be recorded live and saved on Kofi for exclusive access to Green Room supporters.

There’s no long term commitment. With Kofi, you can support for just a month, or for as long as you like. Pop in, pop out: whatever works for you. My goal is to be able to give supporters advice that will make a real difference to their writing and career, because the way I see it: having worked in this industry as a salesperson, bookseller and author for over 30 years, I’ve made every mistake, so you don’t have to.

JOIN THE GREEN ROOM HERE

Are You a Writer Looking for Advice? Join me in the Green Room…

Are you a writer looking for help and advice? Come and join me in the Green Room.

Here’s a clip from the first episode of the Creative Differences podcast where I explain what the Green Room is and how you can get involved…

Twice a month, I’ll be running a 30-minute live session on Zoom where you can ask me questions about the craft of writing, your WIP, or the business of publishing. The sessions will be fun and informal and chatty. You can send me questions in advance. They’ll be recorded live and saved on Kofi for exclusive access to Green Room supporters.

I’m running this via Kofi, where you can join by clicking on the Green Room membership tier for £20 a month…

GO TO THE GREEN ROOM NOW

There’s no long term commitment. With Kofi, you can support for just a month, or for as long as you like. Pop in, pop out: whatever works for you. My goal is to be able to give supporters advice that will make a real difference to their writing and career, because the way I see it: having worked in this industry as a salesperson, bookseller and author for over 30 years, I’ve made every mistake, so you don’t have to.

Writing Goals… Do They Work?

I set some writing goals at the beginning of the year and jotted them down in my diary on January 1st…

For those of you who can’t read my scribble (ie: everyone), they are…

  • Launch The End of Magic and get it to as many readers as possible
  • Relaunch and sell 10k copies of Back to Reality by Glastonbury weekend
  • Self-Publish one or more of the Woodville books
  • Find a publisher for Interstellar Mega Blaster

Have I reached them? Sort of… Well… no…

The End of Magic had a great start and is ticking along very nicely in the UK. A fab launch, great reviews and it topped quite a few Amazon charts. I’ve set myself a target to sell a thousand copies in the USA by the end of the year and it’s been tough so far.

Back to Reality didn’t hit 10k, but we did sell over a thousand copies and it’s given the book momentum.

I have finished the first of my Woodville novels (a series about three witches in a Kent village in the Second World War: think Bedknobs and Broomsticks meets Pratchett’s Witches), and I’ve started the second, and I was all set to self-publish, but my wonderful agent read it and it made him cry on the tube (twice… in a good way) and he wants a shot at selling it. He calls it “commercial gold dust”, which is nice.

And Interstellar Mega Blaster is my middle grade science fiction adventure, which has had a few encouraging rejections. All par for the course.

The more astute of you will note that I’ve not achieved any of these goals (so far). Does this mean I’ve failed? Heck, no.

Goals aren’t immovable objects like Stonehenge. You can shift them, squeeze them and even toss them away. And no, that’s not cheating.

Really, it isn’t. Okay, you might reasonably ask, What’s the point in setting goals if you’re just going to keep moving them? Well, if you’re like me, they’re what get you out of bed in the morning to start writing. They’re aspirations, dreams, and even if we fall short we’re still ahead of bugger-all, which is what we started with.

One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned on the Bestseller Experiment podcast is that setting a clear goal, a definite deadline, and making a public declaration are the most effective things you can do to boost your writing.

Be ready for real life to give you a swift kick in the nadgers every now and then, and be just as ready to pounce on the new opportunities that come along, too. Set a goal. Today.

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.

Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

Do you have a writing goal? Tell me about it and maybe I can help you make it happen.

I offer all kinds of bespoke services for writers, from reader reports to full edits. Drop me a line here for a free consultation.