The 12 Week Year for Writers

CHAPTER 4CREATING YOUR 12 WEEK PLAN

Your vision is your compass and your reward. It tells you where you're headed and why it's going to feel great when you get there. But no matter how motivated you are, getting to where you want to go is going to require a detailed map. “North” is not good enough direction. If you're like me and you got dropped out of a helicopter with only a compass, and you were told to “go north” to find your way home, you'd panic. Just like you need a list of turns and road names to find your destination on a car trip, your writing journey needs a set of more detailed goals and tactics.

Your 12 Week Plans will form the bridge between where you stand today and your vision. Collectively, your 12 Week goals become the stepping-stones on the path you will take toward your vision. A series of good 12 Week goals, strategically chosen, will lead you to your ultimate writing goal more surely and quickly than poorly chosen ones. In turn, your 12 Week tactics will determine your efficiency at moving down the path outlined by your 12 Week goals.

Before we dig into creating your first 12 Week Plan, I'll explain what's so powerful about planning your writing this way. To illustrate the process, I'll work through an example based on a hypothetical book project, code-named Helping Writers Write, which we'll imagine is the next writing project of someone with a near-term vision of becoming a published author and writing coach. When you've finished this chapter, you will ...