Post #265 July 26 2021 “First Paragraphs, First Pages” Everyone knows that first impressions are critical. It’s just as true in storytelling as in meeting someone for lunch. In this post, I want to describe a little technique I use to make sure I cover all the bases for making a good first impression on the reader. Following is a major part of the first page of my newest sf novel The Farpool: Diaspora, coming later this year…. Three days and a handful of hours after arriving in Jupiter orbit through the Atlantic Farpool, Europa Clipper had put in at Gateway Station for some light maintenance work and re-provisioning. Alicia Wu and Evgeni Kotlas were sitting at a table in the ship’s crew’s mess, nursing a few beers. Kotlas fiddled with the gain on the main viewer to bring Jupiter into full resolution. “Looks like a fuzzy beach ball,” Wu said. “With hair—“ Kotlas pronounced himself satisfied with the view. “Yeah, a beach ball with enough radiation to fry your pretty little brain in about two seconds.” “You’re assuming I have a brain…I checked mine at the recruiting station when I signed up for Farpool school.” It was a salmon-hued world, mottled and banded with oranges, reds, browns and ambers, a cauldron of clouds, storms and majestic seething turbulence. Alternating strips of light and dark wrapped the planet in a calico shroud and several small red spots boiled away in the north tropical zone, companions to the Great Red Spot in the south, a centuries-old hurricane churning since the time of Cromwell and King Charles. “Ten seconds to separation,” Sonora called. The captain scanned her boards and instruments, pronounced herself satisfied with what she saw. Europa Clipper was docked at the forward nose port of Gateway Station, a giant sausage stuck on a plate, secured to a kebab skewer, as Alicia Wu had termed it. “Three…two…one…separating now—“ There was a gentle shudder and the sound of capture latches releasing. Sonora pulsed Clipper’s aft thrusters and the ship backed off at a stately pace, eventually settling into a co-orbiting position several thousand meters from the Station. Below them, Europa turned like a cracked golf ball, dimpled, rutted with deep ice canyons and odd brown streaks. As Clipper backed away, the huge banded disk of Jupiter itself poked over the Europan horizon, at a crazy angle. The moon was in a three-and-a-half-day orbit about the giant planet, averaging three quarters of a million kilometers above her cloud tops, bathed in hard radiation. Okay, so that’s an excerpt from the first page. I want to introduce a little acronym to help you as a storyteller remember to attend to the most important things in your first paragraphs and the first page. It’s called A-T-P. 1. The most important thing you can do as a storyteller in your first page is capture the reader’s attention. That’s the A in ATP. If you don’t grab the reader by the collar right off the bat and say, “Pay attention…this is important!”—you may never get them to enter the imaginary world of your story. 2. The next part of the process is to set the tone. This is the T. Or call it atmosphere. Is it a menacing tone, with overtones of foreboding? A happy, expectant tone? Is it a critical, rational, explanatory narrative? Do this with well-chosen words. 3. The final part of our acronym is to create a problem. This would be the P. Set up a conflict. Create some kind of barrier or obstacle for our hero or heroes to overcome. And make it important to the hero, maybe even life and death. Let’s look at my excerpt and see how I did on these three dimensions. Capturing Attention: Right away, I establish that this is Jupiter, not some farm in Iowa. It’s quite a sight, but with serious radiation dangers. And with an expectation that our heroes are going to be descending into that hard radiation bath, there are intimations of danger coming. Also, the title of the ship and the final paragraph of the excerpt show that our intrepid crew is headed for Jupiter’s moon Europa. They’re not headed to the QuikTrip for a smoothie. Setting Tone: Look at some of the words…cauldron, seething turbulence, fry your hair, cracked golf ball, dimpled and rutted. These are not happy, joyful words. They imply danger, a bit of menace, the possibility of unexpected occurrences, hazards and perils and risks aplenty. Our heroes seem to brave but determined people. Which raises a question: why are they doing this? Creating a Problem: Re-reading this excerpt makes me think I could probably do better along this dimension. I should make their central problem more explicit in this first page. The existence of hard radiation and the obvious dangers of what they are doing are part of the problem. Actually, a few paragraphs later, we realize our crew is headed down to the surface of Europa to start boring through its ice surface to the sub-surface ocean below. In editing and re-writing this section, I may well make that more apparent earlier in the text. So, that’s A-T-P. Use this little moniker to guide you in beginning your story in a compelling and engaging way. If you attend to these initial details in telling your tale, you’ll find your readers will be more likely to be sitting on the edge of their seats, wanting to hear and read more. The next post to The Word Shed comes on August 2. In this post, we’ll take a look at what’s important on making a good last page for your story. See you then. Phil B.

Post #264 July 19 2021 “Promoting Yourself as a Writer” Many of the posts I’ve made to this blog over the last few years have been related to the mechanics of writing and storytelling. But to be a real success as a modern author in today’s hyperchaotic literary marketplace, you have to network, promote and market yourself and your ‘brand.’ This is something that doesn’t always come naturally to many writers, who are often disposed to be somewhat loners and introspective, though not all of course. But I’m that way. I want to spend the next few posts looking at ways we wordsmiths can dive into the modern world of commercial writer promotion and networking and make our brands better known and successful. Toward that end, I’ve come up with five ways we can do this. 1. Start a blog, like The Word Shed. I started this blog back in late 2015. Now it’s mid 2021. Creating and managing a blog is an easy way to make yourself known and approachable to potential readers. Engaging with your readers is really what it’s all about these days…understanding what they like, what they don’t like, answering their questions, arguing about details and plots and characters, etc. Your blog should steadily encourage others to post and as the blog manager, you should try to answer as many of these posts as possible. Running a blog is like creating and nurturing a little ecosystem of readers who read and write each other, all gathered around an interest in following and supporting you as an author. This is a potentially rich source of readers and growing your readership is what every author should be aiming for. I’ve seen my own grow since 2014, when my work first appeared online, to over 48,000 downloads. 2. Build and maintain an effective web site. This is one area where I could improve. I do have an author’ website. It’s at http://philbosshardt.wix.com/philip-bosshardt. But it needs updating badly as it doesn’t show but a fraction of my work. A good author’s website should offer a nonstop library-bookstore of all the author’s available work. Mike Shatzkin, of Digital Book World, offers this checklist: – List of all the author’s books, listed chronologically and by series – Landing page for each book, including the cover, a description, reviews, excerpts, links to retail sites and other important metadata that would help readers discover the title and decide to buy – Contact page so readers can easily send an email and get a response – Email capture – Social media buttons, so readers can easily sign up to follow the author on Twitter, etc. – Calendar with upcoming publication dates and scheduled public appearances – Page with links to articles and reviews by the author, as well as references to the author on blogs and in the press In addition to these things on an author website, Shatzkin recommends that authors all should have: – Up-to-date Amazon author page – Google Plus page (which is crucial for effective search engine optimization strategy) – Twitter and Facebook (optional) Seems like a lot of work but I believe it’s worth it, to give your readers a place to browse your work and make selections…and most important, to keep them coming back wanting more. 3. Join a writer’s group, or a critique group. I did a few years ago and it was a great decision. To hang out with people who loves books and writing and who are slaving away on their own projects, to give and take constructive criticism and tips and suggestions and pointers, is priceless. It makes you realize you’re really not alone in what can be a lonely occupation. Moreover, it’s a great way to network and meet people. The group I’m in meets once a week, every Wednesday and we are always doing some kind of writing and bringing something current to read. My group keeps me on my toes and doesn’t let me lag behind or slack off. 4. Attend writers’ conferences and conventions. Yet another way to meet and network. Plus they can be just plain fun. This may require travel, and so incurs the cost and time involved in that. But done expeditiously, with proper expectations, conferences and conventions can be a great outlet for your creative juices and may well inspire you with new ideas and new friends. Writers are actually human beings and have social needs just like everybody. Some of the best conventions are genre-related, like Mystery Writers of America or Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers and their World Cons. 5. Write reviews. In my own work, I’ve seen spikes in my downloads after recent reviews, spikes even in works not being reviewed. Good reviews and ratings are priceless but even bad reviews make your work noticed and notice is what it’s all about. Readers’ attention is a limited resource and it’s getting harder and harder to capture your share of that. Writing and receiving reviews (for Goodreads and others; there are dozens, if not more) is a great way to achieve notice, even notoriety. You may well find that your willingness to review another writer’s work can translate into others’ willingness to do the same…quid pro quo. Networking and promoting your author brand is essential in today’s literary marketplace and anything you can do along the lines of my five suggestions will help gain you the notice and the readers that we all want. The next post to The Word Shed comes on July 26 2021. See you then. Phil B.

Post #263 July 12 2021 “Five Reasons Why You Should Judge a Book by its Cover” In this post, I want to cover some reasons why book covers are so vital to selling books to readers, whether the books are print or ebook. We all judge books by their covers…because we have to, for some very good reasons I’ll enumerate. 1. A well-designed book cover represents the story in a condensed form. It encapsulates and projects the essence of a story in a way that you can take in instantly. 2. A good book cover appeals to your emotions or evokes a feeling. The cover should talk to your readers through typography, imagery and metaphor. Using my cover above, what feelings are evoked when you look at it? If I had done my homework right, you would be feeling a sinister presence right about now. Swamps are always scary places, where creepy things crawl out of the vines and grab your ankles. Skulls evoke a sense of dread, even death. Red type might make you think of blood and gore. 3. A good book cover should grab your attention immediately, even subliminally. You’re intrigued. Getting noticed in a crowded bazaar is a challenge for any author. Whatever you can do to intrigue the browsing buyer is usually a good idea…it’ll make them take a look, maybe even a second look. That’s what you want. 4. We’re already programmed by evolution to look for human faces and forms. Not all covers have people on them, but many do, even most of them. Why? Because we instinctively respond to human faces and forms…even dead ones. 5. The cover does something unexpected. Like Salvador Dali. I always think of Dali as the master of creepy art. You look at one of his paintings and you find yourself saying, “No. That just can’t be.” We’re used to patterns and Dali was a master at taking a simple visual pattern, something we see all the time, and inserting some object or twist that immediately jars you. You cock your head and rub your eyes, disbelieving. A good book cover often has something of the same effect, hopefully not as creepy, but enough to make you look twice and study it. 6. A good book cover should also be visually pleasing. Less is more. Simple and minimal. I have too many separate visual elements in my cover above, although I think your eye is naturally drawn to the skull. Maybe just the swamp alone…. 7. Here are some more tips I found from Writer’s Digest… 10 Tips for Effective Book Covers By: dmatriccino | February 17, 2011 As more authors opt for independent publishing routes, I’m getting more questions about secrets to good book design, production, and layout. Here are the 10 biggest things I learned about book cover design. Remember: Most people in book publishing believe that a cover is a book’s No. 1 marketing tool. 1. The title should be big and easy to read. This is more important than ever. (Many people will first encounter your cover on a screen, not on a shelf.) This is such a well-worn cliche of cover design that I have a designer friend with a Facebook photo album called “Make the Title Bigger.” 2. Don’t forget to review a thumbnail image of the cover. Is the cover compelling at a small size? More people are buying books on a Kindle or mobile device, so you want the cover to read clearly no matter where it appears. You should also anticipate what the cover looks like in grayscale. 3. Do not use any of the following fonts (anywhere!): Comic Sans or Papyrus. These fonts are only acceptable if you are writing a humor book, or intentionally attempting to create a design that publishing professionals will laugh at. 4. No font explosions! (And avoid special styling.) Usually a cover should not use more than 2 fonts. Avoid the temptation to put words in caps, italics caps, outlined caps, etc. Do not “shape” the type either. 5. Do not use your own artwork, or your children’s artwork, on the cover. There are a few rare exceptions to this, but let’s assume you are NOT one of them. It’s almost always a terrible idea. 6. Do not use cheap clip art on your cover. I’m talking about the stuff that comes free with Microsoft Word or other cheap layout programs. Quality stock photography is OK. (iStockPhoto is one reliable source for quality images.) 7. Do not stick an image inside a box on the cover. I call this the “T-shirt” design. It looks extremely amateurish. 8. Avoid gradients. It’s especially game-over if you have a cover with a rainbow gradient. 9. Avoid garish color combinations. Sometimes such covers are meant to catch people’s attention. Usually, it just makes your book look freakish. 10. Finally: Don’t design your own cover. The only people who should consider designing their own covers are professional graphic designers—and even then, it’s not advisable. Bonus tip: No sunrise photos, no sunset photos, no ocean photos, no fluffy clouds. So there you have it: some ideas on book covers. The next to post to The Word Shed comes on July 17. In this post, we’ll look at some good marketing tips for ebooks, from my own experience. See you then. Phil B.

Post #262 June 28 2021 “Plague is Done; Get Ready for Diaspora!” In the last few days, I have completely finished my latest book in The Farpool Stories. It’s called The Farpool: Plague. I plan to upload this new title on 2 July 2021. Look for it in the days to follow, at Smashwords.com and other fine ebook retailers. The next title in The Farpool Stories is called The Farpool: Diaspora. Almost all prep work is done and I expect to begin writing the first draft on or about 9 August 2021. With luck, this title will be done and ready to upload by the end of 2021 or early into 2022. Following is an excerpt from Chapter 1: Chapter 1 Aboard Europa Clipper Jupiter Orbit Insertion January 5, 2210 (Earth U.T.) Three days and a handful of hours after arriving in Jupiter orbit through the Atlantic Farpool, Europa Clipper had put in at Gateway Station for some light maintenance work and re-provisioning. Alicia Wu and Evgeni Kotlas were sitting at a table in the ship’s crew’s mess, nursing a few beers. Kotlas fiddled with the gain on the main viewer to bring Jupiter into full resolution. “Looks like a fuzzy beach ball,” Wu said. “With hair—“ Kotlas pronounced himself satisfied with the view. “Yeah, a beach ball with enough radiation to fry your pretty little brain in about two seconds.” “You’re assuming I have a brain…I checked mine at the recruiting station when I signed up for Farpool school.” It was a salmon-hued world, mottled and banded with oranges, reds, browns and ambers, a cauldron of clouds, storms and majestic seething turbulence. Alternating strips of light and dark wrapped the planet in a calico shroud and several small red spots boiled away in the north tropical zone, companions to the Great Red Spot in the south, a centuries-old hurricane churning since the time of Cromwell and King Charles. “Ten seconds to separation,” Sonora called. The captain scanned her boards and instruments, pronounced herself satisfied with what she saw. Europa Clipper was docked at the forward nose port of Gateway Station, a giant sausage stuck on a plate, secured to a kebab skewer, as Alicia Wu had termed it. “Three…two…one…separating now—“ There was a gentle shudder and the sound of capture latches releasing. Sonora pulsed Clipper’s aft thrusters and the ship backed off at a stately pace, eventually settling into a co-orbiting position several thousand meters from the Station. Below them, Europa turned like a cracked golf ball, dimpled, rutted with deep ice canyons and odd brown streaks. As Clipper backed away, the huge banded disk of Jupiter itself poked over the Europan horizon, at a crazy angle. The moon was in a three-and-a-half-day orbit about the giant planet, averaging three quarters of a million kilometers above her cloud tops, bathed in hard radiation. Miriam Sonora was glad Clipper and Gateway both maintained active rad defensive shielding and emitters. Otherwise, they would have all been fried to cinders days ago. For several days after departing Gateway, Europa Clipper coursed through the Jovian skies in a steeply inclined orbit, skirting the shoals and reefs of her radiation belts, until at last they found the first of several holes in the sheath of charged particles. Captain Sonora passed the word to all hands that the ship was about to begin a series of maneuvers which would end up bringing them into orbit around Europa. Clipper dropped to a lower orbit through the first of these holes, like navigating a minefield in a wartime harbor. After a few days had passed, the ship settled into orbit half a million kilometers above the cloud tops. By now, the planet filled nearly a third of the sky and hundreds of frothing spicules and cells of gas swept by beneath them. The speed of its rotation flattened Jupiter at the poles and widened it to a bulge at the equator. Ferocious winds resulted and they smeared the columns of gas into all sorts of grotesque and beautiful shapes. Wu and the rest of the crew that came by the crew’s mess watched the scenery below for hours at a time. Wu found herself transfixed by the ever-shifting palette of colors and shapes. She could well imagine the planet’s visible face as a giant’s palette, where Nature worked as the artist to create an ever-changing panorama of colors, forms and brush strokes. In time, Clipper made her way into orbit about Europa. Clipper’s pilot, Reynaldo Diaz, joined some of the crew in the mess compartment, as the cracked billiard-ball of a world turned slowly below them. “Gives me the creeps,” Casey Winans said. She shuddered involuntarily and sucked at her drink. “All those cracks are seams in the ice plates,” Belket klu kel: Om’t marveled. “And to think that’s where we’re going, right into one of those seams.” “And below—“ added Sonora. She decided it was time to finish up their final briefings and get ready for the landing. “All right, boys and girls, all hands lay aft to the Service deck. I want to go over last-minute details before we head down.” The briefing lasted half an hour…. Okay, so that’s the excerpt. I hope you’ll like the final result and I hope the excerpt whets your appetite to learn more about the world of The Farpool Stories. My final title in this series, after Plague and Diaspora, will be called The Farpool: Destiny (likely available sometime in the middle of 2022). That will make a total of eight stories in the overall arc. That’s enough for me. The Word Shed will take a brief hiatus for a mid-summer vacation next week. There won’t be a post for July 5, due to the holiday. The next post to The Word Shed comes on July 12, 2021. See you then and have a great holiday. Phil B.

Post #261 June 21 2021 “The Plague is Coming!” In the last week, I finished the first draft of my sf novel The Farpool: Plague. It comes in at 225 pages and about 123,000 words. What’s next? The real work begins. I keep a file called Next Steps for every project I do. It tells me what I have done and what still needs to be done. Below, I’ve reproduced this file for the current project…. 1. Complete any needed expansion of Story Outline, and Sequence of Events. DONE 2. Re-read all titles in The Farpool Stories for continuity with new stories DONE 3. Complete List of Major Players DONE 4. Background and personality sketches on major characters DONE 5. Details on medical/biological effects of the Purple and medbot interventions DONE 6. Write Chapter and Scene Details (2195 CE) DONE 7. Started first draft: 5 April 2021 8. Finished first draft: 10 June 2021 9. Review and edit final 10. Spellcheck 11. Book descriptions 12. Tag lines 13. Word 97 version 14. Set all text to Normal and enforce my styles 15. Verify cover format USE JPEG! 16. Projected upload date: 2 July 2021 From this, you can see I’m proposing to have this work finished and ready to upload to Smashwords by 2 July. This list is to remind me of all the things, after writing, that need to be done to finish a project. I’m currently on #9. So, there is still a lot of work to be done. And the job is somewhat more difficult in that this book is #6 in the series The Farpool Stories and there are 2 more to come. Just preserving continuity with earlier works is a big job in itself. Once the book file and cover file are in good shape, the job turns to marketing efforts. Smashwords offers a lot of recommendations on how to market ebooks. I’ll cover a few here that I like to follow. First, consider including an excerpt from the next novel at the end of this one. This is a form of pre-selling, or maybe whetting a potential reader’s appetite. Of course, this also means you have to have written enough of the upcoming work to make an excerpt. That has not been done yet…one more thing to do. Another marketing idea from Smashwords is to do your upload at a strategic time, ideally just before a major holiday, or even just on a Thursday or a Friday. The idea behind this is that it is during these periods that prospective readers will have more time to browse and come across your work. In my experience, this works pretty well. A third recommendation is to do what I’m doing right here…pre-notifying all my blog readers that something is coming. Also, you should do some of this on your web site and also on Facebook if you have an account, which I don’t yet. All of these ideas are good ways to get the word out that you’ve got something new coming and there’s even more new stuff after this. Pretty much anything that gets your name into the minds of readers is a good thing (like a review in Goodreads). As mentioned, The Farpool: Plague is title #6 in my series The Farpool Stories. As of mid-April 2021, this series had garnered 6587 downloads. That means I potentially have a ready-made audience who might be interested in any new works in this series. Anything I can do to let them know of new titles coming is a good thing. So, here’s the moral of the story: Just finishing the first draft of a book is only the beginning. What follows is at least as important to your success as doing the storytelling in the first place. Don’t skimp on it. The next post to The Word Shed comes on June 28, 2021 See you then. Phil B.

Post #260 June 14 2021 “Researching a Novel…or Just the Facts, Ma’am” Nobody writes a novel without doing some kind of research. It can be detailed and extensive or barebones, but if you want to be taken seriously, you’d better get your facts straight. Currently I’m into researching, planning and outlining for my next sf novel The Farpool: Diaspora. I’ve got electronic and real folders for character bios and backgrounds, book covers, Earth circa 22nd century, Human-Coethi conflict and Jupiter/Europa details, plus a variety of additional files and notes. At this moment, I’m developing background and bios for major characters (but not all of them). The great question for any storyteller or novelist is how much research is enough? How much detail is enough? There is a term—verisimilitude—that writers sometimes use. It means ‘resemblance to the truth.’ No storyteller tells a story with all possible details. He’d be writing or reciting an encyclopedia instead of a story. The storyteller chooses details selectively to enhance the story and give it a flavor of being real. You should include just enough detail to transport your reader into your imaginary world and ground him there, believing that all this could in fact have happened. Which means that you do enough research to provide enough detail to achieve verisimilitude. In practical terms, that means you have to do a bit more research than you ultimately might use. As an author, writing about how a character feels or might react to a situation, I want to be able to pick and choose details to explain, illustrate or dramatize the situation in such a way as to put the reader right there in the character’s shoes. Little details can matter, especially if a reader has some experience with the subject matter. When I wrote The Farpool, I used the term valsalva maneuver to describe something that scuba divers do to clear their ears and sinuses when experiencing pressure changes. The concept was relevant to the story and I had to use it accurately to maintain verisimilitude. I had to research it to know what I was talking about. And I’m sure some of my readers are well familiar with this technique and would have bitten their lips in anguish or firebombed my house if I had used the term incorrectly. I should add that I’ve never scuba dived a day in my life. Ernest Hemingway once said all writers should have a built-in bullshit detector. Why? Because all readers have a built-in bullshit detector. What about science fiction stories, where the writer is taking us to worlds and times and alien cultures that have never existed anywhere outside the writer’s imagination? Here again, the details have to read true, sound true and feel true. And they have to be internally consistent. Often, the littlest detail—what someone ate for dinner last night, how they dressed for descending into that cave, what it felt like when they landed on the icy surface of Europa—if done right, can connect with the reader in just the right way and they’ll find themselves saying: “Yeah…I can believe it would happen like that!” Author Tom Young, writer of many well-regarded military thrillers, writes in Writer’s Digest some tips to follow when researching a story: 1. Write what you know (personal experience has a value all its own) 2. You can do research on the cheap (that’s why we have Wikipedia and libraries) 3. You can find anything on YouTube 4. You can find things anywhere. Keep pen and notepad nearby during all waking hours. 5. Use all your senses 6. You can leave things out. I particularly like Young’s advice about number 6 above. To quote: “If you do thorough research, you’ll find more material than you need, and no reader likes a data dump. In my own writing, I could bore you to death with the details of aircraft and weapons. But a very good creative writing professor once advised me to let the reader “overhear” the tech talk. Say, if my character punches off a HARM missile that might sound authentic and pretty scary. But scary would turn to dull if I stopped the action to tell you that HARM stands for High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile, which homes in on anti-aircraft missile radars. Who cares? The damn thing goes boom.” In other words, a little bit of detail can go a long way if it’s chosen properly and used correctly. But it’s still necessary. You still have to do the research to dig out that little nugget and save it for the right moment in the story. Researching is ultimately about being prepared, ready to write the story with the flair and power that will grab the reader and pull them into your imaginary world and strand them there for the duration. The best stories, the most memorable stories, have memorable characters and memorable settings and details. Anyone remember the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey? The next post to The Word Shed will come on June 21, 2021. See you then. Phil B.

Post #259 May 31, 2021 “Just One More Page: Setting SMART Goals for Writing” In previous posts to The Word Shed, I have said many times that my usual daily goal as a writer is to complete 3-5 pages. This is true for any story I’m writing, whether a novel, novelette or short story. It’s an aspirational goal that I usually achieve okay and it keeps me moving toward completing whatever project I’m working on. Which brings me to the topic for this post: how to set goals for yourself as a writer. I’m indebted to the fine folks at writers.com for the following guidelines on how to set goals for yourself as a writer…. Be S.M.A.R.T. with your writing goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant & Time-bound. SPECIFIC …means the goal is easily identifiable and simple. Let’s take writing goal examples like wanting to write a screenplay or a novel. If you want that kind of lofty goal, you could easily be overwhelmed because it’s not only too big, it’s also too vague. Instead, make a goal of writing for an hour a day, or a specific word-count, or page count. Be as specific as possible. Unclear, over-reaching goals are rarely attained. If you don’t set specific writing goals, you’re unlikely to reach them. It’s all about taking those larger goals and making a plan, knocking them out step by step so you aren’t overwhelmed. MEASURABLE …means you can identify clearly when the goal is accomplished or how much you have left to do to cross it off your list. If you’re setting a goal of writing five pages a day, but you’re only meeting it half the time, you either need to up your game or adjust your goal. We’ll touch more on being realistic in goal setting in the next section. Bottom-line, creating a measurable goal will help you understand how to set the time aside to complete it. ATTAINABLE …simply means the goal is realistic and you aren’t setting yourself up for failure. Note, we’ve also seen the ‘A’ be defined as Actionable. Use actions verbs to define the goal, and then act on them. Nothing kills a goal faster than failing at it right out of the gate. If you say you’re going to write 20 pages a day while working a day job and raising a family, chances are you’ll fall flat on your face, beat yourself up and possibly stop writing altogether. You can’t be a better writer if you aren’t giving yourself time to put the words on the page. But even if you do set a lofty goal of 20 pages a day, there’s no shame in readjusting your expectations. Is adjusting your goal downward giving up? No. Re-evaluating is smart (no pun intended). In war, Generals re-evaluate and adjust their strategies. In parenting, mothers and fathers always re-evaluate their skills and practices in order to raise healthy children. In our day jobs, our bosses re-evaluate us and we re-evaluate ourselves so we can get more accomplished in less time. Changing gears is part of life, and those who can adapt best, survive. There’s no shame in moving the bar for your goals to an attainable one, even if all you’re doing is writing 15 minutes a day. That alone keeps the story in your mind even when you’re not in front of a keyboard. There’s zero point in setting a goal that isn’t achievable. RELEVANT …means the goal is directly related to your overall vision of your life or career. Some people also define the ‘R’ as Realistic. If your goal is to be a successful author, you need to create an author platform, build a website, write blog posts, and still have time to write your novels or screenplays. So if you create a goal of writing a 1200-word blog post every day for your new website, you won’t have time to write the novels or scripts that actually make you a marketable writer. Set realistic and relevant goals that enhance your overall objectives instead of distracting you from them. TIME-BOUND …means you can identify a period of time a goal can be reached and be able to schedule it into your days. On-going goals are ones like “Write an hour a day.” Yes, you can say that’s “time-bound” because if you don’t write today, you didn’t meet your goal. But you should also have other truer time-bound goals, such as having an outline done in 30 days, or finishing the first act by the end of the week. Those mini-goals of the bigger objective help you stay on track and keep your motivation. The other importance of having time-bound goals is to stay sharp on the practice of how to meet deadlines Goal setting is essential to become a better writer. Set your writing goals today. And I might add that, as my goal is 3-5 pages a day, I enjoy seeing the physical stack of paper pile up. That’s a rewarding visual indicator that I’m doing something, that I’m actually achieving my goal. That in itself can be a powerful motivator. Make a plan. Set up your goals as the SMART people at writers.com have suggested and write them down on a calendar. Then get to work. The Word Shed will take a one-week hiatus for the Memorial Day holiday. The next post comes on June 14, 2021. Have a great holiday and remember our veterans and all they have done for us. See you then, Phil B