The problem with achieving a goal is that writing it down may leave you paralyzed. It seems too big, too unattainable. “How am I going to publish a novel?” you think. And since you don’t know where to start, you don’t.

One of the first things I did when I got serious about writing for publication was to make it a rule that I did some action every day to move me towards my goal. Market research, working on a story, writing a query letter, getting a proposal proofed and mailed, these all count as daily actions. If you aren’t doing the daily actions, you’ll never reach the long-term goal. On the flip side, if you fill up your days with the wrong actions (all research but never actually writing) you’ll never get there, either. The key to achieving a long-term goal is in what you do on a daily basis.

Let’s use this example of achieving a goal with the action broken down. You’ve decided you want to write for Harlequin Blaze, and you want to write two books a year for them. You have a realistic idea of how much time that will take and what you’ll earn. You’ve analyzed your time and you know the time it takes to write 2 books of this length per year is achievable. You’ve read the line and you know you could write books like that. You could see yourself doing this for the next 2-5 years, the foreseeable future.

First, you work on an idea that you think could fit in with the blurbs you’re reading on the backs of current and recent releases. You write a synopsis for your story. You do research. You write the first three chapters. Now you have a proposal, a synopsis and three chapters. (If you don’t know how to write a synopsis or where to begin your chapters, the eHarlequin site has an entire section dedicated on learning to write. Use it!) You can either submit your partial with a query letter, or you can continue to write the entire book before submitting your query.

If it’s your first book, finishing it comes before selling it. If you’ve written a few, then you might be better off seeing if anybody bites before you invest the time in completing the book. It’s a big investment of your time and energy.

Here’s a closer look at the goal and breakdown:
Goal: write a Blaze, sell it to Harlequin
1. Make sure idea fits with books currently and recently released from the line (aka Market Research)
2. Develop synopsis. Use resources as needed to write the synopsis.
3. Research the book so you have the background you need to write.
4. Write the first three chapters.
a. Figure average length of Blaze: 55-60K
b. Divide this into average page length/chapter length
c. Determine goal for each chapter’s length
e. Determine how many days with the time you have it will take to reach the 3-chapter milestone: at 4 pages a day, about two weeks for this example.
f. Each day for those two weeks, average 4 pages.
5. Query with proposal
a. Write query letter
b. Find correct address
c. Print and proof proposal carefully
d. Mail proposal and mark calendar with date sent and average response time
6. Develop another idea that fits with current titles releasing.
7. Continue to write 4 pages a day until book is complete.
8. Revise and edit book to best of ability.

Repeat steps for 2nd idea.

Your first attempt may not fly. Your second or third might. If you really want to sell to Blaze, the first no doesn’t mean failure. It means try again. But whatever you do, break the goal down into steps you can achieve with daily action, and make time each day to work towards that goal.

You might also decide at what point you’ll reassess your goal and see if you need to make changes. Maybe the craft is not really up to publishable level and it’s time to take some classes. Maybe your ideas would fit better somewhere else, another line, or even another genre. It takes persistence to achieve a goal, but it also takes flexibility to be open to achieving your goal (publish a novel) in another way.