It’s the holiday season, which means one thing above all else: this is the time of year when slogans and cheesy inspirational sayings are all the rage. Phrases like, “the best present is being present,” and “a goal without a plan is just a dream,” permeate our cultural consciousness as people come together to celebrate their religious holidays and the New Year.

Last year, at the end of 2017, I was preparing to sign a contract with my first (and only!) literary agent and was eagerly awaiting feedback from Hallmark Publishing on my recent submission, The Christmas Company. And during my first meeting with Rebecca Angus (my lovely agent), I remember her asking, “What are your goals?”

At the time, this question completely caught me off guard. As an extremely new author, I figured that the goals were to get an agent and to get published, right? I had vague dreams of seeing my book on the shelf in a real store, but other than that, I hadn’t the slightest clue.

A little embarrassed at not having a real answer for her, after we finished our phone call, I picked up the nearest notebook and pen and scribbled at the top of my notebook: WRITING GOALS FOR THE NEXT FIVE YEARS. I wrote those out, and they included some of those pipe dreams of mine, such as being on the shelf in a bookstore and getting a starred review in a trade publication, but they also included more concrete things, such as “Write a high-fantasy romance,” and “Write that World War II Romance I’ve Always wanted to Write.”

With those goals in mind, I turned to another page and wrote, in big, scrawling letters, “GOALS FOR 2018.” And before I wrote those down, I decided to only write down the ones that would help me get to my goals that I had set out for the next five years. My 2018 were:

1. Finish four full-length novels (or three fulls and a novella).
2. Sell all three books already submitted to Rebecca.
3. Find a critique partner and solicit feedback on each of the completed manuscripts.

And you know what, reader? As of yesterday, I accomplished all of those writing goals! I posted on twitter about finishing my fourth manuscript of the year yesterday, and after a few inquiring DM’s and tweets, I thought that I would share with you how I did it in the hopes that maybe it will also help you in 2019!

Step One: Planning for 2019 Actually Begins in 2018. 

In order to get the most out of your year, I highly recommend sitting down sometime between now and The New Year to plan your writing year for 2018. This way, you can hit the ground running on January first and go into the year with a plan in mind. In the frantic rush of the holiday season, I know it’s difficult to find time for yourself and your writing career, but trust me on this. Taking fifteen minutes before bed every night for a few nights to plot out your future will be extremely beneficial to your 2019 productivity.

Step Two: Creating Realistic Goals is Key. 

Everyone is different and every writer is different. As a grad student who had her mornings free to freelance and work on her books, I was lucky enough to have the time to write as much as I did this year, but the same might not be realistic if I was working a full-time job or if I had a house full of children! The key to making goals and keeping them is to know your limits, know your schedule, and push only a little bit further than you’re comfortable going. Your mental health, time with your family, and overall well-being is NOT worth a little bit of social media street cred, so when you make your goals, ensure that they’re realistic for you and your situation. Nothing makes you want to give up on your goals faster than thinking they are impossible.

Also, make sure your goals are specific. In my goals, I specifically wrote out that I wanted all of my full-length novels to be over 60,000 words, and this helped with planning my writing schedule!

Step Three: Build an Action Plan and Write it Out

After I made my realistic goals, I sat down with my 2018 calendar and blocked out my “no writing days.” This included things like my birthday, visits home when I didn’t want to spend time away from my family to write, Christmas, etc., and these days were vital to keeping me on track. By knowing what days I wouldn’t be writing, I was able to calculate how many days I did have to write.  This was especially important for me because from July to the beginning of October, I had a dissertation to write for my Master’s program, which meant no fiction writing for me!

From there, I made a chart in my notebook about what kinds of books I wanted to write. I knew I wanted to write two sweet romances around 70,000 words and two longer works around 85,000 words, and knowing that meant I was able to better plan out what book I would be writing when.

With my calendar (and the help of Scrivener’s word count/deadline tool!), I mapped out my “deadlines” for each book, writing out how much time I would budget for brainstorming and note-carding, as well as how much time I would budget for writing. Once this was completed, I had a full writing plan for the year. For example, below is the blocked out writing period for Edge of a Star, the first novel I wrote in 2018.

The action plan includes both the calendar portion, but also a word count plan, so that every day you know exactly how many words you’re writing in order to stay on track. Scrivener has been a huge help for me in this regard, but you can do it any way that’s helpful to you!

Step Four: Find an Accountability Partner

Some people use twitter, some people use their fiancé’s, but everyone should have an accountability partner! Basically, at the beginning of 2018, I asked my fiancé to ask me, every day when he got home, how many words I’d written, if I’d met my writing goal, and what I’d written that day. Not only did it give us good dinner conversation, but it also helped me stay accountable and helped me stay excited about the work I was doing.

Further, on days when I didn’t meet my writing goal (or days when I didn’t write at all!), it was nice to have someone to talk to about it, so I wasn’t stuck in my own head. Having a support system is incredibly important to achieving your goals!

Step Five: Find the Strategies that Work for You and for the Book (or Project!) You’re Writing

Every book is a special snowflake. Or, perhaps more accurately, every book is a complex puzzle crafted by the devil to make us work hard. But, either way, part of achieving your goals is making sure you know how to approach that book! For me, the two things that helped were

1. Creating a rough outline of the shape of the book, even if that shape was, “These are the 20,000 words were they meet,  these are the 40,000 words were they go on a quest together and fall in love, and these are the 20,000 words where he succumbs to his hubris, screws things up and they have a war but also eventually fall back in love.”
2. Making a stack of notecards, each one representing a different chapter in the book. Because I know how long my chapters tend to be (2,300 to 3,000 words on the long end,) I can usually track how many chapters a given novel with a given word count tend to have. This means that I can create a stack of notecards wherein each notecard represents a chapter and has information about that chapter written on it. (Usually the chapter number, the character POV of that chapter, and a brief description of the conflict of that chapter and what each character is trying to get out of that scene.) These come in handy when I’m stuck or have writer’s block, because it means that I can remind myself of where the story is moving or allow myself to go and work on a different chapter since I know I can always come back to chapters I’ve skipped!

Step Six: Work Hard, but Forgive Yourself 

This has been the hardest lesson I have had to teach myself. When you set a goal, it can feel like the end of the world to fall behind. I always get very blame-y, which often leads to me writing when I’m ill or on a train (or on my phone in the bathroom of my fiancé’s family’s house while we’re trying to have a family dinner…), but let me tell you right now: if you don’t want to get burned out and lose sight of your goals completely, you have to learn to forgive yourself and how to let go of those temporary hiccups. Tomorrow is another day to tell your story, and you can absolutely seize that opportunity!

Step Seven: Celebrate All of Your Success!

By December 31 this year, I will have written 346, 216 words, across five manuscripts, four of which are completed. If I include my dissertation, that number becomes 362,967 words. And that’s so exciting! It’s incredible to feel that I wrote so much, especially considering that this time last year, I didn’t know if anyone would even want to read what I wrote!

But, the real thing to celebrate isn’t how many books you write or how many words you get on the page. The real thing to celebrate is the goals you make and the goals you keep! Best of luck to all of you in this new year and happy writing! I can’t wait to see all of the wonderful things you create in 2019!

---

Alys Murray is the author of the Hallmark novel, The Christmas Company, available in-store from Target, Walmart, Meijer, select Hallmark Gold Crown stores, and from the fine retailers below. 

Amazon: amzn.to/2E956Ht
B&N: bit.ly/2C3KGNp
Hallmark: https://bit.ly/2R9qpL9

Walmart: https://bit.ly/2T6c42P

Additionally, in 2019, Alys will be releasing Tea and a Cowboy from The Wild Rose Press, as well as Society Girl from Entangled. 

Let’s face it. Characters are hard. Deciding to write about one is hard. Coming up with a name is hard. Making them do stuff and have that stuff matter is hard. Characters are hard because people are hard; characters are difficult because people are difficult. In real life, people are complex and varied and while small glimpses and interactions aren’t enough to explain who they are, who they are defines how they operate in those small glimpses and interactions.

So, when I’m developing a character for a new book, I like to go off-script. While there are tons of websites that will give you development questions like “what is their favorite color” and “what are their fears,” I like to also think about those little, small, tiny details that may never come up in my story, but that could absolutely define a character. Today, I wanted to share some of those questions with you!

1. Do they wear socks in bed? Would they want to sleep in the same bed as someone who does? Why or why not?
2. What Hogwarts House would they sort themselves into? What Hogwarts House would they actually be in? If the answers are different, what causes them to see themselves different than how they actually are?
3. Do they think hotdogs are sandwiches? Why or why not?
4. How would they answer The Trolley Problem?
5. How long could they play a single game of Monopoly before giving up out of boredom or throwing a temper tantrum and leaving the game in a fit of anger?
6. What is (or would be) their favorite ride at Disney World or a similar theme park? Why?
7. Would they rather shiver or sweat? Why?
8. Are they a “Happy Holidays,” or “Merry Christmas” kind of person? Why?
9. Regular milk, milk substitute, chocolate milk, strawberry milk or no milk? Why?
10. Star Wars, Star Trek, Neither or Both? Why? (Nota Bene: This one can also be a variation, like would they rather have a lightsaber, a sword or a phaser?)
11. If they had to watch one movie for twenty-four hours straight, what would it be and why?
12. What’s that one movie from their childhood that they know doesn’t hold up, but they can’t help but love it anyway and will defend it to the death from anyone who says it’s not good anymore?
13. Do they vote? Why or why not? And if the answer is no, do they realize that their answer is stupid?
14. What book is on their bedside table right now and are they actually reading it? If they aren’t actively reading it, why is it still on their bedside table?
15. Will they eat raw cookie dough? Why or why not?
16. Do they think the Hades and Persephone myth is romantic/cool or dark and weird?
17. What’s their position on plastic straws?
18. What’s the one story that they tell over and over again but they get so excited when they tell it that no one has the heart to say, “yeah, we know, we’ve heard this one a million times?”
19. Halloween or Christmas?
20. Do they love seeing the last stars disappear in the morning or seeing the first stars come out at night?
21. Do they love the smell of fire? Why or why not?
22. Did they ever read or watch Winnie the Pooh as a kid? If so, what was the biggest lesson they learned?
23. On the Winnie the Pooh note, what character do they most identify with? Why? What character would other people identify them as? Why?
24. What would they do if a flight attendant spilled a full drink in their lap?
25. What is their opinion on crowdfunding?
26. Are they Lifetime people or Hallmark people?
27. What was the last show they stayed up all night watching? (Or book they stayed up all night reading, album they spent a week listening to, etc.)
28. Are they the kind of person who leaves a sporting event if their team is winning by a huge margin (or, conversely, if their team is being blown out)?
29. Would they watch a scary movie on their own?
30. Stairs, escalators, or elevators?

All of these questions may seem silly, but they can (and have!) generated really interesting characters and exciting developments in my stories! It’s the little things that make up people and their quirks and personalities. The same thing is true of characters.

In one of my favorite musicals of all time, Passing Strange, there is a song called “Church Blues Revelation/Freight Train.” And that song, written by Stew and Heidi Rodewald, includes one of my favorite lyrics ever written in the English language. It goes as follows:

Music is the freight train in which God travels. Bang! It does its thang and then my soul unravels. Heals like holy water and it fights all my battles. Music is the freight train in which God travels.

And ever since I first heard this lyric at the tender age of fifteen (eight whole years ago, because I’m now, as my fifteen year old self would have said, so old) I’ve believed it to be true. I believe that God (and the things I think he stands for, like love and goodness, forgiveness and hope, peace and faith, etc.,) does travel to us and communicate through us, and it can completely unravel our souls.

Which is why I take music so seriously when it comes to my writing. Because my books (romance novels) are so deeply intertwined with ideals of love and hope, I want my soul to be as unravelled as possible when I’m writing it, which means finding the perfect music to do that unravelling.

I’ve seen some literary types on twitter who bemoan “those lady writers” who spend hours perfecting their pinterest boards for their books or finding just the right kind of tea or scented candle to get them in the writing mood, and that really bums me out because it’s clear that these kinds of people don’t get it.

Making art is hard. And sometimes, being in the presence of art (whether that’s something as simple as a candle or complex as an aria) is enough to give us the courage to keep going with that difficult endeavor. Listening to the perfect playlist prepares me to create. It transports me to the world I’m meant to be writing in. It makes me braver.

It unravels my soul.

If you’re interested in the kind of music that unravels my soul, I’ve embedded the spotify playlist for my upcoming release, The Christmas Company (available for paperback and e-book pre-order on Amazon, B&N, Indiebound, and The Ripped Bodice now, also available in Target and Walmart on October 16th) down below. These were the songs I’d listen to in order to hear my novel’s voice, and I hope it gets you in the mood for some Christmas Magic.

Listen to my playlist for The Christmas Company here!