One of the best ways to become a highly committed writer is to get into the habit of determining your three long-term writing goals at the beginning of a new year. In other words, you should decide which writing goals you should complete in the next three to six months? For instance: • Do you want to become a published book author? OR • Do you want to publish articles? OR • Do you want to make enough money from your blogs to be able to become a full-time writer? To accurately determine your long-term goals will take reflection and forethought. I have devised a worksheet for this purpose. I will include them on Wednesday for your reflection. It should serve as a brainstorming worksheet that will help to determine your long-term goals. During the first brainstorm exercise, you should list all the writing goals you want to accomplish, both in the short-term and long-term. You don’t have to be selective at this point. Instead, just try to have fun with this process. The second page of this package for Worksheet A will ask to choose 3 specific writing goals to focus on for the next quarter. You should take a substantial amount of time to reflect about your choices at this point because you don’t want to focus on the wrong goals. It is best to spend a week or more reflecting on this question. Once you decide on your 3 writing goals, you should prioritize them and choose which ones to commit to over the next months and weeks. Be as specific as possible. Once you’ve determined your long-term goals, you could easily determine the short-term goals you need to achieve these three long-term goals. For instance, you should ask yourselves what part of your main writing goal you’d like to accomplish this week to bring you closer to completing one of your long-term goals. Once you determine your next steps, you should write them down in your weekly planner. The Worksheets in Wednesday’s reflective post will help to put these goals in place. Once these goals are written down for the week, you should tack the sheet above your workstation or computer. This will take the guess-work out of what you should be working on when you sit down to write. But more importantly, you will be focusing on the most important goals and writing projects every day. And there is no better recipe for success. Irene S. Roth Author and Editor