How Do You Gauge Your Creative Success?

The small uplift of finishing and framing these four paintings echoed through my life these past weeks, as so many other things dragged at my attention. I received so much from this act of honoring my art in this way—and it’s been a few years in the making, so my honoring wasn’t easy. It helps me, as we enter a very challenging new year, to have art in my close view. A way of saying yes, I am making art. Yes, I am making a difference in the world.

Do you feel that way about your writing, or whatever creative work you pursue? Despite the static around you, do you listen to the uplift your writing creates?

We creative folks hear so much static that tries to drag us away from creating. We hear how we should gauge our creative success. How our art cannot make a difference in the world right now. I disagree—strongly!

One more reason not to be put off from your creative goals, especially right now.

Setting goals that really matter

I’m learning that any act of creative effort is worthwhile. Anything that brings truth or beauty into a chaotic world means a lot. Maybe not in terms of the world’s view of success. But if I count up the reactions from friends who have seen my little quartet of framed paintings, how they told me the beauty lifted them from a funk, I consider my work useful.

So, let’s get to the second step of setting goals that really count in our lives today.

Last week we explored the first step of my goal-setting process: reviewing and honoring the efforts made this past year. Assessing what actually worked. What didn’t. What changed.

The purpose: Letting go of perceived mistakes and reframing your experience in a positive light. Which lends encouragement and enthusiasm to the new round of goals.

Maybe you got some ideas about what would make you feel fully satisfied with your writing life. Maybe you even wrote down some ideas. But how do you manifest them? How do you make them flexible enough to shift as you grow?

That’s what we’ll cover this week: the secret to actually achieving goals. A super simple technique, one I use for all my goals, and I can confidently say I chart my success as a writer directly from it.

Three questions

Last week I used three questions that help me revisit the past year and acknowledge both my achievements and my not-quite’s. I spend 20-30 minutes writing down the answers to these,

1. What did I intend?

2. What actually got done?

3. What did I learn for my next steps?

Once you answer these, you can start considering the year ahead, again with three questions that point to the future, plus one additional to make sure you are able to manifest what you’re dreaming.

The three questions for this week’s exercise are:

1. What do I want to accomplish?

2. What steps will each goal need?

3. What resources will the goal require?

Once again, I’m sharing my own steps so you have a template. Go your own way, of course. Use my example as fuel.

Question 1: What do I want to accomplish?

After I reviewed my writing in 2025, looking back on where I was last January, honoring my efforts and my “oh well’s,” I began thinking ahead. I chose three goals to consider for the next twelve months. They are big goals for me right now, because I’m still recovering from the burnout of publishing two novels in eighteen months. One of them is a marketing goal, which may or may not work, depending on how much recovery my marketing brain gets.

Also, these goals are as concrete as I know right now. They could change—and they probably will—but they serve as a good start.

1. Send out five individual stories from my short-story collection to lit journals.

2. Revise the collection manuscript from my beta reader feedback.

3. Maybe outline or plan another novel or the next writing craft book I have ideas for.

If I look at just these wishes, I get instantly overwhelmed. I might have some ideas, some excitement, but mostly I feel they are too weighty for me right now. They won’t be easy. I do like that they run different pathways through my writing life: the first is a marketing goal—to send out stories; the second is about revision; and the third is a kind of dreaming goal, a goal of exploration.

No matter whether I feel overwhelmed or excited, I must do my next step: to break the goals down into small steps. That way I can accurately test them for how possible they’ll be and how well they’ll fit my needs and desires right now.

Again, this test step is about getting as authentic as possible to what matters to me at the core, not just what I think I should do with my writing life.

Question 2: What steps will each goal need?

When I look at these three goals, I first brainstorm about the steps each will need—breaking the goal into mini-goals, or smaller achievements that lead to my big goal. I can’t really deal well with a huge goal until I break it into small ones.

Here’s what I came up with for the first big goal, sending stories to lit mags:

1. Decide which stories are ready to submit and revise as needed (this ties into goal #2).

2. Get savvy on the submission app, Sub Club, and compare it to Duotrope—decide on one submission log and use it consistently. Right now I’m settled with Duotrope but a classmate last year really loved Sub Club and its additional features so I want to learn it.

3. Use Sub Club to research venues for each of the five stories. Read back issues, get to know the pub. Ask my writer friends if they’ve had experience with that pub.

4. Design a submission schedule and begin to submit.

Question 3: What resources will the goal require?

It’s very hard on my creative self-confidence to promise myself time for a goal and not keep my promise. I start to unconsciously believe the goal isn’t worth it or I’m not trustworthy. If the goal feels right and continues to feel right as I work the steps, the next thing to plan is what kind of help and resources will keep me going if the risk feels too much.

1. Take some kind of generative fiction class online this winter, one that’s low stress but keeps me writing and reading. This is more important than it sounds—it also puts me in community with other writers who may give me new ideas of places to submit.

2. Contact my writing friend who told me about Sub Club if I need to ask questions.

3. Reach out to my writing group and writing partner for regular checkins if needed.

4. Work The Artist’s Way again—just to keep myself accountable.

Bonus step: Time, place, and freedom to create

Even though I’m retired from actively working for money, I have to deliberately schedule writing tasks along with working out and attending yoga class, dog care, family and friends, a new diet I’m trying, getting enough sleep, and so much more—and that’s just winter time when the garden, my other obsession, is quiet.

You probably experience a similar onslaught of activities and demands each day, even more if you’re parenting or working full time.

Goal setting is fine, but it doesn’t amount to much if you don’t give yourself permission to take time for the work of achieving the goals, right? To get that permission also from those around you, so you have privacy and space and time. To consciously schedule your writing time so it counts as much as anything else.

I’m asking myself two questions, as I do this:

1. Where will I work on my goals? My work will mostly be online, on my computer. I know that I write best when I’m alone, so my choices are easy: (1) when my spouse, a musician, is at the studio, or (2) when I can go to the local library or coffee shop with my laptop.

2. When will I work on my goals? I write best in the morning. I like to schedule dedicated writing time two or three days a week, at this point in my creative life. I journal every day but laptop time is best (for me) early in the day and on certain days. Next, out comes the calendar. I’m already at the gym or yoga class on certain weekdays so it’d be easy to bring lunch and just go to the library or coffee shop afterwards.

This was a great test for me. I definitely felt more kinship with the second goal—revising my manuscript—than the last one. I saw very clearly where my energy will need to go, if I pursue each of these. Now I’ll spend more time contemplating the work ahead, weighing it against how much energy I have, figuring out my support system for these risks.

If this approach to goal setting for your writing year ahead intrigues you, our exercise this week takes you through the steps. And remember, this week—make some art! Do some writing! Contribute beauty to the world, in some small way.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Here are your three questions for this week:

1. What changes would I like to see in my writing life?

2. What new things do I want to learn and explore?

3. What would I like to let go of, that’s not working anymore?

Use my responses above as a template as you think about your own new year’s writing goals.

And here’s an unusual resource to check out.

Nanowrimo revision notebook

Share your questions and insights!