“SMART Goals Examples for Writing (Copy-and-Paste Ideas)”

Why do most writing goals fail before the first draft?

SMART goals examples for writing is a key topic in modern project management and teamwork. They fail at the point of specification, not at the point of motivation. Three problems repeat.

The first is that the goal describes an outcome the writer does not control. “Get published in a literary magazine” depends on editors, slush piles, and timing. A writer can control the number of submissions, the quality of the cover letter, and the revision pass; the acceptance is somebody else’s decision. Goals built on the uncontrollable part teach the wrong lesson when they fail.

The second is that the unit does not match the work. A novelist counting words during revision will feel productive while cutting the book in half, which is the opposite of progress. Revision needs a different unit: pages per hour, scenes tightened, or a target word count at the end.

The third is the missing baseline. A writer who has never tracked a week will often pick a number from social media, usually someone else’s, usually from a person with no day job. The result is a goal that is achievable in theory and abandoned in practice.

What does a SMART writing goal actually contain?

Five elements, and each one has a writing-specific version.

The element writers most often skip is *Achievable*, because it requires admitting a number. A measured baseline removes the guesswork: if you wrote on four days last week and averaged 250 words on those days, your weekly baseline is 1,000 words, and a 25% stretch is 1,250. That is a goal you can keep for a quarter.

A quick worked example. A 90-day block is about 13 weeks. At 1,250 words per week, the target is 16,250 words, which is a solid novella draft or the first third of a novel. At 500 words per day, every day, the same 90 days produce 45,000 words, which is why the daily number matters more than the ambition behind it.

How do you find your baseline in one week?

Track for seven days without changing your habits, and record three things: whether you wrote, how long you sat down, and what you produced. A simple note is enough.

Then do two calculations. First, your active-day average: total output divided by the number of days you actually wrote. Second, your weekly total: all output across the seven days, including the zero days. The second number is the honest one, because goals live in calendar time, not in ideal weeks.

If you wrote 2,400 words across four days, your active-day average is 600 and your weekly total is 2,400. A next-month goal of 3,000 words per week is a 25% increase on the weekly total, and it is reachable by adding one short session rather than by writing twice as fast.

If you have no data at all, start with a two-week measurement goal instead of a production goal: “log every session for 14 days, minimum four sessions per week.” That is a legitimate SMART goal, and it produces the number every later goal depends on.

What are 14 copy-and-paste SMART goals for writers?

The examples below are written to be edited. Each one shows the baseline it assumes, the unit it counts, and the deadline that makes it checkable. Swap your own numbers in and keep the sentence shape.

Drafting goals

1. Draft 400 words on 20 of the next 30 days. Baseline: 250 words on three days a week (750 weekly). Target: 8,000 words in a month, a 30% increase in weekly volume with two extra sessions. Deadline: the 30th day. Track days written, not just words.

2. Write a 50,000-word draft between November 1 and November 30. This is the National Novel Writing Month shape: 1,667 words per day, every day, for 30 days. It is a sprint goal and should be labeled as one. In 2015, roughly 431,000 people signed up and about 40,000 reported finishing, so plan for the possibility that you are in the majority who do not.

3. Complete 12 scenes of about 1,200 words in six weeks. Baseline: two scenes a week. Target: two scenes a week plus one on alternate weekends. Deadline: end of week six, with a scene list written first so “a scene” has a definition.

4. Add 2,500 words per week for eight weeks to reach a 20,000-word novella. Baseline: 1,800 words per week. Target: 20,000 words total by the end date. This goal is arithmetic, which is its advantage: you can check it on any Sunday without rereading the draft.

Revision goals

5. Cut 15% of the manuscript in three passes by March 31. Baseline: one full read-through completed. Target: from 92,000 to 78,000 words. Each pass has a job: structure, then scenes, then sentences. Cutting is measurable and satisfying in a way that “improve the draft” never is.

6. Raise editing speed from 800 to 1,200 words per hour by June 30. Baseline: 800 words per hour with line edits. Target: 1,200 with a fixed checklist of five issues you always fix. This is a skill goal disguised as a speed goal, and the checklist is the mechanism.

7. Reduce filler phrases from 8 per 1,000 words to 3 per 1,000 by the end of the quarter. Baseline: run a style check on three recent pieces. Target: 3 per 1,000 across the next three. This works because the measurement is objective and the fix is mechanical.

Submission and publishing goals

8. Send 12 short story submissions in the first quarter. Baseline: two submissions last year. Target: 12, one per week, logged in a tracker. At a typical 2% acceptance rate, 12 submissions give you roughly a 22% chance of at least one acceptance. The goal is the submissions, because that is the part you control.

9. Publish one newsletter issue every Tuesday for 12 weeks. Baseline: six issues in the previous six months, irregular. Target: 12 consecutive Tuesdays. The streak is the metric, and a missed week resets the count rather than ending the goal.

10. Send three query letters per month for six months. Baseline: zero. Target: 18 queries, each with a personalized first paragraph. The count is small enough to be honest and large enough to produce replies.

Craft and reading goals

11. Complete six craft essays and one exercise each by September 30. Baseline: one craft book partially read. Target: six essays, each followed by a 500-word exercise. This turns reading into practice instead of consumption.

12. Read four novels in your genre and annotate ten craft moves in each. Baseline: two novels a year, unannotated. Target: four novels and 40 notes. The notes are the deliverable; the reading is the input.

The business side

13. Log every submission within 24 hours for 90 days. Baseline: no tracker. Target: 100% of submissions logged, with market, date, and response. This is a reliability goal, and it prevents the classic writer problem of not knowing what is still out with whom.

14. Move from $0.10 to $0.14 per word by landing two clients at the new rate. Baseline: current rate and three regular clients. Target: two new contracts at $0.14, which is $560 for a 4,000-word piece instead of $400. The goal is specific enough to test in a sales conversation.

How do you adapt an example to your own baseline?

Change the numbers, keep the grammar. A SMART goal in writing has a stable sentence shape: verb, unit, quantity, baseline, deadline, check. You are only editing the quantity and the date.

Three rules make adaptation safe. First, move one variable at a time: raise the word count or the number of sessions, not both. Second, keep the deadline short enough to learn from, usually two to six weeks; a year-long goal gives you one data point. Third, write the check into the calendar before you start. A goal reviewed monthly is a wish with a date attached.

If the baseline was wrong, adjust the target rather than abandoning the goal. That is calibration, not failure. A writer who planned 500 words a day and produced 350 has learned something more useful than a writer who planned 200 and coasted.

Which numbers should you watch each week?

Track one leading indicator and one lagging indicator. Leading indicators are behaviors you control today; lagging indicators are results that arrive later.

The acceptance rate belongs in the table as a diagnostic, not a goal. At small volumes it swings wildly: one acceptance in 20 submissions is 5%, and one in 40 is 2.5%, with no change in the writer’s skill. Use it to decide whether the market list is wrong, not whether the writer is.

What are the most common mistakes in writing goals?

Counting only on good days. A goal that assumes seven productive days a week is a goal for a fantasy version of you. Count weekly totals, zeros included.

Setting a goal for the wrong phase. Drafting rewards volume; revision punishes it. Deciding which phase you are in, in writing, prevents the strange experience of feeling behind while doing exactly the right work.

Choosing a metric that flatters. Word count is easy and can be gamed with padding. If quality matters, pair the count with a revision ratio: words kept after the edit divided by words drafted.

Ignoring the setup cost. A goal to publish weekly implies an editorial process, images, and a schedule. Budget the unpaid hours or the goal will collide with the paid ones.

How do you keep a writing goal when the week goes badly?

Plan for the bad week before it arrives, because it will. Three mechanisms do most of the work.

A floor, not just a target. Give every goal a minimum version that still counts: 100 words on a difficult day, one page edited, one submission sent. The floor keeps the habit alive when the target is out of reach, and consistency in the early weeks matters more than volume.

A recovery session. Reserve one 45-minute slot each week with no target attached. If the week went well, use it for planning; if it collapsed, use it to recover the lost words. A writer producing 400 words in 45 minutes recovers most of a missed day in one sitting.

A visible cost. When a session is skipped, write down what displaced it. Across two weeks the list is usually honest: a meeting that could have been an email, a long scroll, a genuine emergency. The first two are fixable; the third is life, and the goal should have room for it.

If two consecutive weeks fall below the floor, change the goal instead of the story you tell about yourself. Reduce the target by 20%, keep the deadline, and note the reason. A calibrated goal still works. A broken one gets abandoned.

Where does Doitify fit into a writing plan?

Doitify is our product, so read this as disclosure rather than a review. It is a work management workspace with projects, tasks, sub-tasks, checklists, due dates, Kanban boards, calendars, and workload views. For a writing plan, that means a project per manuscript, a task per chapter or scene, a checklist per revision pass, and a weekly view that shows the sessions you committed to rather than the ones you remember.

The useful part is not the word count, which belongs in your writing tool. It is the surrounding schedule: submission deadlines, editor calls, cover art, launch tasks, and the review slot that keeps the goal honest. Writers who run a book like a project tend to miss fewer deadlines, and they can see when a side project is eating the drafting time.

Conclusion

A writing goal is a small piece of engineering: one behavior, one unit, one measured baseline, one deadline, one review. The examples above are starting points, not standards. Pick two, run them for a month, and keep the one that survives a bad week.

The writers who finish things are rarely the ones with the most ambitious goals. They are the ones whose goals were small enough to repeat and specific enough to check. Copy a sentence, change the numbers, and put the review on the calendar.

If this post on SMART goals examples for writing was helpful, you might also enjoy Synchronous vs Asynchronous Collaboration: Which Should Your Team Use? and How to Prioritize Tasks at Work (Step-by-Step).