Are you a writer who struggles to make progress? Setting big goals for your writing life can be exciting, but you can lose momentum if you haven’t moved past the dreaming phase. At hope*writers, we’ve helped thousands of writers like you get unstuck and move forward with their writing goals. 

When you define and refine your writing vision, it’s important to dream and think big. What do you want to be true for your reader because you said yes to your writing? That requires broad thinking. But when it comes to setting goals and making progress toward those goals, the way to get there is not by thinking big. The secret to making progress is more manageable than many writers think. 

The secret is to start small. 

We still need to brainstorm and name our writing vision and goals, but after we identify the big stuff, many of us lose steam. We need to narrow down our goals to a few key targets and focus on building habits around those...

Goal-setting guru Lara Casey recently joined hope*writers to offer words of wisdom and grace for the writer with big dreams and a fuzzy idea of how to make them happen. Lara is a three-time author, the creator of the PowerSheets Intentional Goal Planner, and the founder and CEO of Cultivate What Matters.

She’s both a writer and an expert in grace-filled goal-setting of all kinds, so we asked her how we can apply her grace-filled goal-setting techniques to the writing life. 

 Lara shared three key tools that we can stick in our toolbox and use to structure our writing goals in a way that is both kind to ourselves and productive.

Believe in the Power of Little-by-Little Progress

When she set out to write her first book, Make It Happen, Lara planned to write as much as one chapter a day. She soon realized this goal wasn’t realistic for her writing habits. Instead, she decided to embrace the power of little-by-little progress and adjusted her daily word...