Episode 109: Setting Writer Goals - How to Focus on What Matters
Setting goals is a great way to ensure you're spending your precious time and resources on what matters. Join Paulette Stout and Lainey Cameron as they discuss tips for authors looking to set annual goals, including ways you can effectively measure along the way.
Your fearless hosts will also go over their personal goals for 2025, and spoiler alert--sometimes not doing something can be a goal too!
Episode Resources
Indie Author Conference Calendar 2025
Women’s Fiction Writers Association Retreats
Books Mentioned
What We Give Away by Paulette Stout (releases February 4th, 2025)
In this compelling tale of self-discovery and romance, Leslie must navigate a world that demands she conform, while finding the courage to be true to herself and live her best life.
Connect with Paulette:
Full Disclosure: We are part of the Amazon affiliate program, which means Lainey earns a tiny commission (maybe enough for a coffeeif you buy something after clicking through from a link on this website.
Episode Sponsors
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Note: next sections are mostly created by AI for your convenience - so please forgive any typos or inaccuracies!
Summary
Paulette Stout and Lainey Cameron discuss goal setting for authors, emphasizing the importance of setting achievable, substantive goals that align with one's current stage in their career. They stress the value of flexibility due to life's unpredictability and the need to focus on goals within one's control. Lainey highlights the significance of creating space for writing and self-compassion, while Paulette talks about balancing health, wellness, and professional goals.
They also touch on the importance of measuring goals and adjusting them mid-year based on life changes. Both hosts share their personal goals, including Lainey's focus on finishing her book and Paulette's upcoming book launch and health priorities.
Outline
Setting the Stage for Goal Setting
Paulette Stout introduces the episode, focusing on goal setting and annual goals, and mentions the delay due to personal challenges.
Lainey Cameron shares her experience of being in Mexico and dealing with unpredictable life events.
Paulette emphasizes the importance of setting achievable but substantive goals to avoid feelings of shame when plans fall short.
Lainey discusses the impact of life's unpredictability on goal setting, sharing personal challenges like family illnesses and losses.
Controlling What You Can Control
Lainey advises setting goals that you have control over, such as querying agents rather than aiming for a specific outcome like getting an agent.
Paulette agrees, noting that control over effort increases the likelihood of achieving goals.
They discuss the importance of setting goals that align with your current stage in your author journey.
Lainey emphasizes not comparing your goals to others, especially those who have more resources or are further along in their careers.
Setting Realistic and Personalized Goals
Paulette and Lainey discuss the importance of setting goals that are realistic and personalized to your current situation.
Lainey shares her approach of setting achievable goals, such as sending a certain number of queries, rather than aiming for a broad outcome like getting an agent.
Paulette adds that goals should also consider your personal life, health, and motivation to create.
They highlight the importance of setting goals that are manageable and align with your overall well-being.
Balancing Personal and Professional Goals
Paulette talks about balancing writing and publishing goals with personal wellness goals, such as maintaining health and avoiding burnout.
Lainey shares her experience of setting goals that allow for self-compassion and acceptance of life's unpredictability.
They discuss the importance of creating space for writing and other creative activities, even if it means adjusting goals to fit life's challenges.
Paulette mentions the need to be thoughtful about where you invest your time and resources, including planning writing dates and avoiding overcommitment.
Measuring and Adjusting Goals
Paulette emphasizes the importance of measuring goals to know when they are achieved and to avoid feeling unsettled.
Lainey shares her approach of setting specific and measurable goals, such as finishing a manuscript or sending a certain number of queries.
They discuss the value of mid-year check-ins to reassess goals and adjust them based on life changes and new opportunities.
Paulette advises being flexible and willing to change goals if they are no longer serving you or if new priorities arise.
Planning for Events and Conferences
Lainey shares her plans for attending the San Miguel Writers Conference and considering other retreats and conferences.
Paulette expresses excitement about attending Author Nation in Las Vegas and considering other events like the Women's Fiction Writers Retreat.
They discuss the benefits of attending conferences for networking, learning, and promoting their work.
Lainey suggests the possibility of organizing a writer retreat with Paulette and other listeners.
Final Thoughts and Resources
Paulette and Lainey wrap up the episode by encouraging listeners to check out their resources on Substack and their website.
They highlight the importance of setting goals that serve you and bring happiness and fulfillment.
Lainey shares a special offer from their sponsor, Alita Winter Heim, for MFA-level writing workshops.
They express gratitude to their listeners and encourage engagement on social media.
Transcript
Paulette Stout 0:02
Hello everyone. We are so excited to be here for another episode of the Best of Book Marketing podcast. I am Paulette Stout. Lainey Cameron is getting us live on Instagram at the moment, and we are here today to talk about goal setting and annual goals. So it's a great conversation. It'll probably be a little bit of a shorter episode than we normally do, but I think it's going to really be worthwhile and hopefully help you get your goals in line for the coming year. We'll talk about some techniques to think about, and then we'll share each of our goals, and then also share some resources at the end. So definitely, hopefully, we'll want to stay around for the whole podcast. Hello, Lainey, how are you?
Lainey Cameron 0:45
Hi, I'm doing okay. I'm happy to be back in Mexico, and I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about this, about what do you do with your goals when life is unpredictable and doesn't go the way you expected?
Paulette Stout 1 0:58
Yeah, for sure, I totally hear you. We've had a lot of, you know, medical stuff going on our family, hence why this episode is coming out late for January. But hey, life got in the way. We decided to give ourselves some grace and be flexible. So that is definitely something that you'll need to do as you're thinking about your annual goals. So just to kick us off really quickly, we're going to talk about just some things to think about as you set goals, like, what are some considerations to help you set goals that will actually be motivating and helpful for you as you go through the year? So first, we believe that they should be substantive but achievable. You know, I think that's something really nice, because sometimes people have really grand plans, and then when they fall short, they're they kind of have a lot of shame around that. So better to set a goal that's a kind of realistic, but maybe pushes you a little bit, but then so that when you achieve that, you'll have something good to kind of fall back on. There any thoughts around that, Lainey?
Lainey Cameron 1:57
Yeah, I mean, it's kind of why we're recording this later in January is, instead of beating ourselves up that we didn't make whatever date we might have made in January, we're celebrating the fact that we're here to do this, and we're still holding an episode out despite the fact that your husband broke his leg. I was in the UK visiting relatives in the hospital. I lost two members of my family in December. We had a memorial this month. I mean, life was just very lifey. We've used that word in the past, very lifey for me in the last 30 days.
Lainey Cameron 2:22
And yet, here we are. We're still getting to celebrate our goals. We're still getting to think ahead. And I think that's part of it, is granting yourself the grace the first, I think, picking goals that you actually have some control over. So here's the thing, you can set a goal that says I'm going to query my book, and when I get to 100 queries, I'm going to have a plan B, okay? Or you can set a goal that says I am going to find an agent. Well, you don't have control over the second goal, right? You can query 100 times, and you may or may not find an agent, and you might do everything right, but it may just not be the second in time, the moment for your book, the right, karma, whatever, whatever, right?
Lainey Cameron 2:57
And so I'm a big believer in - set goals you actually have some control over. Now you've got a big, hairy goal behind it of what you want to do, right? Maybe you want to sell a million copies, and that requires you to do a certain set of things, but start with the goal that's achievable, that you actually have some control over. So I'm a big believer in, instead of saying, you know, my goal is to get an agent, you can say my, this is my personal take. My goal is to send 100 queries, right? That I have control over getting an agent I may or may not succeed with, even though it's something I want, if that makes sense. So I know that's not always the popular opinion. Some people say, No, you should put the thing that you actually want, I'm a believer, and put the thing you might be able to take control over yourself and do for yourself.
Paulette Stout 3:34
I love that, and I think that that's that's very relatable to how you think about things such as like public relations, you can you can control the effort. You can't control the outcome. So if you can control the effort you're putting in towards achieving your goals, with a very high likelihood that you will accomplish those but to Lainey point, there are some things that you may not be able to control over. So other things to keep in mind is like where you are in your author journey. If you have you know, one book, or you're pre published, or if you have three series, your goals are going to be very different, potentially more ambitious if you're a little bit further along in your author career. So when you're thinking about goals, don't think like you have to put goals like somebody else has you know your goals are for you, where you are at this point in time in your author journey. So don't kind of look over someone else's goals, like, focus on what you can control, like Lainey was talking about.
Lainey Cameron 4:26
Yeah, and I love that. Like, maybe your goal is to finish this version, right, and you're nowhere near being ready to market your book or to put it out into the world. That's a great goal, right? Finish this version, finish this chapter, finish this page. Like your goals don't have to be, you know, sell a bazillion copies, or, you know, get on CNN or something. I think setting goals for where you are is great. And also, like, for me, this year, my goal is going to be all around getting the book in the world. We'll talk a little bit about that more. But back to, like, what can I control versus what can I not control? Maybe, maybe it's because I live in a world where I feel like I don't have control of a lot of things. Like, I have a chronic. Illness, and I don't control when I'm healthy, necessarily. And so for me, picking some goals where I'm going to be able to feel a sense of achievement that I did the thing I thought I was capable of actually helps. Yeah,
Paulette Stout 5:10
for sure. So other things to keep in mind is your goal set obligations in your personal life. With Lainey, was just talking about health, physical, you know, mental in your where having the space to create. You may not always have that, and that might vary, and you can kind of take that into account as you set your goals, motivation and desire to create, like, where are you? Do you even want to be writing the book you're working on? Do you want to be writing a different book? Do you want to put the pen down and do something else with your life so there's no you know, goals can also be starting and stopping things as well. So keep, keep that in mind as you're going, finances will impact some of your goal setting. And then you know where you are in terms of your short and your long term goals.
Lainey Cameron 5:58
Yeah, and I liked what you were saying about picking goals for your stage in your career. And I would encourage people not to set goals by comparing to other people, right? So especially, I see people do this in social media where they're like, well, this person's doing this and this and this, and I want to do all that. And like, you know, sometimes we're looking at people who have a whole team, right? They're much farther along than we are. And, you know, you look at what one of these big authors does, and they're on five platforms, and they're showing up and posting every day. Believe me, they don't do that by themselves. They're not spending, you know, Jodi pico is not spending half her day on social media. Trust me, she might have other people doing it for her, but she is not spending half her day. And so I think it can be dangerous to try and set goals comparing to what we see other people who are too far, too far on the journey for where we are right now. And so I just would encourage you to start with, what is your big, hairy, aspirational thing, and what could help you get a little bit further towards that? And it's okay to have this amazing thing in your head, but maybe kind of what's the next step, the next baby step that you can feel good because you achieve it, and then you can move on to the next goal after that.
Paulette Stout 6:59
So that's a great segue, Lainey into the big, hairy, aspirational goal. Do you want to talk about and explain what that is for people before we have the conversation? Yeah, so,
Lainey Cameron 7:09
so I'm doing coaching. I've participated in the past with Camille pagan, who, sneak peek, will actually be a guest on the show this year. Um, I've, yeah, we're very excited. She's going to talk about pivots, and how to pivot your publishing model in your career. It's going to be an amazing episode. Amazing episode, but I've done her career, career novelist mastermind in the past, which is basically coaching, life coaching for authors and show so this this quarter, I'm working with her still, and one of the things she advises is to pick one goal as opposed to 10. Right now, that's controversial, because I think most people tend to pick more than one goal. I'm guessing you have more than one goal flat, but it's really challenged me to think about this differently. And I like, throw you under the bus before we even start, but, but like, it's challenged me to think about it. And the other thing she got us to think about is, like, separate to goals, what is that big dream you have, right? And I think of it as the big, hairy, aspirational goal.
Lainey Cameron 8:01
So I'll share for me, like, I thought about this, and like, I would like to have a book that sells millions of copies. I don't think I'm necessarily going to do it this year. Who knows it might not be? I mean, it's not this year, but, like, it may not be this book, right? But like, that's like, my if I kind of stick it in the, you know, eye in the sky, hairy, crazy dream, right? And so if I believe in that, then I can say, okay, is the little goal that I'm picking this year helping me get a step towards that big, hairy, aspirational goal. And it does influence my behavior. Because for me, I'll talk later about my goals, my publishing path might be affected by that, because some publishing paths maybe have a better chance of getting me there than others one day. And so I like the idea of leaving space. Camille really encouraged us. I'm not using her words and explaining this. She doesn't much better, but she encouraged us to leave space for that big, hairy, aspirational goal, my words, but the dream, her words that you can see out there. And so I think it is helpful to allow yourself to have a dream, whether or not it feels achievable right now, in addition to a set of goals, what do you think black?
Paulette Stout 9:03
I agree with that, and it's funny, because I just, I'm kind of, like a little bit optimistic by nature. And not everyone is that way. So sometimes, if you are very optimistic, it can be easy to, you know, over you know, you know, kind of what kind of over extend, what you think you can achieve, but with these big, hairy goals, that's what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to be thinking big and going big. And, you know, for me, I fully expect to win the pollster this year. You know, I, I applied to the pollster. I gotta be enough to win it. Y'all, um, so I'm just like, waiting for the big truck to roll up with, like, my big statuette, you know.
Lainey Cameron 9:43
Hey, you have a party, and I'm coming to the party.
Paulette Stout 9:46
Yeah, totally coming to the party. Cool. So, yeah, I mean, I don't have, uh, yeah, I've got other goals. I don't have the biggie, hairy goals. I have to think about that. You had a head start on me in that big, hairy goal situation.
Lainey Cameron 9:59
You can let us know in a future moment, but I'll let you know. So, yeah, so what are, what are your goals palette when you think about this year, and I bet you have more than one, and that's okay, but what are your goals when you think about it?
Paulette Stout 10:12
Alright, so I'm just going to show you my goal sheet. It's two pages with, like, club bullets of A, B and C, and things and so, yeah, so I'm, I'm Camila probably cautioned me to to not, but I have had years where I went through this list and I had to add more stuff because I kind of was just nailing it. So that can happen people, it's not an everyday thing. So I tend to kind of categorize my goals around, you know, writing and publishing, a little bit around some of the business things, shorter term goals, lower term goals. And then I also have some wellness goals for myself. And because I was realizing that I was so kind of invested in on the keyboard behind, engaging whatever, that sometimes, like, my health wasn't, you know, getting the attention it should. So I started adding health and wellness. And I know that, you know, if you follow the creative pen podcast, she talks a lot about, you know, she started lifting weights, and you know she's turning 50 this year, and you know she's trying to keep her body strong and healthy, so she has the energy and the capability to sit and write and create and go out and engage in the community and all those types of things. So do have that. So just to start launch, what we give away, which is in two weeks, two weeks, y'all.
Lainey Cameron 11:40
I'm reading it right now, and I love how you take on really pointed, like, societal topics. And this one's a big one, and it's already got me, like, asking myself all kinds of questions, and I'm only like, I think a quarter of the way through.
Paulette Stout 11:53
Yeah, this one is getting a lot of really good response. For those who don't know, it takes on the issue of weight and body size, and it really because questions our obsession with fitness, and maybe there's another way to be healthy and happy and whole outside of what our scale says. So sticky on the issue, a lot of people are really connecting with it. So I hope folks, listeners, will go give it a shot. It's contemporary women's fiction. It does have some open door spice in it, but it's not romance, because it has, like, some, you know, some other plotty things going on. Um, so for me, a part of that is like launching the book and doing, um, doing a lot of promotional activities. And I think you want to do an episode in the future of, like, how things went, so I'll kind of hold off and we can talk about it on that episode. Um, I also have another book in mind that I have had some conversations with an agent about so I'm gonna be writing that book, and it'll be my first kind of, really, maybe, like solidly landed genre, women's fiction with a sister story, no open door, spicy things, and I have an agent who said she'll read it when It's done, and then we can see how that that path goes.
Paulette Stout 13:03
So for me, in terms of big, hairy goals, you know, I would like to expand my reach to more readers through, you know, on store, brick and mortar book shops. And traditionally, publishing is a way to do that. I know people who really associate me with indie publishing, but, you know, I would like to kind of expand and see if I can reach some new leaders and then bring them into my universe. So part of that is also, you know, going the whole agent thing, and I'm starting to kind of dabble in awareness about those channels. Pursuing health and wellness, for me is really important, just making sure I'm moving, that I'm I talked about the skipping the second shift sometimes, which I've been doing in the last month, which is, I have a full time job. I'm the Director of Brand Marketing and a software company. It's a pretty demanding job. I have travel sometimes, and I have the second shift, which is the author life and the book stuff. And sometimes, like, over the last month, I've stepped away a little bit from some of you know, haven't been writing, and it feels like I have all this time because I've skipped the second shift. I'm not doing the second job every day, because that does really kind of wear on you. Um, should I keep going and do you want to do a few of mine and then pop back?
Lainey Cameron 14:14
do you want go to the end? Yeah, okay.
Paulette Stout 14:18
All right. Cool. Um, so, yeah. So I talked about, you know, moving, having, being thoughtful about my nutrition, not overloading myself with deadlines. Um, giving myself grace to enjoy the wins. You know, sometimes we just aren't just so moving ahead to the next one. So some of my goals are just like mindset type things, too. Um, not over committing, you know, to things, especially with, you know, people in my life, obligations and things, and making sure that I have space for myself included in there.
Paulette Stout 14:51
Also, you know, I'm at the stage where I'm gonna have, this will be my fourth book. I'm trying to really, kind of be more thoughtful about my return on investment, like, where. Am I investing my money? What am I trying to do, if I'm advertising? Am I making a profit on the advertising? So starting to think a little bit more intentionally about ROIs. Also like planning writing dates, like thinking things that are going to help me have a long term author life, which is like publishing more profitably, limiting spend by what's working planning, writing breaks into my schedules, evade developing a sustainable writing cadence that avoids burnout, and just being a little bit more intentional, but kind of where I'm spending my time and where I'm how much I'm on social, and how am I showing up on social?
Paulette Stout 15:37
And is it doing anything, you know, so kind of just being a little bit more thoughtful about that, continuing to engage with readers. I do like doing events in person, so, but I have a lot of criteria around those, so I only do certain events that meet the criteria. So trying to plan some of those in for the year. I don't have any on the calendar right now, which is really scary at this time last year, I already had a bunch of things planned, and I have not won on the calendar for this year. I know I'll be showing up places, but I just don't have them yet. So it's feeling a little unsettled around that, um, just also investing and building author community. And like we have, I have different author groups I'm in, um, I have visiting Lainey on my thing, so I might be going down to semi gal so maybe we could do like, a little retreat down there. And, you know, I might be also just trying to think of some way through my author coaching to kind of give back about some of the skills that I've learned and especially around some of the the inclusive things that I've been working on the last few years. Could be a good like a webinar topic. So I'm kind of working on those. So those are the brief rundown of the main categories of my goals for the year.
Lainey Cameron 16:52
I love it. I want to pick up on a word that you use several times. You use the word space several times, creating space, allowing space for, making space for and it got me thinking that, like, for some people listening to this podcast, and let's say you've got a chronic illness, and you're just trying to find time to write, like your goal might be, never mind, without the chronic illness, you might just want to try to be trying to find the time to write, but your goal might be to create space for writing, right? That I want to write once a week, that I want to write three times a week, that I want to find 10 minutes a day.
Lainey Cameron 17:23
Whatever that is like, I love that idea of the goal itself being to create enough space to do the thing you love or that you want to achieve. Like it doesn't have to be that your goal is to finish your book. It could be my goal is to create enough space in my life to write 10 minutes every day. And so I just want to encourage people to think about like, you know, Paulette and I are maybe a little bit farther along now. That's why we're able to talk about topics that like book marketing. But sometimes the goal is simpler. It's just that creating space that matters the most, and like I think that's also still on in my list, is create the space that I don't feel under dressed with my writing, even though my goal is actually to finish my book like I want to enjoy it, right? One of my goals last year was really to find a way to allow myself to enjoy the process of writing and not to feel like it's a disservice to me personally when people say you have to treat it like a job. Because when I started treating it like a job, it stopped being fun. And I realized that eventually that that it could be fun, and I needed to come back to doing it because it's fun, not because I'm treating it like a job. And so I love this idea of spaciousness, and maybe space, yeah.
Paulette Stout 18:20
And stepping away is just a beautiful thing, and it's hard because you feel like you should be it ought to be, you know, but stopping, for me, stopping and slowing down in certain areas is so important to accomplishing everything else. Because if I'm not well, if I'm not whole, if I don't have the right mindset, then you won't accomplish anything. So some of my goals are around doing less sometimes, which is really weird for me. You know, if you do Myers, Briggs, I'm an emfj, which is just like, you know, type of personality types, and, you know, cliftonstrengths, it's like, achieve or maximize or like, all the things that are like, you want to be doing stuff. So not doing stuff is super hard, and it feels, it feels kind of wrong, almost. You feel, I feel guilty when I just sit and I'm quiet and I don't do something that it feels like, almost rebellious. You know, to not do something.
Lainey Cameron 19:21
I had to learn so much self compassion last year because I had a set of goals at the beginning of the year, and my year, like just didn't go the way I expected. I spent several months packing up my mom to help her move house. I spent several months caring for two relatives who had broken bones, and we had to go live with them, just a lot of things, right? And then we had more relatives in the hospital in the hospital in December, and we lost some people. I mean, just like it was a lot of things from April through the end of the year, I think I was just saying this on another call, that I think 10% of my time ended up being my own to do the things I intended to do, and 90% of my time ended up not not being what I expected to spend it on.
Lainey Cameron 19:56
And so for me, one of my goals actually, especially with chronic. Health condition has been self compassion and acceptance that sometimes things aren't going to go the way I wanted them to, right? I'm also kind of a big I want to plan and I want to achieve a type personality, and it's been a big journey for me to realize that, like acceptance, that that I don't always control everything, and maybe that's okay, maybe, maybe my real journey is learning to accept that I don't control everything, and it's hard.
Lainey Cameron 20:22
That's been really, really hard for me, but it's why, when I talk about my own goals for this year, I'm only going to talk about two, slash three things. I added one as we're talking here. So my my one writing goal, as Camille encouraged us to have the one writing goal, is to finish this book, which is sitting on my desk and having my manuscript printed out. This will be the version that comes into the world. Okay? I mean, when I say the version, I've rewritten this book four times from scratch, so I am not rewriting this from scratch again. This is the book coming into the world. I'm now off to paper editing. I'm actually, like, literally, I've got all the scratch ups on my pieces of paper, and at the end of chapter two just started again this week.
Lainey Cameron 20:59
So my goal is I want to finish this book in a way that I feel proud of and find its path to publication. And that's deliberately a little vague at the end, because I have an idea of what I think its path to publication is, and I think we'll talk about this more in detail in next month's episode, but it may or may not work out, and I'm going to put this book into the world right? The one I know I have control of is indie publishing it, and that might be how I publish it. I have a slight goal of a dream that is Lake Union. I would love to see this book land with Lake Union publishers. So if I can achieve that, I will, and if it's not too hard, then I'm going to go the indie path, most likely, so with one little option in the middle.
Lainey Cameron 21:36
So, but the most important thing is finish it in a way I feel really proud of, and however it comes out to market, I want to be able to look at that book and say that's the best I feel like I can do at this point in my career for the skills that I have or can can gain my My second goal is actually to run my marketing program for authors again, and it was sad for me, because that was one of the things I didn't get to do in the second half of last year. I would have run it twice in the year, in the spring, in the fall, and I just didn't have the capacity to run it with less than 10% of my bandwidth being my own in the fall. It was like if I did that in the fall, I wasn't going to write anything at all, and I probably would have driven myself crazy too. So I'm really happy that life is a little bit more stable cross figures. It stays that way.
Lainey Cameron 22:15
And I just decided this week that I'm going to run my 12 weeks to book launch Success Program, starting on February 24 so I'll be opening registration next week to people on the wait list, and then if it hasn't filled off the wait list, after a week, I will open it up to those not on the wait list. In previous iterations, it has sold just off the wait list. So you might want to get on the wait list if you're interested, because the last two times it filled in a week. So and it will run for 12 weeks, starting on February 24 every week I teach a live class. I basically teach everything you need to know about how to successfully launch a book, starting with your brand, your email newsletter. What you do to get social proof? What do you do for awareness? What do you do around sales and giving people a reason to act? Kind of the full package of everything you need to launch your book, especially if you're early in your career, and it's your first book launch, it's really helpful. And by the end of it, you've got a full plan for your book launch.
Lainey Cameron 23:04
So that's coming up. I'm really excited, and the reason I'm putting it back on my goals is this gives me, personally, so much joy when I run this program. It's easy for me, because marketing comes naturally to me, and I have so much I just get so much joy out of helping other authors with something that they don't find as easy or they find overwhelming and kind of simplifying it down to the things that you want to do that work and the stuff that you can just throw throw overboards. You can throw Instagram overboard. Honestly, social media is optional. It's one of the things I tell my class, so I'm excited. That's my second goal.
Lainey Cameron 23:33
And my third goal, and it's one that I wrote down here as we were talking is this idea of balancing my health, putting enough energy into my health that I am doing what I can to stay healthy while accepting that it's not completely under my control. And that's one of the hardest things. I have Crohn's disease, and you want to believe that, like when you have a flare up, it's because you did something wrong, I got stressed, or I ate the wrong thing. And the reality is it's not. It's just kind of random, like last year, I caught something in April. I think it was RSV, it might have been something else, and it just snowballed, and that became an infection, and that became a gut infection, and the next thing you know, I was in the hospital, and it went for four months, and it's just like, you know, what am I going to do? Not go to a festival, because I might catch an infection, never leave my house. Like, I'm lucky that I'm not there yet, right? And so at some point it's like, yeah, I made a trade off, right? I want to live my life and I'm going to take some risks, like I might catch an infection, and so I just think those things. You know, you can't prevent them, but you can learn to accept that. Maybe it's just, I need to learn to flow with it, like it's going to be like that sometimes, and I need to learn that acceptance. But so health is definitely my third goal. I hadn't put it on my list, but it's dead. Thank you. You encouraged me to put it back on my list.
Paulette Stout 24:43
Yeah, and it's, it's so important because, as well, you know, it's, you know, rotting is a solitary thing, and it's a sedentary thing, and, you know, those, both of those things are not great for your mental and physical health. So it's good to just kind of acknowledge that, you know, keeping everything going is super. Important. And, you know, it's, you know, that's why we, at the beginning of this, of this episode, we talked about life being lifey. You know, it's just, was like, one of those themes. And sometimes life is lifey, and your writing goals just have to be put aside, because there's more important, more pressing things that demand your attention. And it doesn't mean that you failed. It just means that you're actually putting your your focus where it belongs for that period of time, right?
Lainey Cameron 25:24
Like, this book could have been out a year ago, but you know what, five years from now, I'm going to look back and be really glad I took three months to move my mom to San Miguel, because now she's here. Yeah, see her more often. I feel much better that she's closer to us. Like it was a good thing to do, it was the right thing, even if it meant I didn't have time for writing. So, yeah, I love that. And yes, it's exciting. Yes. And I will, I will, I will share that when we started talking about this episode. Plus, like, we should do an episode in January about goals. And I definitely had a massive case of imposter syndrome, like, the emperor has no clothes because I'm like, last year I had goals and they all fell on the floor and I didn't achieve them. And so, like, who am I to talk about having goals? But if there's one thing I can offer up, it's maybe that that's okay, acceptance.
Paulette Stout 26:08
It's 100% okay. And it's also, it's basically, these are the items that at this point in time we think are important, and as the year evolves, you know, other things might surface and recede, and that's we'll talk about that after our sponsor section.
Lainey Cameron 26:26
Yay. So I think I get to do the sponsor section this month. So let me put this in context, that if one of your goals is to improve your writing, your craft, then we have a great offer for you. Our sponsor, Alito, winter height in winter, and Heimer, I always miss the middle, middle of that winter hammer. I know Elena is easier, right? Aleta is she's the author of story works, podcast and the story works Guide to Writing series of craft books. She's a coach. She can help you as a book coach. She's an editor. She actually offers editing and she also offers MFA level writing workshops. And she's got a special offer just for our fans, listeners, friends of the best of Book Marketing Podcast where she's offering 10% off her workshops, which is pretty cool. I think it's a nice offer. She's got workshops coming up really soon, and Alita is a great.
Lainey Cameron 27:22
I've talked to many people who've taken her classes in her workshop. She's a great coach. She's actually a three time Pushcart Prize nominee. She's a notable invest American essays. She's won the page turner award. And she also has a story focused podcast called story works roundtable, where she shares a ton of really interesting things. So the info is on our page on how to get that special offer. She's got some co workshops on character, how to get to the core of your character and create protagonists that are driven by by more than just what's buffeting them, kind of on the sideways, on the sidelines, um.
Lainey Cameron 27:55
She's got one on character motivation, protagonist motivation, and how to use that to shape your plot with real twists and turns. She's got one about understanding narrative point of view and how to control the elements of voice and psychic distance in your writing. So really cool workshops, you get 10% off. You just have to go to her website, word essential, com, slash workshops and use the password, BBM. Love, that's best of book marketing. Love, BBM, love, and we'll put it on the episode page, and we will also put it on our to come new sub stack posts, which will be here this year.
Paulette Stout 28:30
Yes, and you so much to a leader for sponsoring the show. I've been on the podcast before. We did a great episode on settings. I'm going to be on another episode of coming up, or we're talking about writing intimate scenes. So she has such great episodes of the podcast, and her workshops are basically that on steroids. So definitely check out what she has to offer. And thanks so much to her for supporting the show. Thanks, Alita.
Lainey Cameron 28:57
Okay, so we've got a couple more topics to talk about before we move on. We were going to talk about the idea of measuring our goals, about the idea of a mid year check in, and then a little bit about events. And that's us for this episode. So why don't you lead us off palette on this idea of measuring goals? Yeah.
Paulette Stout 29:13
So I think that when you put a goal down, you know, one of the things is to, you know, if you can decide how you're gonna measure it. How are you going to know whether that goal was achieved, like something? Sometimes it can be easy. If it's, it's, you know, move the lamp across the room. Yep, I did it check, you know, sometimes it's doing a task, and if you finish the task, that's great. But then if there might be other goals that are a little squishy, and then it can be easy to kind of sell yourself short, or feel or keep moving the goal post on yourself, keep extending it to say you haven't achieved a goal. So if you have something that you is a way for you to measure the goal. That's a good idea to put down. So if you say, find success at blank, well, what does success mean?
Paulette Stout 29:56
Does success mean you feel good as success mean you've still a certain number of. Copies. Does success mean you speak on a panel? You know, so put down. How are you going to measure some of the goals you're choosing so that you'll know when you've accomplished them? Because there's really great satisfaction in crossing something off your list of your goals for the year. But if you don't know if you've accomplished it, you kind of get that little unsettled feeling about, you know, in in completeness. So that's even a word. So if you can try to figure out how to measure your goals as you set them out, it'll be it'll help you know later what you've accomplished them, right?
Lainey Cameron 30:30
People talk about smart goals, specific, measurable, achievable, and I'm going to forget the RMT and smart but I do like the idea we'll put a we'll put an article on the episode page about smart goals. I do like this idea of specific, measurable goals, right? So it goes with that concept of under your control, right? So going back to the querying example, you can't control the output. You can control finishing your manuscript and sending it out, right? You can control creating your query, getting it, getting it reviewed, and deciding your query is ready to start sending, right. So these are things under your control, and they're specific, right? So it's much more specific to say I will finish my query by March, and I will send 100 queries by the end of the year, than it is to say I will try and find an agent.
Lainey Cameron 31:13
Like trying to find an agent, when do you succeed? At what point do you declare you succeeded or failed? Right? I liked how I did it, when, when I was querying last time around, and it was a April ever heart, who's a phenomenal agent advisor to authors, and she said, pick a plan A and a plan B, and decide how long you're going to give Plan A. And I thought that was a great way to think about it. So when I started querying last time, I had a plan A, which was, I was going to query 100 agents, and if I didn't get there, I gave it six months. If I didn't get there, my plan B was, I was going to go out to small publishers. And so I knew that my Plan A was very specific and measurable. Did I send my 100 queries and has six months gone past? Those were the two things, right? And once I had sent my 100 queries and given them six months, I knew that I was at the end of that plan A, and it was tried time to move to Plan B. And so I kind of like the specificity of that, and it worked pretty well for me back then.
Paulette Stout 32:03
Yeah, I love that, yeah, because it's, you know, I definitely have a tendency to add on to goals, because I feel like I haven't done well enough. I didn't do good enough, so I'm added and make it harder to achieve. And that's just kind of short changing yourself and not being honest with what you had hoped at the beginning of the year when you established the goal. You know, so very good. So, um, so our next thing is with that mid year chart. Because sometimes what happens is you make these goals, you write them down, even if you don't write like ABC subsection nine on mine or like Lainey has three main big goals, um, wherever, however you structure your goals. It's good kind of in the middle gear.
Paulette Stout 32:43
And do like a little a little check, where am I along my path to achieving these goals? Do I need to be assessed whether that's a realistic goal for this year based on like, lifey things or other circumstances? Did you achieve your goal sooner than you expected? And do you want to add something new onto your goal list for the year for you to achieve something. Did another priority come up that you still want to watch? You still want to accomplish it, but some other things came up that were more important, or did a new opportunity arise that made you kind of rethink what you want to be focusing on this year? So doing that mid year check is a nice way to stay true to your goals, but to also assess that, make sure that you're focusing on the things that are most important to you at that point in time.
Lainey Cameron 33:27
Yeah, and some people do it sooner than mid year, right? Some people do it quarterly. I would encourage people to do it whenever life changes, right? Like, I kind of had to go back last year, as you've heard, things were a little lifey. And I think in like, May, I basically said, let's think about this again, right? This year is clearly not looking like I thought it was. Let's go back and just say what's really achievable given all the other stuff that's going on. And I changed my goals, right? I dropped doing a class in the second half of the year that I'd intended to do because I wanted to give myself some space for the other things I cared about, like my writing. And so it's okay if life kind of send you sideways to say, okay, breathe. Let's just redo the goals. It's fine, yeah.
Paulette Stout 34:07
And then okay for me, like I was hope I had a schedule for myself for this release that is coming out in a few days. Um, and I wasn't ready, like, I needed a little more time to get the book done, so I shifted the deadlines of some of the you know, my editor and the proof reader and the audiobook nats have moved things back because I just felt like the book deserved extra time and I just needed another month to get stuff done. So I went and did that. I'm really happy I did that. I think the book was better for it. It means that my audiobook is not coming out the same time as the other books. But that's one of those lifey things I just have to be like, okay, not looked at everything at the same time as I hoped. But I think that that's where that whole grace and space idea comes into play. Because if you're if you're being super rigid, you know the part, the purpose. Of the goals is to keep you happy and fulfilled in your life and achieving things that you feel are important to you. So if you're making yourself twisted around the axle, stressed out, unhappy about your goals, then change them. You have control over your goals, like they are within your power to control what is what you want to do, what you don't want to do. So don't, you know, become a slave to your goal, like the goals should serve you and as a positive force in your life. And if that's not happening, then, you know, might be a little bit time to step back a little bit.
Lainey Cameron 35:35
I love that perspective. It's great. I'm going to make a quote out of that palette, like Google should disturb you. It was brilliant. The last topic we had here, and we're wrapping up, was events. And you mentioned earlier that you don't have any committed right now, and it's a little bit weird and scary not to have any committed and I know I found a great article by indie author magazine. It's called indie author conference calendar 2025, so I'll put it in the links on the episode page so people can find it at best of book marketing com or on our sub stack. But I was actually looking at that, and I have several I'm signed up for so far. So the first one is, I'm not exactly signed up, but there are a lot of people I know coming in and teaching at the San Miguel Writers Conference, which is coming up in just a couple of weeks at the beginning of February. It's a phenomenal conference.
Lainey Cameron 36:22
The San Miguel Writers Conference. It's a big conference. It has a lot of different tracks. It has a lot of people writing spiritual memoir, travel writing, in addition to fiction. I know Courtney Maum among others, is coming down for that. So my goal for that conference is actually just to reach out to some of the people I already know online and meet them in real life for meet them for coffee. So it's gonna be a lot of fun. I think there's three or four people that I know. People that I noted that I wanted, like, I have to meet that person in real life. So that's coming up real soon for me. And then I'm on the fence about which of the women's fiction writers retreat Association retreats I might go to this year. There's only one. This year, there's only one. Thank you. I was gonna say, are they running one or two? One?
Paulette Stout 36:59
It is onlyAlbuquerque because they moved Virginia to next spring.
Lainey Cameron 37:05
Okay, so I have to look at the timing with my mom here in San Miguel. I can't be gone all the time, so I need to choose when I'm gone. So I don't know, but I fingers crossed, I can go to that one. What I am signed up for, because I pushed it out from last year, is I'm going to author nation in Las Vegas, which is the indie publishing conference in Las Vegas in November that is definitely on my calendar. I have a ticket. It was just supposed to be last year, and they very nicely, let me push my registration to this November, so I will be there for that. And I have one group of friends thinking about organizing a writer retreat that I'm kind of watching, going, Oh, that could be really nice.
Lainey Cameron 37:37
And hey, Paulette, if you wanted to do a retreat, now...
Paulette Stout 37:39
I want in on that!
Lainey Cameron 37:43
I'm down! So I'm down for San Miguel. Also, if anyone wants to join Paulette and I, we could pull our own little retreat in San Miguel together. Let me know. Let me know if you're interested, and we'll pull it together. It wouldn't be too hard. We could definitely do it this year, and it's not too expensive here, either.
Paulette Stout 37:58
All right, that's a definite, maybe,
Lainey Cameron 38:02
Definite, maybe let me know.
Paulette Stout 38:04
Yeah. I would love to go to Author Nation this year. I've never been. I feel like it's a good with the change. I know there's different tracks, so it's really good for you of different aspects of your career, definitely considering Albuquerque in September, and I would love to just find opportunities to connect with authors. So if you are doing an authory thing and have space, please hit me up. Guess maybe I'll come. Yay. I'm not above begging.
Lainey Cameron 38:38
Love it, love it. And I've got some travel planned mid year for some family weddings and things as well, so which I have to plan around. So I think that was all our topics for now. I encourage folks to go check us out on sub stack and also on our website at best of book marketing com, we're gonna have some interesting resources listed there, including some resources that we have seen people use for planning that work well, including the Audi indie author conference calendar that I referenced. And with that, I guess I'll just say, Happy New Year. Everybody.
Paulette Stout 39:11
Happy New Year. And look, follow us on social, please. And if you see posts engage, we love to hear from you. Have a great month. We'll see you next month.