Focus and Finish: Goal-Setting and Strategic Planning for Writers: Focus and Finish, #1

By Valerie Ihsan

You've tried sticking to your goals. You've set timers and given yourself incentives and rewards, but nothing seems to work. What could be going wrong?

 

Discover the top two reasons why people don't finish their tasks, identify the keys to self-awareness and how to correct limiting beliefs, and create a system that finally works. (Hint: It might have to do with core values and lists.)

 

Focus and Finish: Goal-setting and Strategic Planning for Writers offers motivation and practical advice for writers on maintaining accountability with themselves so they can focus on, and finish, their projects, and find success.

 

Read today and get that project done.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Willow Bench Books
• Release date: Apr 17, 2024
• ISBN: 9798987808214

Valerie Ihsan

Valerie Ihsan writes memoir and women's mainstream fiction. She’s a certified Three Story Method editor, specializing in Story Diagnostics and helping memoirists with structure and theme. She co-chaired the Eugene Chapter of Willamette Writers for ten years, has taught classes and workshops on writing, self-publishing, and grief. She loves dogs and lives in the Pacific Northwest.

Book preview

Focus and Finish

FOCUS AND FINISH

GOAL-SETTING AND STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR WRITERS

FOCUS AND FINISH

BOOK 1

VALERIE IHSAN

Willow Bench Books

Copyright © 2024

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024907954

Willow Bench Books

Springfield, Oregon

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

For anyone who thinks they can’t get it done.

You can.

CONTENTS

Foreword

1. Step One

2. Step Two (and a half)

3. Step Three (and a half)

4. Step Four

5. Step Five

6. Step Six

7. Step Seven

8. Game Changers

9. Triage, Reflection, and Accountability

10. Resources

Author Note

Strategies for Authors

Part One: Productivity

About the Author

Also by Valerie Ihsan

FOREWORD

I’m a not-so-closet list-lover. Some of you may not like lists. Some of you might have tried list-making in the past and found it didn’t work for you. But even if you are not a list-lover, you will find usefulness and value from this book and the exercises and resources in it.

I think we’ve all had the experience at one point in our lives where we’ve woken up and discovered that what we are doing is not what we want to do and, in fact, was someone else's idea all along. Maybe that was the job that your dad wanted you to have, or maybe it's the parenting style that your partner wants you to use, or maybe it's the vacation that your friend wants you to go on. Maybe none of those things held interest for you—or went against a core belief, even—yet you somehow made yourself believe you wanted them and you trapped yourself into doing them.

For instance, if you have been saying out loud all your life that you wanted to be a lawyer, and you went to law school, and you took the bar exam, and you passed the bar, and now you’re working in a law firm, and you're doing the hours, and you say