How I Wrote and Published a Poetry Book: Smarter

SMARTER BETTER FASTER

By now, we’re all familiar with the purpose of goals to help us aim at something. Sometimes when we have an aim or a destination to shoot for, most people’s plans are not specific enough to lead them into action and evaluation. In the book, Goal Setting for Writers, the author introduces the idea of “SMARTER,” which applies to any project and lifestyle goals and consists of seven components:

• Specific (significant, sensible, simple)
• Measurable (meaningful, motivating)
• Achievable (agreed, attainable)
• Relevant (reasonable, realistic and resourced, results-based)
• Time-bound (time-based, time-limited, time/cost limited, timely, time-sensitive)
• Evaluated
• Reviewed (rewarded)

Specific

The book’s author sticks with the general idea, with some aspects targeted at authors. Here are a few questions under Specific the book ask using the what, which, where, and who:

• What exactly do you want to accomplish?
• WHICH actions are required to accomplish your goal?
• WHERE will you do the steps needed to achieve your goal?
• WHO is involved in achieving your goal? Can you complete it by yourself, or do you need help?

While writing my poetry book, this is what I jotted down as part of that exercise: I will write my first poetry book on the theme of love by writing 1 or 2 poems a day with a total of between 65-75 poems for the collection at home with scheduled time slots tracked in my Google calendar with a recurring daily task in Todoist. I will work through three phases for each poem: structure > drafts > revision, with a final draft date of 06/01/21. Not high-level stuff here, but much better than saying I want to write a poetry book and release it on valentines day of 2022. 

Measurable

The next step was Measurable, which measures the total word count or completed drafts of poems by the deadline date. Poetry is challenging to calculate with word count because the language and style of poetry are profoundly different from prose. As one of my favorite poets, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, says, “Prose: words in their best order; poetry: the best words in the best order.” Thus, setting a time goal and scheduling them into my calendar made the most sense. In my case, I committed 20 hours a week and split those throughout seven days, the bulk of them on Saturday and Sunday, given I have a day job. 

Achievable

As for Achievable, I wrote on calendar days how many poems I wrote/revised and recorded them in a spreadsheet at the end of the week. This way, I can calculate the average number of poems I write or edit each week and see where I can improve. 

Relevant 

The Relevant aspect sinks a bit deep and is akin to The Golden Circle: Why, How, and What. The exercise is built on three questions, and my responses were:

• Why is your goal important to you?
  • Better understand human nature through character development and interaction.
  • Creative expression
  • I can complete challenging goals and keep going.
  • Offer value to others
  • Financial freedom to leave my day job
  • Able to tame my inner demons and slay my dragons
  • I’m driven, consistent, reliable, a go-getter, a high-performer, and self-sufficient.
  • I always wanted to manifest my imagination into reality.
• What will the benefits of achieving your goal be?
  • I will establish an identity as a consistent, reliable, goal-oriented, and self-sufficient person.
  • Steps closer to financial freedom
  • A better person than I was before when I used to procrastinate or give up on goals (e.g., web development)
  • Recognition from the public, e.g., maybe a fan base, agent, publishing house, or authors
• How will you feel once you’ve accomplished this goal?
  • It will be a cathartic release for each milestone and encourage me to push for more goals aligned with my values.
  • Be humbled by the experience, so I don’t let my pride overshadow me.

Ultimately, I want to run my online business full-time to provide more value for others and generate multiple income sources while creating work that reflects my values.

Time-bound

The Time-bound aspect is where you set a deadline date for different parts of the project, and this is the most challenging part when you’re starting out; guess what that is? Procrastination. I am launching into a realm where I have yet to gain prior experience and knowledge of how to work from a previous book release to motivate me to undertake the next project. I struggled with this part of the journey because I had struggled with imposter syndrome. “I’m not good enough” was my most significant obstacle to completing the book. 

If you ask me where I stand today, I’ll tell you I have taken most of the reign over that voice of doubt. Publishing a book inspired me to venture into other unknown paths with courage. Besides that, it took over a year to be clear about the release date for my first poetry book, which is 2/14/22. I knew I had a deadline for a final draft by 6/1/21 to work with an editor and, later, a designer before the big day. 

Evaluated

As part of the Evaluated method, you reflect on your progress towards the goal: you identify what you achieved, what’s working, what isn’t, what obstacles arose, and what methods you applied to overcome challenges. As the saying states, “what gets measured gets improved” by identifying and improving areas like:

• Did I meet my weekly writing goals?
• How do I spend my time throughout the week (reviewing the calendar
• How do I feel about the direction and speed I’m moving? 

One of my biggest worries is that we don’t evaluate how we genuinely feel about the tools we use to “optimize” our workflow to see if these hacks correspond with our values. This is especially true with trends in productivity and maximizing one’s life. People pick up the subsequent trending productivity and get bogged down from completing their tasks. We’re not some cog in a machine that we can fine-tune to max output but an organic life-form susceptible to distractions, varying willpower, and fluctuations of emotions. The North American culture commonly has an over-obsessed need to improve in every area of our lives because we’re more concerned about reaching a goal than enjoying the journey. 

In my case, I find it challenging to find time for family and friends—I do take regular breaks to interact with the pets and family and reach out to a friend between tasks. It’s still a work in progress, and the point of adding this detail to the evaluation aspect is that we do not live in silos. At the same time, lifestyle creeps compound or integrates if we don’t keep our eyes open and scrutinize our actions. So, to remedy this: 

• I set up my calendar with reminders of daily tasks, weekly reflective updates, and six months check-in called Integrity Report from Atomic Habits. Notion Weekly Review
• Also, Annual Reviews & Accomplishments, where I merge some questions from Atomic Habits and Ali Abdaal (a popular YouTuber known for productivity). Notion Annual Review

Rewarded

Finally, we reached the “R” word and not that R word… is it review? Well… no, it’s Rewarded; the book Goal Setting for Writers takes a different approach by injecting review into evaluation. We get to play with something unique, and I would venture to say it is mandatory. It’s easy to get caught up in the flow of productivity and churn away the hours with projects and tasks. Still, as humans prone to burnout or anxiety arising beneath the surface as creatures of extremes, we are swarmed with a dreadful feeling of guilt. If I get too attached to writing a book for weeks or months, then depression will soon follow because I’m not a robot. Part of being alive is “living,” living implies we should rest, experience joy, and embrace a quiet time to re-center. 

As a reward, I celebrate small wins. I schedule a leisure activity at the end of the week after completing weekly writing goals. Over the weekend, I would binge-watch the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies for more significant milestones, like finishing the first draft. What’s vital here is that you defined this in advance, so you’re aware of what to expect and motivated to close in on that reward. 

BETTER

This concludes the SMARTER implementation in my work, but what does it entail when I say BETTER, FASTER? The BETTER concept is paying attention to your weekly reflections by identifying what is and is not working and how I can make workflows in my tasks. For instance, if I miss the 1st draft deadline, I’ll downsize some priorities to make more room for writing sessions to meet the deadline. 

FASTER

FASTER doesn’t imply I write faster (although that will help a lot). It’s implementing some checks to help me enter a state of flow quicker and longer without interruptions. For instance, five minutes before, I write my blocking distraction app, Freedom, to start at the scheduled time and block distractions like YouTube. Then, I’ll jump-start a soundtrack on Spotify and open up my writing doc and start writing. This ritual has psychological significance to create a mental cue to prepare for what’s next and to strengthen my discipline to reproduce this workflow. And now, I can finally say we’re done here, and the next portion of this post covers my system.

The Gist

This post focuses on the author’s goals and a strategy for achieving them. This is accomplished by establishing a mindset and set of always-present behaviors. Still, much guidance may be used in any aspect of your life. I sincerely hope you find the ideas presented here helpful and that they help you live more peacefully. To shape the concepts described here, imagination is needed. To tie everything together, I’ll express the key ideas from each topic below.

• You’ve probably heard of the SMART goal method before, but let’s try to use the SMARTER goal method instead (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, evaluated, and rewarded). Having a goal and a general notion of the workflow is one thing. Still, when you’re playing the long game of life and doing something like producing a book to publish it and add marketing, you need something smarter, better, and faster. An organized map will make finding your way around each project simpler than using the compass.
• The SMARTER BETTER FASTER technique needs to be “bulletproofed” even though we have the skills to make any project successful. After all, we are human, and our attention spans, energy levels, and moods change. Even worse, you achieve your objective, soar to victory, and then experience a cliff-drop. Additionally, did you appreciate the trip itself? Be clear about your vision and your motivations (extrinsic and intrinsic). Establishing the strategy or subsystems by integrating the SMARTER BETTER FASTER technique. The preparations we need, the technology and tools we require, and backup plans in case priorities shift should all be considered when coming up with a solution. Of course, this would also include batching work and using templates.
• Although poetry books are not going to make the average poet break into the six-figure salary range, what matters is the impact of the poetic language effect in your life and its effect on others, so publishing a poetry book is worth it if it’s not tied to external values like wealth and fame.