Wow. I remember when I first started writing. I wish I’d known then what I know now! But don’t worry – I’m going to tell you what I know now, so you can have a super fast and successful start to your writing career.

I did ok in those early days – a few letters got published in some big magazines, I got the odd article accepted here and there in some low profile magazines, and one or two short stories received publication and a few complimentary copies.

But as I say, I wish I’d known then what I know now. I was doing ok, but I was aimless. I had no real direction to go in. If I felt particularly inspired, I might write a couple of articles in one day; I remember once writing three in a single day and getting every single one published. But then I’d bask in the glory of my success for weeks… and it was ages before I summoned the muse to write again.

This is a real stumbling block for the newbie writer. If you have real ambitions as a writer – if you want to get published (and paid for), and you have a list of magazines tucked safely under your pillow that you dream about getting published in someday… you need a plan. You need a goal.

This is something I never realised until a few years ago. You can be the most talented writer out there; you can be the next John Grisham, the next JK Rowling, or the next Stephen King… but it doesn’t matter a jot if you don’t have a plan for how you’re going to get there.

Goal setting can make the difference between doing okay, and getting a few pieces published here and there, or making a successful, full time career as a writer. Even if you only want to keep your writing in hobby status, setting goals for yourself can mean that hobby brings in several hundred pounds a month extra, and puts your name in several well known magazines every month.

So how do you go about setting goals?

Well the first and most important thing you need to do is to be honest with yourself. Grab a notepad and pen, and settle down in a comfy chair where you won’t be disturbed. Ask yourself what you’d really like to achieve with your writing. Be honest – don’t neglect to write something down because you don’t think you could ever do it, or it’s too hard, or you don’t think you’re good enough. This is like the ‘what would you do if you won the lottery?’ question – go all out and dream!

Would you like to write a book? Get a short story in a world famous magazine? What’s the one thing you’ve always wanted to achieve with your writing?

Let’s say you want to write and publish your own book. That’s a big goal. But you can do it – if you go about it in the right way. That’s where goal setting comes in. But you need to know how to do it properly – and for maximum effect.

First of all, write your goal down on a Post-It note. But don’t write it as if it’s something you want – write it as if it’s already happened. So you’d write something like this:

“I am a successful published author, and I make £1000 every month selling copies of my book online and in bookstores.”

This might sound a little strange, but it really works! The key is to write your goal down as if you have already achieved it, and then stick the Post-It note where you will see it often – ideally right by your computer screen. By doing this, you will impress the message upon your subconscious, which will get to work for you and start making your dream come true.

Sounds even stranger now, I’ll bet! Well, the subconscious is an amazing thing, but you don’t really need to understand a great deal about it for this method to work. The simple reason it does work is this – the subconscious cannot tell the difference between what is real and what you tell it is real. Whatever messages you bury into your subconscious, it will make them come true.

Think about it. Have you ever noticed how people who are down on their luck are convinced it’s because they’re naturally unlucky? And then something bad happens to prove it? And that convinces them even more… and so on, in an ever downward spiral?

And think about someone you’ve met who always seems to be doing well? They’re always optimistic, always looking for the best in every situation… and they always seem to be ‘getting lucky’?

Both these types of people have ultimately created their own surroundings. The person who expects to succeed does exactly that – because they work towards that goal, and their subconscious drives them there. The unlucky person expects to be unlucky because that’s what always seems to happen to them – so that’s what their subconscious ‘mirrors’ back to them.

So get your subconscious working for you, and think about what you would really like to achieve as a writer. I have used this technique for some time now, and I can tell you it’s amazing what starts to happen when you trust your subconscious and stick that little Post-It note where you can see it!

A while back, I set a goal to get some e-books published. I wanted to be earning £1000 a month by writing and selling articles and e-books, so I stuck my note on my computer monitor, and I found myself looking at it probably twenty or thirty times a day.

Within a couple of weeks of doing that, my first book was on sale with an online publisher, and I had an agreement with a second publisher to write another one for them. In the same short space of time, I found a website on which I could display and sell my articles (check it out at www.constant-content.com/?aref=5038 – I thoroughly recommend it), and sold a couple within five days of each other. It felt like I’d just ‘got lucky’ and stumbled across all this information… but I know it’s because my subconscious knew what it needed to do, and went for it like a heat seeking missile!

And all thanks to that Post-It note!

So you can see what’s possible. Think about what you’d really like to achieve, and set yourself some goals today. If you follow the technique above, I promise you you’ll be celebrating in no time!

Go to it – and enjoy the journey.

In spite of teachers’ misgivings and students’ complaints, the research paper remains one of the most common assignments in undergraduate college writing programs across the country. In addition, much of the writing that students are expected to produce in courses across the curriculum requires them to locate and use research material.

Most writing teachers would agree that successful writers must be able to gather, interpret, integrate, and acknowledge material from a variety of sources, but many teachers are disappointed in their students’ responses to research paper assignments and disillusioned about their abilities to teach students these critical processes. Surprisingly, in spite of the important role that research plays in academic writing, researchers have only begun to examine how students approach the process of researching a topic for writing (Stotsky, 1990).

In two valuable exploratory studies, Kuhlthau (1983, 1988) used questionnaires, interviews, and journals to examine how advanced high school and college students defined and directed their own searches for information to be used in writing. She found that these students moved through a series of six overlapping stages during the search process, which included developing a personal need for the search, selecting a topic, exploring available sources, developing a focus for the paper, collecting relevant material, and preparing the material for presentation. Most important, students moved through these stages before they actually began writing drafts of their papers. This means that a large portion of the critical work required to produce a research paper often takes place during the search process, rather than during the custom essay writing process.

Research reveals that there is a considerable difference between the way many students view the process of research and the way most college instructors and researchers view it. Schwegler and Shamoon (1982) interviewed college students about why they wrote research papers and why they thought teachers assigned them. They found that generally students believe that research writing assignments are intended to test their ability to locate and reproduce information for a teacher who knows more about their topics than they do and who will base their grades on the quantity of information presented and the correctness of documentation. In contrast, they found that teachers believe that the aim of research is to “test a theory, to follow up on previous research, or to explore a problem posed by other research or by events” (p. 819). Perhaps most significant, Schwegler and Shamoon found that “college instructors view the research paper as a means to accomplish one of the primary goals of college instruction: to get students to think in the same critical, analytical, inquiring mode as instructors do — like a literary critic, a sociologist, an art historian, or a chemist” (p. 821). The differences between the students’ and teachers’ views are striking. Students define the research process as an exercise in information-gathering while teachers see it as a way to extend their knowledge through critical inquiry and analysis.

The differences between these contrasting goals for research writing are even more striking when we examine how students and more experienced academic writers actually go about locating and evaluating sources to be used in writing. The majority of the freshmen set out on a fact-finding mission, using “topic-driven” techniques that would allow them to find and assemble information on their topic as quickly as possible. For example, students evaluated possible sources by determining how easily information could be extracted. One student explained her technique for determining this: “Skim the index for your topic; if information is spread out [sprinkled over several distant pages], then reject that book because you would have to read too much . . . you should try to find sources that have pockets or chunks of information that can be read and summarized easily” (Nelson & Hayes, 1988, p. 5). In contrast, the more advanced writers approached their research very differently. They described their initial purpose for conducting research in various ways: “to make a case; to argue for a position; to find a provocative or new approach” (Nelson & Hayes, 1988, p. 3). These goals led to “issue-driven” search strategies that allowed students to zero in on issues and to evaluate the relevance and validity of possible sources. For example, three of the advanced students reported that they skimmed periodical indexes, such as The New York Times index, in order to get an overview of the major issues surrounding their topic, and they used this information to help them find an “angle” or issue to explore. Unlike the “topic-driven” freshmen, these more advanced students evaluated prospective sources rhetorically, asking “Who wrote this, when, and for what purpose?” They chose sources based on their relevance and reliability, not on how easily material could be extracted and reproduced. What emerges from these studies are very different views of the goals and strategies involved in researching a topic for writing. It appears that some students may interpret the goals of research-based writing in very limited terms and that these limited task interpretations may lead them to choose truncated paths when they are searching for material to be used in writing.

But why do students define and approach their research assignments so differently? There are several possible explanations worth considering. First, perhaps the more experienced writers have particular knowledge about using library resources that the less experienced students lack. The “topic-driven” search strategies may be the inevitable outcome when students don’t have the knowledge needed to conduct a thorough search of the library’s resources. Other studies of students’ search processes suggest that this may be part of the problem. An early study of nearly fifty college freshmen at Bucknell University reported that “the conception of research on the part of many [students] appeared to be limited and unsophisticated — often involving little more than finding a book and checking it out of the library” (Reed, 1974, p. 20). Based on her extensive study of the search processes of advanced English high school seniors, Kuhlthau (1985) has suggested that some students may need to “learn to make a comprehensive search of all sources . . . and to extend their search beyond being satisfied with a few books located through the card catalogue” (p. 39). While college freshmen may need to learn how to take advantage of the range of resources available in university libraries, it seems that unless the limited goals that students bring to the research process in the first place are changed, they may continue to be satisfied with a few easily located sources. If their primary goal is to assemble and reproduce what others have written on a topic as efficiently as possible, then long, involved searches are unnecessary. Perhaps this is why students who have attended library tours and received in-depth library skills instruction continue to disappoint their teachers. Such knowledge is largely useless if students are on a fact-finding mission with the sole goal of locating sources with easily plundered pockets of information.

When teachers merely assigned a topic and a due date for papers, students were more likely to procrastinate until the last minute and to rely on shortcuts and “topic-driven” search strategies. However, when teachers provided real purposes for conducting research — for example, by asking students to give oral reports before their papers were due in order to share what they had learned with their uninformed classmates -students took a more critical and time-consuming, “high-investment” approach to their research assignments. The range and quality of the writing contexts students are exposed to may be key factors in aiding their development as academic writers (Nelson & Hayes, 1988). If students work in writing situations that actively encourage them to share and interpret research material rather than expecting them to regurgitate it, they may learn to rely on the same “issue-driven” strategies and goals observed in the more experienced academic writers.