Holly Lisle is a fantasy writer who used goals to transition from a nursing career to that of full-time writer. Her earliest goal was simply to make enough from writing that she could quit her day job. Her goals were not specific enough and the writing opportunities dried up, along with her income.
Currently, Lisle's personal goals are specific and realistic, and they change with each project. Her short-term goals include items such as writing five pages per day, revising a novel in one month or locating a suitable publisher and submitting a finished work by a set deadline. Long-term goals governing the same project might include writing and submitting a novel in a year or having 10 novels written and submitted in five years.
National Novel Writing Month offers an example of both short and long-term writing goals. The long-term goal is to get writers of all ability and experience levels to write an entire 50,000-word novel draft over the month of November. In order to achieve that goal, writers must write about 1,667 words per day--the short-term goal.
NaNoWriMo, as it is often called, also hosts an editing month in March. Short-term editing goals might include completing a chapter each day, while the long-term goal might be to submit the novel to agents or publishers at the end of the month. Writers can participate in these events for free.
In his book "On Writing," Stephen King recommends strongly that all writers set goals. He further suggests a goal of 1,000 words per day, six days per week. He states that he writes about 2,000 words per day. This is a short-term goal, and King does not suggest any long-term goals.
Long-term goals work when you achieve your short-term goals in ways that are meaningful to the long-term goal. For example, your 1,000 words per day must be directly applicable to the larger work you have named in your long-term goal. Other writing that does not directly serve that long-term goal (such as journal writing or blog postings) are meaningless to that specific goal, although such writings may serve other goals.
Including a goal to submit work regularly strengthens your overall long-term writing goals. However, including a goal to be published by a certain date may simply be setting yourself up for failure because you cannot control what publishers select.