It’s nearing the end of the year. Assessment time. How have you been doing as a writer of fiction?
I decided to use the Writer’s Performance Review template created by the Book Coach, Jennie Nash. I encourage you to use it, too.
For 2021, I rated myself as a 73 out of 100. My weakest areas were: Goal Orientation, Industry Knowledge, and Strategic Thinking. I only gave myself a 2 rating in each of those.
For each weak area, I need a plan for improvement. Goal Orientation is relatively easy for me—I just lost sight of doing it now that I’m retired. For Industry Knowledge, I committed to monthly checks of publishing trends, easily done with internet searches. For Strategic thinking, I need to do some research about my ideal readers and their influencers.
Other areas of weakness where I rated myself as 3 were: Self-editing skills, Organization and planning, Genre knowledge, Target audience knowledge, Literary citizenship – peer to peer, and Coachability. Since I meet expectations with these, and since this is the first year I’m doing this assessment, I’m not going to set firm plans for improvement in these areas. That will allow me to focus on the worst areas—the ones with ratings of 2.
As I mentioned, you can use that Writer’s Performance Review, too. It’s important to be honest as you do so. Still, I found it much easier than annual performance reviews at work. Both receiving them from supervisors and giving them to subordinates were stressful events. A self-assessment skips all that worry about how the other person perceives you.
The end of each year is a good time for reflection, review, assessment, and planning for the future. If you try to be as objective as possible with it, this tool might very well improve your writing, whether you create fiction, non-fiction, or poetry. Improved writing—that’s the shared goal of you and—
Poseidon’s Scribe
