This post originally appeared as a guest blog post on novelist and editor Scott Bury’s Written Words site. You can follow Scott on Twitter @ScotttheWriter. Scott hosts guest bloggers that answer the questions: “what’s the best thing you have done as a writer? What’s the worst?” Scott also provides great editorial advice, which is how I came to know Scott’s blog.

I’ve been writing for more than twenty years, having started with angst-ridden teenaged poetry penned under a street lamp, and proceeded to angst-ridden personal columns for my local newspapers. Five years ago, most of the angst out of my system, I started publishing books on activism and eastern philosophy along with three separate crime-series with an environmental or historical theme.

The best thing I’ve done when it comes to writing – besides developing the discipline to rise very early each morning and pound out a few thousand words before the rest of the world wakes – was to develop a plan for where I wanted my writing to take me.

For a number of years I was a consultant helping businesses and non-profit organizations develop communications and strategic plans, so the notion was familiar to me. If you have a plan for where you want to go, it’s easier to get there. If a business is trying to sell organic coffee, or a non-profit trying to end homelessness would benefit from a plan to achieve success, why not a writer?

A writing plan needn’t be elaborate: for me its takes the form of a couple of charts. What books to I hope to write, and by when? Which do I have publishers lined up for? What do I need to do in order to find a publisher for those I’m not already under contract for?

Most importantly, how many books do I need to sell in order to make writing my day job? I love getting up at 5am to write before the kids are awake and my full time work begins, but sometime down the road I’d like to clear some of the mental clutter and dedicate myself full-time to scribbling. To do that, I figure I have to sell around 25-30,000 books a year. What do I need to do to reach that number? What does my backlist look like, and how many titles do I need to my name to reach that goal?

I plotted this all out in Word, and ran the numbers in Excel, and then went for a stiff drink.

But knowing what my goal is, and what I have to do to reach it, keeps me focused.

The worst thing I’ve ever done as a writer is to not learn from my own mistakes. Over twenty plus years as a writer I’ve made plenty. The one I keep making may seem common-place, but it’s a serious threat to achieving my game plan. I suck at self-editing. In fact, my story editor sent me one of Scott’s blog posts as a not-so-subtle hint to get on top of the editorial process, and that’s how we came to be swapping stories.

I get so caught up in the story, the plot, the dialog, that I miss important grammatical mistakes. I make them again and again. I also use crutch phrases and clichés too often. Finally, I tend to add unnecessary description, such as the 156 times one of my character’s “nodded” in a recent manuscript. I went through and cut 152 of those in the 7th draft. After a while the reader just gets dizzy.

To achieve my goal of writing for a living, I have to write the very best books I can. To do that, I have to be mindful of the mistakes I make over and over again, and keep my eye on my goals.

To keep up to date with my process towards my writing goals, and how I overcome my chronic mistakes, follow me on Twitter @stephenlegault