Wishes are the first step



I’ve been thinking about wishes, largely because I tend to look down on them as impractical. The truth of the matter is, the impetus for goals comes from wishes.

What are wishes?
This is easy. Wishes are thoughts about what we want to happen. They are the expression of fantasy. Fantasy is a video clip of our desires, wishes are the sound bite. 

Fantasy, as well as the resulting wishes, come from our values, which in turn come from our emotional and cognitive responses to formative experiences, some of which are transmitted to us by our childhood interactions with caretakers.

I grew up in a creative family — my mother took photographs and designed multimedia projects and my dad did woodworking. Thus I learned that creativity was valued in my family, I learned from my teachers that I had a skill for writing. These developed my value that getting recognition for creativity was important.

I fantasize about getting a book contract. It’s a movie in my head. From it I extrapolate the wish to get published.


Wishes are translated into goals
We have limited resources and abundant wishes, so we have to prioritize which ones we act upon. When we decide to process a wish into steps we can act upon, it becomes a goal. So my raw goal is to get published.


Goals are then clarified
We can’t act upon goals until we’ve clarified two things: 

  1. what resources (time, money, etc.) we can allocate to fulfill the goal
  2. actions to take to fulfill the goal
To make strong goals, we need to answer the queries “who, what, where, when, why, how many, how much”. So I come up with “I will have my first book traditionally within the next five years.”

Goals that go through the SMART philosophy (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) become even stronger. When I do this to my goal, it falls apart somewhat when examined:

  • Specific: Yes, I covered the query questions above
  • Measurable: “book traditionally published” is measurable
  • Relevant: I think so
  • Time-bound: Yes
  • Achievable: here’s the big problem. This goal has nothing to do with what I can do, but a result that’s out of my control. I need to rewrite this goal into one or more goals that will be things I can take action on, which I have articulated here. 


The goal becomes the plan
Because I have done the prior steps, I can act upon those specific goals. The goals inform the plan, which is the series of actions that it will take to fulfill the plan.

Then it’s time to act.
You have a trajectory, a time limit, and the steps toward winning. Now it’s up to you.


Without goals, our wishes flounder. But without wishes, we have nothing to make goals from.








New Year — and changes in the blog

Happy New Year!
Welcome to 2020. I had a pretty peaceful year last year, and I’m hoping this one is more fruitful. How about you? 
  
What’s with the Headings?
You might have noticed the format of this blog post has changed. 
I’m trying to learn a new trick for the New Year, and that is more effective blog posts. I just got a copy of Robert Lee Brewer’s  29th Annual Edition Guide to Literary Agents 2020 (2019)* and I’m using his material to up my social media game.

A couple of things Brewer (2019) suggested in blogging were: 1) shorter sentences; 2) headings 3) clip art. 

How will this affect blogging?
So far, this has been a big change in my blogging, because I have to pause a lot more and think. It’s going to make blogging a lot different, because my almost stream of consciousness blogging will end. But I guess this caters to people’s actual attention spans online.

For you, the reader:

  1. Could you let me know how this is working for you? Like, dislike? I’d love to hear from you!
  2. Check out the book below. Here’s the link: Guide to Literary Agents 2020.


Reference:
Brewer, Robert Lee (2019) 29th Annual Edition Guide to Literary Agents 2020. Penguin Random House.  

* About that discrepancy in dates — American Psychological Association style requires the publication date included, and since today is January 1st, 2020, the book had to be published in 2019.

Goals, Not Resolutions



I don’t do resolutions, I do goals.

Resolutions come from a position of weakness: I’m not doing good enough, I need to fix something. Goals come from a position of strength: I want to make something new happen.

Resolutions aren’t backed by planning. Goals are — and in making the parameters of the goal SMART (specific, measurable, appropriate, relevant, time-constrained). The plan follows, and the plan increases the chances of success.

Here are my revised writing goals for the New Year:

Short-term: 

  • ·       Develop a platform plan by March 1, 2020
  • ·       Write/submit 5 short stories/poems/flash fiction by December 31, 2020
  • ·       Revise via developmental edit by March 1, 2020
  • ·       Send 50 queries for Gaia’s Hands by February 1, 2020
  • ·       Send 50 queries for Whose Hearts are Mountains  by October 1, 2020

 Long-Term:  

  • ·       Get an agent
  • ·       Publish my first book
  • ·       Discuss with agent further books
  • ·      Develop personal sales presence
  • ·      Develop idea for next novel

Notice that my long-term goals are not SMART, largely because they depend on things beyond my control. I put them in as motivational, as a way to envision where I’d like to be. As that trajectory becomes clearer, I will be able to make them SMART.

I have other SMART goals for the year — one is to lose 30 pounds by December 31, 2020 through eating a well-balanced 1500 calorie a day diet and exercising (the development of getting physically fit is in another goal). I will evaluate my goal every month or so and adjust accordingly if I’m not losing 2.5 pounds a month. (If I’m losing more, that’s fine!)

Well-laid plans will beat resolutions every time. Unless they gang aft agley, I guess.

Discovering perseverance

Today is post number 976. In a little under a month, I will write my 1000th post.

This is probably the most consistent thing I’ve ever done in my life. Almost every day, I’ve written this blog as a way to reach out and as a way to help manage writers’ block. I guess I’m in it for the long run. 

I’m serious about this being the most consistent thing I’ve done in my life (other than things like breathing and eating). I’ve had a habit of being really excited by a new hobby or skill and doing it for a while, but not completing it. Gardening is a good example: I will start seeds of all sorts of edible plants in January through March, plant them, and then give up right around the time weeds sprout. My yields go to zero because I can’t find my plants through all the weeds. I’m not planting this year — I’m letting my raised beds go fallow with tarps on them to kill the weeds. 

I wonder if my blogging will help me make more habits in my life stick. One of these is eating more healthy so I can lose weight again (Yeah, I didn’t stick to that too well) and maybe walking. I may have to set New Years’ resolutions (although I hate those). Or maybe I just keep doing the right thing.

Back to Work

My writing time yesterday was taken up by 1) signing the contract to have my poem “Limerance” published in the Winter 2019 issue of Wingless Dreamer; and 2) replacing 56 passwords that Google said had been compromised. This took pretty much all my writing time.

Back to “no excuses but I don’t know what to write” mode. I saw a flash fiction item on Submittable with the theme “Your character feels submerged but valued”. Just about anything in the Archetype universe fits that category. Problem is that I think it’s due today. Or yesterday. Let’s see.

I’m once again not writing another novel by suggestion of an awesome editor I met at Gateway Con (an artist’s conference). The plan is short stories, flash fiction, and poetry until one of the books gets picked up. 

So wish me luck.

A Case of Writers’ Block

I’m back home, sitting at the Board Game Cafe, trying to figure out what I want to write.

Anything I start will be interrupted in two days when I get my dev edit for Whose Hearts are Mountains back, so I can work on fixing it. On the other hand, I feel weird not writing. Not writing poetry, not writing short stories, not writing novels, not editing. 

I’m afraid that if I take a break, I won’t go back. But I have taken a break over finals week and beyond to Christmas. And inspiration has taken a vacation as well.

If I felt like starting a novel, I could turn the jam-packed short story Hands into a novel, if I could get some insight as to what Warsaw, Poland was like fifteen years ago. Boy, did I paint myself into a corner there. 

My blog counts as writing, though, as I intended it to. Warmups to something bigger for the day. Let’s see what that will be.

On My Way Back Home

I’m spending my last couple hours at Starved Rock sitting in front of the fireplace in the Great Hall, soaking up the atmosphere. It has been a good vacation despite my frustrations borne of childhood issues temporarily clouding my perception. 

I need to get back to writing. This will be easily cured by a big project in the form of my developmental edit of Whose Hearts are Mountains. The frustration, though, is that I don’t have any ideas on the back burner, neither short story nor novel. I don’t like feeling so tenuous about my attachment to writing. 

I need to have a resolution that I will write two hours a day once more. It’s been a while since I’ve spent that much time — no, I take that back; I was writing/editing four hours a day cleaning up Whose Hearts are Mountains in November.

Does anyone have any story ideas I can play around with?

Christmas and the Days After

It’s Christmas day, and I’m sitting in the Great Hall at Starved Rock State Park, in front of the fireplace. My husband just snapped a picture of the fireplace and some Christmas decor for us:



Despite my fretting, it has been a good Christmas. I knew pretty much what I was getting before Christmas, because that’s how Richard and I do our shopping. He managed to surprise me with the chocolate in the stocking (given that I’m eating responsibly again, the chocolate should lasr me a long time.

Once Christmas is over, I’m going to need to strategize. January and February are hard for me, particularly because the weather is so bleak and the celebrations are over. I’m more prone to depression at this time. I will have to find things to celebrate and time to celebrate them until springtime comes with its sun.

But in the meantime, Wingless Dreamer wants a headshot of me so they can publish one of my poems. That’s a positive.

Christmases in My Family

It’s Christmas Eve, and I’m sitting in the cabin at Starved Rock writing this. There’s a small fire in the fireplace, and I’ve just gotten done watching “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”.We go to my dad’s at noon today, which almost didn’t happen because Christmas is strange in my family.

Christmas was my mother’s holiday — she decorated the house elaborately with red ribbons and greens and ornaments until it looked like a Victorian fantasy. She chose presents with care and wrapped them in a way Martha Stewart would envy (for my overseas visitors, look up Martha Stewart. She’s a personality whose fame is based on her overly-involved home decor aesthetic).  Mom planned menus and created a spread of Christmas buffet (but no cookies; she found those too fussy).

Even on her last Christmas in 2007, she orchestrated Christmas from the hospital bed in her living room when she could no longer make it up and down the stairs. She decided she would wear her grey robe with Christmas jewelry and direct the Christmas action from her bed. My mom died of the tumor in her brain just before Christmas.

I am my mother’s child, and I celebrate Christmas rather vigorously. My husband, luckily, loves Christmas as much as I do, so the house is decorated, Christmas carols play all season, and we have our yearly ritual of Starved Rock because there are few places so welcoming at Christmas as the Lodge there. But there’s still that remembrance of my mother mixed up in there, and all the complex feelings memories of my mother stir up — sorrow, joy, frustration, anger, love. 

So my Christmases are strangely textured now. I accept that, and I accept my remembrances of prior Christmases are likely romanticized. It’s all part of life.