Resolutions or Goals? Just Do It

It's that time of year again.  In fact, we're starting the second week of that time of year.  Did you make your New Year's Resolutions?  Or are you like me and run screaming from the mere thought of doing it?  If I had made resolutions, I'd have already broken one by being late this morning with this blog.  It happens.

I admit it.  I find the words "New Year's Resolutions" totally frightening.  That's probably because I've never been able to carry my resolve to do something past the first week or two of the year.  But look at it this way.  Another definition of the word resolve means to disintegrate, and I'm obviously good at doing that to my resolutions.

But none of that means that I don't try to set goals and work toward them.  Sometimes there are things that come along--life things, career things--that make changes in those goals, but I still have something in mind.  The word goal carries a more positive ring for me...probably because of that resolve thing and carpet cleaner.

With all that in mind, I wrote a blog post for my own blog last September and thought some of the information I found while researching it could be shared here today.  Besides, I need a nudge to keep me honest and working toward my own goals, New Year's or not. ;)


First, ask yourself some questions.

Is your goal realistic? 
For writers, this is one of the biggest blocks that can keep them from reaching their goal.  For instance, if your goal is to become a published author, setting a goal to be published in a year or any other specified amount of time, isn't realistic.  You have no way to control whether an editor/publisher will buy your manuscript.  Once you've written your book, researched the right publishers to submit to, and slipped your baby into the mail or an email, the control is in another court.  Outside of writing is the same.  You can't control what another person will do.  Make certain your goal is something you can control.  You should also give yourself the time needed to reach your goal and add a little wiggle room.  Realize that life can sometimes throw curves and be prepared.

How badly do you want it?
It takes wanting something enough not to give up at the first sign of problems to keep working on a goal.  Don't quit too soon.  In fact, if you've set a specific time period in which to reach your goal, see it through.  Why?  Because even if you don't reach your goal, you've made progress.  Celebrate it.  You can always try for that brass ring again.  If you decide to do that, you're already a step ahead, because you've seen some of the things that can trip you up, and you can adjust your plan in accordance.


There are all kinds of goals, not only for writing, but for making life easier, healthier, and more fun.  Whether it's getting more exercise, losing weight, organizing your home or life, or taking a vacation, setting goals can help you be a success.  You can find some great tips online to help you along the way, from planning and the process of working on goals to reaching them.  Here are just a few:

• WebMD's How to Reach Your Goals has some great advice on goal setting to help you make reaching your goal a success.
• Not sure you're ready to set a goal?  Do you see too many obstacles?  Susan B. Wilson, Facililitator and Coach has tips on how to remove those obstacles.
• Are you in need of long term goals for living, not just short term goals for specific projects?  Mind Tools - Personal Goal Setting can help you along the way.
• The title pretty much says it all.  Dr. Phil's Seven Steps to Reaching Your Goals.

Harlequin author Susan Meier also has a great workshop on her blog about Goal Setting that began in December.  Check it out for more tips and tricks on making and keeping both writing and other goals.

It begins with It's Monday Morning...Do You Know Where Your Goals Are?  (Scroll down the page until you get to it.)

This year WARA has decided to take on the task of not only urging members to set writing goals, but to keep track and encourage each other individually and as a group.  To change things up a bit, we've chosen word count, instead of page count, and will announce our goals for the year at our first meeting of 2012...TODAY!  We'll be posting our combined progress each month here and on our website in the form of a meter.

The significance of a man is not in what he attains but in what he longs to attain.     Kahlil Gibran

Goals and Shoals by J Vincent

January. The month of resolution-making, of setting goals. Doing this is never difficult. Keeping goals from sinking on the shoals of life is excruciatingly tricky at times. Like last week. My goal was to write this blog. The shoal that goal hit was a virus striking my computer. Traumatic! I had actually managed to remain a virus virgin these many years. The aptly named "Trojan" somethingorother slipped right past my virus protection program which was the first thing to disappear--but let's not go there. What turned out even more painful happened after I handed over my laptop to be "scrubbed" and have a different virus protection program installed. It was then I realized why I should have replaced my old desktop that died in October. Sans computer there is no word-processing--i.e. writingmanuscript, email, or otherwise; there is no email reading. There is no internet, no google directions to the new doctor, no browsing. I can hear you thinking that anyone can live without the internet. Many do. BUT, there is always a but, I had changed all my bills over to paying online and not automatically. I am also going to be taking a trip and need to finalize arrangements and print out several things that they used to mail the traveler. Enough of those shoals.

Back to goals in a roundabout way. Making them is easy. Keeping them is more difficult (see above). Reaching them revolves around the degree of sincerity. No, seriousness. Nope, determination and desperation (a new insight after the computer withdrawal) are much more accurate. Remember the no email reading? I solved that by figuring out how to do it on my Nook. Same for browsing and googling although word processing and printing is sadly out of the oop. To get this blog written I went to my son and used his computer/printer. In the end I will solve all the problems by buying a new desktop. I momentarily thought "Never again will I be high and dry" as fools do but something will come along and throw a road block up along my personal computer highway in the future. To prevent one of the major ones I also bought an external hard drive and set it up to automatically backup any new or changed file. Remember I did say this was a roundabout approach so back to the topic.

Another difficulty in meeting goals occurs if they are too nebulous, too indistinct. The more concrete, the more specific the better. One of my major writing goals for 2012 is to get the first book in my Honour series up through Smashwords. If I write just that as my goal I can almost guarantee it will never happen or take many many months to implement. So I broke it down into specific steps.
1. Find an editor---check
2. Sketch out a cover and find someone to draw or paint it--check
3. Implement the changes necessary after the editor goes through the manuscript--check
4. Download the Smashwords manual on formatting and study it --in progress
5. Format the manuscript
6. Format the cover art
7. Upload to Smashwords

My other major goal is to write the fifth book in the Honour series. I've broken that goal down into research steps, plot realignment (I started this book over a year ago and it has mostly lingered in a doc file--a non-growing file), and scene and chapter goals. Staying on track is not easy but setting small obtainable goals week by week insures more success--at least for me. My "goal" is to finish the book. My set goal at the moment is to finish a chapter. Small is better in goals, like building a two thousand piece puzzle. You can only do it one piece at a time but each piece builds the picture. Each small goal builds the story until one day there is a completed manuscript!

Happy New Year! Happy Goal Making and Keeping. May the shoals in your life be but minor ones!

MILTON BRADLEY AIN’T GOT NOTHING ON US by Reese Mobley

If you’re reading this then pat yourself on the back for surviving another year. Whether 2011 brought you misery and heartache or triumph and happiness, be thankful you made it over the threshold to 2012. There's just something about a new year that brings renewed hope. Maybe we’ll finally lose that extra weight. Finish our first manuscript or our fifteenth. Organize our home and office to make ourselves more productive. Weed out the unnecessary brick-a-brack in our way to being more productive writers.

Set some goals.

Where do you start? It’s quite simple. All you have to do is move your personal game piece to the next square on your game of life. Plan your next move. Roll the dice. Don’t be afraid to take a chance. What’s the worst that could happen? Forward progress is the only way to get the job done. All you have to do is put one foot ahead of the other.

Good luck. I'll be rooting for you all the way.

Hugs,

Reese

2012

Pat Davids here wishing everyone a Happy New Year. I've never been so glad to put any year behind me as I was to 2011.

So, are you making New Year resolution? I'm not. I've decided not to do that anymore. I used to be an avid list maker. I'd plan the steps I needed to accomplish my goals. Some I did manage to make. Others, like regular exercise, went by the wayside before the first week was over.

So this year I've decided I'm not making resolutions. If I eat better, great. If I exercise more, terrific. If I write lots of words, paragraphs and pages, I'll finish a few more books. I will not resolve to do, I will just do.

That's my secret to writing three books a year.

Flex Your Writing Muscles - Childhood Memories (Penny Rader)

http://sites.google.com/site/vwnesler/RenoirChildWriting.gif

Since we've been discussing the impact our childhood might or might not have had on our writing, I thought it could be fun to use writing prompts to delve into our childhoods.  Might give us great fodder for stories.  I hope you'll join in.  Feel free to share.

Free Creative Writing Prompts: Childhood  (Bryan Cohen)

• How did the following things affect you during your childhood: music, books, the weather, money, love. You can combine them all into one story or do separate entries on each.
• Write a poem about [y]our earliest childhood memory.
• You have been given the opportunity to go backwards. You can pick an age and start over again from that age. Do you pick one or not? What age would you go to? Describe your first week with your "old person" memories in your younger body.

How to Write about Your Childhood — Autobiographical Writing (John Hewitt)

"Autobiographical Writing is an excellent way to work on your descriptive skills. When you describe items or memories from your past, you are able to provide details that are often lacking in more purely imaginative exercises. With autobiographical writing you learn how to describe what was rather than what isn’t."

Here a few examples of prompts given by John:

• What was family life like as a child? How did you feel you fit into your family?
• Write about your best friend as a child and the experiences you had together. What has happened to that friendship since childhood?
• Describe your nemesis growing up. Who made your life miserable and what did they do to make it so rough?
• What was the biggest trouble you got into as a child? Describe what you did or didn’t do to deserve what happened to you.

http://www.innertuitionlifecoaching.com.au/files/innertuition/photos/rope%20swing.jpg

Reawaken Your Creativity By Revisiting Your Childhood Pleasures (Aileen McCabe-Maucher)

• This week, honor the small child within yourself by revisiting the activities that brought you the most pleasure as a child. In your journal, make a list of all of the activities that you delighted in when you were a youngster. Think of the things that you used to do that made you lose track of time.
• This week, spend at least thirty minutes doing the activity that brought you the most pleasure in your childhood. Give yourself permission to be silly and spontaneous.

What do you remember from your childhood? (Jo Middleton)

"I’ve always thought of myself as a person with a fairly poor long-term memory, but one exercise we did on my recent Arvon course made me realise that there are actually a lot of interesting sounds, sights and smells buried in the murky depths of my brain, if only I can dig around enough and find them under the layers of daily life."

and

"... exercise was based on an extract of a book called I Remember by Joe Brainard. We were asked to close our eyes and imagine being ten. We then wrote down everything we could remember about how being ten tasted, how it smelt, how it sounded and how it felt. It was amazing how easily one memory triggered another, and before long we were all reciting the most amazingly evocative childhood memories. You should give it a go, see what you come up with."

Writing Triggers for Family Memories (Virginia Allain)

Virginia provides "a fresh memory prompt or writing trigger each week here. Use it to prod your memory, then write down what you discover. Your memory writing may be just a paragraph or it could be five or six pages. As you find the memories flowing again, take advantage and get it into written form. ... You don't have to write about every aspect suggested. Choose a part that interests or inspires you and start writing the memories from your childhood."

Here’s one of her triggers:

Remember Something Precious to You

Think back to some object that was important or precious to you as a child. Describe it. Do you still have it or was it lost or broken or given away? Tell why you considered it special. Who gave it to you or how did you get it? Where did you keep it?

This could be something simple like a feather you found or something valuable like a ring given to you by your grandmother. Think back to something you treasured.

http://salvacion.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/box-of-treasure.jpg

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What do you think?  Care to share a memory or fictionalize a memory?  Do you have any prompts or exercises to creatively mine your memories?

Events that kicked my writing bum (Melissa Robbins)

Merry Christmas Eve to you all!

I've been a writer since childhood, but when this month's topic came up, four events stuck out in my mind. In college, I took three English classes. My first two teachers hated my work. I learned the concept of subjectiveness early on and the fact that I'm not a non-fiction writer. Although my third English teacher didn't like my writing either, he called me into his office and said I should try this, this, and this. For the life of me, I can't remember what he said or even his name, but the fact that my teacher took the time to help me did wonders for my passion to write.

Fast forward to almost a decade later. My son, Duncan was born with heart defects and remained in the NICU for five weeks. With a new baby and a two year old, writing was put on the back burner, but now I had plenty of time to write. After spending a vacation in Scotland the year before, a story and characters started forming. While my mom watched Emma in the afternoons, I sat in Duncan's hospital room and wrote about a WAAF in WW2. Her background and name are different than the Wren in my stories today, but Jack, my cheeky fighter pilot, never changed his ways, much to the delight of the rest of us.

A couple of years later, my writing had stalled again. My story was going nowhere and I gave up on it. Not my characters, though. Finding the time to write seemed impossible. Then one day after starting a new plot with the same characters, I discovered Fran, a fellow Irish dancer was also a writer. I hadn't found anyone to share my story with that I wasn't related or married to before. I was thrilled. We exchanged first chapters and Fran gave me that kick in the pants I needed to start writing again.

I can't remember how long after that that my computer died and I lost everything I wrote. I know. I learned my lesson. As Fran can attest to, the loss was probably a blessing in disguise. My story was in third person, but since I had to start all over again, I tried first person and found my voice.

My fourth event, fifth if you count the computer crashing, was when I joined Sisters in Crime and WARA. I decided that year I wanted to be a serious writer. I finished that story I spent years working on. Writing is a pretty solitary life. The critiques and encouragement I receive from fellow writers help me immensely both with my writing and in life in general.

Childhood + ? = Writing Career (Penny Rader)

My brain froze when I saw the topic for this month's blog.  I'm not one of those writers who has written since childhood...except for a couple failed attempts to keep a journal (which I stopped after someone read it and repeated the info in front of me).

For weeks now I've been trying to decide what could've possibly happened during my growing-up years that molded me as a writer.  I considered accidentally-on-purpose forgetting to write my post, but then I came up with two things:

My love of reading.  When Sister Mary Renee told my first-grade self I was going to learn to read, well, panic surged. I thought she was going to give me a huge, thick red book and expect me to know what all those squiggles meant.  Once I learned what they meant I was happily hooked and I never stopped reading...which many moons later led to writing.

Playing.  When I was a kid (way back in the Dark Ages) we didn't have cable TV or computers or gaming systems.  We played outside.  A lot.  And used our imagination.One of my favorite things to do was play on the swing set and pretend I was being carried away by a bad guy (though what the 'bad guy' might actually do never occurred to me) and was then rescued by one of the current hotties of the day.

I know, not very heroine-like, waiting to be rescued, but as a kid who was bullied I needed to pretend that Bobby Sherman or Michael Landon rushed to protect me, to save me.


~~~

Did a specific event during your childhood inspire you to become a writer?