Tag: goals

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New Year’s resolutions vs New Year goals

 

As the dark days of winter creep to­ward the end of the year, many people con­sider res­ol­u­tions they want to make for 2025. I used to make res­ol­u­tions but some how they nev­er las­ted long. Two to four weeks was av­er­age. Two months was con­sidered a success.

Of course, that left me won­der­ing about my will power and feel­ing like a fail­ure. Gradually, without even real­iz­ing it, I shif­ted to a new way of mak­ing plans for a new year. I now make a list of goals.

Resolutions and goals are sim­il­ar but also quite dif­fer­ent. A res­ol­u­tion is some­thing you want to change.

A goal is some­thing you want to achieve. It in­cludes the steps you’ll take to ac­com­plish your goal and the date you plan to achieve it by.

It took me a while to fig­ure out what a goal is. I want to write a book and have it pub­lished is not a goal, it’s a dream. It’s like know­ing where you want to go but not how you’re go­ing to get there.

A goal goes some­thing like this: I want to com­plete an 80,000 word ma­nu­script by August 31, edit and re­vise it by December 31 and send it to a pub­lish­er or agent by January 1. To ac­com­plish this, I will work on my book for two hours every week­day and for four hours every Saturday.

Goals I know will be on my 2025 list are com­plet­ing a sol­id re­vi­sion of the nov­el I’m work­ing on and sev­er­al home im­prove­ment pro­jects to make my home more en­ergy ef­fi­cient and cool­er in the summer.

The home im­prove­ments – a ceil­ing fan, new blinds and new ap­pli­ances will be re­l­at­ively easy. Each one of those goals can be ac­com­plished with­in a month, leav­ing plenty of time for writing.

The writ­ing, how­ever, is al­to­geth­er dif­fer­ent. My cur­rent draft of the ma­nu­script con­tains 33 chapters. The thought of re­vis­ing that many chapters, es­pe­cially know­ing that half of them need ma­jor work, is daunt­ing. So, I’ll break the pro­ject down into man­age­able chunks.

Months that I’m work­ing on a fairly pol­ished series of chapters, I can re­vise four or more a month. While work­ing on chal­len­ging chapters, I may only be able to re­vise two a month so I’ll plan accordingly.

From past ex­per­i­ence I know it’s easy to be overly am­bi­tious and that mod­est, real­ist­ic time frames tend to be the most successful. 

But simply hav­ing a goal of­ten isn’t enough. To be truly ef­fect­ive ex­perts say you should write your goal down, make a com­mit­ment by telling someone your plan, and be­ing ac­count­able to that per­son. I con­sider my­self lucky to have two cre­at­ives – writer Caroline Woodward and artist Judi Wild — to share my goals with.

I try to be reas­on­able about what I can ac­com­plish yet push my­self a bit too. To be per­fectly hon­est, I nev­er meet all my self-im­posed dead­lines. But they keep me on track and mo­tiv­ate me to try harder.

Of course goals can be made any time of the year but I usu­ally map mine out dur­ing the last few days of December. I al­ways look for­ward to that in­ter­lude — the cusp of one year passing and an­oth­er be­gin­ning — and all the pos­sib­il­it­ies that brings.

Feature im­age at top: Night in the Forest, a paint­ing by Bev Byerley. 

 

 

 

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Writing journeys for 2016

When the New Year rolls around most people de­cide how many miles they want to run or how many pounds they want to lose. I de­cide how many words I want to write.

There are two writers in our house and we’re both at dif­fer­ent stages of our books. Rick’s in the fin­ish­ing phase: adding tid­bits to cre­ate a stronger story, fact check­ing and pol­ish­ing the ma­nu­script be­fore send­ing it to a publisher.

I’m in the early middle, messy stage. Over the last year I’ve ac­cu­mu­lated a huge pile of re­search and now need to de­cide what else I need, how I’m go­ing to get it and then how to or­gan­ize the whole damn book.

Rick’s on a writ­ing high and I feel like I’m drown­ing in a sea of facts, fig­ures and fables. To top it off, we’re cur­rently shar­ing writ­ing space. Inevitably, one of us is in talk mode when the oth­er is into ser­i­ous writ­ing. SHUSS! and oc­ca­sion­ally stronger words of­ten bounce off the walls.

When I moan about or­gan­iz­ing my data (the part I hate about writ­ing a book) Rick tells me to just do it. “Just start writ­ing,” he says, “that’s the only way you’ll fig­ure it out.” I know he’s right be­cause I’ve told him the same thing many times before.

But we aren’t just writers. We’re walk­ers and run­ners, daugh­ters and sons, friends and fond of good meals. Exercise, so­cial­iz­ing, even cook­ing, all takes time. Something that al­ways seems to be in short sup­ply when you’re a writer.Goal 1

Rick and I both have im­port­ant (to us any­way) writ­ing goals for 2016. His is a con­tract with a pub­lish­er and launch date for his book. Mine is to be in the spot Rick’s in now – the fi­nal stages of a ma­nu­script. We know the key to achiev­ing our goals is our time and how we man­age it.

We’ve both vowed to de­vote morn­ings (when we’re the sharpest) to writ­ing. That means no lolling around in bed, few or no emails, no phone calls or ap­point­ments (un­less book re­lated) and no cof­fees out with friends un­til after noon. We’ll be strict about this be­cause we know, even if it’s dif­fi­cult at times, the re­wards will be worth it.

Rick’s strategy is to cut down on so­cial en­gage­ments and ar­range them at times that don’t in­ter­fere with writ­ing. He’s also de­cided not to ac­cept non-book re­lated work (not an op­tion for every­one, I know) for sev­er­al months.

Goal 2I’m a list maker so will re­fine my “to con­tact” list and put it into a timeline. Ditto for rough­ing out chapters, which will, of course, gen­er­ate an­oth­er list for “need to find out.” Every month or so, I’ll re­view what I’ve done. To be per­fectly hon­est, I rarely meet my self-im­posed dead­lines. But they keep me on track and motiv­ate me to try harder.

But simply hav­ing a goal isn’t al­ways enough. To be really effect­ive ex­perts say you should write your goal down, make a com­mit­ment by telling it to someone and be­ing account­able to that per­son. For most of our time to­geth­er, Rick and I have dis­cussed our goals – and wheth­er we ac­com­plished last year’s — at the be­gin­ning of each year.

It’s the time of year when most people make res­ol­u­tions. Many will be broken with­in a week, oth­ers will be half met and some will suc­ceed. Have you giv­en any thought to where you want to be in your writ­ing jour­ney by the end of the year?