Category Archives: Goals

Though I have respected Jim Carrey as a comedian and performer for many years, I would never have thought him to be a fount of cosmic wisdom. That is why, along with so many others, I was blown away by his commencement address at the MUM graduation. In his address, Carrey spoke of his father, on the importance of following one’s dreams, effecting others positively and choosing love over fear. For the full address, click here. If you don’t have the 26 minutes to spare right now, please click on the embedded video below (but do come back to the full speech later). It’s just a single minute of your time, so please do yourself the favor.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajMpfPYlHi4]

When you seek to be a professional author, the odds are against you to an absurd degree. When I was in high school, trying to figure out who I was going to become for the next phase of my life, I had a choice. Either, I could pursue a career in science and technology, or I could develop my passion for writing and storytelling that had begun to grow on the fertile ground of my passion for reading. In the end and at the encouragement of those who loved me, I went to one of the top technical schools in the country and spent four and a half years earning a degree that has enriched my life. Upon graduating, I began working for an engineering company that is a respected leader and fierce competitor in their field. I had done it. People I knew, people who I cared about, told me how proud of me they were and how obviously successful I was.

And yet, I was unhappy. I was unfulfilled. There was a part of me, part of my talent that was being unexpressed and underutilized. It took me nearly 18 months to realize where the sense of discontent was coming from.

You see, though I was pursing highly technical studies in college, I also fed my creative urges regularly through live performance improvised comedy and table top role-playing. My life was grounded in reality through my studies, but I was still able to live in the fantastic. When I joined the working world, I had left that fantastic behind for many good and practical reasons. But, I still needed it.

It was when I started writing again, started reaching out to the community of writers and blogging regularly, that I began to find my contentment and happiness. This month has been all about goals, finding your own balance and managing your life when the deck seems stacked to overwhelm you.

Please take it from someone who has learned it the hard way. Fulfillment will never come from someone else. Instead, you must explore what you find to be fulfilling, what you love beyond all reason and pursue it. That said, the day job and the dream job do not have to be mutually exclusive.

I am an engineer. I am a writer. I am not one or the other, but rather both, simultaneously and always. Each part of my personality influences and informs the other, making it stronger and richer.

The problem I had, the source of my unhappiness and cognitive dissonance was the false assumption that I had to choose one or the other to be supreme. I was failing to achieve a work-life balance. Was that the fault of my company? After all they gave me a great deal of work to do that was time consuming and challenging. Of course not. I am, after all, employed by them. I was selling my time, knowledge and experience to them in exchange for a salary and benefits. Was the work exhausting and effecting my home life? Yes. But, what I chose to do with that home life was still entirely in my power.

This is the most important thing I’ve learned in my short career as an engineer. Saying you are “too busy” to do this or that is an expression of value, not of time constraints. Busyness is a choice. Time is a commodity, and like any other scarce resource, where we choose to spend our time indicates what we value. What you are actually saying when you are “too busy” to do some task is what you are doing now is more valuable than the proposed activity. Claiming to be too busy to write because of my job was in reality saying that I chose things like working, sleep, watching TV, going out with friends, exercise and other leisure was more valuable than the time I could spend writing.

So, what did I do? I began to choose how I spent my time more wisely and learned to say “no.” Not only to others but to myself. I canceled my television package, Netflix and Hulu+ accounts. I put away my gaming consoles and worked on stream lining the things I felt that I had to do to be more efficient.

And I wrote. A few hours of new words here and there, a half hour of editing and a minutes of plotting and milieu development wherever I could find the time. I put my fingers on the keyboard because that is what I valued.

Life is complex and dynamic, so finding your balance isn’t a matter of setting up all the elements in stasis. Instead, you must constantly be shifting, reevaluating what you want and reallocating your immediate future to line up with your goals. Will you risk “wasting” your time on things that make you unhappy but are safe and easy, or will you instead pursue the less certain path? It takes honesty and self-awareness, but spending time wisely is a choice and a statement of value.

“You can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance at doing what you love.” ~Jim Carrey, 2014 Commencement Address, MUM Graduation.

The Candy Crush Method

June 24, 2014

Kim May

Goals Kim May The Writing Life 2 Comments

Admit it. You play it. Even if you don’t want to admit it you know exactly what level you’re on. I’m on 170 which isn’t as impressive as it sounds when you consider that I’ve been playing for over a year. Every time they threw a new curve it took me a few tries to puzzle out how to finagle the pieces in the moves or time allotted.

The change from a casual player to a savvy strategist is very similar to the shift I’ve had to make recently in my professional life. Now that I’ve made my first professional sales I’ve had to up my game. Before, if I didn’t make a deadline it wasn’t that big of a deal because they were self-imposed. Real deadlines aren’t as accommodating. I’ve had to become a lot better at shifting the pieces around in order to line everything up for completion.

For example, just because I can stay up until 1am writing doesn’t mean that I should — especially if I have to work the next day. Likewise just because I only need one week to complete copy edits doesn’t mean that I can afford to wait until a week before the due date to start. Life happens and even though it’s impossible to plan for monkey-throwing wrenches, giving myself that buffer period has been a life saver more than once this year.

I know it sounds pessimistic to plan for things to go wrong but in my opinion that’s part of being a professional. By the time your first title hits the shelves you’ve been writing long enough to know what life events and health conditions affect your writing. If copy edits are due back in X weeks it’s important to know that the striped candy of vacation is going to kill productivity on week one, the chocolate sprinkled best friend’s wedding is going to wipe out several days, and the exploding candy of other deadlines is going to demand your attention sooner rather than later.

Unlike the game, when things slip through your fingers you can’t restart the level or wait for your lives to replenish. A missed deadline upsets publishing schedules, and the lives of everyone involved. It can leave a stain on your reputation that could take years to remove. It’s better to learn to juggle and use your resources to your advantage to turn manuscripts in on time. Good scheduling skills and keeping realistic expectations for your output will keep you sane while you produce at the rate that keep fans, publishers, and colleagues happy.

A Failure’s Guide to Self-Examination

June 23, 2014

Kristin Luna

Goals Kristin Luna Reflection Self-Awareness The Writing Life 3 Comments

Ah, June. When the weather’s nice and Costco is selling too many good ice cream bars. Sure, you had told yourself THIS WAS THE YEAR you won’t give in to temptation. But it’s, like, hot. And ice cream is good.

Four ice cream bars later, you sit on the couch, lamenting your own existence and wonder why you can’t just stick to your goals.

Don’t worry! I’ve brought your misery some company. Did you know just 8% of all people who made a New Year’s resolution succeeded? That means 92% of us failed and secretly want to trip the other 8% who are still hard at work on their marathon training regimen. Because tripping people has consequences, let’s figure out where we went wrong instead.

A Failure’s Guide to Self-Examination

1. What was your goal?

Let’s say you recently took a quiz online that led you to believe that your father isn’t proud of you. After three glasses of whiskey on December 31st, you decided 2014 was the year you’d make your father proud. Your father has a lavish assortment of horrifying animal heads on his wall. “This is how I’ll do it,” you tell yourself. “I’ll go kill an elephant in the wild and give him the head to hang on his wall. He will be so proud of me then!”

The issues:

So many issues here.
First, this goal is not necessarily for you. This goal was made in hopes of gaining favor with someone else.
Poaching elephants is illegal.
Whisky is bad. Don’t do ANYTHING if you are under its influence.
Take a better quiz. That quiz you took online was a joke.

2. Was your goal realistic enough to obtain?

Let’s say your New Year’s resolution was to get a book published. You hadn’t written a novel before, but your prison inmate pen-pal told you you’re a great writer.

The issues:

Again with the issues.
Understand the work your goal will entail when you make it. How many hours will it take to complete a novel? How many days a week will you dedicate to writing? What’s the next step after you’ve written it? How difficult is it to get published?
Ooooo I’ve always wanted a pen-pal! Hook a girl up!

3. Were you under the influence of whiskey or prescription medications when you made your goal?

Well, were you?

If yes, ignore your goal and/or reevaluate.

If no, then wow! Okay.

4. Did you make plans to support succeeding at your goal?

Successes takes planning. It takes a lot of time, dedication, and focus.

The issues:

If you needed help defining any of the words “planning,” “time,” “dedication,” or “focus,” maybe goal setting isn’t for you.

5. Did you fail at your goal?

Let’s say you wanted to tear up the hardwood in your house and replace it with sand. As you pried up the third floorboard, you realized that you hate sand. You hate all those tiny, tiny rocks. Besides, there’s a Real Housewives of Atlanta marathon on E!.

The issues:

You’re right, sand sucks. No issue there.
It’s okay to fail. Failing teaches you, if you’re open to learning the lesson.

The reality is, we all fail sometimes. Failing might hurt, but it doesn’t have to matter unless you make it matter. If you let failure dictate your future, you’ll never meet any of your goals.

Resolve to make one pragmatic, well-planned goal a reality. Make it your focus, and be dedicated to that goal. Carry that success with you and remind yourself of it often. Because here’s a secret: you will probably fail again. The only way to combat it is to make another goal, and achieve it.

Recalibration

June 19, 2014

Jace Killan

Goals Jace Killan Motivation The Writing Life 2 Comments

They say there are no new stories. I didn’t really know what that meant, other than there are common themes through some stories, similar character arcs and that sort of thing, but Twilight and Hunger Games were both very popular “new” stories, right?

I’ve been cranking along on a novel that I’ve now been writing for about two years. It’s a YA fantasy, so word count isn’t the reason for its slow development. I’m a discovery writer and I’m learning, feeling the downsides to this writer type. I started the novel as an exercise, trying to implement point of view and showing versus telling. Fifteen thousand words in and the story began to take shape. Then I learned about pacing and yes my craft was full of pacing problems so I rewrote the story. Then I learned about strong character development and so I rewrote the then twenty thousand words to develop stronger characters.

A year into the novel and a quarter of the way through, after several reworks, I got bored of the piece and went on to write a few short stories, my novel calling out continually to my subconscious, letting me know that I have yet to compete a story of length. So at the beginning of the year I recommitted to writing, adding 5000 words to my story each month. Well, had I done so, I’d be completed with the writing phase of my novel.

Earlier this year (not long after my recommitment to this story) I watched the Lego Movie. I love legos, always have. The start was entertaining. Then as the story developed, I saw my story, the one I’ve been writing, developing for the past two years, come together on the silver screen. Well it was much better than my story and it was completed, but the underlying morals, messages, the character development, all of that was my story, just with legos in a lego world versus some magical realm I had concocted.

This killed my buzz, my energy and momentum. Why bother writing a story that is already told so beautifully?

My dad taught me how to play the guitar when I was fourteen. He showed me four chords, C, Am, F, and G. It took awhile to build the muscles so I could play the sequence without pausing. My dad showed me that those four chords in that sequence were the base of La Bamba, Can’t Help Falling in Love, Sherrybaby, Hang on Sloopy, Mr. Bojangles, and just about every Peter, Paul, and Mary song.

All these songs have different words, different rhythms, different tunes, but underneath, they’re all the same. La Bamba evokes a different emotion than Mr. Bojangles. And I like them both.

So while my story might have been told, it wasn’t told by me, with my characters, in my style of writing, in my world, from my character’s point of view.

I bucked up and recommitted.

I knew I needed to deal with this discovery writing problem. I wanted to finish the book, not spend the rest of the decade rewriting it. I decided to buy Million Dollar Outlines.

After describing me to a T, David Farland suggests that if authors are set on being discovery writers, they shouldn’t bother purchasing his book. Well I do love discovery writing, but it’s not entirely working for me, so I kept reading, after all I had already paid for it. He later suggests that many writers take a hybrid approach, using outlining methods but leaving themselves room so they can still discover the rest of the story.

That’s what I needed to hear. The book is a tremendous help and has great stuff for any type of writer. After reading through it, I was able to outline the rest of the story, and it gave me some great ideas on my already written part, so yes, I’ve rewritten the completed section once again, aligning it with my outlined plot and am currently 32,000 words into the novel. I’m back on track and recalibrated. My new goal is to turn the novel over to beta readers by the end of the year. To steal a line from the movie, “Everything is awesome.”