Category Archives: Balancing Acts

Goals vs. Objectives – Who is Really In Control?

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“No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” ~Helmuth von Moltke

I am highly motivated by progress and will often get frustrated when I feel like I am spinning my wheels in a task. This probably explains my penchant for lists. I know that I’m not the only one who gets a sense of satisfaction by drawing a bold stroke through a particularly challenging line item. However, I have found that it is all too easy to focus on the list itself and forget that it exists to serve my objectives. Recently, I’ve put a lot of thought and effort into living a purposeful life, driving towards and realizing my objectives to the best of my abilities. Through trial and error, I have found that the key to effective progress is self-aware honesty, maintaining a life balance, and having the courage to change course when results do not line up with what was intended when I set my goals.

The first step to living deliberately is to determine what you truly want out of life. There are countless voices in the world, some benevolent and others selfish, that seek to guide our desires. Many people never look past what society, advertising agencies and our loved ones tell us we want. If they are happy that way, all the better for them. It takes work to quiet all the voices and achieve the self-awareness necessary to decide what you really want free from the influence of others.

Once your objectives are set, it takes practice to be able to manage all the distractions and necessities that the world demands of us. Though there are a thousand obligations competing for our time and attention, many things that we view as “essential” can actually be minimized or eliminated entirely. It is a matter of understanding one’s priorities. Once you achieve the self-awareness to determine your life’s objectives, sorting the essential from the non-essential becomes much easier.

Finally, I have found it necessary to be proactive in evaluating and adjusting my goals. Though it is easy to simply stay the course until things start to fall apart, it is a much less effective strategy than taking time periodically to honestly evaluate the results of my efforts. If a course of action isn’t working, isn’t supporting my objectives, there is nothing holding me to them. Try to make a change and see what effects come. I look at it like sailing by the stars. Having a heading does no good if you don’t look up every so often.

I started out my blogging year with the Fictorians by describing the system we use to set annual goals at work. Though I stand by the idea that goals should be SMART (specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time bound), I have come to realize that they need to be adaptable as well. Action is not progress unless my objectives are being achieved. Therefore, goals should be designed and maintained to support objectives, not the other way around.

Who Stole the Goal Posts?

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THEY say, “Goals are not set in stone; goal posts can move; better to have a goal and fail then to not have one and achieve nothing at all.” But THEY never said, “Sometimes the goal posts disappear and you’re out of the game!”

So imagine my surprise when my goals to complete a novel, and revise another and research a third disappeared. I was devastated. All my energy was required to heal a broken ankle compounded with a severe sprain. Ten weeks in a cast, three extra months to learn to walk and the energy drain exacerbated my chronic fatigue. Zheesh! “This is a great opportunity to write,” THEY said. But the energy drain left little for creativity and critical thinking. So now what?

I didn’t fight it. Not one bit. Frustration and anxiety bear no fruit. Putting words down for the sake of it and then trying to revise nonsense later made no sense either. Searching for stolen goal posts was counterproductive. So I went on a holiday! To New York, Iraq, and other cool places on this world and others. Even outer space! Yes, I read books and short stories and loved every minute of it.

Isn’t that why we write? So that others will enjoy the tales we tell, become immersed in the worlds we create and form relationships with the characters we give voice to? I threw away the critic’s hat, no learning the craft for me and I went on a holiday of pure literary pleasure!

Somewhere along the way I made notes for the novel in progress. When I felt more rested and energetic, I proceeded to revise another. And now I’m back – revising. creating. blogging and yes, still reading.

Being forced to fail, which is what a health complication can bring, brought me balance and new joy in the world of words. And for that, I’m grateful and I’m on a permanent working holiday now.

So, I practice my three R’s of the craft – Read to learn, wRite, and most importantly, I Read to enjoy!

Happy reading and writing!

Looking for Progress in a Mirror

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It is human nature to compare oneself to others, no matter how unfair that comparison is. I know that I have neither the productivity of Kevin J. Anderson, nor the skill to write the poetic prose of Guy Gavriel Kay, nor the ability to manage massive story lines and milieu like Brandon Sanderson. However, they are all professional writers with many years more experience than I have. Their skills represent goals, markers of achievement that I aspire to. Even looking to my friends who are closer in experience to myself isn’t an apt comparison. We are all different people and very different writers. Ultimately, their skills and successes have no direct impact on my own abilities. They are simply further down the road than I am. I have found that self-comparison is the only reliable and reasonable metric of progress.

As a writer advances through his/her career, growth occurs with every word and work written. I have often heard writers bemoan their old stories, talking about how they would do things differently given the chance. Though, I have written plenty of prose that has made me cringe later, I am more pleased than disgusted by the discovery. My ability to recognize flaws in my old work shows me better than any other metric my own growth as a storyteller.

The original introduction of my first completed novel is a perfect example. Because I largely discovery wrote that book, it took me two full years to complete. Now, I prefer to work in a more focused and deliberate manner, but that initial experience taught me a lot about my own style and craft. Naturally, my skill and tastes grew in that time. My more experienced eyes were able to see that a passage I had thought was filled with compelling characterization and evocative metaphors was little better than navel gazing. I redrafted that particular introduction half a dozen times, and each version was able to leverage my new skills and perspective. By comparing the initial and final drafts, I am able to clearly plot my own growth.

Though there have been times where I have made notes in a manuscript to rewrite or rework a passage during editing, I would not release a story into the wider world until it represented my best work. I have found that it is generally a good assumption that other writers have the same philosophy. What most non-writers have a hard time understanding is that it is almost impossible to track down and eliminate every error in a manuscript, especially since it passes through so many hands during the publishing process.

The way I see it, if I can recognize that some aspect of my old work is garbage, I must have come a long way from the time that I wrote it. Bonus points if I now understand why it is bad and how to fix it. Therefore, my own terrible prose is a marker of my progress as a writer. For me, that’s very motivating. Being a professional writer isn’t a game for those looking for short term benefit. Rather, writers must be continuously growing and learning. After a while, the trajectory of your skill matters more than the absolute value at any particular moment in your career.

Will It Satisfy?

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When I published The City of Darkness last year (Amazon|Kobo), I was full of anxiety. Lots and lots of excitement, but also anxiety. Why? Because it was my first crack at a sequel. And you know what they say about sequels, right? That they’re never as good as the original. As an author, I was (am!) really concerned about both creating a great story and pleasing my audience. I want to write satisfying stories—and when necessary, satisfying sequels.

I suppose there’s probably a point in time when an author becomes so successful and/or confident in their creative vision that they no longer stress out about this. Or perhaps not. Nonetheless, in many long-running series, fans start to sense that the author is treading water in the middle of their book runs. In my case, my Watchers Chronicle will only be three novels, so this effect isn’t going to have the opportunity to set in.

But if my anxiety was high over The City of Darkness, it’s even higher over my current project, The Law of Radiance—the third book and series finale. I badly want to create a satisfying conclusion. My current readers haven’t seen any non-Chronicle titles from me yet, so this is going to be their first taste of how I wrap up a long, continuing story—something I plan to do a lot of in my writing career, as I’m a huge fan of long-running series.

Finishing any novel is difficult, but finishing a trilogy, I’m discovering, is a cut above. The Law of Radiance has to tell its own contained story, and every aspect of it needs to have a narrative payoff, like all good novels. But it also has to explore a lot of themes established in the previous two volumes. And, of course, there are a lot of dangling threads here and there in those first books that now have to be wrapped up. It’s amazing how many little plot and character details start to slip out of mind four years into a project. There’s a lot to keep track of.

It doesn’t help that I’m three or four months behind schedule, but I can live with the slight delay—and hopefully my readers can, too—because I won’t have another chance to finish a series for the first time. I have to get this right. Or at least as right as I’m capable of getting it at my current level of skill. Twenty or thirty years from now, when I’m a much more accomplished and sophisticated storyteller, I might look back at this book and shake my head at all the ways I could have written it better. That’s a scary thought! Talk about fear and loathing; my greatest anxiety probably comes from comparing myself to the Evan Braun of the future.

But I’m getting off-topic.

The good news is that despite the pressure I’ve put on myself, I’m proud of the way the work is going so far. You might even use the word “satisfied.” I can only trust that my own level of satisfaction in this book will be shared by the general public when the time comes. And I can hardly wait to find out.