Welcome to Tuesday! This morning, I heard someone call it Monday's ugly stepsister and it made me giggle. I don't think it's that bad, but it's funny.
Which leads to my topic for today. Yesterday, I saw this graphic on Facebook:
The resonates so hard with me. One of my mottoes is: You'll never reach your goal if you give up because it's taking so long to get there.
Unless your goal is the world's record for quitting, this applies to everyone and every goal. Speaking specifically about writing, I started my career twelve tears ago. In that time, I've had highs and lows. I've soared and I've hit some bone-jarring rough patches. The industry has changed, publishers have changed or disappeared, and my life has changed. All three of those could have put me in a tailspin. Some of them did.
But here's the thing. You can fight to get out of that spin or you you can crash and burn. I've seen so many authors just...give up. They hit the bad spot and quit. Worse, some of them are kvetching about what happened rather than finding solutions and moving with the future. (by the way, kvetching is one of my favorite words)
Another of my favorites: You've got to roll with it. A rolling stone gathers no moss. In the same way, a person who rolls with whatever is thrown his or her way doesn't stagnate. Progress might be slow, but it's progress.
So what do you do? What do I do?
Well, I have a very certain list of things I want, goals I desire. I keep them in front of me every day. I say them. I write them. Every day. For me, not all my goals are independent of one another. They feed into each other. So I can pick one and work my butt off on it, and in turn, I'm making progress on all of my goals. And they're big goals. They're not like: Finish this book.
So having goals, or as I call them Future Realities, is great, but how do you tackle them? Well, I take the main goal I'm working on and I figure out what I have to do to get it. What I need to research, what I need to learn, what I need to actually physically do. What I don't do is follow the SMART plan. I HATE when people tell me I have to make my goals SMART. If you don't know what that is, it's an acronym that means specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. And it is super limiting. Yes, your goal needs to be specific and measurable. And I think ANY goal is attainable. But realistic and timely? You don't get to tell me what's realistic. If I want to build ten life-size gingerbread houses around the world, that can be my goal. And as far as timely, the only timeline is "before I'm dead."
Well, that took a morbid turn, didn't it?
But the thing is, you can do or be anything you want, as long as you are willing to work at it. And it might take a long time, and people might laugh because it's so unrealistic, but you can't stop working at it if you really want to attain it. You have to be passionate about it and you need to go all in. (and a small, side tip, if you think people will ridicule your goal for being unrealistic, you don't have to freaking tell them what it is. Also, people who laugh at your dreams, those are people you don't need surrounding you.)
I believe in you. And I believe you can do anything you set your mind to. I believe that I can do anything I set my mind to.
Today, August 27, 2019
There will be a little less writing than usual and a lot of editing. First up, I'm completing and edit for the lovely Elisa Leigh. Such a yummy, yummy book. Then I will be working an the edit of Avalanche by Dakota Rebel (which, by the way, is up for pre-order right now).
After that, I will be working on Beach Please. Because of some other projects, that book won't be coming out this week, but I'm looking mid-September for it. I will also be continuing work on In My Chains. That book is also up for pre-order right now. It's releasing October 24th. I'm also putting in an hour on my Halloween book.
By the way, writers, are you surprised I work on multiple projects at one time? Has anyone told you that you can't do that? Everyone's process is different. And you have to find what works for you. Working on multiple projects works for me. Don't let anyone tell you how you need to work, what you can and can't do.
Happy goal getting!
~~ Brynn