Dust Off Those Writing Goals…But Be Realistic
Remember back in January (or December, really) when your aspirational self was like, “This is the year! We’re going to do ALL THE THINGS!” And then life happened, and one by one, your goals withered and died on the vine. Or maybe, like the vegetables I tried to grow this summer, you babied them along, but they stagnated and never developed past their juvenile stage. RIP garden salad dreams.
Guess what? It’s never too late to re-evaluate and set new goals. We don’t have to wait until January first, or next Monday, or next month, or an odd-numbered day in an odd-numbered month in an odd-numbered year to make a fresh start. Now is good. In fact, now is great. All of us at SPS are doing the same thing.
Join us as we hand our January-bright, aspirational self a hankie, tell her we appreciate her efforts, and send her off for a nap. Our battle-tested September selves are ready to make the most of the next few months with some realistic, achievable goals. Maybe you’ll find some wisdom in our various approaches.
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Hoo boy, has this year thrown some curveballs. Health stuff, family stuff, travel-soccer stuff. I’m ready for some pumpkin-spice flavored peace and quiet. Like most humans, I started the year with good intentions. I even found an adulting notebook/planner to use consistently! Unfortunately, that notebook did not magically keep all the plates spinning. Some of my goals got left by the wayside. Now, the kids are back in school, and I’m getting that itch to “be productive.” Before I let myself go too far down that road, I’m going to stop and consider my reality.
First, kids are back in school. That means school events and sports. And sportsmomming. (#inmysoccermomera) That means germs and doctor visits. That means navigating emotional crises inherent in raising pre-teen and teenage children. All of this will take literal time out of my day and deplete some of the emotional/mental energy I need to tackle writing.
Second, the holiday gauntlet looms. Halloween showed up in stores just after Independence Day, but now it’s getting real. Election day is nigh, which, no matter your allegiance, will be an emotional roller coaster. Then we’re into family togetherness season. And in our family, four of our five birthdays land between Thanksgiving and Christmas. (#sagittariansunite) There are parties and school programs and travel and shopping and cooking and eating. All of these things take time and energy. (And money. So much money.)
Third, we are entering the SAD season. In our neck of the woods, hours of daily sunshine dip into the single digits and stay there for a few months. Around October 15, I go into hibernation mode. After decades of trying to “fix” this issue, I have realized that there’s only so much fixing I can do.This is my life. This is my reality. My time and mental/emotional capacity are limited. As much as Aspirational Melanie wants to achieve all the success, adding more things to my to-do list will not motivate me to accomplish more. It will trigger an “I don’t know where to start” paralysis and make me feel bad about myself. But I still want to accomplish something. I want the pride that comes with flexing my creative muscles and finishing a project. I’ve got three major works I’d love to focus on: editing a short story, finishing the first draft of a novel, and revising the business plan book. I am going to be realistic and pick one. The novel is not it because I’m only one third of the way through. We are working on a video series where SPS’s Clare and Margaret build their own business plans using the book as a guide. Part of the process will be identifying areas to rework. That won’t be done for a couple of months, so revisions will fall into early next year. By process of elimination, the short story is the winner.
One thing I know about myself is that I need a framework around my goal. It’s too easy for me to shuffle a vague, undefined objective to the bottom of my list. Applying the SMART system to a goal gives me the kind of structure I need. Here’s my SMART goal:
Specific: I will revise my short story by addressing my editor’s questions and suggestions.
Measurable: I will know I’m done because I will have dealt with each edit in the document.
Achievable: I’ve taken into consideration all of my other obligations, and I know I will be able to carve out the hours it takes to make the edits.
Relevant: This is one of my three priorities.
Time-bound: I have a deadline of December 15.
There. I have a plan, and it’s realistic.
If you can relate to any of my challenges, try taking the pressure off yourself by assessing your obligations for the next few months, choosing one priority, and giving it the SMART goal treatment. I’ll keep you posted on my progress. Keep me posted on yours!
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Compared to Melanie, my life is pretty empty. (And isn’t that what we all do with a list like this, compare ourselves?) Just a husband and a cat. Both of them are pretty self-sufficient–although the cat has yet to open his own cans.
That doesn’t mean I don’t cram my life from waking to sleeping. At the beginning of the year, I told myself that I would, among other things:
Write and exercise every day. All I can say is that the exercise is doing better than the writing.
Create food I wanted to eat every day. After countless meals at 9 p.m., I’ve learned to save the project cooking for the weekends, if then.
Travel. This was going to be the year we stayed home. So we traveled almost every month, sometimes for two or three weeks. And we’ve been dealing with the unintended consequences: endless heaps of laundry and other chores, many, many meetings a day, and a miffed cat who doesn’t want to let us sleep–ever. And those are just the high points.
So, by the time September rolls around every year, I am tired. The kind of tired that doesn’t abate, even if I sleep for an entire weekend. It’s me, mentally reviewing my January aspirations, and seeing how short I come. Another year almost gone, and I still haven’t finished my novel.
I renew my efforts to achieve those January goals. I create lists, lists, and more lists. And then lists of lists.
But this year, thanks to this blog, I am going to do something different. I can’t say to wake me up when September ends. But I can say that my top priority for the rest of the year–starting tonight–is to get enough sleep that I can leap instead of crawl out of bed in the mornings. That the days are getting shorter and the nights longer will only work to my advantage.
And then I am going to take a page out of our former colleague Victoria Werner’s book. She very sensibly asks, when presented with a list, “Is that realistic?” Thus, she doesn’t end each day in a foul mood for failing to do everything on her list. She has the freedom that comes from setting realistic goals.
And I expect, given these two guidelines, I will have both the energy and the time to write.
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What can realistically be accomplished in the next four months? When I think of my own personal goals, they are all lofty and incredibly time consuming. Finish my manuscript. Edit it a thousand times (Okay, that’s a touch dramatic, but .that’s what the editing process feels like to me). Find a way to put my writing out in the world.
Because these goals are inherently time consuming, I give myself permission to not work towards them. What’s another week delay when it comes to a multi-year goal?
For the next few months, I’d like to set goals related to habits rather than large one-and-done accomplishments. Find a writing routine that works for me. Invest in connections with other writers. Make time to read every single day, even if it’s only for a few minutes. Investing in these small goals is how I imagine I will be able to actually pull off the big stuff.
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If you’re anything like me, you’re guilty of making extremely audacious beginning-of-the-year goals, losing steam somewhere along the course of the year, and throwing your hands up in defeat once this time of the year rolls around. I’ve gotten a bit tired of that same, frustrating cycle, so I’ve been working to reframe how I view annual goals–especially when I’m not meeting them like I hoped I would. For me, my focus is less on an aggressive push to cram in all of my goals at the eleventh hour, but more of a focus on prioritizing what I have on my plate.
I’ve got my family stuff that is constant and my top priority, so I make sure to factor that in first, and next I start organizing my work projects so I can make sure we’re getting those hard deadlines for work taken care of. However, as someone who is a ghostwriter and an editor for their day job, it can be really easy to focus on working on writing for other people (since that’s what pays my bills), and let my own writing slip so far down the priority list that it falls off entirely. And even if you’re not working as a ghost or an editor, it can feel really easy to say that you’ll ignore your own writing goals to devote more time to your day job. To be clear, that isn’t an inherently bad thing. We’ve all got bills to pay, and taking time from your day to write can often be a privilege that just isn’t in the cards. It’s all about being gentle with yourself, giving yourself grace for the realities of life and your own limits, and getting creative with scheduling where you can.
So as I stand here with the final few months of the year ahead of me, here’s how I’m refocusing on my end-of-year writing goals. As you’ll see, my biggest theme here is being flexible and giving myself grace. Hopefully these goals will help you as you reevaluate your own!:
I’m trying to get better at not overworking myself, and learning to say no to work projects when I don’t have the capacity to complete them. Working myself to the point of burnout doesn’t make me better at my job, and it only means that I’ll have a lengthy recovery process whenever my body officially decides it has to wrestle me to the ground to get me to slow down. So I’m focusing on holding firm to some boundaries, being okay with saying no, listening to my body, and actively fighting the temptation to glorify working myself beyond my physical limits.
I’m also working to let myself feel okay with pushing projects off until next year, and even putting ideas on hold indefinitely. We are all constantly changing and evolving, and a book idea that sounded like an absolute banger a couple of years ago might not be where you want to be as a writer right now. That’s okay! Honor where you’re at and don’t let yourself believe that you’re abandoning projects simply because you’re hitting snooze.
For the rest of the year, I’m making myself be painfully realistic about the time I have in a day. For me, that means I need to focus on one of my zillions of writing goals. I’m giving myself permission to delay worrying about all of my other goals and ideas and just focus on one writing goal, because I know that’s what I have time for right now. If my schedule changes, I can re-evaluate, but for now I’m being okay with whittling down my writing goals to one.
The last thing I’m doing for my goals is being okay with fully abandoning goals that I thought were incredibly important at the start of the year. In January, I had big plans to grow in a certain area of my writing, and as I sit here now, I realize that I just don’t want to keep writing in that direction. And that’s okay. Maybe one day I’ll change my mind, but for now I’m going to step away from that goal and accept that this year has grown me into a different kind of writer.
When we talked through this blog, we all initially fell prey to the classic mental berating. We enthusiastically debated which goals we were most guilty of neglecting. However, the SPS team ultimately landed on the mutual agreement that all the negativity intrinsic to good ol’ woulda-coulda-shoulda was not what January-us signed up for in the first place. The beauty of working with a team of women who excel in all things (regardless of their willingness to admit it or not—another conversation), is that we find ourselves in a network of fellow writers who are dedicated to the craft despite the hurdles that might bog us down a bit. But hey, if that turtle made it to the finish line then so can we! Mr. Hare (and that new gym membership I still haven’t canceled), be damned.
All this to say: whichever route you choose for seeing your realistic goals through the end of the year, we’re rooting for you.