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Getting A Writing Fix – What’s The Big Deal?

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It’s said that writers don’t just want to write.  Rather, they need to write.  I’m always skeptical of this sort of stuff as, to me, writing is like any endeavour.  You do it or you don’t.  It’s likely that you procrastinate over it, look forward to it, and enjoy or hate it, all at different times.  At least that’s what I’d like to believe.

But I have to confess that I feel soooooo much better this afternoon than I have for the past couple weeks.  We’re in the middle of renovations that I’ve talked about here in the context of said renovations getting in the way of my writing.  Sunday, though, we got to a stage where we could actually start storing our sofas and TV in the living room rather than having them fill the kitchen.  I literally danced around the kitchen floor when it became available again.  Eating nuked frozen meals, grilled cheese sandwiches and hot dogs is not my style so getting the telephone and coffee maker off the stove top was a watershed moment.

So, what does this have to do with writing?  Absolutely nothing, which is the point.  All this has kept me from writing except for a couple of short blog posts – until today.  We decided to ‘take the day off’ which manifest itself in my wife and daughter going to a strawberry farm to pick strawberries, one of the pleasures of living in Quebec.

I stayed home, all alone, well almost.  I had my laptop and Scrivener, so I did some outlining and some WRITING!!!  It felt soooooo good.  I wrote only a couple thousand words but the spring is back in my step and maybe, just maybe, there’s something to that ‘writers need to write’ stuff.

 

Why Do We Set Goals And What Should They Be?

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If you spend time in online writer forums you hear writers talk about their goals.  They also talk about all the reasons they didn’t achieve them.  And they will tell you what their new goal is and how it’s better.  Other writers do what we do; we offer up lots of ‘good luck’ and ‘you go girl’ responses.

Why do we set goals anyway?  Every year people set New Year’s resolutions, often with the full knowledge that the goal will never be achieved and often jokes about this fact are told while proclaiming the goal.  Why?  Clearly, one function of goal setting is to make us feel good – make us feel like we’re making plans, moving forward and trying to accomplish something.

Feeling good is… well… good, but I don’t think this is the best use of goal-setting.  A better reason to set goals is to actually motivate us and cause us to achieve something.  To do that a true goal must meet four criteria.  It must:

1) Be something you can control.

Setting a goal to sell 30 books a month is not a goal.  It may be a dream if you’re only selling 10/mo, but it’s not a goal that you can control.  Yes, you may be able to improve your marketing and thus sales but you need goals like “Do three guest blogs this month,” something over which you do have some control.

2) Be quantifiable.

To say, I’m going to improve my use of dialog sounds admirable but it will not lead anywhere without an additional clause that starts with “by….”  Add “by reading Chiarella’s Writing Dialogue and doing all of the exercises,” you produce a goal such that your action or inaction can be measured.

3) Be short-term enough to be actionable

Some say “goals must have time elements” and while I don’t disagree, I think this aspect of goal-setting needs more precision than “set a deadline.”  Here’s why.  To often I see people making goals like “I want to finish my book by the end of the year.”  That’s a fine goal if it’s said over Christmas dinner.  It’s a lousy goal if it’s spring.

The difference is that humans procrastinate, and/or set other, more short-term goals ahead of any long-term goals.  Thus, if you say “I want to finish my book by the end of the year” at the spring picnic, it’s likely that you’ll be saying “I’m so far behind on my book that I’ll never get it done by the end of the year” when Christmas dinner rolls around.  Short-term deadlines motivate; long-term deadlines do not.

4) Be attainable without super-powers.

This, by far, is the biggest problem I see with most goals that writers set for themselves.  The most common is “I’m going to write 1000 words a day, every day.”  If you have lots of free time this may well be a reasonable goal but there’s a real Catch-22 here.  If you have lots of free time for your writing you’re probably no more likely to set this sort of goal for yourself than a skinny person is to say “I’m going to eat 500 fewer calories every day.”

Instead, writers with full-time jobs, 2 kids and a husband they have to baby-sit set an unreasonable word count goal for themselves and then beat themselves up for not being up to the challenge.  “Stephen King writes 1500 words per day, why can’t I?”  It’s because Stephen King has all day to do it, that’s why.

In the end, goals are not only valuable motivation tools, they are probably necessary for those of us doing things without someone looking over our shoulders.  But just as they can motivate, poorly chosen or defined goals can sabotage your writing, even to the point of convincing you that you’re unworthy of the label “writer.”   Chose your goals wisely.  Make them work for you, not against you.

Her Book of Shadows: Now Available

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I’m happy as a clam this morning. My mystery novel, Her Book of Shadows is now available as a KindleBook.  It’s a soft-boiled, feel good traditional mystery and if you like mysteries that avoid a lot of blood and gore, I think you’ll enjoy Her Book of Shadows.

The book takes place in Quebec City, where retired Arizona cop, Scott Riker, lives with his wife and daughter and heads a group of interventionists. Directed by Quebec business mogul and philanthropist, Luc Duchesne, the group uses their talents and resources to stand between people in trouble and the criminal elements who would do them harm.

In Her Book of Shadows, Riker agrees to find Jodie Burke, a teenage girl whose parents say ran away to Quebec City from Connecticut. But when Jodie’s friend turns up murdered on the Plains of Abraham, it becomes clear that Riker faces something more than just a runaway girl. Time is running out and he must find Jodie and prevent whoever is trying to kill her from succeeding.

Riker struggles with his emotional involvement in the case, caused by the similarities between his daughter and Jodie Burke. This, and his attempts to reconcile his risky business with his role as father and husband add to his internal conflicts but maybe the two roles can be compatible.

The first four chapters are available as a sample download so please give it a try.

 

Writing With a Passion

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Hi everybody,

I thought my first post should be one that states the website goals.  Long ago, I created my first website, shortly after Mosaic came into being.  There was no Netscape, Explorer or Firefox.  Google didn’t exist.  Blogs, Twitter, nor Facebook had been invented.

At the time I was a scientist.  I wrote constantly, in science fashion, but I needed more, so I wrote on the new creation called the world wide web.  Nobody really read that website as the notion of surfing the web was unknown to most at the time.  That never bothered me much.  I wrote because I felt the need.

Since then I left science.  I’ve spent time as editor-in-chief of a couple magazines.  I’ve written monthly columns for several magazines and I’ve written feature articles for others.  I even wrote marketing materials for a couple businesses.  The only common thread throughout was words, strung together to form thoughts.

I love words, and I love the various ways of putting them in an order that makes sense.  While I’m a long-time computer geek, I’m also a fountain pen afficionado and I spend far too much time pondering the wide array of journals and notebooks available today.  So while I have an ongoing love affair with my laptop, I often put pen to paper.  A couple of years ago I recycled a small mountain’s worth of notebooks that I’d used but here’s a photo of the notebooks I’ve accumulated since in the past two years.  It’s a sickness but a very pleasant one.

This website will reflect these preferences.  I will talk about my trials and tribulations as an author, views on the industry, and my thoughts on the writing process itself.  But I’ll also talk about my passion for pens and paper.   Some say it’s old-fashioned to write with pen and paper.  I find doing so is inexorably linked to my success as an author, regardless of what I’m writing.

I do hope you’ll follow along and provide your own insights by leaving comments.  Do you use notebooks in support of your writing?  How do they help you?

Cheers — Larry

larry@larrydmarshall.com