Killer Questions - Secret Dreams or Goals?

 Killer Questions – Secret Dreams or Goals?

When asked our secret dreams or goals, whether writing or not, here’s how we answered.

K.M. Rockwood - To live to a healthy, productive old age and then, as my mother used to say, “Just wake up dead one morning.”

Heather Weidner - I would love to go on bear adventure tour. The photos would be amazing.

Martha Reed - My secret is my next creative writing project. I’ve never written a novella. I have an idea for one with an intriguing male protagonist who isn’t a P.I. or even a sleuth. He’s a civil servant who stumbles into a historic deep dark secret. Writing the novella is my current carrot on a stick reward. I get to start drafting it once “The Seven Gates,” NOLA Mystery #3 gets published this year. 

Connie Berry - I'm living my secret dream right now--being an author and getting to travel to the UK for research. 

Shari Randall - I dream of having my first series made into a Hallmark movie. A more realistic goal is that there are a few places I'd like to visit: Haworth, the home of the Bronte sisters, and the Greek island of Patmos.

Debra H. Goldstein – Winning or placing in a particular contest.

Mary Dutta - I still think I will write a novel someday.

Molly MacRae - Maybe. But it’s a secret. 

Nancy Eady - If I share it, it isn't a secret anymore, is it?  But yes, my dream is to weigh 130 pounds while being able to eat as much as want as often as I want without having to ever worry about my weight.  

Korina Moss - I’d love to be able to earn a decent living with my writing.  

Margaret S. Hamilton - Mastering deep point of view. I never learned how to wallpaper or knit, but I've dropped those goals.

Lori Roberts Herbst – I would love to have one (or more) of my Callie Cassidy books made into a Hallmark Mystery Channel movie or series!

Paula G. Benson - I would like to fly an airplane. A friend of mine did that recently and found it an exhilarating experience.

James M. Jackson - This fits in a the dream category, as I am not about to waste time trying to make it happen:  It would be a hoot to see my Seamus McCree book series made into TV series.

Grace Topping - I want to travel someplace where I can have a clear view of the night sky and see the Milkyway.  

Sarah Burr - I'd love to become a video game streamer. As a big gamer, I always manage to make my friends laugh with my commentary. I'd love to share that joy with a wider audience and be a source of positivity for others, especially during tough times.

Annette Dashofy - It’s not very secret, but I would dearly love to actually win an Agatha award after all the nominations without bringing home a teapot. I don’t expect it to happen, but a gal can always dream.

Kait Carson - Yes! I would like to score an agent and/or a traditional publishing contract. While I enjoy being an indie, I’ve learned I need real deadlines to be productive. We’ll see. Maybe 2025 will be the year 😊

 

A New Approach to Goal Setting

by James M. Jackson

Over the years, I have tried many goal-setting processes. The traditional approach is to set your annual goals to start January 1. Instead of using January 1, I tried using my birthday as the start of a year’s goals. I even deliberately chose not to set annual goals. When I do set goals, I try to make them SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Rewarding, and Timely. See this blog for more details about SMART goals.[i]) From decades of experience, I have learned several important lessons about how I work with annual goals.

1. For me, setting goals works much better than not setting goals.

2. I have never managed to successfully complete all the annual goals I set (except when I didn’t set them).

3. Something always happens during the course of a 365-day year (or in this case, 366-day year) to cause my initial goals to no longer remain completely relevant.

Question: So, what is a poor boy to do?

Answer: Try something different.

This year, instead of setting annual goals, I will set quarterly goals. For my author business, I have four broad categories: Writing, Teaching, Sales and Marketing, and Business. Writing includes my creative process starting with creating the first draft and continuing through revisions and editing until the final version is complete. Teaching includes creating and delivering courses. Sales and Marketing encompasses everything relating to selling my creations. And Business includes the legal and financial aspects of my work.

For my personal side, I have two broad categories: Sharpening the saw and Miscellaneous. Sharpening the saw includes anything related to my physical or mental well-being. Miscellaneous covers anything else. For first quarter 2024, I have confined my sharpening-the-saw goals to three items: maintaining my weight at or under 162 pounds, reaching an exercise target related to running a half-marathon in May, and an education goal to become comfortable with dictation using Dragon.

What about my author goals, you ask?

The Business aspects are prosaic: send out required tax statements to others and complete my 2023 taxes, submit my nominations to various “best of” competitions.

Teaching goals also reflect known commitments. In the first quarter of 2024, I will teach one full course and begin teaching a second. I have two books I plan to reread this quarter to prepare for a third course that I teach late in 2024.

The Writing category has two major elements: complete all writing work necessary on Hijacked Legacy (Seamus McCree #8, which has a publication date of April 22, 2024), and revise a manuscript currently titled Niki Unleashed (Niki Undercover #2).

Marketing and Sales also includes two broad goals. The first relates to putting in place everything necessary for the April 22 launch of Hijacked Legacy. That includes creating blurbs, arranging guest blogs, a launch party, advanced reviews, and more. Soup to nuts, as my father was fond of saying. I have not completed work on the second goal. I know the first step, which is to create a marketing plan for the first quarter. That goal calls for me to complete that by January 15. Once complete, I’ll know what other goal(s) will make sense.

And there you have it. What approach are you taking for 2024 goals?

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James M. Jackson authors the Seamus McCree series. Full of mystery and suspense, these thrillers explore financial crimes, family relationships, and what happens when they mix. To learn more information about Jim and his books, check out his website, https://jamesmjackson.com. You can sign up for his newsletter (and get to read a free Seamus McCree short story).

 

 

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[i] https://writerswhokill.blogspot.com/2017/01/making-your-goals-smart.html

Making Endings for the New Year

 

In Western cultures, January 1 starts the annual calendar and with it come resolutions for the new year. We vow to lose ten pounds, exercise more, get organized, save more, quit smoking, learn Swahili, et cetera. I have nothing against goals. They can be helpful if used the right way, and five years ago I wrote a blog on Making Your Goals SMART. We can start a self-improvement project any day of the year. Today, however, I want to suggest that making good endings can be a critical step to our success.

Have you had the experience of trying to solve a problem and, seemingly out of nowhere, a solution appears, often long after you have actively been thinking about the problem? In college, I kept a notepad by my bed because I would wake up in the middle of the night knowing how to work a math problem that had stumped me the previous day or two. As an author, my recent experiences take the form of resolving a plot hole that had bothered me, or realizing I have a plot hole that I had not recognized. These sudden inspirations often occur while I am walking or listening to music.

Our minds are wired to work on open issues. Think of a computer that has programs open for Facebook, YouTube, a spreadsheet to collect receipts and expenses for your taxes, three incomplete short stories, a webpage providing information about how long it takes a body to decompose in Georgia clay, a to-do list with a few items checked off, a calendar reminding us that next week we have a colonoscopy scheduled for Tuesday at 9:20 a.m., and we need to pick up our child from soccer practice at four this afternoon, and our email program dings every time a new missive arrives. That’s a lot of stuff going on. The computer has algorithms to tell it how to allocate memory, CPU, space on the screen, and whether to access your printer remotely.

Our brains operate in a similar fashion with the positive result that our brainpower keeps working on problems we couldn’t solve. Often when we least expect it, an answer appears. They are not always great answers, but often they are spot on. Unfortunately, our brains aren’t good at prioritizing which problems to work on. Consider those times when you catch yourself thinking about the job you didn’t take seven years ago, the day Sally laughed because your clothes didn’t match, how embarrassed you felt in fourth grade when you snorted milk out your nose. We can’t change these past events. Although it may be useful to learn from past mistakes, dwelling on them at the expense of moving forward isn’t productive – and yet, if we allow them to remain open issues, our subconscious keeps offering opportunities for review. Example: two days after Sam crushed us with a negative one-liner, we think of the perfect response. Too late to use that response, but if we accept it as a fine solution to the problem, we can close that mental tab.

Sometimes we can catch ourselves wallowing in the mud hole of a past situation and issue a personal cease and desist order. This is the advice not to cry over spilt milk.

We can control a vast number of mind-tabs that opened with the best of intentions that we should put to bed. As part of preparing for 2021, I decided to end five writing projects that once excited me so they no longer suck up precious resources from more desirable projects.

Five writing projects I will end

1. Audio Books & Screen Plays: I will not create audio books for the Seamus McCree series. Closing that path means I don’t have to spend time or effort to compare (yet again) alternative financing methods and royalty splits, or find a narrator, or worry about whether Amazon is treating its vendors well. Nor will I follow several suggestions I have received to convert some of the Seamus McCree novels into screenplays.

2. Analysis Paralysis: For 2021, I will not reconsider whether I should maintain wide distribution for the Seamus McCree series or return to the Amazon-only universe with its access to Kindle Unlimited readers. Nor will I make comparisons to what happened in 2020 or 2019.

3. Dystopian Novels: I will put my idea for a dystopian YA series on hold and spend no more time world-building and sketching character arcs.

4. Class for Writers Using Microsoft Word: I know many writers could use a class to help them efficiently use Microsoft Word to prepare their drafts, manuscripts, and format their material for printed books. I enjoy teaching and could do a good job. But the time it will take me to collect material, prepare lessons, market, and deliver the course far exceeds the financial or psychological benefits I might obtain. I will turn down current requests.

5. Dealing with Psychic Bleeders: I call people who sap our positive energy with their negative energy “Psychic Bleeders.” Their techniques include “Woe is me” posts and emails, constant complaints about others, and refusal to do the most basic work themselves while looking for others to spoon-feed information. I’m giving up trying to help (some might say to save) psychic bleeders. I’ll politely refuse to engage with their antics.

The above list is not all-inclusive, nor (except for #5, I hope) am I precluded from resurrecting a project in the future.

Ending projects also holds for the non-writing parts of my life. I plan to give special emphasis to ignoring political Psychic Bleeders on whom I have spent inordinate energy this past year!

Does this idea resonate with you? What endings should you make to free up time and energy for the important things in your life? I look forward to your comments.

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James M. Jackson authors the Seamus McCree series. Full of mystery and suspense, these thrillers explore financial crimes, family relationships, and what happens when they mix. Furthermore, a novella is the most recent addition to the series. You can sign up for his newsletter and find more information about Jim and his books at https://jamesmjackson.com.

A Plotting and a Planning by Kait Carson

No resolutions this year. Which is good, considering that although I am writing this in early January (and shivering under SW Florida freeze warnings), by the time you read this I’d have broken most of the resolutions. Turns out there is a reason for that, and a solution, and it’s similar to my writing style.

As 2017 faded into 2018, newspapers and blogs filled with stories suggesting goal setting as the avenue to make lasting changes. Resolutions, they say, are all or nothing and once broken, stay that way. Goals provide a different avenue. They can be broken down into small, attainable, chunks. Something that can be measured and achieved. These small successes build on each other until, voila – on December 31, 2018, the goal is accomplished and the change made and lasting. Resolution success by a different name.

Building a year by goal setting makes perfect sense to a writer. It’s the same way we build novels, stories, and blogs. My natural writing style is pantser. I have an overall storyline (the resolution) but no detail to get from inciting incident to satisfying conclusion (attainable goals). In fact, even though I have a general idea of the story, the perpetrator is often a mystery to me until I complete the first draft, and sometimes the second or the third!

A few years ago, I discovered a book that helped me go from pantser to a combination outliner pantser I call a plotster. The book, Rachel Aaron’s 2,000 to 10,000 talked about planning scenes—not the book—using bullet point outlines. The process was a revelation. Scenes are the building blocks of a story like goals are the building blocks of lasting change. Scene by scene the stories in my books unfolded in an orderly fashion and followed an arc to the ultimate resolution.

Goal by goal, the changes I want to make in my life can build on each other to accomplish the changes I want to make in my life. Last year’s traditional resolutions were failures. Forgotten before the month was out. The jury is still out on whether the program will be successful—it’s only January 6 today, but the principles are familiar.

How about you? Did you make resolutions this year? Or like me, did you decide to set goals?

Big and Bold

A very great vision is needed and the man who has it must follow it as the eagle seeks the deepest blue of the sky.  ~ Crazy Horse

"If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough." ~ Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (Africa's first woman president)

Lately, I’ve been rethinking my 2014 writing goals. They are manageable and will keep me plodding forward the rest of the year, but they’re not BIG and BOLD. Honestly, while challenging, they don’t rocket me out of bed in the morning, fired up to write. So, I’ve been considering…should I set an audacious and, hopefully, motivating goal for myself? Or, continue with many small goals?

Glass artist Dale Chihuly doesn’t think small. He turns delicate glass into large-scale sculptures then has the audacity to exhibit them outdoors. Last November I walked among his sculptures displayed at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, Arizona. I was awestruck by the artist’s creativity and daring. How can these fragile glass sculptures withstand the elements? I imagine many people said it couldn’t be done.

A seemingly unattainable goal like the one President Kennedy set for putting a man on the moon within ten years, captivated and inspired a generation of people to do just that. If he hadn’t set that goal and put a deadline on it, would we still be earthbound?

Awesome is an inadequate word, but the only one I can think of to describe the scope of the Crazy Horse Memorial being carved in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

 

The story is inspiring. In 1947 self-taught sculptor, Korczak Ziolkowski, was invited by Chief Henry Standing Bear to carve a memorial in the mountains dedicated to Lakota leader Crazy Horse who was killed in 1877 while under a flag of truce. With only $174 to his name, Ziolkowski began working on the world’s largest in-progress mountain carving. It has become a family enterprise carried out by his children since his death.

Chief Standing Bear and Ziolkowski must have known that neither would live to see the memorial finished, but began it anyway. The memorial’s motto is “Never forget your dreams.”

The dreamer in me believes I should have an audacious goal. However, my practical side recognizes that setting challenging but realistic goals helps ensure that I will complete them. Also, large goals have equally large failure rates.

But, small goals are important, too. I read that it’s good to start each day with a ridiculously easy goal like filing a few papers because when you accomplish one goal, you are motivated to complete more.

I suppose goal size is ultimately subjective—what seems like a BIG goal to me may be SMALL to you. Also, over-the-top goals may need a larger-than-life personality to carry them out.

What are your thoughts about setting goals? Do you have a big, bold writing goal?

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Photo of Crazy Horse Monument courtesy of J. Stephen Conn licensed under Creative Commons.

To Thine Own Self, Be Kind

No man is an island, entire of himself… John Donne

More than a week has passed in the new year. How is everyone doing on those 2014 goals? Just in case you intended to make some goals, but didn’t get around to it, you have a second chance: the Chinese New Year kicks off on January 31. Just kidding.

Even if you didn’t set goals, you and I know you actually have them. We all do, whether or not we admit them aloud. Whatever they are, I have a few tips to make yours successful.

1. Success breeds success, and generally failure breeds failure. Therefore, it is important to structure your goals in order to generate successes. If you feel good about how you are doing, you are much more likely to succeed than if you are feeling down.

2. You can only meet your goals in the future. The past is past and cannot be changed. If you are like me and in the past you haven’t met all the goals you set for yourself, now is the time to forgive yourself all your past failures. I mean, Right Now! Do it! Nothing good comes from beating yourself up—it’s a negative feedback loop. To thine own self, be kind.

3. Achieving big goals is similar to becoming a marathon runner. You need to start small. Hold onto the vision of yourself running the marathon, but set an initial goal of (say) being able to run three miles without walking.

4. When I was a manager I helped employees make SMART goals: They had to be Specific, Measurable, Agreed (I couldn’t just set them for the employee), Realistic and Timely (i.e. have a specified timeframe). When dealing with yourself, consider Agreed to mean something you want to do, not something you should do. This should not be the Superego dictating goals. Something vague such as “I will become a published author” misses Specificity and Timely. Heck, write a short story and throw it on Facebook and you’ve met that goal, but was that what you really meant?

5. Make a commitment to your goal. If you don’t make a commitment, it’s a wish, not a goal. One approach is to write down the goal. Another way is to announce to others what your goal is. People generally want to help you meet your goals, and letting others know what you want to do allows them the opportunity to help you along the way.

I announced two of my 2014 goals on My Two Cents Worth (Before Inflation) blog. They are modest goals, but will take effort. During 2014 I want to attain and maintain a certain level of exercise every month, and I want to lose twelve pounds and maintain that loss throughout 2014.

By announcing these goals on my blog, and again here, I can now share my progress (or lack thereof). As I succeed—and I will—I can share that success with others. If I hit a rough patch—for example, a weight plateau before my goal—others can provide support, remind me this is common in weight loss. It’s not just me and my goal; it’s now WE and my goal.

Simply having other people paying attention to my goals will help me succeed, because I really do hate embarrassing myself and that provides one more bit of additional motivation that I can transform into positive action.

5. Measure progress frequently. If your real goal is to complete the first draft of the “great American novel” in 2014, you might approach it by (a) estimating how many words that will be (100,000?) (b) setting a smaller goal of 9,000 words in January. And then measure that goal daily. See your writing time produce additional words each time you sit down to write. Congratulate yourself after each sitting—even if you only added two paragraphs and 100 words. And in March, when your son is getting married, back off from the 9,000 words and make your goal only 5,000.

6. Recognize that most goals revolve around developing new habits. Habits take a while to establish and are rarely reached without a minor backslide or two. Every day provides a fresh twenty-four hours. If you slip one day or two, recognize what has happened and get back up on that horse-of-a-new-habit and ride it today.

If you have a goal that you want me to pay attention to, share it in the comments. If you have a technique that works for you in reaching your goals, share that as well.

~ Jim