March 1, 2016

A Time to Say Hello and a Time to Say Farewell

Issue #19 March 2016

Farewell, My Friends and Followers

As you know, we are always focusing on our goals and the actions we must take to achieve them. Evaluating whether or not those actions are relevant to helping us achieve those goals is of great importance. So once the goals are set, the actions selected, then evaluate, we must tweak those actions. Sometimes the activities we’re doing are helping to push us toward our goals, so we keep those activities. Other times our activities have become a distraction from the main goal. There are also times when circumstances in our life have changed and made the once profitable activities impractical. In that case, we need to drop the activity in order to focus better on achieving the main goal.

Well, circumstances in my life have changed. Serious family health issues are demanding more of my time and energy…almost all of it, in fact. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop working toward my goal. It does mean I must evaluate which activities I’m doing are most effective in helping me as much to achieve the goal of becoming a well-known author.
I have found myself working on too many projects which consume a great deal of time and energy…distracting me from the goal of writing. While I have enjoyed sharing my thoughts and ideas in The Goal-Focused Writer, it has not yielded the following I had hoped for. So this is my farewell to whatever friends and followers read this blog and again to encourage you to continue evaluating your activities as per my example. Below is my final published example of tweaking my own goals. I hope this helps you to tweak yours as well. For those of you who prefer a visual representation, see the attached PDF.

Original Goals for 2016

Activities That Go
1.     Write four (4) blogs for The Goal-Focused Writer
Write blogs for publication (remember that the writing must be done the month before the publication date): January, April, July, October
Writing this blog helped me stay focused on my goals, but since it never gained any kind of following or increased audience, the blog didn’t promote me as a writer. THIS ACTIVITY STOPS.
2.     Develop and push Goal-Focused Writers’ group, writing eights (8) blogs, alternating months with The Goal-Focused Writer
Write a private members-only blog for other writers in conjunction with The Goal-Focused Writer blog (offering free PDF book for joining) and publish: February, March, May, June, August, September, November, and December.
Since this activity is directly related to the above blog, I will not pursue my own writing group online, but possibly pursue building one locally. THIS ACTIVITY STOPS.
3.     Create book cover myself for each of the four parts of LWN
Created cover for Part 1 in December; create covers for Part 2, 3 and 4 before one month trial of Photoshop ends
Just because you CAN do a thing, doesn’t mean you SHOULD do a thing. Creating my own book covers takes massive amounts of time and an expensive creative program that I’m not ready to invest in. It is a distraction from my real goal, which is to write and publish. SO IT GOES!

Activities That Stay
1.     Write six (6) reviews for The Dystopian Reviewer
Read a book every other month, then review the review for publication; offer free PDF of Sci-Fi Analysis for followers: February, April, June, August, October, and December.
This is an excellent activity, since it helps me improve my own writing and lets me know what authors, styles and approaches work well. The blog has a small following which seems to be growing, therefore promoting my name as a writer. This activity stays.
2.     Submit six (6) stories/essays to magazine
Write/edit on new story every other month for publication: February, April, June, August, October, and December.
This is an activity directly related to my major goal, but it’s one I’ve neglected while pursuing the less-focused activities above, which did not help me reach my goal. THIS ACTIVITY STAYS.
3.     Write 8,000 per month on new novel (or 2,000 words per week).
This is an absolute MUST DO in order to achieve my goals. SO THIS ACTIVITY STAYS.
4.     Rewrite and improve synopsis
This activity is a MUST for finding agents and publishers.
5.     Rewrite and improve cover letter
This activity is a MUST for finding agents and publishers.
6.     Send out to six (6) agents every two months
This activity is a MUST for finding agents and publishers. 

As you can see, it is imperative that your activities…those things you choose to devote your time and energy to…are important aspects of whether or not you achieve your end goal. If you’re a writer, your first choice is whether to self-publish on Amazon, Book Baby or through any of the hundreds of services that charge you a fee to put your book in print or if you choose the traditional route of contacting agents and publishers in hopes of a contract. If you choose the self-publishing route, you’ll be forced to learn how to market your book and then spend precious hours taking all those little marketing steps to achieve your book’s success. This what I have been doing for the past two years, during which time I’ve had odd jobs, my mother had a series of small strokes, requiring my help, and I had a massive amount of reading in a new subject to do! I always felt like I was running behind on everything and the things I did finish didn’t look as well-polished as I would have liked. When my mother had an acute stroke last month, I knew she needed more of my time than ever before and that something had to change in my activities. That’s when I decided to work on publishing though the traditional venues. They take more wait time for responses, but while you wait, you continue writing. And that’s exactly what I’ll do.

Setting and Accomplishing Goals

As I end this writers’ blog, let’s review the baby sets we have to take in order to take the leap of achieving our goals:
1)     Set the goal you want to accomplish.

2)     Establish activities that will lead you to that goal.
a)     Practice, practice, and practice some more.
b)     Get feedback on your work whenever possible.
c)     Accept that feedback with grace, remember that the growing requires you to be wrong once in a while. Smile and thank that person for helping you grow.
d)     Get educated in your field of choice, through reading or courses.
e)     Find a mentor or be a mentoring, you’ll learn and grow either way. This is where being part of a writers’ group will really help!
f)      Network with people in you field of choice.

3)     Revaluate your progress toward your goal regularly.

4)     Tweak, change, and alter any activities that are not taking you to the goal you want to achieve or require time away from more meaningful activities that WILL help you grow.

5)     Believe you can achieve, even when things go wrong. Only allow yourself a couple of days to mourn any bad luck, then pull yourself back to focus on your goal.

6)     Repeat these steps frequently until you have achieved the results you desire.

For those of you who enjoy a more visual representation of this Goal Setting Flowchart.

Good luck, good writing, and thanks for reading my blog. Don’t forget that Dystopian Reviewer will still be available and keep an eye on my website: Icy Thoughts for upcoming publications.