I’d set a self-imposed goal for the end of the year, and am having trouble keeping up with it. Yesterday I was thinking about why, and what if anything I could do about it, and decided that I am not going to worry about it. I’ll continue to do what I can, when I can, and I’ve already made more progress than I would have had I not begun.
Thing is, I have multiple goals for life right now. While writing is important to my long-term goals, so is losing weight (if you haven’t got your health, you haven’t got anything), and the short-term goals are to spend more precious time with my husband, and to make Raconteur Press as successful as it’s in my power to contribute to. There’s a constant shifting pattern in my life, and it’s my job to weave it into something that will endure, which burning out and collapsing in exhaustion will not do. Hence why I’m standing at my desk with a walking pad under it, typing while I slowly take steps. I have momentum. It might not be in the direction I thought it would be, but I have it. I’m not moving backwards! Just slowly forward, ever into the future.
Writing can feel like this, too, when it comes to plot. It’s easy to simply drive your hero forward inexorably to victory, but it’s not at all realistic and chances are your readers will feel something is lacking. Even in their escapist reading, they want verisimilitude. The fun comes in when the hero might think he is failing, is retreating from his objective, and you the author know that in reality he is making progress, but perhaps around to go over a pass, instead of the bonehead wanting to go right up to the summit and down the backside. You have the overarching view* and sometimes what looks like a loss is in reality something else. Not, mind you, necessarily a victory either.
We may falter in our progress from time to time, but those are the learning times. The times for healing, even if we stubbornly don’t admit to having been ill. the times to reflect on being overly ambitious, and to acknowledge that with 43000 words already written, 90K is still very possible by the end of the year, even if the author has to slow down a little. Not every goal must be overtopped. Not every speed record has to be broken for your hero to still reach his objective at the end of this book’s plot. It might be a series, after all!
*yes, even pantsers can usually tell if what’s coming ahead in the fog is a molehill or a mountain for the protagonist.
Mad Genius Club 
7 responses to “Faltering”
I’m just hoping to finish something by the end of the year, long or short. It’s been a bad year for stalled WIPs.
Sometimes the point of a goal is not to make the goal, but by aiming in that direction, you get closer to figuring out what else you want, and getting to somewhere better, where new goals are an option.
Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming…
In his commencement address that got turned into a small book, Neil Gaiman points out that every step toward the mountain (creating good art) is a step forward. It might not take you directly to the mountain, and there will probably be detours, but the point is aiming for the mountain and keeping going in that direction.
Or as Robert Browning phrased it in Andrea del Sarto, “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” We might not quite make the peak of the mountain when we thought we would, but we are farther along than when we began!
Lou Reed was interviewed once and was asked about some albums he made that were not well-received, and he started talking about Paul Simon. He pointed out that everybody loves Simon’s “Graceland” album, but most people dismissed the several albums before that one as being not very good. Reed said “No, that’s exactly wrong. Those are the albums he HAD to make to GET to ‘Graceland’.”
I read . . . here? Maybe on FB? “When you own the business, you can work half-time. Twelve hours is half a day, right?”
Being self-employed can be worse. Half-time at this, half-time at that . . . don’t let family time slip away, it’s very important and suddenly you’re stressed out and wonder why.
Step back, start over. And I need to go start some stuff. Also. But be sure and relax and smile and hug your husband.
I want to get back to writing this new LitRPG story idea, more blog posts, and A Roman Solist, so I can now justify putting Solist at Large into physical print.
I’m not going to say that it’s dependent on the election, but…the election will make things difficult in some ways, easier in others.