Goal by Goal

My friends and I are very goal-oriented. We hold annual goal setting sessions at RWA national conferences, with 6 month reviews during our January writing retreats. We post weekly goals to our e-mail loop and cheer each other on as we move toward making our dreams become reality.

My local RWA chapter is also very goal-oriented.

• We reward people for making monthly writing-related goals with a 50/50 drawing. Drop a dollar in the basket, read your written goal aloud. If your name is drawn the following month, you are present, and you have done what you said you would, you receive 50 percent of the kitty. (The other 50 percent goes to the chapter treasury.)
• We hold a monthly Book-In-A-Week challenge where participants set their own goals, then push to achieve them. Our BIAW Mistress hands out nifty prizes (glow-in-the-dark dollar sign glasses, bookmarks, Superballs, Chinese yo-yos) to everyone who succeeds. We have an e-mail loop where we report daily progress, and the mistress inspires us with words of wit and wisdom.
• Several of us participate in The Happy 100s. We write at least 100 words a day for 100 days. We're near the midway point in our second challenge of the year. We do it for the discipline. One of my friends, the Queen-A-Athena (http://scribblinggoddesses.blogspot.com), would love to join us, but we include the weekends in our accounting, and one of her annual goals is to find balance between writing and other parts of life. She wants to keep the weekends for her family.
• In November, Barbara Samuel (www.BarbaraSamuel.com) is coming to upstate New York to give a workshop on The Zen of Goal Setting. (For more information, go to www.cnyromancewriters.com). I attended a version of this workshop at the 2004 RWA national conference in Dallas. It is probably the most life-impacting writing workshop I have ever heard. I still periodically listen to the "tape" of this workshop.

I took a course in January, called Defeating Self-Defeating Behavior (www.margielawson.com or www.writeruniv.com). A big part of what Margie teaches is goal-setting.

Through this class, I met a good friend, Yasmine Phoenix (www.yasminephoenix.com), and we've started goal-setting with each other.

I share my annual goals with my agent (www.vivianbeck.com). Goal-setting is one of the items we discussed before I signed with her. She believes in doing it as strongly as I do.

I like seeing a tangible list of what I want to accomplish. I like crossing off items, one by one, as I complete the task. I did this every day when I worked in the corporate world. I've found I get more done if I continue this practice as I look for another "day" job and intensify my devotion to my writing.

There are several goals I'm not going to accomplish this week, but now blogging isn't one of them . . . and . . .

Oh! Look!

I just made my Happy 100 for the day, too!

BTS Part II, or I Could Invent a Pinball Game

Y-Chromo, at the last minute, asked for a ride to school. It's two miles. X-Chromo wept and begged me for a ride to school. It's one mile. TV Stevie makes them late. I think they should walk. They'd rather sleep.

So I drove them to school.

The rising sun was in my eyes as I drove to the High School, making it difficult to see the little darlings daring motorists to run over them. Although there was one kid with a modified Mohawk-Mullet whom Y-Chromo begged me to hit just because of the hair. "He deserves it for going out in public like that."

Cops & security all over the place. I know they don't mean anything, but seeing them doesn't do my heart good. Y-Chromo says, "It's the first day when everyone (all 4 grades) is back, and no one's been kicked out or dropped out yet, so it's crowded."

In the meantime, I accidentally go when I should have stayed stopped at a stop sign that's NOT a four-way stop, and the person who had the right of way was justifiably angry. Horn honking, fist shaking. My bad.

I dodged school buses, city buses, garbage trucks and recycling trucks on narrow north side streets where two MG Midgets couldn't pass gas even if there weren't illegally parked cars everywhere.

I cross J Street to drop off X-Chromo at Middle School, and now we're in the SF area. And of course, all the urban soccer moms in their gas-guzzling SUVs are illegally parked no where near the curb at every other intersection, motors running, while their suburban-wannabe teens in their preppie uniforms await public transportation to shlep them to their private schools. God forbid Amanda Kathleen (a/k/a/ Muffin) or Barton the Tenth walk 2 blocks and stand in the cool morning air to wait for the bus, much less attend public school. So why can't the moms park at the curb instead of in the intersections?

Finally, outer S, my very own, very mixed neighborhood.

And all the heavy equipment with which we lived from Sept 2005 to May 2006? IT'S BAAAAACK. Loud, grumbling, belching noxious fumes, and parked right outside my bedroom, living room and office windows, and across from my driveway, making leaving and departing a chore.

Oh #^(*, the jackhammers just started.

Unearthing My Office

I'm lucky. I have a room in my house designated as my office. Doesn't mean it's 100% my space, but I'll settle for the 60% I get. Many writers I know don't have separate rooms in which to ply their craft.

That said, I confess that I rarely write in there. It's the room where my desk top computer resides, the unit that is completely off limits to TV Stevie (except when his computer crashed) and our Chromosomes. It is also the room that contains my closet (our 1920-built house is very short on closet space) and the stairs to the (unfinished) attic. Our center-of-the-house chimney creates an interesting jag in one wall.

TV Stevie has a large bookcase filled with oversized books about movies and actors against one wall. He also has another piece of furnture filled with baseball memorabilia and who-the-heck-knows-what else against the same wall. And there's a chest of drawers that used to contain a lot of both his and my stuff, but that I'm confiscating for my sole use. My very small desk, a couple of small bookcases, a larger bookcase, and a filing cabinet line the rest of the wall space.

But this room has also become the catch-all room. Right now, there are at least 3 clock radios no longer being used by members of the family on the floor. I don't know what else is on the floor, but one can barely walk through the room. I'm going to change that.

I have plans.

I want my office.

I need quiet space.

For two years, I've said that I'm going to clean out my office. This week, I started. Ten minutes a day. That's all, at least for now. Otherwise, the chaos overwhelms me.

Last week, I purchased two big plastic bins. One of them now holds my collection of summer shoes. (Yes, I wear them all. What can I tell you?) I dragged several tote bags and boxes filled with I'm-not-sure-what into my bedroom. Another day was spent breaking apart empty shipping cartons and placing them in the recycle bin. Then I remembered why I had all the empty cartons: to box up books to haul to my local library, which adores donations of books in good condition. And in case you didn't count bookcases, there are four in my office alone. We have almost as many books as we have video tapes and record albums. (Yes, VINYL. But that's another blog.) I have one good-sized (but not too heavy) box ready to go.

My friend Carol (www.terapiajewelry.com) has promised to come over at some point and put a lock on the door for me. My friend Yasmine Phoenix (www.yasminephoenix.com)
sent me door knob signs that read, "HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE A WRITER INTERRUPTED" and "STOP! 1. Are you bleeding? 2. Is the house on fire? If the answer is no . . . GO AWAY!"

I want the room to be a haven. A place to refill the well. I have wishing well windchimes hanging over my desk to remind me that the well needs to be refilled. Now that my brother has finished replacing the windows (I paid him!), I can rehang my lovely dreamcatcher and prisms in the windows.

I have plans.

There's a rocking chair, a nice one that we bought when I was pregnant for Y-Chromo, draped in plastic on my front porch. It's coming back upstairs just as soon as I can get it up here.

Maybe I'll post pictures to show my progress. If I can find one of the digital cameras . . .

BTS: Part 1

It's one of those perfect mornings. The air is cool, there's a hint of mist clinging to the drooping leaves, and my youngest child, X-Chromo, went back to school today. The calendar may not say "autumn," but the school district has declared it so. TV Stevie had an early meeting, so I drove X to school, telling her all the while that walking is great exercise, especially in such nice weather. She didn't buy it. Y-Chromo is still in bed (grades 10-12 start school tomorrow), enjoying his last day of freedom.

The house is unusually quiet.

I can take this lull and use it or waste it. Since outside employment (even tho' I'd rather be writing full time) lurks in my future, I should be downstairs with either my lap top or my AlphaSmart, taking advantage of these few, precious hours of quiet solitude. Until the phone rings with yet another prerecorded political message--Primary Day is next week. Or Y hauls himself out of bed and wants a ride to school because the AP English students are having an informal study session.

In an interview in the August 2006 issue of the Romance Writers Report, Nora Roberts says, "If I waited to be inspired to do my job, I'd be unemployed."

This is an important lesson. Writing fiction doesn't require inspiration, but rather discipline. I need to rediscover mine.