goals – Page 3 – Deborah Makarios

January 4, 2014

Look Both Ways Before You Cross

Looking forward to the new year, but also looking back over the year just passed. Coincidentally, it has been exactly a year since I started this blog.

During that time I have written all of eighty-eight posts (although about 25 are simple quote-and-picture posts). Over the course of the year I have gone through Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, reviewed various books on writing, and asked for advice on a myriad of subjects (moving house, staying sane…) which I mostly didn’t get.

I also set goals for myself (see here and here) which I mostly failed to meet, in that I did not finish my WIP by December 31st. But I did make some strides in taking myself more seriously as a writer and doing a bit of would-like-to-be-professional development. As with so many things, Work In Progress.

Among the questions which I have mulled over during the year are whether to keep using my nom de plume (my parents, by some oversight, failed to name me Sinistra at birth) and what precisely it is I am trying to achieve here.

This blog was originally intended as a form of accountability against procrastination, but since no-one is actually holding me accountable but me anyway, that purpose has taken a bit of a back seat.
Procrastination is apparently one of the mysteries of the human condition, as articulated by Paul back in the 50s AD: “I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it.” (Romans 7:15, New Living Translation).

Motivation is perhaps key, but I struggle to find a motivation strong enough to overcome tiredness and self-doubt. Duty doesn’t cut it (unlike Frederic, I am not the Slave of Duty); ambition is by no means my strong suit – perhaps I just need to develop more character. Or a means of reminding myself of what it is I stand to lose.

In any case, over the coming year I hope to look more at subjects of interest to more than myself – that is to say, less of the writing, and more of the whatever-I-happen-to-be-obsessed-with-at-the-moment – steampunk, knitting, millinery, sustainability, odd bits of history, or any combination of the above.

Looking back, my most popular post by far (inasmuch as I can tell, since the majority of views are recorded as “homepage/archive”) is Great Wizards of Literature. I blush a little every time I see another hit on it, as it was originally titled Favourite Wizards of Literature, only some were more great than favourite. It wasn’t until after I had clicked ‘publish’ that I realised I had listed one of my own creations as a Great Wizard of Literature.

He isn’t great, really, but he’s doing his best. (If he’s very lucky, he may one day be published.) An excellent example of how not to blow your own trumpet.

The gong for Most Under-Appreciated Post (from my point of view, anyway) goes to Mid-Week Quote: Reading, for the play on word(s) if nothing else.

On an entirely unrelated tangent, if your New Year’s Resolution includes being more generous, giving to charity, doing something good for someone else or even (aim high!) saving someone’s life, consider this from Throwim Way Leg, one of the blogs I follow.
Getting an ultrasound machine really will make a life-or-death difference to people in Papua New Guinea. Imagine if your local hospital had no ultrasound, no x-ray, no lab for tests… you get the idea.
And do please feel free to pass the link on to anyone you think might be interested.

Thanking you all for your company in 2013, and looking forward to your company in 2014, I remain,
Sinistra Inksteyne

November 3, 2013

Goals and Incentives

Strange how memories forgotten for years can suddenly return with such intensity. This week I have been remembering a newspaper cutting I had on my wall as a girl, which was on the subject of setting and achieving goals.

I remember the paragraph which said to list What’s In It For Me – taking the pragmatic if somewhat un-altruistic view that you couldn’t set goals which only benefited others.
I remember the remarkably bad posture [straightens back] of the young people in the illustrations, who appeared to have been genetically modified with turtle DNA (and not the ninja sort, either).

But before either of these I remembered the feeling of order, perhaps even control, which the cutting gave me. I could set goals, break them down into steps, and then achieve them, at least in theory. I could accomplish things.

For some reason (early exposure to the classics?) I always wanted to be accomplished. To my chagrin, I live in a modern society which does not really go in for accomplishments, and therefore gives me nothing to measure myself against (rather like modern manners).

There is of course always Miss Bingley’s definition: “no one can be really esteemed accomplished, who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved.”

I have a smattering of modern languages, and my posture is at least better than the teenage turtle-mutants in the clipping. Let us draw the curtain of charity over my abilities as to the rest. I might do slightly better in Mr Darcy’s estimation (“to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading”) were it not that he expected all the rest as well. An accomplished lady of the Regency, then, I shall clearly never be.

Well, never mind. Mr Darcy isn’t a patch on the Caped Gooseberry anyway.

The resurfaced memories did make me think again about motivation and goals. While working toward a larger goal, it can sometimes be necessary to motivate oneself in the short term. Never mind what’s in it for me next year, I want to sleep now!

Sometimes it pays to use the carrot instead of the stick, to provide yourself with a few extra incentives. For example, if I manage to write 4,000 words tomorrow, I can go and buy a new exercise book.

To be fair, I’m making a virtue of necessity in this case, as if I write 4,000 words there won’t be room in my current book for another Monday’s worth of words. But buying a new one will be enjoyable just the same.

When I finally finish the first draft of my WIP, I might buy myself one of these to celebrate.
Do you detect a certain stationery orientation in my incentives?

I admit it – I love stationery. As a child of six, I kept an envelope full of blank strips of paper in my room. They weren’t even cut straight, but there was something indefinably pleasing about them. I used to take them out and fan them through my fingers. (Weird kid? Yes. Point?)

Pens, paper, ink – I love them. And if that love can spur me on to keep writing when The End seems unimaginably far away, then even better.

What are your goals? And what are your favourite incentives? All correspondence welcomed.

October 20, 2013

Accountability

As I’ve mentioned before, I started this blog largely to have some accountability about whether I wrote or simply procrastinated.

Recently, I was happy to discover another writer using her blog for the same thing, although in her case she’s pulling out the big guns and doing NaNoWriMo. (I shall take on the role of the elegant lady in the back, watching with her hands over her ears.)

I would like to do NaNoWriMo someday, but not this year, I think. This year has been quite eventful enough as it is, what with moving house, changing job (though not employer), bouts of ill health and so forth.
Of course, as with so many things in life, there will never be a perfect time, but some times are better than others, and the time for which you have prepared is better than the time for which you have not.

As I was mulling over the slowness of my progress this week (while I did some more character work last Monday, I didn’t add a word to the MS) I decided that in a non-NaNo scenario, the important thing is not so much how fast you go, but that you do not backtrack, go in circles, or stop.

Or as Tolkien more poetically put it:
O! Wanderers in the shadowed land
despair not! For though dark they stand,
all woods there be must end at last,
and see the open sun go past:
the setting sun, the rising sun,
the day’s end, or the day begun.
For east or west all woods must fail …

However slowly you trudge, as long as you keep going forward you will eventually get to the end of your book. Unless you’re writing War and Peace: The Extended Edition, in which case you may well die of old age first.

This Monday my goal is to get my main character out of her comfort zone and then knock away all the supports and protections she has had so far. As they say, get your character up a tree and throw stones at them. Or if you’re Tolkien, get them up a tree with slavering beasts beneath and then set fire to the tree.

I like to think I’m comparatively merciful.

So, in the great Internet Accountability, what are your goals (writing or otherwise)? And do you have any handy tips on how to keep motivated while wandering in shadowed lands?

As always, happy to hear from you!
Sinistra Inksteyne