A Different Method of New Year's Writing Goals

Pencils&Lipstick podcast · Jan 01, 2024

Transcript

Happy New Year, everyone. I am recording this early, but it is, as this goes out, 2024, January 1st, and this is episode 211 of Pencils and Lipstick. I have to record this early because I will be traveling on January 1st, but, and maybe some of you guys are, but this episode will go out and we're going to actually have a pretty short episode.

I know right now everyone's probably talking about the New Year's goals and resolutions, possibly the Your Word of the Year, and I think all of that is really great. I studied goals, motivations, resolutions, all that for a really long time as I transitioned from being a full -time mother to, you know, part -time mother, part -time writer, maybe? Full -time mother, part -time writer? I don't know. Whatever that might be. And I think it's all great. Whatever works for you, honestly. I think what I have moved into is what I'm going to talk to you guys about today. And I no longer do word of the year because, not that I have anything against it, but I think that unless you have it really in front of you or a plan on how to make that word prevalent in your life, you forget. Honestly, there are times, you know, that I set goals and I find them really easy to crush and accomplish. Usually the goals that like I enjoy the work doing, right? Mm -hmm. I might not be alone there. But when it comes to writing goals, you know, everyone says that you have to have specific goals. So specifically you might want to finish your book. That's your specific goal. Finish it, right? And then of course they say the motivation and writing by Stephen King like oh my gosh I'm so inspired and this is what I need to do and I need to follow his way of doing things and and I wrote back and said a here's like he's a guy in which he wrote books you know started in the industry at this point 40 years ago the industry was way different he is not a full -time mom, plus full -time worker, plus writer as my friend is. His job is writing books and I don't know him personally, but I would venture a guess as to his life structure

is probably he works on his books and someone else does the cleaning, the cooking, the laundry, the picking up of the kids, right? So as I am complete opposite to that idea, I have learned to change my way of thinking of goals and I encourage others to do this as well. And again, my way might not mesh with certain personalities and if you are like goal oriented mom with the house and the feeding people who always want to be fed. I don't know why. It's like they need me to cook for them because they have homework and they have sports. I'm also driving them to sports. We carpool a few times, but you know, you got to do that give and take.

Yeah, there's just a lot going on. And yes, I choose that for my kids life and for my life. and so what I have to do is work around it. On like next to that is life things that happen that you can't predict and you can you can give yourself buffer room but there are some things that you just can't predict. Like two years ago when I pulled my back and was flat out for weeks um I still worked I still did things but I really didn't do as much as I had wanted to. I had to change my goals, change the way that I was looking at things. This past fall has not gone according to what my ideal was when I planned it out and so a lot of things have been pushed to quarter one and I've had to take a deep breath and push the

duology coming out yet again. You know it was supposed to come out in October and major goals right at the same time because I like to write every day if not like almost every day I will be working on Claire's story which will finish up the historical fiction trilogy and possibly work on the new contemporary series those are my big goals that's that's what I love to do when I you know And I have that up on my Cobb on board. If you guys don't follow Sarah Cannon and you really like goal, goal, goal, goal, goals, she's awesome. It's Heart Breathings on YouTube. Check her out, it's great.

I'll put the link in the show notes. Away from that, my number one goal for 2024 is the Kickstarter for the duology. And at that point, I am teaching myself to then take a breath and celebrate. that's how I am but that's my big goal and I'm gonna crush it in the first quarter and guess what that's a successful year already I'm trying myself that then that is the big goal already done not the major major one right the major one is like finishing the other historical historical fiction book if I can get those two done oh I am going to force before I would put your goal as finishing the first draft of the book but let me say publishing it by the end of the year might be too much because what I'm trying to avoid is avoid feeling let down by yourself, right? So you have to think about this and you have to think about how your personality So I do think that you have to sit back and think about your personality, give yourself a goal, a big goal, a really big goal in which, and then you tell yourself to celebrate, celebrate, celebrate, celebrate. I think more than anything, that is the key to this is that is how you remember. So here's an example.

When I get my Kickstarter together and I hit go, and I already have people there ready the monetary goal which I will because there are strategies to that and we'll talk about that in the new year as I set mine up. I am going to celebrate. I'm going to pick a restaurant that I want to go to. It'll probably be Korean food or Thai food because that's my favorite and we're going to go out and I'm going to get a funny fancy drink and I am going to get dessert and I am going to celebrate having completed the entire Kickstarter. You know, before I have to go back home and start, you know, making sure everyone's getting the ebooks and making sure the print books are there and sent out and signed and all that stuff. Because of course work comes afterwards, but I think it's important to celebrate. To celebrate those things that get done, right? And then I guess I could probably celebrate, you know, maybe I don't know how I would when actually get all the the books sent out because that's a lot of work as well. I want you to to realize that also that as your books as your goals come you know get less blurry before your eyes as you're probably thinking about them this year is it is true that you should write them down. Now, I find the best way to do that is to make up a cub on board and I will, again, the links will be in the show notes and it's right there.

You can't see it, but it's right there and I can see kind of all the work that I have to do and then you move it down what you're doing and then what has been accomplished and that way it's written and it's right before my eyes the things that I want done in 2024. And since quarter four didn't go great in 2023, it's pretty much the same, the same four. So you definitely need to keep it before your eyes. The other thing that I am going to continue in 2024 and which I will encourage you to do is to not only keep your goals before your eyes, write it, put it somewhere where you spend a lot of time, You can finish setting up your Kickstarter. You can finish two chapters this week. Maybe that's one for you. You can, you can. Speaking into myself on what I can do, because the truth is you can write your book, you can develop your characters, you can figure out your story structure, and sometimes you need to tell yourself that. so those are going to be my two goals this year. Some of a lot of them, no almost all of them are just recycled into this year, the idea of them anyway and they are a continuation of trying to continue my entrepreneur journey. Now I do want to let you guys know you know I would love to hear from you on how goal setting works for you? Are you somebody who can just crush it? Like if you tell yourself you're

going to write six books this year, will you do it? That'd be awesome if you did it, right? But and I would love to hear from you. If you're somebody that the word of the year works for you, I would love to hear from you. But I also want to let you guys know that there's other help out there, especially like it's so exciting to set goals the first week, but a lot of us forget them in the second week and by the end of January they're completely done with, right? Like, it's the running joke that we all join gyms January 1st and then the gyms are empty by the end of the month and then we're just, you know, paying for this gym membership that we never use. A, go to the gym everyone. Go move your bodies or go take a walk. But there's going to be a couple to you about how to incorporate romance into your books. If you want just a one -time workshop on romance and love stories, Paula Judith Johnson is going to be teaching my January workshop on January 9th, and I will give you the link in the show notes below. You'll get a special prize just I will be prioritizing celebrating when I finish one of my goals, and my goals will be setting up the Kickstarter for the Bended Duology, accomplishing the Kickstarter for the Bended Duology, and I would really like to add in there the Crossing Thamura book. I would really like to finish that and can we say possibly publish it? But you know, now I'm getting ahead of myself because that's what I do. I don't mind giving myself these big, big goals and then they don't, if I don't reach them, it's okay with me, but that's definitely just me sometimes. Sometimes other people, it really affects. So I would encourage you to check the links below. I would really love to hear from you about how you feel about New Year's resolutions, writing goals, words of the year, whatever that, whatever like works best for you. Maybe you're just trying them out now. Maybe you've completely discarded them and like are just sticking to an agenda. I don't know. How's it working out for you? Let me know. I'm on Twitter or X at pencils lipstick I'm on Instagram at cat Caldwell that author and pencils and lipstick all spelled out You can join my newsletter and just email me back and let me know what you think And I'm just really excited for 2024 for this podcast as well I hope that 2024 is the most prosperous and joyful year for all of us and I can't wait to experience it together at Pencils and Lipstick Podcast. See you next week.