Goal Posts

Happy New Year to one and all!

The arrival of a fresh year stretching its twelve pristine months into the future invites me to make plans.

Look at that enormous expanse of unsullied time, I think. Plenty of time for me to finish the draft of my NaNo novel, split it into three pieces, and flesh out the trilogy...

and research and draft my Pet Novel Project that I'd begun before NaNo...

and edit two clients' projects...

and write books for two other clients...

and write another spec script...

and research literary agents and managers, pinpoint the right ones for my work, craft brilliant introductory query letters, and have them fight over the right to represent me...

and plan the Writing Workshops I'll be teaching...

and promote the book I helped Ryan Gingerich write, which is due for release in March...

and get the movie of "Against the Wind," the screenplay I co-wrote about the life of running legend Dick Beardsley into production...

This is how my thoughts get me into trouble. Because, suddenly, those 365 beautiful, blank days seem pitiful and small and entirely unable to support all the things I want to accomplish when they visit.

I -- like so many writers -- want to do too much. This poses the very real danger of spreading myself too thinly, of starting too many projects, and consequently failing to finish much of anything.

The name of the game is Prioritizing. Instead of asking "What do I want to do this next year?" I must address the issues of "What will I commit to completing this year?" Which is somehow scarier. In many ways, it's easier to have a million Things I Want To Do than to have two or three Things I Will Move Heaven and Earth to Accomplish.

This has led me to think seriously about how to help myself and the writers with whom I work to meet our goals for the next year. I have a plan percolating. I think it will work. I'll add it to the Things I Want To Do, and unveil it next week...

Till then: I encourage you to write down the things you will commit to this next year. Feel free to post them in the comments, if you wish, but write them down. Then let's work together to make our dreams reality.

Happy 2010!

Decisions, Decisions...

"If you knew what happened last weekend, you'd jump in a car and come get me."

Less than a month ago a friend made a train wreck of a life decision so she could be with a man instead of having to be on her own. Everyone who knew her told her it was a colossally Bad Idea. She knew it, too. But that didn't stop her from going through with it.

Since then, she has accepted countless abuses of privacy -- any one of which I would consider an outright dealbreaker.

* She gave up a steady job in order to leave, only to have her Significant Other refuse to pay for her acute emergency medical treatment.

* She has had her phone use limited and monitored.

* Her e-mails and correspondence have been censored.

* She discovered that the Dream Job that was the Significant Other's reason for moving does not exist.

And still she stays. Not only that, but she can still find ways to make herself feel responsible for the Other's bad behavior.

"I moved out here to try to work it out," she said after the "My E-Mail Is Not Secure" incident. But I see that I have been in the wrong frame of mind... I have been hoping it would fail so I could come home. If I wasn't going to actually try, then why did I move?!"

Now, any person who is even moderately removed from the situation could tell her that an Epic Fail has already occurred in the relationship. And not only has she stayed with it -- but she has deliberately uprooted herself from friends, family, church, employment, a support system, and all that is familiar to follow that situation and remain in it.



So when she said the "If you knew what happened" line, she made me think... And I'm not sure that she's right.

If I thought for a MOMENT that my jumping in a car and driving several hundred miles to intervene would get her out of that situation, I'd stop typing and start driving. But until she comes to the conviction that being on her own is preferable to being with the Other, it wouldn't do any good. Like a horse that runs back inside a burning barn, she would find a way to rationalize returning to a relationship on life support.

I hold out hope that someday (soon!) she will decide that she's had enough tyranny in her life. If she needs help escaping, she has an entire battalion of friends, family, and supporters just waiting for the word to mobilize. But she has to want to be free as much as we want her to fly...

"What does this have to do with writing?" you may ask.

Nothing. It has to do with life. And it just goes to show that one person's decisions -- both good and bad -- have far reaching repercussions.