Last month I asked my newsletter readers about how they tackle long-term goals. Specifically if they had any advice for making progress on long-term goals during very busy seasons. The end of the school year and start of summer is historically a time of year when the Trent family calendar is very, very full. And this year a few extraneous projects have added to hustle bustle. It doesn’t help matters that my passion for writing means I’m often in the thick of some very long-term goals. I’ve been writing my current book, Lilies, Dragons, & Rain, often and on for over twelve years now. I’ve written other books and completed other projects in those twelve years of course, but finishing the draft of this novel has been a long (LONG)-term goal.
My readers are an insightful lot and replied with lots of helpful advice that I am sharing today in the hopes that it might also help you chip away at some of your long-term goals. Particularly when life is coming at you like an elephant with a fire hose. All advice is shared with permission, and I have found all to be very helpful as I’ve reapplied myself to some my long-term goals this last month.
Author Anna M. Crockett writes, “Long term goal completion? I need to work on that too but I know I have been using my writing time for admin things so that has been what’s stopping me from progressing on my long term goals. If I use the few hours I have a week to write [and] edit, I’ll eventually finish my books. That, and I just need to get to work and stop letting it intimate me.” It is intimidating! There are days I wonder where I found the courage to write _a_ book, and now I’m working on my seventh.
Melody of the blog Lilacs and Butterflies had some helpful advice for me, and Anna, and anyone that has imposter syndrome interconnected with their long-term goals. Melody writes, “My advice is to be yourself and share whatever you’re comfortable sharing. Some people want it and the others can scroll on…” Sage advice to be sure.
Tirzah writes, “I feel like I struggle with working on long-term goals during busy seasons as well. But, my one bit of advice that I can think of is trying to work at it a little bit each day, even carving out 5 to 15 minutes a day for it whether that goal is writing or something else that you’re working on. Or set aside time a few days each week if it’s a struggle to do something every single day.” An interesting and excellent point. I’ve often heard that the habit of consistency is more important to cultivate than any other. You make more gains practicing the violin, or lifting weights, or flossing if done consistently than you do with haphazard, if heroic, applications.
Crystal shared with me some wisdom imparted to her over the years from, as she puts it, “folks much wiser than this gal here.” She writes, “As a mom of 5 who homeschooled all of them from preschool to graduation, except for #5 who is doing high school in public school/career and technology center, worked part time as a registered nurse, taught English as a second language voluntarily, ran children to all sorts of extracurricular things (and often was roped into helping with these in various capacities), cared for aging parents/ grandparents and on and on, remember to make the big long term goal into smaller, more manageable short term goals. (i.e. 10,000 pages to write in a week becomes 1500 a day. Earning that certificate in 2 years, becomes a class a month till it is done. Taking better control of health by the time grandchildren arrive on the scene, becomes exercise 10 minutes a day 5 days a week, etc.) And always take time for a creative outlet juice flowing project… whatever that looks like for you: bust out the cross stitch, hike that mountain, braid those flowers into that horse’s mane!” I need to sit down after reading this, better yet I need to go pet my friend Fabio, the horse. Writing fiction has been a creative outlet for me for much of my life, but Crystal has helped me see that perhaps in this season the projects that are coming my way and the activities I’ve been craving are perhaps fueling my creative well in other important ways.
Jennifer writes, “Do what you can when you can. Get the little things done and out of the way so you feel like you have accomplished something and take some of the stress off you.” And I owe Jennifer a hug, or at least a happy short story, because she named the elephant in the room. Stress I think is a huge reason why it’s been so slow going. It’s hard to create and harder still to organize all that comes with an elephant wielding fire-hose season of life.
Speaking of stressful times and seasons, many thanks to Carrie who wrote to me in the middle of her own elephant fire-hose storm. She said, “How to accomplish long term goals during busy times…. at this point I have no clue. I’m taking 1 day at a time.” It’s all any of us can do in gale force winds.
Lissa Sloan, fellow fairy tale retelling author, shared with me her adaptations form a class she took at work called Getting Things Done. Lissa writes, “I keep a to-do list on my phone (a bunch of lists, actually). But you could keep it wherever if you’re trying to unplug (totally get that also!). And I try to jot down each little thing (or big thing) I want to get done. I’ll have one list for writing, one list for home, one list for shopping, one for “to do soon” etc. So when you have a minute, you can look over your list and decide what you have time/energy/inclination to get done or work on. I hope this helps!” I can attest that it does! At the recommendation of Dr. Laurie, I’ve been keeping a notebook of my running to do list for years now, but I like the idea of different lists for different goals and keeping some of them with me digitally. Great minds, Lissa!
Britt G, @sweetcleanreads on Instagram, shared, “I have ADHD, and my energy changes with my hormones too – so when I have the energy I plow ahead in hyperfocus mode and when I don’t, I give myself the time to rest and rejuvenate. When I was in grad school and I had trouble writing long papers, whenever my brain stalled, I would go for a 10 minute walk, and it always woke my brain up and my brain always came up with the most ideas while I walked. Walking or biking. Somehow the movement helps. Maybe it has something to do with blood flow and oxygen?”
Britt G reminded me of Charles Darwin’s famous habit of walking his way through “three-flint problems.” If it works for Britt G and works for Darwin, then maybe… I was inspired to return to regular yoga practice. As Mr. Trent cheekily remarked, “It’s almost like the mind and body are connected or something.”
Author Melissa Muhlenkamp, who has a Kickstarter for her debut novel The Castle of Wishes that I am excitedly following, shared the following, “I wish I had advice on how to set goals to encourage progress, especially in the drafting stage. But I suffer from the same illness. I’m a very slow first drafter…. However, I always find two things very helpful. 1. Set up a specify writing-only time (for me this is 5-7am). I only write during this time, and I only write this project. Nothing else takes its place. It helps with continuity of the idea, and progress at a time where nothing else has my attention. And 2. Walking…while thinking and brainstorming scenes in my head for the book. It renews my excitement and makes me want to continue.”
Melissa continues, “I get wanting/needing to close mental tabs, like checking things off a list (I love the feeling!). But I work better when each project has a specific time block in my day. I even clean my house this way! The bottom line for me is that nothing is ever truly finished, even books take years of marketing when the writing ends. So I allocate block-specific hours of my day to the projects or areas I’m prioritizing until their current stage of development is completed and I know I can safely step aside without jeopardizing their progress.”
Maybe embracing that the work is never done is part of the journey is key? I’ve dabbled more with Melissa’s approach of time blocking, accepting that I will have progress if not tidy boxes to check off at the end of it. Also, I am not a morning person. I was reading in my Lord Byron biography yesterday about the very late hours the poet kept and how his friend and fellow poet, Percy Shelley, kept the same when he visited him–staying up all night until 6 AM. Shelley wrote, “I don’t supposed this will kill me in a week or fortnight, but I shall not try it longer.” It’s how I feel after experimenting with early wake-up calls to write.
Brittany B writes, “I think to make progress at long term goals you need to set little goals that are easily achieved. If you can do small pieces that move you in the right direction then you are still making progress that will encourage you & one day you will look up and will be at your long term goals!” Starting with the low-hanging fruit is one of the reasons I’m still writing. There are lots of metaphors in literature about planting and harvesting, and I know from many, many failed attempts at gardening that planting seeds and never having anything to show for it is a bummer. At some point you have to be able to eat that marshmallow. So I frequently default to low-hanging fruit, and let me tell you–an unfolded basket of laundry never looked so good as when elephants are looming in every google docs.
I’ve sliced and diced writing projects before. I’ve made progress trackers for word counts and chapters written. I’ve used external structure to move the needle–nothing gets this author writing like a date set with her editor, except maybe knowing her CPs are expecting that next chapter at the weekly group meeting. But what happens when progress with even those tricks stalls out? some
Kristen Baum DeBeasi, publisher and editor-in-chief over at The Fairy Tale Magazine, shared a very apt metaphor that you may have encountered before and I referenced in the title of this post. “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time,” and Kristen added, “I hope you savor every bite of writing.”
Incidentally, I want to share a bit of serendipity that I stumbled upon as I’ve been experimenting with all this good advice that has as Kristen wrote, helped me “savor every bite” of my drafting process of. I listen to audiobooks and podcasts when I’m folding laundry. And a few weeks ago in one of them I heard mention of Jennifer Lynn Barnes and her Id List approach to fiction writing. I googled my way to this, Red Sneaker Writers #8 podcast where she describers her approach, which is to keep a list of everything in fiction that brings her joy. At times when she is feeling less motivation and enthusiasm for a project, she consults her Id List and finds an element from it that she can incorporate into her writing right then an there. Even if it is as small as characters eating ice cream on a rooftop. The result is some in-the-moment joy for her and a more joyful story for her readers to enjoy later.
I’ve often considered writing a book to be akin to scrapbooking. I collect whimsical mementos, meaningful experiences, and joyful details from my life and organize them in novel-form in a way that is shareable. In some books this is very easy. Turnabout Is Fair Cosplay is a collection of my love for La Jolla, my Grandma Marge, my childhood, and one very special beach house. But with this current book I’m drafting, the whimsy and meaning and joy are attached to experiences that are complex and at times heavy. I’m still figuring out what it means to be a mother and what it means to be my children’s mother. To paraphrase the words of one fictional wizard, it’s not happy exactly but it’s strong. So this reminder to attach parts of my Id List–my love of flowers, my fascination with nineteenth century technology, banter, bitter cocoa, cake–to this book that I am writing has been helpful in my goal to eventually finish this book that I’m writing.
Thank you to all my friends and NL subscribers and readers for sharing their wisdom with me. Thank you to all those who were willing to let me quote them in this blog post. I am so grateful, and I wish you all joy and progress in your long term goals. Thank you for joining me on my journey towards mine.
Photo credit: A slice of lavender-lemon cake from Starry Night Cafe in Fort Collins, CO, where I am having a lovely week writing remotely as my eldest attends a camp at CSU. Kristen, I’m not sure what your metaphorical elephant tastes like, but this week mine tastes like lavender-lemon cake, and it is absolutely delicious.