Tag: goals

Motivation

old fashioned classroomThis week I’ve started an on-line course with Laurie Schnebly Campbell, Plotting via Motivation. We’re at the stage of introducing ourselves. Turns out, we’re a mixed bag of day job writers, homemaker writers, retired from the day job writers, empty-nest writers and writers juggling it all! 

What, I wondered, is the motivation for these various types to take a writing course? From the introduction letters I found

  • Repeaters–those who’ve taken one of Laurie’s courses before and loved it.
  • Those stuck on a wip and looking for guidance.
  • Those looking for a change after being under COVID rules for a year.
  • Newbies wondering what it’s all about.
  • Experienced authors wanting to improve their craft

I could put myself into any of those categories or all of them. I’m bored after a year of mostly staying home. I’ve been to Laurie’s in-person classes and loved them. I’m stuck on a wip but want to try a brand new idea for this exercise. Mostly though, I want to shake myself up. I feel my writing and my motivation have gotten stale.

When I was first published the only option was traditional publishers. So the goal was to get your ms in front of an acquiring editor, followed by the goal of getting her to buy your work. The motivation for that effort varied from personal achievement to making some money to validating the hours I spent at the computer, putting my ideas out into the world.

With the legitimization of self-publishing, a lot has changed. Now, if the goal is to get words in front of readers, there are many avenues. If the goal is to make money, the self-published author has much more responsibility for managing her publishing business. As for validation, does that mean ten people read my work? 100? 10,000? 100,000? Does traditional publishing or self-publishing hold out the most promise for achieving the goal? Am I suited to the “go it alone” technique or would I be better off working with a publishing house? Knowing my own motivation will help answer some of these questions. I think a month devoted to working out character motivation might help me get a handle on my own.

Apart from all of the above, I enjoy mingling with other writers. I find creative people interesting and full of surprises. Like this one, shared by a classmate. It’s called the plot generator.  https://writingexercises.co.uk/plotgenerator.php   

The site gives you six elements of a story, main character, secondary characters, setting, theme, situation and character action. You click on the buttons and up pops an answer in each of the elements. If you don’t like the first suggestion, click it again for a second suggestion. The ideas are totally random. It reminds me of a present I got at Christmas when I was about ten.  A box containing about 30 text covered 5×7 inch cards in different colours offered an endless variety of stories. Any pink card combined with a yellow, blue, green, purple and gold card yielded a cohesive story. Change any of the cards for another of the same colour and you got a different story. It was very clever. I have no idea now what it was called or who was the genius who figured out how to write a story with so many interchangeable segments but the plot generator seems similar to me.

Laurie wants us to work on a new idea. I have a file labelled “story ideas” that never got developed. If I can’t find something in there that appeals, I may go to the plot generator. After all, the class is an exercise in motivation, not the “story of my heart.”

Questions: Does anyone remember that story box idea from long, long ago? Do you know what it was called? Please e-mail me writersstudio@shaw.ca or leave a comment below if you can fill in the blanks of my memory.

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Confession Time

A few months ago I wrote a blog on my new “chunky list” method of time management. I proudly proclaimed my affection for lists and recorded my successes.   I haven’t talked about lists much lately.  There’s a reason.  I’ve fallen off the page.  My lists are short and general rather than long and specific.  Some very measurable things, like laundry, get done in their regular time slot (Monday) but others like “write” aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.  My productivity has fallen in recent weeks along with my drive to finish the story.

Enter my friend/critiquer/encourager/fellow-traveller from the other side of the world. We met several years ago on an on-line course.  The presenter said “pick a partner.”  I decided to find someone as far away from my usual world as I could.  My partner, AB, had the same thought, so now a Canadian and an Australian are travelling the road of life and writing together.  We e-mail each other every Monday with an account of our week.  Sometimes the e-mails are full of glowing achievements, thinking aloud about plot/character problems, or the sharing of a highlight in our personal lives.  Other times our exchanges consist of a tirade about the unfairness of the world/family/work/fate, take your pick, or the clueless comment made by a husband.  As our friendship grows, there are more of the personal notes in our correspondence but always something about the writing.

Last week I was moaning about being stuck and she was complaining about lack of inspiration. We both have January birthdays and the horoscope for our year was not encouraging! AB proposed that we set a word count goal and tell each other what it was, then report back.  I’m always up for a challenge.  I set my goal, the same as AB’s as it turns out, and then my week went haywire. Unexpected errands, a power outage, freezing weather and a weekend away, made the goal hard to attain, but I wasn’t going to report failure on Monday morning.  I wrote while I waited for the car to be serviced, I wrote before breakfast and after supper, I sandwiched in some coffee shop writing between trips to the grocery store and the pharmacy.  By Friday night I’d reached my word count and went off on a wee holiday with a clear conscience.  On Monday morning I wrote to my friend trumpeting my success.

           I’m not giving up on my lists, they are an excellent tool for me, giving me an overview of my week, illuminating a timetable to accomplish all my tasks, highlighting where and when the writing can happen, providing a roadmap to the end of the book. I’m very fond of my lists.  However, I forgive myself easily for not reaching my goals, especially when it’s Christmas and I have a new book or three and a really hard jigsaw puzzle.  That word count is just a number I made up.  It doesn’t matter to anyone else.  But having declared my intention to AB, I had renewed motivation to get there.  We’re both Capricorns and hate to fail!

So, if you’re feeling stuck, whether it’s with writing or sticking to a diet or managing your budget, or any other life goal, I recommend finding a partner to hold you accountable.  I met AB more or less by accident but we hit it off – a lovely piece of serendipity — but there are other ways of networking.  Some of my writer’s crowd have set up small critique groups, our chapter has a goal-setting exercise every February, a couple have a relatives who serve as  sounding boards and task masters.  There are on-line sites to help writers set goals and achieve them.  Here are three suggested ones.  Some charge, others are free.

The Writer’s Circle

Absolute Write

There’s even an app for that at Novelicious

It’s important to find the type of group/partner that works for you. I’m not a chart-type of person so if I have to fill in boxes, the system won’t work for me.  If you love tables and graphs and fill-in-the-blanks type accounting, then you should look for like-minded people.  If you want to keep it strictly professional, maybe one of the paid circles is your choice.  If you like to mix in some personal stuff, then a friend with similar goals may be more your style.

Of course, just like in real life, no one writing partner will fulfil all your needs. I have writing friends whom I meet in person, we brainstorm, commiserate, encourage, share information and sometimes exchange recipes.  I love our gab sessions.  Fortunately, friends in person and friends on-line is not an either/or situation.  I can have both, eat my cake and have it too.  How often does that happen?

It has been said before but I’ll say it again, writing is a lonely business. It’s easier with company.

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