Goals, Motivation, Confusion.

There’s a lot of talk out there about goals. I keep hearing people talk about them, and the advice is sometimes a little contradictory.

You should tell everyone about your goals so that you build up some accountability!

You should tell no one about your goals so that you’re more likely to actually do them!

Goals need to be big, hairy, and audacious!

Goals need to be specific, measurable, actionable, reasonable, and… I forget what the T is. Time-focused? On a deadline?

Anyway, goals. I hate talking about them on the blog because it seems that whenever I do, I wind up killing the goal I had set out to accomplish. Specifically with writing, I’ve heard some advice that runs along these lines.

Writing is an attempt to communicate an idea. There’s a part of your brain that needs to tell a particular story. But if you do a lot of other communication-style things, like, say, listening to talk radio, or commenting on other people’s blogs, that satisfies the brain’s craving to communicate, and you don’t feel as motivated to get writing done.

Which takes us to a whole ‘nother issue – motivation. I know some people feel compelled to write. Those people are going to write anyway to get the voices in their heads to shut up. Maybe. But they feel this compulsion to write, so they write. Who knows if they’re any good – what they’re doing to increase their skills, improve their plotting, characterization, use of language, etc. Their drive is to make the voices stop. To just write it out.

And two years ago at Galley Table Live, we sat down with Ben Bova. And someone in the audience asked him about motivation to write. To which he responded something along the lines of “well, about once a month I get a letter from the American Express company. And darn it, about then, I start feeling really motivated to write.” (Incidentally, Dr. Bova is a super nice guy. If you ever get a chance to talk to him, do it.)

So, motivations abound. Advice on goals abounds. Advice on writing abounds also. Traditional or indie? E-book or paper? Most indies never really see any money! Most traditionally published books don’t earn out on their advance! And have you seen the contracts you have to sign? That on both sides of the debate – ebook and traditional.

Goals. You need them. And you need to stay with them, because success – for various definitions of success – doesn’t come easily or cheaply.

And it may never come, for various definitions of success. If your goal is to make a million dollars selling your anthropomorphic-horses-living-at-the-bottom-of-the-ocean story to whoever the current big movie studios are, and then move to Fiji, well… that may never happen.

But if your goal is just to tell a good story, I think that’s pretty doable. I think you can do that.

I don’t know. I’m no expert. All I do know is, if I want to, I can take the time to plant my rear in a chair, put my hands over a keyboard, and make some clickety-clack noises. And words come out. Which is pretty darn cool.

Tomorrow, I think I’ve got a couple of things to say about language.