Goals, Interrupted

It's just after ten on a Monday night. I'd say it's a quiet night, but the neighbors have an over-inflated idea of how much I want to hear their stereo. Other than that, though, it's a good night. My husband's in bed and I have plans to hang out (and maybe write) with my best good pal Mires. I shared some more chapters of my WiP with my writing group, and I've got a clear idea of what I need to write next.

I've got something knocking around the back of my mind, though, and that is that my original goal of having this book finished by September isn't realistic. I had originally hoped to have a finished manuscript by RMFW this year, which I'd hoped to attend, but those goals need to be revisited. It's kind of sucky, but things happen. Life gets going, days slip by, money gets eaten up by rent and groceries, and you sit and wonder what the heck happened.

I'm going to give RMFW a miss this year, unless my some miracle I scrape everything together last-minute, with the goal of saving up for next year. That's a lot more feasible, and it automatically gets rid of the September deadline I set for myself. My new self-set deadline is the end of the year. That I can definitely do--my little meter on Storytoolz currently estimates my finish for late October. I can definitely get this thing finished by December.

If there's anything I'm learning through this goal shift, it's that as an unpublished writer, I have to be flexible. Heck, all writers have to be flexible. Things change, ideas fade, new ideas crop up, life happens, and characters veer off the track they've been set. I have the luxury of changing my deadline at will, and so there's no use moping that I've "missed" said deadline. I can give myself endless extensions as long as I'm still working, and I don't have to feel bad about it. And I am still writing. Sometimes slowly, sometimes in a more meandering fashion, but I'm writing. And that's better than I was doing this time last year.

Goals have to change sometimes, and that's okay.

'Til next time,
J.