fbpx

Tag: goals

Looks can be deceiving

Comments

Most people hate icebreakers. That said, they’re often a necessary inconvenience, so you may as well sweeten the deal with food. My favorite/least hated one for the classroom involves giving everyone a handful of Starbursts, then requiring them tell something about themselves based on the color. Red is a hobby, yellow is a random fact, orange is a goal for the class, orange is your bucket list. Or something like that.

I always include the bucket list category because it’s so telling about my students, to find out what they want to do in life. And they love learning about me.

Last time I did it, I used my orange Starburst to tell them I want to both pick up a hitchhiker and be a hitchhiker. And when I say this, the kids universally freak out. “You can’t do that! That’s not safe! That’s really f’ing stupid!” Yeah, whatever.

A year-and-a-half ago, I found myself wandering around Door County, Wisconsin. I took the ferry as a passenger, no car, to Washington Island, which really confused the ticket lady. “You realize it’s a three-mile walk to town, right?” Yeah. No problem. I didn’t tell her this, but I figured if I got tired of walking, maybe someone would give me a ride back to the docks.

Washington Island stavekirke

Sure enough, after I’d checked out an awesome little church in the woods and was heading back, an old guy in a pickup stopped and offered me a ride. It’s not quite what I had in mind when telling my kids I wanted to hitchhike, but concerned friends assure me that yes, it was hitchhiking. One thing down.

Since then, I’ve been trying to find someone to pick up, but it never works out: either my kid is with me, or they have too much stuff/dog for me car, or I’m going the wrong direction.

Last week, I was at the gas station airing up my bike tires when I noticed a scruffy kid and dog, surrounded by scruffy gear, sitting in the shade. I asked him if he needed a ride, and where he was headed.

“South.”

“How far south?”

“As far as you can take me.”

“I can take you to the next town. Let me ride home and get my car. I’ll be back in about twenty minutes.”

I was absolutely thrilled by this. I wrote a story about an inexperienced hobo, “Riding the Rails,” which was published by Hobo Camp Review in 2012, but I’d never really had a chance to talk to anyone about their experiences. This would be my chance for some great research.

“Cricket,” as he preferred to be called, was very quiet at first, barely answering my questions. He’d been traveling for about nine years (I’m guessing he was about twenty-five), had been to forty-eight states, and was making his way south to train to become a truck driver.

As the miles passed, he opened up more. He explained how to hop a train, why people in Massachusetts are crazy and Indianapolis is not a nice place, and the best ways to deal with asshole police officers on power trips. He didn’t finish high school, he said, and had been traveling since, staying with friends and working odd jobs, but he was getting tired of it and wanted something more permanent. I told him a little about the students I worked with, the at-risk kids everyone gave up on, and how sometimes they just needed someone to put things in a perspective they could understand. Sometimes, they just needed someone willing to give them a chance.

And then I got to see his sense of humor.

I asked him who gave him more rides, men or women. He told me I was the first women to give him a ride in nearly two years, and I mentioned people thought it was a bad idea because he might be a serial killer.

“If I was a serial killer,” he responded, “don’t you think I’d have my own car? Or five or six of them?”

As we neared our destination, nearly seventy-five miles from where I’d picked him up, we discussed the best place to drop him off. Downtown was out, because it was mostly just college kids walking or biking.

I asked him if he’d considered getting a bike.

“Well, actually,” he said, “I’m gonna get five more dogs and hitch them to a sled, to pull me around. I do too much walking.”

I was really kind of disappointed to drop him off. I’d had a great conversation with him and learned a lot. For his part, he told me it was the best ride he’d had “in a long minute” (he told me that most rides he got were about two-five miles, just from one tiny town to the next, usually in the back of a pickup with no one talking to him). If it hadn’t been for his dog frequently licking my face, and me needing to pick my kid up, I would’ve kept driving him.

I make a point of talking to people who are different from me. Everyone has a story, everyone can teach you something, if you’re just willing to give them a chance.

I know I am; are you?

Fall goal review

1 Comment

Every three months or so, I take a look at the progress I’ve made on the goals I set for myself at the start of the year.

  1. Publish my novel, The Lone Wolf.
  2. Average a short story acceptance each month, with the majority of them in paying markets.
  3. Put out a short story collection.
  4. Get another novel ready to query – either 2012’s NaNoWriMo novel, or the one I’ve been working on for a couple years, A Handful of Wishes.
  5. Read 100 books this year.
  6. Kayak the entire length of the Hennepin Canal.

So, how am I doing?

  1. Yes! Evolved Publishing picked it up, and release date is just two months away, on December 2nd.
  2. I’ve pretty much sucked at this. Grad school is taking up a lot of my time (“ambitious” is how one of my thesis committee profs described my academic aspirations), and between reading, class papers, and thesis research, I haven’t been writing as much as I’d like, and I don’t even currently have any submissions out.
  3. Us, Together: A Short Story Collection came out in June. I’m really hoping to have another one, The Futility of Loving a Soldier, out by the end of October, and definitely by the time The Lone Wolf launches.
  4. The first chapter of A Handful of Wishes will be included in the back of The Lone Wolf, so I guess I have to keep moving with it. The semester ends at Thanksgiving, so I’ll have a month to really focus on it, then 3-4 months for edits, before the April deadline for a Christmas 2014 release.
  5. I’m at 57 books this year – 16 books behind. Again, I’m hoping to knock a bunch out when the semester ends. I currently have hundreds on my Kindle to choose from, so this shouldn’t be difficult.
  6. Yeah, not happening. No fulltime permanent job = no new vehicle to transport a kayak = no kayak. Grr.

If you’ve set goals for yourself, how’re they going so far this year? 

The 99-day plan

Comments

I’ve been a bit swamped the past week, between reading for class and papers and a big project and a thesis proposal and a brief trip out of town. So for today’s post, I’m copying author Christopher C. Starr’s post about ninjas following their dreams in the 99 days left this year.

Basically, it comes down to three questions:

  1. What results do you want to get over the next 99 days?
  2. What sacrifices will you make to get these results?
  3. If something is going to stop you, what will it be?

1. What results do you want to get over the next 99 days? I want to sell a ton of copies of my novel, The Lone Wolf, which comes out December 2nd. I also want to sell a ton of copies of my other stories,”Tim and Sara,” Us, Together: A Short Story Collection, and The Futility of Loving a Soldier, which I’m still editing. Possibly another longer short story as well. Which means I need to write.

2. What sacrifices will you make to get these results? Basically, it comes down to time management. I need to stop wasting so much time on the internet and just write and edit. And I especially need to get this down because after my novel comes out, I’ll need to focus on finishing and editing the next one (due the end of May), as well as really hitting the research on my master’s thesis (due in August).

3. If something is going to stop you, what will it be? Two things, probably: procrastination and just too much going on, especially when I start working again. I’m taking two classes this semester, which generally aren’t bad if I stay on top of them, but that’s the problem; the readings can pile up very quickly.

What’s your 99-day plan?

Midyear writing goal review

Comments

Every three months or so, I like to post how I’m progressing on the goals I set for myself in January.

  1. Publish my novel, The Lone Wolf.  I can cross this off because it’ll be out December 2nd, 2013, from Evolved Publishing. Yay me!
  2. Average a short story acceptance each month, with the majority of them in paying markets.  This has not been going so well. I’ve only had one acceptance so far this year (to a token market), “Us, Together” in Fiction365. Okay, two maybe if you count “The Business Trip” reprinted in Free Flash Fiction‘s anthology, The Flashing Type. However, I haven’t really been sending any shorts out. I wrote a bunch for May’s Story-A-Day, so maybe I can get some of those out soon.
  3. Put out a short story collection.  Yes, did this too! I released Us, Together: A Short Story Collection about a week ago. And I’m currently working through edits on another one, The Futility of Loving a Soldier, which should be out – let’s just say soon.
  4. Get another novel ready to query – either 2012’s NaNoWriMo novel, or the one I’ve been working on for a couple years, A Handful of Wishes. I haven’t had a chance to work on this, but I’ll be getting my butt in gear soon because I promised my editor I’d have A Handful of Wishes to him by April 2014 so it can be published December 2014.
  5. Read 100 books this year. I’m currently at 43. I should be at 49 by now, but considering how busy I’ve been with school and work and writing and my kid, I’m not doing too bad.
  6. Kayak the entire length of the Hennepin Canal.  Still no job, so still no kayak to do this. And no time to do it either. Maybe I can do small pieces as part of some weekend adventures later this summer?

If you’ve set goals for yourself, how’re they going so far this year?

Z is for Zero-Sum #atozchallenge

1 Comment

Day Z of the 2013 Blogging from A to Z April challenge. Today’s topic: zero-sum.

When I was a teacher, I tried to hammer into my kids’ minds that my classroom, and life in general, was not a zero-sum game.  If you’re not familiar with that concept, it means that for every winner there must be a loser. For every A there must be an F. For every millionaire there must be a homeless person.

Unfortunately, that attitude seems to be prevalent with writing. If you buy my book, you can’t buy someone else’s. And while there may be some truth in that – your disposable income probably isn’t unlimited – you can at least read my book as well as someone else’s. Being a fan of one person doesn’t preclude being a fan of another.

I’m fortunate in that I know a lot of writers who are super supportive of me, and of most writers they come across. While we’re all working towards that end goal of an agent, or a publisher, or sales of our self-published book, we can help other writers at the same time: sharing resources. Writing critiques and beta reading. Talking about what’s worked for us, and what hasn’t, and why.

Writers are all in this together. My classroom wasn’t a zero-sum game, and neither is gaining readers.

V is for a Van Down by the River #atozchallenge

Comments

Day V of the 2013 Blogging from A to Z April challenge. Today’s topic: a van down by the river.

I love road trips.  Love love love love love them. My plan when I retire is to move into an RV and travel around the country, just me and whatever cat I have at the time.

And according to motivational speaker Matt Foley, if I want to be a writer when I grow up, or if I want to live in a van down by the river (which I totally would do in a heartbeat), I too can someday end up living in a van, down by the river.

G is for Goals Review #atozchallenge

1 Comment

Day G of the 2013 Blogging from A to Z April challenge. Today’s topic: goals review.

Each year I set goals for myself, and every three months I review my progress.

2013 goals:

  1. Publish my novel, The Lone Wolf.
  2. Average a short story acceptance each month, with the majority of them in paying markets.
  3. Put out a short story collection.
  4. Get another novel ready to query.
  5. Read 100 books this year
  6. Kayak the entire length of the Hennepin Canal.

So far this year, I’m off to a pretty good start.

  1. A full manuscript of The Lone Wolf was requested by a publisher after I queried them, and it’s currently in review.
  2. I’ve only had one acceptance so far this year, “Us, Together” which was published in Fiction365, on Mar 27, but it was a paying market. I pulled a bunch of my stories from the submission queue in order to include them in my upcoming collection, so I’m down to just seven to send out. I have several dozen started and ideas for a dozen more, so maybe I can get some finished during next month’s Story-A-Day Challenge. Because forcing myself to write under a deadline has worked so well for me in the past.
  3. I have a short story collection, The Futility of Loving a Soldier, set for release on Memorial Day; I just need to finish one story and edit another. And I have the stories all lined up for another collection I’d like to release for Christmas; 3 are finished which leaves just 14 to go.
  4. I’ve been focusing on short stories so I haven’t been working on novels much. Last year’s NaNo needs an overhaul; maybe once this short story collection’s done I’ll spend the summer working on polishing a novel.
  5. So far I’m at 26, which according to Goodread’s tracker is where I should be. I have a bunch of books on my Kindle app, and I’ve been trying to read some of those when there’s a lull at work.

    2013 Reading Challenge

    2013 Reading Challenge
    E.D. has
    read 26 books toward her goal of 100 books.
    hide

  6. Spring is just now making an appearance; I’m not hardcore enough to kayak in cold, crappy weather. 

If you’re a writer, what are your goals for the rest of the year?  If you set goals for yourself at the beginning of the year, how are you doing with them? 

    Recurring characters

    2 Comments

    Despite what my summary of last year’s reading habits might suggest, I don’t generally read books that lend themselves to sequels.  I tend to lean more towards literary fiction, where a character grows and changes over the course of the story, and then at the end there’s nothing more left to add, compared to genre fiction where it’s more about the plot and quite often the character is the same in each book.

    That being said, I think it’s possible to find a balance between the two with a recurring character threading his way through multiple stories.

    The first example that comes to mind is Stephen King’s Flagg character.  If you’re not familiar with King’s work, Flagg is a villain who thrives on chaos.  He shows up in numerous stories, almost as if he can actually climb out of one book and into another:

    • a leader of the “bad” guys in The Stand
    • a wizard in The Eye of the Dragon (which is the first book I read by King, way back in junior high)
    • the man in black that Roland chases in The Dark Tower series, a series which crosses through several worlds including ours and that of The Stand
    • an activist in Hearts in Atlantis

    Sometimes Flagg has a different name, but if you know to look, he’s always there, with the same characteristics and end goal, namely of gaining power through destruction.

    A second example is by creating an architype that may or may not be given the same name.  This would include Charlaine Harris and her multiple series revolving around twenty-something-year-old women with paranormal abilities living in the South.  Same main characters, different names, different adventures.

    As a short story writer, I like the idea of having recurring characters and archetypes in my stories.  Often there’s not enough room to get to know a character completely, and many of my stories don’t lend themselves to novels.  Having that character come back, in a different setting, unites my stories and hopefully keeps my readers wanting to come back to know them more deeply.

    One of my goals for 2013 is to put out a collection of short stories, and in it, I plan to have a recurring character somewhat along the lines as King’s Flagg.  He’s a vaguely paranormal guy on a quest, who thrives on chaos while attempting to reach his goal.  He’s already shown up in “The Kindness of Strangers,” which was published in the 2011 Indiana Horror Anthology, and again in a short story I’ve almost finished and will be submitting soon.  He also apparently had a huge hand in Sara going crazy (crazier) during the events leading up to “Tim and Sara.”

    What’s your opinion on recurring characters?  Do you like them traditionally in series, or are you a fan of them popping up in various stories?  As a writer, do you use them, and why or why not?

    Resolutions: 2012 review and 2013 goals

    Comments

    2012

    Last year, I set some goals for myself.

    1. Get an agent (which means stop picking at my novel and just send it out already).
    2. Finish my already-started novel, A Handful of Wishes.
    3. Have at least fifteen stories out on submission at any given time – currently I’m at nine.
    4. Get in shape, and then stay in shape.
    5. Learn how to neatly and nicely-looking lattice a pie.
    6. Date a rockstar (doesn’t matter who).

    I’ve revisited them throughout the year, and now I’ll do the final wrap-up.

    1. I haven’t gotten an agent yet, but I did send out a bunch of queries.
    2. I didn’t finish A Handful of Wishes, but I did finish a novel for NaNoWriMo (although it’s only about 50,000 words right now and needs a ton of work).
    3. I never made the fifteen-story mark for submissions; I think the most I ever had out was twelve.  However, I had eleven acceptances this year, which really depleted my stock (not a bad thing!).
    4. I got a gym membership over the summer, but I haven’t been using it as much as I’d like.  Working a temp job really through me off; I refuse to work out if there are more than about seven people at the gym, which means going after work wasn’t an option (I prefer about 10 am).
    5. Most of my kitchen stuff, like most of the rest of my stuff, is currently in storage, so I didn’t make any pies this year, let along lattice them.
    6. The closest I came was seeing a guy from the local band Three Years Hollow at the gas station.  This band is awesome, by the way, if you like heavy alt rock bands like Breaking Benjamin or Chevelle.

    2013
    Before making my resolutions for the new year, I read a post over at Write It Sideways about how to effectively set goals.  The author suggests using SMART goals – goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (at least that’s how we defined them at the school where I last taught).  So, for example, rather than saying I want to read more, I should make my goal to read 100 books this year – it’s specific, measurable, attainable, and within a certain time frame.

    With that in mind – and possibly overlooking the relevancy component – here are my goals for 2013.

    1. Publish my novel, The Lone Wolf.  I’m going to try the small press route, and I’ve already identified several potential publishers to query.
    2. Average a short story acceptance each month, with the majority of them in paying markets.  I’m really proud of my acceptance rate, but I’ve reached the point that I’d like to be compensated for my stories.  While pro markets would be ideal, token would meet this goal as well.
    3. Put out a short story collection.  I have three in the works, with about half the stories written for two of them.
    4. Get another novel ready to query – either 2012’s NaNoWriMo novel, or the one I’ve been working on for a couple years, A Handful of Wishes.
    5. Read 100 books this year.  That’s the goal I set for myself last year, and while I was making great progress for the first half of the year, I fell off at the end and only read 79.  I only include books I finish in this list.  I’ll hopefully be in grad school part time starting this summer, and hopefully working full time, so this will be a challenge, but I think I can do it.
    6. Kayak the entire length of the Hennepin Canal.  It’s about 100 miles, I think, and requires quite a bit of portage, but it’s definitely doable.  Assuming I get a job so I can buy a kayak, that is.
    Mouth of the Hennepin Canal, taken October 2012

    What are your goals for 2013?

    Where I’m going, and where I should be

    Comments

    2012 is about 3/4 over, so I’m taking another look at the writing goals I set for myself back in January.

    1. Get an agent (which means stop picking at my novel and just send it out already).
    2. Finish my already-started novel, A Handful of Wishes.
    3. Have at least fifteen stories out on submission at any given time – currently I’m at nine.
    4. Get in shape, and then stay in shape.
    5. Learn how to neatly and nicely-looking lattice a pie.
    6. Date a rockstar (doesn’t matter who).

    I evaluated them in April and June, and I wasn’t doing the best.  Now is no different.

    1. I’ve sent out about three dozen queries, with no response other than form rejections.  Tomorrow I’m attending a writing workshop focusing on the publishing process, so maybe I’ll get some insights there (which of course I’ll share on my blog next week).
    2. I set up my NaNo page today (my username is emartin317, if you’d like to be my buddy).  My goal is to finish A Handful of Wishes this year.  I have the story outlined, so as long as I have the time to work on it, I should be good.
    3. I’m currently at six submissions, but I have several stories to send back out.  I should probably do that soon.
    4. I joined a gym last month.  And I’m actually going 4-5 times a week.  I should theoretically be in shape soon.
    5. All my baking stuff is in boxes in my brother’s attic.  Pies will not be made this year.
    6. I wrote a story about a small-time rockstar.  Close enough.

    If you’re a writer, what are your goals for the rest of the year?  If you set goals for yourself at the beginning of the year, how are you doing with them?

    The Musings of E.D. Martin © 2011-2020 Privacy Policy Frontier Theme