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Goals Are Not Just For Soccer Balls

The FIFA soccer championship has been over now for weeks and yet I’m still pondering something. Would I be better at setting and working toward my goals if I had a stadium filled with people to cheer me on?

Writing is such a solitary process. We sit for hours at our computers and type out our stories. Sometimes I just sit while I contemplate a plot turn or character (my husband calls this napping, I prefer Ann Lamont’s term “wool gathering.”) But it’s not like we have a crowd of people gathered around us and urging us on to finish the next chapter.

It seems like whenever I do set a goal  I become my own worst enemy. I plan on writing 5 pages a day and somehow I hit a wall at 4. Try as I might, everything I write on the fifth page is worthless drivel. Perhaps if I hired a rabid “writing” fan I could manage a game saving head shot at the final buzzer and get that last page done, shimmering with symbolism and hyperbole.  The critics would go wild and my readers would weep with joy.

But alas, it’s not to be. I must play this writing game alone. I must dodge the opponents of writer’s block and laundry and cross that finish line to my own applause.

Maybe I’ll buy a vuvuzela  just to cheer myself on…

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A Character in Search of a Home

Okay, this blog may be a bit weird if you’re not a writer, but here goes. I’m presently working on a YA (young adult) fantasy novel.  I breezed through the first 220 pages. The story flew from my imagination, to my fingertips, to the computer screen. And then….

nothing.

For weeks now.

Nothing!!!!!

I kept coming back to this one scene in a tavern and I couldn’t get my main character out of there. And then I realized there was someone else in the background. Someone I didn’t know yet, but he lurked in the corner and kept drawing me back to the scene. Everytime I tried to leave without introducing him, my writing stopped.

What to do? I hadn’t planned on adding a new character. He wasn’t in my plot outline. I didn’t even know who he was! So I sat down today and interviewed him. It sounds bizarre, but it worked. I asked him who he was, what his history was and what his intentions were for my story. You’d think, seeing as he’d come from my head in the first place,  I’d have already known the answers, but I didn’t.

But now I do! And I can’t wait to sit down and add him to my cast of characters and see where he takes me and my protagonist. I think it’s going to be a wild ride!

I thought about how many times I do that in real life. How many times do I leave a “scene”–a meeting or a party, and don’t take time to notice the person in the corner. Whether it’s my own insecurities or my self-absorption, I bet I’ve missed out on a lot of opportunities to bring a new “character,” a new friend into my life. It’s sad to think about but it makes me determined to try harder to live outside my comfort zone and allow new people into my story!