Tales From Burkeland: Tale Four
A wave of excitement propelled me out of my chair after I hit submit. After a year of talking about it, I’d made my first submission to Writers of the Future, six months earlier than I’d planned. Check one goal off the 2025 list. Destination reached.
But where one goal is accomplished, another hits a roadblock. I have two half-finished Kill Your Darlings exercises in the writing folder on my laptop. So much for my goal of one per month in 2025.
Sigh. Such is life.
Setting and achieving goals is like an exciting road trip. We may know where we want to go. We may have a map to lead us there. If we’re smart, we shared our map with someone who can keep us on track. But once we’re on the road, traffic jams, road closures, and cool sight-seeing detours render the map more a guideline than a route planned to the second.
Sometimes, you have to pull into a rest area and make sure you’re still heading in the right direction.
I mapped my 2025 writing goals in January: a monthly Kill Your Darlings exercise; entering Writers of the Future; plotting the series arcs for The Heirs Saga; and plotting each books’ arcs for the Saga. These, I thought, would be the best mini destinations on my way to larger writing goals.
Now that we’re a quarter into the year, it’s time to visit my first rest stop and assess my progress.
Barely out of the garage, the KYDs ran into car trouble. In January, I got caught up with launching my web presence and with the release of Circe, nearly forgetting all about writing a KYD. When I finally sat down to do it, I stared at my screen thinking about a project that excited me more. Same experience in February. Telling my creativity to put the project it wanted to pursue on the backburner killed it.
Clearly, this goal broke down. To repair it, I’m changing it to twelve KYDs by the end of the year. I can work on them when they fit into my creative flow and still develop the target number of new story ideas by December 31.
Entering Writers of the Future in March came as an unexpected sight-seeing stop on my 2025 writing journey. When I set the goal to enter, I planned a September deadline. But then March rolled around, and I decided to just do it. Now, I’m energized to grow this goal. Instead of entering Writers of the Future once this year, I’m going to enter twice.
Maybe three times.
But before I add another sight-seeing excursion to my Writers of the Future goal, I need to make sure the goals for The Heirs Saga don’t get lost. For the next few months, I’ll be working in that story world. I have about one hundred pages of brainstorming notes to organize, and I’ve planned prequel short stories I need to fit into the master timeline. Once I do that, the plotting for the books should fall into place nicely. Of course, there’s bound to be surprise construction along the way.
As I get back on the road toward my 2025 goals, maintaining the right mindset is key. It’s the engine that powers me toward my destinations. Without it at peak performance, I end up broken down.
Quarterly assessments, for me, are like engine tune-ups, offering perspective and reminding me of the big picture destination. Three months into 2025, I’m still on the road to my mini destinations, and the big picture destination is on the horizon. Now, I jump in the driver’s seat and enjoy the journey.
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What you missed in this month’s newsletter:
From the Drafts- First Entry to Writers of the Future: Check!
Remember You Shine- Directing My Energy: How I Set and Plan Goals
Myths and Magic- Celebrations of Spring
From My Shelf- The Myrtlewood Mysteries series by Iris Beglehole