SMART Goals: The holy grail of getting things done. Specific Measurable Achievable Realistic Timely goals. It’s a corporate mantra, spoken at every HR review. We want to set goals which can be achieved – vague language is for mission statements.
For writing, a SMART goal sounds like this:
- Complete second draft of three (3), 5000-word short stories by November 28, 2019
- Submit three (3) short stories to top markets by December 31, 2019
- Finish planning revision structure for novel by January 31, 2020
Each is very specific and measurable. They are achievable and realistic (notice it says nothing about getting any of the works published) and it does have a timely deadline. That’s great. But it’s also about the mechanics of the process. Deadlines. What to get done when. None of it touches on the why.
This is where writing deviates from other businesses in quite a few ways. One of my favorite YouTube channels features a carpenter who demonstrates different Chinese, Japanese, and Western style joinery. You can see the how behind it all right there – you watch him measure and mark the wood, scoring and penciling in every cut. And then he picks out specific tools to build the joints – chisels, drills, planes so sharp they create long wispy films of shaved wood when run down the length of a plank.
I’ve never seen him address why he does it – why does he take so much time and effort to do what some would do with machine tools and CAD programs? I can only imagine, but I think it would lie between “I do this because I enjoy creating something from a simple blank of wood” or “I enjoy the process, the use of the plane and saw to build something” or “I get a great deal of satisfaction from a job well done.”
Right now, I’m having trouble finding reconnecting with what gave me joy in writing before now. Once upon a time, I’d sit behind a word processor and just type away, picturing the story, following the characters through and imagining how people would react while reading the tale. My goals were big hairy ambitions:
- “I want my reader to feel something after reading my story.”
- “I want folks who read my stories to think about creating their own, in a positive way! Fanfic or art or deciding they want to write.”
- “I want my readers to want to read more stories with the characters.”
Those aren’t SMART goals. They’re impossible goals. At no point can I assure some invisible authority that I’ve made an emotional impact on a reader or create milestones to I can meet while getting someone to make fan art. I have to follow another path. A different way of seeing my work.
I have to stop seeing this a well-planned hike, where you know the end point and know the exact paths to get there. There are no GPS markers, or well-maintained paths with signs saying, “Next bathroom, 20 yards.”
This is a rough trek. A wander. This is navigation by trail signs and the sun alone. You walk in the general direction of your destination, work on becoming a better hiker, glean what you can from the folks along the way (and learn when to ignore the ‘ya kant get dere from here’ guys’). All goals you can set are to try and make you a better hiker, a better navigator, and a better trail reader.
You can still fail. You cannot reach the end of your trip. You can be amazing as a hiker, great as a navigator, and yet still run into an obstacle you can’t cross. You can burn out, too, getting sick of the sweat and bugs and people constantly telling you how awful the road is up ahead. Oh, and that town you wanted to visit? Yeah, filled with the worst kind of people.
What do you do, then? When SMART goals don’t get you where you want to be, and the end goal seems so distant, you’re wondering why you’re hiking?
You stop, and take a breath. You try to enjoy just being in the moment. You reconnect with what got you hiking in the first place.
And that’s what I need to do. I need to sit down, close my eyes, and listen to the wind in the trees. Because I’m having a hard time walking any further, and I’m feeling lost.
Biomechanoid Blues 