Though I have respected Jim Carrey as a comedian and performer for many years, I would never have thought him to be a fount of cosmic wisdom. That is why, along with so many others, I was blown away by his commencement address at the MUM graduation. In his address, Carrey spoke of his father, on the importance of following one’s dreams, effecting others positively and choosing love over fear. For the full address, click here. If you don’t have the 26 minutes to spare right now, please click on the embedded video below (but do come back to the full speech later). It’s just a single minute of your time, so please do yourself the favor.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajMpfPYlHi4]

When you seek to be a professional author, the odds are against you to an absurd degree. When I was in high school, trying to figure out who I was going to become for the next phase of my life, I had a choice. Either, I could pursue a career in science and technology, or I could develop my passion for writing and storytelling that had begun to grow on the fertile ground of my passion for reading. In the end and at the encouragement of those who loved me, I went to one of the top technical schools in the country and spent four and a half years earning a degree that has enriched my life. Upon graduating, I began working for an engineering company that is a respected leader and fierce competitor in their field. I had done it. People I knew, people who I cared about, told me how proud of me they were and how obviously successful I was.

And yet, I was unhappy. I was unfulfilled. There was a part of me, part of my talent that was being unexpressed and underutilized. It took me nearly 18 months to realize where the sense of discontent was coming from.

You see, though I was pursing highly technical studies in college, I also fed my creative urges regularly through live performance improvised comedy and table top role-playing. My life was grounded in reality through my studies, but I was still able to live in the fantastic. When I joined the working world, I had left that fantastic behind for many good and practical reasons. But, I still needed it.

It was when I started writing again, started reaching out to the community of writers and blogging regularly, that I began to find my contentment and happiness. This month has been all about goals, finding your own balance and managing your life when the deck seems stacked to overwhelm you.

Please take it from someone who has learned it the hard way. Fulfillment will never come from someone else. Instead, you must explore what you find to be fulfilling, what you love beyond all reason and pursue it. That said, the day job and the dream job do not have to be mutually exclusive.

I am an engineer. I am a writer. I am not one or the other, but rather both, simultaneously and always. Each part of my personality influences and informs the other, making it stronger and richer.

The problem I had, the source of my unhappiness and cognitive dissonance was the false assumption that I had to choose one or the other to be supreme. I was failing to achieve a work-life balance. Was that the fault of my company? After all they gave me a great deal of work to do that was time consuming and challenging. Of course not. I am, after all, employed by them. I was selling my time, knowledge and experience to them in exchange for a salary and benefits. Was the work exhausting and effecting my home life? Yes. But, what I chose to do with that home life was still entirely in my power.

This is the most important thing I’ve learned in my short career as an engineer. Saying you are “too busy” to do this or that is an expression of value, not of time constraints. Busyness is a choice. Time is a commodity, and like any other scarce resource, where we choose to spend our time indicates what we value. What you are actually saying when you are “too busy” to do some task is what you are doing now is more valuable than the proposed activity. Claiming to be too busy to write because of my job was in reality saying that I chose things like working, sleep, watching TV, going out with friends, exercise and other leisure was more valuable than the time I could spend writing.

So, what did I do? I began to choose how I spent my time more wisely and learned to say “no.” Not only to others but to myself. I canceled my television package, Netflix and Hulu+ accounts. I put away my gaming consoles and worked on stream lining the things I felt that I had to do to be more efficient.

And I wrote. A few hours of new words here and there, a half hour of editing and a minutes of plotting and milieu development wherever I could find the time. I put my fingers on the keyboard because that is what I valued.

Life is complex and dynamic, so finding your balance isn’t a matter of setting up all the elements in stasis. Instead, you must constantly be shifting, reevaluating what you want and reallocating your immediate future to line up with your goals. Will you risk “wasting” your time on things that make you unhappy but are safe and easy, or will you instead pursue the less certain path? It takes honesty and self-awareness, but spending time wisely is a choice and a statement of value.

“You can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance at doing what you love.” ~Jim Carrey, 2014 Commencement Address, MUM Graduation.

The Candy Crush Method

June 24, 2014

Kim May

Goals Kim May The Writing Life 2 Comments

Admit it. You play it. Even if you don’t want to admit it you know exactly what level you’re on. I’m on 170 which isn’t as impressive as it sounds when you consider that I’ve been playing for over a year. Every time they threw a new curve it took me a few tries to puzzle out how to finagle the pieces in the moves or time allotted.

The change from a casual player to a savvy strategist is very similar to the shift I’ve had to make recently in my professional life. Now that I’ve made my first professional sales I’ve had to up my game. Before, if I didn’t make a deadline it wasn’t that big of a deal because they were self-imposed. Real deadlines aren’t as accommodating. I’ve had to become a lot better at shifting the pieces around in order to line everything up for completion.

For example, just because I can stay up until 1am writing doesn’t mean that I should — especially if I have to work the next day. Likewise just because I only need one week to complete copy edits doesn’t mean that I can afford to wait until a week before the due date to start. Life happens and even though it’s impossible to plan for monkey-throwing wrenches, giving myself that buffer period has been a life saver more than once this year.

I know it sounds pessimistic to plan for things to go wrong but in my opinion that’s part of being a professional. By the time your first title hits the shelves you’ve been writing long enough to know what life events and health conditions affect your writing. If copy edits are due back in X weeks it’s important to know that the striped candy of vacation is going to kill productivity on week one, the chocolate sprinkled best friend’s wedding is going to wipe out several days, and the exploding candy of other deadlines is going to demand your attention sooner rather than later.

Unlike the game, when things slip through your fingers you can’t restart the level or wait for your lives to replenish. A missed deadline upsets publishing schedules, and the lives of everyone involved. It can leave a stain on your reputation that could take years to remove. It’s better to learn to juggle and use your resources to your advantage to turn manuscripts in on time. Good scheduling skills and keeping realistic expectations for your output will keep you sane while you produce at the rate that keep fans, publishers, and colleagues happy.

A Failure’s Guide to Self-Examination

June 23, 2014

Kristin Luna

Goals Kristin Luna Reflection Self-Awareness The Writing Life 3 Comments

Ah, June. When the weather’s nice and Costco is selling too many good ice cream bars. Sure, you had told yourself THIS WAS THE YEAR you won’t give in to temptation. But it’s, like, hot. And ice cream is good.

Four ice cream bars later, you sit on the couch, lamenting your own existence and wonder why you can’t just stick to your goals.

Don’t worry! I’ve brought your misery some company. Did you know just 8% of all people who made a New Year’s resolution succeeded? That means 92% of us failed and secretly want to trip the other 8% who are still hard at work on their marathon training regimen. Because tripping people has consequences, let’s figure out where we went wrong instead.

A Failure’s Guide to Self-Examination

1. What was your goal?

Let’s say you recently took a quiz online that led you to believe that your father isn’t proud of you. After three glasses of whiskey on December 31st, you decided 2014 was the year you’d make your father proud. Your father has a lavish assortment of horrifying animal heads on his wall. “This is how I’ll do it,” you tell yourself. “I’ll go kill an elephant in the wild and give him the head to hang on his wall. He will be so proud of me then!”

The issues:

So many issues here.
First, this goal is not necessarily for you. This goal was made in hopes of gaining favor with someone else.
Poaching elephants is illegal.
Whisky is bad. Don’t do ANYTHING if you are under its influence.
Take a better quiz. That quiz you took online was a joke.

2. Was your goal realistic enough to obtain?

Let’s say your New Year’s resolution was to get a book published. You hadn’t written a novel before, but your prison inmate pen-pal told you you’re a great writer.

The issues:

Again with the issues.
Understand the work your goal will entail when you make it. How many hours will it take to complete a novel? How many days a week will you dedicate to writing? What’s the next step after you’ve written it? How difficult is it to get published?
Ooooo I’ve always wanted a pen-pal! Hook a girl up!

3. Were you under the influence of whiskey or prescription medications when you made your goal?

Well, were you?

If yes, ignore your goal and/or reevaluate.

If no, then wow! Okay.

4. Did you make plans to support succeeding at your goal?

Successes takes planning. It takes a lot of time, dedication, and focus.

The issues:

If you needed help defining any of the words “planning,” “time,” “dedication,” or “focus,” maybe goal setting isn’t for you.

5. Did you fail at your goal?

Let’s say you wanted to tear up the hardwood in your house and replace it with sand. As you pried up the third floorboard, you realized that you hate sand. You hate all those tiny, tiny rocks. Besides, there’s a Real Housewives of Atlanta marathon on E!.

The issues:

You’re right, sand sucks. No issue there.
It’s okay to fail. Failing teaches you, if you’re open to learning the lesson.

The reality is, we all fail sometimes. Failing might hurt, but it doesn’t have to matter unless you make it matter. If you let failure dictate your future, you’ll never meet any of your goals.

Resolve to make one pragmatic, well-planned goal a reality. Make it your focus, and be dedicated to that goal. Carry that success with you and remind yourself of it often. Because here’s a secret: you will probably fail again. The only way to combat it is to make another goal, and achieve it.

Reevaluating, Reorganizing & Recommiting to Your Goals

June 20, 2014

fictorians

Guest Posts Motivation Reflection Reviews The Writing Life Writing Tools No Comments

A guest post by Kelli Ann Morgan.

If you are anything like me, you like to take on challenges that will push you to do more—to be more—than you have ever done or been before. Every year, a small group of wonderful writers and I get together to report on our previous year’s goals and to set new ones for the upcoming year over food and lively conversation.

During this year’s event, I set up a list of twenty-three specific goals that I wanted to accomplish throughout this year and placed each one on its own notecard to be displayed on the corkboard above my desk in my office. (Yes, I do realize that twenty-three is an insane number of goals, but I would rather shoot for the stars only to lasso the moon than to shoot for the mailbox and barely make it out my front door.) And believe it or not, my goals are not amongst the craziest of the goals some writers set.

Just like anything, your goals need to be tended. Nurtured even. Summer tends to mark the midpoint of the year and is the perfect time to look over your goals and make any necessary changes to get back on track. I use a simple three-step method I call the Triple R Process: Reevaluating, Reorganizing, and Recommitting to Your Goals. By following the Triple R Process, you will enjoy a more productive and happier year.

REEVALUATE

The first step in the Triple R Process is to reevaluate the goals that you set at the beginning of the year. Tug them down off your office wall or pull out the notebook you have them written in and look at them one by one. You’ve had six months to work on your goals. What worked? What didn’t? Ask yourself if they still fit as goals with SMARTS.

NOTE: When setting my goals at the beginning of the year, I try to keep in mind the familiar SMART method with one exception. Many of your may already know how to set SMART goals and so I will not touch on that—other than to define what SMART stands for. Your goals should be: Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. My exception rule is to include at least one “Shoot for the Stars” goal. Therefore, they are goals with SMARTS. We all need a little latitude for attitude.

Life has a habit of throwing curveballs in your direction and that means goals or ideas that were once applicable or relevant may no longer fit into the overall vision you will now have for your immediate career. It is okay to change your goals. Let me repeat that. IT IS OKAY TO CHANGE YOUR GOALS. In fact, it would be counterproductive if they need to be changed and you do not make adjustments.

Reevaluating your goals and making necessary changes does not mean you have failed. It means that you have enough SMARTS to actively groom yourself and your career in an ever-changing industry. You do need to hold yourself accountable. You do need to work on them every day. You do need to…DO something.

REORGANIZE

The second step in the midpoint Triple R Process is to reorganize the goals that made it through the reevaluation step. You will also reorganize your workspace and your mind to be more positive and forward thinking. This step is very important—especially if you have more than one goal you are trying to accomplish. Learning how to prioritize your goals based on your experience over the last six months and understanding how to modify your approach to them is vital to your success. Take the time to make the necessary preparations to be successful. You may have learned that there is more, or a different type, of groundwork needed to be successful in one goal or another.

Next, make a schedule. This does not have to be a detailed, down-to-the-minute schedule, but a basic idea of what you will accomplish on any given day or in what month you will work on a or complete a specific goal. Reorganizing your goals will help you discover where your priorities lie. Reorganizing is different for everyone. Make a chart, goal cards, or some type of visual that you can display in a prominent place in your workspace as a reminder of what you are trying to accomplish. These reminders will help you keep focused on days things aren’t going so well.

RECOMMIT

The third and final step in the Triple R Process is to recommit to the goals that have made it through the reevaluation and reorganization steps. Remember, it’s all about the big picture. 2+2 does not equal 3 no matter how creative you get. Every goal should fit into your master plan and if you want your plan to be a success, you must commit to the goals that will get you there. Believe in the goals that you set. Know your limitations and strive to understand your strengths. Use them to recommit to the big picture.

Work doesn’t have to be miserable. Right now is an AMAZING time to be a writer with many opportunities both here and on the horizon. Whether you are just starting out, a seasoned best-selling author, or somewhere in between, the need to commit to your work is the same. Every step of the journey is worth taking if you look for the lessons and take time to appreciate every moment.

Look at your goals and recommit to achieve them. Find someone to report your progress to. Hold yourself accountable, but never give up. The road will not always be easy, but success is also found in the journey not just the destination. Do whatever it takes to do more. Be more.

It may sound like a lot of work, but it is all about perspective. You can achieve great things by starting out small and dreaming big. Shakespeare wrote, “Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” It is up to you. Reevaluate. Reorganize. Recommit. Then celebrate. Celebrate every one of your successes—great or small. You deserve it. Take the time to use my Triple R Process and watch your dreams come alive before your eyes. You’ll get out of it what you want to. I’ll see you out among the stars!

Kelli Ann Morgan Bio:

KELLI ANN MORGAN recognized a passion for writing at a very young age and since that time has devoted herself to creativity of all sorts. She also moonlights as a Creative Designer – creating covers and more for other authors- and works as a photographer, jewelry designer, painter, and motivational speaker. Kelli Ann graduated Summa Cum Laude with her degree in Business and is the owner of Inspire Creative Services. She is a long-time member of the Romance Writers of America and was president of her local chapter in 2009. Her love of and talent for writing have opened many doors for her and she continues to look for new and exciting opportunities to teach, inspire, and entertain. Kelli Ann loves to hear from her readers. Visit her at www.kelliannmorgan.com.