by Katherine Reay, @Katherine_Reay
The New Year is a wonderful time to set goals. All those good planners with the beautiful clean white pages are just waiting to be filled with brilliance – exercise goals, weight-loss goals, quiet time goals, budgeting goals, work goals, writing goals… You name it and there is an app, a blank page, or an itemized list system to help you accomplish it. I spend much of October each year looking up new planners for the following year. All that promise can be mine for only…
We are in February now. The newness of January is gone and, perhaps, life has crept into those shiny plans. Some may not feel that obtainable anymore or perhaps they are still out there, but need a little modification… I’m going to add a few thoughts, both for writing and life in 2021.
- Be flexible with all your goals. If you hem yourself in, you’re more likely to feel you can’t reach it when you miss a step. We all miss steps. So be sure to create those goals with a good dollop of grace. I think that was my main take away from 2020 — Grace is a necessary and beautiful thing, both to give and receive.
- Be especially flexible with Writing Goals. Writing is a creative process. While there is something to be said for sitting at your computer each and every day, it doesn’t mean the words will flow. During a writing project, my goals continually change… I work by word count some weeks, scenes other weeks, pages edited other weeks. And lately, I work by time. I put in the hours and let the pressure of the outcome go, knowing that it will come together. Maybe the constant change keeps things fresh, or maybe it’s simply my way to quantify an organic process. Either way, try not to let quantity harm your quality or your experience when writing. This is a journey.
- Don’t have too many goals. I learned this the hard way – again and again. Some of those planners have spots for more than a dozen goals, weekly talks, quarterly expectations — it’s dizzying. I’m not sure we can give our best efforts to a dozen goals. I can only manage about two or three. I try to keep three in mind and look again at the end of March to assess my progress. Maybe one goal has become a habit and another can hop on… I only know that a stair-step approach seems to work best.
Have a wonderful beginning to 2021! It spreads before you with some writing already on the pages. January is behind us. But there is much ahead too.
Enjoy the journey, set some great goals, and be gentle as you climb to meet them. Above all, have fun and write brilliantly.
Katherine
Katherine Reay returns to the cozy and delightful town of Winsome where two people discover the grace of letting go and the joy found in unexpected change.
After fleeing her hometown three years earlier, Alyssa Harrison never planned to return. Then the Silicon Valley start-up she worked for collapsed and turned her world upside down. She is broke, under FBI investigation, and without a place to go. Having exhausted every option, she comes home to Winsome, Illinois, to regroup then move on as quickly as possible. Yet, as friends and family welcome her back, Alyssa begins to see a place for herself in this small Midwestern community.
Jeremy Mitchell moved from Seattle to Winsome to be near his daughter and to open the coffee shop he’s been dreaming of for years. Problem is, the business is bleeding money-and he’s not quite sure why. When he meets Alyssa, he senses an immediate connection, but what he needs most is someone to help him save his floundering business. After asking for her help, he wonders if something might grow between them-but forces beyond their control soon complicate their already complex lives, and the future they both hoped for is not at all what they anticipated.
With the help of Winsome’s small-town charm and quirky residents, Alyssa and Jeremy discover the beauty and romance of second chances.
Katherine Reay is a national bestselling and award-winning author of several novels, including Dear Mr. Knightley, The Printed Letter Bookshop and the upcoming Of Literature and Lattes. She has enjoyed a lifelong affair with books and brings that love to her contemporary stories. Katherine’s has also written one full-length nonfiction work, Awful Beautiful Life. She holds a BA and MS from Northwestern University and currently lives outside Chicago, IL with her husband and three children. Publishing credits also include Redbook, USAToday, Christianity Today and FamilyFiction. You can meet Katherine at www.katherinereay.com or on Facebook: KatherineReayBooks, Twitter: @katherine_reay and Instagram: @katherinereay.