by Patricia Bradley, @PTBradley1
How Are Those Resolutions Working For You?
It’s May 3, five months past January. So, how are those resolutions you made at the beginning of the year working for you? Or have you cast them aside, broken and mangled? Raise your hand if that’s you.
That’s me waving my hand. Oh, I’ve not broken them all. Just the 100 crunches a day, and the food diary, and dusting—I mean who needs to dust every week, anyway? I am still writing every day, but that’s only because I have a deadline.
Some of the other resolutions, like budgeting (Easter and a couple of birthdays busted that one) and making better use of my time have fallen by the wayside. So, I think it’s time to set aside resolutions and go for goals. SMART goals. You’ve heard of the acronym. Goals that are:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Timely
Sounds simple. Not. A couple of factors have been left out, namely: Discipline and Desire. You can make all the SMART goals you want, but if you don’t have a HUGE desire to reach your goals and exercise the discipline needed to persevere, the goals will be like some of my New Year’s resolutions. Gone by the wayside.
So have your SMART goals, but make sure those goals are something you really desire, whether it’s a change in eating habits, writing, or anything else. You have to want to reach those goals more than you want that extra cookie or one more episode of Blue Bloods or whatever is your favorite TV program.
If you’ve committed to finishing your novel, you have to be willing to exercise the discipline of putting your seat in the chair, fingers poised over the keyboard. But maybe you are waiting for inspiration to strike before you write? Get over it. Writing is hard work—meaning inspiration is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
So I leave you with this: If you write five hundred words every day, in six months you will have a 91,500 word first draft. And then the real work begins.
Deception, Natchez Trace Park Rangers, Book 4
When ISB Ranger Madison Thorn arrives in Natchez to investigate a white-collar scheme, she has no idea she will be thrown back into the violent crimes division–or that it will get so personal. She’ll have to work with her childhood-enemy-turned-handsome-charmer to unravel the clues before it’s too late.
Patricia Bradley is a Carol finalist and winner of an Inspirational Readers’ Choice Award in Suspense, and three anthologies that included her stories debuted on the USA Today Best Seller List. She and her two cats call Northeast Mississippi home–the South is also where she sets most of her books. Her romantic suspense novels include the Logan Point series and the Memphis Cold Case Novels. Deception, the third book in the Natchez Trace Park Rangers series, releases August 2, 2022. She is now hard at work on a new series set in the Cumberland Plateau around Chattanooga, Tennessee. Her writing workshops include American Christian Fiction Writers online courses, workshops at the Mid-South Christian Writer’s Conference, the KenTen Retreat and Scrivenings Press Author Retreat where she was also the keynote. When she has time, she likes to throw mud on a wheel and see what happens.