Welcome to a cool, rainy Friday, with the prospect of a similar weekend. Do you enjoy the rain? I don’t, especially at this time of year. My arthritis aches and makes life miserable. So how do I escape? Inside my writing, of course.
Today’s letter is G. To me, G stands for goals. Everyone talks about goals. For some, it’s getting the puck into the net in a hockey game or the ball into the net at a soccer game. For others, it’s a vision they have for their future or their business, both short term and long term, something they’ll work at and commit to achieve, something they’ll use to define their success or failure.
Setting goals is an important part of who we are and how we see ourselves. The acronym SMART has become the go-to method for setting goals. Deciding on a short-term or long-term goal isn’t easy, but it’s doable if you make it SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. For your goals to motivate you, experts suggest you write them down. That action and seeing the words on paper makes them feel tangible and real. But that’s only the first step in the process. To meet your goals, you need to plan the steps that will get you there. In other words, to achieve long-term goals, you need to set-short term goals.
As an author, it’s my job to create characters who are “real” to the reader. They need to be the kind of fictional character that will come alive as the story progresses. Let’s look at one of my characters from Secrets and Lies, a Vengeance is Mine novel, also part of the Books of Braden series, compiled with other authors.
Here’s the blurb:
DEA agent, Emily Shepherd, is after the Chef, a crystal meth cook, who sets up labs for the Mexican cartel and walks away—the same man responsible for the deaths of her husband and unborn child. Her search leads her to Braden, Iowa, a small town just right for the Chef’s specialty. But identifying her quarry won’t be easy when she’s up against a woman who sees her as a threat, a male chauvinistic deputy sheriff, and an attractive school principal who might just be at the center of it all.
Jackson Harris has sworn off women. Life is satisfactory, if lonely, until he meets a hazel-eyed damsel in distress who gets under his skin and triggers that protective instinct of his. There’s a killer in town, one who may or may not be a notorious drug lord. Finding him, and keeping his town, his students, and Emily safe, may be harder than he thinks.
Emily’s goal setting starts long before the story does. She was severely injured in the blast that killed her husband and her unborn child, losing part of her leg. Her long-term goal is to get the person responsible. But to get there, she has to checkoff several other items–her short-term goals. First, she had to learn to walk with the prosthesis and learn to look after it. Second, she had to prove that she could get back to work and be effective as an agent. Third, she had to convince her boss to give her the case–no small feat. Fourth, she had to relocate to Braden, the devastated town where the agency thinks the Chef will set up shop. Fifth, she needs to identify the faceless villain who’s left so much death in his wake. Finally, she must figure out how to catch him. Sounds easy, right? Wrong. Each of those steps is dogged by problems both physical and emotional, by characters who help and hinder her plans, and by the Chef himself, a killer determined not to get caught.
Are Emily’s goals SMART?
Specific: catch the Chef
Measurable: the man will be in jail, his operation destroyed
Attainable: Yes. She knows more about this killer than anyone, and this time, there’s no one on the inside to feed him information
Relevant: She needs to bring him to justice; she needs her revenge for all he’s done to her, all he’s cost her. Without it, she can’t move on.
Timely: He needs to be stopped before he establishes his lab and bodies start dropping, three to six months in the past.
Are you a goal setter?
Come back tomorrow for another post on my writing experience. Chek out the other posts here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nuoAOJ-BUAXE1Yl2yIArhUHInj902PHVX6_gL4oKiSo/edit#gid=1195767304
Living the Dream 