Taped to the inside of my dresser is a handwritten note dated November 13, 1993. It reads: I will produce a quality children's book. Over twelve years later, after the publication of The Best Pet of All, I made the addition: I did produce a quality children's book! I've kept that note inside my dresser to remind myself that it's good to have goals and that dreams do come true, even if the road to their realization is long.
Like Christy, most of my goals are the short range ones. Currently my goal each day is to finish the sketch for another two-page spread for my current picture book project, with the goal of having a revised dummy to send to my editor by the end of the month. When I think of all the work I need to do in order to complete the final artwork by spring, I panic. But can I finish one sketch today? Yes, that's doable. And when even that seems insurmountable, I turn to smaller goals: I will finish the sketch of this one character before lunch. Small step by small step I'm inching toward my goal: the completion of the first book where I am both author and illustrator.

Goals: the long and short view

Many years ago at a family party a friend of my mother's asked me my “five-year-plan.” I bristled. Was this a party or an interview? I assumed the phrase originated in a self-help book, but a little Google-action showed me it dates back to the Soviet Union and China in the mid-to-late 1920s. While web surfing I found sites offering templates for creating personal five-year-plans, and many more sites with strategies for setting and working toward goals in all areas of life.

I did realize my childhood dream of becoming a children's book author-illustrator, yet most days I am not aware of my distant goals. I'm only aware of the flashlight beam illuminating the near spot on the path so I can put one foot in front of the other. Do I know where my path is leading? Not really. I hope when this project concludes there will be another one ahead. My graphic design teacher scolded me for just accepting jobs that fell in my lap. He said I should steer my career.

I'm great at meeting imposed deadlines. That is one reason I take writing classes or join writers groups. It's important to switch from this mode of pleasing others to looking at what I want and then break that down into tasks I do for myself. I can look to one example where I did this with happy results. My second author/illustrator project, Dreaming Up: A Celebration of Building will publish with Lee & Low in fall 2012. I set the goal of submitting this project for consideration on the pub date of my first author/illustrator book. I chose to put aside other ideas in development and focus solely on this. Those other half-baked projects still call to me now—a MG novel, a biography, concept picture books, poetry, and more. The ideas bump into each other and compete. I need to stand back and get a distant view. Where do I want to go? Uh-oh, I might just have to develop a five-year-plan! Which project should be the next to develop? For those of you who entertain multiple ideas at one time, how do you decide?

Here's a couple interesting bits I found in my web explorations:

A creativity coach's web site (http://seedfiddle.com/) introduced the concept of Kaizen (Kai=change; Zen=good). “Kaizen, also known as 'continuous improvement,' is a long-term approach to success that systematically seeks to achieve small, incremental changes in processes in order to improve quality and achieve significant goals. Said simply, it is all about the power of small steps.”

Another site offered a helpful mnemonic, SMART goals:

S - Specific
M - Measurable
A - Attainable
R - Relevant
T - Time-bound

Writing to Win

This is my youngest daughter and I this past
Saturday night, moments after she and her teammates won the Oregon 3A State Volleyball
tournament. From the moment the season started, even before the first day of
practice, she told me she wanted to win state. That goal was one shared by her
teammates, only three of which had even been on varsity the previous year. And
things looked good for the first 6 weeks of the season. But then our middle
hitter blew out her knee, sidelining her for the rest of the season. The team
didn’t have a replacement for her, our school is small, so they just
reconfigured the line-up. They missed their middle hitter, but they made do,
and they still thought they could win state. They were undefeated in league
play, and had a 28-2 record going into the quarterfinal, which they took easily
in three games.
But our semi-final game on Friday night, our girls
played the worst game of their season. They couldn’t serve, couldn’t hit,
couldn’t pass. It’s easy to win when everything is working, but when it isn’t,
well…then you need to dig deeper. And they did. I don’t know how, but they managed
to eke out a win. I think I was prouder of them for that win than any other
game this season. And when they stepped on the court for the championship game
on Saturday night, I could feel it. They knew they could do it, and they played
like it. Minutes after this photo was
taken, my kid got a gold medal around her neck.
How could a team just have a goal of winning state
like that? Because that’s the best you can do, and they wanted to be the best.
What if their goal had been to have a better than .500 season? Or to finish top
3 in their league? Decent goals, but really, what would be the point? Don’t you
have to dream as big as possible? Why NOT have a goal of that gold medal draped
around your neck?
My husband pointed out that during the semi-final
game, a game we needed to win in order to make the finals, our girls were
playing “to not lose”, instead of playing “to win.” And I realized writing is
the same. I start each book with a goal. But is my goal big enough? Am I simply
writing to “not lose” instead of writing “to win”? Each time I start a book,
shouldn’t I have the loftiest goal in mind? I mean, if my goal for my book is
simply to have my friends like it, or to make the shelf of my local bookstore, or
to get a dozen fan letters, what’s the point? Like my daughter, why aim for
anything else BUT the state title? For me, why not admit yeah, I’d love a best-seller or a Printz or a Newbery? If I don’t have that level of goal in mind
when I write, what’s the point?
There are seven volleyball teams that drove home
from Eugene today without the state title. They’ll all try again next year, and
someone else will win. Just like each year, there are hundreds of authors who
don’t get the big awards, myself included. But each new book I write, I’m back
in the running. I’m writing to win. And, like a state volleyball tournament, it’s
exciting, because you never know when you might just meet your goal. My
daughter, and her dreams, taught me that.

Be Brave

In order to do good work, I need to remind myself to be brave. Bravery doesn't mean not feeling fear but going forward in the face of it. To do my best work, I need to enter places that are uncomfortable and painful. Like many people I prefer not to, but for a story to jump and have resonance I need to be more honest with myself and go places that are difficult. With the recent death of my mother, I've been thinking about all kinds of things, and one of them is a tendency in myself to hold back. I am aware of places this shows up in my life and in my writing and feel the need to explore this. I also want to write some pieces that are different from anything that I've done. I will continue to repeat these two words: be brave.

Ideal Conditions for My Best Work?

For the past two weeks I have been down with the flu. I would not normally recommend the flu as conducive to ideal conditions for one's best work, but the mandatory stillness of sickness forced me to take time and reflect on the past 6 to 8 months of my creative life. Though creative with plenty of out-put, I would not label the past 6-8 months "ideal conditions." I was too often racing from one deadline to the next, saying "yes" to too many things, and working 10 to 12 hour days. Now that I am returning to health, I am purposefully nurturing the ideal conditions for my best work:

• Pause ~ Find moments throughout the day to pause and appreciate what I am writing, drawing or painting.
• Let Go ~ Begin the day with yoga and a brief meditation to let go of all the to-do lists that begin making themselves as soon as I wake. They will return. they always do.
• Morning is my best time for work~ Clear mornings for writing, sketching, painting.
• Write and draw/paint on ideas that do not have a deadline~ I am a very fortunate illustrator with manuscripts to illustrate on contract for the next several years. I love having a deadline to work with, like all of my fellow potatoes, the deadline spurs me on. But giving time to stories and pictures without deadlines adds excitement and adventure to my studio life!
• Connect with those who believe in me~ I am very fortunate to be working with an editor who believes in me. I am still not clear how it all happened. When I sent her a dark, scary first interpretation of the story SCARECROW years ago, she didn't throw out the contract, though I think everyone at Harcourt was urging her to. Instead, she gave me more time. Her patience and belief in me gave me courage. I also have an artist/composer/writer husband who is intimate with my creative process from the ecstatic successes to the weepy failures, and still he believes in me. And friends. I have cultivated many artist/author friends to share work and life with, all of whom are essential for my best work.
• Read ~ Make time for reading. Picture Books, Chapter Books, Adult fiction and Non. Make a pile of my favorite reads nearby so I can refer to them when inspiration is needed.
• Walks ~ A daily walk loosens my cluttered mind and if I open my eyes, something is bound to inspire me.
• Take Time Off ~ I have a too-strong work ethic. If I am not busy on some task, I feel worthless. Having sat around the house for the past two weeks, reading, watching movies, looking through poetry and art books, and sleeping, I am convinced that time off from everything is essential to doing my best work.

I just have a few errands to run...

In reading the previous posts, I see a lot of talk about distractions. I remember the author and illustrator of the Titch and Daisy books talking about mopping her floors instead of working on her books. She said that her son knew when a deadline was looming, because that's when she did housework.

I, too, am subject to distractions. My husband even accused me of creating errands that I had to run instead of working on my projects. The nerve! (Of course he was right!)

The right conditions usually present themselves after a few days of psyching up to work on a story. My brain finally kicks in and for a few blessed weeks, I'm focused on either creating a new story or editing and revising the ones I'm working on. My best revision ideas come when I'm waking up in the morning, trying to go to sleep at night, or trying to take a nap. It does make sense that when I finally remove the distractions my brain is allowed to be creative. Of course, it means that sleep does not come as easily even though it looks like I'm getting a full 8 hours, plus a nap every day. Usually the distractions creep back in and I have to regain my focus - sometimes later rather than sooner.

Creativity is an unusual friend that needs unusual nurturing I guess. I am grateful when it visits me!

Short, Focused, Bursts of Time

Some people would think long, unstructured periods of time would promote the best opportunity for creativity. But I have found I am most productive and creative in small, focused, bursts of time, especially when I have a deadline I'm trying to meet--and I don't mean a self-imposed deadline. Large periods of time overwhelm me by pulling me in too many directions with too many options. I could do this... Or maybe I could work on that... And then I'm distracted by the deer outside my window, or I need to throw a load of laundry in the washer, or maybe I'll take a walk first, and so on...

I completed my MFA in Writing while working full-time as Coordinator of Admissions in a busy Maryland community college and while having my daughter and young grandchild sharing our home. Believe me, there were many distractions, but the deadline of having to produce a packet of creative and critical work every three weeks was my taskmaster. I devoted my one-hour lunch break each work day to writing in a study carrel tucked away in the basement of the community college library. I knew I had a limited time to accomplish a lot of work, and I was able to dive into it quickly. The hard part was to stop and re-enter my regular work world at the end of that hour. Of course, I had to fit in other early morning and late night hours at home, too, but those short bursts of time kept me going!

Now that I have more freedom, I have to designate hours here and there (with a specific beginning and ending time) to get myself on track. And nothing helps more than having a deadline from an editor!