As a writer, it is mega-important for you to figure out your own personal flavor and brand of gut-rot.  I know, ewwwww, right?  But writer’s gut-rot can eat into your work and your writing and your career until you wake up one day and realize that this thing you once loved, you now hate and don’t know why.  So many writer-friends have told similar stories about something in their process, their career, their writer’s life, or elsewhere that unequivocally rotted out their passion from the inside. And if something is rotting in there, it needs to change.

That gut-rot might be a step in your process, like plotting (or not plotting, or the way you plot), or the efforts you put into promo (whether or not you’re published yet), a particularly draining critique group, a toxic business or personal relationship, or even unreasonable personal expectations (I’m not saying aim for the ground, but if your goals include “NYT bestseller list” or “XYZ publisher acquires me/puts me in lead title slot/spends millions on promo for my title” you are making your success dependent on factors not wholly in your power to control.

Which brings us back around to my broken streak.  It started last year, when I was whinging to Mr. Xandra about my six whole readers (honestly, I’m not sure if there are even six of you out there, LOL!  And I wasn’t whinging about you, I was whinging about the lack of more of you) and why didn’t I see more traffic to my blog. Pragmatist that he is, shut me up by telling me, “Duh, readers want something to read.”

Yep.  If it wasn’t for the hot air, my head would collapse in on itself sometimes.  I mean, I knew this stuff, I’m a smart chick, right? (Don’t answer that)

So I very quietly made a promise to myself that, come hell or high water, I’d make sure to post something in my blog once a week.  If I couldn’t post on the same day (which I often can’t as schedules for moms of little kids are fluid, at best, regimental at worst, and neither offer much in the way of free, quiet, quality, tranquil time in which to ruminate intelligently a la blog), then I’d use the handy-dandy magical “schedule post” button to make it cleverly look like I was showing up once a week, even if I was neck-deep in edits (which I was at one point) or otherwise occupied (several times).  I have (mostly) kept to this goal, and the goal remained something that would be in my control.  Last week, I should have scheduled my post earlier and been done with it before my troubles hit, but it’s a lesson I shall take with me into this week.  I can’t control how many blog readers I get–that’s up to anybody who stumbles across this out-of-the-way cul-de-sac of the internet.  But I can make it a place where readers have something to read.

Now, speaking of something to read…there’s a story that isn’t writing itself.

Goals are helpful to a writer–they give us something to shoot for.  As November teaches/reminds us (for those of us who do NaNo), when you’re in the middle of 50,000 words, all you see is words all around you and none of them are “The End.”  Goals remind us why we’re writing, where we’re going, and maybe give us a bit of a hint as to how we’re going to get there, and why “there” was the “there” we picked in the first place.  So let’s take a walk through my own New Year’s Eve activities (besides making Buffalo Chicken Dip and watching Dick Clark not age while the ball dropped).

I started out like any writer. What do I want in the new year?  My answers–a sale, an agent, a contract, a 3-book deal, a big(ger) advance, to make a bestseller list.  Good start, right?  Ambitious, especially given the market, the recession, and the industry, but okay, shoot for the moon and miss and you still get to fly, right?  The savvy writer will tell you that those aren’t goals.  I want all those things, but they can’t be my goals–they can’t be the goals of a working writer–because I can’t make them happen.  I can facilitate, sure, and I can pay my buck and take my chances, but I can’t really control the outcome of any of that list.  And that means they can’t be goals.

Goals are what I have to do as a writer, and what I can do as a writer.  So let’s try it again.  I want to complete manuscripts.  To submit said manuscripts, and to promote any manuscripts that get turned into books.  I want to sell books.  These are better, because I do have control over finishing my manuscripts, albeit that control may be a large quantity of duct tape, my ass, and the office chair all wrapped up in each other.  Still, not refined enough.  Nobody scores a goal without knowing where the goalpost is.  Goals must have something measurable to them.  Something concrete.  Something that let’s the Forrest Gump in me know when to stop running.

“Complete manuscripts” is a fine goal to have, but how will I know when I’m done?  Back to the drawing board.  I want to complete six manuscripts, and submit at least four of them.  I can’t control whether or not they’ll come out in 2010, or even if they’ll be accepted wherever I submit them, but I can control their existence.  I can complete them.  I can research which publishers or agents are best suited to what manuscripts.  I even have a list of the ones I’ve got simmering that are both far enough along that I can finish them, and a scant handful of interesting agents that I’d like to read more about, so I can control where I submit.  I can also control promotion of my existing books (both of which are still available at Liquid Silver Books)–not sales, because I can’t force people to buy a book–but promotion.  I can create a promo plan and execute it, which is what I’m doing.

Now–NOW, I have a list of concrete and tangible goals.  I have goalposts.  I have…a plan.

New Year’s Resolutions hardly ever work out because they’re nice to declare in January, the declaration is the most important thing about the resolution.  Continuing Resolutions imply resolve.