Setting Goals

Writing is all about setting goals, we're told. Set specific, reasonable goals with quantitative results. I've set such goals before — I've written down "Revise first 10 chapters of Killer Robot manuscript by midnight, June 12" or "send Video Game play to three theater companies by noon, Aug. 12, without going cross-eyed from reading the picky submission guidelines" or "Get up at 5:30 a.m. to write three days a week without killing anyone." These are laudable goals, of course, and I've dutifully created spreadsheets, started treadmill journals and checked off whiteboard to-do lists.

All these goals failed, of course — some rather spectacularly — with blown deadlines, abandoned journals and undignified displays of temper when I couldn't find any Snapple at 5:32 a.m. But even writers need structure, and I can't just sit at my desk every day and mutter dementedly. Well, I could (and often do) but then I should write something too.

So I'm rushing in the opposite direction, with a single, vague goal with only three words: "Write Every Day." Now that doesn't mean I'm actually sitting at my desk writing (insert merry laugh here), because frankly I seem to diddle away a shocking amount of time. For example, today Mr. Killer Robot and Killer Robot Kid went off to Little League baseball practice, which meant prime writing time for me on a Sunday morning. So I spent two hours at my desk. But of course I wasn't writing; I was putting new ink in my printer, setting up my iTunes, setting up my new speakers, finding the perfect spot for my fan, rearranging my bulletin board, and looking for a half-remembered blog post about dips. When my guys arrived home, my desk and bedroom were neat and tidy but my nerves were a mess, because, of course, I'd written nothing.

Then Mr. Killer Robot and I spent a frustrating afternoon trying to arrange his 401(k) contributions, a process that greatly resembled a typical writing session (lots of squinting and muttered cursing, but few tangible results). Then he and the Kid went out again, and now here I am, at my desk writing, but not really writing, just writing about not writing.

I think I'm paralyzed by my newfound freedom. As of Feb. 6, I've reduced my work hours to devote more time to my family and my writing. The family part is working out great: the house is cleaner, the meals are better, I chaperoned an ice-skating field trip and designed a scarecow costume, and Mr. Killer Robot, who is also a journalist, has been on the front page of our newspaper four out of the last five issues. So this is definitely working out personally. But for the writing? Not so much. I did manage to write a short play about a little chess pawn, which was so weird and incoherent, I immediately printed it out and filed it and haven't looked at it yet.

You see, I have six writing projects whirling around in my head, each demanding its time. The last time I felt like this was at my newspaper job last fall, when I was juggling four special publications in various stages of completion. In one five-day period, I was taking one publication to press, making calls on a second one, assigning stories for a third and attending a judging for a fourth.

Fiction projects, however, are different. It doesn't seem to make sense to juggle multiple projects at once, so I'll have to pick one, power it through, then work on the next one. But which do I pick? The short play I just finished, the short story idea? the memoir? the full-length play? Or the novel?

I'm not sure. What I am sure of is that I'm not going to fret much about publication this year. I'm not going to read much about publication either, since it's too depressing. According to the writing mags, I'm more likely to be killed by a meteor in the shape of Elvis' head than to actually get anything published. So I'll just concentrate on finishing 3-6 of these writing projects this year, just churning them out, powering through carpal tunnel and writers' block, and worry about publication in 2013.

And to do that, all I need to do is follow a single goal:

WRITE EVERY DAY.