Setting Creative Goals that Work

A lot of creative people struggle with disorganization. Not everyone fits the stereotype, but many of us admire messy artists—an abstract and freeform lifestyle can imply inspiration, heightened creativity, and a liberated or enigmatic personality. More often than not, the reality of this romanticized stereotype of the scatterbrained artist is far from a carefree, bohemian existence. Just like everyone else, we need to set goals to be successful.

Try as I might to moderate the impulse, I'm addicted to goals. I always have something in mind, I'm always on a quest for self-improvement, and I'm always asking what more I could be doing.

I'm also always falling short. Life never goes as planned, and a combination of perfectionism, high ambitions, and ADD can lead to some big disappointments. It's as important to look at how we set goals as it is to consider what those goals might be.

As a compulsive planner, I tend to forget that ultimate, satisfying success isn't planned. It comes from staying ready to embrace opportunity, both by having an open mind and by knowing yourself well—knowing your values, your style, and who you want to see looking back at you in the mirror every morning.

Of course, we all need something to help us stay fulfilled while we're waiting for opportunity to drop by our living rooms (or wherever you like to wait for opportunity). That's where effective, healthy goal-setting comes in.

I'm currently working on a solid list of creative goals for 2011. However, poor goal-setting can lead to failure and—even worse—low self-esteem. Here are some things to keep in mind when making those oft-intimidating New Year's resolutions:

1. Think about your values and choose goals that inspire you. Sometimes, we're really good at something that doesn't have an important place in our value system. Or maybe we just think we should want to get a promotion, find a better-paying job, or write for 20 minutes every single day. When do you feel most rewarded for your work, most happy and fulfilled? For example, I love music, but making it is a collective experience for me. As such, I get little enjoyment from hacking away at a song on the piano alone for hours, but playing or singing with an intimate group of people makes me feel absolutely fantastic. So a good goal would be getting over my fear of singing for friends, not learning an intensely challenging piece on my own. As much as you can, set goals that align with your deeper values and make your efforts feel worthwhile. Life isn't all about numbers.
   
2. Don't fight yourself. Instead, get to know yourself. How and when do you work most effectively? When do you perform at your peak? It's tempting to set goals based on the negatives: things we want to change. Instead, think about your strengths and apply them to what you'd like to accomplish. It's a lot easier to push from good to excellent than from bad to mediocre.
   
3. Get excited. If you're not excited for what's in store, how are you going to stay motivated? Make sure you connect with your goals and know where you want to end up as a result of achieving your goal, whether it's fitting into your college clothes, saving money for an amazing trip out West, or applying for that artist-in-residency program you've been daydreaming about.
   
4. Set goals that you can control. I love to write things like "have a solo photo exhibition" or "write a stage play and see it performed" in my list of long term goals. However, the end result is ultimately in someone else's hands, so it's not a good goal. Healthy goals provide a challenge, but leave success up to you and you alone. Writing a stage play, then reaching out to five different theatre companies to see if anyone's interested is far more productive.
   
5. Break it down. If I want to submit to six literary journals this year, that means I need to set weekly and monthly writing and editing goals to support that. If I want to write a stage play, I need to set a goal to read scripts on a regular basis, experience plenty of live performances, research proper formatting, and find a competent and critical friend to read it when I'm done. Setting a big goal without stepping back and addressing the steps to get there will set you up for disappointment.

How about you? What strategies have you used to kick off 2011? How do you set and manage goals, and when do you check in with yourself to assess your progress?

So This is the New Year...

If you haven't noticed, Mix Tapes & Scribbles has taken a holiday break. I had a mind to announce this, but decided I would just make sure I kept posting over the holidays instead. Instead, here's what I've experienced:

1. Watching the last Broadway performance of Rent  before leaving for Christmas (not even in the same class as the movie version, folks).
2. Traveling to PA for a whirlwind four-day weekend of Christmas festivities.
3. Singing with my dad, cousin, and the church choir on Christmas Eve and experiencing four-part vocal harmony for the first time.
4. Finding out that yes, if pressed, I can still play the piccolo proficiently.
5. Getting good at the drums in Rock Band.
6. Spending two days trying to fly from Baltimore to Los Angeles, including some really exciting foul-weather landing attempts and an unexpected overnight stay in Houston.
7. Finishing my wool wrist warmers and beginning to knit an afghan.
8. Taking a lot of photographs and feeling inspired to write.
9. Seeing Black Swan at the Arclight Theater in Hollywood..

I'm sure there's more, but during this crazy adventure (which remains ongoing—I'm still in L.A.) I haven't had much blogging time in my days. Not to worry, I'm working on a new piece of writing about it all and once the dust settles, I'll have a lot of fodder for the blog. Until then (i.e. until the weekend), posting will be light.

However, I have another artist feature in the can and I'm going to leave you with a short list of resolutions for 2011. These will return with some friends in an upcoming post about goal setting/management, but for now, I'd like to do the following in 2011:

1. Write a script
2. Finish my novel
3. Be in a flashmob
4. Learn a dance
5. Submit to six literary publications
6. Write and feature more guest posts

What do you have in mind for the new year?

October in Review + November Goals

October came and went in a more hasty and stressful way than I would have liked, inspiring me to set some different goals for November. During October, I hoped to:

• Do some substantial writing/editing on at least 15 days and get my manuscript ready for my second round of beta readers by November 1. EPIC FAIL! I think I probably got down and worked for my goal time of 20+ minutes five days out of the month. Again, life got crazy promptly on the second day of the month, so I'm going to write this one off.
• Finish a short story, which I did and submitted to the City Paper's annual short fiction contest. Yay me!
• Read a script or see a play, both of which I did and loved. I saw Natural Selection at Single Carrot Theatre and read the screenplay for Cruel Intentions. Greatness all around.
• Clean out the basement. One might say I didn't even try...
• Get back to the piano, which I'm actually pretty sad about neglecting. Given my skill level, I feel like I feel like I need a piano companion who can help me out sometimes and keep me motivated.
• Take some footage I can be proud of for a work-related video. I think this is off to a good start and hopefully headed for a good end. I put together a solid draft and feel like I took my boss' critique like a pro...which I am, so this lands squarely in the success column.

Much like the annual performance review I just had at work, reflecting on my goals reminds me that even though not everything was a success, and indeed there were some epic fails, I can still claim some reasonable accomplishments.

In November, I'm going to put my usual word and day counting on hold in favor of some more lifestyle-oriented outlook. I chose not to do NaNoWriMo this month, but I want to focus hard on feeding my creative energy and achieving a state of constant awareness/mindfulness when it comes to art-making. In that light, here are my plans:

• The Facebook Fast. Sometimes I consider deleting my Facebook account, but then I remember two things: first, it's way convenient and I'm awful at keeping in touch. Second, I'm a social media professional. That said, I'm going to break the Facebook-at-home habit for a month and only use it at work. Ironic, right? Really, I'll just be maintaining our fan page and making sure to peek at my notifications.
• Get my novel ready for real. If this isn't done on December 1, I promise the universe I will just print it and give it to my second round of readers.
• Find that piano friend, sing, and play my piano.
• Do something, no matter how small, that engages my creativity every single day.
• Launch the new feature I've been planning for this blog!
• Write about these things all month.

And there you have it: pretty simple. Happy November!

Imminent Ends and Beginnings

Today I realized 2010 is almost over.

I'm not traumatized per se, especially because the end of the year brings Thanksgiving, my birthday, Christmas, and then New Year's quickly followed by our annual Vermont ski vacation. Plus, by this point I'm over 2010 anyway. I'm more than ready to be a year older and start planning a new set of adventures.

However, I also have to face my list of creative goals for the year. So far I've crossed off seven of my 17 goals, which isn't terrible, but I also need to be realistic about my outlook for the next two months: I'll have a class to contend with for most of that time, I'll be away for a week and a half surrounding Christmas and New Year's, I have a five-minute video to produce for work before November 9, and my cat is terminally ill. I have plenty of distractions to keep me busy.

More and more, I've been assessing my goals against the backdrop of doing NaNoWriMo this year. Granted, winning again in 2011 is on my list of goals, but doing so would come at the cost of many others. I may not get to declutter the house, learn a song well on the piano, or fill three notebooks. Maybe most importantly, I may not finish the next draft of my current novel, and I'm absolutely committed to getting that done.

Hard as it may be, I might need to prioritize my other goals, plenty of which include writing. In fact, I may even resolve to do something creative every day in November, as a reminder that even though I'm not writing a novel, the month should still be dedicated to meeting my goals and getting things done.

More than the year being nearly over, the important realization here is how much of life is about choices and managing a finite number of resources. But that's another post—maybe even one involving video game metaphors. For now, I need to spend the last week of October regrouping and figuring out how to make the end of 2010 the best it can be!

October Creative Goals

October has made its entrance, and it promises to be busy! After looking over my goals for September, here's October's lineup:

• 15 days of  20+ minutes of writing or editing.
  (This one's staying the same, since I didn't get there last month)
• Get a new draft of my novel ready to give to my second round of beta readers by November 1, when a new NaNoWriMo will be upon us.
• Finish the short story draft I started in August.
• Read a script or see a play.
• Come up with some kind of idea for NaNoWriMo, and maybe even decide to do a rebel project (short story collection or script, as opposed to a novel).
• Clear out the basement, which I didn't get to finish last month.
• I volunteered to make a video piece for our big annual event at work. I'm hoping to get some great footage and put together something I can be proud of.
• Get back to the piano, now that it's freshly tuned.

I realize I haven't written much lately, and that makes me sad. I think that means I have another goal: create more and share more!

Here's to a great October! Up soon: the return of visual art, tough decisions, and the long-neglected manuscript!

September Goal Review

Happy October! It's a new month, and time to look back on my goals for September. Some went well and some...not so well. I got hit by illness, allergies, and a sick cat and husband to boot, but that's just life. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that there's rarely such a thing as extenuating circumstances. So here we go:

• 15 days of  20+ minutes of writing or editing.
  Not too shabby: I did 50% more writing in September than August, and even though I fell just short of my goal at 12 days, I'm pleased.
• Work on editing my novel manuscript on at least 10 separate days.
  This is bad news. I worked on it for 5 days, folks.
• Set a date for a creative retreat weekend in late fall/winter.
  Done and done! I'll be writing at the beach in mid-November.
• Finish the short story draft I started in August.
  Another no-go. I sent it to a friend to read over for me, but then decided I needed to let it rest for a month. This goal gets bumped to October.
• Get my hands on some script-writing resources, or team up with someone who knows a thing or two about stage/screenwriting. Set a goal for starting a draft (and make sure it doesn't conflict with NaNoWriMo).
  So I didn't do this, I'm sad about not doing this, and there's really no reason for not doing this. Huh.
• See Five Women Wearing the Same Dress at Mobtown Theater.
  Mission: accomplished. I may write more about it later, but I was underwhelmed by the experience considering how excited I was to see the show. Incidentally, I also volunteered at—and stayed to watch—Natural Selection at Single Carrot Theatre and thought it was just great. I feel like it was a better script, but I also feel like Single Carrot is just great, so there it is.
• Register for NaNoWriMo 2010.
  Just jumping in and doing it.
• Completely empty the portion of the basement I want to remodel, down to nothing but the bare floor and walls, and revise my budget/supply list for the project.
  (This will help get me closer to both a decluttered house and a better office/writing space.)
  I'm working on this, but it's a little more strenuous than I expected, so it's not quite done yet. Here's a picture though:
  
  
• Get out of the house for some cafe writing!
  Did it once, should try to do it more.

All in all, not to bad! Are you looking forward to October? Setting any new personal goals?

New Office!

People who know me well likely know how much I love the back room on the second floor of our house. The walls are a pleasing color, the south-facing windows let in an abundance of natural light, and I have managed to keep it more clutter-free than any other room in the house. I decorated it with an area rug and futon I love. I wrote the first draft of my manuscript at the tiny brown desk against the outside wall. It's a fantastic room. I even wrote about it during my 28 inspirations in February.



Well, today I destroyed it. I had originally planned to make this room my office once we remodeled the basement, but suddenly realized I could move it along more quickly by just switching the furniture in our upstairs rooms. After all, our ugly office in the middle room couldn't get much worse, right?



When we actually started moving furniture, though, it didn't seem like such a great idea anymore. I was about to ruin my sanctuary and change my favorite spot in the house forever. Also, look how much dust was under my Doug's desk. Gross!



However, I'm typing this sitting not in a windowless room with walls painted a blue-green I can't stand, but in the back room, looking out the window (yes, I do type and look out the window at the same time) and listening to nighttime bugs outside. My desk is amazingly clean. I feel like I'm sitting in an open space where I can do a lot of writing, not in a dark and stuffy clutter-cave that feels like a chore to be in.

I haven't forgotten that we worked really hard today and still didn't finish the job. The green room is such a disaster I had to close the door and pretend it doesn't exist. A few random items are still littering the floor in our new office. But I don't have classwork for a few weeks and Doug promised to keep working with me until we get it done. For now, small victories: look at this nice space! I'm really close to accomplishing one of my big goals for the year: creating a dedicated space for writing where I can be productive.

September Writing Goals

It's almost September! You might remember I recently decided to reevaluate my goals for the year and start setting small monthly goals that will (hopefully) keep me on track with what I want to accomplish in 2010.

September has its pros and cons in terms of making progress on my projects. On the plus side, I don't have class until September 27! This three-week break should help me get back in the groove with my writing, but I need to make sure I'm being mindful of all that freed-up time and using it wisely. However, we'll be traveling for two of my four school-less weekends. I need to make sure my goals are realistic given all the visiting we're in for.

That said, here's what I'm hoping for:

• 15 days of  20+ minutes of writing or editing.
  (As far as I can tell, I've done this for 8 days so far in August.)
• Work on editing my novel manuscript on at least 10 separate days.
• Set a date for a creative retreat weekend in late fall/winter.
• Finish the short story draft I started in August.
• Get my hands on some script-writing resources, or team up with someone who knows a thing or two about stage/screenwriting. Set a goal for starting a draft (and make sure it doesn't conflict with NaNoWriMo).
• See Five Women Wearing the Same Dress at Mobtown Theater.
• Register for NaNoWriMo 2010.
• Completely empty the portion of the basement I want to remodel, down to nothing but the bare floor and walls, and revise my budget/supply list for the project.
  (This will help get me closer to both a decluttered house and a better office/writing space.)
• Get out of the house for some cafe writing!

I'm honestly not sure if this sounds like too much or not enough to do in one month, mainly because I have a bad habit of setting (and not reaching) long-term goals and ignoring the need for short-term ones. I'll just have to see how I do this month and revise accordingly for October.

How Much Do I Love Being Alone?

One of my goals for this year is to go on a creative retreat. I already have an ideal location all picked out. My family shares a little house on the Jersey Shore with (gasp) no cable TV, no internet access, no extras. Just a little bungalow with a three-block walk to the beach and a two-block walk to the bay. If you're really ambitious, you can plan a five-mile morning hike up to the northern point of the island to see some beach-y wilderness, shipwrecks, and plenty of shells and driftwood.

This sounds perfect for a weekend of solitude, the days quietly passed writing and taking photographs, right?

The only problem is, as antisocial as I can be sometimes, I don't really like being alone. I like being left alone, meaning my husband works on making a video game mod while I gnaw away at my manuscript (figuratively, of course).

But while I'm happy to engage in separate activities most of the time and meet in the middle for a movie or some two-player Little Big Planet, when my husband leaves for a significant period of time I tend to get the hell out of there. Guaranteed, when he starts up his four-hour night class this Fall, I'll be calling my best friend in the next neighborhood over to schedule weekly World of Warcraft and television dates.



So I'm torn. Half of me is in love with the zen-like quiet of the shore house in the Fall/Winter, the smell and feel of the beach, the removal from everyday life. But the other half is raising a cautionary finger and reminding me I'm most productive when I'm quietly engaged in parallel with someone else. That, and I ask my friends to babysit me when I'm faced with a long stretch of time in an empty house.

What's a girl to do? For now I'm going to pencil it in and think a little bit more about what I need and how I can give myself an amazing, productive, and (maybe semi-) detached weekend.

Side note: because I was traveling for a long weekend, the weekly creative non-fiction will be a little belated. Never fear, though, it will make its appearance tomorrow!

2010 Goals Update

Good morning, how are you?

I've been reflecting on my goals for 2010, and while some still seem admirable and totally attainable, I have learned a bit from setting full-year goals. For starters, they're tough to accomplish. I set a goal to finish editing my NaNoWriMo 2009 novel manuscript by the end of the year, but then the summer got unreasonably busy, I started grad school, etc., and work slowed down. Now I'm left to wonder if accomplishing that by year's end would really be a good thing, or if it would just mean I had rewarded myself with a rushed, shoddy manuscript.

That brings me to another point. Life happens. It's impossible to know at the outset what any given year will hold, and it's important to reevaluate goals and make midcourse corrections that make sense.

So how am I doing?

1. Finish editing my NaNoWriMo 2009 manuscript and send it out into the world.
   Not sure how I feel about this. Like I said, it might get revised.
2. De-clutter my house.  The whole thing.  Seriously.
   This is still an absolute must-do priority. the Salvation Army truck is coming on September 8, and I've been working a little bit every week to purge out the stuff I don't need.
3. Begin writing a stage or screen play, preferably as a collaborative project.
   Still admirable, attainable, and a big, big want.
4. Win NaNoWriMo again.
   Once we get to October, I'll have to decide if I think this is a good idea. Although, I'd like to try a collection of short stories.
5. Begin pursuing a graduate degree.
6. Compose an original song.
7. Learn to play a song fluently on the piano, including singing.
8. Audition for something.
9. See a Single Carrot Theatre performance.
10. See a Broadway musical.
11. Write a poem and share it, even if it isn't very good.
12. Write a short story.
    Working on it now!
13. Fill three notebooks.
14. Starting in May, get out of the house to write at least once per month (and document it).
    This might be its own post. Let's leave it at that.
15. Create a writing space in the house (with desk and comfortable chair) where I feel productive.
    Chair: done. Otherwise, see #2.
16. Starting in May, write for at least 15 minutes every day (or at least 90% of the time...). Set (and meet) realistic writing goals every month.
    I'm going to try this for September.
17. Take a creative retreat weekend (and document it).
    This is likely its own post, too. We'll talk later.

How about you? Any big goals for the year? What have you been surprised to accomplish, and what has fallen by the wayside?

Grad School Week One

The other day I began wondering if getting my master's degree might be a big mistake—all that time disappearing.  Truthfully, I'm intensely ambitious in the present only.  I do make a hobby of crafting big goals for my life, but I suspect it's just because the act of making plans is such an engaging pastime in the present.

Trying (and failing) to think of one long-term goal I have set and actually brought to fruition, I realize I may have a commitment issue.  The immediate pain of losing time to spend with friends, work on my manuscript, play my piano, watch movies, and play WoW makes me feel I've lost something.  Not to mention all those activities are immediately gratifying: a level gained here, a chapter polished there, a phrase suddenly becoming smooth under my fingers.

This isn't the first time I've gotten into one of these self-questioning frames of mind and rationalized my way out of a commitment, either.  But wait!  This story has a happy ending, after all.

Instead of feeling discouraged, I did something uncharacteristic, something I haven't done before: I visualized my future.  I love to hate the word visualization, mostly because my mind generally refuses to craft a clear image.  In this case I don't think I needed one.

All I needed was to imagine how it felt.  I let my imagination wander, curious where it would go: I imagined my sandaled feet disappearing beneath  a long skirt, eyes in their comfort zone hitting matte black at every angle.  I was backstage, but on a quiet day, surveying.  Something smelled like sawdust.  I imagined a group of jovial adults gathered there to rehearse in the evenings, much like the groups I used to perform with—a pit orchestra wedged between empty seats and stage.  Kids in a classroom reading a script for the first time, maybe even one they had written.  Opening nights.  Music.  A small office, tidy, maybe with a secondhand couch, that I may or may not walk into with a baby cradled against my body in a sling.

I may never have this.  Life has a way of handing us something slightly different than we had planned.  But in imagining what I could create someday, I made my current efforts seem worth it.  I guess this is what overly optimistic types call "keeping your eyes on the prize."  I don't think I ever thought about what that means.  Now I have an idea: when it's hard to see past the and nots (and not having endless hours to wander through writing and singing and aimlessness), sometimes we need to reach out and touch the thing we're working for in the end.  Because in reality, 18 months is hardly any time at all.

And as a creative person, that imagining shouldn't be so hard to do.

May Rundown

June is here, May is over, and it's time to take a look over my goals for 2010 and see what I've been up to.  Struggling with ADD often means I lose track of the contents of my days pretty easily, so pausing every once in a while to reflect really helps me figure out what I'm doing with all this passing time.  While everyone at the office complains about doing their monthly reports during the first week of the month, I'm thankful for the benchmark/barometer.

May had 31 days to it this year, and I only sat down and did my daily writing practice for 21 of them.  That's barely even most of the time, so I need some work there.  On the bright side, I wrote a lot on some of those days, in addition to doing some good work on my manuscript.  I just need to make sure I'm carving out time every single day and not letting "extenuating" circumstances become an every-other-day occurrence.



In the latter half of May I finally got myself down to Single Carrot Theatre, which is certainly something I'd like to continue doing.  In college I had a friend who'd take me to plays, and I guess part of me thought I'd always have a person like that in my life.  This month I learned that maybe I need to be that person for others!

A plug for Baltimore folks: Single Carrot is in a great spot (Station North: lots of new art spaces, plus easily accessible and free of the parking and/or transit complications of Mt. Vernon or downtown) and provides an intimate theatre experience not to be missed.  The show I just saw was the sort I can measure by how long I spent cocking my head to one side—it's a slightly embarrassing habit when I'm really studying a piece of creative work.  Plus you get a complimentary glass of wine or soda and a cheerful greeting when you walk in the door!

Directly after our theater excursion, my husband left me all alone for a weekend, and I took advantage of the opportunity to spend the morning writing at Carma's Cafe in Charles Village.  Baltimore plug number two: Carma's is another absolutely can't miss.  Sitting for two hours and focusing solidly on my work was a challenge, but that's why I made it a goal in 2010!  That work session got me over a big editing hump, and I think this weekend I'll try dropping by the Evergreen, where all the trendy writers seem to hang out on their laptops.

In terms of big projects, I rededicated myself to editing my manuscript and got some really nice work done on it.  I also started decluttering the house and making way for my new work space by spending an entire weekend in the basement sorting through stuff (and deciding to give most of it away to the Salvation Army).  Big life news arrived on the scene, too, as I enrolled in an online MBA program concentrating in non-profit management.

While I'm not ready to move/create my office quite yet—our quick-and-cheap basement remodel needs to happen first—I did buy a real desk chair.  My back is thanking me at this very moment, and typing away at my desk feels so much nicer!

All in all, I feel good about May, if not the first half of June.  I've gone through a lot of rededication to my creative practice, and it feels good to be getting my life back again after my surgery disrupted the rhythm of things so much.

Making Lists

Last night I sat down to write, but didn't really feel inspired to expand on any of my notes.  Instead, I found myself making a list.  Somehow I've managed to feel both overwhelmed and directionless lately, and I'm not sure whether to blame that on ADD or not having a right arm (or maybe both).

Whenever I feel like giving up on something or just need to calm down, I make lists.  The act of cataloging tasks, organizing them, breaking them down, and finally crossing them off a list is very therapeutic.

This time, I laid out the things I hope to accomplish in 2010.  I tend to set overambitious goals, so we'll see how far I get.  What seems easy now may seem ridiculous in the Fall, but then again, I wrote 50,000 words last November!

I even made a separate page to store my list, but for now I'm going to introduce it right here.  My creative goals for 2010:

1. Finish editing my NaNoWriMo 2009 manuscript and send it out into the world.
2. De-clutter my house.  The whole thing.  Seriously.
3. Begin writing a stage or screen play, preferably as a collaborative project.
4. Win NaNoWriMo again.
5. Write a short story.
6. Begin pursuing a graduate degree.
7. Compose an original song.
8. Learn to play a song fluently on the piano, including singing.
9. Audition for something.
10. See a Single Carrot Theatre performance.
11. See a Broadway musical.
12. Write a poem and share it, even if it isn't very good.
13. Write a short story.
14. Fill three notebooks.
15. Starting in May, get out of the house to write at least once per month (and document it).
16. Create a writing space in the house (with desk and comfortable chair) where I feel productive.
17. Starting in May, write for at least 15 minutes every day (or at least 90% of the time...).
18. Take a creative retreat weekend (and document it).