goals

So what now?

Posted on by johnpriceauthor

I’M SO GLAD YOU ASKED. Now that Happy Little Sheds is out and to the world, what now? If you’ve been following along, you know that this is the first short story in a series of short stories. And while each story does interact with the others, they all stand alone. You can either choose to read them as a set, or just one or two in no particular order. However, if there’s a part of the story where you think, that just seems like filler I can assure you it’s not.

Yesterday I was on the phone with my sister and she asked how the sales went for Happy Little Sheds and to be quite frank, I honestly don’t know. When I wrote The Mandela Effect (which I will republish, but with a shit ton of changes) I watched the sales on a daily basis, continually disappointed that it wasn’t selling, or doing as well as I hoped it would. Not only was it not selling, the asshats who promised, “I’ll give you a review if you let me read it” didn’t follow through. Basically, they read the book for free. Then, I wrote The Curious Story of Mitchell Parrish (another one that I will republish but again, will have some changes) and like The Mandela Effect I checked those rankings daily. They were better than The Mandela Effect but again, disappointing. Rinse and repeat—write another book, check the rankings on a daily basis and get disappointed, write another book, check the rankings on a daily basis and get disappointed. Pregator was my best seller but still somewhat disappointing in the grand scheme of things. It was when I wrote The Story of Hope that I decided not to check the rankings.

Before publishing The Story of Hope I kind of had a heart to heart with myself and asked the question—why do you write? To be honest, I love to write. I genuinely enjoy it. While I would love to make a nice income from writing, get a special on Netflix or Hulu, or even have Amazon pour a billion dollars into one of my series (badum tsss) it’s not something I’m expecting to happen. I write because I have stories to tell and I love it. From my writing, I’ve made anywhere from .77 in one month, to just over $1000. What’s interesting is that my feelings about writing don’t change. When I was checking the rankings and getting disappointed, I still wrote with the same fervor after I published as I did before I published. Literally nothing changed.

So here I am…and so are you…and I hope you’re enjoying the journey with me. Tuesday morning, I will open up a new document, and begin my next story, Hello, Carolyn. If you’re wondering who the fuck Carolyn is, well, she bought a piece of art from Mark Bolton in Happy Little Sheds. I think you’ll like the shitshow of a person she is in our next story.

Publishing Date for Happy Little Sheds

Posted on by johnpriceauthor

BEFORE YOU START READING, LET me forewarn you that this will segue and then end abruptly. Now that you’ve been warned, let’s talk about goal setting for a moment and how distracted I can be. For most of my life (right up until about 5-7 years ago) I made goals but never really followed through. Don’t get me wrong, I accomplished some of them, but because I lacked guidance, a lot of those goals just fell apart. Sometime around the summer of 2017ish I think, I began to have this wakeup call constantly badgering me, “what the fuck are you doing with your life?” So I began to focus on where I wanted to go, but again, things didn’t pan out. Part of the reason is due to the environment I was in (it wasn’t really conducive to a creative life) part part of it was the people who were in my life, some of it was a lack of discipline, and ignorance no how to flesh my goals out. But…I was at least at the beginning stages of pushing myself.

I don’t remember who said it, but I heard a speaker say, “it’s better to aim for something, than to sit and hope things change fo you. If you aim for something, even if you don’t hit it, at least you’ll be further along in your life than if you hadn’t. A 1% change in your life is better than no change because at least with 1%, you can compound on that.” It was in 2018 (around that time anyway) that I began to have a wakeup call that maybe the reason why I wasn’t farther along in my career as an artist and writer is because I wasn’t setting reliable, realistic goals. Reliable, realistic goals give a person clear vision and direction. However, if I don’t hit the goal, at least I aimed for something and was on a clear path, right? Imagine if you made a personal goal to make $1,000,000 (for people who make that, add another zero or two) in one year. However, let’s say you only saved $800,000. You didn’t hit your goal but dammit you have $800,000. That’s $800,000 more than you would’ve had, had you not done anything.

Something broke in me and I don’t know exactly when. I wrote an entire book and it was trash. I wrote an entire second book, but I never told anyone because it was godawful and worse than the one preceding it. It wasn’t until I met Lynanne and she introduced me to SMART Goals (you can google it if you’ve never heard of it) and this is what kind of set my feet on the path of righteousness if you will.

Because of this, I found a way to streamline my goals and direct my focus, narrowing things down and kind of ‘cut the fat’ if you will. I still floundered, but I at least had some kind of direction. It was in that timeframe that I published I think 4 or 5 short stories. I had this fancy, out of this world idea, to publish a ton of short stories and hope that somehow Netflix would pick them up for a miniseries or some shit (a goal, that I still hope to obtain.) The problem is, I was just pushing shit out with no real direction. Again, maybe I wasn’t hitting my goal, but at least I was aiming solely for something for the first time in my life. Most people will never hit big goals because they keep it to themselves. I have this weird habit of embarrassing myself and putting my goals out to the world. When I do, I tend to feel internal pressure to make that shit happen.

Where am I going with all of this? Well this is where I segue into the first short story in a series of close to two dozen short stories. When I wrote Happy Little Sheds, I had this idea to release it on September 13. Life got in the way and it got pushed back to this week, and now next week. Part of the push-back is the cover design. The cover went through multiple designs, a fuck ton of typesetting/font changes, and even color choices. Writing the book wasn’t as hard as designing the cover. What does all of this have to do with goals? Everything.

I had this grand plan to finish the story, have it edited, designed, printed, and released on a certain date. It didn’t happen. But that’s okay. At least I aimed for something. I wrote this long ass post just to say, ‘Happy Little Sheds’ will officially drop on September 27. Printed copies will be available the weekend of October 1. I will be doing a small run of maybe 250, and if there is enough demand, I’ll print more.

The Flower & The Bee

Posted on by johnpriceauthor

LATELY, I HAVE BEEN SEEING this quote make its way through Instagram, and the first time it made me pause. Rarely do I see a quote online that motivates/inspires me to reflect on it but this one kind of caught my attention. However, after the hundredth time of seeing it in post after post, and reel after 20 second reel, it became an overused quote that was just annoying. Every wannabe philosopher was posting it as though they were somehow deep. And while the quote does have a lot of depth to it, you don’t have to post the quote along with a photo of you in yoga pants showing off your amazing abs.

I am an artist and a writer, and I paint amazing landscapes and cityscapes in Richmond, Virginia. Sometimes I am commissioned to draw or paint a portrait, but most of my income from art is in local scenery. When I first pursued a career in art, I often painted with high hopes of selling a ton of it. Unfortunately, most of it never sold, and was either donated or ended up in the attic. It took some time, but I discovered that when I painted things I personally liked, the chances of it selling went through the roof. And so that is what I did. If a piece of art didn’t sell, I really didn’t care because it was something I personally liked and was fine with it hanging on my wall. Some paintings were put in shows and never came back home because they sold before the show was over. To this day, four paintings were pulled off the market because I didn’t want to sell them, and two that, while I tried to sell, never did…so they’re on my wall and I’m fine with this. Why am I telling you all this? It’s because my focus, when it was on creating meaningful art—a shed that I saw on the side of the road with my girlfriend…a landscape in the middle of god knows where…or even a coffee shop in the middle of the city, people were attracted to that meaning as well. And so the quote, the flower doesn’t dream of the bee, it blossoms and the bee comes, is one of such truth, even if it is overused. When my focus shifted from trying to make the money to trying to be a better artist, my finances changed.

“But what if you focus on yourself and the money doesn’t come?” you ask. That’s a really good question. 

Let’s not look at the money for a moment. Let’s say you’re focusing on your relationship and you’re constantly arguing with your girlfriend, husband, or whoever you’re dating. If you take a cold, hard look at yourself, surely there’s something you can work on to be a better person. Let’s say you make promises and don’t follow through, or maybe you’re horrible with money, or some other bullshit; you decide to work on that issue. Let’s go with the first example—you don’t follow through with promises, so you make a conscious effort to do what you say you’re going to do. If the relationship works out, great, you’re a better person who follows through on your promises. If it doesn’t, you’re still a better person who follows through. This goes for just about anything in life, whether it’s finances, working out, relationships, art, you name it. If you turn your focus to just being better at you—as cliche as that sounds—in the end you’re a better person.

What’s great about it, is unless it’s absolutely necessary, you don’t even have to announce it to the world. You don’t have to make a status update like people who are getting ready to leave a Facebook group, “everyone, I’m leaving this group!” You can just do it and people will notice. Dick Gregory once said, “if you have to tell people you’re a Christian, you probably aren’t one.” If you have to post on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook that you’re an entrepreneur, about that mamba life, a Christian, a model, you probably aren’t one. Either you’re on your journey to being/doing something, or you aren’t. Posting Jay Shetty’s plagiarized quotes to inspire the fake hustler within is vomit-inducing enough. And please, don’t get me started on that fake ass hustle culture. Nobody gives a shit about what you say, they care about what you actually do and accomplish.

So as a fellow writer/artist, may I just say that, while there’s nothing wrong with having goals (and you really should have some!!!)—writing for Netflix, being a New York Times Bestseller, selling a screenplay to New Line Home Cinemas, etc., the focus in all that should be on becoming the best writer you can be. 

If you’re good enough at it, everything else will come along. And if it doesn’t, so the fuck what. At least you’re a better writer.

A New Series Of Stories

Posted on by johnpriceauthor

SO HERE I AM, COMPLETELY finished with the presidential book I have been working on well over a year now. The 3rd draft is dun…d-u-n, dun! And now, I know more about presidents than I care to admit. It’s probably going to take at least 2, maybe 3 months to be edited, and while I wanted to have it ready before the year was over, I’d rather have it done right the first time (or as good as I can make it) or not at all.

After finishing it, I came to the conclusion that I will most likely never write another history book. It’s tedious as hell. Verifying, and verifying and referencing, it gets old after awhile. Don’t get me wrong, I love research. In fact, I love doing research on historical shit more than I care to admit. For example, yesterday my girlfriend and I were joking about songs we grew up with…kids songs. And she brought up the song, ‘do your ears hang low’ and there’s a line in the song that goes, ‘can you throw them over your shoulder like a continental soldier.’ I told her that when I was a kid, I always thought the song was, ‘do your balls hang low,’ and that I’d never heard the bit about a continental soldier. So, we decided to consult the bible, aka…google and look up the actual words as well as the history of the song. 

Well…let me tell you something; the song was originally ‘do your balls hang low’ but was later sanitized, and ‘balls’ were replaced with ‘ears’ so that kids could sing it without getting the shit kicked out of them by their parents. But it doesn’t end there. The melody of it, and most of the lyrics, were sung by the British in WW1. Before that, it was the Turkey and the Straw, and before that, it was called ‘Zip Coon.’

And here, boys and girls, is where it gets interesting. Zip Coon, the melody of the song, anyway was a character in blackface who attempted to fit in with American high society. The song dates back to the 1830s. It’s a song that was always intended to be racist and has all the racist stereotypes associated with black Americans, watermelon, chicken, you name it. 

I honestly had no idea, and neither did most of you reading this. But this is what I love about writing, the research…I just hate coming up with a way to write it so that it doesn’t sound like I plagiarized the fuck out of it. That’s the part that can be exhausting. And yes, the book about presidents exhausted the hell out of me. Usually when I finish a story, I take about a week and kind of regroup. But this time…holy shit! I got finished with the book back in August and I haven’t really written anything up until about a week ago. 

Last week, I started another short story, and this one will take a different turn than all of my previous stories. I’m about to put together a collection of short stories that will take well over a year to complete. I have 17 short stories written out (first drafts) and every single one of them overlap; some of them overlap in several locations. Each story stands alone, meaning, you can read a story, and when it ends, it ends. However, in each story, someone makes an appearance who will have a story about them. 

I got the idea for this when I ran into someone who knew someone I used to know. I went to church years ago, and ran into someone who goes to that same church. This individual doesn’t know I went to that church because I left it over a decade ago. He started going to the church maybe 3 or 4 years ago, and I’m sure my name no longer comes up. Well…it may. That church had more gossip than any church I’ve been in so it’s possible. It’s crazy how the religious crowd is supposed to “go into the world and preach” but yet they segregate themselves into an elite group of super spiritual assholes.

Anyway, it’s crazy how paths cross and we meet people who know people and I was thinking, why not find a way to have people’s lives overlap in a series of stories? So…here goes. So why the image of Richmond? Because most of my stories take place in Richmond. If you are in Richmond, you’ll recognize some of the places.

Onto My Next Story…

Posted on by johnpriceauthor

Radwaniyah Palace Complex, Baghdad, Iraq

SO NOW THAT THE Story of Hope is out there for the world to see, what do I do now? I go back to writing. I took Wednesday to myself (what I mean by that is, no writing!) and went back at it on Thursday. I have a document that has every short story/novel idea in it, and good Lord, that thing has grown. Some of the ideas can be combined but that’s neither here nor there. Thursday morning, I opened it, and deciding what I want to write about next is probably the most difficult part. 

It’s difficult because I know that once I choose what I’m going to write, I have to be married to it for a period of time. It’s rare for me to begin writing a story and lose interest in it, but it has happened on occasion. If I don’t know how a story is going to end, or at least an idea of it, I don’t pick it up. The reason is because I have no idea how to end it, so I don’t even start it; there’s no direction so it’s pointless. It’s kind of like someone asking you if you want to go out to eat, but neither of you know what you want, or where you want to go. So you end up driving all over Richmond in the rain before finally settling somewhere that you may or may not even be excited about. Shit, you may even walk into two restaurants, look at their menu, turn around and walk out because nothing was grabbing you, and finally end up at Publix and for one of their epic sandwiches. That’s what writing a story with no ending is like. You end up somewhere that may or may not be what you want. 

While looking through all of my outlines, I finally settled on a story, and I don’t mean “settled” in a bad way. I sat down and talked the story over with my girlfriend and she helped me flesh that baby out. This is the part of writing that I love the most – the exploratory phase. It’s the best part but also the most exhausting because there’s so much research that goes into it. Where does the story take place and what time of year is it? What do our characters look like, and how do you describe them without making them resemble someone you know? What the hell are their names? Everything about them has to be fleshed out so that you can get to know them and know how they’d act or react in a situation. For example: Is the main character shy? Yes. So why did he become arrogant with his boss? That’s out of character for them. Do they struggle with their sexuality? Yes. Is it important to the story? No. So why is it in the story?

I think that last part confuses me about writing because so often I hear professionals say, “if xyz doesn’t move the story along, it doesn’t need to be in there,” and yet I watch movies/shows where this sort of thing happens all. the. time! I read books where the author (a professional at that) will write bullshit that is literally filler, and yet I’m told time and time again, “take that part out, it has nothing to do with the story.” Oh…okay. Sometimes I think people do it simply because they can.

Once I choose the story, and do the exploratory bullshit, it’s all downhill from there. Not really, but kind of. Writing is the easy part – coming up with the idea and direction, that part is hard. So here I go again…writing the first draft of what might be another novelette because I can’t see this next story being less than 7,500 words. 

Once I finish the first draft, I will put it down, and work on the 2nd draft of a previously finished story. When I finish the 2nd draft of that story, I will edit and rewrite the third draft of my next published short story called, ‘Hello Carolyn’, that I finished back in 2019. That means, the story I’m about to start working on, I probably won’t self publish it until sometime next year. So here we go…on to the next story. 

As I said years ago, after I publish a hard copy of a collection of all these stories, I will begin contacting literary agents. The plan was to always go in that direction, and hopefully see if Netflix will be interested. If you’re going to dream, dream big, right? If it happens, great! If not, that’s okay, too. But that said, I have no intention of pursuing something unless I believe in it, and I believe in this.

The Story of Hope…tomorrow

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Not a long post today, but tomorrow, my “short story” goes live on Amazon. The reason I put short story in quotations is because the average short story is less than 7,500 words. The Story of Hope is just under 9,000, which makes it a novelette. I guess I still call it a short story out of habit, but technically it’s a novelette. I look forward to pushing this baby out into the world, and I look forward to seeing where it goes.

I Think I Got Sidetracked…Again

Posted on by johnpriceauthor

Cute Squirrel by Kativ

MY LAST TWO POSTS ARE completely outside of what I’m supposed to be writing about, and when I look back at them, I’m kind of embarrassed. I’m not embarrassed because I wrote them, hell no! No, the reason I’m ashamed is because neither of those posts have anything to do with what my passion or goals are. I write stories, and both of those posts are opinions about things that have nothing to do with that. For the record, this is not to suggest I won’t write more opinionated posts, but I will do my best to stick with my writing goals. 

My girlfriend will be the first to tell you that I am easily distracted. I’m like Dug from the movie Up…squirrel! While writing does come easy to me, I do struggle with focus. On one hand you’d never know this. 

For example, last year when the pandemic hit and my girlfriend was being harassed by a cowardly, stalking psycho, I went full time with my art business. While all that ignorant, toxic fuckery was going on, I wrapped up a collection of presidential portraits (which I’ll discuss in a minute). I think I did 15 presidents, along with other portrait commissions, a painting of the Lee Monument (in its current state) that won 2 art shows (one of them, a national show) and sold for asking price within a month of its completion. On top of that, I painted 15 local Richmond coffee shops with coffee, 9 pop art portraits, did 31 pen and ink portraits of women I admire, and I just finished painting 30 breweries around Richmond that will be available on coasters in the upcoming days along with multiple landscape paintings, one of which was just purchased by VCU Health. Oh, and I was picked up to do a wine label…but who’s bragging, right? That…that’s a fucking narcissistic mouthful right there. 

One of the great things about being an artist is that unlike most people who take a fuckton of photos that they’ll never look at again, or post to social media and forget about, I get to create paintings of my travels that become memories, and something I get to sell and make prints of. It’s one thing to take a stereotypical basic bitch filtered photo posing in front of a sunset near a mountain like countless people. But it’s another to paint that memory, turn it into art prints, and share that memory with the world. Sure, the world may not be privy to all the memories that are invested in it, but when you see a painting I’ve done, it’s a good chance (not always, some are just art paintings because I liked the view) there’s a warm memory attached to it. 

That being said, yes, when I put my mind to it, I get shit done. 

This brings me to my current work. Over the last few months, I’ve been working on two presidential books and to be honest, it’s difficult as balls because it’s not my favorite type of writing. I love reading history and talking about it, but I don’t necessarily get off on writing about it. It’s a lot of research, verifying, research, verifying, and so on and so forth. There’s nothing creative about it, and it’s difficult to know what needs a footnote/reference and what doesn’t. What I think is common knowledge may not be to others. Sure, I can use wikipedia as my reference for everything, but we all know that while wikipedia is a good starting place, it’s not a creditable source (though I think that’s slowly changing.)

So the reason the blog was updated with bullshit posts is because it was a way for me to escape the meticulous research. The presidential book requires me to research every single president and find shit about them that’s not so common knowledge, and make it humorous and unbiased. Some things aren’t so easy to make unbiased…if a president did some shitty things, it is what it is. As of this writing, I am on Jimmy Carter, and if all goes well, I will be finished with the FIRST…yes, you read that right, FIRST draft of one of the presidential books by May. And let me tell you, if owning another book about presidents doesn’t excite your socks off, I don’t know what will.

My Book Will Probably Fail … And So Will Yours

Posted on by johnpriceauthor

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THERE IS A PRINCIPLE IN the universe called Price’s Law, after Derek J. de Solla Price. It’s a brutal law that doesn’t seem to make sense, but is pretty damn accurate across the board. Why is it that the richest 2% have more than the bottom 98% regardless of the governing body? It’s not a capitalist, or socialist, or communist, or any other ‘ist’ that’s responsible.

No matter how good you are at basketball, only a small percent will make it to the NBA and an even smaller percentage will stand out. Millions of people can fight, but very few will make it to the UFC. And boxing? When it comes to boxing, a tiny portion will make it to the top. Even if you are at the top of your game in boxing, nobody cares that you’re number 9 in the world. This is not just in the sporting world – the majority of scientific papers are published by a handful of scientists. Almost all commercial music is produced by a tiny portion of producers. Think of your classical musicians and who comes to mind …  just a few composers – Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, and almost all modern orchestras play their music. Even of those four, no matter how much they composed, only a few select pieces of their music is played. In a business, few sales people will land at the top, and few businesses will stand out in the world of economics.

We can go beyond the mere spectacle of human accomplishments to see this unequal distribution of wealth. In most states, a small number of cities have all the people. There is a vast amount of land in the United States, but in each state, most of the people live in a small area. There are over 170,000 words in the English language, but most of our conversation online or in person consists of the distribution of maybe 500 words, rearranged in regular conversation. In the vastness of space, solar systems take up a small portion of space itself, and even fewer of those heavenly bodies contain all the matter.

Millions of books are published each year, and less than a thousand will sell more than 100,000 copies annually, and even less than that will sell a million copies. As an artist, and someone who writes almost every damn day, I know that because of this principle, my chances of standing out are slim.

I’m a good artist. You might even say I’m a successful artist – I make a living selling art and writing, but I’m not a great artist. I have no international accolades, and beyond my small sphere, I’m relatively unknown.

My chances, and your chances of dominating the market and getting ahead are so slim, but it’s not zero and that’s what makes the journey so entertaining. Someone once said that the past is already completed, the future is unknown, and we’re always trying to fix the present. This is why we’re continually trying to improve ourselves and our situation -to traject ourselves forward. As long as your chance isn’t zero, why not give it all you’ve got? Zero is an interesting number in and of itself. If you have 1% chance of succeeding, at least you have a chance … but if you have zero chance, the game is over. Nothing comes from zero.

So even though I know the chances of my books selling a million copies, or ever getting them turned into a series on Netflix, is so minuscule, at least I have a chance. I have a wonderful support system, strong people in my life, and a drive to make it happen. Regardless of the small percentage of success, I’d rather set my trajectory towards a path that I find fulfillment and that I believe I’m supposed go, than to wander aimlessly in this life. Happiness is in the journey, not in the destination.

Will your book fail? Probably. So might mine. But you have a chance – it’s not zero – and that’s not something to take lightly.

Waiting …

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SHE LIT A CANDLE AND looked down. In the dark of the room, the light flickered off her aging skin. She was up in age, barely even able to see, but managed to get around on her own.

“When the candle gets low, would you please blow it out? Last time, you nearly set the damn house on fire,” she said with a chuckle.

Here in the house, all by herself, she’d talk for hours on end. 

“Would you like the fan off?” she asked. “I can leave it on for you if you’d like. I know how hot it can get in there.”

The room was ever so quiet.

“The noise?” she asked. “I wouldn’t concern yourself with the noise. Sooner or later, it’ll be over. Maybe a day or so at the most. If you can get over the scratching sound. That’s the hardest part.

It’s always the hardest part.”

This is the beginning of one of my short stories, ‘The New Gardeners’. Here we see a character, an elderly woman, talking to someone and lighting a candle. At this moment, the audience doesn’t know who she’s talking to or why, but she ends the scene with a statement that if they wait long enough, the scratching eventually stops. But waiting for it to stop, that’s the hard part. 

I think that’s the hardest part of anything we go through in life – whether we’re waiting to see if our resume is accepted, to see if that girl or boy will respond to our text, or if that customer will buy our product. We put our voice out there and hope/wait for it to be accepted. In that timeframe of waiting, I find it’s best to just pick up another story, or another canvas, and keep at it. I don’t have to be in agony while I wait.

Agents that say that it may take 2 months to get a response, I don’t waste my time with them. They’re obviously busy, and I respect that. I’d prefer to query my work to agents that have time to respond to authors. What’s great is that, as a writer, most agents get back to you in about a week, but dammit, if that ain’t a rough week.

How SMART Are You?

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I THOUGHT I WOULD TAKE a moment to write about something that is making me take a step back, but not in the way that you might think. Sometimes the hardest thing to do, is to take a step back just so you can take two steps forward.

I’ve always written my goals down, what I wanted to do, and from time to time, I was specific. Most of the time, however, I was not. My girlfriend is a planner and everything in life must have a timetable. If you don’t have goals … written, structured, solid goals, then you’re like a player running around on a field who will never score. 

The goal of any game is to score more points than the other team. But it’s not just about scoring all these goals, but in how they’re going to do it. They know there’s going to be opposition, and using history, they strategize how they’re going to win – if they do this, then we do that. If we throw the ball over here, this guy here is going to most likely run this way. If he doesn’t then this is how you should get around him.

They come up with not only a plan for how to make shit happen, but what to do in the event it doesn’t happen as planned. I generally type after I’ve consumed a buttload of coffee, so forgive the grammar. 

My girlfriend introduced me to SMART goals. I’d never heard about this, but it’s the ability to track your goals and measure what you’re doing. 

What do you want to do? Well … I want to be an artist. 

That’s not a goal, that’s an aspiration, a desire, a hope for something in the future. I’m already an artist, that doesn’t change whether I work at Walmart in the stockroom, or own a graphics shop. But what goals as an artist do I have? What goals as a writer do I have? 

I’ve said for some time now, that I want to have my short stories either turned into a series on Netflix, or a part of a series. That’s my goal … but what’s SMART about it?

If you already know what I’m talking about, forgive me, but I’m just coming across this. 

  • Specific: Well defined, clear, and unambiguous
  • Measurable: With specific criteria that measure your progress towards the accomplishment of the goal
  • Achievable: Attainable and not impossible to achieve
  • Realistic: Within reach, realistic, and relevant to your life purpose
  • Timely: With a clearly defined timeline, including a starting date and a target date. The purpose is to create urgency.

This is most likely why I get distracted easy. So here we go … while writing and planning my the ultimate outcome (which may change as I go along) I don’t think it’s a bad idea to take this week and come up with Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely goals for my writing. 

Photo Credit: Alexa Williams @glamorousplanning