Where do you want to be?

Where do you want to be five years from now?  No, this isn't a job interview.  It's a career question.  Where do you want your writing career to be five years from now?  Three years?  One?  Next month?  On one of the big lists?  Looking at your astronomically large bank statement?  Or simply getting great feedback from your critique partner/group?  Big or small, grand or humble, dreams can be reached by a) making a plan and b) taking incremental steps forward.  Man did not step on the moon the day after President Kennedy issued the challenge to be there by the end of the decade (the 60's.)  It took over eight years, and many, many small steps.  The first men in space didn't even circle the globe.  With each mission, more data was collected and the goals grew larger.

What was your first writing goal?  To finish a book?  A scene?  A sentence?  Mine was to write the end of the book.  I woke from a dream and had a the ending scene in my head.  I didn't know these people, I had no idea what their beginning was, but I vowed to get them to the climatic end.  (I learned about big, black moments later.)

After awhile, I realized I needed help, so I took a gigantic, courageous step and found a writing group.  Then a critique group.  I finished a book.  And another.  A contest was entered.  A query letter was written.  A writing conference was put on the calendar.  Individual goals, but each was a step on the path to publication.

Were they part of a plan?  Nothing I'd consciously put on paper.  Do you want to leave your career to chance, or do you want concrete, constructive input?  Get out a piece of paper, open a new Word file, uncap that dry-erase marker.  Go ahead, I'll wait.  (insert Jeopardy theme song)  Ready?  At the top, write your goal.  Make it a big goal.  Now write the thing that has to happen just before the goal becomes a reality.  Write the action before that.  And the one before that.  Keep working backward until you are at where you are now.  Guess what?  You wrote a plan.   Add some target dates for each mini-goal and you have a workable plan.

Now go out and make it a reality.  I will.