This is a struggle that many creators often face.  The idea they want to write is so perfectly formed in their head and yet when it comes time to put pen to paper, the story doesn’t quite match what was in their head.  It’s much rougher and not as fully formed as they would like it to be.

I recently faced this with a project I’ve been working on.  I had plenty of passion for the project, it’s a story that has been on my mind for 4 years or so…But after a few months of working on characters and plot, I realized though I loved the characters and my idea, my skills to tell this story weren’t up to snuff.

When you hit this crossroads, you can do one of two things:  

1.  Give up and throw your hands in the air.
2.  Put the story away for a little while.  Build your skills.  Come back to it later.

If you give up, it’s over.  If you put the story on the shelf and keep working to become a better creator, you can come back to it someday and do it justice.

I’m an avid Neil Gaiman fan.  I loved his writing advice before I fell in love with his writing, because he is often very raw and very honest.  There are a few times where he will mention that he started a story or got an idea, only to finish it years later, long after the initial spark.

Sometimes you just aren’t ready to tell a particular story, even if you love the story to pieces.  I find that I know I’ve hit this point when all the pleasure goes out of writing the story.  Writing is a job, yes, but for me I never want it to feel like hard, monotonous work.

It’s important to have passion and skill for any project you plan to work on.  If you are pursuing a creative endeavor, if you are making stories or art you should love it.  It shouldn’t be just a job, if it feels like a constant slog and you can’t find your passion for the project…Switch projects.  If switching doesn’t help, maybe it’s time to find a new passion.  You want to be excited about what you are working on.  If you can’t find that excitement no matter what you try, then it’s either time to take a break or time to try something else.

There are much easier jobs that pay better that don’t require creative stress.  Creating is labor, but it should be the kind of labor you enjoy doing.

I’ll end this post with a great quote on this topic from Ira Glass:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.

A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work.

Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

I am a bit of a planning nut, so I tend to have daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly goals. Goals are fantastic and necessary if you want to work toward achieving something you have never done before.  A few people do magically stumble into the career or life of their dreams, but they are the exception, not the rule.  Your goals don’t have to be perfect starting out, nor do they have to be as thorough as mine tend to be.

Here’s the thing though, goals are just sentences on a piece of paper or glyphs on a google doc without a plan to work toward them.  So let’s break both concepts down and look at what makes a good goal and what makes a great plan.

How To Write Good Goals

There are a few tried and true aspects you need to have a good goal.  Here are the basics:

• Be Specific – Don’t be vague.  Being vague about your goals tends to make them more difficult to work toward.  While it’s tempting to say “I want to be a writer” and put that as your goal, it is very general and not very motivational.  A goal like “I want to publish two short stories this year” gives you specific information about what you would like to achieve.
• Make Your Goal Measurable – For a goal to be measurable, there needs to be evidence you have done something once you achieve it.  Again, “I want to be a writer” is sort of a flimsy goal because there is no way to measure progress when the goal is so general.  If your goal is about publishing two short stories, as mentioned above, if you get one or two stores published, you have a clear, measurable way to look at your progress.
• Make It Attainable –  If you set impossible goals, you are sabotaging your motivation.  Making goals that are attainable is going to help you build on the momentum you get as you start achieving the goals you’ve set.  “I want to be a famous writer” might be unattainable in the short-term.  “I want to steadily self-publish two shorts and 1 novel per year.” is something that you can do if you put your nose to the grindstone and keep working.
• Make It Time-Bound  – You need a deadline.  Sometimes deadlines still pass you by, but having a clear time limit can be a great way to hold yourself accountable for the goals you have set.  This is why I make daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly goals.  It gives me clear time constraints on the different projects I’m working on.

How To Make A Plan To Achieve Them

If a goal is a thing you want, then the plan is the nuts and bolts of how you get it.  I find that the best way to avoid overwhelming yourself with a big plan is to break it all down into smaller steps.

When I taught special education, we often used a thing called “Task Analysis” to help students learn new and complicated skills.  We would do this by breaking the task or skill down into smaller steps and then we would teach those smaller steps to the student.  Once they knew the smaller steps, they could chain them together and accomplish the more complicated skill.

I use this sort of method all the time when I approach plans. To make a good plan, you break the goal down into various small steps, steps that feel a lot easier to accomplish than the goal as a whole.

Here is an example of a recent way I used this method to make a plan:

One of my current goals is to publish a short story I wrote on Amazon.  It was a story that was accepted into an anthology but the publishing contract fell through.  Rather than let it sit on my computer, I decided I wanted to self-publish it.  The writing and editing are already done, but for example’s sake, we’ll pretend like I’m starting from scratch.

My plan might look something like this:

1. Write a short story (6-10k words)
   1. Write the Draft of the story
   2. Self-Edit the Draft
   3. Have a friend or friends proofread and give feedback
   4. Polish the final draft
2. Get the story ready for publication
   1. Figure out how to format the story for e-publishing (or commission someone to format it)
   2. Commission or make a cover for the story
3. Publish the Story

Now, the steps in between may have other sub-steps that require learning or research on my part, but this is an actionable plan with clear steps to help me work toward my goal.

When working toward your dreams, you’ll want to set goals and then make plans to work toward them.  I hope this little break down helps give you a better idea of how you can do both and do them well.

Like many women around my age, I grew up totally in love with Legally Blonde.  Elle Woods inspired me, because though many underestimated her and did not think she was smart enough to achieve her goals, she was determined.  I have always had a bit of that contrary attitude in me.  I think sometimes spite can be a great motivator, we can push past some of the boundaries that hold us back, just to show the nay-sayers that we are more than capable of accomplishing what they said we could not do.  Or would not do.

I recently saw the Glamour Woman of the Year 2015 speech given by Reese Witherspoon, the actress who played Elle Woods, and really struck a chord with me.  I’ll link you to a video with her speech below so you can watch it as well, but the question she brought up and it’s prevalence in movies really made me think.

In her speech, she draws attention to the fact that in a lot of films there is a crisis moment where a female character turns to a male character and asks this question “What are we going to do?”  Like most women, I have had times in my life where I have turned to loved ones and asked this question, but I think they are probably greatly outnumbered by the times where I did not ask this question.  I have also watched countless women in my life go through a crisis and handle it.  Sometimes with grace and elegance, other times with tears and perseverance.

I have been blessed to be surrounded by amazing, complicated, inspiring women for most of my life.  I have watched my mother lose the love of her life and continue on against those sorrows to carve out her own happiness after that terrible loss.  I have grandmothers who are both strong in their own ways, even though they are opposite in many ways.  I have darling sister and her amazing daughter, both who help bring out the best and most caring side of my heart.  I have female friends, a mother-in-law, step-sisters and sisters-in-law who all work to create the life they love, despite the hardships we all face in life.  Each of these women are unique and all of them are capable.

I say it a lot in my life and some on this blog, but women’s stories are important.  It is important that those stories are as nuanced and unique as the women we meet each day.

So that is why, lately, I have been asking myself “What am I going to do?”  I am going to let the women in my life inspire me to write interesting and nuanced stories.  I’m going to write comics about heroes one day that my nieces can both read and be inspired by.  I’m going to write stories that feel important to me.  Stories that tell about the complicated inner lives of both women and men.