How to Set Goals

sundialI am a failure at meeting big goals.

This year I tried to game the system — my personal system, I mean. I signed up for on-line goal setting challenges. I read books about setting goals. I wrote down all of my goals. I opened an Evernote account and wrote all of my goals there. I downloaded Evernote onto my phone.

Finish current novel. Return to previous “new” novel and finish that, too — by July! Put together a new poetry manuscript. Submit 50 sets of poems for publication. Submit all short stories. Lose ten (more) pounds. Declutter house. Submit novel to ten contests. Attend PNWA conference in July. Send novel to 30 new agents.

After setting it up, I never opened my Evernote file again. I did not finish the work I had planned for either of the novels. I did not submit any poems or stories. I entered one novel contest and didn’t even get a reply, let alone a place. (Scratch “attend conference” off list.)

Not long ago I confided in my friend Priscilla Long that it isn’t working. What do you want? She asked me. I want to make progress, I said. Specifically? she prodded. Okay, I hemmed and hawed a little, then answered, I want to write for four to six hours a day.

You can’t work for four or six hours, Priscilla said. You can only work for fifteen minutes. 

Oh, I said.

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“Be Gentle with Yourself”

It’s so irritating to realize (at my advanced age!), that this lesson, which I have already learned and more than once, must be circled back to and learned again.

It’s the wisdom of small steps. It’s the wisdom of accumulated effort. I don’t know if it’s true for everyone, or if Priscilla, having gone through this with me numerous times before, just knows that it’s true for me. But I have to start with fifteen minutes. I have to turn over my quarter-hour glass, or set my phone timer, or go to  http://e.ggtimer.com/ and set that. Then, I focus. I can focus, intensely, for fifteen minutes. Frequently (usually) I end up working for fifteen minutes 2 or 3 times in a row. Frequently (usually) I end up working for a few hours. But it starts with fifteen minutes.

I am a genius at meeting very small goals.

 

 

The Joy of Poetry: As Much as She Could Carry

Enjoy an excerpt of the newest title from T. S. Poetry Press, The Joy of Poetry: How to Keep, Save & Make Your Life with Poems, by Megan Willome.

Source: The Joy of Poetry: As Much as She Could Carry

Poets in the Park

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Next weekend I’ll be reading in Redmond at Poets in the Park. I’m on the schedule twice (to my surprise), at 4:00 with writers Priscilla Long, Holly Hughes, and John Wright, and again a little later in the day, 5-5:30, along with Polly Buckingham of Stringtown, and Robert McNamara.

Click here to see the full schedule of readings and workshops.

When Women Were Birds

IMG_0181I bought this lovely book last summer while on a mini-retreat in Port Townsend. Then, as I often do, I mislaid the book and didn’t read it. The other day, a friend asked if I wanted to see Terry Tempest Williams with her at the Mount Baker Theatre in Bellingham (tonight!). Despite my usual crazy-busy schedule, I said yes. She will be talking about her new book, but I found my copy of When Women Were Birds and began reading it again.

The subtitle, Fifty-four Variations on Voice, is one of the aspects of this book that first drew me to it. And it doesn’t disappoint. It’s a a holder of stories: Terry Tempest Williams’ ancestors, especially her mother, are here; writer progenitors; the voices of birds; the voice of myths, both familiar and unfamiliar, domestic and international.

The concept behind the book is the gift of Williams’ mother’s journals to her, journals that turned out to be blank. When Women Were Birds seems to include everything Williams has read, and everything she reads between the lines (as it were) of what she has been denied. It’s a gift of interpretation, and a faithful rendering of a woman’s own complex and multi-vocal life. It is the story of a woman finding her voice.

“Rufous-sided towhees scratched in the understory of last year’s leaves; lazuli buntings were turquoise exclamation marks singing in a canopy of green; and blue-gray gnatcatchers became commas in a ongoing narrative of wild nature.”

Williams’ reverence for landscape is well known. Here, she reminds me that we are, each of us, an interpreter of our experience, of all that comes before us, and all that we co-exist with. What if we were reverent instead of defensive? What if we stopped and felt wonder, instead of looking for something to buy, or denounce, or attack? Reading this book, I’m reminded of the miracle of my own existence.

“I had been reading The Tongue Snatchers, by the French writer Claudine Herrmann. She focuses on the French verb voler, which means ‘to fly’ or ‘to steal,’ the two paths traditionally available to women when we speak. We either flee and disappear or steal, adopt, and adapt to the dominant language of men, often at our own expense. Herrmann offers another route, that of the ‘Mother Tongue,’ the voice with an authentic vernacular akin to our experiences, fierce and compassionate at once; the voice as a knife that can slice, carve, or cut, shape, sculpt, or stab.”

Whenever I feel the impulse to buy several copies of a book and distribute it to all of my friends, I come here instead. You’re welcome.