There has been much talk of goals around me of late. I’m typically bothered by it. “You should have goals,” people at work will say – bosses, coworkers with better titles than mine (which are most of my coworkers). “It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have goals,” my mother says – and she is also a coworker with a better title than mine. “Write your goals!” says my father, who prefers a direct approach – which is either refreshing or intimidating, depending on the circumstance.

Yet, I find myself without goals in my professional life. Of course, if you count “making enough money to pay my rent and buy enough food to keep me alive” as a goal, that is mine. I do feel fulfilled by the work I do because I am helping others on a daily basis. But if I sit and think “What is the one thing I want to do?” the answer is always the same. It always has been.

Write. I want to write.

My ultimate dream is to be able to be a full-time writer. I don’t want this to be a dream that is realized because I marry a man who makes enough money for me to quit my job and write full time. I want it to be because I publish something that people want to read and have fun reading.

The problem with this is that people don’t think it is an acceptable dream. In the ever-loving and ever straightforward words of my businessman father – “Write a book? I meant a real  goal, Amber.” (I should mention here that he is always supportive of my writing, he is just terribly practical and well-versed in the difficulties life can throw at you. But you can bet that when I get published one day, he will basically be president of my fan club, carrying around my book and telling people his daughter wrote it. My mom, too. Co-president of my fan club. She is, incidentally, my current biggest fan, and she reads rough drafts of my chapters regularly.)

“So, perhaps I don’t have goals after all.” I began to think this and was disheartened. Then I ran across something kind of great.

One of my favorite YA authors, Marissa Meyer – author of the Lunar Chronicles – recently blogged about a letter she had written to herself when she was twenty-four.

She had written to encourage herself to keep writing, pretending that she was five years older and published. The letter is wonderful and reflects a lot of how I feel these days – at the same age she was when she wrote the letter to herself. It’s a difficult time, starting something that you know is going to be good but that isn’t there yet. It’s hard to keep sight of the end when you don’t know quite when that will be. It’s easy to get discouraged.

At the end of the letter, she included two lists that she made. Motivations for Writing, and Fears that Keep Me from Writing (and ways to work around them).

Using that as an inspiration, I have decided that it isn’t ridiculous to have goals as a writer. Though many might disagree, I don’t think it’s ridiculous that these are the goals that are most important to me. I love my work at my company but I am a writer first and always.

I am going to make my own lists. 25,000 words into my current project seems as good a time as any to reflect.

My Motivations for Writing

1. Telling the stories that these wonderful characters I have dreamed up want told, thereby giving them the respect they deserve by chronicling their adventures.
2. Offering readers the same escape from reality that books always have and always will offer me.
3. To entertain people of all ages with stories of magic and impossible things.
4. To give myself a world to enjoy other than my own (unmagical) one.
5. To improve as a writer and find my own voice.
6. To fulfill my university creative writing professor’s prediction that I am going to be a successful writer – don’t want to let him down!
7. To convey life, love, happiness, sorrow, and fun – and any other possible emotion – the way I see it in the hopes that it allows someone the chance to say “I feel that way, too,” and reminds them that they aren’t alone.

Fears That Keep Me from Writing (and ways to work around them)

1. Self doubt – fear that I have no original ideas or ways of saying things, that I’m just not that good. (Remember that no one is that good in the first draft. Remember that you like writing for the process – and the process includes crappy writing that can be fixed later!)
2. Comparing myself to other writers. (They’re published and you’re not, but that won’t always be the case. Remember that you have the potential to be on those shelves with them, even if you aren’t quite there yet!)
3. Revising before I’m done with the first draft. (Stop being so OCD. The best writing you do comes when you don’t over think. Remember that manic, can’t-stop-this-momentum, worry-about-the-edits-some-other-time free writing produces the most unexpected – and therefore most fun – results.

There we have it. Thank you, Marissa Meyer, and I hope to look back at this in five years when I’m almost thirty and find that some of it has come true!