Notes to My Beginning Writer Self: On setting goals
Dear Me Then,
You’ve decided to go for it. Writing is no more your secret passion, an affair between you and the crumpled pages of your spiral notebooks. You’re going public. Alerting friends, family, lovers, strangers, and the universe of your intention to become a professional writer.
Let me be the first and (spoiler alert) only person to say: Congratulations! You went through a lot to get here, a struggle only we will ever understand. Years of self-doubt. Self-loathing on occasion. Anguished efforts to meet the expectations of other people who said This is who you should be.
You’ll spend years overlooking the prize you won in that fight because no one else can see it. Over time, however, you will come to see your reward as the one truth that’s always with you, your sole unshakeable known.
I know — my telling you what will be doesn’t help you with what is. But I’m writing to you anyway, to share some small advice I think will help you along the way. Maybe the act of putting these thoughts into words will be like striking a bell that will resonate through time and somehow reach your ears.
That being my agenda, I guess it doesn’t matter which subject I choose to start. But since you’re beginning life as a writer, I’ve decided the first thing I want to write about is setting goals. You’ll read volumes of advice on this subject in the coming years before forming your own opinion. Here it is, for the record:
You don’t have to.
I repeat: You don’t have to set goals as a writer.
At least, not yet.
You’ll try, of course. The siren song of strongly voiced opinions will lead you to believe that defining objectives is the only way to advance. You’ll buy index cards and scrawl Finish script, Get movie made, earn $ to write. You’ll tack them to the walls above your desk and leave them until they fade and bend, and then you’ll replace them with new notes, different goals. But neither the cards nor the ideas you articulate on them will create a space for the person you’ve just discovered within yourself to grow.
As a physical being, you’re already mature. You’re an adult with opinions and knowledge and a sense of how to get things done. But your writer self is a newborn — beautiful, perfect, unable to stand. It can’t even say its own name. It’s certainly not ready for the world of definitions and deadlines, competitions and critique.
And that’s okay. The time for goal-setting will come someday, naturally. Now is the time for your writer self to grow and play.
Allow that to happen. Ignore the people who doubt you’re a “real writer” just because you haven’t published a book or had a film made or earned a certain amount of money. Most of those people won’t give you a flicker of validation after you’ve met their definitions anyway. How could they? They’re being washed through life without an anchor. Their perception is limited by looking only in a single direction.
Reject the idea of forward motion as progress. And as you begin this journey, focus instead on this: You’ve discovered being. As everything in your orbit is being swept around by time, that discovery will give you the power to stay.
Until next time,
Me Now
Meagan Daine is a television, film, and podcast writer specializing in alternative coming-of-age stories about diverse characters in extraordinary circumstances. She is currently a staff writer on the BET drama Games People Play. Follow her on Twitter/IG @writeordienow or check out her latest projects at writeordienow.com.
