You gotta have goals.

"Memory" - 16 x 16" colored pencil on board.
Copyright 2008 Maggie Stiefvater.
My panel for the Equine Mural Mosaic (which is fascinating -- check it out)

Regular readers will know that I am in love with goals. If goals were a vegetable, I would pick bushels of them, eat them until I was sick, and then freeze the rest so that I could have a continuous supply of goals through the cold months.

One thing I have learned about goals, however, is that, like vegetables, if you don’t use ‘em or freeze ‘em right away, they go bad. Some of them go bad in a spectacular fashion. Like if you vow to lose 20 pounds at the beginning of the year, forget about the goal, and then discover Haagen-Daas ice cream sometime in June . . . not only is that goal to lose weight gone bad, but it’s bad like stinking in the bottom of your crisper drawer bad. With rotten goal juice eeking around it.

And other goals go bad in a sort of failure to stay relevant way. Like if you suddenly crave sweet potatoes and buy a ton of them. If you don’t cook all of them, you’ll have those few lonely ones left over. They’ll never go bad in a fantastically awful way, but you’ll end up throwing them away after eight months because you just don’t want them anymore. So goals should be checked often and the ones that are really timely ought to be attacked immediately.

So enough with the metaphor. I wanted to write a post today about New Year’s Resolutions. Stop staring at the screen like that, it’s rude. I know it’s nearly the end of July (yes, it’s nearly the end. The 21st. Can you believe it?) but they’re still a good topic. Because halfway through the year(ish) is a great time to pull out your Resolutions and see which of them are done, which of them are so irrelevant you’ll never truthfully attempt them, and which of them are oozing stink-juice in your veggie drawer.

Here’s the sordid truth about New Year’s Resolutions: very rare is the resolution which actually stays good for a year. Twelve months is a long time. Priorities change, economies shift, careers jiggle, exercise goes better than planned, things get born under your porch with six limbs and eyes that glow red faintly in the darkness. It just makes good sense to reevaluate your goals partway through the year to make sure they’re still functioning the way they’re supposed to.

Here are my New Year’s Resolutions I made at the beginning of the year. Let me show y’all how I’m changing them to make them fit my changing priorities (without welching on any of them).

1. make x amount of money with my art
2. make x amount of money with my novels
3. make x amount of that with prints.
4. Contract for sequel to Lament.
5. Memorize 2 O’Carolan pieces for the harp
6. Visit NYC
7. Inspire someone to be an artist
8. Comfortably run a mile
9. Record a lament for Lament.
10. Get an agent
11. Contract for one other book.

I've managed to accomplish #1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 10, and 11. Instead of just crossing them off the list, I’m revising them.

NEW 1. Establish a solid financial plan for the next two years. (See how this is related to my first three goals I accomplished?
NEW 4. Begin writing Re: Myself, my next work in progress. (See how this one flows naturally from finishing Ballad and handing it in to my editor? The idea isn’t to keep myself constantly busy for the sake of being busy – but rather to keep myself motivated and on track for my career and personal life.)
NEW 7. Talk to one hundred teen writers about the business of writing. I’m about a third of the way there already. (similar purpose, just different career)
NEW 10. Keep my novel website updated regularly.
New 11. Double my number of subscribers to my writing blog (m-stiefvater.livejournal.com) and my short story blog (www.merryfates.com) (see how both of these are about furthering my writing career, just like the original goals)

Now for the ones I haven't done yet. Two stay as they are: I'm still going to NYC and I'm still going to record the lament -- I've written it, I just need to make it into the studio.

But two need to be changed.

I didn’t do #5. I’ll confess, I let these two musical pieces sort of go stale next to my potatoes. I had thought I’d be playing my harp more, but really I’ve been working with my acoustic guitar more as the harp needs new strings. So I’m changing #5 to something that will actually have meaning on the list: Buy an electric guitar for my birthday in November and start to learn some fun tricks on it.

And I worked diligently on #8, running a mile, until it got hot – really hot – and then I decided that I really needed something that I could do indoors. I’ve been dying to get killer abs, so I switched this to sit-ups instead. (and whoo do I see a difference . . . you could throw bricks at me now and my abs would repel them). Anyway, so my new number 8 is to do sit ups three times a week for the rest of the year. Still fitness related. But totally air conditioned. Go on, call me a wuss . . .

So how about you guys? Have you revamped your goals yet? Do you need to?

The Last Butt-Kicking of 2007

Successful people believe that they have the internal capacity to make desirable things happen.

This is perhaps the most central belief shown to drive individual success. People who believe they can succeed see opportunities where others see threats. This comfort with ambiguity leads people to take greater risks and achieve greater returns.

Successful people tend to not feel like victims of fate. They believe that they have the motivation and ability to change their world. They see success for themselves and others as largely a function of motivation and ability, not luck, random chance or external factors.

-from "How Successful People Become More Successful"

Okay, folks. Here it is. My last friendly butt-kicking of 2007, for artists, writers, moms, and anybody else who reads this blog. I don't pretend to be the most successful person in the world, but I can say that I'm happy with where I'm at as a brand-new 26-year-old. I'm better off this December than I was last December. If I've made the same leap by next year, I'll be happy next year too.

I'm a big believer in goals, so for me, setting New Year's Resolutions seems pretty obvious. I tend to write down my resolutions right before the New Year and then modify them throughout the year as I meet them. And I do tend to meet them. Want to hear some of mine from last year's resolutions?

1. make my living entirely from art again this year (despite a ghastly October that had me eating way too much spaghetti with no sauce, I did this) (and I had a set money figure that I wanted to meet for myself to count as "making my living", which I'm not going to share here, so don't ask, you nosy buggers)
2. get a contract for one of my novels (regular blog readers will know that LAMENT is coming out in Fall '08)
3. get into American Academy of Equine Art's exhibition (didn't do this but got into the Colored Pencil Society of America's International Exhibition instead).
4. teach more workshops (the Detroit branch of the CPSA flew me out there to teach a three day workshop in March, which was very fun & I've been asked to do a series of 5 workshops in Northern Virginia in '08)

For me, there's no need to convince me about the value of New Year's Resolutions. Setting goals works, because it makes me accountable. How can I be successful if I don't know what I'm supposed to be trying to do? With that in mind, I've dug up some useful goals links for the wafflers amongst you to read before setting your goals. Setting bad goals is worse than none at all, so make sure you're doing it right.

Make Your Goals Specific
The Mindset of Successful People (scroll down to get to the good part)
Hokey Article about Visualizing Goals

The most important thing is to make your goals specific. "Make Money with my Art" is a crummy goal. "Make xx,xxx" with my art is a better goal, because you'll know when you've achieved it. And if you only make x,xxx amount with your art, you know how far you still have to go, and you'll stretch to reach it.

The next thing is to make your goals something that you can mostly do under your own steam. Don't put "Achieve world peace" (which is another sucky non-specific goal by the way) unless you think you can do most of that on your own.

And the next important thing is to not make your goals too easy. Sure, you can throw in some gimmies. But throw in some stretches there. You risk not making them, but you also include that chance that you might. And if you don't put them in there, I can guarantee that you won't make them.

And finally, show them to everyone. Remember that accountability thing? The more people that see them, the more real those goals are. You have a reason to achieve them, to prove yourself to others as well as to yourself.

With that said, here are my top ten goals for 2008.

1. Make 75% of my income from my art. (I have an actual dollar amount that only my family knows).
2. Make 25% of my income from my writing.
3. Shift my art income to 75% prints, products with my art on it, and workshops and the rest from originals.
4. Get a contract for at least one other novel and the sequel to LAMENT.
5. Learn to play my two favorite O'Carolan pieces on my harp (this is my gimmie, but I wouldn't make time for it unless I put it on the list).
6. Visit New York City with my husband (and maybe my toddlers).
7. Inspire at least one other person to go full-time with their art.
8. Comfortably run a mile by the end of the year (this is another gimmie, but like the other one, I wouldn't feel like I had to do it unless it's on this list).
9. Get into the studio to record a lament for LAMENT & build website for book with the tune as a download.
10. Land a good literary agent.
(11). Get my dog Ginger to stop smelling like fish.

Looking at that, I'm sure I'm missing some things, but I'm going to jot them down as I think of them. And you know what I'm doing right at this moment? I'm taking that list, using a beautifully fat and smelly Sharpie to write them on a piece of cardstock and taping it next to my desk where I can see them every day. And I can't wait to start crossing them off.

Let's see your goals, folks. Post a comment here if you've put your goals up on your blog, or if you're afraid to do it that publicly, feel free to email them to me (portraitswithcharacter AT gmail.com) if you want me to help you feel accountable.

Happy New Year! It's going to be a good one.