We’ve heard it all our lives: “Set goals, but set reasonable goals.”  The thinking is, if you set illogical goals or outrageous goals and you don’t meet them, you’ll be disappointed and will stop moving forward.

Perhaps if you have been stuck for a very long time and need simply to knock yourself off of dead center, reasonable goals can be powerful. Accomplishing anything in that state will be good for you. In any other circumstance, however, I say that advice is Poppycock!

Set outrageous goals. Set goals that stretch your imagination almost to the breaking point. Set goals that fill you with fear and excitement. Dread and excitement.

When I was younger and perusing my acting career, I took this old advice to heart and set very reasonable, realistic goals. Instead of saying, “I will be on a television show by the end of the summer” I set goals like, “I will send out 10 pictures and resumes this week.”  I accomplished those goals with little or not effort. I patted myself on the back, knowing that the industry would swoop down and hire me. How could they not! I’d reached my goals!

Do you think people like Michael J. Fox or Carroll O’Connor set puny little goals like that? Do you think they would have starred on very popular, society changing television shows if they had? I rather doubt it. I stopped trying and blamed it on the industry. Shame on me.

As a writer, don’t be satisfied with “I will write 10 pages this week.”  Gone With the Wind, Dune and even Love Story didn’t get written with goals like that. Hamlet certainly didn’t. I suspect that those authors had goals something like, “I will finish a novel by Christmas.”  Don’t write the novel to become a New York Times Best Selling author, but by God, have the goal to be a New York Times Best Selling Author. Anything short of that isn’t worthy of you.  Aspire to Hamlet.

“But what if I don’t make my goals, Geoff? Won’t I be devastated?”

Perhaps. But if you had a goal of a finished novel by Christmas and only got 3/4 done, that would be a lot more accomplished than if you had a goal of 10 pages a week and finished the first chapter or two. Or worse, given it all up because it was a futile exercise. Shoot for the fucking stars. If you miss the stars, you at least get to see a lot of very cool stuff along the way.

Marianne Williamson said, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?”

Don’t be reasonable. Nothing great was ever accomplished by being reasonable. Don’t set average goals. Nothing great was ever accomplished by being average. Set a goal to be great. Set a goal to stand out. Then set goals that scare the pants off of you. Set goals that engage your imagination. Set goals that will piss off your friends and family.

Then do everything in your power to reach them.

I had a life-changing exchange with a teacher, once. We were talking about pursuing our passions, our art. About spending our lives doing something we loved. I stood up in class and asked a question that had been burning in my heart for years: “What if I’m just not talented?”

He asked me, “What if you’re not?”

I thought about that for a moment. At first I got mad. How could he even suggest that? (I was young and logic didn’t enter in to it.) Then, as I considered more, I realized that it didn’t matter at all. And it hasn’t mattered ever since.

I’ve seen people who were truly talented who did nothing with their talent. I’ve seen people who had very little talent, but a lot of drive that sailed in their chosen profession. Over the few months after that conversation, I slowly removed that question from my mind. I did it by saying to myself that I had absolutely no talent, and that I was going to pursue art anyway. It eased a very heavy burden. A burden I’d been carrying a very long time.

I have worked hard over the years. I’ve developed my eye, my ear, my sensibilities. I’ve listened to words and read words and put words together. I’ve experimented and discovered what worked, what was effective, what wasn’t as effective. My love of words was more than enough to keep me moving forward and by moving forward, my love of words and their power and beauty grew. I have been told, by some who seem to know what they’re talking about, that I’m a good writer. If that is true, it’s not because I’m talented, or, if I am talented, because I’m more so than anyone else might be. Talent has little or nothing to do with the ability to combine words in such a way that they evoke a response.

I can use words well because I dream and I follow where my dreams lead.

The rest is just a lot of words.
~Geoff Hoff
Co-author of the how-to guide On Writing a Short Story.

(@conniegreen #blog30 a17)

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Passion has always been my favorite word (well, maybe not always, I suspect when I was a kid, it was more like “fun” and when I was a teenager, it was more like “angst” but, hey, I’m an old fogy now and if I say always, take it how you like it!)

I love when people discover their passion.  Or passions.  I love when people start moving toward their passion.  It moves me to watch people grow as they realize that they can live from their passion.  I have many passions, but almost all of them revolve around creativity.  When I taught an acting class, it was called Passion for Acting.  One reason Steve and I started this blog was because of our passion for writing and the writing process.

And that passion translates for us into opportunity.

I was determined not to write a post about New Year’s resolutions, but my good friend Andy Dolph recently wrote about them in a way that made me think, and I’d like to share that with you.  (He got the idea from Erica Douglas, who has been doing this for many years.)

That is, the “theme word”.  (Or, for all you Twitter people, #themeword.)  Chose a word that will be a theme for the next year, and build your goals and action around that word.  My goals for the new year are already a lot about writing and teaching writing, but this idea made sense to me.  As soon as I read the notion in Andy’s blog, the word “passion” shouted itself in my head.  It was obvious.

What it means for me in this context is to continue to develop all aspects of passion for myself.  Develop my writing, making a grand living doing that and teaching that, traveling (another passion) which I can then do more readily, and, of course, having the common meaning of passion in my life – i.e. someone to share it with.

Think that about covers it. I’ve already declared 2010 an exciting year. With this, I’m now that much more excited.  I recommend you do the same.  Choose a word.  Write down for yourself what it means to you.  Remind yourself of that word as the months go by.  On January 1, 2011, reflect on how that word shaped and enhanced your life.

~Geoff Hoff
Co-author of the how-to guide On Writing a Short Story.