You’ve got nine months left to birth your goals in 2024! (Too graphic?)

Think of this reminder post as your alarm.

The alarm has sounded, slap it and…go back to sleep?

No, don’t do that!

Slap that alarm and bounce up.

Wipe your brow and say, “Whew! I still have forty-one weeks left to work on my project.”

Get up! Get up!

Take advantage of those weeks.

Because time is as slippery as a wet bar of soap.

You know the best way to fail at something?

Give up.

I have a writer friend who is thinking about giving up writing.

She says she’s tired of knocking on doors that never open.

I get that.

My friend is an excellent writer.

Her plots are intriguing.

Her characters are entertaining.

Her stories are full of life.

It would be such a shame if she stopped now.

When I first read my friend’s fiction, I thought, “If she can’t get published, no one can.”

And now she’s thinking of dropping out.

What a huge loss it would be if she did that.

Granted, she is having some health problems.

So first of all, let me say that if you’re going through health issues, it’s not a good time to make drastic decisions.

Save your mental and physical energy to get healthy again.

But if you’re just not enjoying the pursuit of your goal, that’s another story.

Take a good look at why you started on that journey.

Now maybe the unexpected has happened and you realize that you’re just not interested in pursuing your goal anymore.

Maybe you had a personal 9-1-1, and it changed how you look at everything.

That happens.

But do look at your goal, sitting with sad eyes next to you.

Do you really want to turn it away?

How about just shelving it for a couple of weeks?

Reassess your physical and mental health.

See if you can add to your bandwidth to take on the goal later.

You still have time.

That’s the point.

You have 283 days left to make things happen.

Going back to my writer friend, I really understand where she’s coming from.

Being a fiction writer is a tough way to live.

You spend months, years sometimes, writing a book, taking courses to make sure your book is the best it can be, learning how to create a query package to send your little bundle off to literary agents.

You spend so much time envisioning the characters and their stories that they begin to feel like your friends and family.

It’s heartbreaking when you get another rejection.

But that’s what writers do.

Middle-grade publishing is tough right now. (Publishing, in general, is tough.)

I don’t know if it’s because kids aren’t reading—see my previous post: Is Entertainment (as we know it) Dead?—or if the market has just become so specialized that any writing that dares to stick its toe outside of that circle is rejected.

Maybe it’s the cost of paper.

Maybe people have too many other problems that prevent them from sitting down with a book.

I don’t know.

If I knew, maybe I’d be a published author right now.

But I hope my friend doesn’t give up writing.

Everyone faces hurdles in pursuit of their shiny goals.

But it’s the hurdles and how you overcome them that make the best stories to tell your grandkids one day.

I read some funny advice for when your inner voice tells you to quit.

Tell yourself, “Go ahead and give up then.”

See how quickly you sneer and get back to work on whatever makes your heart sing.

Keep going.

Until next time,

~ Gail

Countdown: 41 more weeks of 2024

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