Goals Goals Goals - The Second Attempt

Weird... I published a post called "Goals Goals Goals" a few days ago, and somehow Blogspot ate it. As is always the way, it was the ONE post I didn't save a copy of!

Anyway, here is take two, for better or for worse:

Gentle Reader,

I feel like we're constantly told how important goal setting is. But if you're anything like me, your New Year's Resolutions didn't survive January.

Once upon a time (2007) I found a pretty cool site named 43 Things. It calls itself "The world's largest goal-setting community" and invites participants to:

Join over 3 million people who list their goals, share their progress, and cheer each other on.

Back then, I chose a bunch of goals, and promptly forgot about it for four years. The cool thing is that when I rediscovered the site, I could tick off a bunch of things (like graduate Law school!).

Why it's called 43 Things (as opposed to 10 Things, or 100 things), I don't know. I have only 30 Things on my list at the moment, which range from the straight-forward ("plant out the garden bed") to the complicated and long-term ("start my own consultancy").

Just to prove that people are people, no matter where they're from, here are the top 10 popular goals, according to the site:

1. lose weight (40,055 people
2. write a book (29,511 people)
3. stop procrastinating (29,466 people)
4. Fall in love (26,835 people)
5. be happy 924,158 people)
6. Get a tattoo (22,019 people)
7. go on a road trip with no predetermined destination (20,797 people)
8. get married (20,702 people)
9. travel the world (20,486 people)
10. drink more water (20,390 people)

Any of those sound familiar?

And here are the ten most recently-added goals:

1. Paint nails every week
2. Post 100 looks at Lookbook.nu
3. Stop with swear-words
4. Reading everyday
5. Have success in my career
6. Care better for my skin
7. Practice jazz/pilates/yoga
8. Get a webdesign course
9. Improve my music selection
10. Buy a good camera, with good resolution

Fun, right? I sometimes like to just puddle around and get inspired by other people's goals. The trouble is, I'm such a victim of peer pressure that I tend to get carried away - 43 Things is the reason I am now enrolled in a Wednesday-night ice-skating class...


PS. Thanks to the people who left a comment on the original post - which I was able to access from my email inbox:

Trisha has left a new comment on your post:

Usually my New Year's resolutions don't survive. But this year was easier - they're all writing resolutions, and I've been doing really well so far. :D Even have my own "Goals" page on my blog!

Hey Trisha, I've seen some of your goals on your blog - I must say I am impressed by your dedication. We could all take a leaf from your book!

DearHelenHartman has left a new comment on your post:

Ice skating in summer, a lofty goal indeed. I salute you! Love the thought for the day. Like most writers realizing a lot of my goals lie in someone else's hands. 

Hi Helen, actually I'm in New Zealand, so we are heading into Winter right now! My timing is impeccable: by the time I have skated enough NOT to look like a new-born deer on the ice, it will be summer time! :)

A few of my favourite things...

When the dog bites, when the bee stings (when the heel snaps, when the tax department sends a letter - whatever)... it's good to have a store of favourite things set aside to cheer you up. Here are a couple you might want to add to your list:

Hot Pools – the ancient Romans knew what they were talking about

Last week I went with two girlfriends to thermal pools ninety minutes’ drive from town. (Well, I say ninety minutes, but since I was driving it was nigh on two hours...)

Oooooooohhhhhhh so relaxing. Seriously, there aren’t enough Os in the world to express how good that four-hour soak was. We got out once to have a beer in the cafe, then plunged right back in again. If you’ve ever seen the X-Men movie, where the baddy turns into a 99-percent-water jelly fish – then you have some idea of how we looked by the end of it.

An unwillingness to get out of the bath was a direct cause of the Roman Empire's Fall

 

I don’t know whether it was the country drive, the hours of chatting and laughs, or the wonderful thermal pools working their magic, but that night I slept the best I have since the big quake. Bliss.

Cookie Recipes with photos

I’m proud to say that I am a mean cook. 

No, not like that...

Hmmm. Maybe I should say: I am a pretty good cook. I can whip up yummy meals from scratch, and I know my way around the spice aisle.

But baking? Ugh. I am quite possibly the worst baker who ever donned a pinny. I put it down to my carefree attitude towards instructions; I’m just not good at following instructions. My cakes turn out lopsided and gluey; my scones could be used as paper-weights. 

What I really need is to see the process – to have a visual guide through that dark jungle of baking powder, vanilla essence and caster sugar. I’ve tried the YouTube videos, which are pretty good, but if even if you have them on your IPhone you still constantly have to pause them with doughy/greasy/wet hands. Also, I have an aversion to electronics near water ever since a friend had The Great Cellphone-Cistern Incident of 2005.

Anyway, I found this lovely website called Author’s Kitchen, which (as it happens) is written by two authors. I love that they take pics of the necessary ingredients before they start. I love that they show the process step-by-step. I love that they will be completely honest when they mess up, and even obligingly include photos of said mess. I especially love that they sprinkle their recipes with the occasional swear word (much more restrained than the ones I employ when baking!).

Author’s Kitchen isn’t just cakes and cookies, though: they have an eclectic range of food, seemingly whatever takes their fancy that day. Go check them out.

Links Make The World Go Around

Gentle Reader,

Hey, look at that - Monday Linkies is becoming a bit of a tradition. Is it because I nerdsessively surf the internet over the weekend instead of going out and partying like the rest of the civilised world? Is it because I am low on creative mojo on Mondays? Is it because I’m a naturally generous person and love sharing the wealth? You decide.

(NB You're thinking about stealing the word “nerdsessive”, aren't you? Don’t even think about it. In fact, to assert my ownership I shall use the word once more before this post is over.)

1.  Secretly we all judge other people on their shoes, so click here...

If Shoes Could Kill has upgraded itself to If Style Could Kill. Personally I don’t think the new name is half as catchy as the old one, but I’m going to forgive them, since they’ve branched out to making fun of all sorts of fashion weirdness. Moments of bizarre, and flashes of brilliance, from the far reaches of fashion. Good fun.

2. Recycling is good, and recycling your novel is even better, so click here.... 

Over at Murder Your Darlings I discuss a scene and some characters that it pained me to part with. So I didn’t: I just mashed them into the next one! Hooray for recycling.

 

3. And I’m plugging a blog, that plugs your blog, so click here...

Carolyn Arnold has recently started Plug Your Blog Friday. If you have a blog, don’t forget to show up at Carolyn’s on Friday to shamelessly publicise it. Remember, the more links there are in the webosphere that lead to your blog, the higher it will appear in Google searches. Yes, I know that’s a bit nerdsessive of me (ha! And you thought I couldn’t do it), but there’s not much point in us writing all this stuff if no-one’s going to read it – right?

Linkier than a lynx standing next to a chain-link fence,

Charlotte

PS I have thought about it, Gentle Reader, and you may use the word “nerdsessive” with my blessing. I realise that keeping it from the world would be too unkind.

Links Make The World Go Around

Gentle Reader,

More fun from the internet, loosely based on literary leanings:

1. Passive-aggression can be hilarious, so click here...

OK, I’m going to allow myself this one, on the grounds that it broadly fits into “all things literary”. This site is hilarious. If you have ever received a passive-aggressive note from a house-mate, colleague, or even a random person who doesn’t like how you parked, then you’ll be able to relate to this site. Some of these notes are justified, some not so much; but they all beautifully capture the quivering indignation –and in some cases, outrage – of a person who thinks they’ve been wronged. For a lesson on expressing emotions, we writers could do a lot worse than take a leaf from the passive-aggressive notebook.

2. To learn that there's no trick to being a novelist, click here....

During the month of January, The Writeaholics Blog has featured posts from new and established writers, who have written about their first year(s) of writing. Your blog hostess was featured on this Sunday. Click here to read about my early writing journey, complete with mutant bull-chickens, faulty GPS systems, and even a bit of Confucian wisdom!

3. For eight ways to win the heart with your novel, click here...

I recently stumbled on this blog post, which is particularly inspiring to those who ever have, or ever hope to write a novel: Eight Ways to Win My Heart... With Your Novel

Clickedly-clickedly-click!

Charlotte

Links Make The World Go Around

Gentle Reader,

Happy Monday morning! To blow away those start-of-the-week cobwebs, here are a few links for your edification and amusement:

1.  Laughing is good for you, so click here...

I’ve recently discovered a great new blog called Awful Library Books: the Shame of Library Collections. 

You know how you’re standing in line at the library lending desk, and you see the “bargain books” bin? And you dash out of line, heart in mouth, all filled with the anticipation of something wonderful? And then, of course, your heart sinks as you realise you gave up your place in line for nothing better than out-of-date decorating magazines (fifty cents each) and a couple of 1980s parenting books of dubious ideology (two dollars apiece). These bins tend to be an elephant’s graveyard of books whose last outing from the library predated the fall of the Berlin Wall.

And let’s face it: for every out-dated book garnering sneers in the bargain bin, there are twenty more gathering dust on the lending shelves, reminiscing about the last time they were borrowed (during the Reagan administration, most likely).

Well, bless librarians everywhere if they haven’t taken the opportunity to celebrate the weird, obsolete and sometimes downright funny books languishing in the recesses of public libraries! Awful Library Books takes a hilarious look at books that really oughtn’t be in the library shelves any longer.


2. Learning from other people's mistakes is SO much more fun, so click here...


This week's Murder your Darlings post is up! Learn from the mistakes of my very first manuscript: how not to treat your reader; the embarassing lesson of why research is so important; and killing dialogue tags. Go on, it will make you feel good about your own early stuff...

3. In a recession, FREE is good, so click here... 

Meanwhile, let’s hear it for generous writers who are giving away their knowledge FOR FREE. There are so many out there – a great deal on my blog roll. 

Today I want to share the link of recent blogger Carolyn Arnold, who has launched a nine-part discussion on creating characters so real that they seem like they’ll stroll off the page. The Developing Characters You Can Pinch series can  be found here, so add it to your favourites.

4. I like people who like me, so click here...

And finally, I was delighted to have my flashfic featured this week at The Chrysalis Project. Thanks, team! The prompt – a good one! – was “I knew you could buy magic spells for that; I just didn’t know you could get them on EBay”. You can read my short story on their page here, but I think the formatting and italics work a bit better on this page.

More full of links than a string of sausages,

Charlotte