Building Blocks

the magic of teeny tiny goals

Photo by Susan Holt Simpson on Unsplash

I have a suggestion if you’re feeling completely overwhelmed by (fill-in-the-blank task) and have no clue where to even START:

→Set a laughably small, barely visible goal. And watch what happens.

This could look like:

• Loading two dishes into the dishwasher

• Going for a three-minute walk

• Reading two pages before bed

Chances are, you'll clean more, walk more, and read more if you give yourself permission to simply START. Start somewhere. Start anywhere. Start small.

I experienced this recently when trying to decide how to crack into a big, messy revision (is there any other kind?) for my first novel. The one I’m ‘pivoting back to’ if you read my last newsletter.

You know what I finally did, while treading water in a sea of overwhelm? I started playing around with character names. That’s right, just over here playing dress up with NAMES!

It was an entry point into revisiting this story that I began writing FIFTEEN YEARS ago (with some years taken ‘off’ along the way) that felt manageable to me, fun even. It was bugging me that my two main characters’ names, which I chose on a whim in 2009, had come to feel stale and just sort of ‘off’ to me. Was Joseph too hard-core Old Testament for a sexy male lead? Was Scarlet too Harlequin romance, as someone once told me?

Who knows—I’m sure if I were to ask 100 people I’d get 100 answers.

But I was weirdly excited to play around with renaming these characters and spent hours combing through baby name websites with none of the pregnancy symptoms that typically accompany such a search—bliss! I felt like I was cheating the system!

Have I landed on new names for Joseph and Scarlet, and will this solve all my problems?? No, and No. HA!

But what setting this teeny tiny goal of reconsidering character names DID do, is it proved to have a domino effect that led to asking myself other, more important questions about these characters and this story I’m trying to tell. A story about seeing our past with fresh eyes, about starting over (and over, and over), and realizing the grass often isn’t greener on the other side after all.

This fun, if abstract, little naming exercise got me asking all kinds of follow-up questions, like:

• What am I trying to convey about each of these characters through their names?

• Are there parts of their personalities/connections to other characters/family histories that I haven’t fully explored (this led to ALL SORTS of ‘aha’ or ‘what if I did this?’ moments)?

• What about the title of the BOOK? (Currently The End of Starting Over). Is there a better title? What am I trying to communicate with the title, and how might that change through this next round of revisions, if at all?

• Then I started thinking about cover art and symbolism and repeating themes in this manuscript…the list goes on, several pages of notes later.

My point is—something that started as a seemingly surface-level exercise (let’s play with names!) became a catalyst for bigger, more impactful questions about the intersection of plot and character for the larger story I’m trying to tell.

Give the name game a try, if you want. It just might be the tiny thing that unlocks bigger questions about your own work-in-progress. Or it might not. Maybe you’ll land on a totally different teeny tiny goal you can tackle to get the ball rolling with your own drafting, revision, or other big thing. (Some others suggestions— What JOB does your character have, and how might it impact the story in interesting ways? What about the SETTING? The list goes on… just pick something small. Start there. See where it leads you.)

And if you love or hate the name Scarlet or Joseph, feel free to tell me. I promise I won’t be offended. Turns out, I have many other options. Also turns out, being a writer pursuing publication for 5+ years has given me a pretty thick skin and I am AMAZING at being rejected and having people hate ‘not get’ my ideas.

Nothing would make me happier than to share some of your teeny tiny goals in the comment section! Small goals that you’ve set, or perhaps are inspired to set now. The smaller the better! Please share!

• Are you in the midst of working on (or feeling like you SHOULD be working on) some task that feels so messy and enormous, you don’t know where to start?

• What is one tiny (tiny!) goal you can set, that you know you can accomplish no matter what?

  I know how silly and pointless it might feel, but I also know it just might be the key that unlocks everything.

READING: My reading life has slowed in recent days as I’ve been solo parenting while husband is on a work trip, but still very much enjoying BLUEBIRD DAY! It’s a celebration of winter, an exploration of the complexity and forgiveness encountered in and required by most long-term relationships, and a testament to claiming our joy over what others expect us to do or be.

LISTENING: Norah Jones (needed some comfort music after ingesting 10 minutes of today’s confirmation hearings)

WATCHING: Anything but the ultra-depressing news

COOKING: I made coffee in the French Press this morning. That’s all I have. #smallgoals

Thanks for being here,