Art

Setting Goals

/ Damean Mathews, Author / Leave a comment

It’s officially two weeks into the new year and I think we’re all getting into the swing of things pretty well. 2015 was a pretty good year that saw a lot of changes and developments for a lot of us. Personally I found myself graduating college again, teaching a workshop and signing books alongside an internationally bestselling author, writing a fair amount of short stories, blogging on multiple sites, getting a job that allows me to use my skill set,  getting to meet a few of you guys. That alone was enough to make the hardships of the year well worth it.

One of my other biggest accomplishments of the year was that I finally managed to complete NaNoWriMo. That’s an experience I haven’t gotten to talk about yet, also. Before I do, though; For those of you that don’t know NaNoWriMo is a challenge for writers where you are pushed to complete a 50,000 word novel during the 30 days of November. Believe me, it isn’t easy.

This was my third or fourth year attempting NaNo and in the past I’ve always found myself getting so far along (one year it was around 10,000 and another it was closer to 20, etc…) before college and life bogged me down and pushed me in other directions, but this year I not only succeeding in reaching the goal but I exceeded it by over 18,000 words in a period of 20 days. By November 20 I had a 68,900 word novel in my possession and it felt amazing. It still does. I’m currently running the novel through beta readers so I can put it through the second round of editing and am in talks with two separate publishers about pricing and options and what not.

It’s a good feeling, that’s for sure, but the point of this blog is to talk about the new year, right? No matter how good (or bad, if that’s the case) 2015 was, this year can and will be one for the books! My personal plans for the year are to try as hard as I can to get at least one of my novels to a publisher and try to get it to shelves and not just in an electronic format. Another goal is to try (and hopefully succeed) to get my work published in at least 12 periodicals this year. I have more, of course, like getting back into church and refreshing my relationship with God for myself and my family, but those two are relevant to writing.

Now, obviously these things on my list are New Year’s Resolutions (yes, I’ve made it two whole weeks and I’m still trying!) and that’s a bit of a controversial topic. A lot of people think that making resolutions is a waste of time, some even say that it is a direct challenge to true happiness with one’s life. Their argument for this, of course, is that by making resolutions and pushing yourself to change your life in a certain way, it prevents you from being who you truly are. Silly, right? The point of resolutions is to be a better you, a you that you are happier with. So why not try it? Of course, I’ve also failed at resolutions like everyone else, but this year it feels different. This year I’ve made a list of goals that, if I don’t give up on, will make me a stronger, better, happier me.

So what about you all? Have you decided to make this year better? Have you worked on a list of goals that will improve your life? One thing that I intend on doing this year, with this and my other blogs, is to improve the quality and quantity of the posts I am giving you all. I would like to inspire each and every one of you to go out there and take life by the horns this year, so I want to hear more about what you all want from the blog itself and from me as a writer. How can I be better at this and make more of a difference? No answer is a wrong answer, so give me all you’ve got! Have a great weekend and make those goals, stick to them and change 2016 for the better!

Beating the Monday Blues

/ Damean Mathews, Author / Leave a comment

Mondays suck. Lets face it. But that doesn’t have to stop us from doing great things. We, as artists and writers, really need to give ourselves a bit of a schedule to follow. Some authors will find themselves needing a more strict and rigid schedule. Throughout history there are some authors who have stated that they wouldn’t let themselves do anything else until they had typed X amount of pages or written X amount of words per day. This can be quite a daunting idea for some us and for others it can honestly be nearly impossible. If we don’t have a set schedule at work it can be very hard to try and have a set schedule with out writing. This can lead us to breaking any type of schedule we may try to set. That’s not good at all.

Other of us (myself included at times) don’t like trying to demand ourselves to meet a certain deadline. Granted we may sometimes be under contract and actually have a deadline, but that doesn’t mean that we can just force ourselves to vomit out a certain amount of work just because it’s what we say we need to do. Part of this can be fixed with the inspiration I so love to write about. Even while typing this I am listening to music on my old Mp3 player to make sure I stay motivated despite the feeling of inspiration that I’ve had today. I have used the music on this player to help me write and focus on my craft for so long that I’ve had to change players three of four times because I’ve worn some of the others out and just ran out of room on one.

But we do want to continue performing our craft at the level we are now and we do want to improve. We may find it hard, or even impossible to do that if we let the world get in the way of our productivity. Yes, it’s Monday, and yes that means we are going back to work and/or school and are feeling the typical mourning over the loss of the weekend, but Mondays can be positive as well. Mondays can symbolize the beginning of a whole new week of work. This can be the week where we tackle that hard chapter and vow to gain something from it. Or maybe this is the week we complete that particularly hard painting or song. Maybe it’s even just the week we convince ourselves to pick up the tools of our trade and produce SOMETHING. Mondays can be real downers. They can kill our spirit and motivation and bring us so low that we don’t even have the ability to produce anything at all that week. But they can also mean a lot. They can be the day we start the ending to our latest novel, or start that new painting, or the day we start writing our own music instead of just learning what has already been done. Monday may come at the worst possible time, but it can also bring us a never-ending realm of possibilities. Don’t waste them!!!!