Goals

Never had 'em. Plans, sure, and schemes, and half-baked ideas, but not goals. The only goal I ever had was to finish library school, and that wasn't even my idea. I was on the tail end of a string of people who inexplicably took advice from Georgia.

"I think you should buy that house," she said to Jeff Curtis, and he bought the house.

"I think you should buy that car," she said to a co-worker, and he bought the car.

"I think you should go to library school," she said to me, and I said:

"I'll apply. If I'm accepted, I'll go."

Of course, applying is always easier said than done. I had to take the Miller Analogy Test, which involved registration and bus schedules and whatnot. I scored freakishly high, which means absolutely nothing except that I happen to be good at word games, but those percentiles were the reason I got in. It couldn't have been my interview, because that didn't go well at all.

So there was the test, and then the interview, and then classes and papers and whatnot, and it was one thing after another until it was over. The process was complicated by the fact that I got kicked out part way through, but that's another story. Basically it just meant more hoops to jump through, which I did, and I got back in and finished the program, and I've got the damn degree in a closet somewhere if anyone ever asks to see it. So far, no one has.

This is my one experience with a goal, and what I learned is that you have to keep the goal in the back of your mind and focus on the task in front of you. Finish that, and then finish the next one, and keep doing that until you get to the end.

So I'm kind of at a loss with this publishing thing. In publishing, it seems, the goal is always more--more books, more readers, more sales, more money. You don't ever get to the end.

It's been freaking me out this past week, but with a shedload of help from my friends, I think I've got it back in perspective. My goal is to finish the second novel.

After that, I'm going to steal all Jodi Picoult's fans.