Up until that point, I either wore Mary Janes with a buckle, or my mom tied my shoes with laces. So I sat down, absolutely certain I would know how to tie my shoes without any assistance, and couldn’t. The shoelace wouldn’t behave. All the times I had watched my shoes being tied, and I couldn’t make my fingers do the right thing at the right time. FRUSTRATING.

I asked my mom, whose patience is legendary, for help and she showed me (loop, swoop, and pull) more times than I can count. I put shoes on my bed and practiced. Dad taught me a different way — two bunny ears. Stupid shoelaces. More than one way to tie them and I failed at both. I despaired. I’d NEVER get to go to school.

I sought out our next door neighbor — she’d be able to teach me — and learned to put my thumbs in the loop and pull. Except when I did that, I pulled the laces straight through and had a knot, but no bow. I experienced a gamut of emotions from despair and frustration to anger and self-loathing because I couldn’t figure out how to do what every other person in my life appeared to do with ease. Once in a while, I’d have a moment of hope dashed by subsequent failure. I’m sure I must have cried more than once, and I know I yelled several times, “I CAN’T DO IT!!!” and a shoe or two might have taken flight.

Though I didn’t know it at the time, there were several factors making this an exceptionally trying lesson to learn. I am dyslexic, though it has rarely impacted my ability to read, it shows up in other forms. I also have control issues fine motor skills which is due to arthritis. The combination perhaps made learning to tie my shoes a more difficult endeavor. BUT no matter how frustrated I became, or how many times I “gave up,” I kept trying. Why? Because my desire for success (the right to go to school) was bigger than my frustration.

Achievement of a goal is attainable only if you are willing to keep failing until you succeed. Succinctly put, failure is critical to success. My ability to tie my shoes is founded on failure after failure that I eventually conquered.

So what is the conundrum surrounding my arch enemy, the shoelace? Time marches on and with it improvements and conveniences have been created. We have shoes with velcro and bungee laces that don’t require tying. Parents (and teachers) everywhere gave a huge sigh of relief. No more do they need to have the patience of a saint while waiting on a kid (or several) to tie their own shoes. No more frustration in attempting to teach a child to tie their own shoes. HOW can this be a bad thing?

Learning to tie your own shoe is a child-level rite of passage. And while it may appear trivial on the surface, it is an important part of our development. Without spelling it out, it teaches us the value of perseverance. It teaches us the value of failure. It teaches us about gut-level determination. And it teaches us about the joy and pride of achievement.

Alternatives to shoelaces are a great boon for parents, but we’re robbing our kids of one of the first critical lessons they might remember. If we clear the path for kids so there are no obstacles that must be overcome to achieve a goal, then what happens when later in life obstacles have them boxed in? They have no experience with failure and learning how to cope with it and turn it into success. We have lost the ability to make an assessment of how much we value the success that we’re striving for and put a price on what it is worth to us to achieve.

Learning to tie your shoes when you are 4-years-old has a MUCH BIGGER pride factor that comes with it because you know you have achieved something great … you have proven you are no longer a baby, but a big kid. Learning to tie your shoes at 7 or 8 is not the same thing because there is the feeling that you should have been able to do it earlier. No one else thinks it is such a great feat either.

I am a fighter. When I see an obstacle in my path, my thoughts are on how to get under, around, or over the obstacle to achieve my goal. I don’t give up. Just as we need to exercise our muscles to keep our body healthy, and exercise our brain to keep our mind sharp, we need to exercise our determination. It’s the Tubthumping concept. If we don’t practice getting up when we get knocked down, we won’t achieve our goals.

It seems a bit contradictory, but we need adversity to achieve success. We need to practice failing to learn how to do things right.

What method finally worked for me? I closed my eyes and made up a story. A bunny running around a tree and diving into a hole (loop, swoop, and pull) to escape a fox, and then closed the door, by pulling the laces tight, so the fox couldn’t get in. Stories reign supreme.

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Let me just say that I don’t pay attention to reviews … no, really. I cannot tell you how many there are on Goodreads or Amazon or any other retailer. I also cannot tell you what they say. The only time I even see them is if I need to look at the product page for any reason. Otherwise, unless someone tells me about it, I don’t know. So when Italia mentioned something about a statement made in a review of 7th Grade Revolution and to keep it in mind for The Journal of Angela Ashby, I hadn’t seen the review and my response was that they are different books and what the reviewer had commented on wasn’t intended to be a part of 7th Grade Revolution, but that it already was handled in The Journal of Angela Ashby.

Yes, this is the point when the discussion took a turn toward the intense zone. And in the discussion, I said this:

It’s like trying to shame a cat for not having the characteristics of a dog.

The cat is going to squint its eyes, think of ways to murder, and do nothing to change the fact that it is indeed, a cat.

In the reverse, the dog will scurry around trying to figure out how to increase its catliness and will be worried and seeking approval.

While most of the time, I’m more dog than cat … in this … I am all cat.

When it comes to my writing — the thing I do I am most passionate about — I write the book I have envisioned to the best of my ability. There isn’t a single book I haven’t pushed myself on to make the best it can possibly be — but once it has been released, it is out in the world and I cannot run around explaining to all who read it why I made the choices I made. It either comes across well, or it doesn’t. I make no apologies for my work … ever. If I missed the mark, I missed the mark, but I’m going to do my best to hit it the next time. And no book is ever going to hit everyone the same. Why? Because the readers are a huge part of the experience, and we each have our own tastes and no one book is going to satisfy everyone.

Before I got off my soapbox and put it away, I wound up telling Italia that instead of being bothered by anything she sees in the reviews, she needs to Be the Cat. Because I am. At that point she told me it needed to be my blog.

It has since become a running joke between us. We all need a bit more cat when it comes to other people deciding what we should or should not have done. And the truth of the matter is, it wasn’t that the reviews were terrible or saying the book wasn’t well-written, it’s just that the reviewer wanted to see something more that I CHOSE not to put in. It was a conscious choice on my part during the writing process. So one or two (adult) readers are disappointed … I’m sorry about that, but I stand on the ground that I write for my target audience who are kids, and had I included what an adult felt was lacking, the kids would not have enjoyed the experience as much. In my opinion, but then again, I am the cat.

Does this mean I’m not open to constructive criticism? Absolutely not. I am always striving to improve my craft, and if I’ve completely missed something, then I do want to know about it. But, if what was “missed” is something I did with deliberation and not through ignorance or oversight, it was a choice I made for my work and I’m standing by my choice. Overall, with the reception 7th Grade Revolution has had, I feel pretty good about my choices for the book. Not only has it won some awards, but every kid I have spoken to who has read the book has loved it.

I will leave you with these words … if there is something you are passionate about, think about the cat when the cat has a goal. The cat is consumed by what it is trying to achieve; it remains undaunted in the face of obstacles; you can tell it, “No!” a hundred times, and it might twitch an ear and wait for you to get tired, but it never once loses sight of its goal. This is how we need to approach those things we are passionate about … ignoring the naysayers, keeping our focus, and being persistent until we figure out how to best achieve our goals.

BE THE CAT!

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As much as I’d love to have that straight open run toward a goal — a kind of see it and achieve it situation, there is value to overcoming the obstacles in our path along the way. With every obstacle or misstep, we learn more about who we are, and how important the goal is for us. If things are too easy, did we set our sights too low? Did we truly earn the accomplishment? Maybe I’m perverse, but I tend to value the things that were harder to achieve.

A rope ladder leading into a tunnel running under the school. The thrill of taking the next step along the way to finding the artifact. But then, a simple slip of the foot …

    Rhonda put her foot on the first rung and slowly lowered herself to the second. At this rate she’d take a few minutes to reach bottom, so Dennis worked on untying the knot to remove the cord. A little difficult to do one-handed. He rested the torch against the floor to use both hands.
    Rhonda yelped. The ladder twisted and swished while she clung to the rope, one leg dangling.
    Dennis dropped the torch. “Hold on.” He grabbed the ladder to steady it. The rope tugged against his grip as Rhonda twisted first one way and then the other. The sway slowed and finally stopped. “I’ll keep a grip on the rope. Make your way down.”

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And she didn’t JUST say deadline … she gave me the reason. Two well-known producers are interested and she needs a finished product ASAP, and could I please get on it??? I shook my head to clear any obstructions in my ears making me hear things. But Italia confirmed it and may have mentioned that if she gave me my way, I’d pick at this one forever. So then this happened.

After I finished running in circles, my next thought was, Holy Crap, I need to get this thing done!!! I take deadlines very seriously anyway — even if it is a deadline I give myself. The only way to achieve a goal is to have one and as Napoleon Hill said, “A Goal is a Dream with a Deadline.” Without deadlines we cannot take our dreams and turn them into reality. So I do set deadlines for myself all the time, but when it comes to my writing career, I involve Italia, as my manager, to help me set those goals because together we are building my career. And now I have an honest-to-goodness real deadline made out of concrete.

So how do I handle this new deadline??? Using the time-honored tradition of procrastination, I first BLOG about the deadline and break my website in the process. Then I root around in the cupboard because deadlines are serious stuff, so I have to have the appropriate cup to drink from while I am fastened the chain that tethers me to the writing chair. And at this time of year, WHAT could be more appropriate than my turkey cup for a Thanksgiving deadline??? I guess I’d better get busy and get this book submission ready!!

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For getting healthy in broad terms, it involves making the right food choices, exercising my body, and simplifying things in my life to reduce stress. Losing weight is a big factor in the getting healthy quest, but it is a result of what I’m doing to improve my health. While I am focused on making sure the pounds are disappearing, the main goal is improved health. Since overall health is harder for me to see, quantify, and measure, I do tend to focus, at least right now, more on the weight than anything else. And I’d love more than anything for the path to be like a big ol’ highway with a formula like 1+2=3, that I can rely on. Eat X calories less than you burn, then Y pounds come off the scale. But anyone who has ever struggled with weight on either end of the spectrum will tell you that’s NOT how it works.

I had a big reminder on how things DON’T always work the way we expect them to this weekend. I stopped at the store to get a pair of “goal” jeans because the current pair were getting a little loose … and I am a goal oriented person. I knew there was no way I would fit into the jeans because I had only purchased the current jeans a few weeks ago and haven’t lost enough pounds to get into a new size since. Plus, having been up and down the weight road several times, I have weighed far less and not fit in the size I purchased for my goal. Only, in a supreme twist of the usual fate, they did. *pause for a momentary happy dance* This twist in the path happened to be a pleasant one (YAY!!)

So how does weight loss correlate to writing? Well, first both are a journey and sometimes there are starts and stops along the way, with a few reversals. Anyone who has had to delete chapters of work knows the pain of reversal, just as those who regain weight feel after having busted their butt to lose it in the first place. On the weight journey, my path has been much like a yo-yo, and I’m cursing myself for having picked the one with the longest string — always go for the one that lights up or sparkles. The writing journey has been much the same … up and down, and not always going the direction I’d like. Fortunately, for both I am certain I have the right team in place and the weight will go down and the writing career will go up.

Ten years ago, I was at my heaviest, and it was taking a severe toll on my health, so I had a start and lost a significant amount of weight. Five years ago, I had the amazing experience to be given the premise for the current WIP (work in progress). It amazed, excited, and terrified me all at the same time. I knew I wasn’t ready to truly embark on the writing process, so I made the notation of the idea in my file and went back to my current works. Both of those count as starts … the stop coming almost immediately in the case of the WIP, and taking a couple years with the weight. I’ll spare you the back and forths with the weight, but I experienced equal back and forth with the WIP. I wanted to write this book so much it hurt. I’d be working on other things, and ideas for the current WIP would hit me. And each time they did, I’d add them to the growing file, but fear kept me from putting pen to page or in my case fingers on the keyboard. There was always an excuse. And with the weight loss there was always an excuse … in both cases some very valid, but excuses nonetheless.

As I mentioned, I now have the right team in place for both … and not only that, I have the right focus in place for both. And the focus is not the scale for the weight loss, and really, though I am still so utterly delighted, not on the clothing sizes either, but on the process or plan of how to get to my goal weight. I check in on a daily basis on how I am doing against the plan, and that is working. Similarly, the focus on the writing side is on honoring the process. My process is not the same as any other author … nor should it be (and theirs don’t have to be like mine) … but it is the process that works for me. And my process involves letting the character(s) drive. It took a kick in the tail to get me beyond my fear of not being up to the task of this novel. Fortunately, I have the right person in place for that, my literary agent, Italia Gandolfo, and anytime I get stuck, she’s right there to administer the swift kick to get me on my way again (and she definitely has the boots to do it.) I have my plan for the WIP and I check in daily on where I stand with it.

I chose the picture with the track lanes because it expresses how I usually see things. I am competitive by nature, something I have fought to mold into competing not against others, but with myself. The race aspect resonates with me. How can I get there in the fastest time? How fast can I lose the weight? How fast can I write a novel? But if I keep my focus on the plan, the speed is irrelevant. If I reach my weight goal in nine months or it takes me a year, what difference does that really make? Especially, if in order to hit my goal in the faster time I had to take drastic measures to get there. Drastic measures in weight loss usually come back to bite you. Hard. What about the WIP? I wanted to be done with the WIP by the end of last year. It simply isn’t writing that way. But I still want to hit the starter block, bear down and sprint off — except Melody Fisher, my main character, refuses to play that game. This WIP will be written in her timing, not mine. And if I were to have finished the book by the end of the year, would it be the book that I am currently writing? No. Taking the time on this one is so worth it, regardless of how uptight I might get and fractious because it isn’t moving as quickly as I’d like.

Just as with the new jeans, I’ve been watching the word count at the bottom of the page creep up, like I sometimes obsessively watch the scale numbers to go down, but last night when I glanced down I realized I was so much further along than I had thought, and while there is still a chunk left to write, I no longer feel stalled (hello smaller jeans feeling) And when I have those realizations, I remind myself the competition with myself is not a race. It is not how fast I get to either finish line, but about the journey itself. What have I learned along the way? And how well am I doing it? For the weight loss, I have learned entirely new dietary habits and haven’t struggled with cravings as I have in the past. With the WIP, I feel as if I have truly written beyond my abilities at times because I am keeping myself out of the middle. This is not the story I want to tell, but the story Melody needs me to tell. By getting out of my own way, I have a manuscript I am more proud of than anything I have yet written. And if I rushed either of those things I wouldn’t have the results that I do.

And the final thought is that while I call my manuscript a work in progress, so am I. May I never stop striving to be better both as a human being and as a writer. Knowing the road ahead will not be straight and will contain lots of twists and turns, I move forward with confidence, knowing I am on the right path with both of my focal points, and who knows??? I just might have several pleasant surprises along the way.

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So what are my goals? I have picked 3 big goals to strive toward, and they are interconnected.

I’ll bet you were thinking you’d see a list of writing related goals, right? I look at my list, and that IS exactly what I see.

2014 was a roller-coaster year for me and because things were so up and down and sometimes upside-down, I fretted over things. I’m not much of a worrier … never have been … but 2014 threw me off balance and I fretted about things I couldn’t control as well as things I could. This is my number one goal to achieve because I don’t like chafing against life. When I’m busy fussing about things, I don’t have my full concentration focused on what I need to — which is the writing. Especially when what I’m fretting about IS the writing. While undergoing chemo this past year, I didn’t create any story from scratch. I worked on edits and rewrites, but didn’t create anything new. I didn’t have it in me. So when it came time to pick up a new work, I had twisted myself into knots because I didn’t know whether I had anything inside to give to the writing process. I had been away from creation for too long. Had I lost my ability? Thankfully I have found that is not the case, but for a while, I managed to spiral to a point where I was locked up.

So how will I fret less? By focusing on improving my health (see goal 3). Regular exercise helps to burn up some of the nervous energy I was using to fret and fuss, and it also helps to stimulate the writing brain and unlocks the answers I need to keep the work flowing. Improving my eating habits will make me feel better overall, and when I’m feeling well, I whine less. And, even though I hate to admit this one, working on better sleep habits will help to reduce stress levels, and will allow me to cope better with both the things I cannot control as well as the ones I can.

Another linchpin to fretting less is engaging more (see goal 2). Throughout the bulk of 2014 I was, necessarily through my circumstances, a hermit. My life scope narrowed to life inside the four walls of my home. My commute was across the landing from the bedroom to my office. Some of my social muscles atrophied during this period of my life because I simply didn’t have the energy. Which was fine for then, but not moving forward. The narrowness of life meant my attention was not occupied with outside issues, but only with my own. Not a mentally healthy way to be. I’d rather focus on what I can do for others than on my own situation … so I need to get back to that. Truthfully, I need to expand my circle. I know quite a few people, and it is easy to get complacent, but it is time to open up and engage with others beyond my own little sphere — stimulate my mind — and through expanding my horizons, I will have less time and energy to focus on self and fretting about what I should/should not have done.

One additional thing that will help me stop fretting — writing itself. When I sit down, open the WIP (Work In Progress), and my fingers fly trying to keep up with how I’m receiving a scene, I’m at my best and happiest. The best way I can describe it is to say it is like breathing … when everything is right, there is no effort, you don’t think about the mechanics of taking a breath, you simply do and refresh your body with oxygen. But when you can’t breathe well because you have pneumonia, getting enough oxygen is a problem, you have to focus on getting enough air, and the process is labored. Then when it clears, you have a new appreciation for the ability to breathe without effort. When everything is going right with the writing, I relax, take a deep breath, and create.

I have already put things in motion to help me achieve my 2015 goals. For example, with my day job working with a lot of computer work, doing some programming type of functions, and writing well into the night, I found I was sitting far too much. My back was paying the price. And when my back is not happy, my ability to exercise is less, which makes everything get caught in a vicious cycle. So, I have already implemented an adjustable desk at the work place so I can stand, which I do most of the day, and sit when I need to. 2015 will see a change to my home office writing setup to include the same type of thing. My plan is to take things one little hurdle at a time and by building on each successive achievement, by the end of 2015 I will have met my larger goals.

So it is time to say good-bye to 2014. In many ways, though there have been significant challenges, 2014 was a good year. I ushered in the year by signing with the fabulous Italia Gandolfo of Gandolfo Helin Literary Management, to manage my career. I finished 6 months worth of chemo and remain in full remission. Italia gave me the opportunity to pair up with Luke Matthews to coauthor a children’s chapter book, Timmy and the Golden Lion Tamarin which sold to True North Publishing for release in 2015. So despite the challenges I faced, 2014 has set the bar high for good things to come. Now, as with every year, I face the new year with anticipation. The seeds sown in 2014 are going to bloom in 2015 and I am ready to do the reaping.

2014 was a wild ride. And I see 2015 lurking around the corner ready to leap into action and push me to my limits. 2015 is the steep mountain I climbed throughout 2014 and the only way forward is to fly. All I have to say is “Bring it, 2015. I got this.”

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