This time last year, I blogged about 2020 being a shitshow, but that it seemed like ‘the tide was turning’ for 2021.
Fucken woops.
For many, 2021 was as bad as, or worse than, 2020. And it looks like 2022 is heading for a rocky start, too.
It might seem weird to do things like goal-setting, or writing, when the world is a tyre fire.
But doom scrolling on Twitter isn’t useful: it’s a huge sapper of creative energy and is best avoided. The world’s fortunes are beyond my control.
What is within my control is what I’m going to spend my energy on this year.
I find solace in escaping into writing, and setting goals at the start of a new year always motivates me to work hard.
Before I evaluate my 2021 goals and set my 2022 goals, though, I want to touch on a couple of things around goals.
Earlier this week, an emerging writer contacted me for advice. He felt plagued by self-doubt (as we all do) and said that since I seem big on setting and reaching goals, he wanted to know how I keep focused.
We chatted about it, but his observation validated why I do these blogs each year, because there was a time when people in my life had no concept that I actually worked hard.
Years ago, I remember sharing some good career news with a family member, and he replied dismissively, ‘Oh yeah, you’re always just so lucky. Shit just falls in your lap.’
I wanted to shout at him, because this was such a skewed perspective. That opportunity did not just fall in my lap: I had to get a degree, then an Honours year, then achieve a bunch of stuff, then spend years networking, proving my worth and actually asking for it.
I outlined this to him, but he just shrugged like ‘sure, whatever man’.
His mind was made up: to him, I led an unfairly charmed life, and my success was due to me being more cosmically fortunate than him. Dumb luck.
I think this is really misunderstood about artists. Our successes seem to happen miraculously, but there is so much unseen, unpaid work behind all of it. For every publication, years of toiling at a desk, full of self-doubt, with zero promise of any payoff.
Creative success is an iceberg: people see the single achievement, but not the years of ruthless determination and work that made it happen.
So, when emerging writers ask for my advice, I always say you need to first set clear goals: what are you trying to achieve, and by when.
Next, you need to actively block out the time into your calendar, every week of the coming year, to allocate towards working at each goal.
Your goals need to dictate what your daily life looks like.
I don’t think this can be taught. There just needs to be a moment where the desire to achieve your goals overwhelms your fear and inertia to act on them.
For me, that moment was New Year’s Day 2014.
That day, the dawning of yet another year as an unsuccessful wannabe writer finally broke me.
I felt like a supreme failure; all talk. Since the age of seven I’d been saying I wanted to be an author, and yet here I was at twenty-five with nothing to show for it. Where’s your book, loser?
I had a moment where I got so angry, I just lost my shit. I grabbed an empty notebook and cut sick, ranting and raging in a stream-of-consciousness style, page after page.
What emerged in those pages was that I was fed up investing all my time, money and energy into stuff that only took me further away from where I actually wanted to be in life.
So, New Year’s Day 2014 was the moment I furiously decided to burn all of that stuff down.
I renounced trying to have a good full-time job and career.
I renounced trying to earn lots of money.
I renounced academic validation.
Just now, I dug that particular notebook out of my filing cabinet. It’s a Game of Thrones notebook with an image of the Iron Throne on its cover. Among the many hectic, rage-fuelled, ink-scrawled pages that day in January 2014, I wrote:
I ain’t no good little straight A’s boy getting an office job to make everyone proud and happy.
I am a fucking artist and I am gonna sing for my supper forevermore.
I will make my life happen.
That moment was when my whole life changed, and I became a dedicated artist.
I started calling myself a writer, got working on my first manuscript, and set a goal to complete it by the end of that year.
Since I had a full-time job at the time, my only chance to achieve that goal was to use my nights and weekends. I had to sacrifice all my spare time. I used to fill my down-time with studying various qualifications and drinking and socialising with work mates, uni mates, school mates.
I sacrificed that. No more studying. No more socialising.
I only had so many hours to use per week. If I wanted to avoid being in the exact same place come January 2015, I had to actively make changes in my life.
I dedicated myself to the hustle: evenings and weekends became writing time.
I didn’t miss my old pursuits. Working hard at my dream was a joyous end in and of itself. Even if I never got a book published, I felt alive and happy.
I’m sharing this because whenever someone asks me about goals and discipline as a writer, I feel I can only do so much in the way of advice.
I reckon it’s up to each individual artist to have their ‘fuck everything’ moment, where they get so mad they decide to actually do something about it.
If you’re struggling with this, I encourage you to lean into that moment and embrace it.
Not everyone is the same, of course, but it worked for me.
I spent 2014 working on my first draft, and completed that manuscript in January 2015. Finally, a new year rolled around where I felt satisfied. I wasn’t published, I had no accolades and still felt like a failure – but I was working my arse off to change it.
I was unsuccessful but trying, and that made all the difference.
I have kept this approach ever since, which has helped propel me year after year to keep chasing what I want.
I did the same in 2021, setting ten goals for the year: four writing goals and six personal life goals.
Here’s how I went:
2021 GOALS IN REVIEW
WRITING
1. Sign a publishing contract for Book 2 and do further edits on it.
This finally panned out in 2021. I signed a two-book deal with Text Publishing for my second novel, THE BRINK (out August 2022) and my third novel (out late 2023, probably). Big thanks to my agent, Gaby Naher of Left Bank Literary, for securing me an incredible advance that meant I could be a full-time writer – a lifelong dream come true.
On the editing front, I spent the year doing edits and the next draft is due back to my publisher at the end of January.
RESULT: SUCCESS.
2. Complete the second draft of Book 3.
This didn’t happen. I scheduled September and October to smash a second draft, but some crap personal life stuff happened and blew this to pieces. I had a shit few months and couldn’t write anything real. I wrote a Pokémon fanfiction novella to distract myself instead.
My third novel is due to my publisher this April, so I’ll work on it in the first half of this year.
RESULT: FAIL.
3. Progress the TV Series adaptation of Invisible Boys.
This project moved forward at speed in 2021. We got funding from Screen Australia, held a couple of writers’ rooms, got the first episode script written (holy shit, it’s awesome!), and in November 2021, we won a grant from streaming service Stan and Screenwest to develop the show into a ten-episode TV series.
TV development is a long process, but the next steps during 2022 will be to seek more funding to make this actually happen. Stay tuned.
RESULT: SUCCESS.
4. Get 1 piece of short fiction OR journalism commissioned, contracted or published.
This one worked out. My short story, Rappaccini’s Son, was published in the book HOMETOWN HAUNTS (Wakefield Press, 2021). A second piece, a short memoir titled Territory, was accepted for publication in the forthcoming book GROWING UP IN COUNTRY AUSTRALIA (Black Inc, March 2022).
I was also commissioned by WAToday to write a media article about gay conversion therapy, which was widely shared on social media and led to me fronting other press and radio opportunities to speak on the issue.
RESULT: SUCCESS.
LIFE
5. Maintain an average of 5 workouts per week (between weightlifting, footy and cardio).
I managed to maintain this all year and actually exceeded it. On average per week, I did four weights sessions and two cardio sessions (footy training and footy game) – six workouts total. I pushed myself to stick to this even when my nutrition was bad or my energy levels were low, and I’m glad of that.
RESULT: SUCCESS.
6. Get nutrition sorted to shred up and reach goal weight of 75 kg by 30 June 2021.
I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry. I failed this badly. I had a highly-disciplined first three months: by early April, I was down from 87 kg to 77.7kg, and it seemed I would achieve this. But my mental health nosedived in April, and I ate and drank heavily for months. By June, I was back at 86kg again, and by the end of December, I was still 84kg.
RESULT: FAIL.
7.Get first tattoos in 2021.
This didn’t happen either, and I’m getting mad about it. I wanna get my ink when I’m feeling good about my physique, so this goal is tied to me sorting out my nutrition. I also need money to spare for tattoos, which I currently don’t have as I’m living off advance and royalty income and need to conserve funds. Urgh.
RESULT: FAIL.
8. Train harder at footy and grow more confident and useful to the team in games.
I worked hard at this. For the first three months, I trained with an amateur AFL team, ECU Jets, in addition to the Perth Hornets AFL 9s team. I’ve always wanted to give full-contact AFL a crack. I enjoyed the training, but I felt badly out of my depth in terms of skills – sometimes, embarrassingly so – and I wasn’t able to make it work. The coaches and players welcomed me even knowing I’m a gay bloke, though, and I liked that. But combined with my mental health nosedive and years of crap self-esteem around sports, it became too much. I pulled out to focus on just AFL 9s.
I did become more useful to the team, and I was really proud when the Hornets coach awarded me the trophy for Most Improved Player last month. It’s the first time in my life I’ve won a trophy for anything sports-related. I’ll never be a natural athlete, but I was chuffed to be recognised for putting in the hard work. It’s hard to suck at something, in front of other people, week after week, but still show up and keep trying. I am proud of that.
RESULT: SUCCESS.
9. Do at least one guitar lesson.
After I failed my 2020 goal of doing a whole term of ten guitar lessons, I thought this was a nice, low-ball goal. Lol, nup. I didn’t fit in a single guitar lesson in 2021.
RESULT: FAIL.
10. Do some fun shit for pure enjoyment.
This was an odd goal, but I wanted to ensure I did stuff for fun. I went quad biking with mates, jumped on massive trampolines, went to concerts and went on a footy trip to Lancelin.
RESULT: SUCCESS.
Overall, I hit six out of ten goals in 2021. Not bad, not bad. I don’t stress about failed goals; they just kept me refocus on what I do and don’t want to keep trying at the following year.
My goals for 2021 look similar, but I’m simplifying down to just eight goals instead of ten. Four writing goals, four life goals:
2022 GOALS
- Complete the final edits for The Brink and promote its release.
- Complete the second draft of Book 3.
- Work on the TV Series adaptation of Invisible Boys.
- Get one piece of short fiction OR journalism commissioned, contracted or published.
- Maintain an average of 5 workouts per week (between weights, footy and cardio).
- Get nutrition sorted to shred up and reach goal weight of 75 kg by 30 April 2022.
- Get first tattoos in first half of 2022.
- Train harder at footy and grow more confident.
The first goal is massive, because the front end of the year will be preparing The Brink for release, and August onwards will be promoting it heavily with media and events. It will be hard to fit anything extra into 2022.
Because of this, stuff like guitar and fun shit will go on the backburner for a less hectic year. This year I’d love to go quad biking, go-karting or get out on a dirt bike, but I won’t set it as a goal. I’ve also left off full-contact AFL: I’m still interested, but it’s on the backburner.
I have a couple of more personal goals, too. I’m not sure if I’ll share them later or not, but I’ll be working on these quietly in my own time this year.
I’m keen to get started on smashing my goals now. The main joy for me is not necessarily being able to write ‘success’ or ‘fail’ at the end of each year, but just enjoying the dogged gut-fire I get that makes me work at each goal, week in, week out. It’s the most fun and rewarding way I know how to live.
In that notebook from 2014, I found a quote I wrote down from Paulo Coelho that I want to share here, to finish up. Coelho says, ‘Do something instead of killing time. Because time is killing you.’ I’ve always found that quote brutally motivational. I hope you might, too.
However you plan to spend your 2022, and whatever your own goals are, here’s to a year that, hopefully, has some good surprises in store for us all.
Holden
Holden Sheppard - Author 