Ghost-of-a-Chance

Recently, someone asked me “What do you want to accomplish in the next ten years?” They probably expected something entirely different than what I answered. Some folks, surely, must answer that question with “I want to be promoted in my job” or “I want to get married,” or even “I want to own my own home and not have to deal with my bitchy landlady anymore.” My answer perplexed this person, and honestly, it confuses me, too.

I want to be truly finished with pieces after I’ve written them. I don’t want to spend hours, days, weeks, and even months and years wondering how I could have improved them. I don’t want to wake up in the middle of the night and realize I left a huge-ass plot-hole somewhere, spelled someone’s name wrong, or got chapters out of order. I don’t want to go back, read over my stories, think “My GOD that’s crap,” and spend the next several months agonizing over how I can improve the crap. I want to write, proofread, make final edits, and be done with the piece, able to move on without worrying I’ve made some horrible mistake...and no, I’m not just worrying for nothing. I do make horrible mistakes and find them months down the line, frequently enough that it’s given me some nasty recurring writer’s block.

Improving your craft can make you so much more critical of yourself. When I first started writing (we’re talking single digit ages here) I never looked back. Now I have decades of experience and years of education behind me, all geared toward improving my writing...and I can’t stop looking back long enough to look forward.

Maybe it’d be more realistic to say “I want to win the lottery without ever touching a ticket.”