Do You Have Goals? There's a Blog Hop for That

Visiting some blogs today I found out about the Do You Have Goals blog hop over at Aloha! Mark Koopmans says hi from HI. It takes place the last Friday of every month. Instead of putting your blog name in the linky, you put your goal. 'Write 28 Christian sex novels in Latin by next Tuesday', or 'Kill the wasps in the upstairs bedroom window before they destroy the universe' or 'write 5000 more words in Amish Zombie Apocalypse Book 3.'

The web site for the Do You Have Goals blog hop is here:
The Five Year Project: Do You Have a Goal?

And so, goals. Long term goals, short term goals. I set goals but never believe I can achieve them because I never do, or if I do they must have been so easy they don't count. So I don't think I will set a big or long-term goal this month.

My goal is: 'write 10 more poems in the Sons of Jacob series'.

To explain: I've been taking a few days off from the novel planning process for Starship Destine to work on doing an ebook version of my poetry book Where the Opium Cactus Grows. While working on it the project kind of grew. I am now doing an expanded version of Opium Cactus with the addition of about 20 or so newer poems, which means I will have to do a revised print edition as well.

Which takes 20 or so poems out of the poems I'm saving for the next book, which might be titled 'Sheep's Feet Dancing'. Or not. And it brought my attention to the fact that my poetry output this year has been pretty sparse.

So I've been setting to work, and on impulse I did something new--- I decided to do a series of 12 poems. You see, when I write poetry I grab random books to snatch words from, and the book I happened to grab this time was called Jacob's Dozen by William Varner. It's written by a pastor and is about the 12 sons of the Biblical Jacob, centered on the prophecy made by Jacob concerning his sons and their descendants.

I came up with the idea to do a poem for each of the 12 sons. It's not all Bible-y, though. I DO use the words of the Genesis text (in KJV) but I also use another book as source for other random words in the poems. So we end up with lines like this:

thy father's children bow down
before thee
using the most scientific methods

The thing about my doing the poetry is that it is something I know I can do. I was writing poetry 20 years ago and got quite a few published in 'zines and could do it again if I could spare the money for postage and sample copies of the 'zines. It's just that I've absorbed the idea that it isn't worth doing and that I'd be better off working on a failed attempt at a novel. But I'm beginning to suspect that's not the right way to look at it.

And so my goal is to finish the poem series--- which will be the centerpiece of a future poetry book I'm sure--- and stretch myself as a poet. To allow myself to be a poet. Perhaps I'll do better as a serious poet who writes a novel or two on the side than by trying to force myself into a prosier mode.

So that's my goal. Do you set goals? What has your experience of that been? What is your goal right now?

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