The Most Important Writing Question: What Are Your Priorities?

January’s almost over.

At this point, most writers are either still in that early state of hopefulness (“I will finish my novel this year!”) or they’ve hit their Slough of Despond (“3,000 words a day was a horrible goal.”)

This is not a blog post about writing goals. This is a blog post about priorities.

Not your priorities as a writer but as a person.

If your priorities are off, your goals—and your success or failure with them—will be pointless.

Repeat after me: Your writing life is not more important than your life-life. Your writing life is not separate from your life-life.

Let’s be clear. I believe that writing can be a moral act. And writing takes time. A ridiculous amount of time. Time that I could be spending with people I love. Or catching up on Doctor Who. (I’m three doctors behind at this point.)

But because it is so difficult to be a “successful” writer, there’s a tendency to treat Writing as a goddess before whom the “serious writer” must pour out everything—friends, family, health, sanity—to gain . . . what exactly?

Money? Fame? Self-respect?

At some point, you have to ask yourself, in a blunt, unpretentious way: Why do I write?

My answer is not going to be the same as your answer.

But I can guarantee that somewhere in your answer will be a mixture of fear, ego, questionable ideas about human worth and art, and just possibly, underneath all the psychic muck, a love for something—language; lonely children, seeking comfort in books; a people you call home but rarely read true stories about—that is honest enough to sustain you.

You don’t have to start at the grand philosophical level. Sometimes, figuring out what is important to you on a practical level helps you work out your internal philosophy (or at least, helps you figure out where the holes and contradictions are).

Last year, I asked myself what was absolutely vital in my life. And then I wrote out a simple list of priorities: physical health, mental health, spiritual growth, family, etc.

And then I numbered them.

That might feel a little harsh. (Did I really put health over family? What kind of monster am I?) But it forced me to acknowledge two personal truths: If I don’t take care of myself, I can’t write and I can’t care for the people I love. And if I don’t help the people I care about, everything I write about is a lie.

And then I broke down each priority into smaller priorities and goals (e.g., exercise, schedule regular doctor’s appointments, SLEEP, etc.)—which makes the priorities more practical.  

This list of priorities pulls me back in areas where I am likely run past the edge of the cliff. It forces me to reject certain inner critics (“If your eyes aren’t bleeding and your family doesn’t hate you yet, then you aren’t writing enough”) and take control of my own choices.

I know that not getting enough sleep makes me sick, and health is a higher priority than financial success, so I shouldn’t take on more work than I can reasonably complete this month.

Spending time with friends is one of my priorities, but I haven’t done much of that lately. Maybe I should go to that movie on Saturday?

It’s not perfect. Right now, my life is full of “which family emergency is the most emergency-ish” situations. Figuring out the line between needs and wants and triaging the wants/needs of multiple people is always going to be complex.

But the list pushes me to create goals that reflect what’s actually important to me. Not the things I merely think I should be doing, but things that help me become the person I most want to be.

It takes a long time to create my New Year’s goals now. But I’m a lot happier with the goals I create. I feel like they’re actually about bettering myself—in gradual, genuine ways—and acknowledging what truly makes me happy and fulfilled.

And slowly, my priorities list has forced me to examine my writing.

I hold no scorn for writers who work with their eyes on the market. (People who think that artists shouldn’t create for money tend to already have their money.) But I have to ask myself if the things I’m giving my readers match my priorities for myself.

When I’m writing fiction, do I only care if my characters succeed in their goals (whatever that looks like)? Or do I care about how they learn (or don’t learn) to treat themselves and others? What, by the end of the story, I am suggesting is important?

If reading fiction engenders empathy, who am I encouraging readers to extend that empathy to? And if I am learning to treat myself with kindness, how I am helping readers extend this same kindness to themselves?

When I’m writing nonfiction, what sort of priorities am I encouraging in the reader? Do these contradict my own, stated priorities? (And if so, why?)

If writing makes me happy (and it definitely does), then do I understand why it makes me happy? And can I open a door into that happiness for my reader?

If I only write to fulfill my unexamined picture of writing success, I may still manage some decent work. But I also will risk that strange disconnect that creeps into ego-based writing.

You know the sort of writing I’m talking about: it pays lip service to high ideals but comes across as a bit flat and removed from the messy realities of trying to live a principled life. (“We solved all our problems through the power of love . . . and that money we got from our abruptly dead rich uncle. No, we are not going to explain what we mean by ‘the power of love.’”)

Honest writing about difficult issues requires a life that is honestly lived.

Maybe this is already obvious to you. And you don’t need a rambling blog post to tell you “your goals should match your values.”

But the “tyranny of the urgent” is a kudzu vine that’s constantly hiding what matters most.

So if you’re looking at the beginning of February and feeling a bit overwhelmed (or underwhelmed) and directionless, maybe it’s time to look beyond your goals for the year. Maybe it’s time to dig down to what’s really important to you.

It’s okay if this takes a while. Deciding what is meaningful isn’t a single project but a continual, life-long work.

I can’t pick priorities for you. But if I could, they might be for you to get to the end of the year and not simply say “I finished [number] of my goals” but “the things I did this year, and the stuff I wrote, mattered to me and I am proud of them—even if no else is.”