I’m taking one of Bob Mayer and Jen Talty’s workshops, offered on their website. One of the first things we were asked was to define our objective, our target endgame in our writing pursuits — something Bob commonly throws around as “Oz”. I’ve defined my Oz.

Initially, I defined that as connecting with the readers, building a base, and achieving financial success. But you can really shorten my path down the yellow brick road to one goal.

The benchmark for my having “made it” as a writer will be independence.

Most of us live our entire lives, cradle to grave, in dependency on someone or something else. I think people sometimes consider themselves independent because they “make good money”. But this is a misleading metric. One can make great money but live in fear of losing their job, or finding their profession rendered irrelevant, like a phrenologist facing the encroachment of modern medicine. Simply having a good career and a good paycheck isn’t enough.

It’s not just working for oneself that does it either. I see some authors spend huge tracts of time at conferences and workshops, like twenty or thirty conferences a year, and kill themselves working on this career, with the mindset seemingly being that if they even take a breather for a day, everything will far apart. I understand it more from those first starting up — and there is a common argument from established authors that they are networking — but to me, at the point that you’re working 12 hour days, every day, you haven’t hit what I’d call independence. Unless you like working that much.

Our culture glorifies sacrificing every waking moment as some sort of rite of passage in our chosen pursuits. I openly reject this mindset.

My reasoning is that if you’re working your fingers to the calcium, you don’t have balance, and balance is the bedfellow of independence. So while you might have great success working til’ 3AM, and giving up your nights and weekends, you haven’t made it yet. At least, not to where I think most of us want to be.

Put another way: So what if you have all that money? When do you get to enjoy it?

I like writing a lot. But my metric is that all decisions about the use of my time will begin and end with me and my family. I want a writing career thay will one day support that. I understand paying one’s dues and am in the process of doing so (while not letting down my day job). I’m balancing two manuscripts getting hammered into ebooks, getting covers, ISBNs, attending this workshop, working on the next manuscript, steering my promotions’ groups efforts. But I pray regularly that ambition and the success it will foster will never let me lose sight of what’s really important: independence.

And in particular, independence that gives me more time with my two favorite people, my wife and daughter:

What is your author objective? I’d love to hear it in the comments below.

Stay tuned.

Some brief meta: look for a revamped version of this website in the near future!