On Watching Where You're Going

Whenever I stumbled as a child, my father had a rather annoying habit of saying, "Watch where you're going!"

At the time, I didn't find this particularly helpful. But as I've gotten older, I've come to appreciate the wisdom in those words, especially when it comes to pursuing our dreams.

Last week, I wrote about the importance of having faith in our dreams. About trusting that they're coming, even when we don't know exactly when or what they'll look like when they arrive. Like Christmas morning, we can enjoy the anticipation instead of spending our days worrying about whether it's going to happen.

But having faith in your dream doesn't mean sitting around waiting for it to arrive. There's still work to be done. And I think this is where many writers get themselves into trouble.

We spend so much time looking at the dream in the distance that we forget to watch where we're going.

We want to know how we'll finish our manuscript, whether we'll find a publisher, how we'll attract readers, or whether the story we're working on will ever become the book we imagine. We try to figure out every step between where we are today and where we want to be.

And when we can't see a clear path, we become anxious. We hesitate. We question our choices, worry about making mistakes, and sometimes convince ourselves that we shouldn't take another step until we're absolutely certain it's the right one.

And here's the irony. The more we focus on reaching our dream, the more difficult we can make it to actually get there. We become so concerned with taking the right steps that we hesitate to take any at all. We procrastinate, second-guess ourselves, or spend our time trying to figure out the perfect way forward.

The very dream that inspires us to write can become the thing that prevents us from writing.

But here's the thing: you don't need to know how to get all the way to your dream. You just need to know what you can do next.

Imagine you're walking towards a distant light. You know where you want to go, but the landscape between here and there is unfamiliar. There might be mountains, rivers, fallen trees, or paths that lead somewhere you didn't expect. If you spend the entire journey staring at that light, you're going to trip over every tree root and stumble into every pothole along the way.

And every time you fall, you might start wondering whether you're going in the wrong direction.

But what if, instead of constantly focusing on that distant light, you simply focused on your next step?

Maybe there's a mountain in your way. You could climb it, find a path around it, or discover a completely different route. Perhaps there's even a hot-air balloon nearby! Why not give it a try?

You don't have to know whether your choice will work before you make it. You can try something, see what happens, and decide what to do next.

And that's exactly how I think we should approach our writing.

Maybe your next step is sitting down to write a scene you've been avoiding. Maybe it's revising a chapter, sharing your work with another writer, or finally allowing yourself to begin the story you've been carrying around for years. Perhaps it's experimenting with something entirely different, even if you're not sure where it will lead.

Whatever it is, that's your work today. Not figuring out how to finish the entire manuscript, not guaranteeing that someone will publish it, and not proving that you're talented enough to achieve your dream.

Just taking the next step.

And if that step doesn't take you where you expected? That's okay, too. A mistake isn't a failure. It's a step that didn't take you where you thought it would.

I like to think of the journey towards our dreams as following a piece of yarn from one end to the other. Sometimes that yarn is stretched out in a nice, straight line. Other times, it's tangled into a mess of loops, twists, and knots.

But here's the interesting thing. Whether that yarn is laid out in a straight line or tangled into a ball, it's still the same length. Following it from one end to the other will take the same number of steps, regardless of the direction it takes you.

And I think that's worth remembering when we make mistakes or encounter setbacks. Sometimes we'll learn something valuable. Sometimes we won't. Sometimes we'll discover that we need to turn around, change direction, or try something completely different.

But none of those steps is wasted. They're all part of the journey.

What's important isn't that every step takes us in the direction we expected. It's that we keep taking the next one.

In fact, I think one of the most wonderful things about approaching our dreams this way is what happens to our experience of writing.

When we stop demanding certainty about the future, we can give our attention to what's happening right now. We become more curious, more willing to experiment, and more open to discovering something unexpected in our stories.

We can enjoy writing a scene without worrying about whether it belongs in the finished book. We can appreciate a productive afternoon without immediately calculating how many more afternoons we'll need. We can even have a difficult writing day without deciding that something must be wrong with us.

And when we've done what we can for the day, we can rest. We don't need to spend the evening worrying about everything we haven't accomplished or everything that might go wrong. We can appreciate the work we've done, knowing that tomorrow we'll have another opportunity to move forward.

I think there's tremendous freedom in that. Because the alternative is spending our lives worrying about a future we can't yet see, while missing the life we're living right now.

And isn't that a terrible price to pay for pursuing something we love?

So here's what I'd encourage you to do.

Have a dream for your writing. Make it big. Make it beautiful. Imagine it as clearly as you can, and have faith that it's coming, even if the gifts waiting beneath the tree turn out to be different from what you expected.

Then bring your attention back to today. Look at what's in front of you. Consider what you can do with the time, energy, and opportunities you have available, and take your next step.

Tomorrow, do it again.

You don't need to take the perfect step. You don't need to know the entire path. You don't even need to know whether the direction you're heading today is the one you'll be following a year from now.

You just need to keep moving, paying attention, and trusting that you'll find your way.

After all, you can't discover where your dream might take you if you never begin the journey.

And remember what my dad used to say.

Watch where you're going!

Wishing you and your writing journey all the best,

Trevor Martens
Founder, I Help You Write Things

P.S. Registration for November Writers Camp is open! If you'd like to join me and a group of writers pursuing their dreams this November, I'd love to have you join us.

Learn more and register for Writers Camp here!