Baby Steps Count, It's the Direction That Matters

Happy Holidays! This post is coming out Christmas Eve, but my greeting goes out to everyone celebrating the season.

I just read a National Geographic article about the seven principles of Kwanzaa. A holiday created by one person to foster unity among African Americans, it has spread across the globe. It's not a religion, but the principles seem like a good guide to living, even if you're not black or American. They address unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith. The idea of Kwanza is to focus on one of the principles for each of seven days in a row, and then try to take that forward into your life through the next year.

I have my most productive years when I take time at year's end to assess what I've done and consider what I want to accomplish in the next year. I think, to help me plan next year, I'm going to spend the next week focusing on one of the principles of Kwanza each day - even though it's not the right dates and I don't fit the original audience, and I may tweak the nature of the principle to be more general.

If you celebrate Christmas or Hanukuh or play Grinch throughout the month, consider trying this with me:

• Today, think about unity - how you can work together in your family, community, our nation. How can you help heal divisions?

• Tomorrow, think about who you are and what you want to be. If there are changes you want to make, decide what needs to be done, make a plan, and get to work. Let others know you appreciate their part in your life.

Each of the next days, consider one principle:

• Collective Work and Responsibility: Plan how you are going to build on commitments and relationships you already have; consider what others you want to begin.

• Cooperative Economics: This originally encourages African Americans to support black-owned businesses. We've all grown accustomed to ordering from big businesses online - discover your local businesses and consider how to support them.

• Purpose: Consider and choose a purpose in your life and focus on that. How will everything else you do serve that purpose?

• Creativity: Be intentional. For me, this means asking some questions: What do I want to accomplish with my creativity? How do I want it to be expressed? How do I want it to fit into my life?

• Faith: Be faithful to yourself, to your family and community and culture. Have faith you can make the world a better place to be through your daily choices.

That brings us to New Year's Eve - time to create a motivation board or write resolutions or draft a plan for the year ahead.

Remember: Baby steps count, it's the direction that matters.

Writers Revise

Looking back, I accidentally pulled my first all-nighter in fifth grade. When my parents went to bed, I told them I just had to copy my essay one more time - yes, I am a dinosaur who had to write my essays in cursive and hand-draw any illustrations. I kept finishing, seeing a small error or drawing I could do better, and redoing the whole paper, until I heard my father's alarm clock go off. I still have that essay - it looks childish next to what kids can produce today with computers, but the writing was excellent.

When I was in high school, most finals included essays, often heavily weighted, and you couldn't do a bunch of revision and still finish on time. So tests during the year also included essays. Organization, coherent presentation of ideas, error-free grammar and spelling - all the elements of good writing had to be present in first drafts to do well on those tests. Again, this was all hand-written - no word processing to make corrections quickly and cleanly. It was excellent training; my first drafts are usually clean - especially when I'm working on the computer.

But I don't publish first drafts. It's not just spelling everything right and using words correctly; it's also the flow of the piece. I'm writing this just before posting, but I've already revised the beginning a few times and I'll read through it all at least twice more before hitting publish. When I write a grant proposal or social history or any kind of non-fiction piece, it's always been revised and fine-tuned before I send it out.

And that's just revision on my own.

When there's time, and especially when I'm working with fiction, I prefer to have feedback from other people. They haven't read and re-read it and gotten stuck on one way of telling the tale. They'll tell me if I've started in the wrong spot, or included unnecessary information that starts to lose their interest. If I've revised and ended up with tense changes or other errors that make it difficult to follow, they'll tell me - or I'll hear it myself if it's a group where we read our work aloud. Sometimes they'll make suggestions that I reject (it's always the author's story in the end) but not without considering their feedback and their reasons.

Writers revise.

Writing for your audience: the judge

Always write for your audience - whatever you are writing.

Few writers make a living from their fiction. One of my side gigs is writing social histories for sentence mitigation attorneys. When I'm writing them, I write for the final audience: the judge.

While the attorneys will review and tweak my reports before handing them over to the court, they are not my final audience - that's the judge who is deciding the client's future. I need to consider how the judge will regard the client.

They'll already have a report filed by the probation department, which details criminal history and includes some social history as well as outlining sentencing parameters. Fortunately, that report is provided to defense well before the sentencing date.

I start by reading the probation report as if I were the judge - considering how it sounds, how it might influence sentencing and why. When I start interviews, I know what needs to be countered.

I also consider that the judge sees convicted criminals day after day, many of whom show little genuine remorse, have long histories of criminal activity, and little to support the possibility of success in turning their life around. As I interview, I look for ways to make the client stand out. Starting with relatives and friends, expanding out to teachers, employers, and other professionals, I find people willing to share positive events in the client's life and offering support to help them stay out of trouble.

Approaching the judge from their point of view can make the difference.