Destinations, Not Goals

Why aiming for vague destinations makes me happier than setting standard goals

This image WILL be relevant, I swear! (Photo by Ruben Ramirez on Unsplash)

Today was supposed to be the final newsletter in my Misfits & Daydreamers Primer Series, but as frequently happens with me, I started writing my introduction…

And oh look at that. A completely unrelated thing poured out instead.

So let’s dive in.

---

Reaching Destinations

HOORAY! I finished another book! And I’m quite pleased with myself, if I’m being honest. 😌

Because not only does this mean I’ve now reached my “destinations” for the year (more on that below!), but it proves that leaning into my fluid creative approach has truly been effective for me.

And that’s what I want to talk about today: abandoning the shoulds and instead finding what works for you.

---

Surprise Books

So what book did I finish?

It’s the Strange & Deadly reboot, and boy, has everything about this book been a surprise.

For one, I didn’t plan to write it.

I was only supposed to lightly edit my debut novel, Something Strange & Deadly. All of the books in the series, actually, were to be edited lightly then republished independently.¹ Because why not? I have the rights back, and the books are currently just sitting unread on my hard drive.

But then I opened the manuscript…

And oh. I immediately hated the first line. So that needed to change.

And then that second line—not great either. Hmmm, this whole page just needs redoing, methinks.

Okay, okay, yeah, so the entire chapter doesn’t work. None of these emotions land for me, and why is my heroine Eleanor so tell-y instead of show-y? I just don’t write this way anymore!

Surely the second chapter will be better, and I won’t have to start from scratch again…

Ohhh, no. Nope. It’s just as bad. Worse, even. So let’s rewrite this one too. And hmmm, now I’m in chapter 3, and I just don’t think my character would do what I have her doing in the original. She’d actually do this different thing over here…

AND OFF I WENT, MY FRIENDS.

From there I just stopped even trying to adhere to the original structure or storyline. I didn’t even keep the same magic system! There are necromancers and walking corpses, but that’s basically where the similarities end. Now, the magic system is much richer—and I use the actual 1876 setting in much more interesting ways (or at least I think I do!).

And oh, Eleanor! My heroine! I initially planned to age her up to 18 (from 16 in the original), but as I wrote, I realized it would be much more fraught—and believable with regards to her independence—if she were actually a 24-year-old spinster.

So she got changed too.

And then, the love interest. Why was he such a jerk in the original book? Peak 2010s YA hero—and hey. I loved that back then, so I shouldn’t be too hard on myself or the plenty of readers who loved Daniel…

But it’s just not how I write my love interests or romances now. So he wound up with a personality transplant and (I think) a much more interesting backstory.

---

The second surprise was that the book ended up being much longer than I’d planned for. I was hoping for a pacy 80,000 words…

But it came in at 99,000 words instead. I’ll absolutely tighten that in revisions, somewhat, but there’s a lot of meat on that bone I can’t cut.

And that’s okay! The book also wound up being so much richer in the magic and world and character department. So longer doesn’t make it bad!

---

My third surprise was how lopsided the drafting actually was. The first 66,000 words of the book took me only 2.5 weeks to write. And honestly, they’re quite words good considering!

But the last 33,000 words? Oooooh boy. Those took me so long and with so many false trails, backtracked chapters, reframes, and generally miserable days of stuckery.

Which is basically how all my books come together! So I really should not have been surprised.

Like, really, Sooz. This is how all of your books go!

Sector 26, the first book I finished this year, was no different! Nor was Four and Twenty Blackbirds or The Executioners Three or The Luminaries or basically any book I’ve finished in my entire writing career.

I always hit ~60-75% mark and I grind to a halt. It’s painful. It’s slow.

But for the first time, I just made myself not get frustrated. I accepted this is a feature of my process, NOT A BUG. And I determinedly chipped away at the story bit by bit—backtracking, cutting, rewriting, voice-memoing-my-brainstorming-thoughts, etc.

And as I myself have preached: hard writing isn’t bad writing. To prove this, as well, I think the Act 3 of Strange & Deadly might be one of the best climax sequences I’ve written yet!

Even if it was a slog in the moment, the finished Act 3 is just pure EPIC ACTION.

---

Side note: yes, I’m trying to figure out the best way to show paid subscribers how I will take this behemoth and edit it! So stay tuned!

---

Why I Gave Up On Goals

You’re probably wondering why I gave you all that backstory on Strange & Deadly. Like, Sooz, how is that relevant to destinations instead of goals?

Because Old Susan would have said, No, you can’t work on that. You have other things you need to do, and you should be sticking with only one project until you finish it.

Old Susan would have set a goal for 2026 that read something like this:

• Finish the third Murder Quartet book, Three Mollys in the Well (under contract)

• Finish An Unkindness of Mirrors (a WIP my agent wants)

Then I would have only let myself work on those books for the entire year. And in all likelihood, I’d have probably dragged one of them out of me (the contracted one, is my guess), but I’d have been generally miserable from all the stuckery.

(I think I’ve mentioned about 8,000,000 times now that I am at my most unpleasant when I’m stuck in a story. I certainly said it here.)

I would have then closed out 2026 frustrated I didn’t produce more, and I’d have gone into 2027 with my final Murder Quartet book due—and hanging around my neck like a lead weight.

And I know I would have done this because, to go back to the evidence, it’s what I always did for the first thirteen years of my publishing career. And because of that, I believed I was slow. I believed contracted books were automatically impossible for me. And I believed that me + endings ≠ friends.

But it just didn’t have to be that way! And now I have overwhelming evidence to prove I can do this whole “write faster and be happy about it” thing.

---

Why I Use Destinations Instead

I’ve discussed this before, but I’m going to go over it again with a slightly different take on the metaphor.

A destination is vague. That’s why I like them.

I mean, yes, I do typically put a specific address into my Google Maps when I need to go somewhere.

BUT there are times when I just need a coffee. Or gas for the ol’ tank. Or a grocery store. Or a post office.

So I pop that in Google, and I select whichever one makes the most sense for my current needs and location. Then, eve if I end up at a Starbucks instead of a Tim Horton’s, I’m getting myself coffee. And that’s really all that matters!

Which is how I view destinations in my writing now. If my destination is to finish a book—without specifying what book—then I reach that destination…

Well, I finished a freaking book! And the more books I have finished on my hard drive, the higher my overall odds of career success are.

And if I can actually finish 2+ books in a year and feel good doing it versus being miserable and barely finishing one…

I think it’s clear which approach wins.

---

The other VERY IMPORTANT PIECE OF THIS VAGUE DESTINATION APPROACH is that it allows for surprise.

It’s like finding a dinky coffee shop that turns out to have the most amazing coffee you’ve ever had. You went there because it was on the list of possible destinations in Google Maps. It looked interesting. And then oh my god, why is this iced latte so delicious?! Why is this vibe so cute?! Thank goodness I didn’t just stop at Starbucks again!

To go back to Strange & Deadly, I didn’t expect to write that Book. It wasn’t on any BINGO card anywhere for my career…

And yet, it was such an incredible experience! I had fun! Even when I was miserable and stuck (ha!), I still had an absolute blast diving into that world and exploring it with Eleanor 2.0.

The entire Murder Quartet was also an unexpected surprise that felt like it poured of out of me.

Sector 26 was also another surprise that burst forth.

(Until, of course, I got stuck in all of those books at the 66-75% mark. Lol. 😬 But that’s okay! It’s a feature, not a bug!)

If I hadn’t let myself run after those ideas, I wouldn’t have all these new books under my belt from 2024-2026. I’d have just chipped away at one or two things and quite possibly finished none of them.

So all of this is to say: shooting for vague destinations instead of specific goals has let me have the freedom to explore the unexpected. It has let me follow my muse down unexpected paths. And that in turn has made me a much, much happier human!

---

My Destinations For 2026

Since I don’t think I ever actually shared my destinations for 2026 (I know I shared my list for 2025, but nowhere do I seem to have explicitly made a similar list for 2026…), I want to do that now.

So here it is. For 2026, I want to:

• Finish a book.

• Finish a second book.

• Stretch goal: finish a third book.

And that’s it. That’s all I had on my Destinations List when I went into 2026.

And golly gee, look at that. I’ve already reached my main destinations!

For 2026, I have:

• Finished a book.

• Finished a second book.

Now to be clear: I did not require myself to finish a brand new book I started this year. No way. That would make no sense and turn Jan. 1 and Dec. 31 into arbitrary barriers.

If there’s one thing I no longer abide, it’s barriers and containers that don’t actually serve me!

Plus, since I allow myself to work on so many things at once—and I’m constantly hopping between books at different stages of completion—I will always have some books nearing the finish line while others are just starting out.

And that’s good! Because it means that while I might not finish more than two books this year, I will almost certainly make lots of progress in other ones.

In fact, I already have! In addition to finishing Sector 26 and Strange & Deadly, I’ve managed to:

• Edit + line edit + copyedit Four & Twenty Blackbirds (with my editor/publisher)

• Edit Sector-26 (on my own and with some light external notes from beta readers)

• Edit Strange & Deadly (also on my own—currently awaiting beta reader feedback!)

• Add 10,000 words to my ongoing, very-difficult-so-why-do-I-keep-torturing-myself WIP, An Unkindness of Mirrors

• Finally, finally work through knotted scenes in two WIPs so I can hopefully start writing those again in earnest when the muse returns:

  • The Hand That Feeds — I shared two chapters of this book here! I was so stuck on one little scene and couldn’t figure out why! But I finally managed to rearrange some earlier chapters, and oh! That did the trick. Now the dominoes line up, and now I’m finally cooking with gas again!²

  • Three Mollys in the Well — this is my third Murder Quartet book. I hit 55,000 words and I just couldn’t crack the emotional state of my character in that moment. But phew! I got through! And now it’s off to the races again—or in this case, off to solve a murder!

---

Keeping Track of Progress

In this post, I talk about tracking progress. In Classic Sooz Fashion, I gave up on tracking progress about a year ago.

I just…stopped remembering to do it.

And remember my point about barriers and containers? You can add routines to that list. I cannot overstate how bad I am at them.

But guess what: that’s fine! I know generally what I’ve gotten done this year, and more importantly, I know I’m happy. And I don’t know about you all, but for me, being happy is a pretty good marker of success.³

But for those of you who do want to track output, then check out the post linked above for ideas on how to do so while still maintaining fluidity.

---

IGNORE THE SHOULDS

To end this newsletter, I just want to remind you all to ignore the freaking shoulds.

There is no moral goodness in being able to “write everyday.”

There is no moral goodness in being able to “write everyday at the same time.”

There is no moral goodness in being able to “write a book from start to finish and never deviate to other projects.”

There is no moral goodness in “setting goals.”

There is no moral goodness in “reaching goals.”

There is no moral goodness in “outlining.”

There is no moral goodness in “pantsing.”

There is no moral goodness in “revising as you go.”

There is no moral goodness in “fast drafting without looking back.”

There is simply finding what works for you and doing more of it.

So I urge all of you to find what brings you true satisfaction with your work (while acknowledging there will always be friction and difficult spots in creative work).

Experiment! Ditch goals! Ditch destinations! Try writing everyday! Try writing every night! Try not writing for a week! Try only writing when inspiration strikes!

And definitely try getting the heck off social media. 😌

Just please see what feels right for you, and then do it more. And if you need further guidance, I’ll just yet again recommend you check out Becca Syme’s work at the Better-Faster Academy!

I want all of us to find what makes our creative brains tick, and then I want all of us to accept that what works for me might not work for you—and that’s just fine.

Until next time, my friends! I’m off to poke at a few manuscripts on my hard drive and see which one is singing to me…

💚 - Sooz

1. I still plan to publish them independently!! I’m very excited about this, and you can stay tuned for news on a release date SOON!!!!

2. I’m certain I’ll hit more knotted areas later, but that’s fine! I don’t despair like I would have a year ago. I just set it aside, then chip away at it bit by bit when I have the time/spark.

3. I would like to be clear, though, that I have crappy days. Don’t we all! But after my family went through so many years of sustained difficulty and loss…Well, life feels downright peachy in comparison right about now. Let’s hope it stays that way! (And if not, we’ll weather it like we always do.)