| Caridad Pineiro® Romance Author

January 27, 2021

#WisdomWednesday – Small Steps, Big Changes

I’ve been hearing a lot about micro-goals lately, whether in relation to dieting or any other kind of task. Without really thinking about it, it’s something I’ve been doing for a lot of my life. While thinking about the big picture, like becoming a published author, I was setting smaller more achievable goals along the way. Write a chapter and the chapters became a book. Finish the book and look for an agent. Start the next book. Small steps leading to a big change. I took the same approach with my diet. Do ten minutes on the elliptical. Walk 10,000 steps. Lose 1 pound. Each small step leading to a bigger change.

Why is that so important? Setting goals that are unrealistic only sets you up to feel like a failure. No one is going to lose 100 pounds in a month or even a few months. It takes time. The same with writing. No one is going to become a bestseller overnight. It takes time and dedication.

But if you approach that goal with small steps, it not only seems more attainable, it is more attainable. When I do workshops and people say that they can’t imagine writing a book, I ask them “Do you think you could write a page a day?” The answer is invariably yes which prompts me to say, “Well if you did that, you’d have a book in a year, right?”

I’d like to think that my helping them think about doing such a big thing in small steps might help them reach that bigger goal, namely, writing a book.
micro-goals

June 14, 2017

The Writing Blizzard #WisdomWednesday

From that day in the fifth grade when my English teacher assigned our class project – to write a book – I knew I wanted to be a writer. I’d always been an avid reader, but until that day, it hadn’t occurred to me that the stories in my head could become a story that one day others would read.

I kept at it through high school, college, and law school. The child of immigrant parents and an immigrant myself, education was important, but so was a career that would pay the bills. My parents, especially my mom, didn’t think writing would do it and I am eternally grateful that I was an obedient child since my day job has provided me with many wonderful opportunities.

But so did the world of writing. New friends and new places to visit. Of course, that was balanced out by something I didn’t expect: the writing blizzard. The flurries of ideas that might not ever become anything more. The avalanche of rejection letters that gave way to an even greater avalanche of edits, marketing demands, business obligations, and more.

A lot of new writers I meet think that getting published is the hard part. I gently try to prepare them for the greater blizzard of work that comes after publication.

But if writing is your passion, you put your head down and weather the blizzard because something bright and wonderful emerges from the storm: a new story.

And then the blizzard begins all over again!

May 17, 2017

Wanted: Inspiration #WisdomWednesday #WriteWed

Now that I’ve got your attention . . . LOL!

I sometimes hear that a writer is waiting for inspiration or for the muse to hit to get started on a story. It makes me wonder what will happen if the muse is missing or that inspiration never materializes. It makes me wonder about what I write since I’m not the kind to sit and wait (for anything actually) and I just plopped my butt in the chair one day and decided to write.

Of course that was after a 5th Grade class assignment revealed to me that the stories in my head could become like one of the stories I loved to read. After writing my first book in the 5th grade, working on stories through high school, college and law school, it took a long time for me to say, “I’m finally going to do this.”

I haven’t looked back from that moment. I sat and I wrote. Every day. I didn’t sit and wait for inspiration and a muse because I’m the kind of person who believes that you make your own luck. That you control your destiny and that if you want something, you need to go for it full tilt like Don Quixote at the windmill.

Is it easy? Not always, in fact, most times not. There’s work and family and friends and a thousand other things that can pull you away from that story you want to write. You’ve got to want to write that story really bad and you’ve got to let the people in your life know that you want to write that story really bad. If they love you, they’ll understand and be supportive. They’ll celebrate with you when you say you’ve finished the story of your heart. They’ll hold you when you get that first rejection letter. They’ll be at your side when you get that box of books that says you’ve been published.

But that will only happen if you sit down and write, the muse be damned.

I’ll leave you now with a quote from a woman who was a friend, mentor, and most importantly, my mom: Nothing worthwhile is every easy.