"I'll write a book someday." I always had so many ideas for books. There were so many plots and twists and stories that floated through my mind each day. I was constantly writing poems and song lyrics because that was something feasible, but even then I always said, "I'll do something with these someday." In reality, my "someday" was just an excuse. A reason I wasn't doing that something right now. I started my first novel when I was sixteen and said I would finish it, you guessed it, someday. It was an easy out. A way for me to say, I'm going to do this, but I don't have to do it right now. So that way, if I never finished it, it wasn't like missed a deadline or failed.

        When you don't set goals for yourself, you are giving yourself an excuse to fail.  

       And I did fail. Month after month with my manuscript sitting dormant on my laptop. But then I started a new novel. And when I hit a dry spell with that one, I started a new one after that.

        So now, I not only haven't finished a novel, but I have three half-written novels. And they would all get finished "someday".

       What changed? I listened to an interview one day with Colleen Hoover, who is undoubtedly my favorite author, and I heard her testimony for the first time of how she became an author. It wasn't any huge break or unattainable thing. She simply decided one day that she wanted to write a book, having always had a love for writing. Not to get published, not to make a lot of money, not to become famous. She just wanted to write a book, and so she did. In the only free time she had each week for six weeks she wrote her first novel, Slammed. And then she decided to self-publish. In the end, a blogger picked it up and she became a bestseller almost overnight, but it was the simple fact that she wanted to do this for herself that spoke to me.

        So I got inspired, then I stayed inspired. And that inspiration led me to want to write and write and write until my first novel was done.

        I had to self-motivate on a daily basis. I had to read blogs and interviews with my favorite authors and a million Hemingway quotes. I read poetry, I read novels, I got involved in an author's group on Facebook. It doesn't matter what I was reading, I was staying inspired and feeling all the feels I could.

        But more than anything? I was writing. I set a goal, not an exact date but I was determined to finish it before the end of the school semester I was in. And I did. So I set more goals, and I met some of them and I totally blew past others. But I kept myself working until, one day, my book was done and published.

        I had to decide for myself what I wanted in life. I had to determine my dreams and make them happen today, not someday.

       So what are you saying you will do someday? Whatever it is, you can make it happen. You just have to want it; and not for your mom, or your spouse, or the people who told you that you can't or it's too hard or that it's unrealistic.

       You have to want it for yourself. And I promise you'll find a way to make it happen.