Focus

It’s taken me about a week to process last Thursday.

The USC Women’s conference was pretty great. There was the usual amount of thanking sponsors and other junk that went on for far too long, but the swag bag was fat and the speakers were actually quite stunning  They really got me thinking. One in particular, a former USC Basketball player, who now coaches after playing all over the world, got my synapses firing. “I’m in it to win it,” she said over and over.

Later that night I met with my writing group. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again – they’re amazing. Not only with the feedback, but with the moral support. I’ve been struggling with where to put my energies. If you’re in it to win it, you have to focus and work on being the best you can be at your chosen craft (be it basketball or fiction).

So I took all the things I heard last Thursday (bot the general advice on success from USC and the specific advice on writing from my superb writing group) and mulled them over in my brain.

The word that kept coming back was focus. Right now I’m a business writer, a fiction writer, a science writer, a travel writer, a food writer. I blog, narrate and edit. Everything I do is writing, but I’ve realized that to progress further in any one of those efforts, I will need to focus. But where to focus?

For the answer to that I went back to my new years resolution list. The things I prioritized in my goals were the business writing and the fiction. The first because it pays the bills, the second because I love, love, love it (and it might someday pay my bills). So I’ve begun the effort of focusing.

I passed on a new food writing gig, painful though it was, and spent the time on my business writing. I even signed up for a refresher course on my copy editing skills, since I have a client in the que who needs a lot of copy editing and I intend to be do the best damn copy editing she’s ever seen.

Focus. That’s what it comes down to. You can’t win everything. If you’re in it to win it, you have to focus.

At least, that’s the theory I’m running with this week.