This is The Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 46: Crafting Your Mission Statement.

Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps aspiring writers and all writers to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write every day. I’m your host, Sarah Werner. I just read you the Write Now podcast mission statement, because that’s what we’re talking about today, mission statements. I like to begin each episode of the Write Now podcast with my mission statement so that you know as the listener what you’re getting into when you listen to my show right from the very beginning. It helps to set your expectations so that you don’t come in expecting one thing, getting another thing and then leaving super upset, or maybe people are still leaving super upset. I kind of hope not. But a mission statement is a great way to explain what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. That’s what today’s episode is all about.

If I just got onto the microphone each episode and just started talking to you, a lot of you would probably be like, who is this lady? Why is she talking to me? Why does she always mention her cats and the graveyard behind her house and the books that she loves to read? This is just not making sense. What is the purpose of this podcast? Why am I giving this podcast my time? So I like to set expectations so you know what you’re getting out of this show, so that you can decide if it has value for you or not. In a nutshell, a mission statement clarifies and reminds you of your purpose. I have one for this show and I believe that all writers should have one as well for a number of different reasons that we’ll get into shortly. The interesting thing to me is that I don’t think a lot of writers have a mission statement.

Now I’ve also sometimes heard of mission statements referred to as purpose statements, and that’s all well and good. If you prefer, you can call it a purpose statement, but I like to call it a mission statement because it sounds so much more active. I think of purpose as why you’re here, why you exist. Whereas mission, I think of going out into the world and changing it. That’s just a personal differentiation there. You can really call this thing whatever you want. But, okay, so Sarah, you’re saying right now I’m a writer and I do want you to say that you’re a writer. You’re saying Sarah, I’m a writer. What on earth is a mission statement going to do for me? Isn’t that a huge waste of my time? I mean, the time that I take creating a mission statement can very easily be used to work on my novel or write a new poem.

I think that after we go through today’s episode, you’ll be really excited to start working on your mission statement. Honestly, it shouldn’t take an incredibly long amount of time. I think that the time investment is worth it in the long run. Throughout the episode today, I’d like you to in the back of your mind, start thinking about why you write. We’ve talked about this a little bit in past episodes, but it’s really going to come into play as you’re crafting your writing mission statement. I’ve said before that we are all wired to create. We were all created to create. Human beings have this innate ability and desire to create things, to write, to create art, to dance, to create music, to enjoy music, to read books. We love making things and consuming the things that we make like delicious cake.

What about you? What makes you different? Beyond that primal urge to create something troubling or beautiful? Why do you write? Do you write to create the stories that you wish existed? Do you write to solve problems or provide solutions? Do you write to create worlds that you wish you could live in? Do you write to attempt to change the status quo, to change how things are? Do you write to entertain people and make them laugh? Do you write to help people think twice about the way that they’re living their lives? Do you write because there are things inside you that need to get out? We write for a million different reasons. The reason that you write is unique to you. Even though we have our reasons for writing, I think that sometimes that reason gets buried or forgotten or neglected or overlooked.

Life can get in the way. Life can be hard. Life can be painful, overwhelming, frustrating, difficult to navigate. Having a mission statement and writing it down and maybe putting it at your writing desk or wherever it is that you write, having that mission statement in front of you can act as a lighthouse beacon that guides you to the shore, that guides you toward fulfilling whatever it is you want your writing to fulfill. Mission statements can clarify and remind you of your purpose. I found that a mission statement can also help you make difficult decisions. By that, I mean, whether or not you should say yes or no to something. Does it align with the mission that you’ve set out?

We’ll get into this a little bit more later, but this is one of the reasons that a mission statement can be very, very valuable in your life. A mission statement can also help you as a writer to understand your own story. It gives you your own character backstory, if you will, and can help you to understand where you’re going in the context of where you’ve come from. I think that can be very important. In line with that, a mission statement can help you build your integrity and really live out the life that you want to live. I think integrity is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot. But I think at its very root, integrity means are you living up to the expectations you’ve set for yourself? Can people trust you to live up to the expectations that you’ve set for yourself? Someone outside just started mowing their lawn, but I’m going to keep recording. Ignore the lawn mower sound.

Your mission statement, as I was saying, can help you build integrity and live the life that you want because it projects the person that you want to be and helps guide you toward it. Finally, a mission statement sums up what you are all about. I like to begin mission statements with I will, or I am. I didn’t do that with the Write Now podcast’s mission statement because the podcast is more of a thing. I do have a personal mission statement that I’ll be sharing with you as we work through how to create this together. It does begin with I. I think that there’s something very powerful in I statements. They’re very affirming, and by affirming, I mean that they can help you understand and confirm that you are a person of great worth and that you have a story to tell and that story matters.

I don’t know if you are a fan of 30 Rock, which was a TV show that is I think now available on Netflix, but it stars Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey as this odd couple in the 30 Rock building in New York city. They worked together on a sketch comedy show and get into all sorts of wacky high jinks. Alec Baldwin plays a character named Jack Donaghy, who is this high-power, tie wearing executive who makes decisions about the show from an administrative standpoint. Tina Fey plays Liz Lemon, who is in addition to being my spirit animal, a very nurturing, supporting and hilarious character. They have a great chemistry together. One of my favorite scenes from the show is an episode where Jack Donaghy has to give a speech. He is standing in the men’s bathroom and he already has his lapel mic on, so he’s just warming up. Of course, the lapel mic is actually on and everybody out in the auditorium can hear these things that he’s saying to himself, his affirmation statements.

He says, go out there and win, you magnificent… Make your mommy proud. Show them what you’ve got. I think that that’s the rep that affirmation statements get, and you don’t have to do that. I’m talking about the type of affirmation that says, yeah, I’m a worthwhile person and I have a story to tell, and I like to talk about 30 Rock. Anyway, your mission statement can be another great way to psych yourself up before you write. Without further ado, let’s jump right into beginning to craft our mission statement. We’re going to do this in a series of steps and it should be fairly, I don’t want to say simple, but it should not be arduous or head-desk-bangingly difficult. We’re going to start with step one, which is just a thinking step, but you can write it down if you want.

If you want to follow along and create these steps in your writing journal or on a notepad or something, I invite you to do that. Step one, think about or write about where you are now and where you want to go. Now I’m not saying like, oh, I’m in Detroit right now and I want to go to Cleveland. I’m talking about your dreams. Where are you right now? Are you a frustrated writer whose work-life balance is ridiculously out of control? Are you a mom who has no time for herself? Or a student who has mountains and mountains of homework to do and papers to write and all you’ve really want to do is have time to yourself to read a book and write for yourself? Are you working multiple jobs to make ends meet while dreaming every day of the novel you wish you could write? What’s your dream? How do you want to impact the world? There’s a couple of ways to think about this, but I really want to get at the heart of it.

What I mean by that is I don’t want you to say, my dream is to get famous. Because okay, yeah, getting famous is cool and there’s a lot of cool perks probably to being famous, but that should not be an end in itself. When we talk about what do you want to get out of writing? You can say to be famous, but then think about what will you do with that fame? Because I have known a few people who have touched fame and found it strangely empty and lacking. Maybe your dream is to get famous and use your fame to promote a cause that you care about, or to gain a bigger audience for which to tell your story. Maybe your dream is to publish your book of poetry. Maybe your dream is to publish a novel and have a movie be made out of it. Dream big. This is what we’re going to work toward. Write down where you are now and where you want to be. That where you want to be place, that’s where we’re going to set up the lighthouse that’s going to shine a beacon so that we can navigate toward it even when life gets in the way.

Even when life throws storms and waves and rocks, glaciers our way. In order to get somewhere, we need action. You can’t just sit on a couch looking out your window watching the world go by and wonder why you’re not going anywhere. You need to get off the couch, metaphorically speaking. If you write on your couch, then stay on your couch and write there. What I want you to do is think about what actions will take you from point A to point B, from where you are now to your dream. It’s also okay if you’re not 100% sure right now what your dream is, if you just like to write and you don’t really have an end goal in mind, that is perfectly okay. Me, for instance, I am a bad planner. Like I am a really bad planner. I was a member of a leadership program a couple years ago where we had to write a, let’s see, I want to say like three month, one year, and five year personal development plan.

I was okay with a three month. I was like, well, okay, in three months I want to be this, this and this and I want to have accomplished this. But then planning for the one year and the five year, I was like, I have no idea where I’m going to be. I have no control over what happens to me. Five years ago, I did not even know about podcasting, like, I couldn’t have planned for this because I didn’t know about it. I’m one of those people who’s learned that you can’t plan a whole lot about life. I’m more of a go with the flow person. I learned about podcasting and I was like, oh, I should do this. Then I planned for the podcast, but that’s short-term, so I’m able to plan short-term. Okay, I need to buy a microphone and I need to buy some audio foam and got a couple towels lying around to dampen the sound. Oh yeah, I should probably download Audacity and set up a Twitter and Instagram account for the podcast and write my podcast mission statement.

See, I’m tying this all together. But five year plans, where am I going to be in five years? I have no idea. For me, that’s part of the excitement of life. For you, it might be terrifying. For you, you’re like, oh my gosh, Sarah, what is your problem? I know exactly where I’m going to be in five years, 10 years, 50 years. I know where I’m going to retire. That’s okay. A lot of people are different that way. I don’t know why this is cracking me up. I think I laugh nervously when I think about planning. That’s how non-planning I am. Tangent over. Number one, think about where you are and where you want to be and keep that in mind. Step two. Step two is thinking about your values. Thinking about what is important to you as a writer, or what’s important to you as a writer, a mother, a father, a sister, an aunt, a pickle maker, a computer programmer, whatever capacity you like to think about yourself in.

What is valuable to you? That is a huge and open-ended question. I’m going to provide you with a couple examples. Basically what we’re doing is looking at what matters to us because the values that matter to us are the things that are going to propel us toward that end goal, toward that vision we have for ourselves. Here’s some sample values that might be important to you. I’m taking these from my good friend, Melissa Johnson’s book, Fingers in the Frosting. Values here that she includes are honesty, loyalty, commitment, passion, fun, family, courage, respect, integrity, serving, reliability, encouragement, spirituality, teamwork, learning, prosperity, relaxation, care, hope, truth, love. You can probably add about 700 more words to this list, but start thinking about what it is you value the most and write down five of them. For me, as a writer, separate from my podcast here, my five were serving, fun, creativity, truth, and encouragement.

Those are five things, five values that really matter to me. I’ve said before on the show that I feel like my purpose in life is to serve others. Hopefully I’m doing that for you through my podcast and hopefully I’m doing it for others through my writing. Secondly, I like to have fun. I’m one of those people who I cannot work a boring desk job. I can’t do it. I know this is like horrible of me to say, but I think that work should be fun. I think that forcing ourselves to perform drudgery after drudgery after drudgery is you’re missing something in your work life. If there’s not something at your work that makes you happy, now, I’m not saying that you should go to work and slack off and bring your Legos and build a little warship at your desk. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that you should enjoy the environment that you’re working in and you should have people around you who make you smile.

I think that as adults, we don’t get enough fun in our lives. I was just reading this really interesting article about how we don’t let ourselves play anymore and what kind of effect that has on our lives. It’s fascinating. I think that fun is important. I think that a sense of humor is healthy. My third one is creativity, which maybe is a given for a writer. I don’t know, but I need creativity in my life. I need to create it and I need to absorb it. I need to consume it. That sounds terrifying. But creativity is important to me. I love knowing that I am creative. I love knowing that you are creative. I love inspiring that spark that lets people know that they can create things too. My fourth one is truth. Truth is important to me. I’ve always been one of those people who will say what I’m thinking and how I’m feeling, even if it’s not maybe socially appropriate to do so. I think that no matter how hard we try to hide it, the truth always comes out.

Finally, number five, encouragement. I love encouraging people. I think this goes hand in hand with my first value which was serving. I want people to make the most out of their lives and I want people to live rich, fulfilling, and happy lives. That’s what I want to see. That’s part of my vision for the future is people living good lives and encouraging them along that path. Those are my five values. Yours might be different. You might have kindness and diversity and engagements and honor and freedom. Those might be yours. They can literally be whatever you want and they don’t have to be positive. Maybe you value some negative things like war and crime and injustice. I don’t judge. Whatever is important to you, whatever you value. Write down five of those. Once you’re done writing down your five values, I want you to cross out two so that you narrow it down to your most important top three.

This was really hard for me because all five seemed integral to who I am, but you can do it. My three that I chose were truth, creativity and encouragement. I felt okay sacrificing serving and fun because I felt like serving fit nicely with encouragements and fun fit in with creativity. Mine are truth, creativity and encouragement. These three values are values that shape, probably not only my writing but my life. Now this is where we get a little bit into the tricky stuff. I want you to look at the three values you’ve written down and look at them in the context of your dream, how are your values going to help you live out your dream? This is a big leap to make. It might take some additional journaling. Or if you’re me, I do a lot of sketching while I think. I draw little grids and little lines pointing to things and it’s all very messy, but it helps me think.

I encourage you to take the time to think how will each of these values help me live out my dream. I also want you to see if there’s any inconsistencies between your dream and your values. If your values are freedom, fun, and I don’t know, integrity or peace or compassion, then if your dream is to become an evil corporate overlord, I think that you’ve got some problems just inherently in that. Look at your dream in the context of your values and look at your values in the context of your dream. Do they support each other? Do you need to make any little adjustments? Do you need to further refine your dream? Do you need to define each of your values? Also, I just realized now that while I told you what my values are, I didn’t tell you what my vision or my dream was.

Mine is to publish the novel that I’m working on. That’s my dream. I want to be a published novelist, but not just as a means to its own end. I dug a little deeper as I was writing my dream, my vision, and that was, and forgive me if this is disgustingly lofty, but I want my published work to nurture, heal and inspire others. All right. Maybe you can see where this is going. Step by step, we’ve established our vision, our big dream, that place we want to be. We’ve established our values. Now it’s time to craft our mission statement. This is something that I had to write a couple of rough drafts of. Maybe you’ll get it right on the first try or maybe you’ll wrestle with it for a little bit. Again, this is something that you should definitely write down.

I have mine currently written down, well, I have my podcast pins to my little pinboard here in my office where I record my show, but I also have my personal mission statement written down in the very front of my journal so that it’s always there. It’s always guiding me. I can always reference it when I’m making a decision. Now we are going to craft that mission statement, that I will affirmation statement that explains how we will use our values to accomplish our vision. You can see that through the lens of writing or you don’t have to. If you want this to just be a mission statement about who you are, that’s okay too. But whatever you do, I want you to try using an I statement so that it is affirming and so that you know that it’s something you want in your heart, even if you read it on a day when you’re not really feeling it, which for me is a lot of days.

That’s why we write it down, to stay steadfast to ourselves and to be more purposeful in living out our vision. Here’s my mission statement. I’ve never read it to anyone else, but I’m reading it to you, so don’t laugh. I will use my writing and podcasting skills to tell stories that use truth, creativity and encouragement to nurture, heal, and inspire others. In doing so, make the world a better and more empathetic place. You can read a couple of layers in here. You can clearly hear the three values that I shared, truth, creativity, and encouragement. I’m going to write stories that embody these values that will in turn, hopefully, help me realize my vision, which is to nurture, heal and inspire others. That’s my dream.

I want to tell stories and continue podcasting and write a novel that helps people, and in doing so, it makes the world a better and more empathetic place. Because as writers, we’re the ones who are changing the world. We are the ones who are responsible for changing the world. The ideas that we put into our poems and essays and books and novels and biographies and articles and whatever else it is, whatever it is that you write, writing is first and foremost a means of communication, conveying ideas. What ideas are you sharing? Are those ideas supporting your values? Are those ideas supporting your values and helping drive toward your vision? We are writers and we are going to change the world. I know that sounds like an afterschool special like, oh, you can change the world, but it’s really true because really, there is no changing the world.

There’s only changing the hearts and minds of the people who live here in the world with us. The way that we change people and change their hearts and their spirits is with communication. One form of communication, one very crucial and important form of communication is writing. Whether you’re writing fiction or non-fiction, poetry or essay, we’re going to change things. Changing things is hard. Changing people’s minds and hearts is hard work. It’s difficult. It’s time consuming. It’s frustrating. We’re in our little sailboat and the waves are crashing against our ship and there’s sharp rocks up ahead. There’s maybe a lightning storm forming right above our sail. But our mission statement serves as our guiding light, as our little lighthouse on the shore that keeps us moving in the right direction, that lets us know where we can safely land. That reminds us who we are, what we’re doing and why we are doing it.

Once you craft your mission statement and it doesn’t have to be set in stone, you don’t need to literally go to someone who carve stone and have them carve it into stone. You can change it whenever you want. If you find that you’re like me and you’re not a planner and things change, that’s okay. Your mission statement should change and grow as you change and grow. We change a lot as people. We read new books. We get new ideas. We meet new people. We get new jobs. We change, and that’s awesome. Just leave room for your mission statement to change with you. If your vision and your values change, that’s okay too. Just keep it updated and keep it in front of you. You can share it with people. You can keep it to yourself. You can share it with me if you want, but you don’t have to.

I’ll just be interested to know if you find that it helps you as you write. If you do want to share your mission statement with me, you can do so in a couple of ways, or if you have questions, comments. Loud cars going by, at least the lawnmower has stopped. If you have questions, comments, thoughts, let me know. I love to hear from people. I’m usually not horrible about getting back to you. For someone who’s a writer, I’m very slow at writing because I like to make sure that I’m giving you a thoughtful response. You can get ahold of me in two ways. Well, actually three ways. Number one, you can leave a comment on the show notes for today’s episode, episode number 46, which is out at sarahwerner.com, that’s S-A-R-A-H W-E-R-N-E-R.com. Alternately, you can email me at hello, that’s H-E-L-L-O, @sarahwerner.com.

Thirdly, you can navigate to my website, sarahwerner.com and go over to the tab that says contact. That will open up a little form that will let you just shoot me a quick little email or maybe a long email, whatever you want. Last episode, episode 45, I did a segment on my show called podcrush, which is a podcast that I am currently enjoying listening to. This week’s podcrush is called slush pile, and it is a podcast put out by Drexel University’s Painted Bride Quarterly literary magazine. If you’re familiar with writing lingo, a slush pile is the giant pile of submissions that editors for magazines or other publications have to plow through to find the hidden diamonds, the stuff that they want to publish.

This podcast takes a look at their slush pile and it shows the process that the editors go through when either selecting or rejecting the submissions that they receive for publication. What they do is they essentially record their editorial meetings to give writers like us a glimpse into that process. If this sounds like something you enjoy, I encourage you to check them out. It’s called the Slush Pile Podcast and I’ll link to it in today’s show notes. You can also find it in iTunes under Painted Bride Quarterly Slush Pile.

As always, I would like to thank those of you who support the Write Now Podcast, especially my Patreon supporters. Patreon is a secure third-party donation platform that allows you to give a dollar per episode, $2 per episode, a million dollars per episode, whatever it is that you feel appropriate. I would especially like to thank official cool catch, Sean Locke, official bookworms, Matthew Paulson, Amanda Antonelli, the crew at The Sioux Empire Podcast, and Rebecca Werner, and official rad dude, Andrew Coons. Thank you all so, so much. I don’t know what I would do without you. If you would like to become a supporter of the Write Now Podcast on Patreon, you can go to patreon.com, That’s P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com/sarahrheawerner S-A-R-A-H R-H-E-A W-E-R-N-E-R. There you’ll find all sorts of different levels of giving. It’s like a PBS pledge drive a little bit. There’s cool prizes at different levels and you can choose however you want to do that.

If you would like to support the Write Now Podcast but you don’t really have money, if you are a starving artist or strapped for cash or what have you, I totally understand. The best thing that you can do to help me out is just spread the word. Tell other people about the Write Now Podcasts. Let other writers know that there is someone out there who is cheering for them and wants them to write and succeed. Let them know about the Write Now Podcast. Pass along the URL to my website or let them know how to find me on iTunes. Click the subscribe button and they’re all set. Thank you so much for wanting to help support this show. Finally, one other thing you can do on my website is sign up for my email mailing list. This is a great way to keep up to date with all of the stuff that I’m doing here at the Write Now Podcast. You can sign up in a couple different places on my website.

First and foremost, at sarahwerner.com, there’s a black bar that goes across the top of the website and a place that you can put your email address. Otherwise, you can navigate to the contact page and there’s a link to it there. Or you can even go out to the Write Now Podcast Facebook page and click the blue sign up button, which will sign you up for my mailing list. Whatever of those you choose, I hope you enjoy getting emails from me. This has been episode 46 of the Write Now Podcast, the podcast that helps aspiring writers and all writers to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write every day. I’m Sarah Werner, and it’s my mission to use my writing and podcasting skills to tell stories that use truth, creativity and encouragement to nurture, heal, and inspire others. In doing so, to make the world a better and more empathetic place.