On Goalposts | Furthermore July 2026
And when they move
I’m writing this while on an airplane, flying home from Orlando after participating in a wonderful panel at Barnes & Noble Colonial. The conversation was great, and I’m still thinking about one of the questions that was asked about goalposts. For so many writers, the ultimate goal is to publish a book. If you’re pursuing publication, maybe that first goalpost is finishing your manuscript or signing with an agent, but still, those are in service of the ultimate goal: getting a book published.
But what happens after that? Does the goalpost keep moving with each goal achieved?
And, of course, the answer is yes. Of course it does. We are human and striving is an innate part of the human experience (or, as another author put it last night, dissatisfaction is what makes us human). We strive, we fail, we’re dissatisfied, we strive, we fail, we succeed, we strive. On and on it goes. I (mostly) like the striving. I like having something I’m reaching toward, something that gets me excited.
But also.
Also. It is never lost on me that I am literally living my dreams. What once was a pipe dream to a young girl is now her reality, and that fills me with so much joy I can hardly contain it. In the nine years I spent seriously pursuing publication before The Nature of Witches released, wanting to get published was a physical ache I carried around in my chest. I wanted it so badly that I could feel it, always, an overwhelming longing that was impossible to ignore.
When I started writing my first novel, I was working in a hospital as a sonographer (for those of you who don’t know, my degree is in diagnostic ultrasound! I never took a single writing class in college). The hours were long, and I was regularly on-call, my pager blaring in the middle of the night, dragging me out of bed. I started sleeping at the hospital because the commute back and forth overnight was brutal, and I was pretty much tired all the time. I wrote in stolen moments, clinging to my nights off as if they were a lifeline, using the time to write and write and write. Dream and dream and dream. Hope and hope and hope.
I wrote myself an “open when published” letter many years ago that I finally got to open in 2021. I keep that letter on a shelf in my office because, no matter how far the goalposts move, that was the goal that changed my life. That was the goal that healed the ache in my chest.
I remember the nine years I spent trying so vividly, can so easily access the roller coaster of emotions even now. If I close my eyes, I can almost convince myself that this was all just a dream, that the sound of my pager will rip me from sleep and I’ll peel my face of the tissue paper on the stretcher I used as a bed and go get my next patient.
Every single day that I get to wake up and do this is a dream come true.
So yeah, the goalposts move, and that can be a depressing sentiment. But for me, I don’t see it as a negative thing. What an absolute joy it is that I get to move them, that I achieved something that allowed me to dream new dreams.
(It’s worth noting that we should ABSOLUTELY celebrate all the wins along the way. Moving the goalpost? Great! Celebrate the wins that led up to it!)
(It’s also worth noting that we don’t have to achieve anything to change the goalposts. Dreams can change and grow as we change and grow—what a beautiful thing.)
I’m aware that this might come across as obnoxiously positive, but I’ve always been an optimistic, hopeful person. I can’t help it. And this isn’t to say that there aren’t hard days, that the striving and dissatisfaction don’t feel unbearable at times, because they do.
But the ache in my chest is gone and I’m not getting woken up in the middle of the night by a pager and even on the toughest days, there’s absolutely nothing else I’d rather be doing than writing books. The striving and dissatisfaction of this career is infinitely better than the striving and dissatisfaction I felt before this. I would choose it every second of every day. I do choose it.
So I guess what I’m saying is, for me anyway, I’m so damn grateful the goalposts moved.
I was on the aforementioned panel with Allison Saft, Beth Revis, Sara Raasch, R.M. Gray, and Julia Alexandra; Ellen Goff moderated. Signed copies of all our books are available at Barnes & Noble Colonial, and I believe they’ll ship if you give them a call!
In Case You Missed It
When the Woods Called Us Home is Publishers Marketplace official! After having this story sit with me for eight years, it’s very surreal to see it like this. I’m so excited to share this one with you. (This isn’t actually an “In Case You Missed It” update since I haven’t shared the PM announcement anywhere yet, I just didn’t like how the formatting looked without a header. 😌)
A Moment of Gratitude
I suppose this entire newsletter is about my gratitude for moving goalposts, but I’ll also add how grateful I am to you, my readers. No matter how far the goalposts move, the most important one, the one that doesn’t change, is my hope to write books for the rest of my life. And so far, I’ve been incredibly fortunate that readers have found my work, and I’ve been able to tell more stories.
So whether you’re new here or have been with me since The Nature of Witches, thank you. Thank you so much. The reason I get to move the goalposts is because of you.
Love,
Rachel