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Confession time

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I've been saying that I am rebuilding my writing habit - with the goal of writing at least something regularly - ideally every day. I have tried to choose my words carefully so as not to give the impression that I do write every day - because I'm certainly not there yet. But I am working on it. By looking at my calendar, I see that I wrote on 17 days in June, but only 11 days in July. With being busy and away from home for the first 9 days of August, I fear that I don't have a very good start on this month either. Let's see, 6 days so far. And my next 10 days are pretty busy. Yikes.

I could be discouraged and I could easily feel like a failure. I could beat myself up and ask why I thought I could start a group to encourage others when I don't have it together myself. However, discouragement isn't a very effective motivator. Instead, I can choose to keep going. To keep writing. Keep building that habit. A writer writes.

How about the rest of you? How is it going for you? Are you working toward your goal? Do you feel encouraged? Discouraged? Feel free to tell us about your writing sucesses as well as your failures. Also please share any words of encouragement that might help those of us who need it.

Comments

  1. JessicaAugust 18, 2009 at 8:44 PM

    Thanks for sharing, Kaye. I can definitely identify with this.

    I had been feeling a bit discouraged about my
    writing the last few months. I couldn't seem to motivate myself to sit down and work on any of my projects, and the longer I waited, the harder it became. However, a few weeks ago my husband and I went to our weekly writing group. We had not attended the last several due to vacation and scheduling conflicts. Anyway, we discovered that my husband's sister, who leads the group, had come up with a system of 'goal setting' for each member. We are required to set a personal goal each meeting and discuss whether or not we met it at the next meeting. We had not done anything like this before. At first, it sounded scary (akin to homework!), but the more I thought about it I realized it was just the motivation I needed! So I set my goal (one chapter of my current project), and reached it. Just doing that immensely boosted my motivation to work on it more, beyond the weekly goal.

    So, yes, there are times we get discouraged or lose motivation. Setting small, obtainable goals may be just what is needed to get going again, because nothing is more motivating than accomplishing your goals!

    ReplyDelete

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