Day 17: 90 Day Writing Challenge

by E.V. Jacob on November 3, 2013

I have nothing productive to say about today.  Did some basic outlining, but it was unexciting and inadequate.  Nowhere near enough to warrant its own post.

YOU MAY SHAME ME NOW.

  • Steve A.

    Don’t be so hard on yourself. Any work you do on the book is a step forward, and any progress you make is worth reporting. Seriously, you’ve got an awesome project going, and even though it seems slow, you’re working towards your goal. While also balancing life and work and such, don’t forget. So I say you’re doing pretty well.

    Yeah, I’m terrible at shaming…

    • http://www.ravenhartpress.com/ Eve Jacob

      Steve, you rock. Thank you! I am always very hard on myself and have always harbored (unreasonably) high expectations of myself, so every now and then I need to be reminded that I am, in fact, mortal, and that I can’t actually do EVERYTHING (despite how much I make it SEEM like I can on paper).

      It’s OK, shaming isn’t necessarily the best thing to be good at, anyway ;)

      • Steve A.

        I’m the same way. I set super high goals and tell myself everything that I’m going to accomplish… and then life happens, I don’t get things done, and I blame myself for not working hard enough. Then I get discouraged, continue not getting things done, and eventually give up because I know I’ll never be able to meet my (completely arbitrary) goal anyway.

        So what I’ve started to do is to relax the rules a bit on my goals. I won’t say, “This is how much I need to write today, and this is the date by which I need to be finished.” I get enough of that from work. Instead I’ll say, “I’ll write something every day.” Maybe it’s just a paragraph, or a couple of sentences. Maybe it’s a piece of an outline, or a character sketch. Maybe it’s a bit of dialogue I think will work well somewhere, but I’m not sure where yet. Maybe it’s something I know I’ll never use, and I’m just doing it so that I can say I did something today. But whatever it is, it’s progress. It’s tiny progress, but that’s all I was looking for, so I’m accomplishing my goal. And it keeps me from getting discouraged and giving up.

        So, today I’ve done a couple of sentences. But those couple of sentences keep me going until tomorrow. And tomorrow (or next week), I may go into a super-motivated writing frenzy and get several pages done. So, progress is progress, as far as I’m concerned, as long as it keeps you focused.

        • http://www.ravenhartpress.com/ Eve Jacob

          That’s a good system :) I need to learn to give myself more leeway, haha

  • http://www.christiney.com/ christiney

    Haha I suck at shaming because it feels as though I’m stuck in the exact same situation as you are ><
    At least you're doing better than me on updating the blogosphere T^T

    • http://www.ravenhartpress.com/ Eve Jacob

      LOL I remember at like, midnight that I need to write SOMETHING, so I pop on, bang out an update, and post it with the attitude of: “GAH. WHATEVER.” Better than nothing, I guess…? lol

      • http://www.christiney.com/ christiney

        Yes. It is much better than nothing ><

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