May 31, 2023
Emotional State: I’ve come so far
Writing
Looking back to just two months ago, I marvel at how far I’ve come. I’d just finished the HB90 quarterly planning course and learned I had so much more writing time than I thought I had. Time I wasn’t using.
After beating myself up for it, I decided instead to start tracking my time. I wanted to see what I was doing, when I was doing it, and determine what was causing me to not sit down and write.
I learned right away that getting on social media at any point before I sat down to write would kill my desire to do so and eat two hours without even blinking. So, new rule: no social media until after writing time. Since then, I do scroll social media, but it’s fifteen minutes before a call or the hour before bed when I don’t have the energy to read but need something to pass the time.
I also learned that I tend to do best with two hour time blocks and an immersive playlist in the Pomodoro method. (If you want a good place for those, I highly recommend Abbie Emmons’ youtube playlist.) With that, I rejiggered my very tightly scheduled days (as in, I had time slots filled everywhere) to fit my newly discovered pattern.
But then all those scheduled tasks didn’t happen because it was too restrictive. So, new rule: remove the time block scheduling and just track my time instead. This allowed me to see where I’m spending my time, when I get derailed, and just how much time I spend reading, eating, writing, distracting myself, or working.
Oh, and I get to play with my planner too. Win/win.
What I learned is that I can still go down the research rabbit hole, especially on my topic flavor of the moment: planners and notebooks. (They’re so pretty.) I needed more data and more tools to analyze what was going on, so I took the Write-Better-Faster 101 course from Becca Syme.
It was mindblowing in so many ways. Because the class focuses on you as an individual, but breaks the lectures down into Jungian (Myers Briggs) and/or DISC categorization, with a side eye of Clifton Strengths, what you get is a better sense for why you do what you do, how to strengthen what’s working and counterbalance what’s not, and a strategy to address your pain points.
What I learned from the month I spent taking this course and processing it was that I need to think and process (duh) anything I’m working on. So all those hours I spent world building, figuring out lore, naming my characters, plotting, and just dreaming of my next book project is writing time for me.
Writing time isn’t just fingers to the keys. It’s also all the other things I do (we do) to create the book. For me, this meant that I didn’t need to beat myself up for four hours working on my book but not writing anything.
I also learned that morning pages (finally doing The Writer’s Way), meditating, a little bit of exercise, and some light nonfiction reading (due to reading The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod), is the best way to not only start my day, but the easiest way for me to move into writing once I’ve done so.
I’m still a work in progress, but it’s a much sunnier picture than where I was two months ago. I’ll take it.