Writing Update: Focusing on the Good Days Instead of the Bad

Hello, everyone! It’s been a while since I’ve done a writing update. Partly because… there’s been nothing to update. XD Slowly but surely I’ve been making progress through my edits. Same old, same old.

Until last week.

Okay, I’m still editing. But I had an amazing break through! I talked about it briefly in my last newsletter.

A couple weeks ago, I realized that if I ever wanted to finish editing then I needed to step up my game a bit. So I set a goal to edit a thousand words every day. A few days later and I think I’d achieved that maybe one or two days? It still wasn’t going well. XD

But then I sat down the next day to edit and I guess it was going well because, before I knew it, I’d edited three thousand words! I couldn’t believe it! This was by far the most I’d done this whole time I’ve been editing. I was super pumped and eager to edit the next day.

Then the next day I edited another three thousand. All of last week I edited three thousand words a day! In all, I edited a total of 21,000 within seven days. My mind is still blown away by this. I really don’t know what changed or where all this motivation came from, but I’m so glad for this switch. It’s been a switch that I’ve been waiting for for several months now. XD

When I shared about this achievement briefly in my newsletter though, someone replied and said that this was encouraging to hear because “it proves that just because something’s going slow one day doesn’t mean things can’t change the next day.” To use her words.

I wanted to share this because it struck me as to how true this statement is! We’re far more likely to remember all the bad days we have and focus on those instead of choosing to focus on the good days. We forget, that just because one day is a rotten writing day, doesn’t mean that the next won’t be fantastic! You never know.

Listen to your creativity. Maybe it’s a rotten day because you need to give yourself a break and refill your creative well. I have a designated day every week that I know I will not be doing anything writing related. It’s my break day. And even besides that day, there’s sometimes when I need several break days throughout the week, while other weeks I can get whomping word counts without breaks (like last week XD).

Don’t push yourself to do more than you’re capable of. Instead, allow yourself breaks and times to rejuvenate. Then you’ll be getting word counts you never imagined possible.

This is something that I’ve been trying to take to heart lately. I’ve had a lot of hard, hard editing days over the past couple of months. I’ve had days where I wondered, am I even getting anywhere with this book? For a while, it hasn’t felt like it.

But the real problem was, I was wanting progress immediately. Right now. I wanted to be done editing so I could go back to writing another fun, new project. But sometimes, progress isn’t immediate. In fact, it’s usually after a length of time that you’re then able to look back and see everything you’ve accomplished.

And then, maybe, there will come a time when it turns for the better.

Your turn!

How do you refill your creative well? Do you have a designated break day? How is your progress on your current WIP?

Blessings, Allyson

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