Jog a mile then... let's follow-up on yesterday's post on balance and instead of working on writing workouts, take a hard look at ourselves.As authors, especially for all the unpublished authors, there are many hurdles between where you are, and where you want to be. Some of those hurdles are time, agents, publishers, and readers... curse them all for not being madly in love with us, right?
But the largest stumbling block in our careers, the one thing that will hold us back 100% of the time, is the one we avoid looking at in the mirror every morning.
An author's greatest enemy, is them self.
Or, an author's greatest enemy is our self-allowed vices and deficiencies that keep us from being the best author we could possibly be. Today's excercise is going to be painful, you'll thank me later (I hope).
Workout!
List five habits, traits, or vices that are keeping you from being the best. Pick one and set the goal working on eradicating that habit from your routine. You can report here in the comments box, or leave a link to your post on your bad habit.
My Five-
1. Surfing the internet rather than writing. I'll type a sentence.... check my e-mail.... write a paragraph... IM a friend.
2. Putting writing off until the end of the day. I goof off until 11 o'clock at night and then go, "Oh no! I need to write!" I manage a few paragraphs before I realize I'm too tired for anything and then go to bed promising myself that I'll write first thing in the morning.
3. Hesitating... I want feedback before I finish this chapter, or, I'm not sure I can say that in a book (yes, you can always say that in a book), or, I'm not sure I can hurt my character that much. I hesitate to trust myself or my characters. And it makes my writing weak.
4. Never trying anything new. Especially since part of a balanced writer's life is experience. I need to read outside my genre more, read new authors more. I need to try things and go places I haven't been.
5. Letting doubt keep me from trying. For the fear of failure, I do nothing. It's the whole Isuckitis disease. Rather than trying to work out the nagging of my Inner Editor in a good writing session I hide from the computer and wait for someone else to give me a boost of self-esteem. Who am I kidding??? Rough drafts suck! And that's okay.
My Goal-
Write for at least 45 minutes uninterrupted every morning before noon. Write six days a week (I really do believe a down day is wonderful for the brain.). And write whether I feel like it or not. If I make mistakes, oh well! I can edit them out tomorrow.
What are you going to do?
Can I just copy your list of 5 things? Because those are exactly the ones that hold me back from writing... wow. We need to stop chatting with each other and stop reading blogs. And get writing!
ReplyDeleteGreat post. I may come up with some others for myself.
Number One: Stop commenting on every single blog post I read. I literally spend 3 hours a day commenting on blogs. Imagine what I could be getting done otherwise! But I do soooo love blogging. *sniffs*
Loving blogs is fun (and I admit, I love comments!). But I know you follow a ton of blogs. Maybe you need to reserve the blog reading for after your daily writing is done?
ReplyDeleteIf you get X number of words written, or X number of chapters edited *then* you can go read blogs and comment all you like. Bribery works.
Good advice, Lei.
ReplyDeleteI used to have a problem with surfing rather than writing, but I solved that by not hooking my laptop up to the Internet. If I want to be on, I have to use the clunky PC rather than my Mac.
For me, the biggest thing holding me back is not getting the queries out and procrastinating writing the synopsis. So...on Monday, I will have sent out five queries. And I'll do a chapter a day, six days a week until I get the synopsis done.
I used to struggle with most of these. Where was this list four months ago? :'(
Lost in NaNo maybe?
ReplyDeleteGood job getting the queries out! I'll keep my fingers crossed for you!
Thanks. :)
ReplyDelete1) Self-doubt/isuckitis
ReplyDelete2) Sometimes video games...(but I'm working on this one already)
3) If I'm catsitting, the internet is evil.
4) Not thinking about the characters/situation enough (new way of writing is rectifiying this)
5) Writing the plot down - again, I refuse to do this!
Most of these I'm sorting out :)
Another one is not writing when I'm tired - I need to try and take a little break, then attempt writing. It's therapeutic!
ReplyDeleteMy husband says I am addicted to checking my email. I think it's more a matter of the hesitation and procrastination from writing. I'm looking for those comments in my email to boost me up. I need to not rely on that!
ReplyDeleteI'll go do the workout and post it on my blog.
My List of 5.
ReplyDelete