Writers First Aid

First Fifty Days

November 10, 2010

writer Life takes over sometimes, unless you live on a remote island somewhere. Even happy events–new babies, company, holidays–can sidetrack you temporarily.

Today I realized that I couldn’t even remember some of the “must do” daily tasks of the 100-Day Challenge. Reviewing the weekly challenge letters turned out to be a great way to pump me up again!

Fall Back and Re-Group!

Here, in a nutshell, are some of the tips, tricks, methods and pointers of the 100-Day Challenge that I’ve found to be most helpful. So instead of giving up the Challenge because I totally missed many of the days, I’m recommitting for the final 50 Days to do the following:

Set your goal and break that major goal down into small tasks. Do one small task daily. The only trap you can fall into is to make your daily tasks too complex. Please write this down: “A task is something which takes no longer than 10, 20 or 30 minutes.” When you chunk every task down into slivers of time, it stops you procrastinating. If you only have 20 minutes to do a task, you’ll do it. (Use a timer, either a kitchen one or a freeware timer for your computer-Google “Timer Utility” for some free choices.)
Talk to yourself on paper (or on screen) about your writing. Instead of thinking about writing or thinking about your goals, get that thinking down on paper or screen. Take baby steps, putting one word down after the other. Keep a notebook or file open where you frequently talk to yourself and make notes about anything concerning your writing life. You will stop being intimidated by the art of writing–it will just be something you do. (For more about this see “Write It All Down.”)
Document everything. Write down your goals and plans. Write down each day what you did toward meeting those goals. Every little bit. Brainstorm about your strengths and weaknesses–and things you can do to overcome obstacles. Angela said, “If you get into the habit of journaling, and talking to yourself about your writing, you’ll be amazed at the breakthroughs in your writing that you’ll achieve.” Based on the days I used her idea, I have to agree!
Make a comprehensive Master Task List. (This took several days, but I now have a three-page single spaced list of small 20-30 minute tasks. The tasks are organized into six areas that encompass the writing and marketing things I hope to accomplish.) Now when I have a 20-30 minute “window of opportunity,” I don’t have to try to think of something I can finish in that amount of time. I just grab my list, choose one, set the timer and go.
Keep your goal, or goals, in focus. You may find it helpful to rewrite your primary goal each day. Rewrite it on a sticky note (real paper or on your computer screen) several times a day. This helps you to refocus and remember what’s important to you–and why it’s important.
Do confidence building activities. Re-read frequently the confidence-building thoughts you’ve worked on. See “Pitch It To Yourself” for ideas, if you haven’t done this yet. I have a tendency to do the work, but then never look at it again. So I found my journal and re-read the pitches I wrote. Saying them out loud daily is even better! Remember: your confidence is destroyed by your own negative thoughts.
Write down any questions you have about your writing life or work-in-progress. Angela said, “You’ll find that your questions are like pin pricks–they irritate you. Your mind will automatically start offering you answers to your questions. Write down any answers, no matter how way out and whacky they seem.” This one really works!
Aim for small changes, rather than big ones. Complete your daily tasks. If you can’t complete (or even start) your tasks on a particular day, that’s FINE. Talk to yourself about why you couldn’t–just write 50 words about this. Every word you write is one word closer to being the writer you want to be.
Use creative visualization every day. Before you start a writing task, visualize yourself completing it successfully, in the time you’ve allotted for it. Also, imagine yourself achieving your major Challenge goal on January 1. Imagine how great it will feel! On a daily basis, before you go to sleep at night, imagine yourself completing your writing tasks the following day.
Once a week, re-read your writing journal, all that “talking to myself about my writing” stuff. Highlight the goals and fresh insights and ideas that occurred to you. Transfer some of it to your tasks list. If you don’t review the journal entries–and I know this for a fact–all your wonderful insights will be for nothing. Review and pull those golden nuggets out and turn them into action steps.

From Thinking to Action

“Time to dismantle the training wheels, and WRITE,” Angela says this week. “You’ve got all the strategies you need.” To help you focus on writing this week, here are her “Top Ten Writing Tips to Help You Write More.”

For those of you doing the 100-Day Challenge (or TRYING to, like me), what has been the most helpful advice so far? What has been the hardest thing to implement into your writing life? Do group challenges like this help you focus? Leave me your thoughts!

Post tags: discipline, encouragement, finding time, goals, habits, perseverance, psychology of writing, schedules, strategy, success, time management, writing challenges, writing habits, writing output

Posted in: encouragement,focusing,goals,habits,writing challenges,writing habits,writing output | | Comments (13)

13 Comments »

I love those weekly challenge letters too. I’ve definitely lost some momentum and yet, I’ve accomplished more than I would have imagined. Looking forward to the second half of this challenge.

Comment by PatriciaW — November 10, 2010 @ 1:19 pm
Patricia, I think that’s the key. With all the family events we’ve had this fall, I missed a few weeks of keeping up. And yet, in looking over my list and what I DID get accomplished, I realized (like you) that I was further along than I thought–and certainly further along than I would have been on my own.

I’m trying not to dread the last half of the Challenge. She mentioned that it was going to be heavy on marketing and selling (my nemesis). Hopefully she will take the sting out of that process too!

Comment by Kristi Holl — November 11, 2010 @ 5:29 am
Aiming for smaller tasks instead of thinking big changes has really helped me. Even when I don’t get all the tasks finished, I still feel like I’m accomplishing more as a writer.

Another thing that has really benefitted me is to write down a negative thought that pops up in my mind and take it through the process Angela suggests. It really works when I write out answers to the questions: What do I mean? What do I do now?

I am finding that I don’t beat myself up as much as I used to when I don’t get something done that I wanted to. I instead write about it. For example, something like: I didn’t get much done today, but that’s ok. My family comes before my writing. I’m not going to beat myself up over not getting any writing done. Tomorrow is another day. I’m still progressing and that’s what counts.

I’m leary about the marketing part that’s coming in the challenge. I’ve been progressing in writing more freely but not in submitting and marketing. But hopefully by the end of the 100 days, marketing will be more fun, too.

Thanks, Kristi, for all your motivating posts and for telling us about the 100-Day Challenge.

Comment by Trudy — November 11, 2010 @ 10:13 am
Aiming for smaller tasks helps me too. The little 20-minute ones I can knock off with no trouble. But today–it’s nearly 1 p.m.–and I’m still looking at the “write 2 hours” on my to-do list. Maybe I’ll try breaking it up into 30-min chunks and see how that goes…

I’m not thrilled about the marketing coming up either. But if Angela can make marketing FUN for me, I will be indebted to her till the day I die!

Comment by Kristi Holl — November 11, 2010 @ 12:44 pm
I love the master task list. I am forever making idea notes and things to do lists, but they just pile up and turn into clutter! Now I can find them in one place and they are do-able 20-minute tasks.

Re-reading my journals each week is very helpful; I find many ideas to follow up on. Using different color sticky tabs helps to locate work that I want to follow up on. I can easily flip to green tabs for blog ideas, purple tabs for things to add to my master task list etc.

The 100-Day Writing Challenge is helping me to become more organized, and see what I’ve accomplished each week.

I am looking forward to the rest of the challenge – I need all of the help I can get to market and sell!

Comment by Lana — November 11, 2010 @ 4:40 pm
Lana, that master list helps me a lot too. Mostly I love having it all written down in one spot, and I don’t have to try to remember it all or look for various lists I’ve made and mislaid. I really need to be better about re-reading my journal entries. I think if I highlight good ideas or something so I can find them later, it would help. Glad you’re enjoying the Challenge!

Comment by Kristi Holl — November 11, 2010 @ 6:23 pm
The 20-minute task results still amaze me. Even though I’ve fallen behind slightly, I’ve still been more productive than in the past. I found the visualization concepts difficult because stubborn me just didn’t want to do that part. Group challenges motivate me. Thanks, Kristi, for inspiring this challenge. And thanks to everyone else participating, too.

Comment by Deanna — November 11, 2010 @ 11:05 pm
Deanna, I kept forgetting to do the visualization part too. I’d be in bed when I’d think of it, and didn’t want to do it then. Maybe I’m just being stubborn too. I will give it a try several times today and see if it makes a difference. Maybe I’ll try it before each tiny writing task!

Comment by Kristi Holl — November 11, 2010 @ 11:31 pm
Kristi, I’d love it if you would write more about the 20-30 minute tasks. With real life examples! It’s hard for me to get past “research XYZ” where XYZ is something huge. Or “work on writing chapter 2,” which could take a dozen hours. How do you break it down, except by saying “work on chapter 2 for 20 minutes” which (1) doesn’t seem like a “task” and (2) is hard because I can’t focus and unfocus that fast.

Comment by Nancy — November 11, 2010 @ 11:57 pm
Nancy, I have run into this exact same issue. With some fiction writing tasks especially, you can’t predict how long it will take. So “write for 30 minutes” is what I have on my daily list. I think focusing and unfocusing quickly is a learned skill. I used to do it well when my four kids were underfoot—but it’s something I’ve lost as they grew up. I am regaining it a bit with small grandchildren around. I used to make sure I did my “pre-thinking” away from the typewriter/computer. While attending to kids or laundry etc., I would think about my next scene or a character problem or new titles, etc. so that when I got ten minutes to write, I already had it thought out. I didn’t go into my “office” to write until I had it clear in my mind what I was going to do. I didn’t use those precious few minutes to focus—or the time would have been up before I typed a single word!

Comment by Kristi Holl — November 12, 2010 @ 8:23 am
This is what I was referring to, Kristi:
“Make a comprehensive Master Task List. (This took several days, but I now have a three-page single spaced list of small 20-30 minute tasks.” It would be great if you would expand this into a day’s entire blog and share more details with us. What are these 20-30 minute tasks? How did you come up with them, and how do you use them.

Comment by Nancy — November 15, 2010 @ 11:14 pm
Nancy, I will try to answer this in Friday’s blog this week. Hopefully some examples will make this more clear. Of course, it’s very individual. My own list will be quite different from someone else’s, at least in some respects.

Comment by Kristi Holl — November 16, 2010 @ 6:59 am
Thank you for this post. I lost steam on the Challenge and reading this is what I needed to get re-inspired. I look forward to Fridays post as I am having trouble breaking things down into 20-30 minutes tasks as well. I find I just keep putting the same task down for mulitiple days and not really accomplishing as much as I feel I should each day.

Comment by Carolyn — November 19, 2010 @ 2:50 am