“distressed” by devi laskar

Writing is a solitary enterprise. Some of us leap out of bed in the early morn, dash to our desks and write for two hours before breakfast. These are the same people who wrote their first novel at the ripe age of 19 and are living beautiful glamorous lives.

Most of us aren’t so fortunate. We lumber around, moping and pouting and praying for divine intervention. We threaten to quit, and run away. Then five hours later, we finally sit down to write and are most unhappy with the results. We are no longer in our teens and find, by completing rudimentary multiplication, that we are closer to the century mark than we originally thought, and in no way approaching the end of our first or second or sixth drafts.

Things to counteract this cycle of worrying and self-doubt:

1.write at least one sentence, even if it’s about the weather or what you hear outside the window.

2. Find a “buddy.”

3. Check-in.

The job of a buddy is simple: maintaining contact and “checking in” periodically, to visit or possibly re-visit short-term goals for the week and communicate what the long-term goals are, and to hear “how it’s going.” Some of my BWW colleagues find that checking in every day or every other day is working well; others check in once or twice a week.

In the Book Writing World, Elizabeth has established a goals check-in for those of us in the mentoring class as well as in our craft writing classes and workshop sessions. In the “community center” there is a goals thread that we update every week and it is helpful to “see” our goals in print, and hold ourselves accountable.

So, for those of you with buddies, please check-in. For those of you without buddies, please find a friend and then check-in. 🙂