What you are seeing in the picture above is my vision board that I created a few years back to reaffirm my identity as a writer. As you can see, it’s mostly uplifting phrases or writing mottos.
However, today I want to blog about a motto that isn’t up there (yet), that I’m feeling keenly right now. The motto is: The Chase has got to be worth it.
What does it mean in context to me and my writing? Well, I am very much a process-driven person as opposed to goal-oriented. So it’s not enough for me to have a goal dangled in front of me to push on. Nope, I need to be enjoying the actual process of doing something in order to be motivated to continue with it. So now I think you see how the motto applies to me directly: I need to be enjoying the process of writing a novel in order to continue writing it.
So why am I feeling it keenly? You can probably guess. I’m in a low energy phase with my WIP at the moment. This was a project first conceived by me at the end of 2016 and now it’s already nearing the end of 2020. I have still not completed a first draft for it. That will be my aim for next year.
And what am I doing about this? I’m doing another side project or pleasure project, to get me to once more feel the excitement of writing. I’m also trying to find different entry points into scene writing, thinking of trying on different methods other than my usual. I am also trying to keep myself accountable in terms of time use. At the time of writing, I’ve kept track of three weeks’ time use via an Excel file. I create a new sheet for each week and block out half an hour per row from 8:00am to 9:00pm. On each sheet I would make grey my day job hours as well as other major time commitments and then record down how I’m using the other half-hour slots around my week.
And that’s my share for this week. See you around next week.
Moonlake's Fiction Space 