Happy New Year

I opened the front door on December 31 and let 2021 walk out of my life. What was done was done (or left undone), but what is left to do needs the freedom to get started. I need to get started. Saturday morning, January 1, 2022, I opened the door and invited the new year in. I’m ready to move forward. I’m ready to focus. I’m ready to share what I know and inspire you to attack your writing with passion.

Two Steps to Making Progress with Your Writing Projects

#1 – EVALUATING YOUR PAST EFFORTS

In order to set goals, it is important to examine your past efforts.

• What projects are sitting unfinished in that WIP box? What projects are awaiting a query? What stories are spinning in your brain waiting to be recorded?
• Why have you not finished that WIP? Why haven’t you written that query? Why haven’t you recorded at least the premise of the stories spinning in your brain?
• When are you going to get started? When are you going to progress with your writing?
• But probably the most important question to answer: If not you, who will tell the stories only you can tell? Who can write the articles only you can write?

I sat for the better part of December 2021 evaluating my past efforts to publish my writing and attempted to figure out why I felt like I had mostly failed.

I have only a ONE-word answer: RESISTANCE!

Resistance and Frances Greenslade’s words: “Failure to plan is planning to fail.”

But it is more than resistance and failing to plan. It is the fear of . . . (go ahead and finish the statement). It’s the fear of failure; the fear of criticism; the fear of judgment; the fear of success. I could go on indefinitely.

#2 – PLAN AND RECORD YOUR PROGRESS

I taught high school. I have taken courses in planning curriculum for units and semesters. When I retired, however, I moved willy-nilly into a writing career. I remember my answer when coworkers asked what I would do with all my free time.

Write!

I had been squeezing my writing into the five minutes between classes when I could, during my lunch breaks, and late at night after the curriculum planning and grading had been completed. Unfortunately, I threw all that organization and planning out the window. I had all day to write. Why plan?

It has taken me the better part of seven and a half years to realize the cost of failing to plan as well as the cost of failing to record my progress as a writer.

After writing mostly morning pages for much of the second half of 2021, my passion and stories have gotten the best of me, and I sat down in December and wrote down goals and steps that focus on how to reach that goal.

Have you joined the Facebook group: Ink & Keyboard? You can find it here.