They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
So, how, I ask myself, is tomorrow about to be different? I’m not sure. Resolve, perhaps? Resolve, at least, to succeed tomorrow where I have failed so often over the past six months or so?
I think about how I started this blog; it was one entry at a time. THAT was a fundamental change in my life – I’d never done something with such regularity, other than the necessities of life. I’d never had a daily routine of producing content, and I just started one day at a time. Yes, I had a goal in mind of 60 days, and then 90…and then 100, and then a year, and it just snowballed from there.
That’s what I need to replicate with my writing. This book I’m trying to finish isn’t finished because I don’t have a daily routine. I haven’t been able to find that, despite so many false starts and resets. All of the challenges with writing this manuscript could be overcome if I were to just tackle it every day instead of putting it off and doing other things. The single biggest factor in my success or failure as an author lies in my ability to produce…and my ability to produce is all built around a daily discipline of WRITING.
So…with that clarity, at least, I look to tomorrow and hope it’s a step in the right direction. It’s time to start living the rest of my life. It’s time to get this book fucking finished.
I’m pretty sure that writing has been so hard for me to put first because it’s the scariest of all the activities. Or, you know, maybe it isn’t the scariest…I’m not sure that fear is really what my block is, now that I think about it…nor is it the hardest. No, what it *is* is the furthest removed from any sort of immediate value feedback. When I edit together something for Netflix, I get to immediately log those hours and tally how much money I just made; or when I log into my mailing list and work on my auto-responders, I get to see those numbers fluctuate and see the impact they have on my book sales.
Writing…has no inherent reward, visual or otherwise, tied to its completion. I do have that little goal counter in Scrivener, and that definitely works once my butt is actually in my chair, but how, I wonder, can I create a system that offers me the same type of reward-feedback-feeling as when I finish a study.com narration and see it register on my invoice?
That, I’m going to have to think about. Because, shit…THAT would work. I know it would.
Incentives are so powerful. They quite literally drive the behavior of our world. I have not incentivized myself enough on my writing. How do I do that?
For now, and I know this works at least in the short-term…I shall use my will-power. It’s a finite resource, a fact I am reminded of every few days when all my best-laid plans all fall apart, but it is a resource I have available to me right now at my fingertips. But, we’re going to revisit this tomorrow, this idea of creative the right sort of incentive and immediate feedback to my writing. I might be onto something.
That’s all for tonight! 😛 I started watching A Bug’s Life and was rather stunned to realize that it’s really Seven Samurai…or if you want to be even more precise about it, the version of Seven Samurai that we saw as The Three Amigos. Ie- the warriors are actually totally unqualified and bumbled into the situation by accident. I was never a huge, huge fan of A Bug’s Life, but that realization tonight gave me a new appreciation for it. It ALSO gave me an idea for a novel 😛 But, I digress.
Night!