Hi all,
Here is your lesson for this week. It includes a few more tips and tricks on how to write during the summer. Be sure to complete the assignment as well and post it under this thread.
Take care, and have a great week!
Irene S. Roth
LESSON FOR THE WEEK OF JUNE 10TH, 2019
Prioritize Your Writing Goals
Once you have your list of long and short-term writing goals, its time to prioritize these goals. Our writing life is a treasure trove of desires, dreams, and goals we will want to achieve. The burden to achieve every goal we wish can overwhelm us to the point where we get little or no concrete writing done. This is especially the case in the summer when our concentration may be especially scattered because there is so much going on.Prioritize Your Writing Goals
Therefore, prioritizing your writing goals is very important because it allows you to identify the most important goals so that you can give them more of your attention, energy, and time. It also allows you to spend more time on the things that will advance the completion of your goals. Further, prioritizing can also help you plan effectively. There is no better feeling for a writer than achieving even one goal by the end of summer.
Here are a few tips to follow to effectively prioritize your writing goals.
- Look over your goals. Rank them into three categories, urgent, important and unimportant. Give each of them a numerical value from 1 to 3, with one being the most important and 3 being the least important and something that can wait.
- Assess the value of each. Identify what carries the highest value for you. Identify top propriety tasks and write them down.
- Order tasks by estimated time and effort. It doesn’t have to be a perfect estimate of time. So, if you don’t complete the goal in the specified time, don’t be hard on yourself. Just schedule more time and keep going.
- Be flexible and adaptable. Nothing is carved in stone for a writer. Life happens, especially in the summer. You will have to take the occasional unexpected day trip when you should be writing, or you will have to visit family or have a BBQ. These are all unexpected outings can cut into your writing time.
- Think of achieving one goal at a time. If you work on more than one goal at once, you will feel overwhelmed and your chances of completing the goal is reduced, especially when your writing time is restricted in the summer. This will only frustrate you further and erode your self-confidence.
- Know when to cut out your goals. Some of your goals may be either redundant or simply unimportant. This is why you should keep regularly reassessing your goals to weed out the unimportant ones.
Prioritizing your writing goals will therefore help you categorize your goals according to their level of importance. This can further help you become more aware of your writing goals and which ones you have completed. The clearer and more aware you are, the more successful you will be, especially in the summer when your concentration is hard to maintain.
Decide How Long You will Write Every Day
One of the best ways to write every day regardless of what else is going on in your life is to decide how many hours you will write during the upcoming week. That way, when the week starts, you will have an idea of how much writing you can do. Generally, the more planning you can do and the more intentions you set to write, the more successful you will be.
This is because when you form an intention to write for a concise amount of time every day or even most days, you will have more of a chance to write than if you didn’t set an intention to write. Creating your intention is the first step in creating your goals. This is because there is a connection between setting an intention and bringing about what you intend.
For instance, you may create an intention to write eight to ten hours a week. This intention should then lead you to write down what you will complete towards achieving your writing goals.
I realize that this sounds a bit awkward at first. Intentions are abstract concepts which are hard to grasp. But there is a lot of psychological and philosophical proof setting intentions works. So, at least try it for a few weeks and see if it works for you. I’m pretty sure you will be surprised by the progress you make in getting your butt in your chair and writing.
Like all habits, it can take up to 21 days to form them. So, please be patient and make sure you are as consistent as you can be. Take some time out on Sunday to set your intentions. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes of your time. Just be sure to write down your intentions. Unless you do, you may forget them. But more than that, writing down your intention can also help reinforce the intention in your mind.
Tip 5: Try to Write Every Day
During the summer, it can be hard for writers to find time to write on a consistent basis. We usually come back to the hotel or home tired and sometimes even frustrated as well as anxious because we didn’t get much writing done. It is understandable to feel this way. This is why I encourage writers to write first thing in the day or at the end of the day if they can.
If you feel tired upon arriving back after a day of activity, take some time to decompress. The easiest thing you can do after such outings is to have dinner and watch TV. Then suddenly around 9 pm you remember that you should have been writing and you get upset at yourself. Guilt may set in and all the negative self-talk floats to the surface of your consciousness. You feel awful as you prepare to go to bed because it represents one more lost day of writing.
Days may pass and still you may not have done any writing. This may frustrate you even more and the situation starts to negatively impact your self-esteem. You may start wondering whether you should give up and not write at all during the summer. After all, why should you try and write if you never seem to get around to it. You feel weak willed because you can’t seem to control your free time so that you could get even a bit of writing done every day.
This negative mindset can linger and further increase your levels of anxiety to the point where you are less and less likely to write during the summer. Its easier to forget about writing altogether. You know you should be writing but how can you do so, given all your time pressures and obligations?
The good news is that there is a way out of this negative mindset. I strongly encourage you not to quit writing, even if its hard to find time to write. Just keep trying and be patient with yourself. The best way I know to get you out of this negative mindset is to get into the habit of writing every day, even if it is for a few minutes. This way you can be sure to do even some writing consistently. This will build your self-confidence as a writer and give you the incentive to continue writing every day as time goes on.
Even if you decide to write for only fifteen to thirty minutes a day before or after dinner or first thing in the day, try to write consistently after this time for a few weeks. This will then become a habit and your ticket to success. In other words, the more often you sit down to write at the same time, the more you will want to write.
Secondly, by writing every day, you will develop the habit of writing. After a few weeks, you will want to write every day for 30 minutes and you will find creative ways do so. If you write better in the morning, you will be motivated to get up earlier and write. You will start making time to write and scheduling it in your planner. In the process, you will be building self-confidence and getting a lot of writing done.
Thirdly, and very importantly, you will get your family used to the fact that you will be writing. This will help you feel more confident that you will be given the space by your family to write every day. Non-writers don’t understand the writing life and how long it takes to complete a manuscript. Further, family members may be intimidated by people in the family who write. Therefore, consistently writing will get them used to the idea that writing is a part of your life.
Therefore, make sure that you schedule time to write every day. Experiment to determine your best times to write. Determine what works, and then create a writing schedule from there. But try to be patient, yet consistent. If one time of day doesn’t work, keep experimenting with different times. This will ultimately lead to success and you will become a writer who consistently writes.
Your Assignment:
Please answer the following questions by Sunday of this upcoming week. Post your answers under this thread.
1. Look over your goals list. Rank them into three categories. Then post your first three writing priorities for the summer.
2. Assess the value of each of your three goals. Post this list below.
3. How long will you write every day in the summer?
4. Can you make an intention to write 8 to 10 hours a week every week?
5. Can you write most days in the summer? Can you try some of the tips listed in this lesson to write even for 15 to 30 minutes? If not, why not. If yes, how will you try to do so.
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