So we’re only eleven days into 2017 and I’m already writing a “Hey, look at me, I’m sad and discouraged” type of post.
Okay, maybe that’s not entirely my purpose in this post. After all, we don’t allow negative thoughts over here at Write Good Books.
But that doesn’t mean I won’t occasionally use this forum to vent 🙂
As is the case every January, I like to start off the year by setting some pretty ambitious goals. I reevaluate those goals often, just not usually this often.
My # 1 big goal this year was (and maybe still is) to get the next novel ready to query. But after evaluating the novel I’m trying to clean up and the other one I have started, I’m just not feeling it. So I’m going to put that goal on hold for a little while.
But here is why:
This year has just started off a little…frustrating, I guess. With the sick family, the return to work after the break, and another project that is taking WAY more time than I had originally expected, I just don’t feel like I’m making any progress on my own fiction. And I’m feeling way down about it.
Yes, I know this is a normal thing. All writers feel this way at times. And No, I’m not here to say boo hoo. I’m here to present my solution to the “boo hoo.”
Look for solutions
When you’re feeling down, disappointed, frustrated, or whatever, about something you’re passionate about, you’ve got to do three things.
- Ask yourself why you’re feeling that way.
- Think back to when you didn’t feel that way.
- Figure out what to do to get back to feeling the good way.
So after thinking about it a bit, I figured out that part of the reason I’m feeling so discouraged is that I haven’t had a lot of measurable success in my writing in the last year or so. Looking back at a time I was perhaps happiest as a writer, I discovered that it was when I was producing a lot of short stories.
I was feeling a constant stream of measurable success in the form of not only finishing a first draft, but also submitting it and, in some cases, seeing it published.
Now, while I’ve been working on all of these other projects, promoting Holy Fudgesicles, and revising the next novel, I just haven’t been writing. And I certainly haven’t been finishing anything.
So that’s going to be my quick fix for the next few months. I’m just going to finish a couple of new short stories. I’m not going to set a fixed number of short stories. Hell maybe it will even just be one. But either way, it’ll be better for my well-being to work on a piece of fiction and finish it.
And then after I’ve got this stuff out of my system, I can go back to working on longer-term projects, such as novel clean-ups where I don’t see immediate results.
So thanks for letting my vent a bit and wish me luck on this New New Year goal 🙂
What about you? Have you already had to reevaluate or modify your goals for 2017? What made you do it, and what’s your new plan? Leave a comment and let us know!
