I talked a little bit about this over at my Dreamwidth account, but I think it begs a bit of commentary here: I’m happy to say that I think I’ve finally broken myself of that niggling feeling at the end of every month that I’ve failed in keeping up with my writing schedule. For years, and with the best of intentions, I’d start each month looking at my whiteboard calendar and think, yeah, this time I’ll make it to the end with new words and productivity all over the place!, and inevitably crash and burn about two-thirds of the way through.
It took me until recently that to realize that I’ve been looking at this in totally the wrong way.
Coming into each month with the determination to Do All The Things regardless of real life (and Day Job) getting in the way always leads to failure. And that’s the other mistake I made: seeing that as failure in the first place. In the final weeks I’d always get frustrated that I’d failed to follow my plans once more, and every single time I’d needlessly get angry with myself. It would only be exacerbated by thinking, okay, THIS time I’ll get it right! and setting myself up for failure once more.
What I need to do instead is see the start of every month as a refresh. I run cleaning software on this PC every weekend without fail (and it’s kept Spare Oom’s computer up and running smoothly for over three years so far, thank you very much), and it occurred to me that I really should see my writing habits in very much the same manner.
When I start the new month tomorrow — including participating in Inktober — the whiteboard schedule will once again be full, once again be seen as a guide rather than an assignment, once again allowing myself days off when Real Life intrudes. The whole point of the whiteboard schedule has always been to keep me working instead of procrastinating or distracting myself, nothing more. It’s my coping mechanism that’s kept me from otherwise faffing around on Twitter or playing with my music collection all day long.
What I shall do differently starting tomorrow is just do my best. That’s all. If I miss a day, I miss a day. And come the end of October I’ll do the same thing I’m doing now, accepting the amount of work I’d done in the meantime and starting it all over again in November. And so on. View it as a refresh, not as a metric.
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