Celebrate Your Writing Achievement

Give Goals a Rest

The end of the year and throughout the land writers are loudly wailing, gnashing teeth and resolving."I must write more, I must write better."

Slow and steady writers look gloomily at blogposts charting resolutions and goals listed by superwriters with flying fingers and no need of sleep.

Whether you're making New Year Resolutions or SMART goals (Smart, Attainable, Realistic, Measurable, Time-based), just stop for a day and think. 

What is the point of beating yourself up about everything you failed to achieve and may well not achieve again, New Year or not?
 
Hope springs up like the phoenix on day one of the New Year. But remember the anguish and gradual slide into apathy, knowing that your word count per month hardly equals Wonder Writer's word count per hour.

That slot on the NY Times best seller lists is as far away as ever. No agent or publisher is clamouring for your brilliant novel.

Instead of racking your brains to list goals that don't look too trivial, take the day to list all your achievements for 2010.

List Your Achievements:

List all your achievements even if they're negative: I did not kill Uncle Arnie when he said the turkey was too dry.

Change your negatives to positives: I did not write 250 words a day becomes In November I wrote 1000 words or two blogposts or...


Now divide your achievements into writing successes and personal successes (In July I lost weight--no matter if like me you put it all back on again).


Now put your feet up, read through your list and stop bullying yourself to do better. It's bad for the character. 


Pat yourself on the back. Celebrate every achievement of 2010.

New Year Resolution

Enjoy every moment of 2011. Remember, everything that goes wrong will make a great story one day.

Happy New Writing Year