One question I’m confronting this week is whether to push myself into tracking my daily writing (yes, tracking that practice), or just going with “the flow” and trusting that I’m doing what I need to be with my writing.
Funny thing is, what’s been happening in this mode is that I’m not worrying about if I’m writing enough; instead I’m worrying about and feeling possible detriments of writing too much.
Here’s what I mean:
I started out pushing myself to just write. Wanting to write and having a long project let me keep dropping in and writing basically every day. Great!
My goal was to write every day, but I knew that wasn’t realistic or healthy, so I was in an unclear place.
But after time, it felt like a streak, something I didn’t want to break. And my words output was high, like enough that I started to worry about the quality of the content, that maybe I was doing too much, instead of just feeling the joy of knowing I was doing it—meeting the goal I’d set out to do, which was, essentially, TO WRITE!
So I was doing it, and… it didn’t always feel good. Maybe I was touching the “perfectionist zone”: a place where there’s no room for breaks, inadequacy, ease or flow! This had gotten me going, but if, for instance, I wanted to spend a whole Sunday with my family, how would that fit in? It wouldn’t. I had to amend my goal.
SMART goals
Next I thought about creating a SMART goal. You know, Simple, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. A basic SMART goal would be to write for a minimum of 5 days per week, for 300 words or more. To meet this, I’d simply track my output, something I could definitely do, and then watch what I did and take time off when I had “earned it.”
But something about that felt off. While I encourage my clients to track their output and meet basic goals, to do this and “level up” their writing practice to reach higher and successively higher goals over time, I’ve been doing this for long enough that I wondered if I needed this much regimentation in my approach.
For example, when I started working out with weights a long time ago, I used charts and tables and a lot of data-collecting to figure out what exercises to do, what weights, and how often. It worked well. Then, at a certain point, I realized from others I saw at the gym a lot, that some of them just had the goal to show up.
Their reasoning went something like, “If I just get myself to the gym (insert whatever number here) times a week, I’ll do the work I need to.”
And then I remembered what so many other writers had said for advice in so many places: just get your butt in the chair. Keep doing it.
In short, show up.
My goal was to find balance.
Today’s questions:
What’s your challenge around finding balance in your writing practice look like? What are the ends of the spectrum you’re watching? What are you afraid of?
Next time: enter the “-ish” goal. An idea from my coach, Katherine Golub.
