The writing challenge that knows you have a life.
My baby steps for combating burnout have led to a little breakthrough. I think it’s funny that in all the weeks I’ve tried to just do it, I wasn’t getting anywhere. It took a week of stepping back, taking little breaks, that I had the most success.
I’ve been trying to fit my schedule into something I either wasn’t ready for or just wasn’t right for me. Each step back allowed me to breathe and come back to my tasks refreshed.
I should have had a stressful week too. The evil day job and my volunteer hours were both crazy. It was no where near perfect, but I’m completely okay with that. I edited all but one day this week and in the process have worked out many issues with the WIP. I even added almost 3k.
Instead of trying to make my life imitate art, I needed to get my life straight first and the art fell into place. You got to love it. Can I do it again this week? I’m sure going to try.
The Goals – week-3 results
- Spend at least 1-hour a day with my characters- done. 🙂
- Daily progress in writing craft, word count, editing, and/or plotting- done except for one day. I’ve tried so many times to find the right ending for my WIP and I’ve been finding this most recent attempt a bit overwhelming. The little breaks this week really helped. I worked through the plot from a completely different angle and after spending time with my characters, I think I may have found the right happy ending.
- Take care of and be kind to myself (start w/ a relaxing ritual and daily breaks from technology)– done on all accounts. I’m okay. <~ This is what I needed to believe. I’m doing just fine. No, I’m not where I want to be, but that’s okay. My relaxing ritual in the morning is happening before I leave my bedroom. I’m so glad my boys are getting older because this step is actually doable. My breaks from technology happened this week too. We had a bunch of company this weekend and I was ready for them. Thank you tech breaks. Wahoo!!
My stops on the web you might have missed this week:
My bi-weekly flash at Daily Picspiration: Lucky in Love
D. Renee Bagby Presents First Chapters: Taking Chances chapter one
What you might have missed here this week:
Inside Look with Elodie Parkes author of A Little Mysterious
Spotlight: Midnight Mistletoe by Laurel Cremant
Spotlight and Review: Find Me by Ella Jade
S.J. Maylee 
Good luck on the goals …I’m trying to straighten my life out, too, but I’m not having an easy time.
Thank you and stick with it, Nancy and you will figure it out.
Thanks–hope you are right. Trying to do things one day at a time.
I just went through a months long process of sorting out my relationship w/ writing, daily life, my growing kids, my evolving day job, etc….As things change we have to re-process, and I think especially since i’ve been a mom giving myself that time is hard. Best of luck as you sort out your balance; and it sounds like you made awesome progress this week!
Thank you and you’re so right. What works today may not work next week. Balance seems to be that ever moving target. Hope you have a great week.
Amazing how things like this seem to just sort themselves out when we just get out of our own way, isn’t it? That’s pretty much what I did, too, and by the end of the week, I was back to feeling much better and writing more. Keep it up, and have a great week!
I totally needed to get out of my own way, lol. I hope we both have another great week. Thanks for all your support, Jennette. 🙂