Part of working creatively is learning what to do when things don’t go as planned. In my case, I tend to put deadlines or challenges on myself, and I get rather irate when I can’t reach them.
But it’s mostly my own ego making me feel that way. I tend to put extremely difficult standards on myself, so high that even *I* can’t reach them all the time.
This is both good and bad.
When I make a statement like “I pledge to write on my blog every weekday” and I actually do it, I feel awesome. But if I don’t, I feel like a failure… even if I only missed one day in 6 weeks.
The good side is that sometimes, my ridiculous goals can push me to actually do something I honestly didn’t think I could do. The bad side is, nobody bats 1000. So when I say things like “I’m going to write on my novels every single day!” that’s a *huge* goal, and I need to accept the fact that I’m not going to actually be able to write every single day.
To that end, I’m going to set up a daily writing progress tracker written by Jamie Rubin, whom I’ve linked to before as his Evernote posts are fantastic.
This will allow me to see how much I’ve written over a broad span of time, as opposed to panicking over missing one day. It’s much easier to see the big picture… when you can see the big picture.
(Write Or Die also has a word progress tracker, but I’m not going to be able to write with it all the time.)
Being hard on yourself is the hardest