I'm a big spreadsheets person. I use spreadsheets in just about every area of my life—including writing. I've shared a couple of ways I use spreadsheets in my writing here and here. In that second post, I talked about the tracker I use while drafting a project. At that time, I also had a separate tracker where I tracked all the words that I wrote on all my projects for the whole year. It looked like this:
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
At the beginning of last year, I decided to stop using that second tracker. I'd gone back to school full-time and I felt like using that tracker put too much pressure on myself. Not only was a busier than I had been, I was also trying to get back to the pure fun of writing and felt like tracking my daily word counts wasn't working for me anymore.
But then over the course of last year something else happened. I'm not sure if it's because I began pursuing other interests or because writing had lost some of the fun for me, but I drifted pretty far away from my writing. Even after I quit school, I still didn't get back to writing as much as I had been. I never completely pushed it aside, but it wasn't a top priority for me. It wasn't something I turned to when I had a bad day and needed a peaceful escape. It wasn't ever completely out of reach, but it was just at the edge of my fingertips.
A few months ago, I began wanting to reconnect with my writing. I wanted to write with the passion and frequency I had before I'd made that decision to go back to school. I thought of how little writing I'd done over the past year, and it made me sad. I really got down on myself over it.
Hannah talks about this in her post on forgiveness. She mentioned how she got mad at herself. "Not so much because I couldn't do any writing then, but because I didn't do enough before." I knew just what she meant. Those times when I thought about how little writing I've done the past year, I definitely was mad at myself. But beating myself up about didn't help me get reconnected to my writing. If anything, it made it worse.
Since getting mad doesn't do any good, and in working on transforming into the person I want to be, I have to ask myself what I can do now, what I can do moving forward to do better than I've been doing.
In reflecting on that, I've decided to start using my yearly tracker again. Not to put pressure on myself. But to make myself accountable. To observe my peaks and dips and to continually reflect on how to improve. How to do better. Because writing truly is my safe haven and I'm ready to get back there.
Do you have tools in place to keep yourself accountable? Or do you just go with the flow?
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
At the beginning of last year, I decided to stop using that second tracker. I'd gone back to school full-time and I felt like using that tracker put too much pressure on myself. Not only was a busier than I had been, I was also trying to get back to the pure fun of writing and felt like tracking my daily word counts wasn't working for me anymore.
But then over the course of last year something else happened. I'm not sure if it's because I began pursuing other interests or because writing had lost some of the fun for me, but I drifted pretty far away from my writing. Even after I quit school, I still didn't get back to writing as much as I had been. I never completely pushed it aside, but it wasn't a top priority for me. It wasn't something I turned to when I had a bad day and needed a peaceful escape. It wasn't ever completely out of reach, but it was just at the edge of my fingertips.
A few months ago, I began wanting to reconnect with my writing. I wanted to write with the passion and frequency I had before I'd made that decision to go back to school. I thought of how little writing I'd done over the past year, and it made me sad. I really got down on myself over it.
Hannah talks about this in her post on forgiveness. She mentioned how she got mad at herself. "Not so much because I couldn't do any writing then, but because I didn't do enough before." I knew just what she meant. Those times when I thought about how little writing I've done the past year, I definitely was mad at myself. But beating myself up about didn't help me get reconnected to my writing. If anything, it made it worse.
Since getting mad doesn't do any good, and in working on transforming into the person I want to be, I have to ask myself what I can do now, what I can do moving forward to do better than I've been doing.
In reflecting on that, I've decided to start using my yearly tracker again. Not to put pressure on myself. But to make myself accountable. To observe my peaks and dips and to continually reflect on how to improve. How to do better. Because writing truly is my safe haven and I'm ready to get back there.
Do you have tools in place to keep yourself accountable? Or do you just go with the flow?
