Monthly Scorecard. How Did You Do?

This one’s all about you.

How did you do, these last 30 days past?

Did you write when you said you would?  Most of the time?  Not much?  Get completely side-swiped?

Did you take even a few baby-steps towards setting up or advancing any of the myriad details that shape an anchored author’s life and move you towards quitting the day job?

Remember, this is a game of increments.  An inch here, a step there.  Ten minutes drawing hangmen on a pad of paper while you think about your antagonist’s bad habits is progress of a sort (and definitely progress, if you wrote down your insights afterwards).

But don’t kid yourself that a whole month of no real progress is okay.  It ain’t.  It’s one twelfth of your year down the drain, never to be recovered.

Today’s Saturday.  If you’re not working the day job (most of us aren’t), then today is a good day to review the last 30 days and make an honest assessment of your progress.  Did you write every time you said you would?  (Rare).  Did you at least write more than you did, the 30 days before these? (More common, and a good compromise if you really can’t manage to write every time you scheduled yourself to write).

If you wrote the same amount, or less, spend some time analysing why your wordage is slipping.

Perhaps you’re being too ambitious?

Or just lazy?

Usually, my pathetic excuse is that the whole anchored life is so overwhelming that sometimes I just have to take a dive, and loll about for a couple of days, which can sometimes stretch to a week or more (it’s a highly infectious condition).  The break is a “treat” to myself for all the hard work I’m forced to do.

Which, frankly, is pure bullshit.

There is very, very (ad infinitum) little in your life that you’re forced to do.  The old saw tells us that only death and taxes are unavoidable.  Everything else is a choice.

Oh, it might not have been a good choice. Or it may have been a good choice at the time — or perhaps it was the best choice you were capable of making at the time.

Regardless, you chose to buy the house you’re living in. You chose to get married/start a family/buy that big truck/travel around Europe/whatever.

You also chose to eat all those extra calories, take the day job you have, start writing and fighting for publication.

Some of your choices were damned good ones, and you’re glad you made them.  Others…well, if you made the choice in the first place, there’s probably a way to change your mind.  It might take months and lots of legal fees, but if there’s something in your life that you would be better off without, then fix it.

It’s your choice.  It always has been.

So, if you’re looking back at your progress over the last 30 days and thinking it’s all too hard, too overwhelming, too much to handle…then stop.  Stop torturing yourself.  Stop telling yourself it’s not fair.  Because everything in your life, all the demands and responsibilities?  You let ‘em in.  And you picked them for very good reasons.

If you’ve had a bad month, don’t wallow in it.  Remember, Monday is the start of a fresh record.

For the next 30 days, keep reminding yourself daily that you have ultimate control over your life and you.  Chose to tackle everything that you’ve scheduled for yourself, because you really, really want the results that come from hitting your marks, over and over and over again:

• Quality writing — perhaps the best you’ve ever done.
• Prolificacy — novel after novel produced and sold.
• A growing pool of dedicated readers
• A building reputation in the industry
• A swelling annual income from writing

Best of all:

• Growing confidence in your self-mastery and control, and
• Eventually getting to quitting the day job.

First appeared on Anchored Authors on September 20, 2008

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Tracy Cooper-Posey © 2009. Cannot be copied or distributed without permission.