{"id":12633,"date":"2019-08-19T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-08-19T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=12633"},"modified":"2019-08-16T16:56:17","modified_gmt":"2019-08-16T22:56:17","slug":"2019-07-25-newsletter-authors-note","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/2019-07-25-newsletter-authors-note\/","title":{"rendered":"2019-07-25 Newsletter Author’s Note"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This author’s note originally appeared in the July 25th edition of my author newsletter. To sign up for my newsletter, click here.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Mrs. Vasicek has been sick with the flu for the past two weeks. She’s getting better, but we’ve both been less than productive, and any semblance of a daily routine has basically been shot. Turns out that having your wife around all day is a very distracting thing. Who would have thought?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of this has got me thinking about habits and routines: \nhow important they are, how to make them work, and how not to get \ndiscouraged. I’ve been self-employed basically since graduating from \ncollege nine years ago. I’ve worked a lot of side jobs, but nothing that\n I’d call a “day job,” at first because there weren’t any (graduating in\n a major recession is tough), and later on because I wanted to focus on \nmy writing career\u2014which so far, has been working out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you’re self-employed, you basically have to make your \nown daily routine, because there isn’t anyone else to make it for you. A\n lot of people struggle with this, especially after quitting their day \njobs. If you aren’t careful, you’ll find yourself sitting on the floor \nin your underwear eating peanut butter straight from the jar (not that I\n have any experience with this, of course). But if you buckle down and \npush through that phase, you learn a few things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, you learn that even the best routines always fall \napart at some point. It’s just the nature of the beast. The \ncircumstances of life are always changing, which means that you’ve got \nto be constantly adapting to them. Hanging on doggedly to a favorite \nroutine just for the routine’s sake is setting yourself up for failure. \nGoals are a mean to an end, not an end in themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, guilt is not a very good positive motivator. It’s \nhelpful to keep you from doing the things you shouldn’t be doing, but \nit’s a horrible way to get yourself to do the things you should. I’ve \nknown a lot of writers who constantly beat themselves up for not meeting\n their writing goals, to the point where it’s practically a full-time \njob. For a while, I’ve been there myself. Not good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best way to make yourself more productive is to find \nways to make it more enjoyable. Personally, I find that writing is most \nenjoyable when I’m immersed in the story that I’m trying to tell. \nSometimes, the best way to get immersed is to take a break, and \nsometimes, the best way is just to sit down and write. It takes a while \nto figure out what works. I’m still trying to figure it out better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Third, when making a new routine, make sure to keep your eye\n on the end goal. What good is eating an elephant one bite at a time if \nyou’re eating the wrong elephant? That’s why, when your routine starts \nto fall apart, it may be better to rethink what you’re trying to \naccomplish and rebuild it from the ground up, even though it’s easier \njust to tweak it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s where I’m at right now. I could just push my \ndeadlines back a couple weeks and try to go back to how things were \ngoing, but there’s a lot of other business related stuff on my plate \nthat I’ve been neglecting, and I get the impression that the best way to\n move forward with writing is to prioritize that other stuff and get it \nout of the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This author’s note originally appeared in the July 25th edition of my author newsletter. To sign up for my newsletter, click here. So Mrs. Vasicek has been sick with the flu for the past two weeks. She’s getting better, but we’ve both been less than productive, and any semblance of a daily routine has basically… Continue reading 2019-07-25 Newsletter Author’s Note<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[371,120,1190,454,154,251],"class_list":["post-12633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-creative-process","tag-daily-routine","tag-mrs-vasicek","tag-productivity","tag-self-discipline","tag-writing-habits","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-3hL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12633"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12637,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12633\/revisions\/12637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}