Follow-up

On day 23 of the #30DayWritingChallenge I wrote a letter to myself, containing a plan on how to stop procrastinating and get my writing going again. I decided to follow up after 30 days to see how it worked, and now it’s time. (I realize it hasn’t been a full month since I wrote the blog post, but it was scheduled, so I wrote the letter and started my plan a few days before.)

It’s actually been 30 days, and here’s the evaluation:

Make a to-do list every day:
I realized quickly that every day didn’t work for me, so I tweaked it to a weekly to-do list. And that works like a charm. I can pick and chose what I feel like every day, so even though I have a to-do list, I still have the freedom to let my mood decide. Freedom of choice is super important for my creativity.

Here’s the last two week’s to-do lists. And yes, I’m old fashioned, I have a calendar made out of actual paper 🙂 

Write 500 words on WIP every day:
I tweaked this to write or edit 500 words every day, and it works really great. Even if I’m tired and grumpy, I feel like I can manage 500 words. And when I sit down and write, I often do a lot more, but if I don’t feel like exceeding 500 words, I don’t have to. Perfect!

Write/edit in blocks of 30 minutes: 
This worked in the beginning of the 30 days, when I had a hard time getting back into my writing after Christmas. You can do 30 minutes, Nell, I told myself. It’s nothing. And I could. I wrote 30 minutes, took a break, and started over. But as I got my flow back, I became irritated when the alarm told me it was time for a break if I was in the middle of something. So I scrapped this point rather quickly. I will, however, use it as a kick-starter if I ever find myself in a funk like that again, because it helped get me going.

The verdict:
I actually procrastinate less, so I’d have to call the plan a success. At least the tweaked version of it. Yay! 🙂