Daily Check-in: Day 13

[annotated_em]

Hello, all, I'll be doing the check-in posts this week. Hope your Sunday is going well for you!

Poll #15226

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 5

View Respondents

What have you been working on today?

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Researching
1 (20.0%)

Plotting
1 (20.0%)

Writing
3 (60.0%)

Sending stuff to beta
0 (0.0%)

Editing
0 (0.0%)

Posting
0 (0.0%)

Replying to feedback
0 (0.0%)

Resting
2 (40.0%)

On a scale from Argh to Whee, how are you feeling today?

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Mean: 5.80 Median: 6 Std. Dev 0.75

Argh 1		0 (0.0%)
2		0 (0.0%)
3		0 (0.0%)
4		0 (0.0%)
5		2 (40.0%)
6		2 (40.0%)
7		1 (20.0%)
8		0 (0.0%)
9		0 (0.0%)
Whee! 10		0 (0.0%)

For discussion, let's talk about your goals and plans for the week. I personally find that it's useful to have a larger, overarching goal that's broken down into smaller elements. The elements keep me from feeling overwhelmed by the larger goal and give me a sense of accomplishment and progress when I'm able to check them off my list, so I might be thinking "I want to finish this story," but in practice I'll break it down to "Today I want to write five hundred words/finish this scene" or similar small goals. Sometimes, when writing is hard, I'll settle for "Today I will write a paragraph" because every little bit helps.

How do you approach your writing goals? Does it help you to break things down into smaller steps, or are you a big-picture person? Or do you prefer to freestyle it instead of making plans?

Comments

[lilly_c]

I'm going home mid-week for a much needed break and catch up with the family, so I'm keeping my writing goals fairly light as I won't have any free time while I'm away.

The only things I'm working on this week are my chapter notes for part one of Let Me Fade and editing my unconventionalcourtship fic.

I try to keep my writing plans to small and fairly manageable as it's easier to stick to and adapt when needed.

[princessofbevelle]

Me, I'm researching today, I've been reading up on social anxiety for a new story I'm working on, one of the characters has it really bad.

[linaewen]

I'm traveling, so there's not been much opportunity for any writing. That's kind of an argh not to be writing, but it's nice to get away from work for a bit, so it's really more of a whee!

I agree, it's very helpful to have a big goal to aim for and then work at reaching it with more attainable short-term goals. I need to remember that, as recently, I have been concentrating too much on the big goal of finishing a fic, rather than taking it in smaller, more encouraging bites.