What's your metric?

Mine needed a change.

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In this issue:

What’s Your Metric?
Writing Prompt
WWT Tool Kit Craft Card

What’s your Metric?

So I’ve been working on my stamina, trying to write more. But recently I noticed that I’m not actually lacking stamina. What I’m lacking is enthusiasm.

I used to wake up and write, sneak in writing at work when no one was looking, head to the coffee shop after work to continuing writing until the store closed and they kicked me out. Go to bed and do it all over again. Giddily. I did that for years. So much fun.

But I don’t feel like that anymore at the moment. Why is that? Why the lack of eagerness? Why do I get so easily distracted? Why do I feel meh about writing, like it’s a waste of my time? Especially revising?

Well, I think I finally got a clue.

Back when I first started writing I hadn’t really been a writer. I’d written a couple things here and there, but, I don’t know, I thought it was a pipe dream and so not worth pursuing. So I followed the conventional road to success and became a lawyer. And I really disliked it. But the one good thing about having done everything right and getting it all wrong is that following pipe dreams doesn’t sound like such a bad idea anymore.

But here’s what I did back then that I think is bumming me out now: I decided to make writing a replacement for lawyering. Just a quick switcheroo. I decided that it would be my moneymaker, the way I made a living. I burdened it with the responsibility of having to support me right this red-hot minute.

This would’ve been fine if it had done so, if I’d made my 3-year goal of being a six-figure author, seamlessly exchanging the one career for another, if it had snowballed into a positive feedback loop. But that didn’t happen. Instead, after many many years, I still just have a hobby I love that mostly makes me nothing. That would’ve been fine, too, except—as I’m now realizing—in deciding that it would be my new super-successful job, I set out with the subconscious notion that writing was only worth while if it could support me as well as my old job.

I made making money my metric for whether or not writing was valuable, for whether or not it was worth my time.

This makes me so sad. Because of course some people get it right with the first book in the first six months of trying and blah blah. But just because you don’t doesn’t mean it’s not worth while to do, to do just for itself.

I haven’t put this burden of supporting me on anything else I do. I don’t ask my pug to support me, or walking my pug to support me. I don’t ask reading to support me. I don’t ask all the other stupid things I do to support me. Cooking, YouTube, hammocking. I can’t even list much, because I’ve streamlined so much of my life in an effort to make the Writing Thing become what I demanded it be.

I created my own disappointing situation that perpetually created more baggage around writing. A negative feedback loop.

Bleh.

Anyway. Maybe I’m the only one who has done this, created an unserving metric for whether or not something I enjoy doing is worth my time. But this isn’t all sadness and bad news. Because the awesome thing is that if I can see the problem, the unserving metric, then I can change it.

I love the flow state writing puts me into. I love being surprised by the words that end up on the page, by the twists and turns in the story, by the fact that there was nothing there an hour ago and now there’s a whole scene with life and intrigue and—what happens next? And yes, I even love it when something about it isn’t working, because I know it’s temporary and the fix is going to delight me.

I enjoy it. What’s more valuable and worth my time than that?

Writing Prompt

• Character: CHILD: MAGICAL
  Light Attribute: Seeing the potential for sacred beauty in all things. The belief that everything is possible.
  Shadow Attributes: Pessimism, depression, and disbelief in miracles. Believing that energy and action are not required for growth.

• Setting: A bookstore.

• Object: An armchair, a teacup, a pair of glasses.

• Emotion: ENCOURAGED. Heartened, emboldened, supported.

WWT Tool Kit Craft Card

As mentioned before, I’m making a deck of craft cards to quickly remind myself of techniques while also having a convenient place to keep track of elements like character, conflict, and theme specific to each story. This week’s card is to help you get going or get going again.

Thank you for reading!

I hope this helped you, and I hope your writing goes well this week.

Keep at it,
Megan

WritesWithTools
site: writeswithtools.com
ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/writeswithtools
wishlist: http://tinyurl.com/WWTWishList

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