No Excuses Allowed

Me in my new orange T-shirt

The weekend before last, Dean and I travelled into the city to attend a (biological) women's rights rally. You can see me at the rally in the photo. I'm wearing my new orange Sally Grover T-shirt, and Dean is beside me. (He's behind the man in the white hat. You can only just see Dean in his sunglasses.)

The rally was on Sunday morning so we caught the train the day before and stayed in a hotel in the city overnight.

We really enjoyed the rally. It was fascinating, with some amazing speakers like Sally Grover from the now-famous Giggle V Tickle court case and Senator Malcolm Roberts. And hundreds of people attended, both men and women. 

But during the weekend I began to feel ill.

On Saturday afternoon I had a bit of a headache. That night I slept badly because my head hurt and my nose became awfully blocked.

The next day, by the end of the rally, I felt exhausted. We went and had a picnic in a park and then headed to Central Station to catch a train home.

By the time we arrived home it was after 5 o'clock. We had dinner, showers and an early night. But the next day I felt worse. I joked that I'd caught 'Brisbane germs.' I spent a couple of hours asleep on the couch that afternoon. I still felt exhausted.

The feeling of illness persisted the rest of the week and was dragging me down both physically and mentally. But I was part-way through editing my novel, Magenta, so I worked on that every day. And what I found was that even though I didn't feel like doing it, I still sat down and did it, and once I started I was soon absorbed in my work.

By the end of the week I realised that working on my book was like therapy.

It took my mind off how rotten I felt, and, as it usually does, when I'm deep into writing I forget all about reality. My mind was completely inside the story, and even stopping to blow my nose repeatedly didn't deter me from my mission to get the edit finished. Which I did, so now I only have to do one more run through it, and I'm done. 

But what the whole experience taught me is that there really is no excuse for not writing. So unless I'm bedridden, I can write.

Even times when things have upset me, I can always get lost in my writing and take myself away from my troubles for a while.

It really is that easy.

So no more excuses.

I'm just going to write.

Coming soon...

The Big Mistake Most Writers Make About Consistency

Consistency is a word that comes up often when people talk about writing. We're told that it's all about consistency, which means showing up every day and writing for a set number of hours or words.

I always believed that was true, yet I constantly struggled to maintain the discipline of a daily writing streak. Then I read something that blew that belief away and not only makes way more sense, but also makes building a writing habit so much easier.

This is the quote that I read: 

"In theory, consistency is about being disciplined, determined, and unwavering. 

In practice, consistency is about being adaptable. Don't have much time? Scale it down. Don't have much energy? Do the easy version. Find different ways to show up depending on the circumstances. Let your habits change shape to meet the demands of the day. 

Adaptability is the way of consistency."

~ James Clear

Once I read that, it became so obvious how wrong the belief is that consistency means strictly keeping to a daily set number of hours or words. I mean, sure, it may work for some people, but it doesn't work for me.

Life gets in the way of my plans all the time, making it hard to stick to a rigid target.

And I was looking at it the wrong way.

Consistency doesn't mean adhering to a strict schedule. It simply means turning up every day, which is pretty much what I do. Some days I work more than other days, and some days I don't do much at all.

Just the other day I was feeling guilty because I'd slept badly the night before and felt tired all day. I had a meeting with someone that morning, which was scheduled for 2 hours but took an hour longer than expected, and then Dean and I had to go and buy a few things we needed for the work we're doing on our house at the moment.

By the time we got home, took everything out of the car, had lunch and did the dishes, it was late afternoon, and I was exhausted and almost fell asleep as soon as I sat down. So no writing got done. I just looked over a few things, made a few notes, checked my emails, and left it at that.

At first, I felt disappointed, but then I realised there's no point in stressing about it. I usually aim for a minimum of 2 hours of writing every day, but days like the previously mentioned one don't leave mental or physical room for 2 hours of focused work. Most days I do manage it easily - often I do more.

The reason I aim for a minimum of 2 hours writing every day is because that's all it takes to be a prolific writer.

But I also need to be adaptable to whatever life throws at me. 

So for me, as James Clear said, consistency means showing up every day, no matter what or for how long.

That way I can keep writing fun, because if it's not fun, it's not sustainable.

Goodbye Writer's Block

How to Be a Creative Genius and Have an Abundance of Ideas Plus the Inspiration and Motivation to Write
https://cheritonhousepublishing.com/books/WB.html