Hello and welcome to The Pause,
I hope your week is going smoothly and that you’re faring well this winter.
In this Wednesday’s Creative Focus Sprints, amongst other things, I was chatting about how I got extremely sick last week.
It was the kind of sick I hadn’t been in years, and it forced me to stay in bed and sleep, and sleep, and sleep. I had no energy to think or do much, and even though I had a few projects and tasks in my planner, I called it all off and gave myself full permission to get the rest I needed.
There were some pretty uncomfortable days, I’m not gonna lie, but I reminded myself that the only way out is through, and lo and behold, after what felt like an eternity, the sun shone again, and I returned to life.
As a self-employed person who has to choose to get things done every day without a fixed schedule, deadlines, or a boss over my shoulder, it hasn’t been the easiest to find my rhythm again; I was so ill I even skipped morning pages several days in a row, making me truly feel like I lost the connection with my daily anchors.
So, as I have done many times and I am sure I will have to many times more, I picked myself up, and decided to begin again.
Remembering my why
The first thing I always do when wanting to re-establish my Sadhana, my daily ritual, is ask myself:
What do the practices within this Sadhana bring to my life that make the effort and the commitment worth it?
Sometimes the answer is simpler than others, and I just listen with curiosity. From there, I decide what belongs in my Sadhana and what has run its course. Some parts I readjust, and some parts I let go of.
Knowing my why helps me return to the practice when I feel like skipping it.
Returning to my anchors
My morning routine is divided into four small sections that answer my need to find clarity, learn, move my physical body, and engage in creativity by:
Writing morning pages
Reading a book for 10 minutes
Doing yoga for 15 minutes or going for a 15-minute walk
Working on my new novel for 25 minutes
With the exercise of remembering my “why”, I confirmed that these four anchors are still essential to my well-being, and yet, as I restarted my daily ritual, I found myself struggling.
Morning pages returned quite naturally; probably because it is such an integral part of my routine that I can’t imagine not sitting with my journal and writing those three often nonsensical pages every single morning.
Reading has also been quite enjoyable as a daily habit to return to. Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo is one of my current reads, and I’m finding refuge in the stories of the Marte sisters when I want to dive into someone else’s world for a while.
When it comes to movement, I had been struggling to get back to my yoga practice since the beginning of the year, and walks aren’t really an option where I am right now, but after so many days convalescing, I guess I was ready to move my energy and my body again. Getting back on my mat every morning and moving and breathing gently has been a gift.
I need more paperclips
Since I published my debut novel last October, I have been playing with the idea of writing a second novel, and although I have a rough outline, some of the characters, and a general idea of what it will be about, it hasn’t been the easiest to get back into full-on novel-writing mode.
I wonder if this happens to all debut authors: the fear of the first draft again…
After being sick, I noticed that even though I woke up every day saying I wanted to sit down and write, I ended up prioritizing anything else I could think of.
Yes, the laundry needed to get done, and I needed groceries, but after three days of writing zero words with no real excuse not to, I started feeling extremely guilty, so I decided it was time for a change.
I took myself out to write at a coffee shop, and also to the local library, which helped me get out of the rut and back into the story as I knew it would. Nothing like knowing I might be “wasting” my resources to force me to produce. 👀
I had gotten over the slump, but when looking at my progress, I still felt like I wasn’t writing fast enough or well enough. I still felt like I was behind.
But yesterday, I found a possible solution.
I was listening to one of my favourite YouTubers, Victoria from the Writing Woods, where she argued that gamifying our writing can seem fun but actually may end up putting a ton of pressure on us and making us feel like we’re failing.
I had to agree.
I have a couple of methods to track if I write every day and how much, and although sometimes it motivates me, like Victoria says, whenever I break the writing streak, whether it be a ten or a fifty-day one, I feel like an absolute failure, making me question myself as a writer and throwing me back into a writing slump.
Yay.
What Victoria suggests is making the goals even smaller and more attainable. This is something I also mention often, whether I am talking about sticking to writing or to your daily yoga practice: keep the bar low. Yet I realized I wasn’t truly doing it.
Saying I will write for 25-minutes every single day has worked in the past, yet right now, it is clearly putting enough pressure on me that I can’t get myself to do it.
What Victoria suggests is that instead of tracking if you write every day, or how many pages or words you get down on the manuscript, every time you work on any component of your novel, whether it’d be writing a line, making character notes, or doing research for the time period you’re writing about, you put a paperclip in a jar.
A paperclip, you say?
Yep, a freaking paperclip.
It doesn’t matter if it’s paperclips, pebbles, or stickers, really. The point is to have a visual representation of the progress so that your brain can feel like you’ve succeeded.
I started right away, and I already have three paperclips in my little jar, which brings me joy, helps me feel like I am making progress, and also made me realize I need to buy some more paperclips, because I plan on sticking to this method for the rest of the week, perhaps for the rest of February.
I am curious to know, do you set goals and track your progress when you’re working on your creative projects, and how? Feel free to share your tips and tricks in the comments.
That’s my little writing insight for the week. I hope it helps you, too!
If you want to join my next Creative Focus session, be productive together, and chit chat, join me next Wednesday here on Substack at 12 pm EST (18h CET).
Until we meet again, pause often, breathe deeply, and be kind, especially to yourself.
Much love,
Laia. 💛
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