Rewards

In Jeff Goins' 500-words a day challenge, Day 3 (get up early), he included this postscript: "Try rewarding yourself with little treats when you finish your 500 words for the day. Withhold certain things (like checking email or taking a shower) as ways of bribing yourself to do the work."

I was thinking about this concept when I came across this post earlier today. In it author Nina Faye Morey asserts that "Writing is definitely hard work and if we don't create some little rewards for ourselves each day, eventually all that hard work will suck all the enjoyment out of it."

She has a point. Writing is a pleasure, but it can also be a struggle. It's especially challenging for a "pantser" (someone who doesn't outline or plan her stories) when she has trouble clearing a hurdle or comes up against a brick wall. 

Morey offers examples of rewards that work for her - things like a cup of hot chocolate, Chai tea or a good book. Incentives, she reminds us, needn't cost the earth. 

So what kinds of things can I use as celebrations for writing achievements?

For mini-successes, like writing a blog post or completing 500 words:

• Reading a chapter in a book I'm enjoying
• Listening to a song on my current playlist
• Writing a note of encouragement to myself or someone else
• Taking a break for a cup of hot chocolate, coffee or tea
• Listening to an awesome TED Talk
• Watching a YouTube video
• Coloring a page in an adult coloring book
• Calling a friend whose voice I haven't heard in a while

For larger successes, like completing a short story or longer work, I can:

• Make it a night on the town! Dinner and a show
• Get tickets to a concert
• Invite friends over for a party
• Throw a book launch
• Treat myself to a mani-pedicure
• Get my hair cut at a fancier salon
• Go away for the weekend and stay at a nice bed-and- breakfast or vintage inn

Nina isn't such a fan of withholding rewards, which she views as a form of self-punishment and disincentive to write. I understand what she's saying, but I also get Goins' view of withholding as a way of enticing yourself. You're not failing to reward, you're just making yourself wait until you've got the job done. If I know, for example that I can't check my e-mail until I've written 500 words, or 250, that's probably an effective bribe. If I know that I'm not allowing myself any beverage but water until I finish that chapter, I'm going to work harder to finish the chapter even if (initially) it's not very good. 

When I started this post, I honestly wasn't sure if I'd be able to come up with very many rewards/bribes. It took some thinking, but I'm pretty pleased with the list I created and wouldn't mind expanding on it.

What are your thoughts on incentives? Got any that work especially well? Please share your ideas in the comments. I do my best to respond!

More than Better (Five-Minute-Friday)

I’m going to try to do the Five-Minute-Friday challenges hosted by KateMotaung. Kate gives us a word each Friday and we write something around it, then link up to a common blog post. We write for 5 minutes only, no correcting or revising allowed. Today’s word is “Better.” What a great word for the first FMF challenge of 2019. Not sure if I’ll meet the 500-word challenge within the five minute period, but let’s see what happens.

BEGIN.

Better. We all want to get better, don’t we? We want to be better organizers, better finishers, better at relationships, better at using our time. The list goes on.

Hm. We want to get better, but where do we begin? One thing I think is important is self-assessment. If you don’t know what makes you tick or how you roll, you don’t necessarily understand what your pitfalls are, what holds you back from getting “better.” I’m not sure since I haven’t checked during this five-minute period, but I imagine you can find all sorts of self-assessment questionnaires online, specific to whatever area of life you want to get better in.

I’m not sure what it is within us that gives us this drive to improve. It’s something in our DNA, that desire for excellence or perfection. I do believe that perfection isn’t achievable in this life and there is beauty in a slight flaw. I think, as I reflect on it more, that God put this aspiration within us because He made a perfect world at the beginning and created our desire to get back there. He wants us to remember where we came from.

END.

196 words in five minutes. I’m sure others have done, ahem, better. But that’s not too bad for someone who’s a little rusty and hasn’t done the FMF in some time. There was definitely an urge to edit, though. I mean, this is my authorial blog! I don’t want to put up writing that’s less than my best!

Goins’ 500-word challenge for today is to describe a perfect day in my life. I’ll try to sum that up in the last 140-odd words remaining.

Bradley's Cove, copyright Susan Barclay

Newfoundland. I am 7 years old. My favourite cousin has traveled here with us. He’s 8 years older than I am and doesn’t have much in common with me apart from our grandparents and my mom, but he’s charming and fun to be with. The setting is beautiful, rugged. The sun beats down, the air is fresh and salty, a breeze blows in from the ocean, ruffling the long grasses in the abandoned outport. We spend the day walking into Bradley’s Cove from Western Bay, down to the rocky beaches where we look for interesting rocks and items shrugged off by the ocean. We walk up Dogberry Hill and pick partridgeberries or blueberries, depending on what’s in season. We stroll out to the lighthouse and look for whales. The day is lazy and I’m in the best place with the best company in the world.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, readers! While I've done an abysmal job so far of blogging consistently on my website (and have deleted the old posts), once again I am going to try to do better. Today I'm starting Jeff Goins' 30-day 500-words-a-day writing challenge. Stick with me, and you might find daily posts for at least the next thirty days.

I have a few "words of the year" for 2019: organizing, finishing and relationships. If you haven't heard of having an overarching word for the year, I first heard about it through author Gretchen Rubin, and you can read some of her thoughts here.

Neat and tidy

So, why organizing? It seems obvious, doesn't it? I have a pretty disorganized home, especially when it comes to books and papers, and I need to get it under control - once. and. for. all. Years ago Julie Morgenstern's book Organizing from the Inside Out was very helpful in guiding our filing system plan, but we need to go through and pull out papers that no longer have value and file away the ones that are lying around. We also need to go through our bookshelves and sell or donate any books we no longer want. I know this may aghast my reading-loving friends who cannot part with books, and I hear you since I'm an author and librarian, but just like physical libraries, our bungalow has limited space, for books and everything else. 

It's not just papers, of course. Somehow we've inherited or acquired lots of other things that need to move along - clothes, ornaments, tools we no longer use, etc. I admit that I've kept things for my children for far too long (kids' clothes and toys, for example) when they should have been passed along and enjoyed by other children. Mine are now young adults in their early 20s and while they both hope to get married and settle down some day, short of a surprising change in their circumstances, it looks like that is still several years out. In the meantime, I could be using my cedar chest for my own out-of-season clothing (instead of baby and toddler wear for future grandchildren), and the room that houses our freezer and filing cabinet could be cleared of so many unused things from times passed.

I own four books on the subject of organizing, including Morgenstern’s and Sandra Felton’s TheMessies Manual. Anna Shepard’s Express Housekeeping and Donna Smallin Kuper’s Cleaning Plain & Simple focus more on cleaning, but do have chapters on decluttering. I’ve also recently borrowed two additional books from the library: Dana K. White’s How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind, which has a whole section on decluttering and another on making changes that last, and Erin Boyle’s Simple Matters, which tells you how to live with less and end up with more, starting with decluttering, simplifying and organizing. Clearly, there’s more to it than book acquisition and book knowledge. As with everything else, it’s going to be the application of principles that brings about the desired transformation. But I am determined. This is the year!

This brings me to the end of today's 500 words. What are your thoughts on organizing and decluttering? Do you have a word for the year?