Fixing a Situation
Last year I began to add practices to my morning routine. I still feel they were valuable practices, but they were each taking a few minutes away from the time I carved out for my morning writing until I was left with only a half hour to write each day despite waking earlier and earlier specifically to do that. My time was intended for working on my novels, but that's not how it was being used. My progress slowed and meanwhile, I was trying to do more and more. It wasn't that the tasks were being used as resistance to doing the work, but because I was putting them first, I was putting my effort into things that did not result in work progressing on my novels. And that's as bad, isn't it? So yesterday I had this bit of an epiphany, after waking up earlier than ever and still only finding myself with 25 minutes or so to write before it was time to leave for work. I realized that these things not only took away from my time, but they put me in the wrong headspace. All the journaling and visualization I added to my day deals with my imposter syndrome regarding my entrance to the world of self-publishing. I don't worry about whether I can write or not. So to warm up for creative work with thoughts about marketing and building my subscriber base was counterproductive. I wish I'd seen it earlier. So I resolved, yesterday, not to pollute the creative waters of my morning. To go from dream state to writing flow without putting a kink in the hose. The result? This morning I set immediately to creative work. Spent the timed 16 minutes warming up with free-writing, and spent almost a full hour working on the next scene of Salvage. And I still found time to work on that affirmation journaling, but instead of it taking a half hour, I gave it the five minutes I could spare when I was done writing. Can one mic drop on oneself? Because if so? Boom.