Publication Goals 2019, Mid-Year Report: Numbers and What Really Matters

Every January, when I think about my upcoming writing year, in addition to working on one big work-in-progress project, I envision what I’d like to see happen with publication of short pieces of work. I’m usually pretty consistently writing and sending off short memoir, essay, and nonfiction narratives (in the 100 to 2500-word range) and it’s motivating to have some submission and publication goals in mind.  

This year, I knew that by early summer, I’d want to begin my next book—and that is indeed underway…slowly. I’m having fun getting it off the ground, writing some crappy rough draft pages, making plans. (More on this in a few months, as its still in early infancy, and since it’s an experiential project, I first have to do the stuff I want to write about!)

In early 2019 I set the goal of getting 12 short pieces published—roughly one each month—in print or online, in literary journals, mainstream media/sites, anthologies. Mostly I picked that number/frequency to keep myself motivated and on track with writing and revision, and to keep filling the submission pipeline.

Now that we’re just past the halfway mark in the calendar, it’s time for me to evaluate progress. Over the years, I’ve gained a lot from peeking inside other writers’ goal-setting and progress reports, so I’m sharing it with you.

First though, I had to ask myself, how do I define “success” when it comes to this goal? Is it hitting the mark of one piece appearing each and every calendar month? Or just 12 publications by year’s end? Is it more logical to measure success as submitting enough work to reasonably attain 12 acceptances? (Some folks measure submission success in numbers of rejections, figuring that each rejection brings one closer to an acceptance. They have a point, but I don’t like measurements based on negativity myself.) Perhaps success is producing, over the course of the year, enough quality polished short works that are ready to go, even if, by December 31, they didn’t move all the way through the pipeline from submission to 12 acceptances yet?

Well, all of that matters—or at least a little of each of those things, I suppose.

The tally for publication (and one acceptance, w/publication forthcoming) of short pieces in 2019 so far stands at six for creative work, plus one article and one guest post, and looks like this:

-       - An essay on a mainstream website covering couples and relationships. (February)

-       - An essay on a website that focuses on spirituality and mindfulness. (March)

-       - An essay in one of Medium’s edited publications. (July)

-       - A short nonfiction piece in a popular mainstream print anthology. (August)

-       - A piece of flash nonfiction in the online portion of a literary journal. (August)

-       - Another work of flash nonfiction in a specialized online literary journal. (September)

-       - An invited guest post on memoir craft for an educational venue’s website. (April)

-     -A Q&A interview w/a fiction writer about her new book, on a cool literary website (May)

- 

My (exceedingly exhaustive, multi-page, bordering-on-obsessive) submission tracker spreadsheet tells me that at the moment, I have four completed pieces out on submission at a total of 11 venues. That’s not a lot, and a bit short of my usual making-the-rounds total. Twelve publications (not just acceptances) might not happen by year's end.

While the little Post-it list on my desk that lists works still-in-progress says there are three more almost-ready pieces that should make it into that submission pipeline over the next few months, with the teaching semester getting underway in three weeks, that’s perhaps doubtful. (Then of course, there's life, interrupting and insisting on my attention all the damn time!)

Funny thing about writing/publishing goals though, at least for me. Seems that whether I get close, or achieve the goal, or fall just a little bit or a long way short, the result is often the same: I usually feel just fine about it. Because no matter what, I learn something, sometimes something important—about my writing process, my subject matter, myself. 

And especially, I learn more about what it means to move personal nonfiction stories out into the world—and how, when, why, and where I want that to happen.

I’ve learned that by the time a piece is published, it sometimes means something different to me thing than it did when I first wrote it. With some pieces, some stories, simply sharing them with readers is deeply satisfying. With others, the satisfaction comes from having brought a treasured now-gone relative or friend back to life on page or screen, or from sharing a cherished experience with the world, even if that world is a relatively small number of readers who care about true, personal stories.

And in the end, regardless of numbers and goals and keeping track, that’s very often enough.

Did you set a publication goal for this year? How’s it going?

You can find some of the above-mentioned pieces via the links in the left margin of this blog. The latest is “A Grave Duty,” over on Flash Glass, the online home of Glassworks journal from Rowan University (which, in a cool unrelated but fun twist, is where one of my sons is now a student!).

Image: keyboard with petals - Marco Verch at Flickr/Creative Commons

What's on Your Writer's *I Did It List* for 2017?

Here on the blog, in 2010, I first shared something I’d been doing privately for years: the “I Did It List”—looking back and noting what I’d accomplished in those quickly disappearing twelve months, even if it wasn’t what I’d set out to do. I’d been making a personal “I Did It List” since my kids were small, since I was sure I hadn’t done a single motherhood thing right all year. The list assured me otherwise.

At some point, I began to make an “I Did It List” for my writing life. The idea was—still is!—to pause and take note of all the small things, big things, and in-between things I could say I finished, learned, tried, succeeded at, explored, completed, was challenged by, overcame, and took part in over the year.

By design, the list is not (only) about what got published or where, what I earned, what job or gig I nailed. It’s wider, and deeper, or in some cases, shallower than that. An “I Did It List” for writers, I’ve always sensed, has to include and acknowledge so many other things that happen across an entire year, stuff that counts. The things we do—sometimes without our even stopping to realize it—that keep us growing, learning, and developing as writers.

I write my "I Did It List" without reference to the list of intended goals from the previous January. This kind of list-making isn’t about accountability or productivity, but about acknowledgement and recognizing what makes a writing life year in broader terms.

Since that first post, I’ve been asking my blog readers to consider privately writing their own “I Did It Lists” and many folks have let me know that it was an eye-opening, gratifying experience. Some have shared their lists publicly (though that’s not a criteria or even the point). I I love the wild range of items various writers have listed. Here’s a small sample:

 . began researching more publication markets and then kept track of submissions 

. finally stopped putting two spaces after sentences

. tried a new genre

. was a beta reader for a friend’s manuscript

. organized a writers group because none existed nearby

. read lots more than usual

. started, and sustained, a new early morning writing routine

. saved up and finally went to that conference

. published first (poem, short story, reported feature)

. cleared a spot for a writing corner

. took a writing class online

. taught a free writing class to senior citizens

. submitted beyond the comfort zone

. wrote and placed first book review

. found a social media home and began promoting work in a way that felt good

. filled out that MFA application

. ripped up that MFA application

. got re-started and kept in motion on a big writing project that had been stalled

. tried new software 

As writers, we are too quick to dismiss our small(er) accomplishments, the small steps or steady strides that carry us forward toward larger goals. Especially at this time of year, we may be tempted to focus on what we didn’t finish, didn’t get done, didn’t accomplish—and then shoot straight to a new must-do list for the coming year, one that too often smacks of recrimination.

First, let’s pause to look back and take note of the ways we’ve already begun moving in the direction of our dreams. The list is a way of noticing ourselves as do-ers.

A writer’s “I Did It List” is a clear reminder that there isn’t just one goal, one imperative, one project or avenue of development, or only one fun and enriching writerly thing to accomplish. My past lists remind me of what brought me fulfillment, of the new creative people who came into my life, and how I added to my skills, confidence, and understanding of why I write after all. 

So, here’s your invitation to write your own “I Did It List”. Find fifteen quiet minutes before January 1, 2018, grab a piece of lovely paper and your favorite pen, or open an inviting new blank page on your screen, or find the ideal place in your bullet journal. 

Write across the top, My Writer’s I Did It List, 2017. Go ahead. Take the pause. Pat yourself on the back. You can even get started by listing just one “I Did It List” item in comments here, so we can have a collective “We Did It List”!

While you’re at it, or after you’ve done your own list, I’d love if you would share a link to this post, and encourage your other creative friends to make their own “I Did It List”.

Cheers!

 Images: Red pen - Flickr/CreativeCommons-Phing.; Woman writing - Flickr/CreativeCommons-RoryMacLeod;  list-maker - free clip art.

Of Writing Goals, Hope, the Old Year, a New Year, and One Word

My end-of-the-year, start-of-a-new-year newsletter went out about 10 days ago. If you're not on the distribution list, here's the main story, one I hope will speak to writers setting out with new goals for 2015. The full newsletter is here (along with a link to sign up for future ones).

Last year, my word was HOPE. Each year I choose a word, or short phrase, as a beacon of sorts. It helps me remember my way when the writing life (and life, period) acts up.  

 

I wanted to remain full (or at least mindful) of hope, as I sought to publish a memoir-in-essays. As I let go of freelance editing and writing jobs that I enjoyed and which provided part-time income, but were preventing me from developing longer range projects and nailing down teaching jobs. As I worried, as always, about income and health insurance and when and why and how to publish and in what venues.

So I hoped.

 

Some things worked out (teaching jobs, journal publications, editing projects); others didn't (a book publishing offer, mainly). Life acted up, as usual.

 

The manuscript was a finalist in a few contests. Some publishers expressed interest. Some are still considering it. Some sent (what seemed to be) sincere notes:  the best of the worst of the rejections, was from my #2 wish-list publisher, and read in part, "...This is so very lovely, and comes so close, really within a whisper, of what we like to publish. But, alas...".

 

Alas.

 

Another publisher invited me to resubmit after/if I revise the individual essays into a linear narrative -- advice I've heard before (even from myself), thought seriously about, and up to now, have rejected.

 

A mentor of mine who did that told me, "It was like breaking the back of each of those essays." But she did it, and something else, different but lovely, emerged.

 

Could I break the backs of those essays I loved and labored over? The ones editors at various literary journals over the last eight years read, accepted, edited, and published? Those I carefully shaped, revised, polished?  The ones I thoughtfully envisioned as singular, segmented, stand-alone?

 

It's time to think. Maybe my word for 2015 will carry me through. 

I keep my current year's word private, in a perhaps juvenile attempt to protect its potency. It's a word that seems to suggest two contradictory ideas (contronyms, they're called, words like cleave, bolt, strike). 

 It's a new year. Do you have a word? 

 

Don't tell me. Tell yourself, over and over. Whisper it, or shout it. Write it down, in your heart, on the inside of your forehead, on your desk, in the air you breathe.

 

Alas, it may be what carries you through your writing year. I hope so. 

 

Images: Flickr Creative Commons: Hope Sign (Pol Sifter); Words (Joe Fife)..

 

One More Year-End List for Writers: I Did It. Did You?

For the past couple of Decembers, I wrote here about what I call my *I Did It List,* and encouraged other writers to draw up one of their own before the year ends. While I did make my own list a few weeks ago, I haven't mentioned it here, yet. Actually, the blog's been unusually quiet since mid-November, as I grappled with the end of an unexpectedly busy teaching semester. 

But then  Erika Dreifus reminded me today about the importance of the list and why I feel so strongly that writers write one. So, with a few hours left to 2014, here goes.  

 

The idea, in brief, is that you sit down at the end of the year and list all the things you accomplished – big, small, significant, minor, planned, surprising: whatever you find worthy of patting yourself on the back about. Most of what goes on my list is related to writing and work that is tied to literary endeavors – publishing pieces I'm proud of in particular venues, teaching a new class, hitting income goals.

 

But occasionally more general things make the list, things that contribute to my writing/work life, or to my life, but aren't the kind that result directly in publication, assignments, jobs, or books: one year, I listing having remade my home office after 23 years; another, that I learned more about photography; this year, I listed that I read more for pleasure than usual and began touring colleges with my younger son. 

I've written before about why I think the process of making and thinking about this kind of a list  matters a lot more than scratching out the tired old writers' New Year's resolutions (Write more! X words per day! Get a book deal! Write every day! Quit procrastinating on Facebook!).  

 

And, I find it a lot more instructive, helpful, compassionate, and interesting than the self-recriminating lists many of us make (if only mentally) of all the things we had planned (resolved?) to do and did not get done, the list of letdowns, perceived failures, rejections, and false starts.

 

You can see some of my thoughts about why the *I Did It List* is important -- and what kinds of things you might considering putting on it, and why it's different than a list of goals -- here, here, here, and here. 

 

One of the caveats I put on myself (though you are welcome to ignore) is that I keep my full *I Did It List* private. I don't post it here or anywhere; it's for me, only. Sure, during the year, I've mentioned  things I'm proud to have accomplished on the blog, or posted on Facebook. But I like knowing, when I'm making the list, that it isn't for publication. The list, I believe, reads quite differently than if I knew others would be reading it. But make your own any way you like, and do with it what you want.

 

 The other "rule" I have is not to make the *I Did It List* some kind of accountability activity, holding it up against any list of goals I've made throughout the year. For me, it's not about whether or not I succeeded at X or Y, but about what I did.

 

Did I try something new? Learn something?   Say YES to something and have it work out? Make some interesting mistakes? Some of the best things on my list this year could not have ever appeared on any "to do" list, because they represent my taking a leap when an unexpected invitation, request, or prod was provided -- and having it turn out well, not-so-well, disastrously. But you know what, I did it!

 

Here's what I was thinking today: My *I Did It Lists* are beginning to represent for me, an answer of sorts to that wonderful Mary Oliver poem/question; it's what I've done, this year, with my one wild and precious life. As I'm making the list, I love remembering, then writing something down, and thinking, "Oh yeah, I did do that. Cool!" 

Before the new year starts, or in its early days, look back for just 15 minutes, and write your own *I Did It List.*  If you're like me, or dozens of others who have told me what the experience was like, I'm betting you'll find more on there than you imagined, and feel pretty darn good about it in the process.

 

Images: All Flickr Creative Commons.  Mary Oliver quote, Julie Gibbons; Red notebook, Alexander Levin; Woman in snow, Benjamin Staudinger; Happy man, Neal Fowler.

Writers: A Year-End Call for *I Did It* Lists. Join me?

Three years ago, I first shared with blog readers an end-of-year list-making activity I'd grown to cherish. Not making a typical New Year's resolution list, aka the list of things I should do and maybe will do for about a week and then quit doing.

No, my year-ending ritual is to make an *I Did It List*.  

A mini brag book, so to speak. Each December since, I've talked about how it has become important to me to spend some time at the end of the year noticing, recognizing, and recording what I accomplished in the year that's ending.

I am a writer who--like many of you--routinely deals with rejection from editors, setbacks, uncooperative drafts, lost opportunities, time constraints, deadlines, idea droughts, revision hell, and other unfriendly aspects of the writing life. One December, after I'd had a particularly awful week, I needed some perspective. Surely I had done something right that year I could be happy about?

It would be a short list, I was sure. I was wrong. I had actually done a lot. 

I don't mean only the "big stuff" (like getting published someplace nice or winning a contest or landing a new gig), but also many less obvious, less shiny, but significant ways I'd grown as a writer and further developed my writing life. 

I noticed that some interesting items were things that had whizzed by without initial notice, or whose contribution to my writing life grew more valuable only as time passed, or activities which had seemed like busy work or frustrating tedium, but upon inspection made a big impact.

I invited others to do the same. Since then, many writers have taken up the *I Did It List* challenge.

I would like to encourage everyone to join me again this year, and make your own *I Did It List* for your life as a writer. 

What did you get done? What new thing did you try? Did you intentionally move ahead or move sideways, or back to a better place? What did you learn? What did you do differently? 

Did you make X more submissions than you did the year before?  Did you make one submission, finally conquering your fear of hitting send?  Did you start something? Finish something? Work hard on the middle of something? Take a class? Read more? Find a writing friend? Go to a conference? Write regularly? Learn to blog? Ask for help?  Help another writer?

How long should your list be? As long as you keep thinking of things that mattered, that you set out to do and did, things that you are proud of, pleased about, jazzed by. As long as it needs to be to include even stuff you didn't mean to do but now that you think about it, you did and you're glad you did.  Or as short as it takes you to nod, smile to yourself, and realize that--despite any internal default I-should-do-more setting--you did a lot this year.

List it, and be proud.

Then what?

Nothing, really. I make my list, read it a few times, then put it away until I am having a particularly awful day in the new year; then I take it out and skim it. Oh yes, I'll think, that's right, I actually do accomplish a lot each year, despite awful days, awful weeks.

I like to imagine we can all keep our lists to ourselves, mostly because I don't want to encourage folks to create *I Did It Lists* to outshine other writers' lists, or read like one of those overblown exaggerating holiday letters we all hate to get (and rarely believe).

So while I'm suggesting the list is a personal activity, I'm also thinking that the experience of making the list is something useful to talk about publicly. Write a blog post, Facebook update, a tweet, Tumblr or newsletter note about what making an *I Did It List* did for you. 

What, if anything, did it tell you about the one wild and precious writing life you already have?

However, while my personal take is that my list is for me, yours is for you, I'm aware that spreading this idea via a blog post that I'll be sharing around the web, and expecting others to keep lists private may seem a little strange. And, I'll concede that it is possible to gain (and impart) something meaningful out of sharing such a list. 

But let's at least also take public the collective experience of many writers compiling *I Did It List*. Think of the positive rippling effect we can create by reviewing our year and writing down the highlights, the shared power of naming what we really and truly did; instead of listing what we should/could/ maybe will do, or the soul-crushing empty exercise of shaming ourselves for what we did not do.

Mind you, I have nothing against also making a list of things you want to do in the coming year to make your writing life better. But first, consider how good your writing life already is, and what you did to make it that way. Join me, and who knows, perhaps like other writers did last year, your list will not be only about the writing life, but about life.

Find some time in the crazy final two weeks of the year. Create your *I Did It List* and ask other writers to make their own. Concentrate on what you did, not on what's to come or what's come undone.

Please share this post, and let me know if you have started or completed your own *I Did It List.* 

Image: Flickr/Creative Commons/Daehyun Park

Answering the *I Did It List* questions from writers

Recently, in response to my advice about writers making an *I Did It List," focused on what we accomplished in 2012, I've gotten a lot of feedback; curiously, not here on the blog, but via email, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and on other blogs that passed on the idea. Besides letting me know that the exercise struck a positive chord for many writers (which I'm thrilled about), most of the messages ask me one of three questions: 

First, Do I have something against New Year's Resolutions?  No, not at all. I just don't like that most are framed in sweeping generalizations (I will write every single day no matter what! I will finally finish that manuscript! And it will be fabulous!) that answer to undesirable outcomes and/or negative mindsets (I'm a lazy writer! My work got rejected too damn much last year! I have to improve my writing no matter what!)

I make a new yearly *Want-To-Do List* in January, just after the kids go back to school, the house is no longer decorated, and it feels once again like real time. But I think of this particular year-ahead exercise as a way to update my writing career/writing life plans rather than as resolving to do things differently or anew or so very much better.

I rather like what Drew Myron says about mentally skipping ahead to March, when we're a bit more realistic. Sure, I think it's great to dream big, engage in all the self-motivation we can, put things in writing rather than letting all those great ideas float around in our too-crowded heads.

I also think it's useful to physically write down what we want to accomplish in the calendar year ahead; I'm one of those who really do believe there is some undefinable but real power in simply writing down what we want (as long as we also work at it!).

Armed first with an *I Did It List* though, I think we are likely to have a more realistic idea of the amounts of energy, time, and resources we can actually marshal, and then plan accordingly for that *Want-To-Do* list. And while there's power in committing to a big goal, to stretching, to taking on more in the future than we did in the past, we all have real life limits.

If, between jobs, kids, volunteer work, and eldercare, you are squeezing in three hours of writing per week, I wouldn't make a plan for 2013 that says you will write for three hours per day. The exception: If your *I Did It List* for 2012 was painfully short, and you know it's because you squandered time and energy, slacked off, hung out on Facebook or watching every episode of Homeland ten times instead of writing – then go ahead, resolve. But resolve to make a plan, find discipline, maybe ask for some help; not to simply to "write more."

Second: Shouldn't we also make an It-Didn't-Happen list, to be completely honest with ourselves? Nope – I suspect that, like me, you do enough self-bashing silently in your head (and maybe aloud to your friends) all year anyway – venting, complaining, apologizing about the rough drafts not written, the submissions not sent, the revisions not made. Blah, blah, blah.

Who needs a formal list to remind us of every place we fell short? 

If it's important, and you didn't do it – it goes on the 2013 Want-To-Do list. If it's not really important, and you just keep feeling badly that you didn't do it – stop, please. Spend that mental time thinking of new things to write, or improve that draft.

Third: What was on my own personal *I Did It List*?  Not telling -- except in oblique ways which you may pick up in future (or past) posts.  The things on my list are meaningful only perhaps to me, and for that year, and for what are likely personally idiosyncratic reason(s). They might look like nothing much to you.

But I will tell you this: The value of the *I Did It List* is not only in the satisfaction it brings, the positive reality check, when we first see it all on one list -- but later, in the lessons such a list can teach us about the way we work, about the way our writing life works (or doesn't work). Which will be the subject of my next post. Writing it is already on my 2013 Want-To-Do list.

It's Beginning to Look Like *I Did It* Time

It's mid-December, almost time for me to begin thinking about The I Did It List – my small act of defiance against all the emotionally upsetting lists we humans tend to mentally make as the year draws to a close: the one that ticks off the things we failed to do all year.  We didn't lose weight, clear out the basement, organize the photos, cook better meals, take that trip, call that old friend.

As writers we do our own version of the miss list – we take ourselves to task about the books or chapters or essays not completed, the conference not attended, the acceptances not received, the work not submitted, the agent not contacted, the class not taken, the revision left undone. We tend to see our writing year as a finite lot of things not yet achieved instead of a valuable step along an infinitely curvy road.

Give yourself a break. Please.

Write your own writer's version of The I Did It List.  

Make it a good one.  Please. Write down everything that's happened in your writing life in 2012 that's been good, maybe even great.  At least positive. Little steps accomplished. Medium goals reached. Medium ones broached.

What did you do that moved your writing life ahead?  What did you get done? Who did you help with their writing goals?  Were you published someplace that meant something to you? Did you begin a project?  Finish something, anything?  Did someone you respect say something encouraging to you about your work?  Were you invited to participate in a writing project you are pleased to be involved in?  Did you finally "get" some aspect of writing craft you'd been stymied on before?  Did you write more regularly? With more conviction?  Did you?

In my own I Did It List, I include all the small and the big things. Why not? The tangible and the intangible. The noteworthy and public, the private. Not only does everything add up, it's all part of the whole. Without a lot of small "I did it's" the larger ones can't have transpired. That's how I choose to see it.

I know you did something, many things good for your writing life in 2012. You know you did too. Write it down.

That's the challenge.  Some time between now and December 31, write your own "I Did It List" all about your writing year.  

You can even get started now, and share one "I Did It" in comments.

The One.

Every writer has at least one. Some, I think, realize it at the moment they reach the last line of the finished draft of a particular piece of writing:  a realization leaps up -- this is it, the one. Others only see it only in retrospect.

I'm talking about a breakthrough piece, a piece of writing which embodies a clear jump from one level of craft and skill to another one, a level a good distance up the slippery hill that is our writing climb.

Last week, a writer with whom I have been working on and off for about three years, had hers. I suspected it was coming, was watching for it, hoping for her it wouldn't be much longer; and then I knew. I knew it from the first page; it was the latest draft (number six, I believe) of a long nonfiction narrative she's been working hard at for about seven months. 

This was her breakthrough piece.  

Everything had come together - narrative arc, character development, pacing, rhythm, language, voice, dialogue, detail, description. There was a confidence on the page, a conviction, a assured hand, that had not been there before.

Let me be clear – this is a talented, hard working writer anyway, and her work is already good. Yet she was, shall we say, working her B game, maybe B+.  I knew there was an A game in her. And then, in this particular draft, she stepped up, dramatically; she'd found her sweet spot and I could tell it wasn't a fluke. The piece was at once both powerful and carefully planned, and yet appeared effortless, organic. 

Bam.

We talked about it, and I was not surprised to hear that she already knew there was something different, something important about this revision. We talked about the wonder of the moment when a writer realizes how much more she can do on the page.

Oh, I can do that?  Yes, I can do that. I can do that.  I have an A game.

That's delicious, and a little bit terrifying. Because next, of course, comes the idea of maintaining that A game. But that's another writing life story.

A breakthrough, meanwhile, requires savoring. 

What about the advice that writers must write every day? I say, no. And, maybe. And sometimes, yes.

There is so much cookie-cutter advice about writing, and in particular, about the importance of regular writing routines, that I often wonder how less experienced writers, newer writers, writers with day jobs, or writers have a more well-developed worry-meter than I, ever get through a day without being convinced they are doing everything all wrong.

Don't get me wrong: I am a big believer in an established writing routine, in writing regularly, in integrating writing into the rest of one's life so fully that being awake and writing more or less co-exist.

But to my mind the most detrimental piece of standard writing advice is the one that declares that in order to be a *real* writer (whatever that is), one must write every single day, often amended to include that one must write a set number of pages or words, or a set amount of time per day.

Look, there are times when I do just exactly this, namely when I have something due on a certain date and know I will need to steadily produce in measured increments so I will not go entirely crazy with anxiety over whether or not I will finish on time. 

But in general, I don't hold myself to an arbitrary write-every-single-day-or-else standard.  And neither do dozens of other writers I know, even those who have published many books, churn out essays by the boatload, poems by the hundreds.  Like them, depending on a number of factors – deadlines, research needs, other pressing projects or jobs (paid and not), family obligations, health -- there are periods when I do write every day and then there are times when I do not. There are even times when  – horrors! -- I don't write a blessed thing for a week. Or two. Or more. During that time, do I forget how to write?  Get kicked out of the Writing Club? Drop every writing idea I ever had?  Become someone who is not a *real* writer?

Of course not.

Typically during that time, I am still a real writer. How do I know? I know because I see myself doing other things that support and nurture me as a writer, sometimes intentionally, sometimes without even meaning to.  I read. I make lists of writing ideas. I connect with other writers. I read. I contemplate what has accumulated in my writer's notebook. I seek writing assignments and jobs. I read. I teach/mentor others. I study writing-related stuff – song lyrics, for example. I read. I edit manuscripts. I do research for things I plan to write, or am in the middle of writing.  Maybe I watch films, go to a museum, but mostly I read a lot.  Did I mention I read?

Maybe I'm in a not-writing phase because I'm mentally exhausted after finishing a big project. Maybe I'm physically worn out, battling a cold or aches and pain. Maybe someone in my family needs me, maybe even for days or weeks at a time, which cuts into, or possibly eliminates writing time. Life happens, and being present in life sometimes requires that we don't write (at least not in notebooks or on screen); in the words of one of my mentors, poet/memoirist/MFA professor Richard Hoffman:  "Life first, writing second."

The point is, I'm not a slave to some one-size-fits-all routine, and despite what you may have heard or assumed, neither are hundreds of other writers far more successful than I. And you don't have to be either. 

What you do need to do is find a routine that suits YOU.

If you are NOT writing at all but want to be, if you are the type to squirm out of routines, if you have an ambitious writing goal and/or firm deadline (real or self-imposed), if you have gobs of flexibility in your schedule -- do I think a commitment to daily writing is a good way to get and stay on track? YES. YES. Of course, YES.

Yet that may not be practical given your life situation. Further, I think that holding everyone to some arbitrary standard of needing to write every day only fosters anxiety and guilt. If you think you must write every day, but you cannot actually do so, then you will only end up feeling guilty the next time you actually do sit to write. Who needs that?  Who wants to begin a writing session feeling as if there is so much lost ground to make up, you are already losing?

Who needs to write every day?  Only someone who feels they can, who wants to, who needs to (for deadline or other reasons), and for whom that kind of schedule is workable, enjoyable, nurturing, and possible.  

Everyone else needs another routine instead, one that works for that writer alone. 

Does writing every day help?  Of course. Writing is a mental muscular activity and one does strengthen it by frequent use. So writing every day is good. But so is writing every other day. Or three days a week. Or for six days in a row and then four days off.  Or… It depends on your circumstances, goals, abilities, and especially time constraints and life situation.

Does that mean, hey, since you've got a tough schedule it's okay to write for 10 minutes on alternate Sunday mornings and call that a routine that fits, and assume you will properly develop as a writer?

No !

The idea is to develop an individualized writing routine that works for YOU – that supports YOUR life situation, YOUR writing goals, YOUR capabilities and skill level, YOUR desires.

Tomorrow, I will post what I consider to be the 10 most important criteria for creating a writing routine that works for you.

The above is adapted from Week One of *I Should Be Writing!* Boot Camp:Reclaim Your Writing Life.