Major props to Cat H. Bradley for this idea 🙂

Yes, we fail at many things in our daily lives. But are we doing ourselves any good to focus just on the failures? Each time you see a “failure,” think about the flip side.

This would be a monumental blog post if I wrote down all of my fails. So I will keep this focused to one and probably create an ongoing series, lol!

Let’s start with the topic of writing, shall we?

Writing fail:

I always feel like I’m not writing enough. When I’m teaching or running or watching TV I think, I should be writing. But what is “enough”? I don’t set daily or weekly goals for writing. I’ve done that in the past…30 minutes a day, 500 words a day, etc., only to experience major failure. The first day I don’t reach the goal, I get really down on myself.

Lately I have been a little more fluid on writing goals, like fitting in three sessions a week of at least 30 minutes. That has worked a little bit better when I actually make that commitment. But it’s been weeks since I’ve scheduled that writing time into my calendar.

I suspect, though, that no matter what I do, it would never be enough. Sound familiar? Fill in the blank with your own issue: No matter how much I do _____________, it will never be enough. I think women in particular put an incredible amount of pressure on themselves to excel.

What’s going well:

I AM writing. I’ve written this blog post 🙂 I have made progress on my Camilla Hall manuscript. Instead of saying it’s not as much progress as I wanted to make over the summer, I choose to see the progress. I had a new vision for structuring the beginning of the story and I’m revising the beginning chapters. Actually, I only have a couple of more chapters to revise before that first section is done and I can give it to my writing group for feedback.

I choose to see all the writing that I do as contributing to my writing skill. I’m in the process of writing a 8,000-word professional development report for work. I would be thrilled if I could write 8,000 words toward my manuscript! But the PDR involves writing and thinking and trying to find just the right way to word my ideas.

My mantra: It’s all words, it’s all writing.

What’s your “fail” and what’s going well?