Category: The Chain

Well, thanks to my sick days, the writing chain was broken.  As you can see from last week’s progress, I’m a couple of days behind.  I’m off to a good start this week, though.  I’ve made some major breakthroughs with my seekrit nonfiction project–in fact, that’s going to be my main focus this week, and next week as well, more than likely.  I don’t want to let the progress I’ve made with my fiction slide, but one deadline is a month before the other.

I have to say that I’m only recently getting over how ticked I am at missing two days of progress, sickness aside.  But all I can do is keep calm and carry on, right?

I’m taking productivity advice from Jerry Seinfeld that came to me via Lifehacker, with a few changes.  What he does in order to write every day is to take a monthly wall calendar and mark a big red X on every day he writes. 

“After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”

I’m doing the same thing, except I’ll be using the calendar at the front of my Working Writer’s Daily Planner from Small Beer Press (which can currently be had for $7.95).  I’ve decided to use my planner as a log, listing 3-4 tasks minimum for each day (which could be anything: a minimum word count, so many pages of MS edits, a particular research goal, submitting a story, whatever) and then marking off the day Seinfeld-style if and when I complete them.. 

And I think I’m going to keep posting this, every Monday, for the rest of the year.  Here’s how I did last week.  Tune in next Monday, and we’ll see if I did any better.