Writing for Carrots

Instead of being driven by what could happen, and then riding the rollercoaster of unmet expectations, practice existing in your present. What is happening?

If you’ve ever met me in person, you’ll know within minutes that I live my life by meeting goals. I am a HUGE advocate of setting goals and driving toward them. But solely focusing on the end goal can steal the joy of the writing….which is why we’re all here to begin with. 

When we start focusing on our carrot instead of our why–the reason we write–that’s when we start to lose the race. We might win here and there, but over time, we’ll become tired, burned out, disinterested. We’ll feel like a workhorse instead of a horse who gets to run.

So how can we avoid becoming a dusty, tired workhorse of a writer?

Identify Your Carrot

This month, NaNoWriMo is all the rage. But when you don’t have an event pushing you forward, what drives you to write? Why are you a writer?

Determining this answer is going to be key to your longevity in this industry. Your carrot will change shape, color, texture, and taste. But your why should not.

Let’s say your carrot is critique partner feedback. You’ve sent your pages off to be critiqued, and the anticipation of getting feedback–being told what lines they LOVED, how the story has hit them, ideas for improving scenes–it’s distracting. It may be so distracting that you end up waiting for those pages to come back before you feel you can move on.

But what if your critique partner can’t get to your pages when they say they will? And you’re there, waiting.

…

…

…

…Still waiting…

You’ve become so focused on your carrot, you’ve forgotten your why. And in doing this, you’ve stopped running your race. You’ve hobbled your success.

So how do you keep writing…

• When there’s not a contest
• When you’re not waiting on agent or editor feedback
• When you don’t have a new release
• When you don’t have a deadline
• When you’re not waiting on critique partner feedback
• When your story won’t be ready for readers for a looooong time
• When it’s not NaNoWriMo
• When you’ve blown your publishing schedule out of the water
• When you’re starting over
• When you’ve lost everything

Find the Joy

Go back to your why. You started writing for a reason. What was it? Do you remember? Was it to write for that girl or boy you used to be? Or to tell a story that heals a heart?