Developing Successful Habits

‘Tis the season for new beginnings, assessing goals, and setting new ones. As I did my yearly wrap-up assessment of what I had achieved in 2019 and set goals for 2020, I was both pleasantly surprised at what I had achieved and sobered by how short of my goals I was in some areas.

I’ve also spent much of the week fighting off a low-level state of panic. You probably would, too, if you were only a quarter of the way through an expected 200,000-word first draft of a manuscript that’s supposed to be getting assessed by a developmental editor in two weeks.

Yeah. I’ve had mixed results with the dictating thing (talked about in my last post). Don’t get me wrong—I love it. I absolutely know it’s going to change my life, and it has already helped. But I’ve found it has its drawbacks—such as, it’s super-hard to dictate anything when you are in a room with other people who are all on holidays for the Christmas break, for instance. Or when you’re sick and can barely speak without coughing. (I caught a cold on my way to visit my sister in Seattle and didn’t really start to recover until just before I came home a week later.)

I also find it’s more difficult to dictate fiction than nonfiction like blog posts, but that’s the same as typing for me. When I’m dictating fiction, I tend to “break” things more and then, because I can’t just look up and remind myself what I said before or quickly fix the thing I broke, things tend to get worse before they get better, and then take excessively long to edit back to something I can work with.

I know that I can learn to dictate fiction, but apparently, blithely planning to do so in such a short amount of time and while trying to also spend time with family on holidays was not the best idea.

Quite aside with my challenges with dictation, despite having written 50,000 words on The Sphinx’s Heart and producing a new 11k-word short story for my Patreon community in December (mostly written on my phone, a new one for me), I found I really would have been better off mentally to just plan on two weeks that really were a break from everything and allow myself to enjoy time with family—or to read more. (I only read one book. Wah. At least it was fiction. And it was good. In Her Shadow by Mark Edwards, if you’re curious.)

So, note to self: Next December, take two full weeks OFF. Completely. Not this “I’m on holidays but still worked 40 hours this week” nonsense.

Photo courtesy of Aaron Wilson on Unsplash.

I think that’s why it’s important to keep track of what one has actually achieved, especially if you are driven or work for yourself, like me. It can be so easy to focus on “well, if I don’t do this now, then I’ll be that much further behind where I could have been.” But there are other things we need to do in life besides work, such as spend time with family, refresh our creativity, and unwind. Maybe even clean our blinkin’ house. (Hey, it should be a priority at least once a year.)

And this is me talking to me. You are probably much wiser than I am and don’t have to literally schedule in down time so that you’ll take it. Unfortunately, this is a lesson it seems I never fully learn.

I think it’s because I’m so goal-driven. Going in to 2019, my goal was to have both The Undine’s Tear and The Sphinx’s Heart published by the end of the year. Well, obviously, I only got halfway there. (But I did publish two books last year if you count The Waterboy. Which I do. Between those two books, that’s 187k words of fiction, or 2-3 ordinary full-length novels.) I also FINALLY succeeded in writing an honest-to-goodness short story. Yay!

And, of course, I have set lofty goals for my writing career for the upcoming year, too, one of which is to make publishing fiction a priority. But still, because of getting close to burnout a couple of times this year, I’m looking at those goals with caution.

I think it might be wiser for me to have goals to work toward but without deadlines. Instead of saying “this is the month such-and-such will be published,” I plan to focus on establishing and maintaining the habits that will allow me to create the kind of career I want to have.

This seems so simple, yet it’s kind of a revolutionary way for me to set goals.

So, here is my very simple plan to develop the career I want to have:

1. I will PUT WRITING FIRST BEFORE OTHER BUSINESS ACTIVITIES: I will spend 50% of my non-billable hours writing. (This is roughly 1/3 of my work week.)

2. I will PRIORITIZE MY FAMILY: During non-work hours, time spent with my family will take priority over all other activities.

3. I will NURTURE MY HEALTH: I will develop habits of self-care that will keep me healthy, both during work and non-work hours.

4. I will INSPIRE OTHERS: I will make an effort to pass my skills and knowledge on to others, especially my readers, knitting and editing clients, and other writers.

Yes, I have some more tangible steps laid out in my yearly plan to help me to accomplish these things. But when I do my assessment for the year in 2020 to decide if I am closer to my dreams, these are the four benchmarks I want to determine whether or not it was a successful year in my mind—not how many books or patterns I published or even what my annual revenue looks like.

Because my habits are the one thing I can control. And if my habits set the stage for success, it only makes sense that success is more likely to show up.

I hope you have a plan to get closer to your ideal life in 2020. If not, consider what habits you can establish that will help you set the stage for success.

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Tomorrow, I’ll be part of a panel-style webinar about productivity hosted by Mark Leslie Lefebvre with authors Tracy Cooper-Posey, M. Jane Colette, and Andrea Pearson, all of which are highly productive creatives. If you want to get in on the live webinar, you can sign up here:

Happy New Year, friend!

Holiday Photo Album Highlights:

My mom and I on the way to Seattle at an obscenely early hour of the morning. December 18, 2019.

Fleeing a Minecraft creeper at the Microsoft Store in Redmond, WA.

Lovely shawl on display in Quintessential Knits, Duvall, WA. (I walked out of this shop with only 4 new skeins of sock yarn. I’m so proud of me.)

This design is the Holey Cowl by Kim Birum. Check out her store for more amazing crochet patterns.

My mom, sister, and I got to see Guys and Dolls live at the Village Theatre in Issaquah, WA. So good!

I decided it was time to go for unicorn hair.

It did clash a little with the dress I wore for our Christmas Eve medieval feast at Camlann Medieval Village. Which was amazing, by the way. If you ever get a chance to go to one of their feasts, DO IT! (Thanks to my sister for supplying the dress.)

I wrote and published this short story to my patrons—only $3 to get access! More at All I Want for Christmas. (I know it’s past Christmas, but it’s still a heartwarming read.)

The last week of holidays has been at home with my family. We’ve been pretty chill, mostly finishing up some shows we’ve been trying to get through for a while. Various groupings of us finished Friends (yay!), Carnival Row, The Witcher, Supergirl Season 3, and Season 3/started Season 4 of Doctor Who. Jason, Jude, and I also watched The Laundromat, which was intriguing.

Winter holidays are for hibernating. :-)

And I made Noah a pair of Just Plain Socks.