Monday, June 4, 2012

JumpStartWriMo Motivating Monday

Quote for the day:
 "The reason people give up so fast is because they tend to look at how far they still have to go instead of how far they have gotten.” - Unknown

I am so excited to see your goals.  Thank you to everyone for participating and for helping your fellow writers achieve their goals.

My weekend was jam-packed with family activities, including fishing, but I am making progress.  I outlined my plot with more details, and I edited sixteen pages on top of that, so I got a good start.  So far, I'm a tiny bit behind on my goal, (still within reaching distance), but not meeting my goal for the first few days got me down a bit.  

This final version of my manuscript has been weighing on me because I've had so much trouble with it.  (Hence, the reason why I am doing JumpStartWriMo. I need a kick in the pants to get it done!)  But when I opened up my email, feeling a little discouraged, I had this amazing email from one of my critique partners and when you read what she had to say, you'll see why I value her so much.  It was exactly what I needed!  (She's also offering some prizes for those of us who meet our goals, which I'll soon be giving more details about, so stay tuned.)

Motivating Monday--a pep talk by the amazing Jordan McCollum  (If you haven't downloaded her free writing guides, you seriously have to go and do it right now.  Your writing will love you for it.  Just click here)

"I'm probably pretty strange (probably?), but there's something I love about new starts. And that includes (crazily enough) Mondays. Okay, I don't love Mondays, but every time a new week rolls around, I'm ready to roll up my sleeves and get to work. No matter how far behind I fell on laundry last week, no matter how many pages I'm off in my revision goal, no matter what I'm slacking on, Monday is my chance to start over.

Forget last week or even yesterday. Whether you fell down on the job or blew through all your goals, that doesn't change the fact that we're starting a new week. We get a brand new start today

With a fresh start, it's our opportunity to move forward. Okay, so technically "March fo(u)rth" was a couple months ago--but it's something we can do every day ;) .

Let's get a jump start on this week! How are you going to take advantage of this week's fresh start today?"


And how did you do with your goal over the weekend?

9 comments:

Emily Gray Clawson said...

Jordan and Julie, I couldn't agree more. I LOVE Mondays! They are a new, fresh start and I always feel ready to take the plunge and attack my challenges. Great post!

Jon Spell said...

I fell short of my goal of 30 minutes, both Friday and Saturday, but I'm happy to say that I did work both days and I am up 276 words. Sure, it doesn't sound like much, but it's 276 more than I have done in 2012 before June.

Personally, I'm excited. My next scene is one I've been thinking about for a while - fun to see how it turns out.

Also, I happen to really like Mondays now, but for selfish reasons. It means the long weekend of stressful babies is over and instead, I have the stressful work situation! (but it's stress I can deal with.)

Anonymous said...

Wrote 12426 words and did three character sketches and 1/3 of the outline for my next WIP. Have no idea what I'm writing next in my WIP or where I'm going from here, but hey, progress is progress. I can always cut things out later, right?

Melanie Goldmund said...

I'm doing really well; I added over 400 words to my story over the weekend, and it's been going around in my head the entire time, too. I just can't shut it off, and I mean that in a good way. And I've done another 300 to-day already, even before my scheduled writing time. I just couldn't wait!

It sounds like you've done pretty well over the weekend, Julie. Even if you didn't quite meet your goals, at least you managed to squeeze some things in around those family activities, and that's an achievement! And it's great that you got exactly what you needed from your critique partner.

Sometimes, here at home, when I articulate the things that I haven't got done yet, my sons sing to me a snippet of that song from Finding Nemo. "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming." So I say to you, and to everybody else, "just keep writing, just keep writing, writing, writing!" And you'll get there eventually. :-)

Jordan McCollum said...

Hooray! I've got a daunting day ahead--I have five chapters edited on paper that I'm supposed to actually edit now in the MS to get them to you today. Let's do it!

Julie Coulter Bellon said...

Wow, you guys have done really well! I'm so proud of us. I finished editing three chapters this morning and I am feeling good! It's funny how once you get started you really want to keep on going! Love it! I'm loving this Monday. :)

Janice Sperry said...

I got the proofs for my Chistmas pamphlet and already finished going over them. (Short stories rock) I also decided which book I'm going to work on next. I have way too many first chapters with nothing else written. Rough drafts are the hardest part for me.

Debra Erfert said...

I had to go out of town this weekend, so I didn't get to do much writing. I feel like I'm going through withdrawals. I'll do better tomorrow.

Rachelle Christensen said...

Thanks Jordan for the pep talk! I had a rockin' 2,793 words on Saturday that made me pretty happy. I wanted to reach 2K today, but it looks like it's going to be just 1,000, but I'm still happy with that progress. Thanks for the nudge!