Master List of Progress Reports - 2015

2015: Year In Review

In January, I got on an organizing kick and cleaned up the office files. It didn't really last, but I did learn how to organize better and that skill was eventually put to use when I organized some of my story files in Scrivener in 2016.

In February, one of my eye doctors thought I might have diabetes because my prescription kept changing from hour to hour, but instead it turned out I have cornea dystrophy, specifically Salzmann's nodular degeneration. Surgery was recommended, but given the risks, I've declined to have it until my vision is more impaired. On the bright side, I no longer wear glasses because they don't work for me, so I've just increased the font size on everything.

The summer was spent working on the jewelry business and going to jewelry shows every other weekend, which was incredibly time-consuming and tiring. I was also learning Facebook and how to use a digital camera and Adobe Lightroom, etc., which didn't leave much room (or head space) for working on my stories.

In October, I took a writing course (The Productive Writer by Tim Grahl). I can't say I would recommend it because the actual content of the course didn't turn out to be all that useful to me, but the very first day's lesson did lead me to figure out something on my own that got me back to writing, which ultimately made the $197 price tag worth it.

The challenge was to double my normal daily word count, or if I hadn't been writing, to just write 500 words. Well, I hadn't been writing regularly, so I did 500 words and found out I could write that amount of words stream-of-consciousness style in about 10 minutes. And because there were no conditions on what the 500 words had to be (like text for a story), I ended up using the session to brainstorm, which made me realize a daily writing goal didn't have to be only for actual story text. I could work on a story by brainstorming and still make significant progress. In fact, brainstorming scenes first made it easier to write the story text later.

That realization was so freeing and completely changed how I looked at a daily word goal.

Which started paying off in December when I got a solid 2-week writing streak going. But then I got sick and ended up with bronchitis, which lasted through the beginning of January (but after that, my writing really took off, but I'll save that for the archive for 2016).

Moral of the Story

If you put in the time and effort, it'll eventually pay off.

Sometimes I get down on myself for 'wasting' my time or money with learning stuff or buying things that I end up not using immediately or that don't work out the way I expected them to.

For example, I bought Scrivener at the end of 2014. I spent a year playing with it off and on and learned how to use it, but didn't actually put any of my stories into it. But if I hadn't put in the time to learn the program, I wouldn't have had it immediately available to me when I started writing my 500 words a day in December, and later organizing my stories in it.

And if I hadn't spent weeks reading half a dozen books on organizing in January, I wouldn't have been able to jump in to organizing my stories in Scrivener when I finally did that in 2016, which has ultimately saved me even more time that would've been spent in frustration trying to find a particular piece of info I knew I'd written down somewhere, but couldn't find.

And if I hadn't read dozens of books about writing and productivity, I doubt I would've made the decision to purchase the writing course when I did, and even if I had, I doubt I would've made the breakthrough I did at that time. And that breakthrough has led me to an amazing year of writing in 2016 (more on that next year).

So while it might feel like a waste in the moment, I tend to circle back around to use the things I've considered important enough to invest my time and money in, so maybe the real moral of the story is that I should just trust myself because I seem to know what I'm doing.