Hey everyone! I hope you are all doing well! This is the last stand alone post before we begin back in with our new series titled Inspiration. I can’t wait to share this post with you all. This post, much like last weeks post is not a post with advice about writing although you might be able to find some small pieces of advice in this post. I hope you like it and without further ado…
How I Celebrate Completing A Novel
Despite the fact that I write a lot and quite often there is a funny secret about me. I have rarely completed a whole novel project. I can count on my hands the number of writing projects that I have actually completed writing the book. For this reason, I often have a hard time sharing stories that I have written with friends, family, and fans because then I have people asking me when the next part will be ready. For some writers having people who are interested in their story encourages them. For some reason that pressure actually makes me want to write less.
One of the things that really encourages me to write more is self-set deadlines. The reason a majority of these posts gets written is self-set deadlines. There are quite often topics for this blog or scenes in my books that I have no desire to write about. But because I have set myself a deadline by which it needs to be done, it will get done and written by that time. Deadlines, in my mind, are an unpassable line of commitment that require me to finish a task. It can’t get pushed back, it can not be put on hold, but it can be accomplished with hard work and determination.
However, despite this skill of accomplishing deadlines I have only finished a few projects over the years. Because these completions of stories are so rare, I have personal celebrations that I do for completing a new story or novel.
The first thing I do is the one thing that I think every writer does when they are finally done with a project, they have been working on forever is take a nap. Usually I lay down for a short rest and end up napping. I think that napping is a good way to reset the brain after a difficult project whether it was school, work, or a recently completed first draft manuscript.
The second thing I do after completing a story is also a little obvious. I celebrate by either making or buying my favorite foods for the next couple days and enjoying relaxing before I start the rest of the laborious continuation of editing. This includes all three meals, snacks, and any desserts that I want to eat during this celebratory period. Only occasionally does this not include an exercise plan to make myself feel better for all the food I’m stuffing in my face. Haha.
The third thing that I do is something that seems a little ridiculous considering that I had just finished writing a manuscript. I spend a large chunk of my time working on my hobbies. Some of these include cross stitching, knitting, drawing, and bullet journaling. But my biggest hobby is…. You guessed it, writing. So, I usually do things that are the more fun and relaxing parts of writing for me than writing a whole manuscript. And that’s write short funny scenes and create different humorous situations. Some of these short and funny scenes stay as just short and funny scenes and some of them end of being the beginnings of new books later on. Sometimes I read books on writing and follow some of the advice or exercises from those books for fun.
One of my favorite rewards for writing a book that I ever did was I decided that for my reward I would spend some time looking up funny writing prompts or concept art and write short 2 page scenes, one every day for a week. And so, I did. Two of those scenes later became the inspiration for two later works that I wrote for myself titled Ghost in the System and The Demon Contractor.
Sometimes instead of rewarding myself by writing something I reward myself by designing something for the world. Usually this is maps of new worlds in my imagination but other times it is new costume ideas that pop into my head. Sometimes I go a little bit deeper on the maps and write out a whole cultural explanation of what goes on in that story world. Sometimes when I make a new costume I write down in notes next to it some interesting ideas for what it is, why I designed it he way that I did, who wears it, and in what situations it is worn.
I reward myself for writing hard by writing for fun. I think this is a good way for me to keep a solid balance with myself. It keeps my writing creative and fun while also keeping it motivated and on task. I’m not saying this will work for everyone, this piece, much like the last one, is an opinion post. But this is the best method I have found for keeping my writing creative and motivated.
That’s it for this week’s post. I hope you all enjoyed it. Next week we’ll be starting up with our new series titled Inspiration. I’m not going to spoil the first topic for the new series so if you want to know what it is you will have to wait in anticipation until next week.
Summer is coming and so are some of those new projects. Anyone working on some really fun writing projects this summer and would like to make a writing group let me know. I’m always looking for some fun online writing groups to join for new and old projects. And as always, don’t forget to like, share, subscribe, become a blog page member, and follow me on social media (the links are in the page footnotes below). And always remember,
Get Up, Get Writing, and Get Published. See you next week!
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