Once I took restrictions off myself, things got easier.
I used to think I had to publish things at exactly the same time every day or forgo doing it, which in turn just made me write less, if at all, and made me publish even less. I also thought that I had to publish things in publications. I would submit and wait, and obsess, and obsess, and obsess.Little writing got done, if at all, because all I was interested in was clicking to see if it got published, accepted, rejected, what were other people doing, what is wrong with me, why isn't my writing good enough? These things ran through my head constantly and destroyed me.
But when I published in amazing publications with a lot of subscribers, guess what happened?
My writing got less notice than when I would publish without a publication. So, I decided it didn’t matter, I didn’t need a fancy publication, I didn’t need to have the downward spiral when a publication rejected me. I didn’t need to waste my time waiting for them to take more than a week to tell me I stink. The stress that I put myself through just because that’s what I thought I needed to do ruined my writing. It made me not care because I cared too much, and it was an emotional rollercoaster with more downs than ups.
Now, I'm not good with sticking to things, I love to have a routine, but if something is just slightly off with that routine, then the whole thing gets thrown out the window. The thing that has been working for me for the last week may suddenly get derailed because I miss a day of writing then I think I have to binge watch a show, then I have to organize my daughters closet, then it’s too late to write because I am just exhausted from doing near nothing for the whole day.
Once I got rid of the thought that I HAD to do things a certain way, that’s when I was able to get going.
What I’ve been doing is writing only one article every day. I'm not putting word count restrictions on myself, I'm not putting certain topic restrictions on myself, I'm not putting any restrictions on myself. Write one article a day. I am also doing it outside with my feet in the dirt and my sunhat on while my daughter plays. Maybe this has accounted for my mood, doing something I feel like I have to and want to do, outside, in the sunshine while surrounded by my happy daughter.
My no pressure strategy has helped me to write more.
