Acknowledge Progress in Your Writing
This gratitude trick helps me notice the progress I'm making in my writing life.
It’s almost Thanksgiving—the perfect time for me to share my gratitude-related writing trick with you.
One of the most difficult aspects of writing can be keeping yourself motivated to maintain your writing practice. In writing, progress can feel slow and lonely. One way I’ve combatted this is by keeping a gratitude journal specific to my writing.
Before you start rolling your eyes at the words “gratitude journal,” hear me out—I, too, was a cynic until I tried it. Last year, I kept getting stuck on the feeling that my writing life wasn’t leading anywhere.
That’s when I started pushing myself to write down three things that went well during my writing time after each writing session. It gave me a space to celebrate sentences I’d written that I loved and small breakthroughs I had in my stories and essays. On days when the writing process felt especially grim or dull, I’d simply write, “I showed up to the page today and practiced, and that means I’m getting better.”
This reflective measure has helped me notice daily increments of forward motion in my writing life.
On days when I don’t write, I still try to make a note in my gratitude journal so I can remain mindful of the writing-adjacent victories that are still occurring when I’m away from the page. If I have a new idea for a story while I’m driving somewhere, I record it in this journal. If a passage from a book I’m reading conjures up inspiration, I write it down.
Lately, I’ve had trouble getting in the zone whenever I sit down to write. My gratitude practice has helped with that, too—in addition to recording my gratitude after I finish writing, I also jot down something I’m grateful for in my current writing project the moment I sit down to write. Doing so gets rid of the dread and makes me excited about my work again.
Fellow office supply and stationery enthusiasts, this approach could be for you! Keeping a gratitude journal gave me an excuse to buy a paper planner after switching to a digital calendar years back. Now, I have a weekly planner that I don’t use as a calendar, but as a daily writing log… and it’s so, so pretty. (I got mine from ban.do.)
Next time you write, give gratitude journaling a try. What went well during your writing session? Did you have a new idea that made you smile? Did you write a smart paragraph that made you smirk and say, “Damn, I’m good?” Did you write without getting distracted? These are all victories worth recording!
Over the holidays, do you talk to your family about writing?
It can be challenging for any artist to open up to their families about their creative pursuits. Over the holidays, if a relative asks how your writing is going, how do you usually answer them? Do you feel like your family supports your writing life?
“I love telling my sister when I find or fix a plot or character problem, or when I invent some world-building and want to talk it out. No one else really knows that I'm trying to write seriously though. They'll probably support me (I hope), but I don't want to tell them just yet. I'm afraid they'll discourage me by constantly talking about how little writing pays.” —Johanna
“I'm very lucky to have a family who supports my writing and nearly always asks about it. But even though I know I'm supported, I still find it tough to talk about depending on where I am in my writing process and what kind of writing the family member I'm talking to expects of me. I usually say ‘it's going great!’ and pivot hard.” —Mara
“They're definitely not very happy about it. But they haven't tried to stop me either. I can live with that.” —Damini
“I'm a poet, and my family of origin doesn't care about my writing life. I don't mean that to sound callous—they care about me as a person. But they seem to understand my writing life as what I do because I don't care about sports. So it never comes up, which means I can write about deeply personal things without having to explain it to them while passing the cranberry sauce.” –Michael
Tell me about your writing process in my reader questionnaire! If you’ve answered my newsletter questions before, I’d love to have you back to answer more—I just added new questions for upcoming issues of Lonely Victories.
Really Digging This
Here’s what I’ve been reading and loving lately.
Patrick deWitt’s novel Undermajordomo Minor reminded me of Monty Python and the Holy Grail in all the best ways—castles, witty dialogue, and tons of laughs.
Vivian Gornick’s writing is sharp as a tack. I adored her memoir of life in New York City. She’s had a long career as a critic, and when I read her work, it makes me want to read more widely.
What’s your favorite new release of 2020? Tell me about it and I may include it in my Best Of 2020 Book Roundup next month!
Lonely Victories is a labor of love—one that involves a lot of caffeine. You can support my work by tipping me for coffee, shopping my Bookshop.org affiliate page, or sharing this issue with a friend! Every little bit helps.
Special thanks to Aysha Miskin for designing the banner image for this newsletter and to Becca Wucker for editing this issue.
Learn more about my work at hurleywinkler.com. And while you’re at it, come say hi on Instagram and Twitter.
“Writing alone can give you a very deep sense of satisfaction and lonely victory.” —Greta Gerwig