Reflecting on Your Writing Year

 

Every year about this time, I get to thinking about my writing year. 

• How did I do?
• What did I accomplish?
• How did I handle the obstacles that came my way?
• Are there tasks I am carrying over into the new year?

Such a reflection allows you to celebrate the milestones and identify areas for improvement. Whether you make a bulleted list, write a letter to yourself, or post an entry in your journal, reflective writing will move you forward as a new year begins. 

What are some of last year's writing accomplishments you are proud of? What is a goal you are setting for 2024? 

Cheryl C. Malandrinos is a freelance writer and award-winning editor. She is the author of four children’s books including, A Christmas Kindness, released by 4RV Publishing. A blogger and book reviewer, she is a member of SCBWI and lives in Massachusetts with her husband and three adult children. Visit Cheryl's website at https://ccmalandrinos.com or her children’s book blog at https://childrensandteensbookconnection.wordpress.com

Vison Boards for Authors

 

Have you heard of vision boards? They are visual displays meant to motivate and inspire you to achieve the goals you set. They are fun and easy to put together. 

All you need to create a vision board is poster board or corkboard, scissors, glue, and a bunch of magazines; though I often print free images I find online or pay for stock photos. The creative process of finding the right photos and displaying them in an attractive collage provides a healthy dose of inspiration and helps cement the goals in your mind. 

Authors can use vision boards for focus and motivation, but they can also use them to inspire their next novel. Find photos that reflect the setting, the characters, historical details, current events, or even weapon of choice (for mystery novels). One author I found online used Canva to design a mock front cover for her book's vision board. How cool is that? 

Once you've created your vision board, you need to find the perfect spot to hang or lean it so you see it daily. You don't hide a lamp in your closet. You put it on a nightstand or table to illuminate the room. 

For those who want to save space or want to have a vision board they can carry with them, you'll find several vision board apps available. I used the Gratitude app this year, which is a combination vision board and gratitude journal with affirmations and daily positive thoughts to keep my thoughts and self-talk productive instead of destructive. 

Have you created vision boards in the past? Will you create one for this year or for one of your novels? Share your thoughts in the comments below. 

Cheryl C. Malandrinos is a freelance writer and editor. She is the author of four children’s books including, A Christmas Kindness, released by 4RV Publishing. A member of SCBWI, she is blogger and book reviewer. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband and two daughters. She also has a son who is married. Visit Cheryl online at http://ccmalandrinos.com and her children’s book blog at https://childrensandteensbookconnection.wordpress.com

Three Steps to Meeting Your Goals

At the beginning of year, many writers create a list of goals. For the first few weeks we are all gung-ho and working feverishly. Then something happens. Life gets in the way. On top of that, our calendar is filled with unrealistic goals or goals that aren't specific, timely, or measurable enough to accomplish them. We get discouraged.

How do we stay the course? How do we work our goals into our daily schedules and make them happen.

Look at your calendar and find an hour. Maybe it won't take that long, but give yourself time to truly consider the goals you have set. Bring your calendar and your list of goals with you. I prefer to do this outside of my house--libraries work well.

STEP ONE: Review your goals one at a time and make sure they are S.M.A.R.T. 

In order to move forward, your goals need to be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. Let's say your goal is to publish your first article in 2019. That's great, but it's too vague. A S.M.A.R.T. goal would look like this: I will publish my first article by the end of 2019; researching my topic and writing the article by February 1, having a final draft by March 1, and performing market research in April to begin submitting to select magazine publishers by May 1.

Why is this important? Deadlines are marks on the calendar. They are dates you can see and shoot for. Just as important, instead of having to wait until that article is published to feel like you accomplished something, you have these targets along the way that keep you motivated.

STEP TWO: Break down your S.M.A.R.T. goals into small tasks.

Now, let's take that S.M.A.R.T. goal and break it down into small tasks. The to-do list to research your topic might look like this: perform online research, set up interviews with experts, conduct interviews with experts, and visit the local library for additional resources. Then you need to estimate the time necessary to complete each task.

STEP THREE: Time block your calendar.

Pull out your paper or electronic calendar. It's time to get serious. The best way to accomplish your goals is to structure your time so you work most effectively and efficiently. Time blocking will help. There are plenty of online templates to make this easier. I prefer a weekly planner in half hour increments.

The first thing you do is plug in all the things you know you can't change: the day job, picking up the kids from school, exercise time, doctor appointments, etc. The empty blocks are where you tuck your small tasks in. Maybe Monday morning at nine you have half an hour to perform online research. Wednesday at noon might be a great time to call or email those experts to set up interviews.

What's the best part about time blocking? It shows you where time is being wasted, so you can reclaim it.

If you want to meet more of your goals this year, create S.M.A.R.T. goals, break them down into small tasks, and then time block your calendar. You'll be glad you took the time to set yourself up for success.

Cheryl C. Malandrinos is a freelance writer and editor. She is the author of Little Shepherd, A Christmas Kindness, Macaroni and Cheese for Thanksgiving, and Amos Faces His Bully. A blogger and book reviewer, she lives in Massachusetts with her husband and two daughters. She also has a son who is married. Visit Cheryl online at http://ccmalandrinos.com and her children’s book blog at https://childrensandteensbookconnection.wordpress.com

How Can Writers Use Positive Thinking?

Many years ago, I challenged my online writing group to draft an end of the year review that outlined only the positives of their writing journey. They could share anything they wanted, but it had to be framed in a positive light. Not only did our members enjoy looking back in a positive way, they realized just how much they actually accomplished.

But what is positive thinking? How does it work?

What is Positive Thinking?

Positive thinking is more than just uttering a few happy words and then allowing your fears and self-doubt to take hold again. Positive thinking is a mental attitude that, with practice, allows you to have positive thoughts and uses daily affirmations to help you to see a positive outcome to almost every situation.

Judi Moreo, life coach and author of You Are More Than Enough: Every Woman’s Guide to Purpose, Passion & Power, encourages her readers to make conscious choices to think about themselves in a more positive light. Moreo says we must stop criticizing ourselves and demanding perfection in what we do, and that we need to change the mental pictures we have of ourselves. Through the use of daily affirmations and by visualizing our success, we can achieve the desired results.

Daily Affirmations and Creative Visualization

Daily affirmations are positive thoughts you can affirm throughout the day to uplift you and make you feel better about yourself. Judi Moreo uses them throughout You Are More Than Enough because, as she says, “Changing your life is a process.” Positive thinking isn’t something you can use randomly. If you want it to work, you have to practice it every day.

Moreo dedicates an entire chapter in her book to creative visualization. She says that you can use your imagination to create pictures of those things that you want “to be, do, and have.” On the flip side, you can also imagine that you aren’t able to accomplish what you want because you aren’t smart enough or good enough. Which person do you want to be?

How Positive Thinking Molds Your Future

If what we see is unmet goals, then there is no desire to move forward. Why would we expect anything to change? When we focus on all the good that came out of our efforts, not only do we feel a sense of accomplishment, we can consider changes to help us achieve more goals in the future.

How Can Writers Use Positive Thinking? 

At the beginning of this year you--hopefully--wrote down a list of S.M.A.R.T. goals. Then you broke down that list into smaller, more manageable chunks before creating weekly or daily to-do lists.

Look at your goals and all you’ve accomplished this year. What do you see?

My goals for 2018 included:

GOAL 1: Submit Clever Tom to agents

GOAL 2: Participate in STORYSTORM

GOAL 3: Blog twice a week on all four blogs

So what have I accomplished?

GOAL 1 (not exactly)

GOAL 2 (yes)

GOAL 3  (mostly)

Clever Tom is a children's story I had a ton of fun writing. Something (I couldn't put my finger on what) held me back from submitting it to agents. I tweaked it and then tweaked it some more. I reread it numerous times. Finally, it hit me--it's too long. Just the other day, I sat down with the story again and made the last edits to cut out over 300 words.

Did I meet my goal? Not yet, but on a positive note the story is better because of it.

STORYSTORM is an annual event to generate story ideas. This year I met my goal of 30 story ideas for the month of January and celebrated with a great big ice cream sundae. Rewards help you accomplish more too!

When setting the third goal, I knew it was aggressive considering my limited writing time. But who doesn't love a challenge? I began time blocking my calendar more regularly and have increased my blogging time this year. That's a win as far as I am concerned.

Looking Forward

Use these last two months of 2018 to move ahead with a positive attitude and see what else you can accomplish before Father Time pushes us into the new year. This will give you a head start on practicing positive thinking by the time January rolls around. Then use daily affirmations to keep you focused on the positive and visualize your success.

You have the power to make 2019 your most productive year yet!

Cheryl C. Malandrinos is a freelance writer and editor. She is the author of Little Shepherd, A Christmas Kindness, Macaroni and Cheese for Thanksgiving and the recently released, Amos Faces His Bully. A blogger and book reviewer, she lives in Massachusetts with her husband and two daughters. She also has a son who is married. Visit Cheryl online at http://ccmalandrinos.com and her children’s book blog at https://childrensandteensbookconnection.wordpress.com