So picture this: me mowing the lawn for 90 minutes, laboring in the hot sun and wrestling with the mower up and down the crazy slopes in front of our house. When I’m finally done, I come into the house hot, sweaty and on the warpath for water. Lots of water. While I’m still catching my breath, I get a little ping from my smart watch. It says something like, Wow, your exercise ring is really low right now…maybe you should go and, I don’t know, take a walk or something.
And then I do something that millions of people do. I believe my watch. If my watch says its so, it must be so. Exercise? What exercise? You didn’t do exercise because it didn’t look like exercise.
And yes, because this is a writing blog we all know where this is heading. You take one or two precious hours and get some writing done and realize that you’ve barely managed a page. Quoth the inner voice: Writing? What writing? You’re not a writer. Writers write novels. Where’s your novel? I don’t see any novel.
Relax. Unlike smart watches who think they’re so smart, we don’t have to measure accomplishment with quantity. Give credit where credit is due. As a scribbling momma, or as an artist, a chef, or any other possible enthusiast who happens to be carrying two or three loads all at once, we focus on consistency rather than quantity. We focus on trying rather than not trying at all. My advice — if you wrote something today, give yourself a pat on the back. Effort is effort.
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