The State of Dontigney: New Year, New Mindset

photo credit: photosteve101 via photopin cc

So, I think like most people, I found 2020 to be something of a year of setbacks. I achieved very few of the goals I set for myself. Some of that was unavoidable because pretty much everything was closed. There were a lot of local places I was thinking of visiting and then blogging about. Clearly, that couldn’t happen. Traveling out of state was impractical for most of the year. It still is for most purposes. So that put visiting Crater Lake out of reach, which was frustrating because it’s been at the top of my list of places to visit for years now.

I planned on doing more in-person promoting for my books and had even taken some steps in the direction, but Covid put the kibosh on that. I wasn’t happy with my overall level of fitness and BMI. I’ve made some progress on that front, but it was mostly incidental. I just started walking more and walking is good exercise. I’m sure my financial struggles were nothing unusual for the 2020 shitshow and a lot less severe than millions of other people faced, but they are always stressful for anyone experiencing them.

I weathered the social distancing and stay-at-home orders better than most because many writers spend a lot of time alone anyway. Sure, you can go and write in coffee shops and libraries, but you’re probably not interacting with people much while you do it. You’re just alone in public. So, the isolation didn’t hit me like a hammer the way it hit people who were used to daily interactions with coworkers or extroverts who spend most nights out.

All of those other goal failures, though, took an accumulative toll. My writing productivity fell off precipitously, which meant I didn’t finish writing a single book last year instead of completing 2-3 like I planned on. The best I could manage was generating some short fiction to post on my Patreon page and even that was more sporadic than I’d like. Once the apathy starts setting in, it’s hard to break free from it. I think that — more than anything else — was what made 2020 so difficult for me. The fallout from so many things I’d been planning just not materializing made it hard to get on track with anything else.

Fortunately, it’s a new year. A new year is an opportunity to embrace a new mindset. In fact, I’ve made some strides in that department in the last month or so. I’m actively working on a novel again. I didn’t get a completed draft out for Christmas the way I hoped, but it’s a hell of a lot closer to finished than it was two months ago. Making substantial progress on any project has been a boon for my state of mind.

I’ve also decided to adopt a new mindset about my approach to writing. I found a Facebook group of writers who treat writing novels like a business, which is what you need to do if you ever really want to make it. So, I’ll be adopting some of the writing and marketing strategies that they suggest and testing them out over the next 24 months. If I can produce even 5-10% of the results some of the other new members in the group have managed, I could probably get serious about transitioning to writing fiction full-time. So that’s my goal for the next one to two years. Develop my fiction writing to the point that it can support a basically comfortable lifestyle.

Wondering what else is going on with me and my writing? Sign up for my newsletter/mailing list!

The post The State of Dontigney: New Year, New Mindset first appeared on Eric Dontigney.