Instant or Delayed Gratification?
How are you with delayed gratification? When I was in nursing school, I would study so hard to make good grades, but sometimes, even though the grades were good, family matters and personal issues would result in me having to withdraw and wait a year to pick up the course again as everything was in sequence for the nursing program.
I really wanted to see my family’s standard of living improve, so I stuck with it and endured to the end, but it wasn’t easy. It took me eleven years to get a four year degree.
Nobody says writing, publishing and marketing a book is easy. It takes months, even years, to write and prepare a novel, publish, and even more months and years to effectively market, unless you already have a fan base built up.
Do not be discouraged. If you really want to see your books sell, it will happen.
When things seem to slow down, and progress seems too far away, I sometimes need to step outside of the task at hand do something that gives me a sense if instant gratification. I make jewelry, bead necklaces, bracelets, and earrings. Unlike my writing, hours later I have a completed project in my hands. It is that feeling of completion with something tangible to show for it that helps me along.
If you are one of us writers who needs instant gratification, knit, crochet, bead, paint, draw…find something that will give you instant gratification to balance out that feeling that your writing project is an eternity away from completion. Or find some way to reward yourself for smaller accomplishments along the way…a weekend spent camping in exchange for a weekend of writing, a Sunday drive along the coast for a week of writing, a video game for every fifteen hundred words.
Then go back and write!
Don’t give up!
Find your balance.
Filed under: Healthy Lifestyle, Spirituality, Writing Process/WIPs Tagged: avoiding burnout, balance, Delayed gratification, instant gratification, writing process 
