In NLP, there’s a great saying:

if you do what you always do, you get what you always got

I’m not sure who it’s attributable to, but it really struck me. Want to change? Then change the things you do, or how you go about things, otherwise you’ll stay in the rut. As a writer, one of the things that traps me is becoming stuck, procrastinating, getting hyper-critical – and then fed up. Or putting others (could be people, could be ‘things’) before me. I’ve been doing a little to much of the latter of late – neglecting the writerly self – and that also makes me fed up.

When I feel the familiarity of the rut, I know that I need to do something else, because I’m at risk of staying in the rut. So, today I’ve pushed my comfort boundaries and signed up for something that almost scares me. I’ve signed up for my first Gig regatta. It has nothing to do with writing, but it has everything to do with my habits, and the ones that don’t serve me well. Do you follow? In doing something that challenges me, I think it will push me into a different way of being. I’m feeling anxious about it right now, but that will change to excitement, and then hopefully pride. And when I’m in the ‘good’ place I believe I can achieve anything.

My cumulative word count hasn’t been so good of late (see above) however, the great thing about the 1000 words at a time on the novel, whilst banishing the inner critic in the Fogou, is that it has kept the flow of the novel going, well, perhaps limping. I have 20,000 words, which I didn’t have when I went on The Writing Retreat. I think I should/could be happy about that.