LIFT-OFF Writing Camp Day 4
Do one thing
Gooooooooood morning, afternoon, or evening, wherever you happen to be! And welcome to Day 4 of LIFT-OFF Writing Camp!
Quick reminder: If you’ve been enjoying Writing Camp and want to support PBP, you can get a 2-for-1 deal on paid annual subscriptions until 1 Feb! Instructions can be found at the end of this post.
What Day 4 is all about
Congratulations on making it this far! By now, you’ve taken the very first steps in your new project. You’ve made yourself a plan for the week, and you’re following it as best you can. You’re well on your way to establishing a writing practice around your new project. And now that we’re on Day 4, it’s time to talk about grit.
What the heck is ‘grit’?
Have you heard of this thing called ‘grit’? Ok, sure, it’s a word you can use to describe the coffee grinds that get stuck in your teeth, or the grain of sand that didn’t quite get rinsed out of your salad. But it’s also a word for the kind of steadfast determination that keeps you moving towards a goal despite setbacks, fatigue, distractions, or difficulty.
In her 2016 book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, psychologist Angela Duckworth argued that grit was a better determinant of success and achievement than factors like talent or luck. And while some people may possess a naturally higher degree of grittiness than others, Duckworth proposes that grit is also something that everyone can develop by cultivating 4 things:
Interest. If you’re doing things that interest and excite you, you’re more likely to keep doing them!
Practice. This means not only putting in the work, but trying to get better at it.
Purpose. It’s easier to keep pursuing a goal when you see meaning in the pursuit of that goal.
Hope.
Ah yes: hope. Let’s spend a little time on that. What is that thing called ‘hope’?
If you’re familiar with Greek mythology, you might know hope as the only thing left in Pandora’s Box after Pandora opened it and unleashed a host of miseries upon the world. In some ways, that’s a very appropriate image: hope is the thing that’s left. It’s the thing that has to be left if the world is going to keep going. If you’re at the end of your rope, if you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel, you better hope you find a little hope there.
Having ‘hope’ is often confused with having unfounded feelings of ‘everything’s going to be ok’. But hope involves taking action. It’s what happens every time you pick yourself up after getting knocked down, and it’s the thing that makes you pick yourself up. It’s the chicken and the egg.
Having hope takes practice. You have to make hope happen.
At this particular moment in time, when the world is both literally and metaphorically on fire, having hope probably feels a little bit hopeless. But here’s something you can do in your writing practice to help make hope happen: regardless of whatever may have happened yesterday or whatever might happen tomorrow, do one thing today that keeps your new project alive.
Open up that Word document and glance through it to keep it in your mind.
Pick up your pen and start scribbling.
Find another resource or two that you can use.
Chat about your project with a friend or colleague.
Heck, set aside 5 minutes in your day to sit and think about your project and nothing but your project.
Do one thing, even if that thing feels like the absolute minimum (something I wrote about on Day 4 of a previous Writing Camp). And if you’re someone who learns best if you’re watching a musical number, check out this one from the immortal Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers!
Day 4 Writing Prompts
Take a moment to look through the writing prompts below and select which one suits you today. If you finish using one writing prompt and want to try another, go right ahead! If, on the other hand, you feel like you’re done after responding to one prompt, that’s just fine.
Remember: even if you manage to do just one thing, you’re cultivating the hope and grit you need to succeed.
Option 1: Follow your Cunning Plan
Look at the Cunning Plan you made on Day 2, and at the goal you set for yourself today. That’s your assignment for today!
If you finish that assignment and feel like doing a bit more today, then try freewriting for 5 minutes on any aspect of your completed assignment. Remember: Do not stop. Do not look back. Do not worry at all about using perfect punctuation or sentence structure. Just write as though nobody’s watching (because they aren’t).
If after that you still feel like doing a little bit more, pick whatever part of your project you’re most interested in tackling today, set a timer for 15 minutes, and see what you can write in that time.
Option 2: Freewriting
Reflect on what you wrote or did yesterday pertaining to your project or on whatever part of your project you’re most interested in tackling today. Freewrite on any aspect of that for 5 minutes. Remember: Do not stop. Do not look back. Do not worry at all about using perfect punctuation or sentence structure. Just write as though nobody’s watching (because they aren’t).
If that’s all the time or energy you’ve got for today, that’s fine! Take a moment to look through what you wrote and circle/highlight/underline anything that strikes you as particularly important to your project. You can use this to help keep track of your thinking as you move forward with your project, or as your writing prompt for Day 5 (omigosh, we’re almost at Day 5!!!).
If you feel like you could keep going, you can either (a) set a timer for 20 minutes and see what you can write in that time; or (b) set yourself a goal of writing 200 more words before you stop for the day.
Option 3: You do you
If you’re at Writing Camp for the camaraderie and accountability rather than the prompts, that’s great! Do your own thing, and let us know about it in the chat!
Ok, folks: time to get writing!
Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow for *gasp* Day 5 of LIFT-OFF Writing Camp!
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If you’re a free subscriber who’d like access to everything in the PBP archive (plus all paid subscriber posts) for a year, or if you’re someone who’s been waiting for an even more affordable way to support my work, this is your chance!
To take advantage of this deal:
Find a buddy who’ll reimburse you for half the normal subscription cost for 1 year.
Sign up for a paid annual subscription.
Send me your buddy’s email (to mary [[at]] marycflannery.com) so you both get a paid annual subscription at 50% off for 1 year!
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As ever, thanks for reading!
VB,
M