Shut Up and Write: The No-Nonsense, No B.S. Guide to Getting Words on the Page by Mridu Khullar Relph

Author:Mridu Khullar Relph [Relph, Mridu Khullar]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-02-18T08:00:00+00:00

15

Pick a Reward

For a long time, there was a bottle of champagne sitting in our fridge that someone brought over for us from Switzerland. I was close to a book deal then, closer than I’d ever been, so my husband and I decided we’d open the bottle when we finally had a sale.

That bottle sat in my fridge for more than a year. We stubbornly refused to open it, despite many ups and downs. I let go of my agent, I let go of my book, I stopped working on my novel. Through it all, we refused to open the bottle.

But every time I opened the fridge, there it was, that damn bottle, reminding me of what I had yet to do. It was disappointing, but more than that, it worked as motivation. It sat there, a reminder, not letting me forget how much I loved that misunderstood little book that no one except me had fallen in love with yet. Every time I felt defeated enough and announced that I’d given up and that I didn’t care if I ever got a book deal, I’d open up the refrigerator door and there it was, the reminder that this was about more than just work and money. It was about fulfillment and pushing hard for something I believed in. Something that could make a difference in people’s lives and could be groundbreaking territory.

It motivated me to get up every morning at 6 a.m. and write for two hours, no matter what. It challenged me to find the time and freedom to work on something I believed was important.

We all need that reminder when work feels like work, when all the inspiration and advice and solidarity in the world isn’t enough to show us what brought us to this writing life in the first place. It’s important for us to leave little rewards for our future selves when we’re feeling high and on top of the world, because there will come days soon enough when we’re feeling like we’re sinking into a bottomless pit. Those rewards from the past remind us why we chose this, and what made us want it so badly.

Your rewards don’t always have to be bottles of champagne. They can be simple things. You could tell yourself that you’ll only allow yourself to log on to Facebook if you’ve done your 1,000 words for the day, otherwise you can’t. I’d allow myself to buy books for every chapter completed, but that got expensive very quickly. However, by the time I stopped rewarding myself, I was already in the habit of writing 1,000 words a day. I no longer needed the motivation from the reward.

You could give yourself rewards for milestones that you cross. For instance, hitting 10,000 words on the novel, getting halfway, finishing it, finding an agent, and so on. You can then enjoy your prizes guilt-free and gear yourself up for the next milestone in the project. Some of them will, of course, come easier than others.

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