Hi Reader,

If your writing goal is convincing you NOT to write, we have a problem.

Stay with me here! 😅

At some point in history, the writing world decided that Real Writers write every day, hit their word counts, and maintain a level of consistency usually reserved for people who don’t have jobs, families, pets, or laundry.

Especially laundry.

You’ve heard the rules. Write 1,000 words a day. Never miss a morning. Set a page count and stick to it, no matter what.

My least favorite: Treat writing like a job.

These routines can work beautifully… for the people they work for.

But following someone else’s routine isn’t a test you have to pass before you’re allowed to call yourself a writer.

Here’s where, as I famously say when describing the plot of my novels, shit gets weird.

You decide you’re going to write 500 words every day.

• Monday, you write 427. Not quite there. But close! So very close!
• Tuesday, your dog gets sick and your kid eats a sock (maybe the other way around). Zero words.
• Wednesday, work eats your brain. Also zero.
• Thursday, you’ve got seventeen minutes before you need to leave the house.

Could you write a sentence on the end of the last scene you worked on? Probably.

Could you figure out why your protagonist keeps making that spectacularly bad decision in chapter six? Absolutely.

But 500 words? Not happening.

So you close the laptop. Or you never open it in the first place. 17 minutes is obviously not enough time to work on Old Musty (what I lovingly call the manuscript living in my Scrivener app at the moment).

This is what I mean about your writing goal talking you out of writing.

More often than not, instead of questioning the goal, we start questioning whether we’re Real Writers.

I’m sorry, WHAT?

A goal is supposed to help you move your book forward. Not stand behind you with a whistle, a penchant for yelling, and a military title that makes your liver quiver.

I want you to know:

Showing up and hitting a target are two different things.

In fact, I have receipts from Creative Goblins just like you who took part in the Show Up Challenge this past July. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

A single sentence can move your story forward.

So can a bullet-point list of what happens next. So can a mildly unhinged mind map connecting your villain’s secret to that suspiciously convenient inheritance.

The key is discovering what you’re capable of before deciding what you should be capable of. And when life gets lifey, you adjust. That’s not cheating. That’s a writing practice that belongs to you.

That’s exactly what we’re doing in Level Up Your Writing Life, my $10 workshop. You’ll pick the metric that fits where you are (days, time, pages, or words) and set three levels of goals, from Everyone Gets a Trophy to The Stars Have Aligned. Then we’ll put it into practice together during our delightfully different Novel November in the Level Up Lounge, with a mid-month check-in to adjust along the way.

Lessons go live this Tuesday, October 20th.

​Join Level Up Your Writing Life for $10 here.​

Your book doesn’t need you to win at somebody else’s routine. It just needs you to keep showing up.

Claire 💛

New here? Forget who I am? I'm Claire! Award-winning horror author, project manager, sourdough maven, amazing wife and dog mom, and your future creative mentor! I help fiction writers ditch the rules, fall in love with writing again, and finally finish their damn (good!) stories! As an Author Accelerator certified fiction book coach I know what it takes to write a great novel. As a Writing from the Top of Your Head certified facilitator I know how to make it fun. Ready to finish your book? ​Heck yeah! Let's do this thang!​