January 2020
Hello from Orlando!
I love calendars. I’ve used a monthly and weekly planner for years now along with a big “Seinfeld calendar,” as I call it, on the wall in my home office where I track my writing.
To bring you up to speed if you’re new to the newsletter, when comedian Jerry Seinfeld first started out, he realized that if he wanted to get better at writing jokes, he needed to commit to spending time writing at least one good joke every day. He went out and bought a big wall calendar and put an “X” on the calendar dates when he did his work.
Seinfeld’s goal was simple: Don’t break the chain. He used his calendar to keep him accountable by seeing how many Xs he could put on the calendar in a row. I’ve used a big wall calendar for a few years now to track my daily writing goal the same way.
Today is January 31st. This is around the time the gyms start being less busy. By now most of the people who made New Year’s resolutions have gone back to their old habits. If I’m honest with you, I have a bad habit of not starting things when I need to.
I haven’t started writing the next novel yet. I hadn’t started this time last January, either, as you can see in the picture below, and I think the January before that was the same.
It’s easy to get frustrated with ourselves when we repeat the past. We think, What’s wrong with me? And I should’ve started by now and I’m never going to reach my goals.
We give up on our dreams. We cancel our gym membership. We say it’s too late now. We convince ourselves we’ll try again next year. We lie to ourselves so we’ll feel better.
Today is the day every year when most people’s dreams die…
January 31st…
A date I always seem to notice on the calendar…
And as much as I love calendars, I also hate them… because calendars never lie.
Last year on January 31st, I hadn’t really started on my goal yet, either. Sure, I was “planning,” but let’s be honest–thriller writers “plan” by reading good books and watching movies. I hadn’t put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) until February 1st.
I love using calendars to track my progress toward my big goals and dreams.
Because they reflect reality. You can see where I had days and even weeks where I was stuck. I wanted to write a first draft in four months… it took six. I wanted to finish the final draft two months later… it took five. Calendars are good at telling the truth.
And the truth calendars tell us is this: If you’re intentional and work on your dream consistently, you will finish. It might not be as fast as you want, but YOU WILL FINISH.
So I’m sharing my calendar with you again this year to show you what 2019 was like. How it kept me accountable. How it gave me confidence whenever I placed a large “X” on a day for doing my writing that day… or a number for the chapter I went over again… or the blank spaces that kicked me back into gear because I really wanted one more X.
And I share it because tomorrow is February 1st.
The gyms will be empty. Resolutions, long forgotten.
The amateurs will have given up, deciding to try again next year.
But I, with my calendar, will just be getting started.
Because I have big goals for this year. But I know a goal without a plan is just a dream.
