Tag: race

Why Small Moments Are The Most Important Ones

On By Robert EvenhouseIn The Writing ProcessLeave a comment

Last year I signed up for a 10K run. Immediately thereafter, I was hit with a flood of panic. The run was less than two months away and I had not even jogged in six months.

In my mind I knew I would fail. But I decided to try anyway.

After I crossed the finish line, I slowed down to a walking pace and smiled. I could not believe I finished. I beat my target time and never walked. It was a feeling I won’t soon forget.

After the moment passed, I wondered, how did I do it? How did I go from not running for months to completing my longest distance in years?A man against the setting sun

The truth is, I didn’t get up and believe I was going to run a 10K on my first day of training. I mapped out a one mile run and began. After time, I throttled things up a bit and soon, I covered four to five miles in a single exercise.

This principle of starting where you can, right now, and battling back the fear is applicable to running and the writing of books. For my novels, I focus on a the current chapter, not the entire length of a book.

These small moments – days with mile runs and weeks with two thousand words – are the moments that matter in the end. Any grand, front stage moments start here in a state of quiet progress, day after day, with a target date in mind.

As I headed out for training runs this weekend in preparation for my 10K in a two weeks I was reminded of the power of a single writing session compounded one hundred times. The yield is a book.

Don’t forget about the every day. Don’t forget about the small moments of writing time. Put them together. You’ll be glad to did in a few months.

 

Do You Give One Bad Day Too Much Importance?

On By Robert EvenhouseIn The Writing Life1 Comment

If you keep a blog in hopes to use it as a platform to grow your chances at publication, then you know the power of one day. In one day, you can be dancing about as the views and traffic explode. In another day, you can curl up in a ball on your bed as a handful of people stop in to see something that took hours to write.

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Photo Credit: cesarastudillo via Compfight cc

I work in sales and the power of one day can be a hard thing to shake. Too good and arrogance and his friend complacency start to creep in. Too bad? You know your family will live under a bridge some point soon.

These two scenarios could happen. But the likelihood is probably zero. Why? Because one day does not define a blog, a career, or a relationship. One day has no more power than any other day.

Here is when I thought about inserting some Gandalfain quote about what to do with time that is given to you, but since we aren’t storming Mount Doom, I thought I’d lend this thought.

We must stay focus on our yearly goals. That is what matters.

If you have one bad day in sales, there is a chance to make it up the next day. One bad blog can be easily forgotten if we hit our goal on the next post. The important moment here is what we do next, no mater the outcome of each day. Do we stop? Or do we keep going knowing we are in ____ for the long haul.

I don’t know about you but I have a lot of work to do, miles to traverse, and rejection letters to battle through before I reach my goals.

Have you ever given one day too much weight? What happened as a result?