What benefit are progress journals?
- Thread starter Trish
- Start date
I don't have one on here but I did on the old forum until the end of last year. I used it primarily to hold myself accountable as well as a place to write my thoughts about what I'd gotten done. Kind of a little "I still love to write!" for myself. Only reason I don't have one here is because I pay for a personal site I wasn't using and I figure I should start using it.
I'd say keeping a progress journal has been helpful. Mine is a bit different from the way people here do theirs, though. I set a wordcount goal for the year and then individual goals for each month. I only ever use it at the beginning and end of each month to report whether or not I've accomplished anything. Daily totals stay in my planner. Ramblings stay in my head, notes, and texts to friends.
Tracking what I get done made me realize I'm not as lazy as I think I am. I'm not as prolific as I'd like to be, even with the pressure of meeting the goal I've publicly set motivating me to actually sit down and write, but apparently I'm still pretty productive! It's also helped me better balance my projects, as someone who usually has a million and one WIPs at a time.
I wouldn't say it's one of the best things I've done or something that's absolutely necessary, but it's undoubtedly beneficial.
The worst part about it is having to muster the courage to admit when I didn't do the thing I said I'd do. Let's not talk about how often that's happened.
Tracking what I get done made me realize I'm not as lazy as I think I am. I'm not as prolific as I'd like to be, even with the pressure of meeting the goal I've publicly set motivating me to actually sit down and write, but apparently I'm still pretty productive! It's also helped me better balance my projects, as someone who usually has a million and one WIPs at a time.
I wouldn't say it's one of the best things I've done or something that's absolutely necessary, but it's undoubtedly beneficial.
The worst part about it is having to muster the courage to admit when I didn't do the thing I said I'd do. Let's not talk about how often that's happened.
Darkthought
New Member
They give you an excuse to procrastinate about whatever you're avoiding writing instead. Every writer needs something like that.
They are called progress journals - but they can record a writer's progress through different things - whether it is the milestones you reach in writing a novel, or your experiments with short stories, or your writing journey overall.
They are a place where the writer can reflect on where they are as they climb the hill to being a "better writer."
They are a place where the writer can reflect on where they are as they climb the hill to being a "better writer."
As others have mentioned, it's a great way to keep oneself accountable. It's like a reminder - hey, am I doing writing stuff like I aim to, or am I neglecting my stories, submissions, etc. It can serve as a motivator, like, ah crap I haven't done shit for the past 3 weeks, I should write another short and enter a contest or something.
What I've really enjoyed has been tracking the numbers, specifically for novel writing and for time spent querying/submitting. This can be motivating as well. For example, here are the stats for my most recent novel:
136 hours writing
94.5 hours editing
230.5 hours total
Sometimes writing a new novel seems an impossible task, but with numbers you are reminded that it's absolutely doable, even if you're only writing on days off and weekends, as I do. 230 hours? Yeah, I can set aside that much time over 6-8 months, easy. And then you can get into the fun stats like average words per day, words per session, all kinds of stuff.
Keeping a progress journal helps keep me focused and is a constant reminder that I gotta keep going with the writing activities.
What I've really enjoyed has been tracking the numbers, specifically for novel writing and for time spent querying/submitting. This can be motivating as well. For example, here are the stats for my most recent novel:
136 hours writing
94.5 hours editing
230.5 hours total
Sometimes writing a new novel seems an impossible task, but with numbers you are reminded that it's absolutely doable, even if you're only writing on days off and weekends, as I do. 230 hours? Yeah, I can set aside that much time over 6-8 months, easy. And then you can get into the fun stats like average words per day, words per session, all kinds of stuff.
Keeping a progress journal helps keep me focused and is a constant reminder that I gotta keep going with the writing activities.
What Set2Stun said!
It keeps me organized and focused. I've always been a writer, but it wasnt until I started a progress journal in 2019 that i actually finished writing my novel. Before then, I would write, and then another idea would pop up and I'd chase that idea and write it until ANOTHER idea came up.... and in the end, have all these half written stories or ideas.
With my Progress Journal, i listed out all current ideas i'd done significant writing on (like over 20-30k words). Then I picked the top 3-4 that either had the most words written on it or the most branch ideas.
Then those became my main focuses that i rotated around. Eventually, I narrowed it down to 1.
I found it really helpful to have it. Like, it gave me a place to vent, to pat myself on the back, to make goals and check them off, and to get encouragement. on the old forum, i would vent and share the current issue in my WIP and others would see it and comment suggestions or research support.
It keeps me organized and focused. I've always been a writer, but it wasnt until I started a progress journal in 2019 that i actually finished writing my novel. Before then, I would write, and then another idea would pop up and I'd chase that idea and write it until ANOTHER idea came up.... and in the end, have all these half written stories or ideas.
With my Progress Journal, i listed out all current ideas i'd done significant writing on (like over 20-30k words). Then I picked the top 3-4 that either had the most words written on it or the most branch ideas.
Then those became my main focuses that i rotated around. Eventually, I narrowed it down to 1.
I found it really helpful to have it. Like, it gave me a place to vent, to pat myself on the back, to make goals and check them off, and to get encouragement. on the old forum, i would vent and share the current issue in my WIP and others would see it and comment suggestions or research support.
I keep one (in a notebook) similar to what Buttercream does. It’s good for accountability and planning, but primarily I like to see how far I’ve come. When you look back at all the problems you had some years ago, it becomes very clear how much you’ve learned in the meantime. Without a progress journal I feel like I stagnate because those tiny steps of learning are easy to lose in all the noise.
This is my problem. The stories keep multiplying! I’m going to adopt this method.
My progress journal has served a lot of purposes for me. Firstly, I have at times used it a regular diary, where I can vent about whatever's going sideways in my life, it's not too often that I go there but there are moments where it's a necessity. Secondly, writing can be a very lonely business. I'm not fortunate enough at this time to have any close friends I can share my stuff with, so a progress journal is the best I can do right now. Even if it's mostly illusory, the feeling of being seen is valuable. Thirdly, there's an element of accountability. Whenever I have an active progress journal, there's a small voice inside me that occasionally checks in with "what news do you have this week? Would they be proud of yours progress?" And fourthly, the historical value. I like to be able to go back in time, see where my mind was at six months ago, a year ago, see what thing I was working on and struggling with then. Fifthly, sometimes I wrote down snippets of insight in my journal that hadn't really made it into my writing yet, and it's nice to have a reference base. Back in the OG Forum I wrote something in my journal about PPP (plot, people, places) which was a storytelling method I was toying with for a new project. It seems very basic when I talk about it like this, like yes obviously you're going to have those things, but I had a whole system for it. My journal is the only place I wrote the method down, and I'm kinda bummed now I didn't save any of my old progress journal. I still retain the method in my mind, but a bit of nuance was lost.
In short, we aren't all lucky enough to have a writing partner in our lives (I had that for a while but lost it) and it's important to have a space to casually talk about your stories. I try once and again to talk about my stuff in the real world, I have people willing to listen, but they aren't readers or writers of the kind of stuff I produce. I get a lot of polite nods, but that's it. Having a progress journal lets me engage with a community of like-minded freaks.
In short, we aren't all lucky enough to have a writing partner in our lives (I had that for a while but lost it) and it's important to have a space to casually talk about your stories. I try once and again to talk about my stuff in the real world, I have people willing to listen, but they aren't readers or writers of the kind of stuff I produce. I get a lot of polite nods, but that's it. Having a progress journal lets me engage with a community of like-minded freaks.
I'm still undecided if I should start a Progress Journal.
