I noticed the following thoughts when I revised or read someone else’s writing. “Who makes such a mistake? How stupid can one be?” Etc. of that kind.

Those thoughts had little to do with the person who wrote the piece I was revising or editing; and neither her background. It also had little to do with the fact whether I liked the person or not. Because I usually did, especially since I started my business, I didn’t have to read (especially beta-read) the work of someone whom I didn’t like. And luckily for me, I still have to meet a writer I detest.

And even in the previous job, where I was an employee, I don’t remember disliking either my colleagues or the customers. In fact, I respected all of the persons who wrote or gave me something written to comment or edit.
And still those thoughts would appear. They would also surface around the good bits of writing, but which could be slightly polished.

As I started noticing those thoughts, I was shocked for having them. I found challenging having such feelings about people and people’s hard work. So I resisted them because a kind person couldn’t have such thoughts, could she?

Then self-defensive thoughts would appear, “If I sat now down to edit my own writing, I would enjoy it more.”

But the fact was that I didn’t enjoy self-editing either. When I self-edited, I caught myself thinking that reading, editing or reviewing someone else’s writing was more comfortable because then I wasn’t “burdened” with the responsibility of the author.

Hm, so what was that all about?

Did I mix my feelings, my state of mind at that time, my stress-levels into the revision process of other people’s writing? Did the quality of my comments depend on whether I had a refreshing cup of espresso in the morning already or not yet, whether I had enough sleep, or whether I had an unresolved argument with someone I cared about?

Or was I judgmental and believed in the cliche that all critiques are bad, mistakingly thinking change suggestions and negative critic being synonyms?

I probably did and was. Perhaps even without realizing that.

Was that a fault?

No. That was just an automatic behavior illustrating that I was not fully engaged in what I was doing.

What could help in such situations? What could help me to become more aware and more present?

Judgment? No.

To relax and slow down? Yes.

How?

As in October round of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game, where I discussed the challenges I faced when my writing was read and edited by someone else, three techniques helped me also here, when I had to provide revising comments to other writers (both creative and technical):

• Instantaneous transformation, developed by award-winning writers, Ariel and Shya Kane, embracing awareness and being in the current moment of my life,
• Kaizen that is taking it all step-by-small-step,
• Gamification that is bringing games and playful method to all the tasks I had to address.

These three techniques again proofed to be a game breaker and the savior in the situation.

The instantaneous transformation helped me to become aware of the task, non-judgmentally see my reactions to the challenge it posed and also that I had both the responsibility and the power to accomplish the task.

Here is how. Ariel and Shya Kane provide many resources on the topics of awareness and being in the moment. One of my favorites is a video on YouTube called Transformational Tips For The Workplace.

They formulated three brilliant and to the point tips how to work efficiently and have success at work. The transformational tip for the workplace #2 is called Close Your Complaint Department:

“You should recognize that if you are complaining, that’s the only thing you can be doing. Work, complain, choose one. That goes back to that second principle again. [Author’s addition: the second principle of instantaneous transformation reads, “No two things can occupy the same space at the same time.”] You can only do one thing at a time. If you’re complaining, that’s your moment. You don’t get any work accomplished.“ Ariel and Shya Kane

So, it was that simple; I could either complain or do the work.

The next step was to identify how I could support myself to do the work.

Here is what became apparent.

First of all, I had to identify the following smallest sub-sub-sub-task I could manage immediately. Not to try to consider the whole task and then split into many small steps. That in itself was a complicated assignment in itself. But just see where in the document I was reading and what the next sentence or paragraph was. Yes, a paragraph instead of a sentence. A paragraph sounded to me as a manageable and self-contained bit, to which I could devote a micro-assignment. That was it. Just one paragraph. Nothing else for that given moment to think about.

Then I put myself in front of a challenge: will I manage to read and revise the next paragraph within 5 minutes? If not, how many minutes would it take? I started testing and researching my ability to accomplish a task in a given period.

And finally, I rewarded myself by recording a point (a dash, dot, check mark, cross, or whatever shape I preferred on that day) for each revised paragraph. I gave myself a point when and if I edited on paper, and later I gave myself points when I added my comments and changed suggestions into the text on my computer.

Sometimes, I forgot to record the points. I complained less and less, regained fun in discovering something entirely new for me in other people’s writing and be excited to be able to contribute to make their work shine even more.

Yes, you would be completely right to guess that the process here is the same as in self-editing. And if it is, it would be the best. Because if you treat someone else’s work as your own, you will provide the best advice possible. And if you would formulate that recommendation as the one you wished to receive for the same text, then it would be both kind and honest.

What about you? Have you ever observed the thoughts you have when you revise or edit someone else’s work? Do you usually resent such work or enjoy it? Are there variations in your feelings towards such assignments? What are the circumstances of those differences?

Credits: Photograph ©canva.com under the keyword “correct.”

What is this blog series about? You can find this out on its first blog post called 5 Minute Perseverance Game – Moving my Favorite Game to my Writing Blog.

Copyright © 2017 by Victoria Ichizli-Bartels

The topic of this article has a direct connection to what I did during the October round of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game or, in other words, or the October round of my gamified life.

In the mid of September, I have received the edited manuscript of my last of the three books I published this year, “Cheerleading for Writers.”

The automatic worry generation upon receiving the mail with the edited manuscript functioned faultlessly.

Worries of how many unresolved topics there might be. Concerns whether there would be too much work going through the edits and reading and re-reading my book. Whether there would be still open issues after that, and whether that would drag the publishing process for too much longer. Whether I would be able to publish the book in October as I hoped, whether people would like its cover and description, whether they would buy it, whether they would love what they would be reading. Etc. Etc.

These worries consumed some of the time. But luckily not all of the time I reserved for this work. I did manage to publish the book in October after reading and polishing the book two more times after I got the revised manuscript from my editor. This process included an exchange of more material with the editor that was edited by her and later Incorporated into the book.

The solution to my worrying dilemma was a mixture of three approaches:

• Instantaneous transformation embracing awareness and being in the current moment of my life,
• Gamification that is bringing games and playful method to all the tasks I had to address,
• Kaizen that is taking it all step-by-small-step.

Awareness helped me relax and concentrate on one thing at a time, gamification brought back the fun and breaking the task into small steps helped to make the project doable.

First I started giving myself points for resolving each issue, on which my editor commented explicitly. Then after these were done, I have printed the manuscript with changes accepted. After reading and making notes on each chapter I gave myself another point and recorded it. Then incorporation of changes into the text. Again a score for each chapter. Then the repetition of the process, except the reading was now on my Kindle.

I sometimes forgot to record the points, and I don’t have the total score for editing the “Cheerleading for Writers.” And this was not the point. The point was regaining the fun with the work at hand and with that making progress.

One of the most important tools during this and other rounds of the game were observing myself and my circumstances in any moment non-judgmentally while monitoring the fun factor. If I noticed that the given activity started to become stressful, I slowed down and looked why it was so.

Often the solution was to make a little break and do something else. Sometimes the promise of such a break was already helpful, and I could finish editing or revise the chapter at hand before taking a break.

Awareness includes being kind to oneself.

Award-winning writers and creators of the approach called Instantaneous Transformation, Ariel and Shya Kane define awareness as follows:

“A nonjudgmental, non-preferential seeing. It’s an objective, noncritical witnessing of the nature or what we call the ‘isness’ of any particular circumstance or situation. It can be described as an ongoing process in which you are bringing yourself back to the moment, rather than complaining silently about how you would prefer this moment to be.”
(Ariel and Shya Kane, “Practical Enlightenment,” 2015)

In addition to the lessons learned in respect to dealing with feedback from my editors, I have learned and re-learned (= experienced again) some more general and also specific lessons this past October round of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game.

Here are the general lessons learned:

1. Be willing to play. Thatis one of the primary conditions for a game to take place. (See also the post “Testing the 5 Minute Perseverance Game for the Four Main Components of a Game”, especially the section “Voluntary participation”). Otherwise, this won’t be fun and no game either.
2. Take responsibility, be honest to myself, don’t judge, don’t blame, neither myself, nor others, nor any circumstances. Otherwise no fun, no game.
3. Be kind to myself and others. Otherwise no fun, no game.
4. Stick to the chosen design for some time (in my case one month). Don’t moan, don’t judge (see Lesson 2 above). Otherwise no fun, no game.

The more specific lessons come from planning the next (November) round.

Before I report on that, here are my results for the October round of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game:

I scored in total 765 points in October. That made 62 points more than in September. Out of these, 260 were the bonus points, which correspond to 52 concrete deliveries, postings, etc. These correspond to six more than in September.

The results show that I made progress and did better than in September. But my brain still complained.

And here we come to what I realized as I planned the November round of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game.

I still like the design I applied in September and October with the eight areas of my daily activities, including my work and personal life. But my brain started to complain about the fact that in October there wasn’t a single day when I managed to attend to at least one project in each of the eight areas of activities. So in none of the days in October, I managed to earn the ten bonus points I promised myself for that. Although I have scored many five-point bonuses, for making a delivery on something, whether publishing a book, a blog post, preparing an ad and posting it, writing a proposal and sending it out.

So, to soothe my complaining brain, I started jotting down a new list of projects for November. After playing with the entries in the list and regrouping I came up with the precisely same list but in a different order. “Book marketing” became now bullet 1 (and before it was in the 5th position) and “Free time, fun and health” moved from position 8 to 6. Plus, I made Non-fiction and fiction writing entries more explicit by putting the titles of my future books separated by commas in the bullet titles.

As I looked at the result, I had to smile. This is nothing else then shuffling the cards of a beloved game anew. I want to play this game, and I love it, I also enjoy the current design of it, but playing the same hand for three months in a row would be just dull. So unbeknownst to me, I shuffled the cards and started to play again. I had fun today searching in the list where to put the point for one or another activity. And as soon as I finish and post this blog post I will gain five more bonus points.

Now, that is motivating!

You might smile at this and think that I fool myself by rewarding myself by jotting points for what I do. But how is it different from getting points in the Candy Crush Saga® game? The requests I get from friends on Facebook to play that game inspired me to view my perseverance game as something similar.

I do nothing else than plan my very personal version of the Project Crush Saga game. 😀

I’m even contemplating to call my next book on the 5 Minute Perseverance Game as “Project Crush Saga.” Of course, at some point, I will double-check with the trademark holders at King whether they are OK with me doing so.

But for the time being this is the best way I can explain to you, why I have so much fun gathering points.

Actually, there is even more to it.

While I gather points and marvel as I see more and more of them in my notebook, I also make progress in real projects, both work and personal.

So I am not trying to play a game to escape my life for a bit. Instead, I make my life a fun game.

And I must tell you, this game is gratifyingly addictive. 🙂

On the picture above: A screenshot of one of the chapters from “Cheerleading for Writers.” And here is how the book looks now:

What is this blog series about? You can find this out in its first blog post called “5 Minute Perseverance Game – Moving my Favorite Game to my Writing Blog.”

Copyright © 2017 by Victoria Ichizli-Bartels

Many aspiring writers hear that writing is a hard job. And surely, writing a book is not a day-long assignment. It takes weeks, months, or even years.

On the other hand, many people say they want to write a book but don’t have time for it.

So, what to do?

I started writing my very first book in June 2013. I wrote a few chapters, then shared them with a friend and my niece. They loved what they read. But then I stopped writing the story. Reasons for it were plenty and all the known ones. Full-time job, a family with a small child, voluntary work, the story being too sad, and too slow, not good enough, etc. etc.

Joining a writing course with the best-selling author Menna van Praag helped to boost my writing energy again. Every month for about a year I have sent her three pages of my writing and then got both a written feedback and from her directly, during a one-hour telephone seminar together with her other students.

After a few months of this course, and especially between the phone calls my writing energy ebbed again.

Together with my fellow students, I complained to Menna that I couldn’t find time to write my book or to write in general.

Menna suggested playing a game. She proposed that each of us writes for 5 minutes a day for a month and share our experiences in the Facebook group created by one of the students.

It was a fantastic experience. We cheered each other through the process, and my writing just flew. Yes, sometimes 5 minutes or less, but it progressed.

In the subsequent months, I have forgotten about the game, but I continued writing.

In 2015, I had two small children, and I managed to finish my first book, to revise it, to have it professionally edited, and published it. Doing all that in small steps between taking care of an infant, keeping a household, blogging and taking care of my family.

At the end of that year, I published another book. Shortly before that, I joined a writers’ club in Aalborg, Denmark, where I live. At that time, I was already working on several writing projects in parallel, continuing the voluntary work in a technical community, and started a business. My fellow writers in the writers’ club asked me how I managed to pursue so many projects in parallel, along with taking care of a family with two small children.

As I was contemplating how to summarize and how to explain what I did, I recalled the game introduced to me by Menna. I suggested to my friends to play it. I organized a Facebook Group called “Procrastination Breakers Club” where we would play that game with rounds going for one month.

The rules of the game were straightforward. We had to introduce the project we wanted to take into the game (it didn’t have to be writing; learning a language or rebuilding a house, or anything else that we wanted to do but didn’t see to find time to, would do as well). Then we had to pursue the project for at least 5 minutes a day. If we did it, we earned a point. If we didn’t, then we lost the point to our procrastinating selves. And if we persevered for less than 5 minutes, we got half a point.

By the end of the month, we scored the points, and as writers, we also counted the words we had written during that month.

And that first round of the game that I moderated was one of the most significant revelations in my life as a writer. In that month I have written more than six thousands words, by writing for five minutes a day, sometimes more (but never longer than twenty minutes) and sometimes less. Six thousand! If I continued to write the book at the same pace, I would have a full manuscript within a year. By writing just for about 5 minutes a day!

That was one of the most beautiful discoveries for me as a writer.

And something else marvelous happened. During one of the rounds of our game, another writer friend wrote me a personal message on Facebook. She told me that a sentence I often like quoting and which I mentioned at the writers’ panel we both attended helped her to break her writer’s block. She was late with sending a book manuscript to her publisher and seemed not to manage to get it done. The sentence she referred to was, “You can’t edit an empty page.”

I was delighted when she shared this experience with me and invited her to play the 5 Minute Perseverance Game. She accepted the invitation.

She commented on the page of our group that the game was helping her, and she expressed her surprise with much color and enthusiasm. Sometime later, she posted a message with multiple exclamation marks and a few strong words announcing that she finished the manuscript and sent it to the publisher.

This author’s name is Sasha Christensen, and she is an award-winning Young Adult fantasy author in Denmark. She allowed me to quote her and put the image of the cover of the book, which she took into our game, onto my website. She wrote to me, “This is the one you helped break my block on, btw ;).”

Seeing such an effect of the game and especially the fun of it, I have dedicated a little book to it which I named “5 Minute Perseverance Game: Play Daily for a Month and Become the Ultimate Procrastination Breaker” and structured as if it was a description of a board game.

Sometime after publishing this book and while sharing the game with many people I know and meet, a friend told me, “Oh, there is a well-known term for what you do. It’s called gamification. We learned about it in college.”

Gamification? Of course, I started researching about it. Apparently, this is a method of bringing games and game-design approach into other areas of our lives, like work for example.

A little later, I have heard of kaizen, philosophy, and technique of pursuing and achieving big goals by making small steps and solving small problems. Or in other words by breaking down substantial challenges into smaller ones, with which our brains don’t have obstacles to overcome.

So, this is what I was doing with my 5 Minute Perseverance Game: I gamified my life, and I applied kaizen. In other words, I made progress in my projects by making tiny steps and by gathering points.

I designed my game anew at the beginning of every month varying the number of points, adding a bonus system and taking various projects and activities into the game. And then I discovered something else: this project game design I was doing once a month and enjoying so much, it was nothing else than time and project management, and…it was fun!

I always thought that I hated time management, jotting down to-do lists, making priority lists, and recording progress. Now I measure progress in points and am eager to gather more. If the steps are too big and overwhelming, I make them small and start smiling broadly, when I record a score for each of them.

My life became a fun game, including the writing part of it.

A note: This post was written upon a call-out from Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi on their award-winning blog and website “Writers Helping Writers,” in frames of the launch their new Thesaurus for Writers. This book is “The Emotional Wound Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Emotional Trauma.”

As part of the book launch celebration, Angela and Becca invited writers to encourage each other to persevere and share their stories of strength and perseverance under the hashtag #WritersPersevere. This event includes some amazing giveaways! Check out more here. You can only enter until tomorrow, October 27th, so hurry up if you would like to join.

Today I will report on the results and lessons learned in the September 2017 round of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game.

Instead of dividing the day into slots reserved for each project as I did in August, having twenty-one projects/activities in total, for September, I’ve split the game plan for a day into eight project areas.

These were:

1. Voluntary work in a technical (S1000D) community, where I serve as a chair of a global working group.
2. Content development to offer for sale on my website.
3. Non-fiction writing (including blog posts in business and S1000D areas)
4. Fiction and memoir writing (including related blog posts)
5. Book and content marketing, as well as publishing books and update of already published books, when necessary.
6. Training, coaching and consulting services/projects (including pitching, carrying out, and marketing them).
7. Family, personal, and business administrative matters (incl. accompanying my family members to doctors, organizing meetings with colleagues and friends, personal (including that for my mother) and business bookkeeping and similar).
8. Free time, fun, health, and movement (for my family’s, my friends’, and my own well-being; including sports, getting enough sleep, playing games, etc.)

This very new for me design turned out to be much fun. It was also due to the flexibility I included. There was no more maximum amount of points I could strive to achieve, but I could set records by managing more projects in the same project area. I have also introduced a bonus system. I gave myself two points for each set of 8 points, meaning making one step in a project in each project/activity area. And I gave myself five points for each completed task which included preparation time and delivery to someone externally: sending a draft of an offer to a project partner, sending a manuscript to an editor, answering a customer’s questions in an extensive consulting e-mail, or similar.

At the beginning of the September round, as I was getting used to the new game design, I thought I saw a draw-back of dividing my day into project areas (or groups). When I managed one point in a particular area, I didn’t necessarily urge to do the other projects in the same project group, as for example to work on both of my fiction books on the same day, which I thought I wanted. But to be honest, having multiple projects all written in a flat list as in August (twenty-one bullets) didn’t help to manage more of them either.

There was something else, which became prominent in this round. It also happened before, but I had the feeling that it was stronger this time. Here is what that was.  I didn’t always manage to remember to record the points earned, and at the beginning, I thought that it was frustrating. But then I recalled that in video games you didn’t manage to gather all the treasures available out there either. Some of them need to be left behind if I want to move forward and keep going. I loved this realization because it confirmed how often I experience the projects I want to pursue as pleasant and fun games. So the points which I forgot to record where the treasures I didn’t manage to retrieve along the way. But while forgetting those, I gathered the others. And I got the best rewards of all, a smile on my face, warm feeling of achieving and completing something, and happiness of having a perspective of moving forward.

The new design of eight areas worked so well that I want to try it again next month. The bonus system was excellent too. Having to do for example just one thing in book marketing, or one thing for area eight which I call “Free time, fun, health, and movement” to get the point, took the pressure away and with that resistance to try to make progress in each project. I still could get more than one point per area, but the pressure lessened when I saw that most of the eight boxes in the game for the day had at least one check mark in them.

The most spectacular result for me during this round was in the sports/health area. In the last month, I procrastinated doing something in this “project” and earned only a few points during the whole month. In September, I haven’t been doing sports every day, but I did it every week and most importantly I re-discovered fun in it. For a long time, I used to think that I didn’t like jogging. In my opinion, you couldn’t enjoy surroundings while jogging. This September I discovered that to be untrue. Plus, the springy and merry pace of jogging showed it’s happy face to me. That might have also been because the first time I went jogging this September, I did it together with my children, Niklas (almost 7) and Emma (a bit over 2,5 years old).

We ran only a little circle down our street, then to neighboring one, behind our house, and then back, and that with a few walking breaks for Emma and me to catch a breath. But we returned with rosy cheeks and happy. Niklas was skeptical and reluctant before our jogging tour, but after it, he also said we should do it again the following week. The next weekend came. On Saturday I went for a run alone, and on Sunday we went again together. The weekend after, we repeated the pattern: me jogging alone on Saturday, and together on Sunday. And the past weekend my children excused themselves from jogging because they went swimming with their dad instead. It struck me that just after a few times joking together at the end of a week, all three of us embraced our jogging tours as a beautiful and fun tradition. That was quite an immensely pleasant surprise to me.

The same happened with getting-enough-sleep “project.” In August, I had that pressure to sleep close to 7 hours every night, and I only managed that on 6 or 31 nights. In September, I didn’t have that pressure. One check mark in the box for the project area “Free time, Fun, Health, and Movement” already made me feel good that I did something for my well-being. Whatever that was: either playing with my children, getting enough sleep; doing sports, reading a book, watching a film or a TV-show, or anything else.

What I also realized is that the new design allowed space for ambitions, but included kindness to myself, gave room for flexibility, and plenty of room for fun to collect points. I thought of bonus points before, but September was the first time when I dared to implement them into the game. And instead of feeling as if I cheated and gathered the points for nothing as I feared before trying this approach out, I was motivated to do more and more with a growing sense of pleasure.

Here are my results for the September round of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game:

I made in total in September 703 points. In August I made 262 points out of 651 possible. Now there were no maximum points to strive for in September, and I have passed the maximum of the last month, but that of course due to bonuses. But even without bonus points, I reached 457 points. Much more than those gathered in August.

1. Voluntary work: 50 points
2. Content development for sale: 23 points
3. Non-fiction writing: 22 points
4. Fiction and memoir writing: 18 points
5. Book and content marketing: 47 points
6. Training, coaching, and consulting services/projects: 47 points
7. Family, personal, and business administrative matters: 139 points
8. Free time, fun, health, and movement: 111 points.

Bonus points:

• 46 items delivered = 230 points
• 8 times managed to gather a point in each of the eight project areas = 16 points.

I don’t know if this design would work for everyone, but it definitely worked for me this month.

And since it was so much fun, I will continue with the same design of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game for October as well.

The only change I am going to make is to increase bonus points for managing to make progress on the whole set of eight projects (one in each project area). That would guarantee variety in my day and ambitions to be active in all eight project areas because each of them is fun and worthy.

On the picture above: The new design also meant a new recording system. I caught myself enjoying drawing the nine tiny boxes each day to record my points. Who knew that such a seemingly “silly” activity might raise my motivation and help me see my work as fun? Now I can truly say: I love time management. 🙂

What is this blog series about? You can find this out in its first blog post called “5 Minute Perseverance Game – Moving my Favorite Game to my Writing Blog.”

Copyright © 2017 by Victoria Ichizli-Bartels

There are two major types of editing: self-editing and editing by someone else. The second one, from the point of an author, is rather connected to the reaction toward what the external editor suggested should happen to the initial text.

The 5 Minute Perseverance Game has helped me considerably in both cases.

In this blog post, I will address 5 Minute Perseverance Game and Self-Editing.

Independent on what you write, there are two components of self-editing and revision:

• Verifying the text for possible errors and bits that could be improved, and
• Implementation of the edits into the text.

Some authors might do both simultaneously; others do it separately. For example, I often print out extensive files, such as book manuscripts, read them on paper, and make notes which changes need to be made. Later I implement them into files. Afterwards, I repeat the procedure, sometimes varying the format of the text to be verified. One of the last versions I check is often in e-book format to see how it works there.

If the file is a shorter one (e.g., one page long) or it is an e-mail, then I usually verify and implement changes in one go.

I am sure that many authors do the same varying their practices depending on the text they are working with.

Let’s put the small files and e-mail messages aside. Then it is clear that the editing of large manuscripts might seem overwhelming. If you attempt to get done with it, I guarantee that you will become frustrated and make many mistakes.

Separating the components above into two distinct stages makes very much sense and is recommended by many writers. If you read guides on self-editing, you will see that many successful writers (Stephen King, Joanna Penn, and other) suggest reading and editing on paper.

The division of self-editing into reading plus making notes and first later implementing also allows you to be more thorough in your edits because during the incorporation of your edits into the text you might discover additional edits needed. So your writing becomes more qualitative.

But slicing the self-editing into two steps is not enough for larger documents. These two stages of self-editing are still too massive to do in one piece, especially when you self-edit one of the earlier drafts of your manuscript.

I can’t tell you exactly how little the self-editing steps should be for me to feel comfortable and doable. When the text flows nicely, then editing of a ten-page chapter might seem like an easy and small step, whereas a messy paragraph can send me into moaning, which is followed by tedious rewriting or cutting.

Reading about kaizen, the taking-small-steps philosophy and technique, helped to understand what was happening here.

Robert Maurer, whom I mentioned in the article “The 5 Minute Perseverance Game and Kaizen” in this series, has written the following in his acclaimed book One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way :

“Even the small signs that you are resisting the small step — are an indication that the step is too big.”

So I can’t say for sure that editing a paragraph is a smaller step than revising a page or a chapter because I might resist editing a certain sentence or paragraph, but not an entirely different section.

Thus I can experience different parts of my writing in various ways when I am self-editing. But what is the indicator or tool that can help me here and find what I need to change in my writing pieces?

I was reminded of the best answer to this question as I recently watched an interview with Heidi Klum, a German-American supermodel, television personality, as well as one of the four judges at the America’s Got Talent (AGT) Show.

After the result’s show of the AGT 2017 finals, a reporter asked Heidi what advice she would give to the winner, Darcy Lynn, a 12-year-old ventriloquist. Without contemplating, Heidi answered, “Always to have fun. If you don’t have fun, it shows in your performance. That is always the key number one.”

In my book Cheerleading for Writers, which will appear soon this year, I call this tool “fun detecting antenna.” In writing, I discovered that if I let myself be led by what is fun for me, then my writing becomes a pleasure to read too. But if I am frustrated about a paragraph, it’s not fun for me to read. Then the probability is high that my readers won’t like it either.

Fun as a tool to find out what to do next is just brilliant. Because in case of a “problematic” sentence or paragraph, the step for me to take is to make it fun or simply delete it.

5 Minute Perseverance Game is both about making small steps with the projects we want to pursue and about having fun while making those steps. I am immensely happy for these two tools to be at hand for me in any activity I take on, including self-editing.

A few questions for contemplation: What is your usual practice when you self-edit your written pieces? Do you try to get it done in one piece (or larger sessions) or do you usually do edit in small chunks every day? And what helps you to identify which parts of your work-in-progress need to be modified and which can stay as they are?

On the picture above: I took five pictures of this snail on my way home after delivering my daughter at her daycare. Watching it climbing through the leaves was simply fascinating. This amazing being is proficient at making small steps.

Copyright © 2017 by Victoria Ichizli-Bartels