Avoiding Arbitrary Absurdity

Around this time last year, I told myself I would aggressively start working on the novel. At the time, I meant it, but naturally, life happened faster than I did, and it was pushed to the wayside.

I was disappointed in myself. This fostered feelings of failure, which suggested apathy to my chemistry, and it's well documented that such a state of mind is the enemy of progress.

I am fortunate to have caught the error of my ways, and after several discussions with myself, I had to admit that the arbitrary goals had done more harm than good. I forgave myself, and enacted a new personal policy in regards to progress.

Any work that moves the effort forward is good work. Even if it's only a single sentence a day (not ideal, I'm aware) progress isn't always measured in sheer volume. I am much more focused on the quality of the output, and working in this way has actually caused my word count to go up!

Very often, when we fixate on finishing something quickly, we end up working more slowly; or the work itself is poor. I am not an LLM, nor would I ever wish to be. It is in error that I learn most, and I wouldn't trade the awareness of my potential erroneousness for anything.

Further, I can find further inspiration in my mistakes and misgivings when I review; removing that opportunity from myself seems creatively tragic. I should be just as dedicated to writing this in a way that's healthy for my mind as I am in allowing the story to tell itself the way it wants to.