The Perfect Reward

Programming note: It’s the first blog of the year, but the last in our series of goal-setting/rewards. Next week we start on a new series covering the writer’s routine of developing craft. So brush off your NaNo novels from last November or another WIP and get ready for a solid round of editing with help from Jordan E. Rosenfeld, Writer’s Digest author of Make a Scene. She’ll be blogging with us on Tuesdays in January.

My SNAP plan from Author MBA leaves a place to write out specific rewards I can choose from for accomplishing smaller milestones (small rewards) and the big goals (big rewards.) I understand the idea behind the reward system. Especially for writers who do not have publishing contracts to keep them motivated and rewarded.

Rewards are like a paycheck—rewarding myself for doing the work.

Or like a carrot—bribing me to get the work done.

Or symbolic—reminding me of how great it feels to finally finish my novel.

I tend to be a practical person. When I took the SNAP planning class my rewards were on the boring side (buy a plant, get new curtains, a haircut from my favorite stylist). The instructor encouraged me to have a little more fun with the reward system!

My revelation a few weeks ago came via Kitty’s blog when she suggested maybe some people aren’t rewards-oriented people. That was me! Mostly…

Because I distinctly remember one job I had where I got paid extra if I accomplished certain tasks. You better believe I finished those tasks each week! Hmm. So rewards CAN motivate me.

I think my problem is that I’m not very good at giving myself a reward. It doesn’t feel the same as when someone else rewards me. (Like my husband buying me an HP Mini laptop for my birthday when he saw how serious I was getting about my writing again.)

Here is something I found that might interest other writers out there. The spark of the idea came from when I was sick with a cold and watched hours of daytime TV.

Baz Luhrmann, the director of the movie Australia, was on the Martha Stewart show. He brought along scrapbooks that he keeps for each of his movies–like Australia and Moulin Rouge. They were beautiful books that show the creative journey. Of course, his looked to be leather bound, precisely printed books.

After blowing my nose I thought, What a great idea to document the progress of a novel. You could paste in the initial idea you wrote down on the proverbial napkin. Arrange the photos of the places and people you used for inspiration. List any books that helped you write the book. Stick in scraps of material from the dress that your heroine wears. A sketch of the garden where the climax takes place, etc.

The photo at the top of the page is a scrapbook with the title “Once Upon a Time.” I found it in the Current catalog. Along with the book you can purchase papers with a storybook theme–magical; fairytale; maps; far, far away kinds of papers.

The scrapbook combines all three types of rewards: You can buy the scrapbook now as the paycheck for brainstorming/outlining a new WIP. The carrot is that you can’t fill out the pages until you do some work (obviously otherwise you’d have nothing to put in!) And the symbolic reward? Well, once you are finished your book, you’ll have a beautiful scrapbook to remind yourself of all the work you did. The perfect reward? Just maybe.