Part 1 of the Writer’s Routine: Finishing
Sitting down to write my blog this week, I thought about the saying that performance in any sport is 80 percent mental. So, I surfed around trying to find out from where the quote originated, and stumbled across something even more interesting: the 4 C’s of sports psychology, as described on Brian Mac’s Sports Coach website.
The 4 C’s are: concentration, confidence, control, and commitment.
They are summed up on the website like this:
- Concentration – ability to maintain focus
- Confidence – believe in one’s abilities
- Control – ability to maintain emotional control regardless of distraction
- Commitment – ability to continue working to agreed goals
What would these 4 C’s look like for a writer?
- Concentration—the ability to stay with your story until the end; to not get distracted by the shiny new story; to not get distracted by Twitter or writer blogs. The ability to keep writing until the story is finished.
- Confidence—the ability to not take critiques personally; to keep believing in your project and your growing skills; to not compare yourself to other writers. The ability to trust your training and your voice to tell the story you want to tell.
- Control—the ability to establish writer’s routines to maximize the way you work best; to minimize distractions; to create workable goals. The ability to manage the parts of a writer’s career that can be managed.
- Commitment—the ability to consistently get the words down, whether it’s a daily word count or an annual NaNoWriMo challenge; to routinely improve your craft; to be a part of the writing community. To put your everything into writing your best story and seeing it through to the submission process.
If you notice, I did change the third C “control” to be less about controlling emotions—important for an athlete in the moment—and more about controlling work habits. (Writers don’t control emotions, we explore them and try to write about them in a fresh way.) I highly recommend reading the sports psychology article if you struggle in any one of these areas. You might learn some creative ways to boost any of these C’s in your own writer’s routines.
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4 users responded in this post
I like this very much. I especially like the last one and need to work on the first one! I like your ammendments as well. Thanks! Jan Morrison
Great post, Shonna. I can see where I need to repair and strengthen each of those C’s in my own writing life, but I think the C of confidence is the one most deteriorated. And the cure is to give my critique partners more stuff to critique instead of hoarding it to myself until it is “perfect”. My mind sees flaws where there are actually strengths and overlooks true flaws. So expect some things from me soon!
Jan–Yes, I’m with you on the first one. If I can master that, I’d get so much more accomplished.
Steph–I look forward to reading your work!
Great article, Shonna! Nice way to take a parallel and make it into something useful for writers!
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