Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself

I'm certainly no authority on the subject but I've always said if you want to be truly successful with something you need to be content with progress. Expecting too much of your self can often times be counterproductive and leave you feeling deflated.

We are our own worse critics. Sometimes we are overly critical, and other times we only see what we want to see. I would not recommend being the soul judge of your own progress. If you want to truly know how you're doing you're going to want a pair of outside eyes. This goes for writing as much as it does every aspect of life.

Very rarely will someone come up to you and tell you what a good job you're doing. Rewards are earned not given. I tend to classify feedback as a reward, and instead of waiting for it to come to me I advise going out and getting it. No need to be scared, just accept that what you're going to hear probably isn't going to be good. You want to succeed? Grow some thick skin or get out.

If you're writing a novel a great way to judge your progress as feedback via other. Only one problem, even if most people read, odds are they don't know enough about writing to give you valuable feedback. If you've spent any time on writing forums I'm sure you've seen someone whining about why their work isn't published because their family and friends think it's awesome.

Hmm...your family and friends, people who know and love you, are impressed with something you have done that most likely none of them have absolutely no experience with? Shocking.

I remember in high-school my dad would always come watch my soccer games. At the end he would tell me how awesome I was. He loved when i kicked the ball across the field, or sprinted down the sideline chasing someone. There was only one problem. I sucked. Bad.

When I kicked the ball across the field I kicked it to the other team. When I chased someone down the field it was because I tripped over the ball and lost it. He knew nothing about soccer which made his assessment of my game, while endearing, rather irrelevant.

Not knocking my dad's pride. I love that he cheered me on even when i wasn't doing well. Receiving encouragement even when you don't deserve it is an important component in success. What i'm getting at here is having discernment in which feedback you value.

We have on week left in June and if you have a novel you're looking to judge your progress on i recommend giving this contest a try:

http://critiquemynovel.com/ink__insights_2015

It's an awesome writing competition where you submit the first 10,000 words of your novel to a panel of judges. At this point, the contest costs 40$, but i swear its worth every gosh-dang penny.. Forget the cash prizes, the real draw of this contest is the feedback it provides.You're going to get a slew of score-sheets chalk full of comments and suggestions that will propel your work further than you ever thought. The best part? This isn't your mom telling you your writing is wonderful. These people actually know what they're talking about when they tell you something.

 Even if your work is bad no one is going to tell you it sucks like your roommate did (Looking at you Josh Chung).

For me this contest is just another rung in the ladder on my climb to success.