Outcome independence

I realized this morning that I made a huge mistake in February. For most of 2021 and January 2022 I was writing every day with an application called Gingko Writer. It’s an outliner and I had it set up for writing in fifteen-minute blocks.

So, my main writing outline is for all of 2022, which is split into quarters, and then months and weeks, and then days. Under each day I would set up my scheduled writing for the day in fifteen minute-chunks: 08:30, 08:45, 09:00… up to 10:15.

I stopped doing this in February, and my writing dwindled. I was still writing here on LifeLog but nowhere near the 70k words I wrote in January, half of that being fiction.

I started using the app again today, and my writing came back from life support.

And it all relates back to my topic for today, outcome independence. When I’m writing here, even on a low-key site like LifeLog, there’s an expected outcome. I’m going to publish what I write. It makes it harder to write in the moment. I’m always looking ahead.

In the outliner, especially the way I have it set up, the outcome is just to fill up the time with writing.

• It’s all about me. I’m writing for myself.
• I’m not focused on a particular outcome.
• I have my schedule predefined as a set number of writing sprints.
• I can only fail if I don’t write.

In other words, I’m not worried about the outcome. Will I produce good writing? It doesn’t matter. Most of it is just me thinking about things with my words. But hidden among the slag I always find a few nuggets of ore.

So, today I wrote on schedule. I wrote fiction.