Teachers Write: Weekly Reflection & Tracking Progress

It’s the end of the first week of Teachers Write and time to reflect.  Jen Vincent at Teach Mentor Texts has posed some excellent questions about tracking our progress as writers and setting goals. You can check out her entire post here.

How do you track your progress? What kind of goal works for you?

How do you celebrate your progress?

How did you do this week? Did you meet your weekly goal(s)?

What was the pit of your week? (The hardest part, the non-fun part?)

What was the peak of your week? (The best part, the most-fun part?)

What are you looking forward to and planning for the week ahead?

How do you track your progress? What kind of goal works for you?

This is an interesting question and it really made me realize that I’m not sure how I track my progress. When I read, I track my progress by entering the book on Goodreads when I finish it, but writing isn’t always like that. Sometimes I just write to reflect, but the writing isn’t always “finished” in the same way that you finish a book. However, some of my writing does have a deadline, and I take my inspiration from Jon Corippo -- get a fast start, reflect and revise, finish EARLY, and reflect again. 

Jon Corippo

Much of my writing this summer has been what I consider “professional” writing-- including an hour long keynote and preparing 12 days of professional development. For all of these, I set a target date for completion, and then finished early. I love the feeling of finishing early- even though I could have just set that date as my deadline in the first place. I feel so much more relaxed when I have a little cushion before it really *has* to be done and I almost always make little changes even after it’s officially finished. I really wanted this Monday’s keynote and the upcoming 3 days of PD in Vegas to be planned before my vacation this week so I could just relax, read, and write!

How do you celebrate your progress?

This week, I’m celebrating by taking a trip to the coast for 4 days. I can’t wait! Usually I celebrate with little things like taking a whole day to hike or Starbucks or even just taking a whole day to read.

How did you do this week? Did you meet your weekly goal(s)?

This week was fabulous! My goals for this week: write every day, post my process/draft/whatever and reflect on my blog for Teachers Write, provide feedback to others, and finish the keynote and my Las Vegas PD. Like I said, this week was fabulous and I met all of my goals. But I know it’s because I made time to write.

What was the pit of your week? (The hardest part, the non-fun part?)

There really was no pit, or non-fun part, really for me. But if I had to pick something, it would be that I don’t really have a work in progress right now. I did revisit a professional piece I wrote two years ago that has been on my mind as a possible book topic, but right now I am so busy that it’s hard to imagine working on a book. A girl can dream! Also, most people seem to be working on fiction pieces. Maybe I should try to do that.

What was the peak of your week? (The best part, the most-fun part?)

The best part? Teachers Write- all of it! I loved looking forward to the prompts each day, reading the writing of the other campers, and interacting in so many different spaces- Twitter, on blogs, and Facebook! I feel recharged and can’t wait for next week!

What are you looking forward to and planning for the week ahead?

I’m looking forward to being on vacation and getting some inspiration from the ocean! Since I have no writing that I *have* to complete next week, I’m excited to see what happens.

Thank you to everyone for an awesome week!