A win-win situation by Jane Walters

I have a good friend who is training to become a coach; and, because I’m a good friend, I offered to become one of her victims coachees. Every month, she sends me a short list of questions to consider before our Zoom meeting, so we both have an idea of what ground to cover and what progress is being made.

(copyright Reality Explorers)

Last month, one of the three questions had me stumped. It wasn’t that I couldn’t understand it – I mean, I do know how to read – but I had no idea how to answer. ‘What wins can we celebrate?’ My first thought was, How glorious! A celebration! "We" - that's practically "together"! Some words just do that to the soul, don’t they? But after I’d laid aside thoughts of Pimms and sunshine, I had to dig a bit deeper.

Wins. Hmm...

I tend to think in terms of writing, naturally, and the coaching is designed to reflect that. The trouble is, as alluded to last month, I’m actually in a season of tent-making. What on earth had I won in the past month? A blog-post, some vague ideas for another novel, a fresh bio for an online review. It was stuff I could barely admit, let alone raise a glass to.

My friend pressed me further. (Apparently coaches are allowed to do this, especially when you don’t want them to.) I mumbled about the work I was doing on the house, half-apologetically, but had barely finished when she responded, ‘Well, I think those are really big wins.’

Oh…

The penny dropped and rolled across the laminate while it could. (The forthcoming carpet will soon put a stop to such antics.) My perspective was all off. I’d given myself a zero when it was worthy of a good nine. My inner critic had berated me for my feeble writing output and ignored the substantial gains I’d made elsewhere.

Life simply isn’t one-dimensional, is it? We might focus on some aspect or other to the exclusion of others for a while, but we are more well-rounded beings than that. Perhaps, like me, you’re not writing much at the moment. Perhaps you’re writing loads but despair at what you’re producing. Whatever your situation, cut yourself some cake slack and look at what’s around you. It might even prove inspiration for the next time you pick up your pen…

Jane Walters is the author of Too Soon (Jane Clamp, SPCK) and seems to appear most days on UCB2. She is preparing to lead 2 creative writing retreats in the autumn, for details see her website: www.janewyattwalters.com

She is vice-chair of ACW.