Succor: Showing Up for Work

Succor: Show Up for Work

Every writer wants success. Some people believe that “Eighty percent of success is showing up” (Woody Allen). I agree because showing up produces writing. However, writers face specific challenges when it comes to showing up for work, mostly because they work at home. Making the decision to show up and then stay on the work page can produce two of the biggest challenges for writers.

Showing up for work, especially when a writer doesn't feel well, or when one feels tempted to escape to nature or entertainment, takes self-esteem. In order for a writer to overcome the call of blue skies and a blazing sun through the workplace window, one must believe in her capability to produce. Nathaniel Branden defines self-esteem as “...the experience of being competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and being worthy of happiness.” Making the decision to be a writer means choosing the self-discipline which leads to publishing, paycheck, and popularity. Not showing up to work because the writer has stayed up too late, or because the writer has played or worked too hard the day before—the hangover effect—is being incompetent. Choosing incompetence by failing to show up for work means that we are not qualified to do the job we want to do, and that we do not possess the necessary skills to carry out the position of writer and finish the writer's task; the manuscript. So, if a writer doesn't want to be known as a blunderer, slouch, or a sad sack, then one must show up to work! Most of the time, writer's hangover can be overcome through sitting down and bearing through the first hour or two.

Once the laptop is open, the demons of temptation face the writer head on: Twitter, Facebook, Email, Blogs, and other distractions lure the writer away from her manuscript, and can do so for several hours. All that is left is regret and low self-esteem. Therapist Ruth Johnson claims that “low self-esteem is sometimes a result of consistently failing to achieve your goals” (Daily Record, Scotland). Thus, the writer who invariably expends her writer time as play time must accept her writing goal as unimportant and low on the priority list. Researcher Jennifer Crocker believes that contingencies of self-worth have self-regulatory properties (Crocker, Luhtanen, Cooper, & Bouvrette, 2003) defined as “the willingness to exert effort toward one's most important goals, while taking setbacks and failures as opportunities to learn, identify weaknesses and address them, and develop new strategies toward achieving those goals” (Crocker, Brook, & Niiya, 2006). Therefore, the weak writer must embrace her failure to stay on the manuscript page, and she must boldly confront the diversions which keep her from it.

If success “is what we can make of the mess we have made of things” (T.S. Eliot), then we want to learn from our mistakes in large ways; we want to make our mistake the stepping stone to prolificacy. Self-regulation helps us there. Marking a calendar, or clocking in and out of work, might be all that is required to help us show up for work. Imagine the lift in self-esteem when a writer sees a month filled of green checks or a word count reaching into the thousands. Being true to the writing goal begins with the decision to write and then to show up to the manuscript page. Take action; start today.