Forcing Mechanism: Good Idea?

 Something I learned about myself in college is that I need goals and deadlines in order to really be productive and push myself to get things done. While I love the freedom to write when I like, etc. I know I need to be more consistent or else things never get finished (ex. this blog's lack of consistency and the fact I have about 20 unfinished/not even really started stories sitting on my hard drive). So, in order to help give myself a bit of a push, I thought I'd recruit someone to help push me along the path. Who? Well, my grandmother, that's who. She's not someone who reads for leisure so getting her onboard to read something I wrote is really special. She's always a good sport about reading one of my stories, but she doesn't like to be sent novels in their entirety. She likes to get them one chapter at a time so they don't feel as daunting. This bit is key. Her only wanting a chapter at a time means I can send her already written chapters and keep working on the new ones. And her pace at reading those past chapters can help add pressure to me writing the next ones. 

I've used this tactic in the past to get through my first draft of my angels story (something I still need to edit/revise. #slacker), and it really helped me get through those last few chapters. So, I thought why not apply that same forcing mechanism here. Only good things can come from it right? 

Right...

Except now I'm getting stressed! Haha. What I seemed to neglect in this go around is that I only had 7.5 chapters written of this story before getting her to start reading. Whereas the angel story had at least 20 when she started. And she's not taking her time to go through a chapter like she did at the beginning of her reading the angel story either. She'd take a few days to a week to read the early chapters before she started reading one every day or two. With this story, she's reading a chapter a day and asking for the next one to be send the next day. So, while I'm glad she's reading and liking the story, I don't think I can quite match her consumption rate with my output rate. #economics 

But hey, it's making me buckle down, and while I might start dragging out the chapter releases a bit, I gotta get on it and fast! So far, I've finished up a chapter that I've been hung up on for 6ish months and have figured out a way to transition to the next phase of the story. Counting that as a win! The pressure writing is working, even if I do feel the fire at my heels and hear that whip cracking in the distance. 


Here's hoping I get another chapter written in the next day or so. She's already on Chapter 3!

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