I want to offer you a gentle end of quarter one writing check-in, one that's not based in guilt or shame. It's just an honest look at where you are in regards to your writing progress and what might help you move forward. Because this is a natural checkpoint, not just to ask what did I accomplish, but actually a much more useful question, which is is the way I approach my writing actually working for me, right? Welcome to the Write It Scared podcast. I'm your host, Stacey Fraser, a formerly repressed creative soul, turned fiction writer, story editor, and author accelerator certified fiction book coach. At Write It Scared, we tell the truth about why writing a novel is so hard by acknowledging that most writers grapple with two stories: the one they want to put on the page to the best of their ability, and the often subconscious internal story that prevents them from doing it. This show is designed to help you identify and rewrite the internal narrative holding you back while you discover and write the story you want to tell and learn all the tools to help you do that successfully. Join me each week for a new episode where we'll talk about writing to deepen our understanding of the craft and of ourselves as writers. Writing a novel is an inside job that we do not do alone. Welcome to Red It Scared. I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in. Hey writer, welcome back to the Write It Scared podcast. I'm your host, Stacey, and this is where we talk about the brave and messy and vulnerable act of writing our novels and try to figure out how the hell not to pull our hair out as we do it. If you are listening in real time, we are at the end of the first quarter of 2026, which is staggering, right? Like, how did that happen? The first three months of the year are all gone. So I want to offer you a gentle end of quarter one writing check-in, one that's not based in guilt or shame. It's just an honest look at where you are in regards to your writing progress and what might help you move forward. Because this is a natural checkpoint, not just to ask, what did I accomplish, but actually a much more useful question, which is is the way I approach my writing actually working for me? Right. So back in January in episode 86, I invited you to think about the kind of relationship you wanted to have with your writing this year, what success and consistency would look like for you when you apply the constraints of your life, not some idealized version of your writing life. So now I'm curious, how has it gone? If you haven't paused to reflect yet, this is a really good time to ask yourself, are you making the writing progress you hoped for? If not, were your expectations or goals realistic to begin with? Do you think your intentions or goals need adjusting so that they better fit your life? Or is it truly just time to put in more focused effort? And do you need more accountability to make that happen? Now these are gut check questions. They're not easy, but they are important because we can't steer our ship if we don't look down at the map every once in a while. And we need to take inventory on occasion to understand what our thought processes and actions and behaviors are driving us forward and decide whether those are in alignment with the things that we want. So I really want to stress here that this reflection is not about judging yourself, it's about gathering useful information so that you can make informed decisions to get the thing that you want, which is writing your book. So, with that in mind, I'll share how my own personal writing has gone so far this year, because I did say I was gonna share a quarterly update, a personal writing quarterly update on the podcast. So I'll tell you about the good and the frustrating and the very, very slow. If I had to summarize the last three months, I would use the words steady, not flashy, but effective. At the start of this year, I set some very clear intentions for my writing. I wanted to value consistency over intensity, progress over perfection, and the process of writing over the finish line. And honestly, those intentions carried me farther than any deadline would have because they've allowed me to just stick with it and not feel bad about not making an arbitrary mile marker. So here's what it looked like in practice. I finished the first draft of my romance novel in January, and I celebrated that for all of about 10 minutes before opening an email that was a rejection for one of the short stories I submitted. So yeah, that was kind of an emotional roller coaster day. But I did get back to celebrating, and I think I went out and I think I bought a fancy coffee. And I also uh submitted to several first chapter competitions and still have heard nothing about those. I did a cold read of my young adult suspense novel, and that helped me to realize two things that my protagonist was far too passive in the first quarter of the book, and I discovered a major logic flaw in the backstory that was going to be a big twist at the end of the book, and I had to fix that. And that was frustrating. And I've been working on this book for damn near three years. I had to be addressed. But fixing that logic took some time. It took conversations with my book coach, it took venting to my writing community, phoning a friend, and going for quite a few long walks. But after that, I rebuilt the entire scene outline to strengthen the protagonist's agency and track the plot progression and the character arcs, map the turning points, the twists and reveals, and then, you know, line out the story questions that would develop that would come up for the reader as they progressed through the story. So now I am deep in revising the first half of the book, adjusting goals and stakes and making sure the cause and effect is there. And it is heavy, slow work, but it's necessary. And I'm actually okay with where I am. So the biggest realization I think I've had in the last three months is that slow and steady works just fine if you decide to run your own race. So, looking ahead at the next quarter, the next three months, I decided I'm still not gonna set a done deadline. Instead, I'm just gonna commit to what's been working, just show up consistently. And for me, that looks like sitting down with the manuscript four or five days a week for roughly an hour, more when I can, less when life happens. And some days I thoroughly enjoy it, and other days I just want to pull my effing hair out, but I sit down and do it anyways. And and both things, both methods count because you know, books are not written in bursts of inspiration. Um, they get written in accumulated hours, and sometimes it feels like this book will never be finished. It really does. But that's a feeling, not a fact. The fact is the book will get finished as long as I keep showing up for it. And that's true for you too. So I want to turn this back over to you. How was Q1 for you? What worked? What didn't? What might you adjust to make your second quarter, make this next three months of the year more sustainable? Make your writing process more sustainable, more enjoyable, not just more ambitious. Because here's the good news small course corrections now can change the trajectory of your entire year. Got nine more months left, right? Remember, you don't have to scrap everything. You just have to do an assessment of what's working and what's not, and use that to your advantage. So if this episode sparked some reflection for you, please take a few minutes today or sometime this week to just check in with yourself. Not from a judging place, but more from the perspective as a strategist. You're somebody who wants to find a writing process and a rhythm that works for you. Of course you are. You wouldn't be here if you didn't. So use your reflection to your advantage. And remember, progress does not have to be loud and consistency isn't flashy, but it works. And if you realize that your writing isn't working the way you want it to, or that you'd like more clarity, structure, or accountability, this is exactly the kind of work that I do as a book coach. That's exactly how I help writers. You don't have to figure this all out all by yourself. Book coaching is a collaborative process where we look at where you are and where you want to go and what's getting in the way. And then we create a realistic plan for you to move forward. If that sounds like something you're interested in, you can learn more about working with me as a book coach at my website, writeitscared.co. And if you're not sure whether working with a coach is the right fit, that's okay too. Just keep showing up for your writing in whatever way works for you. Thanks for being here, writer. Keep writing, keep showing up, and keep writing at Scared, and I will see you next week. Thank you for listening to the Ride It Scared podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please make sure to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode. And please leave a review. Reviews help other writers like you find the voices and messages they need to hear to continue to write their stories. Let's lift each other up. Remember, you can be scared and still be unstoppable. I'll see you next week.