Last Christmas my husband gave me a heart rate monitor for a gift. It took me a while to figure out how to use it. Actually, it took my husband setting it all up before I even put it on, but once I did, wow! Now I never exercise without it. I love being able to see how high my heart rate is. I can no longer say I think I'm working hard enough. I know just by looking at my watch whether I'm in my heart rate zone.I love after I'm done being able to review my top heart rate, my low, and my average, but most of all I love seeing how many calories I've burned.
Today after I exercised I kept the watch on while I cleaned the house for 30 minutes and I burned an extra 200 calories. Tonight I played soccer for one hour and burned 1000 calories. (see why I missed it - easy way to stay in shape).
It's such a great motivator and it's easy to see my progress, now if I can just lay off the chocolate and danishes.
Last post I said how I thought I had improved in my writing. Words are coming a little bit easier, scenes are flowing better, and my idea seems to be working. Not to say that there isn't struggles. In fact, I'm in the middle right now and we all now how hard the middle can be.
Although it would be nice to have a watch that tells you how many sentences are awesome, how many scenes are great, and It would be nice to have an actual watch that determined your progress.
What do you do to gauge your progress?
15 comments:
I used a heart rate monitor for a while when I was training to run a marathon.
But writing progress--I guess one way I guage my progress is when I look back several drafts and see where I was and where I am now.
Thanks for the interesting question.
Wow, a heart rate monitor for a gift? That's pretty cool. Even cooler is that you know how to use it. LOL
I don't guage much in rough draft form. It's mostly me mentally reviewing my plot points, what I've written etc. After the story is on file, then I reread and that's when the guaging takes place. Congrats on all those calories!
Keep the chocolate though. It has lots of health benefits. *wink*
A heart monitor would be awesome. I gauge my progress by the way I am feeling. If the writing is good, I'm happy and content. If it's not, it's back to the lappy for revisions. =)
I love the heart monitor. That is so cool. I think that it depends on what stage we're in for figuring out how to track our progress. Word Count in the beginning. In edits I'm often cutting word count but with that I often have a list of things to fix, so with that progress comes when I check things off the list.
It's so hard for me to gauge my own progress! I wish I could with a monitor too! But I find that I can see my progress best by getting a report from someone else, my editor or a reader.
If you ever find a watch like that let me know :) I try to track my progress by comparing to where I started. P.S. I have an award for you at my blog!
Oh- how I wish there were a watch for writing! My best gauge right now is my critique group.
Writing everyday is strengthening my work for sure!
Okay, Patti. I hand over the crown for the queen of analogies!!
Fantabulous! Makes me want to read your work!
Hmmm. Critiquers are a great gauge, as are the editors at my house. Speaking of, they have the final draft now and are going through it. I keep blocking out that image of them sitting at their desks with RED pens running out of ink...
Gulp.
GREAT POST as always.
Patti
Heart rate monitor would be awesome.
I don't really have anything that I use to gauge my progress writing. I do have a little word count tool on my blog. That's probably the only thing.
Yes, please send me that watch that will monitor my good and bad sentences. Great idea. :)
I suppose I gauge it by word count at first, but going back over it, the gauge switches to what other people think of it. Sad, but true. If no one else likes it, I'm definitely not doing something right. On to revisions! (At least I'm not rewriting! Whew!)
Oh, I want that writers watch!!! Sometimes I feel like we take one step forward and then two steps back in our writing. We're working on the second book in our series now and it's TOUGH. I think we're being more careful this time around because we learned so much revising the first book, but man, it's a pain in the butt.
That would be an awesome way to gauge how our writing is coming! I wish I had a wristwatch where it would flash and say, "Wicked awesome sentences, girl!"
That would be amazing.
Where are all the inventors? I want a watch like you described!
It *would* be nice to have a watch or something to determine our progress as writers!
Great blog, I'll be back (I see have several writing friends in common already!).
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