Why Celebration is Non-Negotiable

Regular celebration is essential to crafting a burnout-free, sustainable fiction career.

Yet celebration is also the most commonly skipped -- or delayed -- parts of the process I teach.

Authors will tell me that it's "too soon" to celebrate when they get a new book deal because it's not "official" until they have a contract. 

Or that the progress they made is "too small" to celebrate. 

Or that a big breakthrough "doesn't count" because there's still so much more work to do. 

But without regular celebration to help balance the scales of effort and reward, you run the risk of burning out and losing your creative spark.

So today, I'm making the case for regular celebration: why it matters so much for your creative joy and career longevity, and then how to make it a simple, regular part of your writing life.

Understanding Your Brain: The Motivational Triad

If you're not writing consistently -- if you regularly procrastinate at the start of writing sessions or skip them altogether -- a lack of celebration is often (part of) the reasons why.

Most of us have been taught that the key to being consistent is willpower and discipline.

Except ... willpower is a finite resource. It depletes with every decision you make throughout the day. And discipline? Well, that tends to be punitive and involves fighting with the natural way your brain works. 

Instead of trying to use willpower and discipline to force ourselves to write (and as we all know, "forcing" creativity rarely works), we can tap into the natural way that we're wired to build desire to show up to the page and write our books. 

The most primal parts of the human brain is concerned with one thing and one thing only: survival.

The brain is motivated to keep us alive, and to do that, it prioritizes three things. Avoiding pain. Seeking pleasure. Conserving energy. We call this The Motivational Triad.  

Now, our brains have not evolved yet from the days when this system was on the lookout for the alligators, tigers, and other predators that were going to eat us. It isn't able to distinguish between the fear response of "omg, that bear is about to attack!" and the fear response of "omg, what if my editor hates my book!" To this part of your brain, those are equally fatal dangers. Logically, we know that getting a tough edit letter isn't a matter of life or death, but that doesn't stop our system from freezing up (which then makes it hard af to feel creative enough to come up with useful story solutions!). 

When we avoid celebration, we end up in conflict with two of those pillars of motivation. 

Without a regular celebration practice, your brain learns that writing is painful, doesn't provide any pleasure, and requires a lot of your energy. This is especially true if you end writing sessions thinking things like:

I'm still so behind. I'll never catch up.

That scene is shit - I'll have to rewrite the whole thing. 

Eh, this session was good, but I'll probably hate it all tomorrow.

Instead, when you anchor each writing session with celebration, you skip those painful thoughts and replace them with ones that create positive feelings (aka pleasure).

Things like:

I really love the banter in this scene.

I'm so proud of myself for writing something when I was tempted to skip it.

I'm glad I started this scene. Even though I didn't finish, at least I'm set up for success tomorrow. 

The more often you celebrate at the end of each writing session (I'll walk you through exactly how to do that in a second), the more you looking forward to writing and the more consistently you show up.

Celebration as Burnout Prevention

Celebration does more than help us write consistently (though that alone is very helpful!). It also prevents burnout.

Burnout is a multifaceted issue, but one key warning sign that you're on the road to burnout is when the gap between the effort you put into something and the reward you experience is too wide.

Working hard toward a publishing goal without getting any positive emotional reward is a fertile ground for creative blocks, frustration, and ultimately burnout. This is especially true when we don't allow ourselves to celebrate until we hit major (external!) milestones - like getting a new book deal or selling a certain number of copies. 

It looks a little something like this. You burnout before you get to the reward: 

Now, we can't eliminate effort from the equation entirely. Writing books takes time, energy, and sustained creative focus. We have to show up and put in the work to write our books. (There are, of course, ways to avoid making that work harder than it needs to be, but that's a conversation for another time - and something I work on with my coaching clients.) 

When we introduce regular celebration into your process (including celebrating all the little steps along the way to bigger goals), we bridge this gap by increasing the reward side of the equation. 

This time, the gap is small enough for the intrepid author to make it over the gap. 

Every time you celebrate your progress -- whether that's celebrating that you showed up to the page instead of procrastinating all the way through achieving a major publishing milestone -- you increase the amount of emotional reward writing and publishing provides you. It closes the gap between effort and reward, which decreases your risk of burnout. You're able to make it across the gap. 

You're able to keep writing, because it's something that brings you joy, purpose, and fulfillment outside of the external accolades of publishing.

What (and When) to Celebrate

There is nothing too small or too big to celebrate, and I encourage you to celebrate both the daily progress that's within your control and the external milestones that are part of the publishing process. 

Here are some examples of process-based things to celebrate:

• Showing up to write on a day you would have otherwise skipped it 
• Figuring out a key piece of character or plot that unlocks the story 
• Finishing a section of your book (Act 1, Act 2, etc.)

Of course, there are the major external milestones:

• Selling a book
• Earning out your advance 
• Winning an award or showing up on a "best of" list 

But don't forget the smaller ones, too:

• Hearing from a reader who loved your book 
• Getting blurbs from authors you admire
• Your editor emailing to say they loved your revision 

Be careful that you don't withhold celebration until things are "final" or "official."

An editor reaching out to say they loved your book and are taking it to acquisitions deserves to be celebrated! Don't wait until the formal offer comes in to let yourself feel proud of writing a book that resonated.

And despite what your brain may tell you, you can't "jinx" yourself by feeling proud of reaching this step. Regardless of whether the publisher ultimately offers on your book, making it to acquisitions is worth celebrating! Celebrate early and often. As much as you possibly can. 

 
Celebration Can Be Simple

I want you to take advantage of every opportunity to celebrate: after every single writing session, any time you meet a mini milestone, and whenever big stuff happens, too. 

Celebration doesn't have to be complicated or time consuming. It can be as simple as taking 2 minutes to jot down what you're proud of and then paying attention to how that emotion feels in your body.

Really, it can be that simple.

You finish a writing session, jot down in a notebook or journal (or even just say in your head): "I'm so glad I showed up to write today. I'm proud of ______." Then let yourself feel all the warm fuzzies that come with that. This activates the "seek pleasure" part of The Motivational Triad and teaches your brain that writing feels good and isn't something to be avoided. 

For slightly larger celebrations (say you finish the first draft of a new project), I recommend setting aside 5-15 minutes to journal about the accomplishment. Avoid the temptation to use this as a time to note all the things that still need to be fixed in the book. Instead, focus on what you love about the story, how you displayed resilience to get it done, or pride in how much you focused on creative joy throughout the process. 

You can learn more about the different ways to celebrate by checking out this podcast episode, which includes how I celebrated turning in With All My Haunted Heart. 
 

Final Thoughts

I hope this issue of Real Talk for Writers has convinced you of the importance of celebration.

Increasing celebration is the first line of defense whenever you're struggling with burnout, avoiding your book, or otherwise feeling #NotGreat about your author career. It's why I start every coaching session with celebrations, end each writing session with them, and even begin each weekly planning session by celebrating the week before.

I'd love to know what you're celebrating. Reach out to me on Instagram to let me know what's going well in your writing life and author career. 

Happy writing,
Isabel 

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