The 12 Week Year for Writers

CHAPTER 13THE WRITER'S MINDSET

In this chapter, I want to share one last important secret to making the 12 Week Year work for your writing. The secret is that no system will do the writing for you. Like any system, the 12 Week Year needs energy to make it go and the energy source is you. The more positive energy you can pour into your implementation of the 12 Week Year and your writing, the better your results will be. The natural question at this point is: How do I bring more positive energy to the game? The answer is to hone your writer's mindset.

A mindset, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is a collection of the “established set of attitudes held by someone.” Your mindset is critical because it is the ultimate source of your performance. Your mindset shapes your thoughts; your thoughts determine your actions; your actions determine your results. As Carol Dweck, Stanford psychologist and author of Mindset, writes, “…the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life.”¹

Whether we realize it or not, we experience the importance of mindset every day. Did you ever do poorly in a course that you didn't want to take? Did you ever excel in a course that you believed was crucial to your success? Have you avoided learning to play a musical instrument because you're “not musical?” Have you ever gutted through a difficult experience because you knew the reward would be worth it? If so, you've felt the impact of mindset in your day-to-day life. ...