#Preptober Day 4: Rewards time

Posted at 12:29 am by Jamie Provencher, on October 23, 2018

Imagine the old scene where the farmer dangles the carrot just a little out of reach. The horse or ox keeps moving forward at the sight of the delicious, juicy, crunchy carrot.

A good question to start asking yourself is what is your carrot?

Last year was an amazing year for video games. And if there is one thing that I love after writing and reading, it’s playing video games. With the release of the Switch, Zelda, Mario Odyssey, Wolfenstein II, and South Park: The Fractured Butt Whole I had a lot of things to distract me last November.

My original goal had to be to just NOT play games for the month of November. I know. I’m also not sure why I gave myself such an impossible task but there was one thing I was willing to admit: I tended to spend my free time, free time that I needed in order to be successful during NaNoWriMo, playing video games.

So it made sense initially to just deprive my self completely of them. Go cold turkey.

It didn’t go so well. So instead, I turned it around and said “I need to complete my 1667 words BEFORE I play any video games.” And once my words were done, I could play games carefree.

One of the major failures that many people face is completely giving up what they want to achieve their goal. But instead of giving up your joys during what can be a very stressful and heart-wrenching month, why not reward yourself with the items you enjoy?

Use Milestones such as every 5k to treat yourself to your favorite dessert. Tell yourself you can read one chapter of your favorite book after you finish your first 500 of the day. Find ways to reward yourself as you push yourself.

Do you have a reward plan to push yourself to success? Let us know what works of you in the comments!

Author: Jamie Provencher

Most girls dreamed of being a princess or a warrior. Jamie dreamed of both. Spending her days running around in the woods, Jamie spliced together different worlds to create her own unique one. The only things that stayed the same was the balance between good and evil in her characters: oh and fire. Oh and cats. One day her dreams were shattered. She had become too old for make-believe. For a panicked moment, the world was lost, and then she discovered writing: make-believe that was accepted. Even with a strong background of video games and 80’s cartoons, she was really only interested in talking animals. One fateful date in 6th grade, the 11 year old Jamie was forced to read The Book of Three By Lloyd Alexander. The thought of reading something without talking animals (even though her teacher assured her that the was a “talking” pig) was unbearable. She only agreed after being told that someone would be reading it to her. The book changed her life and Jamie jumped from talking animals to the deep rich fantasy that had plagued her imagination as a child. From there, she began to write original fiction, crossovers, and fan fiction. She attended the Maine School of Science Mathematics for high school. She then ran away to Umaine for her BA in Creative Writing and finally ending her school career with a MFA in Creative Writing from Full Sail University. She currently lives in Maine with her two beloved Corgis. You can read her blog and other writings at https://curiouswitch.wordpress.com/

Jamie Provencher