How to measure your progress as a writer

I'm old enough to realise that things go in cycles. Events, learning and in this case writing.

It's very easy to become discouraged by thinking your progress isn't fast enough. I've lost count of the number of times it's happened to me. Every time I set off on that journey of discovery I manage the beginner slopes easy enough.

Then comes a bit of an incline and whoa, I'm out of breath. Fortunately what happens then is that there's a plateau. Often we rail against the plateaux in our learning because we want to take another leap forward. . . immediately.

But just as we need to draw breath after a real incline, so we need to take stock in our writing progress. And we can turn to look back to assess how much we've learned that we didn't give ourselves credit for.

So if you're beating yourself up about not moving head, cut yourself some slack. My bet is you're further forward than you think.