I hope everyone has had a productive week. Today I want to talk about how to handle a no good, terrible week.

We’ve all had them: weeks from hell. You got sick. The kids got sick. Things got crazy at work. Life happened. Your writing routine evaporated in the chaos and no writing happened.

If you’ve just had this kind of week, my condolences :-)

Here are three tips for dealing with the week from hell.

Avoid them. Yes, sometimes life happens. But have you noticed that life seems to happen more often to some people? In the short run, there may be little you can do to prevent the occasional week from hell. In the long run, however, you have more control than you think. By clearing the decks, getting rid of toxic jobs and ‘friends,’ and maximizing stability, you can minimize the chances of other people and other “things” blowing up our days.

Save them. Did you ever have such a bad Monday that you gave up on your writing for the week because you knew you weren’t going to have the time? Try a strategy I got from a client a few years back. She always scheduled a two-hour block on Friday afternoon as a release valve. When things were going well, she either used it as a bonus writing block or treated herself to some quiet time. But when things went wrong, she knew she could keep that two-hour block free to keep making progress. What a great way to end a week from hell!

Forget them. In sports, you will often hear how important it is to have a short memory. Mistakes happen. Losses happen. The key isn’t being perfect. The key is how you bounce back. It’s easy to feel out of control, guilty, or like an unproductive person when you don’t get any writing done during a bad week. That’s just being human. What you don’t want to do is to let those feelings ruin the next week, or the one after that. After a tough week, time to recenter yourself, “forget” the week behind you, and look forward to getting back into your routine.

Happy writing!

Trevor