November 4, 2009

This month, because of NaNoWriMo, my blog posts may be shorter, but I hope just as thought-provoking for you, the writer. Today I want to share something with you that I read about dreams.

“Only dreams give birth to change,” the meditation said. “Gradually, as you become curator of your own contentment, you will learn to embrace the gentle yearnings of your heart.”

Guardian of Writing Dreams

What longings about your writing life do you have tucked away somewhere? I think we all have them. Some get tucked away until that fictional future of “when I have more time.” Others are hidden because we don’t believe that we have the skill or ability to produce the kind of writing we hold dear.

“There are years that ask questions,” said Zora Neale Hurston, “and years that answer.” Right now, with the publishing industry depressed and asking its own questions about survival, your writing dream may be on hold. [A couple of mine are too.] But this too shall pass.

Sowing Until You Reap

Don’t stop dreaming. Continue to sow the seeds of your dreams. Water them daily. Be the curator of your writing contentment. Your dreams need guarding and protecting, and you’re the only one who can do that.

Take a moment today and write down your most private writing aspirations. Name two things you can do to protect those dreams. Today, do at least one of them!

July 27, 2009

If someone graded you on self-care or self-nurturing, how would you do? Most of us–especially women–would flunk the evaluation. And if you’re also a writer, that can spell trouble.

What’s Your Excuse?

As women, we’re taught to meet everyone else’s needs before we nurture ourselves. And we do so, mostly without complaint, until we drop of exhaustion or illness. We de-value self-nurturing and self-care, putting it at the end of our lengthy list of Things To Do.

Back in 1992, during a particularly harrowing year, I bought a book that I recently re-read. I was delighted to see it has been reissued. The Woman’s Comfort Book: A Self-Nurturing Guide for Restoring Balance in Your Life by Jennifer Louden is chock full of some of the most fun and practical and specific ways you can incorporate self-nurturing activities into your life. The book was written after a year of trauma that left the author unable to write or relax.

As she put it, “I needed to trust what my inner voice was telling me, which was to slow down, take some time to care for me. But I felt too guilty about not being ambitious to heed my intuition. And so a dangerous prison formed: I couldn’t take time to care for myself because I felt I should keep working, but I couldn’t write because I wasn’t nurturing myself. What a mess!”

What’s Your Problem?

One of the best features of the book is a big chart that lists nearly eighty ailments you might have, then the corresponding short chapters that might help that problem. For example, if you feel “deprived,” she suggests the activities in the chapters entitled “Checking Your Basic Needs,” “Comfort Journal,” “A Self-Care Schedule,” “A Day Off,” “Heal Your Habitat,” and several others. If your problem is feeling joyless, you might try the chapters on “Your Nurturing Voice,” “Reading as a Child,” “Seasonal Comforts” or “Animal Antidotes.”

Her ideas are budget-minded (the only kind that work for me), and they are things you can do in your own home. For example, one chapter is on creating a personal sanctuary for yourself. I intend to use a few of her suggestions to rearrange a corner of my office, “walling off” a section with my freestanding bookshelves, moving a small rocker to that corner, adding some plants, a large framed poster of the English countryside, and a small rug to distinguish my sanctuary.

Courage, Fortitude, Boldness

The author claims that it “takes courage to make nurturing yourself a priority. It takes fortitude to meet your own needs. It takes boldness to listen to and trust your intuition.” If it’s been years since you allowed yourself to make self-care a priority, I think her statement is true. I know it was in my own case.

Ms. Louden also asserts that “deserving time to care for yourself is not something you earn…Taking care of yourself is not a reward for getting ten thousand things done today.”

Don’t Wait–Act Now!

There’s no need to wait until you’re burned out with a severe writer’s block to take care of yourself. A little daily self-nurturing goes a long way toward avoiding such conditions. And if you need someone to give you permission to do so, consider it done! I am ordering you to take good care of yourself!

Don’t know where to start? Then I really urge you to get a copy of Ms. Louden’s book and sample some of her fifty chapters of ideas. I know you’ll find something you’ll love!

July 17, 2009

“By perseverance the snail reached the ark.”

              (Charles Spurgeon)

This is a tough time to begin a writing career. It’s a tough time to continue writing! I haven’t heard any really good publishing news from my writer friends for a long time. I sense discouragement. I even heard one long-time writer say he was going to give up if he didn’t sell another book soon.

How Do I Keep On Keeping On?

“You will never get where you want to be in life without being willing to sacrifice and push through the obstacles and adversities that stand in your way,” says Joyce Meyer in her new book, Never Give Up!: Relentless Determination to Overcome Life’s Challenges. “Your obstacle may be an attitude, a set of circumstances, a relationship, an issue from your past, a thought or mind-set, a feeling, or a bad habit.”

What obstacle is standing in your way to getting published during this difficult time? Lack of training so you can bring your writing up another level? You have choices ranging from expensive MFA programs to free online writing courses and e-books. Are you impatient, expecting fast results in an instant gratification society? You may have to find ways to work on patience–and write while you’re waiting. Or is the obstacle pushing against you fear of failure, writer’s block, or some other writer malady that keeps you from producing? You have to find ways to push back–and keep pushing!

Telling It Straight

There isn’t an easy way to have the writing life of your dreams. It takes hard work. No matter how enjoyable it is, it’s also hard. And until you take consistent action steps–make real lifestyle changes–nothing much will change for you. Your writing dream will remain just that: a dream.

“Do you want to be in the same situation this time next year?” Joyce asks. “Or do you want something different? If you want to have something different, then you’ll have to pay the price on this end to have what you want on that end. You will have to spend some of this year moving toward your goals for next year.”

And you’ll have to keep pressing on when you can’t see any progress, when you get rejection slips, and when you get no answer back at all. (The “no answer” answer is becoming very common, by the way, in case it’s happening to you too.)

What’s It Gonna Be?

If you love to write–if you’ve dreamed of being a writer–then don’t give up on your dreams. I know it’s a really tough time to be a writer, whether you’re a beginner, a midlist author, or a full-time writer of many years. “You simply have to choose which kind of pain you want–the pain of pressing through or the pain of giving up,” says Joyce. ”I’m convinced there is no worse pain than an unfulfilled, dissatisfied life.”

If you know, in your heart of hearts, that you were meant to be a writer and you want to be a writer, then please don’t give up. The publishing industry has seen hard times before–and probably will again. That’s no reason to quit.

So fall back. Regroup. Plot your course of action to tackle your writing challenges. When the going gets tough, the tough get going…right?

June 17, 2009

Wouldn’t it be great if you could be inoculated against your writing fears? Get a shot that short-circuits that “fight or flight” response we have to so many things associated with the writing life?

Well, apparently you can. The shot takes about 30-40 seconds to take effect, and if I hadn’t tried it yesterday on a whim, I wouldn’t have believed it would work.

Bite the Bullet

Many things about the writing life can make us freeze. It might be starting the research on a major project. It might be writing the rough draft of that assignment, needing to pull words out of thin air. Perhaps your “fight or flight” response kicks in when you’re hit with revisions–you just don’t know where to start!

The fear inoculation shot works for all these things, according to the author of a book I just started. (I’ll review the book later if I like the whole thing.) To get your shot, begin by choosing up to three of your most stressful or worrisome tasks in your writing career. Write them in a notebook.

Since I always have major procrastination problems when working on a rough draft, that’s what I decided to use my inoculation for. I had dinked around all day getting started, and by 3 p.m. I still hadn’t written a single paragraph. So for my shot, I chose the problem of staring at a blank page while needing to write a scene.

Facing Your Foe

This is not your usual “positive imaging” approach. The 30-40 second “shot” is a mental rehearsal of you confronting your worst fear. You put yourself into that scene. (I pictured myself at the computer, looking at the blank screen and the ticking clock as my writing time seeped away.) Close your eyes and pay very close attention to what’s happening in your body. NOTE: notice how you react in the first five seconds and write these reactions in your notebook.

• note your physical changes (tension, heart rate, breathing)
• pay attention to the thoughts in your head
• listen to what you’re telling yourself

Stick With It

Instead of panicking at the fearful reactions you’re experiencing–and running for the candy or turning on the TV–sit with the fear. Take five or six slow deep breaths and stay focused on the experience you fear. If you stick with it, the author claimed, “you will shut off the fight-or-flight response and come into a calmer, more focused level of energy.”

Feeling skeptical (but desperate to get some writing done), I decided to try it. I closed my eyes, pictured the blank screen and the scene I needed to write, and immediately felt tense inside, began breathing faster, thought This is really stupid that you have to do this, and told myself You know this will never work.

I continued to breathe deeply five more times, focusing on that mental blank screen and ticking clock. And I tell you, the weirdest thing happened. By the time I’d finished the slow deep breathing, I was (without consciously trying) picturing myself writing and had no trouble beginning! I wrote for 45 minutes and got some good writing completed! Later, after answering some website email, I decided to try it again. I took another 40-second fear shot and wrote another hour!

Multi-Purpose Shot

I was so intrigued by the results that I applied the “fear shot” to a couple of personal situations I was dreading yesterday and today. I put myself into the situation, felt the fear response, but forced myself to stay there for 40 seconds. Both times, when I later had to face the situations for real, the fear was gone and they went smoothly.

I think, from now on, I’ll do a mental rehearsal before I tackle any writing task that evokes self-doubt and anxiety. I used to be afraid of shots–but not anymore!

April 24, 2009

I’ve been reading a book on how fear affects writing (and art-making of all kinds). Fear is what holds most of us back from being the writers we dream of being–and probably could be.

Art & Fear suggests that these fears fall into two main categories: (1) fears about yourself, and (2) fears of how others will receive your work.

The fears about yourself prevent you from doing your best work. Fears about your reception by others prevent you from doing your own work.

The Great Pretender  (or fears about self)

When you doubt your own abilities, you feel like a fake, an impostor. You feel like your best work was an accident, a happy fluke that you can’t seem to duplicate. It feels as if you’re going through the motions of being a writer–typing, reading how-to books and magazines, attending conferences–but you suspect that you don’t really know what you’re doing. (And we wrongly assume that all those other writers DO know what they’re doing.)

You also suspect you don’t have any real talent. After all, talented people perform their art with ease. Writers might start out that way, but inevitably you reach a point (if you’re truly working) where it definitely is NOT easy! You take that as a sign that you don’t really have enough talent to be a writer after all. (Truth: talent is a gift, and most people have enough talent. Probably 95% of success is what you do with it–and for writers, that means showing up at the page consistently.)

These fears WILL keep you from doing your best work.

Whose Priorities Count? (or fears about others)

The best writing is not produced by committee. It’s produced when a writer who is passionate about an idea is left alone to create. At these times we aren’t even thinking about others.

Problems arise when we confuse others’ priorities with our own. In our heads, we hear these critical voices. (Some come from our pasts, some from current writing friends, some from what we read in magazines and publishing journals.) Since published writers depend on reviews for sales, what others think has to matter at some point. However, when others’ opinions–how they think we should write–influences you too much and too soon in the process, you stop writing what you truly love and start writing what “they” have said is better or more salable.

Wanting to be understood is a basic need, and writers want others to understand their stories. They don’t want to be booed off the stage for being too different. (We all learned at an early age the dangers of being considered different or weird.) So the inner war continues with writers: can I find the courage to be true to what I need to write, or will I buckle to others’ opinions so I have a better chance of being received well? Buckling to fears of being misunderstood makes you dependent on your readers or audience.

These fears WILL keep you from doing your own work.

Ponder This…

Over the weekend, when you’re out walking or weeding your flower bed or riding your bike, give these two questions some thought:

What fears do you have about yourself that prevent you from doing your BEST work?

What fears about your reception by others prevents you from doing your OWN work?

And if you’re REALLY brave, leave a comment about one (or both). It will give me ideas for future topics!

April 22, 2009

My grandson (3 1/2) has always been terrified of thunder. Last week he was with me during a rare downpour. No lightning, just rumbling thunder and a curtain of rain falling from the eaves. We sat on the back porch swing, Caleb with his head tucked under my arm and hands covering both ears.

I kept swinging, enjoying the rain. When there was a rumble, he’d cringe and yell, “Nana, thunder!” After the fourth rumble, I said, “I think that noise was a plane.” (We sometimes have Air Force cargo planes that fly over, sounding very much like thunder to me.) He opened one eye, looked up at the gray sky, and said he couldn’t see any plane. “They fly up in the clouds,” I said.

But Just Suppose…

I won’t bore you with the ninety minutes we sat there, discussing the probability of the noises being planes or thunder. But by lunchtime, he was sitting up on his side of the swing, hands in his lap, and discussing a cargo plane he remembered from an air show. Noise from the sky (either planes or thunder) had continued the entire time. I was amazed that you could teach a three-year-old to re-interpret events and thus regulate his emotions.

If you’re a writer, it’s a skill you’d better learn too.

We all interpret our emotions. As Beth Jacobs says in Writing for Emotional Balance, an emotion is first a physical response, the stimulation of a pathway of nerve cells in the brain. (e.g. a specific pathway has been identified for the feeling of anxiety, which activates certain physical responses) You interpret–you make decisions about–the physical symptoms and the stimulus that caused the anxious reaction.

In Caleb’s case, his fear that the thunder would hurt him was irrational. His was a false fear. (F.E.A.R. often stands for False Evidence Appearing Real.) After suggesting just one other plausible cause for the noise, he was able to calm down and eventually enjoy being outside watching it rain. (Of course, if there had been lightning, we’d have headed inside. I wasn’t asking him to deny reality.)

So many of a writer’s fears are just like my grandson’s terror of thunder. It’s False Evidence Appearing Real. We take “evidence” like a rejection, and we birth a host of fears: I’m afraid I’ll never be published, I’m afraid the economy is too weak for me to succeed, I’m afraid I’m wasting my time writing, I’m afraid I’m too young/old to write. Or we look at our past failures and conclude, I’ll never succeed at writing either. (I remember that one well. I had tried four or five work-at-home endeavors before taking the Institute’s writing course, and I could have let those failures persuade me I’d fail at writing too.)

Re-frame and Move On

Most often, our writing fears have no more substance than my grandson’s deathly fear of thunder. Fear makes a lot of noise, but it’s just noise. When we decide to interpret circumstances a different way–one that is just as plausible–the fear will eventually evaporate.

Got a rejection? It’s just as likely that the reason is the economy, or maybe the magazine already accepted a similar piece. You have a series of failed home businesses in your past? That’s no predictor of future success. It’s much like Edison’s response when someone asked him how it felt to fail to invent the light bulb 1000+ times . He claimed that none of those efforts were failures. He had been successful at finding 1000+ things that didn’t work. He always expected the next try might be the one to succeed. Eventually, it was.

When your negative writing circumstances could be interpreted in a more positive light, do that for yourself. You’ll get rid of irrational fear, you’ll free up your creativity again (which thrives on hope, not pessimism), and you’ll be prepared for a writing career that can last for decades. Re-framing fear is not an optional skill. It’s a must-have for your writing survival.

April 10, 2009

The guy who goes to bat the most runs the most risks–and receives the most bumps and bruises. The player who gives it his all receives more scrapes sliding into home than the guy seated safely on the bench. But this player also scores the most runs. The wounds are simply part of being successful.

During the 1988 Jamboree encampment of 32,000 Boy Scouts, one troop (38 Scouts) led the entire Jamboree in cuts treated at the medical tent. The huge number of nicks from busy knives sounded negative until someone toured the camp and saw the unique artistic walking sticks each boy in that troop had made. They led the entire encampment in other kinds of woodcarving, too.

Wounds simply mean that you’re in the game. It’s true for Boy Scouts and ball players–and it’s true for writers as well.

What Wounds?

I know an excellent writer who has revised a book for years–but won’t submit it, even though everyone who has read it feels the book is ready. What benefit does she get from sitting on the bench? She never has to face rejection. She never has to hear an editor say, “This is good–but it needs work.” She never has to read a bad review of her book, or do any speaking engagements to promote her work, or learn how to put together a website. She’ll end the game with no scrapes, bumps or bruises.

She will also never feel the exhilaration of holding her published book in her hands. She won’t get letters from children who tell her how much her book means to them and has helped them. She won’t get a starred review or win an award or do a book signing. She won’t move on and write a second (and third and fourth) book.

If you want to be a writer, you have to get into the game and risk a few wounds. Figure out ways to bandage them and recover from them, but don’t be afraid of getting them. They’re simply a sign that you’re a writer. Wear them proudly!

July 2, 2008

(First read Part 1 of “Facing Your Creative Fears.”)

3. Third, if your fears are real, face them squarely and deal with them. Do you really lack sufficient writing skills? If so, enroll in a course. Study writing books on your own. Analyze the books you love best to see how those authors did what they did. Take a public speaking course if you want to be a storyteller or give talks for groups. Take an assertiveness course or get help for your codependency if nasty family members really are holding you back from trying. Work to improve, but don’t get caught in the “perfection trap” by accident. “It is indeed important to strive for excellence in creative endeavor,” says Thomas Kinkade. “It’s important to grow in skill, improve technique. But if we make a god of perfection, we risk pushing ourselves into a creative desert. We’re afraid to try because we’re afraid we won’t be good.”

“But I am afraid!” you say, terror creeping in around the edges of your voice. I know you are. I’ll tell you a secret. We all are. We wear masks to hide it, but we all deal with the fear of writing. How? We learned, finally, to do the writing afraid. We learned that fear didn’t have to stop us, that most things we could go ahead and do whether we were scared or not. We research, even if we’re afraid our idea is overdone. We write rough drafts, even when we’re afraid the whole thing stinks. We submit to publishers, even though we’re afraid that editors cringe when they spot our name on a manuscript. Of course, the magic finally occurs. After many, many repetitions, the fear disperses. It almost disappears.

Just don’t imagine that you can eradicate all your writing fears. As Ralph Keyes wrote in The Courage to Write, “Finding the courage to write does not involve erasing or conquering one’s fears. Working writers aren’t those who have eliminated their anxiety. They are the ones who keep scribbling while their heart races and their stomach churns, and who mail manuscripts with trembling fingers.”

(Come back Friday for the final words on this topic.)

June 30, 2008