July 1, 2009

I’ve received a lot of email from students and blog readers about the difficulties of writing during the summer. Kids are home from school, vacations are taken, company arrives. Is there a way to keep writing during the summer? Yes. You can journal through the summer.

I wrote this article (first part below, second part on Friday) for my book, Writer’s First Aid.  It’s from the section called “Work Habits That Work for You.” Hope you find it helpful!

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For a variety of reasons, writers often have difficulty writing during the summer. Your children may be out of school and underfoot, or you may have a house full of company. You may have trips and vacations planned. Warm weather may entice you onto the beach or golf course. Whatever the cause, you’re thrown out of your writing routine. Sometimes you stop writing altogether and lose your momentum. One solution? Journal through your summer.

Journaling is a hobby with many advantages. It’s inexpensive. A cheap spiral notebook will work just fine. Your journal is always available, and all you need in the way of equip­ment is a pen. Journaling can be done at any time of day, in any type of weather, for as long (or short) a time as you desire.

Are We Having Fun Yet?

Journaling is meant to be fun. Don’t put expectations on yourself during journaling time. Forget about your performance, and don’t critique yourself. Relax. Let go. Writers need a place to write where “enjoyment” is the only requirement. Ask yourself frequently, “Am I having fun?” If not, loosen up. Write from your gut. Be totally honest. If you can relax and have fun, you’ll eventually discover the natural writing “voice” within you. You won’t have to try. Your unique voice will simply flow out onto the page.

Journal the Joys

Journaling during the summer has many advantages. If you’re traveling, it can provide written snapshots of the people you see, the places you go, and the things you do. (Back home, these descriptions easily translate into nonfiction ideas or into characters, settings, and plots for your stories.) If a special event is scheduled-a wedding or the birth of a grandchild-journaling is ideal for capturing those special, once-in-a-lifetime feelings. If you’re surrounded by active children, journaling provides a practical and convenient way to capture creative ideas on the run, since a useful journal entry need take no more than 10-15 minutes.

Journal the Blues

Journaling can also be beneficial in helping you work through unpleasant feelings that sum­mertime sometimes produces. Perhaps your cross to bear is your in-laws’ yearly two-week visit. Journal beforehand, journal during the visit, and journal afterwards.

Before they arrive, write about your feelings of dread. Remember (on paper) the past visits. Describe how you hope this visit will go, then brainstorm ideas that can make that dream a reality. During their visit (perhaps late at night) journal your frustrations, failures-and successes! Use the journal for a dumping ground of negative feelings. (Be sure to hide the notebook!) After they return home, a journal can be used to process the visit. How did it go? What did you learn? What would you do differently next time? Was there improvement? (Later, these notes could become a how-to article on structuring a successful in-law visit.)

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The second part will be on Friday. Feel free to add your own ideas for journaling in the summer in the comments!

June 29, 2009

Today in a newsletter, a couple paragraphs leaped out at me. Why? Because (almost verbatim) they were the words I’d been asking myself all weekend about a project that has limped along for over a year. Here’s what jolted me:

“No matter how successful you are, likelihood is there is some idea you are dabbling with. What is in the way of you committing to this idea? To really going for it? To playing it out to see what is possible? To see what kind of an impact you can have if you just get out of your own way?

I encourage you to make a decision one way or another but to quit dabbling. Either decide to go for this idea in a way that is exciting and fun for you or let it go.”

She’s Reading My Mail!

That’s the decision I needed to make.

Over a year ago, I had an idea for a more ambitious writing project, one that would require more time, some serious study, more research than I was used to, and lots of work. I ran the idea past an agent and my critique group, and they all thought it was a great idea. I was glad–I’d been wanting to stretch myself as a writer for a number of years. This project was my chance.

I started out like a house on fire, but over the last year or so, the fire has fizzled. Hardly a spark anymore–even though I still really like the idea and the first hundred pages I’ve written. One thing after another came up, and weeks passed while I was “too busy” to write. And yet…the idea nags at me, and I actually loooong to get the idea down on paper.

So what’s the problem? I had no idea. I’ve never had this problem before, not in thirty years of writing and publishing 35 books. But I think I found the answer this morning when flipping through the course notes from Margie Lawson’s “Defeat Self-Defeating Behaviors” class. I blogged last January about her class, sharing in several posts some of her ideas that worked best for me.

Fear of Failure? Me?

I was re-reading Margie’s course introduction today and something else caught my eye. It was under the heading of “Failure to Produce” and said, “Sometimes writers keep themselves too busy with life distractions so they have excuses to not progress with their book. Are these legitimate? Or, are they protecting themselves from failing? If they never finish writing the book, they’ll never have to face the fear of rejection. What if I do my best and I still fail…”

Whammy!

There it was! I’d seen it in my students for years and encouraged procrastinating writer friends past such obstacles. But I couldn’t see it in myself! However, Margie’s words rang true. This ambitious project I had tackled had me scared. I feared that I was over-reaching my writing skills and didn’t want to face possible failure. After all, if you don’t finish your book, you can’t get rejected!

I’m hopeful–I know I’m on the right track. I have to stop now and read Margie’s next section on combatting this fear! And then I’m going to get to work. I’m eager to get back to that project and move ahead to completion.

June 26, 2009

I was shocked last week to discover that I had high cholesterol. It’s been low all my life, so I quickly agreed to try a very low fat diet for 3-4 months to see if I can bring it down without medication. I religiously write down each morsel I eat, along with the grams of saturated fat, trans fat, etc. for each item.

Just having to write things down has helped me make good choices. I definitely prefer Cheetos, but the nutritional information on the package was alarming. An apple with cheese (fat-free!) suited my goals better.

Does this have anything to do with writing? Yes, it does–so hang in there with me.

Trackers are Winners!

My best friend lost 100 pounds about five years ago, and she’s been able to keep it off. That puts her in the top 5% of people who lose weight. She now leads a recovery group helping others lose excess weight. When I asked her for some secrets of her self-discipline, she mentioned that she kept careful written track of the food she ate–daily. Even five years later, she still tracks her food intake, like the others in the top 5%.

What’s the power in writing things down? She didn’t know, but several big studies have shown that dieters who write things down lose twice as much weight, and it’s also one of the big secrets of keeping the weight off. Simply writing it down!

So, you’re still asking, what does this have to do with writing?

Keeping Track

I believe that concept works to help us attain our writing goals as well. It’s been helping me! As I mentioned in my post “The Unschedule,” I was using the “write 30 minutes and then reward yourself” system, and part of the Unschedule  involves keeping track of your writing.  Each time you work 30 UNinterrupted minutes, you can log it in. (I use a kitchen timer.) I only keep track of hours written on my current novel, time writing this blog, time studying a writing book, and time spent on my marketing efforts. (I do NOT count reading or answering email or surfing the ‘Net or reading other people’s blogs. Even though it can be tiring, it doesn’t get tracked as “work.”)

The days I keep track and write down what I accomplish are days when I write more and accomplish more. Would keeping track of our progress DAILY help us write twice as much–as dieters lose twice as much? Would it help us establish habits that will sustain us in the long run? Is that how the top 5% of writers who actually make a living at their writing manage to do it? The similarities bear thinking about!

A Separate Notebook

For my Unschedule, I have a lot of loose pages because I printed out the daily schedule on my computer. But today I ran across a journal I’d bought at least ten years ago, but I never wrote in it. It’s a LITTLE WOMEN journal, with art and quotes, and it seemed too special to write in (since my journaling tends to be a lot of griping and problem-solving.)

Today, though, I decided it would become my “work journal.” I’m going to have an official place where I DAILY write down the time spent on each writing activity. I’m not burdening myself with goals at the moment. I just want to see if there really is power in writing it down.

Please join me for the summer in this experiment. I’d like to compare notes in a few weeks. Leave a comment if you plan to try this with me–OR if you already do this and find it helpful!

June 24, 2009

This week I reviewed my goals notebook, the one I set up late last December. Even though I’ve accomplished half of the goals for the year–and the year is only half over–I felt more a sense of failure than success.

I found it puzzling…until a writer friend emailed me a link to a newsletter that discussed five reasons why goal-setting caused problems.

Shooting Ourselves in the Foot?

I’d love to have you read “When Goals Fall Flat” and then give me your feedback. In part, it says:

Goal setting, as a tool, has its utility. We all need a compass. We all need a dream that excites the living daylights out of us, helping us spring out of bed in the morning with vibrancy and enthusiasm.

[But] in my work with top executives, surgeons, artists, and athletes, I see too many people held back by goal setting; people who use this tool to set laundry lists of exercises and meaningless accomplishment measures. They are unsatisfied with their careers, out of balance between work and life.

The reason? Goal setting has five significant downsides when it comes to happiness, exuberance, and a true sense of fulfillment.

Pause and Consider

If you read the article’s five “downsides” of goal-setting, let me know in the comments what you thought of them. I think there is a lot of wisdom in this article–and the ideas presented there are worth “chewing” on. It helped me pinpoint a couple problems in my own mindset and correct them. Hope you find it helpful too!

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!

June 8, 2009

Last week I tried the “Unschedule,” a technique for breaking through procrastination found in The Now Habit, a book by Neil Fiore that I’ve referred to in “Unblock: Two Techniques,” “Five Stages of Procrastination” and “The Vicious Procrastination Cycle.” The four days that I used Fiore’s “unschedule” turned out to be some of the most productive I’ve had in a while. The one day I disregarded it (thinking I really don’t have time for these breaks–too much to do) I actually got less work accomplished!

This coming week is very full again. I’m tempted–again–to scrap the Unschedule as a bit “frivolous,” but then I remember last Thursday. I dumped it that day too–and got precious little done and didn’t even enjoy the time  off. So…I filled out my Unschedule this morning before starting this blog.

What in heaven’s name is an Unschedule?

Hooked on Play

A clue is on the cover of the book. The full title of Fiore’s book includes the subtitle: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play. An unschedule is a way that incorporates play and leisure FIRST in your schedule. Yes, you actually put FUN on your schedule before your chores are listed. Each immediate and frequent reward follows a short (30-minute) period of work. (This is instead of delaying a reward until the whole project is done.)

For example, I have a five-hour critique to do today. Always in the past, I did the five hours non-stop, then crashed with a bad neck ache and headache. Today I’ve scheduled it in small chunks with rewards interspersed frequently. I also have a phone call with a friend at noon on the schedule. I’m eager to see how it works for me.

Why Fun First?

Remember, we’re trying to overcome procrastination here–getting previously frozen people back to writing, enhancing their productivity and creativity.

“By starting with the scheduling of recreation, leisure, and quality time with friends,” Fiore says, “the Unschedule avoids one of the traps of typical programs for overcoming procrastination that begin with the scheduling of work–thereby generating an immediate image of a life devoid of fun and freedom. Instead, the Unschedule reverses this process, beginning with an image of play and guarantee of your leisure time.”

By the way, before scheduling the fun times, block out the chunks already committed elsewhere–taking kids to summer swimming lessons, a class you teach, dental appointments, lunch, commuting places, etc. It will encourage you to get started a bit quicker when you see how much free time you ACTUALLY have for your writing.

Tiny Work Loads

The other recommendation for the Unschedule is to keep work periods to thirty minutes. Thirty UNinterrupted minutes. Thirty minutes of work–use a timer to be sure–and it can’t include anything like checking email on a whim, or returning a phone call, or other distractions we procrastinators are famous for.

After your thirty minutes is up, you record the actual work done on your daily schedule somewhere, and then freely enjoy your reward. Believe it or not, those half hours add up by the end of the day. Fiore says, “Thirty minutes reduces work to small, manageable, rewardable chunks that lessen the likelihood that you will feel over-whelmed by the complexity and length of large or menacing projects.” And thiry minutes of concentrated work can mean a lot of pages piling up.

Time for me to go! I’m twenty-eight minutes into this blog, and I hoped to finish in thirty instead of my usual plodding hour-long pace. Guess what comes next? I plan to read a chapter in Gone With the Wind, my favorite summertime re-reading book.

June 5, 2009

Just this week, I read two smart ideas for quickly breaking through a writer’s block. One I already tried–it worked! Another I read this morning in my new writer’s magazine. Here they are, in a nutshell, for you to put to the test.

Technique No. 1

In the July Writer Magazine, New York Times bestselling author Alice Hoffman was asked if she ever had writer’s block. Her answer, in part, revealed a very simple idea that worked for her–and should work for anyone. “I didn’t believe in writer’s block until I had it–twice in terrible periods of my life. Both times the only way out for me was to start writing… “ Hoffman said. “I decided I would write five pages a day and not look at them for three weeks. Part of having writer’s block is feeling it’s worthless or you’re worthless and you can’t do it right. [You have to tell] yourself, ‘I’m just going to write, and I’m not going to look at it. I’m not going to judge it.’ By the time you look at it, there may be something inside of it you can use.”

And you’ll certainly be past your block if you’ve written daily for three weeks!

Technique No. 2

The second block breaker I read about this week–the one I tried that worked–was in The Now Habit book by Neil Fiore. It has to do with changing your self-defeating thinking that leads to your self-defeating behavior. He says most of us who procrastinate tell ourselves that we MUST finish this manuscript! It’s better, Fiore says, to ask the question “When can I start?” “‘When can I start?’ is the catchphrase of the producer.” This phrase needs to“automatically follow any worries about finishing and being overwhelmed; it replaces agitated energy with a clear focus on what can be tackled now.”

“Finishing” is off somewhere in the vague distance, but if you just keep on starting, the finishing will take care of itself. You can always take one SMALL step. A single small step is something you can accomplish now. Just focus on that alone. Do it over and over–and eventually you’ll finish. I tried that technique this week on a project I had put “on hold” by procrastinating on it so long. I worked only 30 minutes at a time, with a nice reward afterwards. It wasn’t hard. I just reminded myself that I only had to START…I didn’t have to FINISH anything.

Keep It Simple

While both of these block breakers sound too simple to be effective, that’s the joy of it, I think. Too often I look for something big, something new and momentous to try. In reality, the simpler the better.

Give these ideas a try and let me know what you think. Do you have other easy block busters? Be sure to share those too!

June 3, 2009

If you’re a writer and a parent (or a writer, parent and day laborer), you already multi-task. Many of you, to accomplish all that needs to be done in a day, multi-multi-task. Just this week, in a car next to me at a stop sign, was a mom putting on her make-up, talking on her cell phone, and feeding her child a snack. When the light turned green, I couldn’t watch. How did she also drive?

“Most of us have learned to multi-task when attempting to whittle down our to-do list, whether a mental list or written on paper,” says Joan C. Webb in The Relief of Imperfection. “Even time management specialists admit that sometimes we overdo it when it comes to multi-tasking.”

Survival Skill

I certainly survived the young-mom/writer years by multi-tasking. I would never have found time to write if I hadn’t. And yes, it makes perfect sense to multi-task some things, especially non-think types of activities. You can fold clothes while listening to the news, or read a magazine while you’re on hold to make an appointment.

However, things suffer when you combine two or more things that both require your brain to be engaged. Listening to your child tell about her day while you’re proofing your manuscript short-changes both.

“Multi-tasking negatively affects not only the outcome of tasks but the health of the taskers, too,” says Webb. “If it goes on very long–like for air traffic controllers, traders in a Wall Street pit or single mothers–it leads to brain rot.” [At least I learned what happened to my brain after all those years!]

Long-term multi-tasking actually lowers your effectiveness, generates mistakes, and contributes to a host of health problems. And it becomes very difficult to slow down, think about one idea and develop it, write about it, access your slower creative brain, and stick with the project for any length of time.

Mindfulness: the Alternative

Is there honestly an alternative to the chicken-with-her-head-cut-off frenzied multi-tasking that many of us use to get through our days? Yes, there is, although it may sound impossible. It’s called “mindfulness.”

According to the quote on my computer, to be mindful, you must “slow down, do one activity at a time, and bring your full awareness to both the activity at hand and to your inner experience of it. Mindfulness provides a potentially powerful antidote to the common causes of daily stress, such as time pressure, distraction, agitation and interpersonal conflicts.”

Polling the Readers

Where do you fall on the mindful/multi-tasking continuum? I think a healthy writer needs to be able to do BOTH things. Knowing when to be mindful and when to multi-task is the key for me. Often it’s something I learn by trial and error.

Are you able to multi-task like crazy, then make the switch to being a mindful writer, focused on the writing before you? Or would you benefit by being less of a multi-tasker and taking one thing at a time much more often instead? I’d be interested to hear how others–busy writers who also have day jobs and/or care for small children/grandchildren–transition from the “doing three things at once” mentality to mindful concentration that writing calls for.

Let’s pool some of our best strategies!

June 1, 2009

How is procrastination like a bridge you set on fire yourself? According to Neil Fiore in The Now Habit, it’s similar to a situation where we scare ourselves into being frozen.

Fiore says to imagine a very long flat board on the ground in front of you, and then imagine walking on it to the other end of the board. Piece of cake, right?

Then he says imagine raising that board 100 feet off the ground, reaching from one tall building to another. Imagine walking across it again. You don’t skip light-heartedly across now, do you? You worry about falling to your death–and you don’t even take one step.

Then, in the third scenario, he says to imagine you smell smoke and feel heat on your back. You turn, and the building you stand on is in flames. You’ll die if you don’t get moving. What do you do now? Without even thinking, you get across that board. You might crawl, you might sit down and scooch across, but you get across to avoid being burned to a crisp.

That’s procrastination in a nutshell. Here’s how:

Five Predictable Stages 

1. You let a task determine your self-worth. You think being successful at this task or goal will make you happy. You think your self-worth as a writer is wrapped up in this project.
2. You use perfectionism to raise the task 100 feet above the ground–like the imaginary board above. “You demand that you do it perfectly–without anxiety, with complete acceptance from your audience, with no criticism,” says Fiore.
3. You find yourself frozen with anxiety. Your imaginary difficulties with the project raise your stress level. Adrenaline kicks in. You seek temporary relief.
4. You use procrastination to escape your self-created dilemma. This brings the deadline closer and creates more pressure. You delay starting so long that you can’t really be tested on your actual writing ability (what you are capable of if you’d started sooner).
5. You use a real threat to jar you loose from the perfectionism and motivate yourself to begin. The deadline, fast approaching, acts as the fire in the building in the opening example. It forces you to get moving and actually begin the writing.

 Breaking the Cycle

The author of this terrific book (I finished it over the weekend) then takes you back to the top of that building and asks you to imagine still being frozen as you face walking across that board. Then he says to imagine NO fire, but instead a strong, supportive net just three feet beneath the board. It stretches all the way to the other building. There is no danger.

His suggestions in the remainder of the book help create that safety net. I’ll write more about them this week as I try them out. There’s hope!

May 29, 2009

There’s more to dealing with procrastination than snarling at yourself to “just do it!” I know because I’ve been snarling that line at myself for ten days. Today I feel like snarling at everybody else too! I’m caught in the procrastination trap and trying to get out.

I read something helpful about it last night. Did you know procrastination is a cycle with predictable stages? It isn’t just one feeling with one cause. That’s the bad news. I think the good news is that you can interrupt that cycle. The “how-to” depends on what part of the cycle you’re in.

Stages of Procrastination

The vicious cycle of putting things off goes like this:

• starts with feeling overwhelmed
• pressure mounts
• we fear failing at whatever we’re putting off
• we buckle down and try harder
• we work longer hours
• we feel resentful
• we get tired and lose motivation
• and then we procrastinate

Wow! I always thought the “buckle down and try harder and work longer hours” part was good! It’s how I’ve survived all these years. I certainly never considered it part of a procrastination habit or cycle.

But the cycle rings true for me–and is really giving me something to think about. “The cycle starts with the pressure of being overwhelmed and ends with an attempt to escape through procrastination,” says Neil Fiore, Ph.D. in The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Porcrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play. “As long as you’re caught in the cycle, there is no escape.”

Warning Signs of Procrastination

“But I don’t procrastinate,” you may say. Maybe. Maybe not. As I read through the list of thirty-five symptoms in the book, I realized with great shock that I responded yes to about three-fourths of the questions! (It was a shock because for thirty years, people have told me what a hard worker I was, how organized I was, etc.) But I had not considered these behaviors as symptoms of procrastination.

Things like…

• Do you keep an impossibly long “to do” list?
• Do you talk to yourself in “shoulds”?
• Are you often late arriving at meetings and dinners?
• Do you have difficulty knowing what you really WANT for yourself, but are clear about what you SHOULD want?
• Do you find that you’re never satisfied with what you accomplish?
• Do you feel deprived–always working or feeling guilty about not working?
• Do you demand perfection even on low-priority work?
• Do you feel ineffective in controlling your life?

In my book Writer’s First Aid, I maintained that you can’t find a solution to a writing problem until you’ve correctly identified the problem, and then the root cause. If someone had told me that I was a procrastinator, I would have laughed until recently. But I have to admit that the questions hit home, and I definitely recognize that cycle of feelings! Could it be that the burn-out I’ve felt this year comes from a life lived in the procrastination cycle?

I’ll be exploring the ideas for correcting this habit in coming weeks. The idea of not living in that cycle of pressure puts a little spring in my step today!

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