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Monthly Archives: February 2012


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Don’t do this unless you’re willing to change

Photo by Pink Sherbet Photography

Today is my fifty second consecutive day of writing Morning Pages on 750words.

It’s been an amazing process.

It’s generated new story ideas. It’s triggered me seeing it really is possible to make a huge change, like quitting the Day Job. It’s helped me see unhelpful thought patterns, the excuses I use, the limits I set on myself.

 Like the one I wrote about yesterday.

There’s a saying- “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.”

And it’s true. Nothing can change the past. But we can stop recreating it in our grown up lives.

Maisey Yates wrote this in her blog yesterday, in response to me sharing that story about dad and the book I made him -

The words people speak into your life, especially influential people, have a lasting effect. There is no denying that. However, for all the support my parents gave me, they couldn’t MAKE me succeed. Yes, their confidence bolstered mine. But they couldn’t make me write the book, or submit it. They couldn’t make me put in the work, and they couldn’t do it for me.

And the people in YOUR life who have said negative things to you can’t stop you. Words do have power. And when you’re coming from a place with no support, from a place where someone has disrespected and degraded you, I know you have more to overcome than I can even begin to understand.

But those people don’t get the final say. They don’t get to hold you back. You have a purpose, and you have gifts, and no one has the right to discourage you from those things. And their words don’t deserve to carry weight.

They don’t.

I need to stop blaming other people for what is in my life that I don’t like right now, my parents, my husband, my boss. I need to start taking responsibility for my own choices, and I need to stop beating myself up. Blaming them for limiting me, and then beating myself up for  letting them limit me, this does not help one itty bitty iota to change things.

What changes things is choosing to let go of my limiting beliefs I formed out of that situation. What changes things is choosing to stop using those limiting beliefs as excuses.

That’s the biggie. That’s the real crunch place. I’ve been using those limiting beliefs as excuses.

I have created the perfect wrong situation, where I can’t fail because I don’t try, and I don’t try because it’s someone else’s fault. The only problem is, I can’t succeed either. and I can’t be happy, because I’m living a smaller life than I could be. I’m still stuck with that desire and drive and need in me to write, to create those stories, to make those little books of mine. Not trying keeps me safe, and it makes me miserable.

So I need to do to give that little girl who wanted to make books the books she dreams of. I need to let her write. and let go of the excuses. The excuses feel safe and secure and free of failure, which is what my father was trying to protect me from, in his cack-handed but loving way.

Failure hurts. But maybe safety’s not all it’s cracked up to be either. The stories never get told. The books never get made.

No more excuses accepted here. 

I want awareness of them, those excuses. I want to be very aware of my negative self-talk, instead of suppressing it.

So when it comes again, instead of ignoring it or using food and drink to suppress it or getting angry and resentful and not-fair and poor-me, I will gently talk to it. I will tell it- ”Thank you for trying to protect me. but I don’t want to play it safe any more. I want to take this risk. I want to tell the stories and make the books. I want to write the best stories I can.”

That means the little girl needs to write with me. She’s the creative genius. She’s the wild mind. Grown up me can only correct the grammar and spelling and give the story a bit more shape, once it’s written. Grwon up me interefering in the first draft makes for dull dead boring stories and the little girl goes and sits in the corner and sulks because i told her she could play, but she’s still getting stopped, criticised, told her writing’s not good enough.

She makes up the stories, for fun. Grown up me can’t make up the real good stories.  Grown up me needs to butt out. I can only stop making crappy excuses, stop criticising her stories, and let her write. Grown up me can stop being Dad. Grown up me can know my place, letting her create the stories then taking them from her, gently and lovingly, once they’re finished. Then I get to edit them. Maybe with tough love, but still with love, and with acceptance, and with thanks for the gift she’s given me of sharing her stories.

And if nobody wants to read them, that’s their loss. The stories have been told, like they needed to be.


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Clearing away the clutter

Photo by Pink Sherbet Photography
 

I haven’t posted this week because I’ve been in a black hole, pathetic and sorry for myself. It felt self-indulgent to post what was coming out in my morning pages, maybe disloyal to my family and husband and too self revealing as well.

And I had no writing to report. Nada, zilch, a big fat nothing, zero, nought.

Well, maybe not totally nil, but not anything I could point to and say, “Yes, I’ve achieved this much this week.”

A couple of the Sassies were discussing Billionaire and Baby stories, and a whole new idea came to me pretty much fully formed in the time it took me to get the train halfway home from work. And it has strong characters with GMC and everything! It’s very different to my usual sort of story, but I’m looking forward to writing this one.

But in the meantime, what about the morass of half-finished stories I already have?

I’ve played around some with my Wrong Bed story, having fun with that, but I stopped myself by telling myself I needed to know more about the characters before I wrote any more. (Okay, it wasn’t me who said that to myself first, it’s a workshop I’m doing.) Well, I tried, but all I ended up with was a pile of overcomplicated stuff that just didn’t feel true for the characters. The workshop is great in many ways, but I know for this story, I need to just write and let it happen however it happens and find the characters that way. So it may not produce a saleable book, but it’s what I need to do right now.

Jackie did a fab post on the Sassies blog about this. About letting go and writing for herself, for the pleasure of creating a story. That’s so much what I want to do. Stop stressing about all the rules and the have-tos and writing for a market, and just write for the pure joy of it.

So what’s stopping me?

The same thing that’s stopping me writing any more on my Spring Fling accidental cougar story. I know I need to tap into emotion. Anger, passion, pain.

And I’m afraid to. Because a whole lot of past pain has jumped up and bit me on the bum. A whole lot of doubt and negativity about writing and things I’ve believed were true for a long long time. I’m a bottle of pure rage and resentment and self-pity, 175% proof. I don’t want to take that lid off, unscrew that cap, let that particular spirit out of the bottle, ‘cos I’ll never get it back in there again. Of course, what’s needed is to really let it go, and then throw away that bottle too.  I won’t need it any more.

I can’t write wild if I’m hiding from all my unpleasant emotions and cutting myself off from joy. By acknowledging, revealing, and dealing with those emotions in myself, I can also mine them for my characters and my writing.

Right now, I’m skating on the surface myself. The surface of old hurts and fears and resentments. So no wonder my characters skate on the surface too. I can’t dig deep to get to their real emotional pain when I’m busy avoiding my own.

I’m not sure why it’s come up so strongly now, I suspect in response to me making the move towards writing full-time. My internal saboteur, trying to keep me safe from being hurt, told me it was selfish and self-indulgent. That didn’t work. So it’s pulled out its big weapons, the psychological photon torpedos.

Now I grew up in a very negative family. My parents weren’t just not encouraging, they were actively discouraging. There were lots of times hurtful things were said, but I’m remembering one particular episode, when I was about ten. I loved making up stories and spent a lot of writing them and making little stapled books. I wanted to write, more than anything. One day Dad complained he had nothing to read. So I went away and wrote him a story and made a little book for him. I don’t remember what it was, but I think some sort of adventure story, probably involving boats.  I gave it to him, and he threw it away without even reading it telling me it wasn’t a real book, it wasn’t good enough, and I didn’t write well enough for him to want to read it.

So casually, unintentionally, destructive.

And forty years later, I’m still carrying around that voice echoing in my head telling me I can’t write and I’ll never write a real book and that nobody wants to read my stories.

Of course, I shouldn’t let it affect me. I should be able to forget and rise above that. I’m a big girl now and I should be able to write how I want without needing support and encouragement. When I look honestly at how I feel, a lot of the rage is with myself, not him. He didn’t know better, I do. He didn’t mean me to take it that way. I wrote well for a ten year old, but he didn’t want to read a ten year old’s story. I know that intellectually. Yet I still let his stupid unkind words run my life.

He wanted to be a writer, I think, except his Dad made him leave school at 14 and do something practical. How the destructive family patterns get passed on! He read a lot, and I am grateful to him for passing on his love of books, as well as those bloody “you can’t do that” messages. Now I just need to prove him wrong.

I can do it. I will do it, I’m going to do it. That hurting upset little girl who had her precious gift of love flung back at her can have a big hug from me, not more abuse with me telling her she should have been strong enough to not let that affect her. She didn’t stop writing, not then, not ever, but I realise that was when I gave up the dream of being a “real writer”, someone who lived by their stories.

So now I need to be the good parent. I can tell her the truth. Tell her “Your writing is good enough. You can do it. People do want to read your stories. You can make money writing. You can write real books. You can.  I’m going to set things up so it’s safe for you and so you can write as much as you want.”

I can take her stories from her and read them and treasure them, not keep on repeating repeating repeating that old pattern and flinging them back in her face, telling her they’re not good enough. Because that’s what I do everything I let my critical editor mind butt in during first draft and say what’s wrong with it. Stops the writing dead. Of course, the stories will want editing, but first draft isn’t the place to do it!

I’m the one stopping myself now. I’m blaming my father for discouraging me, and yes, it’s regrettable it happened like it did. How much nicer and easier would it have been to have encouraging parents, not depressed angry resentful ones. But the past is past. Right now, I can stop recreating that pattern, stop being depressed and angry and resentful myself.  

A big part of my preparation for quitting the Day Job  in September is a sort of emotional and physical clearing process. I’m looking at my limiting beliefs, wanting to break bad habits of unhelpful thinking. I’m working on my eating patterns trying to eat cleaner, so I’m going through the kitchen cupboards and throwing out all the old out-of-date-never-going-to-get eaten food. The two processes are amazingly similar!

Just like I’m finding seven years out of date food in the cupboard that needs to be chucked in the bin, I’m finding forty year old beliefs that I took on. Some of the food is fine still in date and edible, it just doesn’t suit how I want to eat now. I’ll box that up and take it to the homeless shelter. Somehow I don’t think those beliefs I don’t want any more will be boxed up  and given away so easily, but maybe they can!

It’s time to start telling myself a different story. A story where the book that little girl made gets read. A story where she gets all the love and support and encouragement she needs. Now it’s time to stop believing it and just do the work/ play of writing, without all that crap from the past getting in the way.

Hugs to anyone else experiencing doubt and discouragement.

Living well and doing what each of us knows in our heart is right for us, no matter what anyone told us otherwise, is definitely the best and only satisfying revenge. Continuing to give them power over us by making ourselves small makes everyone lose out- them for being so tied up in their own limitations they couldn’t see what a precious gift of a human being they had in front of them, and us for letting them make us choose to become less than we were.

It’s taken a long time but I’m learning it at last – being small doesn’t make those people who’ve tried to make us smaller feel better like they hoped it would. So let’s be all we can be, the biggest, best, most loving, most self-nurturing selves we can be.

And let’s give our gifts of story to the world, those little and not so little books from our hearts.


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Tipping ourselves over

“We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.”
― Ray Bradbury

 
I love this quote. So many aspects to it.

Allowing ourselves to be filled, connecting to that incoming flow. Quiet, it doesn’t shout to announce itself or pound on the door demanding to be let it. It waits, waits as long as it takes, waits for us to open to it and let it in. We need to trust that we have an endless supply of story. Our ideas will never desert us. Our imagination will always be there. Our creative selves are permanently part of us. Sometimes we keep the door locked, but it’s not our story that has failed, it’s our courage to be open to it.

Then, if we let ourselves be filled, we still aren’t done. Allowing ourselves to tip over takes real courage, a willingness to be off balance, to fall. A willingness to be spilled, to be broken in two, to let our hearts be broken. A willingness to feel, so deeply, to let our characters’ pain be our pain, to let their love and joys be our love and joys. It needs a sense of enough abundance , so that we can let go of what we hold within us. Knowing we can empty ourselves, trusting we will be filled again.  We don’t need to hold on to what we have like a miser.

Then allowing the beautiful stuff out. This is hard. Because it doesn’t look beautiful at first. It can look messy, dirty, unacceptable. We hold back on the beautiful, not wanting to let anyone see the ugliness we know we hide. The “not nice” emotions. The chaos. The grittiness. The mistakes. We’ll keep holding on, holding back. How can we let anyone see that part of us. How can we risk being rejected?

If we aren’t willing to be filled, we have nothing to give the world. If we aren’t willing to be broken, we can’t feel the emotional truth of our stories, and we can’t let them come out into the world. Unless we let them come out, no one will ever see the beauty we hide. The stories only we could tell will never be told. The world will be a smaller place.

Never think your story isn’t important enough to matter, that it’s too little, that it’s no loss. Your story is your story, and you have no way of knowing whose heart it could touch, or whose life it could change.



 Photo by lostintheredwoods


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Staying positive

I read this quote from an interview with writer Amy Spencer at GalleyCat, about staying positive as a writer -

It’s our passion. Some people grow up and live an entire lifetime without having a passion. They can’t figure out what they want to do, they try to do different things, but nothing really clicks in their soul. As hard as writing can be, it is worth remembering that you have something you know you are passionate about … I would rather be doing this than hiking to some particular job in some particular office, doing something that didn’t feed my soul in any way at all.

It’s also helpful to remember that the more you write, the better you get. Always. Whether you are writing a blog post, the fourth version of your novel, grants or technical writing to pay the bills. Whatever you are writing, it is making you better. There is no lost time, there is no lost cause, there are no lost words. Everything is going towards something good.
 

There’s also an MP3 here.

I love her concept of emergency optimism, as a tool we can call on when needed. She believes we can all train ourselves to be more positive and optimistic. She talks about seeing the hard slog of writing as a “present to our future”.

I need to remember that, when I feel that I am wasting time. When the writing doesn’t seem to be moving forward. That chapter that didn’t work and was binned. That character stuff I wrote and never used. That sub-plot that I had to rip right out because it added nothing to the story. That 100 page false start. The workshop exercises that will never be part of a story. All that is making me a better writer. A stronger writer. A writer who’s not afraid to edit.

Hopefully, a writer who learns how to write good, emotionally deep and powerful stories that can give my readers joy.


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Quitting the creativity killers

I’m in the crazy mixed up state of simultaneously angsting about and happily anticipating quitting the Day Job in September.  I know it’s not a logical or sensible decision, of course. I’m not yet published. Even if I was, unless a writer cracks one of the big publishers, it can be hard to earn enough to live on from writing.

But hey, I’m doing it anyway and seeing what happens. Maybe I’ll step off this cliff and fly.

 Last year, I sat for hours on a headland near Sydney. A warm sunny day with a gentle sea breeze. Big sky, and endless ocean. I went to watch for whales, ended up watching the paragliders. Those guys do literally step off the cliff and fly.

Except when they don’t.

The first time I saw one drop over the edge and not come back up, I worried. Was he broken and bleeding on the rocks? Caught up on a tree or an outcrop half-way down? Should I do something? I’m scared of heights. I didn’t dare go close enough to the edge to look over.

Just when I thought I’d have to look, he reappeared. Trudging up a path I hadn’t noticed before along the side of the cliff, carrying his parachute.  I peeked over the edge. There was a small grassy patch between the hard cliff face and the rocks at the water’s edge. Perfect for a soft landing.

The paraglider unfurled his purple and lime parachute again. Waited for the wind to fill it. Waited some more. Stepped off the edge again. This time, he flew.

I hope I do too.

At least I know, if the parachute of my writing ability is too small and flimsy to carry me, I can use the handy dandy back up chute of part-time work. And there’s just enough money in the bank to give me a soft landing.

I’m using the next seven months doing all I can to prepare. Writing a bit differently, not for publication but to build my skills, playing around and having fun with new ideas and new ways of doing things. I’m trying out new methods, like times free writing. I’ll be learning practical skills I should have done a long time ago like touch typing and voice recognition software. I’m figuring out how I can give myself a better writing space. Sitting crossed legged on the bed with the netbook on my lap may not be the most ergonomically sound way to do it when I’m writing six to eight hours most days!

I’m reading lots of different blogs. I’m working on building good habits to help me write, and working on breaking the bad habits, the ones that get in the way. The habits holding me back that I need to quit, before I quit the Day Job.

At Copyblogger, I read this-  8 Bad Habits that Crush Your Creativity And Stifle Your Success

Here’s their suggestions for habits writers wanting to be more productive and more creative need to break-

1. Creating and evaluating at the same time

Most people evaluate too soon and too often, and therefore create less.

Something I’m learning is a key problem for me. I’m constantly judging what I write, as I write. Correcting, finding fault, criticizing. The two elements of writing, drafting and editing, need to be kept separate. Some writers like to do the first draft all the way through then leave it sit a few weeks before editing. Some writers like to write a few pages then wait a few minutes before going back and editing them.

What’s key is not trying to do them both at once. Do, and chances are you’ll end up with dull, stilted, lifeless but grammatically correct story like me! I’m doing a “Care of the Muse” course with Mary O’Gara over at Savvy Authors this month. She talks about the creative process and how important it is to . First use one part of the brain, tell it to switch gears, then use the other. Something as simple as getting up and walking around the room between drafting and editing is enough.

What we haven’t got to yet is how to turn that internal editor/ inner critic/ bloody pain in the butt off long enough to do any drafting in the first place. If anyone has any tips on how they do that, please let me know and I’ll give them a whirl!

2. The Expert Syndrome

Every writer’s path to success is different. There’s no right or wrong way to do it. What works for someone else won’t work for us. I’m exploring different ways of doing everything to discover what works for ME.

Also in this category is the “You can’t sell a story with that in it so don’t bother writing it.” Someone has to be the first to create that new subgenre that five or ten years ago was impossible to sell. Vampire stories. Stories about sheikhs and princes. Stories about wizards and witches set at boarding school. One writer had to invent or reinvent these categories. If you believe in your story and your characters, write it, even if no-one else is writing anything like it. The best way to be the next JK Rowlings by creating a new genre, not copying what’s already out there.

I’m not sure that will be me, but what I do want is to discover the stories I want to write and I can write, not write poor imitations of other people’s stories.

3. Fear of failure

No one wants to make mistakes or fail. But if you try too hard to avoid failure, you’ll also avoid success.

This is a biggie for me and so many writers. Not subbing because we don’t want the rejection, or my personal method, subbing first draft or close to it, so when the rejection hits I can brush it off using that as the excuse. “Oh well, I didn’t submit my best work.”

Well, why the frick not? There’s a not so fine line between holding onto a story forever, reworking and reworking it because “It’s not ready to sub yet,” and submitting dreck.

4. Fear of ambiguity

Unfortunately, life is not neat and tidy.

Good writing isn’t necessarily neat and tidy either. A work in progress needs permission to be a mess. Only final versions ready for subbing need to be neat. I need to drop my bad habit of constantly stopping myself when I’m in full writing flow to go back and correct typos, then by the time I get back where I was I’ve lost my momentum. Multiply this by a hundred or more times per writing session. That’s a lot of lost momentum. A lot of creative thoughts short-circuited.

Maybe if I could live with messier first drafts, I’d write more and better.

5. Lack of confidence

When you understand that ideas often seem crazy at first, that failure is just a learning experience, and that nothing is impossible, you are on your way to becoming more confident and more creative.

Instead of dividing the world into the possible and impossible, divide it into what you’ve tried and what you haven’t tried. There are a million pathways to success.

Time to stop limiting myself. Try doing the crazy thing (like giving up a job to write full time when I’m unpublished!) for a change, just to see what happens. Have fun. Have adventures. Believe that whatever happens, I can pick myself up and carry on.

6. Discouragement from other people

Even if you have a wide-open mind and the ability to see what’s possible, most people around you will not. They will tell you in various and often subtle ways to conform, be sensible, and not rock the boat.

Ignore them.

Can’t add much to that. Except to say thank goodness for the internet. For writing buddies I’ve never met. For people who get why I want to write romance and don’t say “But why don’t you write a real story?” For people who understand that just because writing is hard work and I haven’t succeeded on the first, second, or even the tenth submission, that doesn’t mean I can’t write and should stop.

7. Being overwhelmed by information

Acting on a good plan today is better than waiting for a perfect plan tomorrow.

I love the research stage of writing a story! Getting to know new characters. Finding photos that fit how they look in my head. Doing nifty character charts for them. Googling details of their jobs, where they live. Working out turning points and story structure and filling in more charts for that. It’s fun. And it’s possible to spend weeks doing it and not actually write a single story word. It can become a way of procrastinating, avoiding the scary real work of writing, avoiding finishing a story, so I don’t have to sub, so I don’t have to face another R.

Some writers swear by all this pre-writing. I’m not actually convinced I’m writing any better and screwing up my stories less. I’m still missing key points. I’m still having to do major rewrites that change the story completely. I’m still needing to write half the story before I feel I really know who the characters are and how they act.

I’m not going to stop doing those prewriting things. I do recognise I need to limit them though. Knowing when I have enough to start, and then starting. That’s what I need to do.

8. Being trapped by false limits

Be open to anything. Step outside your comfort zone.

If you’d asked me three years ago if I thought I could lose 60 pounds in a year, I wouldn’t have believed it possible. If you’d asked me last year if I thought I could save over half of my salary, I would have told you it couldn’t happen. For a long time, I wouldn’t have even considered trying to do either. Yet I’ve done both of those. Maybe I can achieve the equally impossible, and make a go of it as a writer! Where else are we limiting ourselves, telling ourselves something just can’t be done?

So, I feel good to recognise these things. Because what I’m aware of, I can change. No beating myself up for not being Mrs Perfect yet allowed!

What about you? What are the habits you’ve already broken that were holding you back? How did you crack them? What habits do you still have that could be holding you back?


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Maisey on Letting Go of Our Writing

 

Image by Capture Queen

Fab post over on the Sassies blog on learning to let go of our writing once we hit send, from the talented and awesomely prolific Maisey Yates!

These lines especially resonate with me, with what I’m thinking about and knowing I need-

But what it all comes back to is this: I can only control what’s happening on my computer, in my word document. I can’t control what happens next. And worrying about it impacts my writing in a negative way. That is not okay!

It’s not easy, and it doesn’t mean I’m able to be zen every day, but it’s been a conscious effort on my part to let go and move on.

Take control on your end. Write the next MS, apply what you’ve learned. Submit. Submit a lot. Because editors can’t buy a manuscript they don’t have. Don’t let fear stop you. Send it out, let it go, and write the next one.


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How to double daily word count, some new writing plans, and a laugh

Tell me you’re a writer who doesn’t want to increase their daily word count, and I won’t believe you.

Oh course, it’s not just about writing more, it’s got to be about writing well. But sheesh, especially when I’m first drafting, I want to whiz through the story, writing well be damned. That’s what edits are for.

I’ve had a couple of periods of amazing productivity, where I’ve written first drafts in ten days. I’ve had other times where I’ve struggled to produce a miserable 10K in a month. Of course, those lightning drafts were not good, they needed a lot of work in the edits. But there was a lot that was better about them than the stuff I’ve written slower. A liveliness, an immediacy, a flow, that I lose when I’m editing as I go. Now that might be more about editor mind messing with creative muse mind.

My editor mind has a lot to learn still, both about not interfering with the part of the creative process they need to butt out of, and about craft skills! Actually, it was editor mind that got both those super fast drafts rejected too, where I went wrong with both those stories was messing up the edits and losing the essenece of the story. Not that the stories were publishable as they were, they were the crappiest first drafts ever, but they both had the seed of a good story in them. I want to have another go sometime at editing them up into the stories they want to be.

It will be a challenge!  Those Book in a Week drafts had lots wrong with them. I missed the point entirely at times. Rambled off on side stories and subplots that didn’t add to the main story. What I’d love, is to write fast and good!

Or at least, less drecky than I do now.

So this post I read today seems just awesome. Writer Rachel Aaron went from writing 2,000 words a day to writing 10,000 words a day, and even better, more focused, better words a day. Now I can’t see I will ever write 10K a day (think I’ve once cracked 7K).

Her secret- she has a three-pronged approach she credits with drastically increasing her word counts.

1. Knowledge- know what you are writing before you write it. Rachel started doing handwritten notes at the start of each writing session, outlining the scene she wanted to write, taking maybe five minutes to sketch out what needed to happen. I did that with the second full story I wrote, four years ago now. I didn’t plot the story out in advance, and I still lost my way a bit, but at the start of each scene I did a quick plan . It helped me write a lot faster than I do now. That might be something to resurrect. 

2. Time- not actually more time to write, but tracking time and productivity, and evaluating that. Keeping a short record of how long you spend writing, where and when, and what the word count was. The results surprised her. Rachel found her most productive sessions were at her least expected time of day, and when she wrote away from home. She was able to identify the perfect length for her writing sessions. Extra important when I’m writing full time, but even now worth looking at. On work days, do I do better when I write in the morning before work or the evening after work? On days off, am I better to write first thing before I do anything else, in the afternoon, or at night when I’m tucked up in bed? Rachel credits this with adding an extra 2-3K a day, with no increase in actual writing time.

3. Enthusiasm- get excited about what you are writing. I know this one. I have days when writing 5K is easy, I’m just so excited to be writing the scene. Other days, even if I sit at the computer all day, it’s a struggle to get 1K. That’s how it’s been all this month. I already figured out that if it felt like that, I was writing the wrong scene. In my current story, I had hero and heroine working together, being just too nice. The scene was flat and dull and lifeless. They needed to get some antagonism and conflict going, as well as the “no, I mustn’t” attraction! Here’s how Rachel dealt with the problem-

The answer was head-slappingly obvious. Those days I broke 10k were the days I was writing scenes I’d been dying to write since I planned the book. They were the candy bar scenes, the scenes I wrote all that other stuff to get to. By contrast, my slow days (days where I was struggling to break 5k) corresponded to the scenes I wasn’t that crazy about.
 

This was a duh moment for me, but it also brought up a troubling new problem. If I had scenes that were boring enough that I didn’t want to write them, then there was no way in hell anyone would want to read them. This was my novel, after all. If I didn’t love it, no one would.

Fortunately, the solution turned out to be, yet again, stupidly simple. Every day, while I was writing out my little description of what I was going to write for the knowledge component of the triangle, I would play the scene through in my mind and try to get excited about it. I’d look for all the cool little hooks, the parts that interested me most, and focus on those since they were obviously what made the scene cool. If I couldn’t find anything to get excited over, then I would change the scene, or get rid of it entirely. I decided then and there that, no matter how useful a scene might be for my plot, boring scenes had no place in my novels. 

Rachel compares the results she’s had with changing how she writes to changing one’s lifestyle to lose weight. Now I know I can do that! Hopefully I can do the same with my writing, get that lightning fast first draft out sizzling…

Thanks to Marguerite Kaye for posting the link on FB.


I’ve thought about what I want to achieve over the next seven months, while I’m still working the Day Job but preparing for time off, time to focus solely on writing for a while. My new writing goals for the next seven months:

- forget about word count. Let myself be slow. Learn to touch type. and stick with it instead of giving up in frustration because I’m too slow and I won’t reach my word count goals. My goal is to learn how to touch type.

- forget about publication. Shift focus from producing story for submitting to producing story for the joy of it. I need to find my writing voice, and style and discover what sort of stories I really want to write. What’s key is not to write to the market. I need to be writing organically, writing the stories that come naturally to me. then finding the market for that story. It does NOT work doing it backwards!

- immersing myself in story. Reading as much as I can, watching films. One of my laments since I started writing seriously again, is that my reading time has vanished. That’s got to change. How can I write good stories when I’m not reading them?

- thinking about my characters, writing wild, and just seeing what I get

- not “trying” to write anything, just showing up for morning pages and seeing what comes. Writing at other times too. On the train. Another half hour before bed. Maybe have two IDs on 750 words, one for morning pages and one for evening pages? That would be fun!

- focusing on reading and learning and growing rather than producing words for publication. Doing the exercises in my how to write books and old workshops. Playing with story and having fun with it. Treating the next seven months as an intensive workshop and totally dropping any expectation of producing anything saleable.

-ignoring any calls for submission, contests, challenges, and the like, unless a usable piece of work just appears (like the Blaze “Wrong Bed” one turned up in my morning pages), or I want to do it as a game, when I need an unrelated story prompt

- making writing be my recreation, play, something I do for pleasure, not a second job. paradoxically, I want to be a professional writer, but I need to loosen up first to do that.

 


And last- today’s laugh.

The reason I won’t say I’m a writer to anyone but close friends and family (they’re bad enough)-



Oh, and happy Valentine’s Day! Hope yours is a good one! Ours hasn’t gone that well so far. My honey and I have rowed on and off day. He’s worried because his Mum, the Queen of Venom, has a new health problem. He’s being a good son, so I should try to be a more understanding wife instead of blowing up on him.  So now I’m downstairs to cook a special dinner for him. Fingers crossed it does the job. Nothing will fix the MiL, but a good meal should fix the mood, at least!


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Dealing with fear and unhappiness – being published won’t fix everything

I’m trying to feel my emotions more honestly. Because how the hell can I hope to write emotionally real stories if I’m suppressing my own feelings, too scared of ever letting myself feel anything?

Two big emotional issues have come up this week and I need to deal with them. That’s just as important a part of my preparation for writing full time as studying craft skills and learning how to use Facebook and making sure I write at least a page on the story every day no matter how bad my work day is. Maybe more so.

So- fear and happiness. Too much of one, and not enough of the other. I’m stuck between wanting out of The Day Job, wanting more time to write, and being equally scared of that happening. On the whole, I’ve done a pretty good job of suppressing the fear.

It’s only as I sit here untangling my feelings to write the blog post that I realise just how strong the fear is. I thought it was the unhappiness that was the issue, and I’d been telling myself off for not being happy now, for always looking to the future. But as I’m letting myself feel it, the fear is stronger.

Well, that kinda explains the knot in my stomach and the headaches and the trouble sleeping all week! How thick and blind to my own emotions can I be? 

The Day Job has been particular busy this week. Super-stressful and exhausting. I’m not happy.  So much so that this week, I’ve found myself thinking- “I’m not happy now, but once I quit this job, then I’ll be happy.”

I’ve always seen happiness as something that would happen in the future. When I moved out of my parents’ house. When I had my own home, not a room in the Nurses Home. When I had a different job. When I was married. When I had a baby. Now it’s When I have a story published. When I quit the Day Job. When I can make my living from writing. When I move back to Australia.

Always looking for something outside of me to make me happy. And guess what?

It doesn’t work like that.

There’s such a risk of letting myself be unhappy now because I still have to do the Day Job, to miss out on living in the present because I’m so focused on the future, telling myself THAT’S when I’ll be happy. And when I am published, when I am a full time writer, what then? Will that make me happy forever, or will I just find other things to be unhappy about?

I need to learn habits of happiness now. Happiness can’t be something that’s perpetually postponed to some perfect future.

I read a lot of different blogs yesterday about being happy, chaining from a post on Shannon McKinnon’s fabulous Happy Writer blog - How Can We Be Happily Unpublished.

 Shannon’s post is all about needing to be happy NOW. How so many of us have the illusion we’ll be happy once we’re published. How being published won’t make us happy for long if we don’t build habits of happiness now.

As she says-

The problem is that by thinking we can’t be happy until we get somewhere other than where we are is that we miss all the happiness along the way.

 Her series is worth reading. She gives a whole blog post worth of tips about being happy as an unpublished writer. Deciding it’s more important to be happy than published. Being mindful of the day to day- focusing on the little achievements we make each day, even if all we managed was to show up at the page and write one good sentence. To know we have value and worth as we are. To focus on the things that make us happy as a writer and stop doing the things that don’t. To know that being happy isn’t dependent on externals, it’s a choice we make, every day. All true.

I tell myself that. And then I feel like maybe I should just be happy now. Maybe I can be so happy I don’t need to leave the job. Maybe I can keep trying to balance job and writing and make it work. Because then I don’t have to deal with the fear of quitting, of the insecurity of not having a job and a steady income.

I don’t think that’s Shannon meant! She’s not saying that the recipe for happiness is putting a Band-Aid on our unhappiness and denying it exists. Being happy now is not an excuse for settling for less than we can be, for letting fear stop us following our dreams.  It’s not a fake telling ourselves things are okay, to keep us where we are and stop us striving about more.

It’s being realistic about what that “more” can give us. Being realistic about where we are and what we are achieving right now.

Sometimes, unhappiness is a gift. It’s what drives us through our fears. That doesn’t mean we stay being unhappy. It means we look at what the unhappiness is telling us.

Mine is telling me I need control in my life, but I’m fearful of changing. Fearful of quitting my job, of losing that security. I’m in full fight or flight mode. Part of me wants to leave work sooner, doesn’t see how I’ll get through seven whole months of things being this bad at work, of pushing writing to the periphery. Part of me is terrified. That part is sometimes shrieking and sometimes whimpering that I’ll never get such a good job again.

 It’s true. When I leave this job, I don’t think I will ever have a job that will pay this well again. And it’s unlikely I’ll make this much from writing. Realistically, I think the most I can hope to make from writing is the bare survival minimum.

I tell myself that will be enough. I have a big cushion of savings. I’m not jumping blind hoping there will be a safety net. I’m building the safety net before I jump.

I’m still scared.

I make myself focus on the benefits- that when I quit the Day Job I will be more in control of my life, not my boss and my patients and anyone else who decides to call or email or come into the office wanting something done. The jobs in my life I’ve liked the least, are the ones where I have little control. Where it’s furiously treading water just to stay afloat, dealing with what gets thrown at me from all directions.  The jobs I’ve enjoyed the most were the ones where I got to structure my days and my time use. Maybe someone else set the goals, but it was up to me how I met them. I want that again, except more so.

I want to be able to set my own goals and meet them. My current work situation is so far away from that it’s laughable. I know life doesn’t always feel so under control for published writers. There are deadlines and revisions and proofs that arrive today and need to be sent back tomorrow. Not one of us, even the most Alphaed up billionaire romance hero, lives a life totally under personal control.

I can tell myself all that, focus on the benefits, but the fear’s still there. The fear of crashing and burning. Of trying and failing. Of spending all my money chasing this dream and not being able to achieve other dreams I could have used those savings on. The house in Australia, the garden, the life I imagine I will have there.

Which brings me full circle, back to the things I think will make me happy. The fear and the unhappiness are linked.

I read this article on dealing with fear, and took it a step further. What I need to look at is what the real need is underneath those things I think will make me happy. What the real thing is I’m afraid of losing.

Just like for characters. They have a surface goal- keep the family home safe from the property developer, make their business a success, have a red sports car, whatever. But that’s not enough to write a story from. That’s not really what they want. The inner need, the motivation, is what they really need and fear losing. The heroine wants to save her family home from developers because she needs a sense of home and belonging to give her security, and she’s afraid of losing that. Or she needs her business to be a success because that will show everyone who told her she’d never amount to much as a kid that she can make it- she needs self-worth and acceptance, and fears getting confirmation she is the failure they told her she’d be.

My fear comes from the same place as my unhappiness. The fear is that I’ll never get what I really need to make me happy, and that I’ll lose what happiness I have. 

Quitting up my job will give me a lot. But it also means giving up things I need, on a very deep level. Security. Getting feedback that I am doing well. A sense of self-worth and acceptance. Having a sense of who I am in the world. I know I am good at my job. I don’t know that I am good at writing.

So I latch onto the hope of publication, as so many other unpublished writers do. Publication is a biggie. it symbolises so many things.

The inner meaning many of us hang on publication is acceptance. Acceptance of our writing, and acceptance of us as writers. Finally being told we are good enough. Especially important for those of us who may have been put down for our writing or told we couldn’t write well enough to make a living from it. The word is even there in the language of publishing- our story is “accepted” by an editor. But being unpublished doesn’t necessarily mean we’re less of a writer.

Publication also means being paid for our writing. For me, that is a first step to making my living from writing. The deeper meaning of that is getting that control I want over how I use my time.

I think those are the two main things I’m looking for. The two things I need to be happy. Acceptance, starting with self-acceptance. And a kind of freedom, the freedom that comes from self-control, discipline and setting my own goals. Which loops back around to a sense of achievement when I reach those goals, which also ties in to self-acceptance.

And so acceptance is the biggie for me.

I’ve been paid for writing before. I’ve had two articles published, one when i was sixteen, another when i was thirty eight. I’ve been “accepted”. but they were articles, not stories. The stories are closer to the truth of who I am. The articles were more like essays for school, it was nice getting paid for them but it didn’t mean anything about the truth of me as a writer. They weren’t created from my mind and heart and guts.

That’s where I really want acceptance. And it’s too much to hang on a fragile novella or category romance or single title story.

I need to find that self-acceptance first, or every rejection will feel like a catastrophe. Even a revision letter will feel like a devastating personal criticism. And as for bad reviews- don’t even go there!

Publication won’t fix what I want it to fix.

Only I can fix that. That’s the real truth Shannon is talking about. I need a self-acceptance that’s separate from my writing. And I need to see that writing well or not so well has nothing to do with getting published.

Jennifer Cruisie wrote-

What’s important in our lives… is not our publishing status but our writing, putting the story on the page, breathing life into the characters, making sure what we write is so true that it reaches somebody’s heart. Perfecting our craft and our art should be our first obsession; the publication we sometimes earn when we’ve mastered writing should come second.

 That’s what I want. And now is the time to start, before I lay myself on the line any further. No wonder I’ve been procrastinating on writing, putting off having something completed to submit. When acceptance for publication is our sole criteria for whether we are “good enough”, rejection cuts into the soul, into our very sense of who we are as a person.

Some practical advice on how to deal with that now-

Start with today, not yesterday.
Over the past few years, I have been very hard on myself for taking so long to plunge into my writing and never look back. I decided not that long ago to only focus on the moment at hand, not on what I didn’t do but should have, and not on how long it will take me to get to a comfortable place in my writing career. Focusing on today’s agenda and today’s only will keep your frustration and uncertainty at bay. As you begin making consistent steps forward, your motivation will continually build, and the disappointment you feel will become a thing of the past (and stay there).

If I don’t do this now, just focus on that page of writing I produce today, then no matter what else I do, no matter how many stories I get published, it won’t make me happy. 

And as a bonus, writing this gave me insight into my last rejected story and the fact I hadn’t noticed that the heroine had no GMC!


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Report from the edge- part two- the good side!

That last post of mine was all my fears and doubts and anxieties- the negative side of making a big change.

Of course, there are far more good reasons to go ahead and do it anyway!  Most of the time, I’m staying firmly focused on the positives. But I believe with any significant change it’s important to acknowledge the negatives and the whispers of doubt we sometimes poison our joy with – because they can and do sabotage us if we aren’t aware of them.

I’m ready. I want this. I don’t want to keep wishing things were different, I’m making them different. And I would far rather try, even if I crash and burn, than keep playing it safe and know I never really tried.

My husband had an aunt who lived for her retirement. She worked all her adult life in a stressful but well-paid job in London, with a great retirement package. Day one of her real life would be the day she retired. She even refused to marry a good man who loved her very much, because it meant leaving her job and moving away. Well, the great day came, and she retired, with the gold watch and the big pension. She bought her dream cottage in the country. Then she dropped dead.

I don’t want that to be me. I’m starting my real life now! I realised a little while ago how much I live in dreams of the future. I put up with life being crappy now, because “someday when this happens and that happens it will all be okay”. Well, no! Those stars may never magically align for me.

 The time to start is now.

Not just  with writing, either. I’m not waiting till I have the big garden in Australia to start growing my own food for example. Even though we only have a tiny garden, I started growing sprouts and little salad boxes on the window sill now. I have another fruit tree ready to plant on the boundary. We’re planning lots of pots and tubs with veggies and strawberries as soon as the weather gets warm enough. I already have the seeds to start growing inside next month.

And that idea I have for the business selling lagenlook clothing, the one all the things I sew for myself are test pieces for? Why now start that now too?

I’m not waiting for some future date when suddenly I can live my dreams. The time to start is now, from where I am.

I do believe this saying is true-

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way…

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!’

Okay, so W H Murray wrote about an expedition to the Himalayas in the 1950s. What I’m planning isn’t quite as big as that! But it is interesting to see how little things start to happen. Pieces fall into place.  Even those little things feel like signs- I’m doing the right thing.

Like I was researching last night on how other writers made the transition to writing becoming their Day Job, especially writers like me who don’t have a spouse with a paycheck they can rely on for income. Two different people recommended Barbara Sher’s book Wishcraft. I wanted to get a copy. I’m pretty sure it won’t be in our small local library, though that’s a resource I need to start making better use of now we’re going super-frugal. A ten second Google turned up this. Yes, she’s put it out there for free!

I feel I’m going to be richly blessed by this change. Sure, there will be times of struggle and doubt and difficulty, because life is like that. But I now don’t think it’s possible to “fail” at this. The worst that can happen is I’ll have a different experience from the one I expected.

The actual writing is still happening too- that’s what it’s all about, after all!

I’ve backed off putting pressure on myself to write and sub for particular deadlines right now though. I let the Spring Fling deadline pass me by, because though I could have finished and subbed something, it wouldn’t have been my best writing. Doing the right preparation for the shift in priorities is more important now than pushing myself to make certain word count targets, or sub first draft just because there’s another “too good to miss” opportunity. If it happens it happens.

I did sub an entry for this Harlequin writing challenge, even though I hadn’t planned to. My subconscious must have been playing with the idea, because the thousand words just came out  in morning pages one day. A quick polish and off they went, just a bit of fun. Unlike last year, where I slaved over my entry and it still missed the mark! Anyway. as long as I write every day or at least six days a week and keep that forward motion going, that’s enough.

The morning pages are a gift to myself I intend to keep giving. It takes me less than half an hour a day to write those three pages. Now at thirty days straight and continuing. This morning, I had another good insight into a small tweak that should significantly strengthen my current story and feels so right! I honestly think without doing that writing, getting in contact with what I really want and need, I wouldn’t have dredged up the courage to plan this big change now. 750words is truly awesome and I’m so thankful for it. It seems counterintuitive that writing other stuff, not story, would help with the story writing, especially when I’m so pushed for time most days, yet it does!


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Report from the edge – on changing priorities

 A couple of weeks ago I made a huge decision- in September I’m going to leave the stressful job with the killer commute and give myself the gift of six months (longer if I can) to focus on writing.

So how has making that decision affected me? That decision that’s big and scary and challenging and joyful and could be so right or could be the biggest mistake of my life?

It’s been an interesting emotional roller-coaster ride!

It feels good. Quiet happiness and satisfaction that finally I’m doing it, I’m going to go all out for this dream and give it everything I’ve got. 

I’ve wanted to make my living from writing since I realised as a kid that people got paid for writing all those books I borrowed from the library each week. At fifty one, it’s long past time to give it a go and stop listening to all those reasons not to that stopped me for the last thirty five years. I don’t want to keep putting the life I want to live on hold until I win the lottery or retire or the stars align or whatever. I want to make writing my priority now.

It will be so good to get up in the morning at the time that suits me best, not 5.45am when the alarm goes off. It will be good to not be so brain-fried from the Day Job and so frantic trying to fit all the have-to-be-dones into my days off that writing gets pushed to the edge and what I want to be my top priority gets done in the gaps or last thing at night when I need sleep.

Right now, when there’s four inches of snow on the ground and the temperature has scarcely gone above freezing all week, it’s also good to know my commute next winter will involve no more than reaching out and picking up my laptop!

But I’m also telling myself this decision is nuts. It’s irresponsible, self-indulgent, and doomed to failure.

Those nasty nagging voices in my head that sound a lot like my Mum and Dad and all my least favourite teachers have started up, big time. They usually mean well. They’re trying to protect me from being hurt and prepare me for the “real” world. But they hold me back from being all I can be.  They tell me it’s better not to have adventures, adventures are dangerous.

They create fear and guilt.

A lot of what mine nag about is financial. My husband can’t work and is financially dependent on me. Not to mention a house full of cats. Right now, I may have one of the most stressful jobs ever, but I also have the best paid job I’ve ever had. The most I’ve made from writing in my whole life is $10 when I was sixteen for an article in a church magazine, and £140 when I was thirty nine for a nursing article. That’s not going to stretch too far when the only person earning money in our home stops getting a regular paycheck. How can I be crazy enough to even think of throwing that away to write? 

I get the guilt too. I’m depriving my husband, forcing him to live more frugally to chase my dream. Isn’t that selfish?  

And issues around simply giving myself permission. Who am I to decide I can take time off to write? Writing’s not work, that’s just a hobby. It doesn’t earn any money, does it, so you can’t be serious. You need to stay in your real job. It’s crazy to give such a good job up. How do you know you are good enough? What if it doesn’t work out?  You’re going to crash and burn and then you’ll be sorry.

That’s getting into the next layer under the guilt. The fear.

Oh my, the fear.

They get me on two fronts with this one. What if I’m risking my big future dream of retiring to Australia and being a full-time writer then, by jumping too soon and doing this now.

And even worse, what if it doesn’t work out at all. What if after six months full time writing, giving it my darnedest, spending eight hours a day writing, I still can’t sell a story. How much is it going to hurt if I try and I fail? Do I really want to know I can’t do it? Maybe those voices are right. maybe this is a stupid idea. Maybe I’d be better staying in this job and keep on just writing when I can. Or at least I should wait until I’m published. Or until I can get a part-time job. I just don’t write well enough yet to make such a big move.

Probably all true. But hey, I’m doing it anyway.

It’s not a wild and crazy impulse decision. I’ve done the sums. Barring disasters between now and September, I’ll have enough money saved for us to live on for a year, if we’re frugal, without breaking into the main retirement/ Aussie move savings pot. I can give myself six months off, then get a part-time job if I need to. financially, it’s workable.

But I just need to shut those voices up long enough to let me actually get some writing done in the meantime! They’re nagging me so badly, my productivity has plummeted since I made the big decision.

Now, I don’t think I’m the only one who has those built-in nags. I think most of us who make writing a priority get this. Anyone who decides to focus on any creative non-traditional path and not the “real job” route. We all have different situations, different things they use to guilt us with. I’m sure for anyone with children, kids play a big part in the guilt stuff.

For most of us, there have been people in our lives who want us to conform and do what’s expected and play it safe. They think that’s protecting us. When we grow up, we internalise those voices. And they keep telling us how we should be, even when doing what they say means giving up our deepest dreams. We’ll be dreamless, but we’ll be safe. They sing us tempting lullabies. We’ll never have the hurt of another rejection ever again.

Stuff that!

I’m at the point where rejections hurt less than knowing I’m not giving it a go. I’m saying “Bring it on” to rejections. Yes, they’ll still hurt, but they’ll mean I tried. They’ll mean I’ve written another story, I’ve sent it out, I’ve learned another lesson in being a better writer.

If only I can shut those voices up long enough to let me hear my characters speak!

I’m not sure what the answer is to these inner voices except to listen to them and acknowledge them, gently thank them for their message, and tell them I’m doing it anyway. They have to be challenged head on. If I don’t, they can sabotage me in subtle and sneaky ways. They go underground, where I don’t hear them for who they are.

When I don’t acknowledge them, suddenly, I become very busy with other things besides writing. The thought of writing makes me vaguely nauseated. All I can think about is how I ought to be doing something else. It paralyses my writing and sucks all the joy out of it.

Oh, my inner voices are pros at their jobs of finding what else I should be doing every time I want to write. They make me think it’s what I’d rather be doing. I should be selling stuff on eBay and making money that way. I should be sewing, that’s a sensible thing to do. At least then I’m both reducing my ridiculous fabric stash a bit and producing something real and practical, not writing another crappy story that will get rejected like all the others. What about some housework, the bathroom is a mess. And hey, if I have that much time to spare, I should do something real like volunteering, or getting a part-time job. Or studying. What about finishing that nursing degree?

When they are in full flow, whether out there as nagging pseudo-parental voices or whether they’ve managed to con me into thinking it’s actually me telling myself all this stuff , I’m lucky if I can get five hundred words written, even on a non-work day.

That’s not a fun place to be. And the voices use that to reinforce their argument. See, you’d be so much happier if you stopped writing. All it does is make you miserable. What the inner voices forget to tell me is that it’s not writing making me miserable.

It’s them.

Well, blow you inner voices! I know you’re trying to stop me being hurt. but it’s time to follow this dream. Thank you for your advice. I know you’re trying to help me, but I’m willing to take this risk.

Lucky you if you don’t have them!

I think most of us who make writing a priority get this. We all have different situations, but for most of us, there have been people in our lives who want us to conform and do what’s expected and play it safe. When we grow up, we internalise those voices.

So is it just me? Am I really nuts? Or do you have the nasty naggers too? How do you deal with them?

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