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Tag Archives: dealing with discouragement


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On Taking the Risk of Revealing Myself

Cat asleep in a household shrine

It takes guts to let other people see your deepest fears, to know the things you love, and realize who you really are. Not everything found in the heart is pretty, but inspiration is not always found in perfection. Sometimes it is the broken pieces that people will connect with the most.
- Musings by Jennifer Blair, Artful Blogging Autumn 2012

This is something I’m struggling with, yet again.

I leave the Day Job very soon. I’m excited about that. I’m also terrified, and looking for safety nets. I don’t want to think about having to financially depend on what I can earn from my writing.

There are safety nets, of course. I have money in the bank. I applied for a side job, an easy no-brainer Saturday job that would let me write while at work.  I can reapply for my old job if I need to, the person I’ve been job sharing with will be leaving in a year or so.  There’s no guarantee I’ll get it, but I’d have a good chance. I use that thought to comfort and ease my fear, my anxiety about truly being a full time writer.

I’m not sure having that safety net is a good thing though. It might just make it too safe. I might coast, thinking I have a year off to play at writing, rather than that I have just one year or so to make or break as a writer so I need to work bloody hard. I might feel so safe and complacent that I’ll end up right back where I am now in eighteen months. So there’s a little voice in my head telling me I’m just wasting my time and my money. All I will have gained is the sure knowledge I couldn’t do it.

It feels like I’m setting myself up for failure, applying for that Saturday job, thinking I can get the twenty hours a week at the Day Job back. Of course, it’s also a way of reassuring the inner critical parent and external real world parents like the mother-in-law.  It’s a good story to reassure anxious onlookers, but the reality is that I do have to make a go of this. I just have to. I’m not letting this dream go.

I kinda hope I don’t get that side job. I don’t need safety nets. I just need to write. I am my own side job and my own safety net.

I need to write, and ship (to use a Steve Jobs-ism), not look for safety nets. Real artists ship. Dilettantes can create, but they never ship. Or they ship infrequently, half heartedly, they ship with the preconditions for failure built in like shipping incomplete, rushed, less-than-their-best work.

Oh my, do I know that one. I am the queen of submitting waaaaay too soon.

Or even more so, of jumping from idea to idea to idea. The lure of new stories, far better than the old story. The dropping one project before it’s completed because the next idea is so exciting, repeated repeated repeated. It’s all resistance, a way of avoiding truly finishing a piece of writing and putting it out there, out to be seen and judged.

My exciting new idea this time is a historical. I’m massively enthusiastic about it. It will be a huge, ambitious book, needing loads of research to get right. I am a little concerned that the amount of research needed is a strategy to avoid actually writing a story.

Because if I write, I have to ship; and if I ship, I have to put it out  there to be seen; and if it’s seen, everyone will also see how bad I write ; and if everyone sees how bad I write I’ll have no credibility and get laughed at and get one star reviews and I’ll never sell a book again and I’ll have to go back to working as a nurse or I’ll have to live on weeds because we won’t be able to afford anything else and my mother-in-law will say I told you so and I’ll be too embarrassed to ever go on a writing forum again and then I’ll die.

The list seems fairly comprehensive. That’s what my mind truly thinks will happen if I actually self-publish. No wonder I’m never able to properly finish anything!

I need to be okay with uncertainty, not knowing. I need to be willing to risk that self-disclosure, to let myself be seen. I need to be zen, like my cats, being what I am, untroubled by questions. What I am is a writer. Like the quote says, I’m imperfect. Not pretty, complete with broken pieces, but maybe that’s something readers will connect with.

It’s time to take that risk.


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Opening the doors to creativity

Locked silver doors of a bank on London's Oxford Street Autumn Macarthur

Were you fed the same myths about creative talent I was, that you either had it or you didn’t have it?

If you had it, creating would come easily and naturally, and if you didn’t have it, well sorry, you’re locked outside, on the wrong side of those magic doors only the talented could pass through.

As kids, we could try something creative once, but if we didn’t get it right first time, then clearly we had no talent and shouldn’t try again. No point wasting money and materials on someone who couldn’t be any good at it. I’m sure my parents meant well, wanted to save us pain and grief trying and failing, trying and failing, bashing our head on that locked door repeatedly.

But they were wrong. Natural talent is only part of the equation.

Parents and teachers put labels on us early. Maybe you were labelled, too. I was the brainy one, the one who was good at reading and writing. My sister was the pretty one, the creative one,  good at drawing and painting. She was encouraged to practice, keep trying, keep creating. I wasn’t.

Now, being the good little girl I was, I listened, obeyed, and  internalised that totally by my late teens. If I wasn’t good at something straight away, if my first attempts weren’t just like the vision I had of what I wanted to create, the only thing to do was give up and stop trying.

I followed those rules for such a long time.

Great story idea, but the first chapter just wasn’t working- give up. Image in my head of a painting I wanted to make, but what I created was nothing like it- give up. Anything at all creative I wanted to do but couldn’t master straight away- give up.

In the end, I learned to stick to my books and hard subjects like maths, where I knew I could do well. I didn’t paint, didn’t draw, didn’t sew, gave up on my stories for a long time too. I stuck to what I was good at. I didn’t risk failure.

Now I’m trying to learn again, find out how to open that magic door, learn to be creative.

To do that means allowing myself to fail. Allowing myself to make mistakes. allowing myself to play. Practicing.

My sister truly is a wonderful artist. She has a natural talent for art. Her drawings looked like what they were supposed to. Her paintings were full of light and colour, while mine somehow were always muddy and dull. We both went to pottery classes in our teens, her first pot was good, mine was wonky and lopsided.

More evidence I shouldn’t try. I was outside the door. I should leave the creative stuff for those who had talent. I obviously didn’t.

But what if natural talent, the sort easily recognised by parents and teachers,  wasn’t all that counted? What if I’ve had creative talent all along but just haven’t used it?

Yes, my sister is talented. Very talented. She’s also spent thousand and thousands of hours practicing, painting, drawing, learning. She’s worked and practiced hard to develop her talent. I’m sure along the way she made plenty of mistakes too. Canvases that got painted over. Drawings she tore up or erased.

The only difference was her belief she had some talent kept her going, while my belief I have no talent made me give up.

The ten thousand hour rule is right. You need to love something enough to put in all those hours, and talent helps, but even for the relatively untalented person, that many hours practice must produce some level of mastery.

What if we could all do anything we wanted to, regardless of whether we’re talented or not?

I was dyspraxic, a clumsy kid, so I couldn’t draw well early, I didn’t have the fine motor control for it.  But I can have a go at it now. It’s a matter of practice. It’s a matter of tolerating “mistakes”. It’s about accepting that I’m learning, and it’s okay not to do it right first time, second time, or even the eighth ninth and tenth times!

That’s the real “secret” of books like Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, or Writing Down the Bones. It’s giving permission to try and to make mistakes and to practice practice practice. So many of us have been so indoctrinated into thinking if we don’t do it right first time we have no ability and should give up.

We need to switch that thinking around now. I definitely do.

The more I try things, the more I’ll discover what I enjoy and what I want to do. Yes, I’ll be bad at first and make lots of mistakes, but if I keep trying, I’ll get better at it.  It’s not fun to try, and fail. But what if it wasn’t a failure, what if it was  a learning experience on the path to master?

From today, I intend to have a go at whatever creative activity I feel like trying. It doesn’t need to cost much to experiment. There’s so much free information and tutorials online. I can buy paints and pencils and  sketch pads at the Pound Shop to play with drawing and painting. I can buy cheap clothes and fabric at the charity shops to play around with clothing designs, where the cost of new fabric might put me off being adventurous. I want to learn to knit again, but yarn is expensive, so I’m experimenting with rag yarn.

We don’t need to wait outside those magic doors, longing for permission. There aren’t any secret passwords or funny handshakes to get us in. We just need to give ourselves permission to play. Those door will swing wide open for us.

What creative activity have you always wanted to do but allowed cost or “lack of talent”  or belief you just can’t do it to put you off trying, or make you give up too soon?

How can you allow yourself to do that thing today?


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Persevering through rejections- guest post from the fabulous Robyn Thomas

I’ve been a slack blogger.

I can make all sorts of excuses about being busy, and they’d even be true, but the deeper truth is,  I’ve been low.  I blog more when I feel good, full of energy, when things are going right in my life. when I’m feeling bleah, just getting through what I have to feels like a hard enough slog, without adding pressure to blog too! Part post-rejection-downer. Part frustration with how expensive and slow the writing shed transformation has – it’s stopped being fun and become hard slog- especially now I’ve added a deadline for completion to the mix. Part dealing with sick cat/ MiL 45 minutes drive away with health issues/ Dad 10,000 miles away with health issues. Part resentment at having to lose (hopefully only temporarily) my lovely part-time Day Job situation so soon after I experienced how wonderful it is, because they haven’t been able to replace a colleague at work who leaves next week.

Anyway, all that’s another blog post. Today’s post is by my amazing critique partner and debut Entangled author, Robyn Thomas. We can learn so much about perseverance, never giving up, and dealing with rejection from her example. Robyn is not only a wonderful person, she writes wonderfully, and has a very different writing process to mine. She’s one of those perfectionist writers who works hard at getting it right first time. She won’t move on until she’s happy with what she has, so she produces beautifully polished first draft. I loved her first published story, His Unexpected Family, when I read it in its original version. I know just how much time and effort it. That story was worth publishing, I thought, as it was. I couldn’t see how it could be better. Yet to read the final published version, I’m blown away. It’s awesome. Somehow, she made an already beautiful story even better, by sticking with it through rejections and three and a half rounds of edits.

When I feel like giving up, I think of her. How hard she works. How she writes in fragments of time snatched from her busy family life. And how worth it the results are.

So it’s over to Robyn-

Thanks so much to my dear Sassy Sister, Autumn, for inviting me here today to talk about rejections and perseverance.

I’m a huge believer in getting back on the horse after you’ve been thrown off, but there are times when it’s beneficial to stop and think before you leap back into action. Very few people have a smooth journey to publication, and most writers will be faced with one rejection after another at some point. The thing to remember is that it’s normal, and no matter how overwhelming it seems, other writers WILL understand. They’ll offer advice and support, and do what they can to help you find your feet again, but the big decision – quit or continue – is yours alone.

The possibility of giving up altogether usually looks good in the initial phase of a rejection. It’s easy, doable, and will get you off the rollercoaster. But it will also cost you your dream. To paraphrase a line from Matt Damon’s character in The Adjustment Bureau: “It’s not whether or not you get knocked down; it’s what you do when you get back up.”

Deciding to stick with writing and try again is the difficult choice because it means you’ll be vulnerable to more rejections in the future. Don’t dwell on it, but do what you can to minimise the risks. Try to see not just where you went wrong, but also what you got right. In my opinion it’s just as important to build on your strengths as it is to remedy your weaknesses.

Looking back at my own journey to publication, I can see that I made some awful (purely emotional) decisions after rejections. At one time or another I tried almost everything you could think of to put rejections into perspective, to learn from them, ignore them or embrace them. I went from taking every word to heart, to taking the liberty of rejecting-the-rejection (in spirit only.) I stuffed things in the bottom drawer, mortified that I ever thought they had merit, and I sent others straight back out to another publisher without changing a word. I rewrote projects from scratch in the hope of bringing them back from the dead, and I moved on to shiny new projects instead. I built myself up, cut myself down, believed, doubted, and struggled to find a workable balance between carrying on immediately and pausing long enough to take stock and avoid repeating my mistakes.

Writing is tough sometimes and rewarding other times, but if you love what you do then you’ll find a way to reconcile the ups and downs. If you don’t give up, and if you’re willing to learn, you’ll prevail against rejections. I know this for sure because I’ve tested the theory. ;-) I’m happy to report that I now have three books contracted with Entangled.

Do you have any tricks to help you through rejections? I like to start with as many of the following at once as I can possibly manage: a bubble bath, fragrant candles, chocolate, sappy music, a cream cake, a favourite movie on DVD, and a glass of wine. That combo inevitably leads to an early night, and things generally appear brighter the next day.

Sometimes you have to take the leap…again.

Newly widowed with a new baby, Ren Jamieson is putting her life back together after her thrill-seeking husband’s death. But when she’s called to show a high-end property to a prospective client—a commission she desperately needs—she meets a man who makes her pulse pound like nothing she’s ever known…

Cole Matthews is more than he seems. Real estate is only part of the reason he’s in Australia –  the other is to see Ren, and make amends somehow for the life lost. The last thing Cole expects is a woman whose humor, sweetness and sexiness give him a rush greater than any he’s ever experienced…

Torn between her growing feelings for Cole and the risks of loving yet another adventurer, Ren will have to choose between keeping her feet on the ground…and taking the most dangerous leap of her life.

Read the first chapter free: http://www.entangledpublishing.com/his-unexpected-family/

Buy links: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/his-unexpected-family-robyn-thomas/1112199079

http://www.amazon.com/His-Unexpected-Family-ebook/dp/B008NXI3H8

Robyn’s Bio:

Robyn believes that romance and fairytales are the best ingredients to work with because they go with absolutely everything. Inspiration is everywhere she looks. She remembers making the decision to write her first book, but since then writing has become more of a compulsion than a choice. It’s less about having complete silence, a gorgeous work space, a free hour or two, and a steaming hot coffee, and more about getting her fingers to the keyboard any chance she gets. The coffee does help, though.

She lives in Melbourne with her wonderful husband and two sons. Writing romance helps to balance the effects of living in an all-male household. She loves to cook, hates to clean up, and keeps very odd hours. Her writing days used to be solitary, but they’re not anymore. Now she has Seven Sassy Sisters online, and their friendship and support is invaluable.

Contact Robyn:

http://www.robynthomasromance.com/

@robynsromance

http://www.facebook.com/#!/robyn.thomas.376


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You can do hard things


Photo by Andrew Morrell Photography

Loving this post by Anna Elliot on Writer Unboxed- “Lessons Learned from Wrangling with the Impossible Book“.

It’s a fabulous post. All of it. But this section particularly resonated with me-

I can do hard things. I read about this idea somewhere and decided awhile back that I was going to make it my personal mantra: I can do hard things. It’s so simple–and yet it’s just an invaluable mindset to be able to place yourself into when faced with a challenge. And let me tell you, I have seldom needed it more than when wrestling with this book! Every book reaches a point where it would be so much easier to give up on it, scrap the whole idea and give in to the siren call of a shiny new idea that promises that, No, really, I will be an easy book to write. Don’t do it! Don’t give up those characters of yours. They’re counting on you to tell their story. And you can do it–because you can do hard things.

Likewise, this is also invaluable when faced with that other inevitable aspect of book-wrangling: editing. Cutting. Killing your darlings. One of the most painful realizations you can come to as an author is that a piece of writing–a sentence, a scene, a whole series of chapters–is an absolutely brilliant piece of writing, something you’re just repulsively proud of . . . and yet it has no place in your story. It’s hard to be brave enough to scrap writing that you love. It’s hard even to scrap writing that you know deep down just isn’t working and face the terror of having to start afresh. But you can do hard things.

Isn’t that the most awesome writing mantra? Fiction writing is often tough, seemingly impossible tough. But if you love your characters, keep going. The only way out is through.

You can do hard things. You can do what you need to do to finish this story. And the next one. And the one after that. Anything in your life you really want.

No matter how hard it is.


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Making my own prison – and breaking out of it

Breaking free
Photo by Matthew Wilkinson

Time to stop beating myself up for not writing enough.

I need to give myself permission to take it easy for a while, I think. This is my preparation time for really getting back into writing.  Not so much the physical preparation, like learning to touch type (I can do that now, almost!), or getting a proper writing space ready. More the deeper emotional preparation. dealing with the issues that have held me back.

So when I do drop those two days at work a week , when I finally have more time, I have no more crappy excuses not to write.

I started doing Holly Lisle’s “How to Think Sideways” course, as part of the preparation. The plan was, I’d follow the course to write the next story. I hadn’t realised the first month is all about getting out of our own way. removing the blocks that we’ve used as excuses for too long. It ties in so perfectly with what I’ve already been doing, in my morning pages and here in the blog.

I have to give up the “No time” excuse. When I only work at the Day Job two days a week, and that will bring in just enough to meet our financial needs, I can’t keep using that as a justification for not writing.

I can’t keep hanging on to the Victim excuse by blaming my childhood any more either, now I know about it. Time to stop limiting myself with ”Poor me, I never made it as a writer because I didn’t get the encouragement I needed back then.”

So powerful to start realising this stuff, what fuels the blocks, and start taking responsibility for my own thinking.

What I’m finding though is layers underneath that again. Just when I think, “Okay, I’m good with that, that bit’s done”, I find something else hiding beneath it.

I’m still scared of starting again.

Not of the work of writing. Of having the time and still not being able to do it. Not having the excuses means I have to face that if I don’t succeed it’s because I’m just not good enough.

The reason I wanted to hold on to that Victim role is the fear that it covered up. If I can blame someone else for me not writing, I never have to face the fear that actually, I have no talent as a writer. Fear of knowing for sure what I secretly suspect- I’m really not good enough.

Of course, I really knew that fear was there all along. But I hadn’t really touched it. I knew it intellectually, but I hadn’t felt the fear. I really got in contact with that ten year old me who is hurting and rejected and feeling sad, yes, but she’s also angry as hell and is never ever ever going to feel like that again.

 So protective parent mind finds  a way to keep me safe from that. If I write, I sub half baked first or early second draft. Or I want to write but I don’t write, using all sorts of victimy excuses. Or I think maybe I should give up writing fiction altogether, like I did last night.

 No wonder I reacted so strongly to Jeff Goins’ piece that mentioned giftedness. I fear I don’t have it. I’m afraid I’m going to put in all the work and use all that precious time I could be using doing other things I enjoy and don’t mind I’m not gifted at, like sewing and cooking, then get another emotional slap in the face at the end of it.

The funny thing is, the ten year old me isn’t afraid. I thought the fear came from her, but it doesn’t, it’s from some other part of me. maybe from protective parent me. Ten year old me is fearless. She knows she can write. She wants to write. Making up stories is what she wants to do, more than anything. It’s her favourite game, better than anything. she loves it.

 It’s a crappy lie made up by older me that she only wrote to please other people, that she didn’t do it for herself. She wrote her stories down  in little books and wanted other people to read them because she wanted to write. Because she knew they were good stories. Because she knew that stories are meant to be shared.

 She’s just angry I’m stopping her. She knows she can so it. She’s not afraid of anything. She wants to write.

 Maybe all I need to do is get out of her way.

I feel like I’ve taken a big step on in breaking down the barriers that have held me back, barriers I’ve hidden behind for too long.  Playing it safe gets us nowhere except in a little prison with walls and door and floor and roof made up of self-imposed limitations.

Next thing to look at is the flip side of the fear of finding out I’m really not good enough. What if I find out I am good enough? If my stories get published and read, what then? A whole new layer of fears to hold me back. I am the queen of frigging excuses.

I’ve read about the “onion” metaphor for character conflict, that good conflict should be layered. Peel one layer back and there’s a new layer revealed beneath it. It does seem to work like that. Clear one block just to find the next one, right there.

I must be the biggest onion in the world!

And then there’s another fear- what if I peel back all the layers and there’s nothing inside. Just a hollow empty shell. All you get inside an onion is- more onion. The biggest what-if of all. what if under all this- there’s nothing. No real person to live authentically.

I’m grinning because that’s a crazy fear, and yet it’s genuine. What if there really isn’t a real me? Maybe the onion metaphor isn’t quite right. Maybe the better image is the prison one.

It’s a prison with multiple layers of walls and doors. So breaking down one level or unlocking one door just brings us to another wall, another door. There’s the outside thorny hedge. Then there’s the moat, with crocodiles. then there’s a high stone wall. then there’s metal bars. then there’s the tiny boxy cubicle the person lives inside.

I live inside.

So safe. So small. So trapped.

I know there is a real me in there somewhere, yet I don’t know her, because I’ve never let her out of that prison. she’s certainly going to be pale and weak and puny, she’s been stuck in there so long. she won’t be able to walk at first, that prison was too small to exercise. the light will hurt her eyes, she hasn’t seen the sun for such a long time. she won’t know how to make decisions and choices for herself, because she hasn’t been allowed to. She’s strong, she’s got to be, but it will take her a while to grow into her strength.

She’s going to need some looking after at first. Then she can start doing the writing she longs to do. Wild writing, free writing, writing that feels and goes deep and is bold and fearless and reckless. Writing atht jumps off the cliff to prove it can fly. Writing to give me back the colour and smell and taste and feel my work has been lacking. Editor Mind thinks too damned much, and is scared to feel.

So- how do you know who you really are, inside all the layers? How have you made your own prison? How are you breaking out?


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Taking responsibility for why I don’t write

Photo by break.things

I’m still not writing.

So as an escape hatch to stop me feeling guilty about that, I’m questioning if I “should” be writing at all. Questioning whether I have any talent. Questioning if keeping on trying to write for publication is worth the effort.

At least I’m being honest about my reasons. For too long, I’ve blamed so much else in my life for me not writing. My husband. My job. My parents. No room to write. No time to write. No peace and quiet to write. I’ve got angry with the people around me and the circumstances of my life for stopping me writing.

What I’m really angry with is myself for not writing.

I can’t make any of those external factors the scapegoat for me not writing.  That’s bad for my husband, my happiness, my productivity, and my karma! If i don’t write, that’s my responsibility.

 Not my job or my husband or my head cold or the tiny house or anything else. Me.

 The big thing about growing up is taking responsibility for what truly is mine to take. Not feeling responsibility for things that aren’t down to me. Not blaming anyone or anything else for what really IS my responsibility.

 So me writing or not is down to me, no matter what the circumstances are. If I’m not writing, it’s because I am choosing something else. Maybe that choice can be justified, maybe it can’t. What matters most is acknowledging- it’s my choice.

 Not in an accusatory blaming-the-victim “You chose this” kind of way. More of an ”If you don’t like it, what can you do differently next time to change things?”

No matter what the situation, there will always be some choice I can make. It’s hard to imagine likely situations where there wouldn’t be. Being kidnapped and taken hostage, okay, all I can choose is my attitude. But in most everyday situations, I have a choice.

I did it to lose weight. I stopped trying to lose weight, which I’d been doing without much results for a couple of years. Instead, I just did it.

There is no try- do, or do not. Or something like that!

Anyway, it’s so true. Eighty pounds in two years, from a UK size 22 to a UK size 10. 

I had to choose to exercise more and to transform how i ate, not once, but many times a day. Walk rather than take the train. Eat this apple, not that cake.  Eat this salad, not that garlic bread. Say “No” to a second glass of wine (or even a first glass). Over and over again.

 The secret is to keep choosing, and make the choices easy. If I pack a salad lunch to take to work, I won’t be tempted to buy a less healthy meal. If i have lots of fruit and nuts and healthy snacks with me, I don’t need to go near those cakes and biscuits in the office kitchen. If I want to be slim more than I want to eat this chocolate, I know what to choose.

Reinforce the benefits of the positive choices, and don’t beat myself up if now and then I choose differently. 

In fact, if I do choose to eat something I “shouldn’t”, I need to make sure I truly want it and then savour every bit of it and celebrate my freedom to choose. Choosing differently every once in a while  only reinforces the truth- everything is my choice.

 I did it for weight loss, I can do it for writing too.

I need to stop trying to write, and get doing it instead. I need to know that writing is a choice I can make, a gift I can give myself. It’s not another dreary have-to on that neverending to-do list.

Yes, I need to set things up so I have no excuses. It’s my job to get systems in place that give me time and space to write. But first I need to know that writing or not writing is my choice.

I can set up work patterns to give myself time to write. Getting up before my husband on week day mornings is one. Going to the coffee shop for two hours a day on days off is another. Simply getting into consistent work patterns even here at home so Arthur knows when I’m not to be disturbed will help. Encouraging him to get out more, then making use of that time will help too.

There’s a lot I can do to change things. If I want to. If I choose to.

It starts with changing myself. Being real. Taking responsibility for myself and my life. Dropping the blame and resentment, and accepting what is my choice and what I can change. Recognising that I can have some but not all of what I want. Working towards creating what I want rather than demanding it all happen at once. 

Most of all, being a grown-up about my writing, not that hurting ten year old girl whose heartfelt gift of a hand written book was rejected. Hug the ten year old me, love her and tell her she can so write. But don’t let her keep making my choices for grown-up me.

Only just in this moment do I realise how much power that ten year old still has in my life. No wonder it’s been hard to feel like writing.

It’s time I chose to grow up. Time I chose to give this everything I’ve got, because I love to write and I want to write. And because to have the stories she loved to write read by someone else was what that ten year old most wanted.

It’s up to me to make that happen.


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Letting go of being a Victim

Let go of your story, so the universe can write a new one for you.
Photo by Alice Popkorn

It’s time I let go of being a victim.

Yesterday’s post made me realise just how much I still am acting as a victim of my parents and my unsupportive upbringing. It’s one thing to be aware of it so I can let go of limiting beliefs, it’s another thing to keep blaming that for what I am not doing, using it as an excuse for not achieving my goals and my dreams.

When I was in my teens, blaming my parents was possibly valid. in my twenties and thirties and forties, less so. In my fifties, definitely not!

For all those years, my parents haven’t been the one’s holding me back. Right now, when that little voice whispers to me that I shouldn’t try or I should give up because I’m not really any good at this, it’s not them saying that. That little voice, sometimes nasty and belittling or sometimes sweetly pseudo-protective, may sound like them, but it’s not.

It’s myself, my internalisation of all the things they told me about what it means to be talented and how if you don’t have talent, it’s safer not to try. If I’m a victim of anything, if anything is holding me back now, it’s my own thoughts and beliefs.

I’ve been the one limiting myself. I’ve been the one holding myself back. I’ve been the one telling myself I shouldn’t do this or that because I’m no good at it and I’m not talented enough and if I’m not gifted in that area why bother. I’ve been the one who’s let my fears stop me writing, painting, creating. I’ve been the one stopping myself from putting what I do create out there by not submitting stories or subbing part finished work too soon.

I’m the only one who can change this. I can change the way I think. I can be aware of my self-limiting beliefs. I can listen out for my self-talk, the place where I stop myself living creatively and authentically, and gently but firmly counteract that.

All change starts here, in me, in my heart and in my mind.

But oh boy, this has such an emotional charge for me. It’s all very well for me to logically and rationally think this stuff, but inside me is an angry hurting little girl who is sick of being suppressed and told she’s no good at what she wants to do and doesn’t want to be stopped doing what she wants one minute longer.

I just exploded with rage at my husband and ended up sobbing. He’s interrupted me several times during my morning pages and I’d responded to him rather than asking him not to interrupt, because I’m aware I can block him out sometimes and not give him the attention he needs. Then it got to the stage where I really knew I needed to focus or I wasn’t going to get anything real done. I asked him not to interrupt me for a while because I needed some quiet time to write.

Fine for ten minutes, then he interrupted me to ask me to tell him when I was done with my writing so he could ask me something then!

He genuinely didn’t see that was an interruption. Which is okay, that’s a key difference in how the Asperger’s mind works. What I really reacted to was the justification. He kept going, justifying how it wasn’t an interruption

 My feelings kicked in. Anger, hurt. A sense of disrespect for my writing, for what’s important to me. Fear that this is how it’s always going to be, impossible to get any time for myself, ever. I lost it, and before we knew it we were in a full blown scene, me being over-emotional to the verge of hysterics and him being hyper-rational to the verge of being Mr Spock.

Didn’t help anything. He still doesn’t understand that what he did was an interruption. I can’t understand how he can’t see that. He can’t understand why I reacted so emotionally, I can’t explain it in any rational way.

The benefit is that I now can’t avoid knowing just how much emotional charge there is attached to this for me. It’s clear that dropping my Victim mentality isn’t something that can be done intellectually. There’s a thinking component to this, yes, but that visceral reaction showed there’s an equally strong emotional component too.

My emotional self (right brain, where the Inner Child and the Muse hang out) gets benefits from being in Victim mode. I get to do Poor Me and throw regular pity parties. I get to have excuses, and avoid putting in the work and maybe needing to confront that actually, I really am not any good at some of the things I want to do. I get to throw tantrums, like I did today. But that comes at a cost.

The price  is - I need to keep being a Victim. I can’t be happy. I can’t achieve anything. I stay stuck. I can’t change anything because I keep blaming external circumstances for my life being the way it is. My parents, my husband, his mother, our finances, my job, society, the government, anything else beyond my control.

Because the things that really impact on my life aren’t beyond my control.

It’s time to grow up. Time to take responsibility. Time to stop hiding  behind excuses. Time to find some other way to nurture my Emotional Self besides letting her keep on being a sorry-for-herself Victim. Time to truly acknowledge and get at the deepest level that I chose this. There’s not one thing in my life now that I haven’t chosen, in some way.

There’s a quote from Marianne Williamson. “Let go of your story, so the universe can write a new one for you.”

It’s time to let go and take the risk of living a genuinely authentic and creative life.


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Keeping on writing, gifted or not!

Photo by Le Petit Poulailler

Ever read a blog post that makes you instantly want to unsubscribe from the writer’s blog?

I reacted like that to something I read this week.

It was in Jeff Goins‘s email newsletter, a piece on the two essential ingredients for success. I don’t think it’s on his actual blog, or I’d link to it.

The piece started off great, all about passion and practice being the only things one needed to be a success. I can agree totally with that.

Then he lost me. Because he slipped in a third thing- giftedness.  

Now this irks me, because a damaging belief in talent and giftedness (or not) stopped me doing a number of things I really would have liked to persevere in until I developed some skill. My father used to say when any of us kids tried something new that if we had a gift for whatever it was, it would come easily.

Now, that probably is true, but it’s not enough reason to go on to his logical next step to discourage us- if it doesn’t come easy, by definition you don’t have talent so you should give up.

That, I no longer believe to be true. Honestly, if it was, most of us wouldn’t be walking or reading or able to drive a car. 99.9% of us would have to give up everything at the first attempt.

But when I was younger that false belief made me give up on a lot of things I maybe would never have been perfect at but I could have had fun with. Playing a musical instrument. Painting.  Throwing pots. It stopped me writing for years.

It’s a deeply damaging and unhelpful belief.

 A better belief could be – if it’s something you want to do, something you love to do, don’t worry if it doesn’t come easy, keep practicing and see how good you can get. Being immediately good may not be a predictor of long term success at something anyway. too many highly talented individuals burn out young anyway. The hare had the talent for running, but the tortoise won the race.

The main catch I see in this concept  of giftedness is- how do we know if we have this mysterious “gift” or not? Do we have to wait for someone else to tell us? Is it something we should just know? Is it that if something is hard work, we aren’t naturally gifted? Tell that to musicians who practice eight hours a day!

I feel uncomfortable with the whole concept of labelling some people as gifted and others as ungifted. It discourages those labelled ungifted, and puts a heavy burden of expectation on those labelled gifted. Or the “gifted” become complacent, stop trying to better what they do, just like the hare in the fable.

Maybe we never give up on the things that are our true love. I’ve come back to writing.

But I look at my friends whose writing is way better than mine, published or unpublished, and I wonder. Are they actually naturally more talented, or were they just encouraged more, did they somehow have the belief in themselves that kept them going? It would be easy to look at the rejections I’ve accumulated in the four years since I came back to writing and deduce that I have no talent and should give up.

“Do I have a talent for this?”  and “Am I any good at this?” are the wrong questions to ask ourselves.

Do I want it? Do I love it? Does doing this somehow fulfil me in a way nothing else does? Have I improved since I first started this? Those are the questions to ask when we feel discouraged, feel like giving up.

And hopefully, the answers will be Yes, and Yes, and Yes, and Yes.


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A very personal argument against self-publishing- I need the gift of rejection

a href=”http://sevensassysisters.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/5489910500_2db642a67c.jpg”>

Photo by The Shopping Sherpa

You can tell I’m the sister who writes sweet, my posts have less half-naked men, sorry!

Now I don’t know why I got to thinking about self-publishing again, but I did. Probably because one of the Sassies, who writes fabulous stories that should be snapped up by a publisher pdq, was mentioning it.

I’ve been beating myself up over missing yet another self-imposed deadline, for the Harlequin Romance Fast Track. I feel a strong sense of failure. I didn’t do what I set out to do, which was finish the chapter and the synopsis and sub them. Actually, I finished the synopsis, and I feel it’s a strong one. The problem was, the chapter didn’t fit any more. Too slow. Too introspective. Not enough hero and heroine together. And not enough GMC. The goal, motivation and conflict is there a bit, but not nearly strongly enough. So rather than sub stuff I knew wasn’t ready, I chose to wait.

That sounds good. Except I know there’s another reason. The reason I procrastinated getting it done.

I am safe from getting another rejection in a month’s time. Smiles a twisted smile and shakes head.

What I want of course is impossible. I want a road to publication where I never have to face another rejection. Where everything I write is accepted (minor revisions okay). Where I never get a negative comment or bad review.

Oops. That fantasy bubble just popped. That’s WTF Publishing out then! WTF would accept me immediately, but the reviews (if anyone ever reads the story) could be something else again.

The problem with some self-pubbed writers is they are doing it for the wrong reasons. Not because they’ve written a story that would be accepted if they subbed it, but they want to hold onto complete creative control. Not because they’ve written a good story that just isn’t a good fit with the mainstream publishers. Not because they’ve rewritten and revised to make this the best story they possibly can and it still doesn’t quite hit the publisher’s mark, at a time when being bloody good just isn’t enough, a new writer has to be sensational to break in.

There are some writers with great stories that have been rejected who really ought to self-publish them. I know a couple myself. I know how hard they’ve worked at their craft. I know how well they write. I know how gutted they are when they get another rejection on something they’ve poured so much into, a story that genuinely is worthy of publication. I would pay to read their stories, just like some books from some of the other self-published writers I’ve bought, read, and enjoyed.

I am not one of those writers. There are a lot of writers self-pubbing who aren’t, either.

Whenever I fantasise about self-pubbing, it’s for other reasons. Because I can’t face another rejection. Because I want an easy route. Because I want to be published, dammit, even if it only sells eight copies and I don’t make enough back to pay for my cover photo.

Not good enough reasons. I remember thinking with my last rejected story, while I was waiting for the response, that if it got rejected I would self-publish it. I believed the story was good enough. Then the rejection letter hit. I thought again about my vow to self-publish.

Maybe I should send it to an different publisher before going to self-publishing? Because I do realise, it’s probably NOT easy to do it right. Eradicating every single error. Formatting it right. Getting a professional looking cover that doesn’t scream “Self-pubbed on the cheap” to potential readers. Maybe I was just wimping out from all that work and the risk of bad reviews, too!

So I looked at the story again.

Ooh boy. The story was very rightly rejected. What was I thinking of when I subbed it in the first place? It’s nowhere near ready. If I self-pubbed this, I’d be lucky to scrape two stars on Amazon. Maybe two and a half, if I could get friends and family to write some – ahem – creative reviews.

That rejected midlength novella is now getting rewritten two ways. One digging deep and changing the conflict significantly, extended into a 50k category romance (that’s the version I just missed the fast Track deadline for, the one I’m kicking myself in the butt over). That’s actually a whole new story. There’s not much I can transfer over from the old story. It’s a full rewrite, just taking off from the same idea. The other will be a very short 10k novella, doing the opposite. Pulling out what’s good in the mid-length novella, tweaking the internal issues and taking out the clunky and unnecessary external conflict that pads out the word count.

The structure is all wrong. Not only is it devoid of any stated goal and motivation for these characters, it’s far too slow to start, I have too many secondary characters and take too long to get the main characters together and get into the conflict. If it was the start of a single title, it would be okay. Maybe.

But the worst thing was- I resolved the essential internal conflict waaaaaaay before I resolved the external relationship block.

So funny to read it again and be half way through and think “This is where the story should end.” So it will!

And the scene that came next, the scene I loved at the time? The scene that absolutely had to be in there? It sucked. I couldn’t even finish reading it, it was so bad. Any reader who’d stuck with the story that far would definitely give up there. I’m not sure that scene is even salvageable. The concept might work, but the execution in this case most definitely did not! That scene doesn’t fit in wither version.

At last, I understand what that phrase “kill your darlings” really means in editing. Nearly all the scenes I liked the most at the time need to go. I’ll be doing huge rewrites on both versions to make them good readable and emotionally moving stories.

But I won’t be self-pubbing them. Once they are rewritten and self-edited as well as I can, I’ll be sending it off to my favourite publishers again.

I hope the writers who do choose self-publishing do well at it, publish wonderful polished stories and get great reviews and fab sales. To do that, they are further along their writing path than I am.

For me, at the stage I’m at with my writing, I need those rejection letters. I still hope soon I’ll sub something that gets a Revise and Resubmit, not another rejection. But if I do get another R, I need to embrace it like the gift it is. An editor’s opinion on why the story isn’t yet ready to publish, the opportunity to take another look at the story I thought was ready to go. Another chance to look hard at the story and see how it can be made stronger, deeper, more focused, a better read.

I want a reader who pays money and invests time in one of my stories to get to the HEA with a satisfied “Ahhhh,” not delete it off their Kindle half-read, wondering why the hell they bothered and swearing never to buy another of my stories again. I want to be on their auto-buy list, not the auto-reject list.

If I self-publish now, they’ll be getting option 2. And somehow I have a feeling having a story rejected by an editor is easier to bear than having it rejected by the readers.

I’m still learning how to write a romance. And I wouldn’t expect anyone to pay for one of my stories now, any more than I’d expect to pay for a piano recital and get to listen to someone practicing their scales.

I better get rewriting! By the time you read this, I’ll be on the plane to Australia, for what’s supposed to be a holiday and a house hunting trip, but may end up being very focused on my parents and their health issues again. Wish me luck with my mission, and time to write somewhere in there too!

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