Enjoy Your Writing, Enjoy Your Life

February 11, 2016 by Leave a Comment

I’ve been thinking a lot about happiness, enjoyment, appreciation, and gratitude lately.

As someone who tends to be prone to seeing “what’s wrong with this picture”, it isn’t particularly easy for me to remember to see the positives in my life and enjoy them. I habitually look for the next thing to fix and improve upon. Then throw in some sleep deprivation and a fussy toddler, and the trip down the rabbit hole into the darkness and negativity can be a short one. ;)

However, I’ve been making some subtle shifts in this department that are adding up to be rather huge.

I’ve never been a fan of gratitude lists or journals. I mean, they SOUND like a great idea, and I BELIEVE in the idea of being grateful, but when I’m stuck in feeling overwhelmed, negative, or down about my life, it feels impossible to get into that space of gratitude and appreciation.

But what’s oh-so-cool right now is that I’m noticing that by making these simple shifts in the way I’m approaching my life and what I’m doing, gratitude and appreciation have become by-products of my experience. I love that!

This all started when I decided to participate in Dr. Jessica Michaelson‘s online journaling program about minimizing online distractions. Just freeing myself from my small but pernicious online addictions has created a huge sense of relief and space in my life.

Then I went on and joined her Finding What You Didn’t Lose program, which I’m also loving. 

Here’s what we’re doing, on a very simple level, that I’m finding so very helpful.

  1. Setting an intention for how we want to approach the day ahead in a way that’s connected to what’s most important to us (like being present or being adventuresome).
  2. Getting clear on the three main things we’re aiming to do in a given day (I’ve written in the past about “three big rocks” for the year — this is about picking them for the day!).
  3. Noticing where we can build in connection, use our natural talents, and find sensory pleasure in our days.

This is all based in research about happiness,* which shows that we need to experience connection, meaning, pleasure, flow, and accomplishment in order to feel happy in our lives. 

How to translate this into enjoying your writing

One of the biggest challenges in long-form writing (a novel, book, screenplay, for instance) is that it can feel endless, like we’ll never reach the finish line of “done”. Living immersed in that context can be disheartening at times and downright discouraging at others.

To keep ourselves feeling fresh — and happy — we need to stay connected to several things, like:

  1. WHY we’re doing it. When we’re clear about how important writing is to us and believe it is our calling, we stay connected to its meaning in our lives. Some days writing is hard, some days it’s fun and easy. But in the big picture, we care deeply about it, otherwise we wouldn’t be doing it. We can even go a little more deeply into the Big Why behind our writing. Perhaps we have a message or vision to share, or we’re hoping to shape, change, and influence people’s lives. When we give thought to our Why, it’s easier to keep on writing.
  2. Small, short term goals. If a long-form writing project, with all its requisite rewrites, is a long-term deal, we need to make sure we create a short term feeling of accomplishment for ourselves right now in addition to our big picture aims. This is easy to do when you set attainable, daily goals. When you start the day with a plan, like “today I’m going to write (one new scene, 350 words, for 15 minutes, etc.)” then you KNOW when you have done it, or not. And when you keep the goal attainable, so you KNOW you can do it, it’s easier to push through any resistance and make it happen. Then you’ll get the satisfied feeling of accomplishment that’s so important for your sense of happiness. As a bonus for this, doing the writing early in the day will only make the rest of what you get done that day a bonus. :)
  3. Other writers and other people. Hang out with other writers who 1) get what it’s really like to write day in and day out, and 2) have generally positive and supportive attitudes about writing. (My Called to Write Coaching Circle is a positive, supportive place for writers, for example.) Be mindful about hanging out in groups of writers who will only tell you how hard it is to break in. Instead, look for people who are finding ways to write and ways into the business that work for them, their lifestyles, and their temperaments. ALSO spend time with non-writers too: Your loved ones, family, and friends. Life is rich, and our writing is richer when we are connected to it.
  4. The rest of life. Writing doesn’t happen in a vacuum. As writers, we tend to be hunched over desks and computers more than average. We need to get out and enjoy the world and take care of our bodies too. Turns out that sensory pleasure happens mostly in the real world, so give yourself some gifts in this regard. I’ve been savoring the simple things, like walks in the beautiful weather, delicious tea, snuggling with my littlest one while he goes to sleep and with my eldest one while I read to him at night, taking Pilates classes, and blowing bubbles for the kids in the sunshine.
  5. Our writing itself. Writing, by nature, can produce the wonderful state of flow that’s part of the recipe for happiness. When we’re writing, we’re in the flow of using our innate talents. So if you’re having trouble getting past the natural resistance that comes up around doing the writing, get support to get into the flow. A working writer is a happy writer.

Here are some power questions to help you put what I’ve written about today into practice:

  • What’s important to you about your writing?
  • What short term writing goal can you set and achieve today?
  • How can you connect with other writers today?
  • What can you do to experience pleasure in the real world today in your life?
  • What support do you need, if any, to get into the flow of your writing today?

Use these questions to make simple shifts and enjoy your writing (more!), and your life. You deserve it.

 

Filed Under: Creativity, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Five Essential Steps to Crafting Your Premise Line, Part II (Plus a Free Guidebook!)

February 2, 2016 by Leave a Comment

Today we’re continuing with Part 2 of a two-part article from story consultant Jeff Lyons, author of Anatomy of a Premise Line.*

In the first article, Jeff reviewed the first two steps of the process:

  • Step 1: Identify the Core Structure of Your Story
  • Step 2: Assess Whether You Have a Story or a Situation

Now he’ll guide us through assembling the building blocks we’ve created into an actual premise line:

  • Step 3: Map the Core Structure to the Premise Line Template
  • Step 4: Finalize the Premise Line
  • Step 5: Test the Premise Line with Objective Readers

Note: Creative nonfiction writers can also benefit from learning these tools, because story is story and biographies, “true stories” and other creative nonfiction all adhere to the same storytelling principles as fiction.

Read the article below, or download our Master Your Premise Line Guidebook here:

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Five Essential Steps to Crafting Your Premise Line, Part II

by Jeff Lyons

Now that you’ve identified the core structure of your story, and assessed whether you have a story or a situation (and made any necessary adjustments to your situation if so desired), you can continue on to Step 3, mapping the core structure to the premise line template. And if you’re still still unsure whether you have a story or a situation, you can use the premise line template as your key to unlock this mystery. 

Step 3: Map the Core Structure to the Premise Line Template

This template takes a very specific form of four clauses (this draws on basic grammar, we’re simply using the clauses that make up sentences). Mapping the core structure elements identified in step one to this template will quickly tell you if you have a workable story.

Let’s breakdown each clause into its constituent parts to see the true power it offers your writing process. 

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Clause #1:  Protagonist Clause

Take your sense of the first two components of the Core Structure (character and constriction) and combine them into a sentence clause (the structure components are in bold).

You have a sense of a character. Now is the time to give them some dimension. Who are they? What takes them from a state of just being and sparks them into action?  Some call this the inciting incident; maybe you don’t have that clearly in your head yet, that’s okay. What else might push them to move forward (or backward)?  What happens to this person that gets them to act and begin their adventure?  The protagonist clause is really saying, “When something happens…”—what’s the “something”?

We’ll use the novel/movie Jaws, by Peter Benchley, as an illustration how this might play out in execution:

Protagonist Clause: … a fearful, “outsider” Police Chief of a small, coastal vacation town is asked to investigate the possible shark death of a local swimmer …

Here the main character is clear, he is constricted with fear and doubt, and there is a sense of the spark that brakes his inertia, i.e., he is asked to investigate a death.

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Clause #2:  Team Goal Clause

Take the next two components of the Core Structure (desire and focal relationship) and combine them to give you the next clause in the premise line.

This clause captures the sense of a tangible want and defines the relationships involved, especially the core relationship (if any) that drives the middle of the story. Now is the time to give a clearer idea of what the main character wants and who is moving through the story with them. This should also give a sense of the motivation for the desire, not just the thing that is desired (i.e., “with purpose”).

Using Jaws, once again, we get the following:

Team Goal Clause: … his worst fears are realized when a marine biologist confirms the cause of death, prompting the Chief to hire a crusty local fisherman to hunt down and kill the beast—forcing the fisherman to take the Chief and biologist along on the hunt  …

The protagonist wants to catch the shark and he’s doing it with his team. There is deliberate purpose in this and a clear, tangible goal.

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Clause #3:  Opposition Clause

The next two components of the Core Structure (resistance and adventure) combine to give a clear statement about the opposing force acting to upset the story’s applecart.

This is where the writer tries to give a sense of the stakes, the big-picture jeopardy of the adventure, and the central opposing force acting against the character’s action.

For Jaws we have:

Opposition Clause: … only to find himself caught between the town’s greedy mayor demanding a quick kill so beaches can be reopened, and the controlling, resentful fisherman who thinks the Chief is a wuss, and who doesn’t need or want the Chief and biologist on his boat …

The opposition forces are Quint, the biologist, and the Mayor on the human side, and the shark on the non-human side. The opposition is not singular in this story, the way it is in many stories—but it is still unified dramatically. The writer has identified the nature of the “serious pushback” and the chaos that will ensue, including the final outcome if the pushback wins.  Here the “opposing force” is defined, as well as the tendency toward disorder, in a clear and dramatic statement that fits perfectly with the idea as a whole.

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Clause #4:  Dénouement Clause

The chaos component of the adventure crosses the third and fourth clauses due to the nature of crisis: it spreads and is messy and is often indistinguishable from the resistance it creates and the change it generates. So, in this final combination we see how adventure leads to resolution, the order implicit in all chaos. The last two components of the Core Structure (adventure and change) combine as follows:

Dénouement Clause: … leading to the three men bonding as a team as they battle the monster, where the Chief proves his value and courage, overcomes his fear of the water, and secures his place in the community when he saves the town by killing the beast.

The complexity of the adventure unfolds in the bonding of the men, who have been in conflict throughout, and with the escalating danger from the shark. The final disposition of the protagonist is that he finds his place in this new world he lives in and overcomes his fears. The writer expresses the change that is at the end of all disorder and chaos, as well as the change that is personal to the character from the Protagonist Clause. There is a coming full-circle in a sense; the beginning, middle and end all tie back to the first and most fundamental step of sensing a protagonist and a personal story.

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Step 4: Finalize the Premise Line

This is how the final premise line would look (note the clause identifiers):

Final Premise Line: A fearful, “outsider,” Police Chief [Clause #1] of a small, coastal vacation town is asked to investigate the possible shark death [Clause #1] of a local swimmer, and his worst fears are realized when a marine biologist confirms the cause of death, prompting the Chief to hire a crusty local fisherman [Clause #2] to hunt down and kill the beast [Clause #2]—forcing the fisherman to take the Chief and the biologist [Clause #2] along on the hunt; only to find himself caught between the town’s greedy mayor [Clause #3] demanding a quick kill so beaches can be reopened, and the controlling, resentful fisherman [Clause #3] who thinks the Chief is a wuss, and who doesn’t need or want the Chief or the biologist on his boat—leading to the three men bonding as a team as they battle the monster; where the Chief proves his value and courage, overcomes his fear of the water, and secures his place in the community when he saves the town by killing the beast [Clause #4].  

Here you can see the entire structure of the story in a single sentence. Granted, this is a bit convoluted and cumbersome grammatically, but this is a good example of what you end up with after a few initial passes of the process. You can refine as you need going forward. The point is, you have your story, its structure, and a roadmap for writing. It all fits, it all flows and it is a metaphor for a human experience resulting in evolutionary change; it is a story. Armed with this premise line you could confidently move forward to writing pages, knowing your story’s armature was strong. 

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Step 5: Test the Premise Line with Objective Readers

Once you think you have a solid premise line, then is it time to start writing? NO!  If you’re smart, you’ll “unit test” the premise line.

Find three or four trusted readers who have experience with storytelling, who you respect—maybe even hire a professional consultant—and get their feedback. Your mother is not in this category, unless she is a novelist. You need objective feedback, not hand holding.

Does the premise line work for them? Do they “see” the whole story and get a gestalt picture of the overall structure? Does the idea pull them in? Do they sense the beginning, middle, and end and would they write this themselves if they came up with the idea? 

These are just a few of the questions you want them to answer. If you get more passes than thumbs-up, then you have to reassess and decide if you want to move forward with a new idea, or fix this one.  If you get a lot of thumbs-up, then you’re probably good to go to begin pages.

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These five steps will help you develop a powerful story premise that can be your early warning system protecting you from story creep and months of lost writing time.

Once mastered, premise development can guide your entire writing process, while giving you an effective and professional pitch tool to use with publishers, agents and editors. 

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Thanks, Jeff!

Jeff LyonsAbout Jeff: Jeff Lyons is a published author with more than 25 year’s experience in the film, television, and publishing industries as a writer, story development consultant, and editor. He is an instructor through Stanford University’s Online Writer’s Studio, and lectures through the UCLA Extension Writers Program, and is a regular presenter at leading writing and entertainment industry trade conferences.

Jeff has written on the craft of storytelling for Writer’s Digest Magazine, Script Magazine, and The Writer Magazine. His book, Anatomy of a Premise Line: How to Master Premise and Story Development for Writing Success* is published through Focal Press and is the only book devoted solely to the topic of story and premise development for novelists, screenwriters, and creative nonfiction authors. His second book, Rapid Story Development: How to Use the Enneagram-Story Connection to Become a Master Storyteller, is due in 2016. Visit him at www.JeffLyonsBooks.com and follow him on Twitter @storygeeks.

*  Amazon affiliate link 

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Want the Workbook Version? Download our Master Your Premise Line Guidebook here:


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Reverse Engineer Your 2016 Writing Goals

January 27, 2016 by 2 Comments

We’re closing in on the end of the first month of the year. I can’t quite believe it!

Most of us started off the year with solid intentions to write. How’s that going for you?

If you’re writing less than you’d like to be, this is the perfect time to make a course correction.

In fact, in some ways, it’s the BEST time to make a course correction, because we’re early enough in the year that small adjustments will go far.

So dig out your end of 2016 writing goals and take stock. (And if you haven’t created your 2016 writing goals yet, here’s a great tool to help you — and no, it’s definitely NOT too late!)

Do the Math

If you haven’t done this yet, reverse engineer your goals so you can see where you’re wanting to be by the end of the month (and at any point along your projected timeline).

Example 1: Finish an 80,000 word novel by December 31.

For example, if you’re aiming to complete an 80,000 word novel by the end of the year, you can figure out your approximate daily word counts. The math for this tells us that you’ll want to be writing about 320 words per day, 5 days per week, all year, excluding holidays (there are 251 working days in 2016).

This means that by January 31, you’ll want to have completed approximately 6,080 words (19 working days in January). This assumes that you’re either writing by the seat of your pants (a “pantser”) or that you’ve already plotted the novel. It also assumes that you work on weekdays and take holidays and weekends off.

Example 2: Plot AND finish an 80,000 word novel by December 31.

Another example: If your goal is to complete an 80,000 word novel by the end of the year, but you haven’t plotted it yet, you can set a timeline for the plotting and the writing. You might allow two weeks or two months to plot; it’s up to you, your writing process, and your available time.

But once you know your timeline, you can break down the plotting into increments, such as chapters or plot points that you want to hit by a certain date. Then you can assess your progress.

Let’s say you’re aiming for two months for plotting, and we’re nearing the end of January right now. So you should be halfway through the plotting at this point, or ideally around the midpoint of your novel. Then, starting in March, you’ll have 212 working days left to write those 80,000 words, or about 377 words per day.

Tools and Adjustments

I love spreadsheets for this kind of calculating and planning. (In fact, I’m working on making a special one for you right now — stay tuned for that!)

Of course you can adjust these calculations for your project and schedule, such as if you prefer to write on weekends, for instance.

Or as in my case, if you’re writing screenplays, you might want to set a daily target page count rather than a word count.

Also, be aware that these calculations don’t include revision or editing time, which may not always lend themselves to a linear progression since deeper cuts and reworking tends to work better from a to do list method.

Assess Your Progress

Once you’ve reverse-engineered your goals, check in: Are you on track to meet your goals by the end of the year? Do you need to bump up your daily word counts or adjust your time table?

One of the smartest things I see writers do is get crystal clear on the math of their projects so they know exactly what to aim for and can pace themselves well. It’s all too easy to live in fantasy land, unclear on what you’re trying to accomplish, floundering in hope and optimism rather than grounded, practical reality. 

So check in on where you’re supposed to be, and make an assessment of what — if any — adjustments you need to make, and you’ll be good to go. 

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Need support to meet those goals? 

Coaching CircleMy Called to Write Coaching Circle will give you support, accountability, and more encouragement than you can shake a stick at to write on a regular basis and make sure you’re finishing all your writing projects.

If you’d like to join us in February, sign up no later than TOMORROW, Thursday, January 28th at Midnight Pacific Time here: http://JustDoTheWriting.com.

We can’t wait to write with you!

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Five Essential Steps to Crafting Your Premise Line, Part I (Plus a Free Guidebook!)

January 21, 2016 by 2 Comments

Last week I shared an interview with my colleague Jeff Lyons, master storyteller, Enneagram expert, screenwriter, novelist, and author, about his new book, Anatomy of a Premise Line: How to Master Premise and Story Development for Writing Success.*

This week, I’m sharing a powerful two-part article from Jeff about HOW to craft a premise line that will guide all your story development.

Note: Creative nonfiction writers can also benefit from learning these tools, because biographies, “true stories” and other creative nonfiction adhere to the same storytelling principles as fiction.

Read the article below, or download our Master Your Premise Line Guidebook here:

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Five Essential Steps to Crafting Your Premise Line, Part I

by Jeff Lyons

Before a novelist, screenwriter, or creative nonfiction author writes down a word, or thinks of scenes or characters, an idea sparks the imagination and a story is born. Or is it? When inspiration strikes, many writers think they have a story, when in fact they have something else. Untethered by the foundation of a real story, they risk becoming lost in the story woods, writing down creative blind alleys and painting themselves into literary corners.

How can you know if an idea that excites you one day, will have legs over the long course of developing a book, screenplay, or series of books? The only way to know for sure is to master the skill of story premise development. A story’s premise is more than a quick synopsis, or a simple statement defining the theme or hook of a story. It is your canary in the storytelling coal mine and your lifeline as a writer.

A story premise, along with its tool the premise line, is a container that holds the essence of your story’s right, true and natural structure. When properly conceived, it expresses your whole story in one (preferable) or two neat sentences. Finding this premise line is no small task; in fact the process of premise development can be the literary equivalent of water boarding. But when you get it right, the payoff in saved time, money and creative blood, sweat, and tears is worth the agony.   

Fortunately, there is a process that can lessen the pain.

There are five essential steps you can learn now to facilitate mastery of the premise process. (For the full seven-step process refer to Jeff’s book Anatomy of a Premise Line.*)

These steps can give you a repeatable and proven methodology for developing any story. This is a critical skill for any writer, because the premise line is a key ally in writing effective agent or publisher query letters, or pitching film production companies. But, the premise line is more than a pitch tool. When you find a premise line that “works,” then you can know with confidence that you have a story that will stand the test of development.

These five steps will guide your writing process, acting as a roadmap to keep your narrative on track and focused, literally cutting development time in half.

After all, if your story is going to go off the rails, isn’t it better to discover that before you get to page four hundred in your novel, or page 150 in your screenplay?

Step 1: Identify the Core Structure of Your Story

A story is defined as: a metaphor for a human journey that leads to change, as played out by the dynamic interdependence of character and plot. A story is further defined by possessing a natural structure, a structure that is not invented by anyone, including the writer. At this basic level, story structure is a natural force like electricity or the wind. The job of the writer is not to impose structure on a story, but to discover what is already there.

This first step helps you identify the seven structure components present in any story—regardless of genre.    

  1. Character: Stories are about us: human beings, even if it is an anthropomorphized version of a human being.  And this person (protagonist) is central to the telling of the tale, not tangential, even in ensemble stories. Who is your protagonist?  
  2. Constriction: The person at the focus of the story is constricted in some way.  Some “personal problem” haunts them, drives them and motivates them. Try to get a sense of what your protagonist’s problem is and sense how it triggers them into action. The constriction is usually activated by some initiating event that forces the protagonist to move from where they are at the start of the story, toward a new path of action (the adventure).
  3. Desire: The protagonist wants something tangible. They don’t want to be happy, they don’t want world peace and they don’t want to be one with the Universe. They want the money, the girl, or to find the radioactive dirty bomb. They want to get something by the end of the story; what is it?      
  4. Focal Relationship: Stories are conversations, not monologues. No protagonist exists in a dramatic vacuum. Who is the protagonist talking with throughout the middle of the story? What relationship is the focus of the protagonist’s attention? This relationship will be the engine that drives most of the drama in your story, even in multiple point of view stories.
  5. Resistance: More than a personal constriction, there is also the sense of serious, external pushback. Something opposes the goal-seeking of the protagonist, and this force creates dramatic friction. Ideally, this is a person and not some abstract force like Nature or the internal angst of the hero-heroine. This is the central opposition and is bent on stopping the protagonist from getting their desire fulfilled. Who is this opposing force? 
  6. Adventure: Entropy is defined as the tendency of all things to move toward disorder and chaos. This is what has to happen in the middle of every good story. Along with resistance/opposition, focal relationship, desire, and constriction try to sense the messiness that will become the middle of your story, i.e., the twists, turns, reversals, and general mayhem that will occur. This is the adventure. 
  7. Change: You may not see the exact endpoint of your story, but you can sense that your protagonist will not end up where he or she began. While the details of the middle may be a blur, there is a sense of a beginning, middle, and an end. If there is such a sense, then there must be something present that allows for these three points. That “something” is character change. Is this change for the better or worse? Does your protagonist evolve or de-evolve?

These are the seven components of the any story’s core structure. If they are present, then you have a story.  If they are missing, or vague, or so muddled it feels like pulling teeth to find them, then you don’t have a story.  You have something else, and that “else” is a situation. 

Step 2: Assess Whether You Have a Story or a Situation

What’s the difference between a situation and a story? The main difference is that the 7-core structure elements are missing.

But there is a quick way to identify a situation without worrying about a structure analysis.  Any situation has these five conditions:

  • A situation is a problem or predicament with an obvious and direct solution.
  • A situation does not reveal character; it mainly tests problem-solving skills.
  • A situation has no (or few) subplots, twists, or complications.
  • A situation begins and ends in the same emotional space as it started.
  • A situation has a weak, underdeveloped, or nonexistent moral component.

A good example of a situation is the classic twenty-something kids caught in the cabin in the woods with the monster outside that’s going to eat them. The focus of these stories is all about who’s going to die, how bloody is it going to get, and who will get out alive. Protagonists don’t change; there is no deeper message in the material, other than figuring out how to not get eaten; and characters are tested for their ability to avoid danger, rather than having their characters tested. Situations are parts of stories; they are not stories themselves. These five conditions are not present in a story, so if you see them, then you know what you’ve got.

If you find that you have a situation and not a story, then you can reevaluate your idea to see if you can develop it into a story using Step 1, above, or decide to simply take the “situation” route, which would not require the development of a premise line. 

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Read on for Part 2 of this article series, where Jeff will guide us through Steps 3 through 5:

  • Step 3: Map the Core Structure to the Premise Line Template
  • Step 4: Finalize the Premise Line
  • Step 5: Test the Premise Line with Objective Readers

Thanks, Jeff!

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Jeff LyonsAbout Jeff: Jeff Lyons is a published author with more than 25 year’s experience in the film, television, and publishing industries as a writer, story development consultant, and editor. He is an instructor through Stanford University’s Online Writer’s Studio, and lectures through the UCLA Extension Writers Program, and is a regular presenter at leading writing and entertainment industry trade conferences.

Jeff has written on the craft of storytelling for Writer’s Digest Magazine, Script Magazine, and The Writer Magazine. His book, Anatomy of a Premise Line: How to Master Premise and Story Development for Writing Success* is published through Focal Press and is the only book devoted solely to the topic of story and premise development for novelists, screenwriters, and creative nonfiction authors. His second book, Rapid Story Development: How to Use the Enneagram-Story Connection to Become a Master Storyteller, is due in 2016. Visit him at www.JeffLyonsBooks.com and follow him on Twitter @storygeeks.

*  Amazon affiliate link

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Want the Workbook Version? Download our Master Your Premise Line Guidebook here:

 

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5 Tips for Building a Writing Habit that Lasts All Year Long … Like Clockwork

December 30, 2015 by 4 Comments

It’s that time of year. We’re all making resolutions and setting goals, thinking about our biggest, fondest dreams, and what we hope to accomplish with our lives in the year ahead and beyond. As writers, usually our resolutions, goals, and visions have a lot to do with our writing, along with the other big goals we’d like to accomplish.

And once you’re clear on the dream — you’ll want to have a way to put it all into action.

This is where building a lasting writing habit comes into play. Habit will get you through to the end, where willpower and determination might otherwise fail you.

5 Tips to Build a Lasting Writing Habit

When it comes to building a writing habit, habit itself is the key word. We want you to get your writing to a place in your life where you wouldn’t even consider NOT doing it, the way you wouldn’t even consider not brushing your teeth every day. That’s when you know you’ve got a solid writing habit.

Here are 5 tips for how you can build a habit that lasts:

Tip #1: Write daily or near daily.

When you’re trying to build a habit, aim to write DAILY. Writing on a regular basis is a hell of a lot easier than writing infrequently, it stirs up more frequent creative thoughts, and it eliminates the whole need so many writers have to “warm up”. It turns out that most “warming up” is procrastination and resistance in disguise, and you won’t need it once you’re writing regularly.

In fact, when you write on a regular basis, you’ll find that your subconscious mind is always working on your project, so it’s much easier to dip in and out of it on the fly.

So when you’re starting out building a writing habit, or even rebuilding one, aim to write every single day. There’s a kind of open window into our writing that closes more tightly the longer the span of time that passes between writing sessions. So keeping that window of time to 24 hours or less, when you’re building the habit, is key. Once you’ve got it down, you can start experimenting with taking days off here and there.

When I first started writing regularly, I had to write every day or my resistance levels would build up to code red proportions. Now I can take weekends off and step back into the writing come Mondays with less drama and angst.

Tip #2: Set small, attainable goals for your daily writing.

Lots of writers crash and burn by setting unrealistic goals for themselves. Many writers are surprised to discover how much they can accomplish in just 15 minutes of writing every day — it adds up over time into so much more than you would ever think. (Check out the story about Rick, who went from 5 minutes of writing a day, to now working on finishing a 6th major draft of his novel.)

Do yourself a favor and start out your habit building with a super small, easily attainable goal that you KNOW you can do, every day, even if it’s just 5 minutes day. When new members start in my Called to Write Coaching Circle program, we encourage them to focus on even just checking in every day as a way of building the habit muscle.

Tip #3: If you’re not writing, make the goal smaller.

Once you set your goal, if you don’t find yourself doing it, don’t despair or call yourself a failure!

Instead, take that as a useful piece of information (your resistance is higher than that goal) and set the goal smaller, even if it’s writing for one minute.

Truth be told, when you’re building the habit, it’s NOT the size of the goal that’s important, it’s the habit itself that is.

Once you’re meeting and succeeding with your initial goal, you can build up to more over time. I started out aiming to write for 15 minutes a day (and finished a script that way) and gradually built up to writing three to four hours a day at my peak before I had baby #2. 

Tip #4: Create triggers for your writing habit.

You always brush your teeth when you get ready in the morning and before you go to bed, right? Getting ready in the morning and going to bed are triggers. You don’t debate about whether or not you’ll brush your teeth, you just do it because you’re so used to it, it would feel weird NOT to do it. So if you can set up a trigger for your writing, it makes it easier to do.

Here are some examples of possible triggers: 

  • Write immediately upon awakening. A huge benefit of writing first in the day is that it clearly separates it from other life tasks and obligations so you don’t have to transition so much between other things to writing and back again.
  • Write with a timer or during a group writing sprint. When you use a timer or you’re writing alongside other people, the writing energy just kicks in and carries you along. 
  • Write after meditating or exercising. It’s nice to stack other resistance-provoking activities next to each other in the day and hit them with a one-two punch.
  • Write before exercising or before doing some other kind of regular activity. Then you have something to “bump up against” in your schedule. 
  • Write immediately after you get home, eat dinner, or put the kids to bed. Know that when you’re done, you’ll write before you do anything else. 
  • Write before going to bed. If you’re a die-hard night owl, consider making writing the last thing you do. 

If you keep doing the same thing, over and over again, it will become a regular part of your routine, and much easier to sustain over the long term.

Tip #5. Create as much accountability as you need to keep writing.

There are many different kinds of accountability, including writer’s groups, mentors, deadlines, accountability parties, and writing buddies.

The trick is to figure out exactly how much YOU need to keep the fire lit under your writing motivation and put it into place. Look for the right combination that keeps you in action.

For example, you might want to have a writing buddy you exchange pages with every week, to keep you honest, whether you actually read each other’s work or not. You could combine that with a writer’s group, like my Called to Write program, which provides daily accountability. If that isn’t enough for you, you could also add in an in person writing group and/or a contest or submission deadline to keep you focused.

There’s no one size fits all answer here. You might be someone who is either great at staying accountable to yourself or someone who rebels against any kind of accountability. If that’s the case, you may you prefer to put your focus on community and connection, rather than accountability, so that what helps keep you motivated is that your identity is tied to your writing and the group you’re in.

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Put these five tips into action and see what you can do! It’s amazing what happens once you start. I wish you all the best in 2016 for a creative and productive year!

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Coaching CircleMake 2016 the year your writing takes off!

If you want help, support, accountability, and more writing encouragement than you can shake a stick at in 2016, join the Called to Write Coaching Circle.

When you join us by December 31 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time, you’ll lock in our 2015 rates and have all the support you need to get your word counts soaring. Plus, when you enter coupon code NEWYEARWRITE you’ll save $30 on your first session or package. Join us!

Find out more and register here: http://JustDoTheWriting.com.

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Are You Waiting for Permission to Write?

December 22, 2015 by 2 Comments

In the teleclass I taught last week: “Called to Write: Align Your Daily Actions with Your Soul’s Deeper Purpose“, something that resonated for my lovely group of attendees was the idea of no longer waiting for permission to write. 

(If you missed the live class, you can still sign up to get the recording by clicking here.)

I waited for years to start writing fiction.

Inside, I felt like I had to get some kind of stamp of approval before I was “allowed” to write. That I needed an expert or agent or mentor or master writer to see my potential and encourage me to pursue writing. That otherwise I was chasing a fool’s dream or breaking the rules somehow. 

Change Your Mindset

I think many writers or want-to-be-writers do this. It’s tied to perfectionism. A belief that we have to be “good enough” before we start. That there’s a qualification level we have to reach before we even begin.

But how can we learn how to do anything, until we actually start doing it?

One of my mentors, Hal Croasmun of ScreenwritingU.com, talks about how he makes a point, every two years, to learn a new skill, so that he always remembers what it’s like to be a beginner. This helps him develop the programs he runs for new writers because he can put himself in our shoes. I’m willing to bet he doesn’t wait for permission to learn karate or poker or horseback riding. I’m betting he picks something that interests him, and goes for it.

Why can’t we do the same with writing?

Perfectionism, again. This has to do, in part, with the black and white nature of writing in this digital age. Back when I wrote drafts on paper, I didn’t hesitate to scratch things out. I knew I was writing a first draft. (I can even recall telling my father that I didn’t think I could ever write without real paper! How times have changed…) There’s something about seeing our words looking so final that makes them seem like they should be final draft, publication quality. Which is entirely unfair to our early stream-of-consciousness drafts.

Underneath the perfectionism is also fear, the lurking originator of perfectionism and other writerly issues, which tells us to play it safe and protect ourselves from potential failure, ridicule, and rejection. It’s a powerful force that works against us and our writing.

But again, how can we learn, grow, and develop ourselves as writers without actually doing the work?

We cannot.

We have to change our mindsets from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset.

And we have to stop waiting for permission — for some kind of pre-approval that will guarantee our success — otherwise, we are really just kidding ourselves.

Don’t Wait for Permission

Here’s the thing.

You do not have to wait for ANYONE to validate you or tell you that you are good enough or deserving enough or talented enough to write.

No one has to “see” or recognize your writing as “good enough” before you can write. There’s no outside evaluation or assessment of “potential” needed or required.

YOU ARE A WRITER.

You are a writer because you are CALLED TO WRITE.

You know you are called to write because you have been persistently nudged, cajoled, and pestered by your deeper, higher, wiser self to write. 

That means, by definition, you have been invited by the Universe to write.

And therefore, you have all the permission you need, right now.

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Coaching CircleReady to fulfill your calling as a writer? Join the January 4th session of the Called to Write Coaching Circle and start getting your words out in the world where they belong. Find out more and register here: http://JustDoTheWriting.com. Save $30 on your first session with coupon code NEWYEARWRITE and lock in our 2015 rates as long as you keep your membership active.

 

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Are You Called to Write?

December 10, 2015 by 3 Comments

I believe in callings.

I believe that each of us has something that we were put here to do, and when we find what it is, we must do it with all our hearts.

And… it isn’t always easy to get clear on what our calling is.

Why?

The noisy, busy world we live in and the noisy, busy minds we are encouraged to cultivate by the mainstream makes it hard to hear ourselves and the deeper whispers of our souls.

And that’s often how a calling comes through, as a whisper.

It took me a number of years to come around to realizing that my deepest call is to write. I spent my 20s and 30s sorting myself out in that regard, changing careers, soul-searching, and more (like helping other people get clear on their life callings!), only to come back to the insight that my 6th grade self already had hit upon: I want to write.

Are you called to write?

If you’re here, reading a website named “Called to Write”, I’m going to assume that you also feel that call. That you have the inner compunction to put words to the page in some form. You may or may not be doing it yet, or maybe not yet quite the way you want to be doing it, but I’m guessing that one way or the other, you’ve been feeling the call to write for some time.

When I conducted a survey a little while ago, 71% of you said that you felt called to write without a doubt. That’s huge. And fantastic!

And, interestingly, 71% of you also said that you struggle with procrastination.

Isn’t that fascinating?

The very thing we feel called to do is the very thing we tend to avoid.

And it’s entirely normal.

One of my favorite things Steven Pressfield says in The War of Art (aka “Jenna’s Bible”) is this:

“The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.”

In other words?

The bigger the dream, the more we fear and avoid it.

The good news

The good news is that it’s not as hard as it feels to help yourself write the way you want to. You just need to understand what’s really going on behind the calling, behind the resistance, and along the life journey we’re making as writers so that you can start to match up what you’re doing on a daily basis with your deeper calling.

I’m leading a free teleclass next week to help you do just that.

It’s titled: “Called to Write: How to Align Your Daily Actions with Your Soul’s Deeper Purpose”.

In the class, I’ll be talking about:

  • Symptoms you may be experiencing if you’re not living your calling — and what to do about them.
  • Mistakes you may be making that might be stopping you from pursuing your calling.
  • How to know you are called to write — no more second guessing what you were put here to do.
  • Things you think may be signs you shouldn’t write but are not accurate — and you should ignore!
  • Surprising facts about how you can fulfill your calling to write more easily than you expect.
  • The mythic journey you must complete in order to fulfill your calling.
  • Action steps to align your daily actions with your soul’s deeper calling.

If you’d like to join me, please register here: http://programs.calledtowrite.com/teleclass

 

 

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10 Tips to Help You Keep Writing Through the Holidays

December 2, 2015 by 5 Comments

It’s a busy time. There’s a lot going on and a lot expected of us with the next round of holidays looming on the horizon.

It’s also a time when we start looking ahead to the new year. Maybe more in the backs of our brains where we don’t have to pay too much attention to it, but most of us are starting to think ahead to our writing in the new year and what we want to accomplish.

Some of us are even putting off writing until the new year, thinking we don’t have enough time to do it now, with all the busyness.

Don’t fall for the big blocks of writing time myth

The truth is, though, that most of us are putting it off because we think we need a lot of time to write. That it isn’t worth writing unless we have a big block of time to write, where we can really dig in. And it’s true, those long blocks of time to write can be lovely (when they don’t scare the bejesus out of us and cause us to procrastinate even more!).

But we don’t really need big blocks of time to keep our writing in motion.

We just have to do some writing.

10 Tips to Keep You Writing Through the Holidays

Here’s what I suggest to my Called to Write members to keep writing through the holidays:

  1. Write small. Even if you’re accustomed to longer stretches of writing time, it’s okay to scale it back to a more manageable amount while you’re balancing the busyness of the holidays too. Even just 15 minutes of writing a day (or 5!) is worth doing and will keep you connected to your project.
  2. Write first. Writing first in the day–even if you have to get up early–will help you bypass most of the challenges the holidays bring. This is because when you put your writing first, everything else comes afterward and fills in the remaining time. It will reduce your stress levels, you’ll feed your soul, and everything else will still miraculously get done.
  3. Set a rock bottom daily writing goal. If you know what your rock bottom minimum for writing is, it’s easier to know what to do on the really busy days. You might want to aim to write 250 words, or three sentences, or write for 15 minutes as your rock bottom. Then you know what you have to do when you’re in tough. (And it’s okay to set your “write small” amount from tip #1 at your rock bottom minimum!)
  4. Set a holiday season writing goal. Whether you’re targeting completion of a major project or simply determined to keep writing no matter what, knowing what your goal is makes it easier to know if you are on track. This year, for instance, with a young toddler in the house, my goal is super, super simple: just to keep writing. That’s it. For another writer, it might be, to finish the draft of a novel by the end of the year. Once you know your goal, you can reverse engineer what you need to do to accomplish it.
  5. Know what your specific challenges are and how you will address them. For example, my older son will be off school for two weeks, so I’m thinking about what he’s going to be doing when I want to be writing and making plans to write when my husband is home and/or the kids are otherwise occupied. Maybe you’ll be traveling, or having house guests. With some forethought, you can come up with a simple strategy to protect your writing time.
  6. Be clear about what days you are taking off. I know of writers who ONLY take off Christmas Day every year. I know others who write 365 days per year. I also know of successful writers who write only on weekdays and take weekends and holidays off. If you decide to take days off from writing, be clear with yourself about when, where, and how you will start writing again after the day or days off. You have to be ready to combat the inertia of not writing.
  7. Assume you will write. On the days you’ve planned to write, make the assumption that writing is happening, one way or the other. Ideally, you’ll have a plan and a schedule to help you stick to that plan, but if all else fails, just assume it’s a question of WHEN not IF. (Don’t waste your life energy deciding whether or not you’ll be writing. Just decide, and then do it.)
  8. Create support & accountability. Habit trumps inspiration, discipline, and motivation almost any day of the week, but habit can still get disrupted by changes in our routine, like the holidays, travel, vacations, extra social commitments, and just generally having more to do. You can use the power of accountability to help keep your habit in place even when it’s being disrupted by other things. Whether you’re checking in with your writing buddies, participating in a writer’s group like my Called to Write community, or talking to your writing coach, having people around you who believe in the importance of your writing and support you to keep doing it helps you stay strong when you’re around people who don’t get it.
  9. Be creative. When the going gets tough, be creative about how and where you write. For example, you might want to arrive at your appointments early so you can sit in the car and write for a few minutes, write on your phone in bed at night (this is one of my favorite tricks), keep a notebook with you at all times for moments of inspiration, or find other clever ways to keep writing even when life is happening.
  10. Write last. Last but not least, if you can’t write first, write last. Even if you take just a few minutes at the end of every day, write. This is my saving grace these days with a busy life with a little toddler. 

I hope this list of ideas will get you thinking about what you can do to keep writing through the holidays so you can feel great about beginning the new year with a strong start.

Happy writing!

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What has writing given you that you’re grateful for?

November 26, 2015 by 14 Comments

It’s Thanksgiving here in the U.S., so many of us are thinking about gratitude.

It occurred to me that since here at Called to Write we focus on writing, it might be worth thinking about what we are grateful for that writing has brought to our lives.

So here’s a place to share, if you feel so inspired.

Let us know in the comments … what has writing given you that you’re grateful for?

I’ll go first:

  • The satisfaction of pursuing one of my two most deeply held dreams, alongside my dream of becoming a mother.
  • The joy of playing in far off imaginary worlds that I’ve always loved but never believed I could be responsible for creating.
  • Incredible amounts of personal growth, self-discipline, self-confidence, self-trust, new habits, and new beliefs.
  • Exciting adventures in learning about writing fiction and screenwriting.
  • A tribe of incredible writers I’m grateful to call friends and colleagues.

It’s your turn. :)

What has writing given you that you’re grateful for?

 

 

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How to use your inner wisdom to choose your next writing project

October 30, 2015 by 2 Comments

So let’s return to our topic of choosing your next writing project.

In my first post in this series, I wrote about where and how writers tend to get stuck choosing writing projects.

In my second post in the series, I wrote about using “decision criteria” to make choices about your next writing project. I should clarify here perhaps, that I’m specifically talking about long form writing projects (a novel, a feature script, a book, etc.). This is because long form projects tend to trigger a different kind of stuckness than short form projects which require less commitment (though there are certainly plenty of ways we can get stuck with short projects too).

In this third post, let’s talk about some additional approaches I like to use when it comes to putting projects in order of “best fit” to “least best fit for now” and also about some intuitive approaches to choosing a project.

Let’s start with project ordering.

** Check out the newly updated version of this series available
for download here (or scroll to the end of this post) **

Putting your projects in “order”

I help my clients get through project choosing paralysis by helping them think about which project comes first. This is important because many writers who are overwhelmed with choices and concepts and ideas feel attached to all of them and petrified by the idea of “giving up” any of them.

It feels like letting someone you love die, or choosing to marry one suitor and rejecting the other.

But this is more like having serial, monogamous relationships. It’s about choosing which project you’ll work on now, all the while holding in mind which one will come next, and then next again. 

And yes, this works when you’re working on a series, but it also works even if you’re working with stand-alone, single-title projects.

The core idea here is to develop a project queue — a list of your projects in an order that you’ll work through. (And yes, of course it can and will change over time, it’s just to help you choose the first one NOW, and to have a sense of what comes next, to calm down the part of your brain that freaks out about missing out on something.)

To put them in order, you can use a number of a different methods, including using decision criteria like those I described last time (like those being the operative phrase; it’s important to come up with criteria that work for you, your brand, your writing career, your lifestyle, etc.).

You can also use intuitive decision making methods instead of or in conjunction to the decision criteria that help bring forth your own best inner wisdom about what comes next.

For me now, a lot of this happens semi-consciously, because I’m constantly sorting and sifting through my projects in the back of my brain, but it’s worth discussing in detail if you’re struggling with a choice.

Using intuitive decision-making methods

  1. My head says / My heart says. One of my favorite ways of helping my clients choose projects is to hold their collection of ideas in mind and then verbally fill in the blanks of these two statements, in turn, SAYING OUT LOUD THE FIRST THING THAT COMES TO MIND.

    For the first statement, “My head says,” keep your eyes open and complete the sentence out loud: “When it comes to choosing my next writing project, my head says … ”

    For the second step, “My heart says,” take a deep breath, let your head drop to your chest, put your hand over your heart, close your eyes and complete this sentence, also out loud, “When it comes to choosing my next writing project, my heart says …” Just notice what comes and notice how it feels. Sometimes they’ll match. Sometimes they won’t. But your heart will have the true knowledge, if you allow it to speak.

    Note that this exercise works best when you have someone to listen and hold the space for you, like a coach, mentor, or trusted friend. Deeper truths tend to emerge in the presence of a caring witness. (Thanks to Sonia for this one.)

  2. Follow your fear. Another one of my favorite methods comes from Steven Pressfield. In a video interview I saw of him, he said, “Figure out what scares you the most and do that first.” The wisdom here is that our fear can be an incredible guide to exactly the next best place we need to go to grow as writers. We would not be experiencing the resistance and fear unless there was something very important lurking in that direction. So you check in with your project list to see which one scares you. Consider heading in that direction first.

    I can still remember facing what I thought was my biggest fear, working on a non-fiction project, when a friend of mine said to me, “I don’t think that’s the one that scares you the most, I think it’s the fiction project.” And of course when I looked deeper, she was right. So I turned to writing my first script instead, about a painful issue that was so terrifying to me I had gone numb to it. (And that is one of the stultifying effects of fear by the way — it can make you believe you don’t care or feel nothing when in fact you feel “too much”, so again, having a witness can be an important part of this process.)

  3. Light / heavy. With an unordered or ordered list of possible projects, without overthinking, zip down your list and make note of which projects feel light and which feel heavy. The “lighter” projects are usually good bets and you can move them to the top. Keep in mind that in relationship to method #2, “light” doesn’t necessarily mean not scary, nor does “heavy” necessarily mean it is scary. Try using these two methods separately and see what happens. Oftentimes there’s a useful overlap that is quite clarifying, and although they may seem counter to each other on a logical level, remember that we’re using intuitive methods here. :) (Thanks to Isabel for teaching me this one.)
  4. Project into the future. Have a little chat here with your future self, about which is the next best project for you. Remember that s/he is already living it, so s/he’ll have the perfect 20-20 hindsight to best advise you. Close your eyes, imagine meeting your future self in a cozy spot, and just ask, “What’s my next, best project?” The answer may surprise and delight you — and may knock all the other projects well down the totem pole! (This happened to me just a few nights ago.)
  5. Pay attention to what catches your eye. As you hold your list of projects in mind and move through your day and your life, notice what shows up, whether through other people’s words, what you read or watch, or things you see in your day-to-day world. Sometimes a little nudge of clarity is all we need, and when we pay attention to the confluence of information and ideas and experiences we have, something will crystalize into a “Yes!” for a particular project above the others.
  6. Do something repetitive. One of the best ways to access your own inner wisdom and intuition is to do something repetitive. So ask yourself, “I wonder what my next project will be?” or “What’s the next best project for me?” and then go for a walk, take a shower, scrub the floor, work out, or do something else that’s physical and repetitive and just let your brain give you the answer whenever it’s ready. Part of this is about trusting the process, giving it time, and knowing that the next project will be clear in its own right and perfect time.
  7. Notice which project bubbles up to the top. My favorite way of choosing a project is to just let them all circulate around in the back of my brain and see which project(s) start attracting new ideas and clarity and bubble up to the surface. Certain projects just seem to have the energy and drive to rise above the others. I’ll usually have a favorite or two, a sense of which seem like the best candidates, and then wait to see what happens, and usually one emerges, just in time for the next writing rodeo.

Can you imagine using any of these tools to help you choose your next project? 

Now that we’ve come to the end of this series, do you have any lingering questions or specific challenges about how to choose your next project? Ask me a question in the comments section on the blog and I’ll be happy to try to help!

And if you’re catching up, start here:

Thanks so much for reading!

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Download the Newly Updated Guidebook Version Here

There’s an updated version of this post and the two others in the series, assembled into a How to Choose Your Next Book (Or Screenplay) Guidebook with an overview of the process in a PDF format, along with a workbook in a PDF and RTF format. You can import the RTF into Word or Scrivener and work with it there.

Click the image below to download the Guidebook now.

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