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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Solve Your Story Problems In Advance with Jeff Lyons’ Premise Line Development Method

January 13, 2016 by 3 Comments

Today I’m sharing an interview with my colleague Jeff Lyons, master storyteller, Enneagram expert, screenwriter, novelist, and author, about his new book, Anatomy of a Premise Line *.

Jeff and I ran a teleclass series and workshop in 2013 about using the Enneagram for story development. In fact, he has another book coming out later this year called Rapid Story Development: How to Use the Enneagram-Story Connection to Become a Master Storyteller, so stay tuned for that one, too!

The brilliance of Jeff’s premise line work is that it helps you solve your story problems in advance. Something I see often is writers struggling with massive rewrites of various types, novels, screenplays, what have you, and swearing on their mother’s graves NEVER AGAIN to write without plotting and developing their stories first. 

Jeff’s method is a powerful tool to help you get your story straight before you write your way into a corner and have to reverse engineer a proper story to find your way out again. Take a gander here and you’ll get a sense of how this whole thing works and why it’s so valuable. Then, get thee to Amazon (affiliate links provided) and dive in!

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Why did you write this book?  Does the world really need another book on how to write better?

No, the world doesn’t need another book on how to write. The world has more than enough books on writing, the world is glutted and drowning in how-to-this and how-to-that, when it comes to writing craft.  You are correct.  The world doesn’t need another book on writing.

Which is great for my book, because it’s not a book on writing, or how to write, or what to write, or on anything related to writing. It is a book about story: how to develop a story, how to structure a story, and how to know if you even have a story.

Anatomy of a Premise Line is a book about story development. Writing and storytelling are two different things and they have nothing to do with one another. They are different skills sets and require two different kinds of talents. You don’t have to have a pen or paper, word processor, or be anywhere near a written language of any kind to tell a story.  Stories can be danced, mimed, painted, sculpted, or written, but stories don’t need writers. They only need storytellers. The problem is—and this is why I wrote this book—storytelling (i.e., story development) is not taught in MFA writing programs, or in film schools, or anywhere else, really.

Writers are on their own, for the most part, in developing their story development skill sets. That’s the need this book fills: this book is the missing class you never got in that expensive MFA program, or film school.

What makes Anatomy of a Premise Line different than all the other story development books out there?

That’s just it, there aren’t a lot of story development books out there. In fact, there are almost no books on real story development in the marketplace. That’s one of the differentiators for sure between my book and other books, but the main differentiator is that Anatomy of a Premise Line teaches how to leverage something called a “premise line” to discover and uncover any story’s right, true and natural structure. Many writing books mention story premise in passing; some might even devote a whole chapter to the idea of “what is a premise,” but this is the only book devoted entirely to the subject of premise development and idea testing.

This is the main distinction between Anatomy of a Premise Line and all other books on story development (the few that are out there) in the marketplace. If a story is going to fail, it will first do so at the level of the idea itself, i.e., at the premise level. This book teaches writers how to master this invaluable tool and how to use it to uncover the perfect structure for any story. Every story has a structure; every story must have a structure. If it doesn’t, then it’s not a story, it’s something else.

Anatomy of a Premise Line teaches any writer how to use that structure to build a map that can guide their entire writing process from inception to writing pages. By leveraging the power of the premise line, a storyteller can learn how to harness the natural structure of their story in one or two sentences. The book has many examples from the worlds of film and literature demonstrating how this works.

I liken it to the old saying, “Give a man a fish and he eats for a night; teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.” Anatomy of a Premise Line teaches you how to fish so you can create stories for your whole life, not just muddle through one night of writing with some flavor-of-the-month story technique. 

What is the biggest problem your book addresses for writers and storytellers?

Anatomy of a Premise Line addresses the problem of, what I call, “premature writing.” Think about it, what happens when a writer gets a new idea for a story? They get excited, they chew on the idea a little while (very little), they get filled with anxiety because of the pressure to write something—anything—and they just start to write.

This is, in fact, the consensus advice to writer, “Just write, don’t edit, don’t hold back, just do it—just write. The story will write itself—trust the process.”

Well, for a few lucky souls this approach can work, the “just do it” strategy can produce some useful writing, but for the vast majority of writes this is horrible advice. Writers think that writing will get them where they want to go, but this is not what happens.

Instead, after a few weeks, or months, and hundreds of pages they find themselves lost in the story woods wondering, “Where did the wheels go off the wagon?” The story isn’t working and they invariably have to backtrack to find their way again.  I call this “backing into the story.” Everybody does it—everybody, without exception. That’s the main problem this book addresses, because when you are forced to back into your story you lose writing time, money, and creative energy struggling to get back on track and find your path again. This can be avoided completely!

I’m on a mission to train writers to hold back from the urge to relieve their creative anxiety by starting pages before they know their story’s structure. Develop your story’s premise first, figure out the basic architecture, and develop your premise line; only then can you know if your story is going to work or fall flat. You can know right at the inception of your idea whether or not that idea will support a serious commitment by you as a writer. It can be done. You can avoid “premature writing” and getting lost in the story woods, if you let the premise development process guide you to the right, true, and natural structure of your story—BEFORE you start writing pages.

The premise development process can literally cut your writing time in half by saving you from getting lost in the story woods, and providing a solid story map that can guide you thorough the entire writing process. This is not exaggeration, this is what I’ve seen happen with literally thousands of writers.

Is this book for screenwriters or novelists? How about creative nonfiction?

Story is story; writing is writing. They are not the same thing. Remember, storytelling has nothing to do with writing. Writing is just one form a story can take, and whether that form is a haiku poem, or a screenplay, or a thousand-page novel is irrelevant. Certainly screenwriting  and novel writing are very different activities, and each has its own peculiarities.

But, Anatomy of a Premise Line is about story, not writing, so I don’t care (nor does the book) what kind of writer you are, in terms of your preferred format. All I care about is what kind of story you are telling, and have you discovered your story’s right, true, and natural structure.  Consequently, the book makes no preference as to screenwriting, playwriting, novel writing  or creative nonfiction; it’s for anyone who tells stories.

I really want to ask you about how you write. What sparks a story for you? Do you have rituals?

The way I write is something I would not recommend to anyone. In fact, avoid my writing process at all cost. I do EVERYTHING you advise your readers NOT to do.

Here is my ritual: Get up, have coffee, feed the cat (so far so good), get on Facebook and spend an hour kibitzing, get on Twitter and check statistics and notifications and respond, get on LinkedIn and track all the mail/posts/messages, get on Stage 32 (Stage32.com) and respond to new contacts and review posts, write for a little while, check email, check Facebook again, check Twitter again, repeat. This is my day. I spend as much time on social media distracting myself as I do writing. I find this is necessary for me. I need distractions to write. It’s counter-intuitive, but that’s what works for me. My day is from 8 a.m. to 12 a.m. pretty much every day, seven days a week. I’m writing and distracting myself all day long—literally. Run away from this as fast as you can and do not do this if you want a life. You have been warned.

As to what sparks a story, who knows? I think it’s different for everyone. For me it’s a mix of my personal neurotic fears and dreams and wishes and obsessive desires. Right now I’m obsessed about the 11th century because I want to write a novel about that period, and I’m all wrapped up in the corruption of the Catholic Church and Popes, and kinky Cardinals and God only knows where that’s coming from inside my subconscious mind. But, it is, so I have to listen. What makes us write the things we write are all very much about us working out our own personal peccadilloes. So, somehow, right now, medieval Catholic perverts are my path to emotional self-healing. Go figure.

What question should I have asked that I didn’t?

“Chocolate or vanilla?” I still can’t decide.

Thanks, Jeff!

Pick up your copy of Anatomy of a Premise Line on Amazon here.*

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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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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

 

 

Filed Under: Announcements, Authentic True Work, Life Purpose, Writing Tagged With: , , , ,

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?

 

 

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: , ,

The results of my online detox experiment and how it has affected my writing

November 25, 2015 by 10 Comments

I wrote recently getting a handle on online distractions that keep you from writing, and prior to that, about cutting back on the online distractions that were cluttering my head.

I’ve been highly interested in this topic because I could feel my life-energy being sapped by these distractions and it’s been really bothering me, despite the many changes I’ve already made. I do a good job of protecting my actual writing time from email and other online stuff, but the rest of my life? Not so much.

And it was mostly because of my phone. My computer use feels manageable. My TV consumption is minimal (though I have been watching lots of Prison Break and Breakout Kings as I’m prepping a sci-fi prison movie right now!). Having said that, I like being able to use my phone to read ebooks in the dark late at night without waking the baby (who sleeps in the same room) and being able to write on it when I want to.

But I don’t like feeling like I can’t be without it. Ever. YUCK.

(And honestly, the picture I’ve chosen to accompany this post keeps freaking me out — it seems entirely emblematic of how so many of us are viewing our world through the filter of a device… constantly.)

My email trap

It was email that was really my last “hook” — I rationalized that as a business owner, I need to stay on top of things and make sure nothing was falling through the cracks. But that notion kept me constantly checking to see if I had any new messages. 

And not only did I feel guilty for oh so frequently “checking” my phone when I was around my kids, I didn’t like the way my brain felt always cluttered by all the checking, even after I’d taken Facebook off my phone, turned off almost all the notifications in the lock screen and more. It was like being tied into other people’s energy and needs was keeping me on edge, in a hyper vigilant state of awareness and constant readiness. Again, YUCK. 

Finding the courage and support to make a change

So I decided to participate in Jessica’s Look Up two week online use “detox” program and see what shifts I could make.

Since my online Writer’s Circle program is similarly grounded in accountability, self-observation through journaling, and support through coaching and peer connection, I knew going in that her program would be just the ticket to get me focused on what I really wanted.

She had us work through her four-step process of first defining what we want, noticing what impulses were driving the behavior to check in online, accepting that those feelings and impulses (often discomfort) would not necessarily change but that we could learn new ways to deal with them, and finally choosing what we wanted instead. Then, every day, we answered simple journal prompts every morning to set our intentions for the day about our online use and how we wanted our days to go, and every evening, about how it went and what we learned.

I deleted Gmail from my phone

Initially I found myself sort of skirting the edges of changing my phone use, testing the water, seeing how it felt just to consider cutting back. (Which just shows how powerful an addiction it can be!)

Even before the program started, I installed the app called “Moment” so I could see how much time I was actually spending on my phone, and how many times I was picking it up. So in some ways it was good that I wasn’t changing anything initially, but just observing. And it was kind of scary. There was one day, prior to the program, where I picked up my phone FORTY-NINE times. 49!! It’s embarrassing even to put that in print.

On about Day 3 of the 14-day program I decided to take Gmail off my phone entirely. For good measure, I took off Chrome too, so my second-biggest, “let me just look that up real quick” excuse was gone too. I still have Safari there but since it wasn’t my go-to program it just doesn’t have the same attraction. While I was at it, I turned off every other kind of lock screen, pop up, and banner notification I could find on my phone (except iMessage and Reminders, which I do use) and on my computer.

It was so worth it.

I felt sort of jittery for about 24 to 48 hours, still on that automatic “must-check-now” auto-alert. It was mildly frightening to feel so much like Pavlov’s Dog. Again, YUCK. 

What changed for me

After that, everything got a lot more calm.

I found myself feeling much more present in my life and to my family.

My brain felt quieter, calmer, more alert.

I had more energy.

I started reading REAL BOOKS and putting my hands on REAL THINGS like baking food, drawing, collaging. I noticed that when I felt the urge to “check” I could make tea, or snuggle with my boys, or GO OUTSIDE and look up at the beautiful amazing sky that helps make life on this planet possible. 

I also found that I could still use my devices for certain things: Kindle, Netflix, the timer, the calculator, iMessages, writing, and other apps I love and find incredibly useful without it taking over my time and energy. My phone became a tool again, instead of a constant companion or savior or whatever it was actually doing for me. It’s been interesting to walk the line of finding what online use works for me and what doesn’t, at least for right now.

I found myself being crystal clear about times when I absolutely did NOT want to be consuming any online stuff at all and have had a few spans of totally unplugged time (something I used to do weekly) and LOVED it.

It’s started to feel kind of gross to be looking at my phone.

So I just don’t do it much anymore. It mostly stays in my office, on the charger, except when I need it when I’m out and want it for emergency phone calls, or if I need it for another purpose, like the calculator or timer. Again, it’s gone back to being a tool, and I like that.

I also found that the days have gotten So Much Longer! All those “little” checks and moments of time that were getting sucked into online use are suddenly mine again. My mind is clearer. My intentions are clearer each day. I feel more focused.

How my writing has changed

And as far as my writing goes, I have not noticed a huge change in my writing time, but I’m not surprised by that, since I’ve already been writing regularly and protecting my writing time well.

What I have noticed is that I feel readier to write when I sit down to do it. Now what swirls around in my brain when I’m out in the world is what I’m going to be writing about next, whether it’s a blog post, my current script, or the next big project that’s coming down the pipeline. It might sound like a small shift, but it’s huge. It feels like I’ve reclaimed my own territory again. And it’s such a relief.

What about you?

Are there ways your online use is hindering your time, life-energy, or writing focus whether it’s on your phone or computer or other device? Does anything I’ve shared here inspire you to make a change? I’d love to hear what you think.

 

Filed Under: Handling Digital Distractions Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Getting a handle on the online distractions that keep you from writing

October 22, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Yesterday I had the pleasure of listening to Jessica Michaelson speak about dealing with our “click and scroll” compulsions in the context of how they keep us from living the lives we want to lead. Jessica is a brilliant coach and psychologist that I’ve worked with on a number of different issues and I adore her for her clarity, deep honesty, relentless compassion, and her willingness to embrace the darker sides of our psyches. 

The trap of online use and how it affects our writing

I took the class because while I’ve gotten my past Facebook and Twitter compulsions under control, I still find myself checking email and for other alerts much more frequently than I’d like to, or that is ultimately necessary for my business and life. I also find myself getting distracted by online interactions at the wrong time — meaning, they are interactions I actually want to be having, but I’m having them at a time that doesn’t work in my life, with my kids in particular.

Also, I read a recent post of Jessica’s that got me thinking about the effect my online activities were having on my general demeanor — I know I’m likely to be more snappish and distracted when I allow myself to try to do two things at once, and I don’t feel good about myself when I’m like that.

The other thing that stood out for me from her post was how much more peaceful she was feeling and how much more energy she had as a result of cleaning up her online use. 

Although I’ve mostly managed to prevent online activities from interfering with my actual designated writing time, I’m aware that having my mind occupied and distracted and busyified with other people’s stuff and other online BS takes away from my clarity of mind and my ability to explore my own ideas, which can interfere with my writing. I instantly saw her point about how ceasing or reining in these kind of distractions would free up a lot of energy for me.

And I know I’m not alone.

A number of my writers in my online Writer’s Circle coaching program and in the classes I teach talk about how hard it is to stop themselves from surfing the internet reading the news or articles, checking email, and scrolling through various online social media sites, and how it impacts their writing time-wise. Having now read what Jessica wrote and listened to what she shared today, I can also see how those seemingly innocuous activities may be draining some of our energy for writing. 

It’s important to note the “may” in that sentence and I’ll tell you more about why in a moment.

Solutions for handling online impulse control

Here’s what I learned from Jessica:

  • There’s no one right way here (a woman after my own heart!) when it comes to online use. Every one of us has to decide what it is that we want to create with and in our lives, and then make a decision about how much (if any) online time supports that. In my case, a significant part of my business, marketing, community-building, and social life happens online, and that’s totally okay with me. It’s only when it crosses the line into compulsively checking that I don’t like it. 
  • Our brains love mindless, automatic, and habitual activities because they release dopamine, which feels great, so there’s a biochemical reward for doing the same things over and over again without thinking. It feels good, so we do it. 
  • The problem is that being on autopilot means that we have let go of making conscious choices in our lives, and that’s where most/many of us actually want to live, where we are in the driver’s seat of our own lives.
  • If we’re going through a rough patch in our lives, we may NOT want to try to reduce or corral our online use because it serves as a buffer for the discomfort we are experiencing. This resonates for me; I know that when I’ve gone through difficult life phases, having some of these tools for distraction have felt like life savers.
  • A big key to solving this challenge is to accept it. In other words, we will always feel discomfort in our lives in some form, and so we will always have urges toward numbing activities, whether they are online activities or another sort (like over eating, TV watching, etc.). Jessica says that the key here is to accept the discomfort, the urges, and the uncomfortable feelings as part of the package. To notice them, and breathe through them.
  • The solution is, in fact, a four-part combination approach of defining what we want from our lives, noticing what’s happening when we have the urge to click, accepting the discomfort we’re experiencing and impulses to click to calm it, and choosing to make new choices and create habits and supports to help ourselves see them through. Jessica goes into a more detail on each of these points in the webinar.

The discomfort of writing

All this strikes an important chord around the discomfort of writing. Remember, we know that writing — because it is our biggest calling — will trigger massive amounts of resistance. And resistance comes from wanting to avoid fear and discomfort.

So it makes perfect sense that it’s so so so easy to say “I’ll just check the news/Facebook/Twitter/email real quick before I start writing”. It helps soothe that discomfort with a nice dose of dopamine that makes us feel better … for a minute. But then we feel terrible for not doing the writing like we said we would.

Taking time to instead define what we want in our lives, for our writing, and for our online use and making new choices to support that are a huge step in the right direction. Jessica pointed out though, that we can’t skip the steps of noticing and accepting, if we truly want to create lasting change.

Want more on this?

If you’d like to watch to the replay of the webinar, you can check it out here.

Jessica is also leading a 14-day program to help people specifically make new individual choices about our online use, in case you’d like to find out more. I’m not an affiliate for her program; I just happen to believe she is a person of high integrity who offers a tremendous amount of value to her clients. Although she often works with mothers, she is by no means limited to only that population, and specializes in helping her clients become the best of who we are.

 

(p.s. I’ll resume my writing project selection series with my next post!)

 

 

 

Filed Under: Handling Digital Distractions Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Choose a writing project with decision criteria

October 14, 2015 by 4 Comments

Today I’m continuing a series I started last week about choosing writing projects. This is the first post of the series where I’m delving into HOW to choose a project. In the last post I wrote about the issues and challenges that tend to come up for writers around choosing a project and what underlies them (spoiler alert, it’s often some kind of perfectionism!) so that we can start to shift how we’re thinking about it.

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

More on mindset first

But first, a bit more on mindset before we explore “decision criteria”:

I remember when I started the ProSeries at ScreenwritingU in 2011. I was concerned about picking the “right” project to work on. And I remember that our instructor (Hal) seemed to be relatively unconcerned about my choice, which at the time I found somewhat disconcerting. Hindsight being 20-20, however, I can see now WHY he was unconcerned. He knew that — especially for someone like me, a then newbie screenwriter — it didn’t actually matter that much what I chose. It would be a learning script, and if I continued screenwriting, which is of course an assumption of the program, it would be one of dozens of scripts I would write.

It’s hard to hold that in mind when we’re choosing projects, especially because of the things we talked about last time (“It’s so much work!”  “What if I choose the wrong one?!” etc.), but if we take an eagle’s eye view of our writing careers we can see that yes, this next project will be just one of many projects we work on in our lifetimes. Will it be a best seller or a runaway hit? Maybe, maybe not. But you can see that if you try to choose on that basis alone, you might get somewhat paralyzed.

Enter criteria

Hence the concept of criteria.

When you use criteria to select a project, you systematically narrow your field of ideas using a list of criteria that you choose in advance to help you make the decision.

Everyone has to choose their own criteria, there’s no point in me telling you what they “should” be. I can, however, share with you some of the criteria I use and think about (and why) so that it might spark your thoughts about your own.

(Side note: I’ll write about OTHER methods to choose projects in the rest of this blog series, including some intuitive methods. So if this particular method doesn’t resonate for you, not to fret, there’s more to come.)

Okay, so on to project selection using criteria.

Start with where you are right now

The first step is to think about where you are in your writing career and what you are hoping to accomplish. 

For instance, are you trying to:

  1. Establish yourself as a writer?
  2. Figure out your brand?
  3. Choose your first project?
  4. Build an audience?
  5. Break into Hollywood?
  6. Something else?

I think you can see that each of these intentions have different outcomes, and so a project to fulfill them would ideally be picked with a specific intention in mind. And since the project you might choose to build an audience may be very different than the one you might choose if you are working on figuring out your brand, you’ll use different criteria depending on what you are hoping to accomplish in order to narrow the field.

Have a list of projects

Also, assuming you’re a writer with a ton of ideas you’re trying to pick from, you’ll want to have a list of projects that you can refer to as you make your decision. (If you’re a writer who is struggling to come up with an idea — any idea! — that’s a different issue that we’ll have to tackle another day.)

Choose your writing project criteria

Here are some ideas I’ve used for writing project decision criteria (and I like to frame mine as questions). Although I’ve listed quite a few possible criteria, I ask my clients to come up no more than three to five criteria to when we make their project choice. More than that and they just get overwhelmed.

I’ve listed more than three to five here to give you some ideas of various criteria I’ve used at different times to get you thinking about possibilities for yourself.

  • Would I be thrilled to write this project? First off, I want to think about my attachment to the project. As long as I’m committing to a long form project, I want to ENJOY myself. This is my life after all, and it’s too short to waste doing things I don’t feel excited about. (You can also use the question from The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, “Does this spark joy?” as an alternate here.) This is about thinking about your level of passion, curiosity, interest, and attachment to a particular idea.
  • Does this project have a high level of clarity for me? Even though I love most of my project ideas, certain projects have more clarity for me. I know what they are about. I know why I want to write them. I know who the characters are. I know what the basic story is. If I don’t know those things, perhaps I still have a good sense of the concept and feel that it will be relatively “easy” to develop, as opposed to something that has a lot of blank spots in it and feels hard and/or overwhelming.
  • Is this project marketable and/or high concept? Going in, I want to have a sense that the project will have legs in the marketplace. This can mean a number of things, for instance, that there’s a trend or market interest in a specific genre, or that there’s kind of a built-in audience with a high level of demand for a specific kind of project. Personally, I’m not that thrilled about chasing market trends because I know that they can change and/or that I might not catch the wave at the right time (I’ve read that what’s on the marketplace book-wise right now was bought 18 months ago). However, I do like to know that there’s a potential audience for what I’m writing, like time travel (my favorite!). I also like to know that I have a high concept if at all possible — a project that people instantly “get” and want to know more about.
  • Does this project fit within my brand? Although there’s a lot of resistance to branding, it’s particularly helpful in the screenwriting world. This is because it helps potential buyers of your work recognize you in the field of writers. Without a brand, you’re just one of many in a sea of thousands and thousands of writers. With a brand, people start saying things like, “Oh, yeah, I know a sci-fi writer, you should talk to Jenna Avery.” So it behooves me to stick with projects that support and enhance my brand.
  • What’s the potential budget for the project? If I’m picking a screenplay to work on (as opposed to a novel), I’ll look at the potential budget for the project. I do this because I want to flesh out the slate of work I have available. Right now, I have two spec scripts that are on the high end for budget, so for my next spec script, I’ll want to choose something in the low- or mid-range. Other writers might choose to always write high or low budget. Remember, I’m not suggesting that everyone should do what I’m doing here, but I’m rather sharing the things I think about with the hopes that they spark ideas for you.
  • Does it lend itself to adaptation? As a sci-fi screenwriter, I’m looking at writing novels and novellas that lend themselves to the screen, in that they are cinematic stories, structured like screenplays, and lend themselves to future adaptation for the screen. I’m exploring this option because oftentimes it’s easier to pitch a screenplay in Hollywood (especially a big budget script) that already has a loyal audience in book form.
  • Does this project challenge me as a writer and will it help me grow my writing skill set? I like to choose projects that help me grow. For instance, writing low budget sci-fi brings a whole new set of challenges (it has to be more character- than plot-driven). I had a fabulous time writing a low budget script on assignment over the summer simply because it pushed my edges as a writer and expanded my writing repertoire significantly. 
  • Will this project be easy to write? and/or Will this project be fun to write? On the other hand, sometimes when I’m on the more tired side, perhaps because I just pushed myself to write a complex, dark, or heavier project, it’s nice to pick the next one to be on the “easier” or lighter side (notice I said easier, not easy) to create a sense of balance for myself. 

Notice that most if not all of the questions have fairly simple Yes/No answers, they either are or are not true. And again, I wouldn’t use all of these, I’d pick three to five to use, depending on what I was hoping to next accomplish in my writing career.

From here, I’d narrow my field of questions, then go over my list of potential projects, and see which of them meet the criteria. Then I’d sort them into an order and see which of them, if any, naturally rise to the top and/or fit the most criteria. 

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Over the next post or two, I’ll write about putting projects in order of “best fit” to “least best fit for now” and a few more intuitive approaches to project decision-making. In the meantime, let me know what you think about using criteria to choose your project. Can you see any questions or criteria emerging for you that might help you choose what’s next for you?

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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.

Turquoise-Car-Button

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

Where Writers Get Stuck Choosing Writing Projects

October 8, 2015 by 6 Comments

An issue a lot of writers get stuck on is choosing.  Choosing what to write, what to focus on, which project to start with. I’ve seen writers longing to write but feeling paralyzed about making a choice. They come up with endless numbers of ideas but reject one after the other upon closer examination, or commit but then quickly run away screaming, or commit but then self-sabotage by hopping between projects or ditching it altogether and starting something new. This is the first in a series of posts about choosing writing projects and different ways of approaching it, and we’re starting with how it happens and why it’s a problem. As with most things with writing, I don’t think there’s one right way to do it, but it’s worth talking about because for a certain brand of writer, it’s a huge issue. (Other writers don’t seem struggle with this at all, but face other challenges!)

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

Where we get stuck choosing writing projects

Let’s talk about where writers get stuck choosing writing projects.

  1. Being afraid of choosing the “wrong” project. This is sort of the blanket, one-size fits all category for writing selection paralysis. It usually ties into a fear of one of the other issues following, like worrying that we’ll get into a project only to find that it loses its gleam and then we’ll wish we’d chosen a different one, or being afraid of wasting time and energy on something that doesn’t have legs, or being afraid the best selling project will be the one we DON’T choose. The idea here, is that there is somehow a “right” answer or a “right” project to choose. I take comfort from a notion I came across once that we must learn to trust that ALL our projects share a convergence of theme, thought, or concept (they come from us after all!) and that whichever project we choose at any given time will become the “right” vehicle for us at that point in our writing careers.
  2. The potential disappointment of giving up on another project or projects. Usually writers with this “I don’t know which one to choose” issue have tons of ideas and interests and project concepts and they are terrified to let any of them go.What I’ve found most useful so far for dealing with this concern is the idea of a “project queue”, that is, having a running list of projects in an approximate order that you’ll work on them. Sure, they might jockey for position a bit and one might miraculously appear that knocks the others down a peg or six but it reshapes the terror that we must choose ONE project to work on into choosing the project we will work on FIRST.
  3. Being afraid of investing a ton of time and effort into a project only to have a (or yet another) project that doesn’t go anywhere. This is a big one, especially for those of us who have been around the block a few times with writing projects. We know what rewrite hell looks like, up close and personal-like, and it’s no fun. So we hesitate about diving in the way we might have been willing to do earlier in our writing careers.Thankfully, I’ve noticed for myself that as my writing skills grow, my ability to write cleaner drafts (closer to what I intended for them to become) is increasing. I’m also noticing that I have less fear about how long something will take, now that I’ve learned how to outline better, break things down into smaller chunks, track my work, and just plain old write faster. So there’s that. And yeah, it’s a ton of work, there’s no getting around it. For me, this falls into the category being willing to invest in myself and my writing. As far as something possibly not going anywhere, well, I’m starting to think that’s the price of admission to a writing career. There are no guarantees — this is art after all. We can rewrite, we can do our best to consider marketability, and we can elevate our projects as much as we can. And sometimes? Sometimes it’s just a learning project. 
  4. Worrying that a project will not be marketable or good enough. Speaking of marketability, I also see writers getting paralyzed by whether or not there is a market for their idea or if they will be able to write it well enough. The marketability piece seems easier to me to address with some research and study of what’s selling in your genre or form.As far as being “good enough” goes though, the only way out is through (that means actually writing and then writing more). I console myself on this front with Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours rule for mastering a craft. I also think we have to find a balance of pursuing what appears to be marketable (I’m not one for chasing trends, but rather understanding what makes a book or a script work for an audience) and following our own curiosity (Thank you Elizabeth Gilbert!) and interests and ideas into the places they are calling us.

What underlies these issues is fear, of course, which is pretty much the only problem that gets in the way when it comes to writing. And a big clue here is the word paralysis. Underlying paralysis we will often find its close cousin, perfectionism. And perfectionism is, of course, driven by fear.

The perfectionist’s safety net

What happens when we don’t choose a writing project to focus on is that we hop from project to project, always starting something new and never finishing anything. Or we try to juggle multiple projects at once, working a little bit on this one, a little bit on that one. The result is the same with either approach — no finished project, no feelings of completion and accomplishment. Also? The world doesn’t get to see what you’re creating. And there’s the safety net — if we don’t finish, we don’t have to share, and we don’t have to face possible rejection, ridicule, or failure. Not finishing (and sometimes not even starting) is a perfectionist’s safety net. That’s the “upside” of not choosing. 

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In my next post in this series, I’ll share some ideas about HOW to choose projects. 

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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.

Turquoise-Car-Button

diamonds

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: , , , ,
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