Here’s a treat for you!
Newbery Medalist Kate DiCamillo received the 2013 Kerlan Award on Saturday, June 8. Here is her acceptance speech, posted by the University of Minnesota. Happy watching! [Kate’s speech comes after the introductions, around Minute #18.] Her Newbery was for The Tale of Despereaux.
You’ll laugh, you’ll sigh, you’ll identify. Enjoy this speech by one of my all-time favorite writers.
While I’m away from my desk this week, I want to share with you some “gems” I’ve gathered in recent weeks from the Web.
I hope you will take time to read and/or print out both things listed today. You’ll be glad you did!
So You Want to Write Books for Children? Is writing for children on your long-term bucket list, or did you just recently acquire the itch? Either way, these seven crucial tips from guest author Mary Hertz Scarbrough will help you get started on the path to becoming a children’s writer. See both Part 1 and Part 2. (Mary Hertz Scarbrough is the author of two dozen children’s books. Her book, Heroes of the American Revolution, was a top pick of the Junior Library Guild in September 2012.)
Do you want help with a novel that is giving you fits? Then do like my much published and award-winning, recent MFA-grad writer friend Sherryl Clark does, and “write around it.” I asked her to explain that technique to me this week in a Skype discussion we had, and she pointed me to a page on “writing around the novel” where I could download a whole 30-day program. I printed it out ASAP!
I know you’ll enjoy all this free writing help today, but I hope you also print it out, mull it over, think about “school starting” soon, and decide to dig in and learn!
(First re-read the last post: New Twist on the Thought-Feeling-Behavior Writing Cycle.)
After three very busy weeks (two new grandbabies, lots of travel, a conference, two work-for-hire deadlines), I was finally able to sit down for a lengthy time yesterday and write on my novel.
Or so I thought.
I sat down all right, but once I finally had an uninterrupted moment to think, a certain situation that has been bothering me for months came flooding back. I couldn’t concentrate on my novel, and I was up and down. I walked. I ate. I sorted laundry. I worried. I ate some more. Later in the day, I Skyped a friend. But I didn’t write until…
I picked up a book by Kelly L. Stone that was still sitting on my desk. She’s the author of Living Write: the secret to inviting your craft into your daily life. I flipped through it and landed on the chapter called “Acting As If.” I knew this was a phrase from my old recovery group days basically meaning “fake it till you make it.”
I reviewed the thoughts-feelings-action cycle. Since my thoughts were unruly, and my feelings were haywire, I figured that “acting like a writer anyway” was my best option. I read her chapter on “Acting As If.”
Here are a couple snippets to think about:
A licensed professional counselor, Stone had many practical suggestions about how to act “as if” you’re a confident writer, act “as if” you’re a self-motivated writer, act “as if” you’re a self-disciplined writer, act “as if” you’re a future-focused writer, and act “as if” you’re a task-oriented writer. [I definitely recommend her book.]
I used one suggestion in the “task-oriented” section, acted “as if,” and got to work. Even though it was later in the day, I had the evening free and ended up with one of the most productive writing days I’d had in a long time. (I’m re-reading Stone’s chapter first thing today though!)
Don’t give up. We’re all in this together, and I’m grateful for writers like Kelly Stone who share what works for them!
“Enthusiasm, motivation, and dedication are necessary for your success as a writer,” says Kelly L. Stone, author of Living Write: the secret to inviting your craft into your daily life.
But…what if you don’t have all those emotional tools (the enthusiasm, motivation and dedication) at your disposal?
“Don’t worry,” says Kelly. “They can be learned as part of the thought-feeling-behavior cycle.”
I’ve heard before that thoughts cause your feelings which cause your actions, and you probably have too. However, Ms. Stone gives a very helpful twist to the “you can change how you feel and act by changing how you think” mantra. And this “plus” makes the idea instantly useful to anyone trying to improve her writing life.
How? By seeing this as a cycle, not a linear set of events. I’d always heard that you had to go in order–1, 2, 3. You change your thoughts first, then your feelings would change, and then your behavior would change. However, this author claims (and I agree after trying it out) that it’s not a straight line, but instead a cycle that runs like a loop.
What does this mean to writers? It means that if you change any one element of the cycle, you will by necessity change the other two parts. You don’t have to start with changing your thoughts if you don’t want to–or if it feels too hard. You can change your writing life by changing whatever is easiest for you.
For example, maybe you’re a Nike-Just-Do-It! kind of writer. You can’t bring your thoughts or emotions into subjection, but you can grit your teeth and sit yourself down at the keyboard right on schedule. If that’s true–if controlling behavior is the easiest part of the cycle for you–then skip worrying about your thoughts and feelings and hit the behavior first.
Maybe it’s easier for you to deal with feelings. I know a perky, sanguine writer who tackles feelings first. Her depressed anxious feelings rebound to optimism just by taking a nap! However, maybe for a variety of publishing and non-publishing reasons, your feelings about writing are sour, and fixing those ricocheting feelings is a losing battle. Then tackle another part of the cycle that is easier for you. (Personally, no matter what I’m going through, I find controlling or changing feelings the hardest part.)
Of the three aspects of the cycle, thoughts are easiest for me to change. It means I have to tell myself the truth, but in a kind way. Over the years, for many problems that I faced, I learned the importance of positive affirmations based on truth. (e.g. Getting started is hard for all writers. Rejection is part of the writing game–writers live through it. My self-worth is NOT based on sales.) I saw that repeating these truths daily for weeks and months could totally reprogram my brain and change my attitude, my feelings, and the resultant actions.
The point? Whatever part of the cycle is easiest for you on any given day, do that. You only need to change one element of the cycle in order to affect the other parts. One day you might find it easiest to self-talk your feelings into shape; other days it might just be easier to sit down and write and forget about your depression for a while. Whichever aspect you choose, it will affect your writing.
If you think more positively about your writing, your feelings will improve and you’ll find yourself wanting to sit down and write.
Or you can work on the feelings part: the author suggested saying, “I love to write!” whenever your feelings were negative. Those improved feelings will prompt you to write, and writing for an hour or two will change how you think about yourself.
Or work on the behaviors part–bribe yourself to sit down and write each morning for a set amount of time, and see how that reprograms your thoughts and feelings about yourself as a writer.
Changing one aspect of the cycle changes them all. You may have to experiment to find which part changes most easily for you. Instead of succumbing to a downward negative spiral, one change and you boost the cycle upward.
“You can see how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are directly connected,” says Ms. Stone. “This is why learning to control your thought-feeling-behavior cycle is so important–because it’s cumulative and self-perpetuating.”
Which part of the cycle do you suspect would be the easiest part for you to change ? Leave a comment below!
Thirty years ago I read an article that said writing was like eating a salami. You’d choke if you tried to swallow the whole thing at once. Slice by slice, though, it was easy.
Life has been hectic lately, with few large chunks of time to work. So I went back to creating 20-minute tasks for my “slices of salami.”
Chop, chop! How do you break writing tasks into those 20 minute slices? At the beginning of the summer, I made a three-page single-spaced list of such tasks, covering several project areas (a novel revision, a possible nonfiction e-book, some work-for-hire educational writing, and marketing).
The beauty of the list to me is that I don’t have trouble getting started. I pick a task–not necessarily in the order listed–set my timer, and get going! Since getting started has always been my biggest hurdle, the list goes a long way toward getting me over that hump.
If your main project is fiction, and you only have 20-30 minutes to write, pre-thinking is critical before you sit down at the keyboard. Otherwise you’ll waste your time getting started and focusing. I became skilled at pre-thinking when I was first taking the ICL course because I had a preschooler, a toddler and a newborn. I wrote in 10-minute slices back then.
I made long lists of tasks for the short stories I wanted to write. The tasks covered such things as outlining steps, “creative steps” like thinking of character and setting names, mechanical steps (e.g. write opening paragraph), revision steps, and marketing steps.
The list of short fiction “slices” would include things like:
Nonfiction “slices” might include:
Examples for marketing might be:
I was going to list some of my own 20-minute tasks for you, but I realized they wouldn’t mean anything to anyone but me. (e.g. search/replace name change, check epiphanies re: p. 194 MAC, make “sense” lists for each scene in last chapter) But I think the examples above give you a better idea of breaking things down into small slices.
Realize that it’s difficult to estimate times correctly. Sometimes I gave myself twenty minutes to do a certain task, and it only actually took me five minutes. Other times, the task took me three 20-minute periods to finish.
For example, in the past, one of my 20-minute tasks was to set up my author page on Amazon.com. (I had needed to do this for more than fifteen years!) My friend did hers in 20 minutes, but even though we were adding the same amount of info, I took three 20-minute times to finish mine. It took me the first twenty minutes just to read and understand the directions, another twenty to write the bio, and another twenty to add the book jackets and video trailer. (Actually there was another twenty minutes spent later because some of the dust jackets wouldn’t load, which I gave up on.)
Life is too busy and overwhelming at times. Yet we need to keep writing so we don’t lose the flow and continuity.
I hope these examples have given you ideas for breaking down your own writing projects into do-able slices. You won’t choke if you take one tiny slice at a time. Now…go eat that salami!
Many of you know that we’ve added two new grandbabies to the family in less than two weeks. (Photos below.)
Because I’ve been spending many wonderful hours holding babies, I am going to post a guest blog today, but it’s actually one that I wrote myself for the blog of good friends of mine.
It’s about “Making On-line Writing Challenges Work for You.” A number of you who participated in my two writing challenges in April are quoted in the article on making use of writer accountability groups.
And new baby pictures? I thought you’d never ask!
Meet Sophia below (two days late) and
and scroll down to see James (six weeks early)!
Consider this quote from basketball great Michael Jordan: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
His point? To be so successful, you have to be in the game a lot and willing to fail on the way to your successes. The same is true for writers.
I have a good friend who has outsold me in the last five years, about five books to one. She has also received a lot more rejections, and she’s had to bounce back from each depressing turndown by an editor. But don’t miss the point here. She has had many more sales because she has been gutsier and submitted a lot more than I have. She knows that rejection simply comes as part of the publishing package.
Do you want to be published by a traditional publisher? Then you need to write and submit consistently–and be willing to get rejected–in order to succeed. And not just once or twice or five times. You need to do this a lot.
Don’t misunderstand here. It’s not just a matter of doing something a large number of times. Even Michael Jordan didn’t just close his eyes, spin around, and throw the ball up in the air–and magically score hundreds of points. He:
Sometimes he missed–but lots of times he scored. The one thing he didn’t do was quit along the way.
In the same way, just writing and writing and writing, then submitting and submitting and submitting, won’t do the trick. It’s not just about the volume of words you write, although volume is important. (It does take practice to make perfect.)
If you want to build the career of your dreams, you must also:
Keep following this formula–keep on keepin’ on. The law of averages will catch up with you if you don’t quit.
Writers struggle more with some parts of the process than others. Some can write and revise till kingdom come–but won’t submit. Others submit to editors willingly, but don’t take feedback and revise.
Which part of the above “formula” for success gives you the most trouble?
This has been a frustrating week on several levels.
When I’m frustrated, it’s usually a sign that I’m trying to control something I can’t control. This can be a person or a situation or an event. The process can churn your mind into mush until you can’t think.
On the other hand, making a 180-degree switch and focusing on the things I can control (self-control) is the fastest way out of frustration. This concept certainly applies to your writing life.
Remember the Serenity Prayer? It goes like this: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
How about reducing frustration with your writing life by applying that wisdom to your career? Here are some things to accept that you cannot change:
Trying to change anything on the above list is a sure-fire route to frustration and wanting to quit.
However, do you have courage to change the things you can? Here are some:
If you’re battling frustration and discouragement with the writing life, chances are good that you’re trying to control something beyond your control. It will make you crazy! The fastest way back to sanity is to concentrate on what you can control about the writing life.
Choose anything from that second list–or share an additional idea in the comments below–and get on with becoming a better writer. In the end, that’s all you can do–and it will be enough.
(First read Mental Boundaries: Who’s in Charge Part 1 and Emotional Boundaries: Who’s in Charge? Part 2.)
By now, you’ve changed your thoughts and your attitudes. However, in the final analysis, taking charge of your writing life comes down to taking action.
Are you actually writing? Have you developed the Seven Habits of a Highly Effective Writer?
Taking action involves substitution. You are replacing unhelpful actions damaging to your writing with productive actions. As Making Good Habits, Breaking Bad Habits says, it’s much easier to break bad habits if you simply replace them with good habits or good goals.
Doing the action of the good habit should be your focus, not “breaking” the bad habit. Good actions will crowd out the bad ones. You won’t have time for both!
Do you have the committed attitude talked about in Part 2 of the series? That committed attitude will make choosing your actions easier.
When you’re willing to do whatever it takes to revamp your personal life so you can write, the choices become clear. You will do things like:
You will make choices in all areas of your life that will support your writing instead of making it more difficult. [If making these choices is difficult, you might find help in my Boundaries for Writers e-book.]
Each time you come to a fork in the road, make a choice to be in control of your writing. Each choice might look small, but these decisions add up to your life. Do find that freedom that comes from being in charge of yourself–and thus, your writing.
“If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.” —Napoleon Hill
As I mentioned before, I’ve been working hard myself to improve habits in all areas of my life, including the writing. In the last year, I’ve found these books especially helpful.
(First read Mental Boundaries: Who’s in Charge?–Part 1)
Are you tired of feeling the same defeatist way about your writing?
Are you ready for something new?
Changing your thoughts will change your mental attitudes and emotional feelings about writing. Even so, there will be times throughout the day when you will be faced with negative feelings flooding you.
Do you let the disgruntled feelings in–maybe even entertain them? Or do you choose to throw them out and lock the door? Do you set appropriate emotional boundaries so you can work?
Instead of postponing happiness until you get published, choose to be content with your writing today.
Look at the larger picture, how each writing day is another small building block laying the foundation of your career. Stay present in the present! Pace yourself with the determined attitude of the tortoise instead of the sprinter attitude of the hare.
You also need to choose an attitude of commitment. Commit to your goals and deadlines, to continued improvement in your writing, and to dealing with negative feelings as they come up.
Commitment is more than “I wish” or “I’d like” or “I hope I can.” Commitment is “I will.” There is a huge difference! (Like the gap between a man saying, “Gee, I’d like to marry you” and “Will you marry me–here’s the ring–let’s set a date!”)
Move from the wishy-washy attitude of “I’d like to be a writer” to the commitment level of “I’ll do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to be a successful writer.” [I understand that choosing your own attitudes and emotions can be difficult. If you have trouble taking charge of your emotions, you might find my “Boundaries for Writers” e-book helpful.]
(Part 3 about choices will be “Your Writing: Who’s in Charge?”)
As I mentioned before, I’ve been working hard myself to improve habits in all areas of my life, including the writing. In the last year, I’ve found these books especially helpful.