dreams

Books for Discouraged or Overwhelmed Writers

Published on by Kristi Holl
Young overwhelmed woman.

During the summer, when trying to stay above the health issues and do things with my grandkids and keep up with a few strict publishing deadlines, I read two books that were especially helpful.

I found I was fighting on a regular basis two discouraging ideas.

One: what had happened to my “dream” novel, the novel of my heart, while dealing with all these other urgent things? It had floundered.

Two: how could I get a handle on everything that had piled up and still get back to my dream novel? [I had a conference coming up where I had signed up to pitch my novel to an editor and agent. If “life” hadn’t interfered for months, I could have easily had it finished.]

As so often happens with me, my prayers for help led me to a book. Or, in this case, two books. One fed my soul with encouragement. The other gave me the practical help and coaching that I needed to get perspective. I don’t believe in re-inventing the wheel if someone else has already solved a problem and written about it. Maybe one or both of these books will help you too.

The Dream Giver

This book inspired me at a time I needed to know that my dream of the last five years wasn’t dead or dying, but meant to be. The Dream Giver: Following Your God-Given Destiny by Bruce Wilkinson has been a bestseller for many years. Here’s the back blurb (and yes, it’s a Christian book.)

“Are you living your dream? Or just living your life? Welcome to a little story about a very big idea. This compelling modern-day parable tells the story of Ordinary, who dares to leave the Land of Familiar to pursue his Big Dream. [Note: it follows the ups and downs of achieving his dream. I could identify with all the stages!] You, too, have been give a Big Dream. One that can change your life. One that the Dream Giver wants you to achieve. Does your Big Dream seem hopelessly out of reach? Are you waiting for something or someone to make your dream happen? Then you’re ready for The Dream Giver.”

Growing Gills

This book was recommended to me by a blog reader who gave such a rave review of this book that I had to check it out. I’m so glad I did! Growing Gills: How to Find Creative Focus When You’re Drowning in Your Daily Life by Jessica Abel is so very good. Don’t you love that title? Jessica also has a great blog. ( Click and scroll down.) Growing Gills comes with a free workbook you can download and print out, which I did, and then work through the exercises to do what her title promises. Here’s part of  the blurb:

“Go from overwhelmed, anxious, and stuck, to consistent, clear, and in control of your creative life. If you feel like you’re floundering in the deep end (Not waving, drowning!), and anxiety over the complexity and enormousness of your creative projects overwhelms you, stop scrambling to fit everything in and feeling stretched thin.

Dive Deep and Swim

  • Sustain the energy you feel when thinking of how awesome your projects could be.
  • Value your own creative work as highly as work you do for other people.
  • Build a reusable structure and process that will consistently get you to the finish line.
  • Blast through your stuck-ness.
  • Finish. Move on to the next project.

You’re a creative person. Even if you have a hard time calling yourself a “writer” or an “artist” in public, making your creative work is core to who you are and how you see the world. You may be harboring a big, ambitious idea for a project. Possibly a lot of them. And it’s killing you.

You lie awake thinking about it…and hating yourself for not doing more to make it real. And then in the morning you’re exhausted, and you can’t believe you “wasted” more time on this stupid idea. Whoever told you that you were creative anyway? You try to shove your idea away, to forget it. But your creative work is what keeps you sane. You can’t not do this. So you live with guilt and anxiety all the time.” [If you follow the workbook as you read her book, this can be a thing of the past.]

 

Achieving the Writing Life of Your Dreams

Published on by Kristi Holl

Achieving the writing life of your dreams—is it possible? Are you closer to it than you were a year ago?

Here are some articles to read and consider if you hope to make the dream of a writing life into a reality.

“Are You Living Your Own Dream or Someone Else’s?” If we are not careful, we can unconsciously be following someone else’s agenda for our lives. This may be your first step toward achieving the writing life of your dreams.

“Honor the Writing Process” shows the practical side of going after your writing dreams and gives some good benchmarks to measure if you are truly serious about doing so.

“Keeping the Dream Alive” deals with how to not let your writing dreams when life gets in the way. Life happens, sometimes in majorly distracting ways. Can you keeping your dream alive even then? Yes!

“The Power of Incremental Change Over Time” Most people underestimate this. They think they have to take massive action to achieve anything significant.

Are Your Writing Dreams Big Enough? Shoot for the Moon!

Published on by Kristi Holl

Every 7-10 years, I go through a restless writing period. I sense a need or desire to do something different, usually something “they say” is out of vogue or not the genre flavor of the month.

Lately, something has been egging me on to try something more challenging. I’ll talk about that in the coming weeks, but for today, I want to challenge you with a question. 

ARE YOUR WRITING DREAMS BIG ENOUGH?

Shooting for the Moon

I’ve been reading about famous inventors (like Edison), famous businessmen (like Ford), and famous entrepreneurs (like Bill Gates and Steven Spielberg). They lived in different historical periods and pursued different kinds of projects. But they all had one thing in common. They did NOT set “reasonable and achievable goals.” They dreamed bigger dreams than anyone thought they could achieve. And then they achieved them–and more.

Edison (who only had a few months of formal education) decided to try to invent a light bulb in less than three years, even though far more intelligent scientists had spent more than 50 years so far trying to do the same thing. An outlandish goal! “They” said it couldn’t be done. But he ended up inventing it in two years!

When Ford started his auto company, the other 250 American automakers were turning out 12 to 300 cars per year. A reasonable goal for Ford to set would maybe be 150 cars per year. But his dream was to produce cars that the average family could afford–not just the wealthy. And he ended up producing 1,000 cars per day off his assembly lines. (That’s per DAY, not per year.)

Their Key to Major Success

Because Spielberg and Gates are present-day phenomena, you’re already familiar with their stories. They became such huge successes for the same reasons Edison and Ford did. They dreamed big, new ideas and then went ahead and accomplished what “they said” was impossible.

The award-winning writers of the past and present who became household names did the same thing. Their books were repeatedly rejected at first too, because “they said” no one would read them. Names like Dr. Seuss, Pearl Buck, Louisa May Alcott, Agatha Christie, Beatrix Potter, John Grisham, James Patterson, Judy Blume, Madeline L’Engle, Margaret Mitchell, Anne Frank, J.K. Rowling, Stephen King…the list goes on and on of authors who decided to follow the advice of Write What You Love.

Ignore What “They Say”

Maybe “ignore” is too strong, but at least take all the expert advice out there with a big grain of salt. Because of the changes in the publishing industry, the naysayers are thicker than ever. “They say” you have to write what will sell instead of following your passion. “They say” you can’t get a good agent–you need to settle for someone with no experience whom no editor will work with. “They say” you can’t expect to sell your novel to a national publisher, so get familiar with self-publishing. There’s not a thing wrong with any of those choices, but make sure they are choices you want to make.

There were many, many years where I needed to write for the market 100%. I needed to write what would sell and what I could get contracts for ahead of time. My single parent household depended on that income. The books were good, and some of them excited me, but I was also practical. I have some leeway now though, and lately I’ve been exploring outside my comfort zone where some yet-undeveloped dreams and ideas lie. I have the itch again to write something different.

I’ve been asking myself the same question lately that I posed to you: ARE YOUR WRITING DREAMS BIG ENOUGH?

Unhappiness: a Positive Sign for Writers

Published on by Kristi Holl

unhappinessHave you ever considered the fact that unhappiness is the first step along the writer’s path?

“Toddlers are bursting with the anxiety and helplessness of having feelings that they can’t get anybody around them to understand. They don’t even have the right words in their heads yet—it’s all emotion and frustration. That’s also an accurate description of writers in step one.” This is how Nancy Pickard and Lynn Lott describe the first of their Seven Steps on the Writer’s Path: the Journey from Frustration to Fulfillment. [I highly recommend this book, by the way.]

This unhappiness may feel like an itchy feeling under your skin. It may feel like an urge to change something. Call it restlessness or discontent or creative tension. “Unhappiness,” say the authors, “to one degree or another, is where all creativity begins.”

Message in the Misery

If you’re starting to feel that itch to change something in your life, you’re moving into Step One. Maybe you don’t feel unhappy exactly. Maybe you’re just restless. But if this tension is trying to tell you that you’re a writer who should be writing, it can very quickly turn into discomfort and then misery if you don’t pay attention to it.

Even published writers in a long-time career can feel this unhappiness or tension when it’s time to make a change. “Every important turn on my writer’s path has been preceded by unhappiness,” Nancy Pickard admits. “The more major the turn, the worse the misery.” (I can certainly identify with that! I get bored first, after writing in the same genre or on the same subjects for years. I itch to try something new or more challenging, something fresh that will stretch me again.)

Brands of Writer Unhappiness

If you’ve been writing for a long time, this unhappy first step on the writer’s path may have more specific origins. It might be the misery of being in a day job you’d give anything to quit so you could write full-time. Or it’s the misery of a writer’s block that just won’t budge—perhaps for months. It might be the misery of when your proposal has been rejected by a dozen editors or agents—and your spouse has told you to get “a real job.”

What About You?

There are many signs, according to these authors, that you are in the first step along the writer’s path (the first of seven very identifiable steps, in which the authors offer practical solutions). I had always assumed that the beginning stages (for other writers) was a time of great excitement, a happy eager time. I was glad to find that I wasn’t the only one who was boosted into action for the opposite reason!

How about YOU? How do YOU know when it’s time to get creative?

Stage 4: Maintaining Long-Term Success

Published on by Kristi Holl

At last, success!

If you’ve taken time to do each of the previous steps, congratulate yourself. It’s been time well spent. But if you’ve done the work, you want it to last.

That brings us to Stage 4 for making changes in your writing life, where you learn techniques for maintaining long-term success. (First read The Dynamics of Change, Stage 1: Making Up Your Mind, Stage 2: Committing to Change, and Stage 3: Taking Action)

You’ve probably begun several new good writing habits to support your future writing career. This is great!

You don’t want to be a quick flash that’s here today and gone tomorrow though. You want the changes to last. You want to continue to grow as a writer and build your career. But…you know yourself. The good writing habits never seem to last.

Until now.

Change and Maintain

In order to keep going and growing as a writer, you need to do two things:

  • Learn to recover from setbacks
  • Get mentally tough for the long haul

First let’s talk about setbacks. They come in all shapes and sizes for writers. They can be mechanical (computer gets fried), emotional (a scathing review of your new book), or mental (burn-out from an accident, divorce, or unexpected big expense). Setbacks do just what they sound like: set you back.

However, too often (without a plan), we allow a simple setback to become a permanent writer’s block or stall. Setbacks are simply lapses in our upward spiral, or small break in our new successful routine, a momentary interruption on the way to our writing goal.

Pre-emptive Strike

Warning: without tools in place to move beyond the setbacks, they can settle in permanently instead. Use setbacks as a signal that you need to get back to basics. Setbacks–or lapses–sometimes occur for no other reason than we’ve dropped our new routines. (We stopped writing before getting online, we stopped taking reward breaks and pushed on to exhaustion, we stopped sending new queries each week…)

Count each day of progress, and don’t be so hard on yourself. I used to make myself “start over” when trying to form a new habit, and it was more discouraging than helpful. For example, if my goal was to journal every morning, I’d count the days. Maybe I managed it five days in a row. Five! I felt successful! But if I missed Day 6 for any reason, I had to start over the next day at Day #1.

Maintaining: A Better Way

I don’t do that anymore. It doesn’t help. Now, if my goal is to develop a new habit, I still keep track, but I keep going after a lapse or setback instead of starting over. So if I were trying to develop a journaling habit, and journaled five days and then missed a day or two, I would begin again on Day #6.

I would count all successful days in a month, which motivates me to try to reach an even higher total number the next month. This works with words and pages written and other new writing habits you want to start.

Coping Plans

In order to recover from setbacks, think ahead. Ask yourself what types of things might cause you to go off course or lapse in your goal efforts. Prepare ways to cope ahead of time and have your plans in place. (Sometimes that’s as simple as always traveling with a “writing bag” of paper, pens, a chapter to work on, a craft book to read, etc. so that you can always work, no matter what the delays.)

Coping plans have this basic structure:

“When __________ [potential distraction] occurs, I will say ______________ [inner dialogue] and I will do _______________ [corrective action].”

When my best friend calls to talk during my writing time, I will say to myself, I’m working and need to call her back at lunch time and I will let the answering machine pick up.

When company comes for a week, I will say to myself, It’s fine for me to take one hour each day to write, and I will close the door to my office (or bedroom) and write before breakfast for one hour.

Retrain Your Brain

Mental toughness–grit to persevere–is the other ingredient you’ll need if you want to maintain the changes you’ve made in your writing habits. Scientific studies have clearly shown that repeated affirmations and mental rehearsals create new neural pathways in the brain making success easier and eventually permanent.

Speaking daily affirmations aloud has been proven to help you “retrain your brain” into healthier lines of thinking. Make the affirmations to deal specifically with your own writing issues. For example:

  • I am equal to any writing challenge.
  • I love to write, and I never miss a day of writing!
  • I get started with ease and keep going smoothly and fluidly.
  • I use visualizations of successful writing times to help build new habits and patterns.
  • I love to study and then apply what I learn to developing my writing gift.
  • I don’t need to be like any other writer.
  • I never give up on my dreams.

I encourage you to make your own list of positive affirmations pertaining to any area of your life where you’d like to see change. Use the affirmations to help you make changes–and then cement those changes in place.

It’s time to stop yo-yoing up and down and create stable, permanent writing habits.

Writing Life: the Reality

Published on by Kristi Holl

“Life is difficult,” wrote M. Scott Peck in his famous book The Road Less Traveled. “This … is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it… Once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

I’d like to amend Peck’s quote to say that “the writing life is difficult.” And once that truth is accepted, “the fact that it is difficult no longer matters.”

The Fantasy

I imagine we all start out on the writing journey with a fantasy of what the writing life will be like. I know I did thirty-five years ago–and it was a fantasy that I clung to tenaciously for far too many years.

My own fantasy involved uninterrupted hours every day to write (after first journaling and then doing some creative writing exercises to ensure the writing would simply “flow”.) My fantasy included the books selling themselves without my help. I expected to reach a time when I’d never have to write anything without having a (lucrative) contract in hand. I also dreamed of writing by longhand in the fragrant garden of a thatched-roof English cottage. Sad to say, the cottage part was the only thing I recognized as pure fantasy. I figured everything else was just a matter of time.

Fast forward thirty-five years and forty-seven published books later…

I love my office in Texas, but it’s a far cry from a thatched-roof cottage. And unless you write from Walden’s Pond, I don’t see how anyone manages to have uninterrupted hours every day to write. Juggling my roles as wife, mother, Nana, daughter, sister, friend, writer and ministry leader means fighting for writing time daily. Each role, at one time or another, has meant dealing with loss, conflict, disappointment, and/or illness–all big time and energy eaters. And because of the changes within the publishing industry–in large part due to the economy and online social marketing demands–there’s no such thing anymore as an author who doesn’t help market his work.

It No Longer Matters

So where’s the silver lining around this black cloud? Simply this. Clinging to my fantasy life of a writer meant that every time reality intruded, I was disappointed or shocked or disillusioned. Lots of angst and wasted energy. As long as I was convinced that the writing life could be simple and more fun than work, I was irritated with reality. I made silent demands that this imperfect writing life go away!

  • Truth #1: The writing life will always be difficult.
  • Truth #2: It doesn’t really matter.
  • Truth #3: All things worth having (family, good health, writing life) are difficult sometimes.
  • Truth #4: We can do difficult things!

Accept Reality

Don’t miss the key point of the blog today. This is not a “downer” message. It’s a truth message–which will set you free. For me, it’s like having kids. Raising a family was the most difficult, time-consuming, challenging thing I’ve done in the last thirty-five years. It has also been the most rewarding, most fun, most gratifying thing I’ve ever done. It’s the same with the writing life. It’s been difficult, but I can’t imagine a career more rewarding than this. After many years, it does get easier--but I would never say it’s easy.

It’s okay to give up the fantasy that someday your writing life will be easy and smooth and not require you to grow or struggle anymore. You really don’t need the fantasy to keep you moving forward. “The fact that it is difficult no longer matters.”

That being the case, what fantasy about the writing life do you suspect you need to let go of?

Keeping the Dream Alive

Published on by Kristi Holl

Lately all my technology has decided to bite the dust. I’ve replaced the computer, the camera, and the Kindle.

To this full-time writer, $$$ “emergencies” often mean taking on writing projects that will pay NOW. For me, that’s writing books and test material for educational publishers. I’m so thankful for the work, but it can take over your novel writing time and energy.

So how do we keep our writing dreams alive when dealing with other things that require a lot of our time?

Life Happens!

“Life is what happens when you’ve made other plans.” We’ve all heard that saying. I want to remind you that it’s during these unexpected “life happens” events that you most often lose sight of your writing dreams.

How do we keep that from happening?

According to Kelly Stone in Time to Write, “The only requirement to be a writer is a Burning Desire to Write, coupled with the dedication that that desire naturally creates. Follow that desire up with action and nothing will keep you from success.”

Life Interrupted

I agree with Ms. Stone. Adhere to that formula for success, and you can’t miss. BUT life gets in the way sometimes: personal illness, job loss in the family, sick parents or children, a teen in trouble, a marriage in trouble. It’s at these times when you need to take precautions to keep your dream alive inside you.

Other writers struggle with this too, whether it’s during calm times in life or when there’s more upheaval. “It’s easy to believe that what you do doesn’t matter, but you have to think that it does matter,” says novelist Mary Jo Putney, “that you have stories to tell, and a right to tell them.  You should take the time to yourself to explore this ability. You’ll always be sorry if you don’t do it.”

Practical Tips

There are many tried-and-true actions to take to keep your dream alive. Write out your goals and action plan, breaking it down into small, do-able steps. Set small daily goals, and write–even if it’s only for ten minutes–to stay in the habit. Visualize in great detail having pieces published, autographing your first novel, or quitting your day job to write full-time.

You don’t have time for all that?

Okay, then just do ONE thing. Steve Berry, NY Times bestselling author, said it well: “The number one thing you must do is write. You have to write, write, write, and when you can’t write anymore, write some more.”

Don’t go to bed tonight until you’ve spent at least ten or fifteen minutes writing. Nothing keeps a writer’s dream alive and flourishing like sitting down and writing. Absolutely nothing.

[If you need more help, check out my books Writer’s First Aid and More Writer’s First Aid.]

 

 

 

 

Writer Imaging (Part 3)

Published on by Kristi Holl

(First read “Writer Imaging” Part 1 and Part 2.) Here are the final attributes of a happy writing life…

4. Staying focused on the positive. View your writing life as a series of opportunities and growth experiences, even though some experiences (like rejection slips) may involve pain.

Daily there are good things to focus on though. Focus on the excitement of finding a good idea, or researching a fascinating subject, or working in a quiet library where you can still smell the stacks of books.

In the same vein, avoid worry, anger and depression wherever possible, and if it’s a part of your life, stop and deal with it. In The Right to Write, Julia Cameron says: “the truth is that too much torment and too much depression can make it as difficult to write as to make the bed, wash the dishes, do the laundry. To the depressed person, writing may present itself as one more chore. For this reason, we are actually working on our writing when we directly address the larger issue of our happiness.”

5. Spending time socializing with other writers. Form writing and critique groups. One word of caution, though: choose WORKING writers, not just people who like to talk about writing someday or go to workshops. Choose writing friends who actually are committed to writing consistently and trying to improve.

Iron sharpens iron. You need writers who will hold you accountable, not for sales, but for trying, for studying the markets, for revising, for doing thorough research, for your daily journaling, or whatever writing activities you’ve chosen for your growth. And if the writers you meet with stop writing, don’t feel compelled to remain in the group. Drop out and find other working writers to socialize with. You will help each other along.

The Whole Truth and Nothing But 
Believe it or not, winning an award or being on the bestseller list would NOT change your writing life, either for better or for worse. That’s because fame and fortune (both which are fleeting, I’m told) are not the elements of a good writing life any more than being thin guarantees happiness for women.

Incorporating the above five elements in your life will do a lot more for creating a happy writer. The best part about this news is, of course, that these five attributes are totally under your control. They don’t depend on the shifting markets, changing times, or fickle public taste.

Each attribute of a happy writer’s life is attainable by every writer. So start today. Right now. Change your perceptions of what a successful writer’s life entails. (It’s probably better than you’ve imagined.) Then go out and make it happen for yourself.

Food for Thought

Published on by Kristi Holl

When I read nonfiction books, I underline important parts. Next to very important sections, I put a star. If the passage really touched something deep in me, it gets a star within a circle.

Over the holiday weekend, I had the pleasure of a couple free hours that I spent re-reading some “star-within-a-circle” portions of The Soul Tells a Story by Vinita Hampton Wright. I will copy some of them for you to contemplate.

Does anything below resonate with YOU?

  • I was a fearful child who grew up to be a fearful adult. I said my biggest yes to creativity only after I’d gone through several life upheavals and learned that I could survive risk and change… I decided that I would write no matter what. (Page 28)

 

  • Saying yes to your gift is a huge thing to do. It helps to remember that you are saying yes to the work itself and not to any particular outcome. You are not saying yes to a successful career as a novelist; you are merely saying yes to writing. (Page 40)

 

  • You have the responsibility to develop practices that help your gifts. Only you can examine your creative needs and set out to provide for them. You have the ability to design rituals, habits and practices that help you engage more fully in your creative gifts. (Page 55)

 

  • If I know from experience that inspiration arrives under certain conditions, I will make sure to re-create the conditions that invited it initially. Thus my early experience comes to determine how it is I will work. (Page 75)

 

  • Your creative work is in many ways your diary. It is how you process your own life. No one has the right to dictate your process. (Page 149)

 

  • The guidance you need as a creative [person] is help with your life more than help with your craft. If your life is reasonably healthy, the craft will come with time and practice. (Page 154)

Did any of those comments from The Soul Tells a Story resonate with you? If so, leave a comment. And now that I’ve read the circled-star parts, I think I’ll go back to the beginning and read all the parts again!

Stage One: Exploration

Published on by Kristi Holl

If success is a journey, where are you along this continuum? As we go through the five stages of success–and learn to celebrate each stage–you’ll see each milestone for what it is: a huge victory.

Getting Started

As I mentioned in “The Five Stages of Success,” my first step along the way was taking the correspondence writing class from the Institute while my three kids were infants and toddlers. Choosing to throw myself into this endeavor was a successful leap of faith for me. (And my husband, as it took exactly half our food budget to pay for it!) But all success has a price, even if it entails making your own bread and homemade yogurt for a year.

If I knew I wanted to write, where did the exploration come in? In two phases actually.

Taking Chances

In Phase One, I hadn’t known I wanted to write. I had tried four other home-based businesses before the writing course. Through those experiences, I found out I did NOT like selling vitamins or make-up, stuffing envelopes, or day care. I was successful in weeding out those careers. Until I took the writing course, I had no idea how much I would love it–a love that has lasted thirty years so far.

Phase Two of the exploration phase dealt with deciding what exactly I wanted to write. I had no idea, and the process of deciding can’t be forced or hurried. You have to take time to explore and mentally try on and investigate the many writing possibilities open to you. And when you hit your niche, you’ll know it.

Analyzing Your Explorations

I sold fiction and nonfiction to magazines, experimenting with shorter material. For two years I wrote for ages preschool through adults. The easiest to sell was middle-grade and adult nonfiction–and that was a consideration. But my highest satisfaction came from writing middle-grade fiction. [That’s where I settled, and (for the most part), that’s what I wrote in the coming years–but that’s a different stage.]

The “Exploration Stage” of success can be such a fun time! I found it exciting. If you want more guidance or direction for this phase, you might try Finding Your Perfect Work by Paul and Sarah Edwards or Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life by Gregg Levoy.

Stay tuned for “Stage Two: Preparation” on Monday!