habits

Not Enough Willpower to Reach Your Goals? Make Mini Habits!

Published on by Kristi Holl

“Focus on the process and you’ll be able to change your circumstances.” (Stephen Guise, author of Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results)

[While writing in England, I am re-posting favorite articles from the past. This one from four years ago still helps me today!]

One lesson I learned on my sabbatical was that my goals and desires outstripped my willpower.

I had high hopes and high expectations for the three months of the media “fast,” but I rarely was able to stick to my very carefully crafted daily schedule. It wasn’t the interruptions or distractions either. I simply felt overwhelmed by the goals I had set, even though I KNEW I had plenty of time to do them.

Goal Intimidation

I hadn’t scheduled 12-hour writing days or anything. In fact, on paper, they looked quite easy for the days I was home alone all day:

  • 2 hours writing  
  • 2 hours studying writing techniques (books, online classes, etc.)
  • 1 hour reading and research

Piece of cake, right? Especially since this was work I really, really wanted to do!

Willpower Burnout

I’ve survived and pushed through and gritted my teeth and met deadlines and ignored headaches for decades…using willpower. But as I faced writing several mysteries for adults that I signed contracts for, my willpower took a hike. I have no idea where it went, but it’s gone into hiding. When the willpower left, the panic arrived.

And then I read the book pictured above. I have read a lot of books on focus, self-management, and the like. Most I don’t finish, to be honest. Many I never get past the first few chapters. I had finally decided that there was nothing new under the sun.

But reviews for Mini Habits were wonderful and by people struggling with the same issues I was. I bought it and started it, not with any real hope, to be honest. But I couldn’t put it down and finished it in a day.

Mini Habits

The author’s scientifically researched, experience based, easy-to-read and understand book says this:  

You can succeed without the guilt, intimidation, and repeated failure associated with such strategies as “getting motivated,” New Year’s Resolutions, or even “just doing it.” In fact, you need to stop using those strategies if they aren’t giving you great results…It’s only when you start playing by your brain’s rules and taking your human limitations seriously–as mini habits show you how to do–that you can achieve lasting change.

From Hopeless to Hopeful

I couldn’t wait to try it. I was honestly amazed that something this simple could be so effective and stress-free!

And what are my new (silly sounding) daily mini writing goals?

  • Write or revise 50 words  
  • Read and do one page of my current craft or study book 
  • 15 minutes of research or professional reading

Has it worked? YES! For me, feeling overwhelmed and getting started has always been the hardest part. Having mini goals in order to create habits is so EASY. And just as he predicted, most of the time you’ll go over your mini habit goal. [For example, I am writing this blog using my “write 50 words today” goal. Until now, I forgot to check the word count, but it’s up to 406 right here.]

However, the next time I sit down to write, I will NOT “adjust my goals up” and tell myself I must write 400 words minimum. No…my internal resistance to writing that much is almost immediate! A goal that size uses a lot more willpower. (Maybe not for you, but it does for me. We’re all different.)

My new writing goals for the day are so EASY to do, so non-threatening, that I don’t miss a day. The writing habit gets ingrained, my mind now believes that getting started is easy, and later in the day I often WANT to sit down and knock off another 50 words (which, more often than not, stretches past 1,000 words before I want to stop.)

If getting started or developing a daily writing habit with ease is your goal, I high recommend Mini Habits. Give it a try!

When It’s Time to Update Your Writing Habits

Published on by Kristi Holl

writingSome writing habits can serve you all the days of your life. But other writing habits need to be moderated or tossed out when your season of life changes.

I’m in a season like that right now, and one thing that works for me during such changing times is to read about famous authors’ writing habits. It gives me ideas of what might work better in my fluctuating circumstances.

Time To Change?

Sometimes the need to revise our writing habits is obvious. Your times and places to write before you have your first child may never match your writing times and places after the babies start to arrive. The same is true for writing when you have a full-time job compared to when you’re retired. (And that changes again when your elderly father moves in with you.) Or when you’re healthy compared to when you’re healing from an accident or illness. So many events can leave you feel overloaded and in need of changing your habits.

Life is always changing, and sometimes drastically. But even with the common, garden-variety type of life changes, old writing habits can become obsolete. Other more workable habits need to replace them if your career is to continue.

Writers Reveal Their Writing Habits

Is your life is in a state of flux at the moment? If your previous schedule and habits no longer work for you, consider a change. Check with successful published writers. See what works for them. Then feel free to copy anything you like and try their habits on for size. We can all learn from each other.

Some great places to start looking include:

Good Intentions, Plus RELIABLE Accountability, Spells Success

Published on by Kristi Holl

intentionsWhat do all success stories have in common? Action. Success is the result of action.

What sustains and maintains that success? Repeated, reliable sustained action.

You can’t succeed by doing nothing. You must recognize the importance of being intentional, or having good intentions. But that isn’t enough. The often overlooked step is making it tangible. This intention can’t merely be in your head or scribbled on a scrap of paper that you’ll lose in your car. You must have a system you trust. (paraphrased from Stephen Guise’s blog The Minimum Requirement for Success)

Tracking Progress? Or Losing Track?

One of the hardest things many of us struggle with is not backsliding after getting a grip on a habit we want to establish. I have health habits I work on (drink eight glasses of water each day, exercise thirty minutes each day, no screen time after 8 p.m. so I can sleep, sugar-free day), writing habits (write 25 minutes and rest 5 minutes, don’t check email before 10 a.m.) and spiritual (devotional and prayer first thing). The trouble is, once I establish a habit well and then move on to work on another habit, I tend to forget (and backslide) on the progress I’d worked hard to establish.

There’s too much to remember! And yet, most health and writing habits are only valuable if you are consistent, if you do them daily or almost daily. I’ve blogged about mini habits in the past, and I’ve run several 30-day mini habit challenges which were very successful. Mini habits are much more reliable than motivation to help you meet your goals. I’m still a firm believer concerning mini habits, but I have been unable to find an easy and reliable way to track both earlier habits and new ones I’m working on. 

Until now.

The Best Way I’ve Found to Track Habits

I have tried various ways to track daily habits: wall calendars with check marks, notebooks with a list of daily habits, an erasable board on my office wall. They all had their benefits. I could see the wall calendar and erasable board whenever I sat down to work in my office, so it reminded me then. The notebook idea meant I could take my reminders on the road, thus keeping up with my habits on trips (which is a real challenge.) But nothing worked for all situations.

Then I read Stephen Guise’s idea about habit tracking on a smart phone with a free app called the Habit Loop tracker. It took me an hour to set it all up, but I have used it faithfully for weeks now. It’s fun. It’s colorful. And it’s the only thing visible on my smartphone’s home screen. (In other words, it’s not just a productivity app that is lost among two dozen other apps.) It goes with me everywhere. I don’t have to be online to track a habit. It keeps track of all the statistics for me. It allows me to set reminders, if I want to. And did I mention that it’s FREE?

For a simple tutorial in setting it up, read The New Best Way to Track Mini Habits by Stephen Guise. He takes you step-by-step through the process of setting it up, including screen shots of how he did it. My home screen looks different than his though. I only have the Habit widget and my ten mini habits on the home screen.

Good Intentions Versus Intentions That Work

intentionsGood intentions, for our writing or anything else, only work if we have a way to hold ourselves accountable. If you’re still hunting for a system to keep building reliable habits, I hope you’ll try this Habit Loop idea.

If you do, let me know how it works for you!

7 Habits of a Highly Effective Writer

Published on by Kristi Holl

“In writing, habit seems to be a much stronger force than either willpower or inspiration.” ~~John Steinbeck.

For several years, I’ve had a list of “The Seven Essential Habits of a Working Writer” scribbled on a scrap of paper and pinned to my bulletin board. I had copied the list from a book by author Jim Denney, who said, “Habits are constant. Inspiration is variable—it comes and goes. That’s why habits are better than inspiration. It is habit, not inspiration, that builds writing careers.”

I want to elaborate on that list, explaining why each habit is important—and how to implement that habit in your daily writing life.

A Writer Writes

You must begin to think like a writer—and that will lead you to acting like a writer. Then you’ll build the habits of a writer—and eventually you will get to enjoy the benefits of being a writer.

Seven Essential Habits of a Working Writer are:

  • Write Daily
  • Cultivate the Art of Solitude Amid Distractions
  • Write Quickly and With Intensity
  • Set Ambitious But Achievable Goals
  • Focus!
  • Finish What You Start and Submit What You Finish
  • Believe You Can

With all of these writing habits firmly in place, you can’t help but succeed!

Habit #1: Write Daily

Writers write. It doesn’t get more basic than that. If your dream is to be a full-time writer someday, you’ll need to develop the habit of writing every day. Habits are powerful, and once writing becomes as habitual as brushing your teeth, your productivity will go through the roof. And more writing translates into better writing. It takes practice like any other skill, and cliché or not, practice makes perfect.

Grab the Time

If you’re still working at your day job (whether outside the home or at home with children), you’ll find it more difficult to carve out a daily writing time. If that’s your situation, you must learn to grab whatever bits and pieces of time you have available. (I know this system works. I wrote my first five middle-grade novels with a newborn, toddler and preschooler underfoot—writing in tiny blocks of time like this.)

Here’s how it goes. Let’s say you have a story or book to write, but you don’t have big chunks of free time. Instead you make a commitment to grab just ten or fifteen minutes every day to work on it. Everyone can carve fifteen minutes out of each day to make some progress. You make a commitment to yourself that your head won’t hit the pillow for the night until you’ve spent at least fifteen minutes on your project. Those bits of time add up. Just fifteen minutes a day is 91.25 hours in a year—more than two full 40-hour work weeks.

It’s All in Your Head

The second reason this principle works is that it keeps your head in the game every day. You don’t just need time to write. You need head space that is free, even if it’s only one tiny corner of your brain reserved for thinking about your writing. If you don’t do it every day, other things quickly intrude and finally crowd out that head space reserved for your writing. Then you have to start over every few weeks or months when you get back to your project.

With writing for fifteen minutes each day, you never lose momentum or have to waste time trying to remember where you left off and who the heck this character is. Writing daily makes each fifteen-minute session its most productive and effective.

Like most of us, once you get rolling, the fifteen minutes often turns into much more if you’re not interrupted. It will build a great daily habit so that when you do have more time—maybe even eventually going full-time—your daily writing habit will already be cemented into your routine.

Procrastination a Problem?

Working writers have to be self-starters. If you have trouble doing even fifteen minutes a day, you’ve probably got a procrastination problem or writer’s block. For several articles on such challenges, see the ten articles in Writer’s First Aid on “Getting Started.”

Habit #2: Solitude Amid Distractions

Solitude is the best preparation for writing, and being alone to prepare one’s mind to write is lovely. But it’s not always possible, and you don’t want to be dependent on being alone in order to write. If I had decided I must have total “alone time” to write, my career would have been delayed at least a decade (until my youngest child started school).

Instead, develop the second habit of working writers—and cultivate the art of solitude amid distractions.

The Ideal versus the Real

Some writers have solitude all day long. Someday, after the kids are grown, or you quit your day job, or you get an assistant to handle your PR and marketing, you might have solitude without distractions. Frankly, though, that is NOT the life of 90% of writers. However, if you work at it, it’s possible to develop the feeling and benefits of solitude even when surrounded by people and interruptions. Rather than trying desperately to create a silent outer environment for yourself, it’s more practical and helpful to develop a kind of solitude, or quiet inner space, in your mind. That “room of your own” may need to be within, at least in the beginning. 

The Eye of the Hurricane

I wrote with small children in the room or nearby for many years. I stopped if they truly needed me for something, but often they were content to play in the same room or the play room by my office. Still, even when children are playing amicably, there’s lots of noise.

You have to find ways to enter the eye of the hurricane, so to speak, that spot in the middle of chaos where it’s still and you can hear yourself think. It isn’t second nature to us, but it can be done. As Isaac Asimov said, “We must find our solitude within. Regardless of the noise and distractions that swirl around us, we must be undistractable.”

Change the Things You Can First

To help yourself find that quiet place inside where you can concentrate on your writing amid distractions, be sure you’re first doing all you can to minimize the interruptions. There’s no point in wasting energy overcoming something that you could simply get rid of. Some distractions you can quickly eliminate. For example, if the Internet is a big lure, close down your email and get off line instead of mentally fighting the lure of Facebook and YouTube videos. (I remove my laptop—the computer with Internet access—to a completely different room while I write.) For many more practical ideas, see “Dealing with Distractions” in Writer’s First Aid.

Finding your calm center takes practice, but it can be done. I wrote my first novels with small children around, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way either. They were both my joy and my inspiration. I didn’t want to remove myself from them—but I needed to be able to work within the chaos too.

Start to practice now. To begin, write just five minutes at a time. Your ability to concentrate—and find solitude amid distractions—will grow.

Habit #3: Write Quickly and with Emotional Intensity

Many writers tell me their goal is to write full-time, to either make a living at it or to supplement their family income. For that to happen, you must move from being a hobbyist to being a “working writer.” You will need to write with two things simultaneously: speed and emotion.

Two-Part Goal

First, let’s talk about speed. It has to do with momentum, with pushing yourself to get the words written. Professional working writers almost all write quickly, moving forward with their drafts instead of stopping continually to re-read sections or obsess over details or revise the same section several times. Just get your first draft down as fast as you can.

You’ve heard about being “in the flow” when writing. It’s that marvelous time when you’re writing with speed and intensity and lose track of time as the words pour out. It’s difficult to reach this “flow” state where you’re lost in time if you constantly jerk yourself out of the story and go back to something previously written. When writing a rough draft, keep moving ahead.  This will help you streamline the writing process to make the most of whatever writing time you have.

Emotional Intensity

The second factor in Habit #3 is intensity. What difference does it make if you write with passion or power? For one thing, it gets you involved in your story or message and helps create that “flow state”. (Hint: choose a topic that you truly care about.) Also emotional intensity makes a powerful impact on the editor who reads your work. (Hint #2: if you don’t feel the intensity while you’re writing it, the editor won’t feel it when he’s reading it.)

Emotional intensity reaches readers—and they spread the word in good old-fashioned word-of-mouth advertising (or new-fashioned word-of-mouth via Facebook and Twitter.)

If you’re able to write fast, but you feel you lack the emotional intensity he’s talking about, get to know your own passions better. (For help with identifying your skills and passions, see the inventory called “Getting to Know You…” in Writer’s First Aid.)

Habit #4: Set Ambitious but Achievable Goals

 “If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.” ~~Thomas Edison

Goal-setting is a must-have habit if you want to be a working writer, someone who is going beyond the hobby stage in writing. Time and again it’s been proven that you increase your chances of achieving your goals immeasurably if you write them down and post them in a prominent spot so you read them frequently.

Break these written goals into long-term, mid-term, and short-term objectives. Long-term goals (write a bestseller, sell a series) define what we hope to eventually achieve. Mid–term goals describe specific projects we are working on right now (under contract or with our own self-imposed deadlines.) This includes deadlines for completing them. Short–term goals define the daily and weekly tasks we must achieve (write five pages daily, mail three queries by Friday) in order to reach our mid-range goals. Note: these are your production goals, and without them, your other goals will NOT be reached.

Give yourself permission to dream big. Your goals need to inspire you. As Andrew Carnegie once said, “If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.” I will say it again: dream big!

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

One of the biggest problems with goal-setting is that we tend to write the goals down and never (or rarely) look at them again. If they aren’t in the forefront of your mind, they’re so easy to forget.

Jack Canfield (co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books) suggests re-reading your goals out loud three times a day. As you do, close your eyes and picture each goal as if it were already accomplished. Keeping the idea fresh in your mind greatly increases your chances of following through to achieve your goals.

How can you remember to do this? You might put your goal list on a pack of cards you can carry with you. Or…“Put a list of your goals in your daily planner or your calendar system,” Canfield advises. “You can also create a pop-up or screen saver on your computer that lists your goals. The objective is to constantly keep your goals in front of you.”

Begin Now

I’d encourage you to take time and write down at least one long-term, mid-term, and short-term goal. The short one needs to support or help you achieve the mid-term goal, and both goals need to support your long-term goal. As you work through these “seven essential habits for working writers,” apply the habits to your written goals.

Habit #5: Focus!

All the previous habits won’t help much if you can’t focus on your work when you sit down at the keyboard. Each previous habit, however, will help you focus.

For example, if you don’t sit down daily for at least fifteen minutes to write (Habit #1), you lose track of your story. You lose the focus after a long break and often have to start over. Setting short-term measurable goals (Habit #4) creates a series of small deadlines, allowing you to just focus on today’s tiny portion to accomplish. And learning how to concentrate amid distractions (Habit #2) will help you zero in on today’s task.

Ready, Aim, Focus!

I used to have a camera with a focusing lens. By rotating the lens barrel, I could focus on the child in the foreground, or the dog sleeping in the background, or the mountain in the distance. As I focused on each separate thing, the other parts of the picture went out of focus.

Writers must be able to focus like that with their manuscripts, both to avoid being overwhelmed and in order to get the job done. We must be able to focus on big things in the background (like the plot or character emotion arcs) or things in the middle (like making sure each scene has the necessary dramatic elements) and close-ups (tightening this paragraph, writing a cliffhanger chapter ending.) If you try to focus on and fix everything at once, you’ll feel overwhelmed and freeze.

Need Some Help Focusing?

We live in a society that bombards us with information, demands, and media overload to add to personal schedules already full with family, day jobs, and all the things that add up to very busy lives. Being able to focus can be a real challenge.

First, figure out what is keeping you from being able to focus. Quite often it’s a simple thing. Perhaps the noisy neighbors in the apartment above you keep you from sleeping well or being able to concentrate. If so, buy a white noise machine, set it to crashing waves or rainfall, and turn it up until it drowns out your neighbors.

Maybe you can’t focus because your writing desk is covered with piles of things to do: the unfinished query to a magazine, the unfinished story for the contest, bills to pay, a writing magazine to study, and the note that says “BUY INK TODAY!” You can’t focus on your writing because you keep feeling like you should be doing something else. If so, clear your desk of the piles. Put them in the closet or on a bookshelf in plastic stackable trays. Get them out of your eyesight so you can focus on the writing task at hand.

Make a list of all the things (personal and professional) that you feel are hampering your ability to focus. Then set about dealing with each and every one.

Habit #6: Finish and Submit

Habit #6 is “Finish What You Start and Submit What You Finish.” Sounds pretty obvious, doesn’t it? If you want to become a working writer, either part-time or full-time, you have to finish your manuscripts, submit those manuscripts, and keep on submitting until they’re sold.

Unfinished Business

I know a couple of very fine writers who may never submit the novels they’ve been polishing for years. They endlessly fuss and obsess over their manuscripts. And it’s a real shame because those novels are wonderful. At some point, you need to say, “It’s finished!”

One caution: if you become careless, you might not do the necessary polishing that deep revisions call for. You might settle for a good enough manuscript, but not rise to the excellence you’re capable of. It makes no sense to spend weeks, months or even years writing a book and then, when finishing, to produce and submit a careless effort. Pay attention to detail. Do you very best right up to the end.

Finishing strong is something great athletes learn. Finishing strong is something writers also much learn.

It’s Finished—Then What?

Study the markets. Find publishers who publish the type of book you’ve written, and make a list. Research online to make sure the publishers you’ve listed are legitimate. (Just Google “XYZ Publisher scam” and “XYZ Publisher complaints” to find out.) Make sure you understand the difference between traditional publishers (who pay you) and vanity presses (who expect you to pay them to print your books.)

Make a list of at least half a dozen publishers where you could submit your manuscript. And when it comes back—all writers get some rejections—you send it out again. And again. That’s what working writers do!

Habit #7: Believe You Can

This last of the essential habits of a working writer might be the toughest one for you: Believe You Can.

Every writer doubts his ability at some point—and many successful, much-published writers deal with doubts about their writing abilities every single writing day. Those successful writers know a secret though.

They feel the doubt—and write anyway. That’s what they decide to do: sit down and write, whether they feel like it or not.

Act As If

Don’t wait until you have confidence in yourself to start writing. It simply doesn’t work like that. The confidence—the feelings of “Hey, I can do this!”—comes AFTER you start writing. Feelings follow behavior, not the other way around. Only when you act like a writer, will you truly feel like a writer. Writers write. Writers show up at the page and stay there, putting down one word after another. And at the end of each writing session, they believe a little more strongly that they can be writers. (For more help in this area, see “Who’s in Charge?” and “Voices of Self-Sabotage” in Writer’s First Aid.)

I hope you’ll keep this list of seven writing habits posted where you can see it—and read it—often. “Without these habits, how could you do anything but fail?” Jim Denney asks. “But with all of these habits firmly in place in your life, you can’t help but succeed.”

I couldn’t agree more. That’s the power of daily habits!

[Reposted from here.]

The Dynamics of Change

Published on by Kristi Holl

We’re nearly ready to begin a new writing year! Or ARE you ready? This year you don’t have to get behind on your goals or quit. Why? Because this time you’re going to take time to understand the dynamics of change.

Did you know that 75% of New Year’s Resolutions (or goals) are abandoned by the end of the first week? The number is higher at the end of January. There’s a reason for that.

From Temporary to Permanent

I spend much time on the blog encouraging you to make changes and deal with feelings that are holding you back. So I thought it might help us stay on track as we move through this new year to do a short series on the dynamics of change–or how to make permanent changes.

How do we make changes that stick? How can you be one of the 10% to 15% who keeps on keepin’ on and accomplishes his or her writing goals?

Change in Stages

One mistake we make is thinking that change happens as an act of will only. (e.g. “Starting today, I will write from 9 to 10 a.m.”) If our willpower and determination are strong, we’ll write at 9 a.m. today. If it’s very strong, we’ll make it a week. If you are extraordinarily iron-willed (and never have life interruptions or get sick), you might make it the necessary 21-30 days proven to make it a habit.

Most writers won’t be able to do it.

Why? Because accomplishing permanent change–the critical step to meeting any of your writing goals–is more than choosing and acting on willpower. (And if you master the mini habits way, you won’t need much willpower either.) If you want to achieve your goals, you need to understand the dynamics of change. You must understand what changes habits–the rules of the game, so to speak.

Making Change Doable

All of the habits we’ve talked about in the past–dividing goals into very small do-able slices, rewarding yourself frequently, etc.–are important. They are tools in the process of change.

However, we need to understand the process of change, the steps every successful person goes through who makes desired changes. (It applies to relationship changes and health changes as well, but we’ll be concentrating on career/writing changes.) Understanding the stages doesn’t make change easy, but “it makes it predictable, understandable, and doable,” says Neil Fiore, Ph.D., author of the The NOW Habit.

Change takes place in four main stages, according to numerous government and university studies. Skipping any of the four stages lowers your odds drastically of making permanent changes that lead to a sucessful meeting of goals.

Here are the four stages of change that I will talk about in the following four blog posts. Understanding–and implementing–these consecutive steps is critical for most people’s success in achieving goals and permanent change.

Stages of Change

  • Stage 1: Making Up Your Mind (the pre-commitment stage). This stage will involve feeling the pain that prompts you to want to change, evaluating risks and benefits of the goal you have in mind, and evaluating your current ability.
  • Stage 2: Committing to Change. This stage involves planning the necessary steps and considering possible distractions and things that might happen to discourage you or cause a setback.
  • Stage 3: Taking Action. This stage includes several big steps. You must decide when, where and how to start; you must show up to start despite fears and self-doubts; then you must focus on each step.
  • Stage 4: Maintaining Long-Term Success. This is your ultimate aim if you want writing to be a career. It will involve learning to recover from setbacks and getting mentally tough for the long haul.

(For a thorough discussion beyond the blog posts, see Chapters 11-14 of Neil Fiore’s Awaken Your Strongest Self.)

The Blueprint

So…that’s the plan for the next few blog posts. Do not despair if you’ve struggled with meeting your writing goals in the past. Help–and hope for permanent change–is on the way. I probably struggled with this for twenty years, despite desperately wanting to write full-time. But until I learned that there was more to it than Stage 3 actions, I failed repeatedly.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Let’s make the writing discipline permanently effective so we can move on to the fun of daily writing!

Beware! Burnout Ahead

Published on by Kristi Holl

“Writing is not everything,” says Lisa Shearin in Writer Magazine. “And if you want longevity in this business, play isn’t just important–it’s critical. We get so intensely focused on having achieved the dream and working so hard to keep the dream going, that we’re blind to the signs that if we keep going down that road at a fast pace, that dream could quickly turn into a nightmare.”

Recipe for Burnout

I was very glad to read her opinion piece–and I wish that message was published more often. I wish someone had said it to me years ago. Having a healthy drive is good, but letting yourself be driven–by others or your own inner critic or even your perceived budget needs–will eventually ruin the joy you originally brought to your writing.

“Dreams are meant to be savored and enjoyed,” Shearin says. “You do have to work hard, but sometimes, the work can wait.”

Too Late

Great advice, but what if you’re already burned out? What if–from overwork, juggling too many jobs and family members, a major loss, or chronic illness–your ideas have dried up? I’ve been there twice (previously) in my writing life, and it was a scary place to be.

Peggy Simson Curry spoke about this in a Writer Magazine archive article first published in 1967. She detailed the process she followed to “slowly work [her] way back to writing” and discover what had killed her creative urge in the first place.

Face the Fear

I think most writers would agree with Peggy that fear is at the basis of being unable to write–fear that a writer can’t write anything worth publishing. Burned out writers constantly think of writing something that will sell. 

“This insidious thinking,” Curry says, “persuades the writer to question every story idea that comes to him. He no longer becomes excited with glimpses of theme, characters, setting, threads of plot. He can only ask desperately, ‘But who will want it?'”

Healing Choices

Among other suggestions, this writer said it was very important to deliberately get outside, away from the writing, and just enjoy the world around you. In other words, play.

Coming out of burnout can be done, but it often takes methodical, small daily disciplines to do it. For me lately, it’s been watering the tiny vegetable garden my granddaughters helped plant and walking to a nearby pond to watch the turtles (doing nothing) and walk back. Earlier, when my eyesight was better at night, I stitched small quilted wall hangings, and that finally unclogged my creativity. Things that help will be different for each writer. 

I feel the burnout lifting lately. I still tire more quickly, but a little trip to the pond and back seems to revive me and restore that “want to” so important in writing stories. This time, I am determined to keep up the routine, even when I feel better, and avoid the burnout path in the future. It takes less time–and is more FUN–to do these routines when you already feel well than to do twice as much to regain your failing health (mental and/or physical).

So take time for yourself today, even ten minutes here and there. You’ll be so glad that you did!

The Gift of Time

Published on by Kristi Holl

It isn’t my birthday or Christmas or Mother’s Day, but it feels like it today. Why? Because I’ve decided to give myself a wonderful gift now.

The gift of time.

I’ve been writing and publishing since my kids were babies. They’re in their thirties now, with their own children ranging from toddlers to teenagers. During many of my children’s growing-up years, I was either single parenting or the family relied heavily on my income. Slowing down to study my craft was a dream I put on my yearly goals list, but it was rarely an option. The 50+ hours of work per week needed to generate income: writing books, teaching writing, speaking, writing test questions, and doing private critiques.

Always Running, Faster, FASTER!

Whenever I thought about studying more, reading more, taking more time to grow as a writer (versus making every hour a billable hour), I would promise myself, Later, when things slow down and the cash flow eases up.

Even when that day came where I could cut back, I found that the very idea panicked me. I had drummed into my head for so many years that freelancer warning, “If you don’t work, you don’t eat.” You learn to go without paid sick days or paid vacations–let alone time to study one’s craft.

If Not NOW, When?

For several years, I’ve been having a discussion with a dear writing friend about slowing down and spending time to improve our writing. I took motivational workshops, learned how to “work smarter, not harder,” streamlined my work habits, and multi-tasked until I met myself coming and going. And what did I do with the time freed up by all this smarter working? Took on more projects, learned how to blog, Facebook and Twitter…but rarely studied. Oh, I bought craft books, but the books that got my full attention seemed to focus on time management.

And my friend? Except for having grandchildren, she was as busy as I was. Yet she got her MFA in children’s writing (traveling half-way around the world to do it), and is now working on her Ph.D. While I don’t have the money for either of those things, I could certainly be studying more. And that’s where I decided to apply my gift of time.

Spending Vs. Investing Time

Starting today, I am giving myself the gift of time to study. I think if I do four or five hours of writing (the moneymaking activities) in the morning, then I could surely study for an hour every afternoon. To survive in the changing publishing times, we will all need to become better writers. And if not now, when? (By the way, it isn’t something I feel I should do. It’s something I want to do. I honestly do love to study.)

Maybe you can’t afford to work part-time yet. (I’m not positive that I can either. I’ll find out!) I know that situation is a reality for many of us. But if you can squeeze out even a daily hour to read current books in your field and study a writing craft book, I encourage you to do it. I’ve signed up for a writing course online which takes an hour per day, and I can’t wait to be a student again! It’s my gift to me.

Celebrating Freedom….for Writers

Published on by Kristi Holl

Sometimes, in order find freedom, you have to take the exit pointed out for you.

Last week was one of those weeks.

And at the end of this post, I’ll share with you a very easy path to the freedom to focus.

Losing Focus

I had reached the middle of a novel, one thoroughly plotted out, mind you, but when I actually analyzed it scene by scene, the plot was quite thin. It needed a subplot to beef up the middle, but it couldn’t be any old subplot. It’s a mystery, so it had to tie in with the main story PLUS add important clues and intrigue. Once added, it also meant going through the whole novel and seeing how the subplot would change all kinds of things.

My solution? Acorn TV! I love British TV, and for $4.99 a month, you can watch all the classics you want. But did it help me plot the sagging middle of my novel? No.

So I stopped watching TV, tried to think of a subplot, and went to check email, then post photos of outings with my grandkids on Facebook, and check the local weather station (even though I didn’t plan to go anywhere.) When I am having trouble with my writing, the Internet is my all-time biggest time waster.

A Semi-Solution Is Not Freedom

The day I had the most trouble, I packed up and went to the library study room where I can’t get their free Internet, for some reason. I got quite a lot done, but someone there was playing video games. It surely left him half deaf because I could hear it perfectly despite his ear buds. And it was so cold in there! I’d forgotten to bring a jacket, a must for anywhere indoors in Texas during the summer months.

I prefer working at home in my office, but I will do what I have to do to concentrate. Today I had the same focusing problem, but I couldn’t leave home this time. We had city inspectors coming to make sure the new doors and windows had been installed properly. And of course, the very busy inspector didn’t come till the end of the day. Did I get any writing done?

YES! A lot! And here’s how.

Best Kind of Freedom

I remembered some software I’d bought a few years ago for a whopping $10 called FREEDOM. It simply blocks the Internet for as long as you choose. I blocked it four hours this morning and could focus so easily then! After lunch and checking email, I blocked it for another three hours and wrote. I haven’t had such a productive day in a long time. When you stop interrupting your own thought processes with tiny snippets of information online, you can actually stick with a writing problem long enough to solve it.

Check it out. The Freedom software is still the same low price; it works on Windows and Mac computers, plus other devices.

Want to restore your freedom to focus? Check it out! (It even comes with an unconditional 60-day money back guarantee.) You can’t go wrong.

How Fit is Your Writing Life?

Published on by Kristi Holl

Ever have a pig-out weekend with a wake-up call on Monday morning? I did yesterday. After reading a few motivational articles online for getting myself back on track, it struck me that getting fit and getting published have a lot in common.

The Writing-Fitness Team

The problems that derail our writing goals and our fitness goals (and the solutions proposed by the “experts”) can almost be interchanged!

  • For example, if you want to lose weight and get in shape, fitness experts say that a support system of some kind is necessary. (Writers need it too.)
  • Interval training is recommended for fitness–short bursts of focused work, then lighter periods for recovery. (This works best for my writing schedule as well.)
  • Fitness experts recommend keeping track of your calories consumed and miles run. (Writers recommend keeping track of words and pages written.)
  • Certainly to succeed in both areas, you need daily disciplines (consistency).
  • And in both arenas, “slow and steady wins the race,” rather than days of self-torture followed by taking several weeks off.
  • Both fitness experts and published writers recommend journaling, both for dealing with emotional issues that can throw you off your goals, as well as “before-during-after” journals for dealing with special blocks and temptations.
  • Fitness gurus tell you how to deal with those loved ones who (perhaps unconsciously) try to sabotage your weight-loss progress. I’ve written about that issue myself, pertaining to writing.
  • Fitness experts talk about the changes you need to make daily, and how you must think of them as “lifestyle changes” if you want to be successful. (Writers, also, must make changes in lifestyle that need to be permanent instead of lasting only until a deadline is met.)
  • Diet instructors caution against using your calories on junk food and feeding the body little nutritional value. (As a writer, we need a variety of “nutrient dense” reading, not just fluff.)
  • To be successful in either endeavor, you need to stop those negative, defeatist thoughts and be optimistic.
  • There are also times to deal with where you do everything right but get disappointing results (follow your food plan and exercise daily, yet gain a pound–OR write daily and submit, yet get rejected.)

I realized today that if I can master these general habits and mindsets, I can conquer all my fitness issues AND my writing issues! How do I plan to do that? My tried-and-true mini habits.

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.