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A Walking Idea Factory

Published on by Kristi Holl

Some days I feel about as creative as a cement block. Most of us know, however, that we can’t wait to feel creative before we write.

Writers who wait for inspiration before they decide to write are generally known as hobbyists. Working writers–those actively writing and growing in their craft–must write whether the muse is “in” or not.

“Which means, essentially,” James Scott Bell says, “you have to become a walking idea factory.” And he really does mean walking. He said he gets a lot of his ideas for his current work-in-progress when walking. I know other writers who’ve said the same thing.

Dragging My Heels

I love to walk, but I have usually balked at this kind of “work while you walk” advice. After working at my desk, I want a break. And mulling over my novel while taking a walk doesn’t do a darned thing to refresh me. My brain is too tired. When I walk, I want to listen to a book on tape, something Jane Austen-y that I know will feed my soul. Thinking about my own novel just feels like more work to me.

But…I’m happy to say that’s not what Bell recommends! In his The Art of War for Writers, he says that after a writing session, “I try to take an hour walk every day and listen to an audio book.” Inevitably his muse or imagination (what he calls “the boys in the basement”) sends up ideas for his work-in-progress while he’s listening to his audio book for relaxation. When that happens, he stops, makes a note in the pocket notebook he carries, then goes back to his audio book and walks some more.

He calls this his system for “being creative without thinking about it. That way you can be ‘working’ on your idea even when you’re not working on it.”

Then What?

For several days I tried Bell’s system. I hadn’t expected it to work–but it did! While walking and listening to Pride and Prejudice on my MP3 player, my brain released a good number of ideas–things that I could later develop (a secondary character’s flaw, a plot twist that would also show the book’s theme, a better setting for the climax scene). I have to admit that I was very surprised how well this worked.

If you want to try it, here are Bell’s steps for becoming a walking idea factory.

  • Focus fully on your book or story idea during your writing time.
  • Take a walk and relax, then capture the ideas that pop up during your walk.
  • Back home, immediately put your recorded bits in a computer file. Expand on them, brainstorm the ideas, follow rabbit trails. Do that with each idea that popped up on your walk.
  • Let the ideas cool for a day and then come back to them for assessment.
  • Decide which ideas to keep and use in your current work. Set the others aside for another project.

Bell says if you get used to thinking this way, your creativity will explode!

Writing on the Road

Published on by Kristi Holl

If you can’t be flexible, don’t be a writer.

Deadlines. Emergency phone calls. And you’re on the road again!

Sometimes there is just no choice. Family needs you. Deadlines won’t budge. So you do what you have to do. It may not be ideal, but writing in the car can be do-able.

Writing in a Car

Life just happens, and you have to adjust. You CAN write on the road if you’re really determined.

Did I like working on a laptop in the front seat of a compact car? No. I don’t like typing with my elbows close to my waist or trying to find angles where the sun won’t glint off the screen. Happily, we were driving in the dark a good bit of the time, so the sun wasn’t a huge problem. Did I like writing with the radio blaring? No–I like total quiet to write.

Despite the less-than-ideal writing conditions, I was able to write a whole chapter on the way there and half a chapter on the way home. That was about 4,200 new words of a rough draft. If I hadn’t written, what would I have done otherwise? Daydreamed. Napped. Stared out the window. Read more–although I still managed to read a lot.

Keep the Pump Primed

Besides getting the words down, the writing done in the car will be very helpful to me later today. When I sit down to write, I won’t have to go back and see what I wrote three days ago and try to remember the emotions of that scene or where I was headed with it. It’s still fresh in my mind from writing in the car last night. I can pick up where I left off with little trouble. (By the way, I readily admit that writing with no small children in the car is MUCH easier! When my children were little and I didn’t own a laptop, my writing in the car was done with pencil and notebook, using a flashlight after dark. Where there’s a will, there’s a way!)

All our best laid plans for setting up a writing schedule can go out the window in a moment. We don’t live on islands, but instead in families that require our flexibility. So learn to build that flexibility into your writing life.

By all means, have a set schedule and a favorite place that is most conducive for your writing. But learn to go with the flow too–and fit the writing in whenever and wherever you can. Later, you’ll be glad you did!

Creative Writers and Depression

Published on by Kristi Holl

I was reading an article in Writing World‘s monthly newsletter (see archives here) where an editor revealed her struggles with depression.

Her symptoms might surprise you.

They also might sound familiar.

Could This Be You?

Dawn wrote: “It came as a huge surprise to me. I thought I was suffering from Post Viral Fatigue Syndrome, or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I did not think I was depressed. I mean, surely I would notice feeling depressed? Surely I would, well, you know, feel sad, weepy or blue? Apparently not. The fact that my body had slowed down, and weakened, that my concentration had been blown to pieces and my ability to think became clouded in a fog are all textbook symptoms of clinical depression. Feeling sad doesn’t really come into it. I had, in layman’s terms, overloaded my system. I had tried to do too much for too long and something has to give.”

Writer Overload

I applaud Dawn for speaking out on this issue. I see writers (and others) overloading themselves terribly these days. I used to think it was just a “young mom writer” syndrome, but I see it in all ages as writers try to work 40 hours at day jobs, juggle children or grandchildren, do volunteer work, run marathons, do social networking, attend conferences, you name it! (And I’m preaching to myself here too!)

This editor/writer went on to describe how she’d slowly over-crowded her schedule (with good things!), and what that had done to her creativity. Since she didn’t exhibit classic signs of depression (sadness, crying), she didn’t realize her nervous system was basically trying to shut down.

If you recognized yourself in her description, do something now before you have a full-blown depression to address. Trust me–it’s easier to deal with your schedule before than to crash and burn after you’ve overdone it for way too long.

Take steps to deal with it now, while you have more choices.

Writing Habits: Getting Back on Track

Published on by Kristi Holl

There is a famous quote: “If you take one day off writing, your muse will take off the next three.”

In other words, it will take you three days (after skipping writing) for you to get back into the flow of your writing project. Even taking one full day off will cost you in focus.

De-Railed Once Again

Because of some unexpected events in January (including a contracted nonfiction project that was taking hours and hours more research than I had figured on), I laid aside my novel about mid-way. After five weeks, I was at a place to pick it up again. But I couldn’t get moving.

So I did what I am always telling other writers to do. I found an online challenge that lasted a week. (Beth Barany ran the challenge through a special Facebook page. For my challenge, I chose “writing 500 words per day” for a week on my novel.) I got behind early in the week, and on Friday had to write 2,000 words to meet the challenge for the week, but I did it, and I got unstuck. I’ve been able to write 30-60 minutes every day since–and I plan to keep it up.

The other thing I did was buy an ebook (free on a daily free ebook notice I signed up for) and read Master Your Time in 10 Minutes a Day by Michal Stawicki. I had also let go of several smaller projects in January that I wanted to restart (reading, studying) that had overwhelmed me. But by using his “10 minutes a day” approach, I got back into all five projects again. I set my timer, worked hard on each thing for ten minutes, then moved on to the next thing. I learned (again!) how much I could get done in ten minutes. More importantly, though, I got unstuck and moving again.

Time of Re-Entry

I don’t know why this is, but when you finally get back to writing, you can expect some uncomfortable, not-fun writing days, producing stuff that stinks. Several writers I’ve read lately say that if you’ve been away from your writing for a week or more, you can expect about ten days of writing that is no more fun than getting teeth pulled when you start again.

When I say “away from your writing,” that’s what I mean too. Sometimes–and I am sooo guilty of this–we fool ourselves that we’re writing when we’re:

  • Reading a writing magazine or blog
  • Marketing a story (looking for publishers and agents)
  • Blogging
  • Journaling
  • Answering email to writers, editors and family members
  • Speaking at writer’s conferences
  • Going to book signings or book store readings
  • Posting to Facebook or Twitter

That’s not the kind of writing I mean. Those are writing-related tasks, and writers today have more and more of them, it seems. They have to be done. But they don’t take the place of writing.

In the Flow

To stay in the groove, so to speak, you don’t have to write for hours and hours every day (although hours are lovely and the more, the better.) I have found that if I work on my novel for even twenty minutes a day, I can avoid that horrible getting started angst the next day. And I don’t have to waste time trying to remember where I was, what the characters were feeling, what the plot problem was, or that new insight I realized about the theme. Our brains seem to be able to hold onto those things for about 24 hours.

As Heather Sellers said in Page by Page, “I try to avoid missing days. The not-writing days aren’t worth it! It’s too hard to get back into it. This is why athletes cross-train off season. This is why people who are successful with weight management stay below a certain weight. It just isn’t worth it. Getting back into shape is just too hard. It is easier to keep doing it, tiny little writing periods, day after day. Without missing a day.”

Too Late?

What if you’ve already missed a few days, or weeks, or months of writing? Then start again. But you can also take this to the bank: your writing will stink, you will hate it or question your story or your talent or your motives, you will feel self-indulgent, and writing for twenty minutes will feel like hours. But this really uncomfortable period is usually necessary. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that–if you stick it out for about ten days straight–it will pass. The muse will return, the writing will be fun again, you’ll realize how much you missed it, you’ll love your writing rituals and routine, and you’ll wake up eager to write as you did in the past.

Once you regain that wonderful writing state, do everything you can to maintain it. If you know you have a super busy day tomorrow, set your alarm twenty minutes earlier and write before the day takes over. It doesn’t take much writing to stay in the flow–not nearly as much as it takes later if the writing stalls.

Write daily, if at all possible. As the note stuck to my computer says, “You don’t need more time…you just need to decide.”

Principles of a Creative Life

Published on by Kristi Holl

“The healthy creative life is an intentional life, in which the person examines options and opportunities, necessities and desires, and makes his or her choices accordingly.”

 ~~(Vinita Hampton Wright) in The Soul Tells a Story

You may know exactly what your writing dreams and gifts are because you’ve pondered them and journaled about them for a long time. That knowledge is important. But knowledge alone isn’t enough. You must be intentional in using this knowledge to develop your creative life.

A Writing Life on Purpose

The healthy creative life involves practices that help further develop your gifts. If you want to write, you have the responsibility to develop practices that help you grow. (You also need to get rid of habits that hurt your writing–but that’s another post!) You can (and should) set goals, design rituals to help you get started (light candles, make tea, put on music) and form habits that help you both start and continue writing.

Here are some questions for you to answer to examine this part of your life. Even if you’ve been writing for a long time, I’d suggest answering the questions based on where you are now. I found them very helpful myself. Without meaning to, we can get off-track, our life circumstances can get us off course, or we might never have given this sufficient thought to begin with.

Now’s the Time!

Here are some questions from The Soul Tells a Story. Brainstorm answers in your journal.

  • How intentional (using planning or goals) have I been about developing my creativity?
  • What opportunities am I looking for–and are these options open to me?
  • What qualities do I want to nurture in my personality and lifestyle that will allow me to use my gifts in my writing?
  • What rituals or practices always seem to work to help me do my writing?
  • What other rituals and practices that I’ve heard about would I like to try?

It’s time to make some intentional choices! We might need to make them for the first time–or we might need to make some because our life circumstances have changed.

We won’t grow as writers unless we intend to grow and choose to grow. What’s a “growth choice” that you might like to make–and implement–very soon?

A Writerholic’s Many Faces

Published on by Kristi Holl

Did you know that, contrary to popular belief, workaholics (and the sub-group writer-holics) don’t work all the time?

In fact the term can describe “any person who is driven to do too much, whether that person works sixty hours a week or runs around like a chicken with its head cut off…Some work addicts appear motionless, but their minds are racing.” (Diane Fassel in Working Ourselves to Death.)

Three Faces of a Writerholic

While my goal and life-long desire as a writer has been to be consistent with my writing output, it is seldom that way. Sometimes I work long hours with a huge output (like writing 50,000 words last November for NaNoWriMo), sometimes it’s in spurts, and sometimes approaching deadlines make me freeze (afraid that I can’t do what I promised in the contract.)

I knew my writing output was sporadic, but I thought each style was a problem by itself. I am beginning to see that they’re all just different faces of perfectionism.

Obsessive Writers

This writer works long hours, taking on project after project. She feels compelled to do what she needs to do to keep going. I used to blame it on the financial needs of raising children alone–and that certainly contributed to the pressure–but after the need passed, the behavior remained. According to Joan Webb, “it is a matter of identity for her. If she stopped to rest, it would prove she is inferior, lazy or both–and that would be unthinkable.” Yup, this was me for many years.

Binge Writers

This writer works in spurts, but with great intensity and energy and focus. These intense bursts of work are sometimes (for the writer-holic) ways to avoid dealing with other issues (children’s problems, marital woes, a looming health concern). “Work, projects, tasks and accomplishments become the medication of choice so that she doesn’t have to feel her emotions, deal with her disappointments or ask deep questions,” says Webb. I’m guilty of this one too–not as much as in the past, but it’s definitely a factor sometimes.

Anorexic Writers

Deadlines can often turn me into this type of writer. The perfectionist in me isn’t satisfied with writing “sh****” rough drafts, as Anne Lamott calls them in Bird by Bird. After having had 42 books published, you’d think this would no longer be an issue! But it is.

Webb contends that the work anorexic is “afraid she’ll do it wrong, so she procrastinates, and the resulting guilt immobilizes her.”

What Type Are You?

Do you identify with any of the above descriptions of workaholic and perfectionistic writers? (If so, these tendencies probably show up in how you  approach other things in your life, like your fitness efforts and your relationships.)

Do leave a comment and share your own experiences in this area.

Silent Sabotage

Published on by Kristi Holl

The writing is flowing, you’re accomplishing your daily word counts, you’re in the flow!

Then, without warning, you take a nose dive. You spiral downward to crash and burn. Your writing comes to a screeching halt.

Why?

Silent Sabotage

This phenomenon happens when we least expect it. Silent sabotage comes in many varieties. Here are some of the most common forms for writers.

  • You’re doing well on your writing (your output, your class work, your marketing, etc.) Love those productive days! Then a little voice in your head whispers, “You know it’ll never last. It’s just a matter of time before you’re blocked again. Might as well give up now–you’ll never make it.”
  • You plan to write your blog and study online writers’ guidelines, but you realize you’ve been surfing the Web for half an hour of your “writing” time. You only had an hour to write, and you’ve wasted half of it! How discouraging. A feeling of hopelessness sweeps over you. The voice whispers, “Well, today is blown. You can’t get anything done in the little time you have left. Might as well keep surfing.”
  • You’ve finally finished the story or book manuscript. You’ve worked hard, and success feels great. What a high! The voice whispers, “You deserve a reward, a break from the computer.” So you don’t write the next day…or the next…or the following week or month. Your break turns into a full-blown block, and you just can’t get started again.

Voice Message

So what can you do about this silent sabotage, this automatic negative thinking? Remember, where the mind goes, the man follows.

If you don’t want to crash and burn your writing schedule, what voice messages can replace the sabotage? How can you encourage yourself instead?

  • When things are going well, pat yourself on the back. Remind yourself that “slow and steady wins the race.” If you set goals that are truly achievable on any given day, and you persevere day after day, you will succeed. You will finish that manuscript; you will submit it (and re-submit if necessary.) If you refuse to give up despite rejections, if you are willing to revise, chances are good you will sell it.
  • When you’ve wasted your writing time by playing Solitaire or surfing or writing endless emails to friends, tell yourself (like the dieter who splurged), “Well, today wasn’t my best day. I’ll make good use of the time that’s left. Tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it. Today’s mistake is limited to today. Tomorrow I will be even more productive.” Stop the slide down that slippery slope of failure.
  • When you’ve completed a project and feel the need for a break, schedule it. Choose a reasonable length of time (maybe one day for finishing a short story, or a week after finishing a book.) On your calendar also schedule time on the day you intend to get back to writing. Enjoy the time off, but gear up mentally for returning to work when the vacation time draws to a close.

Be aware of your thoughts, and counter the negative ones quickly. Change that voice message. Successful writers have learned how to counter the voices of self-sabotage. You can too!

[What are the voices that torment you? How do you counter them to avoid quitting? Let’s share strategies!]

Learned Optimism

Published on by Kristi Holl

Are you a pessimist? You might be surprised. Choosing to be an optimist, according to author Randy Ingermanson, can change your writing life.

Read his article below, reprinted with permission. It’s long–but worth it!

(By the way, I whole-heartedly endorse this book, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life.)

What’s Holding You Back?

I recently discovered something about myself that surprised me. Something that makes me take a lot longer to get things done than I should. Something that sometimes keeps me from finishing tasks. Something that occasionally even keeps me from trying in the first place.

I’m a pessimist.

This came as quite a surprise. After all, I’m not nearly as pessimistic as “Joe,” a guy I used to work with. Every time I suggested a new idea to “Joe,” the first thing he’d say was, “Now be careful! There’s a lot of things you haven’t thought about yet.” Then he’d shoot the idea down with rocket-powered grenades.

After a while, I learned not to run ideas past “Joe” because apparently, all my ideas were bad.

I haven’t seen “Joe” in years, and I’m pretty sure I’m not as pessimistic as he is. But somewhere along the way, I definitely went over to the Dark Side. I became more like him than I ever imagined possible.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that pessimism is not forever. You can quit being a pessimist and start being an optimist.

But should you? Aren’t those pesky pessimists more in touch with reality than those annoying optimists?

Yes and no.

Yes, pessimists generally do have a better grasp of the hard realities of the situation. “Life sucks” and all that. You can prove in the lab that pessimists are better at recognizing reality.

But no, no, no, because in very real ways, you make your own reality. We all know about self-fulfilling prophecies. Those work both ways. Optimists are happier, healthier, and get more done. Because they expect to. Pessimists are less happy, less healthy, and get less done. Because they expect to. Again, you can measure that difference in the lab.

If you’re a pessimist and you want to know what’s holding you back in life, just go look in a mirror.

It’s you. But you already knew that, and you were already down on yourself, and now you’re mad at me for blaming you, but realistically, you secretly believe it’s your own darned fault, so you’re really just mad at me for telling you what you already knew.

Sorry about that. I feel your pain. Remember, I’m a pessimist too, and I’m probably a bigger one than you are.

I’m a pessimist, but I’m going to change. Which is actually an optimistic thing to say, and it means the cure is already working.

What is pessimism? And what is optimism? And how do you know which you are?

I’m not the expert on this. Martin Seligman is the expert, and he has been for a long time. Recently, somebody recommended Seligman’s book to me. The title is LEARNED OPTIMISM.

I grabbed a copy off Amazon and began reading. Seligman hooked me right away with his account of how he and a number of other researchers broke the stranglehold on psychology that had been held for decades by the behaviorists.

Behaviorists taught that people were created by their environment. To change a person, you had to condition him to a new behavior. A person couldn’t change himself merely by thinking differently, because thinking didn’t matter. Only conditioning mattered.

What Seligman and others showed was that the behaviorists were wrong. The way you think matters. Thinking optimistically, you could change things for the better. Thinking pessimistically, you could change things for the worse–or at best just wallow in the “life sucks” mud.

There’s a test you can take in LEARNED OPTIMISM that helps you figure out your particular style of thinking. There are three particular aspects to measure:

* Permanence — if things are good (or bad), do you expect them to stay like that for a long time?
* Pervasiveness — if one thing is good (or bad), do you expect everything else to be like that?
* Personalization — if things are good (or bad), who gets the credit (or blame) — you or somebody else?

Optimists think that good things will continue on but that bad things will go away soon. Likewise, they think that good things are pervasive whereas bad things are merely aberrations from the norm. When good things happen, optimists are willing to take a fair share of the credit; when bad things happen, they’re willing to let others take a fair share of the blame.

Pessimists are the opposite on all of these.

I took the test and discovered that I’m somewhat pessimistic in two of these aspects and strongly pessimistic in the other.

That’s not good. But (having now read the book) it’s not permanent. I can change if I want to. Furthermore, that pessimism is in my head, it’s not a pervasive feature of the universe. Most importantly, my pessimism isn’t entirely my fault, because I can see now who taught it to me.

The above paragraph is a model of how to change from pessimism to optimism. Both optimism and pessimism are driven by your beliefs, which are driven by what you tell yourself.

When you change your self-talk, you change your beliefs. When you change your beliefs, you change your behavior. When you change your behavior, you change your life. Chapters 12, 13, and 14 of LEARNED OPTIMISM teach you the techniques you need to change your self-talk.

Let’s be clear on one thing. Optimism is not about the alleged “power of positive thinking,” not about making those wretchedly gooey self-affirmations, and not about telling lies to yourself.

Optimism is about looking for alternative plausible explanations that might lead to improving your life.

Pessimism is about looking for alternative plausible explanations that might lead to disimproving your life.

Which of those is likely to make you happier, healthier, and more productive? Bringing this home to the topic of fiction writing, which of those is likely to help you get your novel written, get it read by an agent, and get it published?

Research shows that optimism is an invaluable tool in dealing with criticism and rejection. If you’ve ever shut down for three days after a tough critique, or stopped sending out query letters for three months after getting a rejection from that perfect agent, then you can see the value of learning optimism.

Optimism will keep you going through the hard times as a writer. And you are going to have hard times. That will never change. What can change is how you respond to those hard times.

There is no way I can explain in 500 words exactly how it all works. The best I can do is to point you to Martin Seligman’s book and tell you that I think it’s gold. I expect this book is going to revolutionize my life in the next year. I hope it changes yours too.

*******

Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, “the Snowflake Guy,” publishes the Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 21,000 readers, every month. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/>http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com.
Download your free Special Report on Tiger Marketing and get a free 5-Day Course in How To Publish a Novel.

The Vicious Procrastination Cycle

Published on by Kristi Holl

Because I have a tight deadline, and I also need to go to bed early for a race I’m running in the morning, I am going to re-run a popular article from a few years ago on the procrastination cycle. It will bear repeating!

******************************

There’s more to dealing with procrastination than snarling at yourself to “just do it!” I know because I’ve been snarling that line at myself for ten days. Today I feel like snarling at everybody else too! I’m caught in the procrastination trap and trying to get out.

I read something helpful about it last night. Did you know procrastination is a cycle with predictable stages? It isn’t just one feeling with one cause. That’s the bad news. I think the good news is that you can interrupt that cycle. The “how-to” depends on what part of the cycle you’re in.

Stages of Procrastination

The vicious cycle of putting things off goes like this:

  • starts with feeling overwhelmed
  • pressure mounts
  • we fear failing at whatever we’re putting off
  • we buckle down and try harder
  • we work longer hours
  • we feel resentful
  • we get tired and lose motivation
  • and then we procrastinate

Wow! I always thought the “buckle down and try harder and work longer hours” part was good! It’s how I’ve survived all these years. I certainly never considered it part of a procrastination habit or cycle.

But the cycle rings true for me–and is really giving me something to think about. “The cycle starts with the pressure of being overwhelmed and ends with an attempt to escape through procrastination,” says Neil Fiore, Ph.D. in The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play. “As long as you’re caught in the cycle, there is no escape.”

Warning Signs of Procrastination

“But I don’t procrastinate,” you may say. Maybe. Maybe not. As I read through the list of thirty-five symptoms in the book, I realized with great shock that I responded yes to about three-fourths of the questions! (It was a shock because for thirty years, people have told me what a hard worker I was, how organized I was, etc.) But I had not considered these behaviors as symptoms of procrastination.

Things like…

  • Do you keep an impossibly long “to do” list?
  • Do you talk to yourself in “shoulds”?
  • Are you often late arriving at meetings and dinners?
  • Do you have difficulty knowing what you really WANT for yourself, but are clear about what you SHOULD want?
  • Do you find that you’re never satisfied with what you accomplish?
  • Do you feel deprived–always working or feeling guilty about not working?
  • Do you demand perfection even on low-priority work?
  • Do you feel ineffective in controlling your life?

In my book More Writer’s First Aid, I maintained that you can’t find a solution to a writing problem until you’ve correctly identified the problem, and then the root cause. If someone had told me that I was a procrastinator, I would have laughed until recently. But I have to admit that the questions hit home, and I definitely recognize that cycle of feelings! Could it be that the burn-out I’ve felt this year comes from a life lived in the procrastination cycle?

I’ll be exploring the ideas for correcting this habit in coming weeks. The idea of not living in that cycle of pressure puts a little spring in my step today!

Pulling Weeds and Planting Flowers

Published on by Kristi Holl

Writers are good at pulling up weeds, but they sometimes forget to keep going and plant flowers in the dirt. After you pull weeds, don’t forget to plant flowers.

Many writers in December and January talked about their goals for the new year. Many are working hard to break habits that keep them from their writing dreams. It’s why you pull weeds–they can choke out your flowers. Bad habits can choke your writing dreams.

Here are a few weeds that writers should pull:

  • mindless Internet surfing
  • writer’s block
  • procrastination
  • saying yes when you should say no

But is that all you need to do? NO.

Don’t Forget to Plant

I have a neighbor who keeps weeds pulled and has a lovely, clean, raked, raised bed of black dirt. Any time a weed appears, it’s yanked up.  The dirt even gets fertilized. Lots of preparation is done. Unfortunately, there never comes a time when flowers are planted.

Writers do the same thing. They pull weeds. (e.g. conquer writer’s block, set up a writing schedule) Then they fertilize. One such writer, who dreams of becoming a novelist, writes every day. She journals first thing in the morning, and the words flow as she processes her day and makes plans. She posts faithfully on her blog two or three times per week, writing several thousand words each week. She belongs to an accountability group and checks in faithfully.

She blogs about writing issues while dreaming of selling that first novel, or novel series, to a traditional publisher. She has overcome her writer’s issues (“pulled the weeds”) and puts in daily writing time, telling herself that it’s just a matter of time. Week after week, and month after month, she writes, dreaming of that day in the future when she’ll have her first novel published. But it never happens.

And at this rate, it never will. Why?

Because she isn’t planting any flowers. She’ll never have anything but a lovely looking plot of black dirt.

How Writers Plant Flowers

If you dream of publishing a novel, then you have to do correct planting. Your seeds and seedlings might include:

  • studying characterization and dialogue
  • writing descriptive passages
  • practicing figures of speech
  • taking an online class on plotting
  • studying market guides

Those seeds planted and watered will one day produce a crop.

It All Works Together

Yes, you have to get rid of bad writing habits (“pull weeds”), and you need to establish a routine and accountability (“fertilize”). But if you don’t study your craft and write fiction (“plant flowers”), you won’t realize your dream of publishing a novel.

Don’t stop part-way into the process and fool yourself that you’re doing the necessary work. If you have a decent plot of dirt ready, then move on. Plant those flowers!