by Jenna | Dec 22, 2016 | Guest Posts
Today we're continuing my "This Writer's Life" series, in which you get to meet some of my community members and take a look inside their writing lives. Next up is Frani, an action-adventure novelist who joined the writing community in June of 2015.
Meet Frani Bradley: Psychotherapist and Action-Adventure Novelist
Frani is a psychotherapist who lives in Texas, and has impressed me with her dedication to her writing in the time I've known her. She leaves no stone unturned when it comes to her writing, getting out of her own way, and honing her craft, and she recently undertook a massive life redesign in order to make more time for her writing.
I invited Frani to tell us more about her writing project and how she has created more space by overhauling her life, work, and even her living situation (including a Great Dane!).
What kind of writing do you do, and where are you in your process?
I am working on the second in an action-adventure novel series.
Right now I'm waiting for beta readers to finish reading my first novel and entering it into writing contests.
Soon I'll be studying the feedback they give me, and begin the work of incorporating what I want to use.
How has your writing practice changed since you joined the writing community?
I never had a consistent writing habit before I joined the writing community. Before joining the writing community, I had a consistent daily habit of guilt and regret about not writing. Now, most days I feel very good about keeping my daily habit of writing.
What have you learned about yourself as a writer?
I often wondered if I just liked the idea of writing and would never really finish anything, but in the writing community I learned that I am a writer, someone capable of finishing a novel. I owe this to the support of the writing community. Completing my first novel is the manifestation of a dream I've held since I was five years old. I told my grandmother a story, and she wrote it down. It was about a witch who rode a hula hoop rather than a broom. My grandmother said, "Francie, you are a wonderful story teller. Someday you will write a book." She was right.
There are so many levels of happiness and contentment that I have now, seeing my novel in hard copy ready for beta readers. I'm convinced this would never have happened without our group and you, Jenna. So you have literally allowed a life long dream come true. Thank you!
Where do you typically write?
I usually write at my desk at home. Now and then, at a coffee shop with a friend. I also work with my editor online. We collaborate across the internet in real time and over the phone when we're working together on the novel.
What does a successful writing day look like for you?
A successful writing day for me looks like putting in at least two hours of writing time on the suggestions beta readers have made on my first novel, working on my second novel, and studying a book on the craft of writing or doing research. I feel good when I spend at least two hours involved in something writing related.
How have you shifted your life to make more space for writing?
I'm right in the messy middle of changing my life. Over the last three months, working toward the goal of creating more time and mental energy for writing, I have made an effort to streamline my life. In doing so, temporarily I hope, I've created more chaos and extra time and energy drains. Things are winding down now, so I'm beginning to get my sense of humor back about all that has happened. Also, a glimmer of hope has returned, that it's not been madness to try this. I am beginning to see that my writing life could be as I envisioned it in the New Year.
I started by closing my office, where I have had a psychotherapy private practice for nearly twenty years. I opened a home office on October 1st. Moving the furniture, changing my address with managed care companies, deciding suddenly I needed to go paperless, adjusting clients to a new meeting space, and all the many boring details of change have snowballed to create extra work. Meanwhile, my home office needed a new driveway and several other changes to create a good space at home for seeing clients.
I also rented the larger home on my two-acre property to new renters and found myself embroiled in figuring out how to successfully house their large Great Dane in a way that worked for all of us (especially me, at night!).
So needless to say, it's been a bigger project than I'd envisioned. :)
It is December, and seems like much longer than three months since I began the journey of making my life simpler. That sentence really did make me laugh. I am feeling excited right now about how I see things shaping up. My doubts and regrets about starting this are disappearing, and I'm seeing a new writing life forming in 2017. Maybe it's true that "change is messy." It's sure been true for me. In the same moment, I hear the saying, "no guts, no glory" and get happy butterflies.
I'm feeling something wonderful out there with my writing waiting for me to step into it. I can't wait!
What's next for you with your writing?
I plan to continue working on suggestions from beta readers for my first novel, entering it in writing contests, and working on my second novel.
Community Profile
Name: Frani Bradley
Roles: Psychotherapist, Novelist
Location: Corpus Christi, Texas
Genre: Action Adventure
Current writing goal: 1) Incorporate the suggestions of five beta readers into my 1st novel by April 15th and submit to contests, 2) Complete Outline of 2nd novel by January 31st, 3) Complete first draft of 2nd novel by June 1st.
Biggest writing challenge: Keeping boundaries and commitments in regards to writing time
Biggest writing ah-ha: Two people I trust to give honest feedback have read my novel and enjoyed it as a good read. My ah-ha is that I have a novel that two people have enjoyed. It's enough to keep me going a long, long time.
Go-to writing platform: The cloud version of Pages for collaborating with my editor.
Favorite writing spot: In my living room, looking out over an inlet of the Laguna Madre, in the company of my dog and the large water birds in the distance.
Bio: Frani Bradley is an action-adventure novelist based in Texas who writes alongside running her home-based psychotherapy practice. She's a passionate animal lover and has dedicated herself to bringing the spirit of adventure, respect for animals, and spiritual inspiration to her stories.
by Jenna | Dec 20, 2016 | Guest Posts
It's December, the end of the year. In a continuation of my goal to help you Start 2017 Off Write, I thought you might like to meet some of my community members and get a look inside their writing lives. We'll kick off this series with Rebecca Brams, a local Berkeley writer and longtime writing community member.
Meet Rebecca Brams: Mama, Grant Writer, & Novelist
Rebecca is a Berkeley mom of two boys (we have both of those in common!) and she's writing a novel alongside parenting and the grant writing work she does. She has been a writing community member for three years. I invited Rebecca to tell us more about her writing and her writing life.
What kind of writing do you do, and where are you in your process?
I do several different types of writing, including grant writing for non-profit clients, personal essay, short fiction and blog. I mainly use the writing community for my novel work — I’m writing a trilogy of historical fiction novels set during the Inca Empire, in what is today Peru. Since I joined the writing community three years ago, I’ve written a draft of the first book in the trilogy and put it through a story analysis process including reverse outlining and mapping. I used two story analysis methodologies: Save the Cat and The Story Grid. I'm now partway through revising the novel. (If you’re curious about the novel trilogy, you can learn more about it in an essay Rebecca published here.)
How has your writing practice changed since you've been in the writing community?
I've become much more productive and stay on track more easily. I’ve been part of different kinds of writing communities over the years, including when I got my MFA degree, and I’ve found different types of value in each experience. The writing community is unique because of the daily check-in and because of the focus on process, not content. I know that if I get stuck, my coach will offer me a different perspective, and I often use the coaching calls to help me work through issues that come up. Being in the writing community makes me feel like I’m part of a writing community that’s “got my back” and will help get me back on track when I become overwhelmed or lose focus.
What have you learned about yourself as a writer?
I've learned to trust the ebb and flow of the creative process. Recording my progress on a daily basis (and seeing my fellow writing community members do the same) has shown me that I can have a fabulous writing day, followed by a humdrum day, and then get back into the flow again in my next writing session. Now when I have a tough day or hit one of those “stuck” spells, I worry less because I’ve realized it’s a normal part of the creative process.
Also: This is life. This is it. Every day we create it with our choices. Every day we choose to write even though urgent things are calling us, we honor our creativity, the Muse, and the unique voices that can only speak through us. Every day we choose to be gentle with ourselves, we create a life of compassion and peace. These two elements can feel in opposition to each other, but perhaps allowing for the coexistence of opposing forces is necessary for a rich artistic life.
How much do you write and where do you typically write?
I try to write early in the day, usually right after I drop my kids off at school, before lots of other to-dos pop up. That probably happens three to five days per week, depending on whether there are school holidays, my husband's work travel schedule, or if I have a lot of client work. I usually work at home, but sometimes I mix it up by going to a café. About once a week, I go to an in-person writing group.
When I’m at home, I often work at my secretary desk in my bedroom, but when I’m deep into line-edit revisions, I find I work better sitting in bed or on the sofa -- it gets me more into the mindset of a reader. When I’m strapped for time and trying to get in a sliver of writing, I will sometimes even write in my car. My coach has called me a “time-stealing ninja” for the different ways I’ve managed to slide writing into a busy schedule over the years.
What does a successful writing day look like for you?
It used to be that 15 minutes a day was all I tried for. Now my minute goals range a lot more depending on what else is happening in my life. I’d love to work for an hour a day or more, but there are so many different elements in my life that it really depends. Locking myself into a rigid schedule tends to lead to stress and guilt. I try for consistency and keeping up momentum more than getting the same amount of time in every day. And I do writing retreats -- often solo weekend retreats -- to immerse myself and get in big chunks of time.
What's next for you with your writing?
My big writing goal for 2017 is to finish the second draft of the first book by the beginning of the summer when my kids get off school. It’ll be a stretch, but I'm going to give it my best shot with the help of the writing community.
Community Profile
Name: Rebecca Brams
Roles: Grant writer, novelist, blogger, essayist, mother of two boys
Location: Berkeley, California
Genre: Historical fiction
Current writing goal: Finish second draft of novel by June 2017
Biggest writing challenge: Juggling priorities, the unpredictability of young children
Biggest writing ah-ha: Starting is almost always the hardest part.
Go-to writing platform: Scrivener
Favorite writing spot: In bed!
Bio: Rebecca Brams is a writer and mother to two young boys in Berkeley, California. She grew up in California’s Mojave Desert and has traveled extensively in Latin America. She has a B.A. in Anthropology from Stanford University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from St. Mary’s College of California. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been published in Carve Magazine, Literary Mama, Dark Matter: Women Witnessing and on blogs, including her own, https://rebeccabrams.com.
by Jenna | Dec 7, 2016 | Writing Articles
Journaling is an incredibly powerful way to create structure for your writing practice. When you use journaling to bookend your writing practice each day, you become much more intentional about your writing and your ability to learn from what works and what doesn't.
Here are some simple techniques you can use to amplify your writing practice with journaling.
Start Your Day With an Intention For Your Writing
A powerful way to focus your writing day is to start with an intention. I've used this technique in the past, but when I worked with Jessica Michaelson in her Look Up program, I loved how she had us check in twice a day, starting with identifying a core value we wanted to focus on each day in a morning check-in. With her blessing, I've incorporated this idea into the morning and evening prompts in my Writer's Insight Journal (one of the tools in my Ultimate Writer's Toolkit).
The core idea is to identify and name the energy and intention you want to bring to your writing for the day. This simple act brings focus and clarity to your writing, and can be used as a tool to adjust if you get off course.
For example, if your intention is to write with JOY for the day, but you find yourself in angst instead, you can ease up on the throttle and find ways to bring a more joyful, playful energy to your work. On the other hand, if your writing intention is FOCUSED EFFICIENCY and you find yourself in distraction-mode, simply reminding yourself of your intention can be a way to get back on track with your writing.
Complete Your Day By Checking In About How It Went
Similarly, at the end of each day, you can "complete" your writing day by assessing your writing progress and process. What was accomplished, what wasn't. What went well, what didn't. What adjustments you want to make going forward.
It's the power of self-observation we rely on in my writing community. Simply by observing and noticing what we go through each day as writers -- without judgment, mind you -- we gain incredible insights into ourselves, where we get stuck, where we go off track, and how we might need to adjust our writing process.
So many of us judge ourselves for not writing, or not writing enough, but as writers, our true power lies not in judgment, but in our ability to think creatively. And when we bring our creative minds to troubleshooting the challenges we face as writers, rather than beating ourselves up over them, magic happens.
This is how we notice ourselves getting trapped by the lure of internet distractions. Or catch ourselves in the throes of perfectionism or paralysis. Or notice that we're using our workaholism to avoid our writing, or that we're procrastinating with sudden obsessive house cleaning. Or cotton on to the fact that the reason we're not writing is that we're just not getting enough sleep and our willpower is too depleted.
I'm not a fan of the word mindfulness in general because it somehow implies a level of perfection and studiousness I find stressful. But intentional works for me.
Be Intentional With Your Writing
Success in writing doesn't happen by accident. That's a theme that's emerged as I've been writing this series. Writing happens when we are intentional about how we use our time, our days, our minds, our focus, and our creativity. And one of the most brilliant ways we writers can tap into that intentionality is through our own greatest skill, writing. Our journals become the containers for our greatest insights when we take the time to compassionately self-observe and learn from what's working and what isn't, and where we can go from there.
So if you find yourself floundering with your writing at all, carve out a few minutes each morning to set an intention for the day, and a few minutes at the end of the day to assess how it went. Sure, you can do this mentally. But since you're a writer, you know the power words hold. Write it down if you can. And if you need help with making more of a space to use this tool, stay tuned for the release of my Writer's Insight Journal in my Writer's Toolkit this week to help you make it happen.
How do you learn from your own writing process? Tell me about it in the comments.
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by Jenna | Dec 5, 2016 | Writing Articles
One of the biggest challenges I've seen for writers working on long-form writing projects (like books and scripts) is losing heart along the way, mostly because we get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work left to do.
It's not easy to keep our energy mustered toward completion when we've got pages and pages more to write... or harder, pages and pages left to revise (and potentially additional revisions left to go).
Here are three tips designed to help you keep your spirits up as you battle the forces of writing resistance:
Tip #1: Create a Plan
For every stage of your writing, make a plan for it. A plan for the outline, a plan for the first draft, a plan for the revision. For example, if you're writing the first draft, identify the milestones you're aiming to hit, like scenes from an outline or turning points from a beat sheet. Create a timeline for those milestones so you know if you're on track, and if you need to make any adjustments as you're moving through the project.
Even if you're a total pantser, you can still make some estimates for word counts, major turning points, or numbers of chapters.
Make your milestones big enough to be inspiring but not so big that they're overwhelming. I love to use 15-page chunks of a script as a milestone, usually the number of pages between each major script turning point because I know approximately how long it takes me to write or revise a section of that length. (You can see me putting a simple form of this in action here.)
Tip#2: Track Your Work
Once you have your plan and start implementing it, make a point to track your work so you can see how your plan is progressing. I like to use spreadsheets for tracking my writing (there's one in my Ultimate Writer's Toolkit if you want a jump-start with your own tracking).
The core idea is this: Track your time and your word or page counts so you can SEE the progress happening. It's one of the best antidotes I know for project overwhelm. There's nothing quite like seeing your counts climb and knowing you're making progress to help you focus on the progress you are making, as opposed to the work you have yet to do. And this is one of the biggest challenges we face as writers.
We tend to be an intuitive, conceptual bunch (at least the crowd I hang out with) so we can easily see the final, finished product in our minds' eyes -- and then despair when we see how far it is from here to there. But when we learn to use baby steps, and track those steps, we shift our focus from what's yet not done to what is already done, and it's an incredible relief.
Another amazing benefit of tracking your work is being able to see how long each stage and type of work typically takes you, and then you can project approximately how long it'll take to hit each milestone. Such as, how long it takes you to write 15 script pages or 2,000 words in your novel. Or much writing you can do in 60 minutes. Or how long it typically takes you to outline. Knowing your own innate pacing is a big confidence booster, and helps you build trust with yourself as a writer and believe in your ability to complete a project. Knowledge is power.
Plus, when you track your work you'll have the evidence you need to help you stay on track with your writer's schedule. If you've set aside 60 minutes a day for writing, and see every day you're adding 750 words to your manuscript, you'll be more motivated to keep your next writing appointment with yourself because you know in your bones those minutes count.
Tip #3: Keep Your Head Down
And at the same time, let tracking your work be enough of the big picture. Learn to keep your head down and focused on the work at hand rather than on the overall timeline.
Here's what I mean by "keep your head down." Once upon a time, I worked as an intern doing digital 3-D modeling (I made digital houses for virtual architectural walkthroughs and elephants for an animated dictionary, super fun). After I went back to grad school, my boss told me about someone they'd hired. "She keeps her head down," he said.
I wondered what he meant, and he explained that she focused well on doing the work that was in front of her, without looking up and around, chatting, or getting distracted. It clicked for me. And I find that the more I "keep my head down," once I've established the plan for my work, and just do said work, the better off I am.
As a general rule, the time to question and design the plan is not in the middle of implementing the plan, unless something has gone horribly wrong and a course correction is required. But if things are moving forward and no major trains have gone off the rails, stay focused on putting one foot in front of the other and logging the time and tackling the items on the writing to do list.
It's when we stop and question that we flounder. I've seen more than a few writers dropping in and out of the game for reasons like this, and it's just not worth it. The only way out is through. Don't spin your wheels asking "Why is it taking so long?"Just do the work.
Plan the Work and Work the Plan — And Track It!
So if you're looking for ways to keep your energy up while writing your epic book or script, remember: Plan the work and work the plan -- and track it along the way. You'll be amazed at how motivating it is to see your body of work building and building over time.
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by Jenna | Dec 3, 2016 | Writing Articles
Many people think writing is something that happens when we're inspired -- struck by a lightning bolt of ideas, if you will. That when we're inspired we just naturally "find" time to write.
And in a perfect world, that'd be true. (And in a perfect world we'd all have mentors and patrons supporting us to fulfill our creative callings!)
The truth is though, most of us are busy with day jobs, families, and other commitments in addition to our writing, so we have to take a different approach.
Creating Your Writer's Schedule Is About Intentionally Making Time to Write
We don't find time to write. We make time to write.
And making time to write requires being intentional. Writing doesn't "just happen."
When a writer comes to me with a book or script to finish, first I find out about their deadline, and whether it's a self-created deadline or an industry deadline. Then I ask about when they have time write.
Sometimes they have answers, sometimes they don't. Usually it's in the form of some general notions about when they could write or how and when they are already writing (if they are), which is a terrific place to start.
From there I ask a lot of questions about their ideal writing times, other habits, routines, and obligations and we co-create a weekly Target Writing Schedule. We use a weekly schedule because it's a repeatable model writers can carry forward with them throughout the whole year, adjusting as needed when major schedule changes or variations occur. (My Ultimate Writer's Toolkit includes a simple step-by-step process to walk you through creating your personal Ideal Writing Schedule and Target Writing Schedule.)
We call it a target schedule because we know that sometimes life goes awry and we don't hit our targets, but this way we know what to do when that happens -- just flow back into the plan the next day or at the first available opportunity. It's like having a regular work schedule. You get sick and miss a day, and then go right back to work when you get better.
The Magic Happens When You Make a Writer's Schedule
So much magic happens when you make your writer's schedule:
- You become more intentional about writing, and more aware of any choices you make that stop you from writing.
- You make writing a priority in your life, and validate that priority as you put it into action.
- You have an easier time keeping writing appointments with yourself when they're planned into your day.
- You raise the bar on the professionalism you're bringing to your writing. There's a chasm between hoping to write and scheduling writing, and putting it on your calendar helps you bridge that gap. It's about turning pro.
- You become far more likely to protect your writing time from scheduling other meetings or events during those time slots.
- You create a container for your writing, so when you have a project you want to complete, you know just how and when you'll do it.
- You become much more likely to stay on track with finishing your project without getting burnt out, or ending up in binge-writing mode struggling to meet a deadline at the last minute.
- You know when and how to reboot yourself if you get off track one day -- you go back to the schedule the next day.
If you're looking ahead to writing seriously in 2017, start by setting up your writer's schedule, so you'll be ready to hit the ground running when the clock turns.
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