by Jenna | May 8, 2015 | Writing Articles
Every project I work on – especially when it's a long-form piece – has begun to feel like an investment: In myself, in my writing, in my future.
Each one starts out seeming so simple. Just an idea. But it builds over time into a complex story. With questions and puzzles and logic challenges and logic flaws and doubts. All of which have to be solved.
And it takes time to crack those puzzles.
Even though I've been able to move from concept to outline to draft much more quickly now than I have in the past, it's more than just a matter of pace and production. It's also about depth and attention -- preoccupation even -- for a period of my life. It's about making a commitment to a story that occupies my time, my thoughts, my subconscious, my dreams. It occupies ME.
When I hear the stories of how many drafts it took to write The Sixth Sense and how many before he “got” the big idea, I appreciate even more what an investment a story is. Learning to tell it well. To refine it, hone it, pare away the unnecessary bits. All the rewriting. It’s no small thing.
And yet we dive into these stories with such hope and abandon. "This one will be different," we tell ourselves. "It'll practically write itself! I'll be done before I know it."
The grass is always greener
Just tonight I happened upon a journal entry from last year, where I was lamenting about how ready I was to write something new as I was slogging through a major rewrite. And since then, I have. And now I’m feeling about the new project the way I was feeling about the thing I was rewriting at the time. Or possibly worse. :)
Isn’t that funny, how the grass is always greener on the next project?
I think that must be part of the drive behind “bright shiny object syndrome” and the resultant project hopping we writers can get into. Those other projects look so much more appealing than our current moldy one, all banged up and warty and flawed.
No wonder we leave trails of unfinished projects behind us like breadcrumbs leading to a trove of forgotten dreams.
I think there may also be a hesitation to fully commit to a second or third or next project because we know what a major big deal it is having been through earlier projects. I can see why "second novel syndrome" may be more than an issue of simply exceeding the quality of one's prior work! It's also about psyching ourselves up for the next step in our writer's journey.
Difficult but worth doing
Because really, it's why we're here, right? To write?
So whether we're starting our first project or our tenth, or rewriting yet another draft, it's about facing the work. Finding the courage to do it. Stewing in the crummy, awkward, and sh*tty rough draft writing we’ve created or wrestling with the new story choices and puzzles, while we twist uncomfortably, grasping at straws, wondering how on earth to solve or fix it. It’s painful!! Who would want to subject herself to that?
No wonder we jump to other things.
But when I think of each project as an investment, it changes the picture for me.
It becomes worth it to put in the time.
It changes from the wretched torture of rewriting a terrible rough draft or struggling to pull the pieces together to something difficult but worth doing.
What about you?
by Jenna | May 1, 2015 | Writing Articles
Pre-baby #2 last May, I was blogging on a weekly basis. I had a precision system in place. Every week during one of the 60-minute writing sprints we run for my community, I would knock out about 1000 words in 40 minutes, edit, proof, and polish it in the remaining 20, then grab an image and publish the whole shebang within maybe another 10 minutes or so. Then a few final tweaks to the copy in my mailing system and I was all set with my weekly post and newsletter (I have my blog set up to be pulled straight in to Aweber once it’s published on my site, then I broadcast it to my mailing list).
I had a SYSTEM. (And if you know me very well, you know how much I love a good system!)
It was fun, easy, and I was in a good rhythm with it for quite a few years.
Then cue baby, stage right
But once baby #2 came, I knew all bets would be off. And they were.
In those early post-partum days, I was wandering around in a deep haze of physical exhaustion from the birth, breastfeeding and skin-to-skin induced oxytocin highs, and massive sleep deprivation and fragmentation – I was sleeping around the clock with the baby. In other words, all was as it should be. :)
But in the midst of it all, I still had (and have) a business to run. Since I knew it was going to be tough, I had planned to run a series of guest posts over the summer to keep the flow of content going. It was a great plan, and I had I realized what it would take I would have made it a higher priority to set up all the posts BEFORE the baby was born.
(Who am I kidding? The last 6 months of this pregnancy were tough and it was a minor miracle I did such a thorough job of prepping my team to keep things running in my absence! Still, in an ideal world, perhaps…)
In any case, it turns out that guest blog post editing and publishing takes me just as long if not longer than writing my own posts. Live and learn. Still, it was delightful to have a hiatus from being the solo content generator and it kept me in touch with writing and all of you. So once the baby shifted out of the long luxurious naps of The Early Days and into those short 40-minute jobs where there was no point in me trying to sleep anyway, I would get to work on guest posts and screenwriting assignments (and writing the occasional post myself, I think.)
But then the guest post series dried up and I found myself struggling to write the way I had before. Each post took me three times as long as it had in the past. I don’t know if it was the oxytocin/milk brain thing or the chronically tired mom thing or both, but blogging stopped coming so easily.
Then factor in the screenwriting I’m trying to keep up with for my master certificate program and blogging really started slipping through the cracks.
And something just wasn't feeling right
In the bigger picture somewhere along the way I also stopped feeling satisfied with the WAY I was blogging. I wanted to SAY SOMETHING DIFFERENT or at least say it differently, but I wasn’t sure how or even what I exactly wanted to change.
Which led me to some soul searching.
Did I still want to blog?
Was there a different way I could see out there that I might want to try?
What struck me, eventually, was wanting to have more of a mix of posts. Some personal stories interspersed with the writing habit insights. Maybe even an opinion piece or two. Some longer pieces. And even a few occasional guest posts. Once that clarity emerged things got better. But it still wasn't happening.
Creativity required
So my desire was clearer but my action plan was lacking.
One of the things about being an entrepreneur with a baby at home is that you have to be flexible, creative, and resourceful at all times.
Now he's older and is sleeping for longer naps again I have two small windows of time to work in each day, assuming all goes according to plan and there are no random dogs barking during nap time! (Ahem.) (His name is Colton, by the way, and he’s a cute as a kitten playing with a dust bunny.)
So that means I have approximately two to three baby-free hours each day to apportion between screenwriting, blogging, and keeping my writing community in motion. Not a lot of time. Sure. I could hire a babysitter and I do have some temporary help right now, but I WANT to be with my son while he is little like this.
Which is exactly the point. As a writer, and a mom, I have to be super creative about when, where, and how I write. I also have to make sure I get enough down time and sleep or I cross the line into crazy mama land pretty quickly. And since the old pattern wasn't working, I had to come up with a new one.
Finding new times to write
My new favorite time of day to blog is that small window of time before I go to sleep and after the kids are in bed. I’ve learned that I can write in Markdown text on my iPhone in an app with a nice dark mode (Byword) while snuggled in bed. It’s the perfect time to empty my brain of the blog posts I’ve been mentally composing all day (turns out that part of my issue lately has been having too much to say – it gets overwhelming and gums up the works without an outlet for expression).
The key is just making sure I get into bed early enough to write without messing up my sleep. On the other hand, sometimes sleep is hard to come by and having the flexibility to read or write in the middle of the night can be a mental relief rather than lying in the dark working out sentences and trying to keep them in my head until I have time to write them down. Plus it leaves my daytime work slots free for screenwriting and running my business.
Then in the morning I can sync up my files with Scrivener or export them straight into my blog in perfectly formatted HTML.
And it led to finding a new voice and new creative expression
Somehow having a new system has unleashed my creativity again. (See? What did I tell you about me and systems?) I just needed a system that worked with my current lifestyle.
It’s such a good reminder that when your writing pattern stops working, it’s time to redesign your writing life to match.
And the most fascinating outcome for me has been a shift in my writing voice that feels even more like me.
I love it. :)
by Jenna | Apr 22, 2015 | Writing Articles
I'm learning to write faster. With blogging I’m already fairly quick, though my recent writing voice recalibration has slowed me down a bit (more on this in a future installment).
But in terms of screenwriting, I’m learning to be faster and looser, to let go a little more, and to refrain from perfecting until the polish draft.
And being a fast writer is a boon in the screenwriting industry, it seems. I have a few sought-after writer friends who are known, in part, for their speed.
So it’s a good thing, right? To be fast?
Pressure's on
When we write quickly, there's another kind of fast that's implied as well.
It’s the idea that we should be cranking out multiple scripts each year (or books, for my novelist friends). That if we’re not, we’re slackers. (I read recently that screenwriting agents don’t even want to talk to you if you aren’t writing at least three new spec scripts a year, in addition to any paid writing assignments you might be working on. I also have novelist friends putting out multiple books per year.)
It starts to feel as though the counting police are breathing down your neck to see if you’ve done enough. Today, this week, this year. Enough words, stories, scripts, books, etc.
More power to the writers who want to and can write that much, but what about the rest of us with little kids and/or who are old enough to know that pulling all nighters, racing to meet deadlines, killing ourselves with 50, 60, or 70 hour workweeks is ridiculous, short-sighted, and terrible for our health and relationships? Or even just want to make sure we're actually enjoying LIVING along with writing?
Sure. We might want to write a lot. To be prolific. But we have to be mindful about what works for our LIVES as well as our careers. And our lives are individual, with specific realities, so there’s no point in comparing ourselves to others. After all, when comparing, someone always loses. That’s not a fun place to live from. (I honestly doubt that was the plan, when our souls said “YES!” to writing.)
Thoughts about quantity versus quality
I’m of two minds about this quantity thing, of course.
(That’s how you know it’s me!)
On the one hand, writing more stories means more practice, which means more experience and more knowledge under one’s belt as a writer, which also means greater facility with writing as a whole. That seems like a good thing to me. I learn more and deepen my skills with every project I tackle, to be sure. And as my natural pace picks up with greater experience (and my kids get older), I'm sure it will become even easier to write more, more quickly.
It also seems to be the standard recommendation these days — to write as much as possible — and indeed, my personal goal has been to build a library of scripts I can take to market all at once. I’m just choosing not to kill myself over it, especially with little kids whose childhoods I don't want to miss.
On the other side of the coin, taking your time to write one truly solid story may be the ticket to unlocking your storytelling gifts. It’s what I like about what Corey Mandell recommends: getting one script “pitch perfect authentic” so you deeply understand what you’re doing and why so you can carry that forward into your future projects. The argument goes that there’s no point in moving on to project after project if you’re just going to keep making the same mistakes. This is why I chose to spend the last couple of years refining my first script rather than moving on to new projects (though I have now just completed a rough draft of a new project and have taken on a writing assignment).
The real questions to ask
No matter what other people recommend, say, do, or think about how much we “should” be writing, we have to be true to ourselves and set the goals we actually want to achieve, not the goals we are told we "should" strive for.
The real way to measure our pace is by setting goals that work for us, are attainable, and are in resonance with the lives we want to have. Then we can see how well our pace and goals are matching up.
So the real questions to ask are: Are you writing fast enough for YOU? Are you meeting the goals you are setting for yourself, from your heart? Are you writing at a pace that feels sustainable and healthy? One that’s good for you, the project, and the planet?
The real answers lie there.
by Jenna | Apr 16, 2015 | Writing Articles
When someone joins my writing community, and doesn’t participate, I am always fascinated to know why. I don’t assume that the person is lazy or just not writing. And sometimes there are real reasons, like a sudden death in the family or an unexpected deadline at work.
But more often than not, when someone isn’t writing, it’s resistance. Resistance means avoiding the very thing you know you most want to do. In fact, the bigger the calling, the more resistance.
And if you’re the one in resistance, it can be tricky to spot. The stories we tell ourselves become so familiar, we take them as givens.
Garden variety resistance
Stories like “being too busy”, for instance, are common. It’s our best socially acceptable excuse, after all! These are the more obvious cases, where the writer says they want to write, but fails to do so, saying they are too busy.
It’s resistance, plain and simple.
Sure. It might ALSO be true that they are too busy. But WHY are they too busy? What self-created realities are they living in that make them too busy to write?
Resistance leads us to create overflowing lives with impossible tasks and deadlines, because if we CAN’T write, we don’t have to write. Saved!
We always have a choice
The thing is, though, we make the choices that create our lives.
Sure, we might have to hold down day jobs. But we don’t have to be perfectionists about Every Single Bit of work that we do, or work Every Single Available Hour to successfully accomplish our jobs. Perfectionism keeps us working on other projects far longer than necessary. Being busy in this way is the ultimate form of procrastination.
The reality is that it is almost always possible to write for just a few minutes a day, no matter how busy you are. Usually if you can’t find a few minutes, it’s because you’re allowing perfectionism and resistance to get in the way, one way or the other. Even taking on too much work is a form of perfectionism, because when we can’t write, we don’t have to, and we don’t have to see ourselves fail to reach our own impossibly high standards.
Insidious types of resistance
The more insidious types of resistance are new projects that suddenly demand our attention, like just when we’ve finally committed to writing a novel, we decide we have to start a thirty-day workout program, get another degree, start a new business, clear our clutter, move, or fix our finances.
Why do we do this?
On the surface, it might look like we’re mastering self-improvement in all areas of our lives, all at once. It feels so good to finally be committing to writing that we overcommit to trying to improve everything in our lives. Or it might look like we’ve gotten clear that these other projects are more important to do first.
It looks noble. Or smart, to get your priorities in order.
But underneath, it’s self-sabotage.
What we’re really doing is simply avoiding the writing. We might not be willing or able to admit it to ourselves at the time, but raw naked terror is running the show. Better to build one habit or make one major change at a time, ideally in small manageable pieces.
There’s nothing like signing up for something like the writing community or committing to doing the work, and then seeing yourself run fleeing in the other direction (or just plain old losing interest) to clue you in to the fact that you are secretly TERRIFIED of facing the page.
Not that there’s anything wrong with being scared.
In fact, it’s ENTIRELY normal. If you aren’t scared, you might even be doing it wrong.
You might be surprised about what I really think when you aren’t writing
But here’s the thing. If you tell me you want to write and the instantly do the opposite, you might be surprised (or not, if you know me at all!) to know that I DON’T think:
- He’s being lazy.
- She isn’t serious about being a writer.
- He doesn’t have what it takes.
Far from it.
In fact, what goes through my brain is:
- Oh, poor thing, she must be terrified.
- I wonder if he knows he’s running away.
- I hope she will reach out for help instead of hiding.
- I wonder if he knows how defended he is right now.
- I wonder what she’s doing instead of writing and how I can help her troubleshoot it.
What I really see hidden in the way writers act out after they’ve committed to writing but don't do it – is a cry for help.
The bigger the badder
And the larger the way the resistance plays out, the more terror I see:
- Taking on new responsibilities at work or for the kids' schools? Scared.
- Going out drinking every night instead of writing? Panicky.
- Suddenly deciding to start a new business venture or get a fine arts degree? Petrified.
All these kinds of choices – whether they are sudden new choices or chronic patterns – they are resistance, and show us how scared we truly are.
Is this grounds for self-flagellation?
No.
Far from it.
It’s powerful information.
When you know you are not lazy or weak willed but scared, then you know how to deal with it.
The antidote for fear
The antidote for fear is courage.
But it’s also about having a super simple plan to bypass the fear and get into action with the smallest possible steps to get you writing.
So when I see you not writing, my first response is compassion, followed by tons of support and brainstorming to help you get going again. It’s as simple as that.
by Jenna | Apr 6, 2015 | Writing Articles
My best friend reminded me the other day that I have chosen an artist’s career. Her words hit me over the head like a metal bucket, with all the accompanying reverberations one might expect.
Wait.
I did?
An artist’s career?
But she’s right. By choosing to become a writer, I chose an artist’s lifestyle.
Sure, yeah, I’m an entrepreneur too, and a coach. In some senses I’m well-diversified. But in the sense we were talking about, it was hardly different. They are unpredictable jobs. The money goes up and down. You don’t know how you’ll be rewarded for any given effort. There’s not an hours for dollars exchange going on, at least not in the predictable way someone with a 40-hours-a-week-plus-benefits job would have.
And honestly? I wouldn’t give it up. I adore working for myself. When people talk about how they can only take so many vacation days a year so they can’t take an extra day off to have a three day weekend, I just look at them with cow eyes. What now?
On the other hand, in some ways I am never off work. Not one day, not ever. Because it’s mine. But it’s also MINE, you dig?
But I digress.
Chuck Wendig wrote this post recently about making the decision to quit writing (or not). He suggested picturing your life five years from now, not writing, and noticing how you feel. Relieved? Maybe that’s a sign to quit. Disappointed? Maybe you should keep going.
But I don’t know.
Maybe I’m deformed or deficient in some way but along with the massive joy I often feel for my writing and the daily deep satisfaction I get from doing it, I also feel burdened by it. Like it's something I’ve picked up and can never put down again. And sometimes that makes me feel tired, like I want a break. So when I think of not writing in five years, yeah, there’s a part of me that feels relieved. Like I’d be off this self-created hook. But is that so bad? Is that a sign I don’t want it enough? I don’t think so.
Because my real answer to whether or not I would quit writing is “No way, not ever.”
It reminds me a bit of parenting.
Both are “terrible privileges” in a sense. Neither would I give up, not for anything. But they will never ever ever go away. I cannot escape them. Nor do I want to. But some part of me still sometimes longs for those earlier carefree days when I didn’t know what it would be like to have parts of my soul walking around in other small bodies that I made inside my own. Or those days when I could truly be free to do nothing or anything without the need to take care of another being or to put words to the page because if I don’t I start to feel itchy and claustrophobic all at once.
It’s a burden. A privilege. A recipe for angst and joy, all rolled into one.
Do I love it every minute?
No.
Would I give it up?
Absolutely not.
Because in writing I found myself.
And quitting would be giving up on part of me that would lose her home.
