by Jenna | May 14, 2014 | Guest Posts
A note from Jenna: This guest post from the highly talented coach and writer, Jill Winski — whom I’m proud to have serving as a coach for my writing community — offers insights for writers who struggle to finish their writing projects.
Read on to find out about what Jill has learned from her own process and from participating in the writing community.
Learning to finish
by Jill Winski
For more than two and a half years, I’ve been a participant in Jenna’s writing community, and I’ve coached a small group in the writing community for almost that long.
In some ways, I now divide my life into the pre-writing community and during-writing community eras. That’s because, in the writing community, I’ve learned how to finish a novel draft. Before the writing community, I knew how to make it about two-thirds of the way through.
And then — I’d stop.
There’s this quote from Neil Gaiman that one of my group members shared recently:
“Whatever it takes to finish things, finish. You will learn more from a glorious failure than you ever will from something you never finished.”
I don’t think this is always true for everything — some things are simply not worth finishing — but there is certainly a lot of truth there for me.
On finishing short stories
When I was in grad school, I learned to write — and finish — a short story. Because I carried my short stories to completion — even if they sucked — I learned a certain amount about the movement of a short story, about the promises set up in it, and about fulfilling those promises to the reader by the end. I wrote a good amount of short stories, and even had some of them published. I still have tons to learn about the art of short story writing, but, in finishing, I was able to let my own process truly sink in, let the story itself sink into my bones, and learn what could be cut away and what needed to emerge in the next draft.
On finishing novels
With novels, I never made it this far. When I joined the writing community, I had two unfinished novel drafts. I had stopped writing them because I got lost.
I started writing the second novel because I believed I was bored with the first.
And the same thing happened.
I got lost.
I got stuck.
And I made the fact that I was lost and stuck mean that I was not a good writer. I didn’t decide this one day; it was sort of a “happening” over time, after grad school ended and I was no longer in as much contact with fellow writers.
I forgot — or maybe I never really understood — that all writers struggled. The longer I let my unfinished novels sit, the longer the drafts collected dust bunnies and cat hair in a pile next to my desk, the more sure I became that I had failed.
It’s not failure, it’s information
But one of my favorite mantras of the past couple of years is: “It’s not failure, it’s information”.
And that was where the writing community came in for me. As part of logging in our daily progress, we answer a series of questions designed to bring awareness to our writing habit and process.
Awareness. For twenty years it’s been one of the most important themes in my life, but guess what? I never thought to apply it to my writing process.
I believed, for years, that writing just meant sitting down and pushing through even when it was hard.
And that worked. Until I got really, really stuck. And then it didn’t work anymore.
A novel is a vast thing, an unwieldy thing, a thorny thing. The opportunities to get lost, to go off the chosen path, are plentiful.
The more I logged in my daily progress in the writing community and answered the questions, the more I became aware that my problem was this: I was afraid of being wrong. I was afraid of being mediocre. I was terrified of writing a shitty first draft. I just hadn’t known it before.
I actually believed I was bored
I was so afraid to know I was afraid that I’d actually believed I was bored.
It was one thing to write a shitty first draft of a short story; short stories were, by definition, short, and I could take a deep breath, jump in, and hope to come out on the other side in a couple of weeks.
But to write an entire draft of a novel and be, well, bad — for it to be far, far less than the vision of greatness I held in my head — seemed like too much.
Except I realized that’s exactly what I needed to do. And I only realized it by pausing enough to notice the thoughts I was having about my writing, about myself as a writer, and question them.
At the end of my second session in the writing community, I finished my novel draft.
And a few months later, I went on to finish another.
I’ve seen this happen for the group members I coach in the writing community, too. It’s incredibly exciting to see a fellow writer who’s been on a long journey reach a point of completion. And one of the biggest things I’ve learned while coaching in the writing community is that most of us have more days that feel like struggle than days where we feel “in the flow”.
And yet we’re all learning to finish, anyway.
My completed drafts do not match the vision I held in my head. But only in finishing did I actually see what was there, and only in finishing could I build the foundation for a better draft. I’m not saying we must always finish — but if we truly want to, we owe it to ourselves to give ourselves that gift.
Jill Winski is a certified life coach who offers her clients support for the vulnerability that comes with creativity. She continues her adventures in the often-rocky terrain of fiction and nonfiction, and you can find her online at www.jillwinski.com.
by Jenna | Apr 18, 2014 | Writing Articles
Much of what's out there in terms of writing support revolves around getting feedback, whether it's through private coaching, mentoring, consulting, editors, agents, or writing groups.
Good feedback can be a wonderful thing (though surprisingly, sometimes it isn't).
Not-so-good feedback, on the other hand, can be spirit-damaging and procrastination-inducing for writers -- and even more so for the sensitive, thoughtful writers among us (myself included).
Some people argue that without feedback, our writing will never improve, while others say we need to focus on developing and hearing our own voices in our writing, and that critiques simply make it hard to learn our own way.
But what is good feedback, really?
Is "good" feedback an ego stroke, where your friends and family tell you how great your work is?
My answer is no.
Is "good" feedback a ruthless, gloves-off, in your face slam of your work that leaves you reeling?
Um, no again.
Good feedback -- in my opinion -- is the kind of feedback that helps a writer do what he or she is trying to do. Good feedback is in line with the vision of the writer's project and helps him or her make it better. It's delivered in a thoughtful, caring tone, without the use of pejorative, labeling terms like "cliché, melodramatic, bad, good, boring, unoriginal", etc, while still clearly and directly pointing to issues and questions that the reader notices. The reader also provides their feedback subjectively, which means that it's conveyed in an "in my opinion" tone with his or her notes, as opposed to an authoritative, "this is the only way it can be" perspective.
Good feedback is also extremely honest, while still being compassionate. When I read for someone, I bring up everything that concerns me that is appropriate to where the writer is on that stage of their writing process. In other words, if I read a script where I can't see the story through the language choices, that's where my feedback starts. If the script is polished to a high sheen, I can give deeper structural, plot, and character motivation notes. (And that's where it really gets fun.)
Bad feedback, on the other hand, is pejorative, rude, condescending, and often just downright snarky. It challenges the writer's very attempts at writing. It is emotionally damaging. It is not kind or thoughtful or sensitive. It creates a creative wound in the writer that takes days, months, and sometimes even years to heal from. It's beyond me why any "consultant" would take it upon themselves to treat another human being in such an inappropriate way.
When good feedback is not such a good thing
Interestingly, sometimes "good" feedback can be just as paralyzing as bad feedback. I've talked to more than a few writers who have received extremely encouraging feedback from potential agents or managers -- usually something along the lines of "this first chapter is terrific, when you finish the rest, I definitely want to read it." But if the writer isn't done with the project, it can lead to a tremendous amounts of pressure to "live up" to the quality of the first (usually highly polished) chapter.
That pressure, in turn, leads to perfectionism, procrastination, and paralysis. Ack!
On choosing feedback sources
My advice when it comes to getting feedback is:
- IF you choose to get feedback, get your earliest feedback from only your most trusted sources, preferably a fellow writer (as opposed to unqualified family and friends) who knows how to deliver compassionate, productive feedback.
- With any further feedback you get, ask for it from professionals that you pay, know, like and trust. Then listen to them.
- Take ALL feedback with a grain of salt. Is it in alignment with your vision? Does it resonate for you internally? If so, listen. If not, take what works and move on.
- Pay attention to notes that have an element of truth to them, even if the specifics don't resonate for you. It's worth delving deeper into the notes to try to understand the why behind what a reader is suggesting. Sometimes the detailed suggestions don't work for you, but the underlying note is accurate and highly useful. I once had a note from a reader where he clearly didn't "get" what my story was about. But rather than tossing the note out the window, I thought, "Hmm, if he's not getting the core of the story I'm wanting to tell, how I can rewrite it in a way that would make what I'm trying to do come through more clearly?" It was a valuable lesson for me, and I'm so glad I stayed with it because it taught me a great deal about my own writing process.
- Avoid getting feedback until you're really ready for it. Many writers rush to get feedback, looking for validation and encouragement, or get it from so many different gurus and sources that their heads are spinning trying to integrate all of it. While I can't give you a specific guideline, what I'm focusing on myself is taking things farther than I think I can go on my own before reaching out for feedback, and trying minimize the number of sources so I can deal with one set of notes at a time, a trick I learned from my mentor Hal.
The power of critique-free writing support
I've seen so many writers struggle with pain and paralysis after receiving feedback -- even good feedback -- that I've come to believe firmly in the value of ADDITIONAL support for writers in the form of critique-free writing support. This is the kind of support that focuses on the process, habit, and motivation behind writing, rather than on critiquing the content of it. (If you're wanting this kind of support for yourself, my online Called to Write community is a resource you might like to check out.)
In my estimation, writers need both kinds of support to see their writing through -- support for their craft and support for their practice or habit of writing:
- Without compassionate feedback, mentoring, and content support, we can flounder when it comes to solving our story or writing problems.
- Without writing practice support, we can have trouble showing up to the page on a regular basis to write.
- And sometimes, after receiving challenging feedback, we need help getting back to the page to write. Finding support for yourself to do that is an incredible gift.
Thanks for reading!
I always love to hear what you think in the comments.
Warmly,
Photo by Zen Chung
by Jenna | Mar 26, 2014 | Science Fiction, ScriptMag Articles
A new article over on the ScriptMag blog, about the challenges of keeping exposition under control when writing sci-fi.
One of the challenges with writing good science fiction is introducing not only the world itself, but any story background needed to set the stage for what’s to come. In my recent interview with Amazon Studios-optioned Adam Pachter, he mentioned his pet peeve about screenwriters using voiceover to get away with exposition that might… [read more at ScriptMag]
Image by Andrea Bohl from Pixabay
by Jenna | Mar 25, 2014 | Writing Articles
When we're learning something new, we like to think that our progress will happen in a straight line.
But progress is rarely linear, is it?
Sometimes we feel discouraged about our progress and try to cheer ourselves up by saying, "well, two steps forward, and one step back."
It helps is normalize our feelings about how things are going.
Other times it can feel like we're just going around and around in circles, never getting anywhere or improving. It's easy to get disheartened when it feels like that.
The spiral path
A long time ago, when I designed the logo for my old website, I had an idea about how our learning and growth DOES seem to have a cyclical nature to it.
But my observation was that on every pass around that circle, I felt myself moving closer and closer to the core of what I was learning, whether it was a new skill for work or a change in my personal growth.
I've written before about mindset and the value of approaching things from the perspective of learning and experimentation versus "failure".
This "spiral path" perspective has been hugely helpful for me in recognizing that when I find myself thinking, "crap, am I HERE AGAIN?", it may actually be that I'm revisiting a familiar place in my path of learning -- but at a deeper level.
The core of truth
Sometimes people like to see the spiral moving outward -- if that works best for you, great!
My take is that there's a core of truth and (self-)knowledge that we're moving closer and closer to over time -- as long as we're paying attention.
For example, as I'm learning to improve my screenwriting skills, I'm finding myself making mistakes I was making a year ago. I could decide that I've "failed" or that I'm not improving, OR, I can choose to see my knowledge and recognition of the mistake as being one "pass" closer to being able to no longer make that mistake because now I understand it and notice it, which is the first step toward making a change.
The levels of mastery
One of my other favorite tools for understanding the learning process is the levels of mastery.
There are four levels of mastery we move through:
- Unconscious incompetence: Where we DON'T KNOW what we don't know, and we're making mistakes over and over again that we don't even recognize, except perhaps in the sense that things "just aren't working".
- Conscious incompetence: This is when we KNOW what we're doing "wrong" but we struggle with changing it. This is one of the most uncomfortable stages of progress and learning, because we can see where we want to be, but we just can't quite get there.
- Conscious competence: When we reach this stage, we know what to do and we know how to do it. But we still have to THINK our way through it, step by step. It feels better, because we're getting the results we want, but we have to plod away at it bit.
- Unconscious competence: This is the blissful level of mastery where we've reached the inner core of knowledge and we no longer even have to think about what we're doing, we just do it.
If you think back to learning to drive a car (or write a screenplay!), you can see how these four levels can play out.
- At level one, unconscious incompetence, you might have argued with your dad when he was trying to teach you how to drive, thinking you knew better than him -- but guess what? You didn't, and you bumped the car into that dumpster he TOLD you that you were going to hit (that never happened to me :) ).
- At level two, conscious incompetence, you had the basic ideas down, but the darn car kept popping into the wrong gear when you shifted and it would lug across the middle of the intersection and all the other cars had to wait (that never happened to me either :) ).
- At level three, conscious competence, you knew what you were doing, but you still had to think about every little detail, in a kind of running commentary in your mind, like this: "Okay, now check the mirrors and the blind spots, make sure there's no one there, turn on the turn signals, check the mirrors again, merge over carefully, turn off the blinkers", etc.
- At level four, unconscious competence, it's easy. Now you just drive -- like you're on autopilot.
The levels of mastery and the spiral path
My sense is that as we move farther "up" the levels of mastery, we're making sweeps around that cyclical path, moving ever closer to that core of knowledge, which we could also call "unconscious competence".
The beauty of this perspective is understanding that we HAVE TO make a lot of "mistakes" and "fail" frequently in order to learn, and we can trust that as long as we hold on to our goals and determination, keep doing the work, and are willing to stay in the discomfort of learning, we can and will get better and better at what it is that we've set out to do, whether it's writing at a new level, learning a new skill, working on our relationships, or raising the bar in our work.
by Jenna | Feb 24, 2014 | Writing Articles
Between being pregnant and having the flu shortly after my Design Your Writing Life class series and the holiday whirlwind, I found myself flat out not writing for much of January. As someone who pretty much always writes six days per week (with the exception of vacations), I was surprised that I actually couldn't write.
The flu this year is a particularly bad one, and I was in bed for two weeks straight, between fever, exhaustion, and a "bonus" sinus infection and massive headaches. And since my immune system is busy doing other things (like not attacking the baby), it's taken me an extra long time to get better, let alone "get back on the writing wagon". (And even longer to get back to blogging, which I've been missing.)
Here's the thing.
Even once you have a solid writing habit established, major life disruptions CAN come along and throw you off your game. And when that happens, what can you do about it? Resistance is a tricky, stealthy operator, and it can concoct all sorts of bizarre reasons and excuses not to start writing again.
So how do you tell the difference between being too tired to write and being "too tired" to write?
What I tell the writers in my community is this: The only person that can ever really know the answer to that is you.
And interestingly for me, that answer has been, "Yes."
In other words— BOTH. I've been truly exhausted and unable to do much of anything other than feed myself, take care of my son, keep my business running, and do the minimum amount of work to keep participating in the classes I'm taking. But I have ALSO had days where I've been in a resistance pickle over not wanting to write — not wanting to face the challenge, being afraid I won't be able to do the work "properly" (perfectionism alert!), and otherwise just avoiding the writing. Plus my regular writing routine (and schedule) have been disrupted by my desperate need for sleep and rest at weird hours. So it's all been tangled up together into one confusing lump of writing, exhaustion, angst, resistance, and not writing.
These kinds of situations can result from all sorts of things, like suddenly having a crushing deadline at work, losing a loved one, a relationship ending, losing a job, other major illnesses, pregnancy, birth, long vacations, etc. Major life transitions can wreak havoc with our regular patterns and we're suddenly back to square one — having lost our writing habit and feeling resistance to getting back on track.
Getting back on track
So let's talk strategy — how to get back on board:
1. Step One: Acknowledge what's going on.
Pay attention to the realities of the emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual needs that are coming up for you. Also notice what's coming up on the writing front in terms of resistance. Are you avoiding it? Does it feel scary? There's no need for judgment here, just compassionate observation.
Acknowledging what's going on will help you make new choices about how to best support yourself through it.
2. Step Two: Coax yourself through the resistance.
If you've gotten off the writing track, there WILL be resistance. It's normal, it's nothing to worry about, and it can be hard to overcome. So coax yourself through it.
At times like this, I tell myself, "How about writing for just 15 minutes? I bet you can do just a little bit." And then once I get the ball rolling, I feel the tremendous sense of relief, accomplishment, and positive energy that I need to keep my writing habit going over time. (Actually writing instead of resisting is anxiety relieving. For more about why, see this article here.)
3. Step Three: Make an "ease back into it" plan.
One of the principles we use in the writing community is goal refinement. Start with what you think is an attainable writing goal for yourself, given all of the above in steps one and two. Then test it. If you achieve it, great! Do it again the next day. But if you find yourself NOT able to hit your target, make it smaller. Keep making the goal smaller until you KNOW you can and will do it. You can — and will — build back up to more writing time later on.
My choice was to start very simply, with morning pages. Once I had the minimum amount of energy I needed to actually get up more or less on time, I made a commitment to spend my first 20 waking minutes (approximately) writing in my notebook, stream of consciousness. It was a wonderful way to ease myself back into writing regularly.
4. Step Four: Begin building back up to your regular writing routine.
Then, over time, begin building your writing habit, schedule, and routine back up to where it was before you got off track. It's okay to make downward adjustments here too. For instance, if you were writing for two hours a day, but now you've been ill or had a major loss that you're dealing with, you may find that aiming that high just doesn't work anymore, at least not in the short term. So perhaps you'll aim for one hour now, and work up to it incrementally.
Before I got sick, I was writing between three to four hours a day. Over the last few weeks I've been hitting more like one consistently. I've also found that my normal six days a week schedule just isn't working for me, and I'm needing to cut it down to five days a week. Starting this week, I'm working on ramping back up to two hours a day. And I'm being extra gentle with myself about it. Aiming for it, but not self-flagellating if I don't make it.
5. Step Five: If you can, get support.
Having people around you who believe in you and support your writing is a powerful tool to get back on track as well. I'm so grateful to have my community cheering me on, each and every day, helping me observe my writing choices and keep my writing top-of-mind, even when the going gets tough. I also have my screenwriting pals to commiserate and celebrate with in equal measure. It helps to have people who "get it" — how hard it is, how much joy it brings, and how much it means to us. So surround yourself with people who can help you keep the dream in focus, even when you've lost your way.
Thanks for reading!
Warmly,
You may also be interested in:
