by Jenna | Aug 7, 2013 | Guest Posts
Writers who tend to join my writing community — and get the most out of it — often have both a deep call to write (whether they’re doing it consistently or not) and a specific project they want to work on, perhaps one half-completed, languishing on a shelf for a couple of years. And when they find out about the writing community, they’re eager to move past the dreaming or stuck stage into action.
This is the story of a man who has done just that.
When he joined the writing community all the way from Sweden, Rikard Bergquist had been working on his novel intermittently, struggling to find enough time to write and to move past the outlining and preparation stage into writing actual New Words. And he had a little two-year-old daughter at the time too! (She’s three now.)
After being in the writing community for a session or two, continuing to write intermittently, and listening to me (harp on about :) ) advocate for early morning writing and small writing sessions as a powerful way to jump-start a writing habit, one of our other members “threw down the gauntlet” and challenged him to try writing for 5 minutes every day and logging in every day on the site to report about how it went for him. He took her up on the challenge. It changed his life.
In less than four months, after building from 5 minutes a day to a solid writing habit of 60 minutes a day, he knocked out 75,000 words and completed his first draft. He’s still with us in the writing community now, working on revisions. He is one of our most dedicated and consistent members, showing up to write and log in on the site even while traveling — he even met me for coffee in Berkeley here the other day to talk shop while on a trip to the U.S. from Sweden. It was great fun. :)
I asked “Rick” (as we affectionately call him in the writing community) to talk to us today about his experience with finishing his novel, how he got there, and what’s he’s learned about his writing process along the way. You may be surprised to find some ideas and inspiration you can adopt for yourself.
1. Rick, first, welcome and thanks for being here. Let’s start off by having you tell about your recent major milestone — finishing the first draft of your first novel. What was that like for you?
It was one of the most empowering and surprising experiences I’ve had. Empowering because finally this dream of a novel I’ve had for a couple of years was becoming a reality. I escaped the terror of the first draft and actually produced 75,000 words. Instead of laboring and trying to make early parts of the story perfect, writing and rewriting, outlining and rearranging the order of scenes, as well as reading the latest book on craft and thinking I finally got it, I did the work and now have a substantial number of written pages to show for it.
It was surprising because I did it by writing for about an hour every morning during four months — I never thought an hour a day would amount to anything. I surprised myself weekly when I saw what I had accomplished with just an hour every morning. I surrendered to the process, allowing myself to write badly, knowing that it was only the first stage in a big adventure. Overcoming that editor inside of me, who kept telling me it was crap, was a big victory. And my first draft is the result. Now I know that first drafts aren’t supposed to be outstanding perfect novels, they’re just supposed to be written.
2. Can you give us a soundbite about what the story is about and about who you are?
The story is set in the 1570s of Stockholm, Sweden. In a power struggle for the crown our hero supports a new queen for the throne, who turns out to be a murderer, poisoning her competition. When his secret love interest is surprisingly accused and imprisoned for the murder, without any hope of pardon, our hero has to choose between his career or saving her. And what price will he pay for the choice he makes?
I work in the financial industry, for a private equity company, with business development. It’s hands-on management in selected individual companies in a wide range of industries. Writing is for me a creative outlet and a possibility to follow a totally different path.
3. What have you learned about your writing process from participating in the writing community?
Consistent daily work is key to my process. Being consistent means that I stay in touch with my writing, even though I might be working and doing other things during the day. The story evolves and develops in my subconscious, waiting to be served up during the next writing session. Setting goals and being accountable within the writing community, giving and receiving feedback on each others’ processes — in short, knowing that my efforts are noticed by others is a big motivator for me.
Focusing on the process rather than the craft, is a very important difference from other writing groups I’ve participated in. For me, this group is about focusing on getting the writing done, every day. What you write, how you write, and when you write is up to you. But do it every day. The accountability and support of the writing community is key to making that happen.
4. What were the biggest challenges you faced before joining the writing community? Have they changed?
My biggest challenge was finding time to write. I kept telling myself I needed chunks of at least 3-4 hours of undisturbed concentrated time to get anything done. I used to laugh at friends telling me how someone they knew had finished a novel by coming in 15 minutes early to the office and using that time to write. “It just isn’t possible,” I used to say, but now I know better. I kept on trying to find my big chunks of time, getting them here and there. It was a constant struggle. Looking back, I feel like I wasted a lot of time thinking about how to find time to write, but never doing the actual writing, and instead ending up feeling frustrated and lost. I knew I wanted to write, but why didn’t I just do it? I wrestled a lot with that question. With the help of the writing community I established a habit of rising early and writing for an hour every morning. Consistently.
5. When you first joined the writing community in May 2012, what was your writing habit like and how did it evolve? Were there any key moments where you shifted your habit? Was there a particular trigger or did it build over time for you?
At first my writing consisted of sporadic big chunks of time, where I spent the first part of each writing session reconnecting with my story and the latter part coming up with some new tweaks to my outline, synopsis, and characters. I always felt happy and satisfied afterwards, but not continuing to work on it over time always made me question my earlier work when I got back to it. And I was never moving into writing actual words, paragraphs, and chapters of the book, just staying at the outline stage.
There were two key moments for me — One: I followed the advice from you, Jenna, and fellow members of the writing community to adjust my target amount of writing time downward until I found a suitable amount that I could do consistently every day. For me that was five minutes. How amazed and surprised I was of the power of those five minutes. It changed my world — I connected on a deep level with my story and gradually increased the five minutes to sixty minutes per day. At first outlining scenes and then actually writing the first draft.
And this is where my second key moment occurred — Two: I could not get myself writing. I stalled. I reworked. I was stuck. Again following advice from the writing community I gave myself permission to write badly. I told myself “I am writing crap,” and suddenly I was writing about 750 words during that hour every morning. And surprise, it wasn’t all crap.
6. What advice do you have for other writers?
The only way to do it, is to do it. Complete the journey from the first page to the last page. If you can’t do this, it’s game over. Because without the first draft, you have nothing. You need a lot of faith to do it, faith in your unproven ability to write a novel. But give yourself permission to fail, to write crap, to make mistakes, to forget your outline and synopsis and before you know it, you will have your first draft.
7. What’s next for the novel and for your writing?
Right now I am revising the draft. Aiming at having a first rewrite done in a couple of months. There are times when I feel like giving up, but I now know that that’s only part of the writing life. It’s a constant flow of ups and downs, you just have to trust the process and keep putting one foot in front of the other. Finishing this first draft, I will turn it into my second and then my third, or as many as I need to finally hold an amazing novel in my hands.
8. Is there anything else you’d like to tell us?
Have faith, never give up, and know that in the end you’ll succeed. Once you’re in the habit of writing, trust the process to bring you to the finish line. If you feel down and lost during the journey, just tread water and wait for the next creative wave to come. It always does, have faith.
Thanks, Rikard!
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by Jenna | Jul 17, 2013 | Writing Articles
So many writers I’ve spoken to recently are talking about finishing; many at that point of having just finished a major draft or putting the finishing touches on one.
It got me to thinking about the ingredients that go into the mix to make that happen.
It strikes me that there are both internal and external aspects to these success stories. What I see on the internal side is:
- Vision — having an idea or a calling to see something come to fruition.
- Passion — having a love or interest or fierce desire for a specific project or idea.
- Decision — making the decision to tackle the project.
- Courage — having the courage to dive in to the unknown.
- Perseverance — having the wherewithal to stick with something.
- Intuition — knowing when something is right for you, or not.
Hopefully we have all these skills. If we don’t, we can strengthen them within ourselves. (And there are good coaches and therapists who can help us do just that.)
So yes, completing any project requires a tremendous amount of drive, determination, and courage. But even the strongest of strong-hearted among us get tripped up by a laundry list of obstacles, like:
- Doubt — what if I can’t do it?
- Fears — of success, failure, rejection, disapproval, shame
- Resistance — the force that repels us from our dreams
- Procrastination — our tendency to put off anything that moves us toward completion of our dreams
- Perfectionism — the belief that perfection is attainable and that if we’re not hitting it, we’re failing.
- Bad habits — putting vices before taking action on our dreams.
- Poor self- management — struggles with discipline, decision-making, commitment, time choices.
- Poor self-care — not taking care of our bodies, minds, hearts, and spirits.
- Comparison with others — thinking other people are doing better than we are.
- Obsessing about our chances of success — focusing on the big questions rather than doing our work.
- Approval-seeking — looking outside ourselves for validation of our talent or ability.
- Life challenges — stopping when life gets hard.
Many of these things can be solved with self-awareness and determination, and yet what I see time and again is that we can draw on resources outside ourselves to help us make it through the rough patches. Things like:
- Support — there’s nothing quite like having other people believe in you, especially when you’ve temporarily forgotten your own skill and ability.
- Daily accountability — having support to see it through, to keep showing up and do the daily work is deeply motivating.
- Community — being a part of a community where you are with other people who truly “get” what you’re experiencing helps end the sense of isolation we can all experience at times.
- Energy — the shared energy of working together, whether side by side or as a team, can move us into action when we’re otherwise flagging.
- Inspiration — a shared spirit of energy and enthusiasm can reignite us when the going gets tough.
Warmly,
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by Jenna | Jun 12, 2013 | Writing Articles
When you first start a new habit, it’s awkward.
I’ve made the mistake more than a few times in my life of throwing in the towel if I “blow it” early in the process of building a habit.
Over time, I’ve come to see a misstep like that as a little “Oops!” and either go for a do-over or a promise myself to start again tomorrow.
This is part of why we make sure to hold our writing community as a guilt-free zone. Yes, we’re encouraging people to write every day (and when I say we, I mean me and the other coaches for the writing community). And we also keep in mind that we are doing deep, hard work, and there will be missteps and challenges along the way. We’ve ALL struggled to create habits, and it’s no good punishing ourselves when we get off course.
I’ve seen some terrific examples of people who started out just focusing on writing 5 to 15 minutes a day and now have completed novels and scripts they can call their own. It’s very exciting!
As you embark on a new habit, here are a few things to keep in mind.
1. Remember that building a new habit can be awkward — be gentle with yourself about it.
Give yourself lots of space to make mistakes and get back on track. Don’t throw in the towel too early like I did. Instead, see anything that doesn’t work as information about what you might want to adjust as you go forward.
Recently I’ve been experimenting with increasing my daily writing time and shifting my schedule so that my writing takes an even more central role in my life. As I’ve been doing so, I’ve found myself fumbling my pretty-well established gym habit and getting caught in some awkward procrastination moments. Instead of deciding, “This isn’t working,” I’m tweaking my approach and studying my results every day to see what I can learn about what might work better for me tomorrow.
2. Approach habit building with an experimental mindset.
Along these same lines, if you approach your writing — or ANY habit — with the spirit of experimentation, you can give yourself some freedom to keep exploring until you find something that DOES work, instead of feeling like a failure for what doesn’t.
For instance, let’s say you’re trying to build a habit of writing daily and you start by committing to 5 minutes a day. But every day you find yourself not getting around to it at the end of the day and feeling too exhausted to do it. That’s good information, right? Waiting until the end of the day isn’t working. What else could you try? Morning writing? Lunchtime writing? Committing to write for 5 minutes at a specific time of day with a friend who will also write for 5 minutes at the same time?
3. If you have a rebellious nature, factor that into your plan.
If you tend to rebel against schedules and structures, try to factor that in as you plan for your new habit.
I find myself “getting all tragic” if I try to force myself to write seven days a week. (My writing community members got a real laugh out of me saying that on one of our live coaching calls once.) Instead, I’ve committed to writing six days per week, always giving myself one day off from writing. It feeds my inner rebel and helps me feel refreshed for jumping back into writing the next day.
4. Know your procrastination tipping point and adjust accordingly.
On the other hand, you’ll also want to pay attention to when it starts to get hard to restart if and when you take days off. I’ve found that if I don’t write for a stretch of time, it’s HARD getting back on track. Up until now I’ve found that taking two days off is the point at which it gets hard for me to restart the next day, but I’m going to experiment with it further now that I’m increasing my weekday writing time.
So notice the point at which it becomes hard to restart and consider not exceeding that point whenever possible.
5. Know that it’s better to start small and start now — something is more than nothing.
Most of us who work with building regular writing habits are here for a reason — we struggle with procrastination and perfectionism more often than not (they feed each other in an endless cycle of perfectionism, procrastination, and paralysis).
An important mindset shift you’ll want to make is recognizing the value of SOME progress versus NO progress. If I had written for 15 minutes every day for the last 10 years, I’d have at least 8 to 10 scripts under my belt at the same rate I’ve been developing my current one. No guilt or blame though, just a fact.
Also, know that when you’re habit building, you’ll want to go for doing ANYTHING first, then work up to more. We like to have our writers in the writing community write even for just five minutes a day or just focus on logging in to our online site every day for the first week — simply to put the focus and attention on the writing on a daily, regular basis. After that, it gets easier to bump it up to more over time.
So remember, frequency and consistency, not quantity, at least to start. Later you can go for consistency AND quantity. :)
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by Jenna | Mar 15, 2012 | Writing Articles
This post was inspired by a livejournal.com post I read by Jim Butcher, author of “The Dresden Files,” called “The Most Important Thing an Aspiring Author Needs To Know.” When I read it the other day, it brought tears to my eyes.
Don’t kill your own dream.
In his post, Butcher reminds us that any dream worth achieving requires the hard work of showing up regularly and making it happen. And it IS hard work.
When it comes to writing, he says:
“There probably aren’t going to be very many people who are actively supporting your efforts. You’ll probably have more than one person say or do something that crushes your heart like an empty Coke can. You’ll probably, at some point, want to quit rather than keep facing that uncertainty. In fact, the vast majority of aspiring authors (somewhere over 99 percent) self-terminate their dream. They quit. Think about this for a minute, because it’s important: THEY KILL THEIR OWN DREAM.”
In the face of all that adversity, it’s pretty easy to lose faith, give up hope, and want to quit before you ever really get started.
Don’t.
You signed up for this dream for a reason.
You want to write.
You are called to write.
Don’t kill your dream.
Being a writer means showing up regularly, putting your butt in your seat, and writing consistently. And seeing it through to completion, one word at a time.
I love Julia Cameron’s line, “Suit up, shut up, and show up.”
Being a writer means having the courage to face the fears that stop you cold.
Butcher says,”When it’s all done and you’re holding your first novel in your hand, you’re going to look back at your breaking-in period and wonder what all the drama was about. All the things that wrenched you inside out during the torment will suddenly seem small and unimportant.”
Don’t stop now.
Remember:
- Don’t give up. Keep writing. You’re the only one that can make this happen.
- Show up regularly. Write frequently and consistently. It’s much easier to dive back in when you write regularly.
- Build a solid pattern of writing into your life. Organize your life around your writing vision.
- Deal with your inner doubts.
- Protect your dream like the precious seedling it is — plant it in fertile soil and tend it like your life depends upon it.
by Jenna | Mar 9, 2012 | Writing Articles
We write because we have stories to tell.
We write to entertain.
To explore.
To connect.
To teach.
We write because if we don’t, we can’t sleep.
We write to be paid.
We write for the joy of it.
We write because we said we would.
We write to document, explain, journal, create.
We write because we love it.
We write to expunge the terrible questions that captivate us.
To travel the neural pathways and find out where they go.
To see what happens.
Joss Whedon has said, “You either have to be writing or you shouldn’t be writing. That’s all.”
