Good writing is often about how to fix bad writing habits as develop good ones like getting back into a writing routine. Since no one is an island unto themselves, we all need to learn from others. When we do, we learn that we are not alone.
Fix your bad writing habits for a more productive and happy writing lifestyle. Photo by Fa Barboza on Unsplash
There are tons of other writers out there who have had the same bad habits we are so frustrated with. More to the point, they show us we need not fear with those habits because there is a solution to fix bad writing habits.
When we choose to eliminate those bad writing habits we often advance faster than by adding good new habits because those are often what has held us back. All we need is to find those writers we feel most like us who speak to us, then sit down read, learn and apply what they have to say with some focus. I have my personal likes.
These are 12 of my favorite sources I go to for advice on fixing with bad writing habits.
Pressfield is a legend in writing. More than that he is professional, which is what he teaches. It’s all in the trenches, getting hosed, pragmatic work doled out gratis.
How do you get to Broadway? Practice. The same is true for every skill, especially writing. The Write Practice facilitates a writer through developing habits and a dedicated writing practice.
Make a Living Writing is Carol Tice’s freelance writing blog based on her successful work. Her blog covers the freelance writing career with several plenty of free educational resources.
A goldmine of information for business and blogging writers, Writers Write has over 1400 articles, reviews courses and workbooks to improve your writing skills. The free newsletter will motivate you to keep on writing.
John Soares is a full time writer who has declared that he wants us writers to “Work less earn more live more.” His passion is to help other writers get more done for more money while they still have a lot of life left over for themselves.
C.S. Laken has written as a novelist and copyeditor while coaching others on writing, being a mom and avid backpacker. Her greatest love is to keep busy while teaching, writing and helping other writers.
Humility balances confidence as a writer. You need humility to accept changes that make you better like edits by a aggressive editor. Humility purges the ego along with the idea that we are the greatest that has ever been.
Humility balancing confidence in action
When we work on our humility we are not expecting praise for everything we do. Humility is a realization we need to improve and any rare talent we have is quite common among those about us. We gain humility when we realize and accept that we will always find ways to improve ourselves or that we are diminished when so many around us with as much talent. When we work in humility we gain, as Webster’s put it, “freedom from pride and arrogance.”
Arrogance
I have read editors speak of writers, long grown in years, who refuse to change a single word or even argue in confidence over the use of a given punctuation. For themselves, they could see no need for improvement. The tales of the great writers tells a different story. For them they used their humility to balance their confidence
Great Writers Seek Improvement
Even great writers like Jack London have labored under the requirement to constantly improve their writing based on feedback and have revised their master pieces accordingly.
Hemingway would tell off other writers like T.S. Eliot to “Kiss my ass.”, yet he still admitted Eliot was a good poet. He also admitted he had learned a lot from Elliot’s doctrines.
Heming way was far from an agreeable type. There are profane words for his type of personality. Yet he was a humble writer that took the time to improve his craft. I find myself wondering what makes my ego so special that I can not do what two of the most skilled writers of all time did? I can find no reason not to balance my confidence with humility. Still so much to learn.
No need?
Why is it so many see no need to learn to be better writers? So many take classes and yet insist they do not need to learn anything. When people leave school they act as if they know it all. Many seem to insist that they have all the skills they need to be successful in the field, have mastered the skill even, and/or that the rules do not apply to them. Could we be any more ego driven? It’s hard to fathom.
So are you ego driven?
I cannot speak for everyone but these are some of the things I have been told to look for when someone seems driven by the ego, and indeed some of them have been my own folly.
– Defensiveness on feedback. They argue the points or even dismiss critical feedback out right. I did this in my freshman English class more than once. It is amazing the teacher did not shoot me on the spot. Though, I was clearly marking myself as an amateur.
– Unhelpful in their own feedback. The ego driven cannot tell anyone why they found a given work good or bad. You can forget about a helpful suggestion to improve the work.
– Complain about having to give feedback. An ego driven writer will take all the adoration you can give them, but they really don’t see a reason to give anyone else any help or encouragement. This flys in the face of many great writers who are more than willing to offer a word or two in the right direction.
-Rarely follow the instructions to completion. This is likely the main reason ego driven writers tend to come up short. Their egos do not allow for another to correct their errors, so they will only half listen and then make up the rest of it on the fly.
Hardest part balancing confidence with humility
The hardest task for a writer is to admit they cannot take or really give feedback.
At times I have found myself avoiding my own writing errors and justifying them in my head. Even though I do try to be observant, I can still find the demon lose in my brain when faced with a hard judgment on the page before me.
Recently I even argued about the rationality of a Yost with my wife. I thought the acessment was too narrow mined on the over use of passive voice in a piece. I know I should have worked more to keep the percentage down. Much of my argument was a justification for a habit of daily talk. The fact remains I need to cut this habit down in my writing if I want stronger pieces. Said another way I need more control and I just do not have it yet. However, I will.
Acceptance and Improvement
I know I am getting better. The turn for me has been to work on my own self-awareness. That is not easy. Everyone has an ego. The admission that you need to work to improve is the first step, but after that developing self-awareness is not really all that easier. You are going to have to know yourself well enough to gauge your own ego.
The most constructive gauge of your ego is to ask honest and frank questions about yourself and then answer them the same way. If you are at a writer’s workshop or group, is everything about you or are you working just as much with others? What do you find the feedback like? Was it helpful, hurtful or useless? Are you constantly comparing your work to everyone else?
When you look for feedback:
Do you ask for criticism? Even when it might not be positive?
When you dislike someone’s writing, can you find something you find a positive?
When you talk with other writers, do you compulsively list off your published works?
An over inflated ego is not the same as solid self-esteem. The questions here remain are you willing to learn from others? Are you willing to learn at all?
The most useful awareness question: Why are you doing this/ Why are you here?
This is a profound and wide reaching question. It’s not just about writing. It’s about life. Learning awareness is based on understanding our whys in our writing and our lives.
When we enter into a new job, career or skill, we do not expect to remain who we were when we started. We expect to grow and change. Adaption is the key of life. Can we really live if we do not change?
So how do I learn to balance confidence with humility?
You can write a lot and submit a lot. Failure as a writer comes naturally with a lot of rejection. That’s not a bad thing. It simply means you have something to learn, even if it is something as simple as accepting a timing issue. You learn not just humility but also learn to take things as a professional. It’s not personal. It’s a learning experience. You might not really be ready. Relax. You are in the field. Taking your drubbing. It’s called paying dues for a reason. That’s how we learn and get better. This is the natural approach to grow and balance confidence and humility.
Take a class.
Whether it’s online (Udemy and Teachable come to mind) or a workshop (lots of them out there to choose from) or even take courses on a campus. It really depends on how you learn. From my take I wasted many of the courses I took in college mostly because I was more ego driven than I gave myself credit for. I am still working on that ego to get better, but there is always more to learn and further to go.
Whatever your choice though I would argue that your approach to taking it should be approaced more from a question of “What can I learn about myself” and “What can I improve?”
Join a writer’s group.
You want to place yourself in an environment where you can teach others what you know or give them feedback. Why? Because, as my Karate sensei used to remark, “You don’t really learn anything till you try to teach it.” The key here is to offer practical and constructive criticism or support. Try to keep it clear, concise and direct. You are not trying to be a jerk. You want good things to counter the weaknesses you point to. When pushing for a change, give a solution as well. When correcting give your whys and what is the trouble as well. You are not going to be too helpful if it is just I don’t like or get rid of…., and things like that.
I have found that when I give a solution for a problem, I am also fixing the same problem in my own head. We often are blind to our issues but we can see the same issues in others. So we can reverse engineer the solution for our own problems when we help others.
My take about balancing confidence with humility
Humility might not be the deciding factor of your success, but it can hurt your relationships and stop your career’s upward momentum due to a lack of the growth you get from learning. Too much confidence without the balance of humility can lead to downfall.
A long hiatus and now to restart the writing practice. You are all refreshed and ready to go. Yet when you sit down at the desk nothing. Blank pages as far as the eye can see. What went wrong?
Nothing really you are back at work. Now the natural resistance and critic in your head have also gone back to work also. You need some strategies to help you over come these two stepping stones. Let’s take off from where we left off in talking about getting our writing practice going .
Long Hiatus Restart Morning Routine
Start with your foundation. Get your morning routine going again. Depending on how long a hiatus you took, will depend on what you have to adjust or if you can just fall back into the work. If it has been a while, start back at a low level to build the habit. I like to use Tiny Habits in these cases. Starting with a very low bar for a week primes me to want more, while it sets the basic foundation I need to advance. After that week is over, I usually scale up rather quickly to a higher level.
You can also use your new habit building time as an opportunity to change things up and try a new approach. For instance you could make a new habit you have never had the time to try, like Jack Dorsey’s scheduling his work in blocks of time arranged throughout the week.
A writer’s habit might work out like this:
Monday Rough Drafts
Tuesday Freelancing (Pay Bills)
Wednesday Edit
Thursday Blog/social media
Friday Catch up loose ends
Saturday Rereading the week’s work
Sunday Short Stories
Yes, I did fill every day. Who ever heard of a Steven Pressfield (Do The Work) student who would go a day without some work done.
The point here is to give yourself some time to grow, learn something new and see what comes from it. No writer grows without some changes.
Long Hiatus Rust
What if your long hiatus is rusty beyond a simple restart of your old writing practice? How a bout a warm up then? Try a go at NaNoWriMo. It’s a great place to build your basic skills while you develop your mindset and habits all in one, and there are no real outside pressures or stress with the added bonus of a manuscript at the end.
The point here is to let your self adjust to the new demands you are putting on your body and mind. Just like running a marathon, a runner that has taken time away from training does not just run run the Boston Marathon. They first take the time to get themselves back into running form. The same can be said for us writers. We have to be in writing shape. That means slow down. Relax. Laugh a bit at the changes you find. Let yourself become the writer you are now, not the writer you once were. Your work and your body will thank you.
Retrain your brain
When you take off, so does your mind. Writing is really just a series of habits to we use to catch our thoughts and put them on paper. After a while the process is smooth enough that we hardly notice that we are doing any of them. Like typing, grammar, spelling, editing, proof reading, etc…. Even the most skilled typist will come back to the board with a reduced rate. Most teachers will take the time to dust off their skills before they step into a class.
The first step then is to retrain your brain’s mind set with a little brush up on basic skills like sentence structures, style, etc… It’s entirely possible you will be reteaching yourself how to write a book from page one to The End. Bloggers can find themselves looking up SEO answers. There is a lot to get a handle on in the world of writing. Take the time to let the gaps fill in.
Remember to avoid the shortcuts though. Keep your work professional. Cleanup your work before sending it off to your agent or hit publish on your blog. Reread those drafts from yesterday when you’re habit says you should. Do not just leave them to later. It’s the little details that mark the professional minded writer from the hack.
Never be afraid to learn something new. Always ask questions, especially to your brothers and sisters of the keyboard. Relearn the best practices. No matter where you look there is always some thing new to learn. Be like Rikki-Tikki-Tavi “Run and find out.” Be a good mongoose.
My take
The main thing for the writer returning from a long hiatus is that restarting their writing practice is doable. Just set your plan, relax, sit and start back work.
Beginner mind surrenders expertise. How could I have missed that insight in martial arts films since I was a Kung Fu junkie as a kid? All too often we forget that even masters in other arts will join a new art. If they are true masters they will approach it as a beginner. If not they fall back, like every one else, on what they know. Of course when they catch this, they cut that out. Then watch them go.
Mastery
The mastery lesson is the point of every martial arts flick. It was there all the time. The master is portrayed as a bumbling or weak man. He makes a lot of errors and then out of nowhere we see him perform a series of skills at a high level with complete control.
Where did the skill come from?
It was the hidden iceberg that has been developing in the water the entire time. We only see that peak after so much work has already gone into making the ice.
I found myself thinking about this when I was working through today’s Nurturing Your Writing Calm practice. The thought was so powerful that I had to make a note for later to go further into this.
George Leonard spoke of this mindset when he talked of two kinds of masters in ‘Mastery’. Years ago Lenard had given an eight week certification program to two experienced black belts in other styles.
Each master had a different approach to learning.
The first master Lenard gave us was Russell. In Leonard’s words Russell “From the moment Russell stepped on the training mat, he revealed that he was a trained martial artist.” He was full of his old karate practice habits, so learning his new art of Aikido was impeded because he did not let himself make mistakes. In short Lenard had a problem with his beginner mind surrendering his expertise.
Mistakes become mastery
Mistakes are the process we must all go through with the new. We only learn when we make mistakes. A good habit is only limited to a specific set of circumstances. When we move into a new situation, we have to let go of our trusted habits to get to a new level of understanding based on that new set of parameters. The old situations will not apply till we fully understand the new. That starts with the same baby steps we took to gain the first set of habits in the first place.
Expertise steps off the path
Russell’s problem was, “…finding it hard to let go of his expertise, and because of this failing to get the most out of his aikido training.” It was only after he had fallen behind the students without prior training that he surrendered his experience and competence so that he could move along the mastery path.
Tony’s Beginner Mind Surrenders Expertise
Tony’s approach did not indicate any previous experience as a fourth degree karate black belt and owner of two karate schools. His interactions were respectful to the teachers and sincerely humble while remaining aware of everything about him. The only clues to his back ground lay in just his presence and the way he sat, stood and walked. He had no karate warm-ups for class and made no effort to step away from a beginner’s mind. He allowed himself to make the obvious mistakes to learn from them from the perspective of aikido instead of karate. That is to say he let the art teach him how to interact from it’s perspective instead of his own. He surrendered his previous habits for a new and better perspective to improve himself.
The Only time Tony allowed himself to display his full competence was when he was asked to show the class one of his forms. The demonstration took the breath away for a moment for most of the students and teachers present. His grace, power and skill was faster than a human eye could take in fully as he launched multiple attacks with incredible Kia. At the end he bowed and just humbly returned to his seat at the edge of the mat, again the same beginner focused student he had been before.
Mastery as the way
The way of the master of any art from karate to writing to marriage is, “…to cultivate the mind and heart of the beginning at every stage along the way. For the master, surrender means there are no experts. There are only learners.”
Writers have to take this to heart.
Constant learning is how writers work. Every new assignment. Each new book. Any work we begin is a new territory with its own rules that we must learn and craft our habits to meet their requirements.
Sure we do take our old tried and true habits with us, and for much of it we do profit. Though, we must still remain aware of the environment and the shifts we find. That is where a beginner’s approach that allows us to ignore the time tested rules we follow to fall to the way side for a brief time so that we can achieve our ends at a new level.
Professional mind learns for mastery
None other than Steven Pressfield is on record for this in his book ‘The Authentic Swing — Notes From the Writing of a First Novel’. For anyone looking for a writer’s perspective on the beginner’s mind for a writer in a new field, this is it.
Pressfield points out that just jumping in and swimming for the far shore is more of an “armature way” of writing a book than the planned process he learned as a madman and screenwriter. In those disciplines he learned to plan out the elements of the work and ask the right questions to cover the big structure bases. “What’s the theme? What is this story about?” He also looked for the elements. “Who’s the protagonist and what element of the theme does he represent? Who’s the villain? How do they clash? What are the crisis, climax and conclusion? The biggest one too…where do you focus the camera (perspective)?
For his first novel though, he let his instincts guide him. A writer needs to listen to his instincts, Which often shows up when we need to learn something. Pressfield abandoned well honed and proven habits for his first published novel The Legend of Bagger Vance”. “I am not going to work that way on this book. I don’t know why. I am going to wing it. I am going to start on Page One and let her rip.” That is what a writer’s beginner’s mind looks like.
Mastery is when the beginner mind surrenders expertise
No matter how much experience a writer may gain, every time we approach something new we are better off if we follow Pressfield to let the material dictate which habits stay and what new ones we need to learn. Remember that to learn the new your beginner’s mind needs to surrender the expertise you have built to grow.
How to restart your writing practice when you have neglected it for moths or even decades.
Restarting a writing practice is always a practice of remembering that you did not quit just yesterday. You have spent some time and lost some ground. Like the athlete or martial artist returning to a gym , swimming pool, or training floor under the same circumstances, you are going to have to remember to slow down, adjust, and ease back into your practice. Everyone is different and there are lots of things to try. Use what works for you and forget the rest entirely, or add them in as you go. It’s up to you. You are the one trying to relearn how to juggle a dozen things.
Read a book to restart your writing practice
To write you need to fuel the process with what you have read. Reading is the basis point for a writer. It is also likely a key player in the murder of your process the last time. Skipping your reading is like passing up gas stations on the highway. The production loss is subtle warning light that is often ignored. If you are not careful, you are going to find yourself out of gas. When your out of words read gas, you are out of things to type. Your practice is suddenly dead right before your eyes. So start there. Read something. Anything will work, as long as you might write about it. Here’s a great starter list for most writers to fill their tanks on. So how do you do that?
Glad you asked. That means your writing practice restart starts with a reading practice habit restart first. I suggest you find a time, like say half an hour or so to start, you that works for you like the evenings before bed. Just make sure you do not put it in where you will be writing later.
Most of the rest of us can only stand on the side to applaud and gawk. Our lives are filled with movies, projects, hobbies, family, friends and the list goes on. Leave us not mention the need to work outside of writing to keep the lights on, eat and other little life details like that. Our writing practice restart just hangs there like those unused dance shoes we bought for learning the tango.
Steven King Keeps His Writing Fuel in Hand
The key is to remember that to be a writer is to be disciplined. You have to work to make writing work. When your inner critic starts up about this, remind him that Steven King once said, ‘If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.’ So read. Develop the habit and stop whining.
Realx as You Develop Give your Writing Practice Restart Time to Grow
Don’t over think your process. It’s real easy to compare yourself to other more advanced writers, such as indie arthorHelen Scheuerer, or worse the glory of your own past. The fact is Helen Scheurer took years to get where she is and started where you are. You need to as we used to say in the Marines when out on a hump, just put your head down and march. As for your past, well by now it is likely that that glorious view you have has had a big dab of Vaseline on the lens for a long time. You can not live the present in the past anyway, so don’t. Sit down and type. Forget trying to measure up. Just enjoy where you are now. You will not be there forever, so try to enjoy the view you have now.
Another issue that pops up is guilt. Guilt is natural and normal. It’s the conscience’s way of telling us we have missed a step, such as hurt someone. In this case though it might be hitting us for not getting our work done or all the wasted time we have lost.
Fortunately we can deal with guilt most effectively by dealing with it directly instead of putting things off. The strategy is simple. Make amends and start changing your habits.
For example you can compensate for your wasted time binge watching Netflix over the weekend by breaking down the project times you would have normally used to smaller chunks over the coming week to make amends to your writing restart practice.
Revisit Your Past Writing
You, more specifically your past work, is an excellent place to warm back into writing. Look at what you have done a bit to see where you have been and what you have still unfinished. This is a great way to gain some perspective on where you are now and gain some momentum. It also does a great job killing those memories of how great you were way back when. Less glory seeking from the past. More work now. As Steven Pressfield is famous for saying, “Do the work.”
Restarting your writing process is also a haven for writer’s block. So a trip into the past can give you some ideas you might be able to use now. Many a writer has looked back through their stacks to find an unfinished manuscript then stuck it back into the forge to find they have a fine story at the end.
The main reason your old works failed and they are a gem now is simple. You have changed since them. You have perspective, experience, and sharper eyes for story and plot lines (even if you have not kept up with your writing skills) from all the stories and writing you have been exposed to in the time you first penned that book. Remember reading is the fuel for writing. That fuel has been looking for a book or article to go into. You have a lot of it on hand. Use that to to restart your writing practice.
Getting Your Writing Practice Restarted
Once you have some momentum from a good foundation, the rest is just time and keeping on the path to mastery. That is all for now.
Tomorrow, we will do Part 2 of Writing Restart Practice after a Long Hiatus.
Criticism is normal in the writer’s world. How you take it is the key to learn and improve. A writer must learn how to take criticism.
Criticism is normal for everyone. To the writer it is part of the path. Writers swim in a sea of thought. Our work is to clarify those thoughts so that we can write something remotely readable and hopefully useful to our readers. That is hard enough by itself. It becomes problematic because everyone has their own inner critic they have to battle every step of the way. The last word is typed and the deed is done. We have taken the work as far as we can. We might be ready for a reader or editor to look at our work or it might be time to publish. Either way we are opening up the doors to external criticism and possible embarrassment.
External criticism can be either good or bad. How we take it and why is the danger . Whenever a writer takes external criticism or embarrassment to heart, we yield control of our minds and our self-worth. Any criticism must be worth it. It must have real value for us and our work. Destructive criticism is less than worthless. We waste precious mental resources and time when our work is governed by unuseful or harmful criticisms.
A writer can control and even eliminate such waste by limiting how open our mindset is when we validate our critics comments. We want to filter those thoughts rather than just accept them. The professional minded writer knows what to take to heart and what to ignore.
Your Critic’s Mind
Often frustrated people say things to vent their own feelings when they are not able to achieve a given goal themselves. A seasoned pro will ignore this prattle. Invalid criticism is only jealousy spit out by someone who cannot achieve the same kind of success they see in others who are busy moving forward. It’s the crabs in the bucket part of life.
Ego driven criticism is far more than just venting. It can lead to crippling mental afflictions that prevent us from attaining many of the life goals we set for ourselves. Such criticism affects everything from our fitness to getting married or advancing in our careers. It is never benign. That is why writers must learn to deal with criticism the right way.
Pro Mindset
The professional writer has developed the mental habit to evaluate all criticism when it is first encountered, then is able react appropriately. This mental shift to filter out harmful criticism is what marks the professional writer’s mindset from the armature writer. A pro writer takes the time to kill off anything that would weaken his efforts.
An excellent place to start is to demystify what we do. When we humble the ego nature of our work, we view it as just work. Writing is no longer some aloof artistic endeavor feeding our personal ego. No longer is it our art, it becomes just works. Work alone brings the creativity and validity we seek. In this way the critic’s opinions cannot hurt personally because the work itself provides the only validity that is needed. When work is no longer part of us we can more easily see if a given criticism is harmful or useful to the work itself without feelings of personal pain hindering our vision.
Pro Process
The writer who wants to develop the professional mindset uses a tough minded frame of reference. He banishes both hate and hope from the work. The only thought is to advance on his goal. It is very much the same mindset that the warrior poet Archilochus had in mind.
“Be brave, my heart. Plant your feet and square your shoulders to the enemy. Meet him among the man-killing spears. Hold your ground. In victory do not brag; in defeat, do not weep.”
Archilochous reminds us to not act reflexively with emotion like pride, fear or anger. We are encouraged to control and govern our emotional reactions with positive action. Do not to take the spears as personal attacks. A developed mind will not allow space for any outside influence to rule in their stead.
Criticism Do Not’s
Do not allow the negative influence of critics to break your belief in the value of your work. That road will only fritter away your time in anger instead of work. You will get zero writing done looking to prove anything to a critic. Do not justify anything or try to find reason, even in your own mind. It’s a trap. Just keep your mind on your current shot. Let those criticisms flow past.
Any kind negative emotional response needs to be shot down. The criticism is not a sign or some kind of judgment of the gods either. Also not allowed are feelings that something is out to unjustly get you be it god and heaven or just karma. That is just your critic using those outside influencers to reinforce its efforts. Ignore them.
What to Do’s
Remember you are the sovereign supreme in the moment. No blow or act from outside you can stop your focused action in the moment. Your job is to do the work before you. It remains in your power to do that work no matter what some outside voice has judged you, your work or anything else.
Remain compassionate with yourself. The writer defines his own reality. Other realities do not matter in your process.
Steven Pressfield
“Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters that you keep working. Short of a family crisis or the outbreak of World War III, the professional shows up, ready to serve the gods.” The War of Art, pg. 92-93
A professional mindset uses only the writer’s personal opinion to evaluate the value of his work and himself. As writers we must draw that value from the higher self instead of the ego or other outside sources. Our inner critic uses the negative feedback from those other sources to stall and end our efforts. Do not give those outside voice power to validate you or your work.
A helpful outside critique of any work seeks first to improve you, the work or both. That is valid and valuable. Any criticism that only finds faults with you, your work or both is a clear message that you are dealing with a destructive voice. Ignore it.
Writers Ignore Critics
Criticism can be a tool to improve our lives, or it can be a destructive force. The more common criticism is envy driven.
What makes even driven criticism so damaging is that the critics’ voices get in the mind. Once there our brain just does what it normally does. It allows those thoughts to join our mental conversation without editing them. Over time those negative thoughts weaken your efforts to advance. It’s helpful to remember that critics are just another monkey trying to set up shop that master mediators have long advised us to ignore. Those voices in your head are cunning and pernicious. They will do anything to shut you down with the “facts”. Without any effort on our part to purge such things, we find ourselves believing those “facts”.
The envy driven criticism is deadly for anyone. The writer must endeavor to recognize it immediately so that it does not setup house in his brain. Know that the critic is actually just spewing vitriol at the very thing he hates more than anything else, someone doing what he lacks the courage and tenacity to do himself.
How to recognize envy
So how to we know we are dealing with vitriol instead of a real effort to help us? The first step is to listen actively. Don’t just passively accept any advice, including what I am saying here. You need to weigh whether or not to follow the advice. Criticism can be painful, embarrassing or make you mad. Get to know what helpful criticism is and what the motivation of the person we are getting the critique from.
Motivation is the major determiner. Every case is different but in general I have found to ask questions about the critique and what the person is trying to do.
Helpful criticism
While someone may comment on a painful point, a really helpful critic will also seek to give you an answer to solve the problem they are talking about. I have found that most honest and open critics might even be a little more harsh because they favor a clear concise and direct approach. A CCD approach is not an excuse to be rude or destructive or personal. In the Marines, I have gotten such straight talk. It is not an uncommon thing. It did take the wind out of my own ego driven sails. That’s not a bad thing. It was never personal, all behavior. Sometimes that’s how we learn how to fix those things we did not even know we needed to fix.
Constructive critics are also likely to ask you lots of questions to understand your point of view to help them make useful suggestions before they comment. Even if they are working on instinct with no knowledge of exactly how to correct the problem, a constructive critic is likely to tell you it’s a feeling or hunch of what works and what does not. They do not claim some great understanding. This gut criticism can help you make better choices for what to change. Useful critics are often humble in their approach because their desire is to help and not feed their egos.
Egocentric comments are often brought from a omniscient position. All knowing all seeing. You are laid to waste with no chance of redemption.
Respect
Your level of respect for the person is also a great indicator of whether to give the guidance any credit. If the critique is from someone you know and respect who is more skilled than you, you likely are being helped. It’s worth it to spend some time getting their feedback on how to go about fixing things. By corollary, someone you do not respect is often mired in their own self interested failures, so they will lash out at you just to vent some of their bile at you.
Criticism is not about you
One of the most important things to note about any criticism is that you are never the topic. Constructive criticism is always about the idea or the action, not about the person. As such you learn not just what is wrong, but also why they think it’s wrong and what they think you can do about it. Again constructive criticism strives to help build you with some suggestions they think can help. It is almost always more of a suggestion than some kind of sage omniscient command. Constructive criticism often aims at try encouraging you to try again and keep going.
Destructive envy driven critics often put the blame for the problem on you as a personal flaw. The issue is explained vague terms as a problem. You can even be advised to quit rather than be humiliated further. If you pay attention you might even see how this builds them up, at least in their own eyes.
What to do about criticism
There are literally a whole list of questions you could use to evaluate any criticism you might ever come across. However, one of the best methods I have run across is to ask yourself: “Will the change make your life better or just validate the critic’s point of view?” If you will be better, implement the change. If it only gives credit to the critic, ignore it.
I have found this question very useful. A truly helpful person is not really getting anything out of their help other than having helped another person. An ego driven critic is just feeding his ego.
One last criticism point.
No matter the type of advice you receive, it is always best to keep your emotions out of it. Avoid trying to be defensive or getting angry. Remember you are the gate keeper. You decide whether the criticism is valid or not. The control here is yours. This allows you to be gracious, so remember your manners and say thank you. Don’t forget to have some compassion for them too. This is kind to the person trying to be helpful. It is infuriating for the critic trying to level you. Either way you win.
How to finish is about becoming aware of your story’s flow is just the beginning. Now you need a few more tweaks to polish your process habits.
Schedule your writing habit.
I find that developing a daily habit is better for me than scheduling my time. I do recommend having ‘office hours’ in the day, but I choose to focus more on the habit of getting the work done instead of adhering to a set time schedule how to finish. If allotting your day on a time schedule works for you, go for it. For me it’s all about building a habit and time is not quite as relevant.
Either way you need to control your calendar so that you get work done. For me I set down due dates on a calendar and I also make annotations for completing a day’s given projects as I go through the day. That way I don’t miss what is coming up or due on one hand. On the other hand I can get reinforcement for habit runs.
Start your how to finish habit
Now it’s time to figure out what habits to build. Start with some basic questions: What habit do you want? When do you want to write?
Get specific as possible. Days and times are a must here.How long will you write? Do you have fall back times? What production levels will you use? Days done, pages, words, chapters by the week, etc… Find what you can reasonably produce.
Take the time to look at what works for you to build the habit and keep it. Hint: a good habit that sticks is better than over ambitious effort that burns out. Learning how to habit is learning how to finish.
Be sure to cover the entire publication process from draft to final edit and publication. As Seth Godin points out, you must ship it to finish it. Do not wus out when you reach publication time. You need a time line for all of this. Timelines keep us on track, work more efficiently and coordinate those steps where others come, like an editor, beta reader edits, book and cover design, your release and marketing plans, etc… into the process to help us finish. Even if you self publish and do everything through Gumroads and or Amazon, you still need to put these people into your game plan.
Stay realistic
How to finish starts when setting up your schedule. Take time and stay realistic with your goals and timelines. Look at what your commitments are like right now. You might not be in a position to get a book written in 45 days because you don’t have enough time per day and this is your first rodeo.
That does not mean you cannot write the book but be ready to change thing up as you progress. If you can only work half the hours of an ideal deadline, well then move the deadline. If the daily word count is too low or the work takes you longer per day, then change your work out line, work schedule or due dates. In the end writing is a big time lesson in humility. Take heed and learn from the harder lessons. Change things and make new goals as needed. That will help you make your targets while you build confidence and skill. Both of which will improve each other so that in the future you will run more smoothly and become more productive.
Being honest with yourself in the process when things are not working, figuring out things in a logical manner and setting realistic goals that you can achieve is the recipe for shipping, building a library of published works and staying motivated. Even if you find ways to write faster, you still need to set reasonable goals. Unrealistic and unchanged goals will only demoralize you and leave with zero books.
How to finish comes with accountability
One thing all writers should consider is having a critique partner/group. Getting together with fellow writers to go over the week’s work for everyone in the group is a great way to ensure you get your work done and get some early feedback to end problems before they become problems. It’s also a good way to get ideas for how to deal with your process issues, find fixes for setbacks and stay on track.
Start a blog
Talking about your upcoming work is a great way to build a writing platform to market your book. The conversation also will give you a need to meet, specifically public expectations for a finished work, on time. Deadlines you can not move are your friend and the key for how to finish your work. We all need motivation and deadlines are a great one to build that habit.
Setup a reminder
A physical outline or mood board hung where you can see it where you write or a profile sketch on your phone’s background is a great reminder.
The trick for accountability is to remind ourselves about our project every day. That keeps the mind working on solutions.
Get out of the belly of the beast
No first draft is perfect. The secret sauce is to get the first draft done fast. That only happens when we write instead of edit. We act first then reflect. As Steven Pressfield says, “Don’t worry about quality. Act, don’t reflect. Momentum is everything. Get to THE END as if the devil himself were breathing down your neck and poking you in the butt with his pitchfork. Believe me he is. … Don’t stop. Don’t look down. Don’t think.”
Skip the burnout
You know that feeling that your writing is trash? You think nothing you write is important, no one cares about your subject, or you are stuck in writer’s block. That is an illusionary trap, sometimes referred to as writer’s rut. Many writers walk away from projects because of this rut.
Never stop writing cure.
True the current work in progress may be draining your joy way like giant leach, but it has nothing to do with you or your writing. It is the project itself. You are just stuck. That’s all and there is a solution. Switch what you are writing on, but do not stop writing.
Try a different kind of work like a poem, a blog post or a short story. Even a side gig working for another writer’s blog is a good change up. The critical step is to set a time to return to the book. You want time for the mind to figure things out but not so much that you cannot get back into the work. Take a breather but set a specific time to get back in the saddle.
Asimov was famous for switching projects when he got stuck. That’s why he had so many typewriters. Each one was a separate project in process.
The Answer for How to Finish is Within
The answer we are looking for is that we are finished with a work when it rings true with our human soul. That’ is why it’s part of the mastery path.
How to finish is an essential tool a writer must develop. Writing just does not finish by itself. We have to make it happen. There are literally thousands of ways to do this. We can improve our chances of finishing our work with a good writing process.
Many writers find themselves left alone in the wilderness to fend for themselves once they leave school. That’s not bad, if you can replicate what you did in school. If not, as is often the case, you need to create a process on your own.
How to finish is a process
Having a process goes a long way. Even with a solid process we still need to know, when is our work finished and how to finish it.
The short answer comes down to how we feel about the work itself. We are finished when the story jives with our soul.
So how do we learn how to finish?
We study the craft to learn about us. It starts with learning things like creating an outline, theme and a beat sheet. Then we learn the key beats of our genre so that that we know when all the beats are filled properly. We even ask ourselves the important questions such as What’s missing? A writer has to learn why a story or article or copy works or does not and why.
Finishing is why a study of the hero’s journey is important. How to finish is literally a feeling for most. The most detailed outline will not tell you what the finished work will look like, though it can help you get there. The search for that feeling is the reason pantser work the way they do. They look for that full steak and potatoes feeling when the book is done. They want that kind of satisfied feeling. We all do.
Satisfied or Not Satisfied
Leaving a journey hungry and unsatisfied is why we don’t like a given book or movie or show. We don’t use specific words and examples to nail down the reason. We tend to say that we don’t think it works. It is a feeling from our guts instead of a thought from our heads.
A work that fills us emotionally, even if we have never even heard of the hero’s journey, will leave us satisfied when we close the book, leave the theater unable to talk of anything else or endlessly rave to our friends about a broadcast.
When writing does not ring with the soul, we walk away somewhat pissed if not ranting to the gods themselves about how “It fell apart at the end. Something was just not there. I was not hooked. It was boring or just died at the end.” Nothing works for a story that is not grounded with our souls.
The corollary is also true.
We find the story “Grabbed me with line one. I could not put it down. It was a page turner. I was up all night. I hope they do a sequel.”
Well what can we do to get there?
Time to get in touch with your soul. No, you do not have to get religious, just become more aware of yourself. Humans are pretty much the same as far as what resonates with us. What works for one follows the same pattern for everyone else. Since everyone works much the same around the world, quite a lot of people have already found the pattern we all use instinctively. We have to just follow their maps.
The writer’s job is much easier than those who originally found the path through the mountains. Our starting point is to read up on the hero’s journey. For homework recommend starting with Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. It is meaty, so re-reading is going to happen. It helps. George Lucas owes a lot to having read it. I keep it on the book shelf next to my desk or on it.
You can dig down more with Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat and Sean Coyne’s The Story Grid What Good Editors Know. That should get anyone started on the process.
What’s a clinker?
We reach the next stage of our development when we learn to identify when we have a clinker.
Back in the old days of coal fired stoves, every batch of coal usually contained a piece or two that did not burn. Those were called clinkers. Over time some people amassed quite a pile of them, but most just threw them out.
The interesting thing is these deposits were often from either low quality fuel or the equipment was not burning the fuel right. At the end you were forced to remove the unburnable lumps and just start over with fresh coal. Writing can often work the same way and we wind up with a work that just does not work no matter how much heat and time we put into it.
The best way to solve this kind of issue is the same way they did clinkers back in the 1920’s, clean up your material and look at your process so that you can burn the material the right way.
Scale Your Process
My process is to look at the scale of the project first. It is easy to skip steps at any point, but I have found that the larger the project the more likely I am to treat it like I would a short story, article or any other short work. A larger project like a book or a blog is a more long term issue. The longer you have to work on a project the more time you furnish the inner critic for sabotage. It takes more time, discipline and endurance to win out over the long project. I have found that you need to address those needs in your attack plan.
When we don’t plan for the scale, we fail to put into play the resources we need from the start. At best we manage to fix things as we go along. At worst we fight a long and losing battle. This is one reason why many writers tend to fail midway or windup with another clinker lost in a drawer or gathering dust somewhere.
When we have a process that fits the type of work we are working on, we are much more like like a mechanical coal burning furnace. We reduce the chance of a clinker with a process that focuses our energies and mental focus to burn through our fuel, ideas, evenly enough to produce a solid work flow instead of an overheated process resulting in another clinker.
How to finish by outline
Let’s get this part out of the way. Everyone outlines. We just do this in one of three ways. We have writers, plotters, who plan all the details before writing. Some are discoverer writers, pantsers, who amass everything by instinct then cut away the unnecessary bits. The rest of us are a bit of both. No matter the method, we all outline. The only difference is just how much detail we create and time we use to draft it.
Even the most vehement plotter like Steven King will make an outline. His recipe is a rough draft (detailed exploratory outline), a draft edit and a polish. The closest to the plotter ideal and a real single drafter I have studied was Isaac Asimov. He is famous for running things through his brain before he sat down to write. His outline was in his head instead of on paper. What came out on the page was only what he had already figured out. Unlike King who writes an entire book in, as he puts it, as season, Asimov tended to work on multiple books at one time. That way when he reached a sticking point he could let his mind simmer a bit to find the right solution.
An outline by any other name
My inner pantser might not like calling his rough draft an outline but then he can fall back on terms like ‘discovery or zero draft’ to ease the angst. However, I have found that a simple outline like the foolscap method is not only a good way to stay on course and on schedule, even during a discovery draft, the time spent creating the single page outline adds thinking time that clarifies my vision before I write word one. More importantly it also lets me flush out the theme I need to tie everything together.
Even if I start without the theme to go with my foolscap outline and still not finding it till I am much closer to done, I have found I am further along in the process. It makes the manuscript work far better than I would have gotten otherwise.
How to finish is a personal choice
Outlines tend to be a personal choice so I recommend you try a few to find which ones you might find useful. I have tried several other methods. All gave me some insight into the process. They also gave me ideas to modify the process I use. Some of my more favorite outlines include the clothes line method favored by PG Wodehouse, the beat sheet Blake Snyder covers in Save the Cat, and the basic idea bullet point method I found used by journalists.
As a bit of a panster, I have tended to use the write a lousy “First Draft” method. It does work, but I have found that any method can be modified by ideas from the other methods. For instance a “Draft Zero” approach can use a time limit equal to the amount of time need for a planning and outlining to write the first draft. This prevents the panster from spending forever to get the idea on paper and stalling out.
I picked up is to use a “liquid outline”. Keep it flexible as you progress. Start with a bullet point outline of what you think will happen. Then write each chapter following it. Circle back every now and then to clean things ups and fix changes you find in the copy as you go forward. Revise the outline to fit the changes. This keeps you organized and on track. This process allows us to know how to finish while it allows you to remain free to make on the spot pantsing moves in your book.
What I use
Personally I have found the foolscap method coupled with a beat sheet to be the winner for me most of the time. I tend to use that for longer works. I also tend to like the journalist method for shorter things like articles.
A lot of finishing is all about becoming aware of yourself. The more aware you become, the more able you will be to know when things do not work.
All writers finish and ship. You got this. Everything is ready. Now it is time to ship. Are you certain? When did you Finnish the writing? When is that? Tricky questions for all creatives from the artistic side’s writers, artists and performers to the pragmatic side’s architects, engineers and business builders.
Being finished can be easy or hard, it depends on the variables. For our talk here I will stick to writing, but the base concepts are universal for all creative types.
Theory says that a writer is done when they can ship. Practice often stalls shipping. Shipping has several options and depends a great deal on the writer. When we ship happens a lot for writers in the process and can be when we send the work to an editor, publish the article on line or deliver that white paper to a client. Writers ship at several stages, some are harder to get past and are toally different for most writers.
For the most part to ship is the point where we can no longer make changes to our draft. We go live. For many writers this is where we get cold feet. We feel that inner critic just hammering away at us. It is not always easy to know the answer to the question in the back of 0ur head. When is this work ever really going to be done?
Do I have to finish to ship?
A lot of people make the mistake of bouncing between the belief that their stuff is crap and over editing or thinking that every line they put down on paper is golden and waste time trying to make the work work. Neither is hardly the case. They are both stalls to ship.
Every writer needs to know when to let go. Our job is to filter through our raw material to find the pure ideas we are aiming at. Sometimes that means we have to know to let go of the clinkers.
What’s a clinker?
When we used coal fired stoves people often found one or two pieces that did not burn in every load. The nonburnable pieces were called clinkers. They were often the result of either low quality fuel or not burning the fuel right. The common answer back then was mostly just to shovel them out and start over with a fresh load.
Writing works much the same way. When we form clinkers we have to know to shovel things out and start over. We have to know when to let go.
Did you go all Picasso or George Lucas or Sir Author Conan Doyle?
If it were easy to know when a creative work is done masters like Picasso, Lukas and Doyle would have had a far easier time of it. Knowing when we are done is as much a sense from our guts as it is a plan spelled out in great detail on paper. Picasso was showing his newest collection to his friend and Paris art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler when his voice fell silent. In that moment Picasso could see his work had not really reached his vision. Picasso knew his work was not done. He seized a palette knife and shredded each one in turn.
All the time Picasso destroyed months of work his friend kept trying to stay his hand. “Arrête Pablo. Arrête.” Nothing could stop him. In that moment Picasso took himself back to square one. Sometimes you have to know the work is not ready.
Our early success can prevent finishing and shipping also
George Lucas found his work incomplete for decades. Fans raved about this along with him, but it was a case of misunderstanding of what the work scale was. Fans loved the story and demanded the remaining unfilmed six films he had used to craft his back story, story line and characters.
There is little doubt that Lucas could have finished all the films sooner if he had not piddled around fine tuning the original three through several incarnations. The question real question was should he tell the story for the audience or for himself?
Lucas’ vision only wanted to tell the story of the first three films, chapter four to chapter six. Lucas focused on perfecting the vision for the first films instead of finishing the rest of the films and shipping them to his audience. He spent years remaking the films after they had been in the theaters for various versions as the technology allowed him to expand our view of his original vision.
“The special edition, that’s the one I wanted out there. The other movie, it’s on VHS, if anybody wants it. … I’m not going to spend the, we’re talking millions of dollars here, the money and the time to refurbish that, because to me, it doesn’t really exist anymore. It’s like this is the movie I wanted it to be, and I’m sorry you saw half a completed film and fell in love with it. But I want it to be the way I want it to be.
I’m the one who has to take responsibility for it. I’m the one who has to have everybody throw rocks at me all the time, so at least if they’re going to throw rocks at me, they’re going to throw rocks at me for something I love rather than something I think is not very good, or at least something I think is not finished.”
Fans and Lucas aside, the industry is far better off tech wise because of all that time Lucas spent to advance the tech he needed tell his story. The main thing is that in the end it is the writer who says the works done. Though eventually Lucas did bow to the public desires. He made the first of the remaining six films and he set the stage for the reast of the films to be made from his notes and guidelines.
Doyle Changed his Mind
Sir Author Conan Doyle was not consumed by perfecting a vision of his work. He was tired of writing about Sherlock Holmes, so he killed Holmes to get free of the story. The ire of the public over the untimely end of the story, including bricks through his publisher’s window, forced Doyle to bring Holmes back. It was much later that he could quietly quit the tale.
For Doyle the return of Sherlock Holmes ensured immortality for the Holms story, but very few of us today know of his Lost World that has been used for many Jurassic type worlds since including works like Jurassic Park.
So who knows when best to end the story the author or the audience?
Many would like to see ourselves as Picasso with the steel nerves to raze our work to the ground. I am certain some do have Picasso’s direction, but most of us either fritter our time with clinkers or just yield to demands of the audience to decide when we are done. In the end it is the writer who must decide to let go or press on. We have to listen to Picasso and Lucas. Writers are done when we say. We say when to finish and ship.
Support sour focus is a strange kind of thinking but it’s a true need. Let’s dip into this concept. You need to have a support system for your focus outside of the writing. Your work is not just the result of your writing time. It is everything you do in your day. You bring all of it to the table when you sit down to write. If you want your A game when you sit down, you have to have an A game support system the rest of the day so that it can replenish your focus resources and build new reserves.
Be Active
One of the keys to keep your focus strong is getting the blood out of our feet and into our heads. We also need to build our capacity for work, aka our physical fitness. We need fitness for focus. For the writer this is available at two times during our day. One is found while writing and the second is found in the rest of the day.
The power break
Taking breaks at regular intervals while you are working maximizes our reserves, allowing us to maintain peak productivity. When we are writing these breaks can be as short as five minutes and as long as half an hour at the end of our twenty five or fifty minute work periods. Yes, the Pomodoro system is based on this concept. For the writer these breaks allow us to clear our minds and let the subconscious do its thing with the work while it allows the body to sustain longer work times.
Using your break times for surfing on line or similar online distractions do not yield much gain. These power breaks work best when we get some body movement in.
You do not have to put in a Tobata or some other short type of workout, though you could do that for a break during a longer series should you want to blend in a more vigorous approach. You do not have to be this aggressive though.
Most people will be happy to know we get excellent results just standing up and walking around at your normal walking pace so that you can circulate the blood. So get up walk, walk some stairs, go to the toilet, get out of the building for a minute or two and breathe deep, look out a window if you cannot go out, stretch a bit and again breathe deep. Movement refreshes the body and the mind while prepping you for the next round.
My take on supporting your focus
I have used these kinds of breaks for years. Even an hour of writing in the evening runs better when broken up by a five or ten minute moving break. When you remember that being too sedentary is a big problem these days, these simple breaks can be part of your cure along with better focus and higher quality production. Total win win.
They are not limited to your writing time either. The same technique can be spread throughout your day with either 25 minute or 50 minute work periods to maximize your energy and focus for the day.
The rest of your day
Aside from breaking up your day there are other things you can do regularly to support and improve your focus.
Fitness
Being fit has been proven to improve both focus and energy. You don’t have to be a marathon runner either to achieve the laser like focus that runners do. Though if you do happen to be an endurance athlete or aspire to be one there are plenty of writers like Haruki Murakami or Joyce Carol Oats, among others, to draw inspiration from. You can read a better line of thought from Oats in To Invigorate Literary Mind, Start Moving Literary Feet or Nick Ripatrazone’s Why Writers Run
You can skip the hard core, just going for a walk, swimming or adding other low impact workouts still reduce stress, improve health, and strengthens your focus for writing. Plus some exercise and fresh air does wonders for excellent sleep, which is so essential for all kinds of mental skills from hatching your plots, avoiding deus ex machina and of course focus.
Plan as you go
Keeping a note book or pad on hand to take notes when ideas come through out your day is a great way to improve your focus while writing. When we know what we are going to write about focus becomes more natural.
To support your focus practice focus
Focus is like any other skill. We get better when we do it more. Learning to stay focused does not happen overnight. You need to learn it and then practice.
Another common problem can be trouble keeping a schedule. You are fine. Experiment to find what works for you.
If you fail to write for weeks or years, how do you avoid discouragement long enough to start? Like Nike. Just Do It. Make yourself sit and write, even just ten minutes. You could use micro habits to build the practice and as a fall back for those days you are tempted to skip. Find the smallest part of your task you can do. Make it so small that you can not come up with a reason not to do it. Then place that micro habit at a point in your day where you cannot avoid it. The classic example of this is building the habit of daily flossing by starting with just one tooth every day for the first five days. Five days gives you the habit. Building off of it happens rapidly.
Writing is no different. Put down the equivalent of flossing just one tooth, like say write just five words and quit. No more no less for the first five days. Then let yourself build your habit from there. It also helps if the work is something you care about since our emotions do give us energy to do things we care about. You can use anything that works.
Make your schedule a habit
Having a schedule for our days builds a mental pattern for us to lock into so we can tap into our natural flow. It allows us to write when our focus is at its peak and custom build your schedule to meet your needs. Write when you want to. That can be before breakfast, a couple hours in the afternoon or an hour before bed. Even just seven hours on weekends. When does not matter. The only thing that matters is consistency and regularity over time.
When you first start, develop the habit to write first. The reason is till your writing is more of a habit, and even after to some degree, writing can take more time than you will expect from interruptions, illness and unforeseen technical problems. You will avoid much frustration if you work your projects without a schedule till you have enough experience to know how long a given amount of work will take.
So skip setting a dead line for finishing a novel by January 1 or writing a blog post every Monday. Avoid the overwhelm, the need to pull an all nighter or even just giving up on the project. Skip writing deadlines, along with deadlines for all the other writing tasks from research to edits on through to rereading, in favor of using chunks of time at regular intervals. You will give yourself a better chance for success.
Getting back to work
Schedules are often made just to fail. Life happens. Things need to get done.
It is not uncommon for issues from kids to selling the house come between you and your schedule. You are going to lose writing time at times.
What can you do?
Go with the flow and then get back into the schedule as soon as you get past dealing with life’s curve ball. Consider adapting your schedule that you loved to the new situation. Completely revise it if you need to. You can also use what I call habit keepers to ride things through, or bare bone minimums that you cannot skip. For instance you can peel back your writing to just five minutes instead of an hour but keep your normal start time.
The thing to remember is that your feelings and thoughts can fool you into thinking your work is not all that important. You wind up procrastinating. The longer you do that the harder it gets to jump back into the game. Don’t wait too long. Jump into the ice filled water.
Feelings and thoughts
One of the bigger false realities comes from what you feel or think. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, feel fear or dread or worry, or have that critic in your head going off on how your writing is not any good and that you can’t complete it. We can easily feel tired or think we are too distracted to write right now.
The reality is you are not your thoughts or your feelings. Thoughts are, as the monks say monkies chattering in your mind. They are nothing more than the habitual thoughts you have picked up from others. Your feelings are the emotional responses to your thoughts and conditioned responses. Become aware of them both, but let them pass through your head without attention. Don’t let them stop you from getting to your work. Make the choice to write, then act on it.
One practice is to free write for a chunk of time, say twenty minutes. As you fall into a groove the critic and feelings will fade away. It may take time but it will happen.
You can’t do it all
The fact is we all have things we like to do besides writing. We have desires to hit the beach, go skiing, hang with friends, almost anything that is fun and easy. Social media is a huge addictive distraction for many.
The only choice we have is to make cuts and simplify our lives in other areas so we can work on our writing. Ask yourself the hard questions “Are you going to write or not?” “Is your novel going to be ship ed?” Be choosy. Find what you really can live without then move some writing into that slot. Be sure to keep some healthy activities like eating right, staying active and spending time with family and friends.
The key for better focus really comes down to commitment and work. Make the commitment and do the work. Supporting your focus will give you gains. It is also very useful when you are in the belly of the beast.
