Count Every Minute

On a recent road trip, with my husband driving, I was staring out the window. 

“What are you thinking, Jen?” he asked to make conversation. 

“Nothing,” I replied, my mind blank. 

“Really? I thought you said you’re always planning your next book, or scene.”

Huh. I actually did say that. And, when I did focus on my mind, I realized I had in fact been thinking about my work-in-progress. Except, I’m always thinking about it, or my characters, or spinning another story in my imagination, so I hadn’t even noticed I was doing it—not consciously. I love to let my mind wander, to have my subconscious work on those thorny issues, and play around in my imagination, and it’s gotten to the point where it’s so natural for me now that I hadn’t even realized that was what I was doing. 

I’m not suggesting you have to pick up this habit. What I am suggesting is that you give yourself permission to count those times you are doing it as your writing time. Since creativity comes from imagination, we need to strength that muscle. Letting your mind play in your imagination is good training. You’d never run a marathon without training, so why not treat your “dreaming” time in the same way? 

Which means, that I got a good solid, two hours of writing time on that leg of our trip. 😊

Own What You Know

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias where individuals with low ability in a specific area overestimate their competence, while those with high ability may underestimate their skills. This is because those lacking expertise don’t know what they don’t know and lack any self-awareness to recognize their shortcomings and those who are educated in their field assume if they know it, everyone must know it. 

If you’re studying your writing craft, then you’re most likely in the second category. You may have a lot to learn, yes, but you’re aware you have a lot to learn. 

Which means you do know more about writing than most people! Often, we compare ourselves to the award-winners and bestsellers. We think we don’t know anything because we haven’t seen the same kind of commercial success. It’s an easy trap to fall into, but it eats away at our own confidence and, hence, motivation. 

Be proud of what you know already! Congratulate yourself on what you’ve already learned. Depending on the source, statistics suggest that more than 80 per cent of people say they want to write a book. Some sources say as low as three percent actually do. But you are! (Yes, studying how to write is part of the process). So yeah, you know more than most. Own it. Flaunt it. Then write the best damn book you can.  

Avoiding Procrastination

Procrastination and me are old friends. In my journalism days, I lived by the mantra, “that’s what the last minute is for.” Great if you’re on a deadline, but terrible if you’re a writer and, well, the stakes are low. 

Accountability from others is one answer: a book coach (which is the only reason I finished my novels and therefore became one myself!) a critique partner, a family member or friend demanding to read your pages. 

But how to instill accountability in yourself? A) by not beating yourself up over missed writing time (even if, yeah, it’s your fault) and B) by starting slowly to ease yourself out of your procrastination habits.

Here’s what I do: I sit at my computer. I pull up my work-in-progress (or blank page—sometimes the same thing). That’s it. I don’t force myself to write, but I do practice not getting distracted. I don’t go online or check social media. I don’t do the laundry or start dinner. And if I get through my hour (or 10 minutes or whatever) without distraction, I count that as success! Because it turns out when I force myself to confront the daunting task of writing, I’m reminded why I love it. Then, it’s much easier to just do it.  

Finding the Encouragement You Need

At the gym, I was pushing myself hard, using heavier weights than I normally did. My efforts weren’t pretty, but I was doing it!

Until the coach came along and told me to use less weight. 

I was crushed. I’d decided to challenge myself, and instead of support, I got the message: You can’t do this. 

If he’d been concerned about me hurting myself, perhaps I could understand, but his reasons made it worse: “We can’t wait on you to finish”. (Note: we waited on other people to finish when they pushed themselves.)

I thought about quitting right then and there. There are a million gyms; I could find another place to work out.

But I decided to go back one more time. And that time, when I tried the heavier weight (because yeah, I was still gonna try!), I heard a cheer of encouragement from another person in the class. This meant more to me because she didn’t need to do that. It wasn’t her job. Still, she took a few seconds out of her own workout to offer me the encouragement I needed. 

When we write, we might run into people like the coach, who, inadvertently or not, discourage us. But it’s no reason to give up because, as I found out, there are plenty of other people out there cheering for you. And if you can’t easily find one around you? Email me. I’ll be that person for you. It’s my favourite part of my job. 

Reading the Numbers

For all my talk about not fixating on numbers, I sometimes fall off the wagon. I was disheartened to see the percentage of people who open my newsletter had decreased. Were people no longer interested in what I had to say? It’s a good question to ask: if you’re serving readers, you want to offer them something of value. 

But due diligence is also necessary. I examined the numbers, and I discovered some inactive subscribers. It’s fair that they’ve moved on, but their numbers were unduly influencing my open rate. Once I removed them, two things happened: the absolute number of my subscribers went down; the percentage of my open rate went up. 

I could be disheartened by the lower total number of subscribers (I could have kept the inactive subscribers on the list to artificially inflate my total), but instead, I’m buoyed by the higher percentage of open rate—not because the number is higher, but because it means I’m measuring what I most value: getting my message to the right readers. 

It reassured me that the numbers game is not about the total (and the misleading concept that the higher the number, the better). It’s about finding the right number, because behind every number is a real person. 

It’s the same concept for us as writers. It’s not about the total number of readers; it’s about the impact we make on each individual one. 

Drop the “Should”

Recently, I carved out time for my work-in-progress. I try to practice what I preach, so, despite a crushing to-do list, I took time for my writing. Usually, when I’m finally at my computer, I can slip into my story. 

Not this time. It wasn’t writer’s block. I kept putting words on the page, exactly like I encourage my clients—and you. I was doing it! Well, something, at least. But I wasn’t feeling the love. I knew it didn’t have to be good; that’s my biggest mantra, that the only criteria for a first draft is to get words on the page. But where was the sense of satisfaction I usually get from that? 

I finished my hour and with a sigh of good riddance, I moved onto my next pressing task. Still, my writing melancholy stayed with me. 

I feared, suddenly, I’d been giving bad advice all these years! Shouldn’t I be pleased with my progress, since I had more words on the page than I did the day before?

That’s when I realized I was living with a “should”. I should feel good, I should feel accomplished. When I gave myself permission to accept that it was just a “bad writing day”, then suddenly I was okay with the “bad writing.” And suddenly I realized it wasn’t bad. It was just me working out ideas on the page. Which then gave me the motivation I needed to continue. In other words, no matter what advice you’re following, drop the “should”. 

Writing is Hard!

Part of my job as a book coach is to help keep writers accountable. Life always gets in the way. Jobs, family, children, parents. But the minutia of life also gets in the way: having space to write, losing power on your one and only writing night, a (well-deserved) vacation that upends your writing schedule, an unexpected trip to the doctor’s office… And that’s not counting the emotional pitfalls: is my writing good enough? Would anyone even care if I finish? Why am I doing this? (spoiler alert: YES! Your writing is good enough—it may not be perfect, but that’s why you work at your craft. YES! People care if you finish—I care! Why are you doing this? Because you have a story to tell!) 

It’s no wonder so many of us find it easier to push off our writing than find the time/energy/resources to write. Sometimes stopping (or not yet starting) is the only manageable away, and that’s okay. 

But sometimes we forget about the deeper reason we stop: writing is HARD! It’s a challenge to get all the pieces onto the page, then sort them into the right order with the right words, spoken by the right characters. We’re fooled into thinking it’s easy because what we read often seems effortless—but that’s because those books are finished products!

When you’re wishing to metaphorically (or literally) bury your head under a pillow rather than write, remind yourself it’s not you. It’s the job. Writing is just hard. 

Stories Are About WHO

What if you just have nothing to say? 

You want to write; you have ideas floating around your head, and maybe even that cursed cursor blinking disparagingly at you, your doc open, page blank. But it’s not a symptom of writer’s block—where you can’t figure out how to say what you want to say. 

It’s a slow-growing dread that maybe you have nothing to say. 

That all your ideas, however imaginative in, well, your imagination, are re-treads of well, everything else out there. That messages you had in mind, your why for writing, are cliché at best, redundant at worst. That everyone else can say—and has already said—what you think better than you’ll ever be able to. So why bother writing? 

But if you’re wanting to write, if there are ideas in your head, you do have something to say. It’s not the what of your story that is going to make it shine, it is the who: YOU. Your voice. Your choices. Your interpretation. Even Shakespeare borrowed his plots from tales past, so if it’s good enough for the Bard, it’s good enough for you. 

So when that cursed cursor is blinking, or the pen heavy in your hand, start with just one word. That word that got you thinking. Love. Jealousy. Sky. Airplane. Whatever. Write it down. Then walk away. 

There: you do have something to say. 

(Now you just add 99,999 more of those words, and you have yourself your story! 😊)

People, not Numbers

In the social media world—actually, in the real world, too—we’re judged on numbers. Numbers of followers, numbers of likes, number of subscribers, number of sales, number of readers…

For someone like me who is allergic to numbers (ah choo!) it can be disheartening. I get it: numbers are an easy, quantitative way to measure success. The more [fill in the blank] you have, the more influence/importance you (allegedly) have. 

As much as I’d love it to be otherwise (there are lots of things about our world I would love to be otherwise), the numbers game remains the harsh reality. 

If you play it. 

I’m not suggesting you not play if you want conventional success, especially to find your audience for your stories. 

What I’m saying is that not everything is about the game of finding the most. When I consider YOU, my blog post reader, I try to imagine each and every one of you. Because you’re an individual. A real person. NOT a number. If only one of you ever reads my musings, then I have made an impact. (Or not, depending on what I wrote!) My point is that we often get lost in the numbers racket and forget that the numbers are all people. 

And at the end of the day, I want people reading my work. Because it’s people—YOU—not numbers, who matter.

The Raw Material of Writing

Ideas are easy; writing is hard. 

Ideas are what live in our imagination. They’re what we spool out of our head into a plethora of directions. They’re fun to think about, to work with, to muse about. 

They’re also only your raw material. 

If that’s where you stop, because that’s all the time or energy you have, then great! Romp around in your imagination! Plan your next stories! There is nothing wrong with that. 

But if you want to communicate your imagination, if you want to share your creativity, you need to write it down. 

Which means an idea isn’t enough. Scribbled brainstorming about your idea isn’t enough. A rough outline of your soon-to-be-masterpiece isn’t enough. 

Writing is enough. 

But writing is hard, so even when we want to translate what’s in our head onto the page, it’s challenging to get—and stay—motivated. 

But, on the other hand, that’s what makes it so worthwhile. 

Engage your imagination, then take it out for a spin. Show off what you’ve got by putting words on the page. Your story deserves to be seen.