Keeping Yourself Motivated (When Your Writing Needs a Retreat - Part 3)

The second workshop with Isabel Costello at the retreat was about Motivation, and followed on from Inspiration the previous day. It was based around a series of workshops that Isabel already runs with Voula Tsoflias, called Resilience for Writers, but the skills - once learned - can be applied to any life situation.

The definition of motivation is much easier to pin down, and less subjective, than that of inspiration; 'the desire or willingness to do something; enthusiasm.'

Now, I've had slumps. Times when I simply can't be bothered to do the thing I know I need to do. It's lost it's spark; I've fallen out of love with it; someone has prevented me; I don't want to do it, or Life gets in the way. So this workshop really helped me to think through what motivates me - and how I manage to claw myself back from setbacks.

First, we were asked WHY we wrote. The reasons were many and varied. My own were to encourage children to read, and because fantasy is a chance to leave the real world behind and immerse myself in another place. And because I enjoy creating those other worlds...

Some of the other reasons were;

• I enjoy it
• characters can do/say the things I can't
• I can broach difficult situations
• I can't not
• I love words
• it's a safe place to be somebody else
• to connect with other people
• because no-one else is me.

NOBODY said 'to get rich and famous.' 

Have you ever listed the positive qualities of your writing? I bet most of the time you end up saying 'it's not my best. It's not very good. It's probably rubbish...' We were challenged to write down three good things about our writing. The qualities were very personal, and in some cases demonstrated how difficult we find it to accept that we do things well. Was it because we were women and not used to 'bigging ourselves up'? Or our British restraint? 

Having listed these positives, how often did we allow ourselves to think those thoughts? My answer was 'every time I read a badly-written book.' But even then, it's not very often... So what ration of time did I spend taking time for positive reflection compared to negative criticism? Well...let's just say 'could do better.'

To build on the idea of being positive about our writing, we were invited to recount our proudest or happiest writing moment. They were; 

• being anthologised - it was like being made a saint. (This one resulted in the person being referred to as 'Saint X' for the rest of the day - but we all knew what she meant.)
• finishing a story - this is a huge one! (So many people 'have a story to tell' but never actually write it or get to the end of it once they start it.)
• a friend reading the author's book about a family issue which subsequently gave the friend hope for her own situation. (How often does sharing our own hard experience help someone else?)
• overcoming the fear of having dyslexia to reading aloud for the first time in a writer's group. (Fear can be an old, old friend...it's good to be able to kick its butt every now and then.)
• winning a competition at a comedy festival. (Always a fabulous moment.)
• when the agent read the author's book on the train, and ended up laughing so hard, the man sitting opposite her moved away. (What more could you ask for, when writing comedy?)
• attending an assembly, watching children act out a story they'd written collectively, based on a character created by the author. (Still gives me the grins, years later!)
• the debut novel launch party! (Celebration most definitely in order.)

We decided we should celebrate our fabulousness - and visualise success to make it happen.

And that's where the resilient thinking comes in. Because we're used to focusing on the negatives - I'll never get published, I'm a rubbish writer compared to..., things will never get better - and our negative thoughts make us feel bad and then we act in unhelpful ways, (albeit not always consciously) we need something to help us 'to recognise and adapt unhelpful thoughts and beliefs to recover more quickly from setbacks'. 

It's based on CBT - Cognitive Behavioural Therapy - which encourages you to change the way you think about how you feel, and change the way you feel about how you think.

This was demonstrated by Isabel asking us to place different words relating to feelings into quadrants labelled: negative emotions, high energy; negative emotions, low energy; positive emotions, high energy; and positive emotions, low energy. There was quite some discussion during this activity, and it got quite emotional as certain negatively charged words struck a chord with us. Once the words were down - there was no right or wrong answer as to where they should go - Isabel relabelled the quadrants. They became zones of survival mode, burnout, inspired, and recovery. As you might expect, all of us felt we created our best work when experiencing feelings that resided in the positive emotion areas, although most of us associated this with 'recovery' feelings rather than 'inspired' ones. The trick was to recognise your own personal sweet spot, and do your best to move yourself from either of the negative quadrants back into it. 

All of us looking very thoughtful, trying to decide if the words were in the 'right' places
(Moira's photo) 

There was also a lot of discussion around what happens to put us into the negative emotion areas. Husbandly interruptions featured highly (!), with social media a close second. There were much bigger issues mentioned too - lost publication deals, unsupportive friends, family crises - which were obviously situations that lay outside of our control.

What DID lay within our control was how we thought about all of them. Yes, we would acknowledge the situation and the pain it caused, but we didn't have to let it dictate what happened afterwards. 

This has to be something you learn to do, because it requires a certain level of self awareness and that isn't always an easy thing to develop. For a start, in order to be more self-aware, we have to expose our vulnerabilities - one of the retreatees likened it to picking a scab and allowing yourself to bleed - and the places where those vulnerabilities stemmed from. That's not an easy or comfortable thing to do, but if it's understood why we might be feeling the way we are and can then rationalise our catastrophic thoughts as a result, perhaps we stand a chance of changing our actions that follow into something more positive. 

I think I'm already fairly resilient-ish regarding writing. For example - I've picked myself up after rejection. Sometimes, I admit, I got depressed and didn't write. At others, I got angry and thought 'I'll show you'. I know which worked better for me... I realised that it's easier to apply to writing - because that's more in MY control. I find it harder to apply the same principles to situations in my life when I'm not in control of external factors and I'm more emotionally affected, but I'll keep trying.

Going back to motivation then...resilient thinking can help keep you working on a project - like trying to get a novel published and it taking ten or more years (StarMark!) to achieve. But it might need something extra too. Here are a few things that were suggested. 

Make a list of achievable goals. Especially if, like me, you write a long list of BIG things and end up feeling overwhelmed. Break it down into smaller chunks, cross off part-jobs. Or - and yes, I do this! - add completed jobs that didn't originally feature on the list, to the list, simply for the satisfaction of crossing something off! 

Set a time limit. Tell yourself you're going to write for an hour. That's all. Just an hour. And then get on with it. The Writing Room offers extreme versions of this - you set yourself a goal for the session in a room full of writers, and at the end you see what you've achieved. 

Set a word count instead. Doesn't matter how many, but be realistic about how many words you think you can achieve in a specific time period. And if it proves to be too high, don't feel bad about changing it down until you hit a number that seems to be working out for you.  

Visualise your success. It does work, because your conscious and subconscious brain try to come into alignment, but you need to remember that what 'success' means is different for everyone. What is your personal measure of success?

Celebrate the steps along the way, not just the destination arrived at. End of a chapter, a thousand words, finishing the first s****y draft...

And finally, a personal faith-based example of my own; years ago, I was struggling to pray in a particular way. A visiting minister preached about how he'd had exactly the same problem, and shared the advice he was given. 'Pray in the way that you CAN,' he was told. 'Not in the way that you CAN'T.' 

Ultimately, I reckon to keep ourselves motivated in writing, we each need to write in the way that we can, not in the way that we can't. And to do that successfully, we need to be able to recognise both what keeps us in our personal positive sweet spots, and what we can do to make it easier to get back there when life takes us to the dark side.

So here's to finding the silver lining in every cloud, and keeping going when things get tough.

When writing's exciting

For most of the time, writing can feel like an uphill slog. You simply have to keep your bum in the seat and your pen in your hand (or fingers on the keyboard, depending on how you work).

Yes, there are occasions when I can legitimately NOT write, because I'm giving a talk, attending a book fair, or perhaps a workshop fro my own benefit; that's all still part of being an author, but it's not writing.

But most of the time, you're actually writing. And ultimately, it's a grind to get the story down, to create something that a publisher's going to want to publish and readers are going to want to read.

During that process, any author will tell you that they recognise certain stages. Here are mine:

1. Enthusiasm.

Particularly relevant to the early stages of working out a story, when ideas seem ten-a-penny and you can't get the notes down quickly enough. Notebooks are strewn around the house, with weird jottings like 'Name change!' or 'find out about cheesemaking' which make you wonder if you were suffering from temporary insanity. But you don't stop - you trust they'll all make sense at some point and be vitally important to the story you're creating. (Beware - this stage can also develop into 'Researchitis', when you get so bogged down in finding out facts to use in your story, you forget about the actual story...)

2. Hard work.

Thrashing it out. 'Growing' the story. Asking yourself questions until you're absolutely certain of this character's motivation or the time of day in that scene. Seeing the story develop into something you've got a real hope with. This probably covers my notebook version, when I'm working the story out in a general sense, and the 'shitty first draft on computer' stage too. It'll also carry me along quite comfortably to a little over half way through the 'first proper write up' on computer, where I'm beginning to edit fairly closely to produce a decently presented and structured version of the novel. Then...

3. The stall. 

You reach a point where, whichever way you turn, you can't see how to make the darn story work. All those great ideas you had seem really stupid now, and you need to fix them. But every resolution you think of churns up a new issue somewhere else, and the story begins to morph into a massively complex beast and you can't tame it. So you stop. Or feel discouraged. Or wonder how on earth you ever thought writing this novel was going to be a good idea. (And also the point where I'm most likely to give up on a story, though it's not happened that often. If I do give up, I hate that the story has 'beaten' me.)

4. Excitement.

I have to force myself back to it, ignore the stall. I'll go over what I've already written, editing the obvious things, but essentially familiarising myself with the story again. When I reach the point where I'm writing new stuff, I've probably rewritten or tweaked a fair proportion of what was already down and causing me issues. I'll have spotted plot holes and stunted dialogue or inconsistencies, made notes on how to address them, and the excitement begins to build as I continue. It's all becoming clearer in my head, the writing's flowing, and I'm then at a point where - quite suddenly - the momentum of the story is carrying me along, and I can feel the pressure mounting and my character's are doing their best to make things right but things are going wrong and there seems no way out for them and then - POW!

5. The Finishing.

There's a resolution. Everything's not necessarily finished, but the story ties up in a logical place and it feels - finally - complete. Like a real story at long last.

6. The proper edit.

The simple (hah!) act of going over the whole story and polishing it until it's glowing.

At the moment, I'm working on Tilda 3, and I'm at the fourth stage. In fact, I'm only taking time off from it now to tell that I've reached it because I'm SO excited! It's getting very Jason and the Argonauts, and Tilda's right in the middle of the action, heading full tilt towards a climax of GIGANTIC proportions.

It might still be a few weeks before I reach the fifth stage, but it feels close. A lot closer than when I was stuck at stage 3, anyway.

For now, I'll keep writing...

No, that's not Tilda - that's Jason!

Sharing my love of writing

I've been gratified to receive not one, but two, requests recently for creative writing workshops.

Now, I have to be honest - I'm not a qualified teacher. I do have training in my background; years ago I gained a Certificate in Training and Development when I was designing and running cleanliness courses at work. That learning was backed up with an NVQ Level 3 in Training and Development as an Association Trainer with the Guide Association. I've also spent quite a few years (paid and unpaid) supporting primary school children in the classroom. And I help to run a small creative writing group locally.

And I write. I've even had work published, so I do know a little bit about writing stories.

But does all of that really add up to me knowing enough about 'creative writing' to run a kosher workshop?

Having recently been to York and sat in some fabulous workshops (check out the FOW15 Diaries on dialogue, theme and taking risks), I feel woefully inadequate compared to those very distinguished workshop leaders. Almost like a fraud...

I suppose it depends on what you want out of a workshop. If you want to kick your writing into shape, you most probably need to find someone who's more of an expert in sentence formation and story arcs to run the session.

If, on the other hand, you want to play with words, explore ways of inspiring stories, create characters and settings to get your story-juices flowing...

Well, then I might just be the right person for the job.

That's what's gone into the session plan for now, anyway; I'll let you know how it works out when I do it for real with the children...

Getting to grips with technology during an author visit earlier this year...

Oh...Bumble!

Harry Secombe as Mr Bumble (Oliver Twist 1968)

Bumble? No disrespect to Dickens, but it's better than some of the things I could've said...

Why the language? Well, I set aside some time today to flesh out the idea I'd had for my 'Kansas' story - to be submitted to a writing comp over on the cloud.

Except I've run smack right up to a brick wall. I can't make the idea work.

The concept around which I want to build this particular story is quite simple: a method of recording life events. However, the story will therefore cover too long a time period - I'd have to include loads of flashbacks or rely on an unreliable narrator to get the events across. And my gut reaction says the latter wouldn't be a nice story, I can feel it in my bones. I can't see any way round having huge jumps in time or a shed load of recalled backstory. More worryingly, I can't get the 'lost' bit in either, which is pretty essential because it's the flippin' theme.

I spent my precious time this morning filling about 6 pages of A4 with scribbles that are going nowhere and I'm sitting here writing a blog post instead of trying to iron it all out.

When I entered this competition the first time, I had such a clear concept for the story and everything fell into place nicely. The second time, I struggled with where I'd chosen to set the story and ended up writing what was essentially fan-fic. This third comp seems even harder again. Am I having a crisis of confidence? Maybe it's the theme not floating my boat? Or maybe my original concept is just pants...

I could keep writing and hope there's a nugget in the mire somewhere to pull me in the right direction, but I keep getting to a certain point and can't see where to take it from there on. The picture in my head isn't complete - it's a jigsaw that's missing a corner piece, a red flower and a couple of bits of sky.

Maybe inspiration will strike and everything will suddenly click.

I can but hope... in the meantime, BUMBLE!

The countdown begins!

10...9...8...7...tomorrow, we will have lift-off! 

Granny Rainbow is going to be launched in the presence of around 50 friends and family in the upstairs room of a small French Deli in my home town. I'm delighted that the whole team is going to be there - publisher, printer, illustrator and cover designer - to promote both local business and local talent.

Food is ordered, competition and prize sorted, props packed, books ready...but in spite of all the careful planning, I'M SCARED.

From tomorrow, real people - some who know me and others who are complete strangers - will be able to read and judge Granny Rainbow.

And by way of connection, judge me.

I know there's a very real possibility that some readers will not enjoy my book; I hope I can be strong enough to listen to critical feedback and not let it affect my authorly confidence overly much. (Because we all know writers have fragile confidences at the best of times, convinced as they are that one day they've written a masterpiece only to realise the next that the same work is actually a steaming pile of manure and fit only to feed the roses.)

Equally, if I receive any positive feedback, I hope I don't get lulled into a false sense of security and become complacent in what I write in the future. Whilst it's lovely and very affirming to receive compliments, I can't ever allow myself to forget that it takes hard work and commitment to get the writing to that stage.

Whatever happens after tomorrow, I'll still be glad I've got Granny out into the world.

If you read the book yourself, feel free to let me know what you think. I'm now on Goodreads as an author so you can post reviews there, or you can mail me direct via the contact page on my website 

What's that? You've not bought the book yet? Then just click here to purchase...

The creative process.

Can't take the credit for this, I'm afraid - I was reading a blog post at the busy mockingbird (about lunch bags, of all things!) and noticed she'd retweeted 'the creative process'. It went like this...

1. This is going to be AWESOME!

2. This is hard.

3. This is terrible.

4. I'm terrible.

5. Hey...not that bad.

6. That was AWESOME!

Thing is, I reckon as writers, we go round this loop so many times...and depending on where we're at with the WIP, we might loop back at different stages.

So... when I lose faith in a piece of writing, and choose to start something new rather than persist with the original, I'm looping endlessly from number 2 or 3 back to the beginning of the process.

Assuming I actually finish something and ask for feedback... Number 4. Well, if the feedback isn't as positive as I'd hoped and I allow myself  to believe that comment, I'll probably loop back to number 2.

But if I get good feedback and worth-affirming comments, I've reached number 5! At that stage, I'll probably loop back to do the final tweaks, bypassing 3 and 4 because by this point, I know they are not as true as I told myself they were back in the early days of the WIP.

And when I see my work published, I've reached number 6 - at last! That really IS awesome!

So for you, fellow writer, at what point do you find yourself looping back most frequently? And what can you do to help yourself get beyond it?

Fear - and writing

I've read a couple of posts recently, about writers and fear. 

Andrea Phillips, guesting on terrible minds, wrote about the four fears that stop you writing...and after a whole summer without writing much at all, topped off with an agent rejection for Rurik because the story is about rings, (and apparently Tolkien and Wagner have cornered that market), I am very much feeling The Fear. 

Andrea used four categories, which pretty much seem to cover everything about The Fear. Here's how they eat away at me. Some, more than others...

1. Fear about (lack of) talent.

I am so hard on myself. I write my stuff, then I compare it to the work of someone who writes more action, more quirkily, more descriptively, more...everything! And my inner critic says - 'you're rubbish.'

I enter competitions and never allow myself to consider the possibility of being placed, because there will be a million others all entering the same thing who can string words together in a way that will make the reader go all gooey like I never can. I might as well save myself the cost of an entry fee.

It's a risk, letting people see what I've written. Especially when, as a writer, there is so much of 'me' in what I write about. But if I don't take risks, I'll never know what could have been. And if I don't enter any competitions, ever, I can say with 100% confidence that the chances of being placed are definitely zero.

So I keep writing, trying new things, testing myself and my capabilities.

2. Fear about feedback.

I am now a little more restrained regarding who I ask for feedback, having been bitten a few times by folk who told me how I should write/they would write a scene, instead of suggesting ways of improving it. I have some writer friends whose opinion I trust, and the rest fall into the category of 'take with a pinch of salt unless they all say the same thing or what is said makes sense'. And - shock! horror! - even the opinions of agents and book doctors sometimes fall into the latter category...

That's not to say I ignore feedback - a writer ignores feedback at their peril, and should be constantly striving to improve what they lay down on the page.

And feedback often confirms gut feeling, which I really should learn to trust more.

3. Fear about publication.

If no-one in the professional publishing world can make money out of me ('lacks commercial sparkle' seems to be a consistent theme for my full-length children's novels) then to get my stories to the kids I think will enjoy them, I have got to go it alone.

Self-publish.

Oh.
My.
Gosh.

The traditional route to publication meant I didn't have to think about formatting or cover design or promotion or sales. Self-pub does, and it turns me into a quivering wreck who would rather bury her head in the sofa cushions and never write again than face going it alone.

Which brings me full circle to the risk-factor - if no-one wants to do it for me, then I'll have to do it myself to find out whether kids really would want to read my stories.

4. Fear about being judged.

I know my writing isn't always brilliant, but can I bear others thinking the same thing? Will my work wither and die quietly, like an unfunny comedian? Will it get slated by people I want to impress? Will anybody, anywhere on this planet, actually ever read anything I produce, because they take one look at the title/blurb/cover and go 'Nah!

If I thought like that all the time, I'd never write.

Perhaps I need to add a little something to the famous song from 'La Cage aux Folles' - 'I am what I am'; I am what am I am, and I write how I write.



Having read that lot through, I've just realised something; if I stay true to myself and my story, writing to the best of my ability, then the only judge I have to fear is the one inside my own head.

The Fear will only stop me writing if I let it..

So I'm not going to.  

When being a writer ruins reading...

*sigh*

A plotting point - how can a deaf boy sign to his companions in a dark cave? Don't they need to see him?

I'm currently reading Hollow Earth by John and Carole Barrowman, from which the above situation is taken. The premise of the story is good - twins who draw pictures that come to life, whose abilities are sought by villains trying to access Hollow Earth: a place where demons, devils and imagined creatures lie trapped. 

Unfortunately, I'm getting more and more frustrated with what appear to be pretty basic errors in this book - like repeated information, unrealistic dialogue, too much tell and not enough show. Now I'll gladly hold my hands up to state - this is my own personal opinion,  and this post isn't about the book and its merits - it's about whether being a writer ruins reading.

I wonder whether I'll ever be able to read a book without always thinking 'I'd have written that differently' or 'ping-pong dialogue' or 'that could've been tightened', etc etc. Does trying to become a writer yourself mean that you also become a dreadful critic of others because you're constantly on the lookout for things you can improve? 

I hope not. 

Of course it's always easier to see improvements elsewhere, because you're often far too close to your own work to make an objective decision on it. It sometimes takes another person to come up with exactly the word that you meant, but used twenty-three to say! I feel very strongly that this kind of improvement should be done before your book goes to print, preferably by yourself as the author or your editor - not by the reader. Some rough bits might still get through to the printed page, but it's our duty as authors to make our books the best they can possibly be for the reader who will pay good money for them. I can't help feeling that several of the books I've read recently could have done with a bit more spit and polish before being released on the world. 

Perhaps I've just got to learn to turn my inner critic off at certain times, so the reader in me can enjoy the written word again...