expectations

Inner Critics: Valuable Editor or Time Waster?

Published on by Kristi Holl

Writers are opinionated people.

Our brains never seem to stop. We criticize because we “know” how things and people should be. This “critical editor component” of our personality is absolutely invaluable to the editing and revision process. If you can’t spot what’s wrong with a manuscript, you can’t fix it.

However, this same critical ability can cause writers to actually lose focus, allowing their writing hours to slip away with little or no work done.

Think About It

Many of us go through our daily lives with our internal critic or editor in charge. We don’t see the person right in front of us as he or she is (which may be perfectly fine.) Instead, that person reminds us of a demanding boss or an ex-spouse, and we “see” characteristics that aren’t there. Or they remind us of a forgiven (but not forgotten yet) event. Stress!

Conversely, we think the person in front of us is “supposed” to be kind and supportive (or whatever our inner definition of the perfect parent/spouse/child/sibling). And yet many such relationships are anything but, leaving us hurt and upset because they should be supportive. More stress! Life rarely satisfies a person who lets the “shoulds” run his life.

Do we spend our time “shoulding”? We don’t see a child who is happily singing at the top of her voice. (That child should be quieter in the store!) We don’t see an interesting shade of purple hair. (That teenager should resemble a middle-aged adult instead.) We don’t see the predator or user sometimes either–because trusted family members shouldn’t be such things. Our “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” color everything we observe.

Change Your Perspective

Our inner editor sometimes keeps us from seeing what’s in front of us. We are constantly “revising” the facts. So what’s the problem with that? You can’t accept–and get peace about–what you can’t honestly see or face. You stay stirred up–a condition rarely suited to being creative. Sometimes the simplest solutions evade us because we’re all riled up inside.

It reminds me of a story (you may also be familiar with) about “The River and the Lion:

After the great rains, the lion was faced with crossing the river that had encircled him. Swimming was not in his nature, but it was either cross or die. The lion roared and charged at the river, almost drowning before he retreated. Many more times he attacked the water, and each time he failed to cross. Exhausted, the lion lay down, and in his quietness, he heard the river say, “Never fight what isn’t here.”

Cautiously, the lion looked up and asked, “What isn’t here?”

“Your enemy isn’t here,” answered the river. “Just as you are a lion, I am merely a river.”

Now the lion sat very still and studied the ways of the river. After a while, he walked to where a certain current brushed against the shore and stepping in, floated to the other side.

Control What You Can: Yourself

We also can’t gain peace of mind and the ability to focus unless we’re willing to give up trying to control everyone and everything in our environment. We spend entire days fuming and fretting over situations or people we can’t change or control, wasting precious writing and study time.

We need to save our judging skills for revision time and critiquing. We need to save our control freak behaviors for finagling with our characters’ actions. And you may as well give up having to convince people you’re right, while you’re at it. Letting go of those three things (judging, controlling, being right) will give you more inner peace faster than hours of yoga and meditation and mind-altering substances.

Start Right Here, Right Now

Think about something that is currently keeping your mind in knots to the point that you can barely write. Chances are that you are judging someone’s behavior, or trying to figure out how to control a situation, or having mental conversations in which you prove to that stubborn person how right you are. (I know this from personal experience in case you think I’ve been reading your mail.)

Letting go of criticism and control is freedom. For the writer, it means hours and hours are freed up for reading and writing. Just for today, let grown people and situations be what they are. Let them work on solutions for their own problems–or not. Turn all that “should” energy on your own work. [Often the Boundaries for Writers that we need to enforce are those we set on ourselves!]

At the end of the day, you’ll have something great to show for it!

Writing Life: the Reality

Published on by Kristi Holl

“Life is difficult,” wrote M. Scott Peck in his famous book The Road Less Traveled. “This … is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it… Once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

I’d like to amend Peck’s quote to say that “the writing life is difficult.” And once that truth is accepted, “the fact that it is difficult no longer matters.”

The Fantasy

I imagine we all start out on the writing journey with a fantasy of what the writing life will be like. I know I did thirty-five years ago–and it was a fantasy that I clung to tenaciously for far too many years.

My own fantasy involved uninterrupted hours every day to write (after first journaling and then doing some creative writing exercises to ensure the writing would simply “flow”.) My fantasy included the books selling themselves without my help. I expected to reach a time when I’d never have to write anything without having a (lucrative) contract in hand. I also dreamed of writing by longhand in the fragrant garden of a thatched-roof English cottage. Sad to say, the cottage part was the only thing I recognized as pure fantasy. I figured everything else was just a matter of time.

Fast forward thirty-five years and forty-seven published books later…

I love my office in Texas, but it’s a far cry from a thatched-roof cottage. And unless you write from Walden’s Pond, I don’t see how anyone manages to have uninterrupted hours every day to write. Juggling my roles as wife, mother, Nana, daughter, sister, friend, writer and ministry leader means fighting for writing time daily. Each role, at one time or another, has meant dealing with loss, conflict, disappointment, and/or illness–all big time and energy eaters. And because of the changes within the publishing industry–in large part due to the economy and online social marketing demands–there’s no such thing anymore as an author who doesn’t help market his work.

It No Longer Matters

So where’s the silver lining around this black cloud? Simply this. Clinging to my fantasy life of a writer meant that every time reality intruded, I was disappointed or shocked or disillusioned. Lots of angst and wasted energy. As long as I was convinced that the writing life could be simple and more fun than work, I was irritated with reality. I made silent demands that this imperfect writing life go away!

  • Truth #1: The writing life will always be difficult.
  • Truth #2: It doesn’t really matter.
  • Truth #3: All things worth having (family, good health, writing life) are difficult sometimes.
  • Truth #4: We can do difficult things!

Accept Reality

Don’t miss the key point of the blog today. This is not a “downer” message. It’s a truth message–which will set you free. For me, it’s like having kids. Raising a family was the most difficult, time-consuming, challenging thing I’ve done in the last thirty-five years. It has also been the most rewarding, most fun, most gratifying thing I’ve ever done. It’s the same with the writing life. It’s been difficult, but I can’t imagine a career more rewarding than this. After many years, it does get easier--but I would never say it’s easy.

It’s okay to give up the fantasy that someday your writing life will be easy and smooth and not require you to grow or struggle anymore. You really don’t need the fantasy to keep you moving forward. “The fact that it is difficult no longer matters.”

That being the case, what fantasy about the writing life do you suspect you need to let go of?

Writers: Attitude Isn't Everything

Published on by Kristi Holl

I talk a lot about having a positive attitude about the writing life, but your attitude isn’t everything.

There’s no doubt about the power of a positive outlook–I would be the first to say so. Dealing with your self-doubts and writing fears is critically important. However, don’t make the mistake of thinking it will substitute for other things.

At writing workshops I meet new writers who have the most positive expectations about their future careers. I have envied some of them actually! But then I probed a bit deeper and found something that may well derail those writers’ dreams.

What a Positive Attitude Can’t Do

  • Having a hopeful and cheery  attitude about your writing won’t matter if you’re not competent at handling words and basic English grammar. You need those skills! If you don’t have them, study or attend classes until you acquire them.
  • Are you actually writing and developing your craft? If you’re a fiction writer, are you working on character development, how to write believable dialogue, and plotting? If you write nonfiction, are you working on your research and querying skills? (And no, contrary to what you might hear, blogging or journaling doesn’t count because it rarely builds actual necessary skills other than the habit of daily writing.)
  • Attitude won’t change the facts in your life. Fact: you have three children under the age of four and are the primary caregiver. A positive attitude won’t change that. Instead, you must incorporate that fact into your writing plans. (Write in snippets of time. Write about your experiences for parenting magazines and e-zines.) Thinking positively that today you’ll have three hours alone to write is just a fantasy.
  • A positive attitude won’t substitute for change. Time runs out after a while. There comes a time when you have to stop dreaming about the writing life you want to lead, complete with visualizations and an illustrated wish book. There comes a time to actually start living the writing life. (Keep an idea file. Join a critique group. Write daily or almost daily. Learn to do market study–even if you detest it.) Unless you take concrete steps to actually live the writer’s life, all the positive attitudes in the world won’t help.

Go One Step Further

Never stop having a positive attitude! It’s vital. But as writer and leadership expert John Maxwell says,

“Attitude fills us with hope that we might reach our dreams. But hope apart from action falls flat.”

Definitely KEEP your attitude positive. I don’t mean to negate that in any way. But take definite steps to put a foundation under your attitude so that your dreams really do come true.

So…what is one small step you can take today to move your hopes to the next level?

Calling All Introverts!

Published on by Kristi Holl

I laughed out loud when I read the quote below–mostly because it describes me so well. How about you?

“You have your day scheduled out, given over to the expectations of others. You brace yourself for what’s ahead. Then you get a call. The day is cancelled; everyone who needed you is down with a three-day virus. Is there anything more delicious? You know what I’m talking about. We don’t like others to be sick, but we love others to cancel. We become giddy at the prospect of ‘found’ time–time without plans or expectations. Time to think.”

Introverts Unite!

This is from a book called Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength by Laurie Helgoe, Ph.D. She is great at defining introverts.

Contrary to what you might have heard, introverts are not geeky, shy wallflowers, or antisocial. We’re introverts (by definition)  because we “recharge our batteries” in solitude or in quiet one-on-one conversations, while extroverts can get recharged in noisy party-type settings with lots of people.

Introverts are not a minority–we’re just quieter than noisy extroverts. A recent large study showed that introverts comprise 57% of the population. That was a surprise to me. I always felt like I didn’t fit in with the masses. As it turns out, introverts are the masses!

Introvert Writers

I suspect that many writers are introverts. Otherwise, we might not enjoy spending so much time alone writing. And it would explain why our favorite thing to do is read and our favorite places are libraries and bookstores.

Much of the book is about celebrating being an introvert, and then using your introvert traits to thrive in an extrovert country. (Americans prize being extroverts, whereas the Japanese prize being introverts.)

How About You?

Are you an introvert? Will you admit it? (This sounds like Introverts Anonymous: “Hello. My name is Kristi, and I’m an introvert.”) If you think you are, what’s hard for you being an introvert in an extrovert world?

For Your Holiday Weekend

Published on by Kristi Holl

When you take a break on this hot Fourth of July weekend, try some of these articles. They’ll keep you in a writing frame of mind!

What If You Think You Might Be a Mediocre Fiction Writer? Every novelist hits the point, sooner or later, where they think they just might not actually have any talent. What do you do in that case? Should you just throw in the towel? Or muddle forward? How do you know if you’re any good?

Book Marketing Methods That Don’t Work (from Writer Beware! blog) For any author, whether self-, small press-, or big house-published, getting noticed is one of the primary challenges. Larger publishers provide marketing support for their authors (yes, they really do, despite popular wisdom to the contrary), but with smaller publishers, and if you’ve self-published, you may be mostly or entirely on your own.

The Internet and Procrastination If you have trouble wasting time on the Internet when you want to be writing instead, read this article. Some good tips–as well as information about a program called “Freedom”–just might get you past this modern-day obstruction–and back to writing!

Do Publishers Market Books? Do publishers still market books? Or don’t they? Should you go ahead and self-publish since you’ll just have to do the marketing yourself anyway? Before you go that route, read this article. It’s true! And are you willing and able to do all those things for your book? Pays thinking about. 

Tension on the Page, or Micro-Tension Tension! Tension! Tension! Great books have tension that keep us involved in the story. Micro-tension involves a diverse set of techniques.

Fillers and Drainers

Published on by Kristi Holl

I heard a sermon awhile back about life being filled with “fillers” and “drainers.” The pastor was talking about people, of course.

Fillers are people who know how to encourage you and build you up. Drainers are in your life because they need encouragement and help; however, they don’t have time for you if you need something in return. (You know the type. They think a “give and take” relationship means, “You give, and I take.”)

A rare person is both a filler and a drainer in your life, and you’re blessed if you have a person or two like that in your family or circle of friends.

Writing Relationships

If we narrow the “fillers and drainers” idea down to writers, I think you will find the idea holds true there as well. You will meet filler writers who are great encouragers for you, who help keep your self-esteem intact through the tough times of rejection, writer’s block, poor sales and negative reviews.

And you’ll meet drainer writers, those who nail you in the restroom at the writer’s conference and want you to give a free critique, then introduce them to your agent or editor.

Occasionally you will meet a treasure: a writer who is both filler and drainer. When you do, treat this priceless person well, and do all you can to sustain the relationship(s).

It’s Your Choice

What kind of writer are you? You may not know other writers yet, so you might not be sure. But you’ll eventually meet writers at conferences, retreats, local writer gatherings or book store signings and readings. In the writing relationships you form, strive to be a filler as well as a drainer.

If you’re unpublished or newly published, you might think you have nothing to offer. Not true! You don’t have to be published to be an encourager, an uplifter, or a good listening ear. Publishing advice isn’t the only thing other writers need. In fact, I would guess (from my experience) that it’s not even near the top of the list. (That’s why my blog is focused on the emotional issues of writing rather than how to plot or build characters or write a winning query.)

Do a Self-Check

After you attend your next writing event (large or small) ask yourself: “Was I filler or a drainer today?” Did you make encouraging comments as well as ask for help? Did you give as well as take? If you can find that kind of balance, you’ll be able to build writing relationships that will last a lifetime.