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To begin, tell me a little bit about yourself. How many of these have you experienced in your writing life during the past two years? I’ll include checkboxes so you can keep track.
Never finding the time to write
Making the time but not writing
Dreaming of writing but never getting started
Starting but never finishing
Starting but never finishing that one particular piece
Thinking you can do it without help
Thinking you’re beyond help
A love/hate relationship with your writing
Focusing on unhelpful negative feedback and ignoring positive feedback
Focusing on positive feedback and ignoring helpful negative feedback
Wanting to write deep but writing shallow
Writing for others instead of yourself
Writing for money but not treating it like a business Reading about writing instead of writing
Seeking out feedback before you’re ready
Seeking out the wrong level of feedback Ongoing health challenges like
Unexplained fatigue(physical or mental)
Mysterious illness(a neverending or recurring cold or flu) Injuries(constant little accidents) Addiction of any kind (substance, activities, self-destructive habits)
How many did you check? (Put the number right here)
Is it more than zero? I’ll bet it is.
If so, you’re facing Resistance.
I’ve written nearly 20 books and 200 songs in the past 11 years. I checked 17 boxes. SEVENTEEN.
I’m facing Resistance.
You’re facing Resistance.
Resistance? What’s That?
According to bestselling author Steven Pressfield in his groundbreaking work The War of Art Resistance is the mental and emotional pushback we feel when we dare greatly by being creative. It is our unconscious mind protecting us from what it thinks is the danger of emotional vulnerability. It shows up in all the ways in that checklist above, and more.
Resistance is a bully. It will stand in your way and stop your writing. It will knock you down and hurt you, emotionally, even physically.
Resistance strikes nonfiction and fiction authors alike. (Memoirists, are you listening?) Writing a nonfiction book is still a creative endeavor and will expose you to the same fears.
It will stop you from writing using the tools you checked off in that list above.
It’s Not Just You & I
“I was ashamed. I have spent a good many years since—too many, I think—being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction and poetry who as ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent.”
“. . . in my heart I stayed ashamed. I kept hearing Miss Hisler asking why I wanted to waste my talent, why I wanted to waste my time, why I wanted to write junk.”
Who was this loser?
Stephen King. Stephen350 million books soldKing.
This is a quote from his On Writing which, although not precisely instructional, is the most inspiring book I’ve read when it comes to staying the course as a writer.
This is the quote that gave me my writing life back. (I’ll tell you that story someday if you like.)
Our inborn desire to have our work respected can lead to problems if we put what others believe about our “God-given talent” ahead of what we choose to write. It’s one of many ways Resistance twists natural feelings into quicksand.
What’s a Writer to Do?
You cannot defeat Resistance once and be done with it. It’s part of our mental and emotional makeup. What you can do is make it irrelevant. Note that I don’t say “ignore it” because you can’t ignore a bully. But if you defuse them, do things to take away their power, they are no longer a threat. Like the bully at school (or, frankly, in the office) they still show up every day. But we don’t have to keep giving them our lunch money.
Being a writer is hard. You don’t have to do this alone.
It’s not going to be a collective moan-fest or chat-fest. It’s a guided learning environment, a community of writers making a safe place for some “you’re not alone” emotional support. It will also cover practical and actionable tools and processes to get you writing and keep you writing.
Membership is $5 per month or only $25 for the whole year. Questions? Comments? Shout ’em out below and I’ll answer every one.
Are you on Goodreads? Your answer should be yes. Whether you’re a reader, a writer waiting to published, or an author. Goodreads is an important place to be. As an author, you want to have an author profile and book pages. As a reader, you can post reviews. As a writer, you can join the community and build up your connections through Goodreads before you’re published.
Out of all the social media platforms out there, I love Goodreads the most. More than Facebook. More than Twitter, which I really don’t care for at all. There’s always something to do on Goodreads, whether you’re participating in the Goodreads Reading Challenge, adding to your to-read list, or sharing what you’re reading.
But you can do so much more than that.
If you don’t think Goodreads is a great place to promote because you don’t have many friends there or much traffic, then you need to hop on more often and send requests. I built up my number of friends by hunting down everyone I knew on Google + and my blogging network. Then I checked out who my friends had befriended, looking for familiar names. After that, I sent requests to people in groups I joined. No, not everyone, but those who appeared to share my interests in books/authors.
Also, make sure your pages are updated and you link to your Goodreads page everywhere. This is a place were readers hang out and post reviews, so make sure to have a presence here.
Now, I am going to share my three favorite things to do on Goodreads as an author.Continue reading
It has taken me a long time to warm up to Goodreads. As a writer, I’m still very wary of some aspects of the environment over there. But I’ve grown to use it as a tool, both as a reader and a writer.
I recently posted about my experience using Goodreads giveaways. I’ve also started using a few Goodreads widgets…carefully. Today and next Monday I’ll be covering a couple of widgets that I’m using there and Friday Chrys Fey will be talking about three other important things to do with Goodreads.
The way I’ve set up my website is for each book to have its own page, which helps with title SEO and visibility. I’m starting to add the Goodreads review widget on my book pages for a little visual interest and perhaps some social proof. I won’t add them to all of my book pages because I don’t want to slow my site down when it starts loading. I’m thinking the last few releases would be good enough. Continue reading
I released book nine in the Southern Quilting series in late-April. I consider the series to be one that can be read out of order with no problem…there’s really no continuing story arc for the main story, since each mystery is wrapped up at the close of every book.
But there are subplots that arc for this series. As usual, I tend to think that nothing is more important than the mystery. That’s been a stance that I’ve had to reconsider through many years and many editors, but my first instinct always concerns the mystery.
Another note: I always write my book description before I write the book. In fact, I write it months before I write the book…when I have my cover designer create the cover. I’m focusing so hard on the wording that maybe I have tunnel vision.Continue reading
