Whether you make New Year resolutions or set goals, January is the perfect time to look forward. Over the last few years, I’ve been doing something a tad different. I think of one word that will guide me for the year. And then I make sure that what I take on meshes with my guiding word.
I challenged the WITS crew to do the same …
Here are ours.
Orly My word for 2016: Refocus
The last few years have been chaotic on both the personal and professional front. A few amazingly wonderful things—signed with my brilliant agent and sold my debut book; great first retreat for the Women’s Fiction Writers Association—but to be perfectly honest, I let a lot of the chaos trip my forward momentum. So for 2016, I’m committing to refocusing. I’m committing to my writing, and I’m committing to me.
Laura My word for 2016: Choice
I've spent years chasing publishing. 7 books, 2 publishers and 3 years later, I'm not saying I won't continue the chase. But I'm going to do so aware at all times I have choices - and not fixate on one target. This year, it's about what's best for me, and my work.
Fae My word for 2016 is: Publish
I will send queries and requested submissions this year. An agent, an editor with a contract toward publishing is the goal. This is the year I commit to sharing my stories. And being willing to make the changes in my lifestyle to do so.
Jenny My word for 2016: Discipline
I chase after my kid, volunteer at her school, work full time and squeeze in writing. But sometimes (okay, lots of times), I take an hour and curl up with my Kindle and my knitting. We writers need to read, but I also need to add some discipline to my writing schedule and do it before I play. I'm so close to being at the end of a big project and only discipline will get me there.
Now I’m challenging you guys. Add yours in the comments. :-)
Every writer, whether they're starting the journey or standing atop the bestseller lists, feels like a hack at some point. Like an imposter, a phony, a gigantic fakeball loser. It might happen once a month or once an hour. The point is, it will happen.
If Woody Allen is correct and “80% of success is showing up,” the other 20% of a writer's success must be correlated to their stockpile of courage and the strength of their underpants.
I'm sure we're all well-acquainted with the tricks our writer's brain has up its sleeve. The torturous, defeating messages it sends out when we sit our butts down.
I'm too tired.
I'll do this after [fill in the blank].
This book is crap.
No one will buy this.
No one will read this.
And the #1 favorite from the top of the post:
I am such a hack.
These messages are where those titanium underpants come into play. Your courage and your willingness to make mistakes is what will keep you in that chair, even when you're squirming against whatever doom and failure happen to be chasing through your psyche that day.
Neil Gaiman posted this wish for his readers a few New Year's Eves back:
I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.
Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.
So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.
Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.
Make your mistakes, next year and forever.
Isn't that awesome???
All the great minds of our time embrace mistakes because they embrace learning. They dare to suck, and that's a beautiful thing. That means if we get in the habit of just showing up, we will eventually achieve excellence, right?
Well...yes.
If you don't believe me, look at our pal Laura Drake here at Writers In the Storm.
When I first met her, she was clawing her way through her first full-length novel with a cardboard hero and a plot that resembled Swiss cheese. It didn't matter. Because she had tenacity. She had a dream, a strong work ethic and underpants just like those glittery babies up above. (Okay, maybe she wore cotton, but it was strong cotton.)
Laura showed up every day before dawn, facing down that "You Suck" voice because she had a dream. She attended her monthly writing meetings and took every class Margie Lawson offered.
Seven books and several years later, she is about to publish the book of her heart because all that chair time and effort and classes were about this book. THIS was the book she wanted to be good enough to write, because this book is for her sister.
There's a lot to be said for just showing up.
Elizabeth Gilbert's (incredibly amazing) TED talk references these two elusive ideas - the concept of "showing up" and the creative muse.
Gilbert believes the importance of showing up is this:
Whatever creative gorgeousness there is in your universe needs your fingertips to help it into existence. If you don't show up to the page, that beautiful cranky bipolar muse is going to go show up for someone else who is doing the work.
https://youtu.be/86x-u-tz0MA
She expressed it this way:
"And what I have to sort of keep telling myselfwhen I get really psyched out about [writing] is don't be afraid. Don't be daunted. Just do your job.Continue to show up for your piece of it, whatever that might be.
"If your job is to dance, do your dance.If the divine, cockeyed genius assigned to your casedecides to let some sort of wonderment be glimpsed, for just one momentthrough your efforts, then Olé! And if not, do your dance anyhow.And Olé! to you, nonetheless.I believe this and I feel that we must teach it.
"Olé! to you, nonetheless,just for having the sheer human love and stubbornnessto keep showing up."
Just showing up can be an act of great courage. Even if the only thing coming out of your fingertips is crappy writing and hangnails - especially if that's where you are - showing up is an act of defiance that will pay off. That kind of iron will is what forges successful writers.
Sometimes you have to channel social psychologist, Amy Cuddy, and fake it till you make it.
In fact, at the end of the snippet below she says, "..don't fake it till you make it.Fake it till you become it.Do it enough until you actually become it and internalize."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXfrVdhmilI
Note: Cuddy's entire TED talk is here, and is worth your twenty minutes to watch (and the two minutes afterward you will spend pretending to be Wonder Woman).
Here's hoping you show up to your writing in 2016, in some cute-but-mighty underpants, in time to catch the gorgeousness and get it to the page. At the very least, I hope you make some incredibly grand mistakes.
Olé!
Do you make New Year's resolutions? What are they for 2016? What is your greatest writing challenge? And do you have any inspirational quotes to share?
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About Jenny Hansen
By day, Jenny provides training and social media marketing for an accounting firm. By night she writes news articles, humor, memoir, women’s fiction and short stories. After 18+ years as a corporate software trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.
As I reflect upon the challenges 2015 thrust upon me, the dark chill of the winter solstice sets an appropriately gloomy stage. It wasn’t all bad, of course. May 5th brought the publication of my second novel. Other highlights existed. But much of my year was marked by accumulating personal loss, professional disillusionment, and financial setback that rocked my typical equilibrium and sorely tested my optimism. For kicks and giggles, at the end the Universe threw in a badly sprained wrist, which even now is turning my typing into a painful scramble.
On most days I shore up my faith by thinking of myself as a character plugged into a story so grand that I’ll never have access to the whole of it—at least not while I still reside in this earthly realm. But I had lost my ability to meet adversity with any form of equanimity. As the nights grew longer grief had me holed up, detached, and unable to find my footing.
Is that enough whining for you? It’s enough for me. Good riddance, 2015. I don’t even want a do-over. I want to move on.
But moving on isn’t so easy when your resources are drained, is it? Inspiration flees. Creativity shrivels. Problem solving eludes. How, exactly, do you turn whine into gold?
I found solace in the form that never fails to inspire: story.
Here are some of its many healing elements.
Story creates meaning.In story, tough circumstances can create a purposeful progression toward a final note of hope, even when the protagonist herself cannot appreciate this.
Characters will always reveal themselves.Even when I was clearly in no shape to pen a magnum opus, and wasn’t feeling at all like myself, there were many less demanding tasks that reminded me of my character. I taught a few workshops. Recommended a worthy new author to my agent. Blurbed a debut novel. Signed stock at my local indie bookstore. Continued to support my fellow authors with reviews and social media promotion. Helping others is like opening a spiritual faucet that allows a backflow of grace in your direction.
A story has more than one character.Even in the movie Castaway Tom Hanks’ character had a relationship with a volleyball. I was not alone in my slog through the grief’s mire; others have blazed a well-worn path to firmer footing.
Change always requires conflict.Unless we-as-protagonists want our stories to end in the same place they began, we must change. Change exacts from us many deaths: our outgrown roles, our old ways of thinking, our expectations of how we thought our lives and careers would progress. Death is hard to accept—that’s why we’d rather read or write about it rather than struggle with it ourselves.
Conflict is inevitable.Because no two characters are identical in backstory motivation, personality, or spirit, how they pursue their goals will eventually cause their paths to intersect in a way that causes conflict—even if they’re on the same team. Story encourages us to accept this inevitability.
A good story is always hardest on the protagonist right before the climactic fight. You can only take so many hits lying down. Living through my own dark moment made me see it was time to get up and fight for the life I want.
I do not intend to suggest that reading a story will heal those suffering from clinical depression, which requires medical intervention. But 2015 reminded me that there are times when even the most diehard optimists can’t see beyond the crush of external complications. Somehow I forgot story’s promise: that the most impactful gifts can smell like fear, taste like defeat, and sound like heartbreak. These gifts can be poured into a new story. They can change us, perhaps painfully, but for the better.
We live within seasons of change. In the coming weeks the sun will rise earlier each day, and stories will continue raising new questions. Even at the end of a beloved plot line, readers and characters alike wonder: what will happen next?
Let’s find out, shall we?
Happy New Year to all of the readers here at Writers in the Storm!
What are you happy to leave behind in 2015? What are you approaching with optimism in 2016?
Her work as a developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com, specializing in storytelling structure and writing craft, follows a nineteen-year career as a dance critic. Long a leader in the southeastern Pennsylvania writing scene, she hosts lakeside writing retreats for women in northern New York State, leads workshops, and speaks often about writing.
Kathryn lives with her husband in Bucks County, PA.
