Writers in the Storm

Or... Turning Whine into Gold
by Kathryn Craft

I’d like to thank the team here at Writers in the Storm for letting me blow in with a series on attitude adjustment.

If you think this has nothing to do with becoming an author, you couldn’t be more wrong! From our first words tentatively pressed to the journal page all the way to our most recently published book, writing is an artistic endeavor fraught with anxiety that, if we let it, can have its ugly way with us.

This series seeks nothing less than alchemy: if we accept that negative feelings are part of the artistic process, we can learn to manage them to our advantage.

First, let’s drum up some optimism, shall we? Because optimism can help you get published.

Doubt it? More than thirty years of research in high-rejection endeavors, from athletic competition to life insurance sales, suggests the statement is true. There is more to optimism, however, than The Little Engine’s “I think I can.”

Optimism is the practice of framing what has already happened in a positive light.

To raise your optimism quotient, try the following ten affirmations. Meditate on them, speak them, and copy them down in your own hand until you are convinced of their truth.

Once you own these concepts, your writing will be less about the absolutes of success and failure, and more about gleaning the benefits of every step on your path. And who knows—you may end up appreciating the long process of getting traditionally published as much as you enjoy the writing.

10 Affirmations To Bolster Your Optimism:

1. Agents, editors, and authors all love to read and all have the same goal: to increase our country's wealth of good writing. Agents and editors need writers to keep them in business. We are comrades.

2. The book industry is super tough right now, but I am doing what I can to improve both my craft and my knowledge of the publishing industry.

3. I believe that being a published author is my destiny and I will start my journey down that road, but factors beyond my control will affect the timing of my arrival. I will get there when I get there.

4. While pride is the first of the seven deadly sins, optimism is a blessing for myself and for all of those around me. I love my work, so I will share my enthusiasm for it with others.

5. Rejection is the badge of honor I must sometimes wear to prove that I am boldly putting my work out into the world. But it is better to learn that I am not quite ready for publication through a private note from a publishing professional than to get slammed by critics and readers in the court of public opinion, where I might realize poor sales and never be published again.

6. No other writer has my exact combination of innate abilities, predispositions, life experience, interests, passions, and humor. These elements create a perspective all my own that will contribute to the wealth of existing literature. My readers unwittingly await my arrival.

7. Every experience is a good experience for a writer. Victory, failure, acceptance, rejection—they are all part of the human experience, and stoke the creative fire within me.

8. If I am an optimistic fool, so be it. The real fool is the person who stops doing what he loves just because it is difficult.

9. Worst case scenario: it never happens for me. My epitaph: "She died pursuing her dream." What stronger, more beautiful statement could be made about my life, published or not?

10. I am committed to learning. Learning can be uncomfortable, but ignorance will not move me forward along my path. If writing is truly my passion, I must not give up. If we writers stop pursuing our dreams, who will write all the books?

Have you ever turned around a difficult situation by writing out affirmations? It’s a powerful tool. Yes, it’s a bit like brainwashing—but think about it. In an industry as tough as publishing, how can this type of brainwashing hurt you? From the inside out, you will become a writer optimistic that she will eventually get published—and sensing this, others will perceive that you are already a success.

Awesome stuff, right? Kathryn will be here with us at WITS every 4th Monday for the next while. Let's give her a rousing welcome down in the comments!

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Kathryn Craft is a developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com. Her debut novel, The Art of Falling, will be released through Sourcebooks in January 2014. To read more about her book, check out her author site, KathrynCraft.com. Pre-order links are live at bn.com and Amazon.com!

Long a leader in the southeastern Pennsylvania literary scene, she loves anything that brings writers together—conferences, workshops, retreats, and blogs like Writers in the Storm. She also blogs at The Blood-Red Pencil and at her personal blogs, The Fine Art of Visiting and Healing Through Writing.

Connect with Kathryn on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.

By Piper Bayard

Everything I know about writing I learned from belly dancing. Yes, belly dancing.

How can this be? Art is Creativity, channeled into a three-dimensional form. It is the same basic process regardless of the medium, so the act of becoming proficient in any art is the same: discipline, practice, and dancing.

Dancing? Yes, dancing.

The question writers ask me most often is, “How do you deal with writer’s block?”

I tell them that dancing—writing—is the elimination of thought between the music and the motion. Like I tell my dancing students, when you get stuck, don’t push. It won’t work. Take a deep breath, and relax your way through it.

With writing, that means turn off the left brain and allow your muse to take over—allow your right brain to dance. Stories do not come from us; stories move through us. We are not the source of Creativity, but through discipline, practice, and subjugating the ego to the higher purpose, we can become effective conduits for Creativity.

So how do we unblock our conduit?

[No. Fiber is not the answer.]

Getting stuck in our process is all about the left brain—structure, plotting, and editing.

Control. Control is a good thing. It is the material our conduits are made of.

Discipline, practice, and understanding of our craft all contribute to building healthy channels for the flow of Creativity so that it doesn’t simply flood and dissipate with no constructive product to show for it. However, getting caught up in control can narrow that channel to the point that Creativity, like water, will go find an easier path.

When our inner control freaks get out of control worrying about what should come next, what should these characters be saying, what could make this scene bigger and better, we narrow our conduits.

The left brain is all about the piping, not what flows through it. The right brain is all about the flow. The right brain is Creativity’s studio, so when Creativity begins to dry up, it’s a sign we need to get the left brain to back off.

There is actually something simple we can do to achieve this . . . sleep.

When we sleep, our left brain checks out, and our right brain heads for the studio. That’s why so many of us wake up in the middle of the night with our best ideas. When we sleep, Creativity dances.

As you’re drifting off at night or for a nap, ask your brain a question. When you wake, before Creativity notices you’re watching her pirouette, pull out a piece of paper. Unlined paper is best, because lines are all about form and structure. Lines are left brain, and you don’t want the left brain clapping off beat with Creativity’s music.

Get out your unlined paper, get cozy with your favorite pen, and let Creativity dance.

Don’t tell her that she’s doing the wrong steps. Don’t tell her she has on the wrong shoes. And especially, don’t tell her she isn’t good enough to try those moves . . .

Don’t let your thought come between Creativity’s music and the dance she leads through your writing hand. Let her do anything she wants on that page, and trust that she will answer your question while she’s there.

We are not the source of Creativity; we are only her instrument. The three-dimensional tool that allows Creativity expression in this plane of existence. Build her a studio with discipline and structure, then get out of her way and let her dance.

Have you experienced writer's block? How do you combat it? Do you dance?

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Piper Bayard is a recovering attorney, a full-time author, and the managing editor of Social In Worldwide, Inc., a news and events network. Her debut dystopian thriller, FIRELANDS, is available from Amazon in Paperback and on Kindle and in e-book at Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and iTunes for iPad and mobile devices.

She is currently working with a “senior mouseketeer” in the intelligence community on the APEX PREDATOR series of spy thrillers. Her web site is BayardandHolmes.com. She would love to hear from you on Facebook at “Piper Bayard” or on Twitter at @PiperBayard.

by Jenny Hansen

My day job as a software trainer is about building the skills of my co-workers so they can do productive work. And you know what I noticed several years back?

There’s TONS of similarity between my training life and my writing life.

Case in point: Leadership Freak is a business and leadership blogger I follow. I get loads of great advice from his blog to pass on to my team. I also routinely read his stuff and put it out on the writing side of my life.

Writing is a business after all.

Below is my "writing take" on a post he did called 10 Power Tips That Build Potential. Dan Rockwell (aka@Leadershipfreak) and I agree:

People are at the center of everything.

I’ve talked about this before but, as a writer, surrounding yourself with a great team is imperative to your success. This journey’s just too hard to make a go of it all by yourself.

The team here at WITS -- Fae, Laura, Orly and Sharla -- is also my critique group. I don’t know what I’d do without these ladies, and certainly my writing wouldn’t be where it’s at without their help.

Some people have asked me what makes a great critique group.

Sharla Rae has been on the critique group track longer than I have and she wrote a great post about forming a critique group: How to Find Your Dream Team.

Today I'm focusing on how to give and receive feedback in a way that’s constructive and nourishes the insecure artist inside of every writer.

10 Power-tips that build a critique partner’s potential:

1. Always believe in your critique partner. If you believe in them, they’ll believe in themselves.

2. Put them under moderate levels of stress.

Don’t protect your critique partner from pressure. If their plot doesn’t make sense or they’d get more mileage from a scene by changing POV, you have to tell them. It is the nicest thing you can do for them.

3. Support them when they are challenged by honoring their energy and efforts. As their critique partner it’s your job to help them over that 80th rejection by assuring them that submission 81 might be the one resulting in a sale.

4. Provide resources; but remember too many resources stifle creativity.

This means loan them your craft books, plot with them, critique their work. Then send them off to work their magic alone.

5. Focus on their strengths not their weaknesses.

Don’t get sucked into what you wish your critique partner could do. If they keep writing, they’ll be able to do it someday. Take their weaker scenes and do your best to help smooth them.

Ex: I can’t write transitions between scenes well – if the gals didn’t give me that one sentence here and there, I’d probably cry with frustration (cause I’d never get my heroine out of that damn scene…NEVER!)

6. Engage them in the process of setting goals and creating vision.

It’s good to get together at least once a year and set goals and plot out projects. If your critique partners don’t want to do this themselves, ask them to still do it with you. At the very least, ask them to help you review your goals for challenges like ROW80…they’ll tell you if you’ve taken on too much.

7. Give them opportunities when they are ready; 80% ready is ready enough.

I’m famous in our critique group for being a little, um…forward. When we are at events like conferences or meetings with editors or agents who are taking pitches, I’ve been known to sell a critique partner right into the pitching session. They don’t always thank me, but no one has killed me yet.

8. Expose them to others who are doing what they could do.

If you know your critique partner would love to write mysteries, pass on the information for workshops that you passed over for yourself "because you don’t write that." Ditto for the experts in your life like the cousin on the police force or the great-aunt who raises Thoroughbred horses. You know people in your life that are subject matter experts. Refer these people to your fellow writers when the occasion arises.

9. Shorten the time-line for completing projects.

Adhere to deadlines within your critique group, the same as you would with your regular day job projects. Since a piece of fiction is never "finished," as writers we have to learn how to let go when it is "good enough" and move on to the next project. Setting deadlines can help make this letting go process easier.

10. Help your critique partners press through excuses.

Work, school, kids, illness. There are a million reasons we can think of not to write. Some are valid (for a while) and some are not. It’s up to your critique people to remind you of the one really big reason to finish your writing projects. If you want to be published, you must write. And revise. And submit. The End.

Everything else is just window dressing.

A word on pain:

Young and emerging leaders writers will rise to the point of pain. As a writer with some talent and perseverance, the simple equation of butt-in-chair and writing practice is often enough to let a writer write a good book. Progressing from "average writer" to the "remarkable writer" we all yearn to be takes passion, conviction, vision, persistence, and courage.

Your critique partners should be there with a word of comfort or a kick in the pants, AND practice the 10 Power Tips above, to help you break through to the other side.

How do you handle the critique process? Do you have a critique group? Tell us about them and what tips you’ve found to get the most out of the process.

Happy Writing!

Jenny

Jenny fills her nights with humor: writing memoir, women’s fiction, chick lit, short stories (and chasing after her toddler). By day, she provides training and social media marketing for an accounting firm. After 18 years as a corporate software trainer, she’s digging this sit down and write thing. When she's not here at WITS, Jenny can be found on Twitter at JennyHansenCA and at her personal blog, More Cowbell.