Managing Expectations

 

NaNoWriMo taught me a great deal this year.

I shared this fascinating experience with a group of wonderful writers, many of whom contribute to this awesome blog. We would post daily our accomplishments, struggles, frustrations, and/or tears. NaNoWriMo is not a task to be undertaken lightly. In fact, I’d sat on the sidelines for several years, watching other braver souls set forth on the perilous journey of writing 50,000 words in one month. I’d pants around with them in spirit, adding a few words here a sentence or two there to my work in progress, but I did it comfortably from my uncommitted couch. This year, I jumped in with both feet, all the while kicking and screaming, and discovered a great deal about myself and the writing process in general.

The biggest gem of insight this insane challenge gleaned was that as writers, and human beings in general, we are ridiculously hard on ourselves. In order to reach 50,000 words in 30 days, one had to commit to setting down on the page 1,667 words daily. That, by the way, is my extent at math skills, which is why I stick with writing.

At the end of each day we would post our word counts. Some would wallow in defeat and self-torture, others would prance with victory. On days I didn’t make the word count, I felt like I had failed. Days I made the minimum or exceeded it I was ecstatic but felt guilty posting my success because I knew there were others in the group beating themselves up for not meeting the daily requirements. I knew how frustrating that felt.  NaNoWriMo was supposed to be a brilliant kick start to creativity, instead it turned into a mad dash to crunch the numbers, and each day I fell behind left me with a bitter taste of inadequacy and failure. Why? Because the expectation with NaNoWriMo is that you commit to achieving the goal. In order to win, in order to get that shiny NaNoWriMo badge you can proudly display as your profile picture, you had to make the cut.

But here’s the thing. Make the cut for what? We were battling with ourselves and our uniquely creative process (for more insight, check out Anna Davis's post Want More Creative Energy? Pace Yourself). NaNoWriMo forces us to create in a surreal, unnatural environment and then measure ourselves against that ideal.

 

NaNoWriMo is not bad, in and of itself, the problem is how we approach it. Setting goals is a wonderful pursuit, but expecting things to turn out a specific way only sets us up for disappointment and disillusionment if things turn sour. Instead of patting ourselves on the back for 500 words in one day, for many participants (myself included) negative self-talk undermined the process of creating and turned writing into something unpleasant, or at very least a chore, and a tough one at that.

We write because we love to, because our passion compels us to create worlds, people them with a host of quirky characters, and live out our fanciful days in a realm of make believe so captivating that we lose ourselves in our own delightful creations. When we get caught up in the semantics of process and output rather than the experience of joyfully, blissfully adding fresh, compelling, sexy words to the page, in my humble opinion, it defeats the purpose: why we got into this crazy gig to begin with.

As writers, there are a plethora of misguided expectations we may place on ourselves. We might have an unrealistic idea of how long it actually takes to write a novel, screen play, instructional manual, or memoir (months, years, even decades). We might not realize how many drafts it takes to turn a lumpy piece of creative clay into a smooth and polished masterpiece (think double digits here). What about the end result of your blood, sweat, and tears? Do you want to be published? Are you hinging your happiness and sense of accomplishment on whether or not you get picked up by an agent or publishing house? What happens if you don’t sign that contract? Do you throw in the towel, hang up your laptop, and call it a career? Or do you acknowledge that there are other streams, other opportunities to get your work out there? Are you open to new experiences, wild and crazy unconventional options?

If we are constantly hung up on the end result, whether we get there, and the way we envision ourselves arriving (standing on a podium with fireworks and streamer cannons, thank you very much) we’ve lost touch with the passion that drives us to create.

By all means, set goals, have objectives, but don’t hinge your happiness on whether they end up looking like the vision you created in your mind. Instead, go with the flow, take the lessons you learn in the process and attempt something new in the future, try a new tack. No effort is wasted.

Being a writer isn’t easy. There are plenty of challenges both external and internal that we continually battle against, but the journey is definitely worth it if we keep in mind our reasons for starting in the first place. Writing invigorates us. It makes us excited to wake up in the morning, our fingers itch to put those words on the page, to flesh out that story, to sculpt and hone that brilliant idea.

If writing’s your passion live it, breathe it, but let go of the handlebars, loosen the grip, lose the expectations and let the words percolate one letter at a time.

You’re a writer. Have fun with it. xo

In gratitude,

Marissa

 

Want More Creative Energy? Pace Yourself

Writing a novel is a game of endurance, and every writer must find their own pace. I learned this the hard way. I’m currently working on my third novel, the second in a series. Yes, you heard me right: my third novel is the second in the series. That’s because my first attempt at a novel needs a complete rewrite. Currently it’s occupying space on my hard drive until I develop the courage to tackle it.


"So, my old foe, we meet on the battlefield once again."

That first novel taught me something huge and valuable: never underestimate the power of a creative endeavor.

Creating something of value—whether a novel, painting, screenplay, piece of music, or the life of a child—demands reverence and care. Creative energy comes from the Creator, a being whose image we bear in our frail and broken bodies. It is a power…a force, both spiritual and emotional. It is life and love and pain. We can only handle small pieces of this power, and yet we crave it in massive doses. That’s why pacing ourselves is so important: we want the whole thing but can only digest a few bites at a time.

Some people—the marathon writers—work on their novels every day throughout the year. Good for them. I learned that I need to write in blocks of time (usually one to four months) and then take a couple months off to recuperate and brainstorm. You know, take a breather. Stop and smell the roses. And all those other forbidden clichés.

 

But pacing is more than knowing when to rest. There also comes a time for getting down to business. BICHOK: Butt in chair, hands on keyboard. This is when pacing becomes extremely important because this is the point at which creative power becomes the most intense. Writers often call this part of the process “the writing cave,” because it is deep and dark and consuming. It is also necessary for anyone who wants to finish a novel.

During these stretches of focused writing—months of concentrated plotting and words and dialogue—I learned that I can’t skimp on the basics.

What are the basics? They’re probably different for everyone. For me, I stock my writer’s cave with regular sleep, strong coffee (daily), red wine (occasionally), good friends (as much as possible), and time with family (daily).

For hardcore writing months, I also carry around at least three books in my backpack. Yes, actual books made with paper and ink. I don’t even have to worry about recharging the batteries. When I get discouraged—or feel like nobody else on earth has ever experienced the angst and sheer misery of writing a novel because obviously it is a special form of torture reserved for abnormal people like me who have an unhealthy obsession with words—then I pull out one of these books and read until I feel sane again.

1. Stephen King, ON WRITING. Love this book. The guy knows how to write, how to make a career out of it, and how to enjoy every moment. Good stuff.

 

 

2. Anne Lamott, BIRD BY BIRD. Anne Lamott has a true gift for expressing deep truth in relatable ways. My copy of Bird by Bird is crinkled and warped because I accidentally dropped it into the bathtub during a long bubble bath, and Lamott writes in such a way that makes me think she'd be okay with that.

 

3. Steven Pressfield, THE WAR OF ART. A friend lent this to me when I was writing my second novel (the first in the series). I was so impressed that I immediately bought my own copy and refer to it when I need a quick burst of motivation.

There are lots of terrific books for writers, but these are my tattered and torn titles that I come back to again and again when I need to focus that creative energy.

As a disclaimer, I still crash and burn sometimes. But pacing myself keeps that kind of craziness to a minimum. (For the most part.)

Now your turn. What works for you? Any favorite tricks for harnessing creative energy in your writing?

Finding Balance

Many of you have seen these kinds of writer memes in various places on the interwebs.

They get pretty close to the heart of the assorted perceptions of what a writer's life is like.

The only thing I'd change in my own personal meme is to replace "what I think I do" with something like this:

  

I'm under no illusions that I'm Shakespearean in any way.

But see that last frame in both memes? The one with Johnny Depp from the movie Secret Window (good movie, btw)?  It made me snort-laugh because, seriously, that's half of a writer's life--sitting around pissing away your time because you've hit a plot problem, or your muse is on vacation, or your characters aren't speaking to you, or you've contracted a nagging case of ennui, or you're just so overwhelmed and intimidated by the enormity of Writing A Book that you can't plow through and get it done.

 

Which brings me around to the idea of balance. How many of you are full time writers with the luxury of waking up every day to a schedule with only one thing on it: writing?

Not many, I'd guess.

I'm not saying that if you write full time you're suddenly immune to pissing away your time. I'm sure you are. I think it's a universal symptom of authoring. But if you have a "real" job, one you have to do until you've clawed your way into a place where you make enough money as a writer to quit said real job, then you understand how important balance is.

You may or may not know that in addition to being an author, I'm also a literary agent, a college writing professor, and a wife and mother. That's a crapton of work, right there, folks. We're talking at least two full time jobs and two part time. However you add it up, my days are full.

So it was necessary a long time ago to figure out how to balance it all. When I tell people everything I do, they stare at me like this: 

Then they ask: "but how do you do all that?"

My stock answer is: "I've become a master of time management, and basically I just try not to think about it too much, because if I do, I'll probably go crazy."

Generally, though, I'm pretty adept at time management, but not because I came up with some master plan, or took a class, or read a book. I just did it. I make a lot of lists, I learned to prioritize, and I use every spare minute in the day. When most people get off work and go home to relax, I'm still working. I may move from my office at the university to my desk at home, but I work at one or another of my jobs from the time I get up to the time I go to bed, 24/7.

I also have to let a lot of things go, like housework, which doesn't really break my heart, as it turns out.

 

But working hard in no way sets me apart. I know dozens of authors for whom this is a normal life. We do it because we want to. Most authors--whether or not they ever get published--are driven to write, so they'll do it no matter what.

Of course, the trick is fitting it into the rest of your life until you're (hopefully) at a point where you can afford to wake up in the morning and do nothing but write all day long.

There's no magic formula to balancing writing with the rest of your life, because everyone's life is different, so you need to find your own solutions. Compartmentalize, prioritize, shift, shuffle, isolate, ignore...and just DO.

Trust me, if I can do it, anybody can. 

 

Now, go and: