And Other Writing Obstacles

We often throw around the term “writer’s block’. It’s a terrific catch-all phrase for why we’re not writing (when we think we should be writing). I’ve argued before that there’s no such thing as writer’s block—my friend once asked if there’s such a thing as “ditch-digger’s block”. “No! Ditch diggers just get down to it and do their job!” He’s not wrong; we often use the phrase as an excuse to all our writing woes. 

But he’s also not right: writer’s block does exist—but it’s not a creative obstacle. Instead, it’s a message to our creative mind that we’re not on the right track. To get past it, we need to listen to what our creative mind is trying to tell us.

Consider writer’s block like it’s a symptom; it’s the same feeling, but diagnosing the ailment can lead to different treatments. For example, if we’re staring at a blank screen and don’t know what to write, we need to step back and consider our purpose. If we know what we want to write and don’t know how, then we need to brainstorm our meaning before we put pen to paper. If we don’t want to write what we think we should, we can stop and ask why we think we should. 

Digging deeper (ahem, like our ditch digger) is the way out of writer’s block. Find the underlying cause and you’ll cure the frustrating symptom. 

Or, you can go and get yourself another cup of coffee. 🙂

Women in the Writing World

Did you know the first know author in the history of world literature was a woman? 

Seriously. 

Enheduana was a royal princess and high priestess who lived in the 23^rd century BCE in the city of Ur, in what is now southern Iraq. Her poems, which have survived all these millennia, are often hymns to sing the praises of Inana, the Sumerian goddess of sex, war, change, chaos and conflict. (See? Another powerful woman…:))

How did I not know this before? She’s been around for a while, though, obviously less popular and older than, say, Homer. But with a welcome expansion of the literary canon searching for more female, non-Western voices to contrast the male (and white) view of literary history, comes more cultural recognition for Enheduana. This includes museum exhibits, a musical adaptation of her poems and new translations.

I love this fact because it reinforces everything we inherently know about women in the writing world (there is a place and always has been). It’s refreshing evidence that women’s voices may have been silenced before but not silenced forever. 

Oh, and she promotes a nonbinary, gender-fluid perspective of the world, too. 

What else is there to say, but women writers rock? 🙂

A Table for Two: You and Your Writing

I need to walk a fine line as a book coach. I want to support my clients, but I also have to hold them accountable. I offer flexible deadlines because I understand that, well, life can get in the way, but still… deadlines. 

Deadlines help my clients, but how each writer meets those deadlines always fascinates me. One client told me an ingenious idea. 

She moved her computer to her dining room table. 

She’d had it tucked neatly into a cozy corner in her bedroom, a beautiful office nook ready for writing. And then she’d go about steadily ignoring it. Out of sight, and all that. When a moment came that she’d put her computer on the table and left it there, she’d hit on her solution. Every time she walked by her dining room, which was way more than walking by that nook in her bedroom, she’d be reminded of her commitment. Oh yes, I have to write more pages. So she made the time, sat down and completed her submission to me. Early! 

Like all advice I pass on, this may not work for you. (Your dining room table may already be claimed by bills, art projects, junk piles, or, heaven forbid, dinner!) But if the dining room table itself isn’t the solution, then maybe the concept it: put your writing front and centre—literally—so metaphorically, it can be front and centre in your life.

Moving the Goal Posts

I was lamenting to an author friend how hard “traditional” publishing success is to come by. While she agreed, she also cautioned me, not so much about my perspective of “success” (something I’ve learned must be different for each of us) but the dangers of how we always seem to move the goalposts. 

Think about it: at first, you’re happy you’ve made time to write. Success! But it’s not enough; you want more. That’s okay; it’s good to challenge yourself. So you set the bar higher. My goal is to finish my manuscript. And then, with perseverance, effort and hard work, you do. But there’s more. I’ll get it published. Not easy, not by a long shot. When you do, whether it’s traditional publishing, hybrid or self-publishing, there’s a new goal. If I can only sell one copy (to someone not my family or friends!) And then you do. You get more than one sale, maybe even a hundred. But that’s not enough; could you sell a thousand? More? 

Ambition isn’t bad. Strive for the stars! But when you haven’t yet met the ultimate goal (ahem, Stephen King success, or something like it), remember the goals you have met. Instead of moving the goal posts, celebrate the ones you’ve mastered. Then you can add new ones.

Given that most people who say they want to write don’t even get to the point of picking up a pen, I’d say you deserve to celebrate. 

Lessons From Legends

I read an article about the 19^th century English Poet John Keats, who died of tuberculosis at age 25. He’d had a traumatic childhood—his father dying when he was 8, his mother remarrying then abandoning him and his siblings before she, too died when he was 14. Later, his guardian, who mismanaged his money, apprenticed him to a physician. Keats did well in medicine, but he’d started to write poetry by this time. It is no surprise to us writers, that, despite the potential for a steady, respected profession, Keats gave up medicine to focus on writing. 

It didn’t go well. His first efforts at poetry were excoriated by critics, and he was as affected by that rejection as we would be. Still, despite his dire financial situation and failing health, here persevered. 

He died when he was 25. 

He didn’t become a literary icon until long after that. 

It’s common for us to look at the legends and say, they, too, struggled, but look what happened! The resulting, Then it could happen to me! is often what gives us hope. 

I’m not saying give up hope, nor am I saying Keats made the wrong choices, but consider the consequences. It’s okay not to want to be poor, sick and lonely. If you want to write only a few hours a month, but you’re enjoying your life in the meantime? Go for it. If you want to take the financial risk? Go for it. 

Keats’s story is his own. Make your story your own. 

The Camera is Watching

My daughter’s friend told a story of a girl who set her phone camera on time-lapse as she did her homework. The goal was discipline: when she looked back at her time-lapse video, she didn’t want to see any wasted moments. The threat of unproductivity motivated her to keep focused. 

I was intrigued. I personally haven’t tried this, but I like the idea of being accountable to yourself. Given that writing is such a long process—and that some of your writing times may feel sluggish—could this help you keep going? It’s a bit of a “Big Brother/Sister” is watching, only, in this case, the “higher power” is you. 

Writing can be a lot of “downtime”—staring into the cosmic void of nothingness we call writer’s block—so the resulting video may not reveal obvious progress. On the other hand, could it stop us from going down rabbit holes on the Internet or social media? If good writing starts with A.I.C. (Ass. In. Chair.), could filming ourselves be a way to remind us that while we’re sitting there, we should actually do some, well, writing? 

I’m not always one for gimmicks, but I am one for strategy. Since we all have a different writing processes, motivations and discipline, I’m always intrigued to how others work.

Or, my camera will just show me writing blog post after blog post—which is, of course, so much easier than my half-finished work-in-progress. 🙂

Crunching The Numbers

There’s always so much talk, worry, emphasis and hand-wringing over social media. How much should you, as a writer, be on it? What kind of content? How does it help you build your author platform? 

The conventional answer is to use social media to build your audience and find your readers. That in and of itself isn’t easy, so a lot of writers (me included) get frustrated. 

That’s when my problems with social media dawned on me! I was always looking at the numbers! But I’m not a numbers person. There’s a reason I choose words over numbers. Numbers are a foreign language I have yet to master, yet conventional social media wisdom wants us to grow the number of followers or subscribers, to net the most likes and comments and thumbs up and whatever other metrics are necessary for “success”. 

I get wanting to build connections online. But numbers don’t do that. Nor do they show you whether you’re succeeding at that. Because connections online aren’t about quantity. They’re about quality. Do you feel good about the content you’re posting? Would you want to read it yourself? That’s what’s important. Since we’re not uber-celebrities with bajillions of followers, numbers don’t actually matter. ONE reader is enough for you to have made a difference. One smile on one person’s face, making one person’s day is worth it. 

Damn. “One” is a number. Okay, I concede. Numbers do count. “One” is my new favourite. 

Or Not

I’m sure you know the expression, “know the rules before you break the rules.” It holds true for writing, absolutely. There is such a thing as a bad story; writing may be subjective, but yes, there are “rules” that can make a story better. 

Consider, though, what rules make a story better and what rules are just convention. A convention is simply the way something is usually done. It is a convention of a murder mystery to have, well, a murder—otherwise we couldn’t call it a murder mystery. Conventions help us organize and understand. 

But conventions are still artificial. People made them up, then others followed. That’s not to say you can have a murder mystery without a murder, but you can have a mystery without a murder. Your mystery simply gets filed by other people in a different genre. 

Remembering this gives me freedom in my writing. It’s not just about conventions of genre, but any “rule” of writing. I’m not going to dismiss them all, but I am going to question each one. If it serves me and my ideas, then I’ll follow that rule. If it doesn’t, well, there are no story police set on arresting me. Given that many, many amazing stories break conventions (and start new ones) and many, many stories follow conventions and don’t get published, writing rules are not your holy grail. 

Your own story is. 

Wisdom of the Ages

My daughter was telling me about her Radical Political Thought class at university, and her reading of 16^th century political theorist Jean Jacques Rousseau’s thoughts on the origins of inequality. He argued it came from what he called “armour proper”, which is the desire to gain esteem from others and fulfilling your own needs in relation to what others have instead of absolute terms. She gave me an example. Instead of finding food until you are full, you search for more food than your neighbour—meaning you will never be fully fulfilled. 

I love when conversations with my daughters results in connections to my own writing life. Isn’t this true about writers? That we look around us for what everyone else (seems to) have? We compare ourselves to the bestselling authors out there; we look to replicate their success so we’ll have it, too. Relational writing objectives vs absolute writing objectives. 

I’m not suggesting we all put away our query letters, nor do we stop searching for our readers. But what if we stopped to consider what needs our writing serves us in its own right? Without the relational perspective, without looking at what they have compared to what we have, what is the purpose of your writing? 

Remind yourself of your why and then let the publishing and marketing chips fall where they may.  

Romance For All of Us

In one activity I used to teach debating skills in my English class, I would ask those who identified as male to stand on the right side of the room; all those who identified as female to stand on the left (I asked those who identified as gender fluid to, for the sake of the exercise, artificially choose one side or the other). 

I wrote the proposition on the board: Be it resolved that romance movies are better than action movies. I made the male side argue the affirmative (i.e.: that yes, romance movies were better!) The women were arguing the negative (that, in essence, action movies were better). 

It always got a laugh because obviously I was working with gender stereotypes. Romance movies are “chick flicks” and thus, not taken as seriously as “men’s movies” like action thrillers. The students understood the spirit of the exercise—a pointed criticism of the patriarchy, but they could also play up the humour in obviously false stereotypes. 

Romance novels are the biggest selling genre, with upwards of 80 per cent of readers being women. Yet still, there’s a stigma attached to them as “less than” because they are predominantly read by women. 

It’s disheartening that we cannot allow men to value emotions (and love and happily-ever-afters) as much as women, but since we’re nearing Valentine’s Day, I want to celebrate a genre that can offer all of us an escape into a world filled with love. Doesn’t that sound like it should belong to both women and men? 🙂