Happy New Year! I hope all of you enjoyed the peaceful holiday season, whether or not you celebrate.
Housekeeping
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Happy 2023
Every January, many people declare that this is the year they’ll finish their book. You might even be one of those people. While a statement like this can be motivating, it can also feel overwhelming. How, exactly, am I supposed to do this? you might be wondering. Here’s how:
One step at a time
Despite many peoples’ best efforts to do 200 things simultaneously, we can only take one step at a time. Writing a book is a marathon, not a sprint…and getting it to publication is a whole other marathon.
Several years ago, a professional artist friend shared with me some advice from her business coach: “Take the next easy step. If it isn’t easy, it’s not the next step.” When I feel overwhelmed, I often come back to this guidance.
Of course, we also live in a culture that rewards complexity and sneers at simplicity or ease. That culture, though, is the Puritan legacy of our patriarchal forefathers (aka colonizers), so consider this: Choosing to move forward based on ease and flow, rather than massive effort-ing, is a radical, rebellious act.
Take baby steps
Break down each task into baby steps. Some examples of baby steps might be:
Buy Scrivener, or if you already have it, creating a new Scrivener document. You don’t need Scrivener; you can do the same in Word, or a Google Doc.
Gather all your old journals (if you’re writing memoir)
Look up the weather on a particular date that’s significant in your story
Spend 30 minutes finding new studies and articles that support your thesis (for practical nonfiction, not memoir)
Outline the first chapter using index cards or Scrivener
Take a one-off class like this one to understand what you’ll need to organize
Then celebrate yourself for taking those steps. Baby steps look different for each person and each project. A baby step can even be creating a long list of steps!
BICHOK time
Yes, you have to put your butt in chair, hands on keyboard (BICHOK). Many people want to have written a book, and you can’t have written a book without first writing said book.
In my experience, BICHOK time is influenced heavily by what we do before we sit down to write. There are plenty of writing teachers who will encourage you to sit down and push through no matter what. From their perspective—and there is some merit to this—you have to get the crap out before you can start writing well. Sure, sometimes you can get into flow through sheer perseverance. I don’t find this the most helpful approach, because I consider it writing from a place of resistance rather than acceptance.
The Law of Increasing Flow
Another approach is what I playfully call the Law of Increasing Flow. This is how I work on my own writing: I only write in short bursts, and I take breaks before I bonk.
The post Creativity and Mindfulness is a great example of LOIF in action. I knew that I wanted to write about this topic, but every time I sat down to write, my brain blanked. So I went for a walk, because that’s what I nourishes me. Some ideas bubbled up. Then I went for another walk. More ideas came up. Then I sat down on a bench and wrote that post in my notebook, by hand, in about 15 minutes. Compared to other posts on my sites, that one was barely revised from the original notebook version.
Consider what replenishes you, what nourishes you. How might you incorporate that into your writing practice? Create a plan to sustain you through the good times and the challenges.
Living the Mess
This year, I’m aiming to send the Resonant Storytelling newsletter every two weeks, and Living the Mess newsletters on alternate weeks.
For those who don’t know, Living the Mess is my passion project and my WIP/writing focus. It’s based on my experience of spending seven years largely in silence and solitude after a spontaneous spiritual awakening (which, in turn, happened after decades of untreatable anxiety and depression). I call LTM “inner peace for overthinkers.” Living the Mess has been a blog since 2014, and this year, I’m changing it to a Substack newsletter.
If you aren’t already subscribed, I invite you to subscribe here:
Writing a book is much harder than anyone expects it will be. It takes longer than you think it will. It costs money, in terms of hiring editors and other contractors. It’s a long trek up a steep mountain, but the view from the summit is gorgeous. Don’t make the process any more difficult than it has to be. As with life, writing a book presents enough challenges; you don’t need to make it even harder for yourself.
Cut yourself some slack, find the creative rhythm that works for you, and just keep going. Remember, you can’t have written a book without doing the work of writing one.
Have a great weekend, and I look forward to eventually reading the book you’re writing this year!
When I did Jane Friedman’s Business Clinic in December, I set up a ring light. Miss Ariel decided that the light should be focused on her…