I Am My Own Boss, Part 2

          Even though I work alone, I’ve learned how to be my own best boss.

I have some managerial experience. For sixteen years I managed a medical office, and I took good care of my co-workers. It’s taking me about as long to learn how to take good care of myself.

Hands down, praise works best, so I try to appreciate any small step I take toward the larger task at hand – which is drafting a 100,000-word novel. One of the unintended consequences of this practice is that as I’m not just kinder and gentler toward myself, I’m kinder and gentler toward others. If I live long enough, I may actually become a genuinely nice person.

But I must admit that I still have days when I don’t want to sit down by myself to write a book that might never see the light of day. Some days, I’ll do anything to avoid writing, including putting off starting, going off on a tangent, or becoming paralyzed by doubt.

While I could try to turn these problems into an affirmation, “Hey Deb, you’re human!” I’ve found a more effective countermeasure to resistance.

Resistance is what keeps us from accomplishing our goals – from the little ones, like sitting down to write, to the big ones, like finishing a book.

According to nutritionist and writer Linda Spangle, it’s possible to defeat resistance by understanding its components and knowing what to do about them.. Resistance is manifested by Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

Typically, we respond to Fear with Procrastination. (Solitaire, anyone?) The best countermeasure to Procrastination is to Start: open a new document and start typing.

We respond to Uncertainty with Distraction. Ever start writing a piece and decide you really need to read War and Peace before you can do a good job? But before you can turn the page, you need to clean the litter box, which reminds you to put laundry detergent on the grocery list and make a dentist appointment for a cleaning six months hence? You get the idea. The best way to counter Distraction is with Focus.

And then there’s Doubt. Three quarters of the way through a draft and you become paralyzed by a needling voice that whispers, “You really think this is any good? Who are you kidding?” Doubt is responsible for countless unfinished stories in untold files around the world. But even Doubt can be defeated. Just Finish.

I have a Post-It above my desk. It says: Start. Focus. Finish.

Essentially, this is another way of saying, “Single Task” – which I wrote about in Part One of this post. And sometimes, I have to go through NAMS before I can Start, Focus, Finish. The more I practice these techniques, the better I get at sitting down, writing, revising, rewriting and returning to my desk day after day in what can be the most satisfying job working for the best boss I’ve ever had: me.

photo: M. Shafer

   Deborah Lee Luskin is the author of Into the Wilderness, an award-winning novel set in Vermont in 1964.

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I Am My Own Boss, Part One

            There are wonderful things about the freelance life and being my own boss. For instance, I set my own hours. In the winter, this usually means working early and late so that I can be outdoors during the relative warmth in the middle of the day. In the summer, it’s the reverse: I row my single scull early in the morning and don’t show up at my desk until ten. And then there’s the matter of dress code. Mine makes corporate America’s Friday Casual look like haute couture. But the hardest, by far, is the issue of just showing up.

This is easy when I have a deadline with a paycheck dangling behind it. But then, I’m not really my own boss – I’m the pen hired by a client, writing to specs. But showing up to write fiction? That’s when being my own boss can be tough.

For one, it’s lonely. There are neither co-workers to complain to or about. There’s no office gossip. And there’s no one to motivate me when I’m in a slump or to reprimand me when I shirk my desk all together. This is especially true when it comes to writing a novel, which can take years to draft and more years before it’s published. I’ve never received a cold call from a perspective client saying, “I need an 80,000- word novel right away!”

But I’ve been writing novels – both published and unpublished – for a long time. Over the years I’ve developed different strategies for coping with the inevitable slump when I wonder, Why bother? One is to read the Help Wanted Ads. There are days when I think about going to work at a burger joint, or a bakery, or anywhere else but home.

Another strategy was to schedule a weekly lunch date with a fellow writer to set weekly goals, but that’s petered out. These days, I attend a weekly workshop, where I write with the delicious synergy of other writers, including poets and songsters, memoirists, and story-spinners like myself. It’s glorious, and it always picks me up, helps me keep writing along.

But during the recent and difficult process of finding my way into Ellen, the tentative title for the book I’m working on now, I’ve come up with a series of no-fail exercises that help me show up, sit down, and write.

The first I adapted from Joan Dempsey’s Literary Living. It goes like this: I show up at my desk and start the day with N.A.M.S.

N is for Narrate.

I’ve been journaling since I was nine, and keeping an electronic journal since Microsoft Word came out for the Mac, in 1984. Before that, I used to type – on a typewriting machine.  So narrating how I arrive at my desk is how I start my day. It’s a way of talking to myself about all the static of laundry, bills, spousal discord, unhappy kids, sick chickens, the weather. Whatever. It’s a license to kvetch, if necessary, as if I were talking to a co-worker about my existential despair. I spill it all out, typically in a few hundred words.

A is for Affirmation.

Next, I write affirmations. This doesn’t come easy. For years, my self-talk went something like, “Deb, self-pity is a character flaw. Get over it!” But that didn’t seem to help. So now I try to remember what I accomplished the previous day. I list every victory over turpitude and sloth, regardless how miniscule. Washed my face? Terrific! Sat down at my desk at 8? Fabulous! Worked through the temptation to eat lunch at ten? Excellent! Produced x-number of words, researched necessary information, advanced the plot? Another superlative day! Like any skill, I’m getting better at affirmations with practice. And I can tell you from my own experience: the carrot is much more effective than the stick. Also: it’s never too late to learn positive self-talk.

M is for Meditate.

I used to count my journaling as writing meditation, but recently, I’ve started sitting cross-legged on the floor and paying attention to my breath. I started doing this for five minutes (setting a timer), then six, seven, eight – until I could sit still for ten. Each day I added a minute, and each day I’ve been surprised by two things: the time seems to go by faster, and my mind is sharp and clear when time’s up.

S is for Single Task.

I’m now ready to Single Task: do one thing with my full attention. I’m amazed at how much I can get done when I set my mind to it. And when the first thing on my list is finished, I move on to the next.

photo: M. Shafer

NAMS is one of several motivational techniques I’ve learned to use as my own boss. In my next post, I’ll explain another technique I’ve learned to nip procrastination in the bud.

Deborah Lee Luskin writes in southern Vermont and can be found on the web at www.deborahleeluskin.com.

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Technology is great…until there’s a power outage

It was just over a year ago when I moved to my current location hours ahead of Hurricane Irene. I had planned to move on a weekend, but Irene was on her way and I decided I’d rather be in my new place before she hit than stuck in my old one with the hopes of clear roads and power after she hit.

So, that caused a couple of days of unplanned downtime (my moving company could accommodate me with a 90-minute lead time. Yikes!) during a workweek, and even though I’m a freelancer, I have deadlines and schedules, so the disruption hurt.

A couple months later, we had “snow-tober” – a wonderful blizzard in late October. I had 24 hours without power, but it was a Saturday night into Sunday night, so I was back to work on Monday morning. Not bad! I was lucky.

.

Right now, I’m dealing with Hurricane Sandy. Big expectations for power outages, so I’m queuing up this post on Sunday night. If I’m without power, at least you’ll still be connected to me! Unless, of course, you’re without power, too (which I hope you’re not).

I’ve been busy washing dishes and laundry, and filling the cupboards the past couple of days. And now is the last effort for charging everything that needs charging. Because, hey, technology is great, but if there’s a power outage, those of us who have invisible umbilical cords to technology are left floundering a bit.

Gone are the days where I actually know people’s phone numbers. If I can put the contact information in my online calendar or in my smartphone, then I’m all set. Technology has made me lazy. The only phone numbers I know by heart are my parents’ and 9-1-1. 

Sometimes landline phones will work when electricity goes out, but it’s been almost a decade since I’ve had a landline, so, if my cell phone battery dies, I’m incommunicado, unless I want to sit in my car to charge the phone. It’s great that technology has expanded so that the car’s cigarette lighter is now a power outlet!

And work? I don’t have to be connected to the Internet to do most of my work, but I definitely need more than 2 hours of laptop battery life to get anything significant done. And I need to be online to get to my work and to deliver my work. Since my clients are around the globe, business doesn’t stop just because I’m in the dark.

How do you manage during a power outage? Do you give up on work until the power is back? Do you travel to where there is power? Do you have a job that requires you to be in the office regardless of the weather?

I have my Kindle charged for when I don’t want to read a paper book by flashlight, and lots of notebooks and pens handy for creative writing. I can manage during a power outage, I just prefer not to have the outage at all!

Lisa J. Jackson is a New England-region journalist and a year-round chocolate and iced coffee lover. She loves working with words, and helping others with their own. As Lisa Haselton, she writes fiction, co-blogs about mystery-related writing topics at Pen, Ink, and Crimes, has an award-winning blog for book reviews and author interviews, and is a chat moderator at The Writer’s Chatroom. Connect with her on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter. 

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Giving Up Reading

Periodically, I give up reading.

I know, I know, it sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

Good writers are writers who read. I totally agree with that statement.

But every once in a while, I realize that my reading is actually getting in the way of my writing: I’m reading as a way to procrastinate.

Sometimes reading takes the place of writing, and sometimes it takes the place of thinking about my writing. Neither is a good thing.

The first time I read a suggestion to stop reading (in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, many years ago), I thought Julia was way off. I was working full-time as a physician at the time, so how could she ask me to give up that 15 minutes of bedtime reading that I got in a few nights a week?

She wasn’t asking me to give it up. She was asking me if I wanted to be a writer (artist).

And I did—still do. So, I stopped reading for a week. And realized how much reading I had been “sneaking in” to my daily life. Those few minutes added up to almost an hour a day—mostly over solitary meals.

Instead of reading, I thought my thoughts. And came up with some ideas for stories. By the end of the week, I was sorry to see my moratorium on reading come to an end. But end it did, because reading is as natural to me as breathing, so without conscious effort not to read, I was back to reading at any available moment.

Since that time, I have periodically given up reading. I often give up reading fiction, but more rarely I will stop reading anything. When I do this I:

• journal more,
• write more,
• get more ideas for stories, articles, etc.,
• write more cards and letters,
• stay present more.

The end result of a week of not reading is, as Julia intended, a welling up of ideas, images, and thoughts that flow into my writing and into my life.

Not reading improves my writing, not to mention my productivity. I never would have believed it if I hadn’t tried it myself.

Today I’m going to stop reading again for 1 week.

Try it yourself and let me know what happens for you.

Diane MacKinnon, MD, is currently a full-time mother, part-time life coach, part-time writer. She is a Master Certified Life Coach, trained by Martha Beck, among others. She is passionate about her son, her writing and using her mind to create a wonderful present moment.  Find her life coaching blog at http://www.dianemackinnon.com/blog.

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Starting Over

Starting a new book is like learning to drive manual transmission: it’s all about getting into first gear. And even though a writer may have cruised along in fifth to the end of any number of novels before, each new one is like learning to drive all over again.

I’ve been jack-rabbiting, stalling, and crawling forward on a new book for some time, now. Mostly, I’ve been taking notes for my current project while I’ve rewritten and finished two other novels, one published and one currently with an agent. So now it’s time to take all those notes and ideas and relearn how to coordinate the clutch and the gear stick and get writing again.

            I have developed a process. First, I play computer Solitaire until I see spades in my dreams. Then I clean cupboards. Sometimes, I snap at my love ones, and other times I dissolve into tears. Eventually, I start walking. A hundred or so miles later, I overcome my resistance enough to sit down at my desk. That’s when I pull out my driver’s manual: Brenda Ueland’s If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit, originally published in 1938, republished in 1987, and still filled with timeless advice.

For one, Ueland writes as if she’s talking to you personally, and when you’re locked in the solitude and – yes, loneliness, sometimes – of trying to channel an entire fictive world, it’s wonderfully comforting to have a down-to-earth companion by your side.

Next, Ueland believes everyone can write; she should know: she taught writing to all-comers for years, and gives examples of how good writing arises not from education or erudition, but from the writer’s inner truth and honesty – the world observed from her point of view. Ueland believes that everyone is talented and has something to say.

Ueland also says the imagination works slowly and should be given room to roam. “Resign yourself tranquilly to doing something slow and worthless for at least an hour.”  This alleviates some of my guilt and self-loathing about playing computer Solitaire.

Just like life happens while you’re making other plans, Ueland is a big believer that the “little bombs” of imagination burst while you’re doing other things, like “sewing, or carpentering, or whittling, or playing golf, or dreamily washing dishes.”

Ueland says, writing “is just talking on paper.” Long before Natalie Goldberg taught us about Writing Down The Bones, Ueland advocated  free-writing. Before Julia Cameron wrote The Artist’s Way, Ueland instructed us to write daily without looking at what we had to say. Don’t get me wrong: Goldberg and Cameron have done us wonderful service, and encouragement to write bears reiteration. There is something especially encouraging, however, about this strong-minded, mid-Western woman from the last century speaking these plain truths.

With Ueland’s encouragement, I’ve been able to sit down again, find my voice, and start over. I’ve succeeded into first gear, and have just shifted into second: still moving slowly, but definitely moving forward and thinking about my characters and narrative so intently that the fate of my other novel hardly matters. For the moment, that book is finished. All that matters now is the one unrolling before me. As I gather speed and shift up, all I can do is keep my eyes on the road.

Even with experience, this is harder than it sounds. But I have learned that writing a novel is like a long car-ride. There may be breakdowns, detours, road construction, and accidents. But there may also be chance meetings, beautiful vistas, and unexpected adventures.

Honestly, I’m not entirely sure where I’m headed. I could get lost; I may have to backtrack; I may even drive past my exit and have to delete pages and pages of text. This is okay. My experience has taught me faith in perseverance. It’s perseverance that fuels the novelist – eventually – to “The End.”

Deborah Lee Luskin is the author of the award-winning novel, Into The Wilderness, “a fiercely intelligent love story” set in Vermont in 1964. She is a regular Commentator on Vermont Public Radio and teaches for the Vermont Humanities Council. Learn more at her website: www.deborahleeluskin.com

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Sometimes I Have To Trick Myself

I’ve been a runner for over twenty years, ever since I started medical school and learned that exercise was the “magic pill” that everyone was looking for. Throughout the years, there have been times when I didn’t (or don’t!) really feel like going out for a run.

So I trick myself.

I can tell myself, “just get dressed in your running clothes, then if you don’t feel like it, you don’t have to go.”

Sometimes, even after I’m dressed, I have to keep up the pretense:  “Just stretch a little, see how you feel.”

Then, “Just go outside, see how the air feels (or how cold it is, how hot it is).

Then, “Just jog a little, see how you feel.”

Well, by then I’m running and once I start, I don’t stop. Not even that time I ran the Disney World Marathon without training for it. (It hurt. A lot. I wouldn’t recommend it.) Took me six hours, but I finished.

These days, I also trick myself into writing.

With a toddler, a business, and a home to care for, there is never enough time in the day for everything. So sometimes I find myself putting off my writing, which I enjoy so much, in order to check more tasks off my to-do list. When I catch myself doing this, I trick myself. It works to get me running, why not try it for writing?

If I have a writing assignment I need to get going on, I’ll grab a notebook or a piece of paper and say, “I’ll just write for five minutes (or two, or even one), just free associate, see what happens.”

Or I might set my timer and say to myself, “just put something down, it doesn’t have to be good.”

Sometimes I have a first draft of something already finished, but I’m convinced it’s lousy and I’m not going to be able to use any of it.  Instead of continuing to avoid it, I tell myself, “just take a look and see if you can find one sentence that you can keep.” I’m usually (not always, but usually) surprised at how much I want to keep. And once I look at it, I usually want to keep working on it. Reworking a first draft feels easier than starting from a blank page.

Lowering my expectations and breaking the writing up into tiny pieces usually gets me past procrastination.

What are your tricks for getting your writing done?

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Overcoming Self-Doubt

My first published novel came out a year ago, and I went on a full-time marketing spree. It was exhilarating – at first. I had readers! Great reviews! Sales! I received emails, letters and phone calls from strangers thanking me for such a heart-warming story! I loved it – for about six months. But two things started to bring me down.

The first was the escalating need for more, more, more – more praise, more reviews, more sales. If I received one call in the morning, I hoped for another at night. I checked my amazon rankings compulsively. I thought about new marketing strategies constantly. It was like a feeding frenzy – and I was insatiable.

The second was simple: I missed writing. Instead of walking around in the companionship of characters living in their alternate universe, I was bereft of new fictional ideas, because I was obsessed with plotting marketing ploys. I’d sit down to write fiction and write another press release instead. As much as I loved being in print, I felt I’d lost my concentration – and maybe even my creative soul. I wondered if I’d ever write again.

I was lost in self-doubt bordering on self-pity and aimlessly (so it seemed) surfing the net, when I came across a link to The Power of Deliberate Thinking at Literary Living.com. The subtitle read: 5 Strategies for Staying at the Writing Desk (Despite Your Self Doubts). I knew it was for me. I downloaded this free, 40-page book and read it as if I were drinking water after a long drought.

Joan Dempsey

Written by Joan Dempsey as a prelude to a 12-week on-line course she developed, The Power of Deliberate Thinking was all I needed to be reminded that self-doubt is normal – and even highly accomplished and widely published authors regularly experience it. I was also heartened to read that there’s a reason for self-doubt – and ways to overcome it. According to Dempsey, self-doubt serves to make us feel okay about ourselves and our writing. Self-doubt protects us from feeling bad when our writing falls short of our expectations (we knew we weren’t any good to begin with) and helps us feel good about our writing when we write well (I’m a pretty good writer after all!). Self-doubt also keeps us at either end of a spectrum where we’re either not good enough or we’re better than average. The key to writing consistently lies in between these two extremes.

I read all five strategies as soon as I downloaded the book, and I set right to work, doing the exercises. The exercises gave me something to write – and thereby helped me reestablish my practice of sitting and regaining my concentration. They also helped me understand my self-defeating behaviors better – and gave me tools to change that behavior.

Of the five tools, it was the second strategy, “Awareness in the Moment,” that helped me most, and I started a daily practice that eased me back to sitting at my desk, focusing on my fiction, and writing again. “Awareness in the Moment” advocates a four-part method for regaining concentration: Narrate, Acknowledge, Meditate, and Single-Task.

I’ve always practiced writing meditation as a way of stilling my mind, so having permission, as it were, to sit down and write down what it took to get me to my desk that particular morning was second nature. Nevertheless, it felt wonderful to have “permission” to do so. Once I narrated how I arrived, I acknowledged all my fears and distractions – from not being able to control the complexity of my current project to the need to defrost something for dinner, schedule a mammogram and bring in firewood. By committing these distractions to paper, I tamed them – and was then ready to sit in silence for a few moments, listening for the voice that informs my fiction. Once I hear it, I then committed to nothing else – no emails, no internet, no phone calls, no listing “things to be done” later in the day. I just wrote.

At first, I single-tasked for ten minutes. It was enough. As I practiced, I wrote longer. Eventually, I spent less time narrating the complexity of overcoming self-doubt and spent more time writing fiction. Now that I’m happily writing again – engrossed in my new novel – I sometimes forget to stymie myself with self-doubt.

And Into the Wilderness, the novel that came out last year? Satisfied readers recommend it to others, and it’s selling itself, now. This is tremendous affirmation that what really matters is not the marketing; it’s the writing that counts.

Deborah Lee Luskin is an essayist, educator and novelist, who lives and writes in southern Vermont.

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You DO Have Time to Write. Here’s How.

There seems to be a theme brewing here at NHWN. Last week, Wendy wrote about creating the fire in your belly to write. This week, Deborah wrote about the value of persistence, Julie followed up with a post about “making” luck by taking action, and yesterday Lisa shared tips for overcoming fear. Today, I’m hopping on the motivation bandwagon. I’m going to start by telling you something you probably won’t believe:

You DO have time to write.

That’s right. You heard me. I’m talkin’ to you.

Lack of time is the oldest and most frequently used weapon in the would be writer’s well-stocked armory of excuses. It’s the perfect cop out because everyone gets it. We’re all busy. Really busy. There are lots of things we don’t have time for – writing, reading, exercise, meditation, preparing meals that don’t involve items from the frozen food family. Our lives are whirlwinds that start at dawn and don’t end until well past the bedtime we’d hoped for. To say that we can’t find the time is perfectly valid.

But, we can MAKE time.

I know, I know – there are only so many hours in a day and you need to sleep. I get it. I’m not suggesting that you give up your first born in exchange for a magic watch that stops time. (Though – wouldn’t that be cool?  … the watch thing, not the giving up your first born part.)

We build our lives by making choices. Some of our choices

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Why I’m not doing NaNoWriMo this year

It pains me to write this, but I will not be participating in NanNoWriMo this year.

Last year I was a NaNoWriMo virgin, but managed to complete 50,146 words of crap in the 30-day sprint to novel-writing success. It was a heady experience that went against my usual Type-A personality. The idea of sitting down to write a book without a clue about the characters or the plot made me a bit queasy. Despite my apprehensions, I managed to carve out time each day to sit and write. That alone was a major accomplishment.

I was all ready to dive back into the crazy-loving mayhem that is the month of November for NaNo novelists. Earlier this summer, I’d even plunked down a $50 donation and received a copy of the lovely Plot Bunnies print. Last week I started looking at everything on my calendar in an attempt to get strategic about clearing the decks for November’s writing marathon. Shortly after calculating that I have roughly sixty hours of blogging to do between now and November 30th, I realized I needed to do some serious thinking.

So, I went for a walk and had a little chat with myself.

“You should just do it. It’s only one month.”
“I know, but I have so much going on. If I add that into the mix, there’s a good chance I’ll lose my mind and maybe my boyfriend.”
“Wimp.”

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