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Diane MacKinnon, MD, is a Master Certified Life Coach who used to work as a Family Physician. She’s passionate about writing and journaling and is (still!) working on her first book, a self-help book for medical peeps. You can find her at her website, www.dianemackinnon.com.
To be able to ask for what we need, ask for what we want takes courage—and it’s also a skill. Please join me for a free/fundraiser class taught by Alexandra Franzen called The Courage to Ask.
In this class, Alex is going to help us all develop the skill to ask for what we need and want, which will make it easier for us to find the courage to do it.
The Courage to Ask is a fundraiser class for CrisisTextLine.org, an organization that helps people in crisis through text messaging. 75% of the people who text them are under 25 years old and each text is answered by a human being who is trained to help the texter navigate from a moment of crisis to a space of calm.
I don’t text a lot, but I think about all the people in my life who use text as their first form of communication and I’m glad this organization exists. Especially in this time of COVID-19, when people are more isolated than ever, I’m glad there are people trained to handle these kinds of situations. All you have to do is text 741741 from anywhere in the US to be connected to a trained crisis counselor and start a conversation.
If, in this time of COVID-19, you can’t donate to this cause, you can still join the class. It’s free. Here are all the details about where and when.
I hope to see you there.
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Diane MacKinnon, MD, is a Master Certified Life Coach who used to work as a Family Physician. She’s passionate about writing and journaling and is (still!) working on her first book, a self-help book for medical peeps. You can find her at her website, www.dianemackinnon.com.
As writers, we need to be able to write about difficult topics and to inspire our audience to take action. In these difficult times, especially after the murder of George Floyd, we need this skill even more. We need to be able to write clearly about our emotions, our reactions, and our vision.
Alexandra Franzen, a writer and copywriter who I think is brilliant, as well as open-hearted, has designed a writing class for our times. It’s a fundraiser class for Black Lives Matter, so give what you can, or let her know you can’t at this time, and take the class.
Here’s the link to How to Inspire People to Listen, Care, Take Action, and Change the World. The class will take place on June 10, 2020, at 5 PM EST. You can watch the live-stream video (60 minutes) or watch the recording later. There’s also a workbook you can download.
Alexandra is going to cover:
I hope you’ll join me on Wednesday at Alexandra’s class. Together we can continue to make the world a better place through our words, our actions, and our hearts.
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Diane MacKinnon, MD, is a Master Certified Life Coach who used to work as a Family Physician. She’s passionate about writing and journaling and is (still!) working on her first book, a self-help book for medical peeps. You can find her at her website, www.dianemackinnon.com.
In Gretchen Rubin’s book, The Four Tendencies: The Indispensable Personality Profiles That Reveal How to Make Your Life Better (and Other People’s Lives Better, Too) she has found that people have one of four different tendencies when it comes to creating and/or breaking habits. I’ve written about habits before in this blog, but I’ve recently discovered this new book and I’ve used the information I’ve learned in the book to get more writing done.
The book addresses the question, “How do you respond to expectations?”
There are internal expectations (I want to start running again, I want to eat healthier) and external expectations (this report is due to my boss by Friday, my talk is Tuesday, so I have to print my handouts by Monday) and some of us do well with either and some of us have trouble with both.
After figuring out which tendency describes you—take this short quiz here to find out—you can use this information to get more writing done!
After taking the quiz, I know I’m an Obliger. I respond well to external expectations but have a hard time upholding my own internal expectations. That translates to me being very reliable to others but not so reliable to myself.
Rather than beat myself up about my tendency to bail on myself (I’ve done enough of that over the years,) I’m using the information in Ms. Rubin’s book to create external expectations related to my internal goals.
I want to finish a first draft of my book, so I found an accountability partner. He and I are both working on nonfiction books and we make commitments to each other and meet every two weeks to keep the momentum going.
I want to write every weekday, so I’ve joined multiple online productivity groups. We meet on Zoom, check in for 5 minutes, say what we’re going to do (= create an external expectation,) then we work silently together.
If I was a Questioner (another of the 4 tendencies) I’d figure out ways to make the things I want to do make sense. Questioners ask, “Why should I do this?” and will only do things they believe are worth doing.
Check out The Four Tendencies and see if it can help you get more writing done.
Diane MacKinnon, MD, is a Master Certified Life Coach who used to work as a Family Physician. She’s passionate about writing and journaling and is (still!) working on her first book, a self-help book for medical peeps. You can find her at her website, www.dianemackinnon.com.
What do writers read?
Anything and everything, right? Novels, memoir, how-to—but also magazine articles, cereal boxes, and comics.
Anything we read can help us improve our craft. Speaking of craft, there are books on the craft of writing that I read over and over through the years—books such as Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott, and The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield.
Newer books that I find myself returning to are Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You about Being Creative, by Austin Kleon and Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, by Elizabeth Gilbert.
In my opinion, any book can help us improve our craft. The first time I read a novel, I usually read it as a reader: I get lost in the story. But I often reread books: more accurately, I re-listen. My son likes to listen to stories over and over, so often I drive around listening to the same story three times in a row. If the story doesn’t captivate me on the second or third time through—some middle-grade books do, but some don’t—I find myself listening as a writer: trying to figure out how the writer created the effect they did. Then I’m as fascinated—or more fascinated—than I was the first time I heard the book.
It also shows me how important it is to read my own work aloud. Or, even better, to have someone else read it aloud so I can hear it—what works, what doesn’t work. Hearing my piece read to me sometimes makes the weaknesses obvious. If not, my reader often points them out!
One tool (it’s not a book, it’s a journal) that’s really helped my writing, my productivity, and my business: The Ship It Journal, by Seth Godin. You can buy a 5-pack on Amazon, but you can also get the PDF for free from Seth Godin’s blog. As Seth says in the post with the download, it won’t work if you don’t fill it out!
What’s the most helpful book or tool you’ve found for your writing life?
Diane MacKinnon, MD, is a Master Certified Life Coach who used to work as a Family Physician. She’s passionate about writing and journaling and is (still!) working on her first book, a self-help book for medical peeps. You can find her at her website, www.dianemackinnon.com.
This past weekend I was with a friend of mine who’s also a writer. I told her I wanted to start working with a writing partner. We’ve been in the same critique groups before and we’ve always worked well together, so I asked her if she wanted to start working together again.
She told me she couldn’t commit to that right now.
The very next day this same friend texted me to say that a past writing partner had contacted her and was looking for a writing partner and wanted to know if she was available. She wasn’t but wanted to know if I was.
I was!
She told him about me and vice versa. I don’t know yet what will come of this, but the moral of the story is: ask for what you need.
Tell people what you want.
Put it out there.
You never know what will happen.
Barbara Sher’s famous book, Wishcraft: How to Get What You Really Want, offers this same advice.
Just the act of telling another person what you want—or 7 people, as Ms. Sher recommends—has magic in it.
My friend wasn’t ready to become my writing partner, but the act of expressing my wish—out loud, in the world, to another person—changed the energy of my wish. It stopped being an internal circle, going around and around in my mind (where I’d been thinking about it for months) and created a forward momentum.
My friend said “no,” (for now) but the Universe didn’t. It started looking around on my behalf.
You don’t have to believe me. (This is how I explain such things to myself.)
But try it.
If you are looking for a beta-reader, ask the people you know who read and talk about
books if they will read your work. Tell the others, too—the people in your life who like movies over books, for example—because they may know someone who’s always looking for a good read.
If you’d like to work with a critique group, tell people you’d like to work with a critique group. Create a flyer starting a critique group and post it at your local library.
If you want more dedicated writing time, say that—out loud—to the people in your life. Your partner may respond with, “Why don’t I take the kids to karate on Saturday mornings so you can write?” (We can dream, right?)
Or something much more indirect may happen: Your co-worker will ask you to carpool and at the same time asks for silence so when it’s not your turn to drive, you get 45 minutes of uninterrupted writing time twice that day.
It takes courage to ask for what you need, what you want. Someone may say “no.”
But if you don’t ask, the answer is already “no.”
Ask. Put it out there.
Take advantage of the magic.
Diane MacKinnon, MD, is a Master Certified Life Coach who used to work as a Family Physician. She’s passionate about writing and journaling and is (still!) working on her first book, a self-help book for medical peeps. You can find her at her website, www.dianemackinnon.com.
Last month I wrote a blog post about procrastination. Today I want to tell you how I actually get myself to sit down and write.
Sometimes an idea comes and I just sit down and start writing. Or I jot down the idea and sit down and write as soon as I have a free minute.
Often I look ahead and see that I have a blog post due soon and I start thinking about what I could write. I think about it as I walk, run, and drive through my days and, once I get an idea, I sit down to write.
Other times, I notice I’m procrastinating, so I do the only thing that works for me. I schedule my writing time. I write down in my calendar “Write book,” because that’s the scariest thing I’m doing right now and I’ve procrastinated a lot over this book and enough’s enough.
Then, at the appointed time, I sit down at my desk. I don’t want to. I never want to sit down to write at the time I’ve scheduled it. I know this ahead of time so when I show up at the appointed time and “don’t feel like” sitting down to write, I accept this feeling and sit down anyway. When I do, I’m honoring my commitment to myself and to this project I’m working on that I care so much about.
The first thing I write is my journal entry about how scared I am to do this writing. (I wrote about this last month.)
Then I begin. I write. It doesn’t have to be good. It only has to be done.
If you haven’t done this kind of scheduled writing before, keep the time short. Fifteen minutes is plenty to begin with.
Your lizard brain may tell you 15 minutes is nothing, but try it anyway. You’ll be surprised how much you can write in 15 minutes, especially when you don’t give yourself permission to edit along the way.
Schedule your 15 minutes of writing time and write. When the timer goes off or you notice 15 minutes has gone by, stop. You are done. You did what you said you would do. You kept a promise to yourself.
It doesn’t have to be good. This is not about quality. That’s for later, when you are editing.
When I resist writing writing down my writing time, or resist getting specific about what I want to write, that’s when I know I definitely need to schedule my writing time.
Here’s my process:
What happens when you schedule your writing time?
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Diane MacKinnon, MD, is a Master Certified Life Coach who used to work as a Family Physician. She’s passionate about writing and journaling and is (still!) working on her first book, a self-help book for medical peeps. You can find her at her website, www.dianemackinnon.com.
I’ve come to believe we don’t put things off because we’re lazy or disorganized, we put things off because we don’t think we can deal with the feelings that come up for us when we even think about doing whatever it is that we want to/have to/need to do.
For writers, I think we have to deal with a lot of fear just to sit our butts down in the chair and start typing. Especially if it’s something creative or something you feel passionate about.
Our primitive brain starts yammering as soon as we walk toward the writing desk: What if it’s no good, what if I have nothing to say, what if nobody likes it, what if I make everyone angry?
Have you noticed how often that primitive brain, that critical voice, talks about “everyone” and “no one?” It’s scarier that way—and more vague, so harder to refute. If our primitive brain said something like, “what if my brother doesn’t like it?” my evolved brain would just answer, “That’s nonsense. He likes everything I write.”
So it sticks to “everyone” and “no one” to keep us from writing. To keep us out of our chairs. To keep us in fear.
Because the primitive brain doesn’t care about your book, your blog post, or your email. It only cares that you survive until tomorrow, and it’s fine with you living a very small life. It thinks turning on Netflix is a great idea.
And because fear is such a difficult emotion for us to manage, we often do just turn on Netflix. The brain does not distinguish between fear of physical danger and fear of what others will think of us. We have the same physiologic reaction to the thought of others not liking what we’ve (not yet) written as we do to being cut off in traffic while driving. Our hearts start to pound, our hands get clammy, we find it hard to breathe.
But we can manage the fear that’s not related to physical danger. There are ways. Here’s one that works for me:
As you approach your writing desk and you start to hear all those negative questions, write them down. Start a journal entry or grab a pad of paper and write it all down, all those thoughts.
Acknowledge your fear and notice the physical symptoms that come up. Also notice you are not in any actual physical danger. All is well.
Then tell that part of yourself that is so scared that you’re just going to write. You’re not going to show it to anyone, not going to publish it right now. You’re just going to write.
Then, after all those reassurances to that primitive (scared) part of yourself, stay in your chair and write.
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Diane MacKinnon, MD, is a Master Certified Life Coach who used to work as a Family Physician. She’s passionate about writing and journaling and is (still!) working on her first book, a self-help book for medical peeps. You can find her at her website, www.dianemackinnon.com.
Not all writers are introverts who cherish alone time. Many are, but even writers who are extroverts and get all their energy from being with other people, need time alone.
We need time to fill the well. The well is replenished with reflection, relaxation, observation, meditation, and movement.
I should say, my well is filled with all these things. Your well may be filled by additional practices, but even the most extroverted among us has to take some time for reflection and observation. We can’t spend all our time creating content and we can’t spend all our time taking in more—more conversation, more story, more learning.
We need to pause and just be every once in a while. Regularly, if we are going to keep filling that well.
Silence is one of the best tools I’ve found for filling my well. I regularly take Wordless Walks with other people. We may chat before and after the walk, but during the walk, we are silent. We are walking, we are breathing, we are noticing the crunch of the ice underneath our cleats and the flash of the cardinal’s wing as it takes off from a nearby branch.
And we are filled up when we are finished. Full of images, ideas, questions, and insights.
Honestly, I think one of the reasons we all get our best ideas in the shower is it’s one of the few places we are alone without the radio/podcast/TV/other people feeding us words.
Silence, time to reflect, artist’s dates—these are all writer’s tools, just as journaling is a tool. In order to know what we are really thinking, what we are really feeling, we need to take some time to allow our thoughts and feelings to surface. Time is a valuable and ever-more-rare commodity in this busy world, but it is essential for our well-being, whether we are writers or not.
Without that time, that silence, that reflection, our words will eventually dry up. Don’t let that happen.
Fill the well.
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Diane MacKinnon, MD, is a Master Certified Life Coach who used to work as a Family Physician. She’s passionate about writing and journaling and is (still!) working on her first book, a self-help book for medical peeps. You can find her at her website, www.dianemackinnon.com.
When you tell yourself you don’t have time to write, your brain believes you. When you tell yourself over and over you don’t have time to write, you never find time to write. Even when you have four hours set aside to write, something always comes up. Because you don’t have time to write!
Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash
But if you tell yourself you have time to write, time appears. I wanted to write “time magically appears,” but in my experience, that’s not true.
The brain is an organ that produces thoughts. It also believes thoughts—without question. Thoughts appear. We believe them.
Unless we make the effort to question them.
“I don’t have time to write.”
Is that true?
“Well, no. I wrote for two hours yesterday morning and I’m writing right now.”
What’s actually true is: I have time to write.
Because our brains have evolved to expend minimal energy, our brains prefer not to have to make decisions. That’s why it’s easier to go to work the same way every day, even if you could have avoided that traffic by taking the back roads. Your brain, all our human brains, would rather be on auto-pilot, conserving energy for when we have to run from that saber toothed tiger.
But there isn’t a saber-toothed tiger anymore. All that physical danger we’ve evolved to save our energy for doesn’t exist, at least not here in North America. We are very fortunate.
But our brains still operate the way they evolved to millions of years ago. So if we think a thought, it’s easier to just believe it and keep going because it takes less energy, which our brains equate to a better chance of survival.
But some of the thoughts we “just believe” are harmful to us. “I don’t have time to write,” for example, is a poisonous thought to a writer, or to someone who wants to be a writer.
So what can we do about these thoughts that appear and stop us in our tracks?
Take the time to question that thought every single time you think it and you will soon break yourself of the habit of thinking it.
Questioning a thought takes energy. So your brain (and mine!) will resist. It will give you evidence (excuses!) showing why you don’t have time to write.
Keep presenting the evidence showing when you had time to write. Give concrete, specific examples:
Catch yourself thinking “I don’t have time to write,” and challenge it. If you do, you will soon be thinking “I have time to write,” just as often. You will also, I believe, be writing!
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Diane MacKinnon, MD, is a Master Certified Life Coach who used to work as a Family Physician. She’s passionate about writing and journaling and is (still!) working on her first book, a self-help book for medical peeps. You can find her at her website, www.dianemackinnon.com.
Live to Write - Write to Live 