Give Yourself a Break

Ever seen a toddler race in the Olympics? Yeah, me neither. It’s a cute thought, right? But one we’d never expect in reality. How could a little person, just learning to walk, compete with grown adults, athletes, who have trained specifically for their event for years? 

And yet, we writers do it all the time. When we sit down to write our first draft—especially if it’s our first book—we think we should be able to keep up with the best. The books already out there, the bestsellers and prize winners. The published, finished products. 

But we’re not being fair to ourselves. When you’ve never written a book before—hell, even if you’ve written a dozen, you’ve never written this new one before—you’re starting out. Getting your race legs, if you will. You’re the equivalent of a little person learning a new skill. So why do we think we can go for gold the first time out? Why do we think our first draft has to be publishable quality from the start? 

Like a toddler, who grows into a child, then teen, then adult, who practices and trains, and works with coaches and fellow athletes, we, too, can get there. But not right away. Give yourself time. Give yourself training. Give yourself a break. 

The Secret

When you start something new, it’s easy to feel like an idiot. You may stumble and flail, and show your ignorance. It’s true that many veterans may condescend to new people learning the endeavor. If you’re lucky, you’ll find caring, supportive experts who remember what it was like to be new themselves and help guide you. But the inherent fear of judgment remains. 

Writing is no different, made even worse by the fact that there is no one right way. How do you figure it out? Who do you listen to? How do you learn? 

By diving in with a different perspective. Instead of thinking about how little you know, consider that every step you take is leading you to unveil a secret. Your secret. How you write. Your process may be hidden from you, but that’s what your learning curve is all about. It’s about gathering tips and tools that others have used then try them to excavate your own secret. With this mindset, you step away from the “I-don’t-know-what-I’m-doing” anxiety and into the “I’m-curious-to-find-my-own-answers” attitude. 

It sets you on a path of exploration. I’m going to see what others do and then find out if it’s right for me is a lot different than Am I doing this right or am I making a fool of myself?

Unearthing your own secrets of how to write can be hard, but this mindset allows you to go into something new with a confidence that you’re finding your way and your way is valid. 

Give Up Your Goals

Here’s a radical idea: give up your goals. 

Seriously. 

I didn’t say give up writing, but what if we gave up our “finish line”? By definition, that finish line is in the future, whether it be completing a manuscript or making the bestseller list, and it hasn’t happened yet. If we bank all our energy on that goal, we’re focused on future happiness (i.e.: when the goal is met). Only, the future is always out of reach. Even when (if?) we meet our goal, it’s often only a temporary high. We then plan our next goal, and then the next, setting ourselves up to never be satisfied. 

So, what, just give up, Jen?

No. Instead, reframe the idea of “goals” into “guesses”. Goals give you tunnel vision—you focus on only one thing—but guesses are flexible. Guesses are open-minded. Guesses are, “let’s try this and see what happens. Let’s try to finish a manuscript. Let’s try to get it published. Let’s try to enjoy the journey.” And if it doesn’t work? It’s easy to shift your guess. It’s shifting your exclamation mark (“dammit, I’m going to do it!”) into a question (“is this how I can do it?”). One sets you up for failure. The other sets you up for experimentation. One forces you on a certain path; the other offers you opportunities you may otherwise have missed. 

Giving up your goals is not about giving up your dreams: it’s about giving up on the stress they cause, instead.

Puzzling Out Mosaics

I stumbled across a beautiful café, featuring the owner’s mosaics. Even the tables were inlaid with her gorgeous work. That’s when I realized the artist had done what I do as a writer: create a variety of different pieces (her, art; me, story) and put them together in a creative manner. 

I had always envisioned those pieces of a story as puzzle pieces. As writers, we take the time to create each piece (character, plot, setting, etc). Then we work on how they’ll fit together. It’s a challenge, of course, since we don’t often have a finished picture to work from. 

But what if our story-building process is less like a puzzle and more like a mosaic? A puzzle suggests there’s one right way. All the pieces have their place. A mosaic suggests the possibility of multiple ways of making meaning. I’d always liked the puzzle analogy because of the idea of “fit”. For example, you can’t jam two characters together who aren’t supposed to be in the same scene. But if you think of moving mosaic tiles around to create your image, you have more flexibility. 

Writing is all about shifting perspectives—and it’s not just for the reader. Mosaics are beautiful; my writing process can be, too. 

Consumers Vs Creators

I was chatting with a friend recently, who had begun to paint again after a long absence from her art. 

She explained she felt she had been consuming a lot—news, information, social media—and it was getting her down. “I didn’t want to consume anymore. I wanted to create.”

Isn’t that why we write? Yes, absolutely, we consume other people’s stories—as we hope they’ll do ours—but if our love of stories was only about consumption, well, then, we’d be solely readers, not writers. 

And it’s the underlying fulfillment of creation that also struck me. It’s not that we can’t enjoy other people’s stories, but we feel, on some level, in some way, fulfilled by writing. By creating. By coming up with something that has never before seen the light of day. We’re weaving magic with our own imaginations—for us. Because, let’s face it, if it were strictly for the consumer—the reader—we’d pack up our pens in a heartbeat. Given the long odds of publishing, marketing, visibility and discoverability, few writers set out, as their only goal, to churn out a product to make money. 

In the writing world where traction is hard to get, it’s heartening to remember that we’re not simply consumers, we’re creators. 

That, to me, is worth picking up my pen. 

Adding Fun to Our Writing

I read an article about how a woman, after a frustrating commute in Boston, began a campaign to have the public transit system install googly eyes on its trains. 

Googly eyes. On trains. 

And it worked! Boston now decals on some trains that look like eyes. Just for fun. To brighten riders’ days. 

Cute, I thought, and that was the end of that. 

A few days later, my daughter opens the fridge and sees a new carton of milk, with half of it covered in a minion’s face. 

She stops and stares. “Oh my god, that just made my day,” she smiled.

I had to stop and think. I was the one who had bought the milk. I noted the minion, but that was it. I placed the carton in the fridge, yet thought nothing more of it. Now, though, after my daughter’s comment, I can’t help but smile every time I open the fridge. 

The two happy-face stories got me thinking about what we put into our own stories. Even if we’re writing the most angsty, horrific, trauma-laden story, we can often find a spark of levity, a hint of light. We need to, even if it’s a flash, even if it’s only temporary, because light and hope—and a smile—are still a part of our human experience. 

So look at your stories with a critical eye—for fun. Where can you add a hint of whimsy? A dash of silly? 

How, in other words, can you make your reader smile? 

Problem Exploration

I came across this concept of “problem exploration”. It’s the exact opposite of problem-solving, the default mindset we’re most often taught. It’s about taking the time to examine a problem from all different angles—not with the focus of finding the “right” way to “solve” it, but opening up the possibilities of how your problem may not be a problem. 

I love this shift in perspective. If I’m trying to brainstorm an outline—and you know that plot is always my weakness—I often feel like I’m struggling to find the right “fit”. What action or event should I add to make sure my character and story evolve? This whole time I have the end goal in mind. I want my character here. How do I get them here? That’s one way, absolutely, but what if I take the time to explore why my character needs to get “here”? What if I look at how my secondary characters might get “here” and how I could apply that to my protagonist? When started to look at my problems as something to explore, rather than solve, I started to shed some of my writing anxiety. 

There is no magic bullet for an easy writing life. This strategy may or may not work for you, but maybe it’s worth a shot. Because, as I was reminded of advice my father would often give me, “They’re not problems—they’re opportunities.”

What opportunity can you extract from your problem exploration?

Writing Isn’t JUST Writing

Do you ever run out of things to imagine? Yeah, me neither. My mind is always active, thinking up new worlds or new stories or new characters. I have journal after journal after journal of jot notes and story ideas. 

And most of them will nowhere. It took me a long time to realize that was okay. Not every idea can turn into a completed novel and not every idea should! But I got stuck on this notion that I wasn’t a writer if I wasn’t working on turning those ideas into a book. If I wasn’t “putting in the effort” to write scenes and then revise them, then I must not be doing this whole writing thing right. 

But crafting a story for other readers is only one part of the writing process. Playing around with ideas, discarding ones that don’t work, expanding on ones that do is all part of our creativity. So if you’re in that stage, not yet ready to put words onto the page, that’s okay! You’re still doing important, valuable work as a writer. 

More importantly, you’re enjoying it. Writing is HARD! Maybe for you it’s the brainstorming, or maybe it’s the drafting, but if you find a part of the process you enjoy, then enjoy it! Turn your ideas into a book if you want to. Don’t turn them into a book if you don’t! Writing is your thing. You get to choose how you do it. 

Find the Magic YOUR Way

Back in elementary school, my Grade 5 class put on a play, The King’s Creampuff, in which the Witch of All Witches steals the King’s royal recipe book, causing uproar in the royal kitchen when the chef can no longer make the King’s favourite creampuffs. The daring princess (ahem, me, in my theatrical acting debut) saves the day but not before the king tears apart a baked creampuff in a futile attempt to find how it’s made. To his dismay, he finds only crumbs.

Sometimes reading a book as a writer feels the same way. We find a book we love and we dissect it to learn how the author wove their magic. We know the ingredients—character, plot, setting, theme, etc.—but still, we’re never quite sure of the alchemy that creates the magical final story. 

How, then, do we learn the authors we admire? 

Trial and error. We know a creampuff is going to need flour, butter, eggs and, well, cream, just like we know a story will need a character, a plot, a setting and well, a point. You love the smooth taste of your favourite creampuff, so you experiment with how much cream to add, just like you love the colourful descriptions in your favourite book, so you experiment with your own colourful descriptions. 

Your creampuff/book will never be the same as your favourite creampuff/book you consume—as it should be—but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the process of taking what you admire and reverse engineering it. 

The creating, after all, is all the fun. 

Write the Unexpected

I had a minor “huh” moment recently. I’d washed a flower vase and had left it to dry on the kitchen counter. I’d then taken two eggs, to prepare an omelette. I set them on the drying mat beside the upturned vase so they wouldn’t roll away while I got a bowl. 

The visual of the vase and the eggs momentarily made me pause. It was the juxtaposition, I suppose. One doesn’t always see eggs and vases together, at least I don’t. Regardless, the image caught my attention. 

That’s the exact effect we’re looking for when we sculpt our prose. What words or phrases can we combine to create that attention in our readers? How can we use language to get our readers to pause at the unexpected or unusual, just as I did for the eggs and vase? It won’t happen for every word, sentence or paragraph (imagine how stilted the experience would be for readers!) but it’s our aim on at least some of the pages. 

And this takes time. We often want to rush through our story because it’s a long process to begin with. But we need to slow down, examine what we’ve written and look for the right spots. Unlike the vase/egg image, which was purely happenstance, we purposely craft those phrases. Our job is to engineer those “huh” moments. It’s a lot of work, but the payoff is, uh, eggcellent. (I couldn’t resist! 🙂 )