Digging for Gold

image by Stancu Alexandru via sxc.hu

Introduction

I just got back form the gym and I’m tired and achy, but I feel alive. Often you hear stories about how you must write every day, preferably a thousand words or more, but how often have you heard the truth?

Quality not Quantity

Those thousand words, or whatever your goal is, will seldom win the Pulitzer. But you keep at it every day doing a bit better than yesterday and when you look up there’s that article, or WIP you’ve been meaning to complete, all finished.

Anyone can write every day, but not everyone can make it count. You have to sift through those crappy pieces to find bits of gold that will become your magnum opus.

Be a Hoarder

Save everything you write because you never know when that phrase or paragraph will come in handy later. Also this is a good exercise in charting your growth as a writer. I’m often amazed, good and bad, at pieces I wrote earlier. Especially in terms of how my outlook on life has changed as I’ve gotten older.

Once is a Fluke. Twice, a Coincidence. Three Times, a Pattern Emerges

If you find yourself writing about the same topic maybe it’s time to collect those pieces and begin writing a book or find new topics to write about.

Conclusion

Fret not. What you write isn’t as important as how you write it. We all have off days, the important thing is to keep trying until you strike literary gold.

Peaks and Valleys

That which doesn’t kill me, only makes me stronger–Fredrick Nietzsche

Life is full of peaks and valleys, the trick is to enjoy the good times and hold on to them in the bad times. It’s easy to get caught up in your hurt or anger and stew in your emotions until you’ve become a bitter old prune.

It’s up to you whether you let your set backs define you or you pick yourself up and try again. It’s easy to give up before you’ve started. Trust me I know.

I used to criticize everything but never offered solutions and was a general downer who was never satisfied with anything.

But then I made a choice to stop complaining and start doing. Anyone can talk a big game but when it comes down to it not many can back up their words with actions.

I’d been calling myself a writer yet didn’t write or only wrote in sporadic bursts when it felt right.

That is until I made a commitment to the craft and discovered Jeff Goins’s Tribe Writer Program and within three months had finished my first novel and began work on my second one, which I just finished.

I’m not going to lie, there were rough patches along the way and I stumbled, but it was in those dark times I learned what I was made of.

Anyone can shine when everything goes your way the but the mark of true determination is doing what you’re called to do when everything is against you.

Yes, keep your goals realistic. But also dare to dream because otherwise you’ll churn out mediocre crap. There will be times you want to quit. Don’t.

That’s when you dig in and find that inner strength to carry you on through.

Don’t see obstacles as road blocks but as learning experiences. With every set back or rejection letter you learn something and your writing gets betters.

image by Benjamine Earrwick via sxc.hu
image by Benjamine Earrwick via sxc.hu

How to Overcome Your Fears Like a Boss

He who has overcome his fears will be truly free–Aristotle

How many times have you let your fears hold you back from doing what you want? How many opportunities how you missed out on because you were afraid of failure?

The truth is we get comfortable and don’t want to rock the boat for fear of being rejected or the odd one out. So we play it safe thinking things could be better but this is good enough. We keep going through the motions waiting for the time to come when we can move on to the next phase of things.

But sometimes that will only come if you put yourself out there and risk failing. In the seduction community this is known as approach anxiety, the fear or being rejected before you approach, but tit’s also known as the by stander effect.

Often no one wants to be the first to speak up or do any thing until they see others doing it.

The solution is to practice getting blown out, ie desensitize yourself to be rejected/failing. For writers that means you do what Jeff Goins calls performing in public.

You must submit your work to publishes. If you get rejected, so what? You move on and learn from you mistakes. Eventually you’ll hit your stride and others will start noticing your work and publishing it.

This is called hitting your number in pick up artist lingo and represents the point at which you’ve opened yourself up enough to interact with others without being paralyzed by approach anxiety.

But how do you do this?

You have to have courage.

Courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s the will to get up and continue moving in spite of your fears. As with anything start small and move on to larger goals. In this way you able to progress and break larger goals down to manageable chunks and keep inspired to reach them.This is called building positive momentum an is a great tool for keeping on task and not allowing your fears to overcome you.

Another issue with overcoming your fears is knowing when to walk away. If things aren’t going your way it’s OK to quit and try something else for awhile. The point is you continue moving forward to reach your goals. If twitwr is not thing try instagram or pinterest. If those don’t walk try face book, blogging, or something else until you connect with audience and find your tribe.

Yeah, I’m not going to lie. It’s going to be hard work, and sometimes you’ll want to quit all together but don’t. Because the moment you stopped trying you’ve failed.Seldom does anything come easy in life which is why you have to practice to get better at whatever your passion is and then perform in public, hit your number and continue building positive momentum to reach larger goals.

I hope this article was helpful and inspiring. Leave your comments below and remember to subscribe to my mailing for updates on the blog and other projects.

 

You Know You’re a Writer If

 

1.You keep a note pad by the side of the bed for when ideas strike in the middle of the night.

2.The voices in your head aren’t a cause for alarm.

3. You’re familiar with the following phrases:

Kill your darlings.”

Omit needless words.

Writing is really easy. Just tap a vein and bleed on to the page.

Rewriting is writing.

Glue your butt to the chair and don’t get up until you’ve written something.

4.You’ve thought, “Hey I could come up with something better than this crap,” after reading/watching something.

5.You carry a notebook or your cell to jot down observations and snippets of conversations whenever you go out.

6. You wished your muse had a GPS tracker so you knew exactly where to find it.

7. While reading this you’ve started making your own list.

8. You’ve said, “I’d rather be writing.”

9. You’ve experienced the manic highs and soul crushing depressions that comes with the process, yet wouldn’t be happy doing anything else.

10. You write!

 

Patience and How to Go the Distance

Image by Christian Ferari via sxc.hu
Image by Christian Ferrari via sxc.hu

What are you struggling with? Right now I’m dealing with a lack of patience. Migrating to a new domain has been more difficult than I thought. Going from using blogger to WordPress has been a trying process. The learning curve between the two is steep and will probably require at least a basic familiarity with coding.

I can deal with that. The problem is I want everything perfect now. This is nothing new .I’ve always had a perfectionist streak in me that’s kept me from pursuing things ,because I get frustrated when I don’t live up to my ridiculously high standards.

The pressure to be perfect the first time every time almost killed my passion for writing. Have you ever had an experience where you felt like everything you did was crap? Well that was me. Nothing was ever good enough for me. I’d get discouraged, frustrated and say, “Fuck it, why bother?”

The truth is giving up is the easiest thing in the world to do, especially when you do it before you even start. How many times have you had an idea or made plans to do something, then found some way to not follow through on it, because you didn’t see instant results?

Writing and working out are big areas where I fall prey to this. The need to see results for my efforts and not has led to spirals of self doubt and depression. “What’s the point of it all if the results are lackluster?” I say to myself.

The point is writing and life in general isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. You can’t jump in without training and expect to come in first. You have to pace yourself.

Start small and build on it everyday, until you’re ready for that big race. A long the way you’ll stumble, get up and fall again. But you continue until you’ve reach the finish line.

Sometimes we get so caught up in getting there we miss what’s happening along the way. So may be I’m not as far along as I like right now, but everyday I push myself to do a little better, to learn something new about writing, and write for at least thirty minutes a day.

Some days I have no clue what to write about or don’t want to at all, but I force myself to sit still and produce something. Even if it’s destined for the trash I still learned something in the process.

There are times I get stuck or lose track of what I want to say but the point is to continue until I’ve reached the finish line. So the next you fell the urge to sprint, remember you’re running a marathon.

Stranger than Fiction: How Not to Smother Your Message

 

Fiction is the mirror we use to reflect truths about ourselves and the world that we dare not speak for fear of rejection or disbelief. Within every story there is a grain of truth about life and us. Whether you realize this or not your work reveals more about you than you know.

For some it’s the want to change the past so they fictionalize it in an attempt to heal old wounds and make things how they “should” be. For others it’s about addressing the ills of society and calling the corruption they see.

Whatever the case fiction provides the space needed to explore these avenues as well as give an outlet to our subconscious mind. In the course of writing thoughts and emotions will well up and things you thought you were over may rear their head. This can block you from writing if you don’t acknowledged and address them.

Without noticing it more of yourself creeps into your work. A little of this is good but not to the point your message is overpowered and your characters are straggled because you won’t let them act autonomously.

The urge to make your protagonist an idealized version of yourself can be hard to resist. It’s all too easy to give into the seductive siren’s call. Who wouldn’t want to be the center of their own fantasy world?

While it’s true writers put a little piece of themselves into every character, it’s also true you can make them too much like you.

If your characters tend to think. act, and talk like you, chances are you’re using them to act out unresolved issue in your life. this doesn’t mean your characters can’t share similarities with you, but make sure their wants, needs, and aspirations are front and center.

Us writers can be a very selfish lot. We can get so enamored with ourselves we start believe everything that happens to us is noteworthy. It’s not.

Yes write about the birth of a child, the death of a loved, or some other life changing event or time you struggled through.

But save the rants about your boss chewing you out and the barista coping a snotty attitude with you for your journal. Because no one, sans your friends and family, is going to read it.

In the same vein we can become so in love with our writing we fail to see the flaws in it. How any of you out there make excuses for not putting your work out there because you don’t want to deal with rejection? How many of you have said the words, “Well I write for me so it doesn’t have to have perfect, spelling, grammar, syntax or structure.”?

That’s fine if it’s what you want to do but if your goal is to get published then you need to think about pleasing other people. This isn’t a call to compromise your creative vision to chase the latest trend, but you do have to be aware that what appeals to you won’t always appeal to a larger audience.

If you’re not aware of current and past trends in your genre you can spend countless hours slaving away on a book only to find there’s little if any interest in it. if you find yourself in this position then take heart because you’re not alone and you can always salvage something of worth in the rewrite process.

The point is while you may be the center of the world you’ve created, outside of it that is not so. You have to earn your way in and stay there by putting out content that people want, enjoy, and can’t get anywhere else. And this stars by being true to yourself while being open and respectful of others. Not by acting like you’re the greatest thing to happen to the written word ever.

I Need a Queero

 

Have you ever read a story and put it down because you couldn’t stand how spineless the protagonists was? I don’t know about you but if the characters never stand up for themselves and constantly play the victim it’s an instant deal breaker for me.

Whenever I write fiction I always try to have strong characters. Now this doesn’t mean they never stumble or go through dark times. No, when they go up against obstacles they grit their teeth, bear down and overcome it. When people read my work I want them to leave inspired and empowered.

So often I read stories or see movies about LGBTQ characters who are just punching bags for the world. They just sit there and take the abuse dished out to them. Just once it’d be nice to see a story where they fought back.

I don’t mean only in the literal sense, because often that’s impossible when you’re being bullied by multiple people. But they can still turn the tables some other way. They could tell their parents or school officials if they’re kids, or contact the police. And if none of those work they could pursue legal action. The point is to be proactive. Do something, anything, but sit there and continue to take it.

I understand that for many people coming up LGBTQ was hard and they still have emotional baggage that bleeds into their work, but the cumulative affect of this is that it tells the younger generation they are worthless and don’t matter. Fuck that shit.

You don’t have to populate your stories with super heroes or Adonises for them to be strong characters. The greatest strength we have is the will to get back up again, no matter how many times life knocks us down. Just give me one character who demonstrates this and I’m happy. Why can’t we have more theses?

Agree or disagree? Leave your comment below.