Original Impulse Blog

Seven Time Management Tips to Write Your Book

Cynthia Morris — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:00:00 +0000

This is part of the Claim Your Authority series.

I’m having coffee with a friend, chatting. He makes a declaration of desire to write a book, met by my great enthusiasm.

And then the backpedaling ensues. He pulls out everyone’s best fake excuse.

“I don’t have time,” he claims. But a thread of doubt haunts his statement.

I stare at him, unblinking. My look tells him I know he’s full of it. He squirms. Finally I speak.

“Time is all you have.”

He shrugs and resumes the litany of things that occupy his day, desperately shoring up his excuse for why he’s not writing a book.

I listen, hoping that hearing his own excuses will show him that they’re not truth, but choices. Is that you, clinging to this common excuse?

Lack of time is your biggest fake excuse

I have been coaching creatives on time management for over thirteen years. I know how valid this excuse seems. We believe lack of time is the reason we’re not doing our work.

When we pull this out, everyone nods and commiserates because we’re all victims of the ticking clock and our propensity to fill our time with activities.

But I’ve coached everyone from extremely busy executives to retirees to working mothers, and here’s the truth: you can make time for what’s important to you.

Seven strategies to go from excuse-maker to author

1. Get real. Disengage from the notion that you do not have time to do what matters to you.

Be a hero, not a victim of your creative impulses.

2. Get clear. Return to your original impulse for writing your book. This is your stake, your driving motivation. If you don’t know this in one gut-vibrating sentence, you will easily blow off your writing sessions for laundry, dates with friends, shopping, whatever.

Use this original impulse as fuel to stay committed to being an author.

3. Get brief. We imagine we need long, uninterrupted hours to do our writing. And while that may be nice, chances are that perfect getaway isn’t the answer to our time dilemma.

Brief writing sessions – 15-30 minutes – add up over time.

4. Get it on the calendar. This is so dead simple, but frankly, most solutions are ridiculously simple.

Block out time on your calendar at the beginning of the week and stick to it like glue.

5. Get focused. When writing a book, some things need to fall away temporarily. To be a creator, you need to reduce your consumption.

No need to become a hermit; just reduce your time consuming news, tracking social media, watching TV or movies.

6. Get still. As we spend more time bouncing around online, it gets more difficult to quiet ourselves and focus on the deeper work of writing.Extroverts may find it difficult to step away from the roar and clatter of life, but remind yourself that the pause is only temporary.

Distinguish between these two kinds of attention – fragmented and ‘out there’ and focused on your topic. Balance time between the two.

7. Get support. We tend to honor our commitment to others more than our own self-commitments. Honestly, accountability is one of the main reasons people hire a coach to help them write their books. It’s not that I have such brilliant advice – it’s all pretty simple, as you can see.

We value what we pay for, and if we pay someone to help us, we’re going to rise to the occasion to get our money’s worth.

I know these things work because my clients practice them with great success.

I, too, have to deal with making the best choices with my time. It’s not always easy to step away from the bustle to go into the writing cave, but it’s always, always satisfying.

And it’s these strategies that have allowed me to publish a book, five e-books, hundreds of articles and my upcoming novel, Chasing Sylvia Beach.

I want this authority for you. Try this:

Throughout your day, notice the choices you make about how you spend your time.

Notice when you could choose to draft your book instead.

Notice the thoughts or feelings that arise when you consider writing. That – the fears and insecurities – is what is really in the way, not lack of time.

Claim your authority over your time. Watch how your authority grows when you honor your impulse to write your book.

What choices are you making with your time? What helps you claim your authority so you can write your book?

Download a pdf of this article to make writing your book easier.

How a 90-year-old Business Model Can Guide Author-preneurs Now

Cynthia Morris — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 13:00:00 +0000

While Paris in the 20s and 30s was a groundbreaking place and time for the arts, this golden era was also a challenging time for a bookish businesswoman. The Great Depression that started in the United States affected those in Europe, too.

Times were tough for Sylvia Beach as they are for us now. The steady stream of American customers to her bookshop Shakespeare and Company dried up in the 30s. She relied on her wits, her friendships, and her commitment to a cause to keep her shop alive.

It’s hard to imagine now, but mass-market paperbacks were only introduced globally in 1935 by Penguin Books. Sylvia, like us with our electronic books, was forced to stay on top of the changing reading landscape so she could offer her customers the latest in reading innovation.

As formerly secure paths wither away, like Sylvia, we’re forced to become more innovative entrepreneurs in order to succeed.

Despite the startling technological differences between Sylvia’s era and ours, we can find value in seeing how some approaches endure across the eras.

I’ve identified four ways that Sylvia’s business model can inspire our own entrepreneurial endeavors.

1) Carve out a niche within a niche

Shakespeare and Company was Paris’s first English language lending library. Sylvia’s customers were expatriates and French students who needed to read in English.

There have always been plenty of bookshops in Paris, but Sylvia’s was unique in what it offered and how she both sold and lent books.

The bookshop’s stock came from the US and the UK. Sylvia shipped books across Europe to her traveling library members.

How are you unique in your field?

2) Offer membership and access

Today, information and access to authors is free and easy. To rise above the fray, one must be innovative and willing to take a different direction than the herd.

Like Sylvia, we must find strategic and creative ways to sell books. Sylvia charged a fee to be a member of her lending library. In the late ‘30s, she created another level of membership, offering insider access to author readings and other perks.

Now, membership sites are magnets for people who want to share work and life with like-minded people. Membership and access can generate not only income but also greater intimacy between authors and readers.

How can you create special access for select insiders?

3) Spark buzz with quality and scarcity

With no Twitter, Facebook or StumbleUpon, how did a bookseller generate interest? Sylvia mastered the art of the hand-written missive and planned ahead to make sure her audience knew about upcoming events.

She believed that the book she was publishing, James Joyce’s Ulysses, was an extraordinary novel, even though traditional publishers deemed it offensive and convoluted.

Sylvia offered pre-sales both to spark a sense of insider access and to generate money to pay the printers.

She limited this first edition to 100 copies, printed on Dutch handmade paper. A copy of this book went for a record-breaking $440,000 at auction in 2009. Quality and scarcity can be powerful incentives in our era of free and ubiquitous access 24/7.

How can you use ‘limited’ and ‘special’ to promote your work?

4) Be a useful community hub

Shakespeare and Company quickly became a meeting place for writers and artists passing through Paris. In an era without the speed of digital communication, Sylvia often received their mail and messages.

Sylvia devoted herself to helping writers, selling their work, hosting readings at her store, and connecting people when they came to Paris to live the writer’s life. Her shop served as an impromptu salon for book lovers. Her friend Ernest Hemingway said that she had ‘a God-given gift for friendship’.

Today we see these global connections fostered online in forums and on blogs (link to goodreads) where booklovers gather to share favorite titles and to gossip about authors.

How are you useful to your readers and where do you inspire them to gather?

Sylvia’s strategies and passion for books are of great interest to me. I explore some of these themes in my novel, Chasing Sylvia Beach, which will be published in June, 2012.

To get the first scoop about publication details and special treats for readers, please subscribe to my newsletter Impulses.

Write Your Book More Easily with a Manifesto

Cynthia Morris — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:00:00 +0000

This is part of a series: Claim Your Authority to write the stories only you can.

I knew what I wanted to say. When I talked about my book idea with my colleagues, I felt the fire and the passion of what I want to share with my readers.

This was followed by the impulse to write an introduction, a ‘what this is about’. I wanted to write something that rang true, that would incite joy and possibility and empowerment.

But when I sat down to write my introduction, the idea of drafting something that big and meaningful hindered me. My writing felt stiff and formal.

Does this happen to you? Here’s my solution: write a manifesto for your book and work instead of your book’s introduction.

A manifesto is easier to write than an introduction

A manifesto is about what the impact you’re committed to having for your audience. Thinking about what you want for them will help you get away from the work being about you.

An introduction is an explanation of what is to come. You may not know what exactly will be in your book, so it’s better to write the introduction after you’ve written the book.

A manifesto is a stake – what you’re taking a stand for. It can be used for your work outside the book, if you do workshops or book tours, for example.

Speak your intention

Okay, even though the difference between a manifesto and an introduction is clear, it can still feel difficult to sit down and draft your manifesto.

Try this exercise that I use with my clients and that finally worked for me to carve out what I wanted to say.

(Note: if you have stage fright or dread public speaking, imagine that for the sake of this exercise, you are released of that fear.)

Imagine that you’re in a room full of the people you wish to reach. You’re on stage, looking out over your audience. They’re smiling at you, sending love and appreciation. They are eager to hear what you have to say.

Books photo by Sharon Wharton

You have five minutes to tell them what you want to share. Answer these three questions to get to the heart of your work:

What do you want for them?
What must they know now?
What do you want them to do with the knowledge you’ve given them?

Imagine yourself speaking to your people, from your heart, as if this were your one and only opportunity to do so. The time is now. The need to share your work is urgent.

Feel free to speak it aloud and record it. You can play it back later. Use Dragon Dictation software or other recording device to do it. Or just speak it, then type like mad what you’ve written.

I believe that for this kind of writing, if you’re not crying or nearly crying, you haven’t dug deep enough to write what’s truly meaningful for you.

Imagining a direct and sincere communication with the people you’re writing for can lead you past insecurities that are common at this stage.

Draft your book’s manifesto now

Drafting your manifesto can help you focus on your work as a gift to your people instead of a reflection on how great you are. Your manifesto will help you get out of your own way and hush your inner critic.

This may take several drafts, and it may take time. Don’t worry about it. Get the gist of it out with your manifesto and keep going.

Have you written your manifesto for your life, work or book? How do you use it to fuel your writing? Share in a comment below.

Download a pdf of this article to make Claiming Your Authority easier.

Here are some resources for further exploration on how to write a manifesto.

Life Optimizer

Creativity, Creativity

How Writing for ‘Nothing’ Can Give You Everything

Cynthia Morris — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:00:37 +0000

As I unpack and move into my new home, I am faced with a decision: do I put my journals on the shelves or boxed in the closet?

Hundreds and hundreds of pages, billions of words. For what?

Stacks and stacks of writing

These 100+ notebooks full of free writing and journaling certainly aren’t interesting to anyone. They aren’t publishable and they haven’t brought me any money.

But these notebooks full of my scribbles form the foundation of my writing career. Without the pages and pages of meandering writing, I wouldn’t have built the confidence to dare publishable pieces.

You may struggle with being asked to spend hours wasting ink on pieces that will not be lucrative or publishable. Yet when I coach my clients past the initial hurdles of writing freely, they are amazed at how good it feels.

Here are three ways free writing leads you to achieve your writing goals.

Get focus and clarity on what to write

There are so many ways to write and so many subjects to write about. Clocking these hours privately in your notebooks will help you decide where to focus your efforts.

Free writing can clear the confusion to reveal what you want to write next.

Write right past your inner critic to get at your gems

Free writing works for all levels and genres because it allows you to circumvent the uptight inner critic that’s always ready with a reason why you should be doing something ‘worthwhile’.

Enjoy a sense of surprise and discovery

Much of this will never be read by anyone, not even you perhaps. No matter. As Natalie Goldberg taught us in Writing Down the Bones, free writing is a practice that you show up for with little expectation.

Anything could be waiting for you in your pages. Great boredom or great discoveries, for the simple price of your pen to the paper. Allowing for the element of surprise lets you surpass your known limits.

This is where the fun comes into the writing process, when you allow yourself to be led by your pen instead of trying to control everything.

Writing for nothing yields everything

My novel, drafted with free writes

So you see, writing for ‘nothing’ can lead everywhere – more confidence, more self-knowledge, more clarity…more you.

Free writing can make a huge difference if you are a:

Professional writer accustomed to working for pay and deadline only.
New writer who wants to write but don’t know what.
Seasoned writer wanting to shift gears or start a new book.

I don’t need to have my journals in sight to continue gleaning the benefits from them. I’ve used free writing since 1994 and have written hundreds of words that have been read and paid for.

Putting the journals in the closet doesn’t change all the hours and effort I’ve banked by free writing. All that writing for nothing has given me everything in my writing career.

What results have you seen from free writing or from a regular writing practice? How does this kind of writing impact your other writing?

Write freely in February

Join us in February for the Free Write Fling. Because everyone, no matter how busy, can give 15 minutes a day to write what’s inside you.

Here’s what recent Flingers had to say:

“I am a happier person from giving myself this gift of writing for fifteen minutes in the morning. I feel a sense of pride and accomplishment for having completed it every day no matter what. I am more accepting of myself.

I don’t have to write an award-winning piece every morning. I just have to show up. This has taken a lot of pressure off me.

Thank you for providing a safe arena to explore what is possible. It has really motivated me to keep going.” Julia Atwood

“The Free Write Fling has been a wonderful experience for me. I wrote every day for 31 days (hooray!), and looked forward each evening to it. The free writes became part of my daily comfort routine.” April Lee

The Free Write Fling starts today. Write daily, starting now.

American Bookseller in Paris as Literary Pioneer

Cynthia Morris — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:21:32 +0000

Sylvia Beach was the kind of woman I want to know: curious, brave, and above all, devoted to books and people who write them. Her life’s work was to share a love of books with others. She brought readers and writers together in her small Paris bookshop, Shakespeare and Company, which she ran from 1919 – 1942.

In Paris Sylvia made a life for herself among like-minded people. This is something many of us crave: a life full of friendships that evolve from a shared interest in the arts.

My main motivation for writing my novel, Chasing Sylvia Beach, is to share stories about this literary pioneer so she can inspire you, too. Here is a brief introduction to this bookish American.

How a prim daughter created an extraordinary life for herself

Sylvia grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, the daughter of a minister. Her father was stationed in Paris for a year when Sylvia was 14, and that cemented a love in young Sylvia for France.

Fast forward to 1919. After World War I, Sylvia was at a loss for what to do. During the war, she’d volunteered in France and was eager to find a way to stay. A young, unmarried woman at this time was meant to get married and establish a household.

But travels in Europe and friendships with pioneering women like Carlotta Briggs and others showed Sylvia that living a staid life in Princeton wasn’t her only choice.

Options included starting an import/export business. This would allow her to live in the US but travel to Europe often. But a visit to the 6th arrondissement in Paris, where she met Adrienne Monnier, a bookseller on the rue de l’Odéon, sealed her fate. This new friend encouraged her to open a bookshop and lending library like hers, but for English language books.

With a $3,000 check from her mother, Sylvia plunged in. (That’s $45,000 today!) Despite her lack of business experience, with help from Adrienne and a deep passion for books, Sylvia thrived.

Becoming a rogue publisher

Sylvia’s faith in writers extended beyond bookselling when she met James Joyce. When no one else would to publish his groundbreaking novel, Ulysses, Sylvia undertook the huge project at great personal cost. But with this, the bookseller proved to be more than a peddler of books, showing herself as a visionary.

Joyce’s book went on to be hugely popular and continues to be regarded as the classic modern novel, topping must-read lists to this day.

Stubborn or committed?

It wasn’t easy for Sylvia to keep her tiny bookshop afloat, especially during the Great Depression, when fewer Americans frolicked abroad.

It became even worse as World War II approached. Unlike many other Americans who had made Paris their home, Sylvia did not return to the safety of the US. Instead, she stayed in Paris with her shop.

Sylvia survived the Nazi occupation of Paris, and spent 6 months in an interment camp during the war. She shuttered the shop in 1942, closing the business she’d struggled to keep alive for twenty years.

Her commitment can show us how to persist despite obstacles. How a life lived according to one’s passions and interests is a rich one despite meager earnings.

What does Sylvia inspire in you?

Noel Riley Fitch’s book Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation introduced me to Sylvia when I was a young bookseller at Capitol Hill Books in Denver. Through this book I became enthralled with Sylvia. I wanted to know what fueled the brave decisions she made to live and work in France, to stay in Paris during the war and to selflessly devote herself to books and authors.

Keri Walsh recently published The Letters of Sylvia Beach. I read these letters in the archives at Princeton, and they are a great way to hear Sylvia’s voice and see her ever-optimistic spirit.

My novel Chasing Sylvia Beach is a fictionalized account that allows us to travel to Paris, 1937 to meet Sylvia and discover up close what this literary heroine has to offer us now. The book will be published in June, 2012.

Whether you read these books or not, my hope is that Sylvia’s life will inspire something in you. In my next post about Sylvia, I’ll be sharing how Sylvia’s actions nearly 100 years ago are relevant to us today.

What does Sylvia Beach inspire in you? Who is your Sylvia Beach and what does that person inspire in your work today?

How to Choose a Structure for Your Book

Cynthia Morris — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:00:00 +0000

This is part of the series: Claim Your Authority to Write the Stories Only You Can

Okay, you’ve followed your original impulse to write your book now. You’re using this blog series as a tutorial to draft your book.

Your pressing question right about now is this:

What is the best structure for the book?

Laying out a structure

When we set out, we grasp for a structure so we have clarity right away about how to write the book. That makes sense, but the book’s ultimate structure might not be what you start with.

Still, you must start somewhere. Some possibilities include:

Personal narrative
How-to based on professional expertise
Inspirational daybook
Book of your art or photography
Fiction, either short stories or a novel

The purpose of the book can inform the structure. These coaching inquiries can elicit clarity about the book’s purpose:

Who is the audience?
What do you want them to feel, think or do after reading your book?
What is the nature of your material – essay or instructional?

Homework #1: Answer the above questions in writing.

Reminder: If you haven’t already, devote one notebook or computer folder to this project. Gather notes, drafts, ideas and images in one place for easy reference. It doesn’t matter how messy the contents are, just that you have one container for your work.

How will readers interact with your material?

When you know the answers to these questions, you’ll see how people will be experiencing your material. You will know whether you’ll be working mainly with text or also with images, videos or hyperlinks.

Depending on your goals, your material could exist in several forms, depending on how people prefer to interact with it.

Your book* could be:

Kicking back with a book

Paperback
Electronic book
App
Vook
Webinar
Podcasts
Installation
And more…

*We’ll continue calling it a book for simplicity’s sake.

Homework #2: What form will best hold your material? Jot that down.

Reminder: Use free writing to get your words on the page quickly and easily.

No matter what the final form, I suggest free writing as the way to get your first thoughts out on the page. With these preliminary ideas to work with, you can see where you need to add or take away to hone your message.

Organizing your material by developing a chapter template

Okay, have you gotten a sense of what form your book will take you may feel more at ease. Still, you wonder what will actually be in this non-fiction inspirational book.

Here’s what really helps my clients: develop a chapter template. Brainstorm the elements you want to include in each chapter. These could include:

Introduction
Stories
Suggested work for the reader
Inspirational quotations
Illustrations or images

Once you have a chapter that works, use that as a template for subsequent chapters. Keep in mind that the ultimate form may change, but at least you have something to start with.

Homework #3: List the elements you want to see in each of your chapters.

Repetition can bring a sense of coherence and calm

As I write Claim Your Authority first as a blog, I identify the following elements I want in each chapter and why:

Introduction – to be clear on what this post will give the reader and why they need it
Lists – to help a range of readers identify themselves in the writing
Reminders – I’m going to assume a certain knowledge of (if not regular practice of) basic writing strategies.
Coaching inquiries – to help authors write from and about what’s true for them and their work, not merely from a formula
Suggested homework throughout the text and at the end in a list – for readers to do so they’re writing their books along with me

This post is a sample chapter for me. What does it make you feel, think and do?

Homework #4: Draft a sample chapter to see how each element builds upon and increases the impact of your work.

To sum up: this week’s writing homework, if you choose to accept it:

Answer the coaching inquiries to clarify your book’s purpose.
Choose an initial form – how-to, memoir, image-based.
Brainstorm elements for each chapter.
Draft a sample chapter.

Let me know in a comment below how this helps you write your book.

Because this post suggests so much work, let’s take two weeks to do it. Will you do the homework suggested here by February 7^th? Respond in a comment below if you’re writing along with us.

In next week’s post, we’ll take a CYA break and I’ll introduce you to Sylvia Beach and share why I’ve been chasing her for at least 15 years.

Download a pdf of this article to make Claiming Your Authority easier.

Book Recommendation: State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

Cynthia Morris — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:42:00 +0000

I highly recommend Ann Patchett’s novel State of Wonder.

Own the Impulse to Write Your Book and Trust You Can Do It

Cynthia Morris — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 15:30:00 +0000

This is the first in the series: Claim Your Authority to Write the Stories Only You Can

You’ve known you want to write a book your entire life. Or perhaps you’ve only recently realized that a book is in your future.

In either case, you can no longer deny the pull – now is the time to write your book. Whether for personal or professional reasons, the stories inside you demand to be written.

I know this feeling. Once you get that ‘b’ word in your mind, the ideas start rolling. Sometimes the entire book will flash through your being all at once. You get it, viscerally.

Small sprouts grow with attention

Other times, you feel a mere seed, the beginning of a something that you intuitively know will be a book.

However you feel it, you know it’s time to write this book. You may recognize yourself in one of these two scenarios:

You know that your business will go further when you have a book to promote and showcase your work.

You deeply sense that the stories you’ve lived or imagined are powerful enough to inspire others.

Trust that in the very process of writing your book you will find your greater power – your authority. In my e-book Cross the Finish Line, I wrote that every project we work on works us, too. We develop and grow by completing our creative projects.

But even with this deep trust that you must write this book, you may still wonder how you’ll get your book done alongside everything else you’re doing. I’ve been coaching writers since 1999, and I have seen this cycle:

Excitement! I’ve got a book to write!
Enthusiasm! Hurried note-taking to capture the juju.
Confusion…how exactly do I tell the story? Fiction? Non-fiction? Day book or narrative?
Defeat! You’re busy enough already, and the confusion lines up behind that to make you put the project on the shelf.

But you can do it. There’s no need to despair. Books get written one word at a time, and you can make the time and take the focus to claim your authority and write your book this year.

Why bother?

I’ve written two books and five e-books. I can attest to the power and satisfaction I get from completing and publishing those projects. The drive to write can be both intrinsic – internal to you and extrinsic – motivated by external gain.

Intrinsic motivation

You feel strong. Engaged in your life in a way you haven’t before. Challenged in a way that gives you muscles you’ll use in other areas of life.

I want this sense of vitality and engagement that comes from expressing our truth, in ways only we can.

When we’re writing our memoirs, drafting our novels and poems, putting our work on paper, we’re paying attention to what’s important and unique to us.

It’s never been easier or more important to share our stories. Now is the time.

Yours is the voice the conversation is missing. When you claim your authority, the world gives you a certain acclaim.

Extrinsic motivation

The title ‘author’ goes a long way to showing people that you have something to say and that you persisted in sorting out and writing out your message. Being an author shows your commitment. Being an author reveals your expertise.

Claim your authority. It starts with this knowing that you will write a book and will continue with the steps necessary to do it.

Over to you

What does the word ‘authority’ mean to you? From where does your author-ity come from – your experience, your intuition?

Coming up: ~~How to write your book’s manifesto to get clear on the heart of your book.~~ How to structure your book so can you write it more easily.

Download the pdf of this article to make Claiming Your Authority easier.

Read This: The Buddha in the Attic

Cynthia Morris — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:31:42 +0000

My recommendation for Julie Otsuka’s novel The Buddha in the Attic.

Triumph over Editing Despair

Cynthia Morris — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:30:00 +0000

On Christmas Eve, I was nestling into bed after a day of play and feasting. While shutting down my computer, I saw the email I’d been waiting weeks for.

My dear friend and editor David Hicks, true to his word, was delivering his comments on my novel before Christmas.

Looking for the light...

I eagerly opened the document. The copious line edits didn’t faze me – I welcome ways to make my prose sing. It was the comments that made this Christmas gift a combination of coal and gold.

In over 300 comments, David pointed out issues both nitty and gritty. Consistency issues, abandoned plot threads, and confusing red herrings were all highlighted.

I quickly shut the document down and ducked toward sleep. Yet the feeling of despair had rooted in, and I spent most of Christmas day in a state of numb weightiness.

Why is revision so difficult?

With every draft past say, draft twelve, I’ve asserted that this was the LAST ONE. With every draft, I was sure I had reached the limit of my persistence. With every draft, I’ve spent at least a year doing the work to make this book not only readable, but excellent.

With a June launch date and plans well under way to get this novel into the world, the last thing I wanted to face was another deep revision.

I spent the last week of 2011 getting my head around this. Trying to shed the weight of the impending work, I turned once again to my coaching skills.

Little problems and big decisions

Sometimes another revision feels like a death sentence!

The thought of hours of wading through David’s comments induced a strong desire to give up and flee. Bleak moments.

But I’ve been here before, and this time I noticed what was below the bleakness: irritation.

I was seeing every comment as a problem to fix. The more comments, the more problems. The more ways I had gotten it wrong and the more work I had to do.

This insight helped me deal with the work ahead. I don’t like problems. I don’t like when things break down or need tending to. Understanding this helped me get a grip.

But dispensing with the little problems, there were now the bigger issues of plot and character. Things I need to think about and change. Make decisions.

Voila two things that I don’t excel at – enjoying solving little problems and making decisions. I can do it, but I don’t like it.

It’s never been more clear to me that how we do something is as important as what we do. I couldn’t do this final revision with this weight on me.

What shifts perspective?

Two things work for me: both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Deadlines and meaning help me triumph over editing despair.

Deadlines

The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest is here again. The deadline is January 23^rd. When I read David’s comments, I suspected I wouldn’t be able to finish the book until the end of February.

An January deadline is just crazy enough to jump-start my challenge value. Can she do it? is the guiding impulse here. I’m driven to expedite this revision, not just with speed but with accuracy – to write well and strongly.

An archetype saves me

Several times during the last week of 2011 the Chariot tarot card appeared for me. The Chariot archetype represents success and forward movement. Cheers to that – the novel moving on and into the world, and me with it.

But further study showed me that the Chariot also points us to manage emotions, using the fiery forces within to move forward, not get overwhelmed and stuck.

I need both of those concepts for myself – control over the emotional maelstrom in writing and a sense of forward movement.

Using this image and energy, I am driving toward a January 23^rd deadline. I work every day on the novel. I have accepted most of the line edits and am moving through the comments.

I feel a great sense of purpose and commitment, like I am riding that Chariot, and it’s taking me where I want to go. I relish this, because I earned it.

I am grateful to have found both a perspective and a process that will allow me to do this final, final, final revision.

I am more than halfway through draft 16. At this pace, I think I can make the January 23 deadline.

What about you?

What do you find most difficult about the revision process?

What perspective and process will you choose to keep going?

Take a second and tell us works for you to keep going in your creative projects.