Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Stephanie Rowe: Letting Go Of The Big Picture



My guest is Stephanie Rowe. She is is a nationally bestselling author of more than twenty books. You would think  writing a new story would be a piece of cake, wouldn't you? Well, you would be wrong as Stephanie shares with us.

I will admit it; I can make myself crazy sometimes. I'm one of those people who has all these goals and all this aspirations and a million things on my plate, and I can let it overwhelm me. And by overwhelm, I mean, paralyze to the point at which I am completely and utterly unable to perform.

Most specifically, it happens to me in my writing.

For example, when I sit down to brainstorm a new book, often I will become overwhelmed with how difficult it is to pull the story together. I feel like I have a hundred feelers out in different directions, and I can't get a handle on how it needs to all come together. I'll start feeling like the project is so huge that I can't manage it. I'll start to wonder how on earth I'm going to be able to pull four hundred coherent pages out of the 80 pages of seeming unconnected brainstorming on my computer.

At that point, I usually decide the idea is unworkable and decide to write a picture book instead. Since I can't draw, that's usually not the best idea, but since I have no standards and no expectations when it comes to a picture book, it feels like a brilliant idea.

But of course, the moment I start working on my stick figures of Pilfer the Penguin, my mind keeps drifting back to that one I've spent so much time on. I feel like the idea should work, but when I think of actually trying to write 400 pages on it, my brain goes numb and I lose feeling in my hair.

And that's when I look up and see the sign that I carefully penned and hung on the china cabinet that is directly across from the sofa where I like to work. It says, in bright purple marker:

One minute at a time.
One word at a time.
One small step at a time.
Keep your vision big, but your focus small.

The first time I read it, it doesn't register because I'm too busy feeling overwhelmed.

The second time I read it, it doesn't register because I'm too busy feeling overmatched.

But the third time I read it, I pause. I take a deep breath. And I realize what it means.

It means that although, yes, I need to ultimately write 400 pages that are wonderful, amazing and make my editor do the shriek with delight, the truth is that I don't need to worry about that right now. Right now, my only job is to relax, decide I'm going to have a little fun, and commit to spending thirty minutes playing around with the ideas.


Thirty minutes of play.

I can do that. No pressure to deliver. No pressure to have answers. No pressure to get it right.
Just thirty minutes of having a little fun.

Sometimes, I will even set the timer on my phone, and force myself to play with the idea for a half hour before I can take a break, worry about how it's going, or even think about writing the book.

Little by little, step by step, word by word, once I let go of hugeness of the task and focus only on a little, manageable bit, I can start to move forward again. Something meshes, and I chuckle. I have a cool idea and I jot it down. I don't worry about how it will all fit together. I don't worry that I've been brainstorming for four weeks and I still don't have a story. I simply play.

And then, out of the blue, the ideas will all start to come together. Once that happens, I will go from a state of seeming utter chaos to a complete story mapped out in a day or two without even trying. Why? Because I stopped trying so hard. I stopped putting so much pressure on myself to go from 0 to 100 in one step, and instead, I let myself go from 0 to A to Texas to 53.4 to tulip gardens and around and around until suddenly I found myself standing on 100.

It's not always easy for me. In fact, I just had to go through this latest exercise with my most recent book. Six weeks of brainstorming, a number of days of sheer panic, followed by a deep breath, retreat and relax. Then all of a sudden, click, click, click, everything fell into place and four days later, I'm 20k words into a book I gave up on several times.


  • What tricks do you use to help yourself get through the tough moments when you're struggling to accomplish something big or important to you?

Leave a comment and be entered to win a copy of Touch if You Dare.
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Touch If You Dare--Soulfire series, Book #2

To save their respective siblings, Jarvis Swain and Reina Knight will have to team up to trick Death himself.

Who better than a bad-ass warrior on a mission? Jarvis Swain is the ruthless, confident aggressor Reina knows she needs at her back--someone even she can't screw up. This unlikely darkside duo with impressive deadly superpowers of their own may just prove that two wrongs together can be more than right...Excerpt 


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Stephanie lives in New England, and spends every day doing her best to fill it with people, observations and activities that uplift her soul, which include writing, tennis, friends, and  her amazing family.
Four-time RITA® Award nominee and Golden Heart® Award winner Stephanie Rowe is a nationally bestselling author of more than twenty books. A life-long reader, she began crafting stories at age ten, but didn't realize it was her dream until she was an adult.


Once the light dawned, she immediately left behind "work" as the world defines it and went to "work" as she defines it, which means getting up every morning with a smile in her heart so she can spend the day doing that which makes her spirit sing.


Stephanie believes in learning to listen to your heart in order to figure out what your dreams are, and then opening yourself to the inspiration that will direct you there. She believes we all deserve the right to enjoy life, and for the ride to be as easy as we want it to be, and that we all should accept nothing less than making our dreams come true. Find Stephanie on her website http://www.stephanierowe.com and on Facebook