ATTITUDE IS EVERYTHING

I believe our attitude towards a task colors how well we do it. It also determines how easy or difficult it is and how we feel when a task is done. Part of attitude is how we view life. Optimism and pessimism also play into the equation.

I’ve observed, over the years, that positive people find solutions to problems quicker. That could be because they don’t allow negatives to define them or shoot them down before they start. They realize that a negative attitude makes the task twice as hard to solve.  The positive person knows there is a solution. It might not be exactly what they would want the outcome to be, but the solution is there if they take the time to look for pieces and follow the threads. They don’t give up easily. Perhaps it’s that very persistence that yields success.

The past few months I had been analyzing myself and doing quite a bit of reading on craft and motivation. What was I doing different now than before. How could I turn on my creativity again and work through my negatives.

I belong to a fabulous writing group made up of successful professionals from all walks of life and at different levels of writing success. We regularly discuss all sorts of writing issues. One of the topics under discussion was regaining writing momentum. I had asked:

• If you've taken a break, what’s drawn you back to writing? 
• What keeps you putting one word in front of the other, even when discouraged, tired, or busy?

• What excites you about what you're working on now?

Most of my group work, have families, and write. We also have quite a few published authors. We have to juggle life and our writing, so as you can imagine, there were quite a few good points made—good answers. There was a definite pattern emerging and one I had seen for myself. One of our NYT bestsellers made a comment that brought it all into focus.

“When it's [the writing] hard, I think about the fact that it is a job that I've committed to…the first rule of a job is, you show up, whether you feel like it or not.”

Bingo! There it was. Attitude. It wasn’t about waiting for the muse to show up, or writing when the mood strikes. It was about the perception that writing was a job. You write. You have a routine you employ to do the job of writing. You sit in the chair and write whether it’s coming easy or hard. You are a writer. You choose to be a professional, not an amateur—or at least, if you wish to be a published author you do. If you want to succeed at any artistic endeavor to show up and go to work.

I needed to rethink my writing. What was my goal with my writing? Had it changed? Was I a professional or an amateur? Amateurs can afford to procrastinate; professionals don’t have that luxury if they want to do their job and meet their commitments.

I don’t have the stamina I had. I can’t write the hours I did, yet. It’s just as someone trains for a marathon. If you’ve never run or haven’t done it for years you aren’t going to fare well if you decide to run in tomorrow’s race. You have to build up to it and in smaller doable steps. Build up resilience and strength. You have to have determination and the desire to finish the race. That is what gets you to the daily practice no matter how you feel or what the weather is. It’s what keeps you at the sprints to build stamina, or the set of stairs you run up and down. You push through the resistance from your mind and body. You work through the sore muscles.

So I’ve set smaller goals (sometimes I can do a whole chapter and other times it’s only a few hundred words) and celebrate when I reach my goal. I’m setting up a workable routine. In the beginning it was a matter of setting a timer. When the timer goes off, I’m done. If the words are hard, I push through the resistance. Sometimes it means going to a different scene and coming back to the one that’s giving me fits. I’m not angsting over how it looks or over some of the word choices (sometimes that is the hardest part for me because I want it just so), I know I can edit it later—but I can’t edit what I don’t have down. As a good friend of mine says, looking at your writing as a job helps one depersonalize the process of creating—a way of distancing yourself from the process. Getting the words down is the job.

Honestly, for me it’s work in progress. I’m not ready to run the marathon but I show up and work. The amateur talks about it and does it haphazardly or not at all. I’ve determined that I’m a professional and I’m firm in my commitment to win—one chunk of words at a time.

MONDAY MUSINGS: Insecurities Of Rebuilding

~Start where you are because yesterday is gone and tomorrow hasn't happened.~

Writing is something I've always done both in the work force and for pleasure.
Each is in its own compartment. Both come from a different mindset. Writing is something I do and for me it’s always been relatively easy—depending upon the purpose. I can create a conversational tone in my writing or generate a very specific piece in formal or business English.

IWSG Articles and Participants

I approach writing for business and pleasure in different ways.

I’m very focused and disciplined when working. Most of my professional writing came with deadlines. I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with deadlines. I very rarely missed a one. Working to deadlines doesn’t give you time to be stuck. You have to find a way through whatever block there is.

Writing for pleasure has been a different kettle of fish. I’m a bit more freeform—whatever catches my fancy would go on paper. A wisp of a dream I’d developed into a story, something I observed and it created a story in my mind, and what I call my, what would happen if…? When I’d get stuck I’d step away and mull it all over. Sometimes I’d come back to it and write what’s perked in my mind. Other times I’d get bored or lose interest and put it away. Not as disciplined as my professional writing.

Publishing deadlines require focus and discipline. I’ve been a contributor in several essay projects. I've written non-fiction industry oriented manuals. Teaching manuals or creative brochures. Most of these were procedural or writing to capture the attention with a set purpose in mind. Fiction publications were anthologies. Again, I had a deadline. I’ve always found that writing comes with roadblocks and corners to get stuck in. When it’s to deadline my mind finds a way around it.

A few years ago I decided to take my creative writing more seriously and work toward publication. I’ve written several novels. I also have quite a few unfinished manuscripts. Some of the unfinished are experiments in different genres and some are those I lost interest in finishing. I didn’t have a deadline on them so I could play a bit; try different things.

I queried some of the finished work and got some positives back. I had a good writing routine down. I was focused. I had some editing that needed to be done—I hate taking my creative work apart and putting back together.

I had my blog which falls into professional writing, I was attending writing conferences and enjoying the whole learning process. Hey, I even tried an elevator pitch on a story not yet written but I had a preliminary sketch on and the editor said she’d like to see it first before I queried it. That floored me. I was on the top of the world in the beginning of 2010.

Then life went to hell. I mean like a fiery comet zooming for impact. Everything changed in the wake of the crash. Things do come in threes—the tragedy of losing my brother at thirty-nine, my son and his difficulties, then my health self-destructing. Crash and burn, baby. Big time. And there was almost no Phoenix to be reborn.

Some writers are able to write through chaos. I’m not one of them. 
In the beginning of my illness, I would try to write. I’d get so frustrated when the words wouldn’t come. It got to the point that as soon I met with any frustration I’d quit. That became a disturbing pattern.

When writing is something you do without thought, when it comes easy; not being able to write is tough. I’m used to words flowing not hiding like shadows in my mind—you see them, they look real, until you try to touch them and they disappear. Having to stretch or reach for words for even a simple paragraph? You feel like you’ve been amputated.

Things are better. I’m better. But I’ve lost time. I’ve lost focus. The only thing that remains of that positive time is my blog and finished and unfinished manuscripts. Contacts.

I’m working at rebuilding the focus and the writing routine. It’s not easy. The burn of determination hasn’t quite returned but I do see the new growth in development.

I set goals. Baby steps where I was once running. Days of two or three thousand words are replaced with a measly five hundred and some days I celebrate when I accomplish two hundred. I remind myself of those in sports that have suffered a serious accident and what they have to go through to regain lost ground. They have to know how hard to push themselves and that’s a fine line.

Insecurities? You bet I have them. Can I break the pattern of quitting when I get frustrated? Will I be able to regain my joy, focus, and self-discipline? Do I want to? There are days I would tell you no. I don’t want to. Those are the weak days.

One thing I have found is feeling sorry for myself, looking behind rather than forward doesn't get me anywhere good. There is always a choice. I can sit in a huddle and whine or I can work through it and celebrate the success I have. Positive or negative. 

I've always chosen positive.

• How do you handle life's setbacks?