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In this issue:
Stoking the Urge to Write
Short Story Challenge Stats
Weekly Writing Prompt
WWT Tool Kit Craft Card
Stoking the Urge to Write
I’m trying something out. Make that deliberately trying something.
There’s a default way of doing this thing I’m deliberately doing, which might be described as claiming that I have writer’s block and then pouting about it. But that’s not what I’m doing.
What I normally do, on an average day, when things (writing) are going “well” is that I make a point of getting up early every morning and I try to write whether I want to or not. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don’t. Lately I’m don’t-ing. So instead of doing the normal thing or the default, writer’s-block thing, I’m deliberately leaning into the meh. I’m deliberately letting the creative urge build until I can’t stand it anymore and absolutely. Must. Write.
How does one do this deliberately instead of just saying “I have writer’s block. 😩 Waah!”?
Honestly, I haven’t made it all the way through to the other side yet, so I don’t yet know for sure, but I have a feeling that what I’m doing is absolutely going to work.
Here’s what I’m doing
I haven’t reached that can’t-stand-it-anymore state yet. Honestly, I occasionally wonder What if I don’t? What if I never reach that point? What if I never write again?
😊 Even in my not-there-yet state, I’ve reached a point where these thoughts sound funny again. Dubious. Ridiculous, even.
Of course I will get there.
In fact, I’m already getting there. Not there-there yet, but I can feel that I’m getting closer.
Every day I check in with myself, with how I’m feeling about my writing.2 I started out, when I first decided to really check in with myself, feeling discouraged about writing. I’ll save you all the reasons I had for why I felt that way, but that’s where I was. Pretty I-don’t-even-want-to-get-out-of-bed-let-alone-write. Pretty why-am-I-even-doing-this?
Pretty sad, really.
But then I remembered that I could do something about it. So I checked in with myself, and once I got clear on how I was feeling and what thoughts I was thinking that were making me feel that way, I started pointing out to myself why those thoughts aren’t true. Because here’s the secret: They’re never true. Oh, you can choose to believe them if you want to, but you can also choose not to believe them. They’re not facts. There’s evidence for both sides. So I chose to focus on the evidence that felt better.
Eventually—pretty quickly, actually—I moved up from discouraged to worried about writing. Worried still doesn’t feel great, but it’s better than discouraged. What kind of thoughts happened for me at worried? These ones: Okay, I’m functional now. Doing productive things. Still not writing though. What if I never write again? It’s already been however long, and it’s not like I don’t have things to write or drafts to edit. I’ve got things I could be doing, but I don’t feel like doing them. What if it never feel like writing ever again?
So, once again, I focused on these troublesome thoughts and I talked myself down (or up, more accurately) from worry to feeling better.
If you’re facing worry, my self-talk will likely be different from your self-talk, because we’re probably in different stages of writing and worried about different things, but for me, for those worries this time out, I reminded myself that I once put away a project three separate times thinking I’d never pick it up again, and then later, some times much, much later, I would get some idea, some urge I could not ignore, and then all of a sudden I’d be working on the project again. And it eventually got finished. And I ended up satisfied with the output. In other words…
This too shall pass.
Funny thing though? Technically, I am still writing. I’m doing all this negative-thought soothing by journaling. I’m talking myself into feeling better on the page.
Life, she’s funny, yah?
The emotional scale
Have you ever heard of the emotional scale? There are different variations. Lots of people and philosophies talk about it, but the way I approach it is like this: Thoughts feel a certain way, and if you can figure out how you feel and what thought(s) you’re thinking that are making you feel that way, then you can soothe the thoughts. In some cases,3 you can soothe them so much that the original, bad-feeling thought becomes so illogical-seeming that it goes away . . . never to return.
For real.
So this is how I’ve been leaning in to what some might call “writer’s block,” how I’m deliberately stoking the urge to write until I can’t stand not writing and will eventually feel compelled to sit down and focus on a project: I’ve been deliberately moving myself up the emotional scale on the specific topic of my writing.
As of today, I’ve moved myself from discouraged to hope.4 Hope that I’ll be eager to write, so eager that I can’t stand it. Hope that this eagerness will happen sooner rather than later. And today (so cool), I asked myself with genuine curiosity, Okay, well, when I start writing again, which project should I work on? This doesn’t sound like much, but if you’ve ever wanted to write while not feeling at all like writing, then you probably recognize that it’s huge. It’s a sign that the creative force is building, and soon it will burst forth. In other words, I don’t know the answer to that question yet, but when the urge to write reaches its pique, I’m confident that I will know exactly which project I want to work on and I’ll be giddy to do so.
A resource
Yesterday, as I realized I was finally in hope again about writing, I remembered a book I’d read years back. The Seven Steps on the Writer’s Path. It’s more like a repeating spiral than a one-time straight line, but anyway… The authors call the first step Unhappiness. They say that Jung called it the Precreative State. They offer a whole chapter on how to move through this Unhappiness state quickly. It’s worth a read. And not just to remind you, when you’re down in discouragement or despair, that you really aren’t alone no matter how much you might feel, at the moment, like you are. It’s worth a read because they offer lots of ideas for moving through the more uncomfortable steps quickly.
As I was writing this, I skimmed through the book’s first step again, and they actually have a section in the Unhappiness chapter that’s reminiscent of this emotional scale process. It’s a good process: realize where you’re at emotionally and what thoughts you’re thinking that are making you feel that way and then deliberately talk yourself into feeling better. It’s not only a quick way to get yourself where you want to go, but it’s a satisfying one too. It might take you a few days. But those days will absolutely feel better and better.
To stoking the urge to write…
Short Story Challenge Stats . . .
Week 17
Wed: NA
Thurs: NA
Fri: NA
Sat: NA
Sun: NA
Mon: NA
Tues: NA
Total Words: NA
Average Words Per Hour:
Challenge Totals
Words (Rule 1): 59,995
Stories (Rule 2): 10 plus WIP
Submissions (Rule 4): 9
Average Words Per Hour: 599
Weekly Writing Prompt
Character: Father
Light attributes: Talent for creating and supporting life. Positive guiding light within a tribal unit.
Shadow attributes: Dictatorial Control. Abuse of authority.Setting: A car wash.
Object: Gemini says a bucket, lids, and a water filter.
Emotion: Hopeless. Pessimistic, despondent, defeated.
WWT Tool Kit Craft Card
As mentioned before, I’m making a deck of craft cards to quickly remind myself of techniques while also having a convenient place to keep track of elements like character, conflict, and theme specific to each story. This week’s card is about conquering overwhelm. This is the outline for a process I learned from Thinking on Paper. It’s for all kinds of writing, but I think it applies to fiction really well. They keep it so simple. Sometimes simple is exactly what you need.
Thank you for reading!
I hope this helped you, and I hope your writing goes well this week.
Keep at it,
Megan
WritesWithTools
site: writeswithtools.com
ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/writeswithtools
wishlist: http://tinyurl.com/WWTWishList
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It’s my process, I think, more than my projects themselves that have been irking me. I’ve got a number of things I could be working on and want to be working on, so, yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s the process itself that’s the subject of this experiment.
All cases, really.
And as I edit, I can feel I’m even higher than hope. Hope leaves a little room for doubt, but today I’m feeling more confident than that. I’m definitely feeling optimistic, maybe even expectant.