Category Archives: Your Writing Career

Writer Care 101 – Don’t torture yourself

Being Gentle With Yourself Damage Control Day Jobs Dealing With Personal Calamities Emily Godhand Giving Yourself a Break Self-Awareness The Writing Life Work-Life Balance Write Whenever You Can Writing as An Emotional Outlet Your Writing Career Your Writing Environment No Comments

Quick, describe a writer! I’ll wait, like, ten whole seconds for you to think of one.

. . .

Okay, got it? Now let me guess:

They’re a brooding loner in disheveled, dark clothing that reeks of chain-cigarettes and sadness. They’re crouched over a computer in a dimly lit, smoke-filled room, alone, sipping at another whiskey as they write their demons onto the page. They’ve been awake much too long, but sleep is an evasive beauty because there are deadlines to meet. And even if there aren’t, there are. The deadlines live inside them, monsters kept at bay only by copious amounts of coffee drunk by the pot. Their family is widowed, and their friends mourn, but one day they hope the writer will emerge and join them again.They’re writing about humanity and how people relate, don’t you know. It’s deep, important work and no one really understands their genius. They’re a martyr suffering for their art, and the long night isn’t over yet.

Oh, and it’s 8 o’clock in the morning.

writerstereotype
The creature has also become self-aware.

But of course that’s a stereotype and no one *ahem* would ever live up to it.
And maybe there is some truth behind the fact that artist-types are driven to create, and have a higher correlation with mental illness, but we don’t have to romanticize insufficient self-care to take pride in the work we do.

Please, take care of yourself. The art isn’t more important than you; no one else believes that. Your friends and family love you. They want to see you. Isolating to write can help you focus, but come out now and then to connect with the world. Drink your water. Get some sleep. Make a schedule. See appropriate doctors and therapists if you have the need and the means. Take your medicine. Get your chores done so you can focus on writing. Get your writing done so you can spend time on what’s important to you.

Eat the damn kale if you want.

selfcare
Being in pain and over-tired and stressed constantly doesn’t necessarily make the story better, and it’s not worth the human cost even if it did. If you’re working on writing as a career, consider it a second job. You’d get sleep and eat and prepare and set aside time for your Breadjob, right?

Having a regular writing schedule and maintaining your health the best way you can, whatever that means for your specific needs, creates stability, which can help your writing career in the long-term, because it helps you maintain yourself and balance your life.

The best we can do, is to do what we can with what we have. Things will happen. There will be times when things creep up, and things are thrown off. Maybe we or someone we care for gets injured or physically ill. Maybe there’s a flare-up of mental illness, or common stressors from Breadjobs and relationships. There will be things that will try to throw you off, and by taking care of yourself, you’ll be able to weather them easier.

Most editors and publishers are human with things like ‘feelings’ and ‘empathy’. Scientists are still looking into whether or not there are facts to back that statement up, but in the spirit of unbridled optimism I’m going to believe it’s true.

You’ve taken care of yourself so far, right? That’s helped you meet your deadlines, and you’ve progressed as you’ve liked? But things happen. You’ve given yourself the best chance you could to weather this so far, so you’ll be more likely to handle it and still keep your obligations.

And if you can’t because of conflicts, or you need to prioritize yourself now so that you have a future later, most people will understand and work with you. You’re doing your best, and taking care of yourself, and they’re sure to have seen that.

Granted, even some Breadjobs won’t see it that way, but the rant against differing value systems within a capitalistic structure is for another day. Breadjob or Writing Deadline, you gave yourself the best chance and are doing what you can with the situation as it is.

Life’s hard enough. Torture your characters instead.

…now if you excuse me, my pot of coffee is ready.

The Dory Method

Damage Control Fantasy Rewriting Sean Golden Starting a Career The Writing Life The Writing Process No Comments

This month’s theme is about damage control. When I saw that in the schedule, I laughed to myself, a sort of bitter, resentful laugh. Let’s just say that my last year has been a target-rich environment for damage control. Rejection, lack of sales, family issues, job struggles, potential financial ruin, cancer, death… It’s been a heck of a year, for sure.

Back in January I think I hit the lowest point of motivation and hope I’ve ever reached as a writer. I covered part of that in this previous Fictorians post. I won’t cover all that again. Thank goodness. But the gist is still relevant to this subject, which is all about dealing with struggles, setbacks and lack of motivation.

Right now I am doing my final proofread of the third and final book in my War Chronicles series. You want struggles? I was supposed to finish this back in February. You want setbacks? I pretty much rewrote the final third of the book three times. One of the lowest points of that entire year was when I finally came to terms with how much help and support I had gotten from my brother, who passed away from cancer last year. It turns out that it is no mere platitude to say that you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. Really gone. Forever.

So there I was, a month late with my personal deadline for my third book, with my previously planned ending in ruins as I realized it wasn’t the right ending, my main support for working through issues gone, living in a tiny rent house while trying to build my dream home, struggling with a new job as it became painfully obvious that writing wasn’t (yet) going to pay the bills, and dealing with a ream of personal issues better left unsaid here.

I could have packed it in. I could have just said “It’s too much right now, I’ll deal with this after everything settles down.”

But here’s the thing that I’ve learned in my life. Nothing ever settles down. Things rarely, if ever, get easier. And the longer you put things off, the harder it is to pick them up again.

So my means of coping is something I call “The Dory Method.” You know what that is. Everyone knows. But here’s the thing… It works. I just kept at it, a little at a time, worrying at the story issues like a dog with a bone. Until finally, one day, weeks later, I figured out what the story was lacking, and then everything started coming together.

Working full time in a new job, while trying to build a house, and living in a tiny rent house with no privacy is no way to write a book.

But you can do it. If you just… keep writing. Just keep writing. Just keep writing.

Edison was right. Success really can be 95% perspiration. Or in the case of writing, 95% perseverance.

And the result? Warlord, coming soon to an online book retailer near you. 🙂

Your Best Work Just Got Rejected. Let’s Cope.

Failures Kristin Luna Starting a Career Submissions The Fictorians The Writing Life 2 Comments

About two months ago, a much younger, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed Kristin signed up for this month thinking, “You know, I can help people unpack rejections and give them some positive options on how to deal with them.”

HahaHAHA! That was before I got rejection after rejection after rejection (and so on) in just a week’s time. And between you and me, it was hard. All of the coping mechanisms I had built up and employed up until that point crumbled before my eyes. And that’s when I came up an entirely new set of rules for coping with rejection.

First, let me give you the old, yet very helpful, coping exercises.

  1. If you received any feedback with your rejection, consider it carefully. Does it ring true? If so, then make edits. Does it not ring true? Then continue to submit your story elsewhere.
  2. If you received no feedback with your rejection, read over your story again and consider a few things.
    1. Do you still love this story?
    2. Do you see some ways to make it better?
    3. Was the editor just out of their mind to reject your story?
  3. If you see some ways you can make your story better, whether it be another grammatical pass or making the villain more villain-y, do that.
  4. If you still love you story and think the editor just didn’t see what you see in your story, continue to submit.
  5. Take out your journal, or a specific writing journal that you keep, log the rejection, and also take some time to process your feelings about it. Don’t be afraid to say you were really hoping for the story to be accepted and you are hurt that it wasn’t. Continue to write until you feel that you have processed your feelings or thoughts on the story and the rejection.

Now, let me give you some new coping exercises. These will only work if you’re a feeling human being with real human feelings, and you were really hoping for an agent or a publication to accept your work.

  1. Get a bag of potatoes. Cry hot tears of broken expectations onto those potatoes. Why? Because you know what’s yummy? Cooked potatoes.
  2. Eat those potatoes.
  3. Do not shower. Go to the store. Pick out three bags of chips because today, you don’t have to decide between the kinds you want. Today, you get all three bags of your favorite chips. And those hot tear potatoes really got you hungry for some crunchy potato byproducts.
  4. Visit the candy aisle, then the frozen dessert section. Pick out at least two items.
  5. Carry the items to the check out. When the person scanning your items smiles at you, smile back at them, and relish that there is still some goodness, some kindness in the world.
  6. Go home and share the potato chips with your dog. Look deeply into the dog’s eyes and wonder why everything can’t be as simple as your wonderful, loving, perfect dog.
  7. Eat the ice cream or candy and stare blankly at the Netflix menu. Scroll through every menu. Wonder what the point of it all is.
  8. Turn off the TV and think about why you started writing in the first place. Question if what you’re writing now is important. Wonder if it is how you idealized it to be. You realize it’s not quite on the mark. Your younger self would wonder how you veered slightly to the left. You make resolutions to re-align your writing to your ideals.
  9. Go to bed at 6:00pm, or at the very earliest sign of light fading.
  10. Wake up at 2:00am because you went to bed at 6:00pm. Play Candy Crush on your phone until 4:00am, then fall back asleep.
  11. Wake up at 6:00am. Walk your wonderful, loving, perfect dog.
  12. Take a very long shower. Wash away yesterday, and the remnants of yesterday that are globs of mashed potato in your hair and crunchy pieces of potato chips between your toes (don’t be ashamed, you really went for it yesterday).
  13. Make yourself a cup of your favorite tea or coffee with creamer (the creamer you know you shouldn’t drink because it has so many extra calories but it’s just so good).
  14. Sit down at your desk. Open up your laptop.
  15. Take a deep breath.
  16. Go back to the old, yet very helpful, coping exercises.

Damage Control

Damage Control Mary Pletsch The Writing Life No Comments

“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley.”  –Robert Burns

fossilWriters, like everyone else, make plans and budget their time.  We need to keep track of when manuscripts are due and the closing dates of submission periods.  We write on a schedule that works for us (for some, that’s daily; for others, it’s “bursts;” for still others, it’s five days a week, or four, or weekends…but whatever it is, we’re writing regularly).  We’re signing contracts and reviewing edits and receiving author copies in the mail.

At least…we should be.

Sometimes, despite our best-laid plans, something goes wrong.  A wrench is thrown into the gears.

Now what?

This month is about damage control.  Sometimes it’s personal:  there’s a crisis in your life that’s making it difficult to concentrate on your writing career.  Sometimes it’s got nothing to do with your actions at all:  the publisher who accepted your story has unexpectedly gone out of business, or someone is giving you nasty one-star reviews that seem baseless,  or your computer keeps crashing, or you’ve just realized you’re not going to be able to afford to do any cons this year.  Sometimes it’s your story:  why won’t this plot come together?  Why do people say my main character is “unlikable?”

One of the major differences between professionals and amateurs is in the way they respond in a crisis.  This month’s posts contain insights from the Fictorians on how to handle the flying wrenches that come our way with grace and professionalism.

“Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.”  –Allen Saunders