Support to Overcome Writer’s Resistance

Today, a special post about getting writing done rather than marketing your writing. To begin, tell me a little about yourself. As a writer, how many of these have you experienced in the past two years? You can use the checkboxes to keep track. They’re not storing anything anywhere.

Never finding the time to write
Making the time but not writing
Dreaming of writing but never getting started
Starting but never finishing
Starting but never finishing that one particular piece
Thinking you can do it without help
Thinking you’re beyond help
A love/hate relationship with your writing
Focusing on unhelpful negative feedback and ignoring positive feedback
Focusing on positive feedback and ignoring helpful negative feedback
Wanting to write deep but writing shallow
Writing for others instead of yourself
Writing for money but not treating it like a business
Reading about writing instead of writing
Seeking out feedback before you’re ready
Seeking out the wrong level of feedback
Ongoing health challenges like
    Unexplained fatigue (physical or mental)
    Mysterious illness (a neverending or recurring cold or flu)
    Injuries (constant little accidents)
    Addiction of any kind (substance, activities, self-destructive habits)

How many did you check?

Is it more than zero? (If it’s zero, I’d love to hear about that.)

Otherwise, that’s Resistance.

In the past 11 years I’ve written 20 books and 200 songs. I checked 17 boxes. SEVENTEEN.

I’m facing Resistance.

You’re facing Resistance.

Resistance? What’s That?

According to Steven Pressfield in his seminal work The War of Art Resistance is the mental and emotional pushback we feel when we expose ourselves by creating something. It is our unconscious mind protecting us from the “danger” of emotional vulnerability. It manifests in all the ways in that checklist above, and more.

Resistance is a bully. It will stand in your way and stop you. It will knock you down and hurt you, emotionally, even physically.

Resistance strikes nonfiction and fiction authors alike. (Memoirists, are you hearing me?) Writing a business book is still a creative endeavor and will expose you to fear.

It will stop you from writing using the tools you checked off in that list above.

It’s Not Just You & I

“I was ashamed. I have spent a good many years since—too many, I think—being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction and poetry who as ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent.”

“. . . in my heart I stayed ashamed. I kept hearing Miss Hisler asking why I wanted to waste my talent, why I wanted to waste my time, why I wanted to write junk.”

Who was this loser?

Stephen King. Stephen 350 million books sold King.

This is a quote from his On Writing which, although not precisely instructional, is the most inspiring book I’ve read when it comes to staying the course as a writer.

This is the quote that gave me my writing life back. (Ask me about that story someday.)

Our innate desire to have our work accepted can lead to problems if we put what others believe about our “God-given talent” ahead of what we need to write. It’s one of many ways Resistance twists natural feelings into quicksand.

What’s a Writer to Do?

You cannot defeat Resistance once and move on. It’s part of our mental and emotional makeup. You can, though, make it irrelevant. Note that I don’t say ignore it because you can’t ignore a bully. But if you defuse them, do things to take away their power, they are no longer a threat. Like the bully at school (or, frankly, in the office) they still show up every day. But we don’t have to keep giving them our lunch money.

Being a writer is hard. You don’t have to do this alone.

Too many writers are facing the emotional struggle to write without the support they need. After years of writing about it, I’ve created a forum to help writers and artists deal with writer’s Resistance.

It’s not going to be a collective moan-fest or even chat-fest. Instead, it’s a guided learning environment, a community of writers making a safe place for some “you’re not alone” emotional support. It will also cover practical and actionable tools and processes to get you writing and keep you writing.

Membership is $5 per month or only $25 for the whole year. Questions? Comments? Shout ’em out below and I’ll answer every one.

6 Tools to Get You Writing: Which Do You Need Most?

A wrap up of 6 tools to get you writing instead of whimpering in the fetal position on the closet floor.

Resistance the AmygdalaHere they are again:

  1. Environment—Make the place you create your art a place you enjoy being.
  2. Schedule—Habit and ritual give you power when courting the Muse.
  3. Timer—You can do anything for 5 minutes.
  4. Prewriting—Starting comes before finishing.
  5. SMART Goals—You know what they are, but you don’t use them in your writing—yet.
  6. Finding Why—Knowing your true motivation for writing and keeping it top of mind is like having motivation on tap.

Does one of them jump out as something you could really use? Do any seem simplistic, pointless, wrong? What’s missing?

I’d love to offer some free coaching in the comments below. Answer any of those questions or ask any of your own, and I’ll spend however long it takes to help you use those tools to get yourself writing.

My Writing Rituals

A songwriter friend, Charlie Cheney, asked about my habits and rituals. This is my quick unedited response to him. Later, a detailed wrap to the 6 tools to get you writing.

Here are the rituals I developed which allowed me to write 4,000 words a day quite often and as much as 10,000 words at least once, and how they’ve changed over time.

… more … “My Writing Rituals”

SMART Goals (#5 of 6 Tools to Get You Writing)

#5 of 6 tools to get you writing instead of whimpering in the fetal position on the closet floor.

If you don’t know where you’re going, not only will it be harder to get there, you may not know you’ve arrived.

Business folk all know about SMART goals. They know you never begin something without those SMART goals.

A simple Google search will provide endless results, including the fact that everyone has their own version. I’ll provide a brief review here using the version I like best.

Goals should be:

… more … “SMART Goals (#5 of 6 Tools to Get You Writing)”

Prewriting (#4 of 6 Tools to Get You Writing)

#4 of 6 tools to get you writing instead of whimpering in the fetal position on the closet floor.

Another mistake we make is to assume that what flows from our pen must be finished product. Logically, we know this makes no sense. There’s always a bit of re-writing before the proofreading and editing. We would never expect others to deliver perfection without practice.

Whether it’s the next chapter in your novel or a page of marketing copy for your website, it can help to sit down and intentionally scribble the ugliest, roughest draft you can imagine. Make it your plan to write something so simple, so messy, so basic, so ugly, that you can’t possibly use it. This is just a note to yourself about what you’re planning to think about considering writing.

This is much like the trick I use to get myself to do household chores. If a picture needs hanging, next time I see the hammer I lay it on the floor where the picture is to be hung. Then when I run across the box of nails, I set that in place. If the picture needs a hanger attached to it, that goes in the pile as well. Eventually I walk past, look at this instant picture hanging kit sitting on the floor, and realize that it will take almost no effort to finish the task. It gets done.

The hardest part about writing is writing. Not the polishing, the formatting, the editing. Just starting. Just putting down the few words that say what we really mean.

Prewriting is a way to start ugly and simple and just get something down on paper.

Once the task is started, sometimes the compulsion to continue is overwhelming.

That’s okay too.

Up next: SMART Goals