​Hello, Wonderful Writers. If you’re here, that means you read the second blog post I wrote in my It’s a Writer Thing Writer’s Block Mini Series. (If not, this post will make a LOT more sense if you read that one first. You can do that RIGHT HERE.)

If you DID read that post, you may be asking, how on earth will those action steps help me get going with my work in progress? Perhaps you’re thinking that those steps are all well and good in the abstract but still wondering how they will help you plow through a block. 

In order to highlight the steps in action, I’ll share how I personally struggled to generate ENTHUSIASM for a project I’d lost my connection with. This resulted in a difficult start, but I followed the steps I shared in my WRITER’S BLOCK MINI SERIES to fuel my enthusiasm. 

​revising something else, a book that I love as well, and one I’d put off to work on other things too often. It was time to finish this one. 

By the time I got around to revisiting my new thriller idea, all my enthusiasm for the book had disappeared. In my head, I still knew that it was important, and I knew I wanted to write it, but that simmering excitement and emotion that had been so strong the night the idea came to me … GONE.

Here’s what I did to re-establish my enthusiasm for this project.

​Even though I always have a scene-by-scene plot when I sit down to start any novel, those first chapters are usually tough. Most of the time it takes me a good 10-20K words to really settle into the voice of any novel. And, in this case, I didn’t even have my plot fully established yet. It felt DAUNTING. I was going to include a main character point of view, a villain point of view, and a few little interludes here and there. 

I defined my first task as simply plotting the MC POV chapters. I’d worry about the rest later. 

​In this case, I chose to remember WHY this book was important to me. I didn’t need to recall my big whys, my whys for even writing at all, because I hadn’t lost sight of those at that moment. I’d just come off edits for something else, so I chose to focus on my whys for writing that particular book at that particular time. The big one was simply that my agent and I had agreed that this would be the next thing I’d focus on, and I wanted to stick to that plan. My writing motor was revving, so it could have been very easy to ditch this book and go to something else, but I’d made an agreement, so I was going to stick with it. 

Second, I already had some of the plot outlined. Plenty of work still awaited me, but it was still way less than if I started fresh with a brand new concept.

The rainbows I was chasing were all the things I’d been so excited about when I first got the idea. I needed to literally generate that creeped-out emotion again. Yes, you’re reading this right. In order to re-ignite my enthusiasm for this project, I literally scared myself. What can I say? That’s how the muse works for me.

I re-read some of the stories and articles I’d found that inspired the idea, and I bought a non-fiction book on one aspect of my plot as research. Between all of that, I generated the emotional experience I had when I was inspired, which is also the emotional experience I want my reader to have when they read it.

The last rainbow for me is the same across all books. Once I break through the slow start and settle into the voice of any project, I enter my personal flow. Flow is that state we get into where we are truly engrossed in our task, so engrossed that we lose track of time and lose ourselves in the act of doing. It’s immensely restorative and one of my favorite things about writing: that feeling that I’m not even thinking about what I’m writing anymore, that the executive part of my brain is taking a break, while I let the story out in a rush. 

When a book starts slow, it’s the knowledge that my flow-zone is waiting for me as long as I push through that allows me to keep going.

​Storm one, I didn’t want to break my plan with my agent. I didn’t want to even imagine what it would be like to tell him that I hadn’t yet started that book we’d both been so excited about. And, I had another HUGE storm to dodge: I was going to write this book as my NanoWriMo project. I have yet to NOT meet my Nano goals, and no way was I going to set that precedent.

​This part wasn’t too hard for this particular book. I got my new project set up on Nano, and just seeing my word count goal there triggered memories of completing Nano in the past. Memories of past successes are a great trigger for envisioning future success. I did have a hiccup in the plotting for this book, though. My first task was just to plot the MC’s story, but once I began working on my villain, I got REALLY stuck. Once again, I thought about past times when I was struggling with something; in this case, I decided to go with a process that’s worked before: write the main plot and trust that what I needed to make my villain work would come to me during that process. 

That’s exactly what happened. 

I forewent plotting the villain for the time being and started writing. One simple element helped me conceptualize what I needed to do with my villain, but I wouldn’t have thought of it unless I first wrote out the MC’s story. To me, this is one of the big paradoxes for plotters: sometimes we have to start even if something isn’t fully conceptualized. In other words, even when we’ve plotted 95% of the book, we still have to be comfortable with a little pantsing here and there.

By the time I was done with all these steps, I was READY to write. It still took me the usual 10-20K words to really settle into the voice, but the ENTHUSIASM I generated was plenty to overcome the slow start I had to wade through to get to my flow. And, by the time I was done, I created a book that contained all my Magic Cookies, I chased each rainbow and dodged all the storms. 

This was an ACTIVE process. The block might have passed on its own, but I didn’t want to wait for that. I recognized I was stuck, decided to take an active approach to reframe my thinking and change my emotions, and then worked through these steps. 

My hope for us all is that we NEVER get stuck, but since I know that’s not terribly realistic, I hope this example helps YOU see how you can use these steps to rekindle lost ENTHUSIASM. 

Hello, Wonderful Writers. Welcome back to Post 2 of It’s a Writer Thing: Writer’s Block Series! This is a long one, so grab your drink of choice, a snack, maybe a blanket, and cozy up.

Last time, I defined the dreaded WB as the inability to make progress on a WIP (which anyone can experience if they’re struggling to make progress in an area of work or life). I shared my viewpoint that WB comes from one or more of any number of basic challenges in MOTIVATION, CONFIDENCE, and/or CLARITY. 

​Last time, we talked about how recalling the WHYS, our own personal reasons for writing, counteracts the negative emotions that arise when we’re stuck. When we’re stuck, we feel terrible, right? Sadness, anxious, frustrated, irritable. This definitely doesn’t help us move forward on big goals like writing a book. Recalling our WHYS of writing addresses barriers in the categories of MOTIVATION and clearly (no pun intended), CLARITY.

GIVEN 1: Thoughts and emotions are inherently linked. I talked about this in last month’s post, and this notion is literally the foundation of cognitive behavioral therapy. Changing our thoughts changes our emotions.

Here’s and example. Years ago, I had a contract for a book with a teeny-tiny press. I wrote the novel (a full 80K book), and I got through multiple rounds of editing, and then—bam!—they closed. Goodbye book.

Of course, it was an immense disappointment, and I could have chosen to focus on thoughts that fueled that emotion: negative thoughts about my abilities, about my luck, about my measly chances for success in the future. Not only would I have experienced disappointment, I would have invited in a whole cocktail of negative, unhelpful emotions: anger, frustration, discouragement, sadness, depression.

Instead, I chose to reframe the experience. Sure, I was still very disappointed, but I focused on thoughts related to what I got out of the experience: essentially, free mentorship from a professional editor, who I very much respect. I learned various editing techniques, practiced writing a book to spec on a deadline, practiced the skill of negotiating revisions I was going to make, and practiced revising on a deadline. Later, when my agent had significant revisions for me on a book, I knew I could do the work because I’d already practiced all the skills needed. 

By focusing on what I gained instead of what I lost, I generated a cocktail of positive emotions: satisfaction, hope (because I was assuming I’d use these valuable skills again), and one of the most important emotions ever, GRATITUDE.

One thing to keep in mind: our thoughts don’t have to be either-or. It’s entirely normal to entertain BOTH the negative ones AND the positive ones. Even if we do that, we will still generate more positive emotions than if we dwell only on the negative thoughts. Right? And, if we practice reframing, we can get better and better at focusing MORE on the positive thoughts, maybe a split—80% focus on positive thoughts and 20% focus on the unhelpful ones.

GIVEN 2: Writers must generate positive emotions toward their work.

Yeah, yeah, the prototypical tortured artist is still romanticized, but I hate that archetype. I don’t think we need to suffer for art. In fact, I believe we should experience the opposite of suffering in anything we claim to be passionate about. This doesn’t mean that writing will never suck. It will. Hard work will always be … well … hard. Marathon writing sessions will be draining, exhausting, and we my hate the world at times; but if this is our passion, our purpose, then underlying all the struggle should be intrinsic joy, fulfillment, satisfaction, and love for what we do. 

We may lose our connection to those positive emotions, though, for various reasons. Writing a book is hard, it takes time, and requires willingness to be quite vulnerable. Often we must delay gratification and face rejection—over and over and over. So, yes, these things cause negative emotions, but all the more reason to learn how to establish a foundation of positive emotions to fuel you in your writing and to get you through The Suck.

So, let’s talk about how to generate ENTHUSIASM.

I’ll start by talking about motivation. I love Miller and Rollnick’s (2012) conceptualization of motivation. They break motivation down into two core facets: Importance (remember last month when we talked about the WHY of WRITING?) and Confidence. Motivation requires both high importance and at least some element of confidence. 

For our purposes, I’ll define ENTHUSIASM as: The emotional translation of IMPORTANCE.

STEP 1: Define your actual task. This is a little bit of it’s own mind-trickery. Thinking of the enormity of writing a book or launching a career as a writer is often overwhelming. So, first we need to just define the one discrete task we need to accomplish right now. It could be: to get two chapters drafted; revise two chapters; send three queries; respond to a week’s email; open that critique (vs. read the whole thing and come up with a plan for revisions); write one blog post. 

Keep this small, just one chunk of the larger whole.

STEP 2: Remember your WHYS OF WRITING. This may seem simple, but this is literally the foundation our writing careers rest upon. You can also get more specific here. WHY do you need to do the specific task you defined? For example, I find my newsletter software to be a struggle to work with, which creates procrastination, but I value the promise I made to my followers to get out a NL as close to monthly as possible, partly because I also promised I’d pick a monthly winner. That’s my WHY for writing my newsletter; I want to honor my promise to give away a chapter critique or a free book to the people kind enough to be with me on this journey. 

Your reason might vary greatly from task to task.

​avoid (storms). Maybe you don’t want to disappoint your agent, editor, or readers by missing your deadline. Maybe you set a goal for yourself, and you want to keep your promise to yourself. Maybe you know that Pitch Wars is right around the corner, and if you don’t get your pages ready, you won’t be able to enter. Again, this list will consist of things common across writers, but also include some storms that are highly personal to you. ​

STEP 5: What are your book’s MAGIC COOKIES? I’ve borrowed this idea from Susan Dennard, author of the WITCHLANDS series, and if you’re not already following her or on her mailing list, you should. She shares a TON of writing wisdom, which you can access RIGHT HERE.

I love her concept of Magic Cookies. She defines this as the parts of your book that you can’t wait to write. Those delicious scenes, moments, or emotions you just dying to get on the page or the emotional experience you want to give your reader. It might be a character you are in love with. It might be the kissing scenes (hehehe). Maybe it’s the setting. (I recently based an entire book on my longings for a Jersey Shore beach vacation. One of my magic cookies was the boardwalk.) Each book should have a list of them, so get brainstorming. Then, make sure you put at least one or two cookies into EVERY SCENE. Don’t wait for the fun parts to come; purposely insert your cookies everywhere. For my Jersey Shore book, in addition to the setting, my cookies included: twists, intense action moments, portraying a toxic interpersonal relationship, more twists. 

STEP 6: Envision Success. One of my biggest writing slumps happened about a year ago, and I realized as I was coming out of it that one of my big problems was I’d stopped being able to envision future success in my career. I’d been wallowing in The Suck for too long, and it created that negative emotion cocktail I mentioned earlier. Needless to say, I turned that around as soon as I got wise to myself.

When I say ENVISION success, I mean just that. We must create a mental representation of reaching our goals. You can make this as detailed as you like. For some, this step involves literally mental imagery (e.g., imaging typing THE END on your WIP or signing your name to that representation agreement). For others, it might involve journaling or even speaking aloud to oneself about the success you’re going to achieve. The important thing is that we do it. Inability to see ourselves actually reaching our goal can be a big subconscious barrier to achieving it. Have you ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Does this sound silly to you? It can feel silly, sitting there, picturing your first book-signing or practicing verbally pitching a book you haven’t even written yet, but there is a TON of research on how imagery and mental rehearsal work on the brain and how these, along with self-talk, can have a positive impact on performance. That said, you need to figure out the best way to envision success for YOU. Once you’ve figured that out, set aside time every day—even just five minutes—to engage in your personal exercise.

​You may find you want to try all six steps today, but it’s not necessary to do them all every time. One or more of the steps above may work better for you than others, OR they may work better under certain circumstances. (I find that remembering the STORMS I’m DODGING helps me generate enthusiasm for specific tasks, while recalling my RAINBOWS and ENVISIONING SUCCESS are better at helping me cope with disappointments, like rejection.) Once again, the key is developing YOUR PRACTICE for fueling ENTHUSIASM.

That’s it for this month. I hope these action steps allow you to generate legit momentum-building ENTHUSIASM for whatever you’re working on at the moment. And remember, these steps are applicable to any goal you might be working on, not only writing. Next time, we’ll talk about the next emotion, JOY.

References:

Miller, WR & Rollnick, S (2012). Motivational Interviewing: Helping people change, 3rd Edition. The Guilford Press, New York, NY.