How to Keep Your Reading Life Fresh

When writing became my full-time job, my reading life got all professional too.

Kinda makes sense, right? The best writers are super well-read people. I mean, they know everything. They make all these literary allusions, they quote passages from beloved books, you can't stump them with an author reference...

Basically, when it came to my reading life, I kind of panicked.

In spite of graduating with an English major, I still had some holes to fill. I'd never read The Great Gatsby--how had that happened? And Moby-Dick and The Tale of Two Cities. A lot of classics to catch up on, and oh, in the meantime, amazing writers are still actively writing...

Really, it was a paralyzing scenario. And in true Lucy Flint fashion, I came up with a plan:

READ EVERYTHING AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

... It didn't exactly work.

I made lists. A lot of lists. I read to balance out deficiencies in my book knowledge. I finished every book I started, with total seriousness. I took very detailed, I-could-give-a-presentation-on-this kind of notes on what I read.

Heck, if the quality of my own writing depended on what I read, I didn't see how I could do it any differently.

Funny thing happened. My reading energy dried up. And I got really into reading magazines instead.

Eventually I realized I needed to lighten up. I redesigned my reading life to blend structure with a bit of quirk. And now? I'm always energized by what--and how--I'm reading.

Here are my new guidelines:

I keep a huge list of books to read. And I do mean huge. At last count, I have over 1300 books on my reading list, and I'm adding to it all the time.

This used to be a bit crippling--until I changed my perspective.

Here's the thing: I'll never get all the books read. Never. There will always be worthwhile books out there that I won't get to.

Why is this good news? Because it gives me the permission I need to quit reading books I don't like. I want to find the ones I love! So if a book doesn't win my heart over pretty quickly, I toss it. 

I build a monthly reading list. Because 1300 books is still a bit daunting, I break it down and focus on a select number of titles each month. I pick out fifteen, a dozen of which are novels.

Buckle up, because this is where structure meets quirk: Each month has a theme.

Yes, really.

I know, I know, it's a little goofy. But I can't even tell you how much it delights me to do this. One month, it's books with an animal in the title. The next month features titles that start with the letter M. The month after that, it's books with a color in the title, or one-word titles, or every thirtieth book on the list.

I once explained this system to another writer, and she had such undisguised pity on her face. Apparently this way of reading is lunacy. But whatever. It's my lunacy! My reading list! ... Ahem.

I order more books than I can read. So, I order those fifteen themed books through the library, even though I know I won't get through them all.

Because I'm not that quick of a reader. In all honesty, I read about three to six full books in a month. So why order so many? So I'm free to discard the ones I don't like! It keeps me from feeling trapped with a few selections. 

(Plus, it really does feel cathartic to chuck a book. Pffft, I'm not reading this! It's a weirdly great feeling.)

I give a book twenty pages. In spite of my delight in tossing a book, I really do commit to read the first twenty pages. At that point, I know if I'm interested in continuing or not.

Twenty pages is long enough to give you a good feel for the style, the characters, and what you're in for. 

And I've found--after suffering through all too many--that if I'm snarling or rolling my eyes during the first twenty pages, I'm going to feel that way all through the rest of the book. So I chuck it. No guilt necessary.

I know, I know. This totally horrifies some people.

My only requirement in tossing a book: I try to pin down what exactly made me drop it. 

Was the style obnoxious? How? Was the main character totally unsympathetic? Where did I lose interest? Why wasn't it working for me? This little step lets me extract a bit of learning... without enduring the next 350 pages.

Obviously, then, I still do take notes. Yep. It's still my job, after all. But my note-taking is a lot more casual.

I'll write down what worked the best in the book, what kept me reading. I'll try to capture what exactly was disappointing or what was so moving. How did they make that setting come alive, why was that dialogue exchange so spot-on, or how did they pace the climax? 

I'll copy out paragraphs that I loved, or ones that were confusing so I can avoid those mistakes.

So yeah. There's still note-taking. But I try to keep a light hand.

I wipe the slate clean. At the end of each month, I return all the unread books along with the rest.

It gives me a light heart to chuck out the books I didn't get to, instead of making myself complete the list. It's freeing.

Sometimes you just have to be in the right mood for a certain book. So if it fell through the cracks this month, no worries. I'll probably reorder it again, some other month.

... So there it is. That's my reading life. Somehow, that blend of structure and freedom works just right for me. I don't feel so pinned down, but there's enough of a challenge that I get excited to dive in, month after month.

What about you? Do you toss books freely, or have you found it's worth it to persevere? Do you keep a reading list? Or do you like to browse and pick up what sounds good to you?

What works well for your reading life: Let's continue the discussion in the comments.

Wanna keep reading? Check out: Frivolity + Wisdom and The Power of an Explosively Good Book.

Build a Better Brainstorm

Finding good ideas.

Sometimes that feels like my total job description: finding the series of tiny ideas that turn into a character, an action line, a scene, a novel. 

A good idea has some heat to it, some intrigue--and it pulls me forward, makes the process of writing nearly effortless. A dull idea, or one that doesn't suit me--well, that adds weights to the writing process, bogs it down.

Brainstorming. It's how we scare the good ideas into the light, right? How we scrub around for ideas in the folds of our brains. We all need tools to dig around with, ways to bring those ideas out. How far can a writer get without ideas? Not far at all.

My take on brainstorming used to be: Put down all the ideas you can think of.

That was it. Pretty straightforward, pretty chill. But I've done a bit of reading about creativity since then, and these three insights have helped me up my idea-generation game. 

1. Have a question: have a goal.

In his fantastic book, Making Ideas Happen, Scott Belsky has a lot to say about brainstorming. (Actually, the whole book is about the process of turning an idea into a thing, a product. Annnnnnnd basically you should just quit reading this post and pick up that book. It's amazing.)

While brainstorming is a necessary part of the process, it's too easy to get stuck in this happy, anything-is-possible phase. He cautions, "A surplus of ideas is as dangerous as a drought. The tendency to jump from idea to idea to idea spreads your energy horizontally rather than vertically."

Okay. So true. One of my book projects is paralyzed by too many ideas. The draft is basically a collection of possible scenes, some of them written as many as four times in four different ways... So many possibilities, that I got mired in the mess and finally shelved it.

How do you get around this?

Scott Belsky says, "Brainstorming should start with a question and the goal of capturing something specific, relevant, and actionable."

Oooh. Game on.

This kind of clarity is so helpful. Especially when I'm trying to tweak something about the way I work, or what to focus on in a story. It's easy for me to take out a sheet of paper and just generate stuff. But it's so much more valuable to ask, What precisely am I looking for? What exactly is my question? 

And then to take those results and test them to see: How will this look in action? How can this translate to real life, to steps taken?

2. Go after an "aggressive quota for ideas."

One of the best books on creativity I know: The Creative Habit, by master choreographer Twyla Tharp. She advises "giving yourself an aggressive quota for ideas."

There's something in our brains that rises to the challenge of listing a bunch of ideas in a very short time frame. 

Tharp writes about an exercise she gives when she's speaking at an event. "You've got two minutes to come up with sixty uses for [a] stool."

Two minutes: sixty ideas. 

Idea generating goes berserk.

She writes, "The most interesting thing I've noticed is that there's a consistent order to the quality of ideas. You'd think the sixtieth idea would be the most lame, but for my purposes, which are to trigger leaps of imagination, it's often the opposite."

Isn't that crazy? My main takeaway is: I usually stop seeking ideas way too soon.

She says, "It's the same every time: the first third of the ideas are obvious; the second third are more interesting; the final third show flair, insight, curiosity, even complexity, as later thinking builds on earlier thinking."

So now, when I'm searching for ideas, I try to give myself a short time limit and a biiiiiiiiig list to fill. And then I let myself go crazy.

Try it! You might surprise yourself.

3. Go the other way.

One of the most butt-kicking books in my how-to-write library is Donald Maass's Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook.

You guys. This is one of my desert island books. If I was going to, uh, write a book on a desert island and could only bring one book on craft, this would be it. I'm still firmly convinced that the more I apply what he discusses in these exercises, I'll have written the best darned book I could possibly write.

He has a section devoted to brainstorming, with several excellent tips on how to seek out original ideas. But my favorite tip is this: 

Remember the power of reversal. Take your first impulses, and go the opposite way. That is the secret of brainstorming.

This especially applies to the kind of work that doesn't lend itself to "write sixty possible whatevers." For me, this works best in situations like this:

What will Fiona do when the three-headed dog shows up? Run. Scream. Faint. Try to shoot it. Those are the first ideas that come to mind.

But taking those initial impulses and going the opposite way, looks more like this: 

Ignore the dog. Bark at it. Sprout a second head herself. Go closer. Offer it ice cream. Dance.

And suddenly, the scene has a whole different range of possibilities. (We readers love a bit of unpredictability, right?)

Are your gray cells tingling yet?

What brainstorming strategies have worked for you? Which of these tips are you itching to try? Leave your thoughts in the comments!

---

Wanna keep reading? Check out: What we write about when we write about teethmarks and The Way to Great Things.

If you liked this post and want to give your fellow brainstormers a boost, please share the link!

My Best Formula for a Good Writing Routine

My early writing schedules were torturous, terrible things. Hideous.

I was desperate to prove myself. So I devised a massive, arthritically structured plan. I wanted to do four kinds of writing (poetry, essays, short stories, novels), and I wanted to do them all RIGHT NOW. As well as researching markets and sending out submissions.

My days were frantic and bursting at the seams. I took zero time for real input, or the slow exploratory writing--the kind that so often yields the best insights, the best work.

All that's changed--thank goodness!

Now I'm a lot more interested in doing quality work, and a lot less interested in being the girl who writes everything.

After a lot of learning and experimenting, I came up with a basic, non-crazy writing template that has held up for years. It's a formula more than a concrete schedule: It's very forgiving, and the elements can stretch, collapse, or change places, based on your needs or your time constraints. You can shrink it into a thirty-minute micro-version of a writing day, or expand it to fill a full seven or eight hours.

If you're looking for a way to structure your writing days, give this a try!

Step 1: Start with a bit of courage, inspiration, and love.

I start by reading books about the writing life, books that address the attitudes and mindset and heart of the writer herself. This is my mental warm-up, my precursor to deeper thinking.

I am happily surrounded by many good books in this category. Right now, my top five are:

• A Year of Writing Dangerously / Barbara Abercrombie

• The Art of War for Writers / James Scott Bell

• A Writer's Book of Days / Judy Reeves

• A Writer's Paris / Eric Maisel 

• Page after Page / Heather Sellers

Step 2: Warm up your pen with light, unattached writing.

This could be time to do a few writing exercises, or my current technique of choice: a bit of journaling. The point is to get words down, warm-up words. Pen moving over paper; a cursor tracking across that white field. Get some words down without judgement or stopping. Write for a few minutes.

Step 3: Stock your brain: read the dictionary or the encyclopedia.

This is an insanely useful practice. I love the serendipity of what you'll find in a single page. When I'm looking hard for story ideas, I'll gulp down three pages in the dictionary every day.

It's not really about learning new words. It's more about encountering new thoughts, or familiar ones in new contexts. This practice has sparked character ideas, new settings, and whole story concepts. You never know what you'll find, what will save your bacon in a moment of inspirational poverty.

Step 4: The meat of the day: Focus Area #1.

For me lately, this means typing in the previous day's drafting work. Some rough revising work on those pages, a bit of editing, and exploring new ideas that spring up.

If you're new and don't have a project yet, try diving deep into the world of writing exercises.

I once spent eight weeks working through all 365 prompts in A Writer's Book of Days. At the end of it, I had the bones of at least four novels, as well as the ideas simmering for dozens more. If you're new to writing, this might be the best thing for you!

Step 5: Focus Area #2.

This is usually when I do the day's drafting: fleshing out scenes, sentence by sentence.

Other times, I've used this time to work on specific craft and skill-building exercises, like the ones in James Scott Bell's Plot and Structure or Donald Maass's Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook or The Fire in Fiction.

There are MILLIONS of books on craft out there. When I'm feeling weak on a certain writing skill (in other words, always), I'll grab two or three books that cover the same subject, and I'll map out a mini writing course for myself.

Step 6: Review the day, and plan tomorrow.

Because I'm a notetaking nerd, I usually add something to my work journal about how the day went. I'll mull over what I'm stuck on with my draft, vent frustration about what was unexpected, or celebrate the victories.

This is the perfect time to plan the next day. Before I leave my desk, I write out a detailed list of what I'll do tomorrow, category by category. When one day feeds into the next, they start to build momentum. Trust me, it makes it a lot easier to get started.

Step 7: Fall into someone else's good book.

After a day's work of word lifting, I love to flop down with someone else's finished prose. It's both a great way to unwind, and a way to keep musing on words, admiring the rhythms of sentences, getting lost in the imagery.

Plus, hey, we're readers, right? Why write if you don't love to read?

There it is! My tried and true all-purpose writing routine.

Obviously, this is just one girl's escapade in Scheduleland. Maybe this is the kind of thing that bores you to tears, but I'm a schedule junky. Really. I'm the nosiest person when it comes to how other people work, endlessly curious.

If that's you too, then check out the book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work (the blog that started it!) by Mason Currey. While you're at it, look through the archives of My Morning Routine, which posts once a week, detailing the morning ritual of current artists, entrepreneurs, writers, and other creative sorts. 

All right. So: How do you work? Do you have a tried-and-true routine, or a habit that helps you start, or a proven closer? Share tips and habits in the comments!

---

Wanna keep reading? Check out: We the Observers and Be Patient: We're waiting for wonderful.

If you enjoyed this post, please pass it along to the other writers in your life!

How to Live with Humans and Still Write.

When I was at college, I didn't have much trouble with priorities. I knew how much money it cost to be there, so my whole plan was academics first, friends second. Not to say that I didn't have fun. I found a wonderful group of friends that I cherished. But I knew that I was there to learn, to grow, to get a degree. All that stuff.

Fast forward to post-graduation, and coming back home. I came home to write, full-time. And I thought that giving writing top-priority status would be fairly simple. I'd spent four years putting my brain first: I knew how to do this. Right?

Not so much.

When it came to family versus writing, I found myself in decision-making, priority-clarifying agony.

My family members are my biggest fans. Hands down. They are the ones who champion my work, believe in me when I don't, and pick me up when I've had a crappy day. So it's not like they were intentionally jeopardizing my schedule. 

But I deeply internalized the idea that writers must be strict about the time they spend writing. They need to make a commitment to get the words down, and then honor that commitment, no matter what. Even when they work from home, they need to be as accountable as anyone in a 9-5 office environment.

And there's a lot of truth, still, in all of that.

But I began to put everything in my life into two groups: Things That Help the Work Get Done, and Things That Don't.

That looks very cold blooded typed out, but I knew that 1) I was absolutely called to do this work, and 2) if I didn't get my writing in, the book stopped existing.

If I didn't think about my characters, they evaporated like smoke. My ability to have a career one day in this massively competitive field depended on me becoming the best novelist I could.

I came across this quote from the golfer Ben Hogan:

Every day you don't practice you're one day further from being good.

I posted that above my desk and let it torment me.

The pressure was on.

But I love my family like crazy.

So there would be days when minor (or major) emergencies would strike. There would be out-of-town guests who would be visiting right during working hours. There would be impromptu afternoons of errands where my opinion was needed. 

I seemed to be in a constant state of guilt.

I felt guilty when I skipped my writing to entertain guests for four hours. I felt guilty the next day when I felt too drained from visiting to think a single clear thought. Any time family won over writing, I felt like a bad, lazy writer.

But when writing won out, and I didn't help when my family could use the help, or when I didn't spend time enjoying their company or building our relationships, or when I kept myself from joining in too many activities (because I felt overly drained, and knew I wouldn't be working if I participated)...

Well, then I felt like a bitter, hysterical, self-focused shrew.

And I'm guessing I acted like one, too.

And nothing keeps me from writing like a sense of guilt.

I don't know if you find yourself in this kind of circumstance at all.

It always haunted me that on paper, I could easily portion my days: Family gets this amount of time, work gets that amount. 

But for years and years, I couldn't do that. I couldn't stick to it. And I felt like a mess.

Perspective Shift

Two things have helped change my perspective on all that.

First, my younger sister got married and gave birth to the three cutest kids in the universe. And I learned that, if you give me a choice between playing with a cute kid and writing a difficult scene, I almost always choose the cute kid. (Even though I'll get food in my hair.)

But the even bigger change was this: During the last two years, my family was struck by a series of bewildering difficulties, lost jobs, injuries with lonnnng recoveries, and serious illness. And I became deeply, seriously exhausted. Like--I broke.

I stopped doing everything.

And I really didn't care about how many hours I needed to work, or how many pages I needed to write.

So, writing wasn't my full-time job for a long while. Trying to on my feet again: that was my full-time job.

And after I'd done that, I focused on my family, not my words. Real, living people needed me far more than my characters did. I worried--a lot--about what that meant for my writing. I was barreling toward my thirtieth birthday, and no novel deal, no agent, nothing even ready to send to readers.

But at the same time, being present for my family during incredibly hard times, and throwing over my work so that I could spend time with my nieces and nephew--that has all profoundly changed my heart, my character, and my sense of what's truly important.

I'm a different person. With different--better--stories inside me.

Yes, I gave up a lot of writing time. But the ironic thing is: when life calmed down a bit, I cranked out two new novels at an astonishing pace.

For example: I've been writing a trilogy (all the first drafts done, hooray!) And the core idea for the whole thing leapt into my mind four days after my first niece was born. I was staring at her small baby fingers, and thinking about what it felt like to be an aunt.

It was like something sliced through my heart and shook my brain inside out. And--because I'm a writer--I had a new character in my head. And because of that new character, I have three books where she plays the main role.

Loving my family, being present with them, strengthening those relationships... well, friends, it all actually goes into the work.

So is balance a myth, or is it attainable? Do you see life as family versus work? Does one win and the other lose?

I don't have a perfect answer all hammered out. But here's what I've decided.

I do have a commitment to my work. And I do want to do all I can to become the best writer possible. 

But I don't want to do that at the cost of my heart, my most important relationships, or my character. During those early years of debating between writing and family--I didn't really like myself. I didn't like all the resentment I felt, for one commitment over the other. I didn't like the guilt.

Lately, I've chosen to see them as not in conflict with each other. My family, and their lives mingling with mine, drive my stories. My stories are my job, the thing I've been given to do, what I care about, one of my greatest passions. My family relationships: well, they're another. 

I've decided not to see them as "in competition" with each other. Instead, they're two of the main forces that make me who I am. 

It still isn't an easy thing to wrestle with. And yes, there's definitely a time to enforce a strict routine (which I usually do keep to), and to talk about boundaries, and all those healthy things. And we'll definitely be talking about all that later on the blog. 

But for now, here are a few questions I ask myself when things get tricky (because of course they still do sometimes!):

1. Where am I most needed? 

When family is sick or hurting, writing just takes a back seat. Period. I bring books and small writing exercises to waiting rooms, or I'll read out loud as I keep people company, but the family member comes first. And I refuse to feel guilty about not working. 

Likewise, if writing has a really rough week, and the family commitment or errand or request is something that can be shifted, compromised on, or rescheduled: then writing prevails.

2. Is doing less actually okay?

I tend to think that I have to do all or nothing, and that mindset limits my options. 

Sometimes, sitting at my desk for a good thirty minutes, on a difficult-to-get-to-the-writing day, is a lot better than nothing. On days when life is butting in, I set a small task and commit to finishing it, before doing what I need to with family.

It goes the other way too: sometimes, if I just have twenty minutes for a FaceTime date with my nieces and nephew, I'll be honest that that's all I can do right now. I go all out during those twenty minutes (make all the silly faces, sing all the silly songs), but then I go back to my work. And I don't let myself feel guilty.

3. Don't aim for perfect.

Frankly, I don't always know what the right call is. Sometimes the lines are blurry.

Sometimes, "they're going to my favorite coffeehouse for a long afternoon of conversation!" is really worth ditching writing for the day. 

It's too easy for my nature to be obsessed with making the right decision. With picking the thing that I can perfectly defend to myself.  But sometimes the best decisions wouldn't necessarily pass the grim panel of judges that reside in my brain.

Sometimes, you need to chuck your work for the day and go to the apple orchard with your niece and sing to the goats at the petting zoo. Sometimes, when someone is hurting, you need to take a week off of work to be the full-time support staff in your own home. Sometimes, that's just the most important thing.

So when I am tempted to panic, when I think that "I'm one day further from being good," I remember this other quote (infinitely more helpful):

"One may achieve remarkable writerly success while flunking all the major criteria for success as a human being. Try not to do that." -- Michael Bishop

That sounds like the absolute right way to look at the whole question. The right focus to have. 

I'd rather be a good human than a perfect writer.

What lessons have you learned, about balancing work and family? If you're working from home, do you have any special tricks or mindsets that help? Chime in down in the comments!

---

If you liked this conversation, please help encourage your creative friends by sharing this post!

Wanna keep reading? Check out Empty All Your Pockets and Beating the Writer's Paradox.

Seven ideas to kickstart your writing life!

Here's the thing about the writing life: We're always starting. Starting up, starting over, starting for the first time, starting for the hundredth time. Restarting after a break, an illness, a catastrophe, a trip, a block.

One of the most valuable skills to learn as a writer is just that: the skill of starting again.

So here's a handy little list of mindsets and tricks to help you dive in--whether it's for the first time on your first day, or you're coming back from a break (as I am, this morning, after beating off a cold), or you're renewing your interest in a project you put on pause.

1. Embrace it.

I can't tell you how many hours (days, weeks?) I've wasted being frustrated over starting. Starting can be hard, y'all! And given the choice between diving into a new project or, say, eating all the cheese in the kitchen, I tend to vote for the cheese.

I don't like fighting through all the cobwebs in my brain, all the creaking noises as my word engines warm up. I don't like facing my own ignorance about the best way to dive in. But if starting is a fact of the writing life (and it totally is!), then why not make it a friend instead of an enemy?

When I shift my focus, I start to see how the break has made me better. The time away has given me a richness that I will bring to this new project. Whatever growing I've done will only benefit the work. And I probably have better ideas now.

So I decide to be patient. In spite of the cobwebs.

2. Explore. 

Beginnings are the perfect time to entertain a lot of ideas. To cast around for unusual options. You're not bound to anything just yet. 

Sometimes I've been so afraid of these early stages of beginning that I sprint through them to get to the much more comfortable phase of mundane work and crossing off to-do list items. But I think a bit of adventurousness pays off at the beginning. 

Go out to museums, ramble a bit at your nearest state park, meet new people and see them like a writer would see them. Notice everything: it's a writer's job, after all, to pay attention. To everything.

When you look at the world with a writer's eyes, you never know what you might discover. And you might stumble on an even better way to start.

3. Exercise.

In a way, this is part of exploring. Beginnings are excellent times for writing exercises. 

To be totally honest with you, I'm a long-time hater of writing exercises. Really. It's true. I bristle at most prompts, and usually don't feel any kind of idea tugging at me, other than "I'd rather not be doing this."

... Until I came across Judy Reeves's book, A Writer's Book of Days. You guys. This is the exercise book (among other things!) for people who hate exercises. Her prompts are beautifully open-ended. Intriguing little nudges to get you moving. You almost can't help but write.

And the beginning of a project (or a writing practice, or a writing week) is a wonderful time to do a few warm-up exercises, to get the ink and the ideas flowing.

My advice? Grab her book, pick a prompt, and write for ten minutes. If that makes you feel sweaty and anxious, start with five. Five minutes, picking out a path down a new road with your pen.

It will help bring new ideas into the work you're about to do. Or, if you don't know what you're about to do, it might give you a new story to pursue. You might even get hooked on the buzz of unraveling some new images, some new prose, on the spot, right out of your funny brain...

4. Make lists.

Lists are one of my favorite tools for jumpstarting a writing project.

I don't mean lists with items like "Research the setting" or "Decide on inner conflict for Josie," although those are important.

I'm thinking more like: "Ten sounds she hears in the woods during this scene--at least three sounds should be unsettling," and "Twelve weird places where the opening conversation could take place," and "Four reasons why she has a bad reaction to country music." 

I like listing out ways to add interest to my scenes, or ways to get around the cliched first attempts that my brain is sure to fling on the page. It's a way of getting more than one option, a way of tricking yourself into a more interesting writing session than you might have otherwise had.

5. Interview yourself.

This is what I do when desperate times start begging for desperate measures.

When I'm really anxious about the beginning of something, I start talking to myself (and taking notes). I do this in a document devoted to exactly this kind of conversation. I call it a work journal, but you could pick a snazzier name if you like.

I start asking myself what I'm so worried about. What's making me anxious. What I can't stand about the beginning, why my characters make me nervous, why I'm getting a twitch. I let myself go on and on, typing down the complete answers.

Or I start poking around trying to figure out why I had this great idea that led me through weeks of daydreaming to this starting moment--only for it to abandon me. I start asking why this story or this new enterprise matters to me. What captures my heart about it. What images do I keep seeing. What is tugging at the back of my brain.

So many times, this has gotten me around a huge boulder that was sitting at the beginning of my writing path. Because the more I talk about what I care about, the more I imagine the one thing that got me to my desk in the first place.

And then I know my true starting point.

I start with what I care about. Even if it's not the "first line of the book," or the first technical stage of brainstorming, or whatever. Interviewing myself helps me find out what my guts are telling me--and then I go with my gut. 

So, try this. You might be surprised at what you find out.

6. Don't get stuck.

It's good to embrace the start. It's good to explore a bit, do a few exercises, make some lists, and ask yourself questions. 

But it's not supergood to turn the beginning of the path into a campsite. 

Beginnings can be scary, but you can also get used to them. It gets tempting to just stay there, entertaining options for weeks, once you've realized that middles are plenty scary themselves. (And don't even get me started on endings.)

I've caught myself again and again staying on the first step: mired in the first chapter of a new novel, caught in the first paragraphs of an essay, or even just paddling round and round in the pool of research. 

Dare to let go. To not make your beginning "perfect" before you move on into the middle.

Remind yourself that you can fix it later, or make it better some other day. Leap.

7. Trust the mess.

So many artists and creatives recommend that you "trust the process." And it's taken me a while to figure out what this means.

... Maybe because I was too busy shrieking, "But I don't trust the process! I don't trust anything about it!"

The process of creating is messy and confusing. It doesn't always follow logical steps, even when we think it should. It's not easy to explain. You don't always write a piece--or revise one--in a clear and orderly fashion. The route that takes you from "person holding a pen" to "person holding a story" is a bewildering road, most of the time.

(If it's straightforward and easy for you, then you're very lucky. You should probably buy a lottery ticket.) 

What "trust the process" has meant for me is: Don't flip out when it gets messy. The mess is part of it.

And that's okay. Take deep breaths. Go with your gut when you can. Do the next tiny piece of work in front of you. And don't be afraid of the mess.

---

Beginning a project with some degree of grace: it's a skill I keep relearning. 

Each of these list items has saved my bacon more than once. Any of them striking a chord with you?

What have you been doing to ease through the beginning steps of your work? Which list item do you want to try this week? Share your thoughts in the comments!

---

If you liked any of these tips, please send this post to your writing and creating friends! Starting a project is a lonely business--let's keep each other company!

Wanna keep reading? Check out Let's keep going no matter what and The Secret.

Three fears that stop us from beginning something good (and what to do about them)

Most of the time, it's easy to think about beginning something. To dream it up. Starting a new project, or starting a writing practice at all: It feels just safe enough to talk about it. Exciting, and full of good possibility. 

Dreams feel safe. Everything is possible in Dreamville! It is a good time! Your feet don't get sore, you never run out of ideas, your skills rise to the challenge. And confetti floats down, and a feel-good soundtrack hums in the background...

Okay, maybe you vaguely account for snags and difficulties, but they are dream-snags, wispy-difficulties. They aren't enough to squash the floating, ethereal dream itself.

The actual beginning part--well, that's different.

As I make that transition from dreaming and early happy planning and excitement into the actual start--the actual rubber meeting the actual road--my knees get mushy.

Dozens of fears snarl up in my face. I find myself procrastinating, making excuses. I discover a new TV series that I MUST watch in entirety. I find any clutter unbearable and "need" to organize whatever I put my hands on.

I put off the new adventure. Or discard it completely. Or maybe I do start, but so halfheartedly that it fails. And it's kinda on purpose.

Ugh. That's just no good, watching fear snatch a beautiful beginning out of my hands.

Here are three fears that persistently try to derail me:

Fear of looking foolish.

This one's really easy to spot, because it's the voice in my head saying, "Oh my gosh. You look like an idiot."

See? Not that subtle.

This fear cannot get over the fact that I'm a writer.

You're actually going to play with a bunch of imaginary characters, and write down what they say, and then try to sell it to other people. And you call this a job. Your peers are flying planes, leading churches, teaching children, or performing dentistry. And you've got the mental equivalent of puppets on your hands, making yourself laugh, alone, at your desk.

This fear says, "You're not going to be able to tell anyone that that's what you write about, that that's what you do." And so I'm tempted to skip it completely.

Fear of hard work.

The trouble with this fear is that it has its roots in cold, hard facts. It has some truth on its side.

This is that thickening in the stomach that I get when I look at the almighty list of things that went wrong in a book. I come up with these crushingly huge revision treatises. Thousands of things that need fixing. You could probably run a country with a less comprehensive list than that.

And I absolutely quail at the sight of it.

I still think of this feeling as "syllabus shock." It's what descends during the first week of new college classes. I'd pick up those syllabus packets from my professors, look over the collected amount of work I'd be doing that semester. And slowly realize the colossal size of the undertaking.

All the hours of work, all the pages of reading. The dreaded group projects, dozens of essays, and OHMYGOSH even an oral presentation.

"Actually," I'd say to myself, in a clear calm voice (though slightly higher pitched than usual), "I don't want a degree at all. That's all nonsense. I would just like to go to my hometown and open a coffee shop. I believe in coffee. It is a noble undertaking." 

And then they'd find me three days later, wandering the wilderness preserve on campus, with my clothes in rags and my hair on end, raving about espresso machines...

(Okay. That didn't really happen exactly. But I felt like it could happen.)

Fear of failure.

This is the mother fear. The one that gives the others their power.

What if you face down the silliness of your proposed project, and what if you've even managed to believe you can do all the work. Then there's always this one:

This fear says that all your efforts won't amount to anything at all. No one will sign your project. Even if by some miracle you sell the book, no one will read it. Or everyone will--but they'll hate it. They'll write mocking-yet-accurate reviews. And also, bonus: You won't even make money from it.

All around failure.

Turning Fears Around

This is the full fear chorus I hear at the start of an enterprise: You're an idiot, you'll never get it done, and it won't be worth it.

Well. That is some fun chatter. That's a real happy party.

Listen to that too long and too loud, and you'll believe it. But that's not where we're going to stay, right? You and I, we're going to get better at beginning well.

So what works?

Wisely anticipate.

For starters, I think it can help to expect a bit of fear. After all, a taunt that's expected loses some of its power. It might still sting, but you were looking for it. You can block the punch that you know is coming--at the very least, you have a shot.

But if you're going to expect it, you also have to decide not to be paralyzed by it. 

Deciding not to be paralyzed has been huge for me. I remember that fears don't speak the whole truth. I remember that I have more options than fear wants me to believe. 

Sometimes this is as simple as announcing to myself: "I'm going to feel like running away. But I won't run."

Call its bluff.

When it comes to looking foolish, it helps to call for definitions. Pin this fear down. What the heck does foolish even mean?

Does it mean not serious enough? Not valuable? Frivolous?

I just checked my "Speaking Like Fear" phrasebook... and yeah, that's what my fear is talking about. My work isn't as smart and clever as my work "should" be. I took poetry classes. I memorized rhetorical structure and stuff. I should be all smug and intelligent with my words. (I shouldn't type kinda and publish it on a blog post, for crying out loud.)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But here's something I learned recently: When a person is going through a really tough time, they need a laugh. They need a bit of an escape. Yes, they might also need a pilot, a pastor, a teacher, a doctor.

But they also need someone to cup hands around their very humanness. They need someone to hearten them.

They need that bit of encouragement that comes in with laughter. They need the understanding of their very selves that they find in a piece of good fiction. And that is no small thing. That's the very work of living.

So here's the absolute truth: The idea that this is foolish is an illusion.

And that goes for so much more than fiction. That goes for whatever work you do. If it's big enough and important enough that fear gets all up in arms--well! Almost by definition, that stuff is not foolish. Fear doesn't get all riled up with things that don't matter. I mean, why bother? 

Fear shows up for the big stuff. So call its bluff. You're not being foolish at all.

Grab hold of perspective with both hands.

To fight the fear of hard work, I have to change up how I'm looking at the project.

There's a falseness that creeps in when I look at a huuuuuge list of problems with a work-in-progress. There's a lie that sidles up. Because I'm looking at a list that will cover months of my life. But I can't live "months of my life" all at once.

You get what I mean?

In college, I'd look at those syllabuses, and I experienced the weight of all that work at once. But the truth is, I'd do the actual work of it one day at a time.

That's it. One hour at a time. Fifteen minutes at a time.

The pressure of all those deadlines at once--it felt like it was going to kill me, or make me a lunatic, one or the other. But I survived semester after semester just fine. Not dead. Not crazy.

Whenever I start a new book, I hear that shriek: I can't do all that work!!

And I'm learning to respond very calmly and very sensibly: "Well, you're not going to do it all right now."

You eat an elephant one bite at a time, and you write a book the same way. You do that tiny piece of work in front of you, and then you pick up the next tiny piece of work. And bit by bit (or Bird by Bird), you get the work done.

Also? You can totally give yourself breaks, refreshing retreats, and mini celebrations with each project milestone you tick off. It doesn't have to be all grim, all fingers-to-the-bone.

Fear of hard work: It's hysterical when it doesn't need to be.

Decide what success is.

All right. So, failure is real. I mean, it's really real. Stuff dies, ends, blows up, fades.

I spent four years drafting a dead-end novel that I don't know if I can ever rescue. It has a tendency to haunt me, as I work with my other projects. With each revision I start, part of me thinks: "This is the one when you destroy the story irrevocably. This is when it all goes pear-shaped."

Here's my best weapon for that: I take a good, hard look at what success is.

This fear has a very specific definition of success. Something along the lines of: a five-book contract, an advance that lets me buy a car and a cool loft downtown, three big-time awards, and eight weeks (minimum!) on the New York Times Bestseller List.

It wants my enterprise to pay off in a "legitimate" way. This means money, career recognition, and all the naysayers crying, "We should never have judged you!"

If it can't have all that, this fear says, You failed.

I have a nice long history with this fear, because I'm a recovering perfectionist: 

I have literally been sickeningly disappointed by a 100% on a test--because I didn't get the extra credit. Seriously.

But once you realize that you can be disappointed by a perfect score, you start to question just what's driving that disappointment.

In other words, that fear is completely bonkers.

To shut it up, I've come up with my own ideas about success. And instead of black-or-white requirements, it is a list of questions:

• Am I learning?

• Am I growing?

• Am I moving toward a better understanding of stories, and of my story in particular?

• Did I try?

• Was I honest?

And lately, I'm also asking more and more:

• Is this healthy?

• Am I loving the people around me?

• Am I being kind, to others and to myself? Am I being compassionate?

These questions open up a whole new paradigm. A whole new way of looking at work, at projects, at beginnings.

Those four years I spent on my first novel--I grew a lot. I learned so much about the kinds of stories I loved, and the kinds of stories I didn't so much like. I learned like crazy about the writing process itself. I tried very, very hard. And I found out just how short-sighted it is to work in unhealthy ways.

So actually, that novel is a total success. I learned things that I couldn't pay for, and started incorporating habits that are making me into the kind of writer I want to be.

That's crazy successful! That's like a whole degree in writing!

So when the fear of failure shows up, force it to voice its definition of success. And then dare to redefine it.

And then? Be bold about claiming your successes. Celebrate them! And button that fear's mouth for good.

What does fear say when it moves in close to you? What strategies have you used to shut fear up? We're stronger together, so share your thoughts on courage in the comments!

---

Want to encourage a writing friend who might be struggling with fear (and aren't we all)? Please share this post!

Want to keep reading? Check out The DNA of Writerly Heroism and We Are Gonna Run For It.

Starting over: with the most essential ingredient in a writing life.

March. The first month that sounds like it might have Spring in it. Like mayyyyybe we are done with winter and colds and flu and all that frozen-toe nonsense. And it strikes me as a wonderful month to begin something.

Maybe even something kinda BIG.

For me, March holds two big beginnings: in a couple of weeks, I'll reopen my trilogy and start revising. Always a big deal. 

And then, obviously, I've restarted this blog, setting off in an updated and refreshed direction. New ideas, new look, and more clarity on topics and content ideas...

Fresh starts. Mmm. Doesn't that just get the blood going?

... And the fears yapping??

Starting something new, or restarting a current project, or taking a new turn, or updating an outlook--all those big beginnings and microbeginnings that are part of the process--they're all a big invitation for the fear monkeys to come clamoring.

Right? Right??

Hence the refreshed title of the blog: this talk about the lionhearted writing life. 

It's only recently that I've realized that courage is what stands at the crossroads of a strong writer's heart and a strong writer's skill. It takes a whole bunch of being brave to write well. Heck, it takes courage even to practice until you can write well.

For that matter, courage is at the crossroads of anything that is worthwhile. Any new direction that you're called to take.

Now that I know guts are so important to my writing life, I see things differently. A lot of things. 

I value courage more. I try to seek it out, strengthen it where I do find it, and invite it to go a bit deeper. I want to be crazy-brave when it comes to writing. When it comes to anything worth doing.

What is it that you're beginning?

Maybe you're teetering on the edge, not sure if you're going to go forward or step back. Or maybe you're in deep mid-project--which itself has a thousand small beginnings. A million tiny starts. (New chapter, new resolve, new thread, new attempt, new schedule, new routine, new week, new--)

Beginning anything takes courage.

And courage... well, maybe it gets a bit easier with community. Maybe it's a bit easier to leap when you're holding hands?

I'll be your beginning buddy, if you want. 

Let's make March the month of fresh starts.

Let's do this.

---

Wanna keep reading? Check out The Comforting Power of Dumb Determination and The Truth about Terrible Writing.

Know a writer who could use this post? Please pass it along! We can all be brave beginning buddies! (And anything else alliterative!)