“All I can tell you is that if this were a riddle, the answer would be that the game is life, and that while we do not make all the rules ourselves, the one who awards or takes points is always you.”

— Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky (hpmor.com)

~ ~ ~
Sometimes I forget that my “worth” as a writer is not measured by external things, such as number of blog subscribers or published books. It’s intrinsic.

This is what I need to remind myself in these times—and I’m sharing it here in case it someone else needs to hear it too:

✨ You are the one whose life this is; so when it comes to what you do and make, you are the only one whose opinion ultimately matters.

✨ Don’t try to write what you think other people want to read. It’s not their life that you’re living.

✨ Value yourself enough to write and express what you are interested in. Besides, if others aren’t already interested in it, they might become interested in it, if you show them the awesomeness you see!

✨ Share what excites you, what upsets you, and what amazes you, especially when you feel like “Why isn’t everyone saying this?”

Maybe that would be a good writing prompt, actually: what comes to your mind when you hear the question, “Why isn’t everyone saying this?”

Here’s one thing that comes to my mind: the awesomeness of the essay “Self-reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson. (I’ve quoted from it a lot on this blog, especially in this post: “Emerson on Authenticity.”) I suppose one does have to wade through his old and flowery prose, plus some passages where he stretches his points rather too far. But to me, it’s worth it for the gems of pure power! (They are like antidotes to the poison-dogma I learned growing up in high-control religion!) Here are a few of them:

“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”

“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.”

“To be great is to be misunderstood.”

“[People] imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.”

“Insist on yourself; never imitate.”

“Every great [person] is a unique…Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these.”

“Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life; obey thy heart.”

~ ~ ~
So: you lovely, unique person reading this, what is something you wonder why everyone’s not talking about? Maybe that will point you to your own “utterance brave and grand.” ✨

It started when I asked ChatGPT to give me some prompt questions to help me (more quickly and deftly) create story ideas that incorporate my real-life experiences and learnings.

It took some doing, but finally it gave me a set of six questions that were exactly what I was looking for. I’ll list the questions below, and then I’ll show you my specific process in using them to create this story.

1. 1. What truth am I trying to explore?

2. 2. What small slice of life naturally contains this truth?

3. 3. What disturbance enters that ordinary day?

4. 4. What impossible choice does it create?

5. 5. What changes?

6. 6. What image closes the story?

Here was how I answered these questions in my notebook (photos below), which led to the creation of this story.

1. 1. What truth am I trying to explore?

I’m learning to stop unconsciously co-dysregulating for others (taking their dysregulation onto myself) and start regulating myself first so I can consciously, healthily co-regulate for others.

1. 2. What small slice of life naturally contains this truth?

staying subdued, cowed, and on alert when someone else is mad, triggered, and/or dysregulated …

Ok, so maybe we see this in a friendship between two women … maybe on a road trip… or maybe just riding together to an event…oh, a wedding?

1. 3. What disturbance enters that ordinary day?

They get into a traffic jam and are going to be late. Main character (MC) was navigating and friend blames her.

1. 4. What impossible choice does it create?

Stay in that cowed state or speak up/move back into her own emotional space.

1. 5. What changes?

MC realizes she doesn’t have to be ruled by others’ feelings…and maybe the friend, after more rage, eventually calms down…and maybe MC realizes she doesn’t want to spend as much time with that friend anymore.

1. 6. What image closes the story?

She finds and holds onto something in her pocket.

This process felt helpfully straightforward for me, in a way that inspired me to want to do it again and again!

Another aspect of the process of this story was the practical logistics: I just wrote it in my same notebook I use for everything these days, marking each entry with a long “SS” symbol (for short story, or to look like a road). This gave the writing of it a very relaxed and fun vibe for me!

Some notebook photos:

I look forward to more attempts with more stories to come!

And please feel free to borrow this story-creating process if you so desire!

As a working mother, a chronic struggle I have with writing is finding time and space in which I’m not vulnerable to interruption. Occasionally I’m able to get up early or stay up late, but usually I’m just too tired. So, what writing I get tends to happen in brief spurts when things are relatively quiet at home or at work.

This situation can further compound on itself in times of burnout, when my nervous system is too fragile to try writing when there’s a risk of interruption.

Obviously, I need to keep trying to get myself some solid, reliable, interruption-free writing time.

But in the meantime, here’s one thing that has helped: rebranding my writing sessions so that the goal is not “to write,” but “to do a try.”

(I know, I could just say “try,” but the quirky, ungrammatical sound of “do a try” helps my brain to remember/pay attention to the concept.)

Just “do a try”—that way, even if I get interrupted, I will have still met my goal! That in and of itself is soothing to my nervous system during burnout.

And if I don’t get interrupted, then I get writing—a.k.a. food for my starving inner child (“Writer”)!

Thanks for reading. May you get some food for your inner child today, too!

Just because the house is messy doesn’t mean I can’t sit down somewhere to write.

It may be harder to focus due to clutter; it may even be challenging to find a clear enough spot to sit.

But I still get to write.

I don’t have to wait until the house is clean…and I must not. I must tend my body and mind first—a.k.a. write—and clean only when I feel well enough.

In other words, if the only thing in the way of my sitting down and writing is my anxiety about the house messiness (given that the problem is currently much too big to just quickly solve), please, if at all possible, say “screw it” to the messes, and go sit down somewhere (perhaps outside?) and write!

Extra argument: I would much rather be a mom who is often reclining and using her mind—and thus is more joyful and present with her kids—than a mom who’s chronically drained and strained.

QED. I hereby give myself permission to write amidst the clutter.

I give it to you, too, reader, for whatever form of creating, rest, or play you find fulfilling!

When I was writing the first draft of my current work-in-progress (a middle-grade novel), I kept going by telling myself, “Just get the story out—you can revise it later.”

Now the draft is finished and I’m in the revising stage…now it’s “later.”

And now I need something else to tell myself, to keep me going.

It turns out that finishing a novel feels like a moment of mountaintop glory followed by a long, tired, and still-difficult hike back down to the bottom. Or like an elaborate, expensive party, and now the bill has come due—and the cleanup work, too. Or an exciting ocean voyage, followed by a boggy quagmire.

Revising is not as much fun as drafting, at least for me. I find it hard to keep motivated, even though I really do want to polish my work and get it out there in the world, and I want it to be the best it can be.

But in the everyday grind of life—in which it’s already hard for me to get writing time— I tend to not want to spend those precious moments on revising. I want to just write.

So the revising work keeps stalling out; I’ll go for days without working on it at all. It’s apparently not interesting/stimulating/rewarding enough for my ADHD brain, even though it’s something I do care about doing in a values sense.

I’m definitely open to any and all suggestions!

Here’s what I’ve tried so far:

1. Make a structured revising plan. This was/is my plan…sensible, I think, but maybe too much in practice:

   1. First, fix obvious problems and major plot/character changes needed. (Done)

   2. Second, go through page by page and revise for stronger, clearer writing overall. (Done, for now, anyway)

   3. Third, go through and add more sensory/concrete details for even better writing. (working on it now)

   4. Fourth, go through and revise to check for genre appropriateness (in this case, word choices that correspond to a middle-grade reading level).

   5. Fifth, send it to trusted friends/beta-readers; then make any changes based on their feedback.

2. Using a timer for the work each day. This does help…but not really enough.

3. Printing out the manuscript to mark up with colorful pens. This is much more fun than doing revising/editing work on a screen…but still, not enough.

4. Go ahead and start querying. I’ve just begun this idea of going ahead with querying even though the manuscript doesn’t feel perfected, in order to feel like there’s real action happening on the work. I have queried one agent so far (!!!) and haven’t heard back yet; I have the next one picked out for when the stated response time-window expires.

Here’s what I’m thinking about doing next:

(sheepish cringe) I might just stop revising for now and send it to my beta readers as it is, then move on to drafting the next book in the series.

At least that way I would be moving forward with my “Project Writing Practice” (PWP, as I call it) instead of just basically treading water.

Advice?

If you have some advice for me on how to keep myself moving with revising my manuscript to make it better and stronger, please do share!

I want my writing to ring with truth and presence.

I want not to just write, but

WRITE.

Not tiptoe apologetically or twitter sheepishly.

Not mollycoddle, but manifest.

Not dithering, but damn.

I want to say what I think and feel
like I believe it’s real!

I want to not be guided by the ever-shifting opinions and conventions of the crowd. I do care about connecting with people and trying to build bridges rather than burn them, but it seems to me that my best path for accomplishing that end is not more reserve, but more honest presence.

May I keep whacking away at the weeds of learned smallness, to speed my inner Writer on her path of rising up.

“Insist on yourself; never imitate.

…There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these.

…Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”

First, though, I’ll set the scene a little by writing about my relationship with writing.

Backstory

I’ve loved writing since I was a kid, when I filled my notebooks with stories and poems. I have happy memories of writing in my room, in our yard, and on swim breaks at our neighborhood pool. Writing was magical to me.

Then followed a period of years in which writing was mostly lost to me, during the mental, physical, and spiritual strains of my teenage years and early twenties. Those were dark days indeed.

In my mid-twenties, I broke loose from my bonds and started healing—and writing.

Rising action

I don’t have much to show for it yet, outwardly. I’ve been more focused on writing than on trying to submit my work. I have made a few little attempts, and I got my first short story prize and publication last year!

My notebooks and files, however, are full of stories, poems, songs, children’s stories, essays, miscellaneous projects, and a few unfinished novels. The one novel I’ve finished is the one I’m currently revising and hoping to start submitting to agents soon. (!)

To me, notebooks full of writing are like gardens full of flowers. Writing means joy.

Plot twist

Here’s the catch: I know that writing brings me joy, but trauma shaped me to pursue threat-management instead of joy.

So, getting myself to actually do the thing that brings me joy is not a simple matter.

(I know many of you can relate to this problem!)

Therefore, writing very much involves tending to my mental and physical health and finding and enacting boundaries.

Plus, given that I’m a mother of young kids, it also involves a lot of clever strategizing, patience, and opportunity-seizing.

On the other hand, this means I have a handy diagnostic for how I’m doing (which I need because I tend to minimize my feelings and struggles): how much I’m writing!

Character

Leaning into this learning, I have begun calling my inner child Writer. It fits and makes sense: the childlike part of me who holds my core feelings loves and needs to write.

(I’m guessing that the basic concept here is true for most people: the inner child needs to create, though the medium will differ for different people—and not limited to purely artistic mediums, either—because we create art by how we live our lives!)

Asking my Writer how she’s feeling and what she needs is a shortcut for connecting to my core.

Setting

As you know, I love using the image of a river for the ebb and flow of life. In that imagery, my Writer has her own river—her own set of ever-changing conditions—unpredictable waters that she must face and navigate.

Now, when the current allows, she can write about her experiences in this new section called Writer’s Waters.