What Keeps Me Going by Paul Greci

 

The morning of the Equinox Marathon

When I first started writing fiction 15 years ago, I didn’t consciously think about success. Instead, I was swept away by the writing process, and hoped I could finish a first draft of a novel. In other areas of my life, I’ve been pretty self-disciplined when it comes to learning new skills, and that same self-discipline helped me to keep writing.

Lately, I’ve had a little bit of external success in the publishing world. And, I contribute much of that success to internal factors: not giving up, putting forth my best effort, and growing a thick skin while facing hundreds of rejections over the years.

A friendly gathering of the thick-skinned (photo: Paul Greci)

  

It’s true that I worked hard to find an agent. And, like James discussed in his recent post (Handling Rejection), for me, that involved a lot of rejection. I had multiple rounds of agents reading four different manuscripts of mine over the course of four years before I found my agent, Amy Tipton.

I’ve been working with Amy for six years. Two years and two manuscripts went by before we celebrated our first sale, Surviving Bear Island. And then four more years went by before we celebrated our second and third sales.

Whether I have a book under contract to write or not, I’m still showing up to write and wearing my thick skin when it’s needed. I’m focusing on the story I’m writing, fascinated by the process, and that process involves confronting the fears, uncertainties and uneasiness that come and go in the course of creating a story. I don’t think that discomfort will ever go away, and when I think deeply about it, I don’t want it to go away. It is part of the equation that pushes me forward. It is part of the creative process.

Paul Greci is the author of Surviving Bear Island, a 2015 Junior Library Guild Selection and a 2016 Scholastic Reading Club Selection. Forthcoming in 2018 is the yet to be titled sequel to Surviving Bear Island published by Move Books. In 2019, Paul's first young adult novel, The Wild Lands will be published by Macmillan.

Signs

Although I wanted to write a novel for as long as I could remember, I wrote my first one in November 2007. That year was special. My baby had just turned one-year old, and I was at the end of my twenties. I’ve always been a challenge driven person, and with the THIRTIES looming over my shoulder, I was searching for a sign of what to do with my life (because mothering 4 children under 6 and 2 dogs wasn’t enough?). You see? I believe in signs, that if we’re unsure of which way to go, and if we ask for guidance, we’ll get it.

And I did.

Reading my favorite blog, I came across a vague mention to NaNoWriMo, a writing competition that pushed you to write a novel in a month.

Competition?

Writing a novel?

Sign me up! It was November 6, and when I went to the NaNoWriMo website, I realized I’d lost six precious day to try to achieve this feat! But have I mentioned that I’m very driven, especially by competition (I’m a proud Slytherin after all)?

And then there was the sign… You see? I couldn’t just ask for a sign and then ignore it. Otherwise, how could I expect to get help when I needed it next? Because I knew there would be a next time. Have I mentioned I had four kids under the age of six?

So, with a pounding heart and starry eyes, I opened a new document and poured out my heart and years of assimilated clichés on it. Day by day I wrote just enough to reach my word count. Each day, I was surprised by the words that flowed without effort, and other times, by the words that I wrenched out of my mind and heart after the kids were in bed and my eyes were heavy with exhaustion. When November 30^th arrived, I typed the magical words, THE END, just with enough time to validate my word count and get my NaNoWriMo certificate.

Friends, I haven’t stopped writing since. But I wasn’t content only with writing, then I wanted to make my writing better. So I signed up for classes; I found a critique group. I read more voraciously than ever before. I went to conferences where I met amazing friends.

Now that the forties are welcoming me with open arms, I’m grateful for that sign, that little nudge to take the plunge and start writing already.

If you’re waiting for a sign to start writing, or doing the thing you’ve been wanting to do for a long time but you’re not sure if you can, consider these humble words your sign.

Write the story.

Do the thing.

Dare!

There’s never a perfect time when everything aligns to make things possible. We re-arrange responsibilities and obligations; we put fear and doubts aside, and make things possible even when all the odds are stacked against us.

Whether you’re doing a full NaNo (fifty thousand words) or a modified version, take advantage of the creative energy in the air. Believe me! It’s a real thing. I love the feeling of typing alone in my office in the early morning or the middle of the night, knowing that around the world, thousands of believers in the magic of words and story are doing the same thing.

Tell me in the comments if you’ll be participating, and what your goals are. If you want, find me on the NaNo website and add me as your “buddy;” we’ll cheer each other up. My user name is cheboricuas, and I have a good feeling about this November. Let’s end the year with a bang! 

Six Tested Tips for Keeping Your Writing Resolutions, by Kell Andrews

Writers tend to have more New Year's resolutions than most people. We have all the usual ones – exercise more, eat less sugar, cut back on coffee, reduce stress, etc. – but we also have writing ones  – finish that novel, send out more queries, increase word count, try a new genre.

But are writing resolutions doomed to fail, like so many abandoned January diets and exercise plans? No! (In fact, the writing goals are so often the cause of the failure of those diet and exercise plans, but that's another story.)

There is evidence about what strategies turn resolutions into habits and goals into accomplishments. In the New York Times a few years ago, Kevin G. Volpp, a staff physician at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center and a professor at the Perelman School of Medicine and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where Katherine L. Milkman, professor at Wharton, published How to Keep Your Resolutions, based on their own research and a review of current behavioral health and economics research. It seemed like good advice then, and I've been adapting their strategies for writers' resolutions.

1. Make a concrete plan.

If you don't have a plan, they're not resolutions. They're wishes. Plan is to write X number of words in Y number of days and to be finished at Z date. And once you've made your concrete plan, you don't have to cast it in concrete. The best plans have flexibility built in. If you skip a day or fall behind, you are not a failure. Just begin again.

2. Put something you value on the line.

In other words, put skin in the game.  If you have a contract, you already have money on the line. If you do not, you can act like you do.  Milkman and Volpp suggest putting aside money for forfeiture if you don't achieve your goals, but you could give something else up materially. Or you could put your reputation on the line if you announce your goals widely enough that you have neighbors and Facebook friends inquiring after your progress.

3. Bundle temptation with the hard part. 

Number 2 is the stick. Number 3 is the carrot. Milkman and Volpp say that if you want to exercise more, try to bundle that with an addictive activity like listening to audiobooks: "Our research demonstrates that when you leave your copy of “The Hunger Games” (or such) at the gym, you exercise 56 percent more often," they wrote. Big points for using a YA novel as the example (but points off for calling it "trashy). 

Naturally, if you want to write the next Hunger Games, you can't listen to it or you might literally rewrite The Hunger Games. Try bundling something else – your favorite kind of tea you can only drink while revising, a glass of wine you can only pour after you've gotten your nightly words in, a favorite binge watch or read.

4. Seek social support. 

Even introverted writers need social support (If you're here, thank you for being part of mine) Whether a critique group or an online community, writers need and give accountability and support. That's what writing challenges like National Novel Writing Month and Storystorm and online groups like Mastermind and SubItClub are about – accountability, consistency, the transformation of resolutions into habits.

Since you are part of my social support, I'll confess that I'm still struggling to finish the novel I started more than a year ago, but I've published a picture book during that time and drafted and polished up six other manuscripts. What are my resolutions for the new year? Finish and revise the novel, draft six more picture books. Then publish them.

But that last one isn't a resolution – it's an ambition. So here is bonus tip number five from me:

5. Make sure your resolution is in your control. 

A resolution isn't something you want to achieve – it's something you want to do. Much of publishing is out of our hands. No matter how good your writing is, an agent or a book contract or a bestseller list may not happen within a specific time frame. You can work towards it, but you can't control it.

The writing is in your control. Giving and seeking writing companionship is. Putting your heart and ego on the line by querying, submitting, and seeking out readers is.

But what if you miss your goals? Break your writing resolutions? That's OK too. There's always another challenge around the corner, and you can make a fresh start at any time. Don't believe me? Professor Milkman says that too. So let's make that tip number 6.

6. Any time you need a fresh start is the right time to make a fresh start.  

The only timeframe your resolutions need are the ones you set for them.

Writing a First Draft by Paul Greci

Tomato Seedlings

Right now I’m about three quarters of the way through a first draft. I’ve been writing most mornings before I go to work, usually putting about 750 to 1000 words on the page. (I've also been harvesting our garden, but more on that later.)

For every manuscript I’ve written the drafting process has been somewhat different, but I do try to keep a few things in mind when I’m working on a first draft.

----Stay uninhibited, i.e., don’t let my brain get in the way of my heart.

----If I have an outline I use it as a guide—not a detailed map. Give the story room to grow.

----If I know the ending I’m writing toward, and hopefully I do, I want to stay open to different ways of getting there.

-----I give myself permission to do “some” research as I see needed to get information to move the story forward. I don’t want to get bogged down, but if I need to know something that’s going to influence the direction of the story, then I usually stop and do the research instead of just making a note.

-----I reread the chapter I’ve written the previous day and make changes that jump out at me before writing the next chapter.

Like the photo of our baby tomato plants above, writing a first draft is like tending seedlings. There will be plenty of time for weeding, thinning and pruning (and hopefully harvesting) later, but right now it just needs water, sunlight, soil, and room to grow.

Part of our tomato harvest.

 What are some of the things you do when writing a first draft?

Paul Greci is the author of Surviving Bear Island, a 2015 Junior Library Guild Selection and a 2016 Scholastic Reading Club Selection. 

Takeaways from Elizabeth Gilbert's BIG MAGIC and my favorite books on craft by Joanna Roddy

I'm forever reading books from other writers about the craft of writing. Writing is solitary in many ways. I'm always looking for coyotes of the borderlands to show my wandering writer's soul the way into the land of plenty. 

This spring I read Elizabeth Gilbert's BIG MAGIC. I never read EAT, PRAY, LOVE, but I fell utterly in love with Gilbert's TED talk on creative genius, in which she argues for the classical idea of the muse. She says that the modern concept of artistic genius is too much pressure and is silently killing off our artists through addiction, self-destruction, and despair. She offers instead the ancient idea of having a genius: a creative entity that brings inspiration to collaborate with the artist. Today we typically think of this as a muse. The artist is the servant of the muse, offering the grunt labor to bring the idea into being. As a co-collaborator, the artist is only partially responsible for the success or failure of the work.  

The video is 20 minutes long, but if you can give yourself a learning/ inspiration break today, it's worth the watch.

BIG MAGIC expands on the TED talk, and it is a rich, nurturing baptism into the good news of creative living free from fear. It may be the psychologically healthiest thing I've ever read about being an artist. A lot of writers on craft focus on all the barriers to creativity--resistance, apathy, difficulty, fear. I think this can sometimes lead to the paradigm of the tortured artist who believes that their creative work requires brutal sacrifice and torture. Gilbert reminds us that ideas want to be brought to life by artists and that our creativity chose us and is dependent on us to produce anything in the world. So why would we think it hates us and is trying to punish us? One line from BIG MAGIC I quite like on this theme is this:

“I’ve always had the sense that the muse of the tormented artist—while the artist himself is throwing temper tantrums—is sitting quietly in a corner of the studio, buffing its fingernails, patiently waiting for the guy to calm down and sober up so everyone can get back to work.”

Here are my main takeaways from the book:

• Ideas are seekers of human collaboration and we have the freedom to say yes or no to them. If you say no, someone else will get that idea and run with it. If you say yes, but don't show up to do the work, eventually the power of that idea will leave you, looking for another collaborator.
• You're never too old to begin.
• Take the long view of failure and rejection: I plan to do this for the rest of my life. Many years of rejection is only short-term. 
• Do not pressure your creative work to succeed or provide for you financially. That's the quickest way to kill it off. You provide for both yourself and your creative work. (Don't quit your day job.)
• Stop complaining. Complaining about your creative life is bad juju and ideas will not want to collaborate with you. Treat your work with respect, approach it with love, and see how that alters your experience of doing the work.
• Create because you love to do it. There may be no other reward.
• Your work is not your baby. Cut, change, adapt if you must. Your creative power is precious, but your projects will never find their way in the world if you feel that you must forever hover over them protectively. 
•  You are unlikely to get the outcome in the world that you desire from your work. Not that you will never succeed. But even success takes longer and comes in unexpected ways. You cannot control the outcome. Create anyway.
• Put fierce trust in the love you bear for your creativity, trust for which the qualifiers of success or failure effectively lose their meaning.

This mantra toward the end of the book brought me to tears:

"Fierce trust asks you to stand strong within this truth: You are worthy, dear one, regardless of the outcome. You will keep making your work, regardless of the outcome. You will keep sharing your work, regardless of the outcome. You were born to create, regardless of the outcome. And you will never lose trust in the creative process, even when you don't understand the outcome."

I can't recommend this book more. It's a gem, unlike anything in its class.

Here are a list of other books I've enjoyed as creative inspiration and writing craft:

On Writing, Stephen King: The most practical and helpful book on writing and craft I've read. The memoir portion feels erroneous to the reader looking for writing advice, until you realize it's integral. Try not to feel as though you too must produce 2000 words a day after reading it. 

Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott: This was the first book of writing advice I ever read. It's hilarious and honest and focuses on getting past our own hang-ups in order to do the work. 

Walking on Water, Madeleine L’Engle: A Christian spiritual reflection on writing by the author of A WRINKLE IN TIME. Deep and moving, abstract but inspiring. 

The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron: A twelve week creative recovery workbook, not unlike a twelve step program. Great for digging deep into oneself and mining out the reasons for blockage and reconnecting with your creative dreams.

Reflections on the Magic of Writing, Diana Wynne Jones: A hodge-podge of lectures and essays by the great children's fantasy writer who studied under Lewis and Tolkein at Oxford and authored many books, including HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE. The latest edition has an introduction by Neil Gaiman. 

The Writing Life, Annie Dillard: A soulful memoir by the Pulitzer Prize winning Dillard, reflecting on the experience of her own writing life. 

Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg: This is a book filled with practical exercises and the exhortation to keep the pen moving! A huge proponent of free writing, Goldberg, a Zen Buddhist, approaches writing as a practice, much like yoga or meditation.

Question for you: What are your favorite books of writing advice? (I'm always adding to my reading list.) If you've read BIG MAGIC, what was your number one takeaway?

The Enneagram for character development by Joanna Roddy

I have to confess, I put little stock in personality tests. They seem too generic, like magazine horoscopes that, with a little finagling, could apply to anyone. The tests are fun to take, but they're more like acceptable vanity exercises. Only the saints and psychologists among us really dig into understanding types other than their own. At best we say: "Oh you're an INFJ? I'm an ENFJ!" and remark on our shared traits and the differences between introverts and extroverts. 

But recently a psychologist friend introduced me to a personality system she uses in her practice, and I have found it incredibly helpful, both personally and in my relationships. Recently I decided to use it in my writing as well. I was having a hard time making certain characters distinct and clear. Using this system, two-dimensional characters suddenly popped up off the page. I began to understand what motivated them, how they would react in situations, what they might say (or not say), what vice they might gravitate toward, and what core virtue would emerge under the right circumstances. In short, it was character development magic. 

The Enneagram:

The personality typing system is called the Enneagram, and it articulates nine personality types that are interrelated. In an extremely condensed form, here are the nine types and their core motivations:

Type 1: The Reformer/ Perfectionist. "I must be/ do right."

Type 2: The Helper/ Giver. "I must help others."

Type 3: The Achiever/ Motivator/ Performer. "I must succeed."

Type 4: The Individualist/ Artist/ Romantic. "I must be unique."

Type 5: The Observer/ Investigator/ Thinker. "I must understand the world around me."

Type 6: The Loyalist/ Skeptic. "I must be secure."

Type 7: The Enthusiast/ Adventurer. "I must seek new experiences."

Type 8: The Challenger/ Leader. "I must be in control."

Type 9: The Peacemaker/ Mediator. "I must have/make peace."

Each personality type perceives these motivations as the means for them to be safe, to have meaning in their lives, or to be loved.

There are a lot more details to each type, like key fears and desires, and basic virtues and vices. Check out this cheat sheet from Wikipedia (click to enlarge):

Integration/ Disintegration:

What I like about the Enneagram is its nuance and complexity. We all know that a healthy or growing person and an unhealthy or stressed person behave in totally different ways, even if they share personality traits. The Enneagram predicts what traits emerge under stress and during personal growth.  Every Enneagram type uniquely integrates to the healthiest characteristics of another type and disintegrates to the least healthy behaviors of a different type.

For example, threes integrate to a six and disintegrate to a nine. Achieving threes can be self-focused, but with maturity, they look more like other-focused healthy sixes. Threes can be driven, but under stress they begin to look like unhealthy nines: disengaged and apathetic.

Wings:

Enneagram types can have an even greater degree of complexity by demonstrating traits from one of the numbers adjacent to them, which are called wings. The wing augments the primary personality. So you can have an observant five with an artistic four wing, which might produce a professorial art school type, or an achieving three with a helpful two wing might be an front-person for a non-profit organization. These are gross generalizations, but I find the flexibility of wings accounts for a wide array of personality manifestations, even among people who share a primary type. It keeps it all from becoming too canned and stereotyped, but not so general as to become meaningless. 

In Writing:

The Enneagram goes much farther and deeper than this crash course, and those who are interested could spend a lot of time learning about it. I think most of us instinctively pick up on others' personalities, especially writerly types who want to write believable characters. If people were clocks, we immediately perceive the difference between a cuckoo clock, a grandfather clock, a digital clock and an alarm clock. We get, on a basic level, what makes them tick. The Enneagram, then, is effectively like a screwdriver that removes the backing so we can see the actual mechanics at work. 

The most helpful aspect of the Enneagram for me is the basic fears and desires. It helps me to know how a character is going to react to the sticky situations I put them in. For example, one of my characters is an adventurous seven. When his parents want him to go into the military for a war he doesn't agree with, his response is to hop a plane out of the country. A seven's core fear is being trapped or in pain and their spontaneity can make them impulsive, so this response makes sense for him, drastic though it may seem. Another of my characters is a loyal six. A six's basic fear is making the wrong decision. They need guidance to orient themselves. In this situation, my six character would have struggled with living up to his parents' expectations. In fear of making the wrong decision for himself, he probably would have enlisted despite his own reservations. And that would have made for an entirely different plot.

A Warning: 

Fully fledged characters will still surprise us. They should never act against their own character, but they might step out of the box that a personality type wants to put them in. A challenger-leader eight who tends toward domineering might unexpectedly resist the urge to step into an argument, which would mean something substantial for that character. Perhaps they are moving in their direction of integration to look like a helping two, or they've newly realized that winning a fight is less effective than leading by example. This flexibility is how we avoid stereotypes and wooden characters. I like that the Enneagram allows for the changes brought on by maturing or devolving or blending a couple of personality types together. But once these type of tools have helped you build your writing, like scaffolding, they should fall away and let the real, living world on the page play itself out as it must. Using the Enneagram as a tool, not as a law, is the best way. 

Resources:

Start with the Enneagram Institute site and the Enneagram of Personality Wikipedia page. From there, there are lots of books, sites, and articles available to learn more about the Enneagram. And here's a link the the long version of the test if you want to find out what Enneagram type you are and to a shorter version and another type of short test. The last one is my favorite. I apologize in advance for the productive time you will inevitably lose on those tests, but if it gets you to an understanding of good character building, then I think you don't have to feel too guilty about it. 

Please leave a comment if you've used the Enneagram or other personality typing for character building! I'd love to hear your insights. And here's something I'm deeply curious to know: do the main characters you write have the same personality type as you do? Happy writing!