4.
If you ever find yourself becoming frightened or overwhelmed while writing in Stage 3—and it will happen—promptly return to Stage 2 or 1. Don’t return to Stage 3 until you feel totally comfortably doing so.
Stage 4 . Now you focus not just on process, creative goals, and external goals, but your career goals and strategy. Maybe you seek fame and fortune, or tenure, or enough income from your writing so that you can quit your day job.
At Stage 4, you’re treating your writing like a business or profession and thinking about things like revenue, profit, marketing, and sales (Section 8.7). (If you’re an academic, substitute career strategy, tenure, and job openings.) However, the same rule applies about maintaining most of your focus on your creative process while writing.
If you ever find yourself becoming frightened or overwhelmed while writing in Stage 4—and it will happen—promptly return to Stage 3, 2, or 1. Don’t return to Stage 4 until you feel totally comfortably doing so.
Another way to think of the stages is using the path metaphor from Section 1.6. As you move on to each new stage, you let more and more people onto your path: in Stage 2, an editor; in Stage 3, your readers; and in Stage 4, professional partners, and perhaps a wider audience. As you work to replace perfectionism with compassionate objectivity, and to provide more resources for yourself, you’ll get more and more adept at balancing seemingly opposing demands, including art and commerce, without getting overwhelmed or derailed. And you’ll probably also soften around topics you are now rigid about, such as “success = selling out” (Section 6.7), and won’t demand immediate, or definitive, answers to tough questions.
In other words, you will have replaced all the harsh and delusional perfectionist voices that previously gummed up your writing process with kind, inspiring, and realistic ones that spur you on to productivity and success.
----
1 Jessica Strawser, “Anne Tyler’s Tips on Writing Strong (yet Flawed) Characters,” Writer’s Digest, September 8, 2009 (www.writersdigest.com/article/anne-tyler-tips/).
Section 2.17 Anticipate Plateaus and Backsliding
E motional growth and capacity building, which is what we’re aiming for here, don’t occur in a straight line, like this:
But rather in a curve, like this:
You’ll have “good” days and “bad” days (defined relative to your own standard for writing productivity), and perhaps also good and bad weeks, months, and maybe years. You’ll also have plateaus and backsliding. A plateau is where you stay at the same level of productivity for a while; backsliding is when your productivity drops. Sometimes they happen because the work itself is tough (in which case, it might not be an actual plateau or backslide, but only tough work), other times because of personal problems or other distractions.
On challenging days, scale back your ambitions—drastically, if necessary—to the point where you no longer feel fear. Your inner bully will probably appear right on schedule to scorn you as lazy, etc., which is how you’ll know you’re using an effective strategy. Always ignore that voice . I promise you that the shortest route back to maximum productivity is to work patiently within your human limitations so that you have a chance to regain your confidence and focus.
If your priorities change so that you no longer want to write, or if life gets stressful enough so that you can’t write, by all means take a sabbatical. You can return to writing later, and probably will do so with even more energy and ideas and commitment as a consequence of having respected your needs.
Section 2.18 Other Antiperfectionist Techniques
1) Create a Lifestyle That Supports Your Writing. It’s hard to be productive in the midst of chaos, or when struggling with an ongoing difficult personal or family situation. Some writers manage to shut everything else out and just write, but
If you ever find yourself becoming frightened or overwhelmed while writing in Stage 3—and it will happen—promptly return to Stage 2 or 1. Don’t return to Stage 3 until you feel totally comfortably doing so.
Stage 4 . Now you focus not just on process, creative goals, and external goals, but your career goals and strategy. Maybe you seek fame and fortune, or tenure, or enough income from your writing so that you can quit your day job.
At Stage 4, you’re treating your writing like a business or profession and thinking about things like revenue, profit, marketing, and sales (Section 8.7). (If you’re an academic, substitute career strategy, tenure, and job openings.) However, the same rule applies about maintaining most of your focus on your creative process while writing.
If you ever find yourself becoming frightened or overwhelmed while writing in Stage 4—and it will happen—promptly return to Stage 3, 2, or 1. Don’t return to Stage 4 until you feel totally comfortably doing so.
Another way to think of the stages is using the path metaphor from Section 1.6. As you move on to each new stage, you let more and more people onto your path: in Stage 2, an editor; in Stage 3, your readers; and in Stage 4, professional partners, and perhaps a wider audience. As you work to replace perfectionism with compassionate objectivity, and to provide more resources for yourself, you’ll get more and more adept at balancing seemingly opposing demands, including art and commerce, without getting overwhelmed or derailed. And you’ll probably also soften around topics you are now rigid about, such as “success = selling out” (Section 6.7), and won’t demand immediate, or definitive, answers to tough questions.
In other words, you will have replaced all the harsh and delusional perfectionist voices that previously gummed up your writing process with kind, inspiring, and realistic ones that spur you on to productivity and success.
----
1 Jessica Strawser, “Anne Tyler’s Tips on Writing Strong (yet Flawed) Characters,” Writer’s Digest, September 8, 2009 (www.writersdigest.com/article/anne-tyler-tips/).
Section 2.17 Anticipate Plateaus and Backsliding
E motional growth and capacity building, which is what we’re aiming for here, don’t occur in a straight line, like this:
But rather in a curve, like this:
You’ll have “good” days and “bad” days (defined relative to your own standard for writing productivity), and perhaps also good and bad weeks, months, and maybe years. You’ll also have plateaus and backsliding. A plateau is where you stay at the same level of productivity for a while; backsliding is when your productivity drops. Sometimes they happen because the work itself is tough (in which case, it might not be an actual plateau or backslide, but only tough work), other times because of personal problems or other distractions.
On challenging days, scale back your ambitions—drastically, if necessary—to the point where you no longer feel fear. Your inner bully will probably appear right on schedule to scorn you as lazy, etc., which is how you’ll know you’re using an effective strategy. Always ignore that voice . I promise you that the shortest route back to maximum productivity is to work patiently within your human limitations so that you have a chance to regain your confidence and focus.
If your priorities change so that you no longer want to write, or if life gets stressful enough so that you can’t write, by all means take a sabbatical. You can return to writing later, and probably will do so with even more energy and ideas and commitment as a consequence of having respected your needs.
Section 2.18 Other Antiperfectionist Techniques
1) Create a Lifestyle That Supports Your Writing. It’s hard to be productive in the midst of chaos, or when struggling with an ongoing difficult personal or family situation. Some writers manage to shut everything else out and just write, but
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