The Writing Buddy

I like this John Steinbeck quote: The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.


I always encourage my clients to set aside time to write whether they believe that their work is the most important thing in the world or not. For me the best solution has been to behave as if my writing is the most important thing in the world. Belief follows behavior.


Not always. Some days, I write all day and still think, “Why am I wasting my time?” On other days, it is difficult to take time to work on a project that I doubt will ever make it into print.


Writers, when you doubt yourself and your work, hang out with a fellow writer. This one small action will inspire you. Writing is a solitary profession. It has to be. But getting up and facing the blank page every day is easier when you have friends who do the same and can share your pain!


Recently, the new field of network science has begun to examine how our social connections influence us. In 2007, Harvard professor Nicholas A. Christakis and UC-San Diego professor James H. Fowler published a study suggesting that obesity is contagious. They found that having a single obese friend increased by 57% one’s chances of being obese. Scientists are discovering that many emotions and behaviors spread through our social networks, including happiness and regular exercise. I wonder: would having a friend who was a productive writer increase by 57% one’s chances of becoming a productive writer? Why not try it and see what happens?


I’ve been making more time to hang out with writer friends. Here are some of the questions I ask other writers:


*What books have inspired you? What works in them? What would you do differently?


*What trends do you see in the field? How is writing different than it was ten years ago?


*What are you working on? What challenges are you facing? What excites you right now?


*How can we help each other be accountable? This question has led to sharing informal deadlines, weekly email reports, and writing days.


*How can we help each other move forward? From time to time, I will exchange manuscripts with friends for critique. I find it helpful to get feedback from another person writing in the same genre. And, it is an honor to be able to think critically about another person's manuscript.


This week as you are planning your writing time, schedule a walk or coffee date with another writer. No doubt you will leave your meeting inspired and ready to write. 


WANT TO USE THIS TIP IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Write Now! Coach Rochelle Melander teaches professionals how to write more, get published, establish credibility, and navigate the new world of social media. Get your free subscription to her Write Now! Tips Ezine at http://www.writenowcoach.com and sign up to be a member of her Write Now! Mastermind class for professionals at http://www.writenowmastermind.com

Plan B

I'm in the process of creating a new and improved blog. In the meantime, I want to share with you my tip from last week's Write Now! Tips. If you are interested in receiving these in your in box, you can sign up at the Write Now! Coach page.

The most successful people are those who are good at Plan B. —James Yorke

I set aside last Monday and Tuesday to finish my Art Fellowship application. My daughter, husband, and son got sick. Because Tuesday was a primary election day, the phone rang every six minutes. Candidates and their supporters stopped by the house to see if we were voting for them. Of course, since the whole family was germy, I got to be the phone-checking, door-answering diva. By noon on Monday, I was ready to chuck the whole thing. Then I remembered plan B.

Plan B is what you do when ideal doesn’t happen. Plan B allows you to get real and write what you can, when you can, no matter what. Here’s how to make your own Plan B:

Loosen your grip on ideal and get real. Often writers tell me they can only write in the morning or at night or when the moon is full. Some tell me they need to set aside a whole day to get anything done. Others need just the right paper or light or chocolate. Here’s the thing—ideal rarely happens. Sometimes when we have the ideal circumstances, we can’t get the words right. Or we do not write as much as we wanted. Let it go. Ideal is for television and movies. Accept that ideal rarely happens and get real about what you can do. Whew. Now you’re ready for Plan B.

Plan ahead. Interruptions happen. Part of getting real is getting ready. Look back on the kinds of interruptions and roadblocks you have experienced in your writing over the past year. What sort of Plan B would have helped you to solve them? Examples include: writing less, working on a shorter project, writing in a different location, researching instead of writing, or turning off the phone.

Get specific. Most writers I work with have a global idea of what they want to do during the week. For example, I went into last week with this on my to-do list: “finish fellowship application.” That’s too big, even without interruptions. Take your big goal and break it down into really small steps. For my plan B list, my small steps looked like this: write list of current interests in work, write sentence about how art exhibit influenced current work, add recent publications to CV. Each of these steps I could do in 15-minute slots. Many of them I could work on while cuddling a sick child.

Get creative. Do you remember the old saying, “Necessity is the mother of invention?” Crazy, challenging situations stimulate our creativity. Use your interruptions as an opportunity to get creative and design a fun plan B. When author Madeleine L’Engle was in her 20s, she did more acting than writing. Her plan B was to write between scenes. Barbara Kingsolver wrote her first novel in a closet, in the middle of the night, while pregnant with her first child. Keith Donohue wrote his first novel as he commuted to and from work on the train. If these writers can write without all the time in the world, you can too!

I managed to complete my writer’s fellowship application in between delivering doses of pain reliever to my children. My days did not turn out the way I had planned. But my Plan B worked just as well. Now I’ll never go into a week without a Plan B (and C and D)!

WANT TO USE THIS TIP IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Write Now! Coach Rochelle Melander teaches professionals how to write more, get published, establish credibility, and navigate the new world of social media. Get your free subscription to her Write Now! Tips Ezine at http://www.writenowcoach.com and sign up to be a member of her Write Now! Mastermind class for professionals at http://www.writenowmastermind.com

The Happiness Budget: Sidewalk Chalk

The Right Now! Coach Goes to Hospital Camp

We spent much of Sunday packing everything we could think of to make two weeks in the hospital seem less like, well, two weeks in the hospital and more like hospital camp. We have books, magazines, movies, multiple craft projects, at least two bead project kits to create for other children who come to the hospital, and activity bags to make for sibling visitors. (Elly is working on one of those at right.) Of course the most important items in our suitcases, according to fashion-comes-first Elly, are our clothes. Elly spent a lot of time making sure that both of us would be dressed appropriately. (That means no sweatpants for Mom!) 


But no matter how much thought and effort we've put into bettering our hospital stay, the hospital is still a hospital. Elly doesn't like the smell or the daily needle sticks. Neither of us is crazy about the all-night lights and noise. And I don't like having to walk down the hall to the parent shower. Despite the challenges, I am glad we are here. The goal is a good one: getting Elly to eat. (And she is doing well so far.) The staff has been incredibly helpful, especially Elly's team of psychologists. And as long as Elly keeps eating, she is free to explore the playroom, go to the school room, and watch movies. 


And that's just what we are doing today at hospital camp. After spending a few minutes in the playroom, Elly went to school with several other children. Later, I will pick her up for our afternoon movie and craft time. (We're putting together keychain kits to give to the Create A Project Program at the hospital.) Tonight she plans to blog—because no matter where you are, fashion comes first!


More soon from hospital camp.

The Happiness Budget

A few weeks ago I read at the Ode Magazine Web site about towns in the Netherlands who are giving their residents a happiness budget. At first I was troubled by the idea of using money to buy happiness. But then I read the article again. The people who designed this experience were not inviting people to buy a bunch of stuff. Instead, the purpose of the money was to encourage people to invest in projects that bring them happiness.


I immediately thought about my birthday purchase—a new bike. I'd been wanting one for years. The last time I had a new bike, I was a college student. I felt exhilarated when I got on my new bike for the first time. What a sense of freedom! This purchase fits with the happiness budget idea. It provides me with both transportation and a tool for exercise (a major happiness booster). Plus, it's pretty! :-) 


Next Monday, I'll be taking my daughter to the hospital for a two-week stay. She'll be working with the feeding team at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. She's been having tube feedings since February of 2008. We're hoping that she will be able to leave the hospital and maintain her weight (and even grow!) without needing tube feedings. 


During our hospital stay, my daughter will have three meals each day with the feeding team. Aside from that, we will have little else to do. We've been talking about how we can use our own happiness budget to better the hospital stay and help other people. We're hoping to make something we can give away to children who need them. 


We're still in the planning stages, but we will both be blogging during the stay. So check back here for updates on how the happiness budget works for us!

Write2Transform: The Love Equation

When we commit ourselves to writing for some part of each day we are happier, more enlightened, alive, lighthearted and generous to everyone else. Even our health improves. 

—Brenda Ueland

As I caught up on email and journaling, my daughter wrote. "What are you working on?" I asked. My 8-year old answered, "I am measuring love." When Elly had finished working, she had a card for each person in the family. (You can see mine here.) "What does it mean?" I asked. Elly explained that the M was for Mom. One of the numbers stood for the love we have for each other while the other number indicated the time we spend together each day. She told me that the amount of time we spend together affects the love number. In essence, she said that the more time we spend together, the more love we have for each other. But she also assured me that the time we were apart from each other was not lost. The love number also increases when we think about each other. Elly then turned the card over and did a lot of complicated math—none of which I understood. But I think I get the gist of this love equation—put in the time and increase the love!


I certainly found the love equation to be true in my journaling project: put in the time and increase the results. After journaling for more than 40 days, I felt more connected to myself. I have a better sense of what I want from my life and each day. I know what I enjoy in life, and journaling helps me to appreciate the small blessings. Most importantly, when I forgot to journal, I missed it. On those days, I didn't feel quite as good or as connected to my life and my life's purpose. 


But what about the other benefits? In case you forgot, here's what the research says journaling is supposed to do, and how I think it helped me during the month:

*Improve memory and sleep (Yup! and Yup! I always thought that if I chewed over my life in a journal, I might lose sleep. Just the opposite happened. By writing it all down, I was able to let go of difficulties and ruminate less. Of course writing stuff down also meant I remembered things better.)

*Boost immune cell activity (Except for one nasty bug, I escaped the sniffles and such that wound their way through our house.)

*Speed healing after surgery (Thankfully, I didn't get to test that one.)

*Increase general feelings of well being (Yes!)

*Support you in achieving your goals (In the short term, yes. I found that jotting down daily goals made me much more likely to achieve them.)

*Increase longevity (I'll let you know in 80 years or so!)


I could write much, much more about each of these benefits. And, I will. I plan to do more write2transform projects and blog posts in the future. I'll be back to tell you more about how it went.


Until then, happy writing!

Write2Plan

In one of the comments on the Write2Vision post, someone wondered if the hardest part of visioning is putting the dreams into practice. It may be. You know the old quote:

A vision without a task is merely a dream;

A task without a vision is drudgery;

But a vision with a task is the hope of the world.

If we're going to bring to life a piece of our Best Possible Self vision, then we need to do some planning and goal setting. Despite the bad press good intentions get, writing down a goal moves it from imagination to intention. The written goal becomes part of our conscious lives, and we become more likely to achieve the goal. 

Recent research has discovered some interesting facts about writing and goal setting. First, people who emphasized approaching a desired future as they wrote narratives about life-changing decisions (versus writing about escaping an undesired past) reported a greater sense of well-being. Second, writers who use causal words tend to live longer than those who don’t. (Causal words and phrases include the words so, hence, in order that, in hopes of, and for the purpose of.) Finally, as I have mentioned before, people who note when, where, and how they will achieve their goal are more likely to do it.

Take a look at your write2vision journal entries. Ask yourself:

• What specific goals are inside these visions? Make a list.
• What goals are most dear to you? Or, what goals are you especially passionate about? Star these goals on your list.
• How could you go about achieving these goals?
• What one goal could you begin working on this week?
• Write this goal in your journal and begin making a plan. Include lots of small steps!

Once I have a goal and a loose plan, I like using the write2dump exercise to plan my day. Each morning, I write one to three pages about what I hope to accomplish during the day. I often create a schedule to connect my writing goals to specific times of day. I also allow for times of rest and reward in the schedule. For example, I might plan to work on a current writing project for ninety minutes in the morning. I also plan what my reward will be. When I plan both the work and the reward, I am much more likely to accomplish my goal.

Now it's your turn. Write2Plan—then let me know how it goes!