Moving Forward, One Step at a Time
By Juliet Marillier | September 13, 2023 |
Is it something about the time of year? The change of season, the weather? Or is it world events (war, climate change, inept politicians) getting to us writers again? Here in Australia winter is turning to spring and nature is in beautiful bloom, but instead of considering new beginnings and positivity, many in my circle of writer friends are expressing weariness, lack of motivation, self-doubt. For some, this occurs alongside completing projects, winning awards, and speaking brilliantly at workshops and conventions. Their success as writers is evident; it’s public knowledge. The internal struggle is mostly hidden. But it is real.
I was close to giving in to this kind of self-doubt recently. I’d been working hard on the novel and meeting my self-imposed deadlines, but I felt tired out. I slept longer. I spent too much time on lightweight recreational reading when I should have been writing. I opened my home and heart to an elderly, unwell foster canine while knowing perfectly well that managing three needy old dogs would suck up time and energy. Self sabotage? Maybe. There are other people like me who, when especially busy, have a tendency to add to their existing workload. It’s as if we’re testing how many balls we can juggle before dropping some.
At such times the intervention of a fairy godparent would be helpful. Lacking them, we can work our own hearth magic to help restore our physical and emotional equilibrium and our self-belief. These suggestions may be obvious, but it doesn’t hurt to remind ourselves of them occasionally.
Value your past body of work / achievements
Re-read something you wrote that you know is good – a passage or story that still makes you laugh or cry or feel deep satisfaction.
Consider all you have written. Think of all you’ve had published. Whether it’s one story or a zillion, give yourself a virtual achievement award, and have fun designing the trophy. Writing is hard. You’ve done well!
Remember the positive feedback you’ve had from readers, and perhaps also from respected professionals. In particular, remember any comment that really warmed your heart. (For me, the winner is the feedback from readers who’d been through PTSD, and from mental health workers, about how my Blackhorn & Grim series helped them/their clients.)
Think about how you’ve assisted other writers by offering guidance. That might take the form of a contribution to Writer Unboxed or another writing blog, or teaching/mentoring, or agreeing to read someone’s work and provide feedback. It might be through example: someone reads your work and is inspired to begin writing, or to create art, or to write music. This provides a wonderful boost to the spirits. If it happens, value it.
Work on your physical and mental health
Look after your body. A healthy diet and regular exercise, even if it’s walking a geriatric dog around the block rather than running a marathon, will help you stave off those attacks of self-doubt. Also, the dog loves you even at times when you don’t like yourself so much. That love is a precious gift.
While we’re on exercise: swimming is particularly good for switching your brain into a different mode. Creative ideas may flow as you move through the water.
Writing takes time and energy. You may be sitting at a desk, but your brain is working hard, not only during that desk time but also while you are doing other things (a day job, raising children, responsibilities as a carer, study.) The writerly part of the brain doesn’t switch off when you walk away from the desk. You will get tired. Do your best to ensure you get enough sleep, ideally at night. (Dogs, I know you all love nana naps, but maybe we don’t need quite so many?)
Aim for some (fun) social interaction in your life. I love singing, and I’ve been a member of a small community choir for the last few years. It’s a thing I know I can do well, and making music boosts my morale, plus it’s good for me to engage with other like-minded folk. Being a hermit some of the time is fine – it kind of goes with a writing career – but to create believable characters you need to interact with others in real life.
Try other creative activities as a circuit breaker
I’ve written about this before, long ago, but it’s still apt. When we write we make something new. We put together our raw materials in an act of creation. When you feel self-doubt, lethargy, lack of motivation to write, try a different creative path. Suggestions:
– make compost. Watch the gradual breakdown of your mix of vegetable scraps, lawn clippings, shredded waste paper etc, into a rich and soil-enhancing blend.
– when the season is right, make preserves: jam, jelly, marmalade, chutney, pickles. Use nature’s goodness to create something both useful and delicious.
– bake a cake, make a pie, cook vegetable soup from scratch (I do this often.)
– sew, knit, or crochet a garment or a toy. Or mend something. You can do this in small instalments, ten or fifteen minutes at a time. Not everyone can be like my mother, who could watch television and knit complex patterns at the same time.
– do you play an instrument? Can you sing? Move away from the writing desk and make some music! It’s good for the spirit.
One last thing, and it’s important. Please consult your health professional if you start to feel overwhelmed by negative feelings, whether that is about your writing or anything else in your life.
Writers: any great tips for dealing with those times when self-belief dwindles? What has helped you boost your confidence? Is it better sometimes to take a complete break from writing?
Juliet Marillier has written twenty-four novels for adults and young adults and two collections of short fiction. Her works of historical fantasy have been published around the world and have won numerous awards. Juliet’s most recent series was Warrior Bards, of which the third and final book, A Song of Flight, was published in 2021. Her collection of reimagined fairy tales, Mother Thorn and Other Tales of Courage and Kindness, had its trade release in 2022. Mother Thorn is illustrated by Kathleen Jennings and published by Serenity Press.
Juliet is currently working on a two-book fantasy series. The first book in this duology, The Amber Owl, will be published by New Dawn in February 2025.
When not writing, Juliet looks after a small crew of rescue dogs.
Well, I’m finding that gratitude helps. Reading your post has made me feel a healthy dose of it, for this community, and more specifically for you, Juliet. You’ve been such an inspiration and a supportive presence in my writing life. I can’t thank you enough, and the realization is uplifting and empowering on a day with writing on the docket. I’m doubly blessed.
Wishing you and the doggos the best of the changing seasons!
The same back to you, Vaughn! This is indeed an amazing and supportive community. I am appreciating that – and the honest of people’s posts – more and more as the years pass. May your writing day (and all those to come) be rich with creativity and empowerment!
Juliet, Lovely to read your comments all the way from Australia to my home in North Carolina.
Here’s to peace, joy and a renewed sense of purpose to us all.
I’m glad you enjoyed the post, Rose! Peace, joy and a renewed sense of purposeis exactly what we all need.
The Kookaburra song popped into my head while I was reading this. Cheered up my morning. Social interaction, not as much. Thanks for the pep talk.
I have magpies who regularly visit my garden (there are kookaburras in the neighbourhood too.) The magpies know me, and greet me with their melodious warbles whenever they see me, even out walking. Social interaction comes in many forms!
It’s jam-making season. Blackberry-cinnamon, strawberry-anise, golden plum-cardamom, peach-spice. From local fruit, mostly wild, personally picked.
It’s for Christmas gifts, a bit of summer for friends and family to taste in the days of snow, gifts of experience that I hope carry folks away—like stories.
And WU posts sent from another world to lift us from our gloom. Thanks!
Can I come and live next door to you, Benjamin? Those sound amazing and delicious. A Christmas gift made with love and the work of your hands carries its own magic. As for stories, they can be the best gift of all.
Just what i needed to hear, Juliet! Thank you!
Thank you, Stephanie! Hugs from afar!
Thank you for your post, Juliet. I think your first suggestion–to go back and read something the writer wrote that she’s proud of–is very wise. Every writer needs to remind herself that the past is prologue: I did this good thing, and I am going to do more like it. I will add something that can be thought of as the bookend opposite idea: reading published work that isn’t worthy. I’m thinking of Ray Ramey’s Writer Unboxed feature. He publishes the opening page of a bestseller, and asks readers: would you want to turn the page? Often, my own response and those of others is a thumbs-down. It can help one’s sense of writerly self-worth to see that a known author’s past good writing is not always prologue. The new book succeeds because of name recognition and big-budget promotion, not because it’s worthy. Thanks again.
Thanks for this, Barry. I really enjoy Ray Ramey’s feature posts, and am often amazed when clunky or awkward opening pages prove to be written by very successful authors. Many of my responses are thumbs-down too, though a lot depends on one’s personal taste. What surprises me most about that series is the occasional appearance of an author whose work I have really admired in the past, with a first page so clunky that I decide not to read their new title. Editors asleep on the job? Or an author who sells well for the publisher, and is therefore not as rigorously edited as they might be? Who knows?
Thank you for these reminders, Juliet. I’m more than two thirds of the way through a revision and while I know I’ve made positive changes, that cackling ‘voice’ insists from time to time that I’ve made a mess and will never finish. All your suggestions are wonderful. I’ve found a renewed enjoy in baking and cooking, especially with a garden harvest at my fingertips. Nourishing the soul and the belly at once. I also like to have a hand-sewing project going, as the stitching and wider focus help me dream (I experience stitching as powerful magic!). I’ve also been drawing characters and scenes from my stories, which is just plain fun. But playing with my dog is the best reminder that joy is the most potent medicine. Happy Spring! Enjoy the beauty.
Hi Susan, lovely to hear from you. It sounds as if you are working steadily and doing plenty of things to maintain good morale. You will finish, the cackling voice will fall silent, and all will be well! My dogs send love and happiness to your dog, or would do if they were not taking one of those frequent nana naps.
Ah Juliet, this is a gem. Thank you, Dear Writer, Counselor. In the past year, so many disappointments, but my writing? Better than ever. Now thinking of you entering spring as we are entering winter. The planet shrinks because of your lovely words and care. May sunlight filter into your life. Here, when we find it, we are encouraged.
Thank you for these beautiful words, Elizabeth. We’re all one community of writers, scattered around the world as we are. I love the way we support one another.
I re-read the last two chapters – six scenes – of the middle book of my mainstream trilogy, get fired up (I left myself a royal mess to straighten out and complete, and the plotting is almost finished), get down to business, and last until the next daily crisis rears its ugly head.
Handle that, am wiped out for a couple of days, repeat.
Each day my damaged brain will allow me to write a little is a victory, and I remember this part of the way I work from both previous volumes: it takes time to get it right, and then all that structural work makes the actual writing possible.
I am lucky I can write at all, but luck needs help from stubbornness. I SEE the progress, however tiny, and that has to be enough.
That sounds really hard, Alicia, and I salute your ability to stick with it despite setbacks. We can all learn from your comment. Remembering what has worked well in the past and applying the same method can help us through those crises. And gradual progress is still progress. Be kind to yourself!
If you’ve done it before, you KNOW you can. That confidence motivates the stubbornness.
I still remember how hard it was – but I also have pages and pages of what I had to figure out for it all to make sense (I keep detailed notes – the in-brain memory isn’t what it used to be, but reading my own words works as well or better). I just plug away at structure until it’s airtight, and I can believe the story happened.
Thanks Juliet, this is beautiful and calming! Reassuring to remember that creativity flows at times beyond those we’re able to carve out for it, and also that a bit of self care can help! I love the ‘other creative activities as a circuit breaker’ thing because so often I feel like I shouldn’t indulge in other creative activities – if I have time for them, I have time for my current illustration or writing project! This is a lovely reminder.
Hi Erin-Claire! I’m glad the post was useful. I would describe your own work as beautiful and calming, and I think the other creative activities may help open a person’s mind to that calm vibe (and also help the body relax.) That’s not based on any scientific knowledge, but it feels true. Therefore, feel no guilt about occasionally doing them!
I hear you, Juliet. Disatrous floods, earthquakes, political and social violence — the news in the world seems to go from bad to worse. I sometimes feel guilty, spoiled, sitting in my cushy, safe office plunking away at a keyboard. Times like that, I try to to something productive, improve my little corner of the planet: weed the garden, freeze the produce — or write a note of thanks to a fellow writer. Thanks, Juliet!
Hi Christine. Very well said – I think many of us feel that ”first-world guilt” as we observe the current state of the planet. But every small step counts, as you say. We can attend to our small corner, be kind, reach out in friendship. And an important one: use our writer’s voice as best we can to spread a positive message (even if we put our characters through hell before they learn/grow/achieve change.)
Sighhhhh….Yes…As we go into Winter here in Germany…
My coach made me write “I’m not taking on any new projects for the next six months” on a post it note and stick in on my computer so I could just read it back when someone asked to do something new. Except that was in the old house. And I’ve lost the note. So not surprisingly I just have to teach the writing course and then…
Am off to find a new post it note and stick it back on the computer!
Sending you love from afar.
Sending love back to you, Fiona. Re that post it note, I always did think you must have more than 24 hours in your day to fit in so much creative work! Don’t forget to breathe ….
Hi Juliet! This is a great post! Thank you! I’m someone prone to forgetting about my writing achievements, which at the time did mean a great deal to me. You’re right about getting out and, for example, swimming, etc—during the years when I was doing swimming lessons and walking laps (so many thousands of laps) I did get tons of writing ideas during those sessions. I’m currently thinking about going back there. :)
I get huge creative satisfaction from my music work. Every day I do piano practice, but I also spend ages buried deep in my extensive music software setup, not necessarily trying to make a track or piece of music to share or release, as such (though I also spend time practicing to learn how to do that), but just to *play* stuff, soundscapes, rich and complex sound worlds with depth and texture. Some days I get utterly lost in these things, and it’s awesome.
I’d also like to be writing. Not sure why it’s not happening. 🤷♂️
Hi Adrian and thanks for the great comment! You have occasionally mentioned ideas for new writing projects over the last few years, so maybe when the planets align in a certain way you will decide to press on with one or more of them? I’d love to see some new work from you. On the other hand, you are doing a lot of creative stuff with your music, and perhaps that is developing your brain in ways that will prove useful when you are writing again. I’m sure my musical interests affect the way I write, mostly in relation to rhythm, balance, structure. That would be an interesting research topic!