No disclaimers, no doubts: writers, listen up....

All of us are plagued with doubts at one time or another--or all the time.  Writers suffer from this as much as anyone else--maybe more--because most of us are too sensitive, neurotic, obsessive, reactionary, on and on.

But when you're sitting down to write, or even contemplating writing or planning to write, this is the worst time to let doubts creep in: I'm no good, Why me? What's new about what I have to say? I'm horrible at plotting! My dialogue sucks! My vocabulary is teensy weensy....The list goes on!

In my Literary Posse workshop, I have an aqua Bell jar that my students have to stuff with money when they let a disclaimer drip from their mouths.  Disclaimers and keeping that negative self-talk does nothing--nothing at all!--for you as a writer, or you as most things.  All doubts and disclaimers do is keep you from writing and send you hightailing it to clean the grout or feed your face or whatever it is that you do as a lovely distraction.

So when you hear that negative self-talk or think about how bad (not good) a writer (or singer or photographer or artist or musician... you are, here's what I want you to do. I want you to get out your notebook (or camera or easel....) and start creating.  Writers write. Writers progress by writing. Ideas are great, but ideas aren't writing. 

Get out a timer, set it for 15 minutes, and start writing. Freewrite about a character in a story, write a scene in a story, a scene in your memoir, or whatever interests you. Don't stop writing. 

I promise you that the more you do this, the more the doubts and disclaimers will stop and the more you will progress in your writing.

What's your negative self-talk and how do you get past it--or do you?

Freewriting on anniversary

Happy news, now. It's our anniversary. 13 years. Yikes. Not yikes at the number 13 (we married on March 13, believing 13 to be not an unlucky number) but 13 at making it this long. I never even lived in one place this long.

I did a freewriting with my Tuesday night workshop on the words "musings" and "melancholy" and here's what I came up with:
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I love holidays, birthdays and anniversaries. This morning I awoke to flowers crowding the dining room table. Brian's doing. Brian likes to celebrate, too. Any reason to celebrate is good enough for him. There were daisies and hyacinths and orchids, lilies, cyclamen, irises and other tiny purple flowers. Thirteen pennies were scattered about the table. Thirteen, for good luck. We were married on the 13th, 13 years ago.

Seven ceramic angels also loitered about. A heart angel and hope angel and wishes angel. Later Brian went out to buy the wisdom angel, which he said he meant to get but didn't, the one with the book, but no wings like the others.

"It looks like your mother," Brian said to Travis over a dinner of kung pao tofu, kung pao shrimp, vegetable egg rolls, and pizza for Travis.

We three looked at the angel, her head down, a book on her lap.

"Why's that the only one without wings?" said Travis.

"Because it's me," I said. That's me, a fallen angel. I have books, but no wings.

Every day should have such propitious beginnings. Melancholy stayed away today.

My friend Mimi said Brian should give classes to men on how to properly celebrate a holiday. Brian's mother says he always been like this. Musing, she said, he's all of the good rolled into one.

Thirteen years. Yikes.
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