How it Feels to Finish a Project

There comes a time when you tick off everything on your revision to-do list and call the project “done.” It’s a moment of stunned exhilaration–a rush of excitement at crossing a self-determined finish line paired with a kind of disbelief that you made it.

Though none of us ever ends up creating exactly what we set out to create, with enough persistence our initial aims eventually reach some kind of target. And that happened for me last week. I finished my revisions for my non-fiction book.

It feels… strange. In part because other lists have been breeding in the background, all the what-to-do-next tasks, and there are plenty! But this moment arrives one day, a moment of completion. It’s as whole, clear, and delightful as a breath-blown soap bubble, rainbow-tinted, light, and… temporary. It must be savored.

I did reach the end of my revision list, but (as those who’ve been there know) I could easily keep adding more to it, keep striving for improvement. So how do I know I’m done?

Something subtle inside has shifted, and with it an awareness that a significant phase of work is complete. Paul Valéry is credited for saying, “A work is never completed, but merely abandoned.” (Fuller translated quote below.) And I can’t deny I have that feeling of wanting to give up and turn away from the project now. But it has a different quality than procrastination or resistance.

How do we trust this inner sense that something’s done? It’s a little like trusting a new friend or lover. We can’t be totally sure we’re right, but we go with it anyway, aware of our vulnerabilities but willing to see where this next stage takes us.

Done never means perfect. In fact, for a writer to complete a project, s/he has to have made peace with imperfection. Completion can never lead to perfection, but it can lead to value. And that’s what we should be aiming for. I can say, without a doubt, that the book I’ve finished isn’t perfect, but I believe it has value.

For creators of any kind, a desire to make things is underpinned by a desire to contribute value to the world in some way. We work on projects that matter to us, and we hope, one day, they’ll matter to someone else too.

I’ll keep you posted on my next steps as I proceed. For the moment, I am breathing a sigh of relief to be done (for now ).

My work involves coaching other writers on their paths to completion. Sometimes I play a large role and sometimes a very small one. I reached out a few writers I know who have recently finished first drafts or revisions and I asked them how they feel when they finish something. Here’s what they said:

Once I write the final sentence it feels as if I have returned home from a long trip. Happy to be back again but I know there lies ahead of me a good deal of unpacking, and laundry, before I can settle in again.

~ Bromme C., working title: When Soft Voices Die

Even after working on the book for over two years, the realization that it was finished seemed to come out of nowhere. I think of whipping cream by hand, you keep whipping and whipping you’re about to lose hope, suddenly there is the cream with perfect peaks. So many endeavors require a leap of faith. I was elated when I realize the book was done. That feeling stayed with me and helped push aside doubts as I started a new novel. It’s a short novella but I do think of myself differently now that I have finished it, and I see the book differently as well, as something that exists separate from me.

~ Melanie D., working title: People Who Love You

The lady at Staples handed six copies to me, 350 pages each bound with a blue cardboard front and back cover. They were heavy, but my spirit was light as I waltzed to my car carrying the manuscripts, the first draft of my first novel after five years. Now it’s out there, being read by my beta readers. I feel a liberated sense of achievement. I know I still have more work to do on it, but I’m motivated to return reinvigorated with ideas to, in the words of Paul McCartney, “Make it better!”

~ Ariela S., working title, Survival

When I finished my novel and sent the requested draft to an agent, I felt an incredible sense of both momentum and lightness. Finishing energy feels wholly different from starting a project and requires laser concentration, patience and kindness to self. Letting go of your story into the world requires humility and courage.

~ Elena K., working title: Spotlights and Shadows

Thanks for sharing such wise, personal insights. And congratulations to you all!! Can’t wait to see these stories in print!

11 Things Every Writer Needs to Remember

There comes a time when you tick off everything on your revision to-do list and call the project “done.” It’s a moment of stunned exhilaration–a rush of excitement at crossing a self-determined finish line paired with a kind of disbelief that you made it.

Though none of us ever ends up creating exactly what we set out to create, with enough persistence our initial aims eventually reach some kind of target. And that happened for me last week. I finished my revisions for my non-fiction book.

It feels… strange. In part because other lists have been breeding in the background, all the what-to-do-next tasks, and there are plenty! But this moment arrives one day, a moment of completion. It’s as whole, clear, and delightful as a breath-blown soap bubble, rainbow-tinted, light, and… temporary. It must be savored.

I did reach the end of my revision list, but (as those who’ve been there know) I could easily keep adding more to it, keep striving for improvement. So how do I know I’m done?

Something subtle inside has shifted, and with it an awareness that a significant phase of work is complete. Paul Valéry is credited for saying, “A work is never completed, but merely abandoned.” (Fuller translated quote below.) And I can’t deny I have that feeling of wanting to give up and turn away from the project now. But it has a different quality than procrastination or resistance.

How do we trust this inner sense that something’s done? It’s a little like trusting a new friend or lover. We can’t be totally sure we’re right, but we go with it anyway, aware of our vulnerabilities but willing to see where this next stage takes us.

Done never means perfect. In fact, for a writer to complete a project, s/he has to have made peace with imperfection. Completion can never lead to perfection, but it can lead to value. And that’s what we should be aiming for. I can say, without a doubt, that the book I’ve finished isn’t perfect, but I believe it has value.

For creators of any kind, a desire to make things is underpinned by a desire to contribute value to the world in some way. We work on projects that matter to us, and we hope, one day, they’ll matter to someone else too.

I’ll keep you posted on my next steps as I proceed. For the moment, I am breathing a sigh of relief to be done (for now ).

My work involves coaching other writers on their paths to completion. Sometimes I play a large role and sometimes a very small one. I reached out a few writers I know who have recently finished first drafts or revisions and I asked them how they feel when they finish something. Here’s what they said:

Once I write the final sentence it feels as if I have returned home from a long trip. Happy to be back again but I know there lies ahead of me a good deal of unpacking, and laundry, before I can settle in again.

~ Bromme C., working title: When Soft Voices Die

Even after working on the book for over two years, the realization that it was finished seemed to come out of nowhere. I think of whipping cream by hand, you keep whipping and whipping you’re about to lose hope, suddenly there is the cream with perfect peaks. So many endeavors require a leap of faith. I was elated when I realize the book was done. That feeling stayed with me and helped push aside doubts as I started a new novel. It’s a short novella but I do think of myself differently now that I have finished it, and I see the book differently as well, as something that exists separate from me.

~ Melanie D., working title: People Who Love You

The lady at Staples handed six copies to me, 350 pages each bound with a blue cardboard front and back cover. They were heavy, but my spirit was light as I waltzed to my car carrying the manuscripts, the first draft of my first novel after five years. Now it’s out there, being read by my beta readers. I feel a liberated sense of achievement. I know I still have more work to do on it, but I’m motivated to return reinvigorated with ideas to, in the words of Paul McCartney, “Make it better!”

~ Ariela S., working title, Survival

When I finished my novel and sent the requested draft to an agent, I felt an incredible sense of both momentum and lightness. Finishing energy feels wholly different from starting a project and requires laser concentration, patience and kindness to self. Letting go of your story into the world requires humility and courage.

~ Elena K., working title: Spotlights and Shadows

Thanks for sharing such wise, personal insights. And congratulations to you all!! Can’t wait to see these stories in print!

Choice, Change, and Conflict

In the midst of all the changes in the world, we are invited to make some new choices—collectively and individually. Unexpected changes bring us face to face with unexpected choices—to let go of certain assumptions and plans, to reframe cultural beliefs and “norms,” to examine what really matters, and why.

Making choices and making changes are inherently anxiety provoking, and rarely occur without some degree of conflict. In the world at large we’re witnessing a lot of conflict, but many of us are dealing with it at a personal level too. We are each in our ways dealing with anxiety, worry, pain, and fear related to experiences or observations of inner and outer conflict. These are natural human responses to anticipating change and choice.

I think about choice, change, and conflict a lot because they are so much a part of the writing life and telling stories, even in small or subtle ways. Just think: without that bit of inner conflict that arises when we want to write a book but haven’t done it yet, we wouldn’t choose to change our habits to get up early or stay up late to fit our writing in. And if we didn’t throw conflict in our characters’ paths by forcing them to make choices that lead to personal evolution through change, our stories wouldn’t get very far.

As messy as conflict can be, I respect its energy to pressure us to choose and thereby provoke change. And I also respect—or better yet, trust—our human ability to adapt to changing circumstances as well as our ability choose and forge new paths. It’s not easy to change. Not for us or for our story characters. We resist it as much as we long for it. We fear what we may lose, and we don’t trust we can successfully create what we long for, so we often stay stuck.

In the book I’m writing, I tell writers that their story situations “…must be compelling enough to overcome the inertia of being human. The truth is, we’d all rather not change because change is uncomfortable, inconvenient, anxiety-provoking, and often leads to real or imagined loss or even death, as well as changes to beliefs and personal world order. Of course, deep down, we do want to change. We, and our characters, just need the right set of circumstances and enough motivation to do it.”

We seem to be living through such circumstances now, but it’s still hard to know exactly what to do. As our identities and belief systems are being challenged, we are called to examine our mental and moral natures, which are capable of change, but require will, determination, and trust in a vision for a new way of being. I don’t have any answers for rallying that will, focusing that determination, or expanding that trust, except to embrace the clumsy, vulnerable messiness that the choice to change entails—and to have the courage to face the inner and outer conflicts.

Another passage in the book, which is about story characters but also applies to ourselves, seems to fit here: “Change is inherently conflictual whether it occurs on the inside or outside, but without it, we would not grow. We are wired to change. We are wired to evolve. We are wired to heal. And life—in the real version or the story version—provides us with invitation after invitation to rise to those challenges.” Collectively and individually, let’s accept these invitations…and rise.

What Do You Owe Your Readers?

In a word: Everything.

Reading might be the single most intimate act you will experience with a stranger.

When you open a book, you let a complete stranger into your most private space: your mind. Once there, this wordsmith sets up camp and creates words that conjure feelings, actions, and meaning. It’s a privilege to be invited into your mind, and this writer better have something useful, funny, evocative, intelligent, illuminating, or entertaining to say. Or voilà! You can snap the book closed and move on to something else. We’ve all done it. And we’ve also all leaned in when something has grabbed our attention and we felt that sense of “give me more of that.”

Writers start out as readers. They are captivated by the magic of words, but then they choose to take another step. They say, “I want to make the magic too.” It’s an innocent enough desire, and one most writers spend a long time trying to fulfill. It’s honest-to-goodness hard work, and most of it isn’t magical. In fact, we can get so caught up in the effort of honing our craft that we sometimes forget the ultimate reason for it: to court the love and loyalty of readers.

But how do we do that?

Well, first, we lovingly respect our future readers. We take them seriously. They have busy lives, lots of interests, and longings of their own. Because of these facts of existence, you, as a writer, owe your reader at least three things:

1) Tell a Good Story.

Tell a story that is compelling enough to make readers pause in their busy lives. We all appreciate good entertainment, relevant guidance, or breakthrough inspiration. Who hasn’t stayed up all night with a good book? Rather than being angry with that author we’ve been grateful for their powerful seduction, caught up as we were in their magic. Do whatever you have to do to learn how to wield this magic.

2) Don’t Please Everyone.

Readers have many tastes and interests and I guarantee that if you’re true to your “thing,” and hone it passionately (and follow point one), you will find your readers. Trust what drives you, work diligently at your craft, go deeper, cross all your Ts and dot all your Is, keep trusting, and don’t give up.

3) Speak the Truth

By all means tell your readers what they want to hear, but also tell them what they need to hear (from you). Take your reader on a wild ride with your thriller, but remind her about the human condition on the way. Get real in your fiction. I like to define fiction as “lies that tell the truth.” We often turn to made-up stories to discover deeper truths about ourselves and the world. And if something is true for you, it will resonate as true for someone else.

As a writer, you’ll never make every reader happy, and you needn’t waste your time trying. You can only do your thing for those readers who like to lean into your thing. But you must do your thing well. So learn more, practice more, get support, learn to take constructive feedback (and don’t take it personally), and take each project to its finish line, which, we have to admit, is into the hands and hearts of readers who want more of that.

And remember: If, by picking up your book, a reader invites you into their mind, and possibly their heart, enter boldly but respectfully, confidently yet generously, wisely and gratefully. Dot your Is and cross your Ts and you may just end up with a lover for life.

The Most Important Ten Minutes of Your Day

Are you writing? It’s hard to start, isn’t it? We make such a fuss about starting, especially on those things most important to us. The things with stakes attached. And who doesn’t attach pretty high stakes to chosen dreams? Such as writing.

The expectations we have of ourselves and our work can make starting difficult, but here’s a little known secret: it’s only the first ten minutes that feel hard.

Have you ever noticed that when you start to exercise, things feel pretty rough? For about ten minutes. Then your heart rate is up and energy is coursing through your muscles. What about going to an event where you really don’t know anyone? The first ten minutes—brutal. Then you’re either in a groove or making an educated exit. That project at work that you don’t want to do but it really needs to get done? Give it about ten minutes. You’ll be able to take one more step toward completion.

It takes about ten minutes to transition from one state of mind to another or from one activity to another. Humans are naturally resistant to change (even while we also crave it). Every change comes with a period of discomfort, even small changes that occur in a day. Since we are physiologically wired to avoid pain (discomfort) we often experience resistance as we approach these thresholds of change. And the greater the stakes we’ve associated with the chosen activity (what if I don’t lose five pounds exercising this way? what if I don’t finish the novel I’ve set out to write?) the greater the potential resistance and the harder it can seem to start. My advice? Give it ten minutes.

Encourage yourself to endure ten minutes of discomfort in honor of your chosen dreams. Promise yourself a reward if that helps (though I sometimes find that to be a mental abstraction that doesn’t quite work for me). The greatest rewards start flowing at the fifteen minute mark anyway. Your muscles flex, the words fly across the page, and you’re doing what you said you’d do, which begins to cultivate self trust and self respect, two character attributes necessary for self-motivated work.

There’s a saying bandied about that goes, “No pain, no gain.” I’m not a big proponent of struggle or suffering, but all creators face inner resistance from time to time, and unless we find ways to move through it, our dreams hang out on the horizon and never really get a chance to come into clear focus. So take ten minutes and wade through that inner resistance. They could end up being the most important ten minutes of your day.

Staying the Course

Earlier this month I had the good fortune to be a guest on a friend’s sailboat for ten days. Up until then I’d only ever spent a day or half day on a sailboat and hadn’t needed to do much but sit back and enjoy the ride. For this trip, I was one of three hands on deck, and I really had to pull my weight. I learned so much about sailing, and yet it was just the tip of the iceberg (hmmm, maybe I shouldn’t mention icebergs and boats in the same sentence…).

I’m still pretty green when it comes to sailing, but I did take the helm on many occasions, and when we were fully under sail, traveling between seven and eight knots, I learned what it really means to “stay the course.”

Usually when sailing, the captain plots a course according to the nautical charts. This results in a waypoint, the destination you’re aiming for (in our case, nearly deserted bays of small islands or along the Peloponnese coast. Unless you’re motoring only, the wind has to be taken into account, and you might have to tack and jibe–basically moving in a zigzag to catch the wind–in order to get where you want to go. It occurred to me that writing often feels like this too; we generally make our your way toward  writing goals following very indirect lines.

On good sailing (writing) days, when the sails (your mind and hands) fill with wind (inspiration) and you’ve harnessed great power to propel you forward, there can be a wildness to the ride. The boat heels to one side and you need to maintain your balance on a slanted deck. You need a light and strong hand at the helm to maintain a good angle to the wind. But a strong wind pulls the nose of the boat into it and the helm can stiffen and draw you off to one side, so minor course corrections are always being made if you are to make progress toward your waypoint.

Before, when I used to think of staying the course in terms of writing, I imagined maintaining a steady rhythm and routine, keeping my eyes on the goal, and basically plodding along. But after having experienced it literally, I see it as a dynamic, energized process of monitoring and responding to a variety of ever-changing conditions, many of which can steer you astray or tip you into the drink.

The wind, like life, is rarely consistent. We consistently need to make minor (or major) adjustments in our writing process in order to keep moving toward the waypoints we’ve chosen. Struggling with this is normal. Sometimes the wind wins. It’s rarely smooth sailing for very long. Your skills, your passion, and your stamina will see you through the rough seas of process so that you can occasionally experience tranquil bays of progress and accomplishment. But reading the wind, adjusting the sails, and riding unexpected waves will always be required.

Every sailor respects the wind, stands humbly before it, and each writer comes to respect the unpredictable nature of inspiration, word flow, and maintaining life conditions that support the creative journey. But no matter how choppy the waters, how wild or absent the wind, when we take the helm in our writing, all we can do is try our best to maintain an even keel and stay the course as we sail in the direction of our dreams.

By the way, we use so many nautical metaphors and phrases in our everyday language. I found this site that explains some of the origins of terms such as: by and large, batten down the hatches, broad in the beam, hard and fast, get underway, give a wide berth, high and dry, hand over fist, know the ropes, loose cannon, shipshape, shake a leg, taken aback, the bitter end, slush fund, three sheets to the wind, and many more.

Chaos and Order

By the end of January most of us are either hitting a stride when it comes to moving toward goals or else we’ve abandoned them completely. The latter can leave some of us disillusioned and disoriented, and simply trying to keep our heads above water as the river of life carries us relentlessly forward. Often, we give in to the external momentum of demands and distractions (especially after a month of trials and failures) and our once hope-filled creative goals get washed away.

Perhaps you’re cruising right along with your goals and don’t need a pep talk yet, but for those who do, I want to explore the powers of chaos and order.

Life for most of us seems to swing pendulum-like between chaos and order. And creative people tend to hang on the chaos side of the pendulum.

We usually think of chaos in terms of mess, unruliness, lack of control, disorder and confusion. But chaos is also potential, mystery, inspiration, the unknown, the unformed—it’s the source of creativity.

So it makes sense that creatives lean toward chaos, but creative people especially need to find balance between these poles. We know this intuitively, and when we set goals in the New Year, we’re making a valiant attempt to order the perceived chaos in our lives.

It’s the creative person’s intention to harness the energy of chaos, to dance with it until something can be made of it, and that making requires establishing some kind of order in the process.

Order by itself is usually dry and dull, but it’s necessary for getting anything done (and more is required if you’re also after efficiency). Order is the yang to chaos’s yin. And yet, too much order and we feel tyrannized; too much chaos and we’re adrift in meaningless mayhem. We actually need both.

As writers, the order we aim for most of the time is in service to making space in which the chaos of the creative process can enter. For example, choosing the same time of day to write and the same location to write in sets up the kind of structure that the muse, that harbinger of inspiration, can depend on. Faulkner said, “I write when the spirit moves me, and the spirit moves me everyday.” Because he showed up everyday.

A willingness to set up an orderly schedule for your writing allows you to be wild and loose in the writing itself. If you’re wild and loose in the scheduling process, when you finally sit down, you can end up feeling tremendous pressure to “get something done.” That’s in part because you don’t know when the next writing session will be. But if you know you have an hour today and another hour tomorrow and another the day after that, you can begin to relax enough to enjoy the process of meeting chaos on the page rather than in your daily life. Order serves and contains chaos for the creative person.

Order is also required to finish projects, revise them, and send them out into the world. We stumble terribly when we let chaos into these processes. That’s when the river sweeps us up again. So let’s take Thoreau’s advice here: “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.”

Putting foundations under creativity can be challenging for writers. So when the New Year comes around we, along with many others, seize the chance invite more order into our seemingly chaotic lives.

Of course, goal setting has always been easy; it’s the follow through that’s hard, because change is hard. Change requires that we first assess the chaos in our own lives (particularly the chaos that is masquerading as order—how many people say they write everyday but actually have multiple tabs open in their browser at the same time?).

When you’re ready to make a change by setting a goal, first try to assess the level of chaos underlying the areas that need attention. Ask yourself why that area of your life is chaotic, and then ask yourself to come up with one way you could bring some order to that area.

For example, if you overeat, make a schedule with set meals and snack times and don’t deviate from the schedule for one week. At the end of the week, ask yourself how you feel. If you want to write but never sit down to it with any regularity, decide on a time of day and a length of time and block it out in your calendar as you would a trip to the dentist or lunch with a friend, and then stick to your appointment for one week. Pay attention to how you feel after a week’s worth of this kind of productivity.

For most creative people, establishing order doesn’t feel good, but the results from living and creating within a structure (of time allotment or word count) end up feeling energizing. That kind of energy can inspire a creative person to value order in a new way, one which allows them to experience the real rewards of turning chaotic energy into creative work.

Chaos will always be whispering from the murky depths, and we want it to, since those whispers provide the good ideas, and we want to stay open to them. But if you want to experience the rewarding results of your creativity in 2018, then build yourself a raft of orderly routines so you can flow with the river without going under.

Invitation: Devote one week to meticulously recording the time you spend writing. Note down which locations you choose and how you feel before, during, and after writing. At the end of the week, assess your levels of chaos and order. Create a plan for the following week that includes a greater effort at order. Stick to the plan! Record how you feel after.

Inviting Inspiration

As creators, we pay a lot of lip service to inspiration, but what does it really mean to be inspired? And how do we go about getting into that state? Lately, I’ve been thinking about the nature of creativity and inspiration and the connection between the two.

Creativity arises out a relationship you have with yourself—a willingness to listen to what moves you and respond to that with expressive action. What moves you, and those responses, changes daily, and inspiration is the bridge between the two.

How does inspiration appear to us in daily lives? Sometimes in very simple ways.

At the onset of Spring, with new blooms scenting the air, you may rush out to buy bedding plants to fill a planter box. Sharing a particularly delicious meal with friends may drive you to open that cookbook you got last Christmas and try a new recipe. Finishing a satisfying short story may prompt you to pick up your pen and try writing your own.

Inspiration is the bridge between a moment that moves you and a moment of taking expressive action. And because of that, inspiration can be invited in at any time.

It’s helpful if we cultivate qualities of presence, attention, and appreciation, because they are what open us to being moved on a daily basis. (When we’re not cultivating these qualities, it may take a bigger event, like a shock or a surprise, to wake us up to the moment.) These qualities improve conditions for inspiration’s arrival.

The next thing we must take responsibility for is choice. How we choose to react or respond to a moment determines whether inspiration is invited in or not. We can close up to the shock or surprise, or we can let it honestly affect us. We can simply pass by the rose in bloom calling us to its fleeting scent, or we can open to it and breathe it in. The word itself is your guide: inspiration, to breathe in and be filled.

You can stop there if you like. You can be filled up as if by a wonderful meal and walk around satiated until the energy dissipates. Or, on the metaphoric out-breath, you can create something. It could be as simple as a feeling of gratitude, or it might be a cake, or it might be the beginning of a poem that will speak to the ages.

The qualities necessary at this stage are: trust, action, and repeated process. These elements are essential to creation. But this is also the most challenging stage. It’s the hardest to follow through on, because inspiration doesn’t come with any guarantees. A moment that moves us arises from a higher, deeper, or larger place than we commonly inhabit. It calls us forward, fuels us with an urge to act, but so often the results of those actions fall short of our inspired vision. We come face to face with the smallness of our own creature selves and this is uncomfortable to say the least. I think it’s one of the reasons so many of us cut off from being moved at all.

If we get this far and don’t want to shut down, we need to claim three more qualities: resilience with a dash of tenacity, acceptance blended with forgiveness, and the resolve to start all over again. We need to keep the door of choice open, that gateway between each moment of being moved and each opportunity to respond.

Moving through the cycles regularly will bring a greater sense of rawness to those moving moments, but your odds of creation will also improve. Inspiration is the bridge, but it is we who choose to make the crossing.

The Uncertainty of Writing

Lately I’ve been dipping into Pema Chodron’s book Comfortable with Uncertainty (Shambhala, 2002). I’m at an uncertain point in my life and needing reminders to breathe deeply, face my fears, and accept that everything is impermanent. I’m reminded that all of this is good advice for the writing life as well. After all, what’s more uncertain than the writer’s life?

When we open up to writing, we, perhaps unwittingly, open up to uncertainty. We cannot predict where the act of writing will take us. Deeper into ourselves? Into new worlds? Into untapped tombs of passion, tenderness, or rage that find a way onto the page?

It takes courage to face the blank page, to explore new areas of our own minds and hearts, and then to put words down without knowing where they’ll lead. It takes courage to face uncertainty. In the process of developing courage, I’ve been exploring these three approaches:

~ Practice accepting that writing, like life, rises from the uncertain places in ourselves as much as the certain ones. We may not know where our writing is leading us, and that’s fine. It’s part of embracing the mystery of being engaged in creativity, of having the courage to breathe and live.

~ Consider handing off some of your uncertainty to your characters. All humans feel uncertain at some point or other, and so readers will be able to identify with the uncertainty of your characters. Vicariously experiencing a character’s uncertainty, and how they handle it, can help us (and readers) gain a new perspective.

~ Place your need for certainty in areas where you have a fair bit of control. If you set aside time to write daily, even if it’s only 10 minutes or 30 minutes, you are in control of this agreement with yourself. There is too much about writing that is beyond a writer’s control. When we have expectations about particular outcomes, or anticipate who might like our work down the road, or carry around other unfulfilled hopes, we end up creating a lot of unnecessary uncertainty because we’re looking for it in places where it doesn’t exist.

Cultivating the courage to deal with uncertainty, in writing and in life, doesn’t make it go away, but it does make us more resilient creators of life and words.

Choice, Change, and Conflict

In the midst of all the changes in the world, we are invited to make some new choices—collectively and individually. Unexpected changes bring us face to face with unexpected choices—to let go of certain assumptions and plans, to reframe cultural beliefs and “norms,” to examine what really matters, and why.Making choices and making changes are inherently anxiety provoking, and rarely occur without some degree of conflict. In the world at large we’re witnessing a lot of conflict, but many of us are dealing with it at a personal level too. We are each in our ways dealing with anxiety, worry, pain, and fear related to experiences or observations of inner and outer conflict. These are natural human responses to anticipating change and choice.I think about choice, change, and conflict a lot because they are so much a part of the writing life and telling stories, even in small or subtle ways. Just think: without that bit of inner conflict that arises when we want to write a book but haven’t done it yet, we wouldn’t choose to change our habits to get up early or stay up late to fit our writing in. And if we didn’t throw conflict in our characters’ paths by forcing them to make choices that lead to personal evolution through change, our stories wouldn’t get very far.As messy as conflict can be, I respect its energy to pressure us to choose and thereby provoke change. And I also respect—or better yet, trust—our human ability to adapt to changing circumstances as well as our ability choose and forge new paths. It’s not easy to change. Not for us or for our story characters. We resist it as much as we long for it. We fear what we may lose, and we don’t trust we can successfully create what we long for, so we often stay stuck.In the book I’m writing, I tell writers that their story situations “…must be compelling enough to overcome the inertia of being human. The truth is, we’d all rather not change because change is uncomfortable, inconvenient, anxiety-provoking, and often leads to real or imagined loss or even death, as well as changes to beliefs and personal world order. Of course, deep down, we do want to change. We, and our characters, just need the right set of circumstances and enough motivation to do it.”We seem to be living through such circumstances now, but it’s still hard to know exactly what to do. As our identities and belief systems are being challenged, we are called to examine our mental and moral natures, which are capable of change, but require will, determination, and trust in a vision for a new way of being. I don’t have any answers for rallying that will, focusing that determination, or expanding that trust, except to embrace the clumsy, vulnerable messiness that the choice to change entails—and to have the courage to face the inner and outer conflicts.Another passage in the book, which is about story characters but also applies to ourselves, seems to fit here: "Change is inherently conflictual whether it occurs on the inside or outside, but without it, we would not grow. We are wired to change. We are wired to evolve. We are wired to heal. And life—in the real version or the story version—provides us with invitation after invitation to rise to those challenges.” Collectively and individually, let’s accept these invitations…and rise.