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.

Abundance, Gratitude, and Writing

Have you ever noticed how abundance can build up momentum in your life so that good things seem to create more good things? Then all of a sudden abundance takes a step back, seems to drain away or run into hiding? In both cases gratitude is the key. When you have a lot to be grateful for, be grateful! And when it appears that you don’t have a lot to be grateful for, still choose to be grateful, whatever the size of the microscope you have to look through to find something. Because gratitude will keep abundance flowing and it will invite it back when it goes AWOL.

Contrary to many beliefs, you don’t have to have a good and easy life to find time for writing, and you don’t need to have lived a so called “bad” life to have something interesting to write about. It’s true that less stress can aid creativity, but it isn’t always the case. Likewise, a personal story full of trauma and drama can be compelling, but that’s not always the case either. We get what we get when it comes to life situations and histories. It’s what we do with it that counts. And that’s where creativity comes in.

Writing occurs within the context of the life we are living—you make time for it or you don’t. And our stories grow out of our personal histories—whether we are conscious of it or not. The gift of life plus an inventory of experiences leads some people to become writers. But that’s not the case for everyone. If it happens to be the case for you, at some point, you will have to reconcile with your life situation and your past.

You will likely struggle against some aspects of your life situation in order to make time to write. And you will likely wrestle with elements from your past on the way to finding something compelling to write about. Rarely will you approach either with gratitude.

But what if you did?

What made you who you are—all that you’ve experienced so far—also contributed to you becoming a writer and living the life you are now living. That’s worth an ounce of gratitude. It doesn’t matter if you’d like to make a few changes (most of us would), but it’s worth noticing that being in a position to want such change is worth being grateful for too. If you’re reading this newsletter you have tools and technology at your disposal that are gratitude worthy. If you have a glass of clean water within arm’s reach, or a hot cup of tea, you have something else to be grateful for.

How often are you grateful for your writing practice? How often do you love it just for the sake of loving it? Can you let yourself do that now?

Gratitude practice is subject to a particular, softly scientific phenomenon: the snowball effect. Writing practice is similarly affected. The more grateful we are the more we have to be grateful for. And the more we write the more there is to write.

I’d like to return to the first paragraph and substitute the words “abundance” and “gratitude” with the word “writing”…

Have you ever noticed how writing can build up momentum in your life so that writing seems to create more writing? Then all of a sudden writing takes a step back, seems to drain away or run into hiding? In both cases writing is the answer. When you have a lot to write about, write! And when it appears that you don’t have a lot to write about, still choose to write, whatever the size of the microscope you have to look through to find something to write about. Because writing will keep writing flowing and it will invite it back when it goes AWOL.

Write For Your Future Self

When I was coaching a client last month, I brought up the notion of “the future self” as a way to provide a different sort of motivation for writing. Our future self is the one waiting for us next month or next year or 10 years from now. It’s who we will eventually be, in time.

We know that too much thinking about the past and future can wreak havoc with our experience of the present moment, since we often regret things from the past that we can’t change or we long for something in the future that we wish would hurry up and get here. But you can have a healthy relationship with the past and future, too. The path is through gratitude.

The notion of the future self involves first thinking of some point in the future, whether six months from now, one year, or five or ten years. Then think of something you’d like to finish–a writing project you’re in the midst of, or a state of mind you’d like to experience, or maybe even a different physical place you’d like to find yourself in. Imagine the moment in the future exactly as you’d like it to be, really picture it. But rather than forming an image the ideal moment you’d like to attain, as you might do in a visioning or manifesting exercise, instead embody the moment with gratitude for yourself; thank yourself for something you did in the past to get yourself to this point. Let your future self say, “Thank you past self for doing X to allow me to be here.”

If you’re familiar with reverse goal setting, in which you picture your chosen goal and work backwards from the finished goal through all the steps required to reach that goal, this is a little like that, except it’s a bit more right-brained than left-brained. And it serves to enhance the relationship you have with your creative self.

When reverse planning for goals, you picture the goal you want to achieve and work backwards through the steps that will get you from here to there. For example, if your goal is to complete your novel manuscript, picture that moment. It’s all done, printed out, and you’re holding the manuscript in your hands. What happens right before that moment? It probably goes through a proofread. Before that, a copy edit and a developmental edit. Before that, the rough draft needs to be complete. To finish the rough draft you need to follow a writing schedule to get those words written. You might create an outline or do some research before this. You might brainstorm novel ideas to decide what to write about. Working in reverse, you have a different perspective of all that’s required to reach your goal, and with this perspective you can break down a large project into manageable chunks and create a realistic schedule to get it done (the trouble always comes with sticking to the schedule, but that’s another story…).

When thinking about your future self, you approach this reverse planning process a little differently.

Let’s say you’ve given yourself six months to write the rough draft of your novel. Picture your future self six months from now holding a completed first draft in your hands. Step into that future self and thank your past self for writing 1,000 words a day for five days a week to get you there. Really imagine yourself swelling with gratitude for your past self. You know it wasn’t easy for her every day. You know she lost her faith in the project many times along the way, but she persevered, and because of that you’re holding a completed manuscript in your hands, and that feels amazing. You can now take your next step toward your dream.

You could even do something helpful for your very near future self. My client says she sets out her dental floss by the sink in the morning so that it’s there when she brushes her teeth in the evening. She’s made this small task slightly easier for her future self, and it’s a small gesture of self-kindness.

Such small gestures of self-kindness can lead us toward our chosen goals just as well, and probably better, than the self-flagellating ones. You can practice building this relationship with your future self by being that self right now.

Think of something you appreciate about your life today. Did you get an article published in a local magazine? Thank your past self writing that article and sending out a query. If you’re part of a great writing group, thank yourself for having the courage to go to the first meeting. Now extend this beyond your writing life. If you’re happily married and starting a family, thank yourself for saying “I do” once upon a time. If you love your job in a faraway city, thank yourself for taking the risk of moving away to give the opportunity a try.

The key is to really take some time nurturing this feeling of gratitude and self-appreciation. Our minds tend to hone in on all that’s “not right” with our situations and so we tend to diminish the impressive things we’ve done. We might think, “It’s not the perfect marriage, or job, or article, so why dwell on it?” But each of those choices was a creative act that led to new manifestations—something from nothing—and that deserves to be appreciated.

So take a moment to stay to yourself, “Past me, thank you for trying X, because it got me to Y.” And when you sit down to write today, dedicate the effort to your future self. One day she’ll thank you for it.