Chapter 3

THINKING PRODUCTIVE THOUGHTS

A PROFESSIONAL WRITER IS AN AMATEUR WHO didn’t quit.”

— RICHARD BACH, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Being productive is not just about what you do; it is also about what you think and believe. In fact, our attitudes and the stories we tell ourselves might be the key to maximizing productivity in our writing lives.

Let’s explore some Jedi mind-control maneuvers to keep your eyes on the prize, your butt in the chair, and your pen on the page.

YOU HAVE EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO WRITE RIGHT NOW

Instead of reading this chapter, you could be writing. You have choices; you make them all day long, often without noticing that the habits and rhythms you have are actually composed of a series of decisions that you made at one time and continue to make every time you repeat them. If you are in the habit of thinking that you don’t have [fill in the blank with your loudest protest here] that you need to write, it’s time to start thinking some new thoughts. Try this one: I have a pen and a piece of paper. I have hands that work and eyes that see. I have thoughts and feelings and insights and images, and I can write them down. Once I even had an English teacher who insisted that I learn a little grammar. Everything I need to write is right here, right now. All I need to do is say Yes and go.

Don’t idealize your way out of a writing life: You have everything you need to write this minute. What are you waiting for?

FROM DISCIPLINE TO DESIRE

Discipline gets the job done. But if you are not fueling it with the right energy source, it could become an inflexible, joyless rod that you come to dread rather than anticipate. Who wants to write just because we’ve told ourselves we have to? I want more from my writing life than that, and I want more for your writing life, too.

Discipline keeps us moving toward our goals. It keeps our minds churning and our hands moving across the keyboard or page with our imagined end in sight. May I be so bold as to suggest that you fuel this important practice with the nectar of the gods: desire?

Desire brings in the body, the soul, the spirit, and embraces the messy wonder of who we are. With desire as fuel, I propose that we delight in the process of writing; delight in the imagined state of completion; delight in the mind-jumbling confusion of not understanding how to get there; delight when the client or editor says, “Start over again, the voice isn’t quite right and it’s due in an hour”; delight in watching drafts unfurl like petals of something growing and dying and replenishing itself again; delight in checking tasks and days off the calendar, in depositing checks, in knowing that in this very moment, we are doing what we were put on this Earth to do — to write.

YOU ONLY NEED TO SEE WHAT’S IN FRONT OF YOU

In the movie The Secret, Jack Canfield talks about how easy it is to get tripped up by big-picture goals because they seem so daunting we can’t imagine how we’ll get there. In answer to this challenge, he explains that he drove in the dark all the way from California to New York, seeing with his headlights only two hundred feet ahead of him at a time.

I find this to be a reassuring metaphor for the writing life. We can only be responsible for two things: deciding where we’re headed and moving as far as we can see right now in that direction. We don’t have to understand the entire journey. But when we’re clear about our destination and take small consistent steps in that direction, we may be surprised to find ourselves clear across the country in no time at all.

DO YOUR BEST, THEN LET GO

IN YOUR CONTROL	OUT OF YOUR HANDS
A commitment to defining and developing a platform.	The size and composition of the audience attracted to your work and platform.
A commitment to your craft.	The ultimate outcome of the work you produce. (You can only do your best.)
Research and understanding of your market.	Subjectivity, business priorities, and editorial decisions of editors.
A regular practice of sending work out for publication.	Who chooses to publish your work — and when.
Your attitude.	The judgments and perceptions of others.
Your care of your mind, body, and spirit.	Surprises, obstacles, and rewards along the way.
Your auxiliary commitments and responsibilities that limit or enhance writing opportunities.	Necessary work to care for your family or your home, or to do what is required at your job.
Your sleep.	May the sleep muse meet you there!
Your partner, children, and/or pets (the choices and promises you make).	Your partner, children, and/or pets (the choices they make, and the consequences for you).

DON’T WORRY; BE HAPPY

Writers are up against a lot when it comes to keeping our practice vital, engaged, and productive. We don’t have time. We don’t have energy. Blah, blah, blah. What if we were to turn our attention to what is actually working well, what is giving us energy, and what is seeming possible in this moment — no matter how small it might be?

In my experience, when we are truly dedicated to what is positive and possible, much of the negative stuff we’ve been feeding with our time and attention simply untangles itself in the background — just as any living thing given attention thrives, and any that is not tended eventually starves. Tend your satisfaction, and it will take root and flourish. This is fertile ground for your writing, your publishing, and your life.

SEND PROBLEMS PACKING

Years ago, my friend Mariko offered a simple thought-management trick when I was struggling with a personal problem that was affecting my ability to concentrate at work. On a small sticky note, she drew a little suitcase and stuck it to my computer screen. “Put your troubles in here,” she said, “and imagine them on a revolving luggage rack above your head. They will be there when you’re ready for them; but for now, you can take care of other stuff.”

So that’s exactly what I did: I visualized packing up my distracting thoughts into that suitcase and sent it revolving in the ether. It was surprisingly comforting to realize that I didn’t have to give up the problem I was facing, I just had to find somewhere specific to put it so that I could carry on with everything else that needed doing. This device served me so well that there’s a sticky note with a little suitcase on my computer screen right now. This suitcase has a happy face, reminding me that I can continue to invest in the negative story line I’m worrying like a religious practice, or I can choose to write this chapter.

UNTANGLING THE KNOT

When you’re really stuck with your writing, you’ve tried everything and nothing is working, back off. Think of the knot which, when yanked, becomes only tighter. The trick is to loosen things up. Pretend you’re busy doing something else. Put it in a drawer. Trust time. When you are preparing for bed, invite your sleeping self to find a solution. Then let it go. When you are out hiking, invite the sky to find a solution. Then let it go. When you call in an answer from the mystery where answers live, you can relax a little into the not knowing. Think of yourself as a child learning how to stand still so the frightened bird can trust your arm as a safe landing. You are training yourself to a new kind of answer. One that is already there, and you are learning how to listen.

KEEP YOUR INNER EDITOR TOO BUSY TO INTERFERE

There will be plenty of work for your inner editor to do when the time comes. But until it is time, a great way to keep interference to a minimum is to keep that naysayer busy doing something important.

For example, when I’m doing freewriting, one of my favorite writing calisthenics for getting loose and ready for action, I’ll put my editor in charge of counting pages, keeping time, insisting that my hand keep moving, and demanding that I turn away from deliberate, thinking-triggered writing. Basically, my editor facilitates the mechanics of the process so my mind is free to wander. With such an important job to do, my editor is far too busy to start throwing her weight around; she knows she’ll have ample time to judge the nonsense I’m scribbling later. For now, she gets to be the taskmaster supervising the scribble.

How can you occupy your own, well-meaning inner editor (who wants so badly for you to be successful that she’s willing to say any mean thing to get you there) with some useful but tangential job — so you can have the space you need to create free of judgment?

COMPETITION KILLS

A universal truth in the writing life is that the moment we allow ourselves even the teeniest hierarchal thought, something tender in us clamps down and says “not possible.”

Let’s face it: Hierarchy is the psychological masonry of many cultures today. And the nature of the publishing business is to draw a line, subjective as it may be, between “worthy of publishing” and “not worthy of publishing.” Plus, there are teachers and authors and writers everywhere who are resting their own fragile and insecure laurels on whatever rung in the ladder they’re precariously perched on, who will look down on you and invite you to feel small.

What I’d like to remind you is that you have a choice. You can grasp that stone of “best, better, good, not good enough” and let it sink you. Or you can put it down beside you and keep writing. Only you can allow yourself to feel small next to someone you believe is bigger. And only you can choose to see in someone “higher up” than you the beacon of possibility for your own writing life. All you need to worry about (or, rather, enjoy) is your own good, better, and best, because that is what belongs to you. Do you see yourself making progress toward your goals? Can you appreciate your own tenacious spirit that simply stays focused on where you’re headed? Don’t distract yourself with feeling bad about what someone else is doing when there is so much to feel good about that is right in front of you.

PRODUCTIVE LICENSE GRANTED

Last year, I attended a workshop with Susan G. Wooldridge, author of poemcrazy. This extravagantly colorful, frenetic butterfly of a woman seemed to awaken each person in the room to his or her own stirring nectars. This is possible! And this! And this! was the subtext of everything Wooldridge offered and taught that afternoon. And at the end of the workshop, she passed around lovely, little business-sized cards that had a hand-drawn look to them. Each card said “Poetic License.”

I love this idea of actually carrying a prop, a prompt, a permission to do and be the kind of writer we are striving to become. I think honoring our choices with some small symbol that says “I choose to be a Productive Writer” can actually make this path more possible.

BE GENTLE WITH YOURSELF

The only one who can make sure your writing life is a success is you. The only one who can define what success even means in your life is you. For one person, success is finding an early morning hour once a week to write absolution into that blank page. For another, success is publishing a twelve-book, best-selling adventure series featuring dragon toads that speak a language only tweens can understand.

Sometimes it can be tempting to view ourselves as hostage to our own goals or process. Please don’t. Remember that you get to decide when it’s time to work, sleep, eat peanut butter, and blow dandelion seeds into the wind. You get to set goals and timing — and change them if they’re not serving you.

The liberating and sometimes terrifying truth is that you are entirely in charge here. The rules of the road are yours and yours alone. In your writing life, you are the CEO, CFO, the middle manager, the grunt worker, the secretary, bus driver, and janitor. Spoiler alert: You are not going to be good at everything at first, or ever. You are going to be as gawky and wobbly and strange and embarrassing as every being is when it’s figuring out how to exist in a new context. This is how success looks in its early stages — like a mess. And then that mess starts taking shape.