Organizations – Linda Nelson

I am entering my third year of Round of Words in 80 Days Challenge. It is hard to believe that I’ve been blogging for this long, when it seems as though I started keeping a blog only yesterday. This challenge has helped me write Witch Book, Road Salt, and Along Came Neil. That is a total of three novels.

Kait announced that this round we should use Deliberate Writing as our topic of discussion. That is such a terrific idea.

I’m an indie author. The writing life for an indie author is not easy, nor is all the hard work that goes into being this type of writer. Someday, I am sure it will all pay off.

How does deliberate writing fit into the indie world?

It is the biggest part of an Indies world. We have to write with Deliberate Persistence or we will never get anywhere with all the self-promoting and self-publishing we need to do.

Deliberate Persistence is the power of inertia that keeps the stories coming. If we didn’t practice deliberate writing, many of us would have given up long ago. We just can’t give up.

It is practice, practice, practice… That is how our stories come about.

This past year has brought me a lot of growth with my joining RWA – Romance Writers of America. I took part in month after month of online workshops given by several of the Chapters of RWA. One in particular was YARWA – Young Adults Romance Writers of America. I think I got a lot out of them too. It sure made the steep cost of their membership well worth paying.

This year I will be focusing on writing fantasy and honing those skills.

Over the past year, I gave a lot of thought to when I was young I used to play a game of make believe with a good friend. We used to say to each other before we came up with our daily skit – let’s make believe that this happened, or that happened, and we are so and so. I remember those days well. It was when I was five and six years old. I don’t know if she remembers them at all. I apply what I learned from playing these games to my writing. Now instead of having the make believe being about me, it is about my characters. So I came to know, after all those years gone by, I had been practicing fiction long before I knew what I was doing. It was just some childish game. The game became a writing tool in the end.

Enough of my ongoing Deliberate practice…

I am to state what my Deliberate practice will be for this round.

Orgarlan Saga needs a new plot outline for the next book in the series. I’m subconsciously cooking it at this time. I did finish up the time line for the first two books. Now I just need to decide who wants what and why, then the plot will come together like a puzzle.
Blog more deliberately. I have been lax in this area in the past. I must make every check-in, even if I have nothing new to report.
Maybe take a look at one of my slush pile unfinished works to see if anything can be done to resurrect the story line.
Continue to take part in more of the online workshops offered by the RWA Chapters.
Learn to put together a Self-Publishing workshop to be given locally in my area. ß—– Just thinking about this gives me the jitters. A good friend of mine keeps telling me I need to do this.

Check out the goals of other ROWers by following the Linky List link…

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Practice Deliberately and State Your Round 4 #ROW80 Goals (aroundofwordsin80days.wordpress.com)
Is Greatness Genetics or Deliberate Practice? (gormanv.wordpress.com)
Deliberate Practice: Create Your Own Writing Exercises (yilinwang.com)
The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Fear Itself (halfemptymasonjar.wordpress.com)

Today is the third Saturday of the month which means it is my monthly Monadnock Writers’ Group meeting.

First off, I want everyone to know – I stepped out of my box. That’s right, out of my comfort zone. I did this by being the ten minute speaker this morning. That means I had to stand up in front of the group and read for ten minutes.

It went well.

I read an excerpt from Road Salt, the second chapter, and it was well received. Even though I was feeling shaky about the whole ordeal I did it.

This may have brought my confidence level up one more notch.

We had a speaker too. She has been speaking for the past year and I loved her topic – Thriving Creatively. She hit the nail on the head for every artists I know, even writers.

Her name is Michelle Aldredge, a writer, photographer and creator of Gwarlingo, an arts and culture website.

For more info: http://monadnockwriters.org/programs.html or

GWARLINGO.com

She described Thriving Creatively to be a form of growth, contentment, working deeply, fulfilling our potential.

But many of us struggle with thriving, especially when it comes to writing. We have many barriers in place. If we don’t then we are probably social paths and fear nothing.

She delved into the barriers that keep us from thriving – leading to the excuse of writers block and broke this into two groups.

Practical Obstacles

Physiological Obstacles

Isolation
– being alone as a writer and viewing oneself as an outsider.

Money – challenge of making a living

Career Management
– Marketing and Networking

Skill
– Learning the craft

Technology – Internet as a resource or a distraction

Fear – of doing it wrong, external judgment

Shame – being extremely vulnerable

Next she showed the correlation between Thriving and Struggling.

Thrive

Struggle

Play

Rest

Worthiness

Trust

Creative

Acceptance

Intuition

Hopeful

Authenticity

Grateful

Compassion

Courage

Perfection

Numbing

Certainty

Exhaustion

Self sufficient

Being cool

Fitting in

Judgment

Workaholic

Scarcity

Sarcasm

fear

Those who thrive as writers exhibit a strong sense of love and belonging. They have a sense of worthiness and the courage to be imperfect and compassion for themselves and others. They have found connections for themselves and others in artist communities like ROW80, RWA, local writing groups or an artist colony like McDowell Art Community.

They have learned that they must be vulnerable to create. If you strive to create the worst you could possible do then the world will open up for you. To Do – that’s why some say – Do it now!

Practical challenges are about money and making a living. Scarcity can teach us to have a different mindset and find gratitude for what we have. Once we are grateful stress seems to fade away.

Isolation can be a tricky one. Learning to risk participating is a good way to start off. Just asking for help is also good. It can come in the form of finding a mentor or taking an online workshop. And never equate acceptance or rejection with self-worth.

Skill = Practice. You only get better at something when you practice it regularly. This does not just go for learning a musical instrument but also when writing or drawing or anything that requires a skill. Don’t give up – stay on the bus.

Technology can help or hinder. Obsessing with technology can be a sign of numbing when you should be creating. Learn to use it mindfully.

When we learn to thrive we learn to survive and create that which we were meant to create.

ROW80 Update:

Eh – I was struggling last week. I fell into what I thought was being vulnerable by allowing my first draft to be critiqued. It slowed me down, but it didn’t put a stop t me. Instead it just made me rethink the first chapter and I believe I have made it much better. Now I feel I can go on. I have three weeks left until the next critique group. I have to finish the story before then or I won’t go to the critique. Vulnerably, I am not yet strong enough for that while using a first unfinished draft, even though I do feel stronger now for having done that.

I will take baby steps from now on instead of trying to run across the room before learning how to walk. (LOL)

I know I will be running before long and saying catch me if you can.

So nope, no word count for last week, but the weekend is still young and this is the time period when I do most of my writing anyways.

Are you struggling?

What’s your weakness?

What makes you stop writing?