Never Give Up, But...

I recently heard this story:

A guy--let's call him Fred--managed a bar. He was only in his twenties, but he had a real knack for it. He was always coming up with innovative ways to draw a crowd. Under his management, Fred's bar became the most popular after-hours place in town. The business was wildly successful.

When Fred turned thirty, he decided it was time to grow up. He left his job at the bar and went to law school. He got his degree, passed the bar exam, and started practicing law. Fred now had a career, doing what he thought grown-ups should do. He was okay at it. He didn't love it. 

One day, Fred ran into an old friend. They had lunch. The friend was impressed that Fred was now an attorney. Fred admitted it wasn't all he hoped it would be. 

"You know what you should do?' the friend asked. "You should manage a bar."

Fred couldn't believe his ears. "I can't do that for the rest of my life! That's not a career!"

"But you know what?" the friend said. "You were great at it."


As I've written many times before, one of the biggest factors for success is follow-through. Starting a project is easy, but sticking with it after the initial excitement wears off and things get tough takes real work and tenacity.

But follow-through wasn't Fred's problem, was it? He went to law school, passed the bar, and became an attorney. Was he a success? On paper, I suppose, as our culture automatically equates certain occupations with success. On a personal level, though, Fred wasn't all that happy and his job performance was mediocre.

This got me to thinking that the recipe for success is really two-fold: Finish what you start AND Choose something you're naturally good at. 

Fred's talent was in bar management, not law. He resisted the idea of running a bar because it didn't fit his image of success. Should Fred continue to practice law just because it seems to be a more respectable profession? Or should he focus on what he's best at? My guess is that with a little creative thinking, Fred could take those skills that made him a success and parlay them into a career that is more in line with his vision of himself.

Some people have tremendous tenacity, but they focus on the wrong thing. We've all seen those cringe-worthy American Idol auditions of tone-deaf singers that return year after year, swearing to never give up. Our hearts go out to them because we know they're never going to make it as singers and their extreme efforts, though admirable, feel wasted. We wonder why they can't turn that drive toward something they're actually good at.

Assuming you already have a gift for writing, you still need to be on the lookout for misplaced talent. A student in an MFA program may have the high-minded goal of publishing literary fiction when in fact he has the perfect skill set for writing mysteries. Another writer might think novels are a requirement for literary success, but she is great at writing short stories.

The good news is, as artists, our work will naturally guide us toward our abilities. The trick is not to let our egos get in the way. If you want to create serious fiction but everything you write comes out with a humorous twist, embrace it. If you want to be a literary writer, but you excel at genre fiction, embrace it. If you have your heart set on writing short stories but everything you write tends to expand into a novel, embrace it. Don't fight your natural abilities--embrace them.

Then never give up.

Is Your Writing Group Too Nice?

I've been part of a writing group for over a year now with a terrific bunch of writers and it's been a great asset to my writing life. We share our work, talk about the publishing business, books we're reading, chat about our lives and laugh. We offer suggestions and encouragement. Our group is a safe, comfortable place to explore our work. We know that when we share a piece of writing, it will be treated with fairness and respect. We give each other slack. We are each other's biggest fans.

Our writing group is a vastly different experience than what you'll find in most college workshops, where a collection of not-necessarily like-minded souls are thrown together. Sure, you'll find a few kind people here and there, but also a few sticklers, a curmudgeon, that one person who 'doesn't get' your work, and a competitive type or two who are more interested in their own talent than anyone else's. Even with careful ground rules in place, workshops can be a little intimidating--and that's actually a good thing. If you know your work is going to be met with a critical eye, you're more likely to try harder. A tough workshop is excellent preparation for the larger, even more critical world you'll face when you're published.

I was thinking about the difference between my cozy little writing group and a true workshop after receiving e-mails from two of our group members who were apologizing for not having anything to share for our upcoming meeting. At first, we'd all been great about keeping to our deadlines, but little by little our collective discipline was starting to erode. All it took was one person saying they weren't going to be able to make deadline and suddenly we all relaxed. I was probably the worst offender of all, not submitting work for months because I was editing my novel. It occurred to me that the reason why we all joined the group was to write more and to be held accountable for it. Instead, we were enabling a lack of discipline. We were being too nice to each other. I decided it was time for us to buckle down and I was going to be the meanie to say something.

I was a little nervous about sharing my thoughts. By bringing this problem to the fore I, too, would no longer have a free pass. But it had to be done. Overall, the other group members seemed to take it well and everyone agreed that we needed to buckle down.

To soften the blow, we changed our rules a bit. Instead of submitting our work every other month we changed our deadlines to every three months--giving us all a little built-in leeway. If we were unable to generate something new or didn't have a re-write to share, then we had to write a piece using a prompt. One of our members distributed a list of some interesting prompts she found on the internet.

It was settled. No excuses. No more missed deadlines.

If you're in a self-run writing group, I recommend an annual assessment of how the group is functioning and then making adjustments accordingly. Don't be afraid to set goals for your group. On a whim I threw out a challenge to everyone--by the end of the year, we all had to submit a piece of writing to a journal or a magazine. The piece doesn't have to be perfect--we just have to get over our initial anxieties about trying to get published and start getting into the habit of regularly submitting our work.

What challenges does your writing group face? How do you overcome those challenges?

Writing Goals for 2016

Every January I like to take a little time to look back at what I accomplished the previous year and take stock of what needs to be accomplished in the year ahead. I'm a firm believer in setting goals--it's the single most important exercise we freelance writers can do since most of the time we are accountable only to ourselves. Goals help us stay focused and moving forward.

Looking back, here are the goals I made for 2015:

1) Read 52 Books. I'm proud to say that I actually read 54 books. This is a big accomplishment for someone who used to read 1-2 books per month. I used to call myself a slow reader, but not anymore. By signing up for the annual Reading Challenge on Goodreads I made more of an effort to read. The one downside: I was less likely to drop a book that I didn't love because of the time invested.  

2) Post More Often. I was surprised to learn that I achieved this goal, too--but not by much. I posted 22 times last year, which is more than I had the previous three years. Still, not a great number. It was tough keeping my focus on the blog because I was heavily immersed in rewrites.

3) Continue to Build Platform on Social Media. This goal was purposely vague, but I did reach out to my local writers' community and had more engagement than ever before. Also, my blog readership continues to grow.

4) Finish Short Story. Yeah...this didn't happen. I did make headway, though.

5) Finish My Manuscript. I came oh-so-close. I'm in the process of finishing rewrites and hope to be done by the end of January. 

And my one wish for 2015 was...

Sell My Manuscript to a Publisher. This didn't happen, either, because I'm still working on the manuscript. 

With all this in mind, here are my goals for 2016:

1) Read 60 Books--and Some of Them Have to Be Classics. Ok, I'll admit it--part of the reason I was able to read so many books in 2015 is that some of them were pretty slim. Also, at any one time I was reading a work of fiction and a work of non-fiction. When I look over my list for the previous year, I've noticed that I read a lot more memoir and non-fiction because it was a lot easier to read quickly. The fiction I read was mostly contemporary, which can also be easy to read. This year I'm going to dive into some thick novels and some classics that I've never tried. Like War and Peace. There are just so many books to read--it's overwhelming. 

2) Post 36 Times. Instead of being vague, I'm committing to a number. I'm aiming for 3x a month. Still not often enough, but to be honest, coming up with compelling content is not easy. Maybe a book contract will give me lots to write about...

3) Stop complaining. This comes straight out of Elizabeth Gilbert's BIG MAGIC: CREATIVE LIVING BEYOND FEAR. I just devoured this book and will post about it soon. Briefly: Gilbert reminds us that we should approach our work with a grateful, playful attitude and not take ourselves or our work too seriously. Deep in our hearts, we artists know we've got it good, but we feel that if we don't act like it's a struggle, the outside world will think we're just goofing off. We should own our good fortune. So when someone asks how the writing is, I'm not going to sigh and list all my difficulties (after all, no one's making me do it!), instead I'm going to cheerfully say, "It's going well, thanks!"

4)  Finish My Short Story...and Maybe Send It Out? Believe it or not, I've never submitted a short story for publication. I stopped writing short stories the second I graduated from college. I've always seen myself as a novelist, but want to challenge myself by writing something in a different form.

5) Finish and Submit My Manuscript. This is a cheater goal, because I know this is going to happen. I'm only a few weeks away from making this goal. Sometimes you need to throw in a sure thing just so you can feel successful at the end of the year. Will a publisher buy it? That's anyone's guess. It's completely out of my hands, so for now I'm not going to worry about it. My goal is to get my work done--the rest will take care of itself.


So here they are--my humble goals for 2016. Nothing earth-shattering or exciting or all that different from the previous year. This list underscores how the writing life is just a slow and steady continuum. It's perseverance. It's keep on keepin' on for the love of the work--without expectation of glory. It's making a commitment to yourself to create (and finish your creation), even when no one's looking.


What are your writing goals for 2016?