What’s Your Biggest Writing Challenge?

Mine is unclear thinking. Clarity clears a straight path between A and Z. The story, poem, or essay feels consistent and clear. When it seems like one train of thought, and not a mash-up of parts done at different times and moods, a finished work feels cohesive. Some obtain cohesion via many rounds of editing.

Unclear thinking makes messes. Unclear thinking yields awkward, ineffective, meandering trails of ideas that abandon readers in the woods, lost and confused, or in the desert, thirsty and begging for water. These messes are hard to tidy up and are sometimes unfixable.

I need help and hacks to achieve clarity of thought. Sometimes I make mental maps, outlines, index cards, cover walls with post-it notes, or keep journals for specific writing projects with pages of character, setting, and plot developments.

But whatever you do, however you do it, I believe that structure needs to be there to avoid the scourge of unclear thinking in your writing.

So what’s your biggest writing challenge? How do you overcome that obstacle?

Fight Procrastination by "Chunking" Down Goals

The start of the new year is the season of big goals. And with these lofty expectations undoubtedly comes chances for procrastination to occur – especially with writing. “Chunking” down goals is a strategy I’ve used to dead procrastination in my creative life, especially with larger writing projects like manuscripts.

Achievers sometimes bite off more than they can chew. Procrastination is when you look at what's sitting on your plate and think: No way! It's too just big. I can't finish it.

I said plate figuratively, but let’s think about goals as if they are meals. Whenever you have too much to swallow, do what you’d do if you had ordered a large meal at a restaurant. Cut it up. Chop it into smaller portions. Eat it one small appetizing bite at a time, one manageable portion at a time. If needed, take some home to finish later - you don’t have to down the whole meal in one sitting, despite the peer pressure from others. But break that meal down to pieces you can handle.

Like that meal, take intimidating goals and slice them into smaller chunks. If you look at those portions and they still seem overwhelming, cut them into even smaller chunks. Keep going until you get to a bite-sized morsel where you think, "yes, I can finish that." Then just eat it one chunk at a time. And keep going until you've finished the whole thing.

When you have a project that seems too big and you’re tempted to procrastinate, break it down. Then attack it one bite at a time. Savor each piece and appreciate that portion of the larger meal (goal). Swallow and progress on to the next chunk.

The Extra Mile

My dad used to repeat a hackneyed saying - I’m likely paraphrasing, but it was “it’s never crowded along the extra mile.” And though it’s trite, it’s true. You’ll rarely need to fight through a herd of people who are all willing to go above the minimum of what’s required.

For those pursuing success and personal improvement, the road might be long, but it won’t be crowded. Along the way, you’ll confront the silence of being alone on a lengthy journey. That silence is deafening. It’s so obnoxious and omnipresent that you’ll begin doubting the path you’re taking is the correct one.

But don’t succumb to that doubt. Sure, double-check your roadmap or GPS to confirm you’re headed in the right direction. But don’t dupe yourself into believing that traveling along an unfamiliar path by yourself is wrong. You’re a trailblazer, creating new routes that others will follow in the future.

Also, realize you’re not alone. There are others going the extra mile. You just don’t always see them because they’re traveling it in a different field, career path, or sport than you are focused on. Yes, there aren’t a plethora of extra mile walkers, but we are here - trudging forward through challenges, sprinting towards a goal whenever conditions are ideal.

I’m traversing that extra mile in several areas in 2018 – creative writing, consulting career, personal fitness, and hobbies/side hustles. I will find out a lot about myself, both positive and negative, and will make improvements and adjustments in my life while doing this. I’m not completely sure it will all work out, but I’m willing to cast aside doubt and ambiguity to try. If you’re still reading my rant, then you’re probably contemplating doing the same. Just do it. Don’t procrastinate. Walk the extra mile in 2018.

My Writing Game Plan: Pessimistic Optimism

Over the years, I’ve been blessed to meet many writers, in person and online. Some have been successful following different paths. One thing they all have in common is they are all pessimists. The other thing they all have in common is they are all optimists.

I understand this might be confusing. How can two incongruent viewpoints exist in the same individual simultaneously? But the equation makes complete sense when you consider time as a variable: they have made themselves short-term pessimists and long-term optimists.

What I mean is this: they expect each and every discrete project they take to fail because the reality is, most things never get completed or published. They are acknowledging reality, and have zero emotional response when a fiction plot gloriously fizzles to nothing, a poem concept just doesn’t work out, or their personal essay fails to ever get published.

Yet they are long-term optimists because they know if they work on enough writing projects, several of them will succeed, making up for all the ones that failed. And yes, that is also reality.

The eternal optimist who thinks everything they write will “work out” is soon ground down by reality. Their beliefs don’t match up with the results, they start to question themselves, and constant disappointment hinders their ability to shake it off and move onto the next project. They become snakebit, and eventually bitter – which is never a positive trait for a creative.

The constant pessimist never takes any action on their writing endeavors because they automatically expect everything they do to fail. And because they never really act, they do fail. They stay loitering on the sidelines moping, never actually getting in the game.

In writing, mindset is very important. But it must be a reality-based mindset, with hard-nosed expectations, not pie in the sky fantasies or pouty tantrums. The more you do, the more you fail, yet paradoxically the more you succeed.

The pessimistic optimist is armored against constant failure and rejection, and it bothers them not.  But they also expect success to occasionally interrupt failure, which is why they write and compete in the first place.  Become the pessimistic optimist writer, and you will evolve into a winner in a literary world full of losers who love losing.

Goal setting.

The focus in 2016 is to not allow my intermittent trickle of creative work get subsumed under the rising tide of other things – the day job and other general life stuff that inundates my existence.

To continue doing what makes me happy in terms of writing and creativity, and not what I feel like I should or shouldn't be doing…according to writing world, academia, friends, family, or others. I finally found my voice in 2015, and I don’t plan on shutting up just because that voice doesn’t match what’s popular in modern writing.

To create with purpose and goals, but not to let them become the master of me.

What are your goals – creative or other?