The Artist's Way: Week One, Day Three

What are your core negative beliefs about being an artist/creative person?

It’s good to identify them because they’re what hold us back from taking the leap into living a creative life.

“Negative beliefs are exactly that: beliefs, not facts” (p. 31).

We don’t have to believe them. It’s a choice!

Here are just some of my core negative beliefs. (This is very personal, but I feel important enough for me to deal with publicly.) See if you share any of them.

I can’t consider myself an artist or writer because:

• I’m not talented enough.

• It’s only worthwhile if I can make a living from it.

• I only have one or two good ideas.

• I’ll always be poor if I try to be an artist.

• Artists are moody, depressing people and I don’t want to live that way.

• I’ll disappoint my parents if I follow my dreams.

• It’s not practical to be an artist.

• People will consider me a failure.

• I’m too old to change careers.

• I need to think about my retirement.

• Nothing I ever create will be good enough to sell or publish.

I could go on and on…

While making this list, I started to feel a little nauseous, and realized that Julia is right, “What you are is scared. Core negatives keep you scared” (p. 32).

I’m taking my beliefs as fact, and letting them limit my life. That’s just crazy!

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that I should throw caution to the wind, quit my day job, buy a Winnebago, and start peddling my wares across the country (though part of me desires that). But, I don’t need to let them stop me from picking up a paintbrush or writing a short story.

There can be balance. But, not if we become immobilized by fear.

One way she suggests we break our negative beliefs is by identifying them and then countering them with an affirmative.

I’ve worked with affirmations before, but never in regards to my thoughts on my creative abilities.

I’ll talk more about this tomorrow.

For now, I’ll leave you with the same question I started this post with:

What are your core negative beliefs about being an artist/creative person?

Make a list, and we’ll talk about changing them in the next post.

It Begins...

“The biggest thing separating people from their artistic ambitions is not a lack of talent. It’s the lack of a deadline.” – Chris Baty, founder of NaNoWriMo

So, with the big day starting tomorrow, I’d thought I’d let you in on a few things I learned from participating in NaNoWriMo last year.


First, understand that your novel is going to be bad. Really bad. I mean, really, really bad! This is not to say that there won’t be some good parts—because there will be—but most of it will stink.

Now, you might think that going in to something knowing ahead of time that you’re going to suck at it, might be a bad thing. But, you’d be wrong. It’s freeing!! You don’t have to worry about writing the next GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL. It’s not going to happen, so don’t stress about it.

Just write.

Who cares if your plot has more holes in it than something with a lot of holes, and that half-way through you decide to kill off your main character because she’s boring or somehow morphed into a space alien. The point is that you sat down, and wrote your little, trite, poorly-crafted heart out!

Second, and this directly relates to the first point, don’t worry about the research. If you don’t know it, make it up, and use as many words as you can think of to do so!

Just put the made up parts in caps, italics, or something, so you know where to go back later and find out the facts. And frankly, you probably know more than you think!

For example, I know that my main character is going to have dealings with police detectives. In fact, a police detective is going to become an important character with the first few chapters (somehow). Now, am I a police detective? No. I’ve I ever dealt with police detectives? No. But, I’ve watched tons of police-detective-type shows! So, for now, I’ll just rack my brain for any tidbits it can come up with and worry about the “facts” of how a “real” police investigation would go, later.

Last year, my book took place in Ohio. Have I ever been to Ohio? Nope. But I didn’t let that stop me! So, use your imagination, and don’t let the fact that you don’t know that “facts” be an excuse for not finishing your book.

Third, you might start out strong, but you’ll soon waiver on your commitment. (This happens to everyone around the 2nd / 3rd week.)

Trust me.

You’re going to be too busy.

You’re going to be too tired.

You’re going to be too bored.

You’re going to be too untalented.

You’re going to be too far behind.

You’re going to be too…something!

But don’t be tricked by your mental gymnastics! It’s just your inner self-doubt coming to the forefront. All you need to do is remember that you’ve given yourself the permission to write the WORST NOVEL ON THE PLANET!

So, pick yourself up, put yourself back at the computer, and keep typing! It will get better! I promise.

Besides, never forget that you have 11 months to fix it. No matter how bad it is, you can change it!

Now, just a few more little things.

If you can, and are on a roll, write more than the required 1667 words per day. Give yourself a buffer. It will help you on those days where you think your creativity has gone on strike and you can’t put a sentence together.

Also, if you’re like me, you want your first paragraph to be awesome. And waiting for the awesomeness to arrive will soak up valuable writing time. So, do what I do: if I really can’t think of a great first paragraph (which I never can), I just write “The super best, most witty and awesome paragraph ever written that tells us about…” and then I just give the facts of what I’d like it to say using the most words as possible.

Later, when the month is over, I’ll go back and make sure that my prose sings like a canary! (But using some other analogy that is far more creative.)

Lastly, don’t use contractions*. You want every word count you can get. Write out any numbers you use (even if it looks stupid)*. And use LOTS of adjectives.

The point is quantity, not quality. So, write your story, and don’t worry about it!


* This post contains 791 words. But, if I write out all the contractions and numbers, I would have 61 more words! For a total of 852 words. And that would mean that I was more than half-way to my 1667 word per day goal. See! Every word counts!!

I Like to Pretend I'm a Poet

So, I haven’t completely forgotten about this blog. No, it’s been hovering over my head, constantly raining down failure.

But, in an attempt for Present Liz to keep a promise Past Liz made to Future Liz, I’m reviving my commitment to the initial premise of this blog, and am going to begin posting again. And I’m going to try not to be negative about it all (which is harder than I think it would be to dig to China).

With that, I’ll proceed with the purpose of this post.

As some of you may know it’s National Poetry Month (NPM). And I’ve been receiving a poem-a-day from 3 different websites. I’ve enjoyed opening up my email and being surrounded in words—some that have resonated with me, and some that have made me say “Huh?”

This is why I love poetry. It makes me ponder. It makes me cry. It makes me want to be better. It makes me look at the world differently. To me, all poetry (even the bad ones) is worthwhile.

So, I wanted to share (with the two of you) a little bit of new stuff coming out of aspiring (and a few established) poets. The university I work for has a writing program, and in honor of NPM, they published "Poetry Sleepover.” Basically, it’s an online literary magazine. They had poets submit whatever they wanted, and then over a period of 24 hours, they selected, edited, and published this online version.

(I submitted a brief poem modeled after one of my favorite poems by Ezra Pound and they selected it.)

If you have a minute or ten, read through a couple of the poems. There’s a great variety of different styles and topics. Something for everyone!

And, if you have a few more minutes to spare, why don’t you write a poem of your very own in support of NPM? It doesn’t have to be anything spectacular. Trust me on that. I’m an expert at non-spectacular-ness.

Yay for words!!!*



*Tomorrow I'll be posting a special request. So, stay tuned!

A Change of Pace...

Well, since I've started this blog especially dedicated to all my creative endeavors, my creativity has put on cement shoes and is now swimming with the fishes.

Seriously, I feel like the crapity crapest poet on the planet. And it's making me afraid to write because I know I'll have to post it. And then the world (i.e. three people) will read it, point and laugh.

So to say I have writer's block is an understatement. I have writer's coma, or writer's amnesia, or writer's "Holy Moly! What was I thinking? Me? A writer! You've got to be kidding!"

In order to get myself out of this phase (fingers crossed that it's only temporary), I thought I would switch gears. Mix it up a bit. Not think about poetry. In fact, completely forget that I ever thought I wanted to be a poet.

Don't worry though. I'm still going to share something painfully bad exposing. That's what this blog is for, after all!

Now, you all (the three of you) know that I participated in NaNoWriMo in November and wrote a novel. Well, before I wrote that one, I had started another. And, recently I've been working on it a bit, trying to decide if it was worth continuing.

It's a novel about my great-grandma’s experience of being in a small North Carolina town in the early 1900’s, and dealing with the fact that she was a product of rape (and that her mother was mentally handicapped), and the journey she embarks on to discover the truth of who she is. The book is part family history, and part fiction.

So, I thought I would share some of it with you. That way you can tell me if you think it's worth the bother of all the research it's going to require.

Keep in mind this is a VERY rough draft. As in, a lot of it will be tossed as I continue to revise it.

I guess I'll stop talking about it now, and just let you read it.

1910

When you find you’re a product of rape, and how that rape happened, it changes the world. Really. Now, I’m not saying that the sun stops being bright yellow or the green grass turns bleak, but it does color other parts of life—mostly, what you think about yourself and how you fit inside, way down deep where there’s no wind, only a stillness that tells you who you are and where you belong. So, I guess it doesn’t so much as change the world, but changes you in the world.

At least that’s what happened to me. And it’s kind of funny when I look back on it. I thought that finding out the truth about who I was and where I came from would give me a sense of everything else. And with that knowledge in my hands, I would be able to be me—at last—and the life that had been living me wouldn’t be real anymore because I was finally real.

But all the truth did was add to my already unknowness. Now, don’t get me wrong, it did provide some fundamental answers. It explained how I found myself in an orphanage on the outskirts of Franklin County in North Carolina, and it also answered why nobody ever loved me. But it didn’t tell me what I was hoping for. It’s a hope that all us orphans dreamt about—that our families lost us, not left us. And that if they only knew where we were, they’d pick us up quicker than coins at a card game. But, all the truth did was tell me what I feared—that I was left and I was nobody.

Stay tuned for Part II...

The Toughest Part…

There are two steps that one needs to accomplish to become a writer.

The first step is actually calling yourself a writer (out loud, and said to a real person—no imaginary friend counts), and as I discussed in my previous post, this is fraught with fear and trembling.

But once you get this painful right of passage out of the way, you can begin the second step. And this one is even harder because it’s a step that never ends: namely, you have to write.

Yes, I’m sorry to say that to be a writer, you have to write! And you have to do it pretty much every day. That’s what separates writers from idea-jotter-downers.

Now, in this post I’m not going to talk about the quality of what is written, and whether or not this could be labeled as “crap” (which, incidentally, most of it could probably be the poster child for crap). No, I’m just going to focus on what stops us from actually making our writer-butts sit down and come up with something intelligible. Not good, mind you, just real words on a page.

Really, there are tens of thousands of reasons not to write. But for the sake of brevity, and because all of those reasons can be boiled down to two things, I’m just going to list those two.

So, without further ado (to use a trite phrase that all good writers should avoid), here they are:

1. We don’t want to. I mean, we do, but we don’t. It’s the whole failure thing. What if what we write stinks more than a dumpster of dirty diapers? (Some of it will.) What if what we write has already been written and we’re not original? (Some of it has been, and we never are.) What if people laugh at us? (Someone is lined up for that job, don’t you worry.) What if…blah, blah, blah!

2. We’re too busy. We just have too much going on, right? I mean, someone has to organize the pots and pans in alphabetical order by brand name, dust the collection of thimbles given to us by our grandma, and search for that episode of that show we watched that one time that we think we liked! Those things don’t happen by themselves, do they? Of course not!

Well, there you have it. Yep, that’s it. And if you’re an astute reader, you will see the connection between one and two (for the less perceptive, here’s a hint: fear leads to procrastination).

Now, what are we going to do about it? I have few ideas, but I’ll save them for another post.

Re-Used Blog Post #1

So I thought I would post on this blog the posts I write for the University's literary magazine blog. (Hmm, this is a confusing sentence. Sorry about that.)

I feel it's okay since a) I wrote it, b) It's about writing, and c) It kills two blogs with one stone.

Here it is:

What? Me? A Writer?


Last year, I became a novelist.

I say this with trepidation, because who am I to call myself that? Can one merely write words on a page, in some sort of order, for the required amount of pages, and then proceed to call oneself a novelist?

Well, I hope so!

That’s what I did when I participated in NaNoWriMo this past November. I sat down for 30 days, writing approximately 1667 words per day, and ended up with a little book of over 50,000 words. And presto chango, I’m a novelist, with a certificate, and everything!

Labeling myself a novelist is very hard for me; the same for calling myself a poet. In my mind, I’m just Liz, a woman who spends her free time trying to come up with the perfect metaphor for eating spaghetti, or the last line in a story about a Martian who hems drapes.

I’m certainly not a writer! Ugh, that’s the BIG word I avoid using to describe myself.

As I’ve been thinking about why I fear calling myself a novelist, poet, and/or writer, I’ve realized this avoidance stems from how I’ve defined these terms, a definition I began to forge somewhere between elementary school, and Satan’s armpit, or junior high.

In my mind, a writer (et al.) is someone who is a) super cool, b) super smart, c) super witty, d) dresses in black, e) has unkempt hair, f) wears really big glasses, and g) takes black and white pictures of themselves on an angle like he or she can’t be bothered to look at the camera.

I don’t possess any of these traits (well, maybe the crazy hair bit, but without the black and the glass, I just look unhygienic). And so you can see my problem: I’ve defined something that excludes myself. And I think we’ve all done this at some point.

Why do we do things like this? (And by “we,” I mean me.) Are we afraid of ridicule? Of failure? Of having to explain to our grandma that although international business communications would be a more lucrative career, we’d much rather live off Cup O’Noodles while we write our collection of sonnets dedicated to the musical stylings of REO Speedwagon? (Rock on, guys!)

The answer, of course, is unique to each of us. But, it’s one that we all have to face.

It’s taken me a long time to let the fear go, and to actually accept that I am a writer. I am a novelist. I am a poet. (FYI: Writing these last 12 words have, still, almost made me go into spastic fits.)

But, there you have it.

I’ll leave you with a quote from one of the great geniuses of the last century, Popeye the Sailor Man, “I Yam what I Yam.”

And I am whatever I define myself to be.