The Uninvited Guest

By Rosanne Bane

Last week, I planned to take a holiday break from my Process (creative play) and Product Time (writing). I committed to show up for 2 days of Process and 2 days of Product Time and that’s what I did. No guilt. No recriminations. No regrets. I knew that expecting myself to show up for Process and Product Time during a holiday break and all the extra work, play and family time that comes with a holiday would have been a set-up for failure.

I also knew that coming back to my writing on Monday would be more challenging. It’s always harder to return to work after time away. I’m out of practice. I’m stiff. I have to remind myself what I’m working on and why it matters. I have to re-motivate myself. Most importantly, I have to remember to just show up.

Monday night around 9:00 pm, I realized I hadn’t done my Product Time writing yet. You might think that my resistance kicked in then, but the truth is, my resistance had been with me all day. Resistance is sneaky; it knows it is most effective when we’re not even aware of it. But Resistance did call its side-kick Rationalization in for back-up at 9:00 pm.

“It’s late. I’m tired. I deserve a break,” Resistance whined inside my head.

“I’ve worked hard today. I spent a lot of time writing proposals today and that’s writing,” Rationalization lied. One of the most important tools in fighting Resistance is clarity; I know with absolute clarity what does and does not count as Product Time writing. Writing proposals does not count.

Resistance was smart enough to promise I would return to my Product Time writing, but just not today. “Tomorrow is soon enough” Resistance crooned.

I was smarter. I knew that if I didn’t show up on Monday, I was opening the door to Resistance, inviting to come in and get comfortable. I knew that doing that would be like inviting a vampire into my house (unlike resistance, vampires cannot go where they aren’t invited, but both resistance and vampires excel in the ability to clomp on, hang on and drain you dry). So I summoned all my energy resources and made the extraordinary effort required to push the button on the remote to turn off the TV, haul myself off the couch and into my office.

Resistance didn’t give up easily, of course. “I don’t know where to start… I don’t know what to do next… I need to do more research… I need to think about it some more…” The internal litany droned on.

So I started where I left off the last time I wrote.

“This will take forever…” Resistance threatened.

I reminded myself I only had to write for 15 minutes.

Resistance suggested “I really should be emailing that agent who said he might be interested… I should research other agents… or check my email, there might be something important in there.”

I reminded myself I only had to write for 15 minutes and I could do all those other things after I finished my 15 minutes.

Resistance pulled out one of its favorite weapons. “What’s the use? I’ll never get this published anyway. No one gets published anymore unless they’re already a celebrity.”

I reminded myself I only had to write for 15 minutes and I would figure out what to do about the state of the publishing industry after I finished my 15 minutes.

About 10 minutes in, Resistance knew it had lost this battle that day. I wrote for over an hour. I was satisfied, and for once, Resistance was not chattering away inside my head.

That was Monday. Resistance returned on Tuesday. And even though I put in my 15 minutes yesterday, I’m pretty sure Resistance will be back again today. And tomorrow, and the day after that, and pretty much every day until I retire.

But every day I show up and put in my time, I get stronger. Resistance doesn’t get noticeably weaker and it certainly never goes away, but every day I put in my 15 minutes, I deny Resistance the opportunity to get stronger. Every day I show up for my writing, I refuse to invite Resistance in, I refuse to say “Come on in, get comfortable and stay awhile.”

I know Resistance won’t go away, at least not for long. But it’s okay. I’m ready for it because I know when I’m committed to doing Product Time and when I’m taking a guilt-free break, I know what does and doesn’t count for Product Time writing, and most importantly, I know I only have to write for 15 minutes.

Giving Thanks for Resistance?

By Rosanne Bane

I sat at my keyboard lamenting the fact that the easiest blog topic this week – giving thanks – is not really option for me because what is there to be grateful for in resistance? But the more I thought about it, I realized that resistance does serve a purpose. So here it is: the Improbable Post about Five Gifts of Resistance.

1.  Resistance Reveals Your Passion

A student in my Writer’s Resistance class confessed “I thought I must really not want to be a writer since I’m not writing.” I reassured her that her resistance was a sign that she did want to write. If she didn’t want to write, she wouldn’t be in class. And if she didn’t want to write, she wouldn’t feel less resistant, she’d feel indifferent. 

We don’t have resistance to things we’re not interested in. For example, I have no resistance around climbing Mt. Everest. I’m not torn between wanting to climb Everest and not being able to; I just don’t care. I climbed Tablerock Mountain in North Carolina when I was a 16-year-old participant at Outward Bound. I continued rock climbing for a couple of years after that because I worked at a store that sold backpacking, cross-country skiing, kayaking and mountaineering equipment and my mentor and co-workers all climbed. Then I realized I didn’t really like heights and decided not to do it anymore. I have no regrets because I have no interest. No resistance means no passion.  

2.  Resistance Keeps You Interested — and Interesting

We experience resistance when the limbic system (aka emotional brain) recognizes a potential threat. Creative risk will induce resistance, but creative risk is essential to creative reward. If there wasn’t some risk, some challenge, some puzzle to solve, you’d be bored with your writing. (Bored writer = boring writing = bored readers who just disappear.)

You can easily solve a jigsaw puzzle designed for a 5-year-old, but who cares? The degree of difficulty in solving the creative puzzle determines the degree of satisfaction in figuring out how it all fits together. Resistance is an essential part of creative fulfillment.

3.  Resistance Holds Energy

While you’re resisting your writing, it seems that your resistance is a great big energy drain. And in many ways, it is. You’re pouring energy into your writing, but not making progress, because you’re pouring equal energy into to avoiding your writing.

As soon as you learn how to respond to your resistance, there is a tremendous release of energy. This stored energy can propel you to new heights or in new directions and sustain your writing for days, even weeks.

4.  Resistance Makes You Stronger

The only way to get a stronger body is to challenge your body just slightly past your limits, then rest. The muscles that are damaged by exercise grow stronger when they repair themselves.

The only way to get stronger as a writer is to challenge yourself to write just slightly past your limits, then let the writing rest for awhile, maybe get a little feedback (just make sure it’s the right kind of feedback) and then “repair” the writing. What do you feel before and as you write past your limits? Resistance, of course.

5.  Resistance Is Natural

Resistance is normal. Every writer experiences resistance at some time. What matters is not whether you experience resistance (you will); it’s what you do with your resistance. You’re never going to be free of resistance (unless you’re writing the equivalent of a jigsaw puzzle for a kindergartner), so embrace resistance as a natural part of your writing life.

Resistance is like a vulture. Vultures aren’t pretty, but they are an essential player in the ecosystem. They deserve a place in the natural world just like all the other birds. You’ll never want a pet vulture, but when you learn to appreciate their purpose, you can see a kind of strength, grace and beauty in them.

Likewise, you probably won’t up and down for joy the next time you feel writer’s resistance, but you can learn to appreciate its purpose and learn to respond to it with your own strength, grace and beauty.

So here’s a toast to our writer’s resistance! May it continue to show us our passion, challenge and strengthen us, and bring energy and grace to our writing!

 

Break the Rules and Break Your Resistance!

Break the rules and break your writing free!

By Rosanne Bane

I’ve had a particularly good writing week. I made a commitment to focus at least 4 of my 5 daily writing sessions on a project that I had been a wee bit resistant to, and that commitment kept me focused and in motion. The other source of this week’s writing satisfaction came from breaking the rules.

There is a special freedom to be gained in breaking the rules.

The backstory: I asked the students in my Writing Our Way Through Shadow class to write a dreck draft. I’ve posted about the dreck draft before (in the September archives) but in case you don’t recall, writing a dreck draft is intentionally writing as badly as you can. I told my students to write the worst stuff they could, to write something truly awful, clichéd, awkward, stupid, incomplete, unbelievable, sappy, sentimental, boring, grandiose, or any other adjective they would hate to have ascribed to their writing.

I’ve written dreck drafts before and I figured I’d write another to be a good role model, but I never expected to get so much energy, passion and freedom from the exercise.

I wrote a dreck version of a query letter that broke all the rules about being professional and polite. I started with “Listen up, Mr. or Ms. So-Called Editor: I know what the @#%*! I’m talking about.” I wrote the actual word in the draft – I just don’t want to offend anyone here. That’s one of the keys about the dreck draft – don’t let anyone read it unless s/he knows and appreciates the purpose of writing dreck and promises not to judge you.

I went on to say that I understood the potential readers of the book I’m proposing better than the editor audience of the query ever would. I wrote about my conviction that my readers could and would use the information in my book to transform their writing careers. I pretty much accused the editor of not caring about readers, writers, books, literature or anything else other than the bottom line. I even stooped to name-calling. I concluded by writing that I might be willing to let the editor look at my proposal, but only if the terms suited me.

It’s the ‘screw you’ letter so many of us want to write from time to time. It’s the kind of letter we know we can never send. Until I wrote this dreck letter, I’ve always been professional, writing the kind of proposal and query that follows the rules about proving your worthiness to write the book and currying favor to get permission to approach the publishing throne. Logically, I know that not all editors are evil lackeys of a degenerate publishing industry. And I know I can’t do anything with this dreck draft. So why waste time on it?

Because the dreck draft energized me. Outrage is a very revitalizing emotion. Writing the dreck draft reminded me how passionate I am about my book and the information I have to share with my readers. It brought me back to the deep reason I’m writing. Not only can I go back writing a professional query, I can write it with energy and passion because I remember why I’m doing it.

To paraphrase Victor Frankl ‘A writer can endure any what, as long as we have a compelling why.’

What’s your compelling why? What are you passionate about in your writing? What rules are dampening your enthusiasm and energy? And how can you break those rules in a dreck draft?

Have You Caught the Writer’s Alleluia Lately?

When you make your music right, you catch a ride with the Divine

By Rosanne Bane

A fellow writer, who wants to remain anonymous, introduced me to the idea of catching the Alleluia. She in turn caught the idea from a choral director who, as she recalls, “told his students there is always an ‘Alleluia’ going on in the Universe and when you make your music right, you get to catch onto that Alleluia for a while. I feel that way about any art, or maybe about any truth – you know it when you feel it, you know it when you create it. It comes from you, but it’s more than you. I believe this is catching a ride with the Divine and I’m glad to say I have experienced that a time or two.”

I believe that most writers and artists do what we do because we caught the Alleluia at least once. We’re like dedicated surf bums who won’t hold a regular job because it would interfere with catching the next great wave. We’re always looking and hoping to catch another Alleluia.

Creativity is one way of coming to spirituality. Creativity feels so good, especially early on, because it is a lure designed to call us to begin a spiritual journey that will challenge us profoundly. I’ve always said that being in the flow – where the words come effortlessly, we lose track of time and space, our ordinary, petty concerns fall away and the writing is bliss – makes us aware that we are so much more than the little ego-self we usually see ourselves as. In the flow, we have a glimmer of understanding that the art and the work comes not so much from us as through us. That glimmer also gives us a sense that we are so small in the universe and yet so much more connected and part of the universe than we ever realized. We catch a glimpse of unity and eternity. We catch a few bars of the Alleluia.

When we come back to ordinary reality after being in the flow, we think “Wow! That was awesome, terrific, amazing! I want more of that!” For our spiritual selves, it was truly wonderful. But some part of our ego-self intuits that just as ‘horror’ is the root of ‘horrific,’ ‘terror’ is the root of ‘terrific.’ There is something very unsettling and frightening about how we get into the flow and how out of control we are when we’re there.

So it shouldn’t be a big surprise that even though we desperately want to be back in the flow, we also resist the terror of surrendering control. This is the origin of the “I want to write, but I don’t want to write” duality. Part of us knows it’s just not safe to give up control and throw ourselves into the flow. Our egos are constantly trying to get the bliss without surrendering control. We want to know exactly where the writing is going at all times.

But as any surfer worthy of the title will tell you, you can’t catch a wave sitting safe on the shore. Any true surfer will tell you that a day spent in the ocean, wiping out on every wave, getting scabbed and rolled by sets, never really catching a wave, never getting to the Green Room (the interior of a tube wave) is still infinitely preferable to a day spent inland.

You can’t catch the Alleluia knowing exactly where you’re going. That’s the whole point of it – the Alleluia expands your horizons, it takes where you can’t go alone. There’s no doubt about it – writing takes courage. And a bit of foolhardy risk-taking.

Are you willing to spread your arms wide and dive off the cliff into the ocean in the hopes of catching the Alleluia? Are you willing to risk drowning in your own mediocre words for the chance of entering the flow that will give you a glimpse of the infinite?

NaNoWriMo Random Scene Generator: 10 Steps to Solving the “I don’t know what to write” Problem

By Rosanne Bane

Today is the sixth day of National Novel Writing Month, which means that those of you who are NaNoWriMoing should be about 10,000 words into your novel. I think NaNoWriMo can be a great way to get past resistance and I applaud the emphasis on letting go of unreasonably high expectations so you can get the words on the screen.

One of my writing group members, known to other Wrimos as ShildeInMn, is in her seventh year of the NaNoWriMo challenge. For her birthday last year, I created this Random Scene Generator (RSG) for her to use when she wanted to kickstart her daily writing. Don’t worry if you’re not doing NaNoWriMo, you can still play with the RSG.

ShildeInMN says “You could call it the Random SCREAM Generator, too, for all the fun it is! It’s terrific!” 

It takes about a half hour to set-up the lists in the RSG, but once you get your lists written, you don’t need to recreate them. The scene generator will pay dividends anytime you’re at a loss for where to start writing. If you’re meeting with a group of other writers, creating the lists together will make the tool more diverse, random and a lot more fun.

 Step 1. List 21 verbs. If you’re meeting a group, create one list that everyone contributes to. (Do this for all the lists through Step 7.) Everyone will need to write their own copy of the group-generated lists.

Step 2. List 21 locations.

Step 3. List 21 locations modifiers, that is, 21 adjectives that could describe a place.

Step 4. List 21 scents.

Step 5. List 21 sounds.

Step 6. List 21 secrets or secret agendas.

Step 7. Optional: Make lists of other scene elements you may want to include, like 21 objects or 21 strangers who could wander through a scene, or 21 sights, 21 animals, etc.

Step 8. Each writer now selects 2 characters from her or his own novel and inserts those names in the following format:

            (Character 1’s Name) __________________ (Character 2’s Name)

You’ll fill in the blank in a moment. Everyone works independently from here out.

Step 9. Here’s where the random element comes in. Roll two dice. If you prefer, you can go to http://www.random.org/dice/ and let their random number generator roll the dice for you. Personally, I like rolling the dice, I like the sound of them and I like the associations of playing games.

Use this table to convert the dice to a number.

1, 1 = 1
1, 2 = 2	2, 2 = 7
1, 3 = 3	2, 3 = 8	3, 3 = 12
1, 4 = 4	2, 4 = 9	3, 4 = 13	4, 4 = 16
1, 5 = 5	2, 5 = 10	3, 5 = 14	4, 5 = 17	5, 5 = 19
1, 6 = 6	2, 6 =11	3, 6 = 15	4, 6 = 18	5, 6 = 20	6, 6 = 21

The first time you roll the dice determines which verb on your verb list goes in the blank between the names of your two characters. (You may need to add a preposition like  “with” “to” “for” or  “about” to the verb.)

For example, I used the characters Nikki and LeeMarie. I rolled a 3 and a 5, which means I selected verb #14, which is ‘question’ on my list. So my first sentence is “Nikki questioned LeeMarie.” If I had rolled a 1 and 4, I would have selected verb #4 from my list, which is “argue” (where I’d need to add “with”) and my first sentence would be “Nikki argued with LeeMarie.”

Step 10. Continue to roll the dice to select from your remaining lists. The second roll of the dice gives you the location; the third roll gives you the location modifier; the fourth gives you a scent; the fifth a sound; the sixth a secret or secret agenda. You now have 2 characters, one of whom has a secret or a secret agenda, doing something somewhere with other scene elements to incorporate as you write.

For example, my second roll was a 5 and a 4, which equals #17, and selected “closet” as my location. I rolled another 5 and 4 for my third roll, which gave me “windy”, so now I have Nikki questioning LeeMarie in a windy closet. Hmmm, that’s interesting. The smell the RSG gave me was “grease and sugar smell of the State Fair” and the sound was “computer shut down ping.” My last roll gave me “plagiarized senior paper” as the secret.

So at some point in the scene, there will be the smell of State Fair food and the ping of a computer turning off. I can’t figure out why it would matter to Nikki that she or LeeMarie plagiarized a senior paper, but Nikki is an English professor, so it could be that she has a problem with a student who plagiarized a paper,. But it could be even more interesting if Nikki finds out tthat he physicist she and LeeMarie are in conflict with plagiarized his senior thesis and he’s not the expert he claims to be. Hmm again. A plot twist I hadn’t thought of before.

Step 11. Start writing with your characters in the location doing the verb the RSG selected with the other randomly selected scene elements and see what happens.

Step 12. Write and tell me what the RSG selected for you and how well it worked for you.

 

 

God Is a Midwestern Hostess

By Rosanne Bane

Lately I’ve noticed that I have so many writing and writing-related projects that all seem like top priorities that I can’t focus on any one of them long enough to make significant progress. Many of my writing colleagues, students and clients share my frustration with having too many intriguing ideas and too many tantalizing projects on top of a full, and sometimes demanding, collection of personal commitments and family and friend relationships to nurture and maintain. 

Any kid whose parent let her or him run wild at the State Fair, eating cotton candy and watermelon and root beer and a milkshake and chocolate chip cookies and foot-long hotdogs and corndogs and French fries and a seemingly infinite variety of food on a stick, then riding the rides at the Midway and ending up revisiting all that food in reverse motion in the intimacy of the public restrooms can attest to the simple and hard truth that too much of a good thing is just too much.

Talking with one of my coaching clients today about the rushed, desperate, not-enough-time feeling that comes from trying to do too much, I had an epiphany: The reason we struggle to choose among too many wonderful possibilities is because God (or the Universe or the Divine or whatever form of address you prefer) is a Midwestern hostess.

In some parts of the Midwest, a hostess will keep offering food until the guest leaves some on the plate. The premise is that if the guest eats everything on the plate, she or he hasn’t had enough. It gets a bit tricky when the hostess thinks that politeness demands giving more and more food and the guest was taught that politeness means clearing the plate, that leaving food behind shows you didn’t like the meal.

The Universe is inherently abundant. As Auntie Mame said “Life is a banquet.” The upside of that is that we get to choose. The downside is that we have to choose.

Damn. I really can’t have 15 top priority projects. Some of those are going to have to on the “Maybe/Later” list and some may even end up on the “Don’t Do” list.

I told my client about this phrase we have in my family, one my mother taught herself when she was a child as her way of politely saying “no.”

“Thank you. I’ve have sufficiency, even abundancy. Anything more would be superfluous to my delicate constitution.”

Just repeat that to your Divine Hostess the next time you feel the urge to take on yet another project or commitment. Be a good parent to yourself: remind yourself that you can eat anything you want at the Fair, but you can’t eat everything you want.

Monkey See, Monkey Do

By Rosanne Bane

Like so many scientific breakthroughs, mirror neurons were discovered by accident. Daniel Goleman describes the fortuitous accident in Social Intelligence:

Neuroscientists stumbled on this neural WiFi by accident in 1992. They were mapping the sensiomotor area of monkey’s brains by using electrodes so laser-thin they could be transplanted in single brain cells, and seeing which cell lit up during a specific movement… But the truly unexpected discovery came one hot afternoon when a research assistant came back from a break eating an ice-cream cone. The scientists were astonished to see a sensorimotor cell activate as one monkey watched the assistant lift the cone to his lips. They were dumbfounded to find that a distinct set of neurons seemed to activate when the monkey merely observed another monkey – or one of the experimenters – making a given movement (2006, p. 41).

These “monkey see, monkey do neurons” allow us to learn by observing. Mentally rehearsing what you’re going to do – practicing what you’re going to say in a presentation or in my case, imagining how I’ll run an agility course – is to some parts of the brain the same as doing it. But remember the “monkey do” part of the expression. Practicing is vital. You can’t just watch someone else working out and lose weight, for example; you have to use the mirror neurons to motivate you to take action.

A “monkey do, monkey see” flipside may also be true. When you’ve practiced what you’re seeing, you get more benefit from observing others. When researchers compared the mirror neurons of ordinary people with those of professionally trained dancers while both groups observed a dance performance, the professionally trained dancers had significantly more mirror neurons firing. And more mirror neurons fired when the dancers watched dance moves they had practiced than when they watched moves they hadn’t learned.

The implications specific to writers haven’t been researched, but mirror neurons have been discovered near the language centers of the brain and mirror neurons may prove to be essential in our ability to acquire language. So I think we can safely assume that mirror neurons are at least part of what’s going on when writers get a boost from writing in a group.

Students in my Enter the Flow and Writer’s Workout classes (where we do a lot of in-class writing) frequently tell me it’s easier for them to write in class and that they get more out of the in-class writing sessions than they do when they’re writing alone. Just being with other writers writing is going to get your writing neurons firing.

Choose your mirrors wisely

Because mirror neurons are the foundation of empathy – we feel what we observe others feeling – being with other writers who are excited about their writing is going to make you feel more excited about your writing. Being with writers who are discouraged and giving in to their resistance is going to make you feel discouraged and make you more likely to give up. Be choosy about who you spend time with – be choosy about whose neurons you want to mirror.

My students also suggest there may be a cumulative effect. While the writing they do in class is often easier and more productive than their solo writing, those solo sessions are easier and more productive than the solo sessions were before the students took the class. Moreover, the solo writing they do after the class ends continues to be easier and more productive than it was before they took the class.

I also suspect mirror neurons may be involved in the benefits writers get from reading and studying good writing. As Stephen King says, “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.” Reading excellent literature can be a mental rehearsal that activates your mirror neurons and prepares you for your own writing sessions. But again you want to be choosy: reading junk probably makes you more likely to write junk.

The Company You Keep

By Rosanne Bane

It matters what company you keep. You’ve probably heard about the research that shows that if your friends are overweight, you’re over 50% more likely to be overweight yourself. I’m convinced that being part of an effective writer’s group is a great benefit and that being part of a dysfunctional or ineffective writer’s community is worse than being alone.

Where and how do you connect with other writers? Are you part of a writing group or a larger writer’s community? Do you connect with other writers at readings or in classes? Or collaborate on writing projects? Do you tap into what other writers are thinking and doing from magazines? Blogs? Twitter or other social networking? What percentage of your connections with other writers are in-person and what percentage are electronic or remote?

How do you feel and what do you think after your contact with your writing colleagues? Consider the effect of each group separately.

Are you enthusiastic, engaged and excited about your writing? Are you motivated and eager to get back to your writing? Or are you left with a vague sense of dissatisfaction and discouragement?

Do you have new ideas, perspectives and strategies? Or is your thinking unchanged?

Are you optimistic, if not about publishing as a whole, at least about your ability to respond to the changes and challenges you face? Or are you thinking publishing is headed in the wrong direction and there’s little you can do about it? Or even convinced that publishing is doomed and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it?

Does the group have clear purpose and goals? How much do the group’s purpose and goals align with your writing purpose and goals? Do you have an increased sense that being a writer is worthwhile and that your writing is a valuable contribution to your community?

Most importantly, what do you do after connecting with other writers? What actions do you take? What challenge are you more likely to embrace? What risk are you less likely to take? Is the time you spend with other writers (in-person or electronically) worth the time you’re not focused and acting on your own writing projects?

I’ll let you ponder those questions awhile. I hope you’ll then be motivated and encouraged to get back to your writing. In my next post, we’ll take a look what “mirror neurons” are (hint: they’re your “monkey see, monkey do neurons”) and how they fit into this idea that the company you keep is crucial to your emotions and behavior.

Writer vs. Cake Part 2: Invite the Whole Choir to Sing

Invite the Whole Choir to Sing

By Rosanne Bane

So there I was, with a piece of marble cake – the piece with the most frosting – in my cart, headed for the checkout just the way my Saboteur wanted. I may as well have laid down on a railroad track and invited Snidely Whiplash to tie me up.

I’m not completely sure what all went through my mind and in what order, but I do know that my Saboteur was busy encouraging me to take the cake and run. “Don’t look back. Don’t think twice. You know you want this cake.”

But another part of me was regretting that it wasn’t chocolate cake. I circled back to look one more time for chocolate cake or to see if I wanted a brownie instead. There was a chocolate cake, but it was the whole cake and even my Saboteur couldn’t deny the fact that that was far too much cake and far too much to spend for a passing craving.

Another part of me was suggesting maybe I could just wait and get a really good cupcake from Lunds. And another part of me was observing that all this circling and double-checking and hoping against all evidence to the contrary that I’d find a piece of chocolate cake was taking a fair amount of time and the light ice cream in the cart was starting to melt.

But all this time I was taking was letting all the voices inside me speak up. And the voice that got me to put the cake back was the thought “Would I rather eat cake tonight or feel a little lighter and a little faster at Saturday’s agility trial?” (I and my dog Blue train and compete in dog agility.) I know I’m a better handler and have a lot more fun when my weight is down and I’d been reminding myself about that for the last month.

So what does this have to do with writing? The Saboteru is a major cause of writing resistance. This self-destructive force is going to want to sabotage anything that’s important to you: being healthy, making choices that align with your own values, showing up for your writing. Any time your Saboteur wins in any area of your life, it’s strengthened and you’ll have a harder time getting through resistance. (click here to read a related issue of Imagination InkLinks)

Some days it seems like the only voice in your head is the Saboteur’s. All you can think about is how flawed your writing is or how flawed you are as a writer. The Saboteur criticizes and highlights what’s missing and runs non-stop negative ‘what if’ scenarios. These are the days when you have no discernment, only judgments and all of the judgments are harshly negative (for more on the distinction between discernment and judgment, click here).

These are exactly the days when you need to remember that the Saboteur is NOT the only voice in your head. You have an entire committee in there. Or as I like to think of it, a choir of diverse voices.

When the Saboteur is screaming off-key and at the top of its lungs, you need to invite the rest of the choir to sing. You need to take time to listen to all parts of you the way I finally did in the Cub bakery.

Listen to the all the other parts of you that want something different from what the Saboteur is talking about – even if those parts want different things: to go outside or take a nap or get ice cream or go to the movies or hold out for what you really want. You don’t have to act on those ideas, but listen to those parts of you. Invite all the voices in the choir to sing about why they want what they want.

That will help you remember that the Saboteur is only one voice, only one part of you, and doesn’t get to call the shots all the time. Taking time to listen will give you time to remember what you love about your writing and why it matters.

And if that doesn’t give you enough relief from the Saboteur, remember my standard response to it: “Oh, you again? Shove off!”

Writer vs. Cake

Disclaimer: Neither I nor the cake look this good in real life.

By Rosanne Bane

At 8:00 last night, I stood in the bakery department at Cub, debating a piece of marble cake. What does that have to do with writing or writing resistance? Bear with me and you’ll see that how I got there and I got myself out of there is a great metaphor for resolving writing resistance.

I ended up in the Cub bakery last night because Claudia is out of town. It’s embarrassing to admit, but it’s true: Claudia’s presence has a big influence on what I eat. My presence has an influence on what she eats, too. It has to do with mirror neurons, but that’s another post for another day.

I wouldn’t even seriously consider buying a piece of cake at Cub when Claudia’s around. Not that she’d forbid it or anything silly like that. She’d just raise her eyebrows and say something like “Really? You’re going to use points (Weight Watchers® method of tracking food) for that?! It’s not even good cake.”

Claudia is one of those “supervisors” I mentioned in last week’s post, Resistant or Under-Assisted. Claudia’s absence created an “accountability vacuum” and that vacuum sucked me into Cub’s bakery. The writing connection is fairly obvious: human beings are social creatures and we need other people to be our witnesses as we hold ourselves accountable to our commitments and goals. Not only do you need a writing supervisor, you need to have contingency plans for when one of your major supervisors is temporarily absent.

How did I get myself to step away from the cake? Especially when the Saboteur was crooning “Go ahead. It’s not dangerous, it’s just a small piece of cake.” (This is an example of how the Saboteur always lies: it was at least a 4 x 4 inch square of cake, which is at least 14 points, half my daily allowance.) “You won’t eat it all tonight. You know you want it. Get the one with the most frosting.”

It was touch and go. At one point, I had the cake – the one with the most frosting – in the cart and was headed for the checkout.

How I escaped in my next post, “Invite the Whole Choir to Sing.”