Just Say No

After beating procrastination, you may have another challenge to getting writing done.
One of the biggest reasons work doesn't get done is that there may simply be too much to do. However, this rarely happens to a beginning writer. But one who’s been in the writing biz for a while can easily be overwhelmed.

Sometimes the biggest favor you can do for everyone involved is to just say "No." When the war on drugs, the Government adopted the phrase “Just say no.” But that can be a terribly hard thing to do, especially if you’re a freelance writer who lives from one project to the next. Saying no just may mean tearing up your meal ticket.

To get control of this situation, take these four steps:       

    ●    Know what's being asked of you and why. Determine if you’re in a position to handle a job. Do you have the expertise? And more importantly, do you have the time? If the answer to both questions is yes, then you understand the request and how it affects you.

    ●    Refuse the request—say "No." Sure, saying "No" is easier said than done, but just start with an "n" sound, and then put your mouth in the shape of an "o" and say "No, I'm sorry, I can't do it."

    ●    Follow your refusal with logical reasons. Simply and clearly state the reasons that you can't do the project. "No, I'm sorry. I can't do it because I have three other commitments." Some editors will take your “No” as a bargaining tactic and up the ante. But stick to your guns. If you accept higher pay but have to rush to get the job done and make mistakes, then you may put the relationship you have with that editor at risk.

    ●    If you can’t do the job, suggest some alternatives. If you understand the what and why behind the request, suggesting another way or another writer who may be able to do it is easier. "No. I'm sorry. I can't. but so and so knows just as much about that subject as I do and he may be able to do the job."

It’s important to keep the solid relationships you have with editors rather than risk losing them because you end up doing a bad job on a project Learning to say “No” will bolster your professionalism and encourage editors to call you when they have another project.

Dealing With Emotional Block

All writers suffer emotional stress from time to time. Some get through it fine but for others it can be devastating. The three top emotional stressers are the death of a loved one, the end of a long-time, loving relationship, and the onset of major physical problems. But there are many more. Dealing with any of these requires a full-time effort. Even the most creative person cannot work when such heavy burdens settle in.

For even the most emotionally stable of writers, dealing with difficult emotional situations can place a lot of stress on the creative process. Being creative is work. If you’re having toruble thinking that indicates impeded flow, just like the flow of water through the pipes in your house. If something blocks the flow, nothing comes out at the other end.

The creative process is more than what you write. There’s also a part that happens invisibly, under the surface. That’s when your senses perceive the world around you and your heart and mind are thrown into dissonance. That’s when your soul stops responding.

Normally, your creative response doesn’t just pour out of your head. There’ s no such thing as pure expression. You formulate, strategize, order, and then articulate. It’s only that last part—at best about 25 percent—that shows as output or progress.

The sudden death of someone close to you can put you under a great deal of stress. Know from the start that the period of grieving will last from one to two years. Life gets better as the days pass by, but you will have to deal with it. It you find you’re unable to cope, get some grief counseling or join a support group.

Divorce can be traumatic, especially if your spouse has been having an affair. The main emotional trauma to deal with here is personal rejection by someone you’ve trusted, followed by self-doubt. When any long-term relationship ends—even one with a publication or one of your editors—you also need to grieve. While the process is as prolonged as when someone dies, it’s grieving nevertheless.

The sudden onset of an illness or a medical condition can be life changing. Besides medical care, what’s needed here is a lifestyle change. It may be that all the stress you’ve put yourself through as a writer finally catches up to you, causing your body to fail. If your medical condition can be dealt with, you’ll be able to go through rehab. And while that may get your body back in shape, you’ll also have to go through mental rehab. Severe or prolonged illness often brings on depression. Get help if you need it.

Another stresser is a perceived or actual lack of financial support. The cliched image of a starving writer working in a one-room garret is fiction. You need to have some sort of income otherwise your body won’t be in the best shape to create anything. You may have to face up to getting a part-time job to bring in enough income to eat and pay your bills.

Repeated rejection leading to making you doubt your ability as a writer can also lead to major stress. For some people, this is the primary cause of stress throughout their writing career.

So what are some ways of dealing with all of the above?

• First, get enough sleep. Your body, including your mind, works better when you have enough rest. Sleeping an extra hour can make all the difference.
  
• Cry. Yes, have a good cry. If the situation is that bad, you’ll get some emotional release by crying. If nothing else, it will make you feel better. But don’t let yourself get mired in the black hole of depression.
  
• Get support from family and friends. Tell those you trust what’s going on. While they may not be able to physically help you, they can lend moral support.
  
• Surf the Internet. See what tips you can find to help you deal with your problem. 

When faced with a decreased flow in productivity, many writers seek out the device or method to use to quickly raise production levels instead of asking themselves what might be interfering with their creative process. Let’s face it, most people today look for the easy way out. But there’s no easy way out of any of the above stressful situations. The best thing to do is just deal with it. 

A Writer's Haunted Life

When is a writer’s life like a haunted house? Always.

Writers, most of them anyway, live a haunted life. Ghosts appear at every turn. Sometimes, these are the ghosts of previously written pieces that come around to bite them in the ass. Sometimes, these are the ghosts of editors who still carry a grudge for one reason or another. And sometimes, these are the ghosts of poorly made decisions. But whatever haunts you, you can bet it will be far worse than going through a haunted house during the Halloween season.

While visiting a haunted house is meant to be entertaining, living a haunted life certainly isn’t. The bad times far outway the good ones. Usually the euphoria that comes with the good times certainly lingers longer. But the truth is that bad things that happen to writers can have lasting effects.

Take the first time someone critiques your work. You feel scared as hell—your skin may itch, your eyes water, your stomach churns. And what if the critique turns out to be horrible. Will you crawl in a hole and die? Certainly not. But you may get terribly depressed. In fact, you may never write again. It happens far more often than you think.

Perhaps you’ve been working with an editor for a long stretch and you have developed a great working relationship. Then the editor tells you that they’re leaving for another job. You know what you have, but you have no idea what you’ll be getting. The new editor may love your work and give you more than you can handle. Or the new editor may end up telling you can’t write, leaving you without a good regular market.

Or what about when an editor promises you’ll get paid, but you never see the money. If you’re a full-time freelancer, the bill collector demons may be knocking on your door—or calling you every hour. Boy, could you use that money now. But it never arrives. And what about all the work you put into that piece. Sometimes, you can’t even sell it elsewhere.

But then you get a call from your publisher with a nod to a book proposal you sent him months ago. Hallelujah! You dig in and begin working on the book. You’re having a fantastic time. You send in the manuscript. Your editor loves it. Then you wait. One day, you get an Email telling you the publisher decided not to publish your book because the market took a downturn. You get to keep the advance. But no one will ever read your book. And unless the publisher releases you from your contract, you’re stuck.

Haunted houses are full of surprises. They’re meant to be. But so will your life be as a writer. Often you won’t know what the next day will bring. Too many surprises can cause a lot of stress. This turns a lot of beginning writers away from freelancing. The New York Times is in the process of laying off nearly 100 reporters and editors. You can bet a bunch of them will try their hand at freelancing. They should succeed, but many of them won’t. Why? Because they don’t like surprises. Working for a salary has its advantages.

It takes more than writing skill to be a successful writer. It takes stamina. You’ve got to be on top of your game all the time. And when you’re hit with too many ghosts coming at you, you tend to back off and your writing suffers.

You’ve only heard about all the good things that happen to famous writers. But they, too, have had their share of surprises—ghosts that have come back to haunt them. 

Betting on a Hunch

What do horseracing and freelance writing have in common? Actually, quite a bit. Before someone places a bet on a horse, he or she has to study the racing sheet—the lineup for the race. Based on the knowledge they glean from constantly studying these sheets, they pick a horse that they hope will be a winner and place their bet. But sometimes they play a hunch.

Hunches, intuition, and instinct can play a major role in freelance writing. A writer bases all of them on prior knowledge and experience and draws conclusions from what has been learned in similar situations.

Before the days of the automobile, people lost in blizzards or too drunk to drive let go of the reins and counted on the instincts of the horse to get them home. They took a calculated risk, knowing from past experience that their horse would probably make it home. Developing your understanding of your instincts, hunches, and intuitions coming from your subconscious to a fine point so that you’re in a position to take the necessary calculated risks is something you’ll need to work on.

You’ll have to rely on them many times for guidance in the management of your career as well as the shaping of your imaginative work. The trick is to induce your subconscious to work smoothly with the rest of your mind.

Unfortunately, all three of these are notoriously hard to schedule exactly. In spite of your encouraging them, they often doze in some dark corner of your subconscious. Perhaps the best way of luring them out is to lay out a rational game plan. By having such a plan you can lure your hunches to help solve problems.

You could apply this principle to plotting a course for your work over the next year. If you sit down and examine what you did last year with an eye to deciding what you’d like to do this year, you’ll have something to guide you when the hunches start occurring. Besides listing the projects you can count on, add some others just in case those don’t work out. Most likely you’ll get hunches about market trends, but you may also get a hunch or two about that sort of pieces may best fit the adjusted scenario.

In all probability you won’t sell to exactly the markets you targeted. But from experience—instinct—you know which ones will most likely buy the type of writing you do. Plus, you already know the editors with whom you have a working relationship. You already know how much time different types of projects take to finish. All of this gives you an instinct to search out places where your work is more or less guaranteed to be sold. By planning ahead, you’ll be able to find the right ideas early enough to stay ahead of your competition.

Hunches, instinct, and intuition can also play a part in predicting when markets will go bad. Sometimes, the writing, as they say, is on the wall. Unfortunately, you probably have looked up from your computer long enough to see it. Has a publisher been repeatedly late with payments recently? Is an editor forgetting that he or she made an assignment? Have market trends in a particular subject area been showing that there’ less interest in that subject? And is the opposite also true? Has a particular subject gotten more press lately, making it more visible?

Betting on a hunch in any of those areas is a calculated risk but one that may yield great results. 

Winding Down Time

It's the first of December and time to start thinking about what I've accomplished this past year as well as to plan for next. Yes, that's right, I said plan--something a lot of writers don't do. In this game, you have to stay ahead. If you don't, you'll surely fall behind.

To get things started, I renewed a relationship with one of my regular editors. I've worked with this particular publication for 15 years, but this year didn't do much for them. One of my specialties is writing about antiques and this publication is one of my regulars in that market.

I also began formulating an outline for my newest book on the American Southwest. This can take a while. The more thought I put into the structure of the book at this stage, the fewer problems I'll have along the way. And while too much detail can bog me down, too little will leave me with a vague idea of particular sections later on.