Then I wrote Five Ways to Fit Writing into Your Busy Schedule and Honoring Your Writer Identity. 

In this post, I hope to address some of the seemingly insurmountable things on my list that don’t feel like excuses but literal roadblocks. 

I hope that you will be encouraged to no longer see these things as immovable as you try to inch them little by little and get your motivation back.

Loss/Grief

This one is tough, so why not address it first and get it over with?

One of the most difficult setbacks in life is the loss of something valuable. While the death of a loved one is so hard, we can experience similar feelings to varying degrees after the loss of a job we loved or the ending of a relationship. As writers, it’s important we “Honor our reality” and give ourselves space and self-care. 

Yes, we need to take care of ourselves but also remember that our writing can take care of us too. Our writing is an abstract thing that is part of us, and it will always be there waiting for us when we return to it.

For the sake of helping you out, I will put myself out there and say I suffered a loss-setback myself a few years ago. It was one of those really bad ones. But as I was going through my grief, I realized that writing was the only thing keeping me going. 

So I started up again and it was working. But one thing was missing. I felt I needed to interact regularly with other writers. I wanted to go back to school, but then I found DIYMFA, which was a much more manageable route to getting back on track.

By signing up for DIYMFA and embracing my writing life, I was coping much better with my loss. It pulled me out of that grief cycle and gave me something to work on and through which to channel my creativity. It also helped me meet lots of great new people who gave me a reason to get out of bed in the morning. 

My advice: go through your stages of grief, but don’t give up. Free-write/journal about your experiences until it all comes out. Then shift gears and focus on something new.  Cry and rage, but always come back to the page.

Illness

Another rough thing to experience and address is illness, which can also happen in varying degrees. Whether it’s the shock from an unexpected diagnosis, the coping with symptoms, or even a chronic illness you’ve had for years (been there), it might be tempting to put your “writing hobby” on the back burner. 

Don’t do that. Of course, if you are suffering so much you can’t function, your writing will take a backseat, but like with grief, you can have good days and bad. On those good days, let yourself experience the joy of writing. Say “No” to things that don’t bring you joy and focus on writing. It’s obviously not a cure-all, but like laughter, writing can be great medicine. 

My advice: use a calendar to track the days you feel like writing and the days you don’t. Give yourself a sticker/smiley face/treat or something more fitting to your personality on those days as positive reinforcement for trying. The more you do this the more you will associate your good days with writing and associate the writing itself with positive experiences.

Rejection/Bad Critique

This one is more writer-oriented, and “isn’t as serious” but tell that to any writer who just experienced it. The best way around this one is the mindset shift of realizing that it happens to ALL WRITERS.

Yes, it does. And, once you embrace that getting bad critique or receiving rejection from an agent and so forth is all part of the process of writing, it makes it easier to swallow it and persevere. It also makes you a better writer. Remember, even the best quality writers still aren’t perfect. 

Lots of famous authors have different stories of how they dealt with rejection. No one is an overnight success. Debunk myths around writing and educate yourself with the process. The more knowledgeable you are about this industry and what it takes to be successful, the more resilience you will have as a result. 

My advice: give yourself a reason other than publication to submit something. Sure, that’s your goal, but if you don’t get that, what else do you receive? Free writing advice from a knowledgeable source? A better understanding of your genre and who your readers are? A push to do better and know better and write better next time? Keep asking yourself those difficult questions and hold yourself accountable. 

So those were “the big 3” reasons why writers stop writing. And they happen to everyone.

The moral here: life can really suck, but don’t give up on the one thing that makes it better.

Amy Ayres is the Tech Fairy at DIYMFA. When she is not in her office writing about terraformed planets, multiple personalities, and Irish folklore, she is hanging with her awesome tech-hubby, stepson, and RubyCat. Visit amymarieayres.com where you can find out more about her private writer’s group Fill the Blank Page. You can sign up for her Newsletter where she sends out motivational tips for new writers and her special brand of humor. You can also find her on Twitter and Instagram.

The post Against All Odds: Writing Despite Setbacks appeared first on DIY MFA.

Ruh-roh. Becca’s taking a turn for the serious this week.

Just a month ago, I lost my best furry buddy. Couple that with several seriously ill family members and the recent firestorm that swept through southern California, and you might say that it’s been difficult to find time, let alone inspiration, to write. Fear and Grief are the sort of house guests who eat all your food, wreck all your sh!t, and stay indefinitely on your couch. And then blame you for making them dependents.

But this blog isn’t about how to force yourself to keep working on your novel when everything’s going to hell. I had a peer in a creative writing class a few years back who wasn’t a writer, and never claimed to be. She said that she was taking the class to help herself work through some trauma. That’s what we’re going to do today with Fear and Grief.

1. Fear

Don’t try to hide, I see all you anxiety-riddled people. That’s right, those who suffer from imposter syndrome, those who think every word they put down, every published piece will be examined before God and everybody—and then emblazoned with a big scarlet A (for Amazon… Okay, that wasn’t the best extended metaphor ever).

If you weren’t worrying about that before, you sure are now.

Fear is a parasitic little house guest. The more you keep feeding it, the more hair it leaves in the shower. Try these simple exercises:

• Write it down! Seriously, you read all the way through this article for this common-sense advice? Write down your list of what’s scaring you right now. Acknowledging your fears is the first step in conquering them—and turning a light on is a great way to see exactly what sort of hairy visitor you’re dealing with.
• Come back to your goals. In a recent Writer Fuel that Gabriela sent out (if you haven’t signed up yet, you should! It’s that minty green box there on the right), she talked about the top 3 goals for her annual “holy grail”—three goals that trump everything else. You should have a goal that is so strong you would pursue it, even through your fears. According to The Guardian, public speaking is among our top five fears, and yet many writers will have to face this. If one of the items on your bucket list is to do a reading of your book, you’re going to need to conquer that fear pretty quick. Book reading as a famous author trumps being afraid to talk to people (self, listen up!).
• Do what scares you. Afraid of what your family will say when you put out your memoir? All the more reason to do it (as Anne Lamott would say, “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”). Traumatized by firestorms (like me)? Write a story about an arsonist. Terrified of jumping off a cliff? What the heck, do it! (No, no. DIY MFA holds no liability for following any of the directions herein.) Writing about what scares you will help you conquer the beast with the almighty pen!

2. Grief

This one is a little tougher. Grief is different for everyone. I myself have struggled with bottling emotions inside until they become physically painful. Grief is more of a lurker who may even convince you that he isn’t still staying at your house, but in the morning you’ll find all your bacon confiscated (Nooo! Not the bacon!).

Even for those who have trouble expressing their sorrow, there are still ways to write through it.

• Let it hurt. Writing about what makes you sad, like I did with my cuddle buddy, is going to hurt worse even than all those rejection letters you get as a writer. I know, impossible, right? Good. Write about how much it hurts, too; write about how it feels to crumble. And while you’re at it, try to balance the sadness with the brightness: From good times you spent with a person, or the hours of work your hard drive allowed you to accomplish before it crashed.
• Try poetry. Poetry doesn’t have to make sense. Poetry doesn’t have to mean anything except to you. Poetry can include all images that express how it feels to grieve (for ideas, check out this article on the image from Danielle Mitchell). When my 18-year-old neighbor, my brother’s best friend, passed away in a car accident four years ago, I cried every day for weeks. I still grieve, but I began to move forward the day I wrote a poem:

Last Words

for Michael

Trembling low and

confidential to a voice I

didn’t care to hear,

They said

he blew a

Kiss

to his girlfriend

through transparent

car windows

reflecting

too much

I thought,

I wouldn’t be disappointed if

that was my last word.

• Get help. A lot of time we blame our profession instead of seeking to see if there’s something deeper going on. Oh, those depressed artists! It’s okay to be sad, but it can really help to reach out to both friends and professionals who know the tricks to avoiding chronic sadness.

It’s hard to move forward, whether from tragedy or fear of failure, from painful memories or from something as seemingly “simple” as avoiding writing for weeks on end. Fear compounds fear, and grief gets worse the longer you hold onto it, but you are a writer. You can write through it. Write and weep every day if you have to. Only you know which methods help you. I hope that, whoever is hurting out there, you take comfort that you are not the only one and that you can and will write through this.

Got a question? Tweet me @beccaquibbles with the hashtag #askbecca, email me at becca [at] DIYMFA [dot] com, or just leave a comment below! You could see your question answered right here at Ask Becca!

Rebecca Ann Jordan is a speculative fiction author and artist in San Diego. She recently won Reader’s Choice Best of 2013 for her short story “Promised Land” at Fiction Vortex and has published poetry and fiction in Flapperhouse, Yemassee Magazine, Bravura Literary Journal and more. Becca regularly columns for DIYMFA.com. See more from her at rebeccaannjordan.com.

The post Ask Becca: Writing through Loss and Fear appeared first on DIY MFA.