Living the Author Life

The life of a writer isn’t easy. As you may recall from my last newsletter, publishing is a tough business and you have to be resilient to stick with it for the long haul. There’s a lot of rejection and heartache on the path to publication, and sometimes we lose sight of why we’re doing all of this in the first place.

It’s also a challenge to balance writing against all the other things we have going on in our lives. Most of us don’t have the luxury of writing full time and doing nothing else. Even if we are able to make writing our “day job” there’s a lot of other peripheral stuff we have to do, like marketing our work, building our platform, etc. And this doesn’t even take into account all of that personal life stuff that can sometimes get in the way of our writing dreams.

Many of us have families and home responsibilities. As you may already know, I’ve got two kiddos of my own, Little Man and Lady Bug. Little Man is now 12 (so turning into a “Big Man”) and Lady Bug is 9 (going on 19… yeesh!). Between music practice, school concerts and homework help, this spring has felt like a marathon of “kid stuff.” Don’t get me wrong, I love these kiddos more than anything, but all that love doesn’t make it any less exhausting. (If you’re a parent, you know exactly what I’m talking about…)

I know for a lot of folks in our community, caring for aging parents and relatives is a big part of their lives. Those responsibilities can take up a lot of time, energy, and mental bandwidth. And a lot of word nerds have extremely time-consuming day jobs that make it hard to work writing into their schedule. Many of them have to get their writing done in the wee hours of morning or night, or eke out a few words during their daily commutes.

All in all, we have a lot on our plates. And that’s life.

Honor Your Reality

At DIY MFA we have a saying: “Honor Your Reality.” This means that yes, life is part of our reality and sometimes it gets in the way of our writing. But we also have to acknowledge that writing is part of our reality. Without writing, we don’t feel complete. Our creative work is not just a luxury we squeeze into the off hours between items on our schedule. It matters. It’s important. When we are not writing, we are not being our authentic selves.

A lot of people talk about writing-life balance as though it were something rigid and precise. They act like our existence is a set of scales, with our life responsibilities on one side and our writing on the other. According to this model, the only way to find “balance” is if both sides of the scale are perfectly level.

But life isn’t like that. It’s messy. It’s weird. It’s constantly throwing things at us that we least expect.

I think of “balance” as being on a boat. If you try to stand rigidly upright, the rocking of the waves will knock you off balance and make you fall flat on your face. Instead, the way to stay on your feet is to rock with the boat. When a wave pushes one side of the boat up, we lean into that side. When the other side rises, we lean that way. We can’t fight the waves or make them go away, so the only way to deal with them is to lean in.

This means that we have to acknowledge the role that life plays in our reality, but we also have to attend to those writing “waves” when they come up. If we never address the waves on the writing side of our boat, then our lives will be lopsided and the boat will capsize. The way to find “balance” is to recognize that writing and life are a messy mix, but somehow we’ve got to fit both things into our reality.

One way to do that is…

Don’t Write Every Day

(At least, not unless you want to.)

A lot of big-name authors and writing experts say that in order to be a “real” writer, you have to write every day. Personally, I beg to differ. I don’t think that writing every day is necessary—or even healthy—for some writers. Sure, some writers might clock in a precise number of words every single day, but for others (like myself) writing is more like feast or famine. There are days when the muses smile down on me and I knock out thousands of words in one go, and then there are others where a hundred words feels like a slog. If I had to clock in an exact word count every single day, I’d probably have given up on writing a long time ago.

I’ve also heard of many writers who need thinking time before the writing can occur. One writer friend of mine says she spends a lot of time thinking through her book and mapping out each scene in her head. Then when she sits down to write, all the words pour out in a rush. For me, thinking time is also crucial. It’s where I work through different ideas—sometimes sketching them out on paper, sometimes just in my head—and it’s how I discover ideas for new projects as well.

For me, a lot of this thinking time is spent journaling, which I don’t really consider writing per se, even though I am putting pen to paper. I journal just about every day, in the morning before I get out of bed. Most of my journaling is whiny, boring, repetitive stuff, like me complaining about mundane things that probably won’t matter beyond that instant. Yet sometimes, in my journal, I hit on a random idea that I can mine for gold. If I didn’t spill all that whiny, boring garbage onto the page first, I probably never would land on that golden nugget of an idea.

But let’s get back to “write every day” and why maybe it’s not the best strategy. Another thing to consider is that there’s a certain luxury associated with writing every day. Many of us have messy, busy lives that make writing every day an unrealistic goal. Sure, for some writers, writing every day is doable, but we shouldn’t beat ourselves up if we can’t do it.

Let me tell you a story about writing every day. I remember reading the book On Writing by Stephen King many years ago when I was just beginning to take writing seriously. This was back in 2006 or 2007, and this book had a huge impact on my writing, but not in the way you would expect. Now, let me be perfectly clear: this is a wonderful book that paints a picture of what it really takes to be a writer. I love this book and constantly recommend it to new writers. But… there’s one tiny spot that I have to quibble with. This is the place where Stephen King says you have to write 2,000 words per day and read 80-100 books per year, or else you’re not a “real” writer.

When I first read that, I thought I had stumbled on The Answer. After all, if Stephen King said it, it had to be true, right? Well, the truth is, that method might work for Stephen King, but it didn’t work for me. I started out okay, writing 2,000 words per day for a couple of days. Then I had a major rush of inspiration and poured out 4,000 words in a day. Yay! But after that I hit the wall and had a bunch of 200-400 word days. That’s when I started to spiral.

You see, I had this idea in my head that I had to write 2,000 words, like clockwork. Every. Single. Day. But I couldn’t do it consistently. Some days I exceeded my goal; others I could barely eke out a tenth of the required word count.

So, I started to beat myself up. Thoughts popped up in my head, like: “Well, if you can’t do 2,000 words every day, you’re not a real writer.” Or “See? I knew you couldn’t do it. You’ll never publish anything.” Or “Sooner or later, people are going to find out you’re a fraud and you can’t write anything.”

Here’s the truth: Beating ourselves up for not writing does not make the words magically appear on the page. I know. I’ve tried. It doesn’t work.

Not everybody writes with Stephen King precision. I admire the people who do, but I’m definitely not one of them. And that’s okay, because the writing still gets done, it’s just a messier process.

So if we shouldn’t “write every day,” what should we do?

The key is to write some days. Maybe it’s not every day, but a few times a week. Or maybe your weekdays are a hot mess and the only time you have for writing is on the weekends. Some writers might clock in word counts with laser-like precision. Others (like me) may have more of a rollercoaster process. All of this is okay.

We all have different lives, with different goals and challenges. To assume that one method would work for every writer is shortsighted. Instead, the key is to find the method that works best for you.

What Makes an Author Life?

The author life consists of a lot of things—productivity, motivation, mindset, time management, and more—but it looks different for each person. Of course we have to write. If we never wrote anything, we’d have to reconsider why we’re even trying to do this in the first place. The writing itself is non-negotiable. If we want to be writers we have to write. The place where things get messy is in the “how.”

For a lot of us, it takes trial and error to find a process that works. When I first started writing the DIY MFA book, I had a newborn and a toddler at home, so I knew that the only way I would be able to do it was if I could get out of the house. At first, I thought the most efficient way to do this was to go to a hotel, check in early, check out late, and write write write for the hours in between. We had some points from a hotel chain so I figured I’d give it a shot.

The first time I did that, I knocked out over 7,000 words. I did my happy dance, went home, then came back a few weeks later to try a second time. That session didn’t go so well and I only made about 4,000 words. Not bad, but not as good as the first time. Then the third time I tried this I only managed about 1,500 words, plus the hotel points had just about run out. It became very clear that if I had to hide away in a hotel every time I needed to write, this was going to be a very expensive book.

So I tried a different method. Every weekday, after dropping Little Man off at preschool, I started going to the local coffee shop around the corner and writing for a few hours until it was time to go pick him up. Another mom from his class was also a writer, so we teamed up and started hanging out at the coffee shop together, working side-by-side. I didn’t knock out 7,000 words at a time, but I made respectable progress on the book five days a week, eventually getting it done. Plus, knowing that I only had that short, preschool-time window to do my writing motivated me to stay focused. Also, having a writing buddy also helped make the process less lonely.

Keep in mind, this approach worked back then because my life was the way it was at the time. Now, it would be a different story. The kiddos may require a lot less grunt work these days, but there are other challenges, like activities and schoolwork. Plus, DIY MFA is in a whole different place now than it was in 2015 when I was writing the book. Back then, the business was just getting started and we didn’t offer nearly as many courses or programs. Now, DIY MFA truly is a full-time job, and taking away an entire morning five days a week would not be feasible. Instead, I have to sneak in my writing during those nooks and crannies between other DIY MFA stuff.

I share all of this because I think it’s important to realize that there’s an ebb and flow to the writing process. You can’t just take writing advice at face value. You have to try different things out and see what works for you. You also have to recognize that what works at one stage in your writing career, may not carry over to a later stage. Your process for writing book one will be very different from the process for books two and beyond. In the end, we have to acknowledge that the author life is unpredictable and we have to embrace the wild, messy adventure that it is!

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: Living the Author Life appeared first on DIY MFA.

I’m one of the math-loving few in the writing community. 

I’ve always been a numbers nerd, and I love looking at data in new ways. Here, I am going to suggest five ways numbers can improve your writing life. I promise there are no complicated equations here (I will not make you relive your algebra days!), and these ideas can help even the most math-averse among us. 

1. Monitoring Time

Time is the currency we all pay to improve our writing skills and share our work, yet many of us do not keep track of it.

Monitoring your time makes you face the reality of how you are spending it. In her book, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, Laura Vanderkam suggests keeping a time diary for one week to assess how you are using your time. 

After keeping a week-long time diary myself, I learned two things.

1. I discovered I was more conscientious about my time when I knew I was keeping a record of my activities. If I had a half hour of unclaimed time, I had to ask myself if I really wanted to include “scrolling through social media” on my time log. I usually made a better choice.

2. I found my days were fuller than I thought. When I first did the time diary exercise, I was caring for my young children. I spent the majority of my time taking care of their needs, playing with them, and making sure they stayed alive. I didn’t have extra time to give without making lifestyle changes. 

Try monitoring your time. A week-long time diary provides an “average” overview. Are you writing as often as you thought? How much time do you spend reading? Do you have extra time to devote to your writing endeavors or are you maxed out? 

2. Tracking Words

Most writers keep track of their word count at some point. If you’ve submitted a short piece to a blog, journal, or newspaper, you’ve adhered to a word count restriction. If you’ve worked on a novel, you’ve learned your market’s word count expectations. Even if you’re new to writing, your high school English teacher likely asked you to write a 500-word essay. 

It’s common to think of word count in the context of a finished product, but you can also use word count to help you with your writing habits. 

1. Do you write more words in the evenings than you do in the mornings? Maybe you write more words when you work in short sprints as opposed to two-hour chunks.

2. Do you have a maximum output level, after which your brain shuts down? Keeping track of your word count (and how you achieved it) can help you identify what works best for you. 

3. Knowing Writing Speed

Writing quickly isn’t inherently better than writing slowly, though as writers, we may be tempted to believe faster is better. Instead, you can use your writing speed as a metric to understand how you work. 

You may be a writer who spends an hour writing 200 thoughtful words, but then you don’t spend as much time in revision afterwards. Or maybe you’re a writer who needs to spit out the first draft as quickly as possible so you crank out 2,000 words per hour. Perhaps fluctuations in your writing speed indicate when you need a break.

If your current writing practices aren’t working or if you find yourself in a rut, experiment with your writing speed and see what changes. 

4. Setting Realistic Goals

Once you monitor your writing time, word count, and writing speed, you can use these metrics to set reasonable goals. 

For instance, suppose you set a goal to write 5,000 words a week. This seems like a reasonable goal to you since your friend writes 2,000 words a day. However, you average 200 words per hour and write five hours a week. You are setting yourself up to fail before you’ve even started working towards your goal. 

Maybe you want to write two hours every morning before your day job begins. You are currently writing for fifteen minutes during your lunch break. Are you prepared to increase your writing time eight times over? Do you write well in the morning? You’d do better to first change either the time of day you write or the amount you write in one session, instead of changing both simultaneously.

Writers fall prey to romantic notions about the writing life. When they cannot live up to their unrealistic expectations, they give up. Don’t let this happen to you simply because you didn’t consider a few important pieces of data. 

5. Motivating with Numbers

Use numbers in your motivation. Knowing you spent 500 hours (nearly 21 days!) writing last year may be the bragging right that helps you do it again this year. Watching your word count climb into the thousands, and then tens of thousands can inspire you to finish your novel. Recording a writing streak becomes more fun when you plan a special celebration for the 100th day. 

Don’t overlook whimsy. You can set quirky goals by playing with numbers. For example, if seven is your favorite number, you could set a goal to write 777 words a day. For the year 2023, you could set the goal to write for 20 minutes a day, 23 days a month. Write one essay in January, two in February, three in March, and so forth until you write twelve in December. The possibilities are endless, but these kinds of goals become more meaningful to you because they are uniquely yours. 

Numbers Don’t Lie…

… but they also don’t tell the full story. An objective measurement forces you to confront it. If you didn’t write any days in February, the ‘0’ written in your monthly log makes you face the truth. However, it’s important to not let the numbers do all the talking. You may not have written in February because your mother was in the hospital and you were caring for her. Acknowledge you didn’t write, but recognize you were dealing with extenuating circumstances, and move forward without guilt. Don’t make excuses or fudge your metrics, but honor the fact that you’re human and not a machine.

Math is for everyone – writers included. Use numbers to your advantage and see where it takes you. If you do, I would love to hear the results!

Sara Gentry is a writer and Author Accelerator certified book coach with a Ph.D. in applied and interdisciplinary mathematics. She uses her problem-solving skills to help writers find the solutions they need to write books they love. Connect with her on Instagram, Twitter, and her website.

The post #5onFri: Five Ways Numbers Can Improve Your Writing Life appeared first on DIY MFA.

Amanda is a writer, book coach, and food writing columnist for DIY MFA. She began her career with acting and improv, she shifted focus to food writing which led to her being the first dedicated segment producer of Facebook Live for Time Inc.

While in that role, she oversaw more than 300 live segments and created the company’s Food Media Junket, bringing in James Beard award-winning and Michelin-Starred chefs for over a dozen food and lifestyle brands. These days, she helps food folks through the book writing process, helping them craft a story only they can tell. 

Her work has been featured by Cooking Light, Time, Southern Living, Food & Wine, and more. She lives in Nashville, but a piece of her heart will always belong in California.

In this episode Amanda Polick and I discuss:

• Why food writing can encompass so much more than just the “how-to” element.
• How to find your own voice and discover what is unique about you in your writing.
• The importance of challenging yourself as a writer and what you can learn in the process.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About Amanda Polick

Amanda Polick is a writer and book coach. After saying “see you later” to her acting and improv career, she fell into food writing which led to being the first dedicated segment producer of Facebook Live for Time Inc. There, she oversaw over 300 live segments and created the company’s Food Media Junket, bringing in James Beard award-winning and Michelin-Starred chefs for over a dozen food and lifestyle brands.

With over 20 years of storytelling experience and helping hundreds of writers, Amanda now guides food folks through the book writing process. She believes in using her clients’ work as a whole to craft a story only they can tell. 

Her work has been featured by Cooking Light, Time, Southern Living, Food & Wine, and she’s a food writing columnist for DIY MFA. Amanda lives in Nashville, Tennessee now, but a piece of her will be in California forever. 

You can find Amanda on her website.

Link to Episode 385

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 385: Life Lessons from Food Writing – Interview with Amanda Polick appeared first on DIY MFA.

Jeanette the DIY MFA Curriculum Unicorn (aka Curriculum Director) here. I’ve been a fellow word nerd since early 2018 when I ran across Gabriela’s Stop Dreaming, Start Doing video series. At the end of the videos, I flipped to the next blank page in the journal where I had furiously been scribbling notes and wrote down my biggest takeaway—Be the best learner as well as the best writer.

It was this sentence that inspired my deep dive into the DIY MFA curriculum and the three pillars: write with focus, read with purpose, build your community. Consideration for each of these areas is necessary to create a well-rounded literary life. 

Part 1: The Writing

I had just quit my steady job to become a full-time writer. I knew nothing about turning myself into a business or even what a professional writer even did every day—except write. It was obvious that if I wanted to make a living from my words, I had to get them out of my brain and into some publicly consumable form. 

But my first method for full-time writing was the equivalent of throwing pasta at the wall and seeing what sticks. I wrote short stories, blogs, chapters of various novels. I branched out into unfamiliar topics and genres. And at a certain point, when I looked back at all I had accomplished, I realized I had pieces of everything that amounted to almost nothing.

Without concentrating on a single project and putting my everything into it, I was left with half-hearted attempts nowhere near ready for publication. I needed the first pillar of DIY MFA—I needed to Write with Focus. To achieve this meant committing to a project, following through to the last page, and having a plan for what would happen with the piece afterward.

Put It Into Action: It’s okay to want to vary your writing, but you have to see the larger picture and how each individual piece fills in a space in your unique literary puzzle. If you’re just starting out, imagine the body of work you want to create, then craft your writings around this central image. As you contemplate each piece of writing, hold it up to your ideal image and ask yourself: How does it fit? Where is this leading me next?

Part 2: The Reading

As a kid, I could race through a 400-page book in a single afternoon. But after college, my love of reading began to wane and it was a struggle to read even a couple of books a year. I was still writing, but that too became more and more of a battle as I lost the creative spark so often felt after reading a particularly well-crafted chapter from a favorite author.

So when I saw the second pillar of DIY MFA was Read with Purpose, I groaned outwardly. Failure. I was sure this step would mean utter failure in my attempts at following the DIY MFA plan. But in her very Gabriela way, the great word nerd-in-chief convinced me that I could at least try and so I did.

I began devouring books on crafting characters and perfecting scenes. I stockpiled resources on style, grammar, and punctuation for further reference. And I finally picked up a novel and revisited my favorite authors to bask in their genius once again. To me, the second pillar of DIY MFA made reading easy because it became necessary, yet flexible at the same time. Until then, I hadn’t realized how much my writing truly needed the reading aspect in order to advance my own creative works.

Put It Into Action: The best part of DIY-ing this curriculum is that you make your own syllabus! List 5-6 books that could help you in your current project. These could be comp (competitive) titles that are similar in topic or theme or maybe use the same narrative structure or point of view as your book. In any case, they should be books that will give you insights as you work on your writing. Now, pick one book from your list and start reading!

Part 3: The Community

Writing may be a mostly solitary act, but editing and publishing sure aren’t. I knew being a full-time writer would require immersion into the broader writing community, both locally and globally. I started attending various writing and critiquing groups around town (back when getting together was a thing). I joined Facebook groups and grew industry connections on LinkedIn. Everywhere I turned, I tried to fit into the community of writers I found.

But after a time, I realized I was unhappy in some of these communities. Whether it be the focus of the group or its personality, I found myself pulling away from places I felt I should have been diving deeper into. And I had to ask myself, “why?”

What I had missed in the third pillar—Build your Community—was the idea of building only the right community. Critique is necessary, collaboration is necessary; but if you leave every writing group feeling downtrodden rather than inspired, it can mean you aren’t getting the right feedback or haven’t found the right people who will truly support you and help you grow as a writer.

Put It Into Action: Luckily, DIY MFA makes this pillar really easy to apply. If you’re reading this newsletter, technically you’re already part of an awesome writing community. Now that you’ve found the right community, you can reach out to fellow word nerds in a way that makes you comfortable. There’s the Facebook group Word Nerds Unite, or you can connect on Twitter and Instagram via #DIYMFA. Plus, we have something awesome planned for next week that will let you connect with this community even more.

A Complete Writing Life

These days, I live and breathe the three pillars as part of my role here at DIY MFA. And I must say, it has been a distinct blessing to help shape the very content that has impacted me so much. I didn’t actually know how much I needed Gabriela and DIY MFA until I had truly experienced these three pillars for myself. Without each of them, I would not have the full writing life that I enjoy today.

Get on the waiting list for DIYMFA 101 today!

Jeanette the Writer is an editor, coach, and freelance writer who wants to help others demolish their editing fears and finish their manuscript. As a former scuba instructor turned entrepreneur, Jeanette knows about putting in the hard work to pursue your passions. She has worked with authors, speakers, coaches, and entrepreneurs—empowering them with the right mindset, knowledge, and tools to help them tackle their editing goals. You can learn more about Jeanette by visiting JeanetteTheWriter.com. 

The post Beyond the Writing: How to Build a Well-Rounded Author Life appeared first on DIY MFA.

In fact, stress is vital for our personal and creative growth. Stress is a change agent; it’s what turns carbon into diamonds and caterpillars into butterflies, and it can have the same transformative effect on people.

Here are few things that stress can do for you:

Stress can… push you to achieve

People naturally take the path of least resistance. If we don’t have to work hard to overcome something, we’re not going to seek new challenges. Think of a time when a teacher, mentor or parent criticized you. Did you let them convince you that your work was worthless, or did you try to prove them wrong? If you made the second choice, you’ve used stress in a way that pushed you to achieve.

Stress can… teach you what is meaningful

No one likes to think about illness or death, but both of those stressors have a way of crystalizing life’s true meaning. Sometimes they can even galvanize you to act in an entirely new direction. I spent my four years of high school battling thyroid cancer, and while it certainly wasn’t fun, it gave me a strong understanding of the people and experiences that truly matter, and taught me never to waste time or opportunities.

Stress can… make your body healthier 

Whether you’re doing cardio, stretching, or lifting weights, you are putting stress on your body. The act of forming muscle or making limbs more flexible is a challenge to your physical being. But that challenge prompts your body to gather forces that literally strengthen the area you’ve exercised. Each successive exercise makes you stronger and healthier.

Stress can… make your mind healthier

Anything that opens or pushes your brain, whether it be a creative pursuit like writing or painting, or something more concrete like mathematics or puzzles, stresses your mind. But all of those things are necessary to keep your brain healthy and active. They’ve even been attributed to longevity.

Stress can…. affect change in the world

Without stress on our society, we are not prompted toward change. Who isn’t stressed over the current divisiveness of our political climate these days? The key is to take that stress and channel it in constructive ways, like committing to acts of kindness, or having thoughtful conversations about issues that matter.

Let’s go back to the negative products of stress: the anxiety, the tension, the depression. These are real effects, and should be taken seriously. If you’re feeling stressed, treat your body and mind with care. Get enough rest, and eat healthy foods. Take breaks to do relaxing things that you love. Use journaling to express your feelings. Try meditation, light therapy, or using essential oils. And make sure to talk about your stress and the feelings it causes with a therapist, or at least a trusted friend. Keeping a positive outlook on the ways the stress might change and grow you as a person can also help with the negative effects.

I think there should be another word for stress in the English language, one that has a positive connotation, so that we don’t get completely caught up in the difficult feelings it causes us. (The term “eustress” is supposed to have this meaning, but it’s not different enough from “stress” to remove the stigma, and also isn’t used widely outside academia.) Since I don’t have my “invent a new word” magic wand on me, I’ll just have to encourage you to think of stress differently. The next time someone says to you, “I’m stressed,” tell them, “That’s great! Maybe you’re about to turn into a butterfly.”

Leanne Sowul is a writer and teacher from the Hudson Valley region of New York. She’s the curator of the website Words From The Sowul and authors the “Be Well, Write Well” column for DIY MFA. She writes historical/literary fiction and memoir; her work is represented by Suzie Townsend at New Leaf Literary Agency. Connect with her at leannesowul(at)gmail(dot)com, or on Twitter @sowulwords.

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