Have you gotten the DIY MFA Starter Kit yet? This is a two week email series full of worksheets to help you DIY your MFA, so you can get the “knowledge without the college.” You’ll learn more about how to write with focus, read with purpose, and build your community. You’ll also receive Writer Fuel, our newsletter full of words of wisdom and resources to help you keep the momentum going in your writing. And you’ll be the first to hear about other fun goodies we only share via email. Best of all, it’s free to join! You can sign up with your email at diymfa.com/join.

In this episode I discuss:

• Why complacency is the enemy of personal and professional growth.
• The growing pains that come from failing better and why failure is so hard.
• How I embraced failure for an entire year, and how it helped me grow DIY MFA.
• The malleable nature of comfort zones, and why we must keep challenging ourselves.

Link to Episode 479

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to Apple or Spotify 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 479: Lesson 4 – Get Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable appeared first on DIY MFA.

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.

Of course, your journey won’t look exactly like anyone else’s—and that’s just how it’s meant to be! But understanding the journey that successful writers often go on can help us take the next steps, and by knowing what lies ahead, we may gain a bit of confidence to keep going. 

I’ve worked with hundreds of writers at all different stages, and these are the five stages of a writer’s career I’ve noticed. Where are you on this journey?

1.  Aspiring Writer

If you’re an aspiring writer, you’re probably making the shift from reader to writer, falling in love with the creative process, and discovering who you are as an artist. 

You may spend long hours in the library. Hopefully you’re reading every day, maybe taking notes along the way. You might be experimenting with different techniques, habits, and rhythms. 

You might be in a critique group or have a critique partner, someone to share their work with and get feedback from. 

You’re at the beginning of the writer’s journey, hopeful, excited, full of questions. This is the time to notice what energizes you. Practice your craft. Write freely. Bring a playful, curious spirit to your creative process. Soon you will be creating good work that feels original and true to your vision. 

But it’s not enough to write. 

You must begin to live as a writer. Read with intention. Befriend other creatives. Observe the world. Make time to listen to your inner wisdom, so you can develop your own unique perspective. Start to share your work with trusted friends and teachers. Work on smaller projects that will help you gain confidence, clarity, and courage. Think about what you can work on that will be so important and life giving that you will keep going even when you’re discouraged or burnt out. 

It’s common to want to rush to the next phase, but there’s so much to be learned in this stage of the writer’s career. Once you’re farther along the path, you won’t be able to return to this safe cocoon, so enjoy this moment.

2.  Debut Writer

You’ve published a book. You’re sharing your voice with the world and learning what it means to have a larger audience for your work. This is an exciting time in your journey. You’ve put in the work and built something you can be proud of. 

You’re building a community of people who support your work. You’re connecting with readers and learning how to navigate the publishing industry. 

You have overcome challenges and committed to your craft. And there’s so much more to learn. 

This is the time to be bold and focus your energy on marketing, while being mindful of the kind of work you want to be known for. Soon you’ll return to the writing life and explore your creativity more deeply. 

You may worry about how to replicate your success, but if you’re writing, growing, and building relationships, it will be easier than you fear.

3. Established Writer

You have developed a reputation as a writer and have several more amazing projects planned. Your readers are excited for your next book. Reviewers, editors, and librarians are enthusiastic about your work. 

You have so much to be proud of! 

You are building a multidimensional career. Now is the time to write more books, teach classes, host events, and offer critiques and consults. 

You’re expanding your network, services, and audience. While growth is good, it can be easy to get overwhelmed with deadlines and obligations at this stage. 

Even as you build your writer’s career, you still deserve to feel creative. You didn’t work this long to just make widgets that sell. You may long to do something more experimental. Follow that instinct! 

Enjoying the process, protecting your vision, and honoring your creative process will help you grow in ways you can’t yet imagine.

4. Creative Leader

Your career is vibrant and your impact is potent. You are stepping into a powerful role, leading conversations and movements across genres and mediums. Writers, editors, agents, reviewers, and readers look to you for inspiration and wisdom. People respect your vision and ideas. 

You bring your whole self to your work, and people respond passionately. You set the tone and spark conversations. 

You’re working across mediums and genres to make this world a better place. You’re doing work only you can do and learning how to live a creative life that’s sustainable and energizing. 

You are a leader. Treat your time, energy, and vision accordingly.

5. Legacy Builder

You are building a legacy that your grandchildren will be proud of. You are doing the work you are meant to do and finding satisfaction in the creative process. You’re sharing your wisdom generously through publishing and beyond. You are a supernova. 

You have accomplished so much. I know the intense work and focus it has taken to get to this place. But the best is still yet to come! 

Now it’s time to enjoy the beauty you have created and use your influence to make an impact that will last for generations. 

Give yourself space to grow. Build a retreat. Protect your energy. Pace yourself. Experiment. Wander. Daydream. Pour your heart into your work. 

You’re in a special place. Don’t waste a second worrying about what to do with this time. 

You know. Your whole life has been building to this moment. 

Make magic. That’s what you’re here to do.

Looking for more guidance on how you can take your writing career to the next level? Download The Writer’s Way. This free ebook is filled with prompts, exercises, solutions, encouragement, practical steps, and resources designed for each stage of the writer’s career.

Writer and editor Heidi Fiedler has worked on hundreds of books for clients ranging from Chronicle to Bravery Magazine. She does the deep thinking that’s needed to turn an idea into a book that delights and inspires. Whether it’s a poetic picture book, a zippy chapter book, or a kid-friendly take on the physics of time travel, the books she works on are quirky, playful, highly visual, and often philosophical. She also teaches masterclasses and workshops, coaches writers, and offers manuscript critiques that help writers grow and move forward with confidence and ease.

You can find her on her website or follow her on Instagram.

The post #5onFri: The Five Stages of a Writer’s Career appeared first on DIY MFA.

So I decided to make the most of that setback by pursuing something radically different that I had always wanted to do: write a novel.

Two years later, my debut novel, Bit Flip, is finally being published. It has been a long journey that felt daunting at first. But what I discovered along the way is that my time as a tech entrepreneur actually prepared me quite well for being a novelist. 

Although it felt like a 180-degree pivot at the time, I’ve come to recognize the striking similarities of the two occupations. Both are, essentially, typing words (or code) into a computer to create a product. Both are forms of entertainment. And both have discouragingly low probabilities of success.

Beyond those vocational similarities, I realized there were many lessons I learned as an entrepreneur that, somewhat unexpectedly, prepared me to be an author. I offer these learnings here because I believe they represent a unique perspective and perhaps different advice than most authors receive. 

Authors are taught to focus on their craft, that great writing will get discovered. Most don’t think of embarking on a career as an author like starting a business, but, in many ways, that’s exactly what it is. In short, they approach their writing careers like MFAs, not MBAs.

With that preamble, here are the 5 things I learned and practiced as an entrepreneur that directly translated to becoming an author. Hopefully, this will provide aspiring authors with an alternative mental framework for pursuing a career in writing—and maybe even encourage some entrepreneurs that becoming an author isn’t so farfetched.

1. Creating Something from Nothing

The core similarity between starting a company and writing a book is that, at the outset, they are only an idea in your head. Transforming that idea into something real requires tremendous vision, creativity, and tenacity. When founding a company, you have to have a thesis not only for what your product will be, but why customers will want to buy it and how it will be differentiated in the market. 

Writing a book requires the same level of passion, determination, and unwavering belief that you can bring your idea for a story to life in a unique and compelling way. Some writers plan out their story like a product manager writing a product requirements document, some writers just start writing like a coder who can visualize an entire software program in his head. 

Personally, my approach falls between these “Planner” and “Pantser” approaches—creating an outline that I frequently stray from along the way—but this part of the creative process is my favorite. Coming up with ideas for new products was what I loved about being an entrepreneur. And it’s probably my favorite part of being an author as well. 

Finding inspiration, refining your concept, and delivering that first, raw instantiation of your idea is like a drug, whether it’s starting a company or writing a novel. 

2. Obsessing Over Product

One of the most important practices I learned building software products is the ability to continuously refine your offering. 

It starts with a really rough version of your product (a “minimum viable product” in start-up lingo), which you expose to friends and family—your “alpha” users. Then you capture and incorporate their feedback into a next version of your product. 

As you broaden to a larger set of “beta” users, you analyze their usage, conduct user surveys, organize focus groups, run A/B tests, and capture feedback any way possible, which again gets incorporated into a next version, and a next, always improving. 

The same technique applies to writing a book. Many authors think of writing as a solitary exercise—words in your head captured on the page. But once your story is written, and ideally along the way, you need feedback from customers. 

Solicit as many early readers as you can. Be explicit about the type of feedback you want from them. Join writing classes and workshop your story with your peers. Hire professional editors to critique your work. 

Don’t be bashful. Candid criticism is invaluable. Listen to and incorporate their feedback. Obsess over getting it right. Let the market steer you toward a successful book, just as market research can steer an entrepreneur to a successful product. 

3. Investing in Yourself

Another critical lesson I took from entrepreneurship and applied to becoming an author is the willingness to invest in yourself. 

You need to have faith that the near-term income you are forgoing will be worth it, despite the long odds of success. When starting a company, you usually need to bootstrap it at the beginning, investing your own time and money to get the venture off the ground before raising capital from outside investors. 

Becoming an author requires a similar investment of time and money into the success of your books. Just as if you were starting a business, you need to know what you are willing and able to invest. How much income do you need? How much progress can you make writing on nights and weekends? Can you afford to write full-time? What other sources of income can you develop? Do you have a spouse or partner who can support you while you write? 

Be scrappy and efficient. Give yourself a budget and timeframe. Approach it in a financially sustainable way. Getting into financial distress will only set you back. Just like the entrepreneur who has built a meaningful equity stake for herself in her own business, the rewards—not only financial but emotional—for an author can be substantial. 

4. Building a Brand

As an entrepreneur, I spent as much time strategizing over sales and marketing as I did product. In business parlance, I focused on building a brand—from the corporate logo, to messaging and positioning, to user experience, to the “brand promise” communicated to customers. 

As I pivoted to writing, I learned that, just like building a brand for a company, you need to build an author brand. This discipline is one where I see many authors struggle. They view the “promotional” aspects of writing as a distraction or the job of their publisher. They underinvest in building a website, developing a social media presence, producing engaging content, publicizing their work, and the myriad other efforts required to build a brand. 

Even those who do invest in these tactics often lack a larger strategy. They aren’t thoughtful about what they want their author brand to represent. 

The best-selling authors all have clear brands. Their readers know what to expect, from the subject of their writing to the fonts on their covers, and that turns them into fans. 

If you’re not a best-selling author, then you need to build your author brand yourself. You need to look as professional and established as possible. You need to be conscious and consistent about what your author brand will be. 

Plot out the reader journey, from initial discovery, to social proof, to first-time reader, to 5-star reviewer, to loyal fan. This requires not just your book itself, but all the messages, reviews, media coverage, and other ancillary content that constitute a full-fledged brand.

5. Creating an Ecosystem

Perhaps the biggest lesson I learned as an entrepreneur that applies equally to writing is you can’t do it alone. Every entrepreneur needs to be scrappy at the beginning, usually mustering an initial product by themselves or with a small set of co-founders. But to scale that business up requires an ecosystem—investors, employees, partners, and others to grow it into a real business. 

Many first-time writers fall into the trap of trying to do everything themselves. While they recognize the need for an agent or publisher, they fail to develop the other complementary talent necessary for success. Becoming a successful author requires an ecosystem. 

Even if you are self-publishing, you need a developmental editor, copyeditor, proofreader, designer, cover artist, publicist, and other critical functions. 

Nobody possesses all the disparate skill sets necessary to launch a successful book. Even if you somehow did, the time required to perform all those functions yourself would mean you never publish. Just look at the acknowledgements page of any book—it’s a long list of people! 

Be thoughtful about all the additional resources and investments you need to make. Ask other authors. Get references and recommendations. Post projects on Reedsy. However you do it, having a team around you will result in a much better book and a much higher probability of success.

The process of becoming a published author has been incredibly rewarding. At the same time, it’s been unexpectedly familiar from my time as a tech entrepreneur. The thrill of people reading my book is nearly identical to the excitement of having those first customers use a product I helped build. 

I’ve come to see becoming a novelist less as the radical career change I first thought, and more as the latest chapter in my lifelong interest in entrepreneurship. A continuation of what I loved about founding tech companies, activating the same passion, creativity, and determination. 

I hope these learnings help you approach your career as an author more like an entrepreneur.

Mike Trigg is an author and former tech executive. His debut novel, BIT FLIP, comes out August 16 with SparkPress. Follow Mike on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads, or on miketrigg.com.

The post #5onFri: Five Ways Being an Entrepreneur Taught Me to Be an Author appeared first on DIY MFA.

Joyce Carol Oates has a surprising opinion. The most important writerly quality, she says, is not the ability to develop characters or structure plots. It’s not the presence of voice or the ear for flowing prose.

It’s energy.

But maybe that’s not a surprising opinion after all. As a writer, you’ve probably finished a writing session and felt physically and mentally drained. Or you’ve gotten home from a long day of work or study and you’ve lain on the couch, unable to muster the *energy* you need to write. 

“It takes a lot of energy to be creative.” – Austin Kleon, in Steal Like An Artist

“It takes great passion and great energy to do anything creative.” – Agnes De Mille, legendary American dancer and choreographer.

At ClimbWrite, we call this energy “writeforce.”

Writeforce is a fact of the craft. Whether you believe it comes from God or the muse or creative discipline, you can’t deny that some kind of energy fuels your writing. This fuel is vitally important, but few of us give it the attention it deserves. We focus instead on things like dialogue and “show, don’t tell” and killer opening pages. These are all important components of the craft, to be sure, but it doesn’t matter how many great things we load into the car if we don’t have gas in the tank.

That’s where writeforce comes in.

It’s every great writer’s accelerant, the amplifier of skill, and the ticket to your writerly dreams.

So … what exactly is it? Where does it come from? And how can you use it to take your writing from good to great?

Writeforce Component #1: Purpose

Have you ever been unmotivated to do a task at work or at home? You’re midway through brushing the grout or reorganizing a filing cabinet, and you say to yourself: “I don’t even know why I’m doing this.”

Being disconnected from your purpose is debilitating for your enthusiasm. So if you find yourself dragging your feet before a writing session, it might be time to check in with your purpose. Why do you write? What are you trying to achieve–either for yourself or for others–and why is that thing worthwhile?

Even if you’re already writing with gusto, knowing the answers to these questions can accelerate your productivity and your enjoyment.

How strong is your purpose? Take the free Writeforce Assessment below, see if you’re better or worse than average, and use your results to start improving your score … and your chances of reaching your writerly goals.

Writeforce Component #2: Self-Acceptance

Say you have to run a marathon. (Sorry ;D ) Would you rather run it in 10-pound (or dollar) trainers? Or in Nike Free Runs?

Same question goes for your writing. Would you rather write a novel from a place of self-doubt and self-criticism? Or from a place of confidence and excitement?

Self-Acceptance allows you to take off the lead-lined tennis shoes, to silence the critical voice in your mind, and write freely. It allows you not only to find your writerly identity–your voice–it also helps you find pride in that identity. So instead of spending your writeforce energy fighting off your self-doubt, you can spend it locking down your dream agent or hitting those bestseller lists.

Take the Writeforce Assessment to see how your self-acceptance score stacks up against your peers.

Writeforce Component #3: Autonomy

Some people are miserable at their job because of the 10-hour days. Then they quit and start their own business, and they’re happier and more engaged than ever … and they’re working 14-hour days. This is the energy-gift of autonomy, and it exists for writers too.

External pressures can hijack your creativity. Concerns about what is “commercial” distract you from what is interesting. Anxiety over what others will think prevents you from writing what you want to write. These things rob you of your creative autonomy, and the long days start to feel even longer.

Instead of letting external pressures drain you of your writeforce, be guided by your internal compass. It always points to your writerly goals.

Do you have creative autonomy? Or is your writeforce being held back by the external? Take the Writeforce Assessment to find out.

Writeforce Component #4: Positive Relationships

Have you ever wondered why there are so many people clustered around a boxer between rounds? It’s not because they can help throw punches against his opponent–the fight is a solitary endeavor. They’re there for support, for the fighter to draw strength from.

Sometimes writing can feel like taking a long series of punches. You can either nurse yourself back to health, spending a great deal of writeforce in the process, or you can lean on the people in your corner for support. These are your writer friends who understand what you’re going through, who’ve been in the ring themselves and know what the punches feel like.

You can also draw writeforce from people who’ve never fought–or written–a day in their lives. These people are your fans, and no matter where you’re writing or how difficult the work, they’ll always give you the electrifying energy of home-ring advantage.

Have you surrounded yourself with positive people who support your writing? Take the writeforce assessment to find out how you can grow your relationship writeforce.

Writeforce Component #5: Environmental Mastery

Picture yourself in a sailboat. You want to travel between your private tropical islands (we’ll assume this is after you’ve found great success with your writing ;D ). In scenario one there’s not a puff of wind, and when there is, it’s blowing against you. You go below deck to row. In scenario two the wind is at your back, the oars are stored away, and you’re on deck sipping Mai Tais in the sun.

Which scenario would you choose?

It’s an easy decision, but for many of us, the analogous decision is difficult. In our writing, we never stop to think about how to construct an environment that works for us instead of against us, that does not require writeforce energy to conquer but that gives us that very energy.

Do you know what kind of environment increases your writeforce? Have you constructed that environment for yourself?

Take the Writeforce Assessment to measure your environmental mastery. Then, stop rowing against the wind and use it to your advantage.

Writeforce Component #6: Personal Growth

“What a waste of potential.”

This phrase can be directed at anyone, but it almost always comes from parents or teachers or those involved in the lives of our young people. Is it cynicism or generational tension that produces this critique? Maybe a bit of both, but the deeper component comes from within. From experience.

We reprimand our juniors–indeed, we reprimand anyone who “wastes” his potential–because we know what it feels like to fall short of our own. It’s not a good feeling, knowing you could have finished with a better GPA or a higher certification, knowing that if you had only managed your time a little bit better, you could have gotten that promotion at work. Or maybe you’ve fallen short at home. You know that if you’d just tried harder, you could have been a better father or mother or daughter or son. This gap between your reality and your potential is a deadweight on your heart and mind. Your lack of effort to close that gap waters a seed of guilt inside you, and that guilt eats away at your writeforce energy.

Creating a cycle of personal growth will pull this guilt out at the roots.

Do you value personal growth and the energy it gives you? Or do you prefer the energy drain of stagnation?

Take the writeforce assessment to find out.

Perhaps now Joyce Carol Oates’s claim no longer seems so strange. Energy–writeforce–really is the most important writerly quality. It makes everything else you do easier. It’s the first domino in the line leading to a successful writing career. It’s the fuel in your writing vehicle. The analogies go on and on, but know this.

There are a million writing skills you can focus on, but there’s only one that bolsters all others: writeforce.

For a free, creativity-supercharging video course on how to grow your writeforce, click here.

Mason Engel is the Amazon-bestselling author of 2084, the director of bookish documentaries for public television, and the founder of ClimbWrite.com. ClimbWrite’s video courses are designed for fiction writers who are looking to supercharge their creativity and pen the next bestseller.
You can find him on his website or follow him on Instagram.

The post Writeforce: The Secret to Maintaining the Motivation—and Discipline—to Write appeared first on DIY MFA.

Find a Way to Separate the Two Activities

Remember Pavlov’s dogs? The goal here is to create a similar response in ourselves that switches our brain from work mode to creating mode. There are all sorts of tricks you can use to separate the two activities.

For example, Lori, our Operations Maven, changes both her medium and her physical location to signal a shift in the type of writing. Specifically, she switches from her desktop to her laptop or a pad of paper and moves from her office to her kitchen bar when she goes from writing for pay to writing for play. 

Like superheroes, you can also change your outfit when you transition from one thing to the next. Personally, I have a set of working shoes I wear during the day and then I switch to my writing slippers when I’m ready to get creative. 

Write What You Love

Be it for pay or for fun, you need to be writing about things you love. If your paid writing is far outside your sphere of expertise or you struggle to find joy in the topics you’re assigned, it’s going to be that much harder to bring up the will to write creatively after slogging through the day. Writing about subjects you love in both work and play can help ensure the creative juices keep flowing.

Find Your “Why”

Similar to knowing and writing what you love, finding your “why” goes deeper and asks what it is that motivates you to write in each of your chosen arenas. Has it been a dream since childhood to hold your book in your hands? Do you want to be known for amazing ad campaigns for top-notch companies? Sometimes the motivation is monetary and other times it’s based on recognition that comes with being published. Knowing why you write creatively and why you write as a job can help keep up motivation when the going gets tough.

Treat them Both Like Jobs

No matter how good of a writer you are, you only have so many hours you can dedicate to writing in a day, only so much mental capacity. Schedule your creative writing time in the same way you would schedule writing for your clients. Give your novel or memoir the same weight and importance as your money-making words. You might also gather “coworkers” for each type of writing in the form of critique groups or business co-working groups.

When it comes to branching out from fiction to writing for pay, there can be certain pitfalls. Writing is tough. Every writer runs into frustrations, boring projects, and going cross-eyed after staring too long at lines of text on a screen. But you can make it easier on yourself by following the tips above. 

Tell us in the comments below: How do you find balance writing for fun and writing for pay?

Jeanette the Writer is a freelance editor and writer based in Dallas, TX. When not at the computer, you can find her crafting, scuba diving, or posting pictures of her cats on Instagram. Visit JeanettetheWriter.com for more info and follow @JeanettetheWriter on Instagram and Facebook or @JeanettetheWrtr on Twitter.

The post How to Balance Your Fiction Writing with Writing for Pay appeared first on DIY MFA.

Catherine is a writer and journalist who has contributed to many media outlets, including Slate, Quartz, CNBC and NBC News. She is a frequent podcast and radio guest, with appearances on NPR and Lifehacker’s Upgrade. Catherine currently lives in Richmond, Virginia with her husband and baby son. Today we’ll be discussing her first book, Poe for Your Problems: Uncommon Advice from History’s Least Likely Self-Help Guru, which came out this past September.

In this episode Catherine Baab-Muguira and I discuss:

• How Edgar Allan Poe unexpectedly inspired her to write a book about mental health.
• Why she keeps her day job and how it helps her avoid literary snobbery.
• The value of learning to write good copy and the art of marketing your book.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About Catherine Baab-Muguira

Catherine Baab-Muguira is a writer and journalist who has contributed to, among others, Slate, Quartz, CNBC and NBC News. A frequent podcast and radio guest, with appearances on NPR and Lifehacker’s Upgrade, she lives in Richmond, Virginia with her husband and baby son. Her first book, Poe for Your Problems: Uncommon Advice from History’s Least Likely Self-Help Guru, came out from Running Press/Hachette in September 2021.

You can find Catherine on her website or follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Check out the Substack post Catherine wrote about the long, long journey to a book deal, and what her P&L statement looks like.

Poe for Your Problems

Of all the writers anywhere, Poe might be the least likely person you’d ever turn to for advice. His life was a complete dumpster fire: he married his cousin; got fired from one job after another; constantly feuded with friends and rivals; and he was always broke. But that’s also precisely the point. Though Poe failed again and again, he also persevered.

Drawing deeply on his works and life, Catherine Baab-Muguira takes the familiar image of Poe in a new and surprising direction in this darkly inspiring self-help book. Despite what you might think, Edgar Allan Poe is the perfect person to teach you to say “Nevermore, problems!” and show you how to use all the terrible situations, tough breaks, bad luck, and even your darkest emotions in novel and creative ways to make a name for yourself and carve out your own unique, notorious place in the world.

An inspirational tale for black sheep everywhere, Poe for Your Problems will teach you how to overcome life’s biggest challenges to succeed at work, love, and art—despite the odds and no matter your flaws.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 383

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If you liked this episode…

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In this episode, we mentioned a summit, which is now over. It will be housed in the DIY MFA Members HUB. To get on the waiting list for the HUB, click here.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 383: The Mashup as a Model: Lessons for Your Writing Career from Edgar Allan Poe – Interview with Catherine Baab-Muguira appeared first on DIY MFA.

In October 2020, two years to the month since I started writing for DIY MFA, my book, Doodling for Writers, released. It’s a tiny bundle of joy collecting a lifetime of my love of drawing, aimed particularly at helping writers let doodling into their writing life. This month I did my first online doodling workshop. As a teacher for 40 years, I’m more accustomed to in-person classes, but it was wonderful to share my doodle love with people in other places. Also, the webcam enabled me to do close-up drawing demonstrations, which made the intimate nature of my doodling practice more accessible to other people. I need to take some time now to figure out where this is going. Either way, I will doodle on.

Like everyone on the planet, I’ve been holed up at home since March pondering what matters.  Fretting about each breath. My generation was reared on shame, fed endless tripe about how we must always strive for more rather than be content with what we have. Especially women. And people of color. And queer folk. Or people without excess wealth. We were never enough. Or too much of the wrong thing. Either way, shame and discontentment with the self were in surplus.

I watch the generations that have come after mine and am hopeful for the future. They are my children. They are my students. My friends. They reject the burden of shame. They reject the myth of moreness. Of otherness. They embrace small joys. They are the Butterfly Effect.

What does any of this have to do with doodling?

Everything, really.

In April, I’ll turn 60, so I think I can say with certainty that it takes me a really long time to figure out how to live a joyful life. Doodling is what I do, what I’ve always done, to help me engage with a world that overwhelms me. It’s a tiny gesture that keeps me tethered to humanity. For most of my life I have not acknowledged the boundless wonder of drawing. It’s been a lifeline for me, yet I haven’t allowed myself to accept it as my calling, because, well, it’s such a trifle. Surely there were other things I should be doing. Like lamenting some unmet expectation. Or becoming someone real, like a doctor or a beauty queen. A person of value as determined by some mysterious other who knew better than me about how to be me.

Well, eff that.

I resolve to draw more. To mingle words with doodles. To explore the vast universe of small blank pages. I resolve to share my joy of doodling. To invite timid doodlers from time to time to join me on this grand adventure. I resolve to always be encouraging. I resolve that this is plenty enough to build a beautiful life for today and however many tomorrows I have left.

This post is an opportunity for me to say farewell as a regular columnist singing the praises of books with pictures. I’ve loved having a reason to give a deep read of the amazing books I’ve reviewed for this column, but 2021 needs to be about paring down my life so I can focus on living what’s left of it with joyful conviction. Not to be an ostrich, hiding from the world, but instead to strive to be the hummingbird that Dr. Wangari Maathai spoke of during her amazing life as an activist in Africa:

“We should always be like a hummingbird. I may be insignificant, but I certainly don’t want to be like the animals watching the planet go down the drain. I will be a hummingbird, I will do the best I can.”

I’ll leave you with some doodles from my book as a well wish that you resolve for 2021 to venture into the doodleverse and that you fret not one bit about drawing badly by mistake. Heed the wisdom of Miles Davis and Bob Ross. And me. And Doodle On!

Peace out!  

Poet/cartoonist, Rebecca Fish Ewan’s passion is mingling text with visual art, primarily in ink and watercolor, to tell stories of place and memory. Her hybrid-form work has appeared in After the Art, Brevity, Crab Fat, Survivor Zine, Hip Mama, Mutha, TNB, Punctuate & Under the Gum Tree. Her illustrations and essay, “The Deepest Place on Earth,” were published in the Literary Kitchen anthology, Places Like Home. Rebecca has an MFA in creative writing from ASU, where she has been a landscape design professor for 25+ years. Rebecca grew up in Berkeley, California, and lives with her family in Arizona. Books/chapbook: A Land Between, By the Forces of Gravity, Water Marks, and her new book, Doodling for Writers, which released October 2020.

The post Resolving to Doodle On appeared first on DIY MFA.

Sadly, I speak only one language – English – fluently. 

But life and opportunity will forever have their way. 

Let me tell you a story.

In high school, I was a serious student with college aspirations.  My class schedule was chockablock with college prep classes. I visited the guidance counselor regularly to ask what else I should be doing. Regular visits, each school year for three years. Every visit I was told that what I was doing was sufficient. That there was nothing else – no other classes, clubs, activities – I could do to improve my academic chances to get into college.

Two years later at my library job, I checked out books for a woman whose high school freshman daughter was studying to take her first AP exam. And with that interaction, I discovered a world of books for AP classes and CLEP exams. 

I also learned an open secret. Opportunities come not only through actively seeking them out but just as often from being open – watching and listening – to life and the people around you. 

Decades later and after a series of life-altering experiences, I got serious about writing. I joined AWP (Association of Writing and Writing Programs) and attended my first writing conference, AWP2018. I met novelist Diane Zinna, then the AWP Director of Membership Services, the second day of the conference at the AWP membership booth. She encouraged me to apply for their Writer to Writer Mentorship Program, which is free to AWP members.

I was accepted into the three-month mentorship in poetry on my first try. With that bit of providence, I learned another part of being open – action. 

A Hand Up

Mentorships are built – formally and informally – into academic study. Outside of academia finding a mentor can be difficult but not impossible. However, formal education is not always a viable option for everyone. You’re here at DIY MFA, so you know there are other ways to get education as well as mentorships. You can also get access to nonacademic mentorships through writing associations and other programs such as Pitch Wars and Author Mentor Match.   

But why is having a writing mentor a big deal? 

Having one fosters a more personalized and intimate study of your own work and your chosen genre of writing. A mentorship can deepen the range and skills needed to produce your best work. 

My Writer to Writer mentorship with poet Callista Buchen was affirming and enlightening. She answered craft and writing business questions. She critiqued my poems. We discussed other poets’ work. She also encouraged me to focus on three areas to expand my writing and my writing career: compile a poetry manuscript, apply for writers’ residencies, and collaborate with other poets.  

Working with Callista, I could see where the knowledge gleaned from my self-directed study fit into a writing career, into my writing career. 

At the same time, Diane Zinna, the mentorship’s creator, forged a community among all of my cohort’s mentees. The diversity of writers – age, ethnicity, writing experience/genre – encouraged us to share our work and try new things. It laid groundwork for me to try a budding Romanian-English translation project with fellow W2W cohort, poet Romana Iorga. 

Impossible Means I’m Possible

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

― Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

No matter where we are in this writing life, we’re all prone to fear and anxiety. (Lord knows, I am.) 

Fear makes it easy to retreat and label things as impossible or not for us. Reaching out can push us past the supposed impossibility of our dreams. When you stretch yourself and step into places, into work you think of as impossible, you’ll find much is within your grasp. You’ll find in the “impossible” your own version of “I’m possible”. 

Below is a small sampling of writing mentorships available. They are projected to operate during (and beyond) these viral times.

Emerging Translator Mentorship Program

Founded by former American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) board member Allison M. Charette, the Emerging Translator Mentorship Program was “designed to establish and facilitate a close working relationship between an experienced translator and an emerging translator on a project selected by the emerging translator.” The mentorship lasts for approximately nine months. 

Romance Includes You

This Harlequin-sponsored mentorship “offers aspiring romance writers from underrepresented communities the chance to work one-on-one with a Harlequin editor for a year on writing a romance novel and includes an offer to publish their book and $5,000 (US) to support their novel writing.”

SFWA Mentoring Initiative

Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America connects “emerging writers to each other and to established pros” to build community, share knowledge, and network. For SFWA members only, it is focused on professional development rather than artistic development.  

We Need Diverse Books Mentorships

WNDB offers an annual opportunity for eight aspiring authors to be matched with an experienced children’s book creator and receive individual support and feedback on a completed draft of a work-in-progress or your portfolio. The mentorship lasts one year. 

Resource websites

Mentorships and opportunities for mentorships often hide in plain sight. Many websites that regularly compile writing opportunities often include mentorships opportunities as well. The following websites either compile opportunities or feature articles about mentorship how-tos.

Galleyway   

Founded by New York-based writer Camille Wanliss as a resource to champion “diverse voices in literature, poetry, television, film and theater by spotlighting opportunities for writers of color.”  Mentorships, fellowships, and publication opportunities are added monthly.

The Practicing Writer 2.0

Reader, writer, and literary advocate Erika Dreifus edits/publishes the free (and popular) e-newsletter that features opportunities and resources for fictionists, poets, and writers of creative nonfiction.

Trish Hopkinson: A Selfish Poet 

Hopkinson offers poetry/writing resources including mentorships at her website. She also provides a list of other websites with poetry/writing and submitting resources. She is also a Writer to Writer mentee from Fall 2019.

Writer’s Knowledge Base

Curated by cozy mystery author Elizabeth Spann Craig, Writer’s Knowledge Base is a search engine of over 40,000 articles on all aspects of writing.

Apply for mentorships whether you believe you’re ready or not. And write in the meantime; write regularly. Habit is the best tool against fear and self-limitation. If an established mentorship isn’t for you, set up your own mentorship. 

Your love for writing will have led you to or along the fringes of other writers and/or writing groups. Is there a writer (or possibly writers) in the group whose work you admire? 

After you’ve thought out what you’d like to learn from them, ask if they would be willing to share craft techniques and writing wisdom with you. If they agree, you can discuss how much or little time they’re willing to work with you.  

A mentorship requires work from you. Ask questions AND listen…a lot. Take advantage of the mentor’s experience by asking these two questions: What questions should I be asking to get the best from this experience? What questions would you ask if you were me?

No worries if you don’t remember to ask these questions. You might be too overwhelmed with processing the incoming information to ask anything other than procedural questions. However, there’s no time limit on asking. Leave space for you to reconnect with your mentor(s) and to ask more questions. Whatever information you gather later will always be of help to you and give you wisdom/knowledge to share with other writers.   

Whether you find a mentor or decide to be your own mentor, now is as good a time as any. Don’t be afraid to take a path you never thought of traveling. I promise it can and will make all the difference in your writing life.

Who knows what paths will open for you?

Brenda Joyce Patterson is a poet, writer, librarian, and lover of short writing forms. Her poetry and flash fiction have been published in Vayavya, Gravel Magazine, and Melancholy Hyperbole. Along with works by Maya Angelou, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Alice Walker, her travel essay “The Kindness of Strangers” appeared in Go Girl: The Black Woman’s Guide to Travel and Adventure.

The post How to Establish a Literary Mentorship appeared first on DIY MFA.

You’re probably already familiar with at least a few authors who write under a pen name or pseudonym. J.K. Rowling and J.D. Robb are a couple big names that immediately come to my mind. But you don’t have to be an international best-selling author in order to use a pen name. 

Sometimes, writing under different names is a good way to separate work in completely unrelated genres. Additionally, it can separate different author personas or brands. For example, I write and publish poetry, blogs, and academic papers under my legal name “Manuela Williams.” For my work in self-published romance, I use a pseudonym. 

These pen names, or author personas as I like to call them, differ in voice and content. When I post content as my romance pen name, I adopt a sassier tone more suited to the genre. This differs from the tone I use when sharing poetry, blogs, or academic writing, where “sassy” doesn’t really fit that particular work.

Using a pen name can also make social media and marketing a lot easier. I don’t have to worry about driving away or confusing readers of my academic work by posting pictures of shirtless romance heroes every other day. 

Here are some other reasons you might write under a pen name: 

1. Privacy. If you’re a private person and don’t want friends, family, and/or coworkers to know about your work, then writing under a pseudonym would be a good option for you. 
2. Branding. If, like me, you write in unrelated genres, then creating separate pen names can make branding a lot easier. For example, the kind of content you share on Facebook can vary widely depending on whether you write romance or self-help books. Posts that might be appropriate for a romance author might be seen as completely inappropriate in a different genre.
3. Preventing Confusion. If you have a very common name or share the name of another author, then it might be beneficial to use a pseudonym to prevent confusion. 

While it’s perfectly legal to write under a pen name, it’s important that you aren’t using it as a way to get out of pre-existing contracts or to conduct any other shady business. A pen name will not protect you from the consequences if you’re caught. 

Some authors choose to go through the copyright registration process for work published under their pen name. I have personally never done this, but if it is something you’re interested in, I would strongly recommend reading this helpful FAQ from the U.S. Copyright Office or contacting a lawyer to discuss your options.

Now that you have a basic understanding of the “when and how” of pen names, let’s take a look at some tips for creating and managing one or multiple pen names. 

Research Your Pen Name Before Claiming It

Before creating social media accounts and purchasing a custom domain name, it’s crucial that you do your research first. Google each of the pen names you intend to use to make sure they aren’t already being used. Never use the name of someone famous. And try to avoid using the name of a real person. When I was researching a potential pen name, I found that a fairly prolific business coach had the same name, so I chose a different one. 

Be Honest When Crafting An Author Bio

An author bio is an important aspect of your brand and is a must-have, whether you’re using your real name or a pseudonym. Even though you are technically embodying a “fake” persona when you use a pen name, you should never outright lie to your readers. This means that you shouldn’t include credentials or accomplishments in your author bio that you haven’t actually earned. An example of this would be claiming that you have a PhD in your author bio when, in reality, you don’t.  

This same concept can be applied to author photos. Many authors who use a pen name choose to use a logo in place of an author photo on their website or other places, like Amazon. You should never use an image of someone who isn’t you. Don’t just take a random photo you find on a stock photo site (or worse: Google images) and pretend that it’s you.

Remain Consistent 

Consistently use your pen name on the cover of your books, as well as on your website, newsletter, and author social media accounts. If you’re pitching editors, use the name that you want to be published under. However, when filling out contracts, you should always use your real, legal name. 

Establish Your Boundaries

It’s always a good idea to establish boundaries, especially if you plan on being active on social media or sending out newsletters under your pen name. How much are you willing to share? Some authors share and link to their other pen names. Others (like me!) are more private and keep their pen names completely separate and secret. The choice is yours. Ultimately, you should do what makes you feel the most comfortable. 

Choosing to write under a pen name is a personal choice with no right or wrong “answer.” You might find it easier to keep all of your writing projects under one name. Or you might enjoy maintaining a separate pen name for each genre you write in. Happy writing! 

Manuela Williams is a Reno-based writer. She is the author of Ghost In Girl Costume, which won the 2017 Hard To Swallow Chapbook Contest, and her second poetry chapbook, Witch, was published by dancing girl press & studio in 2019. When she’s not writing, Manuela is busy drinking coffee and spending time with her blind Pomeranian, Redford. You can connect with her on LinkedIn and Pinterest.

The post How to Create and Manage a Pen Name appeared first on DIY MFA.