From time to time, you should take stock of your life for situations that no longer serve you or your writing, then let them go. Even activities you once loved. Doing so will help your creative process overall.
Recently, I shared how I’ve given up the last of my regular guest posts on huge writing blogs. The decision was not done lightly, but was necessary to gain more time personally and professionally. That thought process has made me reevaluate my whole world. You should do the same, because…
Less is more for your writing process. As in, more time, energy and happiness.
Who doesn’t want more of that?
1. Less Wasted Time = More Writing Time
This one should be obvious, but I’d stretched myself too thin once again. I was serving on three nonprofit boards (one is plenty), I was a regular guest-poster at too many other blogs, my list went on and on. Cutting back was tough because I enjoyed them all, especially guest blogging. Connecting with other writers is the best!
But, even the guest posts took too much time away from my novels — publishing Pennies from Burger Heaven in January 2016 and finishing its sequel. They were priority #1 in my writing life. Something had to give.
You can’t always let go of other responsibilities. If you’re an entrepreneur working 60 hours each week, you can’t ditch that to write full-time. However, when you go home and play Minecraft for hours to unwind, you could be working on your story instead.
See the difference? No, it’s still not as much time as you’d like for the page, but some is better than none. Think small steps.
Even when you cannot let go of challenging situations: raising a special needs child, a terminal family illness, mountains of debt, you can let them stop defining you. The mental shift makes a tremendous impact.
However, most of us just procrastinate: too much TV, social media, or reading books in your genre in the name of research.
To Do: Look at where you’re procrastinating, then ditch one time-sucking activity.
2. Less Clutter = More Energy for Your Stories
I don’t tend to do spring cleaning. My soul seems to crave clearing away junk in the fall.
Last fall, I opened my bathroom drawer on a Saturday morning to pull out the toothpaste. Before I brushed my teeth, I opened all three drawers and the cabinet beneath the sink, then took out everything. My husband still sat in bed drinking coffee and gave a wounded cry because he knew what I was doing.
I ignored him and plopped myself on the floor. After wiping each drawer clean, I put back what I wanted to keep, made a pile of his things to see what he still wanted, then threw away the rest.
It felt amazing. This is totally woo-woo and I don’t understand it, but when you free up your outer space, it gives you more inner space.
That helps your writing.
I wish I could ship my family away for a week to tackle our entire house on a more regular basis, but we live in this little place called Reality, so that’ll never happen.
I’ll do the best I can with five minutes here and 10 minutes there. Not even every day, just when the spirit moves me.
WARNING: Do not turn this process into yet another way to avoid writing.
To Do: Give away one thing you no longer want, need or use.
3. Less Stinkin’ Thinkin’ = More Creative Energy
I’d fallen back into old, destructive thought patterns. I’m talking way beyond fiction, I mean real life here. The wheels of my mind spin when I’m alone: waking up anxious in the middle of the night, while washing the dishes or driving my car. One more time, I was trying to control the uncontrollable.
* Does she not see how her alcoholism is destroying her?
* He’s making a terrible mistake by marrying her.
* The executive director on my new board may be evil. I should confront her at the next meeting and save the organization.
News flash! You cannot change other people and the mental energy wasted does nothing but drain you. Focus on what you can change. The next time you’re thinking a negative thought, flip it over into a more positive one.
My happiness began returning by doing this simple trick. Better yet, I started spending that time thinking about my plot and characters, so my next writing session is more productive.
To Do: Try to let go of an obsessive thought hurting you.
Good luck to you on your creative journey.
What do you need less of in your life to give your writing more?
Please leave a comment. I’d love to chat.
Pick up your FREE copy today of the mystery, The Moon Rises at Dawn (SkipJack Publishing). Read, enjoy, repeat.
Your post reminded me of Curly’s advice to Mitch in “City Slickers”:
CURLY: Do you know what the secret of life is? {Hold up one finger} This.
MITCH: Your finger?
CURLY: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don’t mean s*it.
And the old KISS rule: Keep it simple, silly.
Every addition to our lives does not simply add complexity to our lives; it _geometrically_ increases the complexity of our lives. However, whittling down to a simpler life is, well, complicated.
Bruce!
It’s been YEARS since I saw City Slickers, but I LOVED that movie, so you’re talking my lingo! Your example was brilliant. Simpler is better, but getting there, as you aptly pointed out, is quite complex.
Life, like writing, is a process, not an event. BTW, deleted your email address in your comment. I’ve got you covered. Thanks for your great insights.
“That executive director on my new board may be evil. I should confront her at the next meeting and save the organization” . . . *Laughing so hard–but feeling your pain.* Lots of good insights/advice here, but really related to the need to stop giving mental energy to worry about things, SADLY, we actually are powerless to change: other people.
Thanks!
Glad I gave you a chuckle, Ev (although that person TRULY is evil). We are soooo powerless to change other people. We (me, in particular) need to focus on what we change: OUR thoughts and OUR actions.
It was sad, identifying-with-you, wry laughter. 😉 Sociopaths (and worse) really do walk and work among us. It’s horrifying. 🙁 But we are powerless, as you say . . . so stepping away is sometimes the best (only?) option.
you have given me a reason to clean today – when I first moved into my new place it had the feel or a writers paradise. I was single and living in a one bedroom. I dont have dinner parties or entertain so my days are filled with plenty of time to write. So when I moved in my desks were arranged in a way that energy was flowing productively and things were getting accomplished. Then fast forward to having surgery on my foot and I had to rearrange so a wheel chair to get around allowing me to still write while I am recovering.
Now that I am able to walk more I am feeling a disconnect with my space and want to reestablish the positive energy flow once again. So not only right now is my space not the way I want it room arrange wise but clutter that distracts me wise as well. Even though I am still relying on my chair when therapy has been too much I want to produce the energy I need to get back to writing instead of thinking “this needs cleaned or tat needs moved. ” Soon I’m hoping to get that, because not having that leaves me not only uncomfortable unproductive but also filled with inner chaos and anxiety.
You 100% get it, Debr! Okay, so you need your wheelchair some of the time, but you also need to rearrange back towards a writer’s paradise again, so you’ll be 🙂 again. You have an AWESOME day ahead of you because you UNDERSTNAD decluttering works.
Good luck and keep me posted!
Yes, yes, a huge high-five to this post! Recently, I’ve fallen into a habit of procrastinating which kept me from finishing any writing project. I didn’t know what I was doing wrong, until I read this post… It seems I’m spending too much time browsing around a specific Tumblr blog, centered around the Myers-Briggs theory (whoa, see here how useful this activity is!) and whenever a scene got tough to write, I whispered to myself: “Oh, who cares, let’s check the new updates of this blog, and THEN I’ll write.” Yeah. Sure. I think you guessed already that the THEN never came.
Moreover, point 3 really resonated with me. It seems that the writing life, and life in general, is a game of ups and downs. One minute you’re confident, the next it goes away. What we must learn to do, as you pointed out, is to ignore the negative thoughts and write anyway.
Thanks for the fabulous post! You are so encouraging, you totally change my life (in a good way)! 😉
Yahoo, Natasha. I’m so glad I’m changing your life (in a good way)! That Myer’s Briggs blog is something I would TOTALLY do. See? This is educational. It’s GOOD I’m paused in my writing to check this out. Ha. Procrastination is procrastination.
What you said about ignoring the negative thoughts and writing anyway reminded me of an interview with a traditionally-published author whose name I’ve forgotten. He talked about his good days and bad days with writing, the struggle and the doubt. He kept showing up and doing the work, day after day. When he held the finished product — his published novel in his hands, he couldn’t tell the difference between the good/bad writing days anymore. He polished it all out.
Our jobs are to just suit up, show up and tell our stories.
I, too, realize that so many distractions abound in e-mails, blogs and face book. It seems I have a habit of tackling these sites as I want the computer to be cleaned up first, and then I can write to my heart’s content. Unfortunately, the e-mails keep coming and I need to turn a blind eye to its allure. Life is more than being chained to the computer, although I have to use it for my writing. My work in process is ambling towards the end and I want to make it very riveting to the reader. I have slowed down trying to make each word and sentence perfect, but that’s not gonna happen and I need to write out the scene and deal with it later. Thanks for your tips and now I’m off to my writing.
Good luck with making it to the end of your novel. The emails, blogs and distractions never stop, so we just have to do the best we can to write first, then attend to that later. Or, let yourself delve into cleaning up your computer for 5-10 minutes, then write. Whichever way works best, we just have to remain vigilant that it can turn into procrastination if we let it.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Marcy, I totally get this. And I meant to write sooner, after reading one of your last guests posts, because while I will miss your words there, I understand. Sometimes it becomes too much. Life gets in the way and we have to prune, scale back. I wish you the best of luck with your books, and I can’t wait to read more on this blog about your writing journey. Thank you as always for the wonderful advice.
Great to see you, Dana.
I really like that analogy of pruning and scaling back. That makes these changes sound almost lovely, although they feel quite painful at times. Still, I KNOW I’m doing the right thing on my quest for less.
I also appreciate your excitement for my books. Good luck with your writing as well!
Marcy – sounds like your writing my biography. I have so many tasks out there (most of them can wait or be eliminated) many of which relate to writing. Combined with these tasks and my fear of putting in hours of time writing when it may not amount to anything, and my perfectionism complex, I don’t accomplish very much if anything, on most days. Pitiful to say, and what makes it worse is I’m retired. That, however, changed and hopefully will continue to change as I decided last week to make my writing projects the # priority each morning. After only 4 days I wrote more on my current short story (will probably end being a novella) than I had in the past six months! That will be the subject of a future blog, but more on that later. I had training on this concept when I was working a real job – handle each “piece of paper” only once. If there is a task or an email out there you haven’t handled in more than (x days/months), delete it because it obviously has little to no importance. I still am not at that stage but at least I’ve taken the first step!! I always read your posts because they will always apply to what I go through each and every day.
Wow, Jack! Your comment made my day — accomplishing more in the past four days than the past six months?! That’s amazing. Keep up the good work!
WARNING! Your perfectionism seems quite strong. Don’t be shocked it you say, “Man! I’ve written first thing every morning for the past month.” Then, you start to fall apart. That’s just fear trying to sabotage you.” Keep going, keep writing.
Thanks for always being such a faithful reader/commenter to Mudpie Writing. I really appreciate you!
My pleasure, Marcy – always glad to contribute to a great blog . . . today I logged almost 5 1/2 hours writing on two projects and perfection wasn’t an issue – hopefully it will stay that way! 🙂
Good job, Jack. In case, perfectionism does return, you know the key — ignore it. Turn your brain off and your fingers on. Keep writing. Good luck!
According to the people I know, turning my brain off is a “no-brainer!” LOL
This is all so true, Marcy! The main reason for me taking a nine month break from the novel I’m working on was that no matter how hard I tried to make time for it, by working two weeks ahead in planning my posts for my regular site. It wasn’t working and had to give. The manuscript not only needed my time, it deserved it too! Plus it won’t earn anything while it remains unwritten! Six weeks or so on from prioritizing that, and working the other posts a month ahead, my coauthor and I have just ‘signed off’ on the fourth chapter of the draft. I’ve got other must-do tasks that might take up a few days now, but even if I can’t get the next chapter completed this week, I will devote some time to it and get it moving, even if it means working late.
I agree with you that our books won’t get read or earn anything even they remain unwritten. Good luck getting back to your chapters. To me, the book is priority #1 above all else: blog posts, social media, etc.
So true! I’m not sure if you’ve realized, but the attribution on the post when shared via the twitter button isn’t linking to you (Mudpie Writing), but instead to a totally different @marcy. I only realized when I clicked to see it after my tweet was favorited.
Oh, my. I didn’t realize that. Thanks for telling me (technology, grrrrr). 🙂
No problem! I always tweet your articles so I don’t lose them, but it was the first time I’d checked the attribution. Grrr
So, I was going through my inbox, which is too packed (daily) to ever get a handle on, and I came across this post. The first and last are absolutely the ones I need to work on. The second? My family begs me to stop going through, cleaning, re-organizing, and donating to charity. But I can’t. Clutter makes me anxious. Useless things drive me batty, and living with a house full of happy packrats is not the picnic it sounds like! I’ve been working on both #1 and #3, and I see some (small) improvement. Here’s hoping I can pick up these good habits sooner rather than later. Thanks for another great post, Marcy!
Hey Adan,
I like with packrats, too, so I hear you. You’re like me. We both need to just take a deep breath and RELAX. We get it all done, it’s just a challenge to do so without torturing everyone under our roof (including ourselves). Just keep at it (writing, decluttering, positive thinking), one day at a time.
I was listening to an address this weekend by a religious leader, He said an old pilot named Hales once told him, “When you can no longer do what you have always done, then you only do what matters most..”
That sort of applies here, doesn’t it?
Happy the person who does just what matters most, BEFORE we get to the “can no longer do…” stage.
Bob Ranck
WOW, Bob. That’s a very profound statement you heard this weekend. I plan to hold onto that. Thank you!