The 7 Secrets of the Prolific Writer's Block (16 page)

1
A super-prolific writer, by the way. According to Wikipedia, “He is attributed some 3,000 sonnets, 3 novels, 4 novellas, 9 epic poems, and about 1,800 plays ... at least 80 of his plays are considered masterpieces.”

2
Dwight Garner, “A Writer’s Prayer, Halfway Answered,”
New York Times
, August 3, 2010 (www.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/books/04book.html).

B
eyond mentors, most prolific writers rely on “concentric circles” of support starting with critique partners and expanding out to an engaged audience. Please note that the descriptions below are generalizations—not everyone will fall neatly into one category, and not everyone in a category will provide the same help. Be flexible in your expectations.

You call your
critique partner
(a.k.a., critique buddy) when you’re having a tough writing day, had a tough rejection (or a wonderful acceptance!), or for help with a writing- or publishing-related problem. You also commit to sending her work on deadline—and she kindly but firmly calls you on it if you’re late. And, finally, you send her work to review.

Being a critique partner is a serious commitment. Typically, two simpatico writers will fill this role for each other, and communicate frequently—in some cases, daily.

Please note that while some critique partners (and workshoppers, etc.) can act as mentors, many mentors do not want to be critique partners. “Important” mentors are often more interested in helping you strategize, plan, and problem-solve than in providing detailed manuscript critiques or emotional support. (They may also not be suited for those tasks.) Teachers, of course, have an obligation to span both roles, but often don’t.

Workshoppers
provide manuscript critiques and problem-solving in a classroom- type setting. Workshops typically provide less individualized emotional support and problem-solving than critique partners, although what support they do provide can be invaluable. The tenor and usefulness of a workshop is usually determined by the teacher or leader, and writers who find a good one often stick with him for years.

Workshops are also common places where people find critique partners.

Most writers have a small group of “
alpha readers
” who are the first people they show their work to after their critique buddies and workshoppers. These could be other writers or “civilians.” A diverse alpha reader pool is a huge asset, particularly for writers aspiring to a large audience: it’s illuminating—and, sometimes, career-saving—to have your work critiqued from various age, gender, religious, ethnic, national, regional, and other viewpoints. I once was saved from sending out a manuscript with an ethnic slur in it when someone older read it. The slur wasn’t in common use among my generation, but it leaped out at anyone older.

You probably don’t want too many alphas—around ten is a good number—and you should only choose people whom you trust not just to give good feedback but to keep your manuscript confidential. In workshops, it’s usually explicitly stated that manuscripts are confidential; you need to explicitly tell your alphas the same thing, and maybe print your copyright and confidentiality information on each page.

Think carefully before using family members as critique partners or alpha readers.
In many cases, they aren’t qualified, and in others—say, if your manuscript is about your family, or touches on controversial themes—the critique partner or alpha reader role conflicts with the family role. In general, if your family isn’t fully sympathetic to your work, if they give too-harsh criticism, showing them early drafts is counterproductive.

Beta Readers:
Some writers, after making the revisions suggested by their alpha readers, send their manuscript to a much bigger pool of beta readers. Again, aim for diversity, and at this point it might make sense to include some sympathetic and savvy family members.

Needless to say, everyone in
all
of the above categories should be (1) enthusiastic about your work and (2) capable of giving constructive criticism.

Finally, we come to your
audience
. It’s hard to write when you don’t have one, or can’t envision one, so you need to create one for yourself using marketing and sales (Section 8.8). The idea that audiences happen spontaneously, say in response to “excellent” or “timely” work, is perfectionist (Section 2.5): most audiences are built over years and decades.

One of the joys of authorship is being able to touch people emotionally and intellectually. Especially now in the Internet age, many of those whom you touch will be motivated to contact you, which is overall a good thing. Some may become part of your alpha or beta teams, while others can help with marketing and sales. Treat your audience members with courtesy and appreciation, respond at least briefly to their notes, and add them (after asking permission) to your mailing list.

If you get to the point where reader correspondence becomes burdensome, take that as a sign of success. (It means you’re inspiring a lot of people, and it’s a good problem to have!) See Section 4.8 for help with establishing boundaries and Section 4.9 for tips on dealing with email overload.

The negative side of the Internet is that it’s also easier for people to send abusive messages. Ignore those unless they contain a threat or are otherwise scary, in which case you should call the police.

Day Job Boss and Coworkers.
As discussed in Section 4.6, a key difference between prolific and underproductive writers is that the former manage their day job in such a way as to minimize its impact on their writing. Typically, this means working part-time, and on a schedule that reserves your most energetic and alert hours for your writing.

This is yet another situation where you must (a) articulate your needs and (b) collaboratively problem-solve, and in order to do those steps you must first come out to yourself and others as a writer (Section 6.6).

I’ve twice gotten day-job bosses to give me the schedule I wanted: once gaining a three-day workweek that left four days a week for writing and home life, and another time gaining an afternoons-only workweek that left mornings free for writing. I’ve also coached other writers on how to do it, and without exception they’ve received more support and cooperation than they anticipated. Many people, it turns out, are happy to help us pursue our dream.

So don’t assume your boss won’t be flexible on your schedule. If, however, he is—or if you’re even afraid to bring up the topic of your need of a new schedule—it’s time to look for another job. Visit www.hillaryrettig.com and download my free ebook 
It’s Not You, It’s Your Strategy
for tips on how to look for a job effectively.

Yes, looking for another job is hugely unpleasant. But if the alternative is never having quality time to write, then staying where you are should not be an option.

Agents and Editors.
In Chapter 8, I advocate for self-publishing as a strategy for avoiding the kinds of unequal and/or exploitative business relationships endemic to publishing. If you choose not to follow this advice, be careful to only work with agents, editors, and others who are compassionately objective and have a basic sense of fairness and egalitarianism. Although this advice may seem idealistic, it’s actually highly pragmatic: most successful writers, along with successful people in every field, know that unequal partnerships tend not to succeed.

It takes a special kind of agent or editor to not succumb to a sense of superiority or entitlement when sitting at the “top” of an inequitable system, but they’re out there. You’ll know you’re in a healthy and productive business partnership if it embodies most or all of the qualities of empowered careers described in Section 8.5.

Chapter
4

“Being in a hurry decreased [helping behavior] ... ethics becomes a luxury as the speed of our daily lives increases.”

—John M. Darley and C. Daniel Batson, “‘From Jerusalem to Jericho’: A study of situational and dispositional variables in helping behavior.” In:
Readings About the Social Animal
, 7th Ed. (Elliot Aronson, ed.), New York: Freeman, 1995.

I
n 1973, social psychologists John Darley and Daniel Batson asked forty students at the Princeton Theological Seminary to write and record a sermon. Half were given the topic of career planning for seminary students. The other half were asked to sermonize about the Good Samaritan parable in which a priest and an aristocrat (“Levite”) callously ignore a wounded and suffering man on the street, while a humble Samaritan stops to help.

After the students had prepared their sermons, some were told that they had plenty of time to get to the nearby building where they would be recording, some were told that they were right on time, and some were told they were late and had to hurry.

Here’s the diabolical part: as each seminarian walked (or ran, in the case of the late ones) to give his sermon, he encountered a confederate of the experimenters who was lying on the ground, coughing and moaning in obvious distress.

He was being confronted with the Good Samaritan scenario in real life.

I’ll let Darley and Batson describe the result:

Subjects in a hurry were likely to offer less help than were subjects not in a hurry. Whether the subject was going to give a speech on the parable of the Good Samaritan or not did not significantly affect his helping behavior.

And (as if that weren’t bad enough):

Indeed, on several occasions, a seminary student going to give his talk on the parable of the Good Samaritan literally stepped over the victim as he hurried on his way!

The experimenters concluded that “ethics becomes a luxury as the speed of our daily lives increases.” In fact, it’s not just our ethical capacity that diminishes when we’re rushed; many important capacities do, including our abilities to think, judge, decide, focus, remember, and relate. Moment by moment, when we’re rushed, we’re simply not the people we’re capable of being.

A related problem is that many rushed people don’t get enough sleep—and fatigue also degrades our capacities, often in dangerous ways. Sleep-deprived people have more car accidents
1
, and they also get sick more often.
2

The antidote for all this rushing around is time management, a practice that is particularly important for writers not just because writing often represents an additional major commitment on top of an already-busy life, but because creativity requires a freedom of mind and spirit that is hard to achieve in the midst of a crowded schedule. Put another way: writers need lavish time not only to write, but to think, and experience, and feel.

Because there’s a lot of misinformation about, and confusion around, the concept of time management, it’s important to define just what it is and isn’t. Time management isn’t about working around the clock, or at some otherwise perfectionist defined level of “maximum” productivity: it’s actually the opposite of that. The goal of time management is to align, as much as possible, your actions with your values. Time management mandates that you get honest about who you are and what’s important to you, and then to make choices based on that assessment, and not out of guilt, shame, obligation or convention. It is strictly grounded in reality, and forces you to acknowledge basic facts, such as that you have limited time, energy and other resources, and can’t be in two places at once.

Time management is a tool for creating peace, success, joy, and impact.
A good time manager is likely to be busy, but not crazy or stressed. She
3
shows up for meetings on time or early, and is well prepared. She completes her work on time, and to a high degree of quality. She has plenty of time for her relationships, health, relaxation, and fun—and also to invest in others, including wounded strangers.

She feels great about herself and her work—and, because of this, she is a natural leader who attracts and influences others.

The hardest parts of time management are the accountability, and the need to make tough choices as to how your time will be invested—but in the end, these will seem like small prices to pay for the benefits.

1
DrowsyDriving.org, a Website of the National Sleep Foundation, n.d. (drowsydriving.org/about/facts-and-stats/).

2
Penelope A. Bryant, John Trinder and Nigel Curtis, “Sick and Tired: Does Sleep Have a Vital Role in the Immune System?,”
Nature Reviews Immunology
4, 457-467, June 2004 (www.nature.com/nri/journal/v4/n6/abs/nri1369.html).

3
In this section, I dispense with the alternating gender pronouns and use only the feminine, since even in many “egalitarian” households women are still disproportionately responsible for childcare and housework, and thus face a stronger time-management challenge. Also, women often have more trouble than men with the techniques discussed in this section, including prioritizing their own needs.

T
he practice of time management is not difficult: you budget and track your time as you would any valuable limited resource. It’s the philosophy underlying the practice that you need to understand, because once you do, the practice becomes easier—and almost automatic. That philosophy can be summed up in five basic principles: