motivation | Sandi Van
October 3, 2019 October 3, 2019 caravanofcomposition	6 Comments
I have officially reached the state of paralysis. You may have noticed there hasn’t been a blog entry since July. If you’ve seen me in person lately and asked what I’ve been working on, I weakly respond with a shoulder shrug and desperate rush to change the subject. There are a number of reasons for this. Life has a nasty tendency to get in the way of writing — family, job, house, volunteering — they all demand my time, my brain power, my creative energy. Also, guilt plays a pretty huge part of the equation. How do I strike a balance where I’m giving 100% of myself to personal responsibilities and still have something left for my creative pursuits?
Answer: I don’t. Instead of giving 100%, which is totally impossible, I give a lower percentage to each item at a decreasing rate dependent upon immediate need. Some examples: one of my co-workers recently retired at the cusp of our busiest season, which translated into extra hours at work. The kids started school, and I had to make sure they had what they needed. While I managed to keep everyone fed and in clean underwear, the layer of dirt in the house increased exponentially, and my laptop lay buried under piles of scout materials. No writing happened. For weeks.
But it’s not just that. There have been small chunks of time where I could have planted my butt in the chair and typed away at something… anything… but I didn’t. Why? you ask. I’ll tell you why. Doubt. Doubt is an ugly, ugly monster who has firmly planted himself in my brain. What if I never write anything worthwhile ever again? What if all my ideas are stupid? Does anyone really give a crap about what I have to say?
I have an amazing, supportive group of writing friends, who nod sympathetically as I describe the fears that stomp on my confidence like grapes in a barrel. They’ve all been there. They all balance life with writing, quietly shoving it into the corner when things get hectic, patiently searching for moments where they can settle into the salve that soothes us: the words falling onto the page from our fingertips, the release of ideas crowded in our brain. I need to write. When I don’t, I become this moody, unruly creature no one wants to be around.
Too many responsibilities, not enough time, pressure to perform — these are all things that can be overcome. But the longer I stand on the edge of the diving board, the harder it gets to jump. Every morning I promise to change, and every evening I go to bed without writing any words. Talk, talk, talk. No action. How do we push ourselves over the edge and into the pool?
I’ve been meaning to start a food blog, and a few weeks ago, it finally launched. It’s not much — a picture of what we ate for dinner with a short blurb about the daily challenges of being a plant eater in a house full of meat eaters. Follow along if you’d like. But it has helped get me out of my writing funk a little, and now that we are finally settling into the school year, hopefully I’ll get back into a writing routine. Which will at least address the first half of my difficulties.
As for the doubt, well, it may never fully go away. We all, at some point, feel inadequate about our skills and worry we aren’t accomplishing all we set out to accomplish. And you know what? That’s okay. We’re human. And as artists, we will never create the perfect thing everyone loves. So I guess my advice (to myself and anyone else who struggles with doubt) is this: Make time for the things that bring you happiness because they will make you a better person in the end. Focus on the process rather than the product, and stop worrying about what other people think. Easier said than done, I know, but if I can jump back into the water, so can you.
If at first you don’t succeed, set the bar lower
July 30, 2018 caravanofcomposition	4 Comments
Okay, that sounds a bit pessimistic. But hear me out. If you wanted to become a high jumper, you wouldn’t set the bar at a height impossible to clear, right? You’d start low and get really good at each level before moving up to the next. If you are learning a new skill, you’d start with the basics and then work yourself up to the more complicated elements. And maybe you’d fail a few times, or a few million times before you could do the thing you set out to do, and maybe that feeling of failure lights a fire under you and forces you to try harder.
But you know what else is super motivating? Success.
I have participated in Camp NaNoWriMo three times. It’s an online contest of sorts that grew out of NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, where to win you must write 50k words in a month. Camp is more laid back (as camp should be). You set your own goals and have a cabin of fellow writers to cheer you on and make references to roasting marshmallows and making s’mores. It’s fun. It’s encouraging. The first time I participated, I agreed to join a large cabin – some writers I knew, some I didn’t. There were virtual crafts, write-ins, and shout outs on Twitter. At the time I was revising my second novel and thought two hours a day seemed a reasonable goal. But I started the month off on a road trip, clocked zero hours of revisions for the first few days, and rapidly became discouraged. There’s this great STATS feature, which tells you your daily progress, how much you should do to reach your goal, and if you continue at your current rate you will finish…. in 2020.
The second time around I was working on a new novel, and decided 10k was reasonable. It wasn’t. Our cabin had only three members, and we had some amazing discussions about plotting and staying confident in your work. I made more time to write, but the words weren’t flowing and again I felt discouraged by the ever distant finish rate.
Third time’s the charm. Between April and July, I worked to unclog the stuff that wasn’t working and brought the first chapter to my critique group. They loved it and told me to keep going.
Let me stop here for a second. I know some of my blog followers aren’t writers and they are probably skimming through this post because blah, blah, blah she’s carrying on about writing again. Look. Your words can make a difference in someone’s life: your child, spouse, co-worker, employee, friend. A stranger. Be kind. Encourage someone today. It might be the very thing they need to keep moving forward.
When I decided to join Camp NaNoWriMo this past month, I thought about my goal. I didn’t want it to be too high and get discouraged. July was busy, people. BUSY. But I didn’t want it to be too low and seem insignificant. I thought about what my friend Kate had said a while ago, about setting micro-goals. If I could sit down every day and write something, 100 words, I would keep moving forward on the story. I set my overall goal for the month at 4k, and did my best to write at least 100 words every day. I didn’t write every day (I missed about half), but when I did, it was always more than 100 words. Sometimes it was only a few more, sometimes a lot more.
So I set the bar lower, but at a reasonable, attainable height. And it worked. The project is at 12k and I’m excited to keep writing.
And it feels pretty good to see this:
Are you trying to accomplish something and feeling overwhelmed? Can you break it up into smaller, more manageable micro-goals? Find a way to earn success. To celebrate the mini victories and stay motivated.
June 20, 2018 caravanofcomposition	2 Comments