Learning to Unlock Writing

It's funny. When we're newbie writers wanting to be authors, we get to a stage where we realize we need to learn a few things in order to level up to being authors. Then we shift into a stage where we secretly wonder if there isn't some special sauce thing we could learn that would catapult us to bestsellerdom. Maddeningly, the authors who are best sellers swear there isn't. Yet most of us keep looking. I know I did. Still do, sometimes.

I gather I'm susceptible to classes and training and such because I have a thing that I want that I know intellectually and emotionally is attainable. Yet I'm not attaining it. So I keep squinting at myself through some inverse magnifying glass trying to work out what's getting in my way. Classes have been part of that examination. I believed that if only I took enough writing classes, I'd pass some unknown Rubicon equivalent and suddenly get it together as a writer. The problem was that my issue wasn't with the writing. Necessarily. That can always improve. Maybe the better way to say that is to say that the writing hasn't been the blocker all this time. I have.

Getting a late-in-life autism diagnosis has been a trip and a process. A long involved process. I've had a lot to learn about what it means, how my brain functions, how I function, and what motivates me and what demotivates me. I've had to learn to pay much, much closer attention to what my nervous system tells me when it tells me. So all of my learning for the past two years has been from other autistic people, some of whom have done an amazing job of deconstructing what it means to be neurodivergent in Western society. I've had to learn how to stop masking so I can recover from a lifetime of burnout. That's been messy. I've learned that I'm demand avoidant to a pretty high degree and that impacts writing. I *finally* worked out why I've never won a NaNoWriMo. Write and report every day creates this massive block of pressure in my chest that builds and builds through the month until I just nope straight out and then call myself a failure. And then meltdown, anyway, without ever understanding why I end up hating me. Not super useful or particularly healthy. 

Having learned what I've learned so far, I'm doing NaNo differently this year. If I report daily, I report daily. (Spoiler alert - yeah, no.) I will just report my numbers when I feel like it. And if I don't make 50K? So what. I'll still be farther along than I was. So while I am taking classes and learning from folks - I can't really say that these people are teaching me writing. They aren't. But what they are teaching me is breaking writing free. Finally. Finally. 

Raven and his friend wish you a happy, relaxing Friday.
 

Groundhog Day writing...good or bad?

 (photo from the author's own monopoly fail)

It’s inevitable.

It’s gonna happen, you just know it.

Sometimes you don’t see it coming because you’re focused. Eyes on the board. Head in the game. But most of the time you know, because you know it happens every time…the fed-up-with-this-monopoly-game—board-flip. Boom. It happened.

Yes, you’re right, the topic of the blog this week is what Groundhog Day thing do you keep doing in your own writing. And I am getting to that, promise! But I wanted to point out that there’s Groundhog Day tendencies everywhere.

If you’re a creative, they’re not always bad. It could be your signature, that it factor that everyone recognizes as you. But more often than not we think of the repetitive in the negative, right?

My first thought was that I Groundhog the hell out of glancing eyes, but then realized that’s because I just finished re-reading a manuscript. Thinking back to the first book I wrote, and I had an overabundant use of was and just. My second book had the case of the glancing gazes. By the third book, I’d moved onto using too many sensory descriptions and not enough environmental ones.

Now in my fourth book, well, I’m only a handful of chapters in so it’s hard to say what will end up being my Groundhog Day for this one. But isn’t that great?! It means I’m learning with each book I write. No, I’m not perfect at what I’ve picked up, but I am aware of those writing pitfalls and take strides to not repeat them, I take strides to improve my writing.

So I guess I’ll go with that, my writing Groundhog Day thing is learning something new. Give me another five books or so and I’m sure I’ll have a new answer. ;)

‘Till then, I really, really want to go watch my favorite, cynical weatherman kidnap Punxsutawney and try win over the heart of the beautiful Andie MacDowell!

How about you? What stage are you at in your writing? Do you have any things you keep doing, good or bad? Or…maybe you just need to find a spot on the couch and turn on Groundhog Day too!