Like many writers out there I’ve been through my “ambitious” stage, a decade and a half of driving, working, “efforting” my way toward success and publication. And yes, I published articles, essays and some stories, even two non-fiction writing guides. Yet I believed that this sweaty-brow and bruised-butt kind of work was somehow going to flower open into an easy, effortless place of publishing, and then I would just then get to sit back and reap the rewards.

I thought, mistakenly, that if I just worked hard enough for a long enough period of time, the joy would come later. It would all be worth it eventually.

You’re laughing with me, now, right?

It’s funny how much we can suffer the moment while imagining “later” to be the land of all possibility, all happiness and freedom and following of one’s passion.

It’s taken me great disappointment—novels that did not sell to publishers who nonetheless “liked” them; agents who chose to move on to other clients; articles that got “killed” and the realization that the teacher in me is still, also, the student—to see what I see now: I am the protagonist of my own writing practice. And like all strong, memorable protagonists, I must start out flawed and through trial and error, with support and obstacle, slowly move toward illumination and wholeness.

What this means is that there is no “there” there—all the published novelists I know are still subject to the fickle winds of criticism and economy, of self-doubt and worrying about sales. Being published is a goal—a crucial one for most of us working at this art—but it’s not the end of difficulty, either, nor the end of work.

I am always exhorting my students and clients to the same end: do the work, the hard work of writing, re-writing, re-learning, re-visioning, but do it with some sense of joy and purpose. Find the meaning. When you’re over-efforting, stop. Pause. Breathe. Seek reinforcements. Walk away. Shelve it. Come back. Always come back.

What’s more: trust the timing. If you are stumped to the point of anguish, trust that message that there is another place for you to focus. If you feel you “should” be working on one project but another kicks down the door and starts writing itself—let it happen. And if there is another round of hard work in store, work that you know will make a difference, roll up your sleeves but also reward yourself; treat yourself gently. You’re doing the work of your soul. You are transforming yourself in the process of working on your writing.

In writing, as in life: if you’re miserable, if you’re in constant pain/block/struggle, then seek a shift. Seek help. Seek movement.

If you keep returning to the work, with an open heart and mind, then the timing will always be right…if you’re listening.

And even though it will be 70 degrees on Wednesday, it will be a January 70 degrees, which is to say that the very air is thicker, the rotation of the planet slower, and the urge to burrow inward still a thump, a gnaw; you just might need a little sunblock to go with it.

 January is no time for work. My body rebels against the idea of work in even this paltry simulacrum of winter that we northern Californians get. It’s both bodily and mental, this resistance. After all, the holidays, despite their best efforts every year to be a light and airy celebration, no matter how mild the effort, always leave me feeling as though we’ve done hard labor since Halloween. Maybe it’s just the effort of anticipation. I sleep more, the morning light against my eye so silvery opaque it might still be the middle of the night, and by noon I’m ready to nap.

I can almost feel the hum of my ancestors—my ancient, ancient ancestors—whose alarm clock was the sun, who obeyed the harsh forces of nature as she pressed a firm hand on their backs and said: be still. Conserve energy. Go slow.

I want to go very slow. I don’t want to work—to grind mental gears, or exert physical ones (unless we’re dancing, then that’s another story). I want to fall into my books, my journals. I want to listen to my cells dividing, the sloshing whoosh of blood navigating my veins. I want soft purring animals to curl up next to me, or a warm child will do, and just stay where I am until 70 degrees becomes the 70 degrees of April, and the grey veil is scoured clean by a crisp lemony sunlight, and the trees pull on their robes, and the animal of me hears the call to wake up again, wake up again, and then I will work.

Imagine what our lives would be like if we did only one thing at a time?

For 2 weeks my three year old is home from his usual routine of 4 days of pre-school. I thought that I would be harried, overwhelmed, annoyed. And there is, I cannot lie, a definite sense of not having enough “me time.” But honestly? When all there is to do is focus on being his mom, and there’s not enough time to worry about work or writing, then I simply don’t worry about them. Strangely,  just being his mom actually is a lot easier when I let go of my attempt to also work and write.

And in those wee hours before he wakes, I do write or work, and relish in the peace of being able to focus.

What would it be like to focus on one thing, one aspect, one goal for your writing this year? Maybe even just an intention for it: like learning to write crisp, tense dialogue; or committing to writing every day. Or something more nebulous: to write only work that makes YOU happy. And what about every time you sat down to work on it, you did not try to hold the whole thing in mind, but focused on only one aspect: one scene, one conversation, one powerful description of a setting, one free flowing moment of words streaming on the page?

Though I suppose it is unrealistic for us to do only one thing at a time in most aspects of our lives, I encourage you, exhort you even, to try it when and where you can. In your material world, and in the world of your words.

Let’s make 2012 be the year we do things slowly, carefully, patiently. Play with our children wholeheartedly. Feel our feet on the earth. Read every word in a book. Write as though there is absolutely nothing else pulling on you.

Happy almost New Year

Look for my new classes in 2012: Plot Intensive, and Novel Intensive

All of our characters begin as shards of ourselves-even the villains and the magicians. In order to mold these paper golems into people of their own, to fledge them away from our own likeness, we have to dig very deeply, which takes time.

Yet what if you could drop sooner into the emotional world of your characters, so that by the time you finish your novel or story, you feel as though you are saying goodbye to someone so dear to you it hurts? Someone you know intimately, whose experiences, though you may not personally share them, you have felt. And whom the reader will also feel connected to?

You can.

Today and tomorrow are the last days to register for Method Writing, this 1-week intensive journey into the depths of your characters, a fantastic way to hide out from holiday gloom, or celebrate holiday cheer!

You’ll learn over 10 different strategies for direct access to intense emotions–without need for back-story.

Join us!

There’s no incense or holy water here, and my priest is not one, but many voices, most of them speaking to me from the pages of dog-eared books on subjects ranging from plot structure to the journeys of heroes.

 I meet myself here every day, and some days there is a productive outpouring of words. Other days I revisit creative “failures,” try to re-imagine my way through muddled story, muddied characters who are still in the process of becoming.

 There was a time I believed this process was all about the end goal of being published. And now I realize that this daily, quiet, personal act is about transformation. Just like a character must undergo a noticeable, dramatic transformation of the self at the end of the journey we call plot, I am here, every day, little by little, to experience higher degrees of myself. Sameness, stagnancy, kills in real life and in fiction—it stifles the soul, and suffocates a good story. Writing cracks everything open.

 The act of seeing writing fiction as a vehicle for personal transformation as well as for telling stories that speak to universal truths has changed the way I write, and the way I live.

 Thus, when I teach writing, I am not meeting my students as instructor-on-high, but as a fellow traveler on a uniquely personal  but parallel road.

 If you’re interested in facilitating this process of transformation in your own writing, join me in February for an intensive 8-week online course on Plot that is like none I’ve ever taught before.  www.jordanrosenfeld.net/online-classes/  

Jordan

It says: ”Don’t worry. Just write.”

Every time I panic that I haven’t blogged or tweeted enough, that I haven’t branded myself powerfully, there it is, a gentle sigh, a feather brush:

Don’t worry. Just write.

It’s not that I don’t believe in social media. Self-promotion is clearly important in this new dawn of publishing. Connecting and branding are real and make a quantifiable difference in selling books and getting read.

But there’s nothing to promote if we don’t write it.

And when I say writing, I mean connecting with your deep inner stories, using them to discover and transform yourself and others, and releasing them to the page. THAT is the most real thing you can be doing as a writer, the reason for doing all the rest of it.

And if you, like me, ever find yourself overwhelmed by the effort of standing up and announcing your presence on your lonely shore, then I exhort you to come to the same conclusion:

Don’t Worry. Just Write.

When I stop to ask myself about my purpose in life when I’m feeling unmoored or unsure, I just look back to the beginning. I’ve been writing stories since I was 8 years old. Those first ones were written in pencil on lined binder paper with no awareness that one day I’d have such a thing as an online presence, much less a computer I could hold in my hand.  So, as I begin to turn down the noise on all the other voices, and listen to the voice telling me not to worry, just write, you’ll see the nature of my posts here changing. I’ll be writing more, doing everything else less. But it will be real.

Be real with  me.

“You bring to your writing, your art, and your stories a piece of yourself. In return, the act of creating gives you the possibility of something even greater: true transformation.”

I’ve come to an unavoidable crux in working with writing clients. It is my job to advise and critique on the nature of making a work of writing closer to publishable. It is my hope and desire, as it is my clients’, that they shall publish—most of them through mainstream channels—their beloved works. And yet a greater truth has been stalking me, circling me through the brush of my own awareness that there is more to writing than getting published and I’m working to find the perfect way to express this:

The act of writing is, in and of itself, important, necessary, and as Martha Alderson suggests in the quote above, transformative.

Yet it’s difficult to say to the person whose goal is to publish a long-toiled on novel: “Relax, trust the process, keep writing even if you see no publishing light in sight.” And it’s not exactly easy, either, to say to the person who writes daily, works hard, but still has miles to go before they are at publishable level, “Take your craft up to the next level.”

I’m constantly striving for a balance of these truths…that publishing requires hard work, sometimes much harder than the writer ever set out to do. And that level of hard work requires the writer to love the work, to enter it for something beyond what publishing alone can bring.

But that is the axis upon which I continue to sit. And at the end of the day I lean toward actions that bring meaning to my daily life, that make me feel fuller, more enriched, purposeful NOW. Certainly publishing is a kind of zenith of that sense of purpose, one in which you also get to put out your words to others and hopefully see some kind of reward in return—praise or money or a chance to speak/teach/keep writing.

I urge the writer to find, and focus on, and build up, and create more of those reasons to write that don’t have anything to do with publishing, or less to do with it.

I hope you’re also writing for transformation, discovery, love, and pride, because it keeps you from despair, or helps you cope, or helps someone else cope and love and transform.

The secret is: the more often you write from that place, the better your work will become.

It’s from this standpoint that I approach writing coaching. I’ve been doing it for years now, but calling it something else (editing). Fact is, the hungry learner inside me has an alter-ego known as the Eager Teacher. Each year that I edit more writers’ manuscripts I learn more about how hungry writers are, too, to write the best material they can write, to imbibe and learn the craft on a level that a writing guide can’t provide alone, or when a college course is too expensive.

I am not the kind of coach who will have you read affirmations or help you manage your time (both of which are wonderful and necessary, don’t get me wrong). What I am is your own individualized teacher—listening with rapt attention to your struggles with writing, and then turning around and crafting lessons and strategies specific to YOU and your individual needs as a writer. I’m a lifeline and a sounding board, too, for when your ideas are stuck or frustration has you caught.

My coaching is, essentially, your chance to be teacher’s pet, to be in the Master Class of You,  designed for you, shaped by you, and constantly open to alterations by you.

Think it’s right for you? Here are my packages (this info will soon go up on the Editor/Coach page):

Coaching Packages:

In general, each week of a coaching cycle consists of: 1 lesson, with 1-2 assignments applied to either a work-in-progress or new material, individualized review and critique of the work turned in, and a follow up coaching call by phone or skype. Schedule can be modified to meet your personal needs.

Coaching Package #1: The Starter
4 hours, $250
1-2 lessons
up to 5,000 words edited
2-30 minute coaching sessions (or 1 hour)

Coaching Package #2: Getting Serious
8 hours, $425
3 individualized lessons
up to 10,000 words edited
4-30 minute coaching sessions (or 2 hours)

Coaching Package #3: The Next Level
12 hours, $650
5 lessons
up to 20,000 words edited
8-30 minute coaching sessions (or 4 hours)

Coaching Package #4: The Commitment
24 hours, $1225
8 lessons
up to 40,000 words edited
16-30 minute sessions (or 8 hours)

Coaching by the hour is another option.

Please use the “contact” form at top to inquire about getting started!

But lately I’ve been feeling the strain of information again upon me—the strangely addictive cycle of spending lots of time on Facebook, reading my tweetstream, getting most of my news, and lots of interesting articles on the arts, even reading books online or on my SmartPhone. After too much of this, I begin to feel like Gulliver attacked on all sides by Lilliputians, pulling on me, tugging me down and in so many directions that even when I’m really doing nothing, I feel tired. I can feel my synapses beginning to hold up protest signs demanding time off.

And this brings me to one of my favorite reasons for writing: to realign, to pull ourselves back together at the seams, collect up all the crumbs of ourselves that the digital ants have carried away.

Creative writing calms our brain waves, brings us closer to that state we enter in dreams and meditation—part trance, part hyper-focus, I don’t know too many writers who can write AND do other things at the same time. Writing requires a profound turning inward, harvesting from the world inside, rather than being at the mercy of the external world.

I think writing is one of the most valuable things any person who also feels swept away in the slipstream of information can do for your brain. As important as making sure to get up and stretch after sitting too long, or exercising, eating healthy and sleeping.

I’m not naïve enough to tell anyone to turn it off, go live in a mud hut in the woods and live off the land, much less to reduce the amount of time you spend swirling in the online clutch, nor; instead I say: turn up the volume on your writing. Make your own noise!

* * *

Check out my online writing classes: www.jordanrosenfeld.net/online-classes/

Ok, try a little experiment with me now: attempt to hold the entire world, plot, characters and landscape of your novel in your mind ALL AT ONCE. That’s right–can you see it all–every plot point and character nuance, every hint and image of foreshadowing, the visual and the thematic, the small and the large?

Of course you can’t.

(If you can: go get your brain studied)

The writers I work with seem to share one common stumbling block, which trips them up before they finally master it: overwhelm. This overwhelm stems from a belief that a novel is written all at once–like a big ribbon unfurling from your  mind, perfectly constructed and smooth, laid down in a single stroke.

It is not.

Novels are written bit by bit. More specifically, scene by scene.  I’ve come to regard the scene as a kind of magic–because by learning its tricks and then laying them down, suddenly that overwhelming concept of the novel becomes a realizable goal.

The scene is so beautifully simple it amazes me every time. But like anything simple, sometimes, until we learn the nuances, it feels complex.

I assure you it is not.

If you want to master this magic ingredient, the building block of good fiction, with me, join me for the ever-popular Fiction’s Magic Ingredient, now beginning October 10th (disregard the start date of 10/3 on the website). It’s not too late to learn a little magic.

Register for Fiction’s Magic Ingredient here.
8 weeks
Online/Self-paced with optional live drop-in chat (all you need is an Internet connection)