Create A Bounce Back Plan

…because setbacks happen.

Every writer hits bumps—on normal writing weeks and especially during a challenge. The trick is to bounce back, quickly.

If you think the point of a challenge like StoryADay is to turn out 31 stories in 31 days then, well, you’ve kind of missed the point.

The real point of StoryADay May is to allow you to teach yourself how to be a writer on good days and bad.

Everyone ‘fails’, when writing. Sometimes that means going for days without writing anything. Sometimes that means writing something you’re not happy with. Sometimes it means not achieving what you set out to do.

But the places where we fail are the places where we learn something interesting: about our habits, about our capacity, about our skills, and about our ability to control our responses.

Your response to a failure should never, ever be to give up.

You can rest. You can reset, but you must not quit.

Today’s tiny task is to:

Create Your Bounce Back Plan

What will you do if you don’t meet your goals for a day during the challenge?

  • Make a list of all the things that might go wrong on any given day in during the challenge,
  • Then, come up with contingency plans. Think of ways to jumpstart your writing, create a gap in your schedule, or perhaps even a ways to forgive and forget, and move on.

Examples

If your goal is to write a short story every day in May and one day you fall asleep before you write your story, how will you respond? Will you—as I strongly recommend—shrug it off and move on to the next day, not going back to ‘catch up’? Or will you allow your subconscious plan to kick in? You know, the one you haven’t acknowledged, but that is secretly lurking there? The one that says “oh, well, I blew my streak, I should just quit and wait for next year?”. Hint: Dont’ do that. Make a proactive, resilient plan like the one I suggested.

If you are failing to get a full story written, because you’re stuck, or because it’s late and you’re tired, what is an acceptable minimum alternative? Will you write a well-crafted 6-word or 100 word story instead of the story you thought you were going to write?

If you hate the day’s prompt but don’t have any ideas of your own, will you skip that day and do something to fill the well (like reading a short story, or going to an art gallery) and call that a win? Or will you have a stash of ‘back up prompts’ from the StoryADay archive to draw on? Or perhaps you’ll dig into your Story Sparks and notes from this month’s warm-up exercises and come up with a story that surprises and delights you, instead? What’s your plan for days like this, when inspiration doesn’t strike straight away?

If you discover that you hate writing at whatever time you had planned out for your StoryADay writing, will you quit? Or will you commit to trying to write at a different time for a few days and see if that shakes anything loose?

If your laptop makes your eyes hurt, or your favorite pen breaks, or you just can’t stand looking at screens anymore. Will you try dictating your story into your phone? Or typing it on an old typewriter?

If you discover you crave a day off, do you have to quit the challenge, or do you decide to give yourself Sundays, or Wednesdays, off? Maybe both? (Full disclosure: I take Sundays off, because otherwise I feel miserable by Week 3.)

Discussion

What is your Bounce Back plan for days when things go awry?

The Power of Tiny Wins

Writing success doesn’t come from heroic marathons—even though we are about to embark on one.

The truth is that success comes from the steps you take to implement what you learn during the challenge. Showing up again and again, long after May is over, is what will drive you to your definition of success, whatever that is (more on that, next week).

And the way to keep showing up (aka ‘build a habit’) is to create an outsized celebration for every tiny step you take towards creating that habit.

Decide, Do, Celebrate

  • Choose one tiny writing task today—setting your intentions for your writing today; deciding to write one paragraph or sentence in your work in progress; opening your manuscript; noticing three Story Sparks, whatever. Just keep it tin.
  • Choose a celebration to do—it might be punching the air, doing a literal victory dance, spending two minutes coloring in a picture, laughing out loud, patting yourself on the back, eating a single delicious chocolate truffle or in-season strawberry that you have put on your desk before you started. Whatever you choose it should be absolutely immediate (no searching for stickers or promising yourself an ice cream later) and it should be something (like the a big grin or the victory dance) that changes your physical state.
  • When you do the good behavior, take the reward—We’re ‘burning in’ the ‘good behavior=reward’ pathway, as if we were puppies. And why not? It works for puppies, and it works for us too.

Further Reading/Listening

Listen to my podcast episode about the power of tiny wins and the Fogg Behavioral Model

Discussion

Did you choose an immediate reward? Did you choose a tiny task? Did you do both, one after the other? Did it feel silly? If so you’re doing it right! Tell us what you did:

Your Writer Identity

You don’t become a writer ‘some day’. You don’t become a writer when someone agrees to publish your work.

You become a writer when you show up.

Nice sentiment, huh? But how do you tame the brain gremlins into letting you show up?

You create a strong identity as a writer.

Create Your Writer’s Manifesto

A manifesto is more than an identity: it’s a statement of your values, your place in the world, and the actions you will take to support that place and those values.

  • Start by listing your literary (and other artistic) heroes–I call them your Fairy Art Parents
  • Make a list of what it is about them/their work that you admire
  • Circle/highlight the features they have in common (you may be surprised)
  • The things you admire likely align with your own values and represent artistic experiences that you would like to create for others.
  • Write your manifesto, beginning with “In my writing I will be…”

Want the fancy, downloadable PDF with a more full description of the process? Go here.

writers manifesto work image, shown on a tablet screen

Discussion

Who were your fairy art parents? What ended up in your manifesto? Share if you dare…If not, just tell us: how was the exercise?

Face The Fear

I’ve been writing—and working with writers—for a long time.

Decades.

Sometimes writers fret about their ability to write characters, or develop plots, or handle pacing, but in my experience, those are not the problems that stop us from writing.

We’re smart. We think hard. Most of us are fairly confident in our ability to research, learn and implement specific writing techniques.

What blocks us is fear.

This week I’m going to give you five exercises to face and tame this most powerful of foes.

Face The Fear, And Write, Regardless

Your inner critic is not a moustache-twirling, two-dimensional villain, out to destroy you.

Like any good antagonist, your Inner Critic is the hero of it’s own story, and it is complex.

  • It’s the nervous voice of everyone who loves you, saying, “Be careful! Play it safe! Don’t get hurt!”
  • Sometimes there’s an added layer of the voices of people who are threatened by you, jealous of you, and scared you will surpass you.
  • Sometimes there’s an added layer of fear from yourself: who will I leave behind if I let go and let myself be as awesome as I suspect I am. Who will be offended, because they think I’m leaving them behind?

But all of these voices—most of them not yours, or at least, not the voice of you in this moment—are simply telling one story, one version of a story. What they are telling you isn’t the truth. It’s one story about reality.

Fortunately, you are an expert storyteller, with a vivid imagination, and you get to rewrite the stories in your head.

It just takes some practice.

Today’s Task

  • Set a time for four minutes. Write down the fears that bubble up when you sit down to write, in general, or on a specific project.
  • Reset the timer, and rewrite those ‘fears’ as strengths.

Examples:

  • “I’m not special. Who am I to think I can write something people will want to read” becomes, “I understand ordinary, everyday lives, with all their complexity and challenge. I’m the perfect person to write a story that gives hope to, or thrills, someone who is facing all the same daily challenges I am. I’m relatable!”
  • “I never finish anything” becomes “I have a million ideas, and sometimes I develop them into complete stories. Not always, but sometimes, and that’s awesome!”
  • “I don’t have time to write” becomes, “Thinking counts as writing, and luckily, I can think while I’m doing other activities that I have to do. All I have to do is focus on thinking about my stories, and creating a little time to record those thoughts, regularly.”

May-Ready Bonus Question: write down three words to describe how you want to feel during StoryADay May

Character Speech

Today’s Tiny Task in preparation for StoryADay May is to

List 5 expressions people in your life overuse

While you’re capturing the phrase, capture the meaning behind the phrase, the culture it comes from, the ways it which is irritates/delights you and how those feelings manifest, physically in you.

Discussion

Pick one of the expressions to share here

Personality Traits

Today’s Tiny Task to prepare for StoryADay is to

Make a list of 5 or more personality traits that drive you absolutely crazy

This exercise is slightly different from the other character brainstorming we’ve done this week, because it’s not so much about an internal or external feature, but more about the actions a person takes, without thinking.

I’m asking you to list traits that drive you up the wall, because accessing strong emotions is a good way to make sure that you put conflict and emotion into your story.

You don’t have to write a miserable story just because you include a personality trait that drives you batty. You can use this trait as a starting point for a character who is going to be reformed, or as comic relief, or as a cautionary tale.

Bonus points: list 3 ways each trait could be subverted, changed, used for comic relief, or otherwise turned around.

Discussion

Are you keeping all your notes during these prep-sessions, in a place where you’ll easily be able to access them during the challenge? Share your ‘system’ (such as it is) here, to inspire/warn others. Then, if you haven’t thought it through yet, pick a place (physical or digital) to store all your notes, and then write yourself a big, physical sticky note to remind yourself you did it. Leave a comment to let us know you’ve done it!