Welcome To The Slow Zone

We writers can be in such a rush–to get this project finished; to submit; to hit the best-seller list; to make our fortune—that it’s easy to get discouraged. It can feel like we’re not making progress if the writing is slow, or ‘successes’ don’t come often.

But writing isn’t just one thing. And none of the activities that make up a writing life are particularly quick.

  • Developing ideas takes time
  • Drafting takes time
  • Revising and rewriting benefits from time and space.
  • Improving our skills demands time, and experimentation, and wrong turns.

It’s OK to be what my friend, coach Jennie Mustafa-Julock, calls “impatiently ambitious”. At the same time, we have to cultivate patience for the parts of the practice that just go…well, slowly.

The Benefits of ‘Slow and Steady’

This idea of ‘going slow’ has come up a couple of times in the Superstars community, this week.

“I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that I’m a really slow writer,” said one person, who writes beautiful, immersive stories.

“I’m embracing being slow,” said another writer, who I’m watching make huge strides in their practice.

World-class athletes, actors, and musicians spend a lot of hidden time practicing their craft; only occasionally stepping onto the big stage to perform.

We writers spend a lot of times doing work that doesn’t end up in front of anyone else. And that’s OK, especially when we are focused on improving our skills.

Couture Vs. Fast Fashion

In a world of fast fashion, people still crave a tailor-made suit, a custom-fitted wedding dress, and a beautifully hand-crafted hat. And those who can, value that quality enough to pay premium rates for it.

In this moment of instant-access to information, and AI-everything, there’s a lot to be said for slowing our creative lives down to a human (humane?) pace. 

Let’s reclaim the time and space for deep thought, wrong turns, course-corrections, and insights that only come with prolonged effort.

These are the spark of humanity – of creativity–that AI can never replace.

Spend some time this week giving yourself the chance to stare into space, make some mistakes, erase some words, and write something nobody will ever see, just for the sake of having done it.


P. S. Want to put some craft-building writing time on your calendar this week? Try the 3-Day Challenge, a self-paced journey through the short story.

Reconnect With Wonder

How cultivating wonder can keep your creative energy flowing, and why it’s so important to nurture it…

This time last year I was able to travel to Scotland for a very happy reason — to party with my my parents on their 60th wedding anniversary.

The journey didn’t exactly go smoothly, but travel always offers the opportunity to see things in a new light: for example our inexplicably cancelled connecting flight from London to Glasgow turned into an impromptu  train journey up the west coast of the UK, past Industrial-Revolution-era factory towns1, old canals, rolling hills, fantasy-inspiring forests, and seas of purple heather. 

I couldn’t stop looking out the window.

The locals? They were watching The Matrix on their phones2.

It’s hard to maintain a sense of wonder in your everyday environment. But not impossible…

And that very sense of “wow” is what fuels our writing.

Why Wonder Matters for Writers

When we’re focused on creating the finished product — a story for a market, a novel in a particular genre — it’s easy to become anchored by expectations. That, in turn, kills our curiosity, our willingness to take risks, our sense of having fun.

And it defers all the opportunities to feel accomplished until “The Project Is Over”.

What a drag.

Cultivating a sense of Wonder brings back the fun.

 It awakens your curiosity.

It keeps possibility alive.

PLUS behavioral scientists assure us that celebrating those little sparks of joy is what help you stay motivated for the long haul.

Practice Off the Page

Athletes don’t just show up for the game — they drill, train, and practice behind the scenes.

Writers need “practice time” too. 

Think of some things you can do this week, away from the page, to exercise your Wonder muscles:

This “non-product-related” time feeds your creative brain.

Ways to Find Wonder

(Without Buying a Plane Train Ticket)

  • Change your route home from work. Notice what’s different.
  • Switch your grocery store. See how the new one is arranged.
  • Wind down the car windows and pay attention: the smells, the temperature, the sounds.
  • Order something new at your coffee shop, then describe it in writing.
  • Talk to a stranger. Find out what lights them up.
  • Visit an odd museum you’ve been ignoring (National Mustard Museum, anyone?).
  • Pull a random nonfiction book from the library shelves and leaf through it.
  • Look closely at weeds in a patch of earth — the shapes, the colors, the insects, the cracks they grow through.

This Month’s StoryADay Theme: Triumph

At StoryADay, Triumph means celebrating every tiny win. Spotting wonder counts. So does jotting down a phrase, or noticing a Story Spark like: the exact way you could represent the rhythm of rain on the roof.

Small celebrations keep you energized, curious, and writing.

Your assignment this week

 Go somewhere new (or look at somewhere familiar in a new way) and find one small thing worth noticing. Write a few sentences about it — just for you.

Ready to turn those sparks of wonder into finished stories?

StoryaDay 3-Day Challenge

Take the 3-Day Challenge and write three short stories this weekend!

find out more

Take the 3-Day Challenge — a short-story writing course you can finish this weekend. Go from “idea” to “The End” in three days, and give yourself the gift of an achievement you can celebrate.


Join the discussion:
Where did you find wonder this week? What tiny moment felt worth celebrating?

  1. Welcome, fellow fans of the board game Brass… ↩︎
  2. Woah! ↩︎

Creativity: Bringing People Together

People are easily led. Let’s lead them to joy, through sharing things they can love.

Last night I got to be part of the audience, doing something like this

Jacob Collier is an extraordinary musician who does not do what he is told, or what others before him have done1.

A few years ago he started experimenting with asking his audience to sing a note, then conducting them in a multi-part harmony, just by pointing at them. It’s quite something2.

Bringing People Together

When so much about our public life is awful, and terrifying, and despair-inducing, it can be tempting to think that taking time out for moments of joy is somehow trivial or disrespectful.

It’s not. It’s essential.

Bringing people from all walks of life together to experience something—collectively, as at a concert or asynchronously, as with reading a good story—is important work.

It’s important that you write your stories.

It’s important that you make them good enough to share. 

Because sometimes, when people come together and share a moment of joy—singing in unexpected harmony or sharing their love of a sarcastic security cyborg—it reminds them of how alike we all are.

Bad actors try to assemble their followers into a scared, exclusionary huddle.

It only takes one courageous person’s vision to bring people together for good.

Art matters. 

Stories matter.

Your voice matters.

Keep writing,

Julie

P. S. It can be hard to gather the motivation to do the work in the face of, well, everything. Here’s a brand-new workbook to help you reconnect to your practice or your project. Download it now, as a thank you for following along on this writing journey with me!

  1. Which doesn’t mean he’s a contrarian. His commitment to doing what he does, how he likes it, has led him to friendship with Quincy Jones, and a deal with Martin guitars where they produced a 5-string guitar for him, because he thought ‘why does a guitar have to have six strings?” ↩︎
  2. I’ve been in choirs where we could not sing acapella and stay in tune. Last night, he led thousands of people through a long improvised harmonic thing and then brought back in an actual orchestra…and we were still on pitch! ↩︎

Who’s On Your Internal Coaching Team?

Do you have an inner critic or an inner coach? And which voice will help you become creative, happy, fulfilled writer?

…and is it time to fire them?

Remember the ancient times of last summer, during the Olympic games in Paris, when the media was flooding us with feel-good stories about quirky folks who had dedicated their life to pursuing excellence in one, extremely niche activity…and everyone thought it was cool?

Good times.

One story that stood out to me was the US Gymnastics team’s commentary on how much happier they were now that they had new coaches—coaches who motivated them with praise and love, rather than fear and shame.

Oh, and they still somehow managed to win the gold medal.

Who are your internal coaches modeled on?

When you’re trying to motivate yourself to write, do you have: 

  • A big, scary guy with a megaphone, barking at you and shaming you for not being perfect?
  • An indulgent hippy mom who says ‘that’s ok, whatever you feel like doing is fine’—even if that ‘whatever’ isn’t helping you reach your goals OR feel fine?
  • Or have you worked to install a positive, loving voice that tells you to set tiny goals that you can exceed and who encourages you to celebrate like mad when you reach or exceed them.

Guess which voice I’m going to recommend recruiting to your internal coaching team… 

Celebrate Success, Every Day

Habit experts, like BJ Fogg, tell us that outsized celebrations for achievable goals are key to maintaining a new habit. 

Lay down those dopamine pathways in the brain by getting up and punching the air every time you meet your new wordcount! (It feels silly, but it helps your brain associate ‘writing time’ with ‘feel-good time’.)

Productivity experts, like Adam Grant, tell us that striving for perfection is a fool’s errand. 

Instead, of aiming for ‘perfect’,  try to make your work ‘perfectly acceptable’—that’s what experts and high-performing professionals do!

Cal Newport tells us it’s OK to slow down, to take one task at a time and do it as well as we can, today.

Performance experts, like Jim Murphy, tell us that “judgement and curiosity cannot co-exist. When we judge someone or something, curiosity goes out the window, and with it, creativity.”

Is It Time To Fire Your Inner Coach?

If the voice in your head is an old-school, 1970s-style gym teacher, screaming in your face every time you perform less than perfectly, perhaps it’s time to consider firing your inner coach.

Instead, invite in a more modern approach, like those used by high-performance athletes, executives, and, yes, writers, today.

Voices that say“

  • It’s ok to take your time; just keep moving
  • It’s good to rest; just make a plan for when you’ll start up again
  • Don’t judge; instead, be curious
  • Don’t try to be perfect; just try to trend upwards
  • Don’t compare yourself to anyone except you: yesterday, a year ago, ten years ago. Remember how far you’ve come
  • Be inspired by other people’s success, not envious or threatened; they’re raising the standards and giving you a reason to strive to be better
  • Celebrate every tiny triumph along the way; got to your desk? Punch the air! Opened your manuscript? Pat yourself on the back. Met your word count for today? Dance party in the kitchen!

Fear, shame, and bullying can get results for coaches, but not for long.

And you’re in this for the long haul, right?

Start cultivating modern, fair-but-firm internal coaching voices, that encourage you to live up to what you know you’re capable of, and who also remind you that one bad day is not the end of the world.

Join the discussion: What do your internal voices sound like? Where do you think they came from? What might a more-positive, productive voice say, instead?

Choose Your Challenge Vibe

Earlier this month I asked you to think about what kind of mood you like in stories 

Today I’m asking you to consider the mood, or ‘vibe’, you want to create during the challenge.

Are you aiming for:

  • Experimental?
  • Ambitious?
  • Playful?
  • Energized?
  • Confident?
  • Focused?
  • ‘Determinedly outrunning your perfectionism and getting something written’?

What do you want to feel on the 1st when you look back at your month?

Journal about it, and then post your target ‘vibe’ below in the comments. Let it set the tone every time you start a writing session).

Superstars Invitation: Want to guarantee you’ll finish the challenge with that feeling? StoryADay Superstars provides the scaffolding you need to keep your vibe high — and your stories flowing — long after the initial excitement fades. Then, we’ll spend the next five months building on that success to create a writing habit that fits your life today, not ‘some day’.

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