How to Create Opportunity

Photo Courtesy klsmith77

In January I wrote a post about personal risks writers experience as a matter of being a writer called What Risks Are There in Writing?  The last quote in that post dealt with pushing limits, risking failure.  The relationship between risk and success has been heavily on my mind since I attended the Pikes Peak Writer's Conference.

"The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open."  ~ Chuck Palahniuk

At the conference, two authors (Linda Rohrbough and Kevin J. Anderson) influenced how I now perceive risk.

I attended two sessions by Linda Rohrbough. One session was how to write what is known as "the elevator pitch." It was a fabulous session, which did help my create a three sentence pitch for Finding Meara. So impressed by that session, I went to her workshop on plotting tools the next day.  Again, she delivered an excellent workshop, and gave me some ideas on how to keep my plotting straight.  She has some of the tools she showed us on her website, so you might want to check it out.

Kevin J. Anderson presented a workshop on the business side of writing with his wife, author Rebecca Moesta. Both have a long list of books, novels and screenplays they have written, edited or just plain have been involved with.  What thrilled me, though, was that they have written for Lucas Film, and Kevin Anderson wrote for the X-files and co-authored with Dean Koontz.

I attended Linda Rohrbough's pitch session first. In it she explained cognitive dissonance, which is when your brain tells you that you're nuts for doing what you're doing.  She said, and I believed her, that if your mind starts freaking out, you are most likely doing exactly what you should.

I liken it to the saying, "If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten." If we don't shake ourselves up, and push the limits of safety (be that emotional, financial, professional) we don't have the opportunity to experience something different.  We limit the opportunities success has to find us.

Photo Courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Then I attended the workshop by Kevin Anderson and Rebecca Moesta. What struck me most in that workshop was how Kevin Anderson's career worked out.  I can't remember everything, so I hope I don't misspeak. 

What I remember clearest is that, while he had to be in the right place at the right time for the opportunities to come knocking, he didn't back away once the opportunity knocked.  Several times during the workshop, he related being invited to join a project, and even if he was knee deep in the middle of current work, he agreed to take on the new project.

He didn't do so out of desperation or because he was afraid to let the opportunity pass.  When he related the stories, he said "I thought, 'I could do that.'"  He had confidence in his abilities and what he could accomplish.

Each of those opportunities put him in the position to be in the right place at the right time for more opportunities, which snowballed into more opportunities.

I don't think any of us should run out and start committing to things we can't accomplish.  Not following through on anything is a career-wrecker, no matter what career you have.

What I did take away from the conference was to look for the opportunities, and then push ourselves a little to accept the challenge.  Be confident in our abilities to "git-r-done."  Don't wait until everything looks perfect and ready and safe.  Sometimes we have to grab life, tell our collective heads to shut up, and give success a chance to find us.  We have to take a risk.

Have you taken a risk that paid off?  Have you ever regretted not taking a risk when the opportunity presented itself?

Three Reasons Why Revision Make Me Nervous

Photo Courtesy of BK Images

For those of you who have written novels and gone through the revision process, this might seem like a silly post.  Why on earth would revisions make a person nervous?

The answer (in my case) is threefold:

1.  It begins with my personality.  Besides the fact that being prone to anxiety runs in the Italian side of my family, I was informed several years ago by a colleague that I am an "external processor," rather than an "internal processor."  That means that I have to talk my thoughts out, often to another person, to give them form and structure.  (Thank God my husband is extremely patient.)

My problem is that I'm not to the point where I am ready to show any writer friends the manuscript, and my husband isn't versed in the craft of writing and revising fiction. I can't even use him as a beta-reader, because he hates reading in first-person.  This inability to really talk out my thoughts and concerns leaves me a little befuddled.  I can't seem to make a decision that I don't doubt.  Which leads to reason number two...

2.  I am no longer working on the first-draft.  That means I don't have permission anymore to make crap.   I am supposed to clean up the first draft "mess" and shine it and make it all better.  The problem?  I have never written a novel before.  I have never revised a novel before.  I must still rely on instinct as to the process of revising, as well as what I'm doing to "fix" my novel.  Which leads to reason number three...

3. Remember that risk post a couple of weeks back?  Well, I am stretching and growing, both as a writer and as a person. It feels uncomfortable.

The simple truth, though, is if I don't get going, I am going to fail.  I will still have the first draft of Finding Meara, as well as any number of other first drafts, waiting to be revised when I'm eighty.  I will never know if my work was publishable or not, because I didn't give it a chance, because I was too afraid to revise wrong.  How silly does that sound!

Last night, I decided to just dig in.  If I don't get the process "right" and it takes me forever, such is life.  If I don't get started, it's going to take me forever, anyway.  I might as well get on with it.  And who knows, maybe it will all turn out okay!

Which kind of "processor" do you think you are?  Is there anything about the revision process that makes you nervous?

What Risks Are There in Writing?

Risk is not the first thing we think of when we hear the word “writer.”  More likely, the vision of a person safely tucked away in an office somewhere, bent over a typewriter comes to mind.

There are risks within the writing life, though.

Photo Courtesy of digitalart

 “If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.” Jim Rohn

While writing, there may be the temptation to stick with what we know, or not to push past our boundaries of what is comfortable.  When we do so, we end up with the ordinary.  We must write “brave and free.”  We have to continually be on the lookout for the unusual, and sometimes the uncomfortable.

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Anais Nin

We risk exposing our inner selves to the world through our writing, thereby exposing ourselves to rejection.  We know that “it’s not personal,” but sometimes it is difficult to separate the person from the writer.  However, there can be greater pain in not finding our own voices, but in trying to play it safe, hiding our voice, and writing for other people’s approval.

“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” TS Eliot.

We risk our sense of security every time we stretch ourselves and reach for our dreams.  When over seventy-five percent of the nation has stated they dream of being a writer, the odds can look pretty small that any one person will make it far enough to be called a success.

If we don’t stretch ourselves, though, we can never know if we could have been in the small percentage that did make it.  It would always be a question in the back of our minds, an itch we couldn't scrath.

While writing can be very risky to our stability and sense of self-worth, what are the risks of not being a writer?  Which risk do you choose?