Category Archives: 12 Step Success

My Clocks Hate Me! I Don’t Have Time to Write! Step One Continued

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Step 1 – Admitted we were powerless over our art and our creative lives had become unmanageable.

Now, my friends, we talk about the time card. I can’t write because I don’t have time. That’s playing the time card. You can put this under powerless, but really, the time card is more about unmanageability. Or really, a perceived unmanageability.

More and more, I’m seeing playing the time card as a cop out. I have a friend who writes novels on his cell phone when there is a lull at work. On his cell phone. With his thumbs.

Let me repeat that.  HE WRITES NOVELS WITH HIS THUMBS ON HIS CELL PHONE!

Another woman I talked to writes whenever she has a spare moment, like waiting in line to pick up her kids from school. Yeah, whips out her laptop and types a couple of words while in the carpool pickup lane.

If you aren’t blocked, if you feel fearless and inspired, you’ll find the time. Yes, you might not sleep as much as you want, and yes, your TV time might get clipped, but the bottom line, there are people, right now, with less time than you, doing more. So more and more, when I play the time card, it’s because there’s something else going on.

One old idea that I had that relates directly to the time card is the all-or-nothing idea.

If I can’t write for eight hours a day, I won’t write at all. I would fritter away my writing time, then look at the clock, and sigh. Only two hours to write? Why even bother? And so I wouldn’t write that day. Artists are people who create art. When I’m writing, I’m a writer. When I’m not, I’m just a human being. We have lots of humans on this planet. Be an artist. Create.

I love the stories about Anthony Trollope.

He was just like us, he had a day job, but every day he would write for two hours in the morning. He was a machine. If he finished one novel, and he still had fifteen minutes left in his writing time, he’d start the next one, and homeboy produced those Victorian novels you can murder people with. Lots and lots of words, two hours a day.

Once I realized I was playing the all-or-nothing game, I swore that I would use whatever time I had to write. Sometimes I only had forty-five minutes. Sometimes less, but I would put the time in because every minute counts. And once I got into a rhythm, I would naturally drift into writing.

The reality is this: most of life is stupid habit. If you get into the habit of art, even when you don’t want to create, you’ll find yourself just doing it anyway because it’s just what you do from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. Stupid, blind habit. And the minutes pile up fast, just doing a little bit every day.

Use the time you have wisely. A friend of mine says he wastes his life in ten-minute increments. You could write epic novels in ten-minutes increments. Go forth. Write. Create. Use your minutes.

Because before you know it, they will be gone.

Surrender Is Heartbreak, Not Sunshine and Puppies – Step 1 Continued

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Step 1 – Admitted we were powerless over our art and our creative lives had become unmanageable.

The bottom line is this: I wanted to write, I couldn’t write, so I had to decide between chopping off my hands or accepting help.  I had to let go of my old ideas that had not worked. When I got rejected by the agent back in 2006, I had been writing for fourteen years, in isolation, in secret. And I had failed. I had to embrace that and surrender.

The first step is all about surrendering and admitting we are broken. It’s not a happy step. Generally, with the people who I have worked with, you don’t leave this step whistling and holding a puppy. But it’s the brokenness that is the magic. The more broken, the better.

I was at rock bottom that day I left the session with the agent. And I re-visit that place every now and again, but it’s never been as bad. Because my writing habit is not a secret that I carry alone any more. I invite others into the madness.

As I’ve said in earlier blog posts, you can’t work the 12 steps alone, which is why the recovery community understands the need to have a sponsor. What I do with the guys I sponsor is to set up weekly appointments with them, just an hour a week, and yes, in our busy lives, an hour is like gold-tinted minutes, but in the end it’s worth it.

With your sponsor, you have to write down where you are powerless over your art, and how your creative life is unmanageable. A lot of these are going to be old ideas that you believe, and we’re going to inventory these old ideas in step 4.

These are some of the ideas I had that kept my writing life unmanageable:

  • I was so afraid of trying to get published that I couldn’t write anything at all. I just couldn’t. I was afraid to succeed. I was afraid to fail.
  • I didn’t think I would succeed, so why even try?
  • Crippling self-doubt. I didn’t think I had any talent.
  • Critical voices paralyzed me. I couldn’t write anything worth reading. Who was I kidding?
  • What I was doing was selfish, and so I needed to spend more time with my family and friends and being of true service to the world.
  • I should wait for inspiration. I didn’t have the big, huge, original idea and if that idea never came, I shouldn’t even bother.
  • The game is fixed and only those on the “inside” have a chance.
  • I was roasted by envy. Other people will get published and not me.
  • If I can’t be a runaway bestseller, if I can’t be the best, I’m not even going to try.

I give a talk called “From Whining to Writing: Courageously Creating and Overcoming the Odds,” and really, it is all about the first step. If I’m powerless over writing and my writing life is unmanageable, I’m stuck right there. But being stuck can be a marvelous thing.

It can bring change.

But for this blog, not yet. Next week, I play the time card. It’s like the race card, but more time-y, less race-y. It basically says, “I’m so busy I can’t write.”

Next week, we’ll see why that’s a lie.

Tuesday 12 Steps – Step One Continued: Hitting Bottom

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Step 1 – Admitted we were powerless over our art and our creative lives had become unmanageable.

The first step in a 12-step program has ZERO solution in it. The first step is about being so shattered, so broken, so sick and tired of being sick and tired, that I will do anything to change. Anything at all.

It’s like the story of the pacifist who was also a prince. As a prince, he was required to carry a sword as a sign of his station, but he was also a pacifist and believed strongly in non-violence.

So torn, so filled with conflict, he went to a church elder and told the elder about his situation. How do I carry a sword and be a pacifist at the same time?

The elder said, “Carry the sword until it is too heavy to carry.”

The first step is about realizing that the goddamn sword is so heavy it’s breaking our goddamn backs.

And of course, as everyone knows, the first step is about the bottom. The depths of despair. Hopelessness.

My bottom came six years ago when I attended my very first writers’ workshop, in Big Sur, California. It started out heroic. I was Achilles, sword, shield, even a printer because my wife and I just knew that the agent would want me to print out a copy right then and there. Still, even though I was armed for success, I was terrified. I was shaking. My eyes were bunny rabbit-wide open.

I sat down in front of the agent, and she knew I was about to implode, because she asked me, “Are you all right?” She moved a little toward the door.

I said, “Yeah, sure, go on.” Inside, I was approaching the guillotine.

And then she hit me with every inch of a beating stick. Because I was an amateur. Because what I had was rough. Because I thought I could write in isolation, without help, without guidance, and if I couldn’t do it on my own, I didn’t want to succeed.

At one point, she leaned back, winced, pointed to my pages and said, “Where are you going with all this?”

I tried to fumble around to explain the characters, the stories, the things I so loved about my book. But of course, it was too late. I was reduced to ashes. It broke me. My worst fears had come true.

I had hit bottom. I couldn’t walk this writers’ journey alone.

I used to say that first rejection was when my writing dreams were destroyed. That’s not really what happened. What happened was my fantasies were destroyed. The fantasies of an overnight success, where I went from obscurity to fame and fortune because of my innate genius.

That fantasy died with that agent. The dream continues. Because the dream is that I can write and enjoy it. I can move people and give my voice to the world of literature and art because I have a unique voice. That is the dream. And when I’m writing, working, creating, marketing, overcoming fears, I am living that dream. Will I ever be a bestselling, jet-owning, fun-loving author loved by billions? I don’t know. That’s the fantasy, and some people get to live that. For me, the dream has to be what I do every day, right now.

 

 

In the words of that Canadian power-trio rock band, and I don’t mean Triumph, “Some are born to rule the world to live their fantasies. But most of us just dream about the things we’d like to be…”

That’s Neil Peart from Rush. And those words are true.

Hitting bottom can be dramatic, like what happened to me, like what happened to Sid Vicious, and to other hardcore addicts and alcoholics, but not necessarily so.

A little piece of 12-step program; you hit bottom when you stop digging, turn around and start climbing out of the hole you’ve dug.

A bottom is a turning point, where you realize you have a problem and seek help. And it might be getting locked up for not writing and sitting in San Quentin with tattooed murderers.

“Whatcha’ in for?”
“I killed and ate my family. What’re you in for?”
“I couldn’t write. Snapped. Burned all my manuscripts.”
“Damn. Book burner. Hardcore.”

Or it might be a Tuesday, and you are in bed, and you realize, “Another day I didn’t write. Why can’t I find the time? What is wrong with me?”

The only important thing about a bottom is that you change. That’s the critical part.