Category Archives: 12 Step Success

Twelve Step Tuesday – Step 1 – Nasty Muses – Powerless and Unmanageable

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

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The Twelve Step process is interesting because it doesn’t start with us being heroic and strong and invincible.
It doesn’t start, as Stuart Smalley would say, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”  Nope. It starts like a good story.  In a place of darkness and despair.

 

The first step is all about being reduced to ashes, being broken, defeated, wrecked, enslaved, sorry as one shoe battered on the side of the highway alone.

Maggie Stiefvater

​My Step 1 goes back to the very roots of wanting to be a writer and not being able to write.  Trust me, I wanted to write novels.  I mean, Maggie Stiefvater had 30 novels in various stages of revision by the time she graduated from high school.

I wanted to be like Maggie Stiefvater.  Doesn’t everyone?  But then, I was powerless and my life was unmanageable.  I couldn’t write even when I wanted to.

And I had the usual excuses.  I was afraid.  I was busy.  It seemed too hard.  I was full of self-doubt.  T.V. was easier.  Reading other people’s books was easier.  And really, that’s how we begin.  Writers start out as readers. Well, broken readers who can’t leave well enough alone.  Or at least, that’s my story.

When teens ask me how to be a writer and what they should do, I say: Write as much as you can.  Read as much as you can.  And sleep.  Teens need sleep.  Their brains are developing.

But for me, I was powerless over if I wrote or not and my writing life was unmanageable.  ​For example, when I was just out of college and working, I promised myself I would write on Mondays and Wednesdays from 7pm to 9pm.   I was busy, you see.  Yeah, that was before family, house, and children.  I wasn’t busy.  I was preoccupied with a whole lotta’ nothing.  As my friend says, I can waste an entire lifetime in ten-minute increments.

And yes, every so often, I’d get a Saturday and I’d skip watching the video tapes of The X-Files I’d recorded, and I would write, and it would be great, and I would think.  Man, that’s cool.  I should do that more often.  How about Mondays and Wednesdays for two hours at night?  But then the siren call of the TV and I would crash onto the couch and be stuck there.  An eater of the lotus was I.  The television lotus.

Now, I could blame my lack of self-discipline, or I could blame Star Trek, or Fear Factor, or John Hughes movies for taking up all my time.  I could blame my parents for not encouraging me like Christopher Paolini’s parents did. Yeah, the guy was homeschooled and had parental support.  I was educated by Jesuits.  Okay, we’re even there.

But my point is, I was powerless and my writing was unmanageable because of who I was and my inability to accept that I needed help and that I couldn’t do it myself.

Here was my idea of a writer: a writer is born fully grown from the head of his/her father. They stride out into the world with one sandal flapping the dust (very Jason of the Argonauts) and they sit down and write a novel.  The novel is gorgeous.  And yes, it might be a Herculean effort, but in the end, it is wonderful.  They then box up that novel (I grew up before email, and we had paper and typewriters and hippies and 80’s music and boys walked around with their hair in their eyes and girls wore lacy gloves like Madonna) and send that box o’ novel out to the publishing world where it is published to acclaim.

 

That was a writer.  They didn’t have critique groups.  They didn’t attend conferences. They worked alone in crappy, lice-infested apartments and drank hooch and smoked camel-cigarettes and were bad-asses.  Even the women writers.  And that’s true.  Ain’t nothin’ as bad-ass as a lady writer.

I thought I had to learn how to write, get published, and then do all that alone.  And it scared me silly.

It drove me not to write because I was alone and even though my wife supported me (hurray), I was still alone.

Some people can do this alone.  I can’t.  My hat’s off to those bad-ass writers who can churn out pages for years all by themselves.  They are warriors.

I am not.  I’m a scared little boy most days.

Next week, my bottom!

The 12 Steps to Writing Success, Part 04: My History As A Failure and A Scaredy-Cat

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I was born modest; not all over, but in spots.
— Mark Twain
This is where I tell you why I’m the perfect guy to blog about despair and artistic angst and writers’ block like a cinder block smashing down on the keys of your laptop.

Bottom line is this: my credentials are more about the internal wounds I’ve overcome than the external honors I’ve been given. Which are sparse. It took me five years to finish my first novel, and I was too afraid to try to seek a publisher. The fact that very few people could read it didn’t quite bolster my confidence. It took me another seven to finish my next novel, and I was still unwilling to get help from anyone. And I still kept my writing life a secret from everyone. My wife would knock on the door, and I’d shuffle away my papers.

“What are you doing, Aaron?”

“Nothing. Not writing. Not me. Uh huh.”

Let’s fast forward? Or rewind. Or both. I always wanted to be a writer, ever since I was little. That was the dream. Aaron Ritchey, writer. On the first day of kindergarten, when the teacher told me to get out my crayons and paper, I asked, “Is this going to help me read and write?”

The answer was no. We were going to color. “Well,” I said, “I can color at home.” So I packed up my grip and walked home. I was five. It was clear what I wanted.

And I wrote Indiana Jones/Conan fanfiction. Of course, I combined them. Jase Kilner and his race through the lost city of whatever. Still a cool name, Jase Kilner.

 

I re-did Little Bo Peep, but added a hardboiled bounty hunter to help the luscious Bo Peep get back her sheep. There were wolves, but our hero had a shotgun. He was too cool to have a name. Too Clint Eastwood-y.

I loved to write stories, and my parents would eagerly wait to read what I had written. I had a fan base in the 3rd grade. My mom and dad. Garsh.

But then fear took hold. Bad fear. In high school, we had a literary magazine, and we’d vote on which stories we wanted to include. I always voted for myself, and I always lost to Pat Engelking, who was a better writer than me. But I hated that feeling, voting for myself. It felt horrible and I felt cursed to lose.

In the next twenty years, I wrote twelve novels. But was too afraid to shop them around.
Which brings up an important lesson. Always vote for yourself and vote with pride. Sending out query letters is voting for yourself. Now, if someone else has something better, vote for them, but if you’re all about the same, go for it, baby. We have to be our biggest fans because writers spend most of their time reading and re-reading their own work. It’s called revision. Be your own fan. Hell, be your own groupie. I won’t go any further on that.

So here I was, twenty years of writing, full of fear and regret. But I finally worked through the angst and terror and I sent out sixty queries to agents, editors, and presses, and I got picked up by a small press. That is my story. Along the way, I’ve spent 20 years working the 12 steps with my sponsor, and I’ve guided dozens of people through the 12 steps as a sponsor. I’ve been in recovery, without a relapse, for 21 years. As of today, everyone knows I’m a writer. And I keep on spreading the word.

I have overcome many of my deepest, darkest fears and self-limiting beliefs, and I can help others do the same. Hopefully, you can do it in a couple of months and it won’t take you decades. Hopefully.

A little bit more about me. Just your typical stuff because in the end, I’m just a typical guy. Oh, how I long to be so much more. But I’m not. Just a writer who plods along. Do-de-do-de-do.

In the middle of all that novel-writing, my wife and I spent 15 months traveling around the world. We settled down in Colorado where we raise two James-Bond-Super-Villains-In-Training who pose as little girls and who adore American girl dolls. Which of course is a plot to transfer wealth out of the middle class into Mattel’s evil laboratories.

When I’m not writing or speaking at writing conferences, I work at a computer company troubleshooting software, which is far more dull than it sounds.

I say all of that to say this. I failed at a deep level with my writing. Because of my own fear, because of my doubt, and because of my overly-dramatic self. I can “should” all over myself, all day long. I should have joined a critique group right away. I should have worked on short stories. I should have studied craft. I should have queried every day for years on end. Ray Bradbury had thousands of rejections before he published anything. Stephen King, same story.

But just because I failed yesterday, doesn’t mean I have to fail today. As long as I work through the angst to get to the other side. And there is another side for all of us. But it takes work and effort.

That’s what the rest of my blog posts are going to be all about. Working through the angst and trauma to get to the other side.

Next week:  Step one. Admitted we were powerless over our art and our creative lives had become unmanageable.

The 12 Steps to Writing Success Part 3: People Love Artists Like They Love Astronauts

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I read my own books sometimes to cheer me when it is hard to write, and then I remember that it was always difficult, and how nearly impossible it was sometimes.
— Ernest Hemingway

 

 

 

People love to tell artists that they’re jealous of them. Wow, you write, that’s great. I wish I had something like that in my life. Generally, I grab them, slap them a few times, dunk them in a nearby lake, hook them up to a motorcycle battery, and then torture them until they take it back.

It’s like when people say, “You’re so lucky you got recovery early.” Uh huh, so lucky I was suicidal at nineteen, a monk at 20 (celibacy vows intact), and I celebrated my 21st birthday watching a bad movie with people who didn’t really give a crap that it was my 21st birthday. Yeah, so lucky.

I think the reason why people are fascinated by artists is that everyone is an artist, deep down, but doubt, fear, general angst, drive them away from it. So it’s like when you say you’re an artist, it’s like saying you’ve just come from visiting a distant planet. Everybody likes an astronaut because they’re tough, skilled, blessed. Artists, writers, same thing.

These series of blog posts are for those who want to be astronauts of the spirit, who want to overcome whatever madness drove them away from creating. The 12 steps have helped millions of people overcome life-crushing, heart-wounding addictions, and they can help those who want to create art but find themselves caged by their own deluded, self-centered fear. The genius behind the 12 steps is that they give us a choice on what we want to do, rather than having us running away whenever some compulsion hits.

And it’s 12 steps. Just 12. Simple. But not necessarily easy. And for those not suffering from a crippling addiction, they can pretend they are. What are you doing tonight, Ed? Working the 12 steps. For your gummy bear addiction? No, I’m a writer. I have a writing addiction I want to nurture. How cool is that?

In 1955, Bill Wilson wrote a series of essays on the 12 steps and 12 traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous that was published in a book, in AA circles called the 12 by 12, and of course, there are a bunch of fascists who are always there to correct people. It’s 12 and 12, not 12×12, ya drunk yodeling idiot. This series of blog posts is going to have a similar format. Next week we’ll have a brief biography, which of course, won’t be hard for me. It’s the old, “I’m not much, but I’m all I think about.” I know, last week I promised a biography, but well, um, the internet breeds disappointment. I’m just doing my job.

Again, I want to be clear, I’m going to keep whatever fellowship I belong to anonymous because the point of this is not to promote any one 12-step program, but to show how people can use the 12 steps to improve their creative lives. And my story is just an example, a kind of, “If this yutz can do it, you can too.” And the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are in the public domain, though I plan to change them, just a bit, because we’re not dealing with alcoholism, or narcotic addiction, or gambling, or sex, or overeating. Ha, reads like a list of ‘these are a few of my favorite things.’ We’re dealing with the generic problem of artistic angst and how to overcome it.

I’ll be using stories from my own life as well as other writers I’ve met, because at the heart of things, 12-step programs are about storytelling. “We heal through our mouths,” or so the saying goes.

And this isn’t going to be a blog series of advice, tips, blah, blah, blah. It’s going to be instructive. Do this. Do this. Do this. In 12-step talk, we take the actions and our thinking changes. You can’t fix a broken mind with a broken mind. It takes action. Bring the body and the mind will follow.

I’m goin’ biblical, Faith without works is dead. Bill W. loved that little piece of quotation magic.

Next week, I promise, the biography of me, or “Why I should be the one to blog about this stuff!”