36 | The Writer • March 2020
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PROBLEM: You’re going through some
life changes.
When I was about to move into my new house,
people told me to forget about writing for a while, that mov-
ing and getting settled were going to eat up all my motiva-
tion. They’re crazy, I thought. I’ve got this.
I did not have this. I didn’t write for a month. Know that
during times like these you can’t fight the forces of life and
change, and that’s OK.
WHAT TO DO: Make time to stay connected to your writ-
ing. Sometimes just doing the smallest amount can keep
us grounded.
- Can you look at your writing project for just five minutes
each day? Open the file of whatever you’re working on
and simply read through it? - If you simply can’t get to your writing, don’t beat up on
yourself. It will still be there when you return – and a fal-
low period can lead to unexpected harvests. - Set a date to return to your project. Tell the whole uni-
verse your date. Don’t stand your project up.
mit, the more you up your chances of getting
accepted. Also, when you have several pieces cir-
culating, each rejection doesn’t feel world-ending
since you still have other irons in the fire.
+ Join a group of writers, in person or online,
who are also submitting their work. The cama-
raderie will be a salve, and you will come to
see that rejection both does and does not
define a writer.
+ Don’t fight the pain of rejection. Acknowledge
it. Share your disappointment. Then get up,
dust yourself off, and get back on the horse.
We all do it.13
PROBLEM: You are JUST SO
FRUSTRATED!
You’re frustrated by your projects,
by the obstacles in your way, by rejection, by
expectation, by the energy it takes to keep going.WHAT TO DO: “Frustration is not an interrup-
tion of the process, frustration is the process,”
writes Elizabeth Gilbert, bestselling author of Eat,
Pray Love. “The frustration, the hard part, the
obstacle, the insecurities, the difficulty, the ‘I
don’t know what to do with this thing now,’ that’s
the creative process. And if you want to do it
without encountering frustration and difficulty,
then you’re not made for that line of work.”
+ Frustration is simply a product of your own
brain telling you that things aren’t going as
they should. There is no “right” way your writ-
ing should be going, there is only the way it IS
going. This is reality, pure and simple.
+ The first line of M. Scott Peck’s best-selling
book The Road Less Travelled is “Life is diffi-
cult.” He goes on to say that the sooner you
accept this as fact and stop wishing it was
some other way, the easier life becomes. The
same is true for writing. It’s hard. For every-
one. The sooner you can stop expecting it not
to be hard for you, the better off – and less
frustrated – you’ll be.14
PROBLEM: You are stuck in the
narrative and don’t know how
to move forward.
In my writing office, I have a wooden replica of a
TWA airplane that is 3.5 feet long and 4 feet wide.
It is held up by a steel rod on a table and is aimed
downward. This is my visual metaphor for how I
almost always feel when I am writing: like I’m in“FRUSTRATION
IS NOT AN
INTERRUPTION
OF THE PROCESS,
FRUSTRATION IS
THE PROCESS.”
—ELIZABETH GILBERT
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PROBLEM: You can’t handle rejection.
Rejection sucks. It never feels good, and it
can stop us in our tracks. No matter how
much we know that rejection happens for many reasons –
your submission comes at the wrong time, isn’t a good fit for
where you sent it, etc. – we almost ALWAYS think it’s a
judgment on the writing. Whether it is or isn’t, rejection is a
part of the writing business, and you have to keep going,
whatever it takes. The best and most famous writers have
been rejected, many of them numerous times.
WHAT TO DO: Submit more. This may seem counterintui-
tive, but the numbers are in your favor: the more you sub-