Writing is hard work.
There is no way around it. As much as I love to write, most of the time it’s a struggle to wrestle the ideas out of my brain and onto the page.
Your Writing Must Ring True
When I’m into a project, my biggest emotional challenge is to maintain a commitment to muster the courage to be true to the process. If you’re writing from the heart, whether it be fiction or memoir, you have to drop deep into the well of your own self to feel the truth in what you write.
If your writing doesn’t ring true in your own heart and mind, it won’t resonate with your readers.
Those feelings can be very uncomfortable. In my second book (A Late Hard Frost) I wrote a number of passages from the point of view of a severely disturbed and frightening character.
Getting into his mind, and writing from his predatory perspective, was difficult and disturbing. But to make the passages real, for a period of time I had to imagine and visualize his thoughts and feelings—and it wasn’t pleasant.
Writing Can be Physically Wearing: How a Quick Cuddle with a Cat Helps!
Self-care is an essential part of my writing process. I exercise regularly at a gym (at least three times a week, and occasionally with a personal trainer) and I spend as much time as I can out of doors, all year round.
Hiking a mountain trail, or just walking my dog around my neighborhood, clears my mind and boosts my energy. Although I don’t usually focus on my projects when I’m hiking or walking, often new ideas pop into my head while I’m out and about.
I also have a yoga practice, though it’s often not as regular as I think it should be.
Writing can be physically wearing. By the nature of the work, a writer must have her “butt in a chair” (the first rule of success in writing) and sitting for long periods is not good for any body, plain and simple.
I take frequent mini-breaks, to walk around the house or to begin some meal prep, to break up a writing cycle. It’s a challenge to take a healthy break when I’m in the middle of an intense passage that is flowing well, and I admit that sometimes I don’t, with a result that my back and arms will get stiff.
But sometimes just picking up the cat for a quick cuddle will be enough of a mini-break to keep me going. (And I’ll also admit to occasional coffee abuse. Sometimes it’s hard to walk the fine line of being happily caffeinated without going over the edge into the jitters.)
Also essential, I believe, is a really good chair, properly adjusted for your body. What a difference that makes!
Give Yourself Permission to Release Your Own Creativity
I believe all of us are creative, though not in identical ways. We have to give ourselves permission to release our own creativity, and to recognize its worth.
Expressing your creative self is rewarding and fabulous, but it can also be time-consuming and exhausting. Creative expression may clash with other life demands. I believe you have to step back, take some deep breaths, and find some way and some time do what you love to do, even if it’s just for a few minutes a day.
In my case, I had to overcome feelings that I was wasting my time, and that my writing was self-indulgent and without merit. I had to recognize that I was writing for me, not for anyone else, and that I needed to do it.
The Toughest Part: The Struggle to be Published
Perhaps the darkest moment for me, and I think many other writers, is a task unrelated to writing itself. It’s the struggle to be published.
Stories abound of successful writers whose initial books were rejected over and over again, sometimes hundreds of times, by agents and publishers. Some great books just won’t get picked up and published, for a variety of reasons.
As a writer you know this objectively, but it still hurts to get the notes saying, “No thank you, this isn’t for me.” Usually you don’t get any useful feedback with the rejections.
My first book, Compass North, was rejected dozens of times before it landed with a publisher who was interested in it. You can find all sorts of advice, tips and tricks, about how to get published, but I do think there is a lot of luck in that process, too.
It’s Gratifying to Have Readers Who Appreciate Your Work
As to the rewards and triumphs—well, there are many. It’s of course gratifying to have readers who appreciate your work. I can remember one particular contact that was very meaningful to me.
The main character in Compass North escapes from a life in which she was emotionally abused by her husband. A reader in Great Britain emailed me to tell me how much the book resonated with her. She had been similarly abused, she reported, and she felt my story rang true for her.
I was touched that my book was more than a story, hopefully well told. For at least one reader, it was cathartic.
Advice for a Young Writer: Write from the Heart
I came to my path as a novelist late in life, after a career as an attorney.
It’s been a bit of a rocky road. I was just beginning my second novel when my husband was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and he died seven months later.
For a time, I wondered if I would ever gather the energy and commitment to write again, but I have. In fact, the book I’m currently writing is a memoir about my grief journey and my climb back into life.
If I were to give a budding writer advice, I would say: just write, write, write. Write every day if you can. Write from your heart, and have the courage to come to the task fully, giving it all you’ve got. Be fearless!
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Stephanie Joyce Cole lived for decades in Alaska. She relocated to Seattle, in a household that now includes a predatory but lovable Manx cat (no tail!) named Bruno, and a young standard poodle named Rusty, who is in perpetual motion.
Stephanie has a law degree from UCLA and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alaska, Anchorage. Since 1986, she has been associated with “Alaska Quarterly Review (AQR),” an award-winning literary magazine housed at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. She is currently a Senior Affiliate Editor for “AQR.”
When she’s not writing, she’s hiking, creating ceramics, practicing yoga, traveling, volunteering and discovering new ways to have fun–and oh yes, reading, reading, reading. For more information on Stephanie and her work, please see her website and Amazon author page, or connect with her on Facebook.
Compass North: Reeling from the shock of a suddenly shattered marriage, Meredith flees as far from her home in Florida as she can get without a passport: to Alaska.
After a freak accident leavers her presumed dead, she stumbles into a new identity and a new life in a quirky small town.
Meredith struggles to find a way to meld her past and present so that she can move into the future she craves, but someone is looking for her, someone who will threaten her dream of a reinvented life.
Available at Amazon.
A Late Hard Frost: Cassandra’s life as a talented but isolated artist has allowed her to hide the emotional wounds that haunt her. Now, unexpectedly, she finally has the love of the one man she’s adored for so many years.
But that love has come at a terrible price…As Cassandra struggles to control the massive changes ricocheting through her life, a sinister figure lurks in hiding, watching her, waiting for his chance to claim her as his own.
Available at Amazon.