STREAM-OF-CONSCIOUSNESS WRITING

STREAM-OF-CONSCIOUSNESS WRITING 

5 WAYS WRITERS SABOTAGE THEIR SUCCESS (32:20) / Heart Breathings (YouTube)

Hello writers and welcome back to heart breedings. Today we are going to talk about five ways that writers hold themselves back and this is one of those videos where I'm basically talking to myself as much as I'm talking to you so I'm very intimate with the subject of this video let's just okay these are in no particular order or but one quick way that a lot of writers we tend to hold ourselves back is we make excuses. This is true pretty much in every facet of our lives, but here's how it pertains specifically to our losses writers. We tend to make excuses about why we're not number one at this genre or why we haven't finished the book yet or why we weren't writing today or, you know, a million different things. Truth is those types of excuses aren't really serving you in any way other than to hold you back to give you some sort of comfort as to why your sales numbers aren't what they want it to be or why you have this book that you've wanted to write for the past five years that still is done. Those excuses, do nothing but hold you down where you are, or even drag you further down. Like here's some examples of excuses. I hear from writers and out of my own mouth all the time. There's never enough time I don't have enough time to get everything I need to do done. And this is actually a problem that a lot of us have that we feel like you know, we've either got kids at home or we've got a full time job or it's just really difficult to balance the marketing that you need to do with getting the books out that you want to get out. But the truth is, there is enough time because there are how many people who are in the indie world now who are making six figures plus every year and they have exactly the same 24 hours in a day as you do and most of them started out just like you were they had a full time job or they had kids at home, or they had a million other responsibilities that they had to take care of. We all have laundry, we all have groceries to go get at the store. We all have that but we also all have the same 24 hours. It comes down to how are you spending your time and when you step away from the excuse of I don't have enough time, which kind of becomes a way to allow yourself to not write today or to not get the things done that you need to get done. And you really look at it and say okay, instead of giving this excuse, I am going to actually start to track my time I'm going to get a planner or I'm going to use an app on my phone that tracks my time and I'm gonna see where I'm really spending it. And chances are you're going to find that you have, you know, five nights a week that you're watching your favourite show on television or you're reading books or you're sitting there scrolling on Facebook or picketing 1000 images on Pinterest. And there's all these things that I know relaxation and taking time for yourself are important too. But if you could just cut that back a little bit and really reclaim your time, then you wouldn't have that excuse anymore. You wouldn't have that to fall back. On. So having those types of excuses is just a way to stay exactly where you are and have an excuse for why you're not being as successful as you really truly want to be deep down. excuses that I hear people say are I'm just not good at marketing. I don't enjoy it. I don't know what I'm doing. Or what I really want to write doesn't sell well enough and I feel really discouraged. So I don't think I should put myself out there or what I really write doesn't sell so I've been trying to write this other thing that I hate writing because it's more marketable and you don't really understand why you're not finishing the book. Well write what you want to write and then figure out a way to make money. Using that as an excuse that what I like to write doesn't sell. It's just another way of holding you back and keeping you in this little box so that you don't actually find your level of success and passion of your greatest life. One of my favourite ones to use is I'm exhausted and a lot of the time it is true. But a lot of the time it's just mornings for me. I'm not really a morning person or I haven't been in the past, but because I have a little guy at home and ever since he was born. I need to write more in the mornings because he's at school. He's busy or my husband's helping to watch him in the mornings and it's so much easier. By the time I get to the evenings which would be my ideal writing time. A lot of the times I really am exhausted because I've been being a mom and a business person entrepreneur all day and I'm tired. But when I wake up in the morning, even though I could set all these amazing goals the night before I wake up in the morning and I just think oh god, I'm so tired. But that is really not true. Because on the days like today where I feel so tired, but then I go upstairs I play. I make an effort to wake myself up and get motivated for the day, then I don't feel so tired anymore. And I get pumped about the things like I review my to do list I get pumped about it. Oh yeah, I was gonna write that really cool scene today or I was going to you know, record this video today. And those types of things start to get me pumped up. So the truth is, I wasn't really exhausted. I have plenty of energy. It's a mindset thing. It's this habit that we have kind of as human beings of making excuses so that we don't have to actually work for our dreams and it seems so counterintuitive, but it's you know, it's this mystery of life is like why do we want something so hard? So much with our hearts. But then when it comes down to do the work, we make a million excuses for why we can't do it. I'm too tired. I don't have enough time. I'm not going to be good enough at it. It's never going to sell we make all these excuses but the truth is those excuses are a lie. That we tell ourselves to hold ourselves back. So the solution to this is to start becoming more aware whether it means you need to journal or whether you need to start you know taking apart those excuses. What are the ones that you use the most? Is it that you don't have enough time then do like I said it started time tracking tracking app, scheduling it out in your day where you're going to write even if it's just a 30 minute sprint on your lunch break, or one hour when you get home every day, no matter how tired you are you have that hour or come home and relax and after dinner you're going to sit down for one sprint a day. I promise you you have just as much time as every other successful person on the planet. It's just a matter of examining those excuses and figuring out why you're holding yourself back using those excuses. Number two, we focus on the negative and if you are a part of the author community in social media, you see this all the time in a lot of groups where people focus on this is what's changed at Amazon. I can't believe Google did this or you know Kindle Unlimited is destroying everything or, you know, I can't go live because I only make money in Kindle Unlimited or they reduce the payout this month that I'm not making as much as I used to or, you know insert any number of negative things that you have zero control over in your life when we focus on those types of things. It's not serving us in any way. All it does is continue to pull us down into this negative mindset. It lowers our energy, it lowers our entire, like motivation to keep working. And it's like sinking in quicksand that the more you focus on those negative thoughts and especially the things that you can't control, like I can't control exactly what my sales numbers are. There are things I can do. To help them like taking out advertisements writing the best books I can, you know, all the things I talked about in my writing a best selling series was here on YouTube. You can do those things and you have control over those things, but the end result is honestly not within your control. You can't just change your sales numbers today. But if you focus on the fact that they're lower than you want them to be, you're not making enough money and you just continue to let those thoughts roll your mind and you continue to wallow in negativity, guess what? You're not going to want to write you're not going to feel excited or pumped about what's coming next. You're going to be marketing from a place of desperation, anxiety, anger, fear. Fear is number one thing that you know we tend to operate on and the truth is most of us as writers are very sensitive people. We're very much people that are in our minds all the time we think about everything and we tend to let those you know those thoughts sort of spiral and when you get into like a negativity spiral and you focus on the things that you can't control like your sales numbers, how well someone else is doing compared to you. Things that the vendors have changed like oh man when Google Play stopped showing you their free books in their genre lists, my sales literally halved. But if I had sat there and said oh my gosh Google Play did this Google Play did this and now my incomes done you know and I had just let myself wallow in that for weeks on end. I would have gotten no writing done. No new books out and I would never have done anything that actively brought me that or sales at Google Play. One of the ways that you can fix this or that you can begin to combat this is to first of all be aware of the negative thoughts. Be aware of the people that you spend time with on social media and an author groups and when things start to get super negative. I mean, we all want to have that shoulder to cry on. We all want to feel like we're not alone when we are complaining about things that that is unfair. But how many times in your writer's life have you been like that happen and it's not fair. Okay. What are you going to do about it? You can't change how Kendall operates, you can't change what Google Play decides to do. You can't change how some sort of upload happened or mistake happened with your preorder. It sucks. Deal with it, move on, but you've got to be aware of those negativity spirals and find a way find some some good tools that work for you to pull you out of it. Whether it becomes what you would call a cheesy affirmations. Like, I can't control this, but I know that I'm a great writer and things are going to turn around for me or she may be more successful, but I'm going to use that as motivation so that you this time next year, I'm like her and then start to come up with a plan for how you're going to come back whatever it was that's pulling you down into this negativity. If it's low sales, then start coming up with a new revenue plan. Maybe you need to do a new series. Maybe you need to rebrand your covers. There's a million ways that you can work to try to increase your sales increase your visibility, and yes, some of these things are long term strategies. But the longer you stay in your negative spiral or your your life of excuses and the things that you can't control, the less you're going to get done. So stop those negative thoughts in their tracks. Like learn to recognise them learn to control your own mindset when it comes to the negativity and find a way to turn it around. My therapist from years ago used to call this reframing which is probably like an official like psychoanalysis term or whatever, but it really works like when you become aware of those negative thoughts, you can find ways to reframe them. So when you say how should my sales today, you know, it doesn't I mean, it will do a lot of good for your mindset to say but they're going to be better tomorrow. But don't just take it to that step. Then come up with an action plan, not based on fear but based on excitement of who you know, you are always born to be because if you know that you are meant to be a writer, this is your calling. This is what you want to do and you know you're putting your whole heart into it. Then there's going to be ways that you can believe in yourself. Get past the negativity and come up with a plan for how you're going to turn things around. Then start executing that plan and focusing on the positive tell yourself you know by this time next year, I am going to have a book that hits number one in its category and here's exactly how I'm going to do it. If you raise your energy, get rid of that negative thought and negative self talk negative Facebook groups. You know, step away from those types of negative influences in your life, including your own thoughts, I promise you you're going to see results from that. You will begin to get on this the same way you can't that negativity spiral, you'll begin to move on this positive spiral and we all have days where you know just things are not going great. That's okay, but you have to stop it in its tracks. Stop the negativity spiral and start raising your energy start coming up with ways that you can support yourself instead of continuing to sink down in that quicksand. The number three way that writers often hold themselves back is we stop learning if you have ever heard yourself say or think well, this is as good as I'm ever going to get. So I don't need to learn plot, or I don't need to learn more about story structure. Or if you've heard yourself like if you've heard a bunch of reviewers say something like well, you know, I loved the writing in this book, but the plot didn't make sense. Or you've got a lot of reviews that say, Gosh, this person really needed a better editor. If you come at it from a place of ego and you say, you know, I paid $300 For that editor and I know exactly what I'm doing, then you're never going to get better. We have to step outside the ego of thinking that we know everything or that we're never going to be able to learn or grasp a new concept. Or we're never going to be able to grow in certain ways. We hold ourselves back from learning the thing that's going to get us to that next level. So you know if you love your editor and she's your sister in law, and you know you think she's done a lot to help you but you're constantly getting reviews or comments from beta readers or friends that are reading it saying, you know, there's a lot of typos here, or that's not how you use this word. Maybe you have to step back from your devotion to your sister in law and base facts and say, You know what, I'm going to try a different editor or I'm going to pick up Strunk and whites element of style and I'm going to learn more about how to use commas or I'm going to learn to write more likeable characters or at least characters where the reader understands their motivations. Stop learning because we're sure that we know everything and we become stubborn, that you know we think we've got it all on lockdown. We also stopped opening ourselves up to the opportunities for growth. And I think that's one of the main ways that writers hold themselves back and the same thing goes with the marketing side of it. I've heard a lot of writers say before, like, Well, I'm not I'm just not good at marketing and I've tried everything and I still can't get my series to take off. Well, have you I mean, really, have you tried everything? Because there are so many different strategies out there so many different tactics. Have you really taken a good hard look at these covers that you love, but maybe aren't selling your book or selling the genre the way that you want it to? Maybe you need to take a closer look at that step back from the ego thinking you knew what was best and listen to feedback from some people around you. That might be helping you learn how to better package these great novels that you've written for. For example, maybe you have tried a lot of things but maybe you haven't tried, you know, engaging with your fans more maybe you haven't tried a different type of newsletter strategy. Maybe you've never tried doing a pre order before or you've never tried not doing a pre order. Sometimes we think we know everything we've got the the formula down or we're scared of something. So we stopped learning we stopped seeking and I know that sometimes as indie authors especially it can feel like there's just so much to learn that we can't possibly take it all in. So what I like to do is you know, I've got my board that I did a video on and I will add sometimes in my goals, that there are these courses that I want to take or videos that I want to watch that I can continue learning. I also even though I've just published my 23rd novel, I am well aware that I have a lot to learn as a writer. I feel like I'm still just kind of a new but there's just so there's always that next level. Even Stephen King in one of his more recent short story anthologies said something along the lines of he still feels like he's a new writer because he's always still learning and that is one of the reasons that Stephen King is as successful as he is and continues to get better and better in his storytelling. If we stop and we just say, Well, I don't have anything else to learn, or I have to write so fast. I don't care to learn anymore. Then you're going to start to see your that you're holding yourself back from the next level of craft and from the next level of success. With your marketing. There's always room to learn. So I think sometimes it's important for writers to step back for a minute and say where can I improve and constantly be working on improving their craft, improving their ability to market improving their conversations and relationships with their readers? There's always ways to improve and so don't stop learning. Okay, the fourth way that writers hold themselves back is we don't prioritise well we have a jillion and one things on our to do list Plus, you've actually got to get your writing done and like I just said, like, you got to find some time to like go read that Elements of Style book and actually implement it. In your writing. We need to do paperbacks, we got to do formatting. We got to find a better cover artist. I mean, I could just go on and listless list a million things that need to get done. The bottom line is that you need to sit down and figure out where your current priorities are. This is a big part of why I do a 90 day plan because instead of getting overwhelmed by everything there is to do and only sort of halfway doing a bunch of different tasks. I know exactly what I'm focusing on. This quarter and I just let everything go when I have a new release coming up or when I'm promoting a big sale, sometimes when I've just finished writing a book and it's gone off to the editor and the beta readers, my priorities shift and now I'm in full launch mode. So sometimes the focus is on the marketing but usually that's just for a very short period of time for me personally, because I see so much more return and so much more income potential in getting the next book of that series out than I do in changing my carbs. So I prioritise those things whereas I might spend three hours a day on writing an extra hour on learning how to be a better writer or reading better writers so that I can understand how they're portraying certain things. Then I would spend maybe 30 minutes working on a couple of blurbs or like optimising my keywords, but I've found what works for me based on where I am in my current career. If I was just starting out, and I hadn't actually published my first book, you know, I see a lot of people who are not even published yet. But there's, they're spending so much time in Facebook groups on online forums, learning about the processes of publishing, and that is great. But then when you ask them, like, How's their book going, they're like, oh, I have no time to write. I cannot tell you how many people I've talked to that are like this. It's easy to get wrapped up in the How am I going to do this and ignore the actual like fundamental priority, which is getting those books written. So to not hold yourself back. That's all you need to get done this week. And you can set out exactly when you intend to do it and how much time you think everything's going to take. If you start a process like that, and you start prioritising things that need to get done. You're much less likely to bend five hours this week on Facebook reading posts about how you know 20 Other people got their books done this week and 25 other people like hit the top 1000 in Kindle Unlimited with their newest release like that stuff does you know good in terms of your own career. All it does is make you compare yourself to others make you freak out about what if my book isn't successful or why am I not making as much money? Like it's great to hear other people, you know, talk about their successes, but when you're really prioritising your own life and your own career, that should be like way down on the totem pole. So take some time to be really specific and deliberate about where you're spending your time and what your priorities are and I guarantee you will stop holding yourself back in a major way. Okay, and the fifth and final thing that I'm going to talk about in terms of how writers hold themselves back, is we doubt ourselves, like I said earlier, writers are very emotional beings. We are very much in our head and we tend to let our thoughts and our mindset and our feelings and emotions dictate how much work we get done, how much we step outside of our comfort zone, how much we take that big risks to go big and have the life that we always dreamed we really need our minds to be in the right place. But it is so easy to get caught up in things that really bring our energy down like the things I was talking about before but also doubting ourselves feeling like what if I'm putting this work indicates his career, and it doesn't take off? What if other people think I'm stupid? What if I publish this book and everybody in my town or everybody in my family thinks that I have no talent? Or who does she think she is for thinking she can write a book and basic stuff like that imposter syndrome. That's a major thing that holds a lot of us back because we look at all these successful people we think well, that's never going to be me. But doubting yourself is never going to get you to the top of your career. It's not going to help you in any way. All it does is pull you back down into that quicksand and it makes you doubt every word that you're putting on the page. I go through this a lot like there's this cycle. My books, I think probably 99% of writers go through, or I always hit a point in the story where I'm thinking I can't do this. It's not coming out the way I wanted. The story isn't cooperating. I feel like I'm just writing gibberish on the page. I know I'm gonna have to throw this out. I'm not sure I can do this. What if I can't deliver on this book and then what if my career and then there goes that negative thought spiral and doubting myself and my own abilities? What I have to do when those types of doubts start creeping in, is I have to talk to some of my best friends who will no doubt tell me Sara You do this every time and it always comes out fine and go look at reviews on your last book. Everything turned out fine and you felt the same way and the same worries. Just keep going trust your process and I have those people you know my husband says the same thing like I remember very vividly like probably on book, maybe 10 or 11 of my career. I like laying across the bed, you know, in dramatic fashion and told my husband like this is the worst book I've ever written. And he started laughing at me and I was like, Why are you laughing? And he said, Because you do this every single book and I had no idea that I did it. But I began to recognise it later that there's just a point in the writer's process where we think I can't do this. This is the worst book. I think boards aren't any good. But you have to learn to push past it. Don't let the self doubt keep you from writing to the end of the book because I see a lot of people like especially if you are watching this right now and you are someone who has started 10 different books but you've never actually finished anything or you've never actually finished editing anything. Then I can guarantee you a part of that is because somewhere deep inside somewhere in the process, you begin doubting yourself and your abilities and whether this book is good enough and you think it's going to be too hard or that you really need something else and what our subconscious mind does, to keep us out of that place of discomfort and pushing to the end and pushing to greatness is our ego and that little child inside us says you know what? Here's this other really great idea. And I bet you'd be so good at this one. And beginnings of stories are typically more fun because we're world building and it's easy because you're just kind of setting the stage. You don't have to figure out like the climax and the big moments at the end and really hard stuff that comes in editing. So that little voice inside of us says you know you're not this one just isn't working out for you. To do this other one, you have to stop listening to that voice because that is nothing but self doubt and self sabotage. Sometimes there may be stories that are totally like unsavable and you should just let them go. But if you find yourself in a pattern of hitting that moment of doubt, and then jumping on the next new story and then taking that for a ride until you hit the moment of self doubt again and then Ooh, there's another like PLOT BUNNY that you're going to explore. What you're facing is extreme self doubt and self sabotage. Even if you think this is the worst book anyone in the history of writing has ever written, finished the book, get past those fears. Tell yourself I'm going to finish this even if it's terrible. Give yourself permission for that book to suck completely, but finish it then when you get a chance to edit it or set it aside or whatever your process is. Go through and edit it until you make it good because you know what a lot of us write really terrible books. The first way through this is why use word sprints help push me because I can say to myself, well, this sucks. But I'm going to sit down for 25 minutes and I'm going to write even more sucky words and it's going to be okay because I'm gonna prove to myself that I can write 1000 more words or 250 more words, and somewhere between the moments and that wall of just in comprehensible doubt. And 25 minutes Sprint's here and there I push past and there's like the light at the end of the tunnel. And suddenly the story starts to come together. Now sometimes that means I throw out 30,000 words and I have to start that whole section over again. But those 30,000 words are full of energy because now I figured out the story and it's literally the closest to magic. I think I've ever been in my life. And if you have not reached those points in your own writing, it's because you're too afraid and you're doubting your own abilities. You've got to stop doing that. Believe in yourself. When it comes to the writing and push through those doubts. Another way that we start to let those doubts hold us back is you know, maybe the reviews didn't come in or maybe we've already got three books up and the sales just aren't what they want it to be and maybe you've got all these debts and all these bills are accumulating. You were really hoping that this writing gig would be the thing that pulls you out of the muck. So when you start to get into that same thing is that focusing on the negativity when you start to really doubt yourself in your abilities doubt your career doubt that the series is going well. You have to find a way to push past it to not react to that panic that's like starting to bubble up that anxiety and those self doubts don't let that sabotage like feel what you're feeling and then step back and take a look at it. And say is this true? I just had a really good release like much better than the last one. You have to really look at the truth because self doubt tends just like fear, it tends to lie to us. And I think that it's important to not panic and self sabotage and completely change the game. When you've just had a little bit of a hiccup or you're just starting to doubt yourself the more you can learn to recognise self doubt and self sabotage from like the need to like intuitively, the need to really change things up, the better off you're going to be because those two things can get very tricky to understand the difference between them. But self doubt is what comes up when we're putting ourselves out of our comfort zone when we're trying new things. And when we're just too afraid that we're not going to be able to see it through. I know several authors who had series that were languishing things that weren't doing very well, but they stuck with it because they believed in that series. And by book five, they were rolling in the dough like six figure income and it happens for some people and it doesn't happen for some people. But even if you believed in it, and you made it all the way through a six book series and it didn't just quite take off instead of panicking and self doubt and allowing yourself to spend a year like on the couch you know, eating Cheetos and watching Netflix take the time to say okay, what didn't work about the series? Was it not placed in the right genre? Maybe the covers weren't right maybe I just still had a lot to learn about craft and I didn't start things off right or maybe my characters just really weren't that likeable and I need to work more on character motivation and pacing or more on dialogue, whatever it is like take a hard eye on it instead of just wallowing in the self doubt of oh my gosh, my series didn't sell. Start looking at the things you can change when it comes to all five of these. It's really all about your own mindset. It's about learning to really stepped back and take a look at the thoughts that are going through your head and the things that are negative, whether you can control them or not. Instead of focusing on those negative thoughts and allowing it to sabotage your career or to make you not right for five days in a row or five months in a row. Really take a look at those things and begin to figure out from a state of awareness how you can change them how you can turn it around, even if it takes something like waking up every morning and writing down in a journal all the reasons why you love being a writer and you're so excited to get to that next series or to start over to do something new or to write that next thing you need to try to pull yourself out of negative thoughts out of excuses about what everyone does. Because, you know the truth is saying it's not fair. It may not be fair, but life is just not fair. And we have to learn to navigate you know the ins and outs of this very tricky business but if you focus on it's not there, this is why I can't do this. Everything's negative, everything's against me. Or you say I'm not going to learn because I'm going to you know, I already know everything I'm doing and it's just not working. If you focus on those types of thoughts, you are going to stay where you are or you're going to drop even lower. So if you really want to reach for your fullest potential for your dream life. Then you have to recognise these things. See which ones of them resonate with you which ones you might be doing in your own life and find a way to pull yourself out of them to be aware of when you're doing it and have tools to pull yourself out of them when you find yourself just spiralling into those thoughts. Now, like I said in the beginning, this is something I need to hear for myself as well. Because you know this this business is very much like riding on open seas and sometimes there's going to be storms and there's going to be things that affect your sails. There's going to be you know, times when you don't feel like writing and there's going to be times when you get bad reviews and there's going to be times when you compare yourself to other people but in the end if you want to be successful focusing on those negative things and those things that hold us back are not going to be your saviour. They do nothing for you but keep you down. So hopefully this list has helped you kind of think through some of your own excuses some of the negative thoughts that hold you back. And what I encourage you to do after you watch this is to comment below with something like a limiting belief of some type that has held you back in your career. And I would love to hear how you plan to shift things. How do you want to shift your energy how you want to shift your mindset, your mood, there are always ways to shift that energy. So wherever you feel the negative energy that's holding you back, start really thinking through make a list of things that you can try until you land on something that's going to work because if you truly want to be a success at this writing business, you're gonna have to learn to master your own mindset and your own time. Alright guys, I hope this video has helped you and if it has, please go and check out some of my other videos and I hope that you'll subscribe and click that notification bell to get notified as soon as a new video goes up from me. And while you're at it. If you are new to self publishing, or you're about to self publish, head over to heart breedings.com where I have a free download for you about everything you need before you self publish it walks you through an entire checklist an explanation of all the little details you need to get like deciding your keywords whether or not you need an ISBN whether or not you're going to use a pen name it walks you through all those kinds of decisions. So hopefully you'll go and snag that free download and I will see you guys in my next video.

[This transcript was generated by OTTER speech to text app I had download on My Samsung smartphone from Play Store. - G]

Kishalay Sinha [G] November 23, 2021