Things I’m noticing while I write, list #1

March 14, 2012 / Jill Winski

I’m fascinated by the challenges creators face, which is why I coach creators. And I’m my own client — in fact, I’m the one client I’d better love working with, because I’m kinda stuck with me, for life. So every now and then I’m going to post some brief lists of things I’m noticing while I work on my novel draft. Just little tidbits that might spark you to say, hey, that’s true for me too. Or, hmm — that’s not true for me at all. Interesting.

Here’s today’s list.

1. When the writing feels really daunting, there’s only one thing to do: Write one sentence. Really. And there’s only one thing to do after that: write one sentence. I can go the whole way that way.

2. Sometimes, I worry I’ve gone in the wrong direction with a scene. But the problem isn’t that I’ve gone in the wrong direction. The problem is the worrying about it. I don’t have to worry. When I’m clear that it’s wrong enough, I will change it. That’s all I need to know.

3. Discomfort is okay. It’s not a sign I should stop, or that what I’m writing is terrible. It does mean I need to be extra-compassionate with myself in order to keep moving forward. Yes, my dear. This is hard. The fact that it’s hard doesn’t mean something is wrong.

4. I love the process. And I thank my lucky stars that I do. When I get very results-focused, I can forget that I write to begin with because I love it. Because it’s my particular way of expressing what I value, who I am. The process can be its own reward, even when I desire a certain outcome. Valuing, even relishing, the process does not mean I am giving up on results. It just means I get to be happy now, instead of then.

What are you noticing while you create? I’d love to hear from you.

Also: while I’m on the subject of writing, as I’ve mentioned previously, I’m both a participant and a coach for Jenna Avery’s Just Do the Writing Accountability Circle. Tomorrow, March 15, is the last day to sign up for the next session. If you’re having trouble committing to a daily writing habit, I highly recommend you check out this group! Click here to find out more.

And: I offer free Creativity Consultations. If you’re feeling stuck or scared and having a hard time moving forward on your creative project, check them out here.

Are You Stretching or Pushing Yourself? How to Tell the Difference.

February 29, 2012 / Jill Winski / 4 Comments

I wrote recently about how perfectionism can be such a creativity killer. It may seem like perfectionistic striving helps us get things done, but its constricting energy actually puts a stranglehold on the flow of our creativity. Still, most of us learn from an early age that there’s value in pushing ourselves, in being hard on ourselves. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked to someone who’s feeling scared and stuck, and at some point in the conversation they say, “I just really need you to give me a kick in the butt so I can get going.”

Sorry, but I’m never going to do that.

What I will do is suggest that you look at how it feels when you have the thought, “I really need a kick in the butt to get going.” How do you proceed from there? Does it feel enlivening? Does it instill confidence in yourself? And, even more importantly, does it create a feeling of trust in yourself?

When I attempt to proceed from that thought, I feel angry. My stomach tightens. My jaw clenches. I also feel some sadness, because I am attempting to motivate myself through force and fear. And I decided a long time ago that that’s not the way I want to live.

The “kick in the butt” method is an example of motivating ourselves by pushing ourselves. If someone pushes me in line at the grocery, I will probably refrain from pushing them back (or maybe I won’t!), but I really want to push back. And similarly, when I push myself, something in me pushes back. I may be feeling resistant to whatever it is I want to do, but pushing myself only creates more resistance. When I proceed from a mentality of pushing myself, I create an inner struggle.

So what’s the solution? For me, it’s changing my mentality from the concept of pushing to the concept of stretching. I’ve always loved the feeling of stretching myself — whether it was stretching my arms and legs in a ballet class as a child, or stretching myself to write that one more page in my journal last night that was just dying to come out, even though I was getting tired.

For me, stretching feels good. It may be uncomfortable and unfamiliar — as when we are beginning to use muscles we don’t usually use, whether we’re in ballet class or starting our first novel — but it’s a challenging sort of uncomfortable. It feels juicy, a bit scary, maybe more than a bit sometimes, but what stretching says is: I trust you to grow toward what is life-enhancing for you. I trust you to more fully become yourself.

What pushing says is: If I don’t push you, you’ll never do it.

I much prefer the message of stretching.

Also, stretching is a good antidote for resistance. If I focus on the feeling of excitement and challenge and discovery that comes with stretching myself, I feel less resistant to doing whatever it is I want (but am scared) to do.

I’d love to hear your experiences with stretching vs. pushing yourself. What have you discovered?

And don’t forget, I offer free Creativity Consultations. Check them out here!

Join Me for Muse Office Hours, tomorrow!

February 23, 2012February 24, 2012 / Jill Winski

Feeling stuck, scared to begin, or flat-out immobilized around something you’re creating? Does it feel like you just can’t stop procrastinating? Do you need some support to get going again? I really know how you feel, and I want to help you get started. To that end, I am offering Muse Office Hours, tomorrow, Feb. 24, from noon to 2 p.m. Central Standard Time. (If you need help figuring out the time zone difference, click here).

What are Muse Office Hours? They’re a two-hour window of time in which you can call in and get fifteen minutes of free, focused coaching from me on any creative issue you’re experiencing. If you’re feeling stuck, scared, so excited you’re freaking out, or anything at all around something you’re creating, and you need some feedback or support, this is totally for you. And the “something” you’re creating can be anything from a novel to a business to a new way of life.

The “muse” in Muse Office Hours does not mean that I, Jill, am your muse — no way! You carry within yourself your own very specific muse, precious and utterly unique, and my purpose with Muse Office Hours is to help you awaken it. Or maybe you just need to get back in touch with it, cheer it up, or knit it a fancy scarf so it will feel warmer and more connected to you. I can help with all that, too.

I love talking to creators about their fears around creativity — and by the way, if you’re having these fears, you’re totally normal. We’ve all got ’em. It’s talking about them and getting support that allows us to get unstuck.

To take advantage of Muse Office Hours, call in to +1 708 689 9480 at any time during the two-hour window, up to fifteen minutes before the window ends — if you get my voice mail, it means I’m coaching someone else; leave a message and I will call you back as soon as I’m able! Muse Office Hours are first-come, first-served.

Thanks to my friend and fellow coach Melissa Wirt for dreaming up Muse Office Hours. 🙂

And stay tuned for my article on the difference between stretching and pushing ourselves, coming soon!

Image is FAIRY © Darrenw | Dreamstime.com

Perfectionism vs. Creativity: The Gloves are Off!

February 13, 2012February 25, 2012 / Jill Winski / 2 Comments

Note: Scroll down to the bottom of the article for a free opportunity for coaching with me!

Last week, the topic of perfectionism arose in several conversations. Each time, we reached a consensus that perfectionism contributes heavily to burnout, which is a huge creativity killer.

Perfectionism tells us we need to drive ourselves. And it’s a pretty tricky little devil. It can wrap its tentacles around an innocent thought like, “I want to create more.” Sounds like a good thought, right? So let’s say your form of creating is writing your novel, and you work on your novel for thirty minutes one day. You feel good, satisfied. But a shrill little voice pipes up and says, “Only thirty minutes? Surely you can do more than that tomorrow!”

So the next day you sit down and you find it’s a little harder to write for thirty minutes than it was yesterday. And on top of it, now you feel like you have to write for more than thirty minutes, because you have to make sure you’re besting what you did yesterday. So you manage to write for sixty. It’s not much fun. You feel like you’re grinding it out, because you’re so focused on how much you do (making sure it’s “more”) that you’ve lost sight of the fact that you wanted to create in the first place because it enlivens you, because it’s a way of using your gifts, of exercising your creative muscles.

The next day, not only do you feel like you’d better write more than you wrote yesterday, but you talk to Jane and she says she writes for three hours every day, getting up at 5 a.m. to do so. The shrill little voice pipes up again and says, “Look how much Jane is doing! Surely you can do that much!”

The following day you get up at 5 a.m., determined to write as much as Jane writes so you can “be a real writer”. Then you read an interview where someone mentions that Philip Roth writes 365 days a year. So now, not only do you need to get up at 5 a.m. and write for three hours a day like Jane, but you need to write every single day of the year. Naturally, it’s already way too late for you to be Philip Roth, but maybe you can still salvage some semblance of being a “real writer” if you write every single day of the year.

You manage to keep this up for about two weeks. By the fourteenth day, you’re so frazzled from keeping up this frantic pace and sleep-deprived from getting up at 5 a.m. — and by now Jane is telling you she’s writing four hours a day, not a wimpy three! — that you never want to write another word, ever, ever again. You get irritated when you hear people talking about how great it is to “create.” Who wants to create? you think. It’s exhausting and it makes you feel bad about yourself. Screw creating!

You don’t do any writing, or any other form of creating, for months (though occasionally you catch yourself doodling in the pages of your journal, in which you scribble illegible fragments that describe how uncreative you feel … hmm). Now you are so not Jane. (Darn that Jane!) You are so far away from Philip Roth, it’s not even funny. You had such good intentions. What happened to how fun, how joyful, it felt to write, way back when? You just wanted to recapture that. What went wrong?

Perfectionism is the behavior created by black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking. If you’re not writing four hours a day, 365 days a year, you might as well not write at all. If the short story you submitted to the literary journal was rejected, it’s because it was sucky and you just don’t know how to write. If the writing isn’t flowing today, you might as well quit, the well has run dry. Perfectionist behavior looks like this: Drive yourself, push yourself, force yourself. And when this doesn’t produce the results you want, quit. For months. For years. Forever.

Cynthia Curnan, in her terrific book “The Care and Feeding of Perfectionists” (which appears to be out of print, but is well worth finding if you can), writes that when we drive ourselves relentlessly with perfectionism, we create burnout, and burnout creates what she calls the “backlash.” The backlash is a long period of “underachieving” to balance out our “overachieving”.

Here’s the solution: Notice. Awareness is so, so powerful. I’ll get more into the topic of awareness and how to manage your perfectionism in my next article, where we’ll talk about the difference between pushing ourselves and stretching ourselves.

By the way, despite the title of this blog post, I encourage you not to duke it out with perfectionism. The more you fight perfectionism, the more formidable it becomes, because it engages with that defensive, fearful aspect of you that’s afraid you’ll never have enough, never be enough. It’s better to deftly swim out of perfectionism’s way, and let it go to battle with itself, like the shark in Jaws thrashing the empty underwater cage. (Sometimes I just have to get in a Jaws reference, because Jaws is awesome.)

And finally, here’s the freebie I’ve been talking about in my last couple of posts: Friday, Feb. 24, from noon to 2 p.m. CST, I’ll be hosting Muse Office Hours. This is a two-hour window in which you can call in and get up to fifteen minutes of free, focused coaching from me on any creative issue you’re having. My purpose here is to reconnect you with your muse! It’s a great opportunity to talk about why perfectionism is getting in your way, why you just can’t seem to get started, or how to continue if you’ve gotten stuck or stalled. Call (708) 689-9480 at any time during the two-hour window; if you get my voice mail, leave a message and I’ll be sure to get back to you in the order the calls were received. I’ll be posting updates about Muse Office Hours in the coming days.

Image is GIRL AND LAPTOP © Geraktv | Dreamstime.com

What Makes You Want to Create?, a.k.a. Monkey Energy!

February 1, 2012February 4, 2012 / Jill Winski / 6 Comments

During my “dark night of the soul” period several years ago when I felt profoundly uncreative, I started thinking about what it really is that causes me to want to create. I noticed that certain things — watching a sparrow splash around in a puddle while I took my morning walk — truly lit me up, while other things — believing my novel needed to be “serious literature” — felt dull as a dishrag.

I realized that “Art with a capital A”, as Julia Cameron puts it in “The Artist’s Way,” felt like a big drag to me. I’m interested in the ordinary. I’m fascinated by the ordinary. Or maybe a better way to put it is, one of my gifts is seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary.

I love to write, but I get turned off by “literary discussions.” I am interested in the craft of writing — what makes a piece of writing strong, what makes it sing off the page — and I am very interested in writers, their thoughts, joys, and struggles — but I’m not interested in keeping up with what’s going on in the “literary world.” I don’t consider myself an “Artist with a capital A.” I don’t think artists are “special.” Artists are human beings, reflecting the human experience.

Maybe that’s why during the past year I’ve developed such a fascination with monkeys, which I wrote about previously. Monkeys are very human-like, but, well, they’re not human. And because they’re not human, they don’t take themselves that seriously. And, as Havi Brooks pointed out so eloquently here, they don’t care if anyone else takes them seriously.

What lights me up these days? If you’ve talked to me at any length lately, you probably already know: Crystal the Monkey. I feel nothing short of giddy when I think about Crystal. Why? Because she is who she is. Monkeys can’t help but be exactly who they are. And that’s what gets my creative juices flowing: being exactly who I am, and reveling in the joy of others being exactly who they are.

My friend and fellow coach Melissa Wirt said to me a while ago, “How can you approach your business with monkey energy?” I couldn’t stop laughing, because she so hit the nail on the head — it was exactly the question I needed to hear. (And that’s what a good coach does, asks you that “just-right” question. Often, you can tell it’s the just-right question because it gives you a massive case of the giggles).

What makes me feel creative? Embracing my own “monkey energy.” In fact, I would venture to say that when we are exactly who we are, we can’t help but create. Creativity comes to us as naturally as breathing when we are true to our very own natures, whether we are monkeys or just lowly humans.

I hear a lot of creators saying, “I should be creating more.” I’m going to suggest we take the “should” out of the equation. What makes you want to create? What makes your heart sing, what makes you giddy, what can’t you stop talking about even when you wonder if people are rolling their eyes at you? Can you get really specific about it? Start from there.

By the way: I do have a special — free! — offering coming up, as promised in my last post. If you’re feeling “creatively stuck,” this is for you. Stay tuned for more info!

And: I offer ongoing free Creativity Consultations. You can read about them here.

I think this macaque is wondering what he'll get into next. It's a great thing to wonder about.

Image is MONKEY © Alexey Arkhipov | Dreamstime.com

Think Small!

January 19, 2012 / Jill Winski / 2 Comments

I continue to notice how doing just a little each day can make such a difference. This is true for my writing, it’s true for my coaching business, it’s true for the decluttering process I’ve got underway in my house. I wrote last week about how doing just ten minutes of writing one night made the difference I needed that day.

You might think that doing just a little isn’t enough. But what I’ve learned is that, when we think we need huge blocks of time to get something done, or when we see our project as so big we are overwhelmed, our tendency is to never begin. And then we feel frustrated and defeated.

Start small. Chip away. Make a dent in whatever it is you want to do. You’d be amazed at what you can accomplish by doing a little each day, over time.

On that note, TODAY, Jan. 19, is the last day to sign up for Jenna Avery’s Just Do the Writing Accountability Circle. I’ve written here and here about what a wonderful experience I’ve had as a participant in this Circle. (I finished a draft of my novel in the Circle by writing approximately thirty minutes a day, five days a week.) I’m also one of the coaches, and we’d love to have you join us this session, which starts Jan. 23. You can sign up for the Circle here.

Also: Be watching for an announcement from me early next week. I have something fun coming up — and it’s FREE!

To Create or Not to Create? Assessing Your Energy Levels

January 12, 2012 / Jill Winski / 2 Comments

I’m totally committed to working on my novel five days a week. But today, it got a little challenging. We got a decent amount of snow here in Chicagoland, and in the time between two coaching calls — time I’d scheduled as my writing time for today — I realized I was going to need to go out and shovel. It was just one of those practical, mother-nature-induced, daily-life annoyances that I was going to have to deal with.

It ended up taking longer than I’d imagined it would. The car windows were wrapped in ice. The recycling bin fell over as I tried to pull it over a bank of snow. And so on.

“Screw it,” I thought as I trudged back up the steps to the house, my cheeks pink and my forehead clammy with sweat. “No writing today. I’ll just have to chalk it up to a snow day.”

Around 8:30, I wrapped up my last coaching call. I was hungry. I ate some leftover mostaccioli and opened my iPad and started playing the Fluff Pets Rescue game I’ve become addicted to over the past week, my “reward” for doing all the stuff I had on my to-do list. I took it as a given that I was too tired to write. But I felt a little bit hollow; the “to-do” list for the day wasn’t truly complete.

And then I felt a little pull in my stomach: a tingle of excitement. I noticed something: really, I wasn’t too tired to write. I wanted to write. So what if it was almost 9 p.m.? I could sit there rescuing fluffy pets (and who doesn’t want to sit around doing that?) or I could get up, go to the computer, and do a little writing.

And that’s what I did. I didn’t do much — just ten minutes of new writing. That was it. But, tonight, that was what it took to give me that feeling that I’d done enough. I moved the writing to the place where I’d done what I wanted to do with the story, with the language, for today. It felt good. I felt satisfied. I’d kept my commitment to myself, even if it wasn’t as much as I’d planned to write. It was enough.

Now: had I gotten off my last call at 8:30 and realized I was physically depleted, my eyes were starting to close and I truly needed to wind down for the night — had it felt like forcing and pushing and having to literally drag myself to the computer to make myself write — that would have been a different story. Had that been the case, I would have called it a day for today — no writing. I would have chalked it up to a snow day and left it at that. And it would have been good.

Geneen Roth once wrote, “Sometimes doing it looks like not doing it.” Sometimes, when we need to rest, that is exactly what we should be doing. This doesn’t mean that at those times we are not creating. Something in us, I believe, is still at work; our unconscious may be knitting together that impossible story problem while we dream.

And sometimes, like tonight for me, doing it looks just like that: going to the desk, sitting in the chair, typing the words into the computer, or scribbling away in your notebook (I still often love to write the old-fashioned way, in a hard-backed Cambridge notebook).

You can always listen to your body for information as to what you need most in this day, this moment. When you think about creating, do you get a little flicker of “yes!” in your chest, even if you’re tired, even if you’ve had a headache since noon? Then by all means, go for it, even so! If, when you think about creating today, your stomach plummets to your feet, your tired bones feel like they want to be in bed and maybe you’ve tried dragging yourself to the computer and sat there for a while and nothing’s really coming out, then, by all means, call it a day for today. You can, and will, start again tomorrow. Trust that implicitly.

By the way: Watch for a special announcement from me in the coming days — I have a cool gift for my readers that I’ll be writing about very soon!

Moving Through the Fear

December 20, 2011 / Jill Winski

In early September, I had two unfinished novels sitting around, and I’d built up a huge amount of fear, resistance, and guilt in relation to them. I was ready to just trash both of them and start afresh, pretend they’d never existed. And that would have been okay, if it was what I genuinely wanted to do. But it wasn’t. I felt like I’d left parts of myself in those unfinished pieces. And I had a deep desire to go back and complete what I’d begun.

Enter Jenna Avery’s Just Do the Writing Accountability Circle, a.k.a. The Writer’s Circle. I joined the group, started logging in my daily writing progress on the website, got support from group members, and, as I wrote about here, I completed a draft of one of my novels in late October. Now, I’ve gone back to my other unfinished novel and I’m working on that one.

This stuff felt too scary for me to touch as recently as four months ago. But I’ve been able to get to it with the help of this group, and by taking small, manageable, daily steps. And I have to tell you, it feels pretty darned powerful.

I’ll be one of the coaches for the next session of the Writer’s Circle, which starts Dec. 26. The last day to sign up is Thursday, Dec. 22. If you have a languishing creative project, or would like to start writing again, or write for the first time ever, this can be a great gift to give yourself. And it’s not a bad way to start the New Year, either.

You can sign up for the Writer’s Circle here. I’d love to see you there!

There’s Enough Time. Really.

December 10, 2011 / Jill Winski / 8 Comments

This week, I had quite a few conversations with creators around the idea of time. The general consensus seemed to be: There’s not enough. I have too much to do — which, by the way, I wish I’d done ten years ago — and there’s too little time in which to do it. Frequently when I hear people say this, I want to agree with them, so they know that I sympathize. “Oh, I know, isn’t it true? There’s just not enough. There’s too much to do. No wonder I can’t get to my (fill in the blank — novel, artwork, yoga, relationship).”

Here’s the thing, though: It’s not true that there isn’t enough. Whether we’re talking about time or money or love.

What we really mean when we say “There’s not enough time” is: I’m trying to outrun my painful thoughts about not accomplishing enough. I’ve got to hurry up. So let me add more and more to my to-do list, so I don’t see more evidence for what I haven’t accomplished. If I can get it ALL DONE, I’ll feel better.

Do you see how backwards this kind of thinking really is? (Because, fellow creators, it doesn’t come down to time — it comes down to our thinking. Always.) The thought “There isn’t enough” creates feelings of urgency, anxiety, sadness, regret. In a nutshell, fear. Then we take desperate, urgent, anxious actions based on these feelings. And no matter what results we get, they don’t feel like enough, because all of these results have, as their backdrop, the belief that there just isn’t enough. We’ve cycled right back into our original thought, and it all continues — no matter what we have, no matter what we’ve created, it isn’t enough, because our belief is that there isn’t enough.

Unless: We look at our thoughts about time. Is it true that there isn’t enough? How much time do I need to feel good about creating today? To feel good about anything today?

I’m going to suggest that the “time issue” is not about time at all. It’s really about our stressful thought that, at some point, our lives will be over and we won’t have done what we wanted to do with them. It’s really about our lack of self-acceptance, about the fact that we’re afraid to meet ourselves, to accept ourselves, exactly where we are. It’s about a belief that there’s a finish line we should have crossed years ago, and we haven’t even made our way to the starting gate.

What if we were to believe that what we need more of is not time, but acceptance — of ourselves, of our lives, of where we are, who we are, now? How would we move forward from that belief? If we are okay exactly as we are, my hunch is that we are more likely to create for thirty minutes today and celebrate that, rather than wait two years for the day when we have a block of six hours to create.

As my awesome mentor Jenna Avery says, “Start small and start now.” What we really fear is not that there isn’t enough time, but that we won’t accept ourselves if we don’t live up to our perfectionistic standards, if we don’t do more, more, more. Do me a favor: do less. Write for fifteen minutes. Sketch for fifteen minutes. Dance for fifteen minutes. And do it today. It takes no time to accept yourself exactly where you are, right now.

One free session up for grabs!

November 29, 2011 / Jill Winski

Last week, I offered four free thirty-minute coaching sessions in celebration of my certification as a Martha Beck Life Coach. One free session remains! You can bring any issue to the session (it can be related to creativity, or not) and we’ll do some exploring together and see if we can get you a little less stuck. You’d be amazed at the shifts that can occur in a short period of time. It’s all about asking ourselves the right questions.

To claim your free session, email me at jillwinskicoaching@gmail.com and put “free session” in the subject line.