When Less Equals More, Guest Post by Rochelle Melander

Today, I welcome Write Now! Coach, Rochelle Melander to the blog.

Rochelle and I met a short while ago over coffee, and, while I nibbled away on a giant blueberry muffin, I groaned about my inability to move beyond the first draft of my novel. I can’t possibly tackle such a large work of writing, I complained. Rochelle then offered me a bit of perspective on long, complicated projects like novels. I loved her advice so well that I asked her to write a guest post about it.

And, lucky for you, she’s not only giving us three tips for surmounting the insurmountable, but she’s also giving away a 30-minute complimentary coaching session. If I were you (and I wish I were!), I’d drop my name in the comments, stat! Random.org will choose the winner on Tuesday, April 30th.

When Less Equals More:
Using Small Steps to Tackle Big Projects

by Rochelle Melander

Highly visionary companies often use bold missions–what we prefer to call BHAGs (pronounced bee-hags, short for “Big Hairy Audacious Goals”)–as a particularly powerful mechanism to stimulate progress. —Jim Collins

Accomplish the great task by a series of small acts. —Tao Te Ching

I start the day with buckets of energy and a packed to-write list. Not only do I have several blog posts due, but there are queries to write, speeches to prepare, and stacks of books to read. Add to that my day job: I’m a writing coach and productivity consultant. I can’t imagine life without at least one “big hairy audacious goal” – and right now I have a few racing around my brain, competing for slots in my schedule. Before I get to my mid-morning snack, I panic and my energy level sinks. How can I accomplish all this?

One small step at a time. That’s how.

According to psychologist Robert Maurer, author of One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way, the fear center of our brains panic at the thought of a big hairy audacious goal. When we think about writing a book, our fight-or-flight response kicks in, and the thinking part of our brain freezes. We experience “writer’s block.” When we break that big goal into small steps, taking teeny tiny steps toward writing a book, we tiptoe past the fear part of our brain and are able to move forward without panic.

I’ve been using the small step method to write books for years. And that’s how I plan to get through this week and accomplish my next big hairy audacious goal. Here are three ways to use the small-step method to tackle your writing goals.

Write a small chunk.

It doesn’t matter what you are writing, an epic novel or the definitive guide to soup—every single project can be broken down into small chunks. In Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird, she equates the big old writing project to “trying to scale a glacier.” No kidding. Her solution: “I go back to trying to breathe, slowly and calmly, and I finally notice the one-inch picture frame that I put on my desk to remind me of short assignments. It reminds me that all I have to do is write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame.” (p. 17). The one-inch picture frame puts a wonderful visual boundary around your writing. Other small chunks include: a scene, a character action, a paragraph, a single idea, a sidebar, or a descriptive detail.

Small step: Break down your big project into a list of several small chunks.

Write for a short period of time.

Many of the clients I work with bemoan their lack of time to write. They long for a whole day or weekend spread out before them so that they can play with big ideas and dig into their writing. I’ve had the same desires, until I actually get those big chunks of time without the spouse, kids, and dogs. Then I panic: “Oh my, oh my, oh no—how can I possibly fill all this time?” I long to be back home, where I can fold towels, chop vegetables, and walk dogs between writing sessions. Over the years, I’ve discovered that I actually accomplish more in a series of short chunks of time than I do with a whole day of “free time.”

IMG_0230Small step: Schedule a short period of time (5-15 minutes) to write every day this week. “Every day?” you ask. Yup. That way it will become a habit. Up your chances of success by tying your writing to something you already do: a morning cup of coffee or your lunch break.

Take on small projects.

Have you heard this quote from Cicero, “Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents and everyone is writing a book.” Cicero was a Roman philosopher who lived in the mid-first century BCE (106-43 BCE). As a writing coach, I can assure you that nothing has changed. Children still disobey their parents and nearly everyone I meet wants to write a book. Few seem to have a smidgen of interest in tiny projects. And yet here’s the deal: short writing assignments placed in big venues can garner a lot more attention than a book. According to an article in the Huffington Post, “The average U.S. nonfiction book is now selling less than 250 copies per year and less than 3,000 copies over its lifetime.” Compare that to the million or so readers who might encounter your short piece in a periodical or online.

Small step: Choose a small writing project to work on—a blog post, a filler piece for a print magazine, or a flash fiction story.

Your turn: How has the small step method helped you tackle big hairy audacious goals?

rochelle smallRochelle Melander is an author, speaker, and certified professional coach. She has used the small step method to write ten books, including the National Novel Writing Month Guide Write-A-Thon: Write Your Book in 26 Days (and Live to Tell About It) (Writers Digest, 2011). Rochelle teaches professionals how to create a writing life, write books fast, get published, and connect with readers through social media. For more tips and a complementary download of the first two chapters of Write-A-Thon, visit her online at www.writenowcoach.com.

Also, subscribe to her Facebook page or follow her on Twitter.

PS. Don’t forget to drop your name in a comment; you could win a 30-minute complimentary coaching session.

* Snail climbing wall Photo credit: lisasolonynko from morguefile.com

Here and Now.

I had a totally different post in mind for today, one in which I would go blathering on about the great weekend I had working on my novel, how I was lucky to have spent two nights away with little to worry about except the story and getting all those flash cards of scenes into a workable order, how traveling with a writing partner and a kindred spirit made the weekend even nicer and the work a lot less painful.

I planned to share photos: pictures of coffee in pretty cups that made me feel pampered and plate-fuls of sustenance that fueled my energy, and a snapshot of blooming flowers that were a sign of promise on a cloudy day.

But, this week’s tragedy in Boston left me in a quiet state of mind. Grateful to be in the here and now, surrounded by the people I love. Comforted by reminders that there are so many good souls  counteracting the crazy in this world. And, glued to this message from a very wise man:

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

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Q&A (and Giveaway!) with Randy Susan Meyers

What did you do when your life unraveled?
~ from The Comfort of Lies

Meyers-The-Comfort-1E147B0Great fiction will mirror our world and make us wonder if parts of a story are real. We will keep turning the page, or we may put the book down, unable to resist the connection.

Some reviewers of Randy Susan Meyer’s new novel, The Comfort of Lies, have given the book fewer than five stars, saying they didn’t like the characters. It’s true that the three women brought together in this book (about adoption, marriage, and motherhood) behave in ways that make them unlikeable. Also true is the fact that each of these women, Tia and Juliette and Caroline, are, in one way or another, quite relatable: their thoughts and decisions, fears and obsessions, have brushed the minds of most readers. And, no one likes the ugly truth.

Perhaps that’s what drew me to The Comfort of Lies, as it exposes reasons why a person would lie, times when the truth may be more painful, and repercussions of deception.

The book jacket says it best:

Riveting and arresting, The Comfort of Lies explores the collateral damage of infidelity and the dark, private struggles many of us experience but rarely reveal.

I’m honored to host Randy Susan Meyers; I’m offering a book giveaway as well. Just leave your name in the comments for a chance to win a copy of The Comfort of Lies. Random.org will choose the lucky reader on Tuesday, April 16th.

Now, welcome Randy!

CC: The effects of infidelity, motherhood, and adoption set the lives of three women on a path of painful awarenesses and acceptance, their feelings so understandably natural (and all-too-relatable at times). I wonder, as a reader and a writer, what was the seed for this novel? How did you decide to write on this particular topic?

RandySusanMeyers_headshotRSM: I didn’t give up a baby for adoption nor adopt a child, but with every pregnancy scare I had, I wondered about the choices I might make. Infidelity? I struggled with the issue in ways that allowed The Comfort of Lies to come frighteningly alive in my mind (and hopefully on paper.) I haven’t suffered through all of my characters’ crises but I’ve been close enough to imagine them all far too well.

Writing The Comfort of Lies drew me to dark places and gloomy themes (falling hard for a man who isn’t yours; learning your husband has cheated; an unplanned pregnancy; thinking that you’re not cut out for motherhood; giving up a child for adoption; wrestling with the pull towards work and the demands of motherhood; failing at work.) Blowing up emotional truths into a “what-if” novel forced me to visit past sins of my own, sins that were visited upon me, and sins that had always terrified me as my future possibilities. People disappearing, or not being what or whom one thought—these themes are at the core of my writing and my life. The Comfort of Lies is not an autobiographical novel—but I drew on bad times in my life and exploded those stretches into “could be far worse” and “what if.” I very much examined that thin line teetering between morality and forgiveness.

CC: The majority of this story is told from the perspective of the three women, Tia, Juliette, and Caroline. It isn’t until we near the end that we experience what’s happening from Nathan’s point of view (a pleasant surprise, by the way, I love those chapters). Did the decision to include his POV happen early in the writing process or come about in later drafts?

RSM: The decision to include Nathan’s POV, and to hold it back until the middle of the novel, was a decision made about halfway through my first draft. I very much wanted to know his belief system, to find out what story he told himself to allow his actions before and after his infidelity. Everyone is the star of their own show, and I wanted to know his ‘show.’ On the other hand, I didn’t want him to be a ‘star’ of the book, but a supporting player to the women—thus was made my decision to bring him in later in the book, and only for a limited appearance.

CC: In your blog post, “The Reader-Writer Covenant,” on your blog, you talk about giving the reader the kind of story you, yourself, want to read. Often, that means digging deep into a character’s psyche, writing stories “gritty enough to have emotional truth.” THE COMFORT OF LIES is full of difficult truths about relationships. And, it’s inevitable: stories we read (and write) affect us in visceral ways. As a writer, how do you walk away from difficult moments you’ve just transferred onto the page?

RSM: I have worked hard on formulating a ‘disconnect.’ Wanting to both write dense emotional novels, and also have a calm life, means I use the following ‘life rules:”

  1. Follow the advice of Gustave Flaubert: “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
  2. I write about things that contain intense emotional resonance, but only when those events and triggers are deep in the past. I will not write about topics which are freshly wounds, or from which I have not recovered enough to have a cold grasp on it. For instance, I was able to write about sisters who witnessed their father murder their mother, using my family history of my father attempting to kill my mother as a trigger for my fiction—but only because it was so far in my past that I could explore the ‘what it’ (what if he’d succeeded, which he didn’t) without either falling apart or spilling my own story onto the novel. The same goes for my explorations of infidelity. Any experience I had which informed The Comfort of Lies was from long, long ago.
  3. I shake it off. When I feel myself flooded by emotion, I force myself to stand up, and then I remind myself that was ‘one the page’ and will stay ‘on the page.’ I have an ability to be quite divisive—using emotional horror and then leaving it on the page. I get up and make supper. Plus, no drinking or any other behavior that would allow me to get sloppy on myself or on the page is ever allowed.

CC: What are you reading these days?

RSM: I just finished Three Graves Full by Jamie Mason (a debut literary thriller, which I loved,) You Are The Love of My Life by Susan Richards Shreve (I was on a panel with her and bought the book and found it entrancing,) and am now immersed in May We Be Forgiven by A.M. Homes (I love everything she’s ever written.)

CC: The process of writing, publication, and release of a novel all present several challenges (one of which you embraced so well with the release of The Comfort of Lies). Is there one word or phrase that keeps you moving forward on days when frustrations threaten to squelch a writer’s inspiration and determination?

RSM: My mantra: This too shall pass.

The drama of Randy Susan Meyers’ novels is informed by her years spent bartending, her work with violent offenders, and too many years being enamored by bad boys. Raised in Brooklyn New York, Randy now lives in Boston with her husband and is the mother of two grown daughters. She teaches writing seminars at Boston’s Grub Street Writers’ Center.

Read more about Randy Susan Meyers’ acclaimed debut novel, The Murderer’s Daughters, and her newly released novel, The Comfort of Lies on her website. Then, follow her on Twitter or like her author page on Facebook.

And, don’t forget to leave a quick comment for a chance to win a copy of The Comfort of Lies.