Establish a Positive Writing Mindset
Pattern interrupt your negative self talk
I co-led a writer’s retreat day last weekend. Six writers and two leaders got together for focused, timed spurts of writing interspersed with gathering to talk about and share work.
We also offered one-on-one coaching sessions. As a long-time writing coach, I love this. I learn so much from them about how writers struggle to get words on the page.
This time I worked with a woman who had developed a particularly bad habit around her writing. She had a huge backlog of work — twenty or more complete stories, six novels in various stages of completion. And from what I heard her read and talk about, I’m assuming she was good. She read an opening with a compelling piece of description, and noted a particularly encouraging rejection from the New Yorker.
If that doesn’t say something about the quality of her work, I don’t know what does. But the problem was this: much of this work had been completed years ago and needed a fresh edit.
And every time she started working on her writing again, the raging critic inside her reared its ugly, roaring head.
