Kicking the Arse of Self Sabotage

We all have a gremlin living inside us. This gremlin's name is Self Sabotage. It's the voice that tells you that you can't do it. You will fail.

This gremlin could be some kind of primitive self-preservation mechanism. If you don't try, you don't risk heartbreak and failure. But it also seems to want to see us miserable. It doesn't want us venture out and risk new things. It doesn't want us to venture from the status quo. It keeps us in a rut, because the rut is safe and familiar, and even if we're not happy in the rut, we have got used to being in it.

Some people let this gremlin rule their lives. They are also the same people who fuel other people's gremlins. We all have people in our lives who tell us we will fail.  Whenever we hear that, our own gremlin gets a bit stronger. Hear it enough times, we might even start to believe it.

If you're a writer, this gremlin is the voice that is telling you you're no good. You will never succeed. You can't really write very well at all. And it fuels the fear. You are afraid of rejection. But if you repeatedly tell yourself you're a rubbish writer, you will never finish that novel, which means you will never get around to submitting it, which means you save yourself from the heartbreak of repeated rejection letters.

But it's not good to listen to that gremlin, no matter how loudly it speaks to you. Plenty of songs have been written about how it's better to have loved and lost than never loved at all, and so on. Some of them are pretty corny, but the sentiment is true. Sometimes you have to take chances. Sometimes the risk you take doesn't work out, but sometimes it does, and you won't know either way unless you give it a go. There's another corny old adage that seems highly appropriate here. The things you most regret on your death bed will be the things you didn't do - not the things you did. Even if some of those things proved to be mistakes in retrospect, at least you lived to tell about them.

So the next time you hear that Self Sabotage gremlin whispering to you that you're going to fail - whether it be referring to your writing, or something else in your life - be sure to give that critter a good kick up the backside. That doesn't mean it won't come back - it invariably will. But the further away and more frequently you kick it, the longer it will take to come back. And when it does, at least you'll be ready for it.

Happy 2013!

Happy New Year 2 by Sabine Sauermaul

How was your New Year's? Hope everyone had a good time, and didn't suffer too bad a hangover. I watched the Red Green New Year's special, while negotiating for chair space with my cat. Amazing how such a small creature can take up so much space.

I guess a lot of people are writing about their resolutions and goals for 2013. For me, the focus is on writing, of getting more of my work out there. Not that 2012 was a washout. I published five short stories, four in anthologies and one through MuseItUp Publishing. I'm currently finalizing the draft of an urban fantasy short novel that I intend to submit this month.

This year, I've decided I'm not going to listen to the naysayers, those negative people who try to convince me, rather insidiously, maybe I'm not good enough. You know the ones. They hide behind insincere compliments, but when it comes time to walk the proverbial walk, they're nowhere to be found.

Sadly, these people (and some writing groups) have played a negative role in my writing, convincing me maybe I wasn't good enough, or that I wasn't writing the right stories, etc. So many of my stories lay dormant on my hard drive, pushed aside, even though I liked them.

That's why I've decided to dust them off, finish and/or revise them, and send them out into the world. Screw what my detractors say. I don't have time for those who want to shoot down other people's dreams.

As for resolutions, I usually don't make any. Except this year, I want to submit at least one story a month. Doesn't have to be a story, either. Could be a screenplay or a poem. As long as I'm writing. :-)

Stressed

Generally I don't post when I'm stressed. When I'm stressed I get grumpy, and I don't want my blog posts to turn into long whinges. However, I am doing so today for reasons I hope will become clear later.

I've had a couple of holidays this summer, which were not stressful in themselves, but coming back to work after time away always makes me regret going away in the first place - the work piles up when I'm gone, and suddenly there isn't enough time to do everything.

I seem to have been struck by a series of ailments over the last few weeks - nothing serious or long lasting, but it has meant I've spent altogether too much time sitting in hospital waiting rooms.

We are in the process of buying and selling property, which is a long, drawn out and stressful process. I'm not going to say too much about this at this stage, because English property law being what it is, nothing is set before exchange, anything can go wrong - and frequently does - before that stage, and so it's best not to assume it's actually going to happen until the keys are in your hand. However, the process involves dealing with estate agents and solicitors, which is stressful enough without all the other stuff going on.

Most crucially, though, I am still wrestling with the WIP. I am mired in the "my writing is rubbish" stage, believing the whole thing needs dismantling and putting back together, and I am not sure where to start.

However, I am starting to think that life stress is connected to writing stress and vice versa. When the writing is going well I am in a much better frame of mind and can pretty much handle whatever life throws at me. When it's not going well, suddenly all kinds of other hassle creeps in - notably, things that wouldn't be bothering me quite so much if the writing was going well. I started today with an early morning writing session that didn't go at all well - I spent much of that hour staring at the page thinking what I had written was complete rubbish. Hence, I didn't have a good day at work, either. When I start the day with a good writing session, the day job is much easier to handle.

So the only stress in my life I should actually be focusing on is my troublesome WIP. If I can kick that into submission, everything else should be a breeze. Even the house move...

Jealousy

I'm going to ask a very personal question. Do you ever get jealous of other writers? Writers who are published and getting rich, and you're not? Writers who suddenly decide it's time to write a book, and then land a three-book publishing contract within a year of finishing their first book, when you've been collecting rejection slips for years?

I'm going to be honest here and say that sometimes I do. Jealousy is a human emotion but it's not a good one to dwell on. It can fester and make us feel bitter and miserable. One of the ways to combat it is to quit comparing ourselves to other people. There will always be people out there we perceive to be doing better than us, in whatever way. There will also always be people out there who are worse off. People try to diminish the success of others by belittling it. It's a hugely destructive thing to do, but it's human, and that's why the celebrity gossip magazines are so popular.

My yoga teacher runs monthly meditation circles, which I try to attend because I find them good for my state of mind. One of the exercises she gets us to do is to go around the circle and everyone has to state aloud something they are grateful for. We keep going on this until people run out of things to say. This exercise makes you focus inwards. Even if you're in a really bad place, at the end of a terrible day, you will find things that you are thankful for.

Being jealous is one of those things we are reluctant to admit to - to admit to jealousy is to admit to being a Bad Person. I actually debated with myself long and hard about publishing this post at all. But in the end I took a chance that I'm not the only writer in the world who gets jealous, and, like the post I did recently about writer highs and lows, maybe it would help others to know they're not the only ones who feel this way.

There are a lot things in my life I should be grateful for, and I need to remind myself of this occasionally. Sometimes I resent the day job because it gets in the way of writing tme. But if I didn't have it, I wouldn't be able to afford all the wonderful holidays I take. So what if there are people out there who are making more money from their writing than me? It doesn't diminish my own achievements. Nor does it make me a bad writer if someone else is perceived to be a better one.

We all have our own path to follow. Sometimes we have to remember to keep watching it, instead of coveting someone else's.

I want to finish this post with a song from the irrepressibly cheerful Dolly Parton, whose "Better Get to Livin'" offers a better lesson in overcoming jealousy than I can offer. Unfortunately I can't embed it, so you'll need to click on the link below to go to the video.

Better Get to Livin' - Dolly Parton