Seven Secrets of Writer's Block

You have to push yourself to the point where it feels like you're broken. And the reason for that is the same reason that when you go to the gym, you push yourself until you hit the point of what? Muscle failure. Unless you push yourself until you can't go anymore, your body, your mind, your soul, your heart will not give you more strength. So it is exactly the very people who are most likely to become the winners in life, to become the leaders. And right now, we need every single leader we can get, because we have no leadership at the top. Our leadership at the top is failing us. So we must be citizen leaders. Every single one of us has to represent for ourselves, our families, our communities, or the country will fail. The world will fail. It is critical. So I just want to offer you love to be the kinds of people who show up here who want to create, who want to communicate, who want to connect, who want to share something precious with the world. You are my people. You are exactly the kind of people that make me want to get up early and stay up late asking, what can I do to support you? So today on Life Writing Live, we talk about different tools that are useful for the creation of artistic work. Now, one of the things that's important to understand is that we want to start with definitions. And the definition of writer's block that we will use is anything that stops you from. From finishing your work, from beginning your work, finishing your work, polishing your work, submitting your work, going on to the next project, and continuing this process until you have achieved your goal. It's to moderate. Just popping in to say a quick hello. I just literally got off of another zoom. Hey. Oh, my gosh. Look at all these great people here. I know. It's wonderful. You got a lot of peeps here. And I'm gonna say Shawnalina. Is that right? Rhonda, Nancy, Lou, Marcina, Madeline, Deborah. All tech athletic films. Angela and Laura. That was like a test. It was almost like a test saying all those names. But anyway, you did so well. I hope I did everybody justice, But I just wanted to say hello. Okay. I warned them that you might not be able to. You know, that you have been very, very busy today, so if you want to drop in later on, you can. But otherwise, thanks for coming by. Okay. Yeah, we try to do these together, but the fact is that one of the beautiful things about a partnership is that when she has things to do, she can go do them. And one of the things that's most important for her to do is take care of Herself. When a circle back around to that question about what's happening in Hollywood, basically, I can't talk about it too much, but there are multiple films and television things that are happening right now and it's amazing. And if we're not very careful, we're going to get slammed with so much work. And there is a point at which it feels good and there's another point at which you can panic. So I have to maintain the coolest, calmest, most centered emotional place that I possibly can so that all this work, all the. All the work that it has taken to get to this point is used properly, is invested rather than wasted. I. This is not a joke. There were two instances in my early career where I did great on the first draft of A or the first episode I wrote for, well, happened with the Twilight Zone. Happened again with Outer Limits and the second episode I froze. I could not access the same level of skill. So I became very deliberate about asking myself, what does it take to achieve excellence at this thing that matters to me so much? And I searched for tools and I found those tools because so now the intent is to do more work and more work and to slowly and steadily increase the quality of the work as I go. So that is the intent and I'm going to do it. What I'm going to do right now, I'm going to open up the chat window, which is great because you guys all have access to the chat window. So as I speak, if there are specific things that I can do for you, if you have specific questions. Questions. If it triggers a thought, be sure to, you know, to type it into the chat window so that this can be as much use to you as possible. It could be as useful to you as possible because if it's not, there's no sense in us being here and you should just like go and binge Dexter or whatever you're watching these days. So let me take a look. What I said, I asked people questions about what is it? What. What are their problems with writer's block? So I wanted to define the process that I lay out for everyone. It's my sentence a day process. It's writing a book a year and a sentence a day. If you were in my life writing program, the life writing program that Tananarive and I do, there's a book, the first thing that you get is a book called Writing is the Life Writing. Writing a book a year and a sentence a day. And so there's a six step process that makes this real 1. You write at least one sentence every day. 2. You write one to four short stories a month. Let me just go into that just a little bit. Do not start by writing books. Do not start by writing longer work. Doing that is like running a marathon before you've run around the block. You work on your skills in shorter work until you've got that polished. When you've got it polished and you've got it right, then you begin to go to longer and longer works. But you keep it small so you could really see all the aspects of what it is that you're doing. Develop your strategies, your tactics, your technology. Develop your understanding of your own emotions, developing your work habits, developing all those different things. We'll go into that a little bit more. But I just wanted you to understand that I know that you probably want to write books. Books are where you get paid. Short stories is where you go to school. That's where you learn the skills that you're going to use to write books or that you're going to use to write films. These could be short films. Like, you know, you could do that too. In fact, that. That works very well. We have a whole little class about that. But. So the first step is you write at least one sentence every day. The second step is that you write one to four short stories a month. The third step. And those can be very short stories. Okay, Steve's back. Yeah, I don't know what happened. We lost Internet there for a moment, but, you know, please forgive me. So I was saying the first step is that you write at least one sentence every day. The second step is that you write one to four short stories a month. The third step is that you polish and submit at least one of those four stories every month. The next step is you do not rewrite once they're finished. You do not rewrite those old stories unless you get an editor saying, hey, I'd buy this if you change such and such. Because what you do not want to do is, is keep going back and polishing work you've already done. Not once you've got it finished. You're going to learn more by moving on to your next story than you will by polishing the last story. This is where it is critical that you believe in yourself. It is critical that you. How do I put this? It's critical that you trust your process. You trust that you have more ideas than you could ever use. You have more ideas within you than you could ever write. Everybody goes quietly insane every single night. All you have to do is to Tap into that flow of dreams, and you'll have all the ideas that 100 people could spend their lifetimes writing. And I mean that. So write a sentence a day, one to four short stories a month. Finish and polish and submit one of those. At least one of those four short stories a month. Don't rewrite. Accept editorial request. Step five is that you have to read 10 times as much as you write. Roughly speaking, that means for every short story you write, you should be reading 10 short stories. Or, roughly, you're reading a short story every day. These could be very, very short stories. I don't care. It's fine. But understand, getting that pattern, getting the structure of writing down to the point of what's called unconscious competence, is critical. The same thing as riding a bicycle or juggling or doing anything else. There's a point where it feels clumsy, and there's a point where you start understanding it. And then there's another point where it's suddenly like, oh, this is easy. That's what you're trying to get to. With all of your basic skills, you. You want to get to the point where it feels like, oh, this is easy. The last of those six steps is you repeat this process 100 times. Most people quit just when they're starting to understand it. They let themselves get frustrated. They let themselves get discouraged. They let fear stop them. What I want for each and every one of you, if you want to be writers, I don't want anything to stop you. If this is what you want to do with your life, I want you to have it. So those are the six steps. We'll talk more about that. But writer's block, then, would be anything that interrupts your flow from one of those steps to the other. You don't write, you don't finish. You don't polish, you don't submit, you don't research. You don't keep things in the mail until they sell or you let discouragement stop you. I don't want any of those things to happen. If you love writing enough to be willing to write 100 stories before you get published, nothing can stop you. So far, not a single one of my students who's followed this process has made it past number 30. In fact, none of them have made it past 27. I created this when I was a good deal younger. I was getting frustrated, I was getting discouraged. And I took a look at what the average number of sale of submissions was. The average number of stories was that the writers I was paying attention to. How many stories did they have to write before they got published. And I found out that the average was 30, 40, sometimes 50. It's like, oh, really? I didn't realize that. I thought that, you know, they just were born full. You know, they were launched full. Born from the brow of Zeus or something. It's like they just write. And they just came out brilliant, brilliantly. And, my God, they started selling immediately, and they got big checks. No, they suffered, they strained, they struggled. And so I decided, all right, if the average is somewhere between 30 and 50, I'm gonna double that. I'm gonna give myself until I finished a hundred stories. And what happened is that took all the pressure off. Now I'm just. You know, the job is I just do the work. Now here's story number one. I'm just starting over from number one. I'm gonna write it, finish it, put it in the mail, keep it in the mail. Read, read, read, read, read, write, finish, put it in the mail, keep it in the mail. Read, read, read, read, read. Try to get 1% better every time. Try to get a little bit better every time. And I made it to story number about 24 before I started selling, and I've never looked back. That makes. It makes all the difference. All right, so in talking to people, once again, I'll repeat this if you have. I've got the chat window open. I'll just go to type over there. Just kind of make sure you guys see it. Hi there. If you have any questions. I love seeing your smiles. I really do. It means the world to me to see you smile. You know, in this world, with all the stress that people are under, for us to be able to. To communicate with each other and find just a few moments of community like this. This is a precious, beautiful thing. And just thank you. Thank you for being. For, you know, being willing to be here with me. So I asked people what stops them in terms of writer's block. And in some cases it was time management. In some cases it was fear. In some cases it was frustration, disappointment, Literally not enough energy, too much depression from COVID and the things that are happening in the world. Black Lives Matter, protests and so forth. And I want to say to you that the other major aspect of the life writing formula is that you take the negative emotions that you're feeling and you use those emotions to drive your work. You write about someone in your situation, and then within this small world, sometimes taking a step back, you can come up with a solution that you didn't think about for yourself. Because with Yourself, your nose is right up against the tree. You can't see it. You can't see your life. You're in the midst of this. So sometimes taking a step back, almost as if you're watching a movie on a movie screen and you're saying, well, I'm going to have a character in a situation as a very similar set of emotional problems. And if you can solve their problems, you're having a conversation with your own deep consciousness about problems, about the nature of problems. And the structure of storytelling is such. The simplest way to describe a story is objective, obstacle, outcome. If somebody wants to do something, something stands in their way. They either solve the problem or they don't. That's the simplest way of looking at a story. So you've got a problem that life gets in the way. It gets between you and your creative flow. And so you have the need to solve this. You have that responsibility or else your heart will die and the stories inside you will never see the light of day. How do you find the solution to a problem that you're writing? I feel like I try to make my story too complex. I. Well, if you feel like you're trying to make your story too complex. Jamia. Is that Jamia Then. Jamiah. Sorry. Thank you, Jamiah. Then if it feels like you're trying to make your stories too complex, then deliberately simplify them. You know, to say there's a very, very simple problem. Base it around a problem you've already solved in your life. Okay? Because if you do it that way, then you're. You're not testing your problem solving muscles at the same time that you're trying to develop your writing muscles. Okay? Those are two separate things. Love your jersey, by the way. Jamiah. Yeah. See, I got my Wakanda on. I got my Wakanda. In fact, I'm gonna change my location here. Yes, I am. I'm gonna change my location. Boom. Choose virtual background. There we go. Boom. Yes, that's right. Wakanda forever. So. Make the problem a small one. Something like trying to tell someone that you love them or trying to quit a job believing in yourself enough to, you know, to move. Remember, any individual story is no more than running a lap. It's no more than like doing push ups. The lap, the push ups any individual meal on a day on your diet isn't that important, but the overall stretch of things is. So protect your process. Protect your process. Say, I realize I'm outlining a novel for every story. What I say is, you're probably not Reading enough short stories. Read a short story every day. Get yourself a copy of a book that has very short stories, flash fiction, the kind of story that you could write the first draft for in a day, okay, where you could just sit down and type your heart out. And when I'm doing rough draft, I pay no attention to spelling, grammar, punctuation, nothing. I mean, if I screw it up, I don't worry about it. I'll fix it in the mix. I'll go back. That's for tomorrow. Today it's letting the little kid inside me, the little boy that started this process, who, by the way, is very happy with who I am as a grown man. But I understand, because he's happy that I went out and did all the martial arts stuff that keeps him safe. I do the bills, I do that. But all of the world that I've created is for nothing more than to give the little boy inside me a safe place to play. And I just cannot tell you how important it is that you protect your heart and that you just. Going back to my beautiful, good lady wife. Part of what it is that we are to each other is that I've got her back and she's got my back. I protect her little girl and she protects my little boy. Because there are times when I push myself, I just get brokenhearted. It's just awful. I need to curl up in somebody's arms and know that I have a safe place to let it out, to be weak. A safe place that there's somebody in the world. I mean, I'll. Whose shoulder I can cry on, and she won't think me any less a man. When you find somebody who can see your weakness and all they see is how beautiful you are, they don't want to take advantage of that. You found a keeper. So every day, that's what I want to be for her. And I know that's what she wants to be for me. So that little boy inside me, that's the part of me that sits here talking to you, that says, let me take an hour to talk to some other writers. Wow, I've got writer friends that I can talk to. You guys are the ones that I wanted to have as friends when I was in high school, you know, when I was in junior high school, when I was in elementary school, when I would write stories and say, you know, listen to these stories that I'm writing. So I get who you are, and I know what it is that you want, and I want you to get what you're looking For. So that's what this is about. So the adult part of you has to be ruthlessly disciplined so that the child part of you has a safe place to play. If you think that makes sense, type in yes. Right now. I want to know that you're there. I want to know that you're hearing me. Because when I'm here, I give you everything I've got because, yes, that's right. So, like, you know, my. My karate instructor who's now in his 80s, and he is just the best man I've ever known. CJ Steve Muhammad, once Steve Sanders, founder of the Black Karate Federation, amazing human being. Every class he teaches, he gives everything he's got. He expects his students to do nothing less. So I have to say, yes, sir, I'm gonna do the very best I can for you. So let me go through seven different things that came up during when I was asking people to talk about writer's block. Okay? So the first thing is worldview. Okay? They have damaging beliefs about their own talent or about the acceptance of the industry. These negative beliefs trigger their sense of helplessness. Okay? That sense of, who wants to hear me? I don't have anything to say. I can't do it anyway. It's too late. You know, those are all your worldview that is underneath any talent, underneath any issues of time or anything else, is what do you think the game is in the first place? Where do you think you are in the game? Who do you think you are in the game that you want to take a look at that? Because your foundational beliefs about what life is about, what work is about, what play is about, what art is about, what writing is about, who you are at this stage in your life, your age, your gender, your race, all of those things are your worldview and will influence whether or not you're willing to take the risk. Every day and every day that you sit down to do some art, you're taking a risk. Anything that stops you from believing in yourself in that sense that is connected with your worldview, you want to interrogate that. You want to ask, go. The three gates, Is it true? Is it useful? Is it kind? Those three gates will save you. Once again, is it true? Is it useful? Is it kind? Anything you find yourself thinking about yourself, your writing, your process, first thing, is this true? Is it true that other writers are better than me? Well, it might be true, but is it useful to think about that? Only if you look at them as process. If you say, yeah, that writer is better than me, I can Learn from them. That writer is better than me. They've been doing it longer than me. That writer is better than me. I will use them to inspire me. That writer is better than me. Let me read their stuff and study them and see how they do it. There's nothing wrong with thinking somebody's better than you unless your next thought is, and I'll never be that good. It is not your job to worry about how good you are. It is your job to write. It is your job to do the best you can and keep submitting. And you write things that touch your heart so that the pleasure of writing itself is the reward. You're actually spending your time touching your heart, developing your skills, stepping into that space. When you can do that, you win. No matter what, you win every day. Who wants to win every day? If you want to win every day, say yes, because that's yes. That's right. That's right. Show your hands. Show your hands, because that's me. I want to win every day. I wake up every day saying, how can I help people? Because if I can help one person, I win. If I can be good to one person, I win. If I can make one person smile, I win. So it's. I set it up so it's very easy for me to win in life. Very, very easy. All right, so that's. One is worldview. The second step is leverage. If you've got enough reasons to do something, you'll do it. When people say they don't lose weight, they don't save money, they don't write, they don't do whatever it is, if you ask them, why do you want to do this thing? What you'll find is they will figure out maybe one or two reasons. But then you ask them, why don't you do it? They'll have a page of reasons. They'll have a whole book of reasons why they don't do it. Well, I'm scared. I don't have the time. I don't have the energy. Nobody cares anyway. I failed every time. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. People will smoke until the day their kid, their daughter, their son comes to them and says, daddy, Mommy, please stop smoking. I'm afraid you're going to die, and I want you for the rest of my life. And if you feel that suddenly, that will be the moment that you decide, I've got to quit. I got to quit. If you want to be a writer, it's critical for you to know why you want to be a writer. Get leverage on yourself so Every day you wake up saying, I'm a writer. And so that's the easiest thing. If you say, I'm a writer, you got to write, because that's what writers do. But if you say, I want to write because I want to change the world. I want to write to teach people the things that I have learned. I want to write so that after I'm dead, people remember my name. I want to write to make money so I can have more fun with my family. I want to write because. I want to write because. I want to write because. I want to write because. And you find those reasons. Until you have enough reasons to overcome your fear, your fear does not have to stop you. What people do is they say, their fear is here. You know they're here. Their fear is here, and what they want is on the other side. You don't have to get rid of the fear. What you can do is make the thing you want so big, so sharp, so hard, so. So bright that now the fear is over here. The fear is here, you're here, and the thing you want is there. Now it's you. You just keep your eyes on what you're trying to achieve, put the fear behind you and run like hell. You literally could use your fear to motivate your action. Because if you're really afraid, all human fears are some version of the fear of death, extinction, loss, deal with the real fear. I'm afraid of dying. I'm afraid of being rejected by my tribe, because that means death. I'm afraid of being rejected by my partner. That means genetic death. We don't have a family. They leave me, I die. If you come to grips with the real fear now, you can say, I'm afraid of dying. And one of the things I'm going to do is I'm going to live as much as I can every damn day. Every single day. I'm going to live. I'm going to sing, I'm going to dance, I'm going to write. I'm going to give myself to the world. And before that eternal night comes, you literally can use your fear of whatever it is that you've been afraid of to motivate yourself to action. So you've got. You've got to set it up so that your reasons for writing are more urgent than your reasons not to write. As soon as you attach more pleasure than pain to any action, you'll do it. Anything in your life that you are not doing, you're not doing because you associate more pain with it than pleasure. And I could take anything that you're doing, and I could prove that to you. On some level, you don't believe that your efforts to do it will bring you pleasure. Your efforts will frustrate you. Somebody will punish you. I don't care whether it's making money, losing weight, finding a partner, finding love. There is both fear and pleasure associated with all of these activities. Anything that's stopping you, there isn't enough pleasure attached to it yet. There's too much pain attached to it. Look into this. Or better still, write a story about somebody in that situation. Because once again, looking at it from a distance gives you perspective. When I say that the first step in life writing is you write one sentence a day. That's because there is no earthly, logical reason that you can't write one sentence a day. The only thing stopping you will be emotional reasons. And this is good, because emotional reasons, like fear of failure will hide behind tactical confusion. I don't know what to do. I'm too busy. I'm too this, I'm too that, and it all sounds reasonable until you say, well, all I had to do was one sentence, so why didn't I do it? I watched three hours of television and I didn't write one damn sentence. As soon as you look at the truth now, you can deal with it. Now you're no longer lying to yourself. And the very first principle of Musashi Miyamoto in the Book of Five Rings, one of the great martial arts treatises, is do not think dishonestly. The integrity of your life is going to be based on whether or not you can be honest with yourself. Scathingly honest, blisteringly honest. You know, you don't have to tell other people what's going on inside you, but you need to tell yourself the truth. Okay? So that's the second thing. You get leverage on yourself by increasing your motivation to do it. Okay? The third thing is negative emotional patterns. As I just said, negative emotional patterns, you have anchored pain to some part of the process, and you spiral into depression, frustration, or distraction. Okay? So what you literally need to do is to get to the point where you start recognizing the negative patterns and specifically interrupt them. Because those patterns in your head are usually based on old beliefs, old behaviors, old memories, things that happened to you in your past, things that people said, the teacher who laughed at your efforts, somebody who mocked you, a parent who said, you know, you can't write or you'll starve if you try to be an artist or whatever. The voices in your head are they're like CDs that play on demand, or they play, you know, when you don't want them playing, which is even worse. And the same voices come up, the same beliefs, the same behaviors. So what you need to do is to scratch that cd. And you scratch the CD by becoming aware when you are starting to play that negative pattern, you're starting to engage in the negative behavior. And what I'm constantly telling people on Facebook is, every three hours, breathe. Just take 60 seconds of deep, slow, diaphragmatic belly breathing. Doing that will break the pattern that you're in. But there are other things you can do. You can jump up and move, moving your body. You can dance around the room. You could, say, put on some music you like and dance for the song, and then sit down and write your sentence. There are three things that control any emotions, that create the emotions inside you. One is your physiology, the way you use your body. The second one is, what are you focusing on? Are you focusing on the fact that you can't do it? Or are you thinking about how wonderful it's going to be if you can do it? The third thing is the language you use inside your head, the voices in your head. I had a friend tell me once that a human being can accomplish anything if they can create well defined written goals and plans for their accomplishment expressed in continuous action. And to be able to take action despite the voices in your head. Everyone's got those voices. So if you think you don't have those voices, then just stop for about 15 seconds and listen. So we're just going to stop 15 seconds. Do you hear that voice saying, what voice? I don't hear a voice. That's the. Now I'm going to give you something that is one of the secrets of advanced meditation. If you take this to heart, it will change your life. And that is this. You are not the voices in your head. You are the one listening to the voices. So the question is, who are you? Who are you really? Because all art is an attempt to answer the question, who am I? And what is true? Those two questions are the core of all art, all philosophy, all science, all inquisition. And when you write your story saying, I believe this is what I am, this is what human beings are. This is what the world is. You know, you now have the elements to write a story, because all a plot is is the way a character reacts to their universe and the way the universe responds to their actions. That's all that there is. By looking at your own life as if you were a character in a story you're writing, you get to take your storytelling skills and utilize them to actually create a better life for yourself. That's another one of those. You win no matter what. You win no matter what. Somebody buys your story. Somebody doesn't buy your story. Doesn't matter. You wrote that damn story. And you now understand yourself a little bit better. You are better at speaking your truth. You're better at finding your passion, whatever it is. That's how we get better. So find a way to break the pattern. So that's the third thing is, is you're in a negative emotional pattern. You're. Instead of writing, you're changing. You know, you're. You're filing your neighbor's cat's toenails. You know, you're taking out your garbage twice. You know, you're doing anything on the right. Getting on the phone to call someone you haven't talked to in a year. Because it's just. This is the time. Whatever your negative pattern is, start recognizing it and developing ways to break it. So you spot it. There it is again. Break it. Spot it. There it is again. Break it. Because all you have to do is to do one sentence a day, and you turn into a writer. Because the reason. Well, the secret is, of course, by the time you've gotten yourself lined up to write a sentence a day, you've, you know, come out of your bedroom, gotten dressed, probably sat down at your computer, booted up your computer, booted up your software, gotten onto the Internet, you know, gotten yourself comfortable, put your fingers on the keys, and you've written that sentence. By the time you've done all that, heck, you might as well write another sentence, Might as well write five sentences. It's like, if you're gonna go for a run, if you say. If you trick yourself, say, I only have to run one lap, just one lap. But you have to get out of bed, brush your teeth, get dressed, you know, walk down to the right, down to the track, stretch, walk one lap and then run a lap. By the time you've done all that, might as well run a mile, because you're already there. So it's tricking yourself. But if you only do that one sentence, that's fine, because really, you're keeping that passageway between your heart and your fingers open just by writing one sentence a day. So if that's all that you have the time to do, fine. You write one sentence, you can feel great about yourself. You're a writer. You wrote today. That's great. And it really will pay off for you. Okay, so step four is you need. You need to see a pathway that's doable, and that's that six step process. Write a sentence a day, one to four short stories a month, one really short, you know, short, short, short story, and you're in, you're done. You know, polish it and send it off. Don't rewrite. Accept editorial request. Somebody offers you money now, you rewrite it. Otherwise, go on your next story, read 10 times what you write and repeat the process a hundred times. Anybody can do that. The question is, will you? But if you will, and you'll tell the truth about your emotions, you'll actually write things that matter to you. You'll keep getting better and better. Better because you're reading 10 times as much as you write. And hopefully, if I were to, I could teach a whole class easily on just that one step. You want to read stuff that's better than you. Needless to say, you don't read the. Just the. You know, you don't read comic books if what you're trying to write is serious literature. You want to write the. You want to read the best writing that you can get your hands on. That's how you program yourself. It's like, you know, dancing along with Michael Jackson. It's like, yeah, you're going to learn how to dance if you keep doing that. All right, now the fifth step is you need what's called empowering alternatives. Whatever behaviors have been negative for you in terms of writer's block, whatever you've used to black to block yourself, find something else. People who try to stop smoking, they'll go back to smoking unless they have a behavior to replace it. So you stop smoking and start swimming. Okay. And stop. You want to stop eating if you go to the. Well, actually, let's go back to smoking for a second. The Schick center used to have. They used to. Maybe they still do. They would give you a little electrical shock every time you started to smoke a cigarette. You do that and you're going to create an aversive pattern with that cigarette. And so you're going to stop smoking. But the problem is that you have not addressed the underlying need. If the underlying need is for you to modify your neurology with nicotine and you stop smoking, you might very well start eating more. So you're going to modify your neurology with sugar. You're going to dump sugar in your bloodstream, or you might start using another drug. So you need to replace it. If you Watch television instead of write. You might say, well, instead of watching television, instead of write, I will write and then watch television. So you change the behavior. I will do this, I will do that. You look at how you have distracted yourself in the past, how you have stopped yourself in the past, and you be honest with it. You be honest about it, whatever, and you take a look at your worldview. Why is it that I say I want to be a writer, but I don't write? I am afraid. I am afraid of rejection because every time I get rejected, I feel like somebody's kicking my guts out. So if you talk to your sweetie pie and you say, listen, I'm going to put myself in a situation where I'm going to risk rejection. And I tell you what, if I get that story back before I answer that envelope, I want to kiss, I want a hug. I want you to tell me that I'm beautiful and brilliant so that no matter what I see when I open that envelope, I'll be okay. You be honest with yourself about what's stopping you, about why you want to do it, and then you come up with the techniques that will help you, and they will be your techniques. Everybody's going to be different. Everyone has different demons. Everyone has different motivations. Everyone has different life circumstances. So your techniques for getting the best out of yourself must be yours. Does that make sense? If that makes sense to you, say yes. Type yes into because I want to know that I'm taking you to church today because this is all about saving your hearts, your souls, you taking yourself back from the world. Because this is your life. This is your one life. And I want every single one of you to get everything that you can get from life. And if there's anything I can do to help with that process, I hope you can feel I'm here for you. I want to do that. I want to give it to you. All right, so the next step is that whatever the new behaviors that you're going to go through, whatever your new process is, you need to envision yourself doing it. You need to condition this behavior so that you know it's going to happen. So if what happens is I write and the telephone rings and I get on the phone and I talk for an hour, and there goes my writing time. Visualize yourself looking, hearing that phone ring. What do you do? Do you just let it ring? Do you turn it off? Do you pick it up and say, listen, I can't talk to you right now, but I can call you back after I'm Finished. What are you going to do? Actually play it out, actually practice it. Whatever it is that you're going to do, that's your new behavior. Visualize yourself doing it. Role play yourself doing it, whatever it is you're going to do so you can see yourself over and over again. You used to have this negative behavior. You're going to have a positive behavior instead. Used to be this negative behavior, this positive behavior instead. Negative, positive, negative, positive. You see yourself doing it over and over and over again. You condition yourself doing it. And you believe in yourself. When you stand, you sit, you hold your face. You use language like somebody who can do this. You be proud of yourself. You believe in yourself. Failure cannot exist in your mind about this stuff. The world can beat you, but you do not beat yourself. You might get rejected, but you don't start out saying, I'm going to get rejected. No, it's you be proud of your work. You find the part inside of yourself that that little girl, that little boy that used to dance in the living room saying, look at me, I'm beautiful. Because she was beautiful and she is beautiful. And if you as an adult will just create a safe place for her to play, a safe place for him to be himself and applaud his efforts, what will happen? You have no idea how much brilliance you have inside you, how much creativity you have inside you. You have no idea. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. So envision yourself doing this thing that's going to bring you the pleasure that you deserve. See yourself doing it. See yourself winning. Then you go out and you give it the best shot you can. Life will do whatever it is that life does. But your job is to do this, repeat this process a hundred times. And my promise to you is that if you will do it 100 times, you'll win. You'll get there. Everybody has so far. And you're not going to be the first for whom it doesn't work. You'll either drop out or win. Now who? Somebody on this call right now, right now knows in their heart that they can make it. Somebody on this call right now knows in their heart they have been waiting for somebody to tell them the precise process by which they can win this game. If you're that one, I think there might only be one of you. And it's the first one who says, it's me in there is the okay. You raise your hand. Who else is willing to take a stand for their own heart? Who's willing to say, I'm gonna give myself Permission to win. Because if you give yourself permission now, you're on the other side of the line. There is nothing unethical about you finding joy. The Dalai Lama said that the meaning of life is to seek joy, is to be happy. And the rest of it is just to find ways to be happy that are in alignment with your ethics and in alignment with your sense of what is right in the world. You know, to be a good person, a caring person, but a strong person. First be safe and strong. What if your child never played? Then what you have to do is visualize yourself playing with your child. You have to, you know, to visualize yourself with that little girl. And there are people. If you can't do it, then get yourself a self hypnosis tape. Go into a deep state of relaxation, Deep, deep, deep. Until your conscious mind starts shutting the hell up. And visualize a child, if you need to see pictures of children, until you can find a picture of what looks like you might have looked. See, because the truth is that no matter how, how, how abusive a background you might have come from, if you were not loved and nurtured at some point in your life, you would be dead. There is babies that are never held and loved die. So there was a point when people cared about you. And if you can make a connection to, you know, a newborn, doesn't matter, maybe it was just a nurse, I don't care. But make connection to that memory. And if you can't remember it, fake it. Envision yourself playing with a child and make that child you. How do you keep. Yes, it feels scary. Yes, it does feel scary. This is scary and fear. But understand something. The difference between feeling fear and being afraid is like the difference between being alone and feeling lonely. Fear is a natural response of your body that says, get ready, something's happening. But interpreting that fear to mean, I can't, I shouldn't, I mustn't, I'm weak, I'm stupid, any of that stuff, that's garbage. That's what was added on. Fear is natural. Fear comes with the package of being a human being in a body. But our interpretations of that fear, what that fear mean? That's our heads. That's the software that we were given along the way. How do you keep your child safe in a critique group? Don't bring your child to the group. You go as an adult, you take your adult to the critique group. You leave your kid at home watching cartoons and eating screaming yellow zonkers. I don't care. You protect your child, you protect Your heart, absolutely every single one of us has the wiring to protect children deep inside us. That's how the human race has survived. And if people did not teach you how to hold yourself proud, precious, then you've got a story to write about someone who never held themselves precious and learned how to play again. What were the movies you loved as a child? Watch them. What were the places you like to go? What were the foods you like to eat as a child? Have a little bit of one of them. Slow down. Remember. Think about the journey you've been on, how many miles you've traveled, how much you've learned, the people you loved and lost things you've succeeded at or failed at. And be proud. You're still here. You're still standing. You're still learning. And the world isn't that lonely a place. Look at this. Look at the people that are just on this call right now. This didn't cost you a dime. I am here pouring my heart out to you because I love writers. I love you guys. And I'm telling you what I wish somebody had said to me 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. You know, I'm getting older than dinosaurs. I get that. You know, I get that. I'm at the end of the period where this is my world. I'm watching the younger people come in, and it's wonderful seeing them grow. It's wonderful seeing them take charge. It's wonderful seeing them not taking shit. It's great. Write your stories as if you were sending a message in a bottle back to a younger version of you. In fact, writing a letter to a younger version of yourself is a fantastic thing. What do you wish to God somebody had said to you when you were a teenager? What is it you wish somebody had said to you? Write a story. Or write. At least write a letter to yourself, okay? Why are the negative voices so much louder than the supportive ones? Because fear is healthy and we love flowers. But tigers will kill you. So fear voices will be louder than love voices. Love will be a whisper sometimes, but fear will be a roar. It's trying to protect you. It is your mind, it is your body, it is your unconscious mind trying to protect you. But sometimes those voices protect you. They're not protecting you anymore. Those voices are actually keeping you away from the things that you love, keeping you from actually fulfilling yourself. So you will need techniques and the kinds of techniques we talk about in life writing that you know. And this is the only commercial you're going to get in connection with this, our monthly, weekly Program Life Writing Premium deals with the psychology as well as with the tactical stuff. As you can tell, I'm not just about structure. I'm not just about character. I'm about who is the artist, who's the person. So I'm going to write the address that you go to. Life Writing, Life Writing Premium. And I believe we've got it set up so that you can join for the first month for a dollar. And in that, you will get my book on writing a sentence a day. You'll also start getting essays and stuff, things from Tananarive. We're going in there, and you become part of our process. So the techniques, the psychological, the emotional, the spiritual techniques to deal with the emotional stuff so that you can apply the tactical, strategic mental techniques are just as important. Who you are as a writer is going to determine. You know, I don't believe in talent except for the talent to focus on something until you've learned it. That's it. Because all I've ever seen, anytime I got close to somebody was people who was successful, was people spent more time doing it than I had. That's all I saw. And I spent more and more time, more and more time focused on it. I got more and more success. And if there is anything that has been discouraging about this process, it's realizing that there are aspects of that knowledge that I cannot teach people, that they will say, well, Steve, you're just so talented. And they won't look at the work. They don't look at the pain. They don't look at the times I curled up in a knot crying because my idol had told me my book wasn't good, or because I got a review that was just horrible. Or because something had happened to the publishing company and my book had been trashed. Or because I found out that the editor, the publisher of the biggest science fiction magazine in the field, had banned me because of my skin color. That to learn that, to know that and to find some way to pick yourself back up and get mad, to not let yourself get scared, to say, all right, if anyone else has ever made it, I can make it. If anyone else has ever started from where I started and gotten to someplace close to where I want to go, I will do what they did. I will follow their path. They will not beat me. They will not win. No matter what. No one can stop me. That is who I was. In connection. It took me 17 years to earn my first black belt because I was dealing with so much fear, because I'd been bullied okay. But I never quit. Even I knew. I remember there was a day when I was driving down the street, just afraid to go into the dojo to pick up a jacket I'd left there for fear that somebody would ask me to spar with them because I was just so devastated with fear. And I remember saying, you know, I remember crying and saying, God, will you either take away my urge to practice this stuff or just let me do it? I couldn't quit. I couldn't do it. No matter what I did, I was stuck. So the question was, why didn't I quit? Nobody would have blamed me. Nobody would have said, well, gee, how come you're not practicing martial arts? Nobody would have cared. But I knew on some level that if I didn't keep going, I'd never be complete. I'd never be healed. I'd never be able to talk to you guys the way I do right now. I know your fear. I know what's going on inside you. And I also believe in you. I believe that you have what it takes. Most of what it takes is being honest and working your guts out for long enough for the conscious skills to become unconscious competence. That's most of what it is. Because art is a matter of having. Think about dancing. You can't really enjoy dancing as long as you're going 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. In your head. It has to be a natural expression, which means that you have to practice the expression until it becomes spontaneous. And then you can just feel the music and move with yourself and move in relationship to your partner and have fun with it. That's writing. You get the practical experience and you learn the emotional skills. And you keep going until you find yourself just flowing with it. And then you look at what you flowed and say, you know, that's pretty good. It's great when you look at something and you say, hey, yeah, I wrote that. That ain't bad. And it won't be bad. It won't be. It'll be good. You have that inside. You. Never let yourself doubt that. And the reason is the seventh step. Relate your reasons for writing to a higher purpose. Feel that you are writing to glorify the divine, to glorify God, to tell your people's story, to make your family proud. When most of us can do more for someone else than we can to ourselves. The first time, I had somebody write me and tell me that they had been on chemotherapy in despair when they found one of my books and read it. And that book gave them the courage to Keep going. The first time I saw that, I realized I don't have the right to quit. I don't have the right to think I'm small. I don't have the right to think that my stories don't matter. I'm helping people stay alive. I'm going to tell my truth. I'm going to do the best I can to make this world a better place for myself, for my parents, whose shoulders I stand on, for my wife, for my children, my beautiful daughter, Nikki, who I love so much, and my son, Jason, who is trusting me to deliver him safely to his adulthood. I swore when I first met my baby boy, I literally took him outside and held him up to the stars. I did the roots thing. I said, behold, the only thing greater than yourself. I literally did that. And it is my job to deliver my children safely to the point where they don't need me anymore. It is my job to speak my truth and my stories, to write to the very best of my ability every day, to do the best I can every single day. And then we'll see what happens. I'll be rewarded for some things, punished for other things. The world won't care about these things over there. But my job is to be the best I can. And each and every one of you who just wants to be the best you can, who just wants to tell your stories, who just wants to have fun, who just wants to dance with the people around you, cheering and clapping and saying that you're a beautiful child because that creates. Part of you is a beautiful child. That part is my friend. That part is under my protection. You come to me. You know, we're gonna do this every other week. We're gonna do life writing, and we're gonna talk, and I'm gonna answer your questions the best I can. I'm gonna be the very best I can for you. And if you will let me do that, I swear I'll get you to the other side. You do your part, I'll do mine. Oh, wow. Let me have a little water here, so. Oh, yeah. Let's see. Let's see here. Participant chat. This, this, this. More. Okay, don't do that. Okay, so if you have any questions, type them in real quick, and I will try to answer them. Otherwise, I want to let everybody go. Your chakra teaching has taught me so much. That's just great. I'm so glad you know, Tonam Reeve and I give away as much as we can because we do not live separately from our community. You guys are our life you are our heart and we love you. Thank you so much. This has been the invigoration I need. Thank you for sharing your life wisdom. Do you have any idea how lucky I have been in terms of the teachers I've had in my life? I think you probably have some idea that I've been blessed in that sense. But I was the kind of person, I would literally drive a thousand miles to spend 10 minutes with somebody who could answer the right question. I've actually done that, just the right question. So. So. And the masters who taught me, most of them taught me for free. The majority of it was free. And all they asked is that I pass that knowledge on. So that's what I want to do. So that's what giving myself permission is hard. Afrofuturism class was amazing. Afrofuturismwebinar.com that's a real thing. Sunkenplaceclass.com and of course, lifewritingpremium.com. oh, did I say I wasn't going to do any ads? I did. I'm sorry. I did another ad. Oh, well, you know, mea culpa. I'm a bad boy. But listen, you know, if there's anything I can do for you, reach out to me on Facebook or, you know, send email. We will see each other again in a couple weeks and. Oh, okay. I just trying to carve my novel idea down to a story. At some point, it gets so spirited that I'm bored. No, don't do that. What you want to do, you want to take one incident from that story from that novel. A story is quite often, you know, it can take place in real time. You know, just one incident one day. You know, Aristotle's unity of time can really be useful here. So don't carve down a book. Take a simple little splinter from that book and write a story about it. Because once again, you're just practicing. You're just practicing. So anyway, you guys have a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful evening. Yes. Shoshana, I love you, darling. You know, I'm so glad that you're here. I'm so glad that you're fighting the good fight. And anything I can do to support you, you let me know. You guys reach out to me on Facebook or whatever if there are things that you would like me to think about that maybe you were too shy to say publicly. You know, I do answer things. And most importantly, I would like to end this time with the Sanskrit expression that means that the divinity within me salutes and acknowledges the divinity within each and every one of you. Namaste. Have a wonderful day. I'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. Namaste. Namaste.