Been thinking a lot today about my fears and the critical voice that constantly tries to stop me from writing. I wrote quite a bit in my WNB this morning, trying to figure out what my fears really are and brainstorming ways to combat them.
I’ve always admired prolific writers. Ray Bradbury. Neil Gaiman. All the old pulp guys like Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith (and so many others). And there are women too, like Andre Norton, Leigh Brackett, and Ursula Le Guin, who were incredibly prolific in their lifetimes. Jane Yolen is a writer today who is incredibly prolific and one I admire.
So, if I admire all these prolific writers, how do I combat my fears and get more writing done?
While writing in my notebook today, I decided to try a technique that will hopefully kill my critical voice and get me into the right headspace for writing.
That technique is visualization. If I can visualize myself as a pulp writer, as someone like Andre Norton, who loves to tell stories and doesn’t care what anyone thinks, then maybe I can let go of my perfectionism and fear of writing something “wrong” and just let the words flow.
You might be wondering, why the need for visualization? Why not just force myself to write more?
But this is where my critical brain is so deadly. The negative thoughts and fears keep me from “just writing.” I get hung up on worrying what people will think. I’ve tried “just writing more,” but critical voice always sneaks in and stops me.
Not necessarily in the moment of writing, but in the off-hours, when I’m thinking about what I wrote and start questioning everything. It’s in the in-between times when my critical voice is most ascendant, when it starts judging my writing and making me doubt myself. These off-hours ruin my energy and enthusiasm for the story. They make it harder and harder to sit down at the computer and write. I’ll force myself to do it, but critical voice has sucked all the fun out of it.
But the prolific SFF writers? I don’t know if they really didn’t care what others thought of their work, but I suspect they had a healthy dose of “don’t give a fuck.” And that’s the attitude I need to channel.
So my solution is visualization.
I like pretending. That’s why I like writing stories in the first place. It’s all make-believe. Like when I was a kid. Telling myself stories while I ran around the backyard. My kids do this too, all the time, and they are so engrossed in their make-believe epics, they have zero time for worrying what others will think. That is the key.
Since I like to pretend, since playing make-believe is where it all started for me, I’m going play make-believe now. I’m going to pretend I’m a prolific writer. I’m going to pretend to be an Andre Norton-esque fantasy writer who writes fearlessly and doesn’t care what people think.
Dean Wesley Smith often talks about how writing should be fun. His advice: “Make it play.”
Well, this is part of my play. I’m pretending to be prolific. Playing make-believe as I sit to write. I’m playing around in the story world even as I’m playing a part at my desk. And if I pretend enough — if I visualize myself as a prolific writer — then perhaps the make-believe will bleed into reality.
Visualization is one of those popular techniques for achieving goals and establishing new habits, and there’s a bit of a hippy-dippy quality to it, but I remember a teacher training we did at my old school several years ago, and the instructor was a professor of psychology, and he told us about the studies they did with students who visualized themselves taking a test and doing well, and he said that students who visualized themselves being successful on the test before they studied did better than the students who just studied. And there’s a bunch of research on how visualization coupled with practice can help basketball players improve their free throw shooting. It’s not unusual for performers, athletes, and others to imagine themselves on stage or on the field doing their thing and having success.
So why not visualize myself as a prolific pulpster who is having a blast writing all the stories of her imagination? To some, this might seem like a crutch, but to me, it’s just an extension of the fun to be had writing stories in the first place. If I can make-believe a story and write it down, why can’t I make-believe I’m someone who has a prolific career and writes with abandon every day?
The visualization has to be coupled with practice, of course. Which means I still need to sit at my desk and write. But when I sit down, I’ll imagine I’m a pulp writer, bursting with stories, fearless, ready to spin a yarn. It’s the fun of the masquerade, of playing dress-up, of pretending. I don’t write under a pen name (well, most of the time I don’t), but I can see how a pseudonym gives one the freedom to be someone else for a little while. If I pretend to be someone else when I’m at my writing desk, perhaps I’ll unlock some of that freedom.
What I hope will happen is that over time, I won’t need the visualization exercise. I hope I’ll simply BE a prolific writer who doesn’t care what others think and who has banished her critical voice. Until then, I’ll use my imagination and pretend.
It’s what writers do.
