The Inquisitive Inkpot
Exploring Tales and the Art of Telling
Remembering on Memorial Day
Last Memorial Day gave me an experience I will never forget.
It all began with a story I had recorded prior to Memorial Day for the national radio program Our American Stories. The piece featured my boss, an ex-marine, telling the incredible story of the war-torn WWII veteran who became his best friend.
Last year, it ended with my one-chance-in-a-million discovery of this man’s gravestone in an enormous cemetery on Memorial Day. So this year, I find it fitting to look back, not only on this particular experience, but also on the story of this man’s (and many others’) survival, loss, and sacrifice—but ultimately on his gift to the people he encountered.
Be sure to listen to the actual story here, and share any thoughts or Memorial Day stories of your own. You can find the original article I posted here, but today I’ll share with you the highlights.
Most of my conversations with my boss revolve around work, but a large percentage of those that don’t are “story time.”
And when he gets going about his time in the marines, it almost always comes back to the man he met after eight years of active duty: Forrie. I love story time. It gives me a window into a life so different from my own, while reminding me that even a Special Ops service member had lessons to learn. And so many of them he learned from Forrie—a man over fifty years his senior.
Do you ever feel like you know someone because of everything you’ve heard about them? That’s how I felt about Forrie. After conducting this interview and listening to hours of “story time” that revolved around this man, I felt like I had personally known him. Heard his laugh. Seen his smile. Heard his stories from his own lips. And above all, I wanted to do something to honor him, however small that might be.
So I went to visit his grave on Memorial Day.
I went looking for Forrie’s grave in the cemetery where my boss said he was buried. Little did I know when I arrived at the cemetery that there were hundreds upon hundreds of headstones, all without any particular alphabetical or chronological order. I decided I would drive to the furthest corner, park, and start my search there, expecting it would take several hours to find Forrie. I did just that: I parked, got out of the car, and began walking toward the first row of graves in the furthest corner. I was mostly watching where I stepped because the ground was somewhat uneven and I had worn completely unsuitable footwear for a cross-country graveyard expedition. But as soon as I turned my head, there it was: FORREST L. JOHNSON. Located directly in front of my car. Next to his headstone was that of his four-year-old son, who passed shortly after he returned from the war.
It could have taken hours to find that one out of perhaps a thousand or so gravestones. My first words were, “Thank you, God.” After standing by the grave for a while, twisting together a clumsy dandelion bouquet, and recalling the hours of stories I’d heard about him, my last words were, “Thank you, Forrie.”
Somehow his children heard the radio piece. And thanks to Facebook and social media, I was able to reach out and tell them what an honor it was learning about their father and how I wished I’d known him. The story has basically gone viral within their family and friend circle. To think of all those people gathering around the story of their father—the man who served his country and nearly lost his life, the man who poured his heart and soul into those around him—to think of these people coming together in shared grief, memory, and gratitude is the greatest reward I could have hoped for.
Who do you know who has served? How did that experience shape them?
In what ways have people of older generations (veterans or not) impacted your life?
Before you go, I invite you to do the following:
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- Sign up below for my author newsletter (infrequent updates about upcoming releases)
Unforgivable Character Flaws
Character flaws.
We can’t deny them. Nor can we fix them in other people. Sure, we can work on tackling our own character flaws and mitigating their expressions, but we will never eradicate them this side of eternity.
While we shouldn’t cherish our character flaws, we must recognize that we will always be at war with them until we exit this fallen world. We have to acknowledge, resist, and forgive them as they rear their ugly heads in our lives. That also means we must learn to live with—and forgive—the character flaws of others. Uh-oh.
Forgiveness is a lifestyle. It’s not easy, but it’s essential for a number of reasons—the most universally accepted reason being that without forgiveness we cannot move forward.
I think plenty of people (myself included) underestimate how hard true forgiveness can be.
“I can forgive anyone of anything,” we say out loud.
But do we?
Let’s take a look in the mirror of stories.
Most of us can think of a literary or cinematic character whose character flaws we cannot forgive.
We might have loved them up to a point in the story. We might have been rooting for them every step of the way. We may have even loved them for some of their minor flaws or idiosyncrasies, which made them more relatable. But then they commit the act. The one deed that shatters our perception of them and undermines their worth in our eyes.
Maybe they hurt a minor character we liked. Maybe they fail to stand up for their values. Maybe they go back on their word. Whatever it is, they do something that makes them deplorable and makes it difficult to sympathize with them. Until they are penitent, we can no longer honestly view them as the protagonist.
Here’s just a couple of shows where a lead’s character flaws really ruined my ability to root for them.
In Poldark, Ross Poldark’s marital infidelity.
In Downton Abbey, Mary’s serial habit of sabotaging her sister’s happiness (although, to be fair, it’s a two-way street).
I could name more, less well-known examples of characters doing basically the same things as these two, but you get the point.
In evaluating these examples, it seems that my list of unforgivable character flaws can be summed up by unfaithfulness and extreme selfishness.
As I think about the real-life situations I have faced, this checks out. The offenses I have found hardest to forgive are were either expressions of disloyalty or excessive selfishness. Someone betraying another person and then lying to cover up. Someone casting aside their standards for a chance to gain popularity. Someone breaking faith in a marriage. These are all pretty heavy, but unfortunately they are not constrained to the pages of literature or the television screen. These are real wrongs committed by real people that I have struggled most to forgive.
Do we need to forgive characters in fictional stories? No, I suppose not. First of all, they’re fictional. Secondly, we have no relationship with them so there is nothing to restore. But it plays out differently in real life. Many of the people who hurt us or those we love will remain in our lives for a long time to come. And even if they do not, carrying a grudge for the rest of our lives is no way to live.
We’ve all heard the saying, “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”
It’s true.
No, this article is not suggesting that by reading more books or analyzing more films you will suddenly begin forgiving everyone in your life. What I do suggest is that our reactions to certain character flaws in stories reveals the offenses we will struggle the hardest to forgive in real life—whether or not they have happened to us yet. Because knowing our minds is one way to prepare for the future—not because we can control the future, but because we can control our response.
What are some lead characters who lost your support because of their actions?
What flaws do you find hardest to forgive?
Before you go, I invite you to do the following:
- Visit and subscribe to my new YouTube Channel for creative writing insights
- Sign up below for my author newsletter (infrequent updates about upcoming releases)
The Lies Stories Make Us Believe
In life, we will believe many lies.
Some of these lies originate with our own flawed perspectives. Some are pushed on us by others we trust. Others are sold to us through the vast web of media that comprises much of our life experience. Many of them we believe.
If I can just reach this milestone, I’ll be truly happy.
Follow your heart and you’ll never go wrong.
The here and now is all there is, so I might as well do whatever I feel like in the moment.
If I can find my soul mate, I’ll never feel alone again.
What’s curious about these life lies is that many of us know deep down inside that they aren’t true.
There’s a part of our humanity that warns us of the fleeting nature of the present, the darkness of our own hearts, and the inability of another human to make us whole. Yet these are lies many of us buy into practically. In our heads we know they aren’t true, but our day to day choices reflect a belief in them.
These lies can come from any number of places, but I’m interested in exploring their prevalence in the stories we encounter. How many cheesy romances leave you feeling like you’re incomplete until you find the perfect lover? How many sports films convince you that the champion title is the ultimate goal in life? How many glamorized war films persuade nonveterans that the battlefield is a glorious place to be?
If we were to state any of these ideas in plain terms, many of us would instinctively recognize them as false.
But for some reason, placing these ideas in the context of a story with relatable characters compels us to feel that there must be an element of truth. This comes back to Walter Fisher’s narrative paradigm: a rhetorical system that accounts for the various nonrational ways we as humans can be persuaded. The concept is simple—we hear a story that moves us emotionally, and we alter our beliefs according to our emotional response to that story. This means compelling narratives can persuade us of things we would never accept in a strictly rational sense. They arrest us by the heart, and we become putty in their hands.
And so we subconsciously begin to believe the lie.
As someone born with a strong natural sense of nostalgia, I have lately realized one of my core lies: that somehow the past can be relived. Someday it will all go back to the way it was—the blissful days of childhood when my family was all still alive and life was simple. Someday lost friends will return to my life, and we will all enjoy the harmony we once had. If I can just reimagine a particular moment clearly enough, it will happen all over again.
As I think of this lie, I am reminded of The Great Gatsby, in Jay Gatsby’s most revelatory exchange with the narrator:
“You can’t repeat the past.” (Nick Carraway)
“Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!” (Gatsby)
While I rationally know that no moment of the past can actually be resurrected, my nostalgic nature continues to promise me that it can all come back someday—just like Jay Gatsby believed. If you know F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous story, this illusion leads to some pretty tragic consequences. I doubt my life will pan out as dramatically (hopefully it doesn’t!), but the point stands: believing a life lie always has consequences.
What’s admirable about The Great Gatsby is that this story—rather than propagating a lie—unmasks it for what it is.
In fact, many literary and cinematic masterpieces are designed to do just that: illustrate what a lie looks like when lived out. The hope is that we as the audience will recognize our own reflection in the mirror and root out the lie’s effect in our lives. We need more of this type of narrative today.
Sadly, though, many stories are better at deceiving us. They keep feeding us the predictable values of pop culture—the ego-inflating, the saccharine, the materialistic, the toxic. A steady diet of this is going to change us. Subtly, yes. Slowly, perhaps. It may not alter the values we talk about or the claims we make, but it will alter the way we interpret life and the choices we make. It will change who we are.
Believing a lie always does.
What are some convincing lies you recognize in stories?
Which lies have you bought into at different points in life?
Before you go, I invite you to do the following:
- Visit and subscribe to my new YouTube Channel for creative writing insights
- Sign up below for my author newsletter (infrequent updates about upcoming releases)
Finding your Focus
Focus is something many of us lack.
There’s plenty of kinds of focus. Focus in the sense of your actual attention span, focus in your work ethic, focus in your monetary investments, and focus in where you direct your free time. We live in a world where all of these types of focus are challenged by the multifarious pursuits, people, and businesses vying for our attention.
There is certainly value in diversifying your life. If we spend every ounce of our time, energy, and skills on one singular pursuit, life is going to be extremely monotonous and even unhealthy. We need balance. Yet there is a fine line between balance and distraction, and this is what I encourage us to think about for a moment.
Based on some of my recent articles and even my about page, you can probably tell that I have multiple pursuits. Multiple ongoing projects. Multiple skills and outlets I am actively investing in, with various points of overlap and difference from one another. While there is nothing inherently wrong with having a diverse list of activities, however, I have been forced to recognize a sobering fact:
Focus is where progress happens.
Sure, you can make gradual progress by juggling many projects at the same time. You can, in fact, complete all of them and even be proud of all them. But when it comes to getting a career off the ground—I mean really launching into something life-changing—this is going to require a unified effort on your part.
If your goal is to find an agent, you have to master the querying process. If your goal is to become a successful recording artist, you have to master your instrument. If your goal is to start a business, you have to master your trade. But beyond all of these skills (writing, music, service), you also have to do a lot of homework. Many of today’s professions aren’t just about mastering a skill, but mastering a system—digging into the industry and understanding the system in a way that your competition doesn’t. This requires a whole different kind of focus. It’s not simply saying, “I’m going to get really good at this one thing.” It’s saying, “I’m committed to getting really good at this and understanding the keys to success.” It’s a holistic kind of focus that demands more time, more sweat, and more dedication than many of us are willing to give. And for those of us who are willing to give it, we struggle because we keep trying to juggle our five other pursuits.
Part of focusing means prioritizing.
It means sitting down and listing all the pursuits we are investing in right now, and deciding which of those we want most. We don’t have to give everything up in order to pursue one, but we do have to prioritize the ones that will get the majority of our time. Maybe that does mean putting some goals on the backburner, to be revisited in later years. Maybe it means rearranging our schedules and lifestyles to focus on learning everything about our main interest, rather than dividing our mental energy between four interests. Who says we have to do it all at once?
This is written as much for my benefit as for yours. I had to hit a wall before coming to terms with the real lack of focus in my efforts. If this is you, know that you are not alone! And know that your best work will blossom when you give it the dedication it deserves.
Now we just have to figure out what that looks like.
What would that look like for you?
What are some pursuits you are juggling simultaneously? Do you see them competing with one another in your life?
What has been your main focus over the past few years? Do you think that will stay the same for the foreseeable future?
Before you go, I invite you to do the following:
- Visit and subscribe to my new YouTube Channel for creative writing insights
- Sign up below for my author newsletter (infrequent updates about upcoming releases)
On the Fear of Change
The fear of change is a two-sided coin.
As someone who has always had a fear of change, I often assumed that my reason for wanting things to stay the same was because the alternative must be worse.
If I switch schools, I won’t make any friends there.
If I move off campus, I’ll wind up in a dumpy, spider-infested house.
If I take this job, I won’t have as much time for writing.
If I end this relationship, I might regret it later.
If…
All of these fears seemed completely legitimate at the time, but in looking back I can see that none of them were well-grounded. (Well, the off-campus house I moved into did have a centipede problem. There’s some significant trauma there.) But overall, my worst-case scenarios did not play out. In fact, some of these changes were the best decisions I made.
Can you relate? Do you find yourself wondering what could go wrong if you step out on a limb?
To be fair, there are many life changes that I would not consider improvements.
The death of family members. The foreclosure of a home. Taking a job that leaves no time for your family. Some of these give us a choice, whereas others don’t. While I think it’s normal to dread what could happen to you, dreading the possible results of your own choice can create a special kind of anxiety. If something goes wrong, you will consider yourself responsible. You will have no one to blame but yourself. That can be paralyzing. In this sense, I think a fear of change can get in the way when making important decisions.
Do you say no to new situations because you actually see red flags or simply because they are new?
Do you pass up opportunities because you are afraid of losing the stability you have now?
Do you rule out new ideas simply because they are not familiar?
I have to answer yes to all of these, which gives me a grim diagnosis: a chronic fear of change.
If this is you, you might be wondering this too: What do I do about this fear?
Well, fear is often a good impulse that prevents us from entering dangerous situations—so we can’t always disregard it. Nor should we let it rule us. God is pretty clear about that one (2 Tim. 1:7).
As I find myself facing the possibility of a major life change this summer, here is the measuring stick that determines whether my fear of change is legitimate or unfounded.
Is my current situation one that I could gladly keep for the next year?
What are my frustrations with my current situation?
Is the type of change I am considering one that will grow me or inhibit me?
This is a very incomplete list of questions, so please share some of the questions you ask yourself in considering a major change. What this list does, though, is force me to evaluate my current situation realistically. There are certain things I love about where I am now. But what do I lose by refusing to trade those in for new growth opportunities?
This is the difference between contentment and complacency.
Contentment recognizes the joys and benefits of the present without rejecting the possibilities of the future. But complacency rejects the possibilities of the future out of a desire to maintain the status quo because it is familiar—not necessarily because the status quo is all that amazing.
Whether you find yourself overly cautious or overly spontaneous, let’s remember this: fear is a visceral reaction that can either preserve us from disaster or prevent us from succeeding. As such, we would do well to engage our minds in the analysis of potential changes, so we can recognize whether we fear a specific change for valid reasons or simply because it is unfamiliar. This can be challenging, which is why we should also involve other people in the consideration process. People we trust. People from different perspectives, from different age ranges and experiences.
Can you tell I’m preaching to myself here?!
What’s your perspective?
How do you cope with change? Do you usually embrace or resist change?
Are you more of an agent of change or are you usually the one responding to change you can’t control?
What are some difficult decisions you’ve had to make and how did your expectations compare with the outcomes?
Before you go, I invite you to do the following:
- Visit and subscribe to my new YouTube Channel for creative writing insights
- Sign up below for my author newsletter (infrequent updates about upcoming releases)
Confessions of a Covid-stricken Writer
I thought covid would give me an unparalleled chance to keep writing. How wrong I was.
Days before I received my positive covid test results, I had struck a gold mine of creative energy. My second children’s book has been progressing toward publication, and only a week ago I had an incredible surge of progress in my sequel to The Exile.
Unfortunately, this surge was short-lived. Let’s just say it’s hard to conjure up creative genius when your brain feels swollen and reading makes you dizzy. So yes, I quickly found myself in the same survival mode many have found themselves in– laid up on the couch with shortness of breath, unable to taste or smell, probably overdosing on ibuprofen, and unable to think coherently. This is actually the first semi-coherent piece of content I have written in almost a week. Small victories!
And already my mental energy is waning, so this will be brief.
For fellow writers and creators slowed down by covid, take heart and take it easy.
Often I find people’s suggestions to “just take it easy” as veiled excuses for laziness. Many people (myself included) call it quits long before reaching an actual burnout. But the reality of illness and its effect on your brain is not something you can dismiss. Your mind is simply not at its best when your body is fighting an intense virus.
Different people have had different symptoms, but what I’ve found most surprising is how quickly my mind wears out with this sickness. If I read or write for too long (or even just think for too long), my brain begins to feel like it’s swelling inside my skull. Thankfully, this can be alleviated by lying down and resting my eyes– but it sure doesn’t make for a very productive quarantine period. Projects have sat untouched for days. My favorite blogs have been neglected. I haven’t posted any new YouTube videos. Deadlines have been postponed. And that’s okay.
As bizarre and uncomfortable as this illness has been, I am reminded that there are people who have had far worse reactions. There are people who have lost their lives or loved ones. Losing one’s taste, smell, and creative capacity is certainly no picnic for a writer who loves food as much as I do, but I am still breathing. I am still at home. And I am recovering. Slowly. And that’s okay.
Before you go, I invite you to do the following:
- Visit and subscribe to my new YouTube Channel for creative writing insights
- Sign up below for my author newsletter (infrequent updates about upcoming releases)
Mental Exercises to Keep You Sharp
Mental exercises aren’t just for mathematicians or professional chess players: they’re for creative types, too.
I say this as someone who often neglects mental exercises because they take time. Why use the precious minutes of my day on something completely unrelated to my all-consuming projects? Books and scripts get written by writing… not by fiddling around with mind games or crossword puzzles.
And yet, numerous scientific studies correlate mental exercises with improved mood, memory, and overall brain functionality (especially as you age).
This should come as no shock, when you consider that brain power resembles a muscle: you use it or lose it. But how exactly can hands-on activities boost your creative skills? Well, I’ll leave it to the scientists to explain that one, but I can name a few mental exercises I’ve recently rediscovered that have sharpened my brain and helped free it from the mind-numbing world of screens:
1. Crossword Puzzles
This one is pretty obvious for writers. I mean, we live in the world of words, so this is supposed to be our jam, right? The only problem I frequently run into is that I don’t know the references in the hints, so I have no idea what they’re actually hinting at. This just makes me feel like an uncultured fool, so many of my crossword puzzles have empty spaces left at the end. :/ Still, it gets me thinking analytically and trying to tie things together (a skill every writer needs).
2. Jigsaw Puzzles
This is the more visual cousin of crossword puzzles, and I’ll be honest: I’m a word nerd, not an art nerd. I struggle with visualization. I can create scenes with words, but I wrestle with physically pulling together the details of an image. I’m not great at creating charts or pictures to represent my ideas, so I consequently struggle to organize visual fragments into a whole (I can organize ideas all day long, just not images). Jigsaw puzzles help me get my brain and my hands working together, picking apart details and synthesizing them. Also, there is no replacement for the feeling of pressing in the last piece of a puzzle and seeing it complete.
3. Untying Knots
Yep, you read that right. Not sure if it’s proven to have any specific benefits, but it takes focus and a lot of patience. Don’t get me wrong—untying knots in your hair or in a necklace chain is one thing. That’s just stressful. But every time I find my crochet yarn skein tangled up in itself, I’m in for at least a few minutes of work. As long as I’m not in a rush, this process can be a semi-pleasant challenge. When we are so used to living a life of scattered thoughts and multitasking, it is surprisingly refreshing to just channel all your focus toward one singular thread and follow it where it leads. And watching the snarls and clumps fall apart as you unwind is a remarkably therapeutic feeling, as the mess progressively becomes one smooth, clean thread. If only mental and emotional knots could be untied like this!
4. Learning something new
It could be a new language, a new instrument, a new song, or even just a new vocabulary word. While some of these are more intensive activities than others, just the simple act of learning introduces new information to our brain and expands our scope of knowledge—or shows us an unexpected connection between things already familiar to us. It’s like adding new ingredients to the creative cauldrons in our mind. It enriches the flavor of our mental activity and enables us to break free from the ruts we may have already formed.
Clearly this is not an extensive list, but these mental exercises have played important roles in helping me think outside the box and even shatter the dreaded wall of writer’s block. Sometimes we just have to look at our work from a different standpoint in order to solve the problem. Sometimes we need to give the pot a stir in order for things to come together. This is why it’s helpful to train our minds so they stay sharp and agile, able to pivot, analyze, and synthesize as needed in our creative process.
How do you stay sharp?
Do you ever do any of these activities? (Whether as a mental exercise or just for fun.)
Before you go, I invite you to do the following:
- Visit and subscribe to my new YouTube Channel for creative writing insights
- Sign up below for my author newsletter (infrequent updates about upcoming releases)
Evaluating Illustration Thumbnails
Easter, Sunshine, and Thumbnails: who could ask for anything more?
This beautiful, sunny Easter weekend was made even more enthralling when my illustrator sent me the complete set of thumbnails for Bertrand the Bashful Bumblebee—my next children’s book, on track to be released this late spring.
Many of you are already familiar with the phenomenon of illustration thumbnails, but I thought it worth sharing some helpful tidbits for any fellow creators (or curious readers):
What exactly are illustration thumbnails?
They’re one of the steps between the storyboard and the final illustrations. I say “one of” because there is another, earlier step follows the storyboard: that is the character concept art.
Basically, the storyboard lays out the chronological order of events and determines what each picture will portray. The illustrator then uses the manuscript and the storyboard to design visual characters, giving them personality, texture, and shape. After the author and illustrator finalize the character concept art, the illustrator begins creating the thumbnail sketches that will be used for the final illustrations. These thumbnails are essentially a miniature, detailed blueprint of the pictures that will fill each page of the book.
All of this is pretty straightforward, but I want to give some pointers on how to make the most of the thumbnail creation process with your illustrator and take into account the logistics you will need to deal with later.
1) Give your Illustrator detailed feedback
If you are like me, you might struggle to visualize exactly how you would like something to look. You just recognize when the illustrator’s work is or isn’t what you were hoping for. Assuming you’ve already committed to your particular illustrator, the quality of the book’s images will depend completely on your ability to articulate your vision and the illustrator’s ability to translate this vision into art—which means you must be very, very detailed in your communication. If you see something in the thumbnails you don’t like, ask yourself why. What is it that jumps out at you? Does something not fit? Are the characters not expressive enough? Chances are if you don’t like it as a three-inch thumbnail, you aren’t going to like it as a 11 x 8.5 book page. Show it to some other folks (ideally people you included in the manuscript revision process) and see what they think. While you are the communication touchpoint with your illustrator, you can certainly gather feedback from others in order to pinpoint exactly what needs changing in the pictures.
2) Consider interior formatting and fitting text with pictures
This is a critical step that I admittedly did not ace the first time around. Ideally, your illustrator and interior formatter should be in communication so that they can integrate the text and the pictures onto each page organically—minimizing white space and making sure everything fits. So much of the inside of a children’s book depends on its visual appeal that this part can really either attract or jar your readers. Put your illustrator and formatter in touch during the thumbnail process so that they can experiment with layout options early on, rather than try to squeeze everything together after the fact.
3) Consider page count
Remember that the number of pictures does not always match the number of pages. Some pages might have multiple pictures on them, depending on what a given section of text contains. Deciding in advance how many pictures will go on each page will help your illustrator plan for the size of each final illustration.
In any case, this part of the process has the potential to be both fun and helpful—just try to take into account as many of the logistics (size, formatting, page count, font size, text blocks, etc.) as possible. It can feel overwhelming, but it is much better to take it slowly and carefully while you can easily adapt things than to to rush to the final illustrations and realize everything is set in stone. Your hard work and attention to detail will pay off in the end!
Before you go, I invite you to do the following:
- Visit and subscribe to my new YouTube Channel for creative writing insights
- Sign up below for my author newsletter (infrequent updates about upcoming releases)
Stop Looking for Shortcuts
Shortcuts: we are always on the hunt for them.
Shortcuts sell. They hook us with promises of overnight success, instant weight-loss, and rapidly acquired riches. They convince us of radical new formulas that invert the traditional (or even natural) order of things, and guarantee they can get us where we want to go faster than ever.
To be sure, some shortcuts are brilliant. Whoever invented the microwave, dishwasher, and washing machine—those folks really had it going on. While these are all technically “shortcuts,” they are also much more. They are innovative solutions to physical problems. They save us time and yield effective results that might not even be possible with sheer elbow grease.
The shortcuts I’m suggesting we should beware of are not technological innovations (although caution is often prudent here too). I’m talking about the ideological movements that promise mega results for miniscule investment.
This is not just limited to gambling or the stock market.
I don’t participate in either, and yet I’m constantly resisting the temptation to explore some too-good-to-be-true shortcuts promoted by alleged thought leaders in the business and literary world. Voices who tell you that your first book could be a bestseller—if you just follow these five steps! Voices who tell you that meeting your lifelong creative agent is just one paid subscription away—just pay your monthly fee and you’ll have a knock-out agent in no time! Voices who tell you… just about anything other than, “Work hard. Keep your eyes open, but work hard. Your ship might come in someday.”
Why is this?
Because sleepless nights don’t sell. Sweat doesn’t sell (unless you’re a body-building model). Forgone social engagements don’t sell.
In our shortcut-saturated society, we are told that the magical shortcuts will remove all the unsavory parts of success for us.
It’s like telling a preteen that they can waltz through puberty without a single pimple. And yet people still fall for it.
I write this not as someone who is immune to the seductions of glamorous shortcuts, but as someone who needs to remind herself that truly fulfilling achievements are obtained through hard work. American culture binges on instant gratification—hence, it’s no wonder that career, monetary, and educational shortcuts sell so well today. And it is possible that some of the get-rich-quick tricks work occasionally, otherwise there would be no success stories. Some people might actually find the gratification they crave from the shortcuts they buy.
But there is a difference between gratification and satisfaction.
Gratification can be attained cheaply. True satisfaction requires much more. One of the fads that I always find amusing is the weight-loss fad. Every time I’m in the checkout line at the grocery store, I see a new formula for losing 10 pounds in one week. I swear, the #1 magical weight-loss superfood changes every 14 days. Does this mean that no one who eats these foods experiences weight-loss? Of course not, they might actually lose a few pounds by simply replacing something in their diet with kale, regardless of whether they exercise.
But the person who exercises will sleep better at night. Why? Because their body didn’t just digest something green—it worked. It sweat, it burned calories, and it released endorphins. And that combination of biological activities reduced stress in the body and brain and gave that person a true sense of achievement.
It’s the same in career choices. We can chase the fads and try new shortcuts to get our half-baked books in front of people who will buy them… or we can wrestle with our work for a year until it is finally presentable and then have it published. One of these results will check a box on our bucket list. The other will yield a product that represents your best work and makes your best even better.
Sure, networking and strategic connections help in obtaining success—but like Cal Newport points out, these will only help you get discovered if you have a skill worth discovering. And the only way to develop discover-worthy skills is hard work. We should beware of anyone who tells us otherwise.
What are some shortcuts you regretted taking? What are some that actually delivered good results?
Do you see shortcuts as a sign of an innovative spirit or a lazy spirit? Perhaps it depends on the shortcut?
Before you go, I invite you to do the following:
- Visit and subscribe to my new YouTube Channel for creative writing insights
- Sign up below for my author newsletter (infrequent updates about upcoming releases)
The Writer’s Creative Conscience: staying Accountable
Every writer has a creative conscience.
By “creative conscience,” I don’t mean a moral compass that dictates what we do and don’t create. I mean a still, small voice that haunts us when we aren’t creating and hounds us for not achieving milestones.
The creative conscience is like an internal secretary: it dictates goals and nags us until we accomplish them. It scolds us when we become distracted. It convicts us for procrastinating. Perhaps it even belittles the goals we have set, suggesting they are too lax to make any significant progress. It is always measuring, always scrutinizing, always correcting, and—occasionally—applauding our efforts. The creative conscience defines our view of our own work volume.
I say work volume here because in my experience, the creative conscience is more interested in how much I create than how good it is. Does this sound familiar?
While many of us might not consciously recognize this voice, any committed writer has some sense of expectation from his/her writing.
For some of us, that means we adhere to tight publishing schedules. For others, that means we want to crank out a couple big works a year or various smaller ones—or even just complete that one glorious project over the next couple of years. We all have goals.
And we all see others with more aggressive goals. We all see others publishing and selling way more books than we are. We all see others receiving accolades and rankings that we aren’t. We’re just trying to keep up with our own set of goals… and our creative conscience is plaguing our heart out.
I’d like to note that the creative conscience is not necessarily a curse.
Some of us are more prone to despair and negative self-talk than others, which means that their creative consciences probably feel like internal persecution more often than not. But just as having a secretary can help keep you on track, that still, small voice can hold you accountable when it matters.
Let’s be real: not every minute we spend away from our notebooks or word documents is wasted. We need to get out and do other things. We need to spend time in the company of others, in nature, in prayer, in all sorts of activities that take us outside of ourselves and let our creative engines rest.
But let’s be honest: not every minute we spend away from our projects is well-used either. Social media (which has wired our brains to compare ourselves with others, by the way), cat videos, email checking, and a host of other activities vie for our valuable off-duty time. These activities are not bad in themselves, but I name the because they have the tendency to devour more time than we realize—and then we wonder why we aren’t making as much progress in our writing as we’d hoped. In such cases, a sharp kick-in-the-pants from our creative conscience might be just what we need.
Lastly, just like our moral consciences, our creative consciences need careful development.
What we feed our mind and what behaviors we permit ourselves affects the way we perceive right and wrong. Likewise, how we analyze others’ success and what we tell ourselves about our own work will affect how much guilt-tripping we endure. It’s nearly impossible not to compare ourselves with more “successful” writers, which means we must be mindful of the takeaways we draw from their success. Do we leave feeling like our own work stands no chance? Do we leave lamenting our own lack of marketing skills? Do we leave feeling like we will never have a large enough library of original work to maintain a steady audience?
It is easy to feel all of those things. I say this to myself as much as I say it to you: rather than let your creative conscience scold you for not measuring up, consider incorporating some of those successful writers’ habits into your own routine. Evaluate whether some of their practices are realistic for you, and try to build them into your own plan. Focus less on whether that will give you identical results, and focus more on letting your creative conscience adapt to these new expectations. At the end of the day, nothing will go 100% according to plan—so why set your heart on cranking out a specific number of works unless you can be proud of their quality?
But let’s be careful not to dismiss those internal proddings when we know we are making excuses… because we have that creative conscience for a reason.
What’s your take on the creative conscience? Do you find it more often helps or hinders you?
How do you maintain healthy expectations of your own productivity?
Before you go, I invite you to do the following:
- Visit and subscribe to my new YouTube Channel for creative writing insights
- Sign up below for my author newsletter (infrequent updates about upcoming releases)
