FLOAT • Becoming Unstuck for Writers

By A M Carley

GOT STUCK?

As a writer, you know stuckness when you see it. And feel it. And, possibly, fear it. You may feel shame. The sense that you're alone with this struggle. Maybe the worst part is not knowing what to do now. Especially after you've tried so many fixes that didn't work.

You're not alone. And feeling stuck doesn't need to be permanent. In fact, the stuckness itself can be a key to discovering what to do next.

A M Carley's handbook for writers introduces the FLOAT Approach to becoming unstuck: a gentle, stepwise invitation to mindful problem-solving and brainstorming. Your own wisdom gains the space and support to speak up and be heard. Help is here! Use FLOAT to draw on your own hidden resources, and find your way again. Including more than 80 tools, extensive introductory materials, inspiration from published authors, and multiple indexes for easy reference, FLOAT is a resource to keep handy.

An online toolkit and resources, incuding audio guides, are also available.

Suitable for writers from woo-woo to pragmatic, introverted to extroverted, quiet to exuberant, contemplative to active, this book offers mindful interventions to help writers become unstuck.

BECOMING UNSTUCK

Trust yourself

Use simple tools

Honor your wisdom

Connect with the clan of writers

Find your strength

FLOAT

REVIEWS

• It's encouraging, professional, and nonjudgmental. This is clearly going to be a very valuable book for writers!
  
• I want to keep this book next to my dictionary.
  
• FLOAT shows a sensitivity to the challenges confronted by writers, especially the constant flux between isolation and connectedness, pursuing what is in many ways a solitary occupation.
  
• It's great to have specific suggestions and exercises that help get the juices flowing again.
  
• We creative folks just love fresh, new ideas and this book is chock full of ways to use our creative energy to fuel the completion of our projects.
  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Be Well Here
• Release date: Dec 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781931922012

A M Carley

Always an enthusiastic reader, as a young adult Anne fell in love with hot lead, publishing, and writing when she edited her high school newspaper. In college she instigated Dial a Bedtime Story, a low-tech effort to calm down distressed fellow students by reading them her original stories over the phone. Her success as an independent arts consultant in New York City derived from her ability to craft agreements among artists, collectors, and arts institutions. She studied law at NYU in order to do this more thoroughly. During law school, an article based on her research on conceptual and minimal art appeared in ArtForum magazine, which led to more speaking and writing opportunities on topics in the arts, law, and technology. After moving from New York to Charlottesville, Virginia, Anne established a creative coaching practice, working with writers and other creatives. She co-founded a local writer group, BACCA Literary. She has appeared at the Virginia Festival of the Book, the Virginia Writers Club Annual Symposium, and the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library. She is grateful to have been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA) as a writer (2016) and composer (2008 and 2012). The FLOAT book was completed there.

Book preview

Copyright © A M Carley 2016

All rights reserved.

Printed in USA.

ISBN 978-1-931922-01-2 EPUB

LCCN Library of Congress Control Number: 2016918973

Be Well Here, Charlottesville, VA 2016

Cover and interior photos thanks to

Creative Commons licenses:

(water and sky) rkramer62 via Visual hunt / CC BY

&

(feather) pixabay / CC0

•

Author photo by Ayla Palermo

•

Book Development & Production by

Chenille Books, Charlottesville, VA

Download your FLOAT Toolkit from

www.chenillebooks.com/FLOAT-Toolkit

BECOMING UNSTUCK

Trust yourself

Use simple tools

Honor your wisdom

Connect with the clan of writers

Find your strength

FLOAT

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

THE FLOAT APPROACH

FLOAT

CHECK IN WITH YOURSELF

TOOLS

TOOLS PREVIEW

AMATEUR OR PRO?

ANGER MAP

THE ANTI-STUPID KIT

ARE YOU COMPETING?

ASK AWAY

BEAT A RETREAT

BUT DOES IT PAY?

CANDLES & INCENSE & CHANTS – OH MY!

CHRYSALIS MODE

COME TO MAMA

COMPLAINING & NOT COMPLAINING

CONFUSE YOURSELF

CORPSE POSE

CURIOSITY

DATE YOURSELF

DO AN IMPRESSION

DON’T EXPLAIN

DUM TA DUM DUM

EXHALE

EYE ON THE WHY

FENCE YOURSELF IN

FIND A FONT

FIRE THE EDITOR

HEY, COACH!

HIRE THE EDITOR

I KNOW A PLACE

AN IMAGINARY FRIEND

IN PLAIN SIGHT

INSPIRATION, SCHMINSPIRATION

IT’S NOT LOST

A JOURNAL

LEARN FROM THE REAL EXPERTS

LINE, PLEASE

LIST HYGIENE

LIVE OUT LOUD

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

LOOK AFTER YOURSELF

LOOK IT UP

MY BUDDY

NOTICE

OBJECTION, YOUR HONOR!

ON THE GO

OPEN MIC

PAIR UP

PARTNERS IN CRAFT

PICTURE THIS

RECAP ROUTINE

RESPECT YOURSELF

SAFETY IN NUMBERS

SECRET AGENT

SET IT UP

SHAKE IT UP

SHOUT, SHOUT, LET IT ALL OUT

SING IN TUNE

TALK, TALK, TALK / KEEP IT QUIET

TELL ME A STORY

THE TIMELESS CLAN

TO MARKET, TO MARKET

TRY MANDOLIN

WHAT’S THE (TWEETABLE) STORY?

WHEN PUSHING THROUGH FAILS

WHO ARE YOU?

WHO LOVES YA?

WHO ELSE LOVES YA?

WHO TAUGHT YOU THAT?

WHO YOU GONNA CALL?

WHO’S IN YOUR CORNER?

WRITE FOR GOOD

YOU GOTTA SERVE SOMEBODY

YOUR PUBLIC PERSONA

T-FLOW TOOLS

THE T-FLOW VARIATION

ALLONS, ENFANTS!

BO-O-RING

CALENDAR IT

THE COMPANY YOU KEEP

COMPOST

THE DESIGNATED ARTIST

GOOD GRIEF

IS THIS THE RIGHT PROJECT?

THE STUCKNESS OF STUCK

WHAT IS SUCCESS?

WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?

EXTRAS

AFTERWORD – WHAT’S NEXT?

EXPERT ADVICE

MORE EXPERT ADVICE (LINKS)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

INDEXES & RESOURCES

TOOLS INDEX

TOOLS CONNECTEDNESS INDEX

TOOLS IMPACT INDEX

MORE FOR YOU ONLINE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I smile when I consider the many people who took part in making this book happen. First, my thanks to creative people everywhere for inspiring by doing.

My author clients and colleagues teach me every day another lesson in how to become unstuck. I am grateful to them all.

My husband, John Stryder, and friends and advisers Amy Baker, Christine Ballard, Julie Convisser, Terry de Guzman, Deanna Griffin, Mary Sproles Martin, Anne McCauley, Belinda Miller, Marla Palermo, David Price, Jeanne Schlesinger, Devorah Spilman, Darryl Stewart, Michele Surat, and Christina Wulf have all played a role in this project’s development.

My fellow writers from BACCA Literary – Bethany Carlson, Claire Elizabeth Cameron, Carolyn O’Neal, and also Andrea Rowland – provided key suggestions and encouragement for multiple drafts.

Colleagues Jane Friedman, Linda Layne, and Jennifer Niesslein continue to inspire me to celebrate the community of independent publishers and writers.

To the kind souls who agreed to beta read early versions, including Andi Cumbo-Floyd, Charlotte Drummond, Beth Oddy, Ayla Palermo, and Jeanne Schlesinger, eternal thanks for your attention and your insights. The book is better because of you.

The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA) provided me the space and quiet to finish this book. I’m so thankful for the opportunity.

I’m extremely grateful to the prolific and erudite Ed Hess, who listened to me talk about this stuff and convinced me to turn it into a book. And special appreciation to Andi Cumbo-Floyd whose invitation to facilitate a workshop motivated me to complete a working draft. Her guest writers helped me test drive the concepts and tools, and also deserve a big thank-you.

PREFACE

Hey, this could be big!

Do you say and think that about your project?

When you do, does it feel exhilarating? Depressing?

Why is it that sometimes everything seems possible, and other times, we’re stuck and see nothing but obstacles? Is it that the stuckness comes from our inborn needs to connect with others – and to distrust them too?

The Paradox of Connectedness

Do you write for yourself, or with a carefully defined target reader in mind? Doubt you’ll ever get published, or have multiple best-sellers under your belt? Whatever your situation, it’s likely that part of your writing energy derives from an urge to connect with others – excluding your journals and other purposefully private writing.

We want to connect. Yet none of us can avoid the self-protective suspicion that eventually got humans to our position at the top of the food chain. Our species wouldn’t have emerged, let alone survived, without an inborn alert system. We learned, before we had become humans, not to trust.

We also are born with a need for closeness, not just to reproduce the species, but to bond with and care for others. Maybe we’re capable of connecting to a shared universal energy or awareness that some call the divine.

We can probably each remember peak experiences that illuminated our connectedness with all the beings on the planet, and perhaps beyond. Yet, day by day, each of us navigates a continuum of need, between mistrustful isolation and immersive connection. In fact, the Buddhists say it’s the illusion of separateness that creates human suffering.

It’s a paradox.

We empathize with our fellow humans who are invested in a creative project. We surge toward the joy of making something new and fine to enrich the lives of others – and scramble self-protectively for the back of the cave, as far away as possible from sharing, trusting, or seeking an audience. It’s not always easy to negotiate a middle way, when we’re in the grip of these powerful – opposed – impulses!

Inevitable tensions accompany the paradox of connectedness. Aware of them or not, we must live with those tensions.

The Timeless Clan of Writers

Language can connect us, inspire us to action, restore faith, support us in grief, induce nail-biting attention, elicit belly laughs, and much more.

Do you remember the first time you found yourself on the receiving end of a writer’s offering that was perfect in the moment? The experience linked you together, whether you were face to face, or centuries and continents apart.

Then, one day, as a writer you express yourself well, offering your work as an invitation. A reader accepts and appreciates it. How wonderfully, even cosmically, connected is that?

And yet separateness beckons from the back of the cave.

The FLOAT Approach

Why not acknowledge the paradox and gently connect with our own inner guidance? Why not discover a middle way? Why not practice becoming unstuck?

Suitable for writers woo-woo as well as pragmatic, introverted as well as extroverted, quiet as well as exuberant, meditative as well as expressive, this book offers brief interventions to help you become unstuck.

Clients, friends, and colleagues have shared their struggles with me. Wonderful authors and commentators have published their observations on the challenges facing writers. My task here was to collect, clarify, and arrange these materials in a framework. I call it the FLOAT Approach.

I invite you to use it whenever you want to become unstuck.

Hey, this could be big!

Anne M Carley

Charlottesville, VA

P.S. Join us. Request your FLOAT Toolkit, free with the purchase of this book, and subscribe to FLOAT Note for the latest new tools, ideas, and advice.

www.Chenillebooks.com/FLOAT-Toolkit

INTRODUCTION

Stuckness. It can feel aggravating, frustrating, puzzling, poorly timed, and just plain wrong.

In the pages of this book, you’re invited to take an open-minded look at the places you feel stuck in your writing process, and to explore an approach to getting free again. To becoming unstuck.

Many books offer advice about overcoming writer’s block, getting unstuck, and so on. This book does, too. What will feel different about the FLOAT Approach is that the process encourages you in two ways: first, to be gentle with yourself, and second, to honor your own wisdom.

We can get stuck between the hardwired human urges toward – as well as away from – connectedness with others (and even the cosmos).

The tension between these urges can be so uncomfortable that we just stop, temporarily disabled from negotiating the struggle, even when a project is important to us.

Then, even worse, we don’t know how to solve the problem, or figure out possible options. The uncertainty adds an extra unwelcome layer of instability and distress.

Shame follows swiftly, for many of us. We tend not to let others know how bad it can get. This has the unintended and unfortunate effect of magnifying our aloneness and sense of shame. We become uniquely miserable, worse off than everyone else. Not recognizing that they, too, are keeping their shame and misery to themselves, we conclude ours is the worst, most embarrassing, and most intransigent stuckness since time began.

We try things. We read about manning up and beating resistance to a pulp, putting our butts in the chair every day at 4 AM, or living dangerously. When those tactics don’t work, only one conclusion remains: We are destined to fail.

Enough! You are not alone. There is another way.

What if you can use simple tools and your own wisdom to get insight into your stuckness? What if that helps you move forward again with your project and reconnect with the timeless clan of writers and storytellers?

Shame, fear, and anxiety can blind us to our own renewable resources of wisdom and good sense. The FLOAT Approach invites your wise self to speak up and be heard.

To Begin

You’ll learn how to use the FLOAT Approach in the next chapter. Then, set aside some time for yourself – at least fifteen or twenty minutes – to try your first FLOAT session. Find a quiet spot, and get started.

Here’s to becoming unstuck!

THE FLOAT APPROACH

Becoming unstuck, step by step.

FLOAT

One day the idea came to me: If we get stuck because we’re pulled between the need to connect with others and the need to stay separate, then perhaps we can learn to rise above that tension.

Perhaps, with mindfulness and wisdom, we can trust ourselves to provide the guidance we need. Perhaps, over time, we can learn to acknowledge our stuckness, and begin to get free of it. And then get freer.

Perhaps we can learn how to become unstuck.

The FLOAT Approach developed from that idea. Here’s how it works.

The acronym FLOAT stands for this five-step sequence.

FOCUS

LISTEN

OPEN

ANALYZE

TOOL

We’ll look at each of these five steps in turn, followed by two illustrative case histories and some practical introductory tips.

FOCUS

This is where the process begins. Focus on your stuckness. What’s it like at the moment? How does it feel?

Identify a question you want to ask yourself. You’ll probably want to pick just one to start.

Here are some suggestions: