Tag: leave your comfort zone

Decisions, Decisions

On October 14, 2019

Hello again, friends and followers! I know it’s been a while but I’m hoping to jump back in with a variety of posts coming to you weekly. If you have questions or blog post suggestions, I would love to hear them! Leave a comment or send me an email at [email protected].

My birthday is this month which is pretty anticlimactic anymore – except I get cake! I am not even remotely joking when I tell you I have to do minor math to figure out my age at any time. This year, the day itself is full of activities with my writing group, After Prom planning, and SPOKE business. And that’s okay. As long as I get some kind of cake and I don’t have to make dinner, it’s all good.

But the best thing about October is that it’s almost NaNoWriMo time!

Working under a deadline seems to be a great motivator for me. Knowing I have a goal to reach in a specified period of time lights a fire under me. Turns out I’m a little competitive. The trouble arises this year in the form of an inability to choose a project for the 50,000-word challenge. I’m leaning one way, but haven’t committed to anything. Yet.

My choices are as follows:

Finish What I’ve Started: My NaNo project from last year is very close to finished but is, in fact, NOT. It’s a light fantasy novel and a huge departure from what I normally write so my confidence in it is a bit low. I also have a ghost love story that I worked on over the summer that has a lot yet to say. There’s subterfuge, romance, and impossible odds. I’m fairly certain I could surpass 50,000 words between these two projects.
Oooh-Shiny! During the Drake Relays, Andrew and I worked out a story line based off a creeper in a pickup truck ogling co-ed runners, even slowing down as each one passed. From that sprang the idea for a crime novel with a middle-aged, worn down female detective who stumbles upon a serial killer. A brand-new novel is almost guaranteed to get me over that finish line.

While it’s very tempting to start an exciting new story, I haven’t done any planning so far this Preptober which is not good. Sitting down to write without a clear idea of where the story should go fills me with anxiety. Perhaps that’s a good thing, though. Pushing at boundaries, stepping outside the box, stretching my skills, and expanding my comfort zone could be beneficial.

If I survive.

What should I focus on for NaNoWriMo: Finishing older works or starting something new? Please comment below or email me – I’d love to hear from you!

Summer Writing Shenanigans

By Sharon Clark

On June 18, 2019

In Messages From Sharon

There is a lot to love about the start of summer: the warmer temps, the longer days, vacations. And this year, it seems that spring is going to stretch at least to the first official day! For me, that means there are days that I can take my trusty laptop outside on the back patio to write without fear of drowning the keyboard in sweat.

Summer also brings with it Camp NaNoWriMo in July. Where NaNoWriMo takes place in November and challenges authors to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, Camp NaNo is a little more flexible. Taking place in April and July, Camp lets you build or join a ‘cabin’ of other writers to support and encourage each other. You also can set your own goal, whether that is editing pages, writing lines of poetry, or writing another novel and setting your own word count objective.

I love Camp.

After my first NaNo year, I decided I needed the camaraderie and accountability of a writing group so I’ve created my own Cabin for each Camp for the last two years. It’s so fun to annoy my friends with daily encouragement quotes, to hold virtual meetups, to gather other local authors for donuts and writing on Saturday mornings. I look forward to Camp every spring and summer and kind of can’t wait for July to roll around!

This summer is also a big step for me in my writing journey. I am in the final round of edits for my novel, I’ll Call You Mine, incorporating notes and suggestions from my beta readers. Then, in the middle of July, I will send my baby off to a professional editor to see how I can fully polish it up and get it ready to shop out to agents.

This is a thing that is going to happen and it terrifies me.

It’s one thing to sit down and write for fun, maybe sharing with a friend or two, but with no real plans beyond that. But I have found that I want more than that. I’m realistic, I know it’s not easy to get an agent and even more difficult for that agent to sell an unknown author’s novel to a publisher. Putting myself out there will probably mean hundreds of rejections and stabs at my notoriously thin skin and fragile ego.

But what if…?

My summer is jam-packed with exciting writing, editing, and reading challenges. What are you planning to do this summer to push yourself and reach for your dreams? Comment below and thanks for reading!

What a Difference a Year Makes

By Sharon Clark

On December 4, 2018

In Messages From Sharon

My second NaNoWriMo has come and gone. I have to admit I’m feeling a little bit of a let down. There was always something to do, someone to talk to or meet up with, daily goals on the line. I find myself having to rein in my enthusiasm and not barrage my writing group with random thoughts and observations. Everyone has a life to get back to, especially as we drive straight into the mouth of the holiday season. We’ve set aside family time and other obligations for a month and we all need to return to a sense of normalcy – if any of us remember what that looks like.

This was a different experience for me than last year. My first NaNo in 2017 consisted of forcing myself to attend events, to actually talk to people, to not give up on trying to reach that 50,000-word pinnacle. The local writing group I joined is made up of people who have been participating for more than a decade and who have a considerable shared history. That was a little daunting, and even more so for someone who faces a bit of social anxiety. Last year I challenged myself not only to write 50,000 words in 30 days, but to attend events and engage with people I didn’t know and who didn’t know me.

Is it too much to say that was a life-changing decision?

Sounds dramatic, I will readily admit. But I can’t deny that I have changed. A little background: I am very good at avoidance. Making plans with people I genuinely enjoy and then panicking at the last second and canceling said plans is almost an Olympic sport for me. It’s not intentional. As the reality of personal interaction and imagined judgement loom on the horizon, I become filled with dread. So throw in something intensely intimate like writing and that anxiety goes nuclear.

I talked myself into showing up at write-ins and attending informational meetings throughout the following year. Then a strange thing began to happen: I didn’t have to force myself anymore and I started instigating meet-ups. I led two month-long Camp NaNo groups, holding online and in-person writing events, spouting annoying encouraging platitudes throughout each Camp.

Honestly, I don’t know how the participants were able to stomach me.

From there, I started looking at writing as more than a little hobby to keep me busy and started thinking my writing might have worth outside of my own mind. Confidence doesn’t come easily to me. I am firmly entrenched in the “fake it ’til you make it” school of self-esteem. But I found that the more I wrote and the more I spent time with like-minded creatives, the more I valued what I – what WE – have to offer.

NaNoWriMo 2018 was a fantastic experience for me. I now have a group of people I consider friends that I hope to continue to meet up with for writing – or just for fun. In 2017 I scraped across the finish line with barely over 52,000 words. It took me from November through the end of July just to finish writing that project. This year? I hit 50,000 on the 14th, ended the month with a decent word count of 91,065, and “The End” is on the horizon within the next week or two.

What a difference a year makes.

Putting yourself out there and taking chances can be pretty terrifying. But there are also some astounding rewards to be gained from taking a chance. I highly recommend it.

What goals do you want to reach but have been too scared to attempt? Have you pushed yourself out of your comfort zone recently with surprising results? Share your story below!