How Do You Create a Sense of Safeness for Yourself?

By Heather Doyle Fraser

My Spring season has been filled with a constant coming back to my commitment of comfort – I wrote about this during March and how I would like to commit to being in my comfort zone. And no, that doesn’t mean that I’m comfortable all of the time; rather, it means that I am cultivating a landscape for myself – both internal and external – that supports me and helps me navigate the space in which I find myself. When we have an internal felt sense of safety or safeness, we are able to tolerate distress and discomfort and move beyond what we thought was possible. 

When we feel safe enough, we are able to create with abandon – in whatever form that takes. For me, that is writing, but also other creative practices: art-making, coaching, singing, or anything else where I am leaning on my creativity – you pick your preferred mode of creation! If we don’t feel safe or comfortable enough, we find ourselves using all of our energy just to survive. Survival gets you through the most difficult times, but it doesn’t provide a jumping-off place for creativity and creation. You can’t access the profound expanse of your imagination when you are in a place of fear, threat, and deep uncertainty. Inevitably fear, threat, and uncertainty are our companions in this life because we are human, and they never go away. But there are things we can do to help alleviate or even prevent some of those fears so that we can stand firmly in our comfort zone while stretching into a place of creation. 

What if – just like I committed to my comfort zone during the Spring season – I built upon my comfort to step into creation during this season of my life? It’s a question I ponder often because I am a writer, and I help people to write books and compassionately navigate their discomfort while doing so. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and experimenting with how we can cultivate a safe space – a haven – in which to create. Because we are human, emotions, feelings, difficult thoughts, and body sensations are going to come up when you are creating something that is meaningful and purpose-driven. If the space in which you create feels safe, though, you are much more likely to be able to maintain and sustain your creativity to the completion of your project. 

How do you create a sense of safeness for yourself when you are writing or engaging in another creative practice? In my next blog, I will share with you what I do to create a safe space to create.

How Did NaNoWriMo Work for You?

by Heather Doyle Fraser

November was National Novel Writing Month. I hear people start to talk about this in late October, “November is National Novel Writing Month! I’m going to do it this year! I’m going to write my book in November!”

Let’s be clear about something from the outset, here. I think NaNoWriMo is awesome. I think it inspires people to think big and imagine a world where they are writing daily and that vision seems exciting and sexy, and also a little scary. And if you sign up for NaNoWriMo on their website — if you look around a little before November 1 — you will see that the good people who birthed this idea intend a few things:

1. Your planning of the novel needs to begin before November 1. In order to start tracking those words on November 1, you need to have created an outline and backstory for your characters BEFORE then. They have a timeline (and even that appears to be a little aggressive to me) that suggests you begin the process of outlining and character development in September.

2. You will write the first 50,000 words of your novel in November. That doesn’t mean you complete the writing of your book. That means you write the first draft of the first 50,000 words of your novel. This is a first draft of a portion of your novel — not a completed manuscript by the end of the month. (Average length of debut fiction novels is 75,000-90,000 words.) 

Let’s do the math on this. If you are writing the first 50,000 words of your novel in the month of November and you start on November 1, that gives you 30 days. This means you are writing about 1665-1670 words every single day of the month. No days off. No exceptions made for, “I’m feeling uninspired and really quite cranky today.” No exceptions for, “I had a client crisis at the office this week and had to put in a couple of really long days at work.” No exceptions for, “I got a terrible cold and didn’t sleep well for a week.” No exceptions for, “My child is sick and I needed to rearrange my entire schedule to take care of them.”

No exceptions.

Unless you decide to take one or two days off each week at the outset. Then you have shortened your writing time. Let’s imagine that you allow yourself to take 6 days off of writing. That means on your 24 writing days you need to write 2,084 words in each writing session. 

More pressure. That’s awesome for setting the stage for creativity and inspiration!

Let’s assume you started ahead of November 1 and you do have an outline and you have created a little backstory on the character development front. Let’s also assume, though, that you didn’t spend as much time on these parts of the process as you would have liked so you are feeling a little uncertain. And, let’s also assume that this is a new endeavor for you so you have not cultivated a consistent writing practice that has become a habit for you. 

If you do not have a daily writing practice in place when you begin, your goal of writing 50,000 words of your novel in 30 days is going to be VERY difficult to achieve. This kind of writing requires practice, consistency, diligence, and a whole lot of self-compassion. Writing nearly 2000 words a day for 30 days takes high-level training! It requires you to set up your life to support your writing habit. 

What does this mean? 

Most people who want to write a book are not full-time writers. They have jobs, families, partners, and responsibilities that require their attention. So, they need to make space for writing like they make space for any truly important and value-based endeavor. They have to account for the time and plan for it, like you would plan to workout or exercise. 

For example, let’s pretend you decide you should write your 2000 words first thing in the morning before work. if you are writing before work in the morning, you would need to make sure that everything is set the night before -- you have to be able to get to bed at a consistent and reasonable time to get up at a presumably unreasonable time to devote yourself to the writing practice before the rest of your responsibilities take center stage (work, adulting, etc.).

The thing people forget when they declare their intention to write a book in a month is that you need to train in order to be able to write nearly 2000 words a day. In order to write this many words consistently per day, you need to have been working up to that number. Your very first writing sessions shouldn’t even have a word count expectation associated with them in my opinion. At the beginning, time alone is your goal. You may not be able to guarantee a number of words at the beginning but you can control how long you sit in front of your laptop.

Just like exercise, this writing journey is a hard one when you feel alone. Even though writing is a solitary endeavor, though, you don’t need to feel alone. And writing in the same space with someone, having compassionate support, and accountability partners all makes this difficult task of writing easier. Doable. And that’s where NaNoWriMo gets it right – all of these people all over the world are engaged in the same challenging activity.

I would like to set the stage though for a more compassionate approach. First off, whether you are writing a non-fiction book (my specialty) or a novel, you need to spend the time upfront on the WHY, the WHO you need to be to write it and WHO you are writing to, the WHAT (hello book plan!), the HOW (What do you need to clear from your schedule? What decisions do you need to make upfront?) and the WHEN. Then you need to get into training mode – consistency is key!

Daily writing practice (or nearly daily) is not only what will help you finish your book, it will also help you to cultivate a deeper relationship with yourself and your writing. It’s pure gold.

So, if you didn’t finish your book in November, no worries! You didn’t have all the information upfront. You weren’t ready. Let’s take it slow and commit to 20 minutes per day, shall we? And if that sounds like too much for day 1, let’s commit to 15 minutes. In a week, you’ll be able to up the time a little just like you up your reps in the gym. 

You can do this… If you want it. If you want to put in the time, day after day, over and over again. Let’s train together. Not for the sprint of one month, but for the long haul. Start now so when November 2022 comes around, you will be in the homestretch rather than behind before you even begin.

If you are looking for a safe place to practice, come join us at The Writing Practice. Learn more at https://mailchi.mp/cmcollab/the-writing-practice.

Why I start with WHY

by Heather Doyle Fraser

Your WHY holds your power.

It is your catalyst and

Your sustaining force.

When it comes to writing a book, I have noticed for myself and my clients, once the decision has been made to write a book we just want to get to the writing. And, that makes sense. It’s a huge undertaking and a decision that isn’t made on the flip of a coin — heads I write a book and tails I eat some ice cream. 

So much thought goes into the mere decision to write a book before any writing even begins. The idea comes first as a whisper, “maybe I could write a book...” and then sits in the back of the mind and in your heart for years without any apparent action taken. It comes up again and again a little louder, and a little louder until the idea of the book is louder than the resistance to the idea of writing it. And once that decision is made to finally take action, people want to sprint.

Writing a book isn’t a sprint, though. It’s a process that deserves care, thoughtfulness, and thoroughness.

When we are basking in the glow of that monumental decision to pour ourselves into writing a book, we may forget that our WHY holds power. Our WHY is both our catalyst and our sustaining force. Fully exploring this WHY leads to an emotional connection and a commitment to the book and the process of writing it. And it provides an anchor and touchstone for us, should we lose our way in the process.

So what does it mean to fully explore your WHY when writing a book? After all, when I first start talking to writers about the importance of WHY, I often receive a shrug, an eye roll, or a look that says, “Oh — I know what my why is. We don’t need to spend time on that.”

But we do.

We need to spend significant time on it, until you can think it, feel it, and speak it with ease and with a level of comfort that only comes from examining all of the folds in the fabric of the cozy blanket that cuddles you on a winter day. And when you become that comfortable, you are also creating a powerful connection -- an emotional connection that can’t be broken or ignored easily. That’s the secret right there.

When I dive in with my clients on WHY this book on their heart is so important, WHY their voice needs to be shared at this particular moment, with this particular message, we are creating clarity and also the opportunity for success for the future. I ask the writers with whom I work to reflect on their WHY and explore it fully and thoughtfully. We talk about it at length, and then I ask them to write about it. I take this three-fold approach because with each new imagining and uttering, more clarity and connection comes. 

When they finally write about their WHY they are clear and vulnerable, logical and emotional. They are whole and complete with the idea of their WHY, and then when they push save on that document, something akin to magic happens. They secure a message for their future-selves that is full of hope and understanding and fierce compassion and power. This is the gift for that future-self that will eventually struggle with some part of the writing process. So when I talk about layering self-compassion into the writing process, this is how we start. This is what one aspect of self-compassion looks like in the beginning stages of the book writing process. Giving your future self a lovely gift, said in exactly right words to meet your needs should you lose your way and doubt your resolve.

When you see in your own words WHY you are doing something, you remember not only the WHY, but you remember the emotion and connection you have to the project — even if you aren’t feeling it in that moment. You realize that at one point you were so incredibly clear and strong in your idea and your vision -- you wrote and believed all of those words, no one else. So, if you wrote and believed them once, you can believe as you once did. You can connect with yourself and your voice. You can feel the connection waiting to be nurtured. You can start — not over, but again. 

You can use the love, power, and surety within that document of WHY to propel you forward into the unknown.

And let’s be honest: The way forward is unknown — even with the most brilliant plan, it is still unknown. But… there are some things that ARE known and felt deeply and in this case those two things are your WHY and your voice. Your voice is particularly poised and ready to communicate your WHY because you know it so well. With that knowledge, you can rest in the power of your pen. 

If the idea of starting with WHY as you begin on your book writing journey appeals to  you, if you are ready to dispel the myth of the tortured writer as I am, join me for my six-week course starting on October 6, Writing Your Book: A Step-by-step Compassionate Approach that Starts and Ends with Your Voice.