25 02, 2015

4 Ways to Keep Your Productive Faucet Flowing

By judythemorgan|2015-02-25T06:00:34-06:00February 25th, 2015|Make Me Think Monday|1 Comment

February is almost over. We’re moving at warp speed through 2015. So how are you doing on those plans and resolutions from New Year’s Day?

If you’re like me, that faucet of enthusiasm has slowed to a trickle or off entirely. Barely a drip.

It’s time to heed the words of a great writerly quote from Louis L’Amour, an American author of hundreds of authentic western novels:

“The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”

The full quote, “Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” provides great advice for writers.

You see when life spins out of control writers, well at least to this writer, lets the distractions stop my writing. Instead of moving ahead, I tend to think, “I’ll just finish __________ then I’ll get back to writing.”

Fill in the blank with whatever distracts you from working toward your goal. You don’t have to be a writer to fall into the distraction trap.

What happens is each passing day we don’t work on our goal or resolution, it becomes easier not to do what we planned. Doesn’t take long before self-doubt makes us question if our project is even worth the time at all.

Here are four ways I plan to get myself back on track, and turn my faucet on again.

Establish a Schedule

A schedule doesn’t have to be set in stone or the same every single day or week. Make it adjustable. Most important, put the time slots on your calendar the way you would any other appointment or commitment.

Seize Small Chunks of Time

An hour may not seem like much, but you’d be surprised at what can be accomplished in a small, consistent, and repeated amount of time. Snatch those minutes wherever you can.

My goal for 2015 is two books published so I’m training myself to keep my iPad with me and write wherever I go like when I’m waiting at the doctor’s office or a passenger in the car. Since I live in the mountains and the nearest Wal-Mart, doctor, or grocery store is at least thirty minutes away. I’m amazed at how my word count builds.

Set your goal as your priority every day.

I work toward my goals BEFORE I do any other tasks for the day. I find if I do the laundry, clean the house or any of those other very necessary tasks first, I always run out of time. You will too.

Reward Small Successes

Be proud of small incremental steps. I remind myself almost on a daily basis that one word a day gives me 365 words of my novel by the end of the year. When I write an entire chapter, I celebrate with chocolate, usually M&Ms!

If you’re like me and your faucet isn’t flowing as it should, it’s not too late. Do not give up or abandon your goals and resolutions altogether.Rejuvenate that motivation you had six weeks ago. Turn your faucet on.

Hear that water rushing? Now turn your faucet on and let it flow steadily.

13 03, 2014

Olympians desire to change the world?

By judythemorgan|2014-03-13T06:00:12-05:00March 13th, 2014|Company's Coming|2 Comments

A guest blog by Jody Payne

Tonight I crept out of my writer’s cave to hear an interview with an obvious non-athlete at the Olympian Games. He talked of the athlete’s desire to change the world.

Excuse me? Are you kidding?

I have worked with some extraordinary athletes in the horse ring. Don’t get me wrong. I am nowhere near their quality. I just happen to know them.

To my knowledge, the ones I know are not out to change the world.

These dedicated human beings don’t waste a lot of time thinking about the State of the Union, what the Dow is doing, or which way to the nearest photographer.

Do you honestly believe when a skier is standing at the top of an obscenely high mountain looking down and waiting for the signal to descend she is thinking about changing the world?

Get real. She is visualizing the perfect run. They know there has to be luck on any particular day, but they also know they are so incredibly good that today this run can prove they are the absolute best in the world.

That’s a horrible, exacting standard to live with. However, somehow, these particular athletes get up every morning and face it.

Let’s don’t strap them with changing the world too.

Here’s the takeaway for this particular tirade: If each of us put the effort into being the best we could possibly be, if every morning we rolled out of bed and did the absolute best we could at what we do, we might just change our own personal world.

Of course, that doesn’t always happen. Rolling out of bed is the most some of us can handle some days. Just showing up is a major victory.

Been there. Done that.

Tomorrow is another day. Do better.

It’s tough, this reaching for perfection. And now we expect our athletes to change the world?

No wonder ballplayers take drugs.

Before you start with the hate mail, I’m not condoning drugs. Far from it. Let’s just make a deal with them.

You do your best, without drugs, and we won’t expect you to change the world.

Does this sound like a fair deal to you?

I’m just saying…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jody Payne is

a writer (fiction and non-fiction),

a horse woman (dressage, no less),

an animal lover (just ask her two rescue dogs Annie and Janie or my two four-legged boys, Toby and Buster),

and most of all she’s southern through and through.

You can connect with her on FB: https://www.facebook.com/jodypaynesays

Her website: www.jodypayne.net

12 03, 2014

Solitude – One Word Wednesday

By judythemorgan|2014-03-12T06:00:52-05:00March 12th, 2014|one word Wednesday|1 Comment

Most of us have been held captive by winter’s hold for so long now. Too long.

We’ve been isolated. Stuck inside. Alone.

Consider Lord Byron’s take on solitude.

Thanks to Edie Melson of The Write Conversation for sharing her creative photo that so accurately portrays Byron’s words.

I believe Bryon suggests, rather than isolating, solitude stirs us to introspection, which in turn feeds our soul and nourishes our creativity.

Do you agree?

10 03, 2014

Liminal Space and Me

By judythemorgan|2014-03-10T06:00:27-05:00March 10th, 2014|Make Me Think Monday|4 Comments

I recently learned about a concept called Liminal Space. I’d never heard the term before so off to Google I went.

Liminality is a transition period where normal limits to thought, self-understanding and behavior are relaxed – a situation that can lead to new perspectives.

Psychologists call liminal space, a place where boundaries dissolve a little and we stand there, on the threshold, getting ourselves ready to move across the limits of what we were into what we are to be.

There’s an Irish saying I think fits liminal space: Reality is that place between the sea and the foam. The sea is deep and dark and scary. The foam is shifty and uncertain, disappearing before our eyes. We linger in the in-between.

Interestingly, the word liminality comes from the Latin limen, meaning a threshold.

Remember adolescence? That’s the liminal space between childhood and adulthood.

So why is liminal space important?

Liminal space is where we can grow and change. The space between the closed door and the open window.

After a time of processing this concept, I see I’m in a liminal space on my writer’s journey.

Or maybe it’s simply that a writer’s journey is a constant state of liminality.

Doors close and windows open.

Everyone’s journey is filled with them.

The hiccup is that you can’t experience transformation unless you let go.

Richard Rohr says, “Few of us know how to inhabit liminal space. If we are security-needy by temperament, we will always run back to the old room that we have already constructed. If we are risk-taking by temperament, we will quickly run to a new room of our own making and liking. Hardly anyone wants to stay on the threshold without knowing the answers…”

I have to agree.

Straddling a threshold isn’t a comfortable place. Fear of the unknown has us holding tight to the familiar.

We must let go of the comfortable and familiar and move into the uncomfortable and the unfamiliar— seize the possibilities.

Not so easy to do. Scary even.

Unless we embrace change. Unless we stop trying to make our old journey fit the new destination.

“I’m going to show the courage not to retreat back to what was and I’m going to be patient not to jump into what I think ought to be, but I’m going to stand in liminal space. I am going to trust that as I stand on the threshold it is pregnant with the possibilities of God.” – David Jensen.

Richard Rohr says, “Nothing good or creative emerges from business as usual. This is why much of the work of God is to get people into liminal space, and to keep them there long enough so they can learn something essential. It is the ultimate teachable space…maybe the only one. … it is the only position that insures ongoing wisdom, broader perspective and ever-deeper compassion.”

What about you? Are you at a threshold in your life? Are you ready to let go and learn something essential—to claim the possibilities behind the open door?

Let’s go!

29 01, 2014

Shiver – One Word Wednesday

By judythemorgan|2023-01-15T10:42:07-06:00January 29th, 2014|one word Wednesday|2 Comments

We spent last week in Houston, Texas where an uncharacteristic winter ice storm came through.

The whole city shut down. Southerners know how to sweat. Not slip, skate, and slide.

My experience is that’s true of ice and rain! Rain leads to flooding in Houston. Ice and snow cause frozen freeway ramps. Houston drivers handle neither very well.

Winter storm weather is our norm in Colorado, but Texans just aren’t trained for it. Actually, they are disastrous at it, if the broadcasts from traffic cams testified.

It was COLD. I have to give them that. I’d forgotten how the humidity makes thirty degrees feel like -30. I spent the entire time shivering.

Friends and family questioned how I managed the cold in our Colorado mountains.

Simple: Dry cold. Road equipment to clear the ice and snow. And a roaring fire!

Lots of people in the southern states and east coast have been shivering for weeks now while we watch our November snowstorm that dropped 20″ of snow evaporate. Go figure!

So if you’re shivering today, stay warm.

If you’re a writer, don’t let the shivers keep you from the keyboard. Bundle up, grab a mug of hot chocolate and let the words blaze.

22 01, 2014

Resolutions Checkup – One Word Wednesday

By judythemorgan|2018-01-17T08:43:16-06:00January 22nd, 2014|one word Wednesday|0 Comments

We’re three weeks into the New Year. How are your resolutions working out?

Goal setting reminds me of eating at a cafeteria. All those choices and, as my grandmother would always say when I could barely lift my food tray–my eyes become bigger than my stomach.

That happens with setting goals. We’re so energetic and eager to start over after the hustle and bustle of the holiday season that we overextend. We set our expectations too high.

If you’re like most of us, those good intentions for a new start to the year are slowing falling away. Why? I think it’s because we set vague or unattainable goals like these.

So if you’re feeling down because your resolutions aren’t happening, look at your goal. Have you set the standard too high?

Adjust and move on.

If you’re a writer, take to heart the advice in the poster. I bet you’ll discover your eyes aren’t bigger than goals.

23 09, 2013

Are you a Pogo Writer?

By judythemorgan|2022-09-11T16:14:26-05:00September 23rd, 2013|Make Me Think Monday, Monday Motivations|0 Comments

A writing career is different from other occupations. A writer has to make up their route to success. There’s no policy and procedure manual, no checklist for success. What to do and how to do it is solely up to the individual author.

Each day brings unchartered waters especially in the current, ever-changing face of publishing. There are good days and bad. Success and rejections. The emotional wave is like a roller coaster ride. Up one day. Downhill fast the next.

More than any other job, at least as far as jobs I’ve ever had go, writers control their destiny. At the same time writers can become their own worst enemy.

By that, I mean we tend to sabotage our success.

Or, in the immortal words of POGO, “We meet the enemy and it is us!”

Not familiar with Pogo Possum?

He’s the anthropomorphic comic strip animal created by Walt Kelly in 1948

The poster pictured on the left was created by Mr. Kelly for the first Earth Day in 1971. To read more about POGO and Walt Kelly, click here.

Why do I believe POGO writers can be their own worst enemies? I see signs, and I’ve seen writers who exhibit these characteristics and fail.

You’re a POGO writer if…

1. You spend too much time and energy focused on mimicking the writing and style of some other author.

We’re spinning our wheels and wasting our words when we do this. The publishing world already has Janet Evanovich, J.K. Rowling, Steven King, and Nora Roberts. Their success is their success. You can’t copy and get there! Every writer has his own path to carve.

2. You obsess with following THE RULES.

Don’t get me wrong. THE RULES are important.

Once you understand the basics—things like POV, dialogue, setting, character, plot, theme, etc., you have to trust your instincts and what works for your story.

Rules are very important guidelines. Writing, on the other hand, is an art form that entails experimentation, innovation, and expansion. Don’t be so hung up on THE RULES you lose your own sense of story.

3. You buy into every new way to write or plot that a writing expert suggests.

Learning the craft, and studying with writing experts is important. I’m not arguing it’s not necessary to study writing craft.

Heaven knows I’ve spent a fortune learning from some of the top teachers in writing craft, and I improved my writing skills by leaps and bounds.

I’ve also learned that all the classes and workshops in the world are wasted if I’m not producing.

More importantly, I realize that writing experts don’t always know what’s right for me or my writing process.

Once you find the process that works best with your personality and lifestyle, you need to stick with it.

Btw, if you’re interested, I’d be delighted to share the names of those experts I highly recommend, just email me.

4. You’re unable to take criticism or the flip side-believe everything anyone says about your story.

Either of these positions can be fatal. Critiques and reviews are an essential part of every writer’s life.

No denying bad critiques or reviews hurt. Surviving a brutal criticism or review of your work definitely isn’t for the fainthearted.

You have to develop an elephant hide and learn to weigh the opinions expressed for exactly what they’re worth then make up your own mind.

It is YOUR story, after all.

Strong writers survive…and often produce better stories from hard critiques or bad reviews.

5. You’re not writing.

This sign is the most telling of all.

Who doesn’t struggle with the procrastination parasite from time to time?

But a successful writing career requires disciple and focus. Whether moved by the muse or not, a professional goes to the keyboard or grabs a pencil every day.

I know what you’re thinking. Authors have to promote and develop reader relationships, which cuts into writing time.

Very true, but I would argue that the key to gaining recognition and readership (aka success) is writing the next story.

Do you recognize POGO writer signs in yourself? If so, now that you know, you can defeat the enemy.

Close this browse and get back to writing!

12 06, 2013