Writing Process – Investigating the writing process

Rejection Part 4- When Writers Need To Say No

My writing for this blog has slowed since the early days due to a boom in my business both as a writer and writing coach. Things don’t appear to be slowing down.

But as it’s a wet Tuesday here in Scotland I’ve decided it’s time to update the blog by writing about one of my favourite topics- boundaries and the art of saying no. I recently wrote a blog article for PositivePsychology.com on healthy boundaries in various kinds of relationships, but here I want to focus on boundaries for working writers. Why? Well, you could say that I have learned the hard way how essential professional boundaries are when contracting with clients online.

Identifying bad freelance writing clients

The fabulous Writer Beware blog details a lot of scams in what they call the shadow side of the publishing industry. However, a huge number of professional writers serve clients outside the publishing industry, by producing content for blogs, websites, e-books, newsletters, press releases and more.

Many writers start out by joining agencies known as ‘content mills’. These typically pay per job for ghostwriting short-form and long-form content, such as social media posts, email copy and blog posts. Some are shady operations requesting writers produce ‘model answers’ for their clients, or in plain English, writing students’ college and university assignments.

There are other jobbing writers’ membership websites that ask for a fee to sign up and peruse ‘curated freelancing opportunities’. I’ve been approached by a few assuring me I’m ‘qualified to join’ who then offer nothing more than a list of job openings freely available elsewhere, and a few ‘how to’ blog articles. IAPWE is one of the newer websites posing as a professional association as described in this Reedsy article. Contena is another one that has attracted poor reviews.

Avoiding scope creep

However, there are other poor contracting practices to be aware of, such as

Asking for a writer’s rate ‘per article’ without stipulated word counts, but rather ‘word ranges’ such as 1,500 to 3,000 words per article.
Hiring writers with contracts that do not stipulate the number of revisions included, turnaround times for revisions, or fees for revisions.

This lack of clarity can lead to the dreaded scope creep, when work increasingly encroaches on your free time, piles on stress, and can eventually lead to exhaustion and burnout.

A tough lesson from personal experience

I was hired as a freelance editor back in June to work on a certain number of articles per day, which I was assured would take a maximum of 7 hours. I agreed to a day rate for the job. However, I found that editing four blog articles, writing SEO content snippets, image curation, image optimization, and affiliate linking would take between 10 and 11 hours a day, as long as I was prepared to acquire repetitive strain injury on my mouse hand. When the client offered to reduce the work to a mere 9 hours a day on screen for a 7-hour day rate, I had to set some professional boundaries and walk.

I learned a tough lesson. Instead of trusting my B2B clients have the professional integrity required to contract and retain a freelancer, I now insist on a paid test article to time audit all ‘per article’ writing and editing tasks. Then, and only then, do I offer a quote and/or accept the rate offered. I’ve found this weeds out the chancers from the genuine clients at the first hurdle. If a client isn’t prepared to send me a paid trial article so I can time audit the job, they are likely trying to get something for nothing. In psychological terms, they are trying to override professional boundaries, as well as standard contracting practices, and that bodes ill for any future working relationship.

The problem is that we writers love our craft so much that we often jump at the chance to work in areas we are truly passionate about. Especially when we’re starting out, it’s easy to slip up and neglect to negotiate a client contract that protects our professional interests.

While the majority of my regular B2B clients have been great to work with, there’s been a handful who pushed professional boundaries in an attempt to exploit my love of writing. I have had to learn to say a firm but polite no to these clients, and establish some professional boundaries about when to proceed or withdraw from an offer.

The art of saying no

In today’s economic climate, taking on work that neglects our professional boundaries is tempting to plug short-term cash flow problems, but can lead to bigger problems maintaining productivity in the long term. However, writing for clients who continually push our professional boundaries has a corrosive effect on our creativity, and physical and mental health.

Paradoxical as it may sound, saying no is a crucial skill for making progress both personally and professionally.

Take a look at this TED talk by Kenny Nguyen about how learning the art of saying no prepares you for the perfect time to say yes.

5 tips for finding great writing jobs

Now we’re clear about how to say no, here are some tips on how to say yes. The following have helped me identify genuine jobs based on creative collaborations and filter out the kind of opportunistic exploitation that can crash your career as a freelance writer.

Ensure you have agreed on a rate per word and not per article, if possible, unless the article has a specific word count attached.
Only agree per hour or day rates after you have conducted a thorough, paid, time audit of the work involved.
Ensure that the number of revisions and/ or edits is stipulated in your contract. If it’s more than one round, always negotiate a fee.
Ensure that turnaround times are agreed upon in advance with reasonable deadlines applied.
Charge for additional tasks such as image sourcing, image curation, image optimisation, internal/affiliate linking, and other SEO optimisation practices. These require additional skills and eat into your time.

For further tips on weeding out the baddies, take a look at this article by freelance writer Carol Tice. You can also check out this more generic article about setting boundaries as a freelancer on Forbes.

Also, for a fun and incisive video on setting boundaries as a freelance writer, watch this video by experienced copywriter Alex Cattoni on ‘How to Fire a Client.’

The core message here is that setting professional boundaries as a writer entails learning the skills needed to have difficult conversations, or as Cattoni says ‘getting comfortable with being uncomfortable’. This brings me back to the tools I use in my writing coaching practice.

How to set professional boundaries

If you’re a freelance writer who struggles with setting boundaries it will definitely impact on your creativity, productivity, and self-worth. Learning how to set boundaries with your clients requires a shift in mindset, as identified in Cattoni’s video, but also the acquisition of specific interpersonal skills. As a writing coach, I equip all kinds of writers with the skills they need to succeed and optimise their productivity. This includes setting professional boundaries.

Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable typically means learning how to manage the anxiety and fear that arises when we decide we need to change our behaviour to achieve cherished life goals. One of my articles on ACT for PositivePsychology.com contains several resources for managing anxiety that can useful when learning to set professional boundaries.

Another of my articles on Setting Healthy Boundaries has a section on setting boundaries at work which includes some useful resources. However, this video by work communication skills coach Tammy Dunnett is a great guide on how to set boundaries at work by getting comfortable with having difficult conversations.

I love Dunnett’s 3 pillars for setting boundaries at work. Make sure you remain

Clear
Calm
Consistent

But let’s face it, when our buttons are pushed uncomfortable and reactive emotions are aroused. When this happens, don’t hesitate to take a step back for as long as needed. This is perhaps easier in the remote working world where we can put all our devices on silent and walk away from the desk. Learning when to take a break to prevent tensions from escalating is crucial as Dunnett explains above.

To finish up, here’s a final reminder from writer Paul Coelho.

Let me know in the comments if you’ve any more tips about how to identify dodgy clients, or how to set boundaries as a freelance writer. Many of us only carve out a writing career after learning from bitter experience.

I hope this article helps you to navigate the often murky waters of online writing gigs and overcome the challenges involved.

Rejection Part 3: Rejection and Loss- the Writer’s Lot?

My last two posts on rejection have been months apart. There are three main reasons why: 1. I was busy writing for others. 2. I was re-writing and editing my 133,000-word semi-autobiographical novel based on my tumultuous years in India and Sri Lanka. 3. I had a series of bereavements that drained me of the inspiration to write anything new.

As the above image suggests (that I took on a recent walk on the beach in front of my home), I’ve been caught between a rock and hard place, but still appreciating the view. These experiences led me to explore the relationship between rejection and loss, and whether dealing with both is part of the writer’s lot in life.

Firstly, in order to build a platform as a writing coach, it’s been necessary to demonstrate my credibility online, rather than focus on crafting posts in what could otherwise remain an unseen internet backwater. However, this entailed shelving this blog for a while which was a type of loss, as I enjoy sharing my musings here with others and the feedback I receive by email.

Yet, this experience has been useful as I’ve been content writing for other blogs, podcasts, and social media accounts, coached a range of writers from diverse academic specialisms, and learned how to turn down badly paid writing gigs – often after my bids had been accepted and fees were yet to be agreed. We’ll return to these points later in this post. So, I’ve been living a writer’s life, and encountering the same issues that my coaching clients struggle with along the way.

Secondly, I took up the long overdue task of rewriting and editing my novel based upon the true story of my time in India and Sri Lanka. There will be a sequel- two are planned. However, taking on board my previous editor’s remarks and recent feedback from a prospective publisher required a big rethink and a new beginning for the book. They made excellent points and spoke to some concerns I also shared.

Taking this on board and beginning again meant I then had to edit the remaining text to accommodate this major change. So, once again, I became immersed in the memories of the wildest adventure of my life as I sifted through the story and ironed out the wrinkles in the plot. I can’t deny that this was emotionally draining work, especially in the context of current events in Sri Lanka and the conversations I’ve had with old friends there about what’s happening on the ground. The seeds were sown for the current crisis over a decade ago and were germinating in the background of my story during my time living on the island.

I then decided that rather than going straight back to a publisher, I’d try to get an agent. So, I had to research who was open to submissions, their interests, and submission requirements. This involved crafting an elevator pitch, a new blurb, and new synopsis. I’m now waiting patiently for a response to my proposal, inviting the possibility of rejection after all that hard work.

While I was preparing my submission, I decided to research strategies for coping with rejection both for readers of this blog, and for me should I need it (let’s face it, who doesn’t?). In the short video below, meditation teacher Todd Perelmuter encourages inviting as much rejection as possible, while learning to interpret rejection as valuable feedback rather than a personal injury. He reminds us that everybody who has become successful has experienced a mountain of rejection along the way, and that embracing rejection is the fastest way to achieving our goals. This sounds counterintuitive in our ego-driven culture, but give him a listen.

Next, after submitting my proposal to an agent, and while editing the remainder of my book, a series of bereavements occurred involving family and friends over the course of just a few weeks. I dropped work for a while and allowed myself some time to process these losses. I took up more intense meditation, walked a lot in nature, and spent time with friends. I reflected on the relationship between rejection and loss, and how rejection can involve the loss of hope. The loss of a loved one can feel like a rejection by life itself, even a loss of meaning or reason to go on, as our interpersonal reference points shift and dissolve.

I found myself drawn to rereading a memoir that is steeped in the experience of rejection and loss to help me gather the threads of these reflections together. Tamsin Calidas’ ‘I Am An Island’ is one of the most hauntingly poetic and moving books I’ve ever read. I say ‘read’, but that’s not strictly true, as when I bought it there were no hard copies available- it had sold out everywhere- I could only purchase the audiobook. There was no Kindle and no paperback published at the time.

So, while doing my household chores I listened again to the audiobook that is so elegantly narrated by the author. Her story describes her experience of rejection and multiple losses, her descent into the undertow of grief, and the loss of meaning that occurs when she confronts her isolation and lack of belonging. Calidas faced a crisis that resulted in surrender and initiation into union with the creative pulse of nature, embodied in the wild landscape of the Scottish island she has made her home.

Given my recent experiences, and my relocation to the Scottish coast during lockdown (not an island, however), I appreciated it all the more the second time around. I began researching her current whereabouts and found some mixed book reviews and a few podcast interviews. I tuned into a couple of YouTube videos to listen to her explain how she transitioned from surviving to thriving in the face of rejection, loss, isolation, and deep despair. My favourite is linked below.

My overwhelming response to hearing her describe the wider context she couldn’t include in the memoir, given the pressure of word counts and space, was a deep respect for her humility and courage. These qualities seem to be key to processing rejection and loss, as both invite us to reframe these painful experiences in the context of something much broader than the personal. Calidas describes an experience of heart opening, and a radical repositioning of her sense of belonging to the ever-present breath of life. She describes her emerging union with the expansions and contractions, ‘the systole and diastole’ of the cycles of nature. Her description of this process echoes the initiation rites common to many indigenous peoples that are required to become fully grown adults in such societies.

So, what has all got to do with the writer’s lot in life? As writers, we must be prepared to face a lot of rejection. A long stream of rejections can risk us experiencing a deepening sense of loss- of hope, of meaning, or purpose. The result of this can be the dreaded writer’s block. Then there’s the temptation to devalue our work by accepting badly paid gigs just to gain a sense of acceptance. However, juggling multiple poor-paying gigs is likely to lead to overwhelm and burnout. So, writer beware!

Despite my experience, skills, and qualifications, I’ve navigated complex contract bids only to be offered ‘extra exposure’ (unpaid work) as my compensation, or rates much less than the minimum wage that are impossible to live on. I’ve also had promised by-lines for blog articles omitted that were then published as ghostwritten pieces. I’ve discovered, to my cost, that there are some personal development ‘authors’ that I doubt have ever written anything that they claim to have written at all.

These rude awakenings to the realities many working writers face have been super valuable. I’m now fully acquainted with the pitfalls of freelance writing which improves the coaching I can offer my clients. Also, I have my name on the front page of Google following a year of hard work writing for reputable blogs managed by authentic people. I’ve learned how to spot the sketchy gigs and can now avoid them. I can help my clients do the same.

However, the most important thing I’ve learned during my first year as a writing coach is not to reject my values when pursuing my own writing goals. Instead, I’ve practised self-help, taken my own advice, and endured the rough and tumble to develop resilience for the long haul. I’m reminded of the old aphorism by the translator of ancient Indian wisdom texts Eknath Easwaran-

Working With Rejection- part one.

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

My previous post on this blog discussed the role of self-compassion in the writer’s life, especially when we’re overwhelmed, blocked by inner or outer obstacles such as ill health, or experience rejection. Since then, I’ve started working as a writer for the Positive Psychology blog. My first piece has already been published on the application of ACT to group work. I have another piece written which will be published soon. Researching and writing these articles has delayed me posting here, but it’s returned me to a disciplined writer’s life. My main focus has been coaching and editing for the past few years. Now, I’m back in the saddle as a researcher and writer facing similar issues to my clients. Given my changed circumstances, I have decided to postpone the app and focus on bespoke one-to-one coaching for the time being. I’ll continue to post here about the common issues challenging my clients and my own writing process, but they’ll be snappier shares, rather than longer articles.

I promised to explore the issue of rejection in this post in more depth, so think of this as part one. I’m certainly familiar with the discomfort of having my writing rejected, and I have also rejected the writing of others when peer-reviewing for journals, reviewing book proposals for publishers, and editing for blogs. Neither side of this divide is pleasant, but it does give me a useful overview of the whole process of rejection. When you’re on the receiving end, rejection can often feel random and arbitrary.

I experienced a rejection of some fiction I’d written recently. The reviewer congratulated me on the quality of my writing but explained that ‘it didn’t grab me enough to want to take it further’. Fair enough, but what to do with that feedback? I took some time to process the rejection. I wasn’t upset. I didn’t take it personally. I even expected this response deep down. Why? I knew the beginning wasn’t sitting right with me and I just hadn’t summoned the patience to rewrite it. So, I decided to try again.

I’m now using some of the material I cut out of a previous version that I’m confident drops the reader straight into a gripping situation on the first page. It’s going to take a while to get it right, but I’m already much happier with it, and especially happy to include the writing I’d been advised to cut out by an editor of a previous version. It was well written he’d said, but not necessary. Now I see it was actually in the wrong place. I eventually stopped working with that particular editor as his advice was 100% market and sales driven, so we ran into a clash in values. Perhaps this clash in values is at the root of a lot of rejection, in one way or another. As writers, these clashes with publishers confront us with choice points. I’ve referred to choice points in earlier posts. Here’s a quick reminder.

The choice point facing me when my editor’s values clashed with mine was between reaching my goal of becoming a published writer in the near future, or choosing to adhere to the values driving my writing process. I took the latter option as integrity is the primary value driving my creativity. Different writers will have different values. For some, commercial success will be all important and there is nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all! However, in my case, compromising to reach a cherished goal was one thing, but ditching the values driving my writing process was not an option. I’ve discussed the difference between values and goals in previous posts, but here’s a quick reminder.

In short, if I’d prioritised my goals over my values, I would have been rejecting myself to try and capture a market. Out of self-compassion and a longer-term view I chose in favour of my values.

This type of rejection experience is specific to fiction writing. A publisher’s or agent’s acceptance and rejection of fiction is somewhat subjective, based on taste, and of course, markets. If you are suffering a growing pile of rejections, then be assured you’re in great company. One of my favourite writers, Kurt Vonnegut, received the following.

“Dear Mr. Vonnegut, We have been carrying out our usual summer house-cleaning of the manuscripts on our anxious bench and in the file, and among them I find the three papers which you have shown me as samples of your work. I am sincerely sorry that no one of them seems to us well adapted for our purpose. Both the account of the bombing of Dresden and your article, “What’s a Fair Price for Golden Eggs?” have drawn commendation although neither one is quite compelling enough for final acceptance. Our staff continues fully manned so I cannot hold out the hope of an editorial assignment, but I shall be glad to know that you have found a promising opening elsewhere. Faithfully yours, Edward Weeks.”

You can read more of the harshest rejection letters received by great writers here.

These days, one easy way to avoid rejection is self-publishing, but then marketing becomes the author’s responsibility. New writers with no platform will find marketing their work very difficult without a great of time and money to invest. I’ll discuss this option in another post. However, when academic writing is rejected, the considerations are very different. I’ve spent many years editing academic writing for publication. I’ve also participated in the peer-review process. My next post in this series on rejection will discuss this process in detail, and how academic writers can maximise their chances of publication. Until then, remember rejection provides you with an opportunity to revamp, re-evaluate, and improve your writing. It may even be setting you on course for something far better than you imagined.

Setting Intentions and the Art of Self-Compassion

This blog has been dormant while I’ve been recovering from an eye infection- a complication of my periodic computer vision syndrome (CVS) that causes dry eyes, irritation, light sensitivity, and tearing up. I treated the problem with Ayurvedic eyewashes, rest and taking a break from the screen. The swollen eye also prevented me from videoing the content for my new app, but now it’s cleared up filming begins next week. This got me thinking about the impact of our health on our best intentions, and how an increasingly screen-based working life may be impacting many of us.

I had to consciously choose to take a break from working, despite another internal commentary blaming me for my eye infection and failing to meet my goals on time. In an effort to appease my inner critic, I even tried the compromise measure of one-eyed research and writing, but after ten or fifteen minutes, realised this placed a terrible strain on my remaining vision. There was nothing else for it, I had to stop and take care of myself properly. I remembered Kristin Neff’s work on self-compassion and reminded myself that we all deserve care and concern during periods of suffering. I visited her site and plugged in my TV monitor to listen to her again.

I wasn’t struggling with an internal obstacle such as procrastination or avoidance, this was my human vulnerability to illness preventing me from meeting my best intentions to meet my goals. I needed some self-kindness.

I pulled her book off the shelf and re-read her exercise that suggests writing yourself a letter as if you were writing to a friend in need. I didn’t write myself a letter, but I did choose to be kind to myself, slow down, and spend more time off-screen than on-screen while my eye healed. I even postponed some client appointments explaining my situation and received messages of care and compassion from them too. This led to reset my intentions to include self-compassion during difficult times when unexpected events derail my best-laid plans. While my intentions always include remaining aware of subconscious experiential avoidance strategies, it’s also important to remember that unexpected suffering requires attention and psychological flexibility.

This very concrete experience of physical illness led me to reflect on the impact of other unexpected events on our writing lives. What other situations might crop up in the life of a writer that require a resetting of intentions and a period of self-compassion? A common experience for most of us is rejection from a publisher, blog, agent, or journal, or getting a poor grade for a written assignment, which may or may not be accompanied by criticism and discouraging remarks.

Unfortunately, many decisions made in the publishing industry are notoriously subjective and even nepotistic. There’s also a lot of competition and bad writing out there. Getting attention is hard. Many choose self-publishing as an antidote to ‘the old boys’ network’ syndrome that haunts many major agencies and publishing houses. Others sign up for writing courses, join writers’ groups, get a writing coach, or even give up in the face of repeated rejection. The fact is that rejection is part of every writer’s life, and rejection takes its toll on us psychologically. An article in The Cut entitled ‘Rejection Is An Enormous Part of a Writer’s Life’ offers some tips on handling rejection by seven established writers who have accepted it as part of their working life. Samantha Irby writes

“Most people don’t tell you why they don’t want your thing. They just say, “Oh, thanks, but no thanks.” I find it soothing to think about how much of this is out of my control. The only thing that I can be sure of is what I’ve made. I wrote this thing; it made me laugh; I’m happy with it. Why they didn’t buy it, I’ll never know.”

The keyword for me here is ‘control’. So many of the factors involved in decisions to publish are not in a writer’s control. Meanwhile, Akwaeke Emezi recounts how rejections that hurt at the time have sometimes been followed by other opportunities offering something better.

“… one of the things I’ve learned is that, a lot of the time, rejections are like doors that close because there’s a path somewhere else that I’m meant to be on. I don’t really feel bad about rejections anymore because I’m like, Okay, that’s cool. I’m not supposed to go there. I can’t wait to find out where I am supposed to go, because that’s going to be awesome in a way that I didn’t even imagine.”

This attitude embraces the acceptance that is key to cultivating resilience. One strategy for managing disappointment is resetting your intentions in line with your values. When you meet a roadblock in one direction, try again using another route. Meanwhile, Alexander Chee takes a deeply pragmatic approach.

“Rejection is something that, in some ways, you have to work with as much as you work with language as a writer. It’s the other medium of writing, which is to say: Learning to work with rejection, learning how rejection can propel you forward, whether you’re deciding to get better or you’re deciding to move on — you just can’t let it be an obstacle.”

I find this the most useful suggestion given my commitment to continuous creative development in face of ongoing challenges, especially when coaching other writers. Language may be the medium that lights our path ahead, while rejection is the shadow that helps us hone and define it. One requires the other, like yin and yang, or as Thich Nhat Hahn put it ‘no mud, no lotus’. Every edit is a form of rejection, and yet editorial revisions are always necessary to refine our writing, blossom and grow. Rhonda Douglas recommends regular doses of self-compassion as essential to our craft.

“Can you see how this can help us as writers to weather the incredible amount of rejection that most of us are naturally going to experience in our artistic lives, no matter how hard we work or how talented we are? Rejection is just a fact of the writing life, and self-compassion can help us keep moving forward in the face of it.”

As writers, perhaps the key to working with rejection is cultivating the capacity to separate our writing from our sense of personal identity through acceptance combined with cognitive defusion. Of course, self-compassion when we feel the twinge of disappointment is always a good move, while judging ourselves as a failure or giving up may be rooted in a misunderstanding of the reality of the writer’s life. What do you think? Let me know in the comment section below. I will also explore this more in my next blog post. Meanwhile…keep writing!

Comparison is the enemy of flow

During one of my coaching sessions this week we homed in once more on the problem of overwhelm and how it can be caused by comparison. Often, before any kind of writing project begins a period of research is required. When I’m coaching academic writers, they often begin writing by researching the work of their peers in the field, especially by focusing on keywords and terms unique to their own research. The result can be the discovery of an overwhelming amount of research papers that may have implications for their own work, which they then feed a compulsion to read to stay abreast of current developments. The result can be writer’s block, typically characterised by a sense of excruciating overwhelm, freezing, and feelings of not being good enough to write for publication as someone else ‘probably got there first’. One of my clients discovered that somebody else had once written about a term she believed one of her research subjects had coined during an interview, and asked if it was permissible to use this same term in her paper, or if it would be seen as plagiarism?

My response was ‘reference it’, note the source, and continue. However, the discovery of the previous investigation of a similar phenomenon risked overwhelming my client. Suddenly, she wondered if she would soon discover a well of information that would take months to process. We discussed whether any ideas were truly unique, as new ideas always build on previous research and tend to be eclipsed by emerging ideas later. This describes the evolution of the investigative process that drives all types of research. The answer we agreed upon was clearly ‘no’.

Often, as the writer and literary critic Raymond Williams once explained, new ideas tend to emerge spontaneously in geographically diverse locations in response to a given zeitgeist that characterises a particular period in history. Each interlocutor may well express an emergent idea in complete ignorance of others expressing something similar or the same elsewhere. Emergent ideas arise through a complex, dynamic and intersubjective cultural process that germinates the seed of the new in response to the dominant culture and the residues of tradition. Therefore, almost no ideas are unique due to their emergence from a historical and cultural process. Following this discussion, we returned to the issue of writing in the flow state, and how comparison and structural framing might be better applied after the raw content had been written in a state of flow.

Dropping into our flow state may also be disrupted by the overreach of digital communication and culture. After a discussion of my previous post, exploring awe-walking as a method for shaking off the energetic stagnation that can settle in at the writing desk, my client began to dig deeper. To access flow, it may be necessary to disconnect from the digital world for a while. For example, as I’m writing this, I see an email has arrived. I am in my flow and so I decide not to open it but am aware of the urge to open it disrupting my inner writing process. This overreach of digital communication posting notifications inside the very tools I use to create is disturbing indeed, so setting boundaries to minimise interference is required.

All too often I have followed up some notification, either an email or social media post and an hour later find myself overwhelmed with information; either of no purpose or indicating another line of enquiry that I could pursue. Also, other people’s reports on their progress with their projects surreptitiously invite me to compare myself with them and see myself as lacking. However, most people carefully curate their social media profiles. Each time we log into social media, we are invited into a matrix of online personas apparently untroubled by the everyday hassles and complexities of life. This social network of self-policed identities aims to persuade or celebrate rather than present any kind of truth, yet the act of persuasion involves a subtle form of comparison and plays on our desire to improve. Too much comparison can be paralyzing because there are always people who are doing better, know more than you, have achieved more than you.

Therefore, I asked my client to stop conducting research, or indulging in comparison, and instead focus on her snack writing exercises from the heart, free of referencing and editing. The result was a more poetic, nuanced, and original writing style that was able to express her previous research findings in the context of her new work. She explained to me that disconnecting from the internet and just writing a paragraph at a time had enabled her to write in a more embodied way that ‘flowed’. I suggested that setting a boundary around the overreach of digital communication had helped prevent her from indulging in comparison.

As the educationalist and philosopher, Krishnamurti said

…you are educated to compare…your brain has been conditioned, educated, trained to compare – right? … psychologically …We are trained, educated, programmed to repeat. […]That is how your brain has become mechanical, routine; it is repeating, saying the same thing over and over again: ‘I can’t do it, I must do it, it is too difficult for me, I don’t understand, tell me all about it.
Isn’t comparison a form of violence?

All comparison is based on competition, effort, and struggle. This is the very opposite of dropping into your flow state which feels effortless, joyful, and natural. The 6 -week Flow Writer Challenge will focus on removing all obstacles to dropping into the flow state while writing. Comparison is the enemy of flow and sabotages the content production stage of the writing process. Structure and referencing may be important but should be the focus of form, not content production. Once this is understood, a writer can dig deeper and discover their unique voice. Comparison dilutes individuality, promotes conformity, and prevents the perception of the present moment in all its immediacy and richness.

Awe walking- a mindful movement exercise to establish focused flow

This week I’ve been busy developing my app that will deliver the 6-week Flow Writer Challenge when it’s launched in a few weeks’ time. The blog had been put to one side while I got on with designing the challenge and the post-challenge programme. I then realised I was again flirting with my old friend overwhelm, which has also been reflected in the feedback from my writing coaching clients- all of them struggling with overwhelm, some due to multitasking and finding it difficult to carve out time to write, some overwhelmed by a need to organise rapidly multiplying ideas into a coherent plan for an article, others struggling with writing up their research design for a PhD upgrade. As I build my writing coaching practice, I am coming up against the problem of overwhelm over and over. This seems to be rooted in having too many things to do in a short space of time, but it is also a product of overthinking and catastrophizing by focusing on the potential for failure. These are very human problems that don’t only apply to writers of course. However, the isolation that accompanies the solitary occupation of writing can make it very difficult to step back from catastrophizing the future and reconnect to the reality of the present moment. When I need to reconnect to the present and realign to my flow, I take a short walk to my special place in the image below.

Aware of the temptation to fuse with a sense of overwhelm, despite the fact I’ve met all my goals and more this past week, I decided that rather than sit down at my desk and tackle my to do list, I’d try and shift my energy outward, and drop into the present moment. This is practice I recommend to my writing coaching clients who feel stuck or overwhelmed, and especially when they feel isolated. Writing is a solitary occupation. For an off the scale introvert like myself, lots of time alone rarely presents a problem but the stagnant energy that can result from sitting at a desk for hours can be an obstacle to maintaining motivation. That’s why the mindful focusing exercises I will be recommending in my 6-week Flow Writer Challenge will involve movement, rather than sitting. Today, rather just taking a stroll, I went for an ‘awe walk’- a mindful movement practice that helps overcome feelings of isolation and disrupts the inward downward spiral of overwhelm. All too often, writer’s overwhelm can result from focusing on an imaginary future where we fail to meet our writing goals.

I am fortunate to live on the Fife coastal path next to a beautiful fishing harbour (in the photo above) and large park with beaches, lawns, picnic benches and woods. So, when I need to take a walk in nature and reconnect with my environment, I merely walk out of my front door! Others who live in towns and cities may not find accessing nature so easy, but the mindful practice of awe walking can unveil a fresh appreciation of the apparently mundane while shifting stagnant energy and reconnecting us to our surroundings. Research has found that awe walking helps overcome feelings of isolation while also being good for our physical health. Awe is very powerful, and can reignite our creative process by dissolving a tendency towards overthinking and getting stagnant energy moving. The Greater Good Science Center at Berkeley offers a guide to a short 15-minute awe walking practice. I suggest visiting the site and following their guidance. I quote from their website below:

“With the right outlook, awe can be found in almost any environment, turning a mundane experience into a flight of inspiration and wonder. It is most likely to occur in places that have two key features: physical vastness and novelty. These could include natural settings, like a hiking trail lined with tall trees, or urban settings, like at the top of a skyscraper. You’re more likely to feel awe in a new place, where the sights and sounds are unfamiliar to you. That said, some places never seem to get old. No matter where you are, the key is to be in the right frame of mind. This practice is designed to help you get there—to turn an ordinary walk into a series of awe-inspiring moments, filled with delightful surprises.”

It is preferable to do this alone, with your phone on silent. I take my phone with me to take photos of the sights that evoke a sense of awe, but I always put the phone on silent. The guided practice from the website is reproduced below.

1. Take a deep breath in. Count to six as you inhale and six as you exhale. Feel the air move through your nasal passages and hear the sound of your breath. Come back to this breath throughout the walk. 2. As you start to walk, feel your feet on the ground and listen to the surrounding sounds. 3. Shift your awareness now so that you are open to what is around you, to things that are vast, unexpected, things that surprise and delight. 4. Take another deep breath in. Again, count to six as you inhale and six as you exhale. 5. Let your attention be open in exploration for what inspires awe in you. Is it a wide landscape? The small patterns of light and shadow? Let your attention move from the vast to the small. 6. Continue your walk and, every so often, bring your attention back to your breath. Count to six as you inhale and six as you exhale. Notice—really notice—the multitude of sights, sounds, smells, and other sensations that are dancing through your awareness, usually undetected. 7. Once you get in the habit of taking walks like this, you may be struck by how frequently you have opportunities to experience awe—they are practically infinite.

The walk can indoors or outdoors. For example, those in an urban setting could visit a gallery or museum if the immediate outdoor environment lacks novelty. You can also follow the guided awe walk meditation in the video below.

I enjoyed my awe walk today which I found energising and uplifting. It enabled me to reconnect with my environment and a sense of joy at being alive. On return, I sat down and wrote this post easily, in a state of focused flow. My awe walk imbued me with a fresh sense of possibility and freed me from overwhelm. If you find yourself overthinking the future and becoming overwhelmed at your writing desk, consider taking a short awe walk, or even a long one. The benefits to your writing process may surprise you. I intend to make this a daily practice. Cultivating a sense of awe regularly has enormous benefits by shifting the stagnant energy that can block access to your flow state.

What is writer’s block?

According to the ACT approach, experiential avoidance is always at the foundation of the internal obstacles that arise and prevent us from achieving our goals. This is the same for any kind of blockage, including writer’s block. Experiential avoidance in writers results in us behaving in ways that undermine the achievement of our writing goals. The ACT hexaflex is designed to overcome experiential avoidance and increase psychological flexibility through the acquisition of new cognitive and behavioural skills. However, before us writers can overcome obstacles to achieving our writing goals, we need to understand the avoidance strategies we use, albeit not consciously, and become much more aware of how our thoughts, feelings and sensations lead to avoidance behaviour- and even that dreaded writer’s block.

The Focused Flow model approaches writing coaching by establishing values-driven writing goals, and then taking an inventory of obstacles that arise when a writer approaches their writing task. For each person, the obstacles that arise will be unique. Yet there are some common problems that many writers face when they approach a writing task. One is procrastination, which tends to be driven by overthinking the writing task, leading to uncomfortable sensations or feelings and the perpetual delay of writing to avoid this discomfort. When faced with a blank screen or page, many experience overwhelm due to overthinking the task ahead which puts the brake on the writing process. Procrastination helps writers to avoid this common experience of writer’s overwhelm. From an ACT perspective, Russ Harris calls this behaviour an ‘away move’ because procrastination diverts us away from the achievement of our goals.

I have noticed that before I sit down to write about any aspect of the writing process, I seem to experience the very problem I’m thinking of writing about. For example, today, I intended to write a blog post about experiential avoidance- and I finally started writing about it after 5pm, but not before cleaning my apartment, sorting out the laundry, ordering my food shopping, taking out the trash, giving myself a facial, and looking at various freelance writing and editing opportunities to boost my income across about twenty websites. This resulted in a growing sense of agitation and even dread. I was aware I was avoiding today’s writing goal, yet there I was, saying I could coach others to achieve theirs! Cue the emergence of the internal critic in full self-condemnation and judgement mode… ‘you haven’t got what it takes, you’re out of your depth, you should stick to editing, who’s going to take you seriously? Why would anybody part with their hard-earned money to learn from somebody like you?’ And so on and so on… which is my version of what ACT practitioners term the ‘I’m not good enough story’.

So, I connected to that experience, and became aware I was feeling uncomfortable and agitated. I connected to the sensations in my body- a kind of dread in the pit of my stomach, a heaviness in my heart that I associate with disappointment, not about a cancelled event, but disappointment with myself. I realised I was at what Russ Harris calls ‘the choice point’, like a fork in the road, with one path taking me away from my writing goals- by going for a walk, having a glass of wine, or finding some other task such as doing a tiny bit of washing up that could easily wait. My ‘I’m not good enough story’ was kicking off along with all the uncomfortable feelings that accompany it, and I had to choose whether to get hooked into the story or remain aware of my uncomfortable feelings, sit down, and just start writing instead. This short video illustrates ‘the choice point’ visually.

I became aware I was at my choice point by connecting to the present moment and noticing my thoughts, feelings, sensations and the urge to indulge in further procrastination, more avoidance and ‘away moves’. According to the ACT model, this dropping into awareness and connecting to the present moment is termed ‘mindfulness’. By becoming more mindful, I was able to choose a ‘towards move’ while remaining aware of my discomfort, picking up my laptop, sitting down and starting to type.

Next, during the writing process, I remembered the problems I’d encountered with potential coaching clients who’d queried the use of mindfulness as a solution to overcoming obstacles to writing. So much so, that I’d been careful to remove the term ‘mindfulness’ from my promotional material and website pages. Then, my mind began to comment negatively on my use of the term mindfulness. The reason? Almost all my potential clients were put off by the idea of having to meditate in order to write! They had associated mindfulness with meditation. I was surprised, but then I’ve been an ACT practitioner for eleven years and had chosen to practice ACT as a coach because it doesn’t involve meditation! I’d previously trained in other mindfulness-based therapies- MBCT and MBSR -which do require a regular meditation practice. This requirement led to problems for some of my peers who found making time to meditate difficult, and had undermined their progress with the approach. Then, along came ACT- a mindfulness-based active coaching approach that required no meditation- so I jumped into further training then began using it with a lot of success, especially with writers in my retreat house in Sri Lanka.

So, I decided to ignore my mind telling me it was a bad idea to discuss mindfulness in this article about the writing process. There are several myths about mindfulness, but instead of avoiding using the term I decided it’s time to do some myth busting instead. Take a look at the short video below by the ACT coach Russ Harris.

Thanks to my mindfulness skills, I was able to choose to behave in a way that achieved today’s writing goal, despite all the uncomfortable thoughts and feelings that arose when I thought about sitting down to write. In addition to connecting to the present moment and noticing the thoughts, feelings and sensations driving my procrastination, I decided to let them be there and unhooked from the impulse to avoid them. In the ACT hexaflex model, these further skills in mindfulness are termed ‘acceptance’ (allowing uncomfortable aspects of our experience to just be there) and cognitive defusion (unhooking or refusing to ‘fuse’ with the ‘I’m not good enough story’).

The next post will discuss these additional mindfulness skills in detail. Acceptance and cognitive defusion enable us to choose ‘towards moves’ by making space for us to enter the flow state, maintain our focus, and achieve our writing goals. Thankfully, mindfulness helped me achieve my writing goal today, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this post now! If you like my investigation of the writing process, please click and subscribe in the sidebar to receive notifications by email. My posts will be full of tips and techniques to help overcome obstacles to all types of writing in the coming weeks ahead.

Values-Driven Writing Goals

When I conduct my first coaching session with writers, I introduce them to the ACT approach that I have integrated into the Focused Flow model. ACT is a collaborative coaching intervention that was developed by Professor Steven Hayes as he struggled to overcome his own personal challenges following his divorce. Previously a highly competent public speaker and lecturer, Steven found himself freezing up when he went to speak and experiencing panic attacks which quickly developed into a full-blown panic disorder. As a psychologist, he tried all the standard approaches to deal with his condition, but none seemed to resolve his problems entirely. You can read more about how he struggled to overcome his problems and how this led him to develop the ACT approach here.

The ACT approach is based on a six staged process that is represented by the hexaflex.

I came across this approach after training in the more traditional mindfulness-based approaches of MBSR and MBCT, both of which require a regular meditation practice. While studying at the Centre for Mindfulness Practice and Research at the University of Wales, I found out that many of my peers had difficulties maintaining a meditation practice due to a lack of time, heavy workloads, and family responsibilities, meaning they often found these approaches difficult to follow. I was drawn to ACT, because while the approach teaches mindfulness skills that develop a greater awareness of how the human mind works, it does not require a meditation practice. That’s right- no meditation is involved! In fact, ACT exercises teach us how to develop mindfulness on the move, during the ordinary activities of everyday life. This alone aroused my interest, so I took an experiential training programme that required trainees to apply ACT to their everyday experience. After we were presented with the hexaflex and the theory was introduced we began stage one of the process called ‘front loading your values’.

When looking at the hexaflex above, it might be difficult to imagine how this approach could be applied to the writing process to help overcome blockages and optimise productivity. At first, this wasn’t my intention at all. It was only after working with a coaching client who had been trying to finish her PhD thesis for twelve years that I discovered how useful ACT could be for overcoming obstacles encountered during the writing process. I simply took my client through the six staged process with a focus on the importance of writing in her life with fantastic results. She then went on to finish her thesis in nine months!

The first stage involved front loading her values. As is often the case, she was unclear about what her values actually were, especially the values that were driving her writing goals. Values and goals are different. Goals are milestones of achievement while values steer the direction we want our lives to take. So, if we’re unclear about our values, we’re not sure where we’re heading, and so we’re much less likely to get there. Often, when my clients complete the values clarification exercises, they discover that the values that had been steering their life so far had never been their own values, but had been adopted from another source, such as parents, teachers, their partner, or even the accepted conventions of society as a whole. Russ Harris illustrates the difference between a values-focused life versus a goals-focused life in this short video below.

For those people struggling to complete a long-term writing project, understanding which values are driving their writing goals is crucial. It’s also important to understand if writing is associated with a lack of fulfilment of other values and how both sides of the coin interfere with the writing process. I’ll give you an example to illustrate what I mean.

Let’s return to my previous who had struggled to complete her PhD thesis for almost twelve years. When she started clarifying her values, she realised that despite the importance of the values of creativity, learning and adventure that steered her PhD research, she also associated spending extended time on her writing with a lack of time with her partner doing things they enjoyed such as travelling together, sharing leisure activities and seeing friends. She discovered that subconsciously she was associating writing with relationship problems, social isolation, and even the loss of her partner to a less boring academic type! So, when we were front loading her values, we also had to reframe her writing in terms of her valued relationships, and unravel the association between writing and neglecting her partner and social connections.

As we did so, she realised to her surprise that her inability to focus on writing was at the core of some her problems with her partner, as her frustration was affecting her mood, energy levels and enjoyment of shared activities. She felt hunted by a sense of guilt and failure, and this was being expressed in her relationships in all kinds of indirect ways. Her partner was becoming associated with her inability to focus and write, although all her partner ever did was try to encourage her! Quite soon, we were able to reframe her writing as support to having a healthier relationship, as she saw how her reluctance to set boundaries to dedicate time to writing up her thesis was undermining her ability to be fully present to her partner and enjoy their time together.

In this case, front loading her values set her on a path to unlocking the time she needed to dedicate to writing, while she used mindfulness skills to detach from the guilt inducing inner commentary that would often arise when she made time away from her relationship to sit down and write. She established some values driven writing goals in the short, medium, and long term that enabled her to achieve a greater sense of fulfilment in other areas of her life. Once she had clarified the values driving her writing process, she was clear about where she was heading and could map out how to get there. This is the territory I cover with my clients in their first two coaching sessions using the Focused Flow workbook as a guide.

In the next post, I’ll explain how the mindfulness exercise of cognitive defusion helps establish the focus needed to drop into the flow state when we face obstacles with productivity even when we have plenty of time to write. Overcoming our inner obstacles to the writing process can be our greatest challenge. The Focused Flow model is especially designed to identify and uproot inner blockages to establishing the flow state, a vital and creative state of mind that is key to optimising productivity.

I look forward to any comments on this post.

Focused Flow- what is it?

Welcome to the Focused Flow blog where I will write about the origins of this approach to the writing process and describe the techniques used to overcome obstacles and optimise writing productivity.

The ‘flow state’ is a well-researched optimal state of mind between boredom and anxiety where you perform and feel your best. Flow is the experience of being so engaged in an activity that you drop into a state of vital, sustained productivity such that you may lose track of time, sometimes even forgetting to eat and drink. I have experienced my flow state when writing from different perspectives, including academic writing, fiction writing and article writing. This blog will share how I have managed to overcome internal obstacles to my own writing process, continued to write in a range of difficult circumstances, and have since gone on to help other writers do the same.

We all of us, writers or not, have good and bad days, suffer ups and downs in our energy levels, have times when we find it easier to concentrate and days clouded with brain fog. Obstacles to achieving our writing goals can arise internally through experiences like self-doubt, procrastination, and lack of confidence in our abilities, or externally- due to a poor night’s sleep, stress at work, or like I am experiencing right now – the constant noise of my neighbour’s DIY activities!

Most recently, many of us will have experienced the extra collective stress of lockdown. This definitely impacted upon my productivity as an editor and writer. In fact, so much so, I wrote a short account of my international lockdown story, about how I got stuck between countries and couldn’t travel, and the impact of lockdowns on the country where I used to live- India. I especially wrote about the impact of lockdowns on the village where I once lived while I was studying mindfulness and meditation in Bodhgaya, India, and the foodbank I’d established with some local young people to help alleviate hunger there. In this way, I managed to turn the obstacle into the focus of my writing for a while. Once I had settled back in the UK and things began easing, I became more aware of the internal obstacles to my writing process that were related to the fall out of social isolation during the lockdown. This inspired me to return to using mindfulness-based techniques, specifically those rooted in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to help me manage and overcome a drop in motivation and self-confidence.

As I did so, my mind went back to when I ran a retreat for writers near Kandy in Sri Lanka from 2011 to 2012. At that time, I was also teaching mindfulness-based approaches to counselling and psychotherapy at a Buddhist monastic college on a part-time honorary basis. I had a regular meditation practice and was immersed in a state of flow on an ongoing daily basis, thoroughly enjoying everything about my life. I remembered how successful the ACT techniques had been unblocking writers who attended my retreat and returned to the workbook I used to guide them through the coaching process. I decided to apply these techniques once again to my own life which felt blocked and stagnant during and after lockdown. I also realised I’d suffered a drop in motivation that was difficult to reignite even as the restrictions eased.

I am fortunate to have an apartment overlooking the ocean on the Fife coast, just outside Edinburgh, so began taking daily walks as the weather improved in spring. However, these weren’t just any old walks, they were what are called ‘awe walks’, where I paid very close attention to all aspects of the environment around me free of judgement and open to wonder. I regularly stopped to admire the play of light on the ocean, and the smell of the brine mixed with blossom in the wooded park by the sea. I paid attention to the way my body felt- often achy and stiff due to a long winter confined by dark nights and lockdown, but then as I lengthened my walks, lighter and more energised. After these walks my mind would clear of fog, my heart felt lighter, and I felt more connected to the world and less isolated. Yet, due to the restrictions still in place, I’d only fleeting social encounters with other walkers and neighbours on the way.

I also take photos on my walks to share on social media and lift the spirits of others living in areas with less access to nature. Others’ appreciation of my images of the Fife coast during lockdown also relieved my social isolation. I will share the photos here and in videos that I’ll be making to illustrate the mindfulness exercises that are key to the Focused Flow model. I hope you enjoy them!

After taking these regular ‘awe walks’ as the days grew longer my motivation began to return. I began to reflect and re-organise my life in relation to my values rather than living in mere survival mode, working as a freelance editor in the ‘feast or famine’ cycle familiar to many freelancers. I returned to my old writings that needed review and began rewriting my ACT coaching workbook as a specific tool for writers. As I did this, I made sure to keep using the techniques myself to reorientate my life away from mere survival, and in the direction of greater fulfilment.

The Focused Flow writing coaching model was the outcome. After pitching my model and business plan, I managed to obtain some funding to establish a new business as a writing coach, with access to free mentoring and various online resources. However, this venture is not just about making a living, but about living a life as a writer in line with my values. As an experienced educator and supervisor, I also value lifelong learning, adventure, and creativity. I value community and service. Gradually, I set aside task-based work driven by my lockdown survival mode and began embracing more creative activities that returned me to a values-driven life path as a writer and writing coach.

By using my own experience as a testing ground and reviewing the successes of the past when I was living in my flow state, I applied ACT to my own writing process to overcome obstacles and optimise my productivity. When I began discussing this with other writers in my wider networks, they were excited and enthusiastic, and my first coaching clients arrived.

As I take them through this course, I will report on the different stages of the model and how they begin to obstacles to obtaining the state of ‘focused flow’. This blog will also be a research tool, detailing the ups and downs on the way to help me invest further in the services I offer and communicate the techniques to other writers. I hope you will join me in charting the roll-out of this unique approach to writing coaching, while I also continue my own creative writing and guest article writing for other blogs that will be linked here as they are published.

You can also read more about the model in the free preview of the E-book on Kindle, currently available at the discounted launch price of just £2.99. I hope you find my blog posts helpful and look forward to your questions and comments, whether about the posts, the approach, or the E-book if you decide to buy it. In service of the values that steer my writing, I also donate 25% of all profits to the foodbank in India where lockdown restrictions are still in place and causing widespread hunger. You can read more about this project here.

Be sure to sign up to the blog to get my newsletter and updates on the Focused Flow approach, as well as some heavily discounted summer school coaching offers.

Have a great week, Jo.