The Key Insight

Some writers seem to have been born with an understanding of how to be productive. Here’s the super-prolific Joyce Carol Oates in her 1978 Paris Review interview:

“One must be pitiless about this matter of “mood.” In a sense, the writer will create the mood. If art is, as I believe it to be, a genuinely transcendental function – a means by which we rise out of limited, parochial states of mind – then it should not matter very much what states of mind or emotion we are in. Generally I’ve found this to be true: I have forced myself to begin writing when I’ve been utterly exhausted, when I’ve felt my soul as thin as a playing card, when nothing has seemed worth enduring for another five minutes…and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.”

This fits in with the idea that the writing life, and each individual piece of writing, should be a journey without a fixed destination. You can’t even set a nebulous goal, like “to sell” or “to write well” – because even a nebulous goal contradicts the very point of the exercise. (And the liberated, creative mind won’t stand for it – it will just shut down. That mind demands freedom, and balks at control.) As Flaubert said, “Success must be a consequence and never a goal.”

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Perfectionism and Addiction

“This is all a giant procrastination and you must deal with it. You must.” – Words spoken to author and then-active alcoholic Caroline Knapp by her dying father, also an alcoholic (from Knapp’s book, Drinking: a Love Story)

The link between perfectionism and addiction has been well documented, but I’ve come to believe that perfectionism plays an even bigger and more central role in many addictions than is generally thought – and that perfectionism itself can be addictive. Let me offer some examples of how perfectionism is handled in addiction literature, and then an idea of how I think it should be handled:

In Holy Hunger, her memoir of food addiction and healing, Margaret Bullitt-Jonas describes how she, “was a perfectionist bent on getting every detail ‘right,’ ready to pounce with condemnation on anyone – myself included – who got it ‘wrong.’”

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Links: How to Live to 100

Great Expectations: Today’s Babies are Likely to Live to 100, Doctors Predict

“And people could be living not only longer, but better, according to doctors writing in the Lancet medical journal, who say that most evidence shows the under-85s are tending to remain more capable and mobile than before. They have more chronic illnesses, such as cancers and heart conditions, but people survive them because they are diagnosed earlier and get better treatment.”

HR Commentary: Still, you would agree it’s better not to get cancer or heart disease in the first place. Scientists believe genetics only contributes 20-30% to lifespan; lifestyle accounts for 70-80% (see next article). Everyone would benefit by going vegan and organic, but young people have the most to gain, as they stand to preserve many more decades of life and health.

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On Turning 51, Optimistically

So this month I turn 51. (I thought it was 50, but my helpful sisters reminded me…so I’m sending the newsletter I would have sent last year. And, YES, I do regularly forget how old I am. Now back to our regularly scheduled newsletter.) The wonderful thing is, I’m not depressed at all. Sure, the ongoing process of physical decrepitude is a bummer, but I’m in a thousand times better place than I was back in my, say, 20s. I am more able to both work and love, which Freud called the “cornerstones of our humanness.” I’m also surrounded by amazing people.

A couple of months back, I attended a Women’s Summit for the Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) movement, one of the key liberation movements of our age. FLOSS has brought us the GNU/Linux operating system, Wikipedia, Creative Commons, the anti-DRM campaign, and the free culture movement, and is generally going like gangbusters. (It doesn’t hurt when your opposition behaves stupidly, as Amazon did when it reached across the Internet with evil DRM fingers and erased copies of, of all novels, 1984 from people’s Kindles.)

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A Writer Without A Publisher Is Like A Fish Without a Bicycle: Writer’s Liberation and You

An excellent essay by bestelling author Jennifer Crusie on why publishing shouldn’t be the end-all to your writing efforts. She’s got a whole section of advice for writers here

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Authenticity Catalyzes Productivity!

The response to last month’s “confessional” newsletter was amazing – a real outpouring of support. Thank you all so much. Here’s one thought-provoking comment I received:

What is it to be professional? When we spend so much of our time working, is it fair to be asked to hide/divorce/suppress big pieces of ourselves that are considered acceptable or even assets in other settings? Why aren’t these qualities perceived as professional? Should these qualities be valued and incorporated? How do we change business to be a gentler and broader place? Is that even desirable?

I can’t help thinking, as I read that, of Mad Men, many of whose characters lead lives that, though superficially glamorous, are inauthentic on pretty much every level. One of the show’s glories is to render the consequences of that inauthenticity plain.

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Speed as an Antidote to Writer’s Block

Greed may not be good, but speed sure is. It was only when I got into this line of work that I understood the meaning of the axiom “he who hesitates is lost.” Procrastination – the fear-based inner force that wants you not to complete your projects – will latch onto any feelings of uncertainty or hesitation and amplify them until you can no longer do your work.

One method for beating procrastination, therefore, is to practice a Zenlike detachment from your work. You want to, at the appointed time, glide emotionlessly over to your desk and sit down and commence work. Just commence, without drama or hesitation.

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Links: J.K. Rowling, Alice Sebold and more

From Sept. 09 Newsletter – sign up at left.

Living With the Dead A haunting tribute to the victims of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina by Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones. My original clipping, now yellowing, is the only thing posted on my refrigerator door other than family photos.

JK Rowling Harvard Commencement address, The Fringe Benefits of Failure Rowling’s personal story from single mother on welfare to probably the world’s most popular author is amazing, and she shares it here, along with the important lessons she learned along the way.

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A Confession

(from Sept 09 Newsletter – sign up at left)

Dear Friends,

I have a confession – I haven’t sent out as many newsletters as I should. Bad form for a business person, and especially bad form for a business coach! I’ve been rationalizing by telling myself that a seasonal newsletter is fine, but that’s really not true: monthly is better if you want to convince people to do business with you.

The real reason I haven’t been sending out more newsletters is that they bore me, which means they have probably been boring you, too. I’ve done my best to include useful articles in them – and some of you have, in fact, written and told me the articles were useful. But they took a lot of time to write and I was never really sure how many people read them.

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Special Offer! Workshop video and audio for $35

Purchase streamable / downloadable videos of my two workshops: Time Management and Overcoming Procrastination, Perfectionism and Blocks to Success for only $35, or purchase a DVD for $40. That’s 3+ hours of video, plus you will also get MP3 audio files of both workshops.

To get the videos/audios, PayPal $35 (or $40, for a DVD) to me at lifelongactivist at yahoo dot com or email me at that address to get my mailing address for a check. If you’re ordering a DVD, please include your mailing address.

These videos are an excellent substitute for the workshops themselves, if you can’t attend, or an excellent refresher for those who have attended. They also make an excellent adjunct to both my writing and coaching. Here are some attendee comments:

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