[00:14] Rachel: Hey, writers. Welcome back to Story Magic, the podcast that will help you write a book you're damn proud of.
[00:19] Emily: I'm Emily.
[00:20] Rachel: And I'm Rachel.
[00:21] Emily: And today we're going to talk about one of my quick little tricks that I use all of the time, and that a lot of tenacious writers have told me that they use all of the time, and that has really helped them kind of get out of their perfectionism. Awesome. And it's what I call separating the thinking from the implementing.
[00:41] Rachel: Love it. I'm excited to hear about that.
[00:44] Emily: It sounds like outlining, but it's not really. Okay, so perfectionism shows up a lot in writing, right? Because perfectionism basically says if you do everything perfectly the first time, you'll be safe. Nobody will be able to blame you, judge you, ridicule you, criticize you, all of those things. And so for me, that has shown up with, like, blank page syndrome, where you sit down and I'm sure a lot of you can relate to this you sit down and it's just really hard to get the words out on the page. This can show up as you literally can't get the words down or you have a really hard time starting scenes. That is a trap I've gotten caught into a lot is like, I didn't know how to start it or transition it or enter the setting. And so I would agonize over the beginnings of my scenes, and it also showed up as just writing really slowly, which is there's nothing wrong with writing slowly, but sometimes it would feel like pulling teeth. And I have always been a linear like, I'm a very linear thinker, so I write very linearly. And so for a long time, I just thought that I had to just push through that, right? Just sit down and put word in front of word and just keep pulling teeth out.
[02:08] Rachel: Just try harder.
[02:09] Emily: Emily yeah, seriously. And when I was trying to break through that cycle a few years ago, I started doing something that I call bullet sketching. And I talked about it on my Instagram, and a lot of people were like, oh, my goodness, that blew open my brain. Because oftentimes I think we don't give ourselves permission to write. We say write messy, I think is the permission that we give ourselves, but what does that mean? And for some people, it's like, okay, I'm just going to put words on the page and it'll be a mess. But for me, my brain just couldn't do that because I was working linearly, and my perfectionism was like, if you're a linear, it has to come out, right? So I literally started making messes in the form of bullet points. So I would write and draft my scene. And I don't mean outline where you're like, this is the beginning of the scene, and then this is going to happen, and then this is going to happen. But it's like a mashup of outlining and drafting in bullet point form. So essentially, I started saying, okay, the scene begins, right? Like, skip the beginning scene begins, and then so and so says something. And then I would get into lines, and it would eventually become, like, bullet pointed lines of dialogue. And sometimes whole sections of the scene would come out. And then I might hit a transition and be like, I have no idea how to get them from here to here. So I would just write, like, transition and just keep going to the next part that I could see. And so it's like a mashup of using brackets, which I know is a tool a lot of people use where they hit a point where they can't see it, so they just put a bracket and keep going. But this allowed me to like I could even go out of order, right? I would write the beginning or the end or the conversation that I could see and plug it in there and start to piece it together in this Frankenstein.
[04:06] Rachel: Approach.
[04:07] Emily: And then I would leave it for a day, and I would come back the next day and I would go into what I call the implementing phase now, where I would sort of flesh it out and make it make sense. Yeah. And then I would find, like, oh, I just need a paragraph at the beginning to establish the setting. I could put that into words now, right? Because I didn't have the pressure of the whole scene in front of me, because I already had felt through kind of what I wanted to happen, how I wanted it to happen, how I wanted the conversations to go, where the important moments were that I had to focus on and where I could kind of speed up the scene. And I had already done the thinking part of it. And so often when I reach or talk to clients who are struggling with just getting the words out, I encourage them to find a way that works for them to separate the thinking about the scene, whether that's outlining or bullet sketching or zero drafting or writing by hand, right. The thinking about it and the planning of it and the feeling through it, and the exploring the parts that you can see, and all of that messy stuff from the execution of it, of making it into a scene that's readable. Because I think the execution part can keep us from thinking coherently about what we do with a scene. So that's my drafting version of it. I'm curious. Do you do anything like that?
[05:38] Rachel: It's reminding me a lot of what I call layer writing. So my perfectionism would show up where I would get really I had no problem usually starting a scene. I didn't have the same emotional reaction to a blank page, but I would get really stuck on the perfect word choice or I need to describe this thing before I can move on or I have to lay out the context or the picture. And so I would just get stuck on what felt like really small things, but felt like impossible to push forward through until I gave my brain the the permission to write in layers. So what that meant for me was that I would basically follow my brains jumping around to whatever it is I wanted to write. I didn't do much outlining beforehand, so this might be more the implementing side, but it's the exact same freeing type of mentality of like, just write what I can see, do the fun parts of the scene. I mostly enjoy writing dialogue, so I use the exploration of dialogue to kind of figure out what's the scene about, who's in it, who's talking. I would write out all of the dialogue that I could see as my first layer. And then I would go back and add in dialogue tags and emotions and how are my characters reacting to one another as a second layer. And then the third layer would be like internal processing, some backstory action, movement of the characters around the scene. And then the fourth layer would be the descriptions, which are usually my least favorite things simply because I get hung up on the word choice.
[07:31] Emily: Yeah.
[07:31] Rachel: So I would do like the things that I didn't love last. And I do use brackets a lot. I do use a lot of the abbreviation Tk, which we might have mentioned on the podcast before. But for anyone who doesn't know, a very common abbreviation to use in your writing is the letters T and K right next to one another. It stands for to come, as in you're going to write it later. But the reason it's a K and not like a C is because in the English language there are no words that have the letters T and K right next to them. So you use it as like a placeholder to skip something. So I would normally write like Tk description about mansion and then close my brackets, move on. But later, when I'm adding stuff back in, I can use the find and replace function, the find function to find tk because there's no other words in the English language that have those two letters next to each other. And then it would bring me right to that spot. And I know, like, okay, here's where I can fill in that description. So anyway, I use a lot of Tk brackets to kind of skeleton what it is I want and then I come back and add it on layers. So it sounds really similar to this thinking process. But my thinking process is like drafting the scene as like a very skeletal I start with the dialogue, I look at what's fun to me, what I can see, and then I continue to build upon those layers with the more meaty parts. Like once I can get down what I envision the scene to be, then I can add in some more of that meaning, some more of that connections.
[09:19] Emily: Yeah, it's so funny. It's almost like these little ways that we get to know our brains and what trips them up and then how can we trick them out of it?
[09:29] Rachel: Yes.
[09:29] Emily: Or assuage them that they're okay. Because for me, even doing a skeleton draft was like it was still linear, and so it was still a scene, right? And if I kept it in bullet point form and if I didn't work linearly and allowed myself to jump around the scene and just kind of put things in different places, I could trick myself into being like, oh, it's not a scene yet.
[09:51] Rachel: Yeah.
[09:51] Emily: And I think Ve Schwab says something very similar in her reels the other day, that she does something like this where it's almost like outlining your way into a draft of a scene. You're like, oh, how did I get a scene right? And I think the layer writing or the bullet sketching or however it is that you do it, can lead you to that. And for me, it was just really helpful to be like, it's not a draft yet, right? It's not a full scene. And just kind of trick my brain into relaxing, into thinking about the scene rather than thinking about what the scene looked like, what the scene needed to be versus what it looked like, I think is the difference. Because my brain would obsess about what it looked like till the ends of the earth, and I would never be able to get out of my head and actually interrogate, like, what do I want this scene to do? What do I want it to be? How do I want it to feel? And this allowed me to do that. So some other things that have helped me do this are journaling. So, like, writing by hand. And I know that we have some writers in our community that write by hand and layer right by hand, and that helps them get out of that sort of it needs to be right the first time. Mindset. I've also used voice recordings, so I do a lot of thinking about my scenes on walks. And so I downloaded Otter AI onto my phone, which is a voice recorder that also transcribes. And because it transcribes so messily, it's not a scene, right? I'm just narrating the scene into it. But then I have something I can work from when I go back to my bullet sketch or when I go back to write the scene, I'm kind of thinking through and feeling through what I want the scene to be before I actually go and try to find the words to put it down. So that's another tool that I've used. And obviously the goal isn't to then go and implement perfectly, right, exactly. Your scene. That's not what we're trying to say. But I have found that it does make it easier for me to put the words on the page or to kind of Frankenstein it together into something I can move forward from and I'm happy with, because I know the core of the scene is there. And I feel good about that. And I feel like I've articulated what I wanted to articulate, and so it helps me not get hung up and move forward. And then yeah, you do like the things if you don't like writing descriptions I hate writing transitions.
[12:21] Rachel: Right.
[12:21] Emily: And you get to do those things last.
[12:23] Rachel: Yes, exactly.
[12:24] Emily: Them so much easier. It does so much easier to insert something that you would get hung up on linearly if you just do it after the rest of the scene is ready.
[12:36] Rachel: Yeah. So I like insert I come back to it and I put in as much as I can. But I also still use Tk because there are still some times where I'm like, I literally don't care about what this looks like right now. And if I think about it, it's just going to trip me up. So that's a revisions question.
[12:54] Emily: I'm going to put this off until.
[12:56] Rachel: Later, and then later Me has like twelve scenes that I have to describe. But at least we got through a draft, right? Tk is very helpful for me to move on, forget about it until I am ready to come back to it.
[13:11] Emily: I love it.
[13:12] Rachel: Yeah, I think this sounds like I love how you have kind of used this to develop your process and I want people to take from it to try it out. And then I also want them to know that process is like a constant experiment. It's like an innovation. And we are going to be going through by the time this episode comes out, we'll just be about to start our writing routine workshop in our tenacious writing community. So we have an entire month long workshop where we develop our processes together and we go through different steps. We look at mindset, we look at our physical environment, we look at how our brains work with the page. What hang ups do we have? What sticking points do we have so that we can develop processes like this that work for us individually? So if you are feeling really stuck, come join us in tenacious writing and let's go through your process together. Let's go through this workshop so we can develop a process that works for you because it's an experiment. Let me try something. Let me see how it went. Did that work for me? No. Why not? Or yes, that was great. Until we find something that feels really good, because you got to this by trying to figure out, I am so stuck on the blank page. What can I do, Judo? Move my brain? What can I do to make my brain not get stuck on this, to think about it differently. And you resulted in this awesome process, and I did the same thing of like, I do not need to be getting stuck on the color of blue of this pond right now. How can I get around it and develop a process that worked for me? So I would fully recommend going, like, approaching your writing process with a very curious mind of asking, where do I get my hang ups? Why do I think that's happening? And what can I change about my process to unlock that or to unblock myself? Try these new things, see how it works and do it again until you get for a process that works for you and come do it with us in our tenacious writing community. Come do this workshop with us because it's awesome. It's so amazing to develop this with other writers and try on each other's processes, try things out, be like, Do I want to do that? Maybe I'll try this. This is how we got everybody to try out bullet sketching and see how it works. Some people were like, oh, I do layer writing, but I never knew that that's actually consciously what I was doing. And they almost had to give themselves permission to write their own process.
[16:10] Emily: It gives you so much agency and makes you feel empowered over your own process when you start to figure out this stuff. Because layer writing doesn't work for me, but it works for you super well, right? Tk never worked for me. So you might hear us throwing out ideas. You might hear other people throwing out ideas. And sometimes it's like, oh, why doesn't that tool work for me? It works for Rachel, or, Why can't I just write messy? And I think a lot of times it's like, okay, yeah. The general advice is you have to make a mess on the page. You have to shovel sand in a sandbox before you can make a castle, right? Like, all the sayings. But you have to determine what that means and looks like for you. And you can only do that by trying stuff out and not shaming yourself. You try them and really getting in tune with, does this feel good? Does this not feel good? And having this just building this toolbox of stuff you can throw at the wall when you get stuck. I was really stuck on adding a I had to add a brand new scene to draft five of my manuscript. Like, brand new never existed. The events of it had never been written in any other form. It just felt like my brain wanted to explode because I was like, how am I going to add something brand new to something that I've polished like a bajillion times, right? And so my perfectionism was so strong, and I was running out of time because I had a deadline. And so I was like, okay, we got to do this. And so I did. I took all the tools out. I was like, I'm going to try journaling. Didn't work. I tried going on a walk and voice recording didn't work. So I wrote the beginning and the end of it. I bullet pointed the middle. I went in circles just trying all the different stuff until finally I had something that resembled a scene and then I could revise it. And that unlocked my brain. But getting those words on the page, it did, it was hard. And I knew why it was hard. I knew what I was afraid of. Right. I was afraid it was going to not match the rest of the book because didn't have time to revise it. So I was able to talk myself through that and be like, we're just going to keep throwing stuff at the wall until we get there and we got there. And so that's the power of knowing what your inner perfectionist says, what specifically it's afraid of, and having tools in your toolbox that you've practiced and tried and you know, when they have and haven't worked for you and you can just throw them at the wall till something sticks.
[18:43] Rachel: Yeah, it sounds like, well, shouldn't I know? And like, no, you don't. Every day is a different circumstance. We have different feelings whenever we show up to the page. And so you're not a machine. You can't treat your body and your brain like a machine. So you have to learn how to adapt your brain and your body to the current needs that it has. And when you really dial that in, that's when your writing life becomes sustainable and consistent all the time. Because you have learned how to adapt your brain and your body to whatever needs it has. And your writing life can adapt to your brain and your body, whatever you're experiencing.
[19:30] Emily: Yeah.
[19:30] Rachel: So critical. So that's the work that we do in our writing routine workshop is we teach you how to learn about your brain and your body and then how to adapt your writing life to your brain and your body's needs, whatever they are.
[19:45] Emily: It's such a good workshop, you guys. And like Rachel said, we're going to do it live this fall 2023. But it's also the recordings are in there. So even if you didn't get to do it live with us, you can do it on your own in tenacious writing or we will likely do it regularly a couple of times a year. So definitely go check out that it's in the tenacious writing program.
[20:09] Rachel: Cool.
[20:10] Emily: Well, if you have tips and tricks that have worked for you to kind of trick your inner perfectionist into not being such a stickler, let us know. I would love to hear what works for you. You could email us anytime or DM us on Instagram. I would be so curious. I'm always looking for new tools for my toolbox.
[20:31] Rachel: Try new things out. Awesome. So link to tenacious writing is in our show notes, and if you email us, it's [email protected] great. If you want to build a successful, fulfilling and sustainable writing life that works for you, you've got to get on our email list.
[20:48] Emily: Sign up now to get free email course. The magic of character arcs. After seven days of email magic, you'll have the power to keep your readers flipping pages all through the night.
[20:57] Rachel: Link in the show notes. We'll see you there. Bye.
