Writer Analysis, Pennwriters-Style

Image by congerdesign from Pixabay

  The week before last, I attended the Pennwriters Conference. In previous years, I wrote posts daily, sharing them here. This year, I had every intention of doing just that, using the conference to get myself back on the blog post bandwagon that the closing weeks of the semester had pushed me off of. I made notes and wrote drafts, but didn't manage to get anything posted.

Better late than never :-)

Attending the workshop that turned out to be my favorite shed a (lot of) light on my inability to move from blog draft to blog post. Given by a psychologist with a goal of helping all who attended his workshop to get unstuck, “The Well-Adjusted Writer” focused on elements of brain chemistry, the brain itself, growth, mindset, and strategies. Not only was it right in my wheelhouse, but the double workshop was a fabulous experience, by itself worth the cost of admission.

The presenter started out with a quiz of sorts, designed to help us zoom in on our obstacles to writing success. My highest score?

The Burned Out writer. Yikes. 

Distracted (agree) and serial starter (sort of...but I do finish a lot of those serial starts) were tied for second with rule-breaker (disagree) following at a close third.

That first "diagnosis" hit hard, largely because it was accurate. I hadn't yet applied that particular term to my writing stuck-ness, but it fit. It was the thing that had propelled me to the conference, to the Friday sessions, and to this workshop in particular. 

But I don't want to be a burned out writer, and so I listened attentively to the rest of the workshop. Much of it aligned with things I was already doing (my ten-minute a day goals were right on track!) and the impending change in my schedule (finishing the semester and moving from three in-person classes to one online class promised to help reduce my distraction. As for serial writer and rule-breaker? Well, I'm not actually too concerned about those. My serial writing has more to do with writing (anything!) on a regular basis and I rarely break the writing rules that really matter.

Bruce (the presenter) also placed a lot of value on figuring out where we are (something he called the "tiny compass") at the outset of a writing session and using that information to our advantage. This is something I routinely do (although I have a tendency to call it "mood-driven" planning, and I struggle to do it without guilt or apology). Once again, this validated not only my 10 minute writing sessions, but also the decisions I made at the conference about when to sleep in, when to attend a session (and when to skip one), and when to push myself out of my comfort zone. On the heels of the last week of classes, grading, and finals, I was running on fumes, but I knew I'd be upset if I didn't go to the conference, and so I went, seeking balance rather than getting my money's worth.

It's not at all surprising that a psychologist would approach all of this the way Bruce did and, as I said, it was right in my wheelhouse. The simple act of figuring out what we can do in any given moment (vs. what we should do) is applicable across so much more than writing. 

In the end, Bruce's workshop was as much about self-compassion as it was about writing. Having just covered this in a course I'm taking and in a course I was teaching, I immediately recognized its value.

Now that I'm back home and my summer class is set up, I'm excited to dig into not only my writing, but the notes from the workshop. Retaking the quiz a week later, I got lower scores (that's a good thing) in most areas, but burned out writer still looms large. Now, though, instead of mourning that, I need to cut myself some slack, and practice stepping away or changing direction when I need to, especially when it comes to the writing tasks I find most onerous. I also need to remind myself what I tell my students -- than any writing is better than no writing -- and to take Bruce's advice and reward myself for achieving my goals.

I know I'm not alone. One of the posts I started at the conference had to do with the reasons people said they were there. The one I heard most often?

I need a nudge.

I'm so grateful to Bruce for providing me with just that, ensuring I'm on the right path to becoming a well-adjusted writer.