To all the writers who entered the 100-word contest: WAY TO GO on entering. That can feel vulnerable, and it takes bravery. We’re proud of you! The top 15 entries will be announced tomorrow on the blog.

Because of what I’ve been reading, I’ve been thinking a lot the last couple weeks about my personal mantras and truths, which made me want to gather them all in one place. I can’t resist compiling a list. Here’s what I have so far, and I hope you’ll share some of yours too!

My job is to show up and be seen. Not to show up and be _________. (Cool, relevant, flashy, sweet, etc.)

This one Brené Brown taught me, and I use it all the time before social situations or presentations when I’m feeling pressure. It reminds me that my job is to be me, not to manage others’ opinions of me.

I use it with writing too. How often have I let the expectations of others weigh me down before I’ve even started a story? How often have I been too fearful to be honest on the page?

It’s not fair to compare my first draft to someone else’s final draft.

I’m so guilty of this. I’ll read a great book and then come back to my first draft and despair at the gap between the two. I have to remind myself that I trust the editing process. I trust that with time and work, I can refine my first draft into a story worthy of publication.

Every YES means NO to something else.

When I say YES to writing a story, to collaborating on a book, to visiting a school, this means I’m saying NO to something else. Probably lots of something elses, depending on how big the commitment is.

This means I better say yes to the right things, because there are only 24 hours in a day, and I can’t do all the things.

I’m capable.

I decided to stop telling myself that “it was just too complicated for me.” For a long time, I told myself things like:

• Historicals are too hard for me to write. I can’t do all that research.
• I’m not a numbers person. I can’t understand my royalty reports.
• I can’t be a business person because I don’t understand taxes, Quickbooks, or all those other businessy things.

Part of why I gave up this rhetoric is I didn’t want my kids talking about themselves like that, so I decided I needed to stop setting a bad example. I decided that I was capable of learning things, and that while some things don’t come naturally to me (math, business, etc.) that didn’t mean that I couldn’t do it.

I’ve now written three historical novels, two of which are published (or about to be published), my agent dedicated 30 minutes to explaining each item on my royalty report so that I could understand it, and I hired a tax attorney. (Just because I’m capable doesn’t mean I have to be the one who does it all!)

Good enough is good enough.

I talked about this a lot in my recent post on perfectionism, so I’ll just leave this truth as it is.

Brainstorming is best with a buddy.

For most of my writing life, I felt like I had to be the one who figured out my story. I needed to figure out that plot hole/character motivation gap/surprise twist at the end, etc. and if I didn’t do it, then it wasn’t really my story.

After days of wrestling, I would breakdown and mention to a writing friend, “I can’t figure out why XYZ in my story,” and within a few minutes, my writer friend would land on the answer.

This happened a sad amount of times before I realized, “Why am I wasting days of my life instead of bringing my problems to my friends right away?”

When you know what the story is about at it’s core, it’s easier to get rid of what doesn’t belong.

As talked about in the first post of How To Know If Your Story Works As A Whole, once I started the practice of writing a sentence or two to describe my story before I wrote my novel, it became much easier for me to see what belonged and what didn’t.

Time away is the best editor.

I’ve also talked about this plenty on the blog, but the 6 weeks I take away from my first drafts is the best thing I do for my editing process.

When stuck, work the problem backward.

Often as writers, we know something that we want to have happen in our story, but we don’t know how to get our character there. I’ve found that going backward is very effective.

I was brainstorming with Roseanna about a whodunnit story. I said that I wanted my character to think another character had been killed and it was her fault, but I didn’t know how to get there. Notice in our conversation how we start with what I want to have happen, and we build the character logic backward:

Roseanna: First we should decide if he’s been killed or not. Has he?

Me: No. I just want her to think it and feel bad.

Roseanna: Okay, so then something has to happen to make her think he’s dead. What’s that? Is she told he’s dead?

Me: Maybe…

Roseanna: Does she see him get shot and assume the worst?

We kept going with this until we worked our way back to where I was in the story. (This never made it into the book, so these aren’t spoilers. As a fun side note, we had this conversation while waiting in line to order food. The people behind us were a bit confused and began to give us more space.)

Keep your work space clean.

This is my writing truth, which of course doesn’t make it your writing truth, but I need a clutter free space to work. When I’m pushing up against a deadline, I can ignore piles and mess, but I’m a much happier and more productive writer when my space is clean.

The tool serves the story, not the other way around.

This relates to my perfectionistic tendencies, but I have several tools I like to use when I’m building a story, specifically my Story Workbook. (You can get the tutorial for making one for free when you sign up to receive our newsletters.) I could really get lost in putting every single detail on that spreadsheet, and then color coding it all. Sometimes it’s hard for me to remember that the goal isn’t to perfect my tool, but rather for the tool to help me.

For fantasy writers, often this manifests as Storyworld Builder’s Disease. The goal is to write a book. The storyworld serves the book, not the other way around.

I’m a whole person, not a composite.

Of all my truths, this one is the easiest for me to forget, but fortunately my husband is quick to remind me.

Here’s how it works for me: I’ll notice that another writer writes more books every year than I do, is a wizard at Instagram, does a school visit seemingly everyday, OR is constantly up-to-date on all publishing news.

It’s very key that you notice I used the word “or” instead of “and.”

I’ll say to my husband, “This writer is AMAZING at school visits. She does them all the time.”

And he will start firing back questions at me. “How many kids does she have? How many books a year is she writing and releasing? What genres does she write? What’s her background?”

When I answer something like, “Well, she’s a teacher…” he’ll give me a (loving) do we really need to have this conversation again? kind of look.

I like to focus on one thing an author is doing amazingly well, and then beat myself up that I’m not doing all those things that all those different authors are doing. And any time I start to shame spiral, my husband will say something like, “You’re expecting yourself to be a composite writer. You can’t do Instagram like Nadine and publish like Roseanna and do school visits like McCall. They have to choose what they prioritize, you have to choose what you prioritize.”

I’m a whole person with a life that involves much more than writing, and even my writing life involves much more than writing. I can’t expect myself to be great and all the different things that other authors are great at doing.

Creating always involves chaos.

I like neatness and order, but I’ve (mostly) made peace with the fact that I won’t ever be able to organize all the chaos out of story writing. There’s always a moment during the first round of edits where there are so many loose ends, and I panic that it won’t all come together.

Every time, I remind myself of that quote about how open-surgery looks like murder in the middle of the process. Editing is the middle of the process. There’s still time to stitch up those wounds and make it look like they were never there to begin with!

Nothing in nature creates all the time.

I talked about this extensively in my Seasons of Creativity: How To Survive the Winter post, so I’ll just say this: Rest is good. Expecting myself to constantly produce is bad.

I’m in charge of my own morale.

As a boss, my husband spends a lot of time thinking about his employees and how to help them do their best work. How to help them stay motivated, focused, and healthy.

When you’re your own boss, like most writers are, no one does that for you unless you do it. I talked about that in the post One Thing Nobody Told Me About Being My Own Boss, but I realized that I have to keep myself motivated, focused, and healthy. I am in charge of morale.

I get to decide.

Lastly, I get to decide so many important things every day. Including, but not limited to:

• How much value I put on my work. Nobody can do that for me.
• How I spend my time. It’s mine to invest or waste.
• How much power that review/rejection/critique will have over me.

This list isn’t static and will certainly grow. Probably even today as you guys leave comments about YOUR truths and they resonate with me or remind me. So, what are some of YOUR writing truths?