with Sharon Dunn

December 13, 2007

Hosted by Anne McDonald

Dancing Word Publisher/Editor

Anne McDonald: Lord, thank You for laughter and fun. Thank You for bringing us through another week. Please bless our time tonight. Help Barbara be able to stay in the chat room. Help us learn to be the best writers we can. Let us be a blessing to You and to others. Thanks for Sharon's willingness to teach us tonight. Bless her socks off. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Protocol reminder: When the floor is open to questions, please raise your hand by typing ? for questions, ! for comments and wait to be called on in turn when you have finished typing please remember to use ga. ga = go ahead, and will keep us from stepping on each others' toes.

Tonight, I'm tickled to be able to introduce one of the sweetest writers I've ever had the pleasure to know. She's been a blessing to many of us writers. Please give a warm welcome to Sharon Dunn. Sharon, Welcome!

* Annie leads the applause and turns the floor over to Sharon

* Dragon Riding Mouse applauds wildly, then nestles down in a furry ball next to Spitfire, ears perked as he listens to the chat

Sharon Dunn: Thank you. Delighted to be here. Let me say a little bit about my teaching style before I launch into the workshop. I teach Freshman comp and I far prefer discussion to lecture so I will basically give an intro and then I have the workshop divided into four parts. I would like to have discussion after each part. If we don't get to all four parts, no biggie.

I got the idea for this workshop from a verse in proverbs that says "guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life". I would argue that is it also the wellspring of creativity and that we are in a business that often wounds our hearts. This is a business that is all about rejection, sometimes from editors, sometimes from members of a critique group. I wanted to do a workshop that would equip people to deal with some of the emotional ups and downs of this business, so in short form, here are the four things that I think help writers deal with the emotional ups and downs and stay in the game long term.

One: set realistic measurable goals

Two: connect to a healthy writing community, healthy being the optimal word

Three: accept the nature of the business

Four: be honest about your emotions and willing to grow from them.

Before I get into goals. I just want to add that I think that are lots of really gifted writers who end up quitting because of the emotional beating you have to take as writer not because they lack talent. I hope this workshop helps prevent some of that.

Okay goals.

Set goals that take into consideration what you have control over. We do not have control over whether an editor buys our manuscript or not.

Here is an example of an unrealistic goal: "I want to be published in three years."

What do we have control over? What would be a more realistic goal? Also, I have found that making the goal measurable is also helpful. Here are some examples of realistic goals that will get you to the big prize of publication.” I want to have a completed manuscript by the end of the year” or "I am going to write three pages a day" or “I am going to attend 2 conferences and take three online classes” or “I am going to read one book a month on improving craft.”

Okay let me throw is out to questions. How many of you have set goals? Did it work for you ? why or why not?

Anne McDonald: Yes, I set a goal of finishing the first book in our adventure series. We made it! woo hoo!

Sharon Dunn: did you give yourself a time frame to finish.

Anne McDonald: Yes, the first goal was to finish the first draft by March. We did meet that goal, though Jason needed a bit of prompting.

Dragon Riding Mouse: I've never tried it much. Once I set a goal to write for at least 30 minutes every night. That worked for a few days, then I forgot. :P That's my memory for you...as fuzzy as I am.

Barbara: I set goals, but then other things seem to get in the way. perhaps they're unrealistic.

Sharon Dunn: what gets in the way?

Barbara: work mostly. I live on a farm, run an editing business, writing

Sharon Dunn: This leads me the next thing about setting goals. They need to be set within the time frame that you have. If you only have one Saturday a month to write, it is probably not realistic to think you can get a novel done. But maybe some articles could be done in that time. Does anyone else have time struggles?

Miralee: I struggle with using my time wisely when I do have time.

Sharon Dunn: There are two things that helped me get my time struggles under control. I kept reading articles that said if you wrote a page a day on a novel by the end of the year you would have a 365 page book. The second thing that motivated me to quit wishing for more time and manage what I had better was a story I read about a Christian writer named Cec Murphy. Cec was a pastor working sixty hours a week. He found though that he could get the secretary to keep people away for an hour each morning. So he used that hour to its fullest.

I don't remember the exact number but he published a couple of books and many articles with just that hour. He writes full time now.

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