Essay Online

Over the course of my writing life, I have noticed that other writers and I cycle through a series of steps on our path toward maturity as a writer. When people come to me for coaching, they often do not know where they are on the path and what they need to move forward. I’ve identified the phases and given suggestions for the support will best serve at each phase. Of course, I have seen the powerful impact of coaching at each phase, but I have added other means of support that are valuable for the writer’s journey.

Infancy You get the spark of creation. You are nervous about your inclination to write, not knowing where to get advice, information and support. Sometimes at this phase, people are afraid to even say aloud that they are a writer. Practice saying it at home, with the pets as audience, and see how it feels. Your loved ones may think you are nuts for wanting to write, but you feel more energized than you have in years. This phase also applies to writers who have taken a hiatus from writing and are coming back to honor a long-lost urge.

Best support for this phase: Hire a coach. With the support of a coach, you will be able to recognize that your emotions and challenges are common. A coach will help you harness that enthusiasm into a practice that will get you on a strong,

steady track.

Childhood You have the exuberance of twenty people when it comes to writing. You want to write everything! You try essays, short stories, poetry, op-ed letters. Your exuberance and desire to learn carries you over any hurdles. You get a lot of practice in writing.

Best support for this phase: Take classes and join groups. This is a great time to be a sponge and absorb all the learning you can. Practice in whatever genre attracts you. This will help determine where your gifts lie and how to best use them.

Teen Years Your exuberance turns to restlessness. You want to see some results &ndash publication, pay even! You yearn to narrow your focus and choose a path that will bring your writing dreams to reality.

Best support for this phase: Hire a coach. At this phase, a coach can help remind you of your original spark and motivation for writing. With a coach’s questions, you’ll be able to discover what is important for you and how to focus and commit.

Adulthood The rubber hits the road. You settle into your chosen genre. This may be where you write a novel or a memoir, or really develop your poetry. This is good, and you start to take yourself seriously.

Best support for this phase: Keep learning, with classes, books, online resources. This is a great time to be in a peer group, giving and getting feedback on your work. A group facilitated by a coach is a good idea, as it will help you to deepen your writing practice.

Full Maturity You’ve been at it for a decade or two and now realize the magnitude of what it takes to be a writer. This is no work for lightweights. You have publications under your belt and find yourself giving advice to whippersnappers writers. You read with a greater appreciation and realize how amazing good writing really is. You have a long term plan for your career and feel the power of your commitment.

Best support for this phase: Befriend writers who are further along than you. Find a mentor. Work with a coach who can help navigate the emotional swings of success.

The phone rings. The laundry pleads to be stuffed, cycled, dried and folded. Chaos reigns in the kitchen, e-mails queue for attention. Our lives are at once mundane and undeniably seductive at the same time. When we sit down to write at home, suddenly everything that marks our existence as tedious becomes compelling. Writing at home can seem tantamount to training for the Olympics past age nineteen.

Yet carving out time to write at home is possible. You can even design a home writing retreat. This weekend, I have staved off all other obligations and have Friday and Saturday free. I look forward to delving into my novel revision with hours of uninterrupted time. How to make sure I don’t veer into work mode. I’ve developed a strategy for an at home writing retreat. Here are the ways that you, too, can carve out space for uninterrupted writing bliss.

Look ahead a month or two in your calendar. Find a day or two that are free and X them out for your retreat. When people suggest a get together on those days, say no. They’re full with something more important. It is vital to guard these days.

The week before, act as if you are going out of town. Take care of all the work and home obligations that need your attention. Think about what needs to be taken care of when you are flying the coop &ndash pet and plant care, clothes for the trip, etc. Make sure your work is done by the day before so you can take the time guilt-free.

Devise a plan. Consider your ideal writing retreat. First, think about what you are retreating from. Make a list of the roles you play in life: mother, spouse, employee, and writer. Give yourself permission to take time off from those roles to focus on one role. This weekend, I will set aside business owner, writer and teacher to be novelist for two days.

Have a focus for your time. You may wish to work on one creative project or several, but know beforehand what this time is devoted to. This will help when you enter the writing zone to get down to work right away.

Enroll allies. Alerting your people to your plans will make it easier to keep your boundaries. If your retreat means simply that you are stowed away in your bedroom or office while the rest of the family goes about their day, make sure they know that your do not disturb sign means just that. Better yet, help plan an outing for them so they can have their own adventure while you write. Who do you need to let in on your plan so they don’t inadvertently try to thwart your efforts?

Get your vittles lined up. Plan for your nibbling needs. Make sure to have healthy snacks on hand. Prepare meals in advance or plan to order out so you can eat well but not get distracted by food preparation.

Be more than a walking head. Have a plan for being embodied. You may plan walks into your retreat, simple yoga or your regular workout.

Commit to tune out. You may want to unplug the phone, commit to leave your e-mail program off for the day and silence your cell phone. What other things do you need to set aside to be on retreat?

Give yourself a break with evening recreation. You’ll want a break by evening. What activities will nurture your writer? You could rent a film about a writer or artist to inspire you. You could have a juicy book waiting to read.

Consider other activities that support your writing. If you went to a retreat center devoted to writers, what would you want to see? Inspiring books about the writing life or writing craft, favorite quotes, photos of writers who are role models may all be part of your writing retreat. Background music that encourages your creativity might help.

Being on retreat doesn’t mean being holed up at home. If working in a cafe or at the library supports your writing, plan for excursions out of the house. . Watch out for the errand monkey, who will try to yank you around town on a bunch of his missions!

Give yourself permission to step out of your norm. Take this time to focus and be in full creative mode. A retreat of even a few hours can be a huge boon to progress on your writing. Have fun and make it work for you.

In January, 2005, six months before Kensington bought Passion, I took a writing course. A friend introduced me to a writing technique called Freefall.

Rather than my trying to explain what she told me, I will quote directly from the Freefall website:

FREEFALL is the technique of writing from the larger Self, beyond reach of the ego and its censors. . . .FREEFALL invokes the courage to fall without a parachute, into the words as they come, into the thoughts before they have fully formed in the mind, into the unplanned structures that take shape, without prompting, to contain them. . . . The moment when someone shifts into that deeper level is unmistakable. Everyone can hear it. As a result, in Coleridge’s phrase, “the wheels catch fire from their own motion.”

At the time, I had the push to do more than I had before, but I didn’t know what. I bought the domain name pfkozak.com in November, 2004, without a clue about what I would do with it. Being the trusting, and intuitive, soul that I am, I pay attention to these nudges as they come. The nudge to do Freefall actually felt more like a knock upside the head.

Group participation has never been my favorite thing. In fact, I avoid it whenever possible. I’m a loner, always have been. My imagination is much better company than I’ve found most people to be. The Freefall workshop required I spend three days in a very big, very old house with about a dozen other people (I don’t remember the exact head count!). I balked. But between the persistence of my friend, who happened to be one of the workshop sponsors, and my own inner head knocking from the universe at large, I caved. I said I would do it.

As luck, and the ever present synchronicity in my life, would have it, on January 22nd, 2005, New York had a blizzard. When the storm hit, we were already at the house. Effectively, the universe conspired to keep me there all weekend. We were snowed in! It’s probably a good thing. Otherwise, I may well have jumped ship.

The schedule seemed simple enough, get up, get dressed, have breakfast and write. We were not supposed to talk during that time. Staying silent sustained an inward focus, which facilitated the Freefall writing process. When we wrote, we were not to correct errors or go back and reread what we’d done. We were supposed to Freefall and not look back.

We wrote for several hours before breaking for lunch. Part of Freefall is the group dynamic critiquing the work. Our teacher and workshop leader, Barbara Turner-Vesselago, read selected pieces aloud during the afternoon. She never revealed who wrote each story. Then the group would comment on the work.

The point of the Freefall process is to break through internal barriers to get to what is hidden beyond the conscious mind. For me, this meant facing inhibitions about putting myself out there I didn’t know I had. The protective walls are torn down. If, in fact, the point of the exercise required I reveal who I am, then I had my work cut out for me.

Now, what happens when someone says, “Don’t think about a blue cow?” The first thing that pops into your head is a blue cow, right? Well, when we were instructed to step aside and let the inner voice speak, my blue cow popped into my head. I had hidden my intuition and psychic experiences from everyone except my closest friends. As I sat with my laptop in a house full of strangers, what started to come up and out were those experiences.

I panicked! There is no question that had we not been snowed in, I would have taken the first train home. But I couldn’t get to the train station. We were hip deep in snow! I took a deep breath and tried to calm down. I literally had to talk myself off of a psychological ledge. What’s the worst thing that could happen? They could think I’m crazy, or even worse, laugh at me!

Somewhere, from a place so deep I can’t define what it is, I started to type. I told my story. I wrote things no one except my husband knew. I typed until I had to stop.

When Barbara read my piece, I waited for the inevitable judgment from the group. Much to my utter astonishment, no one laughed, no one thought me crazy and no one ridiculed me. The comments were positive, and even complimentary. I couldn’t believe it! I had just revealed my deepest hidden secret to a group of strangers, and nothing bad had happened. In that moment, my fear burst like a soap bubble.

I don’t think I’ve ever spent a more utterly miserable weekend in my life! I know I’ve never spent a more important one! At the time, I had no way of knowing that six months later, I would sell my first book.

I frequently use the Freefall technique I learned that weekend in my writing. Allowing what’s hidden underneath to bubble to the surface has proven invaluable to me. I expect that’s how I will finish Take Me There. I will Freefall the end of the book.

The fear I broke through on that snowbound weekend has had deeper implications in my life. I am less fearful overall. I certainly wouldn’t be doing this blog if not for Freefall. I would be too inhibited and afraid to talk about myself this openly. Freefall isn’t for everybody, but it sure worked for me.

How’s your love affair with your Muse?

That’s right, your Muse. Your creative source. Your inspiration for all the kooky, creative things you do. The voice that whispers, “Hey, why don’t you try encaustic painting? That looks like fun!”

Or maybe your voice has a more, well, cranky tone. Maybe your Muse’s voice gets snarky when she sees others creating. Maybe she feels abandoned in the corner, tucked away behind the towering to-do lists.

It could be time for a relationship check-in. My boyfriend and I do these periodically. We take a walk and discuss the state of our relationship. These conversations clear out any resentments that have been piling up. They offer a safe forum for checking in with our shared dream. And, these tete-a-tetes invariably bring us closer.

Try this with your Muse. Plan a few minutes of quiet time to get connected to your creative source. Use your journal to deepen the connection and listen to what your creative source has to say. Let your pen move on the page and don’t censor anything that comes up.

Interview your Muse. Ask the kind of questions that you would ask a really fascinating person that you have always wanted to meet. What motivates you? What do you love? What do you do for fun?

Ask what your Muse wants. Find out if there are any gifts, real or energetic, that she needs. Let her explain whatever she needs. What she writes may be a rant; if you haven’t been listening to your creative impulses, she may have some resentment stored up.

Make requests of your Muse. You may ask her for help with finishing projects, rather than confetting you with more ideas, more inspiration, more projects.

Redesign your alliance. What would a really fabulous year with your Muse look like? What do you want to celebrate with your Muse at the end of the year? Look at what kind of relationship would make you eager to get to the studio or the writing desk. Brainstorm how much time you would spend together, where and when you’d meet, what you’d do when you got together.

Complete the check-in with some kind of celebration. Go to a museum or gallery, or a shop devoted to your craft. Take your Muse to tea or happy hour, just the two of you, and giggle together over your plans.

Using these prompts is a great start to cultivating a deeper connection to your creative source. But an ongoing dialogue truly feeds you and your Muse. Make sure that you give yourself this very vital relationship. One of the side benefits of doing so is better relationships with the others in your life.

Other benefits include feeling more fulfilled, completing projects that have been shelved for too long, and gaining a sense of self-confidence and satisfaction from having a truly dynamic creative life.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? So take some time to connect with your Muse and see what she has to offer.

I am often asked, “How do you it? Where do you find the time to work a full time job and also write books?” The answer is simple. I make the time. However simple the answer might be, actually doing it can be quite difficult.

I get up at 5:15 every morning. The first thing I do is turn on my computer, and log into my office. I am the network administrator for an international shipping company. That means I have to make sure everything is working properly before anyone else logs into the system. I do what I need to do there, and then I exercise. Yes, that’s right, sit-ups, touching my toes (which I can still do!) buttock tucks, the whole nine yards. After that, I get myself ready for work.

Without fail, I meditate before I have breakfast. I credit my meditation practice with training me to have the concentration I need to write. After I eat, I leave for work.

I put in a full day, doing what network administrators do. Computers are my life at the office. I do anything and everything that needs to be done to keep an office of more than fifty people running smoothly. We also have international users that remotely log into our network. Part of my job is to make sure they are connecting properly, too.

Once I get home, I have some dinner. Then, I start my writing workday. Weekday evenings, I try to put in a few hours at the computer before going to bed. If I need help shifting out of the problems of my workday, I use music. I have a Bose Sound Machine and wireless headphones that help me shut out the world and get into my writing space. I reread a page or two of what I last wrote and hope that the next line will come. It usually does.

The lion’s share of the writing happens on weekends. I usually spend at least twelve hours on Saturday and Sunday at my computer. Sometimes, it can be longer. On Monday morning, the cycle starts over again. Oh, yes, I took a week’s vacation to work on Take Me There. I had an April 15th deadline.

I lost some ground last February when I got the flu and couldn’t write if my life depended on it! I had a fever of 103.4, the highest fever of my adult life! To catch up, I put in nine consecutive twelve to fifteen hour days working on my manuscript. I only stopped to go back to work on Monday, and to do the blogging week for Romantic Inks. Come Saturday, I will be back in the harness.

Now comes the real question! How do I do it? As I’m writing this, I’m thinking no one is going to believe I keep this schedule. But I do. I’ve been doing it for almost two years now, since I signed my first contract with Kensington. Once I hit the two year mark in June, I will have written three novels and two novellas budgeting my time as I do. I haven’t missed a deadline yet, not even when my mother passed away last June. I came home from the funeral with page proofs waiting for Sins and Secrets. I plunged in, read and corrected them.

There is a single driving force behind how I manage this. I am a writer. That is different than being an author. Being an author is an occupation. Being a writer is a vocation.

The intangible something inside that compels me to write is not at all comfortable. The words don’t start in my mind. They seem to well up from my chest. Sometimes it feels like an alien is about to burst out. I fully expect one day Sigourney Weaver will show up in her Ripley costume, gun in hand, ready to take me out!

No matter how tired I am, and trust me, I do get tired, I have to write. The alien inside me needs to be appeased, or it will eat me alive! I am amused by the number of people who have said to me that someday, they’re going to write a book. The only way to write a book is to sit down and do it! Procrastination does not a novel make. It doesn’t matter if it’s a blank page, or a white screen from Microsoft Word on a monitor, it has to be filled with words. Those words are the writer’s responsibility. No one is going to do it for you. You have to do it yourself.

Of course, along with the fire that burns in the heart of a writer, there also has to be technical skill. To become a published author, you have to not only want to write, you have to be able to write. It astonishes me at times when I meet people who can’t put three sentences together in a coherent paragraph and expect to get published. The competition is extraordinary. You have to be good to get published. Period! End of story!

Talent notwithstanding, you have to also be willing to do what I’m doing. There aren’t many published authors these days who can make a living wage writing. Certainly, I’m not one of them, at least not yet. That’s why I get up at 5:15 everyday. I have to pay my bills.

So, to finally answer the question I’ve been asked so many times, that’s how I do it. My way isn’t for everyone. But it’s working for me. I have the books to prove it!

Writing erotic romance is certainly a sexual liaison with my muse. Anticipation starts the juices flowing, and then imagination takes over. What is hotter than the expectation of tingles and whispers, caresses and sighs, and finally, skin against skin. The mind, after all, is the most potent erogenous zone. Much like spending a hot night with a lover, foreplay begins while walking up the stairs, or in this case, turning on the computer!

Before computers, writers stared at a blank page in a typewriter. Now, it is a white screen on a monitor waiting to be filled. My muse helps me find the sensual space in my imagination, from which sexy stories appear. Sometimes when I need him, my muse has to be enticed to come out and play. I tease him, pursuing him until he can no longer resist.

My muse is certainly masculine, a commanding presence when he emerges. To coax him out of the private sanctum where he lives, I bait him. He loves music, especially the blues. Oh baby, yes, the blues will lure him out every time. He absolutely cannot resist Etta James.

Once I have his attention, I take a hot bath and soak. That is when we commune. He whispers to me as I drift, telling me what he wants to do. Often, he shows me what he wants, the erotic pictures vivid in my mind. When finally I sit down at the keyboard, the words and images flow from my mind into my fingers.

Holding onto the space of erotic thought can be a challenge. It is a delicate altered state of consciousness, a meditative zone where nothing exists except the story. The characters are on stage, and I have to be a rapt audience. There is no room for laundry waiting in the basket, the grocery list sitting on the table or vacuuming the cat litter tracked onto the rug. Everything, and I do mean everything, has to take a back seat to the presence of the muse. When his virility fills my heart and soul, I have to pay attention.

To sustain my concentration and encourage my muse to continue his flirtatious whispers, I often look at pictures of beautiful men. I trace the curves of their muscles with my eyes, allowing their potency to wash though me. The impressions translate easily into scenes, where I play voyeur to a gorgeous hunk of man making love. Watching him in my mind’s eye, my own fire burns brighter. The tactile sense of him, how he smells, the sweat on his skin, the hard line of his body, the softness of his hair &ndash he overwhelms my senses.

Making love on the written page is as intimate and personal as loving on a bed (or any other surface to your liking). The endorphins kick in and identification with the characters is spontaneous. Whatever is happening on the page is also happening in my mind, an alternate reality for the duration of the session. My muse strokes me until I am sated. Then, he allows me to rest until our next liaison. With a tender kiss, he promises the next time will be even better.

After a full day of work, family and life, you fall into bed exhausted. Mentally ticking off your to-do list, you cycle through shopping lists, phone calls, appointments, feeling good about what you have gotten done, until you get to the thing you really want to do. You lay there, bathed in regret &ndash why didn’t you get your writing done today? You vow to do it tomorrow. You will make time for your novel or that article you know would sell. You consider angles, write a few lines in your head, and fired up with enthusiasm for your writing, you fall asleep. The next day continues on much like the one before and you live the life of an unfulfilled writer, all because you do not do the simple work of making time to write.

The task of finding and dedicating time for your writing can be daunting. Many people who want to write identify this as the number one challenge &ndash finding time. How can you give yourself more time when there are a limited number of hours in the day plus housework, family, a job, and other personal or professional obligations to fulfill? You can’t create more hours in your day but you can restructure the ones you have to make more time for your writing. As a writer and a coach for writers, I have identified some of the reasons behind the challenge and offer some ways to get around the lack of time excuse.

Often the “lack of time” is really a mask for writing fears. The work of writing, while satisfying, can be difficult to make time for. We put it off to do the easier things, the things we know how to do. Think about the things you do when you are procrastinating getting to the writing. Do you clean, cook, or exercise? Do you spend your valuable writing time reading or watching TV? The act of writing challenges us to dive into ourselves and come out with something tangible. This is not easy. Notice when you are resisting and when you really do not have time to write.

There are a limited number of hours in the day, but often we give away our passion and power by forgetting that we can always choose what to do with our time. I can hear you saying, “Well, I have my job, and then I have my family, and kids, and all these other obligations.” Your roles become more powerful than you are because you believe you have no choice in the matter. Certainly dinner needs to be served. Certainly you have other commitments that you need to honor. But who decided that your writing wasn’t as important as everything else? What would life be like if your passions had a place in the schedule as well? What difference would it make to the people in your life if you staked a claim for your writing? Hmmm…

With the help of a perspective shift, you may realize that your writing is important, too. Perhaps in your mind it has been important, but you haven’t taken that extra step to actually make space for it. Without space, your writing becomes a burden on your back, something you want to do but can’t. You then become a victim of your life. No fun.

Look at the following ways to restructure your time both internally and externally. Then try out a few of them and see what works for you.

Get in the habit of writing in short bursts of time. Give yourself ten, fifteen, or twenty minutes to write and then learn how to make the most of those bursts of writing. This means sidestepping the wandering or procrastination that distract you from writing.

Wake up early. Set your alarm twenty minutes early and give yourself that time to write. If the thought of getting up earlier makes you cringe, try giving yourself time at the end of the day.

Do you watch TV? Give it up and give yourself more time to write. Many people use TV as a way to zone out and relax at the end of the day, but isn’t there a better way to relax and be entertained? Yes! Use your writing to relax. Which leads me to…

Reframe the way you think about writing. Of course the art of writing is work, but if you think of it as drudgery and something that requires a lot of you, you are missing out on the rejuvenating aspects of the practice.

Whenever you do get a chance to write, take a minute when you are finished and write down three words that describe how you feel after writing. Use these words as a lure to get you to the page when you feel tired or uninspired.

Take part of your lunchtime to write. Or, use your allotted coffee or smoke breaks to slip away from work and scribble a few lines.

The real issue is often time management. We may have enough time but do not use it in a way that honors our priorities. What are your priorities? If you are not showing up for your writing, maybe it isn’t a priority. What else is going on in your life that is more compelling than writing? Take a moment now to jot down where you spend your time. What do you notice about your priorities?

Once you have a clear picture of where your time goes, how do you feel about it? Does the way you spend your time reflect what is important to you? Work and other obligations seem more fixed and indeed they may be for now, but where else can you make decisions to get writing into your life?

Perhaps your topic or project isn’t seductive enough. I have been working on the same project for years now, and there were times when I just wasn’t interested. I gave myself a break, knowing that I would come back to it. Now I have an angle on it that is compelling and fun and I am more eager to make time for it. How can you approach your project in a way that would entice you to make time for it? How do you find a writing project that earns your time and attention?

Play with an entirely new perspective. Let go of the idea of you as a writer. Perhaps now that you are clear about how you spend your time you are happy with it. Maybe you have realized that you really don’t want to make the effort to write at this point after all. How free would you feel if you let yourself off the hook for having the writing urge and not having the time to indulge it?

Try a tool I use with my clients. Imagine giving up writing, and the idea of writing. I call it ‘taking away the bone.’ Think of a dog with a bone. Imagine trying to grab the bone from the dog’s mouth. The dog will hang onto that bone for dear life. If the thought of losing your writing urge makes you want to grab onto it even tighter, it could be a signal that you need to do what it takes to make writing a priority in your life. Commit to yourself as a writer, get clear about your writing projects, and let it happen.