Ksenia Anske's Blog, page 9

When nothing seems to help you move forward—quit it

It may be the scariest thing you will ever do in your writing career.

Giving up on a writing project. Quitting it cold turkey. Shelving it for millennia, and then some.

But! Here is a big but.

It may actually serve as a catalyst for another amazing writing project, or…

Are you ready for this?

It may be that when you announce you're quitting, help will come. 

Everyone who knew about what you were writing will want to help, and you’ll suddenly have resources you didn’t have before, and your book mig...

Remember—it'll pass

Whatever it is you're struggling with in your writing—it'll pass.

It's the nature of things.

Don't take it too seriously. It's just writing. It's not like someone is standing with a knife at your throat, is it? You'll figure it out.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO FIGURE IT OUT THIS VERY MOMENT.

Give yourself time. Do something for fun. Something silly. To forget your struggles.

I predict that in the middle of doing your silly thing you'll figure out your writing problem. 

You'll come up with a perfect solution...

Don’t neglect your body

Eat. Sleep. Make love. Exercise.

Too often our brain drives us nuts in figuring out things in our heads, and thinking and thinking and thinking.

We think too much. It’s a fact.

We treat our bodies like instruments to get us where we want to get.

And our bodies suffer. Get overworked. Burned out. And our brains stop working the way we want them to. And we never get where we want to. And we get upset. And frustrated. And force our bodies to suffer even more.

Stop the cycle. Learn to love your body....

Clear out your mental space

It’s often polluted. By things. By stuff. By people.

It’s easier to clear out things and stuff than it is people, and yet your first priority is to focus on the people who drag you down and to get rid of them.

They’re polluting your creative space.

And yes, often they’re family and friends. 

Remember. You’re a writer. You’ve committed to being a writer. Your work is too important, too urgent to continue letting them mess with your head and drag you into all kinds of dirt and garbage.

Get rid of t...

Take responsibility for your freedom

Writing is a way to change the world. A single book can do it. Your book can do it.

Yes, it can.

The choice is yours. 

Do you choose the freedom of the responsibility for that change?

Or do you choose to hide behind your fears and do nothing? Have a safe job where you can stay quiet and inconspicuous and out of the way?

It’s up to you.

You only have one chance. One life. YOUR LIFE. And it’s ending by the minute.

Illustration by Bryce Wong 

Train yourself to be hungry to learn

You’ve heard this before. So why am I repeating it for you?

Because every day I meet people who are looking for help—they want to write better, sell their books better, balance life and writing better—and yet when I give them solutions on how to do all those things (based on what I’ve learned over the years and on what I’m doing that works for me), I find that too often they’re closed to learning.

I offer them my time, and I explain how I do things, and I see them drifting, or losing interest,...

Catch inspiration when it strikes you

Aways have writing tools on you.

Phone. Pen and paper. Laptop. A recording device. Whatever works for you.

There will be moments when you'll have a great thought, a wonderful idea. Jot it down. Stop doing what you're doing and catch your inspiration by the tail and quickly write it all down.

This is what we used to do as kids. Just do things spontaneously.

Then we grew up into adults who have forgotten how to be present, in the moment. How to spontaneous. "I'll do it later when I have time." Tha...

Be ready for pushback

There are a lot of hurt people in the world. When you write and publish your book, be ready for those people to push back on your story, sometimes quite violently. 

Know this: THEIR OPINION HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU OR YOUR WRITING.

It’s tempting to think you did something wrong. You somehow wrote it wrong. 

You didn’t.

What you did was, you wrote your truth. That stirred up a painful something in those hurt people. And they pushed back in defense. 

It’s not your fault.

Now, don’t be tempted to a...

Commit to writing and do it

No slacking, no excuses, no bullshit.

Writing requires discipline—the discipline of sitting down, the discipline of producing words, the discipline of not quitting, of continuously learning, and of focusing on perfecting your craft.

Writing is a profession.

Can a surgeon just watch a few videos on surgery and then think, “Hey, that looks easy enough. I can do that!” Would you trust a surgeon like that to cut into your body? Nope. You’d run away screaming.

Then why do so many people think, “Hey,...

Slow down

It’s tempting to rush yourself, to write faster.

Time is relative.

Think of it this way. You’re in it for the long run, right? Right.

What do you want your next 5 writing years to look like? What about 10? What about 20?

So what’s 10 days of slow, careful thinking against 10 years? 

Nothing.

In fact, slowing down will speed you up. I know, it seems counterproductive and against all reason. But we’re condItioned by society to have a time-famine mindset. There is never enough time, for anything.

Bull...