Core values and beliefs
A couple months ago, I've done some writing-related self-coaching. I was using a self-coaching book and a journal for my answers. NLP talks a lot about core beliefs and values. They drive what we do and what we don't do. I can't go into any meaningful detail about what my core values are--it's really personal stuff to reveal one's "buttons". It's a bit like showing the strings that can make you a puppet.
There's a reason why a lot of NLP is being used to sell people crap they don't want or need. Advertising is never about the product and all about the feeling or all about the underlying value (or insecurity). Romance sells the feeling of love, and can hack into our need to love and our willingness to love. It can also hack into our insecurities about deserving love and being lovable or finding somebody worthy of love.
As an example, I get angry every time I go to the local mall. The reason? There's a lot of advertisement about their pre-paid gift card. You buy the card, put money on, gift the card, and they can spend it in any shop inside the mall. So far, so common. The thing that gets me and sets my teeth on edge is the slogan they're using: "Load it with love!"
In other words money = love. Normally, I see such bald-faced crassness only around Mother's Day and Valentine's Day, and, oh, throughout the three months leading up to Christmas. But that shopping centre has made it an all-year fixture. Because love is such a strong value, it's near irresistible. Give them money to show your love. (Corollary: if you don't have money or don't give money, you don't love them enough.) This goes so fundamentally against everything I believe in, it's not even funny.
And there's the thing. The values and beliefs we hold we tend to think of as universal. It took me ages to accept that some people have different beliefs and are okay with that. Quite a few people place their priorities differently and are happy that way. As I get older, I'm getting better at identifying what's important to other people (yep, that took me a good long while).
This is also true for writers. There are writers who do not want to make a living writing. There are writers who are happy just writing for themselves and not for publication. I used to not really understand that--for me, writing is a lot about communication, and putting work out there means that gets fulfilled. By now, I get it. I know writers who are happy labouring away in their studies and offices and at their kitchen tables, and communicate only with themselves. It's not a "damn pity", as I used to think, but absolutely a valid way to go about it. It fulfills different needs from mine and reflects different core beliefs or different ways to go about them.
I think spending a while thinking about what drives us (ambition, loyalty, independence, love, peace...) is tremendously useful for authors (and other humans). What needs are we fulfilling by writing? If a writer is oriented towards money, for example, is that a tangible, quantifiable measure of success ("I'm succeeding because I'm doubling my royalties every year") or a need for safety ("I can't sleep without solid financial in place. I can't think clearly if I'm dreading the sound of the letterbox announcing an unpaid/unpayable bill"). If it's safety, which other ways can that need be fulfilled? Sometimes, these can be at odds - you might want to make money but can't compromise on what you're writing (and what you're writing is uncommercial). Dig deep and see if there's a way to fulfill the conflicting needs. Some lateral thinking helps. In any case, core values and beliefs are usually ignored at our own peril - I think quite a few cases of writer's block might have their root causes here, but that bears further thinking/exploration.
Anyway, that's me thinking out loud in between editing chapters. I've trimmed >4k out of my 127k novel and still have about 25 chapters to work through. I think I'll end up at pretty much exactly 100k. And it'l be a stronger book for it.
There's a reason why a lot of NLP is being used to sell people crap they don't want or need. Advertising is never about the product and all about the feeling or all about the underlying value (or insecurity). Romance sells the feeling of love, and can hack into our need to love and our willingness to love. It can also hack into our insecurities about deserving love and being lovable or finding somebody worthy of love.
As an example, I get angry every time I go to the local mall. The reason? There's a lot of advertisement about their pre-paid gift card. You buy the card, put money on, gift the card, and they can spend it in any shop inside the mall. So far, so common. The thing that gets me and sets my teeth on edge is the slogan they're using: "Load it with love!"
In other words money = love. Normally, I see such bald-faced crassness only around Mother's Day and Valentine's Day, and, oh, throughout the three months leading up to Christmas. But that shopping centre has made it an all-year fixture. Because love is such a strong value, it's near irresistible. Give them money to show your love. (Corollary: if you don't have money or don't give money, you don't love them enough.) This goes so fundamentally against everything I believe in, it's not even funny.
And there's the thing. The values and beliefs we hold we tend to think of as universal. It took me ages to accept that some people have different beliefs and are okay with that. Quite a few people place their priorities differently and are happy that way. As I get older, I'm getting better at identifying what's important to other people (yep, that took me a good long while).
This is also true for writers. There are writers who do not want to make a living writing. There are writers who are happy just writing for themselves and not for publication. I used to not really understand that--for me, writing is a lot about communication, and putting work out there means that gets fulfilled. By now, I get it. I know writers who are happy labouring away in their studies and offices and at their kitchen tables, and communicate only with themselves. It's not a "damn pity", as I used to think, but absolutely a valid way to go about it. It fulfills different needs from mine and reflects different core beliefs or different ways to go about them.
I think spending a while thinking about what drives us (ambition, loyalty, independence, love, peace...) is tremendously useful for authors (and other humans). What needs are we fulfilling by writing? If a writer is oriented towards money, for example, is that a tangible, quantifiable measure of success ("I'm succeeding because I'm doubling my royalties every year") or a need for safety ("I can't sleep without solid financial in place. I can't think clearly if I'm dreading the sound of the letterbox announcing an unpaid/unpayable bill"). If it's safety, which other ways can that need be fulfilled? Sometimes, these can be at odds - you might want to make money but can't compromise on what you're writing (and what you're writing is uncommercial). Dig deep and see if there's a way to fulfill the conflicting needs. Some lateral thinking helps. In any case, core values and beliefs are usually ignored at our own peril - I think quite a few cases of writer's block might have their root causes here, but that bears further thinking/exploration.
Anyway, that's me thinking out loud in between editing chapters. I've trimmed >4k out of my 127k novel and still have about 25 chapters to work through. I think I'll end up at pretty much exactly 100k. And it'l be a stronger book for it.
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Hi Sofia, Alex, Can you ever be anything other than yourself,and should you even try? I don't think you can write something that even in some obscure, roundabout way, doesn't show your core values.
Why you write is something else. (So I write because I do at the moment, weird but true, and to startle my friends.) When I do get around to publishing it will be because I would like other people to share my inner world and hopefully like it. You never know.
The thing about thinking other people have the same values, POV, sense of fair play etc is that it gets knocked out of you the more people you meet. I've known people who can only value themselves, their self esteem (and mine)or their position in society via money, size of house, car. (Note past tense as far as these folk go.) Cash is necessary, but...
As a reader I can take on just about any scenario as long as it isn't too slushy, and there have been very few books I've been unable to finish or have actively disliked. One thing they had in common - a perceived lack of humanity. Sometimes that might have been in the way they were written,but they felt cold. E
Oh ps Aleks - seriously admire your brutal editing capabilities.
Hi VerditwistI agree we are what we are always, be it in our daily lives, in our relationships, in our work, writing etc. A small example, even if we adopt a pen-name for social media, we do not adopt a different persona but we remain us, especially if we maintain the pen-name for a period of time and not for a single entry.
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The values and beliefs we hold we tend to think of as universal. It took me ages to accept that some people have different beliefs and are okay with that.
I always assume that I'm dealing on the same level playing field when dealing with people, that they have my values, my priorities, that when they say yes, they mean yes. Rather Romantic and Heroic view of life. And then I get so surprised and feel like a dummy when I realise that it is not so. I try to keep this in mind in all my dealings, but unfortunately this is not an automatic for me, but something that I have to remember to do all the time.