From My Writing Journal 11-14-13

From my personal writing journal.
 
I have such negative thoughts about myself-as-writer. I'm sure it is behind my issues with writers block and with finishing my work.

I remember when I bought Lawrence B[lock]'s Write For Your Life and the affirmations MP3 [also by Lawrence Block] and working with that seemed to help when I did the writing-affirmations-and-responses exercises.*

I think I need to get another legal pad and use it for exercises in writing affirmations. I filled one legal pad before and I think I was weakening my negative self-talk considerably by that method.

After a while when I wrote down an affirmation I didn't have negative reactions popping in to my head, I had to stop and fish for one.

Yes, I think I should incorporate a little affirmation writing into my working day. I will go to the store to buy a legal pad as soon as the morning writing session is done.

Note: the kitty picture is Kitten Therese the day I bathed her (and took pictures of the whole event). She needs a bath again right now. 

* Writing-affirmations-and-responses exercise:
Affirmations may seem just too new-agey for words, but they are just strong positive thoughts. The Christian pastor Norman Vincent Peale recommended using affirmations and suggested that certain Bible verses would make good affirmations such as Philippians 4:13 'I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.'

Writing affirmations down is one way to put these strong positive thoughts into your mind where they will do the most good. Lawrence Block's book recommended writing the affirmations 3 ways: I am a talented writer, You are a talented writer, Nissa is a talented writer. I do a block of 5 lines of each of these and then return to the first, for a total of 20 repetitions, on each page of the legal pad.

LB also recommends writing down your immediate reaction: you write 'I am a talented writer' and then write what pops into your head: 'you are NOT,' or 'no good' or whatever negative self-talk pops out. I was shocked at first with how virulent it was--- I was calling myself a fraud, even saying to myself 'she's dead'. But after repeatedly writing these negative thoughts as they came, the response kind of wore itself out and I had less and less negative stuff available, and it was weaker. I didn't FEEL it very much.

I had been writing my affirmations in groups of fives (with a space between the groupings), first the 'I' version, then the 'you', and then the named version, all with negative responses. Then I did the last five, in 'I' form, without the responses. 

I came up with a new wrinkle. For those last 5, I now write a positive response--- 'yes, I can' or 'AMEN' or whatever comes to mind. It ends the exercise on a very positive note, and, like the negative responses in the previous lines, has the additional function of keeping the writing of the affirmation from becoming too mechanical. That's also probably the reason for doing it in first, second and third person.
My page at NaNoWriMo:
http://nanowrimo.org/participants/ilsabein
My Facebook writing page:
http://www.facebook.com/NissaAnnakindt