Lorna Faith

Clean Fiction Author

3 Steps to Start Tiny Habits that Help You Reach Your Goals

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When you start Tiny Habits in your writing life, it helps you reach your goals faster.

What are Tiny Habits? Dr. BJ Fogg – a Behavioral Scientist and originator of the term – says that a Tiny Habit is when you do something very, very small. Like floss one tooth, do two pushups or drink one sip of water. In his inspiring TEDx talk – Forget Big Change, Start With One Tiny Habit – BJ Fogg shares tips on how you can change your behavior for good.

Let me share with you what I’ve learned…

3 Steps to Start Tiny Habits…

I’ve needed to get out of what has seemed like a pattern of fear and procrastination. I felt like I was in Psychology 101 again, but this time I was Pavlov’s dog stuck in a repeating habit pattern.

Here’s what I’ve been learning and have come to realize about myself: Fear can be a habit. Left unchecked, fear can become a unconscious loop that goes round and round in our heads.

Many of our habits get triggered by things outside of us(smell, sounds, etc.). Each trigger in your brain results in a behavior and every behavior results in a reward. From a neuroscience perspective this is called a Habit Loop.

In other words, chances are very high that the fears holding you back from achieving your goals are possibly 10, 20 or even 30 years in the making. These fears have become a unconscious pattern that repeats itself over and over again.

Most of the time we have these fears and don’t know how to get out of it, which has definitely been my struggle. I had a elementary school teacher who told me that my writing was like chicken scratchings, and since he was the teacher I respected his opinion. I believed and accepted his words to be truth.

Since that time(many years ago), I’ve literally struggled and battled everyday to get words on the page. I’ve worked hard to push past resistance that showed up in the form of my inner critic. My negative habit loop has gone something like this: my writing isn’t good enough; nobody will read my books; maybe I should quit now, I’ll most likely fail anyway…. and much more.

I’ve had to consciously work toward getting out of this destructive habit loop.

Fear – whether conscious or unconscious – causes you to procrastinate and stops you from achieving your goals.

I didn’t want to continue to let procrastination or fear win, so in the last few months I’ve been learning more about how to get rid of both. 

I have taken steps to understand how to change my unhelpful habit loop. I’ve been choosing everyday to take work on Tiny Habits, and it’s been so encouraging. I hope it helps you too.

Here are 3 Steps to Start Tiny Habits that Help You Reach Your Goals:

1.Take a sheet of paper and write down One Fear you realize that has been holding you back from reaching your goals. Write down whatever the biggest fear is for you that you feel stops you from achieving your goals. For example: For this step I wrote down my #1 fear: I have a big fear that my writing won’t be good enough and that readers won’t want to read my romance novels. 

2.Write down One Tiny Action that you can take immediately – in the next 24 hours – that will move you AWAY from the fear you have and TOWARDS the goal you want to achieve. Think about a tiny step you could take that would move you in the direction of your goal.  Since my big fear has been that my writing won’t be good enough, it has caused me to procrastinate on writing my romance novels.

For example: My One Tiny Action that I’ve chosen to work on, is to write 250 words every single day – without judging my words, and writing those words wether I felt like writing or not. I’ve chosen to just do it.

Also, don’t forget to Celebrate your One Tiny Action 🙂

3.After you have done that One Tiny Action for 7 days, then ADD One More Tiny Habit to your daily goals. Just add something really small to the habit you’ve already started developing in your life. For example: When these 7 days are finished I will add another 250 words to the words I’m already writing everyday.

That’s all there is to it. Simple right?

Some Keys to Remember with Habits.

  • You can stack Tiny Habits on top of each other.
  • What puts most people in the fight, freeze or flight mode is when they think of the Big Goal and they think of all the things they have to do – and then feel overwhelmed. When we feel overwhelmed, our brain switches to fear of success, fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, fear of shame, etc.
  • What will happen as you build these Tiny Habits, is that you’ll start to become a person who feels the emotion of fear and then you take a little action anyway towards what you want to achieve.

Remember: Everyone feels fear. It’s normal. It’s how you handle it and what you do with that fear that matters. So take one small step anyway, when you feel fear.

You’ll be amazed and what happens as you take action on One Tiny Habit for 7 days. I hope you’ll be so inspired by your results, that you’ll want to repeat the process for another 7 days, and so on.

What’s One Tiny Habit you can begin in the next 24 hours that will move you toward your goals? Please comment, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

7 Big Reasons to Finish Writing Your Novel

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When we’re in the middle of writing our story – still trying to find our rhythm – it’s too easy to give up.

As we near the finish line of our work in progress, writing can feel as painful as a visit to the Dentist.

Sometimes we want to abandon our novel completely, but there’s still a part of us that feels compelled to keep writing.

We have all these doubts and questions and we wonder if we should quit now while we’re ahead. But sometimes in these moments, we remind ourselves that if we do quit, most likely we’ll regret at some point later in life.

Writing fiction, isn’t easy.

So why finish your novel at all?

Why you should keep writing…

I’ve had many moments of frustration as I’ve been writing my current novel.

I’ve really struggled with my story. Some of the plot points in the story structure, didn’t seem to ring true to the rest of the story I was telling.

It was incredibly frustrating and many times I wanted to give up altogether.

After talking about the story – out loud – with my husband(asking questions, focusing on theme and characters), many of the foggy parts of the story cleared up for me. It really helped a lot.

If you’re struggling to finish your story, try something new like asking your characters deeper questions or maybe try what I did and ask your spouse, children or a friend if you can talk your story out loud to them. It worked wonders for me.

It’s really difficult when you struggle for a few days or weeks with your story. You start to question whether you’ll ever figure it out and you start to question whether you should finish writing your book at all.

I get it. That’s where I was these past couple of weeks. That’s why I wrote this list of reasons why it’s a good idea to finish your book – I hope some of these ideas will inspire you too:

1. You Love to Write Fiction. For most of us, there are a bunch of activities that we have to do – like going to work; taking out the garbage – and there’s not so many things we do that we choose to do for fun.

It’s great to have a few things in your life, that you do just because you love it. If writing for you is one of those things you love to do, then keep writing… and finish your book. If writing your stories makes you happy and more alive, that’s an amazing gift to embrace.

2. You will stretch and grow as a writer. To write a really good novel, there are many details to get good at. For instance, you need to be able to see the big story, break your story down into story structure and learn your characters arcs.

But, as you keep learning, you become a better writer. That really is an added benefit of being committed to finishing your novel.

3. You learn more about yourself as You write your novel. This was a surprise to me, as I wrote my first novel. I didn’t realize I would have aha moments about myself, but I did.

Most likely you’ll find as you think deeper about your story, that you’ll find new ideas, emotions and beliefs. As you write, you’ll see that the themes, characters and circumstances you explore in your novel, help you understand yourself and your own life in a new way. This can help you understand more of who you are and who you want to become.

4. You can reach people on a deep level with fiction. Ever since I started reading fiction during my childhood years, I discovered that fiction short stories or novels had the power to reach me in a way a nonfiction book never would. I love that about storytelling.

There’s been many novels whose characters and their lives have stuck with me for years. Maybe you’ve experienced that too? Fiction stories and their characters have the power to get deep into the reader’s heart and mind and engage them in a really deep and lasting way.

5. You are empowered and given control as a self-published author. Since ebooks and print-on-demand have revolutionized the publishing industry, you don’t have to wait for an agent or publisher any longer. You don’t have to spend months or years trying and hoping to get published any more.

Instead you can give yourself permission to write the novel you love and publish your novel onto digital retail stores as soon as your book is finished.

Of course, you can choose to traditionally publish if you want, because being an indie author isn’t for everyone. But the great thing is you have the option now.

You can be confident that you’ll be able to get your novel into the hands of readers.

6. You will develop great time management, self-motivation, planning and goal-setting skills. It takes a little bit of planning to schedule in time to finish your novel. Whether you take 30 minutes writing while you’re riding the bus home, or whether you go sit in your closet and write for an hour, it means you’ve chosen to put the time in to write your book. By continuing to write your novel until you type “the end” you prove to yourself that you can motivate yourself to keep going even when the going is tough.

You also use your planning skills when you organize your ideas into chapters and plan all your characters and where each of them fit into your story. You also learn goal-setting when you choose a date for when you want your book to be finished. Then all you do is figure out how many words you need to write each day to hit your target word count.

All these skills are great to develop. Many people spend a lifetime struggling to develop these skills. Writing a book, helps you jump in with both feet to improve all these skills as you write each day, and you can then take what you’ve learned into other areas of your life as well.

7. You might just change your life and step into work you’ve dreamed of doing. If you don’t write your novel, you might regret it later in life. If you don’t finish what you started, you’ll never know what might have been. If you don’t share your words with the world, you don’t know if it would have touched someone, somewhere, or if it might have been a best selling book or perhaps your novel would have been start for you to step into your new career as a full-time writer.

Be brave and confident that you can do this. You will finish your book. Then ten or twenty years down the road you can look back with no regrets and see what you’ve created and achieved as a writer.

Today, choose to make time for your novel…. even if it’s only 15 minutes. Go back through your outline, character sketches or your first few chapters and re-read what you’ve written. Begin to write from where you left off last time.

Make a commitment today.

I will finish writing my book!  😉

 

What are your reasons for finishing your novel? Please share your thoughts in the comments below, I’d love to hear from you!

027 Tips on Self-Publishing and How to Become a Lifelong Learner with Pamela Hodges

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In today’s show, Pamela Hodges shares how writers and artists can give themselves permission to passionately create the art they love. I was inspired by this chat with Pamela, mostly because it has taken me a long time and writing a few books to begin to believe in myself and to give myself permission to write the stories I love.

In the intro, I share about the book I’m reading now by Alan Watt called, The 90 Day Novel. I’ve been going through the each week’s lessons and the exercises have helped me to write with more freedom and to ask the right questions to discover more of my characters & setting.

A copywriting book I’ve been reading and loving is Love-Based Copywriting by Michele PW. Honestly it was the title that drew me to this book. She shares how to attract people that resonate with what you have to say – to your website, blog, emails and everywhere else. Great book. Also, I chat about  TribeWriters  a course that was the #1 influence for me to start blogging and to write books.

Watch the Video Interview

Interview Summary:

Pamela Hodges is a blogger, author and artist who encourages others to embrace their creativity. She inspires by sharing stories about art, creativity and everyday life with cat barf and seven litter boxes.  You can see more of her blogposts at ipaintiwrite.com or visit her cat Harper’s blog at thecatwhowrites.com.

She talks about how she illustrated, formatted and designed the new book that her cat Pooh Hodges wrote called, How to Be A Cat.  This book is for guys who are tired of going to work everyday and can quit shaving and give away their car… and become a cat 😉

Pamela talks about how she was first inspired to write and create her art when she first joined TribeWriter’s course. Later, Seth Godin’s book It’s Your Turn, among other things, encouraged her to try to go to school to learn Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign.

When she first started the class, she didn’t even know how to turn on her computer. But she really wanted to learn how to do this, so she asked a lot of questions and stuck with it.

Trying to be perfect can stop you from creating. Don't let that happen to you. Share on X

Color the Cats: Forty Real Cats from Around the World and Their Stories.

Pamela encourages anyone who wants to begin learning something new that they’re passionate about to…

  • Treat it like a job – even if you have to work many hours at it
  • Set a deadline of when you want to be done – it makes a big difference
  • believe passionately in what you’re doing – in what you’re creating

If as a writer you are doubting your ability, or you are hearing your inner critic tell you “you’re no good a that,” just try it anyway. Maybe it takes you a little longer to finish your project than what it would take others, but that’s okay. It only matters that you get there. That you finish it.

Pamela encourages all writers to read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, to learn how to get past resistance and make space for their creativity.

How do people make room in their busy lives for lifelong learning – to create what their passionate about?

The only way to make room for something is that you have to make a choice.

Is it more important that you find out how the TV series ends, or is it more important to finish

writing that book? Or is it more important to do something with your friends every weekend, or do you need to choose some weekends to stay and finish that project you started, but didn’t finish?

If you want something you need to decide what your priorities are.

Pamela encourages creatives that are struggling with self-doubt, to embrace what you love. You are a writer or an artist when you say you are.

Our value as creative people doesn’t come from outside validation. Rather, it comes from an internal belief that you are who you say you are. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Trying to be perfect can stop you from creating. Don’t let that happen to you.

Treat yourself how you want to be treated. The best friend you can have is yourself. Be kind to yourself. Pamela encourages everyone who has self-doubt to take a big tube of red lipstick and write on your bathroom mirror: Smile sweetheart, you’re great. OR  Hey you’ve got this, I believe in you.

New projects that Pamela is creating: A coloring book called, 31 Days to Joy: Finding Joy in Everyday Life. She will also be writing Pooh Hodges memoir, in a writing class by Marion Roach Smith.  If you want to know more about what Pamela is up to, check out her blog or connect with her on Facebook or Twitter.

Have you given yourself permission and made room in your life to create the art that you love? I’d love to hear your thoughts on that in the comments below 🙂

3 Enemies of Productivity for Writers

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Writers have 3 enemies of productivity that we should be aware of each time we sit down to craft our words.

These enemies, are time wasters that sneak up on us over time.

It’s these subtle and disturbing time wasters that I’ve really struggled with over the past few months.

So if you’ve been wondering why you’re not as productive a writer as you’d like to be, I hope these tips help you too.

3-enemies-of-productivity-lornafaith

Be Aware of these 3 Time Stealers…

Imagine that you are all excited to start a new book. You have the start of an idea. You’ve done a lot of reading and research on writing and on your idea.

You sit down to write. You open up your document on the computer. Your fingers excitedly hover over the blank page staring back at you.

And… nothing. Suddenly you’re paralyzed. You don’t even know where to start.

The obstacle you face, could be one of the following:

1.Uncertainty. You might be unsure of what chapter or scene you’re supposed to be working on. This can cause all sorts of problems. What I’ve found that helps is to write a short summary of where the scene is going for the next time I come back to write.

If you sit down at your computer with no idea of what to write, it will stop your writing in it’s tracks.

Solution: prepare ahead of time for what you will write the next day. Whether it’s research, or digging deeper into your character arc, or simply doing more brainstorming by asking helpful “what if” questions.

2.Excuses. This is simply, coming up with many reasons why you can’t do something. I’ve learned that excuses are cunning things that have a way of slowly sneaking up on us. We say things like: I only have 30 minutes spare time, so I can’t write today; I have to answer this email and reply to friends on social media, so I’ll have to put off my writing for awhile.

Solution: Change you’re: “I can’t write because of this reason…” and change those words to say: “Okay I can see what I can get done in this short amount of time.” or you can say “Maybe I  can’t do what that other person is doing, but what tips can I learn from them and what can I try instead?”

3.It’s too Overwhelming. Anytime something seems to complex or hard to do, it becomes something that you don’t want to work on. It seems overwhelming and then it becomes frustrating to even try.

Solution: Take some time to sit down and write down everything you have to do. Whether you’re writing a book, or creating a project, or whatever. If what you’re working on seems too big, break it down. Make a chronological order of each of the small steps you need to take to carry out the project from start to finish.

As you become more and more aware of these 3 enemies of writing productivity, then you can get rid of the habits – one by one – and put them out of your life.

Seriously. Kick these three nasty time stealers out of your life. You’ll be glad you did.

That’s what I’ve been working on lately too. I’ve realized that when something is too complicated, then I feel overwhelmed… and it paralyzes me. If it’s a book project, I stare at the screen, feeling frustrated that no ideas are coming to me… oy!

So, with my book, I decided to write down more details of the outline and dig deeper into my main character’s fatal flaws, false beliefs, motivations and goals. And guess what, the ideas are racing around in my head again – and I feel excited to write again. That’s a big bonus.

I want to encourage you to try to catch yourself: 1)If you are uncertain and have no idea to write, begin your own Auto-Focus system. Take a minute to listen to this video by Jonathan Milligan on how to set up your own Auto-Focus system everyday. It has been super helpful to me. 2) If you make excuses on why you don’t have time to write, ask yourself what you can do to get your writing done? 3)Anytime something seems too overwhelming, break it down. Begin to make a step-by-step list of the next things you need to.

Then watch as your productivity grows by leaps and bounds as a writer.

Do you struggle with being productive as a writer? What are your tips to push past resistance? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. We can learn from each other 😉

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