Obstacles are a part of everyone’s life. The most successful novelist you know will say their (needs to be either novelist/his or her OR novelists/their) success happened over time and not overnight. Each of them and you, have to deal with four barriers to thinking: Safe, Perfect, Victim, and Feel.
What is your experience with these four barriers? The size and shape of your obstacles are not the same as mine, but the result is the same—they cause problems. Both your writing life and your life as a whole are affected by the thinking barriers. To stop them, you have to deal with them.
SAFE seems alright, but resembles running on a treadmill—you go nowhere fast. If you don’t make waves, things will still work out for the best. Have you ever known that to be true? I didn’t think so. To write your novel, the idea has to leave your mind and find its way to the paper. SAFE won’t make that happen.
PERFECT is for fairytales and dreams. It lives in the minds of those who are content to withdraw from the real world and live there, too. Moviemakers create PERFECT with computer-generated images that wow us again and again. There’s also that town in the Walgreen’s commercial…. Could you actually live there? It sounds appealing but the limits are great and the benefits few.
VICTIM is not how life should be viewed. Despite whatever else you are, VICTIM trumps it all in the end. As a victim, at one time you have let it be known to others that you bear this infirmity. Instead of regaining dignity through your declaration, there are only pity and whispering voices. Living as a victim means reliving your horror and pain, which does you no good at all.
FEEL touches us all (forgive the pun). How do you deal with emotion? Showing too little gives you as much depth as any rock in your front yard. If you go all the way to the right, with too much emotion, you may scare a few people. They’ll attribute your wild persona to not enough oxygen or too much time on the psychiatrist’s couch. Both options leave you out of sync. Balance can be found when you and your Muse decide to put your brains together for the greater good.
Overcoming these four barriers is necessary to move from brilliant idea to remarkable novel. Your struggle and triumph creates the wonderful characters and situations encountered in a novel. Use my saying when dealing with a barrier:
SAFE never starts,
PERFECT never finishes,
VICTIM never acts,
FEEL never thinks.
Looking to sell your novel? Holly Lisle is a full-time writer who has sold 30+ novels to major publishers and is the creator of the “How to Think Sideways Career Survival School for Writers”. Go to http://howtothinksideways.com/members/?rid=1012 to access to 3 free lessons that teach you and access 3 free lessons that teach you how to write a novel that sells – straight from her highly-acclaimed course.
