Wanderin’ Down the Trail of Life

Howdy, y’all! Deb Kastner here, excited to be today’s Rocky Ridge counselor. I’m so excited to be meeting you here at the stable, ready to take our trail ride with our knowledgeable wranglers--Jace, Thomas and Zeb as our guides. You won’t want to miss taking in all the sights in this beautiful area and in my opinion, there’s no better way to enjoy nature than on horseback.

Oh, but yeah—this is a writing retreat. Well, hey, we can multi-task, can’t we? While you’re out breathing the fresh air and hearing the calming clip-clop of the horses’ hooves, you can pray about your future, dream about your writing and envision reaching for the stars.

(Speaking of stars, the evenings around here are amazing, aren’t they? Without the city lights dimming the sky, billions of stars and the Milky Way suddenly appear. Gorgeous!)

As we ride I hope you’ll look at your writing a little differently than you have before.

If you’ve been writing for any length of time, you’ve probably heard of GMC, Goals, Motivation and Conflict. Applied to your main characters, GMC fleshes them out to be three-dimensional people readers care about.

But today I’d like to talk to you about a different way to use GMC. On yourself. That’s right. I’d like to turn the tables on you and ask you what your Goals, Motivations and Conflicts are in your writing (I do this with my life, as well.)

Your characters need good, solid goals to make a story hold its framework. They need something important that they are willing to fight for, both internally and externally. Can the same thing be said of your writing?

Do you know why you write, what’s important to you? There are as many answers to that question as there are authors, so I want you to take time and search your heart. To honor God? To make a living? Make a bestseller list? Because you can’t not write? All of the above and then some?

What will happen when you hit a fork in the trail? Which way will you choose to go? In the best of all worlds, how do you see yourself in a year? Five? Ten? Allow yourself to dream. You want to make goals that are specific and measurable, but I encourage you to stretch yourself and reach for the stars.

Once you have an idea where you see yourself going, check out the trail heads and start where it makes the most sense to you. A specific traditional publisher? Jumping into indie?

When you’ve figured that out, you’ve got to find your motivation. For many writers, even those like me who have published over 30 books, struggle with motivation, especially, for me, at least, at the beginning of a project. Sure, I’m excited to do something new, but at the same time, I have this little imp on my shoulder, nagging at me. How did I ever believe I was an author? I can’t write a whole book’s full of words. No one wants to read what I write. I’m a fraud.

Then there are good writing days and bad writing days. Sometimes the words flow so fast I can’t keep up with them. Woo hoo! I want to sing, and dance and spin like a fairy. (You don’t want to see that. Really, you don’t.) And sometimes it’s downright painful to write even so much as a single word. I call it bleeding on paper. Those days are tough, and every writer I know has them.

What make them a writer is that they write anyway, no matter how they feel. They know why they are doing what they are doing and it motivates them to write even when they don’t feel like it. They are consistent. Successful authors have found a trail that takes them where they want to go. You can only set aside fifteen minutes a day? Use them. Five hundred words? You’ll reach the end eventually, right?

There’s no secret sauce here, my friends. No magic wand. You get on the horse, and you ride. If you fall off, you get back on. And then you do it again, and again, and again.

Guess what? You improve. Pretty soon, it (mostly) feels easier. And when it doesn’t, when you’ve gotten a particularly nasty rejection (believe me, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a seeker or multi-published, it happens. A lot.) or when you’ve flipped head-first over the neck of your horse and landed on your patootie, you groan, get yourself back on your feet, brush yourself off, and climb back on. I give myself twenty-four hours to grumble and sniffle, and then it’s back in the saddle and heading down the trail.

It’s motivation that gets you from the trailhead to the end of the trail.

Aaaaannnnddd then there is conflict.

I’m sure every one of you has a “but.” (No, not the one you landed on when you fell off your horse.)

 Life. Is. Difficult. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. Some years are WAY tougher than other years. Big stuff, like when my sweetheart had a double stroke, and little stuff, like yesterday morning on the way to church when I managed to twist my lower back getting into the car from the sidewalk instead of the garage. Yes, I am that talented. After two hours of eye-ball crossing pain singing in the church choir, I gave in and went to urgent care. A week of taking it easy and popping handfuls of ibuprofen is now in my future—but so is finishing a novella.

There are some conflicts that I legitimately put before my writing, which is also my day job, lending added pressure. I was a physical and emotional mess when Joe had his double stroke. I didn’t write until he was safely tucked away in a physical therapy hospital.  I did write through my back pain. I have chronic migraines, so if I waited until I was pain free to write, I wouldn’t have a single book written.

But I have goals. Motivation. So when the conflicts come, I am ready to fight back. Sometimes my books are better for it. Sometimes God is providing a lesson I need to learn before my characters can.

So now you know my secret—GMC. 

There’s one last thing I want to say before we part ways. Riding—er—writing—is awesome. A beautiful journey with unimaginable joy along the way. Don’t forget to stop and take in the scenery. The end, whatever your end happens to be, is fantastic. But getting there is half the fun.

I would love to hear about your GMC, and how you find ways to enjoy the ride.