Silencing the Saboteur
by Carollyne Hutter
Although it can be unpleasant, criticism is essential to a writing life. Most writers I know are in critique groups—the feedback is so valuable.
Sometimes criticism can cross the line and be destructive to a writer’s work or sense of worth. The most caustic critic can be the voice in a writer’s own head. My friend Eliza King, a talented life coach, calls the voice “the saboteur.” She gives this advice about dealing with the saboteur:
“The saboteur is the voice of our internal critic or the voice of self-doubt that often appears when we are trying something new, and stretching into new, unfamiliar places in our lives. The saboteur comes in and tells us that we are not good enough, competent enough, etc . . . to be who we'd like to be and urges us not to take on the new challenges we are undertaking.
“If we listen to this voice, it eventually takes us on a one-way trip to our worst fears of our possible future. So do not attempt to argue with the saboteur: it will not be convinced!
“The saboteur comes from old survival patterns in our past that may once have kept us safe, but are now no longer necessary and end up holding us back from living fulfilling lives. The saboteur often masquerades in a familiar voice, like a family member's or teacher's voice, so that it really presses our buttons. When the saboteur appears, you feel foggy, confused, resistant to doing anything, and overwhelmed. Who needs that?
“To minimize its influence practice these two steps:
1. Identify and name the voice when it shows up in whatever guise. ‘I hear you, saboteur! I recognize your voice and you are not the expert on the truth about me.’
2. Create your own way of banishing it that works for you. It will never disappear for more than a few hours but you can shut it up for awhile. It can be especially strong when you’re tired or off guard.
“Some examples of ways to get rid of the saboteur: Flush it down the toilet; shove gum or taffy in its mouth; lock it in a cupboard; put it in a jar with a tight lid; make it weed the garden..."
“Be persistent in banishing the saboteur so you can plan your next step and live your life with more peace and hope for your future.”
I would like to add two suggestions to Eliza’s great comments about dealing with the saboteur:
1. Make goals. The saboteur is all about the past. When you make goals, you’re focused on
the future. Keep the goals simple and attainable.
2. Celebrate all your accomplishments, even the so-called “little” ones. For example, I regularly write for a terrific children’s social studies magazine, APPLESEEDS. APPLESEEDS is doing an issue on weather and my editor assigned me to two articles: one on the National Hurricane Center, which was a delight to do. And a second article on weather experiments for kids. I froze when I saw this assignment: Hey, I’m a writer, not a scientist. But despite my reservations, I pushed forward and gathered various weather experiments. Then I invited a bunch of kids over to test the experiments. (To our surprise, we couldn’t get some of the experiments to work and others had to be modified.)
After we were done testing, I wrote up the experiments and emailed the article to my editor. Then I stopped at the grocery store and bought cupcakes. The kids came over and we celebrated finishing this assignment!
About: When she’s not sending her saboteur out to weed in the garden, Carollyne Hutter is a freelance writer/editor/communications manager, specializing in environmental, scientific, and international development topics. She also enjoys writing fiction and creative nonfiction for adults and children (early readers, picture books, and young-adult novels). Please visit her website—www.HutterWriter.com—to learn more. You can contact Carollyne at sayhi@hutterwriter.com.
Eliza King is trained in Co-active Coaching by the Coaches Training Institute, one of the most rigorous and respected training programs in the coaching industry. She loves working with people who are in transition or want to make a change in their lives. Her gift is in seeing people for who they truly are, and helping them be courageous in seeing themselves and living that vision.
Showing posts with label Carollyne Hutter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Carollyne Hutter. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Guest blogger: Carollyne Hutter on Technology & the Writer
With the myriad possibilities for "connecting" online--a full list would be too large to explore here--it's nearly impossible to know much less participate in many. How do you find the time? I for one am connected on Facebook, Twitter (both personally and for work), LinkedIn, this blog, several e-mail accounts, Youtube, various home-related things....See what I mean? At times, it's exhausting just trying to remember all my passwords and usernames. Makes you want to just give up, buy a cabin, become a hermit.
Are you frustrated by technology? Today's post is by member Carollyne Hutter, and as you'll see, it's about how writers relate, or should relate, to technology. It originally appeared on Leslie Pietrzyk's blog Work in Progress. Carollyne, take it away:
A friend sent an email that startled me. I stared for a few minutes at the screen before responding. I had asked him a reference question. He had written back: “It’s lucky you caught me. I only check my emails once a week.”
Once a week? As a freelance writer/editor, I have a close relationship with technology, particularly emails, since my bosses contact me 24/7 with their BlackBerrys.
My friend’s email spurred me to think how dependent writers are on technology, and yet many writers I know don’t include, or rarely mention, technology in their fiction writing. Their characters live in low-tech worlds.
When I decided to write a young-adult (YA) novel, I went around asking other YA writers how they deal with teens and technology. Most said they avoided it, yet many teens mainline technology all day. What gave the teen series Twilight a gothic, old-time feel to it was the lack of technology in the heroine’s life. To me, this absence of teen technology was much more bizarre than her falling in love with a vampire.
As writers, we really should embrace technology in our characters’ lives because our characters use of technology is such a telling detail—just as what clothes they wear, what cars they drive, what they keep on their nightstands are all telling details.
My friend’s comment about only checking emails once a week conjures up an image of a low-tech person, doesn’t it? Just like as the opposite presents a picture: I have a colleague who always checks his emails on his BlackBerry during meetings, even if it’s a small meeting of three people. Or how about this—a friend who appears as a typical suburban soccer mom actually has her own biting, left-wing political blog under a pseudonym. Very telling.
I can understand a writer’s hesitation to deal with technology. I used to joke that I set my YA, Homesick, in 1989 so I wouldn’t have to deal with teen technology.
But the strange thing is I miss technology. Brigit, the heroine of my YA, has to fax her boyfriend in Germany. How slow is that? Or when she needs information, she has to trot down to the library, instead of checking it out on the web. It’s actually been harder than I thought to leave out technology and go back to a time before cell phones, emails, and the Internet were popular. It’s probably been just as hard for me to exclude technology, as other writers tell me it is to include it.
About Carollyne Hutter: This is Carolynne's third appearance at First Person Plural. Check out her discussion of YA lit here. And Twilight here. For over a decade, she has been a freelance writer/editor in the Washington, DC area, specializing in international and environmental topics. Her website is http://www.hutterwriter.com/. Please visit the site to read Carollyne’s stories (including the opening chapters of Homesick), quirky essays, and nonfiction pieces. You can contact her at sayhi@hutterwriter.com.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Brontes Reborn in Twilight
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Those of you who're planning on avoiding watching football and heading off to see a movie after your big dinner may want to check out the vampire flick Twilight.
After posting last week, Carollyne Hutter suggested writing about the just-released film. Because I've heard so much about the book that the film is based on--and pretty much ALL of it was negative--I was curious to see what Carollyne had to say about the film. Since she's also writing YA fiction, this seems pretty apt. Here's Carollyne.
______________________________________________________
Last week I joined the throngs of teenagers and read the wildly popular, young adult novel—Twilight, which was just released as a motion picture. As I wandered into Bella’s story of love to a vampire, I kept getting interrupted by a nagging feeling, like an itch that won’t go away—this book reminds of something else. Then it hit me. Twilight is like a Bronte novel, especially Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.
Take Edward, the love interest of Twilight. In many ways he’s another Heathcliff—the perfect hero and anti-hero. Edward keeps saving Bella in the novel (ah, the hero), yet his inherent desire is to suck her blood (the anti-hero). Both Edward and Heathcliff epitomize the Byronic hero—they’re moody, mysterious, magnetic men with a streak of danger to them. It’s interesting that Robert Pattinson, who plays Edward in the movie, is British. And what is also telling is at the end of Wuthering Heights, Nelly wonders if Heathcliff is a ghoul or vampire.
The setting for Twilight is very Bronte-like, very Gothic. The dark, constantly wet, verdant Olympic Peninsula of Washington state evokes an image similar to the moors of England. Both are precarious places where you can easily lose your way.
Twilight in general has a very anti-modern, antiquated feel to it. Even though the novel is supposed to be set in current time, little modern technology exists in it. In reality, technology is a lifeline for most middle-class American teenagers: their lives are full of text messaging, IMs, Facebook, and Youtube. All these are absent in the novel.
Twilight’s strong connection with the Brontes reminds me as a writer not to forget the classics. The classics can help a modern writer in so many ways. Jane Austin’s delight, insightful novels have spawned a whole industry of current novels that use her plots, including my favorite: Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary.
So I think it’s time for me to re-visit the classics, many of which I read when I was in my teens or an undergraduate in college. This time when I read the novels I am going to look at them not with the eyes of a reader or student, but as a writer. My questions for these works of art are: Why did they become classics, why have they lived on? And why is modern, popular culture drawing from them?
To help me with my journey, I discovered two great resources, although there are many more out there. One is Nancy Lemann’s Inspired by Literature class at The Writer’s Center. The other is Francine Prose’s book: Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Like One.
I wonder as I begin this journey, or shall I say quest, what other old, but forgotten friends, like Heathcliff, I will meet along the way. And what illustrious places we will revisit together.
About Carollyne Hutter: For over a decade, she has been a freelance writer/editor in the Washington, DC area, specializing in international and environmental topics. Her website— http://www.hutterwriter.com/—will be up soon. Please visit the site to read Carollyne’s stories (including the opening chapters of Homesick), quirky essays, and nonfiction pieces. You can contact her at sayhi@hutterwriter.com.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Member Carollyne Hutter: Teens on my Mind
Writer and instructor Leslie Pietrzyk recently alerted me to one of her workshop participants, WC member Carollyne Hutter, and suggested that a post that Carollyne did for her wonderful blog, Work in Progress, might make a great fit for our Writer's Center blog. I agreed. As I'm coming to discover about Leslie, she knows what she's talking about.
Carollyne has recently written a YA novel. And in this post she discusses the genesis of that project (and beyond). At the end of her post you'll find her bio.
_________________________________________________________
When a baby is born, a parent usually gently rocks her or him and thinks about the road ahead—the baby’s first words, first steps, first day at kindergarten. With misty eyes, the parent will continue rocking peacefully and then freeze with dread: What to do when the baby becomes a teenager? “How will I survive living with a teenager?” the parent anguishes.
A few years ago, a teenager, Brigit, came to live with me, but she didn’t move into my house, she moved into my mind. I was looking out the window, pondering the difference between the U.S. and Germany, when I heard a teenage voice in my head complaining how difficult it was to move between the two countries. I tried to shake the voice out, like water after swimming, but Brigit’s voice kept bubbling up.
A couple of weeks later, I dropped in at the last minute at the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) New York conference. When I went to register, they told me that only a few break-out sessions were available and they put me in teen writing.
Ben Schrank of Razorbill led the teen writing session, talking in a relaxed, conversational tone about writing a young-adult novel (YA). He eased some of my fears of writing a YA, such as how to deal with current teenage jargon (His advice: Don’t bother, by the time the novel comes out, the jargon will be out of date.)
Ben stressed the importance of putting humor in a YA. When he said that I knew I was hooked (I had wanted to use more humor in my writing) and that Brigit and I were going to live together for a while.
So after the conference, I let Brigit unpack and move in with me. I would like to say it all worked fine and it was wonderful having a sarcastic teenager living in my mind, but it wasn’t. Sometimes, I was so annoyed with Brigit—her fixation on clothes and appearance, her obsession with coolness, and her stubbornness were trying. I wrote quickly trying to get her out of my head.
As I wrote, I did come to understand her and feel a real sympathy for her—it’s a big move from Munich, Germany to Madison, Wisconsin. And it is tough being 14, struggling to feel grown-up and yet being dictated by her mother’s world.
When I had a good second draft of Brigit’s story, Homesick, I asked talented fiction writers I know to comment on parts or all of it (Deanna Carlyle, Bonny Becker, Rebecca Flowers, and Leslie). This led to a couple more rounds of revisions.
And then the moment came. I felt the story was ready. I humbly lay the manuscript at the feet of a delightful, but picky 14-year-old girl. I armed her with markers and asked her to comment on what worked and didn’t. Her simple words: “I love it,” when she finished reading the novel were for me the highest praise I could possible ever get.
Now Homesick is done and I am dealing with the publishing process, looking for an agent with whom I mesh. In the meantime, I’ve started on the next book. The other day two voices and two books came into my head. One was Brigit, explaining her story wasn’t done and she needed a sequel.
The other voice was talking about being a teenager and dealing with Washington politics. I wrote up the opening page for this new novel and read it to my mother. There was something strange about this voice. “It’s a boy voice,” my mother said. Oh, no! This is really going to take me into new foreign territories. Can I survive living with a teenage boy in my head?
Carollyne Hutter
About: For over a decade, Carollyne Hutter has been a freelance writer/editor in the Washington, DC area, specializing in international and environmental topics. Her website— http://www.hutterwriter.com/—will be up soon. Please visit the site to read Carollyne’s stories (including the opening chapters of Homesick), quirky essays, and nonfiction pieces. You can contact her at sayhi@hutterwriter.com.
Carollyne has recently written a YA novel. And in this post she discusses the genesis of that project (and beyond). At the end of her post you'll find her bio.
_________________________________________________________
When a baby is born, a parent usually gently rocks her or him and thinks about the road ahead—the baby’s first words, first steps, first day at kindergarten. With misty eyes, the parent will continue rocking peacefully and then freeze with dread: What to do when the baby becomes a teenager? “How will I survive living with a teenager?” the parent anguishes.
A few years ago, a teenager, Brigit, came to live with me, but she didn’t move into my house, she moved into my mind. I was looking out the window, pondering the difference between the U.S. and Germany, when I heard a teenage voice in my head complaining how difficult it was to move between the two countries. I tried to shake the voice out, like water after swimming, but Brigit’s voice kept bubbling up.
A couple of weeks later, I dropped in at the last minute at the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) New York conference. When I went to register, they told me that only a few break-out sessions were available and they put me in teen writing.
Ben Schrank of Razorbill led the teen writing session, talking in a relaxed, conversational tone about writing a young-adult novel (YA). He eased some of my fears of writing a YA, such as how to deal with current teenage jargon (His advice: Don’t bother, by the time the novel comes out, the jargon will be out of date.)
Ben stressed the importance of putting humor in a YA. When he said that I knew I was hooked (I had wanted to use more humor in my writing) and that Brigit and I were going to live together for a while.
So after the conference, I let Brigit unpack and move in with me. I would like to say it all worked fine and it was wonderful having a sarcastic teenager living in my mind, but it wasn’t. Sometimes, I was so annoyed with Brigit—her fixation on clothes and appearance, her obsession with coolness, and her stubbornness were trying. I wrote quickly trying to get her out of my head.
As I wrote, I did come to understand her and feel a real sympathy for her—it’s a big move from Munich, Germany to Madison, Wisconsin. And it is tough being 14, struggling to feel grown-up and yet being dictated by her mother’s world.
When I had a good second draft of Brigit’s story, Homesick, I asked talented fiction writers I know to comment on parts or all of it (Deanna Carlyle, Bonny Becker, Rebecca Flowers, and Leslie). This led to a couple more rounds of revisions.
And then the moment came. I felt the story was ready. I humbly lay the manuscript at the feet of a delightful, but picky 14-year-old girl. I armed her with markers and asked her to comment on what worked and didn’t. Her simple words: “I love it,” when she finished reading the novel were for me the highest praise I could possible ever get.
Now Homesick is done and I am dealing with the publishing process, looking for an agent with whom I mesh. In the meantime, I’ve started on the next book. The other day two voices and two books came into my head. One was Brigit, explaining her story wasn’t done and she needed a sequel.
The other voice was talking about being a teenager and dealing with Washington politics. I wrote up the opening page for this new novel and read it to my mother. There was something strange about this voice. “It’s a boy voice,” my mother said. Oh, no! This is really going to take me into new foreign territories. Can I survive living with a teenage boy in my head?
Carollyne Hutter
About: For over a decade, Carollyne Hutter has been a freelance writer/editor in the Washington, DC area, specializing in international and environmental topics. Her website— http://www.hutterwriter.com/—will be up soon. Please visit the site to read Carollyne’s stories (including the opening chapters of Homesick), quirky essays, and nonfiction pieces. You can contact her at sayhi@hutterwriter.com.
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