Last week, we discussed blurring psychological bounaries. This week, we'll tackle utilizing physical boundaries as conflict at the scene and overall story level.
The concept of physical boundaries ties in with the thematic question of ownership. Do we ever really “own” anything? Characters draw chalk lines and erect fences, warning signs, hedges, and walls to define physical boundaries.
Characters in any genre can argue the fine points of the debate whether they are talking about a desk, a house, a country, a dog, a child, or a partner. Trusts, inheritance entailments, and wills are drawn up to ensure that the ownership of a thing passes down in the desired way.
These often play a part in a Mystery or Thriller, but can be used in any genre. Physical boundary conflicts escalate until a crisis point is reached. These conflicts can be resolved amicably or resolved because only one is left standing. They can result in a new division of territory or someone takes all. Such are the basis for world or interstellar wars.
Skirmishes erupt between neighbors over the borders of their yards and driveways. It can erupt between cities and counties and states and countries. Border wars make great overall story problems and thematic arguments: borders are arbitrary versus borders are necessary. No one should fence in anything versus enforcing borders keeps its residents safe. When countries redraw borders, people get displaced and that makes a terrific thematic argument to explore. Humans are willing to kill over scraps of land, even if the land lacks water, food and clean air. Is every scrap of land worth fighting for? Some would argue yes, others no.
Battles over borders could also serve as a problem at scene level if Dick needs to enter a geographic area to gain something and can’t go there. He may have to find a way in that is subversive or get someone else to go there for him.
Characters get testy when people trespass on what they believe to be theirs, whether they are accurate or not. A character might object if someone else’s children played on his lawn or swam in his pool without permission. The same character might make justifications when his children do it to someone else. Characters get really testy, even violent, over their perceived boundaries. Try trimming someone's prize rose bush and you'll know what I mean.
Arguments over physical boundaries can involve a country’s borders, a contested parking space, a room with a view, or the scope can be narrowed to a very personal boundary. Making Dick confront physical boundaries creates conflicts whether he has to jump over a railroad track or cross into Palestine from Israel.
Use physical boundaries to trip up your protagonist and make his scene goal more difficult.
For more information on these and other obstacles for your fiction, pick up a copy of Story Building Blocks II: Crafting Believable Conflict in print or E-book version.
From Facebook’s purchase of Oculus VR Inc. to the latest medical developments, technology is driving new explorations of the perception, reality, and neuroscience. How do we perceive reality through the sense of touch? Alberto Gallace is a researcher in touch and multisensory integration at the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy, and co-author of In touch with the future: The sense of touch from cognitive neuroscience to virtual reality. We recently spoke to him about touch, personal boundaries, and being human.
Out of all the human senses, touch is the one that is most often unappreciated, and undervalued. When did you first become interested in touch research?
I was in Oxford as a visiting PhD student and working on multisensory integration, in particular on the integration between tactile and visual signals in the brain. Soon I realized that, despite the fact that is a very important sensory modality, there was not much research on touch, and there were not even a lot of instruments to study such sensory modality. I started by working more with engineers and technical workshops then with psychologists and neuroscientists, just because I needed some device to test the sense of touch in a different way as compared to what was done in the past. Touch was mainly studied with reference to haptic object recognition, mostly on visually impaired individuals or in terms of its physiological mechanisms. Many of the most relevant aspects of touch were very little, if not at all, investigated.
We use touch for walking, talking, eating, nearly everything basically. It also plays a major role on our interpersonal relationships, it affects the release of hormones and it contributes to define the boundary of our self.
To my students I often say, where our touch begins, we are. I wanted to understand more of these topics. I wanted to compare touch with other sensory modalities. In doing that I was convinced that research on touch had to get away from the fingertips or hands and extend to the whole body surface. The more I studied this sense, the more I became interested in it. For every question answered there were many more without responses. I like touch a lot because there are many things that still need to be understood about it, and I am a rather curious person, particularly when it comes to science.
What do you think has been the most important development in touch research in the past 100 years?
I am not sure if it’s the most important development, but what I certainly consider important is the recent study of certain neural fibres specialized in transmitting socially-relevant information via the sense of touch. That is, the C tactile afferents in humans, that are strongly activated by ‘caress like’ stimuli, might play an important role in many of our most pleasant social experiences. However, I should also say that my personal way to think about science is much more ‘future oriented’. That is, I believe that the most important developments in touch research are the ones that we will see in the next years. I am really looking forward to reading (or possibly writing) about them.
Why did you decide to research this topic?
Most of the previously published books on touch — there aren’t many, to be honest — were focused on a single topic. Most of them were based on research on visually-impaired individuals, and the large majority of them were authored books, a collections of chapters written by different people, sometimes with a different view. Charles [Spence, University of Oxford] and myself wanted something different, something more comprehensive, something that could help people to understand that touch is involved in many different and relevant aspects of our life. We envisioned a book where the more neuroscientific aspects of touch were addressed together with a number of more applied topics. We wanted something where people could see touch ‘at work’. We talk about the neural bases of touch, tactile perception, tactile attention, tactile memory, tactile consciousness, but also about the role of touch in technology, marketing, virtual reality, food appreciation, and sexual behaviour. Many of these topics have never been considered in a book on touch before.
Philippe Mercier’s The Sense of Touch
What do you see as being the future of research in this field in the next decade?
I think that research in my field, pushed by technological advances, will grow rapidly in the coming years. One of the fields where I see a lot of potential is certainly related to the reproduction of tactile sensations in virtual reality environments. Virtual reality will likely become an important part of our life, maybe not in the next decade, but certainly in a not so distant future. However, if we want to create believable virtual environments we need to understand more of our sense of touch, and in particular how our brain processes tactile information, how different tactile stimulations can lead to certain emotions and behaviours, and how tactile sensations can be virtually reproduced. Following the idea that ‘where our touch begins, we are’, research will certainly invest a lot of resources in trying to better understand the neurocognitive mechanisms responsible for supporting our sense of ‘body ownership’ (the feeling that the body is our own) and how this sense can be transferred to virtual/artificial counterparts of our self. Here research on touch will certainly play a leading role.
If you weren’t doing touch research, what would you be doing?
I think I’d work as a scientist in a different field, but always as a scientist. I am too curious about how nature works to do something different. Since I was twelve I’ve always had a special interest in astronomy and astrophysics and I can easily picture myself working in that field too. Understanding the secrets of black cosmic matter or studying the mysteries of white brain matter? Not sure which would be better. What I am sure about is that I like my job a lot, and I won’t change it with anything else that is not based that much on creativity and curiosity.
Alberto Gallace is a researcher at Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy, and co-author of In touch with the future: The sense of touch from cognitive neuroscience to virtual reality. His research interests include spatial representation, multisensory integration, tactile perception, tactile interfaces, body representation, virtual reality, sensory substitution systems, and neurological rehabilitation of spatial disorders.
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Image credits: (1) Via Catalana Barcelona Plaça Catalunya 37. Photo by Judesba. CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. (2) The Sense of Touch, painting by Philipe Mercier. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
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Cuddling, kissing, and hugging are often signs of affection. They could be signs of aggression if the character receiving the affection doesn't want it.
There are situations in which a character must control involuntary responses, especially if Dick is a spy, a cop, or pretending to be someone he isn’t. If faced with an angry mugger or screaming toddler, Dick's initial primordial response might be recoil. His body might tense to strike. If it is a mugger, he lets the punch fly, unless the mugger is holding a gun pointed at his head. If it is a toddler, Dick overrides the urge to strike and deals with it another way, unless he has poor self-control or the child is demon-possessed.
Every character has a different idea of how close is close enough when speaking to other people. We call it personal space. It's uncomfortable when someone stands too close. It is crossing a psychological boundary.
Some characters are touchy-feely types. An extrovert is more likely to be a hands-on kind of guy. An introvert hates being touched by people he doesn't know very well. A character who has been abused may not want anyone to touch him, no matter the reason, loving or otherwise.
Some families and cultures are big on physical displays of affection, others aren't. A character might hug every one he has ever met upon seeing them again. Others prefer a handshake or a bow. The reasons can be personality, culture, or life experience.
Touch denotes a degree of intimacy. Someone touching Dick's shoulder could mean multiple things: desire, anger, or compassion. Little kids touch more than adults. A toddler is not self-conscious about where his hands land or where his head rests. The elderly can crave touch as much as toddlers. It may be decades since someone has hugged them or held their hand.
Jane might not mind being touched by a lover or best friend. She might object to being handled by a stranger at a party. Friends and family touch Jane to greet her, tease her, get her attention, help her, or hinder her. How comfortable she is with them makes a difference in how well she tolerates it.
Jane may normally love being touched by her husband until she is angry with him. How your character feels affects how she processes the touch and the person touching her.
There are times when someone we don't know very well needs to touch us: massage therapists, hairdressers, doctors, nurses, medical personnel, rescue personnel, etc. A teacher may have to touch a child to direct him. A guard may have to touch Jane to direct her. It may make the character very uncomfortable. Children involved in sports are used to being tackled, patted, or punched by teammates. Others aren't.
Characters that are deceptive, don't like themselves, or are ashamed of something may avoid touch. They are uncomfortable when someone approaches them, pats them on the back, or moves in for a hug. Pedophiles touch inappropriately.
When a person touches Jane and it feels off, it sends a frisson of alarm through her system. Depending on the circumstances, Jane may subconsciously recoil, but consciously blow it off and make excuses for it. However, her subconscious remains on high alert until the danger has passed.
When describing touch in your fiction, make sure it is appropriate for the circumstances.
Make sure you tell the reader how the character feels about being touched. Is it a good thing or a bad thing?
What kind of caress, hug, or handshake was it?
Is Jane’s instinctive response to pull away when she knows she has to endure the hug?
These small conflicts illustrate character, reveal relationships, and make characters very uncomfortable at scene level.
Touch ignites an involuntary response, followed by a voluntary response, followed by a recovery. Illustrate the beats during critical encounters. The how and why are important. Was the touch appropriate or inappropriate? Tolerated or defended? Welcome or unwelcome?
Next we will discuss facial expressions.
First off, I hoped you enjoyed Animal Communication Month and I want to thank all my fabulous guests who talked of their passion regarding animal communication. Each are wonderful women who have some very important teachings to share.
It’s been a crazy last few months, and quite honestly, I’ve been hesitant to share my thoughts here as I had felt my space was invaded. That’s a yucky place to be in and I am claiming it back. And with this claiming, I want to share what I’ve learned lately. Perhaps, you can relate, and then we can all support each other.
It’s not your shit*
1. Other people’s shit is their shit. Okay, this one is hard to deal with. When someone acts a certain way, I guarantee it’s their own story going round and round in their head that may have nothing to do with you at all. With one of my relatives, I had this amazing shift when I realized I had a long-standing reaction taking things personally, which HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH ME. It WAS my shit of why I took it personally. When I realized what my shit was, after a lot of learning and figuring things out, I gained some understanding and some real peace, and I didn’t react so strongly. I was able to detach, step back and see this. So, basically, we react to others when it’s really our own shit. Unless, of course, someone is just being a shit towards us, then we are reacting to that.
Beware Impossible Mountains
2. There’s many ways to climb a mountain. That means if you are sensitive and hate crowds, don’t think the only way to go out and teach is to lecture to large groups, and it’s the only way for you to be successful. If you hate doing networking luncheons, then network one-on-one through social media that’s more comfortable for you. I had a beautiful writer friend years ago who wrote children’s books. She was truly gifted with words. But the one thing that stopped her in her tracks of being truly successful was she didn’t want to do book signings. She was dreadfully shy and this was the kiss of death for her. Because of this, she didn’t pursue publishing her own children’s books to avoid that fate.
I had a similar experience when I starred in a television show years ago. I knew then I wanted to write and publish a book. I was told, that’s not how it works. “You have to BE somebody first.” I am a stubborn mule. That was too big a mountain to climb. I published my book anyway and I’m glad I did.
Is this the result I want?
3. We need to ask ourselves are my actions or behaviors giving me what I want? If I want connection, healing, resolve, love, understanding, is how I am acting bringing that about or is it bringing others further away from me? If you don’t feel heard, kindly ask someone to listen. If you are angry, let it out in a healthy way. If you need answers, go do some research and ask questions. Cruel/nasty/mean/angry result = cruel/nasty/mean/angry. Hate feeds hate. It’s a lose-lose situation, always. I’ll never forget my Verizon phone company interaction. The first customer service rep was nasty towards me, so I got nasty. The second rep heard and understood me; validating my feelings. I softened and the interaction changed. There was a healthy resolve.
The hokey-pokey is not what it’s all about
4. I think we all just want to be loved and to love. Love and connection is what it is all about. A world without real, honest connection is one scary, dark, lonely place. Dogs are the greatest teacher of love. It’s hard to not feel loved when a giant puppy is licking your face. Now unconditional love is their majors in life and they have so much to teach us. It’s harder as humans a great deal of time to love like that but we are learning. And we also do need to look at what unconditional love is. It’s not allowing cruelty, especially towards ourselves.
You have every right to keep out what doesn’t feel safe
5. As sensitive people, a great deal of us didn’t learn this. We didn’t know how to create boundaries. We felt we weren’t allowed to. But this is a big one. And you can leave situations that don’t feel safe and people who don’t hear you, or at least create boundaries around those. Lots of times folks write me here asking about spirits that bother them or scary situations, and it’s the same with living people. I used to walk the girls pass one house on my street with two dogs that had no fence. The one dog was a loving, loopy kind of being who in her enthusiasm knocked over elderly Sarah. I didn’t appreciate that nor did Sarah. The other dog, a puppy, was aggressive. She’d zip into the street and bare teeth at Emma. After two times of this, I had a long scream at the dog, which I’m sure the whole neighborhood heard. “No! Unacceptable!” I told her. And the puppy ran back into her house. I then had a long talk with her person. We have a right not to be bullied in our environment. My one friend has a very sweet angel group online. She’s a gentle, kind creature whose whole purpose in life is to help others. She was recently attacked cruelly on her own site by a man who didn’t believe in what she did. He clearly needed to go somewhere else then, where he belonged, but she had every right to block him from that group. And if you are in an environment that doesn’t keep you safe, doesn’t respect the rights or well-being of its members, get out of that environment. It won’t change.
And finally, avoid what feels like an uphill climb
Sometimes, we do need to fight a good fight and keep going. We may be fighting an injustice or we don’t want to give up on our talents, and shouldn’t. But there are other times we are straining, trying, putting out a lot of energy, and it means we are going against the current made for us. We aren’t getting enough support either to help us or to back what we are doing. This causes such a strong fatigue that fills your bones. Believe me, I know. Those are the times to step back and regroup. Follow what does give you energy and where there is support. That’s your bread crumbs for the new direction. Oh, and learn from me. Drowning in resentment over lack of support, really, really doesn’t work. Don’t get stuck there.
Can you relate to these? What have you been learning?
*apologies to those who don’t appreciate cursing or the word “shit,” as I am originally from Jersey and we all learn that word while learning how to drive and that word is perfect for what I am describing
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And speaking of support, if this writing post has helped you, consider buying my HELP I’M SENSITIVE book, or FAIRY ONLINE SCHOOL written classes. I am also busy completing the sequels to that book. Keep posted on developments, by SUBSCRIBING TO THIS SITE.
I returned last night from an exhausting and EXHILARATING writer’s conference in Dallas.
One session I attended was called “Live Free. Write Free.” I came away from that session knowing what I had to do.
Respecting Property Lines
You can read books about setting boundaries. You can preach boundary setting to others. (I do that very well.)
But unless you are willing to do the hard (and often unpopular) work of setting and enforcing boundaries, it’s all for naught.
Biting the Bullet
I got very encouraging news from a couple of editors at the conference, and I came home with lots of work to do. But I also knew that until I set one particular boundary (on myself first, and then with another party), I would never have the mental energy I needed to complete the projects I had promised.
So I did it. I spoke up and set necessary boundaries. And now I’m ready to “write free.”
And because of the post-conference, adrenaline-letdown exhaustion, I am going to re-run an article now. “Finding Energy to Pursue Goals” deals in more detail with the subject of boundary setting to protect your writing energy.
Go for it!
Boundaries can be geographical, social, psychological or physical. No one likes having their boundaries violated. Cross them and you create conflict. This post will address psychological boundaries: the lines that are drawn that separate one person from another. Blur these lines and things get messy fast.
Characters adopt behaviors, coping mechanisms, verbal warnings and body language to defend psychological boundaries. Psychological boundary violations are often very subtle and complicate relationships between protagonists and antagonists, siblings, lovers, parents, children, friends, coworkers and teammates.
Relationships are supposed to bring people together. In healthy relationships, boundaries are flexible. We grow and adapt to allow the other person in, but keep the self intact. We give in only so much and will only go so far. We allow the other person into our personal space. We allow them to touch us. We give them access to our deepest thoughts and feelings. If someone uses that access to harm us, it is betrayal of the highest order.
Most of your characters would be hard-pressed to vocalize what their boundaries are, but feel violations all the way to their core. Boundary violations can inspire heated arguments, divorces, revenge plots and serve as motive for murder.
A woman who tries to get too close too fast will unsettle Bob. He will either decide that she is up to something or that she is emotionally unstable. If he is at first flattered by the attention, he will soon realize that he should have been more wary. Such is the stuff of many a horror story. Romances thrive on love at first sight and sex with a stranger, but that is rushing intimacy. In real life this scenario typically does not end well. That level of intimacy implies connections that haven't been formed yet. It is forcing a character to trust someone they don't know with their health and welfare. It is a boundary violation that runs rampant throughout modern fiction. It's also a plot hole, especially when it happens because "the script calls for it."
A character who offers too much personal information too soon will make Bob suspicious. This is effective as a plot complication. However, if a character enters the story and shares way too much personal information for no reason apart from delivering information, it becomes a plot hole. Readers will be irritated by it, unless they relate to the situation because their own boundaries are fuzzy.
Readers sense boundary violations in your story. They won't necessarily stop reading to shout, "Their boundaries are off!" Rather, they stop reading because they don't like the characters or think the plants and payoffs aren't realistic. I have tossed several books aside because the protagonist fell on either extreme end of the unhealthy boundary spectrum. This is often true in Thrillers where the protagonist runs around shooting people in a display of badass. Protagonists without conscience don't feel particularly heroic to the reader. They may still root for him
This blog goes out to all the girls who've experienced girl on girl crime. I've been seeing more and more of it at younger and younger ages, and I have to ask myself, why? Why are we girls so cruel to one another?
For all of the progress women have made over the last one hundred years, why is it we are still our own worst enemies? Why do we pick on each other so mercilessly?
It's been getting to me lately because not only family members but also close friends of my daughters have been the object of girl-on-girl crime. I'm not sure what one children's author/mom/ aunt/friend can do about it, but maybe if I share my story, it will help other girls to share theirs.
When I was in 7th grade, for reasons I still don't understand, a 6th grader started picking on me. Go figure. A kid a year younger than me. She lived in my neighborhood. We went to the same school. Sometimes, we'd play like great friends. And other times, she'd needle me mercilessly. My father, pacifist male that he is, suggested I sock her one. Don't you love old-school parenting? I couldn't quite work myself up to decking her, even though every time she'd start needling me, it felt like she was socking me one.
The whole situation came to a head when my family was moving. Huge change. My parents were out of town looking for a house. Said kid and I were playing together in the snow. When we were both heading back to our houses, she started needling me again. I tried to turn a deaf ear, i.e. my back, and walk away. She pounced from behind, shoving me down in the snow.
I don't know why that day was different. I don't know why my cup finally overflowed. But I sprang to my feet finally ready to deck her. Yep. Not a proud moment. But empowering. I whirled around and the look that was on my face must have been insane seventh grader crazy. She turned and ran like there was no tomorrow. Better still, she never needled me again. And I never had to sock her one after all.
So, is the moral of the story girls should learn to box? Well...I think what happened that day was bigger than boxing. I finally stood up for myself. I established my boundaries. When I did, the bully realized she couldn't bully me anymore and stopped.
How girls establish boundaries without getting into fisticuffs, though? It's a hard thing to do. To be self-confident when hormone-world is like a roller coaster of craziness inside you. When you feel ugly even though your parents tell you you're pretty. When you sure you don't have the right clothes. The right look. The right anything. It's hard.
But it's possible. Because we girls really are strong on the inside. And we all do have boundaries. They're sacred things, those boundaries are. They are worth sticking up for. In sticking up for them, for ourselves, we become even stronger and more self-confident, and the bullies can't touch that.
So here's a shout out to all girls today. You are strong. You are special. You can do it!!!!!!!!!
And if you want to read about great techniques for sticking up for yourself, try,
Queen Bees and Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman. No socking required!
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By:
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on 6/9/2010
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We hear a lot about setting writing goals. Do any of you have secret thoughts like these? Setting goals is great, but I don’t have the energy to pursue them or I’m already so exhausted that I can’t add one more thing to my life—even something I love.
Is that you? Then you’ve come to the right place.
Plug the Drains
Years ago I had a car that guzzled oil. I added a quart every Monday, but by Saturday the oil light was back on. It did no good to add oil without fixing the leak. The same holds true for your energy level. You can set goals, shore up your willpower, and grit your teeth, but you won’t have any more get-up-and-go until you plug your energy leaks.
We usually lose energy in two ways: enduring annoying or toxic behaviors in other people, and tolerating conduct in ourselves that is harmful (overeating, no exercise, over-due bills, or keeping a cluttered office.) One essential skill is learning how to set boundaries on yourself, such as: no sugar or caffeine before 5 p.m., bedtime by 10 p.m., straighten your desk when you quit work for the day, or pay bills the day they arrive.
You can also set and enforce boundaries with people who steal your energy. Limit your availability, for instance. If you have a cell phone, give the number only to those who really must have it. Your cell phone is to serve you—not the rest of the world. Other people can also drain us with their foul moods, irritating habits, and constant crises demanding our attention.
Learn to set boundaries in these situations; keep your energy inside (where it is useful) instead of spilling out on other people. Believe it or not, family members and friends can be expected to “fix” their own bad moods and self-created crises. (Memorize this: Lack of planning on their part does not constitute an emergency on my part.) If you need help with this essential relationship skill, read Boundaries by Henry Cloud and John Townsend.
Remember: the goal is to find more energy for your writing. You must plug the unnecessary energy drains first. Then you’ll be ready to recover your ability to function with ease.
Get in Shape
You’ll be tempted to skip this step, but I hope you won’t. It’s far more important than most writers realize. Just like you need to maintain your car (oil, spark plugs, belts, brakes) if you expect it to run smoothly, you need to maintain a healthy body if you expect to write in flow, enjoy your work, and be productive.
Are you health conscious? “I watch what I put into my body—no alcohol, drugs, caffeine,” says Sophy Burnham in For Writers Only. “I have become so sensitive to my body’s claims that now I actually often eat when hungry (imagine!), stop and lie down when tired. It has taken me years to learn to listen for those two simple demands, knowing that I write better when the machinery’s warmed up, oiled, clean.”
We all write better in that state. I encourage you to take a “health inventory” right now—and do whatever is necessary to turn you into a lean, clean writing machine.
Create Energy!
After you’ve plugged the leaks and kicked your health up a notch, it’s time to actually create energy instead of wasting it. If you have set (and enforced) boundaries on yourself and others, you’re no longer tied to energy-draining habits and situations. This should
By:
Kristi Holl,
on 5/19/2010
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A few weeks ago in “Find a Need and Fill It” I asked for your input concerning the topics you find most helpful in this blog.
Thank you all for the responses! It’s been very helpful. The requests fell into three main categories. Since I blog on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, that made it easy for me. From now on, this will be my general blogging schedule so that I can cover each topic area regularly.
What You Can Expect
Monday = Inner Motivation (includes:)
- fears–all kinds!
- discipline
- focus
- goals
- rejection
- lack of motivation
- encouragement
- a writer’s dream life
- procrastination
- working with our “inner editor”
- enjoying writing more
- perseverance
- creative inspiration
- writer’s block
Wednesday = Outer Challenges (includes:)
- setting boundaries
- time management
- distractions
- discipline
- writing schedules
- goal setting
- balancing writing with chaos in life
- balancing day jobs with writing
- our writing needs (vs. “their” needs)
- self-defeating behaviors
Friday = Tips ‘n’ Tricks of the Trade (includes:)
- specific genre help
- writing books I’ve found helpful
- blogs I find useful
- classes I’ve taken
- voice (writer’s and character’s)
- critique groups
- conferences
- working with publishers
- marketing–all kinds
- considering the audience when writing
- dealing with publishers who don’t respond
- finding good markets
- developing depth in writing
- selling “unique” pieces instead of jumping on the bandwagon
Thanks for Your Input
All your feedback has been immensely helpful in organizing future blog posts and making sure I cover topics you want to hear about and find useful. If I missed anything on these lists, feel free to let me know!
By:
Kristi Holl,
on 3/12/2010
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If you answered the list of questions Wednesday about “Where’s My Time Go?”, you may see now that other people’s expectations have taken over your writing time. It’s a common occurrence.
Once you’ve completed your commitments, you need a way to avoid becoming trapped again.
Time-Saving Policies
After you’ve spotted some of your weakest areas, develop policies to cover future requests. For some reason, stating that you have a “policy” about certain things carries more weight with people. Target the areas where you have the most trouble setting boundaries. Some “company policies” might include:
*I have a policy about home business parties. I don’t attend them, and I don’t give them.
*I have a policy that includes no drop-in baby-sitting. I need a minimum of 48 hours notice.
*My policy states that I don’t commit to any event more than (X) months away. (Fill in your personal limit.)
*I choose to help with one party each year at my child’s school. That’s my class contribution, so what party would you like me to help with?
*My policy states that I charge $5 for each ten minutes that parents are late picking up their kids from my day care.
Under-Promise
Sometimes our commitments get out of hand because we want to do such an excellent job everywhere. So learn to under-promise, and later you can over-deliver if you have extra time.
For example, instead of volunteering to help at school the entire day, say you can come and read for one hour. If it turns out that you have extra time when the day rolls around, you can use the time to write or you can “over-deliver” on your promise and stay two hours. You’ll earn a reputation as someone who delivers even more than promised—and yet you’ll have saved time for yourself.
Time Credit Cards
Some of us (I’m guilty!) promise to do things months and months in advance when our calendars are still pristine white. Then six months later, when the event rolls around, our calendars are more jammed than we had anticipated; we regret that we ever agreed to that event or favor.
Too often we commit future time that we believe we’ll have, only to be caught up short later (like a credit card junkie who charges now and is just sure he’ll have the cash to pay it off later.)
Stop charging your time ahead! Cut up your time credit cards. Pay off whatever “time debt” you’ve accumulated at this point, but don’t charge anymore.
If people want you to commit to some volunteer thing more than a month away, simply say, “I don’t commit to things so far ahead. If you want to call me back in (X) months, I will be able to give you an answer then.” At that point, you’ll have a realistic idea of what your month’s schedule looks like.
If you are pressed for an answer (”I need to know now!”), then regretfully tell people that the answer will have to be “no.” (Given that choice, people will wait.)
E-mail and Web Surfing
Limit your Internet time to two periods per day, before and after your work day. Keep it short. Answer crucial e-mail, but skip all the forwarded jokes and poignant stories till later. Unsubscribe from all but the best two or three e-newsletters you receive. Delete the junk without reading it and then close down. According to current workplace statistics, conquering e-mail/surfing addiction can save you a full two or three hours per day.
Assignment: Where is your time going? Do you know? Keep track for a few weeks and be sure. Then begin to implement whatever policies you need in order to safeguar
By:
Kristi Holl,
on 3/10/2010
Blog:
Writers First Aid
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Do you feel as if you’re forever running to catch up and keep up? Is finding any time at all to write a challenge for you? If so, you’ll need to simplify your life—choose what really matters—and slow your pace.
But HOW?
Reflective Thinking
With all the noise of modern life and the frantic running around, we have little chance to hear the inner whispers and feel the nudges that try to warn us. “Hold on—this isn’t right” or “You really don’t want to do this.”
Sometimes life gives you the gift of stopping you in your tracks. That happened to me a couple years ago when I ran a fever for eight days and ended up with many sleepless nights to think. I took stock of my rat-face, anything-but-serene lifestyle, and I asked myself some hard questions. If you also want to get off the merry-go-round, take a note pad and jot the answers to these questions pertaining to your own life.
*Why is my life as busy as it is?
*Why have I chosen to commit to so many things?
*What are the costs to me right now of living like this? What are the future costs?
*What tasks/meetings/jobs are no longer necessary? (Only one out of my four cancelled appointments that week needed to be rescheduled. The others, it turned out, weren’t that important.)
*Which activities are things other people thought I should do?
*Which volunteer positions do I no longer enjoy?
*Which professional organizations no longer meet my needs and can be dropped?
This time of reflection was so very profitable. It enabled me to spot three big changes I could make, immediately freeing up about fifteen hours per month.
Should I? Shouldn’t I?
Is your life run according to shoulds (your own or other people’s?) When asked to run a concession stand at your child’s school or attend a make-up or clothing party, do you agree because you feel you should, rather than because you have a real desire to do it? Do you even take time to make a thoughtful decision, or does the should rule?
In a sermon entitled “The Unhurried Life,” the pastor reminded us that “NO is a complete sentence.” In other words, sometimes you can just say no. Or “I’m sorry, but I can’t.” Period. Don’t let people guilt you into doing things you just don’t want to do.
Reassess the value of your time. Is it really more important that you do the volunteer newsletter for your neighborhood association—or that you put that time toward your writing dream? None of us likes to have people mad at us. On the other hand, it may be a price worth paying in order to have a fighting chance to realize your dreams.
By:
Kristi Holl,
on 2/10/2010
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According to the National Science Foundation, the average person has about 12,000 thoughts per day, or 4.4 million thoughts per year.
I wager that writers are well above the average because we read more and writing causes us to think more than the average.
Who’s In Charge?
I had known for a long time that our thoughts affect our emotions, and that toxic “stinking thinking” could derail our writing dreams and health faster than almost anything. You are the only one who can decide whether to reject or accept a thought, which thoughts to dwell on, and which thoughts will become actions.
But sometimes–a lot of the time–I felt powerless to actually do anything about it on a consistent basis. Sometimes I simply felt unfocused and overwhelmed.
Need a Brain Detox?
I’ve been reading a “scientific brain studies” book for non-science types like me called Who Switched Off My Brain? by Dr. Caroline Leaf Ph.D. which has fascinated me. With scientific studies to back it up, it shows that thoughts are measurable and actually occupy mental “real estate.” Thoughts are active; they grow and change, influencing every decision we make and physical reaction we have.
“Every time you have a thought, it is actively changing your brain and your body–for better or for worse.” The author talks about the “Dirty Dozen”–which can be as harmful as poison in our minds and our bodies.
Killing Our Creativity
Among this dozen deadly areas of toxic thinking are toxic emotions, toxic words, toxic seriousness, toxic health, and toxic schedules.
If you want to delve into the 350+ scientific references and pages of end notes in the back of the book, you can look up the studies. But basically it targets the twelve toxic areas of our lives that produce 80% of the physical, emotional and mental health issues today. And trust me. Those issues have a great deal to do with you achieving your goals and dreams.
There Is Hope!
According to Dr. Leaf, scientists no longer believe that the brain is hardwired from birth with a fixed destiny to wear out with age, a fate predetermined by our genes. Instead there is scientific proof now for what the Bible has always taught: you can renew your minds and heal. Your brain really can change!
Old brain patterns can be altered, and new patterns can be implemented. 
In the coming days, I’ll share some more about the author’s ”Brain Sweep” five-step strategy for detoxing your thoughts associated with the “dirty dozen.”
But right now I’m going to read about the symptoms of a toxic schedule. I have a suspicion…
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I travelled and sing through your drawing (until the end of the page = the only border), through your borderless landscape, enjoying every single step . Amazed and astonished I wished this journey will never end . Well, the page is ending but this picture (and the story) are now being “saved” on my build-in HD in my head to be sure I will keep this image save for long time. Very good work, thanks for sharing.
viewing your page was like free falling, beautiful experience. liked your style
O, this is so beautiful! I love your boundless creatures, they are so happy and innocent. I’m glad I see Mi sitting very comfortable on his cloud with his fishing rod. Then, in the end, the little girl and the blabladaddy makes me sad. There allways will be a boundary left…