Last Saturday I attended a workshop offered by Cynthia Morris through the Rocky Mountain Chapter of SCBWI. The focus was on creating a vision of success and then mapping out the immediate goals to use as stair steps to reach that vision. While I didn’t feel a great need for the goal-setting reminders, since I’m intensely focused right now on revising my manuscript, I still got a lot out of the workshop.

I attended to reconnect with some of the people in the network that Cynthia calls my “creative tribe.” I have several, overlapping, smaller tribes, but by far the biggest network of writers I’ve come to know and love and trust are children’s writers associated with RMC-SCBWI. Some live nearby and I don’t see them nearly often enough, so I was glad to have the chance to catch up, even a little.

Of the exercises and pearls of wisdom that Cynthia offered, I found two to be incredibly helpful. One was to write a letter to myself from my muse. I’m on very good terms with my muse, having shown up at the page faithfully every day for about 8 1/2 years. I show up, my muse shows up. Especially for first drafts, which sometimes flow through me as if I’m just taking dictation. So my letter offered affirmation of the mutual respect I have with my muse.

Revisions can be harder for me, which leads to the other jewel Cynthia dropped in my lap. “The creative process can be uncomfortable.” It looks so simple as I type it, but I needed to hear it. I’d been struggling with a particular revision in my book, trying to address a problem that members of my critique group, the Wild Folk of the West, had pointed out. I figured out how to work it, for the most part, but writing it made me squirm. I liked the version I already had, but could see the validity of the critique. I wrestled with it. I let it roam around in my subconscious. I wrote the new scene, not at all sure it would work. I questioned whether it fit, since the writing of it made me so uncomfortable.

After hearing Cynthia, I took to heart the premise that the creation itself can be uncomfortable. That emotion doesn’t mean the new version won’t work. In fact, as I know from my daily writing practice where sometimes the muse is sleepy and sometimes she’s on fire, a new reader probably won’t be able to tell which parts were uncomfortable and which parts flowed. That’s the magic of the process.