In the aftermath of the latest vehicle-ramming attack, this time in Toronto, I’ve been feeling a little more agitated and hyper-vigilant. Thank goodness, no one I know was injured or killed. Still, my brain can’t seem to fully let go of the horror. Most likely my reaction has a lot to do with post-traumatic stress disorder, a result of my own traumatic experience fifteen years ago, when an older driver confused the gas pedal for the brake and rocketed through the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market , striking dozens of pedestrians. Ten died; I was one of the survivors.  So, of course, each time I hear of yet another vehicle-ramming attack, my brain and body is yanked back fifteen years. And I can’t help but still feel the fear storm through all those who had been walking through Toronto’s north end when twenty-five-year-old Alek Minassian intentionally sped down a busy street in a rented van. I still taste the blood, hear the screams, hear the sounds of crushing glass and metal. For those who witnessed the attack – bystanders, rescue workers, family and friends of the victims – they too are likely suffering from PTSD symptoms. And imagine the grief stricken faces of the loved ones of the injured and dead when they received that unthinkable phone call, or saw the carnage unfolding on television.

For anyone who has survived, or witnessed (first hand or in the media) trauma of this kind – a car crash, terrorist attack, mass shooting – don’t be surprised if this latest tragedy has left you a little more overprotective of your children, fearful of crowds, or hype-aware of your surroundings each time you go for a walk. And maybe you’re experiencing a resurgence of nightmares. Though don’t be surprised if you’re experiencing hypo-arousal: numbed out and not present in the world around you. This kind of trauma rocks us at the core, gnaws into our sense of safety, cracks in half any sense of predictability.

For some, PTSD symptoms naturally resolve; for others it lingers. Studies have shown that up to five days after the 911 attacks, 44% of Americans noted at least one symptom of PTSD. Two to four months later, 11% of NYC residents reported persistent symptoms.

No matter how your PTSD symptoms present themselves, they are real, very real. So, please, talk to your family, your friends, your neighbors, to clergy, social workers, educators, to anyone who will listen.

Because

You

Deserve

To be heard

You

 Deserve

To be

Understood

Do you suffer from imposter syndrome, the belief that you’re not really a writer, a photographer, an inspirational speaker? And how often to you hear people say, “Just get over it” or “Stop feeling bad for yourself.” Do those responses make you want to scratch someone’s eyes out? Well, if so, you’re not alone. I get it, believe me. But that doesn’t mean self-doubt should be running your brain’s control tower. While I told myself this day after day, over too many years to count, I continued to let self-doubt into my mind’s home. Self-doubt followed me into the bedroom each night, into the kitchen while I waited for the teakettle to come to a boil, and sat next to me at the dinner table, at my desk.

But I recently kicked self-doubt out of my home, and double-locked the door, just in case it tries to break in with the slip of a credit card. I admit, though, I needed a lot of extra emotional muscle to help me follow-through with the eviction. The name behind the muscle is motivational powerhouse, best selling author, and award winning CNN commentator Mel Robbins. A writing peer introduced me to her work, and when I learned that she ran an online class called “How to break the habit of self-doubt and build confidence” I knew I had to sign up. I recently finished the last session (there are a total of 16), and I’m still energized by what I learned, by how much Mel’s class has changed how I think about myself. Believe me, if you take her class, I swear you’ll become a Mel addict.

Mel is honest from the get go, and shares her own difficulties with self-doubt and anxiety. At one point it became so debilitating for her she struggled to get out of bed most mornings. Finally, she came up with what she calls the “5 second rule.” From the moment she talked about her “5 second rule” as a solution to halt the self-doubt loop that plays like a skipping record through our brains, I was hooked. All you have to do is say “5-4-3-2-1” each time your mind is attacked by self-doubt, procrastination, anxious thoughts, worries. So if you can’t seem to drag yourself out of bed in the morning say, “5-4-3-2-1. Get up.” Say it every single morning. Say it each time you hesitate to send that email you’ve been wanting to send to your boss or friend or family member. Say “5-4-3-2-1” then get your butt in the chair, and write for five minutes (Mel quotes research that says most people will continue what they are working on for much longer; it’s the initiation part that slows us down.)

Along with her “5 second” solution to self-doubt, she has a lot more to offer, much of it backed my science: the traps that make us question ourselves, the connection between self-doubt, worry, and anxiety, the five steps toward self-confidence, and how to reframe anxiety into excitement. If finances are tight for you, no worries, you can meet Mel on YouTube  and watch some of her sessions on self-doubt for free. So no justifications, no saying “It won’t work for me” or “I don’t have time.”

One more thing from Mel: “No phone in your bedroom.” Why? Because she wants you to “engage in behaviors that put you in control of your thoughts.” When the phone is next to your bed, what is the first thing you’re going to do when you wake up? Look at your phone. “You’re dreams are not on your phone,” she says. “You’re priorities are not not on your phone. It’s other people’s garbage.”

If hard statistics are what you need to convince you to put the phone away, here it is: The average worker spends 6.3 hours a day on emails. According to a Time Magazine article, Americans collectively check their smart phones as much as 8 billion times a day. On average, individuals check their phones 46 times a day.

Let’s do this together: Put the phone away. Here, I’ll count with you: 5-4-3-2-1. Do it!

Do you let the mess surrounding you get in the way of your writing time? Maybe you see the dirty dishes in the sink and say, “I should wash those first before I sit down to write.” Or maybe the dirty laundry has piled up, and you can’t seem to let it be until after you write. Sound familiar? You’re not alone; we’re all prone to distraction. It must be in the water, or more likely on social media – the distraction devil – because I can’t tell you how many of my writing peers tell me that they must do this or that before they write. I admire those writers who get up at five in the morning, grab a cup of coffee then head directly for the chair. How do they do it? What’s in their water? Really, no amount of magic water will lure you to your writing chair (sorry if you thought this is where I was going – toward the water). But I do have an antidote to the distraction devil squatting in your head, and it’s better than even the cleanest, sweetest glass of water. I’ve taken the antidote myself, and I’m still here to talk about it. And I’m still writing. Here it is: 27 Wild Days. For more than 25 years, Laurie Wagner – writing teacher, writing coach, author of 7 books, mixed-media artist, and more – has used 27 Wild Days to help others “get to the heart of what they want to write about.” So what exactly is 27 Wild Days?

With 27 Wild Days, Laurie emails interested writers a series of brief videos every day for 27 days. In each video, she shares aspects of the writing practice that has served her for more than two decades. She then reads a poem, twice, and offers a prompt from that poem as a way to help you get your pen moving. She recommends writing for 12-15 minutes (I find 15 minutes works best, since it takes me a minute or two to get into a writing groove). That’s it! Fifteen minutes. Imagine 15 minutes every day for 27 days. That’s 405 minutes (feel free to check my math). During each fifteen-minute session, if you write three pages, (for me that’s seven-by-ten inch notebook pages, which equals a total of 362 words. Yes, I counted.), by the end of the 27 days you’ll have 9,774 words: an essay, 1/8th of a memoir, 1/6th of a novella.

Of course, life does get in the way, sometimes more than we’d like, so if you miss a day of Wild Writing, you can save the video for another time. It’s happened to me: I’m currently six days behind, but those videos are still in my inbox, labeled “Unread” so I can easily find them. The completed videos I save in a separate folder in my email account, waiting to rescue me from future bouts of writer’s block.

So, if you’re feeling stuck in your writing, or don’t know what to write about next, or think you have nothing to write about (not true, by the way), or you’re like me and find it hard to close your mind’s door on the “you-can-find-a-better-word” judge, try 27 Wild Days (it’s only $49). It’s freeing. It allows you to be intuitive, to let yourself go, write words that don’t make any sense, to get a little lost, to be stupid on the page.

That’s it. Now, as Cheryl Strayed would advise: “Write like a motherfucker.”

There’s less than a week remaining in January, which, for me anyway, means it’s still the New Year. Which means we’re still within the 2018-goal-setting window, if there’s such a window at all. When speaking of goals here, I mean writing goals. (I’m a writer, so what other goals are there to ponder?)

As 2017 came to a close, I thought long and hard about my goals for 2018: a large writing project to revise, essays to complete and submit to literary journals, and agents/publishers to whom to pitch my memoir.

Ten days before the New Year, when I was thinking about how to hone in on manageable, realistic writing goals, an email from Brevity, a journal of concise literary nonfiction, popped-up in my inbox. I clicked open the email, and there it was, the post that could not have come at a better time. In “The Year of the Writer,” Allison Williams starts out by first encouraging us to celebrate even our tiniest 2017 writing accomplishments. Maybe it’s a sentence you’re proud of, the essay you finally sent to a dream literary journal, the positive feedback you received from your writing group, or the rejection letter from an editor who took the time to offer specific suggestions and asked you to re-submit in the future. Allison’s mindful nudge for us to recognize each of our writing accomplishments, while examining what worked and didn’t work, was grounding for me. It gave me permission to pause, to take my time to mine the ever-growing list of writing goals I continue to compile and house in a somewhat large file on my computer’s desktop.

So how did I hone in on my 2018 writing goals? I listened to Allison and focused on the classic SMART formula: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timely. As Allison cautioned, I was careful to not set too many goals, and took into consideration my emotional/mental idiosyncrasies. (I become anxious when I have too much ahead of me, and end up spending more time thinking about how I wish I weren’t so anxious than getting as much work accomplished as I’d like.)

Here’s what I came up with (except for goal #1, the deadlines are self-imposed):

1) Apply for the 2018 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Middlebury, Vermont. Deadline February 15, 2018.

2) Submit fifty query letters to agents by the end of March, which is in addition to the 125 I sent in 2017.

3) Each week, revise two chapters of a draft of a novel I wrote two years ago.

4) Revise an essay rejected by a mainstream newspaper, then submit to other publications. Deadline February 10, 2018.

5) Complete an essay about processing forgiveness and submit to literary journals. Deadline: still thinking about it.

6) Collect ideas/thoughts/questions regarding the structure of my next memoir. Deadline: March 1 2018.

Since I do well with visual reminders of things I need/want to accomplish, I typed my writing-goal list, printed it out, and taped it to the inside front cover of my 2018 date book. That way, when my mind gets over-excited about other writing projects, I have that list readily available to remind me, “Melissa, stay focused. Of course, if something else comes up that’s worthy of veering off my writing-goal course, like an offer from an agent to represent my memoir, who then quickly sells it to, say, Random House, and I’m too busy traveling for my book tour to complete those two essays or work on my novel, then I’m all good, really, really good.

So far, I’m ahead when it comes to goal #1: I hit the send button on January 6. Now I just have to wait until May to hear back from Bread Loaf. I’ve taken a small bite out of goal #2: six queries sent – forty-six remaining. As for goal #3, I begin the revisions of my novel during a five-day retreat in Point Reyes, California – what I call the kickoff event to making my next large project the best that it can be. Goal #4: I’m happy to share that I’m deep into revisions of the essay, and feel good about meeting my February 10 deadline. Goal #5: Well, there’s a reason why I didn’t set a deadline: I only recently started the first draft of this essay, and still need to think about a realistic time frame. For some reason (one of my idiosyncrasies), once I set a date, I feel as if I can’t change it. So I need to be sure before putting it out there in black and white. Goal #6: I’ve come out ahead here too; I’ve already decided on the structure of my second memoir, and have even written the first and last sentences of the book!

What writing-life experiences from 2017 have helped you to formulate your 2018 goals? What are your writing goals for 2018? How do you navigate distractions, keep your butt in the chair, keep your eyes on the page and your fingers on the keyboard?

My essay, “Reaching for the Keys,” about my experience taking the car keys away from my Alzheimer’s-afflicted father, is now available on audio. A huge thank you goes out to Sarah Cronin, musician, sound/video engineer, performance artist, costume designer, writer, and more, who has kindly featured my piece (in my voice!) on her website.

“Reaching for the Keys” was previously published in issue 11 of Saranac Review.