How To Divorce Your Writing From Outcome Dependence

How To Divorce Your Writing From Outcome Dependence

Many would-be writers never get their feet off the starting block because of “writer’s block.” Many writers will write their book and then never let it leave their desk’s top-drawer. Some writers, even famous and successful ones, are so crippled by pressure to perform that they spend years procrastinating or writing filler material to put off having to face the end of their story or their next book (looking at you, fantasy genre.)

Writer’s block is used as the reason for this. Yet writer’s block doesn’t exist. There’s no evil demon that sits on your laptop stopping you from typing mechanically (unless you’re a cat person… then you probably deserve it.) Providing you can type, you can write.

There are writers that are so prolific they make me blush. Most days I write from 5,000 to 8,000 words, so that’s saying quite a lot. Those writers don’t worry about writer’s block. They’ve also got a key thing going for them: They aren’t outcome dependent on their writing, even if they’re professional writers.

Most writers are scared stiff of their work failing. They’re scared stiff of negative criticism or something similar. I don’t know why they’re afraid… because there are a lot of reasons to feel no fear when it comes to writing.

1. Kill Writer’s Block Using The JAMIE MCSLOY METHOD

There are a million different ways to concentrate on writer’s block. I hardly ever write about it except in passing, because I wrote an article a while ago which explains how to 100% get rid of writer’s block forever.

In short, the way to get rid of writer’s block is to write and keep writing – no matter how rubbish your writing is. Get into the habit of writing lots of nonsense, and you’ll find that eventually it stops being nonsense.

Once you get started, you’ll be on your way to feeing less daunted about finishing too.

2. Always Have An Eye On Your Next Project

If you’re working on the next great novel that you’re pinning your future fame and financial dreams on, then chances are you’re a bit too outcome dependent to finish the project. I know a few writers who have been “working on their novel” for years.

Putting too much hope and stock into one story is going to end in failure most of the time. It’s also going to mean your progress slows dramatically. You’re probably going to lose interest for that one project at some point as well, and if you’re only writing one book, chances are when you get bored with that project, you’ll get bored with writing itself.

Instead, you should always be thinking about more than one project. I only ever work on one thing at a time (daily thoughts on this blog aside,) but by-god do I dream of moving onto the next one all the time. It means by the time I’ve finished the project I’m working on I don’t really care how successful it is because I’m already excited about the next one.

3. Psychology: You Are Not Your Product.

Back in a previous life, I was a musician. I used to attend weekly critiques where we’d have our music or our performances critiqued by our peers. I wish I could say it was useful, but it really wasn’t. A key problem is that musicians – as well as writers and other artists (I’m assuming) – cannot separate themselves from their art. This leads to massive outcome dependence.

One week I was at this critiquing session, and someone told a girl that her music didn’t really make sense in terms of her goal. She burst into tears, and the session actually had to end whilst this girl was consoled. Outcome dependence; if someone says, “Your work isn’t good” they aren’t saying “You’re a terrible writer.” Even if they’re saying, “You’re a terrible writer,” they still aren’t saying “You’re a terrible, useless human being.”

Occasionally, you’ll get someone who might say, “Your work isn’t good. You’re a terrible writer. You’re a terrible, useless human being too.” That’s what your middle finger and various captioned pictures were created for.

4. Do Wildly Different Writing Projects In A Variety Of Fields.

I’ve had clients who almost went as far as the above. If I was obsessed with pleasing bad clients, then I’d get very upset. In fact, earlier on I did get upset. Now I don’t. I have a lot of projects going on at any one time, which I’ve talked about already.

However, it might be that you don’t get on well with a particular type of project or client. Don’t worry about this: There’s plenty more stuff to do.

This week, I wrote about legal stuff. I wrote about medical stuff. I’ve written daily posts and articles for my other sites. I’m writing a book for one of them. The fact is even if I were diabolically bad at any one topic, I’m not outcome dependent on it because even if I’m the worst medical writer in the world then I’m still not bad about writing about other things.

Varied projects decrease outcome dependence because you can’t be bad at everything.

The easiest way to decrease your outcome dependence is to get into the habit of succeeding. If this is tough because you haven’t gotten over your writer’s block and you’ve only managed 2/3rds of a short story you’re still too scared to have your Mum critique, then succeeding probably sounds a long way off. But it isn’t: You just need to move the goal posts.

Writing is cumulative, and if you can’t write a thousand words a day, write one hundred. Soon writing a hundred will get easy, then you’ll up the stakes.

6. Realise That Writing Is Cumulative.

As mentioned above, if you’re outcome dependent on a writing project, you just need to change your viewpoint slightly.

Very, very few people make a million dollars on their first book… or any book. But there are plenty of writers who make a lot of money and live comfortably. They aren’t overnight successes, but they are successful.

You don’t have to be an overnight success to succeed overall.

7. Realise That Writing Is About Building A Number Of Different Assets.

If you write 1000 words a day on a book, then you can write 4-6 books a year. To put that in perspective, Stephen King is considered a prolific writer and you’d have surpassed his published novel count within ten years at that pace.

As far as this affecting outcome independence: If you have ten books coming out this year, are you going to care more or less about the success of your first one than if that was your sole release?

The great thing about writing is that you can make an asset from nothing. If you wanted to invest in a rental property, then you’d have to save the hundreds of thousands in order to buy it before you could make a five percent return on that investment. With writing a book, you can get bigger returns immediately without paying any money at all.

8. Forget Your ‘Legacy”; You Don’t Have One.

I had a friend a few years back who had written a massive fantasy epic saga. It was multiple books, had the maps drawn and the covers designed and a whole mythology… you know how fantasy writers are.

To my knowledge, this saga sits unfinished on his computer to this day. Why? Because he was worried that it wasn’t “good enough.” He literally referred to it as “his baby” and was terrified it needed something before he could submit or publish it.

If you never release a word of your writing, then you aren’t saving your legacy. You aren’t saving your book from negative criticism. You don’t have a legacy until you actually do something. Nobody is going to look back in a hundred years and talk about that book you never released.

9. Care More About Other Stuff.

As a writer, it’s important to care about your writing. I worry sometimes that I’m a bit flippant about that aspect: by no means should you endeavour to be a terrible writer.

However, if you’re obsessed with any writing project, be it a novel, website or whatever, then you’re doing yourself an injustice. There’s more to life than your writing. If your outcome dependence is massive, then take your dog for a walk or play with your kids or something. Even if writing is your job, it’s only your job. It’s not everything.

10. (Be Honest With The People You Care About.)

This is an add-on to the above point: a lot of people are outcome dependent because they’re proving something to someone. Or, they’re hiding something from someone. Bizarrely, a lot of writers are “in the closet” about being writers. I don’t really get this.

I come up with ridiculous schemes all the time. A lot of these projects go absolutely nowhere. I don’t apologise for it and I don’t try and mitigate it when it happens. My outcome dependence is lowered because I’ve been honest about it:

“I’m writing about X for a new website.”

Nobody cares as much as you do about your projects, so don’t let that be a source of shame or negativity for you.

11. Realistic Expectations, Unrealistic Goals

As I said above, I come up with stupid ideas. I try a lot of them out. Goals are supposed to be measurable, achievable, realistic and all that stuff. That’s boring though. I always feel better when I’m going after a stupidly impossible goal, because it’s like my brain is in a Rocky montage.

My outcome dependence is lessened because of the unrealistic goals. I was never supposed to succeed, and the odds were stacked against me. But I have realistic expectations regardless, so it’s not like I’ve allowed myself to become deluded.

Final Thoughts

This is pretty much everything I can think of to help writers get rid of the pressures of outcome dependence on any one project. I’m trying to think of a concluding statement, but nothing comes to mind. Just follow the above advice and you’ll achieve more and be happier doing it. Seriously.