Yep, that's me, 100% overindexed...
WriterMBA has transcended writing events! Time for me to transcend "overindexing"
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From an ambitious “mastermind” event in February 2024 to a full-fledged three-part mastermind, vendor event, and writers’ conference, Writer MBA has leaped the queue from “fascinating upstart event: keep an eye on this” to “the premier writers event of the 21st century: must participate!” For any writer who is either serious or passionate about their writing—or both!— WriterMBA is far and away the best event you can attend in any particular year. In future posts I will unpack more of my experience there.
Russell actually summed up my major points just this morning, right here.
I’ll repost his whole article in a sec.
But in his missive this morning, Russell also said this:
It takes both great audacity and great empathy to make something, and it’s almost impossible to embrace both of them at once. Most people overindex on one or the other, depending on their past trauma, but if you can find the strength to do both, that is where true art lies.
Circling back to “why writer-shaped?” this is definitely part of the problem for me. I had the audacity to strike out on my own, 20+ years ago, and I developed a ton of helpful material for scholars and writers. But I struggled to create my own art, my own poetry and fiction, the things that forced me to “embrace great empathy”. I suspect that’s because I was “overindexing” on confidence and audacity, which short-circuited my empathic writing. (But not my coaching: during that same long dry creative spell I developed a reputation as an empathic editor and writing coach… ah, the frustrating magic of compartmentalization)
Then, when I took a sabbatical in 2023 to focus on my fiction writing, I overindexed on empathy, and lost the audacity I needed for the operational/organizational side of the creative process. I finished the first draft of a novel, and mapped out three sequels to it, but made zero progress on building an author site or following up on the various people who read excerpts from that draft and enthusiastically volunteered to be beta readers.
Thinking about it now, for the first time in months, I don’t think I’ve even sent the first email to them all.
I haven’t had that audacity.
But I have the audacity to plan a new editors’ event with Troy Lambert for this summer (BYEB: Build Your Editing Business, dates will be announced soon) and a new writers’ event for this coming autumn, also with Troy Lambert and possibly another writing coach (the Fjeldheim Writers’ Retreat in South Lake Tahoe, Nevada).
While doing these businessy things, I haven’t had the empathic self-connection to make any progress at all on my fiction project, or write any poetry.
No, I do not have any clever ideas for how to “find the strength to do both.”
Maybe try to focus on each in turn, somehow? Apparently I don’t switch emphasis very quickly: the shift took several weeks during my sabbatical. So it would need to be “let’s take six weeks and focus on fiction instead of business” or something like that…
Have you found it equally difficult, even debilitating, to embrace both extremes?
Have you found a way to hold them in tension simultaneously?
Teach me to transcend “overindexing”!
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