RECOVERING YOUR CREATIVITY
copyright Mia Zachary 2004

Presented to the Virginia Romance Writers Nov 13, 2004; Romance Writers of America July  28, 2005
and the Desert Rose RWA April 22, 2006

How did this happen?

I had the good fortune to see my very first completed manuscript published to very good reviews without once being rejected. I experienced the thrills of praise from family, congratulations from friends and pretty good sales for a new author. So it was all peaches and cream from there, right? Wrong.

I thought having one book under my belt meant my career was off to a smooth start. I went to RWA National Conference July 2003 with the certain expectation of getting a three-book contract on the proposals I had submitted. Instead I was devastated to have my pre-conceived notions dashed, plummeting into disappointment when no contract was offered.

 That disappointment quickly turned into depression and I stopped writing. This was a very major setback for me. I seriously thought about quitting. Maybe I wasn't meant to write. Maybe one book was all I had in me. I lost my love. Of the characters, of the story and of writing itself.

 So I went back to the well. I researched ways of overcoming writers block and dealing with depression. I bought a fantastic book by playwright and psychotherapist Dennis Palumbo called, 'Writing From The Inside Out'. I began to start my days with free writing and adapted some business tools to fit the creative writing process. And, slowly, one step at a time, I started writing again.

In 1960, MIT meteorologist Edward Lorenz discovered a circumstance that is known as the Butterfly Effect. He could predict the weather for the day after tomorrow. Stretch that to a week, and his prediction always departed from reality. The idea was that if a butterfly chances to flap his wings in Beijing in March, then, by August, hurricane patterns in the Atlantic will be completely different.

 Change one thing and you might change everything. What’s the effect? Long-term results become impossible to forecast. The steps you take to overcome writers block have a potential butterfly effect. With small changes to your attitude and confidence, your writing habits and problem solving techniques, the positive outcome of your efforts is filled with possibilities!