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15 Ways to Avoid Embarrassment Over Your Young Adult Fiction Habit

Writing

Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Twilight, even A Wrinkle In Time … technically, these books were never meant for those of us over the age of 18 or so. As Young Adult (or in the case of Harry Potter, Middle Grade) fiction, they were intended for the younger generation, and yet adults–by which I mean possibly you and definitely me–are still reading them by the bookmobileful. I think we’re supposed to be reading more serious stuff–maybe The Grapes of Wrath, or Moby DickWar and Peace is probably good. I always tell people I’m reading War and Peace, and I’m at that part right near the end. This helps make sure they’ll change the subject quickly so that I don’t have to prove I don’t know what it’s about. Except, you know, obviously war, and also peace. Probably there’s something there about Russia invading … I don’t know, somebody. Maybe Russia invading Russia. Russia is pretty big: they could probably get away with that.

Anyway, my point is that it’s not always impressive and mature-sounding to say “Oh, I just read this great book written for 12-year-olds …” Here, as a public service, are some excuses writers and readers can use to cover for an addiction to young adult fiction.

  • I have a teen at home, so I have to know what they’re reading to be a good parent.
  • I work with teens, so I have to know what they’re reading to do my job.
  • I know my kid is only four, but I have to be up to speed by the time she hits middle school.
  • While I don’t have or work with kids now, I might someday, and it’s better to be safe than sorry.
  • I mistook it for the latest long, boring novel about the grim reflections of an emotionally deprived settlement camp volunteer. That’s what I really meant to read.
  • I’m a writer, and that market’s hot right now.
  • I’m a writer, and I just want to make sure that I know what’s Young Adult so that I don’t write some by mistake.
  • Actually, I’m pretty sure Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is classified as a technothriller.
  • What, that? That’s not mine.
  • Well you know, it’s interesting: it turns out that there are moral and ethical threads to the subtext that really delineate an entirely separate and more cerebral story not immediately evident if you don’t really dig in, but that with energetic literary analysis really emerges with a characteristic–wait, come back! Don’t you want to hear about the affective parallelism?
  • Young adult fiction is where all the really steamy stuff is these days. Who wants to read about two old people doing it?
  • Oh, I just have that because I’m translating it into Serbo-Croatian.
  • That’s just one of the fake covers I use to hide my D.H. Lawrence books.
  • That’s from when I was a kid. I only read eBooks now.
  • Yes, I’m reading young adult fiction. When’s the last time you read a book you couldn’t put down?
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How to Make Habits Form More Quickly

Habits

While it always takes time for a habit to form, if we want to encourage one to take hold, here are some key things we can do:

  1. Do it more often. Each repetition of a behavior helps to strengthen the neural connections that can make that behavior automatic.
  2. Skip the excuses and exceptions. While nobody’s perfect, it’s important to keep in mind that any time we skip a day or decide to let things slide because of “special circumstances” sets things backward and delays the formation of a habit. (See “How Not to Make Excuses“)
  3. Plan in advance. Sometimes we don’t have a lot of attention to spare to think about a goal at the times when we need to make key choices. By planning ahead when we do have a few moments to think, we can have the right choices mapped out for us and increase our chances of making them.
  4. Think, visualize, discuss, daydream. The more time we put into thinking about our goals and imagining the payoffs, the easier it is to tap into motivation when we need it. Use a daily commute, time waiting for appointments, time in the shower, and even conversations with friends to spend more brain time on your goal.
  5. Simplify. The more we make our desired behaviors simple to manage, the more likely we are to be successful managing them. Use tools, regular events, well-thought-out systems, and repeatable behaviors to stay on track.
  6. Find the appeal. It’s much easier to keep to a course of action when it’s something we think of ourselves as enjoying instead of something we think of as a chore or limitation.  Focus as much as possible on the things that make a behavior appealing, and be willing to try to find some enjoyment even in circumstances you’re used to thinking of as unpleasant, like feeling hungry or getting organized.

Photo by Maia C

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How Not to Make Excuses

States of mind

An experiment in excuses
For most of my life I’ve been running an experiment between two categories of things in my life: the “excuses are OK” group and “no excuses” group. It’s only recently that I noticed I was running this experiment, though, and so the years and years of results are only now starting to come in handy.

Let me give some examples of choices that have been in each group. By the way, though I talk a lot about eating well in this post, the points about excuses and exceptions apply just as well to forming any other kind of habit.

“Excuses are OK” group

  • Eating foods that I’d be better off not eating
  • Going to bed at a reasonable hour
  • Keeping track of incoming mail

“No Excuses” group

  • Parenting
  • Vegetarianism (for the 22 years I decided to do that)
  • Going to work

So I might do well for a stretch at making good eating choices, then hit a day when I was traveling and didn’t have many options, so I’d say to myself “Oh well, it’s really hard to eat well on a day like today–I’ll just eat whatever.”

But on that same trip I would not say “Oh well, it’s really hard to eat vegetarian on a day like today–I’ll just get a hamburger.”

My results
Knowing what I know these days about self-motivation, it shouldn’t surprise me that the “no excuses” group of activities were much more successful than the “excuses OK” group. For instance, when I started making a rule of eating only at specific times of day, it became much easier to make better eating choices. I went 22 years without knowingly eating any red meat, seafood, or poultry–even that time back in my 20’s when I was out of money and extremely hungry while traveling and someone offered me a hamburger. By contrast, it’s rare that I’ve gone 22 days without overeating (though all the days I have eaten well count for something, as I eventually lost 60 pounds and have been in great shape for quite a while now).

To look at it another way, and in terms of a real experiment, one study on habit formation found that those participants who kept up the behavior they wanted to make into a habit with no more than one exception over the course of months were much more successful at forming durable habits than those who made two or more exceptions.

The secret of excuses and exceptions
The thing about excuses and exceptions is that if we’re trying to build habits, there’s no good reason for excuses short of total catastrophe. Any time we don’t stick with the behavior we’re trying to build up–that is, any time we make exceptions–we lose some of the habitual behavior we’re trying to build. There may be days when eating well is inconvenient, boring, or annoying, but if I use inconvenience, boredom, and annoyance as excuses, then they’ll wreck my attempts to build a habit over time.

That’s not to say that making one excuse is the end of the world, but it is true that taking excuses as a serious problem and not an acceptable norm will help us develop the habits we want to create.

Easier said than done–but possible!
“That’s really nice,” you might say, “but it doesn’t help me for you to just tell me to behave the way I’d like to all the time. Not behaving the way I want to is the problem in the first place!” And that would be a reasonable thing to mention. Fortunately, there is a practical takeaway here: excuses are red flags and should be treated as such. There’s no such thing as a good excuse when trying to build a habit, there are only catastrophic interruptions. If a friend of yours is in the hospital and you end up throwing your good eating habits out the window from stress and limited choices, that’s fine; it’s not the end of the world–but it is a catastrophic interruption, and it means you’re damaging a good habit you’re working on for something more important. But good friends are more important than good food, and that’s a reasonable choice if you really need to focus on your friend.

On the other hand, what if you just interrupt a good habit because you’re in a bad mood or happen to be in a restaurant that serves something you like? Many of us immediately reach for the excuse box.

But if we recognize excuses and exceptions as danger signs, we can stop ourselves and say “My goal here is to build a habit, not to come up with excuses to screw that up.” Using this kind of awareness, making rules, taking responsibility, surrendering excuses, and making use of any useful tactics we can learn (like this list of 24 Ways to Stop Feeling Hungry), we can move ourselves out of the “Excuses OK” group and into the group that’s really kicking experimental butt.

Photo by ariel.chico

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How Not to Blow a Diet Over the Holidays

Strategies and goals

desserts

It’s one thing to maintain willpower in normal circumstances, in an environment you can control, after a lot of practice. It’s usually much more difficult to stick to your chosen path when circumstances change: travel, holidays, restaurants, vacations, celebrations, moves, new jobs, and so on. Thanksgiving through Christmas is like a parade of these kinds of issues, at least for anyone working on weight loss. Yet some people get through the holidays maintaining or reducing their weight, in the same way some people can go to restaurants full of unhealthy foods and find the good choices there. How does this happen?

The information in this post is specifically about weight loss, but these tactics work for any kind of challenge to willpower, and apply to sustaining any habit through a hard time. The tactics are 1) commit yourself, 2) get informed, 3) make a plan, 4) throw away illusions, 5) enlist help, and 6) resist attacks.

Commit Yourself
You can either let yourself go on the one hand, consuming huge quantities of food, feeling overstuffed, gaining weight, and possibly feeling unhappy about it; or you can commit to eating modestly and expending a lot of effort, avoiding a lot of foods you’ll probably really want to eat, being conspicuous, feeling much better than everyone else after the meal, and then maybe marveling at your success.

If you do want to eat a lot, probably no one will stop you–but if you’re deciding to eat healthily, you’ll need to commit yourself completely. Habit and tradition are generally too strong to be overcome without real resolve.

Get Informed
What foods will be at the event you’re going to? Which ones might be good choices for you to eat? Find out the calorie counts (or exchanges, etc.) for each one. Whatever system you use to track what you eat, apply it to the things you expect to see at the event you’re going to, so that you know for certain whether or not a sliver of pumpkin pie fits in your plans, or whether the potatoes or the cranberry sauce are a good idea. If you don’t have a system for tracking what you eat, you’ll almost certainly need one.

Make a Plan
If you expect trouble over the holidays, that’s an immediate indication that the habits you already have probably aren’t up to the challenge. So you’ll need to make specific plans for behavior–plans more advanced than a general intention to eat less. Willpower is not a vague energy that you can draw from the æther to apply to different situations by “just doing better”; it’s using mental tools to steer yourself into acting differently than you usually would.

What will you eat? How much will you eat? What will you do if the food you’re expecting to see isn’t there? What will you not eat? What will you say when someone tries to urge you to eat it, since after all, “it’s a holiday” or “it’s just this once” or “Martha made it herself” or “it doesn’t count”? What anti-hunger techniques will you use? (See “24 Ways to Stop Feeling Hungry” for some options.)

If you want better choices for food, considering making or bringing them yourself. Eating separate food from everyone else takes a little courage and makes you stand out. But it also demonstrates that you’re serious and committed.

Remember that you’ll need to plan for each event you go to, or else make rules that will keep you on the path for all events. It especially helps to have an emergency plan for unexpected events, like when someone brings cake into the office or you’re invited to dinner on short notice.

Throw Away Illusions
You may not need to hear these things, but in case you do: when you’re trying to lose weight, everything you eat “counts.” Your biology won’t care that it’s Thanksgiving. If you don’t get to eat something that looks good to you, you’re not owed any compensation. You don’t get any do-overs except that you can try again the next time an event comes up. Some people at the event may try to make you feel guilty for not eating; if they don’t have to haul the resulting fat cells around, though, they don’t get a vote.

Enlist Help
If you tell people in advance that you’re losing weight and really don’t want to gain it back over during the holidays, they have more of a chance to prepare themselves and to assist and support you. Walking in the door with your own meal in Tupperware when some one’s already gone to the trouble of making your favorite pie can cause trouble both with your relationships and your eating habits. Giving notice in advance can make it easier for others to help.

Not that everyone will necessarily want to help. Some people may feel that your work on your weight is an implied criticism of their own weight. Others may mistakenly think that trying to lose weight means that you think you “need” to lose weight to be a valuable person rather than that you’re just a valuable person who just wants to lose weight. Some people may be offended that you don’t stick to traditions or don’t eat what they’ve prepared. You’ll have to decide whether it’s more important to have their approval or to stick with your own priorities. It’s very easy to go with the approval; that’s the popular choice.

Resist Attacks
It’s very likely that someone will offer you food that doesn’t fit your plans–and maybe even try to insist. In addition, foods have a nefarious and evil way of offering themselves. Plan how you will resist these attacks and remind yourself that they are attacks when they occur (not in the sense of someone else intending to cause harm, but in the sense of posing immediate and real danger to your well-being). It sometimes helps to recognize the attraction before fighting it, for instance saying mentally “Yes, I could have some more mashed potatoes with gravy, and I would probably enjoy them. I ‘m just choosing not to.”

Specific ways to resist attacks are listed in that article on hunger I mentioned.

Holidays and special events aren’t easy to navigate. If, like me, you’re walking into the den of the beast with the intention of coming out lighter on the other side, good luck! Today I weigh 182 pounds. I’ll update this post in early January to let you know how it came out for me: I expect to have lost at least a few pounds. (Added later: want to know how it went? Read the follow-up post.)

Photo by Donna Grayson

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Avoiding Your Story

Writing

In at least one way, a writing project is very much like getting regular exercise: it will go well if you’re making excuses to do it instead of excuses not to do it.

What I mean by this is that if you want to do a lot of something well, you’re much more likely to succeed if you unconflictedly want to do that thing day after day.

Here’s an exercise example, which if you’ve ever wanted to get in shape (or succeeded in doing so), may make sense to you: a couple of years ago, I barely exercised at all. Then I moved to Florida and was able to take up year-round running, which was grueling at first but convenient enough that I was able to stay with it. Eventually it got so that I would feel good if I ran and feel lousy if I skipped a few days. I started finding time to go running even when it was a little inconvenient or I didn’t feel like it, because I didn’t want to start feeling crummy.

More recently I moved back to Vermont and started doing Taekwondo, which has completely replaced running for me. Not only is it a phenomenal workout, but it’s mentally challenging, it’s social, it absorbs my interest so that I don’t have time to dwell on how effortful it is, it’s for specific amounts of time so that I don’t have to ask myself whether or not I should stop yet, and I get to kick the hell out of things. Since my schedule is a little more flexible this summer, I’ve found myself going even on days when I feel tired, on days when I can barely spend the time, or days when I have other perfectly valid excuses not to. The process is as enjoyable to me as the gradual result of getting progressively more fit.

Let me bring this home to writing: writing regularly–every week at a minimum for most serious writers, every day for many of us–is sometimes hard. It’s especially hard when you’re not enjoying the work. In my case, at least, and very possibly in yours, how much you’re enjoying the writing (not necessarily the editing, outlining, or marketing, but the generation of new prose) has a lot to do with how excited you are to see what happens next–even though very often you know what’s going to happen next. For example, in a novel I wrote a couple of years back, there’s a chapter in which the Greek Titan Kronos is released from a pocket universe in the middle of a battle, hoppin’ mad. I could not wait to write that chapter, and it drove my writing on.

By contrast, I’ve found myself in some stories writing something because “this has to happen”. Well, sometimes things do have to happen in a story, but then, they don’t necessarily have to happen in a way that makes me unexcited to see them unfold. And if I’m not excited about going ahead, that’s a red flag for me. Fortunately, there are some quick and easy solutions to that problem. I’ve recently had to remind myself of these and skip back painfully to rewrite a large section of a book because of it. But the pain goes away quickly, because once the problem is solved and you’re excited about the book, it’s no longer so effortful and laborious, but something you make excuses to do.

Here are some symptoms and solutions for fixing lack of excitement about writing a story–which by the way, can often translate into lack of excitement for readers as well, a far more dangerous situation.

I took a wrong turn: At some point I made a character act against his or her inclinations, or I threw in a plot element that just didn’t belong, and it’s poisoned the story ever since. In these cases I need to weed that out and rework the story around it.

Nothing’s at stake: Donald Maass in Writing the Breakout Novel talks about two kinds of stakes: public and private. Private stakes are why something matters to the character. Public stakes are why it matters to anyone else. We have to care about the character and the character’s interests for private stakes to affect us, and we have to care about the world and the problem posed by the public stakes for those to affect us. If at least one of those kinds of stakes (and ideally both) aren’t making us worried about what’s going to happen, then we’re not going to care.

I should skip this for now: This is hard for me to get through my head sometimes, but stories don’t have to be written in order. If there’s a section I’m not excited about writing, I have the option of putting in “Here’s the part where he has the argument with his mother and they discover they both killed someone” and going immediately to the next chapter, where the cop bursts in. Later I can come back and write that chapter.

The danger with that approach is that there’s some underlying problem with stakes or character motivation that’s preventing you from writing it, and you need to sort out that problem before you proceed with a flawed story. That said, if you really can’t find a problem right now, writing the rest of the story may be the quickest route to doing so, or to proving there is none.

I forgot why I was writing the story: If I get inspired to write a particular story (and I’ll talk about inspiration elsewhere, but I’ll say here that it’s not something I believe writers have any business waiting for, but that instead we must find for ourselves) and later let the story degenerate into details of plot and setting and character, I can lose the fire I had to write the thing in the first place.

There are other symptoms that could fall under this heading, but I’ll leave it at this for now and follow up with more in future.

Postscript: Some people may just not enjoy writing under any circumstances, and for these writers not enjoying the process might not mean anything at all. Tim Powers, for instance, describes parts of the writing process as being laborious and unpleasant. But then, Powers writes such enjoyably and mind-bendingly intricate plots that it surprises me his head doesn’t explode.

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