Create a New Tape when you are stuck
Posted by Teresa | Under Lessons from Authors & Books, Writing Lessons Thursday Jan 15, 2009You are excited about your newest project…you have gotten your coffee or tea and you sit down to write..and BANG! Nothing comes to mind. What do you do? You create a new tape.
Let me explain and to do this I need to tell you how I created a new tape.
Yesterday, I was talking with a friend of mine, Pam Butler. Her and I were talking about the evening before at the St. Pete/Tampa eWomen networking event. I was telling her about a conversation I had with a lady who I wanted to talk with for sometime but haven’t had a chance to meet yet. So I went on to tell Pam about my introduction with this woman and how I thought I just messed up the whole thing.
“Pam, I went up to her and I was so excited to meet her, I said the wrong thing and I just felt silly. But you know, I guess she didn’t mind me coming up to her too much because she told me to wait when we were interrupted by someone saying goodbye to her before they left. I really hope she doesn’t think I am a complete nut.”
“Teresa, that is YOUR perception of how she took what you said and did, however, I bet that was not the reality. I bet she thought you were charming and pleasant to speak with.
Then she said it….“You need to stop playing that tape and create a new tape.”
Pam continued, “You have been thinking about what YOU think you did wrong and that the meeting with her went badly. You need to erase that tape and write a new tape. You have spend your morning and afternoon thinking about this and it is only breeding more negativity and what you need to do is bring in the positive thoughts about the experience.”
Now, I did call this woman yesterday morning and left her a voicemail to say it was lovely to meet her and asked her how I could be of service to her and the organization she works with but I still hadn’t felt great about the whole situation.
Of course, not until Pam helped me realize I just needed to create a new tape of the night before and place happier and positive reinforcements into the situation. And guess what?
By 4pm yesterday, I received a call back from this lady, saying to me that she enjoyed speaking with me the night before and she would love to get together and talk more.
Have you ever met someone and just knew they were placed in your life for a reason? Pam is one of those blessings to me.
So writers and authors – when you get stuck….instead of focusing on why you can’t write and the problem….take that tape out and create a new tape.
I would love to hear back from anyone who has a story about struggling to write and finding ways to help themselves through it.
