How to Strengthen Your Writing Process by Submitting Hot Garbage
Photo by @etiennegirardet on Unsplash
It happens at least once with every client I work with, and sometimes, a couple more times after that.
I can feel it before I even open it up—the “I need an extension because my work isn’t good enough to submit” email. It’s mostly filled with a bunch of reasons why they can’t send in their pages, especially since it’s not “up to par” with what they believe a submission should look like.
I’m still working on the end of this chapter, and don’t know how to finish it.
Things have been crazy, and I just can’t get into a flow. A few extra days will really help.
Most of my writing has just been a brain dump, and I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t understand half of what I’m saying. I really want to clean it up for you before I send it.
And I get it. Most of us who have been in any creative field long enough know what it is to present incomplete work to someone as part of the process to only have it ripped apart. It’s crappy and makes you more protective of your work, which doesn’t help you as a creative person.
That’s why I’m grateful to get these emails, so I can flip the script for my clients. No, I don’t extend deadlines because time isn’t what they really need. You can push off anything for long enough, and time is just an excuse. I’ve never given a client an extension and have them say it was exactly what they needed. They mostly come to the next deadline saying they felt so bad for missing their deadline that they were still stuck, or time was eaten up with something else that they still didn’t like their submission was good enough.
So now that I don’t extend deadlines, I’ll do my clients one better: Getting to the root of the fear, so they can send in their works-in-progress with a sigh of relief that it’s in good hands.
I want my clients to send in what I call hot garbage. Give me the messy pages you’re not sure make any sense. I promise I can sift through it all to find the gold.
But I also think it’s important for clients to know how to send in hot garbage, so they feel like they’re owning this part of the process and not running from it.
So, here’s how to strengthen your writing process by submitting hot garbage to your writing coach. First things first though, there’s something you should know…
Your Book Coach Knows You Know Your Submission Isn’t Perfect (and It Shouldn’t Be)
Unless you’re working on the final edits of your manuscript, your book coach knows you know the work isn’t finished. It’s in development, so there will be missing pieces and places to expand on. I share this quote by Anne Lamott often with my clients:
“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.”
Don’t worry about the misspelled words or sentences you don’t think are pretty or profound enough. Your only job is to get words on the page, so you can show your book coach what you’re working with. It’s too early to judge anything, and often, it’s when you send in what you believe is hot garbage that the good stuff comes out.
Now that we’ve established that, let’s get into how to actually submit hot garbage.
Set a Timer & Freewrite
It’s not super sexy, but you just have to do the work.
Set a timer, be it a manual or digital one, and get to work. Ideally, you move the timer to a different part of the room, especially if the timer is on your phone. You need space to concentrate, and research shows just having your phone on your workspace distracts you from work.
This is not the time to judge what’s on the page. You’re simply arriving for work, putting in the practice and clocking out. Every now and then, we need the ability to dump our thoughts on the page and to walk away and let someone else deal with it.
Forget about typos, well-constructed sentences and any other little hang-up you have about your pages.
If you’re still stuck on how to throw everything on the page, you can use this tried and true template for pretty much anything you’re working on be it a recipe headnote, essay or introduction:
Who
What
When
Where
Why
Seriously. Sometimes, we make things so much more complicated than they need to be. More times than not, the tried and true methods really are the way to go.
Add Comments and Notes in Your Submission
I hated submitting work for my college creative writing workshops. You could only submit your stories as is without any additional notes. While we were being trained by our professors to become productive editors for other people’s work, some people acted offended that it wasn’t complete.
This is not how I get down with clients. I want to know spots where my clients are struggling. In fact, I want them to walk me through their thought process, so I can better help them.
My cookbook and food memoir clients often have loads of research and recipe development to do throughout the book writing process, so I encourage them to add comments and a notes section at the end of their submissions.
This accomplishes a few of things:
It gives them a way to be an active part of the process, instead of waiting for me to make a note that something is incomplete.
Creates a dedicated space for their questions and concerns about their work, so they’re not worried about losing something.
This allows them to use their pages to brainstorm and process any additional pieces they may need to work through. Most of my clients don’t use the full 25 pages given to them for each submission, so the notes section is a nice way to let them take advantage of the space.
I love this tool because it empowers my clients to be involved with the development of their book, instead of feeling like they’re passive participants, and I trust it’ll do the same for you.
Push Through Your Resistance (Some Wisdom from Steven Pressfield and Tadashi Suzuki)
Let’s revisit the reason why I don’t believe in extending deadlines.
I know, it sounds harsh, but it’s actually the kind move to make. Here’s why: Working under constraints not only improves creativity and innovation, but it gives you a clear path forward.
People don’t hire me just to give me money; they hire me because they have a goal they want to reach, and they need help getting there. There’s a statistic that’s floated around for awhile that roughly 80% of people want to write a book. Even with the abundance of books out there, all of those folks haven’t reached their dreams.
I’ll go out on a limb and say it’s probably because they were met with resistance of some kind and couldn’t push through. As Steven Pressfield notes in his classic The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle:
Resistance outwits the amateur with the oldest trick in the book: It uses his own enthusiasm against him. Resistance gets us to plunge into a project with an overambitious and unrealistic timetable for its completion. It knows we can’t sustain that level of intensity. We will hit the wall. We will crash.
The professional, on the other hand, understands delayed gratification. He is the ant, not the grasshopper; the tortoise, not the hare... The professional arms himself with patience, not only to give the stars time to align in his career, but to keep himself from flaming out in each individual work. He knows that any job, whether it's a novel or kitchen remodel, takes twice as long as he thinks and costs twice as much. He accepts that. He recognizes it as reality.
Resistance will find you in a number of ways, but it creates a lie that if you just have a little more time or if circumstances were more ideal, then you’d be able to create the masterpiece you’ve had in your head all along.
While I believe there can be better seasons in someone’s life to write a cookbook or food memoir, I also believe you have to manage your own expectations and know what to do when you hit the brick wall.
The acting teacher Tadashi Suzuki Japanese whose method is grounded in physical movement with the specific viewpoint that "after reaching a genuine fatigue, your concentration becomes higher, and you can see “beyond the hill” as you feel you are slipping into hell."
So fun!
I was introduced to this method at a theater in Los Angeles, and after one of the worst days I’d had in a long time, I had to show up at my class and do nothing but march in a circle for 3 hours. What a freaking nightmare. It felt like I could break down at any point, but I kept going because I had to. And you know what?
Something happened right at the moment I thought I couldn’t go on any longer—a piece of me clicked open with renewed determination and energy to be a part of the collective and contribute at my highest level.
A similar thing happens for my clients when they’re pushed to what they believe is the edge, but the magic often ignites when we think there’s nothing left to give.
What might be on the other side of your edge? Don’t you deserve to see what could be unlocked when you kick resistance in the face and submit hot garbage anyway?
How to Keep Your Writing Process Strong
One of the biggest benefits of submitting hot garbage along with setting a timer and freewriting, adding notes and comments to your pages and pushing through the resistance is that you’re creating something that can never be taken away from you.
There is no guarantee that your book will be bought or published, but you can make sure you show up for the ride. If nothing else, dedicating yourself to a writing practice will produce a confidence that will carry you throughout your career. And that’s worth more than submitting “nice” pages.
If you’re ready to throw away your idea of perfection and get messy with your cookbook or food memoir, join my coaching waitlist now. You have a project you’ve been dreaming about. Let’s see how we can make it a reality.
