How Can Writers Use Positive Thinking?

Many years ago, I challenged my online writing group to draft an end of the year review that outlined only the positives of their writing journey. They could share anything they wanted, but it had to be framed in a positive light. Not only did our members enjoy looking back in a positive way, they realized just how much they actually accomplished.

But what is positive thinking? How does it work?

What is Positive Thinking?

Positive thinking is more than just uttering a few happy words and then allowing your fears and self-doubt to take hold again. Positive thinking is a mental attitude that, with practice, allows you to have positive thoughts and uses daily affirmations to help you to see a positive outcome to almost every situation.

Judi Moreo, life coach and author of You Are More Than Enough: Every Woman’s Guide to Purpose, Passion & Power, encourages her readers to make conscious choices to think about themselves in a more positive light. Moreo says we must stop criticizing ourselves and demanding perfection in what we do, and that we need to change the mental pictures we have of ourselves. Through the use of daily affirmations and by visualizing our success, we can achieve the desired results.

Daily Affirmations and Creative Visualization

Daily affirmations are positive thoughts you can affirm throughout the day to uplift you and make you feel better about yourself. Judi Moreo uses them throughout You Are More Than Enough because, as she says, “Changing your life is a process.” Positive thinking isn’t something you can use randomly. If you want it to work, you have to practice it every day.

Moreo dedicates an entire chapter in her book to creative visualization. She says that you can use your imagination to create pictures of those things that you want “to be, do, and have.” On the flip side, you can also imagine that you aren’t able to accomplish what you want because you aren’t smart enough or good enough. Which person do you want to be?

How Positive Thinking Molds Your Future

If what we see is unmet goals, then there is no desire to move forward. Why would we expect anything to change? When we focus on all the good that came out of our efforts, not only do we feel a sense of accomplishment, we can consider changes to help us achieve more goals in the future.

How Can Writers Use Positive Thinking? 

At the beginning of this year you--hopefully--wrote down a list of S.M.A.R.T. goals. Then you broke down that list into smaller, more manageable chunks before creating weekly or daily to-do lists.

Look at your goals and all you’ve accomplished this year. What do you see?

My goals for 2018 included:

GOAL 1: Submit Clever Tom to agents

GOAL 2: Participate in STORYSTORM

GOAL 3: Blog twice a week on all four blogs

So what have I accomplished?

GOAL 1 (not exactly)

GOAL 2 (yes)

GOAL 3  (mostly)

Clever Tom is a children's story I had a ton of fun writing. Something (I couldn't put my finger on what) held me back from submitting it to agents. I tweaked it and then tweaked it some more. I reread it numerous times. Finally, it hit me--it's too long. Just the other day, I sat down with the story again and made the last edits to cut out over 300 words.

Did I meet my goal? Not yet, but on a positive note the story is better because of it.

STORYSTORM is an annual event to generate story ideas. This year I met my goal of 30 story ideas for the month of January and celebrated with a great big ice cream sundae. Rewards help you accomplish more too!

When setting the third goal, I knew it was aggressive considering my limited writing time. But who doesn't love a challenge? I began time blocking my calendar more regularly and have increased my blogging time this year. That's a win as far as I am concerned.

Looking Forward

Use these last two months of 2018 to move ahead with a positive attitude and see what else you can accomplish before Father Time pushes us into the new year. This will give you a head start on practicing positive thinking by the time January rolls around. Then use daily affirmations to keep you focused on the positive and visualize your success.

You have the power to make 2019 your most productive year yet!

Cheryl C. Malandrinos is a freelance writer and editor. She is the author of Little Shepherd, A Christmas Kindness, Macaroni and Cheese for Thanksgiving and the recently released, Amos Faces His Bully. A blogger and book reviewer, she lives in Massachusetts with her husband and two daughters. She also has a son who is married. Visit Cheryl online at http://ccmalandrinos.com and her children’s book blog at https://childrensandteensbookconnection.wordpress.com

Timely Tips

God allocates each of us twenty-four hours a day, yet it’s never enough.


Writing may begin small, as a hobby. We love it. We spend any extra hours writing more and more, longer and longer. God puts the longing in our heart to get our written words into circulation where others can read them.


At some point, the hobby changes into a career. We submit our words, and a publisher releases the finished product to the public. We learn that now, we have two jobs; writing and promoting beside any other demands.


Below, find tips to redeem your time.


1. Use a timer for social media.


Start by timing yourself on a normal day. Discover how many hours you spend on all the different types of social media. Don’t discount this. Online promotion is critical to our success. I counted four hours a day that I surfed Facebook, Twitter, two e-mail addresses, and several blogs (mine included.) Some days when I had weekly or monthly obligations on guest blogs, that time swells to five or six hours.

How could I stop? I needed a presence, but I didn’t need an obsession.

A small kitchen timer works magic. I subscribe to a time allowance for each type of social media that adds no more than two hours a day. Now, I have two to four hours more for writing.

2. Use traveling time to plot.


In Texas, crisscrossing a couple hundred miles every other week isn’t unusual. My northeastern friends might ride trains or subways. Some may fly a lot on their day job. However you travel, when you’re not driving, utilize this time.


Bring pen and paper, Notebook or IPAD. Plot your next book. Jot down a chapter by chapter outline. Let your mind run free as the scenery passes your window.


3. Set your alarm five minutes early to brainstorm in bed. 3.


When you first come awake, you’re in never-never-land for a few moments. During that time, think on a plot problem or ask yourself how your character would react to a situation.


During these five minutes, your brain floats into creative mode with ease. You have yet to turn on your editor thoughts. Great progress can be made at this point.


4. First things first.


Most writers claim social networking interrupts their writing more than anything else. My suggestion is write first.


Resist the temptation to see if you have an e-mail answer from someone until you’ve written a set number of words, or until you’ve finished your synopsis, or whatever your goal for the day might be. Do the most important thing on your list first.


Use the social media as a reward. Try interval posting. Write 1K words and congratulate yourself with thirty minutes of surfing the net.


5. Be a list maker.


At night, make a priority list for the following day. Number one for a Christian might be quiet time with God.


Number two, would be WRITE unless life sends you an emergency.


***Note*** a dirty floor isn’t an emergency. A sick child is.


If you work a day job, this formula would still work but could involve waking up earlier, or beginning your list after work.

List promotion goals next.


Then, go to housecleaning, filling out tax forms, paying bills, or whatever your list includes. Prioritize every chore you do.

6. Have a stop time to read.


Stephen King said, If you don't have time to read, you don't have time or tools to write.


Allow for a stop time on your day. Read in the genre you write. Read in genres you never write. Read writing craft books and magazines. Read inspirational books. READ to prepare for your next day.


7. Help me, help me.


Do you have family that could help with housework? Friends that might run an errand for you? Can you simplify meals? Does your hubby know how to mop?


Incorporate your need for exercise by folding laundry with your small children. Break for a long time of sitting at your computer by running the vacuum. Use that creative imagination of yours to solve this riddle.


8. How do I say no?


Plan ahead what you will or will not do. If you’re given no time, tell the asker you need to think about it. Never answer “yes” on the spot.


Plan ahead how you will handle interruptions because they will happen.


Try some or all of these time-management tips. Incorporate suggestions of your own. More than anything, whether you work another job or not, writing must be viewed as a career, not a hobby.

Knowing your long term goals as an artist and determining the steps to take to get there.

by Aidana WillowRaven

In many ways, this topic can relate to most career paths, but today, I want to focus on my own field: cover art, illustration, and design.

One of my Twitter followers suggested a blog topic recently that sort of made me step back and think. Here is how the brief chat went:

@heyprettydivine asks me: @WillowRaven Where you see yourself progressing with your art career? Will you be a cover artist forever or will you move on and up?

I responded: @heyprettydivine On and up? There is something better than this? lol. This is why I went to art school to begin with. To be on/in books.

@heyprettydivine tweets: @WillowRaven OH of course! It's amazing, an ultimate dream for so many, but I thought that at such a young age u must nw hve new goals, too.

And after a moment's thought, I replied: @heyprettydivine I do have new goals, but they don't change WHAT I do as much as WHOM I do them for. Make sense?

Then I got to thinking a bit more. Although I knew from day one of my college training that I wanted to be a cover artist, my career path wasn't quite straight. It took quite a while to get where I am now, which is finally doing work I wanted to do when I started fine art classes at Norfolk State (then later at ODU).

Originally, my entire focus was on taking the courses I'd need to be a SFF book cover artist. I had a plan (which my professors and adviser hated ... lol), don't worry about the degree as much as the portfolio. I didn't say it was a GOOD plan ... lol. But in a lot of ways, that approach made me a more diverse artist. It also made it harder for me to get my career rolling. But first things first ...

I had decided to go to college and study art. I stared at my favorite book covers and figured I'd need to learn a lot about the human form, so I took life drawing classes almost every term. I also could see I needed painting and possibly design, since I was too cheap to pay a designer to clean up my art for print ... lol. So painting was also an every term class and design classes, which were not part of a fine art degree, were chosen as electives.

During my first term, I realized that was not going to be nearly enough figure work to accomplish my goal, so I added anatomy, animation, and seemingly non-related courses like anthropology, world religions, psychology, and astronomy to my load. 

I also added pottery and sculpture. I hung out in the studios after classes and watched the grad students work and had one on one conversations with professors about this you just don't learn in class, like copyright infringement and prejudices among the different art fields (which helped me to understand why so many of my profs hated that my goal was to be a scifi/fantasy cover artist).

I slaved myself out to those professors that did gallery showings and those that did what I considered practical things, like created brochures for the Norfolk International Airport.

My point is, I tried to learn it all. Everything I could remotely relate to becoming a fantasy and science fiction artist. I was in college six years and never earned my degree because in my mind, the portfolio was what got me a job, not sticking to a set curriculum. Youth!

Ten years go by ... I win a few awards in art shows. I sell a few computer print outs of my work for a couple bucks here and there. I even sell some work at scifi/fantasy conventions. Nothing big. And no book covers.The majority of jobs out there required my having a degree. I found out the hard way that most Art Directors are not artists themselves. More often than not, there isn't even an Art  Director doing the hiring, but an Editor who typically knows even less about art. They don't bother even looking at a portfolio without that degree.

What I also failed to learn in college was how to land a cover artist gig without a degree or any kind of business skills to start my own freelance business. So, I decided to finally take control of my ability to start my own art career and learn business. A few online courses, and before I knew it, I was being asked to illustrate a children's book.

Well, it's not scifi or fantasy, but it's a foot in the door. Suddenly, I realized I'd been cheated out of thousands of dollars and that my work, which I'd not been paid for, was profiting others. Not me. So more study had to go into fair and ethical guidelines for my industry. I had to find the right people to work with and continue building my portfolio, even though nothing I was doing had anything to do with my initial goal.

Don't get me wrong. I learned a lot on the journey. For example, I learned I like other genres. I LIKE doing book covers in general, not just scifi or fantasy. I LIKE illustrating for kids. That was never part of my college plans. 

I also learned that it takes time to build a name and reputation. You just can't be good. You have to be better and find someone who gives you a chance to show your worth. You have to build a professional portfolio, vs a personal one, because you're simply not legitimate until you have 50 or more published works. You need to learn your rights as an artist. You need to be willing to compromise. You need to do freebies on occasion (keep those to a minimum, or you earn enemies in the art community) and work cheap for a while. And most importantly: You have to figure out what your goals are and what you need to do to reach those goals.

Fifteen years after art school, and I am FINALLY doing what I SET OUT TO DO. So where do I plan to go from here? As I told @heyprettydivine, I have no intentions of changing what I do. I do hope to one day do at least one cover for a best seller. But if I never do, I am still doing precisely what I want to do.

What are your goals as an artist, and how do you hope to reach them?

Aidana WillowRaven

Art Director & VP of Operations

4RV Publishing