Author Life Musings: Bargaining with My Brain

Some writer friends of mine recently encouraged me to tackle a sci-fi standalone that I’ve been wanting to write. It’s been slow going. But it’s going! And that makes me happy. However, I am having to do a bit of brain training.

One of the coolest things about the human brain is that it can be trained. Humans are programmed to learn new things! And I am so thankful! Right now, I am learning to write in more than one genre at the same time. I have taught myself to work on more than one project before, and successfully. But doing two genres is very different. It feels like college, when I had three full-credit courses every eight weeks. It’s awesome! And I am on my way to making it work. But first, I have to practice a little more.

At this point, it’s a bit like striking a bargain with my brain. It's like “Okay, if you do this one book, then you can do that other book you really want to do too!” In some ways, I am finding this bargain, or reward system, helpful for working on the project I am already writing. It motivates me to write my main project so I can get to the new one. In other ways, well, I’ll just say that I’ve started drinking caffeine again. (It's tea caffeine, though, so I think that’s fine lol).

If you can’t tell, I’m excited to learn this skill! I also just love the experience of learning that I can do something hard. It’s really quite amazing what God built our brains to do, and I am very thankful for the ability to learn new skills!

What new skill are you learning right now? Tell me about it in the comments.