Category: The Writing Community

I participated in the Great Witch Lock In

Late last year, you might have seen #Lockin all over social media. Or, maybe I just spend way too much time on social media and notice these things.

The premise of the lock-in was simple. Gen Z decided to spend the last four months of 2025 locking in on a specific goal. That goal was different for every person. What the goal was wasn’t important. What was important was the focus of the person reaching for that goal.

After seeing the hashtag all over, my interest was more than piqued. And then, as though someone was looking out for me, one of my favorite witchy people on social media answered my questions before I even asked them.

Aunt Carla.

If you’re witchy or artsy and you don’t know her, get to know her now. You will not regret it.

After some careful consideration (not really), I decided to lock in on my writing. And let me tell you, it was amazing. I wrote more than I’ve written all year. I wrote microfiction and poetry to share with you all on social media. I wrote almost every day, which has been hard for me while caring for the Darling Husband.

But it was so much more than that! It turns out that sometimes when the Universe sees you putting in the work, it rewards you. During my lock in, I got to give a speech about haunted houses at my local library. I found out about a mini SFWA convention and attended it. And someone tipped me a lot more than usual on Ko-Fi.

So today, let me tell you about some of the tools from the lock-in and why they helped me so much.

Starting the day with ritual

One of the first things you do in the Witch Lock In is to create a ritual to start your day. Mine was simple. I lit a candle, leafed through my notebook, and wrote down one to three things I was going to do that day to work towards my goal.

That little bit of attention and magic first thing in the morning helped me stay on track. Especially on days that felt too busy for me to breathe, I realized that I could do just a little. That was always better than nothing at all.

Collecting inspiration

One of the very first things you do in the Witch Lock In is create an Uncommonplace Notebook.

I loved this notebook. It was a place to collect and craft inspiration for my writing. I wrote song lyrics and quotes that made me feel good about writing and working towards my goals. I pasted in pictures that made me happy. I kept notes on messages I got during meditations. And every time I flipped through it, I couldn’t help but be inspired.

Problem solving

This last year, while I’ve been helping the Darling Husband heal from his stroke, it’s been way to easy to put my writing on the back burner. To throw up my hands and say, oh well. Another day I didn’t get any writing in. Guess this is just my life now.

But during the Lock In, I was doing something I used to know how to do. I was problem-solving.

Mind you, I always consider problem-solving better than ‘toughing it out’. Sure, I could write more if I forced myself to run on less sleep, or wrote when I felt like shit. But that’s not going to be my best writing, and it sure as hell isn’t going to be sustainable long term.

What works better is to solve problems. Solve the things that are keeping you from writing.

Is an hour too overwhelming? Write for half an hour, or just 15 minutes. Too tired after work? Write before. That sort of thing.

Productivity is morally neutral. If we can separate ourselves from guilt and focus instead on solving realistic problems, we can get a lot more done.

Side quests!

Focusing on one goal for four months was great. But it turns out that it’s a lot more productive to find other goals that A, bring you joy, and B, feed your main goal.

For me, that was finding whimsy and joy in life. Experiencing life in a way that brings me joy is, to put it mildly, fucking hard right now. But it can be done, and it feeds my writing.

This is something I hadn’t considered before. I tended to feel like if I was going to focus on one goal, I was to focus on just that goal. But no part of our life is in a bubble. Our job impacts our home life, impacts our craft, impacts our world view. So finding side quests that might depend on another area of your life will help prop up your lock-in goal.

So simple, but it was a game-changer for me.

So, why am I telling you all of this? It was last year, right? The time for locking in is over.

Well, here’s the nice thing about personal growth. It’s a personal journey that you can start at any time. Yes, lots of people enjoyed the community aspect of the Great Witch Lock in. But, I didn’t. I loved the prompts and Aunt Carla’s videos. But I worked this lock in alone. And I did great things I didn’t think I could do. I put my writing first and amazing things happened.

So you can start your own lock in right now, today. No prerequisites required. Just a determination to get one part of your life locked in.

If you love what we do here and want to support Paper Beats World, please like and share this post. You can also support us financially on Ko-fi.

Want to start of the year with a free book? Check out Seeming, book one of Station 86.

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I will never write anything as good as this!

Recently I read a fantastic book called Mister Magic. You can read my full review on Haunted MTL here.

This book sent me into a tailspin for a couple of reasons. The first one was that it dealt heavily with the Mormon church and religious trauma. But the second reason is the one I want to talk about today.

I will never, as long as I live, write anything as good as this book.

I will never write anything as good as The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. I will never write anything as good as The Stand. I will never write anything as good as American Gods. These are all works of art, and I am just not a good enough writer to come up with anything so breathtakingly creative and wonderful as these books.

Writers are readers first. People who want to write stories usually want to do this because we love stories. And we love good stories. So I doubt I’m the only writer to look at a great piece of writing and think that my paltry contributions are nothing in comparison.

But, of course, if I let myself be bogged down by this, I’d never write a single word again. And I think some people would miss my work. I know I would miss it.

So what do we do when we feel like this? Well, here are some of the things I’ve been reminding myself of. Hopefully, they’ll help you too.

Art is subjective

It’s important to remember that everyone’s tastes are different. The same book can keep one reader up at night while being a sleeping pill to someone else. And every single book I mentioned as being works of art has one-star reviews right now on Amazon. And as amazing as it is to realize, you might write something that someone else likes better than you do. You should always be your work’s biggest champion, but someone else will probably be your work’s biggest fan. The flip side of this is that the work that you love, might not be for everybody. Maybe some people love it. Maybe some people hate it. But no book is really perfect, and we should probably all take our favorites down of the pedestals we’ve so lovingly placed them on.

You can always get better

It’s probably not fair of me to say that I will never write anything as good as those books. Because, frankly, I might. I’m always trying to get better. I want to write better, more creative, and gripping stories. I honestly feel even now that I’m just coming into my stride as a writer, yes even after writing and publishing eight books.

Writing requires talent, but it also requires learning and practice. We practice every time we sit down and tap on the keyboard just the same as a musician practices at a piano. We are learning, we are growing. And we can, if we want to, write something as amazing as our favorite books.

Not everything has to be a work of art

Works of art are amazing. A fantastic book can be moving, and life-changing. It can save us when we’re in our darkest hour. It can inspire us to change the world, or just be better people.

But we don’t always consume content that is amazing or life-changing. My life was not even a little changed by Rick and Morty, or any book by Philippa Gregory. But I love those a lot. I’ll go nuts over a Philippa Gregory book because it’s fun to read. The same can be said for most of the books I read or shows I watch.

You can write something just because you think it’s fun. You don’t always have to set out to write the next Great American Novel. You can just write something good. That’s okay, encouraged even.

Besides, I’m willing to bet that the people who write those great books didn’t set out to write something that was going to be world-changing. They had a good idea, and they wrote it to the best of their ability at the time. Sometimes that means we end up with trash. Sometimes that means we end up with art. Sometimes that just means we end up with something that passed the time and helped us enjoy our lunch break a little more.

All of those things are okay.

Your work is your own

I was raised with a mindset that I’m still trying to unlearn. It sounds good at first.

You are already doing better than a lot of people. You right now, wherever you are, are doing better than a lot of other people. Your book is better than other published books. If your book isn’t published yet, at least you wrote a book. That puts you ahead of people who are still working on theirs. If you’re still working on yours, at least you’ve started. That puts you ahead of the people who are just wishing they could write a book but haven’t yet bothered to put pen to paper. And all the way down to the poor scrub who doesn’t want to create any art at all and just wants to watch Real Housewives after work in peace.

There are two problems with that. One, we do not gain our worth from creating things. We are inherently worthy of love, acceptance, joy, and peace without ever making one single thing. But two, if this theory works one way, it works the other way. If you haven’t started your book yet, people who have are better. If you have started your book, people who have published theirs are better. If you’ve published your book, someone’s book was more popular. And there is always going to be someone more popular. Someone else will get a bigger advance, sell more copies, get a movie or TV adaption faster or with a bigger budget.

So instead of comparing your art and your journey against anyone else, compare yourself to where you were yesterday. Compare this project with your last project, and see how much you’ve grown. So I don’t need my current book to be better than Mister Magic. I just need it to be better than Nova.

I hope that you write something today. And even if it’s not as good as you want it to be, I hope you like it. I hope it’s good. Because just by existing, it’s already good enough.

Paper Beats World is a labor of love. If you love what we do here, you can support us by liking and sharing this post. You can also support us financially on Ko-fi.

Nova is available now for preorder! You can order it now on Amazon, and read it in full now on May 17th.

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I’m an indecisive feather in the wind, and I need to stop it

I hold tight to many of my convictions. While I consider myself an open minded person who’s willing to consider others ideas, I am pretty much set on the big core values of life.

What I lack is any conviction when it comes to running my little business over here. I, sadly, am a fan of the trend.

I read a lot of business blogs, and I get some great ideas from them. And when you read a lot of business blogs, you notice patterns. Months ago, the trend was mailing lists, and newsletters. I didn’t have a newsletter at the time, and I didn’t really want one. With a few exceptions, newsletters are the things I get because I wanted some nifty thing that they were offering with the sign up. One exception I have to mention is Ninja Notes, from ByRegina. I love that. She puts a lot of effort into the posts she sends out in those, and I enjoy them.

I didn’t want to do that. I would rather put my best material here, where everyone will see it. I don’t run the same kind of business as these women I read about, for the most part.

But everyone was saying that I should totally do this.

And so I made a newsletter. About seven people subscribed to it. I wrote good content for it, and even included a market list for it, to give it more value. And I hated writing it, every month. It took time away from making content for PBW, and all of my other writing projects. It wasn’t fun for me. I was constantly unsure how it should be ‘different’ so I wasn’t just rehashing the content here. I hated promoting it, too.

But everyone was saying that I should totally do this.

Then I found this new blog, called The Middle Finger Project. And I read this post, about why you shouldn’t just do a newsletter because everyone else does a newsletter.

And that’s when I started feeling like a freaking idiot.

So I told you all that to tell you this. I was reading a different blog, and came across a piece about author’s websites. I was in the middle of the PBW revision at the time, so I was on that.

I came to realize, though, that I didn’t agree with any of the things this blogger was saying. They suggested that while it wasn’t terrible to post short stories or even book chapters on your website, what was the point? They also suggested that your website should be your calling card, a place to get information, not your full work.

But why should anyone buy my books if they have no idea if they like my stories? I buy books often because I love the creator’s website. I love the free stories and art they gave me on their site.

This advice was not for me. And yet, it made me question my whole business model!

Another piece of advice I got recently was to publish short stories in literary magazines to help promote your book. That advice was either given by someone who has never tried to publish anything, or who lives in a magical world where editors aren’t buried under manuscripts, horribly suggestive, and often have months long waiting times.

Now, I’m always open to new things, new experiments, and new ways to promote my writing. My word this year is Wonder, as in, ‘I wonder what would happen if I did this thing I’ve never tried.’ So I’ll continue to read my blogs, and try new things. But from now on, whether I stick with a thing or not is going to depend more on my personal results than what anyone else thinks my results should be.

How about you?

 

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