Romance, parrots, and big decisions
The ‘Meet AZ Writer’ series spotlights writers who live in Arizona or who have a strong connection to the area.
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My name: Megan Crawford
Arizona connection: Resident since 2011, originally from New Jersey
Years writing: 20 years, on and off
Genre: Romance
A book that inspires me: Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
What I’d tell my younger writer self: Writing is a muscle and when you don’t use it your writing loses strength.
Why I Write
I write because I enjoy stepping into another world created by imagination. Something exciting and magical happens when a story is created from nothing.
When I was younger, I wrote short stories after school. I was boy-crazy then, so my stories always involved a crush. I remember sitting on an old wooden chair from my grandmother’s house after school and writing until my mom called me for dinner. I wrote on and off until college graduation. After that, my priorities shifted to scaling my career and writing sat on the back burner.
Corporate Life Was Great…
I spent nearly my whole career in corporate learning. I loved it. I started out as a corporate trainer, then led a team of trainers before jumping into a new role where I measured the impact of our training programs against things like employee productivity, customer satisfaction, and ROI. I loved what I did and who I did it with. I poured my creativity into designing and delivering training programs, training material, and infographics.
But My Writing Dreams Whispered
Even as I scaled the corporate ladder, there was this pull in my mind to write and publish a romance I’d written back in 1994. It took some planning and some soul-searching but I made one of the biggest decisions of my life in 2023. I left my 16-year career with an amazing company to finally pursue my dream of writing.
An Exciting, Terrifying Leap
I was excited and terrified when I decided to leave my career and journey into the unknown as a new writer. Terrified that I had made the worst mistake of my life (and career), but also excited to finally give this dream a shot. I had to push through so much fear as I started this writing journey:
What if I suck?
What if I am a horrible writer?
What if I’ve made a big mistake?
Part of me wished I hadn’t told so many people that I left my job to write a book. It made it real and so much more was at stake if I failed to produce a novel at the end of this.
I don’t think I realized how much resistance I’d have to writing. It took several weeks to get my first 2,000 words on the page. Even then, I continued to drag my feet for the next two months as I battled fear of failure and wondered if my book would be good enough.
Push Through the Fear
Pushing through the fear was like walking against a retreating ocean wave. The pull of fear sinks you deep into the sand and you have to exert more energy to take a single step forward. This became a valuable lesson for me. I needed more energy to push through my own resistance.
The Edge of Your Comfort Zone
One of my favorite self-development experts, Henry Ammar, teaches how to identify resistance when you’ve reached the edge of your comfort zone. Henry explains it in a simple, yet powerful way. The circle is your comfort zone. About one inch outside the circle is your goal, what you want to achieve. The more you push through the resistance, discomfort, and fear, the bigger your circle (your comfort zone) grows until you’ve pushed it so far that the goal is finally inside the circle. He explains that awareness of your resistance is key and the reason to keep pushing.
Widen Your Circle, Step by Step
So that’s what I did. I recognized my resistance, acknowledging it for what it was, fear and discomfort. Then I pushed through it. I pushed through it when I sat down to write, I pushed through it when I didn’t know what questions to ask authors at signing events, I pushed through it when I went to my first writer’s critique meeting, and I began to expand my comfort zone with each uncomfortable task I tackled.
The Force of You
There’s something that happens when you start to push through the discomfort. It’s like you unlock a part of yourself that has laid dormant. The more I pushed through the resistance, the more I started to believe in myself. When you believe in yourself, you become a force to be reckoned with.
No Regrets
When people ask me about the last few months, I describe it as drinking from a fire hose. But I wouldn’t change any of it. I’ve learned so much about the process of writing and about myself. My advice to you, my writer friend, is to keep writing. Keep learning. Know it will sometimes be uncomfortable, but being outside your comfort zone is where your dreams come true! You don’t need to know the next five or six steps ahead, you just need to know the step right in front of you. That’s it.
ABOUT MEGAN CRAWFORD
MEGAN CRAWFORD IS A ROMANCE NOVELIST WHO MIGRATED FROM NEW JERSEY TO ARIZONA. HER PARROT AND #1 SIDEKICK, REX, MADE THE TREK WITH HER AND IS WRITING HIS MEMOIR, A TALE OF TWO WINGS (JUST KIDDING). YOU’LL OFTEN FIND HER AT WRITING EVENTS ACROSS THE VALLEY. FOLLOW HER JOURNEY @CRAWFORDBOOKNOOK AND ONLINE AT MEGANCRAWFORDWRITES.COM.