Monday Morning Motivators to Slay Your Creative Dragons

By CJ Lyons and Margie Lawson


Banishing Stage Fright: from CJ

Everyone has some stage fright, even if we don’t admit it. But for some it can be incapacitating to the point where they can’t perform at all, whether it’s speaking in public or putting their fingers on the keyboard and writing.

The fear of getting it “wrong” can be paralyzing. Here are some tips to overcome stage fright.

First, close your eyes and breath from your belly. In and out.

Imagine your audience. It can be an audience of one, perhaps your perfect reader or your agent or editor. Or a larger crowd.

Okay, can you see them? Now, ask yourself: what do they want from me? What can I give them that would please them? Make them smile in delight?

Usually it’s Entertainment, Enlightenment, or Education. Or a combination of the three.

Once you decide what your audience wants, why they would pay their hard won money or take the time to listen to your words, then with your eyes still closed, make a grand gesture.

Perhaps a sweep of your arm like an opera singer, or a mysterious flick of the wrist like a magician. Anything that works for you, but use this movement every time you practice your speech or sit down to write.

You’re programming your body that with this gesture, you are now “on”, primed for success, all excuses and stalling behind you, this is it.

Finally, envision yourself giving your audience exactly what they want. And more. Imagine wild success, cheers and applause.

Now open those eyes and get to work!


As a pediatric ER doctor, CJ Lyons has lived the life she writes about in her cutting edge suspense novels. Her debut, LIFELINES (Berkley, March 2008), became a national bestseller and Publishers Weekly proclaimed it a "breathtakingly fast-paced medical thriller." The second in the series, WARNING SIGNS, is due out January, 2009. Contact her at http://www.cjlyons.net

Margie Lawson -- presenter, psychotherapist, writer -- lives at the top of a Colorado mountain west of Denver. Margie merged her two worlds, psychology and writing, to develop psychologically anchored editing systems and techniques that teach writers how to write page turners. A former college professor, Margie works as a psychotherapist, writes fiction and nonfiction, and presents full day master classes for writers internationally. Go to http://www.margielawson.com for more information.