Relax? Why on earth would you relax in a situation like this? Anyone who’s relaxed must be sleep or brain dead. Only through constant vigilance can you proceed intelligently in an industry as fickle as indie publishing!
After all, your next book could be the one that sinks your career. There’s no way of knowing what people will take issue with, so the only thing to do is make as many allies as you can in the business. And then hire some sensitivity readers. And then keep your launch somewhat quiet, because a big launch is the best way to get a target on your back. You know there are authors who send their readers after other authors to one-star review bomb their new release. You’ll do whatever it takes to avoid that fate!
Oh god, this is exhausting. There are too many dangers to consider. Screw it! Time to be courageous! Just hit publish and be done with it! Who cares if you don’t have any launch plans!
If you’re feeling a little called out right now, then you’re probably an Enneagram Type 6, the Loyalist. Every creative has concerns and anxiety about releasing their work into the world, but your type can make overthinking what could go wrong an absolute art. But don’t worry, (that can be tricky, I know), because your type can also be a beacon of courage for all other types. Keep reading to learn how.
Welcome back to this series where we explore what motivates us and how we might build a life that works with our creative impulses rather than against them. To read the previous entries, go here: www.ffs.media/story-tips/category/Motivation+series
Today, we’re talking all about the Enneagram Six, “the Loyalist.” We’re going to dive deep into what motivates someone with these core fears and desires, and how we can build an empowered author life for ourselves if this is our type.
If this isn’t your type, I strongly suggest you read it anyway. Not only will it help you write strong Loyalist characters, but I guarantee you have a Six in your life, and understanding them will only strengthen the relationship.
At their core, Sixes’ desire is to be supported. Their fear is that they’re unsupported and lacking guidance. The concepts of trust and courage are central to the way the Six relates to the world.
Of all the types, Sixes have the most fraught relationship with authority. Because they are fear-focused (they’re in the “fear” triad of the Enneagram, and their unique passion is also “fear”), they crave a protective authority figure to guide and protect them. But because they are fear-focused, they don’t trust authority figures. You can see how much of a pickle this puts them in.
The crux of this problem is that the Six is looking externally for authority in these situations, and this results from their rejection of inner authority. But as Loyalists move to healthier levels of development, they tap into a deep well of inner authority and begin to trust that all the clarity they need can be found in themselves. They learn to trust their instincts.
In the meantime, though, Loyalists can struggle with indecision as all the possible threats to their best-laid plans appear obvious to them at all times.
The trouble with talking about Sixes is that this fear at the core of the type presents in two starkly different ways. Loyalists can be phobic or counter-phobic.
Most people know of the fight/flight/freeze/flop/fawn responses to a threat. Fight is to attack the threat, flight is to run away, freeze is being caught in indecision and not acting, flop is to submit to the threat, and fawn is an attempt to ingratiate oneself to the threat. These are all possible responses of a Six, but the first one—fight—is the typical counter-phobic response we might see.
Contrary to what our society might tell us, the counter-phobic response isn’t more courageous or admirable than any of the others. That’s because it’s still reaction to fear rather than a response made out of a sense of inner authority and a faith that the universe is, generally speaking, on one’s side. But this counter-phobic response tends to get more praise from others, even though it is usually a reckless reaction rather than a reasonable response.
The phobic response catches much more flack. This looks like retreat, like indecision, and like behind-the-scenes manipulations of others to increase one’s own safety through social standing.
It’s not uncommon, though, for a Six who is usually phobic to reach a breaking point. They can no longer stand the endless voices in their head pointing out every way it could go wrong, and they no longer have the energy to stay small. In this case, that creative energy that’s been repressed can explode in a reckless counter-phobic act, which in our industry usually looks like publishing a book before it’s ready and before there’s a plan in place for its success.
But don’t worry, because it’s not all bad news for a Loyalist. Once you embrace that inner authority, your leadership and courage can’t help but show—after all, there’s no courage without fear.
When I’m working with a Loyalist who’s struggling with motivation, it’s usually because they’ve rejected their inner authority and have lost faith that things can work out, going so far as to feel like the entire universe is against them. They believe that they don’t know the next best move, and that no matter what they do next, it won’t work out in their favor. This pessimism, as it turns out, has nothing to do with reality and is only a sneak way for anxiety to present itself.
As you might imagine, it can be tricky to consult with you Sixes when you’ve stopped trusting yourself but also can’t trust any outside authority, even as you seek it out. My suggestions are either accepted blindly or shot down immediately. Don’t worry, though; I don’t take it personally.
If you’re a Loyalist, you’d do well to incorporate as many practices as you can into your daily routine that lower your heart rate and tone your vagus nerve. This is because fear, that thing you do so well, activates your sympathetic nervous system, and once that’s triggered, everything in life is harder and burns more fuel. Your aim at the start of each day should be to relax your sympathetic nervous system and engage your parasympathetic nervous system. Doing this will free up much needed mental bandwidth to make smarter decisions by accessing your inner clarity. Enough of these smart decisions, and you might just begin to believe the universe is working with you rather than against you!
Why might fear hinder your creative practices, some might wonder? The answer is simple: creativity requires risk. As soon as you release a book, you’re surrendering your baby to the world. Holding back during the production of it is poison to your creative process.
Once those muscles in your shoulders and face start tightening and you stop trusting your inner authority, making creative decisions that best serve your story becomes nearly impossible. This might look like not being able to choose how to end the book or even what to write in the next line of dialogue. It takes the process away from that inner fountain and turns it into a decision by committee. And if we’ve learned anything from the US House of Representatives and Senate, it’s that the more people are involved in a decision, the less likely even basic common-sense decisions are to ever be made.
The Loyalists who make the biggest impact are those who learn to trust their instincts. They value courage and embody it through their faith that their instincts won’t lead them wrong in their pursuit for something meaningful. Those Sixes aren’t afraid of risk because they understand that everything carries risk, there’s no such thing as 100% secure (thanks, random meteors!), and that in the end, courage is more valuable than trying to live forever.
Trusting one’s instincts isn’t an overnight process, and sometimes we think we’re listening to our inner clarity, but it’s just our fear throwing its voice. But if you’re a Loyalist who’s tired of being trapped in indecision, it might be time to practice this new approach of self-trust in small, low-stakes environments (like how all trust is built).
Each of the nine types of the Enneagram has nine Levels of Development within it. Three are considered healthy, three are average, and three are unhealthy. We move through these levels at various moments of our lives, but we usually have an anchor point or baseline that’s our default. As we unlock some of the unconscious patterns associated with our type, our anchor point can move slowly upward toward healthier levels.
Below are descriptions of a Six in the three categories of development (healthy, average, unhealthy):
Healthy: Trusting of self and others, courageous, highly cooperative while maintaining independence, has a positive mindset, not afraid of being a leader, forms strong relationships with others, shows deep support for movements and individuals they care about, naturally builds and fosters healthy communities that create stability and security for others.
Average: Bases decisions on safest option rather than most impactful or courageous, seeks security through alliances, seeks protective external authority, functions in a state of hyper-vigilance, indecisive and anxious, absence of substantial guiding values leads to unpredictable actions and outcomes, sarcasm as self-protection, begins dividing people into friends and enemies, approaches every new experience/person/situation with suspicion, prone to authoritarian beliefs while being suspicious of all authority, projects undesired parts of self onto others.
Unhealthy: Suspicion turns to paranoia, volatile as they switch rapidly between flight and flight, adopts radical beliefs to find footing and security, feelings of persecution or that everyone is out to get them validate their urge to lash out, can become hysterical and turn to self-destructive numbing behaviors, irrationality and volatility bring about the things they fear.
If you’re not a Six, you’re now thinking of someone you know who is. Or maybe even a character. As you can see, Sixes can make great heroes or villains in your books, depending on what development level they most often inhabit.
Okay, so how do you use this information to motivate yourself as a writer?
Let go. Just loosen the reins a little bit, at least in the creation process. There is no threat in a shitty or bold first draft. There is no threat in revisions. There’s really no threat in publishing, either.
You’re an indie. Stop looking outward for authority. Your readers are the only gatekeepers, and no matter what you write, there will be readers for it. The only thing that can stop you is… fear. But when you choose courage instead, when you accept that you’ll always feel a little afraid but choose to do it anyway because your inner guidance tells you to, you’re unstoppable.
I’ve been around this industry for a while and have seen people try to “cancel” indie authors many times. I have great news: it’s impossible to do. You can’t cancel a human being, you can only bully them. And every time someone bullies you is an opportunity to show them they can’t control what you do. Fuck ‘em. They ain’t the boss of you. So long as you tap into that courage and allow your inner authority to take precedence, there are ways forward to pursue this passion and reach the readers who need your stories. Period.
If Frodo could make it all the way to the heart of Mordor, you can keep hitting publish and finding new fans.
Every type has a wake-up call associated with it to tell us we’re plummeting down the development levels and it’s time to pause, take a deep breath, and reevaluate some of the premises we’re working from. For the Six, the red flag is seeking external security. This is a game with no finish line because you could always make yourself more invisible and inconsequential to eke out just a little more safety… and yet, you can never be 100% secure. So maybe you decide to play it safe and never publish another word. You could still be hit by a bus while strolling down a sidewalk. Game over either way. What do you want to do in the meantime?
The problem with seeking external security (and this can be social or physical security) is that the action necessarily betrays our inner authority. That self-betrayal leaves a Six reeling, and they begin to project the emotion onto everyone else in a subconscious pattern of: you will betray me, and so will you, and you! How do I know this? Because even I betrayed me!
Sixes who’ve accepted the natural risk of living and who defend their inner authority create inspirational works that leave readers moved and inspired. The most quintessential example of this is J.R.R. Tolkien and his stories from Middle Earth. You might notice a commonality between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings: a small, vulnerable creature chooses to leave the safety of his village to confront unknown and unfathomable danger for the sake and safety of the collective.
You don’t get much more Loyalist of a story than that.
And perhaps there is no better example of trusting one’s inner authority above that of the external world (i.e. society) than Mark Twain, another strong example of a Six. Writing down the iconoclastic ideas that he did and publishing them in the time when he did took repeated acts of courage, but as if often the case with the boldest written words, those ideas changed hearts and minds. I would guess it’s the reason schools keep assigning Adventures of Huckleberry Finn despite the egregious racial slurs and stereotypes; in the context of the time, the story took serious cojones to publish.
Need another example of the sheer guts that a Six can access when they’ve chosen to trust themselves? How about Malcolm X? His writings challenge the authority structures of our society and will continue to for generations to come, I suspect.
So, if you’re struggling to put the words down, see if any of these are running on loop in your head:
“I don’t know what should happen next.”
“I need to read one more plotting book before I’m ready.”
“I can’t write that! They’d crucify me!”
“I should play it safe and stick to the genres I’m used to.”
“I should wait to write the next scene until I talk to my writing coach.”
“No matter what I write, this book is going to flop.”
“What if I [normal writing action] and then [catastrophe happens]?”
“If I can think of all the worst-case scenarios, then I can avoid them.”
“I need feedback from a few more people before I can be sure this is the best approach.”
“I’ve taken too long between releases and all of my readers have abandoned me.”
“How can I write when the world is on fire?”
These stifling thoughts will begin to fade when you remember that there is no sure thing in this world, no matter what you do, and that you always have the choice to do the brave thing. No matter how anxious you are, remember that there is someone out there who needs to see your courageous example. You could change the trajectory of their life not by being unafraid, but by accepting your fear and doing the meaningful thing anyway. When your deep wisdom and inner authority speak to you, it’s time to set fear aside and do as they say. No matter the consequences, you won’t regret it.
Drawing conscious thought to our subconscious scripts is like drawing blood to an injury to help it heal. And that’s how we begin to break these cycles that hold us prisoner so we can move to healthier development levels of our type.
It’s also how we keep ourselves motivated and connected to the work when we’re Loyalists.
So, if you’re a Six who’s struggling with motivation:
Develop meditative practices that activate your parasympathetic nervous system and connect you to your inner authority. Journaling, meditation, a walk through nature, tarot, yoga—these are all great places to start. Do them prior to your writing time.
Unlike real life, writing allows for revisions. That makes it a perfect low-stakes place to practice trusting your instincts. See where they lead you, and if that’s somewhere different from the last plotting book you read, that is A-OK! Keep going!
Summon to mind the child you use to be. At some point, they learned not to trust themself and to listen to an untrustworthy authority instead. Show courage for that child who was too vulnerable to do it, and remember that there are all kinds of people who learned this same thing and will have their world changed by your brave example.
Bad news: you won’t live forever, no matter how safely you live. But through courage and trusting yourself, you can be remembered and felt for generations by making the world a safer and braver place.
There is no right or safe way to write a book. If you want to play it safe, you should stop writing immediately. Yeah, never again. It’s the only way. What’s that you say? Your head would explode? Perfect. Then accept that writing is risky, but you can’t not do it. Start from there, and remind yourself of this when you have to. (Put it on a sticky note on your computer, if you must!)
Write stories that will change lives. Make the stakes for not writing higher than those for writing. Danger for the sake of it is a pathological disfunction, but danger for a greater purpose is just called “courage.” And you have lots of it in there.
Almost all betrayal is a matter of perception. If you’re expecting others to betray themselves to stay true to you, then you’re expecting too much and creating self-fulfilling prophecies.
If others expect you to betray your creative vision and your inner authority to stay loyal to them (this includes editors, coaches, beta readers, cowriters, and advance readers), then they may not currently be the right person to collaborate with. Don’t keep deferring to them; let them go.
Build relationships with other authors and create common causes for you to work toward. This could be an anthology, a charity, or even co-writing. As you do, continue to choose to do the brave thing by offering your collaborators the benefit of the doubt rather than slipping immediately into suspicion when conflict arises.
Next week, we’ll discuss how to find you writing motivation if you’re a Type 7, the Enthusiast. This is the type of creatives like Elton John and Miley Cyrus, as well as beloved characters Fred & George Weasley and Eleanor Shellstrop from The Good Place.