Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach

[Ep 199] Today I’m chatting with NavPress Publisher Don Pape. Don has published over a dozen New York Times best-sellers, including Crazy Love by Francis Chan. Don is also the publisher of Julie Cantrell’s Into the Free, which won the 2013 Christy Book of the Year Award. He led a team that won 20 ADDY Awards between 2008 and 2010 for David C Cook titles recognized for best cover or book design. Born in Brazil, Pape graduated with a bachelor of arts in political science from Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada. He speaks fluent French and Portuguese and is married with three sons. His multicultural publishing career in sales, marketing and graphic design has led him to a variety of roles, including executive, literary agent and consultant. Don and I met years ago when my first book came out, and he jokes in the interview that he’s not an expert, but let me tell you, he is. And I’m honored to call him a friend, as well. His focus has always been in the Christian publishing industry, but even if you’re writing for the general market, you’ll hear about changes in publishing in general and learn from Don how writers can and should practice their craft. Here's an excerpt: "The reality for authors is that they are much more engaged in their book than in the past. In the past you could probably give your book over to a publisher and then go back to your Hobbit house and start writing again. Now, you've got to give the book to the publisher and then get fully engaged with the marketing team and the publicity team as to how to reach the consumer—and addressing it in a way that it will reach the right people. And who best knows the content of the book—who better—than the author?" Click on the podcast player (above) to listen in on my conversation with NavPress Publisher Don Pape. Resources * Don Pape on Twitter * Don on Instagram * NavPress * Navigators * Waterbrook (a division of Penguin Random House) * Multnomah (also a division of Penguin Random House) * Bethany House, a division of Baker Publishing Group * David C Cook * Tattered Cover Book Store (Denver) * bookbar independent bookstore (Denver) * A Severe Mercy, by Sheldon Vanauken * Travis Thrasher * Words from the Hill, by Stuart Garrard * Crazy Love, by Francis Chan * Bad Girls of the Bible, by Liz Curtis Higgs * Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World, by

[Ep 198] Some people love to sit down and just start writing with no worries whether or not the work is moving them toward their goals. Others love to spend time making lists, making plans, setting everything up, scheduling down to the minute—devoting so much time to those tasks that they struggle to get around to the actual work of writing. Let’s figure out how to do both. Let’s find a balance. Let’s set ourselves up with a plan that helps us truly move toward goals and level up, and then commit to the work, so we can meet deadlines, accomplish tasks, and make progress. There are three things we need to do: we need to organize ourselves, schedule the work, and enact the plan. Organize, schedule, enact. Each takes a slightly different mindset and represents a slightly different role. It’s as if you’re three people at the same time. Organize As you organize yourself, you’re like a project manager and you’ll need a project management setup. Project Management Tasks You’ll want to make checklists to create repeatable processes and routines that fit into your days. Say no to things holding you back, so you can simplify and prune to focus and level up. Make sure the plan you’re organizing supports your primary goals—that one-year and the three-month goal, but you’ll also want to break down big projects into smaller tasks and schedule those, as well. This is part of the reverse engineering I’ve talked about in the past. Take all of that—the one-year goal, the three-month goal, and all the ways you’ve broken it down into—and back up. What tasks need to be done in each of the three months of the three-month goal? Then move to the month ahead of you and break that into two-week chunks. Move down to the week ahead, then, finally, break down your tasks and goals into days so you know what you’re doing today on any given day—always knowing you are steadily, intentionally moving toward goals. Project Management Systems To organize all of this, you need some kind of system. It can be as complex or simple, or digital or analog as you like. Some people use Trello, Evernote, Google Docs, spreadsheets, bullet journals, or a three-ring binder. It’s up to you. Use what works for you. And stick with it, because you'll invest time into organizing all these projects and all this content, goals, and tasks. You’ll input a lot of information into your system. To repeat that in a different system because you abandoned the first one after a week will simply delay the work of writing. Set up a system and stick with it for at least a month. Don’t give up too soon. Schedule After you organize all of your tasks and goals, it’s time to actually schedule. This represents another role: the scheduler who does the admin work. Choose Your Calendar Pick a calendar that suits you just as you picked a project management system that suited you. Ideally, this calendar will weave together your personal appointments to accurately reflect your availability. Plus, you’re already using that calendar and you’ll have it with you at all times. Many people like the visual effect of huge wall calendars, hanging a poster-size calendar for every month and filling a whole wall. They use Post-Its for projects, tasks, and goals, because the Post-Its can be color-coded to represent each item and can move around as needed if something in your life needs to be moved around and adjusted. You might consider a digital calendar option, however, because most will sync with multiple devices and you’ll always have this pocket assis...

[Ep 197] Every week I follow a pattern of sorts. Sometimes it gets thrown off by a day or two, but for my regular routine I write, record, prep, and publish content you may consume via the podcast, at the website, or in the newsletter that arrives in your inbox. The Routine Drip of Content Every week I also produce social media updates, some of which are drawn from the primary content, as I pluck themes, quotes, and images and revise them slightly for the micro-form found on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Every week, I drip these out—drip-drip-drip—an ongoing effort to encourage writers in all the places I interact with them. It’s part of my writing routine, and while the output wouldn’t blow away any competitors, I’ve seen that the regularity has proven to be sustainable and fruitful. Prepare to Surge Ahead and Get Lots Done Last summer I was out of the country for a month, unable to drip out content on my usual schedule. I could have just told everyone I was taking a break, but I wanted to keep up. I wanted to continue sending out podcast episodes and articles and newsletters to encourage writers as they move toward their goals. So throughout spring, in the weeks leading up to the trip, I doubled up. It felt crazy—I could never keep up that pace on a regular basis—but I produced twice the content I normally would each week. By the time I left, I’d published something each week and scheduled six additional episodes to go live while I was gone. Having a clear goal and an unchangeable deadline kicked me into gear. I got up early; I didn’t let social media distract me. I knew this was a short burst of effort, so with a level of energy I knew was unsustainable over the long haul, I surged forward and pulled it off. Take Advantage of Times When You Can Surge Ahead To get beyond your current status quo—to level up—you’ll have to do something. And most likely, you’ll have to engage with some surges of effort followed by times when content drips out a little at a time. Manage Those Productive Seasons To arrive at your one-year goal or your three-month goal will require you to achieve milestones along the way. To hit those milestones, you have to push hard for awhile, neglecting housework, skipping an outing, scheduling a weekend writing retreat, waking up unnaturally early for a month. You’d be amazed at what you can get done with a surge of focused energy. As I said, it may not be sustainable over the long run, but it can help you get through the muddy middle and crest the hill so you can arrive fast and strong at that milestone—perhaps even at the next level itself. If you want to accumulate more Twitter followers or welcome more subscribers to your email list, you’ll need to take action. You’ll probably need to produce more projects, more content, more interaction—and to see results, you may have to do it all at once, in a compressed time frame. That’s a surge: full-steam ahead to create as much as you can. Surges require resources like time, energy, inspiration, money, grit, sacrifice, focus. Keep Dripping Out Content During Times of Slowdown But to continue reaping a harvest after the results of that busy season, you’ll also have to manage ongoing interaction and output, finding ways to drip it out—daily, weekly—so that readers and followers look forward to your ideas and messages. Small efforts over time add up, and the steady drip of content in social media, the steady drip of daily word count all contributes toward your bigger project. Set up daily and weekly routines to support the commitment to follow-through on the multiple smaller tasks that contribute to the cumulative effect. Your routines are the sustainable element of th...

[Ep 196] Last time, I asked: Where do you want to be in a year? You may have read that and set a big, hairy, audacious goal—a BHAG. Or maybe you called it a “stretch goal.” You want to aim high and not settle for mediocre. You’re excited! You’re an optimist. “In a year, I’m going to be at the top of my game, more successful than I’ve ever been.” Big, Fast Success If you want it bad and can handle a focused, year-long push, you may nail it. If you have big resources to support big goals, this stretch-goal approach may be the way you level up fast. In a year (or less!) you may be the one saying: * “I built a substantial author platform in six months and landed my book contract in eight. I’m on track to launch next year!” * “I’m making a full-time income through my website now that I’ve quadrupled my blog traffic.” * “I’m the keynote speaker at two major conferences thanks to my podcast taking off after just a few months.” Falling Short of Goals But if your time, money, energy, skills, experience, and support are limited, you might not achieve a big, hairy, audacious goal—even if you want it bad. And falling short of your goal can be demotivating. You may end up saying: * “I set out to gain 100,000 subscribers on my email list in three months, but I only have a thousand.” * “My plan to submit an essay each month fell way short.” * “No, I didn’t finish writing my novel in three months.” The macro plan sets us on a course toward a goal. We see the target. We take aim. The good news is that even if we fall short, we may be further along than if we had no goal at all. The bad news is that we may end up so discouraged and disheartened at what seems like lack of progress or failure, we give up. If we’re setting an aggressive goal that is too much of a stretch, we may need to re-examine it before we form the plan to get there. Halve a Goal After Jon Acuff wrote a book called Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work That Matters, he realized people may not need as much help getting started—after all, the beginning of projects and resolutions is the fun part. It’s the middle and the end of projects where we sag and feel stuck and give up. Acuff wanted people to see their goals through to the end, so he wrote a follow-up book called Finish: Give Yourself the Gift Of Done. For Finish, Acuff commissioned a study with the University of Memphis that concluded “small goals, when you cut your goal in half, are 63% more successful than big crazy BHAGs.”1 So if you set out with a BHAG last week, consider chopping your goal in half. * You can adjust the time and give yourself twice the time to complete it: instead of a two-month deadline, extend to four; if you think editing a draft will take 30 minutes, allow an hour. * You can adjust the task: instead of committing to 2000 words a day, drop to a thousand; instead of six Instagram posts per week, try three. * You can adjust the number of goals: if you’re trying to raise visibility and name recognition by speaking, posting on social media, starting a YouTube channel, writing guest posts, appearing on podcasts, and pitching articles to mainstream magazines, drop half of those activities and focus energy and attention on a few. Research to Plan Find out what your writing world is like. What do people expect in that world? What are the successful people doing? Do you want or need to follow a similar path? What do you need to do first to move in that same direction? What level are you at and what’s the next level? Could you connect with people in groups and meetups or at conferences and retreats? Could you find a mentor or coach?

[Ep 195] I’m not by nature a planner. I am, in fact, more of a tumbleweed. You know what I mean? If I went with my personality, I’d be blown around with no particular direction—wherever the wind sent me. On Being a Writer - Chapter 10 Excerpt I wrote about this tendency of mine in On Being a Writer, the book I wrote with Charity Singleton Craig. In Chapter 10, entitled “Plan,” I explain why I decided to be a little more intentional about creating a plan for my writing life: I traveled out west the summer of 2013. As my family and I barreled down a New Mexico highway through a barren landscape, we saw a storm. Winds, like a giant, invisible broom, swept sand up and around. Swoosh! Currents pushed against the side of our vehicle, and debris shot across the road. “Look!” I pointed. “A tumbleweed!” It hopped over the fence and bounced like a beachball twice to cross the highway, before soaring high over the fence on the other side, disappearing into the swirling dust. I had to shout over the roar of the wind for my husband to hear. “I always wanted to see a tumbleweed, but I didn’t realize I’d see it under these circumstances!” I’d only seen tumbleweeds in movies and cartoons. This was my first glimpse of the real thing, and realizing that its movement depended on violent, threatening gusts, I decided to stop comparing myself to a tumbleweed. In my Midwestern mind, tumbleweeds had seemed sort of go-with-the-flow, lazily rolling across the desert in whatever direction a puff of wind might send them. That’s also how I viewed my life as a writer. I didn’t plan my direction much or set definitive goals; I just went where the wind blew. In the early days, I could never quite see the big picture through the blustery dust of the tumbleweed approach. When I stopped being buffeted about, I was able to schedule my weeks and days to align with the vision I have for my writing life. I developed a long-range plan, hoping to look back decades from now and say, “I’m glad I invested in the creation of that work,” instead of, “What was I doing all those years?” But watching that storm hurl the hapless tumbleweed, I realized I didn’t want to be blown completely off the path. I wanted enough control to dig in and stay for a while, especially if I liked where I’d landed. So I’ve abandoned the tumbleweed analogy... My planning isn’t perfect; unexpected events, both good and bad, can throw me off. Nevertheless, my writing life is taking root and growing; I’m making significant, measurable progress each day. I still leave room for serendipity—a phone call from an event planner looking for a conference speaker, or a publisher wanting to hire a writing coach to work with one of their writers, or a magazine editor requesting a 2,000-word article on a topic of my choice. I...submit my work to websites and magazines, collaborate with other writers, coach high school students and adults in their craft, and publish articles at my own website...Clarity. Vision. Organization. Planning. I’m not waiting for the writing life to randomly bounce across my path. And if the wind whips up a surprise for me, I’m ready.1 Macro- and Micro-Level Planning Over the years I’ve learned to be more organized and deliberate at the macro level and micro level. The macro level is that long-range planning that looks at the big picture of where I want to be in the next year or two. I break that down into quarterly goals. They often evolve, but I like to have projects I’m working toward, even if the schedule shifts. Then there’s the micro level, where I plan at a practical level. Now, the micro level is where the magic takes place. But the thing is, it’s not magic at all. I make a plan and work the plan. At the micro-level, I break a project into manageable tasks and schedu...

[Ep 194] When a client brought me along to New York City, the airport shuttle bus dropped us off near Times Square and we had to find our way to the hotel. For a couple of Midwesterners who had never set foot in New York, this was magical. Getting around, however, was a tad mystifying—at first. As quickly as possible we had to evaluate our location and figure out our next step. We pulled out our phones and used an app that located where we were in order to guide us to our hotel. It helped us find our way to the next destinations, as well. The app located where we were and guided us to a restaurant that night and the publishing house the next day. Where Are You Now? Mall maps show a big overview of the layout of the place and mark the keystone stores. You look for a big red arrow pointing to where you stand labeled “You are here.” It helps you figure out your next steps so you take the right path based on your destination and your starting point. That’s what we did in New York and that’s what we can do as writers. We can take time to figure out where we are right now in the world of writing—we’re kind of looking for a big red arrow labeled “You are here,” though it won’t be as obvious as when we stand at that big kiosk in the mall. Nevertheless, with some reflection we can orient ourselves. It’s time to evaluate. If you look at the writing and publishing landscape—and your writing life so far—where are you now? Orient Yourself with These 10 Questions The following questions will help you evaluate your writing world so you can orient yourself and identity your starting point. To help you articulate and solidify your thoughts, record your responses on the downloadable worksheet (below) or copy the questions into a journal answer them there: 1. Describe the writing you’re doing. If you’re writing and submitting poetry and short stories to literary magazines, your world looks different than if you’re writing self-published thrillers, blogging in the travel market, or seeking traditional publishing of a book about cooking with kids. 2. Describe the writing world your work is part of. For instance, are you part of the self-publishing world, traditional publishing, blogging, or the literary market? 3. How long have you been here, doing this work? 4. What kinds of readers are here and how many are reading you? How are you known in this writing world? 5. What projects reflect your best work in this world? 6. What are you still figuring out (or have yet to figure out) to make the most of this writing world? What knowledge or skills do you need to fully inhabit this world? 7. How close are you to maxing out every possibility in this world of writing and at this level? Are you feeling stretched every day, or are you so experienced you’re bored, just skating along as you wash-rinse-repeat? 8. Who has done exemplary work in this space? Who do you look to for inspiration or as a model for what‘s possible? The next question that may take some courage to say out loud or write in a journal: 9. Is this the world you want to continue to write in? For example, do you want to continue submitting to literary magazines? If so, great. You can work on leveling up within that world. It’s smart to ask this question early in the process, because as you continue learning what it takes to level up, you want to be sure you’re investing time and resources moving up in the world that you value—the writing world where you want to continue. The last question is this: 10. If the answer to the previous question was “No,” and this is no longer the world you want to write in, where do you want to write next?

[Ep 193] Leveling up, according to my teenage son, who is familiar with several different video games, refers to a character or creature that gains enough experience to unlock new skills or features. For example, let’s say you’re playing a game with a dragon that has one primary skill: he can breathe fire. But not big fire; he shoots out just a little flicker of flame, like a cigarette lighter clicking open and shut. Discover Your Base-Level Abilities You start the game and figure out how your dragon’s power works. He gains plenty of fire-breathing experience, as you torch abandoned sheds and defend against enemies with a burst of his flame. At some point, you play long enough to make full use of his current abilities. You encounter every threat at least once if not twice, and you know the lay of the land. The dragon can scorch castle doors and scale turrets. He can flick out his fire to burn through the base of a tree to fell it and form a shelter. He’s ready to level up. Unlock that achievement and suddenly you face another dragon and yours breathes out a big ol’ fireball twice the size of his original flames. This opens up new possibilities and invites bigger challenges. And with these newfound abilities, he can face them. Writing is something like that. When we begin writing, we start with natural abilities and skills. We write and we learn what we’re capable of and we gain experience along the way. At some point, we may feel the nudge to level up, so we can see our writing expand—even explode—like a fireball doubled in size. You’ve Got to Get in the Game But before any of that can happen, we’ve got to get in the game. If you want to write, you have to start writing. Only when you get in the game will you begin to figure out what you’re capable of in the first place. Only when you’re actually writing can you test your skills and talents. Only when you’re in the game can you develop a writing practice, learn the craft of writing, and slowly grow comfortable and confident. When Hemingway First Got in the Game I’m reading Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, reminded of his early days in Paris, when he started writing stories and was figuring out his writing voice, his creative process. He found that he liked to write in a notebook while sitting in cafes. While he was still a literary unknown he was meeting and learning from his more experienced contemporaries like Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ezra Pound. He discovered a system for how to stop and start his work in progress: I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day. But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, “Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say.”1 He also learned to trust his emerging style—his now infamous spare style—that relies on declarative sentences. “If I started to write elaborately,” he explains, “or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written.”2 In those early days he wasn’t yet famous; he wasn’t a household name.

[Ep 192] “I have rewritten—often several times—every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.” Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory1 First Drafts Reveal What You Want to Say We’ve already covered the power of writing to discover what we want to say. We can do that with freewriting to discover our initial ideas, writing in our journals or as a warmup exercise when we first sit down to work. We can also use freewriting to bang out our initial draft. This is especially powerful if we’re doing short-form work and pour out the entire story or article in one sitting. If we prefer, however, we can sit down after we think, plan, plot, and outline, and version one may emerge more smoothly, flowing from one idea to the next with logic and fluency. Your personality may feel more comfortable with one approach or the other; there’s no right or wrong. The goal is to get that first draft out so you have material to work with. Once the draft is complete, the real work begins. It’s time to refine that draft, through rewriting, revision, and editing. Rewrite and Revise to Improve Your Drafts As Ernest Hemingway said in A Moveable Feast, “The only kind of writing is rewriting.”2 Editing is how we arrive at our finalized message, our finished work. Because as freeing and freewheeling as we may be when writing the draft, the project needs this next discovery phase. We need to clarify our ideas and clean up our messes. We may need to tweak and tighten. On the other hand, if the curse of knowledge causes us to write too lean, we might need to elaborate on an idea we’ve skipped over or ignored or we may need to expand a section that needs clarity. Questions to Consider To revise, we must begin with the same basic instructions a high school or college student receives in composition class: know the topic, audience, and purpose of your piece. Read with those three things in mind to be sure you’re staying on topic, providing appropriate content for that particular reader, and achieving the intended purpose (such as to persuade, entertain, or inform). For example, you can cut paragraphs where you’ve veered off topic and add information if your audience would need background information. Author Mary Karr offers a less formal approach to editing and revising: “All the while, I question. Is this really crucial? Are you writing this part to pose as cool or smart? For me, the last 20 percent of a book’s improvement takes 95 percent of the effort—all in the editing.”3 Stephen King, too, reads his drafts with certain questions in mind. In On Writing, he explains: Underneath, however, I'm asking myself the Big Questions. The biggest: Is this story coherent? And if it is, what will turn coherence into a song? What are the recurring elements? Do they entwine and make a theme?... What I want most of all is resonance, something that will linger for a little while in Constant Reader's mind (and heart) after he or she has closed the book and put it up on the shelf.4 How to Rewrite and Revise to Improve Your Drafts You’ll find various methods for rewriting and revising your drafts. Writers approach their work in all kinds of ways. Some can’t move forward before they’ve refined the latest section. Others basically freewrite and deal with the word-vomit that splatters onto the page by returning later and cleaning up the mess with next-level editing. 1. Revise and Refine Along the Way In his book On Writing,

[Ep 191] You know within a few notes if you're listening to the Beatles or the Bee Gees, James Taylor or Justin Timberlake, Sting or Cher. Why? Well, it’s their voice. You recognize their voice. In literature, it may not seem as obvious, since we aren’t usually hearing the author’s voice when we read their work. And yet, I’ll bet you could read a few lines of someone’s work and tell me if it's: * William Faulkner or Wendell Berry * Barbara Kingsolver or Stephen King * Tom Wolfe or Virginia Woolf Why? Once again, it’s their voice. You recognize their voice. You’d know if you were reading something by Annie Dillard, Anne Lamott, Ann Voskamp or...Ann Kroeker. Even if you didn’t know them before, if I put passages from Annie Dillard and Anne Lamott side by side, you’d be able to detect a difference. A big difference. Some of it would be due the content. Some of it would be due to stylistic choices each of them makes, like word choice, sentence length, literary devices, allusions. Each writer brings to their work different memories, opinions, and passions. That and more plays into the words we write and the way we write them. Somehow it all comes together into something we label “voice.” What Is Your Writing Voice? Agents and publishers say they’re looking for a unique voice, a new voice, a fresh voice, a genuine voice, a voice that rings true. We writers want to have a voice like that. We want to know we’ve found our voice and we want to deliver our work in that one-of-a-kind voice that connects with readers and stands out in a crowded market. We’re all trying to land on that special “something.” What is this mysterious thing called “voice”? The answer is often vague and subjective, sometimes as unhelpful as “I know it when I see it.” This answer—and it’s not uncommon—leaves writers anxious and unsure of themselves. They get self-conscious and start to question, “Is this my voice? Or did I sound more ‘me’ in the last project?” And if they continue to squirm as they work, worried they sound like someone else or like anyone else, they’re at risk of losing the authentic voice that may already be pouring out of them naturally. Definition of Writing Voice I poked around in books and online and discovered that a few people venture a definition of voice. Education Northwest, the organization that developed the 6+1 Traits, describe voice as “the heart and soul of the writing, the magic, the wit, the feeling, the life and breath.”1 A reader, they say, should identify something individual, something unique from “all other writers.”2 Okay, sounds good. That’s what we’re aiming for: individual, unique, a little heart and soul and, if possible, wit. But how does the writer find that? How does the writer pull that off? How do we know our paragraphs aren’t pulsing with copycat wit? And how can we get some of that magic? Develop an Ear for Voice in Writing While it’s hard to be objective about the individuality of our own writing voice, it’s easier to listen for voice in others. In Writing with Power, Peter Elbow describes a time he assigned autobiographical writing to his students and as he read their work, he paid attention to what held his attention. Over time, he identified those sections, paragraphs, sentences, phrases, and fragments as writing that “felt real.”3 He said, “[I]t had a kind of resonance, it somehow rang true.”4 He sensed power in their words. This power, he decided, was voice.

Today I’m chatting with author and literary agent Jeff Herman. Jeff’s literary agency has ushered nearly one thousand books into print. He’s the coauthor of the acclaimed Write the Perfect Book Proposal and is often featured as an expert in print and broadcast media. Jeff provides insider insight that will give you hope that it’s possible to see your words in print. When you get a chance, check out his resource: Jeff Herman’s Guide to Book Publishers, Editors & Literary Agents, 28th edition. Here's a taste of what he passed along today: "The first myth is that just because you’re in New York or the vicinity of New York you have a crucial advantage over someone from Indiana or Alaska. It’s really not true. The walls that publishing creates obstruct everyone equally. It’s not a matter of geography. It’s just a matter of access." "Now, of course, with digital communications, which to a great extent has displaced hard copy and to a certain extent has even displaced telephones and in person communications, I think that has done a lot to equalize the playing field." "The rules are not really true. They’re really preferences. The walls are porous, if that’s the right word. These walls are not metal plated; it’s more like Swiss cheese. And it’s a big illusion that you can’t get through these walls. The illusion is very useful for agents and editors. It works for us. But it doesn’t work for you, the writer, and ultimately it doesn’t work for the editors or agents because it does in effect lock out a lot of good people. But that’s why we need to be very tenacious and not let the agents or the editors individually or collectively tell you that you are not publishable. Because they don’t know. They think they know—they may know what’s right for them—but nobody can speak for the industry as a whole." "What I enjoy is working with the writer to make them as good as they can be and helping them to achieve their goals. I like to see the results of our good work together. I like to see that the book gets acquired by a publisher, that it gets published, and that it sells copies, and all the benefits that accrue to the author. I really feel then that I’m serving a purpose by helping the client and the publisher and the reader get all these beneficial results. And that’s what I see as the dream situation where we’re all working together as a well-oiled machine." Jeff Herman is the author of Write the Perfect Book Proposal and Jeff Herman’s Guide to Book Publishers, Editors & Literary Agents, 28th edition. Resources: * Website: jeffherman.com * Publisher's Marketplace (Jeff mentioned the subscription you can get through them) * Jeff Herman's Guide to Book Publishers, Editors & Literary Agents, 28th Edition (affiliate link) * Write the Perfect Book Proposal: 10 That Sold and Why (Third Edition) (affiliate link) * Jennifer Dukes Lee interview * Alison Hodgson interview * Shawn Smucker interview *

[Ep 189] When I feel my writing getting a little stale, I start looking around for a teacher. Now, I don’t mean I’m looking for a class with an instructor, although that’s certainly another way to learn and grow as a writer. I mean I start looking around for an author and text that has something to teach me. In this way, I can continually improve my skills as a writer. Develop a Customized Course of Study A lot of writers feel a strong urge to enter an MFA program to do this. If you feel compelled to pursue that, by all means, research it and see if that’s the best next step for you. But you don’t have to embark on a pre-planned course of study. You can develop your own path to establish a writing foundation, to build on an existing set of skills and experience, or to refresh your techniques after falling into a writing rut. Without spending a dime, you can invent an efficient, customized writing course using resources readily available online or at your local library to build your skills and style. By including reading, study, analysis, and practice pertaining to your biggest areas of struggle or weakness, you can write to discover the skills and techniques you’re lacking and integrate them into your work. Discover New Skills the Ben Franklin Way Novelist James Scott Bell wrote an article about how to strengthen your fiction the Ben Franklin way.1 He explains how Ben Franklin came up with his own self-study course to grow in virtues. Franklin made a grid and evaluated whether or not he was successful in his pursuit of a given virtue each week. In The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, the Founding Father concluded he did not attain perfection, as he had hoped, but “was, by the endeavor, a better and happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it.”2 James Scott Bell proposes the fiction writer identify key areas to develop into a stronger writer much as Franklin identified his list of virtues. Bell calls these key areas “critical success factors,” or CSFs.3 He explains: Business and sales folk have been using Franklin’s system for decades to improve their own performance. Not via Franklin’s virtues, but by determining their own areas of competence. These are called critical success factors.4 Bell goes through each CSF a fiction author would want to develop and points to related resources: if the reader wants to learn about scenes, voice, or other aspects of fiction, Bell provides links to articles or books that can address each of those. By tapping into these resources, the writer develops his own self-study course.5 You can do the same. Discover Your Critical Success Factors You can make a list of what you feel are your personal CSFs related to the writing you do. In this way, any of us can identify an area to improve in and find instruction and models pertaining to that exact skill or technique and we can learn from them. For fiction, you could check out James Scott Bell’s list in that article, where he cites the seven key elements a fiction writer could focus on: * plot * structure * characters * scenes * dialogue * voice * meaning (theme).6 You could make a list of CSFs for nonfiction writers. This might include research, idea development and organization, sentence fluency and word choice, grammar skills, or something as focused as transitions. Find Mentor Texts Find some “mentors,” or more accurately, some “mentor texts” you can study and learn from—mentors who excel in the areas where you feel you’re weak. Some of these mentor texts may be instructional, explaining how to do things. Others may simply serve as models.

[Ep 188] In this series, you’ve discovered more about yourself through writing—you may have begun to heal emotional wounds. The act of writing has helped you find the courage to continue to write. Through writing, you’ve articulated your reason for doing the work. And you’ve identified your top themes and topics. Most recently, you’ve written to discover your ideal reader. Today, you’ll see how the act of writing—the process of writing any given project—can lead us to discover what we really want to say. Discovery Writing to Unearth Ideas Before we begin to outline or research, we can use writing to probe what is on our mind—to unearth what we want to say. An effective tool for this—and I’ve talked about it before—is freewriting. I was introduced to the practice of freewriting in college, thanks to a book that was newly released at the time and used in two of my creative writing courses: Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg. Her invitation to freewrite—to set a timer for, say, ten minutes and write, pen to paper, without stopping—gave me a way to shimmy past my stifling editor-mind to what Goldberg calls “first thoughts.”1 Those first thoughts unleashed in me the memories, stories, images, and ideas that I hadn’t yet reached when I sat down to write using an outline. Over time, the practice generally led to my discovering what I really wanted to say in my next project—which, at the time, was usually a poem. Freewriting While Composing the Draft I still use freewriting as a tool to unstick my thoughts—often before even launching a new project. But freewriting can be also used while my writing is in-progress. I can be busy writing a paragraph—sometimes even when I’m following an outline I’ve developed—and pause to go deeper with freewriting. Priscilla Long agrees with this balance of writing into an essay form or structure while occasionally stepping away to further explore ideas and thoughts through freewriting. She refers to freewriting as “discovery writing” in The Writer’s Portable Mentor, where she says this: [W]riting into a structure should be done in tandem with “discovery writing,” that is, writing to learn what you have to say, writing to work out your thoughts, writing to find out what your antagonist thinks (by writing from her point of view in your notebook, even though in the finished story you are never going to be in her point of view).2 In other words, when we need clarity, Long recommends we stop in the midst of writing to an outline or “template” and spend a few minutes freewriting. This avoids shallow treatment of our topic or story. Instead, we respect our mind’s hesitation and take time to discover what we really want to say. After freewriting, we gain insight and turn back to the draft, adjusting our ideas as needed. Determine and Draft Your Project’s Big Idea Let’s say that you’ve spent a few minutes freewriting to determine what to write about. You’ve thought about it, you’ve researched, you’ve outlined.

[Ep 187] In composition classes, college students learn to identify their audience—who are they writing for? On the topic of audience, The Writing Center at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill suggests students think about writing a letter to their grandmothers about their first month at college. Then they say to imagine writing another letter on the same topic, but this time to their best friend. “Unless you have an extremely cool grandma to whom you’re very close, it’s likely that your two letters would look quite different in terms of content, structure, and even tone.”1 The writing form was the same—a letter. And the topic was the same—the first month in college. The only variable was the audience—the reader. And knowing the reader will affect the writer’s choices. Discover Your Ideal Reader for a Writing Project In this Write to Discover series, we’ve explored our top themes and topics and seen that they can be conveyed in a variety of packages—that is, various genres, styles, or forms. As we add in this new element—the reader—we must ask: * Who will be reading this piece? * What does he already know about this topic? * Will this reader have certain expectations based on the type of writing, such as a genre with its conventions? As we dig into the reader’s demographics and experiences, our examples and language as writers will shift; our choices will narrow. For example, an essay on recycling written for The Atlantic will be read by a different audience than a children’s book about recycling or an article in a women’s magazine about recycling. We’ll make different choices to suit our reader in order to produce the best possible project. For any given writing project, you have to know your audience. “I never think of an audience” But you may be resisting this basic writing advice. Perhaps you side with writers like Diane Ackerman, who said in an interview: Actually, I never think of an audience when I’m writing. I just try to write about what fascinates me and to contemplate what disturbs me or provokes me in some way, or amazes me. I suppose if I have a philosophy on this it’s that if you set out to nourish your own curiosity and your own intellectual yearnings and use yourself as an object of investigation, then, without meaning to, you will probably be touching the lives of a lot of people.2 With this philosophy, Diane Ackerman’s audience would be comprised of, well, people sort of like Diane Ackerman. So while she says she never thinks of an audience but instead simply writes what disturbs, provokes, or amazes her, she’s actually writing for an audience demographic that’s close to her own. And it’s worked well for her. She’s a prolific, successful author of many books, poems, and essays. Even if you resist this idea of an ideal reader, even if you’re simply writing what pleases you, you are indeed writing for a certain kind of reader—a reader with characteristics similar to yours. Writing Is a Business with a Customer: the Reader Lee Gutkind, in his book Creative Nonfiction, seeks a balance between writing what you enjoy and keeping the reader in mind: [W]riting...is a business. The reader...is a customer. When you write, you are attempting to create a product that your reader wants to buy—or r...

When I was in junior high, I joined the track team. Track and field offers a lot of events, so the coach had us try a little bit of everything so we could get a feel for what we might like. I had played softball when I was younger and was a good hitter, so I gave the shot put a few big hurls. My throws weren’t too shabby, but I wasn’t interested in training for it, so I moved on to other options. The coach thought I might be good at the 400, which is once around the track. By the time I completed the oval, I was struggling for breath. Sure, with practice I could get stronger and build endurance, but that felt like torture. Any other options? No interest in the 800 (twice around the track? I could barely make it once!) or worse, the 1600 (a mile? Are you kidding me?). I knocked the bar off every time I attempted the high jump—even when they set it at the lowest notch. Later, I tried to clear one hurdle, but it seemed impossible to clear one after another all the way down the track. Pass. The long jump required some funky training to standardize strides for the approach. You have to hit a skinny wooden board without even the tip of the shoe going past. Step, step...boom. Launch for takeoff! I hurtled through the air hoping to land in the sand without falling backwards. I did it. I exploded off that little board and hit the sand falling forward. That was fun. I signed up for that. Next up: the 100-meter dash. I struggled to place my feet in the starting blocks, but once in motion, I was built for speed. I flew down the track. Same with the 200. The gun would go off, and I’d power around the curve and then down the straightaway to the finish line. I felt electrified. Alive. Yes, I was born to sprint. Well, I wasn’t good enough to compete at the college level, but for my rural high school I did pretty well. Figure Out Your Favorite Type of Writing Trying to figure out our favorite type of writing—the writing that makes us feel electrified and alive—can feel at first like experimenting with track and field events. You have to jog once around the track or pick up that shot put and give it a spin. With any luck, you’ll find one form or type of writing that just fits, as the 200-meter dash fit me. With writing, you have to stick your hands on the keyboard and tap out the first paragraph of a narrative essay. You have to pull out a pen and paper and write the first line of a poem. You can’t know what kind of writing will fit you best or what will end up your favorite form until you learn about it and try it out. Your first attempts may feel awkward at first, like leaping backwards over a high-jump bar. How do people do this? On your first few attempts at something new, your resulting efforts might not turn out as you hope or imagine—in fact, they probably won’t. It’ll feel like you’ve knocked off that bar and fallen to the mat in an awkward tangle of limbs. But as you keep testing out writing forms and styles and genres to find what you enjoy—what feels right for you, what electrifies you—you’ll get the hang of it. You’ll see how others pull it off. You’ll study their technique and see if it will work for you. Don’t let the fear of a messy, awkward first attempt at any form—from short stories to a profile piece—stop you from trying. Try a Little Bit of Everything You may be tempted to discount something thinking it’s too big, too complicated, or too foreign to you. You may feel like ignoring a type of writing. In my interview with Tania Runyan, she says she has no interest in writing a novel. In college, I signed up for an introductory creative writing course. They focused on short story half the semester, then switched to poetry. I thought for sure I’d love fiction and hate poetry—or excel at fiction and fail at ...

As you’ll discover in this conversation with Tania Runyan, she’s experimented with being a screenwriter and playwright and written several nonfiction books, including How to Read a Poem, How to Write a Poem, and one for college-bound high school students, called How to Write a College Application Essay. But Tania thinks of herself first and foremost as a poet. Her poems have appeared in many publications, including Poetry, Image, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, The Christian Century, Saint Katherine Review and the Paraclete book Light upon Light: A Literary Guide to Prayer for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany.  Here are a few snippets of our chat: "I write blog posts and articles for companies...and I realize that poetry and that kind of writing are not at odds with one another. In fact, I have found they complement one another really well because poetry is all about condensing language, and the efficiency of language, and audience and emotion, and when you're writing for businesses...tailoring my language to a certain audience, a certain emotion, and trying to do that in an efficient manner, I find has been easier to do because of my background as a poet." "This is very important. The very first thing I bought with my NEA grant, was a Roomba. To this day, I still use it every day. It's responsible for a lot of my writing." Advice for new poets: "When I work with newer poets, it seems they're consistently surprised with how much time I spend on my poems and how much time I think they should spend on their poems. So my advice would be to slow down and enjoy the process...You want to write, you want to produce, you want to publish...but really there's no reason to rush. You need to give yourself to the process and enjoy it." Enjoy learning about all the ways a writer can write as you get to know Tania Runyan. Tania Runyan is the author of the poetry collections What Will Soon Take Place, Second Sky, A Thousand Vessels, Simple Weight, and Delicious Air, which was awarded Book of the Year by the Conference on Christianity and Literature in 2007. Her guides How to Read a Poem, How to Write a Poem, and How to Write a College Application Essay are used in classrooms across the country. Tania was awarded an NEA Literature Fellowship in 2011. When not writing, Tania plays fiddle and mandolin, drives kids to appointments, and gets lost in her Midwestern garden. Resources: * Website: TaniaRunyan.com * Facebook Page: Tania Runyan Poet * What Will Soon Take Place, Tania's most recent poetry collection, celebrating its one-year anniversary (affiliate link) * How to Write a Poem: Based on the Billy Collins Poem "Introduction to Poetry", by Tania Runyan (affiliate link) * How to Read a Poem: Based on the Billy Collins Poem "Introduction to Poetry", by Tania Runyan (affiliate link) * Book that mentioned Nabakov in the bathtub: Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors, by Sarah Stodola (affiliate link) * Writing book Tania recommends for poets, an anthology with simple explanations of forms: Strong Measures: Contemporary American Poetry in Traditional Forms (not affiliate link; only available used) *