Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach

When Author and Acquisitions Editor Jennifer Dukes Lee was in town for an event, we met up and discussed challenges that writers—especially nonfiction authors—face as they try to land a traditional book contract. Jennifer generously provides us with behind-the-scenes insight and solid action steps we can take today. She offers hope, too, that one doesn't necessarily have to boast a giant platform to find a publisher. You can hear us fine, but the sound quality is a little ethereal. Once your ear adjusts, I think you'll be fine—perhaps imagine us in some fantastical location. And you'll love meeting Jennifer. Here's a taste of her encouraging input: "All books are picked for at least two of the following reasons: large platform, great idea, and fantastic writing." "[T]here are first-time authors with small platforms that are still getting published, and I know it because I was one of them." "I think if this is really something that is in your heart and it is burning inside of you, there's really no stopping that. I think you just have to give it time to catch." Enjoy listening as we chat about her new role in the publishing world that has allowed her to sit on both sides of the table, as it were. Jennifer Dukes Lee is the author of Love Idol, The Happiness Dare, and her latest book released in 2018, It's All Under Control. Resources: * Website: jenniferdukeslee.com * Facebook: @JenniferDukesLee * Instagram:  @dukeslee * Twitter: @dukeslee * It's All Under Control (Amazon affiliate link) * It's All Under Control - Companion Bible Study (Amazon affiliate link) * The Happiness Dare: Pursuing Your Heart's Deepest, Holiest, and Most Vulnerable Desire (Amazon affiliate link) * Love Idol: Letting Go of Your Need for Approval and Seeing Yourself Through God's Eyes (Amazon affiliate link) * Hear Jennifer read chapter one of It's All Under Control: https://jenniferdukeslee.com/itsallundercontrol/ * Subscribe to Top Ten With Jen and get immediate access to exclusive free resources on her website. https://jenniferdukeslee.com/subscribe/ * Alison Hodgson interview * Shawn Smucker interview * Patrice Gopo interview * Ann's Patreon account * All podcast episodes You can subscribe to this podcast using your podcast player or find it ...

I recently signed up for Reddit. During setup, I clicked on categories and topics of interest so the app could deliver relevant updates. On the spot I had to decide my preferences: do I want ongoing content about this topic or that? Do I want them to send information about technology, politics, economics? Food, fitness, travel, entertainment? Select Your Top Themes and Topics I’ve had to do this several times over the years, with apps like Flipboard and most news outlets. I created my own categories for Twitter lists and Feedly subscriptions that groups the content by general topic. The act of choosing—of being forced to choose—helps me make decisions. I must discern what I care to know more about and what’s less interesting to me. Narrow Your Top Themes and Topics Once the articles start flowing into one of these apps, filling my feed with content related to the areas I clicked on, I’ll often realize, “Oh, wait. Wait. I guess I don’t want to know that much about weight training or Broadway shows.” So I update my preferences, usually eliminating a category. Before long, I not only realize I’m bored by topics I thought I’d like, I also begin to see topics I’m deeply interested in. When I stop everything to read an article and share it on social media, for example, or talk about it a lot at the dinner table, that’s a clue. I pay attention to my intensifying interest, as it's a strong indication it might be one of my top themes or topics. We can figure out our interests in other ways, however. * What do you already know a lot about? Obviously, it’s been a topic of interest already. * What books do you check out at the library? That indicates you want to dig deeper and know more. * What outings do you invest time or money in? Do you often visit an art museum, movie theater, car show, live concert, lecture, conference, or state park? Our calendars and credit cards can point us toward our top interests. * Do you steer conversations toward a particular topic? Do you seek others who join you in an animated, energizing discussion? Take note. That’s probably a top theme or topic for you. * Where does your curiosity consistently carry you? You don’t have to be an expert to start digging into a topic that captivates you. Explore it. When you begin to identify these top areas of interest, pick up on clues to narrow your focus. This will help you discover the kind of writing you can pursue. Confirm Your Top Themes and Topics by Writing To confirm which of these top themes and topics you want to write about—and the ones you want to be known for—start writing about them. Did you… * read an article that riles you up? Write a response and submit it as an op-ed piece. * read an article that skims the surface of what you know to be true? Write a deeper and better-researched piece and submit it to a relevant publication or work it into a book. * read a short story that touches on themes you care about? Write something that grapples with the same theme using a different plot or cover the same theme in a different genre. Maybe you read a short story but you can explore it in a poem. * read a poem that stirs you with its subject matter or theme? Weave your own images or story into a form poem different from what you read, so you explore the same topic in a new way. Or you could switch genres and write an essay in response to the poem. Whether you write nonfiction, fiction, or poetry, write to discover topics that captivate you, energize you, and hold your attention. Your Personal Themes and Topics The “subscription model” I talked about at the beginning where you identify top themes and topics will reveal a lot. But it leaves out something critical: personal history.

If you’ve read On Being a Writer, you know my coauthor Charity Singleton Craig and I start with identity—claiming we are writers. I told the story of the university publication that accepted my first poetry submissions. They asked for a bio. I looked at examples from a previous issue I’d purchased. The poets talked about why they write. “Without overthinking it, I scribbled out, ‘I write, because no one listens to me.’”1 Until I wrote it out, I don’t think I realized why I was penning poems and pursuing the life of a writer. But when forced to express it in writing, there it was. At that nascent stage of my writing career, I simply wanted to be heard. Your reason for writing can be as simple as that—to have a voice. That may always be what drives you to the keyboard. But it can change over time. It’s been a few years—a few decades, if I’m honest—since I first identified my reason for writing. Over time, my purpose, my motivation—my reason—has changed, and changed again. It pays to revisit this question of why you write and see if your reasons have morphed. Because when you know why you write, you can stay focused and motivated. You can run decisions through the filter of your primary purpose. How to discover it? Through writing. Why Do You Write? Most of this exploratory work can happen in our private writing, like journals, rather than in public forums, like a blog or an essay. But you may find that an essay or poem intended for publication ends up effectively verbalizing your purpose. Writing invites us to grapple with unspoken desires and tap into our driving forces. When we write, we not only unearth our purpose, but we articulate it. I’m going to give you a couple of prompts to help you find your reason for writing—for being a writer. You might answer them in a single sentence without a pause because you know exactly why you’ve turned to writing. Or you might look at these and realize you’re not at all sure why you write. Or you might end up writing paragraphs in search of the answer. You might unearth multiple reasons that suggest more than one motivation. Get them down on paper. Write them out. Write to Discover Your Reason for Writing You’ll understand yourself better. You’ll realize why you’re drawn more to one project than another. You’ll have a way to decide where to focus your resources. And keep in mind that your purpose doesn’t have to be noble or big. Let’s say you decided to try writing a thriller on a dare from your best friend and it’s fun. That’s a reason for writing. You might want to see your name in a publication, to make money, or to be known as a subject matter expert. Those are all reasons for writing. You could work your discoveries into some sort of personal mission or vision statement, or a manifesto. Or going through this process may simply make you more aware of what’s driving you to write. It will ground you. You can play around with this. Jot out ridiculous answers and see how they look on paper. Make yourself laugh. Maybe, well, maybe that’s why you write—to entertain first yourself and then, others. Write to discover your reason for writing. The Prompts Now here are the simple prompts to get you started: I write because __________. OR I write to _____________. Your response can be honed down to a few phrases. For example: * I write because I can’t not write. * I write because I love words. * I write because I have important observations to share. * I write to become famous. Maybe you write in response to this and discover a specific reason based on curiosity, industry knowledge, or some personal experience—joyful or tragic—that...

Ralph Keyes observes in his book The Courage to Write, “The trail of literary history is littered with those who fell along the way because the anxiety of trying to write paralyzed their hand”1. Writers' Anxiety If you’ve begun to reflect on troubling, traumatic memories, you've likely encountered fears. Some of those fears are personal and some, professional. Digging for personal truths almost always leads to increased anxiety in the life of a writer. Keyes notes this causal relationship: The closer they get to painful personal truths, the more fear mounts—not just about what they might reveal but about what they might discover should they venture too deeply inside. To write well, however, that’s exactly where we must venture. Melville admired most the writers he called "divers," those who dared to plunge deep inside and report what they found. Frederick Busch thought this need for inner exploration was what made novel-writing so daring. "You go to dark places so that you can get there, steal the trophy and get out."2 Keyes profiles several "diver"-authors, each willing to go to dark places because they knew they needed to steal the trophy and get out. The first person he first highlights is E. B. White. The Fears of E. B. White As a child, White was scared of darkness, girls, lavatories, speaking in front of people, the future, and the "fear that I was unknowing about things I should know about.”3 His anxiety didn’t dissipate in adulthood, either; it simply shifted. He grew up to fear that “the brakes would fail on a trolly” or that he would collapse on the street, and he continued to fear public speaking. White also worried—to the point of obsession, it seems—about his writing. Keyes said, “He rewrote pieces twenty times or more and sometimes pleaded with the postmaster of North Brooklin, Maine, to return a just-mailed manuscript so he could punch up its ending or rewrite the lead.”4 White said, “I am not inclined to apologize for my anxieties, because I have lived with them long enough to respect them”5. White not only respected his anxieties, but he also seemed to funnel these fears into his projects—working them out, as it were. His readers can clearly see fear exhibited in such characters as Stuart Little and Wilbur the pig. He risked negative responses to his work each time he sent off a project to be published. This added to his anxiety—no wonder he pleaded with the postmaster! E. B. White wrote to discover his fears. However, he also wrote to discover the courage he needed to confront those fears. The Courage to Confront Fear Merriam-Webster's definition of courage is this: mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty.6 Courage, then, isn’t the absence of fear. We discover the courage we need when we venture in, when we persevere, when we write despite the fear—whether or not we write about the fear itself. Keyes believes “[a]ll writers must confront their fears eventually. The sooner they do this, the better their work will be." He also clarifies that the courage we need to do the work doesn't mean we "conquer" our fears.7 In fact, he seems to agree with Steven Pressfield's claim that to silence Resistance, which includes anxiety and fear of all shapes and sizes, we must do the work.8 "Working writers aren’t those who have eliminated their anxiety," writes Keyes.

A few weeks ago I shared with you how freewriting freed me. The book Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg, played a big part in that during my college years, introducing me to the idea of timed writing as a means to write and discover. Even though I wasn't all that interested in Goldberg’s frequent references to Zen Buddhism, I liked her basic approach: "When I teach a class,” she says, “I want the students to be 'writing down the bones,' the essential, awake speech of their minds."1 When I tuned into to my own inner voice and wrote down that "awake speech" of my mind, I began to know myself better. And the better I knew myself, the better and more interesting my writing became. But when I look back, I realize the practice of self-reflection started even earlier, in high school. Write to Discover One afternoon when I was about 14 years old, I was glancing through books on writing at my local library and noticed a title: Write to Discover Yourself, by Ruth Vaughn. I looked both ways and plucked it from the shelf, running my fingers over the green cover with a fuchsia Gerbera daisy poking out of a pencil cup. It seemed a little wacky, but . . . Write. Discover. Writers have a lot to discover, but a way to write true and fresh no matter the project is to start by discovering oneself. I knew that instinctively, even then, and felt affirmed by this title. I desperately wanted to understand myself, to unearth who I was meant to become. And, I wanted to write. I took the book home and retreated to my room where I followed instructions to “portrait” the important people in my life, exploring memories, capturing life. I sat on the hardwood floor of my bedroom and composed a word-portrait of my father, struggling to express the way his resonant voice, rising from deep within his barrel chest, could build and fill—even shake—the house. Or was it just me, shaking? Page after page, the author encouraged me to continue being specific, to use concrete details and metaphor. I poured out stories from my little world. Digging into yourself requires a depth of honesty that is painful, the author said, but imperative. She quoted a professor who said a writer “is the person with his skin off.” First Thoughts That's how I began to decipher my life. On the pages of a journal, I wrote with my skin off—bare, vulnerable. I tapped into the "awake speech" of my mind, burning through to what Goldberg calls "first thoughts" in order to write down the bones, the hard truths, the core of what and who I had been and was becoming.2 The idea of first thoughts made so much sense to me, because I wanted to express my truest self but I knew I was mostly living in layers of thought, edited thoughts. Goldberg explains: "First thoughts have tremendous energy. It is the way the mind first flashes on something. The internal censor usually squelches them, so we live in the realm of second and third thoughts, thoughts on thought, twice and three times removed from the direct connection of the first fresh flash."3 So I used her idea of freewriting when I was in college—timed writing without stopping—hoping to once more get to the bones of thought, experience, memory, feeling; to gain clarity on faded and forgotten memories. As I practiced this private outpouring of words and deeply personal reflections—first with the help of that stumbled-upon writing book and later with guidance from author Natalie Goldberg—I peeled back layers to stare at my heart and soul. I began, through practice—through pain—the lifelong process of finding myself.

Tis the season for many things. One thing that doesn't roll off the tongue as jolly as a line in a carol is a writing life tune-up. Yes, tis the perfect time for writing life maintenance. It sounds so boring, I can't believe I'm sending you off for two weeks with this message. Then again, I'm convinced if more of us would take the time to develop a simple system that supports our whole writing life, we'd stay on track and meet more of our goals and make new discoveries and find new outlets for our work—in part because we aren't scrambling at the last minute to meet a deadline. So it's time to schedule your writing life tune-up. Your Writing Life Tune-up Your writing life as a whole includes both you, the writer, and your work. In a few days, we'll tumble into the new year with big goals, plans, intentions, and resolutions. But before all that, at the close of this year, a writing life tune-up looks at what you as a writer need for success, then turns to your projects, so you can determine how to set yourself up to nail deadlines and build your body of work. Doesn't that sound like a worthy, satisfying activity—even if it's boring? A writing life tune-up isn't sexy, but it's effective. I'll be spending time on a tune-up for myself in the days ahead. Why not join me? I'll be looking back at several areas to see what worked well last year and what I'd like to see in the year ahead. I'll be examining things like: * Professional Development * Writing Habits and Systems * Writing Deadlines * Editorial Calendar Professional Development What did I do last year for professional development? * Three writing conferences * Subscribed to multiple podcasts that offer writing-related content * Attended several webinars led by industry leaders * Read books about writing * Read other books, fiction and nonfiction * Read articles and blog posts with relevant content Some activities you might consider to advance as a writer that aren't on my list could be working with a mentor or coach and joining a writing group or author mastermind. Writing space and tools Our writing life evaluation can include practical elements such as rearranging our writing space. Does my current desk suit my needs? Are there tools that made life easier—did others waste time with complicated steps? Is your current writing chair a good fit? Mine is, but the arm rests need a little duct tape repair. Did you try a standing desk and find it helpful? How well did a writing notebook serve you? Evaluate effectiveness Make a list of equipment, outings, activities, and input from in the past year related to all of these writing life details. * What worked and what didn't work? * What helped you improve as a writer and what wasn't worth the investment of time, money, and logistics? * What gave you energy and what sucked energy from you? * Also, what from your work and life gave energy to others? As I review last year's activities, I'll determine what helped me level-up as a writer. Then I can make better decisions for the year ahead, scrapping anything that wastes my time and resources and continuing what offered the support I need. Plan it out I like to get a big-picture view of how I want to invest in myself and my space so I can include it when mapping out any given week or month. When, for example, do I intend to listen to a podcast or watch a webinar? I don't want to steal time from a writing session, for example, to read an article about queries. And yet I want to read about queries. When will I do that? I know, I know. It's a boring process,

My first university-level creative writing course used as the main text a book that, at that time, was a brand-new release: Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg. After moving through the exercises in that book, I felt transformed. Goldberg introduced a simple concept that I’d never heard of. It’s commonplace today, a part of the lexicon of most creative writers. Freewriting. The Life-Changing Magic of Freewriting The practice of freewriting unleashed in me the memories, stories, images, and ideas that I hadn’t yet reached when I sat down to write using conventional approaches of the time. I'd been making notes and lists, thinking and outlining, then trying to write into an outline. I was taught that approach, and it seemed sensible and efficient. My work, however, was clunky, uninspired, unremarkable. Goldberg’s 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.” Write without stopping. Write without correcting commas or crossing out words. Write garbage without worrying who will ever read what you’re putting down. As I freewrote, I stopped editing my work and second-guessing myself. I blew right past the voices of criticism and tapped deeper thoughts, luring them to the surface. Before freewriting, I was a nervous writer, stifled by all kinds of worries. Having grown up with editor-parents—and I mean that literally; they were both newspaper editors—I tended to prejudge every idea, every sentence, reading each word as if picturing a red pen dangling over my page like the Sword of Damocles. Before a thought had a chance to breathe a single breath and stretch its legs, I’d strike it out and pretend I’d never entertained its existence. Freewriting led to a kind of self-discovery, and from that I was able to produce poetry with punch and narratives that held interest and dove deeper, below the safety of surface-level, where until then I’d been dog-paddling my way through assignments. I wrote about struggles and questions and memories and dreams, exploring it all in hopes of finding something worth developing into a finished piece and sharing with others. This tool more than any others powered my writing life forward. Freewriting freed me. Think, Then Write Years later, I hosted a family friend overnight. She was passing through town and we shared a meal and chatted about writing. Freewriting came up. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I’ll bet I praised the way it frees the mind by skipping past the censor that shuts us down and allows us to draw from a deeper well of thought to produce more meaningful projects. I might have testified to its transformative effect on my life. I probably recommend it to her. She’d heard about it, she said. Then, when I seemed to have exhausted all I had to say about the merits of freewriting, she told me she had recently attended a small, intimate writer’s retreat led by Madeleine L’Engle. I was insanely curious what that was like. And I was insanely jealous, because Madeleine has been a hero of mine for decades. As a child I’d read A Wrinkle in Time, riveted to the story, the characters, the message. When I later realized she’d written nonfiction, I devoured her Crosswicks Journals and Walking on Water. This family friend had the privilege of participating in a tiny writing retreat that left time for lots of interaction with Madeleine. Tell me more! Well, she did. She said Madeleine would give the attendees a creative writing prompt, that always included this instruction or “rule,

Back in October 2018, I interviewed three authors who served on the speaking team at Breathe Christian Writers Conference. We discussed all things writing, like their writing challenges, their writing process, and their advice for writers. All for you. I’ve mixed in with my standard short solo episodes an interview with Shawn Smucker and another with Patrice Gopo. Today, I bring you the last of the three from that conference: a conversation with Alison Hodgson, author of The Pug List. I sprang this on her at the last minute, asking if I could interview her during the last hour on the last day of the conference. We slipped into a room and discussed such topics as boiling a story down to its essence, seeing work come to fruition, managing a pug’s Instagram account, surviving one-star reviews, and much more. Enjoy getting to know Alison Hodgson. Alison Hodgson is the author of The Pug List: A Ridiculous Dog, a Family Who Lost Everything, and How They All Found Their Way Home. She is a Moth StorySLAM winner and a regular contributor to the design website Houzz.com. Her writing has been featured in Woman’s Day magazine, on Forbes.com, Christianity Today’s Her.meneutics blog, and the Religion News Service, and her essays have been published in a variety of anthologies. Alison lives in Michigan with her husband, their children, and three good dogs. alisonhodgson.com   Resources: * Website: alisonhodgson.com  * Facebook: @alisonhodgsonauthor * Instagram: @alisonhodgsonbooks/ and (more prominently) @therealpugoliver * Twitter: @HodgsonAlison * The Pug List: A Ridiculous Little Dog, a Family Who Lost Everything, and How They All Found Their Way Home (Amazon affiliate link) * A clip from Alison's MOTH story * The Barbara Pym Society, a website highlighting information related to an author Alison mentions * Shawn Smucker interview * Patrice Gopo interview * Ann's Patreon account * All podcast episodes You can subscribe to this podcast using your podcast player or find it through Apple podcasts, Stitcher, or Spotify.

Last time, I talked about the power of lists to get us writing about all kinds of things. Lists trick us into writing. In her famous TED talk, spoken word poet Sarah Kay invites the audience to make a list. She asks them to think of three things they know to be true. They can be about anything, she says, “technology, entertainment, design, your family, what you had for breakfast. The only rule is don’t think too hard.”1 Try it. Today. Right now. Even if you’ve done this before, think of three things you know to be true, about anything. Don’t think too hard. Write Your Truths (I'll pause so you can grab a pen and paper to jot down your three things...go ahead, I'll be here...) Ready...Set...Go. (Here, I pause again as you write out your three things you know to be true...) Okay, here are three things I know to be true. * Trader Joe’s Butternut Squash Ravioli is worth the 45-minute roundtrip drive. * If you buy things used, you won’t feel quite so bad when they break. * Books make excellent companions. Each of those could be expanded and developed into a miniature memoir. Because the tiny truths you and I express as proverbial-style statements flow out of life experience. We could tell each other stories. We could tell about how we concluded the ravioli was worth the drive, how the broken item wasn’t quite such a loss, how the books held us close when we needed companionship. We form these tiny truths in the unfolding of our daily lives, so we could reconstruct a scene that led to deeper understanding; we could bring to life a vignette that solidifies a belief. What do you know to be true? Sarah Kay says she often tricks the teenagers she works with into writing poetry by using lists because “Everyone can write lists.” The first list she always assigns is “10 Things I Know to Be True.”2 Later today—or now, if you have time—expand your list. Add seven more to make ten things you know to be true. If you find your thoughts flowing, beliefs spilling out, one after another, keep going. Make a longer list. Keep adding to the list more and more things you know to be true, reaching deeper and deeper into your wins and losses, your heartaches and joys, your embarrassment, your pain. Expand on Your Truth Pluck a single bullet point—a single truth—from your list of what you know to be true. Let it be your next writing prompt. Say more about your truth. Set a timer for 15 minutes and freewrite about that truth. Remember the events that led to this conclusion. Include the back story. Identify the moment of insight. Reflect on its impact. Voila. You've composed your micro-memoir, your tiny truth fleshed out. Maybe it’s for you. Maybe it’s to share. You can use it to form the themes of your work, whether fiction, nonfiction, or poetry. These can be adapted and sort of masked to become a scene in fiction; or, they can be polished and developed into a personal essay. If one truth alone doesn’t seem to have enough meat to serve up to the world, weave together several to become a longer piece—a collage, a list poem, a winding, free-flowing piece that combines to become a whole. Sarah Kay's Spoken-Word Truths Sarah Kay appeared to develop her list of things she knows to be true (or a list quite like it) into a spoken-word poem called “If I should have a daughter.”3

Tis the season for lists, even for those who aren't naturally checklist and to-do list types. For the holidays, people will make packing lists, shopping lists, cleaning lists, address lists, and wish lists. Lists are useful and practical, but they can serve a far more creative and powerful role in the life of a writer. You may find the humble list becomes the most used tool in your writer’s toolbox. Let's look at how lists can transform your writing...and your life. 1. A list is a quick way to generate ideas Whether you’re keeping a journal or meeting an article deadline, lists are quick ways to write during busy seasons. * Make a list of the big ideas you want to cover in a nonfiction book, and you’ve formed a working Table of Contents. * Lists are the basis of roundup articles—a quick and rewarding project for both writer and reader. * List everything you know about a topic or scene you plan to write, and your list establishes what you already know and reveals what you have yet to find out. Thanks to the list, you can plan your research and fill in the gaps. * Keep an ongoing list of article headlines or chapter titles you'd love to tackle someday and you've got an idea bank to draw from when you’re ready for something new. When you have time minutes free, add to the list. * Keep a writer's notebook packed with lists that include descriptions, timelines, character notes, and snatches of dialogue. * Make a list of unfortunate events you can throw at your characters and you'll have the makings of your next novel's plot. 2. A list tricks us into bypassing writer’s block Lists can help us break free from writer’s block by stripping away a lot of the elements typically expected from a creative project. And the act of list-making is so unassuming, so doable, so quick to pull off, we can bypass the things that hold us back or block us, like fear, lack of ideas, confusion, uncertainty. Start a list and you almost can’t stop your brain from producing another item and another. The brain loves lists. If you’re stuck, you may find you’re unstuck by the time you scribble the fourth or fifth entry. You might as well keep going. Next thing you know, you’ve written the draft or the outline of a poem, essay, short story, or blog post. 3. A list is flexible As you write, your list expands and contracts to match the evolution of your ideas. As you edit, you can delete or combine items as needed. 4. A list builds in limits While allowing for flexibility, lists also form natural boundaries. In “A List of Reasons Why Our Brains Love Lists,” Maria Konnikova says the human brain responds to the way a list “spatially organizes the information; and it promises a story that’s finite, whose length has been quantified upfront.”1 If a single idea seems too convoluted, corral it. Deal with idea-sprawl by cramming it into a list. By defining and limiting our ideas, our writer-minds relax; we don’t have to say it all. 5. A list instantly organizes our ideas When I introduced the 6+1 Traits, one of the early traits we must tend to after settling on a solid idea is Organization. How will we organize these concepts or present the stories? Try a list. It’s a quick tool to organize and contain ideas when you have no idea how to organize or structure your material. Possible forms for your project may reveal themselves in the process of expanding, editing, and ordering the list. Categorize and group them. Enumerate them. Your reader’s brains, Konnikova writes, “love effortlessly acquired data,”2 and your writer-brain loves structure.

[Ep 174] In last week’s interview, Patrice Gopo described the stories that bubbled up inside her—personal stories about topics she cared deeply about as she grappled with her identity and where she fit in society. Patrice grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, as a black American daughter of Jamaican immigrants. She wanted to explore that, to make sense of it all. How? Through writing. She turned to the essay to figure out her life, to delve into her experiences—to discover self and live a more meaningful life We, too, can delve into our experiences, diving beneath the surface to discover ourselves and live more meaningful lives. Elizabeth Lesser writes in Broken Open: If we don’t listen to the voice of the soul, it sings a stranger tune. If we don’t go looking for what lies beneath the surface of our lives, the soul comes looking for us. I haven’t read Lesser’s book, but that line urging us to look for what lies beneath the surface of our lives? We can use writing to do just that: to look for what lies beneath and listen to the voice of the soul. Capture Ideas It starts with an image, perhaps, or an interaction that bubbles up—a scene or memory. Pay attention to each one. Capture in detail this scene or image. You can do this on the spot or during a writing session later. Add sensory details. Try to recreate it objectively. That helps to examine and explore the meaning in it. If you don’t have time to write at that instant, jot down in a notebook a key word or phrase that can serve as a reminder or prompt. When you settle in to write it out in more detail, you’ll have many to choose from. Anne Lamott captures these snatches on 3x5 cards she carries in her pocket. Patrice uses a simple composition notebook tucked in her bag. I use Evernote or Google Keep. Ask Why? When you write—when you start to dive in and look beneath the surface—be curious about yourself, about that scene or image or snatch of dialogue. Why am I remembering that moment my dad grazed his leg with the chainsaw? Why does the sensation of flying back and forth in the swing keep coming back to me? Why does that glass doorknob make me tear up? Patrice says that when we're trying to understand what's happening in our lives or in the world—when we delve deeply into an incident to see its significance and why it matters—that’s meaning-making on the page. The incident could be big or small. As an example, Patrice said she noted in her journal that a couple of weeks ago her husband brought her a chocolate bar. It occurred to her he's been bringing her chocolate bars throughout their entire marriage. Why? Why are these chocolate bar moments over the years coming to mind? Why does he bring them? It seems small, but it’s rising to the surface. She’s listening to the voice of her soul. She pulled out her composition book and started writing some of the other scenes and memories, all because she was struck by that recurring image of a chocolate bar. She doesn’t know the answer yet; the meaning is unclear. For now, she’s exploring it. We can do that, too. We can write scenes and reflect. Let’s let curiosity and a sense of discovery lead us. Stay open as you listen to the voice of the soul; look for what lies beneath the surface of your life. You Don’t Need an Outline or Plan

At Breathe Christian Writers Conference, held October 12 and 13, 2018, I interviewed three authors who served on the speaking team. We discussed all things writing, like their writing challenges, their writing process, and their advice for writers. All for you. I’m sharing these conversations with you, mixing them in with my standard short solo episodes. You heard from Shawn Smucker in episode 171. Today, I bring you the second interview: a conversation with Patrice Gopo. We discussed her work as an essayist and meaning-making on the page. She gives us an inside look at her writing process, including several techniques she’s used study the craft of writing as well as the importance of feedback. I begin by reading her bio as we sat down to talk, so you’ll get the official info at the start. Today, enjoy getting to know and learn from Patrice Gopo (and check out multiple resources below). Patrice Gopo’s essays have appeared in a variety of literary journals and other publications, including Gulf Coast, Full Grown People, Creative Nonfiction, and online in The New York Times and The Washington Post. She is the recipient of a North Carolina Arts Council Literature Fellowship, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is the author of All the Colors We Will See, an essay collection about race, immigration, and belonging. Her book is a Fall 2018 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Resources: * Patrice's Writing Resources: to help you develop as a writer - recommended classes, conferences, coaches and editors, craft books, and community * Sign up for her newsletter and receive an essay from the book along with the discussion guide: https://www.patricegopo.com/subscribe/ * Patrice's website: patricegopo.com * Patrice on Twitter: @patricegopo * Patrice on Instagram: @patricegopo * Patrice on Facebook: @patricegopowrites * All the Colors We Will See, by Patrice Gopo [affiliate link, which means I will receive a small compensation at no charge to you if you click through to check it out and purchase] * All the Places We Call Home, Patrice's debut children's book (releases June 2022) [affiliate link] * Ann's Patreon account * All podcast episodes You can subscribe to this podcast using your podcast player or find it through Apple podcasts, 

As you know from my interview with Shawn Smucker, he’s a novelist with ambitious goals—on track to write ten books in ten years. He's written three of his own books—two novels and a memoir. His fourth will be released in 2019. To make a living, he works as a cowriter and ghostwriter. Several years ago he was hit with the realization that he could live his whole life writing books for others and never write his own. With that, he made the switch to writing his own things first every day. It might just be for an hour, but if he commits to writing his own projects first, he knows it's going to happen. Shawn’s wakeup call can serve as our own, calling for us to prioritize our own writing. If we don’t, other things will swallow our time and energy and we’ll have nothing left. But when we do prioritize our writing—when we put our own work first—we start to achieve our writing goals and build our body of work. We can bring our best, most creative selves to our own projects by prioritizing in four different ways. 1. Write Your Own Things First Every Day Shawn prioritizes his own writing by literally doing it first—waking up early to commit a few minutes or a few hours to his work-in-progress. His secret is to follow a routine. Morning Routines Shawn’s routine has been to get up early, but instead of diving directly into the work-for-hire, he sits down and writes for an hour or so on his personal projects. We can set up a routine, too: Get up early and write for 20 minutes or an hour on our own projects before proceeding with the rest of the day—ensuring that our work progresses. Famous Writers’ Morning Routines We’ll be in good company with this commitment to rising early to get to the work. In an interview for The Paris Review in 1958, Ernest Hemingway said: When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. The Telegraph reported that several famous authors rose early to write, including WH Auden, Beethoven, and Victor Hugo. They all liked to wake at 6am. Kurt Vonnegut and Maya Angelou rose even earlier. "Murakami, Voltaire and John Milton all set their alarms at 4am.” So did Barbara Kingsolver. James Clear shared an excerpt of her explaining about the years when her kids were young. Back then, she said she rose early. “Too early,” in fact. Four o’clock is standard. My morning begins with trying not to get up before the sun rises. But when I do, it’s because my head is too full of words, and I just need to get to my desk and start dumping them into a file. I always wake with sentences pouring into my head. So getting to my desk every day feels like a long emergency. One way to prioritize your writing, then, is to give it the first hours of every day, rising early to do so. Get up, get to your desk, and start dumping those words out of your head. If it feels like a emergency, maybe that’s because it is. 2. Carve Out Time to Binge Write Maybe early mornings and routines don’t work for you, at least not right now while you’re dealing with a broken arm or while you’re serving as a caregiver for aging parents.

At a writing conference held October 12 and 13, 2018, I interviewed three authors who served on the speaking team. We discussed all things writing, like their writing challenges, their writing process, and their advice for writers. All for you! I’m going to share these conversations with you, mixing them in with my standard short solo episodes; in other words, you won’t be getting all three interviews in a row. But you’ll know an interview from a solo show because I’ll include “interview” in the subject line—that way you can set aside a longer chunk of time to listen. Today, I bring you the first of the three: a conversation with Shawn Smucker. We discussed his work as a cowriter, ghostwriter, and novelist, and our discussion took place just before release day for his nonfiction book Once We Were Strangers. Shawn Smucker is the author of the novels Light from Distant Stars, The Day the Angels Fell and The Edge of Over There, as well as the memoir, Once We Were Strangers. He lives with his wife and six children in the city of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. You can find him online at www.shawnsmucker.com. Resources: * Light from Distant Stars, Shawn’s 2019 novel * Building a Life Out of Words, Shawn's free e-book chronicling his first year trying to make a living cowriting * Shawn's website: shawnsmucker.com * Shawn on Twitter: @shawnsmucker * Shawn on Instagram: @shawnsmucker * The Day the Angels Fell [affiliate link, which means I will receive a small compensation at no charge to you if you click through to check it out and purchase] * The Edge of Over There [affiliate link] * Once, We Were Strangers [affiliate link] * Favorite books Shawn has re-read to analyze and learn (all affiliate links): * All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr [paperback] * Home, by Marilynne Robinson [Kindle ebook] * Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson [paperback] * Lila, by Marilynne Robinson [Kindle ebook] *

Last time, we talked about the 6+1 Traits. When you take time to evaluate your work in each one, you can begin to identify areas of strength and weakness. Over time you can boost the weaker areas and become a better writer. In the months ahead, I'll continue to explore ways we can improve our craft using these traits to organize each recommendation, but for now, I'm wrapping up this part of the series to bring you something new. I'll tell you all about it at the end of this post. Writing tips, tricks, and tweaks offer immediate results, so here are four more tips to help you be a better writer. 1. Ban "the" at the Start of a Sentence My brother, who teaches writing at a university, reminded me of this tip: Never use "the" at the beginning of a sentence. While this may seem extreme—even ridiculous—what it does is force you to find new ways to vary your sentence openers. “The” is a useful word in the English language, but let’s face it: launching a sentence with "the" doesn’t offer much oomph. I could soften the tip and say, “Rarely begin a sentence with ‘the,’” but if you make it a rule—if you never start a sentence with “the”—you’ll force yourself to reach for creative alternatives. Almost any other word will hook the reader better than "the." So do it; or, rather, don’t do it. Don’t start sentences with “the.” See if you don’t write with a livelier style. 2. Vary Sentence Constructions The first tip leads to the next: vary sentence constructions. If you signed up for the free mini-course "Make Your Sentences Sing: 7 Sentence Openers to Add Music to Your Prose," you’ll have one set of options you can use to mix up your sentence constructions. If every sentence began the same way, we'd be bored after only a few paragraphs. So mix up the way you construct your sentences. When you stop using “the” at the beginning of your sentences, you’ll turn to the myriad options available to you. But think, too, of the whole sentence and how one flows to the next. Your sentences can vary not just with how you begin them, but throughout. At the editing stage, take time to craft your sentences with care and then read them aloud. Listen for mood and tone and style—does it match what you’re trying to convey? Listen for pace—does one naturally lead to the next to keep you reading or do they lag and sag? Listen for musicality—do your sentences sing? 3. Vary Sentence Length As we play with our sentences, we'll want to switch up not only the type of sentences we use but also their length. Don’t fret about these sentence-level changes while writing your draft, but as you edit, listening for the effect of your writing from paragraph to paragraph, you’ll hear your sentences work together to form the complete thought or beat. Sometimes when we churn out a draft, we fall into a steady output that spits out sentences of similar length. When you have several medium-length sentences in a row, the piece may struggle to hold a reader's attention. A longer sentence in there somewhere—created by combining two medium-length sentences—may be an easy solution to try. Add punch every once in a while by inserting a super short sentence—even one with only two or three words. That’ll grab the reader's attention better than an exclamation point. Tell the story or explain the logic, then drop in a short one. Try it. You’ll start to see how it breaks up a paragraph and gives the eye a place to stop a moment and think. 4. Be Natural Remember how our English teachers banned contractions and the use ...