Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach

Last time we talked about having a playground. A place to relax and try new things. A place where you can experiment and be a little messy until you figure out how you want to use that space. Consistent at Your Core At the same time, be consistent at your core. Not that you look exactly the same everywhere you go. I mean, that’s not even realistic. Think about it in practical terms: Sometimes you’ll be speaking at a conference and dressed in a professional outfit while other times you’ll be doing a live video feed while walking your dog. It’s appropriate and expected to literally look different and to exude a different tone in one space versus another. But somehow I should have no question I’m listening to the same person. Everywhere I encounter you—online, at a conference, or in line at Starbucks—I should sense that you are essentially the same. Whether you’re dressed in your best suit for a photo shoot or sitting around a campfire roasting marshmallows with friends, be the same core you. Consistent with Content Maintain consistency in content, too, to avoid blindsiding readers. That doesn’t mean you write the exact same subject using different examples over and over. That would get boring. And tedious. Instead, write under the broader themes you’re known to explore. If you’re a lifestyle blogger, you might have a few subtopics you write about: travel, photography, food. And let’s say you write about those things with a frugality focus: money-saving travel tips, how to get the most out of your DSLR, meal planning on a budget. Readers love your articles. You’re saving them money and you’re a little bit sassy when introducing a product or destination. They follow you for updates. If you suddenly start writing about politics in a cynical tone, your audience will wonder what’s going on. You don’t sound like you and you’re not delivering them subject matter they’ve expected from you. Now, you’re free to write whatever you want, and you may choose to leverage your platform for a higher purpose. Why Do Readers Come to You? Just keep your audience in mind...your readers. Why do they come to you? If you’re the frugal travel blogger and suddenly you start spotlighting luxury hotels that cost $600 a night, and you toss French phrases around as if you’re wearing a beret and drinking champagne, readers who have appreciated your tips for backpacking across Europe and choosing the best hostel will feel like your content isn’t for them any longer. But let’s say you won a luxury trip where your hotels would have cost $600 a night. Your readers might enjoy seeing frugal you marveling at resort living. You could position the luxury outing as Budget Traveler Stumbles into Wonderland. Writing Coach or Arborist? If someone comes to my website or listens to my podcast week after week expecting something related to writing encouragement, instruction, or inspiration, they’d feel confused if I suddenly offer a clinic on tree trimming. I might be an amateur arborist perfectly capable of leading a clinic on tree trimming, but my readers would be scratching their heads. “That’s weird. I come to Ann for writing input, not tree trimming advice.” If, however, a big part of my brand is sharing stories from my personal life, perhaps my readers already knew I’m an amateur arborist, so if a comment showed up on social media about my recent neighborhood tree trimming seminar, it wouldn’t be a total shock. (I’m not an amateur arborist, for the record, so don’t ask me for tips. But I do make excellent steel cut oats, and if you ever want to know my secret, the instructions do still live on this website....

If you scroll through my Instagram feed, it won’t take long before you’ll see quotes on pictures, quotes with colored backgrounds, sourced images and my own snapshots all jumbled together. It’s not pretty. You’ll see travel pictures and book after book lying on a marble table, which is one of two or three decent backdrops in my home. The captions vary. Some are long, some are short. Sometimes I write stories to go with the image; other times, I simply add a little quote or brief explanation. Then there are the Stories. My Instagram Stories aren’t overly planned out and I don’t add a lot of embellishment. I just talk for 15 seconds and then send it off. There’s no rhyme or reason to any of my Instagram content. There’s no grand plan. It’s sporadic. It’s an experiment. It’s a playground. On Twitter, I have a more thoughtful approach. I have a philosophy of sorts going over there...a purposeful flow of content I’m tweeting out. Same with Facebook—it’s fairly easy to figure out what I’m doing there. And I follow a straightforward schedule with predictable content on my website and podcast. But Instagram is where I mess around and try things out. One day I may commit to a smarter approach that matches my overall brand, but I think it’s important while building an author platform to reserve a place to play. While Building a Platform, We Need a Place to Play In an era when writers must take personal branding and platform-building seriously to be considered by traditional publishers, we must be smart about establishing our online presence. We set up our digital home base—our website. Then we secure “satellite offices,” if you will, on social media platforms. We show up as the author of a guest post on someone’s website or find ourselves interviewed on a podcast. We stay on topic. We strengthen our brand. We build an audience that appreciates our message and our voice. In the midst of those efforts, I like to set aside one space where I can be more natural, casual, and real—where I can test story ideas and experiment with my voice a bit. If your brand exudes a natural, casual, real vibe everywhere, cool! You live with more freedom than some writers, you lucky duck. Some writers, given their topic, convey a more put-together feel on social media and write in a professional tone as part of their brand in order to reach their primary audience. They need a place to let their hair down, and the good news is that these days, readers enjoy seeing even put-together professionals in their natural environment. Writers—They're Just Like Us! Have you seen the “Stars—They’re Just Like Us” section of US Weekly magazine? “There’s Kerry Washington buying lettuce at Whole Foods! She’s just like us.” “How fun to see Zac Efron walking his dog! He’s just like us.” “Wow, Cindy Crawford pumps her own gas—she’s just like us.” “How about that—Ann Kroeker reads entertainment magazines! She’s just like us!” Uh, a quick disclaimer: My mom gave me a gift subscription to US Weekly and Taste of Home back in 2012, so for the record, I didn’t seek it out myself and the subscription ran out several years ago. And I don’t flip through it at the grocery store checkout stand. (Well, at least not that often.) But if I did, that would be one of the features I’d flip to. Because I think it’s fun to see the movie or music stars I usually see dressed up and walking the red carpet spotted in normal places in ordinary clothing, shuffling around in flip flops slurping an Orange Julius, just like us. You're Someone's Star Maybe we writers working on building our platforms aren’t big stars—at least,

As a writer, you know how amazing it feels to get positive feedback on something you've shared with the world, whether a blog post, article, poem, or even a short social media update. And if you're an author trying to get a book into the hands of readers, you appreciate each and every person who buys your book and reads your book. You’re moved and humbled by readers who tell others about your book, or give your book as a gift, or leave a positive review, or show up at your book launch and book signings. You're probably already doing a lot of that for other writers. But I know that when my life gets busy, the pile of books I mean to read and review sits untouched while I scramble to finish my own projects. I fail to send off a timely note to encourage a friend who's just released her book. I delay recommending it on Goodreads. Help Writers Find New Readers I forget, that, like each and every one of us, I can help a writer push into new groups of people—my groups of people—to find readers he might not be able to connect with on his own. No matter how many followers we have on any platform, no matter how many subscribers we have on our email distribution lists, we can make a difference in another writer's life by helping share their projects with the people who know us. Collecting Ideas That Truly Help After attending a writing festival in April, I left inspired to do more—to be a better literary citizen. I poked around online, gathered ideas from people who have been on launch teams, and asked other authors who have benefited from the support of readers: What did those readers do? And what truly helped? I collected this input to make a list of action steps I can take to support and serve fellow writers. Then I converted it to a checklist so I can do at least one of these things each week. Busy Readers Can Encourage Writers I'm sharing it with you not to generate any guilt or put any pressure on you...only to share what I've collected and offer a reminder that it doesn't take much to make a difference. Most of these ideas would take no more than five minutes, especially if we were in that space anyway. If we're poking around on Goodreads, for example, it wouldn't take much to recommend a book to someone we think would enjoy it. If we're in a library doing research, we could take a couple of minutes to fill in a request that they acquire a friend's book. I assembled this list for myself, but I hope the ideas leave you inspired to join me in spreading goodwill and good words for our fellow writers everywhere we go. 20 Generous (and Easy!) Ways to Encourage a Writer Today I’ll share the ideas with additional thoughts right here and now in more detail. If one stands out to you—take note and take action (get your copy of the whole collection using the form below): * Sign up for a writer's newsletter (and read it!). If something they send strikes a chord, hit reply and let them know. * Buy books. Stop by a brick and mortar store if you can—many of us encourage support of independent bookstores whenever possible. But don’t limit yourself. Buy the book anywhere, new, and it’ll boost sales. If a store doesn’t have it in stock, ask them to order a copy. You’ll get the copy you want, and the book will get on their radar. * Preorder a book that's about to be released, which helps in many ways, such as showing the publisher sales numbers in advance and maybe even pushing the book to rank high in some bestseller algorithms. * Feature a writer on your website. Interview or write about someone on your blog. Link to the writer’s website to send traffic her way and introduce her to your own readers. If this writer is also an author, send people to places her books are for sale. * Rate and review on Amazon. Write an honest,

This coming Sunday in the United States we celebrate Mother’s Day. Eight years ago, I wrote a tribute to my writer-mom, reflecting on they way she modeled how to live the tension of being the mom she wanted to be while also being the writer she wanted to be. This tribute included family stories and my own memories and fun photos that helped me remember. To honor her publicly, I published it on my website, though I could have written it as a gift and presented it privately. Write Your Tribute It’s not too late for you to write a tribute—a set of memories that celebrate and honor a mother in your life. This mother can be your biological or adopted mother or a grandmother. This mother might be your wife. Maybe your children are grown and you have a daughter or daughter-in-law who has herself become a mother. This mother can be a friend or a mother-figure—sometimes a Sunday school teacher, guidance counselor, aunt, or neighbor will fill that role for someone. Pick a mother you’d like to elevate, celebrate, and honor. Decide if you want to share it publicly and/or privately, then come up with a structure to write this tribute. Resources to Support and Inspire Your Process I’d like to suggest two resources that might help you, both of which—in full disclosure—are written or collected by friends of mine. The Mother Letters The first is The Mother Letters: Sharing the Laughter, Joy, Struggles, and Hope. This collection of short essays in the form of letters was compiled by Amber C. Haines and her husband, Seth Haines, who reached out to friends Amber knew online and in person asking them to send letters addressed to “Dear Mother.” Seth's plan was to collect them and present them all together as a surprise Christmas gift. So many letters poured in, Seth could barely manage all of them. But he did. He assembled and presented them to her that Christmas morning and Amber received a gift that spoke to her mama-life, as the letters, one after another after another, confessed, as she herself wrote, “how little any of us know and how precious it is to be right where we are and who we are” (The Mother Letters, 14). The letters were from mothers to a mother; tributes to motherhood itself, encouragement for a mother; they celebrated motherhood and the power of the letter form. Years later, Seth and Amber realized her Christmas gift held wisdom that could help many others, so they decided to pull a selection of the letters into a gift book. And that became The Mother Letters. I mention it not only because it’s a lovely book and—full disclosure again—I confess I have a short essay included in the book. But I also mention it because the letter form is an excellent way to write a tribute. Consider writing your tribute as a letter. Pack it with memories and spotlight the strengths this mother in your life is known for—strengths she may need to hear spoken back to her. Everything That Makes You Mom The other resource that can help you collect memories, compose your thoughts, and structure your project is Everything That Makes Your Mom: A Bouquet of Memories, by Laura Lynn Brown. In this book, Laura offers prompts to draw out memories, often focusing on a topic or theme or time of year or type of memory. She includes brief vignettes—memories of her own mother—to serve as inspiration. She follows the vignette with questions which, as she writes in the introduction, “help to exercise your own memory muscles.” And this gift book leaves space to write out your memories directly on the pages, so that the book itself can be given to the mother you are honoring, if you wish.

About 20 minutes before the my dad’s calling and funeral service were scheduled to begin, we were milling around, chatting with various family members, organizing papers for the service. Throughout the week, my brother and I searched for photos and significant mementoes to display or add to a slide show. Scrapbook Recollections During that search, my brother unearthed a scrapbook I created decades ago. He brought it to the funeral home, since it spotlighted a lot of Dad’s family members and memories. I’d forgotten all about it, but apparently I’d interviewed Dad as I showed him items like an old clock or a painting. I also pulled out his old photo album filled with images of his family members. Most of them were old, old photos dating back to the early 1900s. Maybe I made this for a college class or for a birthday gift, but whatever the reason, I recorded him talking as he described the item, the original owner, and told stories about the people in the album. Then I transcribed everything and put it together in this scrapbook. I handed it to my nephew. “Did your dad show you this?” He took the scrapbook and shook his head no. “Well,” I said, “these are stories I had Grandpa tell me about people and stuff. You’ll recognize the clock and some of the artwork. You might enjoy it. It’s your family, after all.” Uncle Ed Before long, my kids and their cousins were all leaning over the album, reading the stories and looking at each item. I was standing nearby when I heard them all laugh about one of their grandpa’s recollections. “What’s funny?” I asked. “It’s this ‘Uncle Ed.’” My nephew pointed to an old photo. “Grandpa went on and on about other family members—this lady was a nurse in the Army and this guy was a captain and was really important. Then all he had to say about Uncle Ed was...” My nephew leaned down and I could see the slim strip of paper I’d printed out and mounted below the photo of a man. “‘Uncle Ed didn’t do much with his life.’” He looked up. “That’s it. That’s all he has to say about Uncle Ed.” Everyone laughed yet again. “Poor Uncle Ed!” I said. “Surely he did something with his life?” Reducing a Life to One Line My brother had joined the conversation by now. “You know,” he said, “when you get one generation past the death of someone, your whole life does seem to get reduced to just a few stories.” My brother would deliver the eulogy that day. He said it was hard to know what to highlight about Dad out of all his stories and all his interests. My brother continued, “When you get a couple of generations removed, like Uncle Ed is to us, sometimes all that’s left is one single line.” Oh boy. If I’m remembered for just one line, I hope it isn’t, “Ann didn’t do much with her life.” Writers Leave Behind More Than a Line I’ll remind you of one advantage we have as writers: we can leave behind more than one line. We can leave behind books and stories and essays and poems and journals. Simply by writing—by building a body of work, especially nonfiction but fiction, too—we control the narrative we leave behind to some extent. At the very least, we offer a collection of source documents, if someone ever wants to dig in and learn more. One-Line Legacy - A Summary of Your Life But at our funerals one day, someone will have to summarize our lives as my brother had to summarize Dad's. In episode 149, I urged you to write your own obituary or eulogy, reflecting on a life you’d like to live. That obituary is a summary of a life, not a biography, but it can be long and fairly detailed.

When my dad died in March, our family worked together to write the obituary. Each of us thought back on his life to decide the right stories to tell, the best details to share. What career highlights or life accomplishments should we bring up? What was he known for? How could we best capture his personality? Obituary Eventually we landed on a version of the obituary to publish in the local newspapers, to be read by family and friends and maybe a few strangers. People who didn’t know him got a glimpse of who he was. People who did know him wrote us lovely notes along the lines of, “Yes! That’s the man I remember!” or “I didn’t know that about him.” Eulogy For the funeral service, my brother wrote a eulogy. Eulogies are more personable than obituaries, as they tend to be presented through the lens of the speaker and reflect that relationship, though the eulogy might be delivered by a pastor who interviews people and pulls together their stories into one cohesive piece. To Summarize a Life Thinking back on a person and trying to summarize a life—that’s quite an undertaking. Sobering, too, for the person doing the thinking, writing, and summarizing. As I wrote reflections about my dad for the service, I began to wonder about my own life. Maybe funerals bring that out in all of us who attend. We think about our lives today, our lives in the future. What is a life? What is...my life? What would I want to be known for? What would someone include in my obituary? What accomplishments would they point to from my youth all the way through my retirement years? How would someone summarize my life? What values would they remark on? What passions or hobbies? How would they describe my personality? What would they say was my legacy—what did I leave behind in the world? Creative Writing Assignment Creative writing teachers often make this assignment: to write your own obituary or eulogy. But you don’t write it as if you’re going to die tomorrow. Don’t worry at all about when or how you might die. That’s not part of this reflection. Instead, focus on how you will live. Project yourself into the future and try to imagine how you will have lived. Just talking about it creates a verb tense challenge—following through with the assignment is a bit of a mind bender. You project yourself into the future and reflect back on your life as if you’ve already lived it. What life do you want to have lived? By writing your own obituary, you figure out the life you’ve lived thus far, and the life you want to live from this point forward. It’s a useful exercise for creative writing and...for life. Viktor Frankl's Daily Exercise, Expanded Viktor Frankl offer a daily exercise that Donald Miller summarized in a blog post. Frankl “taught his patients to treat each day as though they were living it a second time, only this time around to not make the same mistakes.” It’s a mind trick. Miller points out it calls us to “evaluate the decisions we will make that day before we make them, and as such, avoid regret.” In other words, you live the day the way you intended to live it. In a similar way, we can expand Frankl’s mind trick and look ahead at our entire life as though we are living it a second time, avoiding mistakes and making choices and decisions so that when we get to the end, we lived the life we intended to live. Best Case Scenarios This is not an exercise in playing out the future based on where we are at this moment, describing a depressing path assuming nothing changes. Don’t play out worst-case scenarios.

On a recent road trip, I loaded the “up next” feature of my podcast player with every episode that sounded intriguing. One episode would play after another without my having to touch it. Hours of Filling the Mind As I rolled down the freeway, I listened to hours and hours of podcasts, filling my mind with interviews, ideas, tips, and strategies related to writing and publishing, creativity and productivity, social media and marketing. That continuous input felt like taking back-to-back sessions at a conference or classes at college. Hungry to learn, I gorged on the steady diet of nourishing information. Hours of Stilling the Mind When I arrived at my destination, I turned off the podcast player. Silence. My brain grew still. That’s naturally what happened at the end of my long journey. But of course that’s exactly what I needed next. After filling my mind, I needed to still my mind. I needed to build in space and time to process and ponder the content I had taken in. I needed time to decide which ideas I could “own” for myself and integrate into my life and work. How could I test them out without some degree of stillness? Hours of Input Need Hours of Silence My outing was my Grand Gesture, if you recall from the last episode. I was near a beach. I made a commitment to walk every day, at least an hour. Sometimes two. As I walked, all that input from hours of listening and learning tumbled around in my mind, mixing with whatever I’d dropped in there over the years. Waves spilled against sand and lulled me into a relaxed state of trust in the directions my mind meandered. Freed from overthinking and overanalyzing, I solved a few sticky issues and casually outlined a few projects. I gained excitement and vision for the year ahead. Fill + Still = Breakthroughs While I have a lifetime of input floating around inside me, I believe in the importance of continuing to fill myself with more. I’m a lifelong learner, I guess. I want to keep my mind sharp. But I also see the value—the necessity—of following the filling with a stilling my mind, giving it space to make connections and arrive at breakthroughs. We have those a-ha moments while walking, showering, folding laundry, washing dishes. When we aren’t actively problem-solving, our minds are still enough to wander, think, make connections. This is a valuable state for a writer in need of breakthrough for a sticking point in a project. Effortless Breakthrough After a period of filling the mind, take time to quiet the noise. Turn down the volume, whether literal or figurative. Give the brain some down time. In the stillness of those quieter, less mentally demanding times, we figure it out: * I just realized how my heroine will escape the trap! * Ah! I know the third stanza in the poem—I can hear it in my head. * For that essay, I’ll allude to a line in a play and write a section on how it resonates with our society. Our rested state allows us to arrive at clarity and vision. Filling and Stilling, We Write Unique With your insight, you can put the idea together in a way that only you can. That’s why you and I could both write about the same topic or respond to the same prompt and your final product would be completely different from mine. Not only are our styles different, but we’ve filled our minds with different content. You read this book while I read that. You came across a quote in your travels and I found one in a letter my mom wrote to her best friend when she was in college. You pored over medical research, while I had a conversation at a party thrown by a friend. We have it all inside, ready to increase the clarity and quality of our writing.

About a month ago, I escaped the frigid late-winter temperatures of the American Midwest and headed out on a big road trip. By myself. To write. (And to walk on the beach.) ’Twas a big investment of time and resources. ’Twas a grand gesture. Grand Gestures for Deep Work Some big writing projects I wanted to dig into continually sank to the bottom of the jumbly piles of obligations and domestic duties. I’d try to set aside time for the ideas, the words, the keyboard, but they struggled to gain traction when I could only dedicate a few minutes here and there. I decided to find focus—and sunshine—elsewhere. This approach to plunging into deep work by making major investments of time, money, or space, are what Cal Newport calls “Grand Gestures.” Rowling’s Grand Gesture In his book Deep Work, Newport offers a few examples of people who have made grand gestures, including J.K. Rowling. When she was working on the final book in the Harry Potter series, she faced everyday interruptions that broke the creative concentration needed to pull together all the threads of the story and finish strong. So she decided to step away from home, where the doorbell would ring and the dogs would bark. She checked into a room in the five star Balmoral Hotel at $1,000 a night. Newport notes that she didn’t intend to continue writing there more than a night, but she accomplished so much, she kept going back and ended up finishing the book there. The Boost in Importance Newport explains: The concept is simple: By leveraging a radical change to your normal environment, coupled perhaps with a significant investment of effort or money, all dedicated toward supporting a deep work task, you increase the perceived importance of the task. This boost in importance reduces your mind’s instinct to procrastinate and delivers an injection of motivation and energy. (122-123) Let me assure you I wasn’t staying in anything close to the Balmoral Hotel for my Grand Gesture, but it was certainly a radical change from my normal environment and required a significant investment of effort. My tasks did indeed take on greater importance, and I sat on the balcony with my laptop and tapped out the ideas and words that got my projects either significantly under way or completed. And I walked on the beach. In the sun. Less “Grand” Gestures Are Still Grand Now, there have been eras of my life where an outing that radical simply would not have been possible. Just out of college, I didn’t have nearly enough money for such an adventure. When my kids were little, no way could I have taken off that many days and driven that far away. Truly, it would have been nothing but a dream—a dream deferred. Back then, though, I made smaller grand gestures. That sounds like an oxymoron, but though they were small, they felt grand. I would escape to the library on a Saturday and stay all day, tapping out chapters in a book or articles for magazines, stepping out only to eat a little lunch I packed. Or in good weather, I might head to a local park and work at a picnic table, enjoying the atmosphere, penning poetry or a blog post. Sure, I’d love to have escaped to a more inspiring locale, but I settled for a less grand alternative—it got me away from my distracting dining room table. With some creativity, I still managed to gain focus and get ‘er done. It’s Worth It The goal, I believe, is to find ways to convince yourself that this project you’re working on is worth it. It’s worth the time. It’s worth the effort. Even a less dramatic “grand” gesture tells the brain to stop procrastinating and do the work. Creative Grand Gestures One of my clients drove her RV to a beautiful campground and stayed the weekend to finish three chapter...

The past two weeks, I shared with you parts one and two of my writing life beginnings. I reflected back on when, where, and how I began to dream of writing, pursue writing, and latch on to the writing identity. I included some of the people involved in the process—people who encouraged me and people who created a challenge for me, even when they didn’t mean to. And I did my best to convey some of those memories and reflections through scenes. Your Writing Life Beginnings Now it’s your turn. I encourage you to think back to your writing life beginnings. When did you first find yourself drawn to writing? When did you first imagine being a writer? What held you back? Who held you back? What happened next? Do you remember a moment, an interaction, a scene from your life that formed you and your view of yourself as a writer, for better or for worse? What happened to reinforce or change that perception? When did you first tiptoe in—or, heck, when did you dive full force into—the writing life? Preserve Your Story Take time to remember. Write it down. Preserve it. And when you face discouragement—when you question your purpose or your identity as a writer—you’ll have this pivotal story to look back on: your story of your writing life beginnings. Beginnings You’ll remember the moments you pushed through and the people who shaped you. You’ll feel strengthened to recall the first words you shared with the world or the first pieces that were published. Maybe your story will begin all the way back in grade school and the first picture book you read over and over and hid under your pillow hoping the story would drift into your dreams at night. Maybe you’ll recreate the day someone read a poem you wrote on blue construction paper and decorated with glitter—you’ll describe how their eyes lit up and they looked down at you, the young hopeful, sensitive poet, and they said, “That’s so beautiful.” And you knew. In that moment, you knew this is what you wanted in life: to be a poet. Maybe you’ll describe the time your words were brushed aside. You slammed shut your notebook and snapped your pencil in two. Your swore you would never write another story. Two decades passed before you ventured back into the world of words, and you’ll share about your first writing attempt after that bitter episode years earlier—you’ll recall a sentence you wrote on the back of an envelope, while you rode a bus on the commute into the city. You’ll remember each word of that sentence, and how you shoved the envelope in your pocket, flushed with hope, and finally felt free to write again. When you capture those moments, you’ll realize this writing dream—this drive to put pen to paper—is no surprise, not really. You’ll grin when you understand that your love of literature traces back…wayyyy back. When the Going Gets Tough It’s worth it to invest a few minutes in preserving this part of your history. It’s worth it, because you can return to it when the going gets tough. And the going will get tough. Writing is hard. Editing is hard. Publishing is hard—sometimes brutal. You’ll have bad days, when you question it all and want to give up. Go back to this. Go back to your writing life beginnings. Write it down. Read it. Remember. Remember how you wanted it—fought for it—and resolved to make words integral to your life. Then go back to the keyboard or the notebook or whatever you write with, and begin again.

Note: This was originally published both at my website and at Tweetspeak Poetry back in 2013. I signed up for an American Literature class. The instructor didn’t ask about my brother, and I understood what I read, like The Mill on the Floss and Their Eyes Were Watching God. I formed opinions—my very own—and wrote response papers that earned A’s and positive remarks from the professor. My journalism course, however, turned me off. Plus, I couldn’t shake that memory of standing at the doorway to fetch the photo of the boy who had been shot. I didn’t want that life, so I abandoned journalism and switched to social work. The professor discouraged students from becoming social workers unless they were absolutely sure. I wasn’t sure. So I switched majors again when I took a folklore class, because I loved the idea of capturing stories. But someone pointed out the limited career opportunities available to folklore majors, so I started to look for an alternative. English Major Then I took another English Literature class. Maybe I was reading Kafka’s Metamorphosis or Joyce’s The Dubliners, but I realized I loved literature when I understood the language. Stories, words, ideas, themes. That’s what I wanted to dive into with my remaining time in college. I don’t know what I’ll do with it, I thought, but this is who I am: an English major. Toward the close of a semester, I walked with my boyfriend toward the campus bookstore, wondering aloud about my future. “What do you really want to be?” he asked. I blurted out, “A writer.” “A writer? That’s fantastic! How about communications?” “No, it’s too much like journalism and I hated journalism. I want to write creative things for magazines or books. I would love that.” “Take a creative writing class.” “Creative writing?” “Sure! You’d write fiction and poetry.” “But I don’t write poetry.” I remembered the sonnets in Dr. Weber’s Shakespeare class. “I don’t understand poetry.” “It’s okay. If you take creative writing classes, you’ll learn to write.” Creative Writing So I signed up for Introduction to Creative Writing. I read Writing Down the Bones and learned about free-writing. I filled notebooks with countless words, pen on paper without lifting it for ten minutes, hoping to turn up memories and ideas to work with. We started with fiction and I wrote a story entitled “Fences” that no one liked—not even me. Then we read and discussed poems, mostly contemporary. Some rhymed, but most didn’t. I understood some of them, but not all. Nobody seemed to mind, though I began to second-guess my right to be in the room with other students who grasped the meaning quickly and sounded intellectual. We began to write our own poems. “Write what you know, ” the instructor advised. “Write from your own memories. Write about your childhood.” So I wrote about dropping hay onto the heads of the cows as they leaned into the manger to eat. I wrote about my brother and his friends warning me that the devil lived in the window well. I wrote about sitting alone in the wooden pew watching the adults take communion at the Methodist church. I wrote about dancing in the barn loft as the afternoon sun streaked through the lone window facing west. And I wrote about my grandmother’s calico cat. None of my poems rhymed. Poetry Every semester I signed up for another creative writing class. For one assignment, I wrote a poem inspired by a piece of art. I chose an Andrew Wyeth print my boyfriend’s mom gave me of a little boy sitting in a field. I invented a scene where the boy had run away, and the week I read it aloud, the instructor, who wore long peasant skirts and Birkenstocks, highlighted the last lines, reading them again, slowly.

Note: This was originally published both at my website and at Tweetspeak Poetry back in 2013. My mom, a journalist, was talking with a friend. She beamed at my brother. “Charlie, he’s the writer of the family. And Annie? She’s…” Here, I felt my mom hesitate. Then, “Annie’s the athlete.” My brother excelled in everything involving words—from composing song lyrics and essays to dominating Scrabble games and inserting witty comments into conversations at just the right moment. I played softball and ran track. And I rode my yellow Schwinn ten-speed down country roads stretching between corn and soybean fields, past herds of Black Angus cattle and silos filled with grain. The labels fit, though deep down, secretly, I wanted to be a writer, too. Journal Three years after Charlie graduated high school, I sat in Miss Thompson’s Senior English class. Miss Thompson told us we would keep a journal chronicling our senior year, creating at least five entries per week. We were to do more than write, however. We were to add our personal touch. Whether we complemented our written words with pasted-in photographs, news clippings and ticket stubs or accented them with watercolor backgrounds and meticulous calligraphy, the key to A-level work was creative expression. She held up three examples of some of the best she’d ever seen—journals from past students whose work she adored. One was Charlie’s. I recognized it immediately, having gazed at it many times while he worked on it during his senior year. She passed them around for students to flip through. When Charlie’s came to me, I opened it, noting his handwriting—a combination of big printed letters and rounded cursive. The content mingled light humor and occasional sarcasm with spot-on descriptions of people and situations. For one page, he cut letters from newspapers to compose an amusing ransom note. I studied the pages, wishing I could copy his techniques. Then I passed it to the person behind me. At the end of my senior year, Miss Thompson didn’t ask to keep my journal. Copy Person I ran track in spring that year, as I had since junior high, training for sprints and the long jump, reinforcing my status as the family athlete. After graduation, I worked during the summer as a copy person, running errands for editors at the newspaper where my dad worked. I hated working in the city. I hated working into the night. I hated the sense of urgency and stress necessary to put out a daily paper. One time I had to drive the company car to fetch a photograph from a family whose son had been shot. I knocked on the door. They barely opened it. I introduced myself and said I was from the newspaper. They reached through the narrow opening and handed me his picture. I told them we would return it and flipped it around to be sure their address was printed on the back. It was. I don’t think they said one word. I said I was very sorry and thanked them for the photo. They nodded and shut the door. I hated invading their grief. College That fall, I started school at a Big Ten University. Not nearly good enough to compete on their elite sports teams, I lost my label. No more was I an athlete, though I did pedal my yellow Schwinn ten-speed across campus, weaving around students who were walking to class. A couple of weeks into my freshman year, I showed up at a tall building where bored grad students served as advisors, looking over undergrad schedules to ensure that our class selections met each major’s requirements. We lined up single-file down a long hallway, waiting our turn. My randomly assigned college advisor asked about my major. Since I had no idea what to study, my mom and dad suggested journalism. I didn’t have any other ideas, so I’d been claiming to be a journalism major on all my school documents and...

Last time we talked about getting that first pancake out of the way so you can make more pancakes. We can be so afraid of that wobbly-edged first pancake that we don’t even start, but when we overcome that fear and pour out that first blob of batter, we’ll start to get the hang of it, flipping more and more until we have a big round stack to serve others. And that’s why we’re writing, isn’t it? To serve whole stacks of our words to others? There are other reasons to write, including personal reasons, like keeping a private journal to explore our inner lives. That practice can lead to a healthier psyche, increased gratitude, and improved health. But those of us who are writing for publication of some kind—even if only on social media—have some desire to serve an audience. To have readers. We want to inform, persuade, encourage, or entertain, right? Keep Flipping Pancakes So here’s the deal. You’ve got to keep flipping pancakes. Every Saturday morning, you have to pull out the griddle, stir up the batter, and make more. And you know I’m using this as an analogy, of course, though by all means, make actual pancakes any time you wish. If you make any for me, I’ll take gluten-free, dairy-free with real maple syrup, please. But back to our writing. Once you write the first poem or the first essay or the first book or the first Instagram post—or the next poem or the next essay or the next book or the next Instagram post—keep going. Pick a sustainable pace and keep writing, keep editing, keep finishing, keep shipping them out however they're shipped. If it means you need to click publish in WordPress so your article goes live once a week, do it. If it means you make the finishing touches on your essay and send it out via Submittable, send it. Be consistent. When you’re consistent—when you keep showing up—you reap layers of benefits. Be Consistent for Readers First, you show your audience you’re serious about this. You’re in it for the long haul. You'll still evolve—it doesn’t mean you’ll produce exactly the same content for decades. But you are saying, “Hey, I’m not a one-hit wonder." Consistency tells the world, “This who I am. This is my personality, my tone, my approach, my worldview. And you can turn to me for X.” Then write X, whether that’s political satire or romance novels. It can be driven by topic, like frugal shopping or high-end travel, or it can be driven by platforms, like podcasts and vlogging. Show up and prove to the world this is what you offer. By writing and shipping consistently, you’re saying, “I'm going to show up with content that persuades you, encourages you, makes you laugh, or solves your problem. You can turn to me for that. You can count on me. I’ll be here. I’ll walk alongside you, reader." Now, plenty of readers will pop over to your blog or your Facebook page and just take away one little morsel of information and never visit you again. That’s okay. But you will have faithful readers. Those are the people you’re showing up for. Whether it’s two, twenty, two hundred, or two hundred thousand, keep showing up for them. Be Consistent for Yourself Interestingly, showing up for others ends up being a gift to yourself. When you write for others, you reinforce not only for them but also for yourself: this is who I am, and this is what I offer and want to keep offering. When you stick with your commitment to show up consistently, you prove to yourself you can do this. You can follow through. You can make pancake after pancake. You get small win after small win, and those add up to become their own big win. Consistency is how we practice our craft and improve.

Back in December of 2014, my first podcast episode spoke to listeners. I preached to myself, as well. The message? Just get started. You Only Need to Know 'Enough' I’d been putting off podcasting for years. There was a wave of interest in podcasting a few years prior to 2014, and I felt like I’d missed that wave. But the opportunity stirred again. People in the online world were buzzing about podcasts and podcasting yet again, and I realized a second wave was swelling. Perhaps I could ride the wave this time, I thought. Now, I’m not too good on the water—I survived a spectacular wipeout while waterskiing when I was in my early 20s. Thankfully, I’m only using that as an analogy. I saw it as a risk—launching a writing coach podcast felt as scary as pulling on those skis. The fear felt the same. But I decided to dig in and do it anyway. I decided to do minimal, just-in-time research and then jump right in even if I didn’t think I knew enough. I was tempted to have every duck in a row, but if I waited for that, I knew I would wait another week, another month, another year. I knew I just needed to know enough. I could get answers along the way. To be honest, at the time I was kind of mad at myself for missing out before, so I was determined to move forward no matter what. Start with What You Have I couldn’t find a straightforward "podcasting for dummies" kind of tutorial. Those came a few months or a year after I started. I read what was out there, tried to figure out the basics, and jumped in with the equipment I had on hand. A couple of questions remained unanswered, but I forged ahead. I used my smartphone and a little earpiece speaker I use for making phone calls. I pulled that very first audio file into GarageBand, did some light editing, uploaded it to my podcast host, and with that, I started. Those first few episodes, I was nervous. The quality was adequate, but not professional. And I did make a couple of mistakes behind the scenes. I was kind of upset and anxious about them for a week or so until a kind and patient person at Blubrry—that’s my podcast host—explained my options, helped me decide what to do, and walked me through next steps. Problem solved. Basically, I had to re-brand the podcast because I couldn’t change the name without starting over. But the point is that even with the mistake, I was able to meet my ultimate goal, which was to get content out there—audio content—that could help writers. I didn’t wait another day and I didn’t waste another opportunity. About a year later I heard the term “minimum viable product” for the first time and realized, “Ah! That’s how I got myself in motion!" That microphone was okay—it met my minimum standard. If I’d waited until I saved up for a nicer mic before starting, I might have missed the wave. Get the First Pancake Out of the Way Whatever it is you’ve been dreaming of doing? Do it. Start it. Grab your computer keyboard and type the first words of that novel. Set your phone on a shelf and record your first Facebook Live. Grab your camera and snap a first few photos for Instagram. Set up a website and start publishing articles. Have you heard of the first pancake rule? I love it because I’ve literally seen its truth in action. Every time I make pancakes—or crepes—the first one or two are kind of misshapen and unappealing, though they taste just fine.

Photographer Walker Evans said, “Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long." Pay attention to this world. Learn something. And then, I might add, give it away. Before you die. Because life is short and there’s so much to say. Stare We writers join the photographers and fine artists and children as the watchers, staring at the world around us, noticing what others brush past or ignore. We’re the ones who see and take note. We pry, listen, eavesdrop. We press in and push out, serving as a conduit of whatever truth we’ve taken in. Share Whatever you learn, whatever you know, whatever you see and hear, write it. Share it. Pass it on. You have stories to tell that only you can tell because you were the one who was there—you were the one who took time to notice and see what others missed. We stare a long time and sometimes stand up, walk to another location to gain a different perspective, and stare even longer—this time from that other angle. Capture it. Verify, as much as possible. And bear witness with honesty and humility. We play with words as we tell the truth. We may speak truth others can’t articulate on their own, or we speak truth others can’t bring themselves to utter. We often speak the truth others can't quite wrap their minds around, but when they see it, read it, hear it, they’ll “get it.” All because we stopped to stare. All because we were willing to share. The Unexpected in the Everyday Sophie Howarth & Stephen McLaren, authors of Street Photography Now, respond in part to the Walker Evans quote, as they describe the work of street photographers in terms that sound something like the work of writers. They say: Street photographers elevate the commonplace and familiar into something mythical and even heroic. They thrive on the unexpected, seeing the street as a theatre of endless possibilities, the cast list never fixed until the shutter is pressed. They stare, they pry, they listen and they eavesdrop, and in doing so they hold up a mirror to the kind of societies we are making for ourselves. At a time when fewer and fewer of the images we see are honest representations of real life, their work is more vital than ever. (excerpted in The Telegraph) We writers can do the same kind of work as the street photographers. When we do, we elevate the commonplace and familiar into something bigger, even “mythical” or “heroic.” We, too, thrive on the unexpected in the everyday. Our work, too, is more vital than ever. Make Much of What Others Pass By Dinty Moore of Brevity Magazine tweeted a quote from Steven Church, who said: "I think our obligation as essayists is to make too much of things that other people wouldn’t make much of." Essayists, poets, novelists, memoirists: look around. In the commonplace, familiar world we inhabit, we see the bigger themes, the more profound truths, the window into what our world is becoming. We do this, in part, by noting what some small piece of it has become. We make much of things others pass right by. Every writer can learn from the street photographers. We can learn to stare. Pry. Eavesdrop. Take it all in. Use every sense. Take it all in and get it all down, even if you don’t write about it until a week later, a month later, a year later. But don’t wait too long. Help the World Begin to See In the play Our Town, the character Emily is speaking to her loved ones when she says, "I love you all, everything. - I cant look at everything hard enough.” Her monologue models attention to detail and inspires every theatergoer, every writer—every human being—to do the same. She cries out to her family to look at each other.

In her book The Artful Edit, Susan Bell says editing “involves a deep, long meditation within which the editor or self-editor listens to every last sound the prose before him makes, then separates the music from the noise" (5). We talked last time about the need to listen—we even explored ways to do so. Now we’re taking it to a more intense level involving "a deep, long meditation," as Bell emphasizes the need to listen to "every last sound the prose" before us makes. This takes time. Attention. Focus. We're making decisions based on what we hear, listening with a discerning ear, to separate the music from the noise. Listen for the music. Eliminate the noise. The Noise Let’s start with the noise. I suspect most of us would agree we writers don’t want to add to the noise of the world, nor do we want to simply make noise with our words. No need to sound like a clanging cymbal unless that’s adding pizzazz or punctuation to drive home a point. So we must recognize when a passage isn’t pulling its weight. Have you read something that feels like it’s sagging, long-winded, or slow? Yeah, that’s probably a sign it ought to be examined more closely and tightened or even eliminated. Susan Bell says in a later chapter, “Develop your editor’s eye to see where your words slouch.” Though she’s switched from listening to seeing, I suspect avid readers who have grown to love the sound of words can see or sense a slouchy passage, especially when reading aloud. We may be able to spot it on the page, too, if the paragraph is packed with long sentences, too much detail, or lack of clarity or focus. You’ve probably hit a sluggish, slouchy passage if you realize you’re speed-reading to rush through a section or you caught your mind wandering. Your text probably needs attention if you're reading and re-reading a passage because it didn’t click the first time. Mego And heaven forbid if your eyes glaze over. The late Ben Bradlee, legendary editor of The Washington Post, coined a term for a bad story: “mego.” A story that bored him was “mego," M-E-G-O, the acronym for “my eyes glaze over.”  If you’re reading and your eyes are glazing over, flag that section. Come back and tighten it, condense it, or if it isn’t necessary, simply delete it. Slouchy words and passages will tire or bore your reader. You’ll risk mego. Minimize mego. Maximize music. Making Music So let’s talk about the music. Bell advises, "you can rhythmically hold on to [your reader] by controlling the musical measure of your prose" (119). A balance of sentence length is a simple fix, but it’s not a science. I can’t tell you to add three compound-complex sentences followed by a short sentence for the perfect combination. I like to think we’ll know music when we hear it. It’s the sound of the sentences flowing from one to the other. It’s the word choices that roll off the tongue with ease. It’s the idea that engages the mind without having to read it twice and the scene that unfolds naturally so the reader practically steps into it. The flow of the passage serves the story or the idea. The music serves the message. Author Mary Caponegro says: I’d always write out loud. When I got that opening, I would repeat it out loud, over and over and over…because it was so important to me that the sonic qualities were intact in every single line. A lot of my self-editing would be preoccupied with trying to maintain the standard in my head of musicality. (171) She seems to enter that long, deep meditation Bell describes to listen to every last sound the prose makes. She’s intent on making music, first. Above all. Beige or Purple Prose When crafting lyrical prose—or trying to—writers are tempted to go too far ...