Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach

I hear it all the time. It doesn't seem to matter what stage of life we're in or what part of the world we're from. Regardless of age or gender or personality type, everyone says it: "I want to write, but I don’t have the time." Time Management Systems Only Part of the Solution You might think the only solution is to quit your job or hire a nanny. More likely, you’ve given up. Well, I guess that’s where you’re finding yourself if you’re someone who wants to write but doesn’t because of time…or lack of it. I don’t think you have to quit your job or hire a nanny. I also don’t think you have to give up. I could offer project management and time management solutions to help you eliminate some things from your schedule, plan your days efficiently, streamline your processes, and make the most of your time. And we could discuss distraction and motivation and nemesis and Resistance and procrastination. Because chances are, more than one thing is keeping you from writing, not just lack of time. It Can Be Done: You Can Write I want you to prove to yourself it can be done—you can write even when you think you have no time at all. Here’s a simple solution that's worked for me. In the next article I’ll share another. You can try one or the other, or both together for even more momentum. This first solution is especially powerful if it’s been a while since you’ve written. Kickstart Your Writing with a Time Block I urge you to kickstart your writing with a block of time devoted to nothing else but your words. If your schedule is insane, this may seem like a counterintuitive suggestion or a contradiction—“If I don’t have time to write, how will I find a block of time to write?" Have you taken a vacation in the past year or two? It could be a one-day escape to a nearby tourist attraction, a weekend retreat, or a week-long getaway. You made it happen, didn’t you? So you know it’s a hassle to step away from life and work, but it can be done. If you want it bad enough, you’ll find a way to set aside the time and make it happen. Same with this writing block. If you want it, you’ll find a way. And like a vacation, it’s not a regular thing. Just one block of time. I want you to love yourself and your writing enough to say, “I’m doing it. I’m making this happen. I’ve waited long enough—it’s time to kickstart my writing." Can you find a block of time? Can you escape the busyness that’s been holding you back? Can you leave it behind for an afternoon, a day, a weekend, or longer, so you can write for an extended time and make a dent in your work-in-progress—or the work that hasn’t even begun? How Long? You don’t have to go far, and you don’t have to be gone long to make a difference. Remember, this is a kickstart, not a completion—you don’t have to write the entire novel or finish the complete essay. You just dedicate a block of time to writing to give it a strong start or build out its bones. Surely you can find an afternoon and evening? Or a full Saturday? Where? For a week or weekend getaway, you could head to a nearby retreat center or a local bed and breakfast or a campground cabin. If you only carved out a day or an afternoon, head to the library or see if a local co-working space offers an inexpensive day pass. Depending on your project, you might want to find a location that doesn't offer Wi-Fi. Without that distraction, you’ll get more words out. Just make notes in brackets directly in the text to remind you to look up details later. You can tackle that research some day when you have just a few minutes between appointments. Kickstarting your project means you need to set down words, lots of words, so don’t get distracted confirming the street name in your home town. Just write.

A lot of my clients are preparing nonfiction book proposals to send out to agents and publishers. One of the sections they have to think through is their primary audience or target reader. We have to identify who this book is intended to impact. It’s a must for any writing project, big or small. We must know our audience to use the best language to connect with them. To understand what they already know about our topic—and what they need to know. To build a relationship with them and continue to connect with them over time. If we don’t know precisely who are primary audience is, we’re capable of generalizing and writing in a distant, unfriendly, unnatural voice. Identifying Your Ideal Reader But who is this unseen reader? Who's clicking on the article you publish at your website? Who reads your tweets? Who subscribes to your newsletter? Who will read your future book? It’s enough to make your head spin, trying to identify your ideal customer, your target audience, your target reader, your avatar. People advising writers are using terminology like this, and it’s helpful because they're pushing us to go specific. For example, they won’t necessarily let you settle for simple demographics like, “My ideal reader is a 30-something mom with young children.” Instead, they insist on a more detailed persona, something more like this: My ideal reader is Cara, a 32-year-old mother of three kids—a second-grader, first-grader, and preschooler. Cara does yoga in the morning, then feeds the kids homemade muffins before loading them into her Honda minivan to drop the older two off at the private elementary school. She then swings through Starbucks with the preschooler, who is dropped off three days a week at the church-based program at 9:00. And it goes on. You figure out what she does when she’s alone, and the problems she encounters, and the questions she has throughout a day. This approach helps a writer—especially the nonfiction writer—come up with articles and content that can address or completely solve this avatar’s problems and answer her questions, one after another. It’s sort of a creative writing exercise to write a character sketch of this fictional person, fleshing it out with enough detail to make him or her completely real to you as a writer. Does the Fictional Persona Help You Write? But for a lot of writers, fictionalizing the person you’re writing for never quite works. Instead of forging a confident tone and close connection, it all feels sort of contrived. Even if you can go out in the neighborhood and see a person who fits that description, or you can find that kind of person online in a Facebook group asking questions you imagined your avatar asking, it’s still sort of distanced and fabricated. Maybe even a little forced. For Real Copy, You Need Real People I like an approach Chase Reeves described in an episode of The Fizzle Show podcast. The Fizzle team was talking about writing copy and how hard it can be unless—unless—Chase says, "you know exactly who you’re writing to and what you need to tell them.” Creating a fake persona or avatar is a step in the right direction in that you’re trying to speak to a specific person, but he takes it to a super-practical level. Here’s Chase’s trick. He opens up Gmail and starts writing an actual email to an actual person he knows really well in his life—someone who fits the type of person he’s hoping to reach with his content. It’s often his dad. So he opens an email, types in his dad’s email address, taps out a subject line, and prepares to communicate directly with his dad, a real person he knows really well. As Chase is preparing to write the subject line, he wonders, What would surprise Dad?

In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, we follow the saga of King Arthur and his knights when, at one point, they encounter the Keeper of the Bridge of Death. Arthur explains that the Keeper of the Bridge of Death asks each traveler three questions. He who answers the three questions may cross in safety. Sir Robin asks, "What if you get a question wrong?” Arthur answers, "Then you are cast into the Gorge of Eternal Peril,” which appears to be a fiery, hellish pit shooting up flames now and then for effect. Sir Lancelot courageously agrees to go first. “Ask me the questions, Bridgekeeper. I'm not afraid.” The questions turn out to be: What...is your name? What...is your quest? And what...is your favorite color. Lancelot answers each question easily and crosses directly. “Right, off you go," says the Bridgekeeper. The next knight, excited that the questions are so easy, rushes up to take his turn. The Keeper of the Bridge of Death asks, "What...is your name?" "Sir Robin of Camelot." "What...is your quest?" "To seek the Holy Grail." And then the Bridgekeeper asks, "What…is the capital of Assyria?" Sir Robin exclaims, "I don’t know that!” He flies into the air screaming, as he is cast into the Gorge of Eternal Peril. What Is a Gatekeeper? A gatekeeper, like the Keeper of the Bridge of Death, has the authority to grant (or deny) you passage into the next stage of your publishing journey—perhaps one of the final stages: that of landing a book contract or getting a byline in a coveted journal. Traditionally, we writers seeking publication have to enter a system and gain entrance from someone in order to be published. A gatekeeper might be the acquisitions editor you meet at a conference, who listens to your pitch and asks to see your full proposal. It’s the agent you query in hopes he'll represent you to publishers. If you’re hoping to land an article in a periodical, the gatekeeper is the editor who reads and responds to your query with a yes or no regarding your idea. It’s the person who receives your poems, essay, or short story through Submittable and decides if it will find a place in the spring issue of a literary journal. Generally, it’s someone who is in a position to green light your project or at least get it to the next stage. Gatekeeper as Decision-Maker Gatekeepers may or may not be the final decision-maker, depending on how a company is structured and how big the staff is. But especially someone you meet at a writing conference is there, representing the publishing company, and has been granted the authority to say yes or no on the spot, allowing you to move on to the next level with them if they say yes or ask for your full proposal...or move on to another publisher or publication if they no. Most gatekeepers have been in the business a long time—long enough to recognize quality art when they see it; they can sense that certain something that sets one project apart from the rest. They can tell if it pops, if it sings. And they know it from the business angle, too. They know what sells. They know their publishing company’s standards and style and whether your project is a good fit. Gatekeepers are people who have the power to invite you in or turn you away. If you’re turned away, you move on. You approach another gate and stand before another gatekeeper. New Gatekeepers Brooke Warner writes that the gatekeeper role is more complicated these days than in the past. As a former gatekeeper, she knows firsthand what it’s been and is noticing what it’s becoming. At her website, she writes, “[T]he role gets falsely propped up by supporters of traditional publishing and complet...

Writers have to churn out content of all kinds, from blog articles and guest posts to magazine pitches and book proposals. You never want the well to run dry, yet you may have faced days when you opened your laptop and stared at the screen without a single idea. It’s kind of scary. You think, “That’s it. My career is over. I’ve used up the creativity I was allotted in life. Now I need to go flip burgers at Mickey D’s." No, no, no. Let me assure you that’s not how it works. The well never needs to run dry. Thankfully, whether you need ideas for blogging, essays, creative nonfiction, poems, short stories or novels, ideas abound. You can find things to write about all around you, just waiting to be explored, developed, and written into existence. With a little experimentation, you’re sure to find least a few things to write about next time you open that laptop. Evening Reflection One of my favorite methods for churning out ideas is "Evening Reflection.” I first heard about this a couple of years ago via Mike Pesca of The Gist, when he interviewed professional storyteller Matthew Dicks. The podcast was titled, “Where to Find the Best Stories.” Dicks shares a daily exercise useful for training attentiveness and generating ideas. At bedtime, he says, think of the one story from the day that has the greatest meaning—something that made that particular day different from all the rest. Take just one to five minutes to write that story down. This refines our lens, he says. He writes the stories in a spreadsheet to force him to keep it short. He stretches the column about three quarters of the way across the screen and limits himself to that space. Be warned: the people who fail at the exercise and give up tend to write too much. It’s so tempting to write the whole thing out as a story, but in terms of idea-generation, your goal is to simply capture the essence in a few phrases so it can serve as a prompt later. Do it daily for only five minutes or less, and you’ll have material to last a lifetime. I’ve begun this practice, and it trains me to be attentive as I faithfully reflect on and record the most meaningful event of that day. Not only do I have ideas to write about—I end up with a succinct record of my days. Ideas from Your Day Another method is to gather ideas throughout the day. Let’s say you’re trying to come up with article ideas for your website or to pitch to magazines. Write a list of how-to posts—make some of them ridiculous enough to stimulate your imagination. Write them as headlines that reflect activities in your day. You’d write the headline similar to how you came up with the 50 Headlines I’ve talked about in the past, but you’re letting the day itself and the things you do and the people you meet get you making connections and dreaming up possibilities. Let’s try a few. Wake Up So first thing you do in a day is wake up. As you smack the alarm, you realize you could at that moment start thinking up some relevant titles: “6 Tasks to Tackle First Thing in the Morning” or “How Early Risers Will Save the Planet” or “Make Your Bed and Remake Your Life.” Others may have written about this, but you could offer a personal angle or interview a friend for content. Morning Ablutions You brush your teeth and look down at bristles. Add to your list: “What Your Toothbrush Wear Pattern Says about Your Personality.” Get Dressed You look in your drawers and see how neatly you’ve folded your sweaters and you remember you started folding them this way after reading Marie Kondo’s book about tidying up. So you go big—after all, maybe you can interview three people who fit these results? “How the KonMari Method Saved My Marriage, Got My Kids into Harvard,

In fiction writing, we refer to plotters and pantsers: those who like to outline their plot and write in an organized manner, the “plotters"; and those who write-by-the-seat-of-their-pants, the "pantsers.” Each approach reflects when and how you do your thinking. I know every writer has specifics to his or her approach, but here’s the general idea. Plotter, Pantser The plotter is imagining his characters and thinking through their struggles up front, before he writes a single word, planning out the story’s plot. The pantser has a basic idea and a main character or two, tosses them into a setting, gives them a problem, and starts writing—because he’s thinking as he writes and the story unfolds before him. Nonfiction Plotters and Pantsers While nonfiction writers and poets don’t technically have to plot out anything, I suspect writers in all genres can identify with one or the other of those general approaches. Maybe you’re a plotter-type who outlines essays and articles or works from a template for blog posts. You refer to that outline and fill out the template before tapping out the draft. You probably started with a list of topics or a mind map to think, and then figured out how to organize all those ideas that popped into your head. Only then—only after you organized the themes, subtopics, and examples, shaping them into some kind of structure—did you attempt to write a draft. Maybe you’re a pantser, generating a big idea and then running with it, letting the subtopics reveal themselves while you write. You might make a short list to get the creative juices flowing, but then you just put pen to paper and started freewriting to unearth everything you can on a topic, trusting your mind to flow in some kind of logical pattern, finding connections and stirring up thoughts, quotes, and ideas you’ve tucked inside some mental file. The Plotter-Pantser Continuum As with many things, however, this is not a binary choice; we’re probably not either a plotter or a pantser. I see it more as a continuum, where pantsers like to have an idea of where they’re headed or maybe they write plot summaries for the next segment they’re starting to work on. And, yes, plotters will stay open to new ideas, willing to erase or rearrange ideas in the outline when some new thought arises or a bit of research sends them off in a new direction. You might be amused to know that some people who see themselves somewhere in the middle of this continuum call themselves “plantsters” (or "plantsers") a combination of both. Which Way Do You Lean? But even a plantser will tend to favor one end of the spectrum or the other. Figuring out which way you lean can help you do your work more confidently from day to day. If you know you like to be a little more organized and prefer a sense of where you’re going before you write, you’re leaning at least a tad toward the plotter end and you'll be able to write drafts with greater ease when you’re prepared. That’s cool. Don’t let someone who leans toward the pantser side tell you that’s uncreative or uninspired. You’re being creative at the beginning of the process instead of the middle of it. If you’re a little more loose about where you’re going, eager to explore your idea or characters as you write, don’t let the person who relies on an outline look down on you. You have to find your way as you go—it’s writing as discovery. If you’re a little more on the pantser side, you’re letting your thoughts and ideas evolve through the writing process. No Right Way to Write It seems like Twitter and Instagram are filled with writing quotes that suggest one way is better than the other. Facebook updates link to articles that elevate one approach over the other.

In Rumors of Water, L.L. Barkat recommends a book to her daughter. Barkat is out in the garden with her girls, who are pulling weeds, and one of the girls, Sara, has decided she hates Bishop’s Weed. Barkat tells Sara, “It’s your nemesis…Every gardener has a nemesis.” She continues with her own reflection on the impact of having a nemesis—a garden nemesis or otherwise: It’s not going to cause psychological distress and end up in her memoirs. But it’s not going to go away either. She’s going to need to work around it, dig it out, ignore it, accept it, if she wants to grow lettuce and peas in this garden bed. (41) She recommends to Sara a book by Michael Pollan that has a nemesis—maybe a gopher. I, being rather lowbrow, thought of Caddyshack instead of Michael Pollan, and then of Seinfeld and Newman: Jerry... Newman. The Writer’s Nemesis You probably don’t have a Newman in your life. In fact, I hope you don’t have any actual nemesis—that is, a flesh-and-blood writer who steals your ideas or steals your thunder. But Barkat suspects every writer does indeed have some kind of nemesis. Maybe it’s The Censor, she says, “a prohibitive voice,” or The Market, “always demanding writing that’s saleable." Maybe it’s The Procrastinator, which is “keeping us from writing.” In his book The War of Art and Do the Work and countless articles and interviews, author Steven Pressfield presents the idea of Resistance. It’s his way of talking about a nemesis. Resistance is the root of all manner of evil and issues, as it includes trouble like fear, self-doubt, distraction, timidity, self-loathing, ego, and perfectionism—any force working against us and our creative efforts. Resistance is an enemy, a nemesis. Pressfield practically personifies it by capitalizing the word Resistance when he writes about it. What's Your Nemesis? What's your nemesis? What hisses at you when you sit down to write? What threatens to grind you to a halt, causing Resistance to your creative work? You’ve got to know your enemy…name it if you can. That’s a good first step in order to fight back and be free. If you know You might already know your nemesis. You may have identified it long ago and immediately blurted it out the minute I asked the question “What’s your nemesis?" It’s procrastination! It’s jealousy! It’s fear of success! It’s fear of failure! If you know, write it down. Knowing it—and naming it—can help you recognize it when it knocks at the door, blusters into your writing space, and sits there staring, glaring, boring a hole in your confidence. If you don’t know If you don’t know your nemesis, it’s time to explore. L.L. Barkat sends writers off with a bit more instruction. She recommends working through a book like The Artist’s Way to explore what’s hindering us. She also recommends studying other writers’ processes to hopefully see ourselves more clearly and pay attention to “our frustrations and our joys with writing” (42). Once you know it and name it, how can you be free of it? How to Be Free of a Nemesis If your nemesis is fear, Elizabeth Gilbert has quite a bit to say. In talking about the kinds of fears that keep us from our creative work, she says, "Your fear should always be allowed to have a voice, and a seat in the vehicle of your life. But whatever you do — don't let your fear DRIVE.” Write fear a letter She also recommends letting that fear write a letter to you. In a Facebook update a year or so ago, she recommended we ask fear what it wants, what it doesn’t want, and why it’s holding us back. And then, after “fear” writes that letter, read it, she says, with an open mind and heart. And then she says we should write back to it. Make sure that this fear understands you have a...

Young people graduate high school or college, apply for positions, and get stuck: no one will hire them because they have no experience, but they can’t get experience because no one will hire them. So they get a job at Starbucks to pay bills, gaining experience with cleaning espresso machines, still unable to land the job they really want and still unable to gain relevant experience because no one hired them in their preferred field. If only they could gain experience, they would be marketable, successful, confident... If only we could gain experience… People often want to write—to become writers—but they lack experience. Regardless of their age, they feel like that young graduate stepping out into the world eager to work but lacking what they need to do the work. As a result, those writers end up stuck, sometimes paralyzed. Without experience, can they even enter the ring? They hold back, doubting themselves or fearing the door’s going to shut in her face. "Is there room in the market for the newbie, the rookie?” they wonder. "Should inexperienced writers even bother trying when so many more experienced writers have established themselves online and in print?” Some writers even worry they’ve passed some invisible point in time and it’s too late. They’ll never be an experienced writer. We Can Get Experience Now Every minute we sit around wondering if there’s room for us at the table, wishing we were more experienced, is a minute we could have been doing something meaningful and productive that contributes to our growth as a writer. It is not too late. And don’t waste any more time thinking it’s too late. We writers have an advantage over the graduate on a job search—we can actually gain experience in our field every single day. We can write right now and grow in knowledge and skill. We may not be ready to write for top-tier publishers, but we can always be improving, moving closer to our goals. While writers with very little experience might go a bit slower in the pursuit of landing a book deal, let’s say, there’s no reason to delay for another moment your growth as a writing professional. In What Ways Do You Feel Inexperienced? Writing Skills? Technology? Navigating the publishing industry? How to approach marketing, publicity, social media? Figure out where you feel you lack and you can fill that gap. For example, you might feel inexperienced in everything, but in reality you’re a talented writer—maybe you studied creative writing! Now you’re feeling the draw (or the push) to write online, but your lack of confidence with technology causes you to suddenly question everything about your abilities. Or maybe you are technologically savvy and jumped into blogging with exuberance, but never received training in writing, so you lack writing skills and confidence with conventions like grammar, capitalization, and punctuation. Identify the areas where you are or you feel inexperienced, and make a plan to address each of those areas. Develop a Personalized Course If you feel lacking in writing skills, for example, you can create your own course of study based on the things you feel you don’t understand: Practice marginalia and copywork to introduce you to techniques. Read books about the art and craft of writing. Track down college writing handbooks and work through the lessons. Sign up for courses online. Hire an editor to review some of your work—ask him to mark the issues and explain why they’re a problem so you can literally learn from your own mistakes. Address specific areas of weakness: if you write fiction but your dialogue seems stilted, study authors who handle it well; if you write poetry but resist form,

Last time we talked about taking a cue from Dani Shapiro and attempting to tell the story as we’re inside of it—potentially before the story has become a story. This requires us to write about life as it’s unfolding, trying to find the story in the actions and interactions that take place. We begin “capturing the living moments,” to borrow a phrase from Anais Nin. What if the events we want to write about took place long ago, before we thought about writing anything down? What if we must rely entirely on memory for material? It's in Us After all, most formative experiences smack us, scar us, and sink into our core in the early years. As Flannery O’Connor said, “Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days" (84, Mystery and Manners) And Willa Cather said in an interview, "I think that most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen. That's the important period: when one's not writing. Those years determine whether one's work will be poor and thin or rich and fine.” If that’s true, all that we need to write short- and long-form memoir is in us. Somewhere. How to Dredge Up Memories How do we get to those long-ago memories? How do we bring up the sensory details that will help us recreate scenes? How can we reach the names of the people with us that day on the farm or what color the wallpaper was in the room where an argument took place? Is there a way to recreate sequence and timelines? Can our minds still hear the tap of a pencil against the desk? Or was it a pen? Dorothea Brande's 30-Minute Memory Break and Artistic Coma One method for dredging up memories you want to write about is to set aside time to recall. Recalling allows us to draw from our reservoir of memories, those moments when we’ve noticed and retained something in the past—something worth revisiting. Dorothea Brande suggests a simple way to engage memory: [S]et...a short period each day when you will, by taking thought, recapture a childlike “innocence of eye.” For half an hour each day transport yourself back to the state of wide-eyed interest that was yours at the age of five. Even though you feel a little self-conscious about doing something so deliberately that was once as unnoticed as breathing, you will still find that you are able to gather stores of new material in a short time. She also recommends an “artistic coma,” and these two ideas could work in tandem—lie down for about 30 minutes and let go of all distractions. That quieted, almost comatose, state can create receptivity to the images, sounds, textures, and people of the past. When that material emerges during the quiet—some of it stepping out of the swamp of the past, dripping with muck—it’s time to write. Write fast. Write everything you’re given, because those slippery memories will slip away again again if they aren't captured. Bill Roorbach: Write to Release While Brande recommends a time of recall to tease out memories followed by the act of writing, Bill Roorbach says memories can bubble to the surface as we write. In his book Writing Life Stories, he claims: One of the many curious things about the act of writing is the way it can give access to the unconscious mind. And in the hidden parts of consciousness lie not only hobgoblins and neurotic glimmers, but lots of regular stuff, the everyday stuff of memory. The invisible face of your grade school bully is in there, somewhere, and the exact smell of the flowers on vines in your grandma’s backyard, along with most everything else. (19, Writing Life Stories) With this method, start writing and trust that the memories hidden in the recesses of your unconscious mind will rise up as your pen covers the page or your fingers fly across the keyboard. Try Both

In her recently released memoir, Hourglass, Dani Shapiro says she used to teach her students that writers need distance from the event or events they intend to explore in memoir. I was quite certain that we could not write directly from our feelings, but only the memory of our feelings. How else to find the necessary ironic distance, the cool remove? How else to shape a narrative but from the insight and wisdom of retrospect? (93) Distance Leads to Fading I've heard this same advice from many sources but struggled with it in practice. Certain experiences in my life have seemed like perfect fodder for memoir, but I waited to write. Time has passed. Years. At this point, critical details and insights have faded—and, yes, even the feelings. That "cool remove” she speaks of seems more like evaporation. Shapiro says her thoughts on the timing are shifting, though. She now sees that "[e]ven retrospect is mutable. Perspective, a momentary figment of consciousness." To me, her new approach feels like a much better way, enlivened by real-time action and energy and all the rich texture of now. Tell the Story While Inside of It She writes: "If retrospect is an illusion, then why not attempt to tell the story as I’m inside of it? Which is to say: before the story has become a story?" I wonder how many stories have mutated as we wait. It happened to me—to a story I thought I might write. I guess I was waiting for perspective before writing it down. Well, and time. I didn’t have time to write as I navigated the memoir-worthy events, but had I been savvier and recognized the power of snatching the story while it was fresh—while the feelings surged with the most intensity, I would have done it. I wish I'd jotted more notes, saved more texts, recorded more observations with my smartphone’s voice recorder. Blogging in Real Time The way people used to blog seemed to follow this approach. Those who wrote from their lives seemed to blog almost in real time, attempting to tell their stories while they were in the midst of them. Journaling in Real Time Those committed to keeping a journal, like Anaïs Nin, a faithful—some might say obsessive—diarist, wrote, "It was while writing a Diary that I discovered how to capture the living moments.” Telling a Story as Memoir in Real Time Capturing those living moments is the work of a diarist and perhaps some journalists, and Dani Shapiro’s comment makes me wonder if it's also the work of a memoirist when we capture them in real time and write inside the story. Diaries and journals and this idea of a real-time memoir help us look at life even as we’re living it. Again, Anaïs Nin said, “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” We write to remember the moment, the feeling. We write to document the way it changed us. Is there a story here? Or just a series of snapshots? Was this a passing emotion or a transformative event? Capture the Living Moments Try it. One way or another, whether or not it’s a story of transformation, capture the living moments. Try to tell the story as you're inside of it. Record the songs that play and the color of clothes on the day you receive life-altering information by email. Take note of the way the old 90-pound dog heaves himself up from his nap and moves through the house and down the hallways on creaky joints to greet the college kids when they walk in the door. Listen for the woodpecker tapping the maple tree as you talk on the phone with your father. Don’t decide yet if it matters; write inside the story that has yet to be a story. After all, if not now…when? Don't Wait If you wait to write until after the old dog dies, you might forget the way he cuts a corner and slides h...

Last time we discussed a writing pipeline, representing the phases or stages a project moves through, from the initial idea to completion—including when it's been published and you save it in a portfolio. Now let’s talk editorial calendars. Life Without an Editorial Calendar For years I got by writing on the fly. I'd have a few minutes free, think up an idea, whip out a draft, and with just a little more time that night or the next morning, I could edit the piece into a solid article to send out to a magazine or publish on my website. My approach worked in the early days, when my publishing aspirations and expectations were as small as my kids. As my kids grew, however, the possibilities seemed grander and I realized this random, last-minute approach was not the way to live a creative, sustainable, productive writing life over the long haul. If I wanted to produce a body of work, I'd need to be a bit more intentional and organized. A tool to support all that and remind me what to do next was an editorial calendar. Life With an Editorial Calendar Whether I’m planning the timing of short pieces like blog posts or long-form projects broken into smaller tasks, I’ve come to rely on an editorial calendar of some kind, even if it’s rudimentary. Over the years, I've tried everything from printed calendars to online apps. No matter what I use, it boils down to deciding when I want to publish or submit something. Then I simply write that down somewhere—preferably somewhere I’ll actually look. Integrating the project due dates on a calendar I’m already using for other appointments helped me value the work as highly as other obligations. It showed up as a priority in my life and helped me view myself as a working writer. I hope life with an editorial calendar improves your own work habits and productivity so that you’ll prioritize your writing. And when you’re picking out the editorial calendar to use, start with what’s most normal and natural for you to avoid overcomplicating things or introducing a big learning curve. Paper Calendars My first editorial calendars were simply monthly calendars I printed off. I’d think about the frequency I wanted to write and publish for my own website along with content I created for other organizations and magazines, then I’d pencil in projects with the deadlines. It helped me learn my capacity and pace by experimenting with work load and frequency. Without a calendar, I’d just be winging it; with a calendar, I could begin to see the weeks I’d scheduled too much. Bullet Journals If bullet journals existed at the time I was printing off calendar pages, I would have dedicated a page to an editorial calendar. As with a printed calendar, I’d mark articles scheduled on certain days for my blog posts or podcasts as well as articles promised to magazines and online organizations. I currently use a bullet journal to plan out ideas, but I’m loving technology options these days for my editorial calendar. Google Calendar I first transitioned from printed calendars to a simple Google Calendar. You can name each calendar, so I gave mine the unforgettable name: Editorial Calendar. I already used a Google calendar to manage the rest of my life, so this was simply adding another layer and I liked that integration. Sample entries of the kind of thing you could include on an Editorial Calendar In Google Calendars, you can click calendars on and off to look at one at a time or have all of them layer on top of each other so you can see schedule conflicts. This was perfect, because it layered my entire life and I could see busy weeks when writing wouldn’t be possible. I could move around project goals to accommodate other obligations in life. Another nice feature: scheduling alerts to remind me to to write, edit,

Have you ever sat down at the computer when you finally carved out time to write, only to discover you have no idea where to start or what to say? You end up wasting a lot of precious time if that’s your approach. In times like that, it’s nice to have a plan, a process, a system of some sort, that helps you take your projects from start to finish. The Writing Pipeline: Taking Your Projects from Start to Finish I’d like to recommend you develop a writing pipeline: a process with phases or stages that take a writing project from initial idea to final product…including the step of shipping it out into the world. I'm not suggesting your writing turns into an assembly line, churning out uninspired content to meet quota or deadlines. Not at all. In fact, a piece you’re working on might live in the draft phase for long stretches while you noodle it. So while a pipeline process might make you become more efficient, it’s not only about efficiency. Whether you formalize the process or not, any given piece of writing hits various phases along its journey. By identifying where something is in the pipeline, you can work on it and move it along, knowing where it’s at and what’s left to do before it’s ready to ship. Phases of the Writing Pipeline Any given writing piece moves through several phases, not including prewriting activities, which would be mainly reading and research. Let's take a look. Prewriting Is Pre-Pipeline Reading and research activities precede and transcend the pipeline, as the books you’re reading and quotes from experts might apply to any or all or none of your projects. I’ll mention them briefly, though, because while they don’t always represent the start of a project, reading and research can have their own storage systems that support the pipeline stages. Prewriting: Reading and Project-Specific Research I read widely, just for fun or to follow my curiosity. But I also purposely seek out and store articles, excerpts, quotes, and interviews that might contribute to a particular project. I have an Evernote folder labeled Research where I can drop articles and things to read, and I also use the app called Pocket. In it, I save articles to read when I have time. And of course I read books of all kinds—e-books, printed books, and audiobooks—knowing in any of these I may find content to include in one of my projects. Prewriting: Notes and Quotes My bookshelf, Pocket, and my Research folder are like giant hoppers I continually fill with inspiration and potential. I pull from the hopper to read and curate the best quotes and ideas. Those need to go someplace different, set apart from the jumble. I put them in a Notes and Quotes folder—I can tag a note with keywords in Evernote, making it easier to search and sort as needed. But I also use a folder, even though a lot of people have abandoned folders in Evernote. I often dip into this Notes and Quotes folder when projects are in the draft stage to integrate the nuggets I gathered. Those are some of the prewriting activities. Now, the Pipeline itself. The Pipeline Stages I’ve identified five stages or phases in a writing pipeline. In Evernote, I actually drag and drop a project file into the next folder and the next in the pipeline as it progresses. You can easily adapt the pipeline concept to many other systems—even a physical system with file folders or a three-ring notebook, moving from hanging folder to hanging folder or divider to divider. 1. Ideas Any project starts as an idea, so I have an Ideas folder. In the ideas folder, I have one master file I can open and add any idea I think of. I might write them as headlines or as a one-sentence summary (or both). If I scribble an article or essay idea on an envelope in the car, I copy it into this file. I also drop in headline templates just for fun or ke...

Ideas pop into my head all the time: while walking, doing household chores, waiting in a carpool lane, sitting poolside, or even as I'm just falling asleep. If I have paper and pen, great. I can write them down. Or if I have time to pull out my bluetooth keyboard and type them up, cool. We discussed some of my favorite writing tools last week. But if you have a lot of ideas or a rich, detailed memory comes to you, wouldn’t it be nice to record it fully and quickly, before it evaporates or you’re distracted by something else? If you write fiction and the outline of a short story or an entire scene for your novel comes to you—I’ll bet you’d love to have some way to rapidly, easily stash it away. Well, you can. Grab your phone and press record. You can save your ideas easily and quickly if you write with your voice—it’s a solution for any writer with big goals and little time. Voice-to-Text Most phones—iPhone or Android—have a microphone icon on the keyboard, allowing you to speak your thoughts into just about any app. In the last episode, I mentioned the beauty of working in the apps that sync on all devices, like Evernote, Google Keep, Google Docs. You can leverage that same advantage of capturing on the go, but you can use your voice to do the writing. I’m sure you’ve found this microphone and used it for voice-to-text. I see people using it all the time…just not for writing. My husband, who is bilingual, discovered he can even switch the globe on his iPhone keyboard to French and dictate notes and thoughts, and it’s worked well…if he wanted to, he could write a love poem in his native tongue without having to remember where all the accents go. Another iPhone advantage: you should have not only that little microphone-on-the-keyboard option—you also have Siri, who can take dictation for you. Speak Slowly, Clearly Though I tend to think most effectively through my fingers, typing my best thoughts on a keyboard, I’ve used voice recording options many times, especially to get out some notes and ideas or even the start of a draft. And I’ve learned to work on my elocution. You as the writer might be brimming with ideas that spill out at record speed, but for dictation or transcription accuracy, it helps to speak slowly and clearly when using transcription tools of any kind. Google Voice Typing In the last episode, I focused on ways to type out ideas. At my website, where the show notes live, I received an excellent comment from Susan, who wrote: "You can also dictate your written notes (or thoughts off the top of your head) right into a Google Doc." She talked about its Voice typing feature. I'm so thankful Susan took time to mention that. This dictation device—or, I guess it’s more of a voice-to-text technology/software—allows you to dictate straight into a Google doc so that your notes or a draft is waiting for you when you’re able to get behind a keyboard. Just click on Tools, then “Voice typing.” You’ll get a big popup microphone icon. Click and start talking. It’s a great way to think and then speak your ideas. Google Keep’s Voice-to-Text Recorder Susan pointed out that Google Keep also has a voice recording option. "Just tap the microphone at the bottom of the screen.” Google Keep records a segment and then instantly transcribes it, giving you the option of saving the audio recording or deleting it after you have the transcription it produces, which is pretty nifty. Evernote, Voxer Evernote and Voxer have similar features. If you have Voxer Pro and you’re an English-speaker, you can use their voice-to-text transcription. Evernote can record your voice and save that as an audio file, or you can use the keyboard microphone, as I mentioned before,

I once asked a photographer the best camera to use. Before he shared his opinion, he said a common answer to that question is, "The best camera is the one you have with you." In other words, it doesn't matter how fancy your equipment is if, at the moment a hawk lands on a fence post next to you, your Canon EOS 5D Mark IV is sitting in the trunk of your car. At that moment, you slowly lift up your smartphone and, as quietly as possible, snap the photo with the equipment you have on hand. I think we should view our writing tools the same way. It doesn't matter if a program installed on your desktop computer at home is loaded with bells and whistles, if inspiration hits while you're on vacation. If you're in the mountains with an extra two hours to write, that fancy program back home isn't going to do you much good. Instead, grab a notebook and pen and capture those thoughts with what you have on hand. Don’t Wait for Ideal Circumstances The other day I was trying to prepare notes for a podcast episode I needed to record, edit, and prep for release the next day. I was running behind, so I grabbed my cheap bluetooth keyboard purchased online for something like 15 bucks, and while my mom was getting physical therapy, I paired the keyboard with my Samsung phone, opened up Google Keep, which is a free note-taking app, and tapped out a draft. In just those few minutes, I was able to slam out a sloppy copy and store it in a program I could open on my laptop at home. I didn't wait until I had time and atmosphere or access to a robust program like Scrivener. I used what I'd shoved into my tote bag. Sure, it's easier to use my setup at home, but I had a deadline. If I'd waited, I wouldn't have finished on time. Just a smartphone and a tiny keyboard got the job done. So let me run through the tools I use for various scenarios. Your life might be more predictable, scheduled, and localized than mine; if so, so you could pick just one combination and use it at all times in your main workspace. But take note of an inexpensive, flexible, mobile option, as well, because you never know—you might get the idea of a lifetime on a cross-country road trip. Writing Tools for When I'm On the Go Smartphone + Bluetooth Keyboard + Evernote or Google Keep https://www.instagram.com/p/BVKg4lXgh_a/ The leanest system I've used so far is pairing my inexpensive bluetooth keyboard with my Android smartphone. Even though I usually travel with my laptop, sometimes it's handy to pull out the smaller, subtler combination. My keyboard is a ULAK brand purchased through Amazon, but the exact model is no longer available (comparable brands can be found with other companies). I bought a travel case for the keyboard with a zippered side pocket where I could store extra batteries. Happily, I could slip the phone itself in that pouch, too, for a lightweight grab-and-go writing system. With this simple setup, I can type up notes as I think of them; write journal entries; compose drafts of short pieces like blog posts, poems, essays, or podcast episodes; and preserve notes from books, magazines, and online articles I read. An important element in this system for me is the app. I want to input the text into an app that syncs with all my devices, so that when I do get back to my desktop computer or laptop, I'll be able to find the draft and use it to craft a final version. I can be offline while typing my draft, and when I get to WiFi, the system logs on and updates. For this, I've used Google Keep and Evernote, both of which are accessible when I open my laptop later. Smartphone + Tablet (Kindle Fire) + Evernote or Google Keep A variation on that leanest option is to substitute a tablet for the smartphone.

You may already use a system to collect emails so you can communicate directly with readers who want to hear from you. If you’re unfamiliar with email marketing systems, they offer a powerful way for you to interact with your audience. If you have a new book coming out, for example, these are the people who would want to know about it. If you’re doing a poetry reading, you can send a note and readers in that city will be glad to hear about it and might make plans to attend. If you have a special price on an e-book, you can let them know about the sale. If you haven’t started yet, I highly recommend you begin building an email list comprised of ideal readers. Start List-Building with MailChimp I started out with MailChimp and used it for years. MailChimp was free, and free sounded like a good place to start. I liked MailChimp’s option to pull content from my website’s RSS feed so people could automatically receive my latest blog posts. I chose from one of their many templates and tried to tweak the code, but messed it up. I read articles and watched videos in their vast knowledge base to try to fix my mistake, but even when I stop-started the video to break down each tick of a box or tap of a character, I still ended up with something wonky. I lost hours trying to solve my problems. Attractive templates ended up looking goofy. I limped along with MailChimp by choosing a simple template and avoiding any customization. I didn’t want to touch any code for fear of breaking something. I stayed in set-it-and-forget-it mode for years, with MailChimp automatically sending emails featuring nothing more than my blog content. Over time, I realized I wanted to send emails more a personal tone. And, if possible, I wanted a simpler system that made more sense to me. I periodically tried to tweak my MailChimp templates only to mess them up again and have to start over from scratch. Then I heard about the new kid on the block: ConvertKit. It’s not new any longer, but at the time it sounded like it might offer almost all the features I wanted without the elements that troubled me in MailChimp. The Pros and Cons I saw in ConvertKit and MailChimp Every system comes with its own set of pros and cons. Here’s what I observed at the time I was deciding. Templates ConvertKit didn’t offer a wide variety templates like MailChimp did, so if I wanted pretty emails, I'd have to get creative. But I wanted to send simple emails anyway, so that wasn’t a huge concern. Emails Generated from RSS Feed ConvertKit draws from a blog’s RSS feed to generate an email, but doesn’t automatically send it like MailChimp does. You have to go in and manually send it. I thought that was a weakness when I first signed up, but now I see it as a strength because I actually want to look at the email before sending it, to personalize it. It supports my reason for having an email list in the first place: to interact with people, encourage them, and support their writing goals. Unsubscribe System One big drawback of ConvertKit was its unsubscribe option. If readers click on the link in the footer, they're immediately unsubscribed and removed from the system. They don’t have any way to manage their subscription; they're just out. I didn’t like that. Stats ConvertKit didn’t show much in the way of stats at the time I considered it. That, too, made me hesitate. I wanted to know how many people were signing up and through which pages or forms. MailChimp did well with that. Simplicity Compared to MailChimp, though, ConvertKit was lean, clean, and simple both visually for the reader and behind-the-scenes in the dashboard. That was a plus. Subscriber-Centered vs List-Driven ConvertKit takes a subscriber-centered approach, whereas MailChimp organizes by lists,

The publishing world is evolving, and no one knows quite when it will end and what it will look like. As a writer, you've probably been spotting new trends, new entry points, new expectations, new leaders, and new technology, wondering how you can possibly keep up with all that change. Well, you’re not alone. Everyone’s seeing all that new—all that change—and wondering how they can possibly keep up with it all. There’s only one way to have a chance at keeping up—and it’s the same way any of us has a chance at gaining an advantage and keeping an edge, and that’s... To learn something new every day. I know it’s frustrating to hear that when all you want to do is write. “I don’t want to be figuring out fancy software and spending all that time on social media,” you’re thinking. "I don’t want to maintain a website and read about the industry all the time. Why can’t I just be a writer who, you know, writes?” And it’s true that a legal pad and a Bic pen should be more than enough to keep a writer churning out words, hitting daily word count goals, avoiding distraction. And I absolutely agree that a writer must write first and foremost. But if you want to try to get in the game—if you want to try to submit to literary journals or see your byline in a magazine or run a freelance writing business or pitch agents—you’ll have to learn some new things. I daresay it’s best to learn a little something new every day…at least on average. The Growth Mindset Helps Learning If you have a growth mindset, like we talked about last time, you know that nothing's fixed and forever. You and I can learn new skills and grow if we set our minds to it and implement or integrate what we learn. So that shouldn’t a concern—you can teach an old dog new tricks. The Curious Lifelong Learner Loves to Learn It helps to be a lifelong learner who's curious and creative, because with those traits, you’ll follow the spark of curiosity to dig for the information and training you want or need and follow up when you unearth another layer of skills you can develop or knowledge you can gain. You’ll poke around to figure out who to ask. You’ll research which is the best free or paid course to sign up for. You’ll subscribe to podcasts with the best information and watch YouTube videos with easy-to-follow tutorials. You’ll get books to read in line at the post office and audiobooks to listen to on a long drive or while exercising. You’ll save up to attend a premier conference or an intimate writing workshop. You'll apply for a grant or fellowship. In doing this, you’ll learn a lot of different things. If you read and learn about the industry, you’ll discover ways to respond to those changes as a writer. You won’t waste time on old methods—you can quickly “pivot,” as they say, and adjust your plan to suit what editors, agents, and ultimately readers are looking for. This doesn’t mean you abandon your vision and write for the market, but it’s good to be aware and thoughtful about what you see around you. Learn Something New About Content Learn in the area of content and you’ll collect ideas for your nonfiction projects. If you write on a nonfiction topic, you’ll have a chance at becoming an expert in your field. If you write fiction, there’s no end to what you could learn because characters need jobs and hobbies; they need to visit interesting places and struggle with illnesses. You can learn about almost anything and pull it into your work. Learn Something New About Craft You’ll write better when you learn more or different techniques and implement them each time you put a pen to paper. When you’re making lists of things you want to learn, add craft to your list and develop your own personal writing course based on skills you ...