Thinking Like A Writer

Recently I was asked by a friend to write down some ideas and inspirations for how I manage get so much writing done. Now that's a subject that is near and dear to my heart, because writing is both my vocation and my passion at this stage in my life. So what started out to be a simple 'how I do it' page or so turned into 11+ pages of tips and advice. I decided to share it here as well, where hopefully it will inspire others to either keep at it, or at least avoid the mistakes I made along the way to getting published. Not that I'm so doggoned famous or anything, but I do write a lot, and I have quite a few books in print right now. So here's how things go for me...

First of all, here’s the background stuff…

When I was a young wife and mother in the 80s, I wound up quitting the workforce to concentrate on family. I’ve always been the creative type, so while I was busy with home, loved ones, gardening, pets, etc, I needed an outlet for something that was just about me. I dabbled in music, art, crafts, and I read a lot, but nothing seemed to bring me the sort of satisfaction I craved, or worked in concert with my home life. To be part of a band, you have to be willing and able to travel regularly. I could sketch and paint reasonably well, but I had very little artistic training, and the good quality supplies that make artwork salable were expensive. You have to be uber talented to warrant a gallery show. I tried a small business selling finished crafts as well as craft supplies, but I found out fast that I am just not the entrepreneurial type. I’d happily craft all day, and I love talking to people, but I really stink at selling and dealing with money, taxes, permits, and all sorts of tedious stuff. I loved gardening and grew a lot of food and started my own plants, but that’s seasonal up here. With my oldest son on the autistic spectrum, he was struggling in school with social skills as well as certain academics. I often needed to work closely with him and the staff, which meant being available on the spur of the moment. I kept looking for something quieter that I could do at odd hours at home, and writing seemed to fit the bill. So writing it became.

I have no more education than a high school diploma, but I’ve always been an avid reader. There was no money in our budget then for me going back to school, and spare time to drive somewhere and work at getting a degree was scarce. Plus I would have to do a lot of remedial academics. The adult education courses were far less expensive and more geared toward one subject, but they were narrow in scope and always met in the evenings, and I didn’t have that time available. This was well before personal computers and the internet became popular and affordable, so my options for learning the writing business were limited. I wound up taking a couple of writing correspondence courses by well vetted schools that sent you course materials and assigned you to a published instructor. We bought a used electric typewriter relatively cheap, and I worked on the assignments in my ‘spare’ time. It was the best solution to a vexing situation, and I learned the rudimentary tenets of how to write well.

Now about the struggle to get published...

Back then there was a growing dearth of small, independent publishers, so I started sending stuff to the big houses and magazines. I got my share of rejection slips, most of them photocopied form letters with no other explanation than, “This does not currently meet our needs.” Which says nothing useful, but it’s faster for those busy, jaded editors who see hundreds of manuscripts a month and can tell within two paragraphs whether it’s worth reading any further. I always included postage to get my manuscripts back. Most of them looked pristine after the 3-9 months or more it took to reply, so I knew they hadn’t been read beyond page 1. Now and then, someone would mark up a short story manuscript and send it back, and those I tucked away in shame after reading them over. Meanwhile I pored through the Writer’s Market every year, subscribed to writing magazines and newsletters, and read every article I could find. Still, nothing. I got a couple of how-to articles into publications that didn’t pay anything other than maybe a back copy or a thank you note. Two places that I had hoped on getting published by went out of business shortly after the owner died, and before I could get something submitted. I just couldn’t win!

After a while, the continual rejection becomes soul-crushing. I’d give up writing for long stretches, and immerse myself in something else creative, but it continued to needle me. Judging by what I was reading, I felt I was doing reasonably good work; so what the devil would it take to claw my way out of that slush pile and get something into the hands of potential readers? I was savvy enough by then to realize that the vanity press people who charged you X-amount to print your book weren’t going to sell it for me, so I never went that route. What I didn’t realize at the time is that the large publishing houses had been gradually buying up all the smaller, independent publishers and turning them into imprints, so that there were only a half dozen big houses left in the US. Those kind of investments really affect the bottom line, so they primarily dealt with authors who were well known in some way. Magazines that printed fiction were going the way of the dinosaurs. So the deck was really stacked against me. Plus along the way I began seeing where most big publishers were only taking submissions from unknown authors via agents, and I found out quickly that to get an agent, you needed at least a contract in hand or some chops in the industry. Catch-22 and yet another dead end.

But I kept writing, because I actually enjoyed doing it. Good thing I’m stubborn!

When changes came along...

When we got our first PC, I had to learn how to operate it so that I could help my kids. They soon bypassed my ability and began teaching me. Once I learned to run a word processing program, that really set my creative spirit free. I am not an organized thinker, so being able to format a document my way and then move text all over the place, made story creation so much easier. It beat the snot out of the typewriter with the three line correction ability, and no ribbons to buy either. Everything got saved on this new invention called a hard drive, which meant it wouldn’t get lost as easily, and with clickable icons on something called a desktop, I didn’t have to type in lines of code every time I wanted to do something. I quickly learned the necessity of good backups though, because I once lost 100 pages of a manuscript and had to retype it from my only copy, which was on fanfold paper from a pale dot matrix printout. Took me over a week. I went through all sorts of backup contortions in those days: multiple 3.5 floppy disks, a tape drive that never worked right, and then on burnable CDs. It wasn’t until far later when the USB flash drives and portable hard drives came out that I was able to save absolutely everything I did in multiple spots—but then I’m getting ahead of myself.

Writing is by nature a lonely business, and while the family was enthusiastic and supportive, they really didn’t understand my passion for it. I was thoroughly hooked on creating fiction by then, and had narrowed my focus down to writing mostly fantasy geared toward an adult audience. That was primarily what I was reading at the time and I was inspired by how many other women authors were involved. Still couldn’t get anywhere with publishers, but I was finding my groove, looking forward to getting back on the computer at every opportunity possible and adding to the stories I already had going. Now and then I took some time off from writing, but it nagged at me to get back to work. There’s a part of me that wants to leave a legacy behind, and even if I never got published, I was building a portfolio of short stories and partly-finished books. I still have most of those original files, which have followed me in countless saves between many different desktop and laptop machines, and even one rather useless netbook. We gradually bought other machines so that the boys would have something to do school work on at home or to game on whenever they had leisure time. Eventually I got my own.

It was fall of 1998 before we finally gained a dial-up internet connection in our rural area that didn’t involve a long distance call. The internet was a whole new world for me, so I got online regularly. Entire nights of sleep we lost to the lure of what lurked in cyberspace. I began to post on those early precursors to today’s social media, the bulletin boards. By the next spring I was moderating two boards for a major software company, one on gardening and the other landscaping. The moderator group depended on a beta live chat program called ICQ to stay in touch, and it was thrilling that you could type messages to someone across the country and get an immediate answer. Later that year, I stumbled across a bulletin board on Prodigy Internet that was specific to books and writing, and within a month I was asked to be a moderator there as well. That’s when I found my clan, and some of the friendships I made there still exist today. Of the three or four people I still correspond with, all have been published, and one actually lives with us now.

I learned a lot more about writing and the publishing business from the more successful authors on that BB, and I have many fond memories from those days. I got into poetry and managed to win both a first prize and an honorable mention in a local contest hosted by a small non-fiction publishing house. I had to stand on a stage at my old high school with shaking legs and read to the audience with all these long published poets and non-fiction authors sitting behind me. I was a wreck, but it was also exhilarating to finally have something I wrote vetted by someone who knows good writing. I’ll never forget the applause, and having several of those authors tell me they thought my poem was very well done. My oldest son also took a secondary prize with one of his poems, so we celebrated together. No certificate ever meant more to me than those, which helped erase a lot of the frustration I had been experiencing.

In 2004 I completed my first book, a huge 800+ page fantasy doorstop with the unfortunate title of The Child Of The Forest. It took four years of hard work to write that massive tome, but only 6 months to have it rejected. This time, I let them keep the manuscript, it was too big to keep sending back. Some other publishers only wanted the first couple chapters, but the result was always the same. Another form rejection slip, another sigh of frustration. But this time, I didn’t give up. I had actually written an entire book, and even if it wasn’t deemed worth publishing, I had finished it. So I continued writing, building up my portfolio. As it turns out, it’s a really good thing that I did.

Fast forwarding to the first stuff that got accepted…

In 2007, our friend Lee Houston Jr., who had moved in with us the previous year, had open heart surgery that saved his life. He was one of those Prodigy BB members I mentioned earlier. While Lee was recuperating, he spent a lot of time online looking for writing gigs. Working together with someone else on a start-up comic company that never actually got off the ground led Lee to an invite from a small start-up publisher of pulp style action/adventure fiction. That publisher was Pro Se Productions, located in northeast Arkansas. That’s almost halfway across the country from Connecticut, but through the magic of the internet we could easily correspond. Lee got picked up as a writer and editor, and he recommended me, because he’d been my beta reader and editor for quite some time. I sent in two sample short stories—one of which was based on a story idea from Prodigy B&W BB alumni and COMPANION DRAGONS TALES co-author Roger Stegman—and both saw print in company magazines. I could have done cartwheels! And that is when I started hawking all the material I had laying around.

I wound up carving up and rewriting that ponderous fantasy novel into three books. The first one, FORTUNES PAWN, was published in 2011. It was the right time and the right atmosphere for what I was doing, because print-on-demand publishing had just started taking off. All the work was done remotely; my publisher was in Arkansas, the cover artist in Ohio, the printing was done in Florida, with me here waiting anxiously in Connecticut. Yet we put out a book. Holding that first copy in my hands after all those years of struggling was such an incredibly overwhelming feeling, I had a stupid grin on my face and tears in my eyes. I still well up to this day, thinking about it.

So don’t ever give up. It may take a while—for me I started writing on my own back in 1989, and didn’t get a book published until 2011. That’s 22 years. But I look at it this way; there are far worse ways I could have spent that time. How many people say they’d like to do something, but never seem to get around to it? I kept at it, and I narrowed my sights down to finding publishers who would work with me, and now I’ve found my niche. I may never be rich or famous, but I have a catalog of work that I’m proud of, and I’ve made the jump from hobby writer to published author.

So what is this Pulp Fiction I speak of, and how does it differ from what I set out to write?

No, it’s not the movie with John Travolta but there are correlations. Pulp is a style of fiction covering many different genres that was insanely popular from around the turn of the century into the 1950s. Some of it was sold as small novels, but most came as standalone short stories or ongoing serials in magazines printed on cheap pulpwood paper with ragged edges. All were relatively inexpensive entertainment aimed at everyday people. Stories covered a gamut of topics from hard-boiled crime, science fiction, fantasy, horror, romance, westerns, etc. It’s fast paced and often featured glossy, lurid covers. It’s fun and captivating reading, and as I discovered as I explored deeper into the fan base, still quite popular today. A good number of the writers of that era went on to have very successful careers, such as Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles), Dashiell Hammett (Sam Spade of The Maltese Falcon and Nick & Nora Charles of The Thin Man), Erle Stanley Gardner (creator of Perry Mason), Max Brand (westerns and Dr. Kildare), Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan and John Carter), and Robert E. Howard (Conan the Barbarian, Red Sonja, King Kull of Atlantis, and Solomon Kane). Tarzan’s saga started in the pulps, as well as Zorro, The Shadow, Doc Savage, detective Sam Spade, and Conan. They all hearken back to classic pulp. The people I deal with now publish what they call New Pulp, meaning these are often brand new stories with new characters and settings, but they have that very familiar pulse pounding, page turning excitement.

It’s been speculated that pulp lead to the superhero fiction of the comics. I also think you’ll fund a direct connection with movies. The Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart was based on Hammett’s Sam Spade. We’ve all heard of Tarzan movies, but I think you can make a case for things like Indiana Jones, Die Hard, Fast and Furious, and Terminator as being pulp influenced. Most westerns are pulpy. Even Star Wars and Pirates of the Caribbean fit the mold. So there’s still a big audience for this sort of heroic escapist story, and with so much potential in digital reading these days, we’re poised to bring in even more fans.

The original pulps were quickly written, often under pen names by authors both male and female, looking to support themselves doing something they loved at a time when money was scarce. Today it’s more a labor of love and homage because the majority of my writing peers have other employment that pays the bills. In the past, women writing speculative fiction of any style have faced an uphill battle to get published under their own names, but that glass ceiling has somewhat lowered over the years. Because of so many groundbreaking female authors who blazed me a path, I can write under my own name, and I tend to favor female lead characters with a lot of spunk who can handle themselves in difficult and dangerous situations. There was a pittance of those sorts of stories in traditional pulp as well as standard genre fiction, where the majority of women were either damsels in distress or scheming villainesses. In New Pulp, there are far fewer barriers. Today it’s the story that matters, not the gender of the writer or the characters.

The difference between the pulp treatment and the standard genre fiction put out by large publishing houses is the pacing as well as the size of the publication. To continue being published I’ve had to learn to rein in the size of my books and ramp up the action. I write more than fantasy now, but that was what I started with, and it’s still my favorite genre. If you look in any book store or library at the shelves where you’ll find fantasy tomes, those books tend to be on the large size. That’s because fantasy fans love detailed description. Unfortunately that takes lots of space in a book, and most of the publishers I deal with have a set word limit between 60,000 minimum to 65,000 max. It translates to somewhere around 150 to 200 pages. That keeps the books affordable, and allows the publisher to make a profit, without which they’d soon be out of business. So I’ve learned how to get the details in that delight the fans while making sure there’s plenty of action and tension to balance it. There’s no room for side quests and big chunks of backstory, so plots are far more linear. Every paragraph has to lead the story forward.

In my experience, fantasy fans—in fact readers of all ilks—want characters they can relate to in some way. That’s my departure from the pulp era, where most characters were either larger than life heroic and villainous constructs, or just vehicles for the plot. I walk a fine line here, and it takes practice and experience—both of which you gain as you write.

Yet it's still a labor of love. I really enjoy what I write, even on the days when it’s frustrating. I wouldn’t go back to how I handled stories before because I can get a book out in a matter of months, or as with some of them that require more research, just under a year. The feedback I get has been positive. It’s not making me wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but it fills the emptiness of for so many years not having a career I can talk about. In the long run, that’s what matters most.

Nose to the grindstone, shoulder to the wheel—all about my writing days.

Don’t be fooled by how much I gush about writing, because it is still a huge endeavor. First of all, you need to understand that I don’t work outside the home. That gives me a lot more free time than the average person. Plus my sons are grown, the youngest one married with children. They all live together and support each other. I have often babysat the youngest grandkids, and cared for my mother up until her passing in March 2019. I’m generally the go-to sitter, and I’d have it no other way. I wrote when I could and still managed at least a couple books a year. Now that the little ones are in school though, I have additional free time. Mine is an all adult household, and my husband still works. Because of mobility issues, I’ve had to curtail a lot of activities like gardening and housework. So that gives me even more incentive to write.

Writing is something I can do sitting down, and you’ll find me at the keyboard banging away most weekday afternoons. That’s my sweet time, when the house is mostly quiet and I can concentrate. I don’t need total silence, but my thoughts can’t compete with conversations or TVs blaring. I currently have my own room and that’s where my PC is. I have a decent unit that my son and daughter-in-law put together for me, with a whopping 1 terabyte hard drive that holds tons of files (I like music and collect pictures too). It has accessible USB ports in the front for plugging in SAVE devices or a headset. I have a 24 inch monitor which eases the eye strain that goes along with this business, and a backlit keyboard so that I don’t need an overhead room light glaring on those gloomy days or at night. I’m just that bad a typist that I need to see the keys, but I get by. All my materials are nearby, and I just recently added an inexpensive printer. I keep my cell phone handy in case I get a call or text, and there’s always something to sip on within reach—usually ice water or iced decaf tea.

Once I make a quick zip through a couple of email accounts, Facebook, the news & weather, and when in season the baseball site (go Red Sox!) I boot up Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com, and at least one Google tab for searches. One of the best takeaways I got from my first writing course was to have a college level dictionary and thesaurus when you write, because it improves your work when you use words well and don't always rely on same ones. I like something I can type into and click on for ease of use—it beats thumbing through a book. Next I decide what I’m working on today, and out comes two squares of Lindt 90% dark chocolate to nibble on for its brain-boosting energy. I only have it when I’m writing. This is all a routine for me, but routines exist for a reason; they tell your mind to settle in because you’re at work now. This is so very important when you work at home, because there are tons of ways to get distracted from what you want to accomplish, and no boss looking over your shoulder. Think about it; we have morning and bedtime routines, work routines, mealtime routines, religious routines, and so on, and those put us in the frame of mind for what we know we must do. If you want to be published, you have to be serious about getting some writing done. Those little ingrained habits really help you focus.

So then it’s time to get to work. If I’m starting a new piece, I have a blank page before me, all set up to the potential publisher's specifications. I can crank up the reading size on the word processor for my comfort without affecting the overall quality of the manuscript, which is a boon to me, because I’d otherwise need reading glasses. I am not an outline person, though I know that works for some folks. Most times I will have some idea of what I want to accomplish in a story and who is going to be in it. The rest just comes as I go along. In a pinch at times I’ve just started with some random sentence that sounds interesting. You have to capture a reader’s attention within the first couple paragraphs or there’s a good chance the book won’t sell, and your first sale is always to the publisher. So make it something dynamic!

At other times, I’ll go back to something I’ve been working on already. I am not one of those people who writes a rough draft from beginning to end and only afterward goes back over it, I tend to tweak things as I go along. To each her or his own, because there’s no wrong way to write as long as you’re getting something accomplished. Find your personal groove and stick with it, ignoring the naysayers. Most word processors have bookmark capabilities, and I use mine to mark off areas I want to revisit, and start the next session by rereading them. When I’m satisfied with a section, I move on. Sometimes I’ll have more than one bookmark in there if I wrote a new scene somewhere between previous text, or cut and pasted something into a different spot. I catch a lot of typos and redundancies this way too, and I’ll sometimes reword an awkward phrase, sentence or paragraph. It sure helps cut down on the amount of work I’ll have to do in my second pass, and I feel the flow of the piece really improves. You do whatever works for you, and you’ll be fine. This is just what works for me.

One thing you really need to get into the habit of doing is hitting SAVE every couple of paragraphs or so. I can’t stress that enough because I’ve lost my share of material to sudden power failures or accidentally hitting the wrong key. Auto-save features exist on most word processing programs but don’t rely on it, because if the blip hits during the save, it almost always gets corrupted. Do it manually on a regular basis while you’re writing. Believe me when I say that your memory will not recall exactly how you worded something. There is nothing more frustrating than seeing several hours worth of hard work go POOF in an unguarded moment.

BTW, there are some keyboard commands that are helpful, and the greatest one of all is the Ctrl-Z combo. This will bring back anything you just accidentally deleted, as long as the manuscript is still up and the power is on. Can’t tell you how many times that has saved my bacon! Just keep holding Ctrl and hitting Z until you’ve regained what you lost.

I generally work for 4-6 hours on a good writing day, though it can vary. I will write any time I have some free moments, whether it’s a half hour or a half day. I do take short 5-20 minute breaks to give my brain or my eyes a rest, but I try not to do that more than once every hour or two. None of that involves gaming or trolling social networks because invariably time gets away from you. Sometimes I look at interesting pictures or pet the dog.

At the end of the day’s session, I get ready to do my off-the-PC saves. First I take a wood count. Between my monitor and my keyboard on my tiny desk is a little 6x9 clipboard with a bunch of scratch paper, the foremost pieces having the title of the project and various word counts on it. I write down today’s total, and then subtract it from the last one on another piece of scratch paper. That will get posted on Twitter and Facebook later, which gives me something to brag or groan about. I like doing it this old school way because those long double or sometimes triple columns of figures show me the progress I’ve made over the course of a project, which is incredibly encouraging. Sometimes I will post the overall size of the project-in-progress as well, generally at key stages like ¼, 1/3, ½ or ¾ completed. It keeps me honest too. I shoot for 1000 words a day, which is comfortable for me, and do get more done at times, though I have days when I write far fewer. I don’t beat myself up over the less successful sessions because any writing done is better than none. Some days I was interrupted a lot, or maybe I wasn’t feeling well. Other times I had more research to do than writing—and yes, research is part of writing when it’s necessary, like for the pirate series I have going, which has a historical backdrop. Occasionally an opportunity comes to chat with a friend or relative, and people are important too. I have my wool gathering days as well, and I freely admit them. Whatever the reason, if the day before and the day after show significantly more writing, then I just chalk it up to circumstances and move on.

Once I’ve tallied word count, I get out the USB flash drives (AKA thumb drives, flash cards, or memory sticks). Those handy little boogers are relatively inexpensive insurance that you’re not going to lose all your hard work. Plus they will hold a ton of text, which is not particularly space intensive. I keep three of modest size for writing, one which gets each daily result dated and titled in a folder for that project. On that flash card, each session’s save is a separate file, so that if I find yesterday’s was corrupt, I can go back to a previous file and not lose the entire manuscript. It’s never happened on these little drives, but I’m paranoid like that. The other two are flash drives made by different companies and they just get a quick save over the last session. When I had an unexpected hard drive crash on my PC earlier this year, I lost everything on it, and those flash drives saved my butt. I have a tablet with an auxiliary keyboard that I can work on as well, it’s set up like my PC with the same programs and synced with the same bookmarks. I was back to writing within 15 minutes after I got done swearing at the Demons Of Electronic Destruction. I had to squint a little and wear reading glasses, but I managed to keep working that way for several weeks until my younger son and DIL teamed up to install the new hard drive in my PC. They made sure it worked and the most necessary downloads were done. I added back all my programs and files. The bookmarks were synced, so I was back in business that evening.

A word or two about flash drives, because I have quite a collection of them. The old ones are small and of slower speeds, but they still work fine for me. Most had the separate little cap that covers the plug end, and those caps get lost easily. So you seldom see that design any more. Right now they are generally either the type where the plug end pushes out from the body by some means, or they have a swinging cover that you move aside to plug them in. I favor the second type, because I’ve had problems with those push-out drives not seating properly, which can cause lost files or corrupted ones. Also that business end is never covered properly, so dust and gook can get in there. Flash drives also come in various sizes measured in GBs (gigabytes). Buy a size you can afford, but 8-16 GB is plenty for most text saves, even with multiple manuscripts, and they are often on sale. Make sure you get one with a solid feel to it, because you’re going to be using it daily. Stay away from the cute designs that have special shapes (I’ve seen chocolate bars and strawberries) as they’re usually poorly made and the plastic comes apart. Get a little zip around case to carry them (they usually hold up to 6) so that they stay protected. Don’t put them on a keychain, they get too beat up! Your writing and peace of mind is worth this minimal investment.

You can cloud save if you wish, because that’s storage that is not physically on your PC, and it’s good to have something offsite if you live in a place prone to nasty weather. We recently had a tornado warning, something that is rare here in Connecticut. Besides my cell phone and a flashlight, the first thing that went into my pocket was my flash card case with the writing files. Forgot all about my wallet. (We all have our priorities!) So I am now considering something like Google Documents for cloud save protection, though I’m uneasy about storing my work somewhere in cyberspace. Many word processors do have that potential now too, and there are other sites online. Ask any published writers you come across if they use cloud save utilities and what they recommend. Most writers are genial folks who will talk to a newbie about something like that.

At the end of a project, whether a short story or a novel, I try and give it a rest before I make a second pass. That might be several days to a week for a short story, or a couple weeks to a month for a novel. In the meantime, I work on something else. Once I boot up the manuscript again, I’m seeing it with fresh eyes, which makes potential problems stand out more. I read through the manuscript from stem to stern to get a sense of the flow of the story, tweaking as I go. Some things I will turn over to a trusted friend as a beta reader for comments and editing. I do that especially with books, which are long term projects, and I return the favor in kind. Another set of eyes can spot things I might have missed. A beta reader doesn’t necessarily have to be another writer, but the input has to be useful. When I’m satisfied it’s as good as I can make it, I clean up all bookmarks and highlighting, making sure the format is proper for where it’s going. Then off it goes along with a cover email (all my publishers accept email submissions) and any additional info the publisher wants or needs, like an updated author bio, cover art suggestions, or back cover copy. Having everything together just makes it easier on the recipient. I do have to stress though, these are all publishers who know me and that I have worked with. If you’re submitting for the first time, find your publisher’s submission guide and follow that.

When I finish a project and it’s been sent off to the publisher, that little scratch sheet I mentioned earlier either gets turned over to use the back side, or if both sides are scribbled on, it gets discarded (in the paper recycling or wood stove depending on the season). Ditto with the math sheets. It’s another ritual that bolsters my confidence that I can and will get writing accomplished.

Over the last several years, I have been keeping a page on my PC’s desktop with a list of writing projects I hope to finish this year. I never get them all done, and some have been carried over several years. But every time I finish a story or book, and it goes off to the respective publisher, I highlight it in some bold color. At the end of the year it sure is satisfying to see all those highlighted projects! Plus if I need another project, I can pick one from the list.

When you start feeling a reluctance to write, it will show in your word count over time. That snowballs to become a mental issue known as the dreaded ‘writers block’. I’ve found my own way around that by rotating between projects. Often times if I boot up something else after a couple of dismal sessions, I’ll have no trouble with that one, it was just what I had been previously working on that was faltering. So I give it a rest. That happens regularly in the middle parts of writing a novel, where it seems like you’re slogging uphill through ankle-deep molasses to get to the end. I call that the doldrums and it’s a warning that you’re becoming frustrated. If you simply must go on, then find something writing related to bring what you’re working on back into focus. Maybe you need some mood music—Youtube has a lot of streaming content and you can type in what you’re looking for to find something that works. Or boot up Google images and try and find something that resembles your character or setting. Write a character dossier or scene description. The idea here is to focus your thoughts back onto what you’re supposed to be doing without abandoning writing altogether. Like getting back on the horse after you got thrown; just choose a different horse.

And folks, it’s not how many times you fell off the wagon, but how often you got back aboard and kept going that matters over the long run.

Writer Ethics

First of all, be professional. Know your target publisher and that house’s audience, and give them what they want and need in as finished a format as you can. Don’t send in rough drafts unless you’re told to. The less work you cause their editorial staff, the better you will be thought of, and the more likely they’ll accept something else from you down the road. Be courteous and civil, even when others aren’t, because unfortunately that will happen. These are busy and sometimes overwhelmed people, and some of them can be downright blunt. Expect to be critiqued and/or asked for corrections, and while it’s not easy to hear that your piece was imperfect, at least give a listen or reread whatever is in question and see if what was pointed out makes sense. If you really don’t feel the change is needed, say so, in a polite but firm manner. Even negative feedback is better than none at all, and you might learn something from it. If you find someone is just too hard to work with, move on to another publisher. Just don’t become ‘that problem author’ because word gets around fast.

I write more novels than short stories these days, but I will work on anything that appeals to me, and now and then I am invited to join in on a multi-author anthology. That I consider an honor, but before I agree to it, I will look at how much time there is involved, consider if this is my sort of writing, and whether I can honestly get it done by the deadline. If I accept then I do my best to turn the work out in a timely manner. But do be careful not to agree to take on every project you’re offered. Too many deadlines and before you know it, you’re swamped. Suddenly it’s more of a chore than a joy to write, and you’re bound to fall behind. Your publisher doesn’t have a crystal ball, so he or she won’t know what else you have due, nor should that person care. You made the promise to finish by a certain date, so don’t hold up the book because you can’t possibly get this done in time. Prioritize your projects. And if something unforeseen comes up like a family matter or health issue, give your publisher a heads-up immediately. You don’t have to spill your guts, but that person will at least need to know you’re going to be late or maybe will need to bow out. The farther ahead of time you speak up, the more likely that some other arrangement can be put in place before the deadline. It happens, and as much as we all love writing, life does get in the way. You will be respected for being upfront about it and that will bolster your reputation.

If you use a beta reader, please be courteous and return the favor if possible. This is a real trust situation, because someone else is holding your baby. Give that person enough time to read and give you feedback, and never hand over your only copy. If it’s too close to deadline, forgo the beta reader and focus on just getting the work edited and turned in on time. Learn to trust yourself as well.

Take time to chat with a fan (you’ll have them) or rub elbows with your peers. Be aware that fans will see you as some kind of miracle worker, because you can turn words into stories. Treat them with gratitude, but just be yourself. I tell people all the time that writing is a profession and trade, like being a lawyer or a carpenter, and I still have to clean my own toilet! They may ask some quirky questions, like where do you get your ideas, and you can answer them honestly and still have some fun. My usual answer is that ideas come out of the ether, that every spring the ‘ether bunny’ brings me another basket of them. When they stop laughing I fess up that ideas come from various places—a dream, a song, a movie I saw, an article on the news, or something I overheard. You can’t explain writer brain to the uninitiated, but you can satisfy their curiosity. If you’re offered advice, listen politely and say thanks. Even if it’s awful advice, someone cared enough to share. You’re not obligated to take it.

If you’re asked for advice or a critique by another writer, be honest but kind and supportive. Don’t feel compelled to read someone’s handwritten manuscript or even listen to them read it. If you don’t want to be involved, you need to politely but firmly refuse, though you can still at least ask the person a couple questions about their writing. If you do read something by another, no matter how bad it might be, give thoughtful input and try and find something in there that is positive. We all have egos, and they bruise easily. The idea is to be helpful, not scathing and cause someone to give up. We all had to start somewhere.

And fair warning, there are writing parasites out there that will attach to you and try and get you to do their work for them. I’ve met a few, and they weren’t horrible people, just unambitious. They’ll bring you ideas and roughly written manuscripts and try to get you to book doctor it into something salable—which you will never get any credit for. I’ve worked with plenty of writers on joint projects, and had no major problems with most of them, but we’re not here to simply make someone else's star shine. You have your own work to do, so be wary of who you hook up with. If it doesn’t feel right, and you’re doing most of the work, get out of that situation. Life is too short to become someone’s overworked flunky.

Learn & Grow Confident

I think I’ve made my point already about the only way to write is to sit down and actually do it. But what if you desperately want to write, but can’t find the time? What do you do?

First of all, take a realistic look at your own life and what’s going on around you. Is there anything you can cut back on that doesn’t hurt your work schedule, or encroach on time spent with loved ones? I understand that not everybody has the amount of free time I do. But maybe you can skip some TV or online browsing and devote that to writing. I used to sit with my kids when they did homework so that I was available, but while they worked I would scribble down ideas and draw sketches of scenes to use later. I’ve learned to always have pen and a pad nearby to jot down random thoughts or snatches of dreams. I have two different book series that each started from a dream I woke up from and scribbled a note about, and there are a couple more in my files. Once I had time, I wrote up something a little more formal about the idea. Don’t trust your memory, even a paper napkin in a restaurant makes a good notepad in a pinch. (Can you tell I don’t eat out anywhere fancy?)

Read a lot! Good writers are avid readers. Read stuff that is similar to what you want to write, and things that are well outside your normal taste. Even poorly written schlock is going to teach you something.

Find a writing routine of your own. You can read all the ‘how to write’ books in the world, but make sure you don’t catch expert-itis from them. Those books are written to make money, and while the advice may still be sound, there’s no such thing as one-size-fits-all. I’ll be the first to tell you that you don’t need to take all or even much of my advice to be successful (other than the stuff about backup saves) but you can experiment with whatever appeals to you and see if it’s helpful. This is how I manage my time. You do what works best for you.

Write something besides fiction or whatever it is that you do. I do a volunteer column on country living for my town’s newsletter, and some occasional blogging. I also belong to a pulp writers group through email and will occasionally answer a question or make a comment. My long distance friends are used to getting chatty emails.

Find your tribe and embrace them. Joining a writer’s group is a good idea if people are supportive and can understand the type of writing you do. It’s not just about critiques, but also sharing the ups and downs that come with the business. Work with people you can get along with. I have a children’s adventure series that I share with two fellow writers and the ideas just fly between us. I correspond with other authors through email, oline social sites, instant messaging, or audio chat. So it is very much a career, in that we network, offer support, and bounce topics around. Sometimes just an encouraging word is enough to bolster someone’s spirits and get them back to the keyboard.

Never lose your sense of wonder. Watch the magic happen over and over again, and be glad you’re part of it. From time immemorial humankind has told stories; orally, in pictures, and with written words. I’ve spoken at my oldest grandson’s elementary school classes about writing, emphasizing why it’s so important to know how to do, and was very gratified to have several of the kids eagerly asking me questions or commenting on how much they enjoyed hearing what I shared. In this time of electronic gadgets that we always have our noses stuck in, which eventually dominate our lives and isolate us from one another, it’s good to be able to set some kind of example of how to use that stuff for creative endeavors. My kids keep a cabinet in their home filled with books I have in print because the amount of writing I do simply awes them. I have several young relatives who are now also exploring writing. In time you will find that people around you will be amazed when they see what you’ve accomplished, and you should be proud of that. Writing is hard work, but it’s also magic in that you’re making something out of nothing. So do talk about it, even when their eyes glaze over. You’ve earned that right every time you sit down and put words on a page to create a whole new world. You have accomplished something most people only dream of doing. It’s part of the legacy you will leave to future generations. I take that seriously, and I hope you will too.

Good luck, and write on,

~Nancy Hansen

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