Your Writing Life: The Benefits of an End-of-Year Review

Last year, I coached a business owner who was writing a book about his years as a wildly successful entrepreneur.  He attributed much of that success to his practice of regularly stepping back to review of how he was doing.  He did this weekly, taking an hour or so to write down what he'd accomplished or realized or changed in his business procedures, how he worked with employees or clients, what he'd learned along the way, as well as the next week's priorities.  

I was intrigued.  I'd always enjoyed setting goals but rarely did I take time to acknowledge where I'd been.  So I began testing out this practice.  For one year, I chose an hour each weekend to list what I'd realized about my writing life.  

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Writing through Trauma: Two Published Memoirists Share Their Experiences with Writing and Finishing Their Books

Two of my past students released new books this year.  Katherine Dering, of New York, launched her second memoir, Aftermath, and Judith Mattison, of Minnesota, published her first, I Will Not Break.  Both write about trauma, Katherine about grave mental illness and loss and Judie about abuse.  Not easy subjects, so this week I interviewed each of them about their journey through writing these books, how they mined their difficult subjects, and how they took care of themselves during the process. 

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Facing Writer's Block: Words of Wisdom from George Saunders

Some writers don't believe in writer's block--that stall out, mind- and spirit-numbing experience that occasionally visits us when we're plowing ahead on a book deadline or trying to bring a new character to life.  But I do.  I've had it, I've coached dozens of writers through it, and it's a real phenomenon.  

Recently, I read a wonderful interview in Lit Hub on the writer George Saunders.  You might be a great fan of Saunders, as I am (his collection of stories, Tenth of December, is some of the quirkiest, most amazing writing I've ever read), or his fiction might be new to you.  His opinion about writer's block is equally inspiring.  It's a bar set too high, he says.  It's about the writer, not the writing.  Always.

Ira Glass, the well-known host and producer of "This American Life," speaks of it as the distance between our taste and our abilities:

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Slow Writing: The Pros and Cons of Writing by Hand

A reader sent me this link, a brief article by award-winning writer Annie Proulx on her five rules for good writing.  Even if you don't agree, the website (Writer's Write) is worth a visit.  But I like Proulx's work and I read her counsel, hoping for some inspiration for my current project.  It's always helpful to look into a respected writer's progress.

Of her five rules, two were about writing by hand.

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Writing about People You Know: Do You Need to Get Permission?

A reader from Connecticut is finishing up her new novel this month, getting ready to send it out to agents.  She sent me a good question that often plagues writers right before their work goes out into the world. 

"I believe it was Barbara Kingsolver who said she sends her finished manuscripts to family for final approval," this writer wrote.  "If there's anything there that offends them she takes it out.  Since there are a few true intimate details in my novel that helped develop my fictionalized characters who were originally based on real people, I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on that."

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When One of Your Characters Is an Institution: Writing about Racism, Politics, and Other Large Subjects

Tom is writing a novel about a fellow physician, but one of another race who lived in a time of great political and personal challenge.  He attended my weeklong retreat last January in Tucson and we worked together on building the storyboard for his book.  He has plenty of events to make the book tense and full of action (lynchings, KKK threats, and more), but one of his biggest concerns has nothing to do with any of the outer story.  He sent me a great question this week about racism and how to depict it in his story.

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Famous Writers' Favorite Tips

I'm just back from a marathon teaching trip so this week's post will be short and sweet:  a wonderful article from the newsletter, BrainPickings, on famous writers' favorite writing tips, compiled by The Guardian.  (Thanks to reader Mary K. for the link.)  Enjoy!  

(If the link doesn't work, go to www.brainpickings.org and search for Jeanette Winterson.)

Exploring Theme in Your Story: How Wounding Event and False Beliefs Intersect with Theme

Theme answers the question:  So what?  That's pretty harsh, but it's what readers need to know soon after they pick up your book.  Theme is the meaning and the message, the purpose of your story.  Not just entertainment, although that is usually part of good writing.  But we look for meaning now, in our literature and in our lives, more than ever.  Publishers know this, agents know this, readers crave this.

Nonfiction writers can tell us the theme, or meaning, of their books.  They can stand on a platform and present the message quite frankly.  If you do that in fiction or most memoir, you alienate readers.  Characters and narrator can rarely be on platform and still keep readers involved in the story.  So theme is trickier for those genres.

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Online Classes and How They Help with Feedback

I haven't always been a fan of online learning--for many years, I liked the face-to-face best, especially when it came to feedback on my writing.  But in the past ten years I've grown very fond of online classes and how they actually enhance writers' ability to give and receive feedback.  I regularly take them for motivation, accountability, and the helpful responses I get for my work-in-progress.

I think there's a great use for them, in the journey of a book, and that's often in the generative and early revision stages.  I don't find as much help when I'm closer to final revision, because seeing only parts of a manuscript is less helpful then.

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To Storyboard or Not to Storyboard: How This Cool Planning Tool Compares to Outlines, Charts, and Maps

I'm working on my third novel, my fifteenth book, and I'm approaching it as many writers do:  from nowhere!  It's an exploratory process, and I don't really know what the book will be about.  I have a good idea, a handful of characters I already love (and hate), and a kind of plot.  But I do have my storyboard, and that's gotten me a lot further along than I would be without it.

You've probably heard of the plotter versus pantser continuum in writing.  Plotters like to know where they are going, in every degree, before they begin.  Pantsers are the opposite--they feel their way along, following the nudges and ideas that come as they generate writing.  I fall somewhere in the middle.  I don't think I would've gotten thirteen books published, fourteen written, without some planning.  But I also know I gained a tremendous amount by letting the muse direct some of my steps as I went forward.

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