How Do I Know When I'm Done? Five Stages of Writing a Book

A past student from my Madeline Island retreats emailed me recently with a great question.  It's one most writers struggle with:  How do I know when my book is actually finished?   "An overarching question I find more difficult," she says, "is whether it could ever be ready. Some things may not be worth the effort or the money. Is it better to pay someone willing to say yea or nay first or does that have to go together with sending it out for paid editing?"

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Walking--Why It Helps Me Write My Books

Not everyone will agree with this post, so skip it if you already know it's not your thing.  Walking has saved my writing life this week.  Even though I live in snow country, northern New England, and we've been hit with a series of snowstorms these past weeks, I have to walk.  It keeps me sane when I'm working out a gnarly problem with a story.

Julia Cameron made a big deal of walking in her sequels to The Artist's Way, which many of you read, as I did, to recover our blocked inner artist.  I thought, yeah, OK, when I first saw "daily walk" up there with "morning pages" and "artist's date."  I liked to walk, but not every day and certainly not as part of my writing routine.   

These past months have changed my mind.

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Refueling Your Creativity--How to Plan in Recovery Time as You Write (and Finish) Your Book

Two of my private clients just completed their books.  A time for celebration, since they both worked extremely hard for the past year or more.  One of them, a first-time novelist, wrote me this week about how stunned she feels and how little creativity she can muster in other areas of her life.  She's a parent, great cook, and gardener, but nothing is feeling charged with energy at the moment.

She's happy her book is done--at last!--but worries about her lack of umph.  Is this normal?  Shouldn't she be gung-ho on the next project, so as not to lose momentum?

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If It Doesn't Further the Conflict, Should You Leave It Out?

A writer who attended my retreat/workshop in Tucson recently emailed me with a great question.  It addresses an important choice that writers face every time they work on their books:  what to include and what to omit.

She asked:  "What happens when there is an event or narrative that reflects my theme but doesn't have enough conflict to carry the story forward.  Should I exclude it?"  For example, if a character supported the narrator in her journey, but there was no conflict involved, should this character be part of the book?

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Three Ways to Help Your New Year's Writing Resolutions Actually Happen

I'm not a huge fan of New Year's resolutions, especially when it comes to my writing goals.  But I do appreciate making time for a pause to review what I've accomplished in the past year and imagine what I'd like to bring into the new one.  It's more of a visioning moment than setting firm goals, because I know (oh so well!) how my goals can morph as the year goes forward.  And I only know what I can see from this moment.  But I've used three methods to help myself create realistic goals for my new writing year, based on what I learned from the previous twelve months.   

Here' s a short writing exercise to try this week, if you want to reflect and plan intelligently, in a way that acknowledges your particular creativity.

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Becoming a Marketing Machine--What It Takes to Promote Your Book

It's hard for writers to hear this:  writing your book isn't your only job in becoming an author.    

Once you've completed your manuscript, put it through revision, secured an agent or not, and sold it to a publisher, maybe you think you can relax back and let everyone else handle the nasty details of getting it into readers' hands.  When I began publishing in the eighties, that was the case.  But it's not true anymore.  Now writers need to learn all about marketing and promotion.  It's part of being an author.

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Writing about Sex, Intimacy, and Other Dangers

Sex is hard to write.  I've written two sex scenes in my life so I'm no expert, but I found each extraordinarily difficult.  

The main challenge was not any reservations about including sex scenes in my fiction but how to make them reveal more about character than the character's actions.  That's my personal preference as a reader, as well as a writer, and it may not be yours.  You may be a Fifty Shades of Gray kind of writer and reader, and more power to you.  But I wanted to address the topic, especially after a coaching client sent me this email.

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Feedback Says My Writing Is "Dense"--What Does This Mean and What Can I Do About It?

A student in my online classes is writing a futuristic thriller about memory loss.  I've enjoyed reading her chapters in class and so have her classmates.  But recently she emailed me about some feedback she'd received that she didn't understand.  She said she couldn't find much information about online, so she was hoping I could help her with what to do with the comments.

Readers have told her that her writing can be dense and hard to get into.  As a thriller writer--and someone who is very comfortable with action scenes--this confused her.  "For my book to be accessible I want to make it as quick and easy to read as possible," she told me.   "I've tried to make it fast paced because that grabs people's attention."

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How to Get Enough Distance from Your Story to Actually Write It

In January 2001, physician and writer, Therese Zink, lived through a traumatic experience:  While on an international aid mission in Chechnya, her boss was kidnapped.  "That experience got me writing," Therese says.  "I'd kept a journal since a creative-writing class in high school twenty-some years earlier and dabbled at times with more creative efforts. But after the kidnapping, I had to write." 

Little did she know how long it would take her to learn to write and to tell that story.

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The Magic of Showing Up--How to Design and Commit to a Writing Practice

What's the difference between a writer who gets a book finished and a writer who never does?  A writing practice.  Believe it--there's nothing more important.  Not talent, not a great idea.  It's down to basics:  putting self in chair, putting hands on keyboard or taking up the pen, and staying there past all the internal whining and doubt and misery to actually put words on the page.

But we all whine.  We all get up and sharpen every pencil in the house sometimes, instead of writing.   

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