J.T. Ellison's Blog, page 18

The Hardest Part of Writing A Book

Are you having trouble starting a project? Not sure where to begin your story, how to put those colors to a palette, or how to find a perfect line of code to start your new app?

I'm going to let you in on a secret. We ALL feel this way. 

Photo by Chang Duong on Unsplash

The hardest part of any book for me is the first 10,000 words (or about 35-40 pages.) As awful as it sounds, I can lose a month, two months, or more to those first 10K. I almost always start in the wrong place, and inevitably have to circle back around over and over and over until I feel like it works. And even then, there can be major changes later on.

I’ve always been envious of writers who can start at the beginning and work straight through to the end. That is NOT my process. Mine looks more like this:

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Tess Gerritsen blew my mind once. I paraphrase, but she said every book, when she sits down to start, she forgets HOW. She’s spot on. There’s a moment when the blank page stares you in the eye and says all sorts of nasty, cruel things. It reminds you of every one-star review you ever received, that your sales aren’t what they could be, that your idea is dumb, your title has been done before, every story is derivative, there are only 7 plots… 

Beginnings embody resistance. They are resistance on steroids. They are resistance on steroids with a dose of mean girls for good measure. Mean girls with hemorrhoids.

Did I mention I don’t like beginnings?

But… beginnings are meant to be cowed into submission. And if it takes a month or more… so be it.

I do have a few tricks I use so there isn’t a great blank maw awaiting me when I start a project. The first is to do some basic things, like title pages and chapter headings. The second is to find a solid epigraph. The third is to not worry about that perfect opening line, only a sketch of what I want that opening to look like. The fourth is to sketch out 40 Scenes.

I write visually; I see the scenes quite clearly though I may not know exactly what's being said, so I describe the setting. I give the weather. It's FINE to do those things to get yourself going. Once you’re underway, you can go back and craft your perfect opening. It's not unusual for me to actually write in screenplay parlance—We are in a dark room. Characters X and Y are having a heated conversation in whispers, when character Z knocks on the door... and I build books chapter by chapter like this. It’s techniacally an outline, in many ways. I also take the synopsis, break it into scenes—even if it’s only be four or five—and write them up like this.

You get the idea. Instead of starting for real, I cheat. That way, when the actual lines come to me, I’m not as freaked out when I see the emptiness—because there is no emptiness!

How do you get yourself motivated? Any tricks you'd like to share? And is there a point of no return for you, when you’re committed to a project?

The Creative Edge by J.T. Ellison is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Friday Reads & Links

It’s Friday, friends, and you know what that means… let’s talk about what we’re reading!

It thought it might be fun to expand this Friday essay to include links to articles I found interesting this week, like my old Sunday Smatterings offerings. So look for a few extras from now on.

As we speak, I have two books going.

Lisa Jewell’s latest, NONE OF THIS IS TRUE, has everyone talking, and for good reason.

And there’s a new offering coming from my buddy Boyd Morrison, THE LAST TRUE TEMPLAR. This series is really cool, a medieval adventure with a noble knight and his lady love. Boyd and his sister Beth do a ton of research, and I highly recommend them.

Jillian Hess has a moment of enlightenment from one of my favorites, Virginia Woolf.

I was fascinated by The Squid Hunter by David Grann, recommended by my friend Cal Newport on his podcast. This kind of long-form journalism is so cool.

Speaking of Cal, he has a new, updated version of his Time Block Planner that I am in love with.

When I want to escape next, this is what I’m going to look for.

So how about you? What are you reading this weekend?

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FYI: These posts are free to read but may contain affiliate links which means we get a small commission that helps keep the kitty in cat food. Thanks for the support! 

The Creative Process Is Not a Straight Line

I blew up my book yesterday.

This is something I always do, usually around the 70,000-word mark. I have three-quarters of the story down, but I don’t really know what the whole thing is going to be. I usually know the ending at this point, and I must embrace that I’ve deviated enough from my synopsis and 40 Scenes outline that it’s time to let it go and trust my subconscious has given me the tools to get the story to the end.

Seventy thousand words is when I can see all the mistakes I’ve made, and find a plan to fix them. It’s the blessing and the curse of being a gardener. At 70K, the flowers are coming up, and you can see that despite your best efforts several months ago to spread the seeds evenly across the ground and keep them watered, your planting was inconsistent. There are five peonies in the left corner, ten roses in the right, none of the begonias or hydrangeas came up at all, it looks like there’s a poblano pepper plant that you didn’t know you had seeded, and the middle of the bed is full of weeds.

Photo by Julia Kicova on Unsplash

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The moment came at my favorite restaurant in Colorado, Pegasus, while eating a plate of chilladas (corn tortillas stuffed with scrambled eggs and cheese smothered in the best green chile you will ever taste) and it hit me like a lightning bolt. I had to borrow the server’s pen and filled a napkin with ideas. I love it when that happens, and I’ve learned that this is my process.

It was such an intense vision I had to shush my parents while I worked out the several angles I needed to shift. I think that might have been fun for them to see their young creative in action—my Dad is also my first reader and sounding board so he hears a lot of this as I’m going, but the action of me throwing my hands in the air and talking to myself was a new one for them.

I have a lot of “moments” when I’m writing a book. A true process. From one day to the next, I find moments of brilliance in my work, and moments of despair. I question why I tried to write this story, lament that I’ve chosen a mystery structure over thriller, then find a thread and shoot to the moon in joy. It’s like waves on the beach—they crash onto the sand, they withdraw, they crash onto the sand, they withdraw, over and over and over. It’s relentless, and on the surface, looks benign. But with each wave, the sands on the beach shift. My words build. They disappear. They build again. And eventually, they tip over into a complete draft.

The revision process starts this all over again. I love it. I hate it. I love it. I hate it. It’s frustrating and exhilarating, all at the same time.

I have to remind myself that it’s the same every book, so I don’t lose hope. That my creativity does not follow a straight line. If I have faith in my process, it will get me where I need to be.

What’s your creative process like?

The Creative Edge by J.T. Ellison is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Friday Reads

It’s Friday, friends, and you know what that means… let’s talk books!

I spent more time inside my own story than in the pages of others this week, but I still have some recommendations for you!

My friend (who has a great writing Substack here called I’m So Glad You Asked) has a new book coming, THE FROZEN RIVER, that I had the joy of reading while in draft form, and I landed a galley copy this week. I’m telling you, this book will stay with you. It’s remarkable.

The brilliant (who also has a Substack, Murder She Writes) has a new book called NORTH OF NOWHERE, a standalone thriller that’s incredible.

And one more to suggest this week, (Substack coming called So You Want To Write A Book) released THE OTHER YEAR, a Sliding Doors-esque emotional women’s fiction story that’s taken the literary world by storm.

So how about you? What are you reading this weekend?

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FYI: Posts may contain affiliate links which means we get a small commission that helps keep the kitty in cat food. Thanks for the support! 

Friday Reads

It’s Friday, friends, and you know what that means… let’s talk books!

It was a great week for books in my world. Pushing hard on a deadline means reading as much as I can to refill my rapidly depleting well, and this week I had two back-to-back winners. The first was Luanne Rice’s LAST DAY, which absolutely blew me away. Assured writing, glorious settings, characters I can’t stop thinking about… a total winner.

The second is Stacy Willingham’s A FLICKER IN THE DARK. I waited a long time to get to this, and it was well worth it. I’m especially entranced with the seamless movement between past and present, something hard to pull off on a good day.

What are you reading this weekend?

PS: If you aren’t signed up for my monthly newsletter, check it out here! August’s newsletter went out yesterday with a delish chocolate torte recipe and all the good news of the month.

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FYI: Posts may contain affiliate links. This means you won't pay a penny more when you purchase that product, but we get a small commission that helps keep the kitty in cat food. Thanks for the support! 

Friday Reads

It’s Friday, friends, and you know what that means… let’s talk books!

I’m on deadline, but I am also at the beach (needed a change of scenery, and yes, I am still running away from home.) I’m doing oodles of writing, but also taking advantage of being near water, which is as good as taking a massive dose of brain vitamins for my creativity, to read for a couple of hours in the afternoon, as the weather allows, in a low-slung beach chair. The books I choose for this moment of chill are important, because I need to both be inspired but also not pulled too far from my own work.

Which means I am finally reading the divine Ruth Ware’s ZERO DAYS. And I’ve queued up STRANGE SALLY DIAMOND by Liz Nugent to follow because I keep hearing great things.

There are a couple of books that I blurbed out this week, too. BROADWAY BUTTERFLY by Sara DiVello, and ONE NIGHT by Georgina Cross. Excellent, both.

How about you? What are you reading this weekend?

Full disclosure: posts may contain affiliate links. This means you won't pay a penny more when you purchase that product, but we get a small commission that helps keep the kitty in cat food. Thanks for understanding! 

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I See Dead People

I’m on deadline, so I hope you’ll forgive me dipping into my archives to share an essay from over a decade ago. I wanted to remind myself of some of the finer points of an autopsy for the book I’m working on, and the best way to do that was revisit the post I wrote after my first experience at the morgue. Not only did I get the specific I was looking for, it struck me that this is a good Substack post because it represents a moment in my career as a writer when everything shifted, and subsequently, my work became richer and fuller. I will warn you ahead of time, there are specifics here, so if you’re squeamish, let’s call it a day and I hope you have a super one. For the rest of you, here we go.

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This is an irreverent title for a very serious post, and I chose it specifically to show that sometimes, we need some irreverence to deal with things in our life. Humor heals all wounds, and writing cop novels means I’ve dealt some really off color moments which defuse the tension of the situation at hand. Humor helps with most every circumstance—with nervousness, with fear and tragedy. Thank goodness we have that, at least.

I attended my first autopsy this past weekend. Allow me to amend, I spent a full morning at the Medical Examiner’s office, which meant not one, but four autopsies. Don’t worry, I’m not going to gross you out with freaky details. Not too many, at least. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t discuss some of what I experienced and the way the day is haunting me. There are images seared into my brain now that I’ll never erase.

Names, places, and details have all been slightly altered to protect the innocent.

Photo by Mayron Oliveira on Unsplash

I recently received an invitation to attend a postmortem, and honestly didn’t want to accept. I’ve done a lot of boots-on-the-ground research for my novels, but attending a real post wasn’t something that I’d ever really felt the need to do. There are great virtual autopsies online, and with my truncated pre-med background and subsequent fascination with doctors, I have enough of a familiarity with anatomy that I can manage. I’ve worked with the Manhattan Medical Examiner’s office to get specific details so my Medical Examiner in this book, Dr. Sam Loughley (née Samantha Owens, who has her own series), doesn’t make too many egregious mistakes or misstatements. But I’ve always felt like a fraud. People always ask if I’ve attended autopsies, and the answer has always been no.

But in the book I’m writing, Sam is a point of view character. So it was time. Plus, I mentioned the invitation in an interview last week, effectively outing myself, which meant culpability. Damn it. After a week of hemming and hawing, I accepted the invitation. We set the day for Sunday.

I dreaded Sunday all week.

I didn’t eat Sunday morning. I got a green tea from Starbucks. I figured that was as safe as anything. I was to call when I was in range. It wasn’t a quick drive, so I had plenty of time to think about backing out. I will freely admit to pulling into a gas station and sitting for about ten minutes, getting up the courage to make the call that I was close. Finally berating myself for being a total idiot, I called. I was ten minutes away, and I did my best not to think about what I was about to do. Or rather, I imagined fourteen different scenarios, in which I passed out, threw up, freaked out or otherwise embarrassed myself.

They met me outside, and whisked me in. I’ve been in this particular morgue before for identification of skeletal remains, passed a few spots I recognized, then suddenly, we were in the changing area. I handed over my purse, pulled on tons of protective gear, and grabbed my notebook. The following conversation ensued:

Tech: “She’s going to get blood on that. I’d leave it.” (She being the M.E.)

M.E.: “Hey, I’m pretty neat.”

JT: “She’s just kidding, right?”

Tech and M.E. have small, secretive smiles on their faces, which remain blank. I am certain they are teasing and decide to bring my notebook. My mask is around my neck. My heart is doing double time. I have enough familiarity with panic attacks to know that I’m pushing into the borders of one. I breathe deeply, square breaths.  

JT: “You should probably have the smelling salts ready, just in case.”

M.E.: “You’re going to be just fine. I’ll take good care of you.”

JT: “Seriously. I have no idea about how I’m going to react. I’m not kidding.”

Tech and M.E. realize that I’m quite serious, and make a plan for me.

Tech: “If you start feeling hot, step out. I’ll come and give you a coke or something.”

ME: “Are you ready?”

I swallow, hard, and nod. In we go.

It is white, clean, pristine, with shiny stainless steel and a man lying naked to my left. This is not my first dead body, but it is my first unclothed, which is momentarily shocking. My greatest fear is that there will be one of two demographics: a man my father’s age, or a child. I immediately see the board says the man is in his 70s. Shit. I realize I’m breathing through my mouth, which isn’t necessary; there’s no real smell. The M.E. checks if I’m okay, and says we have four autopsies this morning. (FOUR? WTF? I only signed up for one. Panic sets in again, then abates. Surely I'm only going to observe one. I can handle this.)

We move further into the morgue. I immediately see a young boy on a gurney further away from the sinks. Nightmare scenario two. I stop cold. The M.E. asks again if I’m okay and tells me not to personalize. There are two more bodies, one woman with blood on her face and a young man with tattoos along his ribcage. I feel the urge to run and not look back. I also have the most absurd reaction—I keep looking for chests to rise, for eyes to open, for bodies to sit up. I’ve got a full-fledged horror film running through my brain—one that never really goes away.

Everyone is waiting for me. The techs are standing at the ready by their bodies. The guests, they call them. All the bodies have been stripped, weighed, and measured. Since none of the deaths are criminally suspicious, evidentiary precautions are not in play. Each station is set up with a whiteboard with things written on it like heart, liver, kidneys. I know enough to know that’s for weight measurements of the organs. I am still on my feet, though looking over my shoulder expecting a ghostly white hand to grab me. When we’ve established that I’m not going to barf or bolt, the M.E., who is no-nonsense and an excellent teacher, takes me to the computer, and we review the cases.

The first step is to cover the details of each individual case. We have an unattended death outside, an unattended possible overdose, a possible suicide, and the child with severe head trauma. I am hugely relieved to learn that his autopsy will be external only; the cause of death was established by the hospital. Thank God for small favors.

We step to the first body, the woman. On go the masks. The M.E. does an external exam, explaining to me in detail what she’s looking for. The woman has marks and scratches on her body. We spend some time determining what they might be. When the M.E. is finished, she nods to the tech, who takes a vitreous fluid level and begins to get femoral blood. I watch rather indirectly, really expecting the gorge to rise, but it doesn’t. So far, so good. A block is placed between the woman’s shoulder blades—not under the neck like we see on TV. I understand why moments later.

We’re standing in a spot where I can see all four bodies when the tech makes the Y-incision on the woman. This is quick, brutal and astounding. The pristine whiteness is replaced by glorious Technicolor. Things start happening very fast. We move to the next body, the probable heart attack, and start the external exam. Then on to the suicide. I know I’m not supposed to be personalizing, but I can’t help it. I feel horrible for these people. I am angry at the young man who decided life wasn’t worth it. I feel sorry for the heart attack. I worry that I will look similar to the woman if I’m ever in her place. I am over-personalizing. I stare into a chest cavity, focus on the ribcage, and knock it off.

That's when I realize I will be attending all four autopsies, because they are done simultaneously. Oh.

We work in circles, moving from station to station. There are unexplained noises, and odd smells. Mostly alcohol, wafting from the bodies. There is a pattern to our concentrics. This is a team effort, a coordinated, choreographed dance. When the breastplate is off, the M.E. looks at the heart in situ, then the organs start to come out. The bone saw didn’t bother me at all, I’ve got contractors in the house laying a floor upstairs and it sounds no different. It is easier when I don’t have to look at their faces. When the skull is off, the tech yells what I think is “Head” and we go back to look at the brain before it too is removed.

Autopsy is a surprisingly physical job. It takes more than one person to move the bodies around on the table. It takes strength to get through bone.

We move on to dissection. Each organ must be looked over thoroughly for signs that the death isn’t what they think. I see things I’ve only read about—cholesterol, plaque, nodules, cysts—and make plans to lead a healthier life. Microsurgery suddenly makes sense. I’m going to stop with the description here and save a bunch of it for my books, but suffice it to say, it’s fascinating.

And bloody. Biggest misconception I had about autopsies—I always envisioned them bloodless, sterile, clean. Yeah. Not. The tech wasn’t kidding when she said I’d get blood on my notebook. It actually sat quietly on the counter awaiting my return—I really didn’t need it to take notes. Sometimes, visuals do all the talking for you. This would have been a bit different if any of the bodies had lost blood at the scene, of course, but these were all intact.

The boy was last, and that was as hard as you could imagine.

We wrapped at 11:30. We’d been at it for three hours straight. One of the techs asked me if I’d had fun. I told her fun wasn’t exactly the appropriate word, though it was a fascinating, enlightening, and educational morning.

Remember the humor? There were some really funny moments, both during and after. A nicked aorta that had people rushing around for ladles. The M.E. getting the band wrong on one of the songs—it was David Essex’s ROCK ON, not New Kids on the Block. Listening to AC/DC while watching a liver dissection. Realizing when we finished that I was starving, and assuaging my hunger with Milk Duds. Going to Waffle House after and needing my bacon very, very well done. Freaking out a friend when I overshared about how to differentiate tissue samples from the lobes of the lungs. The rest goes in the books. Hey, a girl’s got to have a plan, right?

I’m so glad I finally broke down and did this. Sam will be a much, much richer character from here on out. And I was so proud of myself for actually making it through without problems. I'm still haunted by visions; I doubt they'll ever leave me. But I did it.

I will end with this. My own spiritual path has evolved from the dogma I learned as a child. I find beauty in all religions, can see that what I was taught isn’t the only path to God. But what of the soul? We are all the same inside. Organs designed to function in very specific ways, our body structure and development meant to be exact, past the point of similarity. So there is something that makes us all unique, special, different. Ourselves. Id. Ego. Superego. Soul. Spirit. Essence.

Me.

I felt God in the room, whoever he or she may be. I dare anyone to look into the human body and not believe that there is some kind of grand plan. The design, the way we fit together, is stunningly beautiful. Couple that with the knowledge of our differences, and trust me, I’ve been struggling with some weighty philosophical discourse ever since.

So tell me, have you faced your worst fears lately? Is there someplace you’d like to go that you don’t think you could manage? Any research you’ve skipped over?

The Creative Edge by J.T. Ellison is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This essay first appeared on my website, www.jtellison.com, on October 16, 2011.© 2023 by J.T. Ellison. All rights reserved.

Friday Reads

It’s Friday, friends, and you know what that means… let’s talk books!

I had a bit of a reading slump this week, abandoning two books, one mid-way through, one after the first ten pages. I’ve learned that this is not necessarily a function of the books being bad; on the contrary, I’m sure they’re both excellent. It’s more that at this particular moment, as I’m staring down the barrel of a deadline, I need certain kinds of stories to evoke the proper emotions in me. That way, when I sit down to write, I’m inspired and full of words. I finally hit paydirt yesterday with the audiobook of Jess Lourey’s Unspeakable Things. It captured me from the get-go, and now I’m humming along into the weekend, anxious to finish the story.

How about you? What are you reading this weekend?

Full disclosure: posts may contain affiliate links. This means you won't pay a penny more when you purchase that product, but we get a small commission that helps keep the kitty in cat food. Thanks for understanding! 

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The Power of Commitment: Why You Should "Do" Instead of "Try"

“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failures, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” — Teddy Roosevelt

Today I’d like to tell you a story that I hope will inspire you to find a way to ignore both your own critical voice and help alleviate any external creative pressure you may be under. Big tasks, I know. I’ve included a mini-workshop at the end to help guide you through the process. Okay? Here we go.

I was twenty when I presented my senior thesis to a room full of English majors and professors. It was the culmination of three years of creative writing: a group of twenty poems, the best I could glean from those years of work, and my first attempt at a short story. I was, as always, in a Hemingway phase. The short story, “The Lighthouse,” was a murder mystery set in England, overlaid with a gothic, penetrating fog that whisked away souls. Hands shaking, gorge rising, I stood in front of the room and tried to read without passing out — public speaking wasn’t exactly my thing.

When it was over, my peers clapped, but the dour expressions of the faculty outstripped their applause. They’d already read my thesis, already formed their opinions. The department chair pronounced the short story “too informed by B-grade detective fiction.” Yes, the story was dark; yes, it was a clumsy first attempt at fiction. But my voice was there already, the same voice you will experience if you read any of my crime fiction. And I wanted to be a writer. (I already was, but sometimes, we need that affirmation from those we respect, don’t we?)

So I asked my thesis advisor for a recommendation to an M.F.A. program, and she shook her head sadly and sighed. “This isn’t the path for you. Your work isn’t good enough to be published.”

“Your work isn’t good enough to be published.”

The memory of that moment is still tactile and tangible enough to make me slump in my chair as I write it. It was more than a crushing statement. It changed the course of my life. Because stupidly, I listened to her. Instead of spending the next several years writing fresh material, honing my craft, finding my voice, I took her word for it. I believed her. And I quit writing.

Now, this story obviously has a very happy ending. My first job out of college was in the White House, in the Office of Science and Technology Policy. And I got into George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management, where, on the first night of classes, I met my future husband. So everything happens for a reason.

I worked full-time, went to school at night, and fell madly in love. I moved jobs to the Department of Commerce and eventually to Lockheed Martin on the FAA contract, which had me traveling all over the country. Those were full years, and good ones.

But there was a common theme to each position. I struggled. I chafed. I was good at what I did, but I can’t say I liked doing it. Time and again, I found myself in meetings with superiors who asked what the problem was. I had no answers. The problem was not them. The problem was the voice in the back of my head that screamed at me all day and all night. This isn’t you. This isn’t right. This isn’t who you want to be.

It can take only one person, and one sentence, to crush the creative flame entirely.

If my professor had just said, “You need more time to find your voice; keep writing, and try again in a few years,” I would have done that. Perhaps I would have written a drawer full of manuscripts if she’d given even the tiniest bit of encouragement. But I didn’t. I sought an entirely new path for myself. One that, as I said, has a happy ending.

After graduation, we got married, and a few years later, we moved to Nashville, where my husband is from. And everything changed.

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The farcical means by which I returned to life as a writer — adopting a stray cat, going to work for the vet who saved her life, mopping up dog urine and assisting in castrations, and then, on day three of this unique situation, herniating a disc and needing back surgery — is fit for fiction itself. Or a really bad country music song. But…during my recovery, my local librarian turned me on to a writer named John Sandford, and something clicked. My magnetic poles shifted, and I had one simple, arrogant thought.

If he can do it, so can I.

Ah, hubris. My professor was right, of course. I wasn’t good enough to be published. Not then, and not when I started writing again.

And I wrote a book.

Or what I thought was a book. It was really a novella, but I didn’t know that. We didn’t have the same kind of access to the do’s and don’ts of publishing then as we do now. I didn’t know about writers’ organizations, awards, or—let’s be honest— anything. So I made a lot of rookie mistakes.

But I learned. I went to my first book signing—the amazing John Connolly—where I met both John, who gave me such superb advice (all good books find a home, work on that elevator pitch) and some fellow local writers, who invited me into their critique group. I began researching in earnest, deconstructing crime novels to see how the structure worked, going on ridealongs with the police department. I joined Sisters in Crime, began to write for a group blog, Murderati, used what I’d learned to pull what I could from the novella, and wrote a proper book. An agent saw my work online and, as fate would have it, asked to read my book just as I was crafting a query letter to him. Serendipity.

But he couldn’t sell my first book, and I was immediately plunged back into the abyss I’d spent so many years trying to crawl out of. That critical voice came back with a vengeance, roaring and clawing and biting, reopening the scars that were finally beginning to heal. 

You aren’t good enough. You simply are not good enough.

This negativity lurks every minute of every day for us creatives. We allow others to make judgments for us. We allow reviews and acceptances, strangers who hate our work or love our work, to define us.

To be a writer, to come daily to the page, to slough off the voices of the naysayers, takes more than just a talent for stringing words together and machinating stories. It takes a determination to ignore the critics, the pettiness of your muse, the collective voice of the chorus singing your daily demise.

It is a process of natural selection, and only the adaptive survive. It takes courage, and a wee bit of denial, and a healthy ego. We have to believe the story we’re telling is interesting enough to capture the attention of the reader. With any luck, hundreds of thousands of readers.

So, when I finished wallowing in self-pity, I got back to it. I wrote my agent a new book, and he sold it, plus two others. Fifteen years after I stopped writing, I was finally back on the right path.

The intervening years have been a ride, with ups and downs like every writing career. But a career it is. I come to the page daily with hope, and a whopping dose of humility, because I recognize how very lucky I am. I’m doing what I love. That haunting voice, the one who screamed at me for years, who knew I shouldn’t have given up, is gone. I wake each day with gratitude and excitement, knowing I am doing what I was put on this earth to do. When I started, I didn’t have years of work in a drawer, and that is a shame. But I’ve made up for lost time, and I refuse to let someone else decide my life for me again. I dare mighty things. You should too.

Perhaps a better way of saying this is my most favorite quote in all the world. Master Yoda, that great mystic, said, “Do. Or do not. There is no try.”

Do. Or do not. There is no try.

Listen, you want this to work? You have to take chances. You must give in to your impulses every once in a while, trust your gut, know your own soul. You need to ignore the fact that the drop off the cliff is mighty and jump anyway.

Fear can inhibit your growth, not only as a writer but as a person. Fear is the most dangerous part of the creative life.

I do my best to ensure fear doesn’t get in my way, though it slithers in occasionally. But I would so much rather fail, put it all out there, and fall flat on my face than never try at all. Better to have loved and lost, right? It took me a while to reach this point, so don’t fret if you’re not there yet. You will be.

If you’re being rejected, it means you’re doing. The more you do, the more those rejections will turn into successes. You have to believe in yourself, believe you’ll make it, that you’ll break through and achieve what you want.

Early on, one of my biggest fears was working on multiple projects simultaneously. I was writing the first Taylor novel, and the head of my critique group kept suggesting I try writing a short story. I had a total deer-in-the-headlights reaction — I can’t.

I can’t deviate from my novel to try something else. I’ll get pulled off track. I’ll fall into the abyss and never return. I’ll never finish anything. The men will come and find me quivering in a corner, a trail of half-eaten sandwiches strewn throughout the house.

It’s incredible how good we are at getting in our own way. It’s so easy to slack off. Disrespect the muse. Forgo our discipline. Say yes, when we should practice saying no. Faith in ourselves, our work, and our process, is vital to our success, and we’re the best at sabotaging ourselves.

All of that is simply resistance rearing its ugly head. 

Of course you can work on more than one thing at a time. And if you want to be a successful author, you’ll have to master that skill. The more you output, the more money you make, the greater your reputation grows, the more you’ll have to juggle.

Is it easy? Nope.

It’s a constant struggle. Writing one book, editing another, promoting a third — that’s the standard for anyone on a one-a-year schedule—is hard. Multiply that by two for two-a-years, etc. And you’ll be expected to write your book,s and possibly contribute essays to publications, or write short stories for anthologies. Add in touring and blogging and social media-ing and newslettering…. Not to mention, for many of you, a day job, and a family. All of this takes time, organization, and a concerted effort to stay on track.

BUT IF YOU RESPECT YOUR MUSE, SHE WILL RESPECT YOU.

Seriously. If you come to the page every day, she will reward you. If you do, it will happen.

So how do you respect your Muse? It’s such a fun thing to say, but how do you enact this for real?

Which brings me to our mini-workshop. These are things I wish my thesis advisor had thought to ask me instead of dismissing my creativity out of hand and proclaiming I wasn’t good enough.

The point of this exercise is to create achievable boundaries and goals for your creativity so you keep coming back to the page day after day. Grab your favorite notebook and a cuppa, and find a comfortable, quiet place. Envision what you want from your creative life, answering these questions:

What kind of writer, what kind of creative person, do you want to be?

Are you the good literary citizen type? Do you want to write your books and be left alone? Do you want to have an open dialog with your readers? Will you be diligent about deadlines or work when the spirit moves you? Is your creativity a job, or an ideal? Are you going to spend hours every week cultivating your online presence, or will you use that time to create new work?

What sort of career do you want?

Let’s be honest. Not everyone will write runaway blockbusters. There’s plenty of room for a solid, successful, six-figure annually career outside of that goal. Instead, ask yourself where your works fit in the genre you’re writing. What would a bookseller say about your work? Do you need to make a pivot—a new genre, a new publisher—to get where you’re going?

What is your dream?

New York Times bestseller? Six figures annually? Adaptation? Writing a book a year? Trying a new voice in a new genre? Making a living on your Substack? Move from writing novels to screenplays? Connect deeply with readers, and to heck with the accolades? Anything and everything you want from this creative life goes here.

What is your end career goal?

This, though, is where you need to be realistic. Try very hard to choose things that are in your control, like how much you output, the kinds of stories you want to tell, how you want to make readers feel, how you want to be remembered. It’s very hard to say I want to be #1 on the NYT for 52 weeks because that is entirely out of your hands. Something more concrete, like I want to write 20 books, I want to try my hand at fantasy as well as thrillers, I want to be known for evoking a certain emotion in my reader are more realistic.

What does your perfect day look like?

This is *very* important because this particular issue—how you approach your creative day, knowing you and only you are responsible for what you let into your life—both defines you as a creative and is totally within your control. This is a good place to write down a schedule you’d like to keep, the hours you want to spend on your work, and also, don’t forget to set aside time for reading, exercise, parenting, and living a life.

Reminding yourself that you are in control of what you let in is incredibly powerful. It gives accountability, and you can easily recognize when you’ve lost the rhythm of that perfect day because you spent the morning on Instagram instead of writing.

Write all of this down. Put it somewhere you can access it readily if you need a boost. And when you get frustrated or pulled away from the scenarios you’ve envisioned, ease yourself back into alignment. Return to your perfect day, and time block your way into it for a week until the habit reasserts itself. Read through your goals, and as you achieve them, make more. Be flexible, but be disciplined. And to hell with the critical voice who wants you to think you can’t. Be it internal or external, she is a liar.

You can do this. I promise.

Now, go write.

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© 2023 by J.T. Ellison. All rights reserved.

Friday Reads

It’s Friday, friends, and you know what that means… let’s talk books!

I was seeing The Puzzle Master by Danielle Trussoni all over Instagram, so I bought it and read this week. It is *wild*. Think The Silent Patient meets The DaVinci Code with writers and puzzle makers. Mike Brink has acquired savant syndrome, which is totally fascinating, and the author’s research into mathematics and puzzles is impressive. And suffice it to say, I really never knew where the story was headed next.

I am also having a Fourth Wing hangover, and it is severe. So severe that I’m counting the days until I can re-read. It’s that good.

How about you? What are you reading this weekend?

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