Mary Carroll Moore's Blog, page 11

Escape to Paradise--Find Trouble!

My new novel, Last Bets, is now available for pre-order! You can help me rise in the Amazon bestseller lists by ordering your copy today. Release date is April 21.

My 2023 novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, is now available at bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, and amazon.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Last time we took a long trip in our camper van, I kept notes on each day’s failures. Reliably, a small or large problem would upset our plans, along with any sense of control over the travel. Our van’s water hookup leaked suddenly. Electricity was wonky. My dog ate nettles at a rest area and drooled for hours. I slammed my thumb in the heavy lid of our cargo box. A shortcut, wasn’t.

We replaced the hose, got a better surge protector for the electrical hookup, learned to recognize nettles hidden in the grass, got very cautious about the lid of the cargo box, and thought more carefully about shortcuts. Each failure, because of its consequences, taught us something important for next time. I began to think of failure as a welcome part of the routine of traveling—like a frustrating detour that turned out to offer a gift.

In my writing life, I’ve had many creative failures. Moments I almost gave up, because it was all too hard. The times I thought I was finally going to paradise, that place where dreams come true, and I wound up disappointed or worse.

We all encounter these moments. They can be terrifically hard to live through. It’s what happened afterwards that makes all the difference. What do we learn that can propel us the next step?

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Photo by Nihal Demirci Erenay on Unsplash

At age nineteen, I was not a writer at all. In fact, I had chosen the scary and exciting career of foreign language translator. Not a dream I started life with—but my best friend in middle school was a girl named Masha.

Masha had long blond hair and spoke three languages. She was a fairytale princess, to me. Her family escaped the former Soviet Union during one of the more traumatic periods of government, and when we hung out after class, she enthralled me with wild stories of her family’s exotic life there and here.

I blame Masha for my decision, at that young age, to study Russian. My school offered it as an elective. I wanted to be able to converse with her family whenever I was invited over for dinner.

I changed schools a few years later, said goodbye to my friend, but kept going with Russian, which was also offered, strangely enough, by the high school I attended next. I didn’t bother to analyze my weird (and growing) fascination with the language and people, their culture, their literature and arts. I also was a stubborn person, determined not to waste all the years I’d given this language study so far. It didn’t come easy at all. I struggled more than most language students. But I persisted.

I even majored in Russian in college, went on to grad school to study more.

Looking back now, I was setting myself up for failure in many ways. I chose a path because of a friend I admired. I spent eleven years with this language before I finally gave it up.

Why do we choose creative avenues that we suspect will become one of those shortcuts that isn’t? Maybe simple fascination, interest from another time, a pivotal person in our lives who says, Try this! I went forward with zero awareness of the job market, the future possibilities of this career path. (Speaking and reading the Russian language wasn’t high on the list of skills for grads.) But I felt something. I loved the way speaking Russian, fairly fluently by now, made me feel. I dreamed lives in Russia, on the Siberian plains, holed up in a tiny house with snow piled to the windows, playing chess.

My last year of college, nearing my degree in Russian Language and Literature, I read Tolstoy and Turgenev in the original, and I made a new best friend, a young and fierce Ukrainian woman named Olga. Olga was dedicated to increasing my skills in Russian—again, an odd thing, given where we are today. She wanted me to pursue a career as a translator or interpreter.

Eventually, I learned that the New York City ballet was touring Leningrad. They needed interpreters. The application requirements frightened me: a random phone interview with a native speaker, an interview with the CIA, and many tests of fluency and awareness of cultural affairs. But what else was I going to do with my multiple degrees and hard-achieved fluency?

The CIA interview was not the scariest event on that application roster for me. They asked very interesting questions—but it didn’t faze me as much as the phone interview.

I was told the native speaker could call anytime, and I should be ready. No prep for the kinds of questions they’d ask to get me talking and see how I responded. I remember I shared an apartment in Boston in those days with three other college-age friends. No cell phones back then, so all calls came through the shared landline. I practiced each day, I kept my notes by the phone.

When the call came, I was amazed at my calm. I was truly fluent. I answered the interviewer’s questions in Russian and apparently did well enough—he even praised my accent.

Not long after, I got my acceptance. I would be touring with the ballet, as one of their interpreters. To the pinnacle location of Russian culture, the then-called Leningrad.

I’m writing this now, seeing the deja vu: I got a phone call a few weeks later, telling me that the former Soviet Union had invaded Czechoslovakia and the cultural tour with the New York City Ballet was cancelled.

Probably the worst failure I’d faced so far. The nadir of my not-even-started career. I’d passed the most strenuous tests, was chosen for the job, then life shut that door fast and hard.

Photo by Roger Bradshaw on Unsplash

I don’t know about you, but often in my lifetime, my worst failures have meant the most to me, in some way I couldn’t see at the time. I look back now and I’m beyond grateful that the ballet tour never happened. I did get to Russia, I helped chaperone a group of high-schoolers from my alma mater, and I went on to get a Masters degree in the language, teach for a year as an assistant in the graduate program, teach a semester of summer school, and keep my language skills honed enough to continue to read classics in the original for another decade.

But I was derailed that day, and because of that derailment a whole other set of opportunities opened up for me. Namely, my writing career.

Casting about for something to do with myself after the Leningrad tour was cancelled, I remembered my love of cooking. During my last year of college, I’d lived as an exchange student in Paris, studying Russian (still) at the Sorbonne, and learning French cooking. I applied to work in the kitchen of a natural foods restaurant opening near our home. To my surprise, that interview also went better than expected—I was given the job of executive chef.

The rest is my food journalism history. From the restaurant job, I went on to open a cooking school, which got reviewed nationally (USA Today), which led to me being asked to write cookbooks with the California Culinary Academy, which led to my syndicated column with the Los Angeles Times. Which opened the way to several decades of a writing career in food. And that kindled my serious interest in writing fiction, which is where I am now.

I think back on that pivotal moment of true disappointment, despair, even, when I learned the tour to Leningrad and my Russian interpreting job was history. How I really didn’t see it as anything more than a failure, another dead end. I felt adrift.

Failures are like that—turning points, really—which ask us to look carefully at what we can create instead. And those moments lead to other opportunities, ones that are much more aligned to us, in many cases.

I’m not trying to sugarcoat the effect of disappointments, but I have been ruminating on them as I get closer to my 70th birthday in six weeks or so and the publication of my third novel, my fifthteenth book. I’ve had so many so-called failures, I could write a book about all of them. We look at others who have achieved some success, realized a dream, and we don’t realize the winding path they might have taken to get there.

Here are a few random examples from my life, shared so you’ll know how my successes have come after many years of failures and the turning points they’ve brought.

My writing-craft book, Your Book Starts Here, was rejected by so many agents and publishers, I lost track. I had to decide to let it go or self-publish. I found a team and self-published. It went on to win the New Hampshire Literary Awards “People’s Choice” and make back many times the cost of producing it. It’s still a good seller twelve years later and sales have much more than compensated for my costs.

I had to query and be rejected by 40 agents before I signed with my current one. It was incredibly hard to keep going but I made myself. My current agent was instrumental in refining both of my new novels.

My dream business, my cooking school, was hit by the 1980s recession—who had money for cooking classes?—after its noble start; it closed right before I got my first cookbook contract. That led to a nationally syndicated food column with the Los Angeles Times and a lot more books.

I was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer and had to curtail my food journalism career during treatment. Because of this required pause, I got to re-evaluate my real dreams as a writer and go back to school for my MFA in fiction. I saw that was my real goal as a writer—to write stories that people would read and be changed by.

My MFA thesis novel, Qualities of Light, was rejected by dozens of publishers. It finally found a home and was published in 2009 by a small press, with the best editor I could imagine. I learned so much about what that story could be, just by her expert edits. It went on to be nominated for PEN/Faulkner and Lambda Literary awards.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

This exercise is adapted from The Artist’s Way, which has always been encouraging about reframing failures.

This week, make a list of your apparent reversals in your creative life. What have you hoped for but not achieved? What has set you back?

Place them on a timeline, which can be as simple as a line drawn on a piece of paper with dates noted.

Then make a list of things that you feel very proud of. Successes in your life, if you will. Place them on the timeline as well.

Finally, note the cause and effect—did any of the apparent failures change your direction, to allow one or more of the successes?

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I’ve started a new First Sunday newsletter for paid subscribers that addresses your most gnarly writing and publishing questions. Last month’s topic was keywords—why they are essential to help readers find you online, and how mine got my book on the Amazon bestseller list. Get First Sunday once a month and build your publishing toolbox! A yearly subscription is only $45. For it, you get access to the 700+ archives, the monthly Q&A of First Sunday, a safe space to ask questions, and my writerly gratitude for helping me continue to write this newsletter.

Subscribe now

Shout Out!

A hearty shout out to these writing friends and former students who are publishing their books! I encourage you to pre-order a copy to show your support of fellow writers and our writing community.

(If you are a former student and will publish soon (pre-orders of your book are available now), or have in the past two months, email mary[at]marycarrollmoore[dot]com to be included in a future Shout Out! I’ll keep your listing here for two months.)

Barbara Carlier, Journeying Home (Booklocker), January release

Mike Elliott, Escaping Limbo (Itasca Books), February release

Mary Jo Hoffman, Still: The Art of Noticing (The Monacelli Press), May release

I’m a lifelong artist, and I love to inspire and support other creative folk, which is why I write this weekly newsletter. My goal with these posts is to help you strengthen your writing practice and creative life so it becomes more satisfying to you.

I’m also the author of 15 books in 3 genres. My third novel, Last Bets (Riverbed Press), will be published in April 2024. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue (Riverbed Press), was published in October 2023 and became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders alone. For twelve years, I worked as a full-time food journalist, most notably through my weekly column for the Los Angeles Times syndicate. My writing-craft book, Your Book Starts Here, won the New Hampshire Literary Awards “People’s Choice” in 2011 and my first novel, Qualities of Light, was nominated for PEN/Faulkner and Lambda Literary awards in 2009. I’ve written Your Weekly Writing Exercise every Friday since 2008.

Delights (and Risks!) of Writing a Series

My new novel, Last Bets, is now available for pre-order! Release date is April 21. Publisher’s Weekly included the Booklife/PW review in their January 22 magazine and called it a “beautifully wrought story of two women artists outrunning their demons." You can help me rise in the Amazon bestseller lists by pre-ordering your copy today. Thank you from the bottom of my writerly heart.

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash

On our camper trip, my favorite part of the day is curling up with a good book after dinner. Everyone (two humans, two dogs) piles on the bed. Lights are low, it’s raining or windy outside (by the ocean it’s been raining these past days), and the dogs usually snore. But I’m lost in a fictional world. So far, in the ten days we’ve been on the road, I’ve read Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout; The Stars and the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petrus; and Cloak of Darkness by Helen McInnes (picked up in a campground free library). I feel very luxurious. Reading this much reminds me of being a kid.

As a kid, my favorite Saturday activity was a trip to the local library. I’d come home with a stack of books, then shut myself in my room all afternoon. My family were all readers. When we gathered in the living room by the fire or on the screened porch in summer, each person was absorbed in their own book. My mother even read standing up in the kitchen while she cooked. I remember my current novel on my lap at the dinner table, reading between bites until I got scolded.

My favorite stories were series. If I fell in love with a character, no way I wanted to let them go. I wrote letters to my favorite kidlit series authors, encouraging them to write more! I even got a reply back once, a huge thrill.

My biggest compliment when my last novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, was published was this: When are you writing the sequel?

Haven’t you gotten to the end of a favorite book and wanted more? If the characters are compelling and unforgettable, it’s natural to wonder what would happen next. And as an author, it’s equally hard to let go of characters you’ve grown to love. (Or happily hate.) So you write more.

Series mean a longer stretch of time to explore character conflicts. To expand learning and set up new problems. To bring in backstory with more depth. To create future alliances.

As an author, series make sense for marketing too. Once readers are hooked, a series provides a backlist for selling all your books (one of the reasons Amazon often “bundles” books—because if a reader liked one, they’ll probably go for another).

We live in a culture of readers who love to follow a group of characters through many books. Similar to a great Netflix series, we think about them when we’re not reading. Like one of my advance readers of my forthcoming novel, Last Bets, said, “I want to text [these characters] to find out how they’re doing!”

But as this great article on series from NY Book Editors says, it’s hard enough to write one book. Considering a series might put most writers into complete overwhelm.

Your thoughts?

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What do series books require?

Depending on how you approach your book(s), series writing may require a certain amount of forethought and structure decisions. I am a combo plotter and pantser, which means I don’t necessarily love outlining ahead of time. I do love to brainstorm plot and character arcs via a storyboard, and I will often use those trajectories to create an outline or two, but it’s not my starting point. That’s just my way, and yours might be completely different. But if you are at all a “let’s see how it goes along” kind of writer, you may not be able to make the kinds of decisions that series require when you’re writing your first book.

I’ve spoken with series writers who get super excited about plotting multiple books at once. It just makes me tired. If you get juiced by it, though, and you have full knowledge of how the next and the next will go even before you’ve finished the first, all power to you!

In this article, I’m not speaking to you guys, though, as much as the rest of us, who struggle just to get one completed.

But since I’ve now written a series despite my best intentions, just because I couldn’t stop thinking and dreaming about the characters, I know there’s another way to approach it even if you’re not a plotter at heart.

Sometimes a series just happens!

Like I said above, I did NOT start out intending to write a series. My first novel, Qualities of Light, was a stand-alone. I wrote the story of Molly Fisher at age 16, and what happened to her one summer when her little brother was in a boating accident. But the ending kinda startled me—it was not the wrapped-up conclusion I thought I should have. And it did leave an opening for another book about Molly.

My unexpected series (above)

In fact, I got a lot of questions from readers (and requests too) about continuing Molly’s story. So I played with that. What would happen three or five years later, to her and her family, to complete more of the story started in Qualities of Light?

A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue was created to answer those questions, but as I wrote it, many more questions came forward. And new characters, and different plotlines than I anticipated. Yes, it’s about the same family. Yes, it shows the continuation of Molly (and Zoe’s) story. But it also brings in a completely different arc—about Molly’s mom and her estranged sister reuniting.

This second book in what is becoming my series (a third is now roughly sketched out) is a bit like a play with a bright spotlight that roves from one character to the next, highlighting their particular story. First book, the spot was on Molly. Second book, it was on Kate, her mom, and Kate’s sister, Red. Three years between the two stories, a lot of changes, and a bunch of new dilemmas, but the same cast of familiar, favorite players.

I didn’t plan this! But I am very glad it happened.

Returning to these characters was a surprise.  I love them, as characters, even Mel, Kate’s errant husband (he has an affair).  I remember taking a class with Josip Novakovitch, and I was a bit ashamed of Mel, angry at him, and Josip helped me see his humanity and his good intentions, despite his screw ups, so I grew to love him too. 

Molly has been a favorite ever since Qualities of Light.  I always promised myself that I’d continue her story with Zoe, find out what happened to that relationship. And that’s how a series was inadvertently born. So you don’t have to be a plotter—you just have to follow your nose sometimes.

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Do series limit or inform you about the characters?

A reader asked me a great question about the ways series books impact each other, in the author’s experience. Whether knowing the characters in an earlier book limits your ability to make them different or whether it informs you about what new places they could go in the next book.

In my experience, the first book informed me about the characters, rather than limited me. The first novel left questions that the second could answer—or at least explore.

One example was Kate, the pilot mother. Kate always felt like a conundrum, in both books.  She was hard for me to grasp, always poised to run away. I knew peripherally why, but the first book was spotlighting Molly’s story, so less was spent on digging into Kate’s reason for running.

It wasn’t until the second novel that I got informed about all the levels of betrayal in her past. Not just from her straying husband, but also from the father she worshipped and the mother she avoided. In the second novel, I got to put Kate in a position where she was unable to blame anyone else for having to stay and face herself, as painful as it was. She had to stay and fight, not flee. That was a revelation for me as I wrote—to be so surprised and discover the truth behind someone I thought I knew well.

I did run into one limit: my second novel, A Woman’s Guide, didn’t have a good use for Sammy, the younger brother who was so featured in Qualities of Light. He just didn’t fit in the second book, but he was part of the family, so what to do with him? It was a challenge, and I had to come up with a solid reason why he wasn’t onstage in this new novel, since he was such a primary player in the first. And so I did.

Stand-alone as well as series

One of the challenges a writer faces with a series is how much to make each book a stand-alone. It’s a good idea, if you can do it, because there’s no way to count on readers knowing your earlier book(s). Yes, you’ll probably develop a fan base as you put out more books about these characters, and readers will follow the sequence, but what if someone picks one of the books out of order? Their satisfaction counts too.

Certain “world rules” and relationships will need to be established in the early chapters of each book to make this satisfaction possible.

Consider the techniques of series writers like Louise Penny, whose Inspector Gamache cozy mysteries are so popular. Penny allows each novel to be a stand-alone (readers don’t have to be previously acquainted with the cast or setting). How does she do this? By weaving in enough detail in the first chapter to orient.

Make a list of the repeating factors in your books, perhaps the setting details, quirks of certain repeating characters, elements of backstory that feature in every book. See what’s essential for a first-time reader and consider how you’ll do your world-building in each book, so no one gets lost. Study the series writers you admire—how do they keep readers oriented? What repeating details need to be reworked and original for each book? Sometimes Penny’s placement of certain facts, like the bistro owners’ sense of humor, feels artificial when I’m reading it again and again.

Are sequels harder to sell?

If you’re a debut author, consider that a sequel might be hard to sell unless your first book was a blockbuster.  Agents might be reluctant to take you on.

I’d published Qualities of Light in 2009 and decided to shop for a new agent in 2019, ten years later, and I got rejections steadily when I presented my second novel as a sequel. So I tested this out: I changed the names, backgrounds, and setting of A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue to divorce it from its prequel. 

When I signed with an agent who loved it, we proceeded as if A Woman’s Guide was a stand-alone with no relationship to the first book. Which it was, after my rewrite.

But the rewrite never felt right to me. As we worked through edits, I finally ‘fessed up that I was still in love with my original cast. By then, I guess my agent liked the story enough. And I’m very glad to have the book I always wanted to write.

Satisfying endings answer the primary question of each book

One of my pet peeves with series writers is the inability, sometimes, to effectively “end” the first book. Yes, there needs to be a hook to make us want to read the next. But if the first book’s main questions aren’t at least somewhat wrapped by the end, it can leave a reader frustrated.

Writing a series for print is not the same as writing a series for television—there’s not just one week between episodes for readers to wait. There might be years. And if there’s not a sense of completion about your first story, they may not wait for your next one.

I may leave something unsolved, or ask a new question, as a hook to end the first book, but I always completely answer the question that begins my stories.

In Qualities of Light, the book’s opening question was about Molly’s relationship with her family, especially her father: would she continue to be outcast or would she be valued and loved by the end, and would her father also take full responsibility for the accident that changed them all. That is completely answered. But I do leave a hook, a new question, about Molly and Zoe’s relationship and whether it will continue. That question is developed in A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue.

This makes the two books stand-alone as well as part of a series. That was my primary goal, to keep my readers satisfied.

Your thoughts about series? Your experience writing or reading them?

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Your Weekly Writing Exercise

If you’re hooked on your characters and don’t want to let them have just one stage to play on, you may be a candidate for a series. This week, check out the article mentioned above from NY Book Editors, one of the best I’ve read on the pros and cons of writing a series. Test your ideas against their tips.

Things to consider

You need to plant a hook for the next book, somewhere in the final chapters, but also wrap up the primary questions of this book effectively. You need readers to satisfied and curious about what’s next.

There’s often an overarching dilemma, possibly a character’s lifelong quest, that carries throughout the series. Consider how you’d create this and if it would be strong enough to hold for more than one book.

Think about how you’ll reintroduce the setting, the repeating players, and any details that carry to the next book without boring your repeat readers.

Shout Out!

A hearty shout out to these writing friends and former students who are publishing their books! I encourage you to pre-order a copy to show your support of fellow writers and our writing community.

(If you are a former student and will publish soon (pre-orders of your book are available now), or have in the past two months, email mary[at]marycarrollmoore[dot]com to be included in a future Shout Out! I’ll keep your listing here for two months.)

Barbara Carlier, Journeying Home (Booklocker), January release

Mike Elliott, Escaping Limbo (Itasca Books), February release

Mary Jo Hoffman, Still: The Art of Noticing (The Monacelli Press), May release

I’ve started a new First Sunday newsletter for paid subscribers that addresses your most gnarly writing and publishing questions. This month’s topic was keywords—why they are essential to help readers find you online, and how mine got my book on the Amazon bestseller list. Get First Sunday once a month and build your publishing toolbox! A yearly subscription is only $45. For it, you get access to the 700+ archives, the monthly Q&A of First Sunday, a safe space to ask questions, and my writerly gratitude for helping me continue to write this newsletter.

Subscribe now

I’m a lifelong artist, and I love to inspire and support other creative folk, which is why I write this weekly newsletter. My goal with these posts is to help you strengthen your writing practice and creative life so it becomes more satisfying to you.

I’m also the author of 14 books in 3 genres. My third novel, Last Bets (Riverbed Press), will be published in April 2024. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue (Riverbed Press), was published in October 2023 and became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders alone. For twelve years, I worked as a full-time food journalist, most notably through my weekly column for the Los Angeles Times syndicate. My writing-craft book, Your Book Starts Here, won the New Hampshire Literary Awards “People’s Choice” in 2011 and my first novel, Qualities of Light, was nominated for PEN/Faulkner and Lambda Literary awards in 2009. I’ve written Your Weekly Writing Exercise every Friday since 2008.

Weaving a More Complex--and Interesting--Story

My new novel, Last Bets, is now available for pre-order! You can help me rise in the Amazon bestseller lists by ordering your copy today. Release date is April 21.

My 2023 novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, became a Hot New Release and Amazon bestseller in August from pre-orders alone. It’s now available at all online bookstores. Check it out on bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, and amazon.

Photo by Kristin Snippe on Unsplash

Hello again from the road. We’ve made it across seven states now, in our little camper van plus two dogs, and everyone is holding up pretty well. Some days I’m kinda lost, not sure where I am—everything looks so unfamiliar, much like the territory I’ve traveled this past year with my book release efforts. Do you ever feel that way, as a writer?

But this is my “between-time” trip—the limbo between two book launches—and I’m valuing it as pure medicine. Each day I feel a difference: more myself, more able to find joy in writing again, the overworked brain settling down and emptying out. Last night I ate half a pint of coconut ice cream and curled up with a thriller (novel).

Camper life is not simple, though: Unmechanical me, forced to learn unknown facts about our van’s inverter, a mysterious character in our travel story that converts DC to AC, and fix it in the rainy dark somewhere in Virginia. I must honor that small box tucked under the bed, so hard to access, because it so important: when we had no lights the other night, because it overloaded from poor campground electricity, I reached out to my other support community (van-life folks online) for help. I am in awe of strangers holding others up when they most need it.

Things are looking brighter now (electricity OK, and we’re traveling from 21 degrees to 61, seeing the first greening on trees).

But what appeared simple—a winter trip—was incredibly complex that dark wet evening in the Virginia mountains. It brought me to today’s topic: complex version simple stories. What’s the benefit of complexity, in any aspect of life?

Here’s what I learned!

Hosts Roland and Craig of Hidden Gems Books invited me on their show to talk about ways writers might complicate their scenes. At first, I wasn’t sure why any writer would want to make things more complicated in their writing—many have a hard enough time writing simple scenes. Then I thought about books I love, how I crave as a reader what I might call layered storylines.

When we got on the show together, Roland in the UK and Craig in the US and me, talking about these multiple levels of conflict or struggle, both internal and external, it became a fascinating conversation.

After the show, after our fun conversation with lots of great ideas, I kept thinking about what else I might say about weaving complexity into story. I wanted to mull over what makes a scene complex, in the first place, then take the question to another level: What makes a book complex?

I looked at my own recently published and soon-to-be-published novels, which readers and early reviewers are calling “complex.” What elements exist in these stories?

I came up with three:

The story is told by more than one narrator.

The story asks bigger questions—such as moral ambiguity, a current theme in my new novel, Last Bets—which do not necessarily get neatly resolved.

The story-writing process becomes unpredictable to the writer too—writing the book forces the writer into unknown territory where they can be surprised.

Let’s look at each.

The complexity of multiple narrators

As both reader and writer, I have evolved in my enjoyment of more than one narrator—and it’s tricky, I’ll tell you that. Much easier to stay in one person’s head than two or three.

I write in third person limited, which means I do not like to hop heads. I don’t do the global “God” point of view, that omniscient person who feels and thinks from many people at once. I find it hard to read, unless the author is excellent at transitions, and I find it hard to write. I prefer getting into one narrator and staying there for a while.

After all these years of writing, though, I just found I couldn’t tell a full story within one person’s perspective. So I tend to use two or three in my novels. And I like the effect and complexity.

But a writer has to be able to do a couple of things well, to pull this off in a way that gives the reader satisfaction:

The story must present each character very differently from the others, so readers immediately know whose voice we’re in.

Writers must be extremely skilled in transitions between narrators—scenes or chapters where we switch pov.

The first task requires good character writing—differentiation is part of my revision process when working with characters. Once I get to know them enough to see their individuality, I push it. I separate them from everyone else in how they speak and move, their gestures, their spoken and hidden goals and desires, their appearance, and how they relate to all the other characters.

Smooth transitions are harder. Easiest technique I know is to keep one voice per chapter, rather than jumping characters within a chapter. I also look at the ending and beginnings of any section that moves to a new narrator. What quality, concept, idea, or even wording can echo (repeat in some way), to create a bridge for the reader?

Poor execution of either of these two elements means frustrated readers. Feedback is essential, if you’ve chosen this way to complicate your stories.

One of my favorite ways to study both transitions and differentiation is via certain films. Filmmakers/directors are very skilled at this. Two older movies that expertly show this in action (especially expert narrator transitions) are Sliding Doors and The Hours.

Creating complexity with bigger questions

I love exploring the big questions of life in books I read—and I enjoy working with such questions in my own writing. Not everyone wants to: if you’re trying to adhere to a particular genre, like romantic suspense, or you’re going for a certain audience, unsolvable questions might feel out of place. You need to wrap everything up very neatly by the last page, and these questions rarely behave.

But if you want to bring in more complexity—say, you’re interested in moving from commercial fiction to more literary fiction—you might get interested in something unsolvable.

Most of the bigger questions in literature are unsolvable; characters don’t get an easy answer on the gray areas of morality, for instance. Is a person justified in doing harm to prevent harm, for instance? Is a small crime or lie a good way to advert a crisis? These may be clearly defined in some rulebooks but I personally enjoy when they are open-ended, left to the reader to decide.

In my newest novel, Last Bets, my two narrators are struggling with individual versions of the big question of moral ambiguity, or what constitutes right and wrong in life-and-death situations. My goal is not to solve this for the reader by the end but to convincingly present all sides of the argument. It definitely makes for complexity, or so my reviewers have said so far.

It also kept me on my toes throughout the writing process. I was constantly surprised by where the story went.

Creating complexity by not knowing

Do you like being surprised by where your story goes? Does it delight or horrify you to be so out of control, in a way, with its direction? I personally find that whenever I’m surprised, when I’ve let myself venture into unknown territory, when I’ve loosened the reins a bit, the story takes off on its own. It never fails to both thrill and chill me.

I believe that stories are their own selves, if you want to get woo about it. When I’m able to relax my hold and my need to know, the story takes off in new directions that are always better than what I had in mind.

It’s the old situation of letting the Muse take over. Of showing up each day to your desk and taking dictation, in a way.

Again, not for everyone.

Roland and Craig reminded me of this. Not all genres lend themselves to all or even one of these methods of complexity. For the romance writer, to use the example given earlier, the story needs to follow a more traditional pattern: two people meet, fall in love (or in dislike), break apart, and come back together. If the writer strays too far afield, the story moves out of genre.

Another example is the epic fantasy. I think of George R. R. Martin’s immense and already-complicated storylines in Game of Thrones. Such a huge cast, so many locations and eras, infinite plotlines. All elements that create automatic complexity. Readers must track so much in their heads as they read these kinds of books, nothing more is needed.

But if you are slightly bored by your own story, if you want to entice the reader with more unknowns, one of the above techniques below might be worth exploring.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Two options this week for you.

Watch the video of my interview with Roland and Craig as we discuss complexity in scene and story.

Download or rent either The Hours or Sliding Doors. As you watch, study how the director chooses shots and angles that repeat images whenever we’re transitioning from one narrator to another (in The Hours) or between the two possible lives the narrator is leading (Sliding Doors).

First Sunday newsletter (for paid subscribers) addresses your most gnarly writing and publishing questions. This month’s topic was keywords—why they are essential to help readers find you online, and how mine got my book on the Amazon bestseller list. Get First Sunday once a month and build your publishing toolbox! A yearly subscription is only $45. Plus, as a paid subscriber, you get access to the 700+ archives, a safe space to ask questions, and my writerly gratitude for helping me continue to write this newsletter.

Subscribe now

Shout Out!

A hearty shout out to these writing friends and former students who are publishing their books! I encourage you to pre-order a copy to show your support of fellow writers and our writing community.

(If you are a former student and will publish soon (pre-orders of your book are available now), or have in the past two months, email mary[at]marycarrollmoore[dot]com to be included in a future Shout Out! I’ll keep your listing here for two months.)

Barbara Carlier, Journey Home (Booklocker), January release

Mike Elliott, Escaping Limbo (Itasca Books), February release

Mary Jo Hoffman, Still: The Art of Noticing (The Monacelli Press), May release

I’m a lifelong artist, and I love to inspire and support other creative folk, which is why I write this weekly newsletter. My goal with these posts is to help you strengthen your writing practice and creative life so it becomes more satisfying to you.

I’m also the author of 14 books in 3 genres. My third novel, Last Bets (Riverbed Press), will be published in April 2024. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue (Riverbed Press), was published in October 2023 and became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders alone. For twelve years, I worked as a full-time food journalist, most notably through my weekly column for the Los Angeles Times syndicate. My writing-craft book, Your Book Starts Here, won the New Hampshire Literary Awards “People’s Choice” in 2011 and my first novel, Qualities of Light, was nominated for PEN/Faulkner and Lambda Literary awards in 2009. I’ve written Your Weekly Writing Exercise every Friday since 2008.

Getting Emotional Distance: Using Lists to Help Your Writing Practice

My new novel, Last Bets, is now available for pre-order! You can help me rise in the Amazon bestseller lists by ordering your copy today. Release date is April 21. Thank you!

Pre-order my new novel Last Bets!

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

Hello from the road! I’m on a winter trip in our camper van (read: tiny house on wheels) with my spouse and two pups. We’re camped in South Carolina today, heading further south tomorrow, stunned by sunshine and warmth. This translates to lots of staring: at the fields we’re camped near, at geese by a pond, at my two dogs rolling on grass they haven’t seen in months. Staring lets my brain relax, and it sure needs it, after nine hard-working months and two book launches.

One thing that’s kept me alive and writing, during all the book hoorah, is this newsletter, which enables me to be true to my own writing practice. who is one of my favorite Substack writers said as much this past week in her wonderful post about the danger of getting too wrapped up in activities that encircle the writing life, but aren’t actually writing. Read Emma’s post here.

So thank you for reading and keeping this writer honest each week. No matter how distracted I got with my book excitement, I always came back to write. I’m not writing fiction, but I am writing—and it means a lot to keep that going. I especially thank those of you who are paid subscribers (almost 100 of you now!). I am very glad you benefit enough from these weekly posts to say so.

I have another three months before Last Bets is published on April 21. But I’m doing something very different than I chose to do with A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue last year. I’m allowing myself to rest. I’m processing what happened, all the learning I went through, and I’m letting the momentum of A Woman’s Guide carry this second novel. Who knows if this will end up being correct or a grave error. But it’s the best I can do. My winter trip, full of staring and ruminating on the writing life as I’ve lived and experienced it these past nine months, is a good way to rest.

Although there are still a thousand things I could do, I have to find my way back to the basics again, replenish the well.

One of the joys of being in writerly community with you is the questions that I get about everything to do with writing. A songwriter friend asked me a great question recently, and I couldn’t help but let myself ruminate on it as we drove through Virginia and North Carolina. She asked how a writer might avoid the internal scramble of emotions that surge each time we face a new risk during a creative project.

I thought a lot about emotions, their gift to creative people, as well as their handicaps.

So this week, I want to talk about how I get distance from and balance out the very natural emotional surges I experience. I want to talk about my lists.

Lists give distance

I learned list-making from my mother. She was a pilot, trained in pre-flight checklists, which contain many tasks that guarantee safe travel. She kept her love of lists as she had four kids, went back to work full-time, and juggled the countless tasks of a fifties housewife. She scribbled thoughts and to-do’s on the backs of envelopes or notepads. Her kitchen was her office; the lists occupied one counter by the stove.

I watched my mom make these lists, sometimes snuck a peek. I could never make sense of her—or most anyone else’s—lists, though. I knew they worked: she rarely forgot something she’d noted.

When my mom worked, my grandmother took care of us as very young kids. She also made lists during her “quiet time” each morning, her way of preparing the day. She used tiny loose-leaf binders, the size of a big hand, and a favorite fountain pen.

Two strong, pioneering women—my mom was a pilot and my grandmother ran a summer camp for kids—both with dozens of plates in the air.

Not unlike writing, revising, and publishing a book! Tasks for books are endless, it seems. This inherited love for lists allows me to get those tasks out of my head and onto paper, giving much-needed distance and calming those emotions before overwhelm sets in.

I was not so great at emotions as a child—I felt everything so keenly, and I didn’t have vocabulary or skills to communicate it much. My art, both writing and painting, became how I spoke to the world about what I felt. The challenge of this was not having perspective. Everything felt strong and intense, and I couldn’t triage the feelings.

I’m grown and skills have developed now, but I can still slip back into that place of not being able to step back far enough when I feel. This is, I believe, what my friend was talking about.

I thought of one of my first trade reviews for my upcoming novel, Last Bets, a reader who didn’t get the purpose of the story. I was so eager to receive that first review and so crushed when I read it. Looking back now, it was fairly glowing, but my compromised self focused on the one criticism, about the story being too complicated, and panic set in. Maybe I wasn’t the writer I thought. Maybe—even worse—the novel was not what I’d hoped.

Forget all the positive feedback, the agent who loved it, the editor too. Panic waited inside me for the first opportunity to slash at my belief.

None of us are immune—we just receive it differently. Some writers get critiqued and take it in stride, only to find themselves not writing after the feedback session, unaware of how much they’ve been affected. I bulldogged my way through many stages of finishing and producing my novels, only to get hit at the end game.

So my friend was asking: How does a creative person navigate this tricky emotional reaction at any stage of the book journey?

Emotions are also a gift

I believe that emotions create much of what we experience as writers on an unconscious level. Take, for instance, writer’s block (being stuck). My theory is that writing practice is the habit that breaks the need for writer’s block—mostly because it gives distance from the emotions. It’s a practical agreement you have made with your creative self: you’ll get into a chair, you’ll place fingers on keyboard or pen to paper, and you’ll write something regularly. In my experience, the block happens when we don’t get our writing practice regularly and we break our agreement with ourselves creatively.

Not all writers believe in the block. I’m aware of when I lapse in my writing practice, because its lack of momentum grinds me to a stop. And, as hard as it sometimes feels, getting back in that chair and writing even awful stuff will get me past it. That practice saves me every time.

My friend was talking about an acceleration of emotions that is scarier than writer’s block—the deep fear that even writing practice can’t ease. It hits unexpectedly, wiping out all of your confidence in what you came here to do, creatively. It’ll blast your belief in your work, but worse, it'll erode your belief in yourself.

But rewind for a minute to cheer on emotions. They’re not just dangerous to writers, of course not. Emotions are part of what makes us creative people go beneath the surface of life and find new ideas to bring forth. Emotions give us clues when something is off, when we’ve strayed away from the original purpose of a story. Or when someone’s feedback and ideas cross the line. Emotions tell us when we’re comparing too much to others.

Emotions also engender enthusiasm, spark, and excitement at the start of a project, giving permission to try something completely outside the box. We get fuel to take a creative risk and reach beyond current experience.

But just as much as they are creative cheerleaders, emotions love to ramp up false reactions and curtail all generosity by telling us we’re less than. Less than another writer, specifically. They make writing all about comparison rather than bringing forth an internal vision.

I wonder if this is because emotions are raw material—they can’t tell time, they can’t evaluate perspective, they don’t know when it’s too soon to say an idea is working or not. They aren’t so patient—at least mine aren’t.

Before I start my writing each day, I look at my lists. I use lists to assess the importance of any particular idea I’m considering. I use them to find balance with my emotions about my writing. I use them as a gateway to my daily practice. I use them for both sides of the brain.

Lists for both sides of the brain

Not everyone loves lists like I do or finds them helpful for emotional balance. Sometimes they feel like just one more nagging voice reminding you of everything you’ve still to do.

But lists aren’t just tasks. They are also ideas. They become a place to corral every fleeting image and suggestion your creative self sends your brain.

I didn’t always know this. Once I read a book by a writer who believed lists were the enemy of creativity. No one should have to ever live with them; we live much more freely without. I was feeling burdened by the limits of lists that day so for a few weeks, I stopped writing any writing ideas on my lists. At first, there was huge mental freedom indeed. Nothing got written on my calendar either; no notes in journal margins, on my desktop. It all created the sweet illusion that I had endless time with nothing demanded of me.

But soon, a real feeling of loss hit. I started getting swamped by emotions about my writing life, comparing myself endlessly to others during my doom scroll on social media. That led to slipped deadlines, important stuff forgotten. Of course, each mistake added to my ability to trash myself, and the emotions had a field day.

I realized my lists had become ballast for my creative life. But I was determined to make them work for me in a new way.

Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

One side of the brain is global, one is particular—that’s simplifying things, but it helped me realize the kinds of lists that would actually help my writing practice.

The global side of my creative self craves an overview. For it, I make a master list. A master list is a dumping ground, essentially. I write down every single thing I want to consider or do for my writing project. At first, the more logical, triage-oriented part of me rebelled at this: Why combine a maybe-someday task like “research library sites” with a definite task like “ask X for a blurb?” But I soon found myself using the master list a lot—my brain, it seemed, needed a place to just accumulate, not decide.

By having a master list, I relieved my brain of the often-difficult task of triaging an idea’s importance here and now. Everything went on the master list without judgment.

I remember the first time I tried one—I was in the drafting stage of a new book, so my master list became a conglomeration of ideas and resources and research questions and character questions, among other things. I noticed an easing in my chest and gut, where I had become habituated to tension around “not getting things done” and “losing ideas” and all the other negative feelings that swim by during my writing practice. I used the back pages of my writing notebook for this early master list—I have one notebook in process for each book or project—but it soon outgrew it because I added something almost every day, as ideas came to me, wishes I wanted to explore for this project.

The beauty of the master list? I didn’t have to consider the how or why, just the what. No timeline, no level of urgency, just simply writing down the thought.

The list expanded further into ideas borrowed from other writers, stuff I read about somewhere, an idea captured from a dream or during my walk. (I got used to carrying index cards or Post-It notes and a pen with me on walks to jot stuff down; now I just record them on my phone.)

Back then, it was important to me that this list was tactile, not electronic. Something about the kinesthetic movement of writing it down often broadened the idea, gave me other, tangential ideas, or made me realize the importance of it and perhaps even its timing.

As I got in a groove with this master list approach, as panic about my writing decreased, I noticed that my imagination got freer. It roamed to new ideas. More lightbulbs went off in my head for that book project than ever before!

Maybe my global brain had been trying to hold onto too much? Or was it also trying to contain AND judge the worth of each idea that surfaced? Too much work! Before the master list, some of my greatest, although unformed and seemingly impractical, ideas were completely discarded before they could even be tested.

I began using the master lists for my personal life as well as my book life. Whenever my get-it-done-now brain gets weighed down by the enormity of the master list, I stop looking at it for a few days. I take a list vacation. I promise myself that there’s nothing hugely important to forget, no impending deadlines, then I close the book on my lists until that part of my brain relaxes.

But most of the time, the list feels fun and expansive, not burdensome. As long as I keep it loose, untriaged, not pressured, it works.

Have you ever worked with a master list for a writing project?

Leave a comment

Triaging the list—creating list categories

I mentioned above that I believe there are two sides to the creative self—global and particular. After I’d worked with the master list idea for a few months, I took the next step, which was for the particular side. Triaging is when you choose priorities, you sort, you arrange by importance, time required, or urgency.

As long as I kept my global self happy with the master list, I was able to concentrate on triaging and actually accomplishing tasks in their order of importance. To determine this, I used different colored markers for the three levels of importance, time required, and urgency. Some tasks required tons of research (time) but were not at all important to my project—a side trip, in a way, but interesting to me. Others were fast, one phone call or search, and urgently needed to finish a chapter or get legal information squared away for pub date.

As I color coded, I could easily see some tasks didn’t need my attention right now, while others jumped forward.

How to use both lists

Each week, I set aside half an hour to scan my master list. I used my colored markers to highlight a handful of tasks that appealed to me, giving them priorities. Then I’d tackle the ones that needed attention now.

What about the fun ones, that didn’t feel urgent? I like dessert, and these felt like dessert to my creative brain. As long as the urgency got handled, I gave myself the fun of several weekly tasks that were low priority. That also kept the emotions balanced, so I didn’t start feeling like everything was just hard work and no play.

The master list solved my frustration with too many lists (Post-It notes!) in too many places in my life. The color coding to triage into priorities gave me the satisfaction of actually accomplishing tasks. It was an approach that worked for me, and both parts of my brain. I couldn’t work with just my mom’s approach of small pieces of paper stacked on the kitchen counter or contain my ideas to a tiny loose-leaf binder page like my grandmother. With a master list, I had the freedom to expand as much as needed, to create a place for the flood of ideas that usually come with a book project so none were left behind, to have everything in one place. And with the triage system, I was able to feel accomplishment each week.

When the list got too old, cluttered, or hard to use, I’d transfer it to a new set of pages and triage again. Interestingly, the importance of each task changed as the book project evolved. Some items on the list never got addressed—they were irrelevant now—and others got expanded.

Specialized master lists

Sometimes, a task exploded into many small steps. It needed its own master list. I found this also helped my emotions (overwhelm, especially) stay in check. For instance, when Last Bets was in final revision, I made a master list with categories such as:

timeline (when does each scene happen)

seasonal/weather details by scene

character continuity (consistency of names, hair color, glasses, type of clothing, gestures)

backstory placement (when the reveals happen, how they are spread out, their relevance to each present-time scene)

beginning and ending of chapters (varying how I opened and closed chapters)

fact checking (the storm at sea, the distance of the island from the nearest land mass, etc.)

When the same novel got close to publication, I created another master list for all my promotion ideas.

If you’ve read this far, I encourage you to try one or both of the lists. You might not be swamped by emotions—panic, angst, comparisons with others, any of the down-pulling feelings that come with any high-risk creativity. But you might find trying a list or two gives you unexpected distance and balance when you most need it.

List-making will always be part of my daily life—I am my mother’s daughter, after all. Its true gift to my writing life is distance and objectivity when things go south. Nonjudgmental list-making is very healthy, as long as it doesn’t take over my actual writing time. When I find myself making lists instead of drafting or revising scenes, I get back to being a writer.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

This week, try a master list for your current writing project. Start with a small number of items jotted in the back of your journal, on your desktop, or in your writing notebook.

If you’re contemplating a new project or a creative dream, use a master list as a dumping ground—capture every idea, thought, and task, without assessing its usefulness or importance yet.

Hint: Write as fast as you can, no editing. Set a timer if you want to make it really fun. See if you can get 25 items on the list.

When you’re finished, step back and assess. Evaluate how it feels. Are your emotions calmer, more balanced? Does your brain seem freer, emptier? Does the master list overwhelm you or calm you?

Leave a comment

Shout Out!

A hearty shout out to these writing friends and former students who are publishing their books! I encourage you to pre-order a copy to show your support of fellow writers and our writing community.

(If you are a former student and will publish soon (pre-orders of your book are available now), or have in the past two months, email mary[at]marycarrollmoore[dot]com to be included in a future Shout Out! I’ll keep your listing here for two months.)

Barbara Carlier, Journey Home (Booklocker), January release

Mary Jo Hoffman, Still: The Art of Noticing (The Monacelli Press), May release

Pre-order my novel Last Bets!

If a writer in your life would benefit from a boost to their writing practice each week, get them a subscription to this newsletter! Only $45 a year or $5 a month, and they get 52 weeks of inspiration, plus my new First Sunday Q&A where we address your most gnarly writing and publishing questions.

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I’m a lifelong artist, and I love to inspire and support other creative folk, which is why I write this weekly newsletter. My goal with these posts is to help you strengthen your writing practice and creative life so it becomes more satisfying to you.

I’m also the author of 14 books in 3 genres. My third novel, Last Bets (Riverbed Press), will be published in April 2024. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue (Riverbed Press), was published in October 2023 and became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders alone. For twelve years, I worked as a full-time food journalist, most notably through my weekly column for the Los Angeles Times syndicate. My writing-craft book, Your Book Starts Here, won the New Hampshire Literary Awards “People’s Choice” in 2011 and my first novel, Qualities of Light, was nominated for PEN/Faulkner and Lambda Literary awards in 2009. I’ve written Your Weekly Writing Exercise every Friday since 2008.

First Sunday Q&A: Working with Keywords to Attract Your Ideal Readers

Hello, all you new paid subscribers! A flood of you came to join us these past months and I’m very glad. Almost 100 of you now, pledging your support for this newsletter. Thank you so much.

Welcome to “First Sunday” Q&A, where we dissect and discuss your most gnarly writing and publishing questions. I plan to write this the first Sunday of each month for you, as long as you wonderful people send me your questions. I have a great selection from attendees at my virtual launch on November 10 and I’ll lean on these as we get going, but please feel free to post questions in the comments or email them to me at mary[at]marycarrollmoore[dot]com, and I’ll spend time on them, sharing ideas, tips, and resources from my own experience. I’m happy to keep you anonymous.

My intention is to make this a safe, generous place to exchange ideas and talk about the deepest writing and publishing issues on your mind.

If you’re a free subscriber, you’ll get a taste of the article below. Upgrade to paid (only $45 a year) to read the rest. Thank you for supporting this newsletter!

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Photo by Calvin Hanson on Unsplash

Q: In one of your past newsletters, you talked about the importance of keywords for reaching your readers on bookseller sites and via other outreach. I know very little about keywords, and I’d love to learn more.

A: My sense is that few writers know about this vital aspect of reaching readers. I knew so little about keywords when I began marketing my last novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue. I had only peripherally heard of metadata and the use of keywords, and I figured if I wasn’t in tech fields or much savvier on the computer than I was, I never really needed to know.

Metadata can be simply explained as the information behind the information, the data of the data—like the time and date stamp on a photograph. It’s not the photo image itself, it’s the information about the image. If you’re going to break down metadata into what’s most useful to authors, it would be descriptive metadata: title, genre, and other details about your book. Including keywords.

Here’s an interesting article about metadata for authors, if you want to take a deeper dive, but for my purposes, the key is those keywords and how they can be used to get readers to find your book.

Keywords are the way we create compelling descriptions of our books, or blurbs, that are used on bookseller sites to attract readers. Keywords are what should, ideally, come up in a search of books similar to yours. But most of us writers really fall flat when we are asked to write either keywords or sales descriptions (versus general descriptions) of our books. We write the story—what happens, where, to whom. We don’t necessarily write the sizzle, as one author friend said. Keywords aren’t fully used as a way to attract readers.

There are simple keywords and there are long-tail keywords, which are more refined and specific. Both are incredibly useful, when an author learns how to incorporate them into marketing a book.

But so many authors assume the back-cover or jacket copy of their book is enough to connect readers who are searching online for similar titles.

Not true. I learned this the hard way.

This week, I want to share some important tips I learned this past year, launching two books (!!), about different kinds of keywords, what to use where, and how they help readers find your book.

Read more

Creating a Mood Board for Your Book

My new novel, Last Bets, is now available for pre-order! You can help me rise in the Amazon bestseller lists by pre-ordering your copy today. Release date is April 21.

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Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash

Winter is inward-looking time for me. In preparation for the release of my upcoming novel, Last Bets, and the need to talk about it intelligently, I’m making a mood board.

These design-palette creations aren’t new to me. If you read my post from January 1, you know I traditionally set aside an afternoon around New Year’s, get out my saved magazines, and gather a collection of inspiring images for my year ahead or a new creative project.

A mood board is a bit more developed than collage. I think it can tap into subtler levels of what I’ve created, helping me understand motives and concepts that lie beneath the surface. Truthfully, the whole experience of birthing a book is all-consuming, and I’m just glad to get it into reader’s hands. I may not have time to discern its deeper meaning until the production is out of my hands.

In April, after the book is published, I’ll be guesting on podcasts again, and I know from my podcast experience last year for A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, it’s vital that I be able to explore the motivations of this new novel in compelling ways.

Mood board creation is not only a delight, it informs me about those levels. I use them to remember my most important reasons for doing another book so soon, for one—a question hosts are bound to ask, since most (saner) authors space their releases further apart! I can explore the personal behind my characters, how they are parts of myself. I can do the same with my chosen setting, looking at why it called to me to place this story in this particular location. All this comes forward as I create a mood board.

What I learn helps me orient my marketing, my promotion, my talking points. I also just enjoy the beauty of what I collect for the mood board. It reminds me how much I love this book.

What are mood boards?

Mood boards are used by businesses to capture a client’s preferences of style, color, and design. Someone creating a new kitchen for your home might put together all the components on a mood board, so everyone involved is on track with the style decisions. Designers use them. (Here’s a good article on mood boards as used by businesses.)

But writers use them too. There are design software platforms to help (Milanote is a favorite, as is Canva) if you want a digital version.

The first question to ask yourself, though, is whether you want to make your mood board digital or physical. It really depends on your preference, what inspires you, what is easiest. I am a painter when I’m not writing, so hands-on speaks to me. I’ve always gone with physical mood boards because they bring in the tactile and textural that digital can’t. I also love to create with my hands, get messy with supplies, spread out on a table. My mood boards are made on foam core with cut out images, fabric, objects I love, photographs, inspirational quotes.

You decide which you want to try.

How to start a mood board for your book or other writing project

What’s your book’s theme? What’s the orientation of the story? What message does it convey to a reader?

It helps me a lot to brainstorm the theme or message of my book that I want to explore on the mood board. First, I consider the meaning of the story, to me. I’ll walk you through how I did this for my new novel, Last Bets.

Last Bets takes place on a Caribbean island. My tag line is “Escape to paradise, find trouble!” So my mood board needed to juxtapose those opposites—the idyllic escape that turns into trouble. I started with a beautiful image of tropic paradise then searched for what conveyed its opposite—the danger and conflict that occurs during the story as a hurricane approaches and all the guests are trapped.

Take a minute now, if you want, and share a thought about your book’s theme.

Leave a comment

Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel on Unsplash

A great place to search for images is Unsplash. My first choice was easy—this perfect beach image that immediately conveys the heat and intense light of a Caribbean island. I saved it to my desktop to print later for my mood board assembly.

The opposite side of the theme was the gambling underworld that the island houses. It’s a center for high-stakes backgammon tournaments, with players arriving from all over the world to bet their wealth on a game of skill, not luck, as professional backgammon players know. Many migrate from poker to this seemingly innocent table game for this reason. You get good by strategy and skill, no other reason.

The main character is an artist; she comes to the island to finish a portrait for a wealthy landowner but gets involved in the murky underworld of gambling. I found two images for that part of the mood board. One sends a message of order, the other chaos—which is what happens in the main character’s life. She thinks she can control her play. She can’t. Here’s the chaotic image I chose.

Photo by Alp Duran on Unsplash

A hurricane threatens the island throughout the week of the story timeline. The gamblers don’t leave; the game is too intense. I found this image to add, which conveys the equal intensity of the approaching storm. I loved the contrast between the gorgeous green ocean and sand and the looming bruise-colored sky.

Photo by Byron DiMaggio on Unsplash

What contrasts or conflicting images exist in your story?

Leave a comment

As I chose these starting images, I could see the themes emerging, the longer I studied them and placed them side by side on my board.

What else do you add?

Once you have your primary images, the message or meaning conveyed in pictures or colors or textures, the next step is to gather other pieces that speak to you of the book’s story: type, text, quotes, photographs, whatever you can imagine. Some writers creating a physical board might bring in fabric swatches, dried grasses or herbs, bells and beads. Digital mood boards are more about images and text.

Here’s an example of a mood board from Milanote’s examples.

And a physical mood board from another great site, Lit Nerds.

I took a couple of weeks to browse more images online, journal about how they brought to light new aspects of my story, then arrange them on my mood board. The arranging was important; it’s like a conversation with your subconscious, the Muse, whatever part of you that avoids logic when creating a book. It accesses purposes I’m not aware of outwardly.

After I have the mood board arranged on a table or desk, I try to let it sit for a few days. I stop by to study it regularly, add other things, rearrange some more.

There’s a point when the board begins to resonate, almost vibrate with energy. Then I use some archival glue to fasten the pieces. (You can also do this on a bulletin board with push pins.)

It’s an amazingly creative process, and maybe you’d like to try one this month, as you plan, write, or develop (or publish—like me!) your book.

One writer starts each book with seven bulletin boards hung in her kitchen. She pins to them everything that has to do with the book: Images, lists, sketches, photographs, diagrams.  Like a project box, only placed on the wall where she can see each item.

As she writes the book, she sorts. She eliminates options, focusing and tossing what doesn’t fit. She condenses the number of boards to one, discarding all the material that doesn't actually belong to the book anymore.

If you prefer horizontal filing to having things tucked out of sight, this fun tool may work well for you. All you need is enough wall space.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Start a mood board/vision board/collage this week for your current writing project. If there’s an aspect of the project you’re stumped on—like a character you wish you knew better—you can focus on that for the board.

Decide if you want the board to be digital or physical. Follow the steps above. Gather your objects and images, text and quotes. Arrange them in a pleasing way and let yourself study the board for a few days. Don’t hesitate to redo, rearrange, add or subtract. It’s a evolving conversation.

When you’ve got the board to a good place, take time to free write about it. Describe it to yourself, comment on why you chose different colors, textures, images, words, objects. What do they tell you about your writing project that you may not have known before?

If you want, turn the board upside down and see what comes forward. Often, I’ll see completely new patterns and ideas.

Leave a comment with your findings, whatever you learned or discovered.

Leave a comment

Help a writer friend get a to their writing practice this year: get them a subscription to this newsletter! Only $45 a year or $5 a month, and they get 52 weeks of inspiration—plus my new First Sunday Q&A which welcomes questions about all things writing and publishing.

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Shout Out!

A hearty shout out to these writing friends and former students who are publishing their books! I encourage you to pre-order a copy to show your support of fellow writers and our writing community.

(If you are a former student and will publish soon (pre-orders of your book are available now), or have in the past two months, email mary[at]marycarrollmoore[dot]com to be included in a future Shout Out! I’ll keep your listing here for two months.)

Barbara Carlier, Journey Home (Booklocker), January release

Mary Jo Hoffman, Still: The Art of Noticing (The Monacelli Press), May release

I’m a lifelong artist, and I love to inspire and support other creative folk, which is why I write this weekly newsletter. My goal with these posts is to help you strengthen your writing practice and creative life so it becomes more satisfying to you.

I’m also the author of 14 books in 3 genres. My newest novel, Last Bets, will be released in April and is open for pre-orders now. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue (Riverbed Press), was published in October 2023 and became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders alone. For twelve years, I worked as a full-time food journalist, most notably through my weekly column for the Los Angeles Times syndicate. My writing-craft book, Your Book Starts Here, won the New Hampshire Literary Awards “People’s Choice” in 2011 and my first novel, Qualities of Light, was nominated for PEN/Faulkner and Lambda Literary awards in 2009. I’ve written Your Weekly Writing Exercise every Friday since 2008.

Organizing from the Stone Age

My new novel, Last Bets, is now available for pre-order! You can help me rise in the Amazon bestseller lists by ordering your copy today. Release date is April 21.

Photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash

With my new novel, Last Bets, going into pre-orders this month, heading down the road to publication in April, I’m allowing myself clean up time. Creating a book is a messy process, at least for me, with many tools that are not relegated to the computer. I call them my Stone Age organizing tools, and each one has helped me out of a jam with this book.

January is a great time of year for clean up. My whole house, if I have energy, gets a chance for a redo. Books I’ve finished with, clothes I’ll never wear, that junk drawer that’s gotten so full it won’t close, the back storage room shelves (I don’t even remember what they contain), everything gets a chance to be sorted and de-cluttered. I start bins and bags for giveaways. Each day, try to get something in them.

A friend tried a great trick for organizing her life. She took the days of the month and got rid of that number of items. For instance, the first of the month would be one item put into the giveaway box. The fifteenth would be fifteen items. Small or large, it didn’t matter. She said she loved doing it, the freedom and openness it brought to her life.

I’m doing the same, only with my book project. I’m sorting and reviewing the tools, the assists, I used for Last Bets, looking at what worked and what I learned from it.

When I’m in process with a manuscript, traveling through the initial steps of envisioning the story, structuring it, developing my awareness of the characters, revising and getting feedback, then finishing up the journey with pre-publication tasks like cover design, blurbs, and legal data, it creates a wild mess in my writing studio. A mess I love, truthfully. But in order to move on to the next project, to feel real completion, I have to review and sort and file and close up shop on that particular book. I might take photos of my storyboards, the collages I’ve created for the characters, print and paste them into the writing notebook I make for each book. I like to go through the file folders on my desktop and on my desk, decide what to keep and what to toss. I like to browse the baskets of objects that prompted me as I wrote, got me unstuck so many times with their sensory reminders. I might discard or keep photographs and maps of the book’s setting. I might archive my playlists.

It’s all great fun, and super satisfying to do. It gives me both closure and a sense of something well done. Accomplishment and all that hard work acknowledged, while I wait for the book to be published.

This week, I thought I’d give you an insider look into one author’s system of organization, what helps me build and birth a book, including those tangible assists that give certain parts of myself such pleasure.

Photo by DNK.PHOTO on UnsplashAssist #1: the project box

This is an idea I stole from Twyla Tharp! She is famous for her project boxes and I loved having one. In her world of choreography, each dance gets its own new box. Into that box she puts her notes, objects, fabric samples, videos, anything that has to do with what she’s creating.

I loved the concept of a project box, because it helped me feel more organized and focused. Also, it limited the detritus of book creating to one container (when possible!). I chose a big basket I could set on the floor by my desk in my writing studio. In the project box for Last Bets, I put scuba-diving photos from years ago when I used to travel and dive. I added shells to bring in the beach feel, since the novel takes place on a Caribbean island. I even found a piece of fabric that reminded me of gauzy beachwear. Images and character sketches went into the box.

Imagine the fun—and creative thrill—of sorting through all that cool stuff whenever writer’s block arrived. My project box (or basket) acknowledged a tangible part of the creative process that I couldn’t always find on a computer screen.

One stalled-out day, when I couldn't write another word, I reached into the box for images of my book’s world—the island, the green ocean, the wind in the palm trees. I pasted them on the outside of a large notebook which became my repository for ideas, scenes, words, and written stuff the box would lose. It lasted a year, and the images on the outside never failed to lead me back into juicy writing.

What might go into a project box for your current writing project?

Leave a comment

Photo by Omid Kashmari on UnsplashAssist #2: colored file folders for clustering chapters

I go a little crazy in office supply and art stores. I’m a painter when I’m not writing, so color means everything to me. Naturally, when I learned of this second assist, I stocked up on colored file folders in brilliant shades, like the photo above.

What I did with these was even more helpful: on the outside of each, I brainstormed my chapters.

For a nonfiction book, this is a no brainer—my outline or plan is usually more concrete and predictable. When I’m working on a novel, I might not know exactly the way chapters will fall. So I approximate.

First, I make a list of chapter themes or topics or titles. Each one gets a colored folder (the color choice doesn’t matter to me, but you may want to choose a certain color for pivotal chapters). Using contrasting markers, I draw a circle on the outside of the folder and write the title or purpose or theme inside it. One folder per chapter for nonfiction books or stories where I’m fairly certain of the trajectory; if I’m not, one major turning point or theme per folder.

Do you know the brainstorming technique called clustering or mind mapping? Click on those links to find out more. I draw spokes from each circle and write ideas for sections or scenes within the chapter. Sometimes the idea/spoke will generate sub ideas, which become sub spokes.

I suggest, if you try this, to let any ideas come—no censoring. One of the beauties of clustering or mind maps is that they embrace the non-linear brain as well as the logical line-up. Often, I found inspiration where it would’ve been missed.

Assist #3: storyboards

From the clusters, the chapter spider webs that I’m forming, I transition to a storyboard. It’s easiest for me to demonstrate this assist or tool via a video I made many years ago, when I started teaching storyboarding for writers. I use a W storyboard, which was originally created by Joseph Campbell of Hero’s Journey fame.

There are many, many storyboarding tutorials online now—it’s become a trend and I’m glad to see that, because when I began teaching it 25 years ago, it was an oddity.

Storyboards are incredibly useful when you get to the point of itching to organize all the bits and pieces.

Electronic assists

Back to my clean-up time. After the tangible organizing assists are reviewed and sorted and cleaned out, acknowledging all their gifts to the years I worked on this book, I face the tangle on the computer.

Last Bets generated many files of chapters, full drafts, revisions, and supplemental material like agent queries, feedback, and emails. I had a whole folder in my Word docs and many more in a wonderful software called Scrivener, one of the more intuitive writing systems I’ve used.

Software always includes learning time, for me, so I was fortunate to have a knowledgeable writing buddy get me started.

Why use it? For many reasons. Consider a 250-350 page book, which translates to the same number of pages of manuscript copy. I tend to write about 30 drafts of each book I publish (no, I’m not kidding!). So the sheer amount of documents in my Word folder for that book is astonishing. Not only that, juggling all of them in a word-processing system didn’t work as page count grew.

Scrivener’s elegance is its ability to handle draft upon draft, into revision, and organize them into folders that are easily accessible. It allowed me to explore and expand, to not be limited by the linear approach of Word. I needed also to be able to rearrange the order of the chapters as I tested positioning on my storyboard.

When I first began writing books back in the late 80s, I edited on hard (printed out) copy and input corrections into a new Word document each time. A master file for the manuscript, individual files for each chapter, all the chapter (and manuscript) revisions—it was overwhelming. By the time the manuscript was ready to send off to agent or editor, it had become a full file drawer of iterations.

I wrote five books this way, all published, selling well for years. I remember moving from the house where I did most of those books and struggling to throw out all the paper copies with their edits. It felt like destroying history.

After I found Scrivener, I wrote and published five more books, but the process was eons easier. I took online classes from Scrivener guru Gwen Hernandez and learned enough to do all the things I wanted—the software has many more bells and whistles than I need.

All these assists, both tangible and electronic, help me create books I’m proud of. Over the thirty years I’ve been writing and publishing, I’ve honed my method of organizing, and although some of it is Stone Age to others, it works for me. Maybe one of these ideas will help you on your book journey, too.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Browse the assists above. Use them as fuel to explore your current organization and what it might be missing.

Pick an idea that interests you and try it out, even a little.

What intrigued you, that you might test out for yourself?

Leave a comment

Shout Out!

A hearty shout out to these writing friends and former students who are publishing their books! I encourage you to pre-order a copy to show your support of fellow writers and our writing community.

(If you are a former student and will publish soon (pre-orders of your book are available now), or have in the past two months, email mary[at]marycarrollmoore[dot]com to be included in a future Shout Out! I’ll keep your listing here for two months.)

Maren Cooper, Behind the Lies (She Writes Press, November release)

Tammy Dietz, Falling from Disgrace (Cynren Press, November release)

Barbara Carlier, Journey Home (Booklocker), January release

Mary Jo Hoffman, Still: The Art of Noticing (The Monacelli Press), May release

I’m a lifelong artist, and I love to inspire and support other creative folk, which is why I write this weekly newsletter. My goal with these posts is to help you strengthen your writing practice and creative life so it becomes more satisfying to you.

I’m also the author of 14 books in 3 genres. My third novel, Last Bets (Riverbed Press), will be published in April 2024. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue (Riverbed Press), was published in October 2023 and became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders alone. For twelve years, I worked as a full-time food journalist, most notably through my weekly column for the Los Angeles Times syndicate. My writing-craft book, Your Book Starts Here, won the New Hampshire Literary Awards “People’s Choice” in 2011 and my first novel, Qualities of Light, was nominated for PEN/Faulkner and Lambda Literary awards in 2009. I’ve written Your Weekly Writing Exercise every Friday since 2008.

Writing Opposites: Bad Identity, Good Identity

My new novel, Last Bets, is now available for pre-order! You can help me rise in the Amazon bestseller lists by ordering your copy today. Release date is April 21.

My 2023 novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, is available on bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, and amazon.

I’ve started a new First Sunday newsletter for paid subscribers that addresses your most gnarly writing and publishing questions. December’s topic was reviews—what kinds help you sell your books, why certain reviews got my book on the Amazon bestseller list. If you’d like to receive First Sunday once a month, a yearly subscription is only $45. For it, you get access to the 700+ archives, the monthly Q&A of First Sunday, a safe space to ask questions, and my writerly gratitude for helping me continue to write this newsletter.

Photo by Quinten de Graaf on Unsplash

What opposites exist in you? Do you have a good identity, a not so good one? Maybe you flaunt one, hide the other—whichever you prefer to be seen as, gets shown. Characters are not unlike us, in this way. They have opposites, traits they hide, others they reveal freely.

As a reader—and a writer—I’ve long been intrigued with how a person “presents,” to use a psychotherapy term, versus how they really are. A character with opposites attracts me as a reader. For instance, badass women who secretly live as heroes.

All my novels have them. I nurture that quality in myself. I admire it in friends.

But successfully writing characters with believable opposites takes work and inner research. In early drafts, many characters emerge rather flat. We may not know their opposites yet, or the character may not have revealed them. True for fiction, certainly, in my experience, but also memoir. We learn as we go. Maybe there’s not enough conflict yet in the story to allow the opposite aspects to come forward. Or there is too much and the inner lives of characters are blurred.

In any case, I find that characters are somewhat elusive to readers until their opposite traits are revealed.

But opposites can make characters messy: some writers worry that showing the unlikeable sides of a character pushes readers away. For instance, what if a sympathetic woman shows violent desires? Or a villain is compassionate?

We’re not talking cliches here, or stereotypes. This is internal work, where characters reveal tendencies they may not fully accept themselves—and which can surprise both reader and writer.

Without a good balance of opposite tendencies, revealed carefully in story, I find that readers don’t get close enough your players to relate and want to linger. My all-time best complements are “I didn’t want to leave your characters when the story ended.” That takes revealing who these people are, deep down, what they want and where they’re longing to go. Even if they’re not telling.

There are also the writers—and most of us experience this—who want their characters to be one way, and the characters want to be another. A dilemma that stalls out the story, right? I’ll never forget the great question that came during one of my interviews: How do you resolve a character exercising their right to be who they are? Even if you don’t want them to be that way? I could totally relate.

Yes, we are the gods of the world we’re creating. But at some point, we have to let the character be fully realized, despite our worries about what the reader (or our mother, or sister, or boss who will someday read this story!) might think. Characters who are vivid on the page have no qualms about revealing who they are at the core. Instead of who the author wants them to be.

Running the risk of reader dislike

About five years ago, I was looking for a new agent. I was querying about the manuscript that would become my recently released novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue. I got a lot of interest, requests for pages and even the full manuscript. But I also got this response, too often for comfort.

“The biggest problem with your novel is that I don’t like your narrators.”

At first, I took this literally. I longed to shoot back, “Do all characters need to be likeable?” But I had a sense these agents were telling me something important. So I shut up and tried to understand.

Not likeable wasn’t really the issue, I realized. I found this out when I became humble—and brave enough—to email the agent who sent the friendliest rejection and ask.

Here’s what I got back: “They are too elusive. I just don’t get why I should follow them.”

Ah-ha! Not so much dislike at all! Just lack of access to the interior life of the character. My women were too distant from their readers, and this stopped the story.

It was a real turning point in my understanding. Suddenly I got why some of the more despicable characters in literature—consider Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal Lecter—are so intriguing. Yes, we’d never want to be in the same room with that guy, but he’s fascinatingly wrought as a character on the page.

Is this because they are well depicted? Yes, definitely. But even more, it’s because they are close enough to be truly creepy.

So I took that agent comment to heart. I went behind behind the “I don’t like your narrators” to what might be making these two women less accessible. What opposites inside them were not being revealed in the story? What were those opposites, anyway?

If you’re still with me, I’d like to share the steps I went through to bring my distant characters into fuller relief. The process worked, because now that A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue is published, I’m getting that so-satisfying response from readers: “I didn’t want the book to end because I didn’t want to stop being with those characters.”

Although both my narrators were guilty of distance in those early drafts, I’m going to use the most badass one, Red Nelson, as the example in this post. She’s a red-haired rocker who’s fascinated with fire.

Photo by Anton Mislawsky on UnsplashUsing images to access opposites

But first, I want to back up to the moment when I first learned about the opposites in characters. It happened in grad school, in my MFA program.

I was assigned a mentor who believed strongly in the power of images as a way to access opposites. I was revising my first novel, Qualities of Light, the prequel to A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue. In that earlier story, two young women fall in love one summer. I was frustrated in my attempts to bring these characters into vividness on the page. So one week, instead of marking up my manuscript pages as she usually did, she mailed me a torn out photo from a magazine.

No words, just images. On one side, the photo of a shy, beautiful young girl, head bent, dark hair covering her face. I knew this was Molly Fisher, the narrator of Qualities of Light. Then I flipped the photo; on the other side was a completely different image. A wild young dancer, skirt hiked up, hair flying, threw herself at the camera with abandon. No restraint. This was Zoe.

They were opposites. But interestingly enough, they also represented the opposite traits in each other. Molly longed to be wild, Zoe was secretly thoughtful and reclusive, not just badass.

From those images, I was able to finish revising that book, and it was accepted for publication in 2009.

Images of opposites became one of my tried-and-true tricks for getting to know the hidden sides of a character.

So when I was struggling to bring my then-elusive character, Red Nelson, into more accessibility on the page, I began to search online for images. My questions were:

What did she love and lost?

What keeps her up at night?

What does she secretly long for?

Could I answer those questions in images? These would be the surroundings of her interior life, aspects she naturally hides because they mean so much.

I immediately accessed two: music and fire. She has loved her music, when she has to run from the law, she loses it. She loses it even more definitely during her escape (her songbook with all her new lyrics goes missing). What keeps her up at night? Fire. The fire she set long ago with her ex-boyfriend, that burned down a building. What does she secretly long for? Freedom and family, which are opposites in themselves.

As I collect those images, I felt the opposites of violence and gentleness within this elusive narrator.

Once you get a sense of the opposites within your character, the next task is to create story to demonstrate this—scenes that force it out.

I needed to figure out how the violence of this character, Red Nelson, came out through both her loves: music and fire.

Opposites appear easily well-structured books as what I call the “outer story” and the “inner story.” Early drafts of my novel started with the inner story, the emotional longing of this narrator, Red, to find family again. But the emotional longing didn’t bring the violence I sensed in her to the page. It wasn’t enough. I knew I needed to delve into the outer story.

For months, I stewed over how to build a compelling outer story. The friendly yet rejecting agent recommended possibly educating myself in the thriller genre, since outer story suspense was the mother’s milk of thriller writers. A circuitous route led me to a crime novelist who taught with UCLA’s writing program. He asked me the right questions about fire.

Fire entered the story as I studied my character’s history. Her first boyfriend was an arsonist, an excitement she once loved then grew to fear. The thriller writer encouraged me to write scenes about fire—setting a fire, running from a fire, fascination with fire. Slowly, I got an idea: what if the boyfriend causes a crisis that forces Red to run for her life? Her mother begs her to find sanctuary with her unknown sister, the other elusive narrator in my book. Red flees there, unsure of Kate’s welcome. Her plane crashes then explodes. Fire starts the book and ends it.

I drafted some rough scenes, then I started studying Kate for her mirror effect. She’s not a badass at all—she is a rule follower, a Search & Rescue pilot. How would violence show up in her life, if she followed my theory of pairs of narrators forming mirrors for each other?

Like my dilemma with Molly and Zoe, how might my two narrators in A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue hold opposite traits?

As unconscious mirrors, they are never identical reflections—because anything too perfectly aligned becomes predictable. Nothing in the human landscape travels a straight line. There are always unexpected turns.

What aligns them, how are they similar? They are sisters but they live apart for their adult lives, estranged because one is the product of a secret affair. Yet they grow up with identical traits. They both become pilots. They both worry about small details. They both love their renegade father who deserts them regularly.

Ten years apart, the older sister doesn’t know the younger exists; the betrayed mother keeps the fact from her daughter. The younger sister knows all about her older sister; her mother, the lover, tells all. So the younger one begins to idolize her older sister, longing for the belonging it might provide. She becomes almost mythic in the young woman’s mind, just from a few photographs, the stories from her parents, the flying lessons her father gave them both.

Photo by National Library of Scotland on UnsplashYour Weekly Writing Exercise

You can approach this week’s exercise in two ways.

Either start with images: like my MFA instructor did, try to find opposites in visuals that describe the opposites in your character.

Or, make two lists, two columns on a page. Write 5-10 descriptors of your character, as you know them so far. What do they long for? What drives them? What values do they hold dear?

Then consider the opposite of these characteristics. Write them in the second column.

You might explore opposites like:

Loyal Betrayer

Self-focused Heroic

Introspective Wild

Try not to dismiss the opposite out of hand; instead, free write on each opposite, asking how this quality appears in your character’s life. Does the opposite come forward in certain, rare circumstances?

Then try drafting a scene with this opposite quality. How does it change the elusiveness of your character, making them more available to the reader?

Shout Out!

A hearty shout out to these writing friends and former students who are publishing their books! I encourage you to pre-order a copy to show your support of fellow writers and our writing community.

(If you are a former student and will publish soon (pre-orders of your book are available now), or have in the past two months, email mary[at]marycarrollmoore[dot]com to be included in a future Shout Out! I’ll keep your listing here for two months.)

Maren Cooper, Behind the Lies (She Writes Press, November release)

Tammy Dietz, Falling from Disgrace (Cynren Press, November release)

Barbara Carlier, Journey Home (Booklocker), January release

I’m a lifelong artist, and I love to inspire and support other creative folk, which is why I write this weekly newsletter. My goal with these posts is to help you strengthen your writing practice and creative life so it becomes more satisfying to you.

I’m also the author of 14 books in 3 genres. My third novel, Last Bets (Riverbed Press), will be published in April 2024. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue (Riverbed Press), was published in October 2023 and became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders alone. For twelve years, I worked as a full-time food journalist, most notably through my weekly column for the Los Angeles Times syndicate. My writing-craft book, Your Book Starts Here, won the New Hampshire Literary Awards “People’s Choice” in 2011 and my first novel, Qualities of Light, was nominated for PEN/Faulkner and Lambda Literary awards in 2009. I’ve written Your Weekly Writing Exercise every Friday since 2008.

The Pre-order Machine and What I've Learned about Its Place in Publishing

My new novel, Last Bets, is now available for pre-order! You can help me rise in the Amazon bestseller lists by ordering your copy today. Release date is April 21.

My 2023 novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, is now available at bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, and amazon.

I’ve started a new First Sunday newsletter for paid subscribers that addresses your most gnarly writing and publishing questions. December’s topic was reviews—what kinds help you sell your books, why certain reviews got my book on the Amazon bestseller list. If you’d like to receive First Sunday once a month, a yearly subscription is only $45. For it, you get access to the 700+ archives, the monthly Q&A of First Sunday, a safe space to ask questions, and my writerly gratitude for helping me continue to write this newsletter.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

I knew nothing about pre-orders with most of my published books. It was all part of the publication machine that someone else took care of. In these past years, though, authors are having to educate themselves on all sorts of things to do with publishing books. Whether they go trad or indie, it’s no longer us and them, publisher and author, but a joint effort.

With my recently published novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, I decided to explore pre-orders. I’d read they were the best way to raise a book’s status in the online rankings, at least on the bookseller sites like Amazon. So when my new novel, Last Bets, went into pre-orders four days ago, I took up residence to see what would happen this time.

Because last time, with A Woman’s Guide, pre-orders put my book into best-seller status within the first week.

But there are a lot of mixed reviews about pre-orders. They require more effort, advance timing, and extra oomph towards promotion. Many authors are gearing up for publication date; they don’t really want to start the engines that much earlier. And originally, pre-orders were set up to only help publishers. Pre-orders indicated the approximate number of copies needed for actual release; knowing these metrics, they could better prepare. Print more, get better rates, focus publicity.

Here’s what I’ve learned: authors also benefit. Pre-orders allow authors that possibility of higher ranking and if you do grab the golden ring, you can use that in publicity for the life of your book.

Here’s the extra effort required: the book must be live for distribution to bookseller sites before it can go into pre-orders. Once a book is uploaded to Ingram or another distributor, it goes through processing then gets released to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, bookshop.org, Target, Walmart, or whatever booksellers will carry it. On those sites, the book will be shown with its cover, back cover, description, author bio, and any reviews or other metadata. There will be a release date and information on how to pre-order. Here’s how my new novel looks on its Amazon pre-order page.

The orange button on the right says Pre-order now. It shows the option of ebook or print book. When the audiobook becomes available in a month or so, it’ll appear as well.

Within the last year, the pre-order system has changed a lot. It used to be that pre-orders were banked on Amazon until publication day. If a publisher started early enough—and some books go into pre-orders nine months ahead of pub date—the accumulated total could definitely shoot a book to best-seller status. Last year, as I understand it, Amazon changed that policy. Pre-orders are now only counted when they are placed.

Not to worry. If you focus your publicity efforts, there’s still a chance that pre-orders will raise your rank. This happened to me, without my actually knowing it, when A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue went into pre-orders last August.

If enough people pre-order on Amazon within a certain time period, the book can indeed become a bestseller in different categories and even a Hot New Release, which means more attention and the lovely ability to say your book is a bestseller. As one of my New York Times-bestselling author friends said, You don’t want to underplay this. It’s quite a feather.

I didn’t expect A Woman’s Guide would achieve either best-seller or Hot New Release status, but a miracle happened. I hired Suzy’s Approved blogger tours for the weekend my novel went into pre-orders. She arranged for eighteen Instagram book bloggers (bookstagrammers) to release the cover image of A Woman’s Guide to their followers. Some of the bloggers had many thousands of followers; one had 54,000 as I remember. They just posted the cover and a description, and I sent them the pre-order link.

I also used that same weekend to email my close circle of friends and family about my pre-order campaign, as well as post it here in my newsletter.

Somehow, all this effort brought enough pre-orders to send my book into three bestseller categories on Amazon. It rose to #3 in Sibling Fiction and high up in the two other categories.

My NYT friend emailed me: Did you know you were a bestseller today? I hadn’t looked (the listing changes hourly or more often, so you have to catch it). Then she sent another message: You’re also a Hot New Release. No way.

But yes, the novel’s little cover image appeared in a box that said Hot New Releases. The audiobook of A Woman’s Guide stayed there for several months, to my shock.

What pre-orders require

As I mentioned above, when you set up pre-orders, the book has to be uploaded to the distributor and in ready shape for publishing—but here’s the interesting fact. No publishing actually happens until release date. So you have time, say, to make changes if they are absolutely necessary (they involve the editor, typesetting, proofreader, and possibly cover designer’s time, which means money).

In my case, several factual errors came to light during those months between pre-order and the release date of A Woman’s Guide. My volunteer launch team, with their eagle eyes, was reading the advance copy and three of them caught errors. Two times, there was an error in continuity that nobody had noticed. A gun placed in a certain pocket of Red’s backpack with her logbook, for instance, but the logbook isn’t found until a few chapters later. Or cargo pants suddenly having a “jeans pocket.” This is small stuff, but it’s not right, and I worked too many decades as an editor myself to tolerate these kinds of mistakes. I wanted to be pleased with and proud of the book for many years. We also found a weird typo: a whole word dropped out of a sentence between final proof and the galley produced by the printer. Nobody could figure out how that might have happened. But a reader caught it.

Same thing happened with Last Bets. It takes place on a island in the Netherland Antilles. Three mentions are made of seeing the coastline of Venezuela from the dive boat. That’s possible from one of the N.A. islands but not this one.

Thankfully, these kind of corrections could still be made before pub date, because no actual books had been sold and shipped to customers.

Another great thing about this pause between pre-orders and release is that I could add about eight trade reviews and author blurbs that came in later than anticipated. After some discussion with my editor and team, we even decided to use one of the better reviews (from Kirkus) on the cover, which meant bringing in the designer, proofreader, and editor again. I added the rest of the reviews to the early “praise pages” before the first chapter.

None of this would’ve happened without pre-orders, in my view. So not only do they allow the rankings to rise, with bestseller categories being a possibility, they give you and your team the option of making last-minute changes without having uncorrected copies out there, other than the ARC (advance reader copy).

Marry pre-orders with advance reviews

If you’re seeking new readers, not just those who already know you or your writing, advance reviews are a key. A magic combination, I learned, is to support those pre-orders with reviews on Goodreads, BookBub, or other peer review sites.

My wonderful launch team was made up of 60-70 volunteers, and they each got a free advance copy of the ebook. In exchange, I asked them to each write an honest review of the book on Goodreads and BookBub, ideally before pre-orders began, at minimum before the book’s release date.

About 50 of them did! The reviews helped me stay encouraged but they also helped browsers who saw the blogger mention of my books and wanted to know more.

I could also share these early reader reviews on social media and in my emails to friends and family, which I believe encouraged them to take the risk to pre-order my novel as well.

If you’ve read this newsletter for a while, you know that I’m a big believer in reviews as part of why people buy a book. At least for me, reading a positive review encourages me to buy. I reminded the launch team to only post honest reviews—that’s very important on these sites—and I was thrilled when the average on Goodreads stayed above a 4.5 star rating (5 being the top).

Each time a review posted, it felt like a big hug of congratulations.

I love supporting authors by pre-ordering. When an author I love announces a new book, I definitely click to buy ahead of time. It’s fun to await the arrival of a favorite story and I know it helps the author in so many ways.

Pre-orders in a nutshell

Pre-ordering a book is essentially reserving your copy. You don’t pay until delivery and you can change your mind.

Pre-orders allow you to build some buzz ahead of release date. Buzz is basically the excitement potential readers feel when a book is getting extra attention.

If you combine pre-orders with advance reviews, as Goodreads and BookBub allows, you can support the pre-order option—readers can find out whether the book interests them by reading these reviews.

If you’re lucky and time your pre-order promotion well, you can rise in the ranks of online booksellers and possibly get that wonderful “best-seller” status to use in all your promotion.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

I made a New Year’s resolution to do two things to support other authors. I would pre-order a book each week, if I could, to support the pre-order process for another author. And I would post a reader review on Goodreads or BookBub.

Consider this for yourself this week. How might you support other authors and pay forward for when you are published? (Check out the Shout Out! column below for two authors who are happy to get your pre-orders.)

And please, consider pre-ordering my new novel this week!

Preorder from bookshop.org

Preorder from Barnes & Noble

Preorder from Amazon

Shout Out!

A hearty shout out to these writing friends and former students who are publishing their books! I encourage you to pre-order a copy to show your support of fellow writers and our writing community.

(If you are a former student and will publish soon (pre-orders of your book are available now), or have in the past two months, email mary[at]marycarrollmoore[dot]com to be included in a future Shout Out! I’ll keep your listing here for two months.)

Maren Cooper, Behind the Lies (She Writes Press, November release)

Tammy Dietz, Falling from Disgrace (Cynren Press, November release)

I’m a lifelong artist, and I love to inspire and support other creative folk, which is why I write this weekly newsletter. My goal with these posts is to help you strengthen your writing practice and creative life so it becomes more satisfying to you.

I’m also the author of 14 books in 3 genres. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue (Riverbed Press), was published in October 2023 and became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders alone. For twelve years, I worked as a full-time food journalist, most notably through my weekly column for the Los Angeles Times syndicate. My writing-craft book, Your Book Starts Here, won the New Hampshire Literary Awards “People’s Choice” in 2011 and my first novel, Qualities of Light, was nominated for PEN/Faulkner and Lambda Literary awards in 2009. I’ve written Your Weekly Writing Exercise every Friday since 2008.

Ta-Da! My New Novel and Its Beautiful Cover

Today pre-orders begin on my new novel, Last Bets. You can help me so much by pre-ordering a copy this week! With my last novel, pre-orders alone put it on three Amazon best-seller lists and I’m hoping for as wonderful or better with Last Bets. If you enjoy stories about intergenerational friendships, island vacations, or badass heroic women facing their past mistakes, you’ll love this novel. Booklife/Publisher’s Weekly called it a “Beautifully wrought story of two women artists outrunning their demons” and made it an Editor’s Pick. I’m so pleased to share it with you! Pre-order here.

I never had a vote in my earlier book covers. I don’t remember a single one of my books as a food journalist or nonfiction author being emailed to me for comments or even a pre-pub vote. Agent and editors didn’t get me involved back then. To most publishing teams, cover and title choice is a marketing decision, with only the in-house staff and a select focus groups of readers voting.

All those books sold well; no complaints from me. But I did feel a little wistful when I saw the first printed copy. I did wonder what it would be like to have a hand in cover selection, to be involved in the design ideas.

When I switched to fiction in 2009, I had my first collaborative cover design experience with my debut novel, Qualities of Light. My editor asked me to submit images and the publisher’s designer, who was very good, put together the cover. I loved the high contrast, the almost mysterious quality of the lake at dusk, and how the classical Z form of the image invited the viewer in.

I decided to get more involved with my book covers, if I was lucky enough to publish again. Although publishing teams might disagree, I felt the author should know what the cover could most convey about the story.

Fortunately, I did publish—two more novels, including the forthcoming Last Bets. Each time, I learned a lot about cover design, and I also learned that my novels are complex, not simply about one event or dilemma, most carrying multiple storylines told by multiple narrators. That offers a wealth of images to choose from—which direction gives the truest view of the core story? Where are the main threads?

What are the main threads for your book’s images?

I wrote about my cover design journey for my second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, here if you want to hear that story.

For Last Bets, my editor scheduled a cover design meeting and sent me a worksheet to fill out. She asked me to select five covers from recently published comps (comparable titles) and detail why I liked or disliked them. We discussed fonts (serif or sans), primary images, placement of the title and other text. All the details that the designer would need to know.

The core of the discussion, for me, was about themes. What was the novel’s primary focus? Was it scuba diving or island life, gambling or art, female friendships or running from past mistakes? Or was it the new-to-me landscape of paranormal abilities? The main character, a portrait artist, struggles with her talent of far-seeing: she sees the past when she paints a subject and the future when she plays a game for money (think Queen’s Gambit).

Jeenee Lee took all the options we presented and sent me five cover designs to choose from. Each represented one of the main threads of my novel’s key images.

Cover designs we worked with

Option #1, above, focused on the underwater aspect of the novel—the scuba diving. I loved the image, and I know many of the riskier moments take place underwater, during dives. As one of the main characters says, actions and decisions that would never have been considered on land are completely permissible underwater. So this cover hinted at the growing relationship between the portrait artist, Elly, and the man she’s come to the island to paint.

The next image, below, is more about the painting process itself. I liked it also, but it didn’t quite convey the totality of the novel. There’s also not as much tension in this image.

Also, gambling is a strong feature of the story—Elly sees the moves to the game and can cheat to win, so she faces the demons of both sides of that paranormal talent. Will she use it for selfish reasons or for a greater good?

This next idea combined the gambling and painting, with hints of the island in the shell and palm fronds. The right side of the backgammon board shows the paints Elly uses (pastel sticks). Although they are very familiar to me, they caused some confusion with the small group I asked to vote on the covers.

This last cover was the one we liked best, since it combined the heat of island life, the approaching storm for tension, and the game board superimposed on sand and sky.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Cover design is truly an intricate process. Especially with books which are complex and don’t offer just one primary image.

This week, play with your book cover ideas. Ask yourself these questions:

What’s the main event of the story and what images might come from this?

Where does the story take place? Does the setting evoke a certain image?

Who is your reader? What images might speak most to them?

What is your story’s theme? What’s its message? How might you translate that into an image?

Find 3-5 comparable titles online and examine the book covers. Note what you like and dislike about them (colors, layout, fonts). Assess your book cover tastes—do you prefer certain kinds of images? Graphics only? Certain colors?

Sometimes it helps to print out the covers you’ve chosen and cut them up, arrange them differently, take the parts you love and create something new.

If you want to join the fun and say YAY! to a fellow writer lend your support by preordering too. Thank you from the bottom of my writerly heart.

Preorder from amazon

Preorder from bookshop.org

Preorder from Barnes & Noble

Shout Out!

A hearty shout out to these writing friends and former students who are publishing their books! I encourage you to pre-order a copy to show your support of fellow writers and our writing community.

(If you are a former student and will publish soon (pre-orders of your book are available now), or have in the past two months, email mary[at]marycarrollmoore[dot]com to be included in a future Shout Out! I’ll keep your listing here for two months.)

Maren Cooper, Behind the Lies (She Writes Press, November release)

Tammy Dietz, Falling from Disgrace (Cynren Press, November release)

I’m a lifelong artist, and I love to inspire and support other creative folk, which is why I write this weekly newsletter. My goal with these posts is to help you strengthen your writing practice and creative life so it becomes more satisfying to you.

I’m also the author of 14 books in 3 genres. My third novel, Last Bets, will be published in April. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue (Riverbed Press), was published in October 2023 and became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders alone. For twelve years, I worked as a full-time food journalist, most notably through my weekly column for the Los Angeles Times syndicate. My writing-craft book, Your Book Starts Here, won the New Hampshire Literary Awards “People’s Choice” in 2011 and my first novel, Qualities of Light, was nominated for PEN/Faulkner and Lambda Literary awards in 2009. I’ve written Your Weekly Writing Exercise every Friday since 2008.