Mary Carroll Moore's Blog, page 13

Happy Thanksgiving week! A little gift for you--my thank-you for being part of the Your Weekly Writing Exercise community

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I’m grateful to you for being a member of my little writing community. This week, I’m giving you a little thank you.

Please accept three FREE 1-month gift subscriptions to give to family and friends (usual value = $15) as a way to share the gratitude this week.

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Getting to the Meaningful Heart of Your Story

My newly released 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 like 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. November’s topic was “rejection and discouragement,” and I offered new ways to approach both. 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..

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Photo by Michal Czyz on Unsplash

Having a pitch, a thirty-second response to “What’s your book about?” is an important back-pocket item for an author. I’m going to explore the art of the pitch in an upcoming newsletter, as it’s also one of the hardest tasks for most of us pre-submission and again pre-launch. It takes work to figure out the meaning behind your book—which is the real answer to “What’s it about?” There are great techniques and steps to discover that.

But today, I want to go beyond that casual question and its necessary answer and share thoughts on those amazing moments in a book tour when a questioner or interviewer probes your understanding of your book, its origin and its meaning to you. When an interview offers provocative questions that make you think—in a good way.

If you’re lucky, as the author, you’ll be asked such questions often. Maybe on podcasts, maybe during “in conversation” events, maybe at your launch. I realize the word provocative can imply confrontation, but I use it to mean confrontation with the self, with your own limits around how you talk about your book.

We all encapsulate our story’s meaning. We often are no longer surprised by it, after years of working to get the book written, revised, and out to readers. We feel we know it completely, almost to the point of too much familiarity.

But I want to challenge that. I can say in full honesty that each book I’ve published became a new surprise to me when seen through a thoughtful reader’s eyes. Even more, when a skilled interviewer got at it.

I’ve been interviewed many times since my launch in October. Two key interviews were the in-person conversation with Kate St Vincent Vogl at the launch; Kate’s questions unraveled my journey to create the story and the audience questions, when Kate opened it up to the crowd attending, helped me learn even more. I discovered stuff, as I sat there and formed answers. I dug into myself and faced my own limited knowledge of my own story, and I learned!

Last Friday on Zoom, it happened again. I sat in front of the largest crowd I’d ever seen online (88 registered, over 50 attended my virtual book launch). Allison Wyss, author of the short-story collection, Splendid Anatomies (finalist for the 2022 Shirley Jackson Awards) was “in conversation” with me. We’re both teachers at the Loft Literary Center, have taken each other’s classes over the years, and I admire her edginess in all things, both writing and teaching.

Note-taking before an interview is something I like to do, whenever I’m lucky enough to preview the host’s particular approach (from listening to another of their recorded shows or from questions they send with the booking). I took notes before my interview with Kate and again for Allie’s questions. (I do like winging it, too; the notes provide a fallback in case I get brain freeze.)

The process of note-taking is a free write, essentially, that prompts interior research before a podcast or other interview. I want time to decide the boundaries around what I feel comfortable sharing. Yes, I will share about my mother, the pilot, her being the inspiration for the novel, and I’ve gotten more comfortable with talking about how mysterious she was to me, growing up, living with such a legacy, a woman who broke through the male-dominated world of flying and became an aviator. I’m OK with listeners knowing that I am still unraveling this mystery of who she was, doing it via my writing now that she’s passed. I’m also more comfortable talking about my deceased sister, the reason I wrote about estranged sisters finding each other. I can talk about found family, the family you discover outside of the one you grow up with.

Note-taking lets me sift all the possible answers, draw some lines between personal and too personal.

But I also have come to appreciate, even look forward to, the questions that make me feel a bit on edge in an interview. Because I want to learn, too—I want to learn more about my own path as a writer. I want to discover more of the meaningful heart of my story, and I believe these conversations allow that.

Today I want to give you a taste of the provocative questions Allie asked me on the virtual launch. I felt they were both in-depth and intricate. A kind of nourishment that a writer needs. Like with Kate’s interview, they took me new places.

Allie: One thing I love about A Woman's Guide to Search and Rescue is we have immediate and exciting stakes. We begin the story inside a plane as it is about to crash! But I still think it's a book that is as much or more about relationships and emotions as it is about action. Can you talk at all about the balance of those elements?

Me: I started writing the novel as a story about these two estranged sisters, Kate and Red, who have never met because of their father’s betrayal.  I was fascinated with these kinds of internal questions: What would it mean to be unwanted, to search for family but never be sure you’d be welcomed into it?  Who might rescue you from your loneliness? 

My agent loved the novel but she said I needed a plot! 

I worked for a year with a thriller writer, an instructor at UCLA, who helped me build the whole thriller plot, including the plane crash, escape, and chase.  Then my agent said, you have too many murders.  You’re not a thriller writer, dial it back now.  So I had to take out some of the more violent scenes, focus on developing the relationships. 

It sounds like a convoluted journey; many books are. You don’t know your strengths in the particular story you are telling, at first. You try one thing, it doesn’t work, so you try another. Many times it’s a one step forward, two steps back experience.

My agent was right. My real strength in storytelling is women’s emotional lives.  From this meandering path, I learned that even a rich, interior life doesn’t make a strong story, by itself. It has to have an outer structure to hold it.

Allie: I was talking with another writer recently about the theme of found families in your book. And I'm thinking about Red's friends, her band, the way she surrounds herself with people she loves. But then she has to flee and she goes to this more traditional family of people who are biologically related to her--and she is hesitant, but she finds love there too. I love this idea, that we find family and we build family--whether or not the biology is there.

Sometimes when people talk about found families, there is an implied rejection of biological families. And sometimes that rejection is called for! But I think the point is not who we reject, or that we have to reject certain people, but that we always choose our true families. It's the choosing that matters. How do you think about building families in your stories? What is it that draws your characters together into families? And how important is it to you to do so? Red is on her own for much of the book, but also she never really is. Even when she's isolated, she's thinking about the people she knows will always support her.

Me: I hadn’t really thought about this too much before my novel was published but the whole aspect of how to build a family is very important to the story.  I guess it came into my writing a bit subconsciously—I am fascinated with all the different ways that family can manifest in someone’s life, functionally or not. 

I believe that within a lifetime, we create and leave many families, as they help us evolve personally. I feel very close to my siblings and extended family at this point in my life; they are wonderful people and I love spending time with them.  Perhaps this appreciation has come because I have gone far from them and come back on my own accord, once I was ready.

I grew up an artist in a family of scientists and intellectuals.  I learned a lot from them but I often felt a little lost, as a kid and young adult, even though my parents were supportive of my artistic leanings.  My dad loved classical music and we’d sit and listen and identify instruments.  My mom painted when she was younger, as well as did very risky and brave things like fly in the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots program for two years.  But I felt I needed to move away to find who I was, so after college I drove by myself across county to California in my little VW bug, and I lived there for 13 years, started a food career, and wrote my first book. 

But as I grew older, as my parents passed and we lost my older sister, I meandered back to my family of origin, to my aunts and cousins and extended family, to be with them and get to know them again as an adult with more perspective. 

I think this is a fairly common journey.  It can bring much more acceptance and understanding and appreciation of both your origin family and the found families you’ve discovered. 

Allie: A theme I notice is the characters persistently asking questions of "did I bring this on myself" and generally wondering why trouble has come to them, if they are to blame for that trouble. And I think it's tempting to make fiction say that we do bring it on ourselves--that makes a tight little sense of causality to tie the plot together. But it can also lead to the idea that justice is real--that the world is fair--and it's very clearly not. I love how the book sort of questions that idea and I wonder if you have thoughts about that. How much do your characters control their destiny and how much are they fighting against circumstances that are necessarily beyond their control? 

Me: All of them start by fighting outside forces that they feel no responsibility for—like Kate’s husband’s affair or her blackouts, or Red being framed for murder, or Molly losing her love just when she was starting to trust the gift of that love.  But I generally don’t believe in victimhood, or I don’t engage with characters in fiction who have no agency or belief in their ability to create a life.  All three women evolve from that lack of agency to an increased ability to shape their destinies. 

There’s always going to be forces that challenge us, which is life.  Challenges force us to become creative and ask what we can change to move forward.  So there are points in the story where each person is facing that decision or turning point.  It’s not a straight line.  More like that one step forward, two steps back that I mentioned earlier. 

Red, for instance, is selfish because she’s always had to rely on herself, and she’s been an outcast for too long.  She isn’t aware in the beginning of the story how her decisions will affect others, the new family she’s hiding with, when she’s a fugitive wanted by the law. 

Gradually, her choices become less self-focused and more aware of these new people she loves. 

Allie: There is a song that Red writes in the book. And we can get the words, but we can't get the actual notes--just the feel of it. What is it like to describe a song that way? Could you hear it yourself? And of course, what was it like to hear it actually played? I know that has since happened! At your book launch! Did the actual song match your idea of it?

Me: There are two songs, “Night Flight,” which Red writes as a tribute to her mom and dad and a way to heal her relationship with her dad, and “Sky Song,” which is her band Sleek’s big hit.  Two of my band members came to the launch party on October 24 and one of them proposed that he write the song, and we sing it.  I was terrified.  Our band was actively performing a decade or more ago, and although I still love to sing, my chops are just not there, while they are practicing and performing musicians.  But I did it. 

It was the biggest risk of the evening for me and I can still hear a few sour notes on the recording, but it was great fun.

Talk about found family—these guys helped me though chemo and I sang with them when I had no hair.  They were determined that I live and thrive, and I have.  Music saves us. 

When I was writing the novel, I heard a different version of “Night Flight,” more mournful actually, not the James Taylor style we sang, but the song moved me tremendously and I was so glad we did it.  I posted the recording on my social media.

Allie: And yet, we do get really magical scenes of music. How did you think about making that music heard in just the words?

Me: Music has always been a translator for my deepest feelings.  I wanted the book to contain sound as well as the light of art and setting. 

Allie: And "Night Flight" is more than a song, it encompasses the mystery of the whole book. It is what she is writing in the beginning. Her journey IS a night flight. It is the recorder with the song on it that clears her name. It is her adventure and struggles that shape the song. And when she re-emerges after her hideout, it's with that song. Was working this song through the book in this way an obvious choice for you or did the idea come later? Basically, was the importance of this song there from the beginning or did it emerge as you wrote?

Me: The idea was late in coming.  I knew Red was driven by her music, but in earlier drafts I didn’t have a sense of how or where it would turn the plot. 

Molly is also a ready rescuer because of Red’s music and how it influences Molly’s life. 

Kate ends up rescuing Red by finding her recorder, even though Kate represents the non-artistic side of the equation, the facts and evidence side, the search for Red’s recorder was Kate’s turning point, where she decides to let down her guard and embrace the music that Red creates and become her sister at last. 

Allie: This book has a very tight structure that wraps around Red's adventure and marks time very clearly. (Though I guess it spins a bit past the adventure at the end.) And then it reaches into the past through memory and into the future a bit through aspirations. How did you find this structure? How important to you is the structure of a book? Did you ever try to start this story earlier or later or use a different form?

Me: Structure is everything to me as a reader.  If a book has sloppy structure, I have a hard time entering and enjoying the story.  I taught book structure for 20 years using the storyboard diagram, the W, in my classes at the Loft Literary Center and Grub Street and elsewhere. 

So yes, I did deliberately create structure as I worked on the book.  But I also did my usual structural preamble and had several useless chapters in early drafts before the plane crash chapter that actually starts the book now.

On timelines: I am fortunate to be a member of an awesome writer’s group who kept me honest about this aspect of the structure.  I think that was one of their biggest concerns in early drafts, so I paid a lot of attention to it. 

I worked with the present, chronological, time first.  Made sure that worked.  Then I wove in the flashbacks, memory time.  Then the hints of future time through the character’s longings and hopes.

Allie: You have these alternating storylines of these two incredibly strong women with some of the same struggles, though they play out in different ways. And they're even sisters. It's hard not to see them as foils for each other--as shadow selves, even. I keep thinking about how in a different sort of book that built up tension around getting these two parallel lives to come together--getting the characters to meet--that the moment of lines crossing would be a fight of some sort! And I think about traditionally masculine ways of telling a story--that a character must challenge and overcome this other version of self. But that's not realistic or healthy. And this book instead uses what I tend to think of as a more feminine form of storytelling. That it's a final conflict we're building toward, but a moment of connection.

This book obviously contains a lot of conflict (with the law, with Billy, with nature/weather/storms, with the body), but the pivotal moment of the entire story--the moment we build to and that changes everything--is not one of conflict but of connection. It's the meeting of the sisters. I wonder if you have any thoughts about this more positive strategy for building a narrative. (I have a theory that conflict and intimacy can do the same work to drive change and action in a story. I also have a theory that we need more stories driven by connection, instead of always by strife.)

Me: \I started with almost no fights, the conflict almost all internal, and a clear lack of outer plot.  That was just how I entered the story and what I thought worked. 

The thriller writer-editor i mentioned above helped me get tension in the plot. His approach was more of the masculine one, where I was encouraged to build in outer conflict in the form of fights, bad guys doing very bad things, life-and-death confrontations, burning buildings, murder.

Finally, I circled back. I like the more feminine approach, as you say.  I had to add a few anger scenes to find the right balance, something fiercely broken and something seriously hurt when the sisters do connect to find their mutual history.   

I wasn’t aware of these different approaches to structure until I took a writing class with author Beth Gilstrap, who introduced me to Jane Alison’s Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative. Now I realize my real strength as a writer has always been a more feminine structure. Not the straight-line plot, with its more predictable rise and fall dependent on outer events, but the more unpredictable, emotionally threaded plot lines that depend on internal changes. I’m glad for this; I’d rather be an author who writes stories driven by connection, as you say, rather than by strife.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

First, a prompt. Set a timer and write for 10-20 minutes on this: What questions would you most like to answer about your writing or your book?

Pick 3-5 of most interesting questions from your freewrite. Spend another 20 minutes writing your answers. Don’t worry about how intelligent they sound; try to get to the meaningful heart of why you write what you write. If it’s helpful, imagine being on a podcast, where an interviewer asks you these questions and your answers are warmly welcomed.

Finally, if you’re interested in exploring the world of podcasts or reacquainting yourself after being away for a while, check out Michelle’s website and download her free resources on how to be a good podcast guest. It can help make your interview fascinating to listeners.

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.)

Patty Wetterling and Joy Baker, Dear Jacob: A Mother's Journey of Hope (Minnesota Historical Society Press, October release)

Robert Johns, O’Brien’s Broken Play (River Grove Books, October release)

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

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

I’m the author of 14 books in 3 genres, an artist, and a lover of freedom and creativity. 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. 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.

Doing What You're Most Scared Of

My novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, is launched—its little engine is taking it pretty high these past weeks. So many podcast interviews and generous reviews online. I hope you’ll order a copy and see what the buzz is all about, if you enjoy stories about women heroes and complex sister relationships.

Photo by Tom Brown on Unsplash

What’s the point of doing what you’re most scared of? Well, I’ve tested this twice during the past six months as my book took flight.

Each time, I learned something new about myself. I bolstered my courage muscles. I made myself vulnerable in a new way. Scary at the time, worth it looking back.

My first big risk was taking flying lessons. I started in September, at a nearby airport, because I wanted to know more about what my mom, a pilot in World War II, experienced in the pilot’s seat. I wanted a tangible, personal experience of being behind those many dials. My novel’s two main characters are female pilots, so it felt authentic to try flying too.

I’d researched everything I could about flying. Worked with a flight instructor to make sure my scenes were accurate in every detail. But I’d never actually felt what a pilot would feel. What my mom felt every day when she flew those B-29’s.

Totally scary being in that pilot seat as a beginner. My instructor was kind, he handled most of the controls, he said he was honored to teach the daughter of a Women’s Airforce Service Pilot. The preflight check was twenty items, all mind-boggling. I couldn’t find landmarks he knew so well from the air. We wobbled in crosswinds when we landed. But I was exhilarated by the risk I took. I felt completely changed by it.

The next big risk came a month later, when I was planning my in-person launch party at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. A great party must have music, I knew, so I hired two friends, Emma and Alejandro, to perform before and after the onstage interview. Members of the duo JazzLove, they were both seasoned performers and would provide the perfect ambiance for my celebration.

Many years ago, Emma and I performed together in a band called Keystone. Along with three others, we sang five-part harmonies in a modern Crosby, Stills, and Nash style, all original tunes. We even cut an album. Singing with Keystone was a major key in my successful transition back to life after chemotherapy. I remember the gift of singing together when I had no hair, because music heals on every level.

Another of Keystone’s members, Larry, was planning to attend the launch party. He texted to say he’d finished reading my book, liked it a lot, and wanted to write a song from the novel to perform at the party!

A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue has three main characters; one of them, Red Nelson, is an indie rocker, lead singer of a cult band, beginning her rise to fame. She is also on the run from the law for a murder she didn’t commit. While hiding out, she has only her music to keep her company so she works on a new tune, “Night Flight,” a tribute to her pilot parents.

“Night Flight” is a theme in the story—the flight Red takes in the story’s opening, as she leaves her life and the criminal who is chasing her, is a night flight. The characters all are in the dark, flying towards some dream of family. So Larry’s offer intrigued me. What would it be like to hear a song that only existed as a few fictional stanzas? It felt right that it come alive, though, and if anyone could create “Night Flight” for real, Larry could.

We were driving through some midwestern state when my phone pinged and lyrics and a rough melody appeared in a text. I listened as we drove, liking the song more and more. Different than what I’d imagined, but it made me tear up at the end for what it conveyed about Red’s story.

Then I got the big question: would I considering sitting in on the performance? The band would be Emma, Larry, Alejandro on keyboards, and myself.

My chops as a singer are zip. These are professionals. So of course, I said no. Too big a risk. I could talk about my book onstage, no problem. But stand up and sing in front of a packed Performance Hall? No way.

A few days later, I was rehearsing with them.

We look happy but I was mostly scared.

The night of the launch party, I was even more nervous. JazzLove performed while people enjoyed wine and appetizers. Emma’s great voice is perfect for jazz standards and Alejandro is a genius on keyboard.

When it was time for the program to start, I took my seat onstage with fellow author and interviewer, Kate St Vincent Vogl. Probably I’m the only author at a book launch who has her dogs in her lap for courage! Kate’s questions about writing and publishing were so good; the audience in the packed hall asked great ones too. It almost distracted me from the risk ahead.

Then Kate announced the song. I stepped offstage, handed my dogs to my spouse, and took my place at a different mic. Luckily, Emma carried the vocals and I backed her up on harmonies. Larry played guitar and Alejandro his keyboards. The simple melody embodied Red’s search for family. The style of the song, to me, is not unlike the tunes from the Broadway show, Wicked. Full of grit and longing, by an outcast who wants more from her life.

I made mistakes during those four minutes of ecstasy and terror. Here’s the band after we ended, Emma telling me we did OK.

Why do the thing you’re most scared of? Why take such risks? I stood up in front of nearly 100 people and sang when I hadn’t honed that skill in years. I put myself on the line, in social jeopardy. But it was worth it. It created a reunion of members of our band, reminded me how much I adore singing with them. It made a memory I won’t forget in a long time.

And it was a special part of the evening for everyone who came, I think.

When you take a risk, its magnitude to uplift or slay you is so individual. For others, getting in a plane or singing in front of a crowd is a non-event. For me, it crossed a line into real vulnerability. Yes, I felt plenty of vulnerable moments during the six months of this book launch, as I expanded my naturally introvert self into more and more outreach. But I evaluated each step for how soon and easily I could recover.

When I asked for help, how easily could I rebound from a no?

When I submitted for reviews, would I do OK if they weren’t stellar?

Some things I didn’t try because I knew it was so far outside of my comfort zone, I couldn’t recover fast enough to keep moving with the book launch tasks, which were many.

But here I was, at the end of the journey, doing something I never imagined.

On our drive home, I wrote a pros and cons page in my journal, doing that risk assessment retroactively.

Cons: (1) I’d come from teaching a four-hour workshop so my voice might be shot, (2) we’d only have time for one rehearsal and no warmup, (3) I could very easily make a fool of myself in front of all my students, writing colleagues, and friends.

Pros: (1) I trusted these friends, (2) Emma would create a harmony part for me and I could learn it as we drove, (3) Larry would double me vocally (which didn’t end up happening but the promise kept me happy), (4) I love singing with these guys, and (5) I loved the song.

Not surprisingly, pros won out. I can hear so many of my mistakes in the recording, but it was a blast. I’m proud of myself for taking the risk. It gave me some new confidence and courage. Now Larry wants to write a song for my next novel. I just might say yes.

Here’s “Night Flight,” performed by JazzLove, Larry Siegel, and me.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Risk assessment time.

Make a little list (three to many items) of things you’ve put off doing because of fear or not wanting to be foolish. What’s humming in the background of your creative life that you’ve tried to shut away but haven’t entirely succeeded?

Rate each with a risk level: 1 is not much risk, 10 is high risk. This is very individual, so what is risky to you might not be to anyone else, and vice versa. Be honest with yourself. Nobody needs to see this assessment.

Next, take the lowest risk item on your list and place it in the center of a page (easiest to do this with paper and pen). Draw a circle around it and lines radiating off like spokes from a wheel. This is a clustering exercise. On each spoke write one reason you haven’t done this risky thing before. Then draw a bigger circle around all the spokes. Create more spokes from that circle.

Now write small, even tiny, steps you might take if you were to try this risky thing.

Do one of these this week.

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.)

Patty Wetterling and Joy Baker, Dear Jacob: A Mother's Journey of Hope (Minnesota Historical Society Press, October release)

Robert Johns, O’Brien’s Broken Play (River Grove Books, October release)

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

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

I’m the author of 14 books in 3 genres, an artist, and a lover of freedom and creativity. 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. 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.

Join Me on Friday, November 10, 7:00 p.m. eastern, for My Book Launch on Zoom!

It’s party time! Please come help me celebrate!

On November 10, I’ll have my online book launch for A WOMAN’S GUIDE TO SEARCH & RESCUE, my new (and so-far bestselling) novel. My launch features a good, provocative conversation with author Allison Wyss about how this novel got started, the inspiration and the way it shaped itself, what changed midstream, and what happened during publishing. Register below!

Photo by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash

You’re warmly invited to learn more about what happens behind-the-scenes of a bestselling novel. Join me on Zoom, November 10 at 7:00 p.m., for a provocative conversation about all things writerly.

Allison Wyss, author of Splendid Anatomies (Finalist for the Shirley Jackson Awards) and fellow teacher at the Loft Literary Center, will ask some wonderful (and possibly difficult) questions about how my bestselling novel, A WOMAN’S GUIDE TO SEARCH & RESCUE, came about.

From beginning idea to all the changes made in thirty rewrites to the end result which was released on October 24, we’ll explore how a book is made. It’s not all pretty balloons, by the way, and we’re going to get real about that.

When: Friday, November 10, 2023

Where: On Zoom

When: 7:00-8:00 p.m. eastern time (please translate for your time zone)

What: Bring your writerly questions too—we’ll have a live Q&A at the end. And bring your own beverage of choice, dinner, cupcakes, party hat, whatever!

Here’s how to register:

Click on this Zoom link to sign up and get the link. You’ll get an email confirmation with the login and password. Then just join us on Friday, November 10, at 7:00 eastern!

Look forward to seeing you there!

PS Pups are welcome, my dogs say, as long as they get their own cupcake and party hat!

Photo by Duncan Kidd on Unsplash

First Sunday Q&A: A Different Way to Move through Rejection and Discouragement

Welcome to my “First Sunday” Q&A for paid subscribers, where we 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 send me questions. I have a small store of questions from my years of teaching, which I’ll use 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.

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

Q: I’ve been writing for years, I’ve been published too. But my ability to handle the more difficult aspects of writing and publishing isn’t getting stronger, as you’d expect. In fact, I find myself more sensitive to rejection than ever. I also have trouble with moving through stuck places in my writing. For instance, if I’m trying a new skill and I just hate what I’m coming up with.

What are some tips or ways you’ve used to move through slack periods and discouragement?

I’m reminded of years ago, early in my food career, when I was hired to open and run a new restaurant in Southern California. My work involved ridiculously long hours, I always smelled of garlic, and I had trouble sleeping because of the upside down schedule that a dinner-only restaurant requires. Friends thought I had the most romantic job in the world because I loved food and I worked with a team of talented cooks.

I had to laugh. Each time someone said to me, “I’ve always wanted to open a restaurant,” I wanted to bust their sentimental bubble with the real truth.

I feel the same way whenever someone says, “I’ve always wanted to write a book.”

It’s creative, yes. It can be a lovely experience when it’s going well. But most of you who are reading this also know it’s terrifically hard work. And rejection and discouragement are part and parcel.

If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. You’ve probably heard that one too. I sweated a lot in that restaurant kitchen, at a hot stove for hours, working as fast as I could to churn out the meals.

Same with the writing life. I metaphorically stand at a hot stove and the heat can feel unbearable at times.

So why do it?

Because we have to. Nothing beats the creative flight of making a piece of writing work. Rejection and discouragement are small compared to that.

In my recent workshop at the Loft Literary Center, “Writing and Risk: Aligning Your Writing with Your Life,” we discussed the levels of risk inherent in each stage of the writing process. Each stage develops a certain level of stamina for handling the heat of the writing life, the rejection and discouragement. One reason why I honor all the stages, why I feel strongly that we must spend enough time in each to strengthen our muscles.

It’s foolish to expect that we wouldn’t encounter rejection and disappointment, and also that—like my student with the very good question above—it can get harder as we go forward. A rejection from a small literary journal for an essay you submitted might be taken in stride, while a bad review from a respected trade pub when you’re promoting your book hurts more and longer. But the idea is that by the time you reach out to trade pubs for your soon-to-be-published book, you’ve strengthened your rejection muscles consciously, through writing practice and learning how to take feedback. You can handle more disappointments with balance and just move on to the next risk.

My three stages of writing and their risk are good markers. I’ll share them with you so you might be able to (1) see where you are in the continuum and (2) strengthen the appropriate “risk” muscle to better handle rejection.

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Creative Uncertainty

My new novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue (Riverbed Press,), is published. Thanks for all who pre-ordered and helped it hit three Amazon bestseller lists since August and become a Hot New Release. Readers are giving it five stars on Amazon and Goodreads for its “page-turning” suspense and “complex sister relationships.” Available on Barnes & Noble, amazon, and bookshop.org.

Help me celebrate? Join me for a discussion on creative risk at my zoom book launch, Friday, November 10, 7:00 p.m. eastern, with author Allison Wyss. Register here to get the link and passcode to join us!

Photo by Ramón Salinero on Unsplash

I’ve been equating our meandering on the road this week with how my favorite writers approach their work. Not knowing the direct way is a skill I’ve cultivated these past years to good effect.

It includes a kind of confrontation with both self and story. Letting truths become realized that are not pre-known.

Road trips are all about meandering, which is perhaps why they cause such longing for me. I’m happy, as a creative person, with some level of routine and predictability. But I also love the break-out: staring at endless stretches of highway and not really knowing where I am located in my life at that moment.

Today is all rainy and chilly, brilliant fall leaves, and we’re in Pennsylvania. I’m spending time with my journal, processing thoughts about these past six months of book publication and what made this particular one so surprisingly satisfying, so obviously successful, compared to my past books.

I’m also watching the weather app: a cold snap and snow coming to New England before we get home, and our safest route means staying above 28 degrees at night and no snow. Change in plans—we hang out longer here, detour to avoid winterizing the camper’s plumbing just yet. Begging a few more days of creative freedom and the unknown of the road.

I’ve been enjoying Tom Lake, Ann Patchett’s new novel (Meryl Streep reads the audiobook) as an example of unashamed meandering by all characters. Especially the female narrator, Lara. She’s exploring various truths—her beliefs and memories about the past and present. She’s recognizing that truths can coexist as opposites (more about that below) and it enhances a life and relationships, gives everybody more freedom.

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The narrator of Tom Lake is a clear-hearted mother who helps run a fruit farm in northern Michigan. She knows where her life is located. During the pandemic, her three daughters are home and they want the story of her youth as a stage actress in Our Town, where she played alongside a now-famous male actor. Their relationship was fraught with betrayal, which the narrator accepted as part of the deal, betraying herself as well. Betrayal happens when we step aside from what we know is our best path, often. She sees that unconsciousness as part of her, as real as the present in the cherry orchard. In Patchett’s skillful hands, neither past or present is particularly right or wrong; both have value.

I believe that until a person can hold opposites inside, not judging them, they are more inclined to need to be right, to need to know the path ahead. To not be comfortable living with uncertainty.

Why does this matter to writers? Because uncertainty is where the best writing lives, in my humble opinion.

I was recently inspired by a post from George Saunders of Story Club, who mused about a story he almost gave up on because the ending was too predicted.

“I didn’t want to write that story,” he says, “because it felt like such a foregone conclusion. . . . Those early minutes had been spent in a state of discovery but this, now, felt like something different.

“But I still had that voice working pretty well in my head and so, as I recall it, I just intuitively made a slight adjustment, a sort of mid-course correction, that was a form of aversion, really; it was almost as if I said to myself, ‘OK, but what if it doesn’t end badly?  Is there a way we might, without falsifying, get to that place?’” 

Knowing where I was going did a lot of nothing for me as a writer launching a new book. Whenever I felt that being right was most important, my love for the book was pushed aside. If I need the path to be straight, not meandering, much of the surprise, the astonishment, the joy goes away. It also hampers my ability to be in community with others.

“What did you learn most when writing your novel?” a podcast host asked me a few weeks ago.

I learned that not knowing was more fun than knowing. In early drafts, I kept my characters’ trajectories straightforward, thinking this would make their motivations more logical and believable to a reader. I spent a lot of time knowing everything about them. When this happened to them, they would logically react this way. It made sense and it gave me a feeling of control over the uncontrollable process of writing fiction.

But it also made things boring. For my early readers. For me too. I got lots of feedback about needing to be surprised. About wanting the unexpected. About craving the coexistence of opposite traits that made the character’s movement unpredictable. “He’s too perfectly predictable,” said one of my readers. “What could he do or be that’s totally unexpected?”

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

There’s extreme risk in uncertainty as writers—as in the kitchen when you’re out of your depth. Or in a time of life when change is too big. Debora Robertson writes a Substack called Notes from a Small Kitchen Island, which I savor each week because I used to be a professional cook and cookbook writer too. I love reading about her life in France as an ex-pat Brit and her adventures with French cooking. One week, she posted an essay that struck me as a bit more whimsical and introspective than just the recipes coming from her market haul.

She wrote about the change of moving from London, how she gradually let go of what defined her life as a Londoner, including her to-do lists. To me, this brought to mind the meandering that we are doing this week in our little “book tour” camper van. I haven’t looked at my calendar in days. Lists are also anchor in my life at home, but on the road, much less.

But it wasn’t easy for Robertson to set them aside. “Uncertainty is stressful,” she wrote.

Yet I think in the creative life it’s a requirement. A blessing too, to be in a place where you can accept it and recognize its gifts.

What is your relationship with creative uncertainty?

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I think uncertainty in my writing life, my books past and in process, can be stressful, as Robertson says, because I don’t actually know where I’m going next in my story. I wish for clear instructions. I push back my chair and close my laptop and go find something to do that’s predictable. (Is this why writers tell me they sharpen pencils and clean the house when deep in writer’s block?) I embraced the storyboard because it gives a map during drafting and revision. I work with mentors and partners and writing groups to help me stay oriented.

I remember trying to draft a pivotal scene in my just-released novel, where the two estranged sisters reveal who they are to each other. Early drafts were so bland, so afraid of uncertainty, I was bored. I hated my writing until one of my writer’s group friends said, “Wouldn’t they be mad as hell? Wouldn’t it feel like a betrayal to the extreme? What might they do if it was?”

I’m not entirely comfortable with violence and expressions of anger (blame it on my childhood), so my early drafts tend to create too-passive characters. But I did rewrite the scene, many times, until I could write anger. I could write fear, I could do running away—and I remember Caroline Leavitt, who gave me such a beautiful blurb for this book—telling me “They have to have a confrontation. They can’t just walk away!”

Here’s an analogy you’ve probably never heard before: Using anger in a story is like using tarragon in a recipe. Tarragon grows abundantly in my garden, ironic because I loathe using it. Only certain recipes (a Normandy chicken in cream sauce with apples, a certain cheese sauce, maybe a lemon ice) can tolerate its potency. Released anger in a scene is like that—it has to be used so carefully (to me). But I wrote a scene. Like meandering this highway we’re on, it was what it led to that surprised me.

The angry sister lashes out, knocks a cup of hot tea across the room. I made it be a favorite cup, a present for her daughter to heal a tentative relationship. Then I explored what other damage the broken cup could create. I started out with the hot tea hitting the other sister, but that felt too expected. Instead, I explored the cup shattering and the other sister, knowing her niece would be distraught that the cup broke, bending down to pick up the pieces and cutting her hand. A cut that becomes a launchpad for the next event, which is more separation, more fury and rejection.

Turned out to be one of my favorite moments in their relationship, a pivotal scene in the novel.

Uncertainty, or taking side trips into unknown territory when writing or cooking, is not something I can manage every day. It takes a toll emotionally to live on the edge of risk. We have to do that dive in and resurface thing so we build emotional muscles and begin to trust that if we do try something without familiar markers, we’ll be able to come back from it in good shape.

“Taking pleasure in small things helps,” Robertson tells us in her post.

Before I left on this “book tour” adventure, I did something very small that has sustained me during our travels in surprising ways. I invested in next season: I planted garlic. My brother sent me Music garlic from their farm in northern California. Music makes large cloves; it’s easy to peel, and almost sweet. The rest of the garden was dying when I went out to plant that afternoon before we left, ready for winter. Echinacea, Joe Pye Weed, and other seed plants are always left for the birds, but I had cleaned all the vegetable boxes except those in our greenhouse. I cleared a patch alongside the raised beds for our garlic, planting a big fat Music clove in each hole. Next summer, we’ll harvest full heads from each one.

Photo by Aleksandra Dementeva on Unsplash

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

This week’s exercise is about opposites, letting yourself be open to what you DON’T know about your story. Maybe its shadow side, maybe its light.

During my recent workshop, “Writing and Risk: Aligning Your Writing with Your Life,” at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, I shared a great writing exercise I’ve been working with personally. It’s the creation of fellow novelist, Ginger Eager. I’ll share an abbreviated version here (with her permission). If you want to read more from Ginger, check out her AWP-award-winning novel, The Nature of Remains, or her newsletter.

1.     Create a list of things in your life you cannot or do not know at this moment.  Examples might include: How much of the world have I hurt unknowingly? Does my sister/brother/friend really care about me? Does my activism matter in any cosmic sense?  Form the list as questions, if you can.

2.     Select one question from your list. Write it at the top of a new page. Draw a line down the center of the page to create two columns.  At the top of one write “true” and at the top of the other write “false.”

3.     Think back to the past week or month or look at a larger section of your life. Think of three to five moments when it seemed to you that the premise of the question above was true.  Note these in the “true” column.

4.     Look over this period of time and think of three to five moments when it seemed to you that the premise of the question was false.  Note these in the “false” column.

5.     Study these and assess whether they can coexist in your mind and heart.

Examples

Did my sister /brother/friend really want to hurt my feelings with those hateful comments last Thanksgiving?  Rather than limiting your thinking to just your relationship since the comment was made, go back farther, through the whole of your relationship with this person. What do you notice that affirms the premise that this is true? What specific incidents made it clear to you that this person hurt others’ feelings intentionally? Seek proof of the callousness, cruelty, ignorance.

Next, try to prove the belief’s falseness. What proof will you seek to show that your sister didn’t want to hurt your feelings at Thanksgiving? Maybe she has armored herself since her terrible first marriage. Seek specific incidents where you saw the need for this armor, or perhaps specific incidents where you saw her armor up unnecessarily, blocking herself from joy.

Look for conflicting truths. Allow that the questions on your list can be both true and false.

Like the meandering of a road trip, this exercise expands limited thinking, takes us out of our own box, or so I’ve found. It’s a mind expander. It also can contribute beautifully to get a scene unstuck: Ginger suggests incorporating these opposites into a scene. What if, using my example of the angry sisters above, someone can lash out but also be sad or longing for closeness? How would those opposites appear on the page? Gold. I loved this exploration and use it often—hope you try it!

And join me for a discussion on creative risk at my zoom book launch, Friday, November 10, 7:00 p.m. eastern, with author Allison Wyss. Register here to get the link and passcode to join us!

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.)

Nigar Alam, Under the Tamarind Tree (Putnam/PRH, August release)

Cindy Angell Keeling, Dream City Dreaming (Petite Parasol Press, August release)

Patty Wetterling and Joy Baker, Dear Jacob: A Mother's Journey of Hope (Minnesota Historical Society Press, October release)

Robert Johns, O’Brien’s Broken Play (River Grove Books, October release)

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

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

I’m the author of 14 books in 3 genres, an artist, and a lover of freedom and creativity. 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. 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.

Finding Your Writing Practice Again After Publishing

My new novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue had its birthday this past week. It hit the Amazon bestseller list in August via pre-orders and was a Hot New Release, #5 in Sibling Fiction. If you love literary thrillers about complex sister relationships and women aviators, order your copy today! Join me for a Book Launch Event on Zoom, Friday, November 10, 7:00 p.m. Features a discussion with me and fellow author Allison Wyss on creative risk. Register here.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Writer Maggie Smith says her writing process is one of discovery. “If I sat down and thought I knew where a piece of writing was going, where it would end, what it was going to be ‘about,’ what the form might be, how long it might be, where the turn might happen, what imagery might be useful; if I knew any of those things at the outset, I don't even know what the point would be. The writing for me is the process of discovery. That's the whole point. So I enter my writing with questions and just see where they go.” (The full interview between Jane Ratcliffe, in her wonderful Substack, “Beyond,” and Smith is here.)

Discovery makes sense to me. I want to “not know,” as I travel home this week from a glorious celebration in Minneapolis at my beloved Loft Literary Center. So many friends and fellow writers came out to help me announce my book to the world. We had live jazz, great food and drink, and lively, writerly conversations. I felt full up when I left, glowing with how beautifully readers received the work I’d done for the past ten years.

Driving through the late fall landscape of the Midwest gives me time to feel gratitude for the team that’s helped me get here. It takes a small country to birth a book these days. The author is but one spoke of the wheel.

As the miles roll by, the feeling of fullness evaporates, and I’m left with what’s ahead: getting home, resuming my life, the holidays coming, the beginning of winter in New England. The next book (yes, I have another novel all ready to go, which my agent says is even better than the one I just released).

But much of me craves something else: that empty space that Smith talks about where optimal discovery happens. I’ve missed it in the crowd that’s accompanied me on this wonderful journey since April. I’ve been too conscious of the readers out there and close by, to find my creative isolation, that certain mood that lets me commune with a place, a plot, my characters. With so many people watching, I find it hard to make as many mistakes as I need to. I want to stop writing for a result or an audience and just explore.

You cultivate your readers, you’re happy for them, you celebrate with them—they are your writing community, friends and family who have supported all your large and small efforts to get your book out into readers’ hands. We couldn’t do this without them. We do write for them, but I find it hard to write with them.

My friend Lori had a plaque in her kitchen: “It’s been lovely, but I have to scream now.” (In other words, I love people AND I love to be alone.)

There’s also a post-partum feeling about post-launch. Everyone moves on with their lives and you need to as well. But how? How do you get back your love of isolation, the sense of discovery born in a quiet interior space, so necessary for the next book? What’s your best technique for this?

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Even when my son was a teenager, even with writing clients and students to respond to, I worked out ways to be alone enough to write well. First, it was about timing: I got up earlier, before everyone else. I disciplined myself to not check my phone, to settle in with tea and laptop, to dive in to whatever chapter or scene lay unfinished from the day before. To really use that time and space.

Early mornings worked well—I could carry that dreaminess from the night, use it as a kind of prompt. Dreams even brought forth ideas for my story.

Another way I managed this was in distance. I took myself out of the house to a coffeeshop or on a long walk where I could ruminate in privacy.

I also used certain techniques, like stopping my work in the middle of a sentence—a practice mentioned in Stephen King’s iconic book On Writing. It creates a vacuum for the next writing session to fill, an easy way out of writer’s block, as I’ve talked about before in these newsletters.

But some mornings, the crowd was there. Not my readers yet—the project was too early in its development for that particular presence. Instead, my writing times were burdened with life worries: my son’s upset at school, a family illness, money troubles, my own aging. When it was hard to find any interior spaciousness, I did one of two things. Either I started with free writing, using one of those prompts, writing terrible stuff. Or I journaled the three “morning pages” of The Artist’s Way plan.

Occasionally, I read a poem—a great note about this from Jay Deshpande in Lit Hub if you haven’t tried this trick. Deshpande writes, “It is reading a poem that makes it possible to enter the mindset in which more poetry can happen.” Either the journaling, the free write, or the poem would bring in the images and words needed to wake up my sluggish creativity.

But now, I’d just left the most fun, most exciting dinner party, with the best food and conversation. The loveliest guests. Everything sparkled so brightly that my regular life felt as dull as the brown flat landscape we traveled.

How could I slow myself down again, shed the high? Allow the joy of quiet to come back in?

Photo by Nadia Valko on Unsplash

A few years ago, after my current novel was in my agent’s hands, I went through a huge shift inside. I’d completed a manuscript that had been my constant worry and constant companion for almost a decade. It was exciting to release it but incredibly scary. Not just because I wasn’t sure of my agent’s response but because I missed it. Like sending your kid off to kindergarten, there’s a moment of: What do I do with myself while he is at school?

Of course, as a parent there’s no trouble answering that. But still, the sense of bewilderment and slight anxiety felt similar. That’s when I developed this four-part writing exercise.

I’ve used it for years in all areas of my life. Any practice that needs deepening benefits from it. You can change up the steps, do them differently as it suits you, but each allows you to examine where there are weaknesses and strengths in your writing practice. I share both the positive and negative sides of each step, where I found myself flowing through and gaining a lot, and where I stumbled and realized so much needed shoring up.

Step 1: Prepare

This step is basic but we often overlook it. What do you need, in order to write? Do you have the right supplies, is your laptop charged, does your printer work? Do you have enough privacy, time, and space? Do you make writing a priority in your life?

This first step is an inventory of what’s present and what’s missing.

So many writers actually don’t have such writing basics in place. Or maybe they have some things in place—a decent computer, the right pen and pad—but other elements are just limping along. Not enough privacy or time to really commit to writing. No wonder they have a hard time getting started.

Sure, you can write between everything else, grab fifteen minutes in your car while waiting for the after-school pickup. Sure, you can try to write at night while your spouse watches Netflix. But wouldn’t your writing practice be more of a certainty if you actually gave yourself permission to make it a priority?

What would it take to give yourself permission to write instead of [fill in the blank]? Are you putting your creative time at the bottom of the duty list?

Unless we change this, we may never get past this first step.

Part of the process is negotiating: with family, roommate, kids and pets, boss, friends, and elderly parents who might inadvertently (or on purpose) interrupt your writing time. One of my students was astonished at how precisely her mother would call just when she got a bite of free time and sat down to work on her book.

Some writers enter their writing time in a calendar as “appointment with the Muse” or “appointment with self” so it’s sacrosanct.

What do you need to do, to make sure this first step happens?

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Step 2: Enter

Every writer faces the blank page when they start a writing session. It can freeze you. Or you can have a ritual, a routine, on how you enter so you avoid the freeze.

Anne Lamott is famous for her 2-inch picture frame, empty, which sat on her desk. She told herself she only had to write enough words to fill it. Of course, she wrote more but that was the lubricant that got her started.

Other writers read their writing from the day before (I find this works for me).

Stephen King uses that technique I’ve mentioned of stopping each writing session in the middle of a sentence, leaving a sort of vacuum. I’ve tried this and the mind can’t bear it—I work on finishing that sentence all night and cannot wait to get back to the desk the next day.

Some writers light a candle, put on a playlist, wear certain clothes (leggings and a loose top, my workout clothes, work for me) to signal the creative self that it’s time to write.

Some days I don’t need anything—I am happy to just begin. But when I feel frozen or stuck, I use that list of prompts kept nearby. Free writing for even ten minutes starts the creative engine.

What’s your way to begin? If you feel stuck, what’s one thing you do to get over the freeze of the blank page?

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Step 3: Deepen

Losing yourself in your writing is a total joy—at least for me. This third step is only a problem if I have a life, and I have to get back to it. Then, my fear that I’ll be irresponsible to making dinner, picking up my kid, texting a traumatized friend, or a thousand other markers to my every day, keeps me on the surface, creatively. I become afraid of surrendering to risk. I can’t let myself forget myself, to deepen into the writing.

Timers help. I set my phone alarm to sound about five minutes before I need to end the writing session. Those five minutes allow me to become a normal person again, to remember my real life instead of my story.

If you find it impossible to release your attention from the daily demands, if your writing is frustratingly stuck on those surface matters, perhaps you need to arrange a longer “away” time. Some of us, myself included, can only relax far from home. I use coffeeshop visits for this; even though they are noisy places, there’s a real sense of being away. I book myself for two-hour stretches once a week, tell no one where I am, silence my phone, and write. Residencies and retreats are another way.

I find women often need this more than men, to make a broad generalization. We women carry so much in our minds and hearts, as trained multi-taskers, it’s hard to get away entirely unless we are physically gone.

The other element of this step is surrender. Are you able to surrender to your story? Not know where you are going with it, and be OK with that? This isn’t dependent on external demands but the internal fears of letting go of control.

What stands in your way of deepening into your writing?

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Step 4: Serve

This final step is about taking the writing into the world. Basically, you are serving the writing’s true purpose—to find its readers. When it’s time, when you’ve done all you can without other eyes on the work, you decide who will see it.

Feedback groups, writing groups, writing partners, your agent, the editor and publisher, all these preliminary readers help you get your creative work ready to do its service in the larger world. It’s completely different than the actual writing process, but I find it completes the circle of creative expression. Timing is everything, though. When it’s been through those first readers, when you’ve done all you can and are pleased, then find a way to send it out.

I’ve talked these past weeks about the publishing process, the outreach, the search for readers. It can be simpler than that, though. Consider one of the new ways to publish, such as starting a Substack and serializing your work. Or posting it on a blog you create elsewhere. Or sharing it with friends and family as a holiday gift this year.

What options are open to you, to allow your writing to fulfill its service mission in the world?

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Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Try the four steps above. Or try the first one or two. The goal is reacquaint yourself with the essence of writing practice, to be able to stay within your own creativity when your creative world feels like it’s no longer your own.

Explore where you get stuck, which step is easiest, which is hardest. It may surprise you. Then take actions to bring more attention to what’s missing.

And join me for a discussion on creative risk at my zoom book launch, Friday, November 10, 7:00 p.m. eastern, with author Allison Wyss. Register here to get the link and passcode to join us!

Over 700 past posts are available in my archives for this newsletter—lots of great tips, interviews, publishing info, and more. The archives are accessible to paid subscribers only, so if you want to join the fun, consider upgrading your subscription! It’s only $45 a year, a bargain for what you get. And I will thank you forever for helping me continue to write this every Friday.

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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 share your listing for three months.

Nigar Alam, Under the Tamarind Tree (Putnam/PRH, August release)

Cindy Angell Keeling, Dream City Dreaming (Petite Parasol Press, August release)

Patty Wetterling and Joy Baker, Dear Jacob: A Mother's Journey of Hope (Minnesota Historical Society Press, October release)

Robert Johns, O’Brien’s Broken Play (River Grove Books, October release)

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

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

I’m the author of 14 books in 3 genres. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue (Riverbed Press), was published on October 24. For twelve years, I wrote a weekly food column for the Los Angeles Times syndicate before moving to fiction. 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 a PEN/Faulkner and a Lambda Literary award in 2009. I’ve written Your Weekly Writing Exercise every Friday since 2008.

It's Here! A Special Birthday Gift for You Lovely Subscribers

I hope you’ve enjoyed my six-part series about what I learned during my book launch. It’s happening today. We’ve arrived at the celebration time. In future weeks, I’ll talk about the aftermath: how to keep your writing practice alive and well when your life is crazy, how to find the element of discovery and interior quiet again, how to start the next book.

If you haven’t already ordered my book, find it here in paperback, ebook, and audiobook. It’s a page-turner, say my advance readers. A complex sister story about a female aviator running from the law who searches for family and finds surprising truths about her past.

If you’ve been following my journey these past months, you know how much work it’s been to bring this book to bestseller status and keep it there. And now it’s out in the world and I’m asking: Did I do enough? What really worked, what felt the most authentic, what wore me out? We writers prepare for publication day for months, even years. Yet it can arrive with a sense of . . . well, anticlimax.

Heavy lifting is done. I’m feeling a routine now with the podcasts and interviews and bloggers sharing my book. I’m finishing up some giveaways and starting others. I have no idea how long to keep talking about this book, though. I’m already knee-deep in the next one. Yet I want to celebrate its advent into the world.

Parties stave off any sense of anticlimax. Writers don’t do this alone. It makes sense to share the celebration with those who helped get you here.

In-person party: Tonight, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Open Book, 1011 Washington Ave S, Minneapolis. We’ll have live jazz, good food and drink, wonderful writerly conversation with fellow author Kate St. Vincent Vogl. I’ll be signing books for sale by Next Chapter independent bookstore. Joining my former band members for a special song from the novel. More information here.

Virtual party: Friday, November 10, at 7:00 p.m. eastern, on Zoom. Allison Wyss, another favorite fellow author, will be discussing creative risk and asking me questions about how my book came through its passage of risk to publication and bestseller status. Register here to get the link.

Photo by Kira auf der Heide on Unsplash

Because it’s my book’s birthday, here’s my gift to you. It’s an excerpt from my novel, the opening chapter where Red Nelson, a female aviator on the run from the law, seeking lost family, crashes her plane into remote Panther Gorge in the Adirondack mountains of New York State.

I hope it keeps you on the edge of your seat!

A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue by Mary Carroll Moore excerpt: Chapter 1

You're Invited! My Book Launch Party at Open Book, Minneapolis

Twin Cities friends and anyone within driving distance: I hope you’ll join me tomorrow night for my book launch party, starting at 6:30 p.m. at Open Book (home of the Loft Literary Center, which I adore).

Tuesday, October 24, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Open Book, 1011 S Washington Ave, Minneapolis, MN 55415

I’ll be in conversation onstage with the marvelous Kate St Vincent Vogl, who has some very interesting questions to ask about how this book happened. JazzLove, the talented piano-voice duo of Emma Laurence and Alejandro Prieto, will perform before and after, while you enjoy incredible appetizers and beverages.

Two of my former band members (yes, I was in a band!) will perform a song from the novel—and I’ll join them for a cameo. (Talk about risk and fun combined!)

After all this excitement, and more food and drink, I’ll be signing books. Copies of my novel are for sale, thanks to Next Chapter indie bookstore in St. Paul. (Come support them too!)

Please join us. It’ll be quite the birthday party.

Coming in November: "First Sunday" Q&A for Paid Subscribers

Thank you to all who took advantage of my October sale and signed up to be a paid subscriber. Over 50 of you said how much this weekly newsletter means to you and how happy you are to support its continuation. As a thank you, you’ll also be receiving my new “First Sunday” newsletter, starting in November.

“First Sunday” answers questions about writing and publishing from past students and readers. Here’s a taste of what we’ll be discussing in November.

This writer speaks very honestly about a topic familiar to all of us: rejection.

Q: I’ve been writing for years and I’m published too, but my ability to handle the more difficult aspects of writing and publishing isn’t getting stronger, with experience, as you’d expect. In fact, I find myself more sensitive to rejection than ever.

I also have trouble with moving through stuck places in my writing. For instance, if I’m trying a new skill and I just hate what I’m coming up with.

What are some tips or ways you’ve used to move through slack periods and discouragement?

Discouragement is something all creative people must live through, and create in spite of, but it’s not a simple process. I’ll share specifics I’ve learned about managing creative tension, how to take steps forward even when your writing life seems stalled or in reverse, and how to keep your promise to yourself creatively with certain routines that build stamina and confidence.

“First Sunday” Q&A newsletters are my thank you to paid subscribers of this newsletter.

Consider subscribing this week, before my October discount ends.

A yearly subscription costs $45 (for 52 newsletters! less than a buck apiece to inspire your writing each week). With the 20% off it becomes a ridiculous $36 for 12 months. What else could you spend $36 a year on and get weekly inspiration, ideas, and community for your writing?

Upgrade now with 20 % off!

As a paid subscriber, you get:

Your Weekly Writing Exercise every Friday, as usual, with its great ideas, interviews, tips to keep your writing practice alive and well, help to get your books out in the world successfully, and ways to deepen your understanding of why you write

access to ALL the archives of this newsletter, over 700 of them going back to 2008. Substack keeps only the most recent two months available for free subscribers, but you will get them all when you upgrade. Think of it as a marvelous online library of writing inspiration! (Only available to paid subscribers)

the NEW Sunday Q&A starting in November, answering your writing and publishing questions (Only available to paid subscribers)

In addition, paid subscribers get my sincere thanks for acknowledging the time and effort and creativity I spend each week on these newsletters—often many hours! I love writing these, searching my own writing life for what might inspire yours, and your paid subscription tells me, It’s worth it.

Thank you for caring about writing and the creative life! I’m grateful to spend this time with you each week.

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