Mary Carroll Moore's Blog, page 3

Activities of Persistence--What Keeps Us Writing

What’s new in my writing room: My latest novel, Last Bets, was selected in December for Kirkus Reviews' Top 100 Best Indie Books of the Year! Kirkus reviews thousands of indie books, and less than 1% receive a coveted starred review (which mine did). Of those, only 100 are selected across all genres for the “Best of” list. Kirkus is (to many) the Michelin Guide to industry book reviews. A star is like a Michelin three star award. A Best of is way beyond! I’m humbled, stunned, delighted. Grateful to all who helped me get here.

Photo by Jonas Jacobsson on Unsplash

The week my first novel was finally published, after nine years of hard work and rejections, I took a break to assess where I’d come and what brought me to this point.

I tracked back from a year before, when I got the acceptance call from my publisher. Then I tracked further, way back to the week I began writing the first parts of the novel. It happened nine years ago while vacationing at a lakeside cabin with friends.

I wanted to give myself the acknowledgement of such hard work. I don’t know that we do that very often. We’re propelled into marketing, riding the surge of excitement (and often anxiety) that accompanies a release. But I forced myself to disengage from that and reflect.

I listed my activities of persistence--what it took to finish it.

1. I hired two coaches

2. I went to five series of writing classes

3. I enrolled in two years of an MFA program

4. I joined three writers' groups

5. I wrote every day for many months

6. I found a great weekly writing partner

All this helped. But in the end, it got finished--and published--because of one small writing exercise, which I'll explain below.

Belief and Persistence

I've worked with thousands of book writers as an editor and coach. Many finish their books. Some don't. They are sometimes very talented writers with great stories to tell. Stopping mid-process puzzled me. But as I worked with more writers, I learned how persistence shapes creative work. How book writers need to keep going, even when the going is very tough.

I learned to value persistence and a healthy belief in oneself and one's creative expression. Unless you love your writing, who will?

This isn't to say you are ego-driven. You acknowledge what's not working as well as what is. But to constantly doubt, that's dangerous. That will lead to endless revising, endless questioning, and not holding your published book in your hands.

Belief Boosting

About two years before that first novel was published, I was walking back from morning workshopping session with a fellow MFA student. The feedback that day was beyond discouraging about this novel manuscript. I valued the comments but it left me stunned and rather hopeless that day.

"I'll never finish this," I told my friend. I was quite certain. "I'm not meant to. I don't have it in me."

"Nonsense," she said. "You'll finish and you'll publish. It's a good story. It just needs your love." She gave me the exercise I’m sharing with you today.

She told me to go back to my dorm room and start a list of anything I liked about the book so far. Keep the ongoing list in my writing notebook. Add to it, look at it as a reminder. Like a Valentine card to my emerging creative work, it would help me remember to love it.

Here's what I wrote that day:

Molly (the main character)

Zoe (her best friend)

when they first meet at the Boat House (the local dive)

Chad's glasses

the still life painting

how Molly felt driving the motorboat that morning

the lake at sunrise

This exercise reversed my discouragement. I went back to work. I regained my persistence and belief. Since that day, I added to my list as I learned more about my book and fell in love with it again.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Start a list about your writing.

Here are some prompts:

What do you especially love about it, believe in?

What gives you the persistence to keep going?

What stops you?

What might you change to allow more momentum and constancy in your writing practice?

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 or 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.)

N.J. Mastro, Solitary Walker: A Novel of Mary Wollstonecraft (Black Rose Writing), February 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), was published in April, after becoming an Amazon bestseller during pre-orders. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, was published in October 2023 and also became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders. 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.at. Click here to read Molly and Zoe's story.

Two Exercises to Help You Stay Hooked on Your Writing This Week

What’s new in my writing room: My latest novel, Last Bets, was selected in December for Kirkus Reviews' Top 100 Best Indie Books of the Year! Kirkus reviews thousands of indie books, and less than 1% receive a coveted starred review (which mine did). Of those, only 100 are selected across all genres for the “Best of” list. Kirkus is (to many) the Michelin Guide to industry book reviews. A star is like a Michelin three star award. A Best of is way beyond! I’m humbled, stunned, delighted. Grateful to all who helped me get here.

Photo by Grant Durr on Unsplash

After fifteen books, I know all about falling out of love with my own writing. I recognize my own distractions, stall-outs, and mind tricks that keep me away from the page.

I've created a thousand exercises and ways to combat this, accept it, keep writing anyway.

This week I discovered an unusual exercise that appears to be complete procrastination--yet it’s not. It has worked so well, I wanted to share it with you.

Writing a book is more of a marriage than a date. You're in it for the long (er) haul. You need to stay hooked. Or else one of you--probably the book--will pull a Thelma and Louise.

Acedia --A New Take on Procrastination

As writers, we try different exploratory exercises designed to give the writer a new perspective on the book. Two weeks ago, I introduced an exercise called the River Chart, especially effective because it looks like procrastination at first glance. It works because it calms the Inner Critic, who is ever alert to risk on the page and keeping you safe.

The River Chart started with a word I learned many years ago from writer Kathleen Norris, author of Acedia and Me: A Marriage, Monks, and the Writer's Life.

Acedia is a state of boredom, melancholia, distance, and distraction, a "slothful, soul-weary indifference" that is different from depression. It means a lack of will. Not wanting, not caring, even.

I see it as a kind of creative exhaustion. Something well known by monastics, according to Norris. And for writers, it can happen when we give up hope or fall out of love with our beloved books. We stop bringing flowers or even calling. We let the dust accumulate and distract ourselves away from this all-important relationship.

Sometimes we think we are procrastinating, but maybe not. Maybe we have just fallen into a state of acedia.

And the remedies, as I discovered, are often different than just pushing ourselves to perform again. How can you push when the will is gone? Maybe it requires a deeper look at the problem.

Watering Dead Wood with Tears

Norris shares the story of an abba who gave a piece of dry wood to one of his followers and told him to water it until the wood bore fruit. Norris comments on how cruel this seemed to her, yet in nurturing parts of her own life over the years, she has often found herself "watering dead wood with tears, and with very little hope." She says, "I have also been astonished by how those tears have allowed life to emerge out of what has seemed dead."

I run into acedia when I have hit a new skill to practice, and suddenly I feel very inadequate. Or I realize a character in my novel is still not coming alive on the page, and I have no idea how to make it so.

Norris suggests we must water our "dead wood" of a story to allow it to grow again.

River (Chart) Full of Tears

To recap the steps I gave in my post two weeks ago, here’s how the River Chart exercise works.

I drew a snaking river.

I made a list of the important entries and exits in my story, any stages where the momentum of the story accelerates, for example.

Then I looked at the balance of placement of these key moments. Were they packed together, leaving gaps of nothing happening? Could the placement be changed?

Then I asked what I actually wanted from each part of the journey of the story, where I was now with writing it and what I imagined it would’ve become.

No surprise, I was deep in acedia. It all bored me. I wanted to stop the whole process and jettison the story.

At that time, I was also reading a book by Martha Beck, Finding Your Way in a Wild New World. Beck suggests an exercise about conscious metaphor: What images drew me (in the room where I sat) and what might they have to tell me about why I was out of love with my story?

Fairly radical idea. But I went with it. And the idea grew as I played with it.

Anything to get more spark, you know?

I listed some weird items. A fireplace poker, a woven stool, the yellow kitchen shelf. I let my intense focus drift away and I imagined what these items could represent, if they were images in my book journey. It was as if I learned a new language, in the process, and I came out with the reverse of what I expected.

My book wanted me to take more time, go slower. "But we're almost at the finish line!" I cried. "We need to get to know each other even more," it replied.

I thought back to all the good feedback I've gotten from readers I respect, all the techniques I've tried: switching to different viewpoints, adding new characters, changing the plot, enhancing the setting, altering pacing and theme. I've worked hard, harder than I imagined I could. Now the book wanted more getting-to-know-you time?

I had confused "blahs" with procrastination. As I worked deeper into the River Chart exercise, I learned how pushing hard can also be procrastination, if I am avoiding looking deeper into the book. Like a frenetic holiday when a good talk is what's really needed, activity isn't always the answer. Stepping back and pondering the big picture was an antidote. A spa weekend with my beloved.

Acedia had visited because, in my effort to polish sentences, I had distanced myself from the meaningful element in my novel. My dead wood was evident. The River Chart pointed to places that no longer meant anything to me, that had to be enlivened again or eliminated.

It would be great if editors and readers could help find the meaning of your book for you. Nobody but the writer can find the message in her or his manuscript. Why? Because the message has to come from the writer's deepest places, or it feels "tacked on" and artificial.

Writing this story and doing this exercise caused me to go to the far ends of my safety zone--and beyond. I wondered what would take me to this same kind of risk in my story about the missing pilot.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Are you experiencing acedia with your beloved book? Is there a kind of spiritual torpor or apathy, lack of care about your project and your creativity?

Take a rest break from it and chart its river—its journey. See where you wanted to end up and where you've changed direction without realizing it.

This week, look at what you are calling procrastination. See if it's actually a clue to falling back in love with your story?

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 or 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.)

N.J. Mastro, Solitary Walker: A Novel of Mary Wollstonecraft (Black Rose Writing), February 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), was published in April, after becoming an Amazon bestseller during pre-orders. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, was published in October 2023 and also became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders. 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.lling back in love with your story.

Long View and Short View

What’s new in my writing room: My latest novel, Last Bets, was selected in December for Kirkus Reviews' Top 100 Best Indie Books of the Year! Kirkus reviews thousands of indie books, and less than 1% receive a coveted starred review (which mine did). Of those, only 100 are selected across all genres for the “Best of” list. Kirkus is (to many) the Michelin Guide to industry book reviews. A star is like a Michelin three star award. A Best of is way beyond! I’m humbled, stunned, delighted. Grateful to all who helped me get here.

Photo by Gary Yost on Unsplash

When you’re writing a book, you have to simultaneously hover over the forest, while you're noticing the tiny leaves of each tree. Being in two places at once, you must keep in mind your overall book’s focus and structure, how you want it to come together--at the same time as you work on a tiny detail of one scene or chapter.

It’s often hard to balance these two viewpoints well. Most new book writers
can’t.

When I began writing and publishing books, I was able to easily see the chapter I was working on, down to the fine-tuning of one step of one theory or the tiny gesture a character makes in one particular scene.

It was much harder for me to move to the long view: see how this particular particle of writing fit in the book as a whole. Where would it best be placed to engage a reader? Back then, my balancing handicap didn't matter. I was lucky enough to begin publishing back in the days when there were editors at the publishing houses who assumed this job. They helped a writer monitor the long view by keeping in mind the reader, the reader's experience of the book as a whole, and how all the parts made up that whole.

As the writer, I was the "talent" (they actually used to call it that!). I was responsible for creating good writing in each section of each book. My editor, in his lofty treehouse, would take care of the bigger picture.

Things have changed in publishing for many writers today. Books need to be in good shape before they are submitted anywhere--to agent, to small press, to contest, to publisher. So we writers are faced with a task we didn't have to learn back then: we must be masters at what CD Baby creator Derek Sivers called "future-focus" and "present-focus."

We must balance the long view and the short view in our manuscripts.

Useful Tools for Long View/Short View Balancing

My favorite tool for refining the skill of long view, or future-focus, is the storyboard.

My favorite tool for developing present-focus is the brainstorming list of topics, which generate ideas for free writes or "islands" if you maintain a solid writing habit.

Storyboards are not foreign to those in publishing. They are used by many publishers to design sequence in a book that will be created in house. I learned about storyboards two decades ago and use them in my workshops, classes, and all the books I write. I've never grown to love them, as some do, but I depend on their power to pull me into future focus, that long view of my manuscript. They let me see the forest above the trees.

My storyboards are vital maps of each book I write. Without a working map, a writer is severely limited. She is stuck in present focus, the short view. This is truly a fun place to reside, but it also can capture you unconsciously in an endless loop. You produce many small bits but they never become a whole, a real book.

Some writers love playing with dramatic scenes or “islands,” but balk at systems. This kind of writer is stuck in the short view. They aren't able to gain the overview of how these “islands” line up into chapters,and eventually the entire mess gets overwhelming. Either the book will be abandoned, the writer will decide they are more cut out for easier-to-manage short stories or essays, or the writer will finally force herself into a long view--learn to map her manuscript.

What about the opposite tendency? This exists too. A writer can equally get stuck in future-focus. Do you love, love, love storyboarding, make countless outlines and charts, line up ideas on index cards, but don't do much actual writing?

When I talk with writers who adore storyboarding and admit that the actual writing time feels, well, messy, my inner alarm bells go off. This writer has been hovering far above the trees way too long. Yes, writing process is certainly not as tidy and controlled as the beautiful diagrams that line the walls of your writing room, but writing is organic. And it's important to allow equal space for the organic as well as the planned when you're writing a book.

So be wary of getting so hooked into the big picture of what your book could become, that you aren’t willing to do the work that will let it grow into that picture.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

This week's exercise allows you to explore the two views, and see what you might need to balance in yourself.

1. Read the article on future-focus and present-focus by Derek Sivers, which is here. See if it changes your point of view about where you come from, with your book.

2. Set a timer for 10 minutes and write about your like or dislike of these two aspects of book-writing: the big picture (i.e., organizing your writing into a storyboard, outline, or other future-focused system) and the short view (i,e., writing "islands" or freewrites, creating your book loosely).

3. What did you learn? This week, ask yourself how you could begin to adjust any imbalance.

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 or 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.)

N.J. Mastro, Solitary Walker: A Novel of Mary Wollstonecraft (Black Rose Writing), February 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), was published in April, after becoming an Amazon bestseller during pre-orders. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, was published in October 2023 and also became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders. 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.

Using a River Chart to Map the "Flow" of Your Book

What’s new in my writing room: My latest novel, Last Bets, was selected in December for Kirkus Reviews' Top 100 Best Indie Books of the Year! Kirkus reviews thousands of indie books, and less than 1% receive a coveted starred review (which mine did). Of those, only 100 are selected across all genres for the “Best of” list. Kirkus is (to many) the Michelin Guide to industry book reviews. A star is like a Michelin three star award. A Best of is way beyond! I’m humbled, stunned, delighted. Grateful to all who helped me get here.

Photo by Dušan veverkolog on Unsplash

One rainy Saturday, I was teaching at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. Outside, trees were in full leaf, lilacs are blooming, signs of spring are everywhere, unheard of in Minnesota in late April. But because of the rain, my class of 25 writers was content to be indoors.

They'd been working on their books all morning. After lunch, I sent them off to draw the river that is their book.

We don’t usually draw in a writing class but viewing a book as a drawn river —with points of entry or exit—is an easy way to let me imagine the story as a journey. This may be the way your reader will view it, but it’s surprising how many writers feel unable to get this overview of their story. There are too many words, honestly. Too many pages.

Drawing the river is one way I gain this overview in my own work.

River chart steps

The steps are simple:

Make a list of the main entry and exit points in your story—major things happening.

Draw a river on a piece of paper (you can do this virtually but it somehow helps to draw it by hand, maybe because it engages a different part of the brain).

Mark the main points from your list at intervals on the river, spacing them as they occur.

Look at the balance of empty spaces and events. Are they crowded together on one section of the river leaving the rest without much happening?

The main thing you get to see, when you draw your story as a river, is which part of the river makes the most engaging focus. You get to look at the whole, the flow of it, and see what stands out.

I also ask myself these questions:

What part stands out to me?

What part might stand out to the reader?

What’s the most interesting landscape the river passes through?

That leads to my most important question: What content is most relevant to the story I want to tell? Because the river chart often lets me see, very clearly, where I’ve deviated from the story I really want to tell.

So let’s look at the three parts of story creation: content, structure, and language. Assessing the success of each part sometimes tells you where you need to revise.

Part One: Content

Choosing content is a basic first step in crafting a manuscript, no matter what the genre. Memoirists look at the content of their lives, the events that happened, and try to select those with the most impact. While memoirists work from true events, novelists create story from fictional ones, but in the same manner--what engages the reader most easily? Nonfiction writers also do this. I may be writing a book on learning to play the piano, but the first essential question is What do I include and what do I omit?

Content is the outer story, the facts or events your book revolves around. You must have content, dramatic and engaging moments, to create any momentum. To keep us reading. A river always moves.

How do you begin gathering content?

You may have scenes written, you may have journal entries, you may have ideas jotted down. Writers who attend my book-writing workshops learn about crafting these scenes, free writes, or "islands" as unlinked sections of writing, free from any overall structure or organization.

I learned this method when I was writing my fifth book. It's used by many writers because it allows a great amount of creative flow, unimpeded by writer's block. We write content and don't worry yet about the structure, a very freeing experience for the creative self.

But there comes a time when the writing accumulates, the scenes grow, the islands get impossible to keep track of, because there are so many. A next step is needed.

If the writer doesn't begin to structure the content, this is where the writing stalls out.

Part Two: Structure

Why not structure first? Why do I recommend accumulating content before starting to organize it? Why not use an outline?

As a writer, I've written books from outline and books from the content/structure method I'm a big fan of now. But as an editor, I've worked with way too many book outlines that needed serious rearranging to be publication worthy.

It really depends on the writer's skill at seeing "inner story." Most of us can't--or we only see a shallow version of it when we're writing our book's initial content. If this is true for you, an outline may limit you from taking necessary detours--and this is sad, because such sidetracks surface unexpected meaning that you don't plan for. But working without an outline requires you to give up control of the direction of your story. It becomes more organic--and actually more fun to write.

I've seen too many writers get stuck because what's next to write from the outline isn't what's burning to be written. So I advise waiting to structure until there is content written.

Study other writers you admire, to learn how to structure your own story. Select two pages from a book you love. Read it as a writer, looking at the arrangement of elements on these pages--what choices did the writer make? What effect did it bring to you, the reader? You can learn a lot about how the "inner story" conveys the emotion.

So when you work with structuring your own story, look at the pieces you've written and first imagine the effect you want to create from them. Then arrange them toward that effect.

Part Three: Language

Language is the intangible, the thing you can't go after directly. It's all about voice and tone, the rhythm of the writing. It's where the book's deeper message emerges almost organically.

Good content combines with good structuring, an interesting story with an arrangement that provides a strong reaction in a reader. The last step is adjusting the language to enhance that reaction. As you do this more and more, your unique voice will emerge.

Editing with These Three Steps

When we've drafted the manuscript, working through these three steps of content, structure, and language, there comes the crafting time. We need to edit the manuscript and make sure that each of these three is working in harmony with the others. The story has integrity and reads as a whole experience.

You review the content--does the story you're telling have enough happening, enough dramatic action, enough important information?

You review the structure or organization of this content, asking yourself where you want the greatest emotional impact on the reader. Does your arrangement of islands achieve this?

You review the language--how is the pacing, the sentence length, the word choice that you're using? Does the language of tense dramatic moments reflect this tension?

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Three to try this week, if you’re game.

Ask yourself which step you're on: are you working with content, gathering pieces of writing for your book? Are you beginning to structure that writing, arrange it for the impact you're after? Do you have your manuscript completely drafted, ready for language development?

Choose one of the exercises below, whichever one matches your particular step in the river journey, and try it this week.

Content: Make a list of topics for your book. Brainstorm anything that might be interesting to include--even if you can't imagine how it would fit. If you're drawn to write about it, follow that nudge. Try to gather 25 topics on your list. Most of these should be outer events, to provide dramatic action, but they can also be descriptions of a place, person, thing.

Structure: Take 5 scenes or islands you've written, that seem to fit together and might become a chapter. Letting go of chronology for a moment, play with different arrangements of these 5. What if you started with the most dramatic one? What would still need to be written to make good transitions between them?

Language: Print out one of your finished chapters, double-spaced. Lay the pages on a table so you can see all of them. Squint and look for the balance of white space and dense text. Where is there too much of either? Now read that section. How can you bring in the missing element to balance the pacing?

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 or 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.)

N.J. Mastro, Solitary Walker: A Novel of Mary Wollstonecraft (Black Rose Writing), February 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), was published in April, after becoming an Amazon bestseller during pre-orders. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, was published in October 2023 and also became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders. 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 from Both Sides of the Brain--Some New Discoveries

What’s new in my writing room: My latest novel, Last Bets, was selected in December for Kirkus Reviews' Top 100 Best Indie Books of the Year! Kirkus reviews thousands of indie books, and less than 1% receive a coveted starred review (which mine did). Of those, only 100 are selected across all genres for the “Best of” list. Kirkus is (to many) the Michelin Guide to industry book reviews. A star is like a Michelin three star award. A Best of is way beyond! I’m humbled, stunned, delighted. Grateful to all who helped me get here.

Photo by Júnior Ferreira on Unsplash

Jess was a smart and polished lawyer who was a dedicated student in my writing classes many years ago. After writing hundreds of law briefs and legal articles, she began attempting a novel.

It was a love story. She crafted a hundred pages before she signed up for my writing class. A hundred pages that felt like a slog. She hated what she’d written so far.

She’d done all the right things. She read my book, Your Book Starts Here, then designed a storyboard and chapters created from a brainstorming list of topics she wanted to explore in the novel. She set a time each day to write and kept to the discipline.

But the writing was linear, factual, and lawyer-like. Not what you’d expect for a love story. When I read her draft, it felt as if she’d written a law brief then plugged in regular periods of romance. Her dry language sparked no emotion in me as a reader. And obviously, Jess herself was uninspired by it.

Jess was persistent, committed to learning the steps to craft a good story. She knew she had a great book idea—and I agreed. But she was only listening to one side of her brain. And we need both to write.

Sides of the brain

I’m no neuroscientist but I love reading the research about how our creative selves work—or get stalled out. We have a linear and a random side, and most of us lean towards one or the other naturally. Jess was super developed on the linear side, what some call the left brain. I’m over simplifying this, but it’s a useful model to understand what Jess discovered as she taught herself how to write a love story—and what I learned from her.

I could see right away that Jess could use training in listening to the non linear side of her brain, but this was surprisingly hard for her. It bucked her natural preference for logic and analysis, for telling.

So we brainstormed a plan. Here’s the list of assignments I gave her.

Pay a lot of attention to the senses—taste, touch, sound, smell, sight

Go on solo outings to places inspiring these senses and take notes on what

you see, smell, touch

Begin a touch journal—jot down what things feel like

Read novels and short stories that are strong in images

Watch romantic movies instead of the documentaries you prefer

Begin having fresh flowers in the house and eating home-cooked food

Take long walks and afterward write down favorite images

Listen to music—different kinds than you usually listen to

Jess was dubious. She cited no time for walks, music, flowers. She said I was asking her to change her life.

Brain training

A wonderful new book by sociologist and writer Martha Beck, Beyond Anxiety, talks about when Beck met neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor, author of My Stroke of Insight. In this short but stunning memoir, Dr. Taylor reveals how after a sudden left-brain stroke shut down her left brain, she learned what it was like to operate just from the right brain.

For hours after her stroke, Dr. Taylor was aware only of what the right brain delivers--sensory details, images, wholeness of being. In the bliss of right-brain beingness, she was barely able to save her own life.

Her left brain, which is home to ordered, logical thinking—the kind Jess was so used to, the kind necessary to pick up a phone and call 911—had been all but annihilated by the stroke. It would take years of rehab to bring it back to life. Dr. Taylor had to learn all over again how to read, to add, to make decisions.

This dramatic experience of losing her left-brain functions changed Taylor’s entire approach to living. She slowed down, did less, but much to her surprise found she enjoyed life more.

As Taylor says, we tend to use more of one side of our brains. We need both. Beck goes even further, educating us on how to deliberately change our way of working with these different sides of the brain, so we can be both more relaxed and more creative.

Both sides make a book

We often miss the full potential of our writing journey by not tapping into the right brain, the side I was trying to introduce to my student Jess. If manuscripts develop primarily from the voice of our dominant hemisphere, in Jess’s case the left, the journey will be full of blind spots and unnecessary roadblocks.

Neither the linear left brain nor the image-rich right brain can create a complete book by themselves. Using the whole creative self delivers both coherent structure and emotional engagement. Both sides working in concert turn every book into a more complete vision.

Jess took up the challenge of freeing her right brain. The newly embraced creative self began to speak up. Her writing changed. Novel scenes, very good ones that packed an emotional punch, emerged.

I didn’t predict the next event, but I wasn’t surprised. Jess fell in love. She sold her practice, and she and her lover moved to another country. Falling in love is very much a right-brain activity. A person in love suddenly appreciates detail, especially sensory detail. Love changes your percep­tions about everything.

Which side do you favor?

As writers our first task is discover which side is taking up the most room in our creative process. Asking good questions can help you learn which side you are favoring, and which you are ignoring.

If you are naturally ordered in your writing, ask ques­tions that propel you or your character into awareness of senses, which comes from the right brain:

What did it smell like?

What sounds did you/she/he hear?

What time of day was it?

If you tend toward the meandering and random, ask questions that track time sequence or logic, which comes from the left:

What happened right before this?

What will up the stakes right now?

What could happen next?

Our second task is to train ourselves to use both, to switch readily between them, using our whole creative selves and making our books publishable.

If your writing is a wild animal

I’ve also worked with writers who are polar opposites from Jess. “My material is way too emotional to access all the time,” said a new memoirist. “It’s a wild animal; I have to keep it contained.”

A skilled essayist and mother of three told me she loves to write random, but she stays in her left brain to survive. “If I let myself get dreamy, I get instant chaos at home. I want to write this book but not if it means giving up control of the rest of my life!”

Please know that working with your non-dominant brain is not about giving up what you do best. It’s about open­ing up to more, trusting the part of your creative self that gets less air time.

If you’re naturally organized, keep the left-brain control, the structure—it’s essential. Just add in the beauty your nonlinear right-brain self can contribute.

If you’re one of the rare right-brain dominant, then you will need to learn to embrace a structured writing system that can help bring order to your freewheeling words.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

1. Find an event from your childhood that evoked strong emotion.

2. Write about it for 20 minutes, using the sense of sound as much as possible.

3. Pause and close your eyes. Briefly scan your physical body for any sensations that might have arisen as you wrote—are you feeling a bit dizzy, nauseous, euphoric? Do you have a buzzing feeling in your head or a tightness in your throat? Write about your present-time physical body sensations for a few minutes.

4. Now go back to the childhood memory and continue writing, using the sense of smell.

Share your thoughts, ideas, questions, and reactions below.

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 or 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.)

Mary Beth Spray, Imprint: A Woman’s Journey from Trauma to Freedom (Beaver’s Pond Press), December release

N.J. Mastro, Solitary Walker: A Novel of Mary Wollstonecraft (Black Rose Writing), February 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), was published in April, after becoming an Amazon bestseller during pre-orders. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue (Riverbed Press), was published in October 2023 also and became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders. 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. 5. What differences do you perceive in the second writing session?

Creative Tension: How It Affects Your Writing Momentum

What’s new in my writing room: My latest novel, Last Bets, was selected in December for Kirkus Reviews' Top 100 Best Indie Books of the Year! Kirkus reviews thousands of indie books, and less than 1% receive a coveted starred review (which mine did). Of those, only 100 are selected across all genres for the “Best of” list. Kirkus is (to many) the Michelin Guide to industry book reviews. A star is like a Michelin three star award. A Best of is way beyond! I’m humbled, stunned, delighted. Grateful to all who helped me get here.

Photo by Eric Prouzet on Unsplash

i was sitting with a good friend, a fellow writer, and we talked about her latest story-in-progress. I knew she felt itchy about it. I could see the signs of restlessness and insecurity about how it was going with this story. And I could almost predict her next question.

“Can I show you a little? Just so you can tell me if what I’m trying makes sense to someone else?”

We know each other well. Well enough that I know not to automatically say yes, agree to reading some of her draft, because I don’t really know what she wants at this early stage. Early-stage drafts are extremely vulnerable to even the slightest critique, even if you’re an experienced writer.

It would be hard for me to say anything but, “Sure, keep going,” which might have been just right for her. I’ve done this before, and I don’t even have to read the draft to know this—she’s always on track with her ideas.

But there was something in the restless way she couldn’t meet my eyes, and I suspected it was all about creative tension.

Creative tension

When we begin a new story or piece of writing, there’s a gradual building of creative tension that keeps us excited and engaged. I liken it to a balloon slowly being filled with air. As it inflates, it lifts.

The piece gets worked on, dreamed about, struggled with. More air fills the balloon. The piece expands and grows, gets bigger and bigger, starts to lift off because of this creative tension sustaining it.

If you keep building it, the accumulated creative tension will provide enough momentum to finish the piece. This may be one reason many professional writers are super careful about talking specifics about their current project. They don’t want to lose that momentum. They want to stay in the dream, keep thinking about the piece, working on it in their minds when they’re not writing, gain energy to get back to it after any break.

As a teacher, I learned how dangerous it was to break the creative tension a writer is building. Even a tiny amount of critical feedback, as I said above, can get someone totally stuck.

Questions

One way to engage but not break the creative tension is to ask questions. So I asked my friend about where she felt stuck, why she wanted to have other eyes on the story at this point, what she thought was missing. Mostly, I wanted to help her keep going.

But I could tell she wasn’t satisfied when we said goodbye.

She ended up taking the draft to her writer’s group. Who gave her plenty of feedback. So much so, she stopped working on the story altogether. This isn’t unusual. My friend is well published. She knows better than to give in to the restlessness to ask for critical feedback when a piece of writing is still gestating.

I would say one of the biggest dangers to derailing a writing practice is this restlessness, this need for early reassurance. Can you hear the Pffsstttt of all that gathered creative energy escaping into the atmosphere? Can you imagine how hard she’ll have to work to get it back?

I can. I’ve been there soooo often myself. Witnessed it even more often with friends and colleagues.

Sometimes I think that finishing a book or writing project depends mostly on that build-up of creative tension. It’s a kind of fuel that lets you keep writing.

Another view

Another working writer always felt ashamed of his lack of progress when we reviewed goals each January. He had lots of good reasons for not writing: Not enough time. Not enough energy for a real writing life. No space in the house to write. Printer or laptop or both are acting up. Kids are having an awful month in school. Work is crazy too.

All real. He’s not making anything up.

Then I chatted with other writers who juggled the same crazy life challenges. But they managed to write anyway. What’s the difference?

I used to think that the difference between those who got writing done and those who rarely did was some kind of inborn discipline. Something a bit magical inside. Now I know it’s the ability to build and hold this creative tension.

How to find your optimum creative pressure

It’s all about finding your point of optimum creative pressure. How do you do this? By tracking two things: when you begin to get restless, bored, or distracted as you’re writing and when you get the urge to show your writing to someone for feedback.

Both are totally natural parts of writing practice, but so often we let them rule us instead of using them as clues.

Your job is to find the ideal amount of pressure you need to sustain to keep you creating. Each of us it very different.

I find myself able to write for a few hours before I start to feel ancy. I know this about my writing practice now, so I plan to stop my writing session just before that happens. Why? Because it keeps the optimum pressure. I’ll leave the writing with an intense desire to get back to it. If I write too long, I start to lose my enthusiasm and energy. The pressure declines.

I also keep track of when I have the urge to get feedback—and why. What was I working on just as I felt that urge? Usually it’s a risky idea I’m trying. Or I feel I’m repeating myself (often because I’ve worked too long and started to mess with the beautiful creative tension I’ve built).

Not too much, not too little.

You know about pressure. Everyone feels it these days. Lots coming from outside us, much from inside too. This is the good kind, the creative stuff that keeps you going. It’s so worthwhile, to spend time this week figuring out your optimum and how to maintain it.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

This exercise is one I practice over time, but you can start this week. it has two parts; you can do one or both. Each will help you build the creative tension muscle.

Exercise 1: Noticing

Begin to track and make note of whenever you get restless when you’re writing. Do you last an hour before you start to get bored and start to drift to other things? Or do you have a word count that is your optimum for a writing session?

When that occurs, begin stopping just before you reach it. Like if you’re following the #1000words plan, stop when you’re at around 950 words for that writing session. Or if you do well with about two hours, set your phone alarm to stop you ten minutes before the second hour is up.

Exercise 2: Needing reassurance

We all need reassurance, but it’s a great habit to learn when this need surfaces and why. For me, it’s usually when I am taking a risk and I get uncomfortable.

Begin to notice whenever you have the nudge to share your writing with anyone—your spouse or partner, your kids, your mom or dad, your colleague, your writing friends or group. Take a minute and ask yourself why, specifically, you crave feedback at that moment. Most of us secretly want others to love what we’re attempting. Nothing wrong with that—but often the urge is poorly timed.

Begin to notice these aspects of your creative life and work with them more consciously. Knowing your tendencies can help you keep the creative tension building so you can stay the course.

Shout Out!

A hearty shout out to these writing friends and former students who are publishing their books! I encourage you to pre-order or 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.)

Mary Beth Spray, Imprint: A Woman’s Journey from Trauma to Freedom (Beaver’s Pond Press), December release

N.J. Mastro, Solitary Walker: A Novel of Mary Wollstonecraft (Black Rose Writing), February 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), was published in April, after becoming an Amazon bestseller during pre-orders. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue (Riverbed Press), was published in October 2023 also and became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders. 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.

What It Costs to Be a Working Writer, Part 2: Time

A two-part series about what we spend and what time we offer to our writing lives, how to do an annual review, and what to do with what you discover.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

I am still wrapping up my year-end assessment of my writing business, so if you consider yourself a writer in business for your writing life, these two posts are for you.

Part 1, from last Friday, discusses the money we spend on our writing lives, specifically what I spent on mine in 2024, and what worked or didn’t. I was grateful to take time for this assessment, because the flurry of publication and marketing left no energy for it, and I was getting uneasy with money going out each month for subscriptions I no longer wanted.

The other half of my assessment explores the effort part of our business. The actual work, the hours we devote, and what exactly we spend time on to keep our writing life going.

I think of this as business maintenance. But it also includes the work of querying or submitting, the maintenance of equipment, correspondence, posting a newsletter or updating a website, and research for the business (as opposed to research for a writing project).

Anything that doesn’t have us putting words on the page towards our writing goals is part of the business side of being a writer.

Again, I’ll recommend Jane Friedman’s classic guide to being a writer as a businessperson: The Business of Being a Writer. Jane says it all so well. Worth a look! And Kerstin Martin’s Calm Business program, if you want a different approach than harried.

Inventorying your time

I trust that if you’re reading this, the bulk of your creative time is spent on your creative project—your book, your story, your essay, whatever you’re making from the heart and soul of a writer. That’s the way it should be.

Maintaining a business is important, because it’s a structure that supports your creative flow. But it should never take up all your time. Writers need to write.

It’s insidious, though. The maintenance of a writing life can slowly take over your available writing time. Say your printer goes on the blink. Suddenly, you’re running to get a new printer, finding someone to fix the old one, researching your options. That can eat away an entire writing session or more.

Or you commit to blurbing a book because a good friend asked you. I love supporting other writers, especially debut authors, and I enjoy blurbing, but I’ve had to be careful about how many I agree to do. Just reading the manuscript alone can take days. Others have blurbed for me, and I believe in paying that forward and back, but not if it sucks away all my energy for my own writing.

My goal is writing every day. Or at least most days. I don’t feel right in myself if I miss this because business maintenance or a commitment to someone else takes over. I need to write because it feeds me, uplifts me, makes the world seem OK.

But it takes consciousness to guard your writing time. Part of that is becoming aware of where you’re spending your energy and time right now. And if it’s worth it.

Energy and time assessment

Like I did with last week’s money assessment, in January I also did a time assessment. What was I spending time and energy on, to further my writing life?

I listed all the activities I could think of, that were not about actually creating words on the page.

I felt torn about how to consider these weekly Substack posts. I believe they are writing time, because I do all the steps for them that I do for my other writing. But my goal for them is not sheer creativity. I think of them more as service to the writing community, a way to continue teaching and sharing my experience. They also have an element of marketing, to be honest, whenever I have a book or new publication success or an award to share. But I did want to assess how much time I put into this part of my writing life, so I included them below.

I included research for business maintenance, like checking out new software. But not research that’s directly for a writing project—a story, essay, or book.

Here are my categories, and I’d love to hear about yours!

Education

Taking a weekly writing class online—three hours on Zoom plus reading the week’s submissions or assigned material

Watching art videos—about three hours a week, give or take

Following the Substacks I love, commenting on the posts, being part of this community—an hour a week, ideally not more

Feedback

Giving feedback to my writer’s group—reading the submission, making track changes in Word, meeting for a few hours each month

Giving feedback to my writing partner—this goes in bursts, depending on where we each are in our projects

Blurbing for other authors—I estimate this takes me about thirty hours a year right now

Newsletter

Writing and editing these newsletters, one each Friday, monthly on Sundays—ten hours a week, give or take

Addressing subscriber issues—very infrequent

Posting my newsletters onto my website—about an hour every few months

Marketing and community

Posting my own Notes on Substack—5-10 minutes every other day

Podcast interviews—this was taking a good chunk of time each week when my books were just launching; now it’s infrequent

Updating my website—regular maintenance an hour a month, updating chunks of the site takes a lot more time

Other social media—I’m moving away from this, because I prefer the community here on Substack, but many friends and family are on IG, Threads, and FB, so I still post and comment there about an hour or two a week

Creating graphics in Canva and scheduling them on Later—I do this in bursts, because it’s not one of my favorite activities, so perhaps two hours every few weeks

Corresponding with readers and other writers—an hour a week, maybe?

Equipment/space

Updating software—an hour every two or three months

Filing—something I hate, so I avoid it; maybe two hours every six months

Organizing my writing project stuff and room—a daily sort for 20 minutes, a monthly clean and organize for one hour

Backing up my computer—an hour each month or less

Any equipment problems—hard to estimate and can take hours but infrequent right now

Accounting

Bookkeeping—two hours a month

Taxes—about ten hours once a year

What’s worth it?

Once I have my assessment of time and energy spent, I can look at each item and see if it’s really contributing to my life.

Just from making this list, I can see that I want to reduce the social media time. There are friends and family on Facebook, for instance, that I only stay in touch with that way, so I don’t want to ghost them there. But it can become a real time suck.

I experimented with hiring out some of the maintenance. I worked with a tech person to help me troubleshoot computer problems last year—totally worth it. Also a bookkeeper for a while, when my income was higher before retirement. That was great too. And an accountant for taxes when my business was an LLC.

I’m ending my podcast tour now, so that will free up time. I will also slow down on the Canva and Later involvement, since marketing is slowing down too. And blurbing will take a backseat now that I’m involved more in my online class.

But I am thrilled to have this list. It immediately shows me the balance—the actual writing time should be 90 percent of the writer’s life. If it’s not, adjustments are needed.

Assess the writing time against the writing business time. How balanced is it, for you? Maybe you’ve just launched a book. Or you have finished stories or essays you’re submitting. That might take the balance in a different direction for a while, which is all good. Only you can know!

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Make a time log this week. Write down whatever you do that contributes, even in a small way, to your writing life. How many hours do you actually write, compared to how many hours spent doom scrolling on social media or organizing your space or fixing stuff?

Only you can know—often by an uneasy feeling inside—if your writing life is getting the time and energy it needs.

What other activities do you spend time on?

Anything you learned from doing this assessment?

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 or 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.)

Mary Beth Spray, Imprint: A Woman’s Journey from Trauma to Freedom (Beaver’s Pond Press), December release

N.J. Mastro, Solitary Walker: A Novel of Mary Wollstonecraft (Black Rose Writing), February 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), was published in April, after becoming an Amazon bestseller during pre-orders. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue (Riverbed Press), was published in October 2023 also and became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders. 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.

What It Costs to Be a Working Writer, Part 1: Money

A two-part series about what we spend and what time we offer to our writing lives, how to do an annual review, and what to do with what you discover.

Photo by Fabian Blank on Unsplash

Becoming a working writer wasn’t ever in my plan when I began publishing in the 80s. I just loved to write, and I was so happy to see my work in print. Most of those early publications didn’t pay much, if anything, but eventually I was writing books and those did pay.

For my early books, I earned advances and royalties for many years. For my later books, advances were few but royalties are still appearing each quarter or annually.

I began to have expenses, to keep my writing business going. I had to pay for software for tax preparation, a post-office box for business correspondence, a membership in the Authors Guild for legal assistance with contracts, extra iCloud storage, subscriptions and fees for classes I took and writers I read here on Substack, domain and hosting fees for my website, and more.

In the lull while my agent read my new manuscript, I began working on short stories and wanted to submit them. I signed up for a tracking software called Duotrope. Many lit mags now charge a small fee for submissions. So that became a new expense. And if I wanted to send a story out to a contest, more fees.

Eventually my books were published. I began a campaign marketing with pre-orders, submitting to contests again, and posting on social media. Another writer told me about Canva, an online program that makes it easy to create graphics for my social media posts. From yet another writer, I learned about subscribing to later.com to schedule these posts.

Soon, I had eighteen separate expense categories to run my business these past two years. Each time I needed another assist, I researched and asked other writers, signed up for a trial, then subscribed if it worked well.

How much does it all cost?

How much did it all cost, in the end? What does it cost now, to be a fully functioning working writer?

These past two years, I had no time to consider this. These years have been a flurry: two books published and mega efforts at self-promotion. This January, as things finally calmed, I sat down to assess what I was still paying out, if these expenses were worth it, and what I could now reduce.

I’m always grateful for the universe’s perfect timing. That week, I received my monthly newsletter from Kerstin Martin’s Calm Business. Kerstin is the wonderful guide whose online course helped me successfully set up two websites on Squarespace. She has the mission of finding ways to approach business from a calm perspective, and I love reading her thoughts on this.

Ironically, she was also doing a yearly review of what it cost her to be in business. She recommends this annually. I was behind that timeline, but I wanted to try.

It took a bit of searching through my accounting software for 2024 to track all the expenses. There were a lot! Many are still valid but some I could immediately see no longer served.

Kerstin encourages her subscribers to make a list of anything they pay for that has to do with their business for the past year. So first, we need to shift our view of our writing—ask, Is this actually a business? Am I selling anything (book, stories, classes, workshops, articles)? And what am I paying out, to make this happen?

Are you running a writing business?

I accepted that my writing was a business when I got my first payment for a published article, even more so when I got my first advance and royalty check. Suddenly, I had to account for this income in my tax return. I also began to track my expenses.

But so many writers don’t consider themselves businesspeople. We are, if we’re publishing at all or hope to.

Jane Friedman’s classic The Business of Being a Writer opened many eyes to this truth. We’re not taught how to be a businessperson in our MFA programs or by our agents or from most instructors of writing classes. The business of writing is part of the package if you’re looking to sell your work. Like it or not, we writers will eventually come face to face with it.

Business includes not just the money you (hopefully) make on each published piece of writing but your self-promotion, the software you use, the subscriptions you pay for, the equipment you fund.

So my review in January felt like a huge relief—to be faced with the actual money I was spending on my business and decide what was still worth it.

A year’s expenses, in categories

I’ll share my own expense list, just because I found it so helpful to read Kerstin’s. It reminded me of some of the hidden expenditures I was making too.

Not everyone will have all or even most of these. I may be at a different place in my writing business than you are. But perhaps some of this exercise will be helpful, if you’re feeling your expenses are slipping out of mind.

Totals are rounded up to the nearest dollar.

Business basics

This includes my internet use, laptop software for writing and email, website design and hosting, domain name for my business name, Zoom for my classes and workshops and book launches, iCloud extra storage, legal help, professional dues, and more.

Expenses for 2024 (in no particular order):

Zoom Pro Workplace subscription (for meetings) $160/year

Microsoft 365 subscription (for MS Word because I can’t stand the Apple version even though I have a Mac) $70/year

Parallels subscription (to let me have a PC platform on my Mac) $70/year

Squarespace for website hosting $192/year

Godaddy for domain name $25/year

PO box for business correspondence not online $50/year

Supplemental iCloud storage $2.99/month

Business tax software $60 plus $20 update/year

Authors Guild membership for legal assistance with contracts, etc. $149/year

Education

I take classes to keep my skills up, I subscribe to an online video instruction series, I read and subscribe to certain Substacks to both support the writers and be part of this community.

Expenses for 2024 (in no particular order):

Substack subscriptions (the Substack newsletters I pay for to support my favorite writers) $150/year

Epiphany subscription for my art classes $385/year

Online classes $600/year

Books and writing supplies (printer ink and paper, notebooks, pens, books, etc.) $650

Marketing my work

Expenses for 2024 (in no particular order):

Upgrading my podcast setup—new ring lights, rolling desk, and a good mic $300

Canva Pro (graphic design program for making posts for social media) $120/year

Later (schedules social media posts created in Canva) $45/month

Duotrope (to track my submissions) $50/year

Amazon ads $60/year average

What I’ll keep, what I’ll stop

My marketing campaign is almost over, although I’m still repurposing the podcast interviews that are just coming out, sharing the links on socials and here in my newsletters when the topic is valuable to readers. But I expect to back down to a free Canva subscription when my year is up and cancel my Later monthly subscription at the end of March. I’ve already paused my Amazon ads—they didn’t pay off in increased book sales, anyway.

I’ll keep my Duotrope subscription because it’s cheap and still useful.

I’m not sure about my Authors Guild membership. I’ve been a member since the 90s but I haven’t really used their services—my agent was able to troubleshoot one publishing contract, which is what the AG famously helps writers with. I like supporting the organization, but I have to think about where my dollars are going.

Education expenses will probably go up, which fits my year ahead goal of becoming a learner again. I still love my several hours a week, studying new painting techniques from my favorite artists on Epiphany, and I’m excited to be part of a new five-month course for short-story collections from Grub Street.

My basic business expenses won’t change much. I am comfortable paying for all those services and use them all the time.

This week’s exercise lets you make your own expenses inventory, if you want to follow my steps. It’s a good eye-opener if you consider yourself in the business of writing.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

This exercise is good preparation for doing your year-end accounting to file taxes, if you do that. Make a rough list of everything you spend money on, as a writer. Then scan 2024 online bank or credit card statements to see what it actually costs. (This takes less time than it sounds if your subscriptions are annual.) I save emailed receipts in my inbox folders on Outlook, so I can just search for the name of the subscription, such as Squarespace, to get the amount I paid.

After you have a good accounting of your expenses, consider each for its value to your writing life. Are there some that you no longer need, to make way for other expenses you really do need, like a software upgrade?

Share your comments below. Anything you spend money on that I missed above?

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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 or 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.)

Mary Beth Spray, Imprint: A Woman’s Journey from Trauma to Freedom (Beaver’s Pond Press), December release

N.J. Mastro, Solitary Walker: A Novel of Mary Wollstonecraft (Black Rose Writing), February 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), was published in April, after becoming an Amazon bestseller during pre-orders. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue (Riverbed Press), was published in October 2023 also and became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders. 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: Getting Reviews of Your New Book

I write these First Sunday Q&A posts in response to your questions. Please message them to me here on Substack or email me at mary@marycarrollmoore.com. I look forward to it!

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Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Q: I'm getting into the post-publishing world and see the value of online reviews. Have you addressed how to get reviews on Amazon or other online bookstores? Or on Goodreads? Any tips on getting friends to review?

A: Although some publishing professionals believe that reader reviews don’t really influence book sales, as a reader I do scan the posted reviews when I am considering a book. I’m mostly influenced by blurbs from other writers, but reader reviews do count. All of the others who loved a book make my decision to try it out easier.

In my own experience, then, reviews contribute to more people reading my books.

Most reviews are timed to coincide with the launch of your book, when you have the best chance of getting noticed by other reviewers or ranking higher in the site’s algorithm. But it’s never too late to solicit reviews. It just takes some knowledge of what kind of reviews you want and some bravery and a system for asking for them.

I’ll share details from past posts as well as new information below.

Main review sites

When I was planning the launch for my second novel, back in 2023, I spent a lot of time researching the review sites and choosing which I’d work towards. Book reviews range wide in the publishing industry.

Here are the basic groups I found.

Trade reviews (Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, Booklist, Foreword/Clarion, Independent Book Review, American Book Review, Library Journal, and others)

Media reviews (New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, “Best of” lists, and others)

Celebrity book clubs (Oprah’s, Reese’s, #ReadwithJenna, Belletrist, Shondaland, and others)

Reader review sites (Goodreads, Amazon, BookBub, LibraryThing, Book Riot, Reedsy, Net Galley, and others)

Social media groups reviews (Facebook groups, Bookstagrammers, BookTok reviews, and influencers)

Not all are available post-publication, of course. But there are many you can still work with after your book comes out. And those of you who have published, feel free to comment about other review sites/reviewers you know, have experience with, use as a reader, or are interested in as an author, so we can fill in gaps.

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It’s work to get reviews. But I’ve found it quite worth it. The more “presence” my books have online, which is, like it or not, where many readers find their next read, the more likely they’ll consider my book. Also, the greater number of reviews on Amazon and some of the other sites, the more likely the algorithm will feature your book.

Eight benefits of getting reviews for your book

This list is not complete, but it shows eight reasons I learned about the reason to work towards reviews.

To get an accurate sense of why readers like your book. This can help you understand your audience. See #2 to learn why this matters.

To use any keywords that repeat, for marketing. Savvy marketers collect keywords (those repeated in reader or trade reviews) and use them to edit their online book description to reach that audience more accurately. This is gold.

To boost your book’s presence on review sites so browsers will take the leap to buy. Like I said above, more reviews puts you higher in the algorithm. Amazon, for instance, has different levels, or so I’ve heard from many authors: at 50 posted reviews, you get a certain boost; at 100, another; at 200, another, etc.

To qualify as a featured author on BookBub. A friend got this bonus for her book and it mattered in sales.

To have quotes to use on your book’s back cover and your website and author profile pages on social media sites. Again, gold. Use them!

To have quotes to share on social media posts. Same.

To bolster your bio if you’re pitching to podcasts or other interviews. I found this made a difference in the podcasts and interviews. Some hosts read my reviews aloud before my interview started, plus posted them on their show’s website.

To just help you feel great about what you’ve created! Best reason, right?

How and when to get reviews (pre-pub)

Blurbs come first—these are reviews from other authors, which are key to your marketing pre-publication. But they can also be useful post-pub.

Ideally, though, before your book is even accepted for publication, even before you get signed with an agent, you get blurbs. You can approach your beta readers, those peers who give you ongoing feedback, taking note of what words they use as they describe your book.

Then consider the published authors you will ask to read and write a pre-publication blurb for you. These blurbs help you sell your manuscript to agent and publisher. (They definitely attract attention.) I took about two years to do this stage.

Then you begin soliciting for the other kinds of reviews.

Six months before your publication date, you submit for the all-important trade reviews. Spend the bucks. Yes, you or your publisher can submit your book for free to the larger trade reviewers, but you’re not guaranteed a review. To me, it’s worth paying for at least one solid trade review. My preferred are Kirkus or Booklist. I got great reviews from both and used them extensively in my promotion, on my Amazon and other bookseller pages, on Goodreads, and to pitch podcasts. Most trade reviewers required submission six months in advance, so plan for this. If you submit early, as soon as ARCs (advance reader copies) are available, you can use the reviews on your book itself.

A few months before publication, begin working with Goodreads and BookBub. These reader-review sites hold a lot of weight for book browsers as well as Amazon (Goodreads is owned by Amazon). No self-promotion is allowed, so you need to get readers to honestly read, review, and post. Set up an account and link it to your book on the bookseller sites. I like to set up pre-orders so this can happen—although the book isn’t available yet, it does appear on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and wherever else it’s sold. So you can set up a book page in Goodreads and BookBub to prepare for reviews.

Make a list of friends who might enjoy your book. Send them an ARC (pdf) and ask them to read it. Talk each person through the steps of posting a review on both these sites—send the link to your book page. You’re after honest reviews, of course, nothing done as a favor, since you really want to learn from what readers say. All this can be done before your book comes out as long as it’s available for pre-orders and up on booksellers’ sites. Goodreads’ website says, “Please note that we only accept honest reviews that are created of the readers’ own free will. Paid reviews are not accepted and will be removed.” Not only that, they can take down your page. So do this honestly and carefully.

The week of your launch, ask those same friends to post their review on Amazon. (Amazon used to prefer reviews by verified purchasers, so I originally asked my friends to pre-order a copy. After my book was published, I noticed that Amazon posted reviews from non-verified purchasers just as quickly. A nice change.)

As the reviews come in, consider sharing them on your social media feeds. Acknowledge and thank the reader who posted it. Let others know about the substance of your book by sharing these reviews. Comments, when I’ve done this, have been “Now I have to read it!” or “This told me a lot more about the book.” Because it’s not you, the author, talking up the book, it comes across differently.

Use the reviews in your keyword work ongoing, tweaking your book’s presence online as you learn more.

Asking friends and your street team (pre- and post-pub)

It helped me (enormously!) to gather a “street team” of friends and family who were willing to read the ebook before release date. In exchange, they’d post a review when launch day happened.

I received dozens of reviews from these readers to coincide with my launch. They posted on Amazon and Goodreads and BookBub, primarily. I always said, Make sure your review is honest, and if you don’t like the book, don’t feel you have to post anything. Out of 60 team members, 45 posted.

Putting together the street team took courage on my part. Being brave enough to ask, in the first place. And figuring out how to ask, without becoming a burden to my friends.

One of my former students, Megan Lindahl Goodrich, released her memoir, Beyond Terminal, in September. She also worked with a street team of friends and family who supported her through the pre- and post-launch of her book. Even after the book was released, Megan kept in touch, writing an occasional catchup email to the team, sharing how the book was doing and introducing her new audiobook when it was available.

I loved how she approached this, reminding her team to post a review on Amazon if they hadn’t already.

Finally, a HUGE thank you to those of you who have already written a review on Amazon. If you haven’t done so, one last plug: Once I reach 50 reviews, Amazon will feature my book more prominently, and I’m just 30 reviews away from that goal! Here is the link to leave a review. Please keep in mind that Amazon can take down the review if it appears as though you know me. The stars are what matter, so no need to overthink this—it can be short and sweet!

The tone is easy and friendly. You don’t have to work hard at this, she’s saying, but it will help her a lot.

I read her book when it first came out, but I’d forgotten to post a review. So I clicked the link in her email and wrote one immediately. Totally easy.

If you want to ask friends and family to post reviews, you need to (1) be brave enough and (2) make it simple and (3) give them a reason to help you. Share the steps clearly, providing a link.

Giveaways and influencers

Nancy Crochiere released her debut novel, Graceland, in 2023. She had great success getting reviews posted on all the sites. I asked her how she’d done this.

One of the great things my publisher (Avon/HarperCollins) did for me, pre-publication, was three 100-copy giveaways of my novel on Goodreads. These raffle-style giveaways have significant benefits in generating interest in your book. First, if someone enters the raffle, your book automatically get put in their “Want to Read” list. Second, for those who win, the publisher asks if they will post a review of the book on Goodreads. Finally, anyone who has the book on their Want to Read shelf gets a notice when the book pubs.

Over 16,000 people enter the first raffle, and 9000 in each of the other two. Since each of the 300 winners is asked to consider writing a review, I got a lot of pre-pub reviews on Goodreads.

HarperCollins and my publicist also sent books to maybe a hundred or more book influencers and “bookstagrammers.” Bookstagrammers post photos of the book on Instagram with either a review or a quick plot summary.

After publication, I did ask some family and friends to write reviews on Amazon or Goodreads. And when I did a book event or spoke to a book group, I usually mentioned how important reviews are for authors and said I’d be grateful if anyone who read Graceland would consider a quick rating or review. Usually, people did.

Never too late

The ideal timing for getting reviews is pre-publication. But some authors are way too swamped with the actual process of publishing to do this. No worries! You’ve missed the most important window for reviews, but books have long life spans.

You can still ask for reviews from your readers, set up a Goodreads account, learn about the other online sites that might make sense from the list above.

And reviews can be posted anytime. I was surprised to see a review posted by an old college friend, who I haven’t talked with in many years. It appeared on my Amazon site this week. Proving to me that if you have a book out there and haven’t gotten the reviews you hoped for, it’s never too late.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, what you might try from this, what you’ve learned in your own writing life.

Leave a comment

“First Sunday” Q&A is where we dissect and discuss your most gnarly writing and publishing questions. You can send them to me via message on Substack or to my email at mary@marycarrollmoore.com. Your subscription supports me continuing to write my free newsletter each Friday since 2008. I’m grateful!

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Structuring Your Book in Three Acts

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

You may not be a structure geek like me. You may enjoy the flow more than the control. Me too, sometimes. I adore the experience of flow in my writing, the randomity of creative ideas popping in.

But facing the mountain of a manuscript in progress? Then, it helps to have scaffolding.

Good structure, to me, provides something to build on.

So many templates exist. So many craft books on how to structure your writing. The job is finding out what structure works for you and your story. If you flinch at the word structure, imagine it like a loose form that you can bend anytime. Or break completely if you can still keep the reader involved.

Structure to some means a cookie-cutter story without spirit or uniqueness. But I view structure as only the underpinnings, not the flair and freshness each of us brings to our creative work.

For instance, I've long used the storyboard for structure testing. Its beauty is in its flexibility--it uses both random and linear thinking as it builds. So if you suddenly want to bring in another idea, you can. You're not bound tight to a certain progression, as an outline requires.

Still with me? Read on. We’re going to dive into a very practical yet easy structure tool I’ve worked with for years: the three acts.

Three-act beauty

When I’m facing that mountain of words, it’s always helpful to consider the purpose of it in three sections: beginning, middle, and end. Or, the classic three acts. Each has a reason for being, certain “rules” of what it must achieve, if you want to call it that. I prefer thinking of these rules as tests for strength. If my beginning, middle, and end do their work well, they pass the tests.

Vladimir Nabokov famously said: "The writer's job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them."

So if you look at your manuscript as three separate sections, following Nabokov’s three steps, you know that you’ve done your job in the first act when your character is up the tree. I consider act two as the rock-throwing stage, when the hapless narrator is up the tree and can’t get down. Act three, usually, is how they either get down from the tree (or die trying , if your story is a tragedy).

What this formula does is help us see how much got crowded into in each act in those early free-for-all drafts. Maybe we’ve lingered too long in the opening act. Maybe the middle is bloated. But until you break them apart, they blur and their purposes are not clear.

So here are some tips for each act, learned from years of working (loosely or firmly, depending on the need) with this idea.

Act 1

Act 1 is the beginning. Your story’s job is to get that narrator up the tree, and that’s really all you have to do. Of course, we readers may need to know why they climb the tree in the first place, so backstory can help—but not too much in act 1! We’re really all about getting them into that tree.

If I’m working with the three acts using a storyboard, act 1 takes up about 25 percent of the manuscript, running from point 1 (the triggering event) to point 2 (the first turning point at the bottom of the first leg of the W). Here’s a refresher on storyboards if you are interested.

If your draft runs about 60,000 words, 15,000 or so words will make up act 1.

That’s not a lot! But if you make your goal, of getting the narrator up that tree, you’re golden.

So what does “getting them up the tree” mean? To me, it’s basically about conflict—whatever problem is going to be presented for this narrator, whatever drives their story, whatever longing they have that forces them to change, this is the thing that gets them into trouble. They act because of this internal or external conflict. And because they act, more trouble happens. That’s the tree.

So if the purpose of act 1 is to get them up the tree, you know act 1’s needs are satisfied if they are well up that tree. That’s true for fiction and memoir—the main character or you (the narrator in memoir) are the ones up the tree. In nonfiction, like a how-to book, it’s a little different. The first act presents the need for your material--it establishes the conflict or dilemma that causes readers to seek out your book. This might include case studies, client stories, your own stories, anything that sets up the problem.

So we consider act 1 as the part of your book that sets up the problem.

Act 2 makes it worse.

Act 2

I find in most books, when looking purely at structure, that act 2 takes up about 50 percent of the total word count. It’s the real meat of your book. The problem is developed, often made worse. The situation changes, deepens. The topic gets more complex.

Act 2 also becomes the logical way to stall out.

In so many books I have edited, the story will flatline in act 2. It gets bogged down in too much inaction, dialogue, backstory, or history. (The storyboard's genius, here again: act 2 runs from point 2 to 4, first turning point to second turning point, represented by an upside-down V. That V visually reminds us to move to a second climax midbook and create new problems.)

The goal of act 2 is the rocks getting bigger, in other words.

In a 60,000 word manuscript, that means about 30,000 words comprises act 2.

Some stories have layers of problems. Perhaps the problem that starts us out gets solved by the end of act 1. The writer’s job, then is to present a new problem. Why? Simply because problems create plot and tension, which keeps readers reading.

Another quality of a classic act 2: helpers or mentors. Many stories bring in new blood in act 2, in the form of friends, family, a stranger, a mentor who helps the narrator in some way. It can also come in the form of new information to solve the problem. This shows up in nonfiction as specific techniques, a method, or research—steps to make changes.

As I said above, I am VERY careful about act 2 bloat. It’s so tempting to keep things status quo. Using that upside down V from the storyboard has saved my books more than once.

A successful act 2 leads naturally into act 3, the climax and finish.

Act 3

The final 25 percent or so is your finale. About 15,000 words of the 60,000 total. The purpose of the final act is to get that poor character or narrator down from the tree.

Nabokov doesn't tell us this, though. But if you study his writing, he never leaves the character up the tree, beaten by rocks. And from my study of his and other story structure, I could add that act 3's purpose is twofold:

get the character down from the tree

AND show the changes that have come from sitting up there being hit by rocks

Act 3 usually involves a final crisis. On the storyboard, there’s a major turning point at point 4, the lowest point in the story structure. In classic fiction and memoir structure, there’s a final crisis near the very end, often one or two chapters from your final page. Most common in commercial fiction but also appearing in many memoirs now.

How will you fulfill the second purpose of act 3, to demonstrate change? I find that working backwards from the end helps me figure this out. I make notes about the difference in the narrator at the last page, what action or situation might show this, then work backwards through the three acts to find ways to show the gradual unfolding.

Run from rigidity

Some writers take the geek approach too far. They get so hooked into a structure or formula that they don't allow the stories to flex and grow.

So, be easy on yourself.

So what if your act 1 is a bit longer than my suggested word count? Or your act 3 runs shorter? No worries. Many exceptions to the rules in writing! Ours is a living language that changes constantly and stories (hopefully) take us into unexpected places as we write them.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

This week, grab a favorite book in your genre and skim it to see if you can find the separation of the three acts. Then see how the word count falls within those lines. If it breaks the rules, can you tell why?

Then look at your own manuscript, story, or essay draft. Can you find the “tree” and the “rocks” and where the two come together?

Share your thoughts, ideas, questions, and reactions below.

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 or 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.)

Mary Beth Spray, Imprint: A Woman’s Journey from Trauma to Freedom (Beaver’s Pond Press), December release

N.J. Mastro, Solitary Walker: A Novel of Mary Wollstonecraft (Black Rose Writing), February 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), was published in April, after becoming an Amazon bestseller during pre-orders. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue (Riverbed Press), was published in October 2023 also and became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders. 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.