Mary Carroll Moore's Blog, page 8

Writing about Food: Beyond Taste into Meaning

What’s new in my writing world: My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, released in October, just became a finalist for the 18th National Indie Excellent Awards! A big deal. It’s also a finalist for the Golden Crown Literary Society’s Ann Bannon Popular Choice Award. I worked very hard on that book and I’m so glad it’s getting recognition. My newest novel, Last Bets, is out now, and it was a bestseller on Amazon. “Readers will get lost in Moore's beautiful prose, her impeccable plotting, and her outstandingly relatable and multi-layered characters. Beautifully wrought story of two women artists outrunning their demons,” said Booklife/Publisher’s Weekly who made it an Editor’s Pick.

Photo by Siebe Warmoeskerken on Unsplash

Writing about food—when you’re new to it—seems easy. It’s not. Good food writing, I learned from decades of being a food journalist, is not just sweet talk about French pastries lining a bakery window or the smell of chicken roasting on the grill or ripe watermelon in a bucket of ice. That’s definitely part of it, the part that makes you hungry.

But beyond the sensory, there’s the meaning. And to me, that’s what good food writing is all about.

I first met Steve Hoffman, a very skilled food writer, at a writing class I taught long ago at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. Steve had whisked his family to a rural town in the south of France, the experience changed all of them, and they were going to repeat the adventure. He had a book in mind—what it was like to do such a risky thing, how the culture affected him as a person, and what particularly he came face to face with in himself as a result. And, of course, the food.

He was already a seasoned food writer for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Artful Living, and other publications. His just-released memoir, A Season for That: Lost and Found in the Other Southern France (Crown, July 2024), was only a rough idea.

He wanted to learn how a book was built. So we began working together.

Food writers come in all shapes and sizes, with various tendencies and obsessions. What I admired about Steve’s writing was that even in those early drafts that I was privileged to see, he went far beyond his love of French Mediterranean food. He wanted to write about the life of a person—a family—who find themselves in a completely foreign environment. A food-obsessed environment, as anyone who has traveled to or lived in France can attest.

How would the ordinary, everyday experience of buying, cooking, and eating food grown in the Languedoc region and getting to know the community that produced it translate into something life-changing?

What food means

I felt a kinship with Steve from our first days working together. I also had a similar goal, as someone who wrote about food: to somehow transcend its subject and find its heart.

Food and its meaning have been a lifelong passion for me. My once-pilot mother worked full-time at a local university, along with raising four kids, so dinners when I was growing up happened quite late in the day, often at 7:30 or 8:00 p.m. My father didn’t mind; this was the European style he grew up with. For him, dinner was serious business: there was always a good cut of meat, two vegetables, a green salad, and a simple dessert. I remember there was good wine as well, French or Californian (I learned my first French words from reading the labels).

I knew no one who grew up with food this way. But it came from my dad’s parents who traveled extensively for my grandfather’s work as an international lawyer at General Motors. They infused their children with a taste for European cuisine, especially French, and it was handed down to me. When I chose where to spend my last year of college, no surprise I picked Paris.

A story that sounds terribly privileged. Beneath it all, we lived a kind of conflict—my father’s gourmet tastes versus the family budget, my mother’s exhausting work day versus the meal she produced each evening.

And beyond the conflict, I still took away the sense of food as community. As love. As the time I got to talk with my reclusive, scholarly father. As the way I was introduced to tastes that opened my young palate to anything.

No surprise, either, that when I became a journalist, I wrote about French cuisine, the food roots of my American family.

Beyond the words into meaning

As a food journalist, my job was to write in a way that conveyed the tastes, smells, textures, and colors of a handful of ingredients that were magically combined to make a transformational experience. That was recipe writing at its most basic: find the exact words that will bring the experience of that Lemon Tart or Puttanesca sauce or Crab Cakes to the reader.

The goal of most food writers is to compel and seduce: You want readers to immediately get up and make the recipe. Because they taste it in their minds so strongly from your words, it drives desire. Or, if you’re reviewing a restaurant, to immediately call for reservations. You get the idea. And the food writer must do this with words alone—and maybe some pictures, if you’re writing for a glossy or online.

Then there is a deeper level of food writing, which always attracted me. The likes of Laurie Colwin and M.F.K. Fisher, who explored the meaning of food.

When people gather to eat together, what happens? What transforms inside of us? How does each meal bring emotional experience or that community I had with my dad over those wine labels? (Ironically, and to my French friends’ deep disapproval, I don’t drink.) Is the experience different according to what they eat, who prepares it (a la the movie Chocolat)? In cultures where food is serious business, as it was in France when I lived there in the seventies, does what you cook, the ingredients you choose, how you serve the dish, say everything about who you are and what you value?

Steve’s new book is about transformation of self as well as the effect of living in a community that holds food sacred. Growing it, harvesting it, cooking it, eating it—this makes the foundation of a life. I got this, and I love how he conveys it in his writing.

I wanted to find out how he traveled the long road to this book, years after we worked together. What did it take for him, as a writer, to get to the heart of what this memoir had to say?

Interview with Steve Hoffman

What do you love to write about, in terms of food, and why? What are your favorite food subjects and how did they come to be your favorites?

I have two topics—the food of the Great Lakes North and the food of Mediterranean France—that can be unified into a single one. That is what I’m often writing about more fundamentally: my fascination with the earth- and water-bound raw materials that we humans hunt and forage and pluck and dig and pry loose and pinch off and snap free, and then make into something that not only keeps us alive, but gives us pleasure, and in some cases transcends itself into something artful and sublime.

I love writing about both ends of that process—the raw and the refined—and the connections between them.

I was an anxious and introverted bookworm as a kid, growing up revering authors as my personal gods and heroes. Then I studied French, ancient Greek, and English in college and fell in love with Western Literature. Unfortunately, that provided me with essentially zero employable skills, so I spent the middle of my life employed as a handyman, property manager, real estate broker, stay at home dad, and eventually as a tax preparer. It wasn’t until an extended family stay in the Languedoc region of southern France in 2012 that I returned to my early love of writing, keeping extensive journals that translated into articles for local and national publications and eventually—12 years later!—to a published memoir about that time.

What particular challenges are part of food writing, in your opinion, that may not be present in other kinds of writing? As you were learning how to write this book, learning how to be a better writer, what challenges did you face personally?

Whenever you write seriously, you come to understand that everything has already been said.

With food writing, it has been said and is being repeated online millions of times every day beneath impeccably staged photos of restaurant tables and kitchen countertops. In that atmosphere, how do you write about food without feeling you are simply tipping your little cup into the sea?

I think the challenge is in coming to understand that good food writing is just good writing, and that when you write about food you are always also writing about something other than food—pleasure, connection, loneliness, grief, sex, self-hatred, transgression, family.

Then the hardest part becomes writing about yourself—your deepest self—in relation to those things.

The turning point of this long process of writing a memoir was when I realized I didn’t need to become a better writer to finish it. I needed to become a better human being.

Which meant confronting my own ego, and the way in which writing, early in my career, had been a performance. A way of showing off my linguistic dexterity. Instead I had to learn to scale back on a certain kind of facile charm, stop showing off, and start communicating.

And that meant being vulnerable and honest about who I was, about my shortcomings, about my not having all the answers.

What were the hardest things you experienced getting this book published? What happened that surprised you?

Sending out query letters to agents and editors is a soul-deadening slog, and I hated it. If you ever want to feel like a meaningless smudge of a human being, start querying literary agents. I had no luck for several years (and honestly my book, in retrospect, wasn’t ready yet).

Then in 2019, I won a James Beard Award, which is one of the top food-writing awards, for a piece, “What Is Northern Food?” which appeared in Artful Living. After that, everything got a little better. At the JBF ceremony in New York City, I met Francis Lam (who would become the editor of my book), and he introduced me to David Black (who became my agent).

Even then it took five painful years for my manuscript to become the book it needed to be.

Here’s what I would say in retrospect. For all my whining and bitching about the process, in the end, the agents, editors, and publishers were right. My writing was promising but my book wasn’t fully conceived, and there are a million others like that, and it’s not the industry’s job to give them all a chance. You have to do the work and it’s really hard and that’s why so few people ever publish a book.

I realized at some point that I didn’t really know what a story was. For me the lyricism of food writing came naturally. So I overplayed that hand, trying to “eloquent” my way out of a problem that eloquence couldn’t solve.

When I couldn’t deny it any longer, and started feeling as if this whole project was slipping away and might never happen, I took a screenwriting class out of a kind of desperation. That format—where all that mattered was story and narrative momentum and it didn’t matter how beautifully you described the apricot your friend just plucked from his Mediterranean orchard—was what I needed to begin to master this new set of skills called telling a story.

You don’t have to read a lot of food writing to be a good food writer, but you probably do have to read a lot of good fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, because only half of the tools of your trade can be found in the kitchen. The other half is language.

Using language really well requires a kind of taste—a linguistic palate—that you can’t develop without absorbing how great practitioners have used it to say things precisely and beautifully and movingly.

What’s a typical writing day like for you?  Do you write every day or more sporadically?

I live a double life as tax preparer and writer. The first half of my year is taken up with preparing and filing about 500 tax returns. That funds the second half of the year, during which I can write (and, fortunately, not have to write for money).

So my writing is seasonal.

When I am writing, I am constantly fighting off distraction and work avoidance. I have tried every method—early mornings, late nights, long hours, freewriting, the Pomodoro method, playing music, sitting in silence, laptop, desktop, pen and notebook.

I think I am now resigned to the fact that it will always just be hard, because to write the way I want to write will always involve operating at the outer edge of what I’m capable of.

To read more about Steve or order his new book, visit his website or buy his book here.

Food writing tips

It’s hard (for me, especially) to imagine a story without the presence of food: a meal, a snack, an obsession, a midnight reunion over pizza. Maybe a certain kind of speculative fiction in a future where nobody eats would omit any mention of food. But writing about food is like writing about setting or characters or action—it is part of life. And it takes thought, skill, practice to write well.

And sometimes, like in Steve Hoffman’s writing, it transcends what we’re eating. It expands our understanding of what food contributes to a life.

That, to me, is the best food writing there is.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

This week, locate a section of your WIP that could use an infusion of food. Maybe it’s a scene that’s falling a bit flat. Try inserting a meal, a snack, a midnight run to the soft-serve stand.

Do your best draft then check out one or all of these resources to bring more tasty to your words.

Medium—”How to Write a Mouthwatering Piece on Food”

Writers.com—an interview with food writer Jennifer Billock

Writer’s Digest—writing food in fiction

What’s your all-time favorite food? What are you eating a lot of this summer (or wish you were)? And does it possibly show up in your writing?

Leave a comment

Shout Out!

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

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

Afarin O. Bellisario, Silenced Whispers (Transtrategy), April release

Steve Hoffman, A Season for That: Lost and Found in the Other Southern France (Crown), July release

Jim Hight, Moon Over Humboldt (Black Rose Writing), August 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.

Organizing the Writing Life: Storage Systems

What’s new in my writing world: My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, released in October, just became a finalist for the 18th National Indie Excellent Awards! A big deal. It’s also a finalist for the Golden Crown Literary Society’s Ann Bannon Popular Choice Award. I worked very hard on that book and I’m so glad it’s getting recognition. My newest novel, Last Bets, is out now, and it was a bestseller on Amazon. “Readers will get lost in Moore's beautiful prose, her impeccable plotting, and her outstandingly relatable and multi-layered characters. Beautifully wrought story of two women artists outrunning their demons,” said Booklife/Publisher’s Weekly who made it an Editor’s Pick.

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

We writers create a lot of stuff. A certain level of organization—some small, necessary infrastructure to support this part of our creative lives—is necessary to keep all the stuff manageable and easy to find when you need it.

Doesn’t matter whether you write on paper or laptop. Whether you print hard copy or store only electronic files. It accumulates.

And it can drown the writer (unless it’s organized).

Consider a book. Around 75,000 to 90,000 words, give or take. Maybe you are faster than I am, but my norm is about thirty iterations. Even my short stories have many versions on the way to publication. And there are not only my own documents: for every piece I write and publish, I get feedback from my wonderful writer’s group and writing partner. Last manuscript, they each gave me detailed feedback on the final manuscript, including tracking notes in Word.

First, how do I approach these notes, how do I work through them? But also, how do I store them for future reference?

Or consider research. The extensive research notes I made about aviation, Search & Rescue, and wilderness survival for my second novel. Not only do I need to keep those organized, for later fact-checking at final proof. When it came time to thank contributors in the Acknowledgements as the book was finalized for publication, I was desperate for a few days because I couldn’t locate the list of folks who helped with that research. (I did find it, in my writer’s notebook. But it was a real scare.)

Most successful writers have a method. They know how to organize the stuff they create, so that the research file is where they expect it to be just when it’s needed, or the notes from readers are easily found when ready to revise.

After a few publications, they also know what to keep and what to recycle when a new book is finally out in the world.

If you read part 1 of this organization rant, you know I am a systems geek. Systems create that infrastructure we writers need. They require some thought to create well, some time to maintain well. But they really do support the creative flow, so your writing time all about writing, not about searching for a lost file.

I’ll share my methods. I’m eager to hear yours. Tell us what works for you. How do you organize the first level of storage needs: your work in progress?

Leave a comment

Organizing the WIP

Do you prefer tactile organization? Do you need to touch your books and papers, do tangible items to remind you of the physicality of your work?

Or are you completely comfortable with the virtual, and your entire writing life exists onscreen?

I’m a mix. I use an organization method from Twila Tharp—the project box she creates for each new dance she choreographs—and I love having everything I need on my laptop, which makes it all very portable. It took me years and several publications to figure out what works for me.

A la Tharp, I have a flat basket that sits on my desk or slides under it, out of the way, and I store all active items for my WIP here. This supports my need for the physical side of writing. Maybe I’d have clustering maps, photographs, research documents, or character collages in the basket, stuff I enjoy taking out and setting on my desk to review when I’m writing.

Since this basket can’t travel with me to the local coffee shop when I want to write away an afternoon, I also have the most necessary items stored electronically on my laptop.

Active and passive files

There are six kinds of documents I use for a WIP. They can be divided into active and passive files.

working draft (active)

past versions (passive)

feedback (active until entered, then passive or recycled)

master list (active)

research (active until used, then passive)

publication details (passive until pre-pub, then active)

Only active files take up space on my physical and virtual desktops. This was a huge step to organizing my stuff. It does require that you decide, though, what’s immediate to what you’re writing and what’s not. Horizontal filers, this might be difficult for you—if you tend to like to see everything at once, you may not move past chaos easily. But choosing really helped me. It also forced me to use feedback faster, figure out what research was a yes and what was a maybe.

Nothing is discarded with these choices, but the storage differs.

Once I decide what’s active and passive, I scan or enter the active files onto my laptop, into Scrivener if I’m drafting, or Word if I’m in revision (see below). I want them available to be used anywhere I write. So I might photograph that character collage or create that Scrivener version of my storyboard to have handy at the coffee shop.

I use something from the first five folders every day. The sixth only comes forward when the manuscript is accepted for publication and after it’s published.

Each requires a different kind of storage because of how I use it.

Working draft (active)

As I explained in part 1 of this series on organization, I use two different programs: Scrivener for my WIP at draft stage and MS Word once I reach revision of the whole manuscript. Scrivener took work to learn, and to set up. But I’m a fan. I stay in it as long as I can, working revisions of the individual chapters until they are ready to be merged with the whole.

Scrivener is what I open first to find my most current document, the one I’m working on now. It might be a scene, a chapter, or more than one chapter. Each day, I backup that version as a new document. In Scrivener, there’s a handy “snapshot” feature that lets me capture every version as it’s created, filing them behind the current scene or chapter file. In Word, which I use at whole-manuscript revision, I label each revision by title and date. I file them on my desktop, stored chronologically.

The goal here is to always be able to find, without ANY trouble, what you’ve last been working on.

Where do you store your WIP?

Leave a comment

Past versions (passive)

Once you’ve created something, you have the choice of revising it electronically or printing it out and working on hard copy. In making a book, the writer creates so many versions, and they can accumulate hundreds, if not thousands, of pages.

Because of my decades as a professional editor, I tend to work on a new scene or chapter electronically until it’s fairly solid—the basics are in place, it’s satisfying to me on some level, although I know it needs work. At that point, I often print it out to read and edit by hand.

This creates a lot of printed hard copy, with hand-written edits. Once I’ve edited, I input the changes and the past versions get stored. These aren’t useful to have cluttering my desktop—I need to refer back to them, but not every moment. Dated at the top of the page as a header, they are clipped together and filed in folders by chapter, then as the whole manuscript, in a file drawer.

I have one large filing cabinet that stores these during the book’s journey to publication. Sometimes I need to go back and check edits. But as I say above, they are passive files and I want them off my working desktop.

Electronically, I store these versions in a master folder for each book, with subfolders for the chapters. Granted that chapters move around—parts of one will migrate to another. It can’t be helped, so I acknowledge the mess and do not try to track the origin of a chapter. Although Scrivener makes this a bit easier with its snapshots, I still move things around as the flow of the book changes.

As long as they are dated and kept in the master book folder, I can still search for sections by keyword. But the key is still: these are passive files, they don’t need to be in sight all the time, as long as I know where to find them.

Feedback (active until entered)

Feedback is essential. My feedback comes from my writer’s group and writing partner and my agent and editors. Depending on how it arrives, I store it the same way.

My agent edits on iPad with an Apple Pen so I store her notes electronically.

My writing partner, writer’s group, and editor send feedback in Word with track changes. Those are also stored electronically. I have a subfolder within the WIP folder called Feedback. Everything goes it there, and I find it by date. It often helps to rename the files: Marilyn feedback 10.22.24. Easier to find.

There are times I need to print out the feedback. Say, I have to compare four people’s comments on the same scene or chapter. Hard to do onscreen, even with split screens, so I print and lay the pages on my desk. All the revision notes and questions from feedback that I can’t use immediately go on my master list (see below)—the easy fixes I can make right away but these take thought and may cause other revisions.

When I’m getting whole-manuscript feedback (maybe 350 pages), it’s impractical to print four versions with feedback. I might print only the pages that have notes. Or I use the master list and jot down each person’s comments to think over.

I don’t keep printed feedback once it’s used—it gets recycled. I still have the electronic files in my Feedback subfolder.

Master list (active)

My most useful tool for storing and using feedback is the master list. I create one for each WIP, store it on my desktop, often print it out as well to put in the project basket.

It also includes ideas and questions, the things not yet solved that I’m ruminating about. Sometimes feedback generates more problems to solve! And if I’m freewriting in my writer’s notebook (see part 1 of this series), I often solve the problem as I write. Handwriting generates more ideas, opens me to something that typing doesn’t.

The list is gold to me during a project. It’s a place to accumulate everything I wonder about. It might have tasks to do, research to explore. Stuff I don’t want to forget.

Research (active until used)

Scrivener’s sidebars are handy for research notes, including URL’s to pages I need to find again.

But sometimes research is cumbersome. Not easy to scan or store electronically—historical documents, photographs, objects, letters, art, articles torn from magazines. I find it easier to organize these in a folder in my project basket.

My master list helps me keep track of research needed. Interviews to set up, calls to make, online searches to do.

I use my writer’s notebook to brainstorm research needs. I also use it to keep notes from phone interviews, which are not documented via email, and the name, contact info, and date I talked to that expert.

Once I’ve used research, I don’t recycle the notes—I’ve often needed them later, pre-publication, to get permissions or thank someone. But these notes are no longer active. I can keep them in a Research folder in my project basket or file them in the file cabinet.

Publication documents (passive until publication)

During and after a book is published, there’s a LOT of stuff left behind. Here’s what I do with it:

Emails with any agreements or decision points get printed or saved in an inbox folder dedicated to that book.

I discard my hard-copy versions of the chapters and manuscript pre-publication. I used to keep these for years, but I never used or looked at them.

I keep my writer’s notebook. This is my history, as I said, and great fun to review.

I archive my Scrivener files which automatically keep the earlier versions. I’ve never accessed this, so perhaps I’ll eventually stop saving them.

The final files—finished manuscript, galley proofs, final versions—all get saved electronically.

I keep five copies of the printed book in my file drawers.

Research is usually discarded if it’s been used but I keep it if it would come in handy to prove something in the manuscript. Again, never needed so far but I’m cautious.

I do enjoy keeping personal notes and emails from readers—another lovely thing to review years later when I’m starting a new project and feeling unsure about my worth as a writer.

When to start your systems

It sounds onerous to even consider creating these storage systems, so don’t worry about it yet, perhaps. The moment will come when the chaos becomes too great, and you crave the organization.

Or, if you’re already overwhelmed by the sheer volume of words and papers and files, you can start now. Never too late! I constantly refine my systems, as I learn more each time I finish a project.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

What’s one thing you already do with your working systems as a writer that really does the trick for you to feel organized?

What’s something you’d like to try but haven’t yet?

Leave a comment

Shout Out!

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

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

Afarin O. Bellisario, Silenced Whispers (Transtrategy), April release

Steve Hoffman, A Season for That: Lost and Found in the Other Southern France (Crown), July release

Jim Hight, Moon Over Humboldt (Black Rose Writing), August 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: How I Navigated the Creative Slog

Hello, all you new paid subscribers! Thanks for making this newsletter a Substack Bestseller with your subscriptions.

“First Sunday” Q&A is where we dissect and discuss your most gnarly writing and publishing questions. I plan to write this the first Sunday of each month for you, as long as you wonderful people send me your questions. My intention is to make this a safe, generous place to exchange ideas and talk about the deepest writing and publishing issues on your mind.

If you’re a free subscriber, you’ll get a taste of the article below. Upgrade to paid (only $45 a year) to read the rest and receive First Sunday each month. Your subscription also supports me continuing to write my free newsletter each Friday.

Q: I’m probably not the first writer who feels stuck. But I just got my manuscript back from my wonderful writer’s group and the amount of feedback was overwhelming. All good, they are fantastic readers, but I can’t think through the comments and I have no idea how to begin to use them. It feels like I’m in a swamp of uncertainty now, which makes me feel like a bad person after all their hard work and generosity. In a class, you once called it the creative slog.

What do you do when you’re in this kind of slump, when you don’t know how to move forward? How do you navigate the creative slog?

A: A determining factor between writers who actually finish a book—and possibly get it published—and those who don’t is tolerance with this slog.

For me, the slog arrives at fairly predictable moments:

After I download the first, enthusiastic creation of my idea and I’m faced with the reality of making it sing for someone else.

As I read my completed rough draft and see its ineptitude prior to revision.

When I’ve gotten useful feedback but am stunned at the amount of work the changes will take, like you shared above.

When I realize I need considerable new skills to revise to my taste.

During the long wait for responses (from agent or editor or anyone else who holds authority in the publishing world).

Writing teacher Jacqui Banaszynski summed it up beautifully: “The humility of being this stuck will fade once I’ve finished and back in blissful editing mode. The lessons I’ve had to learn again will also fade with time, but for now, they blink like neon.” (Nieman Storyboard)

That neon blink is hard to ignore, isn’t it. It can shape your entire belief in yourself as a writer. It enables the push.

How do you traverse it?

I love how author Stephen Aryan describes it. This “effort to keep going and press on no matter how tired or fed up you are with the book,” he writes. “No matter how much you hate it and think it’s crap. No matter what else is going on in your life with your family, your friends and your day job.”

But what if the slog appears as a kind of road sign, an important signal of the need for a new approach?

After years of pushing through the creative slog, I began questioning the pervasive notion that discipline is the key to making a successful writing life—or career. I began to consider whether pushing forward was the only way to navigate when overwhelmed. What if nothing is broken, at these pivotal moments, but is just asking for that new perspective, is there a different way of going forward?

What would that different way look like? Here’s what I learned.

Read more

The Nonlinear Appeal of the Mosaic Mind

My new novel, Last Bets, is out in the world! “Readers will get lost in Moore's beautiful prose, her impeccable plotting, and her outstandingly relatable and multi-layered characters. Beautifully wrought story of two women artists outrunning their demons,” said Booklife/Publisher’s Weekly who made it an Editor’s Pick. Order your copy today. With my BIG thanks for the support.

Photo by Peyman Farmani on Unsplash

We’re geared to worked through a piece of writing in a linear fashion, from beginning to end, from scene 1 to scene 2, from chapter to chapter until we reach the conclusion. Outlines and all our school training subtly or directly encourages this. It gets us stuck. A lot.

Because of that, I’ve long battled this solely linear approach to drafting and revision.

Magical leaps in a piece of writing, which often happen for me at revision but can also be part of drafting, live far from the path of linear tracking. Have you experienced that phenomenon of being unexpectedly surprised and delighted by what’s on the page? When you read it again after a time away from it, and you’re amazed? Even wonder, did I really write that?

This magic, in my view, is as vital a part of the creative process as the ability to track linearly.

Role model

My mom was a pilot in her twenties. She served in the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots program in WW II. Pilots rely on extensive pre-flight checklists. Before take-off, they make certain all is working. They are drilled in how to solve unexpected problems in the air, such as air pockets, weather shifts, changing conditions. They log their flight plans before take-off so everyone knows their route.

Pilots are expected to travel in a predicted pattern from departure to arrival. So how was my mom a model for nonlinear creativity?

Yes, she was very smart. She was a good pilot. But from the stories I heard growing up, she had to use her gut sense, many times. Once, landing her plane when her engine caught on fire. Another, when she got lost in airspace over West Point. Her extraordinary linear brain absorbed all that training and used every skill she learned to stay alive during the years she flew, but she also employed a backup plan when logic didn’t fly—her intuitive, nonlinear sense.

Dual-patterned thinking entered in her domestic and work lives, after she quit flying to raise four kids and work full-time at the local university.

As she aged—she passed a few years ago at age 98—her mind moved more to meandering. I wonder if it felt like logic went rogue on her. Lost its usefulness now that she was grounded. Or if she secretly delighted in the more intuitive, random approach.

It didn’t always please me, though. I needed both. Talking with her on the phone in the last years of her life, I’d be thoroughly disconcerted when Mom switched to a completely unconnected topic without finishing her previous thought. I guess I was living more linearly then, unable to appreciate the meander.

Mosaic mind

After she passed, I began to remember her mind and memories as a mosaic, a piece of art where each section is connected to the adjacent one, but if you wanted, the viewer could skip clear to the other side. Like crossing a stream on stepping-stones. This is the technique I began using in my revision—not just the linear but the random. I was astonished at its success in tapping my more intuitive brain.

A mosaic makes sense once you step back. In art, it’s essential to view the whole as well as the parts, and revision is that way too.

You revise individual scenes and each must make sense in themselves, but they also must cohese within the whole story. Mom’s aging brain taught me how to see this big picture, where everything connects to everything else, even though it’s far distant.

Yes, I know the aging brain can give a sense of disability, but now I see it as something different. And how to use the skill of meandering for my creative life.

Value of meandering

We are trained to know where we’re going before we get there.

I remember years of writing outlines for drafts and revision, coming up with lame linear answers because I felt forced to finish. Wishing for more magic, more intuitive leaps—because I knew how much I loved these as a reader.

Not long after Mom passed, a colleague told me about Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative by Jane Alison. Alison’s theories clarified my belief that the linear approach in story-making is only what we’re trained in, but it’s not the only approach. She calls it masculine in nature, following Aristotle’s thesis of beginning to middle to end providing the emotional catharsis readers (or viewers) need.

Alison presents the more feminine meander as another option.

The meander is “a river curving and kinking, a snake in motion, a snail’s silver trail, or the path left by a goat grazing the tenderest greens,” she writes.

Unexpected ideas, the real magic of revision, come to me not in a straight line. They appear as I meander. As I do my due diligence to the story, sitting down to work on it every day, yes. But even more often, after I’ve put in my time, they arrive when I’m not focused on solving a problem—maybe when I’m walking or working in the garden. Not paying attention. Looking out of the corner of my eye.

That’s when I capture the real freshness that brings me delight as a writer.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Read this great article in The New Yorker about Jane Alison’s approach to meandering.

Is there an area of your draft or revision that feels overworked, too logical, too labored? Would it benefit from some nonlinear meandering?

Play with this on paper. See if you can brainstorm ten non-logical solutions for this scene or chapter. Beyond what your linear self or outline dictates, what could possible happen to bring freshness and the unexpected?

Shout Out!

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

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

Afarin O. Bellisario, Silenced Whispers (Transtrategy), April release

Steve Hoffman, A Season for That: Lost and Found in the Other Southern France (Crown), July release

I’ve started a new First Sunday newsletter for paid subscribers that addresses your most gnarly writing and publishing questions. This month’s post was about moral ambiguity in writing. Get First Sunday once a month and build your publishing toolbox! A yearly subscription is only $45. For it, you get access to the 700+ archives, the monthly Q&A of First Sunday, a safe space to ask questions, and my writerly gratitude for helping me continue to write this newsletter.

Subscribe now

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

I’m also the author of 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.

Organizing Your Writing Life: Tools

What’s new in my writing world: My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, released in October, just became a finalist for the 18th National Indie Excellent Awards! A big deal. It’s also a finalist for the Golden Crown Literary Society’s Ann Bannon Popular Choice Award. I worked very hard on that book and I’m so glad it’s getting recognition. My newest novel, Last Bets, is out now, and it was a bestseller on Amazon. “Readers will get lost in Moore's beautiful prose, her impeccable plotting, and her outstandingly relatable and multi-layered characters. Beautifully wrought story of two women artists outrunning their demons,” said Booklife/Publisher’s Weekly who made it an Editor’s Pick.

Photo by Dan Azzopardi on Unsplash

You get this scenario: Setting notes collected so eagerly yesterday for an important chapter disappear beneath the debris of a crowded desktop. The browser has too many tabs open. Searches take forever to load. You’ve recently taken up writing longhand but the pencil sharpener is clogged from another broken pencil point.

When this chaos happens, something inside me degrades. I don’t feel creative when I have to pay too much emergency attention to the stuff of the writing life. The tools I use, the organization I need. I’d love the magic of it all working by itself, without any input from me.

But rarely does that happen. Systems that support the writing life are not magically made.

Over the years of writing and publishing and helping other writers, I’ve distilled a list of what’s absolutely necessary in a writing life to stay organized and supported as you create. Here’s what I’ve learned. (And I hope you will share what works for you.)

How to be organized

I am quite organized in all aspects of my life—until I start creating. The flow of writing takes me over. So I’ve realized that to stay organized and stay in creative flow, I need to plan time and thought for my systems.

My particular systems exist in three areas of my writing life. I find them absolutely necessary.

Tools: what I use to write—laptop, desktop, devices; software; writer’s notebook; reference library; favorite pen or pencils or pads.

Files: what I produce and how it’s stored—electronic and paper documents; filing systems; photos and reference documents; outlines; charts, storyboards; backup systems.

Practice: how I write—the regular practice; ritual; writing space; when I write; support from others; privacy and permission to write; quiet or sound; what inspires.

We’re going to explore all three in bite-sized bits, so hopefully whatever you find worth trying, you have time to put in place.

Today is tools: the devices, supplies, and assists I use in my writing, and how I keep them organized and maintained.

Caveat: As you read what works for me, remember you are not me. Take what makes sense. Let go of the rest. Share your own comments and questions.

Leave a comment

My favorite writing tools

I write by hand and on devices, so two tools are essential: my writer’s notebook and my laptop. One warms me up with freewriting. The other is where I make a story.

I start a new writer’s notebook for each new book project. Although I write essays and short stories, books are my main thing. My usual warm-up before a writing session is threefold: (1) I read a poem or a section of an inspiring craft book, (2) I freewrite to a prompt, and (3) I transition to the computer to develop the ideas from the freewrite.

My favorite writer’s notebooks are made by Zen Art Supplies. They are decent-quality paper and they don’t cost much. I can make a mess in them without feeling bad. So I doodle and draw and make charts or whatever calls to me during my freewriting time.

When I transition to the computer, I’m on a 13” MacBook Pro with a blue light screen protector, which eases my eyes. I use Scrivener and Word.

At later stages, I use my iPad as well (or any Kindle reader) to check pacing.

Software

Long ago, I realized an important software truth: I love Word for Windows and hate the Mac version. But I love the Mac operating system overall. I wanted both platforms on one machine. So I use Parallels Desktop (similar to Bootcamp) which creates a Windows virtual machine on my Mac and I toggle between the two.

Not for everybody, but it solves my problem with Word.

On the Mac side (again, my preference) I use Scrivener. I’ve written, edited, and published four books using this program, and I admire its versatility. I was fortunate to have a student at one of my retreats offer to take me through the steps of installing and uploading my manuscript, at the time a true mess in Word, into Scrivener. I’ve never looked back.

When I’m building a book, I start with blank chapters as individual files, giving each a working title. I brainstorm ideas for the chapter on a storyboard (see below) or clustering map. I add character images and bios, setting details, and whatever else the chapter needs. My freewriting notes come forward to flesh out the ideas.

I keep the chapters separate in Scrivener until they are fairly solid hen import them into Word to create the whole manuscript.

What do you use to write?

Leave a comment

Editing assists

I find it hard to edit entirely onscreen. I usually print out later versions of the chapters once they are close to being ready for Word. I edit by hand on this hard copy and input corrections back into the Scrivener file.

Hard-copy editing is a habit from decades of working as a professional editor, and I swear by it, but many writers edit with Apple Pen or other methods onscreen. For me, I miss too much onscreen, as I said, and I can’t feel the pace and flow of a scene without reading it from printed hard copy.

Once the manuscript is in Word, as a whole book, printing gets cumbersome, so I import it into my Kindle or Pages to read on the iPad. Often, I read it aloud.

Four other story-building tools

I have a few other assists I use religiously when I’m building a new book or story.

A storyboard on my studio wall. I create a type of cue card describing each scene (one card or Post-It per scene) and place them on a wall board to make sure the flow works. I learned this from screenwriters. You can see this demonstrated in my You Tube tutorial.

Character and setting collages. I like to create a collection of images for each primary character. I use Pinterest or Unsplash images, printed out, or simply pull from magazines. Often these become valuable prompts when I need help expanding a scene.

Questions list and other lists. My creative brain works best from questions. So each day I write a few to spark my next writing session. I might also write lists of scene ideas, overheard lines of dialogue, setting notes, and lists of character traits.

A file called “extras.” When I begin revising, there are bits and pieces that no longer work, but I don’t want to lose them. More times than I anticipate, the pieces end up back into the manuscript in later revision, often in a different place, often reworked. My extras file gets them out of my working document, relieving the clutter, but I feel secure knowing they can re-enter the story when needed. I search by keyword to find them.

You probably have favorite writing tools—I’d love to hear about them!

Leave a comment

Reference library

My big bookshelves are crammed. I must have over a hundred craft books on writing and creating, and about twenty-five collections of poetry that I use to jumpstart my writing sessions. Below is a tiny fraction, a few current (and old) favorites.

BuzzFeed has a good list of writing craft books, if you are curious. Here’s another one from The Center for Fiction.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (George Saunders)

Ron Carlson Writes a Story (Ron Carlson)

Bird by Bird (Anne Lamott)

On Writing (Steven King)

The Creative Habit (Twila Tharp)

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers (Dave King)

Still Writing (Dani Shapiro)

Making Shapely Fiction (Jerome Stern)

I like having a mix of serious craft books, stories of writers’ lives to give me inspiration and insight, and a few that are simply geared to get a person to sit down and start.

What are your favorites? Share one or two?

Leave a comment

Research

I lean on the Internet and libraries for most of my research, although specialized research requires contacting specialists. For my second novel, I interviewed the head of a Search & Rescue team in California and many aviation buddies who help me correct the SAR and flying scenes. When facts online confuse me or seem questionable, I head for my local library and ask the wonderful research librarians for help.

Some of my research involves collecting photographs of places, people, events that either inspire or back up my stories. I use Scrivener’s very handy sidebar to gather and store them. If I want to see them as I write, I’ll print and pin to a wallboard.

Backing up

I’m sure I don’t need to hammer this point home to you, but it’s vital to back up all newly created files every working session.

Sometimes I do this more than once. You can use a cloud program to do it or you can do it manually, like me. I back up three ways: I email a copy to my gmail account; I save to an external drive; and I save to my laptop.

Scrivener has a snapshot feature built in—very simple to capture each version of the file you’re working on, as many times as you need it. I do this at the end of each writing session, religiously. Then back up the Scrivener files as well.

Maintenance of writing tools

Not a sexy or fun part of the writing life, but maintenance is necessary. You want to keep your writing tools working well so they are there when you need them, right?

I dedicate an hour each month to upgrades and updates. I clean up my backlog of files (more on that in a future post), and whatever maintenance my devices need. It saves my sanity—when I’m hot in the middle of a scene and my upgrade notification comes up, I don’t curse it anymore. I just say, I’ll get back to you on the dedicated maintenance day.

Emails about writing come in constantly. I try to ignore those too, when I’m in a writing session, but I often spend fifteen minutes each morning and evening answering. When publication approaches, there’s a lot and more time is needed. Or if my monthly writer’s group is discussing my manuscript or stories, or my writing partner and I exchange chapters, I set aside time to respond.

Maintenance includes correspondence that keeps my writing life alive and well, but it’s definitely not writing. A valued part of my creative life, for sure. But one that needs its own dedicated time, separate from my writing sessions.

Where do you start?

You may have some of these tools in place, you may set aside time for backing up and for maintenance, for correspondence that’s apart from your sacred writing time. But it took me a long time to develop working systems with my writing tools, and all of it was haphazard, happening whenever I had a free moment. It always felt stressed to me.

It was a breakthrough for my writing life when I realized I needed to have working tools, use them well, maintain them well. My productivity and my general happiness as a writer has increased so much since I did.

How planned or haphazard are your support systems in your writing life? Any changes you might make to more easily use your tools and get the most from your writing time?

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Take time this week to review what tools you use to write.

Think of one item that could use an upgrade. Perhaps something you’ve ignored for a while but is no longer serving you.

Leave a comment

Shout Out!

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

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

Afarin O. Bellisario, Silenced Whispers (Transtrategy), April release

Steve Hoffman, A Season for That: Lost and Found in the Other Southern France (Crown), July 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.

Why It's Good to Stop When It's Going Good

What’s new in my writing world: My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, released in October, just became a finalist for the 18th National Indie Excellent Awards! A big deal. It’s also a finalist for the Golden Crown Literary Society’s Ann Bannon Popular Choice Award. I worked very hard on that book and I’m so glad it’s getting recognition. My newest novel, Last Bets, is out now, and it was a bestseller on Amazon. “Readers will get lost in Moore's beautiful prose, her impeccable plotting, and her outstandingly relatable and multi-layered characters. Beautifully wrought story of two women artists outrunning their demons,” said Booklife/Publisher’s Weekly who made it an Editor’s Pick.

Photo by Rae Tian on Unsplash

A favorite piece of writing advice? I learned it as a grad student during my MFA program. It’s simple: don’t finish a scene. Get up and walk away when you get to the high point of each writing session.

Sounds counterintuitive, doesn’t it. But other writers follow it too. Recently a post came my way from Substacker (read it here). He cited Hemingway who said, “The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day. . . you will never be stuck.”

It’s totally true. And it’s not for everyone.

In his craft book, On Writing, Steven King talks about stopping his day’s work in the middle of a sentence. That’s a more radical idea. I usually finish my thought, but when I tried King’s approach, I did ache to get back to the writing the next day. My brain had to finish that sentence!

Whoever originated the technique, the gist is: Leave a door open for the next writing session by stopping when it’s going well.

I remember this as a painting student: if you continue past your high point, you’ll begin repeating what you’ve already done. Your eye gets tired.

I’ve concluded, for me, that each writing or painting day offers a certain amount of creative juice. If I take a break—or even stop for the day—when it’s flowing well, rather than when I’ve depleted my allotment, it creates fuel for tomorrow.

Not how I was raised

This is NOT how I was raised to approach work in progress. My practical grandmother, who took care of me and my sister while my mom worked full-time, had a motto about “carrying through.” It basically means, “Finish whatever you begin and finish it soon.”

I’ve dutifully followed that advice most of my creative life. I get a subtle thrill from wrapping stuff up. Why, perhaps, so many books of mine are completed and published.

But my grandmother’s belief also got in my way. I ignore the need for a break to refresh. I push past my high point and make a mess, just to reach that finish line.

Create a mental vacuum

I can’t remember how it happened happened, if I got a text or phone call, but one day back in my MFA years, I had to leave the laptop as I had just reached the high point of that day’s work.

All day, it made me crazy. I realized later the action of stopping created a mental vacuum, a kind of tractor beam that kept pulling me back to the story. Pretty simple physics, I know now, but back then I was just nuts about getting back to my work. I couldn’t, for at least 24 hours, and during that enforced break, my brain kept working on solving the creative problem of the scene. The piece I was working on followed me around the rest of the day, flooding me with ideas.

So I made notes. I jotted down the dialogue lines that ran inside my head. I sketched setting ideas. With no other options, I had to let it all simmer—and that gave me the valuable confirmation that Hemingway was right.

Leaving unfinished work in the middle of a high point makes the mind crazy. And that’s the point—make it chew over the scene all night, so when we get back to the laptop in the morning, there’s no chance of writer’s block.

Adding a question or two

Over the years, I’ve expanded this technique. I add questions before I quit.

It’s taken me a while to recognize the feeling that I’m about to hit my high point in a writing session. That’s when I take a break and think of a few questions to add to the end of the page I’m working on.

My questions are like creative prompts. They give my creative self stuff to work on while I’m away from the story.

Surprising yourself

Last year, this technique came in very handy when I was finishing my revision of my recently published novel, Last Bets. I needed some surprises for the ending. I had a great set up: a group of scuba divers goes out for one last dive before a big storm hits the island they’re vacationing on. I didn’t want them to die, but I wanted something to happen that would shake up any equilibrium between them.

I reached a high point in that day’s writing session just as I was describing the boat ride out to the dive site. Here’s where I stopped. (It was agony, truthfully, but very good things came of it.)

Each gust of wind tasted of salt and metal, smelled like rain. Pearl-grey, quilted rows of clouds ran above them, and the dark mass that draped the horizon lay noticeably closer. Enrico passed out steel lifelines to hook around the waist . . .

I took a little walk, got some water, let the dogs out. Then I came back to write these questions on the page I was working on.

Do they get in the water or turn back? Why? How to make this decision believable?

Does something happen underwater?

How does it irrevocably change Elly and Rosie’s relationship?

That last question was the kicker—the thing I couldn’t solve without surprising myself. And I knew continuing to write the scene would not bring those surprises.

After 24 hours, I came back to my desk. And wrote this.

As Elly put the regulator to her mouth and took a long breath, she felt a slight hesitation, a tiny catch. Like the air hiccupped on its way to her lungs. For a moment, worry prickled her arms, urged her to call across the deck, summon Rosie, ask for assurance. But Rosie, probably overhearing a guffaw from the bench of men, scowled even more fiercely.

The overnight simmering of this moment became the idea of some malfunction of Elly’s regulator, the underwater breathing apparatus that scuba divers use. The reg is life or death underwater. She’d get into trouble, she’d have to rely on Rosie in a new way. The outcome of that small scene change, the overnight simmering, created a new trajectory for the rest of the story. Including the surprise ending that I am still getting reader comments (very happy ones) about.

Such is the beauty of the pause, letting a scene rest, incomplete, while your creative self goes to work.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

This week, try the hard thing of stopping at the high point of your writing session.

First time is the most difficult. You may need help to remember to do this and not just keep going. So set an alarm on your phone or computer or write a Post-It to remind you.

Ask a writing partner to try the same exercise and report back to each other about how this goes.

Force yourself (I don’t say this lightly!) to set the writing aside for the day or at least several hours. Then see if re-entry is easier.

You may want to post questions to help you re-enter.

Consider: What told you the writing was at a high point? What clues did you get, internally or in your body, when it felt that way?

Leave a comment

Shout Out!

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

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

Afarin O. Bellisario, Silenced Whispers (Transtrategy), April release

Steve Hoffman, A Season for That: Lost and Found in the Other Southern France (Crown), July 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.

Being a Defiant Reader

I’m thrilled to say that my new novel, Last Bets, is out in the world! “Readers will get lost in Moore's beautiful prose, her impeccable plotting, and her outstandingly relatable and multi-layered characters. Beautifully wrought story of two women artists outrunning their demons,” said Booklife/Publisher’s Weekly who made it an Editor’s Pick. Order your copy today. With my BIG thanks for the support.

Photo by David Lezcano on Unsplash

As a kid, I got lost in books. My mom used to joke that I’d miss my train if I was reading. Once it almost happened: on the hard bench of Grand Central Station’s waiting room, I remained oblivious to both crowds and and the underground rumble until the very last minute, in another world.

In my youth, my requirements for a story to get lost in were simple: characters that transported me. I wanted to be them.

Reading was my primary escape. As a very near-sighted introvert, what would later be called a nerd but without the cachet of brilliant tech or science, I felt like an outcast because I’d much rather lean into a page. I finally got glasses in sixth grade and although I could see the classroom blackboard, I now lived behind thick glass. So I became someone else by reading stories—the hero I wanted to be.

I lived for our Saturday library trip. Lined up on my dresser, my stack of library books lent hope and enchantment. As I grew older, reading also became an outlet for teenage rebellion—what I read defied the rules I lived by.

Find a reading friend

Five years before my spouse and I married, we became reading friends. This friend was unique: each birthday, I sent a box full of my favorite titles from our local used bookstore. I’d kept copies of my best-loved books from kid and young adult days. I visited the cavernous store, dusty and musty smelling, where books were grouped by the owner’s categories, not by publisher’s. I spent glorious hours traveling each aisle, remembering all the friends that had kept me alive as a kid.

All year, when we had our weekly phone calls, we discussed a book. The next birthday, I sent twenty more. This tradition carried on for five years, until we merged our shelves.

Use reading to travel

This winter, we took a two month break from regular life, as a recovery for my exhaustion over launching two new novels. We packed ourselves and two dogs into our small camper van and headed south in February. One of the biggest packing decisions was the selection of books. I read on Kindle but I love most to read before sleep, and that requires print. Our camper is well designed but storage is minimal. We relegated ourselves to one collapsible bin each for books. Plus an extra soft-sided zip bag.

When traveling, I read at minimum one book a week. Reading before sleep became my favorite time of day. Road weary, full of images of all the unknown places we passed, we settled into bed with dogs and dinner and books.

Some books were not a pleasure ride. We discussed this as we drove.

George Saunders, in his excellent Story Club Substack, talks often about reader engagement. When a reader stays with a story, when they can’t let go of it, the story is successful. When a reader drops out, steps away, that becomes the moment in the narrative to examine.

Why did the reader stop? Was it slow pace, the repetitive prose, milky characters?

On the trip, because our stash of books was few, I felt dogged about finishing everything I started. I always hope a story will get better—and some did. I find literary fiction often slow to start and often sparkling by the end, becoming breathtaking. Others were a plod. Even if a book got stellar reviews, it guaranteed nothing. A few campgrounds had giveaway libraries. We exchanged when we could.

Use reading as a prompt

All the while, I wrote. I don’t stop writing, ever. Even when I’m launching another book, I am working on a story or the next book.

Some say a writer should “stay pure” from the influence of other authors while writing—to avoid inadvertently borrowing phrases or tone. This holds no weight for me. We must read to write well. Reading informs us on every level. It’s as if we tap into a universe of words and images with every book, and the energy of that feeds us creatively.

Some say no new stories exist in the world; everything repeats a classic tale. Again, not true for me. Each book I read is more than a retelling. It comes through a unique creative self to show an individual view of the world.

Three of our books were poetry. I read poems before I write. Especially if I feel low about my own creativity. Poets condense beauty and emotion into small space. Like a compressed flower we put in water as kids to watch it expand. I am changed by every poem. I get re-inspired.

This is how to use reading as a prompt. Start your writing session with a page or two, a poem or two. It seriously refreshes the creative self.

Use reading to learn specific skills

Sometimes the way an author will present a scene or a poet translate an emotion into image gives me just the kickstart I need to craft my own scene. Or I’ll study something specific, to help a stuck place.

I remember when I was finishing the revision of Last Bets, published in April. I was down to final details: how vary the ending of my chapters. I spent fifteen minutes before each writing session skimming the ending paragraphs of novels I loved. I wanted to study how those authors used transitions.

Earlier in my revision of Last Bets,, I needed a quick refresher on pace. I chose three thrillers that placed dialogue and action expertly. I opened a page spread, squinted at the text versus white space, and then at my own draft. I modified to allow more white space (faster pace) at times where the writing slumped (this technique was learned from writer Alexander Chee).

A third study assignment: Looking at where a story starts, whether it’s in the middle of action, setting, or a scene of dialogue. Again, I chose favorite books and read just the first pages. Then examined my own. A simple technique that greatly helped me assess the strength of my novel’s opening.

Each book I studied, for specific first aid, upgraded my own writing.

Eventually, though, I had to read for pleasure, not work.

Read for pleasure versus “work”

For over two decades, my work has been about writing.

I made money from publishing, thankfully. My books all earned out. But it’s not a living, so I supplemented with teaching and coaching. Much of what I read became ways to educate myself for my job.

Far in the past, as a kid or young adult, I read solely for pleasure. I touched in with this on our camper trip again. To be able to “waste” time on a less-than-promising book, finishing it no matter what, was not possible when I was teaching. I cut bait fast, set aside a new book by its third chapter if I found no engagement or usefulness to pass to my students.

I chose my reading by what was acclaimed or recommended by a reader I respected, just to keep up with student questions. No complaints—many books I read for classes were extraordinary. But it was always work, not always pleasure.

Now I am retired from teaching, except what I can share of my experience via these conversations with you each Friday. I’m rediscovering my good book requirements—what sparks me, personally, as a reader. I’m reading across genres. I am not reading for work anymore.

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Being a defiant reader

A friend loves her book club. But she’s never reading for pleasure, she says. She’s always behind on the choice of the month. She appreciates the exposure to good books—a reason many join book clubs. But she’s promised herself to take off for the summer, become a defiant reader again.

I love that. I feel more of us should become defiant in our choice of literature. It’s not always the classics that give us creative juice.

I read classics in school, and they developed my appreciation of great writers. I became a student of languages, and I read many books in the original. But they came with an intent to learn, to study, to increase my knowledge. I rarely choose them now.

Good books in my life, these days, don’t work me that hard.

James Joyce is brilliant. I’d never choose him to curl up with during a summer evening or dinner on a camper trip. I might choose a young adult or children’s story. I have less tolerance for hard work.

I have settled into being a defiant reader.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

As a writer, you can divide your reading between study and defiance, if you want. For those who want to read to learn, this week choose a book and use one of these techniques to improve your writing.

Study how an author ends each chapter to improve your transitions.

Use Alex Chee’s squint test (text versus white space) to improve your pacing.

Examine how the book starts—what the author chooses to launch chapter 1—and compare the intensity with yours.

Share your defiance as a reader. What are you reading now?

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Shout Out!

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

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

Afarin O. Bellisario, Silenced Whispers (Transtrategy), April release

Steve Hoffman, A Season for That: Lost and Found in the Other Southern France (Crown), July 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.

How to Get Your Characters to Reveal More

My new novel, Last Bets, became a bestseller on Amazon! “Readers will get lost in Moore's beautiful prose, her impeccable plotting, and her outstandingly relatable and multi-layered characters. Beautifully wrought story of two women artists outrunning their demons,” said Booklife/Publisher’s Weekly who made it an Editor’s Pick. Order your copy today. With my BIG thanks for the support.

Photo by Masaaki Komori on Unsplash

When you write about characters, whether they are lounging in bed or sitting at a farmhouse table having dinner, you write about relationships. You write about entrainment. What they feel and think, their loves, hates, jealousies, power plays, regrets, betrayals, and loyalties comes out through what they choose to surround themselves.

Making use of this selected environment that purposely backgrounds your character can bring your story to life in a new way.

Painters call this surrounding the “negative space.” Negative in this context does not mean bad: it’s simply the atmosphere that embraces objects but is not them.

If you haven’t heard this term before, if you can’t imagine how it applies to writing, read on. I learned its power first in an art class. Then began to use it in my writing with astonishing results.

Power of negative space

I leaned the power of negative space as a young art student.

I was in painting class one day, struggling with a color study: one antique white vase on a blue cloth near two lemons. The still life was lit from the side by a halogen. It glowed.

My teacher gave us the assignment: do not realistically depict the vase and the fruit. Instead, explore the negative space—what was not the objects but what surrounded them.

I had no idea what this meant. Ever the rebel, I ignored her words. The objects were too amazing to not paint. I starting sketching the shape of the vase onto my canvas.

After half an hour, I stalled. Yes, I had drawn a very nice vase. The lemons were appropriately lemon-like in shape. But the painting failed to capture that ethereal glow I saw with my eyes.

These moments in a creative life! You hit the wall, hard. You come that close to scraping your project, maybe your future as an artist. Your mind natters away at how terrible you are. Why bother, right?

Luckily, my teacher knew these moments well. She stepped close to my easel, gave me a quirky smile, and asked me to step back.

“Squint at it,” she said. “What else do you see, beyond the vase and lemons?”

Nothing, I thought. The wall behind them. The rickety table they sat on. The metal hood of the halogen.

She shook her head. “Look at the atmosphere, the air around those objects. Consider its light as a reality, not just a background. You’re after showing the quality of these objects, right?'“

That was the glow I was missing. I nodded.

“When you’re unable to capture the essence of something, focus on what surrounds it. This is the negative space, and it often defines your object more accurately than the object defines itself.”

Surroundings show the essence

By not really paying attention to the people themselves, by exploring what surrounds them, I was able to translate this pivotal art lesson to my writing life. You may learn, if you try this simple technique, that it’s true: characters are defined by what they entrain with. What they love and surround themselves with.

In that painting, after my teacher’s help, I caught the flow. The simple vase and those bright yellow lemons now shimmered on my painting. I simply ignored them as objects and focused on what encircled them—the atmosphere that gave them shape and structure.

That’s negative space. I was thrilled, years later, when I tried it with story.

What do your characters entrain with?

Characters in fiction and nonfiction entrain with people (who they love, hang with, can’t stand). They entrain with beloved pets. They entrain with things (their chairs and soup bowls, photos on the wall, a rug by the door). They entrain with color and light and music and movement. It brings them to life.

When I visit the home or office of someone new to me, I study their space. Do you do this, even unconsciously? It’s slightly intrusive, perhaps. But the small details I notice, clue me into this person, more than anything they could tell me outright.

Consider films: settings are not just a room, but a reflection of the character who occupies that space. We recently watched The Interpreter, with Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman (highly recommended!). Kidman’s character is a white South African, working as an interpreter at the U.N. Her NYC apartment is filled with the country she left behind to move to the States. Very little in her environment reflects any entrainment with America, her adopted country, and we later learn why. Her losses and longings, her real loves, are shown to us in the very first scene in that apartment, as the camera scans the masks on the walls, the photographs, the weavings. The music she plays.

Her character is presented to us in fullness that we don’t get from her dialogue, actions, or movements. We get this character through what is not her.

People hide themselves

We all hide. Due to damage or intrusion by others, we hide what we love and sometimes we hide what we feel, if the emotions are strong or not acceptable. But that means we are only revealing a curated part of ourselves.

In real life, this promotes safety. On the page, it promotes stereotype.

Writers must work to find what’s not being said about the character. We explore the negative space that shows them wholly—beyond what they might tell us.

It’s not always easy to access, though. I use a variety of techniques.

All interactions must count

Aside from studying films for their negative space clues, it’s a fascinating exercise to read a book and make note of all the relationships for just one character in just one chapter.

I took a break from literary fiction this month. I wanted to indulge in an epic fantasy series, totally not my usual. I never really got into this genre (save for Game of Thrones, back when). But someone recommended Sarah Maas’s Court of Thorn and Roses series, and I got hooked. But I also studied how Maas reveals her characters through their negative space.

She depicts a character’s loves in various forms. We see romantic to familial interests, we see enemies and possible friends. We see environment very clearly shown (she’s aces at colors, textures, smells of a room, for instance).

She’s good at showing these loves and hates in every single interaction in her stories, which is what impressed me.

And the unique problems she invents—often a surprise. Mostly created by their relationships.

Listing the entrainments

Once I finished book five, I began a list: choosing one primary player, I scanned for every person, setting detail, or object met in each chapter, then examined why Maas might have chosen it to show an aspect of the person.

More often than not, she scored. Each interaction gave me a tangible clue about the character. How much do they hide, how much do they reveal?

I don’t read this genre much because it can get repetitive—especially in series—and repetition is predictable and steals my enjoyment. But I still came away with admiration for her skill. It’s work to be so down to detail, to make every single thing count. Lots of editing goes into that.

Subtext is a term used with dialogue—what’s not being said often speaks louder than what is. I consider negative space as subtext too. Negative space, what surrounds a character, speaks louder than many of the traditional ways we writers use to show our players onstage.

Collage

A final successful way to explore the negative space is via collage.

I choose colors, Pinterest images, shapes, hats and shoes, animals and objects that hint at who they are beyond how they present themselves. I do this for every one of my characters in every story I write. When I file my writer’s notebook for each finished book, as I’m doing now for my recent novel, Last Bets, I study the collages to see how they ended up aligning.

I made Rosie and Elly’s collages years ago, when I first began exploring their negative space elements. Now it’s eerie to see how close the final versions of these character came to those images I randomly chose.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Choose a scene that’s not quite coming together, in terms of how your character is revealed. Like my painting of the vase and lemons, it may not glow sufficiently. Ask the following four questions about the character in this specific scene.

Where are they standing in relation to this person, place, object?

What gesture or facial expression are they showing?

What’s their tone of voice as they interact?

How are they holding their body?

Or choose a well-working scene and follow my prompt given above: list every person, place, and beloved object your character encounters onstage.

Then ask: What might be missing? What might be too much to deliver in that moment?

What did you learn? What surprised you, perhaps?

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I’ve started a new First Sunday newsletter for paid subscribers that addresses your most gnarly writing and publishing questions. This month’s post was about writing through the gray areas of moral ambiguity. If you’d like to receive First Sunday once a month, a yearly subscription is only $45. For it, you get access to the 700+ archives, the monthly Q&A of First Sunday, a safe space to ask questions, and my writerly gratitude for helping me continue to write this newsletter.

Subscribe now

Shout Out!

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

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

Afarin O. Bellisario, Silenced Whispers (Transtrategy), April release

Steve Hoffman, A Season for That: Lost and Found in the Other Southern France (Crown), July 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. It also is a finalist for the 2024 Golden Crown Awards. 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: The Moral Lines We Cross in Our Creative Lives

Hello, all you new paid subscribers! Thanks for making this newsletter a Substack Bestseller with your subscriptions. And welcome to “First Sunday,” where we dissect and discuss the most gnarly writing and publishing questions. I plan to write this the first Sunday of each month for you, as long as you wonderful people send me your questions. My intention is to make this a safe, generous place to exchange ideas and talk about the deepest writing and publishing issues on your mind.

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

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Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Q: What’s right and wrong is fairly clear to me, in most circumstances, and I like being honest because lies, even little white ones, eat at my gut. I was raised with good ethics, what I can say? That said, I’ve done my share of risky things, crossing lines that I now regret or can justify. I’m not living in a pure zone all the time. I believe in karma, in the highest sense, that what you put out comes back to you, often in disguise or moved around in time, so you may not recognize it at first. I also avoid moralizers, and moralizing in my literature ticks me off.

But where is the line in my writing? What if I want to explore topics, like moral ambiguity, in my characters in my short stories and novels? I wouldn’t be worrying about this, but it’s raising questions among my beta readers for my latest manuscript, and if they are any indication, I’m concerned it’ll put me out of the ballpark for an agent. How do you/did you deal with this?

A: I also grew up with high moral standards, not from a religious background but because my parents were honest people who taught me how to discern what was true for me. Of course, I blew that truth-awareness so many times growing up—testing everything that crossed the line, from fabricating incredible stories (lies) to sneaking out after midnight when I was a teen. Not counting the stuff I chose to try as an adult! I certainly won’t mention all of it here (nothing life-threatening, just totally embarrassing), but you get the picture—I am nowhere near picture perfect. As is true with most humans, when you scratch the surface, right?

Although many of us try hard to be ethical and live by truth in our lives, I also see human nature as prone to test boundaries.

I also know, from my own independent streak, that most of us appreciate learning what’s right and wrong on our own terms. I’ve gravitated towards people who question authority, who want to know the purpose behind a rule before following it. Are you that way? And what does it have to do with your writing life?

Well, it’s a non-issue, until you publish. Or share your work. Then you get the twist: reader reactions. You have a policy of do no harm. Your characters do not. What to do if readers react or you are questioned about it by readers (even family, friends, your bestie, your aunt who had no idea you write that kind of stuff!). Do you even subtly change your story to make it more palatable to others? Do you eliminate what’s truth for you, to have a better chance at publication?

We don’t want to alienate readers across the board. But we also don’t want our writing to become homogenized and bland just to avoid displeasing them. Or even more insidiously, we don’t want to lose our truth in order to be accepted by agents and publishers.

So this Sunday, I wanted to explore, with you, the line we walk. How a writer moves into areas of moral ambiguity, places that may not appeal to readers or the publishing world, with good purpose and understanding of what it might provoke. And be OK with that.

I’ll share my own history with this gnarly topic, and you can share yours in the comments.

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Cross-pollinating

My news: I’m on a podcast tour for my new novel, Last Bets, which is out in the world now. “Readers will get lost in Moore's beautiful prose, her impeccable plotting, and her outstandingly relatable and multi-layered characters. Beautifully wrought story of two women artists outrunning their demons,” said Booklife/Publisher’s Weekly who made it an Editor’s Pick. I’ll post links to my podcasts from time to time, or you can follow them on my Spotify channel. If you haven’t read Last Bets, you can order a copy of the paperback, ebook, or audiobook at all online bookstores. With my BIG thanks for your support for a fellow writer.

Photo by set.sj on Unsplash

ever hear of a band called the Rock Bottom Remainders? The name is self-mocking, I believe. It comes from the publishing term "remaindered book,” which means no longer selling well (those deeply discounted books on tables at bookstores are publishers’ attempts to make even a buck on them).

This band was real. They raised millions for charity with their concerts. And they were all relatively famous writers who risked foolishness in public by doing an art form that wasn’t their expertise!

Stephen King, Amy Tan, Scott Turow, Barbara Kingsolver, and Dave Barry were band members at one time. Backed by pros on drums, keyboard, and guitar, the group performed until 2012, even playing with Bruce Springsteen at an American Booksellers convention.

I love the risk of dedicated full-time writers showcasing themselves in another challenging art that they had not mastered. Who does that, nowadays?

Probably great fun, bottom line, but also terrifying, perhaps. And I bet it gave back something they couldn’t get anywhere else.

Artists love other artists. Writing is solitary. How does community build around us writers? Well, we write, alone, then get together to share what we’ve written—sometimes. Totally not the same as jamming with other musicians.

I believe in cross-pollinating. I’ve dabbled in other artistic avenues all my life (can’t seem to just play with one): been in two bands, as a singer; played the guitar off and on since high school—rather badly; tried flute and hammered dulcimer and recorder; painted and danced (also badly).

Each creative effort has enriched my writing practice. How is that possible?

Hanging out with other arts

For almost a decade, I organized a group of four or five friends for a summer creativity camp. We met at my family’s cabin by a lake in the mountains. One year our group was one screenwriter, three musicians, two painters, and one novelist. (My math isn’t wrong, even though it doesn’t add up—most did more than one art.) Some always toggled, unable to choose between painting and songwriting, for instance.

Why not do both?

I gained so much, just hanging around other artists. From the painters I remembered how important it is to stare and study, visually. From the musicians, I learned new ways to bring sound into my writing. The screenwriter taught me pacing skills, and why dialogue and stage placement is vital in story.

But mostly I just loved being around others who got so much juice from creating.

Poets & Writers had a fascinating article about the phenomenon—and long history—of writers who also enjoy other arts, including the likes Blake, Dostoevsky, Faulkner, Proust, Kafka, and Updike. The article interviewed five contemporary published writers who love to paint, do fabric art, photograph, cook, and draw.

It reminded me that when I’m stuck, it’s time to seek out some cross-pollination.

Cross-pollinating

Last fall, I was interviewed by Valerie Ihsan and Erick Mertz for their Writer Craft podcast. We talked a lot about how writers keep enthusiasm high during the grueling work of producing a book.

Our conversation sidetracked into cross-pollinating: why so many seasoned writers swear by dabbling in other arts to keep their writing sane and productive.

I also used cross-pollinating as a refresher for those stuck times. Or when I’m burned out on words. I practiced this in the months between the launch of my second novel last fall and the recent release of my third in April.

My family and I packed ourselves and dogs in our 19-foot camper van and went on the road for two months. I called it my recovery road trip. My goal was to cross-pollinate: watched great movies, cook great meals, and get involved with my painting again. At campgrounds and when visiting friends’ five-acre “ranch” down south, I set up an outdoor screen house and my easel for art.

I still wrote every morning, but there was no pressure to produce. I could put my passion into my painting.

Like those brave musicians in the Rock Bottom Remainders, I’m not a total newbie with the visual arts. I’ve sold paintings, exhibited fairly widely (galleries to universities to art leagues), and taught classes. The difference is, painting is not my profession. I consider myself a writer first. But painting is my favorite cross-pollination. It relaxes my brain. It gives me new ideas.

If I’m struggling with a story, I either take a long walk or I paint. Both allow a reset.

We were in South Carolina when I took this photo of my traveling easel and box of pastel sticks, set up near a pond in the most glorious early spring afternoon light.

Increase the immersion

What happens when you do a secondary art, versus your primary, as a writer?

When I paint, I can be random. Although I studied seriously for many years to learn how to reliably translate atmosphere, line, and distance into a recognizable image, I don’t approach it scientifically. I don’t try to structure or outline, as I might with a story or novel. I just let my intuition guide me.

Yes, I have a series of steps to follow, just like I do when drafting a chapter or scene, but they are based on how the image feels to me, how it resonates. Rarely do I get this in early draft writing. It’s a beautiful and refreshing experience.

Something else I’ve noticed about this secondary art: a fellow painter once remarked that once you paint something, you own it, and it’s true. I’ll always recognize these reeds painted above, because of the immersion I felt when I studied them for this painting.

The landscapes I paint, whenever I visit them again, have an intimacy like you feel when running into an old friend you know well.

Toggle for refreshment, not discipline

We’re told, as writers, to set up a routine, a discipline, to keep us writing. But what if we need refreshment, not discipline, to keep going in a new way?

The study of reeds, above, took me about 90 minutes. It felt like having a great, insightful conversation with a part of my creative self that doesn’t get tapped when I write. Because of the refreshment it brought, I came away in a very dreamy place—ideal, actually, for re-entering a piece of writing.

We know that words and images use different sides of the brain. As do sounds and movement. Maybe one reason a good walk helps my writing life. Or listening to music or singing along. All these arts are tactile, and they me back in touch with my body. Writing, being an invisible process, happens inside the head and heart, silent as it’s being created.

I’m curious whether you have explored another art avenue, a craft, or some other creative activity alongside your writing. What tangential arts do you dabble in, enjoy, explore? What do they lend to your life as a writer?

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Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Enjoy this article from Poets & Writers then scan your life to see what other art forms you make use of, to bring inspiration or refreshment to your writing.

I’m encouraging you to read the article first, because two of the artists take delight in tangential art forms that might seem mundane, not highbrow enough to be “art” at first glance, but are authentic vehicles for inspiration. Honestly, whatever creative pursuit you bring your passion and love to, will do the trick of providing this refreshment and balance to your writing.

What other arts do you enjoy?

Leave a comment

I’ve started a new First Sunday newsletter for paid subscribers that addresses your most gnarly writing and publishing questions. This Sunday’s post is about moral ambiguity in your stories—how to write it and why it’s important. If you’d like to get in on the fun of First Sunday every month, a yearly subscription is only $45. You also get access to my 700+ archives of this newsletter, a safe space to ask questions that I’ll respond to, and my writerly gratitude for helping me continue to write this newsletter.

Subscribe now

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

I’m also the author of 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.