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My NaNoWriMo Was a Train Wreck

Today’s post is by author Elinor Florence.

Several years ago, I participated in National Novel Writing Month, a creative writing event known as NaNoWriMo.

I joined hundreds of thousands of other writers around the planet who tackled the ambitious goal of completing a 50,000-word novel in thirty days.

In one sense, I was successful. I dutifully churned out 2,000 words a day and at the end of the month, I had a 60,000-word first draft.

That was a mistake I will never make again.

Leaving the station

I began to research the concept for my historical novel seven months earlier, on April 1, 2020. By the time November rolled around I had read dozens of books, recorded a raft of notes, and dreamed up a story. I mistakenly believed I was ready to start writing.

Set in 1905, my novel titled Finding Flora concerns a Scottish newlywed who jumps off the train in the middle of the night to escape from her abusive husband, and finds herself alone on the vast prairie. Flora claims a homestead and endures the deprivations of pioneer life, supported in her struggles by several female neighbours including an American couple, a Welsh widow, and a Métis woman.

On the first day of November, I happily wrote the first thrilling chapter, in which Flora leaps from the train.

From there, it was all downhill.

Wheels coming off

Almost immediately, I realized I needed more of the details that lend authenticity to every work of historical fiction. For example, I had located an old train schedule, but I had no idea what a sleeping compartment in a steam train looked like. I had researched the climate, but not what Flora might be wearing. Each time I hit a snag, I wrote (while swearing in my head) “blankety, blank, blank.”

My greatest challenge was Jessie, the Indigenous character. I had no concept of how she would have spoken and behaved in that time period. I was mortally afraid of writing the wrong thing and betraying my own Indigenous heritage.

But there were larger factual issues, ones that impacted the plot. For example, what were the government’s conditions for filing on a homestead and more importantly, keeping it? The time crunch led me to fabricate laws that later proved to be totally incorrect and resulted in massive headaches.

The storyline was another tangled web. I had imagined the book in broad strokes only, so I started each morning with no clue about what to write next. Nevertheless, I plodded along day after day, filling my word quota.

Screeching to a halt

At the end of the month, I had a shitty first draft, as Anne Lamott calls it. This one was beyond shitty. It was so badly written, so amateurish, that I moaned aloud when I reread it. The piece had no continuity, no rising tension, and no climax. It was little more than a jumble of scenes occupied by wooden characters.

I was so demoralized that I digitally shelved the manuscript for a year, hiding it under several layers of desktop folders, convinced that I never wanted to see the loathsome thing again.

Getting back on track

A year later, my writing buddies who liked the story idea urged me to revisit it. With the utmost reluctance, I fired up the literary boiler. I knew this revision would require more effort than putting lipstick on a pig. I would have to resurrect an entire porker from the dead.

Rewriting was far more difficult than firing off that scattergun first draft. I discovered untold flaws, consulted additional sources, and rewrote almost every scene. That took me four months.

I then submitted it to an Indigenous sensitivity editor. Thankfully she didn’t find anything offensive, but she red-flagged about a dozen instances that needed attention. (For example, I had Jessie wearing mukluks instead of moccasins—mukluks were not worn by Plains Cree in 1905.)

With those corrections made, I hired a professional developmental editor. She identified several major plot inconsistencies, a direct result of my overreliance on that dreadful first draft to drive the action. All too often, I had driven it recklessly in the wrong direction. Those revisions took a further three months of gruelling labor.

Finally, I felt ready to submit Finding Flora to a publisher. To my delight, Simon & Schuster offered me a contract!

But that didn’t mean my work was done. The publisher launched yet another structural edit. The story was told from two points of view, and my new editor tasked me with removing the second POV altogether. That took weeks of swearing and hair-tearing as I struggled to find other means of revealing the information previously relayed through the second character.

Reaching the stationBookshop • Amazon

My novel finally arrived at its final destination. Finding Flora will hit the bookstores on April 1, 2025—exactly five years to the fateful day when I started working on the book.

The only thing that remains of my original manuscript is the first chapter and that, too, has been rewritten multiple times. The plot now makes sense, the characters are fully developed, and, thanks to my slavish attention to historical detail, it has the ring of authenticity.

However, I believe I could have achieved this level of excellence much sooner, and with far less angst. Because of my NaNoWriMo, I estimate that I lost about two years.

In fairness, perhaps historical fiction isn’t the right genre for writing a speedy first draft. Perhaps a fantasy or a romance author might have more success. Surely NaNoWriMo wouldn’t be so popular if it didn’t work for so many people.

But if you are currently participating in this massive exercise, or plan to tackle it in future, these are my suggestions for a better experience.

1. Create a chapter-by-chapter, scene-by-scene outline. The quick-and-dirty process is better suited to pantsters than plotters like me. Creative ideas come thick and fast when you are forced to sit at your computer every day—in my case, too many ideas. I needed a blueprint to keep me on track. Prepare as detailed a plot as possible.

2. Do the bulk of your research ahead of time—preferably all of it. There’s nothing to take your head out of the game and waste precious hours like the necessity to look something up, especially if you absolutely must get it right from the get-go. Facts form the foundation of fiction.

3. Don’t imagine you will have anything resembling a finished book at the end of November. Unless you are a gifted writer, be prepared to spend weeks, perhaps months, tearing apart and rewriting your first draft.

4. Finally, don’t hesitate to give up in the middle of the month. My own reluctance to throw in the towel caused me months of unnecessary work and frustration trying to get my novel back on the right track.

I’m currently pondering my next novel, but I will never again make the fatal mistake of trying to write a first draft in thirty days.

Doubting Yourself Is Not Failing

Today’s post is excerpted from Wrangling the Doubt Monster: Fighting Fears, Finding Inspiration (Bancroft Press, 2025) by Amy L. Bernstein.

What do we have here?

A doubter’s manifesto. An article of affirmation. An artist who says: I see you.

The hope is you see yourself, realize you are not alone, learn that doubt is not your assassin.

You’ll need a bit of truth, a bit of courage. Some repetition too—because you need to hear this more than once. And a wisp of contradiction because … that’s life. I need this as much as you.

A young Sylvia Plath wrote in her journal that “the worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” That sounds true, but I don’t think it is true.

Her assertion implies that only by banishing doubt can you effectively be creative—to practice your art. There are moments, to be sure, when an artist in the flow of creativity (cognitive disinhibition) does not feel doubt blocking the way.

But realistically, doubt is a near-constant companion of anyone making art in any form. Doubt is fuel as well as foe.

Let us therefore not engage in fruitless attempts to banish doubt, or even conquer it. Let us seek productive co-existence with this emotional shadow that hovers nearby, just out of sight, like a ghost.

Let us befriend the ghost.

René Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.”

Equally true: “I doubt, therefore I am.”

Doubt is to life as water is to life. We do not live without either. We do not live without a persistent undercurrent of questions, both tiny and tremendous.

Anyone who claims never to doubt—or to “suffer” from a state of doubt—is lying, either to themselves or to everyone.

Doubt is baked into the human condition and transcends culture, epoch, and geography. People all over the world, in every time period, speak of doubt and the crises of faith it engenders.

Doubt is with us/within us/us.

Doubting is not failing. Doubting is not succeeding. Doubting is not about getting ahead or falling behind; stopping or starting.

Doubting exists in that liminal space where every aspect of art-making is a shade of effort—an embryo of creation.

Doubting may feel like rocket fuel or like doom—but imagine it is neither of those.

Hold space for doubt without imposing labels. Reserve judgment: of yourself of your art-in-progress of what’s in your head/hand/heart. Doubt arises during the many phases of art becoming art.

Let it be. Leave it alone. Keep working.

Every single act of creating is also an act of doubting.

You cannot “make” without wondering. You cannot wonder without questioning. You cannot question—deeply—without exposing yourself to the unknown. Becoming exposed leads to feeling vulnerable. Feeling vulnerable leaves you open to uncertainty. Uncertainty is a close cousin of doubt: a state where truth and clarity shimmer like ghosts.

So much you do not know, cannot pin down. Cannot point to and say, Yes! That!

When you create, you will doubt: Accepting that is your gift to yourself.

Note from Jane: Enjoy this? Then do consider Wrangling the Doubt Monster: Fighting Fears, Finding Inspiration (Bancroft Press, 2025) by Amy L. Bernstein.

The Human-Interest Approach: Focusing on People to Convey Facts

Photo by Onin

Today’s post is by book coach Nicole Pope.

In journalism, we call them human interest stories—articles or broadcasts that cover the news from the perspective of individuals who are affected by the events.

Casualty numbers after an earthquake, for example, may feel abstract to readers far away. An article giving voice to a mother struggling to feed her children after the family lost all their possessions in the disaster has greater resonance. It exposes the personal cost.

The human-interest approach is also a powerful tool that can elevate nonfiction writing from informative to truly impactful. It infuses dry facts and data with soul and elicits an emotional response from the readers.

Academics or experts seeking to reach a broader audience, in particular, may find this technique useful. When they transition from addressing an audience of peers in scholarly publications, they sometimes struggle to strike a balance between authority and readability to make their work more accessible. One key concern is to share their knowledge with readers without dumbing down or oversimplifying.

Writing for an audience of non-experts involves a major shift in writing style that goes beyond using simpler language. It requires writers to become storytellers and deploy narrative skills to craft a tale that incorporates their analytical perspective.

This is where the human-interest approach can help. Framing information through the lens of people’s experiences creates a bridge with the readers’ daily lives and makes complex facts easier to absorb.

Tips to add a human-interest dimension

Researched and narrative nonfiction books can be built around an individual’s story that resonates with readers. In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, science writer Rebecca Skloot covered genetic research and medical ethics, particularly about race, through the extraordinary tale of a long-deceased woman whose cells have been used for medical purposes for decades.

But stories of personal struggles, amazing achievements or epic quests do not need to run through an entire book or be its main focus to strike a chord with readers.

If you’re a writer seeking a potent way to impart information, here are a few tips:

Illustrate specific facts with stories or anecdotes. This is particularly effective when dealing with statistics, scientific facts, or complex issues. In his recent book Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters, political scientist Brian Klaas shows how it’s done. The author draws on chaos theory and a wealth of scientific data to demonstrate how random events affect our daily lives. What makes his book so powerful are the outstanding real-life anecdotes—surprising, funny or moving—that he deploys throughout the book to bolster his ideas.Profile key players. Provide ample details about the people who play a role or are mentioned in your book, whether they’re historical figures, inventors, explorers or ordinary folk. Tell their life story and describe the person behind the name, using descriptive terms that engage all of the readers’ senses and bring these characters to life for your audience.Don’t rely solely on secondary sources. Avoid the temptation to build a case for your ideas only through written resources. Interviews can be an effective way to add another layer to your narrative. You don’t have to be a professional journalist to conduct them, as long as you thoroughly check your sources. Don’t be afraid to contact people whose voice can enrich your content. You’ll be surprised how many will respond positively if they feel you are taking an interest in their work or their life experience. A first-hand account or a well-selected quote not only adds credibility to your content but can also be used to break up fact-heavy sections and sustain reader interest.Hook the reader in the lead paragraph. Grab the reader’s attention at the start of a chapter or book section by starting with an intriguing anecdote or create suspense by starting at a critical moment in time and highlighting the stakes through real-life examples. You can then provide context to support the story you’ve shared and return to the more factual aspect of your text.The power of storytelling

It may seem obvious but it bears repeating. Nonfiction—not just fiction—best holds readers’ attention when it is supported by a compelling narrative. This also applies to big-idea and research-based nonfiction that aims to convey facts, share expertise, or challenge conventional perceptions.

The most thought-provoking nonfiction books are often written by talented authors who skillfully weave facts and vivid details about people to promote innovative ideas and alternative perspectives on important topics. They challenge their audience’s perceptions by highlighting what is at stake.

Injecting a human-interest layer to researched nonfiction should not be seen as a gimmick designed only to increase a book’s commercial appeal. People-focused stories that trigger readers’ imagination and spark an emotional reaction can achieve far more than making data more “digestible.” Well-chosen anecdotes can also foster a deeper understanding of the topics and messages at the heart of the book and add a memorable aspect that boosts their impact.

In a recent podcast interview, historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari, author of the best-selling Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind and the recently published Nexus, which tackles the advent of AI and its impact, acknowledged that “for story animals like us, concrete is almost always better than abstract… Something concrete, something sensory that you can imagine, that you can visualize.” Books convey important messages, he added, but in many cases, what readers retain are “a few anecdotes, a few stories.”

5 Things Painting the Bathroom Reminded Me about Writing a Novel

Photo by Ivan Samkov

Today’s post is by writer and editor Sarah Welch.

Earlier this month, I painted our downstairs powder room.

I had never painted a room before, but I was sick of the plain white, haphazardly decorated space, and it seemed like a good place to try something bold.

As I was working, I realized I could draw a lot of parallels between painting the bathroom and writing a novel. You’ve probably heard me talk about the intersections between writing and other art forms once or a million times, but I’d never considered that a more practical variation of painting—walls as opposed to pictures—could apply, too. But sure enough, I quickly found myself facing very similar challenges to the ones I coach my writing clients through.

Here were my takeaways:

1. You can prep forever, but eventually you have to start.

I waited several days between prepping the bathroom and actually painting it. I’d taped off the edges, covered the floor and the mirror, wrapped the toilet and sink pedestals, and gathered my supplies. But then I just kept prepping. Maybe I should place the tape differently here. Maybe I should cover the toilet in a different way. Maybe I should…

What I needed to do was start painting. Would I inevitably have to adjust some of the prep work as I painted? Of course. But if I waited until I thought the prep was perfect, I would’ve likely ended up with a permanently taped- and drop-clothed guest bathroom. Which would’ve been awkward at the holidays.

I see novelists do this, too. Whether they’re researching a historic time period or fiddling with their outlines, it’s so easy to keep prepping and postpone writing. It feels safer that way, doesn’t it? If you never start painting, you don’t risk turning the bathroom a hideous shade of streaky awful. If you never start writing, you don’t risk your manuscript failing to live up to your vision.

Sure, getting started means potentially failing. But it also means giving yourself an opportunity to succeed. There will absolutely be tape lines to adjust and plot questions to answer along the way, and that’s okay. Sometimes you have to get into it—so it’s practical instead of theoretical—in order to see exactly how to get that prep work just right, anyway.

2. It’s tempting to edit as you go. It’s better (usually) if you don’t.

While I was tackling the first coat, I found myself constantly tempted to go back over spots that still had little white speckles showing under the paint. But I knew that doing that was likely to lead to splotches and streaks, so (for the most part) I refrained.

Same with writing, right? We’re tempted to make each scene and line and word perfect on the first try, which ultimately hinders us from finishing the story. I let those little speckles live on the wall until the second coat, and as authors, we can let imperfect wording, hollow descriptions, and even entire scenes stay as they are until it’s time to begin edits.

I will note that when my roller slipped and I accidentally slapped a bunch of navy paint onto the window, I stopped to clean that up right away before it dried. For authors, that paint on the window might equate to the realization that you’ve written yourself into a giant plot hole, or that a character has made an inauthentic decision that will take the story in a whole new direction. In that case, go head and redirect before your mistake impacts the next fifty pages.

3. While there are general “best practices,” there are a lot of “right” ways to do the job.

I did a lot of research before I got started (see point 1 about indefinite prep), and for the most part, I followed the best practices I read online. Cut in the corners, paint one wall at a time, etc. But there were some “rules” I encountered that I knew immediately I would be better off disregarding. One of those was a Reddit post claiming (very authoritatively) that a “tight space painter” was a waste of money, and anyone with a modicum of skill could paint behind a toilet or sink with a regular brush.

Now, I had never heard of a “tight space painter,” but I knew immediately from this post deriding them that I would need one, so I quickly added it to cart. And I’m so glad I did, because it alleviated my anxiety about some of the trickier parts of the paint job, and it made things so much easier in the end.

In my one-on-one sessions with members of my writing group, I constantly find myself giving authors permission to break the “rules” that they feel they must follow even when they hinder their writing practices. When a “tried and true” (or, at least, widely accepted) rule, guideline, or best practice is no longer serving you and your writing process, then that rule no longer applies. Throwing it out the window in favor of the tools or systems or processes that will make your work better and even—God forbid—more fun does not make you any less of a writer.

4. At a certain point, you have to stop before you make it worse.

For literally three days after I finished painting, I found myself rushing back out to the garage to grab the paint can and a tiny brush in order to fix an uneven line or a spot around the edge of the outlet cover, or even one or two of those darn white speckles that only showed up in a very specific light.

As I wiped wet paint off the base of the hand towel rod for the umpteenth time, I began to fear that this fixation on making it perfect would go the same way as those horror stories of people who cut their own hair and, in the process of trying to make their bangs even, wind up chopping them way too close. So, I finally decided it was time to call this project done.

Are there still imperfections? Sure. Did my husband ask me when I was going touch up the caulking below the baseboards behind the sink the other day? He did. Did I throttle him right then and there? No, and I’m very proud of myself for that restraint. The job is finished. It’s time to step away.

A few months ago, an Inkwell member asked me how she could be confident it was time to hand her latest draft over to a beta reader. She was having the same problem I had with the finished paint job—she just kept finding things to fix, and she couldn’t stop trying to fix them. I told her, “When you can’t tell whether you’re making things better or worse, it’s time to step away from the manuscript.” She was at the point where she was too close to it—she couldn’t see the big picture anymore, and she’d lost sight of her pride in the story. It was time. She gave the manuscript to her very first beta reader and, though she’d had to psych herself up to hit the “send” button, she breathed a huge sigh of relief.

5. The finished product is something to be immensely proud of.

Baseboard caulking and occasional speckle aside, the powder bath is now my favorite room in the house. (Is that weird? I accept it.) Not only do I love the way it turned out, but I feel a sense of pride every time I walk into that room and see what I accomplished. I did this! It was hard, and I was nervous, but I did it. And I’m proud of myself for it.

I hope that’s how every author I work with feels about their finished manuscripts, too. Whether you’re typing “the end” of your very first draft, submitting an edited draft to an agent, or uploading final files to self-publish, you have created something entirely new, and you should celebrate that accomplishment. It’s easy to focus on what you would change or what you haven’t accomplished, but isn’t it so much more rewarding acknowledge yourself for putting your all into a project and finishing it to the best of your abilities?

You did it! I’m proud of you, and I hope you’re proud of yourself.

Breaking Point, Back Story, Resolution: A Three-Part Structure for Memoir

Photo by Dennis Anderson on Unsplash

Today’s post is by writer, editor, and book coach Jennifer Landau.

According to writer Jessica Ciencin Henriquez, many effective personal essays follow a three-part structure: breaking point, back story, resolution. This format works well for memoir, too. When writing your memoir, you begin at the point when something in your life has shifted and can no longer be ignored. You fill in the backstory—which is not your entire life story—that illuminates the breaking point. Then, you move your reader toward some form of resolution that offers closure, if not always catharsis.

Beginning at the breaking point

Salman Rushdie’s National Book Award-nominated memoir Knife opens with a literal breaking point: The author is stabbed multiple times by an assailant while giving a speech at an outdoor amphitheater about, of all things, how to keep writers safe. Rushdie is nearly killed. Among his injuries: a broken jaw.

At the start of Maggie Smith’s memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful she is searching through her husband’s briefcase after he returns from a business trip. She finds a postcard addressed to a woman who lives in the town he just returned from. He tells the addressee that he doesn’t know the type of pinecone they picked up on their walk, a pinecone he then brought home to the young son he shares with Smith.

Sloane Crosley begins her memoir Grief Is for People with a one-two punch. Her apartment is burglarized when she is out running errands and, she tells us, exactly a month later her former boss and best friend Russell will commit suicide.

Starting a memoir at the breaking point immediately draws in the reader. In these three examples, many questions spring to mind. Was the attack on Rushdie related to the fatwa that the Ayatollah Khomeini had issued when Rushdie published The Satanic Verses thirty plus years ago? And why was there no security at the amphitheater? What made Smith decide to root through her husband’s briefcase that night? Did they have a fight before he left? Was there previous infidelity? Was Crosley singled out for a burglary or was it just a conveniently open window? And what led to her best friend’s suicide?

We read on, looking for answers.

When considering the breaking point in your own memoir, think back to what led you to write your story in the first place. That’s likely fertile ground. The events don’t have to be as dramatic as an assassination attempt or suicide, of course. But something has to happen that makes the reader wonder what led to this inflection point.

Keeping your backstory on track

Rushdie’s and Crosley’s books are slim volumes, just over and under two hundred pages, respectively. Smith’s memoir comes in at more than 300 pages, but many of those have a single paragraph or even a single line on them. All three write with surgical precision and use backstory solely as a way to serve the forward momentum of their memoirs.

In Knife Rushdie takes us back to the night before the stabbing to show us what he calls “his last innocent evening.” He takes us back to his younger years, too. There is mention of the fatwa for context, but he doesn’t linger there. We get a portrait of his drunk and abusive father, but only to show the reader that this chaotic relationship made it difficult for Rushdie to find stability in his personal life. That is until he meets his fifth wife, Eliza, who will play a major part in Rushdie’s grueling rehab. He is showing us their courtship and the life they built together to show the reader how hard he’s worked to find a sustaining love. And all that he has to lose should he not recover.

Smith uses backstory to show the cracks in the foundation of her home. Her husband­, a one-time playwright, is jealous of Smith’s success, especially after the poem that gives her memoir its title goes viral. When Smith calls home from a work-related trip she feels her husband’s anger at her taking time away from her duties as a wife and mother. As she puts it, “I didn’t feel missed as a person. I felt missed as staff.”

Smith is also clear about the details she won’t share. She does not recount the scene of her and her husband telling their children about the divorce, for example. Here she is able to set boundaries for the memoir, while also drawing the reader close. The moment her children find out, she says, “isn’t for you.” We are outside of her story, but also her confidantes.

Crosley gives us a brief description of the ring and amulet that were stolen and an only slightly longer one of the grandmother who passed them down: “abusive and creative about it.” The jewels matter because they are Crosley’s mother’s sole inheritance and because Crosley connects their loss to her friend Russell’s suicide. She fantasizes, even after he’s dead, that he will be the one to recover them.

Crosley goes on to paint a portrait of Russell as a charismatic, but troubled man. He had problems with his partner, with his conduct as a publicist at a major publishing house, with a wider literary scandal, and with a penchant for collecting that turns to hoarding­­. On the last night Crosley sees Russell alive, he recounts a fight with his partner who told him, “Whatever happens don’t kill yourself.” Unsurprisingly, that conversation haunts the author: “My friend was telling me something and I didn’t listen. For how long had he been telling me?”

When building your backstory, think of the clearest path to the breaking point. You don’t have to be spare, but you don’t want your readers to feel like they’re following you down a series of dead ends. Too many sidetracks and they may lose trust in you as a guiding hand. If you are using the beat sheets method from Save the Cat, you can think of the breaking point as an “all is lost” beat and build out from there.

Reaching for a resolution

Resolutions in memoir are by their very nature artificial because, except in the case of posthumous works, life continues. As Smith moves through the messy dismantling of her marriage, she acknowledges that her healing is a work in progress. She hopes that by the time her memoir is published she will be in “a place of forgiveness.”

Crosley seeks resolution by traveling to Australia to jump off a cliff, a feat she failed to complete a decade earlier. She stops herself at the edge of the cliff each time, a move known as suicide drills. Here she reveals her actual motive for returning: to see something of what her friend Russell saw as he “peered into an abyss.” She takes out half a gold chain, all that remained after the burglary, and throws it over the edge of the cliff. This is where Russell is, she decides, even if she never goes back again. Months later, she finds the other half of the chain behind a bookcase in her apartment. But Russell’s half is still at the bottom of the ocean. Their separation continues.

Rushdie has the tidiest ending. He literally returns to the scene of the crime thirteen months after the attack. He stands outside the jail where his assailant is being held and then goes back to the amphitheater to recreate the scene for his wife. He makes peace with the attack and with his life. “We’re done here,” he tells Eliza. “Let’s go home.”

However you choose to resolve your memoir, make sure that it feels true to the story you’ve been telling rather than tacked on. Readers crave closure, not manipulation. Be clear about where you’ve planted yourself at the end of your memoir’s journey. Are you still in the thick of it? If so, be upfront about that. It’s a tricky stance, but workable, and can make your memoir feel alive on the page. If you’re ten years past the events of the memoir, you’ll likely have more perspective. Just guard against tying everything up in a pretty bow. Even the most joyous endings have echoes of what came before. Find this balance and you’ll be sure to leave your readers satisfied.

Why the Best Life Lessons Are Writing Lessons, Too

Today’s post is by author and editor-at-large of Writer’s Digest, Jessica Strawser.

In big, defining phases of our lives, there are always little moments that stand out. The ones you can still vividly picture years later, when everything else about that time has blurred together. As writers, we recognize these as telling details—and it’s worth considering why they’re the ones with staying power.

Chances are, there’s a good reason.

For a lot of us, the spring of 2020 is the ultimate blurry memory, a tangle of the most worrisome emotions: fear, uncertainty, grief, confusion.

But the April morning that stands out to me wasn’t tangled at all. It was so simple, in fact, someone else might have laughed it off.

While the initial lockdown looked different for everybody, for me it involved homeschooling a kindergartener and second grader who found me a poor substitute for their teachers and friends. For the record, I found myself a poor substitute, too. Like most people, I tried to keep perspective that as long as we were healthy, we could roll with anything else. But suffice to say disappointment mitigation had become a paramount parenting skill.

When my kids’ spring break approached, I braced myself. Our cancelled vacation was the least of anyone’s worries, but tell that to two Lego-crazy kids who were supposed to be jetting off to Legoland. They’d been counting down for months, chattering excitedly about which mini-figures to bring and what the best rides would be. These were the days you couldn’t even cancel a reservation because all the call centers were jammed; you just assumed it wasn’t happening and hoped your account would be credited eventually.

On the day we’d been meant to leave, I went all-out with a homemade breakfast, trying to lift their spirits. The empty week stretched ahead of us without the pseudo-normalcy of virtual school. “Well, kiddos,” I began, taking my seat at the table, “I know we’re supposed to be on a flight to California…”

My 5-year-old cut in with pure exuberance: “And instead, we’re eating waffles!”

She said this with not a trace of wistful longing. Only a minute-to-minute comparison that a decadent breakfast at home was way better than being on a cross-country flight, uncomfortably buckled into a tin can in the sky.

It stopped me in my tracks. At a time when all the adults were encouraging each other to find joy, to stay present and hold our people close … well, she wasn’t telling herself anything. She was just doing it.

She was showing us how.

I shared this story with many friends who found it sweet, but interestingly, only my writer friends seemed as profoundly moved as I was. Moved to tears. Moved enough to make it a mantra. A group of us had an ongoing email thread full of angst about how on earth we’d meet our deadlines, and whether it even mattered. My daughter’s remark became our shorthand for the small triumphs, and for gratitude—that the sun came out at last, or the grocery shelves were stocked again, or we got a call from an old friend. If we actually liked what we wrote that day, even better.

Today, I ate the waffles, we’d write, the relief palpable. It evolved into a way of encouraging each other, too, to hold out a hand when someone seemed overwhelmed: One day at a time. Just make yourself some waffles, girl. You sound hungry.

Bookshop • Amazon

Years later, I still think about it. It even worked its way into my latest novel. In Catch You Later, new this fall, the two main characters are lifelong best friends, women stuck in dead-end jobs at an isolated highway travel stop. One of them is content to make the best of things there; the other is desperate to get out. When her exit plan suffers a huge setback, they have a literal waffles moment that becomes their own shorthand, the way it did for us.

One of the novelists from that original thread was among the first to read my advance copies. She texted me instantly upon reaching that scene. Love that you put in the waffles!

Maybe we found it useful to have a mantra to ground us because we’re word people. But I wonder if it was more than that.

I wonder if all the best life lessons are writing lessons too. Or if writers are just more inclined to keep our eyes open for metaphors and hidden meaning, to see things from a different point of view.

Or maybe there’s something about this particular lesson that resonates more. Once writers enter the publishing realm, there’s inevitably a low-grade tension in much of what we do. We work and create and dream and strive in an industry that’s in a perpetual state of flux, stress, and even fear (AI, anyone?).

There are times where all we can do—where the best thing to do—is sit down at the table and focus on what’s in front of us. Blocking it all out for a moment of uncomplicated bliss with those glorious, fluffy squares.

When you’re harnessing the flow of a new draft, setting aside any worry of whether it will ever be good enough to publish.

When you’re smarting from the sting of rejection and pat yourself on the back anyway, for being brave enough to put the work out there, for being willing to try again.

When you’ve had a long day at the office and turn down a happy hour with your coworkers, because you promised yourself that tonight, you’d prioritize your writing.

When you celebrate every milestone, even the little ones. When you allow yourself to be buoyed by your glowing reviews on Goodreads and ignore the negatives.

When you finally stand at the podium of your own book launch, taking questions from the audience, and they already want to know what’s next and how fast it’s going to happen.

It’s okay—even good—to shut it all out sometimes. To savor the moment you’re in—the one you’ve worked hard to create for yourself. The one no one can take away from you.

Eat those waffles, my fellow writers.

I don’t know whether it’s the secret to being more successful. But it might just make us all a whole lot happier.

Don’t Demonize Print on Demand

Over at LitHub—the established water cooler for the literary/MFA publishing crowd—bookseller Drew Broussard wrote a piece last week, Have You Purchased a Weirdly Low-Quality Paperback Book Lately? This May Be Why.

The crux of his piece is that traditional publishers—the big ones in particular—are using print-on-demand to fulfill orders to deliver a crappy, overpriced product. As a bookseller, Broussard is disturbed by this, as it undercuts the quality he wants to represent, plus it can end up costing readers more at the register. Some publishers raise the price of paperbacks when moving to POD because it costs more per unit to print, even if the quality dips. That said, Broussard is not always in favor of higher production values. He notes that the rise of sprayed edges and hardcover reissues of popular novels are “morally-neutral late-capitalist cash-grabs.” (The Big Five have a very fine line to walk to be held in high regard today.)

Arguments about the role and quality of print on demand have been ongoing since the technology rose to prominence in the early 2000s.

POD started off being closely associated with the self-publishing market, as it allows authors to publish for hundreds of dollars, if not zero dollars. It has never really shaken off that association, even though it has been a godsend for authors and publishers alike. For authors, it eases the path to nationwide distribution and retail placement; both Amazon and Ingram use the technology (on their own or through printers for hire) to fulfill orders. And for bigger publishers, it has meant not losing sales when being caught short of stock, whether because of a prize win, a current event, or scheduling problems—any number of reasons, some better than others.

Broussard’s position is that POD is being used for convenience and not for really good reasons. From his perspective, I’m guessing a good reason might be fulfilling the extraordinary demand for specific titles in June 2020, after George Floyd’s murder. Titles on race filled the top 10 on the New York Times bestseller list in a way that no publisher could’ve ever anticipated. Ingram’s print-on-demand capabilities ensured that spike in demand could be met. Would it have been better to make readers wait? If so, they might have been waiting a very long time given supply chain problems during the pandemic. And I don’t think the authors of those books wanted readers to wait any more than the publishers did. Every retailer and distributor will tell you that if the book can’t be bought when the customer wants it, you’ve lost the sale.

This is perhaps why both Ingram and Amazon have been rather insistent that publishers give them permission, along with appropriate digital files, to produce titles using POD if and when stock runs out. When I worked at a midsize traditional publisher, this insistence came along with some favorable terms if certain conditions were met. These days, I have to wonder if the carrots have turned to sticks. One retired publisher commented on Threads—and I have heard the same from others—that there is pressure from a “specific retailer” (Amazon) to have the book available as POD even if stock is available. He writes, “It allows them to be never out of stock. That has driven the massive expansion of titles in the two POD programs. It also means that two customers who order a book from that retailer may get different quality goods in their delivery.”

Early POD books were noticeably low quality, but the technology has been advancing for nearly three decades now, and except for people really enmeshed in the industry, it can be impossible to distinguish a POD title from an offset title, at least for the average black-and-white paperback that’s mostly text. The “secret” often shared for identifying a POD book? Look at the last few pages for a barcode. That’s now the giveaway, rather than the paper, cover, or printing quality.

But it’s undeniably true that some POD titles just don’t look great.

For some titles, you definitely wouldn’t want to put the original, offset edition next to the POD edition as the differences would be glaring. So what’s going on? I can only speculate (and maybe some of you working at publishers or printers can enlighten me in the comments), but here are likely explanations. All of this applies to traditional publishers, especially Big Five publishers, and their normal business operations. 

The POD edition was not set up competently. This can be fixed. Publisher Anne Trubek discusses at length who’s to blame when POD looks bad, as well as the technical steps that go into printing a book. Don’t blame POD. Blame the care and competence of those setting up the POD edition.The POD printer somehow botched the job, or more likely the publisher chose lower quality materials, perhaps because better quality materials were not available. (Paper shortages are a thing, more on that in a minute.)The publisher never intended to keep the same level of production value for the book after the first edition or first print run sold out. They planned for the book to move to POD once it became a backlist book or started selling below a certain threshold of copies. The question always becomes, “Does that cover gloss [or special thing that adds cost but is only attainable from offset printing] sell more copies?” Often the answer is no.The original offset edition was never going to transition all that well to POD to begin with.

On this last point: For many years now, people who specialize in book printing and manufacturing have begged and pleaded with publishers to standardize how they produce their books (e.g., paper types, trim, finishes, and more). Standardization reduces costs for everyone in the supply chain, right down to the reader. Standardization also means that when publishers or retailers must use POD to fulfill orders, for any reason, the quality differences become less pronounced or don’t exist. You’re not changing the book trim, you’re not making big changes to the paper quality, etc. POD can do a lot of things well, but it has limited options for trims, papers or special printing operations.

Even 15 years ago, I was being pressured as an editorial director to standardize. That pressure has only been ratcheted up due to ongoing consolidation and transformation of the paper and printing industries. The cost of paper and printing keeps increasing and it’s not just an artifact of the pandemic. There’s a larger story here about the transformation of the paper and printing industry and economic forces at work that book publishing cannot control. I’ve written in my paid newsletter about this (see here, here, and here)—my husband worked for 20 years in book production, so you’re noticing some of that influence!—but it remains a rather boring topic except to a handful of insiders and specialists. But it has a dramatic effect on what Broussard is noticing and what is likely to happen in the future.

Smaller publishers rely on print on demand more than the big publishers.

It’s about money and financial risk. A print run is an investment that might not pay the publisher back in the form of sales. The money is tied up in inventory and it can incur ongoing warehousing costs. It means the publisher has less money for other things, like author advances or marketing. Even for a book that’s selling well, knowing when to go back to press and in what quantity can make the difference between a successful book and one that costs the business dearly. I do admit, however, that the aversion to inventory and warehousing can be taken too far. I saw it happen as an editor, when a focus on “just in time” inventory and reduced warehousing space could end up costing more in the end. But that’s another discussion. Suffice it to say, there’s a balance to be struck.

Authors have expressed frustration with their publishers about the lack of transparency and communication.

Usually the fact their book is being printed and fulfilled via POD is never disclosed. While I wouldn’t say the publisher is keeping it a secret exactly, in my experience, authors are rarely if ever notified about issues related to inventory, printing, or pricing changes. For my own book, my publisher certainly never told me about the move to POD or that the price had increased for that POD edition; I found out on my own. But the transition was seamless and I’ve never heard a single complaint from anyone. (Also, for traditional publishing contracts, authors can expect to be paid their usual royalty rate regardless of how the book is printed.)

It would be great if publishers could do better communicating these changes if only for the sake of transparency and increased trust, but it is highly unlikely the editors themselves—the point person for authors—are kept in the loop about such things. Once a book has sold through its first print run and is due for a reprint, not only has the editor moved on in many cases, but it’s a discussion between the production department and the people who manage inventory and reprints, maybe sales staff. So much depends on the publisher. Unfortunately, if authors are hearing about potential problems from booksellers and feeling blindsided, that’s undesirable for everyone.

Which brings me back to Broussard’s piece: His proclamations about POD on social media, by his own admission, have stoked author anxiety about publishers using POD for their books. He says authors are “shocked to see the product of their labors … given such short shrift.” While he says his criticism is really directed at big publishers in particular (they’re the late-capitalist greedy ones), I don’t see authors being educated as much as they’re being set against a method of printing that is needed by the industry and shouldn’t have a moral judgment tied to it.

The bottom line

I have no doubt that POD is getting misused in some cases and not executed well in others,  but the wiser call to action is to ask how POD can produce a better outcome when it becomes the most logical, sustainable or economical choice for a book. It can produce outstanding outcomes where everyone is satisfied, but it does require advance planning and thoughtfulness. As editor Martha Bayne recently commented, “Print on demand is a technology, pure and simple. Some (many) print on demand books are of excellent quality, indistinguishable from an offset printed book. Almost all scholarly books are printed POD these days, which allows university presses to take risks on books that may only sell 300 copies and keep them in print. Some POD books are shoddily produced, due to printer error, publisher cost-cutting, or some weird combination of the two. But POD itself is value neutral.”

Forget the First Line. Focus on First Pages.

Photo by Jean-Paul Wettstein

Today’s post is by editor Tiffany Yates Martin. Join her on Wednesday, October 30, for the online class Irresistible First Chapters.

Studies show people make judgments about others in a tenth of a second. And it often seems like readers, agents, and editors may decide almost as quickly whether to keep reading your story.

But here’s advice I wish I could offer to every writer tying themselves into knots trying to find that magical first line: Let it go. Worry less about creating a first sentence that will shock and awe, and worry more about drawing them into the story one link of the chain at a time.

The truth about first lines

First lines are greatly overrated. Yes, there have been some classics that have been immortalized in the canon, but too many authors get bogged down trying to create that perfect opening sentence and prevent themselves from creating an effective story.

And while the occasional agent or editor may say they stop reading if that first sentence doesn’t smash it, experienced industry professionals who have read hundreds if not thousands of manuscripts know that the opening line is just the first bread crumb. Effective story openings offer a steady trail of crumbs.

Even if you manage to nail a killer lead sentence, a great first line or page doesn’t make up for other deficiencies. I once was enraptured by a bestseller’s brilliant first line, but the story quickly unraveled and I had to force myself to grudge-finish, hoping it would eventually live up to that chef’s kiss of an opening line. (It didn’t.) A perfect first line isn’t going to help you appeal to industry pros or readers any more than Cinderella’s rotten stepsisters were able to fool the prince beyond their surface-level beauty.

Think of your story’s opening as weaving a spell over your reader: the magic starts working from that very first line, but it’s going to take more than that to complete the incantation.

What about first paragraphs?

These introductory lines of your story carry a lot of weight, it’s true. Their job is to give the reader some reason to want to know more. That generally means they should accomplish a number of key things:

introduce a character who interests and attracts the reader enough to want to take a journey with themcreate a question or uncertainty readers want addressedcreate some sense of tension that readers want resolvedoffer an appealing voice the reader wants to spend more time with

Your first line may be that shiny flash that first draws us closer to investigate the hook, but it’s the lines and paragraphs that follow that determine whether we bite.

“When I think of my wife, I always think of her head,” begins Nick Dunne in Gone Girl, and as he goes on in that first paragraph to clinically describe its contours and texture under which “you could imagine the skull quite easily,” right away we have a keen sense that something is very not-right here between these two characters.

One of the truest truisms of story is that readers don’t care what’s happening until they care who it’s happening to, and it’s hard to capture readers without some sense of character. We read past that intriguing first line to know more about this person … and find that Nick is just as curious about the contents of that head—meaning his wife’s mind and her thoughts, which are opaque to him despite their marriage, although he does imagine opening her head up to try to follow them.

It’s the normal relationship uncertainties he so badly wants answers to, he assures the increasingly unsettled reader. Questions that may initially make us nod in recognition—“What are you thinking? How are you feeling?”—before Flynn knocks us off of our comfortable perch again: “Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?”

We don’t know, but it’s the rare reader who doesn’t want to find out at this point.

Flynn uses all four of the above techniques for hooking readers: character, tension, question, and voice, enticing us into the story further with every line of those first three paragraphs.

What about first pages?

The intrigue and interest you’ve raised in your first page make a promise to the reader: “Come on in and this story will give you what you want and more.” They promise that these elements and events are meaningful and relevant and will tie together over the course of the story—a promise you must begin to deliver on immediately in the first pages.

The first line of V. E. Schwab’s bestselling book The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue isn’t exactly a world shaker: “The girl wakes up in someone else’s bed.”

It’s intriguing enough to tickle our attention, perhaps, but not a situation that many readers haven’t found themselves in before (it’s okay to admit it).

Neither is the next line, as she lies in crystalline stillness “to hold time like a breath in her chest” in the moments before he wakes, to “keep the memory of their night alive through sheer force of will.” Anyone who’s ever feared that the cold morning light might dissipate the magic of a previous evening might not raise an eyebrow at that either—but the story’s lyrical voice begins to draw the reader closer.

Then come the questions and uncertainties:

He’ll forget, she understands: “They always do.” Now we’re seeing a pattern of behavior that may pique our curiosity: How often does she do this? What is the situation? Who are “they”?And the next paragraph of absolution: “It is never their faults.” Why not? Whose is it?The next, where she observes his body with “details long memorized,” upending readers’ assumptions: if these two are familiar enough for “long memorization” of each other’s bodies, who are the others she refers to—and what exactly is going on?

The rest of the first page reveals she met him the previous night; lied about her name “but only because she can’t say her real name”; that she’s taken on several other names in the last month, and two nights ago chose her current one when she was with this same man under another identity.

With every line of the rest of the chapter Schwab offers more detail, fills in a bit more of the picture one brushstroke at a time. Readers are given context that begins to answer some of our initial questions, even as the author introduces more intriguing uncertainties and questions and contradictions that keep us reading to discover more answers.

We’re not just interested in the resolution of ambiguous questions in general. We’re curious about her, trying to put together pieces of this puzzle about this unusual woman, her situation, what she is doing and why.

First-pages faux pasToo much vagueness: Uncertainty and questions in a reader’s mind are solid devices for snagging their interest—but you must offer enough detail to plant our feet and give us some idea why it matters. Vague, amorphous questions do nothing but frustrate readers; we don’t have enough context to care about the answers. Balance offering enough of the picture to orient readers to the situation and the character while holding back a key puzzle piece or two.Action or conflict without character: Leaping straight into exciting action or conflict seems like a powerful way to start your story with a bang and grab readers’ attention. But if we don’t know enough yet about the players involved, or why this incident is happening or matters to them, then it’s just “stuff” happening, removed from the context that makes readers invest. A car being run off the road on a deserted highway late at night by the lone truck behind them might seem like a high-stakes, high-intensity opening sure to ensnare readers, but until we have some context about who it’s happening to (or who is causing it) and why, it’s like watching a video game without real-life impact or consequences.Character info dump: Don’t overdo it. Readers don’t need the full CV of your character(s) in the opening scene; we just need some reason to want to know more. You can paint in more context little by little as the story moves forward. Think about when you meet someone new: Most of us don’t immediately grill them about their background, lives, or personalities; we begin to figure out who they are as we see what they do, how they act, what they say. But we only begin to engage if something about them intrigues us enough to know more.Unclear perspective: The narrative voice is the reader’s companion and guide throughout the story—whether that of a discrete “narrator” or the main character(s) themselves. If we don’t have some idea what perspective we’re joining the story from, readers will be uncertain of their footing in the story. If the story’s narrative voice is weak or absent or dull, readers may not want to commit to spending hundreds of pages with it—or trust the storyteller.

While a unique, lyrical, or appealing voice may snag readers’ interest on its own for a few lines, remember that what you say with your story is more compelling to readers than how you say it. A story’s voice should grow out of and serve the story. The most perfect prose in the world won’t compensate for a story that doesn’t set a hook that makes readers want to read on.

Note from Jane: Join us on Wednesday, October 30, for the online class Irresistible First Chapters.

Why Everyone Should Keep an Authority List

Today’s post is by book coach, editor, and author Joshua Doležal.

I’m just Josh. What does an average guy like me have to say? If you ever find yourself thinking that way, you should try an authority list.

1. Everyone is an authority on something

Most of us believe, when we push our carts past strangers in the grocery store, that each of them has a wealth of knowledge from their life experience. That older gentleman with the baggy jeans and suspenders looks like a great handyman. Maybe he is a veteran with firsthand memories of Vietnam. That college student in sweatpants at the self-checkout register—maybe they have 30,000 fans on a gaming platform, maybe they are already a whiz at ecommerce.

Our default assumption about others is that they know valuable things that we don’t. So why is it so hard to believe the same about ourselves?

You don’t have to be a leading expert on thoracic medicine to write a gripping memoir. Sure, the trendy topics these days are things like trauma, addiction, and gender ambiguity. But some of my favorite books are about simpler things, or subjects that might not seem glamorous.

David Mas Masumoto’s Epitaph for a Peach draws from years of farming experience, but really it’s a book about preserving family traditions, adapting to change, and facing uncertainty. In fact, it’s Masumoto’s lack of confidence in farming that’s compelling. Novella Carpenter’s Farm City is also propelled as much by her ignorance and the pickles she gets into as an urban farmer as it is about clear agricultural takeaways.

Time and again I find myself advising writers to lean into the mess. So that might be one place to start if you don’t feel like you have anything authoritative to say. What are the sources of your self-doubt? What story might you tell if you stopped trying to present yourself as a sage handing down wisdom from on high, but instead wrote bravely into the messes that you know so well?

2. Lists unlock ideas

Memory is a network of interlocking experiences. Trigger one memory, and it will awaken others. The story-worthy idea might be the last one in your list. But you might never have unlocked it if you hadn’t flipped every other trigger first.

So just start listing things that you could teach a reader something about or that you feel you know well. Here’s what a short list might look like for me.

ParentingSongwritingBaseballGardeningTeachingWildland firefightingWilderness conservationFitness

The more you add to your list, the more you’ll remember. Pretty soon you’ll agree with Flannery O’Connor that any of us who survives childhood has enough material to write for the rest of our lives.

3. Lists lead to scenes

Many of my brainstorming tools are sneaky ways to start thinking about scenes. The authority list works best when we keep breaking each topic down to single places and times. It’s like playing with Google Maps, where you call up the aerial view of your town and keep zooming in until you reach the street view.

So let’s say that I’m an authority on wildland firefighting. That job requires a hundred different tasks.

Initial attack (small crews)Deployments (large crews)Chainsaw work (cutting fuel breaks, dropping hazardous snags)Hoselays (trunk lines, fittings, laterals)Back burns (drip torches, pyrotechnics)Mop-up (day shift, night shift, Pulaskis and shovels and McLeod tools)

None of that jargon means anything to you yet. But nested within each of those tasks are scenes, moments in time, little videos playing in my memory.

Initial attack. Getting helicoptered out to a lightning strike with my buddy Tori, who disappeared from my life after that summer except on Facebook. It is a remarkable thing to spend two nights on a mountain with another human being with just a sleeping bag and a few MREs (Meals Ready To Eat) that feel like they are left over from the Vietnam War. Why was this kind of intimacy so easy to find in college? Why is it so hard to find in mid-life?

Deployments. I was dispatched with large crews to California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, even northern Alberta (see “Mutiny in the North Woods”). I could write a whole essay on the strange phenomenon of the fireline romance, how all of the rules of conventional life seemed thrown out the window in fire camps. I saw unlikely pairings on every deployment and enjoyed one myself. It couldn’t have been that we felt a lack of accountability, because we were living cheek to jowl in tent camps with people we knew from our small towns. Was it that drawing close to a primeval force like wildfire, even the smoldering remnants of it that we scraped away at on night shift, awakened the kind of survival instinct that supposedly sparks a baby boom after natural disasters? The fireline romance afflicted (or enriched) firefighters of all ages: why?

Maybe it’s unfair of me to fall back on such dramatic memories. So let’s take a crack at songwriting. I cut a demo years ago, performed at coffee houses, restaurants, and cafes through graduate school, and thought I might aspire to more. But I’m happy enough as a campfire guitarist now.

Just like firefighting, I could break songwriting into tasks or more thematic memories.

Love interestsCollege music scene in rural TennesseeChords and melody first, or the lyrics?Imitation and originality

Love interests. I wrote my first song for Maya, a girl I thought I loved, but now realize I never knew. It was the only time in my life I’ve ever been that possessed by a crush. Maya was a little puzzled by the whole thing, I imagine, and nothing came of it. But that experience unlocked something in my creative life. I wrote 80 songs during college, probably over a hundred by now, counting the dance ditties for my kids. During that time, I’ve pondered a perhaps unanswerable question: why did I write my best songs for women I didn’t really love? Does this say something about me—that my love songs are all avoidance fantasies—or about songwriting in general? Does the creative spark spring from something more like lust than like love?

Imitation and originality. It is a strange thing how certain chord schemes get baked into muscle memory. Even now while doodling around I find myself drifting into the depressive major/minor progression that I must have absorbed from Joan Osborne’s “One of Us,” or from R.E.M., or maybe Shawn Colvin. I can recognize the warmth that runs through U2’s oeuvre, how those melodies always launch up at the end rather than plunging down to the minor chord. But that’s not how my songs ever want to come out. Is it because I grew up in the 90s, a child of Alice in Chains and Soundgarden, and I cannot now escape that imprint on my sense memories? But I hear a similar melancholy in folk tunes, all those murder ballads, even the supposedly happy “Shady Grove,” which I performed at my wedding. So maybe what wants to come out in my songs is more a fundamental human truth than an echo of all my influences. When you get right down to it, where do songs come from?

The question is the key

The two ingredients necessary to push an essay or a book forward are scenes, which we locate by zooming in to places and times, and questions, the messes we find ourselves in or the memories we struggle to comprehend.

As you make your list, keep one eye open for the questions that emerge from it. You’re not generating a list of topics to then “write about.” You’re generating a list of containers for memories to write through. If you’re not curious about anything that shows up in your list, if you don’t feel some urgency to wrangle beauty and order out of the mess, then the result will be either flat or incomplete.

Masumoto fears that shifting consumer demands mean the death of his heirloom peaches. People don’t care about flavor anymore, they just want shelf life and color. So he prepares to say goodbye to his beloved Sun Crests and to farming as an art. What comes out is a love song that ultimately revives market demand (he’s still happily growing those peaches today). But the book begins with urgent questions: What can I do? How can I live with myself if I lose this family farm?

But all of this starts with owning your authority. Say it with me: there is no such thing as block when you’ve conquered the doubt.

You have a story to tell. You have a life’s witness that no one else does. Believe that. Turn your authority into a list. That list will soon be teeming with scenes, and hopefully some of those scenes will have built-in perplexities that you’ll need to write your way through.

Where Do the Stories Come From?

Today’s guest post is excerpted from the new book The Curious Reader’s Field Guide to Nonfiction by Anne Janzer.

I happen to believe that every person on earth is a storyteller. We are all trying to understand the story of our lives.

—Steve Almond, Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow

In a sense, all writing originates from memoir, drawing on the writer’s own perspectives, observations, and stories. Many authors (including this one) fill books and essays with personal anecdotes.

Yet as readers, we often want to see ourselves or our situations reflected in the work—especially when reading advice. If we cannot picture ourselves, we may feel unwelcome. For example, a woman reading a book filled with profiles of men may feel subtly excluded, even if she doesn’t consciously realize the reason.

Nonfiction writers have to decide where to collect their stories and how much to rely on their personal experience.

For journalistic exposés, memoir, history, or other narrative nonfiction, the subject determines the story and characters. For books that explain or inspire, authors have a wide menu of options for choosing stories to support their ideas.

Personal experience

Writers’ own experiences are readily available, so they show up frequently. Sharing personal stories creates a sense of connection between reader and writer.

Early in the book Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less, Leidy Klotz tells the story of the moment he conceived of his area of study. He was using blocks to build a bridge with his young son. They needed to connect towers of different heights. While he automatically reached for a block to add to the shorter tower, his son simply removed a block from the taller tower. And in that moment, Klotz had an epiphany: if we want simpler, lower-impact designs, we must confront our knee-jerk instinct to solve every problem through addition. The story highlights the concept that anchors the entire book. (He also turned it into an experiment that confirmed the broader bias for addition.)

Other people’s stories

Many authors find stories through original research: interviewing subjects, surveying people, and otherwise being out in the world, physically or virtually. When they share stories of non-famous people, writers must introduce us to the characters. That can be a challenge.

Some authors are brilliant at drawing these characters—read any of Michael Lewis’s books about finance to meet people who come to life on the page. But not all writers are as adept. If we cannot feel a connection to or visualize the people, the stories will not carry as much power as they could.

How widely does the writer reach in gathering these stories? If they all come from the author’s own networks, readers outside those networks may feel excluded. For example, books about entrepreneurship that only profile venture-backed tech businesses may not not land with aspiring entrepreneurs in retail or service businesses.

Stories from the news, history, legends, or fictionAmazon • Bookshop

Stories embedded in popular culture are easy to access and often familiar to readers. But there’s a risk that the reader may have encountered them before. So many business books have relied on Steve Jobs’s story that it has become stale—an ironic legacy for such an innovative man.

Nonfiction books often combine stories from all of these sources. The right balance depends on what effect the author hopes the stories, in aggregate, will have on the reader.

We feel seen when the story represents people like us.We gain fresh perspectives when the stories highlight people different from us.We feel connected when writers share personal stories we can relate to.

The choice of stories itself tells a story.