Jane Friedman's Blog: Jane Friedman, page 36

Demystifying Miscreant Memories and Crafting a More Authentic Narrative

Today’s post is by freelance writer and editor Brittany Foster.

Ask me what I ate for breakfast on Tuesday of last week and I won’t be able to tell you. Maybe a bagel? Fruit? Definitely tea. Unless that’s when I ran out…

This isn’t different from most people. Except I happen to be a memoir writer. And if I can’t even tell you that, how can you trust me to accurately recreate scenes from my distant childhood?

I think the answer lies in having a willingness to objectively examine your miscreant memories to determine where—and if—they belong in your story.

Such as this one:

When I was a child, I remember a colorful houseplant in my mother’s room. Green with pink-streaked leaves. Maybe a croton or a rubber olant. Whatever it was, those leaves called to me, the pastel pink so like sugar cookie icing. I couldn’t resist them. I’d eaten vibrant plants before. Peppermint-flavored teaberries and sun-warmed wild strawberries. Surely, this would be just as delightful.

Squatting on the carpeted floor by the bed, I checked to make sure no one was watching before snapping off a leaf and stuffing it into my mouth. I bit into it and balked. It wasn’t sweet. It was caustic and it burned my tongue, coating my mouth in bitter juice.

Just then, my mother turned the corner to catch me cringing with chunks of leaf stuck to my chin.

“SPIT IT OUT! IT COULD BE POISON!”

I spat a wet, green mouthful of half-chewed leaf onto my stepfather’s jeans, which had been carelessly left in a rumpled pile on the floor. My mother ran to me, peered into my open mouth to make sure there was nothing left, and roughly wiped the spit from my face with her sleeve.

Her yell alerted my stepfather, who came into the room after her.

I was terrified of him. Of being caught between the bed and the wall.

With my mother, I moved to the doorway as she told him what had happened. But he wasn’t relieved. He was angry.

I’d had the audacity to spit on his clothes, dirty and wrinkled as they were.

He started to yell. To come toward us.

My mother grabbed me by the arm, hauling me to the front door as his screams followed us out of the house. He wanted to get hold of me—to punish me—but we were running. She threw me into the car and peeled out of the driveway.

We went to my grandmother’s, who sat me down at the kitchen table with a bowl of old-fashioned mixed candies to soften the plant’s aftertaste. They looked like pieces of red and green sea glass and they stuck to my fingers as I picked through them.

The sound of teaspoons swirling in hot mugs of tea is the last thing I remember.

A few months ago, I asked my mother to tell me what she could recall about that day.

“Oh, Brittany,” she said. “I don’t think that happened—I don’t remember it!”

That checked me. Was I wrong? Had it been a dream?

It couldn’t be.

It’s been a part of my history for decades. I can feel the pink, plush carpet beneath my bare feet. The acerbic taste of the leaf on my tongue. I remember my heart pounding and the tackiness of the bright candies.

But if it really did happen, why doesn’t my mother—my only witness—remember it?

It could be because, to her, it was just another day in our life. More yelling. More running. More trauma. Same old.

It could also be because it didn’t happen to her. She was there, yes. But as a witness, not a victim. Multiple studies have been done on the unreliability of eyewitness testimonies. And, although it’s true that trauma can distort memories, and false memories are more likely to surface in those with PTSD (like me), this has been a very clear and distinct memory in my head for a long time. Its remembrance wasn’t triggered by another event or mental probing.

Being a memoir writer, this leaves me in a bit of a pickle. Especially since, as an MFA student in a creative nonfiction program, one of the key messages our instructors pound into our heads is “don’t make s*@t up!”

And I’m not. At least, I don’t think I am.

The truth is that this memory is real to me. But I can’t tell you with complete certainty that it did or didn’t happen.

When I brought it up with my therapist, she assured me that the memory was, in all likelihood, real. She said that the fact that my senses were so entwined with the memory added to its validity because the same part of our brains that is used to process sensory information (the parietal lobe) is associated with memory retrieval and autobiographical memory. 

So, do I write it as truth when my only witness doesn’t remember it? Or do I leave it out, even if it serves my story?

I’m not alone in asking this. It’s an issue that many memoir writers will face. How do you trust yourself or your sources when memory is so fallible? When your witnesses are unreliable or when you’re trying to dig up questionable childhood memories from thirty years ago?

I owe it to my readers to tell them the truth. But what do I do when the truth isn’t black and white? When the only facts I have are based on my memory and they conflict with someone else’s?

The key is to understand how multifaceted truth can be. We only need to look back to the infamous dress or the green needle/brainstorm audio clip to see that reality and truth are intricately tied to perception—both physiologically and psychologically. And if our perspective is wholly unique, the only truth we ever really have beyond blatant fact is our own.

But let me be clear: this doesn’t mean you should serve muddled or unverified memories to your readers as hard truths. Instead, use your skill and experience as a writer to tell them exactly what it is they’re reading. And learn how to work through misty memories.

Some authors do this using footnotes, like Tara Westover. Others, like Caitlin Doughty, distinguish between what she remembers and what was most likely to have happened in scene. Many writers address this in their notes on sources.

And for others, like me, it means putting in the time and work to analyze a questionable childhood memory from a psychological perspective and deciding whether or not it deserves to be part of my narrative. For example, because this particular memory is hard to verify, and I have others that are easier to confirm and that serve the narrative in the same way, I decided not to include it in my book.

However you approach it, just don’t try to pass off murky, half-memories as full-on facts. Your readers aren’t going to expect you to remember every single detail from your life. But what they do expect is honesty. And being upfront about what you do—and don’t—remember is what will give your narrative authority and authenticity.

Writing Hasn’t Won Me Fame or Fortune, But It’s Brought Me Friendship

Photo by Daniel Richard

Today’s post is by author Liz Alterman.

While querying agents and surviving submission, one thing that may keep you going is visualizing your story out in the world, hopefully, loved by the masses.

Along with that, you may imagine hosting a reading before a packed house or even a small crowd of well-wishers huddled inside your favorite bookstore. But in recent months, multiple viral posts have shown authors, their expressions somewhere between disappointed and devastated, staring at a sea of empty chairs. Unfortunately, this isn’t uncommon.

Even with the best pre-event push, there’s no guarantee you’ll fill the seats. Last March, I had a reading scheduled at a charming new bookstore. The shop’s owners and I posted about it on social media. I invited friends and included it in my newsletter. But as that dark and chilly evening arrived, I had a feeling it would be a low turnout.

Minutes before the event was slated to begin, the store was nearly empty. Making things more awkward, my novel’s editor and my agent, who both lived in the area, were there, witnesses to just how wildly unpopular my book seemed to be.

I paced the shop, wondering if I could go hide in the bathroom and attempt to teleport back to the safety of my home. When a couple walked in, I experienced an embarrassing rush of narcissistic feelings, a desperate, “Please be here for me and not to buy a last-minute gift for the birthday party your child’s attending tomorrow!” neediness.

Mercifully, they took their seats and what began as one of the most cringeworthy nights of my writing career transformed into possibly the loveliest.

Melissa Elder and Liz Alterman

The couple—poet Melissa Elder, author of Nostalgia, and her husband Brad, asked thoughtful questions: How did the idea for my novel come about, what did my writing process look like, and could I share my path to publication? (I joke that bookstores should hire them for future events because their questions fostered such an engaging discussion.)

Because it was an intimate gathering (putting a positive spin on it), we got to chat about writing on a deeply personal level and the reading blossomed into a conversation.

Since that evening, Melissa and I have become good friends. Together, we’ve checked out new bookstores and enjoyed long lunches where we discuss our latest reads and the ups and downs of the writing life. We discovered that our shared interests extend to art, photography, and arboretums as well.

We’ve supported one another at subsequent events and I was thrilled to return to that same bookstore when Melissa celebrated the launch of her latest poetry collection.

It might be cliché to invoke the “quality versus quantity” adage here, but I’d happily trade a line out the door for one person who becomes a treasured friend.

That said, if you’re hoping to attract a crowd, I reached out to authors who shared several ways to set yourself up for a successful event:

1. Spread the word

Jessica Payne, author of Make Me Disappear, The Good Doctor, and the forthcoming Never Trust the Husband, recommends advertising early and often. “Tell all your friends and family,” she says. “Post about it—more than once!—on your social media, preferably using a bright graphic. I make my own graphics in Canva, and try to go with something that both looks bookish but is easy to read.”

Payne suggests the following posting schedule:

two months outone month outa week outa day or two prior

“I also always send this out to my newsletter list,” she says. “I get the impression that some authors think people will simply show up because it’s at a local bookstore that posts about it—but that may have limited reach. You know where your readers are, so meet them there.”

Beyond social media, Payne posts on her local Facebook community pages.

“They’re almost always open to community events,” she said. “I explain I’m a local author, give a tidbit about what I write, then share the details, along with the event graphic. I’ve met many new readers this way and it’s led to invitations to do events at other local locations.”

2. Team up with other authors

Partnering with fellow authors can increase the crowd exponentially and also make things more interesting for attendees. While authors often appear “in conversation” with others who write in the same genres, it’s fun to team up with those whose books fall into different categories. This not only broadens the appeal of the event but also may attract new readers.

Lee Kelly, author of the thriller With Regrets, joined forces with Victoria Schade, author of the romance Dog Friendly and Jenni L. Walsh, author of the historical novel Unsinkable, for an event.

“We had wanted to do something for Jenni’s release and given that Victoria and I write in such different genres, a ‘genre sampling’ seemed to make a lot of sense, as there was little else to thread the books together into one event,” said Kelly.

3. Offer something extra

To bring some cohesion to that event, Kelly, Schade, and Walsh presented “A Shelf Tasting: Three Authors, Three Desserts, A Delectably Good Time,” featuring treats from each of their novels.

Kelly added that having something that combines love of reading with another element makes it more memorable for attendees.

Payne agrees. “I never call it a mere book signing, which gives me visions of a long line to a folding table and little else,” she says. “With my latest event, I’ve called it a bookish party. What I actually put in my newsletter: ‘We will talk all things books and writing. I’ll do a brief reading, answer questions, and yes, as always, there will be wine!’ I don’t think people exactly come up for the wine, but I do think it makes it feel fun, fancy. I try to also have nonalcoholic options.”

Last August, Payne celebrated her birthday at her local library with a “bookish birthday party.”

“I got mini cupcakes and it was fantastic,” Payne says. “I think part of it is remembering this is supposed to be fun for you and your readers, and that you don’t have to do it the way it’s always been done.”

If your event doesn’t turn out as you’d hoped

Even when people promise to attend, bad weather, transit problems, sick kids, and work issues often get in the way.

Should this happen to you, it helps to keep in mind that you’re in good company.

In her funny and honest essay, My Life in Sales, Ann Patchett recalls her experience while touring with her first novel The Patron Saint of Liars. Patchett wrote that approaching the stranger at a bookstore’s cash register to introduce herself was often the most awkward part.

“We would look at each other without a shred of hope and both understand that no one was coming,” she explained. “Sometimes two or three or five people were there, sometimes they all worked in the bookstore, but very often, in the cities where I had no relatives to drum up a little crowd, I was on my own.”

If it can happen to Ann Patchett, it can happen to any of us.

Tom McAllister, author of How to Be Safe, shares a similar tale in his essay Who Will Buy Your Book in The Millions, which opens:

“Nobody else is here,” the elderly woman said into her phone. “It’s embarrassing!” She was the first one to arrive at my reading at the Philadelphia Library, a week after the release of my third novel, and two weeks after the pinnacle of my writing life, when that novel was praised in both The New Yorker and The Washington Post, two articles that I had assumed would create something like buzz around me or my writing. It was 6:58, and the reading started at 7:00.”

When things don’t unfold as planned, Payne’s advice is to go with the flow. “My bookish birthday party was going great—until I realized we forgot both the books and the cupcakes at my house, a twenty-minute drive away,” she recalls. “My husband raced off to retrieve them, but in the meantime, I had a crowd of twenty-five-ish staring back at me. So we chatted some, and I explained the situation and laughed with them about it.”

Payne notes the worst part was that initially she didn’t think she had a copy of her book to read from. “But then I remembered I had a digital copy in my Kindle library,” she says. “So I read from that. And then turned that into a fun tidbit to share on my newsletter. In the end, it was fine, funny even. But first there was definitely a moment of panic.”

If you’re hosting an event, publicize it and hope for the best. But attendance is largely out of your hands. If you end up with only a few guests, I hope you get as lucky as I did.

The First Rule of Writing Is Writer’s Block Does Not Exist

Today’s post is by SaaS copywriter Alexander Lewis (@alexander-j-lewis).

On New Year’s Eve 2022, I stood in my backyard surrounded by friends, finishing the last drags of a cigar. In the dark, we took turns sharing our hopes for 2023. I knew my goal. It was clear and succinct in my mind because I’d been noodling on it for weeks. But as others shared one by one in a circle, I second-guessed my goal. All the resolutions before mine were about family and health and finding balance in the new year. Would my resolution about business and money seem crass? Could I jinx myself? Too late. It was my turn. I stuck with my original answer, “I’m going to double my writing business in 2023.”

Crass or not, my goal wasn’t outlandish. In past years I’ve grown the business by almost 90%. But 2023 wasn’t like the previous seven years. Not even close. I didn’t merely undershoot a lofty target. 2023 was the first time my writing earnings were lower than the year before. Revenue tipped backward. Jinx!

A lot happened last year. It was a difficult and strange time to be a working writer. There were fears around AI. My sector, tech, suffered an effective bear market which resulted in a slowdown in hiring. Interest rates rose and marketing budgets were reduced. And exactly midway through the year, I endured the biggest health crisis of my life.

There’s just one problem: None of these factors were within my control. I’d be lying or lazy (or both) to say that last year’s under-performance was purely circumstantial. I made a mistake and effectively tied my hands behind my back. What do I mean? In 2023, for the first time in my writing career, I stopped writing for myself.

The best way to write for others is to write for yourself

Freelance writers have the ultimate edge when it comes to sourcing new leads. Every time you publish an article or new social post, no matter the subject, you’re marketing your services as a writer for hire. Words are your product. Writers often meet their first client by accident. You publish a blog, someone reads it, loves it, and asks you to write something similar for them—for a fee.

Call it the “flywheel” of freelance writing. Call it, “building your writer brand.” It all translates the same: The best way to write for others is to write for yourself.

I began freelancing full-time in 2016. From then until 2022, no matter how busy I was with client work, I always made time to write for myself. Blogging. Social media writing. Guest posting. Half the fun of growing a freelance business was writing the stories that no one asked for, but that I wanted to tell.

It worked. The more I wrote for myself, the more others wanted to work with me. The more publications I wrote for, the easier it became to pitch the next one. All I had to do was keep writing…

That’s where the problem originated. If the best way to write for others is to write for yourself, then the opposite is also true. The surest way to slow your writing career is to stop writing for yourself. And damn it! that’s exactly what I did.

The first rule

The first rule of freelance writing is that writer’s block does not exist.

To write consistently for yourself, you must believe as a fundamental principle that writing is a matter of discipline. As soon as you believe (even partially) that writer’s block exists, you set yourself up for failure. Writer’s block is an excuse, based on fear, that a writer stores in their back pocket. The excuse gives you permission to quit as soon as writing gets hard.

Writing was hard for me in 2023. I think the difficulty started because I was bummed about AI. For me, writing is pleasurable because it is difficult. Now, something that was difficult in nature was made simpler by a machine. It stole some of the fun of writing. So, I stopped writing for a week. One week became a month. One month became a few. And by the end of 2023, I had almost no new personal writing to show for a full year.

I believe writer’s block starts in fear. Most often, I think it’s the fear of perfection. Writers put too much pressure on their first draft. They fear the flashing cursor and never type the first sentence. This has seldom been a problem for me.

Writer’s block arrived for me in the form of a different fear. It was the fear that my work was made meaningless by a machine. It’s silly when I say it out loud. Finding meaning in one’s work is a matter of choice. Besides, if the process of writing is what makes it meaningful to me, then I can continue to write however I please.

Still, I never rationalized my way out of fear. The result was I ignored the blank page. The worst part is that I missed it. 

It takes guts to write

The best writing is scary to publish because it is vulnerable. It takes guts to share your stories and ideas. People can misunderstand. They can object. Clicking publish makes you an easy target to be picked on. Maybe you’re wrong and are called out publicly. Or maybe you’re right and called out anyway.

Every writer must decide for themselves if the vulnerability is worth it. For me, there’s almost no activity I love more than clicking publish on an idea I’ve wrestled with in silence for hours.

A few weeks ago, my wife Sarabeth and I took a walk around Lady Bird Lake in Austin. We let our aussiedoodle Oliver off-leash to sniff around for lost tennis balls at Zilker Park. That’s when I had a new idea for setting resolutions. “What if we set resolutions for one another, based on what we think would make the other happiest?”

We each mulled over possible resolutions in silence for several minutes. I leashed Oliver again as we reached the end of the park. We continued down the sidewalk and then the dirt path. I shared some resolutions for Sarabeth and she gave me a few in turn. One of them was clearly the most important.

“I think you’re happiest when you’re writing,” Sarabeth said.

I still have lofty financial goals for my writing business this year. But my primary goal for 2024 will not be a revenue target, but a writerly one. I am returning to the foundations of a good writing life. My resolution is to rediscover my writing routines and start publishing my work once again.

If the past eight years of freelancing have taught me anything, it’s this: When I write for myself, the revenue takes care of itself.

Want to Improve Your Amazon Ranking? Improve or Update All of Your Book Descriptions

Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán

Today’s post is excerpted from The Amazon Author Formula by Penny Sansevieri.

Let’s say you’re running some Facebook ads and you’re getting lots of clicks, but no sales. This tells Amazon your book isn’t relevant to the search, and that will impact your search rank on Amazon.

Really?

Yes, really.

Amazon’s goal is to serve up things its consumers want to buy; the site isn’t there for window shoppers, and the website is quite intelligent. If someone lands on your book page and immediately clicks off without engaging with your page at all (expanding your book description to reach more, scrolling down to read the reviews), that tells Amazon your book isn’t right for the market; consequently, it becomes harder to rank. So if you’re thinking about your own Facebook ads (or even your Amazon ads) that are getting lots of clicks but no buys, you may want to consider how it’s impacting your relevancy score and your overall visibility on Amazon.

So, how far back does Amazon go when considering your overall relevancy score?

Remember that first book you published that didn’t do well? The cover wasn’t great—you knew it could have or should have been better—but it was your first book, so you took it in stride. You learned from your mistakes and you moved on.

The thing is, Amazon never moves on. Somewhere, lurking in the back end of Amazon is a black mark beside your name, and that mark means, This author once published a book no one seemed to like = low relevancy.

Amazon cares about relevancy. It’s how the entire site—with all of its millions of products—manages to find exactly the thing you’re looking for when you need it. Plug in a few keywords and, boom, the exact widget, lotion, or book you were looking for appears. This is why relevancy is so important and why making sure everything connected to your Amazon account (even the older books you’ve published) is in tiptop shape. This point can’t be overemphasized.

The other element of this as it relates to Amazon ads is that the less conversion you have on your Amazon book page (i.e., the lower your relevancy score), the more your ads will cost you. And if your ads never seem to do well across the board, Amazon will ding your relevancy score as well. If you have an ad set that’s not doing well, kill it.

Is there any hope for that older book that didn’t do well? Fortunately, there are some options. Often, it means revisiting an older title, maybe republishing it, revamping the cover, or in extreme cases, taking it down entirely. But that’s pretty much a last resort.

A few years ago I noticed that our website wasn’t ranking as well as it should for the term “book marketing.” Considering that that’s the work we do, it’s a pretty important term to rank for. Upon investigation, I discovered that a page on our website was broken. By “broken,” I mean it had no keywords, no title tags; it was basically a mess. I fixed it and within about three months, our website was back and ranking again.

You can use the same method for an older book: fix what needs fixing and show Amazon that you mean business. The algorithm keeps a close eye on fixes, updates, and any polishing you do to your book or book page. It’s easier than ever to get back on track, and small changes and enhancements can help build your status in the Amazon ecosystem and grow your presence for both your author page and your book pages.

A great way to get back on track: improve your book descriptions

Whether we’re talking about Amazon or any other online retailer, book descriptions are more important than most authors realize. Too often I see simple details overlooked that can make or break an author’s ability to turn an Amazon browser into the next book buyer.

Dumb down the description

Most people bristle at the saying “dumb it down,” but dumbing it down doesn’t mean your audience is stupid; it means you’re making your content easier to absorb. Brains are meant to conserve energy, and reading long, complex text exhausts the brain and consequently your target reader. Fewer words, shorter sentences. Using eighth-grade writing doesn’t mean you sound like an eighth grader; it reduces the amount of mental energy a consumer needs to use to absorb what you’re telling them.

Make the description easy to scan

If you have huge blocks of text without any consideration for spacing, boldface type, bulleted lists, short paragraphs, or other forms of highlighting that help the reader scan and zero in on the best of the best you have to offer, that’s unlikely to attract readers. When your description is visually and psychologically appealing, it invites the reader to keep going, instead of clicking to a different page.

Our minds are image processors, not text processors, so huge pieces of text that fill a page overwhelm the mind and in fact slow down the processing time considerably.

When we’re looking at websites, our attention span is even shorter than it is when we’re reading a book. Even on sites like Amazon—where consumers go to buy, and often spend a lot of time comparing products and reading reviews—it’s important to keep in mind that most potential readers will move on if your description is too cumbersome.

The first sentence in the description should be a grabber. Often, this is where authors use their elevator pitches. This text could also be an excerpt of an enthusiastic review or some other endorsement; regardless, it should be bolded, and your elevator pitch should always follow this format.

Paragraphs: Keep paragraphs short, two to three sentences max, and let some powerful sentences stand on their own.Bolding and italics: You can boldface key text throughout the description. In fact, I recommend it. Just don’t use boldface or italics too much. It’ll have more impact if you do just one sentence or a few keyword strings.Bullets or numbers: If your book is nonfiction, it can be effective to bullet or number as much information as possible. Take key points and the “here’s what you’ll learn” elements and put them into a bulleted or numbered section that’s easy to scan and visually appealing. Have you ever seen a book description with a ton of exclamation points or all caps? It probably feels as if the writer is screaming at you. Although I don’t recommend eliminating exclamation points entirely from your book description, they should be used sparingly. I’d recommend one or two at most. An exclamation point here and there can help make a sentence seem more emphatic.As far as all caps, don’t even bother. Using all caps, even for a word or two or a single sentence in a book description, makes you look like an amateur.Series authors: take note

Fiction readers love a series. Tell them immediately that your book is part of an ongoing story or theme. Many readers are specifically searching for a great series when they come to Amazon. Include it in the headline. I recommend that you make it part of the title too. For example, you might word your book title like this: Deadly Heat: Heat Series, Book 4 of 7.

However, if your book is part of a series, new readers may not know whether they need to read them in order. The wording here is tricky for authors. If the books can be read out of order, you don’t want to discourage new readers who may land on book 7 in your series and wonder if they have to invest their time to read through the six previous books before they can move onto book 7. It’s a tough call for authors. When I ask series authors if their books can be read out of order, I find there’s a lot of hesitation. “I’d prefer they read them in order.” Yes, I agree; all series authors want this. But be honest with yourself: do the books really have to be read in order? If they can be read in any order, you don’t want to miss out on potential sales. If the books are stand-alone stories, mention that early in the book description to encourage, rather than discourage, new readers. 

Update your page often

This is something you may not have considered: Your page isn’t set in cement. In fact, ideally it shouldn’t be static. When you receive positive reviews and awards, update your book page to reflect that. When you do your keyword string and category research every quarter (yes, put it on the list) consider whether there are any new ones you can sprinkle throughout the different sections on Author Central.

Here’s another idea. If you’re doing a special promotion, book promo, discount, or whatever, why not mention it in your book description? I worked with a client this year who did a special bonus download on her website during the book’s pre-order period, and I encouraged her to highlight it on her book description to drive even more engagements and downloads.

Finally, take a look at the book description below from Dan Silva. It’s a good example of a blurb that combines great review quotes with a book description that pulls you in from the first sentence.

Book reviews are eye candy because people like what other people like. Even if you don’t have review quotes from highly respected or recognizable publications such as Booklist and Publishers Weekly, you should still add reviews. Just be sure to cite them correctly. Notice how they are boldfaced to draw attention? And check out the second paragraph. Whoever wrote this book description inserted a review to help bolster the character description, which is another clever idea.

Book descriptions are your sales pitch. The right description can help sell your book, so make sure yours is tightly written, exceptionally engaging, and aimed at turning a browser into a buyer.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out The Amazon Author Formula by Penny Sansevieri.

Designing Thriller and Mystery Twists That Work

Photo by cottonbro studio

Today’s post is by author and book coach Samantha Skal.

When mystery, thriller, and suspense authors plot their stories, one of the biggest consistent hurdles is designing twists that work. I’ve written previously about how thinking about your villain’s motivations can unblock a climactic scene in a thriller. But what if we’re still in the planning stages of our novel, and we feel stuck as to how to make the story fit the modern thriller convention of “twisty”? What if we’ve written our story, but our beta readers are seeing our twists from much too early on, or we keep getting feedback that the story is too predictable? How do we ideate twists that work?

These questions come up every time I teach and coach thriller writers, and they’re good questions. First, let’s define a few things:

What is a villain? 

Mystery, thriller, and suspense (MTS) stories are the villain’s story, as told and perceived by the protagonist. As such, villains are equally, if not more important to figure out, than the protagonist. In MTS, the villain is the character doing the Bad Thing, and the protagonist is the person trying to stop the Bad Thing. The protagonist may or may not know who this person is, but as the story unfolds, they get closer and closer to the truth, ultimately uncovering what’s actually going on. The villain in these types of stories is sentient, and will go to equally great lengths as the protagonist to achieve their goal. This villain may frame other people to look like the real villain to the protagonist, or may be pulling the strings behind the scenes. Most importantly though, this person has their own wants, needs, motivations, and desires, and they are the person with whom the protagonist will have an ultimate face-off in the story.

What is a twist? 

The protagonist’s journey in both thrillers and mysteries is effectively the unveiling of the villain’s plan, as experienced by the protagonist. The protagonist is our (the reader’s) “guide” through the story, because the protagonist is the character leading the reader along as they uncover what the villain was/is ultimately up to. As such, I like to define twists as follows:

Twists are the reveal of the villain’s truth. This truth feels “twisty”, because the reveal of the truth is unexpected to the protagonist.What makes a twist satisfying?

Satisfying twists are the only logical answer to a puzzle that seemed seemingly impossible to solve as the reader/protagonist moved through the story. Satisfying twists are unexpected, but do not appear out of nowhere. They make perfect sense when the reader looks backwards at what they’ve already been shown on the page via the protagonist and what the protagonist saw, but aren’t easily guessed until they’re revealed because the protagonist led us astray. All the clues were “on screen,” i.e., on the page for us to see the correct answer (the villain’s truth), but those clues were seen (but ignored), or seen (but misinterpreted), or seen (but overlooked) by the protagonist throughout the story.

In other words, the protagonist was dead sure up until the reveal of the villain’s truth that the answer was something else. And because the protagonist was so sure, the reader will be happily led to that same conclusion. These clues were there for the reader to pick up on (and sometimes we do, which is part of the puzzle MTS readers love), but because readers tend to go along with whatever the protagonist thinks/sees/feels about a mystery, by deliberately designing our stories so that our protagonists ignore/misinterpret/overlook clues, the end result is a delightful manipulation of what the reader thinks as well.

By contrast, twists are unsatisfying when they’re predictable, convenient, or feel “unearned,” as they feel when the clues were not on the page for the reader or protagonist to pick up on. For example, if the protagonist has no way of knowing what’s really going on because the villain hasn’t been on the page at all, it can feel very unsatisfying. We (the reader) want the chance to be able to figure out the mystery along with the protagonist, to solve the plot problem, and to see and interpret the clues.

Of course, the flip side of this is if there are too many clues on the page or the villain is predictable, we won’t find the reveal of the villain’s truth twisty at all. It will fall flat. Predictability can take many forms: it can show up when our villain is too obviously evil and therefore easy to guess. It can appear when we lean into tropes in the genre (i.e., the spouse did it), without playing with or changing up motivations. (Pro tip: A trope can become fresh if the reader thinks, via the protagonist, that the answer is obvious, and then the true answer is the villain is someone entirely different.

The key to achieving satisfying, balanced twists and clues is to remember that the protagonist is our guide to uncovering the villain’s truth. Because the protagonist is the character leading the reader along as they uncover what the villain was/is ultimately up to, we as the author have ample opportunity to mislead the reader via the protagonist’s misinterpretation of the clues. Twists feel “twisty” because we (the author) have carefully engineered the story to mislead the reader via the protagonist’s journey and their assumptions.

As such, I recommend keeping the protagonist (logically) convinced about a plausible other solution right up until the point they face the truth. This applies to all the main twists: the midpoint twist (at 50%, where the story takes a turn), the climactic twist (at roughly 85%, where the protagonist faces the villain themselves or the person they think is the villain, and restores order) and the final twist (at roughly 98%, where the protagonist uncovers something unexpected, sometimes facing the true villain).

Ideating and designing twists that work

Because twists are the reveal of the villain’s truth, to create satisfying twists we must start with what the villain is really up to in the story, because often, a lot of what they do happens off screen and off the page.

As such, trying to approach a “twist” from the protagonist’s perspective alone is difficult, because it doesn’t allow much room for development of the villain. This can lead to flat, unsatisfying villains and twists that don’t hook and delight readers. By breaking down the way we view the story from different angles (i.e. from the villain’s perspective first, and then from the protagonist’s perspective), it allows us to think both about what’s really going on, and gives us the space to consider what else we might inject into the story to create a plausible other solution the protagonist can latch onto before they discover the truth. 

In other words, instead of thinking about ideating a “twist,” first come up with the villain’s truth, and then ideate misdirection.

It can also thoroughly help when we (as authors) approach how we want a twist to be received by the reader. This is because once we understand the villain’s actions and motivations, we can lay the protagonist’s journey (solving the mystery/stopping the crime/bringing chaos to order) on top of the villain’s journey. From there, we can figure out the moments their paths intersect, which is key for understanding how the protagonist might misinterpret the villain’s truth. These “on-screen” moments are the clues that the protagonist can ignore/misinterpret/overlook, and these are what drive an MTS story forward to the suspense-filled climactic scene where the protagonist faces the villain.

So, in order to design satisfying twists, we must first think through our story from the standpoint of the villain—instead of the protagonist—and figure out exactly what the villain’s plan was before the protagonist screwed everything up. Stories with sentient villains require a deep understanding of what the villain wants and why they want it, as well as what logical steps the villain takes to achieve their goals.

This is an exercise that can be useful both in the planning stages, and when you’re looking at your whole manuscript and trying to figure out how to avoid it being received by readers as predictable.

To begin, if you haven’t already done so, write down some high-level details about your villain. Answer these questions:

What do they want and why is that goal so important to them?How will their life change if they achieve this goal? Will they fulfill some deep desire or need? Will they be “done” if they achieve this goal?What does abject failure look like? What are the consequences of failure? Are they willing to accept failure?If the Bad Thing they’re doing is ongoing, when did they start doing the Bad Thing? Were they driven to it by something happening in their life? Motivated for some other reason?And the most important question: Why do they keep going? One of the biggest things to figure out around a villain is why this person cares so much about doing the Bad Thing (which probably has dire consequences if they’re caught) that they don’t take the easy way out and just stop or run away. Why do they keep fighting? What’s in it for them, especially once the protagonist starts messing things up for them and presumably, ruining their plans?

Once you’ve answered these questions, then write down the logical progression of the villain’s journey through your story. Keep it to ten sentences or bullet points. Start with answering the following: What was the villain doing before the protagonist came along? What was their original plan? Then, once the protagonist enters the story (typically the inciting incident), how was the villain’s progress toward that goal thwarted or helped? As the story progresses, what steps does the villain take to keep themselves on track to achieve their goal? And finally, what does the climactic scene look like, where the villain faces the protagonist? What’s at stake for the villain? What decision do they make?

Villains, like protagonists, are most interesting when they are not flat, depthless characters. We (as readers) love villains who have reasons for wanting what they want, for doing the things they do, who are motivated by something the protagonist (and the reader) can understand, if not empathize with. If the villain is a serial killer, to what end do they kill? Are they seeking to heal an emotional wound? Protect someone? Seek revenge? Are they actively trying to thwart the protagonist by leaving fake clues, or are they taunting them to see if they’re smart enough to figure it out? If the villain is someone driven by jealousy, love, greed, etc., their motivations and actions toward their goal will make perfect sense to them. They have an outcome in mind that they believe will get them what they want, even if from the protagonist/reader’s perspective, that outcome is untenable or illogical.

The explanation of what actually happened is a big part of a satisfying twist because it explains the overlooked clues and logic that the protagonist/reader (hopefully) didn’t see until that moment.

Once you understand your villain, then and only then take a look at your story from the protagonist’s perspective. Think about the villain and protagonist’s intersection points, where the villain’s truth is revealed, just for a moment. What might the protagonist find, and how? What might they interpret or misinterpret from that clue? What actions do they take because of that interpretation? What do they assume is going on based on other incorrect “clues” (i.e. red herrings), right up until the real villain’s truth is revealed?

A note on why ideating twists that work is equal parts fun and challenging: One of the most challenging (and fun) parts of writing in the MTS space is that we as the author know exactly what all the secrets are. We know who ultimately did the Bad Thing. We know the misunderstandings and misassumptions the protagonist makes along the way are designed to draw the reader through the story. This can, at times, make your story feel incredibly obvious, and you may question whether it’s twisty at all. This is a normal feeling, and this is also what beta readers and other outside feedback is for. If your readers are getting it on page 30, look at your “on screen” clues and adjust accordingly. If they’re getting it a page or two before the twist you planned, you’ve nailed it.

Ghostwriting Trends: A Report from the Gathering of the Ghosts in New York City

Today’s post is by author Josh Bernoff.

With 164 ghostwriters in attendance, the first Gathering of the Ghosts, which took place in New York City on January 22, was likely the largest ever gathering of ghostwriters in one place. As Dan Gerstein, CEO of Gotham Ghostwriters, the cosponsor of the event along with the American Society of Journalists and Analysts, quipped, it was the largest collection of writing talent in one room…since Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

Ghostwriters are a proud but underappreciated group. Because their contributions to the literary world have traditionally been made in secret, ghosts rarely get public recognition. But the world is shifting. In recent years Donald Trump’s ghostwriter Tony Schwartz related his story, and regrets, in The New Yorker, and J. R. Moehringer, ghostwriter of Prince Harry’s mega-selling memoir Spare, published a revealing peek into the intimate dance between author and writer.

The ghosts in attendance were diverse: more women than men; young, middle-aged, and grizzled; mostly white with a dozen or so writers of color; and bursting with accumulated expertise in everything from scientific discovery to leadership and technology. They may have started as journalists, publicists, editors, novelists, and bestselling authors, but now they were united in a fellowship of scribes.

Put aside your preconceptions: while there were plenty who penned memoirs for actors and athletes, there were at least as many focused on thought leadership and advice books from business executives, consultants, health experts, and scientists bent on boosting their audiences. Few of those present set out to be ghostwriters, but fewer still regretted it.

In hallway meetings and lunch conversations, ghosts were elated to skip the usual explanations to businesspeople and readers unfamiliar with the ghosting process and instead compare notes on author antics, tactics to wrangle source material, dealing with client regrets, and how to get paid. When two ghostwriters meet, it’s not one-upmanship about fees that drives them—it’s more about client prominence: “I wrote a book for a Nobel prize-winner,” “I did one for a basketball star,” “Hey, my client was a famous nun!”

The bond between writer and author is intimate, and uncomfortable as often as it is joyous. On the conference stage Jodi Lipper, a six-time New York Times bestselling ghostwriter, spoke of the often overlooked intimacy and trust that extends beyond what’s on the page, and commented, “I’m not a licensed therapist, but sometimes we must all act that way.” 

Daniel Paisner, host of the popular “As told to” ghostwriting podcast, said, “There’s a constant drumbeat in your head: ‘Don’t f— this up!’”

And as Holly Gleason, chronicler of popular musicians, explained, “There are always two truths. There is the truth of the facts…and the truth of what actually happened.” The hired scribe’s job is to tell both.

There was plenty of talk about money—how to ask for what you’re worth with a straight face, and how to get flinty billionaires to part with what they owe for work well done. A consensus emerged: a writer who charges less than $50,000 for a book of 50,000 words or more is going to starve. Ghostwriter Michael Levin suggested that writers take whatever they’re charging now, double it, and add 20 percent.

Ghostwriting is clearly a growth business. The number of prominent people—and strivers—hankering to tell their stories and demonstrate their brilliance is increasing. Even when they have the talent to write, they don’t often have the time. As publishing houses and media companies shed writers and editors, there’s a burgeoning supply of available talent. Even as it becomes tougher and tougher for an author to get a book contract with a big New York publisher, reputable hybrid publishers like Greenleaf and Amplify are multiplying, and self-publishing is opening up paths to market for nearly anybody. If you want to get a book out and you can pay, there’s a writer and a publisher ready to give you your chance to sparkle.

Like all conferences these days, the Gathering of the Ghosts gave out awards for outstanding books written collaboratively—the “Andys” (because of the “and” followed by the ghostwriter’s name that appears on the cover of some ghostwritten books). Winners included: 

Good Power: Leading Positive Change in Our Lives, Work, and World by former IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, ghostwritten by Joanne GordonGlimmer: A Story of Survival, Hope, and Healing by Kimberly Shannon Murphy, with Genevieve FieldSisterhood Heals: The Transformative Power of Healing in Community by Joy Harden Bradford, in collaboration with Tracey Michae’l Lewis-Giggetts

The Gathering also devoted the obligatory time to gnashing of teeth about AI. Lawyer Scott Sholder said we’d need to wait a while for justices’ decisions on the main legal challenge: were large language models (like OpenAI) trained on vast collections of text liable for misuse of copyrighted material? The panelists and audience agreed that AI could never replace the human touch of skilled ghostwriters, but I worry that you might hear the same lament from a gathering of skilled chefs certain that Americans would never eat the bland fare at fast food restaurants. The real threat may not be AI replacing writers, but replacing books altogether. If a bot can tell you Ginni Rometty’s wisdom on any management or technology topic, who’s going to buy and read her book?

Storytelling remains an enduring and fundamental human talent. Ghostwriters are storytellers, and this is their moment. The Gathering of the Ghosts may be the first time dozens of storytellers-for-hire reveled in their creativity, diversity, and expertise, but it won’t be the last. As one ghostwriter in attendance remarked, all of us ghosts love to write, and that’s never going to change, regardless of who’s reading, who’s hiring, how they’re publishing, and how much they’re paying. Ghosts are a lot more visible now. The rest of the industry had better get used to it.

5 Ways to Make a Writing Retreat “Pay Off”

Photo by ConvertKit on Unsplash

Today’s post is by writer and book coach Amy Goldmacher.

Ah, a writing retreat. Doesn’t the idea sound amazing? The delicious word “treat” is even embedded in the concept, connoting something special or perhaps even forbidden.

If you’d love to go on a writing retreat, but in addition to the cost, you worry about when, where, and whether your investment in yourself will “pay off,” I offer you five ways to reap rewards.

1. Give yourself permission.

A writing retreat can be anything you want it to be. You can either get yourself out of your own environment or get everyone out of yours. It can be as long or as short as you want. You can do it by yourself, or you can do it with others; you can attend someone else’s retreat or create your own.

You’re the only one who can set the parameters: What do you want to do, how long can you do it, what budget is needed, what arrangements need to be made so you can be free for this time?

I took myself on what I called a “DIY writing retreat” on a cruise in November 2023. I wanted to spend a block of time with only my writing, without having to be responsible for anyone or anything else. I wanted to cross the Atlantic and see the sea out my window, traveling while working, having my meals cooked for me. I knew how much time and money I wanted to spend. I worked out the necessary arrangements with my household and my clients, and received the time and space I wanted to be able to make it happen.

2. Start with what you want to get out of it.

As responsible people, we’re always calculating time, cost, and effort to determine value. We bargain with ourselves: “If I spend a week at an AirBnB I should be able to finish this novel draft.” But that puts so much pressure on the result rather than the process. What would make a retreat feel “worth it” if its value wasn’t tied solely to concrete outcomes?

What if we imagine the end before we start: How do I want to feel at the end of my retreat?

Here’s what I came up before I went on my cruise:

I would like to leave the retreat feeling more clarity on themes than I feel right nowI would like to leave the retreat feeling accomplished, like I used my time well and enjoyed myself, even if it’s just journaling about the experienceI would like to leave the retreat feeling like I’ve learned something about when and how I write best and can replicate it at homeI would like to leave the retreat feeling like I’ve deeply explored and found some connected themes to keep writing aboutI would like to leave the retreat with a plan for writing the next thingsI would like to leave the retreat having generated some new raw material, even if it’s just journaling about the experience

Freewriting for just a few minutes on the question above helped me see what experience I wanted to come away with, instead of only a robust to-do list.

3. Focus on progress, not outcome.

Once I established how I wanted to feel at the end, I could create a work plan that focused on achieving a feeling that didn’t depend on attaining an outcome. 

What activities or structure will help me feel the way I want to feel?

I did have a long list of things I wanted to accomplish: revise an old project and start a new one; write a newsletter/blog post, draft two essays, work on marketing, and so on. I also optimistically packed 15 books (most of them were very short, but still, way too many to feasibly read!). Even in ideal circumstances, there was no way I would get everything I set out to do done on this retreat. If I focused solely on what I produced, I would end up disappointed. But if I started these to-dos, I could still feel like I had accomplished something valuable. Instead of trying to cross tasks off a to-do list, I envisioned the things I wanted to work on in thematic buckets, and spending time on the buckets was a progress-making method.

4. Be flexible.

Halfway through my retreat, I developed a terrible head cold with its concomitant fatigue, brain fog, and congestion. It derailed my best intentions. I could only stay awake for a couple of hours at a time. I was miserable when I was awake. I slept a lot.

How will I handle the unexpected?

You know what they say about the best laid plans. Stuff always comes up. There’s the stuff we have control over, and the stuff we don’t. I had no control over the process of getting over a cold, other than resting and drinking fluids. It impacted how much I was able to do overall, but since I was focused on making progress rather than completion, I could still spend a just few minutes at a time when I felt clear on one of my buckets, and still feel like I was making progress.

I had wanted to get into prose poetry and brought three books with me on the subject…and touched none of them. I let that bucket go, and I let myself be okay with that.

5. Notice the little things and capture the insights.

Though I’m not a journaler or a morning pages person, I made a concerted effort to capture my retreat experience as it happened. I used Lynda Barry’s daily diary method as explained by Ann Handley to log daily events, observations, and experiences, and I have a record of my trip as well as some deeper insights into my own writing habits and inspiration for the future.

What did I do, see, hear, learn, or feel today?

Some snippets from my log:

My “ship routine” ended up a lot like my “home routine,” meaning, I still had to wrestle with the same procrastination, resistance, and interference demons that plague me at home.Having too many food options is just as overwhelming and exhausting as trying to come up with my own.What might go on behind those crew-only doors?What’s the story with the gorgeous, silver haired, identically dressed twin sisters and their non-identical husbands?Why did that couple at the dinner table next to me not say a single word to each other the entire meal?Nobody knows you’re napping when you’re alone in your room.You can be as connected to the outside world as you want to be—or you can choose not to be connected.It’s all “research.”I sleep better without cats in the bed and when rocked by the ocean.

I enjoyed my retreat. It was special. It was rewarding in the emotional ways I had hoped for, and I came away from it with some tangible work products as well.

Note from Jane: If the idea of going on a writing retreat on a cruise ship appeals to you, there is an upcoming opportunity to do so from April 28 to May 5—with Amy, Jane Friedman, Allison K Williams, and Dinty W. Moore. You can spend 8 days and 7 nights with 25 fellow writers and publishing industry professionals in literary luxury, crossing the Atlantic on Cunard’s Queen Mary 2. There will be daily panels, talks, workshops, classes, and group meals with participants and instructors. You’ll also have free time to explore the ship, take part in activities, write, or nap as you like. More info here and here.

Beyond BICHOK: How, When and Why Getting Your Butt Out of the Chair Can Make You a Better Writer

Photo by Jonathan Mabey on Unsplash

Today’s guest post is by freelance editor Sarah Chauncey.

You’re driving on a long stretch of highway when you have an insight about your main character’s childhood. Or you’re mid-hair-rinse in the shower, when you suddenly understand how to bring together the braided strands of your novel. Or you wake up at 2 a.m. with the resolution to that thorny plot issue you’ve been wrestling.

Have you ever noticed how many ideas arise when you’re not sitting at the keyboard? 

As writers, we’ve all experienced the law of diminishing returns—the point at which our writing stops being generative and begins to feel like we’re pulling each word from our synapses by hand. I spent the better part of a decade investigating how to create what I half-jokingly call a “law of increasing flow.” How might writers support our writing practice in a way that doesn’t leave us mentally burned out?

Conventional advice: butt in chair, hands on keyboard

For decades, writers have been told the most important thing to do is to put “butt in chair, hands on keyboard.” As acronyms emerged with USENET forums in the 1990s, this became abbreviated “BICHOK.”

BICHOK is essential to writing. You can’t publish a book without sitting down to write, to revise, to revise again (and again and again), to query, or to fill out your author questionnaire. Yet so often, it’s treated like a Puritan work ethic or a punishment: “You put your backside in that chair, young man, and don’t get up until you’ve written 10 pages.”

That may work for some writers, and if you’re among them, more power to you! That kind of disciplinarian approach, though, doesn’t work for me.

Putting hands on a keyboard doesn’t make someone a writer, any more than holding a Stratocaster makes someone a musician. There are many times when we can gain insight by looking away from our work. These include: Before we sit down to write, during the writing process, and between revisions. What we do during those times is every bit as important as getting the words down.

To understand how this helps your writing, it’s important to understand the interplay of the conscious and subconscious mind.

How the subconscious and conscious mind work

When I was younger, I used to tell people that my best writing bypassed my intellect entirely; it came from my heart and flowed down my arm. While that might sound precious and woo-woo, it turns out my instincts were right on. The intellect has many wonderful uses—categorizing and sorting (and revising, oh so much revising.)—but it’s a terrible writer.

The thinking mind informs our writing; it’s what allows us to conduct research, analyze information and execute the ideas we have. Original ideas, though, can only come up when we deliberately allow the mind to wander—and pay attention to its whereabouts.

The conscious or rational mind, including what we call the intellect, takes in about 2,000 bits of information per second. However, it can only process about 40 bits of information per second.

The subconscious mind, on the other hand, takes in upwards of 11 million bits of information per second. We know more than we are aware of knowing. The subconscious retains everything we’ve ever experienced. It combines seemingly disparate ideas and experiences and comes up with new and unusual connections. Just ask anyone who’s ever dreamt about their aunt Myrtle performing Riverdance in a T-Rex costume. The subconscious is creative.

Creativity comes from beyond the thinking mind

J.D. Salinger once wrote, “Novels grow in the dark.” By that, he meant that they emerge from the subconscious mind. In my experience, what we call intuition is logic of the subconscious, delivered to us in aha moments after it has had time to percolate.

Consider the old-fashioned tin coffeemaker, the kind you put on a stove. You add the ingredients—water in the bottom, coffee grounds on top—but you don’t expect coffee right away. The stove has to heat up; the water has to boil. Then it has to percolate, mixing the bubbling water with the grounds, as the water slowly takes on the flavor of the grounds. The process takes time and can’t be rushed. Creative percolation is the same.

Many of us get ideas from sudden insights, but waiting around for those is a fool’s errand, because there’s one major block: The thinking mind is as noisy as a jackhammer, whereas intuition whispers. As long as our thinking mind is engaged, it will be difficult to notice subconscious insights.

When we look away and we relax the thinking mind, we’re more receptive to our intuition.

Looking away gives the subconscious time to percolate

Writers get into cognitive ruts when we’re looking at the same material for a long time. Looking away helps us to see our words anew.

It’s not healthy to sit in front of a screen all day. Writers write, yes, but writers also research, experience, dream, ideate and live.

Critical thinking and discernment are essential, but not during the delicate, generative phase of creativity; it’s far more helpful during revision. In the process of creating, our thinking minds aren’t much more helpful than AI: We produce words we’ve been conditioned to produce, using thoughts that we’ve been conditioned to think. We gather information and we regurgitate it.

Stanford happiness researcher Emma Seppälä, Ph.D. wrote in the Washington Post, “Truly successful people don’t come up with great ideas through focus alone. They are successful because they make time to not concentrate and to engage in a broad array of activities … As a consequence, they think inventively and are profoundly creative: they develop innovative solutions to problems and connect dots in brilliant ways.”

Bestselling author and neurobiologist Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. writes about the difference between directed thinking (focus work) and purposeful daydreaming (creative ideation). Both are necessary for writing or any creative endeavor. That’s why it’s important for writers to learn how to identify our insights and navigate our creative flow, both of which emerge from the subconscious.

In order to have effective look-away time, we have to learn how to quiet our thinking mind and pay attention to our thoughts.

Learn to notice thoughts, feelings and sensations (or how to quiet the thinking mind)

According to another Stanford researcher, Dr. Fred Luskin, most of us have about 60,000 thoughts a day, and 90% of those are repetitive. Yet most of us are also completely unaware that we’re thinking. We simply believe our thoughts to be reality. Learning to notice our thoughts—developing what Dr. Siegel calls the “observing circuit”—can boost creativity exponentially.

Try this: Set a timer for 15 seconds and see if you can catch any thoughts that arise during that time. Then see if you can catch yourself thinking as you’re going about your day.

According to a study out of the Netherlands, published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition, daydreaming can only help boost creativity if you are able to notice your ideas bubbling up. Study participants who practiced mindfulness experienced increases in creativity while daydreaming; those who didn’t experienced no such boost.

When I first began learning to observe my thoughts, I would walk around with my head tilted to the side, like a dog listening to an unusual sound. What was me, and what were my thoughts? Once I began to become aware of thinking as a separate process from observing, I was able to become aware of many, many more creative ideas than I had previously.

When to look away

Conventional writing advice suggests taking a break when you know what’s coming next. That presumes that only your writing time is productive and that all look-away time is unproductive.

But in Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing, the late sci-fi author wrote: “As soon as things get difficult, I walk away. That’s the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.” He clarifies by saying that when you move toward cats, they tend to move away, but if you ignore them, then they become interested.

Here are some of the ways I know it’s time for a break:

I’m zoning outWhen words are sputtering out instead of flowingI’m tab-hopping instead of writingI’ve rewritten the same paragraph ten timesWhen anxiety is present and I believe the thought “I can’t possibly take a break, I’m too busy”

Paradoxically, when I believe that I can’t possibly take time away from writing, that’s when it’s most essential. That anxiety-to-panic isn’t doing my writing any favors. It’s a state of contraction, which is the opposite of expansive creativity.

If I work until the point where I feel completely depleted, it takes a much, much longer time to rebound than if I routinely top off my creative reservoir. It is so much easier to prevent burnout than to recover from it.

Aside from your personal creative rhythms—and each of us has our own—there are three main times when it’s important to take time away from the keyboard, with different recommendations for each.

1. Preparing to write (before you sit down)

In a hypnotherapy session, the therapist spends up to 75% of the time (or more) getting the client’s body to relax and their mind in a receptive state, so the suggestions can get through to the subconscious. The same principle applies to leveraging the subconscious in your writing. Making your mind a receptive environment for ideas to bubble up is essential to writing more, better and faster.

Novelist Haruki Murakami aims to put himself into a trance—a hypnotic state—through his daily routine. When he’s writing a novel, he gets up early, writes for a stretch of time and then goes for a long run and/or long swim. He’s in bed by 9 p.m. “The repetition itself becomes the important thing,” he’s quoted as saying. “It’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.”

The more time I spend getting into a quiet, aligned place, the more smoothly the words flow out. Generally speaking, my first drafts that come from a quiet place are far better and require less revision than those that I overthink from the beginning.

How to prepare: There’s an old joke about a student of Buddhism who asked his teacher how long he should meditate. “One hour every day,” replied the teacher. “I can’t do that!” the student replied. “I’m too busy!”

“Okay,” the teacher said. “For you, then, two hours.”

Many of us, especially those with full-time jobs and/or families, have limited writing time. “I don’t have time to look away!” I can hear you saying. For you, then, I say, take half your writing time and get grounded. Even if that’s 15 minutes out of 30 at 5 a.m. Just experiment with it.

If you want writing to flow through you, take time to quiet your mind first. Have the courage to be utterly unproductive. The quieter you can make your mind, the more space you’ve generated for new ideas to arise, and the more easily your writing will flow when you sit down at the keyboard.

Instead of trying and pushing and forcing, see if you can make the mental switch to allowing, receiving, flowing.

Play around with this idea of “relaxed but alert” and figure out what works for you. By learning to develop the observing circuit and purposely engaging that circuit alongside the daydreaming one, you will become more attuned to your deeper creativity.

2. Take regular daydreaming breaks while writing

In my experience, writer’s block comes from overthinking. Taking regular breaks—say, every hour to 90 minutes—can help clear up space in your thinking mind for the subconscious to bubble up original ideas and story solutions.

In Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind, psychologist Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman and journalist Carolyn Gregoire write, “Turning our attention away from the external world and tuning in to the world within—dreams, fantasies, stories, personal narratives and feelings—not only builds a sense of meaning and hope…but also allows us to tap into our deepest wellsprings of creativity.”

How to daydream for increased flow: The idea is to relax your mind and allow ideas to arise, rather than pushing and pushing and pushing. A few years ago, a client made a custom hula hoop for me. Trying to hula hoop without knocking down a plant or terrifying my cat invariably results in me laughing—and a complete pattern interrupt that creates more space for creativity to arise.

Let’s say you’ve been working on a pivotal scene where your main character faces her biggest fear. You’ve been hammering away at this scene for a while, and it doesn’t feel as though you’re making progress. Instead of doubling down and pushing harder, try stepping away and allowing, as Bradbury wrote, ideas to come to you. Don’t push your brain—creativity doesn’t respond to efforting; instead, try to relax your brain and let your mind wander.

These breaks don’t have to be long. According to Kaufman, even 15 minutes of shifting your focus—say, washing the dishes, doing some mindful stretching, or taking the dog out for a walk around the block—can relax the thinking mind enough for ideas to bubble up.

Often, I’ll print out a hard copy of an article-in-progress and go for a walk. After a bit, maybe 30 minutes, I’ll sit down and take one pass through the draft. I might spend 10 to 20 minutes making notes. Then I put it away and continue walking. Another half hour or so later, I’ll find another bench and sit down for another pass. I’m also a big fan of what I call “coffee shop edits”—taking a hard copy to a coffee shop and editing in a different environment.

Maya Angelou took this “different environment” idea even further: She rented a hotel room in her hometown by the month and wrote there in the mornings, then edited at home in the afternoon.

From a young age, Angelou also implicitly understood the difference between the conscious and subconscious minds. As she told the Daily Beast:

[My grandmother] used to talk about her “little mind.” So when I was young, from the time I was about 3 until 13, I decided that there was a Big Mind and a Little Mind. And the Big Mind would allow you to consider deep thoughts, but the Little Mind would occupy you, so you could not be distracted. It would work crossword puzzles or play Solitaire, while the Big Mind would delve deep into the subjects I wanted to write about.

Not everybody has the freedom to work this way, and this is my process; within the boundaries of your own life, you can find your own rhythms. The key to remember is this: The quieter you can make your mind, the more space you’re creating for ideas (and thorny plot situations) to resolve.

3. Look away between drafts

The between-draft look-aways are a bit different. First, celebrate that you’ve finished a revision—woohoo! The writing life has enough challenges; celebrate every single milestone.

Now is the time not necessarily to daydream, but rather, to shift your focus entirely for a longer period of time.

By looking away and shifting focus, you’re cleansing the palate of your mind. When you pull out the draft again, ideally, you’ll be looking at it through fresh eyes. What needs to be cut will jump out at you, as will gaps in the narrative that need to be filled or sentences that need to be tweaked. (I’ve used this process extensively for this post!)

What to do: Anything except work on your manuscript. Decorate the baby’s room. Go on a family vacation. Take a pottery class at a local art studio. In other words, do something completely different than writing. Do your best not to talk about your manuscript with anyone; the purpose is to give you a ‘beginner’s mind’ when you return to it.

Practices that work at any stage

Meditate on it. There’s a good reason mindfulness meditation is touted as an essential tool for writers: It’s all about learning to observe the thoughts that arise. That’s the whole point. Learning to meditate can be daunting and boring at first. Meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg runs a month-long meditation challenge, The Real Happiness Challenge, every February, with short (5–8 minute), gentle guided meditations injected with her signature humor and warmth.

For a fresh perspective, take a walk in nature. A Stanford study showed that walking boosts creativity significantly more than sitting. Walking in nature, in particular, generated about a 50% increase in participants’ creativity.

If you live in the country, nature will be easier to find, but you don’t have to be a rural resident to connect with nature. For the 80% of Americans in a city, you can try this exercise to connect with nature: look for flowers and grass poking up from sidewalks. Peer way up and see how many layers of clouds you can notice, or the way the sky changes from a rich blue overhead to paler, almost white, along the horizon.

Look for connections with nature, whether that’s smelling the lavender from your neighbor’s window box, communing with trees in a forest, or noticing a ladybug on a random daisy. Lie on the floor with your dog or cat, and see the world from their perspective.

Take a creative nap. Einstein reportedly took naps specifically to generate ideas that might help him solve problems. So did Thomas Edison, Mary Shelley and Salvador Dali. The key here is to work with your brainwaves. The ideal state for generating ideas is an alpha/theta state, where your mind is alert, but relaxed and open.

When we’re in the beginning stages of falling asleep, or just in the early moments of waking up, theta brainwaves predominate. According to educator Ned Hermann, “During this awakening cycle it is possible for individuals to stay in the theta state for an extended period of say, five to 15 minutes—which would allow them to have a free flow of ideas about yesterday’s events or to contemplate the activities of the forthcoming day. This time can be extremely productive and can be a period of very meaningful and creative mental activity.” While this is true of all professions, it’s particularly helpful for creatives, and especially writers.

The trick here is to remain aware of your thoughts without falling completely asleep. However, if you do, you could join the ranks of Edgar Allan Poe, George Saunders, Stephen King and many others, who have written stories inspired by dreams (or nightmares, depending).

Where water flows, ideas follow. As Kaufman and Gregoire point out, when we step into the shower (or bathtub), we effectively block out the entire external world, which allows us to focus solely on our inner experience. We can relax our minds as well as our bodies and notice what bubbles up.

What not to do

Not all writing breaks are equal. If you spend your break checking the kids’ homework, scrolling through social media, binging Netflix or even texting with a friend, it’s probably not helping your writing.

Other things to avoid during creative percolation:

Watching TVListening to or reading newsSocial media, games, texting or any other kind of screen timeHeady or emotional conversationsPersonalize the process

To find the particulars that work for you, consider:

What inspires you?What place or activity lets you exhale deeply and relax?Where do you work best?How do you work best?Where can you find nature nearby?What type of exercise feels the most relaxing to you?Coming back to the computer

While it’s important to take look-away breaks, it’s also essential to identify when you’re ready to sit down and write or revise again. After all, you can’t have written without sitting down to write.

About 20 years ago, I noticed that when my subconscious was primed and I was ready to sit down and write, my body would experience a surge in adrenaline. It often took the form of walking around a particular square block in Toronto faster and faster, almost like a human centrifuge. If I hadn’t been paying attention to my body’s signals for so long, I might misinterpret the adrenalin as agitation or irritability. That slightly amped-up state, though, means that it’s time to sit down and, as an actor friend of mine says, “Open the valve.”

Confronting Sophomore Syndrome as a Published Author

Photo by Ryan Graybill on Unsplash

Today’s post is by novelist Kyla Zhao.

This week, my sophomore novel Valley Verified came out into the world—exactly one year after my debut novel The Fraud Squad was published.

A year ago, I was riding high on adrenaline as my debut novel found its way onto bookshelves around the world. The heady scent of freshly printed pages with my name on the cover, the thrill of getting my first media request, and the outpouring of love and well-wishes made my debut experience far beyond anything I could have ever hoped for.

Back then, I was blissfully ignorant of the intricacies of the publishing industry. I was vaguely aware but not yet fully cognizant what it meant when well-meaning veteran authors told me sagely that writing is a business. Everything about the publishing world was new and fresh—and I dove into it all with wide-eyed excitement and unbridled enthusiasm.

Fast forward to today, and the landscape is starkly different. I am no longer an inexperienced novice, unaware of the intricacies of book tours, the relentless drumbeat of social media promotion, and the exhaustion of balancing a writing career with a full-time day job. There are many guides on how to be a debut author, but far too few resources address the unique challenges of the sophomore slump. And I find myself grappling with the complexities of how different my second book release feels compared to my first.

In Valley Verified, my protagonist Zoe is forced to leave her fashion job in New York and move to Silicon Valley to work at a startup. Like me, she’s stepping into a realm where expectations loom large. And as Zoe strives to redefine success for herself in the cutthroat tech industry, I see echoes of my own journey in balancing ambition and reality, in learning to find fulfillment in the process and not the destination.

I was re-reading my manuscript the other day and came across a scene where Zoe is confessing her career woes to a friend:

“But what if that was the best I could do?” Zoe whispered. Glumly, she drew circles in sauce on her plate. “I don’t know tech and I don’t know business. Lillian comes up with good ideas every other minute, but I feel like I just got lucky with that See Yourself campaign—a lightning bolt of inspiration that won’t strike twice.”

With that last line, Zoe could have been talking about me. I can relate all too well to my character’s insecurities and profound imposter syndrome. The sophomore novel brings with it the weight of expectations—both from external sources and the insidious whispers of self-doubt. Will it live up to the hype of the first? What if no one shows up to my book events and signings? Have people tired of me now that I’ve lost the shiny new halo of being a debut author?

As Zoe dared herself to ask—Can lightning strike twice?

As I promote Valley Verified, I can’t help but draw comparisons to the reception of my debut novel The Fraud Squad. It’s a strange paradox: I genuinely believe I’m a stronger writer now than I was back in 2020 when I wrote my first book. The Fraud Squad will always be my baby, but Valley Verified is the book of my heart.

And yet, I know better now than I did a year ago that a book’s success depends just as much—perhaps even more—on its marketability than the quality of its writing. Over the past year, I’ve gotten a behind-the-scenes look at the marketing strategies employed by other authors: hiring publicists, investing in merchandise, orchestrating book tours. It always feels like there’s more I could be doing to maintain visibility in a crowded market and stay relevant in a perpetually evolving industry.

The most palpable shift is the evolution of my relationship with writing. My first book was a passion project conceived without the constraints of external pressures, back when I didn’t even think of getting published. But after The Fraud Squad came out, I’m no longer a completely unknown entity, and that comes with the daunting task of either meeting or defying the expectations set by my initial offering. I’ve grown more aware of reader reviews, more attuned to the likes and dislikes of an audience that I didn’t fully comprehend when I embarked on this journey. And I feel all too acutely the weight of commercial considerations and the unrelenting demands of a market where success is measured in sales figures.

I started writing Valley Verified at a juncture in my life when I felt lost and incapable—not only had I just moved from my hometown of Singapore to live alone in California, but I had also given up my fashion journalist role at Vogue to work for a Silicon Valley tech company. Creating Zoe’s story gave me a safe space to explore my insecurities and fears as I went through two big life and career transitions simultaneously.

Amazon • Bookshop

Now, my insecurities are rearing their head again. As Valley Verified makes its way out into the world, I’m trying to remind myself that something is meaningful not because of its reception, but because of the authenticity with which it was created. Even if my second book “fails” by objective measures, even if it receives none of the accolades that my debut novel did, that’s okay. My journey in publishing has pushed my skills to a new level, introduced me to an amazing community of book lovers and some of my best friends, and added so much vibrance to my life. I’m a better person now because I chose to be an author.

The innocence from my debut experience may be gone, replaced by a more seasoned understanding of the industry. But I can still hold on tight to everything that drew me to writing in the first place.

What Is LGBTQ+ Fiction—And Does a Writer Have to Be Queer to Write It?

Photo by Agustin Gunawan on Unsplash

Today’s post is by book coach and editor Amy Koerner.

Despite the recent wave of LGBTQ+ book bans, sales of queer fiction titles are booming. From May 2022 to May 2023, 6.1 million LGBTQ+ fiction books were sold in the US alone, a 173% increase compared to 2019.

These books are making waves, but what exactly is LGBTQ+ fiction? Is it a genre in its own right? And what does all of this mean for those who write LGBTQ+ fiction?

What is the definition of LGBTQ+ fiction?

Defining queer fiction isn’t easy. The reality is that there isn’t one single definition of what it is. But while there isn’t a correct or standard definition, there are definitely some specific factors to take into consideration when attempting to define it. One possible definition is as follows:

LGBTQ+ fiction = fiction about or by queer people that explicitly or implicitly explores LGBTQ+ experiences, issues, relationships, history or pride

This definition can be better understood in light of the answers to four key questions:

Does an LGBTQ+ story need to be about being queer?Does an LGBTQ+ story need to have a queer protagonist?Is a book considered LGBTQ+ if it has just one queer character?Does a writer have to be queer to write an LGBTQ+ story?1. Does an LGBTQ+ story need to be about being queer?

No, it doesn’t need to be specifically about being queer, but it definitely can be. Some fiction explicitly explores what it means to be queer, how it feels for someone to come out or realise they identify as LGBTQ+ and the challenges many LGBTQ+ people still face today. In these books, queerness and queer issues are explored front and center.

On the other hand, some stories are more implicit in their approach to LGBTQ+ inclusion and visibility. For example, the characters might be incidentally queer, with the focus of the plot being something other than their sexuality or gender. These kinds of stories are also crucially important, as they present queerness as something commonplace and everyday, which it is—or should be.

2. Does an LGBTQ+ story need to have a queer protagonist?

The simple answer is no, it doesn’t. While many LGBTQ+ books do have queer protagonists, this is not always the case, especially when it comes to children’s fiction. For example, there are many picture books or middle-grade novels in which it’s the protagonist’s parent, parents, sibling or other family member who identifies as LGBTQ+.

This doesn’t mean that there aren’t also books for younger readers in which the protagonist is LGBTQ+ themselves or is exploring their identity, but books that focus on a rainbow family or queer family member as opposed to a queer protagonist can still very much be considered LGBTQ+ fiction.

3. Is a book considered LGBTQ+ if it has just one queer character?

The answer is a little more nuanced here, in that it depends very much on the queer character in question and how they are portrayed. This is where the Vito Russo Test comes into play.

This test was invented by GLAAD, the world’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy organization whose mission is to promote fair, accurate and inclusive representation of LGBTQ+ people in the media. The Vito Russo Test is designed to help filmmakers create more multidimensional queer characters, but it is absolutely applicable to fiction too. The criteria a story has to meet in order to pass the test are as follows:

There must be a character who is identifiably lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender.The character must be defined by more than just their sexual orientation or gender identity. That is to say, they have the same sort of unique character traits commonly used to differentiate allocishet characters from one another.The character must be so central to the story that removing them would have a significant impact. As GLAAD puts it, this means the character is not there “to simply provide colorful commentary, paint urban authenticity, or (perhaps most commonly) set up a punchline. The character should ‘matter.'”

So to return to the question at hand—Is a book considered LGBTQ+ if it has just one queer character?—it can be argued that yes, it is, IF that character meets the criteria outlined in the Vito Russo Test. But if the only queer character is just a token addition to the story or is more of a stereotype than a believable, three-dimensional individual (such as a gay best friend or hairdresser), then no, it’s not.

All of this being said, it’s often advisable to have more than one LGBTQ+ character in a story. This allows the writer to celebrate more of the many identities that exist under the rainbow and avoid one character coming across as representative of an entire community. It’s also a more realistic representation of the diversity of real life.

4. Does a writer have to be queer to write an LGBTQ+ story?

This is perhaps the most debated question of all, but again, the answer is no. Whilst it is without a doubt important to highlight and celebrate LGBTQ+ and other marginalized voices within the publishing industry, a writer does not have to be queer to write a queer story.

Many of the people who feel drawn to writing an LGBTQ+ book do identify as queer themselves, but when it comes down to it, so long as the writer is committed to writing a queer story that is respectful and informed, then anyone can do so, including:

out and proud members of the LGBTQ+ communitywriters who identify as queer but haven’t come out yetpeople who are exploring their own identity by writing an LGBTQ+ storyindividuals who are simply drawn to writing LGBTQ+ storiesactive and committed allies keen to support the LGBTQ+ community

That said, if someone has no personal experience of something they’re writing about, it’s crucial that they do their research to make sure that their representation is both informed and respectful and that they’re not accidentally playing into any LGBTQ+ stereotypes. This is where sensitivity readers can be incredibly helpful.

Is LGBTQ+ a genre?

No, it’s not. A genre refers to the style of book the author is writing—the kind of story they’re telling, such as romance, sci-fi, fantasy or mystery.

For example, if someone likes reading romance, then they enjoy stories that center on the romantic relationship(s) of the main characters and have happy endings. But if someone likes reading LGBTQ+ fiction, whilst that may say something about the person themselves, it doesn’t clarify the kind of story they like to read.

However, even if queer fiction isn’t a genre in its own right, it can be written within any genre, from queer romance to queer fantasy, queer mysteries to queer science fiction. In fact, in order to reach as many readers as possible, it’s crucial that there are LGBTQ+ characters and stories found in a wide variety of genres.

What does this mean for writers of LGBTQ+ fiction?

It means there is both a lot of freedom when it comes to writing LGBTQ+ fiction and a lot of things to be aware of. While there are no fixed conventions writers need to adhere to or reader expectations they have to fulfill in terms of the queer content of their story, there is nonetheless much to think about and be aware of.

The LGBTQ+ representation in the book needs to be informed and respectful, queer characters must be three-dimensional, believable people and those characters must also be central to the story. In addition to these considerations that are specific to queer fiction, there are also all the usual craft elements to think about, such as giving the protagonist a goal, making sure there are stakes and conflict, ensuring the protagonist has an arc of change, etc.

But if a writer successfully does all of that, they will be well on their way to writing a strong, compelling LGBTQ+ story—and the world really needs more of those right now.

Head to Amy’s website to get her free LGBTQ+ Story-Writing Guide and find out more about how she helps writers of queer kidlit.