Jane Friedman's Blog: Jane Friedman, page 39

5 Ways to Make a Writing Retreat “Pay Off”

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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.

Avoid Random Acts of Content

Today’s post is excerpted from The Nonfiction Book Marketing and Launch Plan by Stephanie Chandler, founder and CEO of the Nonfiction Authors Association.

One way to attract and cultivate a loyal audience is by sharing compelling content. The goal is to build a relationship that not only leads to book sales but creates fans that stay with you for the long-term. Content marketing should ideally begin before the launch of your book and continue for as long as you want to grow your author business. This is how influencers are born—by marketing content that serves their audiences.

You’ve probably heard the advice to leverage social media, blogging, podcasting, and other content marketing strategies as a tool for growing your author business. However, when you do this without getting clear about the needs, challenges, and interests of your target audience, these efforts usually fall flat.

Let’s take for example Joe Schmoe (not a real person) who authored a book and blogs about backyard farming. Joe is passionate about his topic. He converted his modest backyard into a thriving source of food for his family, and he aims to help others do the same. Despite his passion and enthusiasm, his audience isn’t growing.

To date, Joe’s blog contains several dozen posts. Here are some examples of his titles and topics:

Check out my tomato harvestMemories made on our family vacationWhy I like backyard gardeningSee all the salads I made this weekWhere are the helpers at the hardware store?

Now, imagine you’re interested in backyard gardening. Would the above titles appeal to you? Would they make you want to click on these posts? Or subscribe and visit again and again?

The biggest mistake Joe is making—and one that so many others make with content marketing—is that he’s not considering what his audience cares about. If I’m getting ready to convert my backyard into a mini-farm and I stumble on Joe’s site, seeing photos of his tomatoes or reading about his family vacation offers no value to me. It doesn’t address my challenges or improve my life in any way. So, I will move on, and find one of the many other blogs that can meet my needs.

Here are some better blog post titles that Joe could use:

10 Steps to Getting Started with Backyard FarmingHow to Create a No-Fail Watering Schedule for Your Backyard Farm5 Tips for a Hearty Lettuce HarvestHow to Select Tomato Plants and When to Plant Them3 Reasons Why Your Backyard Garden is Attracting Bugs and How to Get Rid of Them

Can you see the difference here? When Joe puts himself in the shoes of his readers, he will realize they are seeking guidance. As the expert, his readers rely on him to help them get started with gardening and overcome their backyard gardening challenges. If he simply meets these needs, his blog will begin to gain readership momentum.

Identify content ideas

After determining what your audience cares about, you can begin to develop content that meets their needs. Following are some types of content you can create.

How-to/prescriptive

Prescriptive content is some of the easiest to promote because millions of people turn to the internet to seek answers to their challenges every day. When you consider what types of questions your audience is typing into search boxes each day, you can begin to address those needs and develop content they are seeking. Your mission here is to solve their challenges and show them ways to make life easier.

Themes related to book

For narrative nonfiction and memoir, children’s books, fiction, and poetry, you will need to choose a theme and stick with it. Your theme might come directly from your book—or not. You could focus on the location where the book is set and share history of the city or travel tips for visitors. Or, if your book discusses an illness you overcame, sharing helpful information for others battling the illness can be a powerful strategy.

Donna Hartley has authored a series of memoirs based on events from her life, including surviving a collapsed heart valve. Today she earns a full-time living as a professional speaker covering women’s health issues.

Your theme might also be totally unrelated to your book. Charmaine Hammond is a business consultant who wrote a book of lessons from her dog called On Toby’s Terms. She reached out to her business contacts and organized a cross-country tour to promote the book by speaking at dozens of locations. Charmaine picked up the phone and acquired sponsors for the entire trip, covering everything from the borrowed RV she traveled in and a custom promotional wrap placed around the RV, to the coffee she brewed along the way and treats she shared with Toby. Her efforts led to selling tens of thousands of copies of the book and helped her further cultivate loyal fans in her business community—which is her target audience because she offers consulting and educational services for business professionals.

Entertaining and engagingAmazon • Bookshop

If you’re funny, you can engage an audience through laugh-inducing videos (that may go viral!) or a blog where you write hilarious short stories. Though I always recommend picking a theme and sticking with it, being funny could possibly be your focus all on its own. Author Jeremy Greenberg is a former stand-up comic and author of over ten books about pets with titles like Sorry I Barfed on Your Bed and Sorry I Pooped in Your Shoe. He writes hilarious articles for a variety of websites and publications, primarily focused on life with pets and dysfunctional families.

Storytelling is another important piece of the content pie. Great storytellers can build a following by writing for publications that reach their target audience. Without a focused theme, it may be harder to build an audience with your own site until you establish yourself by leveraging the reach that online and print publications offer. The same is true for poets. You either need a theme or you will likely need to rely on drawing interest by getting published on other platforms first.

Want to learn more book marketing tactics? Get a copy of The Nonfiction Book Marketing and Launch Plan by Stephanie Chandler.

To Get on Podcasts, Create a Media Kit

Photo by Medy Siregar on Unsplash

Today’s post is excerpted from How to Get On Podcasts by Michelle Glogovac.

Whether you’re running for a political office, growing a nonprofit, sharing your experience or book with others, educating others on how to successfully do something, or being the light at the end of someone’s tunnel, you’re going to succeed by doing podcast interviews. Your reach is no longer relegated to just those who follow you on social media or find you on LinkedIn. You will now have the ability to reach people all around the world, and not only that, but your interview will be available for the eternity of time … at least while the internet is still around!

Amazon • Bookshop

But before you pitch podcasts, I strongly encourage you to create a media kit. I use the term “media kit,” but others might refer to it as a “press kit,” a “one-page promotional kit,” your “pitch sheet,” or a “one sheet.” Regardless of the name, it’s a one-page document that ideally matches the look and feel of your brand. Its purpose is to offer everything a host needs to know about you that will ultimately make the host eager to interview you. It includes not only your bio and website but links to your social media platforms, your speaking topics, your headshot, your logo, and where you’ve already been featured. Your media kit is a one-stop shop.

Before we dive deep into how to create your media kit, let’s discuss the fact that this is promotional material, and you might be thinking that you don’t want to promote yourself. This is a common theme I hear from prospects and clients alike. I have the same answer for them as I have for you. This isn’t about you. Don’t think about this as promoting yourself if you don’t want to. Instead, focus on how you are going to educate others and share your knowledge and expertise with them so they can benefit from you. Don’t get distracted by negative thoughts of self-promotion. Your interviews are going to help others, as well as help yourself and your business.

First: track down any interviews you’ve already done.

I find that oftentimes we forget where we’ve been interviewed, so do yourself a favor and go Google your name. You can add “podcast interview” or just “interview” in the search bar to help narrow it down. (Tip from Jane: Listen Notes is a good way to search only podcasts, if needed.)

Create a list detailing every interview—whether it’s print, audio, or video—with a link. You’re going to use this information in your media kit. Even if you’re just getting started on your interview journey, chances are there is some sort of recording of you online, whether it was for an interview or a webinar or course you participated in. At this point it doesn’t matter if it fits with the topics you want to be interviewed about; we just want to be able to offer an example to hosts that shows you’re capable of having and holding a conversation.

In the PR world, we refer to “press” as any outlet that mentions you or interviews you. Press includes websites, both digital media outlets and blogs where you have been quoted or have actually written the post, and print media, such as newspapers or magazines, radio interviews, podcast interviews, and television interviews.

For any press that you’ve done, find and copy the link for the interview or where your name is mentioned and also download the logo or graphic art for the outlet. For podcasts, you can google the name of the podcast and then go to “Images” and right-click to save the cover art. Keep all of these in a folder, and give them recognizable file names so you can find them easily. You are going to use these graphics in your media kit. Logos and cover art are more recognizable than text titles and names. Images also tend to take up less real estate, and you need to present a lot of information on one page.

Ensure your media kit feels like you

Your media kit should look like an extension of your website or the branding of your logo, whether that’s for your business or personal brand. When someone looks at your media kit and then checks out your website, there should be no difference in look and feel. This is a part of your brand and who you are. This is what the term “brand recognition” means. It’s like seeing the Nike swoosh without the word “Nike” attached to it, but automatically recognizing what the swoosh means. Brand recognition is seeing the golden arches and recognizing it as a McDonald’s even as you’re driving 70 miles per hour down the freeway. We want your media kit to have brand recognition and to offer the familiarity of your website, your logo, and your social media platforms. The look and feel are all the same no matter where someone sees your content. Consistency is a big deal in how your marketing materials are presented as well as in how you present and share yourself.

You need a professional headshot

One of my favorite movies is Sunset Boulevard, and my favorite line is when Norma Desmond says, “Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.” Not everyone is comfortable with a close-up, but it’s necessary. You need a headshot. Why do you need a photo of yourself? Well, people want to connect with people. We are all virtual these days, so we want to connect more now than ever before. We have emails, Zoom calls, and social media, and so it can often feel like there’s no true human connection. Having a headshot helps to create a human-to-human connection. A high-quality headshot is also going to elevate you as someone who is seen as a professional and who understands the podcasting landscape. Your podcast interviews won’t always have a video component to them, so it’s nice for hosts to see who exactly they are going to be talking to, and this is true even if there’s a video component to your interview. This is part of being approachable and familiar.

Every host is going to ask for a headshot, so you might as well have one ready to go. Your headshot will be used for the graphics that hosts will make and share across their platforms (and you’ll share these elsewhere, too), so you’ll want a great headshot. I recommend investing in a professional photographer to take your headshot photo. Many photographers offer headshot packages, and some larger cities have studios specifically for headshots and social media photos. If you aren’t comfortable with having your photo taken, you’re going to need to get used to it. That’s some tough love from yours truly! Trust me when I tell you that once you get that first headshot done, you’ll feel much more comfortable about it.

Please do yourself (and me!) a favor and don’t use the glamor shots you took in the nineties at the mall! Don’t be afraid to wear bold colors minus any crazy patterns that can be distracting. Your background can be outdoors or a mono-colored wall. If you’ve got a professional taking your headshots, then the person should be equipped and prepared with good lighting to ensure you look as natural and comfortable as possible. Some jewelry is fine, but be sure to not overdo it to the point that it takes away from you being the focus of the photo.

Write a two-paragraph bio

We now know what you look like, but we need to include who the heck you are, so you’re going to need a biography of yourself. Don’t worry; this isn’t your autobiography in book form. This isn’t even your life story in a nutshell. It’s a two-paragraph description of who you are and what you do and should include some of your accomplishments and something that allows your personality to shine through.

Your biography should pertain to your experience, education, special accolades, and awards. If you have a company bio or author bio already written, you might be able to utilize that instead of reinventing the wheel. I think it’s a good idea to have consistency wherever you can, including your bio.

If you don’t have a bio already written, don’t stress. Here are some tips for crafting your bio:

Write it in the third person. This is what a host is going to read to introduce you, so as odd as it may be, write it like you’re talking about someone other than yourself.The opening line should include your full name and what you do. For example, mine would say, “Michelle Glogovac is THE Podcast Matchmaker, award-winning publicist, and host of the My Simplified Life podcast.”Include two to three sentences about your experience—what you do, what you specialize in, and what type of clients you work with—and about your goal—what you are striving to achieve.Create a second paragraph that shares your educational background, the vicinity where you reside, and anything personal you might want to add. Mine includes that I have BA and MS degrees in law; I’m a wife, a mom of “Irish twins,” a stepmom of two adults, and a fur mom; I reside in the Bay Area; and I have a love for wine.Don’t be afraid to give your bio some personality and share who you are in it. The goal is to make your bio not only impressive but relatable as well.

Here is an example of a good bio:

A natural leader in work and life, Shana Pereira has an empathic ability to bring people together and the intuition on how to make the impossible possible. With 20 years of experience in marketing and media, in her professional life Shana directs and guides large-scale operating systems that drive cultural engagement, fast growth, and lasting business impact. After a near-death experience during a heart and kidney transplant in 2020, Shana is now channeling her purpose into building a movement, content platform, and research institute around the future of religion and healthcare.

A storyteller, modern-day apostle, and unrelenting optimist, Shana is a sought-after speaker and thought leader sharing her insights and lessons around organ transplantation, the importance of partnership with your medical team, the mental resilience it takes to survive when faced with death, and the emotional impact of having seen the afterlife. Her experiences and speeches move everyone who hears them—guiding people on how to have a better relationship with crisis and, in turn, their own humanity.

A side note: Be sure to update your bio—don’t let it get stale. It’s a good idea to revisit your bio a couple of times a year, although you’ll be sending it out much more frequently when you are doing podcast interviews.

Point to your social media accounts

We can’t forget to include where people can stalk you … I mean find you! Gather your social media handles for where you show up most consistently. Since the actual hyperlinks are lengthy, I like to use the small icon graphics that represent each platform, such as the Facebook logo, Instagram logo, a microphone (if you host a podcast), and so forth. If you are going to use the Canva app (more on that below), you can get these icons ready to go. If you aren’t active on one of these platforms, don’t include it. Each icon will have a hyperlink to your specific social media account, making it clickable and eliminating any need for the host googling you. If you’re using Word or a PDF, you can also hyperlink your social media account handles within the document.

Put it all together

If you’re new to media kit design, don’t worry: Canva is a simple-to-use website where you can design basically anything. Even better is that it has a free option! I recommend downloading a PDF file of your kit and naming it with your name followed by “media kit.” One thing I want you to remember is that this is YOUR media kit. Let it represent you, your personality, and your brand and showcase how amazing you are. You can also use Word, Google Docs, or Adobe to create your media kit. This is about the end product and not about using the right software or needing to learn a new one.

Final word

Your media kit is going to come in very handy because it’s a tool you will utilize in pitching yourself not only to podcasts but to any other type of media or speaking engagement. You’ve just created your one-stop shop that tells people who you are, what you do, and where they can find you!

Hoping to get on podcasts this year? Get a copy of How to Get On Podcasts by Michelle Glogovac.

How to Write Realistically About Drug Use in Your Novel

Photo by Myriam Zilles on Unsplash

Today’s post is excerpted from The Grim Reader: A Pharmacist’s Guide to Putting Your Characters in Peril (Red Lightning Books, 2024, used with permission) by Miffie Seideman.

Writers have asked how they can realistically describe a drug they’ve never personally used. How can they accurately portray a character’s actions or symptoms?

Know your history

Building a credible scene requires researching some historical facts, including:

Was the drug discovered yet? A scene using insulin set in 1820 is problematic since this treatment wasn’t discovered until the 1900s. Fentanyl shouldn’t be used in a 1930s scene since it wasn’t available for use until the 1960s—opium or morphine would be more accurate choices.Was the method to take the drug invented yet? Since insulin must be given as a shot, that scene is even less authentic as the hypodermic needle wasn’t invented until the mid-1800s. Older historical fiction could involve the use of poultices and mustard packs, while skin drug patches (transdermal patches) are only appropriate in more modern scenes.

You also need to consider what drug trends existed in the time period of your story. Medical knowledge changes over time and with it the drugs prescribed. This, in turn, impacts the type of prescription drugs diverted into street supplies or available in home medicine cabinets.

Here’s a sample scene:

He picked up the empty glass vial next to her lifeless body. Chloral hydrate! He’d been a fool to leave it where she could find it.

Is this author’s sedative choice realistic? It depends on what year the scene takes place. Popular sedatives have changed significantly over the decades. In the late 1800s, chloral hydrate was popularly used to treat anxiety and insomnia. It was replaced by bromides, which were also unfortunately used to create the “bromide sleep” to sedate patients in asylums. By the 1920s, awareness that bromides caused prolonged hallucinations led doctors to prescribe barbiturates like phenobarbital (barbital) instead. So, it was no accident that Agatha Christie chose to weave barbital into the plot of Murder on the Orient Express. Once the medical profession realized the growing trend of barbiturate addiction, benzodiazepines (“benzos”) became the new alternative. Surprisingly, despite safety concerns, it wasn’t until the early 2000s that chloral hydrate was finally removed from the US market.

Based on these prescribing changes over time, how would you revise the sample scene to take place in the 1940s? In 2000?

Sample scene, setting 2020:

He quietly opened her medicine cabinet, fumbling through bottles, until his fingers landed on the one labeled “Vicodin.”

Over the last decade, the growing opioid crisis has caused concerns about overprescribing and addiction. But in the early 2000s, poorly treated pain created a national push for better pain control, resulting in increased prescribing of opioid drugs such as oxycodone, hydrocodone (Vicodin), and Percocet. Eventually, this led to an oversupply of opioids, excess stores in medicine cabinets, and increased street supplies.

Then, with addiction and overdoses escalating rapidly, additional prescribing restrictions enacted in the US reduced drug availability. The unintended consequence of this was an increase in the black market demand for opioids, which escalated illicit drug smuggling into the US. This influx of opioids has included illicit fentanyl, both in bulk and laced into street drugs such as heroin and counterfeit pain pills. The culmination of these events has resulted in the current fentanyl overdose epidemic.

Due to these rapid social changes in a span of only twenty years, an opioid scene set in 2020 will look very different than one set in 2000.

So, is the scene above appropriate? If the character’s grandmother held onto leftover hydrocodone (Vicodin) after her last surgery a couple of years ago, then yes. Many people, especially the elderly, squirrel away leftover tablets instead of tossing them into the garbage. Some patients hoard pills, afraid they won’t be prescribed enough the next time they’re in pain. But if the character’s grandmother is depicted as having been given the pills after a recent surgery, then no. Opiate prescribing in the US has been extremely restricted during the last several years. Few opioids are prescribed after surgery and when they are, the number of tablets is usually enough for only a few days of treatment. In this case, it would be more realistic to have the character not find the pills he wants and resort to buying some from his friend at school. And where would his friend have gotten the pills? He probably bought them from a stranger at a party.

Study drug abuse trends

Different countries, and different locations within countries, have varying trends of drug use and abuse over time. Factors affecting these differences are complex, but include laws, local cultures, drug availability, drug costs, and proximity to country borders. A drug-related scene in a town along the US-Mexico border will look quite different than one set in a Midwest farming town. The resources page at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) website contains a wealth of information regarding location-based trends in drug abuse and even maps of the locations where clandestine labs have been found. The National Drug Threat Assessment, published regularly on the site, details national data related to illicit drugs. For international information, a great resource is the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime website.

Research slang and look for “trip reports”

How your character talks about drugs and the related paraphernalia is just as important to sounding authentic as what the character does with them. A well-written scene using drug jargon can immerse readers in the setting, even if they don’t know what the exact terms mean. A great example of this can be found in Good Girls (Season 1, Episode 6) when Boomer pressures Darren into selling him drugs. Darren’s response—the litany of drugs he has available to sell, including everything from “Addys” to “fat bags of herb”—is both authentic and funny.

Drug jargon not only changes over time but also with geographic location, age, socioeconomic status, and a host of other factors. Hundreds of street names and a wide variety of related slang exist for various drugs. But applying slang to your scene will require additional research to identify the terms that will sound the most authentic in your story. For example, while doobie and vape are slang terms used for marijuana, having your 2020s high schooler talk about “takin’ a hit off a doobie” would be as out of place as having a 1960s hippie invite someone to “vape some dank weed.” And jargon like dubsack and trippin’ balls should be used in the right context.

Online videos posted by recovered addicts or current users offer a well-rounded sense of how to use such jargon realistically. Using the search words trip report with the name of a drug can be a starting place. For example, a search for DXM, third plateau, and trip report will result in numerous videos of users that were filmed during their DXM trips, offering profound insight for writing a scene. In addition, a few social influencers have posted videos documenting their journey through drug addiction, recovery, and sometimes even relapse.

Consider socioeconomic status

What’s your character’s income? What are the economics of the setting? Crack is a credible choice in a plot involving a low-income character because it’s a relatively cheap drug, while a cheese platter spiked with ecstasy is more appropriate in a high-society women’s brunch scene. Is your character a penniless alcoholic? Instead of passing out after chugging a fifth of Tanqueray gin, the medical responders should find him near death from drinking cheap isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol.

The market cost of drugs has an impact on drug trends. For example, in about 2013 Arizona high school students switched from abusing expensive oxycodone pills to cheaper and more available heroin. But an influx of illicit pills from Mexico has driven oxycodone prices down, making it the preferred choice again. Many of these pills, however, are counterfeit and tainted with potentially lethal doses of fentanyl. Now, an upsurge of fentanyl overdoses and deaths are being reported in those same high schools.

How is the drug usually used?

Avoid the temptation to improvise ways to get the drug into your character just to fit a scene. Most drugs given the wrong way won’t work as planned. If your villain spikes a drink with insulin to kill an adversary, he’ll be sorely disappointed when his victim lives. Insulin must be injected or, in some cases, inhaled, to avoid destruction during digestion.

Learn how fast a character should show symptoms

Avoid writing instant drug effects. They are almost always unrealistic. Instead, build page-turning tension using the actual time it takes for drugs to cause harrowing symptoms. Despite what movies would have you believe, a chloroform-soaked rag won’t make a character instantly pass out, and the effects will wear off quickly after the rag is removed. Even injecting drugs rarely works instantly. For example, a villain attempting to kill with an overdose of insulin shouldn’t see the victim immediately fall to the ground. Insulin takes time to work, initially dropping the person’s blood sugar, leaving his brain foggy, his vision blurry and making him shaky. As his blood sugar drops dangerously low, he can suffer a seizure and lose consciousness. Now your character is on the way to dying.

Use the reader’s own knowledge and need for suspense to your advantage. Did your character swallow a handful of pills? Since many people know it takes several minutes for pills to have an effect, you can let your readers build their own anticipation, waiting for the inevitable, while you slowly develop the scene tension.

Need to hasten a character’s demise? Write the scene using a drug that can be injected into a vein (IV) or inhaled, which generally works faster than a shot into muscle (IM) or swallowed pills. Reserve plots using a skin patch for slow-moving scenes since it takes time for drugs to absorb and cause symptoms. High or lethal doses can rapidly create dangers for your character. But, for any of these methods, symptoms should still appear in a cascade, not all at once. For example, a rapid injection of a high fentanyl dose can suddenly cause chest muscles to become rigid, making it hard or impossible to breathe. Then, with no oxygen, several other symptoms can evolve—such as blue lips, seizures, a slowing heartbeat, and death—over several minutes (or pages). The character shouldn’t die instantly, even with this potent drug.

And keep in mind that not all overdoses are lethal. Depending on the drug, your character may suffer serious symptoms but realistically survive. This fact offers a world of harrowing conflicts that can make your character strong enough to ultimately tackle his inner demons.

A note of caution when using brand names

An abundance of caution should be used when deciding to use the brand name of a drug in your story. Brand names can be acceptable, but using language that tarnishes, defames, or falsely depicts a product as dangerous can bring litigation. Authors can circumvent these concerns by avoiding the use of brand names entirely. It’s often not even necessary to specifically mention a drug name to develop a scene. Instead of mentioning the brand OxyContin, build tension as the character opens the leftover bottle of pain pills. Instead of Adderall, a stressed college student studying for finals can reach for his “study buddies” bought in a previous scene. Simply describing what the medicine does can be effective, evoking the reader’s memory of similar experiences. If you want to be completely fictional, invent your own brand name, but try to stay within the symptoms expected from that kind of drug. Suzanne Collins blended several of these concepts well in The Hunger Games series. The sweet syrup that calmed Gale’s pain and was extremely addictive was reminiscent of morphine. If you do choose to use a real brand name, consider getting a legal consult to verify that you haven’t crossed the boundaries of acceptable use.

Additional resources

There’s a wealth of drug information available. A few resources to consider include:

Amazon • BookshopFDA (Food and Drug Administration) and DEA online databases and drug resources, which provide information on changing trends in various geographic locations as well as updates on the legal status of various drugs.Social networking groups focusing on related specialty writing topics, such as trauma or emergency medicine, can be a wealth of information.Newspaper articles and medical journals are great places to find real cases.Local medical professionals, police, and medical examiners can provide insight and realistic ideas.The US national poison center is an often-forgotten resource that collects data from fifty-five poison centers throughout the US. It provides free information to the public on poisonings, drug exposure, chemicals, poisonous plants, and venoms. It’s a wealth of information on trends in drug abuse, overdoses, and poisonings based on age groups and geographic locations. The poison center is also available to guide the general public during poisoning emergencies, such as the frantic parents of a toddler found chewing on iron tablets next to an empty vial.

If you found this post helpful, be sure to pick up a copy of The Grim Reader.

The Über Skill for Writers

Today’s post is by editor Tiffany Yates Martin (@FoxPrintEd). Join her on Wednesday, January 24 for the online class Analyze Story Like an Editor.

One of the most important abilities a writer can hone doesn’t involve writing—at least not their own.

Learning to objectively assess other people’s stories, and pinpoint what makes them effective or not, will do more for your own writing craft than even psychologist K. Anders Ericsson’s much vaunted (and misinterpreted) 10,000 hours of practice popularized by Malcolm Gladwell. 

That’s not to denigrate the importance of actually doing the work of writing. But no amount of putting words on the page will teach you as much as analyzing what makes story work and training your own editor brain.

Analyzing story like an editor informs every element of writing and every skill a writer must develop—not just editing, but also drafting and revision, and storytelling skill as well as craft skills.

The ability to see our own work clearly is one of the greatest challenges of writing. Authors fill in the blanks of their characters and world and stories in their heads without realizing whether it’s coming across effectively on the page to readers. It’s almost impossible to assess our own work as objectively as we can with other people’s.

That’s why practicing the skill with stories we did not create is one of the best ways of learning to see the component parts of effective story and internalizing those skills in the ones you do.

And no matter where you are in your writing career, whether multi-published or at the beginning, you already have the main tool you need to master this skill: yourself.

Analyzing starts with you

Outside of the intrinsic rewards of creating story, story’s effect and its purpose is the reaction it elicits in the recipient. Much of the reason we work to understand and master essential story components like character development, well-structured plots, meaningful stakes, strong momentum, suspense, etc., is because these are the tools by which story compels its audience.

So in learning to understand these core craft elements, we start with observing our own reactions to the stories we take in, and trace our subjective reaction to the objective techniques that elicited them.

I called this objective analysis because you aren’t colored by your own intentions for the story; you’re simply taking it in as an observer, the way editors approach a manuscript when working on it.

And yet where humans are concerned, there’s really no such thing as pure objectivity. We are all subjective creatures, bringing our own biases, experiences, judgments, and perspectives to everything we experience. But it’s those subjective reactions that will lead you to discover the techniques of story that are effective for you, that lead to the types of stories that affect you and move you and elicit a reaction.

By learning to pay attention to how you are impacted by story, both good and bad, you learn to trace back those ultimate effects to the techniques that elicited them. You use your subjective reactions to determine the objective craft techniques the storyteller used to create them.

Analyzing in the wild

In analyzing what you read (or watch or hear or see), first start with your overall general impressions: Was the story effective? Did it engage you? Elicit any reactions in you? What were they—and where in the story did you feel them?

“Reaction” may mean you loved it, were moved, affected, excited—or it may mean it angered you, galvanized you, engaged your attention and thoughts. Indifference results from those forgettable stories that make no ripple at all.

Then you’ll trace those reactions back to specific story elements they relate to, and dissect why those elements worked (or didn’t, which can be equally instructive). And finally you examine the text line by line, identifying granularly how the author created the effect you perceived.

Let’s walk through an example. I just finished Ann Patchett’s most recent novel, Tom Lake. She has long been a favorite writer of mine, and knowing why is the beginning of understanding how she wields storytelling devices to create an effect and a reaction in readers: Patchett is a character writer, and character to me is the soul of compelling story.

Her stories don’t involve objectively massive stakes like saving the world from nuclear threat. They’re often simply slices of characters’ lives in particularly tumultuous or meaningful moments. But they’re deep. Deceptively deep, like the surface of a caldera that extends countless fathoms into the Earth.

Tom Lake is no exception. From the beginning I felt invested in characters who felt real to me, and relatable. Every night I found myself eager to open the book back up and find out what happened to them next. I was surprised by several twists and reveals I hadn’t seen coming. The end felt satisfying—inevitable yet unexpected—and I found the story continues to linger in my mind even weeks later.

If I scratch deeper into these initial overview reactions, I can identify the specific storytelling elements each relates to:

Character: Obviously. Patchett paints not just her protagonist but every character with nuance and verisimilitude, giving each specific driving motivations and clear, tangible goals that give readers something concrete to root for. Point of view and voice: Part of the reason the story engaged me so deeply is Patchett’s intimate first-person narration. Readers are directly privy to the protagonist’s inner life, experiencing the story in her head, behind her eyes, through her immediate perception—which is also the lens through which the author brings the other characters fully to life.Stakes: I cared about what the characters had to gain or to lose—because I cared about them, and they cared profoundly about what was at stake, even though it was objectively small: winning a part in a play, performing at a regional theater, winning (and keeping) a love interest, completing a cherry harvest before the fruit rots. You don’t have to ever have done or cared about those particular things to understand wanting something coveted and striving for it, or craving the attention of an objet d’amour, or attaining a crucial goal by a pressing deadline. The highly personal becomes universal in a skilled author’s hands, and gives a story its impact on readers.Suspense and tension: Patchett creates questions throughout—not always major ones, but threaded through on every page is some uncertainty, conflict, an unresolved tension that made me constantly wonder, “What will happen next?” Her reveals are so seamless and smooth that I never even realized she was concealing something intrinsic to the story until she pulled the curtain away. And when she did, it added even more layers of meaning—increasing my investment in the characters and what they wanted (storytelling is a web where every element impacts every other).Momentum: Tom Lake relentlessly moves the story forward, even as it revolves around events from the past, a masterful feat instructive to any author who has ever struggled to fluidly incorporate backstory without stalling momentum.Plot and structure: Patchett weaves together the story of the protagonist’s past—her single-summer relationship with a man who became a megastar—with her present, quarantined on her family’s cherry orchard with her husband and three grown daughters, a dual-timeline device that heightens the impact and stakes of each storyline, creates much of its suspense and momentum, and instills depth and nuance in each that neither would have alone. My satisfaction with the ending suggests Patchett resolved the plot and various storylines in an effective, cohesive way.

Finally I can go back and dissect, line by line, how she weaves this tapestry. Let’s take just the opening paragraph—I’ll insert my analysis in red:

That Veronica and I were given keys and told to come early on a frozen Saturday in April to open the school for the Our Town auditions was proof of our dull reliability. [Patchett plunges readers into the story in medias res, right in the middle of the action. From the first line she begins to paint a picture of the situation and the characters—both that they are responsible but that they see themselves as dull.] The play’s director, Mr. Martin, was my grandmother’s friend and State Farm agent. [The first brushstroke in creating a sense of place—a small, interrelated town.] That’s how I was wrangled in, through my grandmother, and Veronica was wrangled because we did pretty much everything together. [Relationship details—both with her grandmother, who clearly has influence over the protagonist, and Veronica, clearly her best friend, which also sets up stakes on these relationships that are both germane to the story.] Citizens of New Hampshire could not get enough of Our Town. We felt about the play the way other Americans felt about the Constitution or the “Star-Spangled Banner.” It spoke to us, made us feel special and seen. Mr. Martin predicted a large turnout for the auditions, which explained why he needed use of the school gym for the day. The community theater production had nothing to do with our high school, but seeing as how Mr. Martin was also the principal’s insurance agent and very likely his friend, the request was granted. Ours was that kind of town. [All small, telling details about the world of the story, the character’s background, and setting up the central role Our Town plays throughout the story as well as its themes.]

Another reader might have different reactions to a story like this. Maybe it seems too quiet or small. Maybe they think nothing really happens. Those are as valid as my own interpretation. Analyzing story isn’t about whether it’s good or bad or you like it or not. It’s about how authors use concrete storytelling devices to create an effect. How you are impacted by that varies from reader to reader—and it’s part of learning your own style and voice as a writer.

Analyze everything

The beauty of this powerful technique to improve your own writing and storytelling craft is that you can do it anywhere, with any story you take in—and everything is story: books, both fiction and nonfiction; movies and TV shows; podcasts and feature articles and interviews; commercials, songs, poems; company slogans and taglines; even your own life. I do this so automatically now it’s like a patellar reflex: I’ve analyzed magazine articles, family dinners, home owners’ association dramas, and why Will Smith’s infamous slap of Chris Rock so captured the world’s attention.

Far from taking away the joy of story, dissecting it as a writer lets you appreciate it on even deeper levels—or articulate why some stories are DNFs for you, or simply leave you cold even if critics are raving (I’m looking at you, The Lobster).

It doesn’t matter if you love or hate a story, or who agrees with you about its merit. No matter your reaction, it’s the barometer by which you can gauge how effective that story is to you, which is the only metric that matters in creating the kinds of stories you want to tell.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, please join us on Wednesday, January 24 for the online class Analyze Story Like an Editor.

4 Things Every YA Writer Should Know About Teens

Photo by Seven Shooter on Unsplash

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

Years ago, I had a student in my AP World History class, who, despite seeming interested in the class, never submitted any homework. It was tanking her grade. Hoping to solve this no-homework spiral, I pulled her aside and asked what she did after school most days.

“Most days, I get home from school and start reading a book. And then I can’t stop reading the book. I keep reading until I finish, and by then it’s the middle of the night, and I’m tired, so I go to bed.”

We never did solve her homework problem, but she passed the class and graduated. As a writer and avid reader myself, I have a soft spot for the kids who hide open novels under their desks or stay up all night reading. As their teacher, I know I’m supposed to keep them on task and insist on better study habits. But, whenever I see a teenager reading instead of something else they’re “supposed” to be doing, I can’t help but think, Well, there’s worse things they could be up to.

I also know that a good novel has everything teen brains are primed to crave—excitement, emotion, and escape.

Since most YA authors are adults, we need to rely on our memories of adolescence to write teen characters. No matter how vivid your memories are, the fact remains that teenage brains function differently than adult ones. These differences are deeper than the poor impulse control that makes you want to scream, “What were you thinking?”

As a high school teacher who writes for teens, I think there are four things about the adolescent mind every YA writer should know.

1. Teens are easily bored.

Compared to adults and younger children, adolescents have a low baseline level of dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that rewards us with a little rush of good feelings when we do things essential for survival—like, eating carbohydrates. It also rewards us for survival-adjacent behaviors such as learning a new skill, socializing, or getting lost in a good story. Additionally, dopamine plays a role in learning, mood regulation, memory formation, and sleep.

Low dopamine makes teens more susceptible to stress and depression but also makes everything—even things they used to find interesting—a total snoozefest.

Because of their low dopamine levels, teens crave novelty—new experiences. Books can be a great source of novelty, but they need to deliver right out of the gate to keep a teen reader engaged.

It’s not just low levels of dopamine that make teenagers picky readers. The average American teenager is overbooked. They’re in school 6–7 hours per day and may have nearly as many additional hours in the day dedicated to homework, extracurricular activities, and jobs. That’s a 12–14 hour workday! And, on top of that, teens need more sleep than any time since they were toddlers, between 9–12 hours per night. If a teenager is going to spend any of their precious free time on reading a book, it had better capture their attention fast.

What this means for you: Trim your story down to only the most relevant and interesting parts.

2. Teens are naturally curious.

Teen brains are highly plastic. In neuroscience, plasticity refers to how pliable and adaptable the mind is. For all the shortcomings of the adolescent brain (poor decision-making, mood swings, regrettable sartorial choices, etc.), one miraculous thing about it is the incredible capacity for learning new things and the rapidity with which teens can acquire new skills. On any given day, your teen is learning Spanish, world history, calculus, and how to drive.

Teens are primed for learning, while also being easily bored. Paired together, these two facets of their brain chemistry make teenagers naturally curious people. They are eager to know more about the world around them, and especially to learn about other teenagers. Books are well-suited to deliver. A novel gives the teen reader the closest possible experience of getting to live in someone else’s skin.

In later adolescence, kids become capable of more cognitive complexity. Most kids are strongly driven by a sense of fairness and justice, and in later teen years, kids start grappling with contradictions and shades of grey. Moral and ethical complexities give their hungry, novelty-craving brains a lot to chew on.

What this means for you: Give teen readers the opportunity to learn new things and have new experiences. Give them big dilemmas and questions to chew on, rather than a sermon.

3. Teen emotions are powerful.

That low dopamine again. While everything in the teenage universe suddenly feels so B-O-R-I-N-G, the low levels of dopamine in their brains also makes their emotions feel extremely powerful, especially brand-new emotions like the first flutters of romantic love.

So, a teen who is feeling bored and alone can experience the rush of a love affair or the adventure of political rebellion from the safety of their own couch. It’s a chance to feel the big feelings they might not be getting to feel in their real lives.

What this means for you: Put your protagonist’s feelings on the page so that your reader can feel them too.

4. Teens need to experiment and test boundaries.

Developmentally, teens are in a phase of life where they’re exploring big issues about identity and their place in the world. That’s why so many coming-of-age stories center around identity formation. One of the ways teens figure out who they are is by testing out different ways of being. Just like reading a book is a great way for teens to experience emotional release, reading is also a way for teens to try on and contemplate new identities. It’s a chance for them to see their own experiences reflected back to them and to realize that they aren’t alone in feeling the way that they do. It’s only as an adult that I’ve had a chance to read books with bisexual protagonists and it has been an incredible affirmation to realize that truly there are other people out there who feel the way I do. It would have been super helpful when I was a semi-closeted bisexual teenager to have read those books!

Because teens are so close to adulthood, this boundary testing isn’t just about identity formation (or giving their parents grey hairs), it’s also about autonomy and independence. They want and need a chance to do things for themselves.

What this means for you: Put teen protagonists in the driver’s seat. Give your hero the agency that your readers may lack in their own lives. Again, don’t be preachy. Not only will readers of all ages find it boring, teens are particularly allergic to condescension. They also have perfectly honed BS detectors. They know when you’re trying to feed them something you don’t believe in. Instead of a sermon, show a protagonist facing a big dilemma or testing boundaries so that your teen reader can come to their own conclusions.

(Bonus) 5. Teens have trouble sleeping.

As I mentioned previously, most teens need between 9–12 hours of sleep per night, but many early adolescents also experience what is known as a sleep phase shift. Basically, their body’s natural release of melatonin (the hormone that makes you feel sleepy) shifts by about two hours. So, instead of being ready to fall asleep at 9 p.m., the way they once used to, many teens aren’t physically ready to go to sleep for the night until between 11 p.m. and midnight, no matter how long their day has been or how early they have to get up the next morning. This shift can be so dramatic that to some kids, it feels like insomnia. These same sleepless hours that attract kids to hours of scrolling on social media also make them susceptible to a good page-turner. So, if you pack your novel with plenty of excitement, emotion, and escapism, you can hook your teen readers and keep them turning pages late into the night.

For more on teen brains and writing:

The Addiction Inoculation: Raising Healthy Kids in a Culture of Dependence  by Jessica Lahey  The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed  by Jessica Lahey Wired for Story: The Writer’s Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence  by Lisa Cron

Your Substack Isn’t For Everyone

Photo by aboodi vesakaran

Today’s post is by Elizabeth Held, who publishes the newsletter What To Read If on Substack.

One of the first tasks that querying authors undertake is researching their comps. Underlying this research is the question, “Who is your target reader?” And answering this question meaningfully requires acknowledging that your book is not for everyone.

The same is true for a newsletter. Over the past three years, I’ve built an audience of nearly 7,000 subscribers for my book recommendation newsletter on Substack. (I sent my first edition to one subscriber—myself.) I now hear regularly from other Substackers looking for advice on growing a subscriber base.

I can’t pinpoint a single reason for the growth I’ve seen. Luck, support of other Substackers and consistency have all played a part, but there is one piece of advice I almost always give. Make sure you know who your newsletter is for and what they get from it. It boils down to filling in the statement “where XX audience finds YY content.” This guiding principle ensures you’re giving value to your audience.

Deliver clear value

I love this formula so much that when potential subscribers read my newsletter’s About page, the first thing they see is “where book lovers find their next great read.” Immediately, people have a sense of whether my newsletter is something they’re interested in.

Other successful newsletters deliver on a similar formula, even if they’re not writing it out as directly as I am:

Kathleen Schmidt’s Publishing Confidential: Where writers and publishing professionals find information on an opaque industry. Dearest by Monica McLaughlin: Where antique enthusiasts find undiscovered gems.Sari Botton’s Oldster: Where Gen X finds camaraderie about aging. Lit Mag News by Becky Tuch: Where creative writers find insights on the lit mag world.

Each of these newsletters has a clearly defined audience—they don’t pretend they’re writing for everyone—and deliver value to their subscribers.

Many Substackers seem conflicted about establishing a niche. Instead, they write personal essays or cover a wide variety of topics, without a clear throughline. Established writers, such as Emma Straub, can succeed with this method, but it’s harder for those not coming in with a built-in audience. Subscribers, for better or worse, need to see clear value to take a chance on an unknown author.

That’s not to say all newsletter writers need to be quite as formulaic as I am (three book recommendations each week) to attract an audience. Jolene Handy writes about history, family and life in Chicago, all through a lens of food for Time Travel Kitchen. It creates a sense of consistency for her readers, while allowing her to explore a range of topics. A similar approach would work with art, books, movies, music, etc.

Start with what your audience needs

Completing your “where XX audience finds YY content” starts with thinking about the subscribers you want to attract then determining what they want that no one else is giving them.

For example, if you’re working on a true crime book and want to use a newsletter to find readers for it, you’ll want to think about content true crime enthusiasts are looking for. Podcast reviews? New long reads to check out? Essays on the ethics of the genre? From there, examine what other newsletters are doing and find something different you can do.

This approach works for novelists, too. I am genuinely delighted when I receive romance writer Joanna Shupe’s newsletter in my inbox. Shupe writes love stories set in the Gilded Age, so she’s likely using it to sell those books. Her newsletter, Gilded Treats, includes a mix of historical nuggets about the era and romance recommendations. It’s for readers who pick up her books because of the time period as well as general romance fans.

The difficulty with an audience-centric approach is that it requires putting your subscribers before yourself, at least some of the time. It’s about giving your readers what they want, even if it’s not quite what you feel like writing.

I have found, though, once you’ve established yourself and built trust with your audience, you have some leeway to experiment and explore. I use my book recommendations to comment on the news and pop culture happenings, while also delivering what my audience has come to expect.

It’s tricky and requires some creativity, but rewarding once you nail it.