Jane Friedman's Blog: Jane Friedman, page 44

Book Files and Formats: How to Protect Your Writing Investment

“Safe” by rpongsaj is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Today’s post is by David Wogahn, the author of Countdown to Book Launch and the president of AuthorImprints, a self-publishing services company.

A writer’s investment in their book is more than time and creativity. Our words, and sometimes visuals, are then turned into electronic files—another investment. Publishers cover the cost of creating publishing files, while indie authors bear the expense of creating the files for their books.

This has long been the case, but when bringing a book to market in today’s shifting publishing landscape, doesn’t it pay to be proactive in terms of file ownership?

A traditionally published author may one day have their publishing rights reverted. For indie authors, the firm or freelancer you hired to prepare files may close or disagreements may develop. Or perhaps you want to publish your next book using a different team.

The costs to republish a book or to make changes to a book—or to take your book to a new designer—depend on whether or not you have the appropriate files. Common file types used in publishing are Microsoft Word, Adobe InDesign (an industry-standard software program for typesetting manuscripts), and PDF. The type of file you have determines how easy, and how costly, it will be to make changes to the book.

Here are five real-life author stories about corrections and republishing, and an explanation of why having the files—the right files—is important:

Mark’s publisher reverted the rights to two of his books but wanted to charge him for the PDFs. Mark instead found his old manuscript in Word and had to update it to match the published version. It was time-consuming because he had to cross-check the Word document with the printed book to find last-minute changes made during the publishing process.All Michael had was a physical book. With no files at all, the only option was to cut the spine off the paperback book, scan the loose pages, and then correct the errors created during the scanning process. This expense was in addition to standard publishing fees incurred for republishing.Tiffany could no longer use her original book designer and needed to make corrections to her book. She had an InDesign file, but it was missing the image files. The project was abandoned.Mary Jean chose to republish her three books using her own publishing imprint. One of the books required changes to the cover but all she had was a PDF, not the publishing source files nor the original image file. The cover had to be redesigned.Grace had an agreement with a hybrid publishing company, but during the proof review phase, she learned that the firm was going out of business. Unfortunately, she had no recourse in getting her publishing files, and she found herself back at square one, with only her Word file.The difference between source files and publishing files

Publishing source files are files that can be edited or changed—for example, adding a new chapter, correcting a spelling error, or changing a font.

An InDesign file is a publishing source file (and often a group of files, when you include fonts and images). Many authors draft their manuscript in Word, which is imported into InDesign for the design, layout, and formatting process. Once the book is designed, it is output as a PDF, and this PDF file becomes the publishing file.

It’s also worth noting that it is possible to design and format a book using Word (or Google Docs). In this case, Word is a publishing source file. As with InDesign, one then saves their Word document as a PDF for use as the publishing file.

But in all cases, a PDF is never a publishing source file. A PDF is simply a publishing file to be used for printing the book and it cannot be edited the same way one edits a publishing source file.

Staying organized is the first and minimum level of protection

No matter what path you take to publication, you have at least some ability to maintain control over your writing investment. The first and most obvious control is completely within your power: it’s staying organized.

At some point in the process there will be a final manuscript, and you should save and identify it as such, along with any other files, such as image files. This applies to all authors, whether they’re working with a traditional or hybrid publisher, managing the process themselves, or using a publishing services firm.

But this form of backup applies only to your manuscript. Unless you plan to prepare the book layout yourself using Word, Scrivener, or any of their competitors, you’ll be working with a publisher, publishing services firm, or freelancer that likely uses InDesign.

For ultimate protection, negotiate ownership of the source files

As noted above, getting ownership of the source files will allow you to make changes and republish your book, should the need arise. Will getting these files be possible in all situations? Probably not, but the truth is that you won’t know until you ask. It comes down to negotiation. (For more about this skill, see Jane’s post: The Business Skill I Wish I Could Grant to All Writers.)

For traditionally published authors, the most common option I’ve seen is to purchase the PDF of their book from their publisher in the event of a rights reversion. Perhaps you can negotiate the price, or even get the source files. The point is to ask.Authors working with a hybrid publisher, freelancer, or publishing services firm should have better luck getting the publishing source files. After all, you are paying for this service, right? A services provider that refuses to provide the source file seems to me to be taking an unreasonable position. The primary source file of the book’s design with your content has no value to anyone but you. It’s certainly worth asking about.3 bonus tips for additional peace of mind

When personal computers were first introduced in the 1980s (yes, I’m dating myself here), there were no standards for exchanging files. With more than a dozen word processing programs in wide use, and no PDF format, you would have to ask the receiving party what software program they were using if the intent was for them to open and edit your file. Consequently, it was not uncommon in our office for a document to be retyped.

Here are three hard-earned lessons I’ve learned since then:

For maximum flexibility, protection, and cost savings, use widely supported software programs and file formats—the industry standards. This will allow you to easily exchange your files with others such as editors and publishing services providers.Understand the limits of file conversion. Word documents are commonly converted to InDesign files, but the reverse is not easily done without impacting the formatting. Generally, you can exchange files created by the same software program, but conversion to another file format can be a one-way trip.The more popular the software program, the more people you will find that can help you. For example, if you create a cover in Photoshop, you’re usually safe—thousands of designers use this program.

Owning and protecting your publishing source files is one of the most important things a writer can do to protect their writing asset. You never know when you may need to make a correction or wish to publish a new edition.

First Page Critique: Defining the Scope of Your Memoir

Photo by 🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič on Unsplash

Ask the Editor is a column for your questions about the editing process and editors themselves. It also features first-page critiques. Want to be considered? Submit your question or submit your pages.

This month’s Ask the Editor is sponsored by The Writing Consultancy. Stuck on revisions? Work with an expert editor to revise and submit your fiction or memoir. Get started here >> Submit your manuscript to schedule your free 20-minute call with award-winning author and editor, Britta Jensen.

A summary of the work being critiqued

Title: When Did You Know?
Genre: memoir

Emily was adopted at birth, and I was privileged to be present when she was born. When she first emerged, I wondered if something was wrong, she didn’t cry right away. You’re worrying too much. But at six months old, she didn’t respond with recognition when I picked her up from day care, a flat affect. Later Emily had a choking episode that might have started with a seizure. This started a series of medical tests revealing a chromosomal abnormality, a seizure disorder, and autism spectrum disorder. By this time, we had also adopted her biological sister, Madison, also at birth, an energetic blond girl who later was diagnosed with ADHD.

The memoir shares the pains and joys of parenting these girls, addressing topics such as spirituality and autism, nutrition and weight issues, fatigue, behavior management, sibling rivalry, friendships and sexuality. This book includes resources and ideas of what helped me navigate the challenges of autism parenting.

First page of  When Did You Know?

“Did you know she had autism when you adopted her?”

“No, I just thought she slept a lot. We were able to take her to movies and she’d sleep through them,” I said. People would look at us as we lugged her carrier into the cinema but she’d be silent all the way through.

But even from the day she was born I wondered. I also wondered about Amber, her biological mother. I eventually found out a lot about Emily, our daughter with autism and Amber, her biological mother.

“The baby’s coming, push Amber,” the doctor said at the foot of the bed. He was surrounded by nurses and medical students in blue scrubs.

“Come look,” he told me. He knew I was the adoptive mother.

I stood behind him as a blueish, brownish dome emerged.

“Push one more time, Amber,” they said.

I stood back. Amber grunted and cried out. That must hurt so much. The baby whooshed into the doctor’s gloved hands. He held her up.

“Is there only one?” Amber asked.

“Yes,” he answered.

Earlier while I waited with Amber during labor, she mentioned that a lady in the grocery store had commented it looked like she was having twins. I was surprised she thought twins were a real possibility and that no one put her fears to rest. I paused and wondered about Amber. Just like when we first met her a few days earlier.

Continue reading the first pages, with color coding and comments by editor Hattie Fletcher.

Dear Julia,

Thanks for sharing your work and the first pages of your memoir about parenting—certainly an important story for you and one that’s potentially incredibly useful to other parents who might find themselves in a similar situation.

My first big-picture observation is that it feels a bit hard to see the shape of the story from the materials you’ve submitted. That is, your summary describes the book as a memoir that “shares the pains and joys of parenting these girls …” but that’s potentially a pretty big and abstract story. Do you plan to focus on their very early years, or the time up until they’re 18 and (perhaps) leaving the nest? Do you want to focus primarily on a specific aspect or aspects of parenting—perhaps on your experiences seeking help from the medical community, or your challenges finding a peaceful rhythm as a family? Obviously, readers don’t want to start a book already knowing the ending (at least, not usually), but in the book pitch you want to define the scope of the story more specifically.

There’s no firm rule for how much time/story a memoir can cover. A quick look at some memoirs about parenting will show you many different approaches: Anne Lamott’s classic Operating Instructions is a journey through the first year of her son’s life; Mary Louise Kelly’s It. Goes. So. Fast. is framed around her son’s last year of high school. (A one-year narrative can make a tidy frame, indeed.) But many writers tackle longer arcs: Ron Suskind’s Life, Animated covers almost two decades of his family’s efforts to use Disney movies to help his autistic son engage as fully as possible with them and the rest of the world.

Once you have established the scope of your story and your overall narrative arc, then you can think about where to first enter the story and begin to introduce your characters/family. Maybe you’re telling the story of your young daughters from Emily’s birth to the day when (I’m making stuff up now), at the ages of twelve and fourteen, both girls climbed on a bus together for a week-long group wilderness adventure. Or maybe you’re telling the story from the day of Emily’s choking episode to her high school graduation lunch. Your goal, essentially, is to find a satisfying narrative arc that will take readers on a journey with you and that will provide—even if there’s a lot of mess along the way—some degree of resolution of a central question or tension.

That being the goal, I’d question whether Emily’s birth is the most effective starting point. Birth has, of course, the obvious advantage of being a very clear beginning—Day One! On the other hand, a purely chronological organization of material can sometimes feel tedious on the page. (First, Emily was born. … In her first week … When she was two months old … And then, when she was one…)

In fact, you’re already sort of building in a bit of that framework, by starting—even if only for a few lines—with a fast-forward in order to flash back to the birth. So, for a next draft, I would be inclined to start somewhere a little farther along. And then, after you’ve established some of the conflict/tension of the overall narrative, you could jump back to the time of Emily’s birth (and even before that, it seems), and look at it through the lens of the information you later learned.

Regardless of where in the larger work the birth scene ends up, when you do get there, it might be helpful to consider the pacing of the scene. There’s a balance, usually, between spending too much time in one scene (which, like a chronological organization to a book, can become tedious) and weaving in other elements, such as reflection, description, character development, etc. It seems to me that your first pages currently bounce around quite a bit between several scenes/times, in a way that feels a bit disorienting and jumpy. Focusing more on individual times might make it easier for readers to follow the story, and also open up a little space for you to go into more detail. I’ve color-coded your first pages to show the jumps in time visually. Until the long stretch at the end, a couple days after the birth, you can see there’s a jump every few paragraphs, more or less. It might make sense to consider grouping some of the color sections into bigger sections, whether or not in chronological order.

Finally, I also wonder whether you might expand on some of your worries or questions from this time. You say “I wondered about Amber” but maybe there’s more of an internal monologue there, or more of an internal conversation between you-then and narrator-you, looking back? Did anyone else suggest they had concerns about Amber, or—at her birth—about Emily? In retrospect, was her silence at birth a cause for concern? If it was, how concerned should we be that no one else there flagged it? And, if it wasn’t, then what weight does or should your retrospective worry carry? What are we learning about you here, in this opening scene, and are there other things we should know, right off the bat?

Obviously, there are a lot of emotions and ideas to untangle, and this is just one small part of a much larger story, but ideally every single scene you include—and especially the first scene—will contribute in an important way to the bigger questions of the book.

Thanks again for sharing your work, and best of luck with your project!

—Hattie Fletcher

This month’s Ask the Editor is sponsored by The Writing Consultancy. Stuck on revisions? Work with an expert editor to revise and submit your fiction or memoir. Get started here >> Submit your manuscript to schedule your free 20-minute call with award-winning author and editor, Britta Jensen.

8 Tips for Authors to Boost Their Homepage

Photo by Kieran Murphy on Unsplash

Today’s post is by author and website designer Camilla Monk (@camilla_monk).

I come with terrible news for you: the average visitor spends on 54 seconds on a webpage, and more than half of them will visit nothing but your homepage.

That’s a pretty short window to turn visitors into readers, buyers, or subscribers. To make the most of those 54 seconds, you’ll need a visually appealing page that prioritizes your goals but also smart baits to scrape up just a little more of your visitors’ time and attention. Here are a few ways to achieve that.

1. Start with a great headshot

Before you even start building your website, I highly recommend getting headshots taken by a professional photographer. You’ve probably heard of the old saying, “Fake it till you make it”: that’s what a good headshot is for. You may not yet be a bestselling author, but you want to look like one to potential readers!

Many studios offer a few pictures at a reasonable price. If your budget is tight, you can try online services like Studioshot or ProPhotos, which rely on AI technology to enhance existing pictures and turn them into professional-looking headshots.

If you opted for a studio shoot, don’t hesitate to bring a few objects, copies of your book(s), or even your pet:. A good, sincere headshot that tells the story of who you are is a powerful way to connect with readers and prolong the brief attention span they’ll give to your website.

Lastly, having two or, ideally, three different headshots will avoid a sense of repetition on your website. Ideally, you should have one for the home, one for the bio, and one for the contact page.

2. Bees like color

Think of your visitor as a bee: it’s buzzing erratically your way, drawn to a pop of color in the field: your website. A simple way to impress your brand and book into the retinae of potential readers is to give your homepage an intense, contrasted color scheme, with a pop of color if possible. Here’s an example with four color palettes:

Visitors may or may not like these colors, but they’ll likely remember the website and form an immediate impression of the tone of your writing (frothy, dream-like, dark and unsettling, etc).

You can explore online palette tools (like this one) to find out what color scheme works best for your brand and books, or let yourself be guided by the work of whoever designs your book covers. For those of you using WordPress, it’s fairly easy to change the color scheme of a WordPress theme, so you could match your theme to the cover of your new release to draw visitors into your book’s atmosphere.

3. Use crisp images and illustrations

Here’s one of my biggest pet peeves: loading a website and being greeted by blurry, badly compressed images that make the whole thing look cheap. Make sure to create a folder where you keep high-resolution (at least 2,000px wide) author pictures and book covers that will be later resized by your website (or they should be). You want everything to look sleek and professional.

4. Outbound links: less is more

If you’ve created an author website to sell books, your first logical impulse may be to cram in as many retailer links as possible. After all, this is a gateway for readers to buy your stuff, and they need to find it!

True, except that in real life, visitors will scan your content in a matter of seconds, and if it’s crowded with too many outbound links, their gaze won’t settle on any specific one, and they may be less likely to click at all. Plus, how do we address the issue of international retailers with multiple stores? 

The answer is to focus on the essential: figure out where you want your visitors to click the most, and lump the rest in a universal link: a single web page that lists all known retailers for your book, and, in some cases, tailoring links according to the visitor’s location. You can generate universal links to your books with services like Books2read, Booklinker, or even Draft2Digital. 

If you’re traditionally published, you might want to prioritize your publisher, Bookshop and/or an independent bookstore you’ve partnered with, then have other retailers in a universal link for convenient access. Conversely, self-publishing authors may want to prioritize Amazon, especially those exclusive to Amazon, or where they have a promo running at the moment, then everything else goes into their universal link.

Whatever you prioritize, don’t overwhelm your visitor with a stack of five or ten buttons they can click. Steer their gaze where you need those clicks! 

5. Consider the user journey

All your pictures, text, and retailer links are ready. Before you get started on creating your website—either on your own or with the help of a designer—take a moment to set a goal for your homepage, since it may very well be the only page your visitors will browse during their visit. What do you want to accomplish?

Is this your first book, and you’re promoting pre-orders?Do you want email subscribers?Are you releasing a new book in an existing series, and you want to advertise it but also bring attention to previous titles?Something else?

Figuring this out will help you prioritize sections on your homepage and create a straightforward user journey for your visitors, unencumbered by visual noise or content that doesn’t help you accomplish your goals.

Say you have a new book available for pre-order, and you want sales. Don’t crowd the first half of your homepage with your recent blog posts, because that’s not where you want users to click first. Similarly, you might promote a new release with a focus on pushing people to retailers or just Amazon if you’re an indie author exclusive to Amazon.

Here’s a quick example of how this might look in a diagram prioritizing my goals:

Another hypothetical: if this is your first book, and there’s no pre-order link yet, you might be after newsletter signups to promote your title once it hits the shelves. In this instance, you’re going to open with a headline encouraging visitors to sign up and get notified of your new release. Then below that, if you have a blog, showcase your writing until your pre-order is up.

6. Set up a reader magnet

A reader magnet is a reward for visitors who subscribe to your mailing list. Most authors will offer free chapters of an upcoming title, or even, in some instances, a free book or novella. If you have an online store, you can also offer a coupon for a discount on your books.

To create your reader magnet, you will have to configure your mailing list with an automation (or workflow, for Flodesk): one or several automated emails sent to new subscribers containing a link to download your free chapters, a coupon code, etc.

(Note from Jane: Author Ashleigh Renard has written about the power of a reader magnet and how to create an effective one.)

7. Add a newsletter subscription popup to your homepage

My fingers hurt just typing this because, as a UX designer, I loathe popups with a passion. I am, however, here to talk to you as an author who designs websites to sell books, and well … my subscription rate has skyrocketed since I switched to a popup newsletter form versus an inline form.

There is some debate as to whether leads obtained this way are slightly less qualified than readers who went to the trouble of looking for your subscription form with the express purpose of signing up, but I don’t believe the delta is significant enough to disqualify popup forms.

So toss your principles out the window and do it. I regret to say it works.

(Note from Jane: There are ways to create effective pop-ups that are polite and not intrusive. Here’s my experience.)

8. Always write a catchy excerpt for your blog posts

At 55 seconds, if your visitor is still on your site, they’re probably going to reach your recent blog posts. There are three factors to get visitors to click on those posts and spend a little more time on your website: a catchy title; a hi-res, adequately cropped, and visually appealing post image; and (the one most authors skip) a solid excerpt.

If you’re a WordPress user, you probably know that, by default, your post description will be the first 30 words of the content. Problem is, your intro may not always be concise or powerful enough for visitors to click on the post. So, scroll down to the excerpt field (in the sidebar of your post admin), and write some enticing copy.

To conclude this post, here’s a TL;DR of what we’ve covered today:

Get professional headshots.Add distinctive colors to your website.Make sure every image is crisp.Outbound links: less is more.Prioritize calls to actions or content according to your goals.Set up a reader magnet for your newsletter.Add a newsletter subscription popup.Write catchy excerpts for your blog posts.

Is Deep Third an Actual POV?

Photo by Thiago Matos

Today’s post is by editor Tiffany Yates Martin (@FoxPrintEd). Join her on Wednesday, July 12 for the online class Write Powerfully in Deep Third POV.

I was on a writer’s forum recently where an author asked for examples of books told from a deep third-person point of view. Among the many lively, helpful, and some not-so-helpful comments was one writer who opined that there was no such thing as deep third-person POV—that it was simply limited third with more character insight.

My first reaction was to rebuff the idea, but as I started thinking about it, I could see their point.

Deep third-person POV is a strange little hybrid. A mix of limited third and first person, it plunges readers directly into the lived experience of the point-of-view character, using the third-person he/she pronouns while writing with the immediacy and intimacy of first person.

It’s often seen as a relatively new point of view, within the last 40 years or so, and is wildly popular in the current market, likely because consumers of story and entertainment are used to being fully immersed in story worlds, thanks to first-person video games, reality TV, and of course starring in their own everyday dramas on social media.

Yet deep third has strong roots in a time-honored literary device called free indirect discourse, which has been used by authors of the ilk of Jane Austen, John Steinbeck, Flannery O’Connor and many more, going back hundreds of years.

What is free indirect discourse?

In free indirect discourse, sometimes called free indirect thought, an author will allow the narrative told in another point of view—generally omniscient or limited third—to slip directly into the thoughts of a character as if we’re thinking them with her, as in this excerpt from Austen’s Persuasion, where we flit into Captain Wentworth’s direct assessment of Anne:

He had thought her wretchedly altered, and in the first moment of appeal, had spoken as he felt. He had not forgiven Anne Elliot. She had used him ill, deserted and disappointed him; and worse, she had shewn a feebleness of character in doing so, which his own decided, confident temper could not endure. She had given him up to oblige others. It had been the effect of over-persuasion. It had been weakness and timidity.

He had been most warmly attached to her, and had never seen a woman since whom he thought her equal; but, except from some natural sensation of curiosity, he had no desire of meeting her again. Her power with him was gone for ever.

Notice that this isn’t the narrator reporting on Wentworth’s thoughts, as is the convention of omniscient and limited third; instead we’ve dipped directly into his inner life and the narrative is colored by it, stating as fact what is actually his subjective perspective (“shewn a feebleness of character,” “his own decided, confident temper,” “weakness and timidity,” “her power with him was gone forever”).

It’s tempting to call this head hopping, and technically it does violate the “rules” of limited and third-person points of view, which presuppose a narrator voice that is separate from the character, observing and commenting and reporting on it. In omniscient’s case it’s every character, and in limited third it’s only one at a time.

But if handled skillfully, these “slips” are seamless, blending into the narrative while opening the window wider to the character’s inner life and inviting the reader inside for a moment.

How deep third differs from other third-person POVs

In some ways this is how you can think of deep third. It not only throws the window open wider; it reaches out and yanks the reader through it so you’re in the character’s head, behind their eyes, privy to their deepest thoughts and reactions. In essence you are the character, knowing what they know, feeling what they feel, directly experiencing what they do.

The key differences to remember when using this voice is that unlike omniscient, but in common with limited third, it sticks to the perspective of a single character per scene or section.

And in contrast to both omniscient and limited, the narrator is not a separate entity that can comment on things happening within the character’s purview that they are not aware of. As with first person, if your character doesn’t know it, see it, feel it, hear it, or experience it, it can’t be on the page. The character is the reader’s avatar and we are them, sharing their background, predilections, quirks, orientation, failings, etc. Their blind spots are our blind spots. Their biases color our perception too.

I like to think of POV as a vessel on the ocean that is your character(s)’ psyche. In omniscient the vessel can sail every inch of the ocean simultaneously and observe everything happening on the surface, as well as use its powerful radar to monitor what’s going on beneath anywhere in the sea—with every character. Limited third is a vessel with the same capabilities, but which can monitor only one sector of the ocean—one character—at a time.

Deep third becomes a submarine, sinking deep into the depths of its single harbor to live in the underwater world of one sole character, its periscope always up to also experience its surroundings on the surface.

So does deep third actually exist?

The short answer: yes. If you choose this all-access-pass POV, you are committing to casting the entire story, or at least each deep-third-POV character’s storyline, fully into their direct, firsthand perspective and voice.

Remember: While omniscient and limited can incorporate aspects of deep third in revealing a character’s direct thoughts (through the counterintuitively named device of free indirect discourse), these points of view still feature a separate narrator voice, a removed observer.

Deep third does not.

It removes that middleman between the reader and the character’s experience. The other two most popular third-person points of view may be able to share the character’s thoughts, but it’s only through deep third that we experience their full direct perspective firsthand. Despite the third-person pronouns, it’s a story narrated by the character living it, from their immediate experience.

This tricky POV can be difficult to master partly for this reason: because it’s not a natural perspective humans can ever take, short of body snatching. (Please don’t body-snatch.)

But used well, deep third can be one of the most intimate, engaging, revealing ways to invite readers to viscerally share your character’s world and draw them deeply into the story.

Note from Jane: If you want to explore this topic in-depth, join us on Wednesday, July 12, for the online class Write Powerfully in Deep Third POV.

How to Write a Nonfiction Book Chapter Without Tears

Photo by Akhilesh Sharma on Unsplash

Today’s post is excerpted and adapted from the recently published Build a Better Business Book: How to Plan, Write, and Promote a Book That Matters by Josh Bernoff (@jbernoff).

Negotiation expert Fotini Iconomopoulos described writing chapters for what was to become her bestselling book Say Less, Get More, as “a soul-crushing experience.”

“If you ask me to talk about negotiation, I can riff about it for hours,” she told me. “But as soon as I am sitting down at a computer, a lot of imposter syndrome creeps in. There is a mental barrier that makes me not want to put things on paper.”

She sounds like a lot of the writers I work with. Why do so many writers get blocked, or find themselves writing in circles?

Let’s consider this on a chapter level

If you sit down to write and find that you can’t, the typical reason is that you don’t know what to write. And you don’t know what to write because you don’t know what job the chapter is supposed to do.

Each chapter should answer a question for the reader. Even if you’re blocked, you surely can write that one question.

Then create a reader objective. Write the objective in this form: “After reading this chapter, you will be able to…”

For example, in Iconomopoulos’s negotiation book, the question Chapter 5 answers is, “How does the power balance between parties affect negotiation?” And the objective she might have written looks like this: “After reading chapter 5, you will be able to assess the power balance between yourself and your negotiation partner, and maximize your own power to improve your negotiating position.”

Write the question and the objective, and you’re almost ready to write without pain. All you need is a fat outline.

Writing a fat outline

Among 172 published nonfiction authors that I surveyed, 47% said organizing content was among their biggest challenges. The solution to organizing content is what I call a fat outline.

In contrast to the outlines we all learned in school—which are easy to write, skeletal, and useless—a fat outline has real substance to it. It’s basically a list of all the bits and pieces that will make up the chapter, in the order in which they’ll appear. Fat outlines are relatively easy to create, and essential to easing the task of writing.

To create a fat outline, first assemble all the ingredients that belong in your chapter. There are five basic elements of which all nonfiction book chapters are constructed:

Ideas and frameworksStories (case studies and examples)Argumentation (reasoning)Proof points (data, quotes, citations)Advice (how-tos)

Based on all the research you did and all the knowledge you’ve assembled so far, you’ve got a collection of this stuff, either in the form of research notes and interviews or perhaps as a partly formed idea or three in your head or something you wrote before. Now is the time to collect it all together.

Open a file and dump inside what you’ve got for this chapter, including all five elements. To keep the size manageable, don’t dump entire hunks of research, just put a sentence or two to remind you what you have. Don’t worry about sentence fragments or grammar—this is just a set of notes that no reader will ever see.

Now arrange the bits to form a story. That might sound challenging, but it’s not as hard as you might think. For example, this is one typical way to arrange a chapter:

Here’s a story of someone facing a problem (case study). You can learn from what they learned (main idea). Here are the elements of that idea (framework). Here’s why that idea is valid and convincing (argumentation, supported by proof points). Taken together, here’s what that all means (idea, restated as conclusion). And here is what you should do about it (advice).

Replace each of those sentences with actual content you’ve conceived, collected, or plan to create and you have a fat outline: a blueprint for the chapter. For a longer chapter, you may have multiple sets of ideas, arguments with proof points, and advice, or even additional case studies, but the fat outline is still going to be just a page or two, so assembling it won’t be a difficult or time-consuming effort.

Making a fat outline is a low-stakes, low-stress activity. You can whip one up in an hour or less. And it’s pretty much immune to writer’s block, because writing down little notes and moving them around doesn’t tap into the “people will be reading this, what if it sucks” anxiety of imposter syndrome. You can mangle grammar, misspell words or include cryptic things that only you understand. Since the plan is only for you, you can include anything that reminds you what the pieces mean including pasted-in graphics, small chunks of prose, or links to web content you’ve researched. Fat outlines are easy to play around with and rearrange, just a matter of moving a few scraps of text here or there, or adding or deleting a few things. They remind you of all the pieces you have, so you won’t forget anything when it’s time to write. And when you put things in a logical order, they define a storyline for your writing.

I have one more tip about the fat outline and the chapter that will emerge from it. Your temptation will be to start with an introduction of the idea. But consider starting with a case study, plunging people immediately into a narrative. People love stories. They will absolutely read that story to find out what happened. And after the story, in the warm glow of the story’s happy (or tragic) ending, your reader is primed to believe virtually anything you say. This is where you tie the story to your main idea. Romanced by the story, the reader then falls for your idea, and your chapter is off and running.

Now write the chapter

With the fat outline in front of you, “just write” is no longer terrifying. Write the opening story. Write the powerful main idea of the chapter. Then write the rest of the bits you’ve mapped out in the fat outline. This is easier because you’ve divided the chapter into tractable tasks. If you have 45 minutes, write out an argument. Or take an hour or two and write a section summarizing secondary research. You don’t even have to write these pieces in order. You can just flesh out the fat outline into text and you’ll have written a draft of a chapter. And don’t worry too much about whether each word and sentence is perfect; you can always improve it in the next stage of revision.

The fat outline is a scaffolding to guide and support you, but you don’t have to slavishly follow it. You might decide to put things in a different order than the outline suggests, or add or delete sections. Nobody will know you didn’t exactly follow the outline. It’s just there as an aid to getting words down on the page.

And remember, you have many more tools than sentences and paragraphs. You can divide the chapter up into pieces with section headings and subheadings. Bulleted or numbered lists make sets of items easier to scan. You can use graphics to illuminate concepts or quote whole paragraphs of other work (with appropriate credit and permission, of course). A chapter written with these types of elements will be more approachable on the page and more palatable to readers. It’s less stressful to write by mixing up these elements; it creates a chapter that is more interesting to read as well.

Now you have a plan for writing your chapter. Start with a reader question. Define an objective for the reader. Assemble your content into a fat outline. Then flesh it out. As Iconomopoulos later remarked, this method “would have saved me months of excruciating rewrites.”

Writing chapters doesn’t have to be painful. You just have to approach it systematically.

What Makes a Novel Stand Out on Submission?

Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash

Today’s post is by regular contributor Susan DeFreitas (@manzanitafire), an award-winning author, editor, and book coach. She offers a wide range of courses for writers, including Story Medicine: Better Stories for a Better World, enrolling now for July 10–August 4.

There’s a lot of excellent advice on this blog for getting over the finish line with publishing a novel (and a lot of less excellent advice on the same subject elsewhere!).

But to my mind, there’s something critical to that conversation that rarely gets discussed.

I think because it’s so hard to actually talk about.

A solid story, compelling characters, and strong writing are a great start (especially when you combine that with an accurate understanding of the business of publishing).

But if you want your novel to stand out from the competition, in my experience, it has to have something extra.

It has to have a sense of meaning.

Meaning is subjective, of course. But even so, there are story elements that intersect directly with issues that we as human beings tend to find important, moving, and compelling: Moral questions, and the way they stir strong emotion. Characterization, and what it reveals about human nature. The way the story reflects the truths of our own reality—and the sense that this story actually has something to say.

This is not to say that superficial stories don’t get published all the time, especially in genres that privilege plot over character—and there will always be stories that fit this mold that get published, simply because their “something extra” is something else: a sparkly new speculative conceit, or a mind-blowing plot twist that’s going to get everyone talking.

But debut novels like that are the exception. And as I see it, increasingly endangered—not only because readers are hungry for meaning, but because superficial stories are the type that are most amenable to reproduction by AI.

And in fact I see this as one of the great challenges of our day, as writers: To write at a level of depth that only a real human being can. To write the type of stories that another human being will immediately recognize as one that could only have been written by another real human.

Not only are these the sort of stories that stand out in the slush pile, I think these are the types of stories that make for a better world, period.

Here are four things that I believe distinguish stories that have a real sense of meaning from those that don’t.

1. They touch on moral issues.

In his book The Storytelling Animal, Jonathan Gottschall goes so far as to speak of story as a tool of moral education, intrinsically—not in the simplistic way that Aesop’s Fables are (“and the moral of the story is”) but in a complex way that allows us to fine-tune our sense of right and wrong and really think through what we ourselves would do in similar circumstances.

Donald Maass touches on this in The Emotional Craft of Fiction when he notes that fiction that touches on moral issues stirs “the high human emotions”: compassion, moral outrage, righteous indignation, and even joy when oppressive forces fail in their aims and goodness wins the day.

Some novels are built around moral issues, like Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (the oppression of Black people by white ones) or Richard Powers’s The Overstory (the clear-cutting of forests by corporations). Some novels just touch on such issues, like Delia Owens’s Where the Crawdads Sing (the ostracization of the poor by the middle class) and Sarah Penner’s The Lost Apothecary (the oppression of women by men). Nevertheless, the moral issues at the heart of these novels are a big part of what give them their sense of depth.

Bestseller lists may be dominated by relatively superficial fiction written by authors with ten plus novels under their belts. But breakout debuts tend to have moral issues at their heart, in a way that’s either direct or implied—and this is part of why I always encourage my clients to dig deeper in their final draft, to highlight the moral issues their story touches upon.

2. They reflect the truth of our reality.

Fantasy is great, and I’m all for escapism—in fact, I consider it one of the core powers of fiction, and part of why it survives each new technological innovation in our culture: It provides us with one of the most reliable, long-lasting ways to step out of the daily mess of our lives.

Nevertheless, fiction that feels like a tasty, nutritious meal, rather than like junk food for the mind, has its roots in reality.

Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games series isn’t just a horrific story of adults forcing teenagers to compete against each other, it’s a story about reality TV. Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone’s This Is How You Lose the Time War isn’t just a fantastical bit of time-travel espionage between some random forces, it’s a fantastical bit of time-travel espionage between the forces of nature and the forces of technology.

And that’s not even touching on the wide range of powerful novels that take on issues like climate change, AI, social media addiction, the vaccine wars, and conspiracy theories.

Really, there’s no stronger way to create a sense of your work being vital and relevant to the reader than to touch on real issues in the real world—and that’s part of why I work with my clients to find the connections between real-world issues and the story unfolding within the pages of their novel.

3. They feature complex characters.

Cardboard cutout characters may work in certain types of books (see my note above, on superficial fiction), just the way they do in certain types of movies.

But I’d go so far as to say that the majority of readers are looking for something deeper and more nuanced when it comes to fictional characters (which isn’t hard to see when you read the excoriating reader reviews of novels that fail to meet the mark).

Complex characterization is the opposite of black-and-white. It means that your protagonist is not just a “good guy,” with maybe some little (completely understandable, and really quite sympathetic) flaw, but rather, someone who has some real problem inside that they’re wrestling with, some way in which they are being pushed by the story to do better, and to be better.

And it means that antagonists are not just immoral monsters who delight in creating wreckage, heartbreak, and ruin, but rather, people who have managed to convince themselves that they are entirely justified in their actions—that they are actually the hero of the story.

If writing complex characters comes naturally to you, great! But if not, know that this absolutely is something that you can layer in, in revision—and doing so is a crucial final step in preparing your manuscript for submission.

4. They have something to say.

Finally, novels that have a deeper sense of meaning don’t just touch on moral issues, connect to the real world, and portray characters in a way that’s convincing and complex—they actually have something to say about what the events of the story bring up.

Again, though, I don’t mean this in an on-the-nose, moralizing sort of way—a way that’s going to come right out and hit the reader on the head with the author’s opinion on these things.

What I mean is that the story is conscious of the way it uses themes to make a complex point, whether that has something to do with the importance of gritty realism over pie-in-the-sky idealism (Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Signature of All Things), the impossibility of living as a queer woman under conservative gender norms (Megan Giddings’s The Women Could Fly), or the ways that secrets corrupt us from within (Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch).

And this, I find, is one of the crucial final steps with a novel that otherwise great writers often fail to take: Looking back over the novel in this way and tightening up those themes, on the various levels on which a story operates, to make sure that the novel actually feels cohesive in this way—like it has something to say.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, check out Susan’s wide range of courses for writers, including Story Medicine: Better Stories for a Better World, enrolling now for July 10–August 4.

Your Manuscript Has Been Edited By Top Professionals—But You Still Get Rejected. What Gives?

Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán

Ask the Editor is a column for your questions about the editing process and editors themselves. It also features first-page critiques. Want to be considered? Submit your question or submit your pages.

This month’s Ask the Editor is sponsored by The Writing Consultancy. Stuck on revisions? Work with an expert editor to revise and submit your fiction or memoir. Get started here >> Submit your manuscript to schedule your free 20-minute call with award-winning author and editor, Britta Jensen.

Question

My manuscript has been edited by two top editors on the east and west coasts. Yet, it has been declined by more than 250 fiction agents who merely decline by form letter. I have no idea what could be wrong. I have a great story, but maybe for the wrong time. I am not a BIPOC author and my characters are not BIPOC, which seems to be a lot of what agents are looking for.

—Rejected and Dejected in Miami

[Editor’s note: We asked this writer for their query and first pages so we could best assess the situation rather than guessing. The following answer is based on a review of those materials.]

Dear Dejected,

There are three reasons your book is getting rejected:

The query isn’t selling the book or your professionalism.The book feels dated (despite the argument in the query that it’s in tune with current events).In the first 25 pages, as the story flickers to life, it’s drowned in an ocean of backstory.

Let’s talk about the query first. An author’s query must establish three things: this story is compelling, this author understands the conventions of publishing, and the book has a market.

The query’s description of the plot and themes make the book sound like a downer, and it’s unclear where any hope, triumph or change appears. What’s the lead character’s choice? Where does she take an action that transforms her world?

Most queries are 250–350 words, with some narrative nonfiction stretching to 450–500 words. This query is 750 words. No matter how well-written it is, sending a 750-word query announces, “I don’t know much about how publishing works.” Plus the query is missing some key elements—the book’s word count and genre (women’s fiction).

Half of the 750 words are themes, comps, social issues and cultural movements more suited to self-help or narrative nonfiction than women’s fiction. It’s great to offer quality comps, though. Comparative/competitive titles show agents that readers are buying books like yours—but their purpose is to show current buying patterns. Of the seven books, three documentaries, two news organizations and three celebrities mentioned in the query, only three of those media qualify as “current” (within the last few years) and only one of those is a book. For a novel, list two or three comps, books or TV/movies, that are fiction.

Authors should also watch out for reviewing their own book. Assertions like “readers will sympathize” and “an emotionally gripping tale” ring false in queries. Let the agent discover those characteristics when they read the manuscript pages.

Now let’s address the current events angle. In addition to some other arguments that the book is relevant today, the query says, “In 1979, parental kidnapping was not widely considered a crime. Despite 40 years of new national and international laws, it remains a persistent problem today.” The book is set in 1979, and while feminism, parental custody battles leading to kidnapping, and mental illness in children are very much modern topics, we think differently about them today. Issues that seemed insurmountable to the most conservative couples in 1979 (but who will cook the dinner if Mom works?) are no longer the main focus. Mental illness is diagnosed and treated very differently, and there’s a much greater awareness of mental health in children.

Without a compelling reason to look at these issues in 1979, it feels like we won’t learn anything new. Most of the problems faced by Lena, the main character, would be handled very differently now. Unless the book is truly a deep dive into the 1970s/early 1980s (like Daisy Jones & the Six), readers will have a hard time understanding why the story is relevant now.

The backstory trap: In the first 6,500 words of the book, there are 450 words of story—when Lena’s husband calls a neighbor to say he’s taken the children in violation of a custody order. Before that, we get quite a few pages of motherly adoration of children, descriptions of children, descriptions of mom’s activities. After that small burst of story (which has a nice chunk of tension and stakes!), we get a full chapter of Lena’s parents’ personal history. Then a full chapter of Dad’s parents. Then a full chapter of the couple meeting and falling in love.

Writers often do this work of uncovering the characters and their pasts, and that work feels a lot like writing a book. But this level of backstory is the preliminary discovery phase, like the documents an attorney requests before putting together a passionate opening argument. Based on the pages I’ve read, it’s likely that the story doesn’t actually start for another 25 pages, and you might consider pulling out that 450 words of story to open the book, then cutting everything else until Lena takes an action towards getting her kids back. (And why have him call a neighbor? Why not have Lena be the target right away?)

Here’s the bottom line

Due to the long query and slow pages, the book is being rejected even before agents engage with the writing. And there are a couple of intriguing details—Lena sleeps on the sofa while the kids get the bedroom, and there’s a lot of potential in a Not Without My Daughter-style story set among Americans.

But overall, the writing needs work. There’s a lot of telling and explaining, instead of bringing the reader into the scene with the characters. Lena is described as “sly,” shown as calculating, and her inner monologue is anti-feminist in a way that’s off-putting to current readers, so it’s hard to want to spend time with her.

The Mexican parents are introduced stereotypically, and if an agent makes it that far, that’s the nail in the coffin. They won’t make it to the discussion of Henry’s ethnic and racial slurs, which seem irrelevant to the plot thus far.

I hesitate to criticize your previous editors. I don’t know what you (and they) started with when you began the process, and moving from a journalism background to a novel is challenging. As an editor myself, sometimes I work on a book for long enough that I’ve lost the big picture. Recently, a client made a big change in her book, in consultation with a new reader I’d recommended, and I felt like an idiot for not noticing that change had been needed the whole time. I’ve also watched a client work on a book for a long time that I knew wouldn’t sell, but I also knew they needed to finish and discover that for themselves.

This is probably not your debut novel. This manuscript is either source material for a new story, not just heavily revised but completely re-envisioned—or it’s a practice book.

Don’t shop this to small presses. Don’t self-publish. The same elements in the query, story and writing that aren’t attracting agents will also not attract readers.

Instead, consider what you love about this story, and why you feel compelled to write it. What matters to you about this heroine? The query focuses on the larger cultural context and mentally ill toddlers; the book opens with the daily minutia of her motherhood. What does Lena want? What choices does she face? How must her life goals change, and how must she change along the way? Most importantly, what’s powerful in her hopes and wishes, fears and dreams, that causes her to take action, to change, and to change the reader with her?

The process of finishing a book is a victory in itself. I have a memoir I’ll never go back to, and a novel that may not see the light of day. But writing our “practice” books teaches us not only how to write a book, but that we can. You can write a book. You did. And the world is waiting for what you write next.

—Allison K Williams

Addendum from Jane: For those reading the comments, you’ll see some seek a direct response to the writer mentioning she’s not BIPOC—but she sees agents and publishers actively seeking BIPOC work or BIPOC characters. The implication is she’s getting rejected because she’s white or because her characters are white. Given the challenges that Allison has described, that is obviously not the case. Allison shared on Twitter, “It’s hard to understand why our queries get form rejects. ‘Because I’m white’ isn’t even in the top 100 reasons. Celebrate publishing’s (still too slowly) growing diversity. Buy books by BIPOC, analyze what made them strong enough to publish, learn and grow.”

“Rejected and Dejected” is one of countless writers I’ve heard ask a similar question, although it is usually phrased in a different way. Oftentimes people are afraid to express this at all, or will only whisper it in private. So we hope this post shows that a writer’s best strategy, always, is to pay attention to their craft.

This month’s Ask the Editor is sponsored by The Writing Consultancy. Stuck on revisions? Work with an expert editor to revise and submit your fiction or memoir. Get started here >> Submit your manuscript to schedule your free 20-minute call with award-winning author and editor, Britta Jensen.

I Hired ChatGPT As My Writing Coach

Today’s post is by author Audrey Kalman (@audreykalman).

On April 7, frustrated with my progress on a third full revision and still dancing around my novel’s central story question, I typed the following into my ChatGPT account.

Me: I am struggling with defining the one central thing my novel (currently in draft form) is about. Can you help me figure this out?

In roughly a millisecond, ChatGPT responded:

Of course, I’d be happy to help! Can you provide me with some more information about your novel? What genre is it, what is the general plot, and who are the main characters? This information will help me understand your story better and assist you in defining the central theme or idea.

I provided a short, rough synopsis. Seconds later, ChatGPT returned several paragraphs summarizing what I had provided and offering a possible theme: “The struggle to reconcile tangible and intangible aspects of reality, and the transformative power of belief in the unknown.”

Okay, that’s actually two themes.

Were either of them really what I’m going for? I’m not yet sure. But in a few minutes, ChatGPT had cleared the fog that often results from being too close to your own work and gave me a starting place for refinements. As I write this, a little more than a month after my first interaction with ChatGPT, I have a revised outline, an entire new story line for one of the characters, and a clear direction for my revision.

The Chatbot is in

I’ve checked in regularly with ChatGPT since that first session. I pose writing questions ranging from the general (character development) to the specific (developing a scene about a natural disaster). Occasionally I venture into the more emotional side of the creative process:

Me: I’ve been feeling frustrated at how long my revision is taking. I’m spending so much time planning when I really want to be writing. Do you have any suggestions for tempering my impatience?

ChatGPT: It’s completely understandable to feel frustrated and impatient during the revision process. Here are a few suggestions to help temper your impatience.

The chatbot’s suggestions for dealing with frustration are similar to those I might dispense to coaching clients: embrace the process, set realistic goals, take breaks, and practice self care. Nothing too original, but these interactions advance my work significantly by sparking further ideas.

Using ChatGPT this way feels qualitatively different than my earlier experiments with everything from research, compiling content, and generating comp titles to asking for plot suggestions that better reflect a character’s story arc.

This feels like a coaching relationship.

Having both provided and received coaching, I appreciate the back-and-forth, generative quality of the interactions. That’s what excites me about teaming up with a generative AI system. Talking with ChatGPT the way I might with my long-time writing partner or a writing coach led me somewhere I never would have gotten on my own.

Can a generative AI be an effective writing coach?

ChatGPT possesses what I estimate to be about 70 percent of the skills that make an effective coach, which makes me a little nervous as someone who still offers human coaching. It’s good at:

listening and reflectingmaking guided suggestions based on stored knowledgeresponding without an agenda—a place I’ve had to work hard to arrive at as a human coach so I can offer nonjudgmental, non-prescriptive support; without its own experiences to share, ChatGPT is objectiveless by definition.

In some cases, a generative AI is better than a human. It doesn’t sleep, take a lunch break, or stifle a yawn in the middle of your rambling explanation of a writing problem.

However, the 30 percent of the competencies that it lacks represent the real juice of human-to-human coaching relationships, making a strong case for engaging a human coach, either exclusively or in addition to an AI-based one. That 30 percent includes the following skills.

1. Intuition

Often, human coaches can intuit what writers should focus on, regardless of the issues they bring to the coaching session, and gently guide them in a different direction. ChatGPT may not tell the hard truths about your situation, such as: “At this stage, worrying about story continuity might not serve you. Maybe you should focus instead on how readers will form an emotional connection with the characters.”

2. Reading between the lines

The ability to read between the lines, to interpret subtle language cues (especially body language in face-to-face interaction), and to build on the foundation of an ongoing relationship remain—for now—in the human realm. A human listener can respond based on information that goes beyond the specifics of a prompt.

3. Human pacing and cadence

Humans have been talking to one another for hundreds of thousands of years. As frustrating as our communication can be, there is comfort in its human-paced rhythm. ChatGPT, by contrast, can respond within seconds or even fractions of a second, a rate our conscious minds can’t match. Human/AI conversations tend to be lopsided as the human pauses to absorb an answer and formulate a reply.

Of course, future enhancements could make ChatGPT’s response cadence more human. Think, for example, what might happen when ChatGPT gains a human-like voice. Will it mimic human communication tics such as formulating an answer before you have finished speaking, or cut you off mid-sentence?

4. Experiential empathy

Many writers enjoy writing in the company of others or gathering to commiserate about writerly dilemmas. We take pleasure in these activities largely because of the feeling that we share common challenges. ChatGPT’s empathy is a form of mimicry based solely on gathered data.

This, too may evolve. Although I remain aware for now that the empathy is artificial, the human tendency to anthropomorphize technology has been around for a long time. There’s a body of research about emotional attachment to artificial intelligences, and no reason to think this won’t apply to chatbots like ChatGPT.

5. Handcrafting and physicality

The introduction of digital music was anticipated to doom the vinyl record album. But interest in vinyl has surged because interacting with music through a physical medium is a qualitatively different experience than interacting digitally. Similarly, literary artists and their appreciators are offering their creative talents in physical form in ways that a generative AI cannot reproduce.

6. Embodiment

We are more than our thoughts. Since humans first began philosophizing, we have embraced the idea of mind/body/spirit. ChatGPT has no body, and by its own admission, no spirit. (When asked directly about the topic, it responds, “As an AI language model, I don’t have feelings or opinions.”) AI’s access to facts may be nearly limitless, but its knowledge of the physical and spiritual dimensions come to us filtered through intellect.

Should you explore using ChatGPT as a writing coach?

I believe you’ll be better served to explore ChatGPT’s potential to augment human creativity than to lament what it may take away from writers, but your answer will depend on your willingness to experiment and how comfortable you are with both technology and uncertainty. To benefit, you’ll be well served by an ability to ask the right questions in the right way, perhaps honed by years of search-engine research, so you can craft prompts that will elicit valuable responses.

Your answer also depends on how you feel about the larger issues around generative AI such as what value humans bring to a world in which artificial intelligence is finding its way into more human endeavors.

We’re being called on once again to redefine ourselves as humans, examine our most deeply held beliefs and values, and emerge with an understanding of how technology can work for us rather than the other way around. Who better to do this than a group of people—writers—known for imagination, communication chops, and an ability to dream new worlds into existence?

10 Ways to Nurture a Young Writer

Today’s guest post is by author and publishing consultant K.B. Jensen (@KB_Jensen).

What do you do when a teen in your life is a diehard writer? When they won’t clean their room and just want to write stories or poems all day?

First off, congrats to any adult reading this who wants to support a young writer whether they are related or not. You are lucky to have a dreamer in your life, and they are lucky to have you.

I have a unique perspective on this situation, as a former kid who loved writing (and still does) as well as a parent of a kid who loves writing, and a coach in writing programs for adults and kids, including My Word Publishing’s Emerging Teen Authors Writing and Publishing Camp online.

Here are some things we’ve learned from preteen and teen writers at our publishing camp on how to help them on the journey:

1. Don’t underestimate the power of a positive adult influence.

When I was in third grade, a special teacher in my life, Mrs. Nancy Grein, used to send me to the principal’s office to read my stories. I won grand prize in a writing contest that year and got tossed into the gifted program afterward. Long story short: For a kid who flunked first grade, this was a big change, and it altered the trajectory of my life. Mrs. Grein gave me her school picture and on the back of it she wrote: “I look forward to reading your book one day.” It meant so much to me.

In contrast, when I told my dad I wanted to be a writer when I grew up, he told me I’d starve. So: watch what you tell your young writer. They might write about you one day! So if your kid tells you they’re a writer, believe them and help them along on the journey.

Above all, believe in your writer. “Don’t ever let anyone tell you you aren’t a writer,” author and cover designer Victoria Wolf recently told our camp teen writers at their latest book launch party. “Because you are.”

2. Don’t interrupt them.

This nugget comes straight from my now 14-year-old daughter, and I agree. When you spot your young writer on their laptop typing away at a story, this is not the time to badger them about cleaning their room or doing the dishes. Don’t interrupt their train of thought. Allow them to give themselves permission to write. Do not teach them that writing is not as important as other tasks. Because that’s something that they will have to unlearn later to be successful as a writer. What they are doing has value, even if it’s practice. Even if it’s never published. Even if writing just makes them feel great.

3. Listen carefully when they want to talk or share their stories.

Be kind, supportive, genuine, and specific in the things that you like. Don’t force sharing though. Some kids are shy while they are developing their craft or tackling uncomfortable topics. It’s okay if they don’t want you to read it. It’s great to give constructive and positive criticism, if they ask for it, but make sure you have their permission. Let them build on what they’re doing right, rather than focusing on the negative.

4. Help them learn how to research in a safe way.

So, the kid wants to write about a cult, crime, historical fiction that takes place in the 1980s (gasp), or some other topic? Offer to help them research. Make sure safe search is on their web browser at a minimum. My daughter jokes that she could already be on an FBI watch list, because she’s got an imagination in her search history and likes to write psychological horror. Find useful articles or info, and pass them along.

5. Have a writing party or family writing contest.

Set a timer and write together, if you like to write too. Share favorite lines, if you feel up for it. My husband is not a writer and jokes that he has a talent for writing a lot of emails. But once, we all wrote short stories and judged them. It was a fun family activity, and his story was surprisingly hilarious.

6. Consider a waterproof notepad in the shower.

I once received Aqua Notes in a mysterious Amazon package, and I have no idea who sent them to me, but they are wonderful. You can write story ideas and poems while you are in the shower. If your family shares a bathroom, you can leave each other notes of encouragement. It’s a great place to practice and brainstorm for writing.

7. Show your kid how to play with writing prompts.

There are countless sites for writing prompts. Images also work wonderfully. I love finding them on Pinterest. Anything can be a writing prompt if you think about it, like a treasured object on the top of your dresser, an old photograph, a favorite memory. The idea is to spark a story, sometimes a story you already wanted to write.

8. Find a contest for young writers, and encourage your kid to enter as an excuse to play.

Don’t make a big deal over whether they win or not. If they do win, that’s cool, of course, but it’s not the point and make that clear. The idea is to have fun with the guidelines and try new things.

9. Get them a library card and/or buy them books.

I used to stay up reading all night as a kid, and I’d check out the maximum 12 books at a time. You can learn so much about the craft just by reading amazing books. Consider reading the same books and talk about what you like in the stories and the style. There are some wonderful middle grade and YA books that adults can also enjoy. Bond with the writer in your life by reading what they like. Consider a family library night, where each family member picks out a book for the other to read and swap to try new authors or genres.

10. Find a positive and nurturing creative writing program for your young writer.

Whether it’s a creative writing club after school, a class or an online summer camp, look for a nurturing environment for the young writer in your life. Find a way to encourage a writing practice on a regular basis. Consider helping your young writer create or join a weekly club or monthly writing group with their writing peers in your area.

A note about My Word Publishing: Our camp helps teens learn to revise and works with top editors and designers to produce books for our award-winning Camp Ink Series. So far, our camp kids have published three books and won two awards. For more information or to register a camper, visit our website.

3 Ways Writers Block Their Success (While Thinking They’re Hard at Work)

Today’s guest post is by editor and coach Lisa Cooper Ellison (@lisaellisonspen).

In my early thirties, my aunt sent me a copy of The Secret, a movie claiming my thoughts determined my destiny. I watched it once, then shelved it, knowing I couldn’t just imagine my way to success. Yet my years as a writer and writing coach have taught me that the movie had a point. While you can’t wish your way to a book deal, your thoughts drive what you do.

Most of us spend our time dreaming of the external yes we hope to achieve—whether it’s an accepted pitch, query, or book deal. All external yeses stem from the yes inside you. But many of us lead from our no without realizing it. Those nos stem from feelings of unworthiness, doubts about our work, and fears that we’re not good enough—which are easy to trigger in a competitive field where you’re expected to cozy up with rejection.

It’s easy to spot our internal no when we’re feeling low, but many of these nos disguise themselves as hard work.

Because I recently appeared on the Hungry Authors Podcast, I divided these nos into the three hunger-based categories writers regularly fall into.

The Too Hungry Writer

Too Hungry Writers want everything yesterday, largely because they feel constantly behind. They work tirelessly on their projects, giving up time with family and friends to meet word count or revision goals. Ask them to take a break from their projects, or set a completed draft aside, and watch their eyes narrow as they mentally knock you out. How can they quit when their books must be done by a certain date (like a milestone birthday)?

While Too Hungry Authors are fierce writers with a killer work ethic, they often snack on scarcity, which feeds them lies about how there’s not enough time, or they’ll be worthy when their book gets picked up, or if they land an agent and Big Five deal.

But overwork gives them tired eyes. Muscling through revisions on manuscripts that haven’t rested will cause those tired eyes to gloss over problems. Sprinkle in impatience and a tinge of burnout and they’ll send their projects out before they’re ready.

What starts out as pre-submission optimism soon sours as the rejections pour in. Having worked hard, these external nos feel like personal failures, which leads to more scarcity thinking, which can make a Too Hungry Author ravenous.

Fortunately, you can address what you can identify, and the fixes for this problem are simple. First, make this your mantra: you and your project are on time. Repeat it to yourself until you believe it. If you can’t shake your doubts, think about the authors who raced to publish in 2020 thinking it would be their year, and the relief many experienced when their books weren’t published.

Once you’ve committed to slowing down, let projects you’ve worked on intensely rest for at least a couple of weeks, but better yet, a few months. Spend time with family and friends. Go on a vacation. Write something else. During that project’s fallow period, take a few classes to inspire you and help you see your work in a new way.

I know this will be especially hard for the Too Hungry Authors who either crawled their way out of the next category or fear falling into it.

The Writer Who Fails to Eat

Writers Who Fail to Eat put everyone else’s needs ahead of their own. They want to write, but they fear that it’s too self-indulgent—or selfish—when so many other things need to be done. Some fear not being seen as productive. Others worry their efforts aren’t valuable if they’re not income producers.

So, they focus on other people’s crises, try to do everything, and overbook themselves so much there’s no time for their writing projects. A portion of these writers complain about their lack of time, but others are baffled by their lack of progress, because it seems like all they do is focus on their writing.

Take the writer who signs up for countless classes or participates in five writing groups. They give insightful feedback, tirelessly support their writing communities, and have the best book recommendations. But ask them how much time they’ve spent on their latest draft, or how much they’ve gotten done, and the answer is usually not much.

The more you prioritize others, whether it’s your clients, paid work, children, or writing group members, the more you reinforce the belief that your passions aren’t worthy of pursuing, and you’re not a person who gets things done.

The antidote is simple. Create a small writing goal (like fifteen minutes, three days a week), schedule it, and make it as regular as your bowel movements. Yes, this might mean letting something go or asking for help, but those precious few minutes will make the rest of your day more meaningful. If caregiver guilt gets in your way, ask yourself the following questions:

How do you feel and behave when you make time for your writing?How do you feel and behave when you don’t?Which version represents the self you want to share with others?The Author Who Doesn’t Realize They’re Full 

The final way we sabotage ourselves is by failing to recognize when we’re full. Some members of this group are also Too Hungry Writers, but others are enthusiastic newbies who just want to find their writing rhythm. Many are struggling because they’re trying to write through major life transitions—like births, deaths, or promotions—and have bought into the myth that writers always write. Others are poking at emotionally fraught material. Either way, they’re depleted, and while they think they should persevere, a big part of them doesn’t want to.

When a part of us wants to stop because we either don’t have the energy to write or we’re trying to work on something we’re not ready for, the unconscious mind will stop us. Sometimes this arises as the form of writer’s block where we blank out or try to avoid the page, but for others it can be illness.

To unblock yourself, recognize that writing lives ebb and flow based on how much time and energy we have. When we’re lacking these key ingredients, we’re in an ebb and need to focus on what’s missing. As you do this, remind yourself that the best writing comes from an expansive place—that means giving yourself time to rest, reset, or heal, if that’s required. But you don’t have to let your writing life languish. If a break is in order, determine its length, schedule your return date, then ask friends to hold you accountable. This will not only feed your internal yes, it will help you craft projects that earn the external yeses you’re hoping for.

Note from Jane: If you like this post, sign up for Lisa’s free Writing Your Resiliency newsletter and receive inspiration, tips, and tricks to help you thrive rather than just survive the writing process. As a thank you, you’ll receive a free copy of Write More, Fret Less: 5 Brain Hacks That Will Supercharge Your Creativity, Productivity, and Confidence.