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What If You’re New to Writing and Don’t Know How to Fix Things?

Photo by Daniel Reche

Ask the Editor is a column for your questions about the editing process and editors themselves. It’s a place to bring your conundrums and dilemmas and mixed feelings, no matter how big or small. Want to be considered? Learn more and submit your question.

This month’s Ask the Editor is sponsored by The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Podcast. Step up your writing game and meet fellow writers with The Deep Dive Workshop, a 10-week series from the podcast hosts of The Shit No One Tells You About Writing. Each week you’ll hear from expert writers and editors, followed by workshops led by Bianca, Carly or CeCe.

Question

I’m a beginning writer. I’ve been focusing on it for two years, though I’ve always dreamed of being a writer. In some ways, I feel like I’ve grown, but mostly I get overwhelmed by all I have yet to learn.

I read blog posts and craft books, thinking the advice sounds great and I can’t wait to try it. When I get to my writing, I freeze because I don’t know how to execute it. Two things I’ve been hoping to improve this year are characters and developmental editing.

This is where I’ve been stuck. I read about what needs to be looked at developmentally, but I don’t know how to recognize what needs fixing in my first draft or how to fix it.

I read my writing and know it is not up to par. It feels flat and dull, but I don’t know why or how. I’ll try to start revising and become overwhelmed with fatigue. It’s easier to say the story is too flawed, not working, and set it aside than to fix it. It’s not getting me anywhere.

I think my ideas are simple and lack complexity. They often lack in motivation and stakes. I’m a literal thinker, so it’s hard for me to be wildly creative. A few times, I’ve been told my writing sounds young. It makes me wonder if I’d be better at YA, but I love lighthearted women’s fiction and rom-com/chick lit. It’s been brought to my attention my writing lacks character emotion and voice.

After a few poor attempts at novels and then novellas, I’ve been working on short stories and flash fiction. When revising, it’s easier for me to see the whole picture and it feels less overwhelming.

I took to heart Ray Bradbury’s quote about writing 52 short stories because you can’t write 52 bad stories in a row. I changed it a little in that I’m doing short stories and flash fiction. I have drafted 26 short stories and 26 flash fictions (and have edited some of them).

Now, I have to figure out what to do next. More of the same (maybe 52 of each)? Or something a little longer, like a novelette or novella?

Do you have any advice on how I can learn to see and fix my story-level problems? Is it something that improves with time, and maybe I’m expecting too much of myself?

—Beginning

Dear Beginning:

Thanks for a complex question that I think reflects challenges common to a lot of writers—at every level.

Before I address your main question, there is one blanket suggestion I’d like to offer that applies to many of the concerns you wrote about: Take it easy on yourself.

You’ve brought up several areas where you’re struggling, but one common thread that jumps out to me is feeling beleaguered by self-doubt and self-judgment.

These pitfalls are as common among authors as any I know of. Show me an author who doesn’t doubt her ability or her story, flounder, or feel discouraged, and I will show you a delicious gluten-free pizza; it doesn’t actually exist.

The shortcomings you may perceive in your story and your writing are normal, especially for early drafts. Stories grow, deepen, and develop in the revision process; it’s where they come fully alive.

Try not to judge your initial draft by the standards of a finished one or published book. Revision is a process—often a long one. I regularly do three edit passes in working with an author or a publisher, sometimes more. This is after the author has already no doubt done a good amount of revision on their own to get to the final draft they turned in.

Remember that you never have to show one word of your writing to a soul until you are dead happy with it. Writing is your own private playground, and thinking of it as such—instead of as an arduous obstacle course you have to attempt in full view of the world—can help free you up in both your writing and revision.

Now let’s get a little more specific.

Edit first, revise second

You mention feeling overwhelmed by revising your work: That’s also common. I call this Revision Mountain, and when you are standing in the foothills looking up at the damned thing, it’s daunting. Where to even start?

Many authors plunge right in at the beginning and start revising—but that skips the crucial step of actual editing, and that’s often where overwhelm begins. Before you can effectively address what may not be working in your story, you have to assess what you have on the page.

In other words, as you rightly point out: first you must find any issues, and only then can you begin to fix them.

That means reading your work with an objective eye and identifying specific areas that may not be working as well as they could. It can also be helpful to get outside input from objective readers—trusted beta readers, crit partners, and (eventually) professionals—who can reflect back to you what you have on the page versus what intentions you may be subconsciously filling in on your own reads.

Then you diagnose why each particular element isn’t working.

For example, if you feel that a character doesn’t ring true, first identify specific places in the manuscript where that strikes you. Even if your frustrated answer is “Everywhere!” just go one page, one exchange, one development at a time. What feels as if it’s missing or “off” to you? What exactly isn’t coming across well here?

Is momentum lagging, or do stakes feel low, for instance? Is that because we don’t see what your character wants, perhaps? Is it not clear what’s driving them to attain it? Are their actions and behaviors not consistent with that? Do we not know what’s going on inside of them, so we have perspective and see how they process what happens to them? Every “problem” in your story has a concrete cause—editing means diagnosing it.

Only then, using all the benefit of the work you’ve been doing to learn this craft, do you figure out how to address that issue and weave it into the narrative—in other words, revision.

First you find it; then you fix it.

Then you repeat that process area by area.

Work from the foundation up

One reason revision so often goes awry for authors is the temptation to focus first on perfecting the prose. But as I always say, that’s like decorating the house before it’s finished being built.

I advocate—and use in my own editing work—a three-level process:

Macroedits. These are the story’s main foundation: character, stakes, plot. I always start here; if these aren’t solid, the story won’t be either.Microedits. These are the essential elements that support the macroedit elements and make them maximally effective, like momentum, structure, suspense, tension, point of view, etc.Line edits. Fine-tuning the verbiage—have you conveyed the story in prose that’s lean, elegant, precise, and unique? This is the step many authors mistakenly start with (because it’s fun and sexy!) that often bypasses the core story elements.

Once you finish and feel you’ve plugged all the holes in the dam, you start over and do it again…and again…and again. I liken these repeated editing and revision passes to a master woodworker sanding his creation, running his hand over it pass after pass of the sander, feeling for ever finer imperfections, until it’s smooth as glass.

The process is simple, but the work of it can be anything but. And that’s common too. Editing and revision are most of the real work of writing. But one area at a time, step by step up Revision Mountain, you tighten, deepen, and hone your story.

(This extensive self-editing checklist offers specific questions to ask yourself that may be a useful guide.)

How to hone your editing and revision skills

You say that you are “literal,” not “wildly creative.” You may be glad to know that the chief skill that defines every successful author I have ever worked with isn’t their rampant creativity, but this diligent work in developing, deepening, clarifying, and fine-tuning those initial creative impulses. (In fact, I almost completely rewrote this letter after realizing my initial version didn’t effectively address your specific questions.)

Like writing, editing and revision are skills that take time to learn, and they develop only with practice—the way you are already doing with your flash fiction/short story writing and revising.

The other most effective way I know of is to analyze other authors’ work. I don’t just mean read it—I mean analyze it like an editor does, and reverse-engineer what makes it work. Amazingly, when you get into the habit of doing this, you will find these skills osmose into your artistic subconscious not just in your writing, but also in your editing and revision.

My favorite way to do this is to pick apart every single thing you read or watch—books, articles, TV shows, movies, hell, I often analyze commercials, songs, and ad slogans. What makes it effective—or not? Get granular—go back and reread or rewatch and notice where you react; then dissect how the author elicited that reaction in you.

Also, while finding a positive, constructive critique group can be helpful when you need objective feedback about your own writing, the real value of them lies less in the critique you receive than in the critique you give as you get practice with other people’s stories where you already have built-in objectivity in spotting what may not be working as effectively on the page as it could and why (finding and fixing; assessing and addressing).

You mention that two years in, you’re still learning. Thirty years into my editing career I feel the same way. In any complex, subjective pursuit like art you’ll always be learning.

And the more you learn, the more you see how much there is to learn—so ironically (and annoyingly), the better you get at writing, editing, and revising, often the worse you feel about your abilities.

“Mastering” (I put that in ironic quotes) this craft is a journey that never ends. Take time to appreciate how far you have already come. Two years—or a lifetime—is nothing when learning a skill as complex and challenging as creating fully realized worlds and people and orchestrating the infinite moving parts of story that bring something wholly yours into existence from your sheer imagination.

Take heart and keep going. You’re making more progress than you think.

—Tiffany Yates Martin

This month’s Ask the Editor is sponsored by The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Podcast. Step up your writing game and meet fellow writers with The Deep Dive Workshop, a 10-week series from the podcast hosts of The Shit No One Tells You About Writing. Each week you’ll hear from expert writers and editors, followed by workshops led by Bianca, Carly or CeCe.

Build Your Writing Self-Efficacy

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Today’s post is by writer, editor and book coach Ariel Curry (@arielkcurry).

Last year, Albert Bandura, a renowned psychologist and giant in the field of education, passed away in his 90s. Bandura is best known for his pioneering work around the idea of self-efficacy—a concept that impacts you everyday and has powerful potential for your writing life as well.

Whether you realize it or not, your self-efficacy guides nearly everything you do. It’s why you feel completely confident as you stroll to the washing machine to do a load of laundry: because you’ve done it before, you know how it works, and you have total faith in your own ability to get the job done well. It’s what causes you to shy away from attempting some of the Olympic gymnasts’ routines in your backyard: because you (most likely!) don’t have the years of experience, the skills, and the proof from past success that you can accomplish them.

So what is self-efficacy?

Self-efficacy is the degree to which you believe you can execute actions to control certain outcomes. In my laundry example above, you likely feel high self-efficacy because someone taught you and you’ve done it successfully many times. You believe in your own ability to successfully perform the actions needed to attain the desired result: a clean load of laundry. And on the other hand, as with the gymnastics, having low self-efficacy stops us from trying something we’re uncomfortable with, or even might expect negative results from (like a broken neck!). Bandura writes, “If people believe they have no power to produce results, they will not attempt to make things happen.”

Self-efficacy has a tremendous impact on our motivation to try something new. Even if you’ve never written a book, you might still have high self-efficacy around doing it if you have the right preparation, and you won’t encounter as much resistance to making it happen. It’s the essence of the perhaps cliché idea: “If you think you can, you can!”

Perhaps you’ve felt overwhelmed when asked to do something new at work, and you dithered a bit trying to figure out where to get started. Maybe you’ve felt stymied by your lack of knowledge about how to write a book proposal, and it’s stopped you from even trying. Contrast that to how you feel when asked to do something similar to what you’ve done successfully before. Trying a new bread recipe, when you’ve been baking sourdough for the last 18 months. Writing a limerick when you’ve been writing haiku. You’re likely not too deterred by the fact you’ve never done it before; you know you’ve got the basic skills and can figure it out.

Does self-efficacy really work?

The short answer is yes—increasing your self-efficacy can really help you learn and successfully accomplish more. In a summary of 8 meta-analyses on self-efficacy, education researcher Dr. John Hattie found that self-efficacy has a .71 effect size of students’ learning. If .4 is the average effect you would get just from living, then .71 means your learning is increased quite a bit when you add self-efficacy to the mix.

But does that mean we should go around believing we can do absolutely anything? No. I’m not recommending that you try out those gymnastic routines with the addition of a positive attitude. Self-efficacy isn’t blind belief; like I hinted above, it’s a belief born out of evidence, training, observation, and disposition.

How to increase your writing self-efficacy

Bandura’s work is so powerful because he showed that self-efficacy can be taught and developed. He wrote that there are four primary ways to increase your self-efficacy around a skill.

1. Finding small wins (mastery experiences)

The most powerful way to start building your confidence is to experience small writing wins—or mastery experiences. These small wins might look like meeting your word count goal, posting a blog, getting positive feedback on a writing sample, finishing a chapter or article, or perhaps even writing your manuscript. Each small win builds on the last, so that as you gain confidence and momentum, your wins get bigger and bigger.

2. Seeing others like you succeed (vicarious experiences)

If you’ve never written a book before, it doesn’t make sense to compare yourself to John Green or J.K. Rowling or Glennon Doyle. Instead, you should look for models who are in a similar situation as you—they have a similar platform (even if it’s none!), similar writing experience, and a similar drive to write, and they’re having some success. Seeing these people who are just like us succeed sends the message that if they can do it, we can do it, too.

3. Receiving authentic encouragement from people you trust (social persuasion)

Bandura’s research shows how powerful honest encouragement (what he called verbal persuasion) from someone credible and trustworthy could be in building up our self-efficacy. But it can’t just be blind praise. This encouragement must be:

From someone credible whom you respectTailored and specific to youRealistic (they can’t promise you the moon!)GenuineConsistent4. Staying calm and reducing stress around the task (affective states)

Bandura writes that both our physical state and our mental/emotional state (he calls it our “affective states”) affect our efficacy beliefs. If we’re sore, winded, exhausted, or in pain, we probably won’t have as much confidence in our ability to run 10 miles as we would if we were feeling great and had high energy levels. Likewise, if we’re frightened, angry, grieving, or depressed, we may not “feel like” writing, because we judge our own abilities as less than optimal in that emotional state. Research shows some ways we can take care of ourselves physically and emotionally to increase our self-efficacy:

SleepingWalkingHikingWorking outDrinking lots of waterRegulating our sugarJournalingMeditatingSetting boundaries

I believe that we can use all of these powerful methods for improving our writing lives and accomplishing our writing goals. Self-efficacy is one of the greatest keys to unlocking our writing power.

Unlock Better Reach: Bridge the Gap Between Online and Offline Activities

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Today’s post is an excerpt adapted from Reach: Create the Biggest Possible Audience for Your Message, Book, or Cause by Becky Robinson (@beckyrbnsn).

In my work with clients over the years, I’ve identified a significant gap that even very successful people must overcome to create reach. It’s the difference between how a person shows up online and how they show up offline.

Most people naturally invest more time, energy, and resources in their offline lives. However, an exclusive focus on offline life will almost always limit reach.

The only way to create the biggest reach possible for your work is to grow your contributions online and offline simultaneously. Whatever you do, do it out loud, sharing the story of your work publicly so people can learn and benefit from your work even if they don’t know you offline. Those who are on a journey with the goal of creating more impact need to maximize both their offline contributions and their online presence over time to reach more people. They need to share the value of their work both online and offline.

During my twelve years of working with people to increase the reach of their messages, I’ve identified four levels of expertise related to creating an online presence. Each circle includes a globe icon (representing offline influence) and a computer screen icon (representing online influence).

Someone who has neither online nor offline influence is a beginner. Note that in the beginner circle, both the globe icon and the computer screen icon are marked with an X, which indicates that both online and offline influence are absent.

Someone who has influence online but not offline is a master of branding. In this circle, the globe icon is marked with an X, indicating that people in this category do not have offline influence.

Someone who has offline influence that is not fully represented online is a traditional thought leader. In this circle, the icon for online influence is marked with an X.

The fourth circle depicts true reach experts, the people who show up online in the same powerful way that they show up in real life. People in this group are positioned to create the biggest possible audience and lasting impact for their work.

If you are at the start of your career or at the start of creating traction for an idea, message, book, or cause, you likely are in the category of beginner. You could also call yourself a beginning beginner. You have neither recognition offline nor impact online…yet. You’re figuring out your brand position in life or figuring out your career journey. Or you’ve been in a career and you’re making a switch but have little experience related to your aspirations.

There’s no shame in being here. Instead of being overwhelmed about all that lies ahead, be inspired by the vision of what you can accomplish. There’s nowhere to go but up. Patience will be helpful on this journey, since starting to grow influence online is like planting a tree; it may be years before you enjoy the shade.

Everyone who is starting something new is in this group. In 2009, when I joined Facebook for the first time, I was in this category. I had stepped out of a job in a nonprofit organization when I had my first child in 2001. I didn’t have a specific career vision and I didn’t have any expertise to add to a topic or to a vision of where I could contribute. Even though I was approaching age 40, it would not have been a stretch to call me a beginning beginner.

It can be humbling to be in this place. After I started to take some freelance writing gigs, one of my clients approached me and asked me to write a leadership blog in support of the university’s online leadership degree programs. He framed the request like this: “How would you feel about writing a blog about a topic you know nothing about?” The topic? Leadership.

I remember feeling annoyed. I told my client about my role as president of our condo association, the preschool co-op I had started, and the church I had partnered with my husband to start. “I know about leadership,” I told him. But I really didn’t. I had to start at the beginning. I had neither expertise to offer in the real world nor anything meaningful to say online. I had to work to create both at the same time.

Discover your value

After I entered online spaces in 2009, I acquired more learning about leadership by teaching one semester of undergraduate courses in leadership for an online program. This short stint gave me some additional credibility, but only a thin veneer.

Along the way, I began experimenting with and learning about social media marketing. In my freelance work for the university, I started and grew a Twitter account, then started managing Facebook pages. At the time, we were all learning about social media together and I learned a lot by exploration and experimentation. Increasing my expertise about social media proved to be much easier than increasing my learning about leadership. I had so much catching up to do about being a leader.

When I started my own blog in 2010, my path as a digital marketing professional was still not yet clear. I envisioned writing about several topics: leadership, relational connections, and social media. I had to experiment with topics in my online writing and posting until I had enough experience to see the path forward. I discovered along the way what topics excited me, what topics interested the people who read my work, and where I could make my most meaningful contribution, including how I could carve out a profitable and purposeful business.

Newcomers in online spaces can experiment with content first. They can learn from experience to clarify and hone in on how they can best contribute value.

Add consistency

It will be impossible to create significance offline or online without consistency. Once you’ve identified how you will bring value, start contributing it consistently. So many people who start to build an online presence give up before they have a chance to break through to widespread success.

Settle in

As you are getting started, patience is imperative. Without patience, you will not sustain your contributions long enough to create reach.

Humility at the start may give you some early momentum. If you are just getting started, own it. Tell people “I’m new here. I’m just getting started.”

When I started blogging about leadership in 2009, I spent a lot of time seeking out other leadership bloggers. Early on, I developed a friendship with several bloggers who’d been on the scene longer than me. I soon discovered that most of them had significantly more expertise than I did that added credibility to their contributions on leadership. I asked a lot of questions. I listened to and acted on their advice.

While I was establishing my brand, I had to ask for help—often. I remember an early win in May 2009. The blog I wrote at the time had been going for a few months. So I decided to reach out to Dan McCarthy, blogger at Great Leadership by Dan, to ask him to host a guest article. When he responded favorably, I danced and shrieked around my house. I had no idea how these humble beginnings would lead to my discovery of a powerful new career.

When you are just getting started and can ask for help and humbly learn from others, you can fuel ongoing collaborative relationships. People will want to be helpful and will appreciate the opportunity to guide your journey. Starting strong will increase your chances of sticking around long enough to make an impact.

Be generous

One of the benefits of being a beginning beginner is that you are probably showing up in online spaces without an urgent agenda apart from learning and contributing. Because of this, you may have more time, energy, and willingness to promote others and their work. As a newcomer to online conversations on a certain topic, you can attract attention by amplifying the work and ideas of other people.

Amazon • Bookshop

In this beginning stage and throughout your journey, be as generous as you can. Link to other people’s work, quote other people, participate in promoting others’ books or causes, write reviews of people’s books. If you’ve learned from someone, acknowledge their contribution. If you admire someone, shout it out.

Whether you are a beginning beginner as I was in 2009 or a traditional thought leader with decades of contributions offline, you will create the biggest audience and most lasting impact with your work if you choose to close the gap between who you are offline and who you are online by showing up with consistent value on your core topics.

An Argument for Setting Aside Arc in Story Development

Today’s post is by author Adele Annesi (@WordforWords).

Sound crazy? Not really.

I was reading the novel Hold the Dark by Guggenheim recipient and acclaimed author William Giraldi in preparation for his novel-writing workshop at the Vermont College of Fine Arts Postgraduate Writers Conference. In researching the Netflix adaptation, I saw an interview with the film’s director, screenwriter and main cast on how they prepared for their respective roles. When asked how he prepared for his role as Vernon Slone, actor Alexander Skarsgård said his preparation did not include a traditional approach to character arc: “I tried to avoid an arc … the approach was slightly different to how I normally work … I saw [the character] almost as … [existing] in a vacuum…”

As a long-form fiction instructor and novelist, I initially bristled at not taking a usual approach to character arc. But Skarsgård’s rationale sparked ideas about the potential advantages of a similar approach to writing fiction.

What we talk about when we talk about arc in character and plot development are the people in the story and how they evolve and/or devolve. We consider how these realities will track throughout the events of the story and how one character’s trajectory will affect and be affected by the other characters and the story itself.

One reason not to take a traditional approach to character arc is when the character isn’t traditional. Another is when a character isn’t all that influenced by others in the story or what’s happening, even when the circumstances are dire and the consequences of the character’s choices are costly. Other reasons include:

Flat characters: Contrary to how they sound, flat characters can be complex and exhibit a full range of emotions and responses. But they don’t usually change much or at all from the start of a story to its conclusion. One example is Mr. Darcy, in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Yet, flat characters can be essential to a story, for example, when the other characters (and reader or writer) rely on that person not to change.Discovery: Seasoned and adventuresome writers alike can expand their vision and craft by not rigidly blocking out who a character is or not using arc to define or direct the character.Creative freedom: Dispensing with rising action, pinnacle and falling action for character and plot can free the writer’s spontaneity, bring originality to a work, and avoid superficiality in characters and story.

While there are good reasons to opt out of a traditional arc in plot and story, sometimes a more traditional approach works best:

Order: A more traditional arc for a character or plot can offer stability for emerging writers and early drafts. This doesn’t mean a character or story can’t change. It just means the project would benefit from a more systematic approach to depicting characters or storyline, like when a character, plot or both are complex, and exploration of theme is key to the work.Structure: If a story includes varied plot points and characters, the overall work could benefit from a traditional arc for at least one of the characters and/or aspect of the plot, as this will better support the structure of the work as a whole.

While the use of a traditional character or story arc remains a valuable tool in the writer’s toolkit, there is something to be said for dispensing with tradition, whether in character development, story creation or both.

There is also value in listening to what our characters tell us about themselves and the story, even when what they say may be hard to hear. Approaching a work of fiction as an organic, ongoing dialogue between writer, characters and story can free writers to both explore and discover—one of the best perks of creativity and art.

The Necessity & Power of Sitting With Your Critiques

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Today’s post is by writer and literary consultant Grace Bialecki (@GraceBialecki).

My second novel started on a train to Paris and had a locomotive momentum—for months, all I did was put its words down on the page. Then the expat community led me to a drop-in workshop at Shakespeare & Company. Even though I was writing daily, it’d been years since I’d received formal feedback, but a man there appreciated my edits on his novel’s opening and offered to read mine. Thrilled by our budding friendship, I sent him my chapters.

Classic mistake. He picked apart my word choice, mocked my protagonist’s motivations, and derailed my positive energy. While he could’ve delivered his feedback in a more constructive way, in hindsight, I wasn’t ready for a critique, much less at the line level. I was still in creative mode—churning out characters and plot lines—not questioning commas. As I read through his notes, I felt defensive and disheartened. This opening was the culmination of months of work, and now I wondered if my novel was worth finishing. (Spoiler alert: it always is.)

As writers, we know that critiques are an integral part of improving our work. But we rarely learn how to receive feedback or what to do after. Since that hasty share, I’ve spent years attending and leading workshops. Here are some lessons gleaned about how to receive and grow from our critiques.

Listen receptively

Receiving a critique starts with being ready to listen and admit that there’s room for improvement. Before any potential ego bruising, I’ll remind myself this is a work-in-progress, while also appreciating having produced something. Anything. Remember, even if the future of this piece is unclear, creating it has made you a better writer. And no amount of criticism can take that from you.

During the feedback, do your best to listen:

Check for signs of becoming flustered: flushed face, sweaty palms, racing heart, nervous stomach. These are your body’s way of telling you it’s in reaction mode. And those rampant emotions will overpower any insights your brain is processing. Instead of shutting down or powering through the bad news, recognize that you need to regroup.Come back to calm. The easiest way to calm your nervous system is to connect with your breath. Feel the air moving through your nostrils as you inhale and exhale. If you’re at a desk, plant your feet on the ground, put your palms flat, and close your eyes. Breathe. It’s amazing what a difference three breaths can make. Good news—if you’re workshopping in person, you can still breathe.Amidst all this, try to take notes. Memory is fallible, especially in emotional situations. Even if you’re receiving written feedback, it’s still important to jot down ideas that resonate with you. I do this in a notebook since the act of writing by hand also grounds me.

And if you’re not ready to listen, you don’t have to agree to critiques. Take my effusive father praising my first novel, then pausing. “So do you want my notes?” My reply, all smiles and hard-learned boundaries: “No thanks, no notes.”

Reflect & distill

Receiving feedback is inherently disquieting, so take time before diving into revisions. This could mean going on a walk, moving your body in any possible way, soaking in a bath, making tea, or cuddling with a pet. The goal of these activities is to get out of your head.

When you’re ready, try the following:

Write about the soul of your project. What are you hoping to convey? What themes are essential? And what are your favorite parts? Even if you don’t re-read this, simply writing your goal helps bring the piece into focus and prepare for revisions.Start to decide which critiques are useful—we all have the autonomy to sort through the criticism we receive. If feedback motivates me to keep working and gets my revision wheels turning, I know it’s worth keeping. This usually also means it’s specific, actionable, and in-line with my vision for my work.Throw out the bad. If criticism is vague, demeaning, or centered on the reader’s personal preference, it’s not useful. On an intellectual level, I’ll struggle with how to incorporate it into my work. My body might also feel tight or frustrated. Again, I’ll center myself and calm my inner defenses before deciding if it’s me or them.

Speaking of getting defensive, often critiques do cause an emotional reaction. Instead of blaming the person for their delivery or vowing to burn the next thing they write, take a moment to reflect. Is your reaction coming from a deeper insecurity? A past criticism? Sometimes the hardest critiques to swallow are the most relevant. And other times, they’re brusque and off-base. Be honest with yourself and stand by what’s important to you.

For example, in one of my recent essays, an editor wanted me to name a doctor’s credentials—was she an acupuncturist? Nutritionist? Naturopath? For me, the piece was about universal medical struggles, which meant that the doctor and the malady would remain undisclosed. I politely explained this, made other adjustments for clarity, and she was receptive to my changes.

Avoid being your own worst critic

Bad news—sometimes we’re our own worst critic. Most often, this manifests in perfectionism and writers who obsess over getting a piece “perfect.” Like unproductive feedback, perfectionism is a dead end. Obsessing about word choice or grammar in early drafts; writing and re-writing dialogue or other minor moments; and generally letting the analytical side of the brain rule can stymie creativity.

Often, these self-critiques stem from a place of dissatisfaction. A voice saying this isn’t good enough rather than how can I make it better? Be gentle. Focus on finishing the project and how you’re going to get there.

Ways to move away from perfectionism:

Don’t let yourself over-edit early drafts. Writing by hand is one way of ensuring your inner critic doesn’t take control. Or if you’re typing, remind yourself that this mediocre prose is filler and you’ll clean it up later.Focus on finishing a complete version of your project, rather than a perfectly polished one. Deadlines or accountability partners can help you get to the other side.Separate your worth from your work. Much easier said than done, but keep reminding yourself that writing and creativity are the goals. And if you’re doing that, you’re already succeeding in this difficult endeavor.

Remember, the same ego that gets defensive during critiques might need to be curbed again. Instead of striving for the perfect phrasing, trust that you’ll find it when the time is right. Maybe it’ll even come in the form of constructive feedback.

Learn to move forward

No matter how harsh the critique, I hope everyone finds a way to move forward with their project. At the same time, diving into revisions amidst emotional turmoil can be counter-productive.

Here are some ideas on moving forward:

Write a critique letter to yourself. This combines elements of your vision for the piece with positivity about what you’ve done well, before moving into ideas for revision. Try to be as specific as possible about what you’ll change and distill critiques that resonate with you into actionable edits.Get a little meta and take a moment to critique your critique process. Were the people giving feedback your ideal readers? Is it too stressful to fling open your laptop and dive into workshop after rushing your children through dinner? Remember, the platform and people you entrust with your writing is your choice.Shelve your work with a firm promise to come back. Sometimes it’s simply too soon, and writing an emotionally vulnerable piece makes us realize we’re still processing. Or sometimes life gets in the way of creative endeavors. As long as you’re being honest with yourself, and not throwing out your work, it’s okay to take a break.

As you think about future critiques, remember that a good reader is someone in your target audience who’s already amenable to your genre, subject, or style. My second novel takes place in Paris, so instead of picking apart my florid prose about the City of Lights, my readers are already onboard for descriptions of a foreign place. And if my prose gets too painfully florid, I trust them to tell me, and I trust myself to listen.

Remember your community

As writers, we’re all part of a community who have dedicated themselves to this daunting and thrilling art. When you’re giving feedback, think of supporting your peers and leaving them inspired to keep writing. Writing is challenging enough—we don’t need more discouragement, especially not from those who share our struggles.

What was some of the least helpful criticism you’ve received? And how did you learn and grow from the experience?

For more on critiques and ideas explored in this piece:

Craft and The Real World by Matthew SalessesBig Magic by Elizabeth GilbertThe Artist’s Way by Julia CameronAwakening Self-Compassion by Jack Kornfield

Nobody Knows Marketing Like Romance Authors: Q&A with Kitty Thomas

Dark and paranormal romance author Kitty Thomas discusses negative attitudes toward the romance genre (including her own before she came to love it), whether writing to a formula is as easy as all that, why she thinks sex scenes are the most difficult thing to write, the heartbreaking nature of publishing, and more.

Kitty Thomas (@kitty_thomas) writes dark stories that play with power and have unconventional happily-ever-afters. She also writes some quirky paranormal romance. She began publishing in early 2010 with her bestselling Comfort Food and is considered one of the original authors of the dark romance subgenre.

KRISTEN TSETSI: What did you like to read when you first got into book reading, and how did you veer into reading—and then writing—romance, whether paranormal or, as a few of your novels are, darker?

KITTY THOMAS: I used to love the Goosebumps books as a kid. I wanted to be RL Stine. I was a snob about romance for the longest time, even in my Goosebumps days. Even in 8th grade, romance novels weren’t “real books.” I have no idea why. I guess internalized misogyny, which is really fancy talk for… the culture disrespects it because it disrespects the feminine. I picked up on that even though nobody sat me down and told me they weren’t real books. There was just this sneering derision about them. And a lot of eye rolling around Harlequin novels.

And I certainly don’t want to crap on Harlequin novels, but romance is so much bigger than one publisher, and yet they were all lumped in together as one thing.

As a side note, I was also a snob about Buffy the Vampire Slayer (I didn’t realize it was poking fun at itself and such a smartly written show). Ultimately I became a romance author because I couldn’t find the TV remote to change the channel and got sucked in to the Buffy and Spike drama. (I think it was a rerun of season 4.) I was beyond upset that Buffy and Spike didn’t end up together. I mean it was A. Thing. with me.

So when Buffy and Spike didn’t end up together (I know, spoiler, but the show is SO old. You know, Old Yeller dies at the end, too), I ended up writing fanfic to soothe my battered soul over it. Then I realized that I actually DO like romance and that maybe the love story is all I really care about, after all. (Now romance is all I really read: paranormals, dark, romcoms, sometimes alien/sci-fi.)

So I started reading paranormal romance and then writing it. But Pauline Reage’s Story of O was what inspired Comfort Food, my first darker book. It just made me mad that all these erotic books had to moralize, and the couple couldn’t be together in the end because it was “wrong.” Screw that. When you’re an island unto yourself, who cares what society thinks?

What does paranormal romance (PNR) offer that traditional, human-on-human romance doesn’t, both to the writer and the reader?

I think PNR filled the gap for bodice rippers when those started disappearing off the shelves. Publishers decided that because of sexism bodice rippers were no longer socially acceptable. I totally love when an organization makes a blanket decision about what women shouldn’t be allowed to read because it’s sexist. Ummm, did they not pause to self-reflect and consider that maybe policing women’s fantasies and acting as though we can’t handle our own reading choices wasn’t itself sexist?

It’s not as though these books were written by and for men. They were written by and for women, and then roundly rejected by mostly male-led publishing companies.

Of course now there is dark romance, so in some ways that’s the new bodice ripper. But people still do like their vampires and werewolves.

What do you think the new trend (if that’s the right word) in romance might be? Or, maybe, what would you like it to be, if you could choose?

Well, one new trend I notice popping up is reverse harems. This is where you have a story with one heroine and multiple males. But it’s not a triangle. It’s not like she’s going to “pick one.” It’s “Why not have all of them?” And it’s not two guys and a girl. That’s menage. This is usually three or four, sometimes five males who are all in a relationship with the heroine. Though honestly I think three is the perfect number for these books. After that it starts to get unwieldy. Usually this is also a paranormal romance.

A common trope is werewolves who all share the same fated mate, though I’ve seen it done other ways. I’ve also seen it done without the paranormal element. I’ve got one called The Proposal in my dark wedding duet. The heroine has decided she’s tired of men stringing her along and wasting her time when she wants to get married and have kids, so she starts rotational dating. She’s chosen to remain celibate and just date a man harem until somebody gives her a ring.

Amazingly this actually works, but as she upgrades her man harem she doesn’t realize she’s dating three men who all know each other and have decided to just share her, like forever.

I don’t think I have to explain why this sort of thing is a fantasy for women. LOL! I trust the intelligence of your readers to work it out. Though the interesting thing is reverse harems aren’t erotica. They may have sex in them, but they are romance where by the end there is a functioning and happy polyandrous unit, so it’s not just about the sex. It’s also about the feelings.

You write “unconventional HEAs.” An article in BookRiot discusses whether a novel can be called a “romance” if it isn’t HEA (that is, if it doesn’t have a Happily Ever After ending, usually including a wedding and a pregnancy) or, at the very least, HFN (Happy For Now, which means there’s no marriage or baby). What are some unconventional HEAs?

I think there are a lot fewer “marriage and babies” romances now. Because more and more people are realizing you can be happy forever but not have babies. Or not have a wedding.

Not everybody wants the same things, and what makes an HEA is if the characters are happy in the end. As for “happy for now,” I mean, not to be morbid, but nobody lives forever, so theoretically no matter how happy the book ends, those characters would be separated by death at some point. Unless they’re vampires, but even they can be killed.

I always wonder what happens to the Disney princesses after the wedding. I’m just sayin’.

Happy or sad is just where you end the story.

Amazon • Bookshop

You’ve written a number of captive women, most notably in your bestselling novel Comfort Food. What is it about the captive/captor scenario that so appeals to readers?

I think it’s honestly that the world feels like it’s burning down around us and in most of these types of books you’ve basically got this rich dude giving the heroine pleasure and basically demanding she give in to her own pleasure, and he’s taking care of everything. I mean sure, she’s his captive, but she doesn’t have to worry about the rest of the big bad world. There is a real comfort in that. She only has to worry about him. Plus in dark romance he’s usually hot and insanely protective. Like, a lot of these guys will kill anyone who is a threat to her—though of course who will protect her from him? That’s the conundrum and a lot of the tension.

I think women are so shamed for their own pleasure that this is that “permission” some feel they need to get in touch with their own sexual desire. It’s so strange to me that the activity that literally keeps the species going is so shrouded with weirdness and shame. But, as I said, people are gonna people. What can you do?

When women were crowding bookstores to get copies of EL James’s Fifty Shades of Grey, the press said the books appealed to “bored housewives” (which makes the women sound silly or desperate). The Fifty Shades series was also dubbed “mommy porn,” which Jackie Collins said was a label that degraded women—and Collins herself was told by romance novelist Barbara Cartland that her writing was “ filthy and disgusting .”

There’s something about explicit (or kinky, in EL James’s case) sex in romantic fiction that invites judgment that demeans its female readers and writers, even when—as in Collins’s novels, or as in your recently-released novel Valkyrie —the female characters are presented as powerful.

You’ve been publishing in the genre in one way or another since 2008. Have you seen any changes in attitudes in that time?

I want to say yes, but not really LOL. Honestly anybody who had an issue with romance or sexy books still has it unless they read those books. People are notoriously unwilling to actually try these books they have such condescension for. There’s more than a little bit of misogyny in that. I get it if alien males with two (insert male anatomy term of choice here) or reverse harems or fated mates werewolf love is a little too adventurous for some readers, but there’s plenty of office rom-coms too. We’ll be gentle and just ease you into it.

The people who read romance may not openly admit to it because of the judgment, but they’re not going to stop reading what they love. And honestly romance is such a great genre whether it’s sweet or dark or spicy or funny or has vampires. It’s really a shame that more people don’t give it a try. There is so much amazing writing in this genre now. And it’s not just women reading it. A lot of men are secretly reading romance. I was surprised to learn just how many male readers I have. I mean I write some super hot sex so there’s that.

A writer on a website I came across recently characterizes romance as “easy to write because romance books usually follow a pretty simple formula.” I wonder how “easy” it is to write to a formula, and how “easy” it can really be to write either traditional or dark romance, considering they both incorporate sex scenes, about which you recently tweeted, “I hate writing sex scenes. They are so unnecessarily difficult.” I suppose my question is twofold: is it easy to write to a formula, and what makes sex scenes so difficult?

I challenge them to write a romance anyone would actually care to read. Romance readers are intelligent and very discerning. So the people of that website can name the time and place they want to complete this little challenge and stop running their mouths about it.

As for sex scenes, that’s the most difficult thing in the world to write in my opinion. There are only so many different ways you can describe sex, and you want to keep it fresh. Maybe it’s “comparatively” easy in the first book or two, but come talk to me after you’ve written over 30 of these “easy” books. What a jackwagon.

Also it’s not enough to just have tab A going into slot B. There has to be sexual tension and chemistry. The reader has to desperately want these two characters to get into bed. And there has to be emotional satisfaction to the joining. It’s about their feelings and emotions, not just body parts rubbing against other body parts. Even in erotica the best sex scenes have that psychological component, which is why kink is probably so popular. There’s so much psychology around that kind of trust game.

You said once upon a time, “I think our society needs to deal with the issue of ‘thought crime.’ When we’re so tied up inside we can’t even think a thought without freaking out, it’s a bad sign.”

In an article I wrote—and interviewed you for—about pen names, you explained that you decided to use a pen name in part because of your family’s religious background. Do you experience any kind of emotional or psychological push-and-pull with your decision to use a pen name, a fight between, “I should be able to attach myself to this openly because there’s nothing wrong with it” and “But society is the way it is…” ?

Not really.

I’m a pretty private person. My family knows what I write, they just don’t read it. Though I do read some of my “safe scenes” to my parents. I don’t think it would matter what genre I wrote. I could be making Giant Panda coloring books for third graders, and I would still want a division between real life me and author me.

Besides, you do sort of “become” your pen name. In a way it feels as much my real identity as anything.

Many of your books have hundreds—in some cases thousands—of reader reviews on Goodreads, and it’s generally understood that a book might get a single reader review for every 70-100 books sold. Most self-published authors (and many traditionally published authors) don’t have those numbers. Do you feel as successful as other self-published authors would probably think you are?

I really, really don’t. I’m not sure what it would take for me to feel successful, but I’m not there yet.

How did your early books get the attention they did? How did Comfort Food become your bestselling book?

Amazon algorithms were much more favorable back then. The world of ebook publishing has changed a lot since I started. Early on I was riding the wave of early adopters and people trying to load up their kindles. Now having a book or two out? It’s not impossible, but it’s unlikely to get a huge result out of the gate.

With regards to Comfort Food, I sent it to just a few book bloggers (back when that was a much bigger thing and there were several bloggers who had hundreds and hundreds of reader comments) and then they just sort of took it from there amongst themselves. I really didn’t do a lot for Comfort Food’s marketing. I had no plans at that time to even market the Kitty name much. It was just a book of my heart I had to write.

It was just luck. It was a totally new genre that didn’t exist at the time. There was no such thing as dark romance when I wrote Comfort Food. As other books in the same genre started to show up (many, but obviously not all) inspired in some way by Comfort Food, or inspired by a book that was inspired by Comfort Food, it just became a thing.

In conversation with me, you’ve said that more writers can absolutely make a decent living writing fiction, even if they think they can’t. What would it take?

I definitely think it’s possible, though it does feel like it gets harder and harder.

I think one thing it takes for most is a big backlist and marketing savvy. If you build it, they won’t come. You can write the most brilliant book in the world, but unless some lightning strikes you, you’ve got to be able to get it in front of the right readers at the right time, and that can be daunting and exhausting.

But while I think it’s really difficult, it’s not as impossible as many proclaim. Maybe I have a skewed author friend base, but I’m author friends with at least seven, and possibly more, indie romance authors literally making a million dollars or more a year. Now that’s revenue, not profit, but it’s still from selling romance novels as self-published authors. I’m nowhere near those heights, but if I personally know that many indies making that kind of money, you gotta think it can’t be that impossible to make a basic living.

But it’s definitely not overnight, and it’s a ridiculous amount of work. And this industry will break your heart. I think the better question isn’t “can it be done,” but “are you willing to deal with how hard and painful it’s going to be,” because I don’t know a single author who isn’t having some sort of behind-the-scenes crisis (well, I take that back, I do know one or two, but they are rare), even the really successful ones.

What heartbreak have you seen the industry cause?

There’s the normal “book release failure,” where an author does everything right but their readers just don’t show up for it even though they’ve cultivated a large fanbase over a long period of time. Depending on how much the book meant to the author or how much they need to eat food like a normal carbon-based life form, this can feel like a crushing betrayal. And some quit over it.

Or they’re not making enough money to pay the rent or mortgage in general. They got successful enough to make this their full-time living, and they may have to quit writing because it’s really not just a straight line up where every release gets better and better, and they’re stressed out from an endless grueling release schedule and don’t have it in them to write another book.

Or a book gets pulled from a store. Or there is a publishing issue. I recently heard of an author who was in KU [Kindle Unlimited] and her books were pirated, and now she’s in trouble for breaking contract terms even though it’s not her fault someone else is stealing from her.

The variations of insanity and heartbreak that come with this business are too numerous to name. And it isn’t just the newbie authors. Authors who have been publishing over a decade. Authors making so much money you would think they’ve “arrived.”

And that doesn’t count the personal tragedies that happen that derail an author’s career. This business is brutal, and most readers seem to think authors will just write no matter what because we “love it so much.”

We may love it, but it’s way too much work to do all that’s necessary to take it to market just for “love” (even for a romantic like a romance author). So when the financial rewards disappear, many will quit publishing. Writing isn’t a hobby for those publishing, but many even hardcore readers deep down think we could or should “get a real job” and still keep giving them books on the side. LOL. No.

There is no point at which writing and publishing becomes a pain-free affair, but there are so many authors having a crisis, on the edge of quitting, or having officially quit. So I wouldn’t envy them.

What are all the things you do to make money as a professional self-published author? I know you have a newsletter and website and social media to maintain—how often do you tend to those things? Are you responsible for your own website management and updates? Do you have a book editor? You have a graphic designer—what’s your level of involvement in that process? Etcetera.

It depends on where I am in the process of a book. There’s the writing, obviously, and editing. It can take hundreds of hours just to write a rough draft. I also hire out for cover art and teaser graphics. I bring in people for cross promotion (other authors, but also book bloggers in a book tour). I schedule and set up some paid promos like Bookbubs when I can get them, and others, like Red Feather Romance.

When I do audio I have to coordinate with the audio production people to get it cast and then, when it’s done, listen to the final proofs to approve it. Then I have to set that up with ACX [the Audible platform for independent authors].

When it’s time to release I have to set up the paperback and hardcover. For paperback I use KDP, and for hardcover I use Lightning Source [Ingram]. And then I set up the ebook on about six different platforms.

I wish I had a PA [personal assistant] but I’m not at the place where I can afford to bring someone on, or maybe I’m just a control freak. Plus I feel like the time it takes to get stuff together, is it really going to be less time if a PA does it? Maybe. I don’t know.

My original website design and setup I had a web developer do, but I do most of the updates. I do a little bit of social media daily, though I don’t know how much good that really does anymore. I send out a newsletter once a week, usually, but sometimes bi-monthly, and every day during release week where I do newsletter-exclusive giveaways.

Amazon • Bookshop

My cover artist and I work together on the concept, but really I prefer to give her a basic idea and let her run with it, like with the Valkyrie cover. I used to do my own interior formatting, but now I use Vellum, so it’s much faster these days.

There are also a million different ways to market a book that up until this point I haven’t had time to explore, but I’m moving away from writing to work on marketing my backlist. I may not be writing anything new for a very long time. I have a backlist of over 35 titles that really needs more marketing attention, and it doesn’t make any kind of financial sense to stay on the new release treadmill with all the stress and uncertainty of relying on the Amazon algorithms as well as enough people to buy during release week to get word of mouth going.

There aren’t enough hours available within the laws of physics to do all that one could/should do to truly promote a book and backlist and write new material and edit it and get all the stuff set up for release week. There really probably needs to be five of me. I don’t mean to be a Debbie Downer, but as a career this business is incredibly involved and difficult.

I would prefer to be independently wealthy and do it as a hobby.

If a traditional publisher approached you, would you be interested in signing with one?

No. I’m not really interested in that. I don’t publish to get “picked up” by someone else. Early indie sensation Amanda Hocking got a publishing deal, and I’m not sure traditional publishing did much at all for her. I think she might have done even better if she’d just stayed indie.

The idea that every indie is waiting to be picked by a big publisher isn’t at all accurate.

Is there one thing you see a lot of self-published authors doing wrong if their expectation is to sell books, and was there something you did wrong in your years of self-publishing that you can warn others not to do?

I’m not sure I’m one to judge because I have self-sabotaged in a thousand tiny ways. But I do think a lot of new authors weirdly try to market to other authors. I get authors are also writers, but we don’t have the same vast swaths of reading time that your typical target reader has.

I also think titles and descriptions, which is something else I’m still learning and tweaking. It took me forever to really get on board with the idea that the TITLE is not the art. It’s marketing. The title, the cover, the description, and in some ways the pricing, that’s all packaging and marketing, and you can’t be a precious snowflake artist about it. (Trust me, I’ve tried.)

I have had some of the stupidest descriptions on my books if I wanted to sell them. I swear. And unfortunately I have no one to blame for them but myself. Writing that description is very different from fiction writing, and the author is usually too close to the book. It can be difficult to see it from the angle the reader sees it. But normally, at least in romance, the description needs to focus on the trope because romance readers tend to read for the trope. Is it enemies-to-lovers? Forced proximity? Baby Daddy? Menage? Grumpy/Sunshine (cynical guy and hopelessly optimistic heroine)?

On the plus side, you can always go back and edit the description. Since my books sell online I don’t change the print edition, just the copy on the retailer websites.

Not too long ago, a writer on Twitter expressed sadness that her books weren’t selling. You responded in a tweet that it probably had something to do with her book covers, which you said looked self-published. This is the kind of thing many people might think, but not say. What prompted you to be honest with her?

It was the right thing to do. What if she has a beautiful book that no one will ever know about because her cover sucks? It’s like telling someone they have broccoli in their teeth at a party. It might embarrass them, but you did them a favor. I certainly didn’t tell the author to hurt her. It was from a genuine desire for her not to be floundering around with her homemade cover not understanding why nobody wanted the book.

Readers are very sensitive to homemade-looking covers. There are a very few authors who can do their own covers, but it would be wise for most authors not to assume they are among that rare breed. And for some reason when we make a graphic ourselves we just think it looks so much better than it does. It’s like the proud child with the stick figure drawing.

You gotta remember readers aren’t your parents. They just aren’t going to stick it on the fridge and coo over your artistic brilliance. They’ll just pass. And so many indies, particularly in the romance genre, have their cover art game on. Some of the most beautiful and professional covers I’ve seen have come out of the indie romance author community. And if you’re writing romance, that’s what you’re competing with. Forget the traditionally published covers, not that those aren’t good. Some of the indies are in a whole other league these days.

Seriously, romance authors are rocking it in all areas. People could drop a little of the snobbery and learn something. Nobody knows marketing like indie romance authors. And I’m not saying me. I am by far not the best at this. If I was, I’d probably be one of those million-dollar authors. But all the really innovative marketing and best cover art and some of the most creative and beautiful stories are coming out of this genre. So respect where respect is due.

What would you say to writers who secretly want to write adult romance, but who are afraid to because they’ve been taught, in one way or another, that it’s something to be ashamed of?

Well, I mean, there are a lot of people writing this, so it’s not like you’re some weirdo loner who lives a the end of the creepy lane. There’s power in numbers, and there are definitely numbers of people writing this. It certainly won’t keep you from getting invited to parties. Besides the dirty authors have all the cool parties, anyway.

Romance novels make people happy. They have a happily ever after. Why wouldn’t a writer want to create that?

Michael Lewis (Once Again) Tells the Biggest Story in Finance

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

Michael Lewis hit the story of a lifetime when he published his bestselling book, The Big Short, about the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. Looking back, Lewis seemed to be the right person at the right time and place to capture the biggest financial story of a generation.

It was the ultimate setup. Before writing The Big Short, Lewis was already regarded as a world-class storyteller. Plus, he had the advantage of coming from a career in finance. Lewis had even made a name for himself in financial journalism through his debut book, Liar’s Poker. Mix in Lewis’ southern charm and we might begin to understand how he pulled such a rich and detailed story from an otherwise tight-lipped industry.

But that’s a once-in-a-career finance story, right?

Well, not for Michael Lewis. A few months ago, during an interview with Financial News, Lewis gave his readers a small clue regarding the subject of his next book. Lewis said, “I guess it is possible it will be framed as a crypto book, but it won’t be a crypto book… It’ll be about this really unusual character.”

In recent weeks, the financial world has watched closely as one of the largest crypto exchanges, FTX, endured its public fall. The details of which—including probable fraud, a major hack and theft to the tune of $400 million, and a feud between crypto founders—are still coming to light.

The story may go down as one of the largest instances of fraud ever. And guess who is already at the heart of the story?

Creative Artists Agency announced that Michael Lewis has spent the past six months interviewing FTX founder, Sam Bankman-Fried. The news came to light when Lewis’ representatives began shopping the story around Hollywood to sell the movie rights. For now, Lewis and his team have provided only limited details about the project, but given that Lewis was working with Bankman-Fried for half a year before FTX’s fall, it’s safe to say that there’s much more to this already captivating story. 

Right time and place, once again, Mr. Lewis.

Central to most of Michael Lewis’ works are larger-than-life characters who find themselves at the center of major industry or societal shifts. As Lewis once told The Guardian, “I am not an essayist… I need characters. If I don’t have a character, I can’t find my way into a story.” Lewis seems to seek out people, rather than mere stories, which may be the real secret behind his uncanny ability to find once-in-a-career journalism material.

There has perhaps been no larger financial change since the 2008 crisis than the introduction of crypto as both a technology and an asset class. Lewis, presumably, wanted to find and tell a human story at the center of this big movement.

Lewis could not have foreseen the epic tale of controversy, hacks, and potential fraud that has transpired in recent weeks at FTX. But perhaps what Lewis did see, many months before anyone else, was a deeply human story of cutthroat competition between two opposing charismatic founders, Sam Bankman-Fried at FTX and Changpeng Zhao at the crypto exchange, Binance. All Lewis did was put himself at the center of that human story, just in time to watch FTX fall apart—and Lewis’ story fall into place.

How to Get Back to Writing

Photo by Monstera

Today’s post is by author Matthew Duffus (@DuffusMatthew).

When I finished my MFA in 2005, I didn’t write for a year. Between exhaustion from completing a readable draft of a novel on deadline and the confusion caused by having too many critical voices in my head (thanks, workshop), I didn’t know where to begin, let alone how to get to The End of something. I’d burned out on my thesis, realizing it would be my “novel in the drawer,” and had no idea what to do next. After the first few maddening weeks, I tried embracing Richard Ford’s concept of “refilling the well.” When this stopped working, I knew I needed to try something new.

Below are three steps that helped me start writing again after those long months away from the page.

1. Set a challenge

No, I don’t mean NaNoWriMo. Had I known about that event in 2005, I would have crawled into bed and not come out until December 1st. Instead, I set a reading challenge. Like many creative writing programs, mine had focused on contemporary work, so for this challenge I went back to the beginning of the English novel and read through the major writers until I was prepared to start writing again. I read Moll Flanders and Robinson Crusoe, Pamela and an abridged Clarissa. I read Tristram Shandy and… you get the point. I didn’t stop until I’d read through much of Virginia Woolf and was eager to write. But my old writerly patterns were no longer helpful. I needed fresh ideas, both for what to write and how to do it.

2. Start small

The first thing inhibiting my writing was believing I should know exactly what I wanted to do next and how to accomplish it. When I spoke to former classmates, they all seemed to have a plan for what they were working on. For me, a plan was too daunting. Having one would have meant thinking at the level of a book. I needed to focus on lower stakes, so I concentrated on something smaller, both literally and figuratively. Instead of aiming for 1,000 words per day, as I’d done in grad school, I bought a pack of three-by-five index cards and numbered the first thirty. I filled the lined side of one index card per day for the next month. By the end of that period, I had the beginnings of a longer piece that I was already dedicated to pursuing further. Call it my micro NaNoWriMo.

When I began this project, I had no idea what to write, no preconceived ideas or plot outline, so I focused on creating a strong first-person voice, index card by index card. I started with where I was in life: an apartment caretaker and struggling writer. The day before I reached for the first index card, I’d been dealing with a resident’s plumbing emergency, so I began there. Over the next few days, this voice revealed he was a failed lawyer, having never passed the bar, and was stuck in a long-term engagement with no wedding date in sight. By the end of the second week, I’d discovered his fiancée and her friends and several suitably quirky tenants. I was off and running.

3. Try a new style

Focusing on one notecard per day forced me to slow down in a way I hadn’t done when I was obsessed with hitting my word quota for the day. I made the decision to write in first person, because I figured the “I” would propel me forward and allow me to gain momentum more quickly. In the past, I’d been known for what were dismissed as “quiet” stories, so this time I decided to go loud. I channeled Laurence Sterne, from my reading challenge, and Stanley Elkin, who I’d read in a class during my MFA. I wrote long, circuitous sentences that stacked metaphor on metaphor, clause on clause, and often did not end when I ran out of space on my card. By the third week, I began staring at the blank cards on my desk, wondering if it would be okay to start a second card just this once. I resisted the urge, but that desire indicated that I was having fun writing again.

This manuscript isn’t one I’ve pursued publishing. For more than fifteen years, I’ve treated it as my fallback plan. Something about knowing it’s saved in Dropbox is reassuring. I’ve added and subtracted enough words for several novels over the years, but in the meantime, I’ve published a different novel, a collection of stories, a chapbook of poems, and many shorter works, both in print and online. But the next time I feel stuck, I know I’ll start hunting for more index cards.

Should I Hire an Editor to Help Cut My Manuscript?

Photo by Nikolaos Dimou

Ask the Editor is a column for your questions about the editing process and editors themselves. It’s a place to bring your conundrums and dilemmas and mixed feelings, no matter how big or small. Want to be considered? Learn more and submit your question.

This month’s Ask the Editor is sponsored by Legacy Launch Pad’s Bestselling Book Bulletin. Sign up to receive a bulletin every Thursday morning that includes one answer to a publishing question, one publishing tip, one publishing resource and one bit of publishing advice.

Question

I’m a newbie writer, working on a memoir about a trip I took in 1976. It’s a tad long, and I’ve been trying to pare it down from its three million words to its most important story lines. At what point do I call in an editor for help/advice?

—Needing Help in the Pacific NW

Dear Needing Help:

Writing a long memoir draft is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, you’ve collected all the material you’ll need to write an interesting book. On the other, you’ve got to figure out what’s important.

Identifying those important moments and revising is a daunting process for all new writers, but it’s trickier for memoirists. Unlike a novelist, you can’t solve your story’s problems by making stuff up. Instead, you must find meaning in the chaotic parts of your life, a process that can feel a lot like describing your face without looking in the mirror.

Many memoirists believe an editor is the mirror they’ve been searching for. While the allure of a trained eye on your manuscript can be difficult to resist, high-quality editorial feedback is expensive. Before shopping for an editor, it’s important to know when to contact one, and how they might be able to assist you—something your Spidey senses have already alerted you to.

To help answer those questions, let’s talk about the three skillsets new writers need to develop:

ForesightStorytellingStamina

Foresight: To revise well, writers need to develop a clear vision of what’s next in both the writing and publishing processes. This will help them create a logical plan of steps to take.

Storytelling: Recording life events and telling a story are not the same thing. Even strong writers, and avid readers, must learn how to do the latter. Cultivating strong storytelling skills makes it easier to hack a million-word draft into the most meaningful chunk, then craft what’s left into a succinct, well-written story.

Stamina: I’ve only met a handful of unicorns who can complete a publishable book in less than twelve months. None were new writers. That means most of us need to figure out how we’ll sustain our enthusiasm throughout what might be a long and bumpy ride.

The best way to develop foresight is to attend workshops and conferences and engage with other writers. Most writers cultivate and hone their storytelling skills by taking classes, reading craft books and articles, and then applying what they learn to their drafts. Mission accomplished, they submit their new-and-improved manuscripts to beta readers, writing groups, and workshop-style classes for feedback. This is generally followed by more practice. Classes and writing groups are also great for building accountability, which will help with your stamina.

It’s best to take your manuscript as far as you can on your own before hiring an editor. One of the most economical strategies you can employ is letting your manuscript rest for between one to three months. While your book is in its fallow period, develop your skills and work on other projects. You’ll be surprised by what your fresh eyes see when you crack open your manuscript. Once you’ve made those cuts, you can revise even further with the help of a few beta readers.

If your manuscript is beyond 100,000 words, I encourage you to pare it down to 90,000 words or less before requesting a full manuscript evaluation. It will save you money and the disappointment of hearing that the problems discovered in early chapters are repeated throughout your book. If that word count sounds unattainable, two economical ways editors can help you include a chapter outline review or a 10-, 25-, or 50-page review of your book’s opening chapters.

Writing a chapter outline will help you see what parts of your story have the most energy and rise to the level of importance. An analysis of this outline, along with a few additional exercises, can help you shape what you’ve written into a map that looks and feels like a story. Then, you can use that map to write a slimmer, more focused draft that incorporates the storytelling skills you’ve been working on.

Short reviews are a cost-effective way to find out what’s working, what skills you already have, and which ones you need to work on. They can also help you identify pacing problems, repetition, or sentence-level issues that are bloating your word count. If you’re a new writer, most editors will be able to tell what you need from as little as ten pages. If you’ve got some experience, you can bump that up to twenty-five. If you’re experiencing word count woes, anything longer than fifty will likely lead to feedback on later pages that reads like a broken record.

To make the most of these reviews, polish what you send to the best of your ability. That doesn’t mean your work has to be perfect, but it shouldn’t read like a hot mess of pages you expect the editor to decipher.

Once you’ve received your feedback, which hopefully includes a to-do list, get back to work. If you like this editor, you can always request a longer review once you’ve strengthened, and shortened, your manuscript.

The best time for a full manuscript review is when you’re pretty sure your book is ready for publication. By this point, you will have done everything you can on your own, and you’ll have the skills needed to make the most of your editor’s feedback.

While you’re doing what you can, trust that every skill you learn, and every revision pass you make, is helping you become a better writer.

—Lisa Cooper Ellison

This month’s Ask the Editor is sponsored by Legacy Launch Pad’s Bestselling Book Bulletin. Sign up to receive a bulletin every Thursday morning that includes one answer to a publishing question, one publishing tip, one publishing resource and one bit of publishing advice.

You Don’t Need a Platform If You Can Find an Audience

Today’s post is by author Catherine Baab-Muguira (@CatBaabMuguira).

In preparing to tell you that you don’t need a huge personal “platform” to get a publishing deal, I feel like a missionary about to knock on your front door, all aquiver with zeal and broad-shouldered with conviction. Like, Hi there, friend! Have you heard the good news?

It’s true. You don’t need some huge platform to get a publishing deal or sell books to readers. All you really need is an audience, and the even better news is, such audiences are already out there, ready-built. In a minute, I’ll show you how to find them on Facebook, Reddit, Quora, and similar.

First, let’s acknowledge why “platform” is so horrible, so awful and painful.

My theory, based on observing myself and my friends, is that writers tend to be people who simultaneously crave and fear attention, so we contrive a way to get attention under controlled conditions. People generally don’t become writers because they love being on stage, or because they’d feel at ease kicking back on the set of a talk show and chit-chatting with the shellacked host.

No. Most of us become writers because we’d be uncomfortable in such situations, yet yearn to put ourselves across, anyway. It’s why we choose the loneliest, most introverted medium. It’s also why the modern-day diktat—that, if you want to get published and have a writing career, then you must have large platform complete with zillions of social-media followers—can feel like such a sucker punch. If we were natural-born performers, we wouldn’t be writers. Right?

Still, it would be useless to fault publishers for their reluctance to take on unknown or little-known writers. The dynamic is not limited to publishers, for one. Most people seek information before making financial investments, craving evidence that the investment will profit. Likewise, most people want their bosses to be pleased with their job performance, to not hate them for making bad bets and losing the company’s money.

It’s like that old saying in sales: “No one ever got fired for buying IBM.”

It’s understandable that acquiring editors, who are after all only human, would feel most comfortable working with established brands, and in the writing business that tends to mean working with writers who are already famous, boast large social-media followings, and/or can boast of big bylines, all the social proof that comes from publishing stories in the biggest venues.

What’s more, while social-media followings don’t always equate to big sales, it remains true that writers who’ve developed huge email lists have a much better chance of hitting bestseller lists. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram followings may be red herrings for both publishers and for writers themselves, but email subscriber bases can much more reliably drive sales and preorders.

Besides, whether or not publishers are justified in caring about your platform, the fact is that they do, so why moan? You could waste 10 years of your life wishing this reality were different. Ask me how I know.

Now what if there were a reliable way you could hack a platform and address publishers’ concern that your book will make a good financial bet?

When I sold my nonfiction debut back in 2019, I had the same modest following that I do now: a few thousand on Twitter, and effectively none on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube. The way I made my case was by focusing on my subject’s platform instead. I wanted to write a book about Edgar Allan Poe, so in my book proposal, I spent a great deal of time outlining Poe’s platform, both his online following and its physical, meat-world manifestations.

Sure, the guy has been dead for almost 200 years, and still he has 3.6 million Facebook fans—more than James Patterson or Danielle Steele. It’s a hell of a data point, and Poe has large followings on other social platforms, too.

There are 20,000-plus Poe fans gathered on Wattpad, and another 14,000 on Bookbub.Some 63,000 people follow “Edgar Allan Poe” as a topic on Quora, and there’s a subreddit dedicated to Poe which has around 4,000 people.There are the four Poe museums in the U.S., plus numerous Poe festivals and Poe associations which include both Poe scholars and everyday super-fans.

If I were a marquee-name writer with a track record of bestsellers, I wouldn’t have a bigger platform than Poe. Colleen Hoover doesn’t, at least by Facebook stats, and right now, she’s outselling the Bible.

I didn’t just use Poe’s stats to impress publishers. I put them in my query letter as well. I’ve also used them to place pitches and promotional pieces about my book, now that it’s out in the world, toddling around on its wobbly baby legs, and I’ve started writing articles about Poe’s massive following, up to and including this one.

Would you believe that editors at magazines and websites also care about reaching large numbers of readers? Shocking, I know.

Everyone at every level of the media business stands eager to tap into huge bases of existing fans. It’s the equivalent of buying IBM, so how can you make this dynamic work for you?

In short, by focusing on a massive, pre-built audience instead of on myself, I got a book deal, making all my author dreams come true. And the same path is open to you, if your subject is a topic or person of broad interest (or even, if its followers are enthusiastic enough, of niche interest).

This tip isn’t just applicable to nonfiction, either. A few weekends ago, when I was attending one of those IRL Poe festivals, I heard the novelist Lynn Cullen talk about how her book on Poe led to a huge career breakthrough, though she’d already published several well-regarded books before she wrote 2013’s Mrs. Poe.

Poe himself is just one example, one topic. There’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Composting. Guy Fieri. Greece. Pickleball. Time-travel romances. Writing itself. Et al. Search for these subjects on Facebook, Reddit, Quora, Goodreads, etc., and you’ll find their fan-bases.

So, even as you grudgingly tweet, or send TikToks into the wind, stop and think: Does your subject already have a large existing fandom? How can you quantify that fandom, using the data to impress agents, publishers, and editors? How can you make strategic connections within that fandom so that when it comes time to promote your work, you’re in position?

The beauty of this hack is so self-evident it’s blinding. The focus doesn’t have to be on little ol’ introverted you (or me). Instead, we’re able to connect with others through a shared interest, to bypass the awkward small talk and delve into a common obsession. Our missions become manageable: Instead of building up a following, we take advantage of a pre-built one. We connect with those who love our closest comp, or those who hero-worship Poe just like we do, which feels so much more natural, comfortable, right.

Pardon me if I sound evangelical. As plain and simple as this platform solution is, it’s magic in practice—a way to make the GD numbers work at last. Some secrets are just too good to keep.