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What If Your Memoir Is Middle Grade?

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Today’s post is by Allison K Williams (@GuerillaMemoir). Join us on Wednesday, March 9 for the online class Writing Memoir for Young Adult and Middle Grade.

Many of the adult memoir manuscripts that cross my editorial desk share one issue: They start too early. Usually, about 50 pages too early. The writer spends time establishing the quirky small town/neighborhood they were born in, the family experiences that shaped them, the early realizations that they—or their family—weren’t like everyone else, carefully setting up the clues for later revelations about divorce, addiction, illness or triumph.

The reader needs some of that information, yes, but not all of it. A concrete, well-timed detail can give a lot to readers without spelling it out. For example: I could fill you in on my family history of alcoholism, how it manifested in my grandparents’ daily “cocktail hour,” my own shying away from drinking because I don’t like the taste and I’m scared, what it was like living with a father who was drunk or at least buzzed most of the time—or I could tell you, I have a hard time telling when someone else is drunk. I think they just seem “jolly.” For an adult memoir about an adult experience in my life, and in context, that’s probably enough background.

But what if your childhood is the whole point?

While some adult memoirs successfully cover childhood in depth (notably Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club and Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle), there’s a whole new category out there, selling like hotcakes: memoir for young readers. Graphic-novel autofiction like Raina Telgemeier’s Guts and Jerry Craft’s New Kid and Class Act. Memoir in verse like Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming and Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out & Back Again, both winners of the National Book Award and Newberry Honors, and Laurie Halse Anderson’s Shout, the memoir version of her bestselling novel Speak.

These memoirs fall into Young Adult and Middle Grade, but they don’t shy away from hard subjects. Anxiety. Racism. Immigration. Poverty. Sexual assault. They embrace beautiful writing while dealing with issues their readers experience, in vocabulary their readers can understand and apply to their own lives. Not everything ends happily ever after.

In an adult memoir, childhood is usually a chance for reflection, as in Jenny Lawson’s Let’s Pretend This Never Happened:

By age seven I realized that there was something wrong with me, and that most children didn’t hyperventilate and throw up when asked to leave the house. My mother called me “quirky.” My teachers whispered “neurotic.” But deep down I knew there was a better word for what I was. Doomed.

Lawson takes us into the feelings of the child she was, but she’s processing her experiences through the reactions of the adults around her at that time, and her own knowledge now of her adult life. We know she survived—she wrote a memoir about it.

Thannha Lai’s young self in Inside Out & Back Again also feels doomed:

Every Friday
in Miss Xinh’s class
we talk about
current news.

But when we keep talking about
how close the Communists
have gotten to Saigon,
how much prices have gone up
since American soldiers left,
how many distant bombs
were heard the previous night,
Miss Xinh finally says no more.

From now on
Fridays
will be for
happy news.

No one has anything
to say.

This young narrator shows looming tragedy and fear through her eyes at that age, instead of looking back. There’s an urgency and immediacy to the child’s story. Memoirs from a younger POV bring extra tension, because we all know adulthood can turn out very differently from what we expected. The choices a child makes are often more fraught, with farther-reaching implications, and we don’t know if the narrator will be OK, or what “OK” will mean in fifteen years.

What might make your story right for YA or Middle Grade? Think about your most vivid and intriguing experiences: What age were you? How much of your current manuscript focuses on childhood, and more specifically, learning and realizing new things about yourself and the way the world works at that age? How much is adult reflection on adult problems? Maybe the memoir you’re working on now is right for adults—but there’s a big chunk of childhood you’d still like to share.

Think also about your desired audience. Who is going to benefit more from hearing your story: adults experiencing the same situation, or kids who might be able to choose another path, or gain more resources from knowing they aren’t alone?

Practicing writing through your younger eyes can bring a freshness and urgency to your prose, even when your finished work will be targeted to adult readers. Recreating childhood experiences on the page can bring up buried memories, sounds, smells, tastes, interactions that have faded for adult-you, and make your settings and characters more vivid and realistic for the reader.

What makes a memoir for young adults or middle-grade readers isn’t shying away from tough topics, or using childish language, but approaching situations and events with your childhood eyes. Sharing what the narrator sees and feels, with all the intense emotional engagement of a child, while letting the reader compare those things to what they, too, are seeing and feeling right now.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, please join Allison on Wednesday, March 9 for the online class Writing Memoir for Young Adult and Middle Grade.

If You Can’t Stand the Sight of Your Own Blood, Don’t Step Into the Ring

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

About 10 years ago, I was moaning to my longtime mentor about the mean comments posted on one of my articles. “What is wrong with people?” I asked him. He’s written for Vogue, the New York Times, and published a string of well-regarded books, and while I have done none of those things, I was sure he could use a gripe session, too.

Instead he shrugged and said, “If you can’t stand the sight of your own blood, don’t step into the ring.”

OUCH. I had not been looking for tough love. I wanted sympathy. Why couldn’t he understand that I’m a delicate artiste who needs everyone else to cater to my exquisite sensitivities? What was so hard to grasp about my needing endless external validation and not criticism, much less typo-riddled harangues from strangers?

Okay, so I was the confused one. My mentor had it right, I just needed a little time to come around to his way of thinking. Once I did, though, my worldview rearranged itself in a better order—I had fewer expectations and could accept a wider range of outcomes. It is difficult yet important to toughen up a little, and to develop enough confidence in your work that you’re not sunk every time someone dislikes it and says so, at length.

This isn’t to romanticize hard knocks, it’s to romanticize resilience. How else are you going to have a writing career that lasts more than a couple of weeks? How else can you maintain a crucial openness to feedback, so that when the helpful kind comes, you’re able to hear it? How else can you keep going amidst the often distressing realities of this profession? What are you gonna do—quit?

Fortunately, I only need to ask myself such tough questions every single day. Still, the foremost thing my friend’s advice reminds me of is not the knockdown but the joy: how great it is to be in the ring. How great is it? Oh my God, it is so great. I take it for granted that you also worked for years to get here. You may’ve wanted to be in the ring your entire thinking life. And like Drake said: Started from the bottom, now we here. It is a privilege. I for one am so glad. My guess is you are, too. This dream does not come for free and it never will, but you know, if you can’t stand the sight of your own blood, don’t step into the ring.

These days, just typing that sentence makes me grin at my desk, here in the predawn dark where I have foregone sleep so I can do this instead. Once, it was hard to hear. Now it guides me.

It’s what I told myself in 2018 when I had a different piece come out and a beloved internet personality spent hours making fun of me on Twitter, with a fair few of her 100,000 followers joining in. Seeing that thread was like a polar plunge of the soul, my sensation a refreshing combination of embarrassment and hurt. Soon it grew so long that I stopped quoting it to my therapist and just forwarded her the link. But you know, if you can’t stand the sight of your own blood, don’t step into the ring.

It’s what I told myself when, even more recently, an excerpt of my first book ran on Lit Hub in what was, for me, a dream very literally come true, and some people in the comments section were moved to call it “too cute by half and twice as contrived,” while others posted longer diatribes:

I signed up for this site just to comment on how terrible this article is. I mean, we’re discussing a man like Edgar Allen Poe here [sic], and the best advice you can construe from his life is “double your effort and move/run away”? Well, someone didn’t double their effort in writing this it seems.

I’d like to imagine that you didn’t ever think this was good, but that it’s your job to constantly write mediocre to shitty clickbait articles, and that you are really a talented writer just looking for your big break, and that you hate doing this. I want to believe.

The funny thing is, the excerpt was itself about rejection, so this person dunking on me was, so to speak, scoring double points in the video game. While I can’t say if they really did try to imagine my deeper fears, they landed close enough. It’s okay, though. I don’t agree with their assessment, I have more confidence in my work than that, and anyway I have grown used to the sight of my own blood. It does not shock me. It is essentially fine, close enough to fine for me to keep going.

So—submission rebuffed? Query dismissed? Book turned down by some acquiring editor? Nasty review posted for all to see? If you can’t stand the sight of your own blood, don’t step into the ring. Meanwhile it’s so wonderful to be in the ring. I can’t see leaving it voluntarily, because I want so much to be here. Don’t you? If you’re reading this, you’re probably a writer, too. So you know.

How Important Is Genre When Pitching and Promoting Your Book?

Today’s guest post is a Q&A by Sangeeta Mehta (@sangeeta_editor), a former acquiring editor of children’s books at Little, Brown and Simon & Schuster, who runs her own editorial services company.

This past fall, I came across an essay published by Literary Hub in defense of genre labels. Author Lincoln Michel argued that, while genre labels are fraught, they are “highly useful” and we “actually need them more than ever.”

This point of view intrigued me because it’s rare, especially coming from a fiction writer. Many novelists, especially those who consider themselves literary novelists, are loath to define their genre. Why reduce their work to a label or box? Doesn’t confining oneself in this way impede the very process of creating art? Some writers wouldn’t mind dissolving genre altogether.

As it turns out, publishing executives also have reservations about labels. Earlier this month in Poets & Writers, Dutton editor-in-chief John Parsley said that one of his biggest pet peeves is “the pressure to classify a book as either literary or commercial.” This also surprised me since, as Parsley notes, it’s generally those within the trade who encourage such classifications. It also made me wonder if “literary” and “commercial” could be considered genres.

To get a better understanding of what genre is and how much trade book publishing relies on this concept, I spoke with literary agents T.S. Ferguson of Azantian Literary Agency and Laura Zats of Headwater Literary Management, both of whom have spent several years working in the book industry in various capacities. As with all my Q&As, neither knew the other’s identity until after they submitted their answers to my questions below. Interestingly, their answers overlapped on several levels.

Let’s start with a broad question: What is your definition of “genre,” and how would you differentiate it from other literary terms that are often used in conjunction with it, such as “category,” “form,” and “audience”?

T.S. Ferguson: For me, genre is about setting an expectation with your reader. For example, when you tell someone a book is a “fantasy” they are going to expect some magic or otherworldliness, if a book is labeled a “romance” there’s an expectation that there will be a Happily Ever After at the end. It helps the reader wrap their heads around what kind of story they’ll be getting if they choose to read this book. Category does something similar, but in nonfiction, for instance, your book could be a wellness book, a memoir, a travel guide, etc.—but can also indicate the book’s target age (young adult, middle grade, etc.).

Form and audience are just other ways to give an initial sense of the best way to position your book in the market and in the minds of the industry professional you’re asking to read your book. And they can work together. For instance, maybe your book is a science fiction (genre) short story (form) that will appeal primarily to women in their twenties and early thirties (audience). Your book may find appeal beyond those labels, but it’s good for an agent, editor, or bookseller to know where to start. Who are the readers who are most likely to want to read your book?

Laura Zats: Pretending nonfiction doesn’t exist for the moment, I find it easiest to define the broad term “genre” starting with what publishing calls “genre books”—that is, thrillers, mysteries, romance, science fiction, and fantasy. Genre books are books that are writing to specific rules, things that a reader will expect to be there. This includes worldbuilding, settings, tropes, and even beats to the story. For example, you know a romance novel will always have an HEA (Happily Ever After) or at least an HFN (Happily for Now). From this, genre becomes a little more general, as there are fewer rules to follow, but still seeks to describe, succinctly, what the book is. An historical book will take place in an historic time period, for example. Genre is what the book is, compared to a term like category, which describes only the age range of who the book is for—this is why you have categories like middle grade and young adult and adult, but each category can have fantasy books in them.

Do you expect writers to indicate their genre in a query letter, or is it just as effective to leave it open ended, so that you can make the final call? Are you impressed when a writer deems their work “genre-bending” or “hybrid,” or is this too vague of an assessment?

TSF: Genre is very important to include. The purpose of your query letter is to intrigue the agent enough to want to start reading your work. Being able to give a sense of what type of book you’re asking them to read is a crucial part of that. It also shows you know your market.

I do love when a writer calls their work “genre-bending”—if that’s what it is—but I want to know specifics. Don’t just leave it there. Genre-bending in what way? Take a classic example in film. If I knew nothing about the movie “Alien,” calling it genre-bending or a genre hybrid would do nothing to tell me what I was getting into. But if you told me it was horror/science fiction, I’d be intrigued enough to want to read on.

LZ: Personally, I love working with books that are cross-genre or genre-bending, but crucially, every book still has a primary genre. Naming one primary genre tells me that you understand genre, that you’re a reader, and that you know where your book fits in the market. When I sell books that cross the boundaries between literary fiction and fantasy, for example, to literary fiction editors, I’ll call it a “work of literary fiction with speculative elements,” and to sci-fi & fantasy (SFF) editors I’ll call it “literary (literary being a quality mostly describing writing here) fantasy.” If a writer has a crossover, I encourage them to use the same technique for querying, with the caveat that stretching a description of your book to fit a genre will end up being a waste of your time.

Continuing this line of thinking, if a writer takes a granular approach to identifying their genre, does this give them an edge? A self-publishing writer who chooses an obscure enough genre often becomes a bestselling writer, at least in that genre. Could this same thinking apply to traditional publishing? Or is there a limit to the number of genres, subgenres, and other descriptors they should use when searching for an agent?

TSF: This is a difficult question because I think every agent and editor is different in what they’re looking for. I think the best thing to do is look at their websites and see what kind of information they’re asking for when you query them. For me, personally, if there’s a snappy marketing way of saying it (“this is an enemies-to-lovers, one-bed-only sci-fi/rom-com set on a spaceship orbiting Mars”) then I’m into it. (I’m not looking for a sci-fi/rom-com, but there’s a ton I am looking for and I love a well-done genre blend). However, if you need to go into more detail, it’s probably better to work it into the description of the plot or in a separate paragraph after you describe the plot.

LZ: While a granular approach might be helpful if an indie author wants to hit an Amazon bestseller list, being too specific with your genre will actively hurt a writer querying their book to agents for a few different reasons. First, listing hyper-specific subgenres can communicate that the writer doesn’t understand how traditional publishing approaches genre (which can be extrapolated to mean that they don’t understand how genre relates to larger organizational structures like imprints). Second, a lot of those online retailer subgenres say more about theme than subject, and theme is not an effective way to pitch a book! And finally, focusing too specifically will more than likely mess up your agent research—you might end up querying too broadly (because no one lists your specific subgenre), which is a waste of time, or you might end up eliminating agents based on broad wish lists without giving them a chance to look at your book. As a rule, stick to well-known and well-established subgenres and let your plot paragraphs do the heavy lifting!

If a writer finds success with a certain genre, they will probably be encouraged by their publisher to stay with it to grow their audience. But if you have a client who wants to flex other writing muscles, what is the best way for them to balance their creative impulses with their contractual obligations? Should they use a pen name for any new works that don’t fit into the genre in which they are established? Self-publish?

TSF: I’m a big proponent of “write what you’re passionate about” so if my future clients want to write outside of the genre they’re currently publishing in, I’ll support it. What that looks like I think depends on the contract, the publication schedule, and how fast the author is able to write. If you can only write a book a year and you have Book 2 in your contract due next year, you should focus on that first and then write the book idea that’s been in the back of your mind while you’re waiting to hear about the next contract. If you’re a more prolific writer and you’re capable of it, you might be able to get that book written before you need to focus on Book 2 in your contract. It’s definitely a matter of balancing business with art, and when in doubt, talking to your agent is always the best course, in my opinion.

Whether to use a pen name is a personal decision you should discuss with your agent. There are many good reasons to use one, but it may not be necessary. Same with choosing to self-publish vs. finding a second publisher for your new stream.

LZ: The bulk of the authors on my list write in multiple genres or categories, often concurrently! Individual strategies vary a ton depending on what an author is writing, but here’s my general advice: spend a few years creating a base in a single genre and category—once you have 2–3 books out, that’s the time when an agent can start pursuing publication for your other works. It may make sense to switch just one thing at a time (for instance, if you write contemporary YA and want to write adult science fiction, it may be easier to sell a contemporary fiction or YA science fiction work first than to switch completely over at once, all while returning occasionally to your original genre). Think of individual projects as steppingstones to get you to a place where you are branded in such a way that you can pivot effortlessly between genres you want to write. For some people, this might take 5 years. Others, much longer. But lots of fun books get written in between! Pen names are best used to separate out readership groups (using a pen name for erotic romance is pretty necessary when you also write kids’ books!), but some authors like to use them to indicate a change in genre, or subject.

On the flip side, if one of your clients has reached a plateau with general fiction, for instance, would you encourage them to try their hand at genre fiction? Since genre fiction tends to follow a formula and can be very lucrative, would making this switch be a viable way for the writer to continue to publish and stay in the game, so to speak?

TSF: I think this is entirely dependent on the author. I wouldn’t dream of encouraging an author who doesn’t like or understand genre fiction to move in that direction just to make more money. If they’d reached a plateau with general fiction (or whatever area they were writing in) and wanted to break out, I would sit down with them and look at their career holistically. Is there anything they can do to push their writing to the next level? Is there an idea they’ve been sitting on because they were worried it’s too ambitious? Is it that their current publisher hasn’t been pushing their books as much as we’d like, and is it time to consider shopping their next book around to other houses, etc.? A good agent will always be willing to strategize with you about your career and will want to know about your concerns, your priorities, etc.

LZ: Oh goodness me, no! Genre fiction is formulaic and can be lucrative, but it is a HUGE INVESTMENT. First, a lot of genre fiction runs on much shorter publication timelines and work best as series, so unless you can commit to writing 1.5–2 books a year, you’re going to be considered a slow producer. Plus, I think a lot of writers mistake formulaic for easy. Genre books aren’t just plug-and-play; their magic comes from how a writer innovates and twists the common tropes while simultaneously giving a genre reader the beats and themes they expect a genre book to have. You simply cannot write a successful or even good mystery or romance or thriller without being an avid fan and reader of those genres and understanding intimately the pacing and tropes that make them so popular.

Can you think of any genres that editors are increasingly reluctant to acquire? What are some newer genres (or themes or trends) that have caught your attention?

TSF: Oh gosh. Well, my area of expertise is young adult and middle grade, so keep in mind that’s where I’m coming from. I’m constantly hearing whispers about what’s in and out of style. It made sense when people said there was vampire or dystopian fatigue after Twilight and Hunger Games, not because readers weren’t clamoring for it anymore, but because gatekeepers weren’t. And now vampires are making a comeback! I’ve heard things like “YA fantasy is a tough sell” while I was acquiring and successfully publishing YA fantasy. And I saw the article saying literary agents predict joy will be a big trend soon, but as someone who processes the world through art and media that is dark and edgy and sometimes disturbing, I’m not personally jumping on that bandwagon just yet.

My advice has always been “don’t write to trends.” If you’re chasing trends, by the time you go through the entire process of selling the book, editing it, and publishing it, you’re likely to have already missed it. Instead, what I’m always looking for is something that feels unique and special, that stands out in some way amidst the noise of so many books being published.

LZ: I’m asked this question all the time! I’ll explain why it’s actually the entirely wrong question to ask an agent or editor. When I first became an agent, vampires were on their way out for all the regular reasons—there had been several years of vampire books and a lot of them were huge hits and so publishing more books with vampires had less of a return on investment because there were already bigger, more popular ones published recently. So everyone stopped publishing vampires! Well guess what’s popular again? Vampires! All trends, big and small, are cyclical. Additionally, as an agent, I’m already selling books into late 2023, so if an author asks what’s hot and goes to write it now, it’s almost guaranteed that they’ll miss the trend entirely. It’s much more effective to just write the book you want to write and be patient if it’s outside of trend when you finish it. It’ll come back!

A few more sweeping questions: Is there such a thing as “women’s fiction”—or is this too fraught a label? Can “upmarket fiction,” “book club fiction,” and “commercial fiction” be considered genres—or are these marketing terms that should be reserved for the publisher? Is “literary fiction” a genre—or does it defy or transcend genre?

TSF: As a cis gay man who loves a lot of things that are considered traditionally feminine, I hate the idea that there are girl books and boy books. That said, I do think there are certain books that are more likely to appeal to women, if only because of the gender conditioning our society instills in all of us from birth. So while I do think there is such a thing as “women’s fiction,” the concept is a bit fraught and I also would love to see men picking up “women’s fiction” and enjoying it without shame.

And yes, I do think upmarket fiction, book club fiction, literary fiction, etc. could be considered genres, I usually think of them as sub-genres of contemporary realistic fiction, though I do believe you can also have a literary fantasy or an upmarket horror, etc. Like the other genres mentioned above, those terms come with a certain promise to the reader. They’re also marketing terms, in the sense that all genres are marketing terms.

LZ: I constantly interrogate my own definition of literary fiction—usually, I circle back around to the belief that literary fiction really only exists when one also discusses commercial fiction. I think it’s easy to be glib and say that literary fiction books win awards and don’t sell, and commercial fiction books don’t win awards but do sell, but these are not economic terms! They are simply content descriptors! Both literary and commercial fiction are catch-all terms that describe what a book isn’t (or isn’t only): it’s not genre fiction, it’s not just women’s fiction, it’s not just historical. Where the distinction is, then, is voice. There is no singular literary voice, just as there is no singular commercial-style voice, but the terms help readers determine the way they might ingest the story—will they be more likely to rip through it in an hour because the plot is expertly handled and pulls them through? Or will they luxuriate over the prose? The former is more likely to be commercial, the latter literary.

Assuming there is no definitive list of genres, how do you suggest that writers narrow theirs down? Do you have any other advice on why this does (or doesn’t) matter?

TSF: Ultimately, on top of helping industry professionals position your book, it’s also important to show you know the market your book will be competing in, to understand the fans of that genre, to be well-read in that genre, etc. The more you know about the areas you’re publishing into, the easier it will be for you to reach those readers, both with your work and with your marketing efforts to promote your work. And knowing those things, and having a wider reach, will also make you more appealing to publishers.

LZ: Stay as general as you can while still being descriptive! “Fiction” doesn’t cut it as it’s too vague, but “commercial fiction” is fine! “Women’s fiction” is fine! If you’re writing genre fiction, you’ll have more access to common subgenres (for example, urban fantasy, military science fiction, domestic thriller), but if you can’t pick one or are having trouble deciding, it’s okay! Just zoom out a ton and make sure your plot paragraphs in your query are doing their job!

T.S. Ferguson (@TeeEss): Before joining Azantian Literary Agency in 2021, T.S. Ferguson worked for 16 years as an editor for some of the top children’s and teen book publishers in the business, including Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, Harlequin Teen/Inkyard Press (an imprint of HarperCollins), and JIMMY Patterson Books. He has worked with New York Times bestselling and award-winning authors such as Sherman Alexie, Sara Zarr, Suzanne Selfors, Pseudonymous Bosch, Robin Talley, Hillary Monahan (writing as Eva Darrows), and Adi Alsaid.

Laura Zats (@LZats): For over a decade, Laura has worked with books in every way from bookselling to editing to self-publishing. A literary agent since 2014, she finds the most joy in working closely with authors to build their long-term careers in ways that contribute positively to their financial and mental health, as well as the greater community. Since 2016, Laura has hosted Print Run, a publishing podcast, with Erik Hane and is increasingly passionate about teaching, mentorship, and the role books play in the fight for social justice. In her spare time, Laura plays tabletop role-playing games, cooks elaborate meals, follows long-distance dogsled racing, and drinks a lot of tea. Learn more at the Headwater Literary Management website.

You Are Not Your Traumas. But Here’s How to Write About Them

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Today’s post is by writer, coach and editor Lisa Cooper Ellison (@lisaellisonspen). Join her on Feb. 24 for the online class Writing About Trauma.

In 2016, I attended a conference breakout session facilitated by a charismatic speaker who’d written magnificently about her abusive childhood. During the Q&A, a writer shyly picked up the mic and said, “I tried to write about my childhood, but after fifty pages I had to stop. I need to finish this story, yet every time I try, I can’t. Can you tell me how to finish my book?”

The speaker emphasized self-care and told the writer to keep showing up.

The following year another writer asked a different speaker a similar question and received an analogous response. Self-care. Keep showing up. Trust the process. If it’s too difficult, write about something else.

In my last post, I wrote about the importance of preparing yourself to write about trauma. But preparation is meaningless if you don’t know how to navigate the triggers and tripwires you might encounter as you write about distressing material.

When coaching writers, many hope I’ll share some magical tips that will allow them write powerfully about their pain without having to feel it. Unfortunately, that’s not an option. Writing well requires an open heart. That means you must relive a small portion of the incident as you write about it. When it comes to trauma, that can be a real challenge. Traumatic experiences can be so intense they hijack the brain. Some defy language. Sitting with them for too long can trigger responses that feel a lot like pots boiling over. Do this often, and you might snuff out the passion fueling your project.

To write sustainably about trauma, you need to operate more like a tea kettle that lets a small, steady stream of feeling pour from you—a process that requires moderation.

Practice moderation

Traumas frequently involve crossed boundaries that leave us feeling frightened, confused, and powerless. While you might confront these feelings as you write, you can create boundaries around the process by moderating the content you choose to work on. To do this, make a list of potential scenes then rate them on a scale from one to ten.

The best writing takes place between four and seven—the place where we have feelings about a situation, but those feelings aren’t powerful enough to boil over. Anything rated as an eight or above probably belongs in therapy first. Seeking help before you write is not a sign of weakness. Having a guide counteracts the loneliness and the voicelessness emblematic of our deepest wounds.

When you’re ready to write, limit the number and duration of your high-intensity writing sessions (that’s anything rated at a six or above) to no more than thirty minutes, no more than three times per week. If you have additional writing time, work on low intensity, lighter material.

Focus on meaning 

Trauma is a response, not an identity. To write well about the episodes that elicit these responses requires three steps:

Bearing witness to what happened.Assigning it a meaning and a place in your life.Letting it rest or letting it go.

When it comes to the harms we’ve endured, writers are frequently encouraged to “get it all out,” in hopes of feeling better. While you might feel some temporary relief after writing a cathartic draft, catharsis is only the beginning. Stopping at this point without making meaning from your experience can reinforce the trauma narrative living in your body and brain.

When I refer to meaning making, I’m not talking about some Pollyanna romp through your material that helps you find the merits of your rape or discover how a brutal attack was actually for your highest good. I’m talking about confronting the misperceptions you’ve held onto, like believing it was your fault, and then uncovering the ways you’ve grown either in spite of or as a direct result of what happened.

Psychologist Richard Tedeschi coined the phrase posttraumatic growth (PTG) to explain the positive changes that can arise from adversity. These positive changes are as common as the negative ones, and can include increased empathy, a recognition of personal strengths, and a shift in priorities. If we continue with the example of an assault, perhaps the attack itself was meaningless and unjustified, but in healing, you now have empathy for other survivors and the courage to speak out around the injustices that cause them.

Once meaning has been made, it’s important to let these events go. That’s how you keep from over-identifying with your traumas and instead make room for the revision that will help you turn something terrible into art. It’s also how you’ll help your readers learn vicariously from you.

There are many ways to find meaning in our stories, but most include considerable butt-in-the-chair time where you’ll sit with and explore those difficult moments. To keep from getting lost inside them, you need a process that allows you to go in, get the work done, and then go on with your day.

The bookend technique

Because traumatic memories can be so visceral, it’s easy to get stranded in our memories and then struggle to find a way back to the here and now. The bookend technique embeds your writing time inside a self-care and community check-in sandwich that’s designed to help you choose wisely and remain in control of even the most challenging writing sessions.

It’s purposefully infused with rituals. When used regularly, rituals prime the brain to work in certain ways. That’s why so many writers drink cups of tea, take a few deep breaths, or light candles to invoke their muse. Rituals can also be used to close out an event. Andre Dubus famously wrote “thank you” in his notebook at the end of each writing session. Hemingway jotted down what came next. Some writers go for walks, ring bells, or snuff out those candles.

If you want to bookend your writing sessions, here are the steps:

Assess your energy bank account and the amount of time you have available to write.Choose a scene with an intensity that aligns with what you learned in step one.If you plan to write about something rated at a six or higher, connect with a writing buddy. Tell them the level of intensity you’ve chosen and the length of your writing session, then ask to schedule a post-writing check-in to discuss your self-care plan or to simply talk about something else, like your plans for the rest of the day.Perform a quick ritual or do a short meditation like a body scan.Set a timer for 20 minutes.When the timer sounds, check in with yourself. If you’re doing okay, and the intensity isn’t too high, give yourself an additional 10 minutes. If not, stop.Complete an ending ritual such as going for a walk, drinking hot tea, or stretching to end your writing session.Check in with your writing buddy as a final way to connect with the here and now.Rest and do something soothing to recharge before continuing with your day.

These are just a few of the tricks that can help you write about trauma. Practicing them regularly can turn a story you need to write into one that’s not just finished but also settled.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, please join us on Feb. 24 for the online class Writing About Trauma.

How to Pitch Like a Hollywood Pro

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Today’s post is an excerpt from Pitch Like Hollywood: What You Can Learn from the High-Stakes Film Industry by Peter Desberg and Jeffrey Davis pp. 297-310 (McGraw Hill, February 2022).

You’re an actor. You kiss your wife and three-year-old daughter goodbye and push aside your daughter’s toys so you can climb into the minivan. In 20 minutes, you’re going on stage as a homicidal maniac. You’re about to burst into a bedroom with a meat cleaver. How do you make the transition from hubby and dad to maniac?

Bridging.

Actors use bridging to prepare themselves to inhabit a role. They must make a mental transition from the dad who drove to the theater in a minivan to the maniac who steps onto a stage with the cleaver.

Walking into a pitch, you don’t just turn on a switch; you transition. You have to clear your mind and summon the pitch you’ve prepared.

Make a good first impression before your pitch

The first moments you enter a room can determine the role you’re placed in. Your attire, your posture, the way you enter the room, the type of eye contact you make, and your handshake are what people notice first. And they still haven’t heard your first word.

Smile as you open with a statement or question that grabs attention and provides a hook that prompts your listener to ask questions. You don’t have to be funny or loud, and you should never be the smartest person in the room.

“There are quiet people who are fascinating,” says Academy Award-winning producer Jana Memel. “If you love the story you’re telling, you’ll get over. Be the best you. You don’t have to be Peter Guber who used to jump in people’s laps. You can be soft-spoken and make me want to lean in and listen to you. It’s all about getting your passion across.”

The eyes have it

Make eye contact from the moment you step into the room. If there are two or more people present, make as much eye contact with each person as you can. Research shows that with one person, the optimal eye contact length is around 50 percent of the time. If you make less eye contact, you seem overly shy, scared, or disinterested. If it’s much more, you’ll make people uncomfortable. You don’t want people to feel as if you’re wearing a white lab coat and they’re the experiment.

An effective strategy is to look away from people more when you’re talking. This makes you look pensive. Make eye contact when they’re talking. This lets you see and interpret them as they’re presenting their ideas.

There are additional incentives for making eye contact. We look at people we like more that those we don’t. Dominant people are looked at more, so giving them eye contact in your pitch is taken as a sign of respect. People who make eye contact are thought to be more interested and attentive. Extroverts make more eye contact. Avoiding eye contact is taken as a sign of anxiety. People who make more eye contact are also believed to be more trustworthy and sincere.

Never begin with an apology

The worst way to begin is by employing a self-handicapping strategy, like announcing how nervous you are. The thinking behind self-handicapping is the mistaken belief that you’re lowering the performance bar, limiting people’s expectations of you. Because their expectations are lowered, when you’ve completed your pitch, the catcher(s) will tell you, “You didn’t look nervous. You looked like you were in control.”

This is not what happens. The moment you announce that you’re nervous, you’re redirecting the audience’s attention away from your pitch and toward your hands to see if they’re shaking, or to your voice to detect a quaver. If you’re nervous, let the members of your audience figure it out for themselves. They rarely do. Don’t guide them to it.

Another common example of self-handicapping is to say that you’re inexperienced. “I know what I majored in has nothing to do with finance, but…” There’s a strong chance that the pitch rolls over and dies right then and there.

“Really?” the people you’re pitching to are wondering. “Then why are you wasting my time?” They may even say it out loud. You wouldn’t have gotten the meeting if someone didn’t recommend you.

Interaction: fools rush in

You will rarely walk into a room, give your pitch from beginning to end, say thank you, and leave. Your listeners may want to collaborate with you, question you, or criticize—but they will interact with you. They’ll be observing how you absorb changes or challenges to your ideas and how you react on your feet.

Here’s a little test of your intuition: Do you think it’s better to respond quickly or slowly to these challenges?

This question has been examined. You may think that it’s good to react quickly to a new challenge placed before you because it makes you look smart and imaginative, but you’d be wrong again. Two groups were presented with the same physics problems. One group consisted of physics professors and advanced graduate students, and the other group was made up of first-year physics students. It’s not a big surprise that the more advanced group did better at solving the problems, but we’re looking at timing here.

The takeaway was that the young students jumped in and quickly tried to solve the problem, while the more experienced group took much longer to engage. They studied the problem for quite a while longer, looking at it from multiple perspectives, before coming up with the solution. While their solution time was longer than that of the novice students, their answers were more correct.

It’s advisable to take your time and think things through instead of rushing in and presenting an ill-conceived response to an issue. Professionals will recognize that you take a more thoughtful approach.

Just as important as taking your time to respond is how you respond. As a professional, we assume that you know your field and will respond competently when technical issues are discussed, but what about when you respond to misinformation or an intrusive question?

Dealing with stress

In most cases, you’ll be walking into a room and pitching to people you’ve never met before or at least don’t know well. Wouldn’t it be great if you walked in and saw a friend among the people you’re about to pitch to? If you answered yes, you’re about to be surprised again. Friends can often throw you off your game. And the more those friends want you to succeed, the more of a source of distraction they can become.

Picture yourself learning to play a video game, in this case, Sky Jinks. You’ll learn to fly a plane around the screen avoiding obstacles coming at you faster and faster. If you do well, you get rewarded with money, so you’re somewhat motivated.

Now, a stranger walks into the room as you’re playing. At this point, you can see that you’re probably in the middle of an experiment. With one group of people, the stranger shows absolutely no interest in the game or the progress you or another player is making. In the other condition, he is cheering that player on, clearly wanting him to do well.

Being in the supportive situation made players focus more on themselves and their performance. The cheering acted as an additional form of distraction, causing them to have a poorer per- formance. The irony was that when they were interviewed, they reported feeling less stress by having a supportive audience, even though it made their performance worse.

Start selling at no

Producer/author Gary Grossman says if you get a “yes” on a pitch, stop:

Just stop. Don’t keep trying to sell them on something they’ve already said yes to.

Another mistake is you come in with too many projects, and all producers and execs know that the writer or producer wants to run through things, but again if they like something, forget about the other projects. It’s another good place to stop. Even if you have three more things to pitch because you want to end on a high note, stop. But really you cannot, and I mean must not, oversell.

I’m also a firm believer that you can’t start selling until they say no. Because they say “no,” it could mean that they may not be clear about why they said it. I’ll accept a “yes” and stop.

If they say “no,” I’ll try and find out if there’s another way in—and because I might not have communicated the pitch succinctly or the “no” gives me an opportunity to find out what way it would work. And in that regard, you have to learn to be pretty quick on your feet in how you pitch and how you react to them.

A final shove into the room

As you sit around worrying about your upcoming pitch, think of how lucky you are to have made it as far as the room. It’s an opportunity and a privilege. Lots of talented people don’t get there. You did.

And remember, “They can’t eat your children.”

If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out Pitch Like Hollywood: What You Can Learn from the High-Stakes Film Industry by Peter Desberg and Jeffrey Davis (McGraw Hill, February 2022).

How to Write a Thought Leadership Book

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Today’s post is by author, coach and speaker Stacy Ennis (@StacyEnnis).

With more than thirteen years working with nonfiction authors, and as a published author myself, I know how humbling it can be to set out writing a thought leadership book. After all, it’s one thing to want to write a book; it’s another thing to write a book that connects to your purpose and life’s work. It can feel like a daunting undertaking. But when you have ideas that can change the world for the better, it’s worth doing. When you step deeply into your role as a thought leader, your positive impact grows immensely.

A thought leader is someone whose ideas, expertise, or story influences others at scale, and often the most powerful catalyst to that type of influence is through a compelling thought leadership book that organizes and shapes the transformative insights you’re ready to share. Central to writing a book with this kind of power is understanding the why, who, what, and how of the book you want to write.

Why: Define your big vision

Before you begin writing your book, engage in one to two hours of intentional thought around the life and impact you’d like to have. Journal about what your ideal life looks like one, five, and ten years from today. At each point looking forward, note the age you are, describe your family life, detail your professional life and accomplishments to date, and clarify the impact you’re making through your thought leadership. Don’t forget to include joyful experiences like vacations and hobbies.

This activity will help you clarify and visualize the possible impact of your book, which makes up your why. Your big vision will serve as an anchor that keeps you motivated throughout the long journey of writing and publishing. (To support this process, download my free life visioning guide.)

Who: Clarify your “one reader”

If you’ve studied nonfiction book writing, you’ve probably come across the concept of the “one reader.” In a thought leadership book, your one reader should be a clearly defined person who will have the most profound experience with your book. This individual will undergo the greatest transformation, experience the deepest influence, and perhaps even become an evangelist of your work because she has been so greatly impacted.

To uncover your one reader, think back to the people you’ve influenced, helped, or supported over the years. These could be clients, colleagues, friends, or even your own family. Some authors find that their one reader is actually a younger version of themselves, before they developed a perspective or idea that changed everything. If you’re unsure about who your one reader is, set a timer for twenty minutes and freewrite or make a bulleted list of readers who would benefit from your book, listing the names of people you know, along with more general descriptions (like “young woman entering her career and lacking confidence” or “senior executive looking to develop empathetic leadership in a midsize company”).

Consider your list and the ways each potential reader could benefit from your book. Decide who would benefit the most, and then either sketch out a description of that person or create a fictional reader persona. Describe your ideal reader in a few paragraphs: name, age, what they do professionally, what their family life is like, what keeps them up at night, what gets them out of bed in the morning. What are their biggest challenges? What are they most excited about? List books they love and podcasts they listen to.

If you’re unsure whether you’ve defined the “right” reader, complete one or two more personas. Then take a day or two to think about what you’ve come up with and seek outside insights from a trusted mentor or friend. If you’re really stuck, consider finding an expert guide, such as a book coach or developmental editor. Clarity about your one reader is important, as it will drive decision-making as you outline and write your book.

What: Clarify your book idea

With clarity around your vision and your one reader, now it’s time to uncover the intersection of your ideas and impact. Define the core message of your book: a crystal clear one- to three-sentence description that fully defines the purpose, the throughline, and your hopes for reader impact.

To help clarify your core message, I suggest first spending thirty to sixty minutes reflecting on your book’s purpose. Turn your phone on do not disturb, shut down your computer, and ask anyone who may be home to not interrupt you. Then, close your eyes. Envision your reader reading your book. Watch her expression, imagining her coming across new insights and feeling new levels of awareness. Then, envision her finishing your book, closing it, and sitting quietly, reflecting on what she just read.

From here, you can define your core message by considering your book’s throughline, the “common or consistent element or theme shared by items in a series or by parts of a whole.” The throughline provides the consistent connective tissue that ties your book together from first word to final period. Defining the connective tissue of your book can be especially challenging for people with endless ideas or a robust history within their field. After all, how do you distill twenty years of ideation, practice, and expertise into a few sentences? If you’re feeling overwhelmed as you define your throughline, note some ideas and if needed, let them settle.

Next, turn back to your journal to answer a set of questions: What is the one thing you hope your reader will take away from the book? What are core learning points you hope she will remember? How will she be transformed, impacted, or inspired? Freewrite any additional thoughts or ideas that come up.

Finally, take a day or two away. Come back to your notes—including your vision, reader persona, and journaling—and write your core message, summarizing the purpose, throughline, and impact of your book. This will be your north star, the guiding focus of your writing.

How: Outline the structure and content of your book

Next, spend a couple of weeks outlining the book to create a solid structure. Consider both the core anchors of the book—which will organize into chapter topics—and how they need to be sequenced in order to create a profound impact on the reader. Think through how you’ll integrate storytelling. Consider when and how you introduce your core message, the big idea the book is centered on.

For example, will the book organize around a central narrative, such as your life story, including lessons, insights, and transformations that lead to a paradigm shift in the reader? Will your book present a groundbreaking idea, then walk through the background, discovery, and application of that idea? Will the writing focus on a blend of information, practical advice, and case studies or stories that support the big idea?

If you’re feeling stuck, study other books in your genre, especially ones that resonate with you. Review their table of contents. Reread a chapter or two to study how they integrate storytelling and data to support their big idea. Notice how some utilize storytelling as the core structural foundation, while others focus on the components of their big idea as a framework to guide chapter structures, and still others present information in a step-by-step, how-to approach.

As you think through various structures, consider your book’s core message. What type of structural approach best fits the purpose, throughline, and intended impact of your book? It’s a question worth spending time with, because having a sense of which structural category your book fits into will help you build the outline, plan the writing process, and actually write the draft.

With the why, who, what, and how of the book clearly defined, you’ll be on your way to writing a powerful thought leadership book that connects to your big vision—and eventually impacts lives.

A Year Without Social Media as a Freelance Writer

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

I became a full-time freelance copywriter and ghostwriter in spring 2016. Over the years, I’ve used social media to source new leads, maintain client relationships, distribute articles, and grow my newsletter. I’m convinced that these channels—LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, in particular—are some of the most effective marketing tools ever created, especially for writers.

But like many creatives, I’ve also found social media to be a major source of unwanted distraction. These channels are magnets for attention, often pulling me away from my most important work. A few years ago, I began taking this pull more seriously. How much more writing could I accomplish in a week without social media’s constant drag on my time and attention?

I tried many short-term solutions. I took social media fasts. I deleted the apps from my phone. I logged out of my profiles so that I would have to type the password each time I wanted to log in.

None of these tactics offered a permanent fix. At best, they helped me push through a single day, week, or (occasionally) month. In the end, I always returned to the habit of mindless news-feed scrolling.

In December 2020, I chose to try a more drastic approach. I took a one-year break from social media (which officially concluded in January 2022). Here’s how a year without social media impacted my writing business.

The pros of a year without social media

The first few months of the experiment were scary. My blog readers, email signups, and cold leads slowed substantially down. I wondered if I’d be forced to quit the experiment early just to keep my writing business alive.

Since I no longer had social media for content distribution or marketing, I had to find new ways to get my name and articles in front of my ideal readers. My two primary marketing tactics became writing guest posts (mostly for tech and business blogs) and SEO articles on my copywriting website. And these tactics turned the fate of my experiment around.

Almost every new client last year found me through Google or referral. At the beginning of my experiment, I was receiving about 3 website visitors per day from search engines. Today, that number is north of 40.

This traffic helped me grow the writing business. I was able to double my small email newsletter last year, as well as grow my writing revenue by about fifty percent.

Most notably, I believe my writing improved last year. One understated problem with social media is its ease of publishing. Before my break from social media, I might have a strong idea for an article. Instead of doing the hard work to flesh the idea into an article, I would often take an easier route: write a short synopsis, which I would publish as a tweet.

Taking a break from social media helped me develop greater patience with my ideas. If I liked an idea, I didn’t have the option to publish the one-sentence version. I was forced to sit with it, research it, and ultimately turn the idea into something of substance. Only then could I release the idea to the world.

The result: I was prolific in 2021. Beyond having more client work than any year before, I found the time to write and publish about forty articles across my blog and various guest posts. All this distraction-free writing culminated—I believe—in stronger prose in both personal and client projects.

The cons of a year without social media

Before launching the experiment, I wondered if my writing business would even survive without social media. Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook Groups were such easy forms of marketing and distribution. What would be the cost of ignoring all this low hanging fruit?

Obviously there was no way for me to split-test my year without social media to see what I missed. I can’t name the exact benefits I sacrificed last year because I don’t know.

What I do know is that social media used to be an easy place to grow my email list. Before the experiment, I regularly posted about my newsletter. Every mention—especially on LinkedIn and Twitter—resulted in several immediate email signups. By giving up social media, I also gave up that turnkey approach to finding subscribers. In 2021, I suspect that I worked a lot harder to earn each subscriber compared to the years before.

I also lost easy distribution last year. I was proud of many articles I wrote in 2021, but I had only one place (my newsletter) to share them. I didn’t miss the likes and comments of social media so much as I missed knowing that I had an easy way to tell the world about my latest article.

The biggest drawback of my social media break became clear after the experiment ended. In January 2022, I decided to return to just one social media channel: LinkedIn. The way I see it, LinkedIn offers the greatest benefits to my business, with the lowest drag on my time and attention.

I started publishing regularly on LinkedIn a couple weeks ago and immediately saw what I’d been missing for a year. It’s been like turning on a faucet. Almost every time I share a copywriting article on LinkedIn, a lead reaches out to me via email or direct message. It’s impossible not to wonder how many quality writing gigs I missed last year by disengaging from social media.

My relationship to social media going forward

On a personal level, I love life without social media. Every writer must strike a balance between deep work and platform building. This experiment taught me that I can indeed sustain (and grow!) my writing business without some of the most distracting social media channels.

For now, I will remain logged out of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I will continue to pursue SEO and guest posting as the primary marketing tools for my freelance writing business and newsletter, with LinkedIn reserved as a channel for distributing my latest articles.

As a copywriter, I’ve learned that focus is one of the most underrated strategies in marketing. It’s more effective to go all-in on a few channels than to engage lightly across many. Time to put that theory to practice.

3 Shifts You Need to Make to Finish Your Book

Today’s post is by editor, publisher and coach Janna Marlies Maron (@justjanna).

When I first met Cat, she had been working on her book for more than three years, since finishing her MFA program. She was frustrated and discouraged, feeling like she didn’t know what direction to take with her manuscript. She questioned whether anyone would ever want to read her book and, worse, she felt burned and discouraged by her MFA program because she didn’t feel she got the support she needed to write the story she felt compelled to tell. She learned a lot in the MFA program, but not how to actually finish a book. And she wasn’t able to figure out how to make progress on her manuscript without the external structure of the MFA program.

Maybe you can relate, because I hear these kinds of stories from writers all the time. They can’t seem to make progress on their own, without being in a workshop or MFA program. They also get stuck because they are overwhelmed by the amount of material they have, they don’t know how to organize it, and can’t figure out what structure will work best.

The writers I talk to also attempt to get unstuck in similar ways:

You read all the books and articles on writing you can get your hands on, thinking that if you can just unlock some mysterious craft secret then everything will magically fall into place.You attend as many workshops and seminars and master classes as you can, thinking that if you can just get the exact perfect feedback from so-and-so famous author who has all the answers, then you will have all the answers too.You keep doing the same things you’ve always done, thinking that if you just spend more time, work harder, attend one more workshop, or get more feedback, you’ll finally figure it out.

There’s just one problem with this thinking: It’s all a version of expecting external solutions, when the reality is that most of the time the solution is internal. You need to make three internal shifts to help you finish your book and become the writer you’ve always imagined: structure, story, and sanctuary. Let’s take a closer look at each element of this framework.

Shift 1: Embrace structure

Thinking about structure often makes creatives, especially writers, cringe a little bit. You want to write when you’re feeling inspired, when you’re in the mood, or when you feel like it. But the problem with that is you’re making time for your book project in a reactionary way that is sporadic, unsustainable and, ultimately, exhausting.

Instead, embracing structure means planning and finding consistency in your creative practice so that you can truly start to see the progress you want to see on your manuscript.

You can embrace structure in your writing life with these three actions:

Work your why. If you don’t know it already, figure out the WHY behind your book project and your life as a writer. What is the one compelling reason behind writing your book and telling your story? Once you have this, treat it like a vision statement—one sentence that summarizes your WHY, that you can post somewhere you’ll see it everyday, that keeps you motivated to keep returning to your manuscript.Gather your goals. Once you have your WHY, identify 3-5 goals that support your vision. These are milestones along the way toward accomplishing your vision, and completing your manuscript. As soon as you achieve one goal, you know you’re that much closer to the finish line.Safeguard your schedule. Now that you have your WHY and your GOALS, you need to establish a schedule that will support both by planning time to take action. Your schedule should be a calendar that you use every day. You don’t do anything unless it’s on your calendar, and you don’t make plans without checking your calendar first. And, most importantly, you treat all appointments as equal, even appointments that are only with yourself.Shift 2: Love your story

When I say “love your story,” it may sound a little cheesy or even a little cliché. But compared to other things you might say you love, like cooking or playing music or spending time with your family, it becomes pretty clear that you don’t love your story in the same way.

Let me explain. If you love to cook, you might spend time searching for new recipes. And when you find one you want to try, you might go out of your way to a specialty grocer to pick up some exotic ingredients that they don’t carry at Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s. Because you love it, you nurture it, and infuse the time you spend cooking with tender loving care.

It’s like one of my clients, Susie, says, “It’s not that my manuscript changed, but that I changed in relation to it. I started to believe, ‘Okay, I can write this. I can finish this.’ And that proved to be way more important to me.”

You can begin to love your story with these three actions:

Develop your draft. Sure, it’s easy enough to generate words, get feedback, and revise. Most writers feel like they have that part down. But if you try to force the material into submission and control its outcome, that’s not a very loving way to treat the project. Instead, how can you listen to the draft and let it tell you what it needs? Can you bring a sense of lightness and play into your work, holding it loosely so that it becomes what it’s meant to be? Master your mind. Your mindset affects you more than you know. It creates the story you tell yourself about the story you are writing. One of the best things my therapist ever did for me years ago was to give me the mantra: The story I tell myself creates the reality I experience. So as long as you tell yourself that your story doesn’t matter, that no one will want to read it, or that you don’t have what it takes to write a book—guess what? It will be true.Invest in yourself. When you hear the word “invest” you might automatically think: money. But investing in yourself is about giving yourself—and your book project—what you need to be successful. That means time, energy, attention, and, yes, sometimes money. If you are neglecting yourself, your skill development, or your creative process, then ultimately you are neglecting your story and you won’t make progress toward finishing your book.Shift 3: Create a sanctuary

If you hear the word “sanctuary” and think of a physical place, like a church or yoga studio or a botanical garden, in this context I want you to understand it as something you create in your mind so that you can take it with you anywhere you go.

When you do that, you can access the mindset and energy you need to work on your book without worrying about whether you are at home with all of your creature comforts or in a hotel room on a personal writing retreat. You can access it at any place and any time because you have everything you need within you.

You can create a sanctuary with these three actions:

Renew your rituals. Reflect on how you begin any time you sit down to work on your book. Is it rushed? Frantic? Forced? You can shift this energy so that it is calming and uplifting by incorporating rituals as a way to begin your writing time. Rituals are habits in an elevated form, an action you take intentionally that triggers your body and mind, and prepares it for the creative work ahead of you.Cultivate your creativity. As a writer, you are naturally curious and creative, and so you are probably drawn to forms of creativity other than writing. But, again, how intentional is it? I like to think of cultivating your creativity as cross training for your brain. It’s a way to stretch and train your creative muscles so that they are stimulated and ready to get to work when you sit down to make some progress on your manuscript.Watch your wellness. Your physical wellbeing is just as important for making progress on your manuscript as your craft skills and your mental wellbeing. I like to say, when I am not well, my work is not well. Just as athletes train and watch what they eat so that they can perform at their highest level on game day, you need to take care of your body by sleeping well, eating well, moving and exercising every day so that when you sit down to write, you are also ready to perform at your highest level. If you want to have the mental clarity, energy, and stamina required to generate the output necessary for a book-length manuscript, then you must watch your wellness.

You may have noticed that there is some overlap in each of these shifts and associated actions. Rituals can support mindset, wellness, and creativity; and investing can support all of those things as well. The framework is intentionally designed to be a layered approach, where one aspect supports the next, building on itself to create a more holistic approach to your book project that allows you to integrate your writing with every other aspect of your life.

It’s so easy to get caught up seeking external solutions to your problems, when the truth is if you take time to get quiet with yourself, you’ll realize that making these internal shifts will have a profound effect on your progress.

After working through this framework and making these three internal shifts for herself, not only did Cat finish her memoir manuscript, but she also told me that she now feels the way she wanted to feel at the end of her MFA program: Like a real artist.

3 Things to Ask Yourself Before Writing about Trauma

Today’s post is by writer, coach and editor Lisa Cooper Ellison (@lisaellisonspen). Join her on Feb. 24 for the online class Writing About Trauma.

“Let’s rip it off quick!” My grandmother pointed at the Band-Aid on my knee.

At four, I equated Band-Aid removal with peas, waiting my turn, and going to bed. Still, I loved and trusted my grandmother, so I let her yank it off. After a momentary flash of white-hot pain, I experienced an exquisite relief. Soon after, I adopted “rip it off” as my motto.

Three decades later, during my master’s in counseling, I discovered James Pennebaker’s research on how writing about difficult events improved your health. The trauma survivor in me saw this as a dream come true. So, I began a memoir.

My initial drafting plan combined Pennebaker’s research with Grandma’s sage wisdom. If ripping off a Band-Aid created some relief, churning out one hundred pages of “look what terrible thing happened” would elevate my health and happiness to the Oprah Winfrey level. Bottle that and I’d become the world’s greatest writing coach.

Except, the exact opposite happened. Writing about endless pain depressed me. Eventually, I avoided my writing desk. When I did show up, an essential part of me cried, “No, no, no.” If I forced myself to write anyway, the work felt flat and superficial.

To write sustainably about trauma, you must P.A.CE. yourself.

P roactively engage in self-care. A ctivate your internal wisdom. C hoose wisely and keep it contained. E xplore your stories with curiosity and compassion.

P.A.C.E. is an integrative approach to writing about trauma that combines proactive self-care, mindful awareness, and targeted strategies that help writers discover insights and resilience inside their painful experiences.

Activating your internal wisdom (the A in P.A.C.E.) helps you to assess what you should write, when to get started, and how to manage the process before working on painful material. The process can also help you if you’re feeling stuck.

But before you assess, you need to know the difference between journaling and storytelling.

Journals are private places where we record what’s happened to us. Sometimes we share entries with safe people like close friends or counselors, but they’re not meant for everyone. While you might delve deeper into certain topics, there are no rules to follow and no bar to meet when it comes to the quality of your writing. Journaling is a safe way to bear witness to your experiences and develop insights around them—especially if you’ve never shared these moments with anyone.

Memoirs and personal essays are curated stories about transformation that have gone through extensive revision. They’re tailored for a specific audience who will glean wisdom from them. That means you must reveal lessons learned in addition to writing dramatic moments well. Getting these projects to a publishable stage requires critical feedback from writers and editors.

Assess your readiness

If you’re interested in writing personal essays or a memoir about traumatic events, you might have some work to do before your project is ready for a critical eye, let alone the public. Many trauma survivors associate being seen with danger—either because something painful happened when they were seen, or they were not seen in some fundamental way, especially early in life. Wounds around being seen can make workshops and publications feel like a walk through an active minefield.

If you’re interested in writing a story, ask yourself why this experience needs an audience. If your goal is to show others what happened to you, it’s likely you need to journal for a while. This is a normal and healthy part of trauma writing. Early on, we need someone to attend to our wounds. If this is the case, the best audience is a counselor or other mental health professional—not a workshop or writing group. Workshops are designed to help writers improve their storytelling skills. Most writers, no matter how compassionate, aren’t equipped to help you make sense of your pain.

Assess your energy bank account

Whether you choose to journal or work on a formal project, you must manage the limited funds in your energy bank account. Rest, self-care, fun, and supportive relationships deposit energy into this account. Everything else draws from it. Illness communities talk about energy levels in terms of spoons. If we feel great, we might wake up with ten spoons. Experiencing a relapse? Cut that number in half. Our job is to use these spoons wisely by selecting the day’s most important tasks.

As a writer, replace spoons with pens. You’ll spend most of your pens on daily living. A tiny fraction are for your writing life, so use them well. The more emotionally intense the topic, the more pens you’ll need. If you’re writing about a highly traumatic event, allot at least three to five pens, and an additional pen or two for the recovery time you’ll need after you write.

For some of you, this is all you’ll need. But if you take pride in a high pain tolerance and an ability to write about hard things no matter what, there are a few stop signs to watch out for.

Assess your timing

You don’t need to wait for the perfect conditions before working on a tough story, but there are times when writing about trauma won’t serve you. Here are just a few.

It’s too soon: While you can journal any time, stories require enough distance from an event to know what it means—a phenomenon called psychic distance. The amount of time needed to develop psychic distance is relative. For some experiences, all you’ll need is a few days. But if you’re planning to write about a buried-never-spoken-of event, fifty years might not be long enough. Before writing publicly about buried events, work with a trained professional.Part of you doesn’t want to: Motivated writers love to see their work in print, but that doesn’t mean the wounded part of you is ready. Trauma frequently involves a lack of choices or coercion. Forcing yourself to write about painful things can re-enact the trauma you’ve experienced. This can make you hate writing or give up. If part of you is saying no, ask what it needs to feel safe before proceeding.You’re going through a major life transition: Many writers want to capitalize on the extra time a job loss, divorce, maternity leave, surgery, or pandemic had granted them by writing a memoir. But major life changes—even happy ones like a new baby—are stressful, and that stress requires more pens. Your tough times aren’t going anywhere. At these critical junctures, focus on happy times and joyful activities that replenish the pens lost to transition stress.This is your first writing rodeo: If you’re a beginning writer, start with material that has a low to moderate intensity. That way you can focus on developing new skills around scene writing and dialogue rather than how you’ll deal with the pain of reliving a difficult moment.Your writing time butts up to important tasks: Perhaps you write directly before work or before the kids return from school. Writing about traumatic events requires both pens for writing and a recovery period where you’ll rest and regain a full sense of the present moment. If your current writing schedule doesn’t contain any recovery time, rearrange your calendar to create some mental, emotional, and energetic room for your emotionally intense writing sessions.

When it comes to writing about trauma there are no gold stars. No one will give you a trophy for writing about unending pain. But you can make yourself miserable and stall what could become a valuable project. Your stories have too much healing potential to treat them like Band-Aids. Proceed gently and P.A.C.E. your writing process.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, please join us on Feb. 24 for the online class Writing About Trauma.

Want to Write a Great Novel? Be Brave.

“Bravely Done” by David Camerer is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Today’s post is by regular contributor Susan DeFreitas (@manzanitafire), an award-winning author, editor, and book coach. She offers an online course, Story Medicine, designed to help writers use their power as storytellers to support a more just and verdant world.

For the recent launch of my new online course, Story Medicine, I interviewed one of my mentors, Jennie Nash, a seasoned book coach and the founder of the Author Accelerator book coaching certification program. When Jennie and I work with fiction writers, a big part of our focus is character arc, and in the course of this conversation, I noted that great character arcs tend to connect with the author’s own personal journey.

Jennie agreed, saying, “That’s where the power is, because that’s where you connect with your deep-level why.”

At first, that statement may sound just a bit vague. But as Jennie knows, this connection manifests in a very concrete way, in terms of literary craft, in the protagonist’s character arc: the way that character grows and changes over the course of the novel.

I write on this subject a lot, because I believe that a strong character arc really is the key to an emotionally affecting novel, one that will make a strong connection with readers. And over my decade plus as a book coach, I’ve seen it over and over: the strongest, most affecting character arcs are anchored in the author’s own experience.

Say the character arc is about a woman gaining the courage to leave an abusive relationship. For one writer, that sort of arc will basically just be a device, something that’s there to serve the plot—say, of a mystery or thriller. That arc might work well in this regard, but it won’t necessarily cause reader to connect with the story, or find any particular sense of meaning in it.

But if the author has actually been that woman? The same arc can have a great deal of power—the power to truly connect with the reader. The power to make that same thriller or mystery feel hugely meaningful.

Maybe even the power to change the world.

When the protagonist’s character arc connects with the author’s own personal journey, it has a sense of reality, intensity, and nuance that just can’t be faked. That’s because it’s not based on stereotype, hearsay, or other forms of received information. It’s actually based on the truth of that experience—and chances are good that it will carry some of the deepest, most hard-won truths of the author’s life.

Many of us started writing fiction because we didn’t relish the idea of laying bare the real stuff of our lives—the hard stuff especially. And it’s true that it takes courage to “go there,” in terms of writing from the truth of your own life.

But I believe it’s the greatest gift you can give your reader, because in doing so, you can share the insights that got you through the hard stuff, and how you lived to tell the tale.

And this is true whether you’re writing about the actual circumstances of your life or simply circumstances that touch upon them. Which means this holds true even if you’re writing speculative fiction, set in an entirely different world.

For instance, maybe you’re writing a sci-fi novel about a young man whose best friend was kidnapped by interstellar smugglers. One option would be to go with a familiar, recycled character arc: the protagonist who starts off feeling like a coward and goes on to discover his courage and confront the man who kidnapped his best friend.

That’s a character arc we’ve seen many times in Hollywood movies. A stronger tactic with this scenario would be to work out an arc more clearly centered in the truths of your own life.

For instance: Maybe these interstellar smugglers have actually been terrorizing the protagonist’s region of space for years, and this taps into your own history of being bullied as a kid, and the strong emotions you have around that.

Now it’s personal for you—so when the protagonist finally confronts that antagonist, the leader of this gang of smugglers, at the climax of the story, a lot of emotional power will be unleashed, because you’ll be confronting that bully in a way you never got to in real life.

I mentioned before that this takes courage, though, and here’s the tricky part: remembering how you really felt, and really thought, before you arrived at the insight or realization that helped you to overcome the challenges you faced.

Because hindsight is 20/20, and once you’ve figured out the way out of that escape room you were locked in, the answer seems obvious. But it wasn’t obvious when you were stuck in there, trapped not just by your circumstances but by whatever internal block was keeping you from seeing the solution, and finding your way out.

It’s only by sharing the whole truth of the journey—the good, the bad, the ugly, and, hopefully, the transformation that helped you get free—that you can give this great gift to your reader, this gift of the heart, and unleash the full emotional power of your novel.