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Black Voices in Publishing: Is It a Trend or a Movement?

Today’s post is adapted from an article I first published in my paid newsletter, The Hot Sheet.

Last year in June 2020, the Authors Guild hosted a panel with Black voices in publishing to discuss the challenges they’ve faced in the industry for many decades now. That panel touched on publishers’ lack of knowledge and care in marketing and publicizing Black authors (and their minimal knowledge of the vastness of Black media and marketing opportunities to reach Black readers), the dearth of informed decision makers at bookstores and other outlets, and the fundamental need for more Black people in every part of the business.

In a move that’s welcome—because if one wants to support change, it’s important to take stock and measure progress—the Authors Guild hosted another panel in July 2021 that included a few of the same voices as well as some new ones.

Diversity in publishing is not a trend—it’s a movement.Carl Lennertz, Children’s Book Council

That’s according to Children’s Book Council executive director Carl Lennertz, who has worked in the industry for more than 20 years. He acknowledged that everyone’s been involved in this struggle for a while, but there are more groups now, with individuals and organizations alike calling for change. He thinks it’s different than before: “It’s constant, it’s loud,” he said. “The voice of the young people in publishing, it is so strong and vocal.”

Even though he admitted there will be steps back because there always are, he has reason to hope. He’s noticed that hiring is better, there have been more senior leadership changes, and publishers are doing more than just “meeting and talking” to make things better. He also sees progress being made on parallel tracks: in hiring and mentoring, inside publishing houses, in agenting, at conferences, in organizations to promote work. Furthermore, Lennertz thinks that corporate publishers must evolve in order to attract the best talent because they’re competing harder than ever in the current environment. They’re raising the starting pay, and college degrees are being waived in some cases for hiring. And of course work-from-home arrangements (especially during and after the pandemic), with fewer requirements to live in New York City, are seen to help as well.

Wade Hudson, Just Us Books

The difference between a trend and a movement is that the culture changes when there is a movement, said Wade Hudson, publisher of Just Us Books. “If we don’t have a cultural change, what we’re doing will be a trend.” While Hudson agrees there are signs of a movement, he added, “We can’t underestimate the pushback from those who don’t want to see progress. We sometimes underestimate their numbers and their influence.” For example, he said it’s common now that you see people online saying Black creators who are getting awards don’t deserve them. “We sometimes assume that people in certain professions are thinking like we are, that they are progressive,” he said, but the reality is that pushback inevitably happens. (While it was not mentioned specifically, there is concern about legislation that would eliminate certain types of books, such as those seen to support critical race theory, in schools and libraries.) Still, he said, “There are a lot of young people involved, they are empowered, they believe they deserve a seat at the table.”

Paula Chase, The Brown Bookshelf

More than that, Paula Chase of The Brown Bookshelf said that the fight is no longer about announcing “we’re here” and demanding a seat at the table. She said, “We want to help build the table, decide where the table is going to go.” A YA author, Chase started her organization because she didn’t see promotion of stories like her own; there was a gap in how publishers marketed stories by Black creators. Her goal is to educate publishers in how to support Black creators and authors and help them amplify their books. “In order to sustain this kind of change, we are going to need publishers to put money, time, and resources behind these types of initiatives. We can’t continue to be free consultants. We can’t continue to have our art suffer because we’re trying to right an industry from the bottom up.”

What can you do to help?Kelly Starling Lyons

Such panels are often attended by a majority white audience, and the Q&A time inevitably ends on the question of what white creators can do to help. “We have to be committed to unlearning,” Chase said. “In order to put my book in the hands of a white child or just the child who is not of color—to say to them, immerse yourself in this character’s experience—regardless of that person’s race, it requires a little bit of unlearning on somebody’s part, on a teacher’s part because she thinks that my book can’t teach, on a librarian’s part because she’s so specifically looking for a book to match this reader.”

Author Kelly Starling Lyons suggested that when white authors are asked to speak at conferences, they could recommend a Black creator who can also speak. She said, “By uplifting Black creators, you’re uplifting all children who deserve to see themselves in books as well as see that all of us can write books to speak to who we are.”

Hudson suggested authors be willing to share how they are treated by the industry because authors of color may receive lower advances and royalty rates and not realize it. “We need to have more information,” he said.

For further information and resources on Black voices in publishing, see this list from The Authors Guild.

If you enjoyed this piece, be sure to check out my paid newsletter, The Hot Sheet, now celebrating its sixth anniversary. New subscribers can get 30% off an annual subscription. Use code 6YR at checkout.

Buying Books for the Holidays? Be Prepared to Be Flexible.

Today’s post is adapted from an article I first published in my paid newsletter, The Hot Sheet.

I happen to know more about the ins and outs of publishing’s supply chain because I’m married to a former production guy. He not only worked in book production for 20 years at a mid-size publisher, he also visited Hong Kong to meet the printing team he worked with. Whenever there were worker strikes or supply chain problems that affected how quickly books could be printed, shipped, and delivered to the warehouse, his number was on every executive’s speed dial. Because if books don’t arrive on time, book sales don’t happen as projected, and revenue goals get missed.

These days, he is happy to be out of production, given that the supply chain issues have never been worse for book publishers. Partly this is pandemic related and caused by a shortage of workers and shipping/transportation problems, but it’s also the result of years-long contraction in the printing market. In a nutshell: The largest US printers have gone bankrupt and consolidated over many years, and some paper mills have converted over to packaging—all those Amazon boxes—rather than manufacturing papers used for books, magazines, and photocopies. The book paper and printing shortage isn’t really a result of decreased demand for books (except maybe textbooks), but decreased demand in other sectors, like magazine publishing.

This month, the biggest US book wholesaler and distributor, Ingram, released several statements to its customers warning about the challenges ahead. They warn, “This fall, the global publishing business can expect disruption in shipping, increases in costs throughout the supply chain, shortages in consumables used for packing and shipping, and shortages in manufacturing supplies for books and printed matter. Like many other companies that rely on warehouses, trucking, and manufacturing, IngramSpark expects to be challenged by labor shortages and transportation challenges. We expect to have difficulty finding available workers in many of our warehouse locations and manufacturing plants. We may also lack enough transportation assets to keep books moving at our typical speed.”

I’ve seen anecdotal reports on social media of slowdowns at Ingram warehouses, but no one wishes to go on the record about their problems. However, small press founder Anne Trubek of Belt Publishing wrote extensively about the supply chain situation she faces in her July 27 newsletter, Publishing Is Broken Part 59. Two years ago, she says, she could get a book printed in two weeks; now it takes eight weeks. Because of supply chain problems, she has been pressured by her distributor to print more books than she needs right now, as it may be near impossible to print, ship, and stock later in the year. But the solution to “print more now” isn’t a good one, she says: “Deciding to simply print twice as many copies as you think you need, for fear of running out, can be a disastrous financial decision.”

The aggravating factor is that booksellers, including Amazon, are worried they will run out of books over the holiday season—and placing earlier and larger orders than they would otherwise. Ingram has suggested bookstores order as early as possible and in quantities of 15 units or more; Shelf Awareness notes, “In addition to stocking up early, Ingram also recommends that customers review excess inventory early and make room for new stock, and speak to publishing reps about anticipated titles, which will help Ingram predict demand.”

I heard from Michigan-based bookseller Chanda Stafford, at Parallel 45 Books and Gifts, who says she’s been ordering earlier and more than usual—and has already received her first shipment of holiday books. “There have been so many delays this year, not just in books but in other products we carry, that we feel we can’t wait or we’ll miss out,” she wrote me. “It all affects our bottom line, and by ordering earlier, we can ensure we have the books our customers want the most.”

Small publishers that run close to the margins are just as worried about their bottom line. I reached out to Meg Reid of Hub City Press, who said if customers over-order and Amazon behaves like it always does in the fourth quarter—and buys up as much stock as possible—then “You still have no books in the warehouses for those who actually want them and face massive returns in January of 2022. That’s when we get paid for our fall sales. So heavy returns in January can basically knock out our entire fall season, or worse, put us upside down.”

Reid said that last year, when she went back to press on a book in November, the shipment didn’t arrive in December as expected due to printing delays. When the reprint landed in January, it was welcomed alongside the same amount of returned books. “So, the compromise I’ve had to make,” she said, “is deciding to print what I believe will sell and not upping my orders or rushing large reprints to accommodate for inflated ordering around the holidays.”

Reid said she’s not sure why the forecast this year is predicted to be worse than before, since she’s been dealing with these issues for over two years. “I wonder if it’s just that corporate publishers are now feeling the pain of running out of books and not being able to get more?” she said. I did hear from one agent who said that a printer cut the volume of books it will print for Big Five publisher Macmillan, who will now have to determine which titles will take the hit before the holiday season.

The books most likely to be affected

Agent Kate McKean told me, “It feels like the calm before the storm. I have my eye on my graphic novels, because I bet those are going to be trouble.” In other words: full-color books, often printed internationally, might take the hardest hit. ICv2, which covers the comics and graphic novel market, recently reported that DC is delaying 35 titles, with more shifts likely to come.

Also, new releases with unexpected demand could run out of stock. However, you may still be able to get the book you want by ordering directly from the publisher, assuming they sell direct to consumer. Many have started or improved their online shops, especially since the start of the pandemic. Small presses greatly benefit when you buy from them directly.

For a broader perspective on supply chain issues across every industry, I suggest reading this New York Times piece on how the problem may get worse heading into the holidays.

If you enjoyed this piece, be sure to check out my paid newsletter, The Hot Sheet, now celebrating its sixth anniversary. New subscribers can get 30% off an annual subscription. Use code 6YR at checkout.

Can Fiction Make a Difference in the World?

Today’s post is by regular contributor Susan DeFreitas (@manzanitafire), an award-winning author, editor, and book coach. In October, she’s hosting a free webinar on how writers of fiction can use their power as storytellers to support a more just and verdant world.

We live in a time of great upheaval—a time when it seems like every time we turn on the news, there’s another crisis taking shape.

Wildfires and hurricanes. A pandemic raging out of control. Violence against people of color. Violence against women. Protests and counter protests. Debates about election integrity and voting rights.

Your list may be different than mine, but I’m willing to bet, as a writer, you feel it too: The desire to do something. The desire to make a difference.

If you’re a nonfiction writer, doing so can be as simple (and difficult!) as writing an essay or op-ed, or even pitching a book on an issue you’re passionate about. But for writers of fiction, how to engage with so-called political issues in our work isn’t always so obvious.

Those of us with MFAs may have been discouraged from bringing our politics to our creative work, either overtly or tacitly—the implication being that any work of fiction that attempts to engage with these sorts of issues will be inherently preachy or didactic, and therefore not all that good.

But those sort of attitudes are beginning to shift, as any recent survey of the New York Times bestseller list will serve to illustrate; checking in just today revealed a novel that tackles racialized policing (The Hate U Give), one that deals with domestic abuse (It Ends with Us), and another that touches on homophobia, by centering the romantic relationship between two men in the ancient world (The Song of Achilles). All of which offers ample evidence that novelists need not confine themselves to “safe,” noncontroversial topics in order to be successful.

Personally, the issues that matter most to me are climate change and social justice. Those are issues I’ve centered in my own creative work, and issues I’ve helped my clients tackle in theirs as well. What follows are three strategies I’ve found for engaging with these sorts of issues in a way that will strengthen, rather than weaken, your fiction:

1. Show the human

Sound bites and rhetoric. Buzz words and name-calling. Political discourse in this country can feel very thin at times, with everyone communicating in a sort of shorthand that does little more than ignite a knee-jerk response, either for or against the speaker’s position.

Good fiction aims to dig deeper than that, by revealing depth and nuance. And one of the most effective ways to do that—while getting past predictable debates on hot-button topics—is simply to show the impact a given issue has on one or more of your characters, in a way readers can’t deny.

That’s what Richard Powers did with the issue of deforestation in The Overstory, by showing what certain trees have meant to his characters, who then go on to put their lives on the line to save the last of the American old-growth. That’s what Tayari Jones did with the issue of incarceration in An American Marriage, by revealing the impact that one Black man’s unjust conviction has on his romantic relationship, and, ultimately, the course of his life.

There’s great power in such stories, and much of it lies in the way they reveal the impact of big issues at the level of an individual life.

2. Come with questions

The thing that can make overtly political fiction feel preachy or didactic is the sense that the author has everything all figured out, and is now simply playing out some sort of drama to illustrate those answers via sock puppets. (Think Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, or Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.)

A stronger approach is to start with ideas but then use the tools of fiction to investigate and interrogate them—in other words, to ask questions about them. Because if we really had all the answers, wouldn’t we be better served by hitting the campaign trail, or founding a nonprofit, rather than sitting here behind our desks?

I say, come to this work with your passion. Come to it with your desire to engage with issues of injustice, issues of conscience. But rather than answers, come with questions, because that’s what the tools of fiction are best suited to exploring.

If you do, chances are, you’ll wind up with a story that feels like a thoughtful investigation, rather than a thinly veiled screed.

3. Show different sides

When you feel passionately about an issue, it can be easy to cast those who hold an opposing viewpoint as the enemy—which means such people may wind up as one of the antagonists in your story.

This can be a useful way to shine light on the issue you’re exploring. But I say, resist the urge to paint that person in the typical role of the bad guy or villain. Because in the end, a thin, surface-level treatment of such characters tends to actually weaken your own position, by suggesting that you haven’t taken the time to actually consider where other people may be coming from.

And there’s an added benefit here, whether your antagonist is just sort of a petty profiteer or a full-on ax murderer: a more complex treatment of such characters tends to strengthen the story, offering the sort of insight into human nature and experience that characterizes so many of our best loved books.

And if there aren’t just two sides to the issue you’re exploring, but even three or four? So much the better. Different characters can hold different opinions on an issue, and embody different angles on it—which in turn can make the story feel more like a genuine exploration of a given territory and less like a set of directions.

Is there an issue you’re particularly passionate about? And if so, have you found a way to touch on it in your fiction? If so, tell us about it in the comments!

What It Takes to Be a Freelance Editor

Today’s post is by Allison K Williams (@GuerillaMemoir). Join her on Oct. 20 for the start of a three-part online class, Build Your Developmental Editing Business.

You should be an editor.

Perhaps someone’s said it to you. Perhaps, after volunteering to critique a friend’s book, reading for hours, and writing 2,000 words of feedback (more than you both bargained for), you’ve said to yourself:

I should be an editor.

You love reading, right? And you’re really good with grammar and spelling. Maybe you even have an English degree or an MFA. What else do you need?

Curiosity, education, and ruthlessness.

An editor’s number-one asset is curiosity.

Not just double-checking facts or looking up info for the manuscript they’re working on right now, but a constant, lifelong level of I need to know.

I recently edited an essay that quoted King Lear’s Cordelia. It was a great line—“I cannot heave my heart into my mouth”—but it didn’t mean what the author thought it did. The quote did not support her point. I didn’t have time to reread King Lear and perform textual analysis, as I’d budgeted 30 minutes for this edit. I already knew it, because I’ve seen Lear four times. Fact-checking wasn’t even officially part of this job, but the essay was fundamentally flawed without that existing knowledge.

I’ve always been curious about Shakespeare. And law school. And the oceanic geology of East Asia. And the workflow of commercial kitchens. And dressage. And, and, and. I’ve never met a fact I didn’t want to know. Eventually, most of them come in handy.

Editing successfully requires constant education.

Not just retaining facts, but following trends in genres and in publishing. Even ten years ago, self-publishing was a sucker’s game. Now it can be a legit way to publish, maybe even make money. But it’s not right for every author, and they need someone to tell them why it will or won’t work. An editor must be able to say, “Your teen vampire novel is well-written but there’s nothing fresh. How can you stand out from the crowd? Let’s brainstorm.” Or, “Your category romance needs a Happily-Ever-After or Happy-For-Now ending. Your book will disappoint readers unless you fix that.”

Editors must stay current on tools, too. Grammarly is a toy scooter to PerfectIt!’s Mercedes. Word has hidden tricks to double your editing speed. You’ve got to make sure your work always, always saves itself.

Most of all, educate yourself about writing. What makes a sentence sing on the page? Look at a favorite moment of your favorite book. Can you describe what mechanically makes it powerful? Here’s mine, from Laurie Halse Anderson’s Wintergirls:

.ugb-71cf8b2-wrapper.ugb-container__wrapper{background-color:rgba(252,185,0,0.1) !important}.ugb-71cf8b2-wrapper.ugb-container__wrapper:before{background-color:#fcb900 !important}.ugb-71cf8b2-content-wrapper > h1,.ugb-71cf8b2-content-wrapper > h2,.ugb-71cf8b2-content-wrapper > h3,.ugb-71cf8b2-content-wrapper > h4,.ugb-71cf8b2-content-wrapper > h5,.ugb-71cf8b2-content-wrapper > h6{color:#222222}.ugb-71cf8b2-content-wrapper > p,.ugb-71cf8b2-content-wrapper > ol li,.ugb-71cf8b2-content-wrapper > ul li{color:#222222}

We tilt our heads back and open wide. The snow drifts into our zombie mouths crawling with grease and curses and tobacco flakes and cavities and boyfriend/girlfriend juice, the stain of lies. For one moment we are not failed tests and broken condoms and cheating on essays; we are crayons and lunch boxes and swinging so high our sneakers punch holes in the clouds. For one breath everything feels better.

Then it melts.

The bus drivers rev their engines and the ice cloud shatters. Everyone shuffles forward. They don’t know what just happened. They can’t remember.

Gorgeous. First, bad thing, bad thing, bad thing that most readers personally, viscerally understand, and are immediately present for the protagonist. In the same sentence, good thing, good thing, good thing that is also a good feeling. We’re connected to those, too. Anderson’s rhythm pairs three and three, sustaining that last phrase just a little longer. Our sneakers punch holes in the clouds is aspirational. A dream we’ve all had. Anderson lets us rest for a moment in the beauty of aspiration with a paragraph break; lets us—and the narrator—feel better. Then three tight syllables take it all away.

Editors must be ruthless.

What makes that sentence above true to the narrator’s voice?

Is this the right place in the book to show her desperate to return to the simplicity of childhood, and to tear the reader’s heart that she can’t?

Because no matter how beautiful the writing is, if a sentence doesn’t fit the character or the story, it’s gotta go.

Many early-career authors use their elevated Special Writer Voice, and their editors must challenge them not to make their words “better” or “more polished,” but more truthful to the author’s own voice.

Purely nurturing feedback is unhelpful. Straight criticism is discouraging. An editor must identify what’s wrong, clarify why it must be fixed, and excite the author to do the work. Editors must inflict the pain of “It’s not good enough, yet.” I’ve told more than one author to cut their first 50 pages. That’s painful! What I say about their work must ring so true that they trust me enough to endure that pain, for the sake of a better next draft.

One more thing …

Lifelong curiosity. Persistent self-education. Ruthless support.

But to make even a part-time living as an editor, you’ve must be able to do all this quickly.

Editing is expensive. (Yes, Fiverr editors are charging $50 to “edit” a whole book, and authors most assuredly get what they pay for.) Billing in four figures looks amazing, but your hourly rate depends on how fast you can (effectively) work. If a $3,000 developmental edit takes 50 hours, that’s barely enough for a freelancer to pay themselves and their health insurance, taxes and overhead, and at $1,000 you might as well work in an office where at least they pay for the coffee.

You should be an editor.

If it still sounds appealing, give it a shot. Practice on your friends for free; start cultivating authors whose manuscripts will be ready when your skills are. I took three years to hit my editorial stride. If you’d like a bit of a shortcut, this fall I’m teaching the framework of a developmental editing business: what, exactly, you do; how to do it faster; and getting people to pay you fairly for your curiosity, education, and ruthlessness.

Note from Jane: Please join Allison beginning Oct. 20 for the three-part online class Build Your Developmental Editing Business.

3 Writing Prompts to Spark Your Creativity

Photo by Edgar Colomba from Pexels

Today’s post is adapted from The Joy of Writing Journal: Spark Your Creativity in 8 Minutes a Day by Lisa Tener (@LisaTener).

During my senior year of college, I discovered writing prompts. They changed my life forever. Writing prompts freed me from the pressure to create from scratch by providing me with something to respond to.

I hope the following prompts make it easy for you to be creative; and to allow you to let go of any worrying you may do over writing perfectly or writing for an audience. Write for you. Experience the joy of writing daily, as you hone your craft as well as your writing habit.

1. Permission to be bold

Sometimes, I imagine I hear my ancestors knocking on the door asking me to tell their stories. In her youth, my Grandma Stella immigrated to New York from the Russian Pale (though she insisted she was born in Connecticut, where I’m not even sure she ever set foot). Stella sang in nightclubs from her teens and into her seventies and the intense emotion in her singing made me uncomfortable. My Grandma Lily shared stories of growing up in Vienna: the manor farm her uncle managed where her mother sent her to “fatten up” and where she learned to love animals; the ballroom dancing lessons with her cousins; music nights in Vienna where the young people gathered in her home, playing their instruments and singing songs late into the night, and then spilling into the cafes in the wee hours of the morning.

Up to now, I have not been able to find the courage to write about any of my ancestors. I’m afraid I won’t do their stories justice and, truthfully, the journey scares me, too. What secrets might I uncover about my family’s past? A hundred times bolder, maybe I’d just dive in.

Your turn

List five things you might write about if you were 100 times bolder. Pick one and explore. Go bold. Get a little crazy! You have permission! This video reveals what some of my students and colleagues would write about if they were 100 times bolder.

2. How I got screwed out of inner peace

My husband once joked about writing a book called How I Got Screwed Out of Inner Peace. We laughed at the irony of the title: it captures the ways we fail to take responsibility for our own peace or work so hard at improving ourselves that peace escapes us. As a former—and sometimes current—self-help junkie, who is always trying to become the new and improved version of me, I find personal growth can support us on our spiritual path, but it can also take us in circles when we try to reach an impossible destination and never accept the beauty of who we are.

Your turn

List ten ways that you try to grow or improve yourself. Then, pick one of your self-help methods and write about it. Choose the hardest thing. Or the most ridiculous one. Or the one that most inspires you in the moment. Or write about them all! In what ways has self-improvement supported you? In what ways has it become a trap? Do you over do it? Are you cheating yourself out of inner peace by taking on too much?

3. If my house could talk

My living room is the perfect place to read a book or write one. Everyone hangs out there and I love when we’re all reading, feet overlapping on the couch. However, we have a galley kitchen; so we also dine, stretch, and even game in the large living room. And when someone’s gaming there, using his outside voice, I skedaddle.

Your turn

What is your favorite (or least favorite) room in your house? Imagine a bizarre or humorous thing happening in that room before you entered it and write about it. Or imagine if the room could talk; what stories would it tell? This prompt will help you develop the skill of compelling plot development. Not writing a narrative? That’s okay. It also helps with scene setting for writing an anecdote.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed these prompts, be sure to check out The Joy of Writing Journal: Spark Your Creativity in 8 Minutes a Day by Lisa Tener (@LisaTener).

How to Format Your Manuscript for a Designer or Publisher

“Labels for Art vs Craft Show” by Allspire is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Today’s post is by Tiffany Watson and the team at Hederis (@HederisApp), which offers cloud-based, collaborative book production tools.

There is an abundance of book design software on the market these days. Authors, publishers, and book designers have many options, with each option representing a different set of tools and processes for getting a manuscript ready for production. But in a publishing industry that is increasingly digital first and born accessible, book design software needs to go beyond perfecting the “look” of a finished product. It has to address a fundamental element that ensures a book can reach the widest audience possible: semantic structure.

Semantic structure is a way of describing the different pieces of your text and their relationship to one another. It’s a digital map of a book that can be interpreted by computers—for example, by ebook reading software or by a web browser. It’s a way of saying “this is a chapter, this is a chapter title, this is a plain text paragraph,” so that the computer knows how to present your text.

You might wonder, “if my chapter titles are bigger than the body text, isn’t it obvious that it’s a title? Is that semantic structure?” Well, the answer is…No! Semantic structure is completely separate from design. Think about a vision-impaired person using screen-reading software to read your book: they can’t see that your titles are bigger than the body text, so relying on design to convey semantic structure has the unintended effect of creating barriers between this user and the meaning of your text.

What semantic structure looks like and consists of

Most people use tags or styles to label each text element in a book. In plain text, it could look something like this:

Down the Rabbit Hole
Alice was beginning to get very tired…

Think back to fourth grade, when you had to write a five-paragraph essay and your teacher made you outline each section. You had your introduction, three topic sentences and the three reasons within each topic, and a conclusion—that’s semantic structure! Each label of text locates you in the essay and tells you its purpose.

Many publishing houses have pre-defined sets of tag names that they use for all of their books, so that they have a consistent semantic language for talking about any of their books. Regardless of each book’s unique design and writing style, someone (or some software program) will always be able to know what elements are titles or which paragraphs are block quotes by looking at these consistent semantic labels. These labels also make it really easy to design interiors. (If you’ve ever worked with HTML and CSS, it’s a very similar experience, but don’t worry if you haven’t—we won’t be doing any HTML coding in this tutorial.)

Almost all layout programs are created to work with semantic styles. When you use consistent semantic styles in a Word manuscript then import that text into a layout program like InDesign or Hederis, these programs are set up to automatically apply the same design settings to paragraphs that use the same type of semantic label. For example, you can set the design for one chapter title to look a certain way, and if all the other chapter titles in your book share the same semantic style name, they will inherit that same design. Instead of having to hunt down every quote paragraph in your text and design them one by one, you just have to do it once.

So why does this matter for authors? The short answer is that adding semantic labels makes it easy for any person (or computer, or piece of software) who is looking at your manuscript to understand what the different elements of your text are. They won’t need to guess whether an indented paragraph is supposed to be a quote, or whether a heading using an 18-point font is supposed to be an A-head or a B-head. Semantic labeling speeds up the process of turning a manuscript into a finished book and reduces the possibility for error, ultimately helping to preserve your authorial intent. Even if you aren’t planning to hire a designer and instead want to upload your manuscript into a book design program that offers preset templates or automated styling, having these structural elements in place will make the process much easier and lead to a better final product.

Using Microsoft Word to add semantic structure

Applying semantic structure is fairly easy, especially in Word, if at times a little time consuming. Out of the box, Word provides a tool called “Styles” that allows you to label all the text in your book. In fact, Word automatically applies styles to your book even if you don’t actively create any—most text paragraphs will use the “Normal” style by default, and you might even have used some of Word’s heading styles to tag your book and chapter titles.

But again, you may be saying to yourself, “I already add my own styles; I bold or italicize my headings and change the text size. Why doesn’t this translate into the layout software?”

This goes back to the difference between semantic labels and design: you might be changing the size and appearance of your text, but unless you save these changes under a “style” in Word, it’ll still classify these as Normal text paragraphs with some overrides applied. When you import your Word document into a design program like InDesign, all your paragraphs—regardless of the design changes you made—will have the same style name of “Normal” (with a “+” indicating where you’ve overridden the baseline formatting).

The appearance of your text may transfer depending on how the file is imported, but there will be no style names attached to it, so if a book designer wants to change the font or size of your headings, they have to go through the entire document and change each heading individually or do search and replace based on formatting. This can prove very time intensive depending on the size and/or complexity of a manuscript. If you would like to see this in action, there are screenshots of styled and unstyled documents imported into InDesign further on in this article.

Now that we’ve established why semantics are good and the basic way that they can be applied in Word, let’s dive into exactly how to add them to your manuscript.

How to view the “Style area” in Word 365

One of the best ways to view your document when you are planning to add semantic styles is through the “Style area.” This will allow you to see at a glance which styles have been added to each text element and give you a holistic view of the structure of your manuscript.

One note: I’m using a PC for this tutorial, but all of these tools exist for Mac as well—the steps or menu options will just be slightly different. You can find a simplified version of the Style Area steps for Mac in our documentation here.

Step 1: Navigate to the File tab—it should be on the far left. (If you’re on a Mac, go to Word > Preferences > View, then skip to step 3.)

Step 2: Under File, select “Options” in the bottom left corner of the screen. A window will appear at the center of the screen, as shown in the next step.

Step 3: Go to the “Advanced” settings and scroll down until you reach “Display.” Find the option titled “Style Area Width in Draft and Outline Views”—this is where you can view your styles. (On a Mac, this is the box called “Style area width.”) In order to see the styles in use in your book, you’ll need to set a measurement of how large this pane will appear on your screen. 2.5” is a pretty good option, and you can always come back and try different widths here.

Step 4: Press Ok.

The final step is to make sure you are in either “Draft” or “Outline” view mode.

Go to the “View” option on your main menu, then choose either “Draft” or “Outline” from the submenu.

You should now see a sidebar to the left of your text showing you what styles have been added to each text element in your document—this is the Styles Area. You can easily hide this sidebar at any time by viewing your book in “Print Layout” view mode.

Open the Styles List

We’ve figured out how to see what styles are already applied by showing the Style Area, but now how do you apply new styles? For this, we’ll use the Styles List (different from the Style Area), and make sure we have that list close at hand. Let’s go ahead and open that up.

Go to your home menu and find the “Styles” section. In the right corner there is a tiny “expand window” icon —press it.

Your screen should now look like the image below with all your word styles on the left-hand side of the screen (on a Mac they’ll be on the right).

Applying styles

Once you have your styles area and styles list set up, applying styles is as easy as clicking inside or highlighting the text and then choosing the style you want to apply from the styles list. There are two types of styles available: paragraph and character. Paragraph styles will have the “P” icon or ⁋ (a pilcrow sign) next to them, and will apply to an entire paragraph of text. Character styles will have an “a” icon and will only apply to the specific text you have selected.

If you want to apply a style to a whole paragraph, then all you have to do is click anywhere inside the paragraph, and then select the paragraph style you want to apply from your list of styles.

Character styles can be applied to a word or phrase inside a paragraph. Simply click and drag to select the words/sentences, and then choose the character style you want to apply.

One of the benefits of applying styles to your own manuscript is that you are the content expert. At this point in the publishing process, you are the person most familiar with your writing, so you know how to label each element: heading, subheading, blockquote, dialogue, etc.

The most important guideline when applying styles is to be consistent. For each type of element in your manuscript, use the same style to label it. For example, use the “Heading 1” style for every chapter title, use “Heading 2” for every A-head, use “Quote” for every excerpt, etc. Figure out what types of elements you have in your text, pick the styles to use for those elements, and apply them consistently.

Creating styles

Word has a lot of styles out of the box, and it’s perfectly fine to use those styles in your book. However, you may find that Word doesn’t have a style that describes one of the elements in your book. For example, maybe you want to clearly distinguish the text of a letter from the text of an extract. In that case, you can create your own style names. The easiest way to do that is as follows.

Find an instance in your manuscript where you’ll want to apply your new style.
For example, let’s say you want to add a style for the text of a letter. Find at least one letter text paragraph in your manuscript and highlight it.Make it look the way you want. If you are planning to work with a designer or a program other than Word (for example, InDesign or Hederis), the style name is the end goal—the appearance is less important. If this is the case for you, you can simply indent the text and call it a day for your creative endeavors.Create the new style. With the text still highlighted, navigate to the bottom of the style menu, there should be a button with a capital “A” with a plus sign underneath it. Click that button and a new window should pop up. From here you can name your new style. Once you OK this you will want to apply the new style to the highlighted paragraph. Then apply it to all other instances of letter text in your manuscript.

When naming your styles, make sure to choose names that make some reference to where or what kind of text this style would be applied to, but also keep the description short. In our example above, you might choose the name “Letter Text” or “Extract Text.” It’s best not to name the style based on how the text looks (e.g. “Large Bold”) but rather what it inherently is (e.g. “Heading”).

If you’ve chosen a name but decide you want to change it, Word will let you do that. In your styles list, right click the style you want to change and a drop down menu will come up; the “modify” option is usually the second one down; on a Mac this option is called “rename” and is usually the fourth option down.

Styled versus unstyled document in InDesign

Semantic styles make a world of difference when you go to import your file into a program like InDesign. This styled document below has been imported into InDesign straight from the Word file. All of the Styles have been imported from Word, are attached to the correct elements, and are available for use by the book designer. If you look closely at the image below you will see that the cursor is in the “Chapter” text at the top of the first page, which comes up in the Paragraph Styles as using the “HED Chap” style name.

Styled Word document imported into InDesign

The unstyled document below has been imported into InDesign straight from the Word file. All of the text elements are overridden versions of “Normal” text. This is why when my cursor is on the same chapter text, in the Paragraph Styles it shows that it is using the “Normal+” style (the “+” means an override is applied—in this case the bolded text).

To make this a styled document, the first task would be to go through the entire unstyled text and style each text element. This could take anywhere from one to three hours depending on the length and complexity of your manuscript.

Unstyled Word document imported into InDesignStyled versus unstyled document in Hederis

Hederis has a preset list of styles that you can use streamlined to work with the app. This styled document has been uploaded into Hederis straight from the Word file, using styles from that preset list. All of the styles are available for use by the book designer and are attached to the correct text element. You will notice some text styles seem to be missing in the list on the left—this is because Hederis shows only the styles in each section by default. This section of the book is labeled as a “chapter,” and contains a number of styled elements as shown, including at least one image. Other chapters may contain different types of text, and so the list on the left might look slightly different. (You can always add new styles to the text in a section, too, either via Word or using the Hederis text editing tools.)

Styled Word document imported into Hederis

The unstyled document below has been imported into Hederis straight from the Word file. The main difference between this example and the InDesign example of an unstyled manuscript is that when Hederis detects that an unstyled manuscript has been uploaded, the first thing it does is try to predict text styles based on the text size, position, placement, and even the words being used—that’s why in the image below, you still see style names very similar to the styles in the previous example. This means you’ll have a few styles automatically added to your manuscript, to help you on your way to applying the semantic labeling that you’ll need.

Unstyled Word document imported into HederisFinal thoughts

Semantic styles are a fundamental tool for helping your publishing team understand how to handle each piece of the book text—how to edit it, how to proofread it, how to market it, and how to design it. Word Styles are a great way to help convey this information, and are a standard tool in the publishing industry. And while Word Styles alone won’t give you a fully accessible ebook, they’re a step in the direction of mapping the parts of your book text to highly semantic HTML code (that’s a job for a compositor or layout specialist if you’re using InDesign, though it generally gets added out-of-the-box with automated apps like Hederis).

Note from Jane: Curious about Hederis? Visit the Hederis website to learn more about their publishing tools and start your free Hederis project.

Succeeding with Self-Published Memoir: Q&A with Ashleigh Renard

I first met author Ashleigh Renard (@ashleigh_renard) in early 2020, when we worked together on her query and synopsis for her memoir, Swing. By April, she had signed with a literary agent, but the submissions process stalled out. By January 2021, she was working on a plan to self-publish and launch her memoir during the summer.

She has now done that—and with tremendous success. This is no small achievement for someone with a memoir. Of all the categories that one might self-publish into, memoir is probably the most challenging. There is limited demand for most memoir—unless the person is a famous historical figure, a celebrity or politician, or someone generating headlines. (The example I always use is the pilot who landed a plane in the Hudson, which did result in a published memoir shortly thereafter.)

That’s not to say there aren’t hundreds or thousands of wonderful memoirs deserving of publication each year that readers would enjoy. There is just a lot of competition. So I was delighted when Ashleigh agreed to lift the veil on her marketing and promotion for Swing, and let us know how she made the magic happen.

Jane Friedman: Unlike most self-publishing debut authors I know, you focused on pushing pre-orders and trying to build word of mouth in much the same way a traditional publisher might—which can be challenging without a publisher’s support. There are two aspects of this I’d like to explore.

First, you invested in a traditional bookstore partnership and trying to get wider bookstore community support, so that pre-orders wouldn’t be exclusively through Amazon. I believe you sent stores advance review copies along with a personal note. How did this go?

Ashleigh Renard: The near impossibility of getting a self-published book onto bookstore shelves is widely reported. It’s one of the reasons that hybrid publishers have a market, because they offer that possibility. Many self-publishing blogs encourage authors to completely put to bed the dream of seeing their title on a bookstore shelf. Amazon offers higher compensation than other POD (print on demand) options and they reward authors for cutting brick and mortar stores out of the equation. Their incentives are so convincing that pushing ebook sales (often exclusively with Kindle Unlimited) have almost become synonymous with self-publishing.

I had already begun coaching traditionally published authors on building platform and connecting directly with their readers. I appreciated what I was learning about the reciprocal relationship between authors and bookstores. My own platform was growing quickly, but just because I could go direct to consumer didn’t mean I wanted to.

Taking a bookstore-centered approach felt like the most credible way to establish myself as a debut author who was committed to learning the publishing landscape and supporting the already established community of writers and booksellers.

I couldn’t accept that bookstores wouldn’t want to make money off a book just because it was independently published. I needed to show them that customers would enthusiastically open their wallets to purchase my book.

For this reason, I did not ask any bookstores to carry it. I just asked my audience to order it.

A couple years ago, I reformed my purchasing habits and instead of relying on Prime shipping from Amazon, started pre-ordering books through my local indie, Doylestown Bookshop. Each time, I posted about it in my stories, tagging the author, bookstore, and quite often the imprint and editor (often all of these accounts would re-share my story, getting more eyes on my profile while also amplifying the endorsement of the book). I shared the reasons I was excited about the book and why preorders are important.

By the time my book was available for preorder many of my audience members had started preordering books from their favorite authors and could list off these facts:

Preorders help a publisher determine how much they will invest in marketing and publicity.Strong preorder numbers improve the likelihood that bookstores will carry the title in store.All preorders count for first week sales, giving a writer their best chance of making a bestseller list.

My audience also knew that buying from independent bookstores doesn’t just support small business, but also supports authors, as those sales are more heavily weighted on the curated bestseller lists (NYT and WSJ). Strong orders through an indie bookstore make it more likely that a bookseller will take a liking to a title and display it prominently or give it cover-out rather than spine-out placement.

I polled my audience on Instagram to find out their favorite independent bookstores and I sent ARCs (advance reader copies) to those stores. I chose these stores because I knew it was most likely that these stores would also be receiving preorders. I included a handwritten card, with personalization if I could find the name of the stores’ owners, and let the store know I was educating my social media following (150k at the time, now over 300k) about the importance of preorders and supporting independent booksellers.

My local indie had over 600 preorders because they agreed to be the exclusive retailer for signed copies. McNally Robinson in Winnipeg (where I went to university) also got a ton of orders, enough for my book to hit #1 on the McNally Robinson Winnipeg bestsellers list, beating out fellow Canadian author Dr. Jen Gunter’s The Menopause Manifesto (we shared a pub day), the same week Dr. Gunter made the New York Times list. McNally stocked my title in their stores across Canada and placed several reorder shipments.

You also had an interesting audiobook giveaway strategy that helped support the pre-order. Would you describe the reasoning behind this and how well it worked for you? Well enough to do it again?

I have been a performer (figure skater) and coached performers (coach and choreographer) for most of my life—also, my audience loves my video content—so narrating my own audiobook was an easy decision. My priority throughout the process was maximum print sales, not maximum profits. I was willing to give my audiobook away for free to anyone who preordered the print.

In order to get the audiobook link, readers had to send their screenshot to my assistant. Preorder numbers do not show up until about ten days before pub day, so the steady stream of emails with proof of purchase helped me gauge the effectiveness of my promotional endeavors. Bonus: Many people listening to the book in advance made the early reviews roll in quickly on Goodreads.

About a month before pub day I posted a funny video where I listed the reasons I love my Hitachi Wand (a bedroom electronic). My audience went so wild with questions that I decided I would give away a wand a day until my book released. Preorders from each day would be considered for entry. It led to a steady stream of orders. For many who were on the fence about ordering, it was a fun incentive to just buy.

Your book hit the top 10 IngramSpark bestseller list when it released, and I believe IngramSpark reached out to you. Have they been helpful or supportive in getting the book more placement or sales?

This took me completely by surprise. A week before my pub day I got a phone call from an IngramSpark representative, indicating my title was “exploding” and they wanted to move it into their wholesale distribution pipeline.

Every Friday, Ingram sales reps have a virtual meeting with booksellers from across the world. There is a “Hot New Titles” segment where the Ingram reps make booksellers aware of titles that are selling well and that their customers may soon be asking for. Ingram wanted to include my title in this initiative.

He and I took a look at my website and social media profiles to make sure they were “bookstore friendly,” which basically means linking many purchasing choices, not just Amazon. This was easy, as I had already been educating my audience on this for so long. I put together some materials, my website link, social media profile links, and a handful of videos I had made educating about ways to support authors and bookstores and he shared them with the sales team.

I don’t know for certain how many sales or orders this resulted in, but I do know some friends who ordered through established independent bookstores and received an update email letting them know the book would not be fulfilled by a warehouse, but rather fulfilled in store.

You’ve successfully used TikTok and Instagram in particular to reach your audience. How much of your sales would you credit to your own social media content and engagement with people? Is this the engine that’s driving it all?

My engagement on social media is the engine that’s driving it all—not just because my audience is big, but because I am incredibly attentive to them. I respond to every message and have an average of 80 conversations going in my DMs (direct messages) each day. I feel like I’ve hand sold every single book, either through responding to DMs, comments, or questions on livestreams.

When people come into my DMs saying they found my videos really helpful for shifting their perspective in their relationship or that watching them has opened up a new conversation with their partner, I listen like they are already my friend, because I can often tell they don’t know who else they can talk to without judgment. When they ask for more advice that I haven’t covered or only skimmed in my videos, I’ll tell them they can find more detail in the book. This has led to countless couples reading it together—something I never expected.

You paid for some advertising on social media. How much did you invest (if you’re open to saying)? Did it work? Are you still advertising?

For several weeks I forgot I was launching a book and behaved like a PhD student studying “The Engagement and Conversion Likelihood of Women 25–55 Years Old across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and Pinterest Ads.” I spent 8–12 hours a day analyzing every metric I could grab—and Jane, my goodness, there are so many damn metrics. I tested different ad creative, static images vs videos, multiple landing pages, whether I mentioned the book at the outset or let them “find” the book themselves a few steps in, what difference was made if I sent them directly to an online retailer or to my website to get to know me better. If an ad platform was performing well, like Pinterest and Snapchat consistently did, I upped my daily spend to see the increase in book sales, then matched that spend on the other advertising platforms so I could test my hypotheses for why those others were not leading to sales.

I considered the investment to mostly be about my own education—I didn’t just want to learn what worked, I wanted to learn why and why not so I could help other writers make advertising decisions. I advertised heavily ($1,000 per day) for a few weeks before launch and a few weeks after. I then stopped all advertising to see if I could move the needle on sales by simply posting great content on Instagram and TikTok and my sales climbed to their highest point.

So far you have more than 250 ratings on Amazon and close to 400 ratings on Goodreads. Did you have to work particularly hard to get that many? Any secrets to share?

Getting reviews was the easiest part of this process. I think there are two reasons for this. First, I show up for my audience every day and they truly value me sharing my time with them. They know I have a ton of conversations going in my DMs and am still quick to respond. When I ask them to do me a favor, like request the book from their library or leave a review, they jump on it.

Second, they consistently see me shouting out other writers and mentioning that I am leaving a review for a fellow author. I model how to support authors I love all the time, so when the time came they knew how to support me.

So … the big question: can you tell us your sales so far?

I am about to hit 10,000 sales, with 80% paperback and 20% ebook. I think the high print sales can be explained by two things: I chose to price the ebook at the same price as the paperback, and because my audience wanted to post about my book and print books have a nicer aesthetic than ebooks.

Is there anything that you’ve stopped doing to market and promote?

I’ve found that organic reach and word of mouth are driving the sales, so I’ve stopped all paid advertising and giveaways.

Is there something you wish you’d started doing sooner?

I wished I would have trusted that showing up with a genuine desire to support people and a curiosity to learn would bloom into a community and a purpose and even provide financially—that the incredible conversation I had with one person a day was enough, even when my followers didn’t grow.

I worked really hard on social media for years, with super slow growth, and I wondered what hacks or strategies I needed to employ to connect with more people. What I didn’t realize was that the people I was watching grow were buying followers and likes. I was comparing myself to something that wasn’t real.

It’s not about building a feed that looks good, it’s about creating and connecting in a way that feels good, that fills me up rather than stressing me out.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed Ashleigh’s insights, then you should know she is the co-host of The Writers’ Bridge biweekly Zoom Q&A for writers looking to build their platforms. You can find her on Instagram at @ashleighrenard. Join her on Sept. 22 in partnership with Lounge Writers for the online class How to Sell Books on TikTok, No Dancing Required.

Why and How I Got My Rights Back from HarperCollins

“lets start over” by lonely radio is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Today’s post is by author, journalist and entrepreneur Anna David (@annabdavid), founder of Launch Pad Publishing.

When I sold my first book, Party Girl, to the ReganBooks division of HarperCollins in 2005, I thought I’d won the book lottery. Judith Regan was the rainmaker—so successful at making her authors successful that she’d actually become famous for it.

After the acquisition, the dream continued. I had exciting, glamorous lunches with Regan executives who were so important that they had assistants that came to the lunches (a move, my then-agent told me, was “classy”). My editor thought we should try to sell a reality show about me. Judith thought I should be featured on the cover—an idea she shared with me several hours before she was fired.

Because that’s what happened to the woman allegedly responsible for half the revenue of HarperCollins: suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere (depending on your point of view), she was unceremoniously dismissed in December 2006, and the ReganBooks imprint immediately dissolved.

Ignorant to the ways of publishing, I thought my book would still be a runaway success. Party Girl was scheduled to come out the following May and the New York Post, New York Daily News, Cosmo and Redbook were all scheduled to cover the book. The Today Show had booked me for an appearance the week of release and CAA was already fielding inquiries for the film rights.

But publicity and buzz, I learned, doesn’t sell books. Publishers sell books. More specifically, publisher support sells books.

I had no publisher support because I had no publisher. ReganBooks no longer existed, so I was put under the William Morrow imprint. Authors talk about being orphaned when their editor leaves for another house; this was like being orphaned and then having the orphanage burned to the ground, leaving chaos in its wake.

The cover decisions were messy. The first cover was, in a word, terrible. No one asked my opinion but luckily the team in charge of things agreed with me because it was abandoned for a less terrible one. But the first, really terrible one was sent out to the press so most of the coverage showed the wrong cover.

In the 14 years since then, I’ve published four more books with Harper, one with Simon & Schuster that became a New York Times bestseller and a few more with indie presses. Through that process, I’ve discovered what a rube I was.

But my true publishing education has occurred since founding my own hybrid publishing company three years ago.

It’s through this process that I’ve truly learned all the things my traditional publishers never told me—things that seem to be key to a book’s success. About, say, getting the author’s opinion on the cover. About advance reader teams. About effective book descriptions. About bulk orders. About keywords and categories. Oh, and speaking of categories, HarperCollins categorized Party Girl on Amazon as “Humorous Science Fiction.” While I’d agree that the book is funny, it’s a novel about a girl getting sober but having to fake being wild; in other words, it is in no way science fiction.

When “Quit Lit” started becoming a “thing” a few years ago, it occurred to me that I could republish the book. Last year, when it began to look like the Party Girl movie, after numerous options, would finally get made, I decided I wanted to republish the book under my own imprint. The book was over a decade old and out of print. It had barely been released. How hard could getting the rights back be?

Turns out, harder than you might think. My lawyer told me that because the book was out of print, the rights had officially reverted back to me but because of how the contract had been written, it would be a lot “cleaner” if I received written confirmation from Harper.

And so, in August 2020, he wrote the legal department of Harper a formal request for the reversion of rights, asking for a written response within four months. Four months later, nada.

I got my agent involved. She wrote Harper over and over. And over. Eventually, a woman at Harper named Helen responded that my lawyer’s letter had never been received, despite the fact that it had been sent registered mail. Helen promised they would discuss Party Girl at their next “reversion meeting.” The following month Helen said the decision had been postponed another month.

And then, just when I’d reached the point where I was going to go ahead and republish the book without their permission, I received a letter from Helen telling me that I could have my rights back so long as I didn’t use Harper’s layout or cover. No problem, Helen!

I’m now getting ready to launch my first baby the way I wanted it launched in the first place. I’m sure there will be numerous frustrations, disappointments and annoyances I’ll want to complain about. At least this time I’ll know where I can find the publisher.

Want to Win NaNoWriMo? The Secret Is Preparation

Today’s post is by author, editor, and book coach Julie Artz (@julieartz), who’s currently running a free 12 Weeks to a NaNo Win email course.

The first time I signed up for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), I failed. The story idea I’d come up with on October 31 ran out of steam after about 20,000 words and so did I. So I came back the next year ready to learn from my mistakes and get that coveted first NaNoWriMo “win.” Here’s what I did.

First, redefine winning

I don’t really like the term “win” when it comes to NaNoWriMo because anything writers do to cultivate a regular creativity practice is a win, even if they don’t write 50,000 words in a single month. And I’ve heard many in the writing community admit that setting such a lofty goal actually creates feelings of failure in an already fraught industry.

So redefine what it means to win NaNoWriMo right now. Do you want to write every day in November? Do you want to write 25,000 words? Do you want to sketch out the bare bones of your new story? Whatever your goal, make it something that you can reasonably achieve given the demands on your time.

Set yourself up for success

Even if you set a lower-than-50,000-words goal for November, there are still non-writing things you can do to help set yourself up for success. Consider whether you can:

Stock your fridge and freezer with quick, easy, nourishing meals that will free up cooking time in November. I love this set of make-ahead meals from The Kitchn.If you share responsibility for groceries, meal-prep, or other household chores, bargain with other members of your household—can you pick up more in October so that they can give you a break in November?Set expectations with family and friends that you will be spending the bulk of your free-time in November writing. Creating a sign for your office or bedroom door might help remind them to stay out when you’re writing.Reschedule any non-critical appointments for either before or after November. No need to spend writing time at the dentist!In addition to preplanning some meals, stock up on your favorite snacks and beverages. Don’t be afraid to reward yourself with your favorite sweet as you achieve milestones. It really does help!Panster —> Planster —> Planner

Listen, I’m a reformed pantser. I only had the vaguest idea of a premise when I first sat down to write that failed contemporary women’s fiction novel in 2012. The reason I came back and won in 2013 was less about will power or caffeine intake and more about doing a little planning in advance.

That doesn’t mean you can only do NaNo if you’ve created a 52-page outline and detailed character sketches. In fact, I never do that, even when I’m drafting outside of NaNo. But spending time priming the pump with ideas during September and October—sometimes called #plantober on social media—can help you get off to a good start on November 1.

Here are some things I like to think about in advance:

Comp titles and genres and mashups (oh my!)

Reading widely in your genre and age category is the best investment you can make in your writing. The last thing you want to do is waste November writing time dithering about whether you want to include a witch or a gumshoe detective or a murderous villain (or all three). Get familiar with the tropes for your chosen genre, including deciding how you’d like to reinforce or subvert them, before November comes and panic sets in.

The beginning of an arc: character motivation

If you were only going  to read one craft book before or during NaNoWriMo, I would recommend Lisa Cron’s Story Genius (although I’ve recommended a great book on revision toward the end of this article as well for post-NaNo reading!). It digs deep into how a character’s backstory, desires, and misbeliefs about the world influence the actions they take as their story unravels.

That character motivation is often the first hint of the character’s ultimate change arc during the story. For more information on the strengths and challenges of starting with character, see Susan DeFreitas’s article.

The five-line outline

Although I definitely lean toward character-driven writing, I know it doesn’t work for all writers. That’s why I recommend creating at least a high-level outline before you begin NaNoWriMo. Here’s a technique I use with my planning-averse clients to get them thinking about plot without getting bogged down in an endless outline.

First, describe your story in three parts, beginning, middle, and end.

Your three parts are probably something like this:

Once upon a time. (Ordinary world)But then this happened. (Story Problem)And they all lived happily ever after. (Resolution)

What if you added two more parts to your three-line story?

Ordinary WorldBut then (moment everything changed — story setup)…It was awful until (confrontation)…Then the hero figured it out (climax)…And they all lived happily ever after (resolution)

See if you can map out these five major story beats. If you know more than five, by all means jot them down. But try to at least get five down on paper.

Learn to turn off the internal editor…

Even if you spend hours and hours working on your character arc and plot points, one of the key techniques for NaNoWriMo success is learning to turn off the internal editor. That not only means just continuing to write forward even if you know you’re going to have to change something in revision, but it means being flexible enough to realize when you need to make changes to the planning you did prior to November 1.

…and explore your story idea with abandon

Because what you’re ultimately trying to do is explore a story idea with maximum creativity, minimal doubt, and total abandon. That means it should be fun, exhilarating, challenging, and new. Not a chore. And not punishment for not doing more planning in advance. That’s your internal critic talking. Kindly escort him off the premises.

Creating a routine

Even with all this great planning in place, writing every day for a month can be exhausting, especially if you’re not already in the habit. Each time I’ve done NaNo, I’ve produced significantly more wordcount per hour toward the end of the month than I did in the beginning because creativity is a muscle that strengthens with practice.

To make sure you’re getting that practice every day, consider setting aside a window of time at the same time every day to write. Regardless of your time zone, there’s usually some activity on #5amwritersclub on Twitter, and writing with a virtual friend can help you keep to your routine. And the @NaNoWordSprints account hosts regular get-togethers if having community around you is motivating.

I also like to use sensory input to help get me into the right mindset. I put my favorite essential oil blend in the diffuser, make myself a pot of tea, and sit with the same window view for each writing session. I’m too easily distracted for music, but many writers enjoy either white noise or a set soundtrack to give them an auditory cue that it’s time to write.

First draft does not equal “query ready”

Many agents and editors tell horror stories about the unedited first drafts that end up in their inboxes in the month of December because of NaNoWriMo. Don’t be that writer. Understand that even if this isn’t your first novel or your first NaNo, whatever you finish in the month of November is far from query-ready.

I love Cheryl Klein’s Bookmapping technique as a way of reverse outlining and assessing your plot and character arcs after a draft has been completed and recommend you check out The Magic Words from the library or your local indie bookseller if you’re struggling to know what to do next. Cheryl shared a sample Bookmap on her website for reference as well.

Have you ever fast-drafted a novel? What tips do you have to share? I’d love to hear them in the comments.

Why Write This Book?

Photo by Polina Zimmerman from Pexels

Today’s post is excerpted from Blueprint for a Book: Build Your Novel From the Inside Out by Jennie Nash (@jennienash). Join her on Sept. 22 for the online class The Inside Outline.

In 2013, Pixar storyboard artist Emma Coats wrote down the rules for storytelling she learned while working at the legendary animation studio. I especially love Rule #14. It’s not actually a rule at all, but a question:

Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.

If you’re like most writers, your story has been haunting you for quite some time. It keeps you up at night. It nags at you when you are reading other people’s stories. It pops into your head at times when it is least welcome. It wants to be told. 

It can be extremely useful to know why you think it’s haunting you. There is probably some clue in your answer that holds the key to your whole story.

Why yes, I’m referencing Simon Sinek

I start with why because of Simon Sinek’s mega-selling business book, Start With Why. I have learned an enormous amount about coaching writers from reading business books, and this one is at the top of the list. If you haven’t read it, do it now. If you’re not really going to read it, then listen to Simon Sinek’s TED talk on how great leaders inspire action. It’s 18 minutes long, but even if you only listen to the first six minutes, you’ll get it, because his message is crystal clear: “People don’t buy what you do; people buy why you do it.”

In other words, it’s not enough to create a product that people might want to buy, or a book that readers might want to read. Your story has to spring from a deep conviction on your part, or it risks not resonating with the readers you want to captivate.

So all this work you’re going to do on what your book will be? It actually all hinges on why you want to write it—on why it is haunting you, or why you care. If you can articulate that, it will give your story all kinds of power. Your readers will be able to feel the why.

I actually believe that not knowing the answer to why is one of the things that holds a lot of writers back. They know they like to write, they know they’re good at it, they know they have a story to tell, but they don’t know why it matters to them or what, exactly, it means to them. As a result, they write a book that doesn’t ever really get down to anything real and raw and authentic. They write pages that skate along the surface of things. And if there’s one thing readers don’t need, it’s to skate along the surface of things. That’s what social media is for.

I can already hear you protesting that a book is not a product, not a commodity. So let me ask: do you want strangers to read your book? If so, you have to write a book people will want to buy. Even before we talk about dollars and cents, we want agents, editors, and readers to buy that we have something to say worth listening to. What that means is that we want our story to be generous and alive—and that requires knowing your why.

Knowing your “why” is going deep

Listen to what literary agent Ann Rittenberg says about generosity in a speech she gave at Bennington College in 2002. I have been referencing this speech for almost twenty years, because it gets so precisely at why you need to know your why:

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What kind of writer can make characters [you care about]? I think the kind of writer who is not afraid to access the deepest places in himself and is not afraid to share what he comes up with. Such a writer can set those discoveries down on a page without interference from an internal tribunal. I’m sure you all have some kind of internal tribunal. It might be one voice, or it might be many, but it’s the thing that says, “You can’t do that. That’s insignificant. That doesn’t make any sense. Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”

I have a client whose writing I absolutely love, the way I love the writing of all my clients. I’ve gotten to know her well in the dozen or so years we’ve worked together, and I once told her she had no skin between herself and the outside world. Such a condition can make daily life painful, but it can also make for wonderfully particular, wonderfully alive writing. It’s writing that’s stripped bare of the kind of chatty filler that makes the writer feel more secure, that assuages the writer’s fear of what she’s seen in those deep recesses. Every sentence is pointed, to the point, a working part of the whole machine.

I see plenty of writing that has kernels of good in it, but it’s hedged around with so much tentativeness or uncertainty or excess or stinginess, that it doesn’t allow the outsider—the reader—in. It doesn’t reveal the character. And if I can’t find a chink in the wall, I know that the agent/author relationship isn’t going to be successful.

Yet when I read something that speaks to me, that absorbs me, that remains vividly in my head even when I’m not reading it, I’ve been intimate with the person who wrote it before I’ve even met him. This isn’t to say I know anything about him. I only know he or she is the kind of writer who’s willing to explore the deep essence of character….

You can see why the concept of authenticity and generosity of spirit is so important to writing fiction, so the very first thing to do is to get honest with yourself about your why. Dig deep and write one page on why you must write this book. What does it mean to you? Why does it matter? Why do you care?

Amazon / Bookshop

Note that asking why you must write this book is different from asking why you are writing a book or what you want from the experience. Your motivation probably has to do with any number of things—fame, money, leaving a legacy, or proving to yourself or someone else that you can do it. Writers want to write! We want to raise our voice and be heard! We want to make an impact on readers the way writers have impacted us. The vast number of writers I work with say that they want to write a book before they die. It’s often a thing they have dreamed about doing since they were very young. These are powerful and important motivations, and I am all for knowing the answer to these questions—what you want out of writing a book, what your goal is, what you would consider success.

But for the Blueprint, we are talking about the why for this particular story. Why do you want to write this specific book? Why do you care? Because if you know why you care, your readers will get it, too.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, please join Jennie on Sept. 22 for the online class The Inside Outline.