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The Secret Ingredient of a Commercially Successful Novel

“tinned fear – a vague sense of unease” by ministryofstories is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Today’s guest post is by writing coach, workshop instructor, and author C. S. Lakin (@cslakin).

There are a number of ingredients that make up a commercially successful novel, regardless of genre. Scenes that end with high moments that deliver a punch in the last lines. Evocative, rich sensory detail. Dynamic dialogue that accomplishes much more than conveying information … and the list goes on.

But the greatest and most understated ingredient of a commercially successful novel is microtension. And few writers understand what this is and how it can be used brilliantly in fiction.

A constant state of tension

Tension is created by lack. Lack of understanding, lack of closure, lack of equilibrium or peace. When your readers have questions, that creates tension. When they need to know what happens next, that is tension.

Masterful writers keep their readers in a constant state of tension. And that’s a good thing.

But here’s something to keep in mind: our characters may be tense, but that doesn’t mean readers are tense in response. A character with a tightened fist or clenched jaw does not ensure readers will respond in the same way. And that might not even be the desired response a writer is hoping for.

What the characters think, feel, and show must be carefully executed to evoke the desired emotional response in readers.

The tension we writers want to focus on most is the tension our readers feel. If we don’t keep them in a state of expectation, they’ll start nodding off, and next thing you know, our novel slips unread to the floor.

That means getting tension on every page. How is that possible?

By focusing on microtension.

The difference between tension and microtension

Just what is microtension? Just as the prefix suggests, it’s tension on a micro level, or in small, barely noticeable increments. Your big plot twists and reversals and surprises are macro-tension items. And those have great potential for sparking emotional response in readers. But microtension is achieved on a line-by-line basis.

For example, anytime a character has conflicting feelings, you have microtension. Microtension can be small, simmering, subtext, subtle. Even the choice of words or the turn of a phrase can produce microtension by its freshness or unexpected usage.

Microtension is created by the element of surprise. When readers are surprised by the action in the scene, the reaction of characters, or their own emotional reactions, that is successful microtension at work.

A sudden change in emotion can create tension. A character struggling between two opposite emotions creates tension. Odd contradictory emotions and reactions can create microtension.

Microtension is created when things feel off, feel contradictory, seem puzzling.

Maybe that sounds crazy, but if characters are sitting around happy with nothing bothering them, you have a boring scene that readers will stop reading. Sure, at the end of your book, you might have that wonderful happy moment when it’s all wrapped up and the future, finally, looks bright, but that’s why the book ends there.

Let’s take a look at part of the opening scene of the 2012 blockbuster best seller Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. The characters, Nick and Amy Dunne, greet each other one morning—like any married couple, we’d expect.

At the start of the scene we get this strange thought in Nick’s head that seems to be interrupting the typical “wake up in the morning” ritual we tend to experience each day:

The sun climbed over the skyline of oaks, revealing its full summer angry-god self. Its reflection flared across the river toward our house, a long blaring finger aimed at me through our frail bedroom curtains. Accusing: You have been seen. You will be seen.

The sun is not warming and bright and inviting; it’s angry, accusatory. We immediately are piqued with curiosity—What is Nick feeling guilty about? What has he done? That alone might get many readers turning pages.

Action in a scene creates tension all by itself. Any element of mystery in the plot makes readers want to know what happens next. But masterful writers will also embed words, phrases, and lines of microtension that charge the pages. Describing the sun as angry and watching him, juxtaposed with the word frail (which perhaps hints at the condition of his marriage or his ability to keep his secrets hidden), is microtension.

Note the interest and tension created by the unexpected and incongruous thoughts and reactions Nick has as this moment plays out:

It was our five-year anniversary.

I walked barefoot to the edge of the steps and stood listening, working my toes into the plush wall-to-wall carpet Amy detested on principle, as I tried to decide whether I was ready to join my wife. Amy was in the kitchen, oblivious to my hesitation. She was humming something melancholy and familiar. I strained to make it out—a folk song? A lullaby?—and then realized it was the theme to M.A.S.H. Suicide is painless. I went downstairs.

I hovered in the doorway, watching my wife. Her yellow-butter hair was pulled up, the hank of ponytail swinging cheerful as a jump-rope, and she was sucking distractedly on a burnt fingertip, hum­ming around it. She hummed to herself because she was an unrivaled botcher of lyrics. When we were first dating, a Genesis song came on the radio: “She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah.” And Amy crooned instead, “She takes my hat and puts it on the top shelf.” When I asked her why she’d ever think her lyrics were remotely, pos­sibly, vaguely right, she told me she always thought the woman in the song truly loved the man because she put his hat on the top shelf. I knew I liked her then, really liked her, this girl with an explanation for everything.

There’s something disturbing about recalling a warm memory and feeling utterly cold.

Amy peered at the crepe sizzling in the pan and licked something off her wrist. She looked triumphant, wifely. If I took her in my arms, she would smell like berries and powdered sugar.

When she spied me lurking there in grubby boxers, my hair in full Heat Miser spike, she leaned against the kitchen counter and said, “Well, hello, handsome.”

Bile and dread inched up my throat. I thought to myself: Okay, go.

What made you stop and think, essentially, “Wait … what”? That’s how I spot microtension. We expect a couple acknowledging their anniversary to be happy and full of warm thoughts. What do we find here?

First, the mention of carpeting Amy detested. That’s odd he’d think about that. Then he’s hesitating before joining her. It makes us wonder why. She’s humming a tune, and instead of a romantic song or one that has pleasant lyrics or visual associations, it’s a song about suicide from a TV series about medics in the Korean War. Suicide? Wait … what?

Nick doesn’t spend time thinking about this but instead sneaks a glimpse at his wife, who seems the picture of childlike innocence with yellow-butter hair and a ponytail swinging “cheerful as a jump-rope.” This image and the author’s choice of words is incongruous with the song and her sucking on a burnt fingertip, followed by Nick feeling “utterly cold” at this warm memory of his wife botching lyrics.

We already know there is trouble in paradise by the things Nick notices about Amy and his behavior, thoughts, and reactions to her. Again, we have a contradictory, unexpected reaction when Nick, thinking of how sweet his wife would smell in his arms and her apparently friendly greeting to him, prompts bile and dread to inch up his throat.

Wait … what? Readers now are asking questions and wanting answers. What is he dreading? Amy seems to be perfectly pleasant and cheerful, so why is Nick reacting like this?

A few paragraphs later, we learned Nick borrowed a lot of money from Amy to open a bar in town, and he’s feeling guilty about this. He’s determined to make it a success, and off he heads to work. Here’s the high moment at the end, where the unease and microtension ratchets up ten notches.

As I walked toward the bar across the concrete-and-weed parking lot, I looked straight down the road and saw the river. … The river wasn’t swollen now, but it was running urgently, in strong ropy currents. Moving apace with the river was a long single-file line of men, eyes aimed at their feet, shoulders tense, walking steadfastly nowhere. As I watched them, one suddenly looked up at me, his face in shadow, an oval blackness. I turned away.

I felt an immediate, intense need to get inside. By the time I’d gone twenty feet, my neck bubbled with sweat. The sun was still an angry eye in the sky. You have been seen.

My gut twisted, and I moved quicker. I needed a drink.

Here we see, as Nick heads to his bar, not a pretty garden of colorful flowers but a “concrete-and-weed parking lot” and a river running “urgently” with strong “ropy currents.” These are deliberate images and word choice by the author meant to reflect Nick’s mind-set and mood.

Concrete and weeds conjure up hard, ugly things. The river isn’t gaily rippling or gently flowing, it’s described in a way that we subconscious sense Nick is feeling—some sense of urgency and distress, and ropy currents make readers picture ropes, which are constricting, even violent. Strong ropes evoke images of people or things tied up, restrained, or perhaps whipped or beaten. Nothing there implies joy, peace, beauty, contentment, or happiness.

Then, strangely, Nick sees a line of men walking single file (wait … what?) beside the river, which evokes a prison gang, with eyes fixed on the ground, their bodies tense. And they are walking “steadfastly nowhere.” How in the world does he know that? Why are they in this scene? Why would Nick look at them?

It’s all very intriguing, giving us the feeling that Nick is reading into them what he is presently feeling—trapped, imprisoned, made to “toe the line” as a dutifully faithful husband, tense, but wandering nowhere, as if being pulled by an invisible current against his will … all because of something he’s done that we have yet discovered.

His pressing need to go inside creates more microtension, as does his neck bubbling (interesting choice of word to tie in with the river water) with sweat. He notices again the angry eye of the sun and is reminded that he’s been seen, prompting his gut to twist and need a drink—first thing in the morning.

We are now really itching to know: What has Nick done that has made him so tense and fearful?

Not a lot of action has occurred—Nick’s woken up in the morning, greeted his wife, and gone to his bar—but look at all that’s been implied yet not shown or told. We don’t get Nick thinking, I’m really worried about my marriage. I’ve been cheating on my wife, and if I get caught my life is in the toilet. I don’t know if I can keep up this ruse of being the loving, devoted husband. Amy is controlling and weird and crazy, and I made a mistake marrying her.

Flynn could have told us a lot through Nick’s thoughts to explain what all these strange feelings are all about, and that’s perhaps what an amateur author would do. But instead she chose to pack her opening pages with microtension that create more questions than provide answers.

At any given moment, we humans feel a number of different emotions, and they often clash. By going deep into your characters and drawing out that type of inner conflict as often as possible, you can bring microtension into your scenes.

Yes, you will have outer conflict as well (hopefully a lot of it). But by adding the inner conflict, you can ramp up the microtension.

Try to avoid common expressions we’ve all heard before. Think past the obvious first emotion and find something deeper, something submerged and underlying the superficial emotion. Strive for the unexpected.

3 ways to add microtension to your scenes

Dialogue: Examine each line of dialogue. Take out boring and unnecessary words and trivial matters. Go for clever. Find a way to give each speaker a unique voice and style of speaking. Subtext can hint at what characters are really feeling below the surface, and that creates mystery. Keep in mind the tension is in the relationship between the characters speaking, not in the information presented.

Action: This can be with any kind of action—high or low. Even a gesture is action. So think how to make an action incongruous. What does that mean? Real people are conflicted all the time. Real people are complex, inconsistent. So having a character react in an incongruent manner, and having incongruent developments in the storyline, will add microtension. Have things happen and characters react in ways the reader does not expect. And, most important, show everything through the POV character’s emotions. Action will not be tense unless the character is experiencing it and emotionally reacting to it.

Exposition: Exposition is the prose, your writing. It is the way you explain what is happening as you show it. It includes internal monologue. Find ways to add those conflicted emotions and create dissonance. Show ideas at war with one another. Use word choices that feel contradictory. Find fresh, different ways to describe common things.

The emotions readers feel when an author is a master at microtension are intrigue, curiosity, excitement, fascination, unease, and dread. In other words, when you sense something coming around the corner and you don’t know what it is, it triggers emotions. Depending on the story and genre, those might be fear, anguish, giddiness, mirth, terror, or titillation.

If a writer masterfully creates microtension, she is going to get readers committed to her story and her characters, feeling tense all the way to the last line of the novel.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, check out C. S. Lakin’s online course 8 Weeks to Writing a Commercially Successful Novel. It includes more than 10 hours of lecture and dozens of scenes from bestselling novels analyzed, plus handouts and worksheets galore—for fiction writers of any level.

The Importance of Curiosity and Tension to Storytelling

Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger from Pexels

Today’s post is excerpted from The Eight Crafts of Writing by Stefan Emunds (@StefanEmunds).

“Make the audience put things together. Don’t give them four, give them two plus two.”
—Andrew Stanton

“Drama is anticipation mingled with uncertainty.”
—William Archer

Your goal is to get total strangers to read the first chapter of your book and hook them enough to read the second. And the third. And the fourth. And so forth. But what makes readers open a book and keeps them turning the pages?

In part, curiosity and tension.

Curiosity is an intellectual affair

People are curious souls. They wonder how it feels to walk in someone else’s moccasins for a moon. Or in someone else’s high heels. Is the grass really greener on the other side? How does it feel to have no garden? How does it feel to have an entire park as a garden? How does it feel to have a house in the middle of a desert? People read to experience things they can’t or don’t want to encounter in real life.

Curiosity manifests in two ways:

Expectation or anticipation (positive curiosity)Worry (negative curiosity)

Writers maintain readers’ curiosity by raising questions, in particular, the global story question: Will the protagonist succeed or not?

But don’t just raise any questions. Questions need to come with challenges.

To maintain reader curiosity, you can raise and answer multiple questions on multiple levels—for example, a story question, an act question, a chapter question, and a scene question. Try to keep two to three questions open at any given time. Raise two questions in your opening and answer one. Then, raise two new questions and answer one. Then raise two new questions and answer two.

Take the world of TV and movie writing: screenplays have seven or eight sequences, and each sequence begins with a challenge/question and ends with an answer—success or failure. You can do the same thing with chapters and acts.

You can boost reader curiosity with dramatic devices, like a cliffhanger. A cliffhanger separates a question and delays the answer with a chapter, act, or even book break.

Tension arises from the discrepancy between want and reality

To feel tension, readers must sympathize and/or empathize with characters or at least want to know what happens to them. Dwight V. Swain once said, “Your reader must care what happens. Otherwise, he won’t worry, and worry is the big product that a writer sells.”

Tension manifests in two ways:

The reader wants something to happen—e.g., the protagonist succeeds.The reader wants something not to happen—e.g., that the protagonist fails.

The antagonist and adversity keep the protagonist from realizing her want. The greater the power divide between the protagonist and antagonist, the greater the tension.

Small power divide: Readers wonder whether the protagonist will succeed.Large power divide: Reader wonder how on earth the protagonist could possibly succeed.Optimal power divide and writer jackpot: Readers are convinced that it is impossible for the protagonist to succeed.

In the case of a series, writers give their protagonists an overall or umbrella want and keep them from achieving it. The Blacklist would end the moment Elizabeth Keen is safe. The 100 would end the moment these guys get a life. Tony Soprano better not succeed with his therapy, and Uhtred better not get his kingdom.

Writers can use dramatic devices to increase tension, for example, by:

Raising stakesCreating expectationsIntroducing red herringsDropping unexpected twistsIntroducing deadlinesIncreasing adversity/conflictComplicating complicationsHinting at subtextTension works together with curiosity

Ever heard that stories are either story-driven or character-driven? They should be both. Conflict alone is not an engager. But conflicts keep protagonists from realizing their story goals, which engages readers and produces tension. And conflicts give rise to the question of whether and how the protagonist will prevail.

Note from Jane: if you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out Stefan Emunds’s book, The Eight Crafts of Writing.

Going the Wrong Kind of Viral: Q&A with Andrea Askowitz

Author, editor, and podcaster Andrea Askowitz (@andreaaskowitz) discusses what she learned from going the wrong kind of viral, the power of vulnerable truth in writing, and whether she would rather be famous for her writing or good at it, if she had to choose one or the other.

Askowitz is the author of the memoir My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy (Cleis Press) and the editor of Badass: True Stories, the Double Album (Lominy Books). She produced a documentary about homelessness that is currently nominated for an Emmy and founded Lip Service, a Knight Foundation award-winning night of true stories, which she produced quarterly for nine years. Now, she is the host of the podcast Writing Class Radio. In just five years, the podcast has been downloaded more than 650,000 times.

Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Salon, The Rumpus, Huffington Post, Glamour, AEON, The Writer, Manifest-Station, Mutha, NPR, PBS, and numerous anthologies.

KRISTEN TSETSI: You join Barbara Ehrenreich, JK Rowling, and Lauren Hough, among others, in the unenviable club of authors who have gone viral for the wrong reasons. Your piece in the Independent, about being a rule-breaking, lockdown-flouting entitled American, received a lot of negative attention, including Damon Young’s response essay in The Root, “Andrea Askowitz Invents New Level of Whiteness, Writes the Worst Essay You’ll Ever Read.”

You couldn’t have imagined your piece would generate such a powerful response. What drove you to share that lockdown-era travel experience, what kind of reaction to the essay did you anticipate once you learned it would be published, and what was it like for you to see the actual reactions coming in?

ANDREA ASKOWITZ: Thank you for asking this question and for not cutting me out of your will. I’ve been thinking A LOT about cancel culture and my role in it. I hurt a lot of people and I am really sorry.

What I meant or tried to say in my lockdown-era travel story got totally lost, and now I see why. When I got the piece published, I didn’t expect a reaction at all, which I’m totally embarrassed to admit. I was accused of being tone-deaf, among many accusations. It’s true, I was tone-deaf.

My point was that biblical idea that whoever is without sin should cast the first stone. I judged a man for breaking lockdown rules, then when I broke lockdown rules, I became that man. I had no business judging. I was trying to say we are all hypocrites. I was using myself as the example. I thought people would see themselves in me.

A year later, I realize EVERYTHING about my story was wrong, maybe even the central premise. Stones were cast at me. And while I do not condone meanness, I may have deserved the stoning.

It’s odd to say this, but I think I came out the better for it. I was accused of being privileged and of saying something racist. I hate the racist part the most. But I learned something, and that is why I’m better for it. The privileged part is more complicated because coming out okay after being slammed online for my privilege is probably only possible due to privilege. I didn’t lose my livelihood. Many people do.

Damon Young did a good job. His story is funny. I hate that it’s about me, but it’s Young’s job to call out racism. He’s built a career around this. He didn’t just fly off and call me names, like so many people did online. Young made me think, and in the last year, I have done a lot of reading and tuning in to what’s going on for people of color. The Black Lives Matter movement helped me understand what police brutality really means. I had an idea, but now I know that there is a long and terrible list of people of color who have been brutally treated by the police. So many people have been killed by cops. I never trusted cops, but I didn’t understand how dangerous it is to be confronted by a cop if you are a person of color. I also didn’t understand that some people—because of how they were raised or because of the color of their skin—won’t or can’t ask for what they want the way my wife, Vicky, did.

I’m afraid to stir up anger again by explaining what happened, but it doesn’t really make sense unless you know that Vicky was stopped by a cop at the border of Monroe County, which is the entrance to the Florida Keys. Our kids and I were quarantining at my mom’s house in Key Largo. We’d been separated from Vicky for more than two months because we had just returned from Spain. When the pandemic started, Vicky was in the U.S., while the rest of us were in Madrid.

A few days after returning to the U.S., the kids and I scheduled COVID tests. Vicky had our car and headed down from Miami, where she was staying separate from us (we were trying to do the safe thing), to take us to get our tests. She was stopped at the border because Monroe County restricted tourist entry. This was not a black-and-white case because we weren’t tourists, exactly. Vicky demanded that she be let through. The cop was mean to her and held her up, and this was the big mistake I made. I wrote that she experienced police brutality.

Vicky is Latina and considers herself white. She demanded to get through, which I understand, now, has everything to do with her being able to pass as white. I now know what Vicky experienced was not police brutality. I also know that naming what happened to her as police brutality diminishes other people’s real and sometimes fatal experience.

What was your takeaway from the reader response, both on a personal level and on a professional level?

At first, the response shocked and scared me. I could not speak. Not even at home. I was so afraid to say the wrong thing. Like, I’d say, “Pass the salt.” And then I’d think, Oh no, did someone else need it first? Did that come out entitled? I questioned everything down to who I am and who I thought I was. I thought I was someone who challenged society to be more just.

I am afraid to say what I’m about to say because I know this sounds like virtue signaling (something I’ve learned since my story came out), but before writing full-time, I spent many years working full-time as a social justice organizer and activist. I thought my heart was in the right place. And maybe it was. The problem was that my brain was in another place.

This is the problem with perspective. I was limited by my perspective. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. This whole experience helped me broaden my perspective.

On a professional level, I got lucky. I am lucky. I didn’t lose my livelihood. My wife was threatened and that was scary, but her boss stood by her. So, in the end, the worst part of being cancelled was that I silenced myself.

Your Twitter bio says you’re seeking an agent for a new memoir. Your debut memoir, My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy, published in 2008, is about subject matter made clear in the title. Can you talk about the new one?

I’m working on two projects. One is ready to go out to agents and editors. It’s a collection of linked essays currently titled No One Knows I’m Famous or maybe it’s called She Married a Jewish, Gringa Attention Whore about my relationship with Vicky and how I risked everything when another woman gave me the attention I thought I deserved. I think I come as close to anyone I’ve ever read in telling the truth about a marriage.

My other project is a memoir titled The Year of Living Spanishly. In September, 2019, we took the family to Spain to learn to live less like spoiled Americans. Six months later, we were shut inside our Madrid apartment because of COVID-19. When we returned home, five months short, I was no less spoiled. It took getting reamed on the Internet to teach me a lesson I needed my whole life.

What attracted you as a writer to memoir writing? And what attracted you as an individual to the idea of telling your personal story?

I am fascinated by the truth. I also like how truth can become art. It’s sort of a miracle when someone goes through something terrible and can come through it and also create something beautiful out of that experience.

Telling my stories helps me feel connected. On Writing Class Radio’s first episode, I tell the story of what happened to me when I took my first memoir class and revealed something embarrassing. Basically, I threw myself at a man. I begged for sex. He said no. I know, I’m a lesbian. I know. There was a lot about that moment that humiliated me. I was at a low. Okay, I was desperate and pathetic. I actually swore I wouldn’t tell anyone what happened, ever. Then I wrote about it the next week in my writing class and then read my story out loud. What happened changed my life. I felt understood. Loved even. This is why I’m attracted to telling my stories.

What are some memoirs you’ve read that have helped guide your own memoir writing, in terms of how to creatively approach one’s own life?

Joyce Maynard’s memoir At Home in the World is a wonderful example of structure. It’s just logical, in my mind. Her second memoir, The Best of Us, is also instructive for structure and all things storytelling. She’s one of my best teachers. She’s just a brilliant storyteller. I also just finished Lauren Hough’s Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing, and there were so many moments when I thought, yes, this is why I read and write.

Many years ago, I read The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. And while it’s not billed as a memoir, I know it’s based on his experience. I loved how his stories built on each other. I love this book so much because I despise war, but I felt for his characters. Structurally, the way his characters show up again and again in new ways fascinates me. I also loved how each story worked on its own.

I saw this again when I read Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. Again, this is fiction, but storytelling techniques cross genres. I just loved how the characters came and went. Recently, Kristi Coulter’s Nothing Good Can Come from This actually helped me in how to creatively approach my own life because she took one subject, alcoholism, and built a love story around that subject. That’s what I am trying to do with No One Knows I’m Famous.

Speaking of fame, you asked on Twitter, once, “Serious question for #agents and #publishers: If I create a giant platform, why would I need you?” I imagine this was in response to the preference agents and publishers have for nonfiction writers with established platforms to help sell their work. What answers did you receive, and were you satisfied by any of them?

I directed my question to agents and publishers, which was more a rhetorical question. But some writers answered and the discussion was a lot more thoughtful than I expected.

Some said we don’t need agents and publishers. Someone else said we need agents and publishers for legitimacy, which has been my bias. One writer compared an agent to a realtor and explained that, technically, we could sell our houses on our own, but we’re not experts and we don’t have the contacts or the expertise with contracts and legality. I thought that was a solid point.

What sort of platform do you need to have, as you understand it, to satisfy an agent or publisher? Do you need more Twitter followers (is it that simple?), or are you supposed to cultivate a platform more narrowly aligned with the subject matter of your new memoir—and how do you feel about that? Have you started planning how to do it?

What I understand about the business of publishing is that you have to have people who will buy your book. I don’t like that this is the case, but it makes sense in our current marketplace. The whole world is vying for the whole world’s attention at all times. And because people get their news and entertainment from specific, personalized channels, authors have to create our own channels.

In 2006, I created Lip Service, a live storytelling show, and I needed an audience. My mom gave me her personal mailing list, which included about 300 friends and family. I emailed my mom’s list and about 65 people came. Every show after that, I passed out a sign-in sheet, asking for people’s emails. I announced from the stage that I was taking attendance. When I go to a restaurant and have a fun conversation with a server, I ask for their email. I was/am very assertive about my mailing list and most people sign up when I ask.

This is exactly the same challenge authors have. We need an audience to buy our books. In the last 15 years, I’ve built a pretty strong mailing list, which I add to every week. Now, I have about 9,000 people on it, which is pretty much everyone I’ve ever met.

I’m also active on Twitter and Facebook. I’m bad at Instagram. And because I have a teenager, I’ve recently been introduced to TikTok, which I actually don’t hate. TikTok is fun to watch and fun to make videos. In a way it’s a more honest medium because it’s not about creating relationships, which to me can feel fake. TikTok seems to be all about producing content. Everyone is saying: Look at me! Look at me!

A few years ago, I set out to become Twitter famous. I spent a summer tweeting hard. I write about it in She Married a Jewish, Gringa Attention Whore. At the end of my Twitter summer, I got to about 6,000 followers and then slowed down. I failed. Now, who knows. Maybe this will be my TikTok summer and someone will finally know I’m famous.

I think what agents and editors want is not necessarily a giant number of followers, but an active presence, which would include a large number of people who engage with you. If you can position yourself as an expert on the topic of your book on social media, that’s awesome. Ashleigh Renard, a sex advisor on Instagram, has gained a lot of followers.

Writing Class Radio, the podcast I host, has been downloaded more than 650,000 times in five years. I get about 10,000 listeners a month. So, I do have a loyal following. I also give writing advice on social media, which is almost, but not quite, as sexy as sex advice.

Agents and editors are also looking for stories that hit a nerve and go viral. So, I write and send out essays for publication.

You also put some of them on Medium, and in one Medium essay, about your challenge to yourself to write one essay a week for a year, you write that you asked yourself during week 32 why you’d challenged yourself that way. Your answer was, “I’d finished a book and spent three years revising it with an agent. She sent it out to 12 publishers and it got rejected. Then my agent lost confidence in my book. I sent it out 26 more times. All rejections.”

What were those three years like? Specifically, were submissions ongoing throughout the revision process with changes being made according to editor critiques, or did submissions not begin until the final revisions were complete? And how did you feel about the agent’s revision suggestions when they were made—did you agree they would improve the book, or did you feel pressured to comply because “agents know what publishers want”?

I love a collaboration. LOVE. I don’t always agree with every note I get from editors, or, in the case you’re asking me about, my ex-agent, but I always appreciate and consider their feedback. Usually there is something that can be improved in the place someone notices a problem. So, when my agent asked me to rework, I reworked.

The process was too slow on both our ends. So that was frustrating. But, she would give me edits and I would revise. She kept saying, “Leave some blades open.” I may be a little dense, but it took years to understand that she meant: don’t kill the tension by tying up each issue at the end of every chapter.

While I was revising with my agent, we were not going out to publishers. A lot of time was wasted, and in the end, that’s why I left. She lost faith in my book, but I lost faith in her, too. I didn’t think she worked hard enough. I had the wrong agent, and I’m now looking for the right agent.

So, yes, A LOT of time was wasted. But I also believe that my book wasn’t ready. Writing a good book is hard and takes time and experience. I know that book number three, my next book, will come easier and faster because of the work I did on book number two, which I’ve heard is often the hardest.

This is a building process. Writing and building a career takes hitting a lot of balls against the backboard. To someone who is frustrated by the time it takes, I’d say: You have to love hitting the balls. If you don’t, get out of the game.

Have you ever considered, or would you ever consider, self-publishing?

I’m considering this option more and more. But I still want an agent and I still want to publish with a publishing house. It doesn’t have to be big. But I also want an editor. I love collaborating. I think my book is ready to hit the shelves, but I also think it would become a better book with a trained, professional agent and editor behind it.

How do you, as a reader, perceive work that’s self-released—written work, specifically, because it’s perfectly acceptable to self-release other art, like music, sculptures, paintings, etc., without the associated stigma?

You make good points about other kinds of art going public without any gatekeepers. I have an old-fashioned biased against self-published work. I need to get over it, because I realize that writers are going outside the gates all the time and if they’re good, they get readers.

Ashleigh Renard just put out a book called Swing, which sold 5,000 in pre-sales, which is pretty good. Renard has a strong following and she wrote a solid book about swinging. So, writers are self-publishing successfully.

But even Amanda Palmer got a publisher for her book, and she might be the poster child for crowd funding and independent producing. She taught the art world how to go straight to fans. So why, then, does Palmer’s The Art of Asking have a publisher, which is Grand Central Publishing, which is an imprint of Hachette? I think because even Amanda Palmer can’t reach as many readers alone as she can with a big publisher.

In a recent tweet, after expressing how it made you feel to give your work away for free (a Medium publication had published a piece of yours but didn’t offer upfront payment in return), you and I had a brief exchange that led to a broad question open to all writers: If you had to choose, would you rather be well-paid/famous for your writing, or be good at it?

Your answer was, “This is a hard one. I think…I think I’d rather be good. But then how would I know [if I were good]?”

I’m not suggesting you were doing this, but I see writers on Twitter popularizing a message that essentially boils down to, “If you think you’re any good, you probably aren’t.” It’s as if it isn’t enough to be humble; writers are, these days, supposed to self-deprecate and be ever uncertain of their skill. “I’m pretty sure I suck” is probably the only acceptable self-evaluation when it comes to writing.

And yet. Writers approach literary agents all the time, which they wouldn’t—and shouldn’t—if they really believed their writing wasn’t good enough for traditional publication.

Which brings me to my question: How would you know if you were good? How did you know you were good enough to submit your first memoir to a literary agent? How did you know you were good enough to offer writing advice on Writing Class Radio? How did you know you were good enough to post one essay every week for a year on Medium?

There must be a way of measuring skill. What would you say that measure is for you, and how might another writer seeking their first publication or representation answer the question, “How do I know if I’m any good?”

Can we talk for five hours? I know I’m good. I know because I’ve practiced and practiced. I also know because I read the competition. I don’t actually think of other writers as competition, but I do think of writing as a sport. Or I think of writing in terms of sports. I grew up playing tennis and running cross country. Both sports informed my approach to writing. As a kid, I’d hit 300 forehands and 300 backhands against a backboard for warm up. I knew that Bjorn Borg did that. He was the best player when I was getting started. He never missed. Writing 52 essays was my way of hitting against a backboard.

I know that not every story I write is good. I know there is a lot that goes into good, and that good is also subjective and that sometimes what makes a good story, even a great story, is not even good writing. It’s heart. It’s the willingness to tell the truth.

All that said, I was not self-deprecating when I wondered how I’d know if I were good. Some days I know I’m good. Then other days I’m not sure. I think Jews are famous for being equal parts confident and insecure. These opposing and frustrating qualities are good for any artist, especially writers, because it gives us the hubris to think we have something to say, and the insecurity to rework and rework whatever we’ve said until maybe it becomes pretty good.

I really wonder if I’d rather be good vs. famous. The right answer is good, I know that. But I’m not sure that’s my answer, because I really like recognition. This is part of what I explore in my memoir, She Married a Jewish, Gringa Attention Whore. I know it’s my Achilles heel. I know it’s stupid. This need for attention, recognition, fame, love almost cost me my marriage and my family.

Since we touched on the offering of writing advice in Writing Class Radio, and because choosing details is my second favorite thing (writing dialogue is the first), the episode The Devil’s in the Details discusses the importance of specificity in the use of details. If someone who listened to that episode needed a little bit more help understanding what makes a detail effective, how would you explain which details have more value and which can or should probably be left out?

I love this question, because while I understand the importance of including vivid details, I also love the process of editing out shit you don’t need. I actually get pleasure out of tightening a story down to its barest bones. So how do you distinguish which details to include and which to cut?

Details help a story come alive. Details are the parts we see. They describe character, place, mood, and time. For example, if you’re describing your childhood home, it’s a good idea to name the town, Miami, Florida. If you grew up in the 70s, mention the satin rainbow pillow on your bed and the poster of John Travolta you taped to your wall with Scotch tape.

Other details reveal character. A good way to get to those details is to answer the question: Like what? Or: In what way? For example, my dad is a mellow guy. Like what? In what way? My dad takes a nap every afternoon. His favorite book is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. He spent most weekends of my childhood shuffling around the house in a brown terry cloth towel skirt that fastened with Velcro.

If that last detail makes my dad sound like a creepy weirdo, I’d cut it. Details that almost always need to be cut are ones that read like travel plans. For example, if you are telling a story about traveling to meet your mother-in-law-to-be for the first time and you took American Airlines and arrived at terminal C early, but then American moved to terminal B for some reason and you had to walk the entire airport to find your gate and you started to run and got sweaty and then your flight was delayed, anyway, you probably wouldn’t include all those details unless those travel plans directly related to the story you were telling. I doubt they do. Everyone has an annoying time at the airport, so those details should probably be cut. Sure, you were nervous, but if you want to write about your nerves, tell us you were nervous in a way that specifically reveals your character. So maybe you bought a grey silk button down instead of your usual black because you thought you should spruce it up a little, and when you went to hug your new mother-in-law, giant sweat circles showed under your armpits.

Prior to starting the Writing Class Radio podcast, you were the head of operations for (and had created) the live storytelling program Lip Service. Writing Class Radio, like Lip Service, features writers reading their stories, but it’s followed by writing tips and host commentary to help listeners learn from the writers you showcase.

What motivates you to be a collector and presenter of writers and their writing for an audience of listeners and learners? And has what drives you changed over the years, since your start with Lip Service to what you’re doing at this moment with Writing Class Radio?

I love this question. For nine years, four times a year, I told stories on stage at Lip Service. Every time, after the show, I got surrounded by people who could not wait to tell their own stories. I was like, “Hey, can we talk about my story?” But so many people would just start telling me their own story. I couldn’t get through the lobby of the theater. It would take me an hour to get to the after party a block away because people were so jazzed. And then I’d spend the next three hours talking to people about their stories.

I realized that telling my stories inspired people to tell theirs. So, that’s how I built Lip Service.

I’ve always believed, and still believe, that stories connect people. I think storytelling is the best way to bridge differences. This idea has been challenged lately, especially with what happens online, but besides for inspiring people to open up, I saw in real-life people loving on each other, even when the stories told were controversial or hard to hear.

For example, we had a gay man tell a story about a time he met a guy through a dating app and ended up being asked to strangle the guy. The story was about how he was afraid he’d kill the man, but also how it turned him on. We had another story about a woman who came to Miami in 1980 on a Cuban shrimp boat. Her story ended with, “I am a Marielita.” That term is very heated in Miami. But both of these storytellers were mobbed after the show. They were admired and praised for their honesty and vulnerability. In both cases, I think they helped everyone in the audience—and I’m talking 500 people—understand something they didn’t understand before.

This is what I love about storytelling. I hope that when people hear stories on my podcast, Writing Class Radio, they are also inspired to tell their own stories, and I hope they learn something.

Starting Your Novel With Plot: 3 Strengths and 3 Challenges

“Miniature World, Victoria, B.C.” by Ruocaled is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Today’s post is by regular contributor Susan DeFreitas (@manzanitafire), an award-winning author, editor, and book coach. She offers a first 50-page review on works in progress for novelists seeking direction on their next step toward publishing.

In my work as a book coach, I’ve found that writers of fiction generally fall into three camps: those who start with character, those who start with plot or story concept, and those who start with theme. In part two of this three-part series (here is part one), I’ll address the natural strengths of those who tend to start with plot, along with some challenges these types of writers tend to face.

Plot people, generally speaking, are idea people. A new story may arrive in the form of a concept they’re fascinated by—say, the idea that aliens might be symbiotic beings, in much the same way that lichens are—or an intriguing question: What if two twins, dissatisfied with their lives and marriages, decided to pass as each other for a year?

Or they might be interested in writing a type of story. Say, a thriller that revolves around the trafficking of endangered species, or a story that combines elements of space opera and noir.

Either way, when that big idea arrives, it begins to take hold in the writer’s imagination, and soon begins to sprout into a plot, often one with fascinating twists and turns: Lichens here on Earth are actually aliens too. The switched twins are in fact living out the Welsh fairy tale of Prince Pwyll and King Arawn. The apparent trafficker of endangered species is in fact an undercover Interpol agent. The “woman in red” in that space opera/noir is actually an interstellar phishing scheme.

These types of writers often engage in detailed world building, discovering more intriguing ideas and story threads in the process, and what starts off as an idea for one book soon overflows into a trilogy or a series.

Writers who start with plot may struggle in academic creative writing programs, which tend to privilege character over plot, and literary fiction over “genre fiction.” But starting with plot is just as solid a strategy as starting with character, for the following reasons:

Strength: Plot is inherently high-concept

Those who start with character often wind up describing their book as something like, “a family saga set in Florida” or “a woman trying to decide whether or not to leave her marriage.” Whether such stories will appeal to readers (and hence, publishing pros) is almost entirely a matter of execution.

Writers who start with plot don’t face that issue. They can describe their book in a sentence or two that will get the attention of both readers and publishing professionals, because the story concept speaks for itself.

Strength: Readers love plot

Yes, there’s a solid market for character-driven fiction—but the market for plot-driven fiction is substantially larger, encompassing genres like speculative fiction and mysteries/thrillers.

Writers with an intuitive sense of plot don’t struggle to keep their readers turning the pages. In their stories, A leads to B leads to C, and D is that mind-blowing twist that keeps the reader up way past her bedtime. Such writers tend to have a lot of rabbits hidden up their sleeve, so to speak, and for the reader, there’s a real sense of delight when one after the next is revealed.

Strength: There’s no question of what happens

What happens in the story is what’s necessary to reveal the ideas the author is working with. I often use the metaphor of the field and the path: The field is the world of the story, and the concepts the writer is working with, while the path is the plot that reveals them.

Writers who excel with plot are really people who excel at ideas: they know the field they want to traverse, so they pick the path that hits all the vistas they want to reveal. That’s a very different—and easier—proposition than trying to figure out what a given character or characters should do, or what should happen to them.

Even so, writers who start with plot tend to face a particular set of challenges.

Challenge: Lack of character arc

For writers who start with plot, the characters often start as a means to an end, the who that will discover the what. In order for the story to develop a sense of meaning and depth, they have to dig deeper with their characters in revision, exploring who these characters really are, what makes them tick, and the emotional journey they’ll make over the course of the story.

Plot keeps the reader turning the pages, to find out how A will lead to B. But at the end of the book, it’s not the events of the plot that makes the story feel meaningful, it’s the characters, and the way they’ve either learned and grown over the story or, tragically, failed to. This is the part that writers who start with plot often have to figure out, and layer in, in revision.

Challenge: The incredible expanding plot problem

The thing about being good at plot is…it’s hard to know when to stop. One thing leads to the next, leads to another, leads to a fascinating subplot, and then another, and then, before you know it, you’ve got 160,000 words of something that may not in fact be publishable.

I call this issue “the incredible expanding plot” because I think plot has an inherent tendency to escalate, like a soufflé that expands first to fill the whole oven and then the whole house. Writers with this problem either have to train themselves how to outline in a way that addresses character arc—a key factor in limiting the expansive nature of plot—or develop an eagle eye in revision for what’s really important in the story and what’s not.

Challenge: Lack of a real ending

Remember how I mentioned that writers who tend to start with plot often find themselves writing a series? One pitfall of this tendency is that such writers often don’t know how to actually end their first book in a way that will be satisfying for the reader.

I find that such writers often want to hold onto some big development until Book Two, or even Book Three. My response to that is this: Don’t hold your best cards for some imagined future story, because if you don’t end Book One in way that’s satisfying for the reader, and brings all the major threads of the story through to compelling climax and resolution—even if that resolution is just the troubled situation that will begin the next book in the series—there won’t be another book in the series, because the first one won’t get published.

None of these issues are in any way insurmountable—it’s just a matter of understanding what you’re working with, in terms of your natural strengths, and then developing a set of tools to address your natural challenges, either in outlining or in revision.

Do you consider yourself a writer who starts with plot or story concept? If so, I’d love to hear about your process in the comments below.

Find Your Topic, Not Your Voice

“Communication | ArtPrize 2010” by Fellowship of the Rich is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Today’s post is by author Catherine Baab-Muguira (@CatBaabMuguira). Her book, Poe for Your Problems, releases in September 2021.

In setting out to become a writer, you must strive, above all, to discover your unique voice. At least, that’s become the conventional wisdom, taught in MFA programs as well as in more casual settings, from writers group meetings at Starbucks to free classes taught in the stuffy backroom of your local library. Yet there is so much wrong with this advice that, if you spend even one full minute giving it serious thought, your eyes will roll heaven-ward all on their own like Where even to begin?

Still, we must begin somewhere, so here goes.

How can you know what your tone will be when you don’t yet know what your topic is?

Where exactly do we think voice comes from if not from subject?

Which is the right cart and which is the right horse?

Sure, your unique sensibility may account for a large part of your hot takes, but would you write about muffins and genocide the same way, or Fords and fjords? And are we really so sure that voice trumps all other aspects of a piece of writing?

Finally, who is responsible for advancing this damnable, now-inescapable sick logic, and what is their address, because I’m thinking I might like to T.P. their house?

Maybe that seems a tad aggressive. But you have to consider the real damage this advice has wrought. All over the world, people’s drawers bulge with unpublishable novels, essays collections and memoirs in which there’s plenty of voice, yet no story, no real through-line, no sense of one’s audience beyond the assumption that they’re there. That’s the problem. This overemphasis on voice puts the focus on the writer and what they want to say and how they want to say it, ignoring more pertinent questions. Namely, considering how there’s Mare of Easttown to binge on HBO, why should anyone spend hours poring over your writing instead?

It also ignores the credentialism involved with the few novels and works of nonfiction that get acquired, more or less, because of voice alone. Publishers are a lot less apt to value your unique voice if that voice doesn’t come with degrees from Harvard or Iowa, or if you’re not reading this article while lounging on the terrace at Yaddo. It’s just a fact. There are exceptions, of course. The overall picture is, however, about as clear as any close-up of Kate Winslet, though not as pretty.

I rant like this from firsthand experience, from the wish I could time-travel back about 15 years and tell myself all this. My own writing breakthrough, the one that got me a book deal after a dozen years of trying, came from focusing on topic ahead of voice. Your writing struggles and goals may well be different. You are probably miles ahead of me, much less dense and much quicker to learn. But considering the prevalence of the conventional wisdom, let’s turn it on its head a minute.

What if you were to put the primary focus on your topic?

It might just help you land a book deal, climb some lofty bestseller list, scale those Everest-like Amazon ranks—and what’s more, the process is simple, no matter if you’re writing fiction or nonfiction.

Pick a topic that fascinates you, or learn about a topic until it fascinates you.Lead with research. Google your subject to see what’s out there. Begin to gain a sense of whether an audience already exists.Bring that topic to the world.

This strategy can lead to more interesting writing, and interesting is what you need to be, considering you and I and everyone else we know are all working inside a full-fledged, entertain-or-GTFO attention economy. Few of us occupy such exalted positions that we can take audience for granted. This is all the more true if your goal is to eventually sell a book—again, fiction or nonfiction—because first you must prove to agents and acquisition editors that there’s a crowd of people eager to pay for it.

Your topic could, for example, take any of the following forms:

Things that interested you as a childIdeas you can’t get out of your headPlaces that have become your personal obsessionsOr some such B.S.: weird jobs, strange headlines, cultural trends, etc.

And your audience may pop up in such places as:

Facebook fan groups dedicated to your subjectPublications and other outlets (from podcasts to YouTube channels) dedicated to your subjectReddit boards about your topicOther writers who’ve covered this same subject, plus their audiences.

That’s to name just a few potential sources. The crucial thing about the exercise is that you start to accrue some data. You begin to think in terms of appropriate comps, i.e. other works like your potential work that have found an audience, maybe even seen some substantial success. Another benefit: You may also connect with a community devoted to your topic, which can help you lead a less lonely writer-ly existence, and maybe help you build a platform, too, once you start contributing to that community.

We could spend all day arguing about the reasons the emphasis on voice persists—how it’s easier to teach writing at the sentence level than at the story level, and how most people in a position to teach classes—especially college classes—come from prestigious backgrounds, the kind that encourages the New Yorker to pile praise atop their supposedly transcendent prose, never mind if the novel is meandering or the essays are kinda pretentious, kinda boring. The rest of us are unlikely to be given such leeway.

The good news is this lack of leeway can become a strength for you and me, rather than a weakness. Embrace it, and you might just grow into a more competent, entertaining writer. Most readers don’t give a crap about fancy prose—it’s far from their foremost concern. This has been true since humans were telling stories in caves, and it’s even more true today, when you as a writer aren’t just competing with literal Neanderthals but the best TV ever made, as well as Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and millions of already-published books. So, topic over voice, friend! Content > tone! Subject ahead of approach!

Besides, when you get your topic right, all your obsessive weirdness comes to the fore, starting to work for you for once. You enter flow, and suddenly, the awful pain of writing drops away. You fly, weightless, freed for a GD moment from the grind, and the prose pours out of you, your voice just showing up on the page like some welcome, expected guest, or like a free dessert. It’s freaking magic. Or at least worth trying, anyway.

The Art of the Moment Memoir

“Firecracker Freeze Frame” by rjsteih is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Today’s post is excerpted from We Are the Words: The Master Memoir Class by Beth Kephart (@BethKephart).

There are many ways to think about memoir, many categories, classifications, taxonomies. Family dysfunction memoirs. Medical memoirs. Trauma memoirs. Food memoirs. Nature memoirs. Coming-of-age memoirs.

Here are a few others.

The Brand Memoir: the name precedes the story

Think of Gabrielle Hamilton’s Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef. Or Shoe Dog: A Memoir of the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight.

Or Rising to the Challenge: My Leadership Journey by Carly Fiorina.

Each author was famous for something else before they entered the realm of bestsellerdom.

The Headline Memoir: the book can be summarized with a single sexy sentence

“A daughter’s tale of living in the thrall of her magnetic, complicated mother and the chilling consequences of her complicity,” pretty much sums up Adrienne Brodeur’s Wild Game.

And even though Tara Westover’s Educated is a very long book, it is a volume easily contained by this single sentence: “A coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one’s life through new eyes, and the will to change it.”

Likewise, Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance was promoted with these words: “A probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class through the author’s own story of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town.”

Headline stuff. Movie plot stuff. All right there at a glance.

The Journey Memoir: the author sets out on an actual adventure

Along the way, the author might also take a journey into herself. My favorite of these is Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family, which sends the author back to his childhood home of Ceylon so that he might learn of the family that shaped him.

Mary Morris’s Nothing to Declare: Memoirs of a Woman Traveling Alone also fits neatly into this bucket—a book that takes Morris through Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala so that she might begin “to overcome the struggles that have held her back. By crossing new boundaries, she learns to set frontiers for herself as a woman.”

The Reflection Memoir: to deepen one’s understanding of the greater world and the private self

I think of Anna Badkhen living near the Senegalese port of Joal to navigate “a time of unprecedented environmental, economic, and cultural upheaval with resilience, ingenuity, and wonder.”

Also There Will Be No Miracles Here, where Casey Gerald offers the “testament of a boy and a generation who came of age as the world came apart—a generation searching for a new way to live.”

And of course, Between the World and Me, which finds Ta-Nehisi Coates engaged in work that pivots “from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for a son.”

The Art of the Moment Memoir

And then there is what I’ve come to think of as the Art of the Moment memoir—work in which the moments themselves (and the way they are arranged) are of primary importance and intrigue.

I think of the quilt of memories, thoughts, and moments set down by Jean-Dominique Bauby in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

I think of Bough Down, by Karen Green, whose small texts and images capture the immediacy of grief in the aftermath of a husband’s suicide.

I think of The Folded Clock by Heidi Julavits, which chronicles, in non-chronological fashion, her daily life and thoughts.

I think of writers who understand that our lives are lived moment by moment, and that our art is what we make of the moments going by.

Holding onto the moment

All writers of memoir must ultimately possess the ability to artfully render the moment. To apply wonder, mystery, or deep seeing to an instant in time. To explore the familiar or ponder the unfamiliar. To ask a question and suggest an answer. To liberate curiosity, to mark a memory, to keep one. The range of subject-matter possibilities is endless, as Brian Dillon, in his book Essayism: On Form, Feeling, and Nonfiction, reminds us:

On the death of a moth, humiliation, the Hoover Dam and how to write; an inventory of objects on the author’s desk, and an account of wearing spectacles, which he does not; what another learned about himself the day he fell unconscious from his horse; of noses, of cannibals, of method; diverse meanings of the word lumber; many vignettes, published over decades, in which the writer, or her elegant stand-in, described her condition of dislocation in the city, and did so blithely that no one guessed it was all true; a dissertation on roast pig; a heap of language …

How do we keep those moments? How do we hold them in place until we are ready for them? How do we keep our senses on alert?

Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, knowing is not just a talent or a predilection; it is a discipline. The tool of the trade can be a diary or journal or notebook.

You might think of the notebook, as Lydia Davis does, as a kind of externalized mind. “My journal as my other mind, what I sometimes know, what I once knew,” she writes, in Essays: One. “I consult my other mind and I see that although I do not know a certain thing at present, I once knew it; there it is in my other mind.”

Or you might share Patti Smith’s experience, as a notebook being the home to endless variations of the same paragraphs. From M Train: “Then there are the scores of notebooks, their contents calling—confession, revelation, endless variations of the same paragraphs—and piles of napkins scrawled with incomprehensible rants.”

Or maybe the notebook you keep is home to an implacable I, in true Joan Didion fashion. From “On Keeping a Notebook”:

But our notebooks give us away, for however dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable “I.” We are not talking here about the kind of notebook that is patently for public consumption, a structural conceit for binding together a series of graceful pensées; we are talking about something private, about bits of the mind’s string too short to use, an indiscriminate and erratic assemblage with meaning only for its maker.

When I was a child I kept a diary of sorts—blank books the pages of which I waterlogged with watercolor, then wrote into the ripples the starts of lavender poems.

When I was a young woman I began diary-ing the words collected from the writers who had used them—Ben Fountain’s draggled and furze and logy; Patricia Hampl’s hieratic and vatic; Alan Bennett’s equerries and chivvied and glabrous; Annie Dillard’s apostatized and thigmotropic.

When I wasn’t well for a long time, I kept a diary thickened with quotations from architects, designers, builders, as if they could speak for me, my mood, my quest, and for that period of time, they did:

“When we build, let us think that we build forever.” (John Ruskin)

“We could speak of every project as if were an unfinished love affair: it is most beautiful before it ends.” (Aldo Rossi)

“Should we not try to find our own style?” (Karl Friedrich Schinkel)

I have diaries that record the making of my stories, and diaries that started with the hope of making a story, with admonitions to myself, which were not heeded: “Not style, voice. Not voice, story. Not story, but an existential blast. What alive is. What losing is. Why the word that keeps bleeding is desperate.”

What happened to that story? How did I lose the tail of my own desperation?

And I have photographs, I should say, because I think this is important, thousands of photographs, that keep my seeing intact until I find my pen and my journal and layer in, practice, write again, improve the words. A few videos that help me track the movements of a moment. A few audio clips of necessary sound.

There are no diary rules, but there is, here, a suggestion: That our seeing, our hearing, our smelling, our tasting, our feeling, our knowing, our arts of our moments will be sharper, truer, more alive when we have a journal of some kind nearby, a place that marks the spot, the mood, the moment.

Amazon / Bookshop

I’m looking or listening so that I might somehow record this, you might say to yourself, and because you have entrusted yourself with that responsibility, because a pen or paper or iPhone Notes or the iPad or a typewriter await you, you are naturally going to work harder at seeing and hearing. You are going to extend your pause. You are going to ask yourself questions. You are going to watch those rooks and wonder, indeed, what the word is for that dark symphony of wings. You are going to enter into a moment so that you might raise it up to language and to story when the time is finally right.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out We Are the Words: The Master Memoir Class by Beth Kephart.

The Most Significant Choice Of Your Writing Career

“Unlearn & rethink” by Jonas B is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Today’s post is by author, editor and coach Jessica Conoley (@jaconoley).

The most significant choice of your writing career happens long before your story makes its way into the world. This choice impacts every single aspect of your career, and it is a choice you make over and over and over again. This choice could leave you a husk of a writer, ravaged by the publishing industry, bemoaning the success of everyone else around you; or it could propel you to the next stage of your career and embolden you to try things you’d never thought possible. The funny part is this choice has nothing to do with the act of writing, but everything to do with words.

The most important choice you will make in your writing career is how you choose to talk to yourself about said career.

And for 99% of writers I know, the default setting of this conversation is: doubt, worry, and frustration. Fears on repeat include: Why would anyone ever buy my book? My story isn’t important. I’m never going to get an agent. I don’t know how to do this. Somebody already wrote a story like mine…

When we’re Uninitiated and breaking into the industry, we all have these thoughts, and we often feel powerless. But that feeling of powerlessness dissipates when you master your interior dialogue. You go from being a pawn in a multi-billion-dollar industry to an active player with a say in how your career unfolds.

You can change your default mental settings, and as you rewire your brain you may even learn to enjoy the current stage of your writing career.

But the jump from Why would anyone read my work? to My work is great is not natural. If you try to go directly from the former to the latter, you’re probably going to feel delusional, as opposed to empowered.

Rewiring progresses quietly, in stages. Mindset milestones include: That will never happen to me. Maybe that could happen to me. I can do this. I’ve already done it.

Here are a few exercises for both inside and outside your brain to lead you from That will never happen to me to Maybe that could happen to me.

Inside your headAcknowledge how you think is a choice. Negative narrative is on auto-pilot by now, but someone had to turn on the auto-pilot function and that someone was you. Are you ready to turn it off? Does that idea terrify you? What about those negative thoughts are you holding on to? The choice is yours, all you have to do is make it.

For me, clinging to negativity offered a sense of security. I knew how to be an aspiring writer. But owning the fact I was a working writer put me out of my comfort zone. It forced me to realize people may actually read my work and that triggered a fear of judgment on about ten-billion different levels. But stasis equals death doesn’t just apply to our characters. And it’s only by making a choice to think and therefore act differently that I was able to move forward.

Notice when you’re having a crap-tastic garbage person way of talking to yourself moment and shut it down. Take a deep breath, and say out loud with your voice-box, “I choose not to participate in this conversation.” Add a physical movement, like snapping your fingers, as well. If you’re in public and catch yourself thinking negatively, you can use the physical movement to interrupt the negative pattern. That way people aren’t staring at you for uttering, “I choose not to participate in this conversation” when you haven’t been conversing.Replace trash talk with a new line of dialogue. Once you’ve asserted your choice to disengage from self-trash-talk a few times, take it a step further. Replace your negative monologue with a question of possibility. I like Why not me? If somebody else has done it, there’s no reason I can’t do it too.

Rewriting your brain is hard work. It is physically exhausting to create new neuro pathways. That old wiring for negative thinking will always be there, so rewiring is something we have to practice as frequently as we practice our writing craft. And, just like mastering our craft, adjusting our thoughts and tweaking our mindset is never done—but with practice, your transition time from self-doubt to self-empowerment increases exponentially.

You can do some serious rewiring work on your own, but it has even more impact when you step outside your own brain.

Outside your headRewrite your narrative. Drag out your favorite-colored pen and a piece of blank paper. Write your question of possibility (Why not me?) eighteen times. Say it out loud eight times. Then fill up the remaining blank lines on the paper with a good old creative writing exercise where you indulge in all the sensory details about the moment you finish your manuscript, or get the call from your dream agent, or sign that three-book deal. Be brave enough to write it now, so you’ll be brave enough to live it later.Enlist your writing support triangle. Tell them you want to be a mentally healthy, published writer. Ask them to call you out. When you talk about your career like a heap of garbage, have them ask your trigger question. Hearing “Why not you?” from your support team brings it to a whole new level of possibility.Set up a writing career log to celebrate your accomplishments. This is an ongoing list of all the things you’ve accomplished in pursuit of your writing dreams. (I know, I know, you’re all I don’t have any accomplishments, but you do. The fact you’re reading this article confirms you are taking positive steps toward your dream.) My list includes the date and a brief line about what I accomplished. Sample items include: read a craft book, sent my first query, started a new draft, got feedback from my critique partner, got my first rejection, etc. And don’t forget to give yourself credit for rewiring your brain. Each line on that log is a positive step forward. Read it, breathe it, love it. You’re doing this.

Are Fictional Characters Protected Under Copyright Law?

[image error]“Holmes!!…” by dynamosquito is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Today’s post is from intellectual property attorney Kathryn Goldman (@KathrynGoldman) of the Creative Law Center.

Jack Ryan, the analytical, yet charming CIA analyst, made an appearance in federal court in Maryland earlier this year. The heirs to Tom Clancy’s literary legacy are fighting over him. Unlike in the movies, he’s not in a great position to fight back.

It all started when Clancy signed the publishing deal for The Hunt for Red October where Jack Ryan made his debut in 1984. In a departure from common practice, Clancy transferred his copyright in Red October to the publisher. A few years later, Clancy realized his mistake and was able to negotiate return of the copyright for the book. He immediately transferred the reverted copyright to his company.

Here’s the crux of the current court battle: When Clancy mistakenly transferred his copyright in the book Red October to the original publisher, did the copyright to the character Jack Ryan go with it? Or did Clancy retain the character copyright? In normal practice, the sale of the right to publish a copyrighted story does not stop the author from using its characters in future works.

If Clancy retained the rights to the character when he signed the initial publishing contract, then the rights that reverted from the publisher would not have included the copyright for the character. The reverted rights Clancy turned around and transferred into his company would not have included the character rights. All of which means that the character, Jack Ryan, is part of Clancy’s estate and not controlled by the company he set up.

Jack Ryan is a valuable character with his own copyright separate from the copyright in the book. Everybody concerned, the owners of the company and the heirs to the estate, wants a piece of him, or all of him. And it’s not clear where Mr. Ryan currently resides.

Fictional characters are not listed in the copyright statute as a separate class of protectable work. There’s no application at the Copyright Office for them. But over the years, the law on character protection has evolved.

Courts have held, in certain circumstances, that fictional characters are protectable in their own right.

This is important because characters with independent copyright can be licensed separately from the stories in which they originally appeared. It’s another way for authors to divide their rights to create multiple income streams. That’s the beauty of copyright. It’s divisible. An author can keep some rights and license others. It’s what Clancy did and his company/estate is still doing with the Jack Ryan franchise.

Not every character can be protected by copyright. Stock characters cannot be protected—a drunken old bum, a slippery snake oil salesman, a hooker with a heart of gold, a wicked stepmother, a gypsy fortune teller, and so on. They are essentially ideas for characters, vague and lightly sketched. Copyright does not give anyone a monopoly on ideas. Protecting stock characters would prevent as yet untold stories from being told. Depriving the world of new stories is exactly the opposite of what copyright is intended to promote—the creation of more stories, more art.

A character must be well delineated to be protected.

It must have consistent and identifiable character traits and attributes so it is recognizable wherever it appears. Think James Bond and his distinctive character traits: his cool demeanor; his overt sexuality; his love of martinis “shaken, not stirred”; his marksmanship; his “license to kill”; his physical strength; and his sophistication. Bond is protected by copyright. The Bond character is identifiable regardless of who depicts him.

Defining the well-delineated character can be difficult. Characters that are central to a story tend to change. They evolve. They are built up throughout the book until they are fully formed in the mind of the reader. Without character transformation there is no hero’s journey, no story. Characters can become more delineated and more protectable over the course of a series of books. Bond developed over the course of 14 books written by Ian Fleming and continues to develop on film.

Characters that are less developed are less likely to be protected. Those characters are less expression and more idea. There’s a gray area that needs to be navigated when balancing the protection for original characters but leaving character ideas in the public domain free for all to use.

Public domain characters cannot be protected

But new characters created from public domain works can be protected. Consider Enola Holmes, the younger sister of Sherlock. The Sherlock Holmes stories have been slipping into the public domain for years now, to the chagrin of the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle. The creative elements of Sherlock Holmes stories that are in the public domain can be used by others to build new stories.

Enola Holmes was introduced to readers in a series of young adult books written by Nancy Springer. Enola does not exist in the Conan Doyle canon; she was created by Springer. She has distinctive traits (high intelligence, keen observational skills and insight, skills in archery, fencing, and martial arts, an independent thinker who defies Victorian norms for women) that combine to make her well delineated and protectable.

Another wrinkle: “The story being told” test

The “well delineated character” is the most widely accepted legal test used to decide whether a fictional character is protected by copyright, but it is not the only one. The other is “the story being told” test. Sam Spade is responsible for this test.

Dashiell Hammett created Sam Spade when he wrote The Maltese Falcon. Hammett licensed the exclusive rights to use the book in movies, radio, and television to Warner Brothers. Hammett later wrote other stories with Sam Spade. Warner Bros. complained that it owned exclusive rights to the character and Hammett couldn’t write about him anymore.

Ironically, the court protected Hammett’s right as the creator to use Sam Spade in future stories by deciding that the character was not protected by copyright. Sam Spade is just a vehicle for telling the story and is not the story itself. He is the chessman in the game of telling the story. It was the story that was licensed to Warner Bros., not the chessman.

A character is protected under the “story being told” test when he dominates the story in a way that there would be no story without him. This test sets a high bar for character protection. To protect the character, the story would essentially have to be a character study. The Maltese Falcon is not a character study of Sam Spade.

An example of character protection using the “story being told test” is the Rocky franchise. A screenwriter wrote a story on spec using the characters Rocky, Adrian, Apollo Creed, and Paulie. The work was considered to be an infringing use of the characters. The characters were protected because the movies focused on the characters and their relationships, not on intricate plot or story lines. The characters were the story being told. The writer could not avoid the infringement touchpoint of substantial similarity when he took the characters and used them in a new storyline.

In summary

Fictional characters can lead a new and independent life completely separate from the original work in which they appear. They are an additional creative asset in a writer’s intellectual property portfolio. There is no straight forward way to register for character protection with the Copyright Office other than as part of the larger work. Authors will be well served to think about protecting the rights in their characters when signing publishing contracts and licensing agreements.

The Peer Review Process: What Sets University Presses Apart

“89/365: Judgment” by SarahMcGowen is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Today’s post is excerpted from THE BOOK PROPOSAL BOOK: A Guide for Scholarly Authors by Laura Portwood-Stacer (@lportwoodstacer). Copyright © 2021 by Laura Portwood-Stacer. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.

When an author submits a book proposal to a university press, in a best-case scenario the acquiring editor will think the project is promising and want to go ahead with peer review of the proposal and some or all of the book manuscript. At some publishers, acquisitions editors present projects they are excited about to other press staff and are then approved by an internal committee to proceed with peer review. At other presses, editors can proceed with peer review at their own discretion. Peer review is a practice that distinguishes scholarly presses from other types of publishers, so it’s key for authors to understand how it works and what expectations will fall to them as a result.

If you make it to the peer review stage, your editor will ask you to provide the materials they need for review. Many presses will move forward to peer review with just a proposal and sample chapter or two; some presses prefer to wait on peer review until the author provides a full or nearly complete manuscript, especially for first-time authors.

When your materials go out for review, particularly if you’ve submitted a full manuscript, your editor may stipulate exclusive submission, meaning that they will require you to (temporarily) pull the project from consideration elsewhere if you have submitted the proposal to multiple publishers. The exclusivity usually goes away once you get the reviews back, meaning that if you don’t like what the reviewers or editor want you to do with the manuscript, you can then try your luck with a different press to give yourself some options. Note that up until the moment of peer review or contract, you are free to be in talks with editors at multiple presses in order to identify the best home for your book. As long as you are transparent with everyone that that’s what you’re doing, there is no problem with this at all. If an editor thinks your project is particularly appealing and recognizes that they will have to compete with other publishers for it, you’re in a strong negotiating position and they may agree to waive exclusivity during the peer review process.

During peer review, your editor will ask expert scholars to evaluate your submitted materials and return their thoughts in the form of written reports. Unlike peer review conventions for scholarly journals, peer review for books is not anonymous in both directions. While you won’t know the identities of your reviewers (unless they reveal themselves in their reports), your reviewers will have access to your name and CV, because in addition to assessing the content of your submission materials, they will also be commenting on your scholarly profile and perceived authority to write the book you’re proposing. Reviewers will also be asked to comment on their perceptions of the market for your proposed book.

The return of the reader reports will likely be a big moment of decision for the acquiring editor. These are some possible scenarios:

The reviews come back largely positive and the editor decides to seek approval from their publisher’s internal committee and editorial board to offer you a contract.The editor thinks the criticisms in the reader reports are minimal enough that they can be addressed through a response letter from you. The editor has faith that you will assure the editorial board that you can fix any significant problems in revision and gain their approval for a contract before another round of review.The editor doesn’t think the reader reports are strong enough to get approval for a contract, but they still believe in the project. They may seek additional reports or ask you to revise the manuscript or proposal and resubmit for a second round of review.The editor finds the reader reports negative enough that they don’t feel comfortable moving forward. In this case, the project will be rejected and you’ll move on to any other presses you may be considering. (You might first decide to revise your proposal based on the reports before submitting to additional publishers, but that’s up to you.)

This is a moment for you to make a decision as well. Do you like the direction the editor and reviewers want you to take the manuscript? Are you confident you can address the requested revisions? Have you felt respected and informed throughout the acquisitions process so far? If you have hesitation about any of these questions, you may want to communicate it to the editor. You should know that peer reviewers don’t have the final say on publication; that will lie with your editor and the press’s editorial board. A brief phone call can be extraordinarily useful for getting clarity on what your editor honestly thinks of the peer reviews and how the editor envisions the project moving forward. If you aren’t feeling reassured after talking to your editor about the reports, you might decide to pull the project from this press or temporarily put it on hold while you seek responses from other editors and presses.

If the acquisitions editor feels confident in your project and your ability to turn in a satisfactory finished manuscript, they will present the project to an internal staff committee—made up of editors, marketers, and salespeople—for approval. If the editor’s presentation goes well, the editor will either be approved to offer you an agreement to publish your book or to take your project to the press’s faculty editorial board for their approval. (Some presses don’t need editorial board approval to issue contracts; at those presses your project won’t go before the editorial board until you submit your full manuscript.)

At a university press, the editorial board is made up of faculty from across the institution, most of whom won’t be experts in your area, let alone your subject matter. Your editor will be providing the editorial board with sample materials from your book along with the peer reviewers’ reports and your response to the reports, and then making a presentation where they defend your book’s intellectual soundness, contribution, and fit with the press’s publishing program. Your editor’s enthusiastic support for the project and capacity to defend it using the information you’ve provided in your submission will count for a lot. Understanding that your editor will be making these presentations about your book is key, because your proposal is your chance to give them all the information they’ll need to pitch your book successfully when it gets to this stage. Also keep in mind: If you haven’t submitted a full manuscript yet, your full manuscript will likely also go through a peer review process before your book is given the final green light for publication.

While peer review is a significant aspect of the scholarly publishing process—it’s what sets university presses and other academic publishers apart from the rest of the publishing world—remember that individual peer reviewers don’t decide your book’s fate with the publisher. The input of experts in your field does matter to the decision of whether or not a press wants to take on the publication of your manuscript, yet the word of any given peer reviewer is not the end of the story. Your editor will have gathered reviews from at least two different scholars, and if their assessments contradict each other or are otherwise ambiguous, the editor may have sought at least one additional reviewer to come on board, maybe more. The negative opinion of one reviewer is not necessarily a death knell for your project. Even if all the reviewers agree in their criticism of the submitted materials, that doesn’t mean your project is doomed, as long as your editor still believes in it. If your own response helps your editor demonstrate convincingly that you can satisfactorily address the concerns voiced by the reviewers, your project may still be in play.

Amazon / Bookshop

I advise approaching your “response to the reader reports” as something more along the lines of a “revision plan in light of the reader reports.” Your peer reviewers’ suggestions can genuinely improve your book if you synthesize them thoughtfully. Your job in presenting your revision plan isn’t to rebut the points the reviewers made, or to prove that your submission materials were perfect all along; your job is to show that you will use the reports to strengthen your project into something that represents a smart investment for the publisher. Providing a concrete, reasonable plan for revision—without coming off as defensive or ego-driven—is the way to convince the decision-makers that you’re a good bet.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out The Book Proposal Book: A Guide for Scholarly Authors by Laura Portwood-Stacer.

Post Book Launch Depression Is a Thing

“No Mail Today” by Ivy Dawned is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Today’s post is by Rachel Michelberg, author of Crash.

In the two months since I gave birth to a book, I’ve discovered that post-partum publishing depression is a thing. Even when the baby doesn’t cry at all.

I’m not sure what I thought would happen after my memoir was published. Did I expect Oprah or Reese (or at the very least their people) to come begging to feature it in their book clubs?

Would Terry Gross reach out to my publicist for a Fresh Air interview?

Was the red carpet supposed to be rolled out especially for me to waltz down toward my acceptance of the Booker prize? (I know, the Booker is for fiction and I wrote a memoir, but a fantasy is a fantasy.)

Nah. Except for dreaming about a Netflix miniseries, my hopes are tamer, more subdued. I’m a singer and actor in my other life. I know how unlikely fame is, even for the most gifted among us; as Thomas Edison said, success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. My expectations—I thought—were in check.

So why am I feeling so generally bummed out since my memoir Crash was published?

The weeks and months preceding my publication date were exciting—a welcome diversion from the getting-close-to-the-end-of-the-pandemic boredom and antsy-ness. Since my publicist is on the east coast, I loved waking up to several emails from her in my inbox to peruse while drinking my coffee. 

Are you available to do a podcast for a nationally syndicated show? NPR wants to interview you (regional, not national, but I’ll take it).

Please take a look at the updated press kit—it incorporates the quote from your fantastic Kirkus review! 

It was all so thrilling (an oh-so-familiar feeling) as if April 27th was another opening night. I even had the requisite jitters.

When I was being rational (which happened on occasion), I knew that the actual day of publication would be far less exciting. It was a Tuesday, a regular workday. There’d be no exhilarating applause, no flowers, no cast party. To fill the inevitable void, I took the day off teaching (knowing I couldn’t possibly focus on my students) and arranged a lunch date with my daughter and some friends. My publisher, She Writes Press, posted a congrats notice on Facebook. There were some nice texts (“Happy Pub Day!” “How does it feel to be a published author?”) and a few congratulatory phone calls. It was a strange day. After eleven years of the writing and editing process, a year and a half of preparing the manuscript, planning the launch, building a publicity team and plan, the silence was deafening. Give it time, I thought. After all, most people haven’t even received the book, let alone read it.

My nerves increased exponentially before my Thursday launch event two days later, surprising me—a seasoned performer. I was so nervous I truly felt like throwing up. What the hell? It felt like a one-woman show, and I’ve always preferred the camaraderie and comfort of ensembles over solos. It would be me mostly alone onscreen, with 140 of my closest friends out in the ether.

But what’s to fear? Am I a mess because I’ve written a deeply personal, vulnerable account, revealing embarrassing stories to former synagogue congregants and current students? Or because I’m afraid I might be sued by the antagonists in my story? 

Either way, the book was out in the world now, never to be retracted. It could be a hit—or a flop.

Fortunately, the launch was a huge success. The sponsoring bookstore was pleased with sales, accolades were bestowed, my publicist was happy. I got those flowers (Richard, my husband, has been well trained.) A celebratory dinner with the whole family toasting me was enjoyed.

My baby had been birthed—with a healthy Apgar score.

Richard and I took off for Sonoma for a few days. Despite advice to the contrary, all the wine tasting in the world couldn’t keep me from checking for reviews. The Amazon and Goodreads tabs remained permanently open on my desktop. I refreshed obsessively, becoming a kind of star junkie. As each one came in—many more complimentary than the last—I rejoiced. The few that weren’t so stellar didn’t exactly plunge me into the depths of despair, but my mood was certainly dampened. “What you’re feeling is so normal!” my writerly friends and coaches soothed. “You’re having a bit of withdrawal. So many writers experience that after publishing!” Misery loves company and I did feel bit better. For a few hours.

As the blog tour wound down and the reviews became more of a trickle than a gush, there were days when nothing happened. When the Amazon and Goodreads scores seemed frozen, I panicked. Imposter syndrome would move in like an unwelcome houseguest. Who do I think I am, an author? Please. At times I felt as if I’d never written a word, let alone a book. Then my phone would chime and there would be a text: “Just finished your book. I couldn’t put it down, stayed up way too late reading. SO good!!” and I’d be flying high again.

I’m learning to accept that—as much as I hate roller coasters—I’m on one.

Crash won an award for memoir…up!

3-star review…down.

Is it possible to enjoy the ride? That answer is still unclear. What is becoming clearer is that the message of Crash is resonating, even if Spielberg hasn’t called (yet) wanting to buy the movie rights. My readers are telling me that my story about the realities of caregiving is having an effect on them. It’s opening a conversation that needs to happen.

In her recently published book, Where Do You Hang Your Hammock? Finding Peace of Mind While You Write, Publish and Promote Your Book, Bella Mahaya Carter writes:

Ultimately the success of your book isn’t up to you or your publicist, even if you both do everything in your power to promote it well. Beneath the dream for fame and fortune lurks a greater yearning: to matter. To be loved. We all matter, and we are all loved. Thinking otherwise is a common, conditioned misunderstanding about who we really are.

Amazon / Bookshop

Unquestionably, this experience has been a reality check. When I dig deep, when I ask the critical question I posed to myself multiple times during the writing process: “Who am I kidding? What I’m really feeling is…” The conclusion to that question is: I want to be relevant. To be noticed. To matter. When I allow the number of reviews—or the sales numbers I get from my publisher—to determine my relevance, then that’s a problem.

I need to let my book baby grow at her own pace. And not let her little trips and falls pull me down, or even let the awards and accolades mean that I matter. Because eventually she will mature and spread her wings anyway.

In the meantime, I’ll try to tolerate—if not enjoy—the ride.