Category: writing advice

Life is full of a thousand different activities that pull us in every direction imaginable. There is work, family, friends, housework, yardwork… The list goes on.

Finding time to write amid all this is hard. With everything happening in our daily lives, writing can seem pretty low on the priority list. I argue that making time for your writing is just as important as making sure you brush your teeth. 

Those of us who call ourselves writers are different. While many people have stories running through their heads, writers have an overwhelming compulsion to put them on paper. Not doing so makes us feel like a little piece of our soul is missing. Like we aren’t properly caring for ourselves. It’s just as important as exercise or snuggling your children. If you can create time for those, you can create time to write.

It doesn’t matter how much time you carve out. Maybe you don’t even do it every day. Maybe it’s just fifteen minutes once a week. Whatever that time is, treat it like it is sacred, because it is. Mark it on your calendar. Put it on every schedule imaginable and stick to it. 

If your best friend, Susie, calls you on Saturday morning asking you to go to the farmer’s market with her when you have it in your schedule to write, don’t go. It’s okay to tell people you’re busy. You have to take care of you. As a writer, making time for writing is part of that. Constantly pushing it aside will only leave you unfulfilled and angry because you are not seeing the progress you want. 

Steven King said it best. “Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back to life.” Writers need to write just as much as they need to eat or drink. So, make time for your writing. Put it on your calendar. Then stick to it until that time is as natural as breathing.

Editing is terrifying. You know your manuscript needs more work, but the number of details you have to think about is overwhelming. You have to think about plot, character arcs, grammar, and more. It’s mind-boggling. You can’t be expected to do it all at once. That is why you need a plan.

An editing plan is a strategic process that helps ensure you address each story element. There are dozens of things to consider when editing, but for simplicity’s sake, I have lumped everything into three major categories: plot, character, and prose.

Trying to focus on all these elements at once is impossible. There is a reason professional editors do multiple passes on a manuscript. Instead of trying to keep a thousand spinning plates in the air, focus on just one. I prefer to start with the big picture and work my way down to smaller details.

I start with plot. If the overall plot is rubbish, my amazingly witty heroine won’t be enough to keep readers engaged. Starting with plot helps identify areas of weakness with the overall story and adjust pacing. Maybe you’ll find a scene or character that doesn’t need to be there. (Remember Killing Your Darlings?) Ensuring the plot is solid will make each subsequent editing pass easier.

Now that the plot is straightened out, I can evaluate my characters. Each principal character needs a clear arc and growth throughout the story. Their behavior must be consistent with their motivation and backstory. Personally, I suggest doing a pass for each character. This makes it easier to ensure each one is realistic and serves a purpose in the story.

Prose is the last thing I look at. These are the nitty gritty word choices that will keep you up at night. Maybe that’s just me. Either way, this is the final bit of polish to make the manuscript shine. Doing this last is strategic. There is no point in waxing poetic in a scene that is cut from the final product. So, by waiting until the end to work on prose, I am maximizing my time and efficiency.

But Erin, what if I notice something else while I’m editing? Can’t I just stop and fix it? Sure. There are no hard and fast rules here. If that missing comma is going to make your left eye twitch so badly that everyone thinks you’re winking at them, fix it. Another option is to keep an editing notebook. Jot down the things you want to address later. This will keep you from having the thousand and one half finished editing runs and relieve any worry you have about forgetting what you wanted to work on.

Now that you have an idea of how to build an editing strategy, I hope the process will be far less painful for you in the future. Maybe you already have a great strategy that you use. I’d love to hear about it. Until next time, happy writing!

It doesn’t matter what you do for a living. We all experience moments of doubt that cause us to question what we are doing. The feeling that we are unqualified, not smart enough, ill equipt… the list goes on. Impostor syndrome can be crippling, but I’m here to give you a few ideas on how to combat this roadblock and get back to work.

1. Keep Good Feedback

Let’s face it. We all like to know that we are doing a good job. As kids, we get gold sticky starts and pats on the back for a wide variety of things. As adults, those moments of recognition are few and far between. So we need to learn how to maximize the few moments we do have. I keep a file of good feedback on my computer for this very reason. It is full of emails, photos of cards, and documents with recounted conversations I can go back to when I’m feeling low to remind myself that I do a good job. This little pick me ups remind me I’m better than I think and allow me to keep going.

2. Remember Where You Started

It takes years of hard work and repetition to achieve greatness. When you start to feel like you are going nowhere, look back at where you were when you started. I promise you will have more to show for your efforts than you think. True, you may still have a way to go before you reach your target, but every little step forward is progress. As long as you have that, you’re golden.

3. Focus On What Is In Front Of You

I’ve noticed that when my mind starts to circle the drain of impostor syndrome, it focuses on everything I have yet to do. This increases my stress level and makes me wonder why I thought I could ever handle any of this in the first place. When this happens, I force myself to stop and take a breath. I close my eyes, release the tension in my shoulders, and unclench my jaw. Then I open my eyes and focus solely on the task that is right in front of me. I can’t start the others until this one is finished. So I focus all of my attention into whatever step in the process I am on in that moment. Once it’s finished, I go to the next. Focusing on what is right in front of me helps keep some of that extra brain noise to a minimum, allowing me to make more progress.

4. Allow Yourself Time To Learn

Nobody is a master when they first start. I don’t care who you are about to name. They very well could have been a prodigy, but I can promise you, look into their history, and you find they had a teacher somewhere along the way. None of us are born knowing everything there is about our craft. It takes time. Give yourself a bit of grace and acknowledge that you are still learning. You will always be learning. This growth is a key element of life. One we should embrace with a smile and welcome, because the day we stop learning is the day we stop really living.

I hope a few of these tips are able to help you the next time impostor syndrome creeps into your life. Are there any other techniques you use that are not included on the list? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic. We can always learn more from sharing ideas with each other than we can functioning on an island alone.

Every writer comes to a moment where they have to make a decision. You have been crafting this story element for what feels like days. It’s one of the best things you’ve ever written. You’re in love with every aspect of it. There is just one problem; it doesn’t fit the rest of your narrative. That’s when it is time to kill your darlings.

Killing your darlings is a common term in the writing community that refers to cutting out scenes, lines, or even whole characters in order to make the story better. It is one of the most painful moments of the editing process I have had to endure.

I recently had to cut one of my favorite scenes out of my manuscript. It told you so much about the characters and their relationship to one another. It has some of the best prose I’ve ever written, but the scene didn’t move the story forward. I fought to keep it. I moved it to different places in the story. I changed some elements to try to make it fit, but no matter how many changes I made, it just wasn’t working. So to the butcher block it went.

One of the good things about writing is that ideas do not have to be confined to their original source. That scene served no purpose in this manuscript, but it could be the glue that holds together a crucial moment in the next. The same is true for characters that you cut out. Maybe the sweet old woman isn’t needed in this story, but she could be a valued confidante in another. That’s why I keep a folder full of discarded story elements. Perhaps I can resurrect them in another project farther down the road.

Killing your darlings is painful. There is a reason you love them and want to hold them close. Just be careful that holding them near and dear to your heart doesn’t lead you to diminishing the rest of your work simply because you couldn’t let them go. Taking them out may be painful, but it will all be worth it in the end when you see the finished product shining back at you from publication.

Have you ever had one of those moments where you go from sitting quietly to having tears running down your face? There is no rhyme or reason for it. Just unescapable emotion welling up inside of you before you can even acknowledge it’s existence? I hate it when it happens to me. Crying is one of my least favorite things in the universe, being surprise attacked by it even more so. Having experienced one of these moments recently, I realized that there is a lot we can learn from them. Not just in our own lives, but in the lives of the characters on the pages we read.

Unexpected emotional outbursts of any kind can serve as a window into unknown pieces of our hearts. It shines a light on feelings that have either been suppressed or ignored. Maybe you didn’t even know seeing something was important to you until it happened, and you found yourself crying in relief at the sight of it. A single tear running down a character’s face can be more powerful than a Shakespearian soliloquy when deployed correctly. Let me give you an example form something I’m working on. Paige’s hand trembled as she ran her fingers across the frayed edge of the clipping. Her chest grew tighter as image after image of her father’s scrap book danced in front of her. A shuddering breath passed her lips. Closing her eyes, she imagined her father’s smiling face beaming back at her from the edge of the arena and smiled. There is a lot going on in that passage. Now imagine what it would have looked like if Paige had just started talking about the images she was seeing or what she was feeling. “I can’t believe it,” Paige said. “He kept all of these? Every last article. Every campaign. It’s all here.” She turned to her mother, a tear making its way down her face. “He really did care. Didn’t he?” The Bard I am not, but you get the point. The exact same thing is happening in both passages, but one has significantly more impact than the other. The stillness of the moment makes everything more intense. It’s in those quiet moments when we let emotions run free that we learn the most. About our stories. About our characters. But even more so, about ourselves. What events in your life have brought up these “surprise emotions”? What did they teach you?