Get to know me at 8

Entries from my childhood diary:

June 16, 1991

Dear Diary

It’s fathers day. I had a great day, it was fun. I spent the weekend at grammy’s, it was fun. I had a great day. See you tomorrow.

And the next day:

June 17, 1991

Dear Diary

Today I went shoping. We went to the doctor, shopd for grocerys it was ok. Then we ate lunch. I got a skip it. My sister got a pony. We bought dad some launchairs for fathers day. I know it’s late. Well I’m spending the night at Marie’s tonight. Well bye see you tomorrow.

If I had to give my eight year old self some writing advice, it would be show don’t tell. But props for the correct use of it’s!

My 2014 year in review

2014 has been good to me. I’ve been nonemployed and able to pursue my creative ambitions full force. I met many new friends over the past year and had the opportunity to travel to beautiful places. I’ve got a lot to celebrate. Here’s a rundown of the highlights in no particular order:

Traveling to Seattle with my mom and my sister.
Spending the holidays with my family in Cincinnati.
Accompanying David to math conferences in Baltimore, Banff, Tucson, and the Bay Area (twice).
Declaring myself the First Lady of Math Overflow on Twitter (#firstlady #mathoverflow), and writing some fun blog posts about having dinner with mathematicians, Taylor series jokes, and Algebraic Independence Day.
Growing closer with my writing group, attending some kick butt writing conferences, and generally figuring out how to be a writer.
Placing third in the Georgia Romance Writers Unpublished Maggie Awards for Contemporary Single Title Romance.
Completing a 50,000-word draft of a second novel during NaNoWriMo.
Graduating from Dad’s Garage improv classes in January and joining four improv troupes over the course of the year (Shark Party, Collective 51, The Outliers, and the now defunct Bangprov). I also auditioned for a couple of things that I didn’t get. I’m thankful for these experiences too because they made me realize how much I wanted to do improv and motivated me to work harder.
Taking long form improv classes at The Brink Improv and becoming part of the awesome community there.
Made $10 performing in a staged reading! It was my only income for the year.
I wasn’t able to attend as many literary and storytelling events as I would have liked this past year, but I did have a couple of opportunities to share stories at Carapace and Naked City. I was a featured storyteller at Stories on the Edge of Night, and I’ll be performing in that show again on January 22nd.
I maintained this blog! Since August, I’ve been blogging at least weekly thanks to the introduction of Fantasy Friday. I have plans to introduce some new themed posts in 2015 so stay tuned for that.

Thanks to everyone who reads this blog. It means a lot to me to be able to connect with friends, family, and the greater global community through this space.

Happy New Year!

Recalibrating the flow of sand through my hourglass

Back in September, I attended an Atlanta arts festival and learned something new about hourglasses. Because the flow of sand through the hourglass is largely determined by the shape of the passage between the upper and lower chambers, an artist handcrafting an hourglass determines how much sand to put in the vessel after it’s been constructed, not before. At the artist’s booth, there were timers that measured an hour that looked almost identical to timers that measured sixty seconds. But in the latter, the sand dropped quickly while in the former it barely trickled through.

My workflow lately has felt like a mismatched set of hourglasses. I’m participating in NaNoWriMo and trying to pump out 1,667 words per day on a new manuscript. At the same time, I’m rewriting the first chapter of my first novel, the project I’ve been working on for over a year.

For the new manuscript, the words come quickly, like sand pumping through the hourglass, because I don’t care if these are “bad” words. I’m just trying to get something on paper. The first chapter rewrite, on the other hand, is slow and painful, sand barely eeking through the hourglass. Each word matters so much to me because I love my characters, and I’m plagued by the fear that their story will never get told because I’m not good enough.

I’m looking to recalibrate the flow of sand through my hourglass and strike a balance somewhere in the middle on both projects. I feel like I should care more about the new manuscript because I’m trying to build a solid foundation for a book. And even though it hurts me to say it, I’ve got to loosen my death grip on the first novel so I can make faster progress–let the “bad” words in and then try to improve them rather than standing guard at the gate judging every word that tries to pass.

How would a man say this?

One of the major challenges I’ve faced writing my novel is capturing the voice of distinct characters, especially male ones. In particular, I want the men I write to be nuanced, but I’m afraid they’ll be perceived as sissies or not “real men” if show I them being vulnerable. The thing that bugs me about my hang-up is that over the years I’ve accumulated a ton of evidence that men can be hurt, scared, care deeply about women, etc. Still, I find it easier to portray my male characters as withdrawn and unemotional, even though I know conforming to these stereotypes of masculinity can be damaging.

Luckily, my husband, David, has been a great resource when it comes to tapping into the mind of a man. He keeps me honest:

Blargh update: why am I doing anything?

It’s that time of the month–when I start checking my calendar to see when my next therapy appointment is. I meet with my therapist monthly now, timing which seems to coincide nicely with my declines into nervousness.

Like many, I was disturbed by the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, and saddened by the death of Robin Williams. I wanted to write something about my feelings earlier, but I needed a break from social media. Trying to post anything lighthearted and unrelated that week felt shallow, and I needed time to gather the courage to admit what I want to say.

I’ve talked on this blog before about how I used to cry daily before I left my job in academia, but what I haven’t stated here, although I’ve talked about it publicly, is how often I contemplated my own death during that period. I wasn’t suicidal (my therapist said I was a low suicide risk), but I thought a lot about jumping off of things.

I remember going to a wine festival with David around this time, one of those pay $30 for seemingly unlimited wine. In general, I try to steer clear of this type of event because I’ve found they carry hidden costs (i.e. terrible hangovers), but we’d gone, and while the night started fun, it ended with a cheap can of high gravity beer and me yelling at David when we crossed an overpass, “Don’t you understand I want to jump off this.”

I didn’t really want to jump off the bridge that night. Nonetheless, my jumping fantasies continued until I left my job. At some point, I realized they weren’t about dying but rather escaping a figuratively high place where I felt trapped (the Ivory Tower).

Since leaving academia, my desire to jump has diminished, but I find myself worrying about what I will do if I find myself back in that place again. Which begs the question, why the heck am I trying to write and publish a novel? Whether I fail or succeed, the process itself is bound to provoke my anxiety and cause me a good deal of stress.

David works, and if I wanted, I could spend my days taking care of our home, making sure nothing collects on our feet when we walk around barefoot and preparing elaborate dinners like the kind we used to enjoy when we were graduate students in Berkeley. I think this is a valid life option for me, and one where my overall happiness might be greater than if I pursue writing. If I write, I know I’ll have to face down my anxieties, but if I don’t, it’s possible I’ll be less anxious.

But I know I’m not likely to be much less anxious. That’s the thing about my OCD–it’s always looking for something to latch onto–a possibility of peril that will jolt the circuitry of calamity hardwired into my brain. And writing provides some relief for this because I can live out my fears and experience emotional highs and lows in fiction rather than real life.

I still contemplate my death these days, but instead of jumping, I picture myself lying on a cement slab, slitting my chest open, and taking out my organs. I don’t want to die this way any more than I wanted to jump. I think this vision is about my desire to excise the pain caused by years of anxiety and reveal this part of myself to others.

This vision reminds me of a quote attributed to Red Smith about the difficulty of writing a daily column in a newspaper: “You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed.”

I like this image because this is what writing and storytelling feel like to me. It’s why I think they’re worthwhile ventures even if they cause me a great deal of anxiety. Stories help us to relate to one another as human beings. They help to reduce stigma.

But part of me worries that this exposure is self-indulgent, an unburdening of my own pain at the expense of others who must then bear some part of it. I was at a math conference dinner this past April when the subject of my public reading about my suicidal thoughts came up. I’d had a couple of gin and tonics in quick succession prior to this, and someone commented: “What will you tell us after three drinks?”

The implication his statement was clear to me: suicidal thoughts are not to be discussed in polite company, even if I’ve made them public in the past. (Sidenote: if you’re buying, there’s a lot I’ll tell you after three drinks.)

I know not everyone enjoys opening the emotional vein and riding the circuitry of calamity as much as I do, and I hesitate to make people uncomfortable or to unload my burden onto them. But I do think it’s important to acknowledge that I deal with these thoughts in order to reduce the silence and stigma around mental health issues. Even though, like most things in life, sharing my struggles scares the shit out of me.

I guess it’s a good thing my therapy appointment is this afternoon.

Becoming a writer (Part 2)

In Part 1 of this post, I discussed activities one usually does individually to become a writer (reading, writing, rewriting/editing). Today, I’m back to tackle the activities that involve other people (training, spending time with other writers, business). Again, here’s my model for becoming a writer:

When I started the process of writing my novel, I would have characterized myself as good at writing. Similarly, the first time my husband and I took a ballroom dance class, I went in thinking I was a good dancer. In both cases, I think it’s fair to say I had a natural ability. But I didn’t go from my first dance lesson to performing on Dancing with the Stars, and I would never have landed a book contract with the first draft of my novel (let’s hope I have better luck with future drafts!).

With ballroom dance, I had to learn about posture, rhythm, and movement. I had to learn the steps. With writing, I had to learn the guidelines (e.g., show versus tell). Some view these guidelines as overly restrictive (“there are no rules!”), but for me, learning them has helped me tell my story more effectively.

My thinking is this: people have been telling stories since the dawn of man, and along the way, through our collective wisdom, we’ve figured out some principles for storytelling. Why waste time trying to rediscover these on my own or pursue an alternate strategy that has a much lower probability of success? These principles are principles for a reason, they’ve worked.

So here’s what I’ve done to learn about writing and to promote myself as a writer:

1. Training

Prior to beginning my novel, my formal training in fiction writing consisted of a creative writing class I took my junior year of high school and then repeated during my senior year because I liked it so much.

Since I’ve rediscovered writing, I’ve found classes, workshops, and seminars to be a great place to learn about writing, especially after I’d done some writing on my own. In particular, I finished the first draft of my novel in July of last year, and in the fall, I took a six-week class on novel writing through Emory Continuing Education. Taking the class before I wrote the novel probably would have helped me to avoid some of the worst mistakes I made in the first draft (e.g., head jumping), but taking it after I’d been struggling for a while was gratifying because I could apply what I was learning in the class directly to my novel and see the improvement (e.g., replacing all the crazy dialogue tags I’d used with “he said”).

In addition to the class at Emory, I’ve attended workshops and seminars offered by two Atlanta-based writing organizations I belong to, Georgia Romance Writers and The Atlanta Writers Club. Also, I spent an enlightening weekend at the Tucson Festival of Books, where there were a number of sessions aimed at writers. Sometimes the workshops are duds, but overall they’ve been useful and a worthwhile investment of my time and money.

I’ve amassed a small collection of books on writing. My writing improved substantially after I read Stein on Writing by Sol Stein and Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Browne and King (I noticed a difference and so did my writing group). Other books I’d recommend: Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, Stephen King’s On Writing, and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. Day to day, I prefer reading on an e-reader, but for these references, I like having hard copies.

Along with training in the particular form you are trying to master (for me, novel writing), I would suggest pursuing training in some other art form to get you thinking about story in a different way and to help you recharge. I’ve been taking improv lessons for about a year and a half now (at Dad’s Garage and The Brink Improv). These have been invaluable to my writing mostly because what makes for an interesting scene in improv (an action oriented scene with strong characters who have an emotional connection) also makes for a good chapter in a book. Also, improv allows me to inhabit characters in a way that is physically intimate. My body becomes their body, my voice their voice. And with improv, I have the opportunity to play a lot of characters, explore a lot of different worlds, and to quickly see what works and what doesn’t in a scene. Novel writing is a much longer slog, but I take what I learn in improv and apply it to the novel (e.g., not resolving conflict too quickly, having characters do things instead of just talking about doing them, and being willing to adapt the story and let go of things that aren’t working).

2. Spending time with other writers

Probably the single most important thing I’ve done to spur productivity on my book is join a writing group. I meet with a group of writers, who are working on novels of a similar nature, every other week. We trade chapters in advance of the meeting, send feedback, and then discuss the feedback at the meeting. This process directly benefits my writing because my critique partners tell me what they like and dislike about my manuscript. Also, things get written because I want to have something to send to the group. There are indirect benefits as well. Notably, critiquing the manuscripts of the other writers in my group has helped to become a better editor of my own work.

I’m lucky to live in Atlanta where the live literary scene is thriving, giving me the opportunity to attend literary events and hang out with other writers at least once a week. As is probably evident from the length of these two posts on how to become a writer, I love talking about writing! For the most part, writers are interested in having conversations that I think might bore my other friends (What? You don’t want to hear me vaguely describe my plotting issues?). The Atlanta lit scene, in particular events like Write Club Atlanta, Naked City, Carapace, and Stories on the Square, made me want to be a writer (something about the applause a person receives after sharing a story). And now that I’ve become a writer, I go to these same places to find my role models. I also attend the monthly meetings of my local professional organization, the Georgia Romance Writers, where there are a ton of published authors writing in my genre. The great part about belonging to these communities is that I have people to consult when questions arise (e.g., how do I decide what editors to meet with at writing conferences).

3. Business

This is the part of becoming a writer I dreaded most. It’s not enough that I write, I have to market myself? That’s so corporate and icky and antithetical to my art. Okay, I never call it my art. And as an economics major in college, I discovered I’m not really anti-corporate. The ickiness is fear. How do I convince people to like me?

The most useful resource that I’ve come across so far in helping me develop my author platform (author speak for marketing strategy) is Kristen Lamb’s Rise of The Machines: Human Authors in a Digital World. There’s a ton of useful information in this book on engaging with social media, but the thing I appreciate about Lamb’s approach is her focus on human connection. Reading this book changed how I interact with people on Facebook and Twitter, and it gave me the courage to restart and sustain this blog. Because it’s necessary as an author, especially in the genre I’m writing in, to have a social media presence.

I’ve already mentioned the two local organizations I’m a member of in Atlanta: Georgia Romance Writers and The Atlanta Writers Club. I’m also a member of a national professional organization, Romance Writers of America. These organizations offer workshops aimed at professional development, and they also organize writing conferences where attendees have the opportunity to meet with editors and agents. I attended my first Atlanta Writers Conference this past May and had my query letter, synopsis, and first three chapters critiqued by an agent. She gave me clear feedback on areas where I could improve, and implementing the changes she recommended took my manuscript to another level.

Other aspects of the business side of writing I’m currently working are setting reasonable goals and sticking to deadlines. For me, that’s meant making progress on the novel and continuing to develop my social media presence. For other writers I know, it’s balancing working on novels and shorter fiction pieces. Whatever the goal is, it’s good to have a plan.

So that’s what I’ve done over the past year to become a writer. I don’t claim to know everything, but I’ve been intentional about this process, so hopefully what I have to share is useful to others embarking on this career.

If you haven’t read it yet, check out Part 1 of this post.

Becoming a writer (Part 1)

In a recent post, I showed you how my writing has improved over the the past year, and now I’m back to tell you what I’ve done to hone my craft and to promote myself as a writer. One year into a career feels somewhat premature to be dispensing advice, especially since I have yet to achieve the traditional marker of success (i.e., publishing my novel), but I have insights into the process now that I won’t necessarily remember if I wait. So I’ll go ahead and share my thoughts, and hopefully others with more experience will chime in if they disagree with my approach or have things to add.

Initially, I was going to list all the activities I’ve engaged in, similar to this useful article on how to fake an MFA degree, but I noticed the activities could be grouped into six general categories. Thus, here’s my overall model for becoming a writer:

You’ll notice that the first three (reading, writing, and rewriting/editing) are largely solo activities while the latter three (training, spending time with other writers, and business) involve interacting with other people to improve and promote one’s writing. I’ll focus on reading, writing, and rewriting/editing today and cover the others in a separate blog post (otherwise this will get seriously TL;DR).

I’ll note briefly here that these categories are not exclusive (e.g., spending time with other writers is useful for networking, which I would classify as doing business).

I also want to comment on my choice of the phrase “becoming a writer.” Coming from an academic background, I was hesitant to call myself a writer when I first started writing my novel. After all, I didn’t call myself a demographer the first day I walked into my PhD program when I knew little about the discipline of demography. I had to be trained, like first year medical students who go on to become doctors.

Now, I’m not arguing that formal training is necessary to become a writer or that anyone needs to achieve a certain degree of skill or accumulate a certain amount of text before they can call themselves a writer. As far as I’m concerned, everyone has the right to write, share their work, and call themselves a writer whenever they feel comfortable with the label.

But writing well takes effort, and writers have to decide for themselves what investments they want to make in the quality of their writing before it’s released into the public. I wasn’t comfortable calling myself a writer when I started my novel a year ago but am much more willing to identify myself as such now, the difference being I’ve invested a considerable amount of time in honing my craft and establishing myself as a professional.

So what did I do?

1. Reading

I decided to write a romance novel because I was interested in exploring the tension between love and lust. I arrived at this decision in March of last year. In May, another writer asked me who my favorite romance authors were, and the conversation took an awkward turn when I admitted I wasn’t sure if I’d ever read a romance novel (“Does Bridget Jones’s Diary count?” I asked). She graciously suggested a few authors, and I began reading romance novels at a rapid pace. And it was a good thing I did, because it turns out, I didn’t understand how romance novels work. In particular, I didn’t realize how sexy they are and that the plots tend to follow a similar structure.

The data available on my Goodreads account suggests I’ve read around a hundred books since last May. I read a mix of romance and literary fiction although the majority of what I read is romance. I read for pleasure, but I try to approach what I read from a critical angle as well. Before I began my own novel, I studied the structure of other romance novels. When I ran into problems with point-of-view, I reread some of my favorite novels to see how the authors handled third person. When I don’t like a book, I try to figure out what I dislike about it. Similarly, when I love a novel, I try to identify what attracts me. This process, coupled with daily writing on my part, has helped me to define my writing style.

2. Writing

Okay, so this is most obvious step to becoming a writer: sitting down and putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.

I jumpstarted my writing by participating in Camp NaNoWriMo in July of last year, completing a 50,000 word draft of a novel in a month. To accomplish this, I wrote roughly 1,600 words a day without engaging in any editing. There were a lot of problems with the manuscript I produced, but this was one of the best months of my life because I was able to let my creative brain run free and avoid the editing hell brought on by my perfectionist tendencies. That would come later…

Not only did participating in Camp NaNoWriMo help me produce a large amount of text in a short amount of time, it also made it easier for me to write short pieces. I learned how to sit down and write without constantly questioning myself. And I use this skill now in my rewriting process. I’ll throw out a section of the novel and set word count goals for a week or two to replace it.

To anyone starting out, I’d recommend a brief time where you focus on generating content without judging your work. Set daily word count goals you can achieve and watch your writing accumulate. Give yourself time to fall in love with this process because I’ve found it’s easy to feel defeated once you start critiquing your work.

3. Rewriting/Editing

Rewriting and editing are critical to the writing process, but I’ve included them as a separate category from writing because I think focused attention on rewriting and editing can improve one’s skills at a much more rapid pace than generating text alone can. Why? Because you have to sit down with your work and figure out how to make it better, and while you may succeed in making small improvements, what you end up with still might not be what you consider good. This is the point when you’ll want to consult outside sources (e.g., books on writing, other writers, editing workshops), which I’ll discuss more in Part 2 of this post.

For me, writing is fun while editing is uncomfortable, basically a lot of time spent trying to wrangle terrible sentences and paragraphs into submission. I remember spending about three weeks over the holiday season this past year editing a chapter in my novel that involved a lot of dialogue, physical action, and emotional reaction. Figuring out how to balance these things was painful, but when I emerged on the other side of the process, I had learned something valuable: how to write a scene that was scenic. And if I hadn’t spent a lot of time trying to improve that particular chapter, which I felt was at the emotional core of my novel, I think I could have written four or five novels without figuring out how to do this.

One part of the rewriting/editing process I found frustrating initially was the difficulty I had setting goals and tracking my progress. Unlike writing alone, where I just had to meet a daily word count, rewriting and editing involved subtracting and modifying words until I thought the improvements I’d made were “good enough.” Talk about vague! Now I’m trying to adhere to a strict rewriting/editing schedule (e.g., tomorrow I’m scheduled to rewrite chapter thirty-two of my novel), but I’m not sure this would have worked for me when I first started the editing process. I needed protected time to figure out how to write and what constitutes my style (I’m not done with this, BTW).

The rewriting/editing process is where I’ve felt the most defeated, but it’s also where I’ve experienced my greatest victories. There’s nothing like starting the day with a chunk of text that kind of pisses you off and ending the day having turned it into something witty and emotional. I love sending my writing group chapters I feel confident are the best I could write at the moment.

And that’s why rewriting and editing are so important, because the best thing you can write is not necessarily the first thing you’ll put down on paper but admitting that can be hard.

I’ll be back soon with Part 2 of this post, detailing how training, spending time with other writers, and focusing on the business aspects of a writing career were essential steps on my journey to become a writer.

In the meantime, if you have any advice on becoming a writer, please share it in the comments. I’m especially keen to hear your insights on the rewriting/editing process.

One year into the novel: my writing then and now

I started writing my novel on July 1st of last year and wrote the first draft within a month as part of Camp NaNoWriMo. I’d hoped to have it finished within a year, but it turns out there was a lot I needed to learn about writing.

To illustrate what I mean, here’s a paragraph taken from something I wrote about a year ago:

She grabbed two bottles from the 12-pack they’d picked up the night before at the grocery store but failed to make much of a dent in yet and rejoined him on the porch. They sat close together on the porch swing watching the sunset over the tree tops continuing their conversation from before and alternating with periods of silence where they just enjoyed their proximity to one another. After they finished their first beers, they each had another before they went in to make dinner.

Here, I’ve revised the paragraph (FYI, this is not from the novel):

Melissa grabbed two beers from the fridge and then walked back to the porch. Brad sat on a wooden swing, staring out across the hilltops.

“Here you go.” Melissa handed him a beer.

“Thanks.” He shifted to make room for her. “It’s a beautiful night.”

She sat down and took in the view, rolling hills shaded blue, the sky awash in waves of pink and gold. She’d heard life described as a series of peaks and valleys. This was a mountaintop moment.

She turned to Brad. “I’m happy to be here with you.”

He smiled and put his arm around her, drawing her tight against his side. They sipped their beers and watched the sun slip below the horizon while night collected in the sky. A quiet settled between them, a silence unlike any she’d ever experienced, one that stretched beyond comfort to intimacy.

Only when the moon had reached its full brightness did she mention dinner, and it was still several minutes after that when they abandoned their perch for the warmth of the cabin.

I hope you will agree that the second version does a better job of transporting you the scene. What have I done? I’ve given more detail about the physical space (the porch and their view) as well as their position in it (sitting next to each other on the swing, his arm over her shoulder). I’ve eliminated weird prepositional phrases that undercut the action (e.g. “After they finished their first beers, they each had another before they went in to make dinner.”). I’ve added dialogue. I’ve adopted Melissa’s point of view and relayed her thoughts. Most importantly, in my opinion, I’ve conveyed why this moment should be included in the story: Melissa has never experienced an intimate silence like this before. There’s something special about her relationship with Brad.

I’ve yet to complete a second draft of my novel with a coherent storyline, but I have made some critical advances in my writing style. Here are what I consider to be the three most important lessons I’ve learned this year:

1. Don’t solve conflicts too quickly

I’ve written about this before, but to summarize, in my initial draft, I would set up a problem in one chapter only to disregard or solve it in the next. This led to a story that was not very compelling, characters who weren’t given a chance to fully develop, and hypothetical readers who would have been insulted by the way I undercut the conflict. In particular, if I ask readers to believe something in one scene only to throw it out the window in the next, they aren’t going to trust my story.

2. How to write in third person

I was working in a coffee shop in November of last year when I realized my novel needed an entire rewrite.

I texted a friend: “Novel editing in Columbia, SC, today. Wishing I would have made stronger choices about point of view in my first draft and initial edits. Whereby stronger choice, I mean a choice. So confusing.”

Despite being a long time reader and having read at least one book on writing, I didn’t understand how to write in the third person before beginning my novel. I wanted to tell the story from the perspective of both of my main characters, but instead of choosing one of them as the viewpoint character for a particular scene, I would go back and forth between the two in the same scene, doing what is known as head jumping. When I began to grasp how to write in the third person, my novel improved dramatically. Suddenly, I knew where I was in the scene, inside the head one of my main characters, and it became much easier to describe what was going on because I was filtering the scene through their eyes. Whereas before I was afraid to go too deep into my characters’ thoughts, now I was able to share what my viewpoint character was thinking, and in particular, how they perceived the other character. My romance story began to feel emotional and intimate!

3. Showing versus telling

Last week I planned to do some quick revisions to earlier chapters in the novel. I began my edits and realized right away these scenes weren’t scenic enough. It seems in the past few months I’ve finally begun to understand how to show rather than tell. While my earlier chapters were interesting, they lacked immediacy. Instead of unveiling the events as they unfolded and transporting the reader to the scene, I’d summarized them (similar to the old version of the porch scene above). Now, some summary is necessary, especially to keep the book moving along, but there were parts where I was cheating the reader out of a good scene.

I’m hoping to write a longer blog post about the things that I’ve done this past year to become a better writer, but for now, I’ll recommend Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King to those looking to improve their writing. I read this book last month. I wish I would have read it much sooner.

Home office question: how do I keep my butt in the chair?

I’m trying to develop a new writing routine that makes greater use of my home office space, but I’ve noticed a major problem: I can’t stay seated. I need your help!

As background, I’ve been writing my book for about a year now, and for the most part, I’ve worked at coffee shops. I like this routine because I know I’ll put in a few solid hours of writing whenever I go to a coffee shop in order to justify the trip. But there are problems with relying solely on coffee shops for a writing space. First, there’s the cost. On average, I spend about $7 a trip, putting my expenses at somewhere between $140-$210 per month. The second is that there are only so many hours I want to spend at the coffee shop (maximum of five), and I’m at a point now where I want to be working more than that.

So in order to write more and spend less money, I spent the latter half of last week writing from home. But I could not keep my butt in the chair. Any excuse to get up, I’d take, and if there wasn’t one, I would make something up.

What am I trying to escape? Overall, I enjoy writing and editing my work, but I find myself often getting stuck trying to revise poorly phrased sentences. These sentences make me uncomfortable, and rather than fight, I flee by taking a break, thus prolonging my agony.

Why don’t I suffer this same problem at coffee shops? It’s much harder to leave my chair. In particular, I pack up my computer and take it with me whenever I go to the bathroom. So it’s a pain to get up. I might pause and check my phone, but I don’t completely disengage from my writing space the way I can at home by moving into a different room.

To tackle my problem of staying seated, I tried implementing a 45/15 strategy last week. I would set a timer for forty-five minutes of work and then take a fifteen minute break afterward. But with no oversight, I found it difficult to adhere to the self-imposed schedule.

So this is the part where I ask for your help. What do you do to keep yourself on task when you work from home? How do you keep yourself accountable on projects where you’re only answering to yourself?

I’m afraid to just do it

I attended some really great writing workshops at the Tucson Festival of Books this past weekend. One of the main themes to come out across panels was how fear holds us back.

I’m often afraid.

I haven’t posted on this blog for two weeks not for lack of content or lack of time but because I worry about making things just right before I post them. I worry about saying something that will come across as unintelligent or controversial. I worry about saying something that will come back to haunt me years later. I worry that something I post will go viral. I worry that no one cares at all about what I’m writing.

I worry. But I’ve found that the best way of addressing my fears is often to just do the thing I’m afraid of.

So I’m just going to do it. That is, I’m going to reflect on the importance of just doing it improv and writing. The principle isn’t complicated although it can be difficult to implement.

In improv, if you find yourself talking about doing something in a scene, just do it. For example, if you start planning a party, fast forward to the party. The audience would rather see someone jump out of a cake than hear you talk about someone jumping out of a cake. Action!

In writing, I’ve come across this when authors are plotting something their characters will do. For example, in a lead up to a bank robbery, the characters might discuss how they are going to carry out the robbery. My inclination is that it is better to move most of this detail to section where you show the actual bank robbery unless the conversation highlights some important character traits. Again, action!

In both of these cases, the hesitation to take action is rooted in fear. Can I really jump into this pretend shark tank on stage? Can I really write this scene where the bank robbers’ plans get foiled? Fear holds us back from committing to our choices.

So I’ve just done it, but I’m still a little afraid. What’s fear holding you back from?