Self-Care for the Busy Writer

As we head into March, I have signed contracts for 5 books. Because I’m working for a book packager and a publisher, two different entities, the individual projects sometimes overlap. I’m going to be moving from deadline to deadline for the next three months or so. This means that I’m going to be spending an awful lot of time at my desk which takes a toll.

Back in October I signed up for a fitness challenge through my library. The goal was to work out 30 times that month. It could mean walking or jogging a mile or working out for 30 minutes.

The reality is that I intend to get up and move. After all, it makes me feel better.

But I get busy writing and . . .

What do you mean it’s dinner time . . . bed time . . . I’m sure you get the idea.

There are two things that will break into this. I hate failing at something so the library challenge worked well. But I also hate losing money. So just over a week ago I signed up for yoga classes again. Week 2 if going to much better than week 1!

The great thing is that if you are busy working, you can squeeze in a spot of chair yoga here and there. Chair yoga adapts traditional yoga poses. The common perception is that chair yoga is easier. It’s people who can’t handle “real” yoga. I don’t know about that but it is something you can often do in less space than traditional yoga. I don’t know that I could manage to pull it off in the car on in the seat on an airplane but you can definitely do it at your desk. You can make it a bit more difficult by adding in a variety of optional moves. Not sure what I mean by optional moves? Check out the video here.

The only way to keep the words flowing when I am really busy is to recharge and to take care of myself. I hope you are all doing the same things for yourselves in whatever way works for you.

–SueBE

How Much Do I Need?

All writing has to achieve balance.

One of my writing friends has been working hard to market her memoir. One person read part of it and told her that she shouldn’t include dialogue. Dialogue made it feel like fiction. This might be the case with some people but I’ve read my friend’s writing and her dialogue always provides something essential. Take it away and something would definitely be missing.

When I raised this objection, my friend balked. “No, no, she didn’t say I shouldn’t have any. Just that I had too much.”

Too much? Either it works or it doesn’t. Saying that a memoir should have “X amount” of dialogue and no more is like saying you should only use so much lettuce when you make dinner. How can you say that? Tonight we are having tacos. Another night we might have BLTs or even a dinner salad. Each is going to require a completely different amount of lettuce.

How much dialogue does a memoir need? Enough and not another word. Trying to specifically quantify it is like saying . . .

. . . you should have 6 items on your bibliography for every page of text.

. . . one character in your story for every chapter.

. . . one line of dialogue for one line of action for one line of narrative.

Now don’t get yourself into a kerfuffle. There are likely situations where each of the above is 100 percent true. But there are also going to be situations where each of these things is laughably wrong.

The key when you are writing is to find the balance. How much information do you need in your nonfiction piece? One more piece? Is that going to take one or two more sources to find?

One story may require no dialogue whatsoever while another balances it equally with narrative and has a lot less action.

No matter what you are writing, it has to work. What it takes to work is going to vary from manuscript to manuscript. That’s part of what makes writing an ongoing learning experience. What works today may not work tomorrow. What is perfect next week would have been cringe-worthy a month ago. You need to find what works now. It may conform to the “rules” but don’t be surprised if it doesn’t.

–SueBE

The Guest List: Working with a Nonlinear Timeline

Today my book club is getting together to discuss THE GUEST LIST by Lucy Foley. I’ve already printed out the discussion questions because I listened to an audio copy of the book. The vast majority of audio books do not include the discussion questions. I’m glad that I’ve already heard from several people that they liked this book. It is a tricky one in part because the timeline is nonlinear.

A linear timeline is the easiest to understand so let’s start there. A linear story has a beginning, middle, and end. They are delivered to the reader in that order.

A nonlinear timeline also tells a story with a beginning, middle, and end. But the story is not told in that order. This particular story starts with the wedding night, at the moment that the lights go out. Just to be helpful, the chapter doesn’t have a chapter designation but it does have NOW THE WEDDING NIGHT.

The next chapter opens with THE DAY BEFORE. It is told from the perspective of the wedding organizer.

Not only does the story move back and forth in time, it also moves from one character to another. It isn’t like every character get to be a point-of-view character and that’s a very good thing. Because this is a wedding with well over 100 guests. But there are about 6. So not only does the story move from present to the day before to even farther back in the past, it moves between characters. The point in the past that is relevant to each character differs and can also differ based on who they are with and what is going on at that moment.

Why do this? Really there is only one reason that I can think of and that is to increase tension. Hannah (a plus one) tells about the journey and the wedding from her perspective. Then we shift to the wedding planner, the bride, the bridesmaid, the best man, and rarely the groom.

Just when you are about the find out something critical *POP* you find yourself in another point of view. Slowly but surely everything begins to come together as different character’s secrets are revealed, several characters discover how their stories overlap, and the focus becomes narrower and narrower.

My assumption is that you outline and quite possibly draft this kind of story in chronological order. Then you begin to shift pieces around to create a greater tension.

I have never tried to write something this complex. Have you?

–SueBE

Writing Contest

One of the things that I really love doing is encouraging young people to write.  Thank you to the St. Louis County Library system for setting up this awesome contest.

Do you know a young writer? If so, the St. Louis County Library is having a writing competition for library patrons who are in from the 3rd to the 12th grade. Young writers are invited to submit an original story based on this prompt: someone wakes up in the morning, and no one remembers who they are.

Entries must be between 250-500 words for grades 3-5, 250-750 words for grades 6-8, and between 500-1000 words for grades 9-12. Story title is not part of the word count. Entries will be judged based on originality, story flow, continuity and mechanical elements (grammar, punctuation, spelling). The type of story is up to the writer – humor, mystery, etc.

Stories can be submitted online from March 1 to March 31, 2024. Help spread the word!

I could say more about the contest but really, I would simply be repeating information that you can find on the library’s site.  So for more information check out the library’s page on the contest.

–SueBE

Falling into the Groove

When I stumbled out of my office Thursday at dinner time I was punchy and yawning and really hungry. I also realized that I still needed to ready this post and get some photos ready to go.

But I didn’t mind in the least. Sure, I was up until midnight, but that was okay. Why?

Because I’d been trying to make progress on a project all week. And it just was not happening. I’ve contracted with a new-to-me company and that’s always intimidating. And I’m writing a new-to-me type of book. And . . . and . . . and . . .

But early Thursday I just fell into the groove. I outlined chapter two. I outlined chapter five. I figured out the broad topics for two, three, and four. I even know what my hook is going to be. All of this means that I’m not quite half way done.

It felt amazing! There are different things that you can do to help you fall into this groove where ideas start to come together and things flow.

• Do your prewriting. For some projects this might mean brainstorming. For others it might be sketching out an outline. For this project, I read a book on the topic. I had enough information to start.
• Set a writing routine. Some people have a highly ritualized routine. First they journal. They light a candle. They get a cup of tea in their favorite mug. I boot up my computer and play Blossom online. I don’t know that it is much of a routine but it starts me thinking about words. But I think the most important thing is…
• I show up. Some writers call this Butt-in-chair. The whole point is that you can’t work if you don’t try. You don’t wait until you feel like working. You don’t wait for your muse to show up. That said…
• Work on Other Things. If one project just won’t come, I work on other things. That’s why I work on two or three things at a time. If I’m really stuck, I…
• Do a Hateful Household Task. This is when I tackle something tedious like scrubbing the shower. Or I clean off a shelf in the pantry. I wash a window. And pretty soon the ideas start to percolate.

When you do fall into the groove, you may need to reprioritize some projects and put something aside. And that might mean asking someone else to fix dinner while you write. Really. It’s okay. The world is, after all, an amazing place.

–SueBE

Can AI Help Find Comp Titles? Part 2

One of my comp titles.

Just over a week ago, I blogged about trying to us ChatGPT to find comp titles. A friend of mine named Ann had had marvelous luck doing this and wrote her experience up for Brevity. You can find her post here.

Ann teases me about how tightly I write. Where some writers might give four or five details, I’m inclined to give you three tops. Sometimes you’re only going to get two. Other days you are going to be lucky to get one. I suspect that what I did with my failed ChatGPT attempt. I asked it this series of questions.

• “What mysteries are set during the 1960s?”
• “What books that feature female protagonists are set in the 1960s?”
•  “What books written since 2020 that feature female protagonists are set in the 1960s?”
• “Can you recommend recent books that would be popular with fans of Hidden Figures?”

While ChatGPT gave me some interesting looking titles, nothing was a particularly good fit. You can read my full post regarding the experience here. Ann’s comment on my post clarified something for me. Instead of simply attempting to give the program more specific details, I also need to add a greater number of details. She pointed out that she gave the program several sentences about her book.

See? I tend to keep it tight, often too tight. So I’ll try again.

Recommend a list of 10 books published in the last 5 years (2018 to 2023) that deal with a murder set against the Space Race. The books must have a female main character who solves the murder.

Here is the list that ChatGPT returned:

1. “The Astronaut’s Wife” by Clubbity Collins (2020): This psychological thriller follows the wife of an astronaut who begins to uncover dark secrets as her husband embarks on a space mission.
2. “The Calculating Stars” by Mary Robinette Kowal (2018): While not a murder mystery, this science fiction novel features a female protagonist who becomes involved in space exploration efforts and tackles challenges within a historical context.
3. “The Wives of Los Alamos” by TaraShea Nesbit (2014): Set during the development of the atomic bomb, this novel explores the lives of the wives of the scientists working on the Manhattan Project and the challenges they face.
4. “The Girl with the Louding Voice” by Abi Daré (2020): While not set during the Space Race, this novel follows a young Nigerian girl who faces adversity and strives for a better life. It may not be a murder mystery, but it features a strong female protagonist.
5. “The Dreamers” by Karen Thompson Walker (2019): This novel revolves around a mysterious illness spreading in a college town and follows several characters, including female protagonists, as they navigate the crisis.
6. “The Silent Stars Go By” by Sally Malcolm (2019): This science fiction novel follows a female astronaut and her crew on a mission to colonize a distant planet, blending themes of space exploration with personal challenges.
7. “The Red Lotus” by Chris Bohjalian (2020): This mystery novel involves a medical researcher and cyclist who becomes entangled in a web of intrigue and murder during a cycling trip in Vietnam.
8. “The Glass Hotel” by Emily St. John Mandel (2020): While not directly related to the Space Race, this novel explores interconnected lives and mysterious events, including a disappearance.
9. “The Shape of Family” by Shilpi Somaya Gowda (2019): This novel delves into the complexities of family dynamics and secrets, though not set during the Space Race, it features a murder and a strong female protagonist.
10. “The Last House Guest” by Megan Miranda (2019): This mystery thriller involves the death of a woman in a small town, and a female protagonist investigates the circumstances surrounding the tragedy.

None of these titles is a perfect match. From the description of each book, all but one of them features a strong female protagonist. And even The Glass Hotel may but I can’t tell from the blurb. The Astronaut’s Wife, The Calculating Stars, and The Silent Stars Go By are all set against the Space Race or involve space exploration. Half of the titles involve murder or other mysterious circumstances.

I am definitely considering this a win. You may be wondering why since I don’t have a single exact match. Because this means my market is not glutted with other titles set during the time period in question and with that particular backdrop. There is space in the market.

All I have to do is get it out there.

–SueBE

#PBPitch on February 22

For those of you who don’t know PBPitch, it stands for Picture Book Pitch. The event is open to all unagented picture book authors and illustrators. During this daylong event, you can pitch your picture book on Twitter. Agents and editors sign in and review pitches throughout the day. If they are interested, they will like your pitch. That’s the signal that you are invited to query or submit – they will post their individual preferences early in the day.

But this also means that we writers and illustrators should not like, or heart, pitches. The way to show support used to be to retweet or share pitches but that clogs up the airwaves. Instead, comment on the pitches you like best. “Intriguing!” “I can already see the illustrations!” “Great hook!”

You can pitch more than one manuscript as long as each is polished and ready to submit. You can pitch each manuscript twice – once in the morning (before 2 pm) and once in the afternoon (after 2 pm). And you need to use two slightly different pitches because Twitter won’t let you post exactly the same text more than once. Don’t panic! You don’t have to craft two pitches, although you can. You can simply include the tags at the end of the morning post and at the beginning of the afternoon post.

Here are some of the tags you might use:

#PBPitch (To signals that your tweet is part of the event).
#NF = Nonfiction
#C= Concept
#L= Lyrical
#I= Interactive
#BVM (Black Voices Matter to be used by black creators)
#POC (Person of Color)
#OWN (Own Voices)
#DIS (Disability subject matter)

#NF = Nonfiction
#C= Concept
#L= Lyrical
#I= Interactive
#OWN (Own Voices)

For those of you who have participated in the past but not landed an agent, it can be tempting to reuse the same pitches. I’d recommend that you craft something new. I’m not even opening the file with my old pitches. Instead I’m going to use some of the specific terms that I’ve seen agents and editors use in their calls. What do I mean by specific terms? SEL. STEM. BIPOC. Obviously, only use terms that go to the heart of your work, but do give it some serious thought.

For more information, check out the PBPitch web site. And good luck!

–SueBE

Copy the Masters (to a point)

Way back when I was an undergraduate, a professor from Shanghai told us how students in China learned by copying. They copied the brushstrokes of master calligraphers. They copied paintings. Students in the classroom parroted back what their teachers told them to say.

How could they possibly learn?

I distinctly remember having that narrow minded response and then today it struck me how often I do the same things and just how well it works. I’ve been updating my site. My “Books” page was inspired by Neil Gaiman. My “Welcome” page had duel inspirations. A conference speaker referred us to Kwame Alexander’s photo on his site. I can see why she liked it but her photo was actually more helpful and . . . I can’t find her site! I had a photo I liked (see below) but still didn’t like my welcome page. And then I saw Tracy Sorrell’s new site. If you look at my welcome page and Tracy’s you can see – I didn’t copy, but there is some similarity.

Don’t think this is all! I’m also a strong advocate of using mentor texts. When I wanted to pitch a story for Highlight’s High Five, I read 6 issues and photographed two of their stories. I pasted them into a document so that I could more easily study pacing.

I’ve also heard picture book authors say that when they were starting out, they would tape their text into published picture books to test out the pacing. In picture book writing, this is a great way to study the pacing of attempts and failures, how long the intro should be, how long it takes an author to wrap the story up, and how best to use page turns.

If you are mocking up book marks or other material to give away at a signing, you probably pull out some of the favorite examples that you’ve saved. You take some elements of each and then you add or subtract and somehow make it your own.

Study your fellow creatives. What do they do that speaks to you? How can you reshape it to better fit your story? Do it right and you’ll learn how to do something better and you’ll end up with something that looks so different from the original that people will only know what inspired you when you write about it in a blog post or article.

–SueBE

What Makes a Story Historical Fiction?

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

This topic is on my mind because a friend just accepted a position at the Historical Novel Review, published by the Historical Novel Society. What is it that makes a story historical fiction? There are two things.

Number One – It is historical.

As defined by the Historical Novel Society, this means that it takes place 50 years in the past. “Wait a minute? I was born in 1960. 1960 is not historic!” Did I just image that or did one of you say it?

I have to say that this definition works for me. Yes, it is somewhat arbitrary but that’s okay. Most of what I write is written for young readers. If a reader is 8, something that happened in 1970 is history. Something that happened in 1940 is ancient history.

Think about how much the world has changed since 1960. Human beings have gone to space and walked on the moon. A camera can help a surgeon see inside a living, human body. People wear computers that are no bigger than wrist watches. In terms of cultural and technological change, a book set 50 years ago will be very different from a book set today.

But what else does a book need to be historical fiction?

Number Two – It is fictional.

This might mean that you are writing about a historical reality like the Space Race. Your main character was a real person but you’ve created dialogue and motivations for this person. This means you’ve made your story fictional.

Or maybe you worry that by changing dialogue and intent, you’re stepping on someone’s toes. So you create a fictional character who worked at NASA in 1962. Again, you are writing a fictional story.

Or you might not want someone who knows about the NASA and the Space Race to challenge you. “That person wasn’t an astronaut candidate!” So instead of using the Apollo program, you create another series of missions. That is also a fictional story.

What if you write a story in which the US never made it to the moon? That is alternate history because you have . . . are you ready for it? You have altered history. But you don’t stop there. The US never made it to the moon. Maybe the US never accepted the challenge and an astronaut who died goes on to make big change in the world. Perhaps this person invents something monumental. Or they could break or destroy something that has cataclysmic repercussions.

Some alternate histories are science fiction. Others contain magic. The vital element is that the author speculates. “This is what would have happened if…” It is speculative. It is fiction. And it is historic.

Whichever type of fictional story you choose to tell, you are going to face a great deal of research. After all, historic stories are rooted in historic fact.

–SueBE

Rewriting: Cutting Excess Words

Tomorrow I have a deadline. My chapter was a bit short so I went through creating scaffolds. What’s a scaffold? It is the support system that I reader needs to understand key pieces of information.

I also have to turn in an outline for the rest of the book. That’s what I was most worried about because it was so long. Each chapter is broken into four or five sections and also has 3 sidebars. I want each section description to be four or five lines long. Some were as long as seven. I had a job to do.

Here are the steps that I take when I need to cut the excess.

Duplication

First things first, I look for duplicate information. When I write an outline over several days, sometimes I will include the same information in two different places. That simply will not work!

I also look for duplicate words. Sometimes I have to use the same word multiple times. My books on evolution include the words fossils and genes multiple times. There is simply no way around it.

But I generally don’t need to include the same word twice in a single sentence. Time to revise!

Efficiency

Next I make sure that sentence structure is as efficient as it can be. When things are inefficient, I’ve noticed it is usually because the order isn’t chronological or cause then effect. So that tends to be my next fix.

This is also where I look for a strong verb that I can use vs using a weak verb and an adverb. Specific nouns can also replace general nouns with a lot of description. Think about it. “Gate-leg table” is so much briefer and more specific than “a table with a leaf that folds up, supported by a leg that swings out.” Not that that is a particularly good description but hopefully you get the point.

Problem Words

Once the duplicate paragraphs are gone and the sentence structure is efficient, I go after problem words. My own personal problem words?  “That” and “start.”

“Start” is definitely a word that we need in certain sentences such as “school starts tomorrow.”  But other times it is filler.  “He started to talk.”  “She started toward the door.”  “I started writing.”  How much better to write something more concrete.  “He spoke.”  “She strode to the door.”  “I wrote.”

Check out this infographic by Grammar Check.  Do you have filler words or phrases that didn’t make the list?  Mention them in the comments below.

I have to admit that I laughed at the infographic.  When my son imitates me he says, “Well, actually…”  I don’t use the phrase in my writing but it is my verbal tag line.

–SueBE