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When you’re trying to succeed at writing you’re often told to avoid critique from your mom, your friends, from anyone whose feedback on your work won’t be critical enough to help you improve. This is good advice — to a point. You need honest feedback if you want to improve as a writer. Critique partners and brutal editors are your friends when it comes to spotting weak points in your craft, especially when it comes to clarity.

That said, writing is hard. Rejection is hard, and trying to make it as an author is for most of us, a long, brutal road. It can beat you down and it can be hard sometimes to peel yourself off the mat.

That’s where alpha readers come in. These readers aren’t necessarily going to give you much feedback. They might spot problems, tell you when something isn’t working, but I don’t count on them for line edits or even provide suggested fixes to structural problems.

Their primary purpose is to cheerlead. I use them to know whether or not a book is headed in the right direction, to get behind it and encourage me to keep writing the book. Since I work in an Agile method, I can ship a few chapters a week. My alpha readers, the first round readers, provide feedback and encouragement.

They act as an audience, people who want to know where the story is going. That bit of pressure can keep me working, keep me barreling past the hard parts in a book. I don’t want to let them down.

They’re often my most enthusiastic readers. They ask me how it’s going, and give me a sounding board when I get stuck. Knowing they’re in my corner, that my book has someone waiting to meet it, helps me keep going.

You have to be careful with alpha readers, just as you do with betas. You need to make sure that you trust the person to support and encourage you. Like beta readers, you need to make sure they can provide input you can use and when they do, be sure to parse it against your gut. Don’t let alpha or beta reader feedback sway you if your story feels right as it is. That said, DO listen. Do think about all feedback. It’s a delicate balance between letting your ego tell you to ignore input and letting yourself get pulled in any direction a reader tries to push you. The first results in sub-standard writing and the second in eternal edits. Thank your readers, alphas, and betas.

Most people know that one side of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi had “Know Thyself” written over the main entrance. What most people don’t know is what they wrote over the back door: “Know Thy Limits.” The ancient Greeks were trying to warn us about hubris, dangerous pride and thinking ourselves gods. I like to think they also meant it in regards to overextension.

Creative burn out is a real thing. We talk a lot about word count and daily goals in writing and pursuing success in writing, but it’s important to know when to rest, when to recharge. Our creative batteries need a break, even when our creativity is our escape.

We’re in a time of political unrest, when it’s easy to let the news and the constant stream of input derail completely us. For me, I want to stay active, to call my representatives, to march, to donate where I can. Still, I must accept my limits. I have to know when to pull back and take some time for self-care before I burn out. It’s hard to balance it all, hard to have it all. Be active. Write. Do the work. It’s the only way out for me, but always know your limits and accept the damage done when you surpass them.

Give yourself permission to rest sometimes. You’re not a god. Give yourself permission to take the time out when you need it. Remember, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. Aim to win the long race.

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (original Middle English text from the First Folio of 1623) with stamp – selective focus

I saw the Book of Will tonight at the Denver Performing Arts Center. I have to admit that when my friend Jo invited me I wasn’t certain I needed a deep dive into how Shakespeare’s First Folio was published. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The play is set a few years after Shakespeare’s death, when his friends and actors are confronting their mortality and the realization that the words they’ve loved and lived by, his words, are fading from their collective memory. The fire at the original Globe destroyed the original manuscripts, and the copywriting method Shakespeare employed, only giving each actor his written part, threatens to erase the plays from the world. To publish his plays they have to side with foes, make deals with those they consider devils, and collect bits of text from closets and privies. The lost words hurt even as the cast sees their time on earth running out. They’re racing against time and death.

Book of Will brings the importance of Shakespeare to the front and holds it there, right where the audience can see it. It unabashedly pleads with you to see the value of art, theater, and continuing to feel with an open heart in a world where children can die before their parents and pain is a constant. The performances were stellar. I cried more than once and left wanting more than anything to write, to strive to put something into the world to ease the pain.

See it if you can. Read it if you can’t. Or if you have to settle, read some Shakespeare.

My critique group and I put together a list of query tips to help people write successful query letters. Share as you see fit. Thank you to everyone who contributed help!

Behold the rabbit-chewed, decapitated tulip of my persistence.

I’m sure there are writers who write their first book, get an agent, and publish in short order. Their first novel is a market-friendly blockbuster and they make all the money. They’re probably lovely people with glowing reviews. This post is not for them. This post is for the writers who struggle, who get rejected and keep writing. While I’m sure that dreamy, gifted, lucky writer exists, for most of us, it’s a hell of a lot of work, and a longer road, than we’d like.

Gardening is also work, but it’s not my passion. I have some passion for it. I inherited it from my grandmother, whose legendary green thumb would have made her tsk at the current state of my yard. My grandmother grew every color of flower you can imagine, and I suspect it was quite hard, the work she set herself to. You never really saw that. You saw the colorful blooms she brought to her dining room table, the wood polished to a waxy thickness that a cup of hot coffee would sink into. My grandmother was something of a domestic perfectionist. She weeded clutter with the same focus she used on her plots. She wrote poetry in her youth, but writing was not her passion.

When I first bought my little house, I planted everything. I wanted to remember my grandmother. I bought bulbs and trees. I weeded. I hoped for fruit, for berries, for fresh vegetables. I wanted to recapture some aspect of an idyllic rural childhood that let’s face it, wasn’t so great when I look back. I realized that horses are assholes (another post), and that gardening isn’t just a lot of work, it’s also a major time sink, and so it had to go.
The Tulip of Persistence is a relic of that time. Tulips are pretty easy. Even I, with too little free time and less inclination, shouldn’t be able to screw up tulips. Step one: plant the bulb (right end down, not the pointy end). Step two: apply water with some degree of regular frequency. Step three: wait for it to naturalize. Step four: rabbits eat the damn thing.

Every freaking year. I don’t even remember what color that tulip is supposed to be. I planted it four years ago. Each spring it makes a valiant, tulipy effort. It sprouts, tries to bloom, gets really close, and then, just when the head is forming, and the bloom is near open, the rabbits decapitate it. I don’t even think they find tulips appetizing. They’re just toying with my little writer mind.

I’ve tried several solutions to this issue. I’ve applied pepper and cayenne, cat pee, human pee – all things that should tell the rabbits this tulip is not their friend. Maybe it’s not them. Maybe it’s the squirrels. Squirrels do not give a shit.

Yet, about six feet away, tulips are blooming. See here’s the thing, I want the Tulip of Persistence to make it. It’s sort of my first love, the first bulb I planted in my little urban wasteland. And maybe some year it will happen. It keeps trying. It sends up leaves. It forms its bloom. It gets its head taken off. But maybe it’s taking one for the team, because while it lives and dies its rabbity death, around it, my other bulbs are blooming.
Which brings this ham-handed analogy back to writing.

Step one: Plant more than one bulb. Have more than one book. Don’t write one book, try to publish it, and put your efforts aside. The lovely, prolific, and amazing author Cecy Robson told me to always be thinking two books ahead, and that advice has made a huge difference in my perspective. As soon as your book leaves your hands, get to work on the next one. Be so consumed with focus and love for the next work that the rejections don’t hurt so hard.

Step two: Nourish your work. Strive to improve your craft. The best way to improve your writing is through practice, and make that practice focused. Add a little bio-diversity. Try other genres, try other points of view. Keep striving to improve your prose, your plotting, your writing – all of it. Use new techniques, new tropes. Stretch yourself.

Step three: Naturalize through practice. The more you write, the better you’ll write, but also, the faster you’ll write. I used to think 2,000 words a day would never be my thing. I am easily at that pace now and still picking up speed. I’m getting faster, and better, at it.

Step four: Keep writing. You can’t control the rabbits or squirrels. Rejection is often going to be beyond your control. I know I talk about this a lot, and that’s because there’s just no other way. Writing one book, submitting, then laying down to die if it doesn’t publish isn’t going to get you there. Even if that first book is perfect and beautiful and awesome, which it probably isn’t, it may not make it. This industry takes a lot of right timing and luck. Every book you get to market, get on submission, is one more ticket to the lottery. You can’t win if you don’t keep playing.

Keep writing. Persist. Thrive.

It’s a heavy editing day, which has me thinking about process. A friend just got an edit letter and wanted advice on how to work with one. My process, whether it comes from my independent editor or my agent is the same:

1. Read the letter several times and check any defensiveness at the door. I want to make sure I understand everything in the letter. If I don’t, I call or email the editor/agent to get clarity on those items. (I do not call or email to defend the book or say I won’t make changes).
2. Copy the letter into a new document. Take out the introductory and concluding praise paragraphs (most of us are taught to deliver critique in this way so the author doesn’t think it’s all bad.) Frankly, I do this to isolate the meat of the critique, the stuff that needs changing.
3. Break each change into a numbered line, creating a task list.
4. Check all of the changes and make sure I agree with them all. I usually do. My agent and I have great communication and I trust him. The independent editor I use, Sara J. Henry, is also someone I highly trust, so I usually don’t need to defend anything. If I do however find a change I disagree with, I write a few sentences for that task why I reject the change. (Again, I check any defensiveness). I’ll revisit this a few times before I say no to a change. I often find the change isn’t what’s needed: it’s there to solve a particular problem and I can generally find a solution that doesn’t require that specific solution/change.
5. For the remaining tasks, I sort them into quick changes (character renaming, small tweaks, etc.), and larger tasks. For example, in my last letter, there was an item related to a character’s description. That’s an easy change. There was also a larger change to really intensify the emotional impact of a relationship. That’s a big change. The larger changes usually are going to require a dead tree edit (print and line by line), so if I do the small ones first I can print with the new changes in.
6. I take out the little stuff first. This is a trick I learned in software development: solving small problems sometimes helps shake loose the larger problems. In my case, it gives my subconscious time to find solutions to the big problems.
7. Before I do the big stuff, I print the book. Always I do this double space, in a new font.
8. Then I read. From the beginning. I may not need to make changes until later, but I want to make sure I’m tuned to the book’s tone and voice before I start making alterations to deeper structure. This also helps me find any typos, missing words, punctuation, etc. I’m always surprised how clean a text can be and still I find something. If I’m tracking something like a relationship, I’ll put a post-it on every page that deals with that item, using different colors for different items. I’ll also leave notes for myself post-its.* This process looks like a lot my usual draft editing process.
9. Then I make the big changes, on paper. If a lot of writing or rewriting is required I switch back to the computer, but I’m mostly still killing trees at this point.
10. Then I put the changes into the electronic version.**

*I keep a backlog of other issues I spot that I’ll tackle later. I always try to do one task at a time.

**I use Word, yeah, yeah, I know about Scrivener. I just prefer Word for track changes.