Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach

When building a platform, we might be told to build our email list or increase our social media numbers, so we're tempted to do a lot of things maybe before we’re ready—some people advise writers to buy a bunch of Twitter followers or set up an Instagram account even if we don't like taking pictures. We get so busy trying to follow somebody else’s plan, we forget that before any of those steps, we need to get the basics down. We need to have a solid idea of the main Whos involved. The First Who…Is You! In the last episode, I encouraged you to embark on a memoir project regardless of whether you write memoir or nonfiction of any kind. Even if you write science fiction or romance, if you write, you’ll write better if know yourself well. And one powerful way to get to know yourself is to reflect on the events that formed you in big and small ways—moments when you felt a shift or an insight, moments when you changed. As I’ve said, these personal pieces don't need to be shared publicly, although they could if you felt one would benefit other people. Most importantly, they help you know yourself—you get to know who you are as a person and a writer, continually deepening your understanding of self, even as you evolve. From that place of knowing, you can write with an authentic voice. Make sure that first “Who”—you—is the real you. Know yourself as best you can. Know who you are. Who Are the Other Whos? You can call it your ideal reader. The cool kids call it your avatar. It’s your target audience or target market. Today, for simplicity, I thought I’d just call this your “Who.” Not the Whos down in Whoville, but the Whos for whom you are writing. Who is your Who? When you write, some Whos are out there you're hoping to reach. Right? I mean, that's why we write something and "ship it," whether we submit our work to a publisher or click “publish” on our blog or write Christmas letters that we stamp and mail. We're wanting to reach a reader. Who is that reader? For most of the content you create with your most important message, who are you trying to reach out to? Who are you talking to? Who are you writing for? Who are you helping, encouraging, entertaining, informing, or persuading? Picture those people—real people: a man, woman, young adult, teen, or child. Who do you imagine reading your words? Some writers will say, "Everyone!” They want to write for everyone in the whole world. And I appreciate the longing to appeal to the widest possible audience. You can try, but most likely, you’re going to be writing for a narrower audience just as you will, most likely, need to narrow your topic, your focus, and find your niche. A case in point: I know a lot of people who enjoyed the novel I just finished listening to, All the Light We Cannot See. One could argue it’s written for anyone and everyone to read and enjoy, but I know people who didn’t really like it—it wasn't their style. The Hunger Games had wide appeal beyond the young adult readers it was written for, but some people didn't want to even consider a story with so much violence—even the concept of the book was too disconcerting. It's not for everyone. People read books that aren't written with them in mind all the time, like The Hunger Games, but no book is really for everyone. Even if our book or blog post or poem enjoys unexpected reach, we really do write for a segment of the population. If nothing else, you probably write for an English-speaking audience or you wouldn’t be listening to an English-speaking podcaster. Most of my listeners and readers are located in the United States. See how that’s a natural narrowing? Identify Your Who How can we figure out who we’re reaching and who we want to reach? Consider some of these questions to help you begin to imagine and identify your ideal reader—your Who:

This week I want to encourage you to dip into memories and memoir. Even though this veers from the more obvious platform series we’ve been in, it may, eventually, reveal more about who you are and what you want your platform to be about. I believe it’ll be time well spent. Think back to an event that seems small, yet feels packed with emotion. You don’t have to fully understand it all. Just remember it. Something changed due to that event. It may have been subtle or seismic, but you emerged from it a different person. When you remember and then write these scenes or episodes or events, you are exploring the territory of memoir even if you aren’t working on a long-form memoir project. As you compose these scenes from your past, you’ll learn from them. Future readers may, as well, if these end up as essays or poems that could be submitted, but that’s not the main reason to undertake this project. It’s about mining for material in your own mind. And none of these ever needs to be published. They are first and foremost for your own personal growth. I wrote a short scene in this style that Tweetspeak Poetry published. It lives there under the Memoir Notebook category with the title “Writing the Fragile." Click the link below to read it, or use the podcast player at the top of this page and listen to me read it. http://www.tweetspeakpoetry.com/2015/02/13/memoir-notebook-writing-fragile/ This memoir project, however simple and short-lived it may be for you, can reveal more than you expect—you may not even realize the meaning of a piece until it’s completed. I encourage you to write these scenes as a regular creative writing practice—the practice of remembering. Compose them in a private writing journal or memoir notebook. You will likely turn out some of your best, most interesting material. More importantly, you’ll get to know yourself better. When you get the stories down, you can look at them, ponder them, and learn more and more about the writer—the person—you really are. Click on the podcast player above or use subscription options below to listen to the full episode. Resources: Memoir Notebook: Writing the Fragile * * * You can subscribe with iTunes, where I'd love to have you subscribe, rate, and leave a review. The podcast is also available Stitcher, and you should be able to search for and find "Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach" in any podcast player. ____________________ Is your writing life all it can be?   Let this book act as your personal coach, to explore the writing life you already have and the writing life you wish for, and close the gap between the two. "A genial marriage of practice and theory. For writers new and seasoned. This book is a winner." —Phil Gulley, author of Front Porch Tales

Last week on my blog I shared an excerpt from Mary Pipher’s book Writing to Change the World: I left it up to readers to decide what it meant for them, but I did hope her thoughts would encourage us to listen closely, to realize the power of our words, and then, when we choose to use them, to use our words well and use them for good. The Power of Poetry On Friday, I wrote a post for Tweetspeak Poetry that highlighted the healing power of poetry. I shared an interview with Gerda and Kurt Klein. Kurt was an American lieutenant who arrived at a concentration camp just after it was liberated. Gerda had been imprisoned in the camp and brought the lieutenant into a factory where female prisoners lay on scant beds of straw, sick and skeletal, many with the look of death, barely moving. Kurt recalls his first interaction with Gerda, where she made a sweeping gesture over the scene, and quoted a line from the German poet Goethe, “Noble be man, merciful and good.” Kurt said, "I could hardly believe that she was able to summon a poem...at such a moment. And there was nothing she could have said that would have underscored the grim irony of the situation better than what she did." I was struck by the power of poetry in that moment, for Kurt, for Gerda. In the midst of suffering, she had that line ready. She connected with Kurt. As he said, she “underscored the grim irony of the situation” with one phrase, one line. Turn to Poetry When you don't know what to say, try poetry. It's what we can turn to when our own words would fall flat. As Emily Dickinson reminds us, it gives us a way to tell all the truth, but tell it slant. An article at Vox suggests we turn to poetry, because “[a]rt can help us express what is otherwise too difficult to stomach. It can help us bear witness actively, and it can strengthen our souls for the work we need to do.” The Atlantic also noticed how many people turned to poetry in recent days and interviewed Don Share, chief editor of Poetry magazine, about this phenomenon. He responded: What poetry does is it puts us in touch with people who are different from ourselves—and it does so in a way that isn’t violent. It’s a way of listening. When you’re reading a poem, you’re listening to what someone else is thinking and feeling and saying...It says, "Here’s what it’s like from my point of view.” The poem is a catalyst where you’re bringing two different kinds of people together. And at its best, when it works, there’s a kind of spark, and everyone comes away illuminated by what the spark has ignited. Poetry: A Prescription for Adversity Though Megan Willome and I already knew each other, a poem of mine created a deeper connection for us. She included it in her book The Joy of Poetry, setting it up like this: The following poem was written after a tragedy the poet didn’t feel ready to talk about. That information is not in the text. But a year or so later, when there was a national tragedy, she reposted the poem on her blog, realizing it might have value for other people in their moments of heartbreak. Maybe they didn’t want to talk either. Maybe they were standing in a kitchen, breaking eggs to make a pie. [You can read the poem at this link or hear me read it in the podcast.] Willome offers some observations you can use in your own poetry. The poem makes great use of the sense of touch. It uses words like cradle, palm, jagged, and soft. This pain of mourning the poet feels—it’s tactile. The other sense explored is sight, but everything is translucent. The sun is “filtered.” The windowpanes, “Streaked.” The light is “muted.” Nothing is clear. When something catastrophic happens, our world becomes unclear. Our glasses are gone. We reach out raw hands to feel our way through.

Your writing platform will have a lot of elements, but it starts with you, the writer, and what you’re about or what’s your thing, your topic, your niche. We’ve talked about establishing an online home, because you want to have a place to welcome people who are searching for your niche or your name. When people arrive, they should have some idea of your focus. “Ah, I see that Alice Author writes about the Arts.” The visitor—whether editor or reader—won’t be surprised to find the image of a painting or a still shot of a stage production on Alice Author's home page. Nonfiction Ned writes about leadership. His website will offer some clues through design choices and content—maybe taking inspiration from leadership book covers or from websites like Fast Company and Entrepreneur. Let’s say Ned decides to narrow his niche from leadership to leadership for entrepreneurs in the startup phase. That’s his niche. And Alice writes not just about the Arts in general but about introducing children and families to the Arts. If you’re like Alice and Ned, narrowing your niche, you want to ensure you love it enough and can write enough about it without getting bored. How will you know you’re able to sustain interest in this to write about it over the long haul? The Temptation of Trends Resist the urge to pick a topic because it’s trendy—it’s tempting to think If it’s working for others, I'll increase the odds it’ll work for me, too, and I’ll find plenty of material from others to inspire and inform my own posts. But that’s their thing. Is it really your thing? Maybe. But remember that you need to be fascinated, captivated, and energized by it now and long into the future. So just be sure before going in that direction. The Temptation of Popular Posts It’s also tempting to pick a category because you’ve been writing about all kinds of things for a while and happen to find some success with one topic—an article went viral or you got hundreds of comments on one particular post. This could be a clue, yes. Maybe that is pointing to your narrowed niche. But it might be a random post you wrote that happened to hit people the right way, and you would never sustain interest in it longer than a dozen posts. If I’d made a decision about my narrowed category—my specialty, my niche—based on the popularity and response to a post or article I wrote, I’d have a blog devoted entirely to oatmeal. And while I do like oatmeal, I don’t like it that much. Confirm Your Niche But back to you. When you think you’ve got some narrowed topics in the running, pick one. Just one, for now. The top contender. The narrowed-down category that makes you smile because you realize you think about it all the time. You read about it all the time. You talk about it all the time. That’s a good place to start. Step One: List Subtopics Make a list of subtopics related to this narrowed category. Let’s say it’s Ned’s leadership for startup entrepreneurs. He starts thinking about all the startups he’s consulted with and realizes he could write dozens of case studies, interview entrepreneurs, ask if they want to guest post. He could talk about organizational tools for startup teams, communication skills, startup statistics, recommended conferences, top leadership books. His mind goes wild as he thinks of all the subtopics he can explore. Alice, who loves the Arts, starts thinking of how families can begin to engage with the Arts, so she lists all the museums she’s visited with her family, all the Broadway shows she’s seen, the concerts and operas she’s attended, and what she did to prepare her children to understand and appreciate it all. She looks into virtual tours she can link to and starts listing educators who might offer guest posts, courses people can sign up for online to learn...

If you’re writing nonfiction, you’re probably trying to zero in on a category or topic that you’d like to write about and be known for. You’re trying to find your focus. If you haven’t already been exploring the possibilities by writing blog posts or articles, you’ve probably had some inkling. If not, look for clues. When you’re leafing through a magazine, what articles catch your eye? What do you rip out and stick in a folder? When you’re skimming your Twitter or Facebook feed, what do you retweet or share? What do you save to Pocket or Evernote? What Topics Fascinate, Captivate, or Energize You? Make a list of those fascinating, captivating, energizing topics—the ones you return to again and again. Once you’ve identified those topics or categories, you have some choices. For example, do you see a common thread that ties them together? If so, see if you can create an umbrella under which they can fall. Lifestyle bloggers do this, where under that “umbrella” they have categories on their website—buttons or tabs to click on—for things like “travel,” “health,” “style” and “photography.” A mom-blogger “umbrella" might have these for “recipes,” “crafts, “money-saving tips” and “organization.” It all depends on the things you love and want to write about—the things that fascinate, captivate, and energize you. Narrow Your Categories A couple of things may help you at this point. First, as much as possible, consider narrowing down—or “niche-ing down,” as they say—to stand out in a crowded online world. You can try to enter the lifestyle blogger world, but by narrowing, you’ll make it easier for people to find you and your focused topic. You can narrow by the audience or reader you find yourself drawn to—or the readers drawn to you already if you’re out there writing now. Or, you can narrow the topic to a subtopic and focus on that. For example, instead of “travel," which is a big, crowded category, maybe you focus on frugal travel tips—that’s narrowing the kind of travel, but even that’s kind of a big category. How about frugal travel tips for young families? That’s narrowing the target audience. You could mix and match given who you are, what you’re drawn to, and the people you want to reach. Maybe you want to offer frugal travel trips for big families, or frugal travel tips for retirees. Or singles. Or maybe you want to focus on camping for big families. You see how you can narrow the topic and the audience or reader? That’s niche-ing down. To illustrate how this will work to your advantage as a blogger or writer, consider this: If I want to find an article about frugal camping tips for big families, am I going to be more inclined to dig into a lifestyle blogger’s website that has high-end photography tips and craft beer recommendations as well as three or four camping articles under their broad “travel” category? Or am I going to spend some time digging into the resources I find at a blog offering all kinds of camping tips for big families? Chances are, I’m going to bookmark that second website and return to it. I’m going to pin their stuff on Pinterest and share it on Twitter. That’s the power of narrowing or niche-ing down—the people who need that specific information, and the people who care about a certain subject or the people who are captivated by certain types of stories, will come to you: the one writing exclusively about it. If You're Feeling Constrained A frustration I’ve heard is that this narrowing feels constraining to some writers. It’s like I’m asking you to be a bookseller crammed into a tiny rented space squeezed in next to a barber shop with barely enough room to sell just one category of books, like mysteries. But you do it. You’re fascinated with mysteries,

  Back in 2004, I was on the phone with my publisher and he told me I should start a blog. "It’s what authors are doing," he said. So, I tried to figure it out. I started learning about blogs and paid particular attention to the sub-category of mom-bloggers because my first book was for moms and it felt like the right world to run around in. Rather than using the mom’s name in association with the website, these mom-blogs would often be named things like, "Patience and Pacifiers,” or “Somewhere Under the Laundry Heap”—creative names that said something about what the website would contain and communicate. They were focused. I liked the idea, so I thought for a long time about what to name my blog. For a brief time I used the name of my book, The Contemplative Mom, but before long I realized the adjective “contemplative” felt too limiting or confusing, because while I was contemplative, I was also downright goofy sometimes. I dropped that name and generated a long list of alternative ideas, debated with myself which one fit best, and finally gave up and just went with my name. I don’t think I even had a tagline or subtitle. In a world of clever, creative, specific, branded blog names—even though we didn’t think of as branding at the time—I was just…me. Ann Kroeker. Name Association What was the name Ann Kroeker associated with back then? What was the focus of her website? What would a visitor expect? What would AnnKroeker.com contain and communicate? I don’t think anyone could tell you. I don’t think I could tell you. My blog needed focus. And for my blog to have focus, I needed focus. I had none. I decided to find out what I would write, by writing. That was my strategy. And I learned, in time, it was not the savviest strategy, nor the most efficient. For years, I wrote about whatever came into my mind, and being a curious lifelong learner, just about anything could pop into my mind, including fascinating facts about katydids and the Byzantine Empire. If we looked back in my archives, I would not be surprised to see a reference to Constantinople. I was all over the map. I was a Russian roulette of content with no niche, no clear brand, no focus. I’d have been better off with a narrow tagline, like Ann Kroeker: Somewhere Under the Laundry Heap. But as I said, I wasn’t savvy. I just wrote about whatever. The Oatmeal Connection One day, I wrote about steel cut oats. I wanted to make them and eat them, but I didn’t want to cook them for 20-30 minutes on the stove, which is what’s required, so I dug around the internet and found, deep in a discussion thread somewhere, a method for cooking them overnight in a crock pot using a water bath. And it worked. The oats were delicious—ready and waiting for me in the morning. I was so excited to share this with readers, I snapped photos to show the bowl of oats sitting in the crock, surrounded by water. I included a blurry image of the steel cut oats container—in other words, this was not the staged, high-end, natural-light presentation you’d find in a foodie blogger’s post. It was just unfocused Ann, sharing another random tidbit. Well, I must have hit the right moment in the wave of interest in steel cut oats. Because before long, this post became the most visited post on my website. I’d peek at the stats and see that hundreds clicked through from referral sites. Then thousands. Then ten thousand. A hundred thousand. I switched my website to another host at some point and lost my stats, but based on current information, I would not be surprised if that post has hit a million views. Ann Kroeker was finally associated with something: Oatmeal. This is not what my publisher had in mind when he tol...

  Let’s say you send a query letter to a magazine or a book proposal to an agent. She reads it through and feels there’s potential—it looks like there’s a match between you and her publication or agency. What’s the next thing she’s going to do, most likely? Google you. She’s going to type your name into a search engine and then click around the links that come up. "Let’s see what we can find out about this writer..." What will she turn up? Maybe some articles you submitted to an online organization? Comments you left at someone’s blog? Your Facebook and Google+ profiles? Maybe the race results from a 5K Turkey Trot you ran last Thanksgiving? Is that it? Is that all she’s going to find? If so, you may need to set up a permanent residence. Your virtual home. If you’re a writer working on building a writing platform, you need a website. Help Industry Professionals Find You When you secure your own little plot of online real estate, an editor at a publishing house or literary journal can type your name into a search engine and find articles and “About” information that you compose, that you want him to see, that represents you well, that reflects your personality as a writer. Your author website is presented in your voice and features ideas, stories, and topics you tend to write about along with samples of your work—everything you publish there serves as an online portfolio. It’s the hub of your writing platform. The foundation. Other platform efforts may be super-fruitful, but you still need to have one space where you control your image and content. Help Readers Find You Of course, it’s not just industry professionals who may search for you. Don’t forget readers. Who are you trying to reach? What do you write, and who would read your work if you could just get it into their hands? Again, you want to establish yourself online with the kind of content that will draw those people and help them find you and your work. Imagine if they were to find in a magazine’s archives a story you wrote. It intrigues them, and they search for your name. If they find nothing else about you, that’s a missed opportunity. You could have made a connection with readers, invited them into your space, and welcomed them. All the other places you might start making friends online—on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter—they all offer various strengths and opportunities to connect. But to help people really get to know you as a writer, think about inviting them over to your place for a visit. A Website That Reflects You and Your Work Your website doesn’t have to be fancy with lots of bells and whistles—not at all. It can be simple. At the very least, you want a clean space that doesn’t mislead people about the kind of writer you are and the kind of writing you produce. If you write thrillers, you probably don’t want a lot of white space with flowers in the header. If you write reflective, serious creative nonfiction, you probably don’t want a hand-drawn comic strip like The Oatmeal featured front and center on your home page. And you want a way to get content out there from time to time, even if you aren’t regularly blogging. A Simple, Flexible Online Home You can set up a self-hosted website, which will require a monthly fee, but if resources are limited, don’t wait. With all the free and inexpensive website options out there, there’s no need to be a wandering troubadour with no permanent residence. Come up with a basic idea of how you want to present yourself to the world, and find a simple template that will allow you to create some content—pages people can click on to get to know you, and maybe a blog feature that allows you to write and publi...

Last weekend I presented a breakout session at a writing conference. I arrived in time to register and had a snack before the opening session, then headed into the auditorium with my plum-colored backpack, a rather chunky bag I take everywhere. It serves as my mobile office, so it’s filled with a wide range of items. I found a seat next to an attendee and flopped my bag down by my feet. We introduced ourselves, and I asked what kind of writing she did. She asked about my writing life, and I described some of my work and mentioned that I was a writing coach. At that moment I thought, “Oh, I should get out my business cards.” I thought I’d hand her one and then tuck the little container in my jacket pocket so I could easily whip them out. I said, “Hold on. I’ll get you a card.” I unzipped the section of my bag where they should be, but…no cards. Hm. I shoved my hand into every little compartment—and this bag has a bunch of slick nylon sleeves and sections to help segment and organize stuff, so I started to make a lot of commotion for just one person. She sat there bemused while I zipped and unzipped every section of my backpack multiple times, hoisting it back up to my lap to peer down inside. I offered a goofy commentary as I rooted around the contents justifying items like the plastic fork, knife, and spoon I always carry because I’m often grabbing food on the go when I have that bag. I’m telling you, people often forget to include the cutlery in to-go bags, so it’s totally worth it. Then I saw a card. Yes! I reached down to whip out the one lone card I spotted tucked in a small pocket. “Here!" “Great!” she said. Before I handed it over, I flipped it around to see the front. Oh. It was somebody else’s card I’d shoved in there at another event. “Um, that’s not mine.” Back to the bag. More zipping and unzipping. This writer saw all my cords and pens, my lip balm, gum, tissues, Post-It notes, and a single-serving packet of dijon mustard, “not for retail sale.” All that, but no business cards—at least none of my own. Here I was at a writing conference, talking with a writer—I should have an abundance of business cards! I should have dozens—no, I should have a box of a hundred at the hotel room and an extra baggie right here in my bag stuffed with 50 to replenish the cute little business card holder that was nowhere to be found. For at least five full minutes I rummaged through that bag, but finally, I gave up. I’m sure the other writer was relieved. I zipped shut each compartment, stunned that I’d forgotten. I mean, the business card is key. You meet someone. Shake hands. Chat about writing. Then you hand them your business card. You’re discussing your work, and they’re holding your brand. The business card is tangible and memorable. It’s low-tech, high-touch. It’s an open door, an invitation, a welcome mat of sorts. “Contact me any time,” the card seems to say. “I’m glad our paths have crossed today." At a conference you’re making industry contacts: agents, editors, publishers—even writers who might want to collaborate with you. You want to make a lasting impression. You want them to remember you. You want to leave behind something, a bread crumb that leads back to you. You want to hand them a business card. And I couldn’t find even one of mine. Not one. The opening session began and I tried to shake it off. Forget about the cards. It’s fine. You’ll be fine. If they can spell your name they can find you online. The session ended and I couldn’t resist. I unzipped that backpack one more time and dug into the slot that holds a few papers I rarely touch. And then I felt it.

The following is an excerpt from On Being a Writer: 12 Simple Habits for a Writing Life That Lasts, a book I coauthored with Charity Singleton Craig, published by T. S. Poetry Press. This is from Chapter 10: Plan, and explains, briefly, why I decided to be a little more intentional about having some kind of plan as a writer. In fact, that’s the subtitle of Chapter 10: I am intentional about my next steps. * * * I traveled out west the summer of 2013. As my family and I barreled down a New Mexico highway through a barren landscape, we saw a storm. Winds, like a giant, invisible broom, swept sand up and around. Swoosh! Currents pushed against the side of our vehicle, and debris shot across the road. “Look!” I pointed. “A tumbleweed!” It hopped over the fence and bounced like a beachball twice to cross the highway, before soaring high over the fence on the other side, disappearing into the swirling dust. I had to shout over the roar of the wind for my husband to hear. “I always wanted to see a tumbleweed, but I didn’t realize I’d see it under these circumstances!” I’d only seen tumbleweeds in movies and cartoons. This was my first glimpse of the real thing, and realizing that its movement depended on violent, threatening gusts, I decided to stop comparing myself to a tumbleweed. In my Midwestern mind, tumbleweeds had seemed sort of go-with-the-flow, lazily rolling across the desert in whatever direction a puff of wind might send them. That’s also how I viewed my life as a writer. I didn’t plan my direction much or set definitive goals; I just went where the wind blew. In the early days, I could never quite see the big picture through the blustery dust of the tumbleweed approach. When I stopped being buffeted about, I was able to schedule my weeks and days to align with the vision I have for my writing life. I developed a long-range plan, hoping to look back decades from now and say, “I’m glad I invested in the creation of that work,” instead of, “What was I doing all those years?” But watching that storm hurl the hapless tumbleweed, I realized I didn’t want to be blown completely off the path. I wanted enough control to dig in and stay for a while, especially if I liked where I’d landed. So I’ve abandoned the tumbleweed analogy in favor of something more stable (if overused): my writing life these days is more like the habit of keeping a garden. I sow seeds, watch for growth and fruit, nurture what’s flourishing until it seems the harvest is fading, and a sow a new batch of seeds when the time is right. My planning isn’t perfect; unexpected events, both good and bad, can throw me off. Nevertheless, my writing life is taking root and growing; I’m making significant, measurable progress each day. I still leave room for serendipity—a phone call from an event planner looking for a conference speaker, or a publisher wanting to hire a writing coach to work with one of their writers, or a magazine editor requesting a 2,000-word article on a topic of my choice. I edit content for two online communities, submit my work to websites and magazines, collaborate with other writers, coach high school students and adults in their craft, and publish articles at my own website. I intentionally work this literary garden on my own and with others. Clarity. Vision. Organization. Planning. I’m not waiting for the writing life to randomly bounce across my path. And if the wind whips up a surprise for me, I’m ready. My fellow gardeners inspire me to plan and set goals. They model risk-taking and organization, tackling new projects and integrating the latest technology. Thanks to the encouragement of others in this broad community of writers, I’m more organized and deliberate. When looking at a project, I break it into manageable tasks and schedule them to pace myself leading up to the deadline.

Once upon a time... In the beginning… Call me Ishmael... Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation... Beginnings are inevitable, but good beginnings—are essential. And challenging. We’re told we must hook the reader in the first few words and that effective introductions will make or break our story, our message. We need the attention grabber, and we’re told to use something like a startling fact, a quippy quotation, a top-of-mind question, or suspenseful narrative. The first line, we’re told, is everything: draw the reader in within seconds or you’ve lost them forever. They’ve clicked or swiped away. They’ve moved on. It’s a lot of pressure to get the beginning right, so we fret and stew about whether we’ve begun our piece in the best possible way, and we can end up frozen, paralyzed by the thought that we don’t have what it takes to hook the reader. The story stalls before it even gets started because we can barely begin. Start Writing to Get the Piece in Motion The simplest answer to this problem is: Just write. Seriously, just get your idea in motion and if it means you write the most sluggish, boring, wordy beginning, keep going. If it takes six paragraphs to finally get the wheels turning and the story in motion, who cares? Write. Write, write, write. Because you know what? You can write—or rewrite—the beginning…at the end. Yes, at the end of the whole process of getting your draft down, you can swing back around to the beginning and edit. But you can’t go back to the beginning and edit if there’s no draft. So write. Write it all out. Write bad stuff, bad beginnings, miserable middles, clunky conclusions and go back later to fine tune it. You can cut down that introduction and spruce up that opening line. You can find the one gem that showed up in the second paragraph, third line down, and try that one. Or you might stumble across a quote in a book you finish this weekend and feel it might fit perfectly. Pop it in. Try it. If it doesn’t work, delete it and try starting with story. Start in the Middle — Write the Beginning Later Another way you can trick yourself into beginning is to start in the middle. With or without a simple outline, you can actually start writing further into the piece. With fiction, this gets you deeper into the action; with nonfiction, this might have you starting with your first main point. You can write the whole complex middle before you write the beginning—or the end—and add those later. Nothing Is Wasted Sometimes I’ve edited articles where the opening paragraph ends up working best toward the end of the introduction or as the conclusion. In other words, if you’re self-editing or you work with an editor and realize the beginning needs to change, your words may find a new home elsewhere. But even if it ends up on the proverbial cutting room floor, even then it’s not wasted. Why? Because it got you in motion so you could finish your draft. That beginning served a purpose—an important one. It got your idea in motion. Without it, a great piece might never have emerged. Betsy Lerner says in The Forest for the Trees, “A good editor knows when the three pages at the beginning of a chapter are throat clearing. Start here, she’ll mark in the margin. This is where your story begins.” That so-called throat clearing may be in the form of a lengthy description, spending a lot of time introducing a character, or writing your way into your subject, theme, or thesis—even giving away your conclusion from the first line. An editor, sometimes even a writing buddy, can spot these things that were hard for us to see ourselves. I think we can learn to edit ourselves, but it’s helpful to invite an objective eye to catch...

Since I was in my teens, I’ve browsed the library shelves that hold the books about writing. It’s an ongoing, casual approach to professional development, as I head out with one or more books to at least skim if not pore over. I figure even if some of the material is similar to other books I’ve read, I’ll surely come away with some nugget of inspiration or instruction I can integrate into my writing life. It’s like having dozens of temporary mentors or attending small conferences with lots of breakout sessions. Except it’s free. So the other day I was back at those shelves for a moment—I had not been for a while. As I was scanning the titles, I saw one I’d never seen before. A trim book. A simple title. And a name I recognized. The Art of Nonfiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers by Ayn Rand. Rand wrote fiction including Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead as well as numerous nonfiction works, like The Virtue of Selfishness and Philosophy: Who Needs It. Regardless of where you stand on her life philosophy and views on capitalism, she certainly succeeded at expressing her ideas through writing—and I appreciated some of her thoughts in The Art of Nonfiction. Edited into book form from a series of lectures, The Art of Nonfiction begins with an important reminder for anyone who struggles with self-doubt, worried they shouldn’t be writing. Rand says: If you have difficulty with writing, do not conclude that there is something wrong with you. Writing should never be a test of self-esteem. If things are not going as you want, do not see it as proof of an unknowable flaw in your subconscious…. If you tell yourself you are guilty for not writing brilliant sentences within five minutes, that stops your subconscious and leads to a host of writing problems. Writing is not an index of psychological health…If you do have any guilt, earned or unearned, that is between you and your psychologist. (1) She assures the reader: "Do not conclude, at the first difficulty, that you are hopeless…you have the capacity to make your work what you want to make it.” How can she say and believe that to be true? Because she believes nonfiction writing is something one can learn. "There is no mystery about it," she says. What’s the key? In a world of Google searches, shallow reading. and limited reflection, she says we need to think: What you need for nonfiction writing is what you need for life in general: an orderly method of thinking. If you have problems in this regard, they will slow you down (in both realms). But writing is literally only the skill of putting down on paper a clear thought, in clear terms. Everything else, such as drama and “jazziness,” is merely the trimmings. (2) When I taught creative writing to high school students, I emphasized the need for a strong and clear idea, solid organization that flows in a logical way to convey the idea, and sentence structure that supports the ideas and the organization. Only at that level of sentence structure were we beginning to enhance style and we continued with additional layers of editing, but we started at that high level of critique. Because who cares how beautiful you phrase something if no one knows what you’re trying to say? Why work for hours on finding just the right word for a section you realize you ought to cut to keep the piece moving? Why spend time creating an effective transition if you haven’t yet moved around paragraphs? In nonfiction, then, start with that idea. Think it through. Make sure you know what you’re trying to say, and work on that above all else. I love this section from Rand’s book: "I once said that the three most important elements of fiction are plot, plot, and plot. The equivalent in nonfiction is: clarity, clarity, and clarity.” If you’re writing anything from an article or blog post t...

  Last week, I encouraged listeners to try out Raymond Chandler’s writing approach to avoid resisting the work of writing and, perhaps, to write inspired: Two very simple rules, a. you don't have to write. b. you can't do anything else. (154 Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler) How did it go? Chandler freed us to look out the window or stand on our heads or writhe on the floor. But during the time we set aside for writing we were not to do any other positive thing—not read, write letters, check Facebook, or heart a photo on Instagram. We were to write or do nothing. I contrasted this with the grit-it-out-and-churn-it-out approach that many people advise. You might have heard the quote that’s been attributed to several people: “I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes at nine every morning.” I shared that Barbara Kingsolver said she had no time to lure the muse into her creative process and wait for it, like many writers she admired. As she explained in High Tide in Tucson, when she was a young mom, her writing time began the minute her daughter climbed on the school bus. At that point, she said her muse flipped a baseball cap around on his head backwards and said, “Okay, author lady, you’ve got six hours till that bus rolls back up the drive. You can sit down and write, now, or you can think about looking for a day job” (96). I don't know which approach is more realistic or will produce better writing, so I proposed we give them both a test run. There’s the write-or-do-nothing approach of Raymond Chandler. If I got bored, an idea would eventually pop into my head and I’d be back to tapping away at the keyboard. Then there’s Kingsolver’s approach, where we sit down and write, now, whatever we can as best we can, to get it out and meet deadline. If you tried Raymond Chandler’s approach, I’d love to hear how it worked for you. Or if it worked at all. Did you sit for hours and do nothing? Or did the doing nothing part end up energizing your creativity? This week, when you set aside your four hours, or two hours, or half an hour to write, you’ll still have to avoid the temptation to click over and check email or pop up to fold laundry. The basic advice is the same from both Raymond Chandler and Barbara Kingsolver. You have to sit there. But where Chandler says you don’t have to write, Kingsolver’s muse urges her, “Get to work. Pound out some words." Chandler said write, or do nothing. I think Kingsolver was saying write. Period. Kingsolver’s approach is that you’ve got six hours, or four, or 20 minutes, or whatever, until your writing time is over. "You can sit down and write, now, or you can think about looking for a day job.” This week, as part of our experiment, try the Kingsolver approach. Sit down and write, now, whatever you can, as best you can. Get it out, get it down, and meet deadline. No stopping, no staring, no waiting, no writhing. Just write. Click on the podcast player above or use subscription options below to listen to the full episode. Resources: Episode #67: Either Write or Nothing Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler, edited by Frank MacShane. New York: Columbus University Press, 1981 High Tide in Tucson, by Barbara Kingsolver * * * You can subscribe with iTunes, where I'd love to have you subscribe, rate, and leave a review. The podcast is also available Stitcher, and you should be able to search for and find "Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach" in any podcast player. ____________________ Is your writing life all it can be?  

I saw a quote going around Facebook among writing friends that shows a line drawing of a woman leaning over a typewriter. Above her, it says, "Nothing makes me want to clean, cook, fold laundry, daydream, or nap like having a writing deadline." Sometimes that kind of non-writing activity frees my mind to come up with a great idea; but much of the time, I’m doing those things to avoid the work of writing; it's resistance. Instead of cleaning, cooking, folding laundry, daydreaming, or napping, try following Raymond Chandler's writing approach. The short of it is this. When you sit down to write, follow two simple rules: "a. you don't have to write. b. you can't do anything else" (154, Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler). In more detail, Chandler explains in a 1949 letter to Alex Barris: I write when I can and I don't write when I can't...I'm always seeing little pieces by writers about how they don't ever wait for inspiration; they just sit down at their little desks every morning at eight, rain or shine.... However blank their minds or dull their wits, no nonsense about inspiration from them. I offer them my admiration and take care to avoid their books. Me, I wait for inspiration, although I don't necessarily call it by that name...The important thing is that there should be a space of time, say four hours a day at least, when a professional writer doesn't do anything else but write. He doesn't have to write, and if he doesn't feel like it, he shouldn't try. He can look out of the window or stand on his head or writhe on the floor. But he is not to do any other positive thing, not read, write letters, glance at magazines, or write checks. Either write or nothing.... I find it works. Two very simple rules, a. you don't have to write. b. you can't do anything else. The rest comes of itself. (153, 154, ibid) This flies in the face of the well-known quote attributed to several people, including William Faulkner: I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes at nine every morning. Or what Barbara Kingsolver describes in High Tide in Tucson. She said she longs for more time of her own, and silence. She writes: My jaw drops when I hear of the rituals some authors use to put themselves in the so-called mood to write: William Gass confesses to spending a couple of hours every morning photographing dilapidated corners of his city. Diane Ackerman begins each summer day “by choosing and arranging flowers for a Zenlike hour or so.” She listens to music obsessively, then speed-walks for an hour, every single day. (95-96, High Tide in Tucson) Kingsolver contrasts that with her reality: My muse wears a baseball cap, backward. The minute my daughter is on the school bus, he saunters up behind me with a bat slung over his shoulder and says oh so directly, “Okay, author lady, you’ve got six hours till that bus rolls back up the drive. You can sit down and write, now, or you can think about looking for a day job.” (p. 96, ibid) Okay, so which is more realistic? Which will produce better writing? Better to stare out the window and wait? Or sit down and write, now, whatever you can as best you can? I say we conduct an experiment. We’ll try both. First, in the week ahead, to avoid resisting the work of writing and to write inspired, I propose we try Raymond Chandler’s approach and report back. When you set aside your four hours, or two hours, or half an hour to write, don’t sit for five minutes and then click over to check email or pop up to fold laundry. Sit there, like Chandler said. The idea is to sit and write, but you don't have to write, and if you don't feel like it, you shouldn't try. Remember, you can look out of the window, stand on your head, or writhe on the floor. But resist any other positive thing. Don't read, write letters,

Today I’m leaning on Olympic marathoner Meb Keflezighi's goal-setting strategies to help us set good writing goals. They’re pretty close to SMART goals, but I like these examples from Meb’s running experience. It starts with this: A good goal has personal meaning. Meb points out that no one gave him a goal or forced a goal onto him. No one said, “You have to win the 2014 Boston Marathon” or “You have to make the 2012 Olympic team.” He says, "Those were goals I set for myself. When I told myself, 'I want to win Boston,' it just felt right. I knew that chasing that goal would motivate me to do what was necessary to achieve it and that doing so would require me to do my best." He says, "Your goals should have that same pull on you. They should be things you want to achieve for yourself, not to meet someone else’s expectations." Same with your writing. If you find yourself with a goal, make sure it’s yours. Make sure it has personal meaning. Make sure it’s something you want to pursue for yourself, not because it’s the trend in publishing, or it’s the next logical thing after earning your MFA, or it’s what your friends, parents, spouse or coworkers expect of you. Your goal has to be yours and it has to feel right. And it should have a pull on you to do what’s necessary to achieve it. A good goal is specific. Rather than say, “I want to run well at Boston,” Meb stated specific goals: win the 2014 Boston Marathon and make the 2012 Olympic team. The great thing about being specific is he knew how to devise a plan to get him there. As a runner, he had exact times to aim for. A more ordinary runner might set a time goal for a personal best or determine a number of times or number of miles to run per week. Writers can follow this same approach. We could set a goal of landing our first byline in a local magazine or submitting a short story to a literary journal by January 2017. A writer might want to start a blog and publish an article once a week starting on a specific date. The plan leading up to that might be to identify two or three local magazines that might be a good fit, find their submission guidelines, and outline an article to propose in a query by a certain date. Or to write a certain number of words in the short story and set a deadline to finish the draft in order to submit within a literary journal’s reading period. That new blogger might plan to write seven posts prior to launching in order to have a little cushion as he adjusts to the new schedule. So to follow Meb’s approach, the first two steps are that the goal has to feel right to you, and works best when it's specific because you can figure out exact steps to lead you to the target you’re aiming for. A good goal is challenging but realistic. Meb says, "Your goals should require you to reach outside your comfort zone while remaining within the realm of possibility.” In other words, it should stretch you without breaking you or causing you to give up. He warns against aiming too low or too high. In his running world, he says an example is if you've run a two-hour half marathon then make your next goal to run another two-hour half marathon, it might not be particularly inspiring as a goal. On the other extreme, to imagine you could lower your time by an hour would be unattainable in a reasonable time frame. If a writer is just starting out and has written only three blog posts, it’s probably unrealistic to set a goal of pitching to The New Yorker or National Geographic in a reasonable time frame. But that three-post writer might set the goal of increasing the frequency of how often he posts over the next two months from once a week to twice, or he might set a goal of increasing social media presence to two platforms and trying to guest post at a website open to new voices.

In episode 64 I shared reasons to go ahead and open up about your project. After listening to some of the benefits, you might have wondered why we wouldn’t always talk about our projects with people. Why not take advantage of that great input and the energy and fun of collaboration and developmental input? Why stay secretive? Today I’ll share six reasons people choose to stay secretive about their writing projects. 1. So no one steals their idea It’s a common concern. Some writers won’t talk about their projects with other writers or in a public setting, in case someone would overhear and decide to grab it and write it themselves. Some are so nervous, they even hesitate pitching their projects to editors, for fear their idea will be rejected during the pitch but then passed on to some other writer to be developed for that publishing house. When you’ve generated some idea, some story, some concept you feel is yours to create and shepherd, it is kind of freaky to imagine someone else taking that and running with it. Are these fears founded? Some believe it happens more than we’d like to think, but other industry experts say it doesn’t. For example, Jane Friedman addresses the concern of idea theft in an article where she says, “Most people don’t view unpublished writings (or writers) as an untapped gold mine” and she shares Jeanne Bowerman‘s take on this fear, that it is possible for someone to steal your idea, sure, “but they can’t possibly execute it or interpret it in the same way you can. No one can be you. That is your best protection of all.” Whether or not you choose to be secretive, don’t sit on your idea. If you’ve got a project in mind, write it. Get your version out there. Be the first. 2. So no one inadvertently absorbs their idea and claims it as their own This is similar to the first reason, but instead of someone intentionally stealing your idea, this is a subconscious act. You talk about it to someone, and they forget the source. Or maybe they just overheard it and they sort of absorb the idea eventually thinking it was theirs all along. The only way to avoid your idea getting out there where people can absorb it, is to keep your writing project a secret from everyone. But remember, to refer back to Bowerman’s point, even if someone were to use your idea, they still have to do the hard work of writing it. And no one will write it the same as you will. As she said, that’s your best protection. So don’t be too afraid. 3. To keep their project from getting shot down Let’s say you phone a friend to tell her about your exciting new idea or project, but you catch her on a bad day or while she’s binge-watching The Gilmore Girls. She may not sound all that interested after you explain your idea. You might think she’s feeling blah about your project when she’s simply feeling blah or preoccupied. But it’s too late. You think she hates your idea and all the joy drains away. This seems to happen most often when the idea is in its embryonic stage. Or maybe it's just a tiny tadpole of an idea. If that's the case, it’s delicate, fragile, still taking shape. Give it time. Maybe you can tell your friend later, when you have more of the storyline to share or you know all the content you plan to cover in your nonfiction book And maybe you catch her when she's well rested and fully caffeinated. She can listen carefully, she’ll catch your vision, and then she may blow you away with her enthusiasm. Until then, keep it under wraps. 4. So they don’t have to admit they never followed through What happens if you share your idea with people, then end up not writing it? They’ll ask about it. “Hey, what about that romance about the two food truck owners you told me about?” “Oh, yeah, I gave that up. It just wasn’t taking shape.