Excavating every little thing you love for your readers

Alright,

I just started Rivka Galchen’s new book, Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch.

As I’m reading, I’m noticing Rivka Galchen clearly loves her main character—the mother—to pieces.

In fact, I’m starting to suspect this entire book came into existence so that Galchen could construct NOT the most perfect or best mother literary character ever, but a literary character who embodies every single thing Galchen herself loves about mothering and loves about other mothers and about the qualities Galchen loves seeing in herself when she mothers.

Every loving thing.

Imagine writing a whole book just so you could spend a year immersed in all the details you love about some person, or about some concept. Or about yourself.

Fuckin’ eh, right? What’s that book?

And sure there’s conflict and pain in Rivka’s (can I call you Rivka, Rivka?) novel. Events escalate. Drama ensues.

But I work with a lot of new writers who think that the more painful the story, the more painful it will be to tell that story. And the more painful it is to tell the story, the more they’re doing their job as a writer.

Pain demonstrates accomplishment. Everything worth doing is a struggle we overcome.

Honestly, yes, I work with these writers and also I am this writer. My default approach to writing is to sit in the struggle.

So this week I'm asking myself, "What does my work look like when I’m digging into the nooks and crannies of my subject to excavate every little thing I love and putting all that on display for the reader? What does it feel like to do that kind of work?"

-- M

Artists are MADE, not BORN

Hey,

Do you think you suck at writing?

Periodically when I work with a client, before we can really get going, first we have to talk about all the reasons they can't write a book. Usually one of the reasons is that someone told them they suck at writing.

I wish I could say this story was less common. Whenever they tell me, I feel for them. Then recently I realized the same thing had happened to me. Not with writing (although I carry plenty of writing baggage, too), but with visual art.

High school, freshman year, I took a studio art class with some older kids. I dreaded it because 1. it was required and 2. I already knew I was "bad" at art.

Teachers had always winced at my drawings. I'd stick-figured my way well into fourth grade. I'd made do.

In the studio art class, the teacher would demonstrate a technique at the front of the class, and we would sit in our seats and do the thing he demonstrated.

He would walk around class, giving encouragement to the students whose work looked like his demo. Then there was me.

"What are you doing?" he would ask over my shoulder, trying to sound jocular. I don't remember what I would say back. It wasn't really the words we exchanged but his sighs of disappointment.

I never attempted to draw or paint or ceramicize or anything after that. Once in a while I sidled up to visual creativity. I made collages. I knitted. But I knew I was bad at art so what was the point in going farther?

I realize I've been carrying that around for a long time without really examining it.

The pandemic brought me closer to trying again. Touching paints for me felt almost literally like playing with fire. But it happened almost in spite of myself. I bought a painstakingly detailed paint-by-numbers set for my kids and when it turned out to require too much patience and concentration from them, I took over and painted all afternoon. A few weeks later I opened my kids watercolors and painted some abstract scenes.

I finally confronted the art class memory when I decided to try to adopt the a new frame on creativity and artists. The new frame: artists are MADE, not BORN. Or "discovered and recovered," as Julia Cameron put it and I shared here on Instagram. ​

Once I started to try to believe that, I bumped right into freshman year art. And yadda yadda yadda...

I took another class 25 years later (online this time so I could pause and rewind as much as I needed to) and I painted this. You can see my painting (and read even more lessons I learned from it) here. ​

​Maggie

Reader question: How do I process feedback about my writing?

Reader question! Reader question! I got a reader question about how to process feedback.

I’ve written ​before about receiving feedback. My advice was “don’t.” 🤣🤣

Seriously. 😐Don’t.

People can lob their feedback over the fence. (Maybe you even asked them to!) But whether you asked or not, you do not have to pick it up off the ground just because it landed on your side.

You don't have to receive things just because they're given.

(And if like me, you can’t stop yourself from soliciting feedback, then consider creating a small circle of 1-3 people whose only feedback ever is “It’s good! 😀 Keep going.”)

***

But what if you have no choice? That’s my reader’s question. She’s writing for work, and her boss has appointed themselves editor.

She asks: “How do you deal with negative feedback that requests improvement, but perhaps isn't specific on how to improve?”

Well, ::rubs hands together:: get me a bucket list and cross this one off! I’ve always wanted to write an advice column. (Dreams do come true!)

Here we go.

***
​Dear Reader/Bucket List Dream Granter,

​
1. Triple-check with yourself that you have to incorporate this feedback.

Do you have to edit your work based on this feedback?

Can you instead nod sagely as your boss plays out their repressed-artist editorial fantasy and then do whatever you want?

Let’s say the answer’s no. You do have to change your writing.

2. Unpack.

In your letter you said you got a lot of feedback. Your copy was all marked up with red. But a lot of feedback is not specific feedback.

Specific feedback explains not that they don't like a thing, but why a thing doesn't work, and even better: what they would prefer instead.

(BTW, I can’t resist sharing one of my favorite pieces of non-specific feedback from a boss who has no idea what he is talking about. At least he was nice about it.)

3. Take appropriate action.

If you’re getting a lot of non-specific feedback from a boss who is also insisting you incorporate their feedback, what do you do next? You asked me if you should look at changing your voice or your style.

Neither, because editing the work is not the next step. Any reviewer is of course entitled not to like something, but a writer can't act on such feedback. If your boss wants to be not a reviewer but an editor, they need to do something. Which means you need to do something else.

So, I’d focus on how you can get new instructions you can act on. Can you talk together with the piece in front of you? Change the way you work on the project? (Maybe they write an outline first.) Compromise in some other way?

If your boss can’t do this for you, we’re out of my wheelhouse and it’s time to consult a different advice-giving professional. ​

***

In any case, as you navigate, maybe it’ll bring you a little comfort to know that whatever happens...

your writing is safe,

as long as you remind yourself that the problem doesn't stem from your writing, but from a power dynamic.

So many of us writers shut down production because of power and the people who abuse it.

The comments of a sour-faced grade school teacher. Or some expert at a conference telling a shiny-faced newbie that their book idea will never sell. Or a boss who cannot be satisfied.

These people can throw you off the scent of your own writing for decades.

Your writing is safe.

You don’t have to pick up feedback just because it gets lobbed over the fence.

It’s good! 😀 Keep going.

- M​

PS: Need guidance? I'm here. Here's an overview of how I work with clients. 

Facing and conquering fear in your writing practice... again and again

Some people get their bolt of inspiration in the shower or on a walk. I get all mine on the stationary bike.

I’ll be pedaling in the garage, huffing and puffing, AND BOOM.

I hear Van Wilder's voice from that that terrible, awful National Lampoon movie from the early 2000s that I’ve seen a dozen times,

"Write that down."

When I’m on the bike, I can't write it down so I voice-record these lightning bolts. Today, I listened back to a few from back in January.

Turns out they’re not… genius.

They’re kind of like dreams you wake up from and try to write down immediately: you think you’re trying to capture the content, but you’re actually trying to capture the BOLT feeling.

And BOOM… again.

Except this BOOM is the lightning bolt instantly transforming into sand? Right through your fingers.

…

That’s frustrating when it comes to writing a book. To feel like you have it, and then you don't. Fortunately, it’s also not actually the way good ideas get into your book.

You don’t have to HUSTLE nor rush to capture the lightning before it becomes sand (or whatever).

You get lots of chances. The whole book-writing process is just you giving yourself chance after chance after chance after chance to say the thing you want to say.

What a relief, right?

Yes. And.

...

I’ve started to notice my clients (and me too!) give up on our ideas far too soon. We get the bolt, but as soon as it gets “too complicated,” we junk the thing.

When I started to ask why we give up, the answer was not, “The process shouldn’t be this hard.” (We like working hard. We know working hard.)

It was more often, “The process shouldn’t be this scary.”

Or… maybe it’s OK if it’s scary once, but why is it scary OVER AND OVER? And over??

The repetition of the fear blindsides us.

When we start we're like, "Right! Face the fear, conquer it, knock it down. I can do that!"

But… it’s not just about facing fear once and getting through it. It’s about facing fear dozens of times. Hundreds of times. Possibly, thousands of times?

Ermagerd.

Where were these search results when we Googled "How to write a book"?!

…

This weekend I was rewatching a much different, much better movie - Free Solo. It’s about a professional rock climber.

Throughout the film, he climbed the same scary sections of a rock over and over in preparation for an even more insane climbing feat.

He said something about how his practice climbs weren’t just skill practice but fear practice.

Something like, “the fear is always there but you just encounter it so often that you know where it is, you see it, and you just kind of step around it.”

You have to do the thing enough to expect the fear.

Huh.

- Maggie

Give up what's sapping energy from your life and make time to write

I don’t try to shrink my body anymore.

That doesn’t mean I never think negatively about my body or my eating habits. I do sometimes.

But I haven’t been on a diet (AKA a wellness kick / lifestyle upgrade / juice and/or intermittent fast / “eliminating calories because of my calorie sensitivity” / etc.) in years.

It would be super (self-) righteous if I could report that self-love caused the change. Maybe self-love catalyzed the change, but it was a competing need that made the change stick: a need for capacity.

I love myself but I REALLY love my time and my energy.

Here’s a fact: I have been thin before and you know? It’s fine.

But once I realized I’m not here for FINE, I couldn’t sustain the ritual offering of my time and energy to efforts to shrink my body. All the thinking about eating and meals and exercise and guilt. That ritual offering eats up (pun intended) so much capacity!

We need space and time to cook ideas, to sift the stories from those ideas, and to return again and again to a writing practice where we tell those stories.

CAPACITY—i.e., earthly space and time—is finite. When we’re writing, we need to divert capacity from elsewhere in our lives into our creative endeavor.

So, whenever we recognize sectors of our lives that are burning through time and energy in a whacked-out proportion to the good they’re bringing to us, like I did when I realized I didn’t want to try to shrink my body anymore, well…

Yahtzee! .. UNO!... GIN!

We have found a pocket of additional capacity.

In my case, I didn’t even have to pay for a lakeside Airbnb or take any days off work to access it. (Which, obviously, do those things, too.)

Do you have an energy-sapping sector of your life that you can seal off, and re-route the ensuing freed capacity to your writerly life?

​
M

Find a safe place to allow your writing to unravel

Happy… this thing! Happy six day of 2022.

We are all still doing it. I’m so grateful you’re here with me. I’m so grateful I’m here with you.

***

I took some fraught time off at the end of the year, full of omicron news and uncertainty and joy and even, in the end, a ski trip.

My favorite thing that happened to me during this time was a huge tumble down a steep slope into piles and piles of powdery snow.

My husband and I had two hours of grown-up ski time before we had to go back to the lodge to pick up our kids from their lessons, and I wanted to make the most of it. All morning, I had that quality of rushed energy that makes me a little klutzy.

​It’s a big mountain. We got lost, and soon we were running late to pick up the kids.

At the top of the hill it was windy. I had to shout.

“Alan!” I shouted. “There it is. See??” I pointed toward the lodge I saw, very far away. “Let’s just ski down that way. To the right!”

We started out easily enough.

“Stay to the right!” I kept bellowing, until eventually we found ourselves at the top of a steep slope, one of those short, steep slopes you see professional snowboarders and skiers jump over and land at the bottom of… because they’re too steep to ski down.

We’d gotten away from the crowds. No one was behind us or in front of us. There wasn’t a way to turn around and get back to the beaten path. The snow was at least 12 feet deep, the top layer just as powdery and fresh as it had been when it had fallen the day before.

***

As a teenager, I was a very good skier. Back then, I might have made it down this hill unscathed. But not now. Yet, we had no other choice. From all the time I put into skiing 20+ years ago, I still had some muscle memory, including a kind of mental muscle memory - my own favorite things to say to myself right before taking on a challenging slope.

Don’t pause too long at the top of the mountain; you’ll psych yourself out.

It looks steeper than it will feel once you start skiing.

You don’t have to make it pretty; just get down the hill.

​Alan sat at the top of the slope. “I’m going!” I shouted as I made my first turn.

And then my ski caught in the soft snow, and I turned 180 degrees, with the tips of my skis pointing straight up the hill. I screamed (not unlike this fine person) as I got tangled up, fell down on my back, with my skis still connected to my feet. The tips were up in the air as I began to slide down on my back. The bindings gave way and the skis flew off.

Then it was me and the slope, and nothing else. I remember feeling like a fairy godmother had tapped my chest with her wand and all my tension floated out my fingertips.

I softened my rigid body, let my arms extend out like I was floating in a Palm Springs pool on a sunny day (though the gap between my sweater and my pants was getting wider, allowing more and more snow in), and I slid down the hill on my back, headfirst, gaining speed.

I thought, “I will slide until I stop.” And I did.

***

“One can easily see the metaphorical resonance in that.”- one of my favorite lines from The Wild Braid by Stanley Kunitz and Genine Lentine.

“I will slide until I stop.”

Surrender is a risk. What if I had slid down the slope and hit my head on a rock? But I wasn’t scared of that in the midst of all that snow. So, I waited for the slope to become gentle again, so I could come to a stop. It did, and I did.

***

Here’s my hope for you in 2022. Here’s the thing I can give you in exchange for your presence here: guidance to find your own writerly safe place full of pillows and marshmallows and powdery snow so you can take a tumble or two (hundred), or however many you require to write something true.

To take some risks, knowing you’re in a safe place to do so.

I am here to create a community with those of you who are creating those soft places for yourselves, so you can step into the challenge of starting/continuing/finishing your book this year.

To challenges that end in tumbles into softness, everyone.
​

Cheers,

Maggie​

PS: BTW, it took me forever to get my skis back on, and then… we never got to the lodge! Not on that run. In the end, we were very late picking up the kids. But it was worth it. How much more fun was all that than it would have been to ski a few uneventful runs with the big crowds?

What makes a book a book and why you can't just turn all of your blog posts into a book

"Can I just take all my blog posts from the past three years and turn them into a book?"

Sounds like it would be a pretty easy way to write a book, right? Well...

Let's say you gathered all your presentations and emails and reports and papers and articles and more emails, etc., etc.

All the things you've ever written on a given topic.

If you gathered all that, organized it chronologically, and bound it, it would be 60,000 words of prose, easy.

But I think we can all agree, it ain’t a book.

Which means: a collection of a bunch of writings does not = a book.

New question: Then what makes a book A BOOK?

Answer: Story. A story arc, in fact. As in

• Exposition
• Conflict
• Climax
• Denouement (fancy word for…)
• Resolution

When you’re writing a nonfiction book, even a nonfiction business book, you need a story arc just as much as you would if you were writing fiction. It's the thread that allows people to stay with you as you unspool everything, and it allows them to make sense of the information you're presenting.

Writing is one thing. Writing stuff that readers can make sense of--that's hard.

When it comes to the blog posts example, “turning it into” a book means finding a way to connect all those blog posts so that they tell ONE story. Not the 50 stories of 50 blog posts.

It’s actually harder to transform 50 stories into one story than it is to start from scratch (even though the blank page is intimidating), and design your story arc from there.

That's my take on turning a collection of articles into a book. If you've got a different take, hit reply and let me know. ;)

Maggie

What is the difference between traditional publishing and self-publishing?

Every single client I have ever worked with has asked me about the difference between “traditional” publishing and self-publishing.

Traditional publishing: A publishing house signs you and pays you an advance, or an advance plus royalties, to write your book.

Self-publishing: you publish the book yourself using tools that have become widely available just in the past few years!

First off, here's what doesn't change:

In both cases you’re thinking about selling books, of course! You’re asking yourself questions like, “Who needs this book?” and “What will transform inside my reader after they read it?”

That focus on the audience to answer the question, "Why does this book need to exist?" That doesn't change.

...

Now, I could detail all kinds of differences between the two, including differences in how you can distribute the book, the rights you retain, and how the book gets marketed.

But here’s a difference I want to highlight because it's less Google-able: to land a book contract with a publishing house, the house needs to understand what your book does for them.

In the case of traditional publishing, you have to contend with the possibility that a publisher - or multiple publishers - just won’t understand. If they don’t “get it,” or get you, they are likely to pass on your book idea.

So! Explore the traditional publishing route if it feels right. Just don’t misunderstand publisher rejection as a referendum on whether your idea is any good.

Their rejection is not a reaction to your idea: it’s a reflection of the decision-makers’ taste and knowledge - and the limits of that knowledge.

If you know there’s an audience for your topic that’s been largely ignored (particularly if you’re a member of that audience), or if you know there’s a topic that your audience craves more information about but it’s taboo so no one is willing to talk about it, those are great things.

They just won’t always be recognized by traditional publishers.

​
Maggie

Practice writing by breaking your BIG book goal down into smaller pieces

Hellu,

A lot of people have said, “I want to write a book someday.” They’ve repeated it in their own heads. Out loud. To me. To their dog.

“I want to write a book someday.” It can be a wish or it can be a plan.

Fellow writer and business buddy Zita Christian said to me, “Writing your first book is like cooking a whole Thanksgiving turkey. It’s easier if you get some practice first.”

“What, like first you should roast a chicken?” I asked.

I chewed on that, as it were.

Yeah! First you should roast a chicken.

***

As in: a lot of people who would like to cook a Thanksgiving dinner, soup to nuts, but are overwhelmed by the idea of it, would benefit from tackling a smaller project as practice.

Especially if they’ve never cooked in their lives, or haven’t cooked anything since that meal they turned in for their “Creative Cooking” class final, senior year of college.

#amirite?​

***

So! What does it mean to roast a chicken in the realm of book writing? In Be About Something (my book), I recommend writing and publishing at least a dozen blog posts on your Big Idea to help you think it through.So, “roasting a chicken” could mean writing articles.

But it could mean other things, too, like

• Research

• Interviews

• Talking things out with a trusted thought partner

• Writing Big Ideas, but not publishing them (yet).

You're trying to create something great, like a satisfying meal, but you're also checking in with yourself throughout the process.

How does it turn out? How does it feel to cook it? Do you even like cooking? Do you want to make something else next time?

You can answer all of these questions by writing and publishing shorter works like articles and blog posts. Good practice. Less time commitment.

Even if you don’t publish, you get benefits from researching and writing notes to yourself, because you learn your process and the environment you need to be most productive and creative. And you figure out if you care about your topic enough to continue to pursue it.

***

Bottom line: The people who wish to write a book “someday” turn into the people who actually write the book by breaking down that big BOOK goal into smaller tasks.

Then they can practice those tasks, accomplish them, and move on from them.

The “moving on” part is important. Once you’ve roasted a chicken enough times, you need to let yourself recognize you’re ready to do the whole Thanksgiving meal. That can feel scary, and if it does, I can help you.

• outline

• figure out how to organize your research

• make a plan for writing

​But whatever method you decide to use to get the book done, make sure you’re allowing yourself to practice, accomplish, and progress.

Maggie

PS: When you decide you’re ready to write that book, read my detailed rundown of what it’s like to partner with a ghostwriter. What is a Ghostwriter and Why Do You Need One?

When was the last time writing was fun for you?

Can you think of a moment when you’ve found the act of writing fun?

You can? Oh good, let’s try something. I want you to bottle your moment.

Recall that fun moment. What made it fun?

Was it …

• the topic you were writing about?
• the place where you were writing it?

OR WAS IT this less definable element: the act of sharing something. Of going from knowing something - maybe not something life-changing but a certain tiny, sparkling, sputtering something - to not keeping it to yourself for another moment?

Also. If your answer is NO, you never find writing fun, but you’d like to, I recommend the same exercise in curiosity. Watch yourself wrestle an idea and marvel at your ability to squeeze it onto paper, and then observe: what is it that atomizes the fun out of that process for you?

Am I saying writing should always be fun? Oh, I don’t know. I don’t always find it fun. Exactly.

I mean, if I do the bottling exercise on myself, I have to admit I very often DO find it fun.

But sometimes it’s fun the way waking up in Rome with a cafe latte poured out of a ceramic pot with tiny pink flowers on it and a whole day ahead of you is fun. And sometimes it’s fun in the way that being a 40-year-old who is finally, ephemerally caught up on laundry is fun.

Different kinds of fun.

Maybe it’s better to expand your definition of fun than to claim writing’s never fun?

M​

PS: Awkward segue/but now that I have thought this I can’t un-think it:

George Wallace has the most fun when he writes. I’m sorry to link you to Twitter. Don’t get sucked down a rabbit hole! Just read a few of his tweets. So fun.