Are You Giving Yourself Enough White Space?

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My husband is an artist. He takes a piece of leather, a laser cutter, and some paint, and makes these beautiful works of art. He’s made eels and satellites and faces and, my new favorite, a stag. He can knock out a new one in a matter of hours, and I’m always astounded by the piece of art he can make in an afternoon.

But sometimes, he just doesn’t make anything at all.

Some afternoons, he says, “I don’t know what to make. I think I’m going to rest instead.”

And so he does.

He sits on the couch or watches TV or scrolls through social media or talks to friends or whatever appeals to him that day, but he doesn’t do creative work. He takes a break from the deep work of always making something.

And then the next day, or sometimes the day after that, he says, “I have an idea!” and he’s back in his workshop, creating his next masterpiece.

That rest provides white space, a break from creativity, from your brain always being on. That rest is exactly what his brain needs.

Do you give yourself enough white space?

Writers are often always on. Thinking about their characters (or talking to them!). Building a world in their head. Plotting out the next section of the book. Formulating new ideas. Thinking about new titles. Brainstorming goals, motivations, and conflicts. Trying so damn hard to be creative.

But what about the white space?

It’s no coincidence that so many of us get our brilliant ideas in the shower. The ten or fifteen minutes we spend standing under the hot water can provide brilliant white space, where our brains are free to meander where they want, and BAM! There’s the new idea you’ve been struggling with for days.

So maybe take an afternoon off and just do nothing. Sit outside in a shady spot and soak up nature. Meditate for ten minutes. Sit on the couch and just be. Hell, take another shower.

Take a few minutes to give your creativity a break.

Feeling Gratitude For Your Writing Practice

This post may contain affiliate links to products I use and love. If you buy something through one of those links, there is no additional cost to you, but I may receive a small commission, which helps pay for my continued work. Read my affiliate disclosures here.

Even though Thanksgiving is long over, I think New Year’s is a great time to review what our relationship with gratitude looks like. I’m not here to talk about whether or not you have an emphasis on gratitude in your everyday life, but I am interested in what your gratitude looks like during your writing practice.

It’s easy to become frustrated with writing, especially if we’re not published, and just generally not feeling successful in our work. Those are the times in which gratitude is even more important, however. We need to be grateful for writing and its presence in our life, whether it feels like we’re doing it “right” or not. How can we be grateful in the beautiful, successful, exciting moments if we can’t feel grateful for a boring, mundane writing day? More specifically, what if those beautiful, successful, exciting moments are few and far between? Does that mean we only feel gratitude once in a while?

Instead of just waiting for random moments that perhaps naturally fill you with gratitude, try to find places to work gratitude in on a regular basis. Gratitude is much more likely to become a habit in this case, and you are much more likely to find more and more reasons to feel gratitude in the first place. You can journal about it, reflect on it, consider it while meditating. However you choose to express your gratitude, there are so many things to be grateful for in your writing practice.

Feeling grateful for writing in general

What does writing bring you? What does writing fulfill for you? Really think about your own wellbeing after writing. Is it the creativity that fills you up? The discipline? The fun and enjoyment? Maybe you needed a hobby in your life, and writing has really fulfilled that need for you. Maybe you feel more at peace now that you have an outlet. Or does writing feel like an escape from other parts of your life that you perhaps don’t love as much? Whatever it is, feeling grateful for writing in general is a great start to noticing how writing impacts your life for the better.

Feeling grateful for other areas in your life that are impacted by writing

There are so many other areas of your life that can be impacted by your writing, and it’s good to feel gratitude for those things as well. Has writing made you better at your job? Perhaps it’s allowed you to reconnect with an old friend who is also a writer, or spend more time with your grandmother, who is an avid reader. Maybe sitting at your desk for long periods of time has allowed you to watch the seasons pass, or the birds outside your window. Perhaps you’ve explored new genres or made new friends from the neighborhood book club. What has writing brought you that’s not necessarily writing itself?

Feeling grateful for your writing community

If you’ve found yourself a writing community—whether one or two critique partners or a whole group of writers you meet with regularly—you should feel grateful for them! Hobbies often bring together people who otherwise likely would not have met, and that’s a beautiful thing. Your community might be in person or online, big or small, only about writing or a bit eclectic. It’s all great. Celebrate your new friends, critique partners, writing buddies, and mentors.

Feeling grateful for your writing space

People without a dedicated writing space might initially shake their heads at this one, but I think all writing spaces should bring about gratitude. If you have a dedicated space—an office that’s all yours, a shared workspace, or a living room couch that you like to sit on while you write—that totally counts! If you don’t have a dedicated space, think about all the places you find yourself writing. Maybe the coffee shop or a coworking space? Maybe on public transportation while you commute to work, or even the local fast-food joint while you eat lunch during the week. All of those spaces deserve some gratitude, even if they’re not quite what you had in mind. Try to be specific about what exactly you love about the space, and maybe even take a moment of gratitude for it each and every time you sit down to write.

Feeling grateful for progress

This one might not seem quite as obvious to everyone, but when you’re able to progress to the next step of the writing process, be grateful! Finished researching and plotting? Celebrate! Finished your first draft? Celebrate! Just sent your manuscript to an editor? Celebrate! Many authors struggle to move from one step to the next, and progress can be very difficult, so take the time to celebrate it. You’ve completed yet another difficult step, worked hard, and achieved so much! You should definitely feel grateful about it.

Feeling grateful for your failures

This might be the most difficult gratitude of all. It can be really hard to feel grateful when things don’t feel like they’re going well. Perhaps you got a negative review, or less-than-stellar feedback from an editor or beta reader. Maybe all those rejections from agents got you down. Find a way to spin them in order to find the positive. What lessons did you learn? What motivation can you pull from them? How will that feedback make your work even better? There’s always something to learn and be grateful for.

Feeling grateful for your successes

And finally, the easiest gratitude of them all. It likely feels most natural to be grateful for the easy, obvious positives in your life. And while these shouldn’t be the only things you’re grateful for, you absolutely should celebrate them! Be grateful for each positive review, each promising email from an agent, each sale of your new book—and your old ones too. If you’re not published yet, be grateful for each positive show of support from friends or family, each time you sit down to work, each milestone you complete, and each writing-related task you mark off your to-do list. These successes might feel fewer and farther between than some of your other gratitudes, but rest assured—they will come.

However you choose to show your gratitude, be sure to include writing or any of the many ways it makes your life better.

Creating SMART Goals for Writers

This post may contain affiliate links to products I use and love. If you buy something through one of those links, there is no additional cost to you, but I may receive a small commission, which helps pay for my continued work. Read my affiliate disclosures here.

’Tis the season to be making goals and resolutions about our health, relationships, and careers—and that includes writing! Whether you look at writing as primarily a hobby or a career path, creating goals can help you stay on track and motivated. Without a goal, it’s easy to forget that writing is important to you. For me, goals provide a really helpful trajectory toward what I want to accomplish.

One thing we often forget, however, is that not every goal is created equally. When it comes to setting goals for writing, it’s really tempting to just throw something on the page, like “Become a bestselling author.” I mean, that’s the ultimate goal, right? For some, yes, it is, but it’s actually not a great goal to set. It’s a worthwhile achievement, of course, but the goal itself isn’t smart. One person cannot control becoming a bestselling author. Hell, if you’re looking to be traditionally published, you can’t even control if a publisher wants to put your book out into the world, let alone how many copies it sells! So what should you create as your writing goal? I’m not here to tell you what your goal should be, but I am here to tell you a bit about what makes a good goal in the first place.

The SMART goal structure is quite popular, and many people are taught this technique in work or school (I know I was!). It still holds up. Even now, it’s great for helping you determine if you have a good goal or not. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. A good goal should be each of these things, ensuring that you’re in control of achieving your goal.

Specific

Your goal must be specific enough to determine when it is complete. “Become a bestselling author” is not specific enough to be a good goal, because it doesn’t clarify what bestselling list you want to land on. Do you mean The New York Times Best Seller list? USA Today? Amazon? Something else entirely? Likewise, “Finish my novel” is a more specific goal, in that it has a final end point, but you may need to define what that end point really is. Do you just want to complete a first draft? Do you want a completely final draft, after editing and proofreading? And what novel? Ideally, you’d replace “my novel” with a specific project name. There should be absolutely no questions as to what project you’re working on, or what the achievement of that goal will look like.

Measurable

Your goal must be able to be measured and tracked. “Become a bestselling author” is not trackable. You would not be able to see any progress if you were to pursue this goal. It will just happen all at once at some point in time, but you won’t be measuring it along the way. (Before you tell me that some magical number of sales will get you there, do some research. The numbers bandied about on the internet aren’t finite or exact, and not every sale counts equally. Check out this great article from the Self-Publishing School about how The New York Times Best Seller list actually works.) “Finish my novel,” on the other hand, could be tracked in multiple ways—word count, page count, chapter count, tasks. You’re far more likely to keep plugging away at your novel if you can observe progress along the way. Choose your measure of progress based on what makes most sense for you and your project. If you’re writing a novel that’s a bit open-ended in that you don’t know how long it will be, word count may be the best option for you. If you’re working on a collection of essays, the number of chapters or essays might feel better. There’s no right or wrong here, so choose what works for you.

Achievable

Your goal must be able to be achieved. To me, this is really saying that it’s in your control. “Become a bestselling author” requires a serendipity of sorts—the just-right number of sales at the just-right time with the just-right book in front of the just-right audience. While you can write a fabulous book, that alone does not mean you’ll achieve this goal upon publication. It requires so much more than that, as well as a little luck. Sure, the more prolific you are, and the more you cultivate an audience, the more likely you are to hit the best seller list, but even then, it’s not a guarantee. It's not necessarily achievable. On the other hand, “Finish my novel” is black and white, cut and dry, with a clear ending in sight. You can break down the completion of your novel into a set of steps that you can then complete one at a time, eventually achieving the goal. It’s all in your power.

Relevant

You goal must be relevant as far as your higher-level goals and values. Does it align with the other things you hope to achieve? Does it make sense for you to achieve it based on your existing set of values and morals? Ideally, you want your goals to build upon one another, always in service of your values, so if you create a goal that goes against any of these, you may find friction and a lack of motivation. If you’ve decided that your other goals this year include less screen time, full-time travel, or a less sedentary life in a big way, is it even possible to achieve these goals and your writing goals? Finishing your novel might actually require more screen time, less travel time, and a more sedentary lifestyle. So make sure that your goals are compatible, and if they’re not, consider any ways you might adjust them before you just toss one of your goals in the trash. Perhaps you extend the amount of time you’ll need to write your book in order to account for a slower writing pace. Maybe you’d rather handwrite your novel during the week, then transcribe it on the weekend when you’re getting in a little screen time already.

Some SMART goal teachers use “realistic” as the R word instead, and I actually think that I prefer this one a bit more. Your goal must be realistic in order to be achievable. “Become a bestselling author” is likely not realistic for most of us (especially if you’re only working on your first novel!), and in some cases, “Finish my novel” might not be either. If you’re about to give birth to your first kid, now might not be the time to try a goal like, “Finish my novel,” which will take a significant amount of time that you probably won’t have. There’s nothing wrong with adjusting your goals based on your current life circumstances, and it’s actually smart to do so (pun intended).

Time-Bound

Finally, your goal must be finite. There has to be an end in sight, at which time you can say that you’ve achieved the goal. Not only that, but you should be able to attach a reasonable amount of time to said goal. “Become a bestselling author” cannot actually be time-bound because it might be achieved with your first published novel, or it might take years and years to finally happen. For some, it might never happen at all. On the other hand, “Finish my novel” can be assigned a timeline that works for you. For some authors, this might be writing the full novel in a month (à la NaNoWriMo), and for others, it might take a year or more. Do whatever is right for you. To determine the length of time needed for your goal, consider listing out the tasks and/or milestones that will need to occur during the course of the project. This might help you see the full scope of the goal, and determine a realistic timeline.

Now that you understand how to build a good writing goal, go forth and set your New Year’s resolutions—just be SMART about it!

Anyone Can be a Writer, and Other Editing Philosophies

This post may contain affiliate links to products I use and love. If you buy something through one of those links, there is no additional cost to you, but I may receive a small commission, which helps pay for my continued work. Read my affiliate disclosures here.

I’ve been doing this for a while now—this being reading and editing and haunting the publishing industry, unable to leave it alone—and when you’re around something for quite some time, you’re bound to develop some opinions. And oooh, do I have some opinions for you.

It’s in developing these opinions that I’ve established some philosophies in my business. These philosophies dictate how I edit, what I teach my clients, and how I encourage writers.

Anyone can be a writer.

When I see writers struggling, it’s common to hear things like, “I’m just not meant to be a writer,” or “I can’t do this.” Neither of those things is true. You see, anyone can be a writer, and everyone can do this, but you just have to do it. And so perhaps what separates the writers from the non-writers is that the non-writers just don’t want it enough to prioritize it right now. And that’s totally okay.

But if you do want to be a writer, that’s where the magic happens. When you really, really want to be a writer, you find the time to write in the stolen moments, and in the moments where you’re not writing, you’re thinking about it and planning and dreaming and jotting down lines in your Notes app so you don’t forget them later. You’re setting boundaries with family members and reading books about characterization so you get better and better. You can’t help it. Being a writer is in your soul.

And so anyone can be a writer, you just have to want it bad enough.

You must know who your target audience is, and no, it’s not “everyone.”

If I had a nickel for every time a new author told me their book was for everyone, I’d have retired from editing years ago.

No one thing appeals to everyone. Not sunshine and rainbows, not the scent of fresh lavender in the summer, not freshly baked cookies on an autumn afternoon, not even chocolate.

So if you tell me that your ideal reader is “everyone,” it’s as good as saying your ideal reader is absolutely no one.

There’s power in knowing what type of reader would enjoy your story. There may be several types of readers that would enjoy your story, and knowing that gives you even more power. Yes, there will always outliers, but when you’re publishing your book, you need to know who your average reader will be. Knowing that will inform your cover art, your back cover blurb, the length of your book, your genre, your marketing, and so much more.

The first draft is for the writer, and the subsequent drafts are for the reader.

It seems to me that most novels begin with passion from the writer—that spark of an idea, that zing of creativity. It can be intoxicating and alluring, and gets the writer excited. And so the writer writes, crafting a novel that, to them, is perfect.

But that’s not the end.

Because at the end of the day, the end user of that book is not the writer—it’s the reader. And so, after the first draft, that reader needs to be considered. Things may make sense to the writer, but not to the reader, and this second draft is meant to find these things and fix them. It’s as if you’re fixing up your book, swaddling it in a nice scarf, and sending it off to kindergarten by itself for the first time. You must prepare it to be on its own and in the world, without you to care for it.

To successfully break the rules, you must first know the rules.

In writing, I believe that most rules are in place to help the reader more easily read. For this reason, consistency is important, formatting has standards, and rules must be followed. But sometimes, when you know the rules, know why the rules are in place, and why they’re important, you can break them. This, in essence, becomes a stylistic choice instead of a negligent one. If, instead, you don’t know why writers format things in a certain way, you may format your novel however you see fit, with unicorn stickers and multicolored backgrounds and thirty-seven different fonts. This will, undoubtedly, anger some of your readers, triggering refunds and bad reviews and pitchforks. It’s definitely worth knowing the rules first.

You will only get out of your book what you put into it.

This is where I implore you to take it seriously. Spend some time learning to write by following blogs. Find a community to commiserate with, whether in person or on Facebook. Invest in a good editor (hey, that’s me!) and a cover designer. Look before you leap, and make intentional decisions. Treat your book like something important to you, because it is.

Now, for the unsexy part: after your book has been published, and after you’ve celebrated this enormous feat, you cannot just stop working on your book. Now is the time to promote it in the same spaces that your ideal audience hangs out. Put that title and cover in front of the right eyeballs over and over. Talk about your book, quote your book, share behind the scenes looks at your book. If you do this, you’ll be selling not only your book, but also yourself, and that’s how you get readers who keep coming back with each subsequent novel.

Take the time to develop your own writing philosophies, and if what I mentioned above resonates with you, if you really want it and are ready to invest in yourself and the novel that you’ve poured yourself into, reach out for a quote!