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Powered by Hope

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“Are we going to die, Mama?” I overheard this conversation as I walked behind a young woman and her preteen daughter. The local government here had just announced the lockdown due to COVID-19 and the news was spreading. I had heard the mom tell the daughter that they would have to stay inside for now, as there was an invisible illness in the air that could hurt people. The mom stopped and hugged her daughter. And the child added, “I love you, Mama. I am scared.”

At some point, I think we are all that child. Scared, worried, uncertain about what is coming. I certainly wasn’t prepared for the torrent of my own roller coaster of emotions, much less the messages I was getting from my friends, family, and readers. I was still nursing my wounds of my twenty-four-year-long marriage ending, a heartbreak that I had not been prepared for, and the resurgence of my chronic pain issues, financial problems, and, well, you name it.

And then the pandemic hit. It is like life was imitating a country music song: first the dog died, then the house burned down, then it felt like the world, as we knew it, ended.

I found myself on the other end of long phone calls, walking friends through some gentle guidance and meditation to accept what was happening so that we could calm our chaos and deal with the situation.

Every day, questions like these were arriving in my mailbox:

  1. I am so scared. I fear I cannot create any art.
  2. I feel so helpless and angry with myself. I am sitting here feeling sorry for myself and there are so many who have it worse than I do.
  3. I hate this feeling. I feel like I will suffocate.
  4. It is over, isn’t it?
  5. I am terrified for my family/my parents/my kids/myself.
  6. Does my work matter?

I knew I had to do something. So I created these short sound bites, Powered by Hope, to help my friends and readers deal with this surreal time in our lives. Their goal is to offer gentle stories, hope, and self-care for all of us. I offer listeners a different perspective, as our world faces a “new normal” and we learn what is means to be physically distant, yet connected as humans at our very core. At the end of each audio bite, I offer listeners the chance to put my reflections into practice, and lead them on a uniquely crafted and specialized guided exercise to calm and center the mind. The guided exercises allow people a moment of reflection, the opportunity to pause and think about their lives. [Read more…]

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Flog a Pro: Would You Pay to Turn the First Page of this Bestseller?

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Trained by reading hundreds of submissions, editors and agents often make their read/not-read decision on the first page. In a customarily formatted book manuscript with chapters starting about 1/3 of the way down the page (double-spaced, 1-inch margins, 12-point type), there are 16 or 17 lines on the first page. Here’s the question: Would you pay good money to read the rest of the chapter? With 50 chapters in a book that costs $15, each chapter would be “worth” 30 cents. So, before you … [Read more...]

Road, Neighborhood, Sky: A Three-Layered Approach to Writing a Novel

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During the launch events for Queen of the Owls, I was often asked: “What’s your writing process like?”  People wanted to know if I had a routine, method, daily word count, comfort food, or other habit that carried me from story idea to published book. Since I tend to avoid routine, I usually muttered something about ideas coming to me in the shower and the oscillation between frenzy and sloth.  In fact, “writing process” wasn’t something I thought about. I thought about what I was writing, not … [Read more...]

Managing Your Cast

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           If you believe mystery writers, an awful lot of murders take place in isolated country cottages or on ships at sea or on snowed-in trains.  This kind of isolation makes it harder for the killer to escape, but it limits the cast, which makes the writer’s job easier.  It limits the number of suspects, and readers know everyone from the beginning.  Some more of them may turn up dead before the end, and one or two may turn out to be long-lost heirs or imposters.  But the dramatis personae … [Read more...]

Writing Chapter Books for Young Readers

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A few years ago, I wrote posts for Writer Unboxed about writing middle-grade fiction,  as well as young adult fiction, and picture book texts. Today, as my new book, Four on the Run, has recently launched, I’d like to talk about writing chapter books. Chapter books are part of what may be loosely termed ‘junior fiction’, for readers between 5-9 years old. Readers of that age still read picture books, but they like longer stories, too, though many aren’t quite ready for that leap into the … [Read more...]

Announcing a FREE 3-Video Workshop Series

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Gabriela Pereira, founder of DIY MFA, has unlocked her three-video workshop series: Stop Dreaming, Start Doing. Like all readers of Writer Unboxed, you have a story to share. Whether it’s based on your own experiences or it comes straight from your imagination, one thing is for sure: that story is unique and no one else can tell it but you. But writing isn’t easy and many people say they want to write a book, but very few actually do it. You don’t have to be one of those people. It’s time … [Read more...]

Love, Hope, and the Dystopian Dark

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I had one of those dread-saturated 3:00 AM awakenings last week. The initial panic resulted from a sudden awareness that all the most dire warnings regarding the upcoming election are virtually certain to come true. The Transition Integrity Project, a nonpartisan group of academics, journalists, and current and former government and party officials, has simulated the four most likely scenarios, and all but one results in widespread violence and a Constitutional crisis. [Note: I didn't … [Read more...]

A Quiz Actually Helpful to Writers

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If you have a Facebook account, you’ve no doubt had the opportunity to take a plethora of quizzes. Which Disney princess are you? What Mexican food are you? What is your stripper name? Amusing? Perhaps. Creative time-wasters? Down to the last one. Here’s a quiz, however, that will actually help you with your writing process. It was constructed by a highly qualified friend of mine, Dr. Katherine Ramsland, who holds graduate degrees in clinical psychology, forensic psychology, criminal … [Read more...]

Tangled Threads or Perfect Weave: Writing a Many-Stranded Story

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My first novel had a single first person narrator throughout. It was the ideal choice, since the book was loosely based on a fairy tale in which the central character is mute for much of the story (think Jane Campion’s wonderful movie, The Piano.) First person allowed the reader into her thoughts and feelings, and meant we could walk her journey alongside her. I kept the same pattern for the rest of that series, with a different narrator in each book. I love the immersive feel of a first … [Read more...]

Editing at Your Own Pace

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Writing is usually a fairly solitary experience, except maybe when your cats walk across the keyboard and add their contribution. But the publication process can be different, especially if you want to stand out among other authors and deliver a professional manuscript that can compete with the many thousands sent to publishers and agents every year, along with all the novels by indie authors and those already on the shelves. For many writers, a major part of that professionalization is … [Read more...]

Is Writing Work?

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I'm tempted, of course, to make this the shortest Writer Unboxed post in history. ("Is writing work? Yes." Done!)Writing is work. Hard work, sometimes. Frustrating and challenging and exhausting, yes, those too, all too often. It's work because we sometimes get paid for it; it's work even when we don't. It's work because it takes genuine effort, thought, focus. It's work because it isn't play.Except, of course, when it is.Have you ever had a work in progress you love so much, it feels like play? … [Read more...]

Late to the Party: On Being a Debut Novelist at Sixty

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Please welcome Liza Nash Taylor to Writer Unboxed today! Liza was a 2018 Hawthornden International Fellow and received an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts the same year. Her work has appeared in Gargoyle Magazine; Deep South, and others. Her debut historical novel, ETIQUETTE FOR RUNAWAYS released on August 18 from Blackstone Publishing and is listed in Parade Magazine’s 30 Best Beach Reads of 2020 and Frolic’s 20 Best Books of Summer 2020 , and is the August book of the month for 50-Plus … [Read more...]

Rights Reversion: How to Give an Out-of-Print Book New Life with Self-Publishing

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I recently reached out to the Writer Unboxed Facebook Community to find out what writers want to know about independent publishing. Women’s fiction author Densie Webb replied: “The rights to my first book (with a small publisher) revert back to me in January. I’ve thought about self-publishing, but I don’t have a clue how to go about it.” Densie asked for help evaluating the decision, a simple step-by-step process for self-publishing a book, and inexpensive resources to help her navigate the … [Read more...]

What—and How Much—Belongs in Your Novel?

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“How long is too long?” The question comes up at every conference.  How long should a novel be?  It puzzles me that this anxiety persists.  We are in a literary era that tolerates length.  Game of Thrones, anyone?  Even at 292,000 words, George Martin’s first novel in his epic series is not even in the race.  Gone with the Wind is 419,00 words long.  War and Peace is 560,000.  Even those do not compare to Marienbad My Love by Mark leach, which clocks in at 17.8 million words. (To be fair, … [Read more...]