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About Liz Michalski

Liz Michalski's first novel, Evenfall, was published by Berkley Books (Penguin). Liz has been a reporter, an editor, and a freelance writer. In her previous life, she wrangled with ill-tempered horses and oversized show dogs. These days she's downsized to one husband, two children and a medium-sized mutt.

Recent Posts by this author:

  • The Waiting is (One of) the Hardest Part(s)
  • How to Create Readers (And Read More Yourself)
  • Finding Your Best Beta
  • Losing the Word Weight — How to Put Your Manuscript on a Diet
  • Living in the White Space
  • Unravelling The Ribbons of Your Story
  • That Crazy Friend
  • KAPOW!  Cutting Scenes Like a Superhero
  • The Magic Trick to Landing an Agent at a Conference (Hint: There’s No Magic Involved)
  • What Are You Doing to Improve?
  • Make Your Setting More than Pretty Scenery
  • Writer, Author, or Storyteller?

    • The Waiting is (One of) the Hardest Part(s)

    By

    photo by Damian Gadal
    photo by Damian Gadal

    Writing may be the business of words, but it is also the business of waiting.  Whether you are crafting your first manuscript or polishing your third best-seller, there’s some purgatory involved.  You wait for your beta readers to get back to you.  You wait for an agent to discover your manuscript.  You wait for blurbs from other writers.  You wait for an editor to decide whether to publish you.  You wait to see what changes will be required.  You wait, you wait, and then you wait some more.

    If you are like me, all this waiting creates some serious anxiety.   It’s tempting to moan to my husband, kids, and friends, and I definitely do that at times.  It’s also tempting to hang out on the couch, watching reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, binging on chocolate and popcorn and spiraling into a ‘they love it!/they hate it!’ cycle.  But the waiting stage can go on for weeks or months, and that’s an awful lot of moaning and popcorn.  Here are a few more productive ways I’ve found to spend the time.

    Take a break.  I’ve written about this before.  My writing mind needs a chance to rest and recover, a chance to hum quietly in the background, making connections and discovering new material and ideas without being forced to commit them to paper.  That way, when I do return to writing, I have a fresh well from which to draw.

    FYI:  By taking a break I don’t just mean avoid starting new work.  Don’t mess with your current manuscript either.  Opening the file, reading a few lines, closing it in elation or horror — “It’s so good!  I’m so glad I sent it!”  “It’s awful!  What was I thinking?” — that way lies madness.   You’ve either made it as good as it can be before other eyes see it, or you haven’t.  Either way, leave it alone for now. [Read more…]

    How to Create Readers (And Read More Yourself)

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    A few weeks ago, my husband and I put the kids to bed early.  Both were overtired, and we gave them strict instructions:   Lights out, no talking, straight to sleep. Much later, when we went upstairs to check on them, we found tell-tale evidence they’d disobeyed.  Each kid had fallen asleep with a flashlight on […]

    Finding Your Best Beta

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    One of the toughest challenges I faced when I first started writing fiction was finding someone to honestly assess my work.  I didn’t know very many people who were fiction writers, and I had no idea where to begin.  At the same time, I knew I’d taken my story as far as I could on […]

    Losing the Word Weight — How to Put Your Manuscript on a Diet

    By

    When I finished my manuscript for my second novel, it clocked in at 160,000 words. Pretty impressive, huh?  Double the word count of my first novel.  A little long, maybe, but hey, J.K. Rowling has a few novels out that approach the 200,000 mark.  And it had taken me several years to string them all […]

    Living in the White Space

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    As writers, we tend to focus so much on the words we sometimes forget it’s the white space on the page that makes them visible.   Without that expanse, the words would disappear.  It’s the same thing with life — struggling to write, to get published, can become our only focus, but it’s the experience […]

    Unravelling The Ribbons of Your Story

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    I’m a slow writer.  I tend to live with a story for a long time before putting it on paper, and I’ll read, reread, and re-re-reread chapters multiple times before moving on to the next section.  The problem is, all that familiarity can lead to … too much familiarity.  It’s hard to edit and revise […]

    That Crazy Friend

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    I have this GREAT story I want to tell you about, and … Oh darn. Can you hold on for a second?  Okay, I’m back.  Where were we?  Right.  This GREAT story.  It has this amazing plot and you won’t believe… whoops.  Sorry.  Gotta go again. I’ll be right back. Here I am. Sorry about […]

    KAPOW!  Cutting Scenes Like a Superhero

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    There’s a scene in my novel-in-progress that I absolutely love. It has magic, romance, and the flavor of a fairy tale — everything I’ve tried to accomplish in this book. When I reread it, I don’t get that ‘Oh good God, who am I kidding” feeling that comes from most of my draft work.  I’ve […]

    The Magic Trick to Landing an Agent at a Conference (Hint: There’s No Magic Involved)

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    You’ve revised your manuscript, sent it out to beta readers, revised again, and now it’s cards on the table time. You’re bringing your book to that fancy conference that’s coming up and shelling out the cash for a session with an agent.  But how do you make the most of your 15 minutes of professional […]

    What Are You Doing to Improve?

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    After eight years off, I recently resumed riding horses.  I’m still relatively proficient — I can walk, trot, canter, pop over small jumps, and perform some simple dressage moves.  I’ll never ride in the Olympics, probably never even compete locally again, so my skill set is fine for my needs. Yet, I’m taking a weekly […]

    Make Your Setting More than Pretty Scenery

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    A long time ago a friend and I took a writing class with a well-known author. She asked us to write the first page of a story, which my friend and I did. Then she asked us to change the tense — if it was past, make it present, or vice versa.  No problem. Then […]

    Writer, Author, or Storyteller?

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    I am a storyteller. I play many other roles as well  — wife, mother, sister, daughter. Half-hearted runner. Avid reader. Volunteer. But I was a storyteller before almost anything else. The form my stories take hasn’t always stayed the same, but the telling part has remained true. When I was little, before I could write, […]