Writers in the Storm

A Writer's Guide to Managing the Inner Committee

By Sarah Sally Hamer

I have a theory about writers. Actually, I have quite a few theories about writers, but this one keeps coming back no matter how many times I wander off and chase a different explanation.

I don't think most of us are struggling with creativity nearly as much as we think we are. I think we're struggling with management. Not project management or time management, although heaven knows those can cause enough trouble on their own. I'm talking about internal management. The kind that involves trying to write a novel while sharing office space with a collection of personalities who all have opinions, none of which agree, and several are convinced they're in charge.

Some mornings I sit down at my desk feeling hopeful. The tea is exactly right (I don't do coffee). The story has been waiting patiently. There's that little flicker of anticipation that writers know so well, the feeling that maybe today will be one of those wonderful days when the words arrive on time and everybody cooperates.

Then the interns show up.

One walks in carrying a folder labeled Things We Should Still Be Ashamed Of. Another has spent the entire night creating a presentation explaining why nobody will enjoy the manuscript. A third would like to discuss a completely different book idea and sees no reason whatsoever to continue working on the project that's already halfway finished. Within a few minutes, what began as a writing session has turned into a staff meeting.

The older I get, the harder it becomes for me to believe all those metaphors about the mind being a finely-tuned machine. Maybe some people have minds that operate like elegant, well-maintained machinery. Mine feels more like a small nonprofit run by enthusiastic interns who keep losing important documents and then forming committees to search for them. Oddly enough, realizing this has made me a better writer. It's certainly made me a kinder boss, at least of myself.

Maybe It Isn't Writer's Block

Writers have a habit of taking a remarkable variety of experiences and stuffing them into the same box labeled writer's block.

But, sometimes we're stuck because we've hit a genuine story problem. Sometimes we're exhausted and trying to create from an empty tank. Sometimes life has handed us grief, uncertainty, stress, illness, change, or one of those seasons where simply being a human being is using up most of our available energy. Sometimes we're afraid of failure. Sometimes we're afraid of success, which sounds ridiculous until it happens to you and suddenly makes perfect sense. The strange thing is that all of those experiences feel remarkably similar when you're sitting in front of a manuscript. The words seem farther away than they did last week. The pages feel heavier. The work that once felt exciting begins feeling strangely difficult.

For years, I automatically blamed the manuscript. It was sitting there in front of me, so naturally it became the prime suspect. Over time, though, I've become less convinced that the manuscript is always guilty.

These days I'm more likely to ask myself what kind of stuck this is. Am I confused? Tired? Discouraged? Afraid? Have I lost the thread of the story? Or have I lost the thread of myself? I've noticed that question usually leads somewhere useful. The answer isn't always comfortable, but it's almost always more interesting than simply declaring that I've lost my creativity.

Welcome to the Writing Committee Meeting

One of the great surprises of adulthood is discovering that nobody ever arrives at the perfection we thought we'd find.

When we're children, we imagine grown-ups eventually reaching a place where everything makes sense. Maybe not perfection exactly, but some magical destination where confidence appears, self-doubt disappears, and decisions become easy. Then we become adults ourselves and realize most people are still figuring things out. They've simply gotten better at looking calm while doing it.

Writing exposes this reality because it forces us to spend enough time alone with our own thoughts to actually hear them. And what we discover is that there isn't one voice running the show.

There are many.

Some parts of us want adventure. Some want security. One part wants to send the manuscript out into the world tomorrow. Another thinks hiding it under the bed forever sounds like an excellent plan. What fascinates me is that most of these voices aren't trying to sabotage us. Nearly all of them believe they're helping. The conflict comes from the fact that they're trying to solve different problems.

The growth department is endlessly optimistic. It keeps pointing toward possibility and saying things like, "Look at that. Let's go see what happens." The safety department finds this deeply irresponsible. It would like a detailed plan, three backup plans, a guarantee of success, and preferably a signed statement from the universe before moving forward.

So, let's meet a few of the staff

Let's start with Anxiety.

Poor Anxiety. The older I get, the harder it becomes to stay angry with her. She's exhausting, certainly. She's dramatic. She tends to treat a difficult review and a charging rhinoceros as roughly equivalent situations. But she's also sincere.

Her whole job is protection. The trouble is that evolution trained her for predators, not publishing. Once I started paying attention, I realized she wasn't trying to ruin my writing life. She was trying to protect something she believed was precious. The problem wasn't her intentions. The problem was her inability to distinguish between danger and discomfort. The older I get, the more I realize how often I make that same mistake.

Then there's the Inner Critic, who somehow promoted himself into management without consulting anyone else first. The irritating thing is that he's actually useful. He notices weaknesses. He catches mistakes. He spots problems that might otherwise slip through unnoticed. During revisions, he's worth his weight in gold. During a first draft, however, he's like a building inspector showing up while the foundation is still being poured. Everything he says may eventually matter, but it's too early. The ideas are still becoming what they're meant to become.

Creativity is another story entirely. She doesn't believe in calendars. She vanishes without warning and reappears while you're folding laundry with the exact answer you've been looking for all week. And for reasons I've never fully understood, she seems to enjoy arriving immediately after you've decided the solution probably doesn't exist.

I suspect she finds this funny.

The Three Writing Departments

For years I assumed every writing struggle belonged to the Mind Department. If the work wasn't flowing, then clearly I needed another craft book, another class, another productivity tool, another way to organize my notes.

Then I started noticing a pattern.

Not every problem was a craft problem. Some problems belonged to the Body Department. Some belonged to the Soul Department.

The Body Department handles sleep, energy, stress, movement, hormones, nourishment, and all the practical realities that come with living inside a physical body.

The Mind Department handles focus, learning, interpretation, storytelling, and craft.

The Soul Department asks deeper questions. Why does this story matter? Why am I writing it? What truth am I trying to understand? What am I really searching for here?

I've watched writers spend months trying to fix what they believed was a craft issue when they were actually exhausted. I've watched people chase increasingly sophisticated productivity systems when what they'd really lost was their connection to the work itself. I've done both. Usually with great confidence.

The department matters because the solution matters.

A tired body doesn't necessarily need motivation. A discouraged soul doesn't necessarily need a better calendar. And a confused mind usually doesn't need more criticism.

Living Inside the Triangle

Many of you know I love the Triangle of Structure: the Inciting Incident, the Reversal, and the Black Moment.

I believe that writers (and other humans) live inside that triangle just as much as our stories do.

In the "Wizard of Oz," Dorothy's Inciting Incident arrives when the tornado carries her away from Kansas and drops her into a completely different world. But sometimes the Inciting Incident isn't dramatic at all. It might be the day your child leaves home, the end of a relationship, or simply the realization that something in your life no longer fits. An idea keeps tugging at your sleeve until you finally stop long enough to listen. Before long you're rearranging your life to find out where that question leads.

Following Dorothy again, the Reversal is when she believes that the Wizard is the answer to all her problems. But her entire world view collapses when the Wizard refuses to help her without a payment that may kill her. At this point in the story, she can't rely on a magnanimous father-like figure to fix her. She has to do the work herself. Our personal reversals arrive when the thing we thought we were chasing turns out not to be the thing we needed at all or that we have to take responsibility for our choices. Suddenly the story changes direction, and so do we. That's when the work gets deeper. And stranger.

Eventually we arrive at the Black Moment. For Dorothy, it's when she achieves the goal of acquiring the broom after a terrifying adventure and finds the Wizard is a fake. Her confidence and faith packs a suitcase and leaves town because her choices create the way her life continues. For us, the rejection letters keep coming. The manuscript looks like junk. Gardening starts looking like a respectable career choice. Our choice at this point can also be life-changing. Do we really want to write? Is it worth going on or should we really bury our computer?

What intrigues me is how quickly writers assume this means they've failed. Every meaningful story reaches a place where the old answers stop working. Every protagonist eventually finds themselves standing in uncertainty, unable to go backward and unsure how to move forward.

Why would writers be any different? What if the Black Moment isn't proof that we've gone off course? What if it's proof that we've finally gone deep enough? And, ultimately, what will we choose?

(If you'd like to read more about the Triangle Structure, click here.)

Learning to Lead the Writing Meeting

For a long time, I treated difficult thoughts as enemies. My goal was to eliminate fear, uncertainty, vulnerability, and doubt. If those troublesome employees would simply stop talking, surely everything would run more smoothly. So, when the mischievous interns showed up, I argued with them instead of finding answers.

These days I'm much more interested in leadership than warfare. I've stopped treating every thought as an instruction and every fear as a prophecy. Most of them are just information. Useful information sometimes, but information nevertheless.

Anxiety doesn't need to become CEO. The Inner Critic doesn't need to attend every meeting. Creativity doesn't need to explain where she's been every time she disappears.

The goal isn't silence.

The goal is cooperation.

Tomorrow you'll sit down to write, and the committee will probably be waiting. They'll bring worries, hopes, distractions, opinions, old stories, and maybe one genuinely brilliant idea buried beneath a mountain of unnecessary paperwork.

That doesn't mean you're broken. It means you're human.

And maybe writing has never really been about imposing perfect order on chaos. Maybe it's about helping a room full of mischievous interns create something beautiful together.

If you'd like to continue exploring this subject, click below.

https://youtu.be/QILpzIN-Ots

So I'm curious: if your writing brain really is a room full of mischievous interns, who's currently running the meeting? And what might happen if, instead of trying to silence them, you got curious about what they're trying so hard to say?

More on Sarah Sally

Sarah (Sally) Hamer is a lover of books, a teacher of writers, and a believer in a good story. Most of all, she is eternally fascinated by people and how they 'tick'. She’s passionate about helping people tell their own stories, whether through fiction or through memoir. Writing in many genres - mystery, science fiction, fantasy, romance, medieval history, non-fiction – she has won awards at both local and national levels, including two RWA Golden Heart finals.

A teacher of memoir, beginning and advanced creative fiction writing, and screenwriting at Louisiana State University in Shreveport for over twenty years, she also teaches online at both margielawson.com and nostresswriting.com and blogs for writersinthestormblog.com/ and thewriteconversation.blogspot.com. Sally is a free-lance editor and book coach at Mind Potential, with many of her students and clients becoming successful, award-winning authors. 

You can find her at sally@mindpotential.org

Image Credits: All AI-generated images in this article were created using Microsoft Copilot.

By Jenn Windrow

When it comes to writing, what counts as being productive?

The act of writing involves a lot of numbers. Word count. Page count. Chapter count. Hours logged. We track the above because they are definitive proof that we wrote. Five hundred words feels productive. Two thousand words feels impressive. Zero words feels like failure.

Lately, as I am finishing up a novel, I find myself spending more time on research or staring out the window searching for the right word. I know I sat at my desk all day. I know that my MS has been open in front of me, but on those days that I don’t add as many words as I would like, I do feel like a failure.

But I have to remind myself that some of the most important work I do on a story happens when I’m not typing at all.

It happens when I’m driving, walking through the house, folding laundry, staring at the ceiling, or doing something completely unrelated while one stubborn part of my brain refuses to stop picking at a problem.

The words may not be appearing on the page, but I’m still thinking about my plot, characters, structure, and plot holes. That kind of progress is harder to measure, so, we usually don’t count it.

The Problem With Word Counts

There is nothing wrong with tracking word counts. It can be motivating, create consistency, and help a writer see momentum over time. And honestly, it is how most books are measured, so it is important.

But for me, it can also be paralyzing.

When I know my end goal word count, and I am getting close to typing every writer’s favorite words “the end,” and I am shy 10k words, I start to panic. I worry about how I am going to make up the deficit. And then I spiral and lose focus and freeze up. Then I am not adding any words, and I spiral even more.

That is the world I have been living in the past couple of weeks.

I could just add words to my MS to make myself feel productive, but throwing words at the page doesn’t fix structure or cadence or character motivation. Sometimes we write around the issue because producing words feels better than admitting the story is not working.

I have had days when I wrote pages that later had to be removed because I was forcing the story forward instead of stopping to understand what had gone wrong.

I have also had days when I wrote almost nothing but finally understood why a scene felt flat.

Guess which day helped the book more.

Not All Writing Leaves Words Behind

A character’s motivation finally clicks. A plot problem solves itself while you are making dinner. You realize the argument in Chapter Twelve is not about what the characters are saying. It is about what neither of them is willing to admit. You decide two scenes should become one. You recognize that the side character you created for one chapter is carrying the emotional heart of the book. You discover the ending you planned no longer belongs to the story you wrote.

Instead of adding more words that day, you sit and work through the questions, find the answers, and strengthen your story. None of that adds to your word count. But all of it is writing.

We often treat these moments like happy accidents, but they are part of the process. Our brains continue working on story problems long after we step away from the keyboard. All of this is productive, even if you are not adding words to the page.

Sometimes distance is not avoidance. Sometimes distance is where the answer lives.

Deleting Can Be Productive

One of the strangest things about writing is that progress can look like subtraction. You can spend three days writing a chapter and one hour realizing the book is better without it.

The tracker says you lost words. I'll admit it. I hate deleting words. Even after years as an author and developmental editor, watching my word count drop makes my stomach knot. It's irrational. I know the story is better. But it still feels like I've lost something. It causes a kind of anxiety that is hard for me to explain, because if I am being honest, it is not rational to mourn the loss of words in a novel.

But deleting is not always a setback. Rewriting is not always wasted time. Starting over is not proof that you failed. Sometimes the work did exactly what it needed to do. It showed you the wrong road.

Writers often talk about killing their darlings, but we rarely talk about the guilt that follows. We see the lower word count. We see the empty space. We see the hours that no longer exist on the page.

And we feel defeated.

But all my time as a developmental editor, countless hours spent reading through MS’s that are not mine, have taught me that not all words belong in the story. There are times I suggest pulling out pages of words, and I feel guilty when I do because I know how hard it is to hit delete.

Thinking Is Part of the Job

Writers are not very good at giving ourselves credit for thinking. Thinking looks suspiciously like doing nothing. There is no document to save. No box to check. No daily total to post. You can spend an hour staring at one scene and feel less productive than someone who wrote two thousand words.

But creative work is not linear.

Sometimes a fast-drafting day is possible because of three slow days that came before it. Sometimes the chapter pours out because your brain has already been writing it quietly in the background.

The visible work gets the credit. The invisible work made it possible.

But I have learned that hours of research, to make sure that the story is accurate is a much better use of my time than writing without the research and having to change it all later.

The Days That Look Unproductive

I have had writing days where I barely touched the manuscript. Instead, I asked questions. Why would this character make that choice? What is she afraid will happen if she tells the truth? Why does this scene exist? What changes because of it? What am I avoiding?

Those questions do not always produce immediate answers. They do, however, expose weak foundations. That matters.

A writer can generate a lot of words on top of a bad decision. The pages may look productive while the story becomes harder to fix. In the end the words need to be changed or deleted, and there goes your word count again.

Stopping can be the smarter choice.

Productive Does Not Always Mean Comfortable

Sometimes the least satisfying writing day is the one that moves the story forward the most. There is no thrill in realizing your opening chapter is wrong. There is no dopamine rush in cutting a scene you love. There is no impressive number attached to discovering that your protagonist has been making choices for the convenience of the plot.

But those realizations are valuable. They require honesty. They also require a different definition of progress. That kind of progress makes it easier to have a fantastic, word-adding writing day after because you have spent the time to figure out the foundation before you build it.

A Better Question

At the end of a writing day, I am trying to stop asking only one question: How many words did I write?

Instead, I want to ask:

• Did I understand the story better?
• Did I solve something?
• Did I recognize what was not working?
• Did I make a decision that will strengthen the next chapter?
• Did I move closer to the book I am actually trying to write?

Some days the answer will come with two thousand new words. Some days it will come with fifty. Some days it will come with a deleted chapter, a page of notes, or one sentence scribbled in the middle of the night.

That still counts.

Because words are evidence of writing. They are not the only form of it. So, before you call it a bad writing day, look beyond the number. You may have done more work than you think. And I am sure most of it was productive.

And while I finish this novel, I am going to try and practice what I preach.

What is the most productive writing day you have had that produced almost no words?

About Jenn Windrow

Jenn Windrow once attempted to write a “normal” book—and promptly bored herself into a coma. So now she sticks to what she does best: writing snarky, kick-butt heroines, broody supernatural men, and more sexual tension than a vampire in a blood bank.

She’s the award-winning author of the Alexis Black novels and the Redeeming Cupid series, where the undead never sparkle and the drama is always delicious. Jenn moonlights as a developmental editor, helping other writers wrangle their wild plots and tangle-free prose.

When not arguing with her characters or muttering about Oxford commas, she can be found binge-watching trash TV, wrangling the slew of animals that live in her house (husband and teenagers included), or telling herself she’ll only have one more cookie.

You can find her at jennwindrow.com or lurking on social media where she pretends to be an extrovert.

Photo by Linus Belanger on Unsplash

Zooming in on Zones 2 & 3 of Story Structure: Plenty of Antagonists and Action

by Lisa Miller

The beginning and ending of stories are essential to enticing readers into our stories and making them want to seek out more from that author.

But I love playing with the middle two zones of a story. They do so much work and provide plenty of entertainment.

What Causes the Response in Zone 2?

Something had to have happened at the end of a story’s Zone 1 for our protagonist to have a response in Zone 2.

That something is the 1^st Plot Point.

One of the most famous 1^st Plot Points comes in The Wizard of Oz movie.

Dorothy’s house has crashed down in Oz and killed the Wicked Witch of the East. The original film literally goes from a black and white Zone 1 into a brightly colored Zone 2.

As a kid, I was mesmerized when Dorothy opens the door to this beautiful, strange world of good and bad witches and Munchkins.

A Second Powerful Shift Takes a Very Different Story Into Zone 3

Ballard is a spin-off from Michael Connelly’s Bosch books and TV series.

In the Ballard TV series, Renee Ballard is an LAPD Robbery Homicide Detective now heading up the RHD Cold Case unit.

I was just loving the show, not thinking about story structure or Landmarks. Then the end of episode 5 came and BAMM. The obvious Midpoint of the story had just been revealed.

The cold case team opens a storage unit to find 14 shoe boxes on metal shelves. Each box has a trophy from the victim of a serial killer they are looking for. One is a bracelet with a cold case victim’s name that they know about. But now there are 13 other victims they must identify.

It was also a visual parallel to the Cold Case unit itself. All those metal shelves with boxes of unsolved murders.

This Midpoint Landmark shifts the Zone 2 Reaction portion of Ballard’s story into the Action of Zone 3. With all this new evidence the team is energized to identify the clues and victims. It’s possible the killer is still active, so there’s no time to waste. Action!

It was so powerful; I knew I had to take a deeper dive into the series.

That’s one way you know the story structure and the Landmarks are effective.

What Ballard’s Story is About?

To make sure my students and I have a clear picture of what their story is, they must create a Story Plotline.

Your one sentence Safari Plotline is going to include:

• PROTAGONIST (Who)
• STORY GOAL (What)
• MOTIVATION (Why)
• KEY CONFLICT (Why not)
• ACTION (How)

The protagonist has a goal, because something is personally at stake if she doesn’t achieve it, but something blocks her path, and so she’s forced to take action.

Ballard Plotline:

Protagonist (Who): Detective Renee Ballard

Story Goal (What): Needs to make a success of the new LAPD Cold Case unit she’s been put in charge of.

Motivation (Why): Because if she doesn’t, she will have to leave the LAPD disgraced.

Key Conflict: (Why not): But her dismissed sexual assault complaint against popular Detective Robert Olivas leaves her few allies and little support within the LAPD. Also, a group of dirty cops don’t want past bad deeds uncovered as any of those cold cases are being worked on.

Action (How): And So, Ballard must mold her new unit, made up of volunteers and reserve officers, into a cohesive team. They must learn how to work together to identify a serial killer/rapist while solving other crimes.

Ballard’s Zone 2: Reaction

The 1^st Plot Point, which takes us into Zone 2, happens at the end of episode 2.

Cold Case member Samira Parker, a former LAPD cop who originally worked on the John Doe cold case and comes into the unit, discovers that the bullet that killed the victim is missing from evidence. Likely a cover up within the police.

So, Zone 2 begins with an awareness that dirty cops are likely working against the Cold Cast unit’s success. Any of the team’s discoveries threaten to expose members of the dirty cop ring.  It’s that twist that drives the rest of the story’s Zones. Not only must Ballard and her team be careful of the bad guys, but they also must keep looking over their shoulder for cops who may be working against them.

The 1^st Pinch-Point is around the middle of Zone 2.

The 1^st Pinch Point is a place in the story where the antagonist(s) are more visible and gaining power. It usually occurs around the middle of Zone 2. In a police procedural, it’s important to get those bad guys woven into the story early.

One of the main functions of Zone 2 is to challenge the protagonist, lower their resistance to change.

Dirty ex-cop Driscoll has arranged for one of his allies, Manny, a handsome, young cop, to get close to Martina. She’s the youngest and likely most susceptible to divulging sensitive information from the work they are doing.

Manny shows up at Martina’s favorite bar and flirts with her. This puts not only Martina but the entire unit in danger if information is leaked to the bad guys.

The 2^nd Pinch Point in Zone 3

Zone 3 is another place for the Antagonist, Antagonistic Force and Obstacles to challenge Ballard and her team.

Ballard wakes up to an assailant strangling her. She fights back and, in the struggle, Ballard crushes his windpipe. She survives. But this attack on her causes her superiors to doubt the unit can continue working on the two important cases they’ve been assigned. These cases are taken away to the Robbery Homicide unit. So not only has the bad guy seriously injured Ballard, their bosses, in the LAPD, have taken away the work they valued.

This moves the story towards its lowest All Is Lost Moment. The team feels defeated and so must find a new purpose and another case to work on.

This is the work of Zone 4 Resolution.

Zones 2 and 3 Challenge the Protagonist

The job of Zone 2 is to wear down and exhaust the Protagonist so their resistance to change is at its lowest point. They are no longer reacting but now willing to act. Take that Leap of Faith into action in Zone 3.

The purpose of Zone 3 is to challenge the Protagonist with a stronger Antagonist and making the Protagonist again resistant to the changes they must make.

Those experiences bring the Protagonist to Zone 4 and finding a Resolution.

Look at Your Own Work, Pick up a novel, or Watch a Favorite Movie or Show
Have you seen or used a Plot Point, Pinch Point, or Midpoint that you think was powerful or effective?

Want to learn more? Story Structure Safari will be live at No Stress Writing Academy in September.

About Lisa

Lisa taught middle-school science and was a certified counselor in Texas for 30 years. Her passion for teaching met her love of writing. After not finding the writing classes she needed, Lisa spent several years on a deep study of story structure. That led her to create a powerful and well-loved online course Story Structure Safari.

She has joined the staff at Deleyna Marr’s No Stress Writing Academy  where she is developing new classes. Her Creating A Constellation of Characters is available there January and June 2027. Story Structure Safari runs every September and April. The next Safari is September 2026.

Top image from Unsplash.