Writers in the Storm

by Jenny Hansen

I dream of being an organized person. Heck, I'd settle for being an organized writer. Fortunately for me, I married my organization gene, and he's a keeper! But every year, as December goes into full swing and I'm hip-deep in wrangling the family holidays, I dream of being more organized.

And before all you Planner Unicorns start eagerly reaching for your Pomodoros, I've tried to be one of you. And I have failed. I lose the planners, the cute stickers, the schedules, and the list of resolutions...and it makes me feel like a failure.

I've had a bit more luck using technology to corral my ADD tendencies because my computer files are completely organized. Those suckers are pristine and on OneDrive where I can get them from anywhere, which I find very comforting. Also, Google calendar puts reminders right in my face, from both my phone and my computer, which means I actually remember my meetings and get to them on time.

I love technology.

Fun Tangent: here are some great posts from some of the bloggers at WITS on using technology to increase writing productivity:

• Scrivener and Plottr for Outlining by Kris Maze
• Tools of the Trade to Supercharge Your Writing by Lisa Norman

What Holiday Disorder Looks Like at My House

All my organized friends are about to cringe and peek at these next paragraphs through their fingers. (Sorry in advance!) But this post is about providing comfort to the rest of the readers here. The ones who often feel overwhelmed by life and responsibilities. The ones who jot down book notes on their utility bill envelopes because they can't remember where they put that notebook. The ones who read the paragraph below about my garage and send me a virtual fist bump.

If you often feel like you'd lose your head if it wasn't attached, this section is for YOU. Hopefully, it will help you realize you are not alone.

My Disorganization Gene has a sub-category I'm reminded of every holiday season.

That's when I lament that I am also in possession of the Stuff Disorder gene and the Oh-I-Forgot-I-Had-That gene. Thankfully, I married my husband, aka Mr. Disaster Recovery, and he passed the Supreme Organization gene on to my daughter.

Around the holidays, I depend on my hubby like a blind woman on her guide dog. I thank God for him all the time, but over the holidays — I’m just gonna say it — he saves my bacon every year.

Holiday time shines a strobe light on this not-so-secret shame of mine...

I suck at keeping my stuff organized.

For example, when my husband we unpacked the Christmas stuff from the garage, I found scads of things I’d forgotten about:

• Cards I meant to send last year.
• Presents (including calendars) that were for 2017/2018 not this year.
• 27 boxes of Christmas cards
• 11 stockings (there are three of us)
• 19 rolls of wrapping paper
• 6 things of tissue paper (the jumbo kind)
• 2 jumbo packs of Scotch tape
• And NO blinky lights for outside (because we missed that after-holiday sale last year).

Hello? I’ve got enough Christmas cards for the entire block. Literally, all of my family and friends (and their friends) could come to my house to wrap their holiday gifts. And when I'm pressed for time, I end up using gift bags anyway (which is why the graphic at the top says "wrap a present").

True Confessions

I’d be crushed by my mess if I hadn’t married the King of Organization.

Confession #1

I’ve stopped trying to get my cards out at Thanksgiving or Christmas. Nowadays, we just order New Year’s Cards. (In really bad years, they’re called Valentines… One really terrible year, I had St. Patrick’s day “hellos.”)

Confession #2

Most of the time I buy the cards and presents on time, forget where I put them, and have to spend valuable time digging them out. Sometimes I've had to re-shop. One year, for my Baby Girl’s birthday party, my husband asked if I would consider just wrapping and labeling everyone’s unsent presents and putting them on a table by the door so they could TAKE THEM HOME.

Confession #3

I have started combating this organizational deadlock by mailing gifts through the Fall, or even the moment I buy them. I label the package with an “open date.” I comfort myself with the thought that even if these gifts miss the proper occasion, at least it wasn’t because I was a slack-a$$.

On the upside, I started making many of my gifts these last few years. When I'm not buried under deadlines, I bake, paint, create and knit my way through the holiday season. It gives me joy and my gifts have that personal touch of love, even when they’re not usually timely.

Something else I'm thankful for as I come skidding into the New Year all battered and bruised: I have two organized friends who share their Organizational Rockstar gene with me as holiday and birthday gifts most years. They help me start the New Year feeling hopeful that maybe this year I can be more organized.

My Holiday Writing Dreams

I not only dream of being an organized person, I also dream of being an organized writer. I have pals like Laura Drake who finish their shopping by the Fall and write all their books in a lovely linear fashion. She gets up every day at about 3 am to write for several hours. Honestly, I'd hate her if she wasn't one of my fave peeps.

In my organized writer dreams, my life looks far different:

• I have a set writing time every day.
• I have an actual office space. With a desk and a big storyboard of my current works in progress.
• I have an organized wall calendar.
• I know where my planner is! And it has cute stickers in it.
• I have an assistant who herds me along toward my goals. And mails packages.

Because let's face it, without the last item on the list, I'd either forget about all these goals for weeks at a time, or I'd keep moving along in the same fits and starts that plague me now. And for sure, I wouldn't have that cool wall calendar.

I'm blessed with lots of superpowers - I couldn't be successful at my job or running WITS without them - but being organized isn't one of them. On the upside, I've already made the almond roca this year.

Confession time! Did you inherit the Stuff Disorder gene or the Supreme Organization gene? Are you shuddering right now or nodding your head in agreement? Do the holidays shine their twinkly lights on your greatest strengths or your greatest weaknesses? Please tell me your story down in the comments!

About Jenny

By day, Jenny Hansen provides corporate communications and LinkedIn advice for professional services firms. By night she writes humor, memoir, women’s fiction, and short stories. After 20 years as a corporate trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.

When she’s not at her personal blog, More Cowbell, Jenny can be found on Facebook at JennyHansenAuthor or at Writers In The Storm.

by Piper Bayard

It's December, which is known to writers as the month after National Novel Writing Month. The intensity of the push is over. We blink and search around like the lights just came up in the bar. Or maybe our expressions are more like that look a cat gets when a kid puts a paper bag over it for a few seconds and then pops it off again. We gaze about in a bit of confusion and relief and wonder what the heck just happened. More importantly, we wonder what happens next.

First, if you won NaNoWriMo by making it to the 50k line, congratulations! Woot! Woot! Give yourself a pat on the back. Now get back to work on word 50,001.

If you started writing but fell short of 50k because life is what happens when we’re making plans, congratulations! Yay! Give yourself a pat on the back. You’re further than you were. Now get back to work and finish your manuscript.

If you started writing and fizzled out, congratulations! Pat yourself on the back. You tried. Now open up what you started and get back to work.

"Get back to work" is the theme.

That’s because “winning” NaNoWriMo is not about reaching 50k. Though that’s quite an accomplishment, and it definitely earns the right to wear the t-shirt, it is not the end. It is only the beginning.

NaNoWriMo is not about word count. It is about focusing our choices and behaviors long enough to develop new habits. That's because if we ask any professional author if they are doing Nanowrimo in November, they will tell you that every month is NaNoWriMo. We win far more than the t-shirt and bragging rights when we use the discipline needed for NaNoWriMo as a tool to direct our energies toward reaching further goals.

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So what are those writing goals?

To answer that question, we have to know why we write. For a few of us, it’s because therapy is too expensive. For others of us, it’s to leave behind our stories for our children and grandchildren. For some of us, it is to become the next James Rollins, J.K. Rowling, or Diana Gabaldon. Whatever the reason we write, we need to be honest with ourselves about our goals in order to know what comes next.

For those of us who are writing for therapy or to leave our stories behind as a piece of history, our journey can continue at a leisurely pace, with or without editing, agents, publishers, or tackling the learning curve of self-publishing. Such endeavors can come with deep fulfillment and leave messages that could enlighten our future generations.

For those of us who dream of book tours, movie deals, and big fat checks, our journey requires more discipline. Part of that is resisting the temptation to stare at those Nanowrimo manuscripts and admire them.

NaNo writers and/or new writers often want to coddle their manuscripts and possibly tweak them. Then offer them to all of our family and friends, as if we were showing off our baby.

We might think something like "was there ever a more beautiful baby?"

Well....yes. There was.

The most beautiful baby awards go to the baby that got edited, rewritten, edited, rewritten, proofread, edited, rewritten, sent to an agent, edited again, and sold. So the first thing we must do after NaNoWriMo is get over the “baby” idea. Most of us don’t sell our babies on Amazon.

 Cold, Hard Writing Fact

Writing may be an art, but publishing is a business. It’s a beautiful world when our art is in harmony with the demands of business. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn’t. How we adjust to that fact of life is where we each find our own way.

Regardless of how the art stars align with the earthy nature of business, the process of getting our novels ready for publication requires certain elements.

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10 Steps Between NaNoWriMo (aka Draft #1) and Publication

1. A great book starts with rest.

Unless we actually have an agent or editor chomping at the bit for the manuscript, we should let our NaNoWriMo baby sit for a bit while we write more books. At a bare minimum, we should wait two weeks.

It’s excruciating but so necessary. That’s because working on a manuscript is like driving across the country. If we don’t blink and change our focus from the road to the landscape at times, our minds zone out, and our vision gets blurry. When we stare at a manuscript too long, like the road, we stop seeing it. So we need to change focus, and that includes making our friends, relatives, and beta readers wait until after the next step. It’s agonizing, but it pays off in the long run.

2. Read the manuscript through again and edit it.

It’s not right to ask others to read our work when we haven’t even read it through ourselves. And done a thorough spelling and grammar check.

3. Bring on the Betas

When we are confident that the manuscript is the best it can be without external input, it’s time to send it to beta readers.

When the beta readers send it back, no matter what they say, the only appropriate response is to thank them for their time and efforts. Never argue about their comments. Remember that their purpose is not to give us strokes and affirmation, it is to ferret out the holes in our plots and prose that readers on the open market will find with a vengeance.

4. Evaluate our feedback.

Evaluate beta reader feedback with an open mind and weigh it carefully. If we disagree with an isolated criticism, that’s fine. We move on. However, if more than one person says the same thing, it’s worth deeper consideration, even if we disagree.

Ultimately, we are the masters of our own pages, but part of that mastery is subduing our egos for the sake of creating a great story.

5. The Second Edit

Edit again based on beta reader feedback and polish the manuscript until the sun reflecting off of it could drive airplanes off course.

6. Expanding The Circle

At this point, we need to call in the professionals. For self-publishing or indie publishing, we need an excellent editor for a substantive edit and a line edit. The good ones cost, but they are often worth every penny, as their feedback is invaluable and usually applicable to future projects.

One good way to find someone is to ask around. However, we shouldn't hire a personal friend unless that friend is a professional editor with an excellent reputation—someone willing to slaughter all of our little darlings and make our novel presentable to the public at large. Someone who shows no mercy. Friendship is friendship, and business is business.

For traditional publishing, it's still a good idea to hire an editor, even though an agent and many more editors will give their input during the journey to publication. No agent wants to read unedited work.

7. Rewrite the content of the manuscript again based on the recommendations of the professional editor.

8. Send the manuscript back for the final line edit.

Make sure the editor uses the Chicago Manual of Style or some other equally acceptable authority. A good line editor will cite the rule for every change they make. It's tempting to punctuate from the heart, but it's not good practice.

9. Clean up the manuscript after the line edit.

10. Enter the publication channels.

If self-publishing, we need people to do the cover, the layout, the uploads, the marketing, etc., or learn to do it all or in part on our own. This is no small time investment, but the knowledge can be emancipating.

If going traditional, we must send out those query letters. That's letters, plural. It is our right to query as many agents as we like. It’s up to them to give us a timely response. We would die staring at our mailboxes while waiting for some of them to reply, and many of them never will.

Even if an agent has requested our full, unless they have specifically asked for an exclusive, and we have specifically agreed to it, we are under no obligation to give it. It is, however, professional courtesy to keep them updated if we should sign with someone else.

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The Most Important Next Step

Get back to work. Write another book. It can take a long time to land an agent, and publishers can be even slower. Don’t wait. Move on, because for every writer, ultimately, it is not about 50k in a month. It is not about whether we are published this week or ten years from now, or whether we self-publish or go traditional.

At the end of the day, it is only about ourselves and the page. That is the bond that keeps bringing us back. We may start writing in November, but we keep doing it every month because it’s who we are.

Good luck to each of you, and may your muses be generous!

Do you take all ten steps on your own road to publication? Do you add in other steps, or leave some out? We'd love to hear those answers down in the comments!

About Piper

Piper Bayard is an author and a recovering attorney with a college degree or two. She is also a belly dancer and a former hospice volunteer. She has been working daily with her good friend Jay Holmes for the past decade, learning about foreign affairs, espionage history, and field techniques for the purpose of writing fiction and nonfiction. She currently pens espionage nonfiction and international spy thrillers with Jay Holmes, as well as post-apocalyptic fiction of her own.

Jay Holmes is a forty-five-year veteran of field espionage operations with experience spanning from the Cold War fight against the Soviets, the East Germans, and the various terrorist organizations they sponsored to the present Global War on Terror. He is unwilling to admit to much more than that. Piper is the public face of their partnership.

In Spycraft: Essentials, Bayard & Holmes share information on espionage history, organizations, firearms of spycraft, tradecraft techniques, honey pots, sleeper agents, the most common foibles of spy fiction, and the personalities and personal challenges of the men and women behind the myths.

Though crafted with advice and specific tips for writers, Spycraft: Essentials is for anyone who wants to learn more about the inner workings of the Shadow World.

Note: All photos used are owned by Writers In the Storm (Depositphotos) and Bayard & Holmes (Canstock).

by Colleen Story

Whether you’re a James Bond fan or not, you can adopt some of his strengths to improve your writing career.

I’ve enjoyed the action and excitement of James Bond in the past, but I became a huge fan when Daniel Craig took over the role. I thought he brought a lot more feeling to the character, and I found myself pulling for him more than I had the previous Bonds. 

No surprise that I was excited to see his last movie, “No Time to Die.” Now that Craig’s time as the character is officially over, I’ve been reflecting a lot on the series. 

Which brought me to this idea: Successful writers have a lot in common with James Bond. 

Don’t believe me? See if you have these characteristics. If not, working to develop them could help you reach your writing goals. 

1. You Think Less…Act More

One thing you won’t see much of in a Bond movie is James Bond sitting around thinking. 

Writers, on the other hand, are natural thinkers. We have to be to come up with our ideas, and to keep track of characters, plots, settings, and all the rest.

That means that we, unlike Bond, have to push ourselves to act. We tend to be hesitant to submit our stories, try something new in marketing, and get ourselves out there with guest posting, podcast interviews, and live videos. 

If you’ve waited more than a couple of months to do something you’ve been thinking you should do, straighten your tie, imagine getting into your Aston Martin, and act…the sooner, the better.

2. You’re Unafraid—You Don’t Hold Back

No James Bond movie is complete without Bond leaping off some high surface to brave a long fall below. I heard an interview with Daniel Craig where he said he “used” to have a fear of heights—but after filming five Bond movies, he no longer does! 

Thinking too much before we act often occurs because we’re afraid. Maybe the new website we’ve been thinking of designing won’t look right, or we’ll sound dumb on a podcast interview, or look silly on a video. Maybe we won’t come across well in a workshop. 

As a writer, we must be courageous. We have to put ourselves out there all the time, and it can feel like we're leaping out of a helicopter or diving off a bridge. It helps to take frequent risks. Get used to feeling afraid and do it anyway. 

3. Stay in Shape!

James Bond is always in top physical form. He has to be, to do his job. 

What about you? You’re just a writer, so all you have to do is type on the computer. No reason to worry about fitness, right? 

Wrong. Working long hours at the computer is one of the most dangerous things you can do for your health and your creativity. If you don’t exercise regularly and eat a healthy diet, you’ll be at risk for overweight, joint pain, back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, carpal tunnel, headaches, dry eyes, and much more. Say nothing of the mental dullness and slow-thinking.

Make a point to take care of your health. Eat healthy foods, exercise for at least an hour every day, stretch 2-3 times a week (yoga is excellent), and while you’re working, get up once every 30 minutes to walk around.

Also, consider getting a filter for your computer screen to help protect your eyes. 

4. Take Advantage of Technology

Where would Bond be with Q? Dead, probably! 

Writers don’t need watches with laser cutters or cars that can dive underwater, but we do use a lot of technology to write and market our books. 

You may not have thought about it, but you probably use all these and more in your writing practice: 

• Smartphone
• Computer
• Printer
• Scanner
• Word processing software
• Story-writing software (like Scrivener)
• Camera
• Photo modifying software
• Video software
• Microphone
• Tablet
• Numerous apps
• Cover design software

In today’s world, writers can’t afford to plead ignorance when it comes to technology. The more you learn, the more comfortable you’ll be updating your website, publishing your books, creating your own videos, running a podcast, conducting live interviews, and anything else you need to do to create and market your work. 

5. Dress the Part

Bond is always in style. He hunts down the bad guys and performs all the stunts while looking simply dashing. 

Writers, on the other hand…well, we typically prefer sweats and T-shirts. 

Which is fine most of the time. But it’s important not to forget how to dress up. 

Research has shown that dressing up more formally boosts creativity, improves productivity, helps you focus, and supports self-confidence. (Find more details on how dressing the part helps you write.)

You may want to choose one day a week to don some fancy threads. Wear something like you’d wear to the office, and see how it affects your writing session. 

You may be surprised. 

6. Rely on Your Friends

Q. 

M. 

Miss Moneypenny. 

Every Bond movie has at least one scene where Bond’s friends come to his aid. 

Indeed, Bond couldn’t succeed at his missions without the help of his friends. 

Writers, too, must have support. That could come from family, friends, mentors, editors, writing pals, or even online writers and readers. 

These folks can help pick us up when we’re feeling down, and cheer us on when we experience success. 

You may spend many years writing on your own. Eventually, you’ll need to reach out and let others in. Don’t wait too long. Join a writer’s group, attend some conferences, connect online. You'll be glad you did—especially when you need the help.

7. Take Your Lumps and Move On

James Bond doesn’t sail through his movies unscathed. He’s often in fights, and sometimes he’s hurt badly. Occasionally, he’s even tortured. He falls in love and is betrayed. But no matter what—even if he quits—he eventually carries on to complete the mission. 

Of course, it’s a lot easier to recover from injuries in the movies than it is in real life. But as writers, we must also learn how to take our hits and keep going. 

Your mission is to be the best writer you can be. If you want to succeed, adopt Bond’s commitment to that mission. Don’t let anyone or anything stop you. Know who you are—you are a writer. You will have setbacks. You will get knocked down. You must get up and keep going. 

It’s the only way to save the world—your writing world, that is.

Note: To boost your writing productivity today, check out Colleen’s FREE report here. You’ll also get FREE chapters of her writing books!

How do you channel your inner James Bond-like characteristics in your writing life?

About Colleen

In her latest release, Your Writing Matters, Colleen M. Story helps writers determine whether writing is part of their life’s purpose. Her book on author platforms, Writer Get Noticed!, was a gold-medal winner in the Reader’s Favorite Book Awards, and Overwhelmed Writer Rescue was named Book by Book Publicity’s Best Writing/Publishing Book. Her novel, Loreena’s Gift, was a Foreword Reviews' INDIES Book of the Year Awards winner, among others. Her next novel, The Beached Ones, is set for a spring 2022 release.

Find more at her author website and Writing and Wellness, and connect with her on Twitter and YouTube.

Image Credits:

Top Image by Image by Sammy-Sander from Pixabay

Middle Image by by Kamil Pietrzak  from Unsplash

Final Photo by Matthew Wiebe on Unsplash