The Audience Business

By: Deb Mcleod

5:19 am - Starbucks

I didn't sleep much last night. Was waiting for the alarm to go off so I could brainstorm the resurrection of my reincarnation series. Today is day one of my journey to... I don't know what to call it. And I need a name for what I'm doing and where I'm going.

My journey to my writing career? My journey to fame, fortune, and full-time writing?

It's a journey to somewhere where my novels are published and being read. For the first time I can see where I'll end up.

While I may not know what to call this revelation and new path for my work, I do know what it isn't. It's not the way I was taught to write. In academia, you seek the truths inside yourself and fashion stories around your deepest fears and thoughts. Your work is you and you are your work.

In the beginning I held the greats and their worlds in my sights - females, when I could find them. I loved Virginia Woolf's brain and sought to see the world through the inner thought - writing dry sorts of stories with analytical overtones and emotion held at a distance. Could I write like a dead, white, English woman? I didn't seem to have the right pedigree. I could see it waft up the family tree on my father's side, but I was always a visitor to the names and connections to old money and old power that had fizzled out by the time my father married my mother, the daughter of an Italian immigrant.

In college, my vision was opened by finding the maternal voice in Toni Morrison, finding Zora Neal Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God," Alice Walker, Bobbie Ann Mason and her white trailer trash stories and others. They were writing the people. They were writing the women. They were writing me and I wanted to be one of them.

The problem with that was twofold. It was a time of new discovery of the female voice, so lots of us were writing similar stories and the women's story began to have a life of its own in the trends that came in and out of publisher popularity. At the time I wrote too slow to stay ahead of the curve.

But I was taught that good writing always finds a home. No matter what. That was when there were more than 90? large, reputable publishing houses that decided what America wanted to read. Now there are five big publishing houses and they're playing catch up to what readers are saying America wants to read.

The second problem was that I was writing Italian, not African American, not Asian, or even more currently, not Indian, Iranian, Afghani or any of the other places in the Middle East whose voices readers are currently seeking out.

The Mafia sells Italian. There's a place on the shelf for that. In the traditional world, for women's fiction, apparently there's only room for a few books about Italian women -- a divorcee in Tuscany, who’s not Italian, by the way, and a divorcee eating her way through Rome on the way to prayer in India and love in Belize (or wherever). These are the two nods to my mother's culture, to the red blood that dilutes what little blue I carry in my veins.

"Paper Fish" Tina de Rosa's lyrical masterpiece in the tradition of the dead great greats has not been widely acknowledged, but it's brilliant and took years and years to find a home. And then only after a fight and only in Academia. I’ve studied it, written papers about it, tried to get book clubs excited by it. To no avail.

I was a successful creative writing student, educated in the ways of traditional writing to write the truths that were evident to my perspective of the world. And publishers didn't believe that there was a shelf to put me on. I am my writing and my writing is me. So I tried to write a commercial book - just something to self-publish and see what that's all about.

Four years later (I couldn’t help it!) I have a book that reflects my deepest truths and still has no place on the shelf. "Too creative, too different," senior editor at HarperCollins told me. "There's no audience for it. You’ll have to create one." 

I should thank her for firmly planting me in the self-publishing camp. But still I didn't quite learn the lesson. I was still coming from the writing first. And I wrote until reality hit once again. I had a good idea and I ran with it.

But I wrote a romance series whose Book One would sit on one shelf and Book Two would sit on another. It’s possible there would be crossover, but not likely. So I set it aside and began another romance series and this one had a shelf and could find a home.

But last week at a writing conference, something someone said triggered a reframe that might bring the first romance series onto one shelf instead of two and a place in the book world.

In a blog not long ago, Aaron Michael Ritchey said something to the effect of: “I'm out of the publishing business and into the audience-building business.” And I couldn't agree more.

I'm not going to try to sell to publishers or agents or their idea of what readers want. I'm going right to the readers. Audience building means knowing the shelves. Knowing the shelves means knowing the tropes and reader expectations of the books that live on their favorite shelves. It’s writing within a bit of a framework, perhaps pushing the boundaries and creating a new one.

For me, audience building means earning my way onto my own shelf.

 And today is day one.

About the Author: Deb McLeod, MFA, practices novel research immersion. For her novel, The Train to Pescara, Deb journeyed to Sardinia to study ancient goddess worship and spent time in the Abruzzi village her great-grandparents left in 1905. Her metaphysical knowledge for the Angel Thriller, The Julia Set, culminates from four years of studying and teaching meditation, clairvoyance and chakra healing. For more than fourteen years, Deb McLeod has been a creative writing coach helping other writers to embrace their passion and get their words on the page. For more, see www.debmcleod.com.

Upmarket Your Fiction

By: Deb McLeod

I have the first step to all writing, all marketing, and all book-selling problems! And I'm going to give it to you right here....

Write a story worth reading!

Sounds facetious, doesn’t it? With the advent of self-publishing, standards are slipping. It’s too easy to publish without editing so that’s what a lot of writers are doing. Somewhere along the line a fantasy developed around self-publishing and it’s now deemed a fact. According to the fantasy, all you need to do to make it as a self-published author is to put out more content.

But I’d challenge you to find self-published authors who are making any kind of real sales who have simply slapped up a quick drafty-draft and written another. The exception is erotica. Erotica audiences don’t appear to be too discerning.

While it is important to feed the reader pipeline as quick as possible, what will really make a writer successful is a readership who will not only buy your books but who will become rabid fans. And the key to that is to write a book worth reading. My definition of that is a novel that is both well-written and contains a good, juicy story.

To be really honest, even the writing doesn’t have to be all that great. It’s the story that has to work.

Case(s) in point, among many others: “Fifty Shades of Gray,” “Bridges of Madison County,” Dan Brown’s novels, etc. Just looking at these three, you can note that while the writing isn’t great, the story touches some primal element in a large number of readers. The stories are compelling and that’s what sold these books and built up rabid fans.

I’m a story developer, not without some skill. I’ve been working, studying, teaching, and writing stories for a long time so I know a thing or three.

Recently I was asked what advice I’d give to a new-er writer. Learning story development has to be my first and best advice to any writer.

What is story development?

Story development is a practice based on understanding the dramatic elements of plot and how they work together to create a satisfying and well-paced story. Taking story development one level deeper means understanding the relationship between the structure of a particular story to its content, then letting the content dictate the form.

The three types of fiction: Commercial, literary, and upmarket.

Commercial fiction contains all genre fiction. Its focus is entertainment. Literary fiction strives to make sense of the human condition. It’s focus is generally language. Commercial fiction reads faster than most literary fiction. Commercial fiction generally has a stronger plot element. Literary fiction tends to focus on the quality of the writing over plot elements. Commercial fiction is an easier sell and appeals to a wider audience. Literary fiction is a harder sell and appeals to a narrower audience.

Upmarket fiction holds court somewhere in between. Upmarket fiction contains both excellent writing and a story that appeals to a wide audience. It often genre bends or combines genres. It's new, fresh and sells well.

I teach all my clients, whether commercial or literary, to shoot for the upmarket section on the fiction continuum. If they’re writing in a commercial genre, and they focus on language and the human condition a bit within their genre, is it possible they’ll float to the top of their category? I think so.

Recently a first-time romance author (formerly a literary author) published her book and shot to the top spots on Amazon. She wasn’t even sure when she was writing it if it could be classified as romance. It’s a good story and it’s well written. Now she’s being rewarded for that.

One of my clients last year happened to be someone in my MFA program. She’d written a literary novel but was told by an agent that it would be too hard to sell, unless my friend could rewrite with a tighter plot and some of commercial fiction elements. Basically she would need to bring it closer to Upmarket Fiction. So my friend sent it to me. It was beautifully written but the plot didn’t hold and the character development wasn’t what it could be.

I did a story edit for her. She rewrote it and contacted the agent again. The agent signed her and sold her right out of the gate. It’s difficult to place literary fiction, but my friend had a leg up with that book when she began to understand the plotting elements she needed to change. That will stay with her the next time she writes a novel. And I bet she’ll aim for Upmarket.

But don’t listen to me.

I’m writing this today because I just got off the phone with a new-to-me-client. I don’t do much book doctoring these days. It’s a bit frustrating when someone is already finished with their manuscript before they send it to me and then they find out they have to rewrite. So nowadays, I like to work with people when they’re in the thick of it, as they’re creating the draft or working on their first revision. It saves so much time!

But this person had a draft already done. She knew there was something not quite right with it and she contracted to have me read it and provide advice.

She's multi-published; she’s a literary women's fiction author who was writing a sequel to a novel that was already out there. She had traditionally published that novel and had some success with it.

Before I got the manuscript I read the first book so I could familiarize myself with the story and be ready when it was time to dive into the second. I read the manuscript, made my recommendations and sent it off to her. I always include a section to be sure and call with questions, or to talk about solutions I posed or to brainstorm new ones. I love to do that!

Unfortunately, the manuscript she sent does not work. In my reply to her I used her first story to illustrate why book one works and book two doesn't. She did call that analysis brilliant. And understood a bit of what she had to revise.

After all my work with story these past three years her problems were clear as clear to me. What she needed to consider in order to fix it was also clear to me. She emailed me and thanked me for my comments. Two days later, she emailed again and asked if we could set up a phone appointment.

I thought she wanted to talk about solutions I had posed or to do some brainstorming. But what she really wanted to do was to defend her work to me. I tried hard to stay in observer mode and watch the writerly machinations to prove that the story works (when it doesn't). It so reminded me of being in a critique group. I know I have done this myself so I don't really fault her. It's hard to hear that a piece of work you think is done, really isn’t done. And not only not done, but if there are story problems, that means that down at the bones it doesn't work. This is the exact reason I developed the writing program I have so I’m not trying to convince someone “after the fact” that the story doesn’t work. Because by then, they’re invested in the way they told it.
So, while she talked, I tried hard to bite my tongue and listen, to not get into an attitude of "I'm right" even though I am, but to stay in compassion-mode when what I really wanted to do was to tell her to stop being so obtuse and wasting all that time, effort, and hope on something that could be fixed if she was merely open enough to hear solutions.

Let me digress for a second and remind you she’s a literary writer and her criticisms of my suggestions had to do with the fact that they were “commercial fiction” suggestions about plot.

If you knew me from the old days of writing (the 90s), you would know how frustrating I find the literary vs commercial issue. Each camp could learn a boatload from the other. I know I have. I have a formal literary creative writing education and an informal commercial self-study education.

When I write, I try to be right in the middle between the two. I want to focus on character and language and be respected for my literary prowess. But I want a story that works and one that sells, too. I think I'm smart. I want to be Andre Dubois III when I grow up. He writes in the middle with a nudge toward literary. But his stories are good stories. His novels have plot. I write with nudge toward commercial. When I'm rich and famous I'll lean in his direction. But for now, I've got a plan.

So back to my client. She kept dropping names of people she's studied with and giving their blanket statements about writing. NEVER plot was one of the maxims. How do you fight that ridiculousness?

I let her wind down, tried to tune out and let her defend a turn of her plot that took her heroine out of the story, breaking all forward momentum and basically caused the story to fall apart. As she defended her decision, I typed up her bill.

When we were finished, I began to think about why that conversation had to come into my world. And why it wouldn’t leave me alone. I kept thinking about what she said. So, as with all things in my world, I had to reframe it so I could let it go. And as I thought about it, I began to be grateful for the conversation. I believe in the way I write and what I teach.

I can’t connect with everyone and I’m not right all the time, but I was pretty sure I was right in this case. So after thinking about it, I’m grateful for the conversation, because I came up with a new tagline:

"Work with me and write a book worth reading."

About the Author: Deb McLeod, MFA, practices novel research immersion. For her novel, The Train to Pescara, Deb journeyed to Sardinia to study ancient goddess worship and spent time in the Abruzzi village her great-grandparents left in 1905. Her metaphysical knowledge for the Angel Thriller, The Julia Set, culminates from four years of studying and teaching meditation, clairvoyance and chakra healing. For over fourteen years, Deb McLeod has been a creative writing coach helping other writers to embrace their passion and get their words on the page. For more, see www.debmcleod.com.

The Novel Writing Process

By: Deb McLeod

How do you write a novel?

If you’ve completed a novel you have a process you used that got you to that milestone. If you haven’t yet finished a novel, you, too, have a process you’re using to get you to the end result. If you want to write, but you aren’t, you’re working a process too. The process is not writing and the by-product fulfills the process. Make sense?

The product you get is created by the process you follow. 

• Focus on improving the process and you’ll improve the product. 
• Focus on improving the product and while you’re in your processes, trial and error ensues. Judgment rules and writer’s block flirts on the horizon. 

Writing a novel is a matter of focus. Where will you put your focus? On the product or the process?

While no two people write a novel the same way, or use the exact same processes, there are generalities that can be applied. Here are the four stages of novel writing as I see them:

1. Idea stage
2. Creation stage
3. Revision stage
4. Sharing stage

Each stage involves getting clear on the processes used to achieve the goal of the stage. Let’s say I’m in the Creation Stage and I’m focused on the end product – my really good novel I want to create.

Are the pages I produce during the creation phase going to be good enough to stay in my really good novel product? Probably not. These are first draft pages. And drafty ones at that. What happens when those creation pages are judged against the end product (my very good novel)? They fail. When they fail, I freeze. I go take a craft class. Or join a critique group. Or get writer’s block.

Turn that around and look at what happens when you give yourself permission to really be in the stage you’re in and focus on learning what works best for you within that stage.

If I’m in the creation stage, and I’m okay with the fact that everything I’m writing is teaching me what my book wants to be, then whatever I write is okay. Right? It’s all fodder for the gristmill. And you never know what connections you’re going to make if you give yourself permission to freewrite scenes that may or may not make the cut. What happens if you quick-write scenes that aren’t fleshed out but have the gist of what you want to say?

I’m a firm believer (because it holds true for me) in “How do I know what I mean until I see what I say?”

It has been said that the first response will be a cliché. And it’s been said that the first thoughts are thoughts without a filter. Which one are you? Do you gravitate toward the predictable? Or if you write fast enough that your internal editor can’t shut you down, are your scenes more vivid and memorable? I think you should know where you fall here. It’s good information for next time. Right?

Take a look at the stages that follow and see some of the definitions, goals and the skills that are necessary to use the stage to your advantage.

Idea Stage – freewriting, reading, mulling, talking, brainstorming, playing what if, creating an overview outline, digging into characters.
Goal = deciding on an idea with characters you think has legs. Legs simply means an idea that has the possibility of being interesting and will hold for the length of the novel.
Skills necessary to master: novel concepts, plot twists, outer conflict potential, character exploration and psychology, mythic characters.

Creation Stage – freewriting, using prompts, NaNoWriMo, word vomit.
Goal = accumulate enough material for your novel.
Skills necessary to master: Freewriting to an ever-changing timer, scene construction, type of conflict, using the senses, figurative language, metaphor, discipline to write daily, a place or container that is conducive to your writing, how to use prompts effectively (even the stupid ones).

Revision Stage – analyzing, model book(s), thematic discovery, detailed outlining for character arc, detailed outlining for scene arc, rewriting.
Goal = understanding what you wrote and how to shape into a viable product.
Skills necessary to master: story structure, following theme trails, outlining, deep character discovery, scene structure and conflict, rewriting for the reader.

Sharing Stage – critique group, beta readers, sending to agents, etc.
Goal = testing the waters with your almost finished product.
Skills necessary to master: letting go of your baby, cultivating a rhinoceros- thick skin, finding reader readers rather than writer readers, considering the possibility of self-publishing. Most important of all in this stage is: Start something new.

How do you learn the skills necessary? One: by doing them. Two: by taking a class. Three: by working with me. :)

Pieces not the whole
I learned the art of breaking big projects down into smaller bits when I worked as an accountant. The enormity of the (boring) job had the potential of making me want to call in sick. But the pieces gave me a sense of accomplishment. Like checking things off a list. Lo and behold, when I did the job long enough, I actually came to like it. The investigation piece was especially interesting, but even the day-to-day getting the numbers where they belonged was good, in the way cleaning a house can be good. You know? I focused on the individual pieces and came to like what I was doing. Essential for health and happiness, right?

But the skills I learned in those accounting jobs have served me greatly in writing novels and in teaching novel writing. My clients work the process and step away from judging the quality of the product too soon. They allow themselves the creative freedom to explore. They write better books, more true to their voice and their deepest feelings about the themes.

Best of all, focusing on the process gets the job done. And gets it done faster.

So narrow your focus, write every day, and master your career in steps.It just makes the whole thing achievable. And far more pleasant. 

The Writer's Inner Journey: Part Two

By: Deb McLeod

Last month I promised a road map to achieve the Zen of Writing. I’ll waste no time getting to it. Here is the answer in four simple steps:

1. Act as if 
2. Master the art transformation
3. Structure your life
4. Defeat the virus of fear

Collect the key to that illusive writer's club.

Act as If

Acting as if something is already here opens the pathways for that thing to come. Is that too woo-woo for you? Here’s a story: Once upon a time, in a between time, my husband and I were very poor. By between time I mean between jobs. We were so poor I had to be a coupon-clipping, penny-counting, budget-checking miser to make ends meet and we were sinking fast. Something had to change.

I was talking to a friend about this coupon system I found that was saving me a lot of money. She asked some questions, giving me the opportunity to brag about how little we were able to live on.

She looked at me, puzzled, and asked a life-changing question. “Are you sure that’s something you want to be good at? Living on next-to-nothing?”

Actually, no. I didn’t want to be good at living on next-to-nothing. I wanted to be good at living on abundance. 

Her question started me on a new path. I began focusing on what we did have and not what we didn’t. I began a gratitude journal. I stopped coupon clipping and all the other money-saving things I was doing. I worked on really believing. And things changed.

The woo-woo answer here is that I changed the energy of what I wanted to attract into my life. The right-brain, reality-based answer is that the political climate changed and environmental jobs opened up so my husband got work. My focus on abundance simply made the time more pleasurable while I was waiting.

Of course I believe the woo-woo version, but either way, if you act as if right now, you will get where you want to go. Don’t take my word for it. Check out the experts – start with Wayne Dyer.

I have a friend who was an oncologist. When she transitioned out of that field and into creative writing, the first thing she did was go out and buy some writer-type clothes. She wore them, started acting as if she already was that capital W Writer. She pulled on the identity and the identity became real.

So what are the elements that would help you act as if? Maybe it’s clothes. Maybe it’s writing a little bit every day. Maybe it’s hanging out with writers. Going to conferences. Joining a group. Maybe it’s calling yourself a writer when people ask what you do. Maybe it’s an assumption that you have something to say and the ability to say it.

Master the Art of Transformation

Stories transform. They often depict characters who transform throughout the story. The reader is transformed by absorbing the experience of the story. The writer is transformed by writing it.

Seeing life as story
Are you a narrativist? Do you see your life and the lives of others as stories strung together? Can you look back on the events in your life and see their beginning, middle and end? Can you see how the major events have shaped you as a person?

In my world, life is a series of growth periods. Lessons presented, accepted, worked, and absorbed. There are financial growth periods, relationship growth periods, health, parental, work or career growth periods. We’re all learning all the time. Every time something new enters your world, you’re in a growth period learning to master whatever you need to in order to move out of it. And into the next one.

Standing to the side, as observer-you, with practice, you can see what your growth period is and where you are in it. Simply knowing that makes it more manageable, to be sure. But studying growth periods, yours and those people around you, primes you to create them on the page. And stories are about transformation.

In life there is no real “sense of an ending” in our growth periods or our stories. Some say that’s one reason people read, to get that sense of an ending we don’t experience in life. Readers want to see transformation on the page – whether the character transforms (comedy) or doesn’t (tragedy), it’s the container of transformation that attracts.

Structure Your Life

Look around your world. Does writing come last? Is it the first to go when you get busy? Are there so many reasons you can’t write that acting as if is impossible? Granted there are times when you really can’t write. There are only so many hours in a day. And, if you’re going through a heavy emotional time, it’s also possible that sitting down with your thoughts is the last place you want to be.

But I contend that even during those times, it’s important to see how you might put your writing toward the top of the list. Small steps. Look for boundaries you can erect around your time. Look for writing solutions to deal with emotional pain.

Discover what rituals work for you to get into your writing space. Carve out a the time and a space. Find 30 minutes in a day, even if it means getting up early. Set a schedule. Put a sign on the door like I did when my daughter was old enough to read – Fire or Blood. When the door was closed as it was for an hour or two a day, I wasn’t to be disturbed unless there was fire or blood.

Prepare your family. Writing necessitates communion with the self. And that means you have to withdraw from what’s going on with family, friends, internet. My solution has always been to write early. When my daughter was young, I wrote in the middle of the night, when no one needed me for anything. I napped with her later.

When you’re ready to take your writing life seriously, you will start to put your writing, if not first, very close to the top. And you won't really be serious about it until you do. 

Defeat the Virus of Fear

• I don’t have time – fear based
• I don’t have an idea – fear based
• I’m blocked – fear based
• I have nothing to say that hasn’t been said – fear based
• What if the work isn’t good enough? – fear based 
• What if I get rejected, ridiculed? – fear based
• Who will listen to me? – fear based
• What if I can’t get a publisher, agent, audience? – fear based

How is “I don’t have time” fear based? Look at your world as it stands now. You have time for what you love, don’t you? You make time for your kids, your job, your spouse, your communities, your socializing, your entertainment, right? You make time because it’s not hard to do those things you love.

What is hard is to make time to do those things you fear.

There are all sorts of reasons why our first response to many things is fear. One of the most basic reasons is that that’s what we were taught. Writing is somehow not open to all, though all can write. Yet only those select few somehow get the key to the castle.

Here’s your key to the writer's club 

There is a magic answer. There is a key that is freely available to all though only precious few actually use it.

Focus on the process, not on the product.

That's the key. Work the process and before you know it you’ve taken a chunk out of your project. Perfect the process and soon it's so easy to write you're getting up before the alarm, like me. 

My clients have changed their focus from product to process and they're finishing books they’ve been working on for years. Their internal editor has bailed and they are suprising themselves creatively. 

Here's how to turn the key:

• Create a space in your life for your writing. 
• Do it every day even if just for 30 minutes.
• Break what you need to do into manageable pieces. Don’t get overwhelmed by the enormity of the project.  
• Find a way to know how a novel gets put together (craft). 
• Make a process. Or borrow one. 

Work on your project one piece at a time. Bring the happy (aka Stephen King, On Writing) into your world by writing daily and keep your focus on the process. Not the product. The product then becomes the by-product of all the days you wrote. And, I don't know anything that makes a writer happier than to "have written."

So in order to be happy, all you have to do is write every day for thirty minutes or so. I don't know anyone who can't find thirty minutes. The product will get created. And you will be focusing on what’s working in your writing world, not what isn’t working in your writing world.

Here’s the process I use and teach: 

1. Major character exploration first
2. Plot structure – I use Blake Snyder’s 15 beats and if I’m writing romance, I use romance beats to plot one liners for each scene in each beat.
3. Write the first draft as fast as you can. Pretend it’s NaNo if it isn’t. 
4. Take your draft through a revision process. (I’m teaching this later in the month, if you’re curious.)
5. Find a critique group for the editing phase – the nitpicky stuff. But don’t let them talk about plot. I wanted to add: unless they're really good, but even then they're going to be writing their book with their ideas, not yours. You don’t want to fall into that critique loop of writing by committee and changing the plot now. Just use them for what works on the scene level (tension, conflict) and fixing grammar. 
6. Repeat the process again and again. 

For more information about the methods I use and how you can join a supportive community that actually enables writers to get work done faster than if they did it on their own, check out this page: The Green Checkmark

About the Author: Deb McLeod, MFA, practices novel research immersion. For her novel, The Train to Pescara, Deb journeyed to Sardinia to study ancient goddess worship and spent time in the Abruzzi village her great-grandparents left in 1905. Her metaphysical knowledge for the Angel Thriller, The Julia Set, culminates from four years of studying and teaching meditation, clairvoyance and chakra healing. For over fourteen years, Deb McLeod has been a creative writing coach helping other writers to embrace their passion and get their words on the page. For more, see www.debmcleod.com.

The Writer's Inner Journey: A two-part series

By: Deb McLeod

As we near the end of the year it’s time to take stock, to look back and see where we met our goals and what we want our future writing world to look like.

I am in the midst of doing this work for both my novels and for my online coaching. As I am looking at what other programs offer and promise, I have been struck with how many deal with only one side of an author’s life and completely leave the other side out of the equation.

Let me explain:

Wayne Dyer said: "Before you act, do the mental work first—positive self-talk, inspirational readings, visualization, meditation, prayer. Begin acting as if what you would like to become is already your reality. This is a wonderful way to set into motion the forces that will collaborate with you to make your dreams come true."

To say I want to write is to begin a journey of self-awareness that, if you let it, will bring you the pride of accomplishment, the joy of creation, and will add your voice to the sum of all there is.

Outside of my family, I have found no other thing in my world that brings me more joy than my writing practice.

A close second has been my years of working with writers. Bearing witness to the discovery of their own voice and best process. Guiding and walking alongside as each one brings themselves to the writer’s choice point, a plot point in the through line of their writing life.

Just like a damn good story.

The writing life is two-sided.

Think of the double thread of a fiction plot. The Outer Plot is the "what happens" when a character has a goal. When she wants something, she moves through the story making decisions that affect the journey she experiences.

Then there’s the Inner Plot, or the why of her decisions. The "why of her" creates what happens. Why does this character make this decision over that? Who is she? What are her flaws? What are her habits? What will she have to confront and perhaps change before she can reach her goal? Win or lose, how is her life transformed by her taking the journey?

It is in the inner plot where the real story lives.

So it is true of the writer’s journey.

We live in a time where it's possible now more than ever to write and publish a book. Creative writing has been deconstructed enough so that learning the elements of story is a matter of studying craft. Good storytelling can be taught. Instinct can be awakened, directed, honed. Writers aren’t born these days, they’re created. And I say hallelujah!

Nowadays, publishing can be a matter of slapping your novel onto Amazon. Marketing is some ever-changing formula of social media. A writing career is forged by producing more and more content, faster and faster, smarter and smarter. And getting to know your audience.

The best news is there are no gatekeepers to your work going public. The worst news is there are no gatekeepers to your work going public.

You have to become your own gatekeeper. Which means you have to become the best reader of your own work. The best monitor of your writing practice. Because all successful writing careers start with the fact of a good book.

In the backwash of this new wave of publishing, courses, webinars, and an infinite number of blogs have surfaced that promise fast fiction. Solutions in four steps, five steps, a weekend.

There are ways to produce fast fiction. I use them myself. I teach them to my clients. I designed the 90-day Romance Novel program to fit just such a goal. Those ways produce the outer plot to the writer’s journey.

But what no one seems to talk about is the inner plot to the writer’s journey. It is there that the writers I have worked with are challenged. It is the inner plot that makes the writer. The inner plot that makes the practice a life-long one. In the story of the writer’s journey, it’s the transformation into a writer that creates success.

When the writer has put in the time, when she has acted as if, she will likely come to a dark moment in her writer’s journey. When she finally knows what it really takes, she will decide whether this is the life for her. Or not.

I contend that if you’re reading this, the possibility for you to reach that choice point in your own through line, the possibility of you choosing to become a successful author, exists.

All you have to do is take the journey. The outer journey to master the craft. And the inner journey to awaken your love of writing.

“Not being able to write is a learned disability.” Says Pat Schneider of Amherst Writers and Artists.

Once upon a time I took a screenwriting class at the University of Denver. A visiting Hollywood screenwriter, whose name I no longer remember, conducted an intensive weekend writing workshop. He asked the seventy-five or so writers in the room: "Who likes to write?" My hand went up. He pointed at me. Called me on it. Said: “I don’t believe you. No one likes to write.” What could I do but shrug and say, “I do.” He made a face and returned to the lecture that had been a bit spoiled by what he considered was my lie.

I love to write. I get up before my alarm on most days - anywhere between 3 and 5 am - depending upon how excited I am by it, by the possibilities of the day's writing. I open my Scrivener file, put in my earplug (only one as I am deaf in my left ear), tune out the world, and enter into the creative discoveries of the day for the next five hours. 

You know the feeling you get when you read and get lost in a really great book? I remember getting lost in novels in middle school. There was a pureness to reading back then - high adventure and possibility as hero conquered the stuff of life. That's how my writing feels to me. And it becomes easier and easier to slip into the fictional world the better I get at my process. I took the time to learn what works for me. And now I’m working it. And I have never been happier.

Think of marathon runners who love to run. Are there days when they must groan before they lace up their shoes? What about the days when it’s raining? Is it hard? Is it demanding? Of course. But they wouldn’t run if they didn’t love it. And they run every day. 

To go one more step with the running analogy, you know how they say when runners get through the burn, they reach a place where they feel like they could run forever? That’s what it’s like to love to write. To anticipate the writing and get up before the alarm.

If not being able to write is a learned disability, then is loving to write a learned ability? I believe it is.

I would wager that somewhere along your through line you were validated for your ability to write. A teacher. A parent. A contest. A paper you wrote. An essay that won a prize. Something or someone said to you that you have a way with words.

Some early writers keep writing from that moment and ease into a writing career somewhere in their 20s. But that’s probably not you. Or you wouldn’t be reading this. Perhaps, like me, you tucked it away inside. A bit of pride. A bit of difference from the rest of the world while you moved on to the rest of your life.

But then something else happened to make you bring that out from where you tucked it inside in a velvet pouch you kept close to your heart and forgot about.

Now when you reach inside you realize that nugget of truth about you has turned into something like a diamond, with the promise, and the glitter, and the shine.

I can write, you say.

Yes, you can.

And if you master not only the outer journey of the writer, but the inner journey too, you will have found true creative happiness in the creating. And the ability to make a career out of it. 

Tune in next time when I talk about the Zen of Writing and the writer’s inner journey. I'll provide as best a roadmap as I can to:

• Master the art of transformation
• Find focus 
• Structure a writing life
• Defeat the virus of fear

About the Author: Deb McLeod, MFA, practices novel research immersion. For her novel, The Train to Pescara, Deb journeyed to Sardinia to study ancient goddess worship and spent time in the Abruzzi village her great-grandparents left in 1905. Her metaphysical knowledge for the Angel Thriller, The Julia Set, culminates from four years of studying and teaching meditation, clairvoyance and chakra healing. For over fifteen years, Deb McLeod has been a creative writing coach helping other writers to embrace their passion and get their words on the page. For more, 

Lessons learned from NaNoWriMo

By: Deb McLeod

Every year I orchestrate and deliver a two-week NaNo Prep Countdown designed to help writers who want to win get ready so they don’t face the blank page when they’re trying to reach their daily word count. And every year for the last six I’ve competed in NaNoWriMo myself, this year writing book two in my Twin Flames Romance Series with the working title Silver Love.

So I’ve spent the last two weeks playing with the plot. When I prep for a novel I have a certain process I follow and I like to immerse myself in the dream of the book before I write. This year I was ready to start writing at least a week ago, but I held off, trying to be true to the NaNoWriMo rules. I don’t always care about being a NaNo purist, but this year I decided to wait and keep working on the plot.

The result of waiting was that when I sat down at my desk today I wrote almost four scenes and 4550 words. And I could have kept going but the day’s obligations kicked in after I’d been writing straight for five hours. Oh, the bliss of getting lost in the story.

If you’ve never tried to build your understanding about your story before you actually start writing, I’d highly advise you to try. Here’s what some famous author/teachers have to say about the practice:

Robert Olen Butler wrote an entire book about it called From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction. He says artists access the way they see the world only by “going back to the way in which chaos is first encountered – that is, moment to moment through the senses. Then, [the writer] selecting from that sensual moment-to-moment experience, picking out bits and pieces of it, reshaping it, she recombines it into an object that a reader in turn encounters as if it were experience itself….”

He advises writers to get into the dreamspace of the unconscious to discover the yearning of the characters and the moment-to-moment sensual experience of the story. To dream the book alive.

Spending time in the dreamspace of the book is an excellent way to have it at your disposal when you start to write.

Madison Smartt Bell in Narrative Design: Working with Imagination, Craft, and Form says that daydreaming is the writer’s vocation. That you create for yourself a sort of autohypnosis. “You put yourself apart from yourself, and you enter the imaginary world.”

He also says there’s an unconscious structure to the chaos that begins to morph when you allow yourself to ramble thought the bits and the parts of it.

The unconscious in action

Well, it’s day one of 2016 NaNoWriMo, and I can say for certain that both of those things happened to me this morning. I had been rambling around for two weeks, and when a piece of the structure suggested itself, I went with it and out poured 4550 words. I had spent enough time in the dreamscape of my novel that when it was time to write, I was already there.

So here’s my morning:

Four-thirty a.m. I’m at my desk. I hadn’t even made coffee yet. I read over my Scrivener scene card for the first scene. I have a scene card I use to prep the scene and really dive into when it’s time to revise. But the only part I’d filled out for all the scenes for NaNo was the synopsis: what happens during the scene.

I like doing the rest of the prep work right before I write the scene – figuring out the conflict and the arc. So I was reading over my notes and cycling through the various forms of conflict I could use for the first scene when a lightning bolt slammed home.

This is an historical romance set in Denver in the 1870s and I’m using the romantic trope of a mail-order bride to bring my hero and heroine together. The hero has won the bride in a poker game from her intended and I plotted it that they would get married fairly soon after they meet – as it’s only proper – and spend the book learning how to fall in love.

This is the way I plotted the entire first half of the book. Though I will admit I was having trouble plotting the second half, but that often happens to me. I sort of have to wait until I get there to know what the possibilities are.

When I was mulling the conflict of the first scene and thinking about the setting, my hero is waiting on the train platform for her train to arrive, my hero spoke up and said – I don’t want to get married.

And he’s right. He doesn’t. He’s not at all the marrying kind. That’s what was going to make scenes with his new wife so cute. But I realized she’s the one who wants to get married. Not him. In fact, she’s desperate to get under some man’s wing or she wouldn’t have answered the ad for a mail-order bride in the first place. And though she doesn’t know that her intended gambled her away, the hero is such a better catch than the guy who lost her in the poker game that she would marry him if only he’d ask.

So when she comes to Denver, she’s not only greeted by a different groom, she’s greeted by a man who will jilt her before they get in front of a preacher.

The energy from that new way of looking at the plot just drove the three-and-a-half scenes right onto the page.

I think I had prepped enough, put off starting to write long enough, and put myself in the miasma of the novel that it actually allowed me to think of the story differently. And when I did, I tapped into some kind of subconscious structure that wanted to exist.

Or is that too woo-woo for you?

Predreaming

If you’re competing in NaNoWriMo this year and you want a cutting edge, find a system of “predreaming,” as Butler calls it, before you write your scenes. Butler says:

“There is no intellect in this world powerful enough to create a great work of novelistic art. Only the unconscious can fit together the stuff of fiction; the conscious mind cannot.”

So tune out and tap into your world. Try what Butler calls “dreamstorming.” Dream around your novel and write down only eight to ten words that represent the potential scene you’re dreaming. Make sure it contains a sensual hook, a cue that will bring you back to this space once you start writing the scenes. “A little vision of something, a little smell or taste of something, a little sound… Don’t trust a scene that presents itself to you as an idea.”

Now if you’re competing in NaNo, you’re probably saying, where was this advice two weeks ago when I had time for dreamstorming? Well, don’t despair. You can do this too.

Take the time before you write to walk around the scene you have planned. Close your eyes and put yourself into sensual experience of it. Not just the five senses, feel where the characters are on the stage of the scene. Put yourself in your main character’s place and feel what he or she feels and why. Stay in that space just a little longer than you’re comfortable.

For me, when I’m ready to write a scene the first line pops in and off I go. Wait for that impulse and then start writing. Sort of a freewrite in scene form. Maybe, like me, the scenes will flow easier and be more vivid if you’ve predreamed the sensuality in the scene.

Work in weeks

For the first week, write act one scenes. For the second week, work on the scenes you would find in the first half of the second act. The third week, the second half of the second act. And week four has you writing the finale.

No worries that you’re skating over the novel and what you have needs revision. I’m a big revision teacher. That’s where the book solidifies. For now, and all through NaNo, get the gist of it and move on. Write the full scene if it comes do you. And if it doesn’t, write the senses, experiment with different conflicts scene by scene. Accumulate your words and go for a first draft that gives you something to work with.

Forget perfection and you can do it.

About the Author: Deb McLeod, MFA, practices novel research immersion. For her novel, The Train to Pescara, Deb journeyed to Sardinia to study ancient goddess worship and spent time in the Abruzzi village her great-grandparents left in 1905. Her metaphysical knowledge for the Angel Thriller, The Julia Set, culminates from four years of studying and teaching meditation, clairvoyance and chakra healing. For over fourteen years, Deb McLeod has been a creative writing coach helping other writers to embrace their passion and get their words on the page. For more, seewww.debmcleod.com.