The Successful Writer: Take Your Writing to the Next Level

Ah, the New Year. At its launch, we make our best stab at ditching old habits and acquiring new, better habits that—with any luck—will propel us toward our goals. For writers, that means taking our writing to the next level—the “breakout” story, essay, or book.

Ah, but the fail rate. By the calendar, we’re still in the honeymoon phase—research shows that the during first two weeks of the year, we’re all in with our resolve. By February, we’re starting to slip. By December, most of us are back where we started, or even further behind.  

It doesn’t have to be that way. “Making resolutions work is essentially changing behaviors,” says Ray Williams, writing for Psychology Today. “In order to do that, you have to change your thinking and ‘rewire’ your brain,” a process that involves the creation of new neural pathways through new ways of thinking. If you want to succeed with your resolutions. Williams advises setting specific goals, taking small steps, having accountability buddies, engaging new thought patterns, and celebrating your success between milestones.

Easy enough, but also easier said than done. Structure, guidance, and coaching make the difference between the best of intentions and actually getting the job done—that is, taking your writing to the next level.

With this in mind, I’m offering a three-week online writing workshop, Craft Intensive: Masterful Writing, through 49 Writers, where I’m proud to be part of the 98% instructional excellence rating. Together, we’ll work on developing new thought patterns to propel your writing to the next level. After determining what that next level means for you, you’ll implement strategies for honing your craft, and as part of the process, you’ll undertake a guided study of the techniques used by the writers you most admire.

After a long hiatus from distance learning—it was one of my specialties when I taught fulltime at the University of Alaska—I’m excited to be involved in it again. I especially enjoying designing workshops that integrate online learning with low-tech interactions, using ye olde phone lines for sharing inspiration and ideas. And there’s this ulterior motive—while I’ve happily relocated to the Oregon coast, I’m eager to stay engaged with writers in Alaska and to meet new ones from around the country.

Together, let’s bust the Resolution Odds, building new patterns to take our writing to the next level. The three-week online workshop begins January 26. Discussions by conference call will take place on Tuesday evenings from 7 to 8 pm AST; recordings will be available for those who miss the live events.

Co-founder of 49 Writers and founder of the independent authors cooperative Running Fox Books, Deb Vanasse has authored sixteen books. Her most recent are Write Your Best Book, a practical guide to writing books that rise above the rest; What Every Author Should Know, a comprehensive guide to book publishing and promotion; and Cold Spell, a novel that “captures the harsh beauty of the terrain as well as the strain of self-doubt and complicated family bonds,” according to Booklist. Her next book, Wealth Woman: Kate Carmack and the Klondike Race for Gold, comes out in April, 2016. She is also a staff writer for the IBPA Independent.

Jumpstart Your Writing

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You love to write. Why, then, can it be so hard to get started—or to finish a project that you began with enthusiasm?

An abundance of metaphors prove that this affliction is nearly universal among writers. Your muse needs to visit. Your creative well needs filling. Your batteries need recharging.

Whenever I teach a writing workshop, I find a good number of the participants are in exactly this place with their projects. They’re excited about an idea. Maybe they’ve started drafting, or they’ve finished a draft. But somewhere along the way, they’ve lost momentum. They want to finish, and finish well—if only they could see their way through.

The good news: It’s not all that tough to jumpstart your writing. Here, a few ways to get yourself going:

·         Rediscover what you love about your work: Read through the last five pages you wrote. Don’t make any changes. Instead, bracket the three parts you like best—words, sentences, or sections. Copy one of those best parts onto a clean page and use it as springboard for ten minutes of freewriting. Don’t worry about where it’s going. Just write.

·         Shamelessly imitate: Choose a passage you love from a writer you admire. With pen in hand, unlock its secrets. In the margins, make notes about how it works. Then, using a topic or scene of your own, write a passage that consciously imitates it. Will your effort fall short? Of course. But even the masters are approachable.

·         Read a writer on writing: Read (or reread) what one of your favorite writers has to say about writing. The Paris Review interviews, available online, are a great source. Take comfort in the struggles you share—and the fact that these can be overcome.

·         Talk writing with writers: Meet with your writers group. Attend a reading, a conference, a workshop.

On this last point, I’m prepping to teach a six-hour workshop for writers like you: Jumpstart Your Writing, from 9 am to 4 pm (with an hour lunch break) on Saturday, September 26. Through guided exercises and discussion, we’ll generate ideas, amplify words on the page, and write past stuck points. We’ll explore the writer’s mind, the writing process, and narrative essentials like character, setting, and pacing. We’ll examine and refine our writing processes while exploring techniques to mine and enrich the material from which we write.

Included in the workshop fee is a copy of Write Your Best Book. But you don’t have to be working on a book—our focus will be on re-energizing all types of writing. So whether you’re a novelist, an essayist, a memoirist, a poet, or a dabbler in writing of all types, we’d love to have you join in. You’ll leave with your batteries charged, your well filling up, your muse on your shoulder. Registration is required, so sign up today.

PS: “Jumpstart Your Writing” will be the last workshop I teach in the Anchorage area, at least for the foreseeable future. After 36 years in Alaska, I’ll be leaving in mid-October. More on the Big Move in next month’s post!  

Co-founder of 49 Writers and founder of the independent authors cooperative Running Fox Books, Deb Vanasse has authored sixteen books. Her most recent are Write Your Best Book, a practical guide to writing books that rise above the rest; What Every Author Should Know, a comprehensive guide to book publishing and promotion; and Cold Spell, a novel that “captures the harsh beauty of the terrain as well as the strain of self-doubt and complicated family bonds,” according to Booklist. Deb lives and works on Hiland Mountain outside of Anchorage, Alaska, and at a cabin near the Matanuska Glacier. 

Fact and Fiction: Life into Story

Whenever I hear the latest update on the ebola outbreak, I think of Don Rearden. I can’t help it. In his novel The Raven’s Gift, he wrote about the devastation brought on by a deadly disease that spins out of control. Sure, his book is fiction, and at that time he wrote it, he was thinking bird flu, but the parallels between fact and fiction are a little uncanny.

On a less dramatic scale, I’ve seen a similar tension between fact and fiction play out involving a plot point in my first novel A Distant Enemy. Nearly two decades ago, I wrote a set-up that involved intentional fishing during an emergency closure in Southwest Alaska. In the last few years, a similar scenario had played out in a very real conflict over changes in salmon harvest more drastic than any I’d dared to imagine. Arrests and court battles followed. Decisions were reached, but the battle is far from over.

It would be nice to think that when it comes to such things, we authors are smart and savvy and maybe even a little prophetic (oh lottery numbers, please make yourselves known!). But really, the whole thing boils down to this: in fiction, our material is life as it’s lived and known and hidden and dreamed.

Not that our task is easy. Our own lives infuse our work with power even as “real life” gets in the way. We face hard choices about what constitutes truth. And sometimes what we think we know is only a smattering of what’s required of us to get it right on the page, which means research—lots of it, even for stories.

As author Peggy Shumaker so aptly puts it, "the whole truth is never available to us." And yet somehow in our work, we wrestle with the facts of who we are - the things we can face and the truths we aren't ready for yet. The unknown always feels bigger than the known.

Then there are the practical matters of whose stories we tell and what right we have to give voice to anyone, along with the fine points of perspective and the tension between getting the facts right (whatever form "right" may take) and staying true to the narrative as well as the extent to which we live the facts of our work as opposed to drawing on the experiences of others.

The intersection of fact and fiction makes for great conversation among writers. Tomorrow we’re headed to Soldotna to share that discussion with local readers, writers, and seekers, along with the just plain curious. One and all, you’re invited to “Fact and Fiction: Life into Story,” a reading and book talk hosted by the Kenai Peninsula College Showcase Series in conjunction with 49 Writers.

And wait, there’s more: Don and I couldn’t be happier to announce that Seth Kantner (Ordinary Wolves, Pup and Pokey, Shopping for Porcupine) will be joining us for this lively discussion. We hope you’ll be there too: 7 pm, at KPC’s McLain Commons. Admission is free, with book sales and signing to follow. The next day, Don and I will be teaching workshops on character and point of view. For the workshops, preregistration is required; head on over to the 49 Writers website to get all the scoop.