Journaling - How It Can Help Your Writing Life

I have been keeping a journal off and on since I received a small denim-covered diary with a lock and key in my stocking in 1975. That expanded over the teen and college years into multiple volumes annually. When I started writing, I found that I didn’t journal as much.

A few weeks into the pandemic, I had the thought that I probably should record some notes of what the plague and lock-down was like. It suddenly became a fancy notebook filled with dread and fear. So I stared a second pandemic journal, A Sudden Glory. This one is filled with stories about helpers and good deeds that I run across. Some are tiny little acts of kindness and others are on a larger scale. I decided if was keeping a record of all the doom and gloom, I needed to record some of the amazing things too.

The contents may never see the light of day, but I think a journal helps your writing life.

• It’s a chance for you to write about your thoughts and interests.

• It’s a place where you can just write without the worry of editing and rewrites.

• It’s where you can record thoughts and ideas. You never know when one will become part of a larger work.

• Journaling is a way to record your history and experiences for a future you.

• It helps you establish a regular writing routine.

• Journal entries help you work through conflicts and sort out ideas.

Journaling is a good way to capture a bit of your life, and it’s a precious time capsule when you go back and look at the contents later.

April 10 - Encourage a Young Writer Day - What's Your Advice?

April 10 is Encourage a Young Writer Day. I have so many teachers, librarians, a visiting poet, and a plethora of other writers to thank for all of their encouragement and advice through the years. Here’s my list for young writers. What would you add?

• Read everything that you can get your hands on. Read works in a variety of genres. Read books from all types of authors.

• Find time to write every day.

• Don’t give up. Writing, editing, and all the tasks that go along with it are work. It takes time, dedication, and perseverance.

• Writing is a business. Agents and publishers are looking for projects that they can sell.

• Criticism and critiques are part of the process. Learn what you can from feedback and strive to improve your craft.

• Rejection is also part of the process. It’s not fun. Cry, scream, eat chocolate, and then get back to your writing.

• Write what you love to read.

• Be professional.

What I Learned about Writing from Lean IT

Lean IT comes from the manufacturing world and is based on the Toyota Production System (TPS). Key values and processes have been added to the service and technology industries through the years. Recently, I took a class on how Lean improvements can be added to IT’s service delivery, and I realized that the key principles can be applied to the writing world, too.

1. Continual Improvement (in small steps) is one the key principles of Lean. Revising, editing, and critiques are ways that writers can improve their craft. It needs to be a continuous cycle.

2. Focusing on Long-term Goals helps deliver a solid product and involves continuous improvement. Writers need to focus on where they want to be and work toward this.

3. Quality, Delivery, and Costs are key to production. They’re important in the writing world, too. You need to balance your writing, time, and monetary outputs to reach your goals.

4. The Deming Cycle (Plan, Do, Check, Act) is integral to the continuous improvement cycle. Writers plan, draft, review, and then finish/publish. The writing cycle needs to include all the elements for revising, editing, and proofreading to improve your writing process and your output.

5. The principles of Lean center around Customer Value. The output and delivery of the final work is always centered around the reader and his/her experience. The ultimate goals are to sell books and bring readers back for more.

6. Flow is a key component to the manufacturing process. You need to have the right parts at the right time to keep the process moving. I would argue that flow is key to the writing process too. You need to make time to write. It’s often good to write your first draft and then work on the revising and editing stages. Sometimes, writers get bogged down with the first draft if they edit as they write.

7. In the Lean world there are value-add, necessary non-value-add, and non-value-add activities. You want to optimize your value-add work (writing, editing, etc.) while minimizing the necessary non-value-add tasks (building your platform, maintaining your social media sites, keeping accounting records, paying taxes). You also want to look at your writing life and try to remove any non-value-add activities. (For me, I cut back considerably on TV and movie-watching.)

8. Lean philosophies also focus on cutting Waste which results in financial gain. Cutting out ineffective purchases (software, services, retyping handwritten pages, marketing efforts that don’t show results) can help you to focus your efforts on what does work.

9. Overall Performance focuses on delivery and the right skills and capabilities to do the job. As writers, we need to make sure that we are learning new things and honing our craft. Make sure to build in time for learning that doesn’t consume all of your writing time. When I started writing, I bought every how-to book on the craft that I could find. I spent so much time reading about writing that I wasn’t doing. I kept a few key books, donated the rest to my library, and started writing.

While the Lean methodology is primarily for manufacturing, it has been adapted and implemented in other industries. Many of the principles apply to the writing world, and they’re good reminders to constantly strive to improve and to reach one’s goals.

Your Writing Life Needs Some Spring Cleaning

Spring is here, and I love the warm weather. Everything is in bloom and new again. I also have the urge for spring cleaning. Here are some ideas to help get rid of the paper and electronic clutter in your writing life.

Electronic Files

• Go through your photos and save any that you really want to keep to the cloud or an external hard drive to free up space on your computer.

• Clean up your saved email, especially those with attachments. Make sure to empty your Sent and Trash files regularly.

• Archive any old document files.

• Open your cloud storage and delete anything that is outdated or no longer needed.

• Look at the apps on your phone. Remove any that you don’t use.

Your Marketing Materials

• Check out your biography and marketing materials. Make sure they are current.

• Make sure your website has the most current information about you and your books.

• Check your biography and your books on your social media sites.

• Does your headshot need refreshing?

Paper Files and Clutter

• It’s time to go through your files and purge what you don’t need.

• It’s time to file what hasn’t made it to the filing cabinet yet.

• Make sure that you file mileage and receipts for your writing expenses as you collect them. This will make it easier for tax time next year.

• Clean off your desk.

• Look at all the books you’ve collected over the year. Can any be donated or gifted?

What would you add to my list?

It's Time for Some Email Spring Cleaning

Email has been around since 1965, and the clutter and buildup seem to get worse every day. The volume seems to have snowballed. Here are some tips that help me contain the chaos.

• I’ve linked my email account to my phone. If I delete it on my mobile device, it deletes it, and I don’t have to look at it again on my PC. Just be careful not to delete something important.

• I leave anything that I need to remember or address in my inbox until I take care of it.

• Add new contacts to your list when you read the email. This helps from losing them when you delete the corresponding email.

• I create a series of folders in Outlook. Make sure not create them as subfolders under the Inbox file. I move anything that I want to keep here. This gets emails out of my Inbox. File sizes build up quickly with attachments, and this keeps my inbox size from maxing out.

• Remember to empty your “junk,” sent, and trash email folders regularly.

• Delete spam or scam emails that happen to slip by your filters. Don’t unsubscribe, reply, or click on any links. A click can often trigger the download of viruses or worms to infect your system.

• I have multiple email accounts. Some I use to subscribe to things I might be interested in. This reduces the number of ads, newsletters, and alerts in my primary email box.

Details Do Matter - Tips for Authors

Many times, you only get one shot at querying an agent or a publisher. Make sure you have done everything you possibly can to make your submission and correspondence as polished as they can be. Formatting problems make your work look unprofessional.

Emails/Query Forms

• Make sure all names and titles are spelled correctly.

• Verify that the email address is correct.

• Verify that the name on the query matches the person you’re sending it to.

• Keep a list of the agents/agencies you query, the date sent, and any response.

• Follow all submission requirements.

Manuscript

• Follow standard formatting rules.

• If not specified, use Times New Roman 12 point (black). Don’t use multiple fonts or fancy types or colors.

• Make sure you have a cover page.

• Margins need to be one inch on all sides.

• Put the page number and the author’s last name in the footer.

• You need a cover page with your title, word count, and contact information. The page numbering should start on the first page of your manuscript (not the cover page).

• Most agents/publishers want manuscripts that are formatted for an automatic tab indent for each new paragraph (instead of using the tab key each time or the space bar).

• Don’t use the return/enter key to move to the next page. Add a hard return (Usually Control + Enter).

• Use only one space after all punctuation.

• For American writers, end punction (commas and periods) go inside the quotation marks.

• Make sure your work has been edited and proofed before you submit it. Print it out and do one last check before you send it.

The little things do matter and show that you’ve invested the time to make your work the best it can be. If you have formatting issues with your word processor, there are lots of good how-to videos on YouTube or the Microsoft Help site for Word.

Ideas for Tightening up Your Manuscript - Tips for Authors

Self-editing is probably my least favorite of all the writing tasks, but it, along with the other proofreading and revising steps, are the most important to your manuscript. Here are some ideas of ways to tighten your work and make it more polished before you send out queries. You often only get one shot with an agent or publisher, so your manuscript needs to be the best it possibly can.

• Read the dialogue out loud. If you don’t want to be the reader, use the “Read Aloud” function on Microsoft Word’s Review tab. You will often hear things that need to be adjusted.

• Look at your dialog. Make sure it moves your story forward. Remove the chitchat if it doesn’t add to the story. Fluffy filler needs to go.

• Review your dialog tags (he said/she said). Use the Goldilocks method. You need what’s just right (not too many and not too few). The reader needs to know who the speaker is, but every line doesn’t need a tag.

• Look for places where the action is mundane. If you are bored, your readers will be too.

• Print out a copy of your manuscript and read it chapter by chapter. You will see more mistakes on paper than you will on the screen.

• Use your spell checker to catch extra spaces and typos.

• Search for “be” verbs (is/was/were…). Try to substitute a stronger verb. These are usually parts where you’re doing a lot of telling and not showing.

• Look for examples of passive voice and make those sentences active.

• Review long paragraphs and make sure all the detail adds to your story. Backstory (your character’s history) is important, but it needs to be sprinkled in. Long chucks of history read like a police report or a data dump. They take the reader out of the story’s action.

• Look at the action in your story. You do not need to describe every single step and thing that your characters encounter. If your story is about your character flying to Europe, you really don’t need to tell us about all the things she does to get to the airport unless it is key to the work.

• Make a list of your overused words We all have our favorites. Mine are “just” and “that.” During my editing, I search for these and replace or delete as many as I can.

• Pay attention to the details. If you rename or change something, make sure you’ve removed or updated all references. I beta-read a few chapters for someone the other day, and this person had two different names for the main character and two different spellings of one of the names.

To me, editing is harder than writing, but it is so important to the overall project. What else would you add to my list?

Here's Looking at You - Invest in a Professional Headshot

You are your brand, and of all the things you can spend money on for your writing journey, I would suggest that professional photos are well worth the investment. You also want to make sure that your photo looks like you. If you’ve lost weight or changed your hair color, it’s time to update your photo. Here are a few things I’ve learned over the years.

• Selfies and cell phone candids often don’t have the resolution that you want. It needs to be high enough to be reproduced in digital and in print formats.

• Make sure that the photographer you use does digital touchups to ensure that your photo is topnotch.

• Be careful with the touchups. Slight adjustments are good for a quality photo. You just don’t want someone who is heavy handed with the airbrush tool. I’ve seen some that no longer look like a photograph or the person.

• When you’re reviewing the proofs, make sure the background isn’t busy or distracting. Look at what’s behind you. You don’t want something in the background that looks like it’s going through your head or attacking you.

• Make sure that you’re the only one in the photo. You don’t want parts of arms or legs where someone has cropped out the person next to you.

• Outside shots are great for natural lighting. Just be aware that bugs, nature, and the wind sometimes don’t cooperate.

• Wear solid colors that highlight your skin tone and hair color. Busy prints often don’t translate well in digital formats.

• Make sure any jewelry or hair accessories are complementary.

• Look at your nails. Photographers often include hands in the shot.

• Get recommendations from other authors on photographers and services.

• Make sure you know what’s included and what you’re getting for your money. Some photographers charge for multiple outfits.

• Also make sure that you have the rights to use the photos as you see fit. Some photographers require copyright information for use.

Professional photos are an investment. They’re worth the time and cost to help give you a consistent look on all your marketing efforts.