Clarissa Bannor

Welcome to the New Year and your 2023 writing resolutions!

When I first started writing seriously, I resolved to write a bit every day. I trusted the age-old formula: [Hours writing daily] x [Days in a year] = SUCCESS.

Who doesn’t want to be successful? So, I listened to sage advice from accomplished authors.

“Writing is a daily practice.”
“Real writers write every day.”
And my favorite: “In just one hour a day, you, too, can write a novel.”

The Interwebs are filled with success stories from newly published writers who woke up an hour early, snuck in an hour after work, wrote on their lunch breaks, or miraculously got their children to sleep by seven o’clock so they could spend their evenings in writing bliss.

But every year, around mid-January, I realized this wasn’t me.

Don’t get me wrong. I love a good, habit-forming, daily practice – especially if the habit is something healthy and made of stories. After all, other resolutions like diet, exercise, meditation – all have a better chance of improving our lives when practiced daily.

So, it follows that writing an hour a day could indeed transform my writing life. But, I wouldn’t know. Because the disconnect between resolution and reality meant I never found out.

And when I couldn’t find that hour of productive writing every day, I felt like a failure. I felt like a wimp. Most of all, I didn’t feel like a writer.

But let’s be realistic: Working a full-time job whilst raising children and caring for aging parents doesn’t exactly lend itself to daily practices that a.) do not feed, house, or nurture those in your care; and b.) do not involve sleep.

So how can someone like me set aside an hour (or more) a day to write when there are no said hours to set aside – especially for a creative pursuit?

The simple answer is, I can’t. So, I devised another way of writing that incorporates all the discipline and eliminates (almost) all the guilt.

Let me introduce you to “The Deep Dive,” a writing method that has worked for me and several other writers I know – in particular, women authors and screenwriters who are inundated with family, jobs, school, and the myriad of expectations surrounding our gender.

With a deep dive, I set aside large chunks of time – a day, an afternoon, and entire evening – so I can write undisturbed for several hours consecutively. This requires planning and help from others – my spouse, friends, fellow writers. They care for my children, make dinner, and they manage everyday tasks so I can enjoy uninterrupted creative time.

In the best-possible scenario, a deep dive involves a weekend locked in a room with just me and my writing. I prepare the night before by thinking through the story, I settle my brains and begin writing once my day begins, I take breaks with a cup of tea or a brisk walk – undisturbed. I am on my time and no one else’s, which allows my creativity to ebb and flow with the day.

(I call this Kairos Time. It’s worth a look.)

Because a deep dive sets aside spans of hours, I can immerse myself in the story, with no one’s expectations looming over me. A deep dive provides sufficient ramp-up time to reread my work, look over my notes, and check through my outline, so I’m prepared to discover something new.

I’ve learned that submerging myself in the details is important to my process. I can’t do that in an hour a day. Ramping up takes the entire hour.

I dive deep weekly, rather than daily. That way, I can work my paying job, and everyday tasks like dinner, walking the dog, and childcare don’t infringe on my writing time. Plus, I have the extra bonus of being present for my family, my job, and my creative pursuits when I need to be – without begrudging anyone their time.

The best part: After a deep dive I find myself still living in the story. Plotlines and dialogue come to me during the week while I’m running errands or gardening or taking a walk. I keep my smart phone handy to record these tidbits.

It’s like my subconscious is writing for me, without requiring me to put fingers to keyboard – until I get to my next deep dive.

So, until you reach your dream spending every day as a full-time writer, don’t get yourself in a twist because you can’t manage an hour a day. Your resolution shouldn’t be based on someone else’s expectations of a successful writer.

This year, resolve to tell your story. Resolve to ask for help. Resolve to make the time.

There are many paths to that final page. Find the one that works for you.

Then write.

Meet the Author

Terry Menefee Gau is an accomplished actor & writer, as well as a non-profit professional for the past twenty years.  She has a varied theatre and film resume, spanning over twenty-five years as an actor, producer, writer, and director.  Terry is a proud member of the Virginia Screenwriters’ Forum and has several award-winning scripts under her belt.  She also works at VPM as an events manager in Community Engagement. Terry received her M.Div. and MACE from Union Presbyterian Seminary, focusing in Narrative and Film Theology, and she has a B.S. in Mathematics from James Madison University.  She loves the dichotomy of art and logic, spirit and reason.

Not every story finds a home. For a writer, it’s a worst-case scenario. You spent months (possibly years) bleeding text onto the page and editing the story to make it the best it can be. Then after even more years of querying agents—nothing.

I’ve been there.

Two years ago, I finished one of my most challenging manuscripts: a young adult urban fantasy set in the early 1980s. I immersed myself in spy novels. I studied spycraft, the Cold War, East and West Berlin, all sorts of random crap about 1983, and lots of mythical creatures. The actual writing took about a year, and then the querying began.

I got two full requests from agents. Both eventually sent me rejection letters.

The same day.

One hour apart.

That was one of my worst days as a writer.

How did I cope with that? Less than three hours later, I drove to the library and continued writing my next story.

I love my YA spy novel, but it hasn’t found a home. As demoralizing as these moments can be, shelving an unpublished story doesn’t make a manuscript or the writer a failure. The challenge is how to take a homeless story and make the best of that situation.

First off, every story you write can help you improve your craft. A good writer should always push themselves to do better with each story they write. You’re paying it forward to your next story.

You should also take some time to reflect on your options. Can you query any small presses? Be aware that while there are lots of small presses, many of them rely on print-on-demand technology. That means you probably aren’t getting in a Barnes & Noble. To get your book into many independent bookstores, you’re probably having to buy the books and deliver them to the store yourself. That’s just a step above self-publishing, and that takes even more business savvy on your part.

The grimmest takeaway is to decide if you’ve got the stomach to try again to hunt for an agent or a publisher with another story. Writing is filled with far more rejection than acceptance. This doesn’t end with the querying process. If you think querying agents is demoralizing, just wait until you try to convince a paying reader to buy your book.

Before you call it quits, you should consider why that manuscript failed and do your best to avoid those mistakes with your future projects.

Perhaps you aren’t the right person to tell that story. It’s possible you just don’t have the life experience to make that story work.

Maybe your timing is bad. Certain trends come and go. While I eventually found a publisher for my Gidion Keep, Vampire Hunter novels, I never found an agent. I had the misfortune of timing my agent hunt during the height of Twilightfatigue. I can’t tell you how many agents I researched that looked promising only to see a big “NO VAMPIRES!” in their manuscript wish list. If the timing is bad and you have patience, then maybe there will be a better chance to query agents with that story in the future.

Sometimes, you can cannibalize elements of your trunked story. You can lift a character, a setting, or a plot twist and use them elsewhere. One of my earliest publishing credits was a novelette titled The Deadlands that appeared in the anthology Four in the Hole and is now the title story in my short story collection of the same name. That story was born from the first act of a young adult, urban fantasy novel I’d written and been forced to trunk.

Success isn’t easy to define, even when you get published. The thing aspiring authors often forget is that failing to succeed doesn’t always equal failure. Sometimes, you can find some small victories even when your story isn’t published.

About the Author

Bill Blume‘s love for the written word started in high school with an addiction to comic books that was later hijacked by novels such as Frankenstein and Dragonflight. His short stories have been published in many fantasy anthologies and ezines. He’s the author of the Gidion Keep, Vampire Hunter series. Like the father figure in his novels, he’s worked as a 911 dispatcher for more than 15 years.

A bestselling author, Liliane Fortna has been a professional contemporary dancer (performing in both Europe and the US), European fashion model, fashion consultant, and Amazon rain forest explorer. Since 2008 she has been an Energy Healer in both Europe and the United States, having received her education in France, Belgium, and the United States. She has a degree in English Literature from the University of Maryland and is fluent in French, English, and German. Liliane suffered a very difficult childhood which allows her to understand those who deal with rejection and mistreatment. Over the years, she has helped women feel more confident about themselves, and during the last 14-plus years has used Energy Healing to continue individually helping men and women face and work through difficult physical and emotional situations. With Winks from Above, she helps a broader audience rediscover their innate gift of communicating with their guides and higher self to create a better, richer, and happier life. And as a contributing author in the anthology Turning Point Moments, Liliane helps readers see painful challenges as powerful opportunities to become more resilient, open and hopeful.

When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?

When I was a teenager growing up in France, I loved writing stories, poems, anything. I just had so much fun playing with words. My goal was to become a journalist. The idea of travelling around the world, witnessing and writing about exciting events excited me greatly. Unfortunately, in the 60’s in France, journalism was not well regarded as a profession for a woman. My rather conservative family consequently prevented me from following the path I desired. Only several decades later, after I mustered the courage to get a degree in English Literature, did I finally start focusing on writing my first book.

Which genre are you most passionate about?

I’m an avid reader. I enjoy historical novels, but otherwise I focus on a wide range of non-fiction, primarily biographies, philosophy, esoteric and transformational. As a writer, now that I’ve finished my first transformational book, I intend to turn to a series of children’s books that I’ve been sketching out for some time. I also plan to write an historical memoir based on several generations of women in my family and the impact wars had on them.

What is the most surprising thing you learned while publishing your work?

Winks from Above is a transformational book meant to help others achieve richer, more meaningful lives. But as I went from initial drafting through editing to publishing the final copy, I was struck by how much it also exposed new positive insights for me too. Specifically, as I developed my material, I had to revisit many painful episodes of my life. During this process, I was amazed to see events in a different light, understand their deeper meaning, and appreciate that many of them were connected. Each difficulty I experienced was a step to help me rise to a higher level of consciousness. It was truly cathartic.

What advice would you offer new writers?

Don’t be like me – don’t wait for decades to follow your dream (but if you are a “late bloomer”, that’s okay too). No matter what you write about, dare to amuse, entertain, inform, teach, and share your most inner thoughts. If it comes from your heart, your message will resonate with those who need to read your words. And in the process, it will also allow you to discover parts of yourself hidden in the deepest recesses of your inner being.

I hoard phrases! I can’t point to an exact time when I started, but as a young girl, I became acutely aware of other people’s seemingly sublime ability to spew clever retorts, express mundane occurrences with flourish and wit, and offer wise advice that was clothed with astute figurative aplomb.

I first began collecting words and then phrases in elementary school. Back then, I collected words to meet general education requirements. Armed with the notorious Students’ Companion – a textbook that served a smorgasbord of words with their meanings, synonyms, and antonyms while also dishing out proverbial sayings, quotations, figurative language, and more, I chewed words in an effort to commit their details to memory and swallowed them to digest memorization into knowledge. In time, I developed a habit of squirreling away words and phrases for future use. Then as a bored-out-of-my-mind student, I began reading the dictionary. Perhaps these were the geneses of my word collecting and, more importantly, phrase collecting, which sometimes creates angst when I engage in the editing and revising processes.

Coco Chanel’s famous admonition to remove one thing – an accessory or item of clothing –before leaving the home can be similarly applied to the writing process. And just like those who have a more is more aesthetic to decorating or dressing, word collectors often struggle with getting rid of words – or in my case, phrases – once committed to the page. For starters, finding the correct word or phrase that adequately captures and conveys the mood of characters, settings, or emotions is in itself an art. So, mastering clever wordplay cannot be taken for granted. However, as writers, we live with the knowledge that inevitably, we will be asked to slash and contain phrases for the sake of “the work.”

Yet even though we know it needs to be done, the pain and anxiety of losing that special word or phrase can at times be terrifying. Some writers plunge into the what-ifs. What if I fail to replace it with a more competent alternative? What if I can use it in another paragraph or chapter? What if I (horror of horrors) forget the eloquent concoction? Naturally, such terror is magnified when the thing to be sliced and diced away consists of numerous phrases, sentences, or paragraphs.

Revising is at times, an arduous but always necessary process in creating one’s masterpiece. If you, like me, have consistently practiced word hoarding, extricating clever phrases once deployed to the page requires a steely determination to delve into your purpose for writing. Moreover, it requires discipline to move beyond mere words on a page and to fearlessly commit to crafting beautifully compelling work.

If you suffer from the manuscript-defeating condition that coerces you to amass words and phrases on your pages, here are a few suggestions that might help.

1. Save them. Create a separate file where you can safely stockpile those memorable phrases you’ve creatively concocted. There would be numerous opportunities in the future where you can dive in and retrieve your hoarded treasures to unleash on the literary world.
2. Cut them. Yes, I know it hurts. I’ve experienced the pain of extricating marvelous anecdotes from my work, and heaven helps me if they are funny, witty, or dripping with sarcasm or wisdom. Alas, knowing when to effect brutal cuts at crucial moments in your masterpiece will ultimately save you from further torture. An additional upside is – see 1 above.
3. Remember the end game. Whether writing for pleasure or for a career, the story cannot and should not suffer because a writer stubbornly refuses to recognize that the result you desire is to produce work that is captivating and memorable for all the right reasons.

So yes, I hoard phrases. I know that there are many of us out there. It was and is in listening that I have accrued some noteworthy phrases that I’ve packed and stored away for use one day. Luckily, I’ve also discovered that I too have, over time, developed a knack for such, and I lay them out on paper or on-screen with relish. Yet I also appreciate that in crafting each opus, I must eliminate any dross that might be bogging my writing down, regardless of how funny or profound it might be. (Yes, that’s an oxymoron, but true!) I encourage you to write on! Plaster your words and phrases and magnificent sentences across your pages. Do all of this fearlessly and wonderfully. But know this – in the end, you cannot commit it all to the page.

About the Author

Alethea McCollin is a playwright based in Central Virginia. She is delighted to serve on JRW’s Executive Board, and is committed to story-telling. She is an avid gardener gone rogue, a proud but mediocre bread baker, and a shoe addict. Alethea finds joy in simple things.