How's the writing going so far this year? If you're thinking, "Not well, Rachelle," you're in good company. Here in the United States, there has been plenty happening both on the national and local levels to keep us distracted from our crucial, creative efforts. I encourage you, no matter where you are in the world, to keep writing through it all. Our stories are just as important as they ever were, and now perhaps even more so.

It's easy to get hung up on aspects of your manuscript that actually may not matter much, depending on the stage you are at in the writing process. Don't let these these things stop you from writing!

If you're in the generative stage of your project, don't worry about making the words and sentences or even the shape of the thing perfect. Just write it out. If you're working through revisions, look at big picture things like the overall structure and cause-and-effect trajectory before niggling over grammar and word choice.

Most importantly, just keep going. Invest in creative time as a sacred respite from everything else.

Listen.

Be a fly on the wall as Jane Friedman talks with Ann Kjellberg of the excellent Book Post about how literary talent gets discovered. [YouTube]

They talk about topics such as whether building a platform is increasingly important for fiction writers, adapting your book into a podcast or screenplay, how to think about promotion or discovery if you are a private person, and whether age works against you in publishing. It's worth a listen/watch!

Read.

1. If you click on one thing from this newsletter, click this: Why thinking about publicity before querying agents is best practice. Even if publicity and querying is the farthest thing from your mind right now, this essay is a goldmine of actionable steps to take to best position your project in the marketplace. Who knows, it may also help shape your project into something agents and publishers will want to pounce on!
2. ​Gemma Tizzard on researching for historical fiction: “It’s not a job for the faint of heart, or the impatient. But for those of us with brains that crave this kind of work, it is bliss.”
3. ​How to find your memoir's narrative arc (there may be more than one)​
4. ​Feeling called to write? Why you should answer.​

Write.

Poetry, like no other form, deftly connects the effable to the ineffable. What takes longform writers pages or whole books to uncover, a poet can reveal in a few lines on a page.

Reading poetry, and writing it, is a wonderful way to sharpen your powers of language, observation, and even brevity. Pull down a favorite volume from your shelf or browse the Poetry Foundation website. Once you find a poem you love, use its form as a pattern to write you own poem.

The subject is up to you, but if you're stumped, write about a problem your characters are having in your novel or memoir-in-progress. Write about a secret--yours or someone else's. Write about the thing that scares you most. Write about the funniest thing that happened last week.

The idea is to use a short form to give your artistic eye a new perspective. Who knows what might shake loose!

Wishing you creative focus in a chaotic world. ❤️

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