Hello friend, 👋🏾
This evening, Monday, March 4, 2024 at 8pm ET, I’ll be going live on YouTube and Facebook for a working session called “Build a Romantasy World With Me.”
It’s the first in a series I’m planning for Mondays in March to build out a fantasy world in which I want to write more short stories. I’ll be using the Imaginary Worldbuilding process to dive deeper into a world I need to flesh out.
If you want to join me to talk worldbuilding and actually get some work done, please come through!
You can sign up for reminder emails of my live streams here.
And if you find this weekly email useful, please hit the ❤️ button, share it with a friend, and consider becoming a paid subscriber!
📝 Tough Talk from the Trad World
Agent
had a great post on called “What Makes a Market Tough?” Publishing is a difficult industry. No matter which route you take—traditional or indie—you need to prepare yourself for a bumpy ride. But the industry, like everything else, goes in cycles, and apparently we are in a fairly difficult one.When I first sold my initially self-published series to St. Martin’s Press, I admit, I didn’t know a lot about traditional publishing. But I figured that a huge corporation, filled with professionals who did this for a living, must know infinitely more about how to get books into the hands of readers than I did, toiling alone in my suburban Maryland home.
Now, oh these many years later, I still appreciate the expertise of the folks at my publishers, but it’s clear that on a certain level, we’re all flying blind. McKean says:
When writers ask about the market, especially writers newer to the scene, they think editors and agents have some kind of specialized knowledge to analyze and synthesize what we see in market trends to avoid the dips, to stay afloat, to come out the other end unscathed. And we do not!
…We can look back at the cycle paranormal romance took in the 2010s and see how long it’s taken to come back as romantacy and that might help you figure out if you should write that romance about weregophers this year or next. But that doesn’t mean I can definitely sell a romance, or your romance about weregophers. The market is going to do what the market is going to do, and we only know anything in hindsight.
For most authors, staying in this industry means constantly striving for success—whatever that means to you. Whether it’s more sales, larger advances, more rights deals, or a greater connection with readers, almost all of us are chasing something.
We can try to achieve these goals by writing what we think people want to read, or at least what they’re reading now, but with the time it takes to write a novel, and with the fact that the books coming out today from publishers were often written two or more years ago, that’s a moving target.
So what can you do to survive a tough market, when getting a book sold is as hard as it’s ever been? McKean’s advice is to write the book you want to write. No one really knows why some books work and some don’t. (The PRH trial taught us all that). But if the key word is to survive the industry, I think we can only do that if we keep our hearts intact. If a love for writing and reading brought you here, then that’s the thing that will push you through. No matter how tough the going gets.
📝 Shield Your Time
I’m a big fan of timeblocking/timeboxing (this 10-year old post on my author site is still the most popular one). However, I know it’s not for everyone. There is a specific look of unmitigated horror that crosses the face of someone for whom the idea of timeblocking has just given them hives. If such a person is you, consider timeshielding instead.
In “Timeshielding: How to Do the Things you Actually Want to Do” Anne-Laure Le Cunff of Ness Labs explains:
Timeshielding is about protecting blocks of time in your calendar for what matters to you, with no specific task list. This could be for research, reading, creative brainstorming, or even just doing nothing. Because timeshielding feels more fun than timeboxing, you’re less likely to ignore the blocks in your calendar.
She also gives some great tips about how to guard your time and protect your energy. For instance, if managing your time just hasn’t ever worked for you, have you tried managing your energy?
…try to keep your calendar as free as possible to allow a fluider approach to work. Move things around based on your energy levels. If you feel a spur of energy, you can decide to use the next hour to make progress on a creative project. If you feel low energy, you can reply to some unimportant emails.
Other tips that I think are incredibly useful include putting breaks into your calendar and scheduling time for outcome-independent creative thinking or output. Sometimes loosening the stranglehold on our calendars is exactly what we need to be more productive.
And if you are looking for more organization tips, I’m teaching a workshop in May on organizing your writing life.
🚀 Quick Bites
HB90 Bootcamp is back! I highly recommend this 7-day bootcamp held by author Sarra Cannon to add more productivity to your life with less stress.
Looking to grow your Instagram audience? Dollar Eighty gamifies the process of growing your audience and increasing engagement. (h/t Ines Johnson)
“And consider, always, every day, the determination
of the grass to grow despite the unending obstacles.”
—Mary Oliver
✨Ink & Magic podcast: Episode 16
“Plotting with the Plot Fairy Becca Mysoor”
Leslye and Ines talk about unconventional plotting, 150 word blurbs, and television versus novel structure across all genres with the Fairy Plot Mother. In this magical conversation, you’ll see how Becca Mysoor earned her storytelling wand by helping to craft some of today’s best selling stories!
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