Rainy Writing Day

Eight. Straight. Days. Of. Rain.

This is not an exaggeration. We’ve had eight straight days of rain here in Northern Virginia. Not the type of rain that lets up for several hours at a time, thus providing a welcome hiatus. Not the type of drizzle that makes your hair frizz but doesn’t require an umbrella. The type of rain that falls, hour after hour, in sheets. The type of rain that makes even a warm day chilly. The type of rain that causes your miniature poodle to choose to do her business in the house and face your wrath, rather than brave the elements outside. That kind of rain.

Writers are sensitive people. Eight days of rain may make us sad and lethargic, longing for the sun and wishing for its streaming light to flood our writing haven. But it can also be the perfect backdrop for a productive day.

Start by pulling on a warm, fleecy sweatshirt and fluffy socks (we all own a pair).  Then, go outside. If you have a porch or covered deck, sit.  If not, open a window and pull up a chair.  Don’t write. Don’t take notes. Sit, watch, and listen. You can hear the rain hit the pavement. See the steam rise from the road. Notice a cat skulking beneath a bush. It catches you watching and darts back into the woods behind your neighbor’s house. The air is cold and your fingertips might turn white, but ignore them. Take a deep breath and let your mind wander to your work in progress, to that scene you want to finish, to that new idea lurking beneath the surface.

It’s there – just inside the house – waiting for you. Maybe sit outside a few minutes longer. Maybe get up right now. Either way, choose the right time to make your way back inside and pull up that manuscript. As it loads, pour yourself a cup of tea. Or coffee. Or wine. Take a sip, glance back out at the rain, and relish the silence.

If you haven’t already, crack open the nearest window. You may be indoors, but it’s important to embrace the weather.

Now it’s time for mood music. You’ll want something mellow to enhance the rainy-day experience. We’ve moved away from sad and lethargic. The rain has created the perfect writing day. Get those tunes going. Find your way back to your characters, to their world.

The rainfall comes in droves, now, but you are inside, with your music and the melody of the rain intertwining together. Embrace this calm and the productivity that goes with it.

Ready? Write.



Bethany Masone Harar is an author, teacher, and blogger, who does her best to turn reluctant readers into voracious, book-reading nerds. Check out her blog here and her website here.

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2 comments calm, manuscript, music, rain, warmth, work in progress, writing

The Heavy Link - Perfectionism and Procrastination

One of our amazing contributors. Renee Roberson, recently wrote a great article about our creative health. Take a moment to check out her article here: http://muffin.wow-womenonwriting.com/2018/01/taking-inventory-of-your-creative-health.html

The timing couldn't be more fabulous (as far as I'm concerned) because I was working on something on my end regarding the link between procrastination and perfectionism. There is definitely a link and it's a very heavy one - if you don't believe me, just go to Dr. Google and type in the words: perfectionism and procrastination. WOW! I like it when I'm not the only one who notices things and there is definitely a correlation here.

I was raised on some very sturdy old-fashioned values. The early bird catches the worm. Why put off until tomorrow what you can get done today. Do it right the first time and you won't have to do it again. These are great, right? Maybe not so great...

Here I am, waiting until tomorrow to submit my manuscript because if I go over it once more I can find one more mistake. Waiting to sit down and write until the house is spotless, every bit of dust has been eliminated, and every sock has found it's mate. Typing each sentence over and over again until it shines brighter than the sun (and then deleting it again because I want it to resonate with each and every reader with no possibility for a negative review). My expectations and goals are completely unrealistic. So I wait.

Then, as the deadline approaches I realize I have to get something down on paper. My heart beat quickens, my neck aches, and I chastise myself relentlessly for not following all those golden rules emblazoned on my brain since childhood. I question everything about myself because I think only lazy people wait until the last minute. But alas - I sat down recently with some very smart women and many of us have the same procrastination problem. I feel a bit better about it knowing it's linked to my perfectionism and not my lack of ambition or knowledge.

Where do we go from here? Well, I for one am going to turn to the expert advice from Renee's article: Taking Inventory of Your Creative Health and I'm going to try to be physically, mentally, and emotionally healthier and then I'm going to cut myself some slack. I'm going to stop expecting perfection from myself when I'm very understanding of the flaws of others. I'm going to stop overthinking each and every word, sentence, paragraph, and chapter. I'm going to start enjoying writing more and stop feeling the heavy link around my neck - the heavy link of perfectionism gone wrong.

What have you done to help avoid these pitfalls of writing?
What is holding you back?
What advice can you give others who fall into this perfectionist trap?

Thank you for your thoughts!

Hugs,
~Crystal

Crystal is a council secretary and musician at her church, birth mother, babywearing cloth diapering mama (aka crunchy mama), business owner, active journaler, writer and blogger, Blog Tour Manager with WOW! Women on Writing, Publicist with Dream of Things Publishing, Press Corp teammate for the DairyGirl Network, Unicorn Mom Ambassador, as well as a dairy farmer. She lives in Wisconsin with her husband, five young children (Carmen 10, Andre 9, Breccan 4, Delphine 2, and baby Eudora, two dogs, four little piggies, a handful of cats and kittens, and over 230 Holsteins.

You can find Crystal riding unicorns, taking the ordinary and giving it a little extra (making it extraordinary), blogging and reviewing books, baby carriers, cloth diapers, and all sorts of other stuff here, and at her personal blog - Crystal is dedicated to turning life's lemons into lemonade!

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3 comments getting it right, making it perfect, perfectionism, procrastination, work in progress, writing, writing life

Manuscripts: A Love Affair

Last year, I had a series of relationships which ended badly. I’m talking manuscript relationships. They all started out well. My characters were compelling, my ideas rich. I was eager to see how the story would develop and plunged in headfirst, giving it my all, talking about it to anyone who would listen. I was sure this was “the one.”

But after a few chapters, my enthusiasm waned. Our “romance” fizzled out. I couldn’t muster the energy to commit. The spark wasn’t there anymore. Feeling dejected and defeated, I did what any desperate writer would do: I ghosted* my manuscripts.

Several months ago, I read a “Dear Amy” – she’s a Washington Post columnist who gives advice to readers in need – about a woman who felt stuck. She’d had a series of romantic relationships, but they all ended in heartache. The woman didn’t know how to break out of this cycle. Amy advised the woman to switch her routine, to find romantic partners in brand new places, and to choose people who were the opposite of her usual type.

Amy’s answer made perfect sense to me and, the more I thought about her answer, the more I could apply it to my manuscript relationships. Maybe it was time to try something new.

An idea for a children’s picture book sat in the back of my mind. It had been there a while. Despite my lack of confidence, because I’d never attempted to write a picture book before, I took Amy’s advice, pulled the idea forward, and got started. Each word in a picture book needs love and attention, and I spent a great deal of time nurturing the overarching theme, choosing the perfect action words, and completing a sweet, beautiful little story about a small girl and her comfort object.

In one short week, I had a picture book manuscript I was proud of. It was complete, polished, and wonderful. We had a lasting relationship. In a small way, moving out of my comfort genre and trying out a new relationship helped me fall in love with writing again.

Writing and finishing the picture book was exactly what I needed to move forward with a YA fiction project. Picture books need love and attention, but so do YA novels! After finishing the picture book manuscript, I felt invigorated, and set to work on an outline for a current work in progress that I still had feelings for.

I think it might be the one.

*Teenager lingo for ending a relationship by disappearing from the other person’s life completely. No calls. No texts. Unfriended from all social media. Simply gone.

Bethany Masone Harar is an author, teacher, and blogger, who does her best to turn reluctant readers into voracious, book-reading nerds. Check out her blog here and her website here.

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3 comments manuscripts, new genres, nurturing writing, old manuscripts, picture book, trying something new, work in progress, writing relationships, YA fiction

Chapter Construction: Leave the Reader Wanting More

It’s late. Really, really, late. Your family gave up on you long ago and went to bed. Maybe you joined them, but are still awake, the book bathed in the soothing glow of your phone’s flashlight. You’re lying down on your stomach, and your neck hurts from keeping it upright for so long. Your hands are tired, even though you’ve made a valiant attempt to prop the book up against your pillow, and you need to go to the bathroom but you’re ignoring the urge. One more page until the last chapter. You’re so close. And then you read the last sentence and . . . no! It’s a cliffhanger. The only way to fix the problem is to keep reading, so you take a deep breath and plunge ahead.

If you’re a book person – and I suspect you are – this scenario is one with which you are more than familiar. That moment when you reach the end of a chapter and expect to put the book down, but find yourself unable to let it go, is an incredible phenomenon. Oddly enough, I never really thought about this moment when I first started writing. I knew I liked the book. I knew it had sucked me in – a “page turner” if you will. But I never really thought about why.

That is, until I finished a chapter of my work in progress one day, and felt satisfied.

Then, it hit me: I wasn’t creating the “can’t put the book down” feeling that I love in my favorite books. My novel wouldn’t make someone’s neck hurt late at night, or keep them up way past their bedtime. My writing was solid, but I wasn’t building tension at the end of my chapters the way I needed to. My chapters were long and encompassed a clear beginning, middle and end.

I set out to fix this problem. First, I shortened my chapters, making sure to leave mini cliff-hangers at the end of each one. I moved the resolution of my chapters to the beginning of the next chapter, then followed those resolutions with another source of conflict.

The result? A story my readers wouldn't - and couldn't - put down.

If you haven’t taken a hard look at your chapter construction, I highly recommend it. It can make all the difference. Just picture your readers tired, squinting beneath the light of their phone’s flashlight, desperate for more. Then smile.

Bethany Masone Harar is an author, teacher, and blogger, who does her best to turn reluctant readers into voracious, book-reading nerds. Check out her blog here and her website here.

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5 comments Bethany Masone Harar, building tension, chapter resolution, chapters, novel, page turners, work in progress, writing cliffhangers

Fear of Rejection: When Common Sense Takes a Back Seat

Back in May, I took a leap of faith and sent a query letter for my newest book to a literary agent I felt would be interested. She was looking for young adult literature of the creepy, semi-supernatural, Lois Duncan variety. My book fit that description perfectly.

To my surprise and delight, she asked for a partial. That partial turned into a request to revise and resubmit. It was the furthest I’ve ever gone in the querying process and I took every suggestion she made to heart. She asked me to enrich my main character’s personality, so I spent hours giving her a stronger back story, fleshing out her likes and dislikes, and making her personality shine despite her crippling depression. The agent asked me to reduce my unneeded characters.  I cut them without mercy. I had several people read my changes and received positive feedback. By the end of July, I was ready to send her the revised manuscript.

And yet, I couldn’t.

At first, ignoring my edited manuscript was easy. It was still summer and I had almost three weeks left before I needed to go back to work, which gave me plenty of time. Then, I was in a car accident (you can read about the struggle to write when you have a concussion here) and I wasn’t allowed to use the computer at all, which gave me a valid excuse for not sending the agent my edited novel.

But two weeks ago, when I was cleared to use the computer again and still hadn’t sent her the revisions, I had to face the ugly truth: I was terrified the agent would reject it.

It’s not as though I haven’t experienced rejection before. Query rejections, sadly, are a dime-a-dozen for some of us – myself included. This was different. This was a revise and resubmit – a whole new level of investment. I was so close to finding an agent. If I sent it and she passed . . . well, you can imagine the hurt.

I held out. Work started, which made my manuscript easier to ignore. I started to wonder how long I could avoid the dilemma. Luckily, my husband brought me back to reality. “If you don’t send it,” he said, “I’m going to hijack your computer and do it for you.” Then he hugged me and told me that, no matter what, he knew I’d keep on writing. If this book didn’t find an agent, the next one would.

I sent it that afternoon.  Yes, I've been checking my inbox like a crazy person every since.

The fear of rejection is an unforgiving beast. The key is to slay that beast – sometimes with a little help from our partners – and move on. Maybe the agent will love my edits. Maybe she won’t. Either way, I’ll add this to my writing tool-box of valuable experiences.


Bethany Masone Harar is an author, teacher, and blogger, who does her best to turn reluctant readers into voracious, book-reading nerds. Check out her blog here and her website here.

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4 comments author, editing, fear of rejection, literary agent, manuscript, query letters, rejection, revise and resubmit, work in progress, writing

Side-Kicks: Making Supporting Characters Memorable

Whenever I ask someone about their book or their work in progress, their face lights up. They give me a strong snap-shot of the world they created, the major conflicts and, of course, a detailed description of the protagonist. It isn’t until I read their book that I discover their often-delightful, supporting characters.

I’ve always felt bad for supporting characters. They don’t get the love and attention they deserve. Like Luna Lovegood from the Harry Potter series, or Charlotte Lucas, Elizabeth Bennet’s best friend in Pride and Prejudice - each one is complex and interesting, but when push comes to shove, no one’s going to pay money to dress up like them for Halloween.

Creating interesting side-kicks for our protagonists is an art form in of itself. We pour time and energy into perfecting our protagonists, but without their friends, acquaintances and, let’s face it, frenemies, we can’t see all their complexities. Each supporting character brings out a new side of our protagonist, making their personalities rich and multifaceted.

In the interest of disclosure, I have an easier time developing supporting characters than I have crafting protagonists. I start by thinking of the traits my protagonist lacks. For example, in my current work in progress, my main character needs to work on her empathy. The solution? Creating a side-kick who desperately needs the patience and understanding of others. My protagonist lacks confidence, so I created a love interest who demands it of her. Even in real life, we gravitate to those who possess talents and traits which we lack. Why should our characters be any different?

By having each supporting character embody one strong personality point, I help bring out the strengths and weaknesses in my main character. Technically, these types of characters are called foils (think of Shakespeare’s incredible pairing of the passive lover, Romeo, and the intense fighter, Mercutio). By developing multiple foils, you not only allow readers to have a clear understanding of your supporting characters, but you also make your protagonist come alive.

A protagonist alone doesn’t make a story. Give some extra love to their side-kicks and watch them shine.

Bethany Masone Harar is an author, teacher, and blogger, who does her best to turn reluctant readers into voracious, book-reading nerds. Check out her blog here.

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2 comments author, Characters, developing characters, foil, novel, protagonists, side-kicks, story, supporting characters, work in progress, writing

Naughty Words

Did you know you might be using "naughty" words in your writing?  I'm not talking about the four letter words I hear throughout the hallways of my high school. I'm talking about the words that will make your editor cringe.

When my editor sent me a list of words to reduce and their counts, my jaw hit the floor. Never in my wildest dreams would I have believed these little words could be such a huge problem. Below are my biggest offenders.

1. Look

This pesky little word showed up over 300 times in my original manuscript. Phrases like “he looked surprised” or “she looked away” ran rampant. Though it hadn’t occurred to me at the time, this word is indicative to telling, not showing. Instead of using it, try to describe the character’s reaction using facial expressions or verbal reactions. Description makes for a more engaging scene.

2. Very

Luckily, I didn’t use this word quite as often as I used the word “look,” but I still had to wittle it down. The only way my editor let me keep it is if I couldn’t find any other alternative. When you think about it, it’s not needed, anyway.

3. Just

I used this word – a lot. It popped up everywhere. I used it the most in my character’s dialogue, however, so I discarded it as often as possible and only kept it in when my character needed to use it to make sense.

4. Adverbs

Not the word "adverbs" - I'm talking about all adverbs. Why say “she quickly ran” when you can use a more effective adjective like “sprinted?” Let the verbs speak for themselves. She didn’t “thoughtfully pause.” She paused. Try using terrified instead of “horribly scared.” Out of ideas? A thesaurus is a writer’s best friend.

5. Began

“Amy began to sweat.” Eh. “Sweat beads glistened on her skin.” Better.

6. Felt

Unless I used the word for something the character could literally feel, I had to get rid of it. So my main character couldn’t feel sad, but she could feel the soft fur of her cat. Get it? We often use the word feel to describe emotions but, again, it’s a showing vs telling issue. Instead of writing “she felt sad,” have your main character throw herself on the bed and sob into her purple pillow.

7. Was

The word “was” was (ha ha) my biggest transgression. I used it over 800 times. I’m not joking. For days, I poured over my manuscript, eradicating the word. Each time I took out a “was” I had to re-work the sentence to make it more effective. Trust me, once you’ve been through the trauma of eliminating the same word over 800 times, you’ll never overuse it again.


Word elimination is torture. It is also eye-opening. I keep a list handy, now, so that I can eliminate the majority of my “naughty words” ahead of time - before I submit my work to agents or publishers. Everyone is prone to using certain words. If you’re aware of your favorites, try to keep their numbers down.

Feeling brave? Try searching for some of the words above. You might be surprised how often they appear.


Bethany Masone Harar is an author, teacher, and blogger, who does her best to turn reluctant readers into voracious, book-reading nerds. Check out her blog here.

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6 comments author, bad words, editing, editor, Harar, manuscript, revising, words to avoid, work in progress, writing

To Plow or to Edit?

This depicts literal plowing. I am,
of course, referring to a figurative,
writing-type plowing.

I’ve heard two schools of thought when it comes to writing. There are those who believe, most ardently, that authors should write without editing until the manuscript is complete. On the other hand, there are fervent proponents for editing as you go.

I spoke to a fellow writer years ago, and he felt that it’s much better to finish your work in progress first, without stopping.  The editing, re-reading, and adding on to each scene came later, in his opinion. He believed that a writer loses sight of their story when they stop to edit as they write. In his opinion, finishing the work is the most important goal, and exerting editing effort on a first draft is a waste of time.

Another writer friend says she cannot move forward with a scene when it is choppy and unedited. Knowing that a scene isn’t strong bothers her and makes her less productive. In her opinion, even first drafts should have some literary merit.

I tried both of these approaches over a six day period to decide for myself.

For the first three days, I didn’t edit my work. Not even once. I pushed forward, doing my best to stay focused. I wrote. I wrote a LOT. In three days, I managed to add about a two-thousand words a day, which is very productive for me.

Still on a production high, I entered the next three days with enthusiasm. This time, I stopped after every page and re-read my work, making changes, adding details and rewriting sentences. I was lucky if I finished five-hundred words a day during this period, but I certainly had a strong sense of my characters and plot.

While it may sound like writing without stopping was the better choice, I found that revising as I went was the more satisfying experience. Even though I was productive when I wrote without stopping, I felt less content with my product. At the end of each day, I was left with a feeling of unease, hyper-aware that what I had composed was, for lack of a better word, uneven. On days where I took the time to revise, I felt complete. When I started writing the next day, I was able to look back on the previous day’s work with a sense of fulfillment.

For me, slow, steady, and meticulous was the way to go. I do see how finishing your work quickly can bring a sense of gratification, but paying attention to detail helped me create a more effective story.

So what do you think, lovely readers? Plow through, or pay attention to detail? I’d love to hear your thoughts!


Bethany Masone Harar is an author, teacher, and blogger, who does her best to turn reluctant readers into voracious, book-reading nerds. Check out her blog here.

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6 comments attention to detail, drafts, editing, Harar, manuscript, moving forward, productivity, WIP, work in progress, writing, writing gratification

Friday Speak Out!: Getting In Touch

by Stephanie Allen Crist

I’m a planner by nature. I plan out my life and my work. I wrote my memoir after creating a detailed plan and the process worked great. But, when it comes to my fiction, I’ve learned there’s something magical about writing a story by the seat of my pants!

After “fibro fog” began impacting my concentration, I needed something to get my writing back on track. My usual tricks didn’t work. It was time to get back to basics. I started writing by hand, listening as the pen scritched across the paper, feeling the ink slide from my fingers to the page.

But the scene that flared so brilliantly in my mind felt dull and lifeless. The notebook I’d used was the cheap, flimsy, wire-bound variety. The words I’d written fit the notebook so well I almost threw it away. I went shopping instead.

I found the upscale notebooks I wanted at Target. Bound like a traditional composition notebook, I found a version with a wide right hand margin. I could take notes on changes I wanted to make without getting caught up in a censor-style critique. So, I grabbed four.

The first was for the beginning. The second and third would comprise the middle. The fourth would be for the end. With Larry Brooks’ Story Engineering humming in the back of my mind, I figured that these four notebooks came with a built-in plan. I just didn’t know what it was.

I rewrote that first scene. The prose was far from perfect, but the words were worthy of those fancy notebooks. So, I kept going. Page by page, chapter by chapter, the story started to come together until I put my heroine in a too-tight spot at the beginning of the second notebook. She needed to do something extraordinary to escape. The words flowed like wine, heady and strong.

There I was, at the beginning of the second quarter of my novel, with a scene that could have made a climactic end. That meant that I needed to make things bigger and more dramatic from here on out. As the story progressed, the magic happened. I kept finding new ways to live up to that dramatic promise. Problems got bigger. I was tougher on my heroine than I’d been on any character I’d ever created. I gave her problems she couldn’t handle and I forced her to handle them. And she surprised us both when she handled them well.

Now the story is on my computer, still a work-in-progress. But I’ve noticed something else. Every time I read those big moments that come after that extraordinary escape, they still get me. I’ve read them dozens of times, but they still make me cry. And that’s magical!

* * *

Stephanie Allen Crist is a writer, advocate, and marketer. Stephanie’s first two books, Discovering Autism / Discovering Neurodiversity: A Memoir and First Steps: Understanding Autism, are available now. Learn more by visiting www.StephanieAllenCrist.com and be sure to check out Caressing the Muse, Stephanie’s writing blog.
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Would you like to participate in Friday "Speak Out!"? Email your short posts (under 500 words) about women and writing to: marcia[at]wow-womenonwriting[dot]com for consideration. We look forward to hearing from you!
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1 comment Friday Speak Out, notebooks, novel writing, plotter or pantser, Stephanie Allen Crist, work in progress

Word Challenges: Motivation to Write

photo by wwarby on Flickr.com

It sounds crazy that writers need challenges to write. When I tell my non-writing friends that I am stuck on a work-in-progress or most of my writing time is dedicated to freelance, I can tell they don't get it. But you, if you are reading this blog, you are probably a writer. And hopefully, you get what I mean when I say: writers need motivation. We need to spice it up--or it is super easy to get in a rut and not actually produce new creative material for publication.

This is the exact problem almost my entire critique group was having in the spring. We all seem to have things going on in our lives that are getting in the way of producing any words at all. We love each other, so we still met--sometimes one person out of six would have something for us to critique. Or we would brainstorm if one of us felt stuck. But let's just say, none of us were producing anything close to the 20 pages we could have turned in for the others to read and critique.

So at our last meeting, someone suggested doing a daily word challenge. Every day for 90 days, we should commit to writing 250 words. When we go on retreat in the summer, we will pick a winner of the challenge--and this winner will get a monetary prize--which is the person who wrote the most and the most consistently over the 90 days. And it is working! Our word totals are probably triple what they were all spring in just one week. I'm struggling a little still, but I know why; and soon, I will be able to get on track and add my daily totals to the spreadsheet too.

This isn't the only word challenge you can do. You can do "word sprints", also known as "word wars." What this entails is either physically being in a room with other writers or online at the same time. You set a timer for an agreed upon time (usually less than 30 minutes), and you write as many words on your manuscript as possible as quickly as you can. (It's sort of the same philosophy as NaNoWriMo--just make progress, you can revise later.) When the time is up, everyone shares their word counts, and the person with the most gets to say: "I won the word war."  There could be a prize, like chocolate, if you so desire.

You actually don't need other writers to do a word sprint. You can just compete against yourself and try to beat your personal best, too.

Do you have any word challenges you do to keep yourself motivated and progressing on your work-in-progress? If so, please share them. We would love to hear about these ideas here!

Margo L. Dill is a children's writer and published author as well as an instructor for the WOW! classroom. Check out her books on her website.

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1 comment critique groups, Margo L. Dill, work in progress, writing challenges, writing motivation