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Mark Your Calendar! Free Beta Reader Workshop

Last year’s free workshop, Writing The Things You Think You Cannot Say, brought together a powerful cohort of our community to exchange best practices on the art of memoir writing. Well, we think if something works — you stick with it! So this year we are offering (4) additional free workshops. The first, on working with beta readers, will be held later this month.

Perhaps the most important question when working with beta readers, those early readers who see your work before it is ready for the literary marketplace, is: how can we productively apply structure to the process? Because without intentional guidance the feedback you receive will likely sound something like: “I loved it!” Or, “I guess I’m just not your audience,” code for I hated it. Or, “There’s a typo on page 17.” And we’re looking for something with a lot more heft than that.

We want to make sure you don’t waste your beta readers’ time (and they don’t waste yours). The goal then is to present tactical strategies for getting the most out of critiques offered by professionals and non-professionals alike.

To that end we will discuss:

  • How to select your beta readers
  • The right number of beta readers
  • The beta reader questionnaire
  • How to be open to feedback without being too open to feedback
  • And more!

This free workshop will be held on February 25th at 4:00pm PST. If you want to receive the Zoom details, let us know. We hope to see you there!

The Art Of Improvisation

Recently, I watched The Art of Improvisation, a 2005 documentary about pianist and composer Keith Jarrett. You may know Jarrett’s 1975 recording, The Köln Concert, as the best-selling solo album in jazz history. But what I was struck with while hearing his thoughts — of course — was how similar his description of jazz improvisation was to writing: the mindset, the elements, and the contours. By the end of this documentary, I was convinced that every time we sit down to write, we are, in fact, improvising.

Specifically, some of my takeaways from the film:
  • It is impossible to predict what will happen in improvisation; you just put your nervous system on alert for every single thing.
  • You sort out your materials in real time, approaching them as naturally as you approach your own breath.
  • A concrete thought process and an intuitive process can happen at the same time.
  • First the music enters you, then you don’t have to worry about what to play; the music’s telling you what to play.
  • When you allow everything to come through you, it will reach a kind of choke point when it has to come out of you. And if you don’t make a sound after that, you never will.
  • You find a way to get the best possible sound of your instrument.
  • The familiar routines of life are in complete contrast with the risks you take when you improvise; with improvisation, you begin every time with a blank slate.
  • The more experience a person has, the simpler they can sound; timing is the key to simplicity.
  • You have to take your whole being along with you. Then the soul shines through because things are always new.
When Jarrett joined Miles Davis’ band in the early 1970s, Miles said he wanted him to approach their performances as if he’d never played music before. It takes courage not to prefigure your results; it can feel risky to not have a specific goal. But it is also so refreshing to get into the work this way, and continue to work your way into it slowly. Do you have thoughts on how improvisation relates to other areas of life?

Doctorow’s Headlights

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the novelist E.L. Doctorow’s quote in the Paris Review Writers at Work (2nd) series. You may have heard it:

“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

I believe this; I really do. But still I struggle, writing a book on a deadline, when I extrapolate my current word count and it inevitably falls short of what my contract stipulates. I experience anxiety over not being able to see the make-up of each and every chapter clearly from where I sit today. And behind all of that is the concern that, while I like what I have done so far, that is no guarantee that I will continue producing at a high level.

Rather than make myself falsely feel better, which will only be a temporary solution, I find myself going back to the quote and asking it questions.

If that is true, then I should implicitly only worry about what my headlights illuminate, right? So, it is okay to write Chapter 8, and then Chapter 4, Chapter 3, the Introduction, and so forth?

And if I do that, can I truly rely on the Book Architecture Method concept of series to help me keep track of what I have written about, what still needs to be seeded, and what needs to be concluded?

And if I stay committed to this approach, is it okay, natural even, when one chapter splits into two, and the 33 ideas I have here go with one grouping, and these 15 ideas go with another? And then I can complete this chapter that uses those 33 ideas as their base, and assume that the one with 15 ideas will grow under the approaching headlights the same way all of the other chapters have grown?

Then my obsession with surety always comes back; it seems the best I can do is alternate belief and doubt. I re-read the quote and ask: What if we’re on the wrong road, though? I spread the paper map out on my knee while I am driving, which if you didn’t come of age during the era of paper maps, is not only dangerous, but you end up missing the clues of where the road winds and dips ahead. Are you sure these high beams are on?

There seem to be two options: self-torture or faith. 

If I choose self-torture, the activities seem pretty clear. I will measure and stress over quantity and pace. I will grasp for ideas whose time has not yet come. I will try to get some unsuspecting beta reader to make me feel better about my progress and eventual destination, etc.

If I choose faith, there doesn’t seem to be much more to it than this: Sink into the work. Do I know what I’m working on Tuesday? Do I have a process to capture what announces itself then over the horizon so I know what I’m working on Wednesday? If so, I have everything I need.

Maybe this is why the novelist Ernest Hemingway praised incremental progress:

“The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck. That is the most valuable thing I can tell you so try to remember it.”

Meaning, if you can see this swath of highway, you’re good. And what’s more, once you get a glimpse of the next stretch, you should save it for tomorrow as a way of avoiding writer’s block.

Some days, it all makes sense. One those days I might remember another quote, this one from Japanese Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki:

“Your way is to kill two birds with one stone. Our way is just to kill one bird with one stone.”



Writing The Things You Think You Cannot Say

The inaugural Understory Writers Conference was held last month in Park City, Utah under the sparkling leadership of Annie Tucker. I presented four workshops, including The Book Architecture Method, Meditation for Writers, Editing and Self-Editing…and honestly would like to do it again next week.

But the best one—either because it is the newest, or because it is the topic I am so engaged with right now because of my own book, or because it was the juiciest/most revelatory—was: Writing the Things You Think You Cannot Say. (Which could have been called Dealing With Unspeakable Material In Your Memoir and The People Who Don’t Want You To Speak It.)

After the conference, a number of attendees reached out to express their chagrin they had missed that particular session. And so we are going to put it on again, live on Zoom, on October 14th at 10am Pacific.

In this 60 minute session, we will cover:

  • The gory, vengeful first draft
  • A process to determine what you need as opposed to being guided solely by righteous indignation
  • Libel
  • People you still want to have Thanksgiving with
  • Karma

You know if you need to be there. The cost is free. Email me here so we can make sure you get all the details.