Category: Writing

4 keys to your author social media strategy

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As much as I talk and teach about social media, I have rarely written about it on this blog. Turns out, 2015 was the last time. In rereading that post from nine years ago, I see that it stands the test of time. While social media constantly changes, some things stay the same. One thing that is the same:

If you want to get your book published, you need to be out there on social media.

So how do you build a social media strategy? I know many of you struggle with this. But every publisher or agent will tell you that it is vital that you have a presence on social media. Let me help you get over your distress and offer four key points.

1. It’s not all about you.

That’s meant to make you feel better. Being on social media as a writer means the privilege of engaging with your “tribe” (a Seth Godin term), the community of writers — and not just writers, but writers writing in your genre, published and unpublished, local or around the world. On social media you find and follow those people. It has never been easier to connect with your favorite authors and with other likeminded writers working in the trenches. Seriously, we need one another.

Make your social media about those folks. Celebrate their successes. Read their books and learn from them, then share them on your social media, write reviews, be excited. Point to others, not at yourself. The more you do this, I guarantee you’ll begin to build a network of people around you who will support you when your time comes.

2. But you should also share about you–authentic you.

But at the same time, you need to let people see a window into your world. You’re not just lurking over in their world while presenting a blank slate about your own. That’s hardly helpful because the whole purpose is to join these networks of people. So let them know you a little. But be you. Be authentic.

Share about your writing process: was today a great day of writing? Why or why not? What works best for you? Share about what you’re researching and learning. All writers know the rabbit trails we can get on when we’re researching information on the internet. What new pertinent (or not) information did you learn today? Then you can get a little more personal.

Pinky is not helpful at all.

You don’t need to go overboard, but do know that people are interested. Talk about how your cats are not helpful. Pets are always safe and fun, especially if you don’t want to share family photos or information. Fine, just stick with your writing. I would advise you to stay out of politics unless that’s what your book is about. Just stay on brand. You can do all of these whether you’re blogging or posting on social media.

3. You don’t need to be everywhere.

You can’t do every social media platform and do it well. After all, you have a book to write and, I assume, probably a million other things going on in your life. You should be on the platforms you’re comfortable with and where your readers are. I would advise that you have a website, because that is your own piece of real estate that all of your social media can point back to. This is where you have your author photo and bio and your blog (and yes, you need a blog so it can showcase how you write and that you can indeed write).

From there, perhaps you just want to do Facebook. Or Goodreads. Or Pinterest. If you’re writing YA, then you need to be where the young people are, which is probably Instagram. Study how to use these platforms well. Find your favorite authors or writers you admire and see what they’re doing on these platforms to give you ideas.

4. Post and engage consistently.

This ties back to the “if you want to get published” theme and the “you can’t be everywhere” idea. You may despair that you haven’t been active for a long time or you don’t have many followers. That’s okay. Start back in again, and then create a weekly schedule that you can keep up with. It has to work for you or it won’t work.

Perhaps on Monday you’ll share on Facebook about something you learned in your research. On Wednesday you’ll post on Pinterest some photos you found about the time period of your historical fiction. On Friday, you’ll share the link to an article you read that was pertinent to your book’s topic. On Saturday, maybe a Canva-created quote from your book.

Then, as people engage with you, engage with them. While many social media experts will talk about how you need X number of followers to even be considered for publication, that’s not true everywhere. If you’re building a following and engaging with your followers, if you’re actively and consistently posting on brand, if you’re showing yourself as winsome and creative and someone any publisher would love to work with, well, you’re doing it exactly right.

Realize you’re building relationships. That’s the most important thing you can do as you build your social media and create your author platform. It’s not all about you. You don’t have to become an internet influencer posting selfies all day. In fact, that’s the opposite of what you want to do. Focus not on yourself but on your tribe and your readers. Put good content out there that will be interesting and helpful to them.

Be you. Be there. Enjoy. Drop your blog link or social media handles below so I can follow you!

Writing Real — More than a Dum Dum

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In my Freelance Writing class this week, we’re working on the “art of living” article — writing that seeks to inspire or help readers live life just a little better based on our ability to share our own joys and struggles.

Our text puts it this way: “The key to writing art-of-living articles is to write an article that will make a difference in someone’s life—to provide the reader with something to hold on to and take away into her own life.” —Handbook of Magazine Article Writing

To really make this work, however, that piece needs to provide transparency into the life of the author. Readers want writers to be real, to dive deep, to share their stories.

But it doesn’t need to be dark or traumatic. Sometimes the sweetest and most inspirational pieces of writing come from memories, moments, minute details of life that draw us back and make us think. To give my students that opportunity, I gave them a handout with their lives (so far) divided into segments. They were to write down five or six memories from sets of years: 0-5, 6-10 (elementary school), 11-14 (junior high), 15-18 (high school), and 18+ (college). As they began to scribble, I explained that the memories that came quickly are worth thinking about further. There’s a reason that those bubble to the top.

Their job then was to choose one of those memories and describe it. That gets the scaffolding in place. Now to get a solid art-of-living piece, to get to something that will resonate with our readers, we need to go deeper.

So we considered some questions. I asked them to close their eyes and go back to that memory. What was going on in their lives at that time, in their family life, in the world? Where were they living? Who else was part of their lives at the time? What else do they see, hear, feel, smell, taste? As they looked at that memory in a bigger picture and considered why that particular memory surfaced at all, they can write a story with heart. They can begin to see how that minor thing matters, and in turn, help their readers put themselves into their own similar story.

As if to make me take my own advice, today, a sweet college student dressed as a bunny rabbit stopped into my office and let me draw some Halloween candy from her outstretched pumpkin basket. I drew out a Dum Dum.

The Dum Dum that arrived today.

In that moment, I saw my Grandpa Chaffee’s face. He had been a rural mail carrier in the little town of Wattsburg, PA, and its environs. He drove his massive Oldsmobile Toronado to deliver mail — and there was always a big bag of Dum Dums on his front seat. The children on his route knew he’d give them a sucker. Even though our family visited him only once a year or so, whenever I got into that enormous car to ride with him, I drew a Dum Dum from the bag and stuck it in my mouth, sucking happily as we zipped down twisty dirt roads.

Gramps, me, and Trixie, circa 1964.

That Dum Dum sent me back. The joy of our traveling military family always returning to deep extended-family roots in western PA. The legacy of love and faith I’ve been privileged to receive. The deep loss of grandparents and now both of my parents. Changes as decades pass; foundations that remain solid. Heaven’s certainty. A loving family that shaped who I am. Sweet memories and sweet candy.

It’s just a Dum Dum, but now there’s something there worth writing. Something to help readers also think about how life changes yet some foundations are worth holding onto and passing on. It was just a Dum Dum, but it’s so much more.

What simple things in your life have a depth of meaning? What memories rise to the surface? How might you write about them?

Trail Angels and Trail Magic – Writer Style

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As I’ve discussed in this post (and if you’ve been one of the wonderful folks who purchased my latest book Pathway to Publication), you know that I make comparisons of writing a book and getting it published to the very wearisome task of doing a thru-hike on the Appalachian Trail. My sister began her thru-hike on the trail on March 23, the day before my book released (definitely a God-thing), and as she blogs about her trip, I think the comparisons continue to be apt. You can find her blog at The Trek, Carol Fielding. Her trail name (all hikers have a trail name) is Fortune Cookie. More on that below.

You need the right gear, you need to be ready to face difficulties and overcome them, you need persistence, and you need a healthy dose of confidence as you try to get a book published. It’s a long trek.

A couple things I didn’t include in the book and have only discovered through my sister’s blogs are the terms “trail angels” and “trail magic.” On April 5, she writes this in a post titled “Angels and Magic in Georgia“:

“In case you don’t know what trail magic is, it’s when people set up at a road crossing or parking lot with food and drink. Sometimes they actually hike the food in and pass it out on the trail. Food you can’t carry with you on the trail. Fresh food. Those people are called trail angels and to hikers they are truly angelic.”

Folks who live near the Appalachian Trail will provide for hikers passing through. Sometimes it’s containers of fresh water beside a tree. Sometimes it’s chips and candy bars. Sometimes it’s a full-fledged setup with hot breakfast or a barbecue. Carol describes several instances of trail magic so far — Matthew with his chips, granola bars, and apples; a ministry with a tent making breakfast for all of the hikers; a church near the trail providing shuttle service to their kitchen and a free meal; the Southern cookie lady who set up fresh water and homemade cookies.

The need for fresh water is a constant, especially in these dry summer months. Photo courtesy Carol Fielding.
Carol writes, “Nothing warms the heart of a hiker more than seeing a sign that reads, ‘Trail Magic Ahead.'” This group provides hot food and help with resupplying hikers with necessities. Photo courtesy Carol Fielding.

This got me to thinking about my trail comparisons with the book publishing process. Writing is by necessity a lonely endeavor. We walk the trail with only our thoughts (and our characters and our outlines) to keep us company. We get discouraged. The first draft is no better than a rain-soaked sleeping bag. The editing process looks as daunting as that hike up Clingman’s Dome. (In case you didn’t know, that’s the highest peak on the trail at 6,643 feet. Also the highest in the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee.)

We writers do indeed have our own brand of trail magic! We have writers conferences that encourage and inspire like a nice hot breakfast after some days of instant oatmeal. We have critique group friends who take the time to sit with pieces of our manuscript and help us make it better. We have beta readers who willingly take on the entire book in order to give feedback. We have writers groups that meet physically or online to encourage one another. We have numerous non-writer friends who understand us and help in whatever ways they can.

Basically, trail magic is folks caring for one another. And we writers have that in spades.

Oh, and about her trail name. My sister happened to get this little gem with some Chinese takeout in mid-2022, a year into planning her hike.

Photo courtesy Carol Fielding

And you know what? I think it applies to our writing trek as well.

Who has provided “trail magic” for you? Tell me about it in the comments.

Pathway to Your Dreams

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She’s leaving today.

My sister, that is. Today she leaves to begin on a dream that she’s been holding in her heart for over thirty years. She begins her thru-hike on the Appalachian Trail.

She has been planning this trip for the past couple of years. I first heard about it during a quiet late December evening in 2021 as we sat together chatting, keeping vigil over our dying mom. We held her hands and whispered, and Carol told me of this plan.

And now, the day has come. She and her husband (who will be accompanying her on portions of the trail) have donned their well-prepared backpacks and taken the first steps toward a decades-old dream.

My sister and brother-in-law at the first white blaze that marks the southern start of the Appalachian Trail on Springer Mountain, GA. Only 2,190 miles to go!

It was in some of those quiet conversations with Carol that a thought came to me: The kind of preparations and patience and planning required for such a trek for her to reach that dream are comparable to the kind of preparations and patience and planning required to get a book published.

I was in the beginning stages of writing my book about the process of publication. I was struggling for a hook, plagued by imposter syndrome. But her words ignited something in me.

And Pathway to Publication — the title, the plan, the hook, and eventually the cover design were born. (Thank you, Bold Vision Books for this perfect cover. Read more about the book on this page here on my site.)

When you get ready for a long hike, you don’t just put on your gym shoes and start walking. You need preparation, plans, accurate maps, and appropriate equipment. Likewise, when you step onto the pathway to publication, you can’t rush the process. The publishing world has its own language, processes, and gatekeepers. You need to take the time to develop a plan, create the required pieces, and understand each step along the way.

I wrote this book for the dreamers. Those of you out there who so much want to get published. You have a manuscript but you don’t know what to do next. What are the steps on the pathway to that dream of publication?

My book will help you get there.

My sister is making her dream a reality. I’m hoping to help you make your publication dream a reality.

The book can be purchased on Amazon here.

And, incidentally, if you’d like to follow along my sister’s journey, you can read her blog updates here at “The Trek.”

I’m here to help be your guide on this pathway. Please feel free to contact me! In addition, I’d love to speak to your writers groups or conference. Helping writers is what I do.

Let’s grab our gear and get started!

Even Editors Need Editors

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Here she is. All 332 pages of her. I told you about this book contract and, well, after some weeks of imposter syndrome and some constant worry about if I could actually write this book … well. Ta-da.

The working title is Pathway to Publication. I’m still trying on some subtitles, such as “A publishing professional turned college prof leads the way” or “guides you.” Not sure yet. But we have a little time to hone that part.

The writing process has not been easy. I look at these pages and honestly am astounded.

But it wasn’t done alone. It took a team of people to help me get to this point (and I’m not even at the publisher yet!).

A dear publishing friend helped me see beyond the “this has already been written a million times” dilemma to look instead at my personal perspective on this publishing process. She helped me see that I could write this from the college professor angle — so the book is shaped by the college classes I teach in Professional Writing and is very hands-on, including worksheets to help readers go from the theoretical to the practical. (Thank you, Kim.)

Another publishing friend recommended that I revise my website to focus on the teaching angle and build on that. (Thank you, Rhonda.)

My sister has been talking to me about preparations for her thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail next year. The more she talked, the more I discovered a hook I could hang this book on — preparing for the months on the AT could be compared to preparing a book for publication. That metaphor helped me lay out the chapters. (Thank you, Carol.)

A former student who now has a business helping authors promote their books will help me create a pre-publication marketing strategy. (Thank you, Jori.)

A high schooler I met at our writers conference teen track, who is new to the publishing process, is reading some chapters to help me know if I’m answering her questions. (Thank you, Eliana.)

A current student and another writer friend are reading to see if I’m staying true to the content and my voice, writing clearly, and speaking in the right way to my target audience. (Thank you, Anna and Dave.)

And, finally, yet another student who has started his own freelance editing business just completed an astounding copyedit of the manuscript. He caught me in my wordiness and in my tics. He smoothed and refined and questioned and commented. And, as I taught him in editing class, he remembered to offer a few positive comments as well. And boy, did I need them! (Thank you, Kipp.)

And I’m thankful to the many publishing professionals I’ve learned from across my almost forty years in the industry. Their wisdom guided this book. I’ve added their titles to a recommended books list and quoted several of them throughout. Instead of feeling like “this is just another book on the same topic,” I simply feel humbled to add my voice to the many others who have a passion to help writers.

All of this to say, we writers need folks around us — some with publishing advice, some with writing advice, some with editorial skill, some with marketing skill, some acting as the target audience readers — to bring out the best in our manuscripts.

I still have a week to go with this pile of paper before it goes off to the publisher. That’s why I printed it. I always need to see it on physical paper to highlight and mark the final changes I need to make.

Then, of course, the editor at the publisher will tear it apart — but I already know that. I teach about this. (Thank you, Bold Vision Books.)

I’m ready. After all, even editors need editors.

Writers Need Thick Skin, Part 1: Dealing with Rejection

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I tell my students this all the time: “You want to be a writer? You want to get published? You want to get your writing into the hands of readers? Then develop a thick skin.”

Sounds tough, I know. But it’s 100 percent true.

And this theme is a key element of my upcoming book, which has no title yet but is right now affectionately called, “So you’ve finished your manuscript? You want to get published? Here is everything you need to know, prepare, do, and plan for.” I know, too long. But that’s basically what it’s about.

And there’s a whole chapter on the idea of having a thick skin. Because writers need it.

We need it before we get published, and we need it after (which I will discuss in a later post as Part 2).

First, the BEFORE. Anyone who has been writing and submitting for more than a week has discovered that rejection is simply a part of the process. Writers need thick skin to be ready to handle those inevitable rounds of rejection and maintain personal mental health. No matter how many years you’ve been at it, no matter how many pieces you have or have not published, those four simple words “not right for us” hit right in the gut.

Every. Time.

Why does it hurt so much? Well, as a much-rejected writer, I believe it just comes down to how much of ourselves we put into every piece we write and how rejection feels like a rejection of us personally. Whether it’s a literary story, or a transparent memoir, or a how-to on keeping houseplants alive, we worked hard and put ourselves out there. So it is always with great fear and trembling that we send out the piece or the query or the proposal and anxiously await the response.

We fear that someone out there will laugh uproariously at our audacity to think we can write and that anyone would publish us, show it around so everyone else laughs at our expense, and then reply with the terse email, “Not right for us.”

Courtesy of memebetter.com meme generator (which I love!). Grumpy cat photo and meme created by Tabatha Bundesen.

Can I offer up a few facts to help keep those rejections in perspective?

However, first, I’m going to assume that you are a careful writer and researcher, that others have read and critiqued your work, that you’ve revised and revised to make it the best you can deliver. That is my assumption. (Please don’t be one of those writers who tries to send off the first draft or who dares to think that “God gave me the words” so therefore it’s perfect as is.) Good, solid writing takes time and care.

Beyond that, here are some thoughts from my own (and many others’) experiences:

  • Everyone gets rejected. Every single famous author started out right where you are — wallowing in the misery of the “not right for us.” If you don’t believe me, here’s an article about best-selling books that were initially rejected (often many times).
  • You have to understand how many pieces these editors are seeing every single day. Sometimes hundreds. You have a lot of competition when there are a couple hundred submissions for a single spot in a magazine, or when there are hundreds of book proposals for perhaps five publication slots at an imprint of your genre for the next publication season. So don’t take it personally.
  • It could be that, although your piece or proposal is stellar, someone got in right before you with something very similar. And yours gets rejected. There’s no way you could know that.
  • Acceptance is very subjective. The gatekeeper reading your query or literary piece or proposal needs to “feel it.” They need to resonate with your topic or your voice. And if they don’t, then it will be rejected. Not because you’re a terrible writer, but simply because this particular editor just didn’t have that gut reaction. And there’s no way you can control that.
  • Rejection is about the piece, the query, the proposal — it is not a rejection of you as a person or as a writer (no matter how much it feels that way).

So how can you handle rejection? Here are a few more thoughts:

  • Allow yourself to feel bad for a bit. It does hurt. (Give yourself a day to wallow, if needed. But no negative self-talk. Remember, it’s not a rejection of you.)
  • Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and go back to your tracking system for the next place to submit. (You do have a tracking system, don’t you? If not, create one. Make a list of all the places you want to submit to on something like an Excel doc. More on that in a later post — oh, and also in my upcoming book. <just a teaser>). What I mean is that on such a list you can now mark down that XX publication or publisher rejected it, so now turn around and send it to YY. Of course you’ll have to revise your piece, and double check submission guidelines and word counts, but get it out there again. If you really believe in it, keep trying at other places. You might hit right at the moment when they DO need just your piece and the editor DOES resonate with it.
  • You could even take an optimistic approach, like this writer, on why you should aim for 100 rejections a year (pardon the swear word in the article — but the point is valid). The basic premise is that the more you’re submitting, yes, the more you’ll get rejected, but by the law of averages, it also means the more chances you’re giving yourself to eventually be published.
  • Stay classy, don’t burn bridges with any editor or publisher, and thicken that skin.

You writers out there who have experienced rejection, how do you handle it and keep your writing sanity?

Finding Your Writing Rhythm

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I’ve been thinking about my writing rhythm as I’m working feverishly to meet my book deadline (mid-May). First was getting past my imposter syndrome that plagued the early writing.

Now is, you know . . . finishing the actual book.

In mid February, when the spring semester began and I worked up my weekly class schedule, I thought I would take advantage of a free hour here and there during my work days between classes to keep the momentum going. “One hour of writing,” I boldly declared to myself in the box on the weekly printed schedule.

It has yet to happen.

There is too much else needing my instant attention in those in-between hours — whether it’s emails or grading or prep for the next class or students wanting to meet or just plain taking a breather. (As a card-carrying introvert, being “on” all day long is exhausting. Sometimes I just need to recharge in my quiet office before venturing back out in front of the classroom.)

I’ve discovered that I just can’t work on my book in those in-between hours. It takes too much for me to get going, and then, once I get going, I don’t want to stop and then have to pick up later. A single hour just isn’t enough. But give me an entire Sunday afternoon or give me a free day during our college’s spring break, and I can write for five or six hours before looking up and realizing I should go get something to eat.

Allie Pleiter (creator of The Chunky Method — check it out, it’s cool!) would call me a “big chunk writer.” There are “little chunk writers,” those folks who can pick up and write in the cracks of time between other events. Some of my students fall into that category. In the few minutes between classes, they write. Others are like me and need to find a place and a time where uninterrupted hours allow for uninterrupted flow.

Indeed, famous writers past and present have very different types of rhythms. This article, The Daily Routine of 20 Famous Writers (and How You Can Use Them to Succeed) by Mayo Oshin, offers up the routines of twenty of them. Stephen King tries to write six pages a day, while John Steinbeck strove for one a day. Ernest Hemingway, Susan Sontag, and Maya Angelou wrote in the mornings (it seems that for many of them, mornings are key). Ray Bradbury wrote one short story a week, figuring that, with the law of averages, at least one out of 52 would have to be good. Mark Twain wrote all day from after breakfast until dinnertime. Charles Dickens always took a three-hour midday walk.

Some need music; some need silence (I’m a silence worker). Some write at the same time in the same spot every day. Some are compulsive about page or word count, others not so much.

The point is, no rhythm is right or wrong — you just need to find yours. And granted, I’m guessing you’re not making your living writing, so you probably have to work your writing time around job and family responsibilities. It’s a challenge.

Yes, it’s a challenge, but it will be worth it!

My senior capstone students are currently reading Andrew Peterson’s excellent book Adorning the Dark (if you haven’t read it, please do!). He writes, “If you wait until the conditions are perfect, you’ll never write a thing” (p. 40). And all of them resonated with that statement. (And, if they think it’s tough now while in college …).

So if you’re going to make your writing life work, you need to figure out a rhythm that works for your life right now in this season. Even then, a few months from now, your life routine may change and you’ll need to readjust. But figure out something that will work for you now.

  • Decide if you can make use of small chunks of time or you need long chunks of uninterrupted time.
  • Consider the time when you’re most productive (and have time to put into writing). If you’re a morning big chunk writer with a full-time job, maybe you’ll have to use Saturday mornings. If you’re a morning small chunk writer, maybe getting up a bit earlier and putting in an hour each morning will work for you.
  • Determine if you can work amidst chaos (will the kitchen table work while folks are moving around you, or a local coffee shop?) or if you need quiet. If you need a quiet space, can you set up a work table in a large closet, or the garage, or an attic? Is there a space you can set aside where you can work?
  • Can you do chaos but with earplugs or earphones? Does music help or hinder?

Find out what works for you. Just because someone says to write X number of words or pages a day doesn’t mean YOU have to do that. But if you’re going to keep moving ahead with your writing, you’ll have to find a rhythm that works best for you.

If you’ve found your writing rhythm, what does that look like? Share in the comments below.

3 Questions for Imposter Syndrome

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I feel it (almost) every day. “Imposter Syndrome.”

Defining terms:

An imposter, a fraud. Someone who pretends to be someone else in order to deceive.

A syndrome, a group of symptoms that occur together creating some kind of abnormality. Over at the U of Utah Health site, it says, “A disease usually has a defining cause, distinguishing symptoms and treatments. A syndrome, on the other hand, is a group of symptoms that might not always have a definite cause.”

Put together, one feels like a fraud because of some undefined group of symptoms with no definite cause.

The full definition, as noted by Psychology Today, is:

People who struggle with imposter syndrome believe that they are undeserving of their achievements and the high esteem in which they are, in fact, generally held. They feel that they aren’t as competent or intelligent as others might think—and that soon enough, people will discover the truth about them. 

It looks like me asking such questions:

“What am I doing teaching at a college? I never trained for this! Everyone else on faculty is so much more [academic, interesting, challenging, capable, professional, creative] than I am.”

“What am I doing writing a book about publishing? Everything has already been written. How can I possibly add anything new to the mix? All the other authors [are better writers, have deeper knowledge, have stronger writing voices, can promote their books better, are already on the circuit, are more fun to be around].”

Then basically choose any other task or role, and I’ll find a way to feel like either I shouldn’t try to do it or shouldn’t be there if I am doing it … because, you know, someone else could do it so much better.

I’m not alone. Again according to Psychology Today, 70 percent of adults may experience this at least once in their lifetime. But my imposter syndrome is less about me feeling undeserving of accolades or awards (don’t currently have any to speak of); instead, it’s more about me feeling like I’m merely acting a part and, yes, someone at some point is going to find out I’m not as competent as I pretend to be and they’ll call me out.

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Ever feel like that?

I don’t want to feel like an imposter, even as I humbly acknowledge my shortcomings in so many areas. So I’ve learned to ask myself three questions because, as a Christian, I look not just within but outside myself as well, to my heavenly Father, for help in dealing with this negative thinking and self-doubt.

(1) Did God call me to this job or give me this opportunity?

(2) Have I sensed his clear guidance and peace in pursuing it?

(3) Do I continue to sense his presence — whether things are going smoothly or not?

If I can say yes to these questions, then I can look imposter syndrome in the face and calmly explain that I am NOT a fraud. I am not perfect, I’m still learning, I’m still striving to improve, but I’m not going to let imposter syndrome cause me to do less than my best or refuse to take risks or try new opportunities. I won’t let it stifle me or God’s plan for my life.

(Well, at least I’m going to keep trying …)

What’s that verse we all love? “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13, NKJV). When Christ is giving me strength to do a task he has clearly called me to, then who am I to feel like I’m just an imposter?

Have you ever been inflicted by imposter syndrome? What has helped you through it? Share in the comments!

To the Old Man Working at Starbucks

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You sort of stand out. Most Starbucks employees are pink-haired, nose-ringed youngsters happy to have a first job that isn’t sitting behind a desk. I can say this because my daughter used to work as a shift-manager at a Starbucks right out of college. She was not pink-haired and nose-ringed, but she was young and happy to have a job that wasn’t behind a desk. She loved that job, although a marriage and three daughters later, she has moved on to—you guessed it—a job behind a desk.

But you, sir, you’re tall and grey-haired with glasses. You’re very distinguished looking. You have on the green apron and the headset. I’m at the cash register getting my chai and watching you heat up my blueberry scone. You’re staring into the microwave window as the scone circles. There’s a lag in the activity, a rare quiet moment for you in the day of busy baristas. You’re looking in that window, but you’re not seeing anything.

Image courtesy of Annie’s Eats, Flickr

Why are you here amongst these young bouncy extroverts? Do you have this job because you have to or because you want to?

Is this a job to get you out of the house because a beloved wife passed away and being alone at home all day is just too much?

Is this a job to give you some money because social security just isn’t enough to live on?

Did you get hammered in the stock market? Did your mortgage get under water? Is the economy taking such a hit on you that you have to be here taking latté orders with a shot of this or that?

I’m sorry. I want to come around the counter and give you a hug.

I want to tell you it’s okay that it takes you a little longer to get my drink or to heat my scone. I want to tell the flurry of baristas to just slow down a little.

After all, I bet you have a story to tell. Are you a veteran? What have you seen?

Were you at the top of your game—a CEO or an academic?

Were you a solid and loyal employee for a company that repaid you by downsizing or moving away?

Why are you here?

I could ask but I just think that would be rude. But I want to hear your story.

Why are you here?

And then I think about how I’m suddenly seeing so many older people in jobs where they shouldn’t be—at the checkout line at Walmart, handing me my burger through the McDonald’s window, mopping the floor in the grocery store.

All of them are someone’s mom or dad, someone’s grandpa or grandma. What if you were my dad? What if an impatient punk lit into him for taking an extra ten seconds to gather his thoughts and count the right change? I’d wanna punch that kid.

I really hope you aren’t doing this because you have to, but I suspect that isn’t the case. I wish the economy wasn’t tanking and COVID wasn’t turning everything upside-down.

Sir, I’m not sure why you’re here. I don’t know what circumstances led you to put on the green apron and headset and heat up my scone for me.

But I appreciate you. Whatever your story is, I appreciate you.

I Got a Book Contract!

lindaktaylor9 Comments

Hey writing friends! I just have to share some good news.

I got a contract for another book and I’m so excited.

I’ll be working again with Bold Vision Books, who published my last book titled Word by Word: An Editor Guides Writers in the Self-editing Process (you can read more about that book here).

This will be a revised and expanded version of that book–probably incorporating much of what is in the current book but then bringing in everything that a writer should be doing in the process of preparing for publication. After all, the actual writing of the manuscript is only part of the process.

So I began an outline. See what you think. What am I missing?

  • Seeking an agent
  • Seeking a publisher
  • Building (or enhancing) your social media presence
  • Self-editing your manuscript (that part I have)
  • Going to writers’ conference and what to expect
  • Writing the book proposal
  • Writing the one sheet
  • Perfecting your pitch
  • Preparing for book promotion
  • Being confident in your work
  • Handling rejection
  • Handling acceptance
  • Understanding contracts and rights

As I have attended and taught at many writers’ conferences, I have begun to realize how much knowledge of the industry I take for granted and how much most people simply don’t know. A one-stop basic book for writers just putting their toes into the publishing waters will offer them understanding and confidence as they move through the process of trying to get published.

There is a lot to unpack here. If you have thoughts about something newbie writers should know but don’t — in other words, topics I should address in the book — please comment below or write to me. I would love to hear from you.

Help me make this happen!