Hello from summertime in NYC!
After a stormy Memorial Day, yesterday was just an absolute dream of a day. I had some reading to do, so I spent a lovely hour in the courtyard (I will never get over the fact that reading is an actual part of my job), and then later I walked down to the West Village to meet a writer friend for oysters and cocktails (also, I will never get over the fact that taking about books and writing with other writers is also part of my job).
When I got back, it was so perfect and windy that I texted Henry—grab your book & come down & read with me! We sat side by side in the fading light while William and his friends played catch on the lawn, and it was one of those nights you just want to cram into your heart for some February day when everything’s frozen and dark.
One fun hospitality note related to the holiday weekend: we’d planned a biiiiiig cookout for 4pm on Monday, but as it got closer we realized that it looked like a major storm was coming around 2pm. The night before, we reshuffled to an 11am brunch with mimosas, no grill required, and it ended up being a really fun gathering—despite the time and menu change, despite a handful of us getting caught in an absolute downpour right at the end!
People brought waffles and breakfast sandwiches and strawberry cake and lots of mimosa options—and right at the last second we remembered that we had canopy tents in the storage room, so we pulled them out and put all the food and our chairs under them just as the heavy rain started. The kids played football in the rain, and the whole thing made for a really fun, funny memory—and a good reminder that it’s worth trying to make it work, even in less than ideal circumstances, and sometimes that makes it even more fun. We could have just canceled the whole thing, and that certainly would have been easier, but there was a really special fun energy to last-minute reshuffling and outsmarting of the weather—highly, highly recommend for your next gathering :)
Okay, here’s a confession: continuing a series of any kind is definitely, definitely not my strong suit, as evidenced by the fact that in March of 2023 I wrote My #1 Piece of Writing Advice. Then in May of 2023, I wrote the second piece in the series, My #2 Piece of Writing Advice. And now here we are ONE YEAR LATER with…at long last...my #3 Piece of Writing Advice.
I’m terrible at series, but I really do love writing, and also I love writing about writing. These pieces of advice are the things I share at every writing workshop and panel, the things I keep coming back to again and again. And there are three more parts, too…that I’ll probably share in 2029 or something…;)
For a refresher, here are the first two:
1. Notice everything and get it all down real time, especially the sense memories.
2. Let it marinate—meaning give it time to develop and show you what it’s about.
And the third:
3. Share your work.
Start sharing your work as early and often as possible—you can share it online or in a writing group or with an editor or writing partner, but start sharing your work.
Here’s why this is so important:
First, it forces you to finish your work. It’s really easy to think a particular piece is done, or that you’ve written so much, or that you’ve basically got a full length draft on your laptop…until someone asks you to see it, and then you realize “omg, I basically have a pamphlet, not a book!” or “omg, this needs so much more work!”
You can tell yourself you’re going to finish something, but most of us really never do actually finish something until we know someone else’s eyes are going to be on it—it’s like how you never really clean your house until company’s coming over (just me?). When I’m really stuck, sometimes I’ll ask my editor or agent to give me a deadline, even an arbitrary one, so that I have to show them something by Friday or by the end of the month. If it’s just my deadline, I can tell myself it’s done enough or done-ish, but if another living human is going to put their eyeballs on it, you can bet I’m going to put the extra effort in to finish it right.
Second, sharing your work helps you get comfortable with feedback, criticism and response. Here’s the reality: the more you write, the more editing and feedback you’ll encounter. My work is getting edited all the time—an editor cuts for length. Another suggests a change of phrase or asks for clarity. Another wants to update for tone or tense. It’s all part of the process, and over the years, I’ve become so so grateful for it—thank you for making my work better. Thank you for making it crisper, more readable, more effective. I loooooove editors and editing at this point, but if you’re not used to it, it’s easy to be a little precious about your work, or to assume it’s ready to go without lots of changes and feedback and reworking.
Third, sharing your work shows you where the energy is—what your readers want from you, what gets you excited, what you want to do more and less of. There are times when I write something I think will really connect, but then I can gauge from the response (comments, shares, likes, etc) that it isn’t actually what my readers are looking for from me. Or there can be something that seems to me to be sort of outside of my lane, but oddly there is a connection with my readers, and that’s something to think about, too. I don’t make my decisions as a writer based only on metrics and reader feedback, but it is helpful input. Writing is a conversation between writer and reader, and it’s always important to understand and listen for both sides of that conversation.
A few thoughts about how you share your work: try a few ways, and pay attention to how you feel as you do it. Not every format or outlet is right for each person. Not every kind of writing is right for every format. Early on in my writing life, a couple magazines and websites asked me to write what I’d call hot-topic-y responses to current events. Because it was early in my career and it meant so much to be to be asked, I really tried, but I learned the hard way that that’s not how I like to write. I don’t like having to generate an opinion really quickly. I don’t like having to have kind of a shock-value title or headline. I like time and length and the space to meander, so those pieces were categorically not my thing. But it took some time to try—and fail—in order to learn that.
This is not a commercial for Substack, but I do really love it. For a while, nearly all my writing was either in books or on social media, but in the last year or so, I’ve found so much inspiration and joy in writing here. For a long time, I really liked the length-limitation of social, and I liked connecting an image to a piece of content. But as social trends have shifted and also as I’ve changed as a writer, I’m loving longform these days. Part of creative work is getting to try new formats in new seasons, and there’s a spark of energy in figuring out a new container or set of parameters and rhythms.
For a while when we lived in Grand Rapids, I was in an in-person writing group with three other writers, and I highly, highly recommend that. We were all writing really different kinds of things—one was writing a play about a train set in 1900. One was writing really funny, snarky pieces about dating. One was writing a Bible study. It didn’t matter a bit—in fact, maybe it even helped—that we weren’t working on the same things.
What did really help, though, is that we asked very specifically about the feedback we were looking for on each piece that we shared—for this piece, I’m wondering about tone. For this version, I’m really just looking for feedback on the ending—does it work? The more specific you can be with other writers or readers about the kind of feedback you’re looking for, the more helpful it will be to you.
For example, there are times when I’m sharing something and I’ll say to another writer, I don’t need an edit at this point, I just need to know if the heart of it works…that’s basically me saying, I need more encouragement and affirmation than I do technical polishing—and that’s a clear signal to writer friend for the kind of interaction I’m looking for.
There are other times, though, where I say, “I’m excited about this, and I’d love some suggestions for how to make it better”—that’s the opposite. That’s me saying I feel really solid about this piece, and I don’t only need encouragement—what I’m actually looking for are some concrete ways to make it better.
I totally get it: getting comfortable sharing your work is hard. It’s vulnerable and scary and it’s so much easier to talk about it or not talk about it, but never let anyone get their eyes on this tender, fledgling thing that you’ve built just out of your own weird little mind. I get it. But there’s only one other alternative: hiding it forever. Please don’t do that. Creative work isn’t just for the creator—it’s for all of us, and you make the world better when you share what you’ve made, whether it’s a painting or a song or a story. Scary, I know, but worth it—share your work.