Wfwawriteon spring2015

Write On! Quarterly Magazine of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association

Spring 2015

Honest Critiques The Narcissist’s Guide to Giving Kind Yet Honest Critiques by Mimont

Digging Deep Writing the Deeply Personal by Kathryn Craft

Making Rejection Work How to Get the Most Out of Rejection

by Erin Bartels

Editors FEATURES EDITOR

MANAGING AND COLUMNS EDITOR

HIGHLIGHTS EDITOR

LAYOUT EDITOR

Erin Bartels is a copywriter by day, a novelist by night, and a wife, mother, seamstress, and tireless ambassador for the state of Michigan in between. Erin is a board member of the Capital City Writers Association and the author of The Intentional Writer . You can find her encouraging writers, talking about craft, and sharing beautiful photographs at www.erinbartels.com.

Jessica Ferguson is the author of The Last Daughter , a novella published by The Wild Rose Press. She interviews authors for Southern Writers Magazine and is co-editor of Swamp Lily Review, a Journal of Louisiana Literature and Arts. In her spare time, she plays with her recently retired husband. Jess blogs at www.jessyferguson.blogspot.com.

Write On! is published quarterly by the WFWA. womensϐictionwriters.org facebook.com/WFWritersAssociation twitter.com/WF_Writers

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Tasha Seegmiller is a mom to three kids and high school English teacher in Southern Utah. She writes contemporary women’s fiction with a dash of magic. Her loves include Diet Coke, owls, chocolate and cinnamon bears.

She is a founder of and contributor to Thinking Through Our Fingers, and can be found at tashaseegmiller.blogspot.com.

Sierra Godfrey writes fiction with international settings and always a mention of football (soccer) or two. She is also a graphic designer with a soft spot for magazine layout, and a sports writer covering La Liga for Football.com. She lives in the foggy wastelands of the San Francisco Bay Area with her family and can be found at www.sierragodfrey.com.

Contents 04 14 18

Mimont The Narcissist’s Guide to Giving Kind Yet Honest Critiques

Kathryn Craft

In every issue...

08 10

The WFWA Roundtable

Member News

Writing the Deeply Personal Erin Bartels How to Get the Most Out of Rejection

22

Barbara Claypole White Guiding Scribe: Embracing the Quirky

25

Tasha Seegmiller Tech Tips: The Wonders of Word

27

First Annual WFWA Writer’s Retreat!

Spring 2015 • Write On!

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President’s Note

reminders about upcoming events. Each Sunday is the highly anticipated Industry News, with links to key posts around the publishing universe.

An active Twitter account Are you following WFWA on Twitter? We have an active presence on Twitter, supporting our members and the women’s iction genre at large.

Critique groups and partial critique forums

When the founding members began brainstorming WFWA, we put together a wish list of what we wanted in an association. We were building our own house and no idea was too big or too small. We wanted to have resources for writers at every stage in their career, to have a welcoming and inclusive community, and we wanted a swim-up bar.

Since launching the association in September 2013, we’ve grown to just under 600 members and we continue to expand and enhance the resources available.

The Toolbox section on the WFWA website The Toolbox section includes information, resources, and tips for aspiring authors, debut authors, and published authors on book clubs, writing craft, and the business of writing. You’ll ind queries that worked, helpful questions to guide you through that exciting irst call with an agent, successful strategies for surviving books clubs, how to use Goodreads effectively, a bookshelf of craft books other WFWA members found helpful.

If you’ve written or recently read an interesting article for any of the toolboxes, please consider sharing it with other WFWA members and submit it for the resources section.

Weekly eblasts On Thursdays, Inside WFWA is sent to all members with welcome to new members and news or 2 Write On! • Spring 2015

For me, having critique partners and writing buddies who understand the nuances of women’s iction, is an important part of the process. The WFWA critique group program can help match you with potential partners. There are also forums for swapping reads and another for getting feedback on your query letter.

Book launch parties and author chats For our published authors, WFWA offers quarterly Facebook launch parties and the option to participate in a one week Facebook Café chat.

These are also great opportunities for unpublished members to support fellow women’s iction writers and build connections.

And, of course, the swim-up bar, aka, the WFWA Facebook group.

As much as the founders love our website, we realized it just wasn’t producing the kind of discussion and community building we’d hoped for.

Hello Facebook. We created a closed group just for WFWA members and I’m excited to report that it’s become a lively place to chat, share woes and yays, and build the relationships that sustain all of us through our writing process. If you haven’t yet joined, we’d love to see you over there!

WFWA is a young organization but has a depth of services with something for everyone. And, of course, the board is always open to hearing fresh new ideas from our members.

Write On! Orly orly@oklopez.com

About the WFWA We began this organization in 2013 with the idea to create a safe, nurturing place for male and female writers of women’s iction. The publishing industry is morphing—with new opportunities and, as yet, unknown futures. The founders of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association wanted somewhere to amass and disseminate information to and about our chosen genre.

De ining Women’s Fiction has proven as subjective as the types of books we prefer. For that reason, our guiding statement is broad and comprehensive: Stories that are driven by the main character’s emotional journey.

Our stories may have romance. Or they may not. They could be contemporary. Or historical. But what binds us together is the focus on a woman’s emotional journey.

Write on!

2015 WFWA Board of Directors Orly Konig-Lopez President Kerry Lonsdale Vice President, Programs Laura Drake Vice President, Finance / Treasurer Maggie Marr WFWA Legal Counsel Lisa Collins Mauro Secretary Barbara Claypole White Guiding Scribe Christine Adler Communications Director Annette Gallant Membership Director

If you haven’t already, send them a Friend Request on the WFWA site to stay connected and see their newest posts in The Hub.

The WFWA Founding Team Orly Konig-Lopez www.orlykoniglopez.com www.kerrylonsdale.com Kerry Lonsdale www.lauradrakebooks.com Laura Drake www.lindaavellar.com Linda Avellar www.marilynbrant.com Marilyn Brant www.maggiemarr.com Maggie Marr

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The Narcissist’s Guide to Giving Kind Yet Honest Critiques Mimont

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here are two very good reasons to give compassionate—yet truthful—feedback to our critique partners.

First, if we aren’t kind when we deliver our comments, we can hurt someone’s feelings and they’ll leave our critique group. Robbed of this free labor, we may be forced to pay for editing services and have to cut back on essentials (like massages and cat hoodies).

Second, when we give honest feedback, our critique partners improve their writing and we won’t have to read low-level drivel forever.

So here are a few tips on how to give kind yet honest feedback:

1. Set your intention before you read the piece That’s right. Intention. Take a moment and center yourself before reviewing any work. You don’t need to light candles, sing Oms, or grab a bourbon on the rocks—most of those aren’t necessary. Simply pause and ask yourself, “Why am I critiquing this material?”

Do you want to help the writer become so good they win a Pulitzer and mention you in their speech? Do you want to keep them as a critique 4 Write On! • Spring 2015

partner because they’re great at it and can help you improve your writing—so you’ll win that Pulitzer? The choices are endless and whatever your intention, it’s personal. No one else needs to know.

In fact, it’s probably better that they don’t.

So take a breath and align yourself with what you intend to do. When we consciously enter into a task, we tend to bring our best self to it. And that self is usually kind and honest. Especially after bourbon.

2. Question authority The word author implies authority. When you’re reading someone’s work and it’s clear they have no idea what they’re doing, how do you help them become an authority? Question them to ϔind out what the heck they were thinking. This helps them clarify their literary intentions and you, of course, will look like a deep thinker. Again.

This technique isn’t dif icult. Say, for example, your writing partner has a wimpy protagonist that inally, after chapters of monotonous behavior, takes an action that shows character change. Yet the protagonist’s move is inappropriate.

First, point out that having the character vary her behavior was a win. Say something like, “I love

that your protagonist stood up for herself. I was glad to see that happen and cheered for her.”

Then lean in with the bad news. “It did surprise me when she threw her ninety-year-old granny out of a moving car though.”

This method is utterly transparent to anyone who isn’t a single-cell organism. In addition, writers often take away only one part of the sandwich.

If they only hear, “It’s great!” their work never improves. What if they tell others you critiqued it?

Their lousy work would re lect poorly on you.

Now throw in the questions. “Was it your intention to make her that abrasive? Tossing granny out is pretty harsh. Do you want the reader to take away that she became mean just like granny is (or was before she hit the ground)?”

If the writer hears only the bad, they get discouraged and fail to see the depth of their skills.

This leads them to depression, substance abuse, and, ultimately, rehab. They won’t be available to critique your next chapter.

See what this method accomplishes? Your delivery is kind yet you’re honest that the work needs revision—or at the very least needs a decent funeral for granny in the next chapter. The writer now has tools to examine their work and determine which options are more in line with what they want to say. Also, the burden of iguring out how to change the story is placed back on the writer. Seriously, do we have to do all the work for them?

There is a superior alternative. Layer each point in your criticism with good and bad. So. How do you do this?

3. Throw out the sandwich and have layer cake instead We’ve all heard of the sandwich method of giving feedback. Say something nice. Then point out the negatives. Finally, inish up your critique with encouragement. The good/bad/good sandwich is perfectly acceptable to use when you’re not in the mood to apply yourself. However, the technique has drawbacks.

First off, identify what in the work needs to be ixed. After you ind the law, look for the magic.

What do I mean by magic? Every writer has certain strengths—things they do well. Find their strength then show the writer how to apply their best work to their weaker section. Instead of stating separate good and bad qualities of a work, you use their good points to help them ix their bad ones.

Here’s an example: Say the writer has a security guard throw a peach pie at the protagonist—a bus boy—who had accidently spilled the guard’s soda. In an attempt to dramatize the pie throwing, the writer draws out the action. The guard takes a deep breath, grips the edge of the pie plate, straightens his shoulders, swings his arm back, etc., and ifteen actions later, the pie is tossed. By the time dessert hits, we’ve lost all focus on our hero, the bus boy, because our attention has been placed on the bit-player guard.

The pie in the hero’s face is anticlimactic. Thus, the bad.

But later, in that same chapter, a second patron whips a chocolate pie out of nowhere and throws it at the bus boy with such force that the cream splatters all over his face. He laps around like a one-winged bird, trying to get the stinging cream out of his eyes and pushing it up his nostrils as he tries to wipe the mess away. The focus is on the protagonist and how painfully humiliated he is in a room full of laughing patrons, including the woman he’d hoped to take home that night. Thus, the good. When you point out the negative scene, show Spring 2015 • Write On!

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the writer how they did the preferred technique really well in their own work. By using their own writing as an example, they can easily see how to ix things. All they have to do to is plagiarize their own work. Their “good” can ix their “bad” and, with any luck, none of us will ever ind ourselves in that restaurant.

Here’s another example. Say someone’s writing is uneven. Certain segments have oomph and intrigue while other parts are slow and dull. You can point out the weaker sections of prose then show how, in the same work, the writer shows off their skill as a wordsmith. Mention that you love how they did the spiffy prose and that you’d like to see that done in the weaker section because you ind it so delightful. Layer the good and bad feedback into one point. Remember, this is a huge opportunity for you to appear appreciative and generous. Your image counts.

4. Turn the “what” into a “why” When something in the writing doesn’t work, pointing out the law is only half your job. If you explain why something disturbs you, there’s a much better chance the writer will understand what you mean and improve the work. This is especially important if their novel can translate to the big screen. They might win an Oscar someday, maybe even a Golden Globe. You want to attend those parties, don’t you?

So how do we give feedback that turns the “what” doesn’t work into “why” it doesn’t? Be as speci ic as possible when you identify the problem. That will help you clarify why it doesn’t work.

Then you simply explain both. You get bonus points if you can twist the “why” into something that comes from the writer’s own POV. Here’s an example of something I recently said to a critique partner: “I love the historical details you used in this piece. In every chapter so far, you took great care to accurately portray the era. You transported the reader so deftly into 1920 Texas that I could feel the tumbleweeds ram into that hitching post. Yet when I read the paragraph where the family’s pet 6 Write On! • Spring 2015

rabbit found employment as a bull rider in the rodeo, it threw me. You’d been realistic and historically accurate before and after this paragraph so I wondered if this section was an unintended detour or if you want us to suspend our belief because the story will be a fantasy. This part was inconsistent with the rest of what you’ve done, so it stopped my read and confused me.”

See what happened there? The what: inconsistency. The why: having a tiny, fantastical moment in an otherwise realistic piece jarred me and stopped my read. The bonus point: this is clearly a picky writer who would not consciously overlook inaccuracies and who would probably want to know if a passage was perceived as an error.

The “turn the what into a why” technique, while highly effective, may require a bit of contemplation before you can determine why something doesn’t work. Don’t worry. There’s no law that you have to give feedback within thirty seconds of reading something. Take a few moments to absorb the material before you respond. Go watch your maid do the dishes or your gardener rake the lowerbed. You can always chalk up the extra time you spent to community service.

5. What to do when you accidently say something hurtful that crushes your partner’s spirit and leaves them in a puddle This does happen every once in a while. You may have been rushed, tired, or drunk when you delivered your critique and your words weren’t as humane as they could have been. If you discover that you hurt someone, apologize. After all, you’re still able to stand and they’ve been balled up on the sofa with a box of tissues for the last week.

Be clear and sincere in your apology. Explain that you didn’t really mean to say, “This query letter sucks!” You simply spouted those words in a moment of weakness. It’s perfectly okay—even preferred—to be truthful about why you reacted so strongly. For example, you can say something like, “You did such a great job on your novel that when I critiqued your query letter—and saw you put 72 words in your irst sentence—I freaked out.

I worried that you’d ruin your chance with pro-

spective agents and I really want you to succeed. I’m so sorry that I hurt your feelings.”

The New WFWA Facebook Group

The injured party will forgive you if you bare your soul when you apologize. You’ll be perceived as a humble and vulnerable human being. And that’s okay because we know the truth. We’ll keep it our little secret. •

Have you seen our new WFWA Facebook group? It’s illed with fellow writers, published and unpublished, ready to share, offer advice or support, and cheer you on.

Join our growing Facebook community now.

Some of what we’re talking about: Mimont is the alias used by Michele Montgomery to throw off law enforcement and pesky exes. A screenplay analyst and iction writer, she serves as Critique Group Coordinator for the WFWA. Her debut novel, Through Thick and Thicker, will be published in early 2016. Find her at www.mimont.com.

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weekly writing goals and check-ins

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talking craft and inspiration and motivation

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sharing knowledge and experiences

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what we’re reading

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and more!

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The WFWA Roundtable with Jessica Ferguson

I

decided to try something different this month. Instead of meeting at the public coffee shop, I invited WFWA members to my house.

Unfortunately, only three of you showed up. I guess blogging about my hellacious renovation experience for the A to Z Challenge scared everyone away. So, thank you Kathy Sechrist, Erin Bartels, and Elizabeth Havey for honoring me with your presence. I hope the coffee isn’t too strong or the beignets too powdery.

You have a brilliant phrase, thought, idea at the most inopportune time. What do you do?

Kathy: This usually happens when I’m in the shower, but lucky for me I have my iPad in the bathroom because I usually listen to an ebook while getting ready in the morning. I work with that thought as I inish showering (character, world, emotions, etc.) then as soon as I’m dry I open up my Note app on my iPad and capture it.

Erin: It’s never an inopportune time when you have as many little notebooks stashed around as I do.

Elizabeth: I always have a notebook in my bag when I’m out of the house. I always have

8 Write On! • Spring 2015

sheets of paper near my chair where I read. And if I’m at the computer, I immediately go to EVERNOTE and start a note or add it to an existing one.

Sometimes, I awake from a dream and things will slip away. If something comes to me just before I fall asleep, I have a pen and paper on my bedside table.

Jess: I have to confess that I’ve been known to jot down ideas even while driving. Poor hubby happened to wake from a nap as we blitzed I-10 toward Houston and caught me writing in a notebook on my knee. Next topic, weather.

How does the weather affect your writing and which season are you most prolific?

Kathy: I live in a nature rich environment— water, trees, wildlife—so when the sun shines I want to be outside digging in the dirt, or simply take my laptop out and capture what I am seeing/ feeling. Gray/rainy days I love to sit by the ire with my laptop or a good book. The winters see me writing more—fewer sunny days to become distracted by my outside world.

Erin: I used to think I was deeply affected by weather. Once I made writing a more regular habit, I found that that wasn’t the case anymore.

However, I tend to write during Michigan’s long, cold winter (November through March, essentially) because there’s not much else vying for my time. I revise in spring, send to readers in summer, revise again in fall, and all year long I’m reading and note-taking.

Elizabeth: Interesting question. When I lived in the Midwest, in Des Moines, Iowa for 17 years, I did my best work in the winter. My son would be at school, my husband at work and I might write ive hours a day. Fridays were usually running around days. Weekends no. Now I’m in Southern California and I write almost every day. If I get 3 long days in the middle of the week, I am doing great. Kids are raised!

Do any of you ever read poetry? Why, why not?

Kathy: I don’t—I’ve never enjoyed poetry.

Poems seem to me to be the rumblings of a distracted mind.

Jess: Kathy, you’ve broken my heart! Erin, how about you?

Erin: Often. I’ve always been a fan of good poetry. Poets who practice their art at a high level are excellent teachers when it comes to describing things in unusual ways, capturing a mood, exhibiting economy of language, and simply enhancing the sense that writing is an art that can deeply effect and change people Elizabeth: I love Mary Oliver’s work and have read much of Billy Collins work. Some writers feel like poets to me: Marilynne Robinson and Anne Lamott.

What are some of your favorite words?

glow, dazzling, spring, autumn, profundity, ilaments, coil, embedded, lemon, clunked, arched, sterile, star ish. There is never an end to my love of words.

On another note, if you lost the ability to write or read for an entire week, what would you do?

Kathy: Listen to ebooks while crocheting and audio record my thoughts. :) Erin: I’d sew, garden, take pictures, and practice guitar. Oh, and perhaps I should exercise...but I probably wouldn’t.

Elizabeth: I have had some vision problems, so this question is meaningful. My vision is ine, but reading is truly my life. If only for a week, I would attempt to use some technology that would enable me to listen to a book and to record my thoughts and ideas. Having a cell phone is a blessing and a curse. I love the end of the day when I turn it off and thus turn off email. Then I just read and read.

Jess: Thank you, ladies. I always learn more about myself when I visit with you and ask questions. Until next time … •

Jessica Ferguson is the author of The Last Daughter, a novella published by The Wild Rose Press. She interviews authors for Southern Writers Magazine and is co-editor of Swamp Lily Review, a Journal of Louisiana Literature and Arts. In her spare time, she plays with her recently retired husband. Jess blogs at www.jessyferguson.blogspot.com.

Kathy: ker lufel Jess: I’m grabbing the dictionary.

Erin: The End. Jess: Ohhhh, a phrase I treasure. Wish I could type it more often.

Elizabeth: crystal, blush, shimmering, languid, grey never gray, crushed, haze, converging, liquid, milky, pulsing, tremble, thick, squander, ripened, Spring 2015 • Write On!

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Member News We’re excited to share these new member releases coming out this quarter.

The One That Got Away: A Novel

By Bethany Chase Release Date: March 31, 2015

Sarina Mahler thinks she has her life all nailed down: a growing architecture practice in Austin, Texas, and an any-day-now proposal from her loving boyfriend, Noah. She’s well on her way to having the family she’s hoped for since her mother’s death ten years ago. But with Noah on a temporary assignment abroad and retired Olympic swimmer—and former flame—Eamon Roy back in town asking her to renovate his new fixer-upper, Sarina’s life takes an unexpected turn.

Eamon proves to be Sarina’s dream client, someone who instinctively trusts every one of her choices—and Sarina is reminded of all the reasons she was first drawn to him back in the day. Suddenly her carefully planned future with Noah seems a little less than perfect. And when tragedy strikes, Sarina is left reeling. With her world completely upended, she is forced to question what she truly wants in life—and in love.

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Sisters of Heart and Snow

By Margaret Dilloway Release Date: April 7, 2015

Rachel and Drew Snow may be sisters, but their lives have followed completely different paths.

Married to a wonderful man and a mother to two strong-minded teens, Rachel hasn’t returned to her childhood home since being kicked out by her strict father after an act of careless teenage rebellion. Drew, her younger sister, followed her passion for music but takes side jobs to make ends meet and longs for the stability that has always eluded her. Both sisters recall how close they were, but the distance between them seems more than they can bridge. When their deferential Japanese mother, Hikari, is diagnosed with dementia and gives Rachel power of attorney, Rachel’s domineering father, Killian becomes enraged.

In a rare moment of lucidity, Hikari asks Rachel for a book in her sewing room, and Rachel enlists her sister’s help in the search. The book—which tells the tale of real-life female samurai Tomoe Gozen, an epic saga of love, loss, and conflict during twelfthcentury Japan—reveals truths about Drew and Rachel’s relationship that resonate across the centuries, connecting them in ways that turn their differences into assets.

Waiting For Paint To Dry

By Lia Mack Release Date: May 1, 2015

For ten years, Matty Bell has lived in a self-made, monochromatic safe life: workeat-sleep-survive. She learned long ago it’s easier to run and hide than deal with the PTSD she’s suffered from since being raped at sixteen.

On the night of her thirtieth birthday, a freak accident reveals all Matty’s left behind, unleashing her need to recover her true self and a life filled with passion, where she can reignite her desires and is unafraid to love.

When an opportunity to move halfway around the world appears, Matty must decide how and where she can fully confront her past and come full circle.

The Far End of Happy

By Kathryn Craft Release Date: May 5, 2015

After enduring years of a struggling marriage, Ronnie Farnham has decided to divorce her husband and is beginning to hope for a happy future—until the morning Jeff is supposed to move out, when he locks himself in their barn with a rifle.

When a massive police presence arrives to control the 12-hour stand off, the women in Jeff ’s life are pushed to their breaking points. Based on the author’s harrowing personal story, The Far End of Happy is a powerful novel about the way one man’s spiral towards life’s violent conclusion tests the resolve, love, and hope of the women he will leave behind.

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Dear Carolina

By Kristy Woodson Harvey May 5, 2015

One baby girl.

Two strong Southern women.

And the most difficult decision they’ll ever make.

Frances “Khaki” Mason has it all: a thriving interior design career, a loving husband and son, homes in North Carolina and Manhattan—everything except the second child she has always wanted. Jodi, her husband’s nineteen-year-old cousin, is fresh out of rehab, pregnant, and alone. Although the two women couldn’t seem more different, they forge a lifelong connection as Khaki reaches out to Jodi, encouraging her to have her baby. But as Jodi struggles to be the mother she knows her daughter deserves, she will ask Khaki the ultimate favor…

Written to baby Carolina, by both her birth mother and her adoptive one, this is a story that proves that life circumstances shape us but don’t define us—and that families aren’t born, they’re made…Washington state, Reeve suddenly realizes that she is the only one who can stop him.

Sweet Forgiveness

By Lori Nelson Spielman Release Date: June 2, 2015

The Forgiveness Stones craze is sweeping the nation—instantly recognizable pouches of stones that come with a chain letter and two simple requests: to forgive, and then to seek forgiveness. But New Orleans’ favorite talk show host, Hannah Farr, isn’t biting. Intensely private and dating the city’s mayor, Hannah has kept her very own pouch of Forgiveness Stones hidden for two years—and her dark past concealed for nearly two decades. But when Fiona Knowles, creator of the Forgiveness Stones, appears on Hannah’s show, Hannah unwittingly reveals on air details of a decadesold falling out with her mother.

Spurned by her fans, doubted by her friends, and accused by her boyfriend of marring his political career, Hannah reluctantly embarks on a public journey of forgiveness.

As events from her past become clearer, the truth she’s clung to since her teenage years has never felt murkier. Hannah must find the courage to right old wrongs, or risk losing her mother, and any glimmer of an authentic life, forever.

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Whisper Beach

By Shelley Noble Release Date: June 16, 2015

Fifteen years ago, seventeen-year-old Vanessa Moran fell in love and lost her virginity, but not to the same boy. Pregnant, desperate, and humiliated, she fled friends and family and Whisper Beach, New Jersey, never breathing a word about her secret to anyone. She hasn’t been back since. Now a professional Manhattan organizer, she returns to attend the funeral of her best friend’s husband. She intends on just paying her respects and leaving—though she can’t deny she also wants the town to see how far she’s come as a successful businesswoman. But her plans to make this a short visit fall by the wayside when her girlfriends have other ideas.

Dorie, the owner of the pier’s Blue Crab Restaurant, where Van and her friends worked as teenagers, needs help. Dorie’s roving husband spends every penny they make and now their restaurant is failing.

Joe, the boy Van left behind without an explanation, has never stopped loving her.

While he’s wary of getting hurt again, he also can’t help wondering what would happen if they took up where they left off.

As the summer progresses and the restaurant takes on a new look, trouble comes from unexpected sources. For Van, this summer will test the meaning of friendship and trust—and how far love can bend before it breaks.

What Doesn’t Kill Her

By Carla Norton June 30, 2015

Reeve LeClaire is a college student, dammit, not Daryl Wayne Flint’s victim. Not anymore—not when Reeve is finally recovering a life of her own after four years of captivity.

Flint is safely locked up in Olshaker Psychiatric Hospital, where he belongs. He is walking the grounds of the forensic unit, performing his strange but apparently harmless rituals. It seems that he is still suffering the effects of the head injury he suffered in the car crash that freed Reeve seven years ago. Post-concussive syndrome, they call it.

For all that Flint seems like a model patient, he has long been planning his next move. When the moment arrives, he gets clean away from the hospital before the alarm even sounds. And Reeve is shocked out of her new life by her worst nightmare: Her kidnapper has escaped.

Less than 24 hours later, Flint kills someone from his past—and Reeve’s blocked memories jolt back into consciousness. As much as she would like to forget him, she knows this criminal better than anyone else. When Flint evades capture, baffling authorities and leaving a bloody trail from the psychiatric lock-up to the forests of Washington state, Reeve suddenly realizes that she is the only one who can stop him.

Have something being published between July and September 2015? Please send an email to

writeon@womens ictionwriters.org We’d LOVE to get your news in the next issue of this magazine!

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Writing the Deeply Personal Kathryn Craft

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ver the past seventeen years I’ve told the story of my irst husband’s suicide standoff many times. At irst it spilled incessantly, the re lected horror on my poor listeners’ faces the only way I could get it through my head that our experience was real. But over time, like a river taking its same, inevitable course, my story grew predictable, tumbling over obstacles so familiar their edges had smoothed. I learned where to pull back so as not to make my listener quite so uncomfortable. Where to breathe so I could make it through to the end without sobbing.

So while novelizing my experience, I wasn’t necessarily surprised to hear from my trusted irst reader that I had skimmed over the emotional surface of the story. Her critique of the dark moment, in particular, re lected my worst fear: that I might default to this verbal telling mode and fail to use the full power of literature to evoke my characters’ experience.

“This is what the reader has been waiting for,” she said. How many times had I said the same to my own editing clients? “This is why she’s gotten to know your character. This is the moment that pushes her into the climactic ight for her goal.

The very reason you wrote this story. Give us more emotion. Go deeper.”

With these words, I suddenly felt unequal to telling my story. Of course that’s nothing new

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either. I’d hit this point with every single creative endeavor of my life, whether in choreography or journalism or iction, so I could recognize the feeling for the critical role it plays without abandoning the project. I sat with the uneasiness this caused.

And almost let myself off the hook. I mean, who could blame me if I couldn’t bear to bathe in the blistering tar of memory? No one would. But my reader would not be served.

In his April post at Writer Unboxed, literary agent Donald Maass wrote, “…the emotional impact of manuscripts usually is light and frequently is obvious. Most manuscripts cause us to feel little more than we expect to feel. They play it safe not only in plot but in emotional effect.”

Long before I ever read Don’s words I knew intuitively that the emotions I felt on the day of the standoff were not obvious. They were con licted and shameful and very personally mine. Even on that long-ago day, as I learned of my husband’s fate—at once feeling the words pierce me and yet also somehow watching myself react, in that dissociative way that can be the result of shock—I knew that my emotions held a world of story.

Now, in The Far End of Happy, I just had to bring it to life.

Here, I step back a year to relive my process.

I hope it can be of some use to you as you seek to tap the vein of the deeply personal.

was tough enough to face, but the shards of our parental vow—that we would always be there for our sons, and keep them safe—eviscerate me afresh. The undertow of complicated grief once again curls around my foot, and I taste the salt of betrayal, anger, and shame again on my tongue.

Allow setting to enhance meaning I explore the setting for what it can offer the scene I must write. The irehouse social hall where police kept my family safe had played host to so many family functions, from baptisms to weddings to funerals. The day of the standoff it was devoid of decoration, as if waiting to see what kind of event this would be.

Immerse yourself in source materials and music Today I will write about my husband’s standoff in a way I never have before. My irst draft has not delivered me to the right emotional place so I seek a new path.

I pull out my source materials: handwritten journals, the notations in my planners, the cards and letters. His note of intent, its pages displaying his half-print, half-script writing at its Sunday best. Scrawled dramatically across the bottom, a parroting of our vow: “Till death do us part.”

My irst thought: we have not parted. Despite my attempts to end the marriage, despite all we went through that day, and despite a second marriage that will soon be longer than my irst. A lyric keeps rolling through my mind, so I open Spotify and play “Poison & Wine” by the Civil Wars. Over and over, its haunting refrain builds: “I don’t love you and I always will.”

I’m not the kind of writer who can listen to music while I write, but I hit replay over and over as I read again the headlines that broadcast my husband’s private torment throughout the community. Headlines that made neighbors think they knew him when clearly even his wife didn’t.

The pile of hand drawn cards from my sons’ third- and fourth-grade classmates returns me to feelings I fought so long to quell. Our broken vow

What people can I use? I have a police of icer in uniform. A paramedic. I have them lank the corporal in charge of the special emergency response troop operation, who has shared her uncertainty about the day’s outcome, yet who feels invested due to her own backstory. Her face unreadable.

They have the news I’ve waited all day to hear.

They are coming at me, marching at me, an honor guard without a lag, and all I can think is I’m not ready for this. I want time to stop.

Get creative Another advance reader had noted something my subconscious had laid in: a repeated use of the color red. Red: passion, blood, love, horror, birth, death. As I check back through my novel’s emotional turning points I will make more purposeful use of this motif. Note to self: keep in mind for emotional climax.

I want to use metaphor that will pull the reader into co-creating the moment. Emotion seems so much stronger if suggested rather than named. I recall Irene Nemirovsky’s paired images of residents leeing Paris during World War II in Suite Francaise: People were jammed together like ish caught in a net, and one good tug on that net would have picked them all up and thrown them down on to some terrifying riverbank.

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…

This was how animals waited to die. It was the way ish caught in a net watch the shadow of the isherman moving back and forth above them.

Beyond metaphor, I want the very arrangement of my words to deliver me (and therefore the reader) to this emotional place. What literary passages, I ask myself, have affected me so?

One of the most deeply stirring novels I’ve ever read was Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun. I thumbed back through my worn copy for the stream-of-consciousness prose that always grabbed me, in which the protagonist confuses his memories of a girl he loved with the overwhelm of his grievous injuries:

The source materials I had to review this time felt more dangerous than the headlines or my husband’s handwriting or his desperate words: our wedding album. For the irst time since the standoff I allowed myself to remember what it was like to fall in love with the man I married.

Back when our dreams were all wrapped up in each other.

I suddenly know, even this late in the game, what this story is really about. It is not the standoff. It’s the way the standoff threatens to take away the very thing each of us needs to sustain hope: the ability to dream of a brighter future. To set that up I had to rewrite the beginning.

My character wants something that morning, something her husband’s actions will complicate.

I write:

Stay closer Kareen. Don’t go away. Closer closer Kareen and watch out for the water coming over your face. I can’t turn over on my stomach to swim Kareen I can only loat so please don’t go so far away. Kareen where are you I can’t ind you and the water was coming over your face. Don’t sink Kareen don’t let the water come over your face.

Come back Kareen you’ll choke you’ll ill up like I’m illing up.

The pages felt thick with life as they lipped through her ingers. A long-suffering friend, this journal, taking everything she’d thrown at it. The questions. The tortured answers. The pros. The cons. Moments rich with beauty. The long slow death of a dream.

This passage suggests that just as I clamped down on emotion in my verbal telling by controlling my breathing, I could let emotion ly by omitting punctuation and not allowing the reader a breath at all.

It is not a great idea to completely rewrite your opening at the inal polish turn-in stage, I’m thinking, and my stomach lops around as I await my editor’s verdict. She writes back: “Holy moly.

Love what you’ve done with the opening.”

Review and tweak emotional turning points I am almost ready to have at it—but one last thing. Before I dredge the bottom of this underwater cavern—and while my brain is still getting enough oxygen to do so—I want to make sure the story has properly set up the dive. After all, the story hadn’t led me here in the irst draft—will I now be forcing this emotional scene into place?

Reviewing the infrastructure of the novel, I see that something important is missing from my protagonist’s arc. Her turning points were all about how she was dealing with events imposed upon her by a husband whose needs were direr. I was missing her dreams. Her innocence. Their love.

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At the top of each page, she’d centered her name: Ronnie Farnham. On the lines below, she’d centered herself.

Despite her af irmation, I feel as if I’ve exposed the heart in my chest. It quivers, unsure how to ind its natural rhythm while exposed to the fresh air. The arti ice of iction will not be enough to protect it from public scrutiny. All will be able to see its bloody imperfection and I feel like I won’t be able to breathe until it is once again safely tucked away inside me.

This is exactly what the reader wants. Something hidden and true, something that will inspire Library Journal to use words like “…real, raw emotion.”

In this state, with my vulnerabilities hanging like severed threads from the gaping hole in my

chest, I know I am ready. I kick aside my practiced storytelling about the event. I pick up my re-in lamed emotions, my setting, new craft, my red lag, my character’s all-important goal—and render for my reader the way my character’s soul is rent as the truth of the day’s events march so inexorably toward her. This time the words don’t low—they churn. Edges worn smooth by verbal storytelling are once again rubbed raw.

Query Critique Forum

It worked for me. Will it work for my readers?

You be the judge. •

Did you know that one of our forums is dedicated to providing supportive feedback on your query?

Access our query critique forum by logging into your account on the WFWA website and then go to: Forum > Critique and Reviews > Query Critiques You’ll get great feedback from fellow authors, in a constructive environment.

And for further inspiration, check out the Queries That Worked page in the Toolbox section.

Kathryn Craft is the author of two novels, The Art of Falling and The Far End of Happy (Sourcebooks). Her work as a freelance developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com follows a nineteen-year career as a dance critic. Long a leader in the southeastern Pennsylvania writing scene, she leads writing workshops and retreats, and is a member of the Tall Poppy Writers. www.kathryncraft.com

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How to Get the Most Out of Rejection Erin Bartels

W

aiting for that yes from an agent is like waiting for that second line in a pregnancy test when you want to start a family. (Men, stick with me here—it’s not all about peeing on a stick.) You want it so badly that every time you receive a no your spirit drops. At irst you remind yourself that these things take time. Sure, some people boast success after the irst try—and a few (a curse be upon them) get a yes even when they aren’t actively trying for one. But for most people (so the experts say) it will take a while. And anyway, you’re having fun working on that baby—I mean, book—right?

But then months go by, maybe years, and nothing. What am I doing wrong? you think. You may blame yourself, you may blame others, you may come to believe it was just not meant to be. But while you can’t necessarily learn much in the way of technique from a negative pregnancy test, you can learn a lot from rejections you receive when querying.

So You Want to Publish Your Novel…

Between April 2012 and November 2013, I sent out 127 queries for the same novel (we’ll call this book Nice Try for the purposes of this article).

It wasn’t always the same draft. I worked and 18 Write On! • Spring 2015

worked on Nice Try every time I got a note from an agent that I could ile in my Helpful Rejections folder.

Of all the queries I sent out, 45% of them got no response at all and 46% of them got a “No thanks.” That leaves 9% that got an initial favorable response and a request for pages. Of those positive responses, after sending a partial or full manuscript, I got silence from one agent. From the others, I got a variety of pleasant rejections, such as: •

“You write well but I’m not con ident I could be successful marketing this for you.”

•

“I found much to admire there. Ultimately, however, the project is not right for me.”

•

“It sounds strong but I don’t have the correct editorial contacts.”

•

“You are clearly a talented writer. Unfortunately, however, I am being extremely careful about taking on new projects, particularly irst novels which are very dif icult to place in the current marketplace.”

Okay, that’s ine. But not so helpful when it comes to making the story better. Never fear! I also got the following comments:

•

“The main character is not sympathetic enough.”

•

“While the novel is well written, I found the prose and the storytelling too matter-offact without bringing to life the voices of the characters or creating enough intrigue for the reader.”

•

“While your pages are interesting and wellwritten, I don’t think it gets going quite as fast as it needs to.”

•

“I’m afraid I wasn’t as engaged as I had hoped to be. I felt the characters weren’t sketched as completely as I would have liked, and as a result I didn’t feel the necessary interest in or sympathy for them.”

Now we’re getting somewhere.

Two agents asked to see a revision. One agency just wasn’t strong in the market I was going for, though the individual agent liked my writing. I got this response from the other: •

“I’ve tried a number of times to get back into Nice Try, but I’m afraid I still can’t connect with the protagonist. As relatablity is the most important thing to me, I’m going to pass on this, regrettably. I’d be delighted to read other projects from you in the future.”

Seeing the pattern? I did.

•

Readers had trouble connecting with the protagonist, who was not sympathetic or relatable enough.

•

The voice was not connecting with readers.

•

The pacing was poor (or at the very least, the story started too early).

I tried to improve each of these aspects—I even changed the entire novel over from third person to irst person POV in an attempt to get my protagonist to open up a bit. But at some point I felt I had spent enough time on a story that obviously wasn’t working. With distance, I began to understand the depth of its laws. I could either do a major rewrite—the literary equivalent of bailing water on the Titanic—or move on and apply the

lessons I learned from querying Nice Try to a new book. I opted for the latter.

You’re Getting Warmer For my next novel, which we’ll call Close but No Cigar, I queried ifty agents. I targeted fewer (and largely different) people than with Nice Try because I had a clearer idea of who was looking for the type of writing I wanted to do. Of those ifty agents, only 26% didn’t respond at all and 24% said “No thanks,” many with personal notes about how the idea intrigued them but it wasn’t quite right for them. So only 50% negative (compared to over 90% with Nice Try). From 42%, I got requests to see more—compared to just 9% with Nice Try. (The jury’s still out on three agents, who have yet to respond as of the writing of this article to recent queries).

In total, fourteen agents requested the full manuscript. That’s 28% of those queried. And of those, I got so much great feedback and advice that I can’t possibly share it all in this article. And when I got that feedback, some of it was in the form of long phone calls with a couple incredible agents I greatly admire. I did not settle for trying to “tweak” my manuscript when I knew that I needed to make some substantive changes. I believed enough in Close but No Cigar to make it work.

I still got a number of those “You’re a great writer but I’ll have to pass” emails. And that’s ine.

The lesson I come away with is that every book is not for everyone. You need someone passionate about your writing to represent you, because they have to sell you and your book to an editor, and they have to be con ident they can do it. And several of those emails asked me to send my next effort their way if I didn’t get an agent with this manuscript.

One thing I did not hear? That my protagonists were not sympathetic. While writing Close but No Cigar I always had in mind the most common criticism of Nice Try and I was consciously trying to improve. In fact, I got many compliments on my characters this time around, though I also got some good advice about showing the development Spring 2015 • Write On!

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of relationships more clearly.

the idea of weaving together the different generations of characters and events.”

Other takeaways from this round of querying?

•

“We’re very impressed with the story itself as well as your ability to tackle three intertwining plot threads.”

I am still not getting the emotion to the page in many cases.

•

“It manages to pull off a unique story (which is a rare and pleasant surprise).”

•

There were still choices my characters made that did not always ring true.

•

•

Because I had a complex plot with three distinct stories in three different times, some readers didn’t feel they got to know the characters as well as they would have liked.

“You’re a strong writer . . . in the event that you don’t ind an agent with this project, I would love to look at future work from you.”

•

My opening pages didn’t always grab readers right off the bat.

•

What can I take from this as I work on subsequent novels?

•

My beginnings tend to be too quiet—liven them up, hint at what’s to come, and be sure I’m starting where the story truly begins.

•

Find ways to evoke authentic emotion in readers (since I’m loathe to spell them out on the page—I hate being told exactly what a character feels about everything in her world).

•

Do the necessary work showing the why of a choice or the inevitability of a choice.

•

Maybe go deeper into one story (while maintaining the complexity readers liked) rather than shallowly touch three stories.

Accentuate the Positive Not all learning comes from the negative reactions of others. If you focus too much on the criticism, you’ll miss the things you’re already doing well that you should continue to consciously cultivate. For me, these were things like: •

“I really like your story concept and the way you are weaving the past and present characters.”

•

“I love how complex the plot is here and

20 Write On! • Spring 2015

As writers, we desperately need encouraging words like these. I haven’t given up yet on Close but No Cigar. It’s close—so close—to striking the right chord. I’ve put it aside for now to settle, and I’ll likely pick it up again later this year or early next to tinker with. It could end up traditionally published someday. Or it could be a self-published project. Time will tell.

Surviving the NO! as You Wait for the YES! You might think from reading this article that I received more than 175 rejections in three years with nothing but sunny positivity about what I could learn from this experience. Certainly not. I didn’t spiral into a cupcake-fueled depression, but I won’t pretend there weren’t times when I wondered if all of the crushing defeat was really worth it. I mean, no one is requiring us to put ourselves out there to be rejected.

In addition to the rejection I’ve experienced during the past three years in my iction writing, I also applied for two other positions in my company—and I didn’t get either one. So my world has basically been a big, fat NO! lately. This is hard. In school, everything I tried was met with a big, fat YES! and things came easily. NO! is a new experience, and not one I enjoy.

I ind that the easiest rejections to accept are the silences and the “No thanks” you get when an agent didn’t even have enough interest to ask for a sample. The hard ones are the ones where someone has actually taken the time to read your work and, for whatever reason, pegs you as “not good enough” or “not marketable.” The ultimate

rejection I received from an agent with whom I was developing a real relationship and for whom I did a signi icant revision was very hard to take. In fact, after that one I was so down that my husband suggested I buy a plane ticket to go see a very old friend in Colorado I haven’t seen in years. The trip details were inalized by the next day.

So how do you cope with all that NO! and still retain the passion to create? You remind yourself that it’s not personal, it’s business. You give yourself permission to feel disappointed or even angry.

You allow yourself time to cry or mope or break things or whatever. You go back to those rejections and, if possible, tease out some lesson you can learn. Then you do the work you need to do to make next time better.

What you don’t want to do is shut down, stop sharing, or stop writing. When properly handled, rejection is a good teacher. It can teach you how to write a better query letter, how to target agents who are more likely to love your work, and how to identify the weak points in your writing that need more attention the next time around.

It can also teach you about yourself. Hubris led me to think that I could succeed on my irst try.

Rejection humbled me. Hope and a belief in my next story led me to try again. Rejection showed me that I’m getting closer, but I’m not quite ready yet. And when my third attempt, a story we’ll call This Could Be It!, is sent out to the select group of agents who have enjoyed my work and invited me to submit something else to them, I will hold my breath, cross my ingers, and pray. Yes, it may be rejected. But maybe, just maybe, I will hear an enthusiastic YES! •

Erin Bartels is a copywriter, a freelance editor, and the author of The Intentional Writer and This Elegant Ruin: and other stories. She’s spent the past three years getting rejected and learning the meaning of patience. You can ind her at www.erinbartels.com.

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Guiding Scribe

Embrace the Quirky Barbara Claypole White

I

n a looded women’s iction market, how do you ind your author identity and stake a claim? Whether it’s through character, imagery, setting, or voice, I would argue that you should embrace the quirky. Each of us has a unique way of processing the world and a unique set of tools for surviving real life. Why not use that expertise to fuel your iction?

Everything I write is colored by my love of woodland gardening and my pride in being the mother of a gifted young man who valiantly battles an anxiety disorder. I’m drawn to heroes who live in the shadows of mental illness and heroines who are woodland gardeners and devoted mothers. My stories also straddle my two homes: North Carolina and England. (My mother insists my second novel, The In-Between Hour, doesn’t—but my heroine’s ex-hubby is Welsh and named after a famous English architect, Inigo Jones. So there you have it—a nod to the homeland.) Initially none of this was conscious, but now that I’m working on my fourth novel—technically my ifth—it’s deliberate.

Character: When my debut novel, The Unϔinished Garden, hit the stores, I had low expectations. A famous agent had told me, years earlier, that the book would never sell because James Nealy, my hero 22 Write On! • Spring 2015

with crippling obsessive-compulsive disorder, was too odd to be a love interest. (This was a double whammy since James came from my darkest fear as a mother: What if, when my young son grew up, no one could see beyond the sometimes bizarre manifestations of his OCD to love him for the amazing person he is?)

Thanks to my darling James, sales for the book continue to chug along, and I’ve found my niche: writing hopeful family drama with a healthy dose of mental illness. Will everyone like my stories?

No. Reading is subjective, but quirky characters

are highly memorable. Think about Hagrid, a giant who names a ire-breathing dragon Fluffy; Louisa, the Eliza Doolittle heroine of Me Before You; Mallen, the ex-addict, ex-cop, ex-husband in the Mark Mallen series by Robert K Lewis. (Read outside your genre, people!)

In Screenwriting Tricks For Authors, Alexandra Sokoloff talks about the importance of character introductions. Even though most of my characters are oddballs, I don’t always think about that irst snapshot of them, which is a huge mistake. After reading Ms. Sokoloff’s book, I reworked the introduction of a secondary character in my current WIP, a runaway who lived on the streets at 16 and is now the head sound engineer for a successful recording studio. I heard her voice before she erupted on the page, and yet the reader met her when she was doing something banal. Her action advanced the plot but said nothing about her personality. I spent two hours reimagining the opening sentence of that scene, and for a laugh, I put her into my old car from college: a VW bug called Ernie that had no a/c and no windshield wipers.

I discovered something huge, and suddenly her character introduction went from blah to oh, yeah.

(And Ernie rose from the dead.)

Settings: Obviously, I love woodland settings. The heroine of The Unϔinished Garden owns a plant nursery in our little corner of the North Carolina forest, and The In-Between Hour is one long love letter to the same area. When I started The Perfect Son, I assumed the Fitzwilliams would also live in rural Orange County, North Carolina. But Felix, a Londoner, refused to move to the boonies. I switched to historic Chapel Hill where the heroine, Ella, could have a beautiful garden with camellias. Felix still balked. And then, while I was driving around the Duke campus one day, I found the Fitzwilliam home. On the edge of Duke Forest, it’s accessible only by a bridge over a creek and is hidden behind …ivy-wrapped trees. Growing up in a dysfunctional family, Felix often hid in small, dark places. That house is his castle.

Imagery: As a woodland gardener, I’m obsessed with light and shade. Light through the trees, which to me represents hope, is my favorite writing image. I can ind a way to weave light, dirt, and plant behavior into any scene. Take my new novel, for example, which comes out on July 1st. (Did you notice how I snuck in that wee bit of marketing?)

The hero of The Perfect Son, Felix Fitzwilliam, is an uptight banker and a snotty Brit. He knows nothing about gardening, but his adored big brother was a landscape designer who taught him oodles of plant folklore. In Celtic tree mythology, ivy is a tree that symbolizes reincarnation and survival. I can’t tell you why that’s important—spoiler alert!—but there are many references to ivy in Felix’s POV, and trust me, they matter.

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Voice: I use close third person that reads like irst person. I’ve had to ight to keep this because occasionally my style breaks rules. Am I really that opinionated or ornery? No, I just have a loopy mind that homes in on a character’s voice and refuses to budge. For example, seventeen-year-old Harry Fitzwilliam has ADHD, Tourette syndrome, and—surprise, surprise—anxiety issues. His narrative voice uses ‘Dad’ instead of the grammatically correct ‘his dad’. Using ‘his dad’ slowed everything down and gave a distance that felt wrong for a kid with more energy than a nuclear power plant. My editor and I talked about this and he agreed that it worked, except with the speech tags. So I rewrote all the speech tags in Harry’s POV to edit out any that read, “Dad said.” The copy editor still had to weigh in on my weird style, but we kept to a simple rule: If it was 100% consistent, it worked. I know, maybe I should switch to irst person, but this funky style has become my author voice. It’s part of my identity.

I write darkly quirky stories about darkly quirky people because that’s my passion and it echoes the warped way in which I see the world.

Give me an idea for a messed-up character, preferably one with a neurological challenge, and I’m like a kid in a sandbox. Or a really, really happy woodland gardener. •

24 Write On! • Spring 2015

English born and educated, Barbara Claypole White lives in the North Carolina forest with her brilliant professor husband and, when he’s home from college, their equally brilliant poet/musician son. An avid woodland gardener inspired by her son’s courageous battles against an anxiety disorder (OCD), Barbara writes stories that ind light through the trees and hope in the darkness of invisible disabilities.

Her debut novel, The Unϔinished Garden, won the 2013 Golden Quill Contest for Best First Book; The In-Between Hour was chosen by SIBA (Southern Indie Booksellers) as a Winter 2014 Okra Pick. Her third novel, It’s All About Harry, has a publication date of May 2015. Connect with Barbara at barbaraclaypolewhite.com.

Tech Tips

The Wonders of Word Tasha Seegmiller

O

f all the technologies that writers use, the most common is probably Microsoft Word. But I wonder if everyone knows how many really cool tricks Word has waiting for your writing ease?

Build an Outline I’m not going to take the time to cover how to format a document with double spacing and indentations and the like. That’s usually the kind of thing that is understood. Instead, I’d like to share a way that makes your life a little bit easier.

When you put in chapter titles, if you will format them as a heading or subheading, then, when you go to VIEW then OUTLINE and it will bring up all your chapters as a table of contents. From there, you can click on the chapter link and it will take you right there. Remember a detail that you needed to add somewhere in the irst third of the book? Jump over there and add that detail instead of searching the whole document.

Fix Formatting with Search and Replace If you write in any program besides Word, you know that there can be some formatting things.

Say you typed in quotes and noticed that some of them are “smart” and others aren’t. All you have to

do is type CONTROL+F, select the option to FIND AND REPLACE and put quotes in both places.

Word will automatically make all the regular quotes smart (leaning in and out of quotes). Same thing with em dashes.

Give Better Feedback (Easier Too!) I always think people know about this, but then there are many who are still changing font colors when they want to add comments. All you Spring 2015 • Write On!

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have to do is move to the REVIEW tab in Word, then click on TRACK CHANGES. Once that is set, everything you type will show up in a different color, underlined and with a little vertical mark on the right hand side to show a mark was made.

Keyboard Shortcuts If you are critiquing someone’s MS, a great deal of time can be lost when clicking a word, then going up to the menu to insert a comment, the moving the mouse to accept the comment just made. It can take as much time to go through the process of giving a comment as it takes to make the comment itself. Instead, use the keyboard shortcut. Put the cursor on the word or highlight the sentence you are referencing and then type CONTROL, ALT, M (for Word) or CONTROL, APPLE, A (for Mac).

When complete, type TAB, ENTER and move on. It will be a little slow as you work to gain the muscle memory from this kind of writing, but the time you will save will be worth the effort. •

Tasha Seegmiller is a mom to three kids and high school English teacher in Southern Utah. She writes contemporary women’s iction with a dash of magic. Her loves include Diet Coke, owls, chocolate and cinnamon bears. She is a founder of and contributor to Thinking Through Our Fingers, and can be found at tashaseegmiller.blogspot.com.

Write for Write On! If you want to contribute an article or have a suggestion for an article, please send an email to writeon@womensfictionwriters.org

26 Write On! • Spring 2015

First Annual WFWA Writer’s Retreat!

3. Discussion topics.

Friday afternoon and Saturday will be spent sharing ideas. We’ll break into discussion groups focusing on a speci ic topic under writing craft or the writing life. A topic leader will guide questions but we’ll be leveraging the incredible talent in WFWA through the open sharing of information.

4. Mock Reading

Still trying to decide if you should attend the WFWA Retreat?

Here are 4 Good Reasons to Attend ...

1. Meet fellow WFWAers.

WFWA has become quite an amazing online community in the year and a half since we launched the organization. Many of us have been online friends for years. The retreat is a great opportunity to meet some of those friends in person.

Imagine the fun of spending a weekend with likeminded writers!

Plus, we’ll be holding an open meeting on Thursday before the welcome reception. This is your chance to discuss the future of WFWA.

2. Writing the 21st Century Women’s Fiction Workshop with Donald Maass.

Master instructor, agent, and WFWA member Donald Maass will kick off the retreat with a 4-hour Writing 21st Century Women’s Fiction Workshop. Come prepared for an intensive handson workshop and walk away with the skills to add high impact to your women’s iction manuscripts.

Friday night after the group dinner, we’ll have a Mock Reading. If you’re nervous about reading or discussing your book in front of a crowd, the mock reading is for you. You’ll be in the company of writers with the same butter lies and others who’ve been there, conquered that. We’ll share advice on overcoming nerves, on how to prepare, how to make readings fun for you and attendees, and you’ll have a chance to practice in front of a group of supporters.

Bonus – Booksellers Table On Saturday, indie bookstore Bookworks will be at the hotel selling the women’s iction releases of the published authors attending the retreat.

We’ll have signs around the hotel promoting the booksellers table. This opportunity is open for both traditionally published and self-published authors.

Another bonus – dedicated WFWA Facebook group for those attending The getting-to-know-you-better chats are already underway in the retreat Facebook group.

We may still be a handful of months away from the retreat dates, but plans are already under way for meet-ups and excursions.

The $325 early bird fee ends on May 22.

Come join us…it’ll be a great weekend with fun and talented women’s iction writers!

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28 Write On! • Spring 2015