Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach

You may already use a system to collect emails so you can communicate directly with readers who want to hear from you. If you’re unfamiliar with email marketing systems, they offer a powerful way for you to interact with your audience. If you have a new book coming out, for example, these are the people who would want to know about it. If you’re doing a poetry reading, you can send a note and readers in that city will be glad to hear about it and might make plans to attend. If you have a special price on an e-book, you can let them know about the sale. If you haven’t started yet, I highly recommend you begin building an email list comprised of ideal readers. Start List-Building with MailChimp I started out with MailChimp and used it for years. MailChimp was free, and free sounded like a good place to start. I liked MailChimp’s option to pull content from my website’s RSS feed so people could automatically receive my latest blog posts. I chose from one of their many templates and tried to tweak the code, bu

The publishing world is evolving, and no one knows quite when it will end and what it will look like. As a writer, you've probably been spotting new trends, new entry points, new expectations, new leaders, and new technology, wondering how you can possibly keep up with all that change. Well, you’re not alone. Everyone’s seeing all that new—all that change—and wondering how they can possibly keep up with it all. There’s only one way to have a chance at keeping up—and it’s the same way any of us has a chance at gaining an advantage and keeping an edge, and that’s... To learn something new every day. I know it’s frustrating to hear that when all you want to do is write. “I don’t want to be figuring out fancy software and spending all that time on social media,” you’re thinking. "I don’t want to maintain a website and read about the industry all the time. Why can’t I just be a writer who, you know, writes?” And it’s true that a legal pad and a Bic pen should be more than enough to keep a writer churning out

My mom, a journalist, was talking with a friend. She beamed at my brother. “Charlie, he’s the writer of the family. And Annie? She’s…” Here, I felt my mom hesitate. Then, “Annie’s the athlete.” My brother excelled in everything involving words—from composing song lyrics and essays to dominating Scrabble games and inserting witty comments into conversations at just the right moment. I played softball and ran track. And I rode my yellow Schwinn ten-speed down country roads stretching between corn and soybean fields, past herds of Black Angus cattle and silos filled with grain. The labels fit, though deep down, secretly, I wanted to be a writer, too. Three years after Charlie graduated high school, I sat in Miss Flint’s Senior English class. Miss Flint told us we would keep a journal chronicling our senior year, creating at least five entries per week...She held up three examples of some of the best she’d ever seen—journals from past students whose work she adored. One was Charlie’s. I recognized it immedia

As we seek out mentor texts to imitate or emulate, we encourage the mindset of comparison. When I suggested you search out writing you admire, you’re going to be drawn to a writer you look up to, whose work dazzles when you compare it with your own. Naturally, this writer naturally seems superior to you in some way—otherwise, why would you select this author to learn from? It’s appropriate to admire skilled authors, which is why Ben Franklin's method and straightforward copywork help us learn from the techniques employed by more experienced writers. But as soon as we starting thinking in terms of better or worse, superior or inferior, more or less advanced, more or less prolific, more or less famous…we’re using the language of comparison to label who's better or worse than us at something. And that’s when we teeter on the edge of unhealthy comparison. Comparison: The Good Before we get to the not-so-good, let’s start with the good. The good news is that there are benefits to comparison. Really! Aspirationa

Children used to be assigned copywork so they could practice penmanship and be exposed to great poetry, sayings, and passages from literature. But copywork’s not just for kids. You may recall from Episode 106 that Ben Franklin’s method is similar to copywork: He picked an essay or article he read and admired, took a few notes on each sentence—just a word or two—set aside the original, and some time later tried to recreate the original using the hints he had written down. Like I said, it isn’t exactly the same as copywork, but it’s close. Copywork is more meticulous than that. Like the scribes of old, a person devoted to copywork seeks to create an identical copy of the original text—an exact replicate. Why bother with copywork? You may ask, why would any ambitious, 21st-century adult writer bother with copywork? It may seem like a childish activity. Why revert to past-century elementary-school training when we’re adults seeking to produce a creative, contemporary body of work? Well, one advantage is that

A brief word of warning: this is a longer-than-usual episode. Instead of falling within the typical five- to eight-minute range, this episode clocks in at over 11 minutes. Are you a carnivorous reader? Francine Prose says in Reading Like a Writer: I’ve heard the way a writer reads described as “reading carnivorously.” What I’ve always assumed that this means is not, as the expression might seem to imply, reading for what can be ingested, stolen, or borrowed, but rather for what can be admired, absorbed, and learned. It involves reading for sheer pleasure but also with an eye and a memory for which author happens to do which thing particularly well. (31) When we learn from the best—the greats—they become mentors. We do this by reading with an analytical eye and carnivorous mind to gain insights into what works and apply principles and actual techniques to our own projects. In Episode 104, we talked about interacting with texts by writing in a book's margins, annotating as we go, which engages us

We stepped inside the cave entrance and followed our guide down narrow passageways to see its wonders. The Mark Twain Cave, a national landmark just outside Hannibal, Missouri, was the cave Samuel Langhorne Clemens explored in his youth and used as inspiration for the cave featured in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer when Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher separate from the group that had scampered up the hill to play hide-and-seek inside. Our guide kept us moving along a corridor coined Grand Avenue, shining his flashlight down side passages to give us a glimpse of areas we weren’t allowed to explore. We could see how easy it would be to get turned around and lost, especially if we were like Tom and Becky, carrying candles when a hundred bats flocked down, darted at the light, and struck out the flame with their wings. We heard that Jesse James used this cave as a hideout and signed his name on the wall, as did thousands of other visitors. We saw the signatures dating back to the 1800s, when tourists smoked their

"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” ~ Stephen King You’ll hear that advice a lot. You want to write? Read a lot and write a lot. Simple as that. But is it that simple? Do we simply open the book, read and enjoy the story or helpful ideas, and automatically absorb the content? Or do we need to read with a plan or a strategy of some kind? Is there a way to take in and retain the content, be inspired by the style, and learn methods to apply to our own work? Is there a writerly way to read? I think there is. So do many others. Let’s start with the content. How do we grasp it, absorb it, retain it? Plagued by Lack of Retention? Someone asked me the other day if I’d read Great Expectations. I had. I read it and remember enjoying it. But I couldn’t recall much detail at all. There's Pip, right? And Miss Havisham sitting around in that ratty old wedding dress? That’s about all I could dredge up. I've read lots of books—I was an English Major, for cr

Memoir depends upon memories, yet memory is a living thing—a slippery, unreliable thing. In her book The Art of Memoir, Mary Karr describes memory as "a pinball in a machine—it messily ricochets around between image, idea, fragments of scenes, stories you’ve heard. Then the machine goes tilt and snaps off" (Karr 1). How can we trust this tilting machine to deliver something whole and wholly reliable? If we want to incorporate even short memories into our work to serve as illustrations, Karr says, “even the best minds warp and blur what they see…For all of memory’s power to yank us back into an overwhelming past, it can also fail big time” (5). She sends copies of her manuscripts to people who appear in her books because she doesn’t trust her “wiggly mind” (5). This week is my grandmother's birthday. If she were alive, we'd be celebrating her 121st birthday. And when her birthday comes around, even though she’s been gone for decades, I still remember the coo of mourning doves in her small Midwestern town, a

I heard Seth Godin interviewed on a podcast. He said: The fact that the market is noisy is not the same as the fact that your work is mediocre. Mediocre work is mediocre work! And we have a choice instead to dig super deep and bring stuff to the table that is worth talking about. And it’s not easy and it won’t happen right away. It’s hard to take time to dig deep and bring to the table writing that’s worth talking about. Excellence doesn’t usually spill out of an untrained, undisciplined, inexperienced artist, so we have to find ways to grow as a writer. One way is to surround ourselves with excellence. Surround Yourself with Excellence I used to regularly crank up "Bring on the Night," a live album for which Sting pulled together several top jazz musicians, including Branford Marsalis on sax. Part of Sting's genius for that concert and much of his career has been to surround himself with excellence. For various projects over the years, he's brought together gifted artists to join him, and they performed at

My brother memorized the poem "Jabberwocky" when he was a teenager, and I thought that was so cool. At the time could not think of anything to memorize other than "The Purple Cow," so I decided to copy him. I memorized "Jabberwocky" with its Bandersnatch and the slithy toves and that vorpal blade. I thought I was so cool. Not long ago I heard Neil Gaiman recite it, and I thought he was so cool. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDLac7sAFsI So you see, poetry can be cool. It can be weird and funny and surprising. It can be serious, sad, and sobering. Poetry, if we let it, can seep into us and change us with its funny, surprising, and serious ways of processing life and ideas. My friends at Tweetspeak Poetry know this well. They invited people to join them in the challenge (and fun!) of memorizing poetry during the month of April. Sandra Heska King not only committed to memory "The Stolen Child," which was the poem the Tweetspeak community tried to memorize together, but she also continued wor

In the last episode, I urged you to send out your work even though it means you’re risking rejection—because to get a yes, you must risk a no. I even offered a case for embracing rejection as your goal, especially in the realm of literary journals, because by setting a rejection goal, you’re increasing your odds of an acceptance. A Plan to Process Rejection But you might need a plan for how to process those rejections. You can laugh it off as part of your master goal, but it'll still sting. And it hits hardest when your writing expresses deep struggles or raw pain. Writing like that requires great emotional risk, so to be brave enough to send it off should be applauded. To risk all of that and hear “No, we don’t want this” can leave a writer shaken, even shaky. We are not impervious to the pain of a rejection, nor should we be. We will open that email and feel the wave of nausea. As Isaac Asimov said, “Rejections slips…are lacerations to the soul." You have every reason to react in whatever honest, human

You’ve written something, edited it, polished it, and decided to send it out. Depending on your project, you’ll be shipping it off to a literary journal, magazine, agent, or publishing house. When you do, you risk rejection. You’ve probably heard about Stephen King’s rejections from his book On Writing. He says, “By the time I was fourteen...the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it” (29). You Must Risk a No to Get a Yes Rejection is part of the process of writing and submitting our work. Nicole Rollender says she’s gotten to know several poets through social media, and when she congratulated one of these writers on her full-length acceptance, the poet told Rollender "it had taken her five years and 80 rejections to get her acceptance.” Most people aren’t posting about their rejections, Rollender observes, so this story can remind us that "behind every acceptance are a lot of rejections." Lacerations of the Soul But I won’t lie to you—rejections hurt. I’ve

You may be tired of comma talk, but I want to toss one more punctuation post out to you before I move on to other topics. This one’s about the comma splice. To fix a comma splice, you first have to know what it is. A comma splice occurs when you connect or “splice” together two independent clauses with a comma. As a reminder, an independent clause can stand on its own as a sentence, with a subject and verb. For example: The writing conference invited my favorite author. That’s an independent clause. She spoke for an hour about her muse. That’s an independent clause, too. A comma splice would occur when you connect those two independent clauses with a comma so it would look like this: The writing conference invited my favorite author, she spoke for an hour about her muse. This must be fixed, or your editor might pluck her hair out in small handfuls each time she encounters one. Save her this painful experience by fixing the comma splice yourself. Five Easy Ways to Fix a Comma S

Now that we’re down to later-order concerns, examining our work at the detail level, I thought we might talk some more about punctuation. We’ve already covered the serial comma, also known as the Oxford comma. Let's cover yet another comma: the direct address comma. The direct address comma will be review for many readers, but it’s a fun one to offer as a refresher. Friends, we cannot neglect this comma or leave it out of our stable of punctuation. With it, we save lives. Without it, the unthinkable can happen. What do you mean, Ann? This comma offers clarity in its own way. And you can lock in its purpose is with the now infamous phrase: “Let’s eat, Grandpa.” The comma after the word “eat” is the direct address comma. With the comma, I’m directly addressing Grandpa, issuing an invitation for Grandpa to join us for dinner. Without the comma, Grandpa is dinner. Some people have been advised to read their work aloud and wherever they pause is a good place to add a comma. This helps a little, but somet

Let’s say your writing group or an editor has given you the high-level editorial input on your content that we talked about in episode 95. They’ve offered structural and developmental edits for your piece. And you’ve incorporated those recommendations—deleting, rewriting, and rearranging material as needed so that your overall idea or message is stronger than ever. You’ve revised per their suggestions, and the organization of the piece reads more smoothly than before. It feels complete and clear. What’s next? It’s time to move to the next level. Next-Level Edits: A Closer Look It can be a bit discouraging to realize you aren’t done yet, but your project will always need another look—a closer look. Now it’s time to refine your style through a careful reading. In this stage, you and anyone you invite to offer input can consider your work at the paragraph and sentence level, listening for pace, tone, and voice. You're watching for usage issues. This is the stage when we consider each word choice and eliminat

Last time we talked about commas. In particular, I brought to you the serial comma, or the Oxford comma. I emphasized the fact that details—even commas—really do matter to writers. This was on my mind because of that court case ruling hinging upon how workers, an organization, and the state of Maine interpreted its statutes as a result of a missing Oxford comma. As I warned at the end of episode 94, however, this is a detail-level edit. Don’t let concern over comma placement stall the writing of your draft. You have to write with freedom and abandon when you’re in the writing stage. Comma concerns come later, in the editing phase, when you pop on your fedora and dig into that draft. Even then, though—even when editing—comma concerns are not your first concerns. They're important, no doubt—I mean, I dedicated an entire episode to a single type of comma—but the first time you revisit that draft to consider edits and changes, the commas are not the first thing you tackle. Focus on your high-level edits first

If you’re new to writing, you may be unaware of the fierce debate among writers, editors, teachers, and grammarians over the use of the serial, or Oxford, comma. If you’ve been around the world of words a while, you know the tension, the arguments, the passion associated with this tiny punctuation mark used—or not used—in the specific scenario of a series. The Oxford Comma The serial comma, also known as the Oxford comma, is the last comma you’d use in a list that includes three or more words or phrases and a coordinating conjunction. The comma would be placed just before the final “or” or “and.” For example, if I said, “I love articles, essays, poems, and podcasts,” a serial comma would be the comma you’d place just after “poems” and before the word “and.” It's often referred to as the Oxford comma because, as Oxford Dictionaries explains, "it was traditionally used by printers, readers, and editors at Oxford University Press.” The AP Stylebook vs. The Chicago Manual of Style Style guides tend to fall into

I didn't publish a single post last week. I volunteered to serve at a four-day tournament, and my commitment left no free time. I couldn't write anything new, and I had no blog posts or podcast episodes in reserve. So last week, I published nothing. May I serve as a cautionary tale? Work Ahead on Content If you're a blogger or regular guest columnist for another publication, I urge you to do what I failed to do: write several articles or blog posts and store them up—better yet, prep and schedule them—so you'll have content for the weeks you head off on vacation, catch the flu, or volunteer to serve at a four-day tournament. If you don’t, you'll end up like me and have no choice but to recycle something from the archives or simply take the week off. Now, taking a week off is certainly an option. But your readers like hearing from you. They look forward to your updates. They appreciate your solutions to their problems. They're entertained by your stories. They show up looking for whatever it is you write a

  Before we revise, we need something to revise. We must compose the perfect first draft. How? We write without worrying about every comma splice or misplaced modifier. We write with abandon and get the story down. The Writer Hat During the prewriting and creation stage, we must consciously separate the writer self from the editor self. It’s as if we need to wear two hats—literally two different hats you can wear at the appropriate times. In episode 91, I mentioned my literal editor hat: a Maxwell Perkins-style fedora. The writer hat—especially needed during that first draft creation stage—is more like a baseball hat popped on backward. That image comes to me from Barbara Kingsolver, who wrote: My muse wears a baseball cap, backward. The minute my daughter is on the school bus, he saunters up behind me with a bat slung over his shoulder and says oh so directly, “Okay, author lady, you’ve got six hours till that bus rolls back up the drive. You can sit down and write, now, or you can think about looking fo