Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach

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Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach episodes

October 24, 2017 Ep 124: No Time to Write? A Simple Solution to Kickstart Your Work
I hear it all the time.
It doesn't seem to matter what stage of life we're in or what part of the world we're from. Regardless of age or gender or personality type, everyone says it: "I want to write, but I don’t have the time."
Time Management Systems Only Part of the Solution
You might think the only solution is to quit your job or hire a nanny. More likely, you’ve given up. Well, I guess that’s where you’re finding yourself if you’re someone who wants to write but doesn’t because of time…or lack of it.
I don’t think you have to quit your job or hire a nanny. I also don’t think you have to give up.
I could offer project management and time management solutions to help you eliminate some things from your schedule, plan your days efficiently, streamline your processes, and make the most of your time.
And we could discuss distraction and motivation and nemesis and Resistance and procrastination. Because chances are, more than one thing is keeping you from writing, not just lack of time.
It Can Be Done: You Can Write
I want you to prove to yourself it can be done—you can write even when you think you have no time at all.
Here’s a simple solution that's worked for me. In the next article I’ll share another. You can try one or the other, or both together for even more momentum. This first solution is especially powerful if it’s been a while since you’ve written.
Kickstart Your Writing with a Time Block
I urge you to kickstart your writing with a block of time devoted to nothing else but your words.
If your schedule is insane, this may seem like a counterintuitive suggestion or a contradiction—“If I don’t have time to write, how will I find a block of time to write?"
Have you taken a vacation in the past year or two? It could be a one-day escape to a nearby tourist attraction, a weekend retreat, or a week-long getaway. You made it happen, didn’t you? So you know it’s a hassle to step away from life and work, but it can be done. If you want it bad enough, you’ll find a way to set aside the time and make it happen.
Same with this writing block. If you want it, you’ll find a way. And like a vacation, it’s not a regular thing. Just one block of time.
I want you to love yourself and your writing enough to say, “I’m doing it. I’m making this happen. I’ve waited long enough—it’s time to kickstart my writing."
Can you find a block of time? Can you escape the busyness that’s been holding you back? Can you leave it behind for an afternoon, a day, a weekend, or longer, so you can write for an extended time and make a dent in your work-in-progress—or the work that hasn’t even begun?
How Long?
You don’t have to go far, and you don’t have to be gone long to make a difference. Remember, this is a kickstart, not a completion—you don’t have to write the entire novel or finish the complete essay. You just dedicate a block of time to writing to give it a strong start or build out its bones.
Surely you can find an afternoon and evening? Or a full Saturday?
Where?
For a week or weekend getaway, you could head to a nearby retreat center or a local bed and breakfast or a campground cabin. If you only carved out a day or an afternoon, head to the library or see if a local co-working space offers an inexpensive day pass.
Depending on your project, you might want to find a location that doesn't offer Wi-Fi. Without that distraction, you’ll get more words out. Just make notes in brackets directly in the text to remind you to look up details later. You can tackle that research some day when you have just a few minutes between appointments. Kickstarting your project means you need to set down words, lots of words, so don’t get distracted confirming the street name in your home town. Just write.
8 min
October 17, 2017 Ep 123: This Is How to Write Real Copy for Real People
A lot of my clients are preparing nonfiction book proposals to send out to agents and publishers. One of the sections they have to think through is their primary audience or target reader. We have to identify who this book is intended to impact.
8 min
October 10, 2017 Ep 122: The Role of a Gatekeeper in the Publishing World
In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, we follow the saga of King Arthur and his knights when, at one point, they encounter the Keeper of the Bridge of Death. Arthur explains that the Keeper of the Bridge of Death asks each traveler three questions.
9 min
October 03, 2017 Ep 121: Out of Ideas? Be an Idea Machine
Writers have to churn out content of all kinds, from blog articles and guest posts to magazine pitches and book proposals. You never want the well to run dry, yet you may have faced days when you opened your laptop and stared at the screen without a si...
7 min
September 26, 2017 Ep 120: Plotters and Pantsers for All Genres
In fiction writing, we refer to plotters and pantsers: those who like to outline their plot and write in an organized manner, the “plotters"; and those who write-by-the-seat-of-their-pants, the "pantsers.”
Each approach reflects when and how you do your thinking.
I know every writer has specifics to his or her approach, but here’s the general idea.
Plotter, Pantser
The plotter is imagining his characters and thinking through their struggles up front, before he writes a single word, planning out the story’s plot.
The pantser has a basic idea and a main character or two, tosses them into a setting, gives them a problem, and starts writing—because he’s thinking as he writes and the story unfolds before him.
Nonfiction Plotters and Pantsers
While nonfiction writers and poets don’t technically have to plot out anything, I suspect writers in all genres can identify with one or the other of those general approaches.
Maybe you’re a plotter-type who outlines essays and articles or works from a template for blog posts. You refer to that outline and fill out the template before tapping out the draft.
You probably started with a list of topics or a mind map to think, and then figured out how to organize all those ideas that popped into your head. Only then—only after you organized the themes, subtopics, and examples, shaping them into some kind of structure—did you attempt to write a draft.
Maybe you’re a pantser, generating a big idea and then running with it, letting the subtopics reveal themselves while you write. You might make a short list to get the creative juices flowing, but then you just put pen to paper and started freewriting to unearth everything you can on a topic, trusting your mind to flow in some kind of logical pattern, finding connections and stirring up thoughts, quotes, and ideas you’ve tucked inside some mental file.
The Plotter-Pantser Continuum
As with many things, however, this is not a binary choice; we’re probably not either a plotter or a pantser. I see it more as a continuum, where pantsers like to have an idea of where they’re headed or maybe they write plot summaries for the next segment they’re starting to work on.
And, yes, plotters will stay open to new ideas, willing to erase or rearrange ideas in the outline when some new thought arises or a bit of research sends them off in a new direction.
You might be amused to know that some people who see themselves somewhere in the middle of this continuum call themselves “plantsters” (or "plantsers") a combination of both.
Which Way Do You Lean?
But even a plantser will tend to favor one end of the spectrum or the other. Figuring out which way you lean can help you do your work more confidently from day to day.
If you know you like to be a little more organized and prefer a sense of where you’re going before you write, you’re leaning at least a tad toward the plotter end and you'll be able to write drafts with greater ease when you’re prepared. That’s cool. Don’t let someone who leans toward the pantser side tell you that’s uncreative or uninspired. You’re being creative at the beginning of the process instead of the middle of it.
If you’re a little more loose about where you’re going, eager to explore your idea or characters as you write, don’t let the person who relies on an outline look down on you. You have to find your way as you go—it’s writing as discovery. If you’re a little more on the pantser side, you’re letting your thoughts and ideas evolve through the writing process.
No Right Way to Write
It seems like Twitter and Instagram are filled with writing quotes that suggest one way is better than the other. Facebook updates link to articles that elevate one approach over the other.
8 min
September 19, 2017 Ep 119: If a Writing Nemesis Holds You Back, It's Time to Be Free
In Rumors of Water, L.L. Barkat recommends a book to her daughter. Barkat is out in the garden with her girls, who are pulling weeds, and one of the girls, Sara, has decided she hates Bishop’s Weed. Barkat tells Sara,
7 min
September 12, 2017 Ep 118: How Inexperienced Writers Can Supercharge Their Growth
Young people graduate high school or college, apply for positions, and get stuck: no one will hire them because they have no experience, but they can’t get experience because no one will hire them. So they get a job at Starbucks to pay bills,
9 min
September 05, 2017 Ep 117: How to Dredge up the Memories You Want to Write About
Last time we talked about taking a cue from Dani Shapiro and attempting to tell the story as we’re inside of it—potentially before the story has become a story. This requires us to write about life as it’s unfolding,
6 min
August 29, 2017 Ep 116: Can You Write Your Story Before It's Become a Story?
In her recently released memoir, Hourglass, Dani Shapiro says she used to teach her students that writers need distance from the event or events they intend to explore in memoir. I was quite certain that we could not write directly from our feelings,
6 min
August 22, 2017 Ep 115: You’ll Write More When You Use an Editorial Calendar
Last time we discussed a writing pipeline, representing the phases or stages a project moves through, from the initial idea to completion—including when it's been published and you save it in a portfolio.
Now let’s talk editorial calendars.
Life Without an Editorial Calendar
For years I got by writing on the fly. I'd have a few minutes free, think up an idea, whip out a draft, and with just a little more time that night or the next morning, I could edit the piece into a solid article to send out to a magazine or publish on my website.
My approach worked in the early days, when my publishing aspirations and expectations were as small as my kids. As my kids grew, however, the possibilities seemed grander and I realized this random, last-minute approach was not the way to live a creative, sustainable, productive writing life over the long haul.
If I wanted to produce a body of work, I'd need to be a bit more intentional and organized. A tool to support all that and remind me what to do next was an editorial calendar.
Life With an Editorial Calendar
Whether I’m planning the timing of short pieces like blog posts or long-form projects broken into smaller tasks, I’ve come to rely on an editorial calendar of some kind, even if it’s rudimentary. Over the years, I've tried everything from printed calendars to online apps. No matter what I use, it boils down to deciding when I want to publish or submit something. Then I simply write that down somewhere—preferably somewhere I’ll actually look.
Integrating the project due dates on a calendar I’m already using for other appointments helped me value the work as highly as other obligations. It showed up as a priority in my life and helped me view myself as a working writer.
I hope life with an editorial calendar improves your own work habits and productivity so that you’ll prioritize your writing. And when you’re picking out the editorial calendar to use, start with what’s most normal and natural for you to avoid overcomplicating things or introducing a big learning curve.
Paper Calendars
My first editorial calendars were simply monthly calendars I printed off. I’d think about the frequency I wanted to write and publish for my own website along with content I created for other organizations and magazines, then I’d pencil in projects with the deadlines. It helped me learn my capacity and pace by experimenting with work load and frequency. Without a calendar, I’d just be winging it; with a calendar, I could begin to see the weeks I’d scheduled too much.
Bullet Journals
If bullet journals existed at the time I was printing off calendar pages, I would have dedicated a page to an editorial calendar. As with a printed calendar, I’d mark articles scheduled on certain days for my blog posts or podcasts as well as articles promised to magazines and online organizations. I currently use a bullet journal to plan out ideas, but I’m loving technology options these days for my editorial calendar.
Google Calendar
I first transitioned from printed calendars to a simple Google Calendar. You can name each calendar, so I gave mine the unforgettable name: Editorial Calendar. I already used a Google calendar to manage the rest of my life, so this was simply adding another layer and I liked that integration.
Sample entries of the kind of thing you could include on an Editorial Calendar
In Google Calendars, you can click calendars on and off to look at one at a time or have all of them layer on top of each other so you can see schedule conflicts. This was perfect, because it layered my entire life and I could see busy weeks when writing wouldn’t be possible. I could move around project goals to accommodate other obligations in life.
Another nice feature: scheduling alerts to remind me to to write, edit, and send off my projects for a hours or days ahead of time. When a notification popped up on my phone or desktop,
11 min

About Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach

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With Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach, you'll gain clarity and overcome hurdles to become a better writer, pursue publishing, and reach your writing goals. Ann provides practical tips and motivation for…