Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach

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Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach episodes

January 05, 2016 #32: What's the Thing You Really Want to Write...That Scares You?
Show Notes
Summary:
Think of something you’ve really wanted to write...something that feels exciting to try, maybe a little risky to undertake...something you feel is urgent or important.
And you haven’t written it yet because you’re scared.
You could be scared for a lot of reasons:
Maybe you’re a little scared because it’s a new style for you, or a new genre, and you feel you’ve don’t have the skills or experience to pull it off.
Maybe you’re a little scared because it’s a new style, a new genre, and you’re afraid people may laugh at you for trying something other than what you’re known for.
Maybe you’re a little scared because the subject matter is challenging or emotional.
Maybe you’re a little scared because writing it will name other people and you’re afraid of the relational fallout.
Maybe you’re a little scared because you start so many things and never finish them, you’re afraid this will be yet another project to add to the half-done list. You find it easier if you don’t start it at all.
You could be scared for a lot of reasons.
But if you really want to write something and you’re scared...write it. Write it scared.
Take a minute to think about this project...if you go ahead and write it, even though it scares you, and you finish it, will you look back in ten years and be glad?
If you don’t write it, will you look back in ten years and wish you had written it?
In the podcast, I address some of the reasons you may be scared and urge you to leave time in your days for some quiet mental space, some playful distractions, and some easy interactions—things to refuel you emotionally and prepare you to keep writing the next day.
Before you click away from this post or podcast, write the idea, the scene, the working title on a piece of paper or scribble it in your journal—use code if you want to hide it from others for now.
And when you’re sitting at your computer, open a file. Give it a title. And write three lines of that thing you really want to write. Three lines. You can do that. You’ve got the skills, no one needs to know yet.
It’s time to write that thing you really want to write. That thing that scares you.
Write it. Write it scared.
Listen for the full podcast.
Resources:
To ensure you have some down time including playful distractions, check out The Play Project: A Month of Fun for Anyone (especially writers and other creatives), #29: The Energizing Work of a Playful Writer, and Take Your Play History
#30: Action Creates Clarity
Password protect a document (in Word)
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You can subscribe with iTunes and Stitcher, where I'd love to have you subscribe, rate, and leave a review. You can also use the feed with any podcast player you use.
Connect with me on Twitter and Facebook, where I'm always sharing ideas to help us be more curious, creative, and productive.
Photograph by Ryan McGuire, via Gratisography under Creative Commons Zero terms. Words added by Ann Kroeker.
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Is your writing life all it can be?

Let this book act as your personal coach, to explore the writing life you already have and the writing life you wish for, and close the gap between the two.
"A genial marriage of practice and theory. For writers new and seasoned. This book is a winner."
—Phil Gulley, author of Front Porch Tales
7 min
December 28, 2015 #31: Plan a Playful Year
Show Notes Summary: This is the time of year when people look back at 2015 and consider how they did at achieving their goals, then they look ahead to 2016 and start to plan the year ahead. They decide the habits they want to eradicate and establish, and the goals they want to achieve. It happens […]
5 min
December 14, 2015 #30: Action Creates Clarity
Show Notes Summary: My friend John, an entrepreneur, said to me years ago: Action creates clarity. I’ve passed this nugget along to many people who are just sitting on an idea, afraid to take action, worried they’ll get it wrong. Once you take action, you might feel like you’re stumbling or making mistakes, but what you’re […]
6 min
December 08, 2015 #29 The Energizing Work of a Playful Writer
Show Notes Summary: One of my daughters has always been a playful, creative inventor, looking for ways to add tangible fun to her days. Once, she dragged a plastic bottle and paper towel tube from the recycling bin, grabbed a handful of rubber bands and duct-taped everything together to make a ukulele. It didn’t play, […]
5 min
December 01, 2015 #28: In This Season of Big Dreams, Take Time to Write Small
Show Notes
Summary:
This is a time to dream up some big goals for 2016 and think about how you can expand your reach and stretch yourself, and I definitely applaud and encourage that. But it can also be a time to go small—to use your words to connect with one or two people at a time.
By "small," I mean brief, but also "intimate."
You could:
pull out a note card and write a letter
craft an email to an old friend
pen a poem and slip it under somebody's windshield wiper
leave a love note under a pillow
Small, focused, writing projects have some side benefits beyond blessing the recipient of your writing. By writing to someone specific, you develop your voice.
You’ll be a little more comfortable and relaxed when writing that note or typing that email for someone you know well. You might insert a little inside joke, tell a story, and play with a more informal style. You’ll probably keep it somewhat tight and brief; then again, maybe you’ll be a bit more leisurely. When you know your audience well, you can tailor the message to them.
You keep specificity instead of defaulting to generalities.
Brain Pickings offers excerpts from a vintage book on letter writing:
Though written, as all genuine letters are, for the private eye of one or two familiar friends, and without any thought of their publication, they nevertheless often form the most interesting and imperishable of an author’s productions...In other productions there is the restraint induced by the feeling that a thousand eyes are peering over the writer’s shoulder and scrutinizing every word; while letters are written when the mind is as it were in dressing-gown and slippers — free, natural, active, perfectly at home, and with all the fountains of fancy, wit, and sentiment in full play.
When we write small, we can experience that same kind of natural, active approach that offers a kind of freedom and sense of play.
Will you do it? Will you write small?
If you write small—if you write that email or letter—would you let me know in the comments? You can just say, "I did it, Ann. I wrote small today."
Ideas from this episode:
While we're dreaming up big goals for 2016, we'll benefit from writing small.
If you write small in the sense of writing for an intimate audience of one or two, you'll gain creative freedom.
When you know your audience well, you can tailor the message to them and practice specificity.
Experiment with voice and tone in these small writing projects.
These efforts will bless the recipient, and if you take advantage of the playful approach, they'll bless you, as well.
Resources:
"How to Write Letters: A Vintage Guide to the Lost Art of Epistolary Etiquette from 1876"
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Listen for the full podcast. You can subscribe with iTunes and Stitcher, where I'd love to have you subscribe, rate, and leave a review. You can also use the feed with any podcast player you use.
Connect with me on Twitter and Facebook, where I'm always sharing ideas to help us be more curious, creative, and productive.
5 min
November 23, 2015 #27: Pay Attention to Draw Attention
Show Notes
Summary:
During the holiday season, while traveling and hosting or visiting others, you may not be able to keep up your writing at the same pace. We discussed in the last episode the benefit of having a rut to run in, and yet as we head into these next couple of months, we may not be able to maintain our writing routines at the same level.
Today I want to encourage you that even if you are unable to keep up even a modified version of your writing routine, you can still do one thing: pay attention, to draw attention.
If you pay attention to the details, events and interactions surrounding you over the next few weeks and you have a way to collect and store them, you will be able to use all of that for later, when you’re writing, to draw attention.
Oliver Burkeman in an article in The Guardian, highlights thoughts on writing from Steven Pinker, who points out that writing is inherently a psychological phenomenon, "a way that one mind can cause ideas to happen in another mind."
So our job is to be the ones who see, to notice what’s going on in the world directly around us, and beyond. We can take notes and store them someplace where we can find them again when we sit down to work. It may not feel like writing, but it's the work of a writer.
This can be a task for the holidays if you can’t find an hour to open your computer and write. You could press pause on your work-in-progress for a few days, and instead, pay attention, take notes, and be ready to write, later, through story, description, the essay form, poetry, or fiction, in a way that draws the reader’s attention to something you’ve seen.
This holiday season, pay attention. Gather what you need to recreate the scene, the moment, the revelation, the sensory experience, and store it up for later. Just type a few notes into Evernote or OneNote—wherever you would drop a few sentences or bullet points to jog your memory.
When the days return to normal, you can pull those notes into Word, a Google Doc, or Scrivener, and start the process of “joint attention,” walking alongside your future reader. Write as if you’re saying, “Look here. Can you see it?”
Pay attention, so you can draw your reader’s attention.
Ideas from this episode:
Should you write for yourself or for an audience? The answer is "for an audience," but not to impress them; using the concept of "joint attention," help them discern something you know they'd be able to see, if only they were looking in the right place.
Our job as writers is to being the ones who see—to notice what’s going on in the world directly around us, and beyond.
This holiday season, pay attention and gather what you need to recreate the scene, the moment, the revelation, the sensory experience—and store it up for later.
When you can find time to sit at your computer, write as if you’re saying, “Look here. Can you see it?”
Pay attention, so you can draw your reader’s attention.
Resources:
"This column will change your life: how to think about writing" (The Guardian article by Oliver Burkeman)
Write in the Middle of the Holidays
#26 Why Writers Need a Rut to Run In (podcast episode)
#13 Multi-sensory Writing
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Listen for the full podcast. You can subscribe
7 min
November 16, 2015 #26: Why Writers Need a Rut to Run In
Show Notes
Summary:
A writer needs a rut to run in.
If you're troubled by the construction, let me also say it this way: a writer needs a rut in which to run.
But about this rut...you might be thinking, "Hold on, now, how can a coach who encourages curiosity and creativity be promoting a rut?"
After all, People get stuck in ruts and never change, never take risks, never explore new possibilities. Ruts are things to get out of not to fall into. Ruts feel like tedium. Monotony. Boredom.
And there’s some truth to that, but I’m going to try to convince you to think differently about the monorail experience. When you have a rut to run in, parts of your life switch to autopilot and you don’t have to reinvent every single day. It simplifies life and frees up mental energy for greater willpower and creativity.
It steadies you.
Think of a rut as a habit or set of habits—a routine—that automates parts of your life.
In an article in The New York Times, John Tierney, who wrote the book Willpower with Roy Baumeister, says, “The more choices you make throughout the day, the harder each one becomes for your brain, and eventually it looks for shortcuts...there is a finite store of mental energy for exerting self-control."
We writers need that self-control—that willpower—to stick with the job, to finish the story, to meet the deadline. And we need some creative energy to bring it all to life.
Writers need a rut to run in.
If we deplete our brains on a lot of inconsequential decisions, we're more likely to delay our writing and run off to the movies with a friend. We'll pay less attention to a long-term goal like, to finish a book, and just fiddle with Facebook for an hour. If we do manage to write, a brain lacking willpower will be tempted to default to tired, predictable expressions, too mentally fatigued to reach for something fresh.
Baumeister says:
[P]eople with the best self-control are the ones who structure their lives so as to conserve willpower...they establish habits that eliminate the mental effort of making choices. Instead of deciding every morning whether or not to force themselves to exercise, they set up regular appointments to work out with a friend. Instead of counting on willpower to remain robust all day, they conserve it so that it’s available for emergencies and important decisions.
As writers, we want to conserve willpower so it’s available for some of the important decisions involved with creating and completing our art.
A Guardian article quoted W.H. Auden:
Decide what you want or ought to do with the day, then always do it at exactly the same moment every day, and passion will give you no trouble...Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.
What routine will you form to free your mind to create? What rut will you run in that will leave enough willpower to keep you seated at your desk to do the work you’ve set out to do?
Pre-decide what your routine will be. Set it on repeat, day after day, so that it's automated, so it’s a habit, and it becomes a rut to run in, leaving you with mental space and energy … to write.
Ideas from this episode:
A writer needs a rut to run in, freeing his mind to stick with the work and generate creative ideas.
A rut to run in lassoes the power of routine, or a set of habits, to "automate" the more inconsequential parts of our lives.
Structure your life to conserve willpower by reducing the number of decisions you need to make.
Beethoven and Bergman lassoed the power of routine,
7 min
November 09, 2015 #25: Stuck in the Middle
Show Notes
Summary:
Hundreds of thousands of writers are in the middle of National Novel Writing Month, or what is affectionately known as NaNoWriMo—where writers have signed up with the goal of completing a novel draft of 50,000 words.
If you are among the participants—or if you decided to tackle a nonfiction project during the same month, tapping into the resources and momentum of NaNoWriMo—you’re heading toward the middle of the month and, presumably, the middle of your project’s draft.
The middle is hard. A lot of people stop in the middle of things.
How were you doing on your New Year’s Resolutions back in July?
How about some hobby or craft you started but stopped about halfway through, that’s boxed up in the garage or basement?
The halfway point is critical, because you know what it took to get to that point, so you know you need at least that much effort to finish.
It can feel overwhelming.
It’s easier to just stop and shelve the project. Click save. Say you’ll come back to it someday, but you know you probably won’t.
Some people have trouble just getting started.
Some people have trouble finishing.
When you're stuck in the middle, you have to keep pushing through the middle. Keep the pen moving or, you know, the fingers tapping.
If you’re in the middle of a project now, or you’re envisioning some of the half-finished drafts of poems, articles, essays, or novels, sitting on your hard drive, open a file today. Open the current project or dig into your archives.
If you’re halfway through—if you’re stuck in the middle—you can begin again. You can finish.
On Saturdays I post a writing quote—something to encourage you along the way. This past Saturday’s quote came from Ausonius.
Begin, for half the deed is in beginning;
Begin the other half, and you will finish.
Begin the other half, friends. Begin—keep going—and you will finish.
Ideas from this episode:
The middle is hard; it's where a lot of people stop.
NaNoWriMo participants are about halfway through their projects, and they can celebrate their progress; everyone should celebrate their progress if they made it to the middle.
If you're halfway through any writing project, begin again—by beginning again, you will finish.
Resources:
Write in the Middle of Everyday Distractions: 7 Strategies for Getting Back on Track
Write in the Middle: Yes, You Can Maximize Distraction-Free Writing
Write in the Middle of Chaos
NaNoWriMo
NaNoWriMo stats
WNFIN/NaNonFiWriMo
How the Cuckoo Found Its Voice
#1: Just Get Started (podcast)
#14: Progress, Not Perfection (podcast)
6 min
November 02, 2015 #24: Let It Go or Let It Grow
Show Notes
Summary:
In the last episode, we discussed the urgency of acting on ideas. I quoted an editor my parents worked with who shouted, “Never, never, never sit on a story!” I warned you not to let somebody scoop you, because that idea was given to you. So take action, I said. And write.
Today, I want to encourage you that if you waited a few beats too long and your idea was written up and sent out by someone else...you have some options.
You can let it go, or let it grow.
If you feel like you’ve been scooped, it’s possible you did get scooped and you need to simply let it go and move on to new ideas.
But before you abandon it completely, maybe you’ll find you haven’t really been scooped—maybe you’ll see that your idea is quite a bit different from the piece that came out before yours. If so, you can continue with your idea as originally planned.
And maybe you’ll see that your original idea did get scooped, but if you’re willing, you can let it grow, tweaking yours so it can find readers who have been waiting for someone to write beautifully on this topic.
It might require letting go of your original vision for the topic, but by finding a more specific way to explore it, letting it grow into something with a new angle or audience, the idea may be richer and more interesting than you first imagined.
Ideas from this episode:
If someone truly scoops you on an idea or story, you can just let it go—generate new ideas and move on.
When you compare your idea with the just-released version, you may find they're different enough you can continue without changing a thing.
When you compare your idea with the just-released version, you may find they're similar, but with some tweaks, you can let yours grow into something related but different.
Let it grow by slanting to a specific audience.
Let it grow by combining your idea with something else.
Resources:
Never, Never, Never Sit on a Story
Write in the Middle of Everyday Distractions: 7 Strategies for Getting Back on Track
Write in the Middle: Yes, You Can Maximize Distraction-Free Writing
How to Generate Ideas for Writing
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Listen for the full podcast. You can subscribe with iTunes and Stitcher, where I'd love to have you subscribe, rate, and leave a review. You can also use the feed with any podcast player you use.
Connect with me on Twitter and Facebook, where I'm always sharing ideas to help us be more curious, creative, and productive.
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Book Discussion - The Art of Memoir
Do you read or write memoir? If so, you'll enjoy the book discussion of Mary Karr's recent release
7 min
October 26, 2015 The Writing Life Podcast: Never, Never, Never Sit on a Story
My parents were editors at a major metropolitan newspaper, and my dad often quoted his managing editor, who fulfilled all '50s and '60s movie newsroom stereotypes—puffing on a cigar, shouting across the newsroom. When this editor realized one of his reporters had been scooped by a competing newspaper, he shouted for all the newsroom to hear:
“Never, never, never sit on a story!”
Though I’ve not been in the newspaper business other than writing the occasional feature story, I’ve seen this in my writing life. I’ve learned this lesson. “Never, never, never sit on a story!”
And that’s what I’m here to tell you today.
The times I’ve done nothing more than toy with a story, talking about it with friends and family, tossing it around like I’ve got all the time in the world to develop it, someone else goes ahead and writes it.
Seriously. It’s happened to me multiple times.
If you’ve got an idea in you, don’t sit on it. Don’t just think about it or chat about it with friends and family.
Do something today to make it a reality.
Don’t let somebody scoop you. That idea was given to you. And you will create it for readers, so it's for them, too.
Take action. Get that idea in motion. Develop it. Finish it.
It might be hard and challenging at times, it’s going to feel risky—but you will have made it a reality.
Never, never, never sit on a story.
When it’s done, you’ll be so glad.
So will your readers.
Ideas from this episode:
Never sit on a story or someone may scoop you.
Take action today...and tomorrow.
Don't just do a little and stop. That, too, is sitting on a story.
Fear of failure—fear of rejection—keeps some people from taking action.
Reject rejection and write the story.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Reviewer Leanne Sowul's website
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Listen for the full podcast. You can subscribe to The Writing Life with Ann Kroeker with iTunes and Stitcher, where I'd love to have you subscribe, rate, and leave a review. You can also use the feed with any podcast player you use.
Connect with me on Twitter and Facebook, where I'm always sharing ideas to help us be more curious, creative, and productive.
6 min

About Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach

From the publisher's feed

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…