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Putting books aside for a moment, I also write scripts with my partner. Some are adaptations, some are originals. People ask me how does that literally work? As if they envision us side-by-side at the laptop like the Gershwin brothers with all hands on the keys.

The truth is most of the work is first done on a beat board—index cards taped to a board or wall to hash out the major beats. (Skip this step of screenwriting at your own peril.) We’ll drink Red Bulls, discuss, act out, argue, and move cards until we’re both happy enough to start writing. And the writing stage? It’s passed between us by the act. He takes the Final Draft file, then I take the Final Draft file and so on. That means there are days at a time we don’t know what the other is up to and that’s when things happen, as it did with an original script this week.

Emily: How is the draft going?

Brian: We’ll need a new final act.

Emily: Why?

Brian: The antagonist and protagonist became friends.

Emily: How?! They wanted to kill each other.

Brian: They started talking and they ended up getting along.

While writing a novel, it’s not that much different. The distinction is just the person you might be arguing about the next plot turn with is yourself.

I generally have two parts of myself when I’m at the computer: the part that wants to do everything as I envisioned it and take the straightest road to my destination, and the part that wants to rebel. She’s the one letting scenes run too long, dialogue get crazy, and the characters do things I didn’t mean for them to do! Both sides are important. The editorial taskmaster can’t win every time, or the book will be a drag—for the writer and the reader. There’s something to be said for letting the characters or the plot persuade you to take a twisty and even treacherous path once in a while. A novel without spontaneity can feel very, very dull. Like being on a guided tour for 300 pages.

You have a certain obligation, I think, to protect your work even from yourself—to guard its originality, and not allow yourself to dampen its spirit by chopping out all of the impulsive or curious moments.

This week…

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I think I fell into being a novelist because serial relationships have always kind of suited me. And the relationship with a novel you’re writing—six months to two years—has around the same lifespan.

We covered when to know your book is done, as in pencils down. But pros here know that’s only the start of a book’s life. There’ll be agent submissions, and agent edits, then publisher’s edits. And then hopefully publicity. That’s when it goes right, and it is still a lot of work. It’s easy to stay stuck in a novel, especially during the submission and edits stage—unready to move on. You can feel like you’re in a time loop of small changes and final touches.

But you have to keep writing, so when do you let your head turn and start working on that new thing? (And I know you nonfiction writers are staring at your slutty writing schedules packed with book proposals, articles, and pitches, and asking what’s the big deal? For fiction writers, it is different.)

One of the reasons novelists have to start right away on a new project is to avoid large gaps in our careers. Because of publishing’s still-seasonal schedule and the length of time it takes to set up a book deal and then get it out in the world, you really must keep writing. If you get caught up in promoting and haven’t started anything new, it’ll take you awhile to come back down to earth again, and get back to your regular life before you roll up your sleeves.

For me, with my new novel, this happened once I got agent notes back — and two final notes from my partner — that wound up being MSG for the whole book. A couple of hours of final touches and it felt like the book was ready. And the very next day I wrote the first fresh page for something completely different. Now, a single page isn’t a relationship of course. But you never know what it could become.

As an exercise…

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A lot of times we start writing with a big concept in mind rather than the details: the conflicts, nuances of a character or their story. That’s understandable. Concepts are exciting. But a concept can quickly put down its foot and say, “I’m the most important thing here.” And yet, a job or career is instant world-building and also puts your character in interaction with others.

Not only will your character’s chosen field free up your narrative space for other things, it’s something you can always come back to when you’re lost. What are your character’s actual life skills? Who do they tend to meet or cross paths with, and how can you use those to accelerate the plot?

This is far from nonnegotiable—sometimes you’re writing a character ungrounded in life—maybe their path is still uncertain. And yet a job can be easy shorthand for your character’s desires: thwarted, achieved, or otherwise.

That said there are possible downsides. Since writers do stick to what they know more often than not, the campus novel is well-covered territory. Likewise, giving your characters the job of “novelist” isn’t the flex you think it is after fifty years of postmodernism. To do either means you should try for a big swing. I already took “Campus novel but add a rabies-like virus.”

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We’ve all been at a party in a great conversation circle, but then you say something you think is brilliant or cutting and the response is not what you’d hoped. The mood cools, people look around and mumble things like, “I really need to go say hello to my ex’s new girlfriend.”

Readers can also react this way to when you make a misstep. For either fiction or nonfiction creating tone is about being precise in your word choices and sentence structures, and finding a rhythm that suits the genre and material, but it’s more than that too. It’s about decision making and reading the mood of the room you’ve created. If you’ve been told you have “tone problems,” it’s usually a signal that you need to go back over your whole project and smooth it out—that you nailed the tone in one place but not in others.

In my forthcoming novel, the biggest change after getting my agent’s notes was the death of the most likable character in the novel. I did set it up so that the death had impact on the reader but let’s say I went too far. The novel itself is a dark satire. Not a meditation on the brutality of humanity. After all, I’m Emily Schultz, not Cormac McCarthy. It was too heavy.

Expectations will dictate the tone, but so will the genre, so let’s look at that first. You’ll notice each of these examples is just two or three sentences, but they convey the vibe of the larger piece. Let’s look at a standard mystery, a satirical thriller, and dystopian fiction.

“In the restaurant car all was in readiness. Poirot and M Bouc sat together on one side of a table. The doctor sat across the aisle.” Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie

Tone: Orderly and assured. Just the facts.

“Mix the nitro with sawdust, and you have a nice plastic explosive. A lot of folks mix their nitro with cotton and add Epsom salts as a sulfate. This works too. Some folks, they use paraffin mixed with nitro. Paraffin has never, ever worked for me.” Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk.

Tone: Dark but casual, fast, conversational.

“He tried to orient himself: Was he looking north or south? It was like dragging a fork through gruel. The ash smeared the city’s palette into a gray hush on the best of days, but introduce clouds and a little bit of precip and the city became an altar to obscurity.” Zone One, Colson Whitehead

Tone: Desolate, ominous, but grounded in everyday details.

To understand and practice tone, try a couple of these exercises.

1. Identify your genre and try to write two sentences that embody the genre and go with your character’s conundrum (or your own, if writing nonfiction). Think about pace—how quick or slow you want the progression to feel. Languorous and dreamy, or edgy and quick?

2. Write about an event or something that has meaning for the protagonist, but which they are trying to downplay the impact of. Focus on sensory details and expressing how the person feels by using images or carefully selected verbs, rather than stating it.

3. Write two sentences about a character kicking or catching a ball (or choose your favorite sport). Try to inject as much speed and vigor into the words as you can to make your reader feel very immediately placed in the scene.

Tone is style, vibe, mood. Discomfort is part of the pallet and at least in writing you can always backspace over it and try again for the right mix... unlike when you say the wrong thing at a party.

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The chat this week is scheduled for Thursday at 6 p.m. EST. Pop in, say hello, and tell me a bit about your project. You can wait for the new thread email to remind you or bookmark this link: https://www.themediumcool.com/chat

When Medium Cool launched this writing group, I wanted it to be a place for professional writers to be able to check in, unwind, and talk. It has been that and I want to thank everyone who does stop by to read or chat—it’s been a balm for my writing life this year to connect with you all. That said, I know a lot of people who are just starting to write also read this, and you might not know the first steps of publishing.

So to the lifers: sit these questions out for now, or share your wisdom in the comments. What advice would you give a new writer asking questions like…

Do I need an agent?

Do you have a book yet?

Maybe. Do I have to finish the book first?

Yes, you absolutely do. Go finish it. Pitches and unfinished manuscripts (called “partials” in our lingo) are reserved for nonfiction books, annoying personalities who rode a zeitgeist, or very established fiction writers. In the past this was less rigid, but in 2026 publishers have lots of options and will always favor a finished book.

Do I need a freelance editor to go over my book?

It can’t hurt to have a manuscript polished, but it can be expensive. If your budget is tight or you’re just starting out there’s an amazing number of resources on Substack, often for as little as 10 bucks. There’s—cough—IWG, but I also recommend Amy Shearn and Kathryn Mockler.

Do I need an agent?

I promise. We’ll get there. But first you have to ask…

What do I want my publishing experience to be?

You need to ask this first because publishing in 2026 is a very large thing, but it is not one thing. I think of it like ecosystems. There are five large presses in North America who do the things you think publishing does: own tall buildings in New York staffed by people who live in Brooklyn, and they publish everything from literary fiction to memoir, to history books, as well as thrillers, horror, and romance. But there are also dozens of large independent presses and hundreds of small indies across the country who do the exact same thing. If you’re an academic, there are also great university presses. The difference among all of them is going to be resources.

So…agent?

If you want the resources of the large presses then yes, you really do need to get an agent. Follow Kate McKean for more info on how to do that.

What are the benefits of the big presses?

They have their own marketing and publicity departments, and their own distribution. You will get paid an advance on sales that will be anywhere from the cost of a used 2012 Subaru, to around a year’s salary. If there’s a lot of interest, the book may be pre-empted with a low six-figure offer. About 0.04 percent of books every year crack the million-dollar advance ceiling. If that seems crazy, it’s usually done as a form of marketing, so every bookstore in the country will stock it. (Given that result, it’s actually relatively cheap as an investment for the publisher.)

So I’ll get rich?

The funny thing is no one knows what will sell or not.

What are the benefits of the small presses?

The people who work in the small press are absolutely dedicated to this business and often have a niche: experimental, literary, or genre. That means they can put your book into the hands of the right readers. They are often open to unagented submissions but the advances will be not be big. That said, you may actually earn royalties, have more say in your book’s production, and small press publishers are always happy to share a joint with you.

What kind of publishing is right for me?

It takes a while for most of us to figure that out! So many times I’ve watched new writers work their way down a list, starting at what they think the top literary agency is or the most prestigious magazine, submitting to those first and picking up rejection letters and PTSD along the way. Observe where other writers who are at your level are placing their work, especially if you like them and feel you have something in common. What is in their bios?

Can’t I just use AI to create books and flood the self-published market?

I’m no expert but over the last 25 years I have seen every reputed “publishing killer” start-up, app, or tech company totally flame out. Save for the effect of e-books on the mass market paperback, publishing is pretty much the same as always and that must be down to something more powerful than mere nostalgia. Maybe it just works.

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The chat this week is scheduled for Thursday at 6 p.m. EST. Pop in, say hello, and tell me a bit about your project. You can wait for the new thread email to remind you or bookmark this link: https://www.themediumcool.com/chat

It’s been thirty years since Apple last sponsored a writer, going back to this very real, very 1990s PowerBook ad featuring Henry Rollins. (See the full ad below.)

Unfortunately, that also means professionals have been on our own to acquire and maintain the tools of our job. Ever since I traded my 1997 Power Mac for my first laptop, I have a) never bought new, and b) resisted writing at a proper desk. We’ll talk more about the physical effects of writing more below, but first let’s make sure you’re not wasting money.

Buy used

Since my partner and I run a production company we’ve invested in a well-made expensive desktop computer for multimedia work that will last ten years. Laptops, however, are poorly made aluminum butterflies and they will inevitably break whether you buy new at $2000 or used at $400. None of them really survive the pounding of daily writing either. So if you’re like me and you have a “one book, one dead laptop” motto then you should buy used: Mac of All Trades, OWC, and eBay are places to find great prices.

Keyboard ASMR

I’ve never been fond of the barely there flat keys of Apple laptops. I like a loud clacky keyboard that sounds like I’m filing an article about Watergate in All the President’s Men. I may never remember to plug mine in, but the mechanical keyboards loved by desktop gamers will give you that tactile satisfaction. Plus, it will add a few years of life to your laptop.

Do the Amoeba

Around our house I’m called “the Amoeba” because of my talent for falling into any spot or crevice for hours-long writing sessions. Whether I’m hunched at the kitchen table, cradled in a pouf in my son’s room, or standing at a counter, I can write. Obviously this is partly me self-treating ADHD, as I need to move around. But being an “anywhere but a desk” girl has its drawbacks: guaranteed physical torment.

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Landing that first line is like executing a triple axel: it looks effortless but it is the result of years of hard work.

• “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.”

• “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

• “I rose up sopping wet from sleeping under the pouring rain, and something less than conscious, thanks to the first three of the people I’ve already named—the salesman and the Indian and the student—all of whom had given me drugs.”

The maxim “make your first line matter” is inescapable, especially for new writers. When I edited for Joyland, a grabber could lift a piece out of the inbox, but it always helped if the whole first paragraph sang as well. And the quality, of course, had to continue beyond that. With famous opening lines there’s also something of a retrospective effect: when a book becomes iconic so does its first line, first edition cover art, etc.

Of course, first impressions matter, and a captivating opening line can compel a reader to start your book or story. But during the first or second draft, how can you be sure that the beginning will be the one that stays? You wind up struggling to write the absolute best line you can, and eventually you put it in the garbage. As I progress in a project, I often realize I can start much later—that the early pages are just me convincing myself, and I inevitably wind up saying goodbye to some of them. Given this reality, is the emphasis on the first line a little unfair?

Years ago, I gave my creative writing students a full page of standout first lines, including the ones above. The main discussion was: how many of those authors wrote those lines from the outset, and how many revisited them after toiling away and finally understanding what they were truly trying to say?

I’m a strong advocate for stepping away when the work isn’t flowing. Some of my best opening lines have arrived while I was doing something else entirely. The opening for The Blondes came to me while walking home with heavy bags of groceries. I thought, “Women have stupid dreams…”—a reflection of my own feeling that I wanted everything at once: a great career as a writer, to become a parent, a great relationship, and even good meals that came from nowhere. (This was a couple of years before DoorDash.) This statement felt provocative, loaded, and even mean, yet I was sure it was deeply relatable to others. I went home, wrote it down, and never changed it. However, other openings were often changed several times, sometimes with the final first line even coming from my editors.

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“Write what you know” does make sense for nonfiction. After all, you’re likely to be an expert on what you’re passionate about. But when you apply this to fiction writing the advice can turn into a liability. In college, before I learned to fictionalize enough, I once too accurately detailed a romance in a story I’d written. I deeply regret this, and not just because afterwards my ex-girlfriend, an artist, made a literal installation piece out of our breakup to set the record straight. A steel bed in a gallery with the words “You Lie” etched in it (proving who will win in an artist versus writer fight).

The problem of course was not that I lied—but that I hadn’t lied enough.

I shouldn’t have written what I knew. Fiction is by its definition lying. Good lying. And so in a novel you must invent. Write what you don’t know.

Of course, I’m not talking about stealing someone else’s story from Facebook, or appropriating a specific cultural voice not your own. I’m asking you to trust your imagination and curiosity. And if you don’t know the difference between the two approaches, social media will help you know which is which when you’re caught doing the wrong one.

This week I handed in my new novel to my agent and I’m a little exhausted. But I want to share some of the details of the novel to prove my point. After writing two Brooklyn-set mysteries in twelve months I was ready to leave for someplace else, in my imagination at least, and somewhere quite darker in a new thriller.

I’m not a serial killer, but anger has been one of my great obsessions as a topic. I’m also fascinated by what motivates people to do terrible things and why they think they won’t get caught.

I’m not an influencer, but I am a woman online and I obsess over my appearance more than I ever did before. It doesn’t help that the bra I browsed is now following me endlessly around the internet until it haunts me in my dreams.

I don’t live in San Francisco, but I felt comfortable setting my story in the Bay Area because I’ve visited family there often enough, walked its streets, watched it change, and even thought about moving there. It’s also a city on the edge of the world, ripe with bizarre crime history: the perfect city for the story of a serial killer falling in love. In San Francisco that could happen. In New York City, it’s less likely. (Dating is just harder here.)

A curiosity about how life is lived is pretty much a prerequisite to being a writer. All subjects have a door you can walk through that has some connection with your own world.

You do know what people feel, and how they react to various situations. And that part of the novel, yes, that does come from the what you know adage.

YouTube is my number one stop for nurturing a new obsession, especially ones that will help my writing. For the new novel, I watched a scary quantity of lock-picking videos.

For this week’s prompt, go to YouTube and seek out something you’re interested in (gardening, guitar repair, possessed dolls) but not an expert on. Try turning that subject into a scene or character detail—either for something new or that you’re already working on.

See what doors it opens up.

This was a free Independent Writing Group post! Paid members can also take part in the weekly chat. The next one is scheduled for this Thursday at 6pm, EST. You can wait for the new thread email to remind you or bookmark this link: https://www.themediumcool.com/chat

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Since we’re looking at bad writing advice this month it makes sense to ask: Where do writing rules come from anyway?

Editors certainly have their style bugaboos from so much reading, and creative writing teachers are often desperate to convey anything concrete about the art form. If something is pithy and short enough to fit on a coaster, it will get repeated, wrong or right. That’s just how humans learn—mostly through drink coasters. Does that mean it’s all subjective? It can be. There’s a great firing scene in the movie Full Frontal where David Hyde Pierce’s character is told, “You’ve mistaken your quirks for standards.”

One rule that is repeated so much it can now be considered a standard is: Show, don’t tell.

It is often the first piece of advice given to new writers, because active scenes are great. But follow this advice too much and it can steer your work towards being vague and underwritten, like a tired Ernest Hemingway. That comparison is not an accident. Hemingway had his own theory of spareness that came to be called The Iceberg Theory.

If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.

No matter the branding, these rules favor a certain kind of writing: American modernism of the early twentieth century. This is when novels were being challenged—and changed—by new technology like films and television. A format that let us “see” the events. But that time is over, novels survived, and they are not scripts. If prose writing has a superpower it’s that there is room for your voice, and you can make clear statements anytime in your writing. Or you can lie. Unreliable narrators are more well liked than you think!

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This next month I’ll be looking at bad writing advice. Lucky for me, as a blizzard has brought New York to a standstill, I already wrote about what I think the single worst writing advice is. (Thanks to Amy Shearn for commissioning this back in 2021.)

You’ve heard the advice many times before, probably from an overworked teacher reaching for any easy-to-convey technique, or from that workshop bro who wanted to win a story argument without putting in too much effort. The advice is “kill your darlings.”

I hate that I have to point this out, but killing something you love is psychopathic and illegal.

Like all trite advice there’s truth hiding in the kernel. If you’re being edited well, you really will cut things you’re fond of in service to the book as a whole. Scenes and phrases do get in the way of the story, especially in the opening chapters when a reader is still deciding if they’re committing to you. These are vital discoveries to make during editing. A plot needs to move, the characters need to show us who they are, and the themes and images need to emerge as easily as turning a page. The problem with “kill your darlings” is that it has curdled into an ideology that what you like in your writing should be viewed as suspect. In my opinion as both a writer and editor, if you really like something — an unusual turn, or an off-kilter rally of dialogue — it may be the best part of your writing voice.

Apologies to all who believe they have a William Faulkner quote tattoo, but it was Arthur Quiller-Couch who coined “kill your darlings” in 1916. (It’s understandable though if you continue with the misattribution — it’s hard to think of a quote tattoo as badass when it’s from someone named after furniture.)

“Kill your darlings” has had so much staying power since then because we often have no clue whether the cuts we’re making are harmful, especially when we’re deep into the process.

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“The world is too much with us,” Wordsworth wrote. All of 2026 replies in unison, “No shit.”

Everything in your feed is violent, discouraging, and makes you want to scream. So do it. Go find a place where you can be alone and give a good yell. Or open your window or go up to your rooftop like in the movie Network. I’m ready to shout out of all my windows. Because we have limits, and it’s really hard to write in chaos. It’s hard to do anything in chaos.

And yet—people do and always have. How?

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his “I Have a Dream” speech in a hotel the night before delivering it in front of 250,000 people. He only had eight minutes to speak. In eight minutes, he delivered the most iconic speech of the twentieth century, cobbled together in a hotel lobby and partly ad-libbed. Even after his speeches were typed and mimeographed, there would be notes written all over the margins. As a press copy of the speech shows, the refrain of “I have a dream” itself was improvised.

But he had a clear purpose, as a leader and activist. The purpose of a novelist, story writer, or memoirist is sometimes more abstract. When the news and world events are tough to process, going into an imaginative space can feel...selfish. Not enough. Yes, I know it is important work and we do mirror our social values and our politics in our stories, even when they’re fantastical ones or based in other worlds.

So how can we make an agreement with chaos? Put it on hold for one hour to give ourselves time to go into a different headspace? You can’t even wrap the world in a blanket and lay it down like a baby in a crib, then tiptoe out of the room. Or can you?

Try telling the world, I’ll be back in one hour. Saying that to my partner when I was a new mother saved my life.

See what you can write without judgment of yourself or your reasons for doing so. Allow yourself a tiny escape from everything that has been screaming and fighting for your attention.

Try writing differently than you usually do:

• Write before you look at a newsfeed or social media.

• Write in longhand and see if the personal format gives you more freedom.

• Speak into a recorder or voice memo as a way to write.

And if your fire is truly lit and you want to channel your mad-as-hell energy, then I would challenge you to sit down and scrawl out something entirely new—something based in this now that we are in. A poem, a story, an essay, a tirade. Don’t worry about whether it is good enough. Write something you’re worried you’ll regret. Even if it does not change the world, it may change you.

This Independent Writing Group post was free for all. If you’d like to have access to weekly writing prompts and the live chat group, subscribe below.

The chat this week is scheduled for Thursday at 6 p.m. EST. Pop in, say hello, and tell me a bit about your project. You can wait for the new thread email to remind you or bookmark this link: https://www.themediumcool.com/chat

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In my twenties, struggling with my first novel, I found myself at a bar where I ran into another writer who was celebrating: he’d just finished his most recent novel and he and friends were raising shot glasses.

“But how do you know it’s done?” I asked him.

“What do you mean?” he responded, the warmth and certainty now gone from his voice. “I finished it. It’s done.”

I wasn’t being an asshole on purpose. I didn’t realize I was ruining his moment—every ending and every draft deserves to be celebrated—it had more to do with my curiosity over how he could declare his novel “finished.” I was in knots over where to go next with my own book—in my third draft, I still hadn’t come to that sense of completion. Maybe this was a super power known only to men? Or men with a bottle of Jägermeister in hand?

Questions of confidence and alcohol aside, when do you know a book is done?

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I was raised to never throw things out. I grew up with grandparents who filled up many rooms of their house with things they no longer reeded—dresses kept since the 1950s, church annuals going back to the ’60s, old tube radios and TVs my grandpa picked up at yard sales and liked to fiddle with. Their house wasn’t pathological or unsafe but it was…rather full. They had boxes and bags stacked throughout the front hall and entryway of their home to the extent that the side door was the only one in use. “They lived through the Depression,” my parents would always say, yet most of the things in the boxes and bags didn’t have much to do with survival and were never used again.

As happens with families, neuroses can skip a generation and I grew up with this scarcity mindset too. Saying goodbye to objects I’ve collected over the years—or ideas—is hard even now. (In contrast, my late mother left her house as spare as a hitman whose real identity had been burned.)

For many of us, our writing gets cluttered up by ideas we had in the beginning that we’re not quite delivering on. It’s a room with a stack of boxes in the corner: some pages contain useful things, but if you aren’t managing them to the best of your ability, they might as well go.

If it’s time to clean your closet, I’m here to help with a few suggestions….

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Until you’ve written both prose and scripts you don’t notice how important the idea of character is to drama and how completely indifferent most novelists are to it. After all, novelists of the twentieth century had their almighty voices and their characters were often just the conduit for them. Whether the characters are knowing and ironic like Don DeLillo’s, or self-loathing and horny like John Cheever’s, or horny and horny like Philip Roth’s, those novelists didn’t let their apples fall too far from the tree. Did you know that the novel Stoner, written by English professor John Williams, is about an English professor named William?

But readers of today are a lot like actors. They have questions. So many questions about a character’s backstory and motivation. Above all they want consistency from a protagonist. Do you give the reader what they want? That’s a personal decision. As a writer I don’t mind the challenge of adding complexity to novel characters. For me, I love zeroing in on a telling detail from life that I can grow a character from. What motivates people to do the things they do? Lunch is a great place to observe fascinating transgressions. Here are two that I’m yet to assign to a character.

• The producer who drank eight diet cokes in 45 minutes and didn’t go to the bathroom before he left.

• The friend who lifted the plate of chicken biryani away from the middle of the table and kept it all to himself.

That’s just one source of inspiration. Below are a few more dos and don’ts for building out characters.

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First, a quick note. After getting feedback from readers, and consulting with Substack, we’re happy to announce that all paid monthly subscribers can now access Independent Writing Group emails and the weekly group chat. If you’re already a paid subscriber your rate won’t change. If you’re a free subscriber and are thinking about upgrading, see the rates here.

A title is personal—as personal as how you name your child or your pet. While editing at Joyland, I learned that if I didn’t suggest a title change to an author, editorial would run a lot smoother on our tight deadlines. Publishers of novels and books will, however, have lots of ideas about titles. Twice I had editors suggest title changes for my books: I fought against one; the other I accepted quickly. I’ll reveal which one sold better in a few paragraphs.

The best titles come from inside the work itself. During the writing of a film called Star Beast someone noticed the word “Alien” appeared often in the script and the better title won out. You can also impose a title onto your book with a reference or poetic turn of phrase. With Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead we all immediately get the Elizabethan setting and it tells us who the characters are and also something of their absurd fate of having to prove their worth to the story. R.I.P. Tom Stoppard.

Of course, naming a project while you’re still in it, or even early in the planning, can be tough! At the same time, having a title can help solidify the idea for you and even draw you further in, giving you that sense of urgency that you must complete it. When I came up with The Blondes, I knew I wanted to write that book and I never wavered.

Recently, while struggling with a quest for the perfect novel title for a new and still shaky-legged project, I came across this video lecture by Diane Callahan. Even though I’ve written many books and also taught in the past, I found so much here to think about! Character, setting, themes, the central conflict, small details or even a piece of stolen dialogue can all morph their way into a title. A whole sheet of brainstormed ideas later, I now have a working title.

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Have you folded enough cutlery rolls? Can you polish every tray of glassware? Is every wobbly table stabilized with a stack of coasters?

Those questions just sent shivers up the spine of anyone who has worked in the service industry. Usually, they were barked out by managers or owners during that start-of-shift lull between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m., when the tips aren’t flowing yet. Sure, one part of it was to maximize your time on the clock, but it also served the purpose of making sure everything was absolutely ready when you ended up in the weeds by 9 p.m.

Writing has its shit work too. In between the jet-setting to bookstores, there’s less glamorous work to be done. It could be big, like rewriting the first 30 pages to make it consistent with where your book has ended up. Maybe it’s smaller: did you leave a “TK” or two in the previous chapter? Maybe you have a note to research the statute of limitations in Massachusetts, or to sign up to be part of that AI lawsuit.

Not everything you do is going to be instantly rewarding. Some things to do with your writing are simple housekeeping tasks.

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This week’s check-in comes out of last week’s chat with an IWG member who wanted to get an idea of the early planning involved when tackling a novel for the first time.

In a confession that will surprise everyone except my editors: I did not outline or plot a novel until 2020’s Little Threats—not really. I just wrote as if I were riding a bike, and sometimes with hands off the bars. While this working style propelled me at the time, the truth is each of those early novels had a protracted editorial stage, going back and forth in size, tone, and even POV. For The Blondes, I had about eight plot beats written on cue cards, which is barely more prep than grocery list. All this meant I was having to make decisions with my editors after the writing, whereas I should have made them before.

As for length, the ultimate decider is the market. To publish a novella takes a brave independent publisher or a superstar. Six-hundred page doorstoppers go in and out of fashion, but are mostly out at the moment given the rise in printing costs this year. Below are some tips on how to avoid those two challenging extremes.

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Without a doubt, pro or just beginning, you’ve said the above to yourself a few times. It happens like this. You make a weekly schedule and then the writing block arrives, or maybe inspiration has struck you and you’re about to sit down with coffee in hand but then, in no particular order…

• Something happens in the news and it’s horrible, perhaps even a new kind of horrible

• You get three text alerts about your credit rating

• IG pulls you in and then it’s three hours later

• You realize you’re plain exhausted.

I’m a big fan of not writing—a subject we’ll cover soon—but I feel the decision should be mine alone to make: my prose, my choice! If you don’t push through the obstacles, you’ll find the moments that take you away from the writing will never stop, especially if you have extra life commitments. That’s why I’ve developed some tactics to make sure the world doesn’t decide whether I’m writing or not. The above distractions might be particular to me but I hope the below workarounds help you out as well.

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Don’t worry, being strongheaded and refusing to listen just comes with the job. But over a career it pays to revisit our habits and ask ourselves: how is this working out for me?

This is not a question I would necessarily put to beginner writers. You need to let your own voice grow with successes and mistakes. (Keep in mind it’s mostly the “mistakes” that help us create our personal style, so own them.)

No, this one is for the lifers because you know what your worst habit is and more often than not, you will defend it when challenged. And if you don’t know your worst writing habit, ask your partner or best friend right now because they certainly will know.

Here’s mine.

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The joy of writing, for me, is blocking out the world. Until now, I’ve tried to save reflections for the editing stage. If I asked existential questions while creating the first sentences of a new story I might never have those five hour writing blocks crouched over my kitchen table. But the truth is I get asked “Why did you write this?” by other people after the fact… a lot. Mostly from readers, though one of my early reviews tetchily asked, “What is Schultz’s point?” Last week I answered the question for an actor. And whether one knows the answer or not, it pays to at least try to answer when asked by your audience.

As this is the first Monday Motivation email for the Independent Writing Group, I thought I would focus on this very basic question and try to see it in a new light. What if the question “Why am I writing this?” could become a mantra instead of an accusation? A thing that frees you, rather than freezing you. This week while we write, let it be a gut check to keep us focus…

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