Writer: What do you mean you’re not going to do it?

MC: I think that statement is abundantly clear. I’m not going to climb out the window and leap from the building.

Writer: But you’re being chased. It’s the only option. Besides, it’s too late. I already wrote that scene. You leap off the building. 

MC: Yeah, nope.

Writer: Don’t overthink it. You’re going to land on a scaffolding. You’ll be fine. A little banged up, maybe, but you’ll survive. Didn’t you notice my clever foreshadowing? The mention of all the construction going on?

MC: Still nope.

Writer: Look, I’m the writer. You have to do what I say.

MC: That may be technically true. But I’m still not doing it. 

Writer: I am the all-powerful author. You must do as I…

MC: Ego trip much? Fine, go ahead then. Make me jump. I’ll miss the scaffolding and plummet to my death.

Writer: You can’t do that…

MC: If enough people roll their eyes at your little contrivance, I can.

Writer: Wait. What do you mean my “little contrivance?”

MC: You put a construction scaffolding just outside the window of the sixth floor. What exactly are they constructing here anyway?

Writer: I don’t know. Maybe they’re painting the building.

MC: They’re painting a building in the middle of a thunderstorm?

Writer: Thunderstorm?

MC: You invoked a storm two pages ago. To heighten the tension or something. 

Writer: Oh, right. Maybe it’s of those window-cleaning scaffolding things, then. Recently abandoned because of the storm.

MC: That they just happened to leave hanging one floor below the one where I’m trapped?

Writer: That’s how it works in Hollywood. Just jump already. 

MC: Hollywood? You’re nowhere near Hollywood. You’re sitting in a coffee shop in Colorado, alternately checking the sales numbers for your previously-published books [zero] and coaxing the dregs of your once-hot white mocha from the bottom of the mug. [Pause.] Aren’t you curious about why I don’t want to jump?

Writer: No. But you’re going to tell me now, aren’t you.

MC: Ask me.

Writer: Fine. Why don’t you want to jump?

MC: Because I’m afraid of heights.

Writer: You’re afraid of heights?

MC: Back in chapter two? The flashback where I wouldn’t even get out of the car when my family visited the Grand Canyon?

Writer: That? You were just a kid then. 

MC: Right. Then what about the comment I made to Love Interest in chapter nine? The one where she invites me to join her on a tour of the Sears Tower and I tell her about the time I wouldn’t even get out of the car when my family visited the Grand Canyon?

Writer: Wait, I repeated that story?

MC: You did.

Writer: I can edit that. Sidebar: it’s not called the Sears Tower anymore.

MC: No one calls it the Wills Tower.

Writer: Fair.

MC: Speaking of which, it would be really helpful if you gave my love interest an actual name. “Kiss me, Love Interest” just doesn’t do it for me.

Writer: I haven’t decided what name I want to use.

MC: Seriously? Just use the name of one that got away in your real life. Like you always do.

Writer: I don’t always…fine. Call her…Becca. [Sigh.]

MC: Thank you. By the way, I heard that sigh. Now get me out of here without jumping.

Writer: How am I supposed to do that?

MC: You’re the all-powerful author. Figure it out.

[Long, thoughtful pause.]

Writer: Got it.

MC: Great. What’s the plan? Do I hide in the closet? Throw something at Unnamed Bad Guy #1 then run past him and race down the stairs? 

Writer: Nope. Something much better.

MC: Tell me.

Writer: You go to the window, open it…

MC: Okay.

Writer: You look down, feel dizzy…

MC: That tracks.

Writer: Then, when you start to back away from the window, Unnamed Bad Guy #1 races in and…

MC: Yes?

Writer: …pushes you out of the window.

MC: Wait…Aaaaaarrrgggh…

[Finishes typing.]

Writer: Good thing I put that scaffolding there.

MC: [Groans] I hate you.

But as noted, I am still editing. I have been fortunate to do this for more than three decades. At this stage of my career, I can afford to be selective about the projects I take on. I have a number of “regular” clients whom I’ve worked with for (in some cases) a decade or more. But I enjoy working with new-to-me authors, and first-time authors too. Perhaps that’s you?

In summary: Still here. Still editing. And very much interested in what you’re writing.

Okay, that’s my Proof of Life post. See you again next intersection…

I’ve been editing for more than thirty years. Not the same book, mind you. That would be insane. When I was organizing a shelf yesterday (as one does when procrastinating), I decided to line up some of the books I’ve worked on. The picture here shows what I found. I don’t have much space for books in my small apartment, and I only have a tiny percentage of the printed versions of books I’ve worked on, so this is just drop in the proverbial bucket.

In the interest of full transparency, there is one book here I didn’t edit (Demon, by Tosca Lee), but since I worked on all of her subsequent books (save one), I didn’t want to separate it from its siblings. And the eagle-eyed among you will also see two of Jenny Lawson’s (@thebloggess) bestselling titles here. I was not her editor, nor did I play any official role in publishing her books, but she was gracious enough to invite me to play an early-reader-offering-editorial-input role, so I decided to include them. There are also a couple books here I had a hand in writing, but my three self-published fiction titles occupy a different shelf in my apartment: The shelf where books you hoped to sell/give away/leave on tables in coffee shops go to die. Or at least languish. (The curious can learn more about these books by clicking one of those images in the margin or by clicking here.)

I have no idea how many words I’ve edited over my (so far) three-decade career, but it’s a lot. I recently crossed the million-word threshold with one client alone. So with more than 900 books edited, well, you do the math. I can’t. Seriously, I don’t do big numbers, unless it’s measuring my cholesterol level.

Some of the books I edited sold well. Some didn’t. Some never even made it beyond the “final manuscript” stage. But in every case, I considered it a rare privilege to spend time with the writer’s hard-wrought words.

I don’t take this job lightly. I know it’s not easy to share the words you’ve wrestled for weeks, months, years with a veritable stranger. So to all the authors I’ve worked with (and those yet to come), I say, “Thank You.” Even if your book only sold fifteen copies (including 14 to your mother, despite her mild concern about some of the words you used), it mattered to me. Your story, whether real or imagined, mattered. A lot.

For a season, I lived in that space where you spent so much of your time and effort. I hope I left it in better shape than when I first arrived. That, in a nutshell, is the editor’s intent.

And yet, even with all this experience, I still suffer from imposter syndrome as an editor (though not nearly as often as when I’m playing the role of novelist).

Ultimately, I have to believe I know what I’m doing, and that I’m pretty good at it. Otherwise, I’d have to find a new career. And frankly, I’m not keen on that idea.

Writing a book is hard. (Well, for most of us anyway.) But it can be slightly less painful when you have someone in your corner who can help solve plot problems, steer you in new directions, and cheer you on as you attempt that impossible thing of putting on paper a story that always looks so much better in your head.

Anyway, those are my thoughts for the day. Also? Bookshelves can get really dusty. I mean seriously dusty.

[Sneezes.]

My granddaughter is excited about Christmas and eager to turn eleven, but this is what she’s thinking about right now. In the next hour, she will claim she is “very responsible,” despite piles of clothes on the floor in her room offering evidence to the contrary, then ask for a cellphone for Christmas. Or her birthday, which will come three days after Santa.

“Santa’s not real,” she would tell you in a mostly-confident statement of fact. But she understands the role Santa plays in American culture. She also knows she can’t stop time. She is a reader. She knows lots of things.

She starts singing “Deck the Halls.”

*************

A small artificial tree sits on the table by the front door. It’s sparsely decorated with mostly handmade ornaments from the past six Christmases she’s lived with me. Some feature photos of a girl who once was, and still is on the inside. There are a few Harry Potter ornaments, too, remnants of a season when she proudly read every single book, stretching her understanding of words and worlds while claiming with confidence that Hogwarts was real. (Santa was still real then, too.)

I am silently suffering the holiday season like a soldier crawling across a field strewn with barbed wire. This is not because of childhood trauma. One couldn’t ask for more wonderful and wonder-filled holiday memories. The glow of the tree lights on the ceiling. The smell of pine needles and peppermint. The unceasing hum of Christmas music.

My mother, the piano teacher and church organist, would play the piano. My father would sing, often changing words in a familiar carol to fit the moment and make someone smile or laugh.

Today, Mom is a thousand miles away, Dad even farther. Or closer. I don’t know how to measure the distance between the living and the dead. Music is left to our whims and wishes and granted by Siri or Alexa.

My granddaughter hasn’t asked for much Christmas music this year.

I am thankful for that.

*************

She has carefully placed all the birthday presents around her in a circle on the floor. She sits in the middle, like she is about to perform some magical ritual. She turned 11 yesterday, but has not yet received a letter from Hogwarts.

Perhaps this is her way of increasing the odds. 

*************

12:01. The apartment is mostly quiet, apart from the thumping of celebratory feet from the floor above me. This is the sixth different upstairs tenant since I moved in 14 years ago. Some have been deathly quiet. Others, annoyingly loud. This one leans toward the latter.

It’s the sixteenth year in a row without someone to kiss at midnight. Or is it the seventeenth? After the first five, the years start to melt into one another, turning the past into a puddle. 

I try not to step in those puddles.

**************

My granddaughter has a friend over today. They’ve just finished playing with the pretend food toys she desperately wanted this year. Melissa & Doug toys. “I don’t mind that they’re meant for younger kids,” she says. “I just like playing restaurant.” I tell her that’s good practice for the real world and she gives me one of those, “Really, Papa?” smirks. She’s gotten good at smirks.

The two of them are role-playing something else now. In this make-believe game they are much older, much more responsible. They have to be to care for their imaginary children and pets.

*************

The Christmas tree is back in its box. We only lost one ornament to the ravages of time this year. Construction paper doesn’t hold up quite as well as the hopes of the child who made it.

My granddaughter has taken a break from playing with her friend and is standing by the sliding door, looking out at the first day of the new year. The clouds are low. The trees are bare. The squirrels are hungry.

She is eleven.

I think she is looking for Hedwig.

[I’ve recently joined the Post.News social media site, and will attempt to post there regularly. To keep this blog from feeling lonely, I will occasionally crosspost here. I know this one isn’t specifically writing-related, but it’s writing. And that counts for something.]

It’s not that I don’t have anything to say about the writing life. (I have plenty.) It’s just that I don’t have anything NEW to say about it. You already know that writing a book is hard. You already know that your greatest barrier to writing is resistance (See also: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield). You also know that you’re not going to sell a million copies of your book, even if it’s the best book ever written. (I could be wrong about that one. Here’s hoping.)

I suppose I could use this space to remind you that the best way to improve as a writer is to write. A lot. And read. A lot. But that seems kinda basic and surely you know that already. I’ve talked in this space before about the importance of writing a book that you want to read. Not just because you’ll be reading it a hundred times, but because following your passion is more satisfying than chasing a trend.

Or maybe I could talk about how to decide whether you should pursue an agent and traditional publishing or buckle down and self-publish. If I wrote about that, I think I’d mention that while you may experience a uniquely satisfying sense of validation from getting an agent and, subsequently, a publishing deal, you may find equal (perhaps even more) satisfaction by doing the self-publishing thing. I’m sure I’d also talk a bit about how no matter which way you go, you’ll be tasked with learning how to market this child you brought into the world so other people can have the opportunity to fall in love with it as much as you have. (Or did. I mean, you’ve read this thing a hundred times, remember? It’s okay to be sick of it by now.)

None of that is new, though. And that makes it difficult to come back to this space and fill it with words. I don’t want to say the same old thing. I don’t want to be predictable or boring. This is the same dilemma I have when writing fiction. Maybe you’re familiar with this. You start writing what you believe is a great new thing, only to discover that not only isn’t it new, it may not even be good. When we set ourselves up with a commitment to write “the next great [FILL IN YOUR COUNTRY IN ADJECTIVE FORM HERE] novel,” we’re also setting ourselves up for constant reminders that we’re not original, that we don’t have the writing chops to do this, and that we were naive to think otherwise. That’s a lot of resistance to battle.

I’m about 10,000 words into my latest. It’s not the next great American novel. It’s not something so brilliant or innovative it’ll send shockwaves into the publishing world. And it’s not going to sell a million copies. (I could be wrong about that.)

But it’s mine. It sounds like me. And it’s the only thing I can write at the moment.

I’m okay with that.

Oh look. I just wrote a blog post.

Writing can be unpredictable like that.

The new service will be for projects that are still in their infancy. Those clever nuggets you’ve been collecting in a dozen computer folders (that have names like “new story idea” or “another new story idea” or “an even different new story idea”) as well as the Next Big Thing Surely that’s been taking on a life of its own in your grey matter. I’ll be offering a coaching/mentoring service to help you sort out all those tricky plot and character issues on the fly. I’m a good problem-solver, so I’ll bravely leap into the maelstrom and brainstorm with you to find ways to fill those plot holes with sugar and spice and everything nice. Or toothy, venomous spiders. Whichever best serves the story.

If you have a complete novel that’s ready for editing Right Now – click on over to the Editorial Services page and then email me. I’ll do my best to add your project to the ol’ schedule. But if you’re in that early stage – the one where excitement and possibility tower over the harsh reality that Writing Is Really Hard – hang in there. I’ll have the new service (it’s gonna have its own web page because I’m classy like that) up and ready Very Soon Now. Can’t wait? Email me and we’ll talk.

Meanwhile…keep writing. And be kind to one another, okay?

Whatever the reason, you did that thing writers do: you wrote. Maybe you wrote a hundred words a day. Or a thousand. Did you finish that novel you’ve been working on? Nice. Did you start another? Impressive. What? You wrote two complete novels? Now that’s just rude.

But some of you are more like me. You haven’t written much. Or at all.

Hi, my name is Stephen and I’m a charter member of the Zero Words Written Club. If you fail to write anything for more than a year, you can be a member too. There’s no cost to join, apart from an overwhelming sense of failure. We meet on Tuesdays, just after the hour you blocked out for writing that instead was filled with doom-scrolling on Twitter and rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Just look for the Zoom meeting where all of the participants have a lost, faraway look in their eyes.*

There are lots of good reasons why you may not have been able to write during the pandemic [which continues even now – please get vaccinated so we can end it]. Here are just a few. Feel free to use one when talking with writer friends from the “curiously productive” group:

• I was sick with COVID and now my brain is in a perpetual fog.
• Every time I try to write a scene with lots of people in it I worry that they’ll get COVID if I don’t make them wear masks and then I start to feel a little ill myself because who wants to write that?
• I already spend so much time in front of my computer working/going to school/doom-scrolling that I can’t stand to look at it anymore and before you suggest I write my story longhand, have you seen my penmanship? Even I can’t read my own writing.
• My kids are home 24/7. The only possible time I’d have to write is when they’re all in bed, and by then I am a brain-dead skin bag.
• I just don’t have any motivation/inspiration/mojo to write. I mean, look… [Pause, then gesture widely, indicating everything.]
• I forgot how to words together put order in.
• I’ve been snacking a lot since I’m home all the time and I no longer fit in my writing chair.
• I’m all out of words. I used them up trying unsuccessfully to convince myself to write.
• I don’t know. I just can’t.

If in this past year you’ve written a lot of words, good for you. I mean it. That’s no small feat. If you’ve only written a few, or none at all, I’m here to celebrate you, too. You’re still breathing. You still matter. And yes, you’re still a writer. There is no daily or weekly or monthly word count requirement to remain a member in good standing of This Writing Community. Read that again if you have to.

Of course, you’ll probably want to write more words eventually just so you can feel like a writer again. But there’s no rush. You can take your own sweet time. [Unless you’re under a contract deadline. If that’s the case, well, you’re probably screwed. Buy a bigger chair and get to it.]

How can you be a writer during a pandemic? (Or during Any Time in History?) Just do the best you can with what you have. Write when you can. And don’t stress when you can’t.

Meanwhile, I’ll see some of you next Tuesday.

*To be fair, this could be just about any Zoom meeting. Just smile and nod and keep your microphone off and no one will know the difference.

If you’re using this Very Strange Season to write, I hope it’s going well. If you’re just curled up in the fetal position under your desk, I hope that’s going well, too. I mean, just do what you need to do to survive and/or thrive, whichever drives you into the next moment.

I still plan on writing things in this blog. New things. But between the editing, the single-parenting of my granddaughter, and the curling up in the fetal position under my desk, there just isn’t much time for that right now.

Until then…stay safe. Eat cookies. Read books.

I first had the idea a couple years ago and made all kinds of notes, littering my digital desktop with files bearing names I’ve long since forgotten and my literal desktop with scraps of paper that may have disappeared during a recent, apartment-wide clean-and-purge effort meant to stem the tide of a growing existential unease.

It’s a good book idea. Maybe a great one. And for some inexplicable reason, I’m reminded of it every time I wash my hands in my bedroom sink. Yes, I have a bedroom sink. Two, actually. The master bedroom in my apartment is an en-suite arrangement, but with far less “suite” than “en.” The vanity resides in a shallow alcove between my closet and the cramped toilet/bathtub “room” that has a separate door to keep claustrophobics from showering too long.

I only use the right sink. The left is reserved for the long-abandoned hope of a partner who might also have also found her place on the left side of my queen-sized bed. On the rare occasions when I do lift the handle on the left, the faucet gurgles and offers a little cough just to remind me it’s there and that it still matters.

My Next Novel does that too.

It’s been vying for my attention since the idea first came to me. But what began as incessant, insistent hack-and-wheeze “Look at me!” faded quickly into a polite throat-clearing cough after my son died six months later. Monumental loss changes everything. It rips out all the carefully-organized wires and simply leaves them hanging there in a tangled mess.

Understandably, I started ignoring the book idea’s attempts to get my attention. I also stopped posting on social media. And exercising. And talking to people I didn’t have to talk to. I pretty much stopped everything except the things I couldn’t (like raising my granddaughter and editing other people’s books so I could keep paying the bills).

After sharing about my unintentional vacation from writing, well-meaning Twitter-friends encouraged me to take all the time I needed to grieve before getting back to it. But here’s a hard truth: if I took all the time I needed, I’d never pick up a virtual pen again. This kind of grief doesn’t go away; it merely changes shape.

In the past 18 months, I’ve thought many times about walking away from writing for good. Here’s another hard truth: That would be perfectly fine. Despite all the stories in my head longing to be free, I don’t have to write another word. If my grief never morphed into a shape I could write around or through, I’d accept that. I might not like it (I’d hate it), but I’d accept it.

I can’t write today. I don’t expect I’ll be able to write tomorrow, either. But the Next Novel idea hasn’t given up on me yet. It’s still there, still trying to get my attention. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, I think I’ll try using the left sink tonight.

*I do have a completed novel you haven’t read yet, too. That one’s called Beautiful Sky Beautiful Sky and if I can find the time and energy to publish it, you might see it this fall. I’ll let you know.

They didn’t start out that way.

I didn’t sit down to write a practice novel. I sat down to write a novel.

Driven by hope and madness, I started putting one word after another. Some days I felt certain, most days I felt lost. But I kept at it, word by word, until I came to an ending place. Sometimes the ending place was the realization that the story was awful. Sometimes the ending place was reluctant acceptance that the story just didn’t work. And on rare occasions, the ending place was unmerited hope that I had really done it: I had written something publishable.

But in every case during those twenty years, the final resting place after the ending place was a dusty computer folder labeled “old stories.”

Then, six years or so ago, I wrote another novel. When I reached the ending place on this one, I felt something strange. Confidence. I liked what I had written. And I knew it was good. Maybe not great, but worthy of an audience. So I revised until my fingers bled, then started querying agents. Just a few, really, but it was a big step. I didn’t get any offers of representation, but I did get some encouraging words about my writing voice.

My writing voice.

That’s when I realized the purpose of all those abandoned words. I needed them to find my voice. Yeah, yeah, I know – some writers find it in their first book. (We hates them.) It took me a million. And once I’d found my voice, I also found that modicum of confidence. Granted, a writer’s confidence is a fickle thing – all it takes is one damning review to dismantle it. But I’d tasted confidence, and now I knew the recipe to find it again. Which I did when I wrote (and eventually self-published) Stolen Things. (It’s a good book. The kind you can read more than once. Trust me on this.)

I’ve been writing my current novel (working title: Beautiful Sky, Beautiful Sky) for almost three years now. It was supposed to be finished a while ago, but as some of you know, I took on the awesome responsibility of raising my granddaughter, Harper, nearly two years ago. Single parenting a six-year-old is hard work. Single-parenting a six-year-old when you’re 58 and clutter-phobic and she’s smart and talented and a never-ending ball of energy as eager to learn as she is to get all the toys out at once is…well…harder work. And yes, a joy, too. Of course. At the end of the day, after spending every available hour editing other people’s books when Harper’s at school or at a friend’s house, there’s just not much brain space left for writing my own.

But I’m getting there, a few words at a time. Some days I think it’s the worst book ever written. But other days I think it’s pretty good. And on those days, I thank the million words that led to my first taste of writerly confidence.

Here’s something I learned through all of this: there are no wasted words. I tell this now to all my writing clients. (Some need to hear it more than others.) All the words we write play a role in our writing journey. Some (maybe many) will end up in a dusty computer folder for abandoned stories, but all count for something. Of course, this really only works if you see writing as a journey, not merely a destination.

Here’s how I do that: I keep writing.

Maybe you should too.