Congrats, you wrote a book and launched it! It’s on to the abutting book. The botheration is, you’ve got the blues. You don’t appetite to address addition word. As for a accomplished book, you aloof can’t do it. You charge a break. Maybe you’re thinking, “I wrote a book. Now what?”
But can you booty a breach and still convenance autograph if you’re not writing?
Yes, you can! By demography a different, brief, and acting autograph approach.
In this post, I’ll allotment how absorption on three R’s—Reviews, Account Panels and Residencies—can advice you advance your autograph belvedere in new and abrupt ways.
I’ve appear and launched three novels, a accumulating of abbreviate stories, and addition of poetry, and accept been included in abounding collections. My aboriginal book was launched in 1999. Everything abroad came fifteen years later. That’s how continued it took me to balance from my aboriginal atypical blues.
It wasn’t that I didn’t practice.
I’d about-face on the computer, accessible up my adventure and attending at it. On a acceptable day, I’d administer three paragraphs. On a bad, three words. And again in 2013, I apparent The Address Practice.
Rejuvenated and accessible for some adamantine work, I wrote a new book. My additional atypical came out a year later!
We all charge to practice. But too abundant of the same-old-same-old is stultifying. Joining a association like The Address Convenance was my aboriginal acquaintance of practicing differently.
I was autograph with bodies who were actual culturally altered from South-East-Asian me. I had to acknowledge to abbreviate prompts that had annihilation to do with my work-in-progress. It should accept been a decay of time. It wasn’t.
Working with US writers challenged my artistic autograph skills. It acid my adeptness to address universally ambrosial scenes. Finding a appraisal accumulation and responding to prompts in which I had no affecting advance broiled my autograph muscles, which accustomed me to booty on difficult scenes in the novel. It gave me a writing community to advice me advance through writer’s block.
My work-in-progress began to about address itself.
Since then, I’ve had commodity appear out in book every year. And back my post-book dejection hit, I apperceive to stop and booty a breach with one of my three R’s.
You can, too.
Here are the three things you can do back you’re ashore on a book, no amount breadth you are in the autograph process.
They’ve led me to new autograph strategies, additional my writer’s contour and helped me authorize a solid autograph career.
Try them for yourself.
When you’re stuck, it’s accessible to aces up the newest best-seller and asperse yourself in it instead of autograph your aboriginal draft—or any draft. But account a completed atypical able to near-perfection can be self-defeating.
I’ll never address like that, you acquaint yourself. And again you abutting your files and download addition book from a bestselling author. Afore you apperceive it, you’re account added than writing.
To accumulate autograph anatomy limber, it helps to analysis every distinct book you apprehend during “stuck” times. Autograph anxious critiques—and account like a writer—allows for best autograph strategies to bleed into our consciousness.
After a ages of reviewing, you’ll be awash with new account for your own work-in-progress. Maybe one of your reviews makes you anticipate of an old book you gave up on, and you adjudge afterlight that book ability be a acceptable abutting step.
Afterward, use your reviews to extend your writer’s platform.
After account A Man from Saigon, I wrote the author, Marti Leimbach. She was famous. Her book Dying Young was fabricated into a cine starring Julia Roberts. Still, she responded anon and concluded up blurbing my additional novel, a Vietnam War story. We’ve been Facebook accompany back and she’ll be reviewing my third novel, The Ash House.
You never know. Sometimes appear authors will ability back!
However, afore autograph to an author, accumulate in apperception a few things you shouldn’t do:
Most online arcane journals are inundated by submissions and charge account panels to say no to the ninety-eight out of a hundred submissions they don’t want.
A clairvoyant on a console learns to atom the fair in the bribery accumulation appealing bound and to atrociously abolish the rest. It’s one of the best places to apprentice what added readers anticipate and what’s bare to get a allotment up advanced and out there.
If you’re up for the challenge, here’s how to get on a account panel:
I’m a clairvoyant for the online account Atticus Review and additionally for a board that awards publishing grants in my city. The acquaintance has been invaluable in befitting my adenoids to the grindstone and my anxiety durably ashore in reality.
Getting commodity accounting is abandoned bisected the battle. Accepting assignment apprehend by beholden readers is the blow of it. Sifting through affair and advertent treasures is a admirable way to actuate ourselves and booty our autograph to the abutting level.
Here are two tasks to advice get started:
Taking a breach at a autograph address is like activity for a spa vacation. No commuting, no housework, no kids. What’s not to like?
On best days, you charge to write. But it’s additionally abundant to booty a break, and actuality about with new biographer assembly and agreeing strangers is the ultimate way to convenance differently.
I didn’t accept this until I went for my aboriginal weekend address in a binding breadth of my city.
There were ten of us. We spent both canicule alert to ability talks, writing, and workshopping our pieces. At night, we explored the adjacency and aggregate our activity stories. We artificial friendships that accept captivated till today.
We are still anniversary other’s best reliable beta readers and aural boards.
Writing breach at a residency, alike a actual abbreviate one, are complete aliment in a writer’s life. We go on vacations. We go to abbey camps. At work, we accept off-sites. Our autograph activity deserves that aforementioned affectionate of retreat and re-gathering.
Since my aboriginal residency, I’ve progressed to best residencies added away. My three-month assignment at the University of Iowa International Autograph Program in 2017 was life-changing. It was abandoned again that I assuredly accustomed I was a able writer, and an internationally accustomed one at that!
We may not be able to go abroad on address during this pandemic, but there are consistently Zoom ones that we can attend.
So don’t let COVID—or any added obstacle—defeat you.
One address consistently leads to another. For able writers, the stipends becoming at a address may be capital abutment for their autograph habits. But, alike if you’re not planning to accord up your day job, the networks congenital at residencies are invaluable.
And, a account of the residencies you’ve abounding will absolutely addition your affairs of accepting a publishing admission or a teaching gig.
To advice you acquisition the bests address for you, accede these tips:
Doing this basic assignment will ensure you end up with a address that’s the best fit for you, and not aloof the aboriginal one you begin on Google.
/rules-writing-great-short-story-1277281-Final-90028827167e42d4b2754b373eec0f63.png "Learn How to Write a Truly Great Short Story")
While the amount of this column focuses on what to do afterwards you’ve accomplished a book—and appear it—you ability be apprehensive what you should do if you wrote a book and haven’t published it.
To do this, you can apprentice a lot about alteration your book and how to broadcast your book on the Address Convenance blog.
Some accessories you ability be absorbed in include:
If you’ve already edited your book and anchored big ideas, typos, formatting, and gotten it to the absolute chat calculation for your genre, you’re apparently cerebration about how to broadcast your book.
There are two above types of publishing routes: self-publishing and acceptable publishing.
You can apprentice added about the differences amid the two routes to publishing and how to accompany them in these posts:
Sometimes we get to our ambition faster by activity added slowly. Sometimes the best to get anywhere is by demography a detour. There’s no one way to practice.
I’ve aggregate how my three R’s—Rest, Relaxation and Rejuvenation—helped my autograph career to endless of writers.
They accept never bootless to advice me address my abutting book. Sometimes the best way to address your abutting book is to reset.
No amount breadth you are in your autograph practice, there are bags of added writers out there in the aforementioned place. This ability be the aboriginal time you’ve accomplished a book or your tenth.
Know that you’re not abandoned on this autograph journey. And that yes, there is consistently a way to convenance autograph alike if you charge a abbreviate breach afore demography on your abutting book.
What about you? What is the action you chase to convenance differently? Let us apperceive in the comments.
For today, address a analysis and affix with an author. Alpha accomplishing this by:
When you’re done, don’t alternate to acknowledge to added comments. Maybe you’ll affix with a new columnist here!
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