Mastering dialogue is hard work, but the right scaffolding can help.

Writing naturalistic and compelling dialogue is fiction is both critical and difficult to master. Unfortunately, there aren’t any reference books to tell you exactly what your characters should say or how.

Dialogue takes time to master and even successful bestselling authors don’t always get it right. Any writing coach will tell you that you should not try to create dialogue by replicating real-life conversation. Rather, dialogue is stylized conversation that only sounds natural.

You will also hear that characters should never – or very rarely – say what’s on their mind. Base declarations of need should be saved for highly emotional moments. A character who is trying to earn his father’s respect should not say in dialogue, “Dad, I’m acting this way so I can earn the respect you have withheld my whole life.” If that’s your opening scene, you might as well have your characters leave the haunted house and end your story right there.

While no one can truly teach you to hear or write dazzling dialogue, there are a few tricks that can help you craft dialogue that complements your story, builds emotional tension, and keeps the reader engaged. Here are two that have helped me.

Sentence structure

In Dialogue: The Art of Verbal Action for the Page, Stage, and Screen, Robert McKee shares 300 pages of excellent advice on writing sharp dialogue, including more than a dozen specific examples of film and play scripts utilizing these techniques. One specific piece of advice caught my attention, because it focuses not on juicy word choices – which can’t be taught – but on sentence structure, which can.

In his section on the flaws that can derail your dialogue, McKee discusses mistimed or miscued dialogue exchanges, and shows how sentence structure – the literal order of your words in your sentences, arranged for emphasis – can make the difference between flat or confusing dialogue and dialogue that sings.

You may have read craft advice describing dialogue as a tennis game. One character lobs a piece of conversation at another character, who hits it back, setting up the first character to respond. When dialogue is cracking, the characters may volley long strings of conversation, like two well-matched, highly skilled tennis players. What you don’t often see is what that looks like on the page.

McKee does provide such an example, demonstrating how properly structuring your sentences to place your volleys at the beginning and end of each piece of dialogue can create a compelling action/reaction chain as your characters engage in a verbal back and forth.

McKee quotes a brief passage from John Pielmeier’s play (and later film) Agnes of God. In the story, Sister Agnes, a young nun, has given birth to a child that is found dead next to her bed. Agnes is accused of murdering her baby, but insists she is a virgin. Prior to the birth, Agnes also showed evidence of stigmata, a wound in her hand mimicking the wound of Jesus Christ on the cross. The court appoints a psychiatrist to examine Agnes and determine if she is mentally fit to stand trial. In the following exchange, the doctor discusses Agnes with the convent’s Mother Superior. Note the bolded text.

MOTHER SUPERIOR: Of course not. Look, I know what you’re thinking. She’s an hysteric, pure and simple.

DOCTOR: Not simple, no.

MOTHER SUPERIOR: I saw it. Clean through the palm of her hand, do you think hysteria did that?

DOCTOR: It’s been doing it for centuries. She’s not unique, you know. She’s just another victim.

MOTHER SUPERIOR: Yes, God’s victim. That’s her innocence. She belongs to God.

DOCTOR: And I mean to take her away from Him. That’s what you fear, isn’t it?

MOTHER SUPERIOR: You bet I do.

DOCTOR: Well, I prefer to look upon it as opening her mind.

MOTHER SUPERIOR: To the world?

DOCTOR: To herself. So she can begin to heal.

MOTHER SUPERIOR: But that’s not your job, is it? You’re here to diagnose, not to heal.

DOCTOR: That is a matter of opinion.

MOTHER SUPERIOR: The judge’s… (opinion.)

DOCTOR: Your opinion. I’m here to help her in whatever way I see fit. That’s my duty as a doctor.

MOTHER SUPERIOR: But not as an employee of the court. You’re to make a decision on her sanity as quickly as possible and not interfere with due process of law. Those are the judge’s words, not mine.

DOCTOR: As quickly as I see fit, not as possible. 1 haven’t made that decision yet.

MOTHER SUPERIOR: But the kindest thing you can do for Agnes is to make that decision and let her go.

DOCTOR: Back to court?

MOTHER SUPERIOR: Yes.

DOCTOR: And what then? If I say she’s crazy, she goes to an institution. If I say she’s sane, she goes to prison.

In this exchange, the bolded words trigger the conversational volley between the characters. Each character begins her piece of dialogue responding to what the other character has said and ends by lobbing the argument back into play. By placing the emphasis of each character’s argument at the end of the segment, Pielmeier weights the dialogue to its most important information and sets up the other character’s next line of speech, creating the “tennis game” effect that keeps a scene popping.

To test this method, we can rewrite some of the dialogue to bury the emphasized information within the dialogue string. Notice how this slows down the exchange, muddies the delivery, and decreases clarity.

MOTHER SUPERIOR: I saw it. Clean through the palm of her hand, do you think hysteria did that?

DOCTOR: It’s been doing it for centuries. She’s just another victim. She’s not unique, you know.

MOTHER SUPERIOR: Yes, God’s victim. She belongs to God. That’s her innocence.

DOCTOR: And I mean to take her away from Him. That’s what you fear, isn’t it?

A slight movement of a few sentences completely throws off the pacing. In lines three and four, Mother Superior and the doctor respond to the what the other has said in the previous lines, but not the last thing they said. By burying the key information in the middle of the sentence, the additional text – unique, innocence – is rendered irrelevant and the scene loses its crackle. The dialogue feels clunky and unnatural.

Emotional hierarchy

In his section on dialogue in Anatomy of Story, John Truby says that dialogue ebbs, flows, and escalates in the same way as your overall plot and individual scenes. For example, in dialogue, a main character may state a desire for the scene. A second character speaks against the desire, creating opposition. The first character responds to the attack. The dialogue continues, escalating to confrontation or resolution.

Truby suggests a trick that can help you put this into practice, particularly in highly emotional or turning point scenes. As with any technique, you shouldn’t overdo it. However, this one may help you create key moments that require hot, emotional dialogue.

The hierarchy looks something like this: desire > plan > state of being

• The dialogue begins with the characters discussing a desire. Character A wants to take an action. Character B speaks against it.
• As the conflict grows, Character A proposes a plan. Character B tears it down.
• When the scene reaches its peak emotional moment, attacks become personal, accusatory.

In his book, Truby shares a snippet of dialogue from the film The Verdict. In the scene, an attorney lays out a goal of winning a large settlement in court case. His client attacks the plan, angry that his lawyer turned down an offer that would have resolved the case. The attorney sets out his plan for winning. The client shifts to attacking the attorney on a personal level, accusing him of not caring about the people he’s supposed to be helping.

When working in harmony with your story, the final stage – the accusation or revelation about a character’s true nature – directly connects the dialogue to your character arc and theme. In The Verdict, the client’s accusation is accurate. His attorney is unethical and a drunk. In fact, he took the case expecting an easy settlement and quick commission. However, the case stirred a desire to change and now represents his make or break moment. The client’s accusation strikes at the attorney’s weakness and need, while also heightening the stakes of the outcome of the court case. The attorney must win the case to prove that he cares and is capable of winning.

These scenes don’t have to be lengthy or complicated. The above scene segment escalates through desire > plan > state of being in about 160 words, but that brief exchange sets the stage for what follows – the high stakes arguments in court and the attorney’s redemption.

Neither of these techniques will tell you what to write or how to develop an ear for snappy, idiosyncratic dialogue. But studying and practicing both can help you build scenes with high emotional stakes and dialogue with clarity and tight pacing.

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Inside every writer, there are two competing factions. Not wolves, but inclinations. We have both the desire to fit in and the desire to break the mold, the instinct to follow the rules and the drive to think for ourselves. The wish to be popular and the desire to be great. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is stacked like a pyramid, but sometimes the layers conflict. The safety of community may ask that we eschew personal fulfillment. An apotheosis may require we leave the community.

This is the conflict through which true believers become heretics and heretics become saints.

In writing, there are rules – the methods and techniques that make a successful story. What to do and what not to do. We want to learn the magic formula – the tricks and tips that transform an unknown writer into a bestselling author. I haven’t experienced it, but I bet having 100,000 readers generates a damn fine sense of belonging.

But at the same time, we want to be recognized for our unique talents. We chafe when someone suggests we write to formula. We don’t want to be merely successful, but respected. We want to be known for our creativity, the originality of our writing, and our keen insights. We have to understand the rules of grammar, spelling, and syntax, or we risk looking foolish. But also, we admire the writers who take risks, who play with language, who fashion new words from old, who break molds. As a rule, writers love eccentric writers. Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Tom Wolfe, Anne Rice. Who doesn’t want to live freely and write with a bit of style?

In Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves, sections of prose are typeset to force the reader to turn the book sideways and then upside down in order to continue reading. In other places, the text is set in backwards type, presumably asking the reader to hold the book up to a mirror. The design mirrors the experience of exploring the haunted house in the title, as well as various characters’ descent into madness.

This technique isn’t for everyone. The novel is described as post-modern. A cranky reader (ahem) might be tempted to describe it as post-intelligible. But as an object of art, it’s a stunning accomplishment by an writer with vision, who decided not to follow what we’d likely consider to be the most basic rule for writing a novel: that the reader be able to read it. Mark Danielewski is definitely a heretic. On the other hand, his second novel was nominated for the National Book Award, so he’s at least been considered for sainthood.

You may not wish to create an impenetrable slab of writing, but do take a few moments to acknowledge both sides of your mind. Appreciate the fact that there are rules of good writing and repeatable steps to success, as well as your soul’s desire to color outside the lines. Reconcile your inner saint and heretic.

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Even if you’ve tempered the influence of your backstory ghosts, you may backslide into negativity. You will experience creative setbacks and rejections, and the voices of imposter syndrome are never louder than when they are given the opportunity to say I told you so.

This is inevitable, but you can use the interim time wisely by learning to be aggressively positive. If you spend more than 3 minutes a month on social media, you’ve probably seen the meme exploring ominous positivity:

You will be ok. You have no choice.

Everything will turn out fine. You cannot stop it.

You will succeed. It is inevitable.

Close your eyes and visualize a time or place when you felt most at ease with your creativity or when you felt that you were achieving a high level of success or excellence. Take some deep breaths and enjoy that feeling. Maybe some of your work appeared in print. Maybe someone gave you a meaningful compliment. Perhaps you uplifted another writer when they needed it. Or you might simply remember a time when you enjoyed writing or other creative work without any negativity and simply reveled in the joy of expressing yourself. Don’t rush. Sit with your creative joy for a bit. This is the good stuff.

Another tactic is to stop talking about writing as though it were our punishment. Eliminate phrases like shitty first draft, open a vein and bleed on the page, and I hate writing but love having written from your emotional repertoire.

Consider assembling a new set of phrases to counteract the voices of negativity when they arise. While your work may be viewed subjectively, there also exist unarguable facts about your creative process and work. Write down some statements that even the nastiest person would not be able to refute. Here are a few of mine:

• I genuinely enjoy the time I spend writing.
• I write because I want to, not for any outside gain.
• I have goals and I meet them.
• I love learning and exploring through writing.
• I love talking to other creative people and hearing about their work.

These are not subjective statements, nor are they aspirational. Your ugly voice can argue that your writing isn’t any good or that you’ll never be financially successful, but it cannot challenge the fact that you love writing, learning, and other creative people.

Fill your head with good thoughts and don’t give those fuckers an inch.

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The voices of discouragement are the writer’s ghosts, not so different from the backstory wound a protagonist must overcome to succeed on his journey. Fortunately, we generally do not require a major inciting incident or significant quest to overcome these bad thoughts. Unfortunately, we still have to do the Work – looking inside, examining, unraveling, and refreshing our ways of thinking.

Often, the ghosts of our creative pasts are born of shame – the times we were teased because we loved to read or write, the criticisms and rejections we’ve received, and the very bad advice about whether this work is worthwhile.

Oddly enough, compliments also can be a kind of trap. Do you have fans of certain kinds of stories? Has some of your work sold better than the rest? Have your writing group peers told you they love certain elements of your stories, style, or voice? People starved of encouragement are prone to lean into the qualities that earn them praise, often to their detriment.

All these ghosts – good and bad – can hold us back from trying something new. We might be afraid of rejection, criticism, or failure. We might believe we should stick with the familiar, rather than try that new style or genre we’d like to work in. We might lean into the qualities that others like best, such as lush description, fight scenes, or comedy. After all, we don’t want to drive away they very people that are encouraging us today.

The good news is that we don’t have to live with our ghosts.

For today, take some time to think about what people have said about your writing and ability, either positive or negative. Do you agree? Are you satisfied with those observations and judgments? How have those opinions defined you? Have they held you back from trying something new?

Sit with those answers a bit, and then also take some time to accept and appreciate where you are on your creative path. Show some love for your strengths and successes, as well as your weaknesses and failures. Examine without judgment where you are today and celebrate this moment in time.

This might not be easy for you, but let me give you a tip: Right now, someone is looking at you and whatever you’re doing and where you are on your journey, and they admire you. They want to get where you are. They want to be like you.

And here you are, already doing it.

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When I write about the ugly voices in a writer’s head – as I did last week – it is almost always because I am dealing with one in the moment or am anticipating a visit sometime soon. If I submit a harangue about dealing with personal demons, it is not out of the goodness of my heart. It’s pure self-defense.

Writing is great exorcise.

One unfortunate comorbidity of ugly voices is the desire to place blame. And there is plenty to go around. The voices aren’t ephemeral. They existed in our past and I bet they sound like someone you know, someone who was supposed to embrace and encourage you. If not their actual voice, you hear the syntax and rhythm of people who discouraged, insulted, ignored, or undermined you.

When it would have been kinder – and less work – to lift you up, these voices decided to kick your legs out from under you. It’s easy to blame them for the opportunities we missed or when we feel ten (or thirty) years behind where we should be. If only they had…If only they hadn’t…

But what if you decide that you don’t need what that person withheld? When you sit down to write and there’s no one but you and a laptop or pen and paper, what else do you really need?

• Do you really need your family’s encouragement before you can write?
• Do you need your friends to read your novel?
• Once you’ve paid your bills and tidied up the house, do you need anyone’s approval of how you spend your time?
• Must you have a conversation with someone whose eyes glaze over when you talk about your work?
• Do you need that company in your head?

You don’t need any of those things. Are those nice to have? Yes, absolutely, and if you are lucky enough to have any of them in your life, stop what you’re doing right now and express your appreciation.

But if you don’t? Join the club.

For years I believed other writers and artists had supportive families and hordes of artsy friends who loved talking about their work and tons of collaborative opportunities and spouses who volunteered to cook, clean, and watch the kids so they could have time to create, while I – the turd in the punchbowl of life – struggled on alone.

This was both melodramatic and untrue. Nearly every writer I know has experienced indifference to their work, if not outright negativity. Yes, you will encounter writers who have loving parents and spouses who pay the bills and a circle of supportive creative folks but they are not to be trusted and should never be invited to our gatherings.

I once read a comment that gave me a different perspective on being loved as a writer. A new novel by Stephen King can be expected to sell north of 1 million copies in the United States, a rare feat that we’d all love to duplicate. However, given that the US population sits around 330 million, there are at any moment approximately 329 million people who don’t give a single shit about a new Stephen King book, and that’s just in one country.

Yes, that’s still a pretty good problem to have, but ask: Does SK spend a lot of time thinking about those 329 million people? Does he write for them? Is he trying to please them? Does he fret about their opinion of him? Does he wonder why his books sell a million copies but not two million?

He does not.

If Stephen King can ignore the indifference of 329 million people and numerous critics when he sits down to write, there’s no reason we can’t do likewise, even if we have to discount an extra million people, give or take.

We can get by without someone to prop us up. And I’d argue that when we let go of what we don’t need, the voices in our heads have a bit less power. They are still demanding, but when they show up to harass or withhold, their volume is lower.

Those voices are selling something we don’t need. Close the door in their face.

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This will be a rambling post. I do that sometimes. I mean to write one thing and quickly wander into completely different territory. Thinking out loud on paper, saying something to figure out what I’m trying to say. You’ve been warned.

This started as a post about continuous learning in the writing world and how it should be fun and how it may manifest in various ways at different points in our creative journeys.

I like learning new stuff, especially when it comes to my writing. I love craft books. I follow about 20 blogs that post writing advice and have an insanely well-organized bookmark system for saving the good articles. I can spend hours researching story details, and have learned to be wary of the wiki-hole.

I have always approached my writing as a discovery practice. When I was young, I wrote as a way of imagining solutions to questions I couldn’t answer. When I was older, I wrote to figure out if I had anything worth saying. Now that I have some idea, I want to discover the best way to express myself. Over the years, I’ve also played with form, writing short stories, novels, graphic novel scripts, plays, and poetry. While some of the skills overlap and some lessons learned in one form can be applied to the others, each has its own dialect that needs to be investigated and mastered (or mastered-ish, as the case may be). While I bring some skills to the table, I struggle with others, and I know that every story is going to present its own challenges.

This mindset has its drawbacks. I find it hard to feel like a project is finished, because I know there’s more I can do to perfect it. I’m a jack of many writing forms, but master of none. I don’t write in a set genre, which makes it difficult to answer the question “what do you write?” or even “who are you?”

That may be a deeper inquiry for another day. But I know I’ll never be the writer who finishes a novel on Friday, proofreads over the weekend, and uploads to Amazon on Monday. I don’t want to be the writer who gets miffed when beta readers run the red pen over my manuscript. And I never want to find myself writing the same thing over and over.

I like the stretch. I like playing in different sandboxes. I enjoy the challenges. I’m not afraid of doing the work. It’s fun. Unlike Dorothy Parker, I love writing, and am indifferent to having written. I’m weird.

Do you love learning new skills, craft techniques, factoids? I’m honestly curious, though I’m already betting you do.

But also, I wonder about those who don’t, the writers who skip peer feedback and proper editors and multiple drafts, the writers who do indeed type “the end” to a novel one Friday and are published by the next.

There’s something to be said for the “write and be done” approach, but must it come at the expense of writing your best? Don’t you want to know if the middle of your novel falters or if your dialogue is bland or if you’ve written essentially the same novel multiple times? Is it worth it to cram 25 books on your Amazon profile over the course of a few years (and in some cases, less)?

On the one hand, I admire anyone who doesn’t give a fuck what other people think. This is an important life skill. On the other, I’m bewildered (appalled?) by creative people who appear to give so little thought to the excellence – or lack thereof – of their work.

There is the Dunning-Kruger effect, of course. And some people are just that lazy. If you’ve spent any amount of time scrolling social media forums for writers, you’ve encountered the lazy ones. They’re easy to spot. I’d like to say they’re the minority, but some days, I’m not so sure. For sanity’s sake, let’s agree they are the minority. Loud, but a minority.

So what is it? As I ponder and ramble, I keep circling back to the skill – the confidence – of not caring what other people think. It’s attractive.

But also, I think it’s a trauma response.

A lot of us grew up with criticism and bullying, and so even gentle and honest feedback can feel hurtful. At our best, we grow out of it and learn to find the balance between healthy self-acceptance and a desire to grow and excel. But sometimes we fall short and a mild comment may feel like a personal attack. We have to tune it out or we drown. Call it the fight, flight, or freeze out instinct.

I’ve talked to plenty of writers who were not encouraged to be creative or were even shamed for being unrealistic, unserious, or unworthy. I know people who were talked out of pursuing a creative occupation or passion, because there wouldn’t be any money in it or because they were foolish to believe they were good enough or because the very concept of being creative was too stupid to take seriously, as though they proposed a career as flag pole sitter.

In my case, when not outright ignored, I was told that writing is a lonely life, that the books and writers I liked were garbage, and that if I was serious about writing, I should volunteer to type up the church bulletin every week. On a scale of Useless to Hurtful, I’d place that latter advice somewhere between “Are you being stupid on purpose?” and “Please kill me now.” Even my English professors didn’t know what to say about a career in writing, except that I should consider teaching. In those days, all the writers we studied were dead, so perhaps they believed we were no longer making new ones.

So it happens. A lot. No wonder some of us press the publish button the moment we finish. If we don’t, we might talk ourselves out of it completely. Publish and be damned indeed.

And even under the best circumstances, critical feedback is tough. When we’re already dealing with a group of judgy voices in our heads, criticism can hit like a moral judgment, and suddenly a few paragraphs reflect poorly on our status as writers, or even on our worth as people.

A real writer wouldn’t have made that mistake. A normal person wouldn’t have written that. An intelligent person wouldn’t have wasted their time. Who are we trying to kid?

I had – have – a difficult time overcoming this emotional hurdle. I put a lot of myself into my fiction. Most of my characters have at least a little bit of my history, opinions, observations, and sense of humor. Even when my characters are my polar opposites, my story choices, theme, and genre express a point of view. At heart, the simple phrase “I believe this story is worth telling” is a damn bold artistic statement. So, if my writing is me and my writing is shit, it logically follows that I am shit.

So rather than laziness, maybe the resistance to feedback arises from the receipt of too much criticism. Being open to learning (revising, editing) may feel like admitting defeat so instead we stand up for ourselves. We scream into the ether: “I did this because I wanted to and I’m proud of it and I don’t care what you think about it.”

I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this. Let’s make a pact to stop doing this to ourselves.

All love to Anne Lamott, but let’s start by discarding the term “shitty first draft.” It’s amusingly blunt, but perhaps no longer helpful. Instead, let me suggest discovery draft or brainstorming draft. I call my first drafts the “barf draft” but I don’t mean that pejoratively. The barf draft gets everything out of my head and onto the page. It may be messy but it’s colorful and it gives me a good look at what I’m digesting. Most of it will be cleaned up, and this is where the analogy breaks down so I’ll stop.

When you request feedback on a piece of writing, don’t joke that it sucks or preemptively explain what’s wrong with it. A great practice is to go in with questions. Did the dialogue sound true? Was that joke funny or did it sound mean? Is the protagonist as sympathetic on paper as he is in my head? How would you describe the theme? Bringing your own questions guides your beta reader to where you need their focus and can make critiques easier to swallow, even when someone points out a flaw you didn’t anticipate.

When you approach feedback and discussion from a place of curiosity and learning, you can dull feelings of inadequacy and instead come into the critique with the humble admission that you simply don’t know everything there is to know, even about your own story. When you hit a rough patch in your novel or don’t know where to go next, ask yourself what you need to learn and then go learn it.

As writers, let’s revel in the fun of exploration, of learning, developing our skills, deepening our insights, and putting the best parts of ourselves out into the world. Let’s agree that feedback is awesome. It’s a gift of someone’s time and we should embrace it when we’re lucky enough to receive it.

This is a mindset shift. It takes practice. I still have a hard time with imposter syndrome, so I’m in the arena with you. I want very badly not to suck. The world teaches us that learning is boring and imperfection is something to be ashamed of and that personal taste should be crowd-approved. It can be difficult to unlearn that. But if we can adopt this viewpoint, we become more open to the lessons that writing – and life – can teach us.

In the end, learning should be a joyful thing and if I wish anything for my writer friends this year, it’s that you find all the joy you can in writing.

Even if you publish your novel without asking for feedback.

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This is what a book series is supposed to look like.

This is what a book series is supposed to look like.

And these.

This is NOT what a book series is supposed to look like.

_______

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Taking a creative leap of faith and showing up for yourself and your work are much easier if you love what you do.

It seems that for every writer who loves writing – the process of writing, not simply holding a book in their hands – there is another who does it only begrudgingly. They gripe about the time commitment or proofreading or having to work through a scene when they’re not sure what should happen next. Like Barbie working out an algebra problem, they think writing is haaaaaarrrrd.

This is not unlike how many people feel about relationships. All that communicating and compromise and feelings? Yuck! Sure, Valentine’s Day is great – photo ops! – but then you have to slog through the next 364 days til it comes round again.

Are you a writer who believes writing is a grind? Do you often paraphrase Hemingway’s quote about opening a vein and bleeding onto the paper? Do you relate to Dorothy Parker’s lament that she hated writing, but loved having written?

Maybe – just maybe – you should take an opposite approach to your writing for a bit. Remind yourself that you don’t have to write today; you get to write today. Enjoy the challenge of figuring out what happens next. Marvel at the cornucopia choices you get to make – from subject to theme to character to setting – to make this quilt. Get excited about entertaining someone or sharing what you know. Embrace your creativity as joyous, fulfilling, and fun.

Don’t pour out blood onto the paper, pour out love.

Now, it’s axiomatic that love hurts. Opening yourself to the possibility of loving anything comes with the very real likelihood that your love will be rejected or will someday end. It might feel easier to shut yourself off from the possibility, but on the other hands, the rewards are unimaginable.

Love is liberating. Love creates joyous experiences and creates wonderful memories. And what is writing but an expression of love?

You must love other people enough to listen to, observe, and learn about the human condition, and the world enough to notice its beauty and the emotional resonance that differs from place to place. You must love your characters enough to portray them vividly, in all their complexity. You must love your stories enough to want to share them. You must love yourself enough to commit to your creative practice, set aside the time, and continue even when the work is hard.

Of course, we won’t love everything, every day. But without love of some kind, your writing will feel flat, unalive.

Today, take a few minutes to fall in love. If you need a prompt, pick something you already love and commit it to memory. Choose anything – a person, a piece of art, a kind of food or material, a place, a plant or animal, or a sensory experience. Describe your choice in detail. Examine why you love it. Consider what memories and emotions it evokes.

Love something and remember this feeling the next time you sit down to write.

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Here are two things I know about showing up.

If you missed my last 2 posts, I talked about taking the next steps in your creative journey and that moving forward requires action that is simple and yet not easy. I referred to it as showing up – showing up at writing events and meetup opportunities, showing up at your desk to write, showing up for yourself.

For some of us, this requires a big leap of faith, which is harder than it looks. It’s easy to look confident online, because we are sharing less than 1% of what’s really going on in our lives. But there’s a reason that every decent writing blog has a regular cycle of posts about imposter syndrome, overcoming doubt, building confidence, dealing with setbacks, and working through our blackest moods.

We’re a sensitive lot.

And sensitive people tend to get hurt and hurt people throw up barriers. These barriers keep us from fully connecting to our creativity and our community. We hold back opinions or ideas in our writing. We don’t make the time commitment necessary. We hesitate to take the next step in our career. If you’re like me, you may even feel foolish referring to your writing as a “career.”

So we hide. We may avoid future hurts, but the cost of hiding is invisibility. Learn from my mistakes: being invisible makes it really hard to find your people. You may find it hard to connect to your creativity. And frankly, it will prevent you from feeling fully alive.

It might feel safer to avoid the spotlight or to not take a creative risk or not reveal some truth you’ve experienced or learned, but this is a false safety and it doesn’t compare to the glow of community, growth, and authenticity.

So, here finally are the two things I know about showing up.

1. Showing up requires you to be your authentic self. You can’t hide your talents under a bushel. If you want to talk writing, make friends with creative people, put your work out into the world, or make money, you need to show a little leg. An ankle, at minimum.
2. Showing up as your authentic self is the best way to meet other creative people who are like you, who are seeking the same connections and fortunes, who will be the best people to help you along the way, and whom you will help the most in return. Trust me on this: There are other writers – right now – who want to meet someone like you. Not the writer you’ll be next year. Not You 2.0. The person you are today, reading this.

Take some time to reflect. Is there a big step you’re avoiding? Is your avoidance based on fear of being criticized or rejected? Shine some inquiry on that feeling and see what it reflects. Why are you carrying this?

I’ll go first:

As I wrote last week, I had a lot of excuses for not showing up. I blamed the voices of imposter syndrome, but also, those excuses created quite the cozy environment.

Not showing up kept me from confronting my social anxiety about meeting new people. It helped me avoid imposter syndrome, because I wasn’t trying to portray myself as anything; I was sitting at home. It helped me avoid feeling judged or rejected, because I wasn’t sharing anything with anyone.

Not showing up is easy. Not showing up is safe. It feels good not to feel judged, not to feel like an imposter, and to avoid situations where my social anxiety kicks in. But does that support my writing goals? When I avoid those feelings, am I becoming the writer I want to be? Am I making any new friends?

No.

Lean into this as far as you’re able, but only that far. Self-honesty doesn’t mean self-immolation. If and when you can, go deep. Reflect on your fear without judgment. Discover its layers. Listen to the promises your fear has made. Consider the benefits of safety. Can you let this go? If you can’t let go, can you loosen your grip on it, maybe just a little? Do it.

Then jump.

Your people are waiting on the other side.

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As a highly-motivated goal setter and a usually reliable goal achiever, I’m always curious about whether and how other creative people set goals. I wish I could be one of those laissez-faire writers who wanders through their day being as creative as they feel like, for a few hours or not. Unfortunately, I have to work for my supper, so my opportunity time is reduced by half. If I allow a few hours to pass without being creative, the day is lost.

That’s not to say I don’t have bad days or skip days. Some days I feel burned out from work or don’t feel well, common afflictions I feel are beneath me, but alas. Occasional travel days and holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving are also usually a wash. But on average, I spend a good amount of time writing every week; the exact number of hours per day may vary.

What other people say

In a post on Writers in the Storm, Jenny Hansen talked about her goals for 2026. Every year, the WITS bloggers choose a single word of intention for the year –such as Renew, Reset, or Joy – to act as their guiding star. I’ve tried that, but I never remember the word, so apparently this does not work for everyone. I suppose writing it down would help.

You’ve probably heard of SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) goals. That approach can steer you in the right direction, but may be too structured for creative work. Writing a novel takes as long as it takes. However, it’s also good to be specific about your intentions and to ensure they are reasonably achievable.

I like setting enough goals that I have a roadmap for my year, with some wriggle room if I want to make a detour or if life gets in the way. This doesn’t work for everyone, but I need some structure or I find it difficult to decide what to do next. Worse, if I’m working only from a vague list, I will veer into busy work or research, or work on easy tasks rather than tackling something more meaningful, but difficult.

However, I add the wriggle room because I also need the space to play and the occasional time off. Also, when my deadlines are too strict, missing them feels like a bigger problem than it really is. There have been a few Januarys when I’ve missed some self-imposed deadlines and felt like I’d blown the whole year, when in reality A – I had 11 months to catch up and B – nobody cares.

In her post, Hansen also notes that most New Year’s resolutions fail for these same reasons. Goals are too vague, there’s no plan of action, and we have an all-or-nothing mindset that keeps us from continuing when we fall short.

In Atomic Habits, James Clear recommends starting small by picking one tiny, easily achievable goal – on par with making your bed every morning or drinking a glass of water at noon – and building forward. In his habit tracker app Atoms, Clear suggests defining the mindset you want to develop or end state you want to achieve, and view your actions as strategy. For example, you goal may be “Be more creative” and your strategy is “Write for one hour every morning before work.”

In her post, Hansen shares some insights she learned from a life coaching seminar: Our brains like solving problems as much or more than they like to-do lists. This is another way of saying it’s easy to get lost in the forest when we are looking at trees.  A long list of tasks may be more daunting than helpful, but remembering why you’re doing them may help keep you motivated.

As with Clear’s advice above, it’s helpful to define the end state you wish to achieve as you create your lists. “Post to Substack on Sunday night” is a useful task, but it you attach it to the end state of “Be more connected to my community”, the task may feel more meaningful and less like drudgery.

How I track goals

My two big picture goals for the year are finishing the next draft of my novel and keeping up with my blog. To keep track, I have a daily word count goal and I have a schedule of what I’m supposed to write and when. The word count is simply an estimate of how many words I think I need to finish the book and write 60-70 blog posts, divided by 365. The schedule reminds me that I can’t just tap out words, I have to actually finish chapters and posts. I also can’t jump to a new project when I feel stuck. I could, of course, but then I risk ending the year with a lot of words written, but nothing substantial to show for it.

The dual goals have other benefits. Hitting my word count goal gives me a pleasurable dopamine spike at the end of each writing session, even better if I exceed it. Checking off chapters and posts – usually on Saturday or Sunday – gives me a sense of accomplishment and forward motion at the end of the week, adding motivation and momentum for the start of the next week, which can be dreary.

It also helps to break down big goals into component pieces. The novel is easy, of course – chapters are excellent sub-goals. When I open a new chapter, I start by breaking down the scenes and beats, including any new character or setting descriptions. I like being able to jump around. If I don’t have any particular inspiration for an opening sentence or paragraph, I skip to set building or conversation, whatever gets me into my writing head space.

My blog goal is posting every Monday, so that breaks down easily as well. I also work better when I have an idea of what I’m going to write before I start, so I keep lists of topic ideas or series to run through. Sometimes topics get moved from one week to another, or bumped altogether if I’m not feeling it.

I don’t know how your brain works, but my brain loves checking items off a list. Seeing the word count roll and the check marks accumulate motivates me to jump onto the next piece of writing. And if I finish my novel or work ahead on my blog, I get to – not have to – start writing something new.

Your turn

Do you set goals this way? How do you keep track of your progress?

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