This is an honest and complex question. So many publishers, editors,  and agents say a writer needs to "have a platform," which is a lot like the need to have credit to get credit.

How do you build a platform before you have a product to put on that platform?
 
When I first met my publisher face-to-face, having a contract and a release date in the far distant future, I asked her the number one thing I could do to set myself up for the release.  She told me to get active on Twitter. My response (not wise, considering... publisher) was "I hate Twitter." 
  
She had the marketing department scour my website and social media pages to give me suggestions. Not all publishers do this, but it was invaluable. They sent me a 6 page report on what I was doing right and what I should improve. The good news is that traditional publishing takes so long you have time to build before the release. The bad news is that every editor/agent who is serious about your work is going to ask about your platform. Do you have a website, a FB page, a Twitter handle, etc?
 
I have since reevaluated my opinion on Twitter, as I'm fully an addict, and I now despise Facebook, but I also think the publisher is both right and wrong about "get active on Twitter." Twitter is great for many reasons, but Twitter is not the place to sell books. Mind you, people try, but it's really just yelling into the wind. Facebook is a good marketing tool for writers, but the targeted advertising is part of what makes Facebook a burr under my saddle.

The biggest thing pre-publishing is to get onto your preferred social media platform and start making connections. Follow authors in your genre (as your writer page). Join conversations in Facebook groups or follow Twitter hashtags like #writingcommunity or #amreading. On Insta, it's #authorsofinstagram. You're not selling yourself, not yet, what you're doing is forming bonds and friendship with people who like books and your particular genre. You're building an online network.

I graduated from Regis University with an MA in creative writing in 2015 (Regis now has an MFA program). A fellow student at the time just released her first book of literary nonfiction. She reached out to me on social media. I shared her release to my readers. I shared articles about her release on everything from social media to LinkedIn. This isn't a quid-pro-quo, as I don't expect anything of her in return. It's just the right thing to do to support fellow writers. You can do the same with published authors before you're published.

​You're not bringing attention to something you haven't done yet, you're bringing attention to the thing you love: books. My publisher gave me a list of 15-20 top influencers in the form of bloggers and book reviewers that I should "get to know" or connect with online. I found that too artificial. Instead, I engage with other writers and readers. I like/share/retweet other writers whose work I like/love to build good will with others, and even if they don't directly reciprocate, I figure I'm growing my good karma (and that it will come back to me in some way in the future).

There's no "right" time to build a platform. Honestly, and I mean this, writing comes first. Let me say that again:

Writing. Comes. First.

​It's easy to get sucked into the social media mud pit and get stuck, but if you're already active on a certain platform, getting to know other writers and readers shouldn't be too big of a stretch to start with. Things like a website or a blog can wait until the book is finished, but social media takes time to grow, so starting now would definitely be a move in the right direction.

There's so many ways to get active in a way that is authentic, which I think is what you should focus on. Don't think of it as selling yourself. Writers for the most part aren't really good with that. Instead of "selling" or "marketing" which are dirty little words, consider social media as community building. You're finding a community to interact with, and you can do it no matter where you live, no matter your publishing stage... as long as you have Internet.​

As for where to start, ask yourself: ​​What social media platform do I prefer?

I know some publishers push you to be active on all platforms. Good luck with that. Although I do have someone help me with Facebook (she posts what I send to her onto my writing page because I don't have a personal account on FB), I don't have the time or money for a personal assistant, so spending an hour a day building my social media isn't in the cards, but I do focus on being active on Twitter, because I'm there anyway, and I enjoy the interactions. I even use it for my undergrads instead of online discussions (see one of my Twitter hashtags to see what they post).

Follow writers. Stephen King is on Twitter, and full of all kinds of fun posts from directly related to writing (like when a new book or movie releases), but he also posts pictures of his dog, retweeting other writers (including his son) and generally posting several times a week. JK Rowling used to be much more active, being quite vocal about things that matter to her, but seems to have slowed off the last year of so. Still, she's a good follow. Start with those writers you love, and even if they don't respond, you can interact with those commenting on their posts. And guess what? Those people are probably readers.

Posting to someone who is not your family or friend is weird at first, but I promise, you're not a fraud. You are a writer. You are writing. You are connecting with readers and writers.

Remember the line from Field of Dreams. "If you build it, they will come."

One of the most common suggestions I make to students in the MFA program is to include more analysis of the works they read. There is a difference between reading for pleasure and reading like a writer (and learning to analyze). An MFA is not simply a writing degree. Of course, MFA students will be writing, and are writing, quite a bit, but the most time is spent on reading and analyzing what other writers have done.  Stephen King has famously said "[i]f you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write." 
 
Being a writer is first being a reader, and many (most) writers learn through their reading to become writers. In an MFA program, we focus on the valuable work that reading does to writing skills. During my MFA, I read and wrote critical analyses on three books each month for the first two years of the program. I was numb by the end, but I learned to be quite efficient and effective at reading critically. It has taken me longer afterward to incorporate what I learned into my writing, but that element is equally valuable.
 
We read critically, we write analytically, and then we reflect on the elements and apply them to our own writing.
 
Summary (a brief description of the plot) is lower-level learning. Analysis is higher-level (or critical) reading and writing. And genre doesn't matter. From romance to literary fiction, writers need to analyze what other (sometimes great) writers have written.
 
But all reading is not created equal. When we read for pleasure, hopefully we can actually enjoy the work without picking it apart (I really struggle with this). But when we read as a writer, our job is to pick the work apart. We should read slowly to see the brush strokes of the writer we're studying. We should ask questions of the text.

• HOW did the writer do it?
• What choices did the writer make?
• Why did the writer make those choices?
• Were those choices good or bad? 
• How can I do this in my own writing?

Let's take a look at what some MFA students have written analytically (the following has been used with permission and changes made to correct minor errors in MLA citations):

First, Taylor D wrote: 

Taylor provides a summary of the scene to provide context for the initial conflict, and then looks at evidence from the book (quotes), and finally, discusses how Le Guin's technique impacted her (Taylor) as a reader, and then figures out what exactly she has learned from the reading.
​ 
Now, let's look at what Candace M. wrote:
 

While most writers won't need or want to write an academic paper analyzing a work of fiction, the act of analyzing is an invaluable tool and can be accomplished while reading. Writers should consider writing techniques as they read them, and then consider how and in what ways the reading and analysis can impact their own writing. 
​ 
Embrace analysis. It will help set your writing on fire.
 
ADDENDUM:This kind of analysis also helps writers to critique other writers. Once a writer has torn apart a book by someone like Stephen King, they should have the skillset and vocabulary to help critique and improve the work of their critique partners.
​ 
Work Cited
King, Stephen. On Writing. Scribner, 2000.

Writer's block is real, so don't blame or punish yourself. You'll only exacerbate the problem. A couple things you can try:

1) Julia Cameron's suggestion (The Artist's Way) would be an "artist's date," which essentially means get out of the house. Play. Do anything not writing related to refill your creative well.

​Go somewhere and people watch. Go to a play, an art exhibit, a concert, or a movie. Go play laser tag or paint ball. Go jump on a trampoline or ride a bike. Give your muse a chance to recover. Make it something that works for you and your type of "play."

I've had students go to Painting with a Twist (you, a canvas, and a glass (bottle) of wine. Another student, who is also an actor, was encouraged to Improv a conversation with their protagonist.

2) My suggestion: write something else, and give yourself permission to write badly, or as Anne Lamott says in Bird by Bird, write a "shitty first draft."
​
Write a weird short story, bad poetry, or substandard music lyrics. Sometimes you just need to switch gears until you're ready to work on that project again. I vacillate between Fiction and Creative Nonfiction for this very reason. Sometimes I just need a break (and you might too).

​3) Do something physical. Run, walk, jog, treadmill. There's something about movement that shakes things loose, creatively.

4) See cartoon below on the potential for the books to write themselves:

​5) Watch this video of a letter from sculpture Sol LeWitt to artist/friend Eva Hesse. The language is NSF (not safe for work), but it tends to kick creatives where we need it most:

• A seamstress might tear a piece of clothing apart at the seams to understand how it was made so s/he can duplicate it.
• ​A painter might study and duplicate the brushstrokes of a master to learn to paint like the master.
• A builder might study how the pyramids were made to understand and duplicate their building methods.

A writer does the same. We tear things apart to figure out the how and why, so we can duplicate the techniques in our own writing. Reading is the primary means of learning to write, which is why it makes me sad when new writers tell me they "don't read." I typically sic Stephen King on their heretic asses:

Before we know what to write, we need to know how to write, and the how is reading like a writer. Asking questions, annotating, figuring out how a writer accomplished a certain technique. Like the seamstress, we are taking apart a shirt so that we can use it as a pattern for making our own shirt.

Mimicry is part of the learning process. In middle school I wrote a noir detective story my teacher said sounded "borrowed." Nevermind that her destructive commentary became that negative voice in my head (and most writers have them). The point is that I started at a point of mimicry, but I grew past it. I learned the rules so I knew when, where, and how to break them effectively. I still read like a writer, and I'm reading a book a week (or more). I read across the card catalog: fiction and nonfiction, literature and genre fiction like romance, mystery, thrillers, women's fiction, and just about any genre but horror (sorry Stephen King). Speaking of Stephen King, he continues the quote about the value of reading with the following: 

Reading is an invaluable part of a writer's toolbox. In fact, it may be THE essential tool, but only if you're reading like a writer. So what does that mean? Check out Mike Bunn's article, published free as part of an OER (Open Education Resource), for specific, concrete ideas on what it means to read like a writer. Also, see the video below on how to annotate as you read.

Works Cited:

• Bunn, Mike. "How to Read Like a Writer." Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 2, 2011,    http://writingspaces.org/sites/default/files/bunn--how-to-read.pdf.
• "How to Annotate Text." YouTube, uploaded by School Habits, 9 May 2017, https://youtu.be/w5Mz4nwciWc.
• King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Scribner Anniversary Edition, 2010.

“Dear Professor Skaggs,” a recent post on social media started. The writer was inquiring about MFA programs and was concerned about her age and the actual value of an MFA degree. First, I assured her that age has nothing to do with literary success.

One of my creative cohort in my MFA program was a 22-year-old when she started, the youngest person ever accepted into the program, straight out of her undergraduate degree. She is talented, driven, and will likely be a PhD before she’s 30. But she is by no means representative of our group, which skews older with many looking for a retirement sideline rather than a life’s vocation, and many of us in between those two diverse bookends. Neither goal is wrong, in and of itself, and none of these demographic groups are better served by the MFA.

Writing, in fact, is democratic, and does not discriminate by age or other demographic detail. When you look at when an author is first published, there is no statistical “perfect” age for writing.

One example of writers starting after forty is Lee Childs who writes the Jack Reacher novels. Childs has a unique perspective on writing, in that writers mature with age and have more depth. He says writing is the “ideal career to start later in life.”

Agatha Christie, started much earlier, writing poetry, and earning literary awards, as a child. “But it was her sister’s challenge to write a detective story that would later spark what would become her illustrious career.” She became a published novelist at the age of 26 (“How Christie Wrote”).

Stephenie Meyer has sold more than 85 million copies of her book Twilight. She was 35, so nearly a decade older than Christie, and yet, wildly successful in her field. Her inspiration is quite different as well. She wasn’t challenged into writing a novel, she dreamed it. “Once a stay-at-home mom, Stephenie says the idea for Twilight came to her in a dream.”

JK Rowling didn’t dream her inspiration. She waited for it, specifically while waiting for a train “traveling from Manchester to London King’s Cross … Over the next five years, she began to plan out the seven books of the series” (“JK Rowling Biography”). The first Harry Potter was published when she was 32, and the last when she was 42.

Bukowski was 51 and Laura Ingalls Wilder was 64. Writing knows no limitations of age or experience, but that wasn’t the writer’s only concern in her message to me.

Her post continued, “I am considering applying to MFA Creative Writing programs, knowing that lots of folks think it's not a worthy degree.” She’s worried that the study of writing is a waste, a frivolous degree. In respect to the merits of an MFA, I answered,

Years ago, as a new single mom, I got a job working in the optical department at Wal-Mart. First off, that’s a really weird and unexpected place to find a writer, and second, it wasn’t exactly in my career plan, but I needed a job, and Wal-Mart was hiring.

We had to go through a week of classes and group discussions with other new hires back in the HR section. One discussion asked us to introduce ourselves and say why we wanted to work at Wal-Mart. Note the phrasing: wanted. Along the way, we each told socially acceptable lies about why we wanted (not needed) to work at the big box store in the sky. One young man, with messy dark hair and sad eyes, broke the mold, however. He looked around the table at the eight of us sitting there, and said, “I graduated from college… and then… life didn’t go as planned.”

​Truer words, my friend.

Conflict “arises because something is not going as expected” (Kress 13). Conflict belongs in the early part of your story, so readers want to know what happens next. If nothing happens, if life goes as planned, where’s the conflict? Where’s the interest? “But no matter what kind of conflict your story explores, its nature should be hinted at in your opening, even though the development of the conflict won’t occur until later” (Kress 13).

Let’s take a look at my favorite Harry Potter. There is an implied conflict from the outset as Professor McGonagall, who we don’t know much about yet, says that the Dursleys are the “worst sort of Muggles” in the movie version, and that you “couldn’t find two people who are less like us” (Rowling 13) in the book. Readers see the conflict developing within the first chapter, and that conflict between Harry and the Dursleys goes until the last book in the series. 

Along with that conflict, the larger conflict with Voldemort is implied here as well. McGonagall mentions that the only one Voldemort is afraid of is Dumbledore. She relates that Harry’s parents have been killed, by Voldemort, and somehow, a baby—Harry—survived. He was the boy that lived.

As writers, we need to establish that conflict early so the reader wants to stick with our story. We don’t always know—going in—the various layers of conflict within our story, so once we finish the draft, we need to evaluate the level of conflict and where it begins.

The novel I’m working on now is a straight fiction novel (as opposed to romantic suspense). The first time through, in the original draft, I wrote quickly and recognized some of the conflicts right away, but it wasn’t until I finished the novel that I recognized the conflict that wound from the beginning to the end. On the rewrite, I’m adding in hints of this conflict throughout, including the first chapter, so I can ensure the conflict is enough to sustain the reader.

Looking back at our Harry Potter book, we see conflict in the first paragraph: “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense” (Rowling 1).

​The implied promise here is a conflict between the Dursley’s expectation of “perfectly normal” and the “strange” and “mysterious.”

For your own writing:

• In what ways can you establish conflict early in your current WIP (work in progress)?
• How can you build the conflict throughout?
• How do you fulfill the promise of your conflict to the end?

Kress, Nancy. Elements of Fiction Writing – Beginnings, Middles, & Ends. Writer’s Digest Books, 2011.
Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Scholastic Press, 1997.

Many (although certainly not all) writers are perfectionists. We (as I include myself in that number) want everything to be perfect.

• Our job
• Our writing
• Our book reviews
• Our editorial comments

But, there's that whole "human" thing going on behind the scenes is messing with our stats, and not a single story, poem, song lyric, or novel will be as good as that "perfect" image in our head. And it will kill us if we don't let it go.

No, I'm not exemplifying hyperbole. The kind of stress perfectionism places on the human psyche has real consequences on our health.

Amanda Ruggeri writers in February of this year, "The rise in perfectionism doesn’t mean each generation is becoming more accomplished. It means we’re getting sicker, sadder and even undermining our own potential" (BBC.com), and the physical manifestation of our perfectionism includes depression, anxiety, self-harm, OCD, binge eating, anorexia, PTSD, insomnia, fatigue, headaches, and early mortality.

I have a writer friend with far more publications than my own, and who writes for a major traditional publisher. Each time this writer gets edits from the editor (sometimes numbering in the thousands of comments in MS Word), this friend goes into a deep depression and can't even finish reading the revision letter before running for the M&Ms. And I completely understand that level of angst.

I was raised with the middle-class work ethic of my parents and grandparents, to whom complaining was weakness and giving compliments to their children was coddling. Obviously, they had some serious issues to work out (or they were editors in the making), but the idea behind their work ethic has remained an indelible part of American culture. Work hard, play hard, write hard, create as fast as you can.

But creativity doesn't work the same way as body building or climbing the corporate ladder.

In past posts I've mentioned my crazy publication schedule, which, BTW, was my own dang fault. I had already gone through an MA program and was in the process of shopping a novel when I joined my MFA program. The book sold, and was coincidentally released while I was at my first MFA residency in the summer of 2015. Between 2015-2017, I completed all my coursework while maintaining an intense publication schedule that included writing and publishing 6 novels and a novella, in addition to my creative nonfiction essay collection which I am currently submitting to publishers.

In many ways, that crazy publication schedule while attending school AND working up to 4 jobs and raising my kids was a result of my upbringing and the expectations of a strong work ethic. It was also the result of fear. Fear of failure, fear of success, impostor syndrome... The list goes on and on.

And once I graduated with my MFA, I crashed. There was no creativity left. I had expended it all and didn't take the time to refill my well, as Julia Cameron would say (The Artist's Way). I had attempted to impose my middle-class work ethic on my creative muse, and she was not amused. The creative crash was the natural result of my actions.

Writers everywhere struggle with perfectionism. In a perfect world (pun intended), we would continue to write as we struggled for elusive perfection, but in reality, perfectionism stifles our natural talents and creative impulses into what some would call Writer's Block.

​So let's stop seeking perfection. Let's stop worrying about perfect grades, perfect essays, perfect stories, and perfect lives. None of those things exist, or if they exist (as in a 4.0 GPA), they will injure us in the process of attainment.

The result of chasing perfection is a creative coma, and we are better off to write at a slow and steady rate than to burn in the fire of  frantic production.

As you head into the next season of your writing, and whatever that entails for you, consider the cost of perfectionism. Of course we want to write our best, we want our editor and publisher to like our work, but we can't control their feelings. We can only control the work.

The goal here is not perfection. The goal is growth.

What perfectionist tendencies do you have? Which perfectionist goal can you leave behind and replace with creative growth?

 Happy Wednesday, writers!

This is probably the most controversial part of my RWA conference round-up, so I thought I'd put it first. :)
​
While at RWA, during the Rita ceremony (the Rita's are the romance industry awards), Suzanne Brockman gave a speech that polarized and edified at the same time. (minute :56 if it doesn't autostart in the right place).

And this additional acceptance speech by Kristin Hannah (I saved this at 1:53. I tried to get it to auto start there, but I'm not sure that translated).

Brockman had very specific and personal complaints about the way in which we shy away from diverse characters in the romance writing industry, as did Rita winner Kristin Hannah (see 1:53 in the video).

I do value diversity and believe we have to work to create a diverse environment in our real world and our writing world. In addition to my teaching at SNHU, I also teach at a community college. We deal with some of these same issues, so I start every semester with the video below. I want my students to know my expectations for the ways in which we treat each other based on "labels" that cannot begin to define a person.