The Writing Life

I was in Lisbon when the total blackout hit the Iberian Pennisula, removing power from all of Spain and Portugal for the better part of a hot April day. This was interesting! Nothing like this had ever happened to me. Of course I would write about it.

I made notes that day and night to capture the sensual experiences of being without phone or light or access to my rented apartment. I wrote a draft of the story back in Denver.

But then I blundered into territory my clients and I always stumble into. I was three pages into telling the details of the blackout – trams stalled in the streets, all shops dark and locked, no cell phone access at all. Three pages in and still was not even close to getting to why this mattered.

What went wrong? We all think our stories are good – and they are! These tales are interesting to us, but are likely only mildly interesting to a reader. I’ve identified the problem. It’s a case of anecdote versus story. Here’s an example.

Anecdote versus story or boring versus life-changing

Anecdote: On the way here, I saw a performing monkey! It grabbed my beret and put it on and played the accordion! It was so funny!

Story: On the way here, a performing monkey grabbed my beret and played a song on the accordion. The song was the one I always have in my head when I think of my French life. All this time I had been in love with France, thinking the song and the beret made me more French. But my facade was easily taken on by a street monkey. I had never felt so cheap and superficial in my life. Now I question the things I love – am I such a cliche? Or was the song a sign? Did my beret hold the song about Paris but also all my hopes and dreams?

Do you see the difference? A story has a deeper meaning, something more important to the narrator than ‘isn’t that funny?’

We tell anecdotes to fill time and space and share an experience we had. We write stories to understand something on a deeper level and to convey some meaning to the reader. As writers, we have to work to excavate the meaning.

The blackout story was just an anecdote. Until I dug deeper for a reason to tell this story, it wasn’t worth continuing. I was bored adding up all the ‘and then this happened’. (If you get bored writing, chances are your reader will be bored reading.) I didn’t have the bandwidth to really delve in to discover what matters, why it matters to me, and how it might matter to you, the reader.

People telling anecdotes mostly just want someone to hear their story. People writing stories want to move the reader with a new insight, feeling, or idea. They want to be moved themselves.

If you are stuck in anecdote territory, wondering if it’s interesting to a reader, dig deeper.

Three ways to make sure your stories aren’t boring

Check into your values. What is meaningful for you in this story? I couldn’t find many of my values honored in the blackout story. But the piece about speaking Portuguese while in Lisbon? I had at least 8 values in that story. Writing it felt alive and meaningful.

WAIT. After you’ve pecked at the story a bit, take a break. Ask yourself Why Am I Telling this story? Why does it matter to you?

Who cares? When we get stuck, we often think, who will find this interesting? Who cares? If you know who you are writing for – and you should – it will be easier to know if your reader will care and if so, what they will get from this.

What do you want for the reader? Why MUST they read this story?

When drafting my novel, I had to cut many major chapters. Whole sections! I loved these scenes. But they were merely interesting, not essential to the novel. Editing skills are as important as drafting skills.

Get your copy of Her Lisbon Colors here. 

I hope this has helped you to improve your storytelling skills. Please let me know what this illuminated for you in a comment below.

Clients come to me because they want to write a book or articles for their work. They’re smart, soulful, and bursting with inspiration. They have lots of ideas and papers everywhere. They are ready to put their ideas into shape, but they don’t know how to get organized and get started. I get it!

There are two major aspects of writing that I help people with, and they may surprise you.

Left-brain systems understanding

Ironically, one of the main skills I bring to my coaching clients is structure. It turns out that my genius zone is helping people organize all those ideas and papers into smart, soulful books that make a difference in the world. Clients often say I have a laser-sharp focus and ‘hit the nail on the head’. I see what they don’t. This comes out when we’re brainstorming and I’m helping a client synthesize their many ideas into a coherent whole.

It’s so fun to help them bring their ideas into shape. The clarity they get allows them to get their ideas down much more quickly. But that’s only half of the work.

Right-brain empathy

If writing were merely a matter of organizing our ideas and materials, it would be much easier. But writing is one of the most vulnerable and scary things we can do. We’re called to be honest, to be generous, and to bring language to what we care deeply about.

Three main monsters stand at the gate, preventing us from entering our genius zone of writing:

• fear of not having something to say
• fear of merely repeating what is already out there and
• fear of not being a good enough writer.

Writing a book takes time because we need to deal with these so they don’t keep harassing us and making writing a misery. No one is immune to insecurity about writing – not even my smart, accomplished, and soulful clients.

Coaching skills are real

My coach training taught me how to serve my clients by actively listening, staying out of my own story, and moving them inward to understanding and outward to action on their goals. I cannot emphasize enough that the training I started in 1999 and continue to this day is why I can succeed with my projects and help my clients succeed with theirs.

In all my work, I use my left and right brain capabilities. Designing and leading retreats, writing books, and coaching others to realize their creative dreams bring all of me to the table. I LOVE that. Empathy, organization, and seeing both the big picture and the details are the skills that make writing a book—or anything—possible.

What monsters linger at the gate to your writing joy? Share them in a comment below. 

I’ve shared a lot more about how to get organized here. 

Writing a book is messy, even for seasoned authors. Wrangling your material into cohesive shape is real work. There will be times when you sag with despair and cry out “This is a mess!” Rest assured. This is normal. This is not a function of your ineptitude, the lameness of your book or your inability to pull it all together. It’s part of the process of writing a book. Take a deep breath and trust yourself. Let’s look at how to sort this mess out. Be patient; it might take some time.

Depending on where you are with the process, it might be helpful to print the book up. Many of us are writing in one long on-screen document. Scrolling can be a nightmare, and rolling back and forth can contribute to your feeling of chaos. If you have a draft, even a shaggy draft, print the whole thing. Make sure that the pages are 1.5- or double-spaced, with page numbers at the bottom. Reviewing a printed copy makes it so much easier to see the whole. When I went through my printed draft, it was clear that the table of contents needed to be reordered.

With your printed manuscript in hand, step away from the computer. Take your notebook and pen with you. Your plan is to make a “punch list” of things to work on next. This is a term borrowed from the construction industry, where there’s a walk-through of a house before it’s finished or before a sale. The punch list includes things to fix or work on. Make a punch list for your book. You want one list that you can work through methodically later.

Now, back to the messy draft. Read through everything you have written. This read-through is for the purpose of seeing the whole, for distinguishing what’s working and what’s missing. Read like a teacher who wants to help the student make this paper as good as possible. Put check marks, smiley faces or stars next to things that are working. Add to your punch list as needed. Avoid getting caught up in wordsmithing: if you see sentences that you want to revise, underline them or circle words you want to change, but don’t get caught in the details now. Include the bigger things to work on, not the details. These could include:

• Revise chapter two.
• Add examples for chapter ten.
• Research for chapter four.
• Brainstorm ideas for images in the book.
• Identify passages that need to be fleshed out.

Your punch list will likely be long. Don’t despair. It’s good to have an objective list of things you can work on. The draft will still be messy, but now you have marching orders of what to improve. This kind of list serves as a project manager.

Once you’ve made the list, you can organize items into categories. My recent punch list includes:

• to write
• to do
• weave throughout
• to consider
• plan of action

For each writing session, go to the list and do some of the tasks. Check them off the list to feel a sense of progress. Address as many items on your punch list as you can in each sitting, but know your limits. Notice when you feel “done” writing—you might be getting impatient, rushing and lowering your standards to make progress. The list can also keep you from feeling ambushed by emotions that may arise when you sit down to write. You are just working your way through the list. You might go through this process many times, at least once for each draft. It’s okay—it helps you to know what to do and when.

Excerpted from The Busy Woman’s Guide to Writing a World-Changing Book.

Here’s a punch list I made in Notion for my novel-in-progress. I have whited out the details to avoid spoilers.

Thirty years ago, a mile from where I type now in Denver, I began my writing life in earnest. I wanted so badly to write, but I had no idea how or what! In a class called Writing the Wild Woman, I learned how to free-write, scribbling alongside other women. Afterward, we howled. Because, wild women and all.

It’s hard for me to believe I’ve dedicated 30 years to writing. As a girl, I spent most of my free time reading. I wanted to be a writer. And so, with lots of ink and angst, I have fulfilled a childhood dream. Despite the baby-blue typewriter my parents gifted me, I didn’t have the courage to start writing until my mid-20s.

In my garage are boxes filled with hundreds of journals. I haven’t kept everything but have files full of poems, articles, and essays. All the unseen words speak to the invisible labor that is the writing life. What is visible are the words I managed to bravely put into the world. If we want to have an impact, we have to overcome our fears and insecurities.

I like to say that if you want to know yourself deeply, take up an art form or start a business. All your demons will rise up to meet you. By continuing to show up, you learn that you are more than a handful of insecurities and hopes. Writing is a most splendid way to meet yourself in ink and hopefully, come out loving yourself a bit more.

Writing has offered me a powerful path to personal growth and empowerment. This is what I want for my clients. Not that they become writers, but that by becoming writers they become a stronger version of themselves.

My version of success

My writing life does not resemble what I dreamed of in my Ohio bedroom. I have not been ‘discovered’ by a publisher. I am not a best-selling author and my novel has not been adapted to a film starring Amy Adams. Dang! But how often do our actual lives match up to our imagined lives? I didn’t get married until I was 50, and my husband doesn’t look anything like I’d imagined. And yet, he’s perfect for me. As is my writing life.

If I look back and tally the wins, I’m proud of my writing life. I’ve written and self-published eight books and am working away at my ninth, a novel. I’ve published countless articles, mostly about writing and the creative process, productivity, and a few about yoga. I’ve learned how to write sales copy, because as a solopreneur, being able to promote my services was vital to survival. I don’t earn a living from writing. I have earned over $100,000 from writing – a glorious $3,333 per year!

You may know that I’m into a lot of things. I’m a writer, artist, gardener, traveler. Through my business, it seems like I’ve done a million different things, from retreats to online classes to monthly writing challenges. People call this ‘all over the place.’ Maybe so. When I look over the landscape of my writing life, I see a map of my abundant curiosity and creativity.

Aside from any outcome, my biggest success is that I kept writing. Even as my creativity has led me all over, writing persists. I’ve savored a lot of little writing victories. I have learned so much about myself and the art of writing things people (hopefully) want to read. I have the freedom to write what I want. My days involve a lot of writing. From commenting on clients’ writing to writing my novel to writing this essay, I see my values threaded through all my words: honesty, integrity, purpose, creativity, love of language and humor. Showing up to write means showing up to be me. 

Thirty years in, I am astonished to discover that even though I wander freely among all the creative outlets I love, I have become a person of tenacity and commitment. I am willing to keep at it even when writing feels like an emotional tsunami. The rampant rejections and disappointments have fostered a healthy sense of humility in me.

We want to write because we have something to say, and we want to be heard. There’s no way to measure how my writing has impacted the world. I only know that by showing up despite all the fears and doubts*, I have cultivated a healthy sense of self-respect. Whatever the outcome, I have honored this life-long impulse to write. I plan to keep writing, and friends, I hope you do, too.

*Spell-correct changed that to donuts. If ONLY my writing were fueled by donuts!

It turns out 2023 was a banner year for my book coaching clients. I am thrilled to share their work and successes with you. May their example inspire you to get your own words into the world.

Three surprising things about writing any book

I’ve been helping writers get their words on the page since 1999. Believe it or not, I love it more than ever. I learned so much this year about writing and how to help writers.

You may know this already, but writing a book is a THING. Even if you’ve written a gazillion words, a book is its own animal. People are often blindsided by what’s involved, so here’s a heads-up.

• Writing a book is less about writing and more about organizing.
• You can build a wildly successful marketing plan based on your strengths and gifts even without a huge platform.
• The thing that makes writing easiest is the thing people resist with all their force. I have to really work it to get my clients to surrender resistance and identify their reader.

You might wonder, “What does Cynthia do with writers?” I help smart and soulful people:

• organize their ideas and pull their writing into a book
• write and organize a book proposal, a massive marketing undertaking
• develop ideas and articles in a coherent and powerful body of work on Substack and LinkedIn
• strategize promotional plans and tactics that honor the writer and their goals.

Celebrate my clients’ wins with me

Paula Preschelack published her book The Montessori Potential: How to Foster Independence, Respect, and Joy in Every Child with Chicago Review Press. We’ve been working on this for years, so this was a huge achievement. We worked on how she could get the word out. Paula is a public speaker so we focused her promotion efforts on speaking engagements and also LinkedIn posting. I wrote a case study about our work together here. 

Cindy Lusk published her book Align and Refine: The Journey of Yoga and Meditation. I met Cindy at the Yoga Workshop in Boulder decades ago and always believed in her teaching style and her commitment to yoga. I’m thrilled to see her book come out.

Margaret Frolich, an Associate Professor of Spanish, published her second book Sexual Diversity in Young Cuban Cinema. I don’t work with many academics, but I helped Peggy to find flow and ease even under intense deadlines and work as the chair of her department.

I coached Donna Erickson to write a winning book proposal. This rarely happens, but she immediately got a book deal with the University of Nebraska Press (Bison Books imprint) for Rooted at the Edge: Where the Old and New West Collide. The book reveals the tensions of ranching at the edge of western towns, depicting a threatened Montana landscape steeped in history, conflict, and beauty.

Paul Wyman finished a draft of his book on parts work. I look forward to editing it in January. I love working with coaches who have a body of work they want to bring to a larger audience.

Christine Ruch is the founder of Fresh Thymes. (My favorite Boulder restaurant!) Christine wanted to write about food and health as part of her major career shift. I helped her organize her ideas and write powerfully for her Substack newsletter The Fresh Life. 

Tina Bettison’s Substack Gathering Our Bones is a delightful, creative space for women who want more from their lives and creativity. Tina was a member of Write ON where we helped her bravely launch her newsletter.

April Allderdice is CEO of an organization working at the nexus of clean energy, job creation, environmental justice, and climate change. She’s smart and soulful, and it’s been a delight helping her craft her ideas into compelling articles on LinkedIn.

Nancie Turner finished a draft of her novel and hired an editor. As someone who did this recently, I know what a big leap it is to invest in professional feedback. Nancie also crossed something off her to-do list: she got temporary tattoos. Inspiring messages on her wrist helped her get to the finish line of her draft.

I acknowledge my clients who have devoted themselves to their writing and aren’t at the ‘put it into the world’ stage. We are deep in the process of learning what they want to write and how to say it. I salute Aevea, Bibiana, Carla, Chris, Christina, Emilah, Jesse, John, Laurie, Melissa, Talib, Zaretta, and Zindzi.

I applaud members of the Impulse Writing Club for showing up every Thursday to write together.

Commit to your writing in 2024

If you want to write and need support figuring out what and how and when to put your ideas into ink, I can help.

1:1 book coaching accelerates the writing process and is great for busy executives who need flexibility. I have three openings for 1:1  starting in January.

Write ON coaching group starts in early January. If you benefit from learning from others and are on a budget, this is a great way to get weekly support for a writing project.

Want a simple, affordable ‘writing membership’? Join us to write every Thursday at the Impulse Writing Club.

My business thrives on referrals. Who do you know who could use a book coach? Send them my way!

I’ve been publishing my newsletter Impulses since February 2001. That’s almost 24 years of consistent articles about the creative process.

I’m proud of that longevity, and I am also astonished I kept going for so long. It’s time to switch gears. I’ve been writing as an ‘expert’ and now it’s time to write as a writer. I am starting a new newsletter on Substack.

Stumbling Toward Genius is my online author’s notebook giving you behind-the-scenes access to my novel-writing process. This is a big deal for me, to sit solidly in my writer’s seat. I’m challenged to be vulnerable, honest, and generous about what I’m learning from writing a novel. It’s a big switch from my coachy writing.

You may recognize the name. Stumbling Toward Genius is the name of my podcast. It felt appropriate because I’ll be sharing my highs and lows as I write my fourth draft of When Water Meets Rock.

Please consider subscribing to Stumbling Toward Genius. This novel is one of my life’s biggest projects, and I have already gained so much from writing it. I want to share what I am learning to help you boldly claim your own creative genius.

Come on over and subscribe here.

It takes a lot of hubris – or ignorance – to want to write a bestselling novel. Before you cement the idea that I am a blowhard fool, let me explain. 

I know that best-selling books are few and far between for non-celebrities like me. 

I don’t want bestseller status because I want to be famous. (Okay, sure, I’ll take a wee bit of fame.) 

But my real motivation to write a bestselling novel is two-fold. I always want to share what I have learned. I hope readers of my novel will gain insights into their own imperfect relationships. 

This goal springs from my values of inspiration and community. 

My second reason for writing a bestseller is to help me be a better writer. I am deep in learning mode. How to craft a story that has a complete and satisfying narrative arc? How to develop characters that I care about so the reader can care about them? How to write one good sentence, for goodness’ sakes?!?!? (I’ve pulled off one or two so far.)

This goal honors my values of excellence, love of language, honesty, and creativity. 

I’m human, so this bestseller goal probably also stokes my ego. But if I keep my values front and center, this dream comes from and goes toward a place of depth, not shallow ego.

Part of me knows this goal might not agree with everyone. That I might be ‘coming from the wrong place’ to have such a lofty dream as an outcome. It took me quite awhile to accept and understand my motivations for this novel. They’ve changed over time. 

Knowing what’s important from a deep level is rocket fuel for me when I need a boost to stay with a hard scene. My values keep me steady when I work to assimilate feedback that means a lot more work ahead. 

Do you use your values to recognize and honor your writing motivation?

Learn your values and tie them to your themes in my popular online workshop, Your Creative DNA. Self-paced, illuminating program that will change how you think about your creative work and life. Get your spot here.

Writers are lucky – we don’t require a lot of tools for the job. We can use a simple notebook or an app like Word, Google docs, or Evernote. 

Yet there are more complex systems out there for writing. I have avoided things like Scrivener. Most people I know who use it are fairly savvy when it comes to using complex apps. The trouble comes when people spend more time learning how to use the system than doing the writing. I have seen this happen, and it’s a shame to waste so much time setting up the ops. I get suspicious that the helpful app is functioning more as a procrastination ally. 

But with my current novel in progress, this time I needed to lay out the scenes in a different way than index cards. I leaned toward Scrivener. Then the learning curve loomed. What do I already have that could work, I thought? 

Notion! I have Notion, and have invested considerable time and energy into using it to run my business. I poked around and found a template online ($10). It took less than 3 hours to set up my scenes and chapters. Scriborg is simple yet has everything you would need to organize your novel. It has a lot of features I don’t use for productivity. But seeing the three acts of my novel laid out, with each scene having its own card, is so useful.

Do you use an app or program other than basic word processing for your novel? Leave a comment below! 

I hadn’t been much interested in AI. I know it’s here, I know it’s going to change everything. Focused on my projects, I haven’t wanted to go down the rabbit hole of learning and assessing AI as a tool for work and writing. 

But when LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman mentioned ‘research assistant’ on a podcast, I rushed right over to the computer and got my ‘assistant’ to work. 

In a book proposal, you have to make a claim, evidenced by stats, that there is a large market for your book. I am terrible at researching this kind of thing. I had done several Google searches. But when I used AI to research, I got much more specific results. Granted, the information doesn’t go past 2021, but I can live with that. I also have to fact-check the AI results, but still, it’s helpful.

I have used ChatGBT to help me with my writing projects: 

Comparative titles:

• Searching for any I missed
• Getting summaries to see if I missed anything in what I already wrote 

Alternative titles for my book

It was fun to see some words I wasn’t using that could be considered more mainstream. For instance, I don’t necessarily use ‘creative potential,’ but I liked it when it popped up in an alternative title. It speaks to what I want for us all – that we live up to our potential as people and creators. 

I’ve pointed clients to how to use AI for their book proposals, and one even got a new title for her book using it. 

I played with ‘book launch ideas’ to help brainstorm new ideas for my marketing section in the proposal. I pretty much knew all of them already, which was more validating than informative.. 

Not sure how to use it for my novel-writing, but one day, I had an idea. I strive to write in a certain style. I hope to write in a lyrical way, a way that emphasizes saying something in a beautiful, original way. I say striving because I feel far from achieving that.

I copied a paragraph of my novel into AI and asked it to describe the style of writing. This is what I got back: 

The writing style of this fiction is descriptive and uses vivid imagery to paint a picture of the scene and the emotions of the characters. The author also uses internal dialogue to give insight into the protagonist’s thoughts and feelings. The language is informal and uses slang, creating a sense of intimacy and authenticity. The author also employs metaphors and clichés to add depth to the character’s observations and to convey the physical sensations of the experience. The overall tone is sensual and romantic, with an emphasis on the physical pleasure and emotional connection between the characters.

That made me feel like I was getting closer to the kind of writing I want. Not totally there yet. And clichés? OY! Not so great. It sent me into the paragraph to hunt down what could be cliché and eliminate it. 

I feel ethical about how I have used AI. I’m not getting it to write my paragraphs for me. Having a better research tool is super helpful, especially in the promotion/launch phase of a book.

Have you used AI for your writing? Share how by leaving a comment below!