Today's guest is Stacy Ennis, a number-one best-selling author and book coach, as well as founder of Nonfiction Book School. Stacy joined me today to talk about how being a writer doesn't necessarily mean you have to follow the path of a starving artist, how to merge the fear of selling out with the possibility of success, and how to take small steps to begin building the foundations of your freelance career.
The Saturday Slash
Don't be afraid to ask for help with the most critical first step of your writing journey - the query.
I’ve been blogging since 2011 and have critiqued over 200 queries here on the blog using my Hatchet of Death. This is how I edit myself, it is how I edit others. If you think you want to play with me and my hatchet, shoot me an email.
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If you’re ready to take the next step, I also offer editing services.
My thoughts are in blue, words to delete are in red, suggested rephrasing is in orange.
He dropped to one knee, and she ran for the hills. Great hook! After annihilating her happily ever after, Fern is only certain of one thing: marriage to her long-term boyfriend felt a lot like settling, and she wants more than a safe bet. Displaced to her late grandparents’ farmhouse, the makeup artist is intent on organizing her family’s treasures and her own life. What does that mean? Is she shorting through their old stuff? Is she a city girl that is transplanted? Or does she fit in here? A little bit more on that end would fit nicely here. Instead she finds a certainty she didn’t know existed, and a place to plant her biggest dreams. But even the most idyllic havens can be mirages. This feels a little too much like a summary too early on. I'd cut, and cover these elements later in the query.
Fern grapples with clearing out the nostalgic property, and the loss of this part of her history, too. Again, this feels like a nod to her fitting / not-fitting here. A little more about how she is or is not a fish out of water would be good. As the house sale looms—along with her eviction date—she braves farmhouse misadventures, What does this mean? Like home improvements? and her neighbor, Wes, steps in to lend a hand. With Wes, Fern feels more grounded than ever before, and sparks illuminate their tract of land, revealing a path to their future. Even as Fern is finding the place she belongs, her ex draws her back into his life. And Wes’ roots in the small town are tangled with ties he can’t easily cut—like the family business he's sworn his life to, the football field where he played and now watches his daughter do cartwheels, and his high-school sweetheart bent on reconciliation. A lot packed in here - why would Wes' roots matter or be a problem? Does she want him to move back to where she came from? Does she not want to stay here? And how is the ex luring her back in if she already decided he felt like settling?
Just as quickly as they appeared, Fern’s big dreams disappear before her eyes. But what's her new dream? How is it disappearing? When crisis strikes with a shocking accident, Don't tease here. We need to know what the accident is. the divide between Fern and Wes stretches wider, and the roads back home are so inviting that neither is sure which way is forward. The metaphor feels mixed, if the rood is so inviting how do you not know which way to go? Uprooted again, Fern wonders if home was an illusion all along, and if her already battered heart can withstand another break—or if she’s simply meant to settle, not settle down. Hmm... what's the difference between those two things?
I don't really understand what's at stake. We need to know - very clearly - what Fern wants, and what is standing in the way of it. I think this query is decent enough, but you need to clariy the main problem - what does Fern want? And, it does sound like the question of home and belonging is a pretty big theme, so I'd work that in more. I don't have an idea for how Fern feels about this farm life - is THIS home? Or is where she left behind home?
Death and Transportation: How Hating Her First Job Led Sara Bennett Wealer to Her Next YA Book Idea
Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview.
Today’s guest for the WHAT is Sara Bennett Wealer, author of Grave Things Like Love which releases today
Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?
The idea for Grave Things Like Love came to me years ago, while I was working my very first job out of college. I was the transportation reporter for the North Hills News-Record in Pittsburgh, PA, and I HATED it. I yearned to write features, not file stories about gas prices and road construction. One of the small communities I covered had a big yellow Victorian house with a funeral home in it. I’m not sure how I first learned about them—perhaps it was through covering a death that occurred while I was working on a weekend. But I was fascinated by how the family lived upstairs and ran the business below.
I wish I could remember the name of the funeral home. I can still see it so clearly in my head. I also clearly remember them allowing me to spend a few hours there, touring the place and talking with them about the business. I’d planned to write a feature story, but ended up getting a different job and moving to Missouri. I always remembered, though, how interesting I thought it would be to grow up in that setting. It seemed like the perfect young adult novel.
Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?
That was the hard part! My first draft, which took a long time to write since I was dealing with the deaths of both of my parents (how appropriate!) and revising my first Delacorte book, Now & When, wasn’t really a romance, it didn’t have a ghost angle, and I killed off one of the main characters (who got resurrected as a love interest when I decided to go in a new direction).
Elaine, my main character, originally was embarrassed by her family’s business and a major loner. The story wasn’t much fun, so I decided to lean in a little more to the things that people are curious about when dealing with death. I allowed myself to fold in a ghost story, which was inspired by the idea that Elaine could have a love interest who wanted to be a ghost hunter. I allowed Elaine to be more of a regular teen, who might be frustrated sometimes with peoples’ misconceptions of her family business, but who finds the whole thing sort of mundane—until she starts discovering voices from the past. From there, the plot came together much more naturally.
Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?
Not really. I feel like things always evolve as I write them. Often the story I think I want to tell ends up being something totally different by the time I’ve shared it with critique partners and editors and let it marinate. I’m a big reviser!!
Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?
I usually don’t have a shortage of ideas, but many of them I don’t feel confident in my ability to pull off. Ideas for the longest time came from elements in my life—relationships I remember or something one of my kids did. Those are always just a starting kernel, though. None of my books is truly based on real life.
Lately, I’ve been more intrigued by ideas than real events. I’ve got one whopper of a story I want to try and tell, and I’m terrified I won’t be able to make it work. For that reason, I’m starting to think I really need to try.
How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?
I honestly go with whichever one feels the easiest. Sometimes I’ll have the main character’s voice already, or an idea of a few major events. In that case, I’ll get started and see where it takes me. Sometimes I’ll go with whichever idea feels like the most fun. I have to enjoy what I’m writing, otherwise I won’t be able to power through the inevitable slog phase, when everything feels hard.
I have 6 cats and a Dalmatian (seriously, check my Instagram feed) and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?
I have a ton of pets and I love every single one of them! My poodle mix Ruby will curl up with me if I’m writing in bed or on the couch. If I’m in my study, my Shepherd mix Foster is in his bed a few feet away. I find their presence comforting, and getting up to feed them or let them outside can be a great way to clear my head when I need it. Cats can be distracting, as I’m sure you know, when they decide they want to lie right on your keyboard or nuzzle your face when you’re trying to edit. But when my grey tiger Muffin decides to curl up in my lap, I feel truly lucky. Those are always good writing session!
Sara Bennett Wealer grew up in Manhattan, Kansas (the “Little Apple”), where she sang with the choir and wrote for her high school newspaper. She majored in vocal performance at the University of Kansas before deciding she had no business trying to make a career as an opera singer. She transferred to journalism school, where nobody cares if you can hit a high C or convincingly portray a Valkyrie. Since then, Sara has been fortunate to make her living as a writer. She started as a beat reporter, then went on to work in public relations and advertising—even theme park design. Sara lives in Cincinnati with her husband and daughters, and she still sings when her schedule allows—most recently with the May Festival Chorus, the official choir of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.