Celebrating Perserverance: Come Share Your Story!

Although you will find me mostly on my author's blog here, I wanted to share this post with all of you who have not yet subscribed to it (please check it out!)

Today I am happy to be part of Writers Persevere!, an event that
authors Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi are running for the next few days to
celebrate their release of their newest book, The Emotional Wound Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Psychological Trauma.
This book looks at the difficult experiences embedded in our character’s
backstory which will shape their motivation and behavior afterward. 

Because Angela and Becca have spent the last year exploring painful human struggles, they wanted to highlight a very important aspect of overcoming difficult circumstances: it can make us stronger. I promised to let Angela hijack my blog
today, so please read on!

***

Hi everyone! When you set out to find examples of
inner strength, you don’t have to go very far. Right here in the writing
community we see it every day. Writers more than anyone understand the swirl of
emotions as we work toward publication. We dream of making it and seeing our books in the hands of readers…yet doubt and
frustration can be a constant companion. For us, there is a lot to learn, much
to steel our nerves for, and unfortunately, a host of real-world problems that
can try to derail us. And, even as we slowly move forward and grow, we
can sometimes feel like impostors. This is a tough road.

But the fact that writers face this battle,
day after day, and KEEP GOING…this should be celebrated! We need to be reminded
that we are much stronger than we sometimes believe. We dream, create, and
force ourselves to keep striving. Through the ups and downs, we persevere!

Have you encountered something on the
writing road that made you question yourself? Have you faced an obstacle that
required a force of will to get past?

If so, we want to hear about it! Join Becca and me at Writers
Helping Writers from October 25-27^th, where we are celebrating
writers and their stories of perseverance. Stop in, and tell us about a
challenge or struggle your faced, or if you like, join this event by writing a
post on your own blog and share it using the hashtag #writerspersevere.  Let’s
fill social media with your strength and let other writers know that it’s
okay to question and have doubts but we shouldn’t let that stop us. 

GIVEAWAY ALERT! 

We also have a prize vault filled with items
that can give your writing career a boost, so stop by Writers
Helping Writers. I would love for one of you to win something that will
help you get closer to your goal!

If you struggle, remember to reach out to others. We are in this together, and by supporting one another, we cross the finish line
together (and then keep going!). 

Happy writing!

Angela and Becca

Writer's Block or Procrastination??

It's good to be working on my biblical fiction chapter book after a couple of frustrating months. I just couldn't put my fingers to the keyboard. Then I pondered the answer to the question above.

I'm honored to have my post featured on Becky Fyfe's ChaBooCha (Chapter Book Challenge) Blog today.

Which do you struggle with? Find help HERE.

A pic of Charles Dicken's manuscript reject pile, from his home office in London. It's preserved to remind us we aren't the only ones who struggle.

The Write Connections

I'm posting my writer's journey as a pre-published author on Julie Hedlund's 12x12 blog today. Stop by to find out more about the connections I have made thus far!

Tool # 50: Own the tools of your craft.

. . .Build a writing workbench to store your tools.

We now come to the last chapter in "Writing Tools" by Roy Peter Clark. A very helpful summary, but difficult to condense!  Here we go:

"I've designed this final chapter as a guide for you to build a workbench to store your writing tools. So far, I have organized these tools into four parts. We began with nuts and bolts, things like the power of subject and verb, emphatic word order, and the difference between stronger and weaker elements in prose.

     From there we moved to special effects, ways of using the language to create specific and intended cues for the reader. . . The next part offered sets of blueprints, plans for organizing written work to help bothe the writer and the reader. . .This last part coalesced earlier strategies into reliable habits, routines that give you the courage and stamina to apply these tools. . .

     One final step requires you to store all of your tools on the shelves of a metaphorical writer's workbench. I began learning how to do this back in 1983 when Donald Murray, the teacher to whom this book is dedicated, stood in front of a tiny seminar room in St. Petersburg, Florida, and wrote on a chalkboard a blueprint that forever changed the way I taught and wrote. It was a modest description of how writers worked, five words that revealed the steps authors followed to build any piece of writing. As I remember them now, his words were:

     IDEA.

               COLLECT.

                                  FOCUS.

                                                 DRAFT.

                                                                 CLARIFY.

In other words, the writer conceives an idea, collects things to support it, discovers what the work is really about, attempts a first draft, and revises it in the quest for greater clarity.  .  . Here's my annotated version:

Sniff around. . .all good writers express a form of curiosity, a sense that something is going on out there, something that teases your attention, something in the air.

Explore ideas. The writers I admire most are the ones who see their world as a storehouse of story ideas.  They are explorers, traveling through their communities with their senses alert, connecting seemingly unrelated details into story patterns. . .

Collect evidence. I love the wisdom that the best writers write not just with their hands, heads, and hearts, but with their feet. . .The great Francis X. Clines of the New York Times once told me that he could always find a story if he could just get out of the office. . .

Find a focus. What is your essay about?. . .Get to the heart of the matter . . .Getting there requires careful research, sifting through evidence, experimentation, and critical thinking. . . 

Select the best stuff. One great difference stands between new writers and experienced ones. New writers often dump their research into a story or essay. . .Veterans use a fraction, sometimes half, sometimes one-tenth of what they've gathered. . . A sharp focus is like a laser. It helps the writer cut tempting material that does not contribute to the central meaning of the work.

Recognize an order.  .  . What is the scope of your work? . . .Working from a plan, the writer and the reader benefit from a vision of the global structure of the story. . .

Write a draft. Some writers write fast and free. . .other writers. . .work with meticulous precision. . .But here's the key: I once believed that writing began with drafting, the moment my rear hit the chair and my hands hit the keyboard. I now recognize that step as deep in the process, a step that becomes more fluid when I have taken other steps first.

Revise and clarify. Don Murray once gave me a precious gift, a book of photographed manuscript pages titled Authors at Work. In it you. . .watch as the novelist Honoré de Balzac write dozens upon dozens of revisions in the margins of a corrected proof. You can observe Henry James cross out twenty lines of a twenty-five line manuscript page. For these artists, writing is rewriting.

     Sniff. Explore. Collect. Focus. Select. Order. Draft. Revise.

     Don't think of these as tools. Think of them as tool shelves or toolboxes. . .

A blueprint of the writing process will have many uses over time. Not only will it give you confidence by demystifying the act of writing. . .provide you with big boxes in which to store your tool collection, but it will also help you diagnose problems in individual stories. . .account for your strengths and weaknesses. . . and build your critical vocabulary for talking about your craft, a language about language that will lead you to the next level.

We have now come to the last WORKSHOP:

-With some friends, take a big piece of chart paper and with colored markers, draw a diagram of your writing process. Use words, arrows, images, anything that helps open a window to your mind and method.

This is my final post focusing on the formal craft of writing. I hope you have found useful these chapter tidbits from Roy Peter Clark's book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies For Every Writer," published by Little, Brown and Company. You can find a copy here.

From time to time, I am inspired by an event, film or book that begs to be commented on. In future posts, I will share my insights, which I hope will prove to be meaningful. Until then, is there any topic that would resonate with you here on my blog? What would you like to see posted here?

I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Tool # 48: limit self-criticism in early drafts.

. . . Turn it loose during revision.

This is certainly what holds me back as a writer: self-criticism.  Since many writing-related challenges are in full swing, I think this is a perfect topic for today's post!

Roy shares from two books on writing, both published in the 1930's: "Becoming a Writer" (1934), by Dorothea Brande, and Brenda Ueland's,  "If You Want to Write" (1938).

"Brande. . .is most powerful on the topic of self-criticism. To become a fluent writer, she argues, one must silence the internal critic early in the process.  The critic becomes useful only when enough work has been done to warrant evaluation and revision.

Four decades later, (Roy goes on to say), another writer, Gail Godwin, would cover the same territory in an essay titled "The Watcher at the Gate." For Godwin, the Watcher is the "restraining critic who lived inside me," and who appeared in many forms to kick the doors of her creativity:

'It is amazing the lengths a Watcher will go to keep you from pursuing the flow of your imagination. Watchers are notorious pencil sharpeners, ribbon changers, plant waterers, home repairers and abhorrers of messy rooms or messy pages. They are compulsive looker-uppers.mthey cultivate self-important eccentricities they think are suitable for "writers" and they'd rather die (and kill your inspiration with them) than risk making a fool of themselves.'

Brenda Ueland, writing on the same topic of self-criticism notes that "all people who try to write. . .become anxious, timid, contracted, become perfectionists, so terribly afraid that they may put something down that is not as good as Shakespeare."  

"That is one loud critical voice, one bug-eyed watcher", Roy observes.

For Godwin (Mr. Clark continues), weapons against the watcher include such things as deadlines, writing fast, writing at odd times, writing when you are tired, writing on cheap paper, writing in surprising forms from which no one expects excellence.

So, how can we put this all to use in the WORKSHOP?

Try this:

Godwin writes that she fools the Watcher by disguising the form of writing. So if she is working on a draft of a short story, she may disguise it in the form of a letter. The next time you struggle with a story, put a salutation at the top ("Dear friend") and write a message to your friend about the story. See what happens.

I hope you found useful this chapter tidbit from Roy Peter Clark's book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies For Every Writer," published by Little, Brown and Company. You can find a copy here.

NEXT WEEK: Tool #49 Learn from your critics

Tool #47: Recruit your own support group.

. . .Create a corps of helpers for feedback.

". . .In the real world, writing is more like line dancing, a social function with many partners. . .

     You must create a system of support both wide and deep. If you limit yourself to one classroom teacher or one editor, you will not get the help you need. You must create a network of friends, colleagues, editors, and coaches who can offer feedback--and maybe an occasional feedbag.

Roy goes on to suggest later that we:

"Work on developing the support system you need and deserve." 

And he then lists the kinds of people he needs:

* A helper who keeps me going.  For years, my teaching partner Chip Scanlan has played this role for me, especially when I am working on a long project. . .He says to me, over and over again, "Keep going. Keep writing. We'll talk about that later."

* A helper who understands my idiosyncrasies. All writers have quirks. The fleas come with the dog. . .My wife, Karen, understands this. While I cower under the covers with my dog Rex, she sits at the breakfast table, crunching her Rice Chex, reading my story in the paper and making sure no unforeseen horror has appeared. "All clear," she says, to my relief.

* A helper willing to answer my questions. For many years writing coach Donald Murray has been willing to read my drafts, and he begins by asking me what I need from him. . .My response might be, "Is this too Catholic?" or "Does this seem real enough to publish as a memoir?" or, "Just let me know if you find this interesting." 

* An expert helper to match my topic. My current interest often dictates the kind of helper I need. When I wrote about the Holocaust, and the history of anti-Semitism, I depended on the wisdom and experience of a rabbi, Haim Horowitz. When I wrote about AIDS, I turned to an oncologist, Dr. Jeffrey Paonessa. Such people may begin as interview subjects, but the deeper you get into a topic, the more they can turn into sounding boards and confidants.

* A helper who runs interference. Joyce Barrett blessed me with her assistance for twenty years. I especially remember the morning she came to work, saw that I was writing, closed my office door, and put a motel-style Do Not Disturb sign on the handle. . . .

* A coach who helps me figure out what works and what needs work. For more than a year, an intern named Ellen Sung edited a column I wrote for the Poynter Web site. She could articulate the strengths of a column, ask great questions that would lead to revisions and clarifications, and framed negative criticism with persuasive diplomacy."

He ends with this paragraph:

"You may choose these helpers one by one, but over time they form a network, with you at the center. You may address them as a group via e-mail or ask them in various combinations to help you solve a problem. You can test the criticism of one against the wisdom of another.  You can fire one who gets too bossy. You can send another flowers or a bottle of wine. It's good, on occasion, for the writer to be the king--or queen." 

Now put this tool to use in the WORKSHOP:

--Look at the six categories of helpers described above. Make a list of six people who might be able to serve you in these capacities. Rehearse a conversation with each with the goal of expanding your network.

I hope you found useful this chapter tidbit from Roy Peter Clark's book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies For Every Writer," published by Little, Brown and Company. You can find a copy here.

Next week I feature another of Roy's "Useful Habits": "Limit self-criticism in early drafts."

Tool #46: Take an interest in all crafts that support your work.

. . . To do your best, help others do their best.

Roy Clark opens his chapter with these words:

"I abhor the image of the writer as a solitary figure. That romantic stereotype, associated with loneliness and struggle, has alienated many aspiring writers and blown a cloud over one of the craft's shining truths: that writing is a social activity. . . "

He goes on later to explain:

"In fact, you will never reach your potential as a writer unless you take an interest in all of the associated literary crafts. Cultivate this habit: ask questions about the craft of copy editing, photography, illustration, graphics, design and Web site production.  You need not become an expert in these fields, but it's your duty to be curious and engaged. One day, you will talk about these crafts without an accent. . .

As I develop as an author and journalist, these key figures continue to make my work better:

-Copyeditors. . .think of copy editors as champions of standards, invaluable test readers, your last line of defense.  .  . talk to copyeditors. Learn their names. Embrace them as fellow writers and lovers of language.  Feed them chocolate.

-Photographers. Make sure photo assignments are considered early in the process, not as an afterthought . . .Let the photographer teach you about focus, framing, composition, and lighting. Ask the photographer what you can do to help.

-Designers. . . Learn from them what you need to see and bring back from a scene, material that can be converted into sparkling visual and design elements. Ask your editor and visual journalists how you can  help them while you are doing research or writing early drafts."

Roy ends with a colleague Bill Boyd's Platinum Rule: Treat others the way they want to be treated.

Now a suggestion from Roy's TOOLBOX:

- Read about the associated crafts. Find a good book on photography. Read some design magazines. Listen to conversations about these crafts and develop a lexicon so that you can chime in.

I hope you found useful this chapter tidbit from Roy Peter Clark's book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies For Every Writer," published by Little, Brown and Company. You can find a copy here.

Four chapters to go!  Next week? "Recruit your own support group"

Writing Tool #45: Break long projects into parts.

 . . . Then assemble the pieces into something whole.

Anne Lamott's book Bird by Bird gets its title from an anecdote about her brother.  At the age of ten, he struggled with a school report on birds.  Lamott describes him as "immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead," but then, "my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'

     We all need such coaching to remind us to break long projects into parts, long stories into chapters, long chapters into episodes.  Such advice is both encouraging and practical. . .Tiny drops of writing become puddles that become rivulets that become streams that become deep ponds.

Then Roy speaks from his own experience:

You are now reading Tool 45-- in what was once a yearlong online series -- headed for Tool 50.  If I had said to my editors, "You know, I'd like to write a book of writing tools, "I never would have done the work.  At the front end, book projects seem impossible to get your arms around, like hugging a polar bear.  Instead, I pitched the writing tools project as fifty short essays, delivered at the rate of one or two per week. . . 

Bird by bird, tool by tool, line by line.

Let's put this tool to work in Mr. Clark's WORKSHOP:

- Admit it. You want to write something bigger than you've ever written before, but you can't get your arms around the project.  The length or breadth of it intimidates you.  Cut up the monster.  In a day book or journal, break it up into its smallest parts: chapters, sections, episodes, vignettes.  Without referring to any note or research materials, write one of these small units.  See what happens.

I hope you found useful this chapter tidbit from Roy Peter Clark's book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies For Every Writer," published by Little, Brown and Company. You can find a copy here.

Next week?  "Take an interest in all crafts that support your work."  Join us!

Writing Tool #44: Save string

. . . For big projects, save scraps others would toss.

Roy Peter Clark shares his methods for collecting project ideas:

". . .To save string, I need a simple file box.  I prefer the plastic ones that look like milk crates.  I display the box in my office and put a label on it, say, "The Plight of Boys."  As soon as I declare my interest in an important topic, a number of things happen.  I notice more things about my topic. Then I have conversations about it with friends and colleagues.  They feed my interest. One by one, my box fills with items: an analysis of graduation rates of boys versus girls; a feature on whether video games help or hinder the development of boys; a story about decreasing participation by boys in high school sports.  This is a big topic, so I take my time. Weeks and weeks pass, sometimes months and months, and one day I'll look over at my box and hear it whisper, "It's time." I'm amazed at its fullness, and even more astonished at how much I've learned just by saving string. . .

. . .The trick for me is to grow several crops at the same time.  Fertilize one crop, even as you harvest another. In my office I have several boxes with labels on them. . AIDS, the Holocaust, racial justice, the millennium, World War II, literacy. These are topics of inexhaustible interest, capable of generating a lifetime of reporting, storytelling and analysis. Each one, in fact, is so huge, so imposing, it threatens to overpower the writer's energy and imagination.  This is the reason to save string.  Item by item, anecdote by anecdote, statistic by statistic, your boxes of curiosity fill up without effort, creating a literary life cycle: planting, cultivation, and harvesting. . ."

Here is a suggestion from Roy's WORKSHOP:

-Review your writing from the last couple of years.  List your big categories of interest and curiosity.  For which of those topics do you want to save string?

This was another chapter tidbit from Roy Peter Clark's book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies For Every Writer," published by Little, Brown and Company. You can find a copy here.

Next week I will feature Tool # 45: Break long projects into parts.  This is a tool we can all put to use immediately.  I'm looking forward to sharing it with you.  Any ideas for my next "Monday Mechanics" book or topic?

Useful Habits: Tool #43 Read for both form and content.

. . . Examine the machinery beneath the text.

"If you piece together a puzzle, you benefit from the image on the box.  If you try a new recipe, it helps to see a photo of the finished dish.  If you work with wood, you need to know the difference between a bookcase and a credenza.  The writer must answer this question: what am I trying to build?  And then this one: what tools do I need to build it?

     Whenever I take a big step in my writing, I begin by reading.  Of course, I read for content.  If I'm writing about anti-Semitism, I read Holocaust memoirs.  If I'm writing about AIDS, I read bio-medical texts and social histories of the disease.  If I'm writing about World War II, I read magazines from the 1940's.  So, by all means, read for content.

     But also read for form, for genre.  If you want to write better photo captions, read old issues of LIFE magazine.  If you want to become a better explainer, read a great cookbook.  If you want to write clever headlines, read the big city tabloids.  If you want to write a screenplay about a super hero, read stacks of comic books.  If you want to write witty short features, read The Talk of the Town in New Yorker magazine. . .

     When you find you can't put a story down, you should put the story down.  Put it down and think about how it works. What magic did the writer conjure to propel you from paragraph to paragraph, page to page, chapter to chapter? I call such an act X-ray reading. . ."

Roy then goes on to give examples.  Here are three:

• Sample--for free--a wide selection of current magazines and journals in bookstores that sell coffee.
• Read on topics outside your discipline, such as architecture, astronomy, economics, and photography.
• Read with a pen nearby.  Write in the margins.  Talk back to the author.  Mark interesting passages.  Ask questions of the text.

Along with those suggestions, try this tool from Roy's WORKSHOP:

--Find an author to admire.  Read several works by this writer with a pen in hand.  Mark passages that work in special ways.  Show these to a friend and X-ray them together.  What writing tools did you find?

This was another chapter tidbit from Roy Peter Clark's book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies For Every Writer," published by Little, Brown and Company. You can find a copy here.

Next week, tune in for Tool #44: Save string. . .For big projects, save scraps others would toss.

Sounds like good advice!  Can't believe we have only 7 more tools to go. . .I hope you are finding these posts helpful.  Do you struggle with a certain aspect of the writer's craft?  If so, let me know what it is in the comments below.  It will aid me in deciding what book to concentrate on next.

Tool #42: Do your homework well in advance.

. . .Prepare yourself for the expected--and unexpected.

Today I am featuring another chapter tidbit from Roy Peter Clark's book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies For Every Writer," published by Little, Brown and Company. You can find a copy here.  This last section of chapters is entitled, "Useful Habits."

"That great writing coach Prince Hamlet said it best: 'the readiness is all.' Good writers prepare for the next big writing project, even if it is not yet on the radar screen,  they expect the unexpected.  Like Batman, they cinch up a utility belt loaded with handy tools.  They fill a reservoir of knowlege they can drain at a moments notice.

     Virginia Woolf argued famously that to prepare to write fiction, women would need some money and 'a room of one's own.'  Her contemporary, Dorothea Brande, describe a more disciplined form of writing preparation:

Mind you, you are not yet to write it.  The work you are doing on it is preliminary.  For a day of two you are going to immerse yourself in these details; you are going to think about them consciously, turning if necessary to books of reference to fill in your facts.  Then you are going to dream about it. . . There will seem no end to the stuff that you can find to work over.  What does the heroine look like?  Was she an only child, or the eldest of several?  How was she educated?  Does she work? (from Becoming a Writer)

She then cites novelist Ford Madox Ford, who adhered to an even more exacting regimen:

I may. . .plan out every scene. . .in a novel before I sit down to write it. . . I must know--from personal observation, not reading-- the shape of windows, the nature of doorknobs, the aspect of kitchens, the material of which dresses are made, the leather used in shoes, the method used in manuring fields, the nature of bus tickets.  I shall never use any of these things in the book.  But unless I know what sort of doorknob his fingers close on how shall I . . .get my character out of doors?

So, with these quotes, let's go on to the WORKSHOP:

-With the help of a friend, list possible big writing projects that could emerge from your specialty or area of interest.  Begin homework on these topics, preparation that will help you down the road.

Next week's excerpt is from the chapter: "Read for both form and content."  Stay tuned!

Tool #41: Turn procrastination into rehearsal.

. . .Plan and write it first in your head.

Today I am featuring another chapter tidbit from Roy Peter Clark's book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies For Every Writer," published by Little, Brown and Company. You can find a copy here.

Almost all writers procrastinate, so there's a good chance that you do too.  Even among professionals, delay takes many forms.  The film reviewer checks yet another trip to Starbucks, his fourth tall vanilla latte of the day.  The famous scholar stares into space. . . 

The word procrastinate derives from the Latin word cras, meaning "tomorrow." Never write today what you can put off until tomorrow.  With that sentiment, writers experience procrastination as a vice, not a virtue.  During the process of not writing, we doubt ourselves and sacrifice the creative time we could use to build a draft.

     What would happen if we viewed this period of delay not as something constructive, even necessary?  What if we found a new name for procrastination?  What if we called it rehearsal?

    A wonderful teacher of writing named Donald Graves began to notice that even little children engage in this process of mental preparation.  He discovered that the best young writers rehearsed what they wanted to say. . .Put simply, productive authors write stories in their heads. . . Each act of procrastination can become a time of planning and preparation.

And now, Roy gives you a tool to use in his WORKSHOP:

-Have a conversation with a writer who seems to be procrastinating.  In a diplomatic and supportive way, ask open-ended questions about the writing: What are you working on?  How's it going.  It turns out that talking about the writing can transform procrastination into rehearsal, maybe even into action.

Next week, another tool from the "Useful Habits" section: "Do your homework well in advance."  Stay tuned!

Tool #40: Draft a mission statement for your work.

. . .To sharpen your learning, write about your writing.

Today I am featuring another chapter tidbit from Roy Peter Clark's book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies For Every Writer," published by Little, Brown and Company. You can find a copy here.

We are now in the fourth and last part of the book, entitled "Useful Habits". . .

In 1996 the St. Petersburg Times published my series "Three Little Words," the story of a woman whose husband died of AIDS. The series ran for twenty-nine consecutive days and received unprecedented attention from local readers and journalists everywhere. . . 

     Good writers turn stories into workshops, intense moments of learning in which they advance their craft.  I learned more about reporting and telling stories from "Three Little Words" than from any other writing experience of my life.  I'm still learning from it.  But I did not learn how much I learned until I stumbled on a strategy I've turned into a tool: I write a mission statement for each story. 

Roy goes on later to say:

I scribbled my mission for "Three Little Words" on two pages of a legal pad.  It covers the content and the form of the story, what I was writing about and how I wanted to write it.  My mission begins: "I want to tell a human story, not just about AIDS, but of the deeply human themes of life, love, death, sorrow, hope, compassion, family, and community."  The mission statement included these goals:

(I've chosen three out of Roy's five)

• I want to portray my protagonist as a fully human character--and not some kind of cardboard saint.
• I want to do this so people can identify with and care for her and her family. It's so easy to see people with AIDS as "the other," the outcast, suffering sinners.
• I want to do this in a form--twenty-nine short chapters--that will give people a chance to know, to learn, to care, to hope.

As for the format:

• I want to restore the form of the serial narrative to newspapers--using the shortest chapters possible.
• I want to reconcile the values of short and long writing in American newspapers.
• I want to write each chapter with (a) a stand-alone quality, (b) a cliffhanger ending, (c) a sense of a new starting point.

I cannot overstate the value of this exercise.  It gave me a view over the horizon as I drafted the story.  This 250-word mission statement, which took about ten minutes to write, helped create a 25,000-word series.  It provided the language I needed to share my hopes with other writers, editors, and readers.  It could be tested, expanded, revised--and it was--during the writing process.

Roy ends the chapter with these words:

     My "Three Little Words" workshop goes on and on as I hear from readers and journalists years later.  From this distance, I see things I would have done differently: reduce the number of chapters; make the reporting and writing methods more transparent; create a straighter narrative line by eliminating one flashback.  By writing that mission statement, I not only kick-started my own learning, but I also created a path where many others could ride along.

Now, use the tool in Roy's WORKSHOP:

1. Write a short mission statement for your next work.  Use it to think about your writing strategies and aspirations.  Share it with someone else, as a reality check, and to get suggestions on how to achieve it.

2. Study some of your old pieces, especially ones you deem successful.  Write a mission statement after the fact, listing what you learned from each.

Check in next week for Roy's 41st tool: Turn procrastination into rehearsal.