Writing Project Playlist: The Love Juke

While doing research or writing early drafts of a new story, I often enjoy playing music that matches the tale’s atmosphere. At least, what I think the atmosphere will be, as I don’t typically outline, and my early assumptions about the story may change—except for the original idea that excited me. I write the first draft in a blur, arguably creating a messy, verbose outline, and music can help propel me along, preventing me from overthinking and over-manufacturing plot and characters.

For my next novel manuscript, I’m envisioning a tale of love, darkness, fantasy, melodrama, the Northwoods, and a lot of ridiculousness. The following is the playlist I’ve put together, so far, with those concepts in mind. The playlist is called The Love Juke, and I’m digging it.

Enjoy the ear candy.

A Note About the Time I Failed to Quit Writing

This entry turned out longer than expected. I had planned to write about a small piece of good writing news, but I found that the backstory was relevant, and important for me personally, to jot down. So here we go.

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Once, before I understood query letters and the amount of effort required to edit a novel manuscript, I wrote and sent a manuscript to agents. Unsurprisingly, I received rejections and few responses. That was well over a decade ago.

Time passed. I learned more about the craft, and I wrote short stories, poems, novel manuscripts, and picture book manuscripts. A handful of short stories and poems were published, and about nine years back, an agent showed interest in one of my queries. While I was thrilled to be chatting with the agent, my life outside of writing was less than stellar. I had been making small-sized, medium-sized, and glorious-sized mistakes, as one does, and after a particularly glorious mistake that left me quite sad, I decided to quit writing. Cold turkey. I closed all of my files—almost deleted them—and I stopped sending the agent work. I believed writing was distracting me from dealing with my troubles, even causing them in some instances, and I became determined to build a stabler life of fewer mistakes.

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Before I quit writing, I had followed the misguided idea that, if you wanted a career as an author, everything else in life—work, relationships, travels—had to be secondary, and a distant second at that. It did not matter if you found yourself living paycheck to paycheck and emptied your savings, as I mostly did; it did not matter until it did, and I wound quitting one of the things I loved most.

So, when I decided to build the aforementioned stabler life, that primarily meant finding steady work to support myself. I devoted myself to this endeavor, and having little experience in anything but making things up, I applied to nearly 100 openings. This earned me a handful of phone interviews and two in-person interviews—one of which I followed up with by mailing a Thank You postcard, except I mailed it back to myself, and the second of which I forgot my umbrella at. Perhaps because of a successful George Costanza maneuver, the latter hired me as one of two customer service agents at a travel tech startup. The entire application experience became a great reminder that, despite rejections, it only takes one yes.

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I succeeded at not writing creatively for a year. Yay, me. However, ideas for stories and the desire to write never left, so I eventually allowed myself to restart—more like caved into restarting—but not without restrictions.

No longer would I write daily; no longer would I write for more than 30 minutes a session; and no longer would I write when friends invited me to events. I would have complete control over this creative outlet that I “once” loved, that had felt innate to me since I discovered it, and I set off, believing that I was happier when writing took a backseat to everything else. Having hindsight, I guess I enjoy spinning yarns to myself about my life, as much as I do about my characters’ lives.

Unsurprising to most reading this, my restrictions crumbled, but the breakdown was slow. Writing every few days became writing every other day became writing every day. A half hour of writing turned into an hour turned into two. Accepting most invites dwindled to accepting several dwindled to accepting some. What prolonged the collapse was my job. Focusing on building a career at the startup provided a wonderful distraction.

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I enjoy my day job, and as mentioned earlier, I had little “professional” experience when I started. Since finding stability remained important to me, I dove into the work, treating the startup like college courses: I asked questions about everything, sat in meetings I barely understood a word of, asked to read business proposals, and worked nights and weekends to brainstorm and pitch my own ideas for the company. I heard, “No,” a lot at first, but thankfully I stuck to the notion that it only takes one person saying, “Yes.” Through all of this, I learned customer service, social media and email marketing, business development, partner relations, coding, product design, and more. My intense immersion lasted for about five years, before my body forced me to listen to my inner voice, the one telling me to write more; I say “forced,” because I developed a few physical health issues from stress, rarely allowing myself time to relax and do more of the things I loved—whereas I had once sacrificed too much for writing, I was now sacrificing too much for work.

Moving with the speed of the Tortoise, I began rebuilding my writing habit and confidence. After I had some shorter works published, I set myself the goal of writing another novel manuscript. This was in 2019, and in the blur of a month and a half, I hammered out the first draft of a story that I had been afraid to write; some of the themes frightened me, as they were too related to past mistakes, small-sized through glorious-sized. Typing, “The End,” was cathartic, and I believed I could rewrite, edit, and finish the novel within six months. Three years later, after typing, “The End,” on the final draft, talk about over promising and under delivering. What I failed to take into account were all of the bad writing lessons I had to unlearn, how many good lessons I had to learn, how much doubt from inexperience would impact me, and let’s not forget the pandemic, which really strong-armed me into focusing on my health.

All that said, while the project took longer than expected, I am overjoyed to say that not only did I wrap up the manuscript, I also queried a handful of agents last week. It feels surreal. It feels like I set out to climb a dragon-infested mountain, took numerous detours out of fear, but ultimately scaled to the top, because that is who I am. A writer. Since I first began writing, a few people in my life mentioned that I was a writer first, and whatever else I was doing second—even at my current job—and I am willing to accept that, again, albeit by also recognizing that I can be and am other things too; balance is a quality I’m constantly trying to improve. I will be packing all of the lessons I learned into my writing backpack, as I climb the mountain of my next novel manuscript, one I am excited to begin this week.

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As to why any of this matters, why it was important for me to write a shortish retrospective, one of the newer, most important lessons in my backpack is to not fear failure. This includes not sweeping failures and mistakes under the rug. Whenever my confidence sank while writing the novel manuscript, I found myself emboldened to continue by listening to other creators discuss the struggles they overcame—many of these conversations can be found on The Bestseller Experiment podcast, which I will endlessly plug. Their stories reminded me that we are all human, sometimes orderly, sometimes messy, and for every beautiful thing we make, there are often beautiful disasters in their wake. Success is simply fewer mistakes, is simply perseverance, is simply a single yes away. I hope to add my voice to this conversation and inspire other creators, who find themselves stuck or beginning to stray.

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Thanks to everyone who supports and supported me, directly or indirectly. I hope you enjoy the stories to come.

A Starry—Or Not So Starry—Nonfiction Article

It’s been hectic, to say the least. Life in general has been. I’ll add more color to that claim later, but most of my sabbatical goals have been thrown for a loop. Disappointing, but it’s not all bad news around these parts.

The good news is that Smashing Magazine published my nonfiction article, Rethinking Star Ratings for Readers. The piece discusses some of the ways star ratings fail readers, and the write-up offers an alternative solution—with pretty pictures designed by me!—to review literature and better connect people.

The idea struck me a few years ago, and when it wouldn’t leave me alone, I finally decided to get it out of my head onto paper and pixels. I thought I would toss the finished product on this Journal and forget it, but as I wrapped up, I wondered if a publisher might be interested. And someone was. Just goes to show that you never know until you ask.

Big thanks to Smashing Magazine for sharing the piece and helping with edits, and to my friends who gave thoughtful feedback on earlier drafts.

One of the alternative solution designs that you can learn more about in the article.

Sabbatical Goals that Include More Work. I Am Excited.

I helped create a sabbatical benefit with the company I work for, and I am using the benefit mid-July through mid-October. I was the sixth hire and have been at the company almost nine years. Contributing to growing the business and devoting myself to learn as much as I could—customer experience, business development, coding, design, and so on—I put most of my mental and physical energy into the job. I love the work, the learning, the chance to collaborate with intelligent, empathetic, and creative teammates. I love the work, but I also love my personal life that I’ve neglected.

My company encourages vacation and time off—we’re a travel company, after all—but I can find it difficult to carve out time for life outside of work. No one at my job asks this of me. I love making things, and almost every day I can see how my projects help travelers and teammates. That drives me. However, my personal work, health, and relationships drive me too, and I want to invest more time in those going forward.

So I am taking a sabbatical from work to focus on personal interests and necessities. A big part of this will be concentrating on my health each day, as I have been dealing with chronic pain from various stresses for close to two years. I also plan to travel a little, heading to Scotland for a wedding, driving up to the Northwoods to see family, and potentially taking another short trip.

The other big part of the sabbatical will be for my personal projects. I will sit at my desk—or a desk or couch or log somewhere in the world—and make things most weekdays from 9–5, and I am excited. Mostly I’ll be writing, but I have a design idea or two I would like to explore. I am a week into the sabbatical, and I used that time to get a baseline for how much I can accomplish in three months. I set goals and timelines around what I learned, which I’ll share here to hold myself accountable. I’ll also post updates about progress and adjust the priorities as needed, since unexpected challenges or opportunities may pop up; I prefer not to be rigid, and mainly want to make things that I care about, and hopefully others will end up caring about them too.

Without further ado, my sabbatical goals in order of priority:

1. Finish L’ve novel manuscript edits and send to agents.

   • July 15 – September 15

2. Edit my picture book manuscript, Dream, Children, and send to agents.

   • July 15 – September 15

3. Research and likely launch a small lifestyle brand.

   • July 15 – September 15

4. Write the first draft of the next novel manuscript.

   • September 1 – September 30

5. Write a comic book script for the Top Cow Talent Hunt.

   • September 15 – October 15

6. Launch a newsletter for my website.

   • October 1 – October 15

7. Research and apply to writing grants for 2023.

   • October 1 – October 15

8. Write a picture manuscript for my friend to draw.

   • October 15 – October 30

9. Connect with writers on Twitter.

   • July 15 – weekly afterward

10. Continue sending stories already out in the wild.

    • September 1 – weekly afterward

11. Bonus, if time: either edit my middle grade novel manuscript or complete the Writer’s of the Future Fiction class and write a story to go with it.

Links to What I’ve Read About Star Ratings

I’m writing an article about star ratings, the ambiguity of them, mainly focused on how they fail readers.

While writing the piece, I’ve read a number of articles for research. Several are linked to in the article, but not all. I’m sharing most of them here for anyone who’s interested in the topic.

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Links that show people creating their own definitions for star ratings. One and two.

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An example of star ratings leading to extortion.

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How you can improve algorithmic recommendations from Goodreads—an algorithm that does not seem to pay attention to the context of your reviews.

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The 60 most reviewed books on Goodreads from the past five years.

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The Goodreads mission statement.

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A hoax xenophobic rating and review.

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A deep dive into why ambiguous rating scales fail people and companies, specifically looking at NPS scores.

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Amazon bookstore closures, where they stocked books that were four stars and above.

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The bot problem on Goodreads creates a trust problem.

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People do put some trust in algorithms.

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The Michelin Guide some people credit with starting the star rating fad.

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Mariana Starke, whom some people credit with inspiring what would become star ratings.

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The StoryGraph app that promotes rating and reviewing books with more context than star ratings give.

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A critical look at several UI and UX problems on Goodreads.

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How positive star ratings can sometimes seem too good to be true.

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An HBR article about problems with and solutions for the star rating system.

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Reasons to not care about star ratings.

You Should Be Free to Care for Your Health

I’m writing an article about star ratings and creating designs. This week, I had planned to share links to interesting resources I found, while researching the topic, but with Roe v. Wade being overturned, I’m sharing five abortion healthcare resources instead. When your health is at risk, not knowing how and where to seek care can make creating, just living, a struggle.

While this journal entry in my little corner of the Internet may not reach loads of people, even posting the links can improve the SEO for each site; every little bit helps. And remember, one of the most powerful ways to fight for your rights is to vote and promote voting.

No one should control your body, your health, but you.

Abortion Funds on Twitter

“A network of grassroots orgs building power to remove financial, logistical, cultural and political barriers to abortion access.”

Helmsinki the Abortion Link Fairy on Twitter

She gathers links to resources and shares them for one and all.

Plan C

“Plan C provides up-to-date information on how people in the U.S. are accessing at-home abortion pill options online.”

Planned Parenthood

“Your health is our highest priority and we believe your body is your own.” They will answer any questions you have about “new laws that change how and where you can get safe, legal abortions.”

National Abortion Federation

“The mission of the National Abortion Federation is to unite, represent, serve, and support abortion providers in delivering patient-centered, evidence-based care.”

A Final Date with Tommy Shelby

Image from Wikimedia Commons.

I remember our first date. I started watching Peaky Blinders because, in addition to the dark, atmospheric setting, the opening credits uses the song Red Right Hand by my favorite band, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. I watched until the third episode before I stopped. Something about Thomas and the gang was not resonating.

Years later, after recommendations from several people, I gave the show another go. I overlooked our rocky start, and by the end of the first season, I was hooked. I spent the next handful of seasons watching an antihero commit exceedingly unredeemable acts. By the beginning of the final season, he seemed like the devil that many characters referred to him as.

Without tipping my newsboy hat to spoilers, Thomas performs a number of horrible deeds that could make viewers lose interest in ever rooting for him again. It’s the show’s phenomenal writing that saves him, becoming a magnificent study in how to create and maintain a compelling antihero. Despite all of Thomas’s evil actions, characters more ruthless than him always rise to stand in his way. His only means of overcoming them—of protecting the family and livelihood he gained from his successes—is to become something stronger and meaner and worse. This is the show’s cycle, how it constantly raises the stakes to make viewers understand Thomas’s actions, regardless of if they agree with him. The final season hits a tipping point, and you wonder if Thomas has become that unredeemable devil, or if there is hope for change.

Despite their moralistic flaws, I’m glad I gave Tommy and the Peaky Blinders another chance. I enjoyed our relationship, and we ended on good terms. I’ll miss them.

Site Designs Left by the Wayside

I wrote in a previous entry that I designed too many versions of this site and wanted to stop. While that entry talks about how I ended up with the current iteration, I saved several of the unused versions. Here are a few mock-ups of those iterations, along with brief notes about my thinking process. You can kill your darlings, but that doesn’t mean you have to forget them forever.

The Altered Photos Version

This is one of the earliest versions I created. I grabbed images from Unsplash that represented published pieces of my work. I edited the pictures to be minimalist and suggestive, and I added text from my stories related to each one. My two main reasons for not using this version are: 1) the feeling the images and text create are inconsistent and chaotic across different pages, and 2) the images and text scale poorly on mobile screens.

The Darkly Colored Altered Photos Version

This concept is similar to the Alter Photos Version, except that I leaned into the original images more. The dark edges and subtle colors create a sense of mystery, and the quotes from my stories give a preview of the type of writing I typically do. The text is no longer a part of the images—unlike the first version—which helps it scale better on smaller screen sizes. I like this concept, but I decided against using it, because I constantly found myself second-guessing which stories to use quotes from and which pictures to use. Additionally, this version felt like it was missing a smidge of playfulness that can also be found in my writing.

The Dark Fairy Tale Version

I love fairy tales, with an even softer spot for the dark ones. While some of my stories can be labeled dark fantasy, this version of the site gives the impression that the genre represents all of my work. I appreciate the consistency of this iteration, but I wanted a more accurate representation of my writing.

The Dark and Playful Version

I enjoy writing children’s literature from time to time. I allow myself to use more lyrical language and fantastical ideas when I write in the genre. In this version of the site, I leaned into playfulness by adding weird doodles and writing each page like it was a book chapter with a summary. Ultimately the site felt like it skewed too heavily toward children’s stories—albeit darker ones.

The Literary Designer Version

I dig this version, how it leans into the text. On the home page, I like the large M/A symbol juxtaposed with the small prose type, and the color distantly reminds me of aged paper. Subsequent pages utilize large stylized prose for headlines, which feels both like chapter titles and summaries of each page’s content. The main reason I didn’t use this iteration was that I became burned out on designing the site, and I wanted to take a step back before choosing a final direction. That was when I thought up the concept for the current site.

Have thoughts on these versions or want to share iterations of your site? Feel free to message or tweet me.

200 Words a Day Challenge

If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen me tweet with the hashtag #200wordsaday. This comes from The Bestseller Experiment’s 200 Words a Day Challenge.

The basic premise is this: the best way to learn to write is to write consistently. Consistency builds habits, making what can feel like a chore—such as forcing yourself to sit in front of a screen and poke at a keyboard on a nice day—more like an everyday routine. So, if you’re struggling to build a writing habit, set a smaller writing goal that takes less time to complete, such as 200 words a day—which typically takes around 10–20 minutes, give or take, depending on your draft.

What a lot of people see from setting this goal is that they often surpass it; they unexpectedly end up sinking their teeth deeper into what they’re writing, and they become oblivious to opening their jaws and letting go. And on days when they do the bare minimum 200 words, they still feel good, because the challenge helped them with one of the most important parts of writing. It got them closer to finishing.

Back to the hashtag. Part of the 200 Words a Day Challenge is using the official website to document how much you write each day. This helps you stay accountable. Once you add your word count—I set a daily reminder—the Challenge recommends you tweet how much you wrote. This celebrates the work you did, encourages others to do the same, and it promotes the challenge to other writers—a hat-trick of benefits.

You can learn more on their site, or by listening to the Bestseller Experiment’s podcast, where they regularly mention the wins writers had from the challenge.

Happy writing.

Writer's of the Future Honorable Mention

A short one today to share that my short story, “Directions to Paradise,” was awarded an honorable mention in the Writer’s of the Future Contest. I received the certificate in the mail this month, and I opened it this week—yes, if you notice the date on the photo, I’m a little behind on mail.

I was going to file this away without mentioning it, but I’m also someone who encourages others to share their accomplishments, big or small. So I’m taking my own advice, hopefully inspiring others and maybe even teaching some of you about a contest you can enter.

Fingers crossed I can get this short story published. It’s one of my favorites.