e-Galleys & How To Advance Your Writing Skills
So much bookish news, Ep. 2 My Writing Journey, and my favorite things.
Merry Christmas, everyone! Are y’all ready for the holidays? I’m like, three-quarters ready. I have a few more presents to buy and wrap. But I’ve got my Christmas menu planned and groceries bought. We’re traditional Southern meal around here: spiral ham, cornbread stuffing, yams, and all the good stuff. Every Christmas morning I make a mountain of sausage balls, which my boys polish off by the end of the day. And for dessert, Chess Pie and Blueberry Cobbler. Most folks have never heard of Chess pie. Essentially it’s eggs, sugar, and butter. Comes out the constancy of pecan pie, minus the pecans. No clue why they call it Chess, but it’s so damn good.
And before I get to my book news, I have to tell y’all, I’m obsessed with hot cocoa lately. Like rich and creamy, cooked on the stove hot cocoa. A velvety thick drinkable dessert. So yum! Don’t give me that look when you see the butter in the photo. If you ain’t making hot cocoa with butter in it, you’re doing it wrong. Salted butter preferably. You’ll thank me later.
Book News
There’s just SO much great news to share with you this month. I’m blown away by everything my publisher is doing for my book. For starters, the first print run is set to be 100,000 books!! Holy Moses! Can you believe that?! I can’t. It just shows how much my publisher believes in this book! Now, I know they don’t print all 100K up front, they do it in batches, but still. That’s A LOT of books.
They also asked me help choose the narrator for my audio book! I’m thrilled I’m getting an audio book, not everyone does. The Southern voice has to be done just right, not too thick and backwoods sounding. You want to hear the voice and think, yeah, this could be my main character. And I think we have found the perfect person, I’ll share once we finalize.
And I’m saving the best for last…
ARC BOOK BOXES are going out to book influencers in January!
I’m so excited for these boxes and very pleased with what is going in them. It’s a surprise but in brief you’ll get the ARC, 3 small little things (that I freaking love), a custom piece of jewelry made by me, and a custom object custom designed by my cover artist who painted the crows on my book. Can’t wait!
There’s a limited number of boxes going out. So if you’re a book influencer and you want to be considered, be sure to comment on my Instagram post here, and I’ll forward your information to my publisher.
And ICYMI: e-Galleys for my book are now up for request on Netgalley and Edelweiss! If you loved Where the Crawdads Sing and Practical Magic, you’ll going to love In the Hour of Crows.
My Writing Journey
EPISODE 2 - HOW I ADVANCED MY WRITING SKILLS
I contribute a big part of my recent success to the fact that I put a lot of time and effort in leveling up my writing skills over the last seven years. There are quite a few factors that went into “leveling up.” I don’t think I was a bad writer before, but I do believe I was a descent writer. Maybe I’d even say a good writer. But what I’ve learned in the last 14 years, good isn’t always good enough to get published. Much less get published well, for me that meant big advance, big publisher.
I know you might be reading this post for the secret formula or hoping to find the shortcut answer that will change your writing game forever. It doesn’t exist. There are, however, things you can do to improve your writing skills and increase your chances of getting published and find the success you dream of. Let me first start by mentioning what you all have heard before and don’t want to hear it again, but I’m going to say it anyway…
BUTT IN CHAIR AND WRITE.
Write daily. Write often. Write consistently. You can’t get better at something if you’re not doing it. You can take all the courses, read all the craft books, and attend all the conferences you want, but if you’re not writing, you’re not improving. I’m not going to labor this point, you’ve heard it so many times by now you might not even want to keep reading. But it had to be said. Now that we’ve gotten that thorn out of the way, let’s continue..
FIND A TOUGH CRITIQUE PARTNER.
I could write an entire post covering all the aspects of critique partners. For now, I want to focus on the value in a tough critique partner. To start, a critique partner should be someone you trust, who you have built a strong relationship with, and who you are confident has a genuine interest in seeing you succeed. What is a tough critique partner? Someone who will be brutally honest. That doesn’t mean they are rude or mean, it means despite the fact it will be hard to hear, they will tell you anyway. A tough critique partner isn’t all negative, they should also tell you what’s working and what you’re doing well. But it’s the tough criticism where I find the most value.
What does a tough critique look like? It’s going to sting like hell, but you’ll know in your gut they’re not wrong. How can you be sure? What they tell you will ring with a note of truth. It will touch on that small thing you were worried about but hoped no one would notice. It will confirm that one scene you were unsure about, that actually does need more work. Or they will point to that one character you know you didn’t develop enough, and it shows. It’s not a bad thing to have someone confirm your doubts and fears. It’s an opportunity for growth. Is it easy to hear? Nope. Are you going to push back immediately? Yep. But once you get past the initial blow of the hard truth and you’ve let yourself fully digest it, then you’ll start to see they might have a point. It’s what you do with the information they give you that matters most. That’s where you grow as a writer. Listen to what they have to say and for everything you feel they had a valid point about, find a solution that works for your story and fix it. Not everyone has a thick skin, I sure didn’t when I started. But over the years I’ve honed my critique ear and realized it wasn’t personal. They had the courage to tell me the hard truth (because that’s not easy to deliver either), and I had the courage to listen.
DON’T SETTLE FOR MEDIOCRE.
Writing is hard, and sometimes you get so exhausted trying to fix a scene/chapter/book, that you settle for something that might not be your best work. Don’t get me wrong, what you have is good stuff. But compared to all the successful authors you admire and strive to be, does it measure up? When I was working with a writer’s coach (which I will talk about next) I sent her the first three chapters (of the first draft) of In the Hour of Crows. I said to her, “I freaking LOVE the first chapter. But the other two chapters feel off. What’s wrong with them?” Her response was one of the most eye-opening things ever said to me. She said, “That first chapter is special, it could only be written by Dana Elmendorf. Those other two chapters are run-of-the-mill, anybody could have written them.” Wow, talk about an awakening moment. That phrase, run-of-the-mill, spoke to me. What it meant in correlation with my writing became so crystal clear. From that day forward, everything I write is put through that lens, and it has not failed me yet.
How do you get rid of the mediocre? Press delete and don’t look back. Yep, you heard me. Delete it. Now, I’m not talking about something you just need rework/revise/tweak to get it better. I’m talking about you’ve worked your ass off on this scene/chapter/book, and you’ve done all you can do, and you like it, but you don’t love it. Delete it. (Or save it the dark pit of your computer but never open it again.)
Years ago I went on a writer’s retreat with CJ Redwine (YA author of The Shadow Queen), she talked how she rewrote her book from scratch, and I literally busted out laughing. There was NO way I was going to toss 75,000 words and start over. Fast-forward three years later, and that’s exactly what I did with In the Hour of Crows. I wrote and revised the hell out of the first draft and realized it was all wrong. I saved less than 25%, then started over. After the second rewrite, it was STILL wrong, so I saved maybe 35% of that and rewrote it again, from scratch, for a third time.
You have to free yourself from the “rework tangle” we get stuck in. Sometimes we get so fixated on saving our words, we never ask ourselves if we should. You did it once, trust yourself to do it again. I promise you, the result will be better than the first.
(For the record, that one chapter my writer’s coach loved and told me could only be written by me, it’s the prologue of In the Hour of Crows. While it has been revised quite a few times, it remains pretty close to the original draft.)
DIG DEEPER.
This one is a little hard to explain, but it was a huge part of me becoming a better writer. It was my mantra for seven years. I knew in my heart if I could dig deeper, I could get the career I always dreamed of. So how do you dig deeper? You’ve deleted your mediocre work, but don’t just start rewriting. Ask yourself, are you even telling the right story? Is this what the character really wants? What if you explore changing the story to something else entirely?
Write the story you believe is impossible to write.
The story that you think you’d never be able to write much less pull it off, because you don’t even know where to start and the work and effort to put into it would be astronomical—that’s the thing you write.
When you dig deeper, you are putting something on the page that you KNOW, without a shadow of a doubt, a reader will think, “Damn, that’s good. That’s different.” And if you’re not sure the reader will say or think that, then you didn’t dig deep enough. Now do that for every single page in your book. Dig deeper in yourself, into your imagination and find the words/ideas that are unique and different. Words and ideas only you could write. And when you think you’ve found something good, delete it and dig deeper. Gold is not easily mined. You have to dig deep into the earth to find it. Silver is precious, but gold has so much more value. Dig deeper within yourself to find the gold. It’s there, I promise you.
WORK WITH A WRITER’S COACH.
The final step to leveling up my writing skills came when I hired a writing coach. This isn’t a cheap option, but it was a game changer for me. I’ll write more specifically about that experience in a future newsletter, but for now I want to talk about what my writer’s coach did for me in general.
A writer’s coach is not a fairy godmother who sprinkles magic dust on you, and POOF, you’re a better writer! You still have to do the work. A writer’s coach takes what already exists inside of you, and makes it bloom.
She didn’t just show me how to discover my writing process, she showed me how to use it to my advantage. She taught me how to trust myself and to trust my gut and how powerful that can be once you do. She helped me figure out what tools work for me, and what tools I should quit using just because everybody else swears by them. She helped me see those “magic” moments when the muse randomly showed up, weren’t magical or random at all, but instead it was the tiny steps I had made that day (or the day before) that lead me to a successful writing session.
At every turn she kept showing me I had all the tools and knowledge already inside me, I just wasn’t using them or using them properly. The best way I can describe the experience, my writing practice was giant ball of Christmas lights that she helped me untangle. It’s not as simple as hiring her and everything will change. You have to be ready to receive what she’s telling you and proactively implement change.
Who is this incredible woman who I absolutely love? Heather Demetrios. You can visit her website to find out more information. She has many different packages to choose from, find one that’s right for you and your budget. Unsure if she can help you? Start with one of her smaller packages. She offers a free phone consult to see if you’d be a good fit to work together. Plus, her newsletter and website have tons of free materials as well, so be sure to check those out, too.
These are the things I attribute to my recent success. Your path to success might look different than mine, but hopefully you found something here helpful. Something you hadn’t considered before but would like to try or do different in your writing practice. What works for one person, does not always work for another. To become a better writer, you have to collect all the nuggets of advice and writing tools that resonate with you, then use them. Until they don’t serve you any longer then find a newer, better, different way to do things. A part of becoming a better writer is always striving to be a better writer. Never settling. Every story should demand something from you that will challenge how you’ve always done things, and have you searching for the thing you need to write it better. The path to growth is never easy. It’s called hard work for a reason. But to get the thing you’ve always wanted, you have to do the thing you’ve never done before.
If you’ve found my writing journey helpful, share it with a friend. Stay tuned for next month, as I talk about: My Tips to Getting Butt in Chair.
ICYMI, last month for My Writing Journey, I talked about Navigating Through 3 Agents. Definitely worth a read if you’re in the query trenches.
What I’m Loving Right Now…
I absolutely love my white and gold balloon dog. He sits on my new "Glam Chic” office bookshelf you can see here. Makes me smile every time I look over at him.
LOVING this black necklace! I love organic jewelry and long chunky necklaces. This boho piece fits my style so much.
What am I listening to? “Can’t We Pretend That We’re Good?” by Daniel Seavey. I know this song came out in 2022, but I’m obsessed with it. There’s a line where he says, “take it out on my body” and it’s just so hot in context with the song and how he fierce he sings it. Hoo boy.
Thanks for reading. I hope you have a wonderful holiday with your family and friends and I’ll see you guys next year!
xo,
Dana