Best Romance Novel (or Series) [NOTPoll]

What is the best romance novel (or series)? 

It's time to start a new conversation (remember we are not doing polls anymore). We've never done romance here on Writing About Writing and with Singles Awareness Day/Hallmark Holiday so close that I thought with EVERYTHING that's been written in the genre, it is time to recognize that even though a Harlequin Romance with a triple digit number on the spine might not, in a manner of speaking, be the literary event of the century, there's still some good stuff there over the years that deserves to be celebrated.

For those still getting used to NOTpolls or who remember the years and years of more traditional polls we ran here, there are still rules (below). But instead of trying to figure out what more people think is the BEST (which usually turns into which book has the coolest movie adaptation anyway), we're just going to have a good chat about good books and all come away with some suggestions for our To Be Read Pile™. We'll still have the system of seconds (and "thirds" and "fourths"), but all that will determine is which goes to the top of the list when I post the results. And I'll link out the original nomination post for folks who want to go see what people are actually saying about the book. Eventually these posts listing the results will be compiled in a massive "book recommendation" post.

One thing to note is that much of the romance genre (and a lot of the best of it) is cross genre. So while I won't police this, it's up to you to keep an eye on whether you're nominating a Romance Sci-Fi or just some Sci-Fi that happens to have a strong romantic subplot.

The Rules

• Make two recommendations. Obviously, I can't stop anyone from making fifteen, but nothing beyond the first two will make it onto the master list.
• TELL US ALL A LITTLE ABOUT WHY YOU LIKE THE BOOK (or series ) although obviously do so without spoilers! If you just drop a title name and it gets all the seconds, I'm still going to list it, of course, but the whole point of this is to have a "conversation" and gush a little about the books you think are great, exciting, well written, or unforgettable. 
• For each recommendation, let us know if you're nominating it more as a BEST book in the genre or an UNDERSUNG HERO in the genre. Basically "undersung hero" is for books you think are great, tragically overlooked, NEED to be read by everyone (like…yesterday), but are maybe not necessarily the besty bestest best. They'll all end up in the list I compile, but I'll put them in different places.
• As always, I leave the niggling over the definition of genres to your best judgement because I'd rather be inclusive. If you want to nominate The Thorn Birds as romance (even though it's probably better placed as family saga), you should show your work if you desire those sweet, sweet seconds (or thirds....or fourths) and there might be a discussion thread after your comment with a lot of people writing out the "If I may…"
• You get to mention two (2) books. That's it. Two. You can do one BEST and one UNDERSUNG HERO. Or you can do two BESTS. Or you can do two UNDERSUNG HEROES. But two is the total. If you nominate three or more, I will, with unimaginable cruelty, simply ignore the third and any subsequent books. I'm sorry that I'm a stickler on this, but it's just lil ol' me compiling this list by myself and it's a pain when people drop a spinosaurus list of every single book they can remember in the entire genre. However, you list more than two books and your third or later choice gets a second, I'll consider everything. (Even though that matters a lot less than it did when I was counting seconds to see which titles made the poll––see below.)
• Did I mention two?
• You may (and absolutely should) give a second shout out to AS MANY nominations of others as you wish. There is no more poll, so this will not be a cutthroat competition to see who makes it to the semifinals. It will simply dictate which titles I list first, and it may influence which books someone considers a good recommendation. ("This one got six seconds, and that one only got two, so I think I'll start with this one.")
• Put your nominations HERE. I will take nominations only as comments and only on this post. (No comments on FB posts or G+ will be considered nominations.) If you can't comment for some reason because of Blogger, send me an email (chris.brecheen@gmail.com) stating exactly that and what your nomination is, and I will personally put your comment up. I am not likely to see a comment on social media even if it says you were unable to leave a comment here. 
• You are nominating WRITTEN fiction, not their A/V portrayals. If you thought Bridgerton was a great Netflix show, but never really could get through Quinn's written version, please nominate something else. (I love film, but it's a different medium.)
• Have a conversation, but check the typical internet assholery at the door. If someone likes something you think is terrible, it's okay to let them enjoy it. And if someone has one tight and polite bit of criticism about your recommendation ("I was not a fan of the X plot arc or the way that author writes women."), it's okay that they didn't care for it and there's no need to defend it like they have impugned you honor for seven generations.  I **WILL** delete shitty comments, and I absolutely know that's highly subjective, so better to err on the side of nice. 
• TWO!

Hopefully, we all get some great book recommendations out of this new format. 

Dealing With the Inevitable

This is a bit difficult for me to say, but I've put it off for a couple of months and I can't any longer.

I wish things were going better than they are.

I would love to just wait until the pandemic was over and the economy was recovering before mentioning that I am a crowdfunded artist with rent and electric bills, but we're still looking at several months for a full vaccine roll out. And I waited as long as I could so that I wouldn't be passing the hat during a time of low productivity (or when most of my posts were a 2021 update/revision of the admin tabs at the top of the blog). But these last two weeks, I've punched out a lot of content, including even writing on Wednesdays, my usual day off, just to kind of show you what things will look like when the good times roll.

In the last two months, I've lost nearly a dozen financial backers. And several more have had to lower their monthly contributions to something they could handle more easily.

There's no question what's going on here. I'm not being "punished" for my politics or lack of productivity or anything silly. The global recession has begun to hit my patrons, and crowdfunding is one of the first things folks cut when a budget gets tight. A lot of folks are canceling or reducing their contributions, the holidays tend to hit wallets particularly hard, and I've lost a LOT of money in the last three months. There have been ups and downs, but overall things have been slipping.

So despite my intentions to wait until the pandemic wasn't hitting your wallets and MY productivity quite as hard, it doesn't seem like, in my neck of the woods, either the pandemic or the economic collapse is going to let up any time soon.

I absolutely adore my big donors, and it is not hyperbole to say that I literally couldn't pay my rent without them. But it's also true that I couldn't pay my rent without HUNDREDS of smaller donors. They form the foundation upon which my ability to have any financial security at all rests, and their steady and small contributions are the reason a big donor can have a life event and need to cancel their contribution and I don't immediately have a panic attack and wonder how I'm going to get by. 

One of the reasons I offer one of my best rewards to folks who sign up for my second-smallest tier––$3 a month––is because I value my small donors so much. I know it's a hard time for someone to find a significant chunk of their budget for crowdfunding, so I'm hoping to find a lot of folks who have $1, $3, or $5 to give.

I'm gonna keep doing what I'm doing one way or another. But my ability to keep these solid weeks coming depends on being able to say no to pet sitting, freelance writing work, extra nanny hours, and all the other ways I spackle together a big enough paycheck to live where I do. If you want to help me keep the rent paid and the lights on, right now I sure could use a lot of small donors to make up for some of these recent hits.

I'm getting tapped to do a lot of nannying hours during this pandemic (as I'm the only nanny that can form an isolated pod with my immunocompromised client), and that is keeping me from freaking out too hard about my lost writing income, but I need something from writing to still be there when this pandemic ends, and I go back to ten hours a week.

If you like what I do, and want me to keep doing it (and doing it more), I could use your help. 

Please visit my Patreon if you can help. Even a dollar or three a month makes a big difference when a lot of folks take that step. And the ongoing support allows me to plan and budget for the future.

If an ongoing donation, for whatever reason, isn't good for you, I'm also elated, of course, to get one-time donations as well. I can take donations through Paypal, Venmo (chris.brecheen@gmail.com) or arrange for some other form if electronic transfers don't work. Some people even literally send me checks in the mail.

Of course, the Patreon rewards aren't "worth" the amount of the tiers, but they are my small way of saying thank you for helping me stay afloat, and they go from getting in on backchannel status updates and a monthly newsletter all the way up to early access, a quarterly major newsletter, autographs, and even tutoring if you want it.

1-Thank you all so, so much. Even if you can't help. If you'd asked me ten years ago if I wanted a writing career to involve daily contact with readers, I would have reacted like some people do when you say the word "moist." Now I can't imagine my life without you all. I appreciate you all so much.

2-The algorithm for social media rewards engagement, so if you can't help financially but want to do something (or you want to help out doubly so), please consider reacting to this post and/or commenting. I'm told GIFs work the best, so feel free to have a gif party in the comments.

Why Do I Tell People To Write Every Day? (Hint: I Don't) [Mailbox]

Why do you tell people to write every day?

[Remember, keep sending in your questions to chris.brecheen@gmail.com with the subject line "W.A.W. Mailbox." I will use your first name ONLY, unless you tell me explicitly that you'd like me to use your full name or you would prefer to remain anonymous.  My comment policy also may mean one of your comments ends up in the mailbox. I might spare your anonymous sniper attempt the full death glare treatment if you are asking about some paramount social issue.] 

Anonymous asks:

Writing every day is a capitalist expectation of productivity and ableist bullshit. Why do you still bang that drum?

My reply:

I don't. 

And look, I know the Internet is where nuance goes to die, but you're going to have to stay tuned in past the soundbite if you want to understand what I AM saying, what I have BEEN saying, and the only thing I've ever really said on this matter since I started blogging and before.

Which is this: you decide your own level of involvement. 

I'm not quite going to give this the full-on "hate mail treatment" because this is actually a really important topic and not the regular conservative-dillhole-thinks-they're-slick bullshit, but my eyes are narrowed pretty seriously. You can't really follow my work with ANY rigor and walk away with the sense that I don't approach "write every day" with a fistful of caveats.

I've got articles here specifically about the ableism of prescribing "write every day" as immutable.

I've got multiple articles decrying the way capitalism fucks artists.

My guest bloggers (who I curate) regularly talk about ways to write less than every day. Yesterday's wonderful post, for example.

I've even written one such article myself.

I have an entire series of articles dedicated to not writing more than you want to, more than feels good, more than you enjoy. 

I've even got articles where I talk about how to live up to the expectation without being so damned hard on yourself as to think you need hours a day on your work in progress.

This is the #1 question in my F.A.Q. for fuck's sake. And guess what. That article literally says the opposite. You do NOT have to write every day to be a writer.

I don't know what else to tell you. If you think this is a thing I promote without a lot of disclaimers….pay better attention. And like….kinda….fuck off. If you want to yell at me, at least do it about something I'm actually saying. This shit where I take flak because someone couldn't be bothered to stick around and read the SECOND paragraph gets fucking old. Miss me with this shit where I'm the punching bag to every fuckcrumpet who couldn't read beyond a byline.

So now…why does "write every day" come up at ALL? Why not simply abandon the entire idea?

Because would-be writers keep asking how to "make it."

I'm not kidding. That's the reason. 

Get everyone to knock that shit off, and you'll see some varied advice for a change.

I don't know how to make this clearer than I have. The world of ambitious would-be writers is simply teeming with folks who do not really read, and perhaps even more outrageously who do not really write. They do not earn their ER. But they certainly still do get frustrated at their lack of book deals or careers or publishing accolades. And in a plot twist that Shyamalan couldn't have predicted, I used to be one of them. Back in the before times, I would get REALLY cranky that I wasn't a full time writer. I would hate the world where I had to work for money. I would hate the world where I couldn't just write. I would hate all the distractions.

But then when I had time to write, I didn't. I just went and found ANOTHER DISTRACTION. There was always one more thing that had to be done to clear the way for writing. One more chore that "just ate up the whole day." One more schedule shift to get the perfectly conducive-to-writing schedule. And I could ENDLESSLY divert myself into side quests. It drove my spouse absolutely furious. 

And my life didn't really start to change until I changed that approach. When I began to sit down and write every day (or almost every day), slowly over many years, I began to carve out the life in front of you —the life that people see and want and think I'm holding back from them the secret of obtaining it. 

You decide your own level of involvement.

"Write every day" is spectacular advice that a whole lot of people who want to be successful writers could stand to hear and incorporate. If you want to get better, write every day. If you want to capital-B "BE" a writer, you should try it for a while and see what happens to your creative flow. Even if it's just 20 minutes or half an hour a day. If you are frustrated at the fact that when you sit down, the words just don't come, the best solution is to write every day and make it a habit. If you want a career….well, it's like any other career (you can't do it twice a week). 

If you think you're NOT going to write every day (or pretty damned close) and be the next Stephen King or John Grisham or something…well…
  

But many would-be writers tool on their novel for a couple of hours a week and get REALLY frustrated with their lackluster writing career and even their lack of discipline to write for very long when they DO sit down. Or when they finish, no one seems to think it's very good. They can't get a book deal. If they self-publish, they end up selling a few copies to family and friends and did they really just make $472 off a book that took them five years to write? What happened to their DREAMS????? They crowd readings and literary functions and chat rooms and A.M.A.s and spam out that same question (or some variant) over and over and over. "How can I make it?" Working writers get badgered about their success all the time. Hectored. I get five to ten emails or PM's every day, and I'm a two-bit blogger barely scraping by. Imagine what Neil Gaiman or Zadie Smith have to deal with.

I've never EVER seen a would-be writer ask, "How can I be a contented hobbyist?" Or, "If I don't care about being rich or famous, but just want to see my name in print on ONE book, once, how can I make that happen?" That would be a strangely fresh breath of air to us. (And surprisingly EASY questions to answer, if you're curious.) 

The answer to the question of how to "make it" doesn't change. (I do try to get people to explain what they mean by "make it," although the answer is usually to be a comfortable working writer with a flourishing career.) There isn't a shortcut to this success. But folks will ask it over and over again like one day someone is going to say, "Look, actually, the answer is Omega 3s. It was never write every day. We were lying, and you finally broke us with the 7 billionth time you asked the question. Just eat more fish." Pretty soon, writers just start answering that question to head it off at the pass when they give general panacea advice. 

You might see a lot of memes like this that go around. I've even posted a few on WAW's Facebook Page. When the oxygen that writers breathe is that 1- most people are kidding themselves about how much work it takes to hone one's craft and 2- that everyone around them is demanding to know how to "make it," it is THIS argument that becomes the staple and the mantra, and the disclaimers and caveats and bells and whistles that are acknowledged when and how they come up.

I try to put such macros up with disclaimers these days because I would rather not deal with…well…frankly, with PM's like this one. But to be honest, it's not exactly wrong. Writing IS a muscle (or very like one) that gets stronger with use. Even writers who can't or don't write every day are going to caution you not to take long breaks because everything from your concentration to your imagination to your finger endurance will atrophy if you don't practice regularly. And absolutely no one will say that you're somehow going to magically get any better at writing by NOT writing. (Sitting around and waiting for inspiration before you write is fine if you only want to write for pleasure. It's not so good if you need a paycheck or if you ever want to finish a major project.) But back to this macro, the problem is that there's a prescriptive element in the imperative voice of the first sentence. How unlike a meme to tell someone how to behave…Oh wait.  I mean how unlike a meme to not to have all the nuance packed into two sentences….Oh wait. 

~tilts head~ "Oh macros!"

Imagine, I walk up to a dentist and say, "Mr. Successful Dentist, how do I MAKE IT as a dentist?" And they tell me that it's eight years of school or four years if I have a bachelor's (plus some math and biology prerequisites if my degree was liberal arts or something), and then probably I have to work a 60-hour week for a company or myself and probably six-day weeks for the first 10 years either to get the seniority or (if I want to build my own practice) grow the clientele and reputation that can support more of a comfortable 40-hour-a-week living. My reaction to that can be that it's ableist to ask anyone to go to school for that long or that capitalism sucks and its demands are ridiculous—that you shouldn't have to work sixty hours for half of forever just to have a normal labor work week a decade later on in life. All this is accurate and worthy of much discussion in our late capitalist society. And when you're done raging at the dentist for answering your question, two things will be true. 1- They will be sort of sorry they even bothered to answer. 2- You still won't be a dentist. (Nor would you be one if you practiced drilling into a tree every couple of months.)

Oh and here's the real kicker. A third thing will also almost certainly be true. When it's your mouth that they're digging around in with a drill and a spike, you're probably not going to want someone who's had less training or isn't as good because they "only work a couple of days a week."

See that's where this conversation (and advice…and the solicitation OF advice) gets so weird: you want expertise in what you consume. You want your brain surgeon to be the best. You want your plumber to have a good online rating. And you probably ask people if they have any good shows or books to recommend instead of just picking things at random.

I can't make the publishers with the book deals be nicer to you because it's ableist to ask you to write any more than you already are. I can't make your writing improve (without practice) to the point that lots of people want to read you because "productivity" is a capitalist concept. Oh, I absolutely agree with the premise ("This is ableist and productivity is a capitalist concept.") But I can't change the devotion with which "the best" approach their craft. Artists were working all day and night on their art long before what we would call capitalism was even a thing, and successful artists who are successful because they overdo it are basically one of those life clichés. 

And frankly, if we all were making UBI in a perfectly accessible world, everyone renowned in the field would still be driven and highly productive. Oh you'd see all KINDS of new voices! There's no doubt about that. Folks who could write instead of work three jobs just to get by, or people who weren't spending all their spoons trying to work a job that taxed them mentally or physically to the point where they just came home and collapsed. All those folks could devote themselves to writing. The field would open up to an entirely new (and fucking awesome) level of competition that pushed out legions of mediocre white guys who came from money. But, like professional athletes or professional musicians, the folks who you pay money to see "perform" or whose reputations precede them are going to be some of the hardest working fuckers you ever did meet. Even a niche writer like me, who can't make rent in the SF Bay Area without a second job and is deliberately taking it easier on doctors' orders, is clocking in 40 hours a week on wordsmithing. 

As long as I've been doing this, I've noticed one thing about every writer who has reached "success" (in some form that satisfied them)—they always had one thing in common: they looked for ways to write MORE (not less). They were always trying to find an extra hour here or there to eke out of their busy schedule so they could sit down and write. They never seemed to want to wiggle out of it and they never treated it like it was a burden.

But if all you want is to be absolved of the commitment to write every day, consider yourself absolved.  (I, Chris Brecheen, release you from your burdens. ~beam of light from the heavens~  🎶 Aaaaabsoooooluuuuuutioooooon" 🎶) If you don't want to write, don't write. I'm the first person with boots on the ground and the last to leave when it comes time to saying that the biggest problem with NaNoWriMo is that if you overdo anything (even if you love it), you'll end up hating it. It's true the other eleven months too. So don't overdo it. You decide what "too much" is. You decide your own level of involvement. 

Just….like…maybe manage your expectation that you're going to be a world-famous best seller by your next round-number birthday, okay?

Twice a week? Once a month? Thirty minutes a day, but not on days where your mental illness is at its worst. All good! It's all up to you. You do this for you. Stephen King didn't tell people six to eight hours a day "or fuhgeddaboudit" in On Writing because he wants you to go broke, lose your family, and shatter your mental health. He did it because, all day long, people ask him how to be like just like him. 

There's no glamor in this job (unless you're one of a minuscule handful of household names). The money is questionable and takes YEARS to manifest at all. If you don't love writing for its own sake and it feels like some damnable chore if you do it too much, DON'T DO IT THAT MUCH. ("Doc, it hurts when I do this!") Do it how much you love it—that's the only real reason to do art. Keep yourself healthy; mentally; and physically. Your art can't flourish if you're dying.

You decide your own level of involvement.

See, here's part of the problem: people don't listen to what I say about becoming a "successful" writer (whatever THAT means) and nod sagely and walk away better for their understanding of the tremendous commitment that being a working artist will take. And they don't do it with any of these other writers either. At least in no story that I've ever heard of. When they get this answer about working long hours and as close to "daily practice" as is manageable or feasible, they argue. They argue with the person who has answered their question. As if by explaining that no, actually, "I don't have time to write every day because I work two jobs," the working writer has the ability to say, "Oh well in that case, YOU are excused from this thing that almost all working writers do, and you will 'make it' by working two hours a week on your day off." 

As if it's the writer's fault the world sucks. As if the writer can make a special case for you because capitalism sucks.

They will insist that it can be done some other way. And if you check back in on them in five years, ten years, twenty years, they will not be writers*. Although there is a chance that they will still be insisting that it can be done some other way.

(*Unless they've learned to push through and do the work.)

So along with this deluge of people demanding to know how to "make it," there are a lot of people who will argue with the answer. And so you get an awful lot of would-be writers seizing upon any rhetoric they can to get out of that sense of obligation. They will say they can't write because of the shape of their chair. Or the schedule at work being swing shift instead of graveyard. The fact that they need to be off from work (but when they're off from work for vacation or even between jobs, they still don't write). Or that they can't until they get their new laptop with the ergonomic keyboard. Or that they can't so long as they are so busy with all the things going on. I'm not here to judge any ONE of these claims as valid or not (although even non-writers have heard all these things as fairly transparent excuses) but on a time-table of months and years, they somehow manage to NOT do this thing they claim to love more than any other thing. They still get cranky with writers who tell them to write every day and argue about the validity of what's just barely holding them back instead of contemplating that maybe writing isn't as enjoyable to them as they think.

Which is fine, great. Everyone has to have their "know thyself" moment, right? We all have to have to "come-to-Jesus" that we're not going to be millionaires or celebrities. But…writers getting asked how to "make it" are still the messengers getting shot. And more and more, lately, what I see has the vocabulary of self-care, mental health, and capitalism. 

You know how in video games you can put another skin on your character and run around as Big Bird or something. It doesn't change the game. If it was a gritty stealth game, it's still a gritty stealth game. You're just Big Bird. The game mechanics don't change to be that you get to make friends with everyone, Grover is the end boss, and you sing your way past problems. It's the same game. You're just Big Bird. So I gotta tell you as someone who's been doing this for a long, long time, that while I understand the criticisms against capitalism (probably better than the average leftist), and do my very best to be actively anti-ableist, I also recognize that sometimes I'm watching Big Bird do a stealth kill from behind with a bowie knife.

There are a lot of legitimate criticisms of prescriptive writing advice, and some of it is so obnoxious that it's pushing people to write more than they can while maintaining good health or life/work balance. But please be aware that even if you yourself personally are 100% on the level, much of this terminology has been picked up and APPROPRIATED by folks who….STILL….just don't want to sit down and work. Capitalism and ableism still suck, but that's not what THEIR problem actually is. 

And for fuckadoodle doo's sake, I am absolutely not here to be the arbiter of who's "really" able to write every day but found an argument that gets a lot of traction and gets folks off their case about it. I sometimes don't even answer that question when my friends solicit it of me directly.  Each person has to be honest (sometimes brutally so, but still it's not MY fucking job) with themselves about whether or not they're making excuses or legitimately taking care of themselves. 

And here's the fucking punchline: it doesn't change anything anyway. 

The answer of how to "make it" is still "a metric fuckton of work," and the formula for how to do that without something closely resembling daily work is such a tiny sliver of outrageous luck stories (Fifty Shades of Gray, for example) as to be hardly worth mentioning.

And everyone still has to decide their own level of involvement.

However….let me end on a hopeful note. One of the things I love about the Internet is that it has opened up a new….STRATA of writers. Used to be you either were sellable enough that a publisher thought they could sell the 8000 copies or so that was required to justify a print run (or so damn good, in the literary sense, that they were willing to take a loss), or you weren't. Period. End of discussion. Could you make a minimum print run profitable? That's the only question that mattered. Before that, you were selling short stories for low triple digits (if you were lucky) to establish your name. Other arts had community theater or local bands or weekend warriors. You could be in a garage band that got two gigs a month and was NEVER getting out of your hometown. You could be in a community theater where the ticket sales didn't cover much more than a strike party that would make Caligula blush. You could have your art on display in a little local gallery. You could make a little money without being a household name or being in a metropolitan symphony orchestra. It was basically like art's version of the minor leagues. But for a long time, writing was all or nothing because of the cost of printing. There was really no such thing as a semi-professional writer. 

Printing is….well, it's almost nothing if you consider electronics, and even physically printing things is cheaper than ever.

That sense of "making it" (or not) has followed us into the 21st century, but it's not really true anymore. There are grades and shades and degrees. There's a continuum now and it's fairly intricate. Writers can now make cell-phone-bill money. Second job money. Or be working writers without being traditionally published. (I am. Well mostly…I've had a couple of things published traditionally.) This sense that you have to be a traditionally published writer to "make it" is no longer accurate (and if you see what most advances and royalties are like, no longer very plausible either). 

So you can write an amount that doesn't push you past the point of self-care AND STILL MAKE SOME MONEY. You can be a part-time writer (and not a freelancer or content writer) and still get paid. There's a whole MIDRANGE of writing that now exists between pre- and post-book deal. And you can make enough in there to live a comfortable life. And you can follow the contours of your writing success as far as they can take you, dropping hours at your "day job" only when your writing is paying for the next step. And you can take care of yourself on days when writing is not an option; and when it is, it doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing payout. That "minor league" of writers exists now because of computers and the Internet.

Writing every day is still a spectacular idea if you want to get better at writing on a non-geological timeline, and particularly if you want to be the best (or highly renowned). Writing (almost) every day is basically unavoidable if you have ideas about "making it" that are "comfortable career"-ish in shape. (This is not unique to any career. When I managed restaurants, I worked five days a week and often a sixth day if another manager was sick or on vacation as well as regularly a half day for admin.) Writing every day is a way to remind people who "aren't really writing much these days" that they're not going to get very far at ALL if they let that little break turn into a long one. And the advice to "write every day" reflects the simple math that it takes a lot longer to finish a novel at four or five hours a month than one or two hours a day. But writing every day is not the only way to make your way through the jungle—especially not anymore. Bring some nuance to the idea of "making it" and you'll get some nuance in what it's going to take.

There is one thing you still have to do, though. You have to decide your own level of involvement.

When Writing "Every Day" Has Been Taken From You by Cassandra Field

Guest Blogger Cassandra Field talks about a fascinating approach to take the beating heart and soul and best intention of "write every day" into a world where writing every SINGLE day is simply not a possibility.

Chris's advice to "write every day" is hard for someone like me to read. Due to some health problems, I can’t do anything “every day.” I have reached a point where I can put on non-pajama clothes almost every day, but all bets are off on everything else. That’s why it was such a breath of fresh air when he spent an entire post addressing the fact that the world his writing advice exists in is pretty ableist.

It can be energizing and empowering to have the realities of one’s life acknowledged like that, but it only goes so far. At the end of the day, a person living with a disability still has to take the demands of something like writing and tune it to their individual capabilities. No one can tell anyone else exactly how to do that, but “just keep trying” and “try harder” don’t quite cut it. I have developed some approaches and strategies for maintaining my dedication to doing things that require regular attention, even though I can’t do them every day. I can’t guarantee that they’ll help everyone, but they have helped me, and Chris has accepted my offer to share them with you.

At this point, I should make a disclaimer. Due to this post, I can technically call myself a published writer, but I am nowhere near commercially successful. For that reason, you might choose to take what I have to say with a grain of salt. What I do have going for me is many words on many pages (including this one). The number is still increasing, and some of it is even coalescing into a distinct project. And in case you’re concerned that I focus on writing to the detriment of everything else, I also have a house that isn’t a complete disaster, friends and family I still connect with, and a set of interests that aren’t completely neglected. For that reason, I think my perspective might be worth something to someone. What follows is how I do it.

Taking stock. The first step is to make a list of what needs your regular attention. I’m using the word “need” very loosely here. Yes, the things that maintain your life and health should be on that list, but you should also include things that your life would be really shitty without or would feel severely diminished without. It can be helpful to take in the whole gestalt of your list at once sometimes, so try to make your list fairly short. To that end, I recommend making your items broad categories, rather than specific tasks. For example, you could lump everything hygiene-related - bathing, nail-clipping, hair-trimming, etc. - into one item. “Writing” could include journaling or free-writing, a draft for a specific project, research, or reading things that broaden your perspective as a writer (so, reading almost anything).

Every step of this process requires a lot of honesty with oneself, and this step is no different. For every item you’re considering putting on your list, imagine how you would feel if you only did that thing a few times a year. If the answer is “fine,” don’t put it on this list! If writing is one of those things you would be fine doing only occasionally, you might not be as much a writer as you thought you were. That’s okay! Writing will still be there for you, whenever and however you want to do it. And you can still use the subsequent steps of this process for the things you are going to put consistent effort into. But I’m going to keep referencing writing, because this is a blog about writing, after all.

This is the first of two reasons I consider myself somewhat qualified to write this post on this blog - right up there with keeping myself clean, preparing nutritious food, and spending time with my family, writing needs to be on my list.

Not a to-do list. Once you have your list, take a good look at it and fully embrace the fact that you’re not going to do everything on your list at once. Take a moment to really let it sink in. There’s that need for honesty again. If you could relentlessly tackle all the demands of your life like a tireless machine (which would be a thermodynamic impossibility anyway), you wouldn’t be doing this exercise. Rather than thinking of this as a list of things to do, think of it as a list of things you could do. “If I have the energy available, I could do one of these things.”

The other thing that separates your list from a to-do list is that you’re not going to cross things off. These are things that need your regular attention; that’s why you put them on your list. If you spent some time writing today, that’s great! But you’re not done with it. It’ll be just as great if you manage to do it again tomorrow (but you might not, and that’s okay!)

Saying “no” and saying “yes.” By now you should have accepted that you’re not going to do everything on your list in one day. Therefore, on any given day you’re going to say “yes” to some of your items and “no” to the rest of them. On a really bad day, or a day with a lot of other things going on, you might have to say “no” to everything. That’s okay! Say your “nos” with conviction. If you apologize for your “nos,” you’ll build up a whole bunch of anxiety and regret around them, and that will make it harder to get anything done. Stand by the validity of your “nos,” and let yourself have days when you say “no” to everything!

Another important thing is to be very clear with yourself about what you’re saying “no” to and what you’re saying “yes” to. This has had a few effects on how I approach the demands of my life. The one that’s most pertinent to “writing every(ish) day” is that it keeps things from completely falling by the wayside. Simply not doing something might allow me to forget about it. Explicitly saying “no” to something keeps it in my mind, even as I’m saying “no” to it. Every “no” adds a little weight of priority to it on every subsequent day. Eventually it takes on enough weight that I say “yes.”

Conversely, explicitly saying “yes” to things makes it easier to let myself off the hook for them in favor of other things. I can say to myself, “Look, I said ‘yes’ to the dishes yesterday. I’ll say ‘yes’ to the dishes again when I need to. Today, I’m writing!” It also gives me little victories to celebrate on a regular basis.

Now we see why it can be helpful to keep your list short and general. It’s much easier that way to get a feel for which parts of your life you’ve shored up pretty well and which ones are starting to feel neglected.

Fine tuning. The previous section presented a system in which the items on your list gain priority the more you say “no” to them and lessen in urgency when you say “yes” to them, but of course life isn’t always that simple. Sometimes things stay urgent for an extended period of time. Maybe someone in your family is going through a rough patch, and they need extra family time for a few days. Maybe you let the kitchen get buried in dirty dishes, and it’s going to take a few days to get it under control again. Or maybe you made a brilliant breakthrough on your current writing project, and you need to ride that momentum while you have it. All of these things - and more - are perfectly valid, and you can take care of the other things when everything settles down a little.

Switching gears between activities can feel as draining as actually doing the activities, so if you’re especially low on energy, consider a temporary holding pattern. Just focus on personal care for a while. Have a string of movie nights with your furry friends. Stick to journaling or recreational reading for a few days. My experience has been that if I’m paying attention, eventually I gather the energy to do something different, and then I do it. I hope that turns out to be true for you, too.

If it’s starting to feel grossly negligent to say “no” to something, but you’re not quite ready to say “yes” to it, consider half-assing it. And stand by your half-assery as resolutely as you stand by your “nos” (because it is just a modified “no.”) Toss a few dishes in the dishwasher on your way to bed. Just wash your face and hands, change your clothes, and call it good. Carry a notebook around and jot down a few notes about what you were thinking while you weren’t saying “yes” to writing. Just keep in mind that you haven’t actually said “yes” yet to that thing you half-assed, so be sure to give it the attention it deserves in the future.

There are probably infinite ways you can tweak this approach to fit your needs at a given moment, but these are the ones that have been particularly useful to me. Don’t be afraid to tinker and experiment with it!

Revisiting the list. Your needs and priorities might change over time, or you might find out that your original list doesn’t reflect your actual needs and priorities as well as you thought it would. That’s why you should check your list occasionally and make sure it’s still working for you. If you keep saying “no” to something on this list, but your life is pretty good anyway, consider dropping it. If you have the nagging feeling that you should be making more room for something else in your life, consider adding it to the list.

This is the second reason why I consider myself somewhat qualified to write this post for this blog - after multiple revisions of my list, I still have to include writing.

I think this approach preserves the spirit of Chris’s writing advice pretty well. The essence of what he’s always getting at is that if you want to be a writer, you need to treat writing like it’s your job. That’s what your personal list does for you - it shows you what your core “jobs” are. So if writing gets - and stays - on your list, congratulations! You’re a writer, even if you aren’t writing every day.

Cassandra lives in St. Joseph, Missouri with her family, who refuse to let her call herself a failed scientist. She works with her hands, with her mind, or ideally both, as she can. Much of her writing consists of correspondence with individuals in her life. However, there is a work in progress, working title Heron Stories, which could be called science fiction, fantasy, grimoire, and research notes.

If you would like to write a thinly veiled promo for your own work guest blog for Writing About Writing we would love to have an excuse to take a day off a wonderful diaspora of voices. Take a look at our guest post guidelines, and drop me a line at chris.brecheen@gmail.com.

Top of November 2020 (Facebook Compilation)

Here is a collection of the best memes and statuses from my public Facebook page over the period of Nov 1st through Nov 15th (You're welcome to follow me there.) We got behind on these posts over the holiday and while I focused on the admin "fortnight," so I plan on dropping them once a week until we're caught up. 

I also have realized that these posts are destined to be a biweekly staple here at Writing About Writing. Perhaps the time may come when the world is calm enough that I'll only write on FB a little and do one post a month, but that time hasn't come. Not with the election in the rear view. Not with the inauguration in the rear view. And as long as I'm spending an hour here and an hour there writing out these posts….well, work is work. So I guess this is just a new regular part of WAW now.

I'll make it clear if any posts have the context of being written after a particular event, but keep in mind that the "top of November" would have included both the last few days leading up to the election, the election itself, and several days after. So that's the general context.

A- There's nothing silent about you.

B- You're not the majority.

After 74+ million people voted for Trump….

I would caution my fellow white peeps to choose their words with care in the coming days. Being disgusted, revolted, and appalled by the fact that so many people saw his naked racism on display and in policy and voted for him anyway is quite different than being SURPRISED by that.

We certainly got bamboozled by some promising polling data that maybe the water's edge was not where we thought it was, and it is a pleasant fiction to imagine that Trump finally went a bridge too far with his open white supremacy. But BIPOC have been telling us the national situation was "REALLY THAT BAD" for decades. This whole narrative of total "shock" or being "flabbergasted" requires not having listened to them again and again and again about their lived experiences in our society.

For literally years. Decades even.

That's probably NOT the gaslighting message you intend to send.

Okay, now it’s time to ~checks notes~ demand they build a bridge to us.

"I'm not racist, and I'm offended that you would say so! But also I will swiftly give power to open white supremacists and their harmful policies if it helps my low five-figure 401k. But I'm definitely not racist."

-70 Million Americans

Look, this is really simple. 

Abusers accuse their victims of what they themselves do. Textbook. 101. Right out of the playbook––page one. 

Conservatives in their macro-societal-abuse dynamics have been disenfranchising voters through gerrymandering, voter-ID laws that are piss-easy to see through, closing polling stations, and voter scourges. These laws are proposed by Republicans, supported by Republicans, disenfranchise the opponents of Republicans, are voted on by Republicans and help Republicans win. Republicans are so shameless about this, they will straight up say the quiet part out loud: that re-enfranchisement efforts will cause them to lose.

Essentially by a few points here and there, they've been cheating. They've been cheating more and more every election for decades. The last election, they basically welcomed election interference because it was on their side. They can't win without it. 

And while I'm sure some of them are not capable of imagining how they could lose unless Dems cheated even MORE, this is actually a much simpler equation. This is projection. It is every game with a turnkey or imposter where the person points out suspicious things the others have done to keep themselves looking good.

Now the GOP is cheating SO much, it's become essential that they keep the focus anywhere but on their own voter suppression (which, sadly, they are actually doing quite effectively). Even if some really do capital B "believe" their own shit (but especially for those that don't), it's a survival mechanism to keep the focus on everyone....ANYONE else.

I don’t think I have too many Republican friends, even on this account, but if any of you are pulling that “now we have switched places” bullshit, you STILL aren’t paying attention. 

Joe Biden is many sub-optimal things, but he isn’t likely to endanger the life of Christians, encourage stochastic terrorism against white people, ban Christian-majority nations from traveling here, or treat cities and states run by Republicans like they’re a geopolitical enemy (though Russia as if it is not).

Now it's time for everyone's favorite game show, "WHICH IS MORE LIKELY?" The game where you choose which of two incredibly likely scenarios is actually the MOST likely.

We rejoin the game from our last episode. For $5000 and control of the board, please identify which is more likely:

1- That if tomorrow feminists changed their name to "humanists" or "egalitarians," suddenly ALL those people who "hate that word" would jump on board, give a shit, and fight the good fight against places where there is gender inequality. They would instantly care about street harassment, pay inequality, family planning, and sexual assault because just the word itself was simply SO off-putting that they couldn't bear to stand up regarding issues that disproportionately affect women as long as it came under such a sexist label.

Or

2- That, as has happened every single time a marginalized group demands rights throughout the arc of human history (ever, like literally EVER), the people who stand to lose power find ostensibly reasonable-sounding way to rationalize the fact that they have absolutely no intention of challenging the status quo, but would prefer a justification that sounds plausible to simply saying, “I don’t really care.”

Now....just as a thought experiment...

Juxtapose this election, and its high voter turnout yet STILL narrow results, with the far-left belief that socialism basically sells itself and "Bernie would totally have won" (and be sure and factor in places like Florida where there was a RED wave primarily due to the Trump campaign saying "socialism" a lot). Also please consider the possibility that actually NONE of our goals is even remotely realistic in a pluralistic nation that leans right unless there is a hearts-and-minds ground game the likes of which no dank meme (or calling anyone who disagrees a "bootlicker") is ever going to replace. Also unless there is a re-enfranchisement effort that goes on in mainstream politics more than once every four years. And that sort of institutional change will require mainstream civic engagements and legislation....or in common parlance: "selling out."

Because you can't govern if you don't win.

Or, of course, we can win a war against the greatest military of all time as well as the civilian militias that will resist us––all on their home soil––and institute our policies on threat of violence against the will of the vast majority of society of which we minority rule over in anti-democratic fashion. I suppose that's almost as realistic as socialism taking over a country in which leftists don't participate.

This one was post election…

I'm going to fantasize now.

A thing is about to happen here that has not happened since ever. The Georgians are going to wake up and find that they are strong––that their vote actually matters and can make a difference even if it can't get them everything they want in one election cycle. So they will turn out in waves for the run-off elections for their senate. 

And then Dems win two more seats and flip the Senate.

And Mitch McConnell will still be in office but won't be the majority leader. So he can't effectively be the most powerful human in US politics by simply not allowing ANY legislation he doesn't like to come to the floor for a vote. And Dems can get through some more progressive, Senate-approved appointments. And there will be real stimulus. And maybe Dems can take the country's temperature on a little minor court packing action. And McConnell just has to sit there and watch it all.

And the left realizes that it CAN have power and starts involving itself (they make the price of their political support the democratic reforms that will cement their influence further) and moving the slider away from predatory capitalism and billionaire feudalism. And there are sex parties to celebrate with no creepy guys and at least a couple of people who say "I **REALLY** would like you there, Chris." And a unicorn befriends me and lightsabers are real and....

Sorry, got a little carried away there.

I wish I could impress upon everyone who thinks their not-vote/protest vote is sending a message (to anyone) how much the story is overwhelmingly about Stacey Abrams and Co. and Georgia flipping and not how many leftists maintained their purity by refusing to participate.

Prescient 

A New Disclaimer: Capitalism Ableism and "Making It" as a Writer

I'm about to add this to our current list of disclaimers. Please feel free to take a look at all of them, but it seems like this one is growing in necessity, especially as the cold and hard realities of the pandemic exacerbate everyone's mental and emotional difficulties and require folks give themselves some extra self-care as well as latitude for not being "productive."

The Unforgiving Reality of "Making It" as a Writer

I write to a broad audience. Certain advice here at Writing About Writing (such as writing every day) is a panacea to all of the most common difficulties for which people often request advice. While questions about how to monetize a blog or publish a short story might have specific answers, general questions like how to "make it" or how to "improve" [which I get multiple times a day] all have the same basic answer. In fact, this question has the same basic answer in any of the arts (or any entertainment): practice. Musicians, sculptors, painters, actors, and writers––they all practice…often for years before they go public. And while gains can be made in any discipline with periodic or even sporadic practice, professional artists almost unswerving try to practice daily (or very nearly so). While I make every effort to acknowledge the ableism of prescribing daily writing without caveat, the grind of capitalism to make finding time to work on one's art difficult or impossible, or the absurdity of arbitrating the title of "real writer" on anyone, I cannot alter the fundamental realities of how demanding the journey will be to get better at art. Certainly not if the goal is to quit one's day job and survive capitalism by doing art, and absolutely not if one's goal is to be well beloved by, in the case of writing, the reading community. No one in any career––athlete, surgeon, chef, actor, or writer––will achieve the status of renowned in their field without a lot of long hours and probably more than a few weekends. Many household name writers write every day (or six days a week). [Just as many musicians practice every day and many painters sketch constantly.] Call it harsh advice or a hard pill to swallow or just a reality check. I can acknowledge that the obstacles, but I can't change the world in which those are the people who have what many would-be writers want. 

Please don't assume that I think everyone should or even CAN give this much dedication to their writing. I just don't know of any shortcuts to the things so often cited as goals. (Comfortable careers as working writers or legions of fans.) And most writers absolutely need to hear (over and over and over again) that their main problem is that they're NOT applying their asses to a chair and they further need the splash of cold water that they're not going to achieve those career-caliber dreams if they're putting in weekend warrior effort.

But seriously. Your health is more important––mental or physical. Your dreams can only survive the pandemic if you do.

The VERY Best of 2020 (Also Happy 9th Birthday Writing About Writing)

Of course the only news that Blog thinks matters is that Writing About Writing is 9 years old. 

Sadly, like everyone else, there's nothing to be had but a shitty pandemic birthday. No goals were hit from last year and every hope for next year feels over-optimistically blithe without a solid date on phase 2 of the vaccine rollout. Until then, I'm the only nanny who can pod super safely, and that means I get more hours than I want and my writing suffers. Blog is a bit sad and asked if the annual playing of Big Time could be done as a cover by the same folks who made the Donnie Darko version of "Mad World."

It's such a goddamned "gap year." For everything. For everyone and every ambition and every plan and every hope and every dream and every…

But…I've been doing this for nine years, and if there's anything I've learned in that time is that if you keep pushing through when life is doing its level best to step on your gonads with its four inch stilettos of shitty circumstance, you're going to be rocking MULTIPLE kasbahs even more than you rock overworked metaphors when the clouds part and things get a little easier and you have all that discipline to go on. It's like running with cement shoes on the beach for a year and then someone puts you in sneakers on the sidewalk. 

And on that note, let's stop talking about what sucked from last year, and instead talked about what was awesome.

The VERY Best of 2020

Compiling this list is only the first step. In the coming days, these titles will be added to the The Best of W.A.W. and a new list will be compiled. Instead of the three best posts per month (which is how I usually do it each year), I'll be doing the three best posts per two months. It's simply a reflection of the pandemic and the dearth of really solid articles. But you might see some construction work happening behind the scenes, and there's at least ONE more post that will come out of this.

Still, as often as it felt like I was barely treading water, a few articles popped out and stole the limelight. 

1- 24 Jackwads Who Show Up On Every Post About How to Write Something Oft Problematically Portrayed

Post something about how to write an ace character? Share the words of a Black author about how they don't like their skin being compared to food? Write about LGBT+ representation? Chances are one or more of these usual suspects will show up.

2- Bottom of Aug 2020

Working another job for 25-35+ hours a week has meant I really needed to learn to recognize all those hours I tended to think (didn't count) before. Especially as the political cycle ramped up and my attention span became more and more fractured. An hour spent on a political Facebook post might not be an official blog post, but it WAS work. 

3- If You're Reading This 

Remember that time in April when I got Covid-19. It was the beginning of April too, so they didn't have good tests. Mostly I wrote a post about how I wouldn't be writing any posts for a few days. But it blew the doors off the pageviews. I think because folks worry.

4- A Bump in the Road

It's rare that an appeals post reaches The Greatest Hits menu, but I guess this one was just the right amount of brief yet appealing.

5- Libraries vs. Pay Authors (Wait…What?)

It seems there's some misinformation out there about how using a library is somehow not paying an author. (Hint: that's inaccurate.) Libraries are great for authors! Let me tell you all the reasons why.

6- A Writer's Guide to Working At Home (Part 1 of 3)

When the pandemic started, no one knew how to work from home and actually get things done. But writers have been doing it forever. So here's some advice to help keep you from working all the time and somehow still not getting anything done.

7- Feel How You Feel

When the lockdown started and we realized we were in the pandemic for the long haul, a lot of people didn't feel like they thought they should be feeling. Instead of excited about some time to work on home projects, they were anxious, nervous, sad, or maybe they were enjoying some alone time and feeling broken because their FRIENDS were anxious, nervous and sad. Either way, it's okay to feel how you feel.

8- Top of October 2020

Here's another compilation post that hit the bigtime (I think because the preview image was a funny meme, so it got a lot of heart reacts). 

9-You Can Have The False Dichotomy, But I'm Keeping The Word

Introverts aren't "deeper" or "more interesting" or better at real talk or any of that shit, but there is one thing they are: introverts. So if we get rid of the attempts to feel superior because we sit quietly in a corner instead of talking about the weather, can we keep the word that describes us so damn well. Please.

10- Danger, Will Robinson! Danger! (Mailbox)

Do you have to kill a character to raise the stakes? You really, really don't.