Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach

Back in December of 2014, my first podcast episode spoke to listeners. I preached to myself, as well. The message? Just get started. You Only Need to Know 'Enough' I’d been putting off podcasting for years. There was a wave of interest in podcasting a few years prior to 2014, and I felt like I’d missed that wave. But the opportunity stirred again. People in the online world were buzzing about podcasts and podcasting yet again, and I realized a second wave was swelling. Perhaps I could ride the wave this time, I thought. Now, I’m not too good on the water—I survived a spectacular wipeout while waterskiing when I was in my early 20s. Thankfully, I’m only using that as an analogy. I saw it as a risk—launching a writing coach podcast felt as scary as pulling on those skis. The fear felt the same. But I decided to dig in and do it anyway. I decided to do minimal, just-in-time research and then jump right in even if I didn’t think I knew enough. I was tempted to have every duck in a row, but if I waited for that, I knew I would wait another week, another month, another year. I knew I just needed to know enough. I could get answers along the way. To be honest, at the time I was kind of mad at myself for missing out before, so I was determined to move forward no matter what. Start with What You Have I couldn’t find a straightforward "podcasting for dummies" kind of tutorial. Those came a few months or a year after I started. I read what was out there, tried to figure out the basics, and jumped in with the equipment I had on hand. A couple of questions remained unanswered, but I forged ahead. I used my smartphone and a little earpiece speaker I use for making phone calls. I pulled that very first audio file into GarageBand, did some light editing, uploaded it to my podcast host, and with that, I started. Those first few episodes, I was nervous. The quality was adequate, but not professional. And I did make a couple of mistakes behind the scenes. I was kind of upset and anxious about them for a week or so until a kind and patient person at Blubrry—that’s my podcast host—explained my options, helped me decide what to do, and walked me through next steps. Problem solved. Basically, I had to re-brand the podcast because I couldn’t change the name without starting over. But the point is that even with the mistake, I was able to meet my ultimate goal, which was to get content out there—audio content—that could help writers. I didn’t wait another day and I didn’t waste another opportunity. About a year later I heard the term “minimum viable product” for the first time and realized, “Ah! That’s how I got myself in motion!" That microphone was okay—it met my minimum standard. If I’d waited until I saved up for a nicer mic before starting, I might have missed the wave. Get the First Pancake Out of the Way Whatever it is you’ve been dreaming of doing? Do it. Start it. Grab your computer keyboard and type the first words of that novel. Set your phone on a shelf and record your first Facebook Live. Grab your camera and snap a first few photos for Instagram. Set up a website and start publishing articles. Have you heard of the first pancake rule? I love it because I’ve literally seen its truth in action. Every time I make pancakes—or crepes—the first one or two are kind of misshapen and unappealing, though they taste just fine. After those first two, I get the swing of things. The pan is the right temperature and the batter has sort of settled. Before long, I’m flipping stacks of beautiful, round, puffy pancakes ready to be doused in syrup, or piles of elegant crepes ready to be rolled up with some sweet filling. But I always have to get those first couple of wonky-looking pancakes or crepes out of the way first. Same with my podcast. Same with your project. If you haven’t created something like that before, you can have all the right ingredients and you'll still have to do the first whatever...

Organization is a challenge for writers. You may have strong ideas, feel confident with grammar, and write in a fun style. But putting it all together in a structure that makes sense? That can be hard. There’s no one perfect way to structure most projects. You have options. Some people find this liberating. They enjoy exploring countless options and settle naturally into an order that makes sense for their content. Other writers find this overwhelming. They’d like to be told, "If you’re writing THIS, you always use THAT structure." Without structure, those writers get stuck. Structure Brings Order and Clarity In fact, I’ve met with writers who have been stuck for weeks, months...occasionally for years. All because they didn’t know how to structure their project. Without structure, they didn’t know how to order and organize their ideas, so writing itself felt confusing. They simply shoved it aside, unclear what to do next. Structure brings order and clarity to the writer. And structure brings order and clarity to the reader. Structure for Poets Some writing offers built-in structure. If you’re a poet, for example, you can turn to form poetry to find structure built into the assignment. So many kinds of poems follow a form or a pattern, like a sestina, sonnet, and a rondelet. They each come with rules, rhythms, and rhyme schemes. While challenging, these limits offer structure that a poet who works in free verse lacks. Structure for Novelists Novelists can turn to structure that works well for fiction, such as the hero’s journey. The author doesn’t have to include the obligatory scenes, but many genres work well when the author hits those beats, moments, or scenes a reader has come to expect. Structure for Nonfiction Writers Nonfiction writers may face the blank page with no idea where to start. Or they spit out their ideas with no clue how to arrange them to create an order that flows well for the reader. Writers who compose essays, articles, books know they have a problem to solve: they need structure. And they may struggle with structure due to lack of resources. Maybe no one has pointed out to them structure options. Or maybe they struggle to remain objective with their own material to see how it would best flow. They may have tried methods they’ve learned over the years and those have gotten them only so far. Mind Maps Don't Automatically Lead to Structure For instance, maybe they tried a mind map. And that helped them spit out the main ideas they want to cover in their book. But all those circles spread out like a web on the paper don’t themselves reveal a solid structure—they just reveal a number of possible starting points and all their subpoints. So the mind map may have served to pull out of the writer content ideas, but the map itself didn’t result in a clear structure. Traditional Outlines Don't Automatically Lead to Structure The writer of nonfiction may have reverted to the I, II, III, and A, B, C format they remembered from their youth, with those Roman numerals leading the eye down the page with indented A, B, C items underneath. Under those lines came the numbers 1, 2, 3, then lowercase a, b, c, followed by the little “i’s” with one “i” then two “ii’s” and “iii’s” that created those miniature Roman numerals, leading up to “iv’s” and “v’s.” The poor writer may spend more time fretting over those little “i’s” than they do crafting content. So knowing how to type up a list with Roman numerals again doesn’t in and of itself reveal a structure. Even organized, sequential-types who love to line up papers and numbers and files and books on shelves can create a perfectly reasonable classic outline, yet find themselves unsure if that’s formed an effective structure for their writing project. Try Ready-Made Outlines to Structure Your Next Project How can writers who struggle to organize their ideas find a structure that works?

[Ep 214] Back in July I bought a Garmin watch that tracks steps and heart rate. More importantly, it offers training plans for beginning and intermediate runners. I clicked on a beginner’s plan because I hadn’t run regularly for years, and started following the instructions each day. Now, I tend to wing things in general. More often than not, I jump in and make decisions on the fly with just about everything. I like freedom and hate being fenced in or forced to do things. Too much structure and I’m ready to bust out the walls. But for some reason, I responded well to the structure of this training program. If it told me to do intervals, I’d head down the road and run intervals. If it said to run hills, I found the hilliest hills in the mostly flat city where I live. I enjoyed the choices within the parameters of the plan. I could choose where to run and I could choose to skip a stage of the plan. But I loved how the plan organized my workouts so I don’t have to stand at the end of my driveway trying to figure out what to do each day, inventing from scratch. So while my personality might be the type to look at structure as a curse, I think it might be...a gift. A Writer’s Gift Outlines are to a writer what a Garmin training plan is to a runner: a gift, not a curse. During the years when I taught composition to high school students, the most naturally creative students resisted outlines. They hated the idea of slamming structure into what could be an organic process of discovery. And I sympathized with them—that’s how I tend to feel. So some of them they respectfully requested that they try it their way. But because I was teaching composition, I had to teach outlines. And because this was a group of compliant homeschoolers, they did it my way. Even the student who participated in NaNoWriMo every year as a pantser—flying by the seat of her pants as she completed a novel in the month of November with very little structure—even she agreed to outline for the big research paper assigned for the second semester. When they finished researching and their outlines shifted based on new information they gleaned, they sorted their 3x5 cards into the outline and even the biggest doubters who thought outlining was annoying and a curse found it was a brilliant time-saver. With ease and speed and efficiency, they wrote organized drafts that reflected a logical structure and flow. Even my NaNoWriMo student conceded that the outline-approach worked. She said in the future she would likely drop the step of taking notes on 3x5 cards, but the outline would be part of her writing life—at least for academic papers. While I don’t spend as much time discussing the art of fiction, I’ve seen plenty of general outlines that a novelist could use to give a general form and remind the writer of key elements and beats to hit along the way. We don’t have to use outlines, but they can provide a starting point. They offer structure and support as we brainstorm and produce our first draft. And they help us write faster than ever. Isn’t that a gift? Impromptu Outlines My son participates In a speech and debate club where I serve as a parent-volunteer. Another mom teaches various speaking principles and the past few weeks we’ve reviewed how to outline a platform speech. But she also presents a series of outlines to the students that they can use in their impromptu speeches. Impromptu speeches are not planned in advance. The competitor enters a room, selects a piece of paper listing two topics, and in two minutes, plans a five-minute speech based on one of the two topics. You can imagine how the student’s mind reacts to this pressure. It can go blank. It can spin off in a million directions. We empower our club members by giving them these outlines—these gifts. Students sit down with the scratch paper available, and write out an outline. Then they add their main ideas and examples,

[Ep 196] Last time, I asked: Where do you want to be in a year? You may have read that and set a big, hairy, audacious goal—a BHAG. Or maybe you called it a “stretch goal.” You want to aim high and not settle for mediocre. You’re excited! You’re an optimist. “In a year, I’m going to be at the top of my game, more successful than I’ve ever been.” Big, Fast Success If you want it bad and can handle a focused, year-long push, you may nail it. If you have big resources to support big goals, this stretch-goal approach may be the way you level up fast. In a year (or less!) you may be the one saying: “I built a substantial author platform in six months and landed my book contract in eight. I’m on track to launch next year!” “I’m making a full-time income through my website now that I’ve quadrupled my blog traffic.” “I’m the keynote speaker at two major conferences thanks to my podcast taking off after just a few months.” Falling Short of Goals But if your time, money, energy, skills, experience, and support are limited, you might not achieve a big, hairy, audacious goal—even if you want it bad. And falling short of your goal can be demotivating. You may end up saying: “I set out to gain 100,000 subscribers on my email list in three months, but I only have a thousand.” “My plan to submit an essay each month fell way short.” “No, I didn’t finish writing my novel in three months.” The macro plan sets us on a course toward a goal. We see the target. We take aim. The good news is that even if we fall short, we may be further along than if we had no goal at all. The bad news is that we may end up so discouraged and disheartened at what seems like lack of progress or failure, we give up. If we’re setting an aggressive goal that is too much of a stretch, we may need to re-examine it before we form the plan to get there. Halve a Goal After Jon Acuff wrote a book called Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work That Matters, he realized people may not need as much help getting started—after all, the beginning of projects and resolutions is the fun part. It’s the middle and the end of projects where we sag and feel stuck and give up. Acuff wanted people to see their goals through to the end, so he wrote a follow-up book called Finish: Give Yourself the Gift Of Done. For Finish, Acuff commissioned a study with the University of Memphis that concluded “small goals, when you cut your goal in half, are 63% more successful than big crazy BHAGs.”1 So if you set out with a BHAG last week, consider chopping your goal in half. You can adjust the time and give yourself twice the time to complete it: instead of a two-month deadline, extend to four; if you think editing a draft will take 30 minutes, allow an hour. You can adjust the task: instead of committing to 2000 words a day, drop to a thousand; instead of six Instagram posts per week, try three. You can adjust the number of goals: if you’re trying to raise visibility and name recognition by speaking, posting on social media, starting a YouTube channel, writing guest posts, appearing on podcasts, and pitching articles to mainstream magazines, drop half of those activities and focus energy and attention on a few. Research to Plan Find out what your writing world is like. What do people expect in that world? What are the successful people doing? Do you want or need to follow a similar path? What do you need to do first to move in that same direction? What level are you at and what’s the next level? Could you connect with people in groups and meetups or at conferences and retreats? Could you find a mentor or coach? Could you partner with someone to collaborate? Make lists. Make decisions. Make your plan based on your goal. Enact, Evaluate, and Adjust the Plan While your plan may be aggressive and you’re prepared for a aggressive burst of activity to level up fast, play the long game.

[Ep 188] In this series, you’ve discovered more about yourself through writing—you may have begun to heal emotional wounds. The act of writing has helped you find the courage to continue to write. Through writing, you’ve articulated your reason for doing the work. And you’ve identified your top themes and topics. Most recently, you’ve written to discover your ideal reader. Today, you’ll see how the act of writing—the process of writing any given project—can lead us to discover what we really want to say. Discovery Writing to Unearth Ideas Before we begin to outline or research, we can use writing to probe what is on our mind—to unearth what we want to say. An effective tool for this—and I’ve talked about it before—is freewriting. I was introduced to the practice of freewriting in college, thanks to a book that was newly released at the time and used in two of my creative writing courses: Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg. Her invitation to freewrite—to set a timer for, say, ten minutes and write, pen to paper, without stopping—gave me a way to shimmy past my stifling editor-mind to what Goldberg calls “first thoughts.”1 Those first thoughts unleashed in me the memories, stories, images, and ideas that I hadn’t yet reached when I sat down to write using an outline. Over time, the practice generally led to my discovering what I really wanted to say in my next project—which, at the time, was usually a poem. Freewriting While Composing the Draft I still use freewriting as a tool to unstick my thoughts—often before even launching a new project. But freewriting can be also used while my writing is in-progress. I can be busy writing a paragraph—sometimes even when I’m following an outline I’ve developed—and pause to go deeper with freewriting. Priscilla Long agrees with this balance of writing into an essay form or structure while occasionally stepping away to further explore ideas and thoughts through freewriting. She refers to freewriting as “discovery writing” in The Writer’s Portable Mentor, where she says this: [W]riting into a structure should be done in tandem with “discovery writing,” that is, writing to learn what you have to say, writing to work out your thoughts, writing to find out what your antagonist thinks (by writing from her point of view in your notebook, even though in the finished story you are never going to be in her point of view).2 In other words, when we need clarity, Long recommends we stop in the midst of writing to an outline or “template” and spend a few minutes freewriting. This avoids shallow treatment of our topic or story. Instead, we respect our mind’s hesitation and take time to discover what we really want to say. After freewriting, we gain insight and turn back to the draft, adjusting our ideas as needed. Determine and Draft Your Project’s Big Idea Let’s say that you’ve spent a few minutes freewriting to determine what to write about. You’ve thought about it, you’ve researched, you’ve outlined. You have a good solid concept for this project. When you’re ready to embark on the first words of your next project, determine and draft your project’s Big Idea. What’s this piece about? What’s the focus? What’s the driving theme? Articulating Your Working Thesis Writing this out is a kind of discovery writing all its own—you’re trying to articulate a thesis. Remember the thesis? Back in high school and college you were probably trained to express it as one sentence—a statement that is, in fact, arguable. A thesis can be used in fiction, nonfiction, and some poetry; it encapsulates what your project is about. The thesis statement expresses the Big Idea of your project in that one sentence. You set out to explore and support this statement throughout the piece. Your thesis establishes strong focus for the project from the start. A working thesis is flexible, though. The further you get into your research and writing,