Warning: Hacks for Hacks tips may have harmful side effects on your writing career, and should not be used by minors, adults, writers, poets, scribes, scriveners, journalists, or anybody.

Sometime in your writing career, you’re going to be faced with a deadline you can’t meet. The best advice for dealing with this, of course, is to build up a decades-long reputation of professionalism and reliability ahead of time, proving that one missed deadline is a mere anomaly, like a Bigfoot sighting. That’s all well and good for smug pros who worry about things like reputation and getting paid, but we flakes and hacks need something more immediate that doesn’t require a time machine or a work ethic. That’s why I’ve put together this list of excuses guaranteed to get you out of a jam.

Important Note

These excuses are pretty much guaranteed to work, but don’t go nuts with them. Even the most gullible marks (henceforth referred to as “clients”) will get suspicious if you’re blowing deadlines week after week.

Each person is born with an allotment of fifteen minutes of fame, and every writer begins their career with 100 reputation points. This point balance will go up (supposedly) and down (most certainly) at various points of your career. Each excuse costs you a certain amount of reputation points, which you spend at your peril. Once your balance hits zero, people will stop hiring you. They’ll avert their eyes at parties, and start casually mentioning the younger, more talented, and more attractive writers they’re working with instead. Use your points wisely! Or failing that, have a really good pen name ready to go in case you have to change your name.

The List

Kid stuff (10 points):  Whether there’s a snow day at school, or your kid was awake all night throwing up on the mattress, nobody worth working for will begrudge a parent taking care of their children. (This probably goes without saying, but I’m expecting you to lie about these things. Under no circumstances should you poison your child to make them sick, nor should you create some sort of evil weather-control device in your secret underground laboratory.)

Dead computer (15 points, multiplied by the number of times you’ve used this excuse): Dropbox makes this harder to get away with every year, but as of this writing, it still works. Just be very clear you’re emailing them from your phone when you tell them about it. Add in some autocorrect mishaps to make it lock more convivial.

Food poisoning (20 points): Alcohol is a food, kinda, so you’re not even really lying.

There’s an alligator sitting right next to your car, in which you left your laptop (30 points): This excuse is only valid only in Louisiana and Mississippi. In Florida, you’d be expected to wrestle it.

The flu (50 points): Illness-related excuses worked better in the typewriter-and-snail-mail era, when clients feared you might send them an envelope full of germs. Give this excuse a modern spin by using the face-with-thermometer emoji when you text your client the news.

Dead loved one (80 points): You can credibly only do this once with any given client, but just in case you acquire more points along the way, you’ll have to keep track of which fictional family members you terminate throughout your career. If you kill the same imaginary person too many times, the ghosts of your your faux-dead relatives will rise and drag you to hell, like in that classic children’s story, The Nine Dead Grandmothers of Vincent LeRoy.

Your dog ate it (99 points): Total power move. Give it a try. Dare them to call you out on it. Look them dead in the eye and say, “My dog ate it.” Bonus points if they know you don’t have a dog.

Dead author (100 points): Fake your death. The good news: the client won’t be mad at you. The bad news: The next time you pitch them is going to be very awkward.

What’s your go-to excuse when you’re about to miss a deadline? Share your ideas in the comments!

Warning: Hacks for Hacks tips may have harmful side effects on your writing career, and should not be used by minors, adults, writers, poets, scribes, scriveners, journalists, or anybody.

We all love coffee shops as a place to get hopped up on caffeine, interact with fellow creatives, check up on social media, and maybe even write a page or two. Taking a few minutes to escape from the demands of family can be just what the doctor ordered, or at the very least, your lawyer. However, if you escape to the same place every time, you’ll soon develop a new set of ruts, which will lead to a new set of irritations, a new set of bad habits, and eventually, a new set of dirty looks from those around you. Get a change of scenery for your change of scenery by considering these inspirational writing spots.

A Bar

Like a coffee shop, except with alcohol. Yeah, it’s not that much different, but you’re easing into it. Baby steps.

A City Park

Find yourself a bench in a nearby park and write to your heart’s content. What better way to enjoy the outdoors than by doing something you could more easily do indoors? And you get to feel superior to all the folks out there exercising and socializing like chumps. Just be prepared for when the voice of your inner child shrieks that you’re wasting a beautiful day of unlimited recess by doing homework. You can tell your inner child that you’ve learned new and better ways to have fun, and now you have to get back to work to meet your deadline before your editor calls and yells at you again.

The Beach

Don’t worry about getting ocean water in your laptop. It’s the sand you’ve got to watch out for. At the beach, bring an old-fashioned notebook and pen and let the majesty of your surroundings pull words from your pen as easily as an undertow dragging a surfer to their doom. The sound of crashing waves will wash away the distractions from your mind, except for a maddeningly sweet song sung by several women sitting on a rocky outcropping just offshore. Hustle up and finish your daily word count so you can swim out to meet them!

A Greyhound Bus Headed to Whereversville, USA

Did you know busses have wifi now? That’s all you need, baby. Go on an adventure! It’ll be like a mobile writing residency. The destination doesn’t matter. You don’t even have to tell anybody where you’re going, or that you’re leaving at all. Just grab a cheap ticket and take your seat and get some work done as you leave your old life in the dust. You’ll never travel far enough to outrun your problems, but the bus is so slow that they might get bored and forget about you.

Room 19 at the Park Plaza Motel in South Sioux City, Nebraska

The TV doesn’t work, so you won’t have distractions. There’s no room service, so you won’t be tempted to eat loads of junk food. The place isn’t on the map, isn’t in the phone book, isn’t supposed to even exist anymore, so you won’t get any interruptions. You can’t remember how you got here, so that means you must’ve been really absorbed in your work. There’s a nameless dread in the pit of your stomach, which you hope means you’re on the verge of a breakthrough in your story.

There’s a knock at the door, which spells out your True Name in Morse code.

That means it’s time.

Closing

In summary, when it comes to finding a place to write, you’ve got lots of choices available. Enjoy!

Where do you like to go to change up your writing routine? Share your ideas in the comments!

Warning: Hacks for Hacks tips may have harmful side effects on your writing career, and should not be used by minors, adults, writers, poets, scribes, scriveners, journalists, or anybody.

Look at you, a writer on the go! Maybe you’re off to a convention for the weekend, or to a mountain cabin for a writers retreat. Wherever it is you’re going, you’ll need to to pack strategically to maximize your amount of fun and productivity. You’re probably thinking of packing your duffel with a bunch of socks and underwear and T-shirts or whatever. You fool. You think that’s going to be sufficient for your trip? You’re a writer, for God’s sake, and you need to pack like it.

The list:

• Socks, underwear, T-shirts. They’re basic, but you totally would’ve forgotten them if I hadn’t mentioned them just now.
• Your preferred e-reading device. You can fit an entire library into your pocket. By keeping the book you’re currently reading on your Kindle, you can save room for the hardback editions of Ulysses, Infinite Jest, and a bunch of other classics you want people to think you’re reading.
• A notebook and pens. I recommend buying a new notebook specifically for this trip. It will make it feel more like a special occasion. Make sure to get something that will look good in the Smithsonian when they create the exhibit on how you wrote your masterpiece on this trip. The main thing is that you set lofty goals for your trip to keep yourself motivated, and that you feel like a failure if you don’t meet them.
• Your laptop. Duh, you’ll need it for writing. The fact that 60% of that writing will be updates to your various social media accounts should not deter you.
• Comfortable shoes. If you’re on a trip, you’ll probably be doing a lot of walking while lugging around your travel bag. Be nice to your feet by packing some sensible, comfy shoes. Do what I do and just wear your running shoes the whole trip. You never know when you’ll have to run from angry fans, disgruntled Patreon patrons, or targets of satirical essays. Unless you’re me, and then it’s every trip.

• Passport. If you’re traveling internationally, this is obvious, but bring it on intranational trips also. You’ll feel very cosmopolitan! And it’s exciting to know that if you ever had to spontaneously flee the country because of a gambling debt that got out of hand, for instance, you could. Why, a person could almost vanish completely, if they had sufficient cash and IDs and such! A fun diversion to think about, but the writer’s imagination comes up with all manner of ideas.

• Ten thousand dollars in cash, three fake IDs, two wigs, and a fake mustache. No handlebar mustaches. That’s a rookie mistake. You’re trying to blend in, remember? If you plan to be a writer, you’ll be doing this again and again, though, so I won’t think less of you if you learn the mustache lesson the hard way.

As you can see, packing for a weekend getaway takes more planning for writers than for other vocations. But with a little forethought, you can set yourself up for success–and if you don’t, well, you can flee your shame and start a new life somewhere else. Safe travels!

What items do you absolutely have to put in your suitcase when traveling? Let us know in the comments!

Warning: Hacks for Hacks tips may have harmful side effects on your writing career, and should not be used by minors, adults, writers, poets, scribes, scriveners, journalists, or anybody.

The rise of ebooks and podcasts, and the decline of attention spans and disposable income, have made this the perfect time for you to start writing serialized fiction. By releasing only bite-sized chunks of story, you can give readers just enough to sink their teeth into each week, while still leaving them hungry for more, like your favorite TV show but without the visual element, star power, budget, and major-network distribution.

Never written a serial before? Me neither! But I’ve written a column about how to write one, which you’re reading right now. Let’s go!

What’s all this, then?

What is serial fiction? Like all fictional narratives, a serial is a way to torture and humiliate your protagonist in public. But in serials, you do it on a weekly basis. If that sounds daunting, remember that, as a writer, you are by definition a walking bundle of anxieties and resentments, so have confidence that you can dish out that sort of punishment on the regular.

How do I structure a serial?

Focus on character. Your main character has to be someone you enjoy tormenting. In return for your season-long cycle of animus toward your protagonist, you have to dangle a payoff in front of them. You need to present the central conflict early on in the series/season/cycle/whatever you call it. You can’t start off with two prologues and nine chapters of backstory like you do in your epic fantasy series.

What’s the serial writing process like?

Serials are kinda like an episode of your favorite TV show, so learn to think like a TV writer! We’re in the golden age of television, so we have a lot to learn from those folks. For example, make sure to put a cliffhanger at the end of each episode. Remember to insert act breaks to allow for commercials. Deal with the fact that one of your lead actors got drunk and started a fistfight, and now you’ve got to write him off the show. That’s right, you now have to write backstories not just for your characters, but for the fictional actors portraying those characters. It’s getting all sorts of meta up in here.

To outline or not to outline? Do it however you like, but the beauty of serial fiction is that you only have to write a few thousand words each week. Do you really want to mess with your flow by having some boring blueprint you have to stick to? Just make it up as you go along, and if you get stuck on a particular scene, make that the end of the episode. That’s a problem for Future You to deal with. Honestly, Future You should be thanking you for providing the sort of impossible writing situation that triggers the levels of panic necessary to write something that’s just good enough that you get to repeat the process next week.

Frequently asked questions

Q: Can I take my existing novel and release it chapter by chapter?

A: No, for the same reason you can’t divide your car into a pair of motorcycles. Instead, I recommend putting all your short stories together and trying to write one long, master narrative that connects them all–yes, including both the one with the giant, robotic space elephant and the literary one where the protagonist gets a divorce and contemplates suicide.

Q: How do I end a serial?

A: Don’t have an ending in mind? Good! You’ll actually never have to write one! The ending of a serialized piece occurs at the nexus of where your number of readers drops below your enthusiasm for writing the serial. Whatever you happen to be writing at that moment, that’s your ending. I do encourage you to finish the sentence you’re writing when the time comes, but that’s not a hard requirement.

And that’s pretty much all there is to it! The great thing about serial fiction is you’re not just writing one book, you’re committing yourself to lots of labor and a series of unrelenting deadlines that extend into the foreseeable future. Good luck!

Have you written serialized fiction? Share your experiences in the comments!

Warning: Hacks for Hacks tips may have harmful side effects on your writing career, and should not be used by minors, adults, writers, poets, scribes, scriveners, journalists, or anybody.

Think of all the writers who have helped you out over the years: Your high school English teacher who saw promise in you when everyone else only saw the weird marginalia you drew in your notebooks. The published author who took the time to critique your early short stories. Your secret high-school crush who pretended they didn’t know about your notebook full of embarrassing love poems you wrote about them. All of these individuals made a positive impact in your writing career. Did they ever ask anything in return? Being a self-absorbed writer-type, you probably wouldn’t have noticed if they did. But now you’re the one in the position of power—maybe you’ve sold a short story or two; or perhaps you own more than one “Be nice to me or I’ll write you into my novel!” coffee mug. You couldn’t have achieved these successes without help along the way, and it’s your turn to pass that wisdom to the next generation of writers. Here are a few ideas:

Critique their Manuscript

We all need a helping hand with that first (or second, or third!) book. Look for a promising newbie writer in your circle and offer a thorough critique of their manuscript. Impart to them the lessons you’ve learned over the years—for example, if your protagonist visits a swimming pool in Act I, someone must get pushed into it during a party in Act III. When the newbie writer’s eyes go wide in astonishment that they never learned this in college, simply shrug and say you learned this at the School of Hard Knocks, which is famous for its pool parties.

Host Authors on Your Blog

Let other authors write guest posts on your blog to promote their books. This isn’t just a way to get free content for your blog. It’s also—oh, wow, I had you at “free content for your blog,” didn’t I? Well, that’s good enough for me. And hey, look who’s signed up to write an article? It’s your mentee whose manuscript you critiqued. Wow, paying it forward is paying off already!

Go to their Launch Party

Isn’t it exciting when younger writers start getting published? Be a supportive elder statesman and go to their book launch. Ignore the fact that only half as many people came to your own launch party. Remember that getting into a fistfight over the last available folding chair is a sign of respect for the author. Your mentee will thank you for this later, even if they’re cursing you for causing a scene today.

Offer Encouragement

Can you believe your former pupil is about to go on the morning-TV circuit to talk about their book? It’s a good thing you’re here to offer them guidance. They’re probably nervous, so tell them about the time your buddy who does a podcast mispronounced your name that one time. That humorous and totally equivalent anecdote will have them feeling relaxed as they go on live television in front of millions of people.

Send Them Fan Mail

Getting a fan letter from their mentor will be such a fun ego boost for them! For bonus points, you can ask them for some tips on characterization. And maybe inquire if their editor would be willing to take a look at your manuscript? People love to be asked for recommendations, so you’re doing them a favor, really.

Buy Their Next Book

Make sure to get it signed. As proof that a mentor’s work is never done, you may have to remind them how to spell your name.

What are some ways you pay it forward to up-and-coming writers? Leave a comment and brag about how helpful you are!

Warning: Hacks for Hacks tips may have harmful side effects on your writing career, and should not be used by minors, adults, writers, poets, scribes, scriveners, journalists, or anybody.

You’ve sat on the couch with your laptop for long enough. You’re a real writer, and you deserve a professional writing space of your own. A place where, by the mere act of sitting there, your brain engages into WORK MODE. A place where inspiration can find you. What makes desks so great for writing? Desks are renowned for their flatness, which makes them ideal for both computer-based and paper-based writing.

So what kind of desk do you need? As a writing-advice columnist and Famous Author, I am required to say here that the best desk is the one that you’re sitting at, so pretty much any desk will do—if you’re a conformist, mindless NORMIE, that is. C’mon, we’re going shopping.

Your options:

• IKEA: A simple, elegant desk never goes out of style—nor does cursing at the confusing instructions of IKEA furniture. If you succeed in getting the desk built, however, you’ll love it, along with all the other clever household goods you didn’t need but decided to buy anyway. Bonus: your time spent observing all the couples having relationship-ending fights in the IKEA store will pay big dividends when you write your novel.
• Thrift store desk: A great way to save money, as well as absorb the residual inspiration from all the stories written at this desk in the years before you bought it. This desk could tell some pretty amazing stories of its own. How much junk mail was casually chucked onto it? How did anyone get this elephantine monstrosity into, then out of, their house? Why did all of its previous owners die? Why have I felt a malevolent presence ever since I brought this thing home? Can you believe it only cost thirty bucks?
• DIY: Why spend a bunch of money on a cookie-cutter desk that anybody can have? Building your own may consume all your available writing time for the next three months, but you’ll have your dream desk at only 104% of the cost of buying a similar desk at Target.

• Adjustable desk: The best of all possible desks is the motorized, adjustable desk. Stand when you want to feel energized! Sit when your back starts to hurt! Check Facebook in either position! The important thing is that you set a monthly reminder to use the desk’s standing mode, since you spent all this money and you haven’t engaged its standing configuration in weeks.

• The “I’m still deciding what type of desk I want to buy” desk: These can be purchased at pretty much any hardware store. Simply buy a pair of sawhorses and a closet door. If your friends or spouse raise an eyebrow at this eyesore, you can tell them it’s temporary until you decide on your forever desk. You don’t have to make a final decision until three years from now, when your significant other finally puts their foot down, at which point you quickly order the first thing you find on Amazon.

If you think this is fun, wait until you buy a chair!

Have a harrowing tale of how you brought home your writing desk? Share your story in the comments!

Warning: Hacks for Hacks tips may have harmful side effects on your writing career, and should not be used by minors, adults, writers, poets, songwriters, scribes, scriveners, journalists, or anybody.

Due to circumstances surrounding Hurricane Florence, I will not be writing my “Hacks for Hacks” column this month. My family and I are quite safe, riding out the storm on a wooden raft in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. As much as I would love to blame Mother Nature, which I do for the bulk of the problems in my life, I must accept full responsibility for not planning ahead and taking measures to deliver my column. I offer my humble apologies to Writer Unboxed and my readers.

In the interest of transparency and accountability, I catalogued the mistakes I made in the hope that you can avoid them yourself.

Mistake 1: Ignoring the weather report

Despite the fact that the news reports have been saying for the past week that a hurricane was approaching, through a combination of distracting websites, wishful thinking, snacks, and willpower, I remained unaware of this fact until the rains had begun. As I always say, never underestimate your ability to not notice an inconvenient fact when your sanity depends on you not noticing it. Had I been smart, I would have written and filed my column early in the week when Florence was still just a tropical storm.

Mistake 2: Selling my laptop for a handful of magic beans

When I finally did accept the fact that a storm was coming and that I very well could lose electricity, the life-giving substance that gives power to word processors and blogs alike, I took stock of the situation. I concluded that, given that my column is published on a blog, and that blogs live in “the cloud,” I could plant some magic beans to grow a giant beanstalk and climb up into the cloud myself. Once there, safely above the hurricane’s devastation, I could hand-deliver my column. Not only did I forget that I’d need my laptop to write the column (which is a pretty boneheaded move, I must admit), but the beanstalk only grew four stories tall, and was promptly blown over by the gale-force winds (another oversight for which I feel quite foolish).

Mistake 3:  Trying to turn time backwards by driving my car in the opposite direction of the flow of traffic

Huge time waster, with nothing to show for it. In my defense, this would have worked if not for the roads being closed due to flooding, or if I had a jet ski.

Mistake 4: Selling my jet ski on Labor Day weekend

Every writer should have a jet ski. Whether you’re trying to meet a deadline or navigate around a difficult plot point or find a red herring in your detective novel, those things will get you out of more jams than you can count.

Mistake 5: Traveling to an alternate dimension in order to steal a completed column from an alternate-dimension version of me

This gambit is familiar to writers and readers of science fiction, and let me tell you from experience, it’s not worth it. There’s no way to prepare yourself to meet an alternate version of yourself and realizing that they’ve got their life together. Probably because the alternate-dimension version of you isn’t a writer, but a medical-records technician. I’ll never forget the look of disappointment on my double’s face when I told him I have no bestsellers and don’t meet Stephen King for beers every Tuesday. Anyway, yeah, alternate-dimension me hadn’t written anything, either. I shuffled back through my battery-powered dimensional-portal generator, admitting defeat at last.

We writers love to procrastinate, relying on last-minute panic to get the creative juices flowing. But let my tale be a lesson to all of you not to put off your writing until the last possible second. We are at the mercy of elements we cannot control—elements such as the elements, for example—and we’ve got to be proactive to make sure we meet our deadlines and keep our promises to our editors, and most importantly, to our readers. Once again, I’m sorry I was unable to deliver a column this month. Next month, I promise I’ll be back to writing columns on how to choose the perfect pen, or how to defeat your standing desk or whatever. Weather permitting.

Have you learned any writing lessons the hard way? Has blowing a deadline made you a wiser writer? Share your hard-won knowledge in the comments!

Warning: Hacks for Hacks tips may have harmful side effects on your writing career, and should not be used by minors, adults, writers, poets, scribes, scriveners, journalists, or anybody.

Science fiction Grand Master Joe Haldeman once told me, “If you’re having trouble writing a book, try writing about the book.” By “told me,” I mean he said this out loud in a convention panel discussion that I happened to have wandered into, and by “writing about the book” he meant outlining, probably (I wandered in halfway through). Given that I can get stuck on four to five books at a time, I’m the ideal person to extrapolate on the advice Haldeman might very well have given. So let’s talk about outlines!

What an Outline Is, Isn’t, and Kinda Resembles

Let’s start with defining an outline. For the purposes of this column, an outline is any document external to your book that acts as a guide to the process of completing it. It is not the Roman-numeral-laden inverted staircase you made in your high school English class (unless you find that structure helpful). Literally any format that makes sense to you is fine, whether that’s a one-page narrative description of characters and events, a bulleted list of plot points, or a bar napkin you found in your coat pocket that says, “Like Die Hard but with dragons.” Anything is an outline if you’re okay filling in gaps with explosions.

Some people think of an outline as an instruction manual for writing your book. I like to think of an outline as the literary equivalent of the people in your life who enable your writing career while you take them for granted and give them very little in return.

Know Your Ending

Do you pack the fam into the car for a vacation if you don’t know the destination? In this metaphor, the roadmap is your outline, and your vacation destination of Orlando, Florida, is the ending for your novel, which is in Jacksonville, Florida.

Follow Your Characters

The best stories are about people. Think about what drives your protagonist, and let their choices guide you from there–outlining is just storytelling at a macro level. Your characters will make choices you wouldn’t necessarily make, such as ordering the Oreo McFlurry instead of the M&M variety. If you’re doing it right, your characters will surprise you, taking risks you would never have the courage to take yourself. You’ll see them thrive as their bold choices help them fulfill your own wasted potential, reaping the rewards of a life lived without fear or apology. And then it’s time to punish those smug ingrates, because who the HELL do they think they are? Pathologically undermining our better selves is what writing fiction is all about.

Be Flexible

This is the point in the column where the “By the seat of your pants” school of writers will chime in and say that an outline is a recipe for dull, formulaic fiction, and that outlining doesn’t leave room for the organic creative process. They are, of course, completely wrong. (And HERE is where they’ll chime in to say that I’ve misrepresented or oversimplified their point. They are, of course, totally right.) Hey, I get it, you don’t want to tie yourself down to a particular story direction. As writers, we all can relate the the desire to abandon our cares and responsibilities and zip off in a random direction without looking back. That’s why the most important part of your outline is the part where you remember that it’s okay to change it, overhaul it, or completely ignore it sometimes, and that it’ll still be there when we come crawling back, ashamed of the bizarre heist scene we’ve written with all the flamingoes. Like those loved ones I mentioned earlier, outlines are very forgiving, and they will always take you back—though they will never forget.

Take the Long View

If you think of the outlining process as an emotionally abusive relationship, slogging through the events of your book’s life until its inevitable end, then you can make the writing process as productive and fun as a couple’s counseling session.

How do you like to outline your book? Share your tips in the comments!

Warning: Hacks for Hacks tips may have harmful side effects on your writing career, and should not be used by minors, adults, writers, poets, scribes, scriveners, journalists, or anybody.

Most people who start NaNoWriMo never finish their book. They get busy, they run out of steam, life gets in the way. It happens. There’s no shame in that.

You, on the other hand, have been crowing since August about saving all your ideas for November and that this book will blow everyone away. “This is my year, baby!” you said. “I’ve got so many ideas! I’m gonna crank this thing out, edit it in December, get an agent by February, ink a deal by May, and lord it over my friends the rest of the year! Whoo!” Well, all that big talk has led to a plot that’s basically cribbed from Gremlins 2, and what you thought was a fleshed-out protagonist is the same snarky “tough guy” you use in all your stories, but with a different hair color. To finish by November 30, you’d have to write 2700 words per day, which is technically doable, except the very thought of spending one minute more on this bookwreck makes you want to set your desk on fire (possibly while still seated at your desk). If you bail out now, though, you’ll look like a flaky loser (which is totally what people will think because EVERYONE is very concerned with YOUR BOOK in particular).

Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered. Here’s how to pull the ripcord on your NaNoWriMo project and not look like an idiot.

Wrap things up early

By which I mean, just stop writing and then lie about it. “Oh, the book? Yeah, I wrapped that up by Thanksgiving.” People don’t have time to read all the books they’ve paid money for; who’s got time to read something you haven’t had time to edit yet? Oh, that’s right–you promised the second coming of To Kill a Mockingbird, and you may have friends who want to see how it turned out (or, more likely given that you’re the sort of person who reads this column, you have a rival who wants to see you crash, burn, and have a cheap funeral). If you absolutely must present your work to someone, stop writing where you are, then have your character say something self-reflective while looking at a lake. When people don’t get the ending, just say, “It’s kind of an experimental novel.” Then, give them the side-eye and say, “Not everybody’s supposed to get it.”

Announce that your book has grown into a trilogy

“Whoa,” you’re saying, “that sounds like a lot more work.” Well, yeah. But all of that work is in the future. Who cares what happens then? If people start asking how your trilogy is coming along, I’m sure you’ll think of something. It’s the classic writer’s trick of raising the stakes, except involving your own time, reputation, and mental health.

Kill all your characters

I’m not suggesting that everyone in your book dies in a plane crash or a meteor strike. That’s just a messier version of the hackneyed “And then he woke up!” ending, and no one wants that. No, you’re gonna hunt down every character in your book and murder them one by one. You’re going to take your time. You’re going to punish them for not being more interesting. The line between writer and sociopath is a blurry one at the best of times, and you’ll be surprised (and possibly alarmed!) at how easily your mind conjures ways to torture your cast. Who knows? You may find it cathartic to cleanse your book of these failures of human imagination, and depending on your rage level, you may surprise yourself and finish the book after all.

Real-life emergencies

Sometime life intervenes and you’ve got to shuffle your priorities. Even your most hateful haters wouldn’t begrudge you “temporarily pausing” your book for, say, getting food poisoning. Alpha Move: Say you’re looking for a new job because you got fired for working on your book during work hours. “The muse, she’s persistent,” you’ll say.

Ditch your life

Move away, buy a sailboat, start a new life. New You couldn’t care less if Old You looks like a quitter. Then next year, write your NaNoWriMo novel about that!

Do you have an exit strategy for your NaNoWriMo project? Share it in the comments!

Warning: Hacks for Hacks tips may have harmful side effects on your writing career, and should not be used by minors, adults, writers, poets, scribes, scriveners, journalists, or anybody.

Welp, another year over (yay!), a new one just begun (ARGH!). It’s that time of year when all of our apps send us emails about how many books we read, what music we listened to the most, or how much exercise we got. In this online world of ours, it’s important that we quantify what we’ve done so that we can make our passions more closely resemble math homework. And your writing career is no different. Taking stock of what you’ve done this year is like your annual review at work, except without the possibility of your boss giving you a raise at the end of it. For some writers, looking back at the year that was is like admiring a full trophy case (or possibly a bookshelf full of one’s own publications). For the rest of us, the annual review involves dwelling on a dozen short-story misfires, reliving cringeworthy interactions with your favorite author at a convention, or failing to come up with a funny third beat in a comedy triplet.

Lucky for you, there’s hope. Before my divorce, my marriage counselor liked to say that the difference between success and failure is all about how you frame things. I’m passing this good advice along by showing you how to take an honest look at your the past year in your writing career, then spinning that honest look into something that doesn’t look like you’ve just been spinning your wheels for twelve months.

First, tally your publications. Twitter.com and Facebook are two of the most popular websites in the world, so it’s pretty rad that you got your work published there.

Celebrate your successes. For example, you got paid for writing a magazine article? Pat yourself on the back, you’re obviously doing something right! But success isn’t only measured in money. There are many achievements that you can take pride in that don’t necessarily involve you cashing a check. Get an agent for your novel? Hey, not too shabby, buster! Buy a fancy new pen? That’s cause for celebration in my book! Abandon your NaNoWriMo project that was making you miserable? I will personally throw you a parade! The nice thing about being your own boss is that you get to decide what success looks like. Unless you’re relying on your writing to pay the bills, in which case you definitely should measure success with money. I hope you like beans and rice!

It’s the count that counts. Even if you didn’t finish a single piece of writing, you probably wrote a lot of words. Even the most unproductive year of your writing life seems like it was filled with accomplishment when you look at it one word at a time. If your word count is less than that of a paperback novel, have your word processor do a character count instead. The important thing is that you have a really big number you can show off to someone. Counting characters makes even the thinnest output sound astronomically huge because who has any idea how many letters are in any piece of writing? Best of all, mentioning your character count to someone gives them a terrific opening to say something clever like, “Well, you’re quite a character yourself!” At which point, you’ll both laugh and laugh and forget all about your lack of production for the year.

Set realistic, achievable goals for next year. These are not to be confused with New Year’s Resolutions, which are usually vague and always set you up for failure (it turns out that writing a bestseller every other month sounds way more attainable when you’re drunk on New Year’s Eve). The main difference between resolutions and goals is that writing goals are created when you’re sober, which therefore leave you with fewer excuses if you don’t meet them. If and when that happens, take solace in the fact that you can return to this very article again next year and remind yourself how to spin another year of professional failure into an annual death spiral of lowered expectations. See you next year!

How do you like to take stock of your writing each year? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Warning: Hacks for Hacks tips may have harmful side effects on your writing career, and should not be used by minors, adults, writers, poets, scribes, scriveners, journalists, or anybody.

Every critique session since the 1930s has included someone saying the phrase, “Kill Your Darlings,” and it must continue ever after, like those chain letters you got back in middle school. It’s not enough to kill your darlings in your writing, though. You’ve got to slay those darlings 24/7, whether it’s on your keyboard or at your writers group meeting or at your friends’ birthday party. You’ve got to flense every ounce of fat from your life if you want to make a career of your writing. I’m going to show you how. You’re going to hate this. That’s fine, it’s no picnic for me either. We’ll both be stronger for this.

• We’ll start with your manuscript. Start reading from the beginning of the most recent project you’re working on until you come to a spot where the writing really jumps out at you. What caught your attention? An especially good turn of phrase? Some insightful characterization? Did you feel proud of yourself for writing it? Does it spark joy? Welp, that’s a darling, and it must be removed from your manuscript. You may be tempted to say that I’m deliberately misunderstanding the meaning of “Kill your darlings” just to be a contrarian jerk. Buddy, the spirit of the law was the first darling I killed.
• One of your beta readers just raved about your work. They loved it. Loved it! They can’t wait until it gets published so they can spread the word. Rave reviews from respected peers is a feeling that sets a writer’s soul on fire. A little TOO on fire, if you ask me. This sort of thing has all the marks of a darling. Scrub those kind words from your memory, and that passage from your manuscript. And maybe give your beta reader a tongue-lashing just to be on the safe side, because how dare they?! You’re trying to trim the fat from your prose, you don’t need these warm, squishy feels.

• Someone in your writing group getting a little too big for their britches? Maybe after you give them some primo feedback, they smile and say, “Thanks, that’s really helpful!” What, they couldn’t bother to say your advice “was really, really, REALLY helpful”?! Would it have killed that pompous jerk to say, “I have so much to learn from you!”? Sounds to me like this upstart is a darling that needs killing.

• Don’t forget to kill your biggest darlings of all—your friends and family. Obviously, I don’t mean KILL them, just excise them from your calendar, if not your life. Time spent engaging in hobbies and having fulfilling personal relationships are precious hours that you could instead spend excising all remaining verve and joy from the eighth draft of your novel. If there’s one thing I know about writing, it’s that if you’re not suffering, you’re not trying hard enough. Think of how much you can accomplish if you just give up everything that makes life worth living.

Now, get back to work, darling.

Are you ruthless in your quest to kill your darlings in your writing? Share your sociopathic secrets in the comments!

Warning: Hacks for Hacks tips may have harmful side effects on your writing career, and should not be used by minors, adults, writers, poets, scribes, scriveners, journalists, or anybody.

You only get one shot to hook an editor or an agent. If you’re going to get them to like your novel, you’ve got to do it in the first 500 pages. It may sound harsh. It may seem unfair. But if you want to make it as a writer, you’ve got to deal with the fact that most publishing professionals will give you maybe 500 pages—or less!—to hook them. If they’re not invested in the characters, if they’re not completely immersed in the plot, if they’re not moved to tears by your imagery within your novel’s first six dozen chapters or so, it’s probably never going to happen. Don’t despair, though! In this month’s column, I’m going to cover all the elements you need to include to make your first 500 pages absolutely un-put-down-able.

Opening Action

The most important thing you can do at the start of your novel is to grab readers’ attention with an exciting opening! I’m not talking car chases—human conflict and emotion can sizzle just as much as a bank robbery if you play your cards right. A solid, action-filled opening should include the main character facing a problem, experiencing early setbacks, meeting friends along the way, getting rejected by their love interest, hitting rock bottom, then rising up to defeat their antagonist and win their beloved’s affection. It’s a lot to do, but if you use your elements of craft and write lean, muscular prose, you should be able to accomplish all of this by the bottom of page 500.

Stakes

Never take readers’ interest for granted. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a colossal payoff on page 501 if you haven’t earned their attention by page 500. They need a reason to care—what’s at stake in your book? What’s your protagonist’s reward for success? What’s the penalty for failure? Stakes give readers a reason to care what’s happening, and it’s of paramount importance that you communicate those stakes within the first 125,000-odd words of your manuscript.

Characters

The most important element of any novel? Characters. Lots of ‘em. Good guys, bad guys, medium guys, love interests, chatty BFFs, people to bump into accidentally while at the grocery store, ancillary people milling around the edges of your scenes to lend verisimilitude to the world you’ve constructed on paper, the mascot of the local sports team. You need each one of these to make an appearance somewhere between page one and page 500, though with how little time editors have, I’d shoot for page 475.

Ending

Wrapping things up in a satisfying conclusion is probably the most important thing you can do in your novel’s first 500 pages. If an agent reads to the end of your book and it still isn’t holding their interest, they probably aren’t going to turn to the next page.

I know this is a lot to take in, but I believe in you. Master these elements, and you’ll be able to polish up those initial 500 pages to get agents and editors begging for more. They may even request your full manuscript!

What are your tips for making the first 500 pages shine? Share your thoughts in the comments!

I get letters from aspiring writers from time to time. Here’s one of them now:

Dear Famous Author Bill Ferris:

I want to be a successful writer, but it takes time and hard work, both of which suck. How do I become a success without having to work for it, and when do I get my participation trophy?

Thanks for being so handsome.

Sincerely,
Writer Person

This real letter, which I absolutely did not make up as a straw-man argument, perfectly illustrates that the only thing keeping you from writing success is you. It’s not that you don’t want to succeed, it’s that you’ve prioritized other things ahead of your writing—cable television, video games, your job, a meaningful social life, your family. None of these things are going to help you achieve the success you crave. What’s really important to you? You’re going to have to make some difficult choices about your life. Here’s what you’ll have to give up to become a successful writer.

1. Your sense of entitlement: Nobody promised you success, other than all those writing-advice columns about how to achieve success. You have to earn it in this business, baby!
2. Excuses: Only when you admit that your success or failure is completely within your control can you truly succeed as a writer. Remember: whether you believe you can, or you believe you can’t, you’re writing, which is exactly how that saying goes.
3. Friends: This one will be easy. In the unlikely event that a misanthropic writer such as yourself could ever develop friendships, your work habits, distracted demeanor, mercenary willingness to harvest every conversation for written content, and disproportionate burden on your comrades’ bar tabs will drive them off naturally.
4. A vial of your own blood: When the time comes, you’ll understand why—and you’ll be eager to wield the knife yourself.
5. Extra words: You must eliminate all unnecessary words from your writing. For instance, in my first draft, that last sentence took an entire page.
6. Time: I know it seems like you’d be on top of the best seller list if only you had more time to write, but the fact is, nobody is going to magically give you the time you need. The wizards in charge of such things have already given that time to me, and I’ve already squandered it, so you’ll have to carve out those precious writing minutes for yourself.
7. Your hobbies: Everything you do that does not involve pecking away at your laptop (which cost more than your first car) or scribbling into a notebook (which is nicer than your first laptop) will seem like freeloading—ironic, considering how many of your hours at the office have been secretly spent working on your book.

8. Your awareness of the world around you: I never said that all sacrifices would be bad.

9. Vacations that don’t involve writing: All that time that you’re not spending playing video games and looking at social media can be transferred to your kids as they get used to staring at their tablets and spending summer vacations at writing conventions.
10. Extra space in your home: That space is for bookshelves now. It doesn’t matter if you prefer ebooks or audiobooks; every wall must contain bookshelves, every window shoudl look upon a writing desk, every corner host a reading lamp. The TV can stay until the series finale of Game of Thrones or the book-based television program of your choice.
11. Weekends: When you’re a writer, weekends are your workdays, except it’s a job you can’t quit, working for a boss you can’t stand.
12. The priceless amulet hidden behind the back panel in your pantry: You thought you could hide it from us? Surrender it and maybe—MAYBE—the vengeful god Editorous will smile upon you with the most coveted of literary prizes: a personalized rejection.

I won’t tell you these sacrifices will be easy. Just keep your eyes on the prize, and remember: If you give up everything that makes life worth living, then in just twenty years, you can sell enough books to buy a used Hyundai Elantra.

What sacrifices have you made to prioritize your writing career? Tell us about them in the comments!

Warning: Hacks for Hacks tips may have harmful side effects on your writing career, and should not be used by minors, adults, writers, poets, scribes, scriveners, journalists, or anybody.

After three years, five different hairstyles, six pounds of weight loss, seven pounds of weight gain, a new home purchase, lots of marriage counseling, thousands of cups of coffee, and lots of sleepless nights, you’ve finally finished your book. Now it’s time to distill that experience into a single page. That’s right, it’s time to write a synopsis!

The typical synopsis is 2,000 words, though some people want a synopsis that’s only 1,000 words. I’ve seen a few agents and editors request a 500-word synopsis, but you should avoid working with these people because they are clearly sociopaths who enjoy destroying writers’ minds.

Preparation

For practice, start by writing a synopsis of works you already know. You can get your juices flowing by synopsizing other great works of art. For example:

• • The Mona Lisa: A woman politely listens to someone explaining something she already knows.
  • Abbey Road: A bassist is murdered by his bandmates, and as the lights go out, he glimpses the face of the talentless lookalike the band hires to cover up the crime.

First Paragraph

Start with your protagonist, their central conflict, and the setting. You only have a page or two, so you’ve got to keep it short. “Annie was in a race against time to get from Florida to California in 36 hours, and she can’t take a plane for some reason. She’ll have to navigate America’s scenic highways and byways, which SOME readers can’t be bothered to read about right now, but they’re really something, take my word for it.”

Characters

Remember your rich cast of supporting characters? The folks you now relate to better than your own family? Well, now they’ll know how your flesh-and-blood family feels as you undersell, oversimplify, and completely ignore several of them. You can explain to them later why you had to reduce them to a series of first names, personality quirks, and plot utility. “It’s for work!” you’ll say when they object to being belittled and disregarded. Your characters will tell you they understand. They understand all too well.

Plot

Now it’s time to summarize your plot. This is where a lot of writers get into trouble. They’ve designed the perfect mousetrap, and now they’re being asked to write it like it’s an IKEA instruction manual. Remember the Rule of Threes, by which I mean you should use as many three-word sentences as possible. “A chase ensues.” “A werewolf appears.” “Sandy’s car explodes.” “Liz orders pizza.” In just three words, you can encompass the basic elements of any story: a person, an interesting action, and a third thing.

The End

In the final paragraph, you’ll resolve the conflicts and wrap up the story. Because you have assuredly overwritten the prior sections of the synopsis, you’ve got a sentence or two at most to play with. Let your frustration with the format be your fuel, and don’t get discouraged. This part is important! As everyone knows, the best way to impress the person who will decide the fate of your novel is to eliminate all your sparkling prose and spoil the ending for them.

What are your tips for writing a synopsis? Share your tips in the comments!

Warning: Hacks for Hacks tips may have harmful side effects on your writing career, and should not be used by minors, adults, writers, poets, scribes, scriveners, journalists, or anybody.

Nobody has time to write. I myself didn’t have time to write this column, yet here you are reading it. How’d I do it? What’s my secret? Well, my creative writing professor in college always used to say, “If something is important, you figure out a way to make it happen.” And since getting praise and validation from countless online strangers is important to me, I made the sacrifices necessary to write an article where you can say nice things about me in the comments section.

But I’m an online advice columnist who’s been doing this for a while. Not everybody starts out knowing the incantations and precise measurements of blood required stop the flow of time for long enough to scratch out a monthly article. I started with a few tips and tricks for finding time to write, which I’ll share with you here.

Carry a notebook everywhere

Something that can fit in your pocket, like a Moleskine or one of those little pads that TV detectives use. The blank page of a new notebook is a vacuum that will suck the words out of you, which is a natural and not-gross way to think about writing. The great thing about carrying a notebook is that it’s a constant reminder to focus on your craft. You used to only feel Writer’s Guilt while you were squandering your free time after the kids went to bed. Now you can feel it all the time!

Use your spare moments

Those few minutes you normally use to check Twitter or drive to work? Those are ideal times to jot down ideas. Every time you check Twitter, exercise your prose muscles by writing at least one tweet first. During your morning commute, open up your phone’s voice-recorder app and craft a tragic narrative as you rehearse all the arguments you’d like to have with your ex if only the moment was right.

The sleep debate

Going without sleep has fallen out of fashion. Your brain needs to rest, just like any muscle. Recent studies have shown that you’re actually less productive and less creative if you’re tired all the time. You can cancel this out, however, by simply staying up so late, you forget how addled your brain has become. This sort of self-delusion and motivated reasoning definitely counts as writing, by the way.

Check your schedule

Make the most of your calendar to maximize writing time! Tally up the parties, literary events, and catch-up lunches you’ve scheduled with your friends. Then, for each one, write the excuse you’ll give when you cancel your plans so you can stay home and watch 90s music videos on YouTube.

Open your mind

Writing isn’t just done in front of a computer, or in a notebook. If you decide you must sleep, remember that dreaming is basically writing in the most unrestrained way possible. During the day, you can puzzle out plot developments while in line at the grocery store. You can base characters on the annoying people in the row behind you at the movies. You’ve got possibilities for harnessing your creativity at all moments of the day. If you expand your definition of writing to the fullest extent, you’ll find you’re always writing. Isn’t that great? You won’t ever have to stop. EVER.

What are your tips for finding time to write? Share your ideas in the comments!

Warning: Hacks for Hacks tips may have harmful side effects on your writing career, and should not be used by minors, adults, writers, poets, scribes, scriveners, journalists, or anybody.

You love writing. It’s your passion. Why, the only thing more fun that writing is telling people you’re a writer! But lately you feel like a fraud saying that. Not because of impostor syndrome, but because the thought of spending another few hours working on your book makes you want to set your house on fire. And while arson can erase a great many writing sins, that’s a subject for a future column. Today, we’re only dealing with metaphorical fires, by which I mean burnout.

Burnout is sometimes mistaken for writer’s block, but they’re quite different. Writer’s block is like when you’re hungry and you look in your brain’s Idea Fridge and find nothing but some leftover Hamburger Helper. Burnout, on the other hand, is when you open and close your well-stocked fridge for ten minutes knowing you need to eat but can’t muster the energy to make anything but cold cereal (I am once again speaking metaphorically, but burnout often leads eating cereal for dinner literally as well).

Burnout happens to all of us, myself included. For instance, do you know how much torture it was to write this very column? (Note to my editors: I am kidding! Ha ha!) So whether you need it now or later, here are five ways to deal with writer burnout.

Read. Recharge your creativity by reading the great works of others. Replace your disdain of the creative process with the despair that you’ll never be as good as your heroes.

Clear your desk. Get rid of the clutter, trinkets, pens, papers, computer, your big monitor. Move the desk outside to the curb. Wait for it to get stolen or hauled away by garbagemen. When you feel the itch to buy a way-too-fancy writing desk, that’s when you’ll know you’re ready to pick up the pen again.

Reconnect. Reach out to the people in your life you’ve been too busy to contact. Schedule a lunch with a friend. Call your folks. Patch things up with a certain someone to see if the magic is still there. There’s a chance you’ll feel better about life in general, thus inspiring you to write. There’s also a chance you’ll see how thoroughly you’ve burned your bridges with the people in your life, in which case writing won’t seen so bad by comparison, will it?

Get a life. There’s a whole world out there that you can interact with, if you could just step away from your word processor for once. Take some time off from your daily word count and catch up on the ol’ to-do list. Mow the lawn. Fix the front stairs. File your two-years-ago taxes. Getting reacquainted with your crippling adult responsibilities will give you a new appreciation of why you need your writing to escape them.

Take up a hobby. Imagine, if you can, a reality where you didn’t spend every moment of your precious free time trying to further your literary career. You could take up painting. Go birding. Build a ship in a bottle. Your inner perfectionist will protest that you’re just a dabbler, just a hobbyist, and that you’ll never be great at these activities. Take a deep breath and remind yourself that it’s okay. You are still a good person if you’re not amazing at everything you do. You’d even have value as a person if, say, you admitted to yourself that you weren’t very good at writing. But what a wild thought that is, though, right? Right?! Ha ha ha!

How do you cope with writer burnout? Share your advice in the comments!

Warning: Hacks for Hacks tips may have harmful side effects on your writing career, and should not be used by minors, adults, writers, poets, scribes, scriveners, journalists, or anybody.

Most writers dream of making it big. But what does “making it” mean, exactly? The answer is different for everyone. There are lots of resources about how writers can make money and improve their craft, but today I want to focus on every writer’s purest motivation: to gain the validation, attention, and admiration of important and attractive people. That’s right, Famous Author Bill Ferris is talking about your level of famousness, which is a healthy and totally controllable thing for you to fixate on.

[Note that I’m differentiating between fame and success here. While a small handful of folks like Stephen King and J.K. Rowling have both, many writers have one without the other. Financial success is outside the scope of this column, but to find out more information on how to get rich as a writer, just Google “writing” and click on literally any search result.]

Writing is a never-ending and non-lucrative job, and if we can’t get paid in money, then we should expect to sign a few books for readers, to get recognized when going through the Drive Thru, or at the very least get some “likes” on social media (which is the true coin of the realm in the influencer economy or whatever).

To find your ideal level of fame, we need to identify what type of writer you are.

Type Zero: Fame? What’s That?

Motivation: You write what you write, and people can like it or not. You’re just doing this for you.

Ideal fame level: Your boss knows you write during your lunch breaks, but doesn’t take that as an indication that you’re slacking off on the job.

How you’ll know you’ve achieved it: You’re either a wild success or unpublished, and in either case, you’re already at your ideal level of famousness. So take your emotional maturity and well-adjusted priorities elsewhere, because the rest of us divas are trying to make a breakthrough here, okay?

Type 1: The Bestseller

Motivation: You want to get booked on every morning show, and go on months-long publicity tours so you can get laid in every time zone. You have an insatiable hunger for praise and validation, for someone, anyone to notice me. Er, I mean you.

Ideal fame level: You can’t leave the house without someone approaching, photographing, or cursing at you.

How you’ll know you’ve achieved it: 1. You’re a guest on a book podcast, and the host has actually read your book. 2. The subject(s) of your infamous tell-all book will no longer speak to you.

Type 2: The Purist

Motivation: You don’t write for recognition, you write for art. It’s only about expressing the deep truths of your soul.

Ideal fame level: Toiling in obscurity until your work is championed via the dissertations of nicotine-addled grad students thirty years after your death.

How you’ll know you’ve achieved it: 1. You take the word “reclusive” as a compliment. 2. You turned down an invitation to appear on a book podcast because of your long-standing boycott of their primary sponsor.

Type 3: Everyone Else

Motivation: On one hand, it’s wonderful to be recognized for your work. On the other hand, you’re so very tired.

Ideal fame level: That sweet spot where folks on the street know your name and fancy people will ask you to come talk to them, but not so famous that a trip to the grocery store means getting mobbed by autograph seekers and paparazzi taking photos of you in sweat pants and  buying off-brand frozen pizzas for dinner.

How you’ll know you’ve achieved it: 1. You’re a guest on a book podcast, and though the host hasn’t read your book, they feel guilty about it. 2. When you post a joke on Twitter, all the replies are progressively less-funny versions of your own joke.

Now that you’ve identified your ideal level of fame, all you have to do is achieve it…somehow. Find out how in a future column, or maybe just adjust your expectations.

What’s your ideal level of writerly fame? Share it in the comments!

Warning: Hacks for Hacks tips may have harmful side effects on your writing career, and should not be used by minors, adults, writers, poets, scribes, scriveners, journalists, or anybody.

All books must end—some before they’re finished. Writing a book is hard, and no matter how experienced or successful you get, there will always be times you want to quit. Perseverance is a wonderful trait, but there comes a time in many authors’ lives when a project becomes an albatross that gets in the way of their artistic growth, and they would be best served by writing a different book.

The bond between you and your book is full of highs and lows, laughter and tears, just like any other codependent relationship. Deciding to move on with your writing life is one of the hardest choices you can make as an author, but it can also be the most liberating. The writing-advice columnist Code of Conduct prohibits me from deciding this for you, but it does allow (and encourage!) me to enable your questionable decisions. So if you feel stuck and need to cut ties with your work-in-progress, here are several approaches to breaking up with your book.

It’s not you, it’s me.

The most obvious, bottom-of-the-barrel approach. You are the author. The book is your work. Of course it’s you. You may have convinced yourself that “It’s not you, it’s me” worked on your high-school sweetheart, but your guilty conscience won’t let you get away with doing this to the memoir you’ve been toiling over for the last few years. You’re going to have to work harder than that to come up with a good rationale—but then again, if you were into hard work, you wouldn’t be abandoning this book, would you?

(Was that unfair? You bet it was. That was your book talking; books don’t like to get dumped, so it may tell you some things you don’t want to hear.)

I’ve met someone else.

You’ve had some great times working on this novella for the last six years, but then came this new idea. You swear you only meant to write a quick outline so you wouldn’t forget it, but then one thing led to another. You can’t remember the last time you felt this energized. Well, you can—it was when you started your old book, back before everything went wrong in Chapter 10. And deep down, you’re worried you’ll just keep doing that for every book you write. You look into the future and see a dozen first chapters and false starts of books that failed to materialize, and you lie awake at night convinced you will never finish any work you start because something in your soul is fundamentally, irretrievably broken. As your advice columnist, let me gently remind you that you’re a writer, and that having a fundamentally broken soul has never been considered a handicap in our vocation.

Ghosting.

The honorable thing to do when you realize your book isn’t working is to print what you have, put the pages into a box, set it on fire, put the ashes into a different box, and put that box on a high shelf underneath the crate of random cables you haven’t unpacked for three consecutive moves. That’s called closure. But some writers take the coward’s way out and simply cease writing their book. Worst of all, their utter lack of conscience allows them to not feel guilty about it. Without guilt, are they even writers?! I mean, what’s next? Just stopping writing altogether and using their newly acquired free time to develop new hobbies and rewarding friendships? Going outside once in a while? Spending more time with their spouse and children? Spending their vacation days relaxing instead of effectively working a second job they don’t get paid for? What a horrible thought. What kind of monster would do such a thing?

Ever had to break up with your book? How did you do it? Share your stories and advice in the comments.

Warning: Hacks for Hacks tips may have harmful side effects on your writing career, and should not be used by minors, adults, writers, poets, scribes, scriveners, journalists, or anybody.

I do almost all of my reading via audiobook. It’s a great way to turn a boring activity like driving or dinner with the family into a thrilling escape to a fantasy world. The surging popularity of audiobooks, combined with the fact that every artsy dilettante already has a USB microphone from their failed attempt to start a podcast, has made the role of audiobook narrator one of the most coveted jobs in literature.

As long as there are artistic professions, there will always be untrained wannabes who think they can succeed with minimal effort. And where there are wannabes, you can be sure there are irresponsible articles like this one about how to break into the narration racket. Let’s begin!

What You’ll Need

• A good microphone and recording software. I assume you already have these (see the cheap joke about podcasts from paragraph one of this article).
• Reading glasses. You may or may not need them, but it’s always fun to buy new equipment!
• A British accent.

Preparation

• Listen to lots of audiobooks. You’re probably already doing this, but even so, pay close attention to which narrators make good use of inflection and voice. Also note their pacing, particularly pauses; after a comma, the rule of thumb is to pause long enough to take a breath; after a period, pause long enough to mutter to yourself, “Pfft, I sound better than this hack.”
• Practice reading out loud. Start with your own work, since you’ve already got the rights to it. Reading your own work is also helpful from a writing perspective—reading a piece out loud helps you catch grammatical errors and plot holes, of which you have an alarming number. The despair you feel after noticing these mistakes will add a note of poignant melancholy to your performance.

Record

• Act natural. You’re not reading a book, you’re telling a story. You want to sound like you’re having a conversation with the listener, except they can’t talk back (and isn’t that what every writer wants?). But you can’t do that if you sound like you’re reciting words from a piece of paper; you need to internalize the story. Good narrating is acting, so just do what actors do and memorize the entire manuscript ahead of time.
• Develop distinct voices for each character. These should be mapped to voices you’re already good at. Me, I’ve got like five voices, including the one I like to call “family dog.” Any narrator who happens to have written the column you’re reading now will tell you that five voices is plenty. One trick I deploy during the writing stage is to never write a book that has more than five characters in it, but you can get the same effect by making all your characters generic and forgettable.
• Edit out the bad parts. Sure, performance is fun, but if you’re starting out as a narrator, you’ll also have to edit your own audio. Editing takes the awkwardness of hearing your own recorded voice and spreads it over many, many hours of tedious work. You’ll become highly attuned to your every vocal tic, as well as all the gross sounds you inadvertently make with your mouth. The nice thing about audio, however, is that you can just delete all the stuff that sounds bad. Why, you can even delete the entire project if you want! Just putting that out there.

What are your narration tips and tricks? Make your voice heard in the comments!

Warning: Hacks for Hacks tips may have harmful side effects on your writing career, and should not be used by minors, adults, writers, poets, scribes, scriveners, journalists, or anybody.

Congrats on submitting your manuscript! But the euphoria of finally sending your work to an agent or editor is quickly replaced by the anxiety over its fate. You poured a lot of hours and skipped a lot of TV to finish it, and some faraway gatekeeper could render that effort moot with a single email—or they could accept it and provide you with the validation and recognition you surely deserve. You thought writing was tough? Now you get to live with the agony of ambiguity one second at a time for the next 120 days or so.

You don’t have to live like this. A watched pot never boils, and a fixated-upon manuscript submission never gets a response. I came up with that ultra-catchy saying while waiting to hear back from an editor about a story. I felt so good about putting my nervous energy to good use that it barely stung when the editor sent me a form rejection letter. You too can experience this edifying feeling by employing these handy suggestions on how to spend your time when waiting for a publication decision.

• Take a break. Give yourself permission to do nothing for a while. Relax, you’ve earned it!
• Take a shower. I’m not naming names, but some of you were playing fast and loose with personal hygiene while you finished that book.
• Have a panic attack.
• Cherish your newfound freedom. For a few sweet weeks, you’re rid of the book or story that has been causing you so much heartache. And if it gets accepted, you’ll never have to work on that story again! Except for the edits your editor sends you. Have fun!
• Remind yourself of your victories. Think of the other things you’ve gotten published before. If this is your first work you’ve submitted or you haven’t sipped the sweet nectar of an acceptance letter, focus on the fact that just finishing your work and getting it out there is a small victory. I know that feels like I’m setting a low bar, but…uh…I don’t know a tactful way to finish that sentence.
• Reread your manuscript. The easiest way to spot errors in your work is read it immediately after hitting “send.” Typos, mixed metaphors, inexplicably changed character names; you’ll find all of these mistakes and more at the very moment it’s too late to fix them. You’ll want to kill yourself and have them bury you in one of your story’s huge plot holes, but don’t despair. Wait for your rejection, make the necessary fixes, then send it to another market. Such a catastrophe couldn’t happen more than once, right? Right?
• Have a panic attack.
• Speak the rites. This is a great time to enact the arcane ritual passed down through your family for generations. It’s natural to feel a little jittery the first time, just power through it. Hey, do you want to get punished or don’t you?
• Build your brand. Work on your website. Start a newsletter. Improve your social media presence. Try blogging again. The great thing about writing is that, in addition to the writing itself, there are always a million little jobs that need doing, again and again, until you die.

• Develop a new hobby. It’s not healthy to spend all your time on your writing career. Stimulate your brain with new, enriching activities. Exercise. Take a pottery class. Develop a drinking problem. Catalog all the slights and insults others have thrown your way. Nurse some grudges. You won’t believe how recharged your mind will feel if you fill it with spite.

• Start on that next project. You know the one—the exciting mystery romance that you couldn’t stop thinking about when you were slogging to the finish line of your last book. Now that you’re free to work on it, though, it seems like work, doesn’t it? This cycle of having your fantasies shrivel up under the harsh sunlight of reality will repeat itself again and again until you die.
• Network. Having your head down in your manuscript is great for meeting deadlines, but may cause you to neglect your human relationships. Meet up with your friends and fellow writers for dinner and drinks. Catch up on your petty social media squabbles. If you’re feeling frisky, cultivate a nemesis and start a literary feud.
• Get your hopes up. Give yourself an advance on your advance and splurge a little. You can pay yourself back when the checks start rolling in. Start planning your “I sold my book!” party. Send out invitations and everything. You’re not being irresponsible, you’re betting on yourself, so don’t worry that the venue’s security deposit is nonrefundable.
• Have a panic attack.

How do you like to spend your time when you’re waiting to hear about a submission? Share your ideas in the comments!