step up/step back

A couple years ago, I found myself awake in the middle of the night googling “adult women onset ADD symptoms.” I was struggling to read novels—maybe I was part of the cohort of millennial women who were all diagnosed with ADD during the pandemic?

Then I deleted Twitter from my phone and lo and behold I could read novels again.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t adult women who have ADD. Of course there are! But I know myself well enough to know that my drug of choice (the internet) rewards me with little dopamine snacks and causes me to crave more and more, to get that same rush. Why limit yourself to the small can of Pringles when you can buy the large? If I’m not conscientous about moderation, I can become addicted to any platform (Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, even the Substack app), behaving like a rat in a lab, tapping the app to see if there’s a little treat for me that wasn’t there five minutes ago.

This puts me in a practical, and ethical, bind. I have benefited tremendously from the network, and audience, I’ve built on the internet over the past 20 years. Today I make a living helping other writers advance their careers by following a similar playbook.

But when I really need to think deeply, and write deeply, I yearn to feel a complete sense of privacy. I want to build a wilderness cabin in my head.

I’m not going to write the gazillionth post about the harms of social media, nor will I give you 10 tips for going viral on TikTok.

Instead, I’m going to tell you how I actually think about seasons of being public/private in my own career, and the advice I give my clients on the same topic, because I just don’t see a way to make a living in this industry without at least sometimes being our writer selves in public.

Years ago, when I taught theater classes to children, one of the team building exercises I used was a counting game. We’d sit in a circle on the floor and our goal was to count to 10. If two students spoke at the same time, we started back at 1.

As you can imagine, the most competitive students, and/or those with the weakest impulse control, typically yelled “1!” simultaneously and then we had to begin again. The game is so simple, it seems like something that should take no time at all, but it requires awareness and patience to complete. Everyone has to sync up.

In the little notebook where I wrote down my lesson plans, I called this game “step up/step back.”

Any teachers reading this will remember, from their own classrooms, moments when they encouraged a student to step up (speak up) or step back (share the stage, give someone else a turn).

There are seasons in your career when you will need to “step up” and be more public, and seasons when you can “step back” into the wilderness of your imagination.

I remembered that “step up/step back” game this week because I deleted all my social media apps from my phone, set an auto reply on my two inboxes, and got to work on my novel revision. Dr. Anna Lembke, author of Dopamine Nation, would call this “self-binding,” “essentially the literal and metacognitive barriers we put between ourselves and our drug of choice so that we can press the pause button between the desire to consume and actually consuming.”

I know I have a reputation for being extremely online, but I’ve also written six books, by setting boundaries around how I spend my time and attention. If I’m working deeply on a project, I’m trying to stay offline (and away from my phone). If I’m in-between projects, or trying to sell or promote something, that’s when you can find me doing my one-woman show in a wig on Instagram.

This fall, do you need to step up in your writing life—or step back? Here are a few different scenarios, based on conversations I’ve had with my own clients.

You’re writing a novel—do you need to be creating content, too?

If your goal is to sell a novel, your #1 priority is to write the best novel you are capable of writing. It will sell on the strength of the manuscript, and how great the concept is, not based on the size of your platform. Step back until you finish your draft!

Your novel is finished and you’re querying.

Common advice is to “start writing the next book!” I don’t know anyone who’s successfully followed this advice. (Chime in in the comments if that worked for you!) Most writers at this stage are neurotically refreshing their gmail. If that’s you, now would be a great time to step up and start creating content in public: launch a side project, start a Substack, pitch an opinion piece that’s related to a topic in your novel. Public visibility could capture an agent’s attention. A new essay/article publication, or press about your side project, gives you a reason to follow up with agents.

The added benefit of creating content while you’re querying (or on submission with book editors) is that you’re building an audience for your future launch.

Your goal is to sell a non-fiction book and you already have a platform.

Step back and finish your book proposal! If you need help, Jane Friedman has a free blog post about proposals and my friend

Tawny Lara

is teaching book proposal classes this fall. If you have a platform, it means you’re already a content creator; your challenge is likely longform writing.

Your goal is to sell a non-fiction book, but you don’t yet have a big platform.

This is the toughest medicine to swallow: you’ve got to do both. You have to be public-facing, creating content (or publishing essays/articles/columns) to grow your audience, at the same time that you write your book proposal. The good news is that you can treat your social media as a big laboratory where you can test out ideas for your future book and see in real time what your audience is responding to. The more you grow your audience, the more likely it is that a literary agent will discover you.

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Chat Room

This Friday, my paid subscribers will have access to a conversation with Windy Dorresteyn, VP and Director of Marketing for the Random House Group, all about marketing fiction titles. We’ll discuss:

• The difference between publicity and marketing

• When and how the marketing team gets involved with acquisition decisions

• What the marketing team is doing behind the scenes that an author may not even be aware of

• What would be exciting to find on an author questionnaire

On Friday morning, I will email the Zoom link to my paying subscribers! If you can’t watch live, you will have access to the video recording for 7 days.

Upcoming Classes

• Have you ever thought about self-publishing a manuscript that your agent wasn’t able to sell? Are you writing a memoir that you’re considering self-publishing? Are you curious about the possibility of self-publishing your previous books that have gone out of print? Successful indie author Libby Washington is teaching a beginning self-publishing class for me on September 25 on Zoom. Register here! There are two reduced price ($20) registrations available for writers who can’t afford the full registration fee. To claim one, contact me and tell me briefly about your situation.

• Registration is now open for my popular How to Get a Book Deal the Easy Way seminar on November 14.

• My October Plot Curious class is now sold out