Upcoming Motivational Series

Beginning on July 9th, I will be running a 12 day series here on the blog to get you thinking about writing from a different angle. I believe that too often, authors spend too much time wordsmithing to death their stories, worrying about their GMC's of their characters or thinking about how to market their book before they have even written it. As you have read here on the blog, how many times have I talked about going to conferences listening to authors complaining about book sales, or whining about the business of publishing and not thinking about the stories or even why they are writing. 

That is the point of this series.

I have the benefit of having three fantastic kids in some pretty diverse careers (all of which were amazingly expensive to support as parents). My oldest, Rowan, is a NCAA swim coach and who still competes competitively. My middlest, Cate, is an Equestrian coach in Wellington, Florida working with dressage and hunter/jumpers. My youngest, Bronwyn, who just graduated is a dancer and choreographer. All provide me unique insights not just from a coaching insight, but from a mental and learner's mindset into how to prepare and think about how to approach an activity. For this series, we are going to go to the dance field.

I stumbled across this from a social media post that came across my feed by a ballerina and movement educator by a ballerina and movement educator by the name of Ayca Anil. Her insights were amazing. We'll take what she says about ballet and dance and look at it from a writing perspective. 

Let's get ready to change our thinking! 

Jealousy Is Your Worst Enemy

 We have all seen it before. We have all been there before. 

It's time to cut the birthday cake for someone in the family and the two kids start complaining about how one person got a bigger piece than the other person, or someone got more frosting than the other person. Maybe it is the complaining in the toy store about how someone got a toy that is bigger than someone else's toy. 

Ahh, jealousy. We love it don't we? Especially when it is happening to some other parent and we can sit back and say it NEVER happens to our kids and it NEVER happened in our lives.... (yea, right....).  But I bring this up today when it comes to you and your writing career. Jealousy of other writers is one of the worst things that can happen to you and it will destroy your own career. No, I am not saying you will lose your job. This is all about mindset.

Let's first think about where this jealousy thing is coming from. Again, return to the kids with the cake. Kid 1 is upset because Kid 2 has a bigger slice of cake. Maybe Kid 2 does, but here comes the next question. Do we know the rest of the circumstances? Is Kid 2 older? Did Kid 1 do something earlier to deserve less? Is Kid 1 diabetic and shouldn't have that much of high levels of sugar? The list goes on and on. Well, the same goes for writing. We don't know the circumstances. 

Some writers get things that you WISH you had simply because of circumstances that are out of your control and maybe beyond your reach. Consider the following list:

• They were in a publishing line that was closed and due to a contract they were signed to they were moved to a different house that you had always wanted to be in.
• They were in the right place at the right time and an editor sat down with them at a table at a luncheon and said they wanted to know about their book (you weren't at that conference).
• They had a story that was what the editor was looking for at that time.
• You were tied up with other writing projects and couldn't afford to drop those and start something new on a gamble that the project would be right.
• That person simply had a voice the editor wanted and your voice wasn't what they wanted.
• Get the idea?

We simply don't know what the circumstances are. It is not a matter of the world working against you. Sometimes, things just work out that way.

But we also have to remember that, even though you might want to be at that one big publishing house with that big fancy hard cover book, (here comes the cold hard truth so be braced for it), it might not be where you are destined to be. We have to admit, like all professions, activities, sports, hobbies, etc, some people just have inherent skills that others have. Some people just have the genes that others do not have. Look, I don't care how hard you train and swim, there is something about the genes that a Katie Ledecky or Michael Phelps, or Lebron James have that others do not have. But we can be successful in our own area.

The other thing I want us all to remember, especially as writers, is, if we want this business to continue and to compete against the mind melting streaming services and gaming platforms and get people back to reading again, we have to celebrate the successes of writers.  They got there! Applaud what they did!

And one final note. I stumbled across this as I was writing this post. Consider this as well....

Finding Motivation in the Tough Times

There will be tough days in writing. There will be days when you simply say you don't want to write. There will be days when you get too many rejection letters. There will be days when you stare at a blank screen and not know what to write. There will be days when you ask yourself "how did I get into this mess?"

Sorry, the lyrics got stuck in my head...

Still, you understand what I am talking about. Every author has these. And honestly, for many authors out there, when these moments hit, they simply quit and walk away. The pressure is just too much. The fear of failure is too great. The negative self-doubt is too strong to get over that hurdle.

And that is a shame. I have met a lot of great writers who I saw had potential who just walked away. 

I am, in no way going to say that those successful writers out there do not have bad days. Everyone of them do. But for each of them, they find a way to overcome that hurdle. My challenge for you is to find that way to get over the hurdle and get through that tough time. I will say, please, do not say you are going to give yourself a week or more off of writing. This is similar to those students who say they are going to "take a Gap Year" and often never make it to college. The time away allows your brain just to prove to itself that walking away was worth it. 

Here are some of the things I have heard authors do. All simple. All easy. All work.:

• Take a walk
• Garden
• Clean the house (that is my favorite)
• Go play a video game with your kids
• Bake a cake
• Go write something totally stupid and fun
• Take a day and help out someone who needs help
• Instead of writing, go and read
• Instead of writing, spend some time thinking of new plots
• Instead of writing, use the time to market
• Instead of writing, use the time to support other authors (and yes, that means you can spend way too much money at a bookstore!)

The thing is, that often, we run into these difficulties because we put so much pressure on ourselves that we are thinking more about the pressure and less about the work in front of us. Simply find a way to shift the focus. 

No Answer Means No - Professionally, I Disagree

NOTE and/or WARNING: This is a bit or a rant/editorial/opinion piece. These are simply my thoughts. 

This last weekend, I was at a conference, and stumbled across a post by Jane Friedman, titled, "Silence: The New Rejection That's Expanding in Insidious Ways." This was originally posted June 26, 2025 by Jacqueline Salmon. It once again brought up the new trend editors and agents have been using of the "No answer means no approach."

In this article, it talks briefly about some potential reasons for people doing this and I have certainly heard reasons other editors and agents have used. Heck, I have seen this in responses I get when I sent out a question to someone and get the infamous message "Due to the amount of emails we get, we will only respond to those we feel we want to advance..." message. 

And like you, I hate that message. But I will say, as a side note, at least with that message, I know my email made it to the company I was trying to reach. That email response is so important in a digital age considering how many times we have sent an email out and it disappeared into cyberspace. We know we sent it, it is in our "sent" file, but it did not make it to the person we wanted, or maybe that company no longer exists? This is why those responses are important. 

The article does note that it doesn't take that long to at least respond with a simple message of, "Sorry, this no longer meets our needs."

And yet, this is becoming even worse. It seems that many are getting to the point that they are "walking on eggshells" around editors and agents so as to not "trigger" their personal feelings. As Salmon noted, "Responding, even after expressing initial interest, could open that floodgate to follow up-emails..."

Oh give me a break!

If you are an author, and you want to be a PROFESSIONAL author in this BUSINESS OF PUBLISHING then learn to accept the answer no, and learn to be professional and business like. You do not need to see this as an opportunity to "try one more time" with something we said no on, or try to tell us that we did something wrong or any other message. Just deal with it. 

And honestly, here at Greyhaus, answering emails is something that is a professional standard. OK, I will admit I do not answer those who just send me their promotional material for their self-published book or send me unsolicited offers to provide a service to my agency. But I will respond.

If we in the publishing industry want to see authors improve in their writing, we have to give them something to work with when they send us those query letters. If the story is not something we acquire, then maybe getting a few of those messages over and over again will get them to pay attention and read before sending the material. If we request at least a partial and, in the end, it doesn't work for us, give them something of why it doesn't work. Let me explain.

There are times when I just don't connect with the story. I tell them this is a subjective business. All of yo know that there are times when someone likes a book, gives it to you and you totally hate it. The same thing can happen here. If you think the plot is disjointed, then simply tell them that. If you personally don't like the character, then tell them. 

Again, it doesn't take much.

And as I said earlier, if you are a writer and cannot handle someone telling you your story may not be good, this is not a business for you!

 

Making First Person Better? Hmmm? Scott's Thoughts

I was scrolling through social media earlier this week and saw a post of why a person hated 1st person (already liked this person) but then she noted how she recommended solutions to make it so that she would like the writing. OK, so she had me hooked so I kept sweeping to see what she said. 

Her complaint was the excessive use of sentences starting with "I". It was simply over-kill was her argument. While I totally agree with this statement. I would also argue that it is a problem with pretty much any word that authors tend to use when they write. I find myself doing that time and time again when I write. There are days when I write and find myself using the same word starting paragraphs, or I use the same phrase repetitively in that day's writing. How do I notice this? I pay attention to what I write. My words don't just dump on the page. It requires paying attention! There are days, even here on the blog that I catch my self starting sentences with "So". (Must be something in the coffee?) Who knows. In any case, let's get back to her 1st person argument. 

Her only complaint about 1st person was the use of "I" so all she did was change the beginning of the sentences. To her, wordsmithing on a sentence level fixes the issue. And that, my friends, is where too many authors are making mistakes. And that is also why it is not going to fix my biggest issue with 1st person for so many authors. 

First of all, changing sentence structure is just cosmetic. It makes a sentence sound different. That is all it does. Changing a word does not change the context. Secondly, one of her suggestions was just starting with an action, which again, is just cosmetic. All that she is recommending is changing the sentence around from a basic sentence to a complex sentence (moving the subject later into the sentence with dependent clauses in the beginning...[lost you, huh?]). 

But my real issue with 1st person is the lack of depth that 1st person provides. Again, this is something I bring up here on the blog whenever I talk about it. This is the same example I provide, but it is a good one. If I want to describe a room to a reader and I want to describe it in third person, I can describe the carpeting, the wall paper, the temperature of the room, the china in the cabinet, the lighting, the history of the room, etc. I can add all of that depth. If there are people in the room, I can add in who the people are, their history, brief bio's of those people, their actions, their appearances and so forth. If it is in 1st person and I am just rushing into the room with the groceries and it is my own home, I only have one thing on my mind. To get those eggs to the counter and I don't give a rip about Gradma Eunice's Christmas plates in the China hutch that reminded me of the festivities of the season, or of the smell of the tree in the corner. I want to get the damn eggs to the counter because I am tired. 

In simple terms, too often, writers stick to 1st person because A) they think a genre is supposed to be written that way because that is what they have seen or what they have been told; or B) they are comfortable writing dialogue and writing narrative is hard. 

Remember, just changing words will not fix the problem.