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.

Misunderstanding Conflict In Romance

Conflict seems to be a tough one for a lot of authors to handle when it comes to their stories. They hear about it all of the time when they go to workshops and they learn about the character's GMC (Goals, Motivations and Conflicts). And yes, these are indeed conflicts at one level. These are individual character's issues. In other words, a single character has a goal to achieve, has a motive to achieve it, and a conflict standing in the way. 

No problem there.

But when it comes to romance, we have to deal with another level of conflict, and that has to be the conflict standing in the way of the two characters actually getting together. Often you will hear editors and agents talking about "raising the stakes" for the characters. We want the readers to know that, yes, they will make it to the happily every after (it is a romance after all), but we need to know that they will have to work for it.

Think of it this way. If all the characters have to do is say the "L" word, then this is not a conflict. While for most of us, getting that word out the first time is tough because we really don't know the reaction of the other person, there really isn't much to lose other than maybe a little awkwardness. A real conflict however is the characters have to decide between a relationship and something else. Let's say take the classic trope of a corporate romance. The company has a policy of no in company romances. So, do they have a romance or does someone find a new job? Does someone choose to relocate to make a romance work or not? 

Yes, a lot of these conflicts can start externally, but the conflicts WILL interact with the character's personal GMC. So that character in the corporate romance has a goal of upward mobility in the company, their motivation is to prove to their family they can do it because the entire family has always been successful, and their conflict is their internal belief that they have been told by professors in college they would never do it and they should just get married. Now add in the romance. 

See what I mean?

Hopefully that clears things up!