Back to School for Writers!

by M. L. Buchman

What is it about the Fall? Last year my fall was psychotically busy! I mean I seriously considered sleeping...at least once or twice...I'm sure I did. I just don't remember doing it. So, I firmly vowed, never again... Guess what?

You would think that by this time in my career (over 50 novels and as many short stories), that I'd know some things. Yet, here it is, Fall, and I'm once again convinced that I know almost nothing about the industry and craft in which I make my living.

When I ask, "Why is this?" (which I frequently do in far less polite language), I think I may have puzzled out an answer. It's the Fall...the Back-to-School season.

I have a friend who calls Summer "The Time of Great Forgetting" for writers. Writers are people, too, (who knew, right?) and their lives get busy with kids and summer outings and all of that other madness.

Then it happens.

BANG!

It's conference season. It's the writer equivalent of Back-to-School season. The challenge is that writing is an interconnected sport. High school, even college, is about a wide variety of learnings only loosely related. The cross-over effects of Ancient Greek civilization (my minor), Geophysics (my major), and operating the college planetarium (my hobby and joy) were fairly minimal. For my best friend it was microbiology and free-climbing every building on campus (up the outside).

Writing isn't like that. Story is where it all begins. However, telling a good story isn't enough. You have to tell it well enough that people actually read it. Then, once you create it, you need to produce and sell it. Then, as titles age (which they do by the time you have a hundred of them) it becomes time to refresh them. To do that we must study copy writing so that our blurbs and ads are amazing enough to make people open the book. Cover design (or redesign), so that people stop scrolling long enough to read our cool blurb. Newsletters so that people will know about our next amazing title...which ultimately drives us right back to telling a good story.

Each stage of this career fascinates me, and frequently startles me with new lessons in something I already knew.

For example, I was 25,000 words into my latest novel when I realized that there wasn't a single scent or smell in the entire book. By 100+ titles, you'd think that would be automatic by now...it isn't. Why did I realize this? I was thinking about how I distinguished characters in another series (for reasons I'll explain in a moment). One is a chef. So how does a chef perceive the world? Sight, sound, touch are all secondary. A true chef first experiences their world through taste and smell. Neither my current hero nor heroine are chefs, but they both eat, go outdoors, ride horses, and so on. They're going to smell things.

Duh!

I know this. I've given lectures on this topic. As a matter of fact, that exactly what I was doing when I realized that my current work had none of that.

Conferences are where writers go to get their behinds kicked into gear. Part of it is interaction with other writers at or above your level. Or sometimes it's as simple as giving a talk. Next week I'm giving a talk on Estate Planning for Authors at a national conference. I'll be traveling 15 hours to get from my home on the Oregon Coast to Florida's Gulf Coast to do so (as well as attend the conference).

In building the talk, I realized that I had built other talks for other conferences over the years:

• Managing Your Inner Artist / Writer
• Character Thinking In a Series World
• and many others...

Well, polishing one talk had me looking at other talks and thinking about them. And that had me going back and looking them over until I realized...whoops! I was missing scent and taste from my current novel. I didn't even get to the conference yet, and still I'm getting basic craft lessons, never mind the business ones.

Then I asked the question, if this is helping me...can it help others? Part of what motivates me as a writer is giving back to others. So, over the years, each time I've learned some hard-won lesson, I've tried to find a venue to teach it. And, as anyone who has taught knows, there's no better way to learn a topic than to teach it.

So, my first three classes, the three mentioned above, are now up at Teachable.com (http://mlbuchman.teachable.com/). Why? Because going to a conference is a big investment. It is a challenge in our busy adult lives to take ourselves back to school.

HOWEVER, as writers, we must keep going back to school. We must keep learning. Because the second we stop, we become boring. And that's when someone steamrollers right on by us. Because they remembered to put flavors and scents in their character's world view, or how to manage their inner writer, or how to protect their legacy so that it lives on and helps their heirs.

Yes, the yearly "Time of Great Forgetting" has gone by and we writers are once again consuming knowledge at a rate that only a fire hose can deliver. But I've found that one of the real secrets to success is to never stop learning. 

If not these courses, then others. If not these books, they others. Go forth and find ways to make yourself better every single day. Go find ways to bring success one step closer every day. Even if it feels slow, when you look back, you'll be shocked at just how much ground you've covered. 

Don't go "Back to School." Never leave it!

Just sayin'

• M. L. Buchman: 50+ novels, 3x Booklist "Top 10 Romance of the Year", NPR and B&N "Top 5 Romance of the Year."
• M. L. writes: military romantic suspense, contemporary romance, F&SF, thrillers, even more short stories than novels.
• M. L. has: bicycled solo around the world, designed and built houses, worked too many years as a corporate project manager, rebuilt and solo-sailed a fifty-foot sailboat, flown and jumped out of airplanes.
• M. L. also: quilts!?!
• Find out more at www.mlbuchman.com.