On Double Booking Myself, Synchronicity, and Community (A Love Letter)

In which I start my only little AMA

I don’t want you to miss this, so I’m putting it right up top. In an effort to jump-start more of a writing community here, I’m starting an Ask Me Anything. Do you have a writing question? Are you stuck in your novel writing? Curious about publishing? Need some inspiration or support? Ask away, my friends.

Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash

Hello lovelies,

Last Tuesday, I screwed up. I booked lunch with two different writers on the same day. And I didn’t find out about it until all three of us were on our way—one of the writers texted to say she was held up in traffic. Which is when I thought, uh-oh.

But luckily, I meet both of these writers at the same location, a Panera that’s halfway-ish between where they live and I live. And doubly luckily, they know each other. We would all have lunch together and that should be great. But I’d also planned to go over writing with each of them and that would be difficult in a group. So I fretted as I drove to Panera. (Pro tip: they’ve changed their menu and it was not an improvement. No more cheesy flatbread. I never ordered it but there was much consternation among those who did.)

And then the lunch truly was great. Kathy explained and showed the spreadsheet she uses to track versions of her novel chapters and Marna was delighted to see it. We talked about how hard it is to keep files organized. Kathy was excited to get to talk shop with writers and felt that my double booking was synchronicity. And we decided that we’d do it again, scheduling it so I could have individual time with each writer before and after our group lunch.

And that got me thinking about community. To be specific, writing community. I know you’ve heard this before, but it’s true: the job of a writer entails spending lots of time alone writing. And finding community can be difficult. In my mastermind this week, we talked about how connecting with other writers can help you out of a slump, boost you up, inspire you. A writing community can share tips and resources, be your beta readers, recommend editors and agents and steer you away from bad apples. A writing community is gold.

One of my goals since moving this newsletter to Substack has been to create a writing community here. I’d like people to feel open and safe to leave comments, and connect with others in the comment section, doing all the things I talked about in the previous paragraph. (Substack does have a chat feature, where you can start threads, but not all of my regular readers are on Substack so I’ve not tried that yet.)

But getting it going is challenging because many of you have been readers of this newsletter for many years and aren’t used to having a central location where you can comment. Some of you hit reply and wrote me regularly and I loved that and still do. If you want to connect that way, go for it.

But I’m going to experiment this week and offer myself up. Do you have a writing question? Are you stuck in your novel writing? Curious about publishing? Need some inspiration or support? Ask away, my friends.

Love, light, and good writing,

Charlotte

P.S. Go ahead, ask me your writing question in the comments. I’m all ears!

P.P.S. Readers have spoken and overwhelmingly, you want links to remain a part of this weekly love letter. And so they shall!

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Articles and Resources

Some good ideas in this post from Sahil Bloom.

I love these two women and I have three one-month gift subscriptions to give away. Leave a comment or hit reply to this email and I’ll get you set up.

How do you define success for yourself?

Honestly, I’m not a huge fan of the covers she’s designed but she presents so good how-to ideas for creating book covers.

Gayla always has good links on Friday. (And I’ll have a guest post on her Substack one of these days, when I manage to finish it.

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Books

The Bookshop by the Bay by Pamela Kelley. Pamela Kelley’s books are uber-light and you know exactly where they’re going. But I try to read them periodically because Kelley is hugely popular (seriously, like her most popular books have almost 20,000 reviews) and she got there by self-publishing. So I’m fascinated and try to parse out her appeal as I read. Update: Dutifully reading to the end.

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Events

Overseas Workshops

We’ve written several new blog posts about the location of our France workshop and why we love it so much. You can read about art and artists in Céret, the crazy annual footrace there, and best of all, the wonderful local bakeries. There’s only a couple spots left, so nab them now. And stay tuned for an interview with our writer-in-residence, Angela M. Sanders.

If Italy is more to your liking, the details of our Perugia, Italy creative writing workshop are now up on the website. Does the photo above tempt you? Reply to this email if you want to learn more.

Write-alongs

Also—I host zoom write-alongs on Mondays and Thursdays from 3 to 5 PM Pacific. All are welcome. We’re a friendly group, I promise, and also a productive one. If you’d like to join (its free) hit reply or comment and let me know.

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That’s it for now. Have a great week, everybody. And happy writing.