Keeping Promises

This week a writing mentor sent me a paragraph or two of his writing and asked me what promises he made me, the reader.

As a writer, it’s critical that we keep the promises we make to our readers, or they’ll drop us in a hot second.  It’s brilliantly put, and I wanted to share this week’s inspiration with you.

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Keeping Our Fictional Promises

By Mark Neher

“Our readers want many things from each story once they commit to reading. Some crave a genre and others need a tone. Some like dialogue and some want poetry from stone. Most read in isolation so they won’t feel alone. They might like science-fiction, romance or humor. They may like a salad with a bit of each, a phenomenon with a tumor.

Children need once upon a time. Young adults seek angst, preferably with arrows and secret weapons well animated. The middle aged want to recapture or fast forward, and the old are grateful for the moment. But what do they all have in common? What does every reader want?

They want the truth. They want us to keep our promises. As writers with good intent we are all the same. Our objective is to make our story seamless except for the dramatic natural breaks every good story requires to change direction or drop a third stage rocket and maintain a trajectory with a change of speed. There are many ways to create the narrative, but the voice behind the curtain will be revealed in the end. Each character has to be true to themselves to deserve the readers rewards for their time in the green room stocked with emeralds and a multitude of gems, and treatments for even the hardest case.

I see someone in the back row clicking his heels together and I’m about to drop a house on your writing desk. We have no idea what we are capable of writing, unless we learn from everything written before and decide to be even better because of the sacrifice of our predecessors. Brilliant becomes possible in flashes when you really want it. Bugs you the rest of the day. You are a writer. People hang on what you say. Especially what you promised to sell a book and sacrifice a reader’s day.

Here is the point… most writers build a world and aren’t god enough to hold it together. Your memory is enough if you are gifted with one of those, otherwise what you create has to have a diary, a log to burn to sit by and load you’re your kindling onto the fire. If you have a head to hold it all then cheers, but if not we need to keep track of where we squirrel away our walnuts or what we bury won’t do a bit of good when we spring from our tap roots.”

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My life is changing again. “Yeah, right. Just like everyone else.” you say. It’s true. Life changes for all of us, and I’m no different. With my reduced hours at work comes a reduced paycheck – that’s a big change, and I’ve not been able to successfully figure out quite how to make up the difference yet.

One of the reasons I reduced my hours was to be more present as a mom and for The Best Husband Ever, and another was to focus on writing and really try to figure out how to break into the “making some money” side of writing.  This blog, while a great way to quiet some of the noise in my head, hasn’t lead me into the MSM writing yet, so, I think it’s time for a change.

I’ve written and posted 110 weekly Write2Unpack blog posts in the last 2 years (including this one). I write about things that are sexy, encourage others to be better, kinder, more loving humans, and about lessons that are present all around us – especially from our pets.

What does that have to do with keeping promises? This week I’ve been thinking about the promises I made you, my reader, when I started this blog.  I promised to spend time, every week, reaching out to you and hoping to touch you with my words. I promised to inspire you, to encourage you, to make you laugh, and, sometimes, to make you wonder.  I hope I’ve kept my promises.

I’m going to change my blog, but I haven’t quite figured out the “into what” yet.  I want to continue keeping my promises to you, and make new ones.  I may cut down my weekly posts to a lesser amount, write short stories that (hopefully) make you laugh, cry, or love more.  Maybe I’ll devote more time to my Living With Jeff blog and website, maybe I’ll tell you stories from songs and have you guess, maybe I’ll roll my blog posts into a book of short stories and self-publish, or maybe I’ll devote more time into re-re-re-editing my manuscript and find an agent/editor who believes in me like my husband and fellow writers do.

I know that I can promise you this: I’ll continue spending the time, each week, writing to you with the hopes that what I write reaches you and resonates. I’ll continue to seek out inspiration from everyday occurrences, and share them with you – you deserve that. Besides, keeping promises is sexy.

So this week, my reader, I ask that you watch for me. Find me if you need. I’ll be here, plugging away and working diligently at kicking some writing ass. I promise.

My thoughts are my own, but my pictures are generally found on Pinterest (you can find anything there!). If you like what I write, please share with your friends or someone you think would like it! I’d love it if you follow me on Facebook (Melissa Gale), Instagram (write2unpack), or Twitter (@write2unpack). If you have any topics you’d like to talk about, reach out to me at write2unpack@gmail.com. Oh, hey, and if you sign up to follow me you’ll never miss a post!