It’s week nine of 2026. How is the writing going these days? We’ve just turned the corner into March, which I’ve long regarded as the worst month of the year—full of horrors and jump scares. Based on the headlines this weekend, this March will not be breaking the pattern.
But what has helped me in past years is to actively fight back against the Marchiness of it all. I counter-program with lots of joy: art and music and dinners and books. Months ago, I gleefully bought tickets to three shows, knowing how much I would need them—Margo Price and Jeff Tweedy at my beloved Fillmore, and Father John Misty at the newly restored and reopened Castro Theatre.
I’m going to be fighting back in practical ways too, protesting and postcard-writing. Don’t give in to despair! March cannot beat us.
Over the past few weeks I’ve had many short conversations with writers—in my eight-minute consults at the San Francisco Writers Conference, on Zoom calls, and in my inbox—that showed me the power of incremental feedback, and I wanted to talk a little bit about that today.
Many editors will tell you to wait to get feedback, whether from a professional editor or from a beta reader or critique partner, until you have written and revised a full draft. And that’s good advice: You want to make sure you’ve allowed yourself time for your own vision to fully unfold and that you are presenting the best version of the work you can produce.
At the same time, I believe that you should talk about your work as often as possible, to anyone who will listen, then pay close attention to the responses and questions you receive. Often they will tell you a great deal about what is most compelling about your story or show you a blind spot in your thinking.
Similarly, getting feedback on your opening pages can alert you to important craft tools you aren’t yet using. Recently, I’ve worked with a number of writers who are transitioning from screenplay writing to fiction. They are often excellent at dialogue and plotting, but sometimes weaker when it comes to the ‘telling’ elements (interiority, summary, character description) that are part of the fiction-writer’s toolkit. Showing these writers how to use the tools sooner rather than later means they get to a useable draft much faster than they would otherwise.
How do you have these conversations? Writers conferences are one place they are happening, but you can make them happen almost anywhere you can find readers. Join or start a book group, take a virtual writing class, ask everyone you meet what they’ve been reading lately and see who your people are.
The older I get, the more convinced I am that community is the ultimate solution to most problems (see March, above). This is true of writing too. Find and cultivate your own writing community and start those conversations that can help you better understand your own work.
Summary as character development in V.E. Schwab’s Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
My next Novel Study piece is now up on my website, and if you want to learn more about those ‘telling’ elements I mentioned above, then this is the perfect piece for you to read. Summary is one of the most under-appreciated tools in the fiction writer’s toolkit, but in the hands of a skilled writer, summary can do far more than move characters from point A to point B. In this essay, I break down a chapter from Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil in which V.E. Schwab compresses an entire year into a few pages—and manages to develop character, deepen relationships, and explore the novel’s central themes at the same time.
Scene study of VE Schwab’s Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
There are now 8 full scene studies for you to read – check them out!
Book birthdays!
The Fix Up, by Marina Adair
Poppy Hart is one viral project away from hitting a million followers when she inherits a crumbling Mid Century Modern house in the Hollywood Hills—every DIYer’s dream. Even better, her eccentric Aunt Opal pulls strings to land her a full-production renovation show. The downside? The contractor is none other than Decker “Drill ’Em Hard” Jamison, former NHL legend, current shirtless menace, and the man Poppy once shared the most catastrophic blind date in the history of blind dates with. Walking away isn’t an option—not when this show could change her life and Opal is the only person who’s never abandoned her.
Congrats, Marina! Learn more and buy the book here. Check out my Instagram post to find out my favorite things about the book.
Upcoming appearances
I love speaking to writers and editors—check out my Speaking page or reply to this email if you are interested in having me speak to your group.
IPA BookCamp, April 24, Newark, NJ: I’ll be giving a talk about revision strategies and how to read your manuscript like an editor
Our Thing of Joy this week is an article about a capybara named Prune, who won this year’s Capybara Long Bath Showdown in Japan. (That such a contest exists is another Thing of Joy!) Prune hung out in her enviably beautiful outdoor soaking bath for an hour and forty-five minutes. Good job, Prune!
Stay well, y’all, and keep fighting the good fights.
Kristen