There’s No One Right (or Write) Way

By Lois Winston

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Lately, I’ve wanted to crawl into bed, pull the quilt over my head, and not emerge until we return to a time before the pervasive “My Way or the Highway” mentality that has taken us to the edge of a cliff. Remember when people could agree to disagree and still be friends? Remember when we didn’t cringe whenever we attended family dinners that included certain relatives who hold opposing views and who take every opportunity to try to convince us that they’re right, and we’re wrong? Hold the roast beef and mashed potatoes. Pass the Tums and Xanax.

This “My Way or the Highway” attitude has seeped into nearly every aspect of our lives, even our writing lives. Internet articles and various “experts” (who may or may not actually be experts) tout the best way to write a novel, how to get an agent, how to market your books. They’ll tell you agents and editors only want A, B, and C. Or if you don’t do X, Y, and Z, you’ll never sell a book. Some of this information is only a click away, but others first want your credit card number before imparting their knowledge.

I’m on quite a few listservs with both published and unpublished authors. Every day an unpublished author will either post about great information she found online or ask whether such-and-such service is worth the money.

Writing scams are a topic for another day. Today I want to discuss information posted online or provided in other ways. Writers should never believe everything they read and hear. For one thing, much of it is often contradictory:

• Always plot out your novel.

• Plotting stifles creativity. Just write. 

• You must produce at least 1,500 words a day.

• Don’t worry about word count. Just write. 

• You must write every day.

• Don’t stress about writing every day. It’s counterproductive.

• Always write forward. Never go back to reread/tweak what you wrote the day before. 

• Always go back to reread/tweak what you wrote the day before.

• Never edit while you write your drafts.

• Whenever you change something, always go back and edit your other pages.

• There’s no such thing as writer’s block. 

• Writer’s block is real.

I have heard well-known authors state all the above. However, the statements were made in the context of what works best for them. Their process. Not as “rules” that must be adhered to if you want to get published.

I recently saw an interview with Ken Follett. He spends a year writing the outline for each of his books. He then sends successive drafts to family, friends, editors, and even historians he pays as consultants for their input. That’s the process that works for him. He wasn’t suggesting that his way is the only way to write. He wasn’t even suggesting that anyone should mimic his process. Yet, there are probably some who will come away from watching that interview thinking that Ken has the secret to success, and if they do as he does, they’ll get published.

I find it disheartening that so many writers are so desperate to get published that they spend too much time searching for a secret sauce that has never existed. They constantly fall into the trap of believing they should follow every piece of advice they come across. Their self-confidence continually takes a hit when what they believe to be the secret sauce doesn’t work for them.

But who are the experts doling out this advice they cling to? Sometimes, they’re not experts at all. In my writing infancy, I entered many contests for unpublished romance authors. When the contest was over, most supplied entrants with the judges’ scoresheets and comments. The draw of these contests was that the finalists were judged by editors and agents, and there was always the hope that these professionals would like what they read enough to request the full manuscript.

I finaled or won many of the contests I entered, but I also received some very questionable advice from some of the anonymous first-round judges. One wrote, “I don’t really understand point of view, but I’m marking you down because I don’t think you do, either.” There was nothing wrong with my point of view according to the two other judges who gave me top scores on point of view.

Another wrote, “Editors want the hero and heroine to meet within the first three pages. Yours don’t meet until the end of the first chapter.” That might be the case for a 45,000-word Harlequin short contemporary romance, but I had entered the mainstream category where manuscript lengths were a minimum of 85,000 words.

Advice is only as good as the expertise of the person giving it. However, even when the advice comes from an expert, that advice is always based on that person’s experiences. What has worked for them. It may be the best advice you ever receive. Or it may not work at all for you.

Process is individual and develops over time. No two writers approach their writing the same way. The trick is to keep learning and keep writing, but don’t ever believe everything about your writing sucks based on one rejection, one how-to book, one article, one author talk, or one conference. Or even multiple rejections and more than one person’s advice. After all, Stephen King had decided to give up after thirty publishers rejected Carrie. Luckily, his wife convinced him otherwise.

Yes, there will be aspects of your work that need improving. Every author I know wishes she could go back and rewrite her earliest books. Some have. We all continue to grow in our writing. As you work at your writing, you’ll hone your skills. You’ll develop confidence and hopefully learn to view “My Way or the Highway” advice through a more discerning lens.

Constructive criticism and advice should never be discounted. It very well may be exactly what your manuscript needs. However, that’s not the same as someone insisting that their way is the only way to success. Think twice about that kind of advice and always check the credentials of the person dishing it out.

Meanwhile, my only advice for dealing with family dinners that include a “My Way or the Highway” relative is to take a book with you and hide in an empty room if the conversation gets too heated.

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USA Today and Amazon bestselling and award-winning author Lois Winston writes mystery, romance, romantic suspense, chick lit, women’s fiction, children’s chapter books, and nonfiction. Kirkus Reviews dubbed her critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” In addition, Lois is a former literary agent and an award-winning craft and needlework designer who often draws much of her source material for both her characters and plots from her experiences in the crafts industry. A Crafty Collage of Crime, the twelfth book in her series, was the recipient of the 2024 Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award for Best Comedy, and Sorry, Knot Sorry, the thirteenth book in the series, recently won the 2025 Silver Falchion Award for Best Comedy. Embroidered Lies and Alibis, the fifteenth book in the series, releases February 10th. Learn more about Lois and her books at www.loiswinston.com. Sign up for her newsletter to receive an Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mini-Mystery.

LIMITS

By Clay Stafford

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I was raised to believe that when I came to an obstacle, it was a personal shortcoming if I did not push through, a personal failure if I did not succeed, and a personal cowardice if I gave up. Those beliefs inhabited the marrow of my bones and festered in the recesses of my brain. I had no natural limits, none of us did, or so I thought and was bred to believe. Even giving credence to such an absurd suggestion felt irresponsible. I knew I and everyone else could overcome anything if we only pushed hard enough. There was no skill we couldn’t learn, no talent we couldn’t expand, no mountain we could not climb. I not only judged myself; I judged everyone. I taught it to my students and in my lectures. We all needed to be responsible for the optimal performance of our lives. It was called being dependable, being responsible, rising to the challenge, working harder and smarter, and pushing through. The push was always highly emotional, causing stress and conflict not only in me but in all my relationships, where others’ performances fell short, but I knew it was worth it. It brought out the best in all of us. Like a winning coach, I pushed myself and those around me. And when they pushed back, I viewed their lack of participation as denial and even laziness. Emotionally wrought, I could never see the mental clarity lost in this thinking. From the dejected faces of those I lived and worked with, it seemed I failed in the very presence that I thought I was being, the one I thought I was protecting. Even in that, I strove to do better.

The satisfaction of control brought me peace, or so I thought. I put myself in charge of my destiny. I oversaw my own future, and nothing could get in the way of that, and very little did. I offered every problem and relationship a doorway that could make things easier for me and everyone around me, but if it was blocked, I had no qualms about going through the wall. Pushing longer, harder, and stronger was, to me, a form of commitment. Staying with a problem until the end of the day, even if that day ran into the night, or even several days without sleep, was applaudable devotion and intention. Accepting limits or growing tired meant one had no self-respect. This was how a meaningful life was to be built; the lives of the great men and women I read in biographies exemplified that. They pushed through because they had something all of us could acquire: character. They built meaningful lives; I would, too. Endurance, discipline, and refusal to quit were the framework of success. Refusal to quit meant refusal to retreat, like cowards, like those who were weak. Even rest itself, I told myself, could wait. “I can sleep when I’m dead” was not uncommon coming out of my mouth in reply to those who were close to me and cared, as I popped my trucker’s caffeine pills, drank my ten Cuban coffees, and my gallon of daily tea.

The cost of this thinking and living with such force didn’t show up immediately. It took decades. That’s the deception we take to heart when we believe the deceitfulness chocked at us by the sycophants of the famous. The famous lied to the watching world, the obsequious flatterers lied to readers of books about great men and women, and then I took those as truths and lied to myself. Sure, the lies gave me extra waking time, or something that resembled it anyway. I learned how to stretch the day thinner, how to draw more from myself than I thought I could. The point that activity didn’t always equal accomplishment, though, was often lost on me. What I gained in hours, I lost, though I didn’t realize it, in life and relational clarity. After decades of this rat race, my attention to the important things, not just the walls to burst through, began to dull. My decisions about where to focus slowed. Simple things began to take longer, though I attributed that to age. Regardless, the very life I had always believed I was protecting by defining my own fate began to resist me.

I began to see, or rather I began to feel, that the very wall that I could not seem to push through was myself. Nothing dramatic happened to show me this. Fatigue didn’t announce itself to me publicly. Nothing in my life collapsed. Feeling tired all the time wasn’t bad; it was my baseline. Yet, focus began to take on the persona of irritation toward my work, myself, and the people around me. I no longer set out to tackle only the big things; small problems now carried more weight than they should have, and small mistakes by others began to irritate me. Life began to feel painful, even at times undesirable. Everything became such a big deal. I found that where I used to slam through walls, I began to make choices not out of intention, but out of relief. I became drawn to whatever would end the discomfort the fastest.

Being successful, I began to wonder, why did I feel at rock bottom? Being high in my profession, having relationships others would envy, having built the life I envisioned, something had to change, though I didn’t know how to give it a name. My choices began to become ill-guided, not from indifference, but from dullness. The part of me that once noticed nuance grew silent. Subtle distinctions in life, work, and people disappeared. I lost my sense of when effort was required and when time was the truer answer. I could still function, but I was compensating, now relying totally on force on everything where attention and inspiration once worked cleanly.

Then came denial, and the emotional cost that followed. Each time I overrode the yokes, big and small, that pulled me down, I taught myself not to listen. Signals that I used to welcome began to annoy me. They were inconveniences to my peace. Discomfort became something to suppress, to submit to silently rather than with understanding. Gradually, all trust eroded, not just in my body, mind, emotions, or energy, but in myself in general. A faint impatience began to settle in, yet flat, a sense that I was now pushing through life, all parts of it, still accomplishing, but rather than moving with it, things were no longer flowing.

As a result of shutting out the world and the world within my own head, my world narrowed. Limits began to change perspective. Everything became about getting through the day. Curiosity, my lifeblood, even began to fade. I knew something needed to be done, but that was the problem. I had everything I could ever want. Recovery from that seemed crazy and certainly ungratefully indulgent. Surprise began to have no place or excitement. My world was perfect. I was not in crisis, yet I was living as though I were. Survival mode replaced presence without my consent. Everyone around me felt it or felt the brunt of what I would not share.

I think the most dangerous part was how ordinary it all felt. Nothing told me to stop. Nothing told me to slow down. Nothing hinted at any type of collapse. Nothing told me I needed to stop bashing walls. No one told me I had a problem, or if they did, I didn’t hear. What I was doing, though, was operating below capacity, and I’d been doing it for way too long. I focused on my limitations to the point of obsession, at the expense of seriousness and gratitude about what I could control. There were limitations that I could not power through, I realized after too many years. And because I didn’t realize this earlier, all limitations, even challenges, began to operate out of the same intensity. Out of the blue, it hit me that if I couldn’t power through certain things that didn’t erase who I was or what I could become despite them. I realized that maybe those walls were there for a reason, that maybe I was meant to be something I didn’t consciously see myself as. The realization was slow and painful, but my life began to change. Centering took the place of warfare.

My limits took on a new light. They were never obstacles; they were misconceptions on my part. They were even guardians of who I was meant to be. The sad thing is, I had been deluded and deluded myself for a lifetime. I recognized the pundits of the super life were frauds. I began to respect those limits. At first, I didn’t respect limits dramatically or perfectly, but rather honestly, and, when I did, something softened inside me like the Grinch’s frozen heart. Efforts on things that were within my limits became cleaner. Decisions within my framework grew quieter and more precise. Life began to deepen again, rather than merely expanding. I began to do less because I stopped slamming into walls and instead spent my time doing more. That was the paradox. In fact, I did better at everything I did. The cost of refusing to stop at natural limitations had been the gradual loss of the very capacities that made my efforts meaningful in the first place. Limits and walls became not challenges to defeat, but invitations to stop long enough to acknowledge, honor, and preserve those things that did matter within the sphere of life I’d been given in which to live. Limits became no more than a beautiful river in my life, a life without a boat, that asked me to choose the path to the left or to the right when it told me in so many ways I could not cross but promised adventure no matter which direction I chose.

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Clay Stafford is a bestselling writer, filmmaker, and founder of the Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference, Killer Nashville Magazine, and the Killer Nashville University streaming service. Subscribe to his newsletter at https://claystafford.com/.