I do a lot of training to make sure that I’m running my business well and that I’m keeping my editing skills up to par, and much of my non-editing time this year was dedicated to those endeavours. I want to focus in on the things I’ve learned from an editing mastermind I did this fall and from these series calls that I did just in the past month, because the lessons I picked up in both are really applicable to you as a romance writer as well!
So if you’re not aware, a mastermind is a group of people do similar jobs who get together on a regular basis for accountability, brainstorming, problem-solving, encouragement, etc. Jessica Snyder ran the group, and there were six of us: Jess, Dawn Alexander, Jen Graybeal, Stephenie Magister, Joanne Machin, and me. I cannot tell you how much I learned from these women, who are all lovely people and great romance editors who care so much about their clients and their work. We met a couple of times a month all autumn and had amazing discussions, and here’s what I learned from them:
1) This is not a zero-sum game: One of the most fascinating things about getting to know everyone in the mastermind is that as much as we all do the same thing (romance editing), we all had completely different focuses and specialities. I absolutely loved this because it shows that there’s no need to see each other as competition—we’ve got our own unique selling points that make us the best editors for some people, and make other editors the best for others. Don’t see other authors as competition (and I know that’s so hard when you see people who came up around the same time as you really excelling and when you feel like they’re doing better than you)—you have something totally unique to offer readers. (And actually, if you are similar to other authors, comps might draw their readers to you!)
2) Community: So much of our bimonthly mastermind sessions were really about hyping each other up, encouraging each other to go for big goals, and commiserating with each other over tough business issues. Also, being able to ask “so, am I…normal?” and just to getting confirmation that everyone else had felt or been through something similar was HUGE.
I’ve said this a million times in these newsletters—you need a community of romance people around you. You can’t grow if you isolate yourself and don’t have people around you who understand what it’s like to be in your position and who’ve experienced the same things. Whether it’s critique partners or beta readers or accountability buddies, find your people to walk through Romancelandia with.
3) Creative flow: I so looked forward to every mastermind meeting because I knew I was going to talk to brilliant people, for one, and because I knew I was going to have a torrent of creative ideas after I absorbed the discussion. There’s a whole doc on my computer now of new ideas that I can tackle in the future because of these masterminds. This goes back to community again—when you’re hanging around creative people who are doing interesting things, it inspires your own wheels to start turning, which then goes back to number 1—you put your own unique spin on it.
Last newsletter, I offered 15 free series hook calls, and you all SNAPPED them up. Between the newsletter and my social media, all 15 calls were gone in less than 24 hours! The point of making them free was to a) coach people to discover their series hook, and b) help me develop a new offer I’m doing for 2023 (stay tuned!) and learn what people need when putting together their series. I’m almost done all the calls, and it’s been so much fun (even for a hardcore introvert like me)—I’ve gotten to talk to people I’ve known online for years and meet people brand new to me and dip into so many stories and series in process. Here are the big takeaways from those calls:
1) Trend alert: Paranormal is BACK, baby! I was really surprised about the number of calls I did that were about paranormal romance (and OMG, I had so much grabby hands for these books—they’re all really updating paranormal for the 2020s). Also big was sports romance. Social justice issues were also at the fore of books in all romance subgenres—I think social justice is often in the subtext of romance novels, but more and more, it’s going to become more text in the next few years.
2) About those grabby hands…: You know the feeling when you read something about a book, and you’re just like “give it to me IMMEDIATELY”?
That is the exact feeling I wanted these writers on the calls to be able to evoke when they tell people about their series. That right there is the hook. Being able to give the elevator pitch of your series in one or two sentences where you’re going to convince people to read through the entire series is such a valuable skill to have. And it’s great practice for being able to do it with each individual story within the series.
The other thing I learned from talking to writers on these calls is that the hook is not the theme, nor the blurb, nor the tagline—these are all distinct marketing concepts, all of which you need to be able to master at different points in the writing/publishing process. But starting with the series hook allows you to focus in on what you want the series to be about, and you can then use that to guide you as you write each book.
3) Practice, practice, practice: The authors who had more books under their belt were generally able to get clearer on their hook faster than writers who were just starting out. And no shade to the latter writers—it’s all just about practice, and it’s going to be something that they’ll get better and better at the more books/series they write. It’s still totally doable to get at the hook, but it just might take a bit more noodling on it to get there. Like everything in writing, you are not going to be perfect at it from the beginning (or ever, really), but you have to just start and feel it out as you do it again and again.
4) Sorry, pantsers: If you’re going to write a series, you’re going to need to plan. I know some of you are trying not to hear that, but wait, it’s not all bad! Don't be afraid of the plan! You need to at least have a map of how the series is going to play out. This map does not have to show every single peak and valley of story across X number of books, but you have to have a general direction to set off towards and a sense of the terrain. There is still room to pants things, don’t worry, but with a little bit of planning, it’s going to make your life way easier as you write the series.