Expert tips from a nurse-turned-writer

P.S. I’m not an expert-expert, but I do make a living by stringing words together and want to share everything I learn with you!

Let’s make 2025 our bitch, bitches

Hello writers,

How’s your 2025 going so far? Mine has been filled with long walks, extra sleep, and kids home from school (an utter joy while also very loud and overstimulating). In fantastic news, I’ve gotten more work already! (More on that in future newsletters…) I’m feeling inspired by the new calendar year and I’m ready to jump in and werrrrrrk.

How about you? Let’s get into it!

WRITING TIP OF THE WEEK

Shape your sentences like a master craftsman

When you craft words into sentences and then into paragraphs and pages, you’re creating a kind of music. Random fact about me: I’m a mega music nerd. Not in the “she knows all the cool new bands” way. The nerd-nerd kind.

Through elementary school, high school, and college, I played the flute and sang in multiple choirs. I took so many music classes in high school, I got out of PE every year. (Whoop!)

When you play and sing enough, you get a sense for how a piece’s dynamics play just as important a role as notes or words. An engaging song will have calming lulls and building crescendos. It will have notes that last a long time, and shorter notes leading to another phrase. I think our writing should follow the same pattern.

Here’s what I mean:

You can create dynamics in your writing by varying your sentence length throughout the piece. Do you need to make an important point? Stick a 3-word sentence in there. Want to dig deeper into nuance? Go ahead and use longer phrasing with plenty of descriptive adjectives, clarifying commas, and even an em-dash or two.

For example, here’s a small graf with sentence lengths mostly alike:

• Shiela heard a knock at the door. The banging made her feel nervous. She walked toward the sound. Her heart pumped erratically in her ears. Shiela placed shaking hands on the wood. It quaked with each sharp knock. She rose to her tiptoes. Her eye line approached the door’s tiny rectangular windows. She looked through and gasped.

A little perfunctory. Almost like it was supposed to be a list… Now look at this segment with more varying sentence lengths:

• Shiela heard a knock at the door. BANG. BANG! The sound flooded her nervous system, but she walked toward it anyway. BANG! BANG! She placed shaking hands on the wood. It quaked with each sharp thump. Rising to her tiptoes, she peeked through the door’s tiny rectangular windows just above her eye line. A gasp ripped through her throat.

Any better? It starts the same. But then I added punchy one-word onomatopoeia to make the reader feel it. After that, I added a longer sentence, then hit you again with more one-word “sentences.” Threw in a couple shorties. Then a longer descriptive sentence to draw you in before I finished with a short, strong action-verb finale.

This example was fiction, but you can use the principle in any type of writing. Varied sentence lengths keep your reader engaged and take them on a journey, rather than a dull march through information.

I’d love to know what you think, or read your own examples! Reply and tell all…

TRIVIA-PALOOZA

Library book thievery

Your trivia question for the week is…

💡 Which book gets stolen the most from public libraries? 💡

(The answer’s at the bottom!)

HIGHLIGHT REEL

I grit my teeth and sent the pitch

I have a sucky attitude about pitching. I adore writing, but pitching feels like waaaay too much work for the possibility of getting nothing out of it. However. In 2025, I’m working on my bad attitude (I am, I am). I even left myself an inspirational message on my daily task calendar… (see below)

Jokes aside, one of my biggest goals for 2025 is to pitch more. I attended a pitching workshop held by Liz Heflin through her incredible community of writers called the Inkwell (check it out!) The guest host was Ericka Andersen, who gave us a fantastic pitching framework to subtract the guesswork. And she convinced me to get out of my own way.

Full transparency? I haven’t had any new pitches accepted yet. (Out of the whole three I’ve sent…) But I’m going to give the pitching thing my all this year, and try not to get too discouraged. My “big fish” pitch goals are for:

• National Geographic

• Discover magazine

• STAT

• BBC health

I’m breaking out in hives now. Awesome.

But as Ericka said during her workshop, “There’s no barrier to entry if you have the right idea.” Now, just to conjure up some great ideas!

How do you feel about pitching? I’d love to know. 🙂

IT’S PERSONAL

Gusty highland hike

Every year (so far) I’ve had a slow-down in work for December. And this year, I took full advantage of the extra time. the other day, we tried to get to Ben Lawers for a good, steep climb, but our littlest got mega carsick and ended up vomiting in a plastic bag. (He felt much better after.)

So, we decided to hike right where we were! We had to be extra careful as the wind kept trying to blow us down the hills… but we made it with minimal falls and even had a windy hillside hot chocolate picnic.

‘Til next time

Thanks for reading and see you next week!

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You can view all my work on Authory and also feel free to check out my website!

💡 Find the trivia answer HERE 💡