I recently spent six months teaching revision strategies (and strategies for emotionally navigating the revision process) to creative writers across genres through the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. One of the resources I drew on and recommended to writers most often during those months was fellow Minneapolis writing teacher Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew’s book Living Revision: A Writer’s Craft as Spiritual Practice.

In Tips for Getting Back to Writing After Time Away, I shared strategies for returning to our writing practices when there’s been some kind of break or lull. But what if you want or need to get back, not just to writing in general, but to a particular project that’s ended up on hold? (That novel you’d drafted two-thirds of, the short story you’d just finished outlining before something bad happened, the project you received edits on but haven’t actually revised yet…) What if you just can’t find your motivation or momentum again?
 
Well, first of all, check out the suggestions in that more general post. Be gentle with and kind to yourself. Find ways back to creative fun. Seek out support and community.
 
You’ll also want to start guiding yourself back to the energy of the specific project that has been set aside. Here are a variety of concrete approaches you can try, starting with whatever resonates with you right now:

If you send your work to me or another editor, you’ll probably end up dancing with Microsoft Word’s Track Changes and Comments features—or their equivalents in some other word processor. Even if you just ask friends or classmates to read your draft, chances are high you’ll eventually run into this particular mode of giving and receiving feedback.
 
I’m sure everybody can muddle through! But you’ll be happier and less overwhelmed armed with some strategies for processing this kind of input. (You might even end up with a better, more polished manuscript.) And that’s what this post is for.

Book designer Debbie Berne offers something really neat in The Design of Books, which came out last year (and which Berne both wrote and designed): a beginner-friendly but not boring or patronizing tour of, like, literally how books are put together. What are all the pieces called? What design decisions are made, by whom, and how?

The book’s subtitle is An Explainer for Authors, Editors, Agents, and Other Curious Readers, and I think that pretty much nails it. I love glimpses into parts of my world that are not the areas I spend the most time thinking about, and I love information that makes me appreciate new aspects of stuff I already adore; if you do too, maybe check out this book.

We all know the really loud idea that “real writers” write every day no matter what. But we also know that human beings take breaks from our jobs and our hobbies because we have complicated, interesting, difficult, beautiful, embodied, messy, and hopefully long lives.

Writers—and here’s a big important secret—are in fact human beings.

The writers I know have days, weeks, months, sometimes even years of not writing (or not writing regularly, or not writing in our core genres) for lots of reasons. For example:

• We have bodies and they don’t always work great.
• We have caregiving responsibilities that are sometimes all-encompassing.
• Our other work doesn’t always leave time and energy for writing, especially in combination with body challenges and/or caregiving responsibilities.
• Grief bowls us over.
• We run into fun opportunities and decide to embrace them, even if that means setting aside our writing for a while.

Life happens! It is okay to take a break from a creative practice.
 
The problem is that, although most people want to go back to writing, it can feel really hard after time away. If that’s you, here are some strategies that will help.

I love a good style sheet! Like, genuinely, what a joy. So, if you’ve been looking into editorial services and wondering what on earth style sheets are … or why editors seem to imagine you want one … I’d be delighted to fill you in.

Should a particular romance novel, novella, or story be written in the past or present tense? (Should romance in general be written in the past or present tense?) Well ...

Some romance writers know with absolute certainty that a particular story has to be told in the past tense or in the present tense. Some people only write in one or the other, in which case: Problem solved, carry on!

But a bunch of other people get really stuck on the question of the storytelling tense--when is the story being told? during or after the narrated events? Sometimes this is a stressful decision when a writer is just beginning to play with a sparkling new idea. Sometimes it comes up when someone's trying to get a handle on a draft that just does not feel right.
 
Here's my own (informed, yet personal) take on present vs. past tense for romance fiction:

When you think of a writing group (or, interchangeably, a writers’ group), I’m guessing the first model that pops into your mind is a bunch of creative writers exchanging parts of their drafts and critiquing each others’ work. Maybe in a coffee shop.
 
If you’ve had bad experiences with a writing group in the past, perhaps these coffee shop people are being kind of competitive. Or pointing out typos in an early draft. Or striving relentlessly toward publication while cliquishly looking down on less “serious” writers.

But I promise you, there is a whole wide and diverse world of writers’ groups out there!