Featured Writer on Wellness: Kathryn Bashaar

I think the biggest emotional challenge for most writers is rejection.

Writing is a competitive business. There are way more authors needing publishers than publishers needing authors.

So, rejection is more the rule than the exception. But it’s still hard to take.

I usually can’t write at all for a day or two after receiving a rejection.

How Yoga Helps Me Through Writing Rejections

But this is one place where my 16-year yoga practice really helps me.

Yoga teaches that we have the right to our labors but not necessarily to any particular fruits of our labor.

In other words, my job is to write.

The job of others is to either publish my work or decide not to.

If I’ve written something that I think is good, I’ve done my job. I find that thought very soothing and it centers me so that I can send the story or book out to another publisher (and, often, another and another…)

What Helps Me Stay Creative: Long Walks and Mental Stimulation

Two things help me stay creative.

The first is long, solitary walks, where I can let my mind wander.

The second is mental stimulation, whether it’s from getting together with other people, or enjoying art or music or theater, or going someplace I’ve never been before.

I write a blog which is mainly focused on Western Pennsylvania history, and my husband and I have a lot of fun visiting historical sites in the area. I always learn something new, and usually meet someone interesting who is passionate about their little town and its history.

Covid has been really hard on my creativity because it has been harder to be social.

My Best Book Marketing Tip: Talk to Libraries!

The Pittsburgh area is rich in libraries.

So, before Covid, I had a lot of success pitching author talks to libraries. Adult Program Directors at libraries are always looking for something interesting to add to their program, so I just cold-called them via email and received many positive responses.

I’ve spoken to as few as three and to as many as thirty people at libraries here in Allegheny County. I usually sell several books at my talks, and it is great fun to talk about my book and meet readers.

Goodreads giveaways were also pretty successful in generating sales and reviews when my book was first published. Reviews are important. Beg every friend you have to read and review your book.

What Works for Me When Finding Time to Write

When I wrote my first book, I was still working a very demanding full-time job in information management.

At the time, our daughter and baby grandson had also come back to live with us, so there wasn’t really any place at home to write.

So, I got up at 5 a.m. and wrote in coffee shops for an hour or two before work. Every day. For three years.

Now that I’ve retired, I devote either the full morning or the full afternoon each weekday to writing. Some days I’m submitting or marketing, other days working on a short story or my second novel, or reviewing others’ books, or writing my blog.

But I am in that chair twenty hours a week doing something writing-related.

Long story short, what works for me is the butt-in-the chair method.

Advice for a Young Writer: Take Some Writing Classes

My best advice is to take some writing classes.

Once you have a few classes under your belt, find a critique group that can help you polish your writing. In a critique group you will need to be humble and but also loyal to your own work.

For example, if your writing group tells you that they don’t understand your character’s motivation, take that seriously. Your early readers are your best guide to where your writing is unclear.

But if someone tries to tell you what your character’s motivation should be, or what you should write about instead, stick to your guns. You know best what story you want to write. A good critique group can only tell you how to write it better.

And here is some overall life advice, from a 66-year-old who has face many challenges and feels like every minute of my life in this body in this world has been worth it…

1. Take care of your body. It has to last a long time. Find some kind of exercise that you will enjoy doing enough that you will do it willingly several times each week for the rest of your life. I’ve found several: yoga, dance, and hiking. Find your own exercise bliss.
2. You can follow your dreams and be sensible. It’s not either/or. It’s both/and. If you want to write but also need to earn a living, write on weekends, or before work, or in the wee hours at night, or while riding the bus to work (the bus didn’t work for me, but I have a friend who wrote three novels on the bus). Or save some money so that you can take a year off and write full-time.
3. Love. Always.

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Kathryn Bashaar’s first novel, The Saint’s Mistress, published by CamCat Publishing, is based on the true story of Saint Augustine and his mistress.

Kathryn blogs about books and Pittsburgh/Western Pennsylvania history at www.kathrynbashaar.com.  Her passion for her lifelong hometown led to a fascination with 19^th-century newspaper publisher and abolitionist, Jane Grey Swisshelm, the subject of her in-progress second novel, Righteous.

Kathryn has two adult children and one grandchild. She lives in the South Hills of Pittsburgh with her husband Allen and a very cranky cat.

Kathryn’s fiction and non-fiction have been published in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Civil War Times, and the literary journals Metamorphosis, and PIF. Her short story, “Infamy,” won an Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train’s 2014 short-short fiction contest. Her short story “The Girl From Bethel Park” will be published in the anthology Children of Steel in 2022.

For more information about Kathryn and her work, please see her website and Amazon author page, and connect with her on Facebook.

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