writing Archives - Joy E. Held

AM I A WORKAHOLIC?

Posted on February 18, 2026 by Joy Held

AM I A WORKAHOLIC?

18 February 2026

AM I A WORKAHOLIC?

Disclaimer: This article may contain affiliate links although I have never made a single dime from one, I’m required by law to provide a disclaimer.

If I am a workaholic, I don’t care.

Honestly, I’m pretty sure I am a workaholic, but I’m not going to blame anyone else. Growing up, I had intense role models. My parents and extended family members were all middle class and had to work incredibly hard to make ends meet, food appear on the table, and apparel that met the fashion expectations of the day available to everyone. If we were poor, I didn’t get the memo, but I also don’t remember wanting too much besides a book to read, the time and freedom to read it, and paper and pencil with which to write my own poems and stories.

When I was twelve years old, my parents, who were self-employed (my Dad actually worked two jobs year-round; one full-time and one part-time, both as a contractor,) decided I should be more conscious of the money necessary to run a business and a household. I was happy to learn and by the age of fourteen I was keeping the financial books for both of them. As the family bookkeeper for two entrepreneurs, did I maybe see too much work going on? Did I assume everybody worked all the time? I don’t remember thinking that, but perhaps it influenced me more than I knew, because flash forward I will work, work, work until something is done or I run myself into the ground and get sick.

Something called the Bergen Work Addiction Scale entered the world around 2012. It was compiled by researchers in Norway and the United Kingdom and administered to over 12,000 working Norwegians. It’s based on the traditional psychological conditions indicating addiction to anything and is developed in specific accordance with the principles of work. Here are the seven basic criteria of the Bergen scale:

You think of how you can free up more time to work.
You spend much more time working than initially intended.
You work in order to reduce feelings of guilt, anxiety, helplessness and depression.
You have been told by others to cut down on work without listening to them.
You become stressed if you are prohibited from working.
You deprioritise hobbies, leisure activities, and exercise because of your work.
You work so much that it has negatively influenced your health.

How many do you recognize in yourself? I meet six of the seven. Whatever.

To save me from myself, my Mom introduced me to yoga when I was eighteen. She probably recognized the type A (for Always busy) oldest child syndrome leaking out. Because I was a competitive gymnast, hatha yoga suited my twisty-twirly, boneless body just fine. Consequently, I have practiced yoga and meditate to counterbalance my worker bee personality ever since.

And although not much is said about it, the dirty little secret of gymnastics AND ballet is that you can’t do that stuff forever. THAT has haunted me forever. The last day of ballet, the last day of back handsprings, and the last night of reading till dawn were difficult for me.

The last day of storytelling will inevitably make its appearance. That will be a really tough one. Eyes, hands, shoulders, spine, and hips will eventually stop cooperating. My pragmatic side gets this. My creative side says, “Get this shit done before you can’t!” So, I read books, write books, sell books, and help others with their book needs while I can and until I can’t.

That’s why I am a workaholic. One day the work won’t work.

Are you a workaholic? I took this test on the Psychology Today website and scored a B-. Well, damn. I would love to know what you score. Remember to take such things with a healthy, side-eye of skepticism.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/tests/career/workaholic-test

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Be well, write well!

Joy E. Held

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Saving Marietta: Journey to Freedom, Book 1

JOY E. HELD is a busy author, educator, editor, book coach, entrepreneur, and literary citizen responsible for this site and its contents. She is the author of

Writer Wellness: A Writer’s Path to Health and Creativity (Headline Books, Inc., 2020)

Writer Wellness Workbook: A Guided Workbook and Journal to Accompany Writer Wellness: A Writer’s Path to Health and Creativity (Headline Books, Inc., 2023)

The Mermaid Riot (Fire and Ice YA, 2024) Young Adult Historical Fantasy

Saving Marietta: Journey to Freedom, Book 1 (Headline Books, Inc., 2026) Adult Historical Romance

She is the winner of multiple writing and book awards:

West Virginia Writers, Inc. Annual Writing Contest, Honorable Mention, Novel, 1998.

New York Book Festival, Honorable Mention, Writer Wellness, 2020.

Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Finalist, Writer Wellness, 2021.

Northeast Ohio Romance Writers of America, Member of the Year, 2020.

Northeast Ohio Romance Writers of America, First Book Award, 2020.

She is an adjunct faculty member in the Southern New Hampshire University Online MFA Creative Writing.

She is a proud graduate of Seton Hill University in Greensburg, PA with an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction.

She is a member of The Authors Guild and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.

Joy is the founder and CEO of My WRITEDAY Subscription Box for writers and readers.

GUEST POST: WHAT I DON’T DO AFTER FINISHING A ROUGH DRAFT

Posted on January 2, 2026 by Joy Held

Friday 2 January 2026

“What I Don’t Do After Finishing a Rough Draft”

Guest post from author KAREN A. WYLE

I write rough drafts in a hurry. For many years I followed the original rules of National Novel
Writing Month, even after those rules loosened up: write at least 50,000 words of a new novel
entirely within the month of November. I would make notes on a few characters and some
possible scenes during October, and sometimes do a little research, but I saved starting the actual
text for November 1 st . That meant averaging 1,667 words a day, a pace which kept me from
spending hours editing and fretting over what I’d already written. In recent years I’ve allowed
myself to start in late October, but I still aim to reach (and usually pass) the 50,000 word mark by
the end of November. More often, November 30 th or the first few days of December find me with
a very rough draft about 55K-65K words long.

Very rough. Typical problems include inconsistent character descriptions, inconsistent plot
developments, unheralded changes in point of view or character descriptions, characters
introduced early on who vanish for the rest of the book, and characters with identical names. I’ve
even had characters come back from the dead, with no intention or fanfare. Promised or
foreshadowed plot events may never materialize. On a more technical level, there are often too
many filler words such as “very,” “quite,” “somewhat,” “almost,” “feel,” and (in some uses)
“that.” These words create unnecessary distance between the reader and the point of view
character, or dilute the impact of what’s happening. Two or three or more characters may also
have identical speech habits and vocabularies, instead of their “voices” reflecting their
geographical origins, educational levels, and personalities.

So I jump right into fixing all these problems once the draft is finished – yes?

Well, no. I’ve found it’s better to wait a few weeks and approach the draft with fresh eyes. The
closer I can come to experiencing the draft as a reader instead of a writer, the better my chances
of seeing these problems. Then I can put my writer hat back on and start solving them. I can also
see where the story is too thin, where it needs a deeper dive into a character’s motivations or
trauma, where a subplot could add interest or an existing one is pointless or distracting. And I
can see whether the parts of the story that should move me as a reader actually do so.

It’s not always easy to step back after a month of working on the draft every day. There’s no
feeling quite like the creative impulse on simmer, the way my subconscious sneaks in and turns
the heat up so that it boils at 2 a.m. and compels me to scribble down a barely legible idea on my
bedside note pad. But I know, by now, that if I want the book to be good in the end, it needs this
fallow time.

KAREN E. WYLE

Karen A. Wyle is a retired appellate attorney and the author of multiple novels in a bewildering array of genres. She has been married more than thirty-six years and has two wildly creative adult offspring. She lives between two small dots on the map in south central Indiana, more or less in the woods. http://www.KarenAWyle.com

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Searching & Selecting a Literary Agent?

Posted on October 6, 2025October 5, 2025 by Joy Held

Monday, 6 October 2025

Why Professional Writer Organizations Are Mostly Worth the Dues When It Comes to Searching and Selecting a Literary Agent

Genre specific writing organizations offer different benefits to members. One of those benefits related to the literary agent search that is often overlooked is the pre-screened list of agents actively seeking submissions in a particular genre that some groups offer their members. For example, the dues to the Romance Writers of America national chapter includes access to a members only resource listing agents (there’s one for qualifying markets too) that RWA has already vetted as to their willingness to accept submissions from RWA members. Historical Novel Society also offers this to members in good standing.

The agent search can feel daunting because the system has evolved to where an agent is almost an absolute requirement for getting the attention of a traditional Big Five publishing house because BFs generally accept agented submissions only. This has increased the number of agents, but it has not increased the value of having an agent.

Another agent related value to membership is that the warehouse organizations (and some smaller regional groups) invite agents to their conferences where you can schedule a one-on-one meet with an agent and pitch your work. Sometimes they are group pitch sessions. They may also bring in editors from publishing houses. I’ve known writers who only attend in-person pitches at conferences and have never cold emailed an agent or editor. Many of them have secured agent representation this way.

These resources are workarounds that are worth the consideration because the organization has done some of the leg work for you. It’s a cut to the chase sort of process that might possibly reduce the amount of time and research you should do when selecting a literary agent. But it comes with the price of the annual membership dues or the conference fee. And you still have to do the advance research in order to choose the right potential agent to meet with.

I’ve had a singular bad experience with this process when an agent listed in the member’s only resource accepted me as a client then turned around and said I had to pay for his wife to edit my manuscript before he would offer it to publishers. That was a price I wasn’t willing to pay. The writer organization heard from me and the agent was eventually removed from the list. I had the emails to prove the demand.

Oh, and watch out for schmagents (amateur, marginal, and incompetent) as noted in this article from Writer Beware blog on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association!

https://www.sfwa.org/other-resources/for-authors/writer-beware/agents/

Be well, write well!

~Joy

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This article may contain affiliate links which may result in the author receiving a commission when readers purchase items through the links.

You are receiving this message because you previously signed up for notifications or participated in a program/course with Joy. You may unsubscribe at any time.

My ideas are not ever meant as a substitute for consulting with a qualified health professional.

JOY E. HELD is an author, educator, editor, book coach, entrepreneur, and literary citizen responsible for this site and its contents. She is the author of

Writer Wellness: A Writer’s Path to Health and Creativity (Headline Books, Inc., 2020)

Writer Wellness Workbook: A Guided Workbook and Journal to Accompany Writer Wellness: A Writer’s Path to Health and Creativity (Headline Books, Inc., 2023)

The Mermaid Riot (Fire and Ice YA, 2024) Young Adult Historical Fantasy

She writes spicy historical fiction under a pen name.