Writers I work with—and if I’m honest, I myself—launch multiple projects, enthusiastic about every idea. We open a document, give it a working title, tap out a few paragraphs with loads of energy. Like the squirrel, we scamper around the Internet or library doing research, gathering quotes and anecdotes to incorporate into this shiny new work-in-progress.

A few days or weeks later, we abandon it, our sentences as sparse as the squirrel’s twigs up in that tree. The raw materials of a project—research, paragraphs, quotations—sit on our hard drive. Will we return to it and continue building or abandon it for projects with more potential?

Often we do abandon the project and scamper off to start another one.

Weeks or months later, we might open our Finder window or Google Drive and scroll through our archives, astonished to see so much unfinished business: half-drafted projects, a concept of a book, or the start of a post. We can feel like we’ve wasted our time and resources.

Are we quitters? Are we creatively weak? Are we people who love to start things but get bogged down in the messy middle, throwing in the towel when we can’t find our way through?

Our inability to finish can leave us feeling embarrassed, ashamed, or frustrated.

But that’s unhelpful self-talk. Instead, in this episode, we reframe it.

Listen or head to https://annkroeker.com/2026/03/25/are-abandoned-projects-a-sign-of-creative-weakness/ to read it and access additional related reading.

And to work with one-on-one, head to https://annkroeker.com/writing-coach - I can provide you with human support for writing you produce as the thoughtful human you are...no AI necessary!

In novels, memoir, nonfiction, and poetry, a narrator can set up the main story so that we have a frame effect. This is, in fact, called the “frame narrative.” The main story, then, becomes “the story within the story.” Learn all about it and study examples in this episode.

The frame narrative sets up the “main” narrative, and provides context and lends plausibility to the story within the story. The nested story likely has a completely different narrator from the frame’s narrator (and the frame might also offer insight into that nested-story’s narrator).

The frame creates distance and reduces criticism of the first storyteller who sets things up. If you dislike or don’t agree with the story told, well, don’t blame the messenger. The main narrator is simply telling someone else’s the story (”Hey, this is what I heard a guy say”).

The frame narrative’s speaker says the bold thing by letting someone else say the bold thing. In other words, the frame narrative delegates to someone else the task of saying the hard or controversial thing.

You can see how you can try the frame narrative yourself to add distance from topics that matter to you. It’s a way of telling it slant. Invent one or both narrators, and create the story that sets up the nested story. You, too, can say the bold thing by letting someone else say the bold thing.

Listen or head to https://annkroeker.com/2026/02/25/do-you-really-want-to-write-quietly-its-an-ai-favorite/ to read it and access all my sources in the footnotes. And to work with one-on-one, head to https://annkroeker.com/writing-coach - I can provide you with human support for writing you produce as the thoughtful human you are...no AI necessary!

We all have “pet” words or phrases that slide into our prose like a favorite shoe that’s shaped to our foot and supports our gait—literary techniques that feel like our voice on the page.

Some writers come across more casual, using sentence fragments or words like “ain’t” and “c’mon!” Others turn to ellipses for hesitation and pop a statement (or question) in parentheses for humor.

Guess who’s been paying attention to how we express ourselves?

Yeah, LLMs slurped up our online writing and got a taste for the way we write. Their favorite words and phrases draw from our favorite words and phrases, and now they’re repeating them ad nauseam, shoving them into everyone’s drafts so people leaning on AI for their writing start to sound suspiciously similar.

What’s especially frustrating is that these are perfectly good writing techniques, and now that I see them spilling into my inbox, I hesitate using them.

In the hands of skilled writers, a light touch with these could produce a pleasant flow, but AI doesn’t yet seem to fully sense the need for restraint, balance, and pacing. It stuffs otherwise effective wording into their drafts like too many prizes in a box of Cracker Jack. They stop being special after the fifth appearance.

Once I point them out, you’ll start to spot them in blog posts, articles, newsletters, and social media. In this episode, I point out several AI favorites. You'll start t spot them everywhere.

Listen or head to https://annkroeker.com/2026/02/25/do-you-really-want-to-write-quietly-its-an-ai-favorite/ to read it and access all my sources in the footnotes. And to work with one-on-one, head to https://annkroeker.com/writing-coach - I can provide you with human support for writing you produce as the thoughtful human you are...no AI necessary!