A way (of life) with words

Rebekah Bryan often gets up early, before the rest of her four-member family, and uses the silence to write in her Port Washington home.

Then she goes to her full-time job, where she writes some more.

Her career and hobby are the same but different.

As a technical writer for Wacker Neuson in Menomonee Falls, Bryan has written a number of training manuals for construction equipment. In her spare time, Bryan has self-published several works of fiction.

“A very different kind of writing,” Bryan said.

She is able to keep them both separate — her manuals don’t include the long prose of her novels and her fiction doesn’t have concise details on how to operate a skid steer loader.

Bryan is a member of the Ozaukee County Writers group that gets together monthly at a local coffee shop or someone’s house to write and help each other through the process of creating copy.

“That’s probably my favorite part of being a writer,” Bryan said. “We’re each other’s biggest fans.”

Bryan is doing a modern retelling of the six Jane Austen novels. She’s working on the fourth and fifth books now.

Bryan’s first book was published in 2015 and was “semi-autobiographical,” she said. “Front Row” tells the story of teens following their favorite bands to concerts.

Bryan, 37, grew up in Hartland before moving to Cambridge, and became a fan of singing group Hanson. She and her friends also followed some Madison and Milwaukee bands.

Bryan said she mixed some fiction into “Front Row” with the consent of her friends. The concert community, she said, snatched it up. She released two follow-up books since.

She remembers holding “Front Row” in her hands after publishing it.

“It was crazy. It was what I had been waiting for my entire life,” she said.

Around the same time, Bryan released “Flowerantha,” a fantasy story about a boy whose best friend is a mermaid.

She started that story when she was 11, she said.

Bryan remembers she was always creative, making up plays with her best friend next door and performing them for their parents. Her mother was a teacher and her father was a pastor. Her interest in fantasy was likely sparked by her father reading “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” to her and her brother.

Bryan graduated from Cambridge High School and earned a degree in information technology from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

She worked in web design at a Bayside area travel company for four years before she was hired as a technical editor at Johnson Controls, where she worked six years. She has been at Wacker Neuson for four years.

Her background in information technology helps to put engineer lingo into layman’s terms in technical manuals, she said.

When she sits down to write novels in the mornings or on weekends, white noise of ambient music helps, as long as it’s not a song she knows. A cup of coffee or glass of wine often sits next to her.

Her daughters, 9 and 6, aren’t in on the process.

“If my kids are around anywhere, I can’t concentrate,” she said.

Bryan listens to several writing podcasts and is in an online writers’ group that provides encouragement.

National Novel Writing Month held each November calls for participants to write 50,000 words in 30 days. Bryan has done it several times, which got her to publish her first couple books.

“I work well with deadlines,” she said.

Like any author, she looks for ways to combat the dreaded writer’s block. She found a free online tool called Write or Die that forces people to keep writing. When they stop, the page turns red and beeps.

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Bryan worked from home for a couple of months before returning to the office.

“I thought I would write more during that time. I didn’t,” she said.

Symptoms of the coronavirus will show up in a future book, Bryan said.

Bryan has figured out that she has a lighthearted and fun brand, and that her writing is meant to appeal to “women who maybe don’t have it all figured out yet but are very ambitious and want to be taken seriously.”

As a result, her husband Nate, who sells cloud software across the state and is supportive of his wife’s hobby — he likes to build speaker systems in his spare time — has only read “Flowerantha.”

Her daughters aren’t into writing but are good at math, but the 9-year-old also read Bryan’s fantasy book, which is written for children 8 to 12. Both of her children attend Dunwiddie Elementary School, and Bryan did an online reading of the book in spring when students were learning from home.

“That’s the aspect they like about me being a writer. They like to show me off,” Bryan said.

Bryan would like to get into romantic comedy writing, somewhere along the lines of the Hallmark movies.

“All of them have the same story lines but they’re just a little different,” she said. “People eat them up. What is the formula?”

Bryan has considered the idea of writing full time, but she said she still enjoys her regular job.

Self-published for several years, she has advice for those looking to get into the field.

“I think you should write that first book for yourself,” she said. “Do it for the love of writing and that you have to get it out.”

It’s difficult to build readership as a self-publisher, she said, so she suggests doing a series of books to keep people coming back. Self-doubt can still creep in from a critical review.

A consistent writing schedule and a support system are also important, she said.

Writing has played a big role in her life beyond publishing books.

“It helps me work things out, emotions from my past or funny situations,” she said. “It’s a nice outlet.”

See Bryan’s website at rebekahnbryan.com. She and other authors are speaking at “Day of Writing Dangerously” from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday via Zoom that’s available on Facebook.