#AmWriting (KJ)

This week, Jess and KJ talk to journalist, author, and lifelong knitter Peggy Orenstein about research, nonfiction writing, expertise, and examining the unexamined in ordinary life. Peggy’s newest book is , Unraveling: What I Learned About Life While Shearing Sheep, Dyeing Wool, and Making the World’s Ugliest Sweater.

Peggy’s TED Talk: What Young Women Believe About Their Own Sexual Pleasure

Why Fish Don’t Exist, by Lulu Miller

Etymology of the term “woolgathering”

Etymology of the term “spinster”

The Revolutionary Power of a Skein of Yarn, Unraveling excerpt in the New York Times.

Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind and Omnivore’s Dilemma

#AmReading

Peggy: KJ’s Playing the Witch Card, David Copperfield by Charles Dickens and Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

Jess: Inside of a Dog by Alexandra Horowitz and The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo

KJ: Geneology of a Murder: Four Generations, Three Families, One Fateful Night by Lisa Belkin

Also mentioned: The Puzzler by A.J. Jacobs

If you love a good writing retreat—especially one that comes with good solid coaching and the chance to meet others who are working on similar projects—here’s one to check out. This fall, three Author Accelerator certified book coaches are offering Mainely Memoir, a retreat for women writers in historic Biddeford, Maine, held over three days in the gorgeous Maine woods in September, with one-on-one coaching both before and after the retreat. It’s the perfect opportunity to give yourself the gift of time and focus so that you can make real progress on your memoir this year. Find out more at www.mainelymemoir.com

Have you followed Jess on IG yet? You really should!

Out of #AmWriting episodes and in need of another podcast? Check out A Bookish Home. I’ve been a guest, and it’s a delight.  Librarian and writer Laura Szaro Kopinski interviews a different author each week, so you can  Add to your TBR list while getting the inside scoop on the winding road to publication.  Coming up this spring will be Amy Poeppel, Sarah Penner, Maggie Smith and many more. Find it here on Apple podcasts or search it on your pod player of choice.

Hey all! Today Sarina brings you a fun but tricky topic: how to write a novel in three months. 

Should you do it? Maybe. It depends on the book. Not every book can or should be written in 90 days. 

But if you’re game to try, Sarina gives you: 

4 things you need to know about the book before you start

5 tips for writing scenes more quickly

3 things to try when you’re stuck

Links from the Pod

The Astronaut and The Star, Jen Comfort

2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love, Rachel Aaron

Otter.ai

Becca Syme’s Quitcast and her book Dear Writer, You Need to Quit. 

If you love a good writing retreat—especially one that comes with good solid coaching and the chance to meet others who are working on similar projects—here’s one to check out. This fall, three Author Accelerator certified book coaches are offering Mainely Memoir, a retreat for women writers in historic Biddeford, Maine, held over three days in the gorgeous Maine woods in September, with one-on-one coaching both before and after the retreat. It’s the perfect opportunity to give yourself the gift of time and focus so that you can make real progress on your memoir this year. Find out more at

If you love #AmWriting, make sure you subscribe to get bonuses and appreciation.

Calling all freelancers! On March 9 and 10, the Institute for Independent Journalists is offering an online freelance journalism conference with 12 information-packed interactive sessions on everything from pitching, negotiations, and contracts to podcasting and developing new revenue streams. Speakers include editors for The Atlantic, The Guardian, The New York Times, Wired, The Verge, The Emancipator, and more. Registration costs $69 for 12 live, interactive sessions, delivering 15 hours of learning. For more information and to register, see: theiij.com All sessions will be recorded and available to view for one month after the conference.The IIJ is a new organization whose mission is the financial and emotional sustainability of journalists of color. Everyone is welcome at the IIJ’s public programs, like the conference, although some future opportunities will be limited to BIPOC freelancers.

Recently, someone on Twitter asked if sensitivity readers are still a resource writers utilize and where to find them. Yes indeed, sensitivity readers are still a great resource, and since we interviewed Jordan Shapiro and a sensitivity reader he worked with on his book, Father Figure: How to Be a Feminist Dad. I hope you enjoy this re-airing of episode 266 the #AmWriting podcast.

Hey all, Jess here. When I agreed to read and blurb Jordan Shapiro’s new book, Father Figure: How to Be a Feminist Dad, I was struck by the attention he paid to inclusivity and the language he used to describe it. When I mentioned it to him, he told me he’d used a sensitivity reader named Jazz to ensure he got the language right.

Sensitivity readers are becoming more of a norm in publishing. Jodi Picoult has tweeted about how much she depends on hers to get her descriptions, language, and representation right in her books articles like this one in the Guardian and this one in Vulture are great primers on the topic.

We asked Jordan and Jazz to join us to talk about the experience of working together to create Father Figure.

#AmReading

Jazz: What's Your Pronoun?: Beyond He and She by Dennis Baron

Jordan: Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

KJ: Conjure Women by Afia Atakora

Jess: Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert

If you love a good writing retreat—especially one that comes with good solid coaching and the chance to meet others who are working on similar projects—here’s one to check out. This fall, three Author Accelerator certified book coaches are offering Mainely Memoir, a retreat for women writers in historic Biddeford, Maine, held over three days in the gorgeous Maine woods in September, with one-on-one coaching both before and after the retreat. It’s the perfect opportunity to give yourself the gift of time and focus so that you can make real progress on your memoir this year. Find out more at www.mainelymemoir.com

Out of #AmWriting episodes and in need of another podcast? Check out A Bookish Home. I’ve been a guest, and it’s a delight.  Librarian and writer Laura Szaro Kopinski interviews a different author each week, so you can  Add to your TBR list while getting the inside scoop on the winding road to publication.  Coming up this spring will be Amy Poeppel, Sarah Penner, Maggie Smith and many more. Find it here on Apple podcasts or search it on your pod player of choice.

Jess here, because I hate outlining. Hate it. It sounds boring and feels like an assignment, writing stripped of all flow and joy. I asked KJ and Sarina to help me with this problematic mindset, because my novel in progress clearly needs a solid outline and yet every time I go back to work on it, I feel irritated, frustrated and blocked.

Thank goodness for my accountability buddies, because they came through for me in this episode. In fact, the moment we logged off the Zoom call, I got back to work, refreshed, refocused, and engaged in the process of storytelling.

Resources

Jennie Nash and Author Accelerator

Save the Cat Writes a Novel

#AmReading

Jess: I’ve been watching Daisy Jones and the Six on Amazon Prime and re-listening to the audiobook, which features Jennifer Beals as Daisy. I needed more Taylor Jenkins Reid, so I finally downloaded the audio of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, which I’m really enjoying. (Also mentioned: Carrie Soto Is Back, Malibu Rising)

KJ: Amy Poppel’s The Sweet Spot

If you love a good writing retreat—especially one that comes with good solid coaching and the chance to meet others who are working on similar projects—here’s one to check out. This fall, three Author Accelerator certified book coaches are offering Mainely Memoir, a retreat for women writers in historic Biddeford, Maine, held over three days in the gorgeous Maine woods in September, with one-on-one coaching both before and after the retreat. It’s the perfect opportunity to give yourself the gift of time and focus so that you can make real progress on your memoir this year. Find out more at www.mainelymemoir.com

Hey you - yea, you! Are you following Sarina on Tiktok?

Out of #AmWriting episodes and in need of another podcast? Check out A Bookish Home. I’ve been a guest, and it’s a delight.  Librarian and writer Laura Szaro Kopinski interviews a different author each week, so you can  Add to your TBR list while getting the inside scoop on the winding road to publication.  Coming up this spring will be Amy Poeppel, Sarah Penner, Maggie Smith and many more. Find it here on Apple podcasts or search it on your pod player of choice.

The book is The Society of Shame and one of the many, many ways you can tell it’s satire is that it keeps making people who don’t get it mad. Satire is fiction, hopped up on humor and then amped up by all the things that seem like they couldn't quite happen and yet you know they might. (Another commonality of good satire? The most outrageous bits are often the ones that come straight from the headlines.

The author is Jane Roper, who is also the author of a memoir, Double Time: How I Survived–and Mostly Thrived–Through the First Three Years of Mothering Twins, another novel, Eden Lake, numerous personal essays and humor pieces, and a very eclectic Substack, Jane’s Calamity.

She MAY be the first graduate of the famous Iowa Writer’s Workshop to appear on the pod, and we talk about that, as well as the parenting memoir ghetto. But mostly we’re focused on satire—what it is, how it’s really playing with fire, and why it still needs heart.

A few other satires mentioned:

Dietland, Sarai Walker

The Startup Wife, Tahmima Anam

#AmReading

Jane: The One, Julia Argy

Daughters of Nantucket, Julie Gerstenblatt

KJ: Ms. Demeanor, Elinor Lipman

Find Jane on Instagram - @writerjaneroper

If you love a good writing retreat—especially one that comes with good solid coaching and the chance to meet others who are working on similar projects—here’s one to check out. This fall, three Author Accelerator certified book coaches are offering Mainely Memoir, a retreat for women writers in historic Biddeford, Maine, held over three days in the gorgeous Maine woods in September, with one-on-one coaching both before and after the retreat. It’s the perfect opportunity to give yourself the gift of time and focus so that you can make real progress on your memoir this year. Find out more at www.mainelymemoir.com

If you love #AmWriting, kick in some $$ to support us and get bonuses (and appreciation!).

But wait, isn’t a memoir a book about my life? What do you mean, I need an idea?

We mean, you need an idea. Because your whole life is… really not book material. But one thematic chunk of it? One recurring event, one series of catastrophes, one relationship, one moment that changed everything?

Now you’re talking—and so are we, to the amazing Rachael Herron, host of the How Do You Write Podcast, author of Fast Draft Your Memoir and leader of a recurring, very hard to get into multi-week class of the same name. We talk about what does and doesn’t serve as memoir material and how to get from a vague glimmer of an idea to something that will carry you (and your reader) through chapter after chapter, and we quote a line from Cami Osmond: In memoir there’s the what and the so what.

Go where the sparkle is.

A few assorted links from the pod:

The Art of the Book Proposal, Eric Maisel

Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert

Broken, Furiously Happy, Jenny Lawson

The Art of Memoir, Mary Karr

Devotion, Inheritance, Hourglass, Slow Motion, Dani Shapiro

Bittersweet, Susan Cain

I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette McCurdy

When Women Were Birds, Terry Tempest Williams

A Life in Stitches, Rachael Herron

I Miss You When I Blink, Bomb Shelter (Memoirs in Essays), Mary Laura Philpott

Essays that start light, then hit hard: Episode 312 with Mary Laura Philpott

Still Writing, Dani Shapiro

The Shepherd’s Life, James Rebanks

Good news for memoir writers! Y’all probably know how much I love Jennie Nash’s Blueprint books. They really are the closest thing I’ve found to a guide for getting through draft after draft. I start with them, and I go back to them when I’m stuck. The Blueprints keep me on track and help me write the book I set out to write for the readers I hope to reach.

Her newest, Blueprint for a Memoir: How to Write a Memoir for the Marketplace Is coming August 1, 2023. If you’re seeing this in July 2023, there’s a fantastic event available only to those who pre-order: a live—or recorded—deep dive into the four key steps of memoir writing, with a chance for Jennie Nash to select you for a live Hot Seat coaching session to review your work and an entry to win the Grand Prize: a written review of your Blueprint and an exclusive 50-minute strategy session with Jennie.

I think this Blueprint is Jennie’s best yet, with insights into story-telling that I’ll be using in all my work. Find all the details for the book and the pre-order event at bookcoaches.com/podcasts.

Hey you! Are you following Jess on TikTok?

Medicine, literature, academic writing, submitting to literary journals: we wander all over the map with guest Danielle Ofri.

Funny thing—writers for popular pubs tend to see literary magazines as an unsurmountable challenge (I know I do) and vice versa. Danielle Ofri, though, straddles both worlds as the Editor-in-Chief of the Bellevue Literary Review and a regular contributor to the New York Times and Slate as well as journals like The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine, making her the perfect person to talk to about that crossover, as well as the crossover between a career with confidentiality at its core, and one where telling the whole truth is key.

Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, a preview of the weekly Top 5 for Writers that will be dropping into #AmWriting paid subscriber inboxes on Monday, August 26, 2019: Top 5 Questions for Your Novel's Main Character. Not joined that club yet? You’ll want to get on that!

Got a friend who needs more #AmWriting?

As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. Find us on iTunes, Stitcher, Outcast, Spotify and everywhere else. This show notes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend.

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LINKS FROM THE PODCAST

#AmReading (Watching, Listening)

Danielle: Ragtime E.L. Doctorow and Little King, Salmon Rushdie's short story excerpt in the New Yorker from his book, Quichotte.

KJ: Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, Cal Newport

#FaveIndieBookstore

The Strand again! We don't mind repeating a good one.

Our guest for this episode is Danielle Ofri, the author of What Patients Say, What Doctors Hear; Singular Intimacies ; Incidental Findings;  Medicine in Translation; Intensive Care; What Doctors Feel;Best of the Bellevue Literary Reviewand the forthcoming When We Do Harm, a Doctor Confronts Medical Error.

She is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Bellevue Literary Review, a journal that explores issues of health and humanity. fiction and non-fiction and poetry. Find their submission guidelines here. Find out more about at Danielle at DanielleOfri.com, and Listen to her TEDMed Talk: Deconstructing Perfection, here. You can listen to her TEDMed talk Fear: A Necessary Emotion here.

This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.

Find more about Jess here, and about KJ here.

If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.

TRANSCRIPT (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)       

KJ:                                I'm KJ Dell'Antonia

Jess: and I'm Jess Lahey.

KJ: And this is #AmWriting

Jess: with Jess and KJ.

KJ: #AmWriting is the every week the podcast about writing all the things that you might be writing, fiction, nonfiction, short pieces, long pieces, essays, pitches, humor, proposals. And most of all, this is the podcast about sitting down and getting the work done.

Jess:                             01:52                I'm Jess Lahey and I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and a forthcoming book on preventing childhood substance abuse. And I had to think about it for a second. What am I writing? And you can find my work. Let's see. Pretty soon in air mail, but I generally am in the New York Times, Washington Post, places like that.

KJ:                                02:11                It must be August. I am KJ Dell'Antonia. I am the author of How To Be a Happier Parent. I'm the former editor of the Motherlode blog at the New York Times where I still contribute occasionally. I'm also the author of a novel that will be coming out next year and you can find my work most often at the New York Times. But just incidentally, just by the way, pretty soon you'll also be able to find a little something by me and Wendy Aarons at the New Yorker.

Jess:                             02:42                I mean I did not know if you were going to announce this today, but I am like burst rocketing bursting. This is a bucket list thing. This is huge and big bucket. Oh yeah. We'll be talking about that more because there's, it's cool and there's a lot to talk about there, but we have a guest, our guest today I'm so excited to talk about because my husband came home from work and he said, Oh my gosh, there's this woman you must talk to. I heard her speak. She's incredible. Her name is Danielle Ofri. She is a physician. She's at Bellevue hospital and is a writer of lots of different things. She writes for sort of traditional publishing about she has a forthcoming book on medical error.

Jess:                             03:31                She has a book that I have been enjoying very much called What Patients Say, What Doctors Hear. And she also writes for the New York Times and Slate and a bunch of other places. But she's the co-founder and editor and chief of the Bellevue Literary Review, which coincidentally was the present you gave Tim last year, KJ. You gave Tim a subscription to the Bellevue Literary Review just last year, which was so cool. And this sound really fancy, but the truth is that I wrote for Danielle at the Bellevue, right. And they gave me a couple of subscriptions. All right, well I passed one on to Tim as someone I thought would deeply enjoy it. And that was, that's how that came about. So, so often we have guests who have at some point been edited by me. I have been edited by Danielle, a little little flip around. It's so cool. And actually speaking of bucket list, check this out. Her essays had been selected by Stephen Jay Gould, Oliver Sacks, Susan Orlean for best American essays, twice, best American science writing. And she, yeah, she got, she's just all over the place with all these buckets, things that we would be honored to have on our resume and our CV. So Danielle, welcome to the show and thank you so much for joining us today.

Danielle:                       04:49                Thank you guys. It's really fun to be here.

Jess:                             04:52                We get so many questions about academic writing and obviously at some point we want to spend some time talking about that. But really what I'd love to do is start with you and how you got started as a writer. Did the doctor part come first or did the writing part come first?

Danielle:                       05:09                Well, I, you know, as a little kid, I love to write books, but that got pushed by the wayside and I was a doctor first. I did a sort of a long route. I did an MD PhD program or did research that I ended up in a lab did a residency at Bellevue fell in love with internal medicine, but I trained in the 90s during the height of the AIDS epidemic. And if you remember that time, it was a fairly brutal time, a lot of death and destruction and very exhausting. And so when I finished my decade of training there, I took a year and a half off and I just needed to get away. So I, and I must say my, all my supervisors said, that's a terrible idea. You'll forget all your medicine. You'll never get back into academic medicine. You'll lose all your connections. But someone else said, you know, I think they might be jealous. You know what, maybe so. So, off I took to just support myself. I worked for, for eight weeks in various clinics around the country. There's a whole system for temporary doctors to fill in. And I did that. And then I would go to South America, traveled to the money, ran out, and then call, collect from Wahaca, say, what do you got next? And then ended up in New Hampshire. And so during that year and a half when I learned nothing to do in these small towns, I began to write down the stories of my medical training with no intention to, you know, write a book. I just needed to write them down because at the time I remember thinking this is singular. I will never be so up-close to such a monumental moment. I think every month I should be writing this down. But of course who has time then you're so busy. You know, a patient would die in the bed or be filled in five minutes. But I think it was also too close to the emotional bone at the time. So I needed to really be physically away and I wrote them down, not as a way to process them or do therapy, but I just needed to give them their due cause they had to go somewhere. And so I spent a year and a half writing. I eventually came back to Bellevue, which is where I always wanted to be. At the time there was an economic crisis and a hiring freeze. And when a spot finally opened up, there was only a part time position available, 60% time, which I'd never imagined. But you know, I had student loans so I took it. And so one of my days off I picked up a writing book off the street and one of those yellow you know, Gotham writer's workshop boxes on second Avenue degrading class. And that is how it started. And so I began working on these stories with different writing teachers and sending them out to a little, you know, literary journals was some, you know, subscriber base was smaller than my medical school class were ashore. And then eventually one running, he just said, you know she, she missed her subway. Stop reading a story to that, that needs time to get an agent. So I got an agent pulled together my first collection of essays called singular intimacies becoming a doctor a, Bellevue, which all my friends thought was about French lingerie, but it was about these relationships that doctors and patients have and that's kind of how the writing began.

Jess:                             08:02                Well, so let me stop you for a second. So these are the nitty gritty is this is really what our listeners adore. So how did you go about getting your agent?

Danielle:                       08:11                So I looked in a book on how to find an agent and they said, look at other books that like yours. So I went to the acknowledgement section. I also got a book on agents I think was by Jeff Herman maybe, and we'll do their personal interests and those interested in medicine. I send out sample chapters and I finally got an agent, although I will say I did not close my book, deal with the agent. My agent sent my collection out and I got turned down by 13 of New York city's finest publishing houses. And then one day I had a piece of peer, I think in Tikun magazine and the director of Beacon Press called me and said I read your piece. And do you have any interest in writing a book. I say, Oh, do you have one? Have I got, have a book right here. And I confess, I committed my one act of theft and I borrowed, I'll say in quotes, eight prepaid, FedEx labels from my chairman's office because I didn't have time to get the FedEx. I'm working all the time and sent my manuscript to Beacon Press, which they took. And so I get rid of my agent and I've published, now we'll going on my sixth book with Beacon Press without an agent.

Jess:                             09:16                Okay. So that, that's really interesting. So how did that go down with your agent? I've never heard of that specific situation where an agent has submitted everywhere and had no success and then you go ahead without your agent. So did you just mutually part ways with your agent at that point?

Danielle:                       09:32                I told her, you know, I have been approached and through that she hadn't gotten it sold. And so it, you know, it was a little awkward, but I think she understood and we, you know, parted amicably and I've had agents approached me since then saying, well, and I say, I don't really need an agent because I have a publisher. Oh, but we can negotiate you a better deal. But I don't want that. I really, Beacon Press is an incredible press to work with it and it fits in that little niche. It's not a big house, but it's not a small indie houses having a medium size press and that feels like kind of three bears just right. So I'm fortunate that my, my editor is the director, so I feel like I have the ear of the director as well as my editor. And in my five books, I've have no turnover of my editor, the publicity person or the marketing person.

Jess:                             10:20                Oh wow. That is so unusual.

Danielle:                       10:23                I know, because I'll tell you, we plan first book, we sold the paperback rights to one of the big houses, which I was really excited about. And every six months I did a letter saying, hi, my name is Jane, I'm your editor. Hi, my name is Joe, I'm an editor and I had no idea every six months it was a new person. And so the difference is so palpable and every book, my husband's, Oh, you should really try for a bigger publishing house. And I don't think I want to because I, I've had friends with, with very mixed experiences. You know, you have one big as great and you're the prince for the, you know, six months, then your next book fails. And yet no one answers your calls.

Danielle:                       10:57                And I have no trouble with that. My team always answers my calls. We talk on the phone for an hour. I really feel like they're interested in my career. And I remember what my editor said on the first day before I signed it. She said, we never let our books go out of print. So we only publish books that we want to keep on even in small print runs. And this was sort of pre, you know, E readers, what really mattered. And that kind of commitment meant a lot to me. And I'd much rather have a smaller print run, you know, smaller finances that if the exchanges that you know, stays in print and treated respectfully because I'll tell you that big house, let my book go out of print the paper back and never told me. And so I had the humiliating experience of going into a, an appearance. He said, we want to get you a book, which book? I told a bunch book and they said, Oh, we called the publisher, it's not in print. And boy with that, that was awful.

Jess:                             11:50                That would be a really embarrassing...

Danielle:                       11:51                Beacon Press took the rights back and we publish their own paper back. But that was the case. They didn't even give me the courtesy of letting me know they're dropping it. So that's a difference I think between working with a medium sized press versus a big house and listen to the big houses are wonderful and they lots of great stuff. But for me I couldn't, I think stomach is ups and downs that a big house offers.

KJ:                                12:12                So I want to come back to the question of how your professional colleagues received the idea of you as a nonacademic writer, because that feels in so many settings, and medicine is definitely one of them. It feels like that could be very fraud.

Danielle:                       12:32                Well, I would say my immediate colleagues who are largely clinical and their academic in that they're all teaching, but most aren't doing research and research papers.

KJ:                                12:41                Right. And I also want to note that this sort of predates the era of, you know, doctors write for the New Yorker and that makes, you know, and that's what they do and we love them. This was, you know, you were one of the early ones.

Danielle:                       12:55                Yeah. So I would say my clinical colleagues actually find a lot of recognition in the writing and largely, you know are supportive because they see their own experiences reflected, which often don't get airtime any place else. I mean, academically I see where that plays a role is, you know, do I get promotion based on that? And that's definitely been a little bit fraud, your tenure, that kind of thing. Because that kind of running doesn't really count.

KJ:                                13:21                No. Cause people read it. I mean, why would that, yeah. Right.

Danielle:                       13:28                And it doesn't bring in grants and grant money. And so although lip service is paid to, you know, international recognition, yada, yada, yada. If it's not bringing in grant money and it's not the traditional publishing. No, I've published a lot in academic journals, but essays, so New England Journal of Medicine and the Lancet, all these big medical journals, but in their sort of essay perspectives in fact, the first time the New England Journal ever did it perspective, they refuse to do that sort of, you know, namby pamby you know, type of writing for the longest time. I was actually the first one they published, so it really took quite a risk with them. And so for the readership who would never seen that in those pages, that was a completely new piece I type of writing. And now that section is probably their most popular section. So I think it's been received well clinically, academically, probably not gonna get me tenure or promoted, but that's okay.

Jess:                             14:22                One of the things I would love to know is where, how the Bellevue Literary Review got started and how you got involved in that, how you decided to start that and how it came about.

Danielle:                       14:32                Well after I got back from my, you know, year and a half of traveling and started to write when I started back in the clinic, I really wanted to bring some of that writing in. Now what we do is as academics as, as teachers is we the students, medical students hand in their writeups about the patients, the history and physical. It's very, very jargony. And you know, once you've read 10 or 20 or 50 or a hundred, they all kind of start to sound the same. So I find, send them, listen guys, you're killing me from one of your write-ups in this semester. Just tell me the patient's story. Ask the patient, what's it like that emphysema, what was it like when the doctor first told you that diabetes? And I started getting these really fascinating essays that people would turn in. Really interesting and they were sort of stacking up on a file cabinet at the same time we did a new chair of medicine come in Marty blazer and he was having the students on the hospital awards write a 1000 word essay on anything. Philosophy, pathophysiology, economics along as inspired by patient, just kind of heretical for medical students writing an essay. Oh my goodness. You know, he started having his little stack of essays and the student colleagues that you guys ought to meet. He just come on. I just started working there. So we met and we had a respect of stack of essays and we thought, you know, we should make a journal. We thought about, you know, an in-house mimeograph student journal. But as we talked more, it became apparent that issues of medicine and health are really universal. And then you listen, you can get by in life and never need a plumber or an accountant or a lawyer if you're lucky, but you're never going to get by without interfacing with the medical system. And even if you are perfectly healthy, you care for a child, an elderly parent, you have a job visible, you will never get by without it. And I think that that also in genders a real existential fear in people that their body or their mind might betray them, you know? And they can't control that. And when you're in the medical system, you are, you're powerless. Many times you don't know often what's going on. You can't speak the language, you're freezing cold in a gown, you don't know what's going to cost and you're in pain or worried about your family members. So it's very hard to sort of hold onto yourself. And so we thought maybe it makes sense to have a journal that allows you to creative way to address this because you know, the top 10 tips or that bending osteoporosis doesn't really, I think address that kind of things. So we put out a two line call for submissions for poetry fiction, nonfiction on health and healing. And we've got a thousand submissions right off the bat.

Jess:                             17:02                Wow.

Danielle:                       17:03                We knew we tapped a nerve and they were not from medical people, from ordinary writers and now we get 4,000 submissions a year, all walks of life all over the world. And as our publisher likes to say, it's hard to be published in the BLR now than in the New England Journal of Medicine because we only can print, you know, a few of them. So I think there really isn't. And I think creativity and vulnerability really overlap and that great Venn diagram of how we write. And so it's not surprising that brushes with mortality and death and fear and worry help ignite some kind of passion, creativity and that comes out and poetry and fiction and creative nonfiction.

Jess:                             17:40                I have a question that's actually related to what KJ used to do, which is you're dealing with these really grave, you know, many moments of mortality, these moments that are huge events in people's lives. And when you write about them, it can become incredibly precious to you. It can become so important to you that when, when/if you get rejected, it's not just a blow to your writing, it's a blow to like this experience you had in your life. And KJ used to get, you know, submissions about, you know, the death of a child or you know, these incredibly moving experiences. But for some reason or another, they're just not a great fit. How do you balance, you know, how do you go about communicating with your writers about the importance of an event and the way you write about it and creating sort of pieces that are not just people's therapy but that are really great works of writing.

Danielle:                       18:41                It's a very interesting thing in particular that comes up in the realm of nonfiction because people are ready about their real experience and it is painful to reject a piece about their mother's Alzheimer's disease. And you know, when I, when I talk about this on panels, there's a difference between a moving experience and a moving piece of writing. They're not the same thing. And also it has to be more than just the particularities of here. I went to the doctor. This is what happened. It has to be transcendent. It has to rise above what actually happened to something that can connect to others. And so I do suggest that people, you know, read other things we've published or other, you know people who have written about enlist in a way that brings it beyond just the nuts and bolts of what happened. I also stressed that using the techniques of fiction is very helpful in terms of, not in terms of making things up because nonfiction is truth. But in terms of developing character and voice and setting and in drama and and pacing, you know, so often in nonfiction people are very, they applaud right along the way things go, but they don't have to be that way. It's still truthful if we cut back and forth in time and we have flash powers and flashbacks and we stretch moments and compressed moments because that's makes for more dramatic writing. In the actual rejections, I tried to be very gentle and we try when we can to offer feedback. Of course at that volume we can for everyone. So if you do get a fun letter, please forgive us. We're all volunteers, but we do try, we do have some that we think could be helpful. We'll include that in the rejection letter.

Jess:                             20:11                That's incredibly generous of you given the volume, but also as you well know, incredibly helpful for a writer. I mean we, we cling to these pieces of, you know, even if it's just a one line piece of you know, this is promising, but you might want to whatever, those are pieces of that's feedback that we hold onto with great hope.

Danielle:                       20:34                Yeah,I stress that a lot of it's subjective. And I have my own story. I had a piece that was ended up in the Missouri Review and went on to being the best American essays. Which was a huge honor. And so I got a letter from a professor of English in the Midwest and he's complimented in essence that he uses it in his teaching. And I was very honored and I look at the bottom of his email and his, you know, so-and-so pH D department, English editor of their, you know, literary journal. So I went back to my nice, huge rejection folders. I kept every rejection and in fact I submitted the very same piece to that journal. No, he wasn't then. He wasn't the editor then, but, and it stood out because that came back with post-it stuck on the thing. This is so dull, boring. You know. Again, it wasn't him, but it came back when someone left on those really negative projections and it was the same piece. So you know what, don't worry, it's not, it's like dating. You just gotta visit the numbers and someone's going gonna connect. And so it may not be, the is not good. It didn't fit in for me on this day. But try other places, you know, play the numbers game. Hold on. I just have to back up for a second. You got a rejection with actual post it notes from the person who read it and rejected it with the actual notes of what they said. I don't know if that was intentional, but there were, ah, and then the, the current editor stains are allowed to compliment me on this piece and how he uses it in his teaching. That's all a little satisfying. Oh, that's amazing. It didn't work at that moment. Just keep submitting.

KJ:                                22:10                Now you're an editor yourself. So you know, you,

Danielle:                       22:13                You got my other thing I do mention is you please do read the submission guidelines. If it says max 5,000 words, don't send a piece of 8,000 words. Yeah. Because it will be rejected. If it says we don't take PSI Phi, don't submit PSI Phi, you would be amazed. You know, we now have to charge a small reading. No, I wouldn't know. We wouldn't have to charge it a $5 meeting fee by our higher ups. We don't have to do, but we have to. Okay, so now you're paying $5 a submitted. Don't submit a piece that we rejected out of hand, you know. But it is all, all in is so common. Maximum three polling people send 10 poems and so I feel terrible. But you know, you do have to, with the submission guidelines, that's your end of the bargain as a writer.

KJ:                                22:57                I know that our listeners are now going to be sort of madly Googling Bellevue Literary Review so talk to us about what you guys do publish, what your mission is, and how that has evolved.

Danielle:                       23:15                Yeah. So we're looking for, to explore, you know, the issues of underlying health and illness and failty of the body and mind. We call it the journal of humanity, human experience and we interpret that loosely. So topic wise weren't fairly wide ranging, but the writing has to be excellent. That's our first thing. So fiction wise, we are fairly traditional. We do not do genre fiction, romance. We don't, we rarely do flash fiction. We stay away from gimicky writing things that have lots of, you know, 20 different kinds of headings and numbers. You know, I feel like the writing should stand on its own. It has to read like a great short story and it has to be character driven. I've got to feel a need to want to follow this character. So our, our that's our fiction or nonfiction has to be more than just what I did when I went to the doctor.

Danielle:                       24:10                It has to rise above that and somehow and, and be applicable to other people or it has to have the same beauty of writing a fiction does it. And it's not academic. We don't take things with footnotes or extensive quotes from 20 different sources and we want your thoughts and your exploration of an issue. And for poetry, we prize accessibility. So again, we do not do, while the experimental stuff, you know, as a unusual literary journal, for many people, we're the only literal journal they've ever read because a lot of our readers are not English lit people. They don't subscribe to 20 literary journals, but they have an interest in medicine and that's how they come to us. So for this audience, we weren't poems they can read and not be intimidated by it. So we tend to stick again a little more traditionally on the poetry that someone who's not an English lit major can read and say, Oh, that, that connects to me.

Jess:                             24:59                What I would love to know is how you balance you obviously do your own writing, your working as a physician and so how do you balance these two things and what is your daily or weekly routine look like?

KJ:                                25:13                And she's reading all these submissions

Jess:                             25:15                and reading all this review.

Danielle:                       25:17                That's exactly right. And I will say we also have reviewers who help us weed through the initial slush pile because we can't read all 4,000 ourselves.

KJ:                                25:26                That's almost worse because then you're left with you know, 40 things that are all good enough to be in there and the process of figuring out which eight to put together. .

Danielle:                       25:36                Exactly. But so anyway, so back when I started, as I mentioned, I ended up on a part time track because that's all that was available. So the full time slot eventually opened up and I said that actually get married and I thought long and hard about going full time, my salary would double because part timers are prorated on the shabbier side of things as you probably know. But I've thought about what would I do if I had twice as much money tomorrow? Well I still couldn't afford an apartment in New York city. You know, I couldn't buy anything. I don't need a car. I have clothes such as they are. And I recognize that the one thing I'd want is that one thing money really can't buy and that's time. So I feel like I kind of bought time by turning down the full time offer and to this day or made 60% off, not happenstance on day one.

Danielle:                       26:21                If they sit here and go sign up for the full time as everyone else does, this wouldn't have happened. So I'm 60% of my time in the hospital the equivalent of of six half days, you know, strangely abortion. And then my other time is writing legal. Of course I had three kids in there. So, you know, taking them to the dock, doing everything else in life ends up in that time. So often, you know, your writing time gets eaten away cause you don't leave work to do these things. You take it out of your own time. But I try to, if I can get one or two snippets of writing for an hour or so a week, I'm happy that that's success. And then, you know, the BLR and, and everything else. I took up cello lessons about 13 years ago and that's my will.

Danielle:                       27:06                The one thing that I pursue outside of all of this, you know, because I just, I can't, I'm too embarrassed show up to my teacher without having practice. So I'm the goody two shoes, medical student and I practice every night, but I'll go to the gym. I don't see anything else. And I don't watch, I haven't watched a TV show since ER you know, all of that. So I leave pop culture, I leave up to my kids, but so that's, that's kind of how I do it. And then, you know I get rid of everything else. Like my goal in life is to never set foot in a store unless voluntarily. So I ordered it line. I don't want to spend any time shopping unless I want to. So I don't spend my weekends ever going to, you know, stores. I don't really care about my clothes are 20 years old. That's fine, you know, unless I feel like doing it, but not for for necessities.

KJ:                                27:56                But you're writing what feel like these densely researched they're interview intense books where you really both telling your own story and telling a thoughtful story about what's happening in the medical profession and wrapping that within the, you know, the story often of a particular case or a particular doctor, one to two hours a week. My mind is boggling, does that include the research?

Danielle:                       28:28                Yeah. Everything that, it also depends. I mean I do a lot of traveling, so airplane time is writing time, airport time. You know, often I'll get more writing time in there. But my goal was to have like at least choose two to three sessions where I gets a, you know, a little time of writing. And hopefully more than that, it can be two or three hours, but sometimes it's not. I also did two years that I took off from work. So I took off a year, let's see, my daughter, youngest is 13, so 13 years ago we went to Costa Rica for a year. I quit my job. We took our two kids at the time. I actually had my baby there and we've done a novel, which then turned into a book instead of a novel. And then six years ago we took a year and went to Israel and I worked on what doctors feel and that was really wonderful. I'm gonna talk about a luxury of having, you know, be able to write five days in a row and keep a train of thought. That was, I would love to do it again, but I think I would lose my job.

Jess:                             29:28                That's actually what I was gonna mention when KJ said the thing about two hours for me. If I don't have more time than that, I find it very difficult for them to pick up where I left off to continue a train of thought to, you know, continue forward knowing where I'm headed next. So huge respect for being able to pull this stuff together cause your writing is so lovely and your narrative is so seamless. It doesn't, it feels like you're fully immersed in your writing. So I don't know. I'm so impressed.

Danielle:                       29:56                Thank you. It's short pieces for that very reason. You know, to write the larger thing takes a chunk of time. Sometimes I will try to block out, you know, for the next month, try to schedule nothing on my writing time so I can write for four hours, you know, several times a week.

KJ:                                30:11                Well that's what I was going to ask you. Do you schedule the writing time? Like do you know when your next sessions are going to be? Do you sit down at the beginning of the week or the end of the week and figure out when that's going to fit in?

Danielle:                       30:21                No, I mean I know when I'm not in the hospital so that's my starting point. But then things, you know, things fill in. But I try to, each of my time, not in the hospital, at least have some time toward writing. But of course writing also involved, you know, social media and publicity that you have to do a lot on your own and a lot of that, you know, work these days is on, on the writer. So there's that part as well.

KJ:                                30:43                Well, and you have a, I mean, you have a new book coming out this spring that you did not get to take a break to write. And I'll just, we'll, we'll put it on our website of course, and talk about it more, but it's called When We Do No Harm, a Doctor Confronts Medical Error. And I'm just taking, you know, a wild swing at the idea that that was not easy to research or write, it's not something people want to talk about.

Danielle:                       31:06                Yeah. That is true. That, that it's been several sorts, taken several years to, to write. But people were also remarkably generous, you know, once you find someone who likes to talk and just get on those interviews, you know, am I a non-hospital afternoons or mornings or days? Yeah. and then I try not to do it on weekends, but really when I do a lot of travel, I catch up a lot on writing it, you know, even five hours on a plane, I couldn't ask for anything more. Now some people hate it. I think it's the most ideal luxury.

KJ:                                31:39                Yeah, that's, that's the way it works for me too. I have to agree. I just spent intentionally seven hours on a train on Monday and Tuesday for exactly that reason. I mean, I was going somewhere that I wanted to go, but I wouldn't have gone if it wasn't also for that seven hours.

Danielle:                       31:54                I've gone there and back to California in two days and I don't give, it isn't all, I'm like, I don't mind that all, man. I have two days in a row to have all this time, you know, with no one bothering you. It's wonderful. So I would fly back and forth across the country if someone would would fund me on that.

KJ:                                32:07                There's a story in Deep Work about someone who took a flight to Japan, drank a cup of coffee, got back on the flight and then flew back because he had like, you know, a massive deadline to complete an entire book. And I felt such sympathy. I was like, yeah, yeah, I could do that. That would be a good way to do it.

Danielle:                       32:35                Yeah, I do really, I would say Amtrak up and down the East coast. Yes.

KJ:                                32:40                I want that Amtrak residency. There you go. That's exactly, yeah. That's exactly where I was for my seven and a half hours. DSLR Boston, New York, New York to Boston.

Jess:                             32:52                Alright. You're all helping me reorient my thinking about all the travel and how I'm going to get all the work done. So now, now that it's clear that my,

KJ:                                32:59                Well, you're getting ready for what you do when you get there, it is different.

Jess:                             33:03                At the same time, I do tend to think of airplane time as, Ooh, I get to listen to an audio book for two whole hours, but now I'm going to reorient and think of it as two hours that I can be spending writing.

Danielle:                       33:15                I don't have as much time to read novels. I mean that, that I do have to say between writing manuscripts and writing and listening to audio books, I have to, you know, shelve a few things and unfortunate that often gets shelved. Yeah.

Jess:                             33:29                Yeah. Well actually speaking of which we love to spend some time at the end of each podcast talking about what we've been reading. Do you have something you've been enjoying recently?

Danielle:                       33:38                So we did have a weekend away and I was in a thrift store and I saw for $1 an EL doctor's book, Ragtime, which I had never read it. You know, I should really read that and I paid my dollar and read it cover to cover in a weekend and just loved it. What am I, I know he's a master, but to sort of be in the clutches of someone who just puts you through that story, no holds barred, it's an amazing experience

Jess:                             34:02                That's going to have to go on my list because I have to admit I haven't read that one either. It's one of those books that sort of sits around on the periphery of my consciousness and I've never picked it up so I will have to read that one too.

Danielle:                       34:13                Yeah, it goes by very quickly.

Jess:                             34:14                KJ, what have you been reading?

KJ:                                34:17                I also haven't had, I've been doing pretty intense writing so I haven't had a lot of reading time and I have spent what I have rereading Deep Work by Cal Newport, not Rivkin, although I'm sure he's written something maybe. And you know, it's just, it's one of those books that keeps it, you know 10 minutes in there keeps me focused when I'm you know, when I put the book aside. So I've been rereading it, we've recommended it a zillion times and here I am shouting it out again.

Jess:                             34:51                I talked about Deep Work on a podcast with someone else yesterday. It, it comes up all the time for me. I love that book. I am reading, I'm reading two very interesting things. I I was, did an interview in which I punted a question back to the host who asked it of me because I was not up on all of the research on marijuana use and mental illness. And there is now a new book. It just came out by Alex Berenson who writes for the New York Times and various other outlets and it is a book called Tell Your Children the Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness and Violence. And I'm sure there is going to be a lot to argue about with this book, but it's a really interesting perspective on Alex Berenson had a conversation with his spouse about the, of marijuana use and said, you know, sort of led him down the rabbit hole as it so often does and he decided to write an entire book about it. So now I at least don't have to punt that question. Next time I get asked about marijuana use and mental illness on a podcast because I've now read an entire book about it and it's really interesting and in the same vein, I'm just starting and it's great. Ben Westhoff's new book, Fentanyl, Inc and that one I believe is just about to come out. It should be out by the time this podcast airs. And it's for those people who don't know what fentanyl is, it's the drug that's causing so many drug overdoses because it's sneaking in to so many other drugs, usually heroin. And it's the story of how fentanyl ended up in the drug supply. And it's a fascinating story. I highly recommend it.

Danielle:                       36:28                Yeah, just add, I read the recent a New Yorker story by Salman Rushdie calls Little King and he has a new book coming out. This is an excerpt, but fentanyl and the opioid crisis are woven into his story in a remote essay. And so I can't wait for that book to come out.

Jess:                             36:45                Oh, I'll have to check that out. Absolutely. do you have an independent bookstore that you love and would love to give a shout out to?

Danielle:                       36:53                Oh, I just love The Strand.

Jess:                             36:55                You and me and KJ, all of us, we love The Strand. What do you love about it?

Danielle:                       37:00                Well, as a student I would pass by there my bike on the way to medical school all the time and pick up those $1 books, you know, all the time. So I just love being able to afford the books. But then I as an author experience the effect of independent bookstore when for what doctors feel my book once death, never put it out as a staff pit and left it out for a year. And we sold copies in that one bookstore than any bookstore in the entire country. It was more than a thousand copies in one store because one staff member put it out there. And I so appreciated that personal touch was all it took. And so I did the opening of my next book at strand. Because I was so happy to be part of that kind of community.

Jess:                             37:45                It makes such a huge difference. Our local bookstore did the same thing for the Gift of Failure. It was on a book, you know, it was sort of on the, it wasn't like, Oh, here, here's a little charity for our local author. It was like, we love this book. Here it is. You should read it. And that makes such a huge difference in book sales because the, you know, independent booksellers really have power to move books. It's amazing.

Danielle:                       38:06                Oh yeah, absolutely. And so in a BLR, we try to also give shout outs to our authors who have published books. So anyone who's been in the BLR, and that includes you, KJ, if you have, you know, new book coming out, let us know. We will not run on social media and send it around, including on newsletter because we, we know how much those little, you know, boosts help and every little bit helps in today's publishing world.

Jess:                             38:28                That's incredibly generous of you. And it means so much to writers to get a shout ou like that. All right. If people would like to find your work. And I do have to mention, you have a wonderful Ted med talk on sort of deconstructing our perceptions of perfection that I think could also be really helpful for writers. I really enjoyed it from the perspective as a writer and thinking about perfection. But if people want to find out about your books, about your Ted, talk about the articles you write, where can they find you?

Danielle:                       38:59                My website is just Danielleofri.com. I keep all my writings there on my Ted talks and various things. I also send out a newsletter once a month with new articles. I have a new piece coming out in a week or so, kind of writing about the experience of doctors and nurses in the hospital and, and their perception of their own profession and how it may have not upheld its ideals. So I send that out to non-commercial. And I also talk a little about the Bellevue Literary Review. So if you want to hear that, you know, give me a shout.

Jess:                             39:28                Well, and that was what I was going to ask next. If someone wants to find the Bellevue Literary Review either to read or subscribe or to submit, where would, where would we send people for that?

Danielle:                       39:38                The blreview.org. Although in the past, a new website coming. So if you get on there now, you might your old one, but the new one is coming soon. So but if you're on my newsletter, you'll hear, you'll hear about it also.

Jess:                             39:52                Fantastic. All right, well thank you. This has been incredibly enlightening. This is also been a big hole in our knowledge of the whole, you know, academic and I'm just so grateful to you for all of your knowledge and for the writing that you do, so thank you.

Danielle:                       40:06                Well, thank you. It's been a pleasure.

Jess:                             40:08                All right, all of our listeners, until next week, keep your button, the chair and your head in the game.

KJ:                                40:21                This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Perella. Our music aptly titled Unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives, should be paid for their work.

Becoming an expert takes years of work and many of you have asked how you can take that expertise out for a spin in the media. I don’t blame you. From the moment the my first Atlantic article, “Why Parents Need to Let Their Children Fail” went viral in 2013, I was eager to get on television and radio so I could talk about my work, stir up interest in my topics, and hopefully maximize my chances of selling a book on the topic. One decade and two books later, I still pitch producers all the time about a range of topics, and I’ve learned some things.

Sit back, relax, and let’s talk pitching, prepping your topic, and securing media spots on television and radio so you can become one of those go-to experts producers seek out over and over again.

Where Jess meets Brooke Shields:

Jess on Armchair Expert with Dax and Monica:

If you love a good writing retreat—especially one that comes with good solid coaching and the chance to meet others who are working on similar projects—here’s one to check out. This fall, three Author Accelerator certified book coaches are offering Mainely Memoir, a retreat for women writers in historic Biddeford, Maine, held over three days in the gorgeous Maine woods in September, with one-on-one coaching both before and after the retreat. It’s the perfect opportunity to give yourself the gift of time and focus so that you can make real progress on your memoir this year. Find out more at www.mainelymemoir.com

Out of #AmWriting episodes and in need of another podcast? Check out A Bookish Home. I’ve been a guest, and it’s a delight.  Librarian and writer Laura Szaro Kopinski interviews a different author each week, so you can  Add to your TBR list while getting the inside scoop on the winding road to publication.  Coming up this spring will be Amy Poeppel, Sarah Penner, Maggie Smith and many more. Find it here on Apple podcasts or search it on your pod player of choice.

Writing through chronic illness and other challenges, with Karen Lock Kolp

This writing thing often feels hard. A common text among the three of us (Jess, Sarina and KJ) goes like this: OW OW OW OWOWOWOW. Our brains hurt. But for this week’s guest, Karen Lock Kolp, it’s more than that. Because of a rare tendon condition, Karen does all her writing and online work—and we do mean all—using her voice. That means that when it comes to both dictation and writing through big challenges, she’s a pro, and her advice in this episode was solid gold on both counts.

Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, a preview of the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, September 2, 2019: Top 5 Things to Remember When Writing is REALLY Hard. Not joined that club yet? You’ll want to get on that. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month.

As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode.

To support the podcast and help it stay free, subscribe to our weekly #WritersTopFive email.

LINKS FROM THE PODCAST

The Solopreneur Hour with Michael O'Neal

Joanna Penn's The Creative Penn

Karen's Dictation Software Choices: Dragon Dictation, Chrome Browser, Dragon's Transcription Button.

MouseGrid video on YouTube: How to Use the Dragon MouseGrid (as it turns out, it’s focused on navigating in Facebook with Dragon, but still a great video)

It's a Long Way to the Top, AC/DC

#AmReading (Watching, Listening)

Karen: Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, Caroline Criado Perez

The Purloined Paperweight, P.G. Wodehouse

Grown-Up Anger: The Connected Mysteries of Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and the Calumet Massacre of 1913, Daniel Wolff

KJ: The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, Abbi Waxman

Jess: God Land: A Story of Faith, Loss, and Renewal in Middle America, Lyz Lenz (Hear Lyz on the podcast here.)

#FaveIndieBookstore

Jeff Kinney's An UnLikely Story in Plainville, MA

Karen Lock Kolp is the author of Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics: Key Tools to Handle Every Temper Tantrum, Keep Your Cool, and Enjoy Life with Your Young Child and 10 Secrets Happy Parents Know: How to Stop the Chaos, Bring Out Your Child’s Good Behavior, and Truly Enjoy Family Time (Your Child Explained). Find out more at Karen's website: We Turned Out Okay. Listen to her podcast here. Her popular episode Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics is here.

This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.

Find more about Jess here, and about KJ here.

If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.

Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)

KJ:                                00:01                Howdy writers and listeners. August is basically over. September is here and this is the very last time I can invite you to join us in Bar Harbor, Maine for the Find Your Book, Find Your Mojo retreat from September 12th through 15th of 2019. It's a fantastic chance to get some one on one time for your project with me or Author Accelerator founder Jenny Nash, and then dig in with all your might in a gorgeous setting surrounded by your fellow #AmWriting word nerds, including Serena Bowen, who's going to talk about indie versus traditional publishing. There will be bonding, there will be writing, and knitting and artistic renderings of words of the year and all kinds of festivities and I for one can't wait. Find all the details@authoraccelerator.com/am writing.

KJ:                                00:55                Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone and try to remember what I was supposed to be doing.

Jess:                             00:59                All right, let's start over.

KJ:                                01:01                Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers.

Jess:                             01:04                Okay.

KJ:                                01:04                Now one, two, three. Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia.

Jess:                             01:13                And I'm Jess Lahey.

KJ:                                01:15                And this is #AmWriting with Jess and KJ. #AmWriting is our weekly podcast about all things writing, be they fiction, nonfiction, some bizarre intertwined creation, short stories, proposals, essays, long pieces, short pieces. And most of all, the one thing we always are is the podcast about getting the work done.

Jess:                             01:46                And I'm Jess Lahey. I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and a forthcoming book about preventing substance abuse in kids. And you can find my work at the New York Times and the Washington Post and recently at Air Mail, which is a new venture by Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair. And that was kind of fun to write for someone new.

KJ:                                02:06                I am KJ Dell'Antonia. I'm the author of How To Be a Happier Parent and the former lead editor and writer of the Motherlode blog at the New York Times where I am still a contributor. I'm having a freelancing break while I work on what will be my second novel and my first novel, The Chicken Sisters will be out next year.

Jess:                             02:24                So exciting.

KJ:                                02:26                That's who we are. That's why you should listen to us. Today, we have a guest that I think you are also going to want to listen to. I want to welcome Karen Lock Kolp. She is a child development expert and a parenting coach with a podcast, a thriving online community, and she is the independently published author of 10 Secrets Happy Parents Know. But we are not going to talk about anything parenty because what we are gonna talk about is getting all that work done because Karen is also a woman who lives with chronic illness. She has a tendon disorder that she'll describe to you later, but it has made her an expert in the use of her voice, both as a podcaster and in dictating her writing, which I know you're all going to want to hear about. And it's also made her an expert at keeping her butt in the chair sometimes whether she wants to or not, and getting her work done anyway, even when it's really, really hard. And that's why you're here. So thank you so much for joining us.

Karen:                          03:28                Oh, thank you. It's really wonderful to be here. This is very exciting for me. Your podcast is one of my favorites. It is one of the few that survived my recent digital reset. Yours was one of the few that I brought back in because it's incredibly valuable.

Jess:                             03:51                Oh, that's so nice. We survived a purge. That's so exciting.

KJ:                                03:56                I purged lately too, although I partly purged just because I get so frustrated with the iTunes podcast app and switched and then once I switched I realized I hadn't brought everything with me and some of it I didn't miss.

Jess:                             04:08                I had that moment where iTunes said, you seem to have not downloaded this in awhile. Do you still want to listen? And I thought about it and I said, well, no, actually I'm done.

Karen:                          04:20                That's really cool. I did that.

KJ:                                04:22                So Karen, so what I really want to talk about today is the specifics of writing with chronic illness, but also more on a general note, just the challenges of writing when it's hard. I think that we all have times when we feel like this is impossible and you have written through moments that I think most of us would define as actually impossible. So, start by telling us where you stand and how this started for you.

Karen:                          04:56                Wow. It's, it's quite a story. So, actually first of all, I think I just want to say that I was well into writing my second book before I would dare to call myself a writer. So there's that as well. I was like, I'm a podcaster, I'm not a writer. You know what I mean?

KJ:                                05:14                Yeah, no, we all have that. Yeah. I mean it's always, well, I wrote for the New York Times, but only online, you know Nobody, none of us thinks we're a real writer yet. Yeah, except maybe Salmon Rushdie, he thinks he's a real writer.

Karen:                          05:34                Thinks he's a writer. Yeah, exactly. A real writer. I was midway through the second book and I was like, I said to somebody, Oh, I'm a writer. And I was like, wait a minute, I actually am a writer. I'm like, that's pretty cool. For me, it all started eight years ago, more than eight years ago now, I contracted a tendon disorder. And the way that I did it was I got a gastric disease called diverticulitis, which I would not wish on my worst enemy. And I took some (this is the nearest that my doctors and I can figure out) I took a really strong course of antibiotics to get rid of it. And they had a thing in them called fluoroquinolones. And since that started, since I went down this rabbit hole, it's been discovered that fluoroquinolones cause tendon problems largely in kids, but caused these problems anyway. And the rheumatologist told me, probably four or five years in that like I'm one of the lucky few who it stuck around for it. There's like a third of people who get this that they get it and get better right away. And then there's a third who sort of get it and it sticks around for a couple of years. And then I'm one of the ones who's, you know, it's gone on for a really long time.

KJ:                                06:42                That's just annoying.

Karen:                          06:45                I mean, isn't it?

KJ:                                06:48                The truth is that in a single hand card game, odds don't matter and it’s either going to stay or it's not and if it stays those odds just make you mad.

Karen:                          06:57                Yeah. And I, I, it took me a long time to get here, but I, I would say that what I've done is I've kind of gone through a real metamorphosis, you know, before I was a caterpillar and then this was my chrysalis and now I'm a butterfly. Like I truly understand the meaning of differently abled in a way I never, ever did before. For the first couple of years, the focus was really on my legs. I lost almost complete use of one leg in particular (my right leg) because of some of the tendons in it. And then there was a sort of very long rehab. But while I was going through that, I needed a wheelchair. Whenever I left the house it was a mess. And when that got better, then my thumb tendon started to go. And I'm still basically really still recovering from that. The legs are much better than the upper body. So all my writing is done online, and I do it with a speech recognition software. But, I want to even go further back than that, if it's okay.

KJ:                                08:04                Yeah.

Karen:                          08:05                Because I, the whole reason that I started to do anything is because I wanted, it sounds, it may sound silly, but I wanted to give a TED talk. I was, I remember watching TED talks and loving them and laughing at them. Like I couldn't move, I was stranded in a chair. And I remember thinking, you know what I could do, I could do a TED talk in a wheelchair. I want to do a TED talk. And so what, I, I haven't done one yet, I'm still hoping to, but this whole thing started because I was like, well, I want to do that. So my husband especially helped me try to figure out like, how could you do that, because at the same time as I wanted that I was also feeling incredibly useless and a total burden at home. We had two young kids and I couldn't be the house wife, and I couldn't be the cook. And I couldn't be the laundry and I couldn't be the chauffeur. So I really was feeling very down, like not quite suicidal, but if you got hit by a bus it wouldn't be a problem kind of thing. I had to learn first that there is value in me even if I can't use my hands or my legs. Once I learned that, my family was like, we need you, we need you to be the brains, which is how we define it around here. Then I could sort of look outwards from that. And that was when I really decided, I think I want to do a TED talk. And that has led to so much cool stuff. And even if it's not ever a TED talk, I'm so happy.

KJ:                                09:33                Well, I mean, you know, it's kind of cool that it started from that, right? And, and it remains as a goal, but now you have, you know, you have so many other goals that you have achieved in the meantime.

Karen:                          09:54                That's a very good thing to know. I mean, I, it's nice to have that validation, you know.

KJ:                                10:01                Yeah.

Karen:                          10:02                Thank you.

KJ:                                10:02                I almost don't even know where to go from that, but so you've picked a topic and you took it from there. It's sort of hard to list all the things that you have, but you have this thriving online community, you have a coaching business, you have a lot going on now. What came first?

Karen:                          10:28                So first came the podcast and that came about in a really interesting way too, because my husband wanted me to have an iPhone. So part of my problem, part of the hands per happened because I was doing too much texting on a phone that had those nine buttons, you know what I mean, where you'd have to like cycle through the number one to get to a and all those sorts of things. And that really blew up with the thumb tendons and my husband's like, okay, we're gonna get you an iPhone because it's playschool. You won't ever have to worry about like anything. You know, there's no, you don't have to choose between apps. Like it's just, it's there for you, there's no worries with an iPhone, which my family has since they've gotten Androids and there are times where they want to throw them out the window, you know what I mean? But I still have an iPhone because I need it. And that was when I really first discovered podcasts and one of my favorite podcasts was done by an entrepreneur who teaches other people how to start an online business. And I really wanted to start an online business.

KJ:                                11:34                You need to name the podcast, by the way.

Karen:                          11:37                Oh, that podcast is called The Solopreneur Hour podcast with Michael O'Neal. So I got into his podcast and I started trying to do something. I made a horrible, horrible website with my husband's help that I'm so glad it's gone, basically. Because I just needed to start and I knew I wanted to do something for parents of young children. I have a master's degree in early childhood education, I've got a bachelor's in human development and family relations, I've got nine years as a preschool teacher in an industry standard, state of the art, absolutely wonderful town-run preschool program. The town I grew up in actually. And I wanted to help parents cause I couldn't be in the classroom anymore, so maybe I could, you know, I could at least help them that way. So, I'm developing this pretty awful website and I'm doing it listening to Michael O'Neal's show. And I wrote to him at one point to basically say thank you because what he was doing was making me feel like I could do this, like this was attainable by me. And I explained my tendon condition and he read my letter on the air and he gifted me three months in his coaching program. I just want to take a moment to send up a silent thank you to him because I don't know what I would've done if I hadn't had him. But I mean, what, he's just a wonderful guy.

KJ:                                13:08                Say a thank you to you because if you didn't reach out, do you know exactly when he would've come and knocked on your door if you hadn't written that letter? Never.

Karen:                          13:17                Exactly.

KJ:                                13:19                Yeah. You know, we often are like, yeah, I was really lucky because, but you made your luck.

Karen:                          13:24                Yeah, that's very true. And I remember the feeling of like, this is really happening. Like, Oh my gosh. And his real jam, the thing he's really good at helping people figure out is what's your brand. And so we went through, as I said, he took one look at my goofy website that I had been working on and he was like, Oh, you know, this isn't going to fly. Yes, not this. Exactly. And then we spent, I would say probably a good part of those first three months coming up with the concept and the brand. And I, I will never forget the day after trying three or four, you know, names, when I said to him, you know, what I've been really thinking about and pushing around is the idea of a podcast called we turned out okay. And he was like, that's it. He goes, that's it. And then he goes, you know what your tagline is? It's the modern parent's guide to old school parenting. I was like, yes. And it was just so much fun. So the whole process was fun and like he made it fun and he made me feel like I could do this, you know? Whereas at home I was sort of getting a little bit of like, are you sure? Do you really want to take this on? This is a lot for somebody with, you know, with the conditions and the problems that you've got. And it was so motivating and such fun to be in that program, so I'm grateful to him. Very grateful.

KJ:                                14:43                Well, and it's cool that it came about that he offered that to you, but this is also sort of a moment to recognize that getting some coaching can be super helpful. I think a lot of us are really reluctant to spend money on our dreams and, and also we have this feeling that if we were really capable, if we could really do it, we could do it on our own.

Karen:                          15:08                Exactly.

KJ:                                15:10                If I were a real writer, I wouldn't need an editor's help. If I were a real entrepreneur, I wouldn't need a coach to guide me through finding my brand. And that is, that's just, that's just not true. We all need to learn where we're going and getting in with an expert can can cut your time in half, it can inspire you, it can help you see exactly what you saw, which was that it might not look to people on the outside like you were ready to do this, but you wanted to prioritize it. I think that's cool, too.

Karen:                          15:45                Yeah. So that's how I got started. That's a really long story for how I got started.

KJ:                                15:51                Okay. We accept long stories. So at this point, you're podcasting and then you must at some point have sort of decided, well, I need some blog, I need some writing to go with this podcast. Let us know how you figured out how to do that, especially given that you were gonna need to dictate.

Karen:                          16:15                So I think one of the, one of the things that a lot of people overlook I guess or don't want to hear maybe, is that you've got to start it before you know what it is. You have to start it before it's fully formed. And I started the podcast in 2014 or 2015, it's just over four years old. So 290 episodes in, in four years and counting. I got to maybe like 56 or 57 and I did an episode called Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics and people went nuts for it. Like I started to get emails from people and that got downloaded more than any other episode I'd ever done. People really responded to the idea that, wait a minute, there are these little Ninja tactics I can do to make my home life better? It's super easy, but things that I know as an early childhood professional that maybe, a parent who's not, wouldn't know, you know what I mean? So things like, how to make no sound like yes was one of those first Ninja Tactics. What I did from that was I decided to write a book called Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics. And I wanted to be able to talk about it in written form as well. You know, there's this idea you should have an email list. I've been taking a lot of time to try and figure out what my email list is going to be and I've gotten to 2019 and I figured it out and I love it. And people again are really responding to it. It's a weekly newsletter now, where I always get to vary it. But, I started it as, Hey, if you want to get notified when Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics is available, then I'll put you on this email list and you can find out and that really grew from there. For me it's been a lot of experimentation and exploring my burnout rate. So I used to do a six episodes in a month. And I realized that after the second year that that was not working for me. It was too much. I couldn't concentrate on my coaching clients if I was spending that much time on the podcast. Instead, I started doing these biweekly live members only calls for the people in my community. And, and if I did that twice a month instead of this extra podcast, I suddenly, I wasn't burned out anymore. I was focusing my energies in the right place because the people in the community could then say to me, here's my question about this. And I could go, Oh my God, people who listen to the podcast need to hear about that too. So I'm serving my clients first and then being able to bring these cool things to the listeners.

KJ:                                19:08                Right.

Karen:                          19:09                So, then I started listening to Joanna Penn, the Creative Penn podcast. And I started to sort of reframe myself as not just as a podcaster, but as an author as well. And what she does is so cool because she's all about like write books that are really professional and well written and fantastic at giving good advice and keep writing them. And I was like, you know what, that's something I could do. And so I've been working on that.

KJ:                                19:43                So wait, wait. You're saying that's something I could do, but you don't type.

Karen:                          19:50                No, I don't type, exactly.

KJ:                                19:53                First of all, we want to know how you actually do it, but how did you get over that mental block of, you know, I'm going to write, but not with a pen, not with a keyboard, and not with a pencil.

Jess:                             20:07                I'm especially waiting to hear about that because I have tried.

KJ:                                20:11                We want the mental block first, then we want the tools.

Jess:                             20:15                I just can't. I've tried so hard, so I'm dying to hear how you do all the dictation.

Karen:                          20:20                Can I just say that it was not without many temper tantrums? I mean, I think this is necessity as the mother of invention. There was no way for me to do this without the speech recognition software. So I had to form a truce with the speech recognition software. So for me over these years now I've spent, I don't know if I've gotten my 10,000 hours in or not yet, but I would say probably. But the way that I got there was by doing it. So, I work much better if I can read something that is printed. So, my husband printed out the entire user manual for speech recognition software. So I was learning the commands - because there are these interesting commands that you can use. So you can tell it to click here, you can tell it to click save, you can bring up a mouse grid. I think if you guys are looking for the tool that has been a lifesaver for me. It's this idea of a mouse grid. So I want you to envision your computer screen and you say the words mouse grid. And what happens is a grid of nine blocks comes up on your screen. Say I want to click something in the lower left corner, that that happens to be the number seven. So I would say seven. And then the mouse grid would reappear, but the whole mouse grid is now where the number seven used to be. And so it's a little more focused now in that corner.

KJ:                                21:57                And where do you get something like that?

Karen:                          22:00                Where do you get the mouse grid?

KJ:                                22:02                Yeah.

Karen:                          22:02                Well, I use Dragon Speech Recognition software, so it's a component of that. But I'll tell you, I learned how to use that properly by watching the most beautiful and just heartbreaking video on YouTube. I mean you think you've got problems, right? And then you Google how to use the Dragon mouse grid and the person describing it to you is a person who not only has lost the use of his arms and legs, but also has speech difficulties and they are describing to you how to use this mouse grid and then they are using the mouse grid. By the time he gets to the small enough place in the grid in this video, I am crying. I mean my thought was if somebody like that can not only do that, but teach me how to do it, there is nothing that will stop me. Like what a good, incredibly good example of someone who's making it work no matter what, you know?

KJ:                                22:56                Wow. All right, we're going to find that. We're going to link it.

Karen:                          22:58                So, the mouse grid is a huge tool. I've discovered that Dragon plays very well with Chrome and not very well with Firefox, for example. So there have been times where I have felt like I was drowning and that I just couldn't get a breath. I wish I had a better description. Like, I will sit down and I'll be like, alright, I'm going to write a blog post and I use the speech recognition software to open Google Chrome and then I use it to navigate. to the inside of my website, not the outside pages everybody sees, but the sort of private admin pages and I get to the correct post.

KJ:                                23:56                And you're doing all that using the Dragon Dictate?

Karen:                          23:59                I am, yeah.

KJ:                                24:00                So we think of Dragon Dictate as something that lets you dictate a story, but you can sort of basically set it up to run your whole...

Karen:                          24:09                You can, yeah. You can use their voice commands for all of this. But what I've learned to be more patient with what used to kill me so bad was I would get three quarters of the way through that process and then I would open the dictation box, but sometimes Dragon can't see and doesn't know what you're trying to do. I don't know how else to describe it - it won't write anything. You'll say something and it will say, we can't recognize that speech or something and you're just like ugh. So I would get all the way to that point and then the app would crash or something like that. Talk about temper tantrums! But I just kept playing the song It's a Long Way to the Top by AC DC. I kept thinking to myself, there's no other way. Like it's either this or you go throw yourself in front of a train, like what's it gonna be here honey? And, I knew I wasn't going to do that, so I was gonna have to keep doing this basically. Does that make sense?

KJ:                                25:15                Oh yeah, no, it totally, it totally makes sense. So now you're writing a book via Dragon Dictation and all of the challenges that that entails and then you're editing it the same way.

Karen:                          25:33                I am. And, and I have learned - this was such a breakthrough for me. So, say if I'm going to write the title of a chapter and have Dragon sort of recognize it, I can now make a recording for my podcast, get my microphone out and my headphones and stuff like that. And I can say the following. So, here's the title of my book that dragon will recognize. OK. are you ready?

KJ:                                26:04                Yeah.

Karen:                          26:05                Cap educating cap. Happy cap kids, colon numeral nine cap ways to cap help cap your cap, child cap, learn cap to cap and joy cap learning, something like that. I can't remember it exactly, but I'm, that's the book I'm working on right now.

KJ:                                26:19                So, you're fluent in, you're fluent in punctuation.

Jess:                             26:24                There really is a whole other language.

Karen:                          26:26                It's a whole other language. But what's neat is you can get into the flow of it in a recording sense. So like I can record 15 minutes of language that sounds like that. And, and I can, there's a transcribe button in Dragon and it will take that and put it on paper but legibly so that it can be read. It just says educating happy kids. Nine ways to help your child learn what they need to know. And it's like such a mirror every time this, every time I see this appearing, I'm just like, yay!

KJ:                                26:59                I need to quickly hop in and apologize for only naming your most recent book cause I knew that you had more. But in the intro I, for whatever reason just threw out the first one. We will be listing them all.

Karen:                          27:10                Oh, thank you. No worries. I mean, I appreciated that you listed any of them. I mean this is the one that I'm currently working on, so this is the one that my brain is like really thinking about. So I just today, today I sent it off to my editor for final revisions, so yay.

Jess:                             27:31                It was funny when you said the thing about how if you want to do this thing badly enough, you can figure it out. But when we were interviewing Shane recently about the fact that he uses his two thumbs to type entire books on his iPhone and Oh my gosh, you know, KJ and I used to have a segment in the show called Ow It Hurts, but it was always like it hurts. Like, Oh, I don't really want to write this, but not like I have to write an entire book with my two thumbs. If Shane Burcaw can write three books with his thumbs, I think I can figure out the intricacies of how to use dictation software.

Karen:                          28:17                If you want to, if it's a real goal of yours. I think a lot of times that I would not be a podcaster or an author without the tendon disorder. Like I was, I was too invested in my own life. I guess. I remember sort of having this yearning, like I remember being 38 about a decade ago and just saying to my husband, like, you know what, isn't there anything else? I mean, I love you and I love the kids, but isn't there anything else? I think had I not gotten the tendon disorder and, and had all of that other stuff kind of stripped away from me, I'm not sure that I would've had the guts even to try something different. Even now I will walk into a Christmas tree shops and I get tired, so I often need to find a seat so you'll find me sitting on the bird seed. This happened just recently. I was in line of Joann Fabrics and the line was so long that I literally sat down on the floor and crossed my legs and apologized to everybody around me and said, this is just what I have to do. I mean, once you've been through things like that, those are really socially embarrassing situations and it's like, well, I can do anything if I can do this.

Jess:                             29:36                I just am fascinated. I've never, I'm fascinated. My brain is stuck on the line that I wouldn't be a writer without my tendon disorder. I think, you know, the thing, the very thing that makes that more difficult for you is the thing that made it happen. And I find that really wonderful and fascinating and complicated.

Karen:                          29:54                Yeah. Thank you for recognizing it. When I think metamorphosis, that's really what I think of. And I came to our conversation today with a couple of points that I wanted to make sure to cover. If anyone is trying to work in difficult circumstances that, that I thought they might want to know, this is what's worked for me and the first one is to just own it, to say to yourself, this is what I want to do. Like it can be so easy for us to get caught up in I've got to get dinner on the table and I've got all these duties that we have in our day and there can be some guilt around backing away from work or family and saying, I'm taking this time to do this thing that I really want to do. And for me that had to come first.

KJ:                                30:44                Yeah. I mean, if, if you are in a situation where you have limited resources, be there physical or mental to put them into this thing that at that moment is only for you is really hard. You know, it's very easy to say to yourself, well, you know, if I'm going to have like an hour of, of like sort of on time today because I'm suffering from exhaustion or because I get physically tired, I should put that into my kids' school meeting or dinner or you know, something. So I think that's really important.

Karen:                          31:21                Yeah. That's what's worked for me. I remember lying in bed one morning just before I wrote to Michael O'Neal, just before I started to like come up with this website. And I remember lying in bed one day and every day I had been thinking, you got to get busy living or get busy dying, which is from a movie, it might be from the Shawshank Redemption. I literally would lie in bed going, are you going to get up now cause you got to get busy living or get busy dying. And on this particular day I sat up in bed and I said out loud, I am doing this and I'm not even sure that I knew what this was yet. But like it was this idea of I am breaking free of the sort of constraints. Whether they are because I feel guilty that I can't do very much or because like my time really ought to be spent on this other thing. And I was basically like, I got no hands. So like I'm going to do this, whatever it is.

KJ:                                32:21                I was just going to say, okay fine. If you can get your mental head around it. And it also sounded like you had had partner support, which is great, but sometimes we have to go on without it.

Karen:                          32:34                Yup. Yup. Yup. It was huge. So Ben used to say to me, he's actually the producer of my show. And what's funny is he has a day job, he goes off to work every day and that doesn't have anything to do with audio. But he went to school for sound engineering and his friends from college are people who work on the Today Show or who have won Grammy's and stuff like that. And he basically decided that his life was going to take a different path, but we used to joke, we'd pass a radio station in the car and I'd be like, Hey, let's move here and I'll be the talent and you can be the producer. And like that's kind of what's happened, which is so interesting. So he gets to feed his audio soul a little bit. He gets to geek out over, you know, making the show sound great and like all the cool, you know, little audio things that he couldn't do before. So support is really important. But I will say this, too. Ben is the one who, he was like, he used to say like, we need to get you with your friends because you're so much happier when you're like with people. He would say, I've seen you come alive today. We went to a party or something and cause it's just so hard to be sitting alone and you know, only feeling like you can't do stuff. So, when I said to him, I think I'd like to try starting a a business, he was like, yes, please. I'm glad because you need something to do with your mind. So he was always very, very supportive from the beginning. I didn't think to put that on the list, but I think that's probably pretty important.

KJ:                                34:05                Well, it's, it's hard to be the partner because you can think to yourself, you know, if I were in that position, I would do such and such. Well, and first of all, you don't know what you would do, but secondly, you can't actually do it. So, you know, you can look at your partner and see, well I, she really needs to get out there and, and do stuff with her friends. But it's not like he can pack you into the car.

Karen:                          34:25                Yeah, exactly.

KJ:                                34:28                To be them too. All right, well what comes next?

Karen:                          34:29                Alright. So next for me was the idea of just starting small, like small habits have won the day for me. When I first started, and even sometimes now, I have a version of your open the document, you know what I mean? And I always felt like, so if you've got 5% use of your hands, what can you dedicate that 5% to? And sometimes it was twirling spaghetti and that was all I had, you know. But if I've got 15 minutes, if I can take the next 15 minutes and dedicated to writing something like, and then I don't do anything else for the rest of the day, that's fine. I put one foot in front of the other today. I took one step. So really small habits that you do repeatedly. The next thing I think, cause you can say to yourself like, it's too big. I can't, I just can't. But, but if you try to break it down to like the smallest step, the step, the step that you feel like, okay, I can do that, I will do that. And then you're done for the day and you come back to it the next day. So small habits are fun and good. The next one that comes up for me is celebrate the wins. Even the tiny ones like - so actually, I've been writing a fictional book one minute at a time, which I know sounds crazy, but it worked for Neil Gaiman so I feel like it's gonna work for me.

KJ:                                35:57                It's really the only way to do it. It's just a question of whether they're consecutive minutes or not.

Karen:                          36:02                Yes, exactly. I just don't have the time to commit to even 15 minutes a day of fiction writing, but I can open a notebook and it's actually, it's hand strengthening practice too is how I look at it. I can open a notebook and I can write a sentence. And what I've been taken to is I'll write a full sentence and then I'll make the next sentence be like the beginning of the next sentence. So the next day when I come back, I've got a writing prompt basically. And I have found that it's enough to keep this story alive for me. Like, so I had the idea for the novel and I did a lot of work around who's who, what's the main character dealing with? I have a dear friend who lives in Maine and the property next to her dream property has been taken over by a jerky landlord who insists on bringing like people from away who shoot off guns and bring bands in and they're raising a family. And so I'm writing this to give her some hope, basically. I've been having a ball with it, one minute at a time. So that's one of my one minute, like that's one of my tiny habits. I can't do more than that. So that's what I do. And when I do it, I celebrate that win, like I did this today. Yes.

KJ:                                37:20                Yes. All right. Keep going. Do you have time to?

Karen:                          37:25                I got two more, two more. I think my most important resource is energy. When my energy level is gone, it is gone and I have to go to sleep for eight hours to get it back. So, I tend to work in projects and the way I think of it is like I'll do so quarterly, I'll look at this each quarter anew and my project for the first month of the quarter is recording the podcast episodes and getting those show notes done so that for the whole quarter. So now I've got two other months that I can keep writing or I can do other cool stuff. This August we're gonna have a staycation. So I get to do that because I planned in July for August. So I'll get that project completed and then work on the next project. So, for this quarter it's been educating happy kids has been really my next project. That and rest.

KJ:                                38:24                That's your next book, right?

Karen:                          38:25                Yup. That's my next book. I have found that is a really great way to manage my energy level because I can see progress as I'm working through a bigger project. For me that really, really works. It may not work for everyone. Some people might like to sort of get a little bit of something done every day repeatedly, but I like to be able to say, okay, that project is finished and now I can move on to the next one. So I've been doing that. And then the last one, and this is probably the most important one, is the idea of trying again tomorrow. So like if today is a blowout, if you cannot do it, if, if everything has gone wrong today, you still have the choice to get up and try again tomorrow.

KJ:                                39:11                Cool. Yeah, no, that's, that's great. I love it.

Jess:                             39:14                We've also observed in the past, this happens to me with writing and it happens to me with teaching that some of my very worst teaching and writing days have been followed by some of my best. So that's a good reminder for me that no matter how crappy things go on one day it can turn around completely the next.

Karen:                          39:33                Yup. Yup. And as I think as a part of all of this, there's this idea of support.

Speaker 3:                    39:39                Like we talked about that a little bit with my husband, right? But you guys are such a support for me. The #AmWriting Facebook group is one of the only places I go on Facebook. I go there and I go into the group of We Turned Out Okay listeners that I have developed over there,

KJ:                                39:55                It is the only place I go.

Jess:                             39:57                It's literally true. KJ and I, what we did was we made it so that the group is our bookmark for Facebook. So if you're going to go on Facebook, you have to go there.

Karen:                          40:07                No way.

Jess:                             40:08                Yeah.

KJ:                                40:09                You can, that you could have two bookmarks, one for our group and one for your group and then you never have to risk being caught up in something that you didn't want to experience.

Karen:                          40:21                Oh, I'm going to Facebook and figure out how to do that.

New Speaker:               40:23                I think it's going to be particularly valuable as we head into the next couple of years.

Jess:                             40:28                Yes, I think so too.

Karen:                          40:30                Yup. Yup. Wow.

KJ:                                40:31                Can we talk about what we've been reading?

Karen:                          40:32                Yes.

Jess:                             40:34                But before we even go there, I have to say, the amount of helpful information so far has been - I've been writing stuff down on my end it's been great. So anyway, yes,

KJ:                                40:45                I've written down tons and we're going to come up with some ways for listeners to get at this. I'm vague potting but more to come, more info to come probably like in the afterward or the prologue or something.

Karen:                          41:06                One last thing I want to say before we get to the books. Jess, I don't know if you will remember this, but I was referencing how I use that one minute to strengthen my hands and I got to meet you.

Speaker 3:                    41:23                This was several years ago now.

Jess:                             41:24                I remember, I totally remember.

Karen:                          41:25                I totally remember that cause I brought my book, I brought my book of quotes and I asked you to sign that.

Jess:                             41:33                I have a picture of your book of quotes. It was really, really cool and explain what you mean by book of quotes.

Karen:                          41:41                So I started taking either pictures from magazines or newspapers or images or whatever that I really liked, that really resonated with me, that made me feel positive and happy. And I started putting them into a notebook. And then I also started putting favorite quotes from books, things that I knew I was going to want to revisit. And what's cool about that is now I have like several years worth of those and I can go back and I can be like, Oh my God, yeah, I need to remember that. And there were like five quotes from the Gift of Failure in there when I brought the book to you. And it was so much fun. Your reaction just made it so exciting.

Jess:                             42:19                It's super trippy and amazing and you inspired me to do the same thing. So now in my notebook, I'm constantly writing, but your notebook was really, really pretty and I took pictures of it because the way you put together these quotes that move you and inspire you was so beautifully done. So it meant so much to me. And of course I remember.

Karen:                          42:37                Yeah. Oh good. I'm really, really glad. That was, wow, that was really, really fun.

Jess:                             42:42                So what have you been reading?

Karen:                          42:44                Oh my gosh. I've been reading. The one I'm going to start with is the one I want to most talk about. So if I run out of time, I gotta get this one in there. It's called Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed By Men Caroline Criado Perez, which the spellings are all going to be right in the show notes, I'm sure. It is a book about how the world is designed for men and how that can actually be life threatening for women. And it's so interesting because at first you're like, really? I mean really, and then you start reading and my mind has been blown. Just one example is in, I believe it's in Finland. I actually haven't gotten to this yet. My husband recommended this book cause he heard about it on a podcast. And there's a chapter about, I believe it's Finland where snow plowing, like snow street clearing is threatening women's lives because of the way the streets are cleared because of the methodology behind what streets are cleared when and it has to do with the fact that men basically go to work and come home and women do all their errands so they're slipping and sliding all over the side roads. Um, absolutely fascinating. And I like just the foreward of this book, I kept having to stop and be like, Oh my God, can you believe this? Like, and I'm raising two teenage sons. And so what's really fun about this is just engaging with them on this stuff. And they're like, Whoa. Like I never thought of it that way, you know, or whatever. It's been really, really cool. So Invisible Women, please, please read it. It's great.

Jess:                             44:20                That sounds really interesting and I hadn't heard of it.

Karen:                          44:22                And the cover is the little the bathroom symbol for males in black. Really, really clear and vivid. And then in sort of like this silvery whitish color, the same color as the cover itself is like, is the female symbol. So you can't even see them if you're looking at it in the wrong light. Absolutely. Yeah. So I'm sneaking them in. I also am reading The Purloined Paperweight by P.G. Wodehouse, that's my bedtime reading. I need something really light before bed. And P.G. Wodehouse just fulfills that. So that's so good.

Jess:                             45:08                KJ is such a huge fan. You totally went straight to her heart.

KJ:                                45:13                There's another author written out there has written something like P.G. Wodehouse....

Karen:                          45:19                You shouted about it a few weeks ago and I was like, Oh, I need that book. And I read it. It's called Jeeves and the King of clubs. Yep. That was such a great, yep. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it very much. Okay. Last one. Grown Up Anger, which is a book by Daniel Wolff, an author I've had on my show for another book that he wrote. This is a book that takes Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie and a massacre that happened in 1913 in the upper peninsula of Michigan and connects them in this really interesting musical line, which just blew my mind. So I had to talk about that one. It's just so good.

KJ:                                46:00                It sounds like it might be up Jess's alley.

Jess:                             46:03                Yeah, that sounds really interesting. KJ, what have you been reading?

KJ:                                46:06                I just read a really fun, summer read called The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman. You know, she might, she might turn up around here at some point.

Jess:                             46:21                She might indeed.

New Speaker:               46:22                Anyway, I had such a good time with it. I am a sucker, as many of us are for any book with the word book, library, books, etcetera in the title. I actually think authors have recognized that a little too hard, so you have to be careful about picking those books. Always download the sample if you're reading them on digitally, otherwise, you know, pick them up and touch them. Anyway, The Bookish Life of Nina Hill was really, really funny. Book story, Silicon Valley, oddly enough, California and all the sort of juicy bits of things that you don't know about, like trivia contests and lives you'll never lead. Lots of fun.

Karen:                          47:05                Cool. That sounds like a good one.

Jess:                             47:07                Our selections are really diverse this week. I'm reading one of our former guests book. It's finally out. Lyz Lenz's book God Land. It is fantastic. It's part memoir. It's part of a reflection on faith. It's not really, not much of it is memoir, but it's really a story of faith, loss, and renewal in middle America and has a gorgeous cover. It was shorter than I expected and she's done a really great job with the pacing. I'm really impressed with the book. So yay. Congratulations, Lyz. You did a beautiful job and if you recall, she had two books due in the same year. So this is one of two books that she wrote the same year, both research based books. Anyway, props to Liz. Good job Liz. Well we ran super long, but this is such a jam packed with lots of helpful bits to it. So I am thrilled and thank you so, so much for being with us. And if people would like to find you, where can they find you?

Karen:                          48:14                They can go to, weturnedoutokay.com and you can spell it either. Okay or Ok.

Jess:                             48:20                Excellent. I also completely forgot about our bookstore shout out. Do you have one?

Karen:                          48:27                Yes. Oh, I was going to give a super quick shout out to the bookstore that is owned by Jeff Kinney. The author of Diary of a Wimpy Kid is 20 minutes away from me. It's called An Unlikely Story and it's in Plainville, Massachusetts. And it is such a blast. It's like such a fun place where there's so much more than books and the books are awesome too.

Jess:                             48:48                I know of a couple of people who have read or done events there and have just loved it. So I'm going to have to do a pilgrimage there at some point.

Karen:                          48:54                Yes. Yes, please do. Let me know when you do. Cause I will, I'll try to meet you.

Jess:                             48:58                Oh, absolutely. Alright. I think we're, I think we're good. This has been a fantastic episode. So until next week, everyone keep your button, the chair and your head in the game.

Actually, there is no action without anxiety. We all feel it, and we’re all driven by it—and almost no one is completely at peace with it. Morra Aarons-Mele, author of The Anxious Achiever and Hiding in the Bathroom: How to Get Out There (When You’d Rather Stay Home), has been working for years to normalize those feelings and the spectrum on which they appear to bring mental health struggles out into the open and encourage people to rethink the relationship between their mental health and their success. We talk about harnessing every degree of anxiety and finding ways to keep going—and even go better—when things get hard.

LINKS FROM THE POD

The Anxious Achiever

Hiding in the Bathroom: How to Get Out There (When You’d Rather Stay Home)

The Anxious Achiever Podcast

Morra Aarons-Mele

Using tropes and genres like a pro: Ep 334 with Alexis Hall

#AmReading

Morra: Robertson Davies The Deptford Trilogy, The Cornish Trilogy

Which sent us onto a tangent that included: Peter Orner, author of Still No Word From You, Katie Crouch, author of Embassy Wife, Andy Borowitz of The Borowitz Report, Sarah Stewart Taylor, author of A Stolen Child and The Drowning Sea who appeared on the podcast in episode 298 and Lisa Christie’s The Book Jam, which hosted the event KJ refers to along with her podcast, Shelf Help, and then another podcast, This Jungian Life.

KJ: The Murderbot Diaries, Martha Wells

If you love a good writing retreat—especially one that comes with good solid coaching and the chance to meet others who are working on similar projects—here’s one to check out. This fall, three Author Accelerator certified book coaches are offering Mainely Memoir, a retreat for women writers in historic Biddeford, Maine, held over three days in the gorgeous Maine woods in September, with one-on-one coaching both before and after the retreat. It’s the perfect opportunity to give yourself the gift of time and focus so that you can make real progress on your memoir this year. Find out more at www.mainelymemoir.com

Hey listener - have you followed Jess on TikTok yet?

The burn chart mindset, whole book project management, and a how-to for finding a progress tracker that works for you.

KJ’s an avid user of burn charts. Sarina uses a desktop variant (and has her own style). Jess doesn’t entirely see the appeal. What’s the difference between a burn chart and to-do list? Maybe nothing, if your to-do list goes all the way to the end of your project—and maybe everything, if you’re not paying attention to the difference between what you’ve got on your list, and what has to be done by when and by who in order to meet a deadline. This week on the podcast, KJ tries to talk Jess into the burn chart mindset, Sarina talks whole book project management, and we all come down to a how-to for finding a progress tracker that works for you.

Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, a preview of the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, September 9, 2019: Top 5 Reasons You Need a Burn Chart. Not joined that club yet? You’ll want to get on that. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month.

As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode.

To support the podcast and help it stay free, subscribe to our weekly #WritersTopFive email.

LINKS FROM THE PODCAST

Pacemaker Planner

KJ’s Burn charts: Happier Parent, left; The Chicken Sisters revision, right.

Sarina’s Pacemarker chart, left and burn-up columns, right.

#AmReading (Watching, Listening)

KJ: The Beautiful No, Sheri Salata (As you consider this one, you might want to take a look at KJ’s Goodreads review here.)

The Writer Files (a podcast)

Sarina: The Rest of the Story, Sarah Dessen

Jess: Daisy Jones and The Six, Taylor Jenkins Reid

Dani Shapiro’s Family Secrets (a podcast)

#FaveIndieBookstore

Norwich Bookstore, Norwich, VT

This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.

Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.

If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.

Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)

KJ:                                00:01                Hey all. As you likely know, the one and only sponsor of the #AmWriting podcast is Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps writers all the way through their projects to the very end. Usually Author Accelerator offers only longterm coaching and they're great at it, but they've just launched something new inside outline coaching, a four week long program for novelists and memoir writers that can help you find just the right amount of structure so that you can plot or pants your way to an actual draft. I love the inside outline and I think you will too. I come back to mine again and again, whether I'm writing or revising. Working through it with someone else helps keep you honest and helps you deliver a story structure that works. Find out more at www.authoraccelerator.com/insideoutline.

Jess:                             00:57                Go ahead.

KJ:                                00:58                This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.

Jess:                             01:02                All right, let's start over.

KJ:                                01:03                Awkward pause, I'm going to rustle some papers.

Jess:                             01:06                Okay.

KJ:                                01:06                Now one, two, three.

KJ:                                01:15                Hey, welcome to #AmWriting podcast.

Jess:                             01:18                I'm Jess Lahey. I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and some articles you can find if you Google my name and a forthcoming book on preventing substance abuse in kids.

Sarina:                          01:28                I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of 30 romance novels. The next one will be called Moonlighter.

KJ:                                01:35                And I am KJ Dell'Antonia, author of How to Be a Happier Parent, former lead editor and writer for the New York Times Motherlode blog and author of a novel forthcoming next summer, a beach read. And if you are a regular listener, you might've noticed a little difference in our introduction today because we are now #AmWriting The Podcast and now with more Sarina.

Jess:                             02:01                Now with more Sarina and you may have noticed some weird hesitation in our voices as we were doing the intro cause it's been a couple of years doing the regular intro and I'm happy to make a change.

KJ:                                02:11                Yeah, this fall we're sparking it up. There's going to be three of us sometimes. We're going to do lots of interviews, we're going to do some great new projects that we are excited about. But today we're just doing a podcast on one of my favorite dear to my heart topics, which is the burn chart.

Jess:                             02:33                This is very timely because in the #AmWriting Facebook group, someone posted just a few days ago, could someone please explain this whole tracking software burn chart thing. And we've talked about burn charts a couple of times because KJ likes them. And because I've never really used them, I wanted to know more about how to use them, especially, you know, with this deadline looming. But you and Sarina are so good at planning your time I think it's something I could really learn from.

KJ:                                03:03                Well that was something I was thinking about was I thinking, is there a difference between a burn chart and a to do list? And the answer is not necessarily, If your to do list goes all the way to the end.

Jess:                             03:19                Well, where are we now? KJ, you still use burn charts? Sarina, do you use burn charts?

Sarina:                          03:24                Well, I use a thing called Pacemaker and I can't wait to hear how much like or different it is from KJ's burn chart.

Jess:                             03:32                Okay.

KJ:                                03:32                And this is perfect because that is clearly a software thing, right?

Sarina:                          03:37                Yup.

KJ:                                03:37                Yeah. So I, I'm the paper burn chart. You, you are the digital version. All right.

Jess:                             03:44                And I'm the one who just sits in the chair and hopes that I get enough words on the page to meet my deadline in October.

KJ:                                03:51                Yeah. Well I mean I hope you're doing a little bit more than hoping, but if not, Hey, we've got time. We've got time to like rein you in. All right, so a burn chart is a physical manifestation of two things and one is the amount of time that you have to go towards your deadline. And the other is your is tangible markers of your progress towards that deadline. So just to really make it incredibly easy. If for some reason you knew that you had to write 10,000 words and it doesn't matter what they say, just that you just have to write 10,000 words and then you have five days in which to do it. Obviously at the end of every day you need to check off that you have written 2000 words. That would be very easy. You would make one side of your chart, 2000 words, 4,000 words, 6,000 words that you know, and then the other side, the days. And then you would draw a little straight line. And if you got there you'd be right on your line. And if you wrote 2,300 words, you'd be a little above or below your line depending on how you want to measure it. And so really the key is that you have divided the work that you have to do up into measurable....

Jess:                             05:28                achievable...

KJ:                                05:28                Well that's an interesting piece of it. So when I created my burn chart for The Chicken Sisters revision, I had exactly 30 days and I had 27 chapters and I went through and I had a list of the chapters. So I wrote out the chapters and I thought, well, these are in pretty good shape, so I ought to be able to do these together and this one's not in bad shape so I sort of tried to chunk them together. And it turned out that after two days I was dramatically wrong. But what was really good because I had sort of drawn this line of where I thought I could get to and I very quickly realized I couldn't do nearly as much as I thought that I could. So I was able to sort of quickly rejigger the chart right away. And if I hadn't been able to rejigger the chart, I could have quickly asked for another two weeks because it was immediately clear that I was only going to be able to manage one chapter a day, tops. And some days I wasn't even able to manage that, but fortunately it turned out to sort of all zip along at the end. So you have to be able to define an achievable goal, yes. But that's kind of problematic because if you've got 30 days and 40 chapters and all you can do as a chapter a day, then there you are. You know, your deadline is not gonna work.

Jess:                             07:00                Yeah.

KJ:                                07:00                So that's part of the reason to create a burn chart.

Jess:                             07:02                Well, and the nice thing about your burn charts, KJ, having looked at them many times with great envy is I remember when you were writing How to Be a Happier Parent, you had these very pretty burn charts that have an X axis and a Y axis and a line that goes down to zero. And by the time you're done, your little line meets the bottom line and you're down at zero and it looks all pretty. And I remember seeing one of those and thinking, Oh well wouldn't that be satisfying?

KJ:                                07:31                It is satisfying. Yeah I've got the Happier Parent one here now. And that was one where I divided the work into chunks that were sort of only coherent to me because it might be outline this, and draft this, and revise that. But as long as I got through, I think I was at a three chunk a day plan, cause I had a pretty solid idea of what I could and couldn't do. Now on The Chicken Sisters chart I also made a funny mistake. I did the axises wrong. It's hard trying to think how to explain it, but the way that I did it, it wasn't satisfying. So if I, if I achieved more than I thought I would achieve because I had put the chapters all along the bottom there wasn't sort of, if I marked that I had colored it in, it didn't look good. It didn't look like I was doing something. So I turned it sideways.

Jess:                             08:36                It needs to look really satisfying. You either have to be coloring - we'll put all these pictures up on the website - but it needs to look satisfying. You need to be either creating a long bar of color or you need to be reaching some zero end point.

KJ:                                08:51                Yeah. And you can burn up. So you could have like if its the first day of the month and you need to get one chunk down or one chapter done so you put the day on the up and down axis and the achievement and then you sort of color it in and the next day you get and see you can go up or you can, as I did with Happier Parent, you can count down because I needed to cross things off. So I started off at the upper left hand corner and I burned down.

Jess:                             09:25                Okay. That makes sense.

KJ:                                09:27                I checked things off. But in Chicken Sisters I did the axis backwards. I ended up burning up, burning up was more satisfying.

Jess:                             09:41                Okay.

KJ:                                09:42                So how does this compare to doing it on Pacemaker, Sarina?

Sarina:                          09:45                You know, it's kind of similar. With Pacemaker you tell it what you're doing. So, drafting as opposed to revising and and then you tell it how many words you need to go.

Jess:                             10:00                Was this designed for writing specifically?

Sarina:                          10:02                Yes.

Jess:                             10:03                Oh, okay.

Sarina:                          10:04                And then you give it your deadline. What I do enjoy is that you can finesse a little bit with telling it when you're not going to work. Like I had two trips this month and I was able to tell Pacemaker that I would not be writing on those days. And the nice thing about that is that it's always recalculating. So right now it tells me that on this project I have 11 days left and over those 11 days I have 15,800 words to go. And so it very handily lets me know that I need to write 1,317 words each day to get to my target of 90,000 total words.

Jess:                             10:56                So if you do that or don't do that, do you tell the app or is it integrated with whatever you're using to write?

Sarina:                          11:01                No, It's not integrated. It's just a satisfying thing to open up the Pacemaker window and enter my new total word count.

Jess:                             11:10                Is it on your phone or on your computer?

Sarina:                          11:12                It's a desktop app, which I admit is not very 2019.

Jess:                             11:16                Okay. ,

KJ:                                11:18                But this would work really well for either drafting - and I'm assuming if you get to 80,763 words and you write the end, you're going to count that.

Sarina:                          11:32                Of course.

KJ:                                11:33                It would work really well for that or for revising where you could put in the number of words that you have.

Jess:                             11:43                How does it work for revising specifically?

Sarina:                          11:45                Well, I was just doing a revision on something else and I would have entered it the same way where I would have just told it how many words were left in the unrevised part of the document or rather how many were in the revised part. But it's actually kind of flexible. I think you can instead just tell it how many revision words you've covered that day. You can make it do a lot of what you might want to do.

Jess:                             12:12                Okay. So what happens if, like today for example, my plan is to submit the chapter I'm working on right now to my agent by the end of the day. I was feeling really good about it yesterday and then I dove back into the beginning and I said, Oh heck, this stinks. I have to redo. You know, what ended up being a whole morning's worth of work. And I think I can still get it done. But how does a program like that account for the fact that what you've got is not always what you think you've got? Or can it?

Sarina:                          12:42                Obviously it can't, but it just recalibrates so I like to keep things so that my daily word count than I need to accomplish is 1200 words or lower. Like I, I feel good about life when that line marching across the screen says you have to do 1200 words every day to stay ahead. And now yesterday I didn't write anything, but I did a lot of thinking about what was wrong with this book and what I needed to do to fix it. So today when I opened up the window, it said, guess what, honey? You've got to do 1300 instead of 12, just to keep your head above this ocean and and so obviously I slipped there a little bit, but you know, if I put up 1500 words today, which let's face it is not an insane number, then it'll start to go back in the right direction.

Jess:                             13:37                Okay.

KJ:                                13:37                So I guess it just depends on what it is you're needing to measure. I mean, I admit my burn charts tend to be sort of like complicated multi page affairs because for example, if I was doing what you are doing, Jess, and if I had chapters that needed to go through phases, so you need to draft it, then you need to send it to your agent, then you're probably gonna revise it, then you're going to send it to your editor. When I'm doing that, I allow time for those other people's involvement. So, if I were where you are...

Jess:                             14:14                ...you would be in a total panic.

KJ:                                14:16                I would be in a total panic, utter and total sympathy and props for you. After I was done breathing into the paper bag under my desk, I would come out and I would make a list and I mean that's the thing, you just want to use the list.

KJ:                                14:29                I'm looking at my How to Be a Happier Parent and I listed the chapters and then I checked off: had I outlined it, had I drafted it, had it gone to my agent, had I revised it. I actually was not sending chapters to my editor so I didn't have that as a piece. And there was a point when I sort of had estimated the percentage that things were drafted and things were a little crazy. But I was allowing for for that process so that when the last chapter that was going to my agent was going to my agent, I would be on say, revising the first three chapters. So I made these really sort of monstrous multi page lists. And then what I did was to figure - each one of these is going to take me three hours, let's add up all the three hours, and then divide it by the amount of time that I have left and, and sort of lay it out there. And one of the reasons to do that is so that you can see if you're going to be able, because sometimes you set a deadline you can't hit. And it's so much better to recognize that five days into working with your burn chart when you're like, wait a minute, I'm seven chunks underwater or 12,000 words underwater. Then you can reach out to everyone else involved because when it's a visual reminder, you can't fool yourself. You can't every day go 'I worked really hard, I did everything I possibly could because there are circumstances when everything you possibly could isn't going to get you to October 1st with, with the book.

Jess:                             16:24                Well, and that's why we changed this deadline to begin with. I mean, I hit May and realized, Oh yeah, July 1st is not gonna happen. And I actually went to my agent before she had planned to come to me on May 1st and I got to her before that to say, yeah, we need to change this. But my little sort of clue to myself when something is done - mine's a lot simpler than yours in the sense that what I do is keep that all those chapters on the left hand side of my page in Scrivener. I close the folder when that chapter is done or out or off to edit. The nice thing for me is I can see, all the time, on the left hand side of the page things that I need to put cues for, where I'm headed. Oh, don't forget that in chapter seven, I'm going to say such and such. So I have sort of a nice low visual cue on the side, but it's really pretty simple for me. I don't really have a strategy as involved. Right now I'm in the 'just keep my head down and keep plowing through' and I always worry that if I take time to do things like make a very fancy burn chart, which would be a wonderful procrastination strategy for me right now, that I'm just using up time on something when I should just be sitting at my desk writing the words.

KJ:                                17:39                Well that is a know yourself thing and it's probably helped by the fact that you've written this kind of book before.

Jess:                             17:46                What's really weird about that though is that I don't have a burn chart for Gift to Failure. Every once in a while I look around and I think, did I really write that book? Because I don't remember how that even happened. It's like that labor thing with childbirth and labor, you know, the only reason you do another one is cause you forget what it was like the first time around.

Sarina:                          18:08                I experience that too, I've had to go back into my own books a lot this month to see what I said about certain secondary characters and, and there'll be a joke in there and I'm like, I don't really remember where that came from.

KJ:                                18:26                Yeah, I'm having that too. Sarina, one thing I was thinking of when I was looking back at my 2017 journal because I wanted to find the How to Be a Happier Parent burn chart. And I could see all the different places where I'd put up goals and where I'd listed what the different chunks were and sort of re-revised again what I needed to do. And for me that's a keep your mind on track thing. Sarina, I know that at the beginning of a big season of writing, you'll be like, I'm shooting for three books and a serial and these are my different deadlines. And I imagine you sort of sticking up giant post-its to put the different deadlines places. And I feel like it's almost a different kind of big burn chart cause again, it's that visual.

Sarina:                          19:30                It is and actually I was just doing that last weekend and it's so much harder than figuring out how many words you can write in a month. What I was struggling with is project management really. So I have this book that I need to turn into my editor on October 9, but having that editorial date set up was a to do list item that had to come into my life sometimes between deciding to write the book and choosing a publication date for it. Because once I finish a project, there are all these other people that have to be involved and that's where all the stress comes from. So for this book I had to hire a cover designer and we had to establish a date for that and I had to hire an editor because my previous editor is leaving the business and I had to hire both male and female narrators. And this morning I woke up to the knowledge that I hadn't asked my audio engineer to do the post production on the audio book yet. So it's all those deadlines that really make me crazy because you can't sit there quietly with your bar chart in your notebook and you're not in control of your own destiny up to a point. So I've been really struggling with that lately.

Jess:                             20:55                That would be panic inducing for me. I mean the idea that on top of writing this book, I also need to be out there figuring out who my narrators are and what my post production stuff is going to look like. I mean, it's a much more complicated picture and I think the analogy of project management is really apt. I think that works. Anyone who's worked in the business world and had to keep together some large project like that with many sort of that many headed Hydra situation. I think that's a really good comparison.

KJ:                                21:25                Well that is the world the burn chart prompts from. You know, the original use of a burn chart is techies developing software and they would put it up in a group workspace and maybe everybody's pieces would line and basically what they would do is set up targets. You know, everybody needs to have written their chunks of code to achieve this piece of creating the like button for Facebook or whatever. And then, those are going to go off to the bug checkers while we move on. So that's where the burn chart idea came from. So it can be perfect for managing a lot of moving parts and keeping track of whether your other people are doing what you need. Like, right now I've revised and somebody else has my revision and I'm pencils down and I can't do anything. But I'm still very aware of the day that my editor is expecting to have this revision back. You just can't have any illusions when you've written it down. And I don't think you have any illusions. It's almost just a question of whether or not it's satisfying for you to see it laid out or if it's useful. And if it's not, it's not.

Jess:                             22:56                I'm also one of those people that I can be completely gung ho about something on one day and I'm all excited and I charted out and for like two days I'll track my progress and then I'll forget. And then it's over. For me, when I'm not focused on the process itself, I tend to lose track of the other details. But I like looking at your burn charts, they're very pretty. And I love looking at Sarina's charts cause her charts are gorgeous and I'm very impressed by all of it. For me, right now I don't know, maybe it's just because I'm in such a state of panic.

KJ:                                23:31                I just have to say that the idea to me of being where you are without this checklist, visual reminder of what still has to be done. Like, I would lay awake at night mentally drawing little boxes and creating a to do list. And I think some people are just like that. I have another friend and she's exactly like that. Like in every project there's that phase where it's all so amorphous, you can't make the list.

Jess:                             24:04                That's how I am at the very beginning. But now I have a mental picture of where each of the chapters are.

KJ:                                24:12                Yeah. And once I get to the point where I can make that list I need to make the list. You know what it's like? It's like that whole David Allen's Getting It Done book where he's just like some of us just need to write it all down. And if that frees your brain to go, Oh, okay, it's somewhere, it's somewhere, like I'm not going to lose that.

Sarina:                          24:39                I'm definitely in that camp.

KJ:                                24:40                It sounds like you're not, Jess. I mean, it is somewhere, it's in your Scrivener and that's enough to make your brain go, okay.

Jess:                             24:53                Well, and actually that's a good point. If I was using Microsoft Word for this, and I had no central location where all the chapters were in folders. Like the very first thing I did at the beginning was arrange all of the research into the various chapters and then I had the outlines. And so for me, Scrivener has been invaluable because it allows me to quantify to a certain extent where I am with each chapter and that's what gives me some peace - is being able to see those chapter headings with those folders, with that stuff, with the text I've already created and maybe the fragments that I've cut out - that to me is sort of burn chart-y. Kind of, without the end point.

Sarina:                          25:32                Jess, do you know the trick about you can import your own icons for those left hand column?

Jess:                             25:40                No, I did not do that, but I'm sure I could spend a good two hours on that this afternoon instead of finishing this chapter.

KJ:                                25:45                That sounds like a good rabbit hole. Oh, I want this one to look like a little folder.

Jess:                             25:50                That's the problem with Sarina. Sarina's got all these pretty little add ons for things. So for example, she's the one who taught me how to use Link Tree in Instagram and she spent the $6.99 to get the very pretty version. And I have the basic version. I was very tempted to go for the pretty version. And then I thought through the process of like getting all those icons and making it look pretty and I said, and we're sticking with the basics because I knew I couldn't go there. It would've been a very fun little endeavor, but not today. Anyway, things are going great. I did have a dream night before last that you guys will appreciate. So, as you guys know, my deadline is in October and I have scheduled a vacation starting the day after I hand it in. And my in-laws are going to be there and my husband's going to be there and I'm speaking at a spa at Canyon Ranch and so it's like a built in vacation. But also I'm working while I'm there and it gives me a place to relax at the same time and I want it done so that I can focus on the relaxation part. And I dreamed the other night that I was at Canyon Ranch and I could not relax and I couldn't figure out why I couldn't relax. And I was thinking and thinking and then I realized it's because I never turned my book in. It was horrible.

Sarina:                          27:11                So did you also forget to put your pants on because that's pretty much the same chain.

Jess:                             27:20                Well actually what's really funny about that is the day after I turned in Gift of Failure was the day that I went horseback riding and got thrown from the horse and bonked my head and did really forget that I had written a book. When Tim was leading me back from where I bumped my head and got the concussion and he was trying to see what was happening with my memory and he quizzed me on my book and what it was about and the names of my children and I did not know any of those things. And so really it was sort of like a little bit of a throwback to the day I completely forgot that I'd written a book at all, even though I had written the whole book and handed in it on time, no ahead of time. I think a whole day ahead of time. That's exciting.

KJ:                                28:06                Well you're taking anxiety dreams to a whole new level.

Jess:                             28:09                We did have someone on the Facebook on the #AmWriting Facebook page who announced that she handed in her manuscript with, I think she said 28 minutes to spare and she was very happy with herself. Does anyone have anything else to say about burn charts? We will put pictures on the website so that people can see what they actually look like because you guys do some beautiful work when it comes to that kind of stuff. I'm very impressed.

KJ:                                28:35                It is a pleasure, it's an indulgence. We're recording in the last week of August and I think by the time this is live, it's just going to be the first week of September. But this is the week for me when I need to put all my September charts together and things like that. Sarina has already done hers, she was showing them to me.

Jess:                             29:02                Sarina's the one who has already gotten us our 2020 agendas. So of course she already has her September charts.

Sarina:                          29:10                I'm ready.

KJ:                                29:12                And some things just don't lend themselves to burn charting. Like if you're drafting, Pacemaker sounds like it would be better. It's almost like you only need a burn chart if it is complicated and it's only satisfying if it is complicated. If you're just drafting then, stickers on a day. I didn't do a burn chart for Chicken Sisters until I was revising. I didn't do a burn chart for drafting it because it wasn't like that. It didn't have that many moving pieces. Unlike when I was doing the nonfiction and it was going to the agent and it was moving all over the place.

Jess:                             29:53                Well, and I'm looking at my calendar right now and I do stickers. I'm using the polar bears that Sarina gave me in the middle of summer, which makes perfect sense. I'm using my stickers. I think my stickers are for 1200 words or something, but most days I'm double or triple stickering simply because I have to, or getting negative numbers because I'm editing. But really stickers are kind of irrelevant for me now. It's about time and progress and feeling good about where I am.

Sarina:                          30:22                Awesome.

Jess:                             30:23                Yes. Gold stars. The other thing that was a big deal for me was I canceled and rescheduled a lot of things that I just couldn't do. And I've said no to blurbing some things and I've said no to interviews. But when I got my last contracted piece out to the New York Times, I have a few edits to do, that was sort of a big, dust my hands off and say, whew, now I'm just focusing back on the book stuff. So that was a big deal too. But anyway. Alright. Do we want to talk about what we've been reading?

KJ:                                30:56                We did.

Jess:                             30:56                Alright. I can't go first cause I haven't thought yet.

KJ:                                31:00                Oh, okay. I can go first because I have thought and it is actually kind of funny except I have to flail through my phone to go back. So I read a book called The Beautiful No and Other Tales of Trial, Transcendence, and Transformation. The author is Sheri Salata and she was the executive producer of the Oprah show for a long time. This is what I'm going to say about this book. In my opinion, there are three kinds of people. Well there are three reactions when someone tells you that they've seen an animal psychic, right? And the first one is WTF. I mean that's number one. The second one is sort of an amused interest and open to the possibility that you might sort of learn something in that process with some humor and a fair amount of, you know, a bucket of salt and some sort of personal, I'm taking something from this cause it's cool but I'm not entirely bad. Right? So that would be the second. And the third one is all in, baby, animal psychic, tell me what my dogs are thinking. So this book, The Beautiful No, this is a book for people in category three. And if that is you, this is the book for you, go for it. That is what I've got to say.

Sarina:                          32:46                I'm stuck on....is animal psychic a metaphor here or?

KJ:                                32:54                No, not even a little bit. And I have had someone look me in the face and say, I have called an animal psychic and I am a two person. I am okay, that's a really interesting thing that you've done and I would love to hear more about it. And if in the process you felt that you gained something, I would love to know about that. But if we can also kind of laugh at the idea, that would be good too. That's me. I am a two. I am not one, I'm not gonna cross you off my friend list. But I'm also not three and this is really a book for three. You need to be all in with the animal psychic to enjoy this. Although I have to say I kind of couldn't put it down.

Jess:                             33:47                Well that's an interesting review.

KJ:                                33:51                It's not exactly a negative review, nor is it exactly positive, it's just very specific.

Jess:                             33:57                Alright. Sarina, what you got?

Sarina:                          34:00                Well, I read a pile of books in July, but August for various deadline reasons does not look the same. I am very slowly reading The Rest of the Story by Sarah Dessen and she writes beautiful, measured, contemporary YA novels. And this one I'm certain when I'm able to give it more time, will not disappoint.

Jess:                             34:21                You're going to have to tell me at some point, I've never gone down the Sarah Dessen rabbit hole and I know you're a fan, so at some point you're going to have to tell me your favorite one so that I can start with that one. So I've had a weird reading month. I felt like I couldn't start a new book that would really suck me in because then it would be really tempted to listen a lot. So I have been listening to something that has completely sucked me in, but it's episodic, which is Dani Shapiro's Family Secrets podcast and it's essentially juicy family secrets in bite-sized chunks. And it's completely addictive, but you also have an end point, which is exactly what I have needed. I also have to say, you know those books that you feel like enough people told you that you would really like it, so you really keep sticking with it? And then finally you just throw your hands up in the air and say, forget it. I'm going to give up because I just can't do it. That's how I felt about The Snowman by Jo Nesbo. I tried so hard with that book. I really, really did. I just could not care less. So that's where I was with that one. But I also do have one to recommend. A couple of our guests recommended Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid, and in audio form it's absolutely delightful. It's that book that's about an imaginary rock band during the 70's and set in Los Angeles. And they have a different voice actor for every character and they're all well-known actors. It's a little bit like Lincoln and the Bardo in that sense. Really, really good audio book. But again, it's something that I can listen to in chunks instead of getting completely sucked in from a narrative perspective. So anyway, that's what I've been listening to Family Secrets by Dani Shapiro. You've got to listen to.

KJ:                                36:20                Yeah, I wanted to throw a podcast out there too. The new one that I tried because I wanted to listen to Jenny Nash. When I'm feeling stressed about my writing, I like to find a podcast that Jenny has been on and just listen to it. I don't even necessarily really listen, it just makes parts of my brain start thinking. Anyway, she was on a podcast called The Writer Files and I discovered that that was going to be a new podcast for me. I really like it.

Jess:                             36:51                She always puts things in ways that are hopeful and optimistic and reality-based, things that feel like they're huge and I can't get my arms around them. Suddenly Jenny has explained them in such a way where I'm like, Oh, I could totally do that. I love listening to her. Sarina, I don't think you've ever done an indie bookstore shout out. Do you have one that you could do for us?

Sarina:                          37:15                I'm sure if I did, you have would have already covered it since we cover the same ground here.

Jess:                             37:20                Yeah, that's true. But you've been places we haven't been.

KJ:                                37:25                I don't think we've ever shouted out our local bookstore where I need to pop in today. Our current local bookstore since we've got one that closed fairly recently and another that's going to open soon. But you know, let's shout out the Norwich bookstore.

Sarina:                          37:38                Oh definitely.

Jess:                             37:39                They're worth shouting out again, absolutely. Cause they're so great.

KJ:                                37:43                I mean always brilliantly curated. One of the things I love about them is that they have a website where I can order the book and then when it comes in, I pop in and I've already paid for it and it's ready. They wrap it in brown paper and put it up on the shelf like I was ordering. So I find that kind of amusing in case I don't want anyone to know that I'm reading The Beautiful No, which maybe I don't.

Sarina:                          38:13                Do you know how I order from there? I just email Liza the owner and I say, could you please get these three books for me? And then she emails back a week later and says they're waiting and then I go in and pay.

KJ:                                38:26                That would be easier. I should do it that way. I do it on their website and every single time the website says that is not your password. You need to create a new password. And I have written this password and it is the password.

Sarina:                          38:38                I guess my method circumvents that and I think, what's the point of shopping local if you can't just fire off an email. But I will say the adorable thing about it is that I did some months ago email and say, Hey, could you please get me Barron's Guide to Colleges? And the email that came back said, Dear Sarina, I can't believe that the child for whom you were just buying picture books needs this Guide to Colleges. I know. And she was right.

Jess:                             39:19                That's really sweet actually. I have to say, I was looking through pictures recently and I found a picture of my 15 year old when he was an infant asleep on that bear that they used to have at the Dartmouth bookstore. That used to be on the second floor, the flattened bear. And it was before we even moved to Hanover, but we knew we were going to be moving to the area and I was lamenting the loss of the bookstore and the bear, and you know, the loss of my children's youth, that kind of thing.

KJ:                                39:52                At the time you complained a lot. I'll just put it that way.

Jess:                             39:55                Yeah, that's true. Alright. Kids are back in school, yes?

Sarina:                          39:59                Tomorrow.

KJ:                                39:59                Tomorrow.

Jess:                             40:01                Thursday for mine. So by the time this airs, our kids will be back in school and you can just do a mental picture of us all doing happy dances.

KJ:                                40:10                Tune in tune in next week or the week after, or sometime in the very near future for all of us on that fall fresh start.

Jess:                             40:19                That'll be good. That'll be really, really good. Okay. Alright, everyone, until next week, keep your butts in the chair and your head in the game.

Jess:                             40:36                This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid.

We’ll admit it. We like our writerly gear. We get a little rush from visiting our favorite Vermont stationery store together. (In fact, we just did this last week.) But in all seriousness, we spend a lot of time on this job, so it’s good to figure out what works for us.

Today Sarina takes us through her novel-writing tech stack. She covers hardware, software and the “why” behind the tools she chooses. 

Links for some of Sarina’s tech: 

Scrivener

Keychron K series Keyboard

Inexpensive ergonomic mouse

Campus binders with removable pages and extra paper

Remarkable 2

Otter.ai app

What’s in your tech stack? Let us know in the Facebook group!

If you love a good writing retreat—especially one that comes with good solid coaching and the chance to meet others who are working on similar projects—here’s one to check out. This fall, three Author Accelerator certified book coaches are offering Mainely Memoir, a retreat for women writers in historic Biddeford, Maine, held over three days in the gorgeous Maine woods in September, with one-on-one coaching both before and after the retreat. It’s the perfect opportunity to give yourself the gift of time and focus so that you can make real progress on your memoir this year. Find out more at www.mainelymemoir.com

Out of #AmWriting episodes and in need of another podcast? Check out A Bookish Home. I’ve been a guest, and it’s a delight.  Librarian and writer Laura Szaro Kopinski interviews a different author each week, so you can  Add to your TBR list while getting the inside scoop on the winding road to publication.  Coming up this spring will be Amy Poeppel, Sarah Penner, Maggie Smith and many more. Find it here on Apple podcasts or search it on your pod player of choice.

Dana Bowman is the author How to Be Perfect Like Me and Bottled Up: A Mom’s Guide to Early Recovery. She was the 2016 recipient of the Kansas Notable Book Award, making her the only podcast guest to share that distinction with me. What else do we share? The experience of feeling a level of exhaustion with the goals we’ve set for ourselves and the need to find our way back into the work.

Links from the Pod

Clifton Strengths

The highly competitive Kansas Notable Book Award!

Jon Acuff

Becky Blades episode #347, Start More than You Can Finish: Redefining failure

#AmReading

Dana: Vacationland, Meg Mitchell Moore

Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt

The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control, Katherine Morgan Schafler

Four Tendencies, Gretchen Rubin

KJ: The Society of Shame, Jane Roper

Mentioned: Life in Five Senses, Gretchen Rubin

Are you itching for a career change but struggling to figure out that next chapter? By now, you’ve probably heard us talk about book coaching—how much we love being coached, and how much I loved my coach training.  Book coaches help writers bring their dreams to life through support, feedback, project management, and accountability at each step of the book writing and publishing process. Author Accelerator’s Book Coach Certification program teaches you the key editorial, project management, organizational, and people skills needed to launch your own thriving book coaching business. To find out if book coaching is the right career for you, Author Accelerator is launching a new 5-day challenge to help you envision your new chapter. In their $99 One-Page Book Coaching Business Plan, you’ll narrow down your business idea, your ideal client, your ideal service, and more. 

Enrollment opens May 15th and runs through the end of the month! Visit bookcoaches.com/podcasts and enter the code PODCAST at checkout to get 50-percent off the One-Page Book Coaching Business Plan Challenge. bookcoaches.com/podcasts 

Do you like book recs and achievement stickers? Sarina Bowen’s Instagram might be right up your alley!

Not subscribed to our shownotes yet? You should be—sometimes we send surprises! And we’d love it if you choose to $$ support the pod.

As a former member of the “write drunk, edit sober” club, I thought it might be interesting to look at the research on alcohol, weed, stimulants and their effect on creativity so we can figure out what’s working for us, what’s not, and weigh the pros and cons of intoxication for inspiration.

I cite a few studies in this episode and, for the #AmReading segment, share a few of my favorite books on the topic of writing and intoxication.

A fun article about the Delphic Oracle in the New York Times

Research Cited:

“Alcohol Benefits the Creative Process: being moderately intoxicated gets people to think ‘outside the box.’”

“Cannabis Use Does Not Increase Actual Creativity but Biases Evaluations of Creativity” Heng, Y. T., Barnes, C. M., & Yam, K. C. (2023). Journal of Applied Psychology, 108(4), 635–646.

"Neurocognitive, Autonomic, and Mood Effects of Adderall: A Pilot Study of Healthy College Students" Weyandt, Lisa L., Tara L. White, Bergljot Gyda Gudmundsdottir, Adam Z. Nitenson, Emma S. Rathkey, Kelvin A. De Leon, and Stephanie A. Bjorn. 2018. Pharmacy 6, no. 3: 58. https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmacy6030058

#AmReading: Books on intoxication, writing, and recovery mentioned in the episode

The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking by Olivia Laing

Home Before Dark: A Biographical Memoir of John Cheever. by His Daughter by Susan Cheever

Note Found in a Bottle: My Life As a Drinker by Susan Cheever

Drinking in America: Our Secret History by Susan Cheever

The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath by Leslie Jamison

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

Out of the Wreck I Rise: A Literary Companion to Recovery by Neil Steinberg and Sara Bader

If you love a good writing retreat—especially one that comes with good solid coaching and the chance to meet others who are working on similar projects—here’s one to check out. This fall, three Author Accelerator certified book coaches are offering Mainely Memoir, a retreat for women writers in historic Biddeford, Maine, held over three days in the gorgeous Maine woods in September, with one-on-one coaching both before and after the retreat. It’s the perfect opportunity to give yourself the gift of time and focus so that you can make real progress on your memoir this year. Find out more at www.mainelymemoir.com

Are you looking for some fun reads to pass the time between episodes? Then you should check out KJ’s Bookstagram!

Jess here! This week, I’m coming to you from somewhere in Indiana, tired but happy. Getting out on the road and speaking to students, teachers, and communities is both exhausting and incredibly invigorating, and this week I got to speak to a classroom of student writers, kids who are just learning about the basics of researching, writing, and even podcasting. There’s nothing I love more.

When I’m in these classrooms, and especially when I’m talking to kids looking to change the world by writing for their school papers as they dream about breaking big stories like the Harvey Weinstein saga, I always recommend Jodi Kantor and Meghan Twohey’s essential text, Chasing the Truth: A Young Journalist’s Guide to Investigative Reporting.

Enjoy!

New York Times investigative journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey broke the story of Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assaults in 2017 and harassment and won a Pulitzer Prize for their efforts. Their book about the Weinstein investigation, She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement, came out in 2019 and the film version will be out this November.

Now, Jodi and Megan offer the lessons of their investigation - the process involved and the rules that governed its publication - to student journalists so they may be inspired and informed. I (Jess) got to talk to Jodi Kantor about the book they created for those young journalists, Chasing the Truth: A Young Journalist’s Guide to Investigative Reporting.

Links from the Pod:

#AmWriting Facebook group

If you love a good writing retreat—especially one that comes with good solid coaching and the chance to meet others who are working on similar projects—here’s one to check out. This fall, three Author Accelerator certified book coaches are offering Mainely Memoir, a retreat for women writers in historic Biddeford, Maine, held over three days in the gorgeous Maine woods in September, with one-on-one coaching both before and after the retreat. It’s the perfect opportunity to give yourself the gift of time and focus so that you can make real progress on your memoir this year. Find out more at www.mainelymemoir.com

If you love #AmWriting, kick in some $$ to support us and get bonuses and appreciation.

It’s a new #AmWriting episode!

There’s a style of creative nonfiction in which a gifted writer tells someone else’s story. The story of a house being built, or a life in the wilderness—or, in the case of Lauren Sandler, the story of a young single mother in search of housing during her first year of motherhood. Lauren’s subject—a smart, driven young woman caught up in the system because of her own history, and desperate for not just housing but an education, a career, and love and a life of her choosing—was unlikely to ever find a way to tell her own story without Lauren’s help.

“She chose me as much as I chose her,” says Lauren. We talk to Lauren about how that relationship was formed and how, although the act of observing something changes it, Lauren tried to let Camilla’s story unfold as though she weren’t there, even while her own daughter was demanding to know why they didn’t just let Camilla sleep on the couch. If you’re interested in long-form journalism, or just in the process of embedding yourself into someone else’s life, you’ll love this episode.

Links from the Pod:

Lauren’s latest book This Is All I Got: A New Mother's Search for Home

Find Lauren on her website: www.laurenosandler.com

#AmReading

Lauren: The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante

The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante

KJ: The Book Charmer by Karen Hawkins

Jess: Goodnight Beautiful by Aimee Molloy

Thanks for letting us into your inbox. If you’ve got questions, comments, episode ideas, head to the #AmWriting Facebook group or email us at amwritingpodcast@gmail.com.

Want more #AmWriting? Support the podcast with just a click of the button below for less than $2 an episode, and get weekly Writer Top Fives like Top 5 Mindfulness Tricks For Better Writing Sessions or Minisodes like How an Editor Considers an Essay.

Have you checked out Author Accelerator’s Book Coach training at bookcoaches.com/amwriting? Seriously, if every time you hear us talk about book coaching, you think to yourself—hey, I could do that!—you should. They have great programs for fiction, non-fiction and making your side-gig full time—and they offer tuition help for BIPOC coaches as well—more info on that at bookcoaches.com/equity.

And if you haven’t tried Dabble yet, YOU MUST. Just go play with the storyline building tools. Trust us.

Jess here. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I know how my brain works, which is to say it doesn’t, unless a hard and fast deadline looms large in my calendar. I’ve been known to tell my agent or editor to expect chapters on a given day, or I plan to have a completed book proposal to her by X date three weeks hence, but this spring, I’ve decided to call in my writer reinforcements.

I summoned KJ and Sarina to a study room in the Howe Library in Hanover, NH on a very rainy day in late April because I needed their help. I needed them to hold me to dates and words and pages, and without being prompted, they pulled out their planners and dutifully asked me what dates to circle in brightly colored ink.

I now have deadlines, and actual human beings to bug me about them, for various stages of my novel-in-progress, and I will not - can not - let them down.

This, dear listeners, is what accountability buddies are for.

Come along for the ride and, as a bonus, learn about all kinds of Scrivener tools and tricks I plan to employ along the way.

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” - Terry Pratchett

Links:

Scrivener, in case you are one of the unconverted.

#AmReading

Jess: Sarina Bowen’s Brooklyn Bruisers series (and Jess’ comfort reads)

Underland by Robert Macfarlane

A review of Underland by Robert Macfarlane (by Terry Tempest Williams) in the New York Times.

Sarina: Happy Place by Emily Henry

KJ: The Candid Life of Meena Dave by Namrata Patel

Sarina’s progress trees:

Jess’ Accountability Bunny:

Accountability buddies:

Are you itching for a career change but struggling to figure out that next chapter? By now, you’ve probably heard us talk about book coaching—how much we love being coached, and how much I loved my coach training.  Book coaches help writers bring their dreams to life through support, feedback, project management, and accountability at each step of the book writing and publishing process. Author Accelerator’s Book Coach Certification program teaches you the key editorial, project management, organizational, and people skills needed to launch your own thriving book coaching business. To find out if book coaching is the right career for you, Author Accelerator is launching a new 5-day challenge to help you envision your new chapter. In their $99 One-Page Book Coaching Business Plan, you’ll narrow down your business idea, your ideal client, your ideal service, and more. 

Enrollment opens May 15th and runs through the end of the month! Visit bookcoaches.com/podcasts and enter the code PODCAST at checkout to get 50-percent off the One-Page Book Coaching Business Plan Challenge. bookcoaches.com/podcasts 

Do you get KJ’s Box of Chocolates email—for erratic doses of books and enthusiasms? If not - what are you waiting for?

Not subscribed to our shownotes yet? You should be—sometimes we send surprises! And we’d love it if you choose to $$ support the pod.

When I (Jess here) interviewed Lacy Crawford about her new memoir Notes on a Silencing, we discussed the complex and often contradictory goals of publishers’ legal departments and fact checkers at periodicals such as Condé Nast/Vanity Fair, where Lacy’s first serial excerpt was published. An article on nonfiction book fact checking (or the lack thereof) published in Esquire (by Emma Copley Eisenberg) made the rounds online in August, and many readers were surprised to discover that publishers don’t fact check the books they publish. In fact, a standard clause in nonfiction book contracts indemnifies the publisher when it comes to the author’s factual errors. What publishers do, however, is send the manuscript over to their legal departments to ensure they will not be held liable for defamation, an risk most authors mitigate by changing names or identifying details of some people in the book. Lacy explains how the goals of the legal department and the goals of fact checking are often at cross-purposes, and we come up with a few things authors should think about when selecting a excerpts for publications that will rigorously fact check.

Find Lacy Crawford:

On her website: www.lacycrawford.com

On Twitter: @lacy_crawford

We had so much to discuss we skipped #AmReading, but Lacy’s first book, Early Decision, was a delight. It’s a satire about the high-stakes, high-stress process of college admission.

Thanks to everyone who supports the podcast with $$$ on top of all the love and ears. To join that team, click the button below:

Because we do things for our supporters! Like weekly Minisodes When There's No Muse, Keep Going and Top Fives like Top 5 Ways to Prep for NaNoWriMo. And we are working on supporter-only discussions that we expect to be killer. So come on in, the water’s fine.

Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here and don’t forget our sponsors and partners!

Have you checked out Author Accelerator’s Book Coach training at bookcoaches.com/amwriting? Seriously, I am in for this (this is KJ). I’ve discovered I love helping people with their fiction just like I liked editing for the NYT, but I want to know what I’m doing before I start. So look for me at a training session near you, and check it out. They have great programs for fiction, non-fiction and making your side-gig full time—and they offer tuition help for BIPOC coaches as well—more info on that at bookcoaches.com/equity.

And if you haven’t tried Dabble yet, YOU MUST. It has replaced Scrivener in our hearts in part because it’s so much easier to use—and in part because we love the way it plots. Free trials for everyone, no need to remember a code, just go here.

Fresh fall starts or pressing fall deadlines? Here's how to make the most of that new season, sharpened pencils, back-to-school mojo.

Even when a pressing deadline means you’re not starting anything new, fall still manages to feel like a time for fresh starts and renewed productivity—and setting goals for what can get done by the end of the year now, when it still feels like so much is possible. We’re talking planning software, balancing reality with what we think our tomorrow selves might be capable of, and grabbing any momentum the annual back-to-school season offers with both hands.

Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, a preview of the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, September 16, 2019: Top 5 Mistakes Writer Websites Make. Not joined that club yet? You’ll want to get on that. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month.

As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode.

To support the podcast and help it stay free, subscribe to our weekly #WritersTopFive email.

LINKS FROM THE PODCAST

#AmReading (Watching, Listening)

Jess: Holding, Graham Norton

KJ: Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done, Laura Vanderkam

Sarina: Take Off Your Pants: Outline Your Books for Faster, Better Writing

#FaveIndieBookstore

Bear Pond Books in Montpelier, Vermont

This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.

Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.

If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.

The image in our podcast illustration is by Bernd Schulz on Unsplash.

Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)

KJ:                                00:01                Hey writers, are you whispering to yourself that this might just be your year to make NaNoWriMo happen? Or maybe planning to do it again? Then, do yourself a favor and invest in Author Accelerator's Inside Outline coaching now so that you've got a structure to free you up to use those 30 days in November to write something that really works. It is no fun to "win" NaNoWriMo with 56,000 words and then realize 35,000 of them don't serve your story at all. Trust me, I speak from experience. The Inside Outline really works. Find out more at authoraccelerator.com/insideoutline. Is it recording?

Jess:                             00:44                Now it's recording.

KJ:                                00:44                Yay.

Jess:                             00:45                Go ahead.

KJ:                                00:46                This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.

Jess:                             00:50                Alright, let's start over.

KJ:                                00:51                Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Now one, two, three. Hey, I am KJ Dell'Antonia, and this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is the podcast about writing all the things, short things, long things, fictional things, nonfictional things, but please not nonfictional. Not, not nonfictional things pretending to be fictional. Well anyway, just don't get that wrong people. Right? We need to clarify. Some things are fiction, some things are nonfiction, short, long. We write them, all except for the ones that you're not supposed to write. Oh, I know the ones where you say they're nonfiction, but they're really fiction. That's bad. Alright. They can be short, they can be long, they can be proposals, they can be pitches, they can be essays, all the things. But most of all, #AmWriting is the podcast about sitting down and getting the work done.

Jess:                             01:54                I'm Jess Lahey and I am the author of the Gift of Failure and a forthcoming book about preventing substance abuse in kids and you can find my writing all over the place, the New York Times and the Washington Post. And actually as this airs, over at a new publication called Air Mail.

Sarina:                          02:11                And I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of 30-ish contemporary romance novels. You can find me at sarinabowen.com.

KJ:                                02:19                I am KJ Dell'Antonia, author of How to Be a Happier Parent, and of the novel The Chicken Sisters, which will be available next summer. I'm also the former lead editor and writer for the Motherlode blog at the New York Times, where I still write occasionally, and you can find my work (a little bit of it) at The New Yorker.

Jess:                             02:36                That's funny and still really cool. I still can't get over it, it's just so cool.

KJ:                                02:42                Just as a shout out to everyone who's ever written once for something. There are no gatekeepers of what you say you do. You can say, "You can find my work in the New York Times if you have written for the New York Times online, that counts.

KJ:                                03:02                There are not rules, there is no one checking, and if you don't grab it and take hold of it somebody will. Other people are, so take it and rock it people.

Jess:                             03:13                The nice thing is when something like that's on your SIG file, or your bio, or your resume, or your CV, no one can ever take it away from you. So what are we talking about today?

KJ:                                03:28                Today's topic is fresh fall starts, productivity, the real new year, September, all the school supplies.

Jess:                             03:38                Okay. Well, you and Sarina get to take the lead today because frankly, fall stinks, fall is horrible. Fall is my nemesis this year because my book deadline is October 10th. So every single time someone mentions fall, I want to just go into a hole and disappear. So fall is bad this year.

KJ:                                04:04                You don't have a sense like you've got some renewed energy? You know, your house is empty?

Jess:                             04:12                No, no. I feel like my deadline's getting here really fast.

Sarina:                          04:18                Somebody needs a nap and a hug because fall is awesome.

Jess:                             04:23                No, I know it is. I love fall. I mean, I live in New England, I live in the epicenter of beautiful fallness. But as I was mentioning earlier, for our listeners that have been listening for a while, we have these wonderful calendars that we love to keep and we have this sticker system and I love my stickers. This month they came from Robbie Bear and Matthew Swanson, some authors that I love. I got some beautiful stickers from them and I have at the top of my calendar the words, 'the final stretch' and on every single day I have days left to my deadline and today (or the day we are recording) I have 38 days left until my deadline. And so I'm in crazy countdown mode, and tomorrow I leave for a road trip for two days. So yeah, you people can be excited about fall all you want, but I'm just gonna live in my state of dread and oppression. I will say as a progress report, I did hand in the first five chapters of my book to my editor this past weekend and I was so deliriously happy I thought I could just do cartwheels. It was pretty great. So that was a big milestone for me, so I'm feeling really good.

Sarina:                          05:35                Awesome.

KJ:                                05:35                We were really excited.

Jess:                             05:36                Yeah, I know, I know. Alright, you people talk about your fresh fall starts and I'm going to sit here and mope.

KJ:                                05:42                Well I handed in my big revision, which was due theoretically September 1st, but I took a look at the calendar and went, 'Okay, I'll just ask my editor', she probably doesn't really want this on Sunday of Labor Day weekend and indeed she did not.

Speaker 1:                    05:58                So I had a couple extra days which I used. I didn't work that much over Labor Day, but I definitely worked some. Well, it was due Tuesday. So Monday, end of day, I waved bye-bye to my revisions. And my editor reports (I love this) that she read it all in one sitting!

Jess:                             06:18                Oh that's fantastic.

KJ:                                06:20                So she said she loves it and it's all good and it's all exciting. I will have small revisions at some point during this month, but the real priority for me this month is going back to my next project. Code name - Project Guru. So off I go.

Jess:                             06:37                It has a code name, I love that.

KJ:                                06:39                It does, all my projects have code names. Of course, my next novel is called The Chicken Sisters and the code name was chicken. They might not be super secrety.

Jess:                             06:51                The code is easy to break is what you're saying?

KJ:                                06:53                I think so. Sarina, what's your priority this fall?

Sarina:                          06:57                Well, I'm neck deep in deadlines as well, but I still feel that fall is absolutely a turning point in publishing for so many reasons. And it's not just us and our love of the discount pen at Staples and the new markers. Really, publishing keeps a calendar that supports this whole 'Fall is glorious'. But for example, my European publishers have been nowhere to be found all summer. So now I'm starting to see new covers and to hear new publication dates and there's just more happening.

KJ:                                07:35                Yeah, there is no point in submitting anything to anyone in August, for the most part. I think my agent, when we were submitting my How to Be a Happier Parent, I feel like we actually targeted kind of the middle of August on the theory that people would be coming back and everyone else was going to submit in September. And I could be wrong, we might've just talked about that. I don't remember the details, but basically - nobody does anything in August. And what they do is kind of like trying to get ahead cause they know September's gonna be crazy.

Sarina:                          08:09                Right. And from the writer's perspective, this is really the last push before the holidays. So you get this time when everybody's at their desk, and you can get your questions answered, and you can also take a peek back at your goals for the current year from a moment where it's not over yet.

KJ:                                08:34                Yeah, you have some time to grab those goals, and see if their make-able, or revise them into something make-able, or see what you could do towards them so that next year you don't feel quite so like I didn't do that. I'm all good. There is data (and I'm just going to get it wrong) that I think either October or March is the most productive month of the year because there's nothing in either of those months that gets in our way.

Jess:                             09:08                That makes sense. One of the interesting things about coming back from the summer for me, is I submitted a couple of things over the summer with the understanding that the people were on hiatus. One was for a television show, actually. It was a pitch I sent for a television show, knowing full well that those producers were not going to be back until after the Labor Day weekend. But I put it in their boxes and said, 'Here it is, I know you're not back to work yet, but it'll just be waiting for you when you get back. So there's been this lull and now all of a sudden I'm also like, 'Oh wait a second. At any time I could get some emails about these things I sent in over the summer. It's kind of exciting.

KJ:                                09:46                Well, it's kind of an interesting question - whether we should or shouldn't do that. Because on the one hand, the thing that's been sitting in your inbox since August 20th is less appealing than the thing that drops into your inbox on September 5th, maybe. Or maybe you feel like you need to get to it, I don't know.

Jess:                             10:06                My thinking on this was there was some momentum behind my getting the ideas in and I didn't want it to get lost in the hustle. I wasn't sure exactly what time this person was going to be going back to pitch meetings and stuff, so I didn't want my ideas to not be there when those happened. And so for me, we had a little jocular email back and forth going and I wanted to keep the momentum of that, rather than let it get stale. That was my thinking anyway. Who knows? We never know how this is all gonna work.

KJ:                                10:40                Sarina, do you lose your voice artists, and your cover art designers, and your editors and stuff like that in August? The same way that publishing goes on hiatus?

Sarina:                          10:52                No, I would say that the digital crazy people like me work 24/7 without any predictable breaks, honestly. It's really only the traditional world that seems to disappear. Like magazines are still having their summer Fridays in August, that part of it is all predictable. But no, the people who hustle for themselves do not seem to be as seasonal.

KJ:                                11:22                Right. Well, it would make sense not to. I mean, if other people were going to take a break in August, you'd be good to be the person who wasn't.

Sarina:                          11:31                Yeah. The other thing about what I do specifically is that there are some big summer events and some elbow rubbing and deal making gets done surrounding those things. So I'm more likely to meet vendors and people who can affect my sales platform in the summertime. But, that's just a weirdness of the way my little corner of the world works.

KJ:                                11:59                Right. Well, I feel like some of this is also, just like you were saying, it's mental. I think we're all conditioned - we're back to school whether you have kids or not, and certainly whether you go back to school or not. It feels like a good time for hunkering down, and learning new things, and putting words on the page. It feels like there's a good block here. We go from September 1st to November 20th or something before your personal life starts, which is kind of sad. It just feels like I've got lots of time without surprise obligations.

Sarina:                          12:51                Well, those of us with children, it's really true. I mean, the whole shape of my day changes once everybody goes back to school.

KJ:                                12:59                Yeah. And Jess gets out of that because she's got one child left at home and he is pretty darn independent. I have (well I had) four, one's in Spain now. But actually he's perhaps more demanding in Spain than he was while he was here because he's kind of lonely.

Jess:                             13:34                Alright, so when you talk about fresh fall starts, what exactly are you thinking? Do you guys do more goal setting when you go into the fall? We were just talking about this in our home, actually. Because we do goal setting sort of once a season and so we were just actually planning our family dinner because my oldest son's college is just about to start and right now is a really good time for us to sort of talk about what we all have in mind for the next three months and we like to talk about things we'd like to achieve, that sort of stuff. Do you do the same thing with your writing going into this new season?

Sarina:                          14:08                Yeah, I definitely do. And honestly, I've been trying to find a better way. I spent part of the weekend looking at project management tools on the web, which of course sounds like a giant time sink and it was, but I am having trouble planning longterm because there are so many interconnected deadlines with the way that I produce material and I'm trying to find a tool to help me overcome this.

KJ:                                14:39                Like an Asana like thing, only just for you.

Sarina:                          14:41                Yeah, kind of like that. I'm always having to count backwards. So if I look at next year and I'm like, you know, May is a good month to publish. Because all the primaries are over and we haven't hit the summer doldrums yet. So I definitely want to have a book coming out in May. And then this is where it gets fun. So six weeks before I want that book to come out, I have to hand it off to an editor. So, I have to hire that person and I have to hire that person at least six weeks before that moment. So then I'm like, okay, six and six is 12. So all the math begins. And then I have to hand it to audio narrators, edited, four weeks before it comes out, but I have to hire those audio narrators 60 days before that. So it's all these interconnected deadlines that I'm having trouble tracking in my life. And that's a big challenge going forward.

KJ:                                15:37                Right. And I am definitely re-looking at deadlines and goals. And some of that is the sort of renewed fall energy and some of it is renewed fall time. So I also have a book coming out in May or June. I don't actually know the exact date yet, but I'm going to guess like the very first week of June. Plus my paperback is gonna come out.

Jess:                             16:01                That's right, I totally forgot about paperback.

KJ:                                16:04                Right. So I was just looking at my website, and my follow KJ links, and my Twitter, and the headers on everything. And thinking, well, I'm gonna have to change those. They should reflect the new book, but there's also the paperback and they're pretty different readership, anyway. So yeah, it's another one of those things. I'm not going to be able to look at that in May and go, 'Oh, I think I'll just fix all of it.' So yeah, I was doing some counting backwards, too. So some of it is what do I want to have done when, counting backwards. And some of it is what do I want to achieve now? And sort of setting a goal to go forward. Because my goal is to have my new project fully drafted by the end of October.

Sarina:                          16:55                That is, that is a big goal. Wow.

Jess:                             16:57                How are you doing on that?

KJ:                                16:58                Well, it's about half drafted, honestly. So it's a highly doable, I don't plan to have it polished. But I'd actually kinda of like to have it agent worthy by then, but I don't know. Yeah, I can do it.

Jess:                             17:19                You can do it. You can do it.

Sarina:                          17:28                And then when you have a project at a publishing house, that becomes a little bit of a whack-a-mole game because one of these days someone is going to turn up with copy edits for you.

Jess:                             17:39                That's the thing about this fall that I was thinking about. So my editor happens to be really fast. In fact, so much so that when my agent and I were talking about deadlines for the book, I said, 'Look, every six months I do a presentation at Canyon Ranch and so I'll be there actually for a whole week starting the day after my book deadline. And originally we had put a cushion in between my book deadline and going off to Canyon Ranch. And our agent said, 'You know, Gail is so fast with edits that you may wanna literally make it the next day so there's no possibility you have edits back from her so you can actually enjoy that week. But I'm figuring that after the deadline, pretty much right away, I'm going to start getting edits. I'm protecting that week and I also know starting the day after what next thing I want to start writing. So I will go off to Canyon Ranch having some pleasure writing in mind. So I may not do it, I might write, I don't know, we'll see. But I'm definitely taking lots of books because, oh my gosh, I have a stack of books that I haven't been able to read because I've been working so much., So I'm excited for that. But edit, edit, edit. The other thing that was kind of cool is I realized when I sent those chapters off to my editor that suddenly now she's going to have thoughts about possible cover designs even though the pub date is still way away, but obviously all of a sudden I'm like, 'Oh wait, I get to start thinking about some of the really fun parts of this process, which is going to be really fun.'

KJ:                                19:22                That is very nice.

Jess:                             19:23                I can't even imagine what the cover is going to look like for this book. It's kind of exciting to think about, though. Oh, speaking of covers Sarina, you sent us some covers the other day and it was interesting to me just to see in different countries how differently people think about your work. It's always been interesting to me because for example, your German covers are absolutely gorgeous for your Ivy Years books. And then for another series they go in a whole other direction. Then you look at a whole other country and you realize, well, they have a very different sort of aesthetic about your books. It's fascinating to me to see your covers in different countries. And mine too. I mean, some of mine make no sense. My Korean cover has deer all over it. I don't know what that's about, but apparently it appeals to some aesthetic. It's very pretty, I just don't know what it has to do with failure, but I'm happy it's pretty. But I don't know what it's appealing to on some sort of cultural level.

Sarina:                          20:19                Right. Well first of all, there is nothing more fun than looking at foreign cover art, because the work is already done, right? You wrote that book like three years ago and now you just get to see somebody else interpret it. The German romance market has no bare chests at all, which means all their cover art is super classy and really cool. So, yeah, that's a really good time.

Jess:                             20:51                So you're saying, just as an aesthetic, no romance covers in Germany do that? So the whole Fabio on the cover just isn't a thing they do?

Sarina:                          21:03                Well, not currently. I mean, there could be some past moment in German romance that look different. But it's lots of flowers and pastels. So in this country I would never publish a romance that didn't have some human element on it. Like even if it was a hand, or the corner of a smile, or something. To me, you need a person somewhere represented on there or people are not going to know what that book is about. But in Germany they don't have that restraint. And so it's really hard for me to look at German cover art and make sense of it because I just have to trust that they know what they're doing. And that's how I ended up with flowers all over the Ivy Years. And I thought, well where's the Ivy? And it turns out not to matter because they did amazing things with those covers. And I'm still seeing them on Instagram, a year and a half later.

Jess:                             21:59                That's the thing that also has been so cool about seeing what romance authors and readers do with Instagram and covers. I had no idea. It's this whole culture of set design to honor books that you love or series that you love. It's amazing to me what shows up on your Instagram feed from readers and other authors.

Sarina:                          22:24                It's pretty cool.

Jess:                             22:25                Yeah, I kind of wish that was happening in nonfiction and literary fiction, it would be so cool. Although I will say, some people have done some very cool things with Gift of Failure. But never to the level that I see with the romance.

KJ:                                22:41                It's not quite the same thing. Let us know when someone tattoos a line from it on them. It could happen, it totally could. I mean, it actually kind of makes sense.

Jess:                             22:57                What's really cute is I get videos from people of their kids doing things and being proud of themselves. I get those all the time. I love them so much.

KJ:                                23:10                My stickers for fall look like little typewriters because you gave them to me, Sarina. I've been looking forward to using them. And then the day I made my September chart and I was all ready to go and I was like, 'Wait, where are my typewriter stickers? And there ensued a flurry of wild searching.

Jess:                             23:48                Sarina, when is your next release date? Are you gearing up for any release dates?

Sarina:                          23:53                October 29, I believe.

Jess:                             23:56                It's so crazy. It happens so fast that, you know, I was realizing when you introduced yourself as the author of over 30 novels or whatever, you know just you were on recently and talking about two dozen. So it just goes fast, it's so impressive, it's so amazing.

Sarina:                          24:21                I don't keep track all that carefully. Do you know the Romance Writers of America keep track of this stuff? They will have a milestone for you. Like if I submit that that was my 30th book or whatever, they'll send me a little pin.

Jess:                             24:52                Does anyone have any actual tips? Can we give some actual practical tips? Anyone have any actual, wonderful tips aside from starting a new page on the calendar, which is always exciting, and doing all the picking of the stickers, and picking a new page. But do you guys have any sort of ideas for ways to think about fall as a fresh new start to give yourself a break? Maybe if the last thing you submitted didn't go very well, how you wrap your brains around a fresh start.

Sarina:                          25:19                I really like to look at this as the last lap and so it's fun to look back at my 2019 goals and also start to pencil in the 2020 goals because it's not so scary to do that right now. So, while I'm trying to finish up this year on a strong note, I have definitely started in the margins, just doodling the goals for next year. Because it's not here yet and I feel like I have room in my brain to think about that from a place of less pressure. So I start every morning with my planner open to look at what I'm doing for the day before I look in that dreadful email inbox to see what might be there for me and I just try to get a grip on the new day before it takes over.

KJ:                                26:11                And I'm looking at every day and finding the block for words. Which also kind of looks like assigning blocks. So for various reasons, I brilliantly looked at this the first week with people back at school and decided to put a lot of appointments in it. Like the people coming to pick up the furniture that's getting donated to Habitat for Humanity and the this and the that. And I very stupidly broke up my own days in ways that were a little hard to manage. On Friday, I try to look at the week ahead, mark off the blocks that I have sucked away for other things, and also make a mental note to myself to stop doing that. And then make sure that the days have a space that is dedicated to doing the thing that I most want to do. And then a space that is dedicated to doing the things that I have to do. And sort of trying to make those realistic, so that I don't start this great time of year feeling like I need to beat myself up because, as we all agreed, this is not the week for me to make 1200 words a day. Maybe next week, but not this week. This week, I kept the writing goals a little smaller cause I've got a couple of days where I really had just smashed myself down into teeny, tiny little pockets. So I think looking at the time you have and making choices about how you're going to use it instead of going, 'Oh, it's one, this is my two hours, what am I going to do?' is really key.

Jess:                             27:59                Well, this might be a good time to mention that all of a sudden the three of us - but mostly you - have been working on a new project. There is a new time allocation thing that is coming into play for the three of us. KJ, would you like to talk about our new project?

KJ:                                28:16                Oh yeah. I'm so excited about this. So, members of our Facebook group already know that we've launched the #AmWriting weekly shownotes email and the #AmWriting supporters, top writers, and top five emails.

Jess:                             28:35                What do you mean by that?

KJ:                                28:36                I'm really excited about this, so I'm going to lay it out. So you can go to amwritingpodcast.com and you can sign up to just every week when we drop a new episode, you can get the show notes, you can get the transcript, you can get the audio of the episode in your inbox. So every time we have a new episode, you'll know what it is, you'll know what it's about, it's right there if you want to play it from there. Now that doesn't change anything in terms of us popping up in iTunes, or Outcast, or Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcast. We are still there. But this way, you can get a little notification, you can get the links, you can get any images. For example, last week we did our burn chart episode. So the show notes had pictures. And those pictures were in the show notes email.

Jess:                             29:37                It's also been super fun to watch people's reaction to getting that stuff, too.

KJ:                                29:46                So the other thing that we have done is we know that a ton of listeners want to support the podcast. And if you go to amwriting.com and poke around a little, you'll find a lovely video of just Jess and I talking about how much we have invested in the podcast so far. And we've mentioned it a couple of times.

Jess:                             30:10                Do you want to say the number no matter how painful?

KJ:                                30:14                It's so painful. So before we got our sponsor, it didn't feel like it was this much at the time, but somehow or another we managed to spend $10,000 between us.

Jess:                             30:26                That doesn't even count buying microphones, or our time, and all that stuff. That's just what we've spent on our producer.

KJ:                                30:38                Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. People have mentioned that they would love to support the podcast financially, but we didn't want to just do that. We didn't want to be like, 'Okay, well fine, send us, send us a check or however you want to do it. We wanted to give something to people that want to support the podcast. So Sarina and I sat down and came up with the idea of the Writers Top Five. So what we're doing is every week we are sending out (to our supporters) a top five. So, for example, right now you can find top five questions you should ask your novel's main character. You can find top five reasons you should have a burn chart. They come out on Monday. So next Monday is going to be top five steps to burn chart success. So that's the how to, and that's going to be supporter only and I don't know what comes next, but I know we've got top five things you can do on Good Reads coming up, top five things you need for your Instagram tool kit, top five ways to prep for NaNoWriMo, all kinds of stuff. Sarina, do you remember some good ones?

Sarina:                          31:54                Well they're all super prescriptive, which was really important to me. Because when I listen to the amazing interviews you guys do, I'm always taken somewhere on a writer's journey that's not my journey, which is always really illustrative. And I love to sit back and listen to the amazing guests that you find to take me somewhere where I'm not going myself. So that's why the top five things are meant to be things that many (if not all) of our listeners can put into action immediately. So it's the 'This is for you to act on right now.' And that's what we're going to deliver.

Jess:                             32:33                The stuff I've been working on lately has been (I have a couple in progress) on top five organizational strategies before you ever start researching that nonfiction book or top five tips for keeping your research organized while you're working on the project. A lot of sort of mistakes I've made and have come up with solutions that work for me. I'm in this position right now of having already made the mistakes and fixing them on this second book and that's been really fun to see. I'm like, 'Oh, that's a place at which I would have lost this altogether if I hadn't come up with a way to fix it.' this time around. So yeah, mine have all been very practical around organization and nonfiction writing.

KJ:                                33:19                And most of them are both fun and actionable. But we will be letting Jess do top five things you can do to prep for taxes.

Jess:                             33:27                Actually now that we have Sarina on board all the time, Sarina's got perspectives on self-publishing and we had talked at one point about top five things to do if you're going to take on a pseudonym, top five things to do before you hit publish on that self-published novel, that kind of thing.

KJ:                                33:48                So we could basically riff all day on top fives and basically we will. So we're excited. So the thing to do, if you want to either get the weekly show notes email or sign up to support us is to go to amwritingpodcast.com and this is all via the people at Sub Stack. So if you happen to remember the listen the episode with Lyz Lenz about how she supports herself on Sub Stack, we're now using Sub Stack both to produce the podcast, to send out our show notes, and to create our top fives. And starting in November, we're gonna do some supporter only bonus audio episodes of some kind. And the cool thing that Sub Stack has brought off that I haven't found anywhere else, is that if you're a supporter and we start doing the audio thing, we send you one email, you click that link, that link opens your podcast app no matter what it is. And I have tried this on Outcast (which is not one of the most popular podcast apps by any means) and it just popped up and there I was. I was subscribed to this supporter only podcast and then it just fed. I never had to do anything else. Whereas there are some other platforms where every time one of the people that I love puts out a supporter only audio episode, I can only listen to it on my phone, which is frustrating because where we live it's great for about the first half mile. So if you want to support the podcast, you can sign up to support us for $7 a month or $80 a year. And you can also always get the show notes, the transcript, the links for free like they've always been. And the audio of the #AmWriting podcast every week. Gonna stay free, we started it this way, we're keeping it this way. We love doing it, but we would also love to have anybody's support that's game to join the team.

Jess:                             35:51                Do we want to talk about what we've been reading?

KJ:                                35:57                What I have been reading is relevant to our topic. Can I start? Cause I haven't talked enough. I decided to reread Laura Vanderkam's Off the Clock. Laura's writing (and Laura was a guest on the podcast at some point and I'll look that up and pop it into the show notes) about time (she would say time management, but it's really about time) has changed my life in many ways and Off the Clock is one of my favorites and I decided to reread it. And as a result of sitting down and rereading Off the Clock, I did a couple of things. I started blocking off time to make sure that I was spending it with friends because one of my favorite quotes from Laura is "People are a good use of time." I say that to myself all the time. People are the best use of time. When I talked earlier about making sure that I plan the way that I'm gonna use my blocks of time, instead of just getting to them and figuring out what I want to do. That is also down to Laura and as I read through, there are just all kinds of moments when I'm reminded that the way that I talk to myself about my time and the way that I choose to use my time is going to affect how I feel at the end of the day so much that...anyway, it's a great book. It's always a good read and highly, highly recommended.

Jess:                             37:29                She's always a good reread, too, cause I get different things depending on where I am in my headspace every time I reread her stuff. For me lately, the equivalent of that is every single morning, no matter how stressed I feel about this deadline, I wake up and I try to remind myself that, 'Oh my gosh, I cannot believe I get to do this for my work.' I just feel so lucky. And so that helps me sort of make the most of what I get to do for my, for a living. It's really good. So Sarina, what have you been reading?

Sarina:                          37:57                The only thing I've been reading right now is a book called Take Off Your Pants. And that refers to being a pantser versus being a plotter in fiction.

Jess:                             38:11                Alright. You're going to have to do a recap. I know we talked about at one time on another episode, but we definitely need to know more about that.

Sarina:                          38:17                Okay. Plotting versus seat of the pants. And her title Take Off Your Pants is tongue in cheek to turn people into plotters. So the book is by Libby Hawker and she approaches plotting a book before you write it from a character perspective, instead of exactly like the beats or the three act, five act structure that the plot gurus talk about. And I just liked her approach a lot because it feels like something that can apply to what I do a little better. Often when I read books about how to plot a novel, they are all assuming that I'm writing some kind of epic Star Wars thing with life and death.

KJ:                                39:08                They do tend to have a really masculine gestalt and I don't mean that like Star star Wars as anything but for men. The whole sort of spreadsheet plotting and hero's journey plotting tends to lean towards the action driven story.

Sarina:                          39:37                Yes. Like if you're trying to write a sweeping epic fantasy, those books are usually more applicable. And I've found that this character based plot structure that she starts with speaks to me in a way that some other books have not.

Jess:                             39:55                Does this mean you're going to change? Are you going from being a pantser to a plotter?

KJ:                                40:00                Oh, Serena is so not a pantser.

Sarina:                          40:15                And that's the thing, I used to think of myself as a plotter until I worked with some people who really plot in a serious way. And then I started to see all of this squishiness in my approach. And not that it's terrible, it's just that it's lovely when you can learn the vocabulary for the things that you're doing, because it gives you a way to think about them a little more deeply. And so that's what I'm trying to do.

KJ:                                40:42                I like overlaying some of that on top of what I have already. So when I did the revision of The Chicken Sisters, I put a beat sheet over it. I had never done a beat sheet for it. Which is the Save the Cat, writes a novel thing. I have done the Inside Outline, which is very similar and I redid my Inside Outline and I created a beat sheet, which I had never done and that really helped me because I was trying to trim. And when you have the beat sheet you are forced to recognize what the priorities are and sort of give those more space. So I like putting the stuff over what I've already written as well as using it to write new stuff.

Sarina:                          41:30                Yeah. That tends to just stress me out.

Jess:                             41:32                I held this back from you. I was going to email you about it and I decided to hold it for the podcast because I thought you might think it's delightful. So this was on chirp and chirp.com is like audio books on sale. So I get an email once a week or so, maybe more often than that, saying what's on sale for audio books. And so this one sounded cute and I downloaded it and the voice sounded really familiar of the narrator. I didn't know anything about this book, I decided to just go blind. And the book is called Holding. And I don't even remember why I picked it, which is why I thought it would be kind of fun to just go into a blind. Turns out this novel is written by Graham Norton. Graham Norton is very famous in the UK for the Graham Norton Show, which is delightful. But I had no idea he ever wrote a book and it turns out he's written a bunch of them. So this was completely new to me and it is something you would really like, KJ. It is a little village oriented mystery with really quirky Irish characters, and what Graham Norton does really well is a really funny depictions of very quaint Irish village characters. Everyone has their own little backstory and their own little quirks. And yes, there is the overlay of a mystery, but more than anything, it's sort of that thing you love - that small village. You're going to love it. And actually, I was listening to some of it just to relax before I went to bed and I giggled a whole bunch of times and Tim was like, 'Okay, you gotta listen to something else.' Who wants to do our bookstore?

KJ:                                44:05                You do the bookstore.

Jess:                             44:08                I get to do the bookstore! Well this bookstore was a scene of an interesting crime for me. So we are going to shout out a bookstore that all three of us really love called Bare Pond Books in Montpelier, Vermont. I went to this bookstore the day that the Gift of Failure came out and it's what put the nail in the coffin of impressing my son because they didn't have my book, and we hadn't been able to find it a couple of other places, and my son said to me, 'Are you sure that this book comes out today?' And it turns out that there had been a supply issue and blah, blah blah, and it was still in some boxes and dah, dah, dah. But Bare Pond Books is this great bookstore in Montpelier. It's one of those really classic, you know, squeaky wood floor bookstores that's well curated, really approachable. It's right at the main intersection in Montpelier, really easy to find. And I believe you sent me a picture of my book in the window there with your kids waving from outside the window. I think we are done for the day cause we ran long.

KJ:                                45:57                Before we sign off. I just want to remind everybody that if you'd like to support the podcast, you can go to amwritingpodcast.com and another way to support us (and getting our email is great, we would love to send you the email with the show notes and the transcript cause we're making it, it'd be great if people make use of it) by leaving us a review on iTunes, or Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And can review it or just by telling one friend that this is a podcast that they would love.

KJ:                                46:29                That's a great idea.

Jess:                             46:30                And you also mentioned that the people in our #AmWriting Facebook group are some of the first people to find out about our Sub Stack project. And so if you're interested in joining that group on Facebook, please do, because we talk about topics we might want to come up with on the podcast, we talk about things that are happening in our lives, and it's just a really great place for writers to support each other and there are no meanies there because we can filter the comments. So thank you so much everyone for listening and again, until next week, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.

Jess:                             47:11                This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid.

Jess here. I know, I KNOW. I’ve been meaning to get to this for ages but who has time to just sit and watch videos about software? Not me. However, last week Sarina told me about some of her Scrivener tricks and I realized it’s time. I put my butt in the chair and scrolled through ALL of the Scrivener YouTube videos (for Mac) and searched on #scrivener #scrivenertips and a few other hashtags on TikTok, and I have to admit, I learned a lot. I’m no guru, but I’ve solved some problems I was having with the app. I hope my time spent learning this stuff can flatten your learning curve so you can get on with the words!

Links:

Scrivener

Scrivener on YouTube

Are you itching for a career change but struggling to figure out that next chapter? By now, you’ve probably heard us talk about book coaching—how much we love being coached, and how much I loved my coach training.  Book coaches help writers bring their dreams to life through support, feedback, project management, and accountability at each step of the book writing and publishing process. Author Accelerator’s Book Coach Certification program teaches you the key editorial, project management, organizational, and people skills needed to launch your own thriving book coaching business. To find out if book coaching is the right career for you, Author Accelerator is launching a new 5-day challenge to help you envision your new chapter. In their $99 One-Page Book Coaching Business Plan, you’ll narrow down your business idea, your ideal client, your ideal service, and more. 

Enrollment opens May 15th and runs through the end of the month! Visit bookcoaches.com/podcasts and enter the code PODCAST at checkout to get 50-percent off the One-Page Book Coaching Business Plan Challenge. bookcoaches.com/podcasts 

Have you followed Jess on IG yet? There’s cute puppy pics, educational reels, and of course - little glimpses into life in Vermont.

Not subscribed to our shownotes yet? You should be—sometimes we send surprises! And we’d love it if you choose to $$ support the pod.

More words, better words, in less time? Sometimes. In this episode, finding your own path to write faster.

If only we could write as fast as we type! You could set your clock by our book production, right? Not so. This week we’re exploring how to write faster with Sarina in the lead. Finding your own patterns, prewriting and avoiding that “stuck” feeling by finding tangible ways to explore your characters and book without doing battle with words dominate our conversation as we riff on ways to up our daily word counts without ending up with something that’s destined for the cutting room floor file.

Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, a preview of the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, September 30, 2019: Top Five Reasons to Be on Instagram. Not joined that club yet? You’ll want to get on that. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month.

As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode.

To support the podcast and help it stay free, subscribe to our weekly #WritersTopFive email.

LINKS FROM THE PODCAST

2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love, Rachel Aaron

#AmReading (Watching, Listening)

Jess: She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement Jodi Kantor, Meghan Twohey

KJ: Podcasts for book recommendations: What Should I Read Next? with Anne Bogel and Get Booked, from BookRiot

Sarina: 100 Deadly Skills: The SEAL Operative’s Guide to Eluding Pursuers, Evading Capture, and Surviving Any Dangerous Situation, Clint Emerson

#FaveIndieBookstore NEWS

Jenny Lawson, author of You Are Here, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, and Furiously Happy, will be opening Nowhere Books in San Antonio with the former GM of Book People. We love it when a new indie is born.

This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.

Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.

If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.

The image in our podcast illustration is by Jordan on Unsplash.

Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)

KJ:                                        00:01                    Hey writers, are you whispering to yourself that this might just be your year to make NaNoWriMo happen? Or maybe planning to do it again? Then, do yourself a favor and invest in Author Accelerator's Inside Outline coaching now, so that you've got a structure to free you up to use those 30 days in November to write something that really works. It is no fun to 'win' NaNoWriMo with 56,000 words and then realize 35,000 of them don't serve your story at all. Trust me, I speak from experience. The Inside Outline really works. Find out more at authoraccelerator.com/insideoutline.

Jess:                                     00:36                    Go ahead.

KJ:                                        00:36                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.

Jess:                                     00:36                    All right, let's start over.

KJ:                                        00:36                    Awkward pause, I'm going to rustle some papers.

Jess:                                     00:36                    Okay.

KJ:                                        00:36                    Now one, two, three. I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is the podcast, your podcast we hope, about writing all the things, short things, long things, fiction, nonfiction, genre, new and creative genre, proposals, pitches, emails to potential agents. This is the podcast about sitting down and getting your work done.

Jess:                                     01:26                    And I'm Jess Lahey. I am the author of the Gift of Failure and an upcoming book about substance abuse in kids. And I think I'm on like day 31 until my deadline, so I'm completely insane. You can also find my most recent work that I'm super excited about The Smarter Living Guide to How to Help Your Kids Succeed in School This Year, which was super fun to write. And my first foray into the guides at the New York Times.

Sarina:                                 01:53                    I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of several USA today bestselling romance novels and my newest one will be called Moonlighter coming on October 22.

KJ:                                        02:04                    And I am KJ Dell'Antonia. I am the former lead editor of the New York Times Motherlode blog, the author of the book How to Be a Happier Parent and of a novel forthcoming from GP Putnam and Sons next summer about which you'll just be hearing so much later. And now that we are providing (by email) show notes every week, I'm going to invite everybody, first of all, to head over to our website and sign up so you can get the show notes and consider supporting us by signing up for the #Writer'sTopFive emails. But the real reason that I wanted to bring that up, is that every time Jess introduces herself on the artificial intelligence transcript app that we use to start out before our lovely assistant Marisa goes through and makes it all much, much, much better it says, I'm just lucky. I thought that was glorious. All right, we have a great topic today. Sarina, kick us off.

Sarina:                                 03:16                    Today we're talking about writing faster, which of course you know is an art and a science. Jess laughs because she's up against her deadline, but the truth is...

Jess:                                     03:29                    Jess laughs cause she's losing her mind. And KJ texted yesterday something about the fact that you just can't get as much done in a day as you think that you can get done in a day. And that's my life right now.

KJ:                                        03:44                    Before we talk about writing faster, which I think is doable and there are strategies and I can't wait to hear them. I just want to say that I'm having two struggles this week. And one is that - I just can't do as much in a day as I think I can. You'd think I'd know that by now, but I don't. And the other is that I also can't make all the people happy. So yeah, apparently I have learned nothing in my life because I'm still trying.

Jess:                                     04:15                    Well your book was not called How to Make Everybody Happy, it's just how to be a happier parent. So how are we going to write faster? Someone give me the keys to this car. How do we write faster?

Sarina:                                 04:59                    I came about this topic listening to lots of fiction authors (because that's mostly who I'm talking to during a week) talk about how to write faster. And every once in awhile, a so-called friend of mine will post, 'I wrote 11,000 words today.' And I will feel nothing but rage, because I have never once written 11,000 words in a day and never will and that's fine. But it really got me thinking about why is my pace, my pace? And what does it mean about my habits that has brought me here? And is there any way for me to increase that pace? So my average pace, like on a longterm basis, is about 1200 words a day. And that is up from about a thousand words a day. And so some people would look at my pace and say that I was flying, right, because 1200 words a day, you can on average write four books a year. But to someone else, that pace is like turtle pace and what the heck is wrong with me? So, this discussion is really more about writing faster for you and not becoming a speed demon. Because I don't actually want to write 11,000 words in a day. But anyway, more on that in a second.

KJ:                                        06:22                    I was listening to someone else on a different podcast, say exactly that same thing - about the people that can write 11,000 words in a day or whatever. And what that person said is, 'I probably, maybe could write 11,000 words in a day. However, the final 9,000 of them I would just have to throw away the next day. So, the gain would be zero. And that was her process.

Jess:                                     06:50                    I actually had a really good experience this week. I got more written in a day than I had in a long time. And ironically, our listeners will be just tickled to hear it was while I was traveling. But I figured out why - it wasn't just that I was trapped on an airplane for a cross-country trip (which part of that obviously it had to do with it). But I realized that my laptop, (normally when I write at home, my laptop is plugged into a monitor that mirrors my laptop) so that I've got this nice big monitor and I can have multiple documents up at once. Which is great because my laptop keyboard stinks. But what I realized was that the fact that my laptop computer keyboard was broken, freed me up from editing as I wrote. So what I did was I was just typing, typing, typing, knowing full well that the edit was going to be a heavy one. But all I was doing was getting the chapter structure out. And I wrote 5,000 words that day on planes and was it messy? Absolutely. But something about being freed from that impulse to edit as I went was really good for me. And that's not something I had tried recently.

Sarina:                                 08:10                    I have so many thoughts. The first one is I want to find you a bluetooth keyboard and ship it to you FedEx. So a couple of years ago, my father (foolishly, I might add) challenged me to a typing competition. He was laboring under the delusion that he was faster at typing than I was. So we had to settle it of course, as one does. And I clocked out at 95 words a minute. Beating him handily. I don't remember how badly and to save his feelings will not say right now. So if I told you a minute ago that my average pace is about 1200 words a day and if you put those two things together, it might lead you to believe that I can work for 12.63 minutes a day and be finished. But of course, I don't work for 12.63 minutes a day. And so, that led me to ask myself, what am I doing with all of that other time? So you just made a point that some of your time is spent fixing the B. And it made me want the following: (which I do not have) a tool that if I were just going to sit down and write for a couple of hours and then if I could look back at a video of what that page looked like as I went, I am 100% sure that I will type a thing and fix it, and type a thing and fix it, and type a thing and fix it. Because when I'm in the document and I'm composing chapter seven or whatever, and I'm looking at chapter seven and I'm writing it and there's dialogue and there's speech tags and all this stuff, I am constantly tweaking. Like, 'Oh look, there's two paragraphs that both start with the word I, let's change it.' And I just used that word two paragraphs ago, let's fix it. And that is my method. I am a fix-it-as-you-go kind of writer, because I just detest having a giant, horrible, messy chapter that I have to go back and rip to shreds for two days after I've written it. So at first, in my little quest for how to write faster, I listened to a lot of good advice about how to dictate things. And I tried, and I failed so spectacularly, because it turns out that the first way that something comes out of my mouth is never the way that I want it to. And that my process as an author, did not lend itself to dictation. Because sure I can dictate a lot faster than I can type, but I don't actually want that output. And what comes out of my mouth on the first round is not what I want to see on the page when I'm done. So I spent all this time trying to figure out why I couldn't get a dictated product that I was happy with. And it turned out, software wasn't my problem, the equipment wasn't my problem, the fact that Dragon stopped supporting the Mackintosh product was not my problem. None of it was my problem, except that I don't ever use the first thing that comes out.

Jess:                                     11:50                    You write more dialogue, I don't tend to write dialogue. But do you find that dictation is helpful for dialogue?

Sarina:                                 11:58                    You know, there's something that's more helpful for it. And that's this - the first part of writing quickly or learning to improve your pace is to understand what's holding you back. So, there might be people who don't type 95 words a minute and who are paralyzed by the blank page and who actually need that moving dictation. The eyes off the page to get that work out faster. In order to solve the question of how do I personally increase my pace you have to find out which personality type you are in terms of how it gets onto the page. So I just articulated mine to you right now, but a year ago I could not do that because I didn't actually know what was holding me back. So, then I set about trying lots of other things that weren't dictation based. So there's this book that I discussed with KJ once called 2k to 10k (and of course we'll put the link for that in the show notes.) And this author has a very analytical mind. I can't remember how quickly she wants our 10k to come. I don't even remember if she was advocating for a one day 10k or not, but it doesn't really matter. Because she was using similar analytics to figure out what her process was. So in her book, one of the things she says you should try is to make a nice journal of how your writing is going. So, if you sit down at 8:00 AM for 90 minutes, you should write down what time of day it is and what day of the week it is and how many words you got. And then you should do the same thing every single time you write and then you will see a pattern. I believe she thought she was the best in the morning, but that turned out to be wrong, she was most efficient at night. So, by analyzing your own ability to get words on the page, you can learn a lot about how to not waste your time. Which seems obvious in review, but was really meaningful to me when I figured that out. And then another thing she does in this book is actually the tool and technique that saved me, which she calls pre-writing. And this is where all the acceleration happened for me. She gave it a name, pre-writing, for something that I was sometimes already doing. Which is - I'll have a day where I'm finishing up a scene, and it's a great scene, and I love how it came out, and I will turn the page because it's done and I'll still have time and I'll still have energy left and I won't know exactly what happens next. Like my outline might be good, I might know the next bit of conflict is that my characters are going to have an argument about a thing and I already know what's at stake, but I don't know maybe where they're having it or what other little thing needs to happen first or just the really granular bits. Like how does that chapter start and how do they get into the argument in the first place? So this is where pre-writing is really important for me. So I close out that document, because that's the document where I'm gonna change every sentence that I write, and I open up my notebook, and I just start short-handing what's gonna happen. Like we start the scene here, and there's the problem, and here's the solution, and wait, we get into an argument. Oh wait, it's about the dog, the dog does it. There's this discovery on the page that's so free.

Jess:                                     15:42                    Wait, can I ask you a question though, because I thought, (especially since you tend to co-write) weren't you guys doing that as part of your planning process for the book anyway? Or was that something that you were doing on your individual chapters without sort of talking that much to each other since you had like a big, overarching outline?

Sarina:                                 16:03                    Right, that's exactly it. You know what happens next conflict wise, but you don't know how the scene unfolds.

KJ:                                        16:10                    Yeah, I do something like this, too. What it looks like is something like, okay they're in the car, maybe they're in a coffee shop, then I sort of drudge along, just hit return and start again, yeah they're at the bookstore. You know, he comes around, oh, nonfiction section, perfect. I mean it literally looks like that. And then the next day when I go to that it also percolates in your head and sort of starts to turn into a scene, or it does for me.

Sarina:                                 16:49                    Yup, and also dialogue, as well. When you just start blurting out onto the page the things that they're going to say to each other, you don't have to write the blocking. So you can quickly get to the heart of what is accomplished via that dialogue, like what plot is unfolding as people interact. And you don't have to worry about being consistent with body language, or that everybody blinks too much, or everybody's staring at each other too much, or all these little things that you find later that are too overwhelming. It's just the dialogue lines, no punctuation, no nothing. And that's when you figure out what's really happening in the scene. And then you take this God-awful, ugly piece of note taking you just did and then you go into your little perfectionist document and you write the scene in a way that pleases you. I'm just far more likely to fix fewer things when I do it that way because I'm excited that I've just solved the problem of what's happening.

KJ:                                        17:58                    I think I could write faster if I could also write shorter. I could write less if I was more disciplined about what you just said. Which is what do they need to say to each other, why is this here, why does this need to be here? Because you know, frequently I'll have those two people in the bookstore or whatever, and there's all kinds of clever things they could see,or talk about, or do. And if I would just focus on why they need to be there and if I only wrote in one clever thing, then later on I wouldn't have to take out five clever things and that would speed me up overall.

Sarina:                                 18:39                    Yeah. And that's where organization comes into play, because you can stash those clever things someplace else. Like, if you really like your note taking system, if you're comfortable with it, then you can just sticky-note it somewhere that 'Hey, this funny joke, that book we saw on the shelf, actually maybe plays into a theme that you're trying to develop.' So those little clever things can get set aside to percolate later.

KJ:                                        19:13                    That's sort of a different question of working faster, I guess. Right now we're just trying to talk about getting more words on the page while you're drafting. But getting the right words on the page is good, too.

Sarina:                                 19:26                    And then that whole idea about time of day, I haven't had much luck identifying a particular time of day that I'm better at getting words onto the page. However, I have noticed that the time of day that I get them out to the page has a very direct result on how I feel about everything. So, if I'm able to produce work in the morning, then I'm invincible. And if I sort of avoid it all day and end up writing it at 10:30 at night, then I'm just like on the treadmill and it hurts. So, that's another part of habits and how you get those words out and when. So sometimes I will even do the pre-writing step the night before. Like I'm feeling okay about the work for that day and I kind of know what's happening and let me just sit down and spew it into this notebook and then I will open it up in the morning and everything is less terrifying.

Jess:                                     20:29                    That's what I think would help me the most. Yesterday I wrote for 14 or 16 hours, but it was obscene. And the thing that kept me from stopping is that I know that getting back into the flow is my problem. So I need something to help me. So that when I sit down in the morning, or after a break or whatever, I'm not like, 'Okay, what was I doing? Where am I? What am I doing next?' And sometimes I'll highlight things in the document and then just write really quickly, 'Here's what you were thinking about next.' And that can help me overcome that little hump, but it's also just a mental roadblock. When you have a document that's as big as a book, it's really hard to sort of wrap your brain around sitting down and diving back in. But after about 15 minutes or so, you're like, 'Oh, okay, I'm back in. This is good.' But I would love to eliminate that 15 minutes at the beginning.

Sarina:                                 21:24                    Totally. For me, sometimes it's not 15 minutes, it's like three hours. And part of the reason for the three hours is that we're always convincing ourselves of something. I think writers are so guilty of this. Like in order to dig a ditch, you don't have to go back outside in the morning and convince yourself why that ditch should be dug. You know, the shovel is right there. But, with authorship there's a lot of doubt that comes into the equation and some of that doubt is necessary. So I like to think of it as like an in-breath and an out-breath. There are days when you just need to shut your inner critic off and just get that scene onto the page because that is what we're doing today. And then, maybe the next day you actually have to reverse the process and you have to invite your inner critic to the table and re-look at that scene that you did yesterday and make sure you're still going in the right direction. And so that requires a lot of emotional control of your inner critic. And my inner critic is not so easily manipulated as that some days.

Jess:                                     22:31                    Well, I'm in that place with the book where I have these wild vacillations between like, 'I've totally got this, it's going to be so easy, I'm on the downhill slope.' And then not even seconds later, the enormity of what a book is will hit me and I'm like, 'I don't know that I'm doing anymore.' It's this crazy emotional place and it's so funny to me that I can vacillate so quickly between the two, but there we are.

KJ:                                        23:14                    One was one of the hosts of Marginally was saying that she had read Wendell Berry. He had written that every day of farming, he would wake up, and lay in bed dreading like, and then he'd get out there and 15 minutes later he'd be like, 'Oh yeah, because I love it.' And you know (as someone with this small farm) recognizing that everybody has that 15 minutes. I mean, I think ditch ditch diggers do,too. You know, they know why they have to dig the ditch, but they're still like, 'Oh geez, not the ditch again, the same ditch, why didn't I finish that ditch yesterday?' You know, I think everybody's like that. And then you get out there and you're like, 'Alright, you know, I'm in the flow, I can see the progress, the ditch is getting deeper or whatever. Ditch digging might not be the best comparison. Anyway, I think we all have that feeling of get the butt in the chair and getting things going.

Jess:                                     25:10                    The good part about this part in the process is I can overcome that, 'Oh my gosh, I have no idea what I'm doing.' If I just take a breath and sit back and go, 'What are you talking about? You've got this, you're fine.' But there were times with my first book when I couldn't break out of that. So that's good, that's getting better.

KJ:                                        26:42                    Well as long as we're just talking about trying to get the work done as opposed to getting it faster. I also had a moment this week where somebody else was trying to get me to do something and that person was in a hurry and needed this urgently. My fresh morning time had already been taken up by a doctor's appointment, so my day was already not going great and I was gonna concede. You know, I was going to do this thing. And then I was just like, 'Wait, wait.' And I was being angry at the person in my head and I said, 'Who is doing this to you? You or that other person?' And I had to admit it was me. While they wanted me to do that at 10 rather than 11, they weren't necessarily going to know. So, I firmly put my little butt in the chair and did my own work for that first hour and a half and then I did the thing that the other person was asking of me.

Jess:                                     27:51                    I achieved something elusive earlier this week. I was having a really good day of writing and I achieved the elusive writer's high. I've never experienced runner's high, even after years of distance running that's never something I ever got to. But I did have writer's high the other day it was really lovely. And I put on some music and I kind of danced in my chair a little bit while I wrote. It was lovely. It exists.

Sarina:                                 28:16                    Well, let's spend another moment on the day when you can't find your writer's high. I have days when I just don't feel close enough to my characters or my topic. And sometimes those are the nights when I won't read anything before I go to sleep. So, instead of being tense about it - there's this funny part from Cheers (and I'm totally dating myself), where Norman, the interior decorator, would tell people, 'I've programmed myself to dream about your space.' And I love that line so much and I actually feel like I can turn that on a little bit with fiction. Where I will go for a walk, or I'll take a drive, or everyone knows how wonderful the shower is for writing thoughts, but I will just think about my characters in an unforced way. Or I will look for pictures on Pinterest of the coffee shop, or the attic bedroom, or the resort where they might be staying. I'll just do something that's tangential to figuring out the scene without actually worrying about what happens next in the scene. So we're not stuck, we're marinating. You're honoring the cogitation that has to happen before you're actually ready to go on. And yeah, it's true, I won't be getting any words on the page at that time, but I'm also not going to take flight from the problem. So, if you can find a way to allow yourself to think about your topic without actually saying 'What happens, what happens next?' then sometimes wonderful things happen that way.

KJ:                                        30:10                    I love that. We're not stuck, we're marinating. You're also just finding other ways to keep your butt in the chair, right?

Sarina:                                 30:19                    Yeah, or even out of the chair.

KJ:                                        30:21                    Or you know, keeping your head in the game, then. Something, come on, do something.

Sarina:                                 30:25                    Yeah, definitely head in the game. Once I drew a picture of the floor plan of the bar owner in my story. I didn't actually need the floor plan. I just drew it because it kept me thinking about him in a way that was not confrontational to what chapter 11 was going to do.

KJ:                                        30:50                    I love the idea of you like having these confrontational, mental... And you're so right, sometimes you just can't get them, you can't figure out why they would do what it is that you need them to do, or what they would do instead that still makes things move. And it is a confrontation.

Sarina:                                 31:14                    Yup. And some books are faster than others, obviously. People who think that my writing pace is fast, should remember that I'm writing books in essentially two series, where the world building has been established in previous books and some of the characters are already known. I just wrote an email 10 minutes ago to my assistant asking her to go through six books and pull out every reference to the youngest brother in this family. And then to go deep diving for mentions of the deceased father, because he's going to become important. And I will just reread every line about those people. So that falls under the category of what cannot be rushed. So, it's amazing that there are people who can write 11,000 words in a day, but I would still posit that on novel that I want to read again and again has some parts that have to take a pause after those 11,000 words. Because reviewing your own work for theme and motif is something you can't rush, basically. I always need to go back and find like, 'Oh, look how many times I mentioned lost sheep.' So, being lost is a theme of this book, and the sheep is the motif, and where have I underutilized this image and what was I thinking? That kind of thing, it's lovely to write fast, but if you give yourself permission to have to go back and think about all these things, then you'll end up with something that you're really happy with whenever you do finally write the end.

KJ:                                        33:03                    So I think when I talk about write faster, I would just like to get another couple hundred solid words a day. I would like to spend a little less time hovering over the keyboard and a little more time with my fingers moving. But not 11,000 words.

Jess:                                     33:27                    I think a good marriage for me in a day is a little bit of time spent smoothing out stuff I've already written and just pounding out new stuff. But I can't do both for really long periods of time because it's different, mentally taxing tasks for me. You know, getting a ton of words on the page is tiring in one way. And editing stuff I've already written is tiring in a different way. And for some reason for me, if I do a little bit of both, I can last longer.

KJ:                                        33:58                    I will just sort of point out to myself, that I've done NaNoWriMo. I have won NaNoWriMo and I'll just bask in the glory of that for a minute. And it is the book that eventually became The Chicken Sisters. So, I can write 1600 words in a day. I typically don't, but I could. So some of write faster might also be make more space. I was getting up early on days when, in a normal month, I might not get up early. I was pushing things aside that I might not have pushed aside. So, making the space - I guess that's not writing faster, that's just writing more.

Jess:                                     34:45                    Well, there's a really fun activity that I used to do with my students for NaNoWriMo when I gave them space to do NaNoWriMo in November, obviously. There's a little workbook that they used to produce and I'm not entirely sure that they still do. And there's a big page at the beginning of the workbook and it's got a big picture of basically what looks like your no button, KJ. It's like a big like stop button. And you're supposed to pretend to hit it, because that's your inner editor. You're supposed to silence your inner editor and so we would actually do it for fun. We would put the page on the desk, and we'd all slam the desk and say, 'That's it.' Our inner editor, we've just shut it off, so that we can move forward without having to worry about going back and make everything perfect. And that allowed the students to let go of that perfectionism a little bit and just allow the words to flow more and to become part of the process, instead of part of the editor. So that was a fun thing.

KJ:                                        35:41                    You touched on this, but do you separate your editing days and your writing days or your editing blocks and you're writing blocks? I've been in a deep editing space, cause I just turned in essentially the final edit of The Chicken Sisters and I'm having a hard time. In fact, instead of getting into deep writing on my new project (for a lot of reasons), but including the fact that I'm in editing mode, I'm going back over the probably first third to a half of the book that I already have, and making it match where I know I'm going. Whereas in in the past, when I've written things I have not gone back. I've just gone forward the way I knew I was going, and then gone back and fixed it. So how do you manage that editing versus writing space?

Sarina:                                 36:35                    I go back a lot. I really am a big fan of going back to the beginning, and printing it out, and reading it, and scribbling in the margins, and then doing an edit even before I've hit the 50% Mark. And Elle Kennedy doesn't like to do that. She likes to write the whole thing and then go back and fix it, but I feel too out of control. It's like there's dishes in the sink kind of feeling. One way that that benefits me is that I just printed out a book that I had just finished and I had exactly four days to do the final revision and the result was totally as expected, which is that that first 25% did not require very much of me because I had already been there so many times. The second 25% was okay, the third 25% was a disaster, and the last quarter was great because I had already figured all my stuff out. And I was able to write the last quarter of the book, even if I hadn't fixed the 50 to 75% part yet, I knew what was there and it was all fresh.

KJ:                                        37:45                    I think it's just too soon for me. I'm only on my second hopefully publishable novel (I've got some tucked away). So it's too soon for me to sort of say, 'Oh, this is how I do it.' But, some part of me doesn't want to spend too much time going back and polishing the first 25% because at least in the first book there were things that I needed to go back and change. I don't think you're polishing anyway. It's somewhere between polishing it and revising. I want to revise to get the plot consistent, and the character development consistent, and the things that I know are happening consistent, but I don't want to spend too much time on it because there's a pretty decent chance that somewhere the final third of the book, something will happen that will cause me to go 'Oh, yeah. I really got to go back and and insert this, that, or the other, or pull out this, that, or the other, because that has changed. So it's an interesting balance.

Sarina:                                 38:50                    I still take that risk. I'll polish the heck out of things even if they're gonna get changed.

KJ:                                        38:57                    You have permission. Well this was, I am going to write faster, or better, or more, or something.

Jess:                                     39:08                    I always just benefit from hearing how strategic Sarina is in her thinking about her writing.

KJ:                                        39:14                    I think it's just good to take some time and think strategically. So I love that. But let's switch gears, who's been reading?

Jess:                                     39:23                    Actually, can I go first on the book? Because that's exactly what the book I've been listening to is about. So, I had very high expectations for Jodi Kantor and Meghan Twohey's book 'She Said'. And oh my gosh, it's so much better than even I thought it would be. And here's why I love it so much. Of course, I love the background stuff, you know part of the story of this is that they had to get to people like Ashley Judd and Gwyneth Paltrow without going through agents and publicists, the people who it's their job to protect these people. So they had to do a lot of that and there were things I was looking forward to reading in this book. For writers, this book is a masterclass in investigative journalism. And I'm not talking about like sweeping ideas, I'm talking about nuts and bolts. Here's how they kept this document secret in the New York Times system, where they keep work in progress. Here's how Megan Twohey handled someone who's answer on the telephone said one thing, but clearly meant another. It's brilliant. And they really take you into the room, they take you into the page one room, they take you into the meetings where they were. I'm talking about the tiny, minute details that could either make the story credible or make the story fall apart. And I learned a ton and I also just got that juicy behind-the-scenes dishing on the guts of investigative journalism. And I was just blown away by the book. Absolutely blown away by the book. And if you get a chance and you see it in the store, turn it over and look at the blurbs on the back. Cause frankly, that's one of the coolest things I've ever seen. Instead of having blurbs on the back, they have quotes from women about the Weinstein case, or Trump, or whoever. And it's attributed to She Said. It's so brilliant, it's just a fantastic book. Kudos to them, I'm so impressed. They just deserve for this book to be a runaway bestseller.

Sarina:                                 41:38                    Sounds amazing.

Jess:                                     41:39                    Yeah, it's just so good. Sarina, what have you been reading?

Sarina:                                 41:45                    Well, I'm still in an editing hellscape of my own creation, but I have been flipping through this hilarious research book. Which is not meant to be hilarious, but it's called the 100 Deadly Skills by Clint Emerson, retired Navy SEAL. And it's the subtitle is The SEAL Operatives Guide to Eluding Pursuers, Evading Capture, and Surviving Any Dangerous Situation. And he is not kidding.

Jess:                                     42:14                    This is like the last book I can picture you reading. I'm so intrigued.

Sarina:                                 42:19                    I know, but it's for fiction naturally. So now I know how to bar myself in a hotel room.

KJ:                                        42:43                    That's awesome, I love it. Well, I have not been reading. I actually have started something I'm excited about, but I'm gonna finish it before talking about it. So what I have to offer everyone instead, (and I'm actually really excited about this) I have found two fantastic new podcast, specifically for book recommendations. I can't believe I did not know about these, and maybe you guys did, but I am absolutely in love with, What Should I Read Next with Anne Bogle, who's also known as the Modern Mrs. Darcy. I want to be a guest on this podcast so bad, you guys. What she does is she has one guest and she asks them what they've enjoyed lately, what is not for them, and what kind of reads they want to to have on their bedside table, and then she gives them three recommendations after having this sort of glorious 40 minute long talk about what they like about books, and what they don't like about books. I love it, it's such fun to listen to. And on a similar note, I also came across the Get Booked podcast from Book Riot and this is two hosts and they don't have a guest. Instead, people write them in and they say something like, 'I have a really hard time finding the right thing to read on a plane. I need it to be distracting like maybe with dragons, but I really hate it when it involves, you know, the gender politics, what can I read...' These questions are so specific and then they launch into their book recommendations and it's so much fun to listen to.

Jess:                                     44:21                    That's cool. That's how I use Twitter when I've got a student that has very specific interests, and a very specific reading level, and is a reluctant. I go to Twitter and I say, 'Okay, fifth grade reading level, basketball, a kid who's from central America, Go.' And then you know, I get all these cool recommendations. I love that.

KJ:                                        44:41                    I believe, Jess, you said you have bookstore news. So instead of a fave indie bookstore this week, we're going to lay out some indie bookstore news for people.

Jess:                                     45:05                    It's very cool. This is newly public news from Jenny Lawson. She wrote Furiously Happy and Let's Pretend This Never Happened and a fantastic coloring book for people when they're anxious. Anyway, she's just wonderful and she is opening a new bookstore in San Antonio. She signed her lease just recently. It's going to be called Nowhere Bookshop and she has secured the former head of the CEO of The Book People Bookshop in Austin, which is a fantastic bookshop, as the general manager of her bookshop. That will be opening goodness knows when, but either later this year or early next year. So that is huge news. San Antonio is going to have a new bookstore, and I believe also a bar, but don't quote me on that. It's gonna be a combination bookshop and other things. And that's just really exciting, especially since I have a date at a speaking engagement in San Antonio coming up. So I'm praying that she gets it done in time.

KJ:                                        46:10                    Alright, well let's call it guys. We got places to be, we got words to write.

Jess:                                     46:29                    Absolutely. Alright, everyone, until next week, keep your butts in the chair and your head in the game. This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid.

How do I find a writing group and what if they’re mean?

That’s a question we get asked a lot, and we always encourage writers to reach out in our Facebook group or boldly throw it out there anywhere else online that you hang out and see what happens. You don’t even have to trade pages to be a writing group. You look for the kind of support and camaraderie you need.

But if you’ve ever thought of hying yourself off to your local version of Grub Street or our local spot for in-person writer-ness, The Writer’s Center to find your people—or possibly starting an in-person writer-connection-thing of your own, then you’ll want to listen to my conversation with Joni Cole, founder of said Writer’s Center and the author of Toxic Feedback: Helping Writers Survive and Thrive—which is just freshly out in a revised version, which is why we’re bringing this convo back to you now! This new version has half a dozen new chapters, plus new interviews with famous authors who share their own feedback stories--from the inspiring to the deranged. The new chapters cover issues such as:

-- how to overcome imposter syndrome; 

-- how to catch yourself when you're resisting feedback that you really need to hear; 

-- how to receive and offer feedback on particularly difficult or delicate story material;

-- and one whopper of a story on how to negotiate with your publisher when you absolutely hate their proposed cover of your book (See chapter entitled "Fifty Shades of Writing"). 

Joni is also the author of Good Naked, and the This Day series, which collects diary entries from women all across the United States on a single day, and the host of the podcast Author, Can I Ask You. Joni and I talk starting writing groups, running them, keeping it positive and making sure you don’t lose your own work in the process of helping others.

Links from the pod

Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft by Janet Burroway

The Place Between Breaths by An Na

#AmReading

Joni: Embassy Wife by Katie Crouch

American Dialogue by Joseph J. Ellis

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses

(KJ and Jennie discussed Craft in the Real World in Episode 275: Writing While White (or otherwise part of the historically dominant paradigm))

KJ: Writing the Romantic Comedy by Billy Mernit

Find Joni: jonibcole.com

The Writer’s Center in White River Junction, VT

Are you itching for a career change but struggling to figure out that next chapter? By now, you’ve probably heard us talk about book coaching—how much we love being coached, and how much I loved my coach training.  Book coaches help writers bring their dreams to life through support, feedback, project management, and accountability at each step of the book writing and publishing process. Author Accelerator’s Book Coach Certification program teaches you the key editorial, project management, organizational, and people skills needed to launch your own thriving book coaching business. To find out if book coaching is the right career for you, Author Accelerator is launching a new 5-day challenge to help you envision your new chapter. In their $99 One-Page Book Coaching Business Plan, you’ll narrow down your business idea, your ideal client, your ideal service, and more. 

Enrollment opens May 15th and runs through the end of the month! Visit bookcoaches.com/podcasts and enter the code PODCAST at checkout to get 50-percent off the One-Page Book Coaching Business Plan Challenge. bookcoaches.com/podcasts 

Trying to find your TikTok Groove (or just looking for more happily-ever-afters for your TBR)? Make sure you check out Sarina’s TikTok

Psst: if you subscribe to the shownotes, you’ll get #AmWriting episodes straight to your inbox. Double points if you subscribe with $$.

SO. Virginia’s Substack—here it is right here—which also features a podcast, went from 700 people to 4500 people to 28K subscribers. BEFORE her new book, Fat Talk, hit the NYT best-seller list. Wouldn’t you like to hear how?

We’ve got you covered. Replicating her success? Well, that’s never the way it works. But everything we learn helps.

Links from the pod: FAT TALK: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture@v_solesmith on Instagram, Twitter and TikTok

The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image, and Guilt in America

#AmReading

Virginia: Momfluenced, Sara Petersen

More Than You’ll Ever Know, Katie Gutierrez

How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water, Angie Cruz

KJ: Dear Committee Members, Julie Schumacher

If you love a good writing retreat—especially one that comes with good solid coaching and the chance to meet others who are working on similar projects—here’s one to check out. This fall, three Author Accelerator certified book coaches are offering Mainely Memoir, a retreat for women writers in historic Biddeford, Maine, held over three days in the gorgeous Maine woods in September, with one-on-one coaching both before and after the retreat. It’s the perfect opportunity to give yourself the gift of time and focus so that you can make real progress on your memoir this year. Find out more at www.mainelymemoir.com

Hey reader - have you followed Jess on TikTok yet? She publishes videos daily and might just be the resource you need.

Howdy from KJ’s office, where I’m trapped because outside these doors, an angry child lies in wait, ready to tell me all I’ve done wrong as a parent over lo these many years. Good thing I had Jess and Sarina to keep me company while we talk about marketing, selling, navigating the socials, blurbing and asking for blurbs and reading blurbs and oh, still writing the whole time.

Links from the pod:

The Flying Pig

The Chain, Adrian McKinty

On Good Authority, Anna David

The Eragon series, Christopher Paolini

Good As Gold, Sarina Bowen

Jess’s daily videos

I’m not linking the dumb lounge chair I’m sorry.

#AmReading

Jess: On Good Authority, Anna David

KJ: Yellowface, R.F. Kuang (The Plot, Who Is Maud Dixon, The Writing Retreat) (note—I wrote more about this in the #AmReading Substack HERE —link also below.)

Sarina: We All Want Impossible Things, Catherine Newman

Ghosts of the Orphanage, Christine Keneally

If you love a good writing retreat—especially one that comes with good solid coaching and the chance to meet others who are working on similar projects—here’s one to check out. This fall, three Author Accelerator certified book coaches are offering Mainely Memoir, a retreat for women writers in historic Biddeford, Maine, held over three days in the gorgeous Maine woods in September, with one-on-one coaching both before and after the retreat. It’s the perfect opportunity to give yourself the gift of time and focus so that you can make real progress on your memoir this year. Find out more at www.mainelymemoir.com

Hey! Hey you! Are you looking for more book recs? You are going to want to check out KJ’s Bookstagram and her many reasons why you want to pick up that book…

Joshilyn Jackson doesn't just write best-selling thrillers. She narrates them, too. Should we?

Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, a preview of the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, September 23, 2019: Top Five Steps to Burn Chart Success (a How-to). Not joined that club yet? You’ll want to get on that. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month.

As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode.

To support the podcast and help it stay free, subscribe to our weekly #WritersTopFive email.

LINKS FROM THE PODCAST

#AmReading (Watching, Listening)

Jess:

I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution, Emily Nussbaum

KJ:

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, David Epstein

Joshilyn:

Gretchen, Shannon Kirk

The Better Liar: A Novel, Tanen Jones

Lady in the Lake, Laura Lippman

#FaveIndieBookstore

Little Shop of Stories, Decatur, GA

Our guest for this episode is Joshilyn Jackson.

She is the author of:

Never Have I Ever

The Almost Sisters

The Opposite of Everyone

Someone Else’s Love Story

A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty

Backseat Saints

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming

Between, Georgia,

Gods in Alabama

My Own Miraculous

Don’t Quit Your Day Job

Wedding Cake for Breakfast

This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.

Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.

If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.

The image in our podcast illustration is by TK

Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)

KJ:                                        00:01                    Hey all. As you likely know, the one and only sponsor of the #AmWriting podcast is Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps writers all the way through their projects to the very end. Usually Author Accelerator offers only longterm coaching and they're great at it, but they've just launched something new inside outline coaching, a four week long program for novelists and memoir writers that can help you find just the right amount of structure so that you can plot or pants your way to an actual draft. I love the inside outline and I think you will too. I come back to mine again and again, whether I'm writing or revising. Working through it with someone else helps keep you honest and helps you deliver a story structure that works. Find out more at www.authoraccelerator.com/insideoutline.

Jess:                                     00:57                    Go ahead.

KJ:                                        00:57                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.

Jess:                                     00:57                    All right, let's start over.

KJ:                                        00:57                    Awkward pause, I'm going to rustle some papers.

Jess:                                     00:57                    Okay.

KJ:                                        00:57                    Now one, two, three.

KJ:                                        00:57                    Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia,

Jess:                                     00:57                    and I'm Jess Lahey.

KJ:                                        00:57                    And this is #AmWriting,

Jess:                                     00:57                    with Jess and KJ.

KJ:                                        00:57                    #AmWriting is our podcast about all things writing. Long things, short things, book proposals, entire books, short articles, blog posts, YA, pitches, whatever we can think of. And as I think most of you know, #AmWriting is really the podcast about sitting down and getting the work done.

Jess:                                     01:43                    I'm Jess Lahey, I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and an upcoming book about preventing substance abuse in kids. And I write for the Washington Post and the New York Times and various other outlets.

KJ:                                        01:53                    And I am KJ Dell'Antonia, author of a novel forthcoming next year and also a parent-y type book How to Be a Happier Parent, former lead editor and writer for the New York Times Motherlode blog But I saw someone in one of our reviews accusing us of having a nonfiction focus on parenting writing. To which I was like, 'What?' I mean that has certainly been our professional writing, I guess our guests probably see it that way. But not today.

Jess:                                     02:27                    Not today. I'm so excited. Can I introduce? Cause I'm super excited. Today our guest is Joshilyn Jackson. She is a New York Times and USA Today best selling author of nine novels, including one that I am (spoiler) not finished with, so be careful - called Never Have I Ever, it is so good. But one of the big reasons we wanted to have Joshilyn on today is that she does something that almost no one really does, which is narrate. She narrates her own fiction audio. And we know a lot of people, including ourselves who narrated our own nonfiction, but fiction is a whole other game. Not only does she narrate her own fiction, she's really, really good at it. She's won a bunch of awards. She was nominated for an Audi award, she was on Audio File Magazine's best of the year list, she was an Audible All Star for the highest listener ranks and reviews. I mean that's huge. And then I also have to add, because near and dear to my heart, she also works with an organization called Reforming Arts. And she has taught writing and literature inside Georgia's maximum security facility for women. So we have that in common as well. Welcome so much to the show, Joshilyn. We're so excited to talk to you.

Joshilyn:                              03:56                    Oh, thank you for having me. I'm really happy to be here.

Jess:                                     03:59                    We love talking to authors, but one of the topics that has come up a lot for us is narrating audio books. Not only because Sarina Bowen (one of our frequent guests and sort of almost another host) has a podcast about audio books. Specifically, I'm a huge audio book fan and we've been talking a lot lately about people who choose to narrate their own fiction cause it's really hard. So we would love to talk to you about that today, but we'd love to start with sort of just how you got started with writing. What's your story?

Joshilyn:                              04:40                    Oh, I've always wanted to be a writer. When I was three, I published my first novel using the Crayola stapler method. My mom helped, and to be fair, it wasn't a very good book. Yeah, I'm dating myself, but when Walden Books came out with Blank Books, I was in middle school and I would buy a Blank Book and write a novel into it and the novel would be just however many pages the Blank Book was. And I was a huge Stephen King fan. I would write these books, I remember one was called Don't Go Into the Woods and all these girls who looked a lot like girls who were kind of mean to me in middle school, one by one went into the woods and never came back. It's terrible, but really derivative Stephen King novel.

Jess:                                     06:54                    Alright, so let's skip ahead to your adult life. How does writing become a part of your adult life?

Joshilyn:                              07:02                    I mean it's my job, is that what you mean?

Jess:                                     07:08                    Yeah, exactly. In terms of your professional work. I know one little thing about you that I would love to interject here, a bit of trivia. You got plucked out of a slush pile. How did that go down?

Joshilyn:                              07:22                    Yeah, I didn't know any better. So what I did was I loaded up 160-something query letters into a shotgun, pointed it at New York, which is of course insane, don't do that. If you're getting ready to query a book query 10 - 15 agents, if you don't get a 20% return of agents saying let me see a partial or your manuscript, your query is not good enough and it doesn't matter how good the book is. So to shoot off that many at once is just to burn all your lottery tickets when you don't know if your query is good enough and is representing your book to a point where somebody is going to take you seriously. Out of the 160-something queries I got one request to look at the work and that was my agent.

Jess:                                     08:12                    Wow. And that was the one that got pulled out of the slush pile?

Joshilyn:                              08:31                    There's thousands of those they get everyday. And it wasn't the best query, but he was interested in the idea. So he asked me to send the manuscript, and I did, and we ended up working together.

Jess:                                     08:42                    And how did that first that first book deal go for you? How did that all come about?

Joshilyn:                              08:47                    Oh, it was a long time coming. So, he was my agent and he was interested in me. We had a couple of phone conversations, I sent him some short stories I'd had published. And he shopped two nonfiction book proposals, a children's book series, and two novels for me. At that point I was pretty ground down about it. That's a lot of rejection, and a lot of years, and a lot of work. So I just quietly said to myself, 'You know, I'm not gonna break up with my agent. I'm not going to have this big dramatic thing. I'm just going to stop sending him stuff, I'm gonna stop calling him, I'm gonna stop bothering him because I've done nothing but cost this guy money. So, you know, I'll just let it go and New York can suck it. I'm going to write cause I can't imagine not writing, but I'm done trying to be published. I was butt hurt, I picked up my toys and went home. And that Christmas he sent me a present, and a letter, and it was like his family Christmas letter. And at the bottom, he had written a little note just to me and he said, 'When am I gonna see something from you again? You really are one of my favorite writers.'. You don't say that to somebody who's never been published. You say you're so talented. You say you have so much potential. You say, I think we can sell this. You don't call an unpublished person, one of your favorite writers. So I sent him the manuscript I'd been working on and he sent it out, he said this is going to auction. And he sent it out to I think eight places like saying, this is an auction, you have two weeks. And we had a preempt in two days and he made me turn the preempts down. I was not going to turn that preempt down, I was so excited. It was an offer of actual like folding for a book I'd written. And he was like, no, we're turning this down. And I was like, okay, technically I'm the boss of you and we're not turning it down. He said, 'It's cute that you think that, but I'm the one who understands this industry and we're turning it down. We turned it down and he sent word out to the other houses that we had turned down a preempt. And everybody had 48 hours to get their best offer in and five of them showed up to bid.

Jess:                                     11:27                    That's fantastic. I emailed with shaking fingers in return when I heard that we had a preempt that was for an amount of money that I was like, 'Whoa.' I remember typing back. 'Oh, okay. I trust you.' But in my head I was like, I totally don't trust you, we should accept this. I saw that you were part of a book called Don't Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors in the Day Jobs They Quit. So what was the day job you quit?

Joshilyn:                              12:07                    It's a job that I called tote monkey. I'm dating myself again, but there was a car parts place that had these dot matrix printers and when the stuff was all down on the floor from the printer, I would take a huge stack and peel those rinds off and then separate it like white, blue, pink, goldenrod, white, blue, pink, goldenrod. And then I'd file each of those colors where they had to be filed. And by then the dot matrix printers would have other huge stacks lined up and I'd just take them and peel them is all I did.

Jess:                                     12:43                    Were you so sad to have to quit that job to become a professional writer?

Joshilyn:                              12:48                    I had dropped out of college to be an actor and eventually was starving and had to take this day job. I called my father and I said, 'I want to go back to college.' And he said, 'You can go back to college until you get a B, I'll pay for it until you get a B.' So I went back to college and I never got a B, that job taught me that I didn't want to be doing that job.

Jess:                                     13:18                    So the acting stuff leads us to the big questions that I'm dying to ask you about how you got started narrating your own audio work. And did that start from the beginning? Was that something that you specifically trained to do? Please tell us all about it. Because, and I have to sort of spoiler here is that some of the conversations we've had is about like, Ooh, that's kind of interesting. I wonder what it would take to be able to narrate our own fictions. So what does it take, Joshilyn?

Joshilyn:                              13:48                    I don't think it's necessarily a good thing most of the time when authors read their own books, to be honest. Because it is a really specific skill set. And I did go to school in theater and I did live off the grid for awhile as an actor and a playwright. And most of the time when I made money, it was doing voice acting and I got some pretty good gigs. I've done voice acting for local commercials and radio spots. But I've also done stuff for a documentary that PBS was doing, stuff like that. So I had a theatrical background and when my first novel came out, while the narrator of that novel is a wildly, promiscuous murderess and people always think that your first novel is autobiographical, which of course my first novel was, but as you know from earlier, it did not sell. This was my third novel, so it wasn't autobiographical. I am not a wildly, promiscuous murderess, for the record. And I wasn't sure how much I wanted to be associated with her anymore than I was. You know, with a debut, that's the first question you get - so how much of this is your life? And so, I didn't really want to do it. My second novel, I figured I had that distance. Plus I also thought Arlene should sound really young and I don't think I've ever sounded particularly young. She has to sound young for you to forgive her. But my second book, I really thought I could do it. So I went to my editor and I said, 'You know, I used to be an actor and I've done a lot of voice acting, do you think I could read the audio book?' And she said, 'Oh, no, don't do that.' And I said, 'Okay, but I really have done it before.' And she was like, 'You know, I was with Warner Books and they were the most theatrical of the audio books. Some audio book companies want a real straight read with just very light differentiations between the voices and some of them want it to be really theatrical.' This was a very theatrical one that wanted big differences in the voices and they put musical tracks in and stuff. So I said, 'Well, can I audition?' And my editor said, 'Yes, you can audition, but you're not going to get hired. But, sure.' So, I had a friend named Darren Wong, he's actually an author, too. He wrote The Hidden Light of Northern Fires, which is a great book. And he used to run an audio book magazine called Verb, it was an all audio magazine. So he had a home studio and an edit board and professional grade equipment and he helped me edit it and set levels. So it was a really good recording and I did a fight scene with five different men having a fight. And I did a comedic scene so they would know my timing and I did straight narration with energy so they knew I could get them through the landscape descriptions or whatever. And then after I turned that in, like two weeks later, my editor called and she was like, 'Oh yes, you can read your audio book.' So I started reading my own and the first one did well. And so after that, the next time we got a book contract, they had a little clause in there that said, I had to read the audio book, it was already in the contract and I thought that was really flattering. And now I read for other people who aren't me, too.

Jess:                                     17:32                    I had heard that actually because as I said, our frequent guest, Sarina Bowen, has a podcast called Story Bites with Tanya Eby. Tanya has her own studio and they tend to really pick apart narration. Especially since Sarina picks the narrators for her books and she's very picky about that and they raved about your narration. So they were one of the reasons we found out about you.

KJ:                                        18:03                    You were episode three of their Story Bites Podcast. You'll want the rest, but if you want to taste it for free that's one way to do it.

Jess:                                     18:22                    Well, and Sarina also raved about The Almost Sisters. That was a book that she really enjoyed and we trust her judgement. What I meant was you guys have read The Almost Sisters, I have not yet. I'm going to now though because the first of Joshilyn's books that I have read is Never Have I Ever, and I am so deep in and what I wanted to say is I'm listening to the audio and I also have the hard cover of the book, as well. And one of the things I wanted to say about your narration there is you have two very different women in particular that are sort of at the heart of this book. And I have to say that what I was struck by from the very beginning is your depiction of Rue, one of the two sort of main-ish characters. And you do such a brilliant job with her because I'm not even sure what it is you're doing because I don't have the technical words to describe it, but there's something in her voice that renders her a completely different human being than your protagonist who has such... I've heard for various audio book narrators that they'll often have recordings of their characters or are you able to do that just sort of as you go through?

Joshilyn:                              19:56                    I don't use recordings, I do use my husband. I met him doing black box theater. We were working at a regional repertory theater together. The first time I ever saw him, he was learning to stage sword fight - that is hot. So we've known each other since we were teenagers. I was 18, I think he was 19. And he is a theater guy, his masters degrees is in stage management. So when I'm getting ready to do an audio book, I go through and set voices with him and he says, 'No, that's not right.' Or, 'Oh, that sounds just like her, but can you take it just a little deeper? Drop your register just a little bit.' So he works with me on the characters and it's good to have that because my voice sounds different in my head. So he's sort of my feedback loop. And then I'm an outside enactor like I was never method, where you go inside, and try to find some memory, and attach it. I've always been like, if you put your body and face into the shape, you'll feel the thing that your body is in the shape of. So the way I set characters is with a stance and a facial expression. So if I get into a certain position and hold my face a certain way, that voice just comes out because that's what I have the character attached to. So I'm sure it looks bizarre to my sound editor and director when I'm in there doing a scene with a bunch of different people talking as I fold myself into different shapes and make these weird facial expressions, but it works.

Jess:                                     21:30                    That's really interesting. What that reminds me of - I was lucky enough to see Bradley Cooper play The Elephant Man. And at the very, very beginning, he walks out to the middle of the stage to center stage as just a guy, as Bradley Cooper. But he becomes the character by changing his body shape, that's how he does it. And he does it right in front of you so that you can see it happen. And it's a really cool thing. I think you should totally set up some videos so we can see what it looks like. .

Joshilyn:                              22:00                    I would rather not see it myself. I don't want to feel self conscious about it because it works and maybe I don't want to see that.

Jess:                                     22:10                    Well, so the next question I have then is now that you do all this narration, do you hear your characters as you write them?

Joshilyn:                              22:19                    I guess, but I always have. And I mean, the kind of stuff I'm talking about with setting voices, that takes a lot longer for a book I didn't write. For a book I did write, I know what these people sound like in my head and I just try to approximate that with the voice and the range that I have. Which you know, is getting harder as I get older. In another 10 years I probably won't have the vocal elasticity to do my side gig anymore. So I'm trying to do a few more because I love it. I'm doing a few more a year than I used to, just to be able to do it while I can. Because you really do need some good elasticity and I'm not willing to give up drinking or fried food entirely and coddle my vocal chords to try and get another five years out of them.

Jess:                                     23:11                    Can you tell ahead of time when a line is not going to work? KJ and I talked about this because we were lucky enough to be able to record our nonfiction books. And other friends and advisors have done the same - where you hit a line (and I used to be a speech writer as well) and I remember specifically I wrote a speech for a governor and we got to rehearsal with the prompter and there was just a line and he was like, 'This is never gonna come out right.' It's just not coming out of my mouth right. Do you ever hear that when you're writing or do you just not worry about that?

Joshilyn:                              23:44                    I definitely it when I'm writing because I read aloud to myself as a writer. Like especially dialogue, I'll read it out loud while I'm writing. I mutter and talk while I'm writing. And if a paragraph doesn't sound right or I'm having trouble with it, I'll read it aloud and sometimes I edit aloud. I'll just change it mid-sentence to make it sound better and then just write down what I heard myself say.

Jess:                                     24:12                    I will say, over my 20 years as an English teacher, I have told my students over and over and over again, if you want really good editing, if you would like to really get your paper clean, you've got to read it out loud.

Joshilyn:                              24:24                    So smart. And just speaking as an audio book reader, as a person who reads them aloud, and I listen to them obsessively. You can tell the people who don't read their work aloud from the people who do. Not that it's that huge of a difference where now the book's not good or anything like that. But like people who read them aloud have so much less unintentional, internal rhyme. When you're just looking at words, you can write a sentence like Mike took the bike down the street with his friend Rike and they ate a pipe. You don't hear it cause it's visual and you don't see it. But then when you were listening to an audio book, I'll hear a string of rhymes and I'll be like, 'That person did not read their book out loud.'

Jess:                                     25:07                    Well, and actually when we interviewed Steven Strogatz about his book that just came out recently about calculus that's just beautiful. He said that he dictates when he writes and he found his last line of his book because of the rhythm, cause he was walking at the time. And so that rhythm then made it into his writing because it was spoken in the first place and not because it was just his fingers dancing across the keyboard. So I find it fascinating. And Sarina Bowen also uses dictation software as well and our guest Karen Kolpe that we interviewed just recently also uses dictation software. So, I'm always curious about the difference between dictation and just writing with your hands and being able to hear those things and how that changes your work. So that is fascinating to me. It had never occurred to me that maybe I would be writing in rhymes unintentionally.

Joshilyn:                              26:02                    Yeah, I've never tried to use dictation software, but maybe I should because I listen so much. It's weird; I tried to be a playwright for a while and I'm not a very good playwright to be honest, because I'm not willing to leave that room. Like a play should be a framework where a director can come in and do things and then there's room for actors to come in and do things so that it's a different play every time. And I'm just obsessively (and I'm not saying I have control issues, but I have control issues) and writing a play, I've just always felt I was trying to lock stuff down and make it be the way it is in my head. And it felt like the whole front of my head would heat up. Whereas when I'm acting or when I'm writing a novel and I am in control of what I do, even though of course you're being reactive, I feel like it's coming from the occipital lobe. It feels like it comes from a different place in my brain.

Jess:                                     27:08                    That's so interesting. There was an interview a long time ago that I heard with Michael Ondaatje and he said he does not hear his work at all, he only sees it. And it's very difficult for me, I don't hear my work either. I do nonfiction though, so maybe it's different. But for me it's very visual and not sound related. So it's always fascinating to get into the head of someone who writes differently. Like I just don't hear it.

Joshilyn:                              27:34                    Yeah, that's interesting. If I'm engaging it just in the terms of the visual, it's not going to get where I need it to be.

Jess:                                     27:45                    One of the things you did for for this most recent book (a central thing in this book is scuba diving) and this was something you had never done before, right?

Joshilyn:                              27:56                    No, never.

Jess:                                     27:59                    So how did you even, not having had the experience, I just assumed when I listened to the book that Oh, that's something she does and isn't that cool? She knows what the words are, but how did you even know that was going to be a thing if you had never done it before?

Joshilyn:                              28:15                    Amy was always a scuba diver, I wanted the metaphor. The ocean was so perfect for what I was doing in terms of like, (if you've ever dropped your sunglasses off a boat, you know the ocean can hide anything) you're never getting those back. In terms of being like this massive place where you can put things that you are just gone forever and also being kind of an entity with its own breath, so that your secrets are sort of housed in this living system. There were lots of metaphors that I wanted that scuba diving gave me and so I watched YouTube videos and did some interviews and I was like, I'm not getting this. I went to my husband and I said, 'Hey baby, it's about time for my midlife crisis and I need to learn to scuba dive for this book. I think my midlife crisis is going to be scuba diving. Would you like to have it with me?' He'd already had his midlife crisis - he learned to play the bass and joined a band. But he was like, 'Yeah, I'll do yours with you. That sounds really fun. If the other choice is an oiled cabana boy, I say scuba diving.' So we started diving and it really changed the book. I knew that Amy (Amy's my narrator, the protagonist, the scuba diving instructor), she's the one who has sort of the dark past and she's entirely reinvented herself. And you know, I wanted that baptismal imagery - go into the water, come up a different person. She's very self-destructive after she does this kind of terrible thing, she almost doesn't survive it. she has so much guilt. And then she sort of navigates her own understanding of grace and she reinvents herself and finds a life she can sustain. But I needed something to be the pivot that she uses to save herself. And I tried a bunch of different things and scuba diving was also in there. And then after I was diving, I was like, I don't need anything else. This is what saves her. Because it's so, it's like yoga plus plus - it is meditation, it is prayer, you cannot project into the future, you cannot worry about the past, it grounds you entirely in the present. You actually use your own breath. Like once you have a good technical ability to dive, once you've practiced enough and you're not fussing with your equipment all the time and you really understand how to get neutrally buoyant in the water, you actually change levels in the water and aim yourself just using your own breath. So it's your breath inside the ocean's breath. It is, it's also like super fun.

Jess:                                     31:02                    I loved the idea of someone finding freedom in an activity that many people would find completely claustrophobic and closed in. So there was something really interesting about scuba diving as a metaphor. (as I also scuba dive) Something that a lot of people wouldn't be able to bear because it would feel too close. For her, it's exactly that that gives her the freedom. I really loved that metaphor. Well, one of the things I wanted to say about this book - so KJ and I talk all the time about people's ability to a) stick the landing on books, and b) surprise us. Well, the surprise thing I can attest to because I was listening to it as I was before I went to sleep last night and I had headphones on and my husband was reading something else and I got really upset and I said, 'Oh, well, duh. I figured that out a while ago.' And then you totally tricked me, you completely messed with my head. I thought I was ahead of you and you were so ahead of me. And I love that. I mean, the ability to be surprised is huge, it's especially huge for me because there's so many books (KJ can attest to this) that I have thrown. I've joked about throwing books across the room because I get so angry at formulas that make me feel dumb as a reader. And you made me feel like - you had me.

Joshilyn:                              34:45                    Oh good. I'm glad I enjoy a plot twist.

KJ:                                        34:49                    How much of that do you set up ahead of time and how has that evolved over the course of nine books?

Joshilyn:                              34:59                    So this was my first book that is really leaning hard into domestic noir.

KJ:                                        35:05                    I would agree that this is twistier, and I can actually only go back to The Almost Sisters, but that one's pretty twisty, too.

Joshilyn:                              35:15                    Yeah. I always use the engine of a murder mystery or a thriller (sometimes to greater degrees than others) plot twists because I enjoy it. But, really the only thing that's changed in terms of genre is the stakes and the pacing. The stakes are super high, I don't know how to explain it, it really is just about stakes raising. It's still my voice, my kinds of fierce, female characters who act instead of reacting, my thematic things I'm always interested in, you know, I'm always writing about redemption and motherhood. So, I would agree with you. But for me, the plot is the thing that comes last. The plot is the cookie. I understand what I want to address thematically very, very well. I understand these characters down to their bones. Sometimes I think about characters for years before I write them. I've been thinking about Rue and for a vehicle to write Rue for more than seven years and she was a hard person to place because she's difficult. You wouldn't want a place in your life. She's a nightmare, but she's a very interesting nightmare. So, I know the characters, I know the stakes, I know the themes, and the plot is the cookie. I try to play fair, too. Like something will happen and it'll really surprise me and then I go back and edit and put in clues and foreshadowing and I'm good at it. I have a facility for this. I think as writers, we all have things that we're good at and things that we really struggle with. I'm good at crafting those kind of plot twists. That's the thing that comes easily to me, because it's fun and I'm surprising myself, too. And I try to play fair so that at least some readers will catch onto what I'm doing. Or if you go back and read it a second time, you're like, 'Oh, right there. She practically tells me right there.' But you slide it into these little moments where you're describing a car and nobody's paying attention or you know, there's all kinds of tricks you can do to misdirect. It's like a magician's sleight of hand with coins. They do everything, they just got you looking at the wrong place when they do the thing.

KJ:                                        37:35                    I'm at the stage of a revision where I have a list of about six things that I just need to go back and make sure are properly set up. And it doesn't take that much, you know? I did read something recently where a character very suddenly took a turn that I really was like, 'What, what?' There was like one warning of this and none of the warning came from the character. So it yanked me, and you have to find that line where you've given people enough preparation that they aren't pulled out of the story by wait a minute, is this consistent with what happened before?

Joshilyn:                              38:22                    Flannery O'Connor says you have to get to an end that feels inevitable, yet surprising. And I love her.

Jess:                                     38:36                    It's so funny you guys are saying that about fiction because that's what I'm working on right now. Even in nonfiction where I have two chapters and they're sort of two chapters that really go together and one was submitted with my proposal, so I wrote that a long time ago. And then the other one I just finished. So I have them now side by side because I need to plant seeds for one in the other, in order for the reader to be led a bit down a path and for things to at least feel like I've prepared them a little bit for what's coming next. And I love that part of the process. I love it. You know, with nonfiction it's not really about hints, but it is, it is anyway, it's narrative hinting, even though it's nonfiction. I love that.

Joshilyn:                              39:23                    Yeah. I think that's really actually cool that that translates into nonfiction. That's really interesting.

KJ:                                        39:33                    If there aren't a bunch of through lines, then you just get a bunch of different stories.

Jess:                                     39:47                    Well, and it's funny that you were talking about hearing and I said I don't hear my work, but that's actually not true because I always try to end on a major chord. You know, there's that sort of resolution to a major chord at the end where your reader can go, 'Ah, okay. Yeah, it feels good.' And so I do hear that little bit. I try to come back to a major chord at the end of a chapter so that I leave my reader feeling at least not like they're, you know, hanging there on a dissonant note and that I've just dumped them off the edge. So there is a little bit of sound there.

KJ:                                        40:20                    Let's hope we've left our listeners on a major chord at this point. It's think it's time to shift gears and talk about what we've been reading.

Jess:                                     40:32                    Please share with us - you first.

Joshilyn:                              40:35                    I always have a book and an audio book going. And can I do a little commercial for Libro FM? So the way I get my audio books is through a service called Libro FM, which it's just like any other subscription service. You know, you get a credit every month, and your credits never expire, and it costs exactly the same, but it benefits your local independent book seller. You choose the store you want to shop through. So of course I'm all over that. So I was listening to Gretchen by Shannon Kirk and this is some next level WTF. Like I loved this book. It is so smart. Like I don't even know if it's a thriller, it verges on horror. But, then I loved the character so much and the character of Gretchen - I dream about, it's really good. It's about a young woman who's on the run with her mother and they have hidden identities and they move into this little shack. And then they have to leave and they're on the run again. And the girl next door is named Gretchen and she finds herself involved in this (puzzles are a big metaphor) game with Gretchen that has these very far reaching consequences.

Jess:                                     42:02                    I'm on their website right now getting this book, I'm so excited.

Joshilyn:                              42:08                    And then the book I just finished reading with my eyes is called The Better Liar by Tanen Jones. It doesn't come out till January. Here's what I liked about it - it's a thriller, it's suspense, which I really like, but it's fun. Like the plot is fun and twisty and sinister, but she's doing something so smart and so emotionally resonant just under the surface. I went to it for like a fun, twisty read and it is - I got that. But at the end I was not just like, 'Whoa, what the twists.' I was like, 'Whoa, Holy crap.' There was an emotional surprise. It's about a woman who has to appear with her, estranged sister to claim her inheritance and she has reasons for needing the money. And when she goes to find her sister (who's a troubled person) she finds her body, but she meets somebody else who looks like her sister, but who has secrets of her own, and they go to try and claim this inheritance. It is great.

Jess:                                     43:26                    Oh, that is a great premise. I'm going to have to buy that one, too.

Joshilyn:                              43:32                    I just finished both of those and I just started Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman and it's great so far, which is completely unsurprising because I've never read a Laura Lippman book and gone, 'Oh well that was disappointing.' She's so good and I'm loving it so far.

Jess:                                     43:49                    Okay. KJ, you're up. What have you been reading?

KJ:                                        43:52                    I have not been reading anything, to be honest. I'm in the middle of something that I like, but I'll wait until we finish it. I'm in the middle of Range by David Epstein, which we've talked about before. I'm rereading, I'm doing a lot of rereading right now. I have a list of like fresh books I read this year and I was thinking I should make a list of books I actually reread, too.

Jess:                                     44:17                    I have been joking around on our text trio that I have been (because my brain is so occupied right now with getting to my deadline and this book) that I've been doing a lot of re-listening. And my re-listening choices have been Sarina Bowen books. And so every once in awhile I'll text Sarina with some observation about some characters she wrote like eight years ago. And it's just really comforting.

KJ:                                        44:46                    It occurs to me that I did forget to mention that I might have just read a book called Never Have I Ever by Joshilyn Jackson.

Jess:                                     44:57                    I was just about to say that exact thing.

KJ:                                        44:59                    So, I did just read an entire novel. Which normally would've been what I put on #AmReading. And it is great, and it is twisty, and it is turny, and it is satisfying, it's really satisfying.

Jess:                                     45:16                    I really, really love it. And while I have you, I do have to ask you one quick question, Joshilyn, did the title come first or did the premise come first?

Joshilyn:                              45:25                    The premise came first. In fact, I had almost finished the book with a completely different title that I don't remember, it wasn't a great title. And my friend Sarah Gruin was like, 'Why aren't you calling this Never Have I Ever? I was like, 'Oh, I don't know. You're so right. That's obviously the title. Nevermind.'

Jess:                                     45:48                    I love that because ever since I started the book that was kind of one of my first questions. I wrote it on the inside flap - which came first, the cover or the title or the premise - because it's great. Both of them are great. I also have been listening to Emily Nussbaum, who's the television critic at the New Yorker. She has a book called I Like To Watch and it's all about being a television critic, which is something I don't think I would do, but I'm fascinated by the job. I'm fascinated that the job exists and I'm a huge fan of Emily Nussbaum to begin with. So I'm loving this and this is a book that you can read in chunks because it's sorta like essay, more essay format. And it's really lovely, which is not surprising because Emily Nussbaum is a lovely writer, so I recommend that so far, I'm not done with it either. Alright. An independent bookseller?

Joshilyn:                              46:42                    I live in Decatur, Georgia and we have so many Indies. They're my favorite things to visit when I travel. I live like four blocks from EagleEye, so that's my walk up and get a book independent. And then down on the square there's a store called Little Shop of Stories, which is a kid's shop. It's like an independent that just sells children books and a lot of YA, but they have a super curated adult section and sometimes I get overwhelmed at the bookstore and I like to just go to a Little Shop where you only have this many books to choose from and they're all handpicked by hand sellers who read obsessively all the time. You're not going to get a bad book there, so I can just go in there and it's kind of relaxing to have less choices.

Jess:                                     47:33                    Visiting bookstores all over the countries is like our sport, that's one of our favorite things. And then, and then I have to help KJ winnow down what she's purchased cause they won't all fit in her suitcase, that kind of thing. She's even worse when she goes to England. She goes to England and then brings back like a box of books with her, it's ridiculous.

KJ:                                        47:55                    Well it's so fun when you're somewhere else and you can find books that have not been published here. I had a lovely time with my Canadian cover of Educated. And then I was sitting by someone at the pool this summer and I looked over and I was like, I'll bet they're from Canada cause they're reading Educated with the good cover, not the cover that I didn't like, which the American publisher put on it.

Joshilyn:                              48:18                    What does the Canadian cover look like? Not the pencil?

KJ:                                        48:22                    Well, by comparison I thought it was less evocative than the children's school desk set in a middle of a field in front of the mountain that she actually lived near. To me, it worked a lot better than the pencil, which while there wasn't anything wrong with it could go with a lot of books. Like say Jess's book...

Jess:                                     49:25                    Alright, well man, we have gone long, but I have to admit I could talk about this stuff forever. You've been such a great guest and so generous with your time and thank you and keep narrating. See, this is another fun moment where now I have a new author, I loved this book, and now I get to go back and listen to your other books. I have those queued up now. So I've got some listening to do, I'm so excited.

Joshilyn:                              49:56                    Thank you very much for having me on. This was really fun.

Jess:                                     49:59                    If people would like to find out more about you, where should they go?

Joshilyn:                              50:03                    Joshilynjackson.com, spelled my weird way. I'm also on Instagram and the Twitter.

Jess:                                     50:12                    We'll link to all of those places in the show notes for this episode of the podcast. And again, thank you so much. And for everyone who is listening, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game. This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid.

Two years ago, Jennie Nash and I (this is KJ) got into a debate about what was the best, most helpful book for a writer’s bookshelf. Almost instantly we realized that we couldn’t choose just one (although if we could, I suspect it’s Save the Cat Writes a Novel for me and Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit for Jennie, but even as I write that I’m having second thoughts in favor of Big Magic but I’m just SO ANNOYED with her right now because of the whole take-back-my-book thing) and, yeah.

Anyway. It’s summer reading time, and to my summer reading list I’ve added a few books about writing, starting with Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being and, yes. Twyla Tharp’s book (it’s taken me this long to get over my resistance but JENNIE IS ALWAYS RIGHT about these things) and adding, for a practical note, Save the Cat Strikes Back by Blake Snyder and The Trope Thesaurus from Jennifer Hilt. (Want my non-professional summer reading list? Subscribe to #AmReading.)

If you’re looking to add to your own professional summer reading, you can’t do better than going back to the series of summer episodes that Jennie and I recorded as a result of that first debate. They’re all listed and linked below, along with the books we discussed, and I’m putting the first of them (Episode 269) here—in which we debate, yes, Big Magic versus The Creative Habit.

Since then, Jennie’s published two Blueprint for a Book books: one each for fiction and nonfiction and, coming later this summer, memoir. They’re all EXCELLENT and highly recommended as well.

Working Bookshelf Episodes:

* Inspiration (Big Magic versus The Creative Habit)

* Plotting (Save the Cat Writes a Novel versus The Situation and the Story)

* Productivity (Productivity with Deep Work versus From 2K to 10K)

* Up Your Game (The Practice versus The Bestseller Code)

* When You're Stuck (The War of Art versus Dear Writer You Need to Quit)

* Getting Published (The Essential Guide to Getting Published versus 78 Reasons Why Your Book May Never Be Published and 14 Reasons Why It Just Might)

* Writing While White (The Anti Racist Writing Workshop, Craft in the Real World, Writing the Other)

* When You Don't Know Why You're Doing This (Start with Why versus How to Write an Autobiographical Novel)

* Writer Comfort Reads (Bird by Bird versus Making a Literary Life)

* Editing (Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative versus Blueprint for a Book)

If you love a good writing retreat—especially one that comes with good solid coaching and the chance to meet others who are working on similar projects—here’s one to check out. This fall, three Author Accelerator certified book coaches are offering Mainely Memoir, a retreat for women writers in historic Biddeford, Maine, held over three days in the gorgeous Maine woods in September, with one-on-one coaching both before and after the retreat. It’s the perfect opportunity to give yourself the gift of time and focus so that you can make real progress on your memoir this year. Find out more at www.mainelymemoir.com

Hey - are you following Sarina on Instagram? It’s a great place for romance goodness (and check out her (Surprise!) billboard at 34th and 7th Ave!).

Writers, I have IDEAS. Usually a lot of them. 99% of them go nowhere. You can feel me bubbling over with ideas in every episode and even in the title of many episodes. There is so much I always want to say.

Like me, Jennie Nash is an idea cannon. So between us, we come up with a lot of plans. This is all to say that first: this episode, and the 7 “Idea Factory” episodes that follow, are the result of one such idea. At the beginning of this year, I (It’s KJ here) was deciding on what to do for what I hope will be my fourth novel, and Jennie and I got to talking, as we often do, about the difference between a “spark” and an actual, full on IDEA.

In this episode, we talk about what makes a full idea and why it’s so fantastic, in memoir, fiction and non-fiction, to have that idea in hand before you start writing a book—or why, when you hit a wall in drafting, the answer often involves going back and figuring out what that idea was in the first place.

It’s the first of 8 Idea Factory Episodes that will take us through my process for coming up with ideas, kicking their tires, and letting them evolve in fiction as well as involve sitting down with guests to talk more in depth about non-fiction and memoir ideas (because yes, you need an “idea” even for a book that’s based on your own life.

Every time I sit down to write, I wish it were easier. One of my most common thoughts is that I wish there were an instruction book. I was a gold star student back in the day. Just tell me how many words to write and about what, teach! I’m on it.

Sadly writing doesn’t work that way—but Jennie Nash’s books, Blueprint for a Book and Blueprint for Nonfiction, really are the closest thing I’ve found to a guide for getting through draft after draft. I start with them, and I go back to them when I’m stuck. The Blueprints keep me on track and help me write the book I set out to write for the readers I hope to reach. They give me tools to figure out the answers to questions that I’ve been known to avoid, like “why now” and “why does the reader care”.

But even more than that, the Blueprints serve as a reminder that while writing a book is hard, it’s do-able. It’s not magic, and there’s no muse. There’s just going at it, again and again, until you get it done. Blueprint for a Book and Blueprint for Nonfiction are available on Amazon and you can pre-order her newest: Blueprint for a Memoir: How to Write a Memoir for the Marketplace—coming August 1. Pre-order that one, and there’s a super cool bonus.

Pssst: if you love #AmWriting, kick in some $$ to support us and get bonuses and appreciation. Lots of appreciation!

THIS IS MY FAVORITE THING EVER. Jennie Nash and I (KJ here) are talking ideas this summer: getting them, keeping them, taking them from baby spark idea to big-enough-to-hold-a draft idea. In this episode, I lay out my favorite technique for forcing myself to do two things: thing of something beyond the single spark I’m attached to at any given moment and take all of the sparks I can generate and push them harder until they get to a point where they might just stand on their own.

I hope you like it as much as I do. If you play the airport game, I’d love to hear about it! Just reply to this email and tell me how it went.

Good news for memoir writers! Y’all probably know how much I love Jennie Nash’s Blueprint books. They really are the closest thing I’ve found to a guide for getting through draft after draft. I start with them, and I go back to them when I’m stuck. The Blueprints keep me on track and help me write the book I set out to write for the readers I hope to reach.

Her newest, Blueprint for a Memoir: How to Write a Memoir for the Marketplace Is coming August 1, 2023. If you’re seeing this in July 2023, there’s a fantastic event available only to those who pre-order: a live—or recorded—deep dive into the four key steps of memoir writing, with a chance for Jennie Nash to select you for a live Hot Seat coaching session to review your work and an entry to win the Grand Prize: a written review of your Blueprint and an exclusive 50-minute strategy session with Jennie.

I think this Blueprint is Jennie’s best yet, with insights into story-telling that I’ll be using in all my work. Find all the details for the book and the pre-order event at bookcoaches.com/podcasts.

If you’re big on scrolling Instagram, why not give Jess a follow? Warning: addictive puppy pics ahead!

Shortcut to finding our characters’ worst flaws and deepest fears? Yes, thank you.

All Sarina had to do was say “protagonist character analysis” and we were off. Enneagrams, for those who have never heard of them [raises hand high] are descriptions of character types intended for “journeys of self-discovery.” But when it comes to knowing more about your protagonist (and love interest and antagonist and their mother and all the people) they’re pure solid gold, especially if you go romping down the rabbit hole of reading what people in various types (there are 9, with a “wing” in one direction or another) think of themselves and their relationships.

Suddenly, you can think about how your character would play fantasy football, or interview for a job. But the best part is diving deep into how your character behaves at her/his/their very worst, and very best, along with what they most fear and what they believe they want. It’s like real butter on movie popcorn, people.

Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, a preview of the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, October 14, 2019: Top 5 Resources for Dictating Your Work. Not joined that club yet? You’ll want to get on that. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month.

As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode.

To support the podcast and help it stay free, subscribe to our weekly #WritersTopFive email.

LINKS FROM THE PODCAST

The Enneagram Institute (length type descriptions and relationships between the types under the “LEARN” tab).

Free Enneagram test (there are many; this is the one KJ talked about, chosen largely at random for brevity and for being free) from eclecticenergies.com.

Enneagram and Coffee on Instagram.

#AmReading (Watching, Listening)

Jess:  The Butterfly Girl and an essay “The Green River Killer and Me” by Rene Denfeld and Demi Moore’s memoir, Inside Out

KJ: The Great Believers, Rebecca Makkai

Sarina: The Play, Elle Kennedy

#FaveIndieBookstore

Prairie Path Books, Wheaton IL

This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.

Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.

If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.

The image in our podcast illustration this week is from enneagramandcoffee on Instagram, and I asked permission to use it, although I confess that I’m posting it pre-reply. But I feel good about our odds. Plus, fun follow for everyone!

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Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)

KJ:                                        00:01                    Hey Book people, before today’s episode of #AmWriting, I want to tell you about something new from our sponsor, Author Accelerator. No matter where you are in your own work, you’ve probably found yourself working with other writers on theirs. If that time spent encouraging, editing and helping someone else turned out to be pure joy for you, you might want to consider becoming a book coach yourself. Author Accelerator provides book coaching to authors (like me) but also needs and trains book coaches. If that’s got your ears perked up, head to https://www.authoraccelerator.com and click on “become a book coach.” Is it recording?

Jess:                                     00:01                    Go ahead.

KJ:                                        00:01                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.

Jess:                                     00:01                    All right, let's start over.

KJ:                                        00:01                    Awkward pause, I'm going to rustle some papers.

Jess:                                     00:01                    Okay.

KJ:                                        00:01                    Now one, two, three. Hey I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. We are the podcast about all things, writing short things, long things, fictional things, non-fictional things, memoirs things. And as I say, every single week in a variety of different ways, this is the podcast about sitting down and getting your work done.

Jess:                                     01:23                    And I'm Jess Lahey. I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and a forthcoming book on preventing substance abuse in kids that is due in seven days. And you can find my writing at various places including the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Sarina:                                 01:41                    I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of more than 30 romance novels and you can find me at sarinabowen.com.

KJ:                                        01:49                    And I am KJ Dell'Antonia author of How To Be a Happier Parent and have a novel that will be coming out next summer. And the former editor of the New York Times' Motherlode blog. For the most part at the moment you can find me sitting in front of my laptop writing a new novel. And I'm going to just own that Sarina and I are snuggled up in our small town library, gazing out at there are a lot of really pretty trees, but these that we can see are not super spectacular and that, I forgot my microphone. So we might sound a little echoey.

Jess:                                     02:24                    And from my perspective, I'm looking out on the woods behind my house and there are a couple of red leaves out there, but it's Vermont and it's just starting to get that orangy glow to it. It's really pretty. What was crazy is this week I went from Vermont - where I was wearing a sweatshirt - and I traveled to Charlotte, North Carolina where it was oppressively hot, it was like 95 degrees. And then I went New York where it was cold again and then back here. So it's just been a really interesting week of summer and getting into fall. So, I'm ready for fall. I'm happy about it.

KJ:                                        03:09                    And now this is the podcast about all things weather, and enough of that. I am so excited about our topic today because this is going to be super fun. We're going to talk Enneagrams, which is a rabbit hole that Sarina went down one day. And then quickly texted to me and I immediately dove right in after her. But let me just say before you all go, 'Wait a minute, wait a minute'. We're not talking about our own Enneagrams, although we might. We're going to talk about doing it for characters, because it's so cool. But before we do, what is an Enneagram for those of us who don't know, which was actually mostly all of us until we started this. You can do the defining.

Sarina:                                 04:07                    Oh good. The Enneagram, which seems to have had most of its big talk in the 60s with psychiatrists. Working in psychiatry in the 1960's and 70's is a framework for explaining various human psychological profiles, personality typing.

KJ:                                        04:34                    It is not the one where you get I,D, J, H, Q, B, Y. This is the one where you get a number.

Sarina:                                 04:42                    So there's nine numbers in a shape. And you were referring to the Myers-Briggs system personality typing, which I'm honestly not a huge fan of. Partly because it was forced upon me by my corporate overlords in my previous work life.

Sarina:                                 05:03                    But the Enneagram is, as we'll discuss, uniquely useful for writers. Because both personality type systems have a lot to do with preferences and how you prefer to handle things and how you see the world. The Enneagram I quickly discovered is also really focused on character flaws. Like your super power is also your greatest weakness, right?

KJ:                                        05:28                    Which is so perfect for creating both main characters and secondary characters. I mean, that's exactly what you need to know. What does this person fear? And what do they want? And that's what these nine types are. And also, I mean partly because there are nine and then they sort of spread out. There's like, the enthusiastic who leans towards the challenger or leans towards the loyalist. You get a lot of different - this is not cookie cutter, it's got a lot to it.

Sarina:                                 06:03                    Right. And if you get a book about Enneagrams and you take a look, you'll see some discussion of the wings, which is a theory with the Enneagram that each of the nine types also has a secondary type, which is the adjacent number.

KJ:                                        06:38                    So 27 possibilities, but all of which have a lot of range within them and happily you don't have to get a book on this, you can just hit our friend uncle Google.

KJ:                                        06:52                    Right. And there's some nice reliable sources for information.

Sarina:                                 06:57                    And our favorite is the Enneagram Institute. I was pointed there (I'd like to give a shout out to author Nana Malone) who is the first person who ever said the word Enneagram to me. And I had to go look it up and Nana Malone is a romance writer and now I need to go read everything she's written because she has a wonderfully nuanced understanding of how this all works for character typing. And she really sort of walked me through how she looks at it and I was immediately hooked.

KJ:                                        07:27                    We're enchanted, in part because one of the things I like about this (besides that it helps you) we all start with a character and we have this sort of mental picture, and I think we often start from something kind of flat. You often start with a stereotype. So you're often like, 'Well, my person is a real type A, or my person is a real introvert. Like you kinda just start with one word and then you build from there. And after you've spent a little time building, then you can dig into these Enneagrams and you'll find the one that fits the person that you're creating. And then you can sort of start reading a little more and go, 'Oh yeah, totally.' We're in the Enneagram Institute right now and we're looking at the peacemaker. So peacemakers are accepting, and trusting, and stable. And you could see that could be a character, but then you know, you can go like really sort of down into it and they have a universal temptation to ignore the disturbing aspects of life and seek peace and comfort. They numb out. You can see how you can really use this to create someone.

Sarina:                                 08:51                    So everybody's biggest super power is also their biggest weakness. And even though we like the sound of that as fiction writers, this really shows you how to do it.

KJ:                                        09:03                    I'm just looking at nine here. It even tells you exactly what it is that nine is. We're not proposing you just grab this and like stick it into a book cold. But if you have a character who's a nine, their want is for everything to be peaceful and pleasant and can't we all just get along? But their need, which is right here on the bottom of the list of description of nine, is to remember that the only way out is through and you can't just brush your troubles under the carpet. And there you go. I mean, that's practically a plot right there.

Sarina:                                 09:40                    It is. And they all are. Maybe we should just dive in and give a few examples. I'm writing a nine right now. Well, nine is, as you said, that the peacemaker or the peaceful mediator. And most any gram resources will tell you what is that person's greatest fear? And nine's fear being shut out. And they fear being overlooked. They fear losing connection with others and all kinds of conflict, tension, and discord. So, what they're longing for is that their presence really matters. And their desire is for inner stability and peace of mind, because of those basic fears. And so you can see that their weakness then would be to hide from the stuff that isn't quite hitting their peacemaker senses. So, you could remain in an idealistic place psychologically and not cope with the things going on around you.

KJ:                                        10:51                    So this person needs to sort of break through that desire to keep everything idealistic and feeling like it's all safe and calm and get to a point where they actually feel secure.

Sarina:                                 11:07                    So let's contrast the nine with a seven.

KJ:                                        11:09                    That's perfect because I'm writing a seven.

Sarina:                                 11:11                    Me too.

KJ:                                        11:12                    Oh, excellent.

Sarina:                                 11:14                    Well, my seven is a party boy.

KJ:                                        11:16                    My seven is a failed child actress.

Sarina:                                 11:21                    Well, this number is usually called the enthusiast. And their basic desire is to be happy and satisfied, fulfilled and engaged. So sevens hate boredom and they're easily bored. And I was listening to a podcast with Ian Cron who has what is probably the most popular Enneagram book out there. And it has a bright yellow cover, The Road Back To You, I think. And he was very clear about how sevens leave a wake of unfinished projects behind them because of their attention span. And there's always something more interesting to be doing. And I really particularly liked his descriptive appeal about all of these. And there's one, I don't think it started like this in the 60's and 70's, but a lot of the writings about Enneagrams now are from a faith-based kind of Christian perspective. I don't read much faith-based stuff, but he had a really light touch that that made me want to seek out his book anyway. Even if even if the Christian angle is not what's interesting to me about it. So the seven and the nine don't look at the world the same way, even though they're in the same world together sometimes and have to have to sort through that. And in each case you're handed weaknesses. And so if you look at the Enneagram Institute site, it will actually tell you what a romantic pairing.

KJ:                                        13:05                    We can just look that up right now. Relationships types, we've got a seven and a nine here and I'll just go under seven and hit the nine. And we can see what each type brings to the relationship.

Sarina:                                 13:21                    They bring a good mix of similar and opposite qualities. Fundamentally, they're both positive outlook types who are optimistic, upbeat, and prefer to avoid conflicts.

KJ:                                        13:33                    There's gotta be a but here.

Sarina:                                 13:34                    Oh, there's absolutely always a but. That's why we like Enneagrams. So sevens are more active and self-assertive than nines. They tend to take initiatives and to make the plans and have multiple interests and they bring the fun and sparkle and the party atmosphere. Well nines bring a sense of steadiness and support so you can see how that might build.

KJ:                                        13:56                    And that's one of the things sevens want is somebody to take care of them. One of the seven's weaknesses that I've found that I'm exploiting in my person is that they want to feel like somebody else. They would like to seed the decision making to someone else. So that they can just sort of party along, having a good time and you know, getting a chance to try everything and do everything and experience everything, but not necessarily have to make any hard choices. So here are the potential trouble spots for that possible relationship between the seven and the nine. Sevens are more equipped to talk about whatever's bothering them. But they often feel they cannot help themselves and honesty demands they tell the nine how unhappy they are with them.

Sarina:                                 14:54                    That's a good scene.

KJ:                                        14:55                    One of the sunniest and most carefree couples can become one of the most hopelessly tortured if they become unwilling or unable to really talk with each other. Why do I have a feeling that is going to happen to the poor seven and nine?

Sarina:                                 15:10                    But that's also like the classic Harry Potter and Dumbledore problem, right? Just knock on his office door, Harry.

KJ:                                        15:17                    That's every book. I mean, it's not a good book unless you're shouting, 'Just tell them. Just tell people, just tell everyone what's wrong. Just tell them the truth.'.

Sarina:                                 15:28                    You know what, though? You make a good point because that is in every book, but it's not always good in every book. So you have to earn it.

KJ:                                        15:36                    And it has to be different and the person has to have a really good reason for not telling the truth. So you have to understand why they're not going to. And if they don't, if you're sitting there reading along going, 'Oh, come on. Like you know, this character would just tell her boss everything or whatever, then that's it.' You're not going to keep going. So, Enneagrams can help you to find the reasons that your character is not telling the deep dark secret. Not telling the deep, dark secret is not revealing everything about themselves or whatever. And then you can also head out and have a look. So one of the things I think is fun about the Enneagram is that it's a great way to find some things about your character that would be true to this person that you have created, that are also quirky. And a funny way to do that if you just want to sort of wander through the world of quirks of different things is to (I mean there's probably a lot of places to do this) but we happened to have found the Instagram account for Enneagrams and Coffee. It's lovely, it's really funny. So, for example there's a post here where she says, 'I need someone who for each Enneagram type. So sevens need someone who doesn't stop on my ideas and nine needs someone who asks them really good questions and genuinely listened to the answers. Sometimes these are funny, sometimes they're not. But the reason I loved it is you can come up with a bizarre quirk that your person always does. So walking down the sidewalk sevens are dance walking. And you could use that. And what you get is sort of quirks that are gonna be consistent with a personality type that maybe you are not, but you know people that are like this, you can feel it. You can sort of get their three-dimensionals. For example, when they play fantasy football they're the one that's always trying to trade. Or whatever. That might not occur to you, but it might be perfect for your person. And it's just fun.

Sarina:                                 18:04                    I liked the fantasy football one, too. I read that one. We should do a few more types because it makes our examples better. So type one is the reformer, the moral perfectionist. And I have to say, that I think I might be this type.

KJ:                                        18:21                    We will put a link to a quiz you can take that is free. And frankly the link was chosen entirely because I Googled free Enneagram test and this one was free and kind of long and seemed good. So we'll put a link and you can figure out your own because of course that's fun. Alright, so type one, possibly Sarina.

Sarina:                                 18:43                    You really like rule following. I don't like to make the rules, but I like to make sure that everyone else is following them. Number two, the helper, the supportive advisor. So the number twos are the people who are making sure that there's somebody working in the soup kitchen on Christmas Eve and they really, really love helping other people and it really feeds them.

KJ:                                        19:11                    But they also like to be appreciated for their doing of this. I'll talk about this in a later episode if I'm not quite done with it, but I just read The Logger Queen of Minnesota and loved it. And there's a total two, like one of the main characters and there is just two, two, two. They're always doing exactly that, but their inner thought is always, 'You know, basically maybe when I'm dead everyone will appreciate how much I did.'.

Sarina:                                 19:39                    And number three is the achiever. So that's the person in the CEO office burning the midnight oil, you know, making sure he's on top of the heap. And I think, in my earlier life I was more of a three before I found my inner one.

KJ:                                        19:58                    I've got a three in my next book. I've got a broken down, beaten up, three. In the book I'm writing.

Sarina:                                 20:07                    Okay. So four is the romantic individualist. So the who's the Harry Potter character?

KJ:                                        20:13                    Luna Lovegood.

Sarina:                                 20:13                    Writing the poetry, gazing at the moon, singing a song, interpretive dance.

KJ:                                        20:22                    I remember some fun stuff I liked about this one. Also empathy, they see themselves as uniquely talented, special, one of a kind, but also uniquely disadvantaged or flawed. So you see this in a lot of characters where they feel like they're super special and they're different from everyone else. And one of the things that they often have to discover, which I'm sure I could find if I sort of scroll down here, is that other people also share their needs, or share their interests, or are willing to sort of be part of them. My longings can never be fulfilled because I now realize that I'm attached to the longing itself and not to this best specific result. So that's what the four needs is to figure out how to be attached to something besides this sort of dream of themselves as special.

Sarina:                                 21:25                    Type five, the investigative thinker. And that's supposed to be the most analytical personality type. And also tending toward introvert.

KJ:                                        21:37                    So it's a little obvious, but if you were writing in the mystery genre, you probably at least would want to hit this so you could figure out whether your person had this or didn't have this. And if your main character doesn't, there's probably someone in your plot that does. I could see that.

Sarina:                                 21:54                    So five is like Sherlock Holmes.

KJ:                                        21:57                    Yeah. I'm looking at this - so perceptive and innovative, sure. But also secretive and isolated. I mean, that's a thousand detective story heroes. But they're all interesting and deep and it's not like a two dimensional thing. Alright. Six the loyalist. What do you have on the loyalist?

Sarina:                                 22:19                    You know, I haven't done enough that I understand this one so well. But, sixes know how to be on a team, but they're a bit anxious. Like they're Woody Allen, making all of my anxieties, wearing them on the outside.

KJ:                                        22:38                    The cool thing about the Enneagram Institutes, their key motivations are they want to have security, they want to feel supported by others, to test the attitudes of others towards them, and to fight against their anxieties and securities. I mean, once again, I could write a dozen plots in that. Oh, this one gives George Costanza. Okay, so now we know what a six is. A six is George Costanza. Do you like me? Do you really like me? I don't think you like me. I'm just going to be really awful until I see whether or not you like me. But I'm also going to be completely loyal to you at all times. That's a six, I like a six. Then, just to keep sort of going with what we can do character wise here, if you scroll down to the bottom of this extremely useful free site, they talk about how at their best the six is self affirming, and trusting of others, and independent, belief in themselves leads to true courage. Okay, that's where your six gets to at the end of your book, right? But at the beginning, your six is ... let's don't go all the way down to hysterical. I guess this is probably where they drop down to.

Sarina:                                 23:55                    Yeah, that's the darkest moment.

KJ:                                        23:58                    The darkest moment for the level six - they're self destructive and suicidal. They're on skid row.

Sarina:                                 24:05                    Okay, well that's pretty dark. Not in a comedy, maybe.

KJ:                                        24:09                    Yeah, maybe in a comedy you only go to level seven.

Sarina:                                 24:12                    But you do bring up a good point, which is that Enneagram writers like to talk about, what an unhealthy version of each one of these things looks like. And my friend Nana Malone was saying that she looks at these unhealthiest levels, like what's the worst version of that character's self? And then she sort of looks at that to be the dark moment of her novel. And tries to make those things pan out each time.

KJ:                                        24:44                    And it's really cool reading this stuff about the six. You can see them sort of deteriorating. You know, to compensate for their insecurities they become sarcastic and belligerent, blaming others for their problems. And then they just sort of keep sinking lower. But then hopefully they come back around and end up believing in themselves and finding their true courage. I'm not sure that ever happened for poor George Costanza yet.

Sarina:                                 25:08                    The series ended before he got there.

KJ:                                        25:10                    We can hope that he found himself in a prison cell.

Sarina:                                 25:13                    The only one we haven't mentioned is number eight.

KJ:                                        25:16                    Okay, well conveniently enough, number eight is the one I dropped into.

Sarina:                                 25:23                    Really? So tell me about eight, because I don't think I understand this one.

KJ:                                        25:26                    Eights are challengers, rebels. Yeah, that would be me. And the quirky thing about eight, the thing that kept popping up everywhere is that eights also wants to try everything. So eights are ordering everything in the restaurant because they don't want to miss out on everything. So that's an eight characteristic. Decisive, willful, prefers other people to do what they want. That might be me. Yeah, I was sort of in between. I was like, 'Am I seven or am I eight?' But I tested out as an eight.

Sarina:                                 26:02                    So the fear here is of being controlled, like letting someone else make all their decisions.

KJ:                                        26:08                    To be in control of their own life, says the unemployable, freelance writer. So that would be me. Yeah, I didn't spend a ton of time on it, but apparently I could rebuild a city, run a household, wage war, make peace. I have all kinds of things within my Enneagram. It's a rabbit hole, we can't deny it. But man, it's a useful rabbit hole. When you're thinking about your character and trying to create someone who is three-dimensional and whole, who isn't either too perfect or too flawed. You can't read this and go, 'Okay, well I'm just going to apply this Willy nilly.' You have to go, 'Well, okay, what would somebody in my character's situation who has these fears, that has these desires, what might they do? You know, what might they have done at some moment in their past? What would be affecting what they do now?' It's hugely fun.

Sarina:                                 27:15                    So it's been really useful for me on the book that I need to finish next, in a couple of months or whatever. But I have to say that I have discovered a big question in my head about how this all fits together because when you use the Enneagram as your character basis, it almost, but not accurately... So here's a moment where once I learned more about it, I'll find my answer. But the other way we build characters is to look at their big emotional wound and to understand how this thing that happened earlier in life is shaping all of their decisions and their outlooks now, which is somewhat in conflict with the idea that you're born seeing the world a certain way. So yeah, I mean if you want to go with that character background that you know, he witnessed a horrible accident or you know, some big thing in his or her past made that person be the way they are right now, there's a little bit of struggle there. And between that framework for making your character arc and this sort of innate diversion.

KJ:                                        28:33                    I think that when it comes to creating character, I can probably work with either way. You need to have the emotional wound or the moment in their background or the lengthy experience. You know, there are a lot of options there. It doesn't have to be a single event that gives them whatever misbelief that they're sort of traveling through life with, right? But I feel like I personally can take the Enneagram and either start it there, it doesn't bother me, I'm cool. They don't have to have been born with it. I find that I can't make a person - like basically the minute I start to make a person and I want to give the person a name, I have to know who their parents are and sometimes even who their parents are. Not like in depth, but I can't even name you unless I know what your mother and father would have named you.

Sarina:                                 29:30                    Well that's really healthy as a fiction writer because you will save yourself time, I think. Because I actually kind of take the opposite approach whereas that I usually know some dramatic thing that's going to happen at the 50% point. And so the beginning part of my characterization sounds like I'm holding a Barbie doll and a Ken doll, one in each hand. And the dialogue that's coming is just as bad as it sounds like it would be. And I have to sort of bumble through that a while until I figure out what they're really saying to each other. So, if I knew who their parents and grandparents were, the first draft of chapter one would be a lot better.

KJ:                                        30:11                    Maybe. Sometimes you get lots and lots of pages on who their parents and grandparents are that you really, really don't need. But yeah, I can't even give them a name until I know where the name would've come from. And then to know that, sometimes I have to know why the parents' names were what they were. I guess I think names are really important. I could probably find a naming rabbit hole, I've found them all.

Sarina:                                 30:37                    I've bought baby books when my kids were already teenagers, just for this purpose. Seriously, there's a lot of baby books in the world.

KJ:                                        30:45                    I just Google, you know, common surnames or common first names for people with X descent and that kind of thing.

Sarina:                                 30:54                    And I'm sure you've discovered this social security naming database. So in case our listeners don't know, this U.S. Social Security database publishes the most popular 100 names for girls or boys for every birth year, going back a good amount.

KJ:                                        31:14                    Right. Which is great because if you need to bring somebody's grandmother or great aunt into the story, you don't want to name them Madison. That'd be wrong.

Sarina:                                 31:24                    So you would go back and you would look at the database for the year of 1939 and see that Sally who was the number 17 or whatever.

KJ:                                        31:37                    Character creation is so fun. I felt like I could just create characters all day, but darn it, then they have to go and do something and I have to be mean and make terrible things happen to them. And I have to have them make terrible choices. And that is where the glorious thing about this Enneagram is that man, does it give you the reasons that your characters make really, really, really terrible choices. And contrary to all appearances Jess is still here.

Jess:                                     32:08                    I'm still here. No, I was going to say, recently I'd noticed a Sarina posting things to her Sarina Facebook group that she's been doing mean things to characters lately and I've been wondering about what kind of evil stuffs been going on over in Sarina's writing world.

KJ:                                        32:26                    You got to do mean things. I think I put it up somewhere - woke up, did mean things to character. I don't remember what it was.

Sarina:                                 32:35                    I feel like I haven't always been very good at that.

KJ:                                        32:38                    Yeah, it's a weakness of mine, too. Like, why don't they just make all the great choices and the whole book will just be the happy middle.

Sarina:                                 32:47                    Well plus, honestly, I let readers' angst into my head. Like, I'm writing a book about two characters that my readers have already met and I know that they're not gonna want me to make him make bad choices. Like I can the already hear the, 'Don't make him do that.' And those voices are kind of hard to shut off sometimes.

KJ:                                        33:13                    Yeah I have to just have the voice that's like, 'Oh, you know that's just too hard. That's just too much. That's too awful. Nobody wants to read about that.' But yeah, we do. We absolutely do. That's exactly what we want to read about. And speaking about what we want to read about - should we talk about what we have been reading about?

Sarina:                                 33:31                    Absolutely.

KJ:                                        33:32                    Alright.

Jess:                                     33:33                    Who's going first?

KJ:                                        33:35                    You go first cause we haven't heard from you for awhile.

Jess:                                     33:38                    Okay. So because I've been traveling this week and I've been doing a lot of audio book listening and I listened to some really interesting things. I also want to talk about the fact that Renee Denfeld's book The Butterfly Girl came out this past week. She also published (and I know I've talked about her before) She wrote The Enchanted, she wrote The Child Finder and The Butterfly Girl is the next book in a sequence with the same protagonist that was in The Child Finder. But what's so interesting about Renee is that she's just decided, I have never seen her do this before, she just wrote something, memoiry for crimereads.com. It was an essay called The Green River Killer and Me because Renee was a teen runaway, she lived on the streets. She grew up in a very unsafe situation. And so the stuff that she writes about, these kids on the streets that get lost and sort of lost in the system and lost in the world, she's lived that. And so it was really fascinating. I've been so engrossed in Renee Denfeld's fiction, to suddenly read this piece of memoir from her. It was such a gift and it's a beautiful piece of writing. Crimereads.com. The Green River Killer and Me. But then I have something really fun. I decided to do something a little bit light for this trip. And so I listened to Demi Moore's memoir called Inside Out. And you know when there are those memoirs where you feel like you're hearing a little too much. Like, I don't think I should be hearing this. She spills everything and I got a little uncomfortable. And it was also really weird cause I read it right after it came out, which is when they were looking for like Ashton Kutcher for his response to what she accuses him of in the book. And so in real time I could see on Twitter how people were responding to this book. If you're looking for a juicy, sort of scoopy memoir, this is the one for you. And you know, I also didn't realize she'd been through some of the stuff that she's been through. But it also made me a little uncomfortable.

KJ:                                        35:59                    Yeah, the best memoirs walk that line. And the other ones slide a little bit in either direction, which doesn't make them not necessarily good reads.

Jess:                                     36:07                    Well there were moments where I was like, 'Oh, this is probably best for the therapist, not me and the entire world.'

KJ:                                        36:15                    That's the problem with being Demi Moore is that nobody stops you. You know, your editor's like 'Hey, why don't you sit on this part for a little while and we'll come back to it.' You know? Whereas her editor is like, 'Oh, Demi it's great.'

Jess:                                     36:37                    Well, and she worked with a ghost and I believe it was with Harper. So that's the kind of conversation I would love to be a fly on the wall for. You know, as much as I loved what I heard about investigative reporting in She Said with Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor and I got to see all that behind the scenes stuff, what I want is a behind the scenes. Here's what it's like when a celebrity and a ghost writer sit down and work on something together. I would love to be a fly on the wall to that, I think would be fascinating.

KJ:                                        37:08                    Yeah, me too. Agreed. We have to find that person. If you're out there, we'll interview you completely anonymously. We promise. So I have a question for you. So if you're traveling and you're listening to this memoir, what are you doing while you listen? Are you walking through the airport?

Jess:                                     37:28                    Oh yeah. I'm walking through the airport, I'm in the car on the way to the hotel. I don't sleep very well when I travel in hotels and I'm trying to catch up on sleep a lot. So often in the air I have noise canceling headphones on the airplane and if I'm too tired to work, then I just listen to a book. I take a lot of walks when I'm traveling because I've been sitting on planes so much and then I'm listening. So, yeah, I do a lot of listening when I'm just sort of going from place to place.

KJ:                                        38:02                    Cool. Yeah, that's a lot of listening cause that's a lot of hours.

Jess:                                     38:05                    Well and you know things like before I go on stage, you know I have to do the whole getting ready and I do make-up, which is something I don't normally do, and I do my hair and during all of that I'm listening. So there's a lot more listening that goes on when I'm on the road.

KJ:                                        38:18                    That makes total sense. I just like to picture you. I think your life traveling around speaking is as interesting to some of the rest of us as you know, this idea of the ghost writer sitting and talking to Demi Moore, it's just different. So, details.

Jess:                                     38:34                    What's also fun about the audio book thing for me when I'm at home is like if I'm vacuuming, then I use my noise canceling headphones when I vacuum so that I can hear the book. Or if I'm out working in the woods than I had just have little earbuds in. So I'm almost always listening to a book if I'm doing like housework or yard work, that kind of thing, too. So anyway,

Sarina:                                 38:53                    I am reading The Chase by Elle Kennedy, which is her new one. And Elle Kennedy is one of my collaborators and she is just super fun, super great dialogue, good time. She writes these romance series that take place in college, but they're never in a bubble world. Like there's a real world with grumpy coaches, and goofy teammates, and it's just a good time.

KJ:                                        39:22                    That's fun, yeah, that's what I need. Well, I want to concede that the book that I read this week was actually a little unlike me and oddly, this is a good time. So I finally read The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai and it was a big book last year and it just came out in paperback. I actually met Rebecca at a book festival, but more relevantly, I've heard her on a couple of podcasts. And what's interesting, The Great Believers is a book about the 80's AIDS epidemic, as well as having a part that happens in either 2016 or 2017. It's kind of relevant, it's historical fiction that you don't think of as historical fiction. If I say historical fiction to you, you're like, 'Oh, bodice rippers, people riding horses, prairies, stage coaches, whatever. But this is as much historical fiction as that because she took Chicago where the AIDS epidemic hit hard and put her characters into the world of everything that was happening right then and it's really well done. But even more importantly for me, it's actually a super positive, hopeful read in which the people in it are joyful, real seeming people having happy lives, often up to the point when they're not because you know, AIDS. I read another book that was in the literary fiction category this past couple of weeks and I ended up sort of hate reading it. Because I got why the story was getting everybody's attention and I got what it was about it that made it sort of good literary fiction, but I really hated the people, all of them. You would not want to be in a room with anyone who had been in that book. The Great Believers is not like that. You would want to be in the room with everyone in it and yet it's this really deep, emotional story. So anyway, highly recommend. Not that other people have not already recommended it, but it's a good one.

Jess:                                     41:31                    Tim just finished it too so you and Tim can talk about that one sometime. He liked it too. As an HIV doc, it was one that had been recommended to him about 15 times.

KJ:                                        41:44                    I am not in any way an HIV doc. So don't be scared off, you don't have to be an HIV doc to enjoy this book. But yeah, that is what he does. So that doesn't surprise me, but it's just a good book. I can see why it was top 20 for a lot of people in the year that it came out.

Jess:                                     42:03                    Am I doing a bookstore? I get to do a bookstore that the people were so kind. They were the booksellers at one of my events. I was recently in Illinois and Prairie Path Books came out and did my book sales for me and they were just really great. We got talking about other kinds of books that they carry and the book seller was making recommendations to me. I'm just always so grateful when a book seller comes out and works at one of my events and sells books for me. And they're always just excited to meet the authors and talk to them about their books. And I'm always grateful. So I wanted to give Prairie Path Books in Wheaton, Illinois a shout-out.

KJ:                                        42:44                    Excellent. Well, we love them all, all the bookstores. I want all the books. I want all the bookstores.

KJ:                                        42:53                    Well before we shut ourselves down, a reminder that we've got our new thing. You can sign up for our weekly emails and every week when we drop a new podcast we'll send you an email with a little something about what the episode is about. You can click and listen right there, although you can always listen in your podcast app, and you can also click through and find a transcript along with all of the show notes. But all the links, everything you might need to know for an episode, is in the email. And we are also inviting everybody to support us. So, if you love the podcast, if we're doing something for you, if we've helped you out in your writing at all and you want to take a little time to head into our website and give us some financial support, we'd love it. I'm really rambling cause this is hard, it's weird to do this. Let me just lay it out, but we created this really great thing that we love called Writer's Top Fives. And if you're a supporter of the podcast, then every week you get a top five and we have done top five questions you should ask your character. We've done top five reasons you should be on Instagram, top five things you're going to get out of NaNoWriMoat. We've had a good time with it...

Sarina:                                 44:24                    And we have so many coming up.

KJ:                                        44:25                    We have so many coming up and they are great. And I just totally ran out of steam on my promotion there. That's okay.

Jess:                                     44:33                    I wanted to mention to you guys that we got a lovely note from one of our listeners who actually has hearing issues. She's not completely deaf, but partially deaf and she wanted to thank us for our transcripts. She said it's been really nice to be able to go back and look at the transcripts and see what she missed.

KJ:                                        44:49                    That's wonderful. And we've also been seeing it in the Facebook group, people saying, 'Where are the show notes for episode 10?' So it's lovely to know that people are going back and looking at the show notes, that they're not sort of just sitting there in some sort of metaphorical bottle of canary cage on the internet. So I love that. Go look for our show notes.

Jess:                                     45:11                    Alright, well and till next week everyone. And by the way, when we come back next week, I will either be done with my book or deceased. Until next week, everyone, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game. This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid.

Not writing what your inner parent says you “should” be writing? How to get over it.

Fellow writers, KJ here. I have gathered you here today to discuss the moment last week when I sat down on my bed, surveying a pile of literary fiction, some of which I liked and some of which I most emphatically did not, and asked myself, as I have many times on other topics—should I be writing something other than what I am writing? Should I be good at something other than that which I am good at? This week, I lay it out there: sometimes I feel ashamed that I don’t write something more … serious. Then Sarina slaps me around a little, and Jess declares that even writers of serious stuff (I give her that title) sometimes feel like they’re not using their time wisely.

Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, a preview of the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, October 7, 2019: Top Five Reasons to Embrace NaWhateverWriMo. It’s a good one! And I happen to know the next one’s on dictation tools and is even better. Not joined that club yet? You’ll want to get on that. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month.

As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode.

Keep scrolling—there’s some cool free stuff from Author Accelerator, below.

LINKS FROM THE PODCAST

The Snobs and Me(essay) Jennifer Weiner

From Uber Driving to Huge Book Deal(Adrian McKinty and The Chain)

#AmReading (Watching, Listening)

Jess: The Chain, Adrian McKinty, Pride and Prejudiceread by [Rosamund Pike] and Sense and Sensibilityread by [Emma Thompson]

KJ AND Sarina: Things You Save In a Fire, Katherine Center

#FaveIndieBookstore

The Flying Pig, Shelburne VT

Find more about Jess here, Sarina hereand about KJ here.

If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.

COOL OPPORTUNITIES FROM OUR SPONSOR:

Every episode of #AmWriting is sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE—and they have two free webinars coming up. Details:

CHARACTER CLINIC

Author Accelerator is excited to team up with Writers Helping Writers to showcase the NEW Character Builder tool in the One Stop for Writers software.

Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi from One Stop for Writers and Author Accelerator coach Julie Artz will be co-hosting a free Character Clinic webinar on Tuesday, October 8 at 11 AM Pacific. During the event Julie, will be coaching a writer through the character work they have done using the Character Builder.

We encourage everyone to register for the event even if you cannot attend live, as a replay will be sent to everyone who has registered.

REGISTER FOR THE WEBINAR NOW

THE INSIDE OUTLINE 

Jennie Nash developed the Inside Outline in her work as a book coach, and it has been tested in the trenches by hundreds of writers. It can be used to help you start a book, to help you rescue one that isn’t working, and to guide a revision.

We're hosting another webinar about this life-changing writing tool on Monday, October 14 at Noon Pacific/2 PM Central/3 PM Eastern.

We encourage everyone to register for the event even if you cannot attend live, as a replay will be sent to everyone who has registered.

REGISTER FOR THE WEBINAR NOW

The image in our podcast illustration is by Markus Spiske on Unsplash.

Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)

KJ:                                        00:01                    Hey there listeners, KJ here. In this episode, you’ll hear both me and Sarina give a shout-out to Author Accelerator’s Inside-Outlining process. The Inside-Outline is a took that helps you make sure your book has a strong enough spine to support the story you want to tell. It forces you to spot the holes in your character’s arc and your story logic before you throw 50 thousand words on the page—without being the kind of outline that feels limiting to writers who prefer to see where the story takes you. #AmWriting listeners have exclusive access to a free download that describes what the outline is, why it works and how to do it—and if you’re writing fiction or memoir, I highly encourage you to grab it. Use it before you write, while you’re writing or even as you’re doing final revisions to give your story the momentum that keeps readers turning pages. Only at https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwriting. Is it recording?

Jess:                                     00:01                    Now it's recording. Go ahead.

KJ:                                        00:01                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.

Jess:                                     00:01                    All right, let's start over.

KJ:                                        00:01                    Awkward pause, I'm going to rustle some papers.

Jess:                                     00:01                    Okay.

KJ:                                        00:01                    Now one, two, three. I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is the weekly podcast about writing all the things, be they fiction, nonfiction, proposals, pitches, essays, freelance work. This is the podcast about sitting down and getting your writing done.

Jess:                                     01:40                    I'm Jess Lahey and I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and a book I'm just finishing, it's due so soon, on preventing childhood substance abuse and you can also find me at the Washington Post and The Atlantic and the New York Times and places like that.

Sarina:                                 01:55                    And I'm Sarina Bowen. I'm the author of 30 odd, contemporary romance novels and you can find me at sarinabowen.com.

KJ:                                        02:02                    They're not all odd. Sorry, I just had to, some of them, though. I am KJ Dell'Antonia, I always hit the softballs, and I am the author of How To Be a Happier Parent, the former editor of the New York Times' Motherlode blog, you can still find me as a contributor there. And I'm the author of a novel, The Chicken Sisters, which will be out next summer. That's who we are and we are downright giddy with joy today for Jess who is on the downhill slide, the good downhill slide.

Jess:                                     02:49                    I'm just so discombobulated. So here's where I am. The day that we're recording this, I'm 14 days out from my book deadline. I am going to make it. I'm in the stretch, I'm in that place where nothing else happens. I haven't left the house in days. I am barely getting dressed in the morning. Yesterday I wrote for 14 hours straight, literally all I stopped to do a couple of times was let the dogs out and grab something that I'd already prepared and stuck in the refrigerator and microwave that. So, I'm in a crazy space, but there's something a little fun about being in that full deep dive. Like this is all I think about and my family's being really lovely. They're cooking for me, they're doing the laundry. I've got a lot of support, so that's great.

KJ:                                        03:46                    Is this what the last deadline felt like, too? I do not remember.

Jess:                                     03:50                    Well, here's the thing, I was talking to someone about that just recently. Writing a book is like having children, you forget a lot of the worst parts because you know, we'd never have children again if we remembered it all. And honestly, I handed in Gift of Failure a whole day early. I was very proud of myself. I don't remember it being this bonkers.

KJ:                                        04:14                    I don't remember it being this bonkers for you. But I do remember all the bad parts about having children, but I'm not sure I remember the bad parts about you having children.

Jess:                                     04:25                    Well keep in mind also, I learned a lot from doing Gift of Failure. So a lot of the editing that I had to do after the fact I'm now doing before the fact. It's really funny, every time I compile a chapter in Scrivener and then put it into Word for submitting to our agent and then later on to the editor, I've got this huge list of 'Have you done this?', 'Have you done that?' So when I finish a chapter, it takes me like two hours to go through all of my lists. Like search for all recurrences of the word that, and then remove like 50% of them. Have you used a hyphen the right way? How many commas are there? You know, that kind of crazy stuff that just saves Lori from having to remind me that I overuse the word that. So, yeah, there's a lot of my launch codes that have to be run before I submit. I don't remember it being this bonkers.

KJ:                                        05:31                    This is your experience of finishing this book. Who knows? Like last time, maybe not quite like this. Next time, who knows?

Jess:                                     05:39                    It's interesting. I did learn a lot last time and I feel better about what I'm producing this time simply because last time I didn't know. I was like, I had no idea if my editor was going to come back and say this is great or this is ridiculously bad. Because I had nothing, I had never done it before, I had nothing to judge it against. So this is really a different experience for me in a good way. In that number one, she's seen chapters as we go along and I've already gotten feedback on those chapters and oh my gosh, she loves it and that makes me so happy. But she's also been able to give me feedback and I've been able to change direction. So like the chapter I handed in last night is different from the previous three chapters because she'd given me feedback on those previous three chapters, which I'll go back and fix later. But I'm able to make course corrections midway, which has been really great. It has helped me eliminate a lot of work on the other end. So yeah, it's different. The answer to your question is I think it's different.

KJ:                                        06:44                    I'm just probably different every, it's probably different every time up to a point. And now we turn to the author of some 30 odd books, Sarina. Is it different every time, up until it suddenly isn't different or is it still different every time?

Sarina:                                 07:00                    You know, I am trying to make it less the same every time. Because you and I, KJ, have spent a lot of time lately thinking about outlining. And I'm trying to shift my whole game towards becoming a better outliner so that I don't have a repeat experience, which is 'freak out about the ending on every single book'.

Jess:                                     07:26                    Well, but one thing I wanted to ask you about is you just recently had basically what I'm going through right now except with editing. And that seemed pretty intense for you. Does that stay the same or has that changed and does it depend on whether you're working with a coauthor?

Sarina:                                 07:41                    Well, I shot myself in the foot a little bit and set up a month where I had to do edits on two books in the same month. And that that was just either bad luck or bad planning, take your pick. But I find it quite exhausting to have to make everything perfect on two books in a row where you don't give yourself the fun part of drafting and inventing in between to break up the tedium of perfection.

Jess:                                     08:09                    Oh, that's a good point.

KJ:                                        08:12                    When I was doing the big edit of my novel, I couldn't draft. I thought it was going to be able to. If you go back about eight podcasts, I'm like, 'I'm going to do both. I'm going to edit a little every day and I'll write a little every day. And that lasted a week. Mostly because the editing was just more intense. Drafting is fun, sometimes. Editing is fun, sometimes. Making things perfect, maybe not so much.

Jess:                                     08:46                    Well, the 14 hours I spent yesterday were sort of a combination of the two. Mainly it was editing, which can be really tedious and all that stuff. But yesterday I did get to have one of those moments where it got a little buzzy and I was like, 'Oh, I like that.' I got to have those, even in the editing process. In fact, I changed how the chapter ended and I had one of those sort of moments where it feels like the minor chord changes to a major chord and there's that big breath you can take at the end and you're like, 'Ah, it works.' It was really a nice moment. And that happened in editing, so that was really fun.

KJ:                                        09:29                    I just don't think I have ever had an experience of writing that feels like what I hear you reflecting. So part of me is sitting thinking should I be writing for 14 hours a day? That's not something that's up. I mean, I've had a full time writing job that sometimes took that, but I wouldn't have been writing the whole time. I would've been writing and editing and screaming and coding and frantically going through the comments and all the other things. The intensity with which you are writing right now is not something that I have ever experienced.

Jess:                                     10:06                    Okay. Here's the thing, though. It's not about the intensity and it's not about the amount of time. The only, and this is really helpful information for me, the only times I have gotten this really serious - it's like a runner's high kind of thing. It's a writer's high. And the times I get it, reliably, are when I'm writing creative nonfiction. It happened when I wrote for Creative Nonfiction. That piece 'I've Taught Monsters'. It's happening in this book and the good news is that my editor is encouraging me to write more that way and less like a research paper, which is great cause I get less of it when I write that sort of sciency kind of stuff. But it's nice to know that there is this genre that gives me writer's high and it's the stuff I like to read the most. So, it's kind of like knowing what your sweet spot is. So for me it's a genre.

KJ:                                        10:56                    That is the perfect segue into the topic, which I have gathered us here today to discuss. Which is - what we write, how much we choose that, and how much it chooses us, and how we feel about it. Which is a very complicated way of saying that I had a crisis of confidence last week in which I sort of sat down on the bed, convinced that the fact that I do not and will not and never going to write literary fiction, basically meant that I had wasted my entire education.

Sarina:                                 11:36                    Well, I have a crisis of confidence pretty much every day at noon schedule.

KJ:                                        11:56                    I wouldn't call it a crisis of confidence, though. I like the book that I wrote, and I like How To Be a Happier Parent, and I like the work that I do, and I like the experience that I have doing it. But I have frequently had the experience of feeling like I should be doing something else. When I spent years writing about parenting for the New York Times, it was the gutter of New York Times writing when I was doing it. And it may be that the experience has changed, but you know, it wasn't something really important like sports. It wasn't finance, it wasn't politics, although it frequently was finance, and it frequently was politics. I just would often feel like, you know, a smart person should be doing something else. And I'm having a little bit of that same feeling, you know, contemplating my undeniably fun romp of a book, which I enjoyed writing and is exactly the kind of thing that I like to read. But, then I just sort of think you go to the bookstore right now and everything is sort of really deep, and dark, and meaningful, and apocalyptic.

Sarina:                                 13:31                    Sorry, I have some things to say. Well, first of all, my ghetto is located down the alleyway, you know, past a flap of tattered burlap, from your ghetto. Because romance writers are very accustomed to being in a ghetto that is ghetto-ier than everyone else's. And in fact, I remember this hilarious essay that Jennifer Wiener wrote for the New York Times a couple of years ago about going to the Princeton reunion as a commercial fiction author. And I remember tweeting to her, 'Well, you know, I sometimes roll up to the Yale reunion as a writer of occasionally erotic romance. And so, my ghetto mocks your ghetto. But, the funny thing is that Jennifer Wiener, I love her so much, and her favorite book of mine is a work of gay romance. So, she totally gets it. It was just a funny moment. And romance authors are very much accustomed to this idea of you're not a real author even if you're making six figures because there's a guys chest on the cover of your book. And we all have days where that doesn't seem fair or you get the weird look from the mom at the soccer game. But I always tell people who are struggling with this, that when you write some amazing line of dialogue, or that thing that happened in chapter two comes back as the perfect call out in chapter nine, it doesn't matter what you're writing that in, you feel just as good about it either way. When it works, it works.

Jess:                                     15:36                    In the end, you're a storyteller. I mean the whole point of being a writer is to express yourself in stories. And frankly, you have told me on this podcast that there are awards for literary stuff that are out there that automatically mean they're books that you're not going to like. And you don't want to be trying to write that stuff because it would stink. Because you don't like writing it, you don't even like reading.

KJ:                                        16:13                    I feel fine, I'm super excited about my book. In some ways, I'm more excited about it than I was about the nonfiction. It's funny how I think we all do this to ourselves. How I think we all have a should. And do you have a should at all?

Jess:                                     17:10                    For me, because the stuff I really like to write about has to do with children's welfare, and ways prisons could be better and help kids. I really do love writing that stuff. The problem with that stuff is not a lot of people care, even though it's about kids. You know, as soon as you start talking about prisons or something, people are like, 'Yeah, yeah, whatever.' I get upset that I don't write that stuff more, because I feel like I should. Because that feels like if I were really doing my job and using the bullhorn that I have, because I'm lucky enough to have an audience, I need to be writing stuff that's more worthy. And so that can be really tough, cause sometimes I just want to write an essay about fishing with my dad. So yeah, I feel that, too. Should I be using these words to help kids be better or do I get to just enjoy writing?

KJ:                                        18:11                    I had an idea for a new question we should ask everyone that comes on the podcast - 'What do you write when you write in your head?' You know what I mean? James Thurber used to tell, a possibly apocryphal story, about how his wife would walk up to him at parties and say, 'James, stop writing'.

Jess:                                     18:33                    It's definitely creative nonfiction. I just thought about it and yeah, that's what I'm writing in my head.

KJ:                                        18:40                    Are you writing essays or are you writing like opinions? Sarina, what do you write when you write in your head?

Sarina:                                 18:49                    Well, I always am happy to admit that I'm a little bit trapped in romance at the moment. Because I have a platform and the bigger it gets, the harder it is for me to find tons of enthusiasm for striking out in a new direction.

KJ:                                        19:06                    And you're kind of good at it.

Sarina:                                 19:08                    Well, thank you.

Jess:                                     19:09                    She's also incredibly good at YA, too. My favorite book of your happens to be a YA novel.

Sarina:                                 19:18                    I actually love YA and I would like to write more of it. The Accidentals was a really good time for me to write. But the thing about YA though is that I don't love where the market for it is right now. So very objectively, I am not sorry that I'm not trying to sell something into that space right now. I might next year, perhaps. But not because I think the market will be any better next year. I don't love the direction of the young adult market and what's happening with it. So even though I feel suited to write it, even potentially better suited than I am to romance, that would be a really tough decision to make.

Jess:                                     20:06                    KJ, what do you write in your head?

KJ:                                        20:11                    I'm not necessarily sure that the question reflects like what we've written, I think it also reflects what we are accustomed to write. I write essays in my head. Sometimes they're angry, ranty essays. Sometimes they turn into actual essays, and sometimes they turn into actual angry, ranty essays. I recently penned an epic called 'Why Salad Is Just Too Hard'.

Jess:                                     20:47                    I'm not going to talk about the details, but on the personal side, besides writing this book, there's a lot that's going on right now in my life. There's a lot I want to remember about what's going on in my life right now. There has been some funny and tragic and weird things that have happened. And it's been really frustrating for me not to have the extra time to sit down and write a lot of that down, so I've had to just jot down notes. But that's the stuff I've been writing in my head because I need to process that stuff. And the way I process is by writing creative nonfiction essays about it in my head. So, it's really weird. It's sort of like I'm constantly sorting through the weirdness of my life in terms of creative nonfiction essays. It's very bizarre.

Sarina:                                 21:49                    So you're saying you have an inner David Sedaris?

Jess:                                     21:52                    Yeah, I guess I have thought about it that way and also feeling bad that I don't have time to do what the crazy manic thing he does everyday. Obsessively writing notes and then transcribing those notes, because ideally that's what I would be doing right now if I had time, because so much is happening in my personal life right now that I'm afraid I'm gonna forget. If this was a perfect world, I would have two hours a day to process my notes into writing that I would then do something with eventually down the line. But I don't have time.

KJ:                                        22:25                    I feel like you can only mentally do that if your day job is bartending or something. It's like if you're writing all day then to sit down and also write...

Jess:                                     22:40                    I'm out of words, this happened during Gift of Failure, too. Although, during Gift of Failure somehow I was writing a column every two weeks, too. I don't know how that worked, I honestly have no memory of it, I've blocked it out. Since we're talking about people who have had a crisis of confidence, I have a cool story. It's about a book I read recently. So, there was this article in The Guardian that just just killed me it was so good. It was written by Alison Flood. It was in The Guardian recently and is about an author named Adrian McKinty. And Adrian McKinty has been in the media recently because he has a book called The Chain that was really a fun listen and I really liked it. And I was curious about what this guy's all about because it turns out he's written a bunch of mysteries in the past. He's been an author for a long time, he's written a lot of stuff, stuff that got critical acclaim, but just no one else read it apparently. So there's this article in The Guardian and it's called 'From Uber Driving to Huge Book Deal: Adrian McKinty's Life-Changing Phone Call'. Get this, so Adrian McKinty has decided to give up, he's decided I can't support my family as an author, he's Uber driving, he's working a couple of jobs just to make ends meet. Even though his books have gotten great reviews and critical acclaim, he's giving up. So he had mentioned this to Don Winslow, huge author Don Winslow, at a conference. This freaks Don Winslow out because Don Winslow has been through something like this, a similar situation, and he doesn't want Adrian McKinty to give up. So Don Winslow tells his agent Shane Salerno that Adrian McKinty is giving up writing. And Shane Salerno calls Adrian McKinty and says, 'Don tells me you've given up writing and I just don't think you should do that. Have you thought about writing a book set in the U.S.?' So Adrian McKinty has had an idea for a book and he writes 30 pages of it, like bangs out 30 pages of this book that he'd been thinking about. And at around three in the morning, he hands it in and at 4:15, the phone rings. And here's what Shane Salerno,agent to Don Winslow says, 'Forget bartending. Forget driving a bloody Uber.' Salerno said, 'You're writing this book.'. And he's like, 'No, I can't. I can't support my family.' He gets an offer of some short-term financial support from Shane Salerno. He's like, 'You need some money, just to get by so you can write this thing? I'll help.' Anyway, he writes the book, he gets a huge book deal for it, and then an even huger film deal. He got a six figure deal for The Chain and a seven figure deal for The Chain as a film. So yeah, he didn't quit. It's a crazy story. It's just nuts. Well, what was cool about it is that he had this idea for these two - it's sort of like when Stephen King talks about how he got the idea for Carrie - it was these two ideas that didn't work on their own, but when they came together, bang, there's a plot. So he had this thing kind of marinating in there, but he pushed back pretty hard. He's like, 'Nope, I'm done. No, really.' And there's also a nice moment when he gets the film deal, McKinty says to Salerno, 'I said, mate, you should have told me to sit down first. Can you say it all again really slowly as if you're talking to an idiot?' So anyway, it was a cool story. You might not love it, it's a people in peril sort of story, but a very cool idea. This is not a spoiler because it's right there on the book, but essentially your kid gets kidnapped and the only way your kid gets returned is if you kidnap another kid. and so on, and so on, and so on. So anyway, it's gonna make a killer movie. It's just compulsively read. I listened and it was a great listen. So anyway, cool story.

KJ:                                        27:45                    So are we on what we're reading?

Jess:                                     27:48                    Well, I don't know. Would we like to talk about what happened with the New York Times book lists?

KJ:                                        27:52                    Oh yeah, that's right. Speaking of ghettos and having your ghetto sort of semi-recognized, but not really.

Jess:                                     28:00                    Yeah, The Times is changing their lists. Who would like to take this one? Sarina?

Sarina:                                 28:27                    My response was that this isn't even news. Because what they've expanded is that they brought back something they cut more than a year ago, which was the mass market paperback list used to be a weekly list and they also cut graphic novels at exactly the same time. So, bringing it back as a monthly is a non-event, especially because what sells in mass market paperback is a lot of romance and genre fiction.

Jess:                                     29:00                    So Sarina, for our listeners who may not be as familiar, I would say, 'Sarina, why aren't you super excited about that? Mass market means romance. Why aren't you excited?'

Sarina:                                 29:11                    Because the romance market keeps moving further and further away from mass market fiction. So they cut it at the moment when it could have made a difference and now it's just not interesting.

Jess:                                     29:23                    For anyone who may not know, what does mass market mean?

KJ:                                        29:26                    They actually haven't changed it on their website, the lists still look the same.

Sarina:                                 29:32                    Right. It says the new lists don't even hit print until the end of October. So mass market is those rack sized books that they have at the grocery store. The market for those fundamentally changed a few years ago when the distribution company that was handling most of them stopped doing their business. And then publishers began to move away from mass market paperback and into the trade size, which is the slightly larger paperback you mostly see on tables if you go to a bookstore. So mass market gets two kinds of releases. They get some romance releases, just straight up. It'll be like e-book and that. Or, if you have a mega best seller then you might also get a pocket sized release after your regular paperback release. So by adding this, it's a really strange decision because there aren't that many books that come out in mass market anymore and the romance ones are selling most of their copies in e-book form. So when I read this change I thought, 'Oh the New York Times is trying to make a nod toward romance without having to touch anything that's independently published.' They basically are holding up a sign that says 'Self-published do not apply.'

Jess:                                     30:59                    Here's a question, though. They do have an e-book list, so that wouldn't include self-published books then, is what you're saying?

Sarina:                                 31:10                    Well, the e-book, it's called combined fiction. That's the list they have. They don't have an e-book bestseller list anymore that's just for e-books. Because it would have lots and lots of self-published things on it. And they didn't like that, so they got rid of it.

KJ:                                        31:29                    Yeah, I was going to say there is no e-book list.

Sarina:                                 31:35                    Nope, there was, but there isn't any more.

KJ:                                        31:39                    Speaking of ghettos and not recognized. And I will also just note that they pulled their parenting list at the same time and they didn't even restore that one. They're not even pretending that if you don't manage to make advice and how-to (which some people do) you're just not.

Jess:                                     31:59                    That's going to affect how publishers market books, too. You know, is my next book a parenting book? Is it an advice or how-to? Well, if I'm a smart publisher and I want it to make the list, I'm gonna make sure I push it as an advice or how-to. If I go into a bookstore looking for Gift of Failure it's never in the advice or how-to, it's in the parenting section. But if I were releasing that now, I would say, 'Well, we need to really push this as an advice or how-to.

KJ:                                        32:30                    I don't think, and I could be totally misinformed here, but I think advice, how-to, and miscellaneous incorporates all the other. So it does incorporate parenting and now it'll have to incorporate sports and science, too.

Jess:                                     33:15                    Since I already talked about The Chain, can I also just mention really quickly since we're going to talk about what we're reading? So when I'm in this crazy place like I am right now with this book. It's been really hard for me to find moments to calm down and relax. And I have been relistening to Jane Austen, but specifically, I had been listening to Rosamund Pike read Pride and Prejudice, who had played the sister Jane in one of the film versions of it. But now I'm listening to Sense and Sensibility read by the actress Juliet Stevenson and it's really lovely. And the nice thing about it is my mind can wander, because I already know the stories by heart. It's like when your kids are really, really little and they love having the same story read over and over and over again. I think that's soothing on some very primal level for me, so that's what I've been listening to.

KJ:                                        34:25                    Yeah, definitely relistening is really good for that. I've been relistening to something that I have listened to twice already, partly just for that. Some of the reasons I had to listen to it was that one of my children was compelled to memorize the Declaration of International Human Rights or something along those lines. And said child required both an audience and to do that out loud, but did not actually require you to listen. So, earbuds, that's what I have to say about that particular experience. I do have some books, but Sarina, you want to go?

Sarina:                                 35:13                    Yeah, I just bought a hardcover copy of Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center. Because not only did KJ like this book, but she told me that I would love it.

KJ:                                        35:25                    That was the one I was sitting here before the podcast going, 'I know I read something I really liked recently. What did I read?' That was what it was! Found it. Now I have to change mine.

Jess:                                     35:44                    What is Things You Save in a Fire? Is it nonfiction? Is it fiction? What's happening?

KJ:                                        35:48                    It is flat out romance that has been marketed as commercial women's fiction and it is that, as well. But I see nothing about the story that violates the genre rules of romance. It is not one of those things where there are two people and only one of them gets her... We've talked about this before, the line is interesting and strange. And this one is a clear, fun, rollicking trip to the H E A. That would be the happily ever after.

Jess:                                     36:22                    So it's not going to give me any guidance about what I should save if my house catches on fire.

KJ:                                        36:27                    No, how-to and miscellaneous it is not.

Jess:                                     36:32                    Alright, sorry. KJ, what have you been reading?

KJ:                                        36:36                    That's it, I read that, I really liked it, it was really good. She has an amazing Instagram feed, too. Her name is Katherine Center and she is an artist, as well as a writer. So she paints on the books, which is killer. And as a doodler, I'm thinking I'm going to doodle on my books. I'm going to doodle chickens on my books for Instagram and I cannot wait to do it.

Jess:                                     37:00                    Oh, that's a really cool idea. I like it. I can't wait. I have a cool bookstore for this week. When we first moved to Vermont, of course I had to go looking for all the independent bookstores in the area. And I've talked about some of them, but I have not talked about this lovely little one. There is a little town near us called Shelburne that has the sweetest little town center, there's a gorgeous museum that has all these old buildings from all over Vermont and New England that have been restored. And across the street from that is this little little village, it's really cute. And in that village is a lovely little bookstore called The Flying Pig Bookstore. It is small, but it is lovely, and they really know their books. And I have been trying to order my books through there because I can ride my bike to it, which is nice. I have a little basket on the front of my bike and so I have this very romantic vision of riding to my local bookstore and picking up my books and putting them in the basket of my bike. These are the kinds of things I live for at the moment, so I highly recommend it.

Sarina:                                 38:09                    Sounds great, I think you should take us there when we see you next.

Jess:                                     40:10                    Alright. Are we good, people? Have we done our job this week?

KJ:                                        40:16                    And let me just say that if you agree and think that we have done our job, we hope you'll head over to amwritingpodcast.com and sign up for our weekly email. You get a transcript of all the things about riding around with your dog in the car and possibly some more useful things as well. And if you really love the podcast and crave more useful things, you can sign up for our writer top fives at the same place. That's a subscription service, supports the podcast, which is and always will be free. Also enables you to get our writer top five lists every Monday. Coming up, we've got top five reasons you should do NaNoWriMo, we've had top five questions you should ask your fictional character, top five reasons you should be on Instagram, we got top five ways to make your reader laugh.

Jess:                                     41:15                    The burnchart one was great. And I can say that because I have nothing to do with them, because as I may have already mentioned, I have no other time to do anything but write this book. So this is all you two and I am so impressed with what you guys have done with these top five. They've been fantastic. I've enjoyed them as a reader that has nothing to do with them at the moment, but I will.

KJ:                                        41:36                    All right, so head over to amwriting podcast.com. Check us out, support us, subscribe to us, and of course as always, subscribe to us and rate us should you care to on iTunes or wherever you listen to your podcast.

Jess:                                     41:59                    This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid.

I did a call with a writer this week who really is just getting started, with a few short stories finished and dreams of the future, and after we talked at probably unnecessary length about the fundamental truth that writing is hard and you have to actually DO it, not just think about it and plan for it, so annoying, she asked me how I start a new project*.

This episode is my answer, pretty much—because I’ve just done exactly that. My first outline document for the book I’m working on is dated 2/15; I opened a scrivener doc in March, there were 3 chapters in early April and I’m heading to the finish line on the first draft as I write (which would be quite fast for me so please do note that it’s a very very very first draft).

So I have just started. Here’s how.

And here are links to last year’s Blueprint for a Book series, in which Jennie Nash and I talked about all the stages of starting all the things:

Find Your Why: Blueprint for a Book Step 1

What's Your Point? Blueprint for a Book Step 2

Who Will Read My Book? Know Your Market: Blueprint for a Book Step 3

Your Jacket Copy is Your Promise to the Reader: Blueprint for a Book Step 4

There Must Be Change: Blueprint for a Book Step 5

What's the Structure of Your Narrative? Blueprint for a Book Step 6

How to Drive that Narrative Forward: Blueprint for a Book Step 7

One Outline to Rule Them All (Even if You Hate Outlining): Blueprint for a Book Step 8

But Does this Book Work? Blueprint for a Book Step 9

How to Go From Planning a Book to Writing One: Blueprint for a Book Step 10

And—starting next week—a whole summer series on getting the IDEA, refining it, testing it, poking it and revising it. You’re gonna love it.

*And then she asked how to get an agent because… we are who we are, and everyone asks that!

LINKS

The Idea: The Seven Elements of a Viable Story for Screen, Stage or Fiction, Erik Bork

Save the Cat Writes a Novel, Jessica Brody

Blueprint for a Book, Jennie Nash

#AmWriting Prewriting Episode 178 #WriteFaster

Rachael Herron’s How Do You Write Podcast episode 376 with David Ellis

If you love a good writing retreat—especially one that comes with good solid coaching and the chance to meet others who are working on similar projects—here’s one to check out. This fall, three Author Accelerator certified book coaches are offering Mainely Memoir, a retreat for women writers in historic Biddeford, Maine, held over three days in the gorgeous Maine woods in September, with one-on-one coaching both before and after the retreat. It’s the perfect opportunity to give yourself the gift of time and focus so that you can make real progress on your memoir this year. Find out more at www.mainelymemoir.com

Do you get KJ’s Box of Chocolates email—for erratic doses of books and enthusiasms? If not, what are you waiting for?

This is the third in our 2023 Summer Idea Factory series. Jennie Nash is back, and this time, she and I are talking about the process of testing out ideas, talking through them, and spending enough time with them to figure out if they’ll sustain you through an entire book—and if you want them to.

Good news for memoir writers! Y’all probably know how much I love Jennie Nash’s Blueprint books. They really are the closest thing I’ve found to a guide for getting through draft after draft. I start with them, and I go back to them when I’m stuck. The Blueprints keep me on track and help me write the book I set out to write for the readers I hope to reach.

Her newest, Blueprint for a Memoir: How to Write a Memoir for the Marketplace Is coming August 1, 2023. If you’re seeing this in July 2023, there’s a fantastic event available only to those who pre-order: a live—or recorded—deep dive into the four key steps of memoir writing, with a chance for Jennie Nash to select you for a live Hot Seat coaching session to review your work and an entry to win the Grand Prize: a written review of your Blueprint and an exclusive 50-minute strategy session with Jennie.

I think this Blueprint is Jennie’s best yet, with insights into story-telling that I’ll be using in all my work. Find all the details for the book and the pre-order event at bookcoaches.com/podcasts.

Are you on TikTik? Check out Sarina’s feed for plenty of examples of great book promotion fun!

Jess here! Jamie Sumner and I talked over the summer about her middle grade books, mainly because I’m a fan. She does not shy away from difficult topics - substance use disorder, financial insecurity, physical disability, autism, and anxiety. She’s been on the show before (here’s her first interview) but I had to have her on to talk about her new book, Maid for It, out September 5, 2023.

Jamie’s website: https://jamie-sumner.com

#AmReading

Jamie: The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff

One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Jess: The Fires of Vesuvius by Mary Beard

Pompeii by Robert Harris

If your fall could use a little witchy reading fun, you should hop online or over to your favorite bookstore and order a copy of KJ’s latest, Playing the Witch Card. Think grown-up Gilmore Girls meets Practical Magic, with a family deck of troublesome Tarot cards stalking a new generation. You’ve listened to KJ talk about getting the work done—now go check out the result, and pick up a copy for a friend, too. Guaranteed fall vibe, no pumpkin spice necessary.

Bookshop.org Amazon Barnes&Noble Still North Books and Bar

Enrollment is now open for Author Accelerator’s new and improved fiction book coach certification program! Turn your love of reading into a career you love with a self-paced program you can access from anywhere. With more than 100 hours of training, videos, case studies, and worksheets, Author Accelerator’s program teaches you the key editorial skills, client-management strategies, and tools needed to help writers reach their goals and to help you start a thriving book coaching business.

I’ve been through this, and I can tell you that this is more than just an online course. You’ll take the skills you learn and apply them with real-life clients through three practicums designed to help you practice helping authors go from confusion to clarity with their novel idea. Yes, you work with real writers, yes it’s terribly nerve-wracking—but the author I worked with during one of my practicums just got a book deal with that project! This is real, kids. 

Learn more and enroll now at bookcoaches.com/podcast. 

More interested in nonfiction? The nonfiction certification program launches next month! Visit bookcoaches.com/podcast and sign up for their newsletter to stay in-the-know.

I’ve been wanting to talk cookbook writing with Gesine Bullock-Prado for some time now, and was thrilled to get the chance to sit in her home and baking school in what was once Freegrace Tavern, built in 1794. Portraits of Freegrace and Jerusha hang in the entryway, overseeing (and judging?) all visitors to the house (pic below).

You can find Gesine at her website, where you will also find information about her baking school, Sugar Glider Kitchen. Warning: her classes sell out almost immediately, so you’d better sign up for her emails and have good reflexes.

Of course you can find My Vermont Table at all the usual places, but please choose your local independent bookseller if you can.

If your fall could use a little witchy reading fun, you should hop online or over to your favorite bookstore and order a copy of KJ’s latest, Playing the Witch Card. Think grown-up Gilmore Girls meets Practical Magic, with a family deck of troublesome Tarot cards stalking a new generation. You’ve listened to KJ talk about getting the work done—now go check out the result, and pick up a copy for a friend, too. Guaranteed fall vibe, no pumpkin spice necessary.

Bookshop.org Amazon Barnes&Noble Still North Books and Bar

Enrollment is now open for Author Accelerator’s new and improved fiction book coach certification program! Turn your love of reading into a career you love with a self-paced program you can access from anywhere. With more than 100 hours of training, videos, case studies, and worksheets, Author Accelerator’s program teaches you the key editorial skills, client-management strategies, and tools needed to help writers reach their goals and to help you start a thriving book coaching business.

I’ve been through this, and I can tell you that this is more than just an online course. You’ll take the skills you learn and apply them with real-life clients through three practicums designed to help you practice helping authors go from confusion to clarity with their novel idea. Yes, you work with real writers, yes it’s terribly nerve-wracking—but the author I worked with during one of my practicums just got a book deal with that project! This is real, kids. 

Learn more and enroll now at bookcoaches.com/podcast. 

More interested in nonfiction? The nonfiction certification program launches next month! Visit bookcoaches.com/podcast and sign up for their newsletter to stay in-the-know.

Part two of the memoir conversation: yes you do need an idea for a memoir. Gotta narrow things down, figure out what you want to share and why and most of all, why anyone would want to read it. There’s a difference between a memoir, and a memoir that the market will embrace—and we tell you how to find it.

Good news for memoir writers! Y’all probably know how much I love Jennie Nash’s Blueprint books. They really are the closest thing I’ve found to a guide for getting through draft after draft. I start with them, and I go back to them when I’m stuck. The Blueprints keep me on track and help me write the book I set out to write for the readers I hope to reach.

Her newest, Blueprint for a Memoir: How to Write a Memoir for the Marketplace is out now!

I think this Blueprint is Jennie’s best yet, with insights into story-telling that I’ll be using in all my work.

Hey you! Are you following KJ on TikTok? YES, KJ. Please do so now.

You’ve no doubt heard people say of non-fiction books “that should have been an article”. Not every idea can sustain an entire book or story. Many things that feel like ideas are really set-ups: what if there was a school for dragon riders? Yes, absolutely, cool, but the who and the what happens and the why do we care never go away. In this episode, we talk about turning the flicker of an idea into a full light bulb, and rescuing an idea that didn’t turn out to be quite enough.

Good news for memoir writers! Y’all probably know how much I love Jennie Nash’s Blueprint books. They really are the closest thing I’ve found to a guide for getting through draft after draft. I start with them, and I go back to them when I’m stuck. The Blueprints keep me on track and help me write the book I set out to write for the readers I hope to reach.

Her newest, Blueprint for a Memoir: How to Write a Memoir for the Marketplace is out now!

I think this Blueprint is Jennie’s best yet, with insights into story-telling that I’ll be using in all my work.

Have you checked out #AmReading? It’s KJ’s weekly email on books and bookish enthusiasms, and you’ll find everything from a surprising take on who’s doing the best Austen adaptations now and why to a book for anyone who felt saved and seen by their favorite childhood authors. You’ll love it!

That first non-fiction book may seem easy—it’s your THING, the thing you know—but you still have to hone it down. Is it advice, information, the story of how you learned what you know? Inspirational, confrontational, aspirational? And then comes the next book. And the next. And it still always comes back to the idea.

Good news for memoir writers! Y’all probably know how much I love Jennie Nash’s Blueprint books. They really are the closest thing I’ve found to a guide for getting through draft after draft. I start with them, and I go back to them when I’m stuck. The Blueprints keep me on track and help me write the book I set out to write for the readers I hope to reach.

Her newest, Blueprint for a Memoir: How to Write a Memoir for the Marketplace is out now!

I think this Blueprint is Jennie’s best yet, with insights into story-telling that I’ll be using in all my work.

Are you following Sarina on Instagram? It’s full of writing inspiration with stickers and trees tracking her goals (no seriously, check it out).

In our Idea Factory wrap-up, Jennie and I talk about the ways ideas need to change and evolve throughout the writing process—while you develop them and even in between drafts. Don’t let the idea take charge—the writer has to keep running the show.

Good news for memoir writers! Y’all probably know how much I love Jennie Nash’s Blueprint books. They really are the closest thing I’ve found to a guide for getting through draft after draft. I start with them, and I go back to them when I’m stuck. The Blueprints keep me on track and help me write the book I set out to write for the readers I hope to reach.

Her newest, Blueprint for a Memoir: How to Write a Memoir for the Marketplace is out now!

I think this Blueprint is Jennie’s best yet, with insights into story-telling that I’ll be using in all my work.

Want to read the first chapter of Playing the Witch Card? Then subscribe to KJ’s #AmReading email and be the first to get a sneak peek at her latest!

Hi all! Jess here! Welcome to a new season!

We are back with our usual #AmWriting content and I’m incredibly excited about this episode.

Seven years ago, I was speaking in the school library of a small elementary school in California - the entire event was a favor for a friend - and met a reader named Kirsten Jones. I love small events because I get to spend so much time talking with the audience members at the book signing. One of the last people to get her book signed was Kirsten, a former NCAA athlete and aspiring writer. She had this idea, she said, a Gift of Failure but for the parents of athletes. YES, I said. Write the book. We need this book. Please let me know how I can be of help to you so this book can be in the world.

Seven years later, here we are. Raising Empowered Athletes was born August 8, 2023.

In this episode, Jess and Kirsten talk about the journey from a beautiful, scary, secret idea whispered to another writer at a book event to publication day and everything in between.

Links:

Kirsten’s website

Raising Empowered Athletes at Bookshop.org

If your fall could use a little witchy reading fun, you should hop online or over to your favorite bookstore and order a copy of KJ’s latest, Playing the Witch Card. Think grown-up Gilmore Girls meets Practical Magic, with a family deck of troublesome Tarot cards stalking a new generation. You’ve listened to KJ talk about getting the work done—now go check out the result, and pick up a copy for a friend, too. Guaranteed fall vibe, no pumpkin spice necessary.

Fiction writers! If you’ve set a goal of finishing a publishable draft in a year’s time, and are looking for an in-depth resource to help you through each step of the writing and publishing process, Author Accelerator certified book coach Susan DeFreitas has an exciting new offering you don’t want to miss.

Workshops Against Empire includes five courses on story structure, crafting scene, mastering POV, querying and pitching, and more, with the goal of helping you reach YOUR goal with confidence. It’s an immersive program that’s available in a variety of formats and price points, including a self-paced DIY course bundle.

To learn more about the course - and the year-long group coaching program coming next year for fiction writers - visit bookcoaches.com/podcasts to sign up for a free sneak peek with Susan DeFreitas and Author Accelerator CEO Jennie Nash that promises to include tips you can use now to finally finish that work in progress.

Want to know more about what Jess is up to? Check out her IG (and cute doggo pics for an easy cheer-me-up!)

Sarina’s on the struggle bus.

Jess is back to non-fiction and killing it on TikTok.

KJ’s in book launch mode and also killing it on TikTok. Want to help share Playing the Witch Card with the world? Everything you need is HERE (and this is also something every author should do, every time).

Also, BUY MY BOOK. (This is KJ, can you tell?) You’ll like it. I promise. So will your mother, daughter, sister, partner and next door neighbor.

Bookshop.org Amazon Barnes&Noble Still North Books and Bar

#AmReading

KJ: Mistborn, Brandon Sanderson (for more about my Barnes and Noble visit, check out my free #AmReading weekly email of book recs—and subscribe!

Jess: Think Again, Adam Grant

That’s it for the shownotes!

(She who takes the screenshot times the screenshot…)

Enrollment is now open for Author Accelerator’s new and improved fiction book coach certification program! Turn your love of reading into a career you love with a self-paced program you can access from anywhere. With more than 100 hours of training, videos, case studies, and worksheets, Author Accelerator’s program teaches you the key editorial skills, client-management strategies, and tools needed to help writers reach their goals and to help you start a thriving book coaching business.

I’ve been through this, and I can tell you that this is more than just an online course. You’ll take the skills you learn and apply them with real-life clients through three practicums designed to help you practice helping authors go from confusion to clarity with their novel idea. Yes, you work with real writers, yes it’s terribly nerve-wracking—but the author I worked with during one of my practicums just got a book deal with that project! This is real, kids. 

Learn more and enroll now at bookcoaches.com/podcast. 

More interested in nonfiction? The nonfiction certification program launches next month! Visit bookcoaches.com/podcast and sign up for their newsletter to stay in-the-know.

Hi #AmWriters! Jess here to talk about what I’ve been up to this summer and hoping some of it proves helpful for you. That’s why we started this podcast years ago - to flatten the learning curve for other writers.

Here I am, almost a decade out from the publication of The Gift of Failure and I have this new book, The Addiction Inoculation, on a topic that can be scary to some people (substance use disorder! eeeek!) as you know, I’m always looking for ways to get books in the hands of new readers, get information into the heads of people who need to know it, and keep my speaking career afloat. This summer, I did a massive marketing re-invention because the speaking engagements that have been going particularly well are not about one book or the other, but both. I’ve been using The Gift of Failure as a Trojan Horse to get the Addiction Inoculation substance use prevention content out to audience members who need to hear it but who might be reluctant to attend a talk advertised solely as ABOUT SUBSTANCE USE PREVENTION.

Behind the scenes moment, I just texted Sarina and KJ in our group chat:

Anyway, back to marketing. I came up with some new ideas and while researching those, stumbled upon a conference aimed squarely at the people doing substance use prevention work on the ground. I decided to go to the conference to meet them and get my book into their hands, and I tell you all about how it went.

I wanted to share what I learned and some strategies that were helpful to me as well as a reminder that the success of our books does not hinge on pub day. Sure, a great pub day is helpful and can get you on one of those coveted lists, but there’s a lot to love about the slow burn book, the perennial seller, the evergreen content.

#AmReading:

Autonomy Supportive Parenting by Emily Edlynn, PhD

The Woodkin by Alexander James

Never Enough by Jennifer Breheny Wallace

Erasing the Finish Line by Ana Homayoun

Middle School Superpowers by Phyllis Fagell

Growing Up in Public by Devorah Heitner

Raising Empowered Athletes by Kirsten Jones

Calm the Chaos by Dayna Abraham

Hi! KJ here, invading Jess’s shownotes to say BUY MY BOOK. Playing the Witch Card, out 9/12/23 in US and UK. You’ll like it. I promise. So will your mother, daughter, sister, partner and next door neighbor.

Bookshop.org Amazon Barnes&Noble Still North Books and Bar

Looking for Workshops Against Empire? There's been a change of plans--that will be offered in November now.  Visit susandefreitas.com to learn more. Enrollment is now open for Author Accelerator’s new and improved fiction book coach certification program! Turn your love of reading into a career you love with a self-paced program you can access from anywhere. With more than 100 hours of training, videos, case studies, and worksheets, Author Accelerator’s program teaches you the key editorial skills, client-management strategies, and tools needed to help writers reach their goals and to help you start a thriving book coaching business.

I’ve been through this, and I can tell you that this is more than just an online course. You’ll take the skills you learn and apply them with real-life clients through three practicums designed to help you practice helping authors go from confusion to clarity with their novel idea. Yes, you work with real writers, yes it’s terribly nerve-wracking—but the author I worked with during one of my practicums just got a book deal with that project! This is real, kids. 

Learn more and enroll now at bookcoaches.com/podcast. 

More interested in nonfiction? The nonfiction certification program launches next month! Visit bookcoaches.com/podcast and sign up for their newsletter to stay in-the-know.

Discover Sarina Bowen and her book marketing fun (and other neat goodies) on TikTok!

Hello #AmWriters! Jess here. I have been getting a lot of messages via the #AmWriting Facebook group and email about details that can make or break a speaking engagement. I like having a podcast episode to point these people to, so here’s the podcast episode I wish I’d had before I received my first invitation to speak.

We talk negotiation, fees, contracts (while remembering that while I went to law school I remember precious little so this is not legal advice), problem-solving, bad hotels, great hotels, flights, and reimbursement. Plus a lot more.

As always, I hope this is useful to you, and happy speaking!

If the idea of being a book coach niggles at you every time you hear anything about our sponsor, Author Accelerator, I have good news: they’ve fully revised and updated both the fiction and non-fiction book coach certification program. With more than 100 hours of training, videos, case studies, and worksheets, Author Accelerator’s program teaches you the key editorial skills, client-management strategies, and tools needed to help writers reach their goals and to help you start a thriving book coaching business.

But maybe you’ve got no doubt it’s a great program—you’re just not sure if book coaching right for YOU, or if you can pull it off. Well, Author Accelerator wants it to be the right call for you, too. They’re offering a $99 5-day challenge all about getting your business idea out of your head and onto the page—but #AmWriting listeners get it for half off. Head to bookcoaches.com/podcast and enter the code PODCAST at checkout for 50% off. bookcoaches.com/podcast

And if you’re asking yourself—so why charge for the challenge, if they want it to be right for me too? Because if you pony up, you’ll really DO it. So if it’s time to stop dreaming and start acting, there you go. 

I’ve been through this, and I can tell you that this is more than just an online course. You’ll take the skills you learn and apply them with real-life clients through three practicums designed to help you practice helping authors go from confusion to clarity with their novel idea. Yes, you work with real writers, yes it’s terribly nerve-wracking—but the author I worked with during one of my practicums just got a book deal with that project! This is real, kids—and it works. 

I’m a fan of NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month, in which the plan is to write 50,000 words of a novel in November. It’s about 1666 words a day, a little more if you take off for Thanksgiving, and it’s do-able to get to 50K words. But realistically, most people’s result, even if they “win” isn’t a draft of a novel. It’s usually the rambling draft of the first half or two-thirds at best. Because even if your preferred method of writing is to “pants” (As opposed to plot), getting a novel draft to actually END is perhaps the most difficult part. Even the “murky middle” is easier to draft than those concluding scenes.

But NaNoWriMo can—and has, for many people—end in an actual draft that becomes a novel. There’s something about the energy of the month and the challenge of imposing those 1666 words on days that are already full of countless things that really works for many of us. The Chicken Sisters began (after years of noodling) as a NaNoWriMo project in 2018, and plenty of other authors also attribute their first drafts to NaNo. I drafted Playing the Witch Card during November, too. The key is to make a plan and stick to it (and not abandon it if it bleeds into December, either). There’s nothing I love more than making a plan—so here are my keys to NaNoWriMo success.

First: Recognize if this is for you. For me, the combined challenge of confining the draft to a month and the ridiculousness of making it November—hello, Thanksgiving, all the things—actually makes me more determined. Tell me I can’t do a thing and watch my dust. I love the sheer ridiculousness and arbitrariness of shoehorning this in. It fits perfectly into the model of things I’ve achieved in the past. So that’s the question: when have you been successful at seeing a project through to the end? Did it look like NaNoWriMo? Or maybe it was similar, with more or less accountability. Did it have a set schedule, did you tell people about it or keep it secret? Do you thrive on self-imposed deadlines or loathe them?

If this whole game feels wrong or burdensome to you—but you still want to draft a book—then quit this right now and make your own game, but don’t let yourself off the hook. The reason most people never write a book, even if they dream of doing it, is… they never write a book, they just dream of doing it. Go ahead and reject NaNo if it’s not for you—but use this moment to find a way of getting it done that is. (You might give Sarina’s Episode 352, how to write a novel in 3 months, a listen.)

Second: It’s not cheating to know what your book is about, it’s smart. If sitting down on day one and writing it was a dark and stormy night and going on from there has worked for you, go for it. Most of us need more (and if you’ve never FINISHED a book by starting off that way, it’s safe to guess you need more). In a perfect world, you’d go through the processes we describe during summer 2023’s Idea Factory (Episodes 366-373) AND the Blueprint for a book series (Episodes 322-330).

If nothing else, you should know these three things: What’s the book about (the plot), why are you writing it/why does the world need it (the emotional arc) and where does the story start, peak and then end. Those last can be vague if you prefer—the killer traps her and her dog in a mountain cabin, she manages to escape and returns for revenge—or much more specific if you know who the killer is, or why the couple splits and then reunites. On the one hand I do better with specifics; on the other, those specifics are nearly always wrong. So go figure.

Third: You need a plan for what you will write when. Most of us noodle around wildly in the beginning of a book and then get stuck in the middle and hit that 50K without grappling with the end. I try to force myself to stick to a schedule: Week one: the beginning, Week two: the first half of the middle, Week Three, finish the middle and Week four: write to the end. If I’m not there—and I never am, it’s impossible—I “prewrite” to the next place I need to be. That means a scrawl of what needs to happen and it’s truly gibberish. Because I love y’all, and because I don’t think people often imagine writers are exaggerating when we talk about “shitty first drafts”, here’s a picture of some pre-writing/outlining from my current project.

The bar is LOW. Why why why, indeed.

Fourth, let’s say I get to 50K and the end of November—yay!—but I didn’t write The End. Keep going forward—do not revise until you’ve ended this draft somehow unless you’ve successfully finished other novels by revising before you hit the end. It doesn’t have to be the right ending. It probably isn’t the right ending. But until you write it (or at the very least pre-write it but it has to include the actual things that happen and are felt and said, not just end this somehow), you can pretend everything is going in the right direction when it probably isn’t. When we revise before we finishing, we’re almost certainly revising the wrong thing.

And if you don’t “win?” Revise that schedule, re-make the rules, take a mulligan and keep going until you do. Don’t abandon that book. Even if it’s the worst book ever. We all write the worst books ever, and sometimes we fix them and sometimes we don’t, but until you prove to yourself that you can finish a draft, you’ll never write a better one.

Finally, keep this mantra in mind. Cross-stitch it on a pillow, put it on a post-it, get a tattoo. Good writing comes last. Don’t polish that sentence until you know it belongs, don’t perfect that scene until it’s earned its place in the book.

One last word on NaNoWriMo: If you want to do it, if you wish you could do it, if you’ve always dreamed of doing it… do it. It’s 2 hours a day for 30 days. You can find them. You can make it happen. But… you’re the only one who can.

If the idea of being a book coach niggles at you every time you hear anything about our sponsor, Author Accelerator, I have good news: they’ve fully revised and updated both the fiction and non-fiction book coach certification program. With more than 100 hours of training, videos, case studies, and worksheets, Author Accelerator’s program teaches you the key editorial skills, client-management strategies, and tools needed to help writers reach their goals and to help you start a thriving book coaching business.

But maybe you’ve got no doubt it’s a great program—you’re just not sure if book coaching right for YOU, or if you can pull it off. Well, Author Accelerator wants it to be the right call for you, too. They’re offering a $99 5-day challenge all about getting your business idea out of your head and onto the page—but #AmWriting listeners get it for half off. Head to bookcoaches.com/podcast and enter the code PODCAST at checkout for 50% off. bookcoaches.com/podcast

And if you’re asking yourself—so why charge for the challenge, if they want it to be right for me too? Because if you pony up, you’ll really DO it. So if it’s time to stop dreaming and start acting, there you go. 

I’ve been through this, and I can tell you that this is more than just an online course. You’ll take the skills you learn and apply them with real-life clients through three practicums designed to help you practice helping authors go from confusion to clarity with their novel idea. Yes, you work with real writers, yes it’s terribly nerve-wracking—but the author I worked with during one of my practicums just got a book deal with that project! This is real, kids—and it works. 

Hi. 🙋‍♀️ My name is Sarina, and I’m a bit obsessive about stationery products. I’m always on the lookout for a good excuse to buy new pens or a new notebook. But bear with me, because this one is 100% valid: every year I buy a new reading journal, and I use it well. 

The journal itself is nothing special. It’s just a 200 page B5 (or composition book sized) notebook where I keep track of all the books I’ve read. (Or, in many cases, books I started and did not finish. I’m a big DNFer, because life is short and there are too many books to cover.)

At the front of the journal I keep a list of the gems—the books I want to recommend. Plus a long list of things I want to read.

But 99% of the pages are given over to my thoughts about the books themselves. Sometimes I only write two lines, and sometimes I cover two pages.

When I first began tracking my reading like this, three years ago, I wasn’t very precise about what I wrote down. It was only after I formed a structure for my notes that the process became truly useful to me as a novelist. These days I always note some very specific things. Here they are, and here’s why they help: 

1. Genre

After I note the title and the author, I write down the genre.

Okay—sue me—I actually have a cute set of self-inking stamps that flag the genre. A scary face for thrillers, a dinosaur for anything magical, and hearts for romance. But it would work just as well to write “thriller” at the top of the page.

Then, as I read, I make specific notes about the subgenre. Is it a domestic thriller with romantic elements? Is it a romance with a subplot of suspense?

We’re always told that our books have to fit in one specific spot on the shelf, or they’ll be unsellable. But the more you force yourself to notice, the more fluid genre appears to be.

Here’s an example: I love Karen Slaughter’s Girl Forgotten. It’s a procedural, because the main character is a US Marshall. But here’s the catch—it’s literally her first day on the job. So she doesn’t know what she’s doing. And there’s an element of the crime that’s deeply personal to her, which gives the book more of a domestic (girl with a problem vibe.)

Don’t let them put you in a box, at least not until it’s time to actually package the book. 

2. Structure

Next, I make notes about the book’s structure. Is it single POV, or multi? Past tense? Present? First person or third? Do all the chapters take place in a linear timeline? And I write down which characters have POVs, as they occur.

The thing is, I’ve been reading novels for many decades now, and I thought I was well versed with all the possible structures. But by forcing myself to note them down, I see more about each book’s structure than I ever had before. And once in a while I learn some brand new tricks from a close analysis of structure.

Example: the psychological thriller Darling Rose Gold by Stephanie Wroblet has a really diabolical structure that kind of blew my mind. 

3. Predictions

If I’m reading a book with elements of mystery or suspense, I always stop at 35% or 50% to write down how many suspects there are. Who am I meant to suspect?

And—crucially—I take a guess at the perpetrator or other secrets yet to be unveiled.

I've learned a surprising amount by doing this. For a mystery or thriller, there are usually 3 to 5 suspects. Once in a while, I come up on a book with so many more, like The Last Party by Clare Macintosh.

But what's really been interesting is how often I am correct about who the villain is! You’d think that my ability to guess the outcome would hamper my enjoyment of a book. If I'm able to guess the suspect halfway through, doesn't that mean the author failed?

Nope. The truth is actually the reverse—some of the books where I’d figured it out early turned out to be my favorites. And sometimes I’m right at 40% but the author changes my mind before I am finally vindicated. **Rubs hands together maniacally**

Bottom line—making guesses like this has helped me understand what readers of plot-driven books are really there for—to match wits with the author. Besides, a poorly executed twist is much worse than no twist at all.

4. Setting

I always write down the setting. And if I get through the book and have trouble remembering what city we were in, that’s telling, too. 

5. Post-it for Quotes

Lately, I've been putting one 3 x 3 full stick post-it on each book’s page. Then I try to write a couple of chapter openers on that sticky note.

Personally, I find that opening a chapter is tricky for me, so I'd like to keep this top-of-mind as a way of observing how other people do it.

Sometimes I use the sticky note just for a particular turn of phrase that I enjoy, or some other bit of writing that I appreciate.

I guess the point of this exercise is to demystify great writing for myself. Sometimes the best writing is the simplest, and I could make myself crazy imagining that all effective writing sounds like Shakespeare. 

6. Flaws

Usually, I write a no-holds-barred review in just a few sentences. It's worth, noting that nobody is ever going to see this book. It's for me and me alone so I don't have to save anyone's feelings when I write: "great setup; terrible execution." Or, "saggy in the middle. Couldn't stick the landing." “WHERE WAS HER EDITOR?”

Then again, the way to make this exercise truly useful is to write down what I might have done differently. At what point in the narrative should the author have taken a different turn? 

If you can fix someone else’s book, you can learn to fix your own.

7. What’s the Point?

Finally, I try to jot down the book’s main point. This book is about trusting your community. This book is about the lengths women will go for bodily autonomy. This book asks how much we owe our families. Etc. 

In conclusion

I promise you that I don't write down every single one of these things for every single book. Some books, frankly, aren’t worthy of such attention.

But when I manage to dig into a novel, in such a way that most of these questions are answerable? Those notes become invaluable to me. Writing them down makes the lesson stick. And by forcing myself to view novel from some of these frameworks, I have learned many valuable lessons about my own writing. 

If the idea of being a book coach niggles at you every time you hear anything about our sponsor, Author Accelerator, I have good news: they’ve fully revised and updated both the fiction and non-fiction book coach certification program. With more than 100 hours of training, videos, case studies, and worksheets, Author Accelerator’s program teaches you the key editorial skills, client-management strategies, and tools needed to help writers reach their goals and to help you start a thriving book coaching business.

But maybe you’ve got no doubt it’s a great program—you’re just not sure if book coaching right for YOU, or if you can pull it off. Well, Author Accelerator wants it to be the right call for you, too. They’re offering a $99 5-day challenge all about getting your business idea out of your head and onto the page—but #AmWriting listeners get it for half off. Head to bookcoaches.com/podcast and enter the code PODCAST at checkout for 50% off. bookcoaches.com/podcast

And if you’re asking yourself—so why charge for the challenge, if they want it to be right for me too? Because if you pony up, you’ll really DO it. So if it’s time to stop dreaming and start acting, there you go. 

I’ve been through this, and I can tell you that this is more than just an online course. You’ll take the skills you learn and apply them with real-life clients through three practicums designed to help you practice helping authors go from confusion to clarity with their novel idea. Yes, you work with real writers, yes it’s terribly nerve-wracking—but the author I worked with during one of my practicums just got a book deal with that project! This is real, kids—and it works. 

Jess here, with detailed answers to the questions raised in the #AmWriting Facebook group about finding, contracting, and working with a speaking agent.

I have tried both going it alone and managing my own speaking career and working with an agent on an exclusive basis. Both paths can work, both require a big investment of time, and both have their own obstacles.

Keep the questions coming in the FB group or by email, and we will keep answering them!

If the idea of being a book coach niggles at you every time you hear anything about our sponsor, Author Accelerator, I have good news: they’ve fully revised and updated both the fiction and non-fiction book coach certification program. With more than 100 hours of training, videos, case studies, and worksheets, Author Accelerator’s program teaches you the key editorial skills, client-management strategies, and tools needed to help writers reach their goals and to help you start a thriving book coaching business.

But maybe you’ve got no doubt it’s a great program—you’re just not sure if book coaching right for YOU, or if you can pull it off. Well, Author Accelerator wants it to be the right call for you, too. They’re offering a $99 5-day challenge all about getting your business idea out of your head and onto the page—but #AmWriting listeners get it for half off. Head to bookcoaches.com/podcast and enter the code PODCAST at checkout for 50% off. bookcoaches.com/podcast

And if you’re asking yourself—so why charge for the challenge, if they want it to be right for me too? Because if you pony up, you’ll really DO it. So if it’s time to stop dreaming and start acting, there you go. 

I’ve been through this, and I can tell you that this is more than just an online course. You’ll take the skills you learn and apply them with real-life clients through three practicums designed to help you practice helping authors go from confusion to clarity with their novel idea. Yes, you work with real writers, yes it’s terribly nerve-wracking—but the author I worked with during one of my practicums just got a book deal with that project! This is real, kids—and it works. 

Ok, we probably don’t feel as cheery as that little subtitle sounded after we’ve been away from a project for a while. Most of the things that yank us away from our work unexpectedly aren’t good things. (There must be exceptions?)

In my case, I got sick, and then I overdid and got sicker, and the result is a project I haven’t touched in a week. Which is SO not that bad or that long—sometimes things happen and it’s a month or more before we can get back into the work—but it made me think about what I do when I’m forced to stop and re-start.

* Forgive yourself. Might you have been able to do better? Maybe. Would a real writer have managed to work through whatever it was? Maybe. And maybe, if you’d really had to, you would have. Or maybe not—sometimes even people with deadlines and editors and fans clamoring need to put their work aside for a while, because sometimes you just cannot. Or sometimes you do anyway, and maybe, as I once did, you turn in an article during one of the worst weeks of your life thus far and it includes a recipe for Miso Roasted Cod in which you forget to include the miso, which is published because apparently there were no backstops at this particular entity, thus ending your recipe writing career forevermore. (Obviously that worked out ok, but 21 years ago I would have told you my life was over.) Let it go. You needed time. You took it. It’s for the best.

* Check in. Is it really time to get back to this? Can you look ahead and see yourself getting back into whatever routine is in the cards for you now, or are you setting yourself up to disappoint yourself? Look, only you know. Some people write at the worst times. Some people wait for better times. Sometimes those are the same people at different points in their lives. It is okay to hunch over a laptop under circumstances when people think you should be doing something else, and it is okay to decide to re-read all of Anne of Green Gables even when the waters are calm again.

* Do your commit-thing. If it’s time and you’re ready, do whatever you do when you start something. Tell a friend, tell the world, stick a post-it on your desktop, re-up your timer app on your phone, make a list or a plan or a mood board, make a promise, light a candle, stand outside and scream up at the clouds to tell them you’re back in the game, babies!

* Allow for some prep-time. Maybe you need to read over your project or your outline. (Or maybe you shouldn’t, because going in an unexpected direction could be a great thing.) A thinking-walk or drive could be good, or a re-read of your favorite motivational or craft book, or even just a page of it. If you’re a pre-writer, start there and let yourself hit a downhill before you start actually sticking in all the punctuation.

* Start somewhere easy. Maybe that’s right where you left off. Maybe it’s a scene you’ve been writing in your head. Maybe it’s the end or a new beginning.

* Go all in. Once you open the file, stay in the file. You’re out of practice. This will be harder than it was last time. Your text messages, your laundry, that annoyingly long pinkie nail, all will beckon. (Actually it’s ok to go trim the nail. But you do NOT NEED YOUR PHONE to do that.) Set a timer, throw your phone across the room, handcuff yourself to your desk, do whatever you do. Maybe for a teeeeeny bit less time than usual. But do it. And then stop even if you’re rolling. Every day this will get easier if you just do the thing.

* You might need to go back and forgive yourself again. Maybe this is harder than you thought. Maybe it feels like you’ve lost the thread. Maybe you don’t feel like you’ll ever, every get it going. What would you say to a friend right now? Bet it’s nicer than whatever you’re saying to yourself. You will keep going. Be kind.

* SAVE THIS POST. The time will come when you need it again. And so do I.

It's that time again! Every year Jennie Nash and the Author Accelerator team put together a holiday bundle worth hundreds of dollars for folks who enroll in the Book Coach Certification Program ahead of the new year. Enroll this month to receive a $150 gift card to Better World Books, access to their $99 course the One-Page Book Coaching Business Plan Challenge, a copy of Jennie’s Blueprint book in your genre, and MORE.

And did we mention you can now pre-enroll in Author Accelerator’s Memoir Certification Program? The course opens in March 2024, but if you enroll this month, you’ll get $600 off the cost of enrollment – which is certainly something to be jolly for!

When you enroll in the Book Coach Certification program, you’ll gain access to a thriving community of friends and colleagues, more than 100 hours of training, videos, case studies, and worksheets to teach you the key editorial skills, client-management strategies, and the tools needed to help writers reach their goals and to help you start a thriving book coaching business. So, whether you’re looking to expand your writing skills or start your new year with a new career, there is no better time to start your journey. Visit bookcoaches.com/podcast to get your special offer.

Writers, if you're paying attention at all, you've heard from Zibby Owens in the past 2 years. She's the host of the Moms Don't Have Time to Read Podcast and the creator of Zibby Media, which at this point includes a magazine, a publishing house that's having a great month with, among other books, The Last Love Note, which KJ highly recommends and an LA-based bookstore. In 2022, Jess talked with Zibby about how she launched her literary life--and as that life gets bigger and bigger, we thought it was time to share her story again. 

Ever want to know “how she did it”? This episode is our little version of How I Built This, in which we ask Zibby Owens—whose name you surely know by now—about how she turned a desire to be part of the world of books into a one-woman mini book empire.

Zibby Owens is the host of Moms Don’t Have Time to Read, a daily podcast featuring interviews with authors that has over 900 episodes. She’s also a Bookstagrammer with 16K followers, the host of a second podcast—Moms Don’t Have Time to Have Sex—the editor of two anthologies, Moms Don’t Have Time To and Moms Don’t Have Time to Have Kids—KJ contributed to that last one—and now the CEO of Zibby Books, a new publishing home for fiction and memoir. She’s a regular contributor to Good Morning America, she’s been called “America’s Top Bookfluencer” and she has two books coming soon: Princess Charming, a picture book, and Booked, a memoir. She’s also got four kids, and they’re kids—elementary and middle school age, not a bunch of independent high schoolers wandering around

But.

Five years ago Zibby was none of those things (except a mother of four). And that’s what I want to talk about. She’s built a massive literary life, a community, a reputation in just a few years, and—after totally owning the fact that she has help with her kids (heck, not just help, they’re completely gone every other weekend because, divorce sometimes works like that) and also that this isn’t how Zibby earns a living— we go back to the beginning and talk about what it took to get there.

Because no matter who you are, you can’t wake up and say, I think I’d like to be America’s Biggest Bookfluencer, and whip out your Amex card and make it happen. You can’t even take your Kardashian self and decide this is what you want and ask your assistant to set it up. This takes work and desire and passion, and we dig into how Zibby started, and how she made things take off.

Links from the pod:

Lee Carpenter: Red, White, Blue and Eleven

Andre Agassi: Open

Zibby Books

Zibby Books Ambassadors (at bottom of Zibby Books page)

#AmReading

Zibby: Going There by Katie Couric

Hungry Hill by Eileen Patricia Curran

The Husbands by Chandler Baker

The Last Season by Jenny Judson & Danielle Mahfood

KJ: A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow

Jess: Speaking of Race by Celeste Headlee

It's that time again! Every year Jennie Nash and the Author Accelerator team put together a holiday bundle worth hundreds of dollars for folks who enroll in the Book Coach Certification Program ahead of the new year. Enroll this month to receive a $150 gift card to Better World Books, access to their $99 course the One-Page Book Coaching Business Plan Challenge, a copy of Jennie’s Blueprint book in your genre, and MORE.

And did we mention you can now pre-enroll in Author Accelerator’s Memoir Certification Program? The course opens in March 2024, but if you enroll this month, you’ll get $600 off the cost of enrollment – which is certainly something to be jolly for!

When you enroll in the Book Coach Certification program, you’ll gain access to a thriving community of friends and colleagues, more than 100 hours of training, videos, case studies, and worksheets to teach you the key editorial skills, client-management strategies, and the tools needed to help writers reach their goals and to help you start a thriving book coaching business. So, whether you’re looking to expand your writing skills or start your new year with a new career, there is no better time to start your journey. Visit bookcoaches.com/podcast to get your special offer.

Hey writers—I’m in a funny phase of novel drafting right now where I’m really only doing the prewriting—which is an odd style of drafting wherein, for me, I basically write only dialogue and statements of movement and the very most important bits of inner dialogue. (As in, no one is opening car doors or setting down their coffee cups, and there are also no quotation marks, and they could be anywhere as far as setting is concerned.)

Writing this way keeps my eyes on the prize—basically it’s what do I need to know to really write this scene, which kind of tricks me into what does the reader really need to know. I’ll add some of the set dressing later, but I find that when I write this way, the end result is tighter and cleaner.

Here’s an example I found that ultimately became Chapter 3 of Playing the Witch Card. It’s actually pretty accurate:

Flair is desperately shutting door on what she’s done, locking up wildly as if she could lock it inside, back door, Josie never comes to front, running from a ghost, you know better than to make a joke like that in Rattleboro Well did you No Just of herself How was day Sucked Customers 2 if you count Loretta What did she want? She comes in all the time actuall and when she does it’s usually a little better, I think it’s all that Halloween horror That’s what people are here for but then my customers all prefer the alley it’s part of the mystique Yep those rebel tattoos that x percent of the population has But not you When I think of something I want tattooed on me you’ll be the first to know Sometimes that’s my job, do you want to know what tattoo you should have I do not. Stop it. Change subject Loretta wanted me to make Halloween cookies And I suppose you said no. you should. If anything would change your luck I kow you hate it. But I don’t see how you’re going to be here and not be part of it. Met by lucie on the doorstep. I’m going back to Chicago. What happened today Stupid Halloween, stupid party Parties are nothing but halloween’s a big deal around here. Your mom just got asked to do something for the Rattlebones. Even lucie looked up at that Really? Everyone wants to do that, Annabel’s always telling people that her mom practically runs it but I don’t think she gets to be out there---could I help? She says she’s not doing it I don’t want to You have to I’ll think about it If I can’t do that for Halloween I want to go back to Chicago Not happening, we agreed, you’re here until we both go visit at thanksgiving (and she was hopeing not to do that) I’ll think about it I guess you’re doing Halloween I hate you. I’m not. But she knew she would.

There’s actually zero interiority in here, which forced me to add it later but only where the dialogue didn’t already convey it. Which leads me to today’s replay, which is one I needed: what’s the difference between showing—in internal dialogue—and telling? Bc we don’t want to info dump, and yet also our characters need to reflect on their past or think things they don’t say. This episode is me, Sarina and Jess talking about the difference. I hope it’s as helpful to you as it was to me!

Original show notes

The whole “am I showing, or am I telling” inner debate can be tough in every part of a novel, memoir or nonfiction-with-elements-of-memoir draft. You don’t want to “tell” about the action. You don’t want to “tell” about the setting. And goodness knows you don’t want to “tell” what the character is feeling.

Except when you do. Sometimes a little telling, in the form of inner dialogue, is exactly what the reader needs to feel a part of the story, not just the happenings. Sarina, Jess and KJ are all in for a conversation about how to immerse a reader in emotions, reactions, fears, self-doubt and even self-deception.

Got an inner dialogue question you’re wrestling with? Try sharing it in our Facebook group—and for other burning questions, small and large, email us at amwriting@substack.com. We can’t respond to every email, but we might answer your question on an upcoming show—or even invite you on for a little coaching.

Links and quotes from the pod:

From In Her Boots:

“Jasmine was still a little leery of the animals, so I set out to charm her with them. **Here’s what my editor said here:  Maybe Rhett could think here about how the animals always made her feel good and she wants to impart some of that to Jasmine, who is stretching so far outside her comfort zone to help Rhett? This could be a nice friendship moment to show Rhett caring about Jasmine.** After we fed the entire crew—which would make any human popular—I gave Jas Brownie’s curry comb and showed her the places where he loved to be scratched, and together we groomed the little pony to a sheen, Jas brushing while I pulled his mane and tail. Jas ran inside and emerged with a bandana that we tied in his forelock, giving him a rakish look suited to his personality, and at the same time we both pulled out our phones.”

Here’s the revision:

“Some barn time would absolutely help me feel better. If Jas was a little more comfortable with them, I knew she would feel the same way, and I wanted that for her. I didn’t care about the Maggie part of it. I’d overheard her on the phone with Zale last night, and I wanted her to know that the farm was a refuge for her no matter what. After we fed the entire crew—which would make any human popular—I gave Jas Brownie’s curry comb and showed her the places where he loved to be scratched, and together we groomed the little pony to a sheen, Jas brushing while I pulled his mane and tail. Jas ran inside and emerged with a bandana that we tied in his forelock, giving him a rakish look suited to his personality, and at the same time we both pulled out our phones.”

From We Are Not Like Them:

p. 113 “I’m relieved to see that the crowd really is peaceful, so many faces filled with righteous conviction and purpose. Nonetheless, my cynicism kicks in. Ain’t nothing changed but the music. All the clever signs and chants, the people who showed up just so they could post it to their social media, what does it add up to?”

From Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake:

p. 161 “She laughed and then hoped he’d meant her to.”

p. 179 “Rosaline didn’t want to jinx it, and possibly she was reading too much into one ambiguously encouraging look from Marianne Wolvercote, but she thought she could do okay this week. Possibly even well? After all, she had a strong concept. And the part of her that used to do homework under test conditions was now secretly rather glad to get to practice in an unfamiliar kitchen.”

Also mentioned:

Beach Read by Emily Henry

Talia Hibbert

#AmReading

Jess: The Triumph of Seeds: How Grains, Nuts, Kernels, Pulses, and Pips Conquered the Plant Kingdom and Shaped Human History by Thor Hanson

KJ: We Are Not Like Them by Christine Pride & Jo Piazza

Sarina: The Enneagram in Love: A Roadmap for Building and Strengthening Romantic Relationships by Stephanie Barron Hall

It's that time again! Every year Jennie Nash and the Author Accelerator team put together a holiday bundle worth hundreds of dollars for folks who enroll in the Book Coach Certification Program ahead of the new year. Enroll this month to receive a $150 gift card to Better World Books, access to their $99 course the One-Page Book Coaching Business Plan Challenge, a copy of Jennie’s Blueprint book in your genre, and MORE.

And did we mention you can now pre-enroll in Author Accelerator’s Memoir Certification Program? The course opens in March 2024, but if you enroll this month, you’ll get $600 off the cost of enrollment – which is certainly something to be jolly for!

When you enroll in the Book Coach Certification program, you’ll gain access to a thriving community of friends and colleagues, more than 100 hours of training, videos, case studies, and worksheets to teach you the key editorial skills, client-management strategies, and the tools needed to help writers reach their goals and to help you start a thriving book coaching business. So, whether you’re looking to expand your writing skills or start your new year with a new career, there is no better time to start your journey. Visit bookcoaches.com/podcast to get your special offer.

Who wouldn’t want a step-by-step process for revision? In her book Intuitive Editing, this week’s guest, developmental editor Tiffany Yates Martin, lays out an approach that will help keep you organized, although sadly there is no magic wand involved. We talked to her about the big picture questions she asks before diving into someone else’s work:

Is the main story question clear?

Do the characters drive the story?

Do we/the characters end up somewhere different than where we began?

Where does the momentum flag (because it will, somewhere) and why?

Then we deep dive into questions of finding objectivity in your own work, micro-suspense, suspense vs. tension, writing manuals and—most important of all—how important it is to know that all first drafts are terrible and revision is part of the work.

A few links from the pod

If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland

How to Grow a Novel by Sol Stein

Stein on Writing by Sol Stein

*FREE* Editorial Summit - December 6th

#AmReading

Tiffany: Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

KJ: Ties that Tether by Jane Igharo

Sarina: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

Sarina and KJ have news!

The Chicken Sisters is out! Signed copies here, Bookshop.org here, Amazon here—and if you order from your local indie and fill out this form, I’ll mail you a signed bookplate.

Sarina's novel Bittersweet, the first in her USA Today bestselling series, is currently free at all vendors. Farmers make the Earth move. Amazon: https://geni.us/FreeBittersweet

Apple: http://geni.us/BsIbooks

B&N: http://geni.us/bsbreach

Kobo: http://geni.us/bskreach

Google: http://geni.us/bsgreach

Book-gift shopping? Grab KJ’s 12 Days of Books to Give (and Get) list here for everything you need for your Austen-loving brother, your thriller-hound mom and the friend who craves a cozy escape.

Did you know supporters of the #AmWriting podcast get a little something extra weekly? Whether it’s a Writer Top Five like Emails to Send During Your Book Launch, a #Minisode like Should I Hire a Publicist?, or one of our new product reviews and other things we’re inspired to share, bonus stuff is ALWAYS dropping into their inboxes and pod-players. To get more #AmWriting for just a few bucks a month, click the button.

And have you checked out our sponsors? If listening to Tiffany makes you think, that is my total dream job, you need to head to bookcoaches.com/amwriting to learn more about the side gig that could supply much-needed consistency to your writing income or become your full-time passion.

And have you tried Dabble writing software yet? If you’ve been thinking about testing out a tool to go beyond the ordinary word processor and make your work easier, this is the one we recommend. We invited Dabble to sponsor the podcast because, in short, it’s awesome. It’s easy to use, it works offline and on, it’s always synced up and always available on all the platforms and it makes finding your way around in your manuscript easy and even fun—and it’s designed to minimize distractions and keep you going. Find out more, and do a free trial, at dabblewriter.com.

Gang, it’s a #AmWriting Bonus episode that I think you’re going to love: Shiny Thing Syndrome. Jennie Nash and I I originally planned to get together to discuss whether I (it’s KJ here) might want to do some book coaching in 2021, but we ended up talking way more broadly about finding your why, career priorities, money and passion and fame and all the reasons we think we want to do something versus the good reasons for actually doing it (or not).  

This first aired as a Facebook Live conversation (and you can find the video in the #AmWriting Facebook group if you’re interested), so you’ll miss the usual intros and the voices of Sarina and Jess, and you will get some waffling around with the tech at the beginning at about minute 50, when Jennie’s video dropped. But we pulled it back together, and it’s a great conversation for those of us who always finding ourselves with more ideas and excitement than time and energy. Hope you enjoy it.  

Sarina and KJ have news!

The Chicken Sisters is out tomorrow, 12/1. Today’s the last day to pre-order! Signed copies here, Bookshop.org here, Amazon here—and if you order from your local indie and fill out this form, I’ll mail you a signed bookplate.

Sarina's novel Bittersweet, the first in her USA Today bestselling series, is currently free at all vendors. Farmers make the Earth move. Amazon: https://geni.us/FreeBittersweet

Apple: http://geni.us/BsIbooks

B&N: http://geni.us/bsbreach

Kobo: http://geni.us/bskreach

Google: http://geni.us/bsgreach

Book-gift shopping? Grab KJ’s 12 Days of Books to Give (and Get) list here for everything you need for your Austen-loving brother, your thriller-hound mom and the friend who craves a cozy escape.

Writers, some thoughts: first off, I HATE the word of the year I declared in this episode. I chose… poorly. It’s such a weak work, so unadventurous, so poky. So I have already reframed, and searched long and hard for a word that basically means, I am never ever making another TikTok again no matter what anyone says, and the result is unapologetic. For the moment. I’m not superthrilled, bc I would rather have a positive active word that one that starts with a negation, but that’s where I am for the moment. (Got a better idea? Reply to this email, I haven’t inked this into the old bujo yet!) I considered NotSorry, in honor of Sarah Knight’s glorious anti-self-help books, which I reference in the episode, but I think I’ll rock unapologetic better.

Well, that was very important. TO ME. #notsorry

This is our annual goal setting episode. We focused mostly on WOTYs (word of the year), possibly because it was mid-December when we recorded and I for one have STILL not figured out exactly wtf I’m trying to do with myself next year other than write another book and attempt to sell it. Jennie gives some brilliant advice about thinking quarterly, which I am totally taking. Sarah dials it back (which is still a lot) and Jess reminds us all to stick with goals that make us happy not just to achieve, but while we’re doing them.

While we’re at it, we re-visit our yearly advice to distinguish between goals we can control (write the book, query the book) and goals we cannot (sell the book to a trad publisher). The first get milestones, steps and our full attention. The second… we recognize may need to shift with the sands. I once wrote a little mini workbook about that with a worksheet—both attached below.

And now, on to the links!

Jennie’s new substack—get ON that.

Pre-order The Five Year Lie RIGHT NOW.

Our WOTYS

RESERVE UNAPOLOGETIC (and know how I feel about changing it? You guessed it baby.)

ABUNDANCE

RECREATE

ZONE OF GENIUS

Links!

The One Thing, Gary Keller with Jay Papasan

I MEANT to mention I Would Do That Differently, Emily Grosvenor’s new substack and seriously, my new motto, but it never came up. Still, she was a guest on episode 342 and I suggest you check it out!

Writers, KJ here. I’m sitting with my new Muse Machine, a deck of 150 open-ended, creative prompt cards designed to spark inspiration across various tasks, from writing to painting from one of my very favorite idea-sparkers and kick-in-the-pantsers, Gretchen Rubin. I don’t like writing prompts (because I hate the idea of intentionally writing stuff I know I won’t use) but these are different. They’re meant to get you thinking in a different way, which means you might get “take a nap” or “can it be bigger on the inside than it is on the outside?” Whatever it is will set your mind spinning. (And they would make a fun gift for the other creatives in your life, too!) Get 10% off until 12/31 with code MUSEPARTNER10. Learn more here.

Are you looking to kick your 9-to-5, and work for yourself? How about if you could set your own rates and read books all day? Author Accelerator might just be able to help you out!

By now, you’ve probably heard us talk about book coaching, an exciting career where you can help writers bring their dreams to life through support, feedback, project management, and accountability at each step of the writing and publishing process. It’s like being a literary personal trainer for writers! Through Author Accelerator’s Book Coach Certification program, you’ll learn the key editorial, project management, organizational, and people skills needed to launch your own thriving book coaching business.

To find out if book coaching is the right career for you, Author Accelerator is offering a 5-day challenge to help you envision your new chapter. In their $99 One-Page Book Coaching Business Plan, you’ll narrow down your business idea, ideal client, ideal service, and more. Interested? Visit bookcoaches.com/podcast to learn more.

Crew, we love us some Becca Syme over here. We will listen to any podcast she’s on, sometimes twice. We (okay, me) watch her YouTube channel while we work out. We read her email newsletter religiously. Because she gets writers and writers. She gets that while we may all be trying to do what looks like the same thing, we all do that thing differently and what works for one of us doesn’t work for all of us.

So obviously we were super-excited to get to talk to her, and we’re delighted to re-share this very very inspirational interview with you as we head to the end of 2023.

Who wouldn’t want to write better and faster? I can’t even imagine. Our guest this week is Becca Syme, creator of the Better Faster Academy, author of Dear Writer You Need to Quit as well as other books in the Quit series and the author of the MatchBaker series of cozy mysteries (with such glorious titles as “Vangie Vale and the Murdered Macaron”). Her superpower is helping writers find what they do best—their strengths—and do more of that instead of worrying about trying to “fix” the things we aren’t naturally good at.

Links from the pod

The Clifton Strengths Test

The Ted Lasso blog post

Better Faster Academy

The Quitcast on YouTube

#AmReading

Becca:

Mandy M. Roth

Yasmine Galenorn

Rajani LaRocca

DEVS (TV show)

Sarina: Unguarded by Jay Hogan (part of Sarina’s World of True North)

KJ: The S**t No One Tells You About Writing (podcast)

Writers, KJ here. I’m sitting with my new Muse Machine, a deck of 150 open-ended, creative prompt cards designed to spark inspiration across various tasks, from writing to painting from one of my very favorite idea-sparkers and kick-in-the-pantsers, Gretchen Rubin. I don’t like writing prompts (because I hate the idea of intentionally writing stuff I know I won’t use) but these are different. They’re meant to get you thinking in a different way, which means you might get “take a nap” or “can it be bigger on the inside than it is on the outside?” Whatever it is will set your mind spinning. (And they would make a fun gift for the other creatives in your life, too!) Get 10% off until 12/31 with code MUSEPARTNER10. Learn more here.

Are you looking to kick your 9-to-5, and work for yourself? How about if you could set your own rates and read books all day? Author Accelerator might just be able to help you out!

By now, you’ve probably heard us talk about book coaching, an exciting career where you can help writers bring their dreams to life through support, feedback, project management, and accountability at each step of the writing and publishing process. It’s like being a literary personal trainer for writers! Through Author Accelerator’s Book Coach Certification program, you’ll learn the key editorial, project management, organizational, and people skills needed to launch your own thriving book coaching business.

To find out if book coaching is the right career for you, Author Accelerator is offering a 5-day challenge to help you envision your new chapter. In their $99 One-Page Book Coaching Business Plan, you’ll narrow down your business idea, ideal client, ideal service, and more. Interested? Visit bookcoaches.com/podcast to learn more.

Maybe you’re drafting a novel, maybe you’re not. Either way, we vote for seizing on the community energy generated by NaNo and getting some work done.

The magic of NaNoWriMo isn’t in the number of words or the length of time or even the month of November. It’s in the community seizing this time—when we could so easily heave a giant sigh and say oh, well, November, it’s practically December, might as well give up—and instead bestowing upon it this extra energy, turning it into a holiday of our very own. We’re all for writing a 50K word novel (and there’s much advice in this episode on prepping for just that) but we’re also in favor of creating your own National Whatever Write Month. Pick your poison, name your deadline and join us in taking back November.

Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, a preview of the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, October 21, 2019: Top 5 Ways to Tame the Internet Distraction Beast. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month.

As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode.

To support the podcast and help it stay free, subscribe to our weekly #WritersTopFive email.

LINKS FROM THE PODCAST

Junior NaNoWriMo

Jennie Nash method for finding your thru line and your roadmap for writing useful words (because we’ve all written our way to finding the story, and we don’t particularly recommend it): The Inside Outline Download (formerly known as the Two-Tier, but don’t worry, this is it.)

Character development resources:

Episode 180 #CharacterEnneagramRabbitHole

The Emotional Wound Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Psychological Trauma, Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi

Take Off Your Pants!: Outline Your Books for Faster, Better Writing, Libbie Hawker

FabulaDeck.com

Episode 75: #NovelPreparations

#AmReading (Watching, Listening)

KJ: The Lager Queen of Minnesota, J. Ryan Stradal

Jess: Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity, Peggy Orenstein

Ready or Not: Preparing Our Kids to Thrive in an Uncertain and Rapidly Changing World, Madeline Levine

#FaveIndieBookstore

Print: A Bookstore, Portland, Maine, which does not look like this in October but soon will. Sigh.

This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.

Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.

If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.

The image in our podcast illustration is by chmyphotography on Unsplash.

KJ:                                        00:02                    Writing people, this episode of #AmWriting is about setting yourself up for NaNoWriMo success no matter what spin you’re putting on it. We love NaNoWriMo because it takes a month when it’s easy to slack off—hello, holiday season!—and turns it into a month when much of the writing community is settling in to push harder, whether it’s the classic draft your novel NaNo, or whether you’re creating a book proposal, editing an existing work, drafting a memoir or applying yourself fresh to anything else. If you’re going for classic write-a-draft-of-your-novel in a month NaNoWriMo, you’ll want to sign up for Author Accelerators’s free 7 day jump-start-your-book email series. Truly, the five exercises they send you, from a one-sentence logline to your back-of-the-book copy, and the advice on getting those done really helps to set you up for success. I go back to those exercises again and again to see what I’ve promised the reader, and what I’ve promised myself. Sign up at https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwriting. Is it recording?

Jess:                                     01:16                    Now it's recording.

KJ:                                        01:17                    Yay.

Jess:                                     01:18                    Go ahead.

KJ:                                        01:18                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.

Jess:                                     01:23                    Alright, let's start over.

KJ:                                        01:23                    Awkward pause, I'm going to rustle some papers.

Jess:                                     01:26                    Okay.

KJ:                                        01:27                    Now one, two, three. Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. #AmWritingHashtag is our podcast, it is your podcast about writing all the things - fiction, nonfiction, proposals, emails, pitches, and in short, this is the podcast about sitting down and getting your work done.

Jess:                                     01:57                    I'm Jess Lahey. I am one of your co-hosts. I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and a new book coming out in 2021 about preventing substance abuse in kids and just finishing up, packing up, and turning it into a package for my deadline. Yay.

Sarina:                                 02:18                    And I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of 30-odd romance novels and the latest one is called Moonlighter.

KJ:                                        02:25                    I am, as previously stated, KJ Dell'Antonia, author of How To Be a Happier Parent as well as a novel coming out in June of next year. Cannot wait to share a cover with everybody, but that is still a little bit away. And I want to remind everyone that if you want to hear a little bit more from us, you can sign up for our weekly emails in which we will basically shoot you out the podcast, along with all of the links, and a little bit of a transcript, and everything you could possibly need to know about every episode. So, you can sign up for that at amwritingpodcast.com.

Jess:                                     03:06                    And the place where you find all the good things,

KJ:                                        03:09                    All the good things.

Jess:                                     03:11                    What are we talking about today?

KJ:                                        03:12                    Oh, we are talking about like the super obvious, elephant in the room topic for all writers in October, which is are you doing NaNoWriMo? And if so, how?

Jess:                                     03:24                    And what?

KJ:                                        03:26                    Yeah, and what? Exactly. So you guys know I love NaNo, but I've only managed to do it, like straight up NaNo once, which was in 2017 and it's actually eventually the draft that turned into the novel that's coming out next year. So, every other year I've sort of taken November and that energy that is just afoot in the writing community and thrown my own style at it. Like, I did some variation of something or another for my How To Be a Happier Parent book. And this year, I'm figuring out, I'm drafting, so it's gonna be National Novel Writing Month for me. But it's not the whole novel, I mean I've already written part of it. It would be silly to abandon that. So, my topic for today for us is sort of Nah, whatever, WriMo. National whatever write month. Cause I think it's so cool. November is a month you could easily just toss, right? Cause it's November, holidays are on the way. There's no way you can do a lot of writing this month, right? And once you've tossed November, December just might as well, yeah, we'll just start again in January. And come on. If you do this right, if you let the community encourage you, by January, you could have a whole book or you can have nothing. Those are your choices, whole book or nothing.

Jess:                                     04:50                    NaNoWriMo has always been a really sentimental time for me because this is something I did with my students from very early on when NaNoWriMo first started. And it was a process that I started before the month began and we would go through this whole process of why it's fun to let go, what are the parameters for this essay, and how does it need to look in all the various drafts, and just start to write. And some of my fondest memories of teaching are there was a morning when one of my students came in. It was like day two of NaNoWriMo and she came into school and she looked at me and her eyes were just huge and she said, 'I felt like I fell into a book. Like I was a part of it and I've never experienced that before.' And I think for kids, especially, we tend to tell them, 'You have to write, and here's your rubric, and it has to look like this, and don't forget that the topic statements have to support the thesis statement, blah, blah blah. And for students to see that first experience of them falling into a book and becoming a part of it, as they just sort of let it pour out of them - that's always been what November has been about for me. Whether it's experiencing it myself or just sort of checking in every once in awhile with the vibe, like through Twitter or everyone talking about it online. There's just a really cool vibe about November and NaNoWriMo. It's great, I really love it.

KJ:                                        06:17                    Of course, ironically, one of the things we're about to tell listeners is don't just sit down and start writing.

Jess:                                     06:23                    Yeah, and I'm talking about kids. I mean, we went through a whole planning process actually with the kids. NaNoWriMo, and I don't know if they still do it, but there's a junior version of it and they have a whole workbook that prepares kids for it. You actually plan your characters, there's worksheets, it's really well done. If it still exists, we'll put it in the show notes because it's a really great resource for kids. And of course, kids aren't writing 50,000 words. They're setting their own goal. And when we did it, there was also a community online where you could register your class and the kids would log their progress every day and they'd have these little meters, and sometimes they'd get into competitions with each other and they'd come in and they'd say, 'I saw that you logged another 3000 words yesterday. Yay, you.' It was a really great process that NaNoWriMo actually was pretty thoughtful about, in terms of preparing kids. So, no, it was not just sitting down and writing, even for my students.

KJ:                                        07:18                    I'm pretty sure that's still there. Sarina, have you ever used NaNoWriMo to put together a book? I mean, it's write at your speed, right?

Sarina:                                 07:25                    Yeah, I have actually. The first time I completed it was for a novel that is currently in a drawer. You know, this one really probably deserves to come out, but I've been a little busy. But the weird thing about this is that I wrote this piece of women's fiction and I was kind of down on women's fiction because my one attempt had failed, but I wrote this NaNo piece and I like it. But there was a couple of characters in there, like a father and a daughter who had been estranged for 17 years. And so on like December 4th, I was sitting in my child's violin class as one does, like not paying attention. And I thought, you know, that dad and that girl, that's a really good story. So that idea, sitting there after writing 50,000 words became my book The Accidentals.

Jess:                                     08:25                    One of my favorite books of yours. I love that book. I love that relationship. I love those characters.

Sarina:                                 08:31                    Well, thank you. And so that's both a fun little story, but also a cautionary tale about maybe I could've gotten to that story first and understood its power if I had been a little more thoughtful about my NaNo project.

KJ:                                        08:49                    That is kind of why we are doing this today, as opposed to on October 31st. Which is just to take some time and give a little thought to what can you do with this community push this month? You know, if you wanna write 1600 words, how can you make it a good 1600 words, that is a useful 1600 words. And on the other hand, if you wanna just use the energy, then I think what matters is just to try to just push yourself a little more. Cause that's kinda what NaNo is about. I mean, we have the thousand words a day that I'm doing right now. And I know, Sarina, you're trying to do 1200, but I'm just coming back at a thousand words strong. But 1600 is a lot more, so I feel like whatever project you're working on, or whatever thing you're working on, now's a really good time to take a look at it and go, 'Well, how can I just give that just a little bit more? How can I put together like a group of people that encourage me to just really get to something I can call an end in November?

Jess:                                     10:06                    One thing I would love to do today, if it's at all possible, is to talk about - I'm in a weird position where I can't do a ton of advanced planning because I think this project finishing up this book and a work/vacation trip that I have right after it's due, will put me up into the end of the month. So I have a couple of possible things that I would be willing to share on the podcast that I could possibly work on. And I would love to sort of, if we have time today, to brainstorm what might make the most sense.

KJ:                                        10:40                    Ooh, what should Jess do next? This is a great topic, I love this. Alright, well let's start there and then we'll talk about trying to set ourselves up right. What do you got?

Jess:                                     10:54                    Me? The Jess stuff? Oh, I get to go first? Okay. So I have three things. I have a YA novel that I started a long time ago, actually during NaNoWriMo. I have a first chapter that I love and characters that I love, and some things I've thought about over time and Sarina's actually even read an early version of this chapter and I feel like I need to finish that book for myself. I feel like I need to see that through, it's a very sort of personal thing for me and I have no idea what will become of it. But I think that will be something I regret if I don't finish. So I have that. And then I also have these essays sitting there that are really important also that I would like to continue working on to some eventual possible essay collection. And then I have an idea for another research-based book and that I'm totally not ready to talk about yet, but that I'm sort of excited about doing the proposal process of working out my ideas for that proposal.

KJ:                                        12:02                    And what you have also is the possibility of your edits dropping on you at any time and somewhat randomly.

Jess:                                     12:09                    But here's the thing, right? Because of, and we've talked about this a little bit, my original publication date was going to be next fall. The election is pushing that until the spring of the following year. So my official pub date is now in spring of 2021 and edits - I have plenty of time. I think for my sanity on this project, I would like to get a little bit of mental distance from the book. And November might be a fantastic gap in which to do that. In fact, I heard from my editor that she might not even get to look at the rest of the book until the end of November, anyway. So that gives me a really nice buffer to put this book away and do what Stephen King talks about, which is that put it in a drawer until it starts to feel a little bit like an artifact and you can look at it a little more objectively.

KJ:                                        13:02                    Oh, I love that you're going to get that time.

Jess:                                     13:04                    I'm really excited about that, too. So I think it might be wise for me to not work on edits for just a little bit, just a short period of time, just enough time to work on something else and focus on just that one thing.

KJ:                                        13:16                    Okay, we like this plan.

Jess:                                     13:18                    So thoughts? So we have those three things. Book proposal, essays, novel. The problem with the novel thing is I don't have time to plan really before I'd have to start on that.

Sarina:                                 13:32                    Well of course, I want you to write the novel. But it's not just that I really like YA novels and I enjoyed reading the beginning of it, but also because I honestly feel that novels lend themselves more constructively to this kind of attention.

Jess:                                     13:52                    That's true.

Sarina:                                 13:53                    I feel that essays may be a little more challenging. Although, you could use the ability to move from one to another in a helpful way, like if you get stuck on one essay. I can just picture myself flipping around a lot, though.

Jess:                                     14:13                    Well, and you have heard me say that these essays, these sort of creative nonfiction, is where I really get a buzz. So I do really enjoy and get to do a deep dive in when I'm in. So, there's that.

KJ:                                        14:24                    I guess a nice thing about NaNo for what we're talking about, is that the specific idea of NaNoWriMo is you've come out of the month with a 50,000 word novel draft. But it's not a daily goal. I described it as a daily goal, but if you're gonna get to 50,000 words, you've got to write 1,600, well 1200 words a day. But you don't have to. So you're saying, well I don't have time to plan. Well first of all, you've got some stuff written, so you've got some things in your head. You know, you could sit down and create an inside outline, you could do some work (even in the beginning of November) and maybe what you say is 'Well mine NaNo for this book, because I've already got X, is another 30,000 words plus the outline or...

Jess:                                     15:20                    I'm glad you said that because I was thinking in terms of its old name (the name Jenny used to call that outline and I couldn't remember the new name, so I'm really glad you said it) I was actually thinking that spending deep time on that inside outline might be just the perfect way to start the month and then jump in. I don't know. I wish Jenny was on this. I thought about that. Oh, well. I will do some more thinking about it. I think I know what Jenny's answer would be - Jenny's answer would be spend very careful time on your inside outline before you willy nilly go off writing your novel, because as you found out, you can spend a lot of time and words and effort writing something that isn't right. And why do that if you can spend some time really organizing it on the front end first?

KJ:                                        16:13                    Very true, but you also want to take advantage of the energy of having the project. So I think if you go into it with your defined version of what you want it to look like and if it is both realistic and yet a push, that's ideal.

Sarina:                                 16:34                    You could also structure this in a way that accommodates your need to spend time doing some side writing for this book. So you could count those words, you could count the words that you spend on your outline. And when I outline and I was doing this last night, actually. I had a horrible long day of returning emails and so much conflict and just the worst Monday ever. And then I went to take a kid to a music lesson. I guess that's a theme today. And I was walking around the track at the Lebanon High School in the dark with my phone recording me talking about what had to happen next in this book. And I swear to God, I've written like seven outlines for this book already, but I really just needed to walk around that track in circles and say, 'And then this happens, and then this happens, and then that happens.' And then I got home and sort of blurted all of this outline stuff out of the application, which is called Otter.ai, into a document. And there were 2,000...

KJ:                                        17:42                    Side note - supporters can find Otter.ai in an upcoming top five for writers, top five resources for dictating your work. Just throwing that out there.

Sarina:                                 17:54                    Good footnote. But, so what sometimes happens when I get 2,000 words of outline is that when I'm tapping away, trying to give myself all of the good stuff that I've been thinking about, I accidentally write partial scenes.

Jess:                                     18:12                    Oh, interesting.

KJ:                                        18:13                    Yeah, or just lines. I totally agree with you. Cause I'll be like, 'And he says dah dah, dah. And she says dah, dah, dah, dah. And then they did...' And the dah, dah, dahs do make it into the book.

Sarina:                                 18:27                    Yes. So there's no reason to sort of hold your outline hostage. You can be outlining and writing a novel in the same hour.

Jess:                                     18:39                    You're so smart. No, I love this, this is really great. Especially since one of the byproducts of having kept my butt in the chair and being a good little writer doobie is that I am so remarkably out of shape. And so one of the tasks for me in November is taking more walks,, doing more hiking and getting out more. And so using something like my phone to dictate some and do what you're talking about actually would be a really good way to keep that going.

KJ:                                        19:10                    I feel like this is practically a take back November movement. It's like y'all are claiming that November is the time when we're supposed to start holiday shopping, and marinating things, and putting pie dough in pie dough containers. November is actually, especially the first part, a really great time of when things tend to - like the fall routine tends to be set, whether it's your personal routine, or a work routine, or a family routine. And it tends to just kind of keep going. There aren't concerts and all of the early fall stuff has fallen away and so early November can be super productive. And then you take that energy and you just get up early, and ignore your whole family, and make it keep going through that beginning of the holidays.

Jess:                                     20:12                    I do have to say that there won't be a lot of ignoring my family simply because I already did that. In this last month, my husband has been the grocery getter, the laundry doer, the dog taker carer of her. I mean, they've done everything and I have been so absent. And so one of the things I'm really looking forward to in November is spending more time with my family, getting to know my family again. It'll be lovely, they've grown since I saw them last. I think this is really helpful actually. I think I have sort of a mental game plan and I think it's the novel, and I think it's doing what Sarina's talking about with the outlining, and sort of thinking about scenes. I've changed some of the characters. Actually one of them I changed at Sarina's behest. I have a friendship that is now I think more of a romance and so that's a great idea. I'm happy with that. That sounds like a great plan for November.

KJ:                                        21:10                    Well, so Sarina, I love that you're pulling together pieces for a new novel. It's kind of where I am, but I think you're more strongly there. So let's talk about what we can put together now in October, if we're on top of it or at the beginning of November, whatever works, to try to help make the words that we're going to write in November actual usable words instead of just the words that you have to sort of you know, vomit past in order to get to the real book.

Sarina:                                 21:41                    Okay. Well, you know that we love to talk about resources. And at the top of our resources list, of course, we're gonna put Jennie Nash's outlining as one of our gold standard ways to get into writing a book. So that goes right at the top of the page.

KJ:                                        21:59                    And we also have last week's discussion of character enneagrams. So if anybody missed that go back, because this is one of the ways we're thinking about our characters anew and afresh. So that's another good one. I'll put that on the list.

Sarina:                                 22:16                    So this is an outline right here and Roman numeral one is the Jennie Nash method of understanding the point of your book and finding the through line so that the things that happen are connected by cause and effect. And then Roman numeral two is different kinds of character-based plotting. So enneagrams is a great resource, so that's letter a. Letter b is perhaps something like the emotional wounds thesaurus that we talk about sometimes; understanding what's driving your characters and what stuff in their icky background is scaring them. Which also leads into that book I talked about a couple episodes, which is now getting some play in our Facebook group. Like a couple people have said they're reading Take Off Your Pants, which is about character-based plot outlining. And then of course we have to reserve a Roman numeral at the bottom of this outline for classic plot, hero-based plotting. I've said before that it's slightly frustrating to me that that hero-based plotting is tricky in romance. But we do have a resource to share. We were sent this deck of cards called the Fabula Deck and I believe there's 28 of them at fabuladeck.com. Oh, it's 40 cards, sorry. And the first ones in the deck are my favorite. So it's the hero's steps. So card number one literally says 'The ordinary world. Who is the hero? What is his world like at the beginning?' And if you're plotting something like high fantasy or Star Wars or something with a defined hero going on a journey or an adventure, this would be just invaluable. And step number two is the call to action. And step number three is anxiety of the call. And so these cards are just like little roadmap.

KJ:                                        24:25                    Is it a 40 step road map or is it like the first 10 cards are a roadmap and the next ones are...

Sarina:                                 24:32                    Well there's 14 hero steps, which is a nice structure. And then there's character cards and some readers' steps. So there's a few different frameworks in the deck.

KJ:                                        24:45                    Wait a minute. I need us to take a step back and just talk about like what is this deck? Is this like that spinny plot wheel that somebody came up with in you know, the 1800's or you know, spin the wheel and figure out what your next step a stranger arrives next at you. You know...

Sarina:                                 25:04                    Well, I think it's more like a Joseph Campbell hero's journey. Actually on their website they use a cute example where they've plotted The Matrix movie against the first few cards in the deck. So, for the ordinary world card, the first step of the hero's journey, their sticky note says, 'A hacker doubts his reality.' And then card number two, which is the call to action, is that he follows the white rabbit and they kind of demonstrate the way that a lot of classical action stories that we've come to enjoy, follow this path in the way that they've laid it out.

KJ:                                        25:53                    It's just a fun structural way I guess to have the cards out there. That's kind of a fun twist.

Sarina:                                 26:01                    It is a fun twist.

Jess:                                     26:02                    The whole Joseph Campbell thing is something my students used to love to do. It was one of our favorite things as we'd plot out like Star Wars, The Matrix, The Lion King according to all the different parts with the Joseph Campbell stuff. It's super fun. I love that stuff.

KJ:                                        26:17                    Well isn't it funny how movies lend themselves so much better to this? It's because when you really look at a movie, they're so bald because all of the stuff that takes words in a novel comes into your brain in a different way in a movie. You know, the description of the person's office, and the description of what the person looks like, and the description of the person's movement. I mean when you peel all that back, you're left with post it notes that say things like, 'Hacker doubts his reality.' It's kind of amazing. And that's kind of going back to the Inside Outline, right? You're trying to get just those post it notes and for some reason it's so hard, like I feel like I need 20 post it notes.

Jess:                                     27:04                    One of the things we would also do is the kids would come in and I would ask them to sort of just start shouting out some of their favorite books, or series, or whatever. And then the challenge would be, can we plot this book? You know, isn't this interesting how we can - and then they would get this look in their eye, like all of a sudden order had been established in their universe. And it was really sort of satisfying to be able to say, 'Oh my gosh, look at this. This thing has a trajectory with these common plot points or common milestones and we can do that with this book and we can do it with this book.' It's just this really nice moment when they go, 'Oh, look at the universe make sense all of a sudden.' It was great.

KJ:                                        27:46                    So what else is in the cards? Like what is in the cards for us?

Sarina:                                 27:53                    Well, you're going to have to flip through all of the hero's steps, but we get to a death, which does not need to be literal at a resurrection. And then the cards also give you a few other ways to look at your story, like how the reader is experiencing it. So I actually find the first half of the deck to be the most useful with the hero's journey. Because if you're going to cut out a card, or if you don't know what goes on that card, then it's a hole that you need to acknowledge and confront.

KJ:                                        28:33                    Yeah. So if you're getting ready for your NaNo and you can lay out those cards or some version of those cards, you can find a lot of different sort of stories structure...it's kind of all over the place. It's that book The Idea that I've talked about before, there's lots of places to see the hero's journey stretched out, but it sounds like this is a super fun and practical way to do it. But anyway, if you don't have that death or the hero resists the journey kind of thing then yeah, you're missing something. There's something that people need to see happen that hasn't happened. And you can fulfill these expectations in a bazillion different ways, but if you don't fulfill them, you tend to sort of end up with people going, 'Wait a minute,' or maybe just not reading at all. I have a terrible time with it, though, I have to say. With the journey plotting. I do remember like writing down in huge letters (because you were talking about how something needs to die. Like that's kind of the - well, there's all kinds of names for that, the all is lost moment is my favorite) And I wrote in capital letters about my new book, that a person metaphorically dies. And I was like, 'Oh yeah, yeah, I found it.' But I don't know. I guess I just get caught up in all that stuff I was saying you don't even see in a movie. It's really hard to just lay down the post its and be like, 'This happens, and then this happens, and then this happens.' And it's harder than it thinks.

Jess:                                     30:43                    Plenty of people would argue that if you're coming at it from the perspective of, I need to have all these plot points in my book, then you're going about it backwards and you're losing the freshness or the lifeblood of your novel. I mean, it's not like Virgil went out and said, 'Okay, gotta go get me some Joseph Campbell before I can write the Aeneid.'

KJ:                                        31:06                    I'm really not Virgil and yeah, I get you, but I think that what at least tends to happen for me is that I have a giant messy thing in my head with all of those things in it. And what I am doing is more in and along the...gosh, can we just reference...we should just call this the podcast in which we reference Stephen King's On Writing constantly, but...

Jess:                                     31:31                    Well, we do it all the time.

KJ:                                        31:32                    Yeah, exactly. We'll just change the name of the podcast. No the part where you're excavating the dinosaur, right? So it's finding it, I'm digging for the post its. It's not like I'm artificially creating the post its. It's that they're buried in a pile of other paper, and magazine clippings, and pictures of people, and cards, and goodness knows what.

KJ:                                        31:57                    So yeah, I have a hard time digging out the important post it I think is what I'm saying. So even going back and revising my book that's coming out next year, there were definitely moments of like, 'I know this thing is in here, like this turning point, but I really need to peel away the 16 descriptions of what the character is doing and whose hand she's holding or whatever in that minute so that people can see that.' So, you know, do it ahead of time and I guess we think we're hoping we'll be ahead of the game, right?

Jess:                                     32:30                    Right.

Sarina:                                 32:30                    Yeah. And I will acknowledge that some of my best books have the best dark moments for sure.

Speaker 4:                          32:42                    So, even though I sort of fight it the way that you're describing, it's totally worthwhile to continue prodding yourself mercilessly...

KJ:                                        32:53                    Until you find that really dark moment. Yeah.

Sarina:                                 32:56                    Right. And I will say that, you know how I like to fill up the extra spots in my sticker calendar with quotes? I had one in September that I wrote down because I think it's true with a but at the end. So it's an E.L. Doctorow quote like this, '"Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

KJ:                                        33:24                    But.

Sarina:                                 33:25                    But, I acknowledge that the wisdom here (and he's right), but I have written a lot of novels just looking at the headlights and I'm squinty and tired. And I have really given myself the task of making 2020 the year of the outline because when I have recently had better outlines, I just feel better about my life.

KJ:                                        33:50                    Well, and to kind of stretch poor E.L. Doctorow's metaphor out, you do need to know where you're going. I mean, yeah, it's like driving at night, but it's best to drive at night with the idea that you're going to get to Concord, as opposed to the thought that you're just going to go out and drive at night. So we're just trying to find a few points on the map here because goodness knows that I am perpetually lost.

Sarina:                                 34:22                    The last time we drove at night we almost killed a bunny.

KJ:                                        34:30                    Yeah. So you want to be careful with that stuff. It's dangerous, that's what I'm saying. Alright, well I think this is our way of saying let's all figure out what our own NaWhateverWriMo is, what's yours going to be Sarina? What's your goal for set for November? I know you've got one.

Speaker 4:                          34:49                    Yeah. So my issue with actually ever doing NaNoWriMo is that I can't give wholly one month to one project reliably. So I'll be putting the finishing touches on one thing, and then getting back to some other things, so it's going to be a mixed bag. But I'm going to finish up a novel called Heartland in my True North series. And that is my big goal for the next five weeks for sure.

KJ:                                        35:16                    Yeah, that's mine basically too. Except I think I should probably not call my novel Heartland cause that would just be weird. So I'm trying to finish up the novel that I am working on, which has lots, and lots, and lots of bits written but definitely needs a full....If I can get it done by the end of November, I better get it done by the end of November. It's exactly the kind of goal I'm talking about. It's a push. It's a stretch. But, I can do it. So that's going to be fun. And I probably do need 50,000 words, although we all know that my problem is more words, too many words, not too few words. In fact, today's goal was: 'Write the thousand words and then delete enough words to get the chapter I was working on back below 3000 words.' Cause that's my new rule, no chapters over 3000 words. So it was like, 'Yes to a thousand words. No, we're just going to delete, but it all counted.' We've given Jess her task.

Jess:                                     36:22                    Yeah. Well, and it's going to be really weird jumping back into that because for awhile there I was on that I'm going to let myself pull a Diana Gabaldon, which apparently she does not always write in a linear fashion. She'll just write whatever strikes her when she picks up in the morning and then she'll have these random scenes that she then has to string together. So I did that for a while, so I don't even know what's in that file now. It's going to be so weird. It's going to be crazy.

KJ:                                        36:53                    Alright. Well, anybody read anything worthy of note?

Jess:                                     37:02                    Well, my thing though is (I'm going to do something really obnoxious and I'm going to apologize ahead of time) but I have these advanced copies of books that have been sitting on the side of my desk and I've been begging for extra time on them, but I've been asked to read them for various reasons. And so I'm taking them with me on vacation next week. And I started two of them. And I'm not only do I have (spoiler here) I have KJ's book and Sarina's next book on my iPad. I get to read those and I am so excited. I was saying, I feel like such a wealthy person going off with these two books on my iPad.

KJ:                                        37:40                    Nobody is going to believe anything you say about either of these books. It's like having our mothers say they're wonderful.

Jess:                                     37:48                    Absolutely not. But I also have three advanced copies by three authors I really like. And one of them is Peggy Orenstein. She wrote this fantastic book called Girls and Sex and her new book Boys and Sex is coming out in January. And I have been skimming through it and I already love it. I have an advanced copy of Madeline Levine's new book. Madeline Levine wrote Price of Privilege and Teach Your Children Well and her new book is called Ready Or Not, and I'm really excited to read that. And then I have another book by Christine Carter who wrote a book called The Sweet Spot. And I know her because we did a talk one time together in California about middle school and her new book is called The New Adolescence: Raising Happy and Successful Teens in an Age of Anxiety and Distraction. And so I have five books to take on vacation with me that I'm excited to read. So this is going to be a big reading week for me. I'm so, so excited. And two of these, like I said, I've already started to dive into and I already like. But I haven't touched your book or Sarina's book, I'm keeping those for vacation.

KJ:                                        38:57                    Well, I read one book. I don't have a stack, I only have one, but I really liked it. I finished The Lager Queen of Minnesota. Sarina, I bought this at Print when we were in Portland. Remember I was sort of wandering around with this stack of books and I was like, 'Yeah, I don't want any of these.' And then all of a sudden I was like, 'But I'm going to go back for that one. I've been eyeing that one.' The author is J. Ryan Stradal and I loved this book. It's really good. It's got a lot of different points of view and Oh, when we were talking about enneagram and I was like, 'Oh, there's this character in it that's a total, I think it was six, but I don't remember.' Anyway, lots of different points of view. A really good story, people that you really want to hear more from. Some of them you don't get to hear more from, because it's got all these points of view, but it comes full circle in this really cool, unexpected, yet satisfying way. And we all know that's exactly what you want. So this is definitely a recommend for me. It's also a lovely cross between literary and commercial. It sits right on that line that I like, which is smart, but commercial, I don't know where people have mentally filed it, but I enjoyed it. I also wanted to throw out there that I bought a book by Jojo Moyes (who is great, like you know Me Before You, and all that) so I bought a book that I was like, 'This looks different, and it feels different, and I bet this is one of her really early books.' And it was, it's The Peacock Emporium or something like that. And when I finally managed to look at the pub date, cause I just didn't when I bought it, it's 2004. And I don't think I'm going to be able to finish it because there's a really long windup before the pitch is all I'm saying. I'm like a quarter of the way through the book and I don't think these are even the main characters yet. But you can kind of see where she's going. And it's fun to read an earlier book by somebody who has gotten so good at it.

Jess:                                     41:22                    This was a conversation I had with my kids last night. My son was listening to some music and he said, 'Oh my gosh, I've been listening to the same musician for the longest time and I can just see the trajectory.' And I said, 'That's what's really fun for me when I find an author I like, and then going back and reading some of their early works.' Or following someone like David Sedaris and seeing the bridge between some of his early stuff and then what we both agreed was his best book, which is Calypso (his most recent one). I love seeing that progress. It's really cool.

KJ:                                        41:54                    Yeah, it's fun and it's just encouraging because I definitely feel like I'm growing from book to book and I know you guys do, too. So it's nice to see it. It's nice to see it out in the wild.

Jess:                                     42:06                    Since you mentioned it, I want to make sure we give a proper shout out to Print. Those of you who have been listening for a long time might remember we were there once. We recorded our interview with Richard Russo at Print. It was not the quietest background ever, but it is a fantastic bookstore. And the reason we were there interviewing is that Richard Russo's daughter is the owner of Print Bookstore and it is a beautiful, wonderful, bookstore that I adore in Portland.

KJ:                                        42:38                    So let's call that the Fave Indie Bookstore for the week. Alright, that's our week.

Jess:                                     42:55                    We have a game plan, people. We have a game plan for November.

KJ:                                        43:01                    Said it at the beginning of the episode, saying it again now. Head over to amwritingpodcast.com, sign up to get our emails. We also do supporter emails every week, top five for writers. There's one, I think it actually already rolled out, that's top five reasons to do your own NaNoWriMo, which has got some of what we talked in this episode and a bunch of other stuff cause I just wrote it. Yeah, so head over, sign up for that. You'll get emails whenever we drop an episode. You have the option of getting the top fives, which are fantastic. Some great stuff coming up. And that is it. And of course, as always, if you're having fun with us, review us, help other people to find us. We love that. We want to talk to as many of our fellow writers as we possibly can.

Jess:                                     43:52                    And until next week, everyone, keep your button, the chair and your head in the game. This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid.

Whenever I see a writer on social media incessantly talking about their own work, their own book, and their own launch, the thing that comes to mind is this: “They’re not being a good literary citizen.” Being a good literary citizen is, among other things, showing up for the community you are a part of, uplifting other writers, and doing what you can to make sure that all voices are heard. We often think that the time to help others is after you’ve made it, but in this episode I’m talking to a writer who is doing this in a big way before she herself has made it into the spotlight. For years she has volunteered at the Thrillerfest conference – and this year, she was asked to become a paid co-director of the event. I think you’ll find her story inspiring.

Links from the Pod:

Thrillerfest

Samantha Skal, Book Coach

Tessa Wegert’s Shana Merchant series starts with Death in the Family

During the pandemic, there was an explosion of people who wanted to write memoir, and many of those writers are now struggling to make sense of their drafts and figure out how to approach the marketplace. It's a great time to be a book coach who specializes in memoir, and in March 2024, Author Accelerator is launching a certification course to give memoir coaches the skills, tools, and experience to meet writers where they are.Our year-long program is robust and intense. I'm inviting any listeners of this show who are interested in our coaching program to sign up for a one-on-one session with me to strategize about whether or not this course is right for you. Just go to bookcoaches.com/amwriting to sign up for a time that works for you.

Deciding what to leave in and what to take out is something every writer has to face; from the moment they start conceiving of an idea to the moment when it goes to press. What strategy do you bring to those decisions?

In this episode, I (Jennie Nash) chat with book coach and author Suzette Mullen about the scenes she left out of her forthcoming memoir, The Only Way Through is Out.

She has an ebook you can download and read along with five cut scenes, plus see her reasons for cutting them. You can find it at: https://www.yourstoryfinder.com/behindthescenes

Links from the Pod:

Suzette’s website

Books we mention on this episode include:

Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, Jessica Brody

Blueprint for a Memoir: How to Write a Memoir for the Marketplace, Jennie Nash

You've heard us talk about Author Accelerator's book coach training program, and now they're offering a unique chance to peek inside a successful book coaching business and see what it really looks like. Grab the FREE 52-page mini magazine, From Lost Lawyer and Empty Nest Mom to Thriving Author and Book Coach -- How I Built My Book Coaching Business, HERE. You don't even have to hand over your email! You can read about book coach Suzette Mullen's journey as a writer, a book coach, and a human -- and on February 6 at 9am PST / 12 EST, you can join Author Accelerator CEO Jennie Nash and Suzette for a conversation about Suzette's journey. The sign-up for the February event is on the same page where you download the magazine.

The #AmWriting team is so excited to present this interview with Dr. Barb Mayes Boustead – because it’s an #AmWriting success story!

Barb was the random winner of The Summer Blueprint Challenge we ran in the summer of 2022. She won a Blueprint review with Jennie Nash – and the book proposal that came out of that work recently landed Barb a book deal. (Want a chance at something like that for yourself? Keep reading—we’re hosting a new Blueprint Sprint!)

Her book, WILDER WEATHER: What Laura Ingalls Wilder Can Teach Us About Watching the Weather, Understanding Our Climate, and Protecting What We Cherish, will be published by the South Dakota Historical Society Press in 2025 — a perfect match of topic and publisher, as you will hear in this episode.

We are offering this challenge again this summer — and this same prize. Anyone who finishes the Blueprint this summer is eligible to enter the drawing to win a Blueprint review. You can read all about the Blueprint challenge HERE — and you can join us at anytime this summer. We’d love to have you for the podcasts (there are ten in the series), the AMAs, and the write-alongs! Any paid subscriber is welcome.

To learn more about Dr. Barb Mayes Boustead’s work, check out her Substack here:

You can also visit her author website and find her on Instagram at @windbarb

You can download a draft of her book proposal HERE.

The Laura Ingalls Wilder conference she mentions in the show is Laurapalooza

The Blueprint Barb did is from Jennie Nash’s Blueprint for a Nonfiction Book: Plan and Pitch Your Big Idea

Are you a “sticker”?

Regular listeners know that whenever we meet our writing goals around here, we text each other one word: STICKER. (and then we add a cute sticker to our calendar, because we’re fun like that).

We call supporters of the #AmWriting podcast “stickers” too—and while our regular podcasts and shownotes go out to all of our listeners, we have created a few things just for stickers. First, there’s the Summer Blueprint for a Book Sprint—10 weeks dedicated to working with coaches and a community to figure out how to turn your next idea—or your struggling draft—into the book you want to write. You can join it anytime (the how-to is below).

Stickers can also submit the first page of their WIP to the Booklab First Pages podcast, where we might choose it to discuss, review and offer ideas for persuading agents, editors and readers that they want to turn that page and see what happens next. (Find the link to submit a first page HERE.)

I’m a sticker! Give it all to me now.

To join the Blueprint for a Book Summer Sprint, you must be a paid subscriber. Then, opt-in and set up your podcast feed. Don’t worry, it’s simple! Click here to go to your #AmWriting account, and when you see this screen, do two things:

* Toggle “Blueprint for a Book” from “off” (grey) to “on” (green).

* Click “set up podcast” next to Blueprint for a Book and follow the easy instructions.

Once you set those things up, you’ll get all the future Blueprint emails and podcasts (and if you’re joining the party a bit late, just head to our website and click on Blueprint for a Book in the top menu).

I think of myself an analytical person. Fine, a cynical one. So when my friends began talking about manifesting as a way to improve one's writing career, I struggled to wrap my head around it. Even if I was privately fascinated. 

First, let’s define our terms.

Manifesting, in this context, refers to the practice of thinking aspirational thoughts with the intention of encouraging them to become reality. It's based on the belief that our thoughts, energy, and focus can directly influence the physical world and attract specific outcomes or experiences. This concept often aligns with the Law of Attraction (See: Atkinson, Wattles, Byrne, etc), which suggests that positive thoughts bring positive results and negative thoughts bring negative ones.

In other words, by visualizing our desires, affirming them through positive statements, and believing in their eventual realization, we can 'manifest' these desires into our lives. It's not just wishing; proponents argue it's about aligning ourselves mentally and emotionally with the desired outcome, thereby making ourselves open and prepared for the opportunities and resources needed to achieve success.

Appealing, right?

I thought so, too. Who doesn’t want to write a letter to the Universe, name her desires, and watch them come true? 

But first I had to overthink it. I was raised to believe that hard work was the secret sauce, and if I haven’t achieved my goals then I probably haven’t been working hard enough, or writing well enough. Right?

Besides—if happy thoughts can bring success directly to my doorstep—like fruit flies to an overripe banana—does this mean that failure is always my fault, too? If I tell the universe I deserve to hit the New York Times bestsellers list in 2024, and then the universe doesn’t deliver this shiny bauble… does that imply that I’ve failed myself with my own negativity?

Furthermore, if that’s true, then isn’t manifesting the ultimate in privileged thinking? Some of us face hardcore challenges that make getting through the day awfully difficult. It feels disingenuous to those who are struggling to assume that any obstacle can be cleared by positive energy.

My inner critic pounced, and my exploration of manifesting almost ended there. Almost. But then I had one more uncomfortable thought, and came to realize that this part of the struggle is actually the whole point, because it gets to the heart of writers’ fears. 

After all, show me a writer who has never wondered whether writing is not the most self-centered job in the world. Show me a writer who believes that writing is always the most valuable and useful thing she can do with her time. That’s just not how writers are made. Self-criticism is actually crucial to the work. You can’t edit your work if you’re not willing to second guess your own decisions. In fact, balancing the impulse to create with the impulse to delete is, psychologically , the guts of this job.

Furthermore, when I sit down at my keyboard every day, it’s with the understanding that making up stories for a living is already a privilege. Previous success doesn’t exempt me from the knowledge that writing always serves the writer first, before it ever serves the reader. The act of composing a story (or a screenplay or a poem or an essay) is always self-indulgent before it gets the chance to be an indulgence for someone else. 

I struggle with this. Not daily, perhaps. But often enough to make asking the universe for more success into a fraught endeavor. Does the universe really care if I hit the USA Today bestseller list for a twenty-fifth time? 

And yet…

Here I sit at the keyboard, giving my precious time and attention to this career, whether the universe cares or not. So don’t I owe it to myself to do the best job I possibly can? If there’s anything more self-indulgent than a career in authorship, it’s squandering that career in authorship. 

Next, I invite you to consider the conditions under which great writing gets done. Do we do our best work when we’re A) sitting here convinced that nobody cares, and nobody will ever read our work or when B) we bathe in the warmth of great possibility, open to the joy of discovery and ideation? 

Yeah, it’s that second one, isn’t it? 

It turns out, for me anyway, that manifesting and writing have a whole lot in common. They both share the Rumpelstiltskin-like quality of making something out of nothing. They both require unwavering belief in the possibilities, whether the current reality reflects a blank page, or an empty checking account. 

In other words, even if I’m not quite ready to believe that a few hours’ work on a vision board will cause money to cling to me with the static electricity of socks right out of the dryer, a writer already understands that ideas prefer an open mind and a receptive heart. I also know that ideas are critical for excellent and prolific writing. And excellent and prolific writing is a crucial step toward earning royalties. 

It is, in short, a positive feedback loop that I already understand on a gut level. 

Meanwhile, as I toil at my desk, there are over a hundred spots on the New York Times bestsellers list every week. Someone has got to fill them. There’s almost no point to working fifty hours a week as an author unless I believe that one of those slots can be mine. 

Ergo, the only way of catching one of them in my greedy little hand is to manifest that reality out of blank pages and sunshine and the unwavering belief that I’m allowed to ask the universe for all the marbles. A halfway dream is a waste of time and notebook paper.

Dear Universe, let’s call it like it is. My life is already an exercise in literary optimism. I can acknowledge the privilege of this job while still reaching for that next tier. I can open my vulnerable soul wide enough to speak my most ambitious desires out loud. I can let those yearnings see the light of day in much the same way that I give fictional people their own hopes and dreams. It’s not even as hard as I feared. 

Yours in gratitude,

—Sarina.

P.S. Universe: if you could also deliver me a first class plot twist for this proposal I’m writing, I’m all ears.  

You've heard us talk about Author Accelerator's book coach training program, and now they're offering a unique chance to peek inside a successful book coaching business and see what it really looks like. Grab the FREE 52-page mini magazine, From Lost Lawyer and Empty Nest Mom to Thriving Author and Book Coach -- How I Built My Book Coaching Business, HERE. You don't even have to hand over your email! You can read about book coach Suzette Mullen's journey as a writer, a book coach, and a human -- and on February 6 at 9am PST / 12 EST, you can join Author Accelerator CEO Jennie Nash and Suzette for a conversation about Suzette's journey. The sign-up for the February event is on the same page where you download the magazine.

Jess here. We have talked about the lure of shiny objects, those glowing opportunities on the horizon that may (or may not) be worth the potential downsides. We have all fallen victim to the hypnotic glare and some of us have even been blinded and temporarily lost our way. So how do you decide whether a job offer is a shiny object, a worthy endeavor, or both? How do you decide if it’s the right time, right boss, right idea, right direction? And once you have done that, what else do you have to be aware of before you sign on the dotted line?

Well, it so happens I’ve been weighing all of these factors over the past month, and I wanted to share my thought process with you in case it’s helpful.

Mentioned in the Podcast:

The Author’s Guild

American Society of Journalists and Authors

PS: Find Special Care Instructions here

You've heard us talk about Author Accelerator's book coach training program, and now they're offering a unique chance to peek inside a successful book coaching business and see what it really looks like. Grab the FREE 52-page mini magazine, From Lost Lawyer and Empty Nest Mom to Thriving Author and Book Coach -- How I Built My Book Coaching Business, HERE. You don't even have to hand over your email! You can read about book coach Suzette Mullen's journey as a writer, a book coach, and a human -- and on February 6 at 9am PST / 12 EST, you can join Author Accelerator CEO Jennie Nash and Suzette for a conversation about Suzette's journey. The sign-up for the February event is on the same page where you download the magazine.

Wanna start—or fix—your email/Substack? We GOT YOU. Dan Blank is, truly, THE GUY when it comes to helping writers identify our audience, find ways to reach them and also feel great about the process. Before you do anything else, go subscribe to his Substack. I’ll wait.

Ok, those Substack links are BIG. But brace yourself, there’s more of them. In this episode, which you must go listen to, Dan, Jennie and KJ talk about the three ways to approach a Substack, why you should have an email list no matter what, finding your role (inspiring, entertaining, teaching) and—most importantly—not heading out there with something that’s half baked.

Our message today is: BAKE THE THING.

What do you believe above all? What do you want to explore? What do you want to share? Who do you want to come hang? Answer those questions, and Substack—some version of it, which may or may not involve $$ and trust me we get into that—is YOURS.

Today instead of books, we have Substack follow recommendations! (and you DO NOT have to use Substack to get these emails. If you don’t, they’re just emails. Subscribe!)

KJ’s REC’s

Free and gonna stay that way:

Welcomes $$, plenty that is free and lovely

Worth every $$

Jennie’s RECS

Dan’s RECS

During the pandemic, there was an explosion of people who wanted to write memoir, and many of those writers are now struggling to make sense of their drafts and figure out how to approach the marketplace. It's a great time to be a book coach who specializes in memoir, and in March 2024, Author Accelerator is launching a certification course to give memoir coaches the skills, tools, and experience to meet writers where they are.Our year-long program is robust and intense. I'm inviting any listeners of this show who are interested in our coaching program to sign up for a one-on-one session with me to strategize about whether or not this course is right for you. Just go to bookcoaches.com/amwriting to sign up for a time that works for you.

“It doesn’t have to be good, it just has to happen” - Seth Godin, The Practice

“F*ck it, I feel like sh*t” - Jess Lahey

Hi everyone! Jess here. We actually managed to get Sarina, Jennie, KJ and Jess together for an episode even though Jess and KJ have been under the weather. All December and January, the group text thread has been moaning and groaning about feeling awful and needing to work but feeling awful. So what do you do when you are not at your physical or mental peak and working becomes more difficult? Do you push on through and grind it out? Sometimes. Do you close the computer and recline in your bed with your hot tea and tissues? Sometimes.

Here are our thoughts on working when under the weather.

#AmReading

Jennie

* Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb documentary

* Avid Reader: A Life by Robert Gottlieb

Jess

* Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me by Ada Calhoun

* Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis by Ada Calhoun

While we have your attention, we’d love our listeners and readers to help out the Institute for Independent Journalists Foundation in their work, “…to track the demographics of the nearly 3,000 journalists laid off in 2023, and to understand the implications for our field” by taking this census. From the IIJF:

The project aims to take a census of the journalists laid off or bought out in the last year-plus, uncover any trends, and assess the impact on newsroom demographics headed into a pivotal election year. Results will be published in Nieman Reports and shared through IIJ Foundation channels, including conference presentations and webinars. We’re aiming to collect data through mid-February and release results in March.

As you know, the IIJ is a one-year old organization whose mission is the financial and emotional sustainability of freelance journalists of color, entirely led by BIPOC women. The IIJ Foundation is our nonprofit arm.

You've heard us talk about Author Accelerator's book coach training program, and now they're offering a unique chance to peek inside a successful book coaching business and see what it really looks like. Grab the FREE 52-page mini magazine, From Lost Lawyer and Empty Nest Mom to Thriving Author and Book Coach -- How I Built My Book Coaching Business, HERE. You don't even have to hand over your email! You can read about book coach Suzette Mullen's journey as a writer, a book coach, and a human -- and on February 6 at 9am PST / 12 EST, you can join Author Accelerator CEO Jennie Nash and Suzette for a conversation about Suzette's journey. The sign-up for the February event is on the same page where you download the magazine.

Writers need a page, a profile and a whole lot of patience and persistence to even feel like we’re close to getting Facebook “right.”

The question first appeared, as these things do, in the #AmWriting Facebook group. A book is coming! I’m on Facebook (obviously), but do I need an author page in addition to my profile? Why—and what should I do with one once I’ve got one?

Our answer is yes, but of course it doesn’t stop there. In this episode, we talk the ins and outs of Facebook for writers of all kinds, with a primer on the basics and then a few ninja-level tips from Sarina.

Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, a preview of the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, November 4, 2019: Top 5 Things You Don’t Need to Be a “Real” Writer. We’d love your support, and we hope you’ll love our Top 5s. Join in for actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month.

As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode.

To support the podcast and help it stay free, subscribe to our weekly #WritersTopFive email.

LINKS FROM THE PODCAST

The #AmWriting Facebook Group

Grown and Flown on Facebook

Ron Lieber’s Author Facebook Page

Sarina’s Facebook Page

Sarendipity (Sarina’s Facebook Fan Group)

Jess’s Facebook Page

KJ’s Facebook Page, which she didn’t even remember existed but will now tend as directed by Sarina.

ManyChat

#AmReading (Watching, Listening)

Jess: Home, Run Away, Harlan Coben (also mentioned, Tell No One)

KJ: Kitchens of the Great Midwest, J. Ryan Stradal

Sarina: Ninth House, Leigh Bardugo

#FaveIndieBookstore

Gibson’s, Concord NH

This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.

Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.

If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.

The image in our podcast illustration is by NeONBRAND on Unsplash.

Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)

KJ:                                        00:01                    Hello listeners, KJ here. If you’re in with us every week, you’re what I like to call “people of the book.’ And some of us book people discover somewhere along the way that not only we writers, we’re people with a gift for encouraging other writers. For some of us, that comes out in small ways, but for others it’s a calling and an opportunity to build a career doing work you love. Our sponsor, Author Accelerator, provides book coaching to authors (like me) but also needs and trains book coaches. If that’s got your ears perked up, head to https://www.authoraccelerator.com and click on “become a book coach.” Is it recording?

Jess:                                     00:02                    Now it's recording, go ahead.

KJ:                                        00:45                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.

Jess:                                     00:45                    Alright, let's start over.

KJ:                                        00:45                    Awkward pause, I'm going to rustle some papers.

Jess:                                     00:45                    Okay.

KJ:                                        00:54                    Now one, two, three. Hey all, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is your podcast, your weekly podcast, our podcast, about writing all the things. Fiction, nonfiction, pitches, proposals, essays you know what? All the things, except poetry. None of us do that. But we did have a poet on once. I dunno, I just was thinking that the other day like, wait a minute, it's not quite all the things. Alright, back to the regularly scheduled introduction. #AmWriting is the podcast about sitting down and getting your work, whatever it is, done.

Jess:                                     01:40                    KJ, before I introduce myself, speaking of the intro changing up, we got an email this week from someone who said, 'Wait, you changed the pattern at the beginning of the episode and I don't know what to do with that.' It was very, very funny.

KJ:                                        01:54                    I love that people go back and listen to all the episodes. It brings me incredible joy.

Jess:                                     01:58                    Yes, it does. I am Jess Lahey, I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and a forthcoming book about preventing substance abuse in kids. And I write at various places including the New York Times, Washington Post and the Atlantic.

Sarina:                                 02:13                    And I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of 30 plus contemporary romance novels. And you can find more of me at sarinabowen.com.

KJ:                                        02:22                    And I am KJ Dell'Antonia, a novelist and also the author of the nonfiction book How to Be a Happier Parent, first novel will be out next summer, more to come I hope. You'll sometimes still find my work at the New York Times and in a variety of other places. So that's it, that's who we are. We know some things and today our plan is to talk about what we know about Facebook. But before we do, I just want to thank everyone who has gone in and subscribed to our weekly emails that come out every week about the podcast. That is a new thing that we're doing and I love that people are finding it useful. Every week we send you little something about what the episode is, all the links, and a way to see a transcript, which is pretty cool. And also huge shout out and thanks to those of you who have signed up to support the podcast and get our weekly top fives for writers. It's huge, we feel so grateful and excited that you guys want to support us, and want to be a part of it, and want to get our top fives, which we're having a great time doing. So you know, thanks to everyone for that. And if you're looking to do either of those things, head over to amwritingpodcast.com and you'll find all the links there.

Jess:                                     03:42                    Alright, let's do it. You said our topic is Facebook. What do you mean about this Facebook thing?

KJ:                                        03:54                    Well, it's a great place to put up pictures of your kids and offend all your relatives on your political views. But as a writer, people have questions like, 'Should you have an author page and a personal page? Should you do everything from your personal page? How has this evolved over the years? And I have wrestled with it. Sarina has come to some pretty good terms with it and I'll just also throw out there that back in 2013 when I started with the Times, they actually said to me, 'We do not want to create a Facebook page for the Motherlode blog, which doesn't exist anymore anyway. So just use your own. It was one of the best gifts that they gave me. I don't think it was actually the right choice for them, but well, and here and today I'm sitting here with no author page, but the AmWriting page and everything I do professionally ends up on my personal page and I'm not sure that's where I should be.

Jess:                                     05:01                    I'm a mess. Sarina, you go cause you've got a whole thing. You use it beautifully.

Sarina:                                 05:07                    Well, thank you. But we have to talk about vocabulary for a second. Because people have a profile, not a page. And we just want to be careful to use that vocabulary correctly because if listeners go and try to untangle our suggestions, they might run into a little trouble. So every person, like the way that we would define a person has the right under the Facebook terms of service, to have one profile. So, if you use a pseudonym for your writing, you may find yourself in the awkward position of trying to fake it to Facebook that you can have two profiles. And yeah, so that's a good time. But the profile is the main way that most people look at Facebook, you login with your profile. Now a page, you can have as many pages as you want. A page is meant to be representing something that's not a person. Like a brand or a business or it can be a person, like a personality. So I have a profile under Sarina White Bowen, it's three words. And then I have a Sarina Bowen page. And pages and profiles have different things that they can do, they're not identical in their functionality. And that's why we get into these tricky discussions because the way that pages and profiles behave is not identical and that's where some of the weird fun comes in.

Jess:                                     06:54                    Well and honestly that's where most of my apathy/confusion lies. Mainly because for me, my profile, Jessica Lahey. Actually, I think my profile is Jessica Potts Lahey because my maiden name is Potts. So that's my personal profile, the thing I originally signed up for Facebook with. That has long since gone out the window as a private, personal thing. Like I get 30 friend requests a day and I accept some and don't. But most of them are people I don't even know. I've just long since given up the ghost on that. But it is how I keep in touch with childhood friends and high school acquaintances and things like that. Then I also have a page as Jessica Lahey and that was something my publisher wanted and it was important to them. But see, here's the problem - if you're accepting any old person out there to your profile, and I'm posting things to my page and to my profile and honestly, there's a lot of overlap between the two. I wish I'd been more strategic about this from the beginning. And I somehow had a profile that was really just personal stuff and then shuttled everyone else over to my page, like put up kind of some kind of like, 'No, I will not friend you, but here's my page.' I wish I'd been more strategic about that, but I didn't and so now I have a mess. I have, two things, neither of which is personal, and both kind of get duplicate posts.

Sarina:                                 08:28                    Well, I could make you feel better by telling you that we're all in the same mess, honestly. Because Facebook has treated the two things differently over time. So, it used to be that in the glory days of 2010 you could make a page and even if you'd gotten this right from the very first day...

Jess:                                     08:53                    If I could have seen the future...

Sarina:                                 08:55                    Well, that's the thing. You would have still not been able to do it exactly right because the behavior that would have been optimized at the time would have changed. So back in the glory days, you could've made that page that you were just talking about and kept your profile private and you could have posted the things you were writing and thinking about it on this page and people would see it and they would interact with you and your page would grow, and grow, and grow. And you might have like 30,000 followers. However, Facebook has very much become a pay to play platform and now they would want you to pay every time you put up a post on your page that you wanted more than say 5% of your followers to see. So the fact that when you share meaningful things on your profile, at least there's some chance that the people who are connected to you will see it. So it's not entirely clear to me that you wouldn't be a very sad owner of a highly followed page by this point. But everybody who relies upon Facebook to push content into the world has been increasingly unhappy with their results because it's not just that Facebook wants your money (and they absolutely do want it), but also just the number of pages in the world grew at such an exponential rate that they can't actually show everybody all the stuff that they're following anymore. Like if you liked your dentist's office in 2013, then you know, the odds of you actually seeing a post from the dentist are really bad. Like the pages who you might actually see are the people who have been out there working it so hard since the very beginning, with a nice pace of content release, and a good interaction that...it's very few pages that are still getting that kind of play. You mentioned that you get a lot of friend requests. Facebook actually caps the number of friends you can have at 5,000.

Jess:                                     11:05                    Early on I think it was like 2000 or something. But yeah, it's definitely 5,000. I'm getting close and that worries me. Because what if someone I really want to follow, that's why I don't accept all of them or even real people...

KJ:                                        11:19                    People don't know you didn't accept them. And probably most of their goals is just to follow you, which is what happens if someone puts in a friend request and you say no, they end up following you.

Jess:                                     11:32                    That's right. Yeah, I forgot about that.

KJ:                                        11:35                    At least you've got that going for you.

Sarina:                                 11:36                    So, another factor is that now Messenger is tied in with the people you're friends with on Facebook. So I have stopped accepting friend requests completely, unless of course I met the person.

KJ:                                        11:51                    Unless it's your friend.

Sarina:                                 11:53                    Or, but I got some friend requests after that retreat we went to in Maine and I accepted those. But I don't accept random requests anymore because I've discovered it's just a way for readers to bug me. Like when is such and such a thing coming out and you know, there just aren't enough hours in the day for me to do a good job answering those messages.

Jess:                                     12:16                    Actually, I'm so glad you said that because that has been a source of anxiety and frustration for me in that the number of direct messages I'm getting via various apps has gone through the roof and it's a lot of people asking very personal questions about their own children. I got one the other day and she sent me this long, long, long message about what she's going through with her child. And she wrote the word please and she sent a picture of herself with her child.

KJ:                                        12:48                    I wish you could auto reply from Messenger. Because if you had that that said, 'I'm sorry, I can't...' I suppose you could just type one. Okay, we're going to get back to how everyone should use Facebook in a second, but just to solve this particular problem with which I am somewhat familiar, type something up, and imagine yourself as your assistant. 'I'm sorry, Mrs. Lahey can't respond to all.' And you know you're gonna feel like a jerk, but Mrs. Lahey can't respond personally to everyone and that leaves you the freedom to do it. To take a step back, we have people on our Facebook group page, which is a whole other thing, and is a great tool for various kinds of authors, particularly I think in nonfiction. Someone was saying, 'Here I am and my first book is coming out and should I create an author page?' And there are reasons to say yes to that, I think.

Sarina:                                 14:07                    Yes, there are. One of the reasons you might need an author page is if you want to advertise something, you can't advertise from a profile, you have to advertise from a page. So, the main reason that the Sarina Bowen author page continues to grow a following is because of paid advertising. And when you use paid advertising you collect likes sort of by accident. So you should never run the kind of ad that just gets likes because that's pointless. But if you have something to advertise like 'Look, this is my new book. Here is the link at Apple books.' Then that is something I advertise and the page does grow its following that way. So I would say that if you have even a 20% chance of ever wanting to advertise something, you should set up that author page. But then you should not obsess about how many followers it has. You should post only often enough so that it looks like the lights are on. And you don't need to worry about it. It needs to be set up so that there's somewhere people can find this kind of information, like the link to join your newsletter, and the link for your own personal webpage. So you need to be listed there because a lot of people will use Facebook as like a global directory. So you need to be find-able, but you do not need to obsess about how many people are following you there. So you can really put it as one of those things on your Sunday promo calendar where you're like, 'Oh, time to stop by the neighborhood of my Facebook page and maybe update something. You know, a book I'm reading or an article I put out this week.'

Jess:                                     16:05                    I use it for my speaking calendar, too. Like you know, 'Oh I'm going to be in the next week or month or whatever I'm going to be in so-and-so.' One thing I would like to add is that so early on in my promotion plan for Gift of Failure, my publisher very much wanted me to have a Facebook page because one of the things they did during my pub week was that I added my publisher as an administrator to my Facebook page and they posted a couple of ads. So that was wonderful and helpful.

KJ:                                        16:37                    That's really nice. I have not heard of a publisher doing that, which just means I haven't heard of it. I advertised my book personally a couple of times. But I actually did it from the #AmWriting page, I think, because we have a page and I don't remember if I have a page.

Jess:                                     17:00                    I think they did two or three ads just during pub week itself. And that was nice. They wanted to know as part of my original, the fact that I had one was what interested them. So I don't think they actually care that much about my followers. Who knows. Anyway, I want to make sure that was in there.

KJ:                                        17:22                    When you pay to place a Facebook ad from your page, that has nothing to do with how many followers your page has. It goes to that subset of people that you hopefully carefully create within the Facebook ad maker.

Sarina:                                 17:40                    That's right. The ad engine is a vast thing. There are entire podcasts about the Facebook ad engine. So, we won't cover that today but it does give you access to basically everyone on Facebook and Instagram.

Jess:                                     17:58                    And you can target very carefully and all that sort of thing?

Sarina:                                 18:00                    Yes, sort of carefully. But yes.

Jess:                                     18:03                    Okay. Anything else here?

Sarina:                                 18:06                    I do have a page and I do have a group, cause you mentioned groups, and groups are lovely and for a couple of reasons. One is that they gel with what Mark Zuckerberg claims to be his new idea for what Facebook should be, which is groups of like-minded people talking to each other. So I actually have a fan group on Facebook.

Jess:                                     18:41                    I belong and I love it. I love your fan group and it is so much fun to go in there and look at what's being posted. I love your fan group.

Sarina:                                 18:51                    It's called Sarendipity and I'm deeply uncomfortable with the idea of having a fandom. I don't like to use the word fan, I'm not saying that I don't use it, but I don't really want to be that person. It's kind of like there's always a party that I'm hosting and I have to show up, you know. But what happens is that people tend to go there to talk about things that come up in my books and it really takes the pressure off of me. So in May, I had this book where one of the characters, who was known as lobster shorts, that was his avatar on an app. And one of the central conceits of the book is that the other person in the book doesn't know that lobster shorts is really his neighbor. So they have this whole conversation and I swear there are still people posting various lobster clothing in my group, you know, five months later I'm still seeing, look at this lobster shirt I found. So that's super fun because then the discussion doesn't have to be about whether or not you liked the book or what I'm having for lunch. It's like a commonality. This thing that we've all found funny and here's a little more of it. So my group is full of posts about apples because of one of my series.

Jess:                                     20:21                    Your group also, I have to say, there was one thread that was posted by one of your fans and it was a question and it was, 'How did you discover Sarina Bowen?' And it was one of the most and incredibly fascinating look at how readers find authors. Some of them were, 'I discovered her through Elle Kennedy, I was an Elle Kennedy reader.' Some were, 'Amazon recommended Sarina because I read X'. It was fascinating and it was a wealth of information about how people stumble upon new authors. I loved reading that thread.

Sarina:                                 20:56                    You're right, that was fascinating. But you also said that I didn't post it. There are lots of authors who do ask that question, who are able to ask questions about themselves without wanting to jump off something high. And, but I can't, it's just not me to do that. There's also other romance authors who posts like Towel Tuesday. And so on Tuesday there'll be some photo of a guy in a towel and the other romance readers are like, 'Ooh, good one.'

KJ:                                        21:23                    I thought it was going to be the author and a towel. That's brave.

Sarina:                                 21:29                    Well now you're really scaring me. That's not me either. And I really struggle with what is my role in that group. And there are so many ways to do it. And if you are a person, as an author, who is comfortable hosting that kind of party all the time, then the group is probably your greatest asset.

KJ:                                        21:54                    Alternatively, if you are a person who, as an author, wants to generally answer those kinds of questions that Jess is getting by Messenger, who has a nonfiction platform, which is self-help or that kind of thing you could create... Yeah. Ron Lieber does it really well, that's what you were going to say.

Jess:                                     22:26                    No, I was going to say Grown and Flown, Lisa Heffernan and Mary Dell Harrington, they do that incredibly well. They use those questions as fodder for posts on their massive, massive group for Grown and Flown.

KJ:                                        22:42                    Right, but they started out as a group and a blog and only later became a book. I guess what I'm saying is if you are Lori Gottlieb, or you, or Ron Lieber, you could use Facebook to start a group in which people discuss the topic of your book. But, I think that there would be a pretty high maintenance requirement there. I mean, at a certain point it would probably become somewhat self sustaining, but for a while I feel like it would be really demanding that you find and put up questions, and respond to things, and keep track. I think that'd be a pretty big time investment, but it might be a worthwhile one.

Jess:                                     23:30                    It would be a big investment.

KJ:                                        23:31                    I'm not suggesting you do it, this is a general. Let me just say, I don't think that's you, you need to write books. But there might be people for whom it would be a great strategy. For example, the author of Quiet, Susan Cain has said, 'I thought about writing another book and then I realized, no, my mission is to keep talking about this one.' She does it in a different forum. But if that's where you are, if your mission for the next few years is to talk about the topic of your nonfiction probably. Then that could be good.

Jess:                                     24:15                    As a speaker, I have to say, reader questions are incredible fodder for either articles, new chapters, blog posts, things to talk about on stage. I have this sort of wealth of stories and many of them came from readers who wrote me, or posted, or messaged, or whatever and said, 'Here's what's going on and here's how I've used the things you wrote about.' So that can be an incredibly valuable thing and if you want to mine that for all it's worth, a little bit of effort could pay off big time.

KJ:                                        24:47                    Right. All right, so we got the basics. You've probably already got your profile. Certainly there's no one in our Facebook group asking questions about how to use Facebook that doesn't already have a profile. You're gonna need a page, but you don't need to do anything more there besides keep the lights on. You could contemplate a group, you need to think about how you use Messenger, and what else? What am I missing in terms of the basics?

Sarina:                                 25:14                    Well, we definitely covered the basics, but I could give you a couple of ninja level things. So my page has an auto-responder that is hosted by a service called ManyChat. So if you go to the Sarina Bowen page and you hit the button there to send a message, you will immediately get a reply from a bot and it says something like, 'Hello. And then insert first name of person. Thank you for reaching out. The best place to find information about upcoming Sarina Bowen books is this link right here.'

Jess:                                     26:09                    Brilliant.

KJ:                                        26:13                    That's for Messenger messages or posts

Sarina:                                 26:17                    Messenger, but it's Messenger to the page, not the profile. So it also says, 'And if you are a man who just wants to chat or show me your photo, you will not like my response.'

KJ:                                        26:35                    Even if you're wearing a towel. Especially if you're wearing a towel.

Jess:                                     26:39                    I do like that when I get messages like that, like gross, disgusting, stuff like that. Often for example, in Instagram it will shield it from your view. And so in order to see whatever picture someone has sent you, you have to actually click on it. And I have decided not to click on a few things that I receive via the messaging part of Instagram.

Sarina:                                 27:05                    Weirdly, the what to blur out trigger is really strange, though. Because I click on them all the time and it's usually like just a photo of a book on a table and it's like my book, you know. So that's one thing that you can hook up. Now, this is the ninja super top secret thing is that also ManyChat, will collect the identities of everyone who ever messages you.

Jess:                                     27:34                    To what end, Sarina? To what end?

Sarina:                                 27:40                    I will tell you. A page can also always message whomever has messaged the page before. So if you run a contest where to enter the contest, you send the page a message, then ManyChat can retain that list of hundreds of people and then randomly messaged them when you decide. So I could right now just blanket message, all the whatever thousand people who've ever messaged my page before with, 'Hey, guess what? I have a new book.'.

Jess:                                     28:16                    Oh my gosh, you're so brilliant.

Sarina:                                 28:17                    I don't actually use it, though. Because I find that people are very confused about whether I'm messaging them personally this way. Like it's not common enough a thing to break down that wall. And I don't actually want people to think that I'm messaging them. So, it's not a useful tool for me, but it does exist. And the other Ninja level thing is about the page itself and how nobody sees them anymore. So I do keep track. My page has either 14 or 17,000 followers. I can't remember right now. And the average post is seen by like 1200 people. So it's less than 10%. But if I didn't do certain things, then it would drop even further because the Facebook algorithm looks carefully at each post to decide if it's going to love you or not. So if you're always posting Amazon links then it hates that. But if you're always posting to your own website, it hates that less. And if you're posting text with no links or pictures at all, it loves that because that seems really genuine to Facebook. Like if you just have a haiku to share or something.

Jess:                                     29:53                    Is that why people started doing that thing where they started posting in the first comment instead of in the post itself?

Sarina:                                 29:59                    The link? Yeah, the link in the comments. Yeah. I'm not sure. I think Facebook caught onto that immediately, though.

KJ:                                        30:05                    So, interesting, completely random side note, Facebook doesn't want you to sell animals anymore. And of course Facebook is actually the largest place to advertise horses. So our barn manager, I just turned her on to go ahead and put a picture, but you put the link or you put the ad in the comments. Because if you put an ad they throw it off and it's got to do with puppy mills and that kind of thing, which I'm totally supportive of. But Facebook killed all the sites upon which people once sold horses and they have not yet been replaced with anything. And it's a problem. But, that does still work to some extent I think. The link in the comments.

Sarina:                                 30:57                    Okay, well this is how I handle it. A page can also have what are called top fans. That is Facebook's word for it. So if you turn this feature on to your page, you might have to have a certain number of followers, I don't know what it is. You turn on the top fan badge and then Facebook will actually track for you who it considers to be your top fans. I believe I have, I don't know, a couple hundred of them. And top fan badges are earned by commenting on things and liking things. So I actually run a giveaway like once a month we pick a random top fan and they get to have a prize of their choosing and the prizes are a signed book shipped anywhere, an item from the Sarina Bowen swag store, or a bad, but flattering poem in your honor.

Jess:                                     31:56                    While we're on the topic and because I have helped you with some of this in the past and I have had to deal with it myself, when you run these sorts of things and you say shipped anywhere, just keep in mind how much it costs to ship to Australia. Just keep it in mind. Just think about it when you do it.

KJ:                                        32:14                    There's a reason people do U.S. only and apologies to those who can't participate, but whoa.

Sarina:                                 32:23                    Yeah, one book to Australia is $22.50 and yesterday I shipped a box to France for $57 50. Ouch., right?

KJ:                                        32:35                    Groups have a similar thing to the top fan, which is the conversation starters.

Jess:                                     32:40                    Yeah, I love that. And there's also like a visual storyteller. We have it in our group and, according to our group, I'm an administrator, but I'm also a visual storyteller because I post a lot of pictures to our group.

KJ:                                        32:53                    Well, no prizes for you. I'm sorry.

Sarina:                                 32:55                    Well, the point of giving prizes to top fans is to give an incentive to comment. If you were to go look at my page right now (and I have no idea what the last thing we posted), but you'll see like 'Can't wait' and just people chiming in and the chiming in tells the Facebook algorithm that that piece of content is valuable or interesting. So Facebook will give it a little more love. I mean there are days when it feels like my entire job is to try to outwit the Facebook algorithm and not everybody needs to think like this or operate like this, but it's quite the rabbit hole.

Jess:                                     33:37                    Well, and we've talked about this in the past, is that certain social media platforms are great for certain things. And for me it's Twitter and for you it's Facebook. And we've talked about this in the past and partially it's a self-perpetuating thing. But when Sarina goes on my webpage (which I let her do from time to time and look at where my traffic's coming from) you know, mine's coming from Twitter and hers overwhelmingly comes from Facebook. So if you know that the genre that you write in is Facebook oriented, then this is really helpful information. For me, I'm trying to figure out how to best use Facebook. And it may be different for nonfiction authors, but I think when you know that that's where your fans are it's worth spending a little bit extra time and effort, as you do, to engage that audience. It's all about decision making.

Sarina:                                 34:27                    And in order to remove some of the emotion from it. So yesterday I got very depressed because I have a book launch coming up and I realized just how much I hate launching. Like it's a kind of a popularity contest that I don't really want to enter. I don't enjoy that week of share me, share me, love me, buy me. So one of the ways that I get around this is that every two months I take note of where the growth in my social media following is happening. So I'll just note the totals of how many followers are on the page, how many people in the group, how many on Instagram, how many on BookBub and how many on my newsletter list. Not because I'm obsessed with the totals, but because I want to know which thing is growing the fastest?

KJ:                                        35:23                    Where should you invest your time?

Sarina:                                 35:25                    Right? Where is the heat? So that I don't obsess about my Facebook page if that's not obsessable this week.

KJ:                                        35:34                    Well, my loose take on what Facebook is good for is nonfiction of the kind that I have written and that Jess writes, parenting stuff, family oriented stuff, self-help style stuff. Basically, probably nonfiction with more of a female audience. I don't know what I mean, Facebook is definitely both genders. Does it skew female? Do we know?

Jess:                                     36:07                    I don't know, but I do know that parenting stuff, at least from my perspective, does incredibly well on Facebook. And then the added bonus is that some of the outfits I write for like the New York Times and the Atlantic and Washington Post have very active Facebook pages. And when they post my stuff to Facebook, holy moly, the shares for those articles go through the roof. And then of course other Facebook pages pick up those articles. And I'm very lucky in that some of my more evergreen content the Atlantic will repost from time to time, thus revitalizing an article I wrote four years ago, which is lovely. Yeah. So from that perspective it's really useful.

KJ:                                        36:47                    Well, I often think of it is Twitter for serious nonfiction, Facebook for lighter nonfiction, Instagram for fiction. But I think that is just a gross, gross oversimplification as evidenced by the fact that Sarina makes a really good use of Facebook. And Facebook's ads for fiction, especially independently published fiction, are kind of I think without parallel. And there's no barrier to entry like there is on Instagram. You can't advertise on Instagram. You can't even link on Instagram. You can't advertise either, can you? Am I right, Sarina?

Sarina:                                 37:23                    You could advertise on Instagram.

KJ:                                        37:25                    Oh you can still advertise, okay. Alright, fine. Well, this is good. Okay.

Jess:                                     37:31                    This is really helpful.

KJ:                                        37:32                    We've laid out some useful basics, given me some ideas. I hope we've given some of the rest of you guys ideas. Oh my gosh. Books.

Jess:                                     37:56                    Yeah, do we want to talk about what we've been reading? I have a new author that I've recently discovered that's fun to read. You know there are certain really popular authors that are sort of are in the periphery of your awareness and yet you never actually listened to them. I finally listened to a Harlan Coben book recently. So I listened to Harlan Coben because a narrator that I really, really enjoy - Steven Weber, he played one half of the duo on the show Wings in the 80s, and he's still out there doing some great stuff. He's an audio book narrator and I happen to love his audio narration voice. You can click not only on authors in a lot of apps, but you can click on the narrator, too. So if you really like a narrator, try other things they've narrated. And that's what I did. And I've been listening to a Harlan Coben book. I listened to one called Home that was kind of interesting, but now I'm listening to one called Run Away (it's two separate words). I think it's his newest one. The opening was so beautifully done - and what's really fun about Harlan Coben is that he's funny without trying to be comic. Like he's just a witty writer and it's really fun in a way that I don't get to read a lot. And so he's highly prolific. There's tons out there. He has series. He has stand alones and so it's nice to have a new author to be able to dip into and learn new things from. So that's Harlan Coben Run Away so far I'm loving it. Home was really, really interesting. I like that one, too.

Sarina:                                 39:32                    Well, Jess, I love Harlan Coben. And there's a lot to learn there, also. One of his novels (my favorite one) was made into a movie in French.

Jess:                                     39:49                    What's the book?

Sarina:                                 39:51                    I'm trying to figure that out right now. Tell No One. It's a wonderful novel.

Jess:                                     39:56                    I actually originally heard about him because Stephen King talks about him a lot. I think they're buds or something or he just really likes his work, but I just never occurred to me to listen to any of his books or read any of his books. But I'm glad I am.

Sarina:                                 40:13                    Yeah. So Tell No One, it's a great read and it's a lovely movie where they've changed in New York to Paris and you know, enjoy. The book I'm reading is Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. It's a wonderful novel that is actually fantasy. I'm probably mis-genre-ing this novel right now. There's magic in it, but I swear this book it's probably going to do great, but it's like written just for me. It takes place in New Haven and on the Yale campus and it supposes that the secret societies are actually each the holder of a special kind of magic. It's hilarious and I have so many questions about - they basically didn't bother changing the names of anything. They just went for it. And I'm fascinated.

KJ:                                        41:17                    I love that. And yeah, there was just something on our Facebook page someone going, 'Should I use a real town? Should I slightly change the town?' And I think that is always an interesting question because we're all sort of asking ourselves, 'Well, do I have permission to use all the names of the secret societies at Yale? Do I need permission? Is there a secret society that will come after me if I failed to ask permission?' Yeah, that's really cool. It sounds like a fun book, too. Oh, mine. So two weeks ago, I think, I shouted out The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J. Ryan Stradal. And I also (because I loved The Lager Queen so much) grabbed his first book, which is Kitchens of the Great Midwest and similarly, it's a lot of fun.

KJ:                                        42:08                    It's smart fiction. It's very, very readable. And this is a fun example of something else we were talking about two weeks ago, which is following an author throughout their career. Now, J. Ryan Stradal (who is a man, at least based on his author picture) only has two books. And Kitchens of the Great Midwest is the first one and The Lager Queen is the second one. And Kitchens of the Great Midwest is good, I really enjoyed it. Lager Queen is better in a lot of technical, and also just sort of reader grabbing kinds of ways, and that is just fun to see. It's fun to watch people evolve, but they're both really fun books.

Jess:                                     42:49                    Cool, excellent.

KJ:                                        42:52                    Bookstore? I know we have a favorite Indie because we talked about it.

Jess:                                     42:52                    Yes, we do. We did. We would like to talk about Gibsons. Gibsons is a bookstore in New Hampshire, in Concord, New Hampshire. And for me, it holds a place in my heart because it was one of the places I first spoke about Gift of Failure to an audience (unfortunately it was pouring rain that night) to an audience of I believe four. Two people who had come for the book talk and one person who was trying to get out of the rain and had no idea what they were doing there and a staff member of the bookstore. So despite that, is a fantastic bookstore. I love it there. They have great curation. I think, Sarina, you talked about really enjoying that bookstore, too.

Sarina:                                 43:37                    I also did an event. For my, the women's fiction novel failure that we don't talk about anymore.

Jess:                                     43:46                    And did you have more than four people?

Sarina:                                 43:47                    I had 12. Well, for debut fiction it wasn't bad at all. It was a lovely, engaged audience. And the staff is so lovely and I've been to other's events there as well and they always just do a fabulous job.

Jess:                                     44:32                    I have to get back to writing. And so until next week, everybody, keep your butts in the chair and your head in the game. This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid.

You KIDS. If you’re not already following Jo Piazza, queen of the highly suspicious influencer side-eye, what even are you DOING on Substack and Instagram? Go follow her now. We’ll wait.

Okay, now listen while we talk about Jo’s many-booked career that includes freelancing, narrative non-fiction, journalistic memoir (the kind where a reporter manages to get paid to interview people to try to help her with her problem), writing novels with co-authors and novels alone. Just LOOK at the list below and tell me you don’t think you’ll get something out of listening to this woman (who has also made multiple podcasts and we’ll list those below too.) Press play now.

BUT BEFORE YOU DO: Pre-order The Sicilian Inheritance and get all things Jo on Substack free forever. You’ll love the book (or if the dual narrative historical feminist fiction is not your vibe I guarantee you’ll find someone who will)—BUT ALSO this is actually a great offer, bc as you can see Jo’s likely to be filling the place with entertaining and informative content for a long time to come. I already have the book and I still pre-ordered because that’s a deal.Jo’s Website: jopiazza.com

Jo’s Books

The Knockoff (with Lucy Sykes)

Fitness Junkie (with Lucy Sykes)

How to Be Married

If Nuns Ruled the World

Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win

We’re Not Like Them (with Christine Pride)

You Were Always Mine (with Christine Pride)

Celebrity, Inc

Love Rehab

AND The Sicilian Inheritance

Jo’s Podcasts

Committed

Under the Influence

She Wants More

Fierce

The Pod Club

Also mentioned

Pam Jenoff

Fiona Davis

The Secret Book of Flora Lea, Patti Callahan Henry

Kristin Harmel

#AmReading (or #AmEnthusing bc you can’t stop Jo once she gets going)

Virginia Sole Smith’s Burnt Toast Substack

Sara Petersen’s In Pursuit of Clean Countertops Substack

Momfluenced, Sara Petersen

Ghost Story (narrative Podcast)

Roy Kent’s standup show

The Women, Kristin Hannah

During the pandemic, there was an explosion of people who wanted to write memoir, and many of those writers are now struggling to make sense of their drafts and figure out how to approach the marketplace. It's a great time to be a book coach who specializes in memoir, and in March 2024, Author Accelerator is launching a certification course to give memoir coaches the skills, tools, and experience to meet writers where they are.Our year-long program is robust and intense. I'm inviting any listeners of this show who are interested in our coaching program to sign up for a one-on-one session with me to strategize about whether or not this course is right for you. Just go to bookcoaches.com/amwriting to sign up for a time that works for you.

Jess here. I love love love coaching calls, and opt to talk rather than trade emails when someone needs a comprehensive education in speaking career building. I met Katie at a recent speaking event and she grabbed my attention on stage right away. She had that…something that speakers need on stage to hold the attention of a large audience.

Katie was generous enough to allow me to record our call so you all can learn along with her! Here’s to flattening learning curves!

Links from the Pod

Katie’s website

Katie’s book, Untold Teaching Truths

Katie at the Accutrain 50 in 50 panel, from my live Thread of the event:

During the pandemic, there was an explosion of people who wanted to write memoir, and many of those writers are now struggling to make sense of their drafts and figure out how to approach the marketplace. It's a great time to be a book coach who specializes in memoir, and in March 2024, Author Accelerator is launching a certification course to give memoir coaches the skills, tools, and experience to meet writers where they are.Our year-long program is robust and intense. I'm inviting any listeners of this show who are interested in our coaching program to sign up for a one-on-one session with me to strategize about whether or not this course is right for you. Just go to bookcoaches.com/amwriting to sign up for a time that works for you.

✍️ Writers: when you’re stuck on a plot, go outside and take a walk with a friend. You’ll still be stuck, but you will get your steps in for the day, and have someone to b***h to. Follow us for more plotting tips. Here all week.

Sometimes Sarina and I take an ordinary walk. Most times, actually. But sometimes, part way up the first hill, Sarina says, Ok, so I have this problem. And then we’re off, trying to figure out why a character would make a certain choice, or how to get someone from point A to point B.

And then I will say, ok, I have a problem. And occasionally it’s that simple, but for me, the problem is usually that I have made my plot so ludicrously over-complicated that it cannot even be explained, let alone reduced to a single problem. Which is a different problem.

And then we try to fix THAT. Either way, there’s a point here, which is: putting the problem, or the plot, into words in itself can help solve it—or reveal what’s really wrong—and also, it can really help to get a new perspective. In the episode, we talk about how and why to do this (it doesn’t have to involve a walk or a dog or a hill), who you can enlist (apparently Kristan Higgins does it with her husband, only he’s not actually allowed to talk) and most importantly, we discuss getting past the all the voices in your head telling you not to, and and note that the louder those voices are, the more likely it is that maybe you need to talk this over with someone before you go any further.

A few things we referenced: the summer planning series, Blueprint for a Book Challenge, which included a LOT of talk about why it’s a good idea to voice what you’re planning to do before you do it.

Links from the Pod:Becca Syme

Jennie’s book The Last Beach Bungalow

Sarina’s book Rookie Move

Otter (voice recording app)

#AmReading

KJ: The Mistborn Trilogy, Brandon Sanderson

Wreck the Halls, Tessa Bailey

Sarina: The Intern, Michele Campbell

Jennie: Debbie Millman’s Design Matters (Podcast)

The Creative Act, Rick Rubin

During the pandemic, there was an explosion of people who wanted to write memoir, and many of those writers are now struggling to make sense of their drafts and figure out how to approach the marketplace. It's a great time to be a book coach who specializes in memoir, and in March 2024, Author Accelerator is launching a certification course to give memoir coaches the skills, tools, and experience to meet writers where they are.Our year-long program is robust and intense. I'm inviting any listeners of this show who are interested in our coaching program to sign up for a one-on-one session with me to strategize about whether or not this course is right for you. Just go to bookcoaches.com/amwriting to sign up for a time that works for you.

Hey #AmWriters, Jess here! There's a very specific reason I wanted to re-up this coaching call with Emily Edlynn. I did an interview with AJ Jacobs day before yesterday, but it's not going to drop until May. I love AJ Jacobs, I know you love AJ Jacobs, and I’m really excited for you to hear our interview - but in that interview we talked about writing nonfiction books in less than a year. It is possible to do! We had a coaching call with Emily Edlynn 100 episodes ago and I wanted to re-up it because her book is out. She did it! She completed the task. She knew the assignment. Her book, Autonomy-Supportive Parenting, came out at the end of 2023. So I'm very proud to replay this episode and let you know that the P.S. on that episode was success! I hope you enjoy it.

And WAY TO GO, Emily!

Our guest on this episode has a problem—a good problem, yes. An enviable problem even. One that she herself is delighted to have: she’s sold a non-fiction book on proposal.

And now she has to write it. 60,000 words, researched, organized and ready for the editor while also fitting in her day job, raising 3 kids with her partner and all of the other curveballs life likes to throw you.

In this “coaching call” episode, Jess and I (it’s KJ writing, as it often is) help long-time listener Emily Edlynn figure out how much time to spend in what areas: book structure, research, interviewing, drafting, editing—and then how to set yourself up to allow for getting a major project like this completed on time. (We all know how KJ loves a good burn chart - check out episode 175: #HowtoUseaBurnChart). We talk about motivating yourself, strategies for staying on track or picking back up after the unexpected happens. (You can read Emily’s email to us at the bottom of the shownotes.)

Most of us spend more time working on short term projects than longer ones, and when we do get involved with something that stretches out for months or years, it’s usually with other people and external deadlines, whether it’s a major work endeavor, a house remodel or a Ph.D. dissertation. Books—even books with agents and editors—require major solo mojo to get from start to The End—and then revise the result of that. It’s yet another of the many many things that aren’t easy about writing.

But it can be learned, and it can be done.

Emily doesn’t have any trouble using the time she has to write—but if you do, here are some ideas based on Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies, which are all about knowing how you best meet inner and outer obligations (of which writing a book is weirdly both). Obligors need outer accountability. Set yourself up with a friend or your agent, give them your goals and arrange weekly check-ins. Questioners need reasons, so make that burn chart and put up a full calendar where you can see it and always have an answer for “but do I really need to do this now?” Upholders probably need nothing more than a plan—but make sure your inner upholder understands that this is a priority. Rebels benefit from regular reminders that this is hard, that most people can’t do it and that achieving this goal is a rebellion against everything that stands in its way—and many also like a plan that involves beating the clock. Anything that lets a rebel say “I’ll show you!” is rebel jet fuel.

Gretchen appeared on Episode 107 of the podcast, and you can take her “Four Tendencies” quiz here.

Emily’s email: I am a psychologist by training who started writing for an audience in 2017 when my career hit a crossroads with a move for my husband's job. My parenting blog led to writing freelance when possible, including a weekly parenting column for Parents since 2019. In April, I signed a contract with a small, independent publisher, Familius, to write a parenting book.The full manuscript is due May 1. I have never felt so lost! I thought there would be more editor interaction over the year, but she basically said "See you in a year unless you need me!" (I have asked more from her, but have realized she is going to give me broad strokes and not much else.) I have scoured all the places for resources on "how to write a nonfiction book" but besides some of your episodes, what I find is either about self-publishing or marketing, not the process of writing a nonfiction book (that's not a memoir).I'm trying to narrow this down to one question, which probably can't be "how do I write a nonfiction book in a year with no structure, in the time I have?" For context, I spend half my working week doing therapy in a private practice and supervising graduate students. I'm also writing a new blog post once a month to keep my newsletter subscribers engaged, and my weekly column. Oh, and did I mention attempting to raise 3 children in the process? I currently clock about 8 hours a week of writing time . . . and then I read relevant books when I can almost daily. I did find a virtual writing group with two other psychologist authors, which has been helpful. Since you probably aren't aiming to answer "how do I write a book in a year?" maybe narrowing it down to, "How do I manage my time with a professional job that pays the bills, little interaction with an editor (this seems different in the fiction world or even the nonfiction Big 5 world), to complete a 60,000-word nonfiction, researched manuscript in a year?"

Do you think you can help me??

Links from the Pod

How to Get an Agent Episode

Emily’s website, www.emilyedlynnphd.com

#AmReading

Emily: The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

Wow No Thank You by Samantha Irby

KJ: Becoming Duchess Goldblatt, Anonymous

Jess: The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Podcast: Lili Anolik’s Once Upon a Time at Bennington College

During the pandemic, there was an explosion of people who wanted to write memoir, and many of those writers are now struggling to make sense of their drafts and figure out how to approach the marketplace. It's a great time to be a book coach who specializes in memoir, and in March 2024, Author Accelerator is launching a certification course to give memoir coaches the skills, tools, and experience to meet writers where they are.Our year-long program is robust and intense. I'm inviting any listeners of this show who are interested in our coaching program to sign up for a one-on-one session with me to strategize about whether or not this course is right for you. Just go to bookcoaches.com/amwriting to sign up for a time that works for you.

Hey hey Jess here!

I had a couple of great learning opportunities this month, so in the interest of flattening learning curves, I took notes for all of you!

First up, I took a call from a company interested in working with me to boost my platform, and I was curious about what they do and how they do it. While I won’t reveal what company I talked to, I will tell you about all the things I learned on that call. Companies that promise to boost platform are proliferating, and I was curious about how it all works.

Second, I was on a panel about monetizing platform at the Institute for Independent Journalists conference on freelancing and learned SO much from my co-presenters. I have subscribed to all of their newsletters because they are very cool writers, all.

Frankie de la Cretaz, Out of Your League: Dispatches from the intersection of queer sports and pop culture.

Tim Herrera, Freelancing With Tim: Demystifying the world of freelance journalism.

Morgan Sung, Rat.House: an exploration of social platforms and how they shape our real world culture, from dissecting the creator economy to unpacking chronically online discourse.

Sa’iyda Shabazz at Autostraddle.com

Jaeah Lee: independent journalist and a contributing writer at The New York Times MagazineAmReading

James, Percival Everett

The Other Bennet Sister, Janice Hadlow

I hope this week’s episode provides some useful information, and at the very least, leads to some of your new favorite writers!

During the pandemic, there was an explosion of people who wanted to write memoir, and many of those writers are now struggling to make sense of their drafts and figure out how to approach the marketplace. It's a great time to be a book coach who specializes in memoir, and in March 2024, Author Accelerator is launching a certification course to give memoir coaches the skills, tools, and experience to meet writers where they are.Our year-long program is robust and intense. I'm inviting any listeners of this show who are interested in our coaching program to sign up for a one-on-one session with me to strategize about whether or not this course is right for you. Just go to bookcoaches.com/amwriting to sign up for a time that works for you.

Hey #AmWriters! It’s been almost three years since our interview with Jenny Lawson first aired, but we know the struggle is REAL - so we thought this is the perfect time to bring this episode back out for a listen. Whether you’re struggling with getting the work done or feeling like maybe you’re not really a writer, this episode may be just what you need to remind you why you’re here. Happy listening!

Writing is hard. In this episode, we talk imposter syndrome, editing, the right headspace for reading your own stuff, why you might need a “nice” agent, reading your work aloud to friends, recording audiobooks in the closet, being years late on a deadline, sending your editor proof of life and the deep inner conviction that people only buy your book because they feel sorry for you. #ohyeah.

#AmReading

Jess: Win by Harlan Coben

Jenny: Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Hour of the Witch by Chris Bohjalian

Note: Bookriot Podcast

KJ: The Fifth Petal by Brunonia Barry

Jenny’s Bookshop: The Nowhere Bookshop, San Antonio, TX

The Fantastic Strangelings Book Club books:

Professional Troublemaker by Luvvie Ajayi Jones

Swallowed Man by Edward Carey

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

The Did Bad Things by Lauren A. Forry

Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby

Find Jenny at The Bloggess!

Hey, it's Jennie Nash, founder and CEO of Author Accelerator. I hear so many people tell me that book coaching sounds like their dream job, and they wish they could do it, but they can't because ___________. Fill in the blank, whatever it is: They don't have an agent, they haven't written a bestseller,  they don't have a Ph.D., they weren't an English major, they don't know enough about the publishing industry--whatever the thing is. And I can tell you that I see people overcome these things every single day. I have a presentation on this, on imposter syndrome. It's the single biggest barrier keeping most people from saying YES to their dream job. Come check it out at bookcoaches.com/imposter. That's bookcoaches.com/imposter.

Today, I (Jennie) am excited to welcome novelist Caroline Leavitt to the show.  She's a very prolific author who's novels have landed on the New York Times bestseller list, the USA today bestseller list, and have been optioned for films, translated into many languages, contents for magazines, and won all kinds of awards.

Caroline is also the co-founder of A Mighty Blaze, an organization that began during the pandemic to promote independent bookstores and authors who lost their book tours.  It's since grown into an organization of 35 professional creative volunteers, connecting writers and readers online in a variety of ways, including a podcast.

Today, I'm talking with Caroline about her new novel Days of Wonder  and specifically about the dual timeline and how she learned to trust her gut to make the story work.

You can find her at CarolineLeavitt.com

Humans of New York

The idea for Sarina Bowen’s thriller, The Five Year Lie, is an incredible and suspenseful hook for a story – and she first heard it from a writer friend. In this episode, Jennie Nash interviews Sarina about the concept of who owns an idea and how this particular idea made its way through Sarina’s brain and onto the flap copy of her forthcoming book.

Things Mentioned in This Episode

Lauren Blakely

The Best Men by Sarina Bowen and Lauren Blakely

The Five Year Lie by Sarina Bowen – preorder it wherever books are sold

Sarinabowen.com

Hey, it's Jennie Nash, founder and CEO of Author Accelerator. I hear so many people tell me that book coaching sounds like their dream job, and they wish they could do it, but they can't because ___________. Fill in the blank, whatever it is: They don't have an agent, they haven't written a bestseller,  they don't have a Ph.D., they weren't an English major, they don't know enough about the publishing industry--whatever the thing is. And I can tell you that I see people overcome these things every single day. I have a presentation on this, on imposter syndrome. It's the single biggest barrier keeping most people from saying YES to their dream job. Come check it out at bookcoaches.com/imposter. That's bookcoaches.com/imposter.

The infamous how-to meets self-help meets memoir-with-a-dash-of-stunt genre. It may be awkwardly named, but we love it.

This week’s guest didn’t realize she was laying the groundwork for her first book when she decided to write 50 thank you notes to the people, things and places that shaped her in honor of her 50th birthday—but of course she was When you can define a thing and the time frame and the reasons for doing it so clearly, what else can you do but inspire other people to do the same? But the road from I’m doing this thing to I’m publishing this book isn’t clear (although in this case it was lightning fast). This week, Nancy Davis Kho talks to us about what it took to make her book saleable, then write the damn thing and make it really really good.

Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, did you catch the #WritersTopFive that popped into your inbox Monday? (And if it didn’t, HELLO, you need to subscribe to our free weekly #AmWriting emails!)

That was just a little taste. We do those every week. I just scheduled Top Five Reference Books for All Novelists, and Three More for Special Occasions, and you don’t want to miss it. (You won’t believe the kinds of things that can be turned into an encyclopedias or dictionary.) We also recorded the first of many #MiniSupporter episodes that will slip right into the podcast feeds of #AmWriting supporters everywhere. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month.

As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode.

LINKS FROM THE PODCAST

Aya deLeon, author of the Justice Hustlers series.

#AmReading (Watching, Listening)

Nancy: The Good Lord Bird, James McBride

Jess: Sense and Sensibility, narrated by Kate Winslet

KJ: What Should I Read Next—the podcast from Anne Bogel, aka the Modern Mrs Darcy. (I’m obsessed with it. I’ve found so many great new reads!)

#FaveIndieBookstore

A Great Good Place for Books, Oakland

Our guest for this episode is Nancy Davis Kho, author of The Thank You Project and host of the Midlife Mixtape podcast. Find the book, the podcast and all things Nancy HERE.

This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work done. Check out their FREE (and epic) upcoming summit on the Business of Book Coaching if you’re intrigued, or visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwriting for details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.

Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.

If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.

Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)

KJ:                                        00:02                    Hey there listeners, it's KJ. What with Jess starting in on a new project lately, we've been talking a lot about nonfiction and research. If that's your kind of work, our sponsor, Author Accelerator can help and you don't have to go all in with full on book coaching if you're not ready. Check out their new four week long nonfiction framework program that will help you nail down your structure before you start to write, or after your writing and realizing, dang, this thing needs a backbone. Authors of self-help, how-to, and academic texts will find the shape of their books, create a working one page summary that helps reveal that shape at a glance, and develop a flexible table of contents to guide you through the drafting and revision process. You can find a lot more, including previews of much of the material, by going to authoraccelerator.com/nonfictionframework. Is it recording?

Jess:                                     00:02                    Now it's recording.

KJ:                                        00:02                    Yay.

Jess:                                     00:02                    Go ahead.

KJ:                                        01:00                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.

Jess:                                     01:01                    Alright. Let's start over.

KJ:                                        01:06                    Awkward pause, I'm going to rustle some papers. Now one, two, three. Hey, I am KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting the podcast about all things writing - nonfiction, fiction, book proposals, essays, not poetry. I made that joke a few weeks ago, but I just can't stop because I feel like it's not all the things. I am KJ Dell'Antonia, your rambling host, and this is the podcast about getting your work done.

Jess:                                     01:45                    And I'm Jess Lahey. I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and a forthcoming book. It won't be till spring of 2021, a book on preventing substance abuse in kids and you can find me at the New York Times, and at the Atlantic, and at the Washington Post. And we have such a guest today. We have such a guest.

KJ:                                        02:05                    I didn't really introduce myself.

Jess:                                     02:06                    Go ahead, please go.

KJ:                                        02:08                    I just introduced myself as your rambling host and I am so much more than that.

Jess:                                     02:13                    You go, and then we'll let that weird person who no one even knows, we'll let her talk after. But KJ, you go first.

KJ:                                        02:24                    I am KJ Dell'Antonia. I am the author of the novel The Chicken Sisters, which you can't buy yet, but you'll be able to next summer and believe me, you'll hear all about it. Also of How To Be a Happier Parent. I'm the former editor of the Motherlode blog at the New York Times, where I sometimes still contribute and I am working on novel number, whatever it is if you count the ones in the drawer and we don't know if it will be published, that's what I'm doing. So that's who I am and why you should (or should not) listen to me.

Jess:                                     02:57                    We have a guest today who you should definitely listen to. Because she's hysterical, and wonderful, and funny, and has a book coming out that is fantastic and very near and dear to my heart. We are talking today to Nancy Davis Kho. She is a writer. She's written for Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Adirondack Life, The Rumpus, all these various places. She's in an anthology called Listen To Your Mother: What She Said Then, What We're Saying Now. And Listen To Your Mother, by the way, is hysterical if you've never come across it before. Nancy has a fantastic book coming out this month that is, as I said, so near and dear to my heart because it's about thanking people. And so, thank you Nancy, for being on the podcast today.

Nancy:                                03:41                    I pretty much wrote a book in order to be on your podcast, just so you know.

Jess:                                     03:46                    Nancy has her own podcast, one of my very favorites. It's the Midlife Mixtape podcast and if you are not already listening, you should. Because it's wonderful, and fantastic, and it makes me very happy every single time I listen to it.

Nancy:                                04:03                    You guys are so nice. Can I call you every morning, Jess, and just have you say, 'You matter.'

Jess:                                     04:09                    I love this book, not only because thank you notes are really important part of not only my personal life but my professional life, but because I feel like KJ and I have had a personal stake in the project because we've gotten to hear about the process of you writing this book, and pitching this book, and how it all came about. So we usually like to start by talking sort of about how you got started writing, KJ often likes to ask what the first thing you got paid to write was, and we'll go from there.

Nancy:                                04:44                    Oh wow, I'll have to think about the answer to that question. Thank you so much for having me on the show. And also you guys have been such tremendous cheerleaders and sources of real pragmatic information. I have listened to so many of your episodes and just scribble down as I'm going because this podcast is so invaluable in helping people as they're going into various, you know, the first time you're doing this, the first time you're doing that, you guys have had guests on who've talked about that. So it's such a great resource and I really am honored to be on the show.

Jess:                                     05:20                    And you're going to have to listen to some of the publicity episodes - like the marketing and publicity episodes.

Nancy:                                05:26                    Jess, am I brand new? I've already listened. I started listening to them a second time, please. The one where you guys were talking about your book launch plans. I listen to podcasts oftentimes when I'm hiking and I can picture the stretch of the Oakland Hills where I was, where KJ was talking about how many rows were in the spreadsheet and I was like, 'I can't do all of this. God.' But it was good.

KJ:                                        05:53                    You're just lucky Jess didn't talk about how many rows in her spreadsheet.

Jess:                                     05:58                    Tell us about how you got started.

Nancy:                                06:02                    My background is in international business. I studied that in college. I got a couple of degrees in that, I picked up a husband in an international business program. So it all worked out. And I spent about 17 years doing that and I loved it. But whenever anybody would ask me, 'If you could do anything, what would you want to do?' I would say, 'Oh, I'd like to be a writer.' Here's my reason: it seems portable, I think I could do that from anywhere. That was my basic feeling about it. But I did always love writing. And you know, I've been an avid reader. All of us, right? Anybody listening to this show, we've all been reading since we were in short pants. And nothing like a 40th birthday to give you a bit of an identity crisis. And I thought, 'My God, I'm going to turn 40. And I tell people I want to be a writer. I've never tried. Maybe I should try writing. That would be a thing I could do.' So I took a class the summer before I turned 40 and by the time I finished (it was a class in creative memoir or I think it was just personal essays) and by the time I finished the class, I'd had two things published. And I was like, 'You know what? I love this.' I loved getting the byline and I just loved the process of writing. So that is now 13 years ago in the rear view mirror. And I thought at the time, as you do when you're a beginner at anything, I was like, 'Hmm, what's the hardest thing that I'm not qualified to do? I know I will write a novel of historical fiction that deals with race issues from the standpoint of a white woman. That's what the world needs now.' So I commenced to spending six years researching and writing a novel that is composting very nicely in a drawer. I can see which drawer in my office it is sitting in right now. And that was hard work. I told my husband, 'I'm a writer now, I'm going to quit my corporate job. Neglecting to factor in that I had two small kids who needed (we live in the Bay area, everybody needs to work) So it was a bumpy time - the writing I loved, the researching I loved, like the whole writing part of it was great. It was trying to figure out how to balance the lifestyle with that that was challenging. And also just realizing how much I had to learn as a writer. And I think one of the messages I try to put on the podcast all the time, so the Midlife Mixtape Podcast is about the years between being hip and breaking one. And I started it because I wanted there to be a counter narrative to midlife being a crisis because what I found was that it wasn't an identity crisis to become a writer. It was like I was adding something to myself. I was doing something that made me happy. And now it didn't work right out of the gate. I didn't publish a novel when I was 41, but I was challenging myself, and learning new stuff, and eventually I ended up going back to corporate work and doing that part time. And that's kind of been my gig ever since. I have a day job, I work in digital content licensing. I really like it, I have mastery at it, I've been doing it for years and years. And then I have this creative side where I can do the writing. So I think as a writer, I just feel like I've been pragmatic in terms of forgiving myself for not being successful right away. And so, I spent six years getting better and better and still not having a novel that needed to see the light of day. And then when I finished with that, I got frustrated and I had started the blog, Midlife Mixtape, and I realized that what felt very comfortable to me was humor writing. It came to me naturally. I'm the youngest of three in a family of very funny people and you really have to bring your A game all the time in my family. So, for me that was a much easier voice to write in. I always say my goal is to sound like Erma Bombeck meets David Sedaris, you know, not mean spirited but funny, and kind of poignant. And so after a little while writing in that voice on Midlife Mixtape, I thought, 'I know I'll write a book about my midlife music crisis.' And I wasn't really having a midlife music crisis, to be honest. What had happened is, I went to a concert and a bouncer said to me, 'Are you just here to drop off your kids?' I mean, I've been an avid concert goer since I was 14 and that shook me. So I was like, 'Oh, maybe I am too old to go to a Vampire Weekend concert. Maybe I should try to find more midlife appropriate music.' But the truth was, I still kept going to shows like that. I started going to the symphony, I started going to heavy metal shows, I was trying all different kinds of stuff. But I felt like I was manufacturing the arc of my story a little bit. And I think that always kind of stuck with me that I was telling a funny story people could relate to, this memoir that I spent only three years writing that one. So I doubled my speed from which I had written the historical fiction novel. But there was something about that story that never connected, even for me, because I just felt like, okay. As this one writing mentor of mine said, 'What, you wanted to go to a concert, you kept going to concerts. There's not a lot of character change here, you know. Any good memoir needs that needs that arc.' And so I got to see a lot of fun shows and I wrote about those on the blog. But that book also came closer to what I wanted to write, but it still wasn't quite the right thing. So that one went into a drawer and that was now I guess about three years ago, four years ago.

Jess:                                     11:55                    Well, and I have to say you're definitely learning your lessons. Because all of the things you're criticizing about the early work that stayed in the drawer is like the antithesis of what I found when I opened The Thank You Project. So keep going with your story, but I just want to say that like all of these realizations, you're having, you know, the sort of there being no trajectory, there being no personal connection. Like that's what The Thank You Project is about from the very first page, a very personal project that came out of a very important moment in your life. I think even if I didn't know you personally, I would be very connected with you as a writer from the first page of this book. So, those lessons were really important for you to learn. I think that's how we get there, as KJ and I both know, you got to write a lot of bad stuff.

KJ:                                        12:48                    We never talk about this, but you and I both, Jess, have memoirs in drawers.

Jess:                                     12:53                    Yup. Yeah we do.

KJ:                                        12:54                    I mean that just, it just doesn't come up. Like we talk a lot about my novel in a drawer. But it rarely comes up that I have, I can't remember if I wrote the whole thing, but I definitely have a memoir proposal in the drawer. And you have a memoir proposal and I think pretty much the memoir.

Jess:                                     13:10                    Oh no, I have the whole thing. I sold chunks of it as essays and and that was sort of the thing I got out of it.

Nancy:                                13:22                    Well, and I think this is really my message to anybody who's listening, and feeling frustrated, and wondering why the project isn't working. Fast forward to spring of 2018, which is when the idea for this book, The Thank You Project, came along and I know we're going to talk about it, but my message is every misstep I took was actually getting me closer to this book that I feel so strongly about, I feel so proud of, I feel like I'm the right person to tell this story that's in this book. And all that other stuff, all those years I wasn't getting published. What was I doing? I was meeting great writers. I was reading books by great writers. I was very happily sharing the work of other writer friends and promoting them and I was getting better at my craft. I was building my network of support. And so now I'm hugely gratified, but you know, there's so many people trying to help me with this book and that's because I put in 12 years of work that didn't feel at the time like it was amounting to anything. But now it's all paying off. So anybody who's listening and feeling frustrated, I would just say, please don't give up. Because there's a reason, there's a path.

Jess:                                     15:03                    Well what's funny is before I wrote the proposal, as KJ well knows, for the book I just finished, I actually went through the trouble of writing proposals for a bunch of books that weren't quite right and what they were was sort of circling around the topic, but also really important work for me to do to figure out, Oh okay, so this aspect of this topic fits in somewhere, but I'm not quite sure how. So that finally when that idea comes, you have some familiarity with the things that aren't particularly interesting, or working, or whatever. So when you have that moment, it's super exciting when you have that idea for, Oh this is the thing. In fact, I pulled off the road and I texted Sarina and KJ right away and said, 'This is it. This is the thing, I know this is the right thing.'

Nancy:                                16:26                    Well, and that's how it felt. So the book is called The Thank You Project: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time. And what happened was I found an agent for that music memoir, it did not sell. And I really had a time where I thought maybe I'm not a writer, I know I'm good at writing these little blog posts and I get essays published, but maybe I don't have it in me to do a full length work. So I'm going to take this creative energy and I started the podcast and turns out I love podcasting; I'm a tech nerd at heart. A lot of the work I did the first 17 years of my career was in the software industry. So I love working, learning new technology, and everything. I was really struggling a little bit with this idea that maybe I'm not an author, I'm a writer, but not an author. I guess that's probably not an uncommon thing. And it occurred to me one day (and I was 49) it occurred to me that the reason my book didn't sell was because my character, myself in the memoir, wasn't unhappy. There wasn't a transition because she started off happy and she ended up happy. And I'm like, that's not a problem, that's something to be really grateful for. And this was at the end of 2015, and in 2016 I was going to turn 50. And I'm like, 'You know what, the thing I should do to honor and commemorate my 50th birthday is to thank the people that have made it possible for me to be where I am.' You know, my parents were alive, my husband's great, been married to him since forever, we've got two girls, you know, everything's fine. So I thought the way I want to celebrate my 50th year is I will write a letter every week, a thank you letter once a week, to somebody who has helped, or shaped, or inspired me up to this point in my life. And of course when you tell the universe that you're doing this because everything's going great, everything goes to s**t pretty darn quickly. So I started writing my letters and it was really great. I'd sit down every week and you know, write a letter to my nephew Tristan, or to my friend Kitty who lives in Australia. And it just was wonderful every week to sit down and think about this person who had been meaningful in my life and what lessons that I learned from them and how they'd help me.

KJ:                                        18:44                    I'm going to interrupt, cause I know where you're going. At this point, this isn't a book?

Nancy:                                18:49                    No, no. These are just letters.

KJ:                                        18:51                    This is just something you're doing. So this is not like stunt journalism, in which you're, 'I don't know what I'll do. I'll write...' This is a genuine thing, right?

Nancy:                                18:59                    I wasn't even an author at that point, anymore. I'd kind of tried it and not gotten through anything. So I was just writing thank you letters because that seemed like a good way to mark a period of my life. So halfway through the year, my dad gets diagnosed with cancer and he is gone in six weeks. We had no idea he was sick. My older daughter left for college a couple of weeks after the funeral and that was certainly not a sad thing, but it was a big adjustment to have your older kid to go off to school and she goes to school on the East coast. So she's far. And then it was the 2016 presidential election, so everybody's anxiety level was through the roof. And I realized the worse things got, the more I needed the thank you letters. Because it was just this moment every week where I could crowd out all this sadness, and this tension, and the worry, and I'd be like, 'Hmm, I'm gonna write a letter to the city of Oakland. Because you know what? It's not even just people who have shaped me, it's places I've lived. And then I had a period of writing letters to cities and then I started writing letters to dead authors. Like I love Jane Austen. I'm going to write her a letter, but I'm going to have to explain some things to her. And it got to be really fun. And anyway, I got to the end of the 50 letters, (took me longer than a year) printed them all out, bound them in a book, and flip through that book all the time. You know, you rifle through it and you go, 'Oh yeah, my Aunt Nooney is so nice to me.' You're having a bad day, read about what your Aunt Nooney did for you. You know, it'll cheer you up, it'll remind you that when you're in hardship, you've almost never been alone. That there's always people around you. So, just in and of its own self as a writing exercise, writing the thank you letters was really important. So now it's spring of 2018 and one of the people who got the letters, Ann Imig who is the editor of the Listen To Your Mother Anthology and the founder of that empire said, 'Nancy, that's your book. You need to tell people how to do this.' And I'm like, 'What? It's so straightforward. You write a thank you letter.' But then another friend of ours who knew that I had done it, sat me down and she's like, 'Okay, who did you write to? How long was the letter? What did you put in the letter? How did you organize it?' And I answered questions for her for like an hour. And I thought, 'Okay, maybe it's not as straightforward as I thought it was.' So I thought, you know, at this point, the podcast was cooking along, my day job's cooking along. My kids are, you know, I've got one in college, one in high school, nobody needs me around anymore. I got some free time. So I thought I'll just start writing a few chapters of this, just think about how I would write a book that explains to people how to do their own thank you project. And it poured out of me, I wrote that proposal so quickly. Why? Because I had two other book proposals that I'd already done. Yes, I wrote a book proposal for a fiction novel. Don't ask me, I know it's wrong. And now I know that. At the time when I was writing my historical fiction I didn't know. So, there's the reason I wrote two proposals because when I really needed one, I literally just could do a find replace, for the most part. So it was just kind of a proof of concept to myself that this could be something. And I wasn't going to get an agent, because agents hadn't sold my book before, so why would I bother? And then people like KJ, and Jess, and a couple other people said, 'You should talk to an agent.' So I started in April 2018, at the end of May 2018 I reached out to a few agents who I'd met in person and online, and three or four of them came back and said, 'I would love to see this proposal.' And I was like, 'Oh, that's weird.' And I got it out the door. And then the timeframe was I signed with our wonderful agent (we all have the same one, Laurie Abkemeier) who's been wonderful, signed with her in June, we worked on the proposal together in July, and I signed a deal with Running Press in the end of August. This is all last year. So I signed the deal with Running Press in August. My deadline was November 15th for the finished book.

Jess:                                     23:16                    You had written parts of it -Yes? No?

Nancy:                                23:19                    Well, I'd written the first three chapters that belonged in the proposal...

Jess:                                     23:25                    So what had you been smoking to make you think that you could set a deadline that quickly? What was the thinking behind that?

Nancy:                                23:33                    I knew how to write this book, I knew how to tell this story. I'd written the letters. I knew how impactful they could be. I really wanted other people to know. I am spiritual, I'm a church lady, I go to this Episcopal church. And I do think this is one of those cases where I was given a message to share because that's something I can do. I can tell like a funny, uplifting story. It's taken me 13 years, but I know how to do that. In the places where the other two books had been a struggle - I don't want to say I couldn't have told those stories, but this one just was easy for me. I just knew what I wanted to say, and I and I knew how to say it. And let's face it, I do use snippets of the letters and there were days that I needed the #AmWriting podcast, I'm like, 'Ooh, I need a burn chart. I need to know what my daily word count is. And there were days where I'm like, 'Well I'm talking about a letter to write to a doctor, maybe I'll include a snippet of the letter I wrote to my OB.' I just covered my word chart, like put in two paragraphs, and I'd be done, go get my coffee. So there was a little bit of source material in that I do include snippets of my letters to kind of get people started. But I didn't want it to just be my letters. I ended up interviewing a few people who had done something similar, so I've got some other people's examples. And then the thing that I loved about writing the book was that it gave me a chance to delve into the science of happiness and gratitude. Cause I didn't want it to just be, 'This is what I did, so you should try it.' I wanted to steep it in some quantitative research that talks about why gratitude letters are so magic. And you know, low and behold, during those 13 years when I was freelance writing, I interviewed a bunch of happiness researchers for various publications. So I had the Rolodex - does anybody listening know what a Rolodex is? I had the phone numbers, okay? So I called the researchers and I got to interview them and you know, again, that was not wasted time. All of that stuff is why I could do it in two and a half months.

Jess:                                     25:50                    And it's why KJ, over and over again, insists that I'm not allowed to say, 'You know, boy, I got really lucky with Gift of Failure, right place, right time.' Well, no, it was a lot of work and it's that work that other people don't see.

KJ:                                        26:04                    Preparation meeting opportunity.

Jess:                                     26:06                    Yeah, exactly. There you go. There you go. The thing that I was really interested in - let's say you've got all of these letters, and you've got this idea about how you want to do this. In terms of organization, I really liked the way you organize the book and it was a little unexpected. I thought it was going to be like sequential, but you did a really interesting thing with the organization. I'm kinda wondering how you arrived at that particular sequence.

Nancy:                                26:37                    Welcome to my brain, cause I do think it's sequential. I knew that I wanted the introduction because (I'm not gonna give away the whole introduction) but basically when my dad got his letter (I wrote to him and my mom first) and my dad was very cute and called me and he's like, 'Aww, Nance, I loved it. I put it in a frame and it's over my desk.' So I knew I wanted to start with the fact that my dad had this letter framed and sitting over his desk. And then I figured I would need to go through exactly all the questions that Melissa asked me on the porch that day. Like, 'Who did you write to? How did you...' So there's a first chapter that's all about how you can organize this. And I want to say at the outset, throughout this book, I say, 'But that's what I did, do what you want.' Like nobody is in charge of your pace, what you write, who you write to. And the amazing thing about gratitude letters (as I found out from the researchers) is that even just thinking about what you would put in a letter creates happiness benefits for you. So it's all about firing the neurons and getting the positive outlook kind of codified within your brain pan. That's how I would explain it. So writing it down is great, but even if you read this book, and just think about the things that I'm talking about, people will get benefits. But then, after that section, the whole rest of the book is, here's the kinds of people who you might want to think about writing. And I think some of the categories are obvious - from friends and family. Although less obvious, because do you ever write a thank you letter to your spouse, or to your kid, or to your parent? Probably not. You know, there's a whole category of people that we take for granted and so that's kind of where I start. And part of the reason is because it gets the juices flowing for when you're writing the thank you letters, you know, you have a lot of source material for those people. But as I went through my own process and I just kept coming back to this idea of, okay, who helped me, shaped me, inspired me. Well, one of the people who helped me was my German ex-boyfriend when I lived in Germany and didn't know how to file taxes. It didn't work out with him. But man, he made sure my taxes were done every year on time and properly, and I wouldn't have been able to stay in Germany if I'd screwed up, their bureaucracy is on it. Like I'm sure they would've found me and sent me back to America. So I wrote a letter to him and this is when I figured out that I could write letters and not send them. Nobody needed to know that I was doing this. So I could write a thank you letter to anybody. I could write it to my childhood bully; I was so sensitized to bullying because I had been a victim of it, that my kids from the minute they started school, we talked about bullying. What do you do if you see it? What do you do? How do you help somebody going through it? How do you make sure you're never the perpetrator? You know, I'm not sure I would have been so tuned into that if I hadn't known this person. Now, that was a letter I actually chose not to write. That was one where I was like, 'You know what, I don't want to spend any more time on her.' But you could. And so, it was fun to kind of expand and so I did that in writing my own letters. But in writing the book, what I loved was thinking about, 'Well, who's going to read this? Could be anybody.' So what other things, like what's outside of my world, that I should think about and prompt people to write about. Like, I've never been in the army, but I made sure to say like, 'You might want to write a letter to your drill instructor.' You know, there's so many kinds of people, and I just tried really hard in writing it to have as an inclusive tone as I could. And I had a few people read it who had very different experiences from me, and that's what I asked them to read for. I wanted to make sure that someone who wasn't heterosexual would also feel like this book spoke to them and somebody who wasn't white would also feel...So I was at a conference that I had the chance to hear Aya de Leon, do you guys know her? She's a Bay area writer and professor. She writes these really great crime capers with African-American heroines. And a lot of times her heroines are sex workers and she's really about like, they're very feminist, but they kind of they have a message that's a little bit hidden.

Jess:                                     31:18                    I'm looking at the covers right now, they're so good. They're these women, sort of face forward at the camera, The Boss, and then another one called Side Chick Nation, and another one called Uptown Thief. They're fantastic covers, I love them. And really strong women with their shoulders back and sort of facing you like, yeah, bring it. I like it.

Nancy:                                31:40                    Right. And she's really smart. And at this conference I went to, she was just saying, 'If you want to write diverse character well, have diverse friends.' I just thought that's so obvious. But as writers, if you want to reach out to a diverse audience, make sure you've got those people in your real life so that you can go to them. And that was, again, my 13 years of preparation. I knew who I could ask to read for different things. And so that was a part of the review process.

Jess:                                     32:14                    One of the things that you said, you asked a lot of people who had experience outside of yours to help you, but the thing that you did really well in the book is to create these ideas about how you should think about the thank you notes. And one of the things you said was, 'Who or what has shaped me?' And that is such a personal question, but a question that is universal. Because as you said, it could be the ex-boyfriend that things didn't work out with. But everyone's got those people that you realize, Oh wow, I didn't actually thank that person. And it may not have been a particularly positive experience at the time, but that question alone right there, I think, makes the book nice and generalizes it for everyone. I love that question.

Nancy:                                32:56                    Well, and I hope that given that it's coming out before we start another presidential election year, people are so isolated and people are so quick to judge now, and maybe we always were, but it just feels different. And part of what I think these letters can do is remind us the small ways that people in our lives have helped us. Even if we were on opposite sides of a divide now, they've made a difference for us. And just sending those letters (or even if you write and it's not possible for you to send it) even writing it to remind yourself of the humanity of the people on the receiving end, I think is really powerful. So I'm glad it's coming out when it does, I hope it is helpful for people next year. I'm just really excited for it to come out. Can I say one thing? Because of this audience, I think I can share this. The one thing that I wanted to mention is that the same week that I got the book deal, my mom was diagnosed with lymphoma. And my mom's 86, and she's in an assisted living place, and she's got dementia. And they initially gave my mom a two and a half month...I was going to say sentence. That's what it felt like, they said that's how much time she has left. And it was awful, because on the same week I got this amazing news, I got horrible news. And I'm not going to leave you in suspense, Mom's doing fine, we took her to a specialist a few weeks later who kind of said, 'It's not nearly as dire as the first guy said and here's a bunch of treatment options.' And so mom is hanging in, she still loves John Denver, we talk a lot about John Denver. No, but it was a real exercise in compartmentalization. That's why I bring it up, because I knew I had to get this book done, and my siblings are amazing. I would have probably said like, 'I can just not do the book.' and they would have never forgiven me. So they're like, 'Figure out what your schedule is, come home if you can, and you'll get it done.' So the shitty first draft was done in six weeks, and I flew to Rochester to visit with my mom, and spent a week with her, came back, and then I finished the book after that. And the whole time I just had to keep these two things separate, because I could not have finished the book otherwise. And when it was over, I completely fell apart for a little while. And the irony was, writing the thank you notes again, writing about thank you notes, I got to kind of use them a second time in just the same way that I had the first time I wrote the letters. You know, to kind of say, 'My mom's got an X-Ray today, and we don't know what it's going to find, but Hey, I'm writing about how funny it was that time I wrote a letter to so-and-so.' If you think of writers sitting in a cabin somewhere, and having all their diversions taken away, and there's nothing but good whiskey and the sound of this pounding surf, I think that's b******t. You know, you just have to write through what you have to write through. And I felt lucky to have the opportunity. Who's the biggest reader I know? My mom, you know, back when she could read, I was not going to let her down.

Jess:                                     36:39                    Is she pretty stoked for you?

Nancy:                                36:42                    She's pretty hilarious, my mother. She is stoked; she remembers that I have a book, that's landed somewhere, I don't think she knows what it's about. She's astonished that I told her I will bring her a book in person and hand deliver it to her. Well, she literally was the one who put the love of reading in me, so there you go.

KJ:                                        37:06                    I mean we'd all like that cabin, but you know, both Jess and I had big deadlines this year, and we both also had big personal stuff that our families overall prefer that we left as as family. But yeah, it's part of being a pro, and it's also just part of like embracing that part of who we are. It's like, you know, I'm a writer, I'm a writer with the sick parent. I'm a writer with whatever other problem that you have. But I'm a writer and this is what I'm doing now, and then in three hours I'll be doing something else. And I think you're so right to shout that out, because I know frequently I will sit there with my personal problems and with my deadline and go, 'Other people don't have to deal with this.' But honestly, yes they do.

Jess:                                     38:07                    Yeah. There were plenty of times going towards this deadline where I would hang up the phone having dealt with some of the personal stuff that was going on, and just take a couple of really deep breaths, maybe have a good cry, and then turn on my monitor, and get back to work.

Nancy:                                38:21                    Did you both feel like the writing part was like safe haven? Because that's how I felt. And then I was writing from like five to seven in the morning, cause I still had the day job. But I was like jumping out of bed cause I knew the next two hours I'll be happy.

KJ:                                        38:39                    Having the abiity to focus on it - like having spent, (you've been talking about putting in the work) having spent the past decade or more, turning stuff off, and turning to the keyboard or the paper or whatever, and saying, 'You know I got to get this.' So having that practice, the ability to just shut everything else down and focus on it, I've been so grateful - past-me for teaching present-me to do that. So thank you letter to her, I guess.

Jess:                                     39:13                    It was also really nice for me occasionally to not feel guilty. You know, I feel like when other people need me or I'm supposed to be feeling a certain way about something, it's nice to have a pass to say, 'Nope, I can't do that. I can't spend emotional attention on that right now because this has to happen.' I have this deadline, so I get to turn that off for a minute and not feel guilty about feeling bad for someone else while I can focus on the words. And so for me, it was an incredible safe haven. It was license for me to focus on something else that really was about what I love doing. And if I hadn't had that, I think it would have been an even more challenging summer than it was. But this really gave me a way out of that.

Nancy:                                40:02                    So the message is for writers, if you're having a terrible time, try writing, maybe that will cheer you up.

Jess:                                     40:08                    Well, but we do have to move on to what we've been reading because we're running over, so let's talk about what we've been reading. Nancy, would you like to tell us?

Nancy:                                40:33                    Yes. So I was visiting my mom two weeks ago, and even if she can't read anymore, she still demands that we do. And in the assisted living place, there's a giant bookcase outside her apartment, and she always makes me take a book when we go by, just take one. They don't care, just take one. So I grabbed one off the top. It was The Good Lord Bird by James McBride, which was a 2013 national book winner that I finally got to in 2019, it's been out for a while. Oh my gosh, I loved it so much. I actually just finished it last night. Ironically, one of the small characters in the book is the main character in my historical fiction novel in a drawer. So I think maybe that's why I avoided it. I didn't want to see him be alive in somebody else's book. But oh, it was fantastic. It was like Mark Twain on steroids. I loved it. It's all about John Brown and Harper's Ferry. I love abolitionist. You know, abolition is lit. And it's really, really well done. It's a fun story.

Jess:                                     41:34                    Yeah, that shelf in the bookstore, it's the popular one, The Abolition Is Lit shelf. I have a whole shelf on fishing in New England in the 1850s or so. That's a whole section in my library cause I'm obsessed with the whole Gloucester, fishermen thing. That's a thing for me. I'm still reading away on some of the stuff that's on my Audible. But I will say, that I just found out and I had mentioned this before, that when I am writing stuff, I like to reread things that are comforting, and I had been relistening to a whole bunch of Jane Austen and I just found out that there is a recording of Sense and Sensibility with Kate Winslet. And so that is going to be a evening listen for me.

KJ:                                        42:33                    We have recorded multiple episodes this week and I am out, but I have already shouted out the What Should I Read Next? Podcast, but I have to shout it out again. So it's What Should I Read Next? With Anne Bogle, who some might know as the Modern Mrs. Darcy, she's had a blog for a long time. So I listened to an episode of this podcast earlier this week and I ended up downloading samples of four different books and they only talked about like eight. Somebody goes on and says, 'These are the books I like and this is what I'd like to read next.' And it's just such an incredible joy. So, try the podcast and I guarantee that you will come away with something to read, even if I can't suggest anything at the moment. Yeah, it's a really good one.

Jess:                                     43:34                    Alright, Nancy, do you have a bookstore you love?

Nancy:                                43:38                    I very much have a bookstore I love, it's called A Great Good Place for Books, here in Oakland up in the Montclair neighborhood. And Kathleen Caldwel,l who owns it, is the neighborhood treasurer. Everybody's kid has worked at that bookstore at some point. And she pays them in books and it's just fantastic. In fact, Great Good Place is doing my launch party, which is on December 3rd, and she's just one of those people you walk in the door and she says, 'Oh, Nancy, I knew you were coming in this week, so I've put aside three books for you.' And my favorite story about her was the time I ordered Skippy Dies, it's very dark Irish boarding school, it's like a comedy tragedy. It's an amazing book. And she sold my husband a gift card for me for Christmas, cause that's what I get every Christmas. Andrew, if you're listening, I need a gift card. And I took it in and I said, 'Okay, I want to get Skippy Dies.' And she said, 'Well, I'm going to order you the three part version of the book.' And I said, 'I think it's just a novel. I've been reading reviews, it's one book.' And she goes, 'Oh, it's so much cooler when it comes in the case. So I'm going to get you this. And I know how much is on your gift card, you can afford it.' So I love Kathleen, she is always hustling for those authors. She brings in great, great authors for readings and yeah, so if you're in Oakland check out Great Good Place For Books.

Jess:                                     45:08                    Alright, everyone needs to run right out and get The Thank You Project: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time by Nancy Davis Kho. It is going to make such a good gift, that's my plan (sorry, spoiler alert to everyone who's getting presents for me this year) that's what you're getting. So get excited to read this book, it's fantastic. So congratulations on your long path to publication and thank you so much for being on the podcast today.

Nancy:                                45:35                    Thank you guys so much for having me. And everybody out there - keep writing, you're on the path, you're doing it.

Jess:                                     45:39                    And in order to do that, everyone has to keep their butt in the chair and their head in the game. This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid.

Novelist Abbi Waxman makes us laugh talking process and inspiration almost as much as we do when reading her books, with emphasis on using settings you know and love.

Our transcription assistant reports that this was “her favorite episode ever.” It’s definitely a contender—Abbi Waxman is funny and candid about the challenges of creating characters and worlds that are engrossingly real yet also comical—and about her next novel, the first one not fully set in her California ‘hood.

Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, you don’t want to miss the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, October 28, 2019: Top 5 Goodreads Secrets for Authors. It’s a good one! If you haven’t yet plunked down a tiny chunk of cash to support the podcast, maybe now is the time. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month.

As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode.

LINKS FROM THE PODCAST

#AmReading (Watching, Listening)

Abbi: A Miss Silver Mystery: Lonesome Road (#3), Patricia Wentworth

Jess: Home, Run Away, Harlan Coben

KJ: Confessions of a Bookseller, Shaun Bythell

Three Things You Need to Know about Rockets: A Real-Life Scottish Romance, Jessica A. Fox

The Gyrth Chalice Mystery, Margery Allingham

#FaveIndieBookstore

Chevalier’s Books Los Angeles, CA — if you’ve read Nina Hill, this is the real life bookstore she works in, and we love that.

Our guest for this episode is Abbi Waxman. Abbi is the author of:

The Bookish Life of Nina Hill

Other People’s Houses

The Garden of Small Beginnings

This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.

Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.

If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.

Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful—and, this time around, Jess is “New Speaker.” We don’t know why. AI is mysterious.)

KJ:                                        00:01                    Hey writers—you all know we love our sponsor, Author Accelerator, which offers intense book coaching to help writers keep their butts in the chair and their heads in the game and finish what we start. But what if you’re not ready for full on coaching? What if you’re still trying to figure out where your story or memoir is going, and you need help? In that case, Author Accelerator has something new: the four-week Inside Outline Coaching program, which will help you quickly and efficiently visualize your entire story, spot the holes and places where your characters have lost momentum and ensure that you’re working forward with a structure that will support the story you want to tell. I love this tool, and working with someone to stick to it and get it right is going to save you a lot of time and a lot of typing. Find out more at https://www.authoraccelerator.com/insideoutline.

New Speaker:                    00:01                    Go ahead.

KJ:                                        00:01                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.

New Speaker:                    00:01                    All right, let's start over.

KJ:                                        00:01                    Awkward pause, I'm going to rustle some papers.

New Speaker:                    00:01                    Okay.

KJ:                                        00:01                    Now one, two, three. Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. The podcast about writing, which is pretty much why we named it that. We are a podcast about writing all things - fictional, non-fictional, proposals, pitches, writing emails in the quest to get an agent, and I've run out of my list, but it's one I give you guys weekly and as I hope you know, we are the podcast about sitting down and getting your work done.

New Speaker:                    01:50                    And I'm Jess Lahey. I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and a book I just turned in on preventing substance abuse in kids. And you can find me at the New York Times, and the Atlantic, and the Washington Post .

KJ:                                        02:03                    You're killing it. This actually is your due date and I'm so delighted.

New Speaker:                    02:08                    I'm a little bit giddy today.

KJ:                                        02:11                    You should be. I am KJ Dell'Antonia, author of a novel coming out next year, The Chicken Sisters, and of How To Be a Happier Parent, former editor of the Motherlode blog at the New York Times, where I'm still a reasonably regular contributor, and at the moment working on novel number two. And I am delighted to say that we have a guest today. So before I introduce her, since she's sitting there silently, I will just say, 'Hi Abby.'

Abbi:                                    02:39                    I wasn't sure if I should be making little chicken noises in the background. It's probably a good idea for me to sit excitedly until prompted.

KJ:                                        02:55                    Abbi is the author of three novels, all of which I've totally enjoyed and I believe have recommended at one point or another on the podcast. They are - I'll go in backwards order - her most recent novel is The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, preceded by Other People's Houses. And then, gosh, there ought to be another word for this - preceded by The Garden of Small Beginnings. I would call them comic, commercial fiction, with plenty of snark and a little tiny touch of the darkness of life, and our huge fun. And we're so glad to have you.

Abbi:                                    03:36                    It is my pleasure to be here.

KJ:                                        03:38                    Thank you.

New Speaker:                    03:41                    I have to say, she's been so excited to talk to you. So the fact that she's just overflowing with questions...

KJ:                                        03:52                    I've really enjoyed The Bookish Life of Nina Hill. And I want to go back and talk about - I guess what we like to do when we have a guest is go just a little bit back into your career. A lot of our listeners are somewhere sort of mid-career, a lot of them are just getting started, and everybody wants to know things like - how did you get started? I know that you were in advertising, so I think my question is what's the first thing you wrote that wasn't advertising that you got paid for?

Abbi:                                    04:27                    So yeah, I worked in advertising for a long time. But I always knew that I wanted to write books, ultimately. But that's because that's what I saw growing up. My mother was a murder mystery writer. My biological dad was also in advertising. My stepfather was not a writer, so this is just what I saw grown ups doing a lot of the time and certainly that's what I thought mothers did. So, I had a career, I had my own agency for a while ,and then I decided I wanted to quit that, write books, and have children. Which those two things are inextricably linked in my head. The problem being, of course, having children is a hundred percent contra-indicated if what you're trying to do is actually get work done. So it took me a very long time to write my first novel and then subsequent ones were much quicker because I didn't have three kids under five in the house. But while I had those three small kids and I wasn't being super successful at finishing my own work, I got hired to ghost write a novel for a celebrity, who shall remain nameless.

KJ:                                        05:36                    And that's always such a bummer, but we know that's the way it works.

Abbi:                                    05:39                    That's the way it works. So I wrote a novel, a piece of fiction for this person and my name wasn't on the cover, but it was on the check and that's all I really actually care about. So that was good. Not that all I care about is money, far be it for me to suggest I am just venal in that way, but I do enjoy making money for my work. Because I did it for free for so long that it is still very pleasant to get paid for it.

KJ:                                        06:08                    I'm impressed that it was a whole novel.

Abbi:                                    06:11                    Well, before I wrote that one, I had written several novels that were too crap to see the light of day. So finishing a novel was a sort of a barrier I'd already cracked. Finishing a good novel was one that you could argue I haven't yet cracked, but which I'm working on.

KJ:                                        06:29                    We will not argue that. How did you convince a celebrity and a publishing company that you could do the novel for the celebrity?

Abbi:                                    06:40                    You know, it's a mystery, to this day. So I have a friend whose name is Hillary Liftin, who is a very successful ghost writer of both (she writes fiction herself and she writes nonfiction books with celebrities) and she's written dozens of them and she's really, really good at it. And she recommended me to an agent who approached her about writing this piece of fiction. And she said, 'No, no, but you should have my friend Abbi do it.' I don't even remember writing a proposal. So I had to go and meet - there's actually a good story attached to this, but I don't know if I can tell it without revealing it. So I went to meet with this celebrity, along with several other writers (not at the same time, although that would have been hilarious), but one after the other. And she had us meet her at Chateau Marmont in Hollywood, which is just just right there. I was so happy to even be doing this because it was so ludicrous. It is so incredibly Hollywood and I was just like, it's ridiculous. So I show up wearing my jeans, my Target T-shirt, and the one cool jacket that I possessed and could still fit into. Cause I worked hard on gaining weight after I had my kids and I was very successful at it. And so I squeezed into these clothes, I go in, the first thing she says to me (she's tiny, tiny little celebrity as they all are all) 'Oh, I love your T-shirt.' And I said, 'I got it at Target.' So literally that was my opening - I got it at Target, which you think would be enough to end the whole thing. And so she arrived. She walks in just before I get there, I see her walk in and she literally asks whatever you call the person at Chateau Marmont who's in charge of helping celebrities deal with their lives, She's like, 'I need breakfast cereal.' And he sent someone out to shop for breakfast cereal for her so that she could have (I nearly swore) Captain Crunch at like 11 o'clock on a whatever day it at the Chateau.

New Speaker:                    08:57                    That's really impressive. I actually was going to tell you the last time I got a compliment from a celebrity, I actually said, 'I got it at a garage sale.' And it was about an article of clothing, so I can actually one up on that one. Yeah, it came out of my mouth and I said, 'Oh, that, that wasn't what I meant to say.'

Abbi:                                    09:19                    But at the same time, you know, I don't know, do celebrities shop at Target? I'm sure they do, everybody shops at Target, everybody shops at garage sales. I would feel much worse saying, 'Yes, it's Gucci.' Like that would not fly. So, you know, it is what it is. So anyways, so she interviewed me and a load of other people, and the funny part is that I didn't hear anything for weeks. So I was like, 'Okay, whatever.' Then I get a call that she had told her manager who was sitting there that she wanted this other person whose name I won't say, but she got on the phone with this other writer and then 15 minutes into the conversation she suddenly goes, 'Oh wait, I have to go.' and hung up on this other writer. Because it turned out she didn't want that writer, she wanted me, but she had mixed us up. I imagine she said, 'The English one.' But this other writer was also English. So this poor woman (who it turns out also knows Hilary Liftin, my friend) was like, 'Yeah, it was the weirdest thing. We were talking and all of a sudden she's like, 'Sorry, my shoes are on fire.' and hung up on me and I never heard another word because of course she didn't have the balls to actually say, 'Oh my God, I've made a terrible mistake. I do apologize.'

KJ:                                        11:06                    Celebrities, they're just like us, only ruder.

Abbi:                                    11:20                    So then I met with her, we talked about her ideas for the book, and then I wrote it in six weeks. So there you go.

KJ:                                        11:28                    And from there - straight into your own novels or were there any pit stops along the way?

Abbi:                                    11:34                    I started doing a second novel for her and she wasn't happy with what I had done, and I had already done quite a bit, so my agent was like, 'Okay, well she'll start over, but of course it will cost you more money.' And she's like, 'Well, I don't want to pay any more money.' And I said, 'Then I don't want to write any more words.' And so that's how that happened. And so then The Garden of Small Beginnings got written and that agent and I came to a parting of the ways, cause we had a different point of views on what should happen with the book. And then I actually put that book away for a year or two and tried to write screenplays and get involved with TV, had minor, minor encouragement in that direction, which then didn't come to pass. And so I was like blow this, I'm going back to writing books where the only a*****e I have to deal with this is myself. And so that's what I did. And then I got a new agent, a wonderful agent who agreed with me about the book. And the rest is history.

KJ:                                        12:39                    Same agent, all three books?

Abbi:                                    12:40                    Same agent, all three books, and the fourth which I just handed in and two more that I'm on the hook for. So I have two more to go.

KJ:                                        12:48                    When's the fourth one coming out?

Abbi:                                    12:49                    Presumably next spring/summer.

KJ:                                        12:52                    Ah, excellent, we shall be together.

Abbi:                                    12:55                    Well at the moment, I still think it's a piece of s**t. So that is always what happens. I'm like, 'This is it. My career is over. Every time.'

KJ:                                        13:07                    You don't feel like you're getting better? So I read them in this order: first, The Garden of Small Beginnings (because I read that one I suspect right around when it came out), then, The Bookish Life of Nina Hill (obviously sometime later), then back to Other People's Houses. I mean, they were all extremely fun and there's something in particular I want to ask you about, but I would say you're definitely building skill. You're not feeling that?

Abbi:                                    13:36                    No, I do feel that. I feel like every time I write something it's better than what I've written before. But what I'm not building in is necessarily confidence about it once when it's too close. So when I had it in Nina, I was like, 'It's a piece of crap.' And then by the time it came out and I went back and looked at it again, I was like, 'Oh. No, it's all right. It's all right.' And there were even bits, you know, when you read something that you're like, 'Wow, that's really good. I have no idea who wrote that part because I don't remember writing that part.' You know, there are more of those each time. So that I guess is good. But I find that the gap between what it's going to be in my head and what it ends up on paper, that doesn't seem to get a great deal smaller. I'm always a little bit like, 'That was not what I was really going for and part of the time it's because I'm not capable of doing what I think I can do. And part of it is just that the writing process itself changes the nature of the idea. Right? Like different things come out on paper and you follow that direction and it's not quite what you had in mind originally, but you know, it's still better than ice fishing.'.

New Speaker:                    14:44                    It's the same for nonfiction. Nonfiction works the same, I always quote Mary Roach. You know, I usually have an idea about something I'd like to research and possibly write about. And then Mary Roach refers to this period of time as a 'research flail' that she flails about in the research for a couple of months and then figures out what the book might be and that gap is always really hard for me cause you have to take that leap of faith that words will end up on the page on the other side. So definitely, nonfiction and fiction seem to have that similarity to them.

Abbi:                                    15:19                    Yeah. I mean I think any large project, even if it's not writing, like you build a house, or you have a child and you have this idea of what it's going to be. But then the actual everyday practicalities of creating something change the nature of the finished product itself.

New Speaker:                    15:38                    Yeah, absolutely.

Abbi:                                    15:52                    You know, the book itself (this is going to sound ridiculous), but the book itself has sort of an influence, you know what I mean? Like it takes on a life of its own and the characters do what the characters do. And so you just have to sort of trail along.

KJ:                                        16:19                    So what is your process around that? Sarina who isn't with us today and I, and now Jess, who's gonna go in for some fiction next, have been talking a lot about what we plan ahead of time, what we don't plan ahead of time. It seems to vary a little bit. What's your process look like?

Abbi:                                    16:40                    It's cracked.

KJ:                                        16:41                    You'd recommend it then?

Abbi:                                    16:44                    I am writing a book about it now because it really needs to be down on paper. No, it's terrible. My process is that I have an idea about, that's usually a character idea or a situation. So for example, the book I just wrote that I just finished, which at the moment is called Mothers, Daughters, and Unexpected Outcomes, which is a title that was sort of arrived at by a huge number of people.

KJ:                                        17:12                    Oh, good. Titling by committee.

Abbi:                                    17:14                    But I'm sure it's a great title. It's gonna be great. Anyway, the point is - that book was inspired by my real life experience that I know we all share, of that moment where you realize that the child you've been raising for the past 13, 14 years has suddenly turned into a totally different person and all the skills that you've gathered raising that child up until that point are completely useless. So you have to sort of come up with a whole new way of trying to relate to this person, who is now a different person, and who you respect and love, but who is deeply freaking irritating and annoying and bumptious and narcissistic and...

KJ:                                        17:57                    And knows where all your buttons are. And still hesitates not to press them.

Abbi:                                    18:03                    No, leans on them in fact. So that's what this book is about. So my process was, I want to write about the period I'm in right now. And the situation I set up was the woman and her teenage daughter are taking a college tour. So that was the structure of the book. I'm going to take them away from home, they're going to be on their own together with another group of parents taking this group college tour up the East coast. So that gave me my structure and then I just have at it. So what usually happens is, I write the first 10 - 15,000 words in a froth of excitement and confidence. Then I come up against whatever the floor in my original idea was and flail around flailing big, an excellent word for the process. Flail around and freak out and panic and that panic period lasts usually a week or two. Then I write everything. I've got down so far on index cards and stick them up on a noticeboard and stare at them for a while. Then I decided to work out what the next 10,000 words are going to do. I work that out, I write those, then I panic. Do it again, rinse and repeat. So that's basically my processes. Write a chunk, freak out, write it down, look at it, try and come up with what the next bit is going to be, write that, it changes, panic. It's lurching, it's sort of like the progress of a drunk person trying to get home. I lurched from lamppost to lamppost and then eventually I get there. It's good, right? You like it, right? You feel inspired, right?

KJ:                                        19:38                    Yeah. I think you should patent it because it works really well.

Abbi:                                    19:42                    The panicky lamppost process.

KJ:                                        19:45                    So, it sounds like you start from an emotion. Like a mental place where your people are, kind of. But one of the things that really strikes me about your books is that your people are always very much in a really defined physical place. And I don't mean like, I know that the bookstore has blue walls. I mean, it's almost like workplace fiction. Like The Garden of Small Beginnings had this very strong, not just gardened theme, but this sort of teaching, the placement of the garden and the thing the person was doing. And then Other People's Houses had that neighborhood setting. And it was a really distinct California neighborhood. And then The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, same sort of city bookstore.

Abbi:                                    20:36                    Same neighborhood. All three of the first three books are all set in the same neighborhood.

KJ:                                        20:40                    Yeah. I thought so, but it's not the neighborhood so much as they all have such a really strong setting for the action. And I wondered when that comes into play. Well, and you're leaving that too, if they're all heading out.

Abbi:                                    21:04                    Oh no, that's why this next one is a piece of crap. So, here's the thing. I struggle with structure. I feel like that's my weakness as a writer. I think I'm good at characters, I like writing dialogue, but I really struggle with plot and structure. And so in order to try and help myself, you will notice I always create this structure, this sort of artificial structure that I then lean on. So, in The Garden of Small Beginnings, she was taking a gardening course. I was able to break up the book by these lessons, right? So it sort of gives me a calendar and a structure to cling to. And then I separated each section. So each lesson, each class, was sort of a break, and then there would be another set of action as a result. The second one, Other People's Houses, she had to take the kids to school every day, right? So she was carpooling these kids to school and the sort of going from house to house gave me the structure I wanted. And then Nina, she had a planner, right? The action of the book takes place over a number of weeks during the summer. And so that gives me the structure and so then I can sort of cling and we're back to lampposts again. Then I can cling to the structure and move the story along sort of forcibly. And that's just my anxious cheater's way of giving the book some kind of structure because I feel like my plots aren't strong enough. Very little happens in my books, like they are not plot-driven because I'm not really interested in that. I love reading it, and I admire it in other writers, but I'm not very good at it myself. And I'm much more interested in the action that's going on between your ears as you drive your kids to school each day than I am in how you actually got to school because that's what's interesting to me.

KJ:                                        23:00                    That is funny that you would say that because I would say the same thing about what I write. And I've always felt it as sort of a flaw, but I would not have said it about your work as a reader. I see your point, nothing blows up. Although in Other People's Houses, it kind of does. That one's got a pretty clear plot high point. I feel like that whole plot driven structure thing is a very masculine way of looking at book structure.

New Speaker:                    23:41                    Right. I agree.

KJ:                                        23:43                    It's very external.

Abbi:                                    23:44                    It is very external, and I'm not interested in external stuff. I'm much more interested in relationships between people, conversations that you have in the normal course of the day, the small conversations you have with strangers, and the gap between what you're thinking and what you're saying, and also the gap between what you are presenting and what is really going on. The gap between your inside and your outside. That's what interests me as a person, as a human being. And so that's what I tend to write about. And then I tried to write about kids and dogs because I like kids and dogs.

KJ:                                        24:18                    Now how about the funny? Your books are funny. Especially Nina Hill. I mean, I think I laughed out loud multiple times at the end as they're sort of lurching around. It had that fun, tastic, caper feel. Do you feel that when you're writing it, do you plan it? How do you make that happen? Come on, give us the secret.

Abbi:                                    24:57                    Well, as you can tell from talking to me, I am just naturally a laugh riot and a charismatic maelstrom of humor. And so, it just comes out that way. No, I just can't take everything very seriously. And so when I'm writing I just can't take it seriously. I've tried writing serious books and I fail. I could just can't do it because I think most things are funny. Most things are ridiculous. Life is just a series of ridiculous predicaments. And so that's what I tend to write about.

KJ:                                        25:34                    And you do it very well.

Abbi:                                    25:36                    That's very kind of you to say.

KJ:                                        25:39                    So you were talking earlier about novels in the drawer. I think all of us would love to know how many it took you to get to the point where you could get one out.

Abbi:                                    25:50                    Okay. So I wrote two complete novels that were s**t. And I also wrote probably three movie screenplays that were crap and a TV pilot that nearly got made. So that I guess was marginally better. And which is now going to be the basis of the book I'm writing next. Yeah, so several. The very first one I wrote, I literally threw away. Like, I don't have it anymore. It was written 17 years ago when I was pregnant with my first child and it was pretty poor. And so I threw that one away completely. The second one I kept in a drawer. Well, not really a drawer but you know a folder on the desktop. And I tend to keep everything because I have many, many starts as well. As I said before, I seem to be able to write 12 to 15,000 words.

KJ:                                        26:52                    I was going to ask you how many of those sort of frothy beginnings - cause that's the hard part for a lot of writers is getting paid. So many people have like a really polished first three chapters or a lot of really enthusiastic bursty first three chapters. But it's, it's sitting down and going, okay, I'm gonna make this work. Do you have anything to say about the first time you managed to bring that off? Did someone lock you in a room?

Abbi:                                    27:25                    I was pregnant and bored and this was before the internet was really as interesting as it is now. So I didn't really have much to do. It was after September 11th I was pregnant with Julia, my eldest. We were in New York when September 11th happened. And then we went and lived with a friend in Berkeley for six weeks. And it was during that period of time that I finished the first piece of crap. I don't know, I think that's where being a professional comes in. Is that you can't just write the parts that are fun and easy. You have to just keep writing. I write every day. Often I say I write every day, I want to write every day, and I set out to write every day. But because of life, often I end up taking someone to the dentist or picking up groceries. So life trumps my work in a way that I think sometimes is something that women suffer from more than men. Not because of any inherent sexism, God forbid that there was any suggestion that there is any institutionalized sexism at work. It does appear to be a kind of expectation, that apparently I've bought into, that if some little child needs to go to the doctor, it's me that does it. So, work gets trumped all the time. But less and less as my kids get older and less and less as I get more bolshy. And so, I go and work every day, ideally. And you just keep plugging along.

KJ:                                        29:02                    But you were able to tell yourself this is what professionals do. It sounds like - before anyone was telling you that with a paycheck.

Abbi:                                    29:10                    Oh yeah.

KJ:                                        29:10                    That's hard for a lot of people.

Abbi:                                    29:11                    Bear in mind, I worked as a writer in advertising. So I was getting paid to write for decade and a half. So putting words on paper and getting a paycheck was something that I'd always done. And so I treated it that way. And advertising is also a great training for writers because you get used to throwing your work away and you get used to starting over. Like over and over and over and over again. And usually you work relatively hard on something and then someone will s**t all over it and you're like, 'Okay.' And you tear it up and start over. And after a while, that becomes just part of the process, and that's why it's such good training. Like journalism, like any career where you're basically selling words and other people, who haven't written them, have power to buy or sell them. So yeah, you get used to not caring so much and at the same time caring a lot. I don't know if that makes any sense, but you know what I mean? Being professional about it.

KJ:                                        30:15                    So we have a new question that I'm trying out on people. It's kind of a silly one, but what do you write in your head? I think all of us as writers wander around, sort of writing in our head constantly. What do you write in your head - when you're in the shower, or when you're lost in thought, or when you're driving kids to school? What are you writing in your head?

Abbi:                                    30:38                    At the moment? To be completely honest, I'm writing my eldest daughter's personal statement for her college applications.

KJ:                                        30:46                    That's an awesome answer.

Abbi:                                    30:48                    That is absolutely what I am writing and rewriting over and over again, which is unfortunate because I'm not actually the one who's writing the personal statements. Yeah. I have written bullet points for my child's personal statement many, many times on the way to the grocery store.

KJ:                                        31:13                    And I'm sure she's disregarded every single one.

Abbi:                                    31:16                    Oh, she's thrilled. She loves it when I come home and I burst into her room and I say, (well, after I've said what the hell happened in here?) Then I say, I've had some ideas for your personal statement and she sits up in bed and she, tugs out at least one of her ear bud things and says, 'Get out of my room.' Yup. Every time.

KJ:                                        31:41                    That's beautiful. It's really touching.

Abbi:                                    31:43                    It's a bonding moment. It's happened a lot lately. You know what it is, I don't even know that I'm writing as I'm driving around, but I'm always thinking about the book and sometimes I get an emotional feeling that I'm then trying to sort of get on paper. And so I'm always very happy when I'm driving around because I feel like I'm working, but I'm not actually producing anything.

KJ:                                        32:12                    Yeah, I write some amazing stuff on long drives, you wouldn't believe it. Yeah, it's good. It's really good. Then recently I tried turning on the notes app in my phone and (our friend Sarina, who has actually managed to do this successfully) I dictated a few of the great words that were in my head and I think that ended as we can all predict, which is that I did not even bother sending them...

Jess:                    32:39                    I have my children email me or text me. Like if I have a kid in the car with me, I'm like, 'Oh my gosh, I just had an idea. I need you to email me with the words.' and I'll come up with some random string of words. And they look at me like, who are you?, What is it you do with your life? It's always really revealing.

Abbi:                                    32:59                    My children are amazed I've lived as long as I have. They're so perplexed that somehow I have managed to make it to nearly 50 when I'm clearly barely capable of getting through the day. You know, it's part of this mysterious force that keeps them moving forward. It's like we must find out what she is actually doing with her life.

KJ:                                        33:25                    We don't want them to have an answer. That's all. That's my theory, anyway. I'm hopefully just gonna remain a mystery to them for long enough that none of them writes a book about me.

Abbi:                                    33:37                    Oh, I'll be dead long before I hope.

KJ:                                        33:43                    Well, speaking of books we always like to let the guest go first. So let's do #AmReading. Have you read anything good lately or that you would recommend?

Abbi:                                    33:54                    When I'm writing, I can't read the genre that I'm writing. So I don't ever read fiction when I'm writing because I'm worried that I will steal from it or I'm just will become so despondent that this other person is doing it so much better that I will be unable to continue. So, my favorite genre is murder mysteries, which is what I grew up reading, cause that's what my mother did. And so when I am left to my own devices, I will go back and read golden age mysteries, like Agatha Christie, Patricia Wentworth, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, etc. I am reading a Miss Silver mystery, which is Patricia Wentworth. And I couldn't be happier, I just go back over and over. Nero Wolfe, which is actually an American guy writer. I love those books and I've read them all 50 times and I will read them all 50 times more.

KJ:                                        34:59                    I have shelves and shelves and shelves. Which Patricia Wentworth are you savoring at the moment?

Abbi:                                    35:05                    I believe this one I'm reading is called Lonesome Road. I'm also terrible in general at titles. But they're all good and I love the Nero Wolfe mysteries. I think they're perfect. Just constructionist perfect.

KJ:                                        35:36                    So fun and such a great place to just go back and refresh and cleanse. There are some great people writing murder mysteries now, but I just tend to go back and reread them. It sounds like you do too.

Abbi:                                    35:52                    All the time. All the time. And I'll try not to, like right now I'm not reading Nero Wolfe's because I've read them so many times that I'm trying to forget some of it. But the problem is as soon as you start the book, you're like, no, I remember exactly. But it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter.

KJ:                                        36:09                    I think it actually frees your mind up to sort of churn around in the background.

Abbi:                                    36:13                    Yeah. And I just appreciate it, the writing is so good. Agatha Christie, you know, there's a reason that she is a success. Her plots are so perfect, her characterization is so deft, and they're so satisfyingly pleasing to read, that it's just a joy. So that is what I am always reading, a mystery of some kind or another. And that's what I would love to write. But I don't. Unfortunately I've been semi-successful writing this other genre and my publisher is not interested in me writing mysteries.

KJ:                                        36:47                    I have one in a drawer in which a guy at law school is killed in a parking lot and he bears a lot of resemblance to a guy I went to...yeah. It can never come out of the drawer.

Abbi:                                    37:08                    Well, the thing is, so I wrote a mystery - and my publisher probably doesn't want me to talk about this, but whatever - I wrote a mystery that I loved, and has a set of characters that I adore, and they don't want to publish it. And so that's fine. I'm actually going to rewrite it as not a mystery for my next book because I love the characters so much. And that's fine. I've discovered that I'm totally comfortable with that. I just want to write about these characters. So that's really where I'm at. The whole genre thing is somewhat perplexing to me. So, I did a lot of promotion for Nina around it being a romance, which it's funny because to me it's not at all a romance. I mean it is, but it's the weakest part of the book. That is not what's important. So I just felt like a bit of a fraud.

KJ:                                        38:06                    It's just really hard to tell. We spend a lot of time talking about this too, and I've just followed the women's fiction hashtag on Instagram and discovered a lot of new authors that way. And I think if we had Sarina here, one of the definitions that she's once offered me is that in women's fiction, one person can get their guy, but there has to be another plot. And if there's a best friend, they don't get their guy. But if it's romance, then everybody gets their guy. I'm probably misquoting her terribly, but you know.

Abbi:                                    38:39                    I get it. I call what I do domestic fictio,n because it's about people's domestic life.

KJ:                                        38:48                    I write what I like to read. Yeah, it's what's interesting. One more thing...

Abbi:                                    38:56                    What are you guys reading?

KJ:                                        38:57                    Oh that's right. We get to say what we're reading. Jess, go ahead. Cause I am drifting off.

New Speaker:                    39:02                    I've decided to do an experiment. So, as I mentioned, I've been reading Harlan Coben because I had never read Harlan Coben before. And I realized (especially recently) we've been talking about popular authors that have a bazillion best-sellers whose books I've never read. So I'm going to try a little experiment and try to read a book by a whole bunch of really, really popular, successful bestselling authors that I just don't even think to pick up because they've got books A through Z or W actually I guess is where she ended up. But you know, books by people that I have never picked up before and who have lots of them out there. Cause who knows, maybe I'll like one of them. I do know that I'm loving Harlan Coben still. So that's been fun for me.

KJ:                                        39:49                    And I have been rereading Confessions of a Bookseller by Sean Bythell, which we've talked about before. In part because I met a friend for a drink and she handed me a grocery shopping bag and said, 'George (her husband) wanted to give you this back.' And there it was - my copy - and I was in need of something soothing and fun. And in the process of reading it I got to noodling around because he writes a great deal about his girlfriend, who I think is his then-girlfriend, but I'm a little hazy. And, and the fact that she has written a book about the town in which the bookstore is. So for whatever reason, I never looked that up at the time. But now I have looked it up. And so the person who is Ana in his book and is his girlfriend had written the very popular Three Things You Need To Know About Rockets: A Real-Life Scottish Fairy Tale about her leaving her LA life, an ambitious Hollywood filmmaker, and going to this small town in Scotland and meeting this bookstore owner, and falling in love. I think the book has a happy ending, I'm not sure the life piece of it does, but I know they're trying to get it made into a movie. And now I've sort of rabbit trailed off into buying that book and following everyone on all the social media so I can find out what really happens, which honestly I probably would be just as happy if I just left it all between the covers of the first book. But that's what I'm doing.

New Speaker:                    41:19                    That sounds like a delightful endeavor.

KJ:                                        41:22                    And Confessions of a Bookseller is super fun.

Jess:                                     41:27                    And speaking of booksellers, actually, do we have a bookstore to talk about this week? Ms Abbi?

Abbi:                                    41:34                    Yes. So this is easy because the bookstore in Nina Hill is a real bookstore. And so in the book it's called Nights. And in real life it's called Chevalier's, which is French for night cause it's a very, very thin disguise. And it's on Larchmont Boulevard and it's a real independent bookstore, really run by a woman named Liz and staffed by a number of very smart and fabulous young women, much like Nina Hill. And I love it. I go there all the time. I always launch my books there. It's a really great store.

KJ:                                        42:08                    Oh, you're like one of the people with the kids in the reading group.

Abbi:                                    42:11                    Yes.

KJ:                                        42:12                    You're a side character in your own book.

Abbi:                                    42:15                    Yes. I'm not only the hero of my own life, I am also the supporting cast.

KJ:                                        42:21                    What did they do? What did they think?

Abbi:                                    42:25                    They liked it, they were amused. Or they're doing a very good job of pretending that they're amused, but yes, they like it. Liz says that she's nothing like the character Liz, but she is. It's a great store and has a wonderful selection of books. And Liz is one of those people who has the gift of, if I say to her, 'I really enjoyed X', she will say, 'Oh then you will really enjoy Y' and she's 100% correct. So that's a great skill.

KJ:                                        42:55                    I need her in my life, that is an amazing skill. My novel to come is centered around two fried chicken restaurants in a single small town in my book named Chicken Mimi's and Chicken Annie's. No it's not Chicken Annie's, that's the real one. There's a small town in Kansas with two fried chicken restaurants called Chicken Mary's and Chicken Annie's and I do not know what Chicken Mary's and Chicken Annie's are going to think of having become Chicken Mimi's and Chicken Franny's.

Abbi:                                    43:34                    I hope you at least get some free chicken out of it.

KJ:                                        43:38                    If I were in this small town in Kansas where haven't been in decades, I think I could make that happen. Well, thank you so much. We have utterly, wholeheartedly enjoyed, it's been, as you said, a laugh riot. Actually, it really has been. This has been really great and we thank you so much for coming.

Abbi:                                    44:15                    It's my pleasure. I look forward to coming back sometime.

Jess:                                     44:19                    Well and if people want to find you out there on the social internets, where will people find you? Where would you like to people to go?

Abbi:                                    44:26                    They can find me on Instagram. Cause I don't do Twitter.

KJ:                                        44:39                    We'll find it. We'll link it in the show notes, which I will remind listeners you can get in your inbox every week by going to amwritingpodcast.com and signing up and there they will be every time we have an episode, it will pop in. There'll be a short paragraph usually from me rambling on about what it is that we talked about. And then you get all the show notes, all the links, everything you could possibly ask for.

Jess:                                     45:09                    Alright. Until next week, everyone, keep your butts in the chair and your head in the game. This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid.

If you do not already know Rachael Herron, host of the Ink In Your Veins Podcast (formerly known as How Do You Write) and author of 13-ish novels (including 2 thrillers under the not-exactly pseudonym RH Herron), soon-to-be two memoirs and a few assorted books as well as many many blog posts and essays about writing… well you’re lucky because now you do.

The thing to know about Rachael Herron for today’s purposes is that she’s published her books both independently and with traditional publishers. She’s even retrieved the rights to traditionally published books from over a decade ago and re-published them herself—even while enthusiastically traditionally publishing her thrillers. Even with all that experience and knowledge under her belt, she still decided she just HAD to go out and publish something new. She’s independently publishing her newest book, Unstuck: An Audacious Hunt for Home and Happiness—but first, she decided to run a Kickstarter to help her do it.

Did Rachael have any idea how to run a Kickstarter? She did not. Did she know if she’d meet her goals? Nope—although, as you’ll hear in the episode, she had a bunch of good reasons to think she just might.

If you’ve ever toyed with the idea of using Kickstarter to fund a book yourself, this is the episode for you. We talk about why Rachael decided not to seek a traditional publisher, how she decided to try Kickstarter and what it took to get it done, as well as what I call “mistakes we made so you don’t have to”. We talk about the highs—hitting her goal in a matter of hours and getting to create “stretch goals” so raise even more, being chosen as one of Kickstarter’s “Projects We Love”—and the lows, like almost setting goals in the wrong currency, which would have meant she’d essentially be paying people to take her book and overpromising speed and needing to tell people things were not actually live… yet.

And we get way into the weeds on who this might work for and who might want to look for another way to get what they want. If you’re thinking oh, her platform is big, no wonder this worked for her—we talk numbers, and I bet you’ll be surprised. And her final piece of advice is so important that I’m going to lay it right down here:

Write the book first.

Links from the pod

Find Rachael’s Kickstarter, which runs through April 22, 2024, HERE.

Follow Rachael on Instagram HERE and subscribe to her EXCELLENT email about writing HERE. Support her on Patreon HERE.

Get Your Book Selling on Kickstarter, Monica Leonelle & Russell P. Nohelty

Joanna Penn episodes on Kickstarters

How to Be Old, Lyn Slater

Lulu.com

Bookfunnel

Hey, it's Jennie Nash, founder and CEO of Author Accelerator. I hear so many people tell me that book coaching sounds like their dream job, and they wish they could do it, but they can't because ___________. Fill in the blank, whatever it is: They don't have an agent, they haven't written a bestseller,  they don't have a Ph.D., they weren't an English major, they don't know enough about the publishing industry--whatever the thing is. And I can tell you that I see people overcome these things every single day. I have a presentation on this, on imposter syndrome. It's the single biggest barrier keeping most people from saying YES to their dream job. Come check it out at bookcoaches.com/imposter. That's bookcoaches.com/imposter.

He’s back! He’s back! One of my favorite writers, an early and generous mentor, the fantabulous A.J. Jacobs. We interviewed him last when his book, The Puzzler, came out, and he’s back to talk about his new book, The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution’s Original Meaning.

Links from the Pod:

A.J.’s website

My Outsourced Life article

Party like it’s 1789! My weird enlightening month living strictly by the U.S. Constitution in The Guardian

Thanks for listening to this week’s episode! If you enjoy what we’re doing here at the #AmWriting Podcast, make sure you’re subscribed to get our episodes straight to your inbox (and hey - maybe forward it to someone else who may enjoy).

We’ve been talking a lot lately about the how hard it is to finish a project and how different that energy is from the wonderful, euphoric, sometimes manic starting energy. Here’s some advice from Jess, Sarina, and Jennie on how authors manage their lives and relationships and work amid the ups and downs of writing projects.

AmReading:

Sarina: She’s been loving the Orphan X series by Greg Hurwitz

Jennie: Her fave read this week is Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano

Jess: Finally got around to listening to Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt and KJ convinced her to download The Murder of Mr. Wickham by Claudia Gray. She also started The Sicilian Inheritance by return guest Jo Piazza.

Hey, it's Jennie Nash, founder and CEO of Author Accelerator. I hear so many people tell me that book coaching sounds like their dream job, and they wish they could do it, but they can't because ___________. Fill in the blank, whatever it is: They don't have an agent, they haven't written a bestseller,  they don't have a Ph.D., they weren't an English major, they don't know enough about the publishing industry--whatever the thing is. And I can tell you that I see people overcome these things every single day. I have a presentation on this, on imposter syndrome. It's the single biggest barrier keeping most people from saying YES to their dream job. Come check it out at bookcoaches.com/imposter. That's bookcoaches.com/imposter.

As a hybrid author with a long history of both self-publishing and traditional contracts, I’m often asked about this choice. How I decided to self-publish, and is it still a good idea?

This is question for the ages! Or, well, since 2007. 

The answer is that it’s complicated. My own feelings about self-pub have surely evolved over the years. This March I celebrated my ten-year anniversary as a self published author. I had a great return on my efforts right out of the gate, so I’ve always been a fan. Unfortunately, though, self-publishing ate my life. It’s a lot of work, so I’m not quite as gung-ho as I used to be. But that doesn’t mean it’s a terrible idea.

To help you decide, I’ve identified several questions you can ask yourself to help figure out if self-publishing is for you. 

#1 Does this book have an easily defined “shelf” in publishing land? 

* Self publishing is not for every book. It works well when the genre has a built-in readership who already knows what it wants. For example, mystery lovers know how to shop for a mystery. They know how to spot one, and they usually don’t need an NPR interview with the author to entice them. 

* If your book can fit comfortably and familiarly beside its cousins in the genre, give yourself ten points in favor of self publishing. 

#2 Do I have a built-in readership I can reach via email or social media? 

* If your book does not have an obvious, built-in readership, but you have a built-in following, then self-publishing might make sense for you. 

* For example, if agents and publishers are telling you that your topic is too niche for them, but you already know how to reach the exact reader you need, then maybe you should trust your gut. Perhaps you’re the leading expert in crafting origami holiday decorations, with an instagram following of a hundred thousand people. Or maybe you travel the nation speaking on a particular topic. Or you’re part of a well-defined group—like education influencers, or architecture nerds. There are certainly some instances of an author knowing better than the publisher whether a book will sell. 

#3 Do I have the patience to learn how publishing platforms fit together?

* I’m convinced that anyone can learn the ropes of self publishing. But you have to want to learn them. I enjoyed learning how to self publish. Then again, I also used to enjoy doing my own taxes. So maybe I’m a special breed of nerd. 

* Before you start, figure out which bank account you’re going to provide for payment information, and get ready to provide your tax ID number. You’ll need to set up at least one platform, like KDP or D2D (Draft 2 Digital.) 

* If you hate business, math and admin work, make sure to be honest with yourself about all the red tape you’re going to have to cut as a self-published author. And to those who say “I can just hire this stuff out,” I’m not sure that’s a great idea. Yes, there are hybrid-style publishers who will take your money and fill out the forms on your behalf. But many of them overcharge and overpromise. Self publishing is, by its very nature, a DIY effort. 

#4 Can I source the editorial and design help that I need to get this right? 

* Hiring freelancers is often a fun part of this job, but it’s great to have a plan. 

* Editorial work can vary vastly in quality, and the problem is that you won’t be able to tell who’s competent just from a website or an email exchange. That’s why the first question I ask editors is: are you willing to do a two page sample edit? And I don’t hire anyone who says no. It’s not that I expect anyone to work for free, but two pages is just a few minutes time. And finding an editor who jives with your style is hard. 

* Furthermore, you need to be very clear about what you expect the editor to do. Is this a developmental edit? Will she be advising you on pacing and plot holes? Or is this a copyedit—meant to find errors, awkward phrasings and repetitions, and basic inconsistencies? Or is this a final proofread? Each of these services will be priced differently. 

* Cover design, unlike editorial work, is easier to evaluate from a portfolio online. Note that cover designers tend to be very genre specific. So you need to find someone who has designed covers close in nature to the one you need. Before you even get started, make a Pinterest board of covers in your genre that you admire. 

* It’s also worth noting that not all competent writers are born with the right vocabulary for discussing cover design. If you feel this is a weakness of yours, try to find a designer who seems willing to give you the time and attention you need.

#5 Am I ready to bear the full responsibility for launching my book into the world? 

* The best thing about self-publishing is that the author has complete control. But that’s also the worst thing about it! If you fall in love with a cover, but it’s not a good fit for the genre, there’s no one to play devil’s advocate. Or, rather, you will have to work hard to find collaborators you trust to help you make the big decisions. And you’ll have to course-correct all by yourself when you realize you’ve gone astray.  

Conclusion: with great power comes great responsibility. So be ready! Self-publishing can be life-changing, but it’s best if you go in with open eyes and an open heart. 

~Sarina

It’s EPISODE 401! That’s a lot of episodes. We’re proud. We’re also not done—and a couple weeks ago, a fellow writer decreed, in an email post that went rather viral, that No One Buys Books.

We disagree. Instead, we offer the following less bleak but not entirely rosy corollary: Nothing Sells Books. But Books Still Sell.

Coming at you in this episode are four somewhat cynical authors, one who spends her time now working with writers rather than writing herself. We’ve all had books hit various lists… and we’ve all had books that have not, have neither hit any lists or reached target numbers or earned out or anything of the sort. And we have thoughts. Listen for them… but meanwhile, here I am, KJ, with my very own soapbox bc I said “I’ll write the shownotes” and the others, spotting an opportunity to let someone else do a thing, semi-wisely agreed because now I get to tell you what I think.

I mostly think that we authors have bought into a story in which we have more control over our sales than we do. We believe—or want to—that we can TikTok hustle up readers, tweet our way to success, muster our many Facebook friends to buy three copies each (it’s not that much!), put some links in our Substacks and call on our Notes, Threads and Insta buds to click those links. And traditional publishers want so badly to believe that too—because if it’s not true, then we don’t know what is. Reviews MIGHT sell books. Ads sometimes work. Even celebrity book clubs, the last magic best-seller wand, only work when there is a match-up between readers and the book—some Reese, GMA and Jenna picks sell big while others don’t, and there is absolutely no way to beg, buy, or steal your way onto them anyway. (Maybe? Story idea, yours for the taking: author blackmails way onto celeb book list, things go terribly wrong.)

And I want to tell you that this is not true, because I don’t entirely want it to be true. It arguably hasn’t been true for me, and I’ve seen it not work for many if not most of other authors. To get more specific, I’ve had not one but TWO excerpts of a book in the NYT and had it not move the needle. I’ve had an essay in LitHub, ditto. I’ve been on many, many podcasts, I’ve sent emails, I’ve made TikToks and reels, and I’ve watched friends push these buttons hard and less hard to mixed results—but not NO results, and that’s an important distinction. Below, I’m offering a few success stories, all with massive caveats, the most important of which is this: I probably only see the successes.

The TL;DR is this: nothing easy sells books. There is no short cut or even a long cut. For most of us, nothing we ourselves are willing to do or are capable of doing in the short term is going to move enough titles to make a significant impact on our success. The second half of our koan is also true, though. Books still sell. But most book sales, especially those that lead to wild success, come from forces beyond our control. Word of mouth, a lucky media hit, a celebrity boost. A hit TV show that comes out of the blue years after a series is published (Bridgerton), or maybe after the author has died (The Queen’s Gambit). Or they come from enough people picking up the book and sharing it with enough others in ways that cannot be planned or gamed. You can’t count on those things, although one thing remains true: lightning can’t strike a book that hasn’t been written.

The most important thing to do is to write the books.

Sarina notes in the podcast that nothing sells (your) books like more books (by you)—witness, for example, Taylor Jenkins Reid. Daisy Jones and the Six was not her first book by any means—but its success brought her backlist roaring into prominence. I think about TJR a LOT, because she stuck to the thing I want to stick to—writing the books, not recording video confessionals about the writing process and setting them to the music du jour. But… that’s a thing. That people like. That honestly can (maybe, kinda, and I’m not at all sure how much you control this) sell books.

The depressing (to me) truth is that if you really throw your whole heart and soul into marketing your title, you might be able to get somewhere, but the thing is I am talking ALL IN. I’m talking hours of content creation one way or another. It might be hard-hitting researched work in an area that fascinates people. It might be hot takes on a world that really is your wheelhouse. It might be soul-baring, emotional videos about the process. It might be really digging into Facebook ads and Amazon algorithms, SEO and tagging. Either way it’s a lot of non-writing work to create podcasts, ads, videos and well-produced reels. It takes time, much of it spent on details like lining up the right music and analyzing results and repeating again and again and none of that is easy or fast.

Let me offer some case studies. First, Breanne Randall. This one is painful for me because we had similar books coming out at a similar time (Playing the Witch Card and The Unfortunate Side Effects of Heartbreak and Magic), and hers hit the NYT list and mine did not. Is it possible that she wrote a better book? Sure. But she hit the list for one week only (NO SHADE that’s amazing), her first week after going on sale, which means that the vast majority of those sales were pre-orders and most almost certainly didn’t result from WOM from happy readers. So at that moment, it probably didn’t matter whose book was better. What mattered was something else, and it’s quite possible, even likely, that that “something else” was her impressive hustle, especially on TikTok but also on Instagram. I did some. She did more. A LOT more.

For all the details on her hard work and results, read Dan Blank’s description here—but suffice it to say we’re talking hours and hours of video and posts, an excellent eye for what was resonating with viewers and readers and a willingness (up to a point) to really share the journey. She’s also attractive and closer to the TikTok demographic and probably herself loves the format—all things that go a long way to success in any genre. It’s really hard to put that kind of time and effort into a creative act that you aren’t enjoying (and unlikely to succeed). And the book itself fits the TT demo as well—but that’s not enough on its own. She did the work, and she reaped the reward, and I both admire and hate her for it.

Here’s another approach: become the go-to expert in an area you’re passionate about and develop a fan base around it, then write a book in that area that is absolutely for your fans. My example here is Virginia Sole-Smith, who we’ve had on as a guest (Episode 362: Talking Fat Talk and Substack Success, and Episode 128: #PlanItOut). Virginia has shifted around somewhat, from a more parent-oriented place to one centered on diet culture, anti-fat bias, feminism and health. You’ll find her—and her podcast, email and many many media hits and her best-selling book—here. She’s an excellent example of laying the platform groundwork but again, this isn’t something that can be done lightly or easily—or quickly. This took time and passion and persistence. I sincerely don’t think you can fake this or game it, but if you can see your way to it—it sells books.

For a contrarian take on same, go look at Jo Piazza’s last year of content. She is all hustle, and she threw herself, heart and soul, into promoting her novel The Sicilian Inheritance. (Listen to her on Episode 393: Writing What I Want to Write). And she sold a ton of copies—she should be and is thrilled, it’s a success by almost any measure. That “almost” is because—and this is her talking and her measure of a success she’d hoped for, not me judging (although I too define success in this not-very-healthy way)—she didn’t hit any lists.

I say maybe she still will, but the truth is that most books, if they’re going to hit, do so in the first week. (By no means all—see TJR above, or Colleen Hoover, or The Queen’s Gambit, etc). Jo was and is and always will be true to herself and her wide-ranging interests, and that means her last year of content, which has been wildly popular, has also been all over the place, from tradwives to Little House. She’s had amazing media hits, but they didn’t sell enough books to satisfy her. (I write this with some hesitation, I hope she doesn’t kill me… IT IS A FUN GREAT ENTERTAINING BOOK BUY IT NOW.) Maybe if she’d been Virginia and thrown herself all in after… Italian genealogy? True crime? Family history? Then the result might have been different and maybe not. Maybe she’d have been bored. Maybe she’d have missed something she’s done in the past year that will lead her to still bigger and greater book sales. WE CANNOT KNOW.

Because… Nothing Sells Books. But People Still Buy Them. The End (and also, the beginning.)

Announcements:

* The spectacular Summer Blueprint for a Book program, with coaches and episodes and a workbook and all sorts of things to get you rolling on your next project, is coming (details soon, start date 7/2/24).

* Our new monthly Booklab First Pages Review Podcast, starting 6/1/24 (early episodes will be free, later episodes will go to supporters only). Want to submit your first page? Supporters will find the link in their welcome email! (Can’t swing a subscription because $$ is tight? Reply to this email and we’ll set you up.)

* Become a Sticker or Sparkly Sticker supporter before the end of May using this link and get 20% off your first year. This isn’t much, since supporting us costs less than a trendy Stanley mug, but it will buy you a fancy coffee.

LINKS

* Abdi Nessenian, Only This Beautiful Moment

* The Creative Pragmatist

* Sarina Bowen’s The Five Year Lie

* Amy Smilovic on the Second Life Podcast

* The first page of Sarina’s thriller… below.

Let me start by answering the question posed in the title: very bad. Very very bad. Terrible, even. Plotless meandering senseless drivel involving two-dimensional characters continually lifting cups of coffee to their lips and then never putting them down and suddenly, without warning, pumping gas instead. Although, to be honest, that last is never my personal problem. My (incoherent, emotion-less, inconsistent) characters tend to meticulously move around a reasonably clear, if poorly described, landscape. They speak in full, grammatically correct sentences. They even banter and they’re often quite entertaining as they go about doing completely the wrong things for the wrong reasons.

And this was my problem. I heard the phrase “shitty first draft” (as you no doubt have) many times, and I thought, well, but it’s not. It’s not unreadable, or incomprehensible. If you picked it up and read just one paragraph you’d mistake it for a real book. Pull any single paragraph out of any draft I’ve ever written and you’d go, yeah, okay. That’s a book by a writer! Not a great writer or anything. My point is that the writing is always fine. Good, even. Sometimes better than good.

So when the drafts themselves turn out to be pretty shitty, I tend to be way more crushed than I should be—because “shitty” doesn’t mean what I thought it did. It’s taken me far longer than it probably should have to figure that out. Maybe everyone else is way ahead of me here. But the thing that makes a shitty first draft “shitty” isn’t that the writing is bad.

It’s that it’s a terrible book.

When I first started writing fiction, I had only my own early drafts to compare things to. They weren’t (aren’t) good—they lacked structure, were too complicated, explained some things too much and other things not at all. There’s no interiority, emotion or description. I write around the plot, or include too much plot, or try to attach a plot that’s not thematically integrated with the story. The bones are soft floppy poorly formed and malleable—but if I, say, burn down a barn, the scene itself will be exciting and consistent. That often fooled (fools) me into thinking my draft is further along than it is. And then I thought it was just me—other people probably wrote pretty good book drafts that then needed revision in different ways. Other people started with good bones and worked out from there. Only I, special stupid snowflake that I was, kept writing all the skin and clothing and hair and sometimes organs to go on wrong or non-existent skeletons.

I’ve since read a lot of other first drafts and I’ve realized: I was totally wrong.

This is how lots of people do it.

This IS what “shitty first draft” means. (Or it can be, it probably means lots of other things too). Most of us (honestly, even if we blueprint and outline and all the things) are going to end up with someone telling us that the book has no middle, that we need to cut the first 2/3, that our protagonist isn’t unlikeable per se, but rather that there is nothing on the page to like or dislike. Someone will say, he has no agency. She’s too passive. There’s nothing at stake in the first third of the book, why on earth would she take this job/go to this party/answer that phone call, why this, why him, why now. And they will be right (although they might not be right about how to fix it).

Whether it’s a freelance editor, a good beta reader or the hosts of TSNOTYAW who tells you that your draft, be it first or second or fifth, is still firmly mired in “shitty” territory, the most common reaction is something along the lines of:

This is too bad. It’s too awful, if I’ve come this far and I still don’t have this or that fundamental thing in place—if there is somehow no climax or no reason to relate to the character or no clear arc or evolution, if somehow this is 80K words but it is still not a book…

Yeah. Turns out that’s the way it works. For a LONG time. For draft after draft after draft. For the draft that gets you an agent, even maybe. Maybe for the draft that you sell.

Revision—re-drafting— isn’t polishing, or even adding dialogue or emotion or removing a character or changing the POV from third close to first present and back again. Until the very last versions, it isn’t just working with the words on the page. It’s working with the ideas and the concepts and the scenes and the moments. The characters and the themes and the arcs. This is what we mean when we say good writing comes last (Episode 354) and when we try to distinguish between editing and revising. They’re all shitty drafts. Until—and this only happens if you just keep going in there and tearing out the liver you stuck in where the heart should be or whatever—it’s finally a book.

I don’t know about you but I hate this every single time. Some people do it faster than others but every writer whose early drafts I’ve ever read is going through some version of the same thing. It starts with something mind-bogglingly terrible—when considered as a book—far, far more often than I once believed.

If a first draft has a beginning, a middle and an end, it’s a good first draft. It can be as bad as it has to be, as many times as it needs to be, for as long as it takes.

If you find that encouraging… then you’re definitely in the right place.

Hello #AmWriters, Jess here. When Rosalie Haizlett emailed to introduce me to her work, I was intrigued. At the time, I was working on the marketing section of a book proposal, trying to thick- and thin-slice the book’s potential audience and explain why my fanbase as well as new readers might purchase this particular book I was describing. So when Rosalie emailed to tell me about her forthcoming book, Tiny Worlds of the Appalachian Mountains: An Artist’s Journey my head exploded. How do you convince a publisher to let you write about such tiny worlds, no matter how beautiful your art and eloquent your writing? Rosalie generously answered my questions in the spirit they were asked: with a genuine love for small presses, books about very specific subjects, and wonder for her process and her end product.

As a bonus, I found out about some of the most incredible fellowship opportunities for writers and illustrators, ones I’m tempted to apply for myself! I hope you enjoy this episode as much I did.

Rosalie’s website

Rosalie’s #AmReading suggestions:

Farmhouse by Sophie Blackall and Sophie’s website because it’s gorgeous

Rare Air: Endangered Birds, Bats, Butterflies and Bees by Sarah Kaizar

Jess’ #AmReading suggestion:

The Five Year Lie by Sarina Bowen, duh.

It’s SO SO EASY for creatives to get caught up in chasing after praise and approval to boost their own mood and productivity. How can we spend less energy "borrowing self" from other people's reactions, and more energy pursuing what's important to us? KJ asks Kathleen Smith, author of True to You: A Therapist's Guide to Stop Pleasing Others and Start Being Yourself, to help us find our true writer-selves at all the moments when all the other opinions and demands and pseudo-beliefs beckon. The goal? Hanging up a mental sign that says “currently closed to imaginary commentary.”

Kathleen Smith PhD, LPC is an author, licensed therapist, and expert on relationship systems with degrees from Harvard University and The George Washington University. She is the author of Everything Isn’t Terrible: Conquer Your Insecurities, Interrupt Your Anxiety, and Finally Calm Down, a funny, practical guide that breaks down psychotherapy concepts into accessible stories of change and True to You: A Therapist’s Guide to Stop Pleasing Others and Starting Being Yourself.

She also writes a weekly therapy newsletter, The Anxious Overachiever, —and clearly we all need THAT.

#AmReading

Kathleen: Wild Rituals, Caitlin O'Connell

KJ: The Creative Pragmatist, Amy Smilovic (largely unobtainable, so check out her Substack here.)

Find Kathleen via her website, Facebook, or Instagram

Are you a “sticker”?

Regular listeners know that whenever we meet our writing goals around here, we text each other one word: STICKER. (and then we add a cute sticker to our calendar, because we’re fun like that).

We call supporters of the #AmWriting podcast “stickers” too—and while our regular podcasts and shownotes go out to all of our listeners, we have created a few things just for stickers. First, there’s the Summer Blueprint for a Book Sprint—10 weeks dedicated to working with coaches and a community to figure out how to turn your next idea—or your struggling draft—into the book you want to write. You can join it anytime (the how-to is below).

Stickers can also submit the first page of their WIP to the Booklab First Pages podcast, where we might choose it to discuss, review and offer ideas for persuading agents, editors and readers that they want to turn that page and see what happens next. (Find the link to submit a first page HERE.)

I’m a sticker! Give it all to me now.

To join the Blueprint for a Book Summer Sprint, you must be a paid subscriber. Then, opt-in and set up your podcast feed. Don’t worry, it’s simple! Click here to go to your #AmWriting account, and when you see this screen, do two things:

* Toggle “Blueprint for a Book” from “off” (grey) to “on” (green).

* Click “set up podcast” next to Blueprint for a Book and follow the easy instructions.

Once you set those things up, you’ll get all the future Blueprint emails and podcasts (and if you’re joining the party a bit late, just head to our website and click on Blueprint for a Book in the top menu).

We only meant to dissect the success of the writer from this NYT piece briefly, but it turned out we had a lot to say. No, we can’t all imitate her (nor do we want to) but there are things to be learned here. And things to be learned by checking in on your goals at mid-year! How’s it going out there?

LINKS

New York Times: How a Self-Published Book Broke ‘All the Rules’ and Became a Best Seller

The Atlantic: The 24-Year-Old Who Outsold Oprah This Week

The Nothing Sells Books but Books Still Sell essay and episode #401

Not linking to the workbook we discussed bc I have my doubts…

Not linking to the TT stuff either so sue me.

Start Where You Are, Meera Lee Patel

oh OKAY I’ll link to the workbook:

The Shadow Journal, Keila Shaheen

Rachael Herron’s Ink in Your Veins Podcast Ep. 183 with Jennie Nash

Sarina’s latest book, The Five Year Lie

Jess on Instagram and TikTok killing it

Funeral in my Brain, Lisa Levy (coming soon!)

2024 Words

KJ: Unapologetic

Sarina: Abundance

Jess: Recreate/Recreate

Jennie: I… do not remember. (It was Zone of Genius)

#AmReading

Jess: Ali Hazelwood’s Not In Love, Funny Story by Emily Henry

KJ: I Hope This Finds You Well, Natalie Sue

Sarina: The Paradise Problem, Christina Lauren

Jennie: They’re Going to Love You, Meg Howrey

An #AmWriting Success Story, Episode 404

Are you a “sticker”?

Regular listeners know that whenever we meet our writing goals around here, we text each other one word: STICKER. (and then we add a cute sticker to our calendar, because we’re fun like that).

We call supporters of the #AmWriting podcast “stickers” too—and while our regular podcasts and shownotes go out to all of our listeners, we have created a few things just for stickers. First, there’s the Summer Blueprint for a Book Sprint—10 weeks dedicated to working with coaches and a community to figure out how to turn your next idea—or your struggling draft—into the book you want to write. You can join it anytime (the how-to is below).

Stickers can also submit the first page of their WIP to the Booklab First Pages podcast, where we might choose it to discuss, review and offer ideas for persuading agents, editors and readers that they want to turn that page and see what happens next. (Find the link to submit a first page HERE.)

I’m a sticker! Give it all to me now.

To join the Blueprint for a Book Summer Sprint, you must be a paid subscriber. Then, opt-in and set up your podcast feed. Don’t worry, it’s simple! Click here to go to your #AmWriting account, and when you see this screen, do two things:

* Toggle “Blueprint for a Book” from “off” (grey) to “on” (green).

* Click “set up podcast” next to Blueprint for a Book and follow the easy instructions.

Once you set those things up, you’ll get all the future Blueprint emails and podcasts (and if you’re joining the party a bit late, just head to our website and click on Blueprint for a Book in the top menu).

The Blueprint is a process of inquiry that ideally happens before you start to write a book, but is also incredibly effective before you start to revise a manuscript or if you happen to be stuck writing chapter three, or thirteen, or thirty-three over and over again.

Jennie created the Blueprint and KJ is both a fan and a book coach who is certified to teach it. In this short episode, we chat about why the Blueprint is so great and why it would be great for you to do it with us this summer!

Do The Blueprint With Us This Summer!

Starting July 2, we’ll be walking you through the 14 steps of the Blueprint over 10 weeks. Some of the steps are very short and we combined them into one episode.

Every episode speaks to fiction writers, memoir writers, and nonfiction writers. There are workbooks, and you will get a link to the digital download of the Blueprint book of your choice.

We’ve also invited four Author Accelerator coaches to host weekly AMAs (ask me anything) and write-alongs so you can ask questions, block off time to write, and meet other #amwriting listeners who are working on their projects, too. You can meet Amy Bernstein, Candace Coakley, Sara Gentry, and Stuart Wakefield in this post.

If you finish your Blueprint over the summer, you will be eligible to win a review from either me or KJ. (If you missed the #AmWriting Success Story about the writer who won the Blueprint Sprint grand prize in 2022, give it a listen. It’s very inspiring! It’s right HERE.)

To play along, you must be a paid subscriber.

Once you pay, opt-in and set up your podcast feed. Don’t worry, it’s simple!

Click here to go to your #AmWriting account, and when you see this screen, do two things:

* Toggle “Blueprint for a Book” from “off” (grey) to “on” (green).

* Click “set up podcast” next to Blueprint for a Book and follow the easy instructions.

Once you set those things up, you’ll get all the future Blueprint emails and podcasts (and if you’re joining the party a bit late, that’s fine — just head to our website and click on Blueprint for a Book in the top menu).

I want to join the Summer Blueprint Sprint!

I want to invite all my writer friends to join me!

“As I said in my earlier email, you have so much to work with here. First off, your premise is gold. Easy to summarize, clear conflict, big stakes. I’m envious! When you’re ready, agents are going to sit up and take notice—which is all the more reason to have a rock solid thing to give them when they ask (and they will ask—don’t send a single query until you have a full, completed, polished manuscript ready to press “send” on, because I think you will get requests immediately).”

That’s from my October 2021 developmental edit* for guest Erin Quinn-Kong. This month, Hate Follow is out from William Morrow & Company—because Erin knocked the revision out of the park. In this episode, we dig into what it felt like to get those (tough love) notes, how she worked with them, querying and the big moments that came next. You’re going to love it—PLUS, Erin has agreed to let us share the full 6 page edit letter with supporters who purchase a copy of Hate Follow in any format and send us their receipt. (Details on how to do that below.)

As I tell Erin in the pod, I knew from what was on the page (and from her journalism experience) that she COULD do this revision. It wasn’t an easy lift, though. Not every one would have wanted this kind of edit or been willing to work with it. (Honestly, I’m sitting on one RIGHT NOW and not sure I can stomach what it needs to get it there.) But Erin did it—with amazing results. Here’s a little more from the letter:

“I have no doubt that you can do it, either. Even though this is still in draft form, I didn’t want to put it down, especially in the more polished first half. (I knew what I was getting! That’s not a criticism of the less finished section. It’s in the perfect place for this stage of the process.) I wanted to know what would happen, and that is so much of the battle won right there. There’s great conflict and drive in these pages.

And fundamentally your writing is really excellent. In the sections that are more complete, you strike a good balance between inner dialogue and action, you move the story, your chapters end in good places. There’s also a solid cause-and-effect thread pulling the reader along—although, as you’ll see, I think that drops in a few places and needs some shoring up. But those issues aren’t as big as they sound.”

This is a great episode—huge thanks to Erin for being willing to play along. Follow her (but don’t hate her!) at @erinquinnkongwrites on Instagram or subscribe to her email: The (Writing) Group Chat on Substack.

Links from the pod

The Only Game in Town, Lacie Waldon

Episode 402: How Bad Can a Good First Draft Be

*from KJ: I did a developmental edit for Erin while doing the Author Accelerator Book Coaching program, but although I’m certified, I don’t offer coaching services.

How can you read Erin’s developmental edit letter? For starters, you need to be a paid supporter—and we’re offering a super-quick October surprise special. Head to https://amwriting.substack.com/halloween2024 for 20% off your next year.

Hi! Jess here. I just finished Catherine Newman’s new novel Sandwich, and I’m feeling a lot of feelings. I expected Sandwich to be great because I love everything Catherine Newman writes, but it was a balm for a wound I did not realize I was nursing.

That’s what I love about books. Our feelings about them are highly personal and subjective. Some of my favorite books possess little literary merit but have found a place on my list of essential re-reads based on their emotional, temporal, or geographical entanglements.

Sandwich is a town on Cape Cod, where the bicep would be if the Cape were to let up on tricep day. A big part of my childhood was spent in a lovely house on Corn Hill in Truro, the second to last town on the very tip of the arm, where the Cape would wear her watch if she cared about the time.

When I was very small, my parents rented with friends, but when their best friend, Richard, bought our favorite of the hilltop houses, it became our second home, the place where my most visceral, cherished, rose-tinged memories were formed. The pine floors were soft under my feet, the sound of the bayside waves constant and gentle, and the light of the morning sun in the front bedroom remains my favorite filter.

When the house burned in the eighties, we all wept as if a family member had died. My father oversaw its reconstruction down to the perfect placement of the toilet. In a house bursting with actors, musicians and other sorts of wonderfully loud and dramatic guests, it was the only place one could be alone to lean on the windowsill looking out at Provincetown, down at the rock that emerged at low tide, and the cute boy from the cottage two doors over.

Richard died in 1992 and he took the magic of that house with him. We tried, we really did. We agreed to think of it as a new place, a future place, but our last gasp visit ended in an explosive family fight that served as final punctuation on that chapter of our lives.

Cape Cod has changed since the seventies and eighties for everyone, of course. It’s fancier, more curated. Less wild and dangerous, more pruned and planned. Everyone knows where the hidden freshwater pond is, and they are all there, all the time.

I mourn the loss of what Cape Cod was to me, but Catherine Newman brought it back for me while I was immersed in her words, and for that, I am grateful. Her novel bears little resemblance to my lived experiences, and yet it evoked moments and images that resonated deep in my body.

That’s what great books do for us. They help us feel things we thought we’d lost. They describe the things we lived and how they felt.

Read Sandwich. It will likely be something completely different for you than it was for me, but it will be something beautiful, nevertheless.

And with that, here’s our episode with Catherine Newman about genre-hopping and writing all the things.

“We’ll be tending our wounds. And we’ll be as young and as whole as we’re ever going to be.” - Catherine Newman, Sandwich

#AmReading

KJ: Henna Artist by Alka Joshi

Recipes for a Beautiful Life by Rebecca Barry

Jess: Sure Shot by Sarina Bowen

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

Missing You by Harlan Coben

Catherine: Know My Name by Chanel Miller

Sea Wife by Amity Gaige

The Chicken Sisters by KJ Dell’Antonia

Original shownotes:

Why stick to any one genre? Our guest this week is Catherine Newman: memoirist, middle grade novelist, etiquette columnist and now the author of How to Be a Person: 65 Highly Useful, Super-Important Things to Learn Before You’re Grown-Up. While she’s at it, she writes a cooking blog, co-authored a book on crafts for kids and edits ChopChop, a kids cooking magazine. And she pens frequent funny essays for everything from O to the New York Times to the Cup of Jo website. In other words, she’s putting a pastiche of writing together and making it work with an insouciant disregard for any and all advice about self-branding or owning an niche or sticking to one topic or identity.

In fact, I’d argue that “insouciant disregard” might just BE her brand.

This episode also includes the immortal words “I’ve never had to kill anything during the podcast before,” uttered by Jess—so that’s a reason to listen right there. But there are plenty of others—this is a real nitty gritty episode on building a career and getting things done.

Are you a “sticker”?

Regular listeners know that whenever we meet our writing goals around here, we text each other one word: STICKER. (and then we add a cute sticker to our calendar, because we’re fun like that).

We call supporters of the #AmWriting podcast “stickers” too—and while our regular podcasts and shownotes go out to all of our listeners, we have created a few things just for stickers. First, there’s the Summer Blueprint for a Book Sprint—10 weeks dedicated to working with coaches and a community to figure out how to turn your next idea—or your struggling draft—into the book you want to write. You can join it anytime (the how-to is below).

Stickers can also submit the first page of their WIP to the Booklab First Pages podcast, where we might choose it to discuss, review and offer ideas for persuading agents, editors and readers that they want to turn that page and see what happens next. (Find the link to submit a first page HERE.)

I’m a sticker! Give it all to me now.

To join the Blueprint for a Book Summer Sprint, you must be a paid subscriber. Then, opt-in and set up your podcast feed. Don’t worry, it’s simple! Click here to go to your #AmWriting account, and when you see this screen, do two things:

* Toggle “Blueprint for a Book” from “off” (grey) to “on” (green).

* Click “set up podcast” next to Blueprint for a Book and follow the easy instructions.

Once you set those things up, you’ll get all the future Blueprint emails and podcasts (and if you’re joining the party a bit late, just head to our website and click on Blueprint for a Book in the top menu).

Writing BFFs Alison Hammer and Bradeigh Godfrey were thirty days away from a publisher deadline for their third book when the news came down: change this book from women’s fiction to romance.

Should they do it? Could they do? How would they do it???

In this episode, Jennie Nash digs into this juicy question.

Books mentioned in this episode:

The Beach Trap

The Comeback Summer

Until Next Summer

Are you a “sticker”?

Regular listeners know that whenever we meet our writing goals around here, we text each other one word: STICKER. (and then we add a cute sticker to our calendar, because we’re fun like that).

We call supporters of the #AmWriting podcast “stickers” too—and while our regular podcasts and shownotes go out to all of our listeners, we have created a few things just for stickers. First, there’s the Summer Blueprint for a Book Sprint—10 weeks dedicated to working with coaches and a community to figure out how to turn your next idea—or your struggling draft—into the book you want to write. You can join it anytime (the how-to is below).

Stickers can also submit the first page of their WIP to the Booklab First Pages podcast, where we might choose it to discuss, review and offer ideas for persuading agents, editors and readers that they want to turn that page and see what happens next. (Find the link to submit a first page HERE.)

I’m a sticker! Give it all to me now.

To join the Blueprint for a Book Summer Sprint, you must be a paid subscriber. Then, opt-in and set up your podcast feed. Don’t worry, it’s simple! Click here to go to your #AmWriting account, and when you see this screen, do two things:

* Toggle “Blueprint for a Book” from “off” (grey) to “on” (green).

* Click “set up podcast” next to Blueprint for a Book and follow the easy instructions.

Once you set those things up, you’ll get all the future Blueprint emails and podcasts (and if you’re joining the party a bit late, just head to our website and click on Blueprint for a Book in the top menu).

Hey writers! Maybe I say this all the time, but this episode is GREAT. Remember how in Episode 402 I asked the question for the ages: How Bad Can a Good First Draft Be?

At that point I was on a fifth draft and it was sadly still pretty “bad”— think “I built a bookshelf but one of the shelves is on the back and I don’t think it necessarily needed window shutters or a fan”. I settled in to outline, not what WAS there but what I knew SHOULD be there on both the plot (outside) and emotional arc (inside) levels. And damn if it didn’t help. It always helps.

This episode is me and Jennie talking about how I did that, why I needed to and how much it helps. Funny story: last week after the episode as i was revising I looked at one of the new scenes I’d plotted out and thought, nah. Things were running a bit long, I thought. I don’t need that.

It took 48 hours of wrestling with what came next to realize that the problem was: yes, I did need that scene. It didn’t do masses of plot work but it was huge emotionally. Put it back in and started rolling along.

Whew. Ok, episode—enjoy!

Are you a “sticker”?

Regular listeners know that whenever we meet our writing goals around here, we text each other one word: STICKER. (and then we add a cute sticker to our calendar, because we’re fun like that).

We call supporters of the #AmWriting podcast “stickers” too—and while our regular podcasts and shownotes go out to all of our listeners, we have created a few things just for stickers. First, there’s the Summer Blueprint for a Book Sprint—10 weeks dedicated to working with coaches and a community to figure out how to turn your next idea—or your struggling draft—into the book you want to write. You can join it anytime (the how-to is below).

Stickers can also submit the first page of their WIP to the Booklab First Pages podcast, where we might choose it to discuss, review and offer ideas for persuading agents, editors and readers that they want to turn that page and see what happens next. (Find the link to submit a first page HERE.)

I’m a sticker! Give it all to me now.

To join the Blueprint for a Book Summer Sprint, you must be a paid subscriber. Then, opt-in and set up your podcast feed. Don’t worry, it’s simple! Click here to go to your #AmWriting account, and when you see this screen, do two things:

* Toggle “Blueprint for a Book” from “off” (grey) to “on” (green).

* Click “set up podcast” next to Blueprint for a Book and follow the easy instructions.

Once you set those things up, you’ll get all the future Blueprint emails and podcasts (and if you’re joining the party a bit late, just head to our website and click on Blueprint for a Book in the top menu).

The title of this episode comes from a great George Michael quote that Sarina reminded us of and one that I now think about all the time: People thought I wanted to be seen as a serious musician, but I didn’t. I just wanted to people to know that I was very serious about pop music.

That’s us here. We’re very serious about fun reads—and so grateful that Emily is too. This episode was recorded as Emily was releasing Book Lovers. This year, you can read her newest, Funny Story, which was just the delightful escape Sarina and I both needed this summer. And let me remind you right here that you can—and should!—also grab Sarina’s latest, the fantastic The Five Year Lie—a very very fun read.

This was a great talk and we know you’ll love it—but for your entertainment, here’s what AI had to say about it:

The speakers discussed their experiences and insights on writing and publishing, including the importance of maintaining a consistent brand, balancing creative expression with validation, and creating authentic conflicts in fiction. They also shared their thoughts on the value of joy and love in literature, and how societal pressure to produce world-changing literature can lead to a lack of appreciation for works that prioritize happiness and joy. Additionally, they discussed their favorite thriller books and the impact they've had on them, and shared book recommendations in the romantic comedy genre. Overall, the conversation highlighted the challenges and rewards of writing and publishing, and the importance of prioritizing joy and happiness in literature.

Something like that, yeah. But with more shrieking and laughing.

This discussion was so true to our hearts (KJ writing, Sarina co-signing). It’s hard to for some of us to give ourselves permission to write fun books in a world where “things we like” and especially “things women like” are often dismissed as less worthy. After Sarina reminded us of this George Michael quote—when asked when he was going to “write serious music” his response was “You don’t understand. I’m very serious about pop music.” And KJ immediately demanded that everyone read This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch which is, instead, a book about exactly what we just said. That you should read. Immediately. We’ll wait.

So how do your get very serious about writing fun reads? Emily’s insight on how to turn the seemingly small internal battles that our kind of fiction often hinges on is perfection: “you have to make things realer than real life”. For more, hit play.

Links in the Pod

#AmWriting Episode 302 with Katherine Center

#AmReading

Emily: Miss Aldridge Regrets, Louise Hare

The Bodyguard, Katherine Center

The Change, Kirsten Miller

Sarina: The Bodyguard, Katherine Center

Upgrade, Blake Couch (Emily then shouted out Dark Matter and The Letty Dobesh Chronicles with its Good Behavior TV adaptation)

KJ: This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch, Tabitha Carvan

Thank You for Listening, Julia Whelan

Emily Henry on Insta: @emilyhenrywrites

Join Emily’s newsletter: Get My Grocery List

Are you a “sticker”?

Regular listeners know that whenever we meet our writing goals around here, we text each other one word: STICKER. (and then we add a cute sticker to our calendar, because we’re fun like that).

We call supporters of the #AmWriting podcast “stickers” too—and while our regular podcasts and shownotes go out to all of our listeners, we have created a few things just for stickers. First, there’s the Summer Blueprint for a Book Sprint—10 weeks dedicated to working with coaches and a community to figure out how to turn your next idea—or your struggling draft—into the book you want to write. You can join it anytime (the how-to is below).

Stickers can also submit the first page of their WIP to the Booklab First Pages podcast, where we might choose it to discuss, review and offer ideas for persuading agents, editors and readers that they want to turn that page and see what happens next. (Find the link to submit a first page HERE.)

I’m a sticker! Give it all to me now.

Subscribe

To join the Blueprint for a Book Summer Sprint, you must be a paid subscriber. Then, opt-in and set up your podcast feed. Don’t worry, it’s simple! Click here to go to your #AmWriting account, and when you see this screen, do two things:

* Toggle “Blueprint for a Book” from “off” (grey) to “on” (green).

* Click “set up podcast” next to Blueprint for a Book and follow the easy instructions.

Once you set those things up, you’ll get all the future Blueprint emails and podcasts (and if you’re joining the party a bit late, just head to our website and click on Blueprint for a Book in the top menu).

Sarina here! There was a scramble over who got to interview Lyndsay Rush about her poetry, but I raised my hand first.

I’ve always thought of poetry as the fustiest kind of writing, but the moment I opened A Bit Much, I knew that Lyndsay was here to change my mind. Not only is her poetry gorgeous, her path to becoming a published author was unusual in all the best ways.

Tune in to hear how she accidentally became a poet. And how she accidentally accumulated over 140,000 Instagram followers.

We ask her about that magic moment—when she suddenly realized that this Instagram poetry habit of hers was going to be a whole big thing. It’s a publishing story for the ages!

Or just skip to the good stuff and find A Bit Much at Bookshop, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble.

Lindsay on Instagram. Lindsay on Tiktok. Lindsay on Threads.

Hey everyone, I'm Jennie Nash, and if you're interested in becoming a book, coach, I have a special offer for you. It's a free pass to a mini course called The One Page Book Coaching Business Plan. This course walks you step-by-step through how to envision your future book coaching business and it leads to a one-on-one strategy session with me! Go to bookcoaches.com/ABC and at the bottom of the page, you'll find a link to the course. That's bookcoaches.com/ABC.  You can use the code FROMJENNIE to get in free. That's FROMJENNIE all caps and make sure you spell my name out: J E N N I E. We're going to be raising our prices in 2025 so now's a great time to get certified if you think it's something you want to do. I look forward to speaking with you.

Hey readers—KJ here. This episode of #AmWriting is brought to you by my latest, Playing the Witch Card. I wrote this at a moment when I needed more magic in my life—but it turned out to be a book about how until we know who we are and what makes us happy, even magic doesn’t help. My main character, Flair, is a total control freak who fears the chaos created by her family deck of Tarot cards and the cookies it inspires her to make until she decides that she can harness their power to control the world and people around her—but that’s not what the cards are for at all. I was inspired by what I see as the real magic of Tarot cards—and tea leaves and palm reading and every form of oracle: they help us to see and understand our own stories. As someone for whom stories are pretty much everything, I love that. You can buy Playing the Witch Card on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop.org and my local indie—and I hope you’ll love it too.

Hello #AmWriters! Jess here at the beginning of a very busy fall speaking season, coming to you from the northwest corner of Indiana. I’ve talked to you before about the nuts and bolts of my speaking work, but I thought it would be fun to bring you along with me and talk about the things I pack, plan for, and think about when I’m on the road.

If I missed anything you want to learn about, head on over to the #AmWriting Facebook group and hit me up with questions!

What’s in my speaking bag:

What I found when I visited the Lafayette Barnes and Noble in search of Sarina Bowen’s books (look for the yellow pages!):

Then I went over to the thriller department and found:

And when I looked for KJ I found:

And finally, I check for my books so I can sign them, photograph the books and let readers on social media know there are signed copies at the bookstore! I was not originally face out but once I signed, the bookseller re-arranged so I could be. Loved her for that.

Are you a “sticker”?

Regular listeners know that whenever we meet our writing goals around here, we text each other one word: STICKER. (and then we add a cute sticker to our calendar, because we’re fun like that).

We call supporters of the #AmWriting podcast “stickers” too—and while our regular podcasts and shownotes go out to all of our listeners, we have created a few things just for stickers. First, there’s the Summer Blueprint for a Book Sprint—10 weeks dedicated to working with coaches and a community to figure out how to turn your next idea—or your struggling draft—into the book you want to write. You can join it anytime (the how-to is below).

Stickers can also submit the first page of their WIP to the Booklab First Pages podcast, where we might choose it to discuss, review and offer ideas for persuading agents, editors and readers that they want to turn that page and see what happens next. (Find the link to submit a first page HERE.)

I’m a sticker! Give it all to me now.

Subscribe

To join the Blueprint for a Book Summer Sprint, you must be a paid subscriber. Then, opt-in and set up your podcast feed. Don’t worry, it’s simple! Click here to go to your #AmWriting account, and when you see this screen, do two things:

* Toggle “Blueprint for a Book” from “off” (grey) to “on” (green).

* Click “set up podcast” next to Blueprint for a Book and follow the easy instructions.

Once you set those things up, you’ll get all the future Blueprint emails and podcasts (and if you’re joining the party a bit late, just head to our website and click on Blueprint for a Book in the top menu).

It all Started on the ‘Book

Sarina, here! This episode began in a Facebook thread. In a writers’ group, author Dena Moes R.N. expressed some concern about trying to bring a book to market during a very noisy news cycle.

I pushed back a little, given the nature of her book: It's Your Body: The Young Woman's Guide to Empowered Sexual Health. This lovely book is no stranger to politics. In 2024 it’s political to even suggest that a young woman has the right to decide the fate of her own body.

What could be more timely?

Dena and I brought our friendly debate to your door, where we cover:

* What does the election cycle really mean for books and book buyers?

* What are some elements of Dena’s story that play well with readers who are staring down the barrel at a very important election?

* Who should Dena talk to about this book, and why?

You can see some of the content Dena is working on at Instagram and Tiktok

You can find the book at Amazon and Bookshop.

Books we’re reading this week:

Dena is reading I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself by Glynnis MacNicol and The Inner Practice of Medicine by Dr. Wendy Lau.

Sarina is reading: Happiness for Beginners by Katherine Center and One Jump at a Time by Nathan Chen.

Are you a “sticker”?

Regular listeners know that whenever we meet our writing goals around here, we text each other one word: STICKER. (and then we add a cute sticker to our calendar, because we’re fun like that).

We call supporters of the #AmWriting podcast “stickers” too—and while our regular podcasts and shownotes go out to all of our listeners, we have created a few things just for stickers. First, there’s the Summer Blueprint for a Book Sprint—10 weeks dedicated to working with coaches and a community to figure out how to turn your next idea—or your struggling draft—into the book you want to write. You can join it anytime (the how-to is below).

Stickers can also submit the first page of their WIP to the Booklab First Pages podcast, where we might choose it to discuss, review and offer ideas for persuading agents, editors and readers that they want to turn that page and see what happens next. (Find the link to submit a first page HERE.)

I’m a sticker! Give it all to me now.

Subscribe

To join the Blueprint for a Book Summer Sprint, you must be a paid subscriber. Then, opt-in and set up your podcast feed. Don’t worry, it’s simple! Click here to go to your #AmWriting account, and when you see this screen, do two things:

* Toggle “Blueprint for a Book” from “off” (grey) to “on” (green).

* Click “set up podcast” next to Blueprint for a Book and follow the easy instructions.

Once you set those things up, you’ll get all the future Blueprint emails and podcasts (and if you’re joining the party a bit late, just head to our website and click on Blueprint for a Book in the top menu).

Hey writers! I’m Jennie Nash — and this is the #amwriting podcast, the place where we talk about writing all the things: short things, long things, fiction, non-fiction, pitches and proposals. 

Today, we’re going to dig into a part of the writing process that comes WAY before you write anything — which is giving yourself permission to write in the first place. 

So many writers are shut down by teachers, people who love them, critique partners, well-meaning editors and book coaches, perhaps the entire culture– and the impact of that shutting down can last for decades, if not entire lifetimes. 

In my Blueprint framework – a method of inquiry for starting a project -- the first question is why write this book? Why do you want to do this? It’s amazing to me the number of times that the deep level why has to do with reclaiming a voice that was shut down. 

My colleague and friend Julie Artz was shut down when she was 25 and 20 years later she is finally grappling with what happened – and feeling a creative spaciousness that eluded her until now. She’s been on the show before, but I invited her back to talk about this important topic. 

About Julie:

Julie Artz is an Author Accelerator-certified Founding Book Coach, a sought-after speaker and writing instructor, and a regular contributor to Jane Friedman, Writers Helping Writers, AuthorsPublish, IWWG, ProWritingAid and more. Her work as a Pitch Wars and Teen Pit mentor, a former SCBWI Regional Advisor (WWA), and her memberships in The EFA, the WFWA, AWP, and the Authors Guild keep her industry knowledge sharp. She’s built a thriving book coaching business based on her values, her editing chops, and her knowledge of story. Connect with her on Instagram @JulieArtz and download her freebie on giving yourself permission. https://pages.julieartz.com/giveyourselfpermission 

It’s hard to believe the summer is almost over, and in the next few weeks, we will be wrapping up our special Blueprint Challenge that we did here at the #AmWriting podcast. As a part of that challenge, anyone who signed up for and completed it will be getting a list of exclusive offers from Author Accelerator book coaches to help them with their blueprints.

But if, as the summer closes, you're at a point where you feel like you could use some help from a book coach, we suggest you check out Author Accelerator’s book coach directory. They’ve certified more than 260 book coaches in fiction, nonfiction and memoir, and one of them may be the perfect person to help you get your book back on track.

Head to https://www.authoraccelerator.com/matchme to find the book coach that’s right for you.

Is it time for me (this is KJ) to start a new novel? Not quite-quite-quite, but that time is coming. There’s a decent chance that the novel I’m working on now will be finished, in the now-we-try-to-sell-it sense, soonish. And that will take some time, and maybe it won’t happen (I know, you think I’m just saying that but no, it’s really quite possible). Even if it does, at some point very soon that will be out of my hands for long enough to start working on something new—and if I’m lucky, that will co-incide with November and National Novel Writing Month, which is my favorite time to write a 55K word draft that probably will contain approximately 1737 words that end up in an actual novel but that seems to be part of my “process”. I think my process is a raging dumpster fire but out of the ashes arise books so fine, this is how I do it.

First, I’ll need an idea. Jennie Nash and I recorded a whole summer about “Ideating” (Episodes 366-373—The Idea Factory). I’d argue that this is possibly the most important part. Sarina and I have a partially joking saying: Friends don’t let friends write books without hooks. But an idea is a multi-part creation. It’s not just a hook, it’s not just a premise. A premise is vampires that feed only on people descended from the original crew and passengers on the Mayflower, and maybe that’s a hook as well. It’s not an idea until we know why it matters, and who it matters to within the book and why it might therefore matter to readers.

Honestly, I’ll probably get that second bit wrong to start with, but you have to start somewhere. Right now, though, I don’t even have the first bit. Maybe you don’t either. Maybe you have an idea noodling around inside you, or more likely fifty. Maybe you can mash some of them together. Maybe they’re all amorphous or flimsy or when closely examined take place in a world or mood that you don’t want to live in for the next couple of years.

But you have to pick one and see where it goes. I started this thinking I could help with that, and now I’m not so sure. I mean, I have a plan. I know what I am going to do, or what I think I’m going to do, but it’s hardly a step-by-step formula for success. It’s going to go something like this:

* Wander the bookstore. Most people buy their books online from descriptions now, but genre still matters. Look at the piles of romantasy (romance/fantasy), the growing tables of horror and horr-antsy (I made that up but it should be a thing). The buy-one-get-one-half-off tables of romance and thrillers, and speaking of thrillers, that’s a pretty broad category that ranges from “your heart is in your throat the whole time” to “huh, I wonder what’s going on here”. Series mystery, which I think is the only thing left that’s really “mystery” and not “thriller”. Pick up a book from “fiction” that’s described right in the cover copy as a “second chance romance” and try to figure out why it’s in one place and not the other. (One Last Shot by Betty Cayouette, which I found by googling what I remembered from the cover copy: book second chance model photographer theo italy. Nicely done, Google.) Sigh, give up, and try not to contemplate whether the world really needs any more books. It does not. But I need to write one, so it’s getting one. #sorrynotsorry

* Play the airport game, which we talked about in Episode 367 HERE). Basically it goes like this: go to an airport (or ask a friend who’s going somewhere). Find the Hudson or whatever your airport general shops are called that has the SMALLEST selection of books. Like, one rack face out. Take a picture and then walk yourself through it and ask, “which of these books is most like something I could have written?” Examine those books closely, asking two primary questions: 1) why is this in the airport bookstore (why do people love it/buy it) and 2) why is it like something I could have written? Then spend your flight, or two hours in a coffee shop, coming up with an idea and a brief pitch for something that resembles each one of those books. You have no more than 30 minutes for each book/pitch, and it must have a title, a logline, rough flap copy, inner and outer plots and a story arc with a beginning, middle and end.

* Do a wild title brainstorm. Sometimes a book just has a great title. Beach Read, Summer Romance, A Star is Bored, Blonde Identity. The last time I made a list of “great titles” I hit one—Romantic Comedy—that someone else has recently used to great success and came very very close on two others. Should you write a book just because you have a great title idea? No of course not, but some great titles could apply to a LOT of book ideas. People are buying the vibe, not the plot, when they buy Brooklynaire.

* Mayyyybe look over your old idea notebooks, if you have them. I have some mixed feelings about this, since I don’t want to let my current idea generating muscle off the hook. But these might also jog something loose. I have my 2022 book out now for this purpose.

* Pick a couple ideas—say three—and noodle them out further. Now we’re pretty much into the whole Idea Factory protocol from the summer of 2022—and that DID end up with me writing one of the books we talked about. So apparently it “worked”.

That’s my plan. Y’all know I like to set “sticker” goals—a nice thing about this is its flexibility.

Hey writers. I'm Jennie Nash, founder and CEO of Author Accelerator. It's back to school time, which means it's a great time to start training to become a book coach. By this time next year, you could be certified and out there helping writers bring their books to life- even if you're not a published author yourself. Take our quiz, The 10 Characteristics Of a Great Book Coach, to find out if you have what it takes to become a great book coach. Visit bookcoaches.com/characteristics-quiz that's the clunkiest URL ever so let me say it again: bookcoaches.com/characteristics-quiz We'll also put it in the show notes so you know you're going to the right place.

Hello #AmWriters! This week, I’m answering a bunch of questions we received via amwritingpodcast@gmail.com and our #AmWriting Facebook group. Here’s to flattened learning curves!

* I just got my first speaking inquiry. How do I know how much to ask for?

* Someone asked me to provide video content for a conference/summit/virtual event. What should I charge?

* What’s all this about affiliate codes and revenue sharing for conferences?

* What reference books would you recommend for writing nonfiction?

* It’s time to ask for blurbs for my book! How do I figure out who should blurb? How do I ask? Can someone quoted in my book blurb my book?

* If I quote myself in my own book is that plagiarism? What if I really need to use that quote, how do I do it?

* I’ve been asked to speak but I’m freaked out by my time slot/some other challenge to audience numbers. How do I get people to stay and listen?

* What are the “marketing materials” you keep talking about for events and where did you get all of it?

* Scam alert! See also “I Got Scammed So You Don’t Have To” by Jen Mann of People I Want to Punch in the Throat.

Hey writers. I'm Jennie Nash, founder and CEO of Author Accelerator. It's back to school time, which means it's a great time to start training to become a book coach. By this time next year, you could be certified and out there helping writers bring their books to life- even if you're not a published author yourself. Take our quiz, The 10 Characteristics Of a Great Book Coach, to find out if you have what it takes to become a great book coach. Visit bookcoaches.com/characteristics-quiz that's the clunkiest URL ever so let me say it again: bookcoaches.com/characteristics-quiz We'll also put it in the show notes so you know you're going to the right place.

Hey readers—KJ here. This episode of #AmWriting is brought to you by my latest, Playing the Witch Card. I wrote this at a moment when I needed more magic in my life—but it turned out to be a book about how until we know who we are and what makes us happy, even magic doesn’t help. My main character, Flair, is a total control freak who fears the chaos created by her family deck of Tarot cards and the cookies it inspires her to make until she decides that she can harness their power to control the world and people around her—but that’s not what the cards are for at all. I was inspired by what I see as the real magic of Tarot cards—and tea leaves and palm reading and every form of oracle: they help us to see and understand our own stories. As someone for whom stories are pretty much everything, I love that. You can buy Playing the Witch Card on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop.org and my local indie—and I hope you’ll love it too.

KJ here, team. In this episode, Jennie asks the questions, and I walk us through the whole thing from start to finish—the options, the renewals, the moment we thought we were getting the rights back and the big calls that finally convinced me this was really going to happen—and then of course what it’s like when it DOES.

Above are a few glam shots from the premiere screening, which will never not be one of the biggest nights of my career. I’m not sure how you top it. You can watch The Chicken Sisters—an 8 episode series starring Schuyler Fisk, Genevieve Angelson, Lea Thompson, and Wendie Malick on Hallmark Plus (or Amazon Prime) now. Here’s a little preview on YouTube, too.

Hey readers—KJ here. This episode of #AmWriting is brought to you by my latest, Playing the Witch Card. I wrote this at a moment when I needed more magic in my life—but it turned out to be a book about how until we know who we are and what makes us happy, even magic doesn’t help. My main character, Flair, is a total control freak who fears the chaos created by her family deck of Tarot cards and the cookies it inspires her to make until she decides that she can harness their power to control the world and people around her—but that’s not what the cards are for at all. I was inspired by what I see as the real magic of Tarot cards—and tea leaves and palm reading and every form of oracle: they help us to see and understand our own stories. As someone for whom stories are pretty much everything, I love that. You can buy Playing the Witch Card on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop.org and my local indie—and I hope you’ll love it too.

The Anxiety is Real

You can’t swing a Blackwing pencil without hearing another creator worrying about generative A.I. And we get it—the ubiquity of generative A.I. tools has soared over the last two years. In this episode we aim to take a deep breath and discuss the topic from a candid but calm position: why authors are worried, why we should be worried and what to do about it (besides anxious posts on social media.)

Things to freak out about: a Two Part List

In service to our measured discussion, we lay a bit of background. Sarina tells us why The Authors Guild is suing OpenAI, and why you should join the Authors Guild.

Then we mine two different veins of anxiety:

* Column I: Billion dollar AI tools stole our intellectual property to train their models, and…

* Column II: AI might take my job.

We delve into both these concerns, discussing ongoing litigation, the potential for licensing content to AI companies, and more. We also discuss how AI tools are affecting other parts of the publishing industry (such as audio book narration) and the pervasiveness of generative AI in our everyday lives.

#AmReading

KJ: The Paradise Problem, Christina Lauren

Jess: The Widow on Dwyer Court, Lisa Kusel

Sarina: Nora Goes Off Script, Annabel Monaghan

The Love Hypothesis, Ali Hazelwood

Hey readers—KJ here. This episode of #AmWriting is brought to you by my latest, Playing the Witch Card. I wrote this at a moment when I needed more magic in my life—but it turned out to be a book about how until we know who we are and what makes us happy, even magic doesn’t help. My main character, Flair, is a total control freak who fears the chaos created by her family deck of Tarot cards and the cookies it inspires her to make until she decides that she can harness their power to control the world and people around her—but that’s not what the cards are for at all. I was inspired by what I see as the real magic of Tarot cards—and tea leaves and palm reading and every form of oracle: they help us to see and understand our own stories. As someone for whom stories are pretty much everything, I love that. You can buy Playing the Witch Card on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop.org and my local indie—and I hope you’ll love it too.

Hey #AmWriters, Jennie here. I'm excited to welcome editor and publishing strategist, AJ Harper to the show to talk about the art of helping writers do their best work.

AJ helps nonfiction authors write foundational books that enable them to build readership, grow their brand, and make a significant impact on the world. She was part of the writing coaching team for TEDx Cambridge, one of the largest TED events in the world. As a ghost writer and a developmental editor, AJ has worked with business writers of all kinds, guiding them to bestseller lists and to many millions of copies sold. She's worked on 10 books with business writer Mike Michalowicz, including Profit First: Transform Your Business From a Cash Eating Monster to a Money Making Machine.

Her own book on writing came out in 2023. It's called Write A Must Read: Craft a Book That Changes Lives, Including Your Own. This book is one of the best books on writing nonfiction I've ever read and it's one of the best books on writing period, which is why I wanted to have AJ come on and talk to us. Our conversation will be incredibly helpful for anyone writing nonfiction, but also for people writing fiction and memoir. AJ is just really smart about story structure, thinking about the reader, and fine tuning your ear for good writing. Her story about how she stepped out from behind the ghostwriting curtain to raise her own voice and claim her own authority is riveting.

Books mentioned in the episode:

Little Women, Louisa M. Alcott

The Trumpet of the Swan, E.B. White

Caddie Woodlawn, Carol Ryrie Brink

Hey readers—KJ here. This episode of #AmWriting is brought to you by my latest, Playing the Witch Card. I wrote this at a moment when I needed more magic in my life—but it turned out to be a book about how until we know who we are and what makes us happy, even magic doesn’t help. My main character, Flair, is a total control freak who fears the chaos created by her family deck of Tarot cards and the cookies it inspires her to make until she decides that she can harness their power to control the world and people around her—but that’s not what the cards are for at all. I was inspired by what I see as the real magic of Tarot cards—and tea leaves and palm reading and every form of oracle: they help us to see and understand our own stories. As someone for whom stories are pretty much everything, I love that. You can buy Playing the Witch Card on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop.org and my local indie—and I hope you’ll love it too.

Hi all! Jess here. When I wrote my first book proposal (for The Gift of Failure), I had a foggy idea of what a “comp” was. A book just like the book you want to publish, right? Not exactly. Comps are a really important part of pitching any book - nonfiction or fiction - because it helps an editor understand your vision for the book and consequently, what the publishing house’s vision for the book could be. What does the market for this book look like? Who is on the shelf already? Why is this book similar or different?

Like I said, an art.

Come with me while I explore the parameters for comps and help you write a better “Comparable Titles” section for your next book proposal.

I use the comp section from the proposal for The Gift of Failure to discuss comps in this episode, so here’s what the formatting looks like in that document:

Hey readers—KJ here. This episode of #AmWriting is brought to you by my latest, Playing the Witch Card. I wrote this at a moment when I needed more magic in my life—but it turned out to be a book about how until we know who we are and what makes us happy, even magic doesn’t help. My main character, Flair, is a total control freak who fears the chaos created by her family deck of Tarot cards and the cookies it inspires her to make until she decides that she can harness their power to control the world and people around her—but that’s not what the cards are for at all. I was inspired by what I see as the real magic of Tarot cards—and tea leaves and palm reading and every form of oracle: they help us to see and understand our own stories. As someone for whom stories are pretty much everything, I love that. You can buy Playing the Witch Card on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop.org and my local indie—and I hope you’ll love it too.

It is of course the inimitable, the unconquerable, the inexhaustible Jo Piazza, all of whose adjectives require me to use spell check. I am a long time fan of Jo, and she’s been on the pod before—see also Episode 393, I Want to Sell Books, But I’m Also Writing What I Want to Write. She is the author of, most recently, The Sicilian Inheritance and coming soon, Everyone Is Lying to You, which started out as a serial in her weekly email/Substack, Over the Influence. She’s also the host of a great podcast, Under the Influence.

As far as I know she’s the first person to pull off this feat. She probably isn’t, but we’re going to roll with it as a working theory. This is a great convo, and you will undoubtedly leave inspired, as I was, to write your own serial. (I probably won’t but I WAS inspired.)

Join Jo’s Substack and vote on the cover HERE.

#AmReading

Jo:

The Displacements, Bruce Holsinger (author of The Gifted School)

Nightwatching, Tracy Sierra

Here One Moment, Liane Moriarty

KJ:

I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself, Glynnis MacNicol

The Wedding People, Alison Espach

Jo’s email/Substack Over the Influence

Big news, #AmWriters: our guided Blueprint for a Book Challenge was such a hit this past summer that we're going to run it again in January! Plus, we're adding even more interactive elements so you can connect with other writers.

It’s a great way to start or refine a book idea, get some professional guidance from our Author Accelerator coaches, and stay motivated to do the hard work of thinking before you write.

Whether you're writing fiction, nonfiction or memoir - this challenge could be just the thing you need. We will be launching in early January, so stay tuned to these podcasts for all the details, check the show notes, and make sure that you are a supporter of the #AmWriting Podcast, so that when it comes to January, you'll be ready to go.

#AmWriting is made possible by our “stickers” - readers who financially support the Podcast. As a thank you, Stickers get access to bonus content - like our Blueprint for a Book Challenge. To receive these posts and support the Podcast, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

I couldn’t resist the subtitle, kids, sorry. It’s not that shocking—but Tim’s journey was definitely only for the bold.

I’ve known Tim Grahl—or known of him—for more than a decade. I watched him help writers like Dan Pink launch their non-fiction books onto the best seller list, and devoured and followed his excellent advice about launching my own books (which you can find here at booklaunch.com). Then I watched—or rather, listened—as he pivoted into the world of fiction, enlisting editor Shaun Coyne to join him on a podcast and help him use Coyne’s Storygrid method to work on what eventually, after many revisions and a whole lot of failing in public, became Tim’s first novel, The Threshing. At the same time, he and Shaun were building Storygrid into what’s not just a business, but a huge community of writers and editors. He’s just published his second novel, The Shithead, a very different book from the first… I call it The Firm meets The Alchemist; Tim prefers Fleishman Is In Trouble meets Faust. Both work.

We talk Tim’s sideways journey into fiction, and then we talk craft—in particular, how to learn what you don’t know, the myth of the lone writer in a cabin and the importance of feedback and then we dig into a passionate discussion of theme.

You can check out The Shithead here.

Links from the pod

Booklaunch.com

Storygrid

Shaun Coyne’s book, Storygrid

The Prince of Tides, Pat Conroy

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The Accidental Tourist, Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler

(KJ also mentions Redhead by the Side of the Road)

The Husband’s Secret, What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

Heads up! This is probably the only time you’ll see this.

Join me—KJ—for Novelmber, which is very hard to pronounce but is my word for reclaiming my writing space in November. Think NaNoWriMo, our version—daily challenges and stretch goals, formatted by you, for you.

There will be write-alongs, posts, a massive Google spreadsheet for sharing goals and updating progress, thoughts on how hard this is, and more than you want to know about why I need this regroup so badly. All writers, every genre, welcome.

This is sign-up only—I don’t plan to spam the whole #AmWriting community with my wails of writerly distress daily for an entire month—but it’s also for everyone who wants in. I hope you’ll join me—I don’t want to go this alone.

Don’t worry, signing up is simple! Here’s how:

Click here to go to your #AmWriting account, and when you see this screen, toggle “Novelmber” from “off” (grey) to “on” (green).

THAT’S IT!

Once you set that up, you’ll get all future Novelmber emails. Any audio or video will show up in those, along with write-along schedules.

You’ll also want to add yourself to the Google Sheet where we’ll all record our overall goal, day’s goals, daily progress and what we’re feeling. I’ve started it off.

Join me for the first write-alongs HERE. (That’s a link to my Zoom Room.) I’ll be sitting there:

Friday, November 1 10:30-12:30 (ALL TIMES EST)

Tuesday, November 5, 2:00-4:00

Friday, November 8, 9:00-11:00

More times coming. Join me, help me, let’s make Novelmber WORK!

About once a season, I have a speaking experience that doesn’t go exactly the way I want it to, but I’ve learned how to keep these experiences (and the negative feedback that can result) from keeping me awake at night while fueling positive change. Well, that once-a-season occurrence happened earlier this fall, and it felt awful. I usually text Tim or KJ and Sarina with, “well, that felt off” and they reassure me that the audience probably did not notice, and sometimes - sometimes - that’s true. Whether the audience noticed or not, I did, and I need to walk off stage feeling like I nailed it, that I reached people, planted seeds for positive change, and made the best use of the audience’s (and my) time, not to mention the client’s investment of time and money.

This episode contains advice on how to prepare for events and catch potential mistakes before they happen, redirect yourself on stage when you feel things getting out of control or heading in the wrong direction, and some productive ways to cope with and respond to negative feedback.

No matter how good you are, no matter how experienced you are, you will have bad days on stage. I hope my experience with failure flattens your learning curve.

Unlike the photo at the top of this post, this picture is of me in mid-death spiral. This was almost ten years ago but I remember the event and the nausea vividly. I walked off stage feeling as if I’d squandered an incredible audience and wasted their time, but I keep this picture to remind me of how far I’ve come and why I have to keep improving.

Today we’re talking about the need for a writer to be resilient over the long haul of a career and my guest is A.S. King

A.S. King has been called “One of the best Y.A. writers working today” by The New York Times Book Review and is one of YA fiction's most decorated. She is the only two-time winner of the American Library Association's Michael L. Printz Award (2020 for Dig and 2024 for The Collectors) and has won the LA Times Book Prize for Ask the Passengers. In 2022, King received the ALA's Margaret A. Edwards Award for her lifetime achievement to YA literature and 2023, she accepted the ALAN Award for "artistry, courage and outstanding contributions to YA literature."

Amy – which is her real name – has taught for years in MFA programs and is working on her PhD in creative literature

I wanted to talk to Amy because I heard from a mutual friend – Caroline Leavitt – that Amy’s publisher had made a change to her promotional team just weeks before the launch of her newest book, Pick the Lock, which one reviewer described as "a punk opera, a primal scream, and a portrait of a family buried in lies."

Many of our listeners are trying to get their foot in the door with their first book, or to get a career off the ground with their second or third and here is someone who has written 15 books, who is at the top of her game, and who still has things like this happen – which is to say things that go wrong, things that don’t go her way.

I thought a conversation about what it feels like at this stage in a career would be illuminating – and was I sure right. Let’s get to it.Find A.S. King at AS-King.com

Heads up!

Join me—KJ—for Novelmber, which is very hard to pronounce but is my word for reclaiming my writing space in November. Think NaNoWriMo, our version—daily challenges and stretch goals, formatted by you, for you.

There will be write-alongs, posts, a massive Google spreadsheet for sharing goals and updating progress, thoughts on how hard this is, and more than you want to know about why I need this regroup so badly. All writers, every genre, welcome.

This is sign-up only—I don’t plan to spam the whole #AmWriting community with my wails of writerly distress daily for an entire month—but it’s also for everyone who wants in. I hope you’ll join me—I don’t want to go this alone.

Don’t worry, signing up is simple! Here’s how:

Click here to go to your #AmWriting account, and when you see this screen, toggle “Novelmber” from “off” (grey) to “on” (green).

THAT’S IT!

Once you set that up, you’ll get all future Novelmber emails. Any audio or video will show up in those, along with write-along schedules.

You’ll also want to add yourself to the Google Sheet where we’ll all record our overall goal, day’s goals, daily progress and what we’re feeling. I’ve started it off.Join me, help me, let’s make Novelmber WORK!