This week Jess talks to Jacob Sager Weinstein, a writer who has done just about everything. He started out with highbrow aspirations, as he learned his craft from none other than Toni Morrison and Joyce Carol Oates, and has worked as a journalist, screenwriter, comedy writer as well as a fiction and nonfiction author. In his travels from Princeton to HBO to the sewers of London (really!) Jacob has learned the art of the pivot as well as the secret to finding joy in just about every kind of writing project. His newest book is How to Remember Everything: Tips & Tricks to Becoming a Memory Master and Jess, the worst number rememberer on the planet, can attest that the memory tricks on pages 64-67 are brilliant and work beautifully. Links from the podJacob’s webpageThe Hyacinth SeriesHow to Remember Everything#AmReadingJess: The Mission: How a Disciple of Carl Sagan, an Ex-Motocross Race, a Texas Tea Party Congressman, the Worlds Worst Typewriter Saleswoman, California Mountain People, and an Anonymous NASA Functionary Went to War with Mars, Survived an Insurgency at Saturn, Traded Blows with Washington, and Stole a Ride on an Alabama Moon Rocket to Send a Space Robot to Jupiter in Search of the Second Garden of Eden at the Bottom of an Alien Ocean Inside of an Ice World Called Europa by David W. BrownJacob: All the Beverly Cleary. And by all of it, he means all of it. And—love us, love our sponsors! If you’ve been dreaming of a book coaching career, you know you want the guidance of Jennie Nash and the crew at AuthorAccelerator. You’ll find everything you need at bookcoaches.com/amwriting.We hope you’ve heard Jess waxing rhapsodic about learning all the things over at The Great Courses Plus. Goodness knows what she’s learning about today….small business accounting? The Pacific Theater in WWII? Anything’s possible, because…Jess. If you’d like to learn something new today, you can get a free month of The Great Courses Plus at thegreatcoursesplus.com/amwriting. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Beverly Jenkins is best-selling, award-winning, and still having fun with all she does—in other words, all the things we writers aspire to when we sit down at the desk. But when she first got started, she “didn’t have a clue”—and that might have freed her to do exactly what she wanted to do. We talk keeping history accurate but still making it entertaining, the joy of placing characters in a particular moment in time, bookshelf placement (“African American Literature”? “Men’s Health”?) and the pleasures of changing up your process for every new book.Am Reading Beverly: Shadows in Death by J.D. RobbBattle Ground by Jim ButcherBlack Sun by Rebecca RoanhorseThe Blood Heir by Ilona Andrews “If I could only have one author for the whole rest of my life it would be Ilona Andrews.”Sarina: My Last Duchess by Eloisa JamesDark Witch by Nora RobertsKJ: Wandering in Strange Lands by Morgan JerkinsWild Rain by Beverly JenkinsBeverly thought KJ definitely needed to watch the Love Between the Cover documentaryKJ’s Brain Fart: While J.D. Robb is and always will be the great Nora Roberts, I have been enjoying the Writers, Ink podcast with J. Thorn and J.D. Barker lately. Barker writes thrillers, most recently with James Patterson.Our guest today LOVES TWITTER. Find her there in “Romancelandia” at authorMsBevAnd she hangs out on no less than three Facebook pages!But somehow she’s still getting her work done. #jealous.Hey readers! We can’t stop talking about our new sponsor The Great Courses. While Jess has been a fan for literally years, the rest of the #AmWriting crew are working to get caught up on all the great goodness they have to offer. You can find out more about them at https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/amwriting.And - as we move into 2021 working towards achieving new goals: if you find yourself asking ‘Is this the year I launch my own book coaching business?’, you know we cannot recommend Author Accelerator enough! Their book coaching course is everything you need to get started. Find out more at bookcoaches.com/amwriting. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Hey kids, we’re getting back to basics this week with a down-n-dirty episode on pitching, focused on opinion pages everywhere. We’re talking to Lisa Levenstein, an academic, historian and feminist (and the Director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program and Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina Greensboro) with two books under her belt: A Movement Without Marches: African American Women and the Politics of Poverty in Postwar Philadelphia and They Didn’t See Us Coming: The Hidden History of Feminism in the Nineties. Lisa took that expertise and those books and turned them into a growing career writing passionate freelance pieces of a kind that really appeal to editors—blending current issues with her special historic perspective on women’s issues.We talked about everything from subject lines to finding your topic to using one piece as a steppingstone to break into another market, and it was fabulous. Enjoy!Links from the podLisa’s piece on child care in WashPo.Lisa herself#AmReadingLisa: Big Friendship How We Keep Each Other Close by Aminatou Sow & Ann FriedmanSarina: What Happens In Paradise by Elin HilderbrandKJ: The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters by Balli Kaur JaswalHave you checked out our new sponsor? Thanks to The Great Courses for coming on board. Jess has been a fan for literally years, while Sarina and KJ are planning to catch up. Find out more at https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/amwriting.And—is this the year you launch your own book coaching business? You know how much we love Author Accelerator, and their book coaching course is everything you need to get started. Find out more at bookcoaches.com/amwriting. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Last year’s words: Abundance. Practice. Magic. This year? Generous, Organize, Flow. It’s only now, writing these shownotes, that I see a pretty pattern… which is more that one of us chooses words she wants to embody, one chooses words she wants to shape her actions and the other seems to be counting on the muse in what may be a dubious way. Who’s who? It might surprise you. Welcome to our 2020 year in review/2021 goals episode. We’d love to hear your plans for the year—and how last year went. Come visit us on Facebook and share!#AmReading / #AmListeningJess: Come Out Come Out podcastScent of the Missing: Love and Partnership with a Search-And-Rescue Dog by Susannah CharlesonKJ: Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know by Alexandra HorowitzBetter than Before by Gretchen RubinDeep Work by Cal NewportNiksen: Embracing the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing by Olga MeckingFrontier Follies by Ree DrummondSarina: The Search by Nora RobertsThe Shepherd, the Angel, and Walter the Christmas Miracle Dog by Dave Barry (Out of Print)Blindsided by Victoria Denault from Sarina’s new imprint Heart Eyes PressWe’ve got a new sponsor! Thanks to The Great Courses for coming on board. Jess has been a fan for literally years, while Sarina and KJ are planning to catch up. Find out more at https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/amwriting.And—is this the year you launch your own book coaching business? You know how much we love Author Accelerator, and their book coaching course is everything you need to get started. Find out more at bookcoaches.com/amwriting. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

A little #AmWriting behind the scenes: as we headed into this recording, Jess texted KJ:Here’s the lowdown on Mark: I have been a fan of Mark Olshaker’s writing since I first encountered it in 1995. He may be best known for his work with former FBI Special Agent John Douglas, his writing partner since 1995, who pioneered the behavioral crimes unit at the FBI and inspired the Jack Crawford character in Silence of the Lambs. Together they have written many books including Mindhunter, about the role of behavioral profiling in catching violent criminals. His work with Douglas has landed him on the bestseller lists, but he has also written five novels and his nonfiction and documentary work covers subjects as wide-ranging emerging infectious disease, forensic emergency medicine, bioterror, the Lindburgh baby, and victims’ rights. He is also an Emmy-award winning filmmaker, as if that’s not enough AND, in a topic near and dear to my heart, he wrote, produced, and directed the film Discovering Hamlet, about one of my favorite productions of Hamlet directed by Dereck Jacobi and starring Kenneth Branagh. He follows Branagh and Jacobi from first read-throughs to opening night in 1988 and it’s now my life goal to see this film. Mark began his career as a journalist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Wall Street Journal, NYT, WaPo, and USA Today and I am SO very excited to talk with him today!The result was every bit as fun as you’d imagine. We talked about finding the real story behind Silence of the Lambs, the “other kinds of detectives”—epidemiologists—and drawing a story based on taking a fact and running with it. Mark quotes Tom Clancy: “The difference between fiction and non-fiction is that fiction has to make sense.” Plus, our guest eviscerates Henry James.Links from the pod:Mind of a Killer PBS episode.The Killer’s Shadow and The Killer Across the TableMindhuntersInc.com #AmReadingMark’s favorite crime fiction: George Pelecanos, Laura Lippman, Ian McEwanAnna Karenina by Leo TolstoyWar and Peace by Leo TolstoyDr. Zhivago by Boris PasternakCrime and Punishment by Fyodor DostoevskyThe Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor DostoevskyAll the King’s Men by Robert Penn WarrenKJ: Plain Bad Heroines Emily M. DanforthJess: Writings on an Ethical Life by Peter SingerThe Other Bennet Sister by Janice HadlowGreat Books by David DenbyAs we say every week—we’re so proud to be sponsored by Author Accelerator and Dabble. If you’re wondering—why Dabble and not Scrivener? For us, it’s that plotting tool and the intuitive way it works, but others have weighed in—check that out here with a little Dabble v. Scrivener scoop.And if listening to all of our conversations about book coaching has made you think, hey—that’s the career for me—then you’ll want to head to Author Accelerator’s BookCoaches.com to see how you can make that happen. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Writing nonfiction outside the memoir space usually means finding sources and stories that are not your own. Narrative, self-help, history, economics, social sciences, nature—no matter what your topic, this form of writing requires reporting, just as many freelance assignments do. So where do you go when you’re looking for sources? Often, your own backyard—and for lots of us, that can mean we inadvertently only talk to people who share our perspective, and sometimes our privilege. Nobody knows that better than Julie Lythcott-Haims. For all her books, and most particularly for her latest, Julie has made it a point to draw from sources that reflect the diversity of our larger national experience. We talked about finding those sources, owning the need to seek out specific points of view and how you know when you’ve got it right.Links from the PodEd Yong’s article in the Atlantic about what he’s learned as he’s worked to diversify his sources: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/i-spent-two-years-trying-to-fix-the-gender-imbalance-in-my-stories/552404/Adrienne LaFrance on gender bias in her own reporting: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/02/gender-diversity-journalism/463023/Our Minisode on diversity in sources for non-fiction work, from light-hearted articles on favorite baby food flavors to seriously researched pieces for high-profile outlets. BIPOC, non-binary and women are outweighed by white men when it comes to who gets quoted in the news, whether the voice is adding an expert perspective or just a little local color. In it, we suggest the following:SheSourceInformed VoicesNPR’s Source of the Week and how to use it.Columbia University’s list of female, non-binary and BIPOC experts on the mediaHARO#AmReadingJulie: The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation by Anna Malaika TubbsJess: Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition by Patricia ChurchlandKJ: Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. DanforthSarina 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/FreeBittersweetApple: http://geni.us/BsIbooksB&N: http://geni.us/bsbreachKobo: http://geni.us/bskreachGoogle: http://geni.us/bsgreachBook-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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Whew! This week, Sarina and KJ (that’s me writing as it usually is) both launched books—Sarina came out with Loverboy, second in KJ’d favorite Sarina series, The Company, while KJ FINALLY and after many many months got to see The Chicken Sisters come out into the world. Notice the different verbs there? That’s because our launches come from very different places, and we talk about that—as well as, of course, ALL the Reese Witherspoon Book Club backstory. You can grab a copy of Loverboy in all kinds of ways: 🗝️ Audio https://geni.us/Audio-LB🗝️ Amazon https://geni.us/Amazon-LB🗝️ Apple https://geni.us/Apple-LB🗝️ Kobo https://geni.us/Kobo-Lb🗝️ Nook https://geni.us/Nook-LB🗝️ Google https://geni.us/Google-LBAnd there are a bunch of ways to buy The Chicken Sisters. There’s YOUR Indie bookstore--and if you buy it there and fill out this linked Google doc, I'll mail you a signed bookplate for it.There's The Norwich Bookstore, which has signed actual copies.There's MY Indie: Still North Books.There's Bookshop.org.There's Amazon.There's Barnes and Noble.Links to the memoirs KJ mentioned: White Walls: A Memoir About Motherhood, Daughterhood and the Mess in Between, Judy BatalionYear of No Clutter: A Memoir, Eve SchaubSlow: Simple Living for a Frantic World, Brooke McAlaryChasing Slow: Courage to Journey off the Beaten Path, Erin Loechner#AmReadingJess: Distress Signals by Catherine Ryan HowardThe Liar’s Girl by Catherine Ryan HowardSarina: Winter Street, Winter Stroll, Winter Storms, Winter Solstice by Elin HildebrandKJ: Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. DanforthThanks for listening! As a heads up if you’re book-gift shopping make sure you 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.And 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 Novel in #Process Part 1: Finding an Idea, 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 we love our sponsors! Check out Dabble Writing Software if you haven’t already, and visit BookCoaches.com/amwriting to learn more about Author Accelerator’s amazing book coach training (hello, holiday gift that keeps on giving) or for their free book coach matching service. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

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 podIf You Want to Write by Brenda UelandHow to Grow a Novel by Sol SteinStein on Writing by Sol Stein*FREE* Editorial Summit - December 6th#AmReadingTiffany: Such a Fun Age by Kiley ReidDear Edward by Ann NapolitanoThe Vanishing Half by Brit BennettKJ: Ties that Tether by Jane IgharoSarina: Fangirl by Rainbow RowellSarina 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/FreeBittersweetApple: http://geni.us/BsIbooksB&N: http://geni.us/bsbreachKobo: http://geni.us/bskreachGoogle: http://geni.us/bsgreachBook-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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

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/BsIbooksB&N: http://geni.us/bsbreachKobo: http://geni.us/bskreachGoogle: http://geni.us/bsgreachBook-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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

It’s the gifts episode! Here are the links you’re looking for: KJ: Redbubble ❄️ Stamp blocks ❄️ Stamp blanks and stencils ❄️ Frixion Pens ❄️ Leuchterm plannerJess: Sarina’s Socks ❄️ Half Broke by Ginger Gaffney (for KJ, but Jess loved it, too!) ❄️ Fillion planner cover by Little Mountain Bindery ❄️ Jess’s favorite sticky tabs ❄️ Pens by Schneider ❄️ Sarina’s stamp with the kinda-sorta True North Series three pine tree logo ❄️ The “Begin” mug Jess wants a case of.Sarina:Hedgehog Pencil Holder ❄️ Post-its that fit over planner months ❄️ Corkicle (it doesn’t come with the sticker, sorry… but actually I (KJ) have extras and if you asked me I could probably mail you one if I don’t get too many asks! Just reply to this email and I will see it.)#AmReadingJess: Scarcity: The New Science of Having Less and How It Defines Our Lives by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar ShafirKJ: The Other Bennet Sister by Janice HadlowSarina: The Girl with Stars in Her Eyes by Xio AxelrodZowie! Thanks for listening. If you want to check out our last gift episodes (and guides), click the years: 2019 2018 2017.If you’ve got other ideas we should know about, share them in the #AmWriting Facebook group.And if you’d like to subscribe to the shownotes email or support the podcast, click the button.To give a subscription as a gift, click THIS button! This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Every writer craves that high concept idea that leads to the breakout book, or in this case breakout series. For Lyssa Kay Adams, it came from that joke women often make about wishing their male partners read romance—and a moment in 2016 when she “just wanted to live in a world full of men who get it.” She created The Bromance Book Club, about a group of men who read romance to understand their relationships and their partners. That became her first novel, quickly followed by Undercover Bromance and Crazy Stupid Bromance, and we three have read and loved them all. We talk indie v. trad, breaking out, building a series, writing diverse worlds and more.Links from the PodJason Rogers’ Men’s Health articleHeated Rivalry by Rachel ReidKobo LibraOverdrive#AmReadingLyssa: Just a Heartbeat Away by Cara BastoneSnapped by Alexa MartinSarina: Again the Magic by Lisa KleypasJess: The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton WilderCrazy Stupid BromanceKJ: Ties That Tether by Jane IgharoAll Stirred Up by Brianne MooreSpeaking of romance, we love you, our listeners. Our sponsorships pay for the production and hosting of the podcast, but you support the time and work we put into being there for you every week, both by following us, reviewing the pod and keeping in touch, and with your financial contributions. #AmWriting supporters get a weekly bonus in the form of a minisode, a Writer Top Five or a little backstage burst of whatever the three of us are talking about that week (like Sarina’s new product review plans. Want in on that? Click here. And we love our sponsors! Check out Dabble Writing Software if you haven’t already, and visit BookCoaches.com/amwriting to learn more about Author Accelerator’s amazing book coach training (hello, holiday gift that keeps on giving) or for their free book coach matching service. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

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 HomeFind Lauren on her website: www.laurenosandler.com#AmReadingLauren: The Days of Abandonment by Elena FerranteThe Lying Life of Adults by Elena FerranteKJ: The Book Charmer by Karen HawkinsJess: Goodnight Beautiful by Aimee MolloyThanks for letting us into your inbox. If you’ve got questions, comments, episode ideas, head to the #AmWriting Facebook group or email us at [email protected]. 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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

MADNESS! We don’t know how, but somehow this went live without audio at midnight. So here it is again for you subscribers, with —the actual podcast episode. We don’t have a lot of repeat guests, but Seth Godin can come on the podcast any time he wants. Seth is a fountain of wisdom about writing, pitching, selling, and building your audience, and his new book, The Practice: Shipping Creative Work, is a great addition to his (substantial) body of work. Seth Godin is not only the master of the short pithy book of helpful advice, he’s the master of dishing out that advice straight from his brain to yours, as well. He does not have to stop and re-frame. He does not meander about his point. Not one bit. He’s a fountain of quick sentences that wallop you upside the head with their truth and clarity and demand to be written down. Here are just a few from this interview, which you won’t want to miss: “Process saves us from the poverty of our intentions"“There is never enough reassurance from outsiders” “Don’t let your audience expect another greatest hits album every time”“Be the boss of the process”“Creativity is an act of leadership”Jess, Sarina and Seth talked about getting the work out there to your readers. That’s it. Shipping the work. Sure, we also talked about how it gets done because we always do (and Seth reveals Isaac Asimov’s advice for getting 400 books written) but in the end, the work has to end up with your readers. We did not talk books this week because we were on a tight schedule and Seth had so much wisdom to share, we skipped it. However, Seth recommended the documentary Double Take about the sculptor Elizabeth King, who is quoted in The Practice: “Process saves us from the poverty of our intentions.”Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here and don’t forget our sponsors and partners, Author Accelerator’s Book Coach training at bookcoaches.com/amwriting and DabbleWritingSoftware. They’re hand-picked because we LIKE them. So check them out.Finally—KJ here—Obviously, with The Chicken Sisters coming out in December, book marketing has been on my mind.One thing I learned in the last go-round when How to Be a Happier Parent came out is that it’s a bad idea to do it alone. There’s no way I could have done the whole launch by myself and you know, still had all my faculties intact.One piece of help I got was taking a course called How to Launch a Bestseller from Tim Grahl, a book marketing phenom who’s had dozens of clients on the bestseller list. He pushes my buttons a little—because no matter what anyone says, you CANNOT make a bestseller yourself and to believe you can is to set yourself up for failure—but his advice is solid.Another piece of help I got was from Sue Campbell, a book launch coach who helped me execute some of the monster-sized launch plan I put together based on Tim’s course. We had fun together and did some really fun things, like a quiz (find your parenting mantra).Sue was actually personally trained by Tim and now she’s launching a really cool thing.It’s a monthly membership that will give authors the resources they need to build an audience and the opportunity to pick Sue’s brain on a weekly basis. Basically, Sue’s the perfect person to help you set and reach your goals for your author career.Membership in the club includes:* Direct access to Sue Campbell, Book Launch Certified Coach and her team at Pages & Platforms team at a fraction of the cost to hire them privately.* Mindset coaching to help you break through your marketing block and find your “clean selling” approach.* Help with goal setting and attainment.* Specialized coaching and workshops to get the knowledge and skills you need to market well and avoid wasting time and money.* 24/7 access to a community of fellow authors.* Access to special expert guests from time to time, including Tim Grahl.Another big benefit: this club is a flexible way to get marketing help when you need it. There’s no long-term commitment. And she’s offering a free-month trial right now. There are live calls every Friday at 1 p.m. Pacific time/4 p.m. Eastern.I know for myself, having a community of like-minded people helps me make huge progress. (Heck, that’s what the #amwriting podcast and Facebook group is all about!)I highly recommend you give Sue’s Your Next 9000 Copies club a try. I’ll be there too. And this is, as you’ve probably guessed, an affiliate link for the #AmWritingPodcast, so use it and you support us too. But I wouldn’t recommend Sue if I didn’t believe in her. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Campers, this week we’re talking about a topic near and dear to all our hearts, but most particularly Sarina, whose productivity levels are epic and who is always looking for something that will help her ramp up. We talk hardware and software that makes the writing process easier, or at least more varied; handwriting-to-text, voice-to-text, AI, editing software, citation software and throw in a few other ideas for good measure. Links to everything we discuss are below.Post-It App: CaptureDragon Naturally SpeakingOtterRev.comWhitelinesProWritingAidNeboBookEndsDabbleScrivener#AmReadingJess: The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu and Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts by Joshua HammerKJ: His Only Wife by Peace Adzo MedieThanks to everyone who supports the podcast financially—we hope you’ve been loving recent treats like the Minisodes from Jess: What Really Sells Books and KJ: Why I Love Plotting Books (and which to grab) and the Top 5 Things to Know About Using a Pseudonym. To join that team, click the button below (we’re kinda having a fall sale!):But it’s all good. The pod is free as it always has and always will be. 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 every time there’s a new episode.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here and don’t forget our sponsors and partners!If you’re getting into NaNoWriMo this year, head over to the #AmWriting Facebook group to find your fellow-listener-lunatics—and consider trying out Dabble Writing software, which was specifically designed for plotting and writing fiction. Dabble is extending its free trial throughout the months of October and November, so you can try it out without any fear of losing your work, and it’s easy to export everything you’ve done right out at the end if it’s not for you. But we think it will be! Find out more at dabblewriter.com.And if what gets YOU salivating is the prospect of helping writers turn all those rough NaNo drafts into something that’s ready for their next level, , you should check out bookcoaches.com/amwriting, where our sponsor, Author Accelerator, offers the training you need to turn your passion for stories into a full-blown side gig or business. You’ll find all the info, as well as a free video series to help you decide if book coaching is right for you, at bookcoaches.com/amwriting. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Have you ever, while banging out a document of any kind in Word or Pages or whatever, thought to yourself “Dang, this would be so much easier if ______.” Every writer has been there, but only a few rare souls actually go on to “I am going to make something that does that, darn it.” Jacob Wright is that rare soul. Once upon a time, while drafting his own experiments in fiction, he pitched Scrivener on a mobile version, and when they declared themselves content with who and what they were, he set out to build it on his own—a simpler software specifically designed for story. #AmReadingJacob: Warbreaker by Brandon SandersonKJ: The Queen of the Night by Alexander CheeSarina: Crazy Stupid Bromance by Lyssa Kay AdamsY’all, Dabble is free for all of October and November to anyone who wants to hook it up to a NaNoWriMo account and use it to plot and then draft your November 2020 magnum opus. (And there’s always a free 14-day trial, year-round.)And to help you get that plot right, we strongly suggest you check out the free writing challenge at Author Accelerator. When you sign up for the challenge, you will receive seven assignments targeted at defining what your book is about. Throughout the week, you will...* Define why you are writing this book* Discover the point of your story* Develop your book jacket copy* Describe your book in one killer sentence* Brainstorm and select your book’s working title* Start writing your book with our Two-Tier Outline workbook (for fiction)* Swear you’ll be way ahead in the NaNoWriMo game.Or if what you hope for is to help other people get their NaNo drafts ready for the big time, check out Author Accelerator’s Book Coaching courses to learn more. Want more #AmWriting? Support the podcast with just a click of the “subscribe” 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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

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.comOn Twitter: @lacy_crawfordWe 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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

A book of essays. A memoir that’s truly a family history and an American history. And—soon—a novel. Morgan Jerkins talks starting a writing career as a millennial, the privileges necessary to survive (financially) in New York City while pursuing a writing career and fighting the urge to let other people decide whether to take your work seriously. We cover so much ground in this interview, from #publishingpaidme to interviewing skills to figuring out how much of your self belongs in your work, that we barely even grazed the surface of how much Morgan’s current book, Wandering in Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots, taught her—and teaches the reader—about Black American history and how hidden it still remains from most of us of any heritage. If you enjoyed Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration or Caste, you’ll love Wandering—and even if you didn’t, if you’re a fan of memoir, interested in family history and legend or are just a product of the typical white-centric education in American history and wish you knew more about the many other sides of the story, grab it. Find Morgan Jerkins:On her website: www.morgan-jerkins.comand on Twitter: @MorganJerkins#AmReadingMorgan: Girl, Woman, Other: A Novel by Bernardine EvaristoTemporary by Hilary LeichterSeverance by Ling MaPachinko by Min Jin LeeKJ: Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa GyasiSarina: Uncanny Valley: A Memoir by Anna WienerUnspeakable Acts: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit, and Obsession by Sarah WeinmanWe talk a LOT about money in this episode—huge thanks to everyone who supports the podcast financially. We hope you’re enjoying supporter-only Minisodes like When There's No Muse, Keep Going and Writer Top 5s like Top 5 Tips to Getting a Great Interview. To join that team, click the button below:But that doesn’t have to be you! The pod is free as it always has and always will be. 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 every time there’s a new episode.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, 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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

It’s KJ, and I don’t know about you, but I’ve noticed that about 99 percent of the time when I sit down at my laptop, I seem to be doing it solo. Where is this muse of which other writers speak? Sure, I often get in the flow. I can click merrily along at the keys—but inevitably, I hit a spot where the flow jams up in my brain and I don’t know what’s next and I really, really just want to get up and go get a nice cookie. This Minisode is me talking about how I keep going (for 50 minutes).How to listen: if you’ve listened to any previous MiniSodes, this one should already BE in your podcast feed. If not, click on the link to listen and you’ll find yourself at amwriting.substack.com. You COULD listen there, but we’re guessing you’d rather get all subscriber episodes, from now on, in your usual podcast-listening app. It’s easy, and you only have to do it once to get every #Minisode from now on right where you want it.So click “listen in podcast app.” You’ll get an email with a link in it. Click the link—ON YOUR PHONE—and you will get a menu of the most popular podcast apps. Chose yours and click, and you’ll have a new “private” podcast feed for supporters only.If your favorite listening app isn’t included, fear not. There’s an RSS link in the email. Your podcast app has a way to add that—it’s probably a “+” sign somewhere on your main page. Add the link once, and any time we do a #SupporterMini, you’ll get it without having to do a thing. (Trust us, it’s easy. This is WHY we chose Substack.) This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

It’s an age-old question: how do you build a platform big enough so publishers take notice? This week we interview Dara Kurtz, author of one self-published book and one traditionally published book. She shares her considerable, deliberate efforts to build her online readership for her site, Crazy Perfect Life, and translate fans of her website and Facebook group content into purchasers for her second book, I am My Mother’s Daughter. Buckle up and dust off your spreadsheet skills, because this woman loves data. You can find out more about Dara on her website and on her podcast, Thrive. #AmReadingDara: She’s re-reading her own book, which is helpful for doing media around publication, as well as The Untethered Soul by Michael A. SingerJess: This is All I Got: A New Mother’s Search for Home by Lauren Sandler and A Beautiful Work in Progress by Mirna ValerioKJ: The Beauty in Breaking by Michele HarperThanks so much for listening! Just a reminder that our #AmWriting supporters get #BonusEmails every Monday like our Minisode: When There's No Muse, Keep Going which will be going out on Monday, October 5th. It's our thank-you for helping support the podcast you love for only $7 a month. Click the upgrade button to find out more!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 every time there’s a new episode. To support the podcast and help it stay free, subscribe to our weekly #WritersTopFive email.This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. 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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

It’s—a podcast episode! With Jennie Nash, so you already know you’re going to love it and I don’t need to say any more. Sarina and I had a great time talking nitty gritty book coaching details with Jennie from a different perspective—what if you want to BE a book coach? But don’t worry if that’s not of interest—this episode will still inspire you to take a professional approach to your work, whatever it is, to think about money and value differently and find some changes that will help you wherever you are and whatever you’re working on.As for book coaching—I (this is KJ) recently volunteered for the Women Fiction Writer’s Association’s fall pitch event, helping writers polish their 50 word pitches before they had a chance to pitch agents—and it was so much more satisfying than I thought it would be, for a lot of reasons. Helping people—yay. SO MUCH EASIER to see things in other people’s work than in your own, also true. And then there was the satisfaction of handing things back to the writers for them to work on. Like handing back a baby with a smelly diaper to its parent. But I also just enjoyed the work a lot more than I thought I would. If you’ve had an experience like that, this is really the episode for you. Jennie talks about how valuable that work is, how we can come to understand it’s worth and feel good about charging for our services, why it’s good for everyone when this is done professionally and what it’s like to be a book coach, to have a book coach and to do that work right.Links from the Pod:Read Books All Day and Get Paid For It by Jennie NashBookcoaches.com/amwriting#AmReading:Jennie: The Hate You Give – Angie ThomasKJ: Queeny – Candice Carty-WilliamsWant more #AmWriting? Support the podcast with just a click of the “subscribe” 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.And don’t forget to check out Dabble Writing Software. If you’re following a bunch of twisty turny plot lines with the help of index cards or post it notes, Dabble is for you! Get a free trial at DabbleWriter.com This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

It’s a madcap, free-ranging episode where we go from figuring out how to get your important work done (and quit doom-scrolling through your phone) to embracing that same phone for its best use: nourishing conversations with the people you love and then launch into some fantastic tips for interviewing experts (or podcast guests!) that you won’t want to miss. Links from the pod and the scoop on our guest: Celeste Headlee is an NPR journalist and the author of three books: Do NothingWe Need to TalkHeard MentalityCeleste talks about the danger of working from home with Mary Elizabeth Williams on Salon.You can find her at: CelesteHeadlee.com#AmReadingCeleste: Studs Terkel’s Race helped me understand race (as a black jew) like never beforeKJ: Motherland by Leah FranquiJess: Magical Thinking, Lust and Wonder, and Toil and Trouble by Augusten BorroughsThanks to everyone who supports the podcast financially—we hope you’ve been loving recent treats like the Minisodes from Jess: What Really Sells Books and KJ: Why I Love Plotting Books (and which to grab) and the Top 5 Things to Know About Using a Pseudonym. To join that team, click the button below (we’re kinda having a fall sale!):But it’s all good. The pod is free as it always has and always will be. 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 every time there’s a new episode.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, 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.And—have you checked out the Bookable Podcast? Audio explorations of the books you might want to read next, with a host who’s a veteran of a much-loved, much-missed NYC live monthly book event. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Not everybody wants an author hanging around their office all day.Our guest is a best-selling education writer Jeff Selingo, already an expert on college and higher education who took that one step further for his latest: Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions. Jeff managed to embed himself in three admissions offices to write this book, a feat that will boggle the mind of anyone familiar with the industry (and it is an industry, make no mistake).We talk pitching and selling the book, lining up the admissions offices and then dancing the delicate dance of writing honestly about people and places that have opened themselves up to your critical gaze, finding students to become part of your story and balancing the stories you tell—plus all the minutia of getting those stories, from consent forms to pseudonyms to not changing the outcomes by becoming part of the story. #AmReadingJeff: The Dry by Jane HarperJess: The Woods and Missing You, Harlan CobenH is for Hawk by Helen MacDonaldKJ: Life Is In the Transitions by Bruce FeilerFind Jeff at:His Website: www.jeffselingo.comOn Twitter: www.twitter.com/jselingoOn Facebook: www.facebook.com/JeffSelingoVia Instagram: www.instagram.com/jselingoThanks to everyone who supports the podcast financially. To join that team, click the button below:But it’s all good. The pod is free as it always has and always will be. 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 every time there’s a new episode.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, 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.And—have you checked out the Bookable Podcast? Audio explorations of the books you might want to read next, with a host who’s a veteran of a much-loved, much-missed NYC live monthly book event. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

It’s the topic every author seems to love to hate: self-promotion. Sharing our work on social media, pitching ourselves to podcasts and reaching out to friends and colleagues to ask them to boost us up in various ways can feel hard—but it shouldn’t. It’s part of the deal—and the people around you don’t mind. In fact, they want to know when you have a new book or article out, especially if you’re a regular and generous supporter of the good work the people around you are doing as well.We talk about getting past the emotional hurdle here, and then we talk about the how best to get the job done—best practices for self-promotion and a lovely list of “Glamour Don’ts” for those who are worried about getting it wrong. Links from the Podcastsharelinkgenerator#AmReadingSarina: What Happens Next by Colleen ClaytonKJ: A Star is Bored by Byron LaneJess: The Overstory by Richard PowersHave 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. And—have you checked out the Bookable Podcast? Audio explorations of the books you might want to read next, with a host who’s a veteran of a much-loved, much-missed NYC live monthly book event. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Lauren Ho is the author of the debut novel Last Tang Standing, which is getting HUGE buzz. It’s been called Bridget Jones meets Crazy Rich Asians, and it does deliver on that promise. Lauren is our very first guest to join us from Singapore, and it’s very late at night there but she managed to hold her own. We talk lawyers-turned-writers, selling a book from outside the US and UK, Goodreads reviews and the challenges and advantages of writing characters (not necessarily POV characters, but still voices that have a place in your story) from perspectives that aren’t your own. #AmReadingLauren: Sex and Vanity by Kevin KwanA Good Family by A.H. KimThe White Coat Diaries by Madi SinhaKJ: Rodham by Curtis SittenfeldJess:Becoming Duchess Goldblatt (Anonymous)Boyfriend Material by Alexis HallFind Lauren at:Her Website: www.hellolaurenho.comOn Twitter: www.twitter.com/hellolaurenhoOn Facebook: www.facebook.com/hellolaurenhoVia Instagram: www.instagram.com/hellolaurenhoBehind-the-scenes and only in the email this week: KJ was a guest on the wonderful How Do You Write podcast with Rachael Herron, and truly had a blast and loved every minute of it and thinks you should listen to all the episodes (she does!).Jess shared this video of pandas being pandas and caused Sarina and KJ to loose many minutes of work.Lacy Crawford, whose book Notes on a Silencing has come up many times on the pod, got an apology from St. Paul’s, the private high school which covered up her rape and protected her rapists. We appreciate you! We’re glad you get the shownotes every week, and if you’re also one of our gorgeous and wonderful supporters, you can expect a #Minisode on why KJ loves books about plotting fiction, which ones she adores and how she’s using them to drop into your podplayer Monday—and we’ve uploaded and categorized all of our previous Top 5s and Minisodes on our website, which means that if you want to explore advice on agents, or nonfiction, or marketing and promotion, you’ll find what you’re looking for right HERE. And if you’d like to support the show, and get access to everything from our recent Top 5s (like business upgrades, tax tips and ways to hold yourself accountable to our Minisodes, like KJ on how an editor considers an essay, Sarina’s letter to her younger self and Jess on what really sells books, then click the button below to chip in! We’ve got a bit of a deal on this fall—a full year of support for just $56. That’s just a tiny bit over $1 an episode! Aren’t we worth it? This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Our guest this week is children’s fiction and YA author Julie Berry, and here’s why: she gave a talk at a conference about visualizing and imagery that Sarina has “been thinking about for 7 years.” That should tell you how much gold there is in this episode—all kinds of useful stuff about how we use images and senses to spark our own creativity and build a connection with our readers in every genre. We think you’ll love it. #AmReadingJulie: The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George SpeareBeauty by Robin McKinleyThe Blue Sword by Robin McKinleyThe Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinleyThe Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie PopeThe Secret Life of Trees by Robin BlackwellBlack and British by David OlusogaStaying Power by Peter FryerSarina: Love Lettering by Kate ClaybornKJ: Tiny Imperfections by Alli Frank & Asha YoumansFind Julie at: Her Website: www.julieberrybooks.comOn Twitter: www.twitter.com/julieberrybooksOn Facebook: www.facebook.com/julieberrybookspageVia Instagram: www.instagram.com/julieberrybooksThanks to everyone who supports the podcast financially. To join that team, click the button below:But it’s all good. The pod is free as it always has and always will be. 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 every time there’s a new episode.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

We’ve got a great interview for you today with a freelance journalist who does a different kind of work than any of us ever have—out in the field reporting on his favorite subject: reality adventure TV on trips rife with travel and danger and expense reports. I think you’ll love it. We talk about finding your topic and making that topic, well, topical by looking for what’s happening within the world you’re covering that reflects what’s happening outside of it. We also discuss MFAs (he’s a fan), email (not so much) and how to keep from “opening your email and letting somebody else dictate what you do with your time.”Links from the Podcastfresh.inkLongform on Twitter#AmReadingAndy: Fates and Furies by Lauren GroffThe Secret History by Donna TarttJess: The Summer of ‘69 by Elin HilderbrandThe Book of Eels by Patrik SvenssonKJ: The Guest List Lucy Foley#TBR: The Mountains Wild by Sarah Stewart TaylorFind out more about our guest:AndyDehnart.comReality BlurredAndy’s newsletterFind Andy on TwitterSee Andy’s book recs on BookshopAnd if you love the podcast, have you considered kicking in some cash? Our sponsors cover our production costs, but our time is basically sponsored by you, our loyal listeners. If we’ve added a little value to your day or week or year, please consider supporting us. How? Click the button.As we say every week—we’re so proud to be sponsored by Author Accelerator and Dabble. If you’re wondering—why Dabble and not Scrivener? For us, it’s that plotting tool and the intuitive way it works, but others have weighed in—check that out here with a little Dabble v. Scrivener scoop.And if listening to all of our conversations about book coaching has made you think, hey—that’s the career for me—then you’ll want to head to Author Accelerator’s BookCoaches.com to see how you can make that happen. Or if listening to the promo this week made you wonder about book coach Kemlo Aki, find more about her here. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Write every day. Don’t read fiction while you’re writing fiction. My way or the highway. In a burst of frustration, we’re reminding ourselves—and you—that there’s no one way to get this job done, and if your way is counter to what some of the greats might tell you (we’re looking at you, Stephen King, even though we love you), that doesn’t mean it won’t work.A few links from the episode:Minisode: #AmQuerying: How to write a fiction query letter that makes an agent ask for moreBecca Syme: https://betterfasteracademy.com/beccasyme/#AmReadingSarina: Notes of Silencing by Lacy CrawfordJess: Unacceptable by Melissa Korn & Jennifer LevitzUnspeakable Acts by Sarah WeinmanKJ: Big Summer by Jennifer WeinerThe Vanishing Half by Brit BennettOur amazing sponsors: Dabble Writing Software, which I can’t wait to use to line up all my scenes and plot points AS SOON AS I START FIGURING OUT WHAT THEY ARE and which you should absolutely try.And Author Accelerator. Jennie Nash is doing a Facebook Live coaching of a memoir outline on August 14, 2020—that’s next week. I can’t wait, I love watching her do these. Sign up here, or just go learn more!KJ Dell'Antonia 0:00 Writers, KJ here. Have you heard me talk about Dabble yet? I mean really listened. Dabble writing software is our new sponsor, and we love them. Sarina and I can't stop playing with the outline piece of it, which is every bit as flexible as a bunch of post it notes on your desk and a whole lot more portable. You can track everything that belongs within a scene, how that scene fits into multiple plot lines, and where that scene belongs in the book. And you can move it with the flick of a mouse. It's honestly a little too much fun. We don't want to encourage you to procrastinate, but getting your storyline right isn't procrastination. It's part of the work. So try out Dabble and let us know if it helps you get your work done by downloading a free trial at dabblewriter.com. Is it recording?Jess Lahey 0:50 Now it's recording.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:52 This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone and try to remember what I'm supposed to be doing. Jess Lahey 0:56 Alright, let's start over.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:58 Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay. Now one, two, three. Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. The podcast about writing all the things, fiction, nonfiction, short pieces, long pieces, entire books, be they small or long, pitches, proposals, and as I say every week, this is the podcast about sitting down and getting your work done or not, but trying. I am, as I've previously stated, KJ Dell'Antonia. I am the author of the novel The Chicken Sisters, which will be out in December of this year, which is 2020. I'm the former editor of the Motherlode blog at the New York Times where I still sometimes contribute and the author of How to Be a Happier Parent, which is out in paperback and available everywhere now. And I'm Jess Lahey, the author of The Gift of Failure. And I have a new book coming out in April. I just finished the galley edits so it feels real, called The Addiction Inoculation. And you can find my work right about now when this thing comes out in the Washington Post, but I write for lots of different places.Sarina Bowen 2:19 And I'm Sarina Bowen. I'm the author of 35 romance novels. And you can always find more of me at Amazon Apple books and everywhere romances are sold.So today's topic is kind of about keeping your head in the game.Jess Lahey 3:06 It absolutely is. I'm optimistic. I'm going to go with the it is about keeping your head in the game. What is our topic for today, Sarina?Sarina Bowen 3:14 It's myths about writing. All the things that we have absorbed over the years that may or may not be true. And myths come from a place of cultural reference. So these myths aren't out of left field, but we still want to examine them just to make sure we're taking the right advice.Jess Lahey 3:36 Well, I think it's important to do that because some of these myths come from people. I mean, heck, if we took our oft cited David Sedaris advice about never, ever asking for anything, and that became sort of the way that writers were supposed to do things, then not a lot of writers would get stuff done. It happens to have worked beautifully for him. There are a couple of other authors that I'm going to cite while we're talking about some of these, and it can become the word of the writers. And it's not necessarily so because writing is different for different people.Well, I think in particular, there is one myth that we really want to blow up today for all of our sakes. And that myth is the 'you must write every day'. Am I right?It can be a goal.And you know, I think we often make it sound like we do write every day. And we often do write every day. But I think what we don't talk about is that it is seasonal and cyclical. And that writing can sometimes mean other things.Sarina Bowen 4:45 So I came up with the idea of myths, I mean, it entered my brain this weekend when I was listening to a talk by a writing coach named Becca Syme. And she was speaking at an event called Inkers Con that I was enjoying listening to. And she does some myth busting in hers but what she got to was that you have to examine the premise of these myths, like what premise are we accepting if we go along with it and KJ just said writers write every day and I would say that there's an even deeper premise to that one which is writers right because they must, and this one always makes me roll my eyes. Because I am definitely a writer. You know, my whole career is set up around this, but I have never once looked in the mirror and said, I'm a writer because I must, it's a compulsion for me. It's not it's actually my job and some days I just don't feel like doing it.Jess Lahey 5:55 I think that for me, it's how I best express myself. I mean, I always would rather express myself in the written word than trying to explain something to someone orally. And that's just my preference for how I tend to make the best contribution. Do I have to write? In fact, if someone said I couldn't write for the rest of my life, I think I could be okay. I think I'd be fine. I may not be as well understood, but I think I would be fine. I'd have to make more phone calls. Oh my gosh, that would be the worst.Sarina Bowen 6:33 You know, Jess, you just reminded me of that thing that happens at the very end of Spinal Tap the rockumentary. At the very end, when the credits are rolling, they asked each band member in turn, like, 'If you couldn't have rock and roll, how would you go on?' And the first one says something like, 'Well, but I'd still have the sex and drugs.' And then the last one is like, "Well, I could work in a shop.'Jess Lahey 7:19 But yeah, I think that the whole I have to write or I will perish is along the lines of I couldn't live without you because I just don't think those are healthy ways to think about the world, but that's just me.KJ Dell'Antonia 7:33 And you know, it is true that there are easier ways to make a living. So, you know, you probably aren't doing this unless you want to do it, but I feel like have to is awfully strong. So the you have to write every day...Stephen King, every day including Christmas, right? Or whatever your holiday of choice is, just every day, sit down every day. When I am working on something, I do write every day, generally including weekends. Sometimes I can't. Sometimes you're spending 12 hours taking a hike with your family. I guess what I'm trying to say is just you don't have to. It is possible to stop for a week or a couple of weeks, or I have somebody that I was reading said in between every book they spend like a month just gardening. I don't remember who it was. But yeah, when you're in the midst of something, writing everyday is a good way to keep your hand in, and make sure that you know where to start, and that you're still going, and that it's going fine. And especially if you have deadlines or goals. But when you're in between things, like I just turned in a manuscript and I don't know what's gonna happen with that manuscript, but because someone else has it, it's pencils down for me. And I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do next. But if I was writing 1000 words a day without knowing what I was going to do next, that would not be pretty.Jess Lahey 9:59 I have to second your thing about writing every day when you're working on something because if I don't write every day when I'm working on something, I number one get lost. Like, I can't find where my brain was when and then it takes me like two hours to sort of get back into it. But I also feel like it gets stale for me a little bit. So when I'm working on something, I absolutely have to work on it every day. Sorry, Sarina, what were you gonna say?Sarina Bowen 10:26 I was just gonna go one step worse than that, which is I get afraid of my own project.Jess Lahey 10:31 Really? Interesting.Sarina Bowen 10:33 Yeah, I develop a fear about it. That I won't like it as much when I go back and I won't want to continue. It's just a fear of the unknown.Jess Lahey 10:44 It varies for me. There are times when even in mid-massive draft, serious know what I'm doing, have it all, sometimes you have to drive someone somewhere that's 12 hours away. But sometimes I make it an affirmative decision to just be like not today, this day gets a cross. And I love those days.KJ Dell'Antonia 11:37 And that's okay, too.Jess Lahey 11:41 The week after I finished my manuscript and I went on vacation with my husband and my in-laws, it was so nice to say I am not writing this entire week and that can be incredibly freeing. And as it turns out, my brain had the space to think about other things and to sort of muse on other topics. And it was really, interestingly, a very productive week for me from a brain standpoint, but not at all from a writing standpoint, it was just so freeing.But even mid project, sometimes there's just a day when you either can't or choose not to. And I don't find that that stalls me at all, it's fine. You know, that maybe shouldn't be every other day. But yeah, you don't have to write every day. So cross that one off.I can relate to what Sarina said about getting afraid of things. Because I'm sure you've had this moment where you get that email about edits that need to be done and it feels so massive and unwieldy until you actually start and get into the document. And for me, my work always feels manageable when I'm in it, and it's only when I stop being in it that it starts to feel like something I can't even start. So for me it's a bit of self preservation to stay as in it as possible. Otherwise it gets out of my arms and it starts to feel like just something that's way too big. So it's definitely something I have to do for my own, just moving forward kind of thing. Sarina Bowen 13:11 Okay, KJ, what else you got in the myth box?Jess Lahey 13:14 Oh, well, my current favorite myth is you shouldn't read anything similar to what you're working on while you're working on it. When I was just getting started as a writer, I tried to follow that but it's just not what I have found to be true. First of all, whether I'm writing fiction or nonfiction, I find that reading things in the genre or something similar, it's not like I'm suddenly going to rewrite The Bromance Book Club by accident. I feel like it's helpful, because it can be very freeing to be reading along and see what another author has done. Or how they've transitioned, or to realize that, gosh, I really enjoyed that book. And I feel like the character's mother was a total force and presence, but I go back through and I count and she only appeared on the page four times. That's amazing. So I can do that. And sometimes if I'm stuck. I'll go and find the book where I know that an author has done something that I'm trying to do really, really well and either just reread it for inspiration or actually tear it apart. What do they do? What did they do here? What did they do there? Yes, dissection, our favorite thing. So I totally read in my genre when I'm writing. Regardless of what I'm writing.Sarina Bowen 14:56 I tend not to, but also I work in a very tight corner of genre fiction. And so even though I might be reading a romance while I'm writing a romance, I like to work out of genre in my reading because I feel like I find the parallels more available to me there.Jess Lahey 15:18 But you're still reading. I mean, a lot of people say, 'Well, when I'm writing fiction, I'm not reading fiction.' And I'm like, Whoa, that's big. And I've actually heard people say that, like that's a really big chunk to let go of.Sarina Bowen 15:35 Right. Sometimes when I do read really tightly in my own genre, when I'm writing it makes the possibilities feel smaller, not larger, because I can see all the ways that we're all fishing in the same pond. Like they become more obvious to me even if the book isn't similar at all.Jess Lahey 15:54 Well, and sometimes I just feel like you know, if I rewrite someone that has really knocked it out of the Sometimes it's just like, oh, that's the only possible way to do that. And now I feel small and lost. And as though I will never come up with anything as brilliant as that particular logline, or plot twist, or whatever. So there's that, but I'm not going to stop reading because of it. I think I've said in the past that for nonfiction when I need a real hit of a voice that if I'm feeling a little bit not on top of my game, or I'm not feeling like an expert, if I go to a book where the expert voice is really, really strong it's kind of like it's like a rah-rah-rah kind of thing. It's like watching you know, a master musician right before you need to go on stage and be a master musician yourself. It's that sort of feeling of Okay, I can emulate that. It's sort of a fake it till you make it kind of thing. If I get this boost, then I can sort of feel like I'm ready and up to the task. So that for me is an important part. It's not that I'm reading the whole book, it's that I'm dipping in for that expert voice, which is good for me.Yeah. And sometimes let's say I'm sitting here thinking, Okay, I've got my person I know who I'm gonna write this next book about, and I kind of know what they want and where it's going to be. But I need to figure out what makes them act, like I need an inciting incident (as I think the story grid people would say) I need a thing, I need what makes them mad, I will think back to like the last four or five books that I read and liked and think well what pushed that roller coaster off onto the ride. And it's not that I am now going to be like, I know, his wife left him, because my character is not a man and isn't married. It's just a way to sort of remind yourself of some of the things that move characters in books that you love. And hopefully help inspire some ideas. Honestly that one I'm still kind of struggling with...Sarina Bowen 18:09 I saw a brilliant tweet that was kind of on this topic. It's a tweet by Rachel Hawkins who is a lovely YA writer and she tweeted this out on July 17. And I loved it so much she says, 'Me writing books, man I hope this is not stupid. Me reading books/watching TV/consuming basically any media. This is so stupid. I love it so much. Oh, I have room in my heart for the stupidest of things. Thank you.' I hope I've done it justice. But she did such a great little play act there of the different ways we hold ourselves accountable of our own work versus reading that thing that you are enjoying so much or that inspires you.Jess Lahey 18:58 Right and sometimes just realizing how goofy the inciting incident, or the resolution, or the reason that someone was doing something was, and yet why you sort of went right along with it happily, that's super helpful.I've said it once and I'll say it again, some of my favorite writing is my favorite because you can tell that the author is really loving the writing. And Sarina, some of my favorite stuff that you have written is stuff where I can just feel that you're having a good time while you're writing it. So I think that's an important part of it. So yeah, I love that idea of not holding ourselves to impossible standards. What else do we have?Well, I know we wanted to talk - today, I set my timer with the idea that I was going to spend 55 minutes noodling around on the plot of what I hope will be the next thing I'm writing and I've got several pages of assorted noodling. But the way that I get myself to the point of noodling is I'll stack up like a couple of plot books near me and maybe even pick one up and read a little of it because as I'm reading it I'm saying, Okay, if you're not really punishing the character, then nobody's gonna stick with you. I'll find my brain going, Okay, how am I going to punish my person? Like how's this gonna go badly once they make this choice and that kind of thing. So they fire me up. How's this for a myth? Plotting books are for amateurs. I don't know that that's a myth, but I think it's a feeling that we have. Like if I can't do it without resorting to looking at Save the Cat Writes a Novel then I shouldn't be doing it at all. In which case I shouldn't be doing it at all.Sarina Bowen 21:07 Yeah, we're able to give that myth a pass, aren't we? Jess Lahey 21:12 I think so. KJ Dell'Antonia 21:12 Yes. I love sitting down with a good book that tears up the hero's journey and tells you exactly what the twisty points are and what what the required elements are. And fine do them, don't do them, whatever. But using that map can be so great. So that's the myth. That if you use a map like that, you're gonna produce formulaic fiction. Jess Lahey 21:41 But you're hitting on something really important, though. Is that if you're talking about hero's journey, what you're talking about then is that some of that's happening anyway on a really subconscious level. So I think one of the things - there's this tension between it should just happen and that vision of Stephen King going down to his mental basement and channeling the magic satellite. And he talks about I don't know where the book's going because if I'm surprised by my own story, then the reader will be surprised. But I know for a fact that I have no mental basement where I'm going to go where the people in the basement are going to allow me to channel a book and that it's going to be well plotted and it's going to be well executed. And that just isn't a thing for me. And I think that comes from a place of yearning, because wouldn't it be a) super fun and b) wouldn't it be just so fantastic to be such a natural at storytelling that you just have to quiet your mind and go to your basement place and suddenly you're able to channel books and not that it's that easy for him, but that there's that myth that it should be that easy. And I think that's what gets us in trouble.Sarina Bowen 22:57 So the premise there is that novelists are born and not made. And that is such a dangerous premise because many of the people who grow up loving books so much and read them incessantly, just have never had a minute to analyze and dissect the manipulation that a good novelist is creating on the page. And, you know, the idea that we wouldn't ever have to read a book about that is dangerous.KJ Dell'Antonia 23:32 Yeah. I mean, personally, if I sit down and just grab a couple of characters and start writing, you know, will it be decent writing? Yes. Will it be entertaining? Yes, for about a page or maybe two. But, you know, without some idea of what their problem is and what they're going to do to fix it and how it's going to go wrong. I'll just write a conversation for a really, really, really embarrassingly long time.Sarina Bowen 24:11 I mentioned earlier that I had listened to this talk by Becca Syme and she had hit all these myths. And one of the ones that she gave really spoke to me because on the face of it, it's not a myth at all. And this was the one she said, You can't edit a blank page. And at first, I was like, hang on, you really actually can't. But what she meant was that not everybody assembles their plot in the same way. You know, some people really need to think for a nice long time before they're ready to write. And I think I am one of those people. Jess Lahey 25:03 I'm one of those people definitely.KJ Dell'Antonia 25:05 We were talking about that when we were walking the other day that, you know, you and I are both trying to develop a new plot. Basically, we're both noodling around. And whether that's scribbles and paper or just sort of mental scribbles, we are editing that, in some sense to find who we're going to write about and what's going to happen to them and what they're going to want without having actual words. So, you can't stick commas onto a blank page, or at least not with any degree of productivity, but you can edit your mental vision of where you're going. Or your scribbled notebook vision of where you're going. Jess Lahey 25:51 Isn't that really what I'm doing? I'm still trying to finish my Author Accelerator Inside Outline for this novel idea that I have and isn't that just sort of front loaded editing because I'm saying, oh, this doesn't actually move anything along. And especially since Jennie forces you to be so concise with your Inside Outline, it forces you to say, what is this actually adding to the book. And later on, if I want to have a whole entire chapter about them sitting talking about food for an entire chapter, I can stick that in later if I want, but at least at the beginning, I'm not wasting a lot of time by adding something that I think I need that will end up having no place in the book.KJ Dell'Antonia 26:30 Right. You can write different ways, like some people would rather write it all and sort of figure out where it's going that way. But you can edit your mental page, I guess is what we're arguing here.Jess Lahey 26:50 Well, Sarina has talked extensively about her efficiency and the outlining and how those two things are linked. Sarina Bowen 26:58 I'm starting to figure out that outlining for me isn't quite as simple as I had thought that it was, and that there are productive kinds of outlining for me and non productive ones. So that's what I've been chewing on and why that you can't edit a blank page thing really spoke to me.KJ Dell'Antonia 27:17 I find I do a fair amount of scribbling in the notebook that I never go back to. Jess Lahey 27:23 Yeah, I do that, too. KJ Dell'Antonia 27:34 I write it down now sort of knowing that I will probably never go back and look at it. But there's something about putting it in ink on that piece of paper that I don't know locks it in for me.Sarina Bowen 27:47 I do that too all the time. There's just a certain number of rocks I have to turn over until I find the thing I'm looking for.KJ Dell'Antonia 27:54 That is a good way to put it.Jess Lahey 27:56 I think that gets back to where we were in the beginning, which is I think best in the written word on the page. And it isn't until I sit down and start writing those things that I actually get to the bottom of what's silly, stupid, works, doesn't work. I can think about it all I want, but I'm not going to know if that thing whether that's in an essay, or a nonfiction book, or a fiction book, whether it's going to work in the end until it's actually down on the page and I can look at it.KJ Dell'Antonia 28:22 Yes. So here's the thing. 800 word essay, I think well while I'm writing it. I can do that, because even if I write 1600 words, and then have to figure that out, that's fine. 90,000 word book, not a good plan. For me. I think maybe I could get to a point where it might work because I have written more books. But right now, not an efficient use of my time. Yeah, I was just telling you guys that I have a big feature coming out and the outline at one point was longer than the word count for the feature. But it was a very useful exercise because we had to go through that process to figure out what was going to end up at the end. And we couldn't have done that without outlining first.Jess Lahey 29:14 We've had some really good ones. And I think with all the myth stuff, it's just reassuring to know that there aren't a lot of wrong ways to do this writing thing. I mean, if words are getting down on the page, and it's fulfilling to you and you're feeling good about what's happening, I don't care if some other writer says you're doing it wrong. I very specifically had a writer, look me in the eye and tell me I was doing something absolutely wrong. And it was the most crap advice I've ever gotten on writing, but realizing that was actually really helpful to me because I went, oh. And even the fact that I now look at this author that I really respected and see that she might be wrong about this, that demystifies the process for me a little bit and I think I'm gonna be okay. So I love when we can bust some myths up.Sarina Bowen 30:05 Yeah, we're busting them. I would say just that the overarching theme here is examine your own premise like if you look at your process like it's a changeable, mutable thing, then it's a very productive way to try to examine your process. Everybody wants to go faster. Everybody wants to write better work than they did last week. And looking at your process and what other people think about it from a couple paces back is usually a pretty helpful thing.Jess Lahey 30:40 Absolutely. KJ Dell'Antonia 30:42 You know, and maybe that this has been a huge multi-month endeavor in recognizing that the rituals that we maybe once had and the places that we like to write, and the ways that we like to do things were not available to us anymore, especially if you were in coffee shops, or you like to say to write in a room that did not contain multiple children and partners who were trying to ask you questions about why there is no food in the refrigerator. You know, we don't have that anymore, or maybe we need to find a way to find it. All three of us have lately been sort of wandering around going, oh, I can't, I just can't. And I guess busting the myths is kind of a way to try to find our way to say, okay, I can't do that, but maybe I can spend half an hour trying to figure out what my plotting book is that I would like to read and then actually sit down and read it and hopefully do a little. So now that we're done for the moment with our mythbusting, let's move on to what we're reading after a short break. Listeners, you know we're about to get into what we've been reading. And we've been reading some good stuff. But have you ever thought about how those books get so good? Or maybe thought you could be a part of making an author's novel, memoir, or nonfiction as good as it could possibly be, and get paid for the work? Author Accelerator has a book coach training program that students described as truly life changing. They dig into the mechanics, process, and emotion of coaching, but they don't stop there. Their program also helps you turn coaching into a profitable business that fits into your life. Find out more at authoraccelerator.com.Jess Lahey 32:54 Okay, people what have we been reading? If we haven't been writing as much let's hope some of us have been reading some things, I know I have.Sarina Bowen 33:01 I did I read a memoir like a grown up. And it was the terrific memoir that Jess mentioned on another episode, which is Notes on a Silencing by Lacey Crawford. It was terrific. And I want to shake everyone from her teenage years. And tell them what for. I had my typical reaction to memoir, which is always my frustration that people's early lives don't have a perfect narrative arc, like some of my favorite fiction. She did an amazing job, it's such a good book. And I enjoyed reading it very much, but it's always jarring to me. And also I had another typical memoir thought, which is how do people remember things from when they're 15? And she and I are just about the same age. She's a couple years younger than I am. So I guess we'll go with that. But finally, relating to today's discussion, there were just some things about her experience and the difficult traumatic experience that she had to process that I feel like made me a better fiction writer. And I feel more competent at tackling maybe darker backstories just having Lacey Crawford make me think about that kind of trauma in one's youth. So I enjoyed it very much.Jess Lahey 34:40 Oh, good. I loved it. I absolutely loved it. I thought she did a spectacular job. KJ, what have you been reading? KJ Dell'Antonia 34:48 Oh, so I actually was able to go and sit by a pool by a beach last week. It was amazing and miraculous and made me feel as though the world was normal. In the process, I read two books. One of the things I read was total classic, perfect beach read even has the name. It was Jen Weiner's Big Summer. It is extremely fun. It is a taco of a book that is delicious, and fun, and wonderful, and amazing to eat, and yet has some substance to it. It was great. Amusingly, because she is Jen Weiner, it is of course marketed, and covered, and titled as though it is women's commercial fiction. It is absolutely 100% murder mystery. I don't think that's a spoiler because if you read the whole flap copy, you at least figure out that there's something along those lines going on. This is like right down to the set of amateur detectives drawing out clues on a blackboard classic, every I dotted, every t crossed, mystery, super fun, super well done, and with all the wonderful themes of women's fiction that she usually has. And yet it also has this mystery, which is really fun and entertaining. And it's also just amusing that when you've got multiple best selling commercial women's fiction books, you can write whatever you want and call it commercial women's fictions. And I love that and support it. Go Jen. So that was one of them. And the other is The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. So I go on my vacation. I read about the first half of The Vanishing Half, it is amazing is wonderful, but it's also the kind of book that when you are reading it, you do not wish for anyone to poke you and ask for sunscreen. You're deep in it and it's kind of a grumpy book in some ways. And it is really, really good. This one's the story of two twins who started out in 1950's Louisiana. They're black girls, they run away from home. One of them decides to pass as white, the other does not, and it comes forward, not the present, into like the 70's and 80's. But in a really amazing, and fascinating, and wonderful way. I loved it was really good. Excellent one, well worth your hardcover dollars.Jess Lahey 38:12 Excellent. I've been reading some really good stuff too and now I'm excited I have two more books to read. I listened to Unacceptable by Melissa Korn and Jennifer Levitz. Melissa Korn is at the New York Times, Jennifer Levitz is at the Wall Street Journal and this is the story of the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal case. And it is so good. The level of reporting is incredible. They do an incredible job; they read everything, all the details are there. She does all the characterizations really well. So it's not just some extra bits that could have been added on to the articles you've already read. This is a really deep dive into how the whole thing came together and it's beautifully done. I can't recommend it highly enough, especially if you like that sort of thing. You know, procedural, but also juicy, all kinds of stuff. And then I also picked up a book - I follow Sarah Weinman on Twitter and I saw that she was talking about a new collection she has called Unspeakable Acts. And it's a collection of true crime. She writes a lot about true crime. She has a blog about it. It's sort of like that best American Crime Stories that used to be published, but she was the editor of this really lovely collection and there's some really good stuff in there. There's something by Pamela Koloff and a couple of other writers that I just really love. So I happen to really like the true crime genre and these are nice sort of bites of true crime and beautifully written stuff it's a definitely a best of so I'm way into it. So Unspeakable Acts and Unacceptable are my two books, both huge thumbs up. One quick thing, if you are going to have people narrate a book in which (and this has nothing to do with the books I'm recommending) if you're going to have people narrate a book in which there are foreign accents, even just if they're British accents, especially if they're British accents, please get a narrator that can do the accents. I just had to return two books over the past two weeks that I couldn't listen to because the accents are so bad. So that's my rant for the day. KJ Dell'Antonia 41:18 Before we sign off, let me point out that some of the conversation that we talked about today, started with me shouting about not being able to figure out what plotting book I was looking for on our Facebook page, which is, of course, AmWriting on Facebook. And if you're not in our Facebook group, you should absolutely join it. We have a good time. There's a lot of people gathering up writing partners and creating accountability groups and asking questions, and it's friendly and fun, and lovable so you should do it.Jess Lahey 41:51 So that's really fun. In fact, recently we had someone finally admit that they've been lurking but they were inspired by all the people who posted there. And so guess what? They got a book deal. I mean, it's just the coolest, coolest place. I love it.KJ Dell'Antonia 42:05 Yeah, that was awesome. And secondly, if you want to get the show notes for this podcast and every podcast, please sign up to get our emails by going to amwritingpodcast.com. You can sign up for the free show notes or you can sign up to support the show. And if you support the show, then every week you will get either a writer top five, or a mini episode that drops right into your pod player. The mini episode from last week as you listen to this, which for me is still in the future is going to be me talking about great fiction query letters. So if you're interested in that, you'll want to hop over and give us a little support. But even if you're not we'd love to have you on the email list to get the show notes because then you always get the links to the books that we've talked about and everything else.Jess Lahey 42:57 Alright. Perfect. That was Beautiful. 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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Hey campers—I hate reading you all a canned intro to our authors every time, so I’m winging it with our guest, Sonali Dev. I’m a fan of hers, so I feel like I know all the things. She’s the author of four straight-up romances, but her last-book-but one is the start of a series written in homage to Jane Austen, as is her latest, both set among the members of a politically ambitious Indian family in California. Why Jane Austen? Because, as Sonali says, “those were the first books I read about women wanting things and getting them. Instead of ending up crazy or dead.”We talk the pros and cons of writing from such revered material, whether readers are “looking for Lydia,” the need to make your heroine “likeable” (pro tip: the female Darcy is hard sledding) and supplying recipes for hungry readers. Links from the pod: Sonali Dev on IGNewsletter with a recipe booklet, recommendations, and a really bad joke.#AmReadingSonali: Boyfriend Material by Alexis HallThe Kingmaker by Kennedy RyanKJ: The Proposal by Jasmine GuilloryPerfect Happiness by Kristyn Kusek LewisSarina: Pale Rider by Laura SpinneyThe Great Influenza by John M. BarryThanks to everyone who supports the podcast financially. To join that team, click the button below:But it’s all good. The pod is free as it always has and always will be. 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 every time there’s a new episode.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:00 Hello fellow writers, we have an interview for you with Sonali Dev whose Bollywood romances have always reflected her love of all things Jane Austen, and whose latest books are all in on that passion. If you're all in with books, reading, and writing, you might want to check out the latest book from Jennie Nash at our sponsor, Author Accelerator - Read Books All Day and Get Paid For It: The Business of Book Coaching. You can find that and more at authoraccelerator.com. Is it recording?Jess Lahey 0:30 Now it's recording. KJ Dell'Antonia 0:33 This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone and try to remember what I'm supposed to be doing. Jess Lahey 0:37 Alright, let's start over. KJ Dell'Antonia 0:38 Awkward pause. I'm gonna rustle some papers. Okay, now one, two, three. Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting the weekly podcast about writing all the things, fiction, nonfiction, short pieces, long pieces, proposals, pitches, you are allowed to start to write things that do not start with P, although I may not list them here. And in short, we are the podcast about sitting down and getting your work done. Sarina Bowen 1:14 I'm Sarina Bowen, I am trying to get the work done this week on romance novel number 36. And you can find more about me at sarinabowen.com.KJ Dell'Antonia 1:25 And I am KJ Dell'Antonia. I'm the author of the novel The Chicken Sisters, and you heard it here first, I don't know when it's coming out. We've just delayed that puppy from this summer into the future. Not the indefinite future, but I don't know what kind of future. So everybody's talking me off the ledge because I'm not super happy about it, but it is what it is and when it comes out, it's gonna be great. It really is. I'm also the author of How to Be a Happier Parent, which did come out in paperback this summer. I'm a former editor of The Motherlode blog at the New York Times and still sometimes a contributor there. And you'll find me bookstagramming on Instagram at kjda. And we have a guest today that I'm really excited about. So I hate reading everybody the canned intro to the authors all the time, where I sort of just suck pieces off of their websites. So I'm sorry, guest Sonali Dev, I'm revealing your identity. I'm just gonna riff, because I am a fan and I feel like I know all the things without having to write them down. So Sonali Dev is our guest today. She is the author of four straight up Bollywood style romances, but her last book (but before this one) was a take on Pride and Prejudice. And this one, the current book, which is called Recipe for Persuasion follows the arc of the Jane Austen book Persuasion. And we're gonna talk about that and all kinds of things. And Sonali, I'm so excited that you're here.Somali Dev 3:14 Thank you so much for having me. And I think what I like to call it is an homage to not even an homage to the novel, but an homage to what I learned personally from the novel as a young girl growing up. So it's inspired by, and it's an homage to, her work.KJ Dell'Antonia 3:33 That completely works and I have not yet finished Persuasion, although I am deep, deep, deep into it. And I absolutely gobbled Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors. And I think you're not someone that sticks tightly to what's been done before in any way and that's what makes them so good.Somali Dev 3:51 Yeah, not even close. I mean, that's not even my intent ever. You know, these are completely my stories. There's no doubt and like I said, what they are to me is not even really so much about the story, but what I learned from that story, and what it made me, and what it makes me want to say. And so they're absolutely my stories, but it very much is paying homage to her original stories.Sarina Bowen 4:22 And how did you decide to do that? Like it's a big, difficult task to nod at this work that you already love so much. So what was the deciding factor for you that this would be your next big series of projects?Somali Dev 4:38 So, it's really strange because you know how we have those childhood dreams that are grand, like the Oscar speeches we give in front of mirrors and things like that. You know, where you dream you're going to do something and Jane Austen was one of my earliest favorites. She was, I think, a very strong influence on me as a young girl, because what I saw in her books was aligned very closely with who I was on the inside, but who I was not being reinforced by the stories in my world. I grew up in India, and the stories we were hearing rarely were about women wanting things and getting them. And so that in Jane Austen's work spoke to me, because you know, her heroines at a time when there was nothing in their world telling them they were worthy of anything considered themselves worthy of getting love, and they didn't end up either crazy or dead, like all the other classics. So from a very early age, and I also dreamed of being a "big fancy author" sitting in my big fancy cottage by the beach and writing, you know, that was my faraway dream as a little girl. And so very early - like I couldn't even tell you where the genesis of that idea was - but very early I knew I wanted to tell her stories my way and then as I started to take the publishing journey seriously and I became a published author, it was always very front and center in my mind. And as that idea had taken taken shape and become real I knew that I wanted to take these four novels, which are my favorite four novels, and tell them under one story umbrella. And I also wanted them to be entirely my stories, while still being very much nods to her. And so all of that was just always in my head. And I think in 2013, I sold my first book and had my first agent. And at the time we had sold the first two Bollywood books and you know how agents and authors who want a career, kind of want to stay a few steps ahead. And when we were having that conversation, I told her about this idea. And her reaction in a very casually dismissive way was that Austen doesn't sell, so we're not going to do that. And even for a second that didn't dissuade me, which kind of tells you how much a part of me this was. So, you know, it was always something I was going to do, no matter who else was on that train or not. So it was just somehow (and I think that has to do with how much of an influence she was for me as a woman and as a person growing up). So I always knew I was going to do this.KJ Dell'Antonia 8:01 Wow. If we read your first four books really carefully knowing this now, would we see hint? I think you see hints of Darcy, for example, in something that I'm writing now. And I'm aware of it. And it's not an homage, it's not anything, it's just some of the ways that he interacted with Elizabeth are reflected in what I'm working in. So would we find them? Would we find little clues?Somali Dev 8:29 I think you would be hard pressed not to find some influence of her in any romance novel. So definitely. In fact, I think when I was selling Bollywood Bride, my hook was (of all things) Wuthering Heights meets Monsoon Wedding. I think the things that we read as children... The other day I was talking to someone and when this person read Bollywood Bride they got a Jane Eyre sense and I think that has to do with the fact that there is a crazy lady in the attic. Like you can't write a bad arrogant, bad proposal without invoking Jane Austen, there's just no way to do it. You can't write an arrogant man without invoking Darcy. And so, yeah for sure, I think you see that in those books. I think how you see it more is in the voice. And there's a little bit of cynicism in all my writing. This need to laugh at the world we live in was something I think again was reinforced by Jane Austen and by PG Woodhouse. And you know, those authors that I read as a child like we live in this world and it's flippin ridiculous and that it's okay to live in it and yet find it completely ridiculous was something (again) that felt okay because I read these books young. And I think if you looked you would find in a lot of the inner dialogue and the narrative of all of my books is the fact that all is not well with our world and it's kind of ridiculous.Sarina Bowen 10:40 Can I ask a question - you just made such a terrific case for the fun and the backbone that you get by writing an homage to something you love, and I just want to think about the risks for a second. Because that's something we do on the podcast a lot is just to think about the pros and cons of various paths. So I read a book a few years ago called The Flight of Gemma Hardy, a novel by Margot Livesey. And it's a Jane Eyre take, which is super fun. And I went to see this author at my local bookstore and she started to talk about why she wrote this book and my jaw kind of hit the floor because she had a life that began a little bit like a Jane Eyre. So she was just primed to write this thing. So I took this wonderful book, and I read it and I enjoyed every minute of it. But in the back of my head, I was always like, What is she going to do with the crazy woman in the attic? So to me that announced itself as a risk that readers would be looking for certain plot cues to happen. So how do you subvert that?Somali Dev 12:01 So what you're saying is that if you pick up a book that is titled Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors you're going to be looking for...KJ Dell'Antonia 12:12 You're looking for Lydia...Somali Dev 12:14 and you're looking for a story that's kicked off by a misunderstanding and egos being hurt. You're looking for the bad proposal. So again, I think (and this happened fairly naturally, and this might just be a nature and personality thing) is that I really only cared for what I wanted to say. And I really only cared for the story I wanted to tell. And so if at any point I had thought (I never, for a moment and this is with all my books) I rarely think about what it is people want to hear. I feel like I'm doing a disservice to writing, and not to sound obnoxious, but I feel like this in the way I live in everything, if you say things that you think people want to hear, then you have zero credibility. And there's really no authenticity in living like that. And so I try to kind of transfer that to how I write. And so just naturally I don't worry about it. And that explains a lot, possibly about my career.KJ Dell'Antonia 13:28 So you're just kind of like, well, the Lydia is coming and that's okay. Like, if people maybe know that the Lydia is coming (I'm just using Lydia because that's a pretty easy one), but I'm good with that. Like, I'm rolling along and by God, the Lydia train is about to crash into my story.Somali Dev 13:46 No, not even that. I'm thinking if Lydia is not important to the story I'm telling, then she doesn't have to be there. Like I want this story to be about two people who start off on the wrong foot because of how they see the world and themselves, and that's what I want. Only in that much is what I want to do with Pride and Prejudice. You know, I want to explore how when you meet someone who is completely different from you, how you process yourself and the world. And so that is what I want to do. And so that's what I'm going to do. I'm not thinking about people looking for Wickham or for Lydia or any of that. So it's only in that much, that I want to retell that story. Now, if that kickoff point where there is the misunderstanding, comes naturally to my story, and if that proposal comes naturally to my story, only then it has a place in my book. So like with Persuasion, at least with Pride, Prejudice and Other Flavors, there are some plottish consistencies, but with Persuasion, you'd be hard pressed to find anything more than a thematic connection.KJ Dell'Antonia 15:23 So Persuasion is my least favorite Jane Austen book, and I want to get to that...Somali Dev 15:28 I want to talk about that because I've been hearing so many people say that.KJ Dell'Antonia 15:34 But I'm watching for who the other girl is, and maybe I'm wrong, maybe she's not even coming. So, but don't tell me, don't tell we're not spoiling in any way. I had guessed, I was like, oh, I'll bet this is the girl who falls off the wall. I forget her name. Yes, Louisa Musgrove. Thank you.Somali Dev 16:00 So I think that for me again, the way I think about the story is that Louisa Musgrove isn't Louisa Musgrove in the story, she is the thing or the device that keeps Ann and Wentworth misunderstandings reinforced. So what she is is them not growing enough to put their past behind them. So, what you will find is other things that keep them from doing that. You might be able to take a character and say, okay, she's kind of Louisa Musgrove, but what she really is, is just that thing standing in their way, which is really in terms of story to me, what I'm trying to get them over.KJ Dell'Antonia 16:52 Right. Oh, you need that, because otherwise it's boring.Somali Dev 16:56 And that's the story, the story is about getting over mistakes. But not by magic, but by growing. So that's the story I'm trying to tell - the story that no mistake is absolute. I'm not trying to tell the story of Captain Wentworth per se, I'm trying to tell the story of this warrior-like man who goes off and makes lemonade when life gives him lemons, but has not let go of his past, and how he's going to process a second chance and this girl who has to grow a spine and you know, was never spineless.KJ Dell'Antonia 17:35 That's why Persuasion is my least favorite Jane Austen. Because I have trouble with the spineless heroine. But yours I can tell has a spine, she's just put it in the closet somewhere.Somali Dev 17:53 Again, with both of them... Now, I don't see Ann as spineless, I see Ann as very much a product of her time. But if she were truly spineless she would have just gone off and married the next Joe who comes along. So Ann is just someone who feels differently from how the world around her feels, and she has to make that journey of being okay with it. I think this is a very universal journey and we all make it. It's just less overt in our day to day, because the world will tell us being x is really what makes you cool or all of that. And if you naturally don't feel x, then you have to make the journey of that being okay. And I think that's her journey. So it's not spinelessness. She never is okay with what doesn't feel okay to her. She just has to find a way to find that power to let that become.KJ Dell'Antonia 18:48 That's probably why Persuasion does work. Even though like you said, you're hearing a lot of people say that they have frustration with the heroine. There's a lot of pleasure in seeing her find a way to be okay with it. And also I think you're right, we all know that we're in that and that it's a really common journey. Maybe it's just one we don't like to think that hard about.Somali Dev 19:13 Yeah. And we don't live in a world with overt taboos or overt divisions in society, but they're all still there, it's just become more silent and it's become less easy to find. But I feel we still relate to those journeys, because it's very much there. And it's our daily struggle, I don't think there is a person in the world who feels completely comfortable in their skin from the day that they were born. Which is why this whole woman against her world or woman against expectations story works for us even today. Now, I will say that if you've watched the films, I think both portrayals of the two BBC films that are most commonly watched, the portrayals of Ann Elliot are terrible, terrible. Yeah, so maybe those filmmakers saw her as that, or those actresses did. But it's terrible, like that's not how I saw Ann Elliot and I found it very violating to have actresses play them like spineless wimps because she's not. KJ Dell'Antonia 20:33 I wanted to ask you if you find that setting the Jane Austen stories - this is probably more true of Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors which you actually set in India. Recipe for Persuasion is set in the United States.Somali Dev 20:49 No, they're both set in the United States. They're are an Indian American family. It's the story of a politically ambitious Indian American family. And Pride, Prejudice and Other Flavors is set in the San Francisco Bay area where the older son is running for California Governor. So it's very much set in America.KJ Dell'Antonia 21:08 Pride, Prejudice and Other Flavors has got him running for governor?Somali Dev 21:12 So the overall arc for these four novels when I imagined them was that, it was this politically ambitious Indian American family in the Bay Area. And their oldest son is running for California Governor and the stories kick off with the announcement that he's running, and then they will end when the election results happen.KJ Dell'Antonia 21:33 Right. So that's gonna be all four books?Somali Dev 21:35 That's all four books. KJ Dell'Antonia 21:36 I think (and it's been obviously a little while since I read Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors) that the flair of India and the feel must have just sort of soaked into me a little too thoroughly. But what I wanted to ask was, do you think that using your Indian heritage and working within that culture you kind of get the advantage of some of the more strict expectations that Jane Austen's heroines faced? Like it might be harder for people to buy feeling huge pressure from your family from some suburban Chicago kid, whereas if you're looking at a tiger mom or at an Indian parent who has expectations about marrying within the Indian... I don't even know what the words are that I'm looking for. Anyway, do you think that sort of helps to heighten the Austen feeling, is what I really wanted to ask?Somali Dev 22:40 Okay, so first, Trisha (who is the protagonist of Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors) who is a female Mr. Darcy, because the story is gender flipped. She's a neurosurgeon at Stanford. So you know, very much an American story. But I think you're right, and it isn't that simple. Because I think family expectations are pretty ubiquitous and universal. Having said that, Indian families have peculiarities and lack of boundaries, or at least mine does. I was having this conversation with someone else who is not Indian and she said, 'Are their families where they believe in boundaries?' And I don't know families that believe in boundaries. So I think it's naturally a part of being a family, but then as an author always world building. So this could be a white family, they could be a Korean family, they could be a black family, as long as I as an author can make you believe that that's how their relationships and their bonds are. That's all I really need to do. And for me, being an Indian American girl, there is authenticity to my understanding of how Indian families interact. I do feel like it's not that unique, but that just might be because that is my life. And so it is easy for me. I don't know if it's easier for the reader to process. Again, you know, Jane Austen was about family, but I think that it was really more about society. So how rigid the society you lived in was and again in these books, it is very much the modern world, so it's not like rules have suddenly appeared. It's that rules exist in our world, they're just more subtle than they were 200 years ago.KJ Dell'Antonia 25:26 I just wonder if the rules feel easier for a white reader to stomach because they can sort of be like, Oh yes, Indian families are like that, but yet the reason that they're in there and identifying is that all families are like that exactly like you said. It's an interesting way of just thinking about how readers let things into their minds and where they go with it.Somali Dev 25:58 And again, I come across all sorts of readers. I come across the reader who will come to me and say with great amounts of disbelief that they could actually relate to my characters. Like they think they're saying something nice to me and they're like, my gosh, I could totally relate to Milly, who you know has a child. And my reaction to that is always, you can relate to vampires so why are you surprised that you can relate to an Indian girl?KJ Dell'Antonia 26:32 You can relate to Jane Austen's heroines. They're as far from us as anything.Somali Dev 26:38 Exactly. And then there are people who have read one book, and it's a checkmark. Oh, I read an Indian book and now I know everything about the Indian culture, and I'm done with my little walk. And there are readers who inhale all of my books and see them as a story and reading and processing them like they would read and process any story. So I think that there is a good spectrum of readers. And again, I'm essentially writing it as a story. And my hope is that everybody will in the end, we will be a world where everybody will read it as a story, not an Indian story.KJ Dell'Antonia 27:20 It is very much a story, except for the part where it makes you hungry for Indian food. Sarina Bowen 27:49 I just wanted to point out that at the beginning of Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors, chapter one actually begins in India with the heroine's childhood. This beautiful rich memory of her visit to a family estate and what happens there. And I just love the way that you get this glimpse of her as a young child and then you snap your fingers and you're in this hospital in Northern California. So I felt like I was being dunked into her sort of mythical past before shown the harsh hospital lighting and that just helped color it that way for me as a reader, that she was just more interesting than if I had seen her in a lab coat for the first moment.Somali Dev 28:41 As writers, all three of us, I'm sure have had to make this struggle. And that is the likability of your female protagonist. So just by virtue of writing a female Darcy, and that was one of the reasons that I wrote this book and also one of the reasons why writing this book was a very personally transformative experience for me. Because I set out to see if arrogance and owning your own power and privilege and your own brilliance and all of that would still be easily palatable. I mean, would be easily palatable in 2019 in a woman as it was in a man 200 years ago, in 1813. And so, it turns out that it isn't, it turns out that it took a lot of iterations to make Trisha consumable. And it was work because a woman being arrogant, and a woman being impatient, and a woman being lacking in empathy is not seen the same way as a man being all those things. And one of those things, I think one of the reasons that I had to show you right up front where she's coming from, it instantly softens her, which is kind of sad that she needed that instant softening and if I was showing you a man in that same situation I may not have had to soften him. You know, we would all have been much more accepting of his arrogance and trusted that he'll come around. Because men are expected to be jerks in fiction and especially romantic fiction when we start out. Sarina Bowen 30:42 That's so true. And you know, if Pride and Prejudice had begun with little Darcy in knee pants like snuggling a swarm of puppies I don't know if I could summon the same outrage during that awful proposal. And I think that we should take a pause right here with Darcy in knee pants with the puppies, before we talk about what we've been reading.KJ Dell'Antonia 31:07 Excellent plan. Writers before we get to what we've been reading, let's talk about what you've been writing or rather, where you've been writing. If you've got a pile of colored index cards that represent scenes, and plot lines, and characters, and keep getting shuffled around on the floor while your dog walks on them, a notebook full of pages with half an outline here and a list of things that belong in another scene there. I get you. And I want to encourage you to take a look at Dabble, the writing software that works the way our writing minds work, or maybe the way we wish they'd work. Capture all those little details and big plot lines in a system designed to help you keep track of where you are and where you're going. We love Dabble and we hope you will, too. Get a free trial at dabblewriter.com and please head over to our Facebook group and tell us what you think. Now it is time, let's talk about what we've been reading that did not involve Darcy and with a swarm of puppies?Somali Dev 32:22 I so now want to read Darcy with a swarm of puppies. And boy shorts. KJ Dell'Antonia 32:29 Alright, so what are we reading? Sarina Bowen 32:55 My books are easy. KJ Dell'Antonia 32:56 Okay. Then you go first, Sarina, while Sonali and I gather our thoughts. Sarina Bowen 33:02 My book club has picked Pale Rider by Laura Spinney, which is a book about the Spanish Flu of 1918. And the structure of Pale Rider is frustrating me, so I have turned to The Great Influenza by John Barry to compare the two and I will let you know.Somali Dev 33:23 Can I just say I have so much respect for anyone reading those books right now like in this moment in time.KJ Dell'Antonia 33:40 Alright, Sonali, I'm gonna turn to you because I am looking up a title on Kindle.Somali Dev 33:48 It seems to be a really good time for rom-coms. And just in terms of what's being published, like every book being published is a rom com, but it's also a really good time for some fun and romance. So there's one that comes out in July, it is called Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall who is one of my favorite, favorite romance authors. Sarina Bowen 34:20 I cannot wait to get my hands on that book. Somali Dev 34:22 I have been saying that this is possibly the best rom-com I have ever read. Like it's in that realm, it's that good. So it is this fake relationship, but through the whole book the fake relationship is in quotation marks. Like as you're reading it, these big virtual quotation marks because it is this complete cup of a boy who is the son of a fallen rock star. So he is a papparazzi darling. He's always in the news for the wrong reasons. He's a mess. And to regain his reputation at work, he needs a good solid boyfriend. And so he finds this man who is a human rights lawyer and incredibly straight laced and all the things and it is just delightful. It is laugh out loud funny. I mean, there were times when I was guffawing like a hyena. Don't drink hot beverages - you will choke and you will spit them all over the place. Hilarious, incredibly poignant. Just so connected, it's just a gorgeous book. I mean, it will just leave you so happy. And it's one of those books that also makes you turn a mirror on yourself. So it's all those things and it's just amazing. So that comes out at the end of July, I think.I'm so jealous that you have the arc. Alexis Hall is so talented.Incredibly, I think is one of the greatest talents of the romance genre right now. Glitter Land is also an absolute masterpiece, I think. I didn't think I would love one more than that, but it's just delightful. It's everything a British rom-com should be or can be. So I have also recently discovered Kennedy Ryan and think that her writing is almost like startlingly beautiful. And she wrote The Kingmaker I think that came out in December last year, and it was what she calls a duet, so Kingmaker is the first. I think the second book is called Rebel King, but it has this giant emotional impact of like old style romance. But all of the subject matter is so current and contemporary. So she kind of juxtaposes those two things so well, very emotionally, it's an old style romance, but with all the regressive parts gone and it's this fresh and very contemporary, very socially conscious take. And of course, I'm not a huge fan of the whole alpha label. And Max, her protagonist, is as alpha as they come and so even with a hero, who is someone I would run 10 miles from in real life, I just completely bought it and she just makes it beautiful.KJ Dell'Antonia 37:45 That sounds really good. And I have just written Boyfriend Material down on my list of books to order and I want to check out Kingmaker. I have been reading The Proposal by Jasmine Guillory, and I am only partway into it. And I don't usually talk about books until the author sticks the landing, but she's probably going to and it is really good. And she has a new book coming out this summer too, which is definitely not just on my list of 99% sure, I already ordered it. So there was that and I also read and enjoyed very much Perfect Happiness by Kristyn Kusek Lewis, that one's not rom-com, that's definitely women's fiction. It's woman who is already married, struggling with all kinds of things to do with being already married. And it's pretty fun because she's a happiness expert who is unhappy so that was clearly the hook and it was very hard to put down. So that's fun. And that is what we've been reading because Sarina already told us and we immediately dismissed those because we didn't want to read them.Sarina Bowen 39:19 Sonali, thank you so much for joining us today. Somali Dev 39:22 Thank you so much for having me. That went fast and it was so fun. Thank you.KJ Dell'Antonia 39:28 Should we tell people where to find you, Sonali? Besides sonalidev.com? What's your favorite social media? Where should people follow you?Somali Dev 39:37 I am on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. And I'm fairly active on (more active than I should be) on all three. And I do also have a newsletter which I was really bad with but I'm now trying to send out once a month so it's a very low incidence newsletter but what I do that people might have fun with is I do a recipe, a recommendation, and a really bad joke, because my family sends me the most terrible jokes on group chat. And I feel like I shouldn't be suffering alone. And if you sign up for the newsletter, I have a free recipe booklet that you get. And of course, I'm told over and over again that the books make people hungry. And these are recipes that are related to the books. So you get that.KJ Dell'Antonia 41:51 Well, this was super fun. I echo Sarina in saying thank you for coming. And Sarina, do you want to take us out?Sarina Bowen 42:16 Yes ma'am. Until next week, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.Jess Lahey 42:29 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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

This week, Jess got a message from some family members who’d read the draft of her forthcoming book, The Addiction Innoculation. They had … thoughts. Those thoughts turned out to be nothing drastic—but the emotional roller coaster Jess rode while waiting to hear more was a doozy, and got us all thinking about how much of ourselves is exposed when we write non-fiction with a memoir element, how real memoirists do it, and how often readers—especially those closest to you—read our fiction looking for hidden truths. It’s a fun conversation that also covers pool floats, parents, dream offices we probably wouldn’t use and more. Links from the PodcastYard PodsDon’t Kill the Birthday Girl by Sandra BeasleyMrs. Everything by Jen WeinerKJ and Sarina’s Pool Floats#AmReadingKJ: Rodham by Curtis SittenfeldI'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing BrownJess: Notes on a Silencing by Lacy CrawfordSarina: Don’t You Forget About Me by Mhairi McFarlaneThanks to everyone who supports the podcast financially. To join that team, click the button below:But it’s all good. The pod is free as it always has and always will be. 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 every time there’s a new episode.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:00 Hey there. Before we embark on a new episode, I get to tell you about our new sponsor, Dabble. I wrote my last book in a mad combination of Word and Scrivener and it worked fine. But putting the whole thing together in the end was hard. And I accidentally left a chapter out of a draft, confusing everyone. With Dabble the whole book is always just sitting there, already compiled and together as a unit, but still easy to navigate around in using chapters or scenes. It's magical, and I can't wait to make full use of it this time around. Give it a spin at dabblewriter.com and let us know what you think. Is it recording?Jess Lahey 0:38 Now it's recording. Go ahead. KJ Dell'Antonia 0:41 This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone and try to remember what I'm supposed to be doing. Jess Lahey 0:45 Alright, let's start over. KJ Dell'Antonia 0:46 Awkward pause. I'm gonna rustle some papers. Okay, now one, two, three.I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting, the podcast about writing all the things - fiction, nonfiction, memoir, essays, proposals, pitches. In short, as I say most nearly every week, this is the podcast about sitting down and getting your writing work done. I'm Jess Lahey. I'm the author of The Gift of Failure and the forthcoming Addiction Inoculation that'll be out in April 2021. And currently writing some stuff for The Washington Post and Air Mail. And yeah, I guess that's about it.Sarina Bowen 1:31 And I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of 35 romance novels. And I'm currently writing nothing and it is glorious.KJ Dell'Antonia 1:41 I'm KJ Dell'Antonia. I'm the author of How To Be a Happier Parent and the novel The Chicken Sisters, which is coming out this December look for it in bookstores near you if you can be in them and goodness knows I hope you can, but I'm not holding my breath. I am the former editor of The Motherlode Blog at the New York Times where I sometimes still contribute. And I write things for other places. But I am primarily now focused on fiction, kind of, mostly, more about that in a minute maybe. Jess Lahey 2:12 Speaking of being able to go into bookstores, I was able to go into one for the first time recently, they're limiting their customers. I went to the Phoenix Bookstore in Burlington, and I was able to browse and I had just forgotten how much I miss browsing and I found a couple of books and I was so excited to just sort of be able to look at the things and not online. It was very exciting. KJ Dell'Antonia 2:37 I have been really aching to do that and haven't done it since March, but I have a couple of possible abilities to do that in my immediate future I hope.Jess Lahey 2:50 I stayed in like the gardening section and the cooking section and just looked at all these books. I miss it. I miss it so much. Hold on, can we go back to what Sarina said about not working on anything right now like this is monumental because you're always working, Sarina, you're constantly working. Are you taking a break right now between projects?Sarina Bowen 3:15 I am. And it's partly because I'm just burnt out and need a break. And partly because I have a lot of promo and organizational stuff that could really eat an entire month. And I'm ahead for the first time in many months - ahead of publication schedule. KJ Dell'Antonia 3:34 Wow, that sounds glorious. Jess Lahey 3:36 That's really amazing. KJ, what are you doing?KJ Dell'Antonia 3:38 Well, my agent has just given me back some edits on what I hope will be my next novel. So I'm finishing those up and then we'll figure out where we are going from there. But I suspect that I will finish those edits up and then that will be sort of temporarily finished and then it is time to start something new. So I am wandering through the world thinking what's the next novel? Who's it about? And I'm spending a lot of time thinking things like well but wait the last two were about people and their mothers. I apparently can't stop with people and their mothers. And then I was like, Well, lots of authors can't stop with people and their mothers. Sarina Bowen 4:26 Well, we all had one or we missed having one, so that's a big theme. KJ Dell'Antonia 4:34 It is universal, but it's almost feels like it should be its own genre. And then I've been noodling a possible nonfiction thing. Just a little something about writing.Jess Lahey 4:57 That's really exciting. KJ Dell'Antonia 4:58 I've been having fun thinking about it.Jess Lahey 5:00 Yeah, I didn't expect to have many deadlines right now. But then stuff came up and I was asked to write some things. I'm working on two book reviews that will be due in the next couple months, two books that I never would have picked up on my own. So I'm learning a lot from both books and I can't say what they are. And then Tim and I are writing a piece together for a big national publication about going back to school in the age of COVID. And the problem with that it's going to be in print and so the word count has to be pretty on target. And the problem is this is such a big topic that even our outline at one point was longer than our final word count. Well and I just texted you guys about this before we started, but working in the same house together, Tim and I write together pretty well, but we normally do it in separate locations. And you know, no one's going to work, no one's going to school, and we just had the dumbest argument about absolutely nothing. And we just don't argue very much. And so I realized man, it is so time for someone to go work somewhere else because I can't take it anymore. KJ Dell'Antonia 6:26 I was on Instagram and a lovely writer whose name I have now forgotten, was showing her writing shed and it was as cute as anything and she was a New Englander. So it was clearly not only useful for part of the year but I just looked at it I thought that is amazing. Plus, if I had it, somebody else would have taken it over. Jess Lahey 6:46 You know who has a great one is Julie Lythcott-Haims. She does all of her interviews from there and she writes there and it's called like a yard pod. And it's absolutely beautiful. It's just stunning, it's filled with books, and it's bright and sunny, and it's behind her house, and no one goes in there really but her. It's pretty lovely.Sarina Bowen 7:05 That is living the dream.KJ Dell'Antonia 7:08 You'd think so, but I bet I wouldn't even use it. I tend to sit smack in the middle of everything. It's stupid, but I do. I don't use my office anymore because there's someone else in here. I mean I record in here, I don't know, I used to write in here.Jess Lahey 7:27 It does sound like this wonderful thing - I was at a house recently and they have a little glassed in studio overlooking Lake Champlain. And I thought about it and I'm like, it looks so beautiful, but you're right, I think I would just not spend a lot of time out there.Sarina Bowen 7:45 I would - take me!KJ Dell'Antonia 7:51 Alright, yard pod for Sarina. Jess Lahey 7:59 So we do kind of have a topic this week that we were playing around with because I read a book this week and submitted my finished-copy-edited-now-in-galley-form pages form book to some first readers and have been having some anxiety attacks this week. So we wanted to talk a little bit about when you reveal yourself through your writing. And Gift of Failure I revealed some of myself, but there's nothing embarrassing there really, there was nothing like too freaky in there. But this new book is very memoir-based, so much so that we actually talked about the possibility of coding it as a memoir as well. And it's really scary because it's about my substance abuse, my being an alcoholic, and about what I went through. And I read a book this week by Lacey Crawford called Notes On a Silencing and it's about her sexual assault at St. Paul School. And so I've just had on my brain a lot lately the idea of putting yourself out there in your books and how what a challenge that can be, and we want to come at this from a couple of different angles. And for me a lot of this came down to the fact that I handed my book The Addiction Inoculation, over to my parents. And it's right there in the flap copy that I come from a family where there's a lot of substance abuse. And I got one of those phone calls, I was very careful when I wrote it, but I got one of those phone calls from my parents saying, can we talk? And it turned out okay, but I had that like my heart in my stomach. I thought I was gonna throw up, I'm like I was so super careful about what I put in there. And I didn't tell anyone's story, but my own story. But, man, putting more of yourself in a book is extremely anxiety provoking. And we wanted to talk a little bit about that and how that happens, or doesn't happen, or what happens with fiction and that kind of stuff. So I was wondering if you guys had any thoughts on that.Sarina Bowen 10:14 I read a memoir recently-ish called Don't Kill the Birthday Girl by Sandra Beasley. And the subtitle is Tales From an Allergic Life. So she is super allergic to many things, which is not exactly like a hot button family issue. It's not tales from being beaten in a cupboard, you know? But even the first line of her acknowledgment section says, 'There's no sentence more terrifying to two family members than I'm writing a memoir.' And I loved that. I loved that as the first line of her acknowledgments and, of course, her life experience growing up with this somewhat unique, but unfortunately not unique enough, problem of having anaphylactic shock all the time from being allergic to half the world did bleed into her family a little bit. And her ex boyfriend is in there, she had to deal with it even though it wasn't like a dark topic. So I had never realized that before until I read it in her acknowledgments.Jess Lahey 11:31 I guess I also think a lot about you know, Mary Karr, who wrote Lit about substance abuse in her family. And of course, she's written a whole bunch of stuff, and it's all deeply deeply personal memoir stuff. And she talks about the fact that she lets people read all of this stuff that she writes ahead of time, and that there's some veto power. Her mother apparently, you know, was like, 'Look, you live this, go for it. This is your experience.' But that's definitely not what a lot of relatives do. A lot of relatives, mine included, were worried, really worried and I even let them see my book proposal. And in the book proposal I did say that I was going to talk a little bit about my family, but in pretty general terms. There were some ground rules (or some agreements) that we made early on about how much I reveal that isn't my story to tell. And that's also been interesting. Early on, when I was doing interviews about the fact that I was writing this book and people would ask me about my history and I had to make it really clear that I am not free to tell other people's stories, I'm free to tell my stories. But where those stories overlap and how much my experience of someone else's story am I allowed to tell? I'm always really scared that I'm going to get that wrong. KJ Dell'Antonia 12:55 Sure, I mean, just to give an example that I will intentionally make completely not about any of us. Just say that you want to write about the reason that you're a trapeze artist. And for some reason your father is super, super sensitive about his experiences as a trapeze artist because his dad was a trapeze artist and he found that really a difficult way to grow up. But the fact that he's really upset about the whole trapeze artist thing because of his dad affects how he experiences or how he responds to you being a trapeze artist. And, you know, there you are. You sort of need to include your dad's experience of trapeze artists in your memoir because otherwise his crazy reluctance to permit you to swing wildly from the trapeze just doesn't make sense. I was just, I'll call it coaching. So I had a friend come to me with a couple of essays recently, and by essays, I mean really long, literary things, 15-20 pages and such. And frequently you get a phone call like that, and you sort of opened the document with trepidation, but these were amazing. And this is a friend with a really interesting story. And I said, 'Well, you know, it's just gonna be up to you to figure out how much of this you want to tell because I think you have a memoir here as well as this other stuff.' And she said, 'Oh, both my parents are dead.' And I was like, 'Well, then you're free.' Now, I wouldn't wish this upon anyone, and I do not want that day to come, but when it comes, yeah, you write anything you want. Jess Lahey 14:42 I thought about that a lot. There are certain stories that I would love to talk about, but I do talk specifically in my book about the fact that ignoring things, and hiding truths, and pretending like everything's fine when things aren't fine, was a very big part of my story. And so it's really scary - and for me one of the big things I talk about a lot in the book is that I am very honest about my personal life and my substance abuse because in my childhood no one was allowed to talk about it, in fact, we got in trouble for talking about it. So that was the thing that I was most scared of my parents reading and so once I realized they were okay with that, we were basically on okay ground. But it was also interesting because of the conversation I had with them was very much about my parents perception of a statement I made versus my perception of a statement I made and I was making it very generally and he was reading it very specifically. And once we talked about that, he was okay with it. But when we were disagreeing I'm like, well, crap, because this is now in galley version and have I now blown up a bomb in the middle of my family. And that stuff is so scary and yet it was so important to me to be as honest as possible. Because the very thing I'm trying to say in the book is that secrets and shame are what keep us sick. And so to not go there is counter to what I'm saying - about the need to get over our secrets and our shame. So it was it was a tricky situation, but one I felt was really important to to do justice to.Sarina Bowen 16:21 That's amazing.Jess Lahey 16:23 I want to know, Sarina, one thing - so whenever people talk to fiction authors, they often say you know how much of you is in your characters? And I've always thought about you know, there are certain fiction books I would love to write and I'm always worried someone's gonna think I'm projecting like my own stuff onto my characters and do you get any of that?Sarina Bowen 16:44 Yeah, but of course you have to separate what the people close to you think versus what strangers think. So with memoir, it's really important to your family existence that everybody you know is okay with your memoir. But in fiction, some misunderstanding just doesn't have the same weight. So I have most of a manuscript somewhere for a women's fiction that I haven't finished or published yet. And my mother read an early draft of it. And she said, 'I didn't know that you hated Hanover.' (which is the town where I live) And I said, 'Mom, I don't hate Hanover at all, but my character is not a fan.' And so writing what you know, can mean just using everything you see about a place to look at it from different angles, which is what I had done, and it wasn't my first book because of course, that kind of distance is hard to capture the first time you write a novel, but this one was a very confident view of living in this small town as a 40 something single woman who sees a lot. And I just was fascinated by the fact that she thought that I didn't like my town just from some things that this character observed about it. But a stranger wouldn't grab that and have as strong feelings about it. Probably. So when you're writing fiction, in one sense, you're handing over a chunk of your brain for the analysis of others, which is always a little uncomfortable, because there will be some things that you personally feel that just bleed in there and you can't help it. Like I hate pumpkin spice lattes and none of my characters are a fan either. Jess Lahey 18:48 Or certain kinds of beer, you're very clear on your beer preferences, too. Sarina Bowen 18:57 That's right. Nobody drinks Bud Light in my book or if they do that is not a good character, like that person is going to murder somebody. So if you read all 35 of my books, you can find some things about me that are like my personal preferences and blind spots, which is, of course, important to the national discussion of how people of color are treated in fiction and seen in fiction. But of course, that's true about every author, it's hard to get fully away from all of the things you believe and don't even realize you believe. But with a romance novel, though, you have this shield. So it's like, here's a piece of my brain, but it's also filtered through the expectations of romance readers everywhere, like the genre is expected to behave in a certain way and I follow those rules and so you get parts of me but not all of me because I'm trying to give you the experience that a romance reader is looking for. And so that's just easier than with memoir. It just happens less often. Jess Lahey 20:08 Well, I don't know because KJ likes chicken. KJ is from the Midwest, I'm thinking KJ wrote a memoir and she has a sister we don't know about.KJ Dell'Antonia 20:28 So I have a novel in a drawer. I haven't looked at it in many, many, many, many, many, many years. But I that one I know has much stronger autobiographical elements than The Chicken Sisters. The Chicken Sisters - it's kind of like what Sarina said, there are things in there that I have done, like encourage my children to use the car as an amusement park so that I could have a conversation with someone, both sisters share some thoughts with me, but I'd even be hard put to tell you which one. Yeah, I probably identify with one slightly more than the other. But I could go back to How To Be a Happier Parent and it's kind of like your first book, Jess. It's got things in it that are personal, that are stories, but it took so long to write and also because it's kind of geared towards parents of kids that are younger than mine are now. So I really tried to go back in time for the best stories. And I think actually in the end, my kids were disappointed by how little they were in it. They really expected it, like they opened it thinking now we're gonna find out what mom really thinks of us and it's just not the book that I wrote. But I will say that no matter what I write anywhere under any circumstances, my parents invariably call me up and say that never happened. Jess Lahey 22:24 It's funny because I thought about this recently because I talk with Sarina about the different kinds of romance books there are - like the second chance, and the friends to lovers kind of thing, and recently an ex-boyfriend of mine got divorced and so I started spooling through my head (even though I have no interest in dating this person, I'm very happily married) how a story might go if someone that was like a first love kind of thing got divorced and what if the person was single and was still interested? How would that romance novel go. And then I simultaneously realized, well, I can never write that book because there's no way I could convince my husband that on some level, I wasn't going there just a little bit in my brain. It's what fed the initial idea for a story, but it's not something that I actually want in my life. And that line would be really hard to convince the people close to you of, I think sometimes. The way you did with your mom, Sarina.KJ Dell'Antonia 23:32 I think that it would be okay in your third or fourth book, because I think that by then, the assumption that you were writing fiction would be so established. Like, I don't open up a Jen Weiner book and think, Well, clearly she's unhappy with her husband because this person's unhappy with her husband. Whereas if it were a debut novel, I might, I really probably don't because I don't think about it that way. But I feel like even your family's expectations are probably different at that point. But I too would hesitate to write like somebody struggling in an unhappy marriage. Although one of my characters is struggling in this book, but there are two characters and my husband has read it and he still seems pretty secure. I didn't get complaints. Jess Lahey 24:31 I could see how that would be really problematic, though, for an insecure partner.Sarina Bowen 24:35 Yeah, well, first, I must say it depends on if your partner reads your books, because I could write anything.Jess Lahey 24:44 Has he read any of them?Sarina Bowen 24:45 He read one. And, you know, I guess that was enough for him.KJ Dell'Antonia 24:50 Mine didn't read Happier Parent, but he wanted to read this one.Sarina Bowen 24:53 You mentioned Jennifer Wiener and she had a book called Mrs. Everything that came out last summer that is based on her mother's journey. Jess Lahey 24:53 Oh really?Sarina Bowen 24:53 Yeah. KJ Dell'Antonia 24:53 Is her mother still with us?Sarina Bowen 24:53 Yes. Actually I read this on Twitter. KJ Dell'Antonia 24:55 So you know it's true. If she tweeted it you do, I know, I'm just sorry.Sarina Bowen 25:06 Well she is terrific on Twitter.KJ Dell'Antonia 25:23 She is terrific on Twitter. She a reason to be on Twitter.Sarina Bowen 25:28 She is - seriously, she's a force of good on Twitter. And she told this quick story. The details aren't all there for me still, but that her mother went by herself to a bookstore discussion (like a book club night, and this was the book) and she went and participated and didn't tell anyone that she was that mother.KJ Dell'Antonia 25:48 Oh, that is really funny.Sarina Bowen 25:50 It is priceless. Jess Lahey 25:52 That is a very, very cool story. If you've read (KJ and I have, I'm assuming you have Sarina) there's a nonfiction book that she wrote a couple of years ago, she talks about her story, and her mom, and what they went through with her dad, and all of that. So that would be a really interesting story to explore. Well, the Lacey Crawford book that I was talking about, so much of this story that she tells exposes a lot of other people's stories, and I haven't had a chance to talk to her about it. I was gonna ask her about it, like how many of the names were different names? Did she change all of the names? Did she change some of the names? You know, it's really easy to figure out a lot of the details around some of the people unless she changed all those details and you know what class she graduated from from St. Paul's. I think you have to be really brave to do that. And I had a lot of thoughts after reading Notes On a Silencing. It's a fantastic book. We've DM'd a few times about some of the elements of the book because I was just so blown away by what an incredible job she did with this book, it's really, really good.Sarina Bowen 27:06 Well, I'm reading it this month. Last night I talked to my book club into choosing it.Jess Lahey 27:10 Oh, you did? Oh, good. I think you'll really like it. I think you'll really like it. It's definitely her story and the events of the past couple years with St. Paul's triggered sort of her going back into that story, sort of that idea of I thought I dealt with that, I thought I was okay with it, and then it re-emerged when people started suing St. Paul school recently. So it was another perspective. And because we live near there, it's something that's been in the news a lot for us. And so it was fascinating to read it from the perspective of someone who has gone through this with the school just you know, 30 years ago, 20 years ago, whatever it was. So anyway, I think you'll really like it. She does a delightful job. And she had written a fiction book as well, the admissions book, KJ, I believe you read, right? KJ Dell'Antonia 27:58 Yes, yeah. I'd have to pull up the title of it, I don't remember. But I remember that it was very, very, very funny. And I liked it, it was about college essays. It was about someone who helped with college essays, and it was definitely a good read. So I'm not surprised this would be good. Jess Lahey 28:16 She's a delightful writer, really good writer.KJ Dell'Antonia 28:20 We've been just talking about all kinds of people who hop around genres. Writers worry that you can't, but I don't know, I think it's great. I definitely go to read the nonfiction of novelists that I like and will try the novel of a nonfiction writer that I like, so everyone else should totally do that, if you like my nonfiction. Jess Lahey 28:50 I've been doing this outline of this novel that I'm thinking about writing - a different one from the one that I thought I was going to write and I'm curious to see what my writing looks like in fiction because I just don't do it. So I don't have a sense for what my writing is going to look like when I'm telling a more creative story. It's going to be an adventure for me. And whether or not it ever ends up on a bookshelf anywhere, I'm really interested to see what my writing looks like in a different format, in a different genre, and a different sort of sense.Sarina Bowen 29:22 I can't wait. Jess Lahey 29:24 Yeah, I'm excited.KJ Dell'Antonia 29:25 So we've been talking a lot about what we've been reading. But let's get into the details of what we've really been reading this week after a small break. Listeners, you know we're about to get into what we've been reading, and we've been reading some good stuff. But have you ever thought about how those books get so good? Or maybe thought you could be a part of making an author's novel, memoir, or nonfiction as good as it could possibly be and get paid for the work. Author accelerator has a book coach training program that students describe as truly life changing. They dig into the mechanics, process, and emotion of coaching but they don't stop there. Their program also helps you turn coaching into a profitable business that fits into your life. Find out more at authoraccelerator.com.Jess Lahey 30:32 Well you guys know what I've been reading. I read the Lacey Crawford, I've been having to devour these nonfiction books for some nonfiction book reviews that I am writing. And I'm experiencing that thing when you (I haven't had this happen in a while because I don't belong to a book club) get assigned a book, I'm immediately less interested in it than something that I'm allowed to read just because I want to read it. It's sort of that like high school English class phenomenon that I'm always resisting or trying to push back against as a teacher. So I feel like a student in high school again, it's like, but I don't want to read it. I didn't pick this book. Sarina Bowen 31:26 I feel obligated to point out that you're probably getting paid for this. So you know, suck it up, Buttercup. Jess Lahey 31:31 Exactly. And it's so hard. I'm so grateful to be getting paid for any writing right now that believe me, I am thrilled as I can be about reading these delightful books.KJ Dell'Antonia 31:44 Well speaking of not wanting to read things, I have been reading I think I might have mentioned this, but it's probably in a future podcast because of the weird way that we've been recording lately. Sorry, behind the scenes glimpse everyone. Anyway, I've been reading Rodham By Curtis Sittenfeld, and I picked it up with excitement and read about the first 50 pages. Rodham is the story of what if Hillary never married Bill, basically. And I got really glommed down on is this real, how about this? How about this? Is this real? Did they really eat those donuts? And I just didn't know if I could keep going. But I went on Instagram and I was like, I'm reading this and I didn't really say that because it seemed sort of negative. But I was like, I'm getting really glommed down in the details. And everyone's like, just keep going, just keep going. So I did. And man, I'm glad I did because it is so good. And it is a tour de chutzpah that Curtis Sittenfeld managed to bring this thing off. I can't even imagine writing, I mean we were talking about sort of fictionalizing your own mother, but fictionalizing this totally famous person that we all admire and look up to. I'm just in awe of both the willingness to do that and also the way she pulled it off. Every detail. I mean, just everything drops so perfectly. It's really structured brilliantly. I just can't recommend it enough. Jess Lahey 33:22 I feel like we've gone on this journey with you. Because early on in a text, you're like, Oh, this is just not working for me, and then in another podcast you sort of hinted at the fact that it was turning and so now we're on the other side of that and I feel like we've gone on this journey with you. It's a little bit like I remember hearing Helen Mirren interviewed about playing the Queen or playing someone who's currently alive and how much more of a challenge that is than playing an imaginary person. I can't imagine having just saying yes, this is what I'm going to do next, I'm going to select a person that exists.KJ Dell'Antonia 34:07 Let me just say that if a dude had done this, and it was called McCain, he'd be winning prizes. And she should be. But I haven't seen it in a lot of places. And I think it's really well done. But I have another one, I have something else that I've been reading. I also just finished I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness from Austin Channing Brown. And that one was interesting, both because it's Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness and that is a perspective that I don't get enough of, but also because it was really about her experience in working within Christian church and within Christian centered organizations, which is also a world that I know nothing about. And I guess it also might sort of fall into that category of - I kind of hesitate, because my experience of Christian organizations is just not something I'm super interested in. So sometimes when you're reading along in a memoir and it skews off into a religion that is not something that is yours you kind of feel like, well, this isn't really for me because that stuff's not for me. But I obviously kept going with it because it had all this other great stuff in it. And I was glad, it was really interesting to experience both of those worlds that I am not a part of. If you're looking for something to read along those lines, and especially if you are a part of a lot of Christian organizations, I'll bet it would be really, really juicy from that perspective. I didn't have any real way of knowing like, Oh, is that really true? Do people really you know, behave that way or say those things or sort of pretend to be interested and then sort of step back? But anyway, I recommend. Jess Lahey 36:17 I will definitely put it on my list. I love hearing about books that you guys are loving. I get so many cool recommendations.Sarina Bowen 37:03 Well, yesterday I received via FedEx two pool floats that I bought because they're exactly like KJ's. And I plunked one of them right into the pool and I got in there with my paperback copy of Don't You Forget About Me by Mhairi McFarlane, which is marketed as a romance novel with a really cute illustrated cover but wow, she is terrific. The writing is fabulous. There's a little prologue section from high school that is so perfectly high school that I have chills. I read three chapters in my pool float feeling I figured out the secret to life, basically. And I can't wait to flop myself back in there later today and and keep going.Jess Lahey 37:58 When you put in Don't You Forget About Me of course Simple Minds comes up. I think I got a copy of that book in the mail. So I may just have to go downstairs and find it on my shelf. That's exciting.KJ Dell'Antonia 38:18 I have her first one. You might have her first one. This one's pretty recent. This one's just come out, right?Sarina Bowen 38:27 No, this is an earlier one.KJ Dell'Antonia 38:30 Okay. I don't think this is the one I have. Jess Lahey 38:33 It's funny because you remember when we were talking a bunch of episodes back about cover art and how a lot of you know like rom-coms/women's fiction are all with these drawings of people with ambiguous faces. I have found that I have a bunch of them in a wish list for audiobooks and I can't tell them apart. They are all just primary color people and especially the ones that have a dog, like a couple of them people have dogs and I think the trend for this sort of primary color faceless drawings of people may have gotten to the saturation point I think, because I'm starting to confuse them.Sarina Bowen 39:13 Well, it's not going away anytime soon because stock photography needed a big bad refresh before COVID and certainly hasn't improved from half a year of lockdown. So those illustrators, they have some job security right now, let me tell you.Jess Lahey 39:33 I will say that in terms of stock photography, you provide endless entertainment for some of the things that exist out there as stock photography, and moments when you say like, why would anyone ever need a picture of a man without a shirt on, and a seal holding a basket of apples? Alright, well I'm glad I got to talk about the whole feeling about the memoir stuff, because this makes me feel better. One of my favorite comments about writing memoir, and it comes from Abigail Thomas, and it's the one about you know, dig deep and be honest or don't bother. And I try to remember that as a mantra when I'm writing stuff that's highly personal, like this new book, The Addiction Inoculation. And I don't think I can do justice to that topic without being really personal, but boy it gets scary when it goes out in the world. You know that it's out there in the hands of people, not just like readers I admire, but people whose lives are part of the book as well. It's nerve racking. KJ Dell'Antonia 41:16 I've got a few things to say. If you're not in our Facebook group, come get into our Facebook group and let's have a convo about this one - who's feeling exposed and like what's going on. If you're doing memoir, if you've got fiction that makes people feel like it's about you, I will try to remember to throw up a conversation starter. If I don't somebody else do it and let's get in that #AmWriting Facebook group and do that.Jess Lahey 41:50 That's exactly what I was going to say too, because we actually put out some tax tips just recently. And that came from a question that came up in the #AmWriting Facebook group so it's a good place to be. Well, if you would like to get stuff like the tax tips, you can go ahead and sign up for our list over at Substack at the #AmWriting page.KJ Dell'Antonia 42:27 You can do that at amwritingpodcast.com. Okay, that sounds great. Go there, it'll send you to all the other stuff and I am working on getting all of our great top fives and minisodes into the regular website as opposed to the Substack website. Jess Lahey 42:46 Yep, I'm actually going to be recording as soon as we're done today. I'm going to be recording a new minisode to go out up on the website in a little bit. So there's all kinds of extra content that's up there. But 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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Kari Lizer is best known for her work in television, as writer and co-executive producer of Will & Grace and the creator of The New Adventures of Old Christine. When her essays about parenting took the shape of a book, she found that her real life provided more than enough material for a comedic memoir. Aren’t You Forgetting Someone? has it all - chickens, Kate Middleton’s bangs, psychics, and the promise of happy endings. #AmReadingJess: Beach Read by Emily HenrySarina: The Worst Best Man by Mia SosaKari: Olive, Again by Elizabeth StroutSubscription links and a transcript follow—but first, a preview of the #MinisodeMonday that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, July 20th: How an Editor Considers an Essay. Not joined that club yet? You’ll want to get on that. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #BonusContent 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.This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. 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 Dell'Antonia 0:00 Writers it's KJ here. Before we get to the interview, which is Jess and Sarina talking to the very funny Kari Lizer I wanted to share a little about our new sponsor, Dabble. I wrote my last book in a mad combination of Word and Scrivener and it worked fine. But putting the whole thing together in the end was hard and I accidentally left out a chapter of a draft confusing everyone. With dabble, the whole book is always just sitting there already compiled and together as a unit and easy to navigate around in as chapters or scenes. It is magical and it can't wait to make full use of it this time around. Give it a spin at dabblewriter.com and let us know what you think. Is it recording? Jess Lahey 0:43 Now it's recording. KJ Dell'Antonia 0:45 This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone trying to remember what I'm supposed to be doing.Jess Lahey 0:49 Alright, let's start over. KJ Dell'Antonia 0:51 Awkward pause. I'm gonna rustle some papers. Okay, now one, two, three.Jess Lahey 1:02 Hey, this is the #AmWriting podcast with Jess Lahey and Sarina Bowen, KJ is off this week. This is the podcast where we talk about all the things - all the writing things, the researching, the editing. I'm just about to start editing today, actually. So we'll probably slip in and mention of that - writing romance, writing fiction, writing nonfiction, writing all the things we love to talk about. And this is definitely the podcast though, first and foremost, about getting the writing done. I'm Jessica Lahey I'm the author of The Gift of Failure and the forthcoming The Addiction Inoculation that will be out next year, April 2021. And you can find my work at the Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other lovely places like Airmail recently, actually.Sarina Bowen 1:47 And I'm Sarina Bowen I'm the author of 35 romance novels. My most recent USA Today bestseller is called Sure Shot and you can find more about me at sarinabowen.com.Jess Lahey 1:59 So can I just say one thing? I was I was tooling around on Facebook looking for something and all of a sudden, I noticed that you dropped like an additional thing to Sure Shot. And I simply do not understand when you write all the things. I don't understand how you write all the things, you write everything and you write stuff that you don't even tell us about, and launch it out into the world and it makes my head spin.Sarina Bowen 2:22 Well, thank you, I think. Yes, I did have a couple chapter prequel that I put into an anthology that someone was putting together and it really wasn't the world's greatest accomplishment there, Jess, but thanks anyway.Jess Lahey 2:39 Alright, well, we have a guest this week, and I'm really, really excited about this guest because we have found out that number one, we have some things in common that we need to talk about, but also because this book almost made me late for this interview because I was having so much fun reading it, I couldn't put it down. It is so funny. Without further ado, I would like to introduce Kari Lizer. Her new book is called Aren't You Forgetting Someone?: Essays From My Midlife Revenge? And, okay, we've talked before about getting blurbs and this woman, this book, she's got some blurbs on this book. It's a very funny book. She is a former executive producer and writer for Will and Grace. And that's going to figure into a little tiny bit of the conversation today. But Kari, thank you so much for being on the show today.Kari Lizer 3:35 Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here.Jess Lahey 3:37 Such a delightful book. And it's not just because a lot of the action happens in Vermont and Sarina has written an entire series that is a romance series based completely on a fictional small town in Vermont. There are chickens, there are lots of animals. And so we've got that angle going on, but we we also have the devotedly introverted sort of thing going on, obviously the writer thing going on as well. So we're just really excited to talk with you today. Kari Lizer 4:17 It's nice to have that in common. It's a specific thing for sure. Vermont people are a certain kind of people, I know that.Jess Lahey 4:27 We're reading this book at a really interesting time because most of the book is about just the thrill people get (people like us) tend to get when someone says something is canceled. And everything's canceled right now. So how are you doing? We're recording this at the beginning of June, on June 11. So we've all been on our own or at least in close proximity to very few other people. How are you doing?Kari Lizer 5:00 Well, I spent the first few months of this lockdown shut-in period in Los Angeles, which was very different than it feels here in Vermont. It was stranger there for sure. I had one of my kids home with me. And it was a little bit harder to navigate there. It wasn't that different lifestyle wise for me than my normal life though, because I do spend a lot of time at home. I'm an introvert, I write at home. I don't venture out unless I absolutely have to. But it did get strange and I did start to feel the walls closing in on me for sure. I mean, just the lack of outdoor space. I mean, because the trails were closed and the parks were closed. I have four dogs. Going outside with them, it just felt like we were just on top of each other a little bit. So made the decision to hop in a car and drive across the country with the four dogs and come to Vermont. Because there's more wide open spaces, so it's feeling a little bit like I've been released from prison a little bit. But, you know, there are other challenges here in terms of of being quarantined and you know, there's the 14 days here in Vermont that I have to isolate myself from other people and so, you know, it's challenging. Listen, I don't have it as bad as a lot of people have it, I have a lot to keep me occupied. And I can do my job here. I'm starting up a new TV show and I can do my writers room on Zoom. And it's just it's not that bad. I've had things to occupy me, so I'm pretty lucky as it goes, honestly.Jess Lahey 7:06 Well, actually the fact that we're in the middle of this. We're in the middle of a country protesting right now over George Floyd's death, there's so much going on that has rendered... In fact, a couple weeks ago, we recorded a podcast where we just felt like our hearts weren't in it. And one of the things you write really beautifully about in this book is being able to write when other things in your life are not necessarily going the way you would like. In fact, you mentioned in the book that you were writing for Will and Grace at the same time that you had a divorce and you had your sister's death going on. So that sort of stuck out for me because at a time right now when I could be super productive, I'm finding it really, really difficult to put my heart in my work and I would love to know how you worked through some of that?Kari Lizer 8:01 Well, I mean, I think it's easier when you have assignments, a television writer, I think it is a little bit easier under those circumstances because you have to, I mean, you have deadlines and those kind of things, I find it a little bit harder too under these circumstances, when I can write if I want to and I'm a lot less productive now. It was very strange that I left Los Angeles just as things were sort of bubbling up. And by the time I got here, the world had sort of exploded, I mean, I just left when COVID was happening. And then the protests hadn't really started yet. So I feel strangely isolated from all of that and it feels like things are happening so far away from me, so I feel very distracted by that too. I think it's certainly easier for me to write, obviously, when I have people waiting for things to come to them, you know. I mean, I'm a goody two shoes always, so I will always turn things in when people need them, but left to my own devices I can't always get it going either. I mean, sometimes it is hard to motivate myself I mean, I always have this fantasy that all I need is a cabin in the woods and then I'll sit and I'll churn out novels one after the other and I don't write a word. If I've ever rented a beach house or something with this romantic notion that I'm going to write things, not a word comes out of me at those kind of places, I need busy, I need chaos, I need something. The more that's going on the more I can't seem to write so... Jess Lahey 9:28 Yeah, I'm deadline oriented, too. And Sarina, you know, self publishes her work and she does so much of the work herself and she's so good about self imposed deadlines. There was a great quote Shonda Rhimes at one point said, 'Writing for television is like laying tracks while you're actually in the train.' Is that an experience that rings true for you?Kari Lizer 9:51 That's about right, yeah. There is an oncoming train at all times. It just feels like an impossible job and somehow it gets done. And I function really well under those circumstances. You know, the more pressure the better, from the book you can tell I when I had children underfoot, the younger the better, the more children the better. Throw a little cancer in there and then I I thrive. When I have less going on, and I have all the time in the world, and it's sort of leisurely, I can maybe write a chapter or two but I think I was sort of cut out for the television world because it is just writing under the most serious duress that you can imagine.Sarina Bowen 10:39 Can I ask - is Aren't You Forgetting Someone? your first thing that you wrote that was intended to be a book with two covers on it at a bookstore?Kari Lizer 10:49 It is and it didn't really start out that way. I took a little hiatus from television when my third kid went off to college, and I just I wanted to sort of do something different creatively. And I was part of this writers group because as we're talking about, I am deadline oriented and I found that I wasn't writing anything when I was left to my own devices. And so I found what was really helpful for me, was sitting around a table with other writers who were working on novels and essays and various kinds of writing. And I had to show up every week at this table. And it gave me a deadline of sorts that I wanted to show up with something. And so I started writing these essays not knowing what they were or where they were going to belong or just even I thought maybe it was a pilot, maybe it was a movie I just really didn't know I wasn't writing it for for anything except myself, except to have a different sort of creative experience. But I did do it in a group and that really helped me with that sort of accountability piece that I need to to keep myself moving forward. And then it just sort of piled up and and you know became this book but I didn't really know when I started what it was.Jess Lahey 12:12 Well and it wouldn't have been out of the ordinary for you if this had turned into a script because the New Adventures of Old Christine that you also wrote was based on your life, correct?Kari Lizer 12:23 Loosely, yeah. Sort of my fantasy of what my life might have been if I was better at my life, if I were Julia Louis-Dreyfus then yeah my life would look like that, but not quite. But yeah, loosely based on my divorce and those years after my divorce.Jess Lahey 12:42 Our listeners love to hear sort of the the nuts and bolts, like the nitty gritty stuff about the writing, and how the words get on the page. And so you've got this group that's helping you get deadlines done. You're getting some essays out there. What's the point for you where you realize that this is a book and not a movie or a pilot? Kari Lizer 13:01 Well, it was sort of at the encouragement of this group of people that I was with. Which I can't express enough how helpful that was to have feedback from a supportive group of people. For me, it was really valuable. Because I didn't know and I felt a little lost in it and I was insecure about it. It was just not a genre that I was used to writing and I didn't know, it felt embarrassing to me to write such personal stuff. It felt like I was writing my diary a little bit and it felt a little bit like who really cares about this stuff, and is it interesting, is it braggy, what is it exactly? And it was great to have that encouragement of other people saying, just keep writing, don't think about what people think about it, just keep moving forward, and don't stop down to think about the reaction to it. And that was really helpful to me and worry about what it is after the fact. And so when I looked at it, and then I was able to sort of put it together and it's like, oh, there is sort of a narrative here, there is sort of a theme. And I'm a huge fan of David Sedaris, for instance and I read a lot of essays, and I read a lot of comic essays in particular. And so I thought, Oh, well, that's sort of what this is seeming like and I got some outside people to say, 'Well, here's where there are holes in this narrative, and here's where you need to fill it in.' And I really took some advice from people who had some sort of objective eyes on it. And then I started sort of shaping it into a book as opposed to just a pile of what felt like diary entries. You know, I needed to sort of turn it into something that was more than just musings and try to tell a story with it.Jess Lahey 15:05 Alright, so this is a publishing industry, nitty gritty question. So our co-host, KJ Dell'Antonia, she and I have the same agent and our agent represents nonfiction she just doesn't really do fiction. So in order to sell KJ's novel she had to pair up with another agent in the same agency that does fiction. So my question to you is, if you have an agent who you know has been representing you for your work in Hollywood, do you need to go to a new person in order to sell a book or can you use your same agent in order to sell to a traditional publisher?Kari Lizer 15:40 Well, fortunately I had just gone to a new television agent in Los Angeles, but it was a giant conglomerate agency that has a lot of different arms. So I went to them and I sort of brought this pile of essays to them, and it was this conference room of suited men, you know. And basically, I felt like I was bringing them my uterus on a platter. And I was like, here I have this and I'm sure they were expecting me to bring them a television show because that's where I make the money. And that's where they make money. And I said, 'I have this and this is sort of what I'm really on fire about right now. Is there anything you can do with this?' And to their credit, they read it, they loved it. They said, 'Well, this isn't what we do. But our agency in New York, let's give it to the lead agency in New York, if they're interested, and they want to take it on great, and we'll give it our best shot. And so that worked out and the people in New York took it and gave me some advice about it. And when it went out the first time they sent it around and it didn't get picked up by anybody. And so then I took it back, and I worked on it some more, and I filled in what I thought were the sort of holes in it, and I realized it wasn't quite finished. And I kept writing and then I went out again with it same agents to their credit, they didn't give up on it. And then the next time around it found its home. So it was really a process.Jess Lahey 17:10 That's really tough, to send something out that's been out and then you're gonna work on it for a little bit and send it out again, that's kudos to your agents because that's an incredibly difficult thing to do and something that most agents are actually pretty reluctant to do. Kari Lizer 17:24 Yeah, I'm very grateful to them and for their sort of sustained belief in it because it was really a process and it was a business that I didn't know anything about. So I was completely in their hands and I had to trust them and just believe that it was gonna work out the way it was supposed to. So I think I was very lucky. And also in good hands with them that they kept the faith, honestly.Jess Lahey 17:57 So you haven't always identified as a writer, you identified for a long time as an actor and I have to ask about the line in your book about the psychic Teresa who felt the vibrations in your keychain. You say you became a writer because of Teresa feeling the vibration in your keychain. And I have to know more, like where is that story?Kari Lizer 18:24 Well I'll probably write that one someday I just was an actor from when I was a kid. I started when I was 11 going on commercial auditions, I lived pretty close to Los Angeles and my mother would drive me in and I started doing commercials and that was sort of it for me. I didn't go to college because I already knew what I wanted to be when I grew up and I just went directly into Hollywood. And I worked pretty consistently, I did television shows and pilots and I thought well this is worked out great and I made a living as an actress until I was about 30 years old and then it stopped. I mean, it came to a grinding halt in a way that was terrifying and then nothing, I mean just nothing and I slowly sold the house that I bought, the car, I mean just everything dried up, and I had nothing to fall back on. You know, as your parents tell you to have something to fall back on I had nothing, I had no skills. I couldn't even wait tables. I mean, when I lived in New York for two years, I got fired from every waitress job I ever had. I mean, I don't know how to do anything, honestly. And it was really scary. And I went to a psychic that somebody recommended and she said she had to hold on to my keychain. And she said that if I continued to be an actor, I would be moderately successful. But if I was a writer, I would be successful beyond my wildest dreams. I was so upset. First of all, it seemed like so much work, you know, it's just like, no, I don't want to be a writer that sounds horrible. But I thought, oh, okay, so you know, I didn't have any other choices. I mean, there was no other options. I was really in bad shape. I was dead broke. So I wrote, I was earning money at the time. My only skill was I could type, my only good subject in school was typing.Jess Lahey 20:25 That's such a good starting place for the whole writing thing. Kari Lizer 20:30 It is I mean, it's a great skill. And in fact, I was earning my rent at the time typing (because we were typing at the time) scripts for a friend of mine who was a writer. I was getting 50 cents a page to type his scripts up. And so I went home and I wrote a like a spec pilot and then I wrote a play, I just had to write a play. And I gave it to this friend of mine, who I was typing his scripts for, he liked it so much that he said, You know what, I'm going to put this up in a theater, I'm going to produce it and put it up in a theater. And we'll invite all the friends from showbiz that I know and all the ones that you know, and we'll see if we can get you a job I said, but I'm going to star it because what I really want is an acting job. And so I starred it, and he put it in theater, and I got offers to write, an agent came and said, 'I would like to represent you as a writer.' I didn't get a single acting offer, which is all I wanted, and it was devastating, but it started my writing career. Because of this person who believed in me, which is often how it starts, you know, somebody helps you out. And it was just crazy. You know, I had no business doing any of it. I didn't know if I could write I'd never tried to, but it was just pure desperation and then ultimately, just sort of dumb luck. And it just turned out. I think I'd absorbed enough. You know, I had read enough scripts, I acted in enough things, I think I had sort of absorbed structure and those kind of things by osmosis maybe a little bit. I don't know, who knew it could have turned out very differently, but I was very lucky.Sarina Bowen 22:14 Well, that's how most novelists start, right? Like they've read a whole lot of novels. And they've sort of absorbed it. But I have two questions for you. The first one is if you could just slip me that psychic's contact information.Kari Lizer 22:31 Yeah, I don't know what happened to her.Sarina Bowen 22:35 The second one is, so it's well documented in Aren't You Forgetting Someone that your grown children are never going to ask your opinion about anything important, but if they did, if one of your three ungrateful humans came today and said, 'Okay, Mom, I want to be a writer. Should I write a book or should I write for TV?' How would you handle that question? Because a lot of our listeners are thinking about all the different ways they are accomplishing the writing dream and what's your thought about that?Kari Lizer 23:13 Well, I don't think I would say one or the other. I think that writing is writing. And I think I don't think I found a big difference between writing this book and writing for television. I think the main thing that I brought to this book that I try to bring to television writing is telling my true stories, and I think that's when I have found success in both genres. So just trying to be authentic. So I would say, wherever that story seems to find its place. And honestly, I mean, I've had things that have started out as plays and it's like, oh, this isn't sort of finding its way as a play and it turns into a short story or it turns into something else. And I think sometimes not to know what it wants to be is okay, too. I mean, that's certainly my process a lot of times, that not sort of being too sure about what your endgame is, but sort of working your way through the process, and figuring out sort of what story it is you want to tell, and figuring out sort of what form it takes, and where you're going to end up later, like that's a question for later. But figure out what story you want to tell first I mean, for me that that works better. If I get all caught up in Oh, what network is it going to be on? Because I know a lot of people that do that in television, who would star in this or what network would it be on? If I start putting the cart before the horse I get completely blocked, then I can't think about the story or then things don't come to life for me anymore. I'm just not thinking about the right things anymore. I think I have to let the story the story speak first and then figure out those other details after the fact.Sarina Bowen 25:27 AwesomeJess Lahey 25:28 When I first started writing for a bigger audience, I remember my father read something that (you know, I started my writing, especially when I was a teacher on just this blog) and my father read something that was for suddenly for a bigger audience and he called me and he said, 'You know how much I love you. (and that's when you know something big is coming) I don't know who you're writing for all of a sudden, but it is not you.' And it was the best feedback I could have gotten because I suddenly had all these ideal readers clattering around in my head and like, how many comments am I gonna get. And it was one of the best bits of feedback I've ever gotten. Which is basically, just stop thinking about all those other people and continue to do for you. Which I have to say, before we get into the next thing I want to talk about really, really quickly one of the cool things about you and your writing - and I have to say also about Sarina because all three of us are very much people who like a lot of time by ourselves and a lot of quiet time and don't necessarily need to interact with other people all the time - and yet you and Sarina, your real gifts, at least in my opinion with Sarina, I don't want to speak for her obviously have to do with dialogue. And dialogue about connection. I mean, especially with Will and Grace, that entire show really was about the connection between these people and the action that happens and all of these inciting incidents and all that stuff, that's interesting. But what's really interesting about that show, it was the connection between the people and for Sarina, I mean, she writes romance, that's what this comes down to in the end. So I find it very interesting that two people who are perfectly happy spending a lot of time talking only to their animals or to inanimate objects in the room are so good at that interpersonal connection. I thought about the two of you a lot when I was reading this book.Sarina Bowen 27:30 Well, we don't dislike interpersonal connection. We just like it in small doses.Kari Lizer 27:37 Yes.Jess Lahey 27:40 Before we to start talking about what we've been reading, we need to take a quick break, and we will be right back.KJ Dell'Antonia 27:52 Before Jess, Sarina, and Kari tell you what they've been reading, let me ask you, what have you been writing? How's it coming along? We'd always love to hear about it in the #AmWriting Facebook group. But if you're stalled on your memoir, losing direction on your nonfiction project, or keep writing the beginning of your novel over and over again, maybe you should consider working with a book coach, you could get help with an outline, a draft, or the entire drafting process. And it could be just what you need to finally write the words the end, and actually mean them. Find out more at authoraccelerator.com.Jess Lahey 28:37 Alright, we can start talking about what we've been reading. Kari, do you have a book that you would like to talk about that you've been reading recently?Kari Lizer 28:45 Well, I just finished and it's not brand new, but I just finished Olive Again by Elizabeth Strout and I love those Olive Kitteridge books so much. I mean, I think I relate to that woman. I'm speaking of loners and cranky ladies. But yeah, so I just finished Olive Again and I thoroughly enjoyed it.Jess Lahey 29:08 I talk about her a lot as a person that I couldn't believe I was continuing to read because I hated her so much. In fact, we reread Olive Kittredge before we read Olive Again because I just love those books so much. Sarina, what have you been reading?Sarina Bowen 29:28 Well, most recently I've been reading Aren't You Forgetting Someone by Kari Lizer. But the night before I read a book by a romance author named Mia Sosa with the best title ever, ever, ever. And the title of this book is The Worst Best Man. And of course, there's a wedding cake on the cover with the bride pushing the best man off of the top of it and it's just the cutest thing ever.Jess Lahey 30:02 Yeah, I've needed cute lately. I'm still reading Ibram X. Kendi's How To Be An Antiracist and I find that I need to read that in short bits because it's really hard because I have to think about myself and what I can do to be better. And so on the polar opposite side I've been reading a bunch of sort of rom-com type of stuff and we texted quite a bit about (KJ and I especially) because we were reading at the same time about Emily Henry's Beach Read. Kari, I haven't read any other books like this, but it was really cute. It was a rom-com with two writers the romantic interest is by two writers and in two very different genres who sort of have this animosity/rivalry kind of thing and it was just adorable. And those books I've been doing as audio while I'm out tending my garden so I find myself laughing a lot in my garden which is good fun.Kari Lizer 31:16 Oh, that's a good idea. Yes.Jess Lahey 31:19 By the way, before we say goodbye I actually wanted to tell you that when you're reading Kari's wonderful book, Aren't You Forgetting Someone and you get to the part where it says that Martha Stewart taught her about b******s you need to understand that you've misread the word Maria as Martha. Kari Lizer 31:42 Wait, did I say that?Jess Lahey 31:46 I read it twice and I'm like, that can't be true. Oh I wish it was true. That would be a good story.That's the other fun thing about this book is there's so many juicy, there's obviously your psychic story, your John Edwards story and just a lot of really fun juicy stories in here and also as an animal hoarder, I really identify with your animal stuff. Thank you so much for giving us something to read that has been just been a way to retreat a little bit from the hard stuff because I think we need a balance of those things right now even when it's really important for us to face the hard stuff. It's also really important for us to have an escape to a place of laughter and comfort. And so I just I'm really grateful to you for that.Kari Lizer 32:52 Thank you. I am glad that it felt like that and and hope that hard stuff gets a little less hard shortly is my my wish.Jess Lahey 33:16 Alright. Well thank you everyone for joining us this week. And until next week, 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. This is a public episode. 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We have trouble believing you haven’t already heard of our guest this week, Susan Wiggs, but just in case—she’s the author of many many novels, a multiple #1 New York Times bestseller and an overall amazing storyteller. Her current novel, The Lost and Found Bookshop, is on sale now and her most recent bestseller, The Oysterville Sewing Circle, is just out in paperback.We talk crafting a story, starting from the emotional journey versus the physical plot, building a character, choosing a setting and our collective addiction to writing books, and Susan reveals that she does indeed read fiction while she’s writing fiction—and it’s a good thing, too, because her reading list is long indeed. Links from the PodWriting the Blockbuster Novel by Albert ZuckermanThis American Life, Promised Land (the “I Wish” song episode)#AmReading (all Susan, and you’ll see why)Aging in Place by Aaron D MurphyBeing Mortal by Atul GawandeOn Ocean Boulevard by Mary Alice MonroeHouse Lessons by Erica BauermeisterUntamed by Glennon DoyleThe Splendid and the Vile by Erik LarsonSabrina and Corina by Kali Fajardo-AnstineThe Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins ReidThanks to everyone who supports the podcast financially. To join that team, click the button below:But it’s all good. The pod is free as it always has and always will be. 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 every time there’s a new episode.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:00 Hey, fellow writers this week we've got an outright amazing conversation with Susan Wiggs. Many, many times bestselling author of many, many novels, who really knows how to construct a story. And when getting the work done doesn't just take talent and dedication, but an understanding of the craft of creating a story. If you'd like to work with someone who understands that craft, head over to Author Accelerator and look into finding the right book coach for your work, or if craft is your jam, learn more about becoming a book coach yourself at authoraccelerator.com. Is it recording? Jess Lahey 0:36 Now it's recording.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:39 This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone and try to remember what I'm supposed to be doing. Jess Lahey 0:43 Alright, let's start over. KJ Dell'Antonia 0:44 Awkward pause. I'm gonna rustle some papers. Okay, now one, two, three. Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia. And this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is the podcast, the weekly podcast, about writing all things, fiction, nonfiction, short things, long things, pitches, proposals, everything you have to write before anybody lets you write anything. And in short, this is the podcast about sitting down and getting that work done.Sarina Bowen 1:16 And this is Sarina Bowen. I'm the author of 35 romance novels. You can always find more about me at sarinabowen.com.KJ Dell'Antonia 1:26 And I am KJ Dell'Antonia, the author of the novel The Chicken Sisters, and also the book How to Be a Happier Parent, former editor of the New York Times' Motherlode blog, and still sometimes a contributor there. And we are so excited to welcome our guest this week. This is the first guest we've ever had that has rivaled Sarina in prolificness. We're so excited to welcome Susan Wiggs. She is the author of (I think I counted 37 but as soon as I let her talk, I'm gonna check) novels, multiple number one New York Times' bestseller and an overall amazing storyteller. When you pick up a Susan Wiggs book, you know that you're getting a fully built world and a story that's going to grab you and hold you tight and that you're going to be sorry when it lets you go. Her current novel is The Lost and Found Bookstore. And she's also got another novel just out in paperback - The Oysterville Sewing Circle. That one's just out right now. Am I right?Susan Wiggs 2:29 That's correct. It's just out in a paperback, the book club edition just came out.KJ Dell'Antonia 2:35 Ooh, cool. I love the whole book club edition and this edition.Susan Wiggs 2:41 I just love book clubs in general. So yeah, thank you so much for having me. This is such a thrill to talk to somebody who's not a fictional character.KJ Dell'Antonia 2:51 Yeah, we don't do much of that right now either. They're either fictional characters or they live in our house, that's all we got. So yeah, we are really excited - so, how many books is it before I even get started? Susan Wiggs 3:02 Oh, I knew you're gonna ask me that. And you know what? To be honest, I don't have a count. But I can tell you my first book was published in 1987. Huntington Zebra books, and I've published a book or two every year since. And so I've stopped doing the math. I just write my next book.KJ Dell'Antonia 3:27 But we will ask, you just because our listeners always want to know. How did you get started? Tell us how that first 1987 book happened, travel back in time with us.Susan Wiggs 3:40 You know what, you always remember your first time and I'll just leave it at that. I'll leave that to your imagination. But honestly, I was a young teacher just out of graduate school. I got myself through graduate school by reading really big, thick, romance novels, you know, the real bodice rippers all through the 80's. And so yeah, I had such a taste for them, and such an affection for them and a love for the form that I just wrote one. And I had no idea what I was doing. I wrote it on a typewriter. I didn't know about any writer's associations. I knew Writer's Digest, I was a subscriber to Writer's Digest, I always knew that I wanted to write and so I wrote a book called Texas Wildflower and I wrote it on a typewriter. It was this huge, unwieldy pile of pages. I was very proud of it, but I didn't know what to do with it. And so somehow, I wormed my way onto an editor's desk at Kensington Books, which had and probably still prints Zebra, Pinnacle, various ones like that and they're still up and going, and the editor's name was Wendy McCurdy, and she's still in the business. I believe she may be back at Kensington now. Anyway, she was delightful. You know, very young, probably as young as I was at the time, editor who called me up in the middle of a very busy life. I had a toddler, and dogs, and a house, and a teaching job. And I was very overwhelmed. And she called me in the middle of all that and said, 'We like your book, and we want to publish it.' And I was just floored. Yes, I was stunned. I didn't have an agent. And so I just said, 'Yes, where do I sign?' And so it's interesting that we would be talking about this right now because one of the things that I did because I didn't have a literary agent, I didn't really know how to negotiate any sort of contract. And one of the biggest blunders that I made that is turning out to be kind of a very funny and happy accident was I gave them the copyright back then. And I think now copyrights revert to the author if the book is out of print and unavailable for, I believe, three to five years. And I think I signed my name to something to say it was out of print and unavailable, but they had 16 years to reprint it. And in those 16 years, my books became rather popular. And so they never wanted to revert the rights to me because I would always say the book's not out, it's very old, don't you want to revert the rights to me? Because that way, the author controls his rights and creative control over that property and you know, you can resell it and things like that, but no, they kept hanging on to it. And so I'm sitting here, it is 2020 and I'm looking at a royalty check dated May 26, 2020 for that book, for Texas Wildflower that was first published in April 1987. Because they keep reissuing it, they still have it in print, they reissued it numerous times in different packaging. And as my books have evolved, the very original cover (you can probably find it on my website susanwiggs.com) was a very, very in your face bodice ripper cover. I just loved it, I thought was really cool. But as my books have become more mainstream and evolved into general fiction, or mainstream fiction, the covers look very upmarket now and rather sophisticated. It's basically the same book - at one point I did go in and do some light editorial work, and, you know, cringing the whole time because obviously after you know, 50 something books, I'm not that same writer that wrote Texas Wildflower - and so I had some rookie moments in that book, many of them, and yet readers still, they're drawn to something about that book. So, you know, it's still in print. So thank you, Kensington Books for keeping me alive on your list.KJ Dell'Antonia 5:40 That's a great story. And I love that it is still out there. And the cover thing is really funny because we have talked to a lot of authors and we've seen that same evolution many times. And I know Sarina and I are both really fascinated by cover art and why publishers and authors pick one style over the other and the new trend towards the sort of drawings instead of actual pictures of people.Susan Wiggs 8:48 All authors are obsessed with cover art. You know, even before I was published, I was designing the cover in my head, and I'm terrible at it, but I'm always gratified when I see the way that my books go out into the market because usually it's spot on, there have been some turkeys in my repertoire - no fault of mine or the publisher, sometimes they just don't turn out well, but the new book, The Lost and Found Bookshop, did you guys get a copy of it? Or the advanced reading copies? KJ Dell'Antonia 9:23 Yes, and I really, really love it. But do you know what, my copy doesn't have a cover. So I haven't seen it.Sarina Bowen 9:32 It's beautiful, though. I love the cover. Susan Wiggs 9:35 Well, the journey - that cover went through so many iterations. And the reason is that they try to build and this is a really great thing about publishers, if they're committed to an author, they really try to build you as a brand. And so you don't want each cover to be so unique that it doesn't even look like it could be by the same author. And so I had a rather good hit with The Oysterville Sewing Circle last year, and one of the big pieces and one reason that that book really struck a chord was it had an incredibly striking cover. It was like stark white with this blood red spool of thread on the front with a sharp pin sticking through it. And they wanted to build on that. But I wrote about a bookshop, so there's no sharp needles or anything. And so we really struggled with what this new book should look like so that it kind of accesses the spirit of the previous book, but also is inviting and beautiful enough to attract new readers as well. So I hope this cover does it. It hasn't hit the shelves yet, so I guess we'll see.Sarina Bowen 10:43 It's very beautiful.KJ Dell'Antonia 10:45 Yeah, I agree. And I can see how it looks with The Oysterville Sewing Circle, I've just pulled it up. Sarina Bowen 10:52 It's a lovely analogy to that other book but I also noticed that your that Oysterville has a new cover, too. Which is also very beautiful, and sometimes publishers do that. If they don't like a cover, but sometimes they do it just to catch the eye of people who didn't grab it the first time.Susan Wiggs 11:12 Yes, there's been three iterations of the Oysterville cover. The first one with a big spool of thread was the hardcover. And then there was a mass market paperback that came out in January. And because of the timer in the pandemic time, it was widely available only in essential markets like Walmart, the places that could stay open during the pandemic. And so it sold like wildfire. In March, it was the number four New York Times' paperback. And so there was this little paperback edition of it and then they decided for this summer to do a premium paperback, they're called trade size paperback, and it's a bigger edition and they add extra content in the back. I think there's a reading group guide, and article, and a recipe, and some other materials back there to give reading groups something to chew on. And then they decided, let's use a new image on this cover and the one that they did on that edition was actually a rejected hardcover look, you know, they they tried several looks, and they knew it was a pretty look, but they wanted to go out in trade paperback with that one. So no effort is ever wasted. That's what I am finding out. Yeah, my agent calls it four bites at the apple because the fourth bite is the audio book. And audio books are quite a big category these days and there was a slump during pandemic but as things are opening and people are going back to work and commuting again, there's an upturn in audio sales.Sarina Bowen 12:12 Mm hmm. Yes, I definitely felt that audio slump in April.KJ Dell'Antonia 13:04 I want to say, You have so many books under your belt and you were talking about how that first one is very, very different from the writer that you are now and we wanted to talk about how you go about now, structuring a new story. Because your stories are so - I've only read your later stuff, so I didn't read the earlier stuff. Your stories now are so tight, and they really don't have a lot of extraneous stuff, and I really would love to hear where you start from and I guess we'll start with that. Where do you start when you're looking to start a new book?Susan Wiggs 13:54 That's one of those things that probably didn't change a lot from the very beginning. What inspires us, you know, something has to grab you, and it's almost visceral. And for example, in The Lost and Found Bookshop, it was a very stark moment that I had. I was speaking with some elderly people that lived at my mother's assisted living place, and I'm in charge of my mom's elder care, she now lives with me. And so I do a lot of speaking with groups like that. And one question that I love to ask older people is, what if you got to have a do over, you know, what if you got to make a different decision in your life? And so, somebody said something like, 'I would have been a meteorologist, but women weren't allowed to do that back then.' And I thought, wow, you know, I want to write about somebody who does get that opportunity. You know, she does get to walk away from her very steady, predictable, corporate job and life. Unfortunately, what drives her to that point is very tragic, but she does get there. And suddenly she gets to make a new blueprint for her life. And so I was very inspired by that. And I realized that with every book, even from that very, very first one, it's a moment of profound change in a character's life, whether it's a decision that she has to make or some situation that's forced on her. And so I'm most fascinated by that. And it's always, you know, my characters, there's a lot of variety. They come from all walks of life, but she's usually the smartest person in the book, but she doesn't know it. That's the one thing I would say they have in common, but from there, the process has become not a routine for me, but definitely a journey that has familiar signposts, you know, I have to know my character and I get to know her in ways that come to me subconsciously or I consciously research her world. I build her world around her, what did she do? What does she fear? What was her family of origin? Like that's huge for me, because I believe that people, as adults are the sum of their family of origin, good, bad, indifferent, or usually a mixture of everything. And I sort of build the character, psychologically and physically, that way. And at that point, I kind of have a sketch. It's usually written down in sketchy notes, and then I figure out what does she want, what is her utmost desire? And I try to figure out what that is and then find ways for her to not be able to have that. I know, it's kind of mean, but that's where the story comes from. Because people read for the struggle, I do, you know, somebody wants something, you know, Dorothy wants to get back to Kansas or Luke Skywalker wants to destroy the Death Star. Whatever, the main character has to want something that is profoundly important to them. Whether it's you know, to revive a failing bookstore and look after her elderly granddad, or to create a women's support group for domestic violence survivors, which is The Oysterville Sewing Circle. There has to be a really powerful want that I believe I relate to and readers might relate to and once I have that, I'm off to the races. I sort of pick the setting, and I populate her world, and I create a plot, and I write an outline. And I say outline, it's really just a 5-10 page present-tense narrative that I then pitch to my literary agent and my editor, sometimes separately, sometimes, simultaneously and they usually have some feedback for me. I have a writing group that I meet with regularly here on the West Coast up in Puget Sound, which is where I'm broadcasting from. And through that process, I get a roadmap for my book and then I kind of disappear with my pen and paper for about six months and I do write with pen and paper it's kind of old school but it keeps the distractions at bay while I'm drafting the story.KJ Dell'Antonia 18:41 Wow, I want to come back to drafting with pen and paper. But Sarina and I often talk about (I'm only on like novel number two in terms of anything I'm going to try to sell) but...Susan Wiggs 18:53 Then you are light years ahead of 99% of everybody else, believe me.KJ Dell'Antonia 18:58 And I don't discount my treatment I'm super excited, my debut is coming out this summer, everything is going great. And I'm just literally, like, painful minutes away from giving the draft of the second book to my agent so we can figure out if maybe we can go out with it before the first one comes out. Susan Wiggs 19:23 You know, every writer is convinced that all the other writers have the answer. And we always want to pick each other's brain.KJ Dell'Antonia 19:29 Yes, it's easier for everyone else. Susan Wiggs 19:30 I want to hear how everybody else does it because I'm doing something wrong because I'm so stuck right now.KJ Dell'Antonia 19:36 Well, we often talk about whether you start from the emotional story or the plot story and it sounds like for you, it's almost always the emotional story.Susan Wiggs 19:46 Yes, because I have to have some sort of connection. Otherwise, I'm just writing a work report. And there's also something that really resonated with me, it was on that one of the very first podcasts of history This American Life, probably familiar with it, with Ira Glass. I don't remember the the specific episode but he talked about something called the wish song that appears in every Disney animated musical. The main character looks out at the landscape whether it's in the little French town for Beauty and the Beast or in the wishing well for Snow White or whatever and they sing a song, and the song expresses their wish. And so I don't give my character a wish song but I look for that deeply held emotional and sentimental desire, you know, the yearning that the characters expresses. And when you build the story around the character, then her emotional journey is really the plot. She has to do something she has to be in a world in a situation but her emotional journey is really where I go to get my deepest pieces of the story.KJ Dell'Antonia 21:39 And then when you're trying to take that emotional journey and marry it to a physical journey. Do you generally know where you're going from the beginning? Is it hard to figure out what physical journey will best tell that emotional story? I'm sure you're really good at by now...Susan Wiggs 22:00 Well i don't know but I do know that it's the fun part for me because I love to explore different settings. There are some writers who go back to the same setting again and again and it really works for them and they get known for being a writer of a certain region or something like that. For me, I love to travel and I'm such a fan of world travel. So I love to find what will bring out the deepest aspects of this character. Is it a city, is it a beach, is a lake, is it somewhere out in the countryside? What time period is it and so I have all these different explorations that I do where I find the perfect pairing. Because some of my stories, like The Oysterville Sewing Circle, it could take place anywhere in the world. It's a woman on a career path, who has a big complicated life situation, and she ends up forming a group for domestic violence survivors, but I ended up setting it in the most remote town in the most remote piece of beach on the Washington coast called Oysterville, because I felt like that was a metaphor for you know, this woman going out on a limb. And on the other hand, The Lost and Found Bookshop, I wanted a bookshop on like the cutest vintage street in San Francisco. Usually my setting is a place that I would love to be, a place I would love to visit. Some of my favorite books are books that make me want to go there, want to be there. So I've got a stack on my desk right now - I've got Ocean Boulevard, and there's a beach picture, and I've got hello summer, and there's another beach. We've got a theme going here. So the setting is something that I hope will play up aspects of the story and character in a metaphorical way. And so that's one of the things and then the other thing that I love playing with is, as a writer, we get to live so many different lives, we get to have so many different jobs. And so every main character I've ever written has a job that I fantasize about. She's a photographer, she's a dancer, she's a writer. Well, I don't fantasize about that, I know the grim reality of that, but I've always wanted to be a bookseller. And so The Lost and Found Bookshop was gratifying for me to write about that. But we're very lucky because we get to experience these things vicariously through our research and through the people that we write about. So it keeps it very exciting and fresh. We don't go back to the same job day in and day out.Sarina Bowen 25:08 Right. And a bookseller is an interesting observer of humanity in terms of who comes in to look at what. That's a really durable archetype, which is amazing.KJ Dell'Antonia 25:24 Hey, listeners, KJ here, before Susan tells you what she's been reading, let me tell you, that's a lot. Let's talk about what you're writing, or rather where you're writing, Sarina and I have been loving our new Dabble Writer software. I've already raved about how intuitive it is, and how much we love the plotting tool. But since this episode is about beach reads, and I hope you're finding a way to indulge in a summer getaway, I want to tell you that another cool feature of dabble is that you can use it anywhere and on any device. Online, offline, PC, Mac, Chromebook, Mobile, they all work and they're always synched up. So the edits you jotted into your phone yesterday are right there on your desktop today. We really think you'll like it and we'd love to hear what you think. So check it out with a free trial at dabblewriter.com and then get in touch.Sarina Bowen 26:25 But I wanted to take you back a second to the Disney wish song because that was really interesting to me. I'm actually not a big Disney watcher, as my kids are a little older now but, I hadn't really realized that before. And I love that you start from the character's wish. I find when I start, and I'm wondering how you get past this, but sometimes does that wish feel a little bit thin to you until you really dig in. It's like the chicken and an egg of character conflict.Susan Wiggs 27:03 Absolutely, totally. And I'm always so envious when I open a book, and the character has this life or death problem or situation, because my books are really personal and they're kind of intimate and they're very much about a woman's desires in her everyday life and she's not out saving the world or vanquishing bad guys or something like that. And so my stories - until I really dig into them - feel a little every day, a little mundane. And so I'm very sensitive about that and it possibly makes me work harder, all the harder on the aspects that are really going to bring the story to life for the reader and really going to get the reader involved and behind the character. And with The Lost and Found Bookshop, one of the things that the publisher did is they sent out a lot of advance reading copies to working booksellers, or actually furloughed booksellers because of the time that we're in, and the feedback that they got was so extraordinary that they ended up making a deck of quote cards with feedback from these booksellers. And it was really extraordinary to see how they experienced this book and what their feedback was. And so even though it was a woman who doesn't consider herself anything special, she was really special to these readers. So I'm really hopeful that when the book goes out into the world and is not my baby anymore, the readers will relate to that.Sarina Bowen 28:51 That's wonderful. And as you point out, those of us who write emotional journeys, you know, some days doesn't it seem super tempting to just kidnap your heroine on the first page?Susan Wiggs 29:02 Yeah, it does really and you know, have her like swept away by pirates or something just to get the action going, when instead she's got to give a presentation at work and it sucks and, you know, something like that. Actually, that's interesting that you brought that up because my original opening scene of The Lost and Found Bookshop was pretty much exactly that. She had a work situation at her corporate job and it does not go well. And it's very important to her. But I was concerned that the readers might not hook right into her because she's a little challenged by the situation and she's not a warm, fuzzy person in that moment. And that's a little risky to do, because you want your reader to like your protagonist right from the start. And so, I was apprehensive about doing that. So what I did is I added and this is something I sometimes do, I sometimes don't, I added a prologue. And the prologue put her in the most emotionally stressful situation I could find for her at that moment, so there's like just a one page prologue, it's really quick, but it's like, everything that I wanted the reader to know about this character, so that when they turn the page, and there she is in her work meeting, and she's sweating and nervous and that sort of thing, they can relate to her in a different way. So that was actually a writing craft moves that I made, you know, a lot of writing is inspiration and it's art and it's talent. But a good other segment of it is just knowing how to manipulate your craft and steer your craft towards the best experience for the reader.Sarina Bowen 30:59 It's been Powerful to realize at some point in your development as an author that you have got the spotlight in two hands and you can point it wherever you want.Susan Wiggs 31:10 It is and hopefully we know what to do with that spotlight. That's generally what revisions are for, right?KJ Dell'Antonia 31:19 Yeah. I sometimes find myself just thinking, I don't know, it felt kind of like this last time and it kind of worked last time. So I'm just hoping it's working now.Susan Wiggs 31:32 Yes. And it's hard when you're deep in the weeds of your draft of your novel, it's really, really hard to have the perspective that ultimately the reader is going to have and sometimes you just have to forge ahead on faith. KJ Dell'Antonia 31:48 So when you are lost in those weeds do you find yourself going back to that 5-10 page narrative that you mentioned at the beginning? Susan Wiggs 31:56 Um, no, what I usually do is go pull weeds in my garden or hike with the dogs or something, and try to walk away from it for a bit. And then I also do more research, a lot of times I'm stuck at a spot in the book, and I just need to read more about the situation, you know, whether it's more articles about elder care or more articles about this Spanish American War, which has a very weird, kind of interesting little spotlight in the book. So sometimes I just do more research. There's a very good book, there's so many good writing books, but one of them that was quite instructive to me a million years ago, it was called Writing the Blockbuster Novel by Al Zuckerman. He was (maybe still is) a big agent in New York, and he was Ken Follett's agent and he talks about when you get blocked the first thing you should do is go back and do more research into your setting, and your situation, and into the character's job. And I don't know that that resolves it every time for me, but it's very helpful.KJ Dell'Antonia 33:11 I love books like that. I love books that at least just tell me something to do when I'm stuck, anything, just just give me something I can get my fingers into.Susan Wiggs 33:24 Yeah, I'm a writing book junkie. I have probably 16 linear feet of books on writing and I have my favorites but there's always something that I can glean from most of these. I don't always work through them cover to cover but I love browsing through them, that's always inspiring to me as well.KJ Dell'Antonia 33:48 I love hearing that because I am so there. I love stuff like Save the Cat Writes a Novel and Write Your novel in 90 days and it doesn't have to be great. I don't know, I like dipping out and finding a roadmap from time to time, I think.Susan Wiggs 34:06 Yeah. It goes back to writers being convinced that every other writer has a secret and they're hiding it from us. KJ Dell'Antonia 34:14 I do have the secrets to how other people can write them that turn out to be the problem. Well, this is a great time to shift into talking about what we have been reading. In every episode, we like to just shout out something that we've been enjoying lately. And so I hope you've had some time to read and have something in mind that's been keeping you entertained when you're not writing right now?Susan Wiggs 34:46 Absolutely. I'm always reading and I've always got a couple of books going - one on the nightstand and one in the living room and one wherever I happen to be. And right now some of my books reflect where I am in my life. I think I mentioned that my mom has moved here, she's 90, she's a bit high maintenance right now. So I'm reading. Let's see, I've got a stack here. I'm reading Aging in Place by Aaron D. Murphy. Not very interesting, except when you need it. But the other one that I just love, and I've read it before, but I'm rereading Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. Medicine and What Matters in the End. And then for light hearted reading, I have the new Mary Kay Andrews, Hello, Summer, was just published. And a good friend of mine, Mary Alice Monroe has a new book out called On Ocean Boulevard. And it's like the ultimate summer read. It looks like I haven't started it yet, but I'm looking forward to that one. I have a book here that is a memoir. Because one of the things that my husband does, he does a lot of things, he's a designer, but one thing that he's been doing is he's been renovating old houses. And he's not really a flipper because he renovates them beautifully and then sells them or rents them. But anyway, I'm very preoccupied with old houses these days. So I found this book House Lessons by Erica Baumeister, who's written some of my favorite books. She wrote a book called The School of Essential Ingredients that I loved. And this is a memoir of restoring an old house called House Lessons: Renovating a Life.Sarina Bowen 36:58 And then for my birthday my husband got me Untamed by Glennon Doyle, amazing, amazing memoir about a woman's very extraordinary journey.KJ Dell'Antonia 37:15 I'm in the middle of that one might now myself.Sarina Bowen 37:18 She's a wonderful writer and then I bought well because Father's Day is coming up and and Jerry is not my father, but his sons are probably going to forget. So I bought him the new Eric Larsen, The Splendid and the Vile, which is a history of Churchill during World War Two. And I just love Eric's books and Eric's a good friend of mine and so I tease him I say that he's everybody's father's favorite writer. You could always count on somebody's dad liking an Eric Larson book, just like you can always count on somebody's mom liking a Susan Wiggs book. And then two more on my nightstand. This one is a collection of stories called Sabrina and Kareena, there was a there's a lot of controversy about a big book that was out earlier this year called American Dirt. And it focused some attention on Latino writers or Latin ex-writers. And so I decided that I did not have enough on my shelf and so a bookseller recommended Sabrina and Kareena by Kali Fajardo-Anstine. But it won the National Book Award and the stories are just lovely. I love them. And then finally, I just started this morning over coffee The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid and If you haven't heard of her, you will soon because her book, which was called Daisy Jones and The Six is about to be a very big series on, I think Amazon Prime, or maybe Netflix, and quite, quite the big hit. And I adored that book as well. So I know I'm gonna like this new one. And you wonder with all these books that I'm reading, do I have time to write? No, I don't. Do I have a deadline? Yes, I do.KJ Dell'Antonia 39:26 We fully understand.Sarina Bowen 39:29 But you know what, reading books keeps the craft alive. As a writer, you read a book differently than just a reader. And I say just a reader with a lot of respect, but it's kind of like my husband's an apparel designer. And he can look at any garment and see what it took to make that garment and he knows a lot of technical things about it that the casual person wouldn't even know and I think the same can be said, of writing and it is a little harder for me and probably you guys to, to really get into a book. Just because we're also noticing things that are not supposed to be noticeable.KJ Dell'Antonia 40:14 Every so often I'll be like, Oh, I bet that was a major subplot at some point, there's a reason that that dog is a German Shepherd or whatever, you know, and but now there's not and you can go in and out of that mode, right? Well, so it I think rather than say anything that I'm reading, just because we have a great list here, I'm gonna just ask you one last question, which is - do you read fiction while you're writing it?Susan Wiggs 40:49 Always? Yes, I do.KJ Dell'Antonia 40:52 We do, too! So many people don't - or say they don't. Susan Wiggs 40:56 Um, I would probably go through withdrawal symptoms if I couldn't read fiction, and so for some reason, it's not a problem for me personally to distinguish what I'm writing from what I'm reading. And you know that I don't know if that's true for everybody. But it doesn't seem to be a problem for me. Maybe it's telling that one of my first things that I remember writing for publication was when I was in seventh grade, they decided to publish a book report that I had written in the newspaper because I was supposed to do a book report on Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. And I was so destroyed by the ending of that book that I rewrote the whole ending of the book, and that was my book report. So my seventh grade teacher thought that it was interesting enough that you know, she published it in the newspaper. So that was one of my first publishing credits. I was rewriting John Steinbeck. So, I don't know maybe you need maybe you need that level of arrogance to kind of push your way into publishing.KJ Dell'Antonia 42:06 I think that you predicted your own future. Well, we have to respect your time but we are so grateful that you came and did this. I think this was a fantastic conversation about writing. I enjoyed it so much. Thank you.Susan Wiggs 42:21 Thank you so much. I'd love talking shop with you guys. You're amazing.KJ Dell'Antonia 42:25 It's great. So for our listeners, you're definitely going to want to look for The Lost and Found Bookshop and also maybe take a look at The Oysterville Sewing Circle. So, Sarina you want to take us out with our with our always final saying?Sarina Bowen 42:56 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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

This episode springs from a question asked in the #AmWriting Facebook group (if you’re not in it, you should be): Sarina has talked about her decision to be independently published, but we’ve never heard from Jess and KJ about why they go the traditional route.We discuss the three things you should think about when making the Indie/Traditional call, why you need to think hard about airport bookstores and finding the print ratio—and the good and bad reasons for making this choice.#AmReading Sarina: Boyfriend Material by Alexis HallKJ: The Exit Strategy by Lainey CameronJess: The Mountains Wild by Sarah Stewart Taylor(listen to the #AmWriting episode with Sarah here)As we say every week—we’re so proud to be sponsored by Author Accelerator and Dabble. If you’re wondering—why Dabble and not Scrivener? For us, it’s that plotting tool and the intuitive way it works, but others have weighed in—check that out here with a little Dabble v. Scrivener scoop.And if listening to all of our conversations about book coaching has made you think, hey—that’s the career for me—then you’ll want to head to Author Accelerator’s BookCoaches.com to see how you can make that happen. Here’s what we don’t always say: Man we love recording the podcast. But every hour spent on it is an hour not writing! Our production costs are now covered by our lovely (and carefully chosen) sponsors, but our time in pulling it all together is supported by you, our listeners. We’d love it if you joined that team (if you’re not already on it!) Supporters get weekly #WriterTopFives like The Top Five (Free) Ways to Get Your Shiny New Book Cover in Front of People’s Eyeballs or #Minisodes like Don't Make the Same Mistakes Twice—and thanks to the magic of substack, those minisodes drop right into your pod-player once you’re set up. Want in? Click the button. KJ Dell'Antonia 0:00 Writers, it's KJ. The #AmWriting podcast is excited to tell you about our new sponsor, Dabble Writing software. We invited Dabble to join the #AmWriting team because we are in love with the plotting tools and intuitive interface. And I want to tell you something else I love about it, what they call the focus fade. I barely even noticed when it first started to happen, but any details that are open in the sidebars of your Dabble document fade away automatically as you write, leaving you with nothing but a beautiful clear space to work in until you need them and send your cursor in that direction, then they're back in a flash. It makes for a great distraction-free writing environment. Find out more and do a free trial at dabblewriter.com. Is it recording?Jess Lahey 0:47 Now it's recording.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:50 This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone trying to remember what I'm supposed to be doing.Jess Lahey 0:54 Alright, let's start over.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:55 Awkward pause. I'm gonna rustle some papers. Okay, now one, two, three.Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia. And this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is the podcast about writing all the things, fiction, nonfiction, books, essays, pitches, proposals long form, short form. In short, this is the podcast about sitting down and getting your work done.Jess Lahey 1:25 Hi, I'm Jess Lahey, and I am the author of The Gift of Failure and the upcoming The Addiction Inoculation, which will be out in April of 2021. And you can find my work in lots of places, including the Atlantic, The New York Times, and Washington Post. Sarina Bowen 1:39 And I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of 35 romance novels. You can always find my work at sarinabowen.com or wherever e-books are sold. KJ Dell'Antonia 1:52 I am KJ Dell'Antonia. I'm the author of the novel, The Chicken Sisters, which you heard it here first is now not coming out until December at the earliest. But that's okay. Really, totally fine, whatever. I'm also the author of How to Be a Happier Parent, the former editor of the New York Times' Motherlode blog, still sometimes a contributor there. And I'm just wrapping up a revision of a draft of my next (hopefully) novel. So that's what I'm doing. And I should say that I am not recording where I normally record because, you know, I lost the the officemate battle of of the the work at home universe.Jess Lahey 2:45 I know we have a topic today, but before we get to the topic, I just wanted to say, KJ mentioned that she just finished a draft. And it has struck me that I knew from the beginning from a long time ago that your deadline for that first draft of the next book was June 1. And it has been a crazy, crazy time. This was a self-imposed deadline. No one made you do this by this by this June 1 thing, and yet you hit it and I just I don't know if I'd had a chance to tell you this before but I was just so impressed that given everything that's going on and the fact that it was a self-imposed deadline, that you made itKJ Dell'Antonia 3:52 Well thank you. It probably should be said that it was not the first deadline. I was looking back at my bullet journal and noticing that in April, it had draft to Karen (that's my agent) as a goal. So it took at least an extra month beyond what I was hoping. But, I did get it done. I did get a draft to her. She's made some comments, which were extremely helpful. And I have done the hardest part of the revisions and I expect to have the revisions back to her this weekend. And then we shall see if it's time to try to sell it or time for me to just take another pass. Jess Lahey 4:37 It's exciting. It is super exciting.KJ Dell'Antonia 4:39 It is. I'm feeling really good about it. But you know, ask me tomorrow.Jess Lahey 4:43 Who wants to announce our topic today?KJ Dell'Antonia 5:02 We have an actual topic. This is how people know we're not a scripted podcast, we could be because we could have like this really smooth flow could be like, and Jess will say, and I can tell podcasts that are like that. And it isn't that I don't love them. It's that I'm too lazy, I think.Jess Lahey 5:19 They're very time intensive and I have to say from the beginning we knew what we wanted out of a podcast. This is what we wanted. So welcome to our world. KJ Dell'Antonia 5:29 Well, somebody asked on the Facebook group, I think and if you're not in our Facebook group, you totally should be. Someone said, 'We've heard Sarina discuss her decision to go indie, but we've never heard Jess and KJ, talk about their decision to go traditional.' And also, Sarina has been traditionally published in the past as well. So, we thought we'd just talked about that.Jess Lahey 6:00 There are very specific reasons, but it also challenges sort of the status quo, which, you know, get five years ago even, when Sarina started this, you know why you would choose to go traditional isn't a question anyone asked just because there wasn't the landscape that there is now. And we wouldn't have had our amazing role model of Sarina Bowen to look at at the time. But I mean, you're so good at it. The nice thing about having you as a friend is I don't ever say she makes it look easy, you do make it look easy, but I know how much work you put into this. And it's a mind boggling amount of work to do self publishing well, and to do it the way you do it. So that's part of the equation for me, but I love the fact that we can even ask this question now of, you know, why do you go traditional versus self publishing because a couple of years ago it would have been a really clear cut decision.Sarina Bowen 7:02 That's true. I mean, I knew people in 2014, 2013, who were turning down traditional contracts for self publishing. But that was a super rare thing to do. And those people, you know, had extraordinary circumstances and extraordinary insight that, you know, most of us didn't have. And if you go back 10 years, the traditional route was always the right choice. And now the landscape has changed so much that it is sometimes the right choice. But now there's a more interesting decision matrix associated with with who goes traditional and who does not.Jess Lahey 7:51 Well, and I remember, about 10 years ago, there was some story of a woman who had a I can't remember what her name is now, but she had, I think, a fantasy series that she had self published. And the big success story was that she was able to get a three book deal with traditional publishing so she no longer had to slum it over in self publishing. And that was seen as a huge success story. But that's not the case these days. I mean, there are a lot (especially in fantasy or romance) that would look at that and say, 'Well, why would I go over to traditional publishing if I have the platform, and she was very successful, which was the reason she got the deal in traditional publishing.Sarina Bowen 8:33 I do remember that story. And honestly, the reason that it was such a big story is because the numbers attached to it, I believe she had a seven figure deal on that book.Jess Lahey 8:47 Yeah. Well, I brought up the fantasy and romance thing. And Sarina, could you address why I brought those two categories up?Sarina Bowen 8:55 Absolutely. So I have identified sort of three major ways of thinking about an author's approach to self versus traditional. And I feel like the one that you're referencing has to do with gatekeeper's audiences. So romance and fantasy readers tend to select their books right on their phones from the Amazon store or from the Apple books app. And they're not really using gatekeepers for book recommendations. Maybe they're even using Goodreads for this or some sort of crowd-sourced decision making process about how to pick their next genre fiction read. And so it's those places where readers have stopped looking at who the publisher of a book is, where independently published books have been so successful. So one of the first questions you're going to ask yourself when you think about this question is, am I in a gatekeeper genre or niche. So if school librarians would be primary in spreading the word about your book, then you know maybe self-publishing is not for you. If you are in an area of publishing where trade reviews are going to really matter, then traditional publishing is the way to go if you want that starred review from Publishers Weekly because you have an informed decision about how that is going to help your book get seen then yes. So also, if you want to be in a big box store, if your book really is perfect for the end cap at Target, and you know you fit right there. Well, the only way to get into that big box store on the end cap at Target is to be published by a pretty big publisher. So that's a tricky bargain, as it turns out, because I had a traditionally published book with Penguin more than 10 years ago. And it did not get picked up by Target. They told me it was seen as too East Coast. So, I missed the end cap at Target based on the topic in a way that I couldn't really have foreseen. But you have to be fairly far along in your decision making before you'll learn if if that was gonna work out for you. So you know that's difficult. But and the last bit of this is award dominated sectors. Like if you write poetry, or short stories are your mode of expression, then awards and shiny stickers on covers are going to matter to who and how many people see your book. And so that's another gatekeeper audience.Jess Lahey 12:13 Well, and then there's this in between space too, that's really interesting. Like, I still write in education. And there's an in between space of these sort of independent publishers within education. So there's sort of traditional publishing and then there are these like smaller independent publishing, which are kind of self-pub, but not really. Or started out as self-pub and then they became something bigger. And then there's self-pub, self-pub, which is what you have been doing. And I think that that's a really good point that understanding who your audience is going to be, who your intended audience is, really will help you determine if self-pub or traditional pub is the right place for you. And for me, I was writing a book that was really meant for a sort of general audience, it was nonfiction. To do nonfiction in the self-pub world is really hard. I haven't seen a ton of examples that have done really well. And I get sent a lot of self-published books in the education. KJ Dell'Antonia 13:16 I think it's extremely platform dependent. Jess Lahey 13:20 Yeah, that's true. KJ Dell'Antonia 13:21 So if you are Marie Forleo, you've got this massive audience. And I would say that if you had been wanting to self publish your second book, you would have approached the first book.... You would have had to really intensify your email address gathering and your speaking to that audience directly. Like you could probably have set yourself up better to do that. But you would have needed to think about it like from the minute that your book took off, which of course it totally did. You will have needed to be going okay, I mean, how am I gonna collect these people? How am I gonna put them into a pie that is my pie and not the publisher's pie.Sarina Bowen 14:06 You know, there's one kind of nonfiction that actually does really well with self-pub, but it's probably invisible to you. And that is highly prescriptive books.Jess Lahey 14:22 I thought you were gonna say highly prescriptive business books because I was gonna say, those I have seen and that have been very, very successful self-pub.KJ Dell'Antonia 14:33 I was gonna guess that, because if it's like How to Raise Sheep on a New Zealand Sheepholder's Farm When You Are Actually from Norway, you know ten people might buy it, but you're gonna find those ten people.Sarina Bowen 14:49 Yeah, and I'm sure there's people just raking in the money on highly prescriptive nonfiction that is very trend based. But as a writer, that's not really interesting to me. But let's just say you were a CrossFit guy, like at the moment when CrossFit got really big, and all you wanted to do was write about this niche, new little method for working out to like minded individuals, that could have been an amazing self-pub project just based on finding those people in a place where a traditional publisher might have looked at you and said, cross what?Jess Lahey 15:36 Yeah, but then you need people in that field, in that industry, in that hobby, interest, whatever, talking about your book a lot and recommending it to other people within that. Sarina Bowen 15:49 Because I think if it's a very prescriptive thing that people are searching for on Google, then you don't, but if you wanted to write a book about the guy who started CrossFit, then that's different.Jess Lahey 16:07 That's a good point.Sarina Bowen 16:08 Yeah. So one way to look at this decision is to think about an airport bookstore. And everything in an airport bookstore is in a print-centric market, basically. And a lot of people haven't stared quite as hard at airport bookstores as I have, but there's very specific stuff in there.Jess Lahey 16:31 Oh, I stare really hard. And I've wondered a lot about that rack that sits at the edge of the store halfway out in the terminal aisle, that's very prescriptive, either books about faith or books about business. Like I've never heard of any of these books. And they're like, over a quarter of a million copies sold. I've always wondered about those.Sarina Bowen 16:55 They're prescriptive about your mind, but not about like how to rebuild your car. You know what I mean? Like they're practical in like a meta sense, like the big expansive thoughts you want to think about when you're sitting on that plane. And sometimes the decision of who should publish your book is complicated by the author not allowing herself to be honest about whether her book would fit on that shelf. And that's where all the difficulty comes from.Jess Lahey 17:36 Well, the airport bookstore is frustrating to me simply because when you look at what's for sale in many of the smaller ones, it's really only the books that are on bestseller lists in the top, you know, 10 positions.Sarina Bowen 17:48 Yeah, and there's no genre fiction in an airport bookstore, even though people read genre fiction on planes and the reason for that is that you have to think about like how print-centric is your market. So, if you are writing in a very print-centric niche, then traditional publishing will always be a better deal for you but there are different reasons to be print-centric. Like if your desired reader is 12 years old. That's a very print-centric reader in any genre. If you're writing a cookbook, or a workbook, or something where it's actually useful to have this thing on the counter in front of you, again, print-centric. Older readers, like mysteries with older characters in a demographic that has been slower to adopt e-books, also print-centric. And sometimes the only way to find this information is to ask an author who writes in a genre like yours - what is your print ratio. And I'm always surprised that authors don't know their print ratio. Like, the Penguin Random House portal makes this very easy to see. If you log in and look at your numbers. I can tell you that Rookie Move in its first year of publication was 84% e-books and 16% print. And when I saw those numbers, I said, Oh, geez, I should have self-published these books. Because the math just works out that way. But if I had been writing in market women's fiction for Penguin, instead, it might have said 55% print, 45% e-book, and then that would have been a totally different decision matrix. KJ Dell'Antonia 19:41 I want to talk for a minute about a couple of author reasons for doing both, for example, Gretchen Rubin, obviously, a hugely popular traditionally author of books about how people find happiness. She self-published a book that was basically all of her emails (I could get I could be getting what it is wrong, but essentially everything she had emailed to her subscriber list every year because people kept asking her for it. And very few of us have that kind of audience, but I thought that was sort of an interesting one. And then there's another author and I'm looking for her name. So she's a romance writer, and she's British, and her romances are traditionally published, but her books about riding horses, which fall into that sort of sporty, prescriptive category that Sarina was talking about, are self published. So I think that's interesting. Yeah, I mean, they're really fun, but you know, I've read them for a very specific reason, which is that I have an interest, it's exactly what you're talking about. If you're passionate about training your horse in a non-aggressive way, then you're tend towards wanting to read everything you can by people who have already done that, and you don't care how it was published.Sarina Bowen 21:27 Well, if you think about, if I were to write a book about horse training, and I could say to myself, you know, that's not an airport bookstore book.KJ Dell'Antonia 21:44 Tanya Kindersley and her horse books are in KU, you but I don't think her romances are. Yeah, that's not a book for an airport bookstore because that's just not what you're thinking about when you're getting on a plane.Sarina Bowen 22:00 So I also, I tried to make a list of good reasons to go traditional and bad reasons to go traditional and good reasons to go independent and bad reasons. And of course, the way this works is that the bad reasons are much more fun. Okay, so let's start with bad reasons to self publish your book. Bad Reason number one - I'm tired of querying agents, and I'm feeling very impatient.KJ Dell'Antonia 22:34 Oh, yeah, that's a very bad reason. Jess Lahey 22:39 Well, the impatient one is a big one, like, Oh, this would go so much faster if I could just push it out there now, I wouldn't have to wait for a year and a half or whatever to get my book out. That's a biggie.Sarina Bowen 22:49 It's true. And we are all impatient. I mean, I'm just as impatient as the next guy. So that's, that's a bad reason. Another bad reason is I haven't been honest with myself about the quality of this piece or its market readiness. And when people look down on self published books, they're really looking at that. Jess Lahey 23:12 Like I said, I get sent a lot of them and they just needed an editor. They just needed to go through another editing process. They needed a better spell check. You know, that kind of thing. And then that's what leads people to say, oh, self published books stink. I'm not going to read them. And that's simply because there are a lot out there from people who were impatient just pushed them out early.Sarina Bowen 23:37 And even the people that say I'm never reading a self published book have probably read one and didn't know it? Because if it's done right, you know it you don't even notice. KJ Dell'Antonia 23:49 Yeah, if I find myself going, Oh, who published this? That's a bad sign. I never ask that about something that's really good.Sarina Bowen 23:59 Sure. Well, my last bad reason to independently publish was I have unreasonable expectations about the discoverability of my book. So, sometimes people just want to write that book that's half horse training, half memoir. And the reason they haven't found a place for it with a traditional publisher is that they keep getting rejections that sounds like this. 'Well, this is fascinating. We're not sure how to sell it.' It's so tempting to write your story and then say, oh, anyone would read this. Anyone could enjoy it. But the truth is, that same person is super picky about their own reading, right? And so it's it's so hard to really be tough on yourself and say, 'Well, actually, not everyone is going to want to read this.' And it belongs to a highly specific audience. And so if you end up with a beautiful book that you're proud of, but it's really hard to define that audience, well then your next trick is you have to get busy defining it, whether that helps your traditional publisher or your eventual self publishing.Jess Lahey 25:22 And sometimes that can happen by looking at other books (if you can find them) other books that are out there that have sold within that audience, because occasionally what will happen is in a proposal, like in both of my proposals, I've put competing titles in there and my agent Laurie has come back and said, yeah, we need to explain why you included this book because it only sold 800 copies. And so if you're trying to say that there's room in this market, because, look, there's this other book, but it did really poorly. You need to differentiate your book and explain why more people would want to buy it than that book. Sarina Bowen 26:04 So bad reasons to go traditional. Are you ready? Oh, okay, well, bad reason number one. My agent will be upset with me if I don't accept this deal. Bad reason number two, I'm afraid to ask my publisher or my agent to break out the math for is this a good deal for me. Bad Reason number three, there's a stigma attached to self publishing.Jess Lahey 26:54 But don't you also think you have to say there's a stigma attached to self publishing in this category. Sarina Bowen 27:03 I actually have the asterisk and I was about to say that, unless you're trying to reach an audience that is sensitive to that stigma. Bad reason number four, this deal stinks but they'll pay me more next time. And that one's tricky, of course. Because if you're offered no advance, which happens a lot lately, then your publisher has no skin in the game. And that's a really tough decision.Jess Lahey 27:34 Yeah, not good for when it comes to marketing, because there's no impetus to invest in the marketing and publicity for that book.Sarina Bowen 27:43 Yep. And the last bad reason to go traditional is I need a publisher's validation. Who doesn't want to be wanted?Jess Lahey 27:55 Well, and it's tough because, you know, when writers get together and talk, they ask who each other's publisher is and you know, it's still a loaded conversation.KJ Dell'Antonia 28:05 In our genres they do. In Sarina's genre I think they probably don't. You're probably already kind of vaguely aware, right.Sarina Bowen 28:14 Yeah, but in romance, where it's we're like the canary in the coal mine market for independent publishing. And when I meet an author who has a long string of traditionally published titles, what I think about that author is, she must be awesome at writing. Because if you're not, you're going to be dropped on your head by your publisher pretty fast, right? But when I meet somebody who is very successful at self publishing, I think she must be a great writer, and she definitely knows a lot about the market because self publishing your work forces you to learn a ton about what readers want and how they make decisions. Whereas in traditional publishing, it might suit your life better to be published by someone who isn't you, but you will not learn as much. You just simply can't. Because a lot of those decisions are made out of your viewpoint.Jess Lahey 29:16 Yeah, and it's a lot of work to do all that stuff and to learn all that stuff. I mean, it's a lot of work. I guess the other thing you have to think about along those lines is you have to do a lot of work that does take away from your writing time. And if you hate it, I mean, that's the other thing. You really like the business stuff and you like analyzing markets and you like figuring those things out. I don't know that I want to do any of that. And so that's another part of the decision, too. Is is what do you like doing about this and what do you hate doing about this and is it going to drive you crazy and make you sad to have to do that work? You know, the background stuff, the marketing, and the business, and all of that stuff.Sarina Bowen 30:04 Definitely. And with regard to romance, because we've already established that that's a perfectly good market to independently publish in. After I started doing it myself, I flipped quickly to well, everyone should do this, because I saw the ways in which that it allowed me to cut the line and build a readership faster than traditionally published romance authors were able to do because their publisher held on to all the information, like who's reading the book, and what's their email address. So I was able to more quickly build a readership that really belong to me. But then as the the work of self publishing ate my life in an increasingly aggressive way, I softened on my stance of you know, what might work for me might really not work for someone else. If I had a day job at the Pentagon, like one of my colleagues does, then self publishing would just be like having a third job. Everybody has to make her own decision.Jess Lahey 31:13 Yeah, like I love the PR and marketing stuff, but some of the things that you do and are so good at and love because that's the money stuff and the numbers, you love that stuff. And it's just not my not my bag. KJ Dell'Antonia 31:30 I definitely did not think about self publishing the novel that I sold exactly because I didn't really, I always intended to go out with it. Because my position was just so good for going out as a traditionally published author and getting a decent advance. But what I sort of always had in the back of my mind was if this career as a traditionally public hopefully book a year, author of women's fiction doesn't work out the way that I want it to, I have your model of doing it. But what you do is different and I know that. Like I would have to be able to write books more quickly and develop the audience. If I wanted to do it like that, I would do it like that. I don't know if that makes any sense. I mean, because, because I love what you do. But I didn't think it was quite what I wanted to do right now. And I don't know that I could either. Your success is pretty astonishing. Sarina Bowen 33:04 I know what you mean. And the word astonishing comes to me sometimes too, when I do consider the luck involved, and timing, and all kinds of things like that.Jess Lahey 33:16 Well, the word astonishing comes into it for me, mostly because from when I first started looking at whether I was going to get traditionally published, I could put my arms around that, I knew what that looked like. And we call it traditional publishing because it's traditional, but until Sarina started doing it, I had no idea what that looked like. It wasn't something I could even envision because I didn't know what was involved and when you can't envision something, it seems completely overwhelming. But now that I've been watching Sarina do this, it is something I can get my arms around and it's much more of an option to me mentally if there isn't all of this sort of mystery out there about what's involved. So I think very few writers have someone to look to that have done this and can break it down for you and show you exactly what it is and exactly how it works. And I think that's part of why people tend to think about traditional publishing first is simply because it's traditional, and you can look and there are a million books out there on how to do it. But I have to assume there are a lot of self-pub books about how to do self publishing. And if you start googling them, you will find them and they are very niche books, as you said about giving very practical advice about how to do a very specific thing.KJ Dell'Antonia 34:41 You know, there are books that if I wrote them, I would totally sell. If I wrote that natural horse training memoir, or a dog training memoir, or something like that, I would totally self publish that. I'd be doing it for a different reason and a different audience. Jess Lahey 35:09 Well, and the other thing is, it has to do with knowing who the people in the landscape are again, too. Like, one of the things that Sarina had to do is figure out who's who in the romance publishing world. And now you know who's who in the natural horsemanship world and knowing those who those people are and who to reach out to and who to advertise to and do your PR with. That's another big hurdle that makes it more comprehensible to you that you would do the self-pub thing.Alright. Sarina, you were the one who had the wonderful list, have we hit everything that you wanted to talk about?Sarina Bowen 36:02 We have pretty much and I would just like to leave it with this idea. And that's that every author who's contemplating publishing at all, should really do their level best to define their own audience. So that could be something like the audience for this book is nursing students, or ComicCon attendees, or fans of James Patterson, just the more granular and precise you can be about defining the audience for your work, the easier it is to convince a publisher to take you on or to just figure out how you're going to sell the darn thing if you publish it yourself. Jess Lahey 36:46 And we've talked about this in book proposal writing, too, that saying, oh, everyone will want to read this book is like the first big mistake. So yeah, that granular look is important for traditional publishing, too. So you're gonna have to think about that no matter what.Sarina Bowen 37:00 That's right, some of these decisions and self honesty exercises are going to be undertaken no matter what decision you make. Jess Lahey 37:11 I love that you called it self honesty decision. That was really good. I like that because that's what it is, you know, that's absolutely what it is getting real about who's gonna read your book.KJ Dell'Antonia 37:23 Fellow writers, before we get into what we've been reading, let me flag for you the big message of this episode. If you're going to indie pub, you better be honest with yourself about what you've written. If you've got some doubts about your ability to do that, and who doesn't, a book coach might be the answer, both to help you assess what you've done, the strengths and the weaknesses, and to figure out what else if anything you might want to do before grabbing one of those self publishing how-to books we talked about and getting out into the market. Author Accelerator book coaches know their stuff when it comes to both traditional and indie publishing to find one that's right for you head to authoraccelerator.com.Jess Lahey 38:07 Speaking about reading books, let's do that part. Let's talk about what we've been reading because oh my gosh, I've been reading such good stuff.Sarina Bowen 38:15 I've got one. I am reading Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall, who is a man. And he is always hilarious and I recommend him wholeheartedly.Jess Lahey 38:31 Ooh, that sounds like fun. What do you got KJ? KJ Dell'Antonia 38:33 I also have a fun one. I have just finished The Exit Strategy by Lainey Cameron. It is a super fast moving story of two really go-getter women in Silicon Valley, which always fascinates me in and of itself, who discover that they are both - one is married to and the other is engaged to the same really, really rotten con artist. So it's got overtones. I mean, it's not like he's having an affair, it's like full on con artist stuff. So they're sort of race to get away from him and out from under him and they have to work together on something, it's just super fast, and entertaining, and kind of a juicy read, and I really enjoyed it. So that's The Exit Strategy from Lainey Cameron, and it just came out last week I think.Jess Lahey 39:32 But speaking of listening to things because that's how I've been doing just about everything lately because I've been outside a lot. I have been listening to Sara Stewart Taylor's The Mountains Wild and it just came out this week, the week we're recording, and actually we'll link to it in the show notes, but we did interview Sara Stewart Taylor early on in the process, we interviewed her about mystery writing, because that's what she does. And she's really good at it. And she has a whole bunch of books that I have read of hers. But this Mountains Wild book is really special. And the reason I want to talk about the audio version is that when you do an audio book and you need to find a narrator that can do other languages, lots of accents, I'm assuming it's a really tough get and the woman who narrates Sara's book is fantastic. She gets the Gaelic, she does the Dublin accent, the Northern Ireland accent, the Long Island accent, and she does male, and female and there's no moment where I'm saying, Oh, this isn't a full cast of characters, this is one person pretending to be lots of people and it's really, really good. Sarah's writing is beautiful. And the audio narration is spectacular. And so congratulations, Sara Stuart Taylor on the release of your book. This is what's fun about this podcast, I think is having this long view like, you know, we interview them early on when they first got their book deal, and then come back to them when the book is actually out. So anyway, I'm proud of Sara. It's really good. Alright. I think that's it for this week.KJ Dell'Antonia 41:28 I think that's it for this week. I want to remind everyone to sign up for our weekly email with the shownotes because that is also how you will get all the book recommendations with their links, as well as links to our fantastic sponsors, and links to our Facebook group and links to everything that we talk about. Plus, it's your little announcement that there's a fat new episode waiting for you in your podcast player. And if you want to go one step further, you can support the podcast financially. And as a result, get weekly mini episodes or writer top fives that are super good and super fun. And those mini episodes also drop right into your podcast player once you support the podcast, which is a fun little trick that our friends at Substack have figured out.Jess Lahey 42:22 In fact, I'm recording one today. I love recording those little mini episodes. They're really fun. And if you want to, actually, we mentioned that today's topic came straight out of our #AmWriting Facebook group and we keep really tight reins on. There's no mean stuff and people are nice and supportive and it's moderated and it's just a bunch of writers supporting each other and it's a really fun place to hang out. And if you ask any questions there who knows it may be a topic on a future show.KJ Dell'Antonia 42:54 This is true and you can find all of those links at amwriting podcast.com. Jess Lahey 43:01 All right, everyone. This is it, until next week, 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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

You listen to podcasts. You love podcasts. (Perhaps we’re assuming here, but after all, we ARE a podcast.) And you’re a writer, with books or articles or ideas or other projects you want to get out into the world. Which just might mean you’ve imagined yourself as a guest on a podcast, sharing your work. (It’s the writer version of the sportscaster doing an imaginary play-by-play while a kid shoots hoops—we imagine ourselves being interviewed by our favorite podcasters.)This week’s guest, Lauren Passell, can help with that. She loves podcasts (she even created a weekly email that’s essentially a love letter to the big, the small, the great and the weird in the podcast world: Podcast, the Newsletter). And she loves writers. And she loves connecting writers with podcasts, so much so that she’s turned it into her business: TINK Media, a PR company specializing in podcasts. We talk about creating a podcast-worthy story, finding the right podcasts to pitch, perfecting those pitches and making your voice a part of the podcast world. It’s an amazing and useful episode. I think you’re gonna love it.Links from the podSubscribe to Podcast the Newsletter and take the quizListenNotes.comPlayer.fmPocketcastStitcher[Castro]Friday Black, a short story collection by Nana Kwame Adjei-BrenyahThe United States of Anxiety: I Did Not Watch the Video#AmReading/#AmListeningJess: Longform CBC Podcasts: Finding Cleo, Someone Knows SomethingKJ: How Do You Write with Rachael HerronLauren: Threshholds, produced by LitHubArticles of Interest, from 99% InvisibleThanks to everyone who supports the podcast financially. To join that team, click the button below:But it’s all good. The pod is free as it always has and always will be. 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 every time there’s a new episode.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.Don’t forget to check out our new sponsor, Dabble. We’re in love with its plotting and organizational tools and its write-anywhere availability, and we think you’ll like it too. And if you want to hear more from Jennie Nash, founder of Author Accelerator, she’s been on three great podcasts of late (and KJ has listened to them all, because listening to Jennie makes her want to write): Marginally, How Do You Write and Reading and Writing. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

This week we talk to Maria Konnikova about her new book, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win. After a series of devastating health and financial setbacks, Konnikova, a former New Yorker staffer whose other books include Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock and The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It…Every Timeset out to understand how luck, skill and human behavior contribute to the trajectory of our lives. Though she’d never played a hand of poker in her life, she convinced Poker Hall of Fame inductee Erik Seidel to become her coach. Konnikova quit her job at the New Yorker and set aside a year to learn poker as a way to master her luck and her life. One career in professional poker and more than $300,000 later, Konnikova found at least some of the answers she sought. Links from the Podcast:Long Form Storytelling, The Grift PodcastSlate daily podcast, The Gist#AmReadingMaria: Weird by Olga KhazanKJ: The Authenticity Project by Claire PooleyJess: Sunny Days by David KampThanks to everyone who supports the podcast financially. To join that team, click the button below:But it’s all good. The pod is free as it always has and always will be. 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 every time there’s a new episode. Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

This week, the How to Launch a Book series continues with everyone’s favorite: book launching on social media. Twitter. Instagram. Canva. PicMonkey. Crello. Pinterest. Linked In. Head blowing up yet? We talk about planning your launch social media, how to use social media and image-creating apps to share and promote and why you shouldn’t feel one bit like you’re talking about your book too much when you’re launching it into the world.We also fall apart a bit, here and there, because these are falling apart times, and we feel it.#AmReadingKJ: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia OwensJess: The Secret History by Donna TarttHow to Be an AntiRacist by Ibram X KendiMiddlesex by Jeffrey EugenidesSarina: Pale Rider Laura SpinneyDon’t forget to check in with our sponsor, Author Accelerator. They’ve got a special book coaching class happening in June on coaching historical fiction, which I would love to be a fly on the wall for—as well as introductory and master classes on book coaching, and, as always, the ability to match you with just the right book coach to help you move your work forward.As for us—we send out a MiniSode or a Writer Top Five every Monday to our supporters. Your support pays for the production and transcription of the podcast, and is the reason why, this week, you don’t also hear my conversation with the child who walked in while we’re recording. Also why there’s music and a fun opening. Because we hired a professional, because it’s good to do these things right. So thanks for chipping in—and if you’d like to join us, click the button.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:01 Hey writers, it's KJ. This week we are continuing our book launch series and Sarina is schooling me on getting all my social media ready for a fiction launch. At our sponsor, Author Accelerator, they're offering some different schooling this month, June of 2020 with classes in book coaching. There are introductory classes, master classes, and (this fascinates me) a special class this month on coaching historical fiction. I love that they're getting so specific, and I would love to listen in on that one. If you're intrigued find out more at authoraccelerator.com. Is it recording?Jess Lahey 0:40 Now it's recording. KJ Dell'Antonia 0:43 This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone and try to remember what I'm supposed to be doing.Jess Lahey 0:47 Alright, let's start over.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:48 Awkward pause. I'm gonna rustle some papers. Okay, now one, two, three. Hi, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting, the podcast about writing all the things, short things, long things, fiction, nonfiction, essays, book proposals, pitches. In short, this is, as I say every week, the podcast about settling down and getting your writing work done.Jess Lahey 1:18 This is Jess Lahey I am the author of The Gift of Failure and the forthcoming The Addiction Inoculation. And you can find my work at the New York Times, and the Washington Post, and The Atlantic, and various other spots.Sarina Bowen 1:29 I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of 35 romance novels and the most recent one is called Sure Shot.KJ Dell'Antonia 1:35 I am KJ Dell'Antonia, author of the novel The Chickens Sisters coming out July of 2020 and the book How to Be a Happier Parent out in paperback now, as well as the former editor of the Motherlode blog and column at the New York Times where I am still a contributor. That's who we are. And this week, we're continuing our how to launch a book series, in which we sort of try to cover all the different arenas of things that you can get ready for before your book launches. We've done Amazon, Bookbub, and Goodreads. We've done websites. And now we're going to turn our attention to social media.Sarina Bowen 2:22 That beast called social media.Jess Lahey 2:24 Such a powerful tool sometimes. Well, and I know for a fact that when I talk to authors who are sort of contemplating the social media sort of for the first time in a professional context, they're just so overwhelmed. They're like, do I have to do all of it? So Sarina, do we have to do all of it? Do we have to do Pinterest, and Instagram, and Facebook, and do we have to be good at all of it? Because that's the thing that seems to overwhelm authors.Sarina Bowen 2:52 Absolutely. You will find it overwhelming because it is overwhelming and you don't have to do it all. You absolutely have my permission not to do all of it. So, of course, everybody has their favorites. So you really need to ask yourself two questions. And Jess, you've been super articulate about this, too. Like, the two questions really are, which platform is your favorite or which platform makes you hate it the least? And the corollary question, which is almost as important, which platform is your people?Jess Lahey 3:45 Yeah, where's your audience?Sarina Bowen 3:47 Yeah. And you and I have discovered that our answers to this question are like 180 degrees different, whereas you talk to educators all the time on Twitter, and my audience is really on Facebook and Instagram.Jess Lahey 4:04 Yep. How did you figure that out? I mean, for me, it was fairly obvious from the get go because I think I started learning about personal learning networks and realizing, oh, that's where all the teachers were. And I was using it for teaching. But then, of course, when I started writing something that was about teaching, it was sort of a natural fit for me. But did you have to go looking and sort of figuring out where all those people were for you?Sarina Bowen 4:28 I really did have to pay attention because there are a lot of authors on Twitter. But at one point, somebody said to me, Twitter is where I go to talk to other authors. But I reached my readers on Facebook and I thought, okay, well, that feels a little bit familiar. But I'm a really analytical person and I like data. So of course, I've been using all of these sites, at least partly, for kind of a long time. And I realized that my Squarespace website (and every website does this in some capacity, you just have to find it, but it has really good data about this) it's called traffic sources is the page that I look at. And under social media in the last 30 days, you can see, or maybe I'm at seven days here. But over some period of recent time, I have gotten 816 clicks from Facebook, 158 clicks from Goodreads, and 78 clicks from Twitter, and 18 clicks from Pinterest. So that tells a really clear story immediately about what's working. And of course, we post fewer links on Instagram and my Instagram shows up on this other page because I use a program for this and I'm getting like 200 off Instagram.Jess Lahey 5:54 Wait, what do you mean when you say that your Instagram is showing up on another page and use an app for that?Sarina Bowen 6:01 Well, let's let's just dive right into Instagram because lots of authors love it. So anyway, what I was trying to say is that you, you can be given permission to cut one of these out if you can see in hard numbers where people are finding you. And of course, a lot of the links that I post on social media do not lead back to my website. So this is just a little subset. But I still find it quite telling and it gave me permission to walk away from Twitter without really looking back and I actually changed my account there. It says now that it's a Sarina Bowen update account infrequently monitored, because I'm not part of the conversation. And it basically says, this is a promo account, you know, do with that what you will, I don't expect to have a grand, wonderful following there, because I have chosen not to pursue it.Jess Lahey 6:57 You know, it's really interesting. I have a column up in TweetDeck - one for you and one for KJ, because I like to keep tabs on what people are saying about my peeps. And occasionally I'll find stuff before you guys see it. But what I often see are cross posts from Goodreads with a tweet saying what percentage they are through him via Goodreads. And it's really clear that people are letting Goodreads cross post to Twitter for them. And that's the majority of what I see from readers regarding your books, which was a really interesting realization to me that it's sort of not that the readers are necessarily there, but that they're letting Goodreads cross post for them.Sarina Bowen 7:39 Yeah. And can we just back up to the part where you said you have a column on TweetDeck, but that column is a special thing. That's a search column, right?Jess Lahey 7:48 Right, right. Meaning I have a search column with quotes around your full name and a column for you on @SarinaBowenUpdates or whatever your handle is. Just because I like to just know what's happening with my people. Sarina Bowen 8:05 That's amazing. Jess Lahey 8:08 It's fun, I like to see what people are reading of your stuff. And you know, it's always fun to report back that when people are saying nice things.Sarina Bowen 8:15 You know what, at one point I had a column like that. But I found that I didn't always want to know all the things that were showing up there. Jess Lahey 8:26 That's probably true. I've seen some things that I didn't necessarily want to see. But that's also how I found out about that thing where I was my one of my essays was on the SAT, because people weren't tagging my handle on Twitter, they were just saying mean things, and making memes about me using my name and sometimes misspelling it, but either way, that's how I found out that I was on the SAT and that all the high schoolers in the country hated me that year.Sarina Bowen 9:05 We're still on Twitter, so let's let's finish Twitter because I want to know something that I'm not good at on Twitter because like I said, I don't use it that much. But how do you use hashtags to find your audience?Jess Lahey 9:19 Well, it depends. I use hashtags on Twitter for education stuff, simply because they're chats that happen, like more chats than I can even tell you. If you do a Google search on education hashtag Twitter chats you will get this table that has hundreds of Twitter chats. So occasionally, I'll use them for things like you know, I need a particular book for kid a particular age and then I'll hashtag a couple of reading or teaching literacy hashtags, but I actually don't use hashtags very often on Twitter. It's not so much my jam.KJ Dell'Antonia 10:03 It's not like Instagram, there's not a lot of room for them. You just use a hashtag, unless you're joking.Jess Lahey 10:10 There are exceptions, though. I mean, like if a big education conference is going on, I'll throw up a column for that education conference and follow people at that conference so that I can see what's going on, and find out what people are talking about, and things like that. But for the most part, yeah, I don't really use hashtags. I don't use hashtags the way people use hashtags in Instagram. It seems to be a bigger deal in Instagram than it is on Twitter, at least for me, that may not be the case for everyone. But definitely for me, hashtags are not as much a thing on Twitter.KJ Dell'Antonia 10:42 I think that the reason to use them on Twitter tends to be because your being part of a conversation is around a hashtag. So it's often political, but not always. I mean, that's why. Whereas on Instagram, because people rarely reshare because Instagram makes it hard, I will follow certain hashtags. And then from those hashtags, I might find new accounts to follow. Because for example, I'm actively looking to follow people who write about the kinds of books that I write. So I follow a hashtag for that. I don't do that in Twitter for a lot of reasons. One of which is that I just don't go on Twitter anymore.Jess Lahey 11:30 I absolutely just misspoke though. Because in looking for this new audience for the new book, I actually do have a list around people in recovery and then I also do have a column for hashtag recovery or hashtag sobriety or hashtag sober so that I misspoke. Because I don't know the audience as well in the recovery world as I do in the education world, I do occasionally go mining and looking around just to see who's who, who's talking about what, who's reputable, who's not, sort of who's in the conversation, and those hashtags can occasionally help me access that.KJ Dell'Antonia 12:09 And I think the thing for Twitter is that if you're a nonfiction author, especially, but it probably works in fiction as well, is that you can end up in a conversation with an expert that you might want to reach or a fellow author that you might want to reach because if they're putting out a tweet, and you reply to it, it's just different, then they might tweet back. And because they're actually actively on there, well depending on whether or not they've scheduled their tweets, but usually the kind of thing you'd reply to isn't that, so there's an opportunity for connection there that's a little bit different, but I don't know. It's sort of more general. It's not a lot to do with launching your book. Jess Lahey 12:57 Well, for me though, the one thing I do though is if I find someone who's in my demographic squarely, someone who I really am interested in following on Twitter, and who I think really follow some interesting people, whether it's recovery or education, I will go through who they follow and sort of say, oh, look, there's some people I don't follow and follow those people. So that can be really useful too, if you're new to a field. Going and looking. For example, if you were really interested in like COVID stuff, and PPE, there's this woman, Dr. Megan Ranney, who's out there in the media a lot and Megan would be a great person to go follow and then look at who she follows because she probably follows a really reputable group of people within that field. So that's a really great thing to do, too. For example, if you were writing your first novel, and it happened to be a women's fiction novel, go look to see who like Jennifer Wiener or KJ Dell'Antonia or Jodi Picoult, who do they follow? And obviously, there might be some interesting people for you to follow in there as well. So that's been really useful for me.KJ Dell'Antonia 14:05 But to specifically bring us back to book launches, I will say one thing that I did on Twitter with my nonfiction book launch, and I think Jess may have done some of the same thing, is to tweet everyone I quote in the book. So when I was launching my nonfiction, I prepared in advance a bunch of tweets that were like, 'Thanks for your help with How to Be a Happier Parent, Jessica Lahey, it's out now.' They were a little better than that and I had those all revved up and ready to go and either scheduled or not, so that's a way to let people that were helpful to you know, so that hopefully they will share. So that's one way to use Twitter. And another way is to ask other people to tweet for you.Jess Lahey 14:50 Right. And, you know, our groups of friends can be relied on to really boost us if we need them. But it's been really fun watching for a friend. Like when Catherine Newman's book was first up on Amazon, and you know, it'll be out by the time this podcast goes up. She did that. She said, I want to thank @JessLahey for supporting me in this book by blurbing it and blah, blah, blah. And that sort of reminds me, oh, yeah, I really support this book I want to help. So you're right, that's a really good way to do it as well.KJ Dell'Antonia 15:25 Right. And so then another thing that you can do within Twitter is to create tweets about the book that people that are on your email list could send out. And if you go to share link generator, you can write a tweet that then you can create a link and you can put it in an email, you can put it in a blog post, you can put it on almost anywhere and say click to tweet. And if someone clicks that, then their tweet pops up, it's editable. So what I do with that, is I send it out to a bunch of people that I know, but maybe my email list, maybe my launch team, maybe just 20 people that I have collected, and I say, it would be awesome for me if you would tweet about the book. Here, I've made it easy. Click here, and you get an editable tweet about the book with all the links. And the person clicks. And it says, 'Hey, I'm so excited to welcome KJ's new book, The Chicken Sisters into the world.', and they can change that too. You know, 'I've read this and I love it' or 'I hated this I never want to hear from this author ever again'. You know, they can change it to anything that they want. But it's already there. And it has the links and it makes life so much easier. And I always kind of boggle at people who don't. People who just send me an email and say would you mind tweeting about the book? To do that I have to go find the link, and then I have to think of something to say, and I have to go on Twitter, I mean, there's like four steps in there. Whereas with share link generator, you can make it a one click deal. It also works for Facebook, but we're not on Facebook yet.Jess Lahey 17:09 All right, are we done with Twitter?Sarina Bowen 17:11 I would like to propose one last thought on Twitter that's actually applicable to all of the platforms we're discussing today. Which is that by the time any author gets to her launch day, she feels as though she has been talking about nothing except her book since the beginning of time. And she is a little bit sick of herself and the whole topic. But I would just like to say that Twitter specifically has a sort of short half life of each tweet. And even if you feel you've been discussing your book way too much, launch day is not the moment to change your behavior. Like it's the one day when everyone will forgive you for talking about your book launch a whole lot. So you know, hang tight and put out yet another tweet about your book on that launch day because that is your moment. And not that many people will see that tweet, even if you are sick of yourself.KJ Dell'Antonia 18:14 And to save yourself the agony of spending your launch day writing 10 different tweets about your book. Write him ahead of time. I mean, then you've got them. I've got a Google spreadsheet going in which I'm just dumping possible posts or make the images that you're going to use have them all ready and just know what you're going to put out there so that you don't have to generate it while you're sort of feeling that 'Oh my God, I've been talking about this forever.'Jess Lahey 18:54 This week coming I believe is my copy edited manuscript and I have scheduled for when that has to go back in and then I'll have another date coming when I'll hopefully get my galley proofs. And my plan is to go to those looking at my copy edits with a highlighter so that I can highlight a few tweetable, Instagram-able, quotable things that I can make Canva cards for from the get go. Because I'm probably not gonna want to go through the manuscript to the fine tooth comb again, after I do it for all these edit things. So why not do both at the same time?KJ Dell'Antonia 19:30 I did that with the novel as well.Jess Lahey 19:34 So smart...KJ Dell'Antonia 19:35 Sarina, you do something a little different. You do sort of the 'Here's what you can expect to find', which I always think is really fun, which I am also doing now.Sarina Bowen 19:49 Well, Jess mentioned Canva cards, and let's just spend a minute on Canva, because it's a really useful tool of mine. Canva is a graphic design program at least that's what it calls itself. And there are many there's one called Crello there's several versions of this beast, PicMonkey, lots of places where you can use templates and make cute designs fairly easily even if you're not a Photoshop human. But what I love about Canva specifically, and I actually have the paid version of it, is not only is it good at designing stuff, but it will save it for you for later. So when I'm feeling it in terms of promoting my book, and I'm not sick of myself on a particular day, I can go into Canva and mess around with things like quotes from the book, or thank you for your support, or anything that has to do with that design. And you can actually make pages each Canva document, you can just duplicate the thing you made, and delete the quote and put in a new one. So it's really good at sort of holding your design brain in one spot.KJ Dell'Antonia 21:10 And you can resize it for something else. So you can duplicate it and then resize it into Twitter size, or Facebook size, or LinkedIn size, or Instagram story size, instead of Instagram post size.Sarina Bowen 21:25 Right. I think the resizing is part of the paid portion, or at least it used to be, but that was definitely something that I enjoyed getting after I became a whatever it's called pro member. It's not very expensive either. It's like, the whole year costs $200 or something like that. So Canva is definitely a great tool for when you're switching from Twitter to Facebook or you want to play around with a checklist. Those checklists you were just talking about that I make are also wonderful in Canva. And another thing I do if you have chapters in the book that you're launching, and those chapters have titles, I like to make countdown chapter titles because as you hurtle through that month towards your book launch, it's great to be newsy. And so I will make let's say, chapter eight of my book is called, 'Is that really a duck?' I will make a Canva card that says in eight days I will bring you chapter eight, 'Is that really a duck?' And then the next day, I'll have one to post that says, in seven days, I can bring you chapter seven, 'The duck went fishing', and on and on because I've taken the trouble to give my chapters funny titles or informational ones, and it just gives you something newsy to put out into the world as you count down to your terrifying book launch.KJ Dell'Antonia 23:04 I did that with nonfiction, too. I did it with How To Be a Happier Parent and it was fun and it was helpful and it was just it just felt like something to say. And I made little cards, and it kept me busy, and gave me something to say. Jess Lahey 23:25 I just want to underline this whole planning ahead thing, because if you are waiting until the very end to think about doing these things, you're going to just be so overwhelmed. So the clear message here is be thinking about text, tidbits, strategies, things you want to do ahead of time so that you're not overwhelming yourself the week of pub date.Sarina Bowen 23:45 Definitely.Jess Lahey 23:46 Because that would be insane.KJ Dell'Antonia 23:48 And let's talk a little about the goal of all of this. It's not going to sell millions of books, you're only probably reaching... So when you ask other people to share on social media, you're reaching their followers and when you're sharing you're mostly reaching your own followers and some retweets. But I think something important to remember is that people need to see the book more than once, usually before they head over and click and buy. And sometimes they don't even remember where they saw it or how they saw it, it just becomes familiar because you've posted a lot of imagery around it. But you haven't made it annoying, you've made it fun, you've made it entertaining. So when people see that title, when they're surfing a book site, or hopefully in a bookstore, it makes them go 'Oh yeah, I've been thinking about that one.' Jess Lahey 24:44 I definitely hear that a lot that you know, we've talked about this before, that it's the repetition and sometimes it's the second, third, or fourth time that someone says 'Oh yeah, that book that I meant to buy the first time I heard about it, but didn't.' KJ Dell'Antonia 24:57 So to some extent, that all means that if you don't do it during launch week is just an excuse to do it. If you don't do it during launch week, fine, the next week do something different, create a bunch of things, and start putting your book out there. We don't need to panic if we don't get it all out there on launch day.Jess Lahey 25:24 You know, what's so interesting about the social media thing too, is that there have been all kinds of attempts, there was that thunderclap thing that was a couple years ago where you'd ask people a favor to all tweet and post something to social media the same exact time and I don't think that that had any kind of effect and it was a huge amount of effort. And it sounded like you were getting something done, but I don't know that it actually had any major effect. So when we talk about these things that you're supposed to do on social media or that you could do on social media, we're not saying that you have to do all of these things and they're going to have a major impact on book sales. But every little bit, you know, can help. And as we always like to say, we don't want to get six months out from book release and say to ourselves, 'Oh, I could have done that other thing. I wanted to be able to say, we did all the things that were under our control that we could do to help our book do well on launch day. But that thunderclap thing was very weird, I think anyway.Sarina Bowen 26:26 It was an attempt to make virality happen where it wasn't destined to.Jess Lahey 26:33 Exactly, to force a lot of noise all at the same time in the hopes that it would catch fire. And I don't know, I just mixed metaphors. But I don't know that that was a particularly effective thing to do. And I like to be sparing and what I ask other people to do to help me out and being a part of something like that wasn't something I was particularly interested in.Sarina Bowen 26:54 Right. I don't think I once participated, but it was an interesting experiment.Jess Lahey 27:00 Alright, anything else that you want to add to this discussion about Twitter or Instagram?KJ Dell'Antonia 27:07 We didn't do Instagram...Sarina Bowen 27:09 We should do Instagram, which is growing faster than the other services that we've been talking about. Jess Lahey 27:17 Sorry, in my head I kind of thought we had sort of done Instagram because in my head I associate Canva with Instagram, so mentally I had gone there. So my apologies. Sarina, Instagram. Sarina Bowen 27:59 Instagram is a platform where sharing doesn't really happen very often. So you kind of have this one moment to put something visual and beautiful in front of people and hope that it sticks with them. But discovery on Instagram also works a little differently than it does on other platforms, which is that hashtags really matter on Instagram. So, before you are launching your book, you want to figure out what hashtags people are using who are looking at books like yours and I have a little collection of these I keep it handy.Jess Lahey 28:42 There's a lot of them for authors and writers and books on Instagram. There's a ton of them, so good for you having a list.Sarina Bowen 28:50 Well, I have several lists, honestly. So if I'm talking about my own book that's coming, I will use bookaddict, booknerd, bookworm, booklove, booklover, contemporaryromance, romancereads, IGreads, oneclick, alwaysreading, you get the idea. There's a lot of these.KJ Dell'Antonia 29:08 And let me guess that you have a list that is pastable. Sarina Bowen 29:11 Oh, yes.KJ Dell'Antonia 29:12 So where do you keep that? Sarina Bowen 29:14 I happen to keep it in notes, that little yellow app on all things Apple that is just really handy. But you could use Google Keep for this, you could use any program that you keep handy. KJ Dell'Antonia 29:26 I use Evernote and I have thought about using Keystrokes. Because since Instagram really requires that you use the phone. You know, you can't post to Instagram except on a phone. So if you go (in an iPhone, at least) into general, and you go to keyboard, you go to text replacement. You can make a series of letters and put them all in there and then when you type that series of letters they will all pop up. Sarina Bowen 31:00 KJ taught me this nifty trick because actually I use it on Instagram too, which is that I have thank you and some longer phrases for thank you spelled out in German, French, Italian, and Portuguese, because Instagram is a really international platform. And at least half the tags that people are using for me on Instagram are in German, honestly. God bless German instagramers. So I have three different German phrases saved in those Keystrokes that I apply when somebody takes some beautiful picture of my German book and tags me in the post so that I can be thankful without writing danka, danka, danka, danka all day long.Jess Lahey 31:50 Yeah, that's really brilliant. And I'm actually going to need your help because I got tagged in a couple of things that I needed a Portuguese thank you for and I didn't have it. So that's really smart and really thoughtful. Sarina Bowen 32:06 So, that whole keystroke thing and being made to create stuff on your phone is kind of a drag. Thanks, Instagram, you can actually hack your way around this by installing a Chrome plug-in that fools your Instagram into thinking you're on a mobile device when you're not...But my current setup is that I probably have the picture on my phone anyway because I use an iPad to create a lot of imagery, and then I type whatever I want onto my notes on a laptop, and then I just open it on my phone, and copy and paste, or I rely on Bluetooth to copy from one device and paste into another. Because I am never, ever composing an Instagram caption on my phone, my thumb's are not that good at typing, it's just not happening. So there are several ways to keep your Instagram feed looking good. And you don't need to do that. Like you don't need to become obsessive about the beauty of your Instagram feed. But, there are moments when I want to kind of work hard on this. So I have an app called Preview that I use to look at what the grid will look like before I post and some people use one called Planoly. And there's also Later which is a posting to Instagram app. And if you change your Instagram to a business account, you will be allowed to schedule via some of these third party things so that it could post automatically. I don't actually do that, I don't need to post Instagram so often that scheduling is super helpful for me. But I know that a lot of people like to do it that way.Jess Lahey 34:13 But if you want to see a beautiful Instagram account, go check out Sarina Bowen's Instagram account. The gold standard seems to be what some book bloggers and some romance readers in particular seem to do for the authors that they love, and the people who create these gorgeous Instagram posts for you just blow me away. I'm amazed by the kind of artful creations that your readers create, and that you create for your books. They're really beautiful.Sarina Bowen 34:45 They blow me away, too. KJ Dell'Antonia 34:47 Well, you can use those when someone else makes a beautiful image of your book or just makes an image of your book because my goodness, thank you very much. You can do a couple of things. You can post it to your story, which is only polite I think and quite common, but you can also use an app that will allow you to repost and in this case I use Repost. And if you're using an app like that, then when somebody else posts about the book, you can take their post and use it in your feed. Thus, you know, adding to your number of images that you have without you're having to create an image which is really cool. And there's the opportunity to sort of say, you know, thanks bookstagrammar for writing this lovely thing about my book, and then you can share the lovely thing.Jess Lahey 35:38 What's always weird is when someone thanks me for posting something beautiful they made about my book to my story, and I'm always like, 'Oh my gosh, thank you. This is the most beautiful thing ever. And it's such an incredible honor to be able to repost that.' So it's a wonderful, it's also just a great way to sort of connect with readers. I love it.Sarina Bowen 35:56 Repost and those apps also will copy the entire caption that the other person wrote...KJ Dell'Antonia 36:04 Including the hashtags.Sarina Bowen 36:07 Yeah, exactly. So that not only are you assured an easy way of giving credit to the person who created that thing, but it's very easy to share. So because we never want to get into trouble and have any creator think that we've stolen their work for our own. KJ Dell'Antonia 36:28 Yeah, that's the nice thing about using the app instead of screenshotting it, is that it makes it very clear where you got it. And it's just socially acceptable.Sarina Bowen 36:38 Yep. My other trick for working ahead on Instagram is that I don't commonly have more than a small handful of paperback arcs to give away ahead of the launch. So I went to Moo and I made a bunch of these beautiful five by seven postcards. Like I'll do like 150 five by seven postcards of the book cover. And I will mail them all over the world because like I said, Instagramers are very international. And then I will see those postcards pop up all over Instagram during launch as well. And they cost a lot less than a paperback arc and it's honestly really about the shipping, I can put $1.15 stamp on one of these cards and send it all the way to Australia, whereas shipping a book to Australia costs $25. KJ Dell'Antonia 37:38 And that sort of gets around you know, if you want to be sharing arcs, they can be digital, but there is something that people can take a picture of, which is really nice. People love having something to take a picture. I love having something to take a picture of. I don't do LinkedIn, but I have some friends that do it really well. And so I'm just gonna ask them when my book comes out will you post this on LinkedIn, please? But if you are a business writer, you probably should be.Sarina Bowen 38:22 Definitely.Jess Lahey 38:24 Absolutely. The business world is very much about LinkedIn. And you know, I will post things there but I actually don't see a ton of interaction with the stuff that I post there. So it's often an afterthought for me. Alright. Can we talk about what we've been reading? Pretty pretty, please. Sarina Bowen 38:53 Absolutely. Has anyone been able to read?KJ Dell'Antonia 39:00 I will note before we talk about what we've been reading that we didn't talk about Facebook.Jess Lahey 39:05 I think that's a whole long discussion in itself. I mean, that's just me, mainly because I hear Sarina talking about the stuff that she does there. And she's on a whole other level with Facebook and I sort of have the feeling that that's its own episode in and of itself.KJ Dell'Antonia 39:23 Okey dokey. There we go. Stay tuned. We got one more book launch thing to go. Jess Lahey 39:34 KJ you have been doing a beautiful, beautiful job, by the way, speaking of Instagram of talking about what you've been reading, and you've really done a great job of doing these capsule reviews of books, and you've sort of set a standard, I think, for me anyway for understanding how to do a really quick review of a book. So I just wanted to tell you that I have been appreciating those a lot.KJ Dell'Antonia 39:56 Why thank you, I'm actually planning to up that game. So, I've been creating a whole list of books that I want to make sure get shared. This is partly just the the whole let's help make book book launches still work. So I've got a whole great list of books that I want to share with people that are either books that I recommend and here's why, or books that I have had an arc of, or books that I'm super anxious to read. And I've been putting together ways to do that. So yeah, I've been having fun. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Hey all—this week, a special mini episode on diversity in sources for non-fiction work, from light-hearted articles on favorite baby food flavors to seriously researched pieces for high-profile outlets. BIPOC, non-binary and women are outweighed by white men when it comes to who gets quoted in the news, whether the voice is adding an expert perspective or just a little local color. Here’s some help finding sources that reflect the world we’re writing about.Links from the PodSheSourceInformed VoicesNPR’s Source of the Week and how to use it.Columbia University’s list of female, non-binary and BIPOC experts on the mediaHAROThis mini-episode went wide, because the topic is important and we wanted to make sure everyone had a chance to hear it. Other minisodes, like the recent Pitching Yourself to Producers, and Writer Top Fives (like Top Five Ways to Boost a Writers Instagram or Top Five Ways to Start a Revision) go out to our supporters every Monday. That support pays for production and transcription (we give you all our time because we love you) and we appreciate it. Want to help? We’ll make it easy for you: click the button. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

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.#AmReadingKJ: Henna Artist by Alka JoshiRecipes for a Beautiful Life by Rebecca BarryJess: Sure Shot by Sarina BowenAnimal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara KingsolverMissing You by Harlan CobenCatherine: Know My Name by Chanel MillerSea Wife by Amity GaigeThe Chicken Sisters by KJ Dell’AntoniaThanks to everyone who supports the podcast financially. To join that team, click the button below:But it’s all good. The pod is free as it always has and always will be. 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 every time there’s a new episode.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:00 Hey writers KJ here. Usually I write down what I'm going to tell you in our pre episode, promotional blurb, whatever you want to call this, and I will say right away that of course we are, as always sponsored by our friends at Author Accelerator, who we love. This week, instead of writing down some great reasons why we love them I just wanted to take a minute to read to you from the email that I got from Jenny Nash this week. This is her weekly email that goes out to anyone who's on the Author Accelerator list, or read every single one of those and I cannot say that about almost any other weekly email I get, there a couple. Anyway, Jenny writes, "I was speaking with a writer this week who could see the light at the end of the tunnel on her novel. She was almost done and she was terrified. She could feel herself panicking and turning to other shiny new ideas. Anything that wasn't this almost done idea. Being done would mean that her work could be rejected. Being done would mean that her work could be judged. Being done would mean that her limitations and weaknesses as a writer would be on display for everyone to see. Being done would mean that whatever she had on the page was as good as she was able to do. Even if it wasn't anywhere close to the perfect story in her mind. Being done would mean that she would be exposed." I could really, really relate to that. And I think I'm not the only one. A lot of us start to let things go the minute we get anywhere close to the finish line, because the finish line is scary. And if that's the place where you are maybe now is the moment when you want to reach out and see about working with a writing coach. You might not need much a few weeks, a little bit of a push, a little bit of help, just to take that thing that you're working on, and get it through to not the almost best you can do (which you know allows a lot of room for imagining other things) but the actual best you could do and then make a real decision about what it is you'd like to do with it. If you're game for that, you should head over to authoraccelerator.com and click your way through to all the great places because we love them and there's also a lot of other good stuff there. While I'm here I also want to say that this episode includes a couple of small swear words here and there and also some weird commentary on vaginas. Because this is one of our dearest friends we're interviewing this week and we got a little bit weird. So letting you know that so if you have tiny ears around that you are concerned about? Honestly, it's no big on this one. I don't think that it will bother you, but I wanted to give you a heads up. Alright. Enjoy it. This is a great episode. Is it recording?Jess Lahey 2:51 Now it's recording. KJ Dell'Antonia 2:53 This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone trying to remember what I'm supposed to be doing.Jess Lahey 2:57 Alright, let's start over.KJ Dell'Antonia 2:58 Awkward pause. I'm gonna rustle some papers. Okay, now one, two, three.Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia. And this is #AmWriting. The podcast about writing all things, from fiction, to nonfiction, pitches, proposals, emails, essays. This is the podcast about sitting down and getting your writing work done. Jess Lahey 3:27 I'm Jess Lahey, I'm the author of The Gift of Failure and the forthcoming book The Addiction Inoculation, Raising Healthy Kids in a Culture of Dependence, who the subtitles are always so tricky, and you can find my work on the old interwebs at The Atlantic and the New York Times and The Washington Post and lots of other places.KJ Dell'Antonia 3:58 I am KJ Dell'Antonia, the author of the novel The Chicken Sisters coming out on July 1 of this year, which is 2020. For those of you listening in the future, when I hope things are not what they are now, but that is not what we are going to talk about today. We have a guest, our guest is Catherine Newman, who we've actually been trying to record with Catherine since like since like our 10th episode. But wait, I want to tell you about Catherine, she is a memoirist, a middle grade novelist, and etiquette columnist and now the author of How to Be a Person: 66 Highly Useful, Super Important Things to Learn Before You're Grown Up.Jess Lahey 4:57 It's actually 65, but I think that we should invent a 66 while we're here.KJ Dell'Antonia 5:22 Okay, no, I wasn't done. I wasn't done - because while she's at it, Catherine writes a cooking blog, she co-authored a book on crafts for kids, and she edits Chop Chop, a kid's cooking magazine, which I didn't even know till I just recently read her bio because I never read the bios of my friends because I'm supposed to know all this stuff, but I didn't. And she pens frequent funny essays for everything from O to The New York Times to The Cup of Joe website. In other words, she's putting a pastiche of writing together and making it work with an insouciance disregard for any and all advice about self branding, or owning a niche, or sticking to one topic or an identity, and in fact, I would argue that insouciance disregard might just be Catherine Newman's brand.Catherine Newman 6:10 Oh, my God, that's it. I just feel like that's the mic drop. I'm so happy. I also feel like you just fully explained all the problems I have. It's my insouciance disregard.Well, I loved your intro. My intro really would have been you know, this is Catherine Newman for me is the writer that, not only a person I adore and know personally, but as a writer she's the one who always figures out the new way to say the thing I have been feeling and yet felt so cliched that I never wrote it down. She always has some new amazing way to state it and then I'm like, 'Oh my gosh, how has no one ever said it that way before?' and it's so true and perfect and beautiful. And you know, for a lot of writers that write about parenting and this whole racket that we call life, often if they have a favorite piece, I often will say let me guess was it by Catherine Newman because her pieces just rank as people's favorites.Jess Lahey 8:00 We love your stuff. But you guys, you and KJ have a much longer relationship than you and I do, Catherine. So KJ, tell them where you guys met.KJ Dell'Antonia 8:09 I don't know where we met. I know that Catherine wrote for me at Motherlode but it must have been Wonder Time. The late great that says that it's not the greatest like the more I say the name now that it's gone, the dumber it sounds, but it really was. Yeah, okay. Soft sigh of regret. And while we're having soft sighs of regret for demises of magazines, I hear Family Circle just tanked. I mean, I know that was like in the fall, but... Catherine Newman 8:49 I know I always feel like I'm there on that tiny little island of sinking magazines.Jess Lahey 8:57 I'm just about to send out an email today saying Hi, want me to write anything? Anything you got - I'll write that thing.KJ Dell'Antonia 9:40 Great. Okay, so here we are, finally, at last.So okay. 65 (not 66) Highly Useful, Super Important Things to Learn Before You're Grown Up. Why that after a resume that includes two parenting memoirs, one crafting book, and one middle grade novel that was my middle grader at the time absolute total favorite, he even reviewed it for Parenting magazine. Yeah, he still looks back on that with fondness because he has a hard time finding books that he likes. Anyway. And so from there you thought I know, the best thing and the easiest thing for me to market next would clearly be a book of useful things to learn before you're grown up. I don't think that's really how you did it.Catherine Newman 10:37 Yeah, no, no, I know. Isn't that crazy? Really, the dirty truth is that I pitched it as a much worse book. I wanted a book, I went to the library to look for a book, I don't know if you ever end up writing this way where it's like, oh, this thing doesn't exist that I assumed existed. But I went to the library to get a book for Bertie, because I wanted her to do more helpful stuff in the house, but she didn't know how to do it. And she didn't want to be taught how to do it by anybody. So this is, second child has been wanting to do it by herself since she was two. And it's really hard with a person like that, who doesn't want to be shown how to do something and then you ask them like, 'Hey, can you clean the bathroom?' And she's like, 'I don't know how to do that.' But then if you try to show her she's pissed. So for Bertie it worked, so I went to the library to get I assumed like DK had made one of those like photo illustrated guides to chores, you know...KJ Dell'Antonia 11:52 I might need that, there are things I don't really know how to do. Truth. Catherine Newman 11:57 So I went to get that book from the library, like I walked in confidently, talked to the librarian and they were like, 'Yeah, we don't have a book like that.' So I was working with Story at the time (the publisher)and who I love and my editor there is an old person from Family Fun who I used to write all this fun stuff with. KJ Dell'Antonia 12:22 That was also a fun place to write.Catherine Newman 12:25 Oh my God, so fun. So she and I had worked on a piece that I think killed me called Chores Fun. So I pitched her the book Chores Fun and I wanted it to be photo illustrated, step by step, DK style. And she was interested, but needless to say that got higher up over there and they were like, 'No...'KJ Dell'Antonia 12:50 And me, I want that book. I would buy 500 copies of that book. Catherine Newman 12:58 So they then said, you know, can you expand it so it's not just that? And so the other thing I really had wanted to write was, I want to say etiquette, but I don't mean in the like uptight, sort of like how to talk to the Queen of England sons, just the like how to communicate sense of etiquette, like how to be a person who needs to communicate with other people. I had wanted to write a book about that, too. And so we sort of merged those. And the book for me is primarily that but then we broke it down a little so it seems like it's many more topics than communicating and like cleaning a bathroom. So there's some stuff about cooking, and some stuff about money, and some stuff about just general skills like you know, changing batteries and that's how it came to be. And so I have found both of my kids with galleys of the book open to learn whatever it is they need to do. Bernie has used the book to tie a necktie and swears it works. And when I had asked them to clean all the bathrooms at Thanksgiving, I went in and the book was like, propped up on the counter in the bathroom.Jess Lahey 14:16 Oh my gosh, that's so brilliant. KJ Dell'Antonia 14:17 I had not thought of that. We've been cleaning bathrooms like crazy around here and yeah, I discovered that one child claimed to have been taught to wipe the toilet with a Clorox wipe and then flush it. And when I tell you that we're on septic I can also tell you that that ended extremely badly with men in the basement and saws. Oh, God, yeah, that's not how to clean a toilet. And I really didn't tell her that either.Catherine Newman 14:47 No, I can imagine.KJ Dell'Antonia 14:49 Anyway, I have now taught this skill, but I feel that it needs refreshing so I'm gonna prop that up. Jess Lahey 14:57 I'm gonna do the same thing. There's that forgetting of things that technically they should know. And as we've talked about a bajillion times for me - that one was laundry and we solved that with the dry erase markers on the washer and dryer with all of the instructions and the bathroom one seems to be the next frontier that we have to handle around here.KJ Dell'Antonia 15:22 Well, the truth is that in this moment, any of us who did have someone who sometimes cleaned for us whether that was frequent or infrequent, don't have that. Anyway, most of us are, even if there's stuff that maybe we didn't have to do before, or we were teaching our kids to do it but they didn't necessarily have to do it I could kind of poke at it and that was fine because the person who really could do it was gonna be there in two weeks. So now it's like yeah, this is how you clean the toilet. Jess Lahey 16:17 Here's the nice thing about this book also is that there are so many times when you show a kid how to do it and you're being a little overly controlling or they're like no one else does that, no one cleans behind the toilet seat, Mom, you can show them a book and say, 'Look, this is how an arbiter of how these things should be done is actually doing things. KJ Dell'Antonia 16:55 So what has it been, like getting out there to share this book that is, in many ways, so different than from what you've done before?Catherine Newman 17:18 I could ask you the same. You know, it's funny. The funny thing for me is that my first two books were so intimate that actually, it was really like trial by fire in terms of publishing. So when people would blur together sort of criticizing the book with criticizing me as a parent or even just me as a person, because the memoir genre kind of invites that and it was really little nerve racking, honestly. And so then after that there was fiction, which is so delightful because it's fiction. And there was a book I did with my friend Nicole, that craft book, which is so delightful, because a) it's a craft book, so no one's gonna, like take my character apart over it and b) it was with a friend. So you know, it's like how I used to love co-teaching when I was teaching, like it's so dreamy to have a partner in something because you're not stranded. So this is none of those. This is not a memoir. It's not fiction. I don't have a partner in it, but it doesn't feel dangerous to me. It just feels like oh, kids need to know how to do stuff. And I feel pretty good about it being useful. So I don't have like weird shame, you know the memoirs for me, I promoted them with shame. I mean, I had blathered on and on about all my deepest fears about parenting and my kids and then I had to go sell it and it was so humiliating and I just am feeling a delightful absence of shame around this book. So I don't know if that's what you asked or how I ended up there. So I'm feeling pretty happy. I feel like it's coming out. I actually weirdly feel like the timing for my book is good because lots of kids are home. Jess Lahey 19:46 I'm in total agreement with you on that one. Catherine Newman 19:50 And I feel like lots of parents genuinely need help. So it doesn't even feel artificial. You know, sometimes you have to teach your kids stuff even though it'd be much easier just to do it. I know you both know that because You both have talked to me about that, but I feel like this moment where I can say hey, I am well to welcome someone make dinner you know it doesn't feel like a learning avenue it's just real life and the kids are in it with us and they're old enough to see it, it doesn't feel contentious and so I guess I feel like this is actually not a bad moment for a book like that. You know, I'm so glad I don't have some book coming out about I don't even know. I think we're lucky like KJ I weirdly feel like this about your book too, that your book even though it's fiction, and it's like this total romance, it's so perfect because it offers something that people need in this moment, like I needed to read about these feuding fried chicken places. And it was like this ace in the hole for me that I knew I could just relax and read it and it was so that it was like the most incredibly pleasurable comforting diversion. So anyway, I feel like it would just be terrible to be coming out with a book that was like entering the workforce or you know, something that was like so not the moment for it...KJ Dell'Antonia 22:06 Thank you for saying lovely things about The Chicken Sisters, I'm super excited to share it. And I am kind of with you, I had a lot of angst around How To Be a Happier Parent because I kept going, it's happier, and not better, either. I felt like, you know, who was I to talk and to say those things and so I felt a lot of stress around that, that I don't feel. You know, it's a fun novel. That's what it's supposed to be. And it is that and it's got pretty yellow cover, and I am looking forward to everyone being able to buy it.Catherine Newman 22:54 No one's hoping to solve a problem with it, except maybe just wanting to be diverted. You won't fail, you know...KJ Dell'Antonia 23:17 Did you find people pushing you to do something else that was more in line with what you've done before? You know does your agent say like 'Well, could you just write another memoir? Or a collection of essays perhaps.'Catherine Newman 23:51 The funny thing is I'm a terrible pitcher. Like I really like for people to come to me and be like, 'You know what we need?' And I'm like, 'Sure, you know, because I am, as I have said for 20 years, I'm just a writing tramp. I will write whatever, as long as it doesn't like conflict with my politics, you know, but I've written you know, whatever copy to say that the tampons not gonna fall out of your body without ever using the word tampon or body. I mean, give me whatever and I will write it. Like I even like being assigned weird stuff because then it's like doing a crossword puzzle. You know, it doesn't ask that much of you emotionally. But, all of that is to say that I am not dying to publish another book of essays or another memoir and maybe at some point, I will. I mean, I have a lot of interest in all of us doing an anthology about like menopause. That would be really, really funny. But, I feel like something collaborative that was like more a collaborative essay project. And I feel the same way about writing about older kids. I would love to do it collaboratively. But I definitely don't want to write a whole book about it. My guess is if I do another book after this, it'll be an adult novel. Adult novel always sounds like it's porn... I have an adult novel I want to write that I've been sort of writing and it's that thing where now I don't know how to write it because I'm starting to lose track of the world before the pandemic, even though I lived in it for 50 years. So I don't know, that's always lingering around as a thing I want to write and then, you know, I want to write another book in this genre for Story for sure. And I wouldn't be surprised if that something happened, I don't know if it would be a follow up, or we would have to see, I guess.Jess Lahey 27:25 So for writers that are wishing they can cobble together this Higgledy Piggledy, a little writing here, a little writing there a little of this genre. How I mean, I know it's impossible to say, I'm assuming you're not going to say, Oh, yes, I had this all written out. 10 years ago. This is exactly the path I have designed for myself.Catherine Newman 27:44 You mean when I was getting a PhD for 10 years, but I then went on to not use? Yeah, that really wasn't the plan. Jess Lahey 27:52 Yeah, that was while I was at law school, learning how to be a juvenile attorney. So you know, for those writers who look to us to have some sort of takeaway about how to create a life around writing for themselves? I mean, do you have anything you could share for us in terms of how you've managed to cobble together this really interesting career?Catherine Newman 28:15 Well, thank you for calling it both Higgledy Piggledy and interesting because I think of it really as both of those. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, nothing that you haven't heard on this podcast before. I feel like the old improv yes and advice I do think about, I say no to nothing. Again, only if it conflicts with my politics. So I've never been proud and I continue not to be, I will write most things and I will work on most projects and I will give it away if it's a worthy cause. I'm more than happy to write something for someone doing something that's important. So I ended up with tons of relationships and I know you're both the same that for both of you that sort of one of the treasures of your writing and publishing life is these ongoing really well nurtured relationships and I don't I do it as well as you guys, truly. But that said, I do maintain relationships with everyone I've ever written for and they end up who knows where like, you write the shitty Kotex copy and then that person goes to O Magazine, I just feel all the time like people move around so much. And as long as I make myself easy to work with, and available, then I feel like I get a lot of assignments just because those two things turn out to be, I think marketable skills weirdly.Jess Lahey 30:10 I find it shocking that you say you're not as good at it because we had never met, I admired your writing so much, and you agreed to have coffee with me never having met me before when I happened to be in your town. So I disagree that you are not very good at cultivating these relationships and you know, whenever I talk about your writing, people talk about the fact that they really admire you as a writer, so I think that you do a really good job of that.Catherine Newman 30:42 Well, thank you. I loved the idea too, that you like called me out of the blue. I totally was already stalking you. KJ Dell'Antonia 30:58 Catherine, I think you have a gig right now that a lot of writers would both kill for and also feel like well hey I could do that, I could weigh in on etiquette issue real simple and getting a column is kind of the gold standard of what people want that's hard to achieve and I get a lot of questions about it and I'm not at all helpful. So I would like to give you the opportunity to be not at all helpful - like how did it happen?Catherine Newman 31:36 Oh my god, it was so like a one thing and another and it was exactly the thing of an editor I'd worked with somewhere unglamorous ended up at Real Simple. And then I wrote something for her there and their etiquette columnist was leaving, they asked me to audition which was so nerve racking. so I The question was something like my cousin without talking to us named her twins after my twins like what would you do?So I it was just luck but a lot of my luckiest things (seemingly luckiest things) come from having said yes to really outrageous things either low paying things or things that I wrote for a good cause. I would just say for me, I think almost everything good in my career has come from a certain openness and willingness. You know, it's like when my kids were little and they were writing thank you notes for shitty presents, you know that they didn't like and weren't happy to get and I would say there's always something true you can say that's gonna be real, like someone gave you a gift that in and of itself is something to be thankful for and you can express that. That sounds so corny, but whatever. That's how I am. And I think like almost any opportunity I'm given to write I do feel like there's an opportunity to make some kind of meaning out of it, if that makes sense. Either to take pleasure in the writing or to say something funny or to get a little philosophy into it or a little politics into it. And so I guess I think of even the weirdest stuff as an opportunity, which I think is a head game I play with myself because I'm never going to be successful enough to not need to keep writing all this stuff all the time. You know, I am just constantly writing and that feeling I have of everything being a little bit of an opportunity, you know, we're all writers, because we're curious about the world, I feel like at bottom, that's probably the main thing we all have in common. And you can always express that, you know what I mean? Even if it's something that feels sort of random. So that's a long way to say that I think every writing gig is an opportunity. I mean, unless somewhere wealthy is grossly under paying you then don't do that. Like they can't do that. That's wrong. But I just mean, you know, some of the stuff that isn't like a perfect fit or isn't high profiler isn't very glamorous, those things have always led to other things for me, almost, almost inevitably, in a way that I feel like is karmic in the true sense of what you put out into the world comes back to you.KJ Dell'Antonia 34:51 We talk about things in that category a lot because we make a practice of getting annoyed with each other whenever we say I got lucky because yes, we have been lucky but yeah, fortune favors the well prepared. You know, Dax Shepard can't ask you on his podcast and Kristen Bell can't share your book unless you have written it and perhaps presented it to her. Yes, some things land and some things don't. But if you don't throw any paper airplanes up ain't nothing gonna hit.Catherine Newman 36:05 I feel like it's partly luck and partly this other gendered thing, which is I am a pleaser and I have really mixed feelings about that because on the one hand like I have raised Bertie to not be a pleaser...KJ Dell'Antonia 36:25 You wrote about that for me at Motherlode and it's such a hysterical piece and it made people so delighted and so angry at the same time.Catherine Newman 36:32 Yeah, but I am such a pleaser and that has served me really well in my career. And I never as a feminist, I always have really mixed feelings about it because some of it feels really gendered to me that I'm friendly. Let me say as a side note to my own comment that I was just making. I think one of the beauties of freelancing is that you can't take any of your relationships for granted and you shouldn't anyway, I mean, I really feel that right. If you're in a workplace, you should always be nurturing your relationships and taking care of everybody in that way. But freelancing, no one ever has to hire you again. It reminds me a little bit, if you will, of waiting tables, which I was excellent at. Where you're always gonna do best if you were your sort of best self if what you put out is the best version of yourself it's gonna bring you the best work and connect you to the best people. And the truth is, it actually makes my life good because I mostly have positive interactions and that's so much better for me than getting into bed at night and be like Oh God, I had the worst interaction with somebody. So if something's kind of weird I'll like die about it. And I just feel like freelancing I mostly have to be somebody that people would want to hire. You know, I know I keep sounding like such a w***e. But there it is.KJ Dell'Antonia 38:21 That's kind of how it works some of the time. So Catherine, what have you been reading?Catherine Newman 39:59 So truly The Chicken Sisters was my segue back into reading but I wanted to mention a book that actually I was reading right before that, which was (I don't know if you've talked about it on the podcast), but the Chanel Miller book, Know My Name. I admired it so much. I just love her and I love her as an illustrator and I just love everything about her. And as a memoir, I thought the gift of being able to write about something so terrible, with so much love and optimism just blew me away. Like, it's everything I ever sort of wanted to be as a writer. And that book just killed me. I thought it was so incredibly good. I almost wanted to read it again to study it.Jess Lahey 41:32 I didn't know she was a writer, so I was a little nervous. And then I was so blown away, especially towards the second half. I found there were a few moments in the first half where I wasn't totally with her, but then it just picked up steam in terms of it felt to me almost that she got to be a better writer during the process of writing it and at the end of it I went off for a walk in the woods by myself because I had to sort of just process that book. It was exquisite. It was so well doneCatherine Newman 41:59 I had honestly just the exact same. I read it because I felt like this kind of moral obligation as a feminist not to turn away from the story, was so I felt like I should read this book. I picked it up with a dread of obligation. And then it's just sang, it was so beautiful. So that book and Bertie read it after and was crazy about it. And so that book, I have other books, but I want to hear what you're reading, too. Jess Lahey 42:47 KJ, you want to go next?KJ Dell'Antonia 42:57 I've started some books. Okay. I'm going to tell you that I'm rereading a book, because I can tell you with confidence that I love this book and I have enjoyed it. I think this is a multiple read. I've read this many times because it's just soothing and kind of wonderful. And I think I've talked about it on the podcast. Catherine Newman 43:15 Can I guess? Is it I Capture the Castle?KJ Dell'Antonia 43:19 No, but I do like that. No, not at all. It's a memoir, and it's called Recipes for a Beautiful Life by Rebecca Berry. She wrote it in like 2008 or it takes place in like 2008 so it's got a lot of the the economy crash in there as she and her family are moving. We all know I'll read anything in which a family moves to a small town in a rural place and makes a new life for themselves. Anyway, I have really enjoyed that. So that is what I can guarantee for you. I have started The Henna Artist and I really like it so far. I'm gonna mangle her name so I'm going to look it up for the show notes. At chapter three I'm really liking it, but we all know how that could go, but I don't think it will.Jess Lahey 44:22 Well I have to start with I listened to the audio of Sarina Bowen's newest book Sure Shot and I got to talk about it with her because she did some really interesting things in there and we were talking a little bit. We were talking about authors who are gardeners and they plant seeds for new things and Sarina just did an exquisite job in this book. I love her books from just a listening to the story perspective but I also love watching her go and sort of planting the seeds for the books that will follow in the series because she writes books in a series and this is one of the Brooklyn Bruisers hockey books and I just from a technical perspective adored listening to Sure Shot her new hockey romance. But it's funny KJ that you said the thing about small town and comfort and making a life in a small town thing because my comfort listen this past couple of weeks on and off has been Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver because I've been prepping my gardens, I've spent so much time not writing as much but doing a ton of gardening and so listening to Barbara Kingsolver while I do that has been has been just wonderful. And the last thing I just finished last night was another Harlan Coben, this one was called Missing You and it was really clever. And we have to try to get Harlan Coben on the show because he does this thing that Sarina had told me about that he's known for, which is the the climax at the end of the book, except it's got two peaks, not one. Like you think you've hit the climax and you have the answers and then he hits you again, with a second sort of twist climax. And it's so it's his thing. He does it over and over and over again. And he's so good at it. The guy plots a book like nobody's business, so I'm dying to talk to him. So if anyone out there knows Harlan Coben, I would love to talk to him about how he plots his books. But anyway, so that's been what I've been listening to and it's been all listening. A little bit of reading books in hand but mostly listening because I've been out in the garden. Catherine Newman 47:25 Can I mention one other book? I just so what I just read is my friend Amity Gage's book, Sea Wife. And it's not at all comforting at all takes place on a sailboat. And it's a young family, a married couple and kids on this sailboat and it's a kind of a thriller and kind of a mystery. And I feel like it's one of the best books I've ever read about parenting even though it's a novel, and I tore through it but it's very breathless and like terrifying so...KJ Dell'Antonia 48:10 Well that has its place at the moment, too. Because then you forget where you are. Catherine Newman 48:15 I was really caught up in it and it's also just incredibly lyrical. Like some of the sentences I would read twice just because it was so gorgeous. So I'm recommending that as a total escape-like thriller.Jess Lahey 48:54 I went yesterday, I have to say I went yesterday to pick up a book from the Vermont Bookshop in Middlebury, Vermont, and there was no one at the shop but they had this beautiful cart outside the door with everyone's orders labeled and covered with some plastic and it was just the most delightful way to get out and and go 'shopping' even though I couldn't shop it worked really nicely. Booksellers are working so hard to make that work. Catherine, thank you for being so patient with us while we worked out the details of how we were going to have you on the show. It shouldn't have taken us this long, but we're very happy that you were patient with us.Catherine Newman 49:48 Oh my gosh, my pleasure. Talking to you is a highlight of my week and life.Jess Lahey 49:55 Well, and I'm going to recommend that people go ahead and preorder How to Be a Person...KJ Dell'Antonia 50:03 They won't have to preorder it will be out by the time this is out.Jess Lahey 50:07 It's just such a delightful book. It's such a fun read, I'm going to be giving it as like part of a baby gift. I'm going to have copies around to give to people constantly. I have a neighbor I'm giving it to as a gift. So I'm so excited to have just multiple copies around the house.Catherine Newman 50:26 You guys are so supportive I could cry. Jess Lahey 50:33 Oh Catherine, where can people find you if they want to find out more about your higgledy piggledy career?Catherine Newman 51:06 CatherineNewman writer.com I think.Jess Lahey 51:44 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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

When your book launches, you want to meet your readers where they are: anywhere people are talking about—or better yet, buying—books. Of course we want to support our local Indies (that’s why the links here are all to Bookshop.org)—but if there are readers on Amazon, we’re going to be there too. This week, we’re talking about how to get yourself set up on Amazon, Goodreads and Bookbub—and why you absolutely should.For more info, check out our past Writer Top Fives on setting up your Amazon, Goodreads and Bookbub pages. Usually, Top Fives and Minisodes go out to our supporters, but we’ve made these three available to everyone—because the info in them is so great, and maybe a little because this way, you can see what you’re missing. If now’s your time to sign up to support the podcast, click the button. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

She might just have the perfect job. This week, Jess and I interview Abbe Wright, Senior Editor at ReadItForward.com and co-host of The Adaptables, a podcast that hashes over every detail of the movies and shows that are adapted from the books we love. Links from the pod:I wanted to break up. Then he got a tattoo of my name.Read It Forward PodcastThe AdaptablesThe Longform PodcastBookbento (Read It Forward’s Instagram)Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste NgNormal People by Sally Rooney#AmReadingAbbe: All Adults Here by Emma StraubJess: Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu MillerNerve by Eva HollandWhy We Swim by Bonnie TsuiKJ: The Address Book by Deirdre MaskThanks to everyone who supports the podcast financially. To join that team, click the button below:But it’s all good. The pod is free as it always has and always will be. 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 every time there’s a new episode. Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Back in December 2019, we set #WriterGoals for 2020.We had no idea. This week, we go back in and revisit—which goals still stand? Which do we have to let go, and which just don’t feel right any more? Was there any point in setting these goals in the first place?In the end, we decide (not very cheerfully, it has to be admitted) that while our goals are necessarily changing, they’re always worth setting and revisiting. We’ll all be settling down to think differently about what we hope for in what’s left of 2020. Are you revising your 2020 goals, or sticking to plan A? Head over to the #AmWriting Facebook group and tell us about it.#AmReadingKJ: Undercover Bromance by Lyssa Kay AdamsThe Body in the Garden by Katharine SchellmanSarina: The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady HendrixJess: Audible Original: David Sedaris, Themes and VariationsRat by Stephen King (found in the If It Bleeds novella collection)Hey—now is a great time to check out our sponsor, Author Accelerator, where you can launch a career as a book coach or get paired with the right coach to get your project moving. And if you’d like to support the creation of #AmWriting, we’d appreciate your help! Supporters get weekly Minisodes or Writer Top Fives—and our undying gratitude. Want in? Click the button. KJ (00:01):Hey everyone. KJ. Here we are talking writer goals again this week. It's our midyear review - pandemic style. If you're setting your own goals for the rest of 2020 our sponsor Author Accelerator can help you start a new side gig as a book coach or match you with a coach who can help you work through challenges both on the page and in the calendar for getting your current project done. Find out more at authoraccelerator.com/amwriting. Is It recording?Jess (00:33):Now it's recording. Go ahead.KJ (00:35):This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.Jess (00:39):Alright, let's start over.KJ (00:40):Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay. Now one, two, three. Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is the podcast about writing all the things, short things, long things, fiction, nonfiction, essays, pitches, proposals, and as we say every week, this is the podcast about sitting down and getting your work done.Jess (01:11):I'm Jess Lahey. I'm the author of The Gift of Failure and a forthcoming book about preventing substance abuse in kids called The Addiction Inoculation. And you can find my writing at places like the Atlantic and the New York Times and the Washington Post.Sarina (01:25):And I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of some romance novels. My most recent USA Today bestseller was Heartland, which came out in early 2020.KJ (01:35):And I am KJ Dell'Antonia, the author of the novel, The Chicken Sisters, which is coming out in June of this year as well as How To Be a Happier Parent already long out in hardback, but coming out in paperback this summer. And actually that's still happening, which I'm pretty pleased about. And the former editor of the Motherlode blog at the New York Times where I am still a reasonably regular contributor. And that's who we are. And where we are is in our houses, which is actually where we all are. But you know, it bears mentioning on this the 9th of May, 2020. Yeah.Jess (02:15):Which contributes to our topic today. You want to tell everybody what we want to talk about today?KJ (02:22):Oh sure. So we're gonna revisit our goals. Every year around this time we like to take a little mid-year review. We usually do it in June, so I guess we're doing it a touch early, but it has occurred to us that perhaps some of our goals are not going to be the same for the rest of the year. So it seemed like it was a good time to sit down and take a look at what we thought we were going to achieve, what we have achieved and what we're still hoping to achieve. So we've all got them lined up right here in front of us and away we go.Jess (02:56):Who wants to go first?Sarina (02:57):I would love to open.Jess (03:00):Oh, please do.Sarina (03:02):Well, you know, we all are fans of Dan Blank who has been a guest on this podcast and also has his own terrific podcast as well. And Dan Blank's podcast is called The Creative Shift. So he sends out a weekly newsletter that is pure gold and you should subscribe.KJ (03:26):It really is, it's one of the best ones I know of.Sarina (03:29):So, two Fridays ago, he sent one out that began with sharing a New Yorker cartoon that really speaks to what it's like to be a writer right now. And it's a picture of a guy in a rowboat in the middle of a choppy body of water. And you can see there's a shark, and there's a ship sinking behind him, and there's lightning, and it's raining. And the caption says, 'This is it - the time to finish your novel.' And I love it desperately because, you know, remember back in March when we were all like, Hey, what are we going to accomplish while we're stuck at home? Or how about when the three of us (and I'm so happy we did this, I wouldn't change a thing), but we sat and recorded an episode in December right before our office party where we go out together for lunch and we very cheerfully made a list of goals for 2020. Not having any clue that 2020 would shape up to be quite unlike most of the other years that we've sat around planning things together. So I think we should revisit those goals and see what is capable on here. And what have we learned about goal making from our lists.Jess (04:54):I was going to say the first thing I've learned is to be flexible, and to shift, and to adjust to your surroundings. Cause clearly that's the theme of the day. Alright. So what'd you have on there, Ms. Sarina?Sarina (05:10):Well, you know, many of my goals could really stand up in terms of getting the same things done. Especially where I had goals about helping other people, and helping other authors, and helping other women. And those things are all still true and I've been trying to do more of that. But of course I had some goals about like how much I was going to accomplish in terms of writing. And, you know, I'm not teaching anybody to read right now because my kids are old enough to handle this stuff by themselves. But, I didn't count account for my own potential anxiety and the difficulties of making career decisions when the whole world seems to be shifting. So goal I'm having the most trouble with is the one where I was writing an entire book to give to my agent to sell in a new genre for me and that suddenly feels insurmountable even though my work day could look the same because I don't know if that part of publishing is going to be there for me when I'm done. And that's like a mental obstacle to doing that.Jess (06:19):You mean the YA genre?Sarina (06:21):Yeah. Well, you know, unfortunately I have a lot of knowledge of economics and I'm watching businesses fail around me. And I have like a mental block about writing into a publishing world that might not exist when I'm done.Jess (06:42):Yeah, I hear that. Absolutely.KJ (06:47):I am still plowing through, my top number one goal was to finish a book that has now got a different title than it had in my list of goals, but that is fine. Who knows what the title is going to be, but that was my top number one goal was to finish it, and then hopefully get it out, and pitch it to editors. And that is still my top goal despite the obvious changes in the publishing market. I'm not struggling with that as much, but it's probably because I don't have the alternative that you have. Like you could put your time into stuff that you can independently publish and you know you will be there, and readers will be there, and digital book sales will be there. So, it's different, you've got a different choice there.Sarina (07:42):I was just going to say that the fact that most of my publishing is digital is such a blessing and I just don't discount it at all. And also my fear about that other project is not entirely rational, but part of me is in that rowboat with the guy in the thunder storm. And I'm not sure what to do about that. Like how to disembark.Jess (08:09):Well, it was interesting, someone asked a question in the #AmWriting Facebook group this week about this question and said, 'You know, what's everyone doing? Like are we pitching? Are we querying? Are agents picking up new clients? And are people buying books?' And so I went ahead and asked our agent and I said, 'I don't have to quote you or anything.' And she said, 'Hell yes, people are buying.' She said, she's had a couple of auctions. She said, you can totally quote me that people are buying, people are looking, that things are still chugging along in book sale world. I think a lot of people are scared about releasing right now, which is a really scary, new world sort of situation. But people are still buying books. People are still picking up new writers. So there was that sort of gut check of, Oh, there is some normalcy happening out there and our agent is not the kind of person to be you know, to be blindly optimistic. She's the kind of person to give it to you like it is.KJ (09:18):Yeah. Or even worse than it is. My fiction agent says the same thing and my editor says she's acquiring. So people are acquiring of course, whether they're like whistling Dixie and a thunderstorm is another question. But, they're trying, everybody wants to keep going. And I would like to have a book to sell them. I would very much like to have a book to sell them. What I am finding is that the speed at which I can complete this is totally different than it used to be. Even when I'm sitting down to work, I can't work as fast. Both because I think my focus is off and because my house is full of people. People everywhere, everywhere I look, there's another person and they eat. They just won't stop eating.Jess (10:25):Yeah. I'm the place of, Oh my gosh, dinner really does happen every single day. Like everyone's on their own for breakfast and lunch. But that dinner thing, that's our sort of reconnect with each other. We're still doing dinner. Dinner is important to us. And because I have big eaters, they tend to start asking at like 4:45. I'll get these texts. So what's the thought for dinner? So dinner happens every day, shockingly. And that's actually been, if anything, a positive for our family. So having something, you know, to eat evening and sit down and even if it's just like last night I threw together a soup. It's been a good thing, but it is shocking to me how much they can eat. But on the other hand, like our grocery bills are freaking me out. But on the other hand we are not eating out at all. So we don't even do takeout. But KJ, did you finish? Can I start talking about mine? Because mine go in a weird direction.KJ (11:26):Well I didn't. I mean, the goal of finishing that book is the only one that stays the same. I have essay goals on here and I am just not feeling the essays right now cause it feels like the only essays I can write would be about this. And I don't want to write about this. I really don't. I know a lot of people do, but I really, really, really, really, really don't. So you know, I had humor on here. I wanted to do some of that. Does it have to be covid humor? I don't know. So there's that. My promotion goals around The Chicken Sisters, the ones that are on here are still the same because... Podcast goals. Yeah. Well the shift is in how, but I didn't really write how into my goals.Jess (12:20):No, I mean the real fact for you is that some of the things that you were counting on, some of them in there are not happening.KJ (12:28):So, no, but it's not like everybody else is out there hawking their books face to face and I'm not, so I am not as bothered by that as as I might be. You know, the advantage to it (as an introvert who's not super into travel) I really wanted to do these things, but not doing them is okay too. In some ways.Jess (12:57):Can I just offer another silver lining to this though, is that it's unbelievable to me how generous other writers are being with each other right now. I know you and I have both bought a bunch of books that we may or may not ever read just because we're supporting our fellow authors out there. And I think it's a fantastic thing. And I mentioned in another podcast that I'm a new devotee of this long form podcast and on that they're talking to a lot of writers right now who are trying to release books during this and they're talking about the generosity of other authors. So that's been really lovely to see. So hopefully some of that will kick in for you too, KJ.KJ (13:37):I think it will. I feel pretty good and I'm having a really good time. One thing I'm having a good time with is that when this all started someone mentioned to me that the warehouse might not be able to send out advanced copies anymore. And I went, 'Oh, so wait, they're just sitting there? So would they just put them in a box and send them to me?' So they did. I basically have all the remaining advanced reader copies. And so I'm sending the Good Reads giveaway winner copies and I'm sending all the bookstagrammers and I ultimately spent a lot of time sort of going, which would be the very best bookstagrammers. And last week I was just like, you know, I'm just going to send these to the bookstagrammers that I follow and that follow me and that are sort of in my universe and that'll be happy and excited to get it. And I've been doing that and it feels really fun. So that's entertaining.Jess (14:40):That's a very cool thing. Plus, you know, there's the whole decorating of them. But Sarina, you had something you wanted to mention to KJ.Sarina (14:46):I did because when she was talking about essays, it made me realize that how much of the news I'm reading is all focused on the same thing. So that means that relevancy is suddenly like a little bit of a wrench in our goals because you could still write essays, you still have the time, and you still have the voice, but the relevancy of the things that you were probably going to work on is just gone. And I'm struggling with some relevancy, too. It takes a whole lot of optimism to write romance and you know, I'm a little bit stuck on that. And even just literally, I looked at the epilogue of one of my hockey books and I had my team winning the cup in June of 2020 and guess what? There isn't even going to be a cup in June of 2020 and it never occurred to me. Like I try not to paint myself into a corner. I do it all the time anyway, but it never in my wildest dreams occurred to me that there would not be a champion.Jess (15:53):It takes an extra layer of imagination, too. I mean, you're already constructing new worlds for your books and now suddenly you're having to like construct a whole world for your own world so that you can construct those. I mean, you have to have a certain level of optimism. You have to have a certain level of ability to envision a world in which your characters are not going through this, not touching each other thing. And I mean, look at that. You are trying to write about people who are so much touching each other in a world where no one's allowed to touch each other. I mean, it's a really weird thing.Sarina (16:25):It is. And I saw a really funny tweet from a narrator who was doing a book and he, without naming the book said, 'You know, this book really confused me. I was telling my friend because it not a lot happens. There's not a lot of conflict. They go to Ikea and buy some furniture and I was just waiting for the conflict.' And the friend said to this narrator, 'Dude, what you just described is like science fiction at this point.'Jess (16:56):That's true. That's absolutely true. Yeah. Alright, well I wanted to talk about the fact that so I actually did finish the edits on my manuscript. That was my number one goal, finish the edits on the manuscript and you know, it wasn't anything like Gift of Failure but there was still some heavy lifting to do. And I got them done. I'm looking at the date actually I got them done well before the date that I was hoping to get them done by. And the reason I wanted to get them done by that date was that I wanted to have a new proposal or at least the shortened version to show my agent cause she has no idea still what I'm thinking about. And I wanted to have that to her by April 15th and of course that was smack in the middle of just trying to wrap my head around all of this stuff. And you know, for me also personally, it's been anxiety provoking. Like I can sit here in my house, in the woods. I was telling my husband, this is a really weird paradoxical thing. I don't go out very often, obviously, but when I do go out, I get pretty depressed because here in my home I can ignore it and I can kind of forget about it for short periods of time. But going out in the world has been just scary and weird and anyway, so the worst of this stuff has come right at a time when I was hoping to get a new proposal done. And so what I've decided to do is give myself a break and I'm doing a lot of my research through audio. And while I'm listening, I keep a notebook near me, but I am outside. Because for the first time since I started a speaking career that runs on an academic schedule, I've never been home in time to get really good gardens ready for the growing season. And I definitely never got gardens in my new house. And I've always felt a little adrift without my gardens. So I've been giving myself a big fat break. And I leave the house as soon as I'm done with my stuff in the morning and I go outside and I don't come in until I have to get that infernal daily dinner thing going again. I walk in at the end of the day and I look at my husband and I say, 'I am just so happy outside.' And the other thing was because of all this anxiety, I wasn't sleeping very well and just exhausting myself during the day outside, and just being sore, and tired, and drained has been much better for my sleep. So I'm giving myself a big fat break right now, in terms of the writing part. Definitely still researching, loving listening to all the audio, but giving myself a big fat break, thinking of it as a little vacation has been really important to me. And I have gardens now. I have the bare bones gardens down and it makes me so happy and I finally feel like this house is mine again. You know, it finally is a place where I live. And and that's been fantastic. So yeah. And then the rest of my goals were things like, so finish the edits, got those done on time, finish the new proposal, totally didn't happen on time. But that was my own internal schedule and that's okay. And then back with you on the essay thing, cause I had complete five essays for collection by the end of the year. I've definitely thought about them. And for me that's a big thing cause I do a lot of the thinking, the writing internally first, and then I just of get it down. But yeah, I'm not writing about covid and these essays are about things that are so unrelated to that. And so it's just been close to impossible to get that essay writing done. But I'm feeling better now and I feel like that's going to come back online really soon. Our friend Mary Laura Philpott has sold a new essay collection and I happen to know that she's trying to get down to work on that. And so, I'm sort of mentally trying to partner with Mary Laura and be thinking about those essays. Spanish was a big one and I haven't done that. I just absolutely 100% failed at that. We had some goals around Spanish that were going to culminate with some big Spanish speaking for a trip that got canceled. Well and now my thoughts have shifted also to things like I'm starting to freak out about some of the spring speaking events. You know, a big source of my anxiety around an inability to stay focused for a few minutes at a time has to do with money stuff because my non-writing income went poof. And that's the majority of my income. So that's been challenging. And my husband works for a hospital that just announced that all of the top level people will all take pay cuts. And so my husband's taking a pay cut in the midst of this as well. And then if anyone's been following my social media, they know we just spent the equivalent of a small used car on our dog who almost died. So that's a stressful thing, too. And yet we're so fortunate, I'm not scared about paying our rent, but I am just anxious. If I had to rewrite my goals now, it would be do more of what's making me feel really good right now. And that's making me feel really good right now.KJ (22:42):Well that's a good question. Are we going to rewrite our goals? I think it might be worth sitting down and doing. Because one of the other reason that some of this stuff happened - I've got some goals here around the podcast, and the email list, and marketing with other podcasts. There's no reason I can't do those things other than that I've got about three hours of brain power in me every day and I use it up on writing the book and then I just have so much less steam than I used to have. I don't know. I guess it's the anxiety, I guess it's that. But you know, I used to be able to sort of write in the morning and then go back to do all the other stuff in the afternoon. And it's also all the household stuff. It's all this stuff, all this stuff. And some of these are just like we were saying, I just don't necessarily want to focus on that as much anymore.Jess (23:37):Okay, well then put a line through it. I'm putting a line through the Spanish one. I'm letting myself off the hook for that. You know what, I was just looking at number five, which was one email a month for my email list. And my email list has gone up a lot this year because of some high visibility podcasting I've done. But I'm really glad we're doing this today because that is a good kick in the pants for me. But you know what I've done that's been also really wonderful. I think I'm just missing teaching so much that I've been doing this thing on Twitter where I teach about rhetorical devices and I do a long thread and you could see the smile on my face while I'm doing them. It makes me so happy. I'm like pulling all these books off the shelves and it's teaching and I'm having so much fun. So I'm going to keep doing that. And you know, doing more of that I think would be really super fun for me. So I may even stick that in instead.KJ (24:37):That is so funny because I said one of the things we could talk about today is changing our approach to social media. And you said, 'Oh, I didn't change anything.' I was like, 'Yes, you did.' That's what I was thinking of. You know, we're filling in some gaps of things that we used to do in real life with social media. And I feel like that is one for you. And if you could or wanted a new teaching job, you certainly couldn't get it now. So you have found that. I've been connecting a lot more on Instagram. I've been going back into Twitter, which I had been out of for literally years. Trying to find ways to use Facebook that don't involve getting sucked in. And actually I'm on Instagram way too much. I need to stop. But also feeling like it really is providing a connection and a place to talk about books and things that are important to me. Like these are the conversations I might normally be having, like at a hockey game or in line at the grocery store or at the bookstore over coffee or whatever. And now they're taking place online in different ways. So that was what I was thinking of, but I was also thinking about you. How about you, Sarina, have you changed your social media at all?Sarina (25:54):Well yeah, but it's not all sunny around here. I've had to take some breaks, some like multi-day breaks from social media just because it feeds my anxiety when I can see people sort of emoting about the same things that I'm worried about. I have to walk away because sometimes it just amplifies all the things I'm worried about. So I think taking some steps back has really helped me. And plus I don't want to amplify my own...I feel very brittle right now and I don't really want to be brittle on social media, so I've just had to sort of back away.Jess (26:37):It's funny you say that because now thinking back, just about every time you text that you're freaking out about something, it's because you saw something on social media that just triggered you. So I think that's fantastic.Sarina (26:47):I mean, I'm more caught up on news right now than I've ever been in my entire life, but it's not such a great thing because the reason I can't walk away from Washington Post and the New York Times is that I'm looking for someone to tell me what's going to happen. And of course they can't really do that, but that's why I keep going back. So I've had to kind of step away from that, too. Not because news is bad, but because it can't serve what I'm really searching for.Jess (27:22):Didn't you say that you were on Google for something and you realize that there was a commonly searched for question on Google, which was what's going to happen? I don't think Google can even do that.Sarina (27:42):I love to see what other people are searching on Google. And I will stop and screenshot them if they're particularly wonderful.Jess (27:52):Oh, can I tell you something really cool? At Google headquarters in California I got to speak there after Gift of Failure came out and they took me through and I got a really cool tour and one of the things they have as a staircase and on the riser for each step of the staircase are the most Googled things so you can watch in real time on the staircase as all the things that people are Googling changes. And it was really cool while I was there looking at other stuff. They also have this room you can stand in and it screens all around you like floor to ceiling screens all around you and you can enter any search term you want. It could be you, for example. So I entered Jessica Lahey to see sort of what the world sees when they look at me across all platforms. And it allows you to see like does your website match up? You know, do you have a brand that has unifying themes, blah blah blah. And it was just really interesting to see how does my website match up with what's going on on Twitter and what's going on on all these different platforms. It was really kind of cool. That was kind of fun. But I'm sorry I totally took things off the rails because you were talking about what's going to happen and no one being able to tell you that.Sarina (29:07):Yep. And they still can't so it doesn't really matter.Jess (29:09):Well what has been interesting is from, and I know you're looking a lot at a lot of this through an economic lens, cause that's who you are. But my son is studying economics and can you imagine - this is when my kid is getting his introduction to the world of economics, like this is such a weird and bizarre time and he has a summer job that is (and I don't think I'm allowed to say where it is yet because I don't think anything's been signed) but it's at the epicenter of what's going on economically. And so we've been talking about it a lot, but from a very academic perspective, which has been interesting. I guess it allows me to sort of set it over there and have a bit of a reserve around it. But I mean it's not like it's good news. It's just academic instead of about like our personal economic situation. Can I interject one tiny thing? Can you all look at your word? I have them all in front of me right now. How are you feeling about your words?Sarina (30:18):I still like my word.KJ (30:18):I hate my words.Jess (30:23):Okay. Well my word was practice and I'm actually still feeling good about that because it's a good reminder to me that it's not about having these huge breakthroughs. It's about the daily practice of either thinking about structuring, blah, blah, blah. So I'm still happy with that. Sarina, your word was, do you remember?Sarina (30:39):Abundance.Jess (30:40):How are you feeling about that?Sarina (30:41):Well, honestly, I should still tape it up into every room I walk through because the truth is it's pretty abundant around here. Ebooks are still performing. My life is fine. It's just a little more anxious than it used to be.KJ (30:59):And my word was magic and I'm not feeling very magical right now. Although honestly, I am up and down every day. I don't want to be Pollyanna about this. Nobody is happy about what is happening, but I suppose it is a little magical that my family has not killed each other in the 67 days that we have been largely cooped up together. That is kind of magical. And I was thinking that I might put some magic in a next book draft, after this one. I don't know, maybe that will happen. Yeah, magic did not turn out to be a super helpful for this time.Jess (32:11):Speaking of magical thinking and inhabiting fantasy lands that don't exist. Should we talk a little bit about what we've been reading? Alright. Sarina you want to lead off again since you went first last time?Sarina (32:24):Well, I'm reading something that KJ gave me. The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix. This was a book that spotted before KJ bought it and I thought, I'm just happy that book exists. The writing is terrific. His writing game is super strong from the first paragraph of the prologue and I am intrigued.Jess (32:58):Oh, good. Cool. What about you KJ?KJ (33:01):Well, I'm reading a book, Sarina gave me. I am reading Undercover Bromance by Alyssa Kay Adams. We need to book club on this one, Sarina. We need to have a discussion, but like her previous book in this series, The Bromance Book Club. It is fun, satisfying, fast paced, and distracting. And that's about everything I ask of a book right now. And I also am reading The Body in the Garden by Catherine Schellman. This is a historical mystery and I have not read very much in the mystery genre for many, many years. And it's kind of fun to see that in a same way that historical romances have taken a real turn for having a modern way of thinking within the historical romance as opposed to trying to keep people thinking as they might have in the time. This mystery also sort of falls into that category. It has a modern attitude within a historical time and space and that makes it fun. And that's by Catherine Schellman. So again, fun, distracting, light. Just what we need.Jess (34:16):Yeah, I I have a book I want to talk about today cause there's something really interesting in it and it's not something that you guys normally read is two things. Number one for the audio listeners out there David Sedaris released an Audible original. It's not a huge deal. Don't get too excited. It's only 30 minutes long. It's called Themes and Variations, but it's essentially him just riffing about the people he talks to on book tour and the things they talk about. I think it was like $1.89 or something like that. But I got so excited when I saw it and I've already listened to it three times just because I needed a little David Sedaris back in my life. But the thing I went and listened to is I saw that there was a new Stephen King coming out and a former guest on our podcast, Ruth Franklin, wrote the review of Stephen King's new book in the New York Times and it's a wonderful review. She's such a great writer. I was like, 'Okay, well if she has a nice things to say, I'll get it.' And it's a collection of novellas and short stories and I'm not going to talk about all of them. I want to talk about just one and there's one called The Rat and I'm not going to do any spoilers here, but if you are a writer who has ever felt blocked in your writing, this story is a truly delightful, dark, dastardly view into the writer's head when they're trying to wrestle with their demons and why they can't get the words on the page.Speaker 3 (36:26):And I was working out in the woods while I was listening to it and there was a giant smile on my face. I was cackling. I'm like, this is so mean. And it's similar to when he channels the writer in Misery, when anytime he's ever talked about sort of what it's like for him to write and to go through that trap door into his basement. And all of that good stuff is in there. All of that stuff from On Writing that we love so much about his reading, about his process that's all in there, channeled through this writer in this story called The Rat. And it's delightful. It really truly is. It would be worth getting the book if you can afford to do it. It would be worth getting the book just to listen to this story really quick. I mean, I've also been comfort listening and I was scrolling through my Audible books that I've been listening to and they've all been books about sort of overcoming hardship. I realized I relistened to Jenny Finney Boylan's She's Not There. And I relistened to Diana Niad's Find a Way, which is about swimming from Florida to Cuba.KJ (37:40):I think you're the only person who's still listening. Audio has just dropped cause nobody's in their cars, nobody is commuting.Jess (39:02):I'm glad we did this cause I actually feel refocused in a couple of different ways and I'm feel good about drawing a line through one of my goals and just saying nope. By the way, go check out the #AmWriting Facebook group if you want some interesting reading about how other writers are handling this time, because that's what really most of the conversation is about right now. Like, how do you handle stuff? Are people still pitching here? What do you think about this? It's a really reassuring and supportive place to be, but until next time, 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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Check out this Minisode where Jess discusses the mistakes she made writing her first book, and her new tricks to avoid making them again.Usually, Minisodes and Top Fives go out weekly to our supporters. But once in a while, we send one out to everyone—like this one. If you’d like more Minisodes (coming soon: Jess on Pitching Podcast Producers), or Top Fives like the Top Five Things to Know About Writing Under a Pseudonym or Top Five Ways to Start a Revision, become a #AmWriting supporter with just one click. And, uh, your credit card. Because while the podcast is free for you all (and we love doing it) it’s not free to create, and we truly appreciate the help from everyone who can chip in to help us make it, and make it better. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Our guest today is Anne Bogel, most recently the author of Don’t Overthink It, which came out on March 3, 2020. Followers of this podcast who’ve taken my advice may have checked out her podcast, What Should I Read Next, where she talks books, reading and recommendations with guests—because I’m a huge fan. Anne is also the author of I’d Rather Be Reading and Reading People: How Seeing the World Through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything, the host of a second podcast, One Great Book and the blogger behind the Modern Mrs. Darcy.com.We talk about genres, owning your expertise, finding your voice and launching a book in a global pandemic. Some favorite advice goes straight to the title of Anne’s latest book: don’t overthink it. Sometimes, the right idea for a book is the one that’s always with you, that you’re interested in, that feels easy and obvious to you because it is—but isn’t such a cakewalk for everyone else.#AmReadingAnne: Musical Chairs by Amy Poeppel (available July 21st, 2020)The Switch by Beth O’Leary, who also authored The FlatShareKJ: The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky ChambersJess: Wild Horses of the Summer Sun by Tory BilskiThe Boy from the Woods by Harlan CobinThanks to everyone who supports the podcast financially. To join that team, click the button below:But it’s all good. The pod is free as it always has and always will be. 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 every time there’s a new episode. Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

This week, it’s Jess and I (KJ) talking to Olivia and Meghan from the Marginally podcast, which we love for its frank conversations about challenges and setbacks and day jobs and the struggle to keep your butt in the chair (sound familiar?).We talked about finding your writing people, the joys of keeping that day job, and the things that grow from grabbing a friend and starting the thing you wish someone else would start. #AmWritingMeghan: Followers by Megan AngeloThe Glass Hotel by Emily St John MandelOlivia: Emma by Jane Austen (and all the movies)Independence Square by A.D. Miller Jess: Wow, No Thank you by Samantha IrbyKJ: Love Lettering by Kate ClaybornThanks to everyone who supports the podcast financially. To join that team, click the button below:But it’s all good. The pod is free as it always has and always will be. 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 every time there’s a new episode. Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Do mystery and thriller writers ever “pants” their stories? What’s it like to give a dark protagonist some elements of your own history? How much fun is it to fill a book with references to all of your favorite books ever? We cover those things and more with author Peter Swanson, whose new book, Eight Perfect Murders, is a hybrid of psychological thriller and who-dunnit that all three of us loved. Also on the docket: we name our top three most terrifying children’s picture books. FIND OUT MORE ABOUT OUR GUEST:https://www.peter-swanson.com#AmReadingKJ: Bringing Down the Duke by Evie DunmoreStoryworthy, Matthew DicksPeter: My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth RussellWhether you consider yourself a plotter or a pantser, we know you consider yourself a writer. You write. Enough said. If you’ve plotted or pantsed your way all the way through any narrative, you know what a tough job that is—and you might be able to help somebody else do it, too. In addition to matching writers with book coaches who help you keep your butt in the chair, our sponsor, Author Accelerator, offers book coach training and certification. If that sounds like it might be the perfect gig for you, head to authoraccelerator.com to learn more. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Hey #AmWriting Listeners. It’s April 13, 2020, and this episode, like the last, is a throwback to a simpler time, when we left our homes without masks and took baristas and lattes and a whole lot of other things for granted. So it may feel jarring that we’re not discussing the current situation, but at the time there was little to discuss—and we wouldn’t have, anyway, because our guests, Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen, had so much fantastic advice to share about co-writing, writing suspense and just writing in general. They were a blast to talk to, and we hope they’re hard at work on a new thriller via Google docs. If you’re hard at work on a project—or would like to be—our sponsor, Author Accelerator, has some free resources for this tough time, including a free ebook—The brilliantly titled Writer’s Guide to Agony and Defeat, writing resources for families and an upcoming webinar with creativity coach Jennifer Louden that’s just what every writer needs: Why Bother? Why write this book, and why now? I’m already signed up for that one. Find more at authoraccelerator.com/spring2020writingresources.Greer Hendricks  and Sarah Pekkanen are the co-authors of New York Times bestsellers The Wife Between Us, and An Anonymous Girl. Their latest book is YOU ARE NOT ALONE, on-sale March 3. We're recording just before its release, and it's getting a TON of buzz. I loved a Bookstagram review that called it "intrusive, suffocating and creepy. In a good way." Here's the background on these two: Sarah is a former journalist and the author of 8 novels--with Greer as her editor. They decided to collaborate, and the rest is history--that we will be digging into in depth on the podcast. You’re going to be jealous. But in a good way. LINKS FROM THE PODCASTA video of how Greer and Sarah collaborate.Before I Go to Sleep, S.J. WatsonGone Girl, Gillian FlynnLiane MoriartySome of our favorite co-written things: Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan (They each took a character) The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus (They passed it back and forth) KJ's: The Knockoff and Fitness Junkie, by Lucy Sykes and Jo Piazza (They pass it back and forth, but Jo’s the plotter and Lucy provides the juicy stuff.) FIND OUT MORE ABOUT OUR GUESTS:http://www.sarahpekkanen.com/http://www.greerhendricks.com/#AmReadingGreer: Dear Edward, Ann NapolitanoSarah: Good Morning Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery, Catherine GildinerKJ: The Worst Best Man, Mia SosaBrooklynaire, Sarina BowenSarina: What Happens Next, Colleen Clayton This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Hey campers, KJ here. In this week’s episode, we talk to the brilliant Jessica Abel, a creativity coach extraordinaire, about how to get past whatever’s stopping you and develop a sustainable creative life. In so many ways, it’s a timely episode, and it WILL inspire you to get in there and get some work done.But it may also inspire you to wonder what planet we are living on, as we lightly discuss such exotic activities as driving children to school and going to work. Sorry. That was Planet February, also known as the good old days. We were prerecording for some planned travel that—well, you know the drill. As we press go on this episode, life has changed for all of us—but in every other way, this call to creative action is completely timely. So take a break from the news and revel in it. It’s also a great time to check out our sponsor, Author Accelerator, where you’ll find a free seven-day writing challenge that can help you narrow in on the project you want to write—and let me just say I love that thing. I do it over and over again whenever I lose focus or start a new project. You’ll find it at www.authoraccelerator.com/amwriting. Here’s something else that might help: Jessica Abel’s What’s Stopping You Worksheet. And be sure to follow her in all the places: Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.She has more resources on her website as well. No transcript this week. It’s all just too much. But here’s what we’ve been reading: LINKS FROM THE PODCAST#AmReading (Watching, Listening) Jessica: Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, James ClearThe Stone Sky, the last book in NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth seriesJess: As Needed for Pain: A Memoir of Addiction, Dan PeresWhy We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, Matthew Walker & Steve WestKJ: What Happens in Scotland, Jennifer McQuistonShout Out to the Get Booked podcastThanks to everyone who supports the podcast financially. To join that team, click the button below:But it’s all good. The pod is free as it always has and always will be. 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 every time there’s a new episode. 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. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Hey writers—super-practical episode this week! Call it part two of the Sarina coaches KJ through her book launch series. This week, it’s the #MarketingMojo page—things you’ll need as you market your book no matter what the book is or when it launches. This is the road to creating things like back-of-the-book or flap copy, ad copy, social media post copy and more, for fiction and non-fiction both. We go in deep in the podcast, but here’s a quick primer, starting with the easiest and building up to the biggest challenges. Sarina suggests creating a Google doc with the following: * Praise for the book/General praise for you and your work. Why? People buy things because of the emotions they’re expecting to feel. The praise you get from others—or the praise you’re hoping for, which is another way to approach this—is a shortcut to what emotions people have when reading your work.* Short quotes from the actual book that say something in a few words that’s really indicative of the theme. Note—they can be shortened, condensed, or made more pithy as needed. You’re allowed to misquote yourself.* A list of the conflicts, curiosities, tropes or other standout traits of the book. Cliffhangers? Puzzles? Thought-provoking questions? Identical twins, billionaires? Small towns and second chances? These are things that get people to pick up a book. List all you’ve got. * From there, you’re on your way to creating your taglines and cover copy. We give examples in the episode—or just flip over any book in your genre and take a look.#AmReadingSarina: The Weight of Ink, Rachel KaddishKJ: Gaudy Night, Dorothy SayersJess: The Biggest Bluff, Maria Kornikova No transcript this week, because of … things. All the things. Too many things. But the podcast is there and waiting! Enjoy, and stay safe.PS: It’s a great time to check out our sponsor, Author Accelerator, where you can launch a career as a book coach or get paired with the right coach to get your project moving. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Feeling a wee bit stuck? Struggling to get anything on the page? Well, we all are—and not only does this week’s guest know from writer’s block (her last book came out in 2004), but she gave a raging case of it to her protagonist in her new novel, which allowed her—and us—to really dig in deep into what happens when the words don’t come.Join KJ and Sarina as we talk to Laura Zigman, author of Separation Anxiety (a perfect book for this moment, all about how we’re all, every single last one of us no matter how weird or obnoxious or even put-together-seeming, just doing the best we can with what we’ve got) about writing funny, the edge between humor and empathy, and how life can get in the way of publishing even when it seems like you’re on the right track.#AmReadingJess: The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz, Eric LarsonGood Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs, Jennifer Finney BoylanPodcast: The Long Form Laura:Weather, Jenny OffillDept. of Speculation, Jenny OffillKJ: Separation Anxiety: A Novel, Laura ZigmanPodcast: Beach Too Sandy, Water Too WetSo, we know it’s rough out there. It’s rough in here, too, but I guess, in a way I’ve personally never experienced before, we really are all in this together. And we’ll come through it together whether we like it or not. As I say in the intro, we recorded this just as the Covid19 shutdown wave was about to crash over us all, and we’ve got a few other episodes we recorded in anticipation of cancelled travel that just take us right back to the olden days—those are coming in weeks ahead, along with more timely episodes.Thanks for listening and for sticking with us. We feel supported by every one of you. If you feel like kicking a little into the production kitty, (and getting #Minisodes and #WriterTopFives) click the button.This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator—training book coaches and matching coaches and writers.Find out more: https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwriting.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: Hello it’s KJ here and this is going to be a slightly longer than usual pre-roll announcement. Jess, Sarina, and I want you to know that Sarina and I recorded this episode, an interview with Laura Zigman, just as the covid crisis was just beginning to hit. We do mention it, but probably not in the way that we would now. And on that same note, this week our sponsor Author Accelerator is giving their time over to our effort to encourage you to support your local independent bookstore during this. Remember, Amazon is not going to have any trouble making money while we're all shut up in our houses. But your bookstore is - if you want them to still be there when this is all over and it will be over and we will want them - please do the less convenient thing and support them now.  Here's how when you're looking for some new books (for example Laura Zigman’s Separation Anxiety) call your favorite independent bookstore and see if they're offering curbside pickup or home delivery, many of them are. Hopping in your car getting out there and just letting them drop that book in your window is entirely still possible for a lot of us. The mail is at least still coming, or check the website to see if they have an online store. If they don't consider purchasing your books via Bookshop.org. Bookshop is the new site designed to give away 75% of their profit margins to independent bookstores. We have a small presence on Bookshop, I'll try to include that in the show notes for this episode. Profits go to all independents, we’ll have a list of them there. If you listen to audiobooks, try LibroFM. That’s Libro.FM - when you start a membership with the code shopbookstoresnow you get two audiobooks for the price of one and 100% of your payment will go back to the independent bookstore of your choice. Everyone that has an internet connection should be following our favorite bookstores and sharing them all over the place, even if they don't have a social media presence you can talk about them and share how their store is personally important to you. Help your local stores tell their story. Do take a minute to subscribe to Author Accelerator’s weekly emails, a number of their online courses are free to subscribers during this crisis. It's a hard time to keep writing (and more on that in a later episode), but this could help. Is it recording?Jess: Now it’s recording.KJ: Yay. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.Jess: Alright, let's start over.KJ: Awkward pause, I'm going to rustle some papers.Jess: Okay.KJ: Now one, two, three. Hey, I’m KJ Dell’Antonia and this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is the podcast about writing all the things - long things, short things, emails, proposals. In short, as I say every week this is the podcast about getting your work done. Jess: I'm Jess Lahey. I'm the author of The Gift of Failure and the upcoming Addiction Inoculation, coming out in 2021, and you can find my work at The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. KJ: I am KJ Dell’Antonia, the author of The Chicken Sisters, which is coming out this summer. well as How To Be a Happier Parent, out now in paperback and coming out in hardback this summer. You can also find my work at the New York Times, and all the things. I’m the same person I am every week. We have a guest today I'm so excited about. We have Laura Zigman she is the author of (as you probably know) the new, and current, and very timely (in a weird way, but we'll get into that shortly) book Separation Anxiety, as well as Animal Husbandry which was made into the movie Someone Like You starring Hugh Jackman and Ashley Judd, Dating Big Bird, Piece of Work, and Her. E2 is a contributor the New York Times, as well as the Washington Post other places. She produced a popular online series of animated videos called Annoying Conversations I know that she pulled some annoying conversations into her own writing. We're so excited to have you here.Laura: I’m thrilled to be here. KJ: So, Separation Anxiety is your first book in how many years? Laura: 14 years has passed since my last novel was published in 2006. It was a completely different world.KJ: Yes, and the amazing thing about that, or one interesting thing is that you gave your protagonist a similar case of writer's block, which unlike you she did not triumphantly overcome before the book was written, because that wouldn't make for a very good book. It’s wonderful that she has that, it works so well, but as a writer myself I feel like I would hesitate to put something autobiographical into my person. I would feel like it was wrong somehow, but it was so great that you did it. Talk about the choice to do it. Laura: You know I've always written what I call semi-autobiographical, which really starts from a place I'm always at. So my first novel was based on my experience of being a single woman living in New York and working. All of my other books sort of followed the starting point where I was, and this was no exception. I couldn't really imagine writing from another place. My experience when I started writing this novel in 2015 was just a point where it felt like the aperture on so many parts of my life had really darkened and shut down. And so that's where I was, I completely had writer's block and had had writer's block for quite a while. And I just had to start there and so I gave that to my character as well.KJ: Well it really works because it becomes a way to approach about life, but before we even get into that I would love to talk about the writer's block itself. Sorry, but we have listeners who are right there in that position whether it's for some of the same reasons like there’s just so much going on in your life or whether it's because the words just aren't coming. Back in 2006, when did you know this was big?Laura: Well, you know what happened was my fourth novel was published in 2006 and very quickly it tanked. Let's be frank, it just didn't do very well. We've all been there. I have often forgotten this little piece of the story in my head because I usually take responsibility for everything that happens to me, my own choices whether I choose to stop writing or wasn't able to overcome a lack of confidence. I forgot that at the time the book came out my agent (when it was clear the book wasn't doing very well) called me at home and said maybe I should take a break from writing fiction for a while. At the time it really crystallized my own lack of confidence so I didn't question the fact that my agent was telling me this and it would have been nice if she would have given me a different message and so I take responsibility for internalizing the message, but it really had an effect on me. It really was like somebody in a position who could have encouraged me was saying why don't you take a break because this isn’t working for you? That very quickly pushed all of my shame buttons, you know I was already embarrassed that the book didn't do very well, it just really shut me down. And then everything else started to happen - I was diagnosed with breast cancer, my parents got sick, a lot of stuff happened in my personal life which just cemented my pre-existing condition of writer’s block. And that lasted a really long time, even though there were things I did along the way that were kind of baby steps. But for the most part, in terms of writing fiction, writing a new novel, I totally shut down.KJ: Yeah, I mean that is exactly what you don't want your agent to say to you. First of all, you don't want your agent to say that and second of all, who says that?Laura: Right, it was unfortunate.KJ: You know, perhaps with the best intentions. I don't know, it’s hard to grant that one. Wow. So, rule number one - no shooting down people’s life work, and saying maybe you should do something else for a while. Now that we've established that, moving on. You may not have been specifically writing a book or working on fiction not shut down creatively. So tell us some of the things you found you could do. And let's just owned that you're time was sucked up by having breast cancer and having your parents as well. This was like all day, every day for a long time.Laura: Right, so it was like “sandwich generation” for many years. What happened was, one of the first things I did was sort of accidentally pivoted to ghostwriting. In 2007 or 2008, I was able to start ghostwriting. And that was something kind of lucky I felt that I had found. I had blogged about a television show I had started watching while I was recuperating from my surgery and then I was contacted by the show's producer and I ended up doing a book for a television matchmaker, which led to a few other projects. That led to some really interesting memoirs that I wrote for people like Wendy Davis and Eddie Azard, who is a British actor and comedian. And those were great projects and that was a great thing to do in terms of earning a living in writing, which was helpful to not have to write my own stuff. It was a relief not to have to come up with ideas for plot or characters, I was just able to use my skills almost like a job.KJ: It's almost as if by using someone else's words you could kind of guarantee that when you sat down there was work.   Laura: Exactly. It lowered the pressure.KJ: Whereas if you are relying on yourself and you're feeling blocked, you might sit down and nothing may come out. That must have been terrifying.Laura:Exactly. I was doing that over the years and I think it was 2011 I discovered this platform on the internet called extra-normal. And you could write these little scripts and have these animated characters speak your words. And so I discovered it and thought Oh my God this is the best thing ever, because I would sit down in the morning and just whip out two or three minute scripts that were based on something annoying that happened the day before - either a conversation with my son or couples my husband and I were socializing with, whatever it was there were lots of annoying conversations. And so I would sit down in the morning, whip out a script, and have no writer's block because it wasn't like I was writing a novel.I just sat down, wrote it, and it would take a few minutes to generate the video, and then I would post it on social media. People really loved them. I think I would have still done them if the platform hadn’t shut down back in 2013. But I made 75 of them and I really loved doing them. And I loved that it made writing feel fun again. And then of course, I felt like a failure because I couldn't monetize them. I thought, it's only a matter of time before I have a show with these, but nothing happened. A lot of us feel that if we can't monetize something in some way then we've failed. Or I did, anyway. Then a few years later I tried again and wrote a script from scratch, like a film script, and my agent at the time really loved it and couldn't sell it, and again I felt like a failure. And it wasn't until 2015 that I finally had a break in my writer's block and decided I was going to try to write a novel again. So I went back to that script that was about a couple who couldn’t afford a divorce and had all the same issues that the novel dealt with, but I ok went back to that script, took just a little piece of it and used it to sort of seed the novel. And I went back to some of those old little videos and found little things in there that I used. So in retrospect, nothing that I did was wasted. In fact, they were really useful when I started again. But in the moment I still felt frustrated that I wasn't able to get the flame to catch.KJ: I was waiting to see if Jess might want to weigh in so I wasn't dominating the conversation. Jess: No I'm just listening. I find it fascinating. I always love the idea of you know when I get stuck sometimes and recently I've been stuck on sort of how to move forward with this new thing, so I really have just been going back through David Sedaris's book and my old notes. And so that idea of being able to go back to the script and say well I really like this story why it doesn't necessarily have to exist in this format and finding new inspiration in something you've already put out there. Especially when it's something you've already put out there that didn't come forward in the way you wanted it to. KJ and I talk about this all the time, we both have things in the drawer that didn't see the light of day - some of those I was able to use for articles in magazines. And I love the idea of recycling and repurposing things you love in a new format. I think that's a great way to jump-start yourself out of writer's block.Laura: It was great because I realized I had the script itself and it was sort of a road map, but I had the characters and a few scenes to start with. It was just a great way and if I hadn't done it a few years later I think it would have been so much harder for me to start. Not impossible, but it was such a gift to start with. And that made all the difference.Jess: Actually, can I go back? Since I've never had the writer's block (and I guess it can be described differently for lots of different writers), but for you does that mean literally you sitting there and not having any words to put down on the page? For some people I know it manifests anxiety and panic attacks, authors have described it in lots of different ways. I'm really just curious on a nitty-gritty level how it came about in your life and what it felt like and looked like.Laura: That's a really good question. I think for me it felt like just a total shutdown after that fourth novel. I have had a lot of success - I use that term loosely as we all define success and failure in relative terms. Always really happy with my career and so when the fourth book came it just felt like going very well. There's a certain sense of ambient shame like everyone knows if your book didn't do well, you know and you get filled with this sort of shame. I think it was a lot of that shame and it was also a sense of even if I wrote another book would I be able to sell it and that mushroomed into a complete lack of confidence. And it was interesting because years later around 2015 when I started to be friendly with a group of writers in Harvard Square someone told me about the quotation that Norman Mailer had said about writer's block, which he defined it as a failure of confidence. And something about that when I heard it I realized it really didn't have anything to do with the fact that writers are writing, whether they're good or not, whether they're commercial or not, whether they're literary, they just keep writing. They have confidence. And once I saw it in terms of that and not about my skills, it was about my sense of myself. Then I was somehow able to say I'm going to try again. There was something about taking out the personal and making it more about my lack of confidence. Because I saw all of these other people writing and I thought you know I can write as well as they can. You know less good than some, but maybe better than others - it's all about confidence. Which seems so simple, but I don't know. Jess: I think reading other people’s crappy writing can sometimes be a good jumpstart, too.KJ: So what else did you think shifted in your life to allow - I just want to point out that you had writer's block, you didn’t stop writing . You just stopped writing that. You had fiction block. You had novel block. You had voice block. You didn't have word block. But what moment freed you up again sort of loosely in your life that allowed you to be able to sit down and actually say okay I'm starting again? Were you able to do it that way or did you have to trick yourself into it? Laura: I still had to trick myself. What happened was I was working for a startup in Boston, a wellness app similar to the one described in the book. And I was there for about a year and then I left. It was then that I decided okay the universe has given me some time and maybe now is a really good time to start. I was able to make a little start because I rented a shrink's office by the hour in Harvard Square. I wanted some space and I was ghostwriting a lot and I thought if I could just have a dedicated day that I decide I'm not going to do ghostwriting today - so I went on Craigslist and found an office to rent by the hour, which I did on Mondays. So I would show up, sit in the chair, look at the art on the wall, and some days I would write, and some days I would play Solitaire on my phone. But by the end of a few months I had a #amwriting on Instagram and had gotten to a few pages and I feel like that was the way I really got started.KJ: Did you work on it in between the Mondays? Or was it just like only when you were there?Laura: I really just did at the office at first. After I gave the office up I felt like I had made enough progress in those three or four months, having those 50 pages I felt like I had something. I started something. Then I started to take little trips with a writer friend of mine and we would go away for a few days to work. And I was really able to start to feel like I was onto something. KJ: I love that pieces of the book came and you were able to pull pieces that had been around awhile. Because one of the amazing things about Separation Anxiety is just how funny every detail is. You know, you don't miss an opportunity to drop in some humor. When you talk about the depth of the material but you were working with, I can feel that. So when you sat down to write how much of the funny comes out of you or how much do you put in later? It's a thoughtful and empathetic book, yet also very funny. So it's not like it is just funny - it manages to be funny as well as all the other things. Laura: You know, that’s a really good question, too. Because I know when I sat down to start it I had no interest in writing a really funny novel. And I didn't feel funny at the time. I started writing it before the political situation had changed. But when I really started to really get going on it it took a while. And so by 2017 is when I really started to feel like I was making really good progress. And by that point the world didn’t really feel funny, it felt frightening. And I wanted to be true to that, but I didn’t want to overwhelm the reader with how the world and my world had changed. In the decade that I had stopped writing I had lost my parents and several close friends. And middle-age just felt different. And I also didn't want to write a completely grim book because I don't think that’s necessarily what people want to read either. There had to be space for the light to come in, a kind of feeling of hope. So I was really conscious of just trying to be true to all the parts. I wanted the sad parts to be sad and the funny parts to be really funny. Because they often just really coexist. Maybe at the time that I was going through the most difficult periods of time there may not have been humor in the moment, but looking back it was always really side by side. I remember in some of the saddest times getting an email from my son's school that inspired me to include these people puppets. I just ended up using them in the plot; in reality but they seemed like a potentially funny plot device.KJ: They work with the overarching plot because as someone who writes fiction I've had the problem of a plot device that doesn't match the rest of the book, but this one matched.Laura: And back to your question, in the old days I think I would have just used them as a sight gag and let it go, but this time I understood things differently. I was like each character has to serve a purpose. A bigger purpose here - and what is the purpose? For my message in this book it was like everybody is suffering and struggling. And even when we don't know it, everyone has a story and everyone is really doing the best they can to get through their life and I found that that was the important message I was trying to communicate in this book. Because when I had so many years of struggle, whether it was with my sick parents, or with friends, or my career so many people helped me. I was so grateful for that level of humanity that I really wanted the book to encompass that.KJ: It’s an amazing achievement - there's not a word wasted, there's not a character wasted.Laura: I'm glad you feel like it worked. KJ: It definitely works. The last thing I want to touch on with this writer's block and you not having another novel coming out again is financially how did you handle it? Like how did that affect your writing?Laura: It's a really hard thing. Because on the one hand when you are financially strapped you have the impetus to work because you have to, to hustle every year. So I did that with the ghostwriting, but I was also very lucky in that I had earned a fair amount with my first book and I had been careful with that. And so we were living off that for a while. Every year with the ghostwriting I managed to get a gig that was just enough to get us through. It’s exhausting and that is one of the things taking away from the more creative aspects. We all khow that to write a novel you need to be firing on all cylinders of your brain for that. We all know what that's like. You just have to have that kind of mental energy; so much of it is diverted into stress thinking. It is exhausting and is a really fine line. Part of it helps you churn out words because you have to and the other part depletes you - every year I was just walking that line. Jess: And of course what fills us back up is the reading. So can we talk about what we’ve been reading? I'm excited to talk about mine. Laura: I am behind in my reading, but I'm very excited to read KJ’s book The Chicken Sisters. I also have right in front of me Weather by Jenny Offill. Because I love her Department of Speculation I'm so excited to read Weather.KJ: I have heard that if you liked Department of Speculation then Weather is just the right amount of goodness that she offered up the first time. I haven't read it either yet. I just finished Separation Anxiety and you have been listening to me rave about it and the characters just stuck in my head. As it turns out I could totally handle, it called me and I put down books without hesitation. it was a really fun read. I went to my local bookstore and bought a bunch of things.Laura: Some of them, like Politics and Prose in DC are doing free shipping through the end of March. Jess: Eric Larson’s new book I had been really excited to read for a while. It’s called the Splendid and the Vile. I love Eric Larson and love how he uses historical research and weaves it into this just compelling tale and I’m getting drawn into the world of Churchill and it’s really been delightful, especially since this is an area I’m not particularly expert in. I haven’t read a ton on it. So I’m really loving it, I’m a fan of Eric Larson. And on the flip side of that, I’m reading a book I’m really enjoying, it will be out in May I think. Good Boy: My life in 7 dogs by Jenny Finney Boylan. I have to tell you that there’s a dog on the cover and dogs in the title, but it is not a dog book. It’s hard to describe, but it’s very much about trying to figure out who she is and in conjunction with her dogs. I don’t think you need to be a dog person to love this, I think you need to be a Jenny Finney Boylan fan to love this book. I highly recommend pre-ordering it. And lots of podcasts, I was on the road a lot, but a lot of my speaking gigs have been cancelled and I’ve found myself unexpectedly at home so I’ve been on a podcast deep dive. I have to put a plug in for the Long Form podcast, if you haven’t been listening you have to. A good starting place is episode 378 with Ashley Sea Ford where she gets nitty gritty on money and she talks about figuring out what you’re worth. KJ: If anyone wants a super dopey podcast, guaranteed not to stress you out, I have been listening to Beach to Sandy, Water to Wet, Dramatic Reading of One Star Reviews.    Jess: 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.    This is a public episode. 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