#AmWriting

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

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

Why Fish Don’t Exist, by Lulu Miller

Etymology of the term “woolgathering”

Etymology of the term “spinster”

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

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

#AmReading

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

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

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

Also mentioned: The Puzzler by A.J. Jacobs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5 tips for writing scenes more quickly

3 things to try when you’re stuck

Links from the Pod

The Astronaut and The Star, Jen Comfort

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

Otter.ai

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

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

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

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

True confession time: Sarina and I have always wanted to make something like this. I’m talking about The Storyteller’s Workbook, which is a gorgeous combination of structural writing guide and writing bullet journal created by Isabel Ibañez, the author of Woven in Moonlight and Written in Starlight, a fantasy YA series that’s a hit with TikTok and Time Magazine both as well as a designer whose work you’ve seen while drooling in the paper sections of stores like Anthropologie and Adrienne Young, the New York Times and international bestselling author of the Sky and Sea duology and the Fable series whose first “adult book”, Spells for Forgetting, came out last fall. (That’s in quotes because who are we kidding, adults read the heck out of her earlier work.)

The episode is fun, all about making something like this—and Adrienne and Isabel’s writing processes, the examples they share and the ways the book reflects how they really work. But what you’re really here for is to see what it looks like—which is, in a word, gorgeous. If you’d use something like this, you can’t do better—the paper is nice, too, suited for any kind of pen, there’s not going be bleed-through, it lays flat… all the things.

So here it is!

#AmReading

Isabel: Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries, Heather Fawcett (she also mentioned The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden and Uprooted by Naomi Novik)

Adrienne: Hell Bent (sequel to Ninth House), Leigh Bardugo

KJ: A Dangerous Business, Jane Smiley

Find Isabel & Adrienne on Instagram at: @IsabelWriter09 & @Adrienneyoungbooks

Is 2023 going to be the year you finally click through and start exploring the idea of becoming a book coach? Author Accelerator’s coach certification program is good stuff, kids, I’ve done it. We’re talking editorial, project management, client intaking, and emotional skills along with the support you need to make a goof it. Wondering if you have what it takes? Here, they made you a quiz. Go see!

Do you get KJ’s Box of Chocolates email—for erratic doses of books and enthusiasms?

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

As Leslie Hooton told me, “Some writers have a stroke of luck, I had a stroke at birth,” which left her paralyzed on one side of her body. Thanks to Dragon dictation (not sponsored, we’re just fans!), she’s learned to train her Dragon and “penned” three novels including her most recent release, After Everyone Else. As Jess hosts this episode, we delve into plenty of tangents on dictation, deleted text fragments, inspiration, and the wisdom of Wendell Berry.

It may be that when we no longer know what to dowe have come to our real work,and that when we no longer know which way to gowe have come to our real journey.

- Excerpt from “The Real Work” by Wendell Berry

#AmReading

Leslie: Olympus, Texas by Stacey Swan and Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

Jess: Unraveling: What I Learned About Life While Shearing Sheep, Dyeing Wood, and Making the Ugliest Sweater in the World by Peggy Orenstein

Leslie’s links:

Her website

Her Facebook

Her Instagram

If you’ve been intrigued by all the talk you’ve heard about book coaching over the years here at #Amwriting, maybe this is your year to explore becoming a coach yourself. Author Accelerator is GOOD AT TEACHING YOU TO DO THIS. And supporting you in making a business or side-gig out of it, we swear. Here, they even made you a quiz to see if you have what it takes. Quizzes are fun, people! Go check it out!

Pssst: Do you follow Sarina on Instagram?

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

STOP. Do not think to yourself, well, I don’t want to write Erotica—why is this podcast/book for me? This conversation, and the book, How to Write Erotica, that inspires it, goes far beyond any pre-imagined specifics you have about writing scenes, stories and books focused on which bit of bodily anatomy goes where—because to write good erotica, you have to come back to the heart of writing any story (fiction, memoir, what-have-you: why this story, why this character, why now? Guest Rachel Kramer Bussel knows what makes good story, and this conversation is applicable to any writing that appeals to our senses (as all writing should) and challenges our ability to tell our truths (ditto).

Links from the Pod

Starr**cker Magazine on Twitter

Take Me There anthology

Fetlife.com

Addition, Toni Jordan

A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo

Cheesy Boots in Dirty Girls: Erotica for Women

#AmReading

City of Likes, Jenny Mollen

Spoiler Alert & Ship Wrecked, Olivia Dade

Rachelkramerbussel.com

eroticawriting101.com

@raquelita on Twitter

Is 2023 going to be the year you finally click through and start exploring the idea of becoming a book coach? If you’ve been intrigued by all the conversations we’ve had about book coaching over the years here at #Amwriting, maybe this is your year to make it happen. Author Accelerator’s Book Coach certification program teaches you the key editorial, project management, client intaking, and emotional skills necessary to launch your own book coaching business. I’ve done it, and even after years as an editor for the New York Times, I expanded my skills dramatically, and my approach to helping others with their books, and writing my own, is so much better.

The best part: no publishing experience is necessary to be good at this work.

Are you curious to see if you have what it takes? Head to bookcoaches.com/podcasts now to take Author Accelerator’s free quiz to find out if you have the skills and characteristics needed to launch your own book coaching business and get paid to read books all day!

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

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

Your query letter—or your jacket copy—KNOWS. It knows if you’ve got a whole story in there, if there’s an arc of change, if there are stakes, if there’s a why now and a why this and a why her/him.

You just have to be willing to listen. Julie Artz, query coach extraordinaire, and KJ talk about mistakes writers make in our queries—and more importantly, the problems queries can reveal about our stories.

DOWNLOAD JULIE’s 5 STEP QUERY LETTER AUDIT!

Links from the Pod

Podcast: The S**t No One Tells You About Writing

Blog: Jet Reid’s The Query Shark

Podcast: Queries Qualms and Quirks

Previous episodes:

Ep 343: Friends Don’t Let Friends Write Books Without Hooks

Summer Blueprint Step 4: Your Jacket Copy is Your Promise to the Reader

#AmReading

Julie: The Book of Delights, Ross Gay

Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver

KJ: Inciting Joy, Ross Gay

“You Just Need to Lose Weight” and 19 Other Myths about Fat People, Aubrey Gordon

(also mentioned— Maintenance Phase Podcast)

Julie Artz @julieartz on twitter and Instagram

Is 2023 going to be the year you finally click through and start exploring the idea of becoming a book coach? If you’ve been intrigued by all the conversations we’ve had about book coaching over the years here at #Amwriting, maybe this is your year to make it happen. Author Accelerator’s Book Coach certification program teaches you the key editorial, project management, client intaking, and emotional skills necessary to launch your own book coaching business. I’ve done it, and even after years as an editor for the New York Times, I expanded my skills dramatically, and my approach to helping others with their books, and writing my own, is so much better.

The best part: no publishing experience is necessary to be good at this work.

Are you curious to see if you have what it takes? Head to bookcoaches.com/podcasts now to take Author Accelerator’s free quiz to find out if you have the skills and characteristics needed to launch your own book coaching business and get paid to read books all day!

Okay, some us (hand up here) start ALL THE THINGS. But some of us don’t like to start what we don’t think we will finish (and even those of us who start a lot sometimes beat ourselves up for that).

But if you don’t start stuff you cannot finish stuff. So: here’s Becky Blades, author of Start More than You Can Finish (which—and this is a big deal—was recommended by the Next Big Idea Book Club — and you can listen to five ideas from the book by clicking that link) on why we should… start. More than we can finish. And HOW. And also, how to learn to love not finishing what we start.

Links from the pod:

Becky and her daughter in McSweeney’s: A GUIDE TO MIDWESTERN CONVERSATION: ELECTION EDITION

Becky’s daughter’s book (A Guide to Midwestern Conversation, Taylor Kay Phillips)

#AmReading

Becky: You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey and The World Record Book of Racist Stories, Amber Ruffin, Lacey Lamar

Think Again, Adam Grant

The Science of Stuck, Britt Frank

KJ: The Real Work, Adam Gopnik

StARTistry, the newsletter

If you’ve been intrigued by all the talk you’ve heard about book coaching over the years here at #Amwriting, maybe this is your year to explore becoming a coach yourself. Author Accelerator’s Book Coach certification program teaches you the key editorial, project management, client intaking, and emotional skills necessary to launch your own book coaching business—and it’s so much more than an online course, as it comes with amazing opportunities for community and connection.

With more than 135 certified book coaches and counting, Author Accelerator is helping people around the world launch thriving book coaching businesses to guide writers through each step of the writing and publishing process. If you’re curious to see if you have what it takes? Head to bookcoaches.com/podcasts now to take Author Accelerator’s free quiz to find out if you have the skills and characteristics needed to launch your own book coaching business and—as Jennie likes to say-- get paid to read books all day!

On this week’s episode, Jess and KJ talk to Kristen Mei Chase, an OG mommy blogger, journalist, former professor, podcaster, CEO of the Cool Mom Picks Network, and now, novelist. Her book, Thousand Miles to Graceland comes out on January 24, 2002, and we discuss the long road to publication for her (very personal) story.

#AmReading

Kristen: Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You

KJ: Charmaine Wilkerson’s Black Cake

Jess: Reading has been all disappointment recently so she names no names, but she remains optimistic and just started The House in the Pines by Ana Reyes.

Order signed copies of Kristen’s book here!

If you’ve been intrigued by all the talk you’ve heard about book coaching over the years here at #Amwriting, maybe this is your year to explore becoming a coach yourself. Author Accelerator’s Book Coach certification program teaches you the key editorial, project management, client intaking, and emotional skills necessary to launch your own book coaching business—and it’s so much more than an online course, as it comes with amazing opportunities for community and connection.

With more than 135 certified book coaches and counting, Author Accelerator is helping people around the world launch thriving book coaching businesses to guide writers through each step of the writing and publishing process. If you’re curious to see if you have what it takes? Head to bookcoaches.com/podcasts now to take Author Accelerator’s free quiz to find out if you have the skills and characteristics needed to launch your own book coaching business and—as Jennie likes to say-- get paid to read books all day!

Hello #AmWriters! Someone in the #AmWriting Facebook group asked about the best ways to connect and build relationships with bookstores, so we decided to revisit this older episode with bestselling author and Emmy-winning television host Mary Laura Philpott. Drawing on her many years working at Parnassus Books and launching her own books into the world, we talk about the benefits of working with your local bookseller in time for publication day.

Got a writer-dilemma we could help with? Wanna come on the pod and talk it through? Hey, there’s a goal! Whatever you’re trying to do, maybe we can help you find the action items to get you there. Email us—[email protected]—and let’s talk.

HEY NOVELISTS—Did you finish NaNoWriMo? Would you like to know what to do next with that pile of words you worked so hard to create? 

Here’s a group of Author Accelerator certified book coaches dedicated to walking you through the process of finishing your draft or tackling revision—and they have put together a host of free resources to get you started.

Check out  www.nanonowwhat.com to learn more about these fantastic book coaches and how they can get you from NaNo success to a draft that’s ready to pitch or publish.

Writers, I’ve got exciting news from Author Accelerator. Applications for Author Accelerator's new 2-year scholarship program for Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other people of color opens this month! The Author Accelerator team developed this scholarship as a way to amplify diverse voices and perspectives that are under-recognized in the publishing world.

The newly launched Author Accelerator Book Coach Certification Scholarship provides one year of professional mentorship and feedback for up to three students of color as they complete the Book Coach Certification program and one subsequent year of career coaching and mentorship as they launch their business.  If you’re Interested in Applying,  the scholarship window opens November 15th and will close January 15, 2023. The program will kick off in March 2023.  To learn more, visit bookcoaches.com/equity.

A few assorted 2023 goals that I have no doubt I can achieve:

* Finish this box of Wheat Thins

* Take down holiday decorations before July.

* Read … some books.

* Let the dogs in.

Hey, look at that. Already I can check off #1. Jess, Sarina and I just aren’t feeling the goals this year. Oh, we have them. But they’re mostly “do that again” or “yeah, stick with that” kinda things. . I’m gonna write another book. Jess is going to promote her speaking and work on her fiction. Sarina is going to write… four books. I think. Don’t hold her to that, it’s just what I remember. More than me, anyway, but happily it’s not a competition.

And then we have dreams for the ways all of that will be received, which we know aren’t goals because they’re out of our control. We’ve figured out that part—good goals have action items, are achievable and can be checked off. You either wrote a book or you didn’t. You either pitched 60 agents or you didn’t, completed the online French course or not, went to the art class or stayed home. Did you “draw more” or “become a writer” or ““watch less Netflix”? Who the heck knows?

But did you write 500 words, or spend 30 minutes researching agents, or read a chapter or sign up for a class? That you can check off. Want to hear more about that? Here are a couple of tools we’ve come up with over the years.

So, we’ve got that. And we set those. But as it turned out, none of us is aiming for the moon this year, or even forming a team for future moon launches. We’re kind of just all trying to hold tight and enjoy the ride.

So my question is—is that just us? Because we’re a bit settled, and have family things to cope with, and need to recover from the recent whirlwinds? Or is no one feeling big goal energy this year? Spill, kids, and if you ARE swinging for the stars, we will cheer you on.

* Buy more Wheat Thins.

Got a writer-dilemma we could help with? Wanna come on the pod and talk it through? Hey, there’s a goal! Whatever you’re trying to do, maybe we can help you find the action items to get you there. Email us—[email protected]—and let’s talk.

HEY NOVELISTS—Did you finish NaNoWriMo? Would you like to know what to do next with that pile of words you worked so hard to create? 

Here’s a group of Author Accelerator certified book coaches dedicated to walking you through the process of finishing your draft or tackling revision—and they have put together a host of free resources to get you started.

Check out  www.nanonowwhat.com to learn more about these fantastic book coaches and how they can get you from NaNo success to a draft that’s ready to pitch or publish.

Writers, I’ve got exciting news from Author Accelerator. Applications for Author Accelerator's new 2-year scholarship program for Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other people of color opens this month! The Author Accelerator team developed this scholarship as a way to amplify diverse voices and perspectives that are under-recognized in the publishing world.

The newly launched Author Accelerator Book Coach Certification Scholarship provides one year of professional mentorship and feedback for up to three students of color as they complete the Book Coach Certification program and one subsequent year of career coaching and mentorship as they launch their business.  If you’re Interested in Applying,  the scholarship window opens November 15th and will close January 15, 2023. The program will kick off in March 2023.  To learn more, visit bookcoaches.com/equity.