#AmWriting

We make a point of setting goals every year—and, even more importantly, actually looking back to see whether we achieved them, and why. We’ve talked a lot in past years about the importance of setting the right kind of goals (you can get a short PDF on goal-setting and a worksheet below)—by which we mean goals you can control. You can’t sell your book to a publisher—that’s not a goal within your control. Get an agent, make a best-seller list, same. But you can finish the book, get help with the query, revise, edit, spend X time, write X words, write the proposal—without anyone else having to make a choice that fulfills your dreams.

We try to make our goals mostly dreams we can fulfill ourselves, and then add in the big, out-of-control payoffs in sort of a different section.

But even given that, we make mistakes. My goals last year were weirdly TOO specific (a more usual problem is that they be too vague) and as it turned out, in several cases although I still wanted to achieve the overarching goal, the specific goal I set didn’t interest me any more. This year I plan to give myself a little more leeway.

Jess’s WOTY (word of the year) last year was Evaluate. Mine was Play. Sarina’s was WIP. Jess and Sarina nailed theirs. I… kind of forgot mine. But looking back, I lived up to it. I traveled more for fun than I have in many many years—partly because post-Covid and older kids, but still, it would have been easy to just go no, that’s TOO MUCH WORK. But I didn’t, I got out there, and I have the memories of the camel ride, the vintage shopping trip, the hike outside San Fransisco, the baths in Asturias, the road trip down the East Coast, the heat in Austin and the crowds watching the World Cup in the plaza in Marrakech to prove it. Thinking of it all makes me think of the new rule form fave guest Laura Vanderkam’s Tranquility By Tuesday: Effortful before Effortless. Sometimes “Play” is also kind of hard work. But it’s worth it.

I’m sending out a discussion thread for next year’s WOTYs. You’ll get a preview of mine there (I’m already living by it) and hear from Jess and Sarina on the next episode! Or come chat—details below.

Links from the Pod

Gifts for Writers

Epic (short story by Sarina and Elle Kennedy)

Jezebel’s Creepy Stories for Halloween

Rachael Herron’s 90 Days to Done Masterclass

@katherineroystudio’s reel on how picture books are made

#AmReading

Sarina: Every Last Fear, Alex Finlay

Jess: Desert Star, Michael Connelly

KJ: A Letter to Three Witches, Elizabeth Bass

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.

Want to BE one of those book coaches? Our partners at Author Accelerator have super-fun BONUSES for anyone who signs up book coach training before the end of 2022. Learn more at bookcoaches.com to find out if 2023 will be the year you launch a book coaching business or level up the one you already have.

Finishing a draft is glorious.

Realizing you have to revise it—especially the first time—is … not.

That’s the focus of this bonus episode. We’re thinking, maybe it’s post NaNoWriMo, it’s December, and you’re sitting on on a draft, a real honest-to-gosh draft of your first novel. And you should be thrilled, happy, pleased as punch.

But since you’re a #AmWriting listener, we know you know the next step is NOT pressing send on an agent query or designing cover art. Or even polishing each sentence to perfection. In this episode, you’ll hear me (KJ) chat with three fantastic book coaches about what you do do to go from the drafting process to the revision process, the first steps in shifting your mindset, evaluating what you’ve got and figuring out how to make it better.

Links from the pod:

The 30 day revision process episode

Creating Character Arcs, KM Weiland

Save the Cat Writes a Novel, Jessica Brody

MORE INFO: Head to www.nanonowwhat.com for free resources on the evaluating and revision process, and 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.

Hear from other #NaNoNowWhat coaches on #AmWriting:

Rona Gofstein on Blueprint for a Book Step 3: Who Will Read My Book? Know Your Market

Sam Skal on Blueprint for a Book Step 8: One Outline to Rule Them All (Even if You Hate Outlining)

The guest coaches

Kayla Davenport has been an avid reader and writer her whole life, and now assists other writers on their own bookish journeys. She enjoys a wide range of genres, but her favorites are young adult fantasy and dystopian stories that delve into compelling characters and their struggles. She is the author of the young adult dystopian series Beyond the Gates, and is very involved in the online book community on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok under the name @thebooktubeturtle. Through her coaching business, Kayla Davenport Books, she works with writers at all stages of the process, from initial idea to publication, but her specialty lies in revision work, identifying the hidden gaps in stories and helping writers fill them in and take their manuscripts from good to great.

Stacy Frazer is a formerly repressed creative soul turned speculative fiction writer, YA fantasy author, Author Accelerator certified book coach, and the founder of Write It Scared. Her mission is to help fiction writers let go of the self-doubt spiral and find clarity and confidence in their stories so they can finish their books. Stacy firmly believes that the only creative license required to write a novel is one's lived experience and that you can learn all the tools to craft a book that makes you proud!

When not writing, reading, or working with writers, you can find Stacy hanging with her daughter or on the trail with her big goofy labrador, Gus Gus. To connect with Stacy, please visit her website: www.writeitscared.co. You can also email her at [email protected] or follow her on Instagram @WriteitScared.

Sam Cameron has spent the past decade as a writing tutor and high school history teacher. She loves helping teenagers find their voice and discover the world around them. Coaching YA authors is the perfect marriage between her love of story, my passion for teaching, and her firm belief that all teens deserve to see themselves represented in great books! Her coaching super power is diagnosing the fatal flaws of a manuscript and helping writers figure out how to fix them.

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.

My motto for 2023 is “good writing comes last” but it might as well be “story first”, which is why we’re re-sharing this interview with Anna North, author of three novels, most recently Outlawed—the January 2021 Reese’s Book Club pick. Outlawed has a powerful theme and message and what we call, in the interview, a “poke-in-the-gut point”—but it also has, first and foremost, a can’t-put-it-down story. We recorded this in January 2021, and it deserves a listen any time.

Bummed that there’s not a fresh episode this week? We’ve got you! Hang tight until Tuesday for a bonus episode: NaNoNowWhat. If you finished NaNoWriMo—of have a draft desperately in need of completion or revision—this is the episode for you.

KJ talks to a group of Author Accelerator certified book coaches about the process of finishing your draft or tackling revision. Can’t wait? They’ve also 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.

Hooks, tropes, high concept. Comps. The publishing world tosses those phrases around like juggling balls, and I for one (as usual it’s KJ here) had a hard time understanding them for ages, especially the idea of a hook.

But now I get it. A hook, in short, is the thing that gets someone—agent, editor, reader, movie-goer, etc—to say, following a one or two sentence description of the book: SOLD. Fiction, non-fiction: same deal.

So a hook COULD be high-concept. (What if a kid wished to be Big? What if you woke up and discovered your whole life was a TV show with you as the unwitting star?). It could also be a mix-and-match situation with a pair of comps or a single comp (Cujo, but a cat).

Or it can steal from something high concept: The Princess Diaries, but with the Japanese royal family (Tokyo Ever After). Groundhog Day, but in Brooklyn with a girl in the ‘80’s whose dad is now sick (This Time Tomorrow).

Sometimes the hook is right there in the title. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. Dial A for Aunties. The Gift of Failure.

The thing about a hook is that it’s rarely the full story. It’s a “come for the X, stay for the Y situation”: you pick up the book because you love a good restaurant reality show family battle, but then it’s the small town story that keeps you reading. Or it’s just that there’s a lot more to the story—as Sarina says, the whole “but then what happens?” A hook does not make a book—and a lack of hook does not mean a bad book. It’s just a whole lot harder to tell you what a book without a hook is about, and therefore to sell it. It can be done. But I, for one, am not doing it again.

Have you written a book with a hook—or without one? Wondering if you’ve got hold of a hook or a trope? Is there a particular hook (hello, “but in publishing”) that always gets you? We’re chatting in the comments—or head for the chat itself to see what else we’re talking about. You can also find us on Facebook.

Books and Links from the Pod:

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

A Very Merry Meet Cute, Julie Murphy & Sierra Simone

The Bromance Book Club, Lyssa Kay Adams

In a Holidaze, Christina Lauren

Beach Read, Emily Henry

Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains, Bethany Brookshire

Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America, Leila Philip

Listen, World: How the Intrepid Elsie Robinson Became America’s Most-Read Woman, Julia Scheeres & Allison Gilbert

The Chain, Adrian McKinty

The Plot, Jean Hanff Korelitz

Karin Slaughter’s Pieces of Her, Girl, Forgotten

Episode 71 Building a Relationship with Your Bookstore

#AmReading

Jess: Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America, Leila Philip

Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains, Bethany Brookshire

Ghosts of the Orphanage (March 2023), Christine Kenneally

KJ: A Very Merry Bromance, Lyssa Kay Adams

All I Want for Christmas, Maggie Knox

Witchmark, C.L. Polk

Sarina: Pieces of Her, Karin Slaughter

The Night Shift, Alex Finlay

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.

Want to BE one of those book coaches? Our partners at Author Accelerator have super-fun BONUSES for anyone who signs up book coach training before the end of 2022. Learn more at bookcoaches.com

Hi all, Jess here!

I’ve been getting a lot of questions in the #AmWriting Facebook group and in my DM/emails about speaking, so I’m going to do a series of bonus episodes about the topic. There’s so much to talk about, but since so many of the questions are about speaking agencies (working with them, getting one, how much of a cut do they take, how do you know which ones are good), I thought I’d start there.

I hope this episode flattens the learning curve for you!

Show Notes

My agency, American Program Bureau and my personal landing page over on their website.

Sometimes you have to start with a memoir (that you never publish) to figure out who you are and where you’re going. Today’s guest has a nice impressive bio—but 8 years ago, she was just a writer staring at a screen and working on, as many of us do when we first start, a memoir.

Emily Grosvenor is the editor of Oregon Home magazine, Willamette Week’s design publication Nester. She’s also written for The Atlantic, Salon, Good Housekeeping, and others. 

But ALSO like so many of us, she started as a generalist, freelancing from the familiar “write what you know” place. New place, children, parenthood, cooking, trying to navigate finding adult life or living with a partner? Write about it.

But a funny thing happened on the way to that memoir: She realized she didn’t want to keep living in that space. And when the memoir didn’t sell, Emily found the opportunity to write about something she really wanted to explore—and figured out how she fit into the market.

Links from the pod

Foundry Media Literary Agency “exploded”

Sarah Susanka’s Your Not-So-Big Life

Seth Godin’s Purple Cow

Pia somebody, Badass Your Brand

Bonus: Rachael Herron’s Fast-Draft Your Memoir in 45 Hours (because that might be the way you plow your way through what you need to write to find out what you want to write)

Sign up for Emily’s Design Shift Newsletter HERE.

(Our episode on email lists 151: #StartHereforEmailLists)

Emily on Instagram @EmilyGrosvenor

Book: Find Yourself at Home: A Conscious Approach to Shaping Your Space and Your Life

#AmReading

Emily: Marie Kondo's Kurashi at Home

KJ: Start More than You Can Finish, Becky Blades

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.

Want to BE one of those book coaches? Our partners at Author Accelerator have super-fun BONUSES for anyone who signs up book coach training before the end of 2022. Learn more at bookcoaches.com to find out if 2023 will be the year you launch a book coaching business or level up the one you already have.

Hey #AmWriters! Jess here. I recorded a bunch of videos to answer all of your questions about creating video for book marketing but in the end, I figured an entire episode needed to happen in order to really get into the topic.

I started creating daily videos based on the content in The Addiction Inoculation because I wanted to the information out there, and if it sold some books or rustled up some speaking invitations, great. At the time I’m writing these show notes, I’m 63 videos deep, and yes, it’s a massive time suck. It takes a lot of work, and a lot of patience through plenty of mistakes but the experience has been a net gain for me overall in terms of education and exposure.

I hope this flattens the learning curve for you, and please report back in the #AmWriting Facebook group if you have anything to add or advice to offer!

Links

The #AmWriting Facebook Group

Jess on Instagram

Jess on TikTok

Jess on Twitter

Listeners, the team at Author Accelerator knows that all kinds of people can make good book coaches. It’s not necessarily people who have had massive success as writers themselves. It’s not necessarily people who have secured agents, book deals, degrees, or awards.

It’s people who really could spend all day talking about books, who get excited by the idea of lifting up other writers, and who are ready to back up their passion for writing with skills, training, and hard work.

If that might be you, join the Author Accelerator team for two days of exploration on November 30 and December 1, 2022, to find out if 2023 will be the year you launch a book coaching business or level up the one you already have. Head to bookcoaches.com/dreamjob to learn more.

I know. I know. Long term listeners know what’s coming first but this first gift combo is an #AmWriting favorite for a good reason. The three of us own the same journal and nearly identical (save for the color of the elastic fastener and monogram) custom leather Fillion and we love them so much.

Our favorite calendar/journal is, and has always been, the Leuchtturm1917 monthly planner with 136-page dotted notebook pages. We love everything about it - the monthly pages, the number of dotted pages, the weight of the paper, the pocket for stickers in the back - oh, it’s so good. Sarina keeps a very eager eye out each year and two of our favorite days are the “what are next year’s colors?” discovery day and the day Sarina hands over the new beauties in our color of choice. Sarina’s planner is a thing of beauty so here’s a pic of what her month usually looks like (stickers are for completing the day’s word goal):

What’s a Fillion, you ask? Well, about ten years ago I bought a gorgeous tri-fold leather holder for a journal at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas and a very happy love affair was born. I actually met the woman who makes these lovelies, Lesha Shaver (pic below), owner of Little Mountain Bindery, and she’s currently making a custom leatherbound book for a lucky someone on my holiday list this year.

There are tons of options for the Fillion, but ours is the XL trifold with our initials in Huxley font. You can fit two notebooks in there if you want, plus the optional magnetic pocket is great for stickers, ruler, stencils, that sort of thing. I’ve been giving this Fillion to people as a thank you gift for years (for example, everyone who has blurbed my books has one with their initials and their favorite color elastic cording).

In plucking the proper url to link in this post I just discovered Lesha has created a deluxe Fillion box set and now my mouth is watering.

Given that we have our journals, now we need to have a very serious conversation about pens. I have choices, of course, but Sarina has OPINIONS. Her current favorites are:

* Uniball Jetstream retractable fine (.7mm) ballpoint pens in black.

* Pentel EnerGel RTX medium point (.7mm) retractable liquid gel pens in assorted colors.

* Pilot Frixion light pastel highlighter with erasable ink and chisel tip 3-pack.

I happen to love my black Sharpie ultra fine point pens, but that’s just me. They do bleed through most journal pages, so I understand if you are offended.

Here’s the thing about the Pilot Frixion pens: they erase using the heat generated by the friction of he eraser on the paper and it’s a perfect erase. I took Sarina’s Frixion pen obsession to a whole new level and bought the big 24 set. Looooook how pretty….

If our pen choices don’t turn your crank, look around at one of our favorite sources for pens and other addictive office items, JetPens or MochiThings. I apologize in advance.

Other fun things I’ve kept on a running list this year:

Bulk blank notebooks with kraft paper covers (I keep the tiny ones, 10 for $24) in my pocket or wallet at all times because I’m 52 and starting to forget things.

This adorable Kaweco fountain pen in smooth sage. It’s tiny and light, and I love it. I linked the medium nib but it comes in lots of versions. The ink is specific to this pen and comes in lots of colors, too.

I am terrible with glasses. Mine get left all over the place (there are three pairs of glasses in my woods, right now, sitting on stumps or logs I can’t locate) and I scratch them far too quickly. That said, this soft but upright Tät Tat glasses (or whatever) case really helps. I keep it on my nightstand and consequently I’ve managed to hold on to at least one pair of unscratched prescription glasses. Mine’s grey-blue.

Oh, and since people ask me all the time about my glasses, they are Warby Parker Ainsley in Marzipan Tortoise.

Did you know Sarina made her own journal for romance readers? Yes, indeedy. The Kissing Books Journal by Heart Eyes Press. In fact, Sarina told me she even keeps a “Gifts for Readers and Writers” list on Amazon, so here’s that, too.

Finally, since few of us need more stuff, don’t forget about memberships to The Authors Guild or PEN America. Members of The Authors Guild get access to legal services, web services, insurance discounts, all kinds of great webinars and events, and the opportunity to build your community of writer friends. This year, The Authors Guild helped advocate for writers and got Amazon to change its ebook return policy and was instrumental in getting ZLibrary taken down and its creators arrested and indicted for piracy. PEN America offers writer and reader memberships and both are vital to supporting their work advocating for for free speech, fighting censorship and book banning, and protecting writers from online abuse.

NB: some of these items listed at Amazon have affiliate codes on them which means Sarina or I might make a few cents here or there from Amazon’s coffers. I tried to link to smaller retailers wherever possible, though!

Happy holidays to all of you. We appreciate you all so very, very much.

Pain by Elsie Robinson

Imagine discovering that one of the highest paid, most well known journalists in the world, whose voice dominated the Hearst media empire for more than 30 years, who wrote something like 9,000 published articles…

has basically disappeared from living memory.

That’s the story of Julia Scheer and Allison Gilbert’s biography: Listen World: How the Intrepid Elsie Robinson Became America’s Most-Read Woman. The story of this podcast is how Allison came to enlist Julia and finish the project, which came from the discovery of one of Robinson’s poems (and please note this was not a woman who was best known for her poems) in her mother’s papers thirty years ago.

We talk about Elsie—whose writing secrets and mantras sound like things you could hear any day on the podcast—as well as the process of defining the project, finding a co-writer and shifting your own work, and even your own bio, in order to become the writer of a new kind of book.

Links

First, our new mantra: It is the Parked Profile, not the Divine Spark, which is the secret of success. (i.e.: Keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.)

Elsie’s Writing Manifesto and Top 5 Quotes on Writing.

A novelization of another famous women of the era: The Personal Librarian

Fab reviews of Listen, World:

Wall Street Journal

New York Times

Washington Post

Allison’s colleague and co-author, Julia Scheeres

Allison’s website

#AmReading

Allison: Lab Girl, Hope Jahren

The Successful Woman, Dr. Joyce Brothers

KJ: Out of the Clear Blue Sky, Kristan Higgins

Also mentioned—The Crappy Friends Podcast

Listeners, the team at Author Accelerator knows that all kinds of people can make good book coaches. It’s not necessarily people who have had massive success as writers themselves. It’s not necessarily people who have secured agents, book deals, degrees, or awards.

It’s people who really could spend all day talking about books, who get excited by the idea of lifting up other writers, and who are ready to back up their passion for writing with skills, training, and hard work.

If that might be you, join the Author Accelerator team for two days of exploration on November 30 and December 1, 2022, to find out if 2023 will be the year you launch a book coaching business or level up the one you already have. Head to bookcoaches.com/dreamjob to learn more.

Ever feel like some things are just outside your ken? I’m that way with literary magazines. And I’ve never found the right retreat or residency, or applied for a grant, and I know sometimes it’s just that I don’t think I belong in that world.

But worlds don’t usually just reach out and drag you in. That’s a fave theme of ours around here—you can’t be published unless you write something, etc. If you want to be part of a literary world you have to find it and start looking around for a door.

This podcast is ALL about finding doors. And knocking, and however you want to extend the metaphor—and it was great. As I’ve said before, you can tell a practical podcast by the number of links that end up in there, and there are a ton of useful links below.

And let me add to all of it my favorite old school book on a similar topic, Making A Literary Life from Carolyn See. I hope this talk with Patrice inspires you to get OUT THERE.

About our guest: Patrice Gopo is an award-winning essayist and the author of books for adults and children. Her essay collection, All the Colors We Will See, was Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Her debut picture book, All the Places We Call Home, was inspired by one of the essays in her collection. She’s the child of Jamaican immigrants, but she was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska—which gives her a pretty unique perspective on everything from racial identity formation and immigration to weather and life in the great outdoors. She’s had essays in a ton of publications, including Catapult, Charlotte Magazine, Creative Nonfiction, and AFAR Magazine, and her essay “That Autumn” received a notable mention in the Best American Essays 2020—which is HUGE. She’s also the recipient of a North Carolina Arts Council Artist Fellowship and a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award—and I’m telling you all these details because literary magazines, grants and residencies are exactly what we’re planning to talk about.

Links from the Pod

Literary Mama

Relief: A Journal of Art and Faith

Publisher’s Weekly Lit Mag Database

Funds for Writers database

Clifford Garstang

Poets & Writers: Literary Magazines

Lit Mag News!

Creative NonFiction Classes (Patrice mentioned teacher Lisa Olen Harris)

North Carolina Arts Council

Patricia Gopo’s Grant Application Tips

PatriceGopo.com Writing Resources

St. Nell’s Humor Writing Residency

National Endowment for the Arts

Sustainable Arts Foundation

#AmReading

Patrice: Nothing Special, Desiree Cooper

When Stars Are Scattered, Omar Mohamed and Victoria Jamieson

The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop, Felicia Rose Chavez

KJ: A Rather Haunted Life (Ruth Franklin's biography of Shirley Jackson)

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.