#AmWriting

Struggling to put a price on your time? Jess and Sarina (an economist and former trader on Wall Street) help your find that elusive number. 

A listener asked Jess for advice on consulting fees, so in order to find an answer more satisfying than, “It depends,” Jess and Sarina get down to economic brass tacks. Sarina explains how publishers or anyone else who wants to hire you for your writing value your time, and how you can propose a figure that takes everything from opportunity costs to fungibles into account. In an attempt to make pricing your time less complicated and emotionally fraught, Jess offers a simple formula to nail down a number that represents your hourly worth. 

Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, January 20, 2020 is ONE OF THE BEST YET: Top 5 Ways to Win at Newsletter Subject Lines. So sign up, support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month. (If you’re on KJ’s mailing list and have been impressed by her style lately—she read this early and took it to heart.)

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As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free. 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. 

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

#AmReading (Watching, Listening)

Jess: MasterClass and The Collected Schizophrenias Esmé Weijun Wang (and her Twitter feed)

Sarina: The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J. Ryan Stradal

This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, where January is Become a Book Coach Month. Sign up for mighty and wondrous Business of Book Coaching Summit here—or visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwriting for details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.

NEWS ABOUT US

Watch KJ’s latest in the #BooksThatWon’tBumYouOut series on Instagram HERE. 

Find more about Jess here and Sarina here.

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

The image in our podcast illustration is by TK

Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. Find it at amwritingpodcast.com.)

She writes Emmy-winning television comedy, bestselling children’s books, plays, and sentences for the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Is there nothing Jill Twiss can’t do?

Musical theater actress and stand-up comic Jill Twiss dreamed of writing for television but did not know how to break in to the world of late-night comedy shows. The stars aligned when a few supportive women called some chits on her behalf, and lo, she landed a spot in the writing room of the Emmy-award winning show, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Her work on Last Week Tonight has earned her multiple Emmys, WGA and Peabody Awards, and led to a series of bestselling children’s books as well as the opportunity to write humorous “Can I have that word in a sentence, please?” hints for the Scripps National Spelling Bee. 

This week, Jill and Jess talk about how Jill got her start in television, her love of Vice President Mike Pence’s pet rabbit Marlon Bundo, how her children’s books came to be, their shared need for pressing deadlines, and Jill’s play-in-progress about the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention.

Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, you know we dropped the Top Five Ways to Find the Right Agent to pitch into everyone’s inbox last Monday. What will our supporters find there this Monday? It’s SO FRESH WE DON’T EVEN KNOW. But if you become a supporter, you will. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month. 

Upgrade to Supporter

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. 

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#AmReading (Watching, Listening)

Jess: Good Luck with That by Kristan Higgins

Jill: The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America by Isaac Butler and Dan Kois

Our guest for this episode is Jill Twiss.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Everyone Gets a Say

The Marlon Bundo episode of Last Week Tonight (full episode): 


Just the excerpt about A Day in The Life of Marlon Bundo with a clip of the animated all-star cast audiobook: 



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

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

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

The image in our podcast illustration is by Kate DeCarvalho. 

The music in our podcast is by Max Cohen.

Transcripts for every episode can be found at amwritingpodcast.com.

“Every writer,” book coach Jennie Nash tells us, “ thinks at some point that they just cannot do this. That’s just part of the process.” It’s not our favorite part—but it’s true, and getting past that stage and on with the job of finishing a book in any genre is the part of the process that many writers just can’t seem to conquer. But for some of us—like Jennie—helping other people get past that road block is a superpower. If that’s you (and you know if it is)—then we might just have a side hustle for you. In this episode, we talk to Author Accelerator’s Jennie Nash about the five things that make a good book coach, how she trains book coaches and her process for guiding a writer’s process—and why a good book coach must be paid. 

Transcripts are having a holiday break—but the next #WritersTopFive is already scheduled for Monday, January 6, 2020: Top Five Ways to Find the Right Agent to Pitch. Those Top Fives are how we thank our supporters, who tell us how much they appreciate the podcast by funding it at $7 a month or $80 a year. The end of the year is a great time to do just that—and you won’t want to miss that Top Five or the ones that come after. Ready to join us? Just click the button.

Upgrade to Supporter

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.

Get New Episode Emails

This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, where January is Become a Book Coach Month. Sign up for mighty and wondrous Business of Book Coaching Summit here—or visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwriting for details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.

#AmReading (Watching, Listening)

Jess: Love and Other Words / Roomies by Christina Lauren 

KJ: Convenience Store Woman, Sayaka Murata

Sarina: Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts, Kate Raccullia

Jennie: The House that Lou Built, Mae Respicio

The Crow, Burlington, VT.

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.

Whoa. Fellow writers, 2020 is upon us. And here at #AmWriting HQ, we love setting annual goals. We really do. We adore everything about it, from the anticipation and planning to the writing them in our handy dandy notebooks (although this year KJ got paralyzed by the need to make them pretty and ended up with temporary under a to-do list scribbles). 

One reason we love it so much is that we feel good about our goals. Typically, we tend to reach them—and that isn’t because we’re super-people. It’s because we set the right kinds of goals. Things we can control, that are within our reach, that can me measured and revisited and that hold us up and support us in our work. And we also love words—which means we love choosing our word of the year. This year we’ve got three good ones. Listen in, and then share yours in our Facebook group. 

If you’re working on goal setting and want to read more about how we make goals work for us, we’ve got something for you! Sign up for our weekly shownotes emails and get a goal-setting mini-ebook HERE. Trust us, this is helpful--there's nothing worse than setting goals that just end up making you feel like you've failed. This is something it pays to get right.

Links and transcripts are having a holiday break—but the next #WritersTopFive is already scheduled for Monday, January 6, 2020: Top Five Ways to Find the Right Agent to Pitch. Those Top Fives are how we thank our supporters, who tell us how much they appreciate the podcast by funding it at $7 a month or $80 a year. The end of the year is a great time to do just that—and you won’t want to miss that Top Five or the ones that come after. Ready to join us? Just click the button. 

Upgrade to Supporter

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. 

Get New Episode Emails

This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, where January is Become a Book Coach Month. Sign up for mighty and wondrous Business of Book Coaching Summit here—or visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwriting for details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.

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

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

Whoa. Fellow writers, 2020 is upon us. And here at #AmWriting HQ, we love setting annual goals. We really do. We adore everything about it, from the anticipation and planning to the writing them in our handy dandy notebooks (although this year KJ got paralyzed by the need to make them pretty and ended up with temporary under a to-do list scribbles). 

One reason we love it so much is that we feel good about our goals. Typically, we tend to reach them—and that isn’t because we’re super-people. It’s because we set the right kinds of goals. Things we can control, that are within our reach, that can me measured and revisited and that hold us up and support us in our work. And we also love words—which means we love choosing our word of the year. This year we’ve got three good ones. Listen in, and then share yours in our Facebook group. 

If you’re working on goal setting and want to read more about how we make goals work for us, we’ve got something for you, our loyal email subscribers: a goal-setting mini-ebook. Download it here.

Links and transcripts are having a holiday break—but the next #WritersTopFive is already scheduled for Monday, January 6, 2020: Top Five Ways to Find the Right Agent to Pitch. Those Top Fives are how we thank our supporters, who tell us how much they appreciate the podcast by funding it at $7 a month or $80 a year. The end of the year is a great time to do just that—and you won’t want to miss that Top Five or the ones that come after. Ready to join us? Just click the button. 

Upgrade to Supporter

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. 

Get New Episode Emails

This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, where January is Become a Book Coach Month. Sign up for mighty and wondrous Business of Book Coaching Summit here—or visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwriting for details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.

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

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

We’re reviewing our 2019 goals. Did we gloriously achieve? Live up to our words of the year by focusing on the worthy? Check every box and climb ever mountain? 

We did okay. 

In some cases, we killed. In others, there were extenuating circumstances. Goals were revised, cast aside, postponed. All part of the process. To hear how we did, listen in—and be sure to share your bests and worsts from 2019 in the #AmWriting Facebook Group. Then, get ready for some #2020GoalSetting next week.

Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, a request. Can you work supporting the #AmWriting podcast into your end-of-year budget? The next Monday’s #WritersTopFive: Top Five Ways to Find the Right Agent to Pitch, will drop into inboxes Monday, January 6, 2020—just in time for a new year of pitching goals. Every weekly #WritersTopFive email features fast, fun, actionable advice from KJ, Jess, Sarina and our guests. Supporters also get subscriber-only bonus PODCAST SHORTS. A little randomly timed inspiration from one of us every so often, straight into your podcast feed. Want in? Click the button.

Support #AmWriting

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

LINKS FROM THE PODCAST

Jess’s video of an eagle trapped by an octopus (which is not nearly as dramatic as I feel trying to wrestle all my goals and to-dos into submission).

#AmReading (Watching, Listening)

Jess: The Bromance Book Club, Evie Drake Starts Over

KJ: Unmarriagable: Pride and Prejudice in Pakistan

Sarina: The Bromance Book Club

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

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

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

Transcript are on a break for the holidays.

We all know you can’t really buy the things we writers want: inspiration, the power to spend as much time writing our books as we do thinking about them—not to mention sales, agents and editors. But you CAN grab a few things that make the writerly journey more fun. In this episode, we talk about the joys of journals and the perfect markers, tech tools that qualify as investments and those that are a little less spendy and suggest a few gifts for your writer groups stockings—including custom socks. 

Episode links follow—but first, a preview of the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, December 16, 2019: Top 5 Things to Do to at the Start of a New Nonfiction Project. Remember, you can GIFT a supporter subscription! Or sign up to support us yourself.

Give a gift subscription

On that note, there are affiliate links in this post. Most will go to support the podcast, but the things KJ “borrowed” from Catherine Newman’s gift guide are her affiliate links (and she’s donating the proceeds this year). 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. 

Get New Episode Emails

And now, this week’s links!

LINKS FROM THE PODCAST

The Leuchtturm B5 bullet journal with monthly pages we all use.

From KJ:

KJ’s two sets of sticky notes: the color dots, and the color flags, from the glorious gift guide of one Catherine Newman.

KJ’s new favorite notebook, from Sarina (and Paipur—here’s their direct website).

Books and art supplies KJ is craving:
Finding Your Creative Voice, Lisa Congden

A set of watercolor paints like this one, also snatched from Catherine’s gift guide. And hey, why not this book she liked, too? A Field Guide to Color, Lisa Solomon.

The outline pens KJ keeps seeing on Instagram—or something like them— are here in plain, and here in glitter.

We talked about classes from Skillshare, BluPrint and Master Class.

Give the Gift of a Podcast here.

From Jess: 

Book Nerd hat I bought at Parnassus but you can get from Out of Print

Night Scout Rechargeable LED beanie in red

Tät Tat “sacco” upright pouch for glasses in grey blue 

The Every Day Calendar from Simone Giertz (her useless robot video is here)

Pre-order Benjamin Dreyer’s Stet! Grammar game, out July 7, 2020

From Sarina: 

Snarky notepads 

Frixion no-bleed, erasable markers in fineliners and plumper versions

New apple pencil 

Nebo app for handwriting-to-text 

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

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

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

There’s no transcript for this week’s episode. Transcripts will return next week. 

Turns out you should judge a book by its cover, and readers do. Which means authors need to consider that (and not our own taste) when we think about our own covers. This week, we talk about the two things to consider whether you’re an indie working with cover artists or a trad with a publisher and an art department: reader expectations and those now-you-can’t-stop-seeing-the-flowers trends, and it turns into a bit of lesson in heading to the bookstore and making some cover judgments of your own.

Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, have you heard that we recorded our first #SupporterMinis this month? #SupporterMinis are short bursts of advice or inspiration (or maybe commiseration) to punctuate your writing week, which appear in the podcast feeds of our supporters. Supporters also get weekly #WritersTopFives like Top Five Goodreads Secrets for Authors and Top Five Things You Don’t Need to Be a Real Writer. Support us and we’ll do everything we can to support you!

Upgrade to Supporter

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. 

Get New Episode Emails

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

#AmReading (Watching, Listening)

Jess: Running with Sherman: The Donkey with the Heart of a Hero, Christopher McDougall

KJ: Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts, Kate Racculia

The 78 Best Book Covers of 2019 from LitHub

9 beautiful book cover design trends for 2019, 99designs

This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work done. Check out their FREE (and epic) upcoming summit on the Business of Book Coaching if you’re intrigued, or visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwriting for details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.

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

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

The image in our podcast illustration was compiled by the people at the magnificent LitHub, which you should bookmark and read constantly, and used in the article that’s linked in our shownotes: The 78 Best Book Covers of 2019. I note that I have not read one single one of these books. 

The infamous how-to meets self-help meets memoir-with-a-dash-of-stunt genre: it may be awkwardly named, but we love it.

This week’s guest didn’t realize she was laying the groundwork for her first book when she decided to write 50 thank you notes to the people, things and places that shaped her in honor of her 50th birthday—but of course she was When you can define a thing and the time frame and the reasons for doing it so clearly, what else can you do but inspire other people to do the same? But the road from I’m doing this thing to I’m publishing this book isn’t clear (although in this case it was lightning fast). This week, Nancy Davis Kho talks to us about what it took to make her book saleable, then write the damn thing and make it really really good.

Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, did you catch the #WritersTopFive that popped into your inbox Monday? (And if it didn’t, HELLO, you need to subscribe to our free weekly #AmWriting emails!) 

Get New Episode Emails

That was just a little taste. We do those every week. I just scheduled Top Five Reference Books for All Novelists, and Three More for Special Occasions, and you don’t want to miss it. (You won’t believe the kinds of things that can be turned into an encyclopedias or dictionary.) We also recorded the first of many #MiniSupporter episodes that will slip right into the podcast feeds of #AmWriting supporters everywhere. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month. 

Upgrade to Supporter

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. 

Aya deLeon, author of the Justice Hustlers series.

#AmReading (Watching, Listening)

Nancy: The Good Lord Bird, James McBride

Jess: Sense and Sensibility, narrated by Kate Winslet

KJ: What Should I Read Next—the podcast from Anne Bogel, aka the Modern Mrs Darcy. (I’m obsessed with it. I’ve found so many great new reads!)

#FaveIndieBookstore

A Great Good Place for Books, Oakland

Our guest for this episode is Nancy Davis Kho, author of The Thank You Project and host of the Midlife Mixtape podcast. Find the book, the podcast and all things Nancy HERE.

This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work done. Check out their FREE (and epic) upcoming summit on the Business of Book Coaching if you’re intrigued, or visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwriting for details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.

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

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

Want a transcript? Please head to amwritingpodcast.com.

We wanted to talk holiday writing—as in, writing ABOUT holidays, not writing during the holidays. So we went strolling through the holly-bedecked halls of the Internet—because, #dominantculture, holiday books as they appear without a more specific web search means Christmas books and specifically, the 250 page equivalent of a bonbon of a Lifetime Christmas movie. We found Natalie Cox, author of the debut romcom Mutts and Mistletoe. And then we found that Natalie Cox is also Betsy Tobin, author of five other novels, co-owner of a bookshop in North London and just generally appearing to live an authorial dream life. 

So of course we invited her on to talk about not just holiday writing, but switching genres, the real meaning of “debut” and whether or not owning a bookstore in London is as much fun as it sounds like it would be. Links from the episode (which was itself as much fun as it sounds like it would be) follow.

As for writing DURING the holidays, if you’re a supporter, you can check out the Top 5 Hacks for Holiday Writing—and if you’re not, why not? Give yourself a little holiday giftie and us a little holiday boost clicking the button below to support the podcast you love, get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice and occasional bonus #MiniSupporter podcasts for just $7 a month. 

Upgrade to Supporter

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. 

Get New Episode Emails

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

#AmReading (Watching, Listening)

Betsy:

Three Women, Lisa Taddeo 

KJ: 

Beside Herself, Elizabeth LaBan

Sarina: 

The Boss Who Stole Christmas, Jana Aston

INK@84

Our guest for this episode is Betsy Tobin, aka Natalie Cox. Find more about her at BetsyTobin.co.uk.

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

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

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

Want a transcript? Head for amwritingpodcast.com