Hungry Authors

We’re closing down 2024 with our fourth and final installment of our book proposal series! Today, we’re talking about arguably the most important part of your proposal: the part where you prove you’ve got what it takes to write your book. We’ll talk about why you should include an at-a-glance TOC, how to write a compelling annotated table of contents, and what sample chapters will show off your ideas best.

Don’t miss your chance to be part of our next cohort: The Book Deal Blueprint, starting January 21! Learn more here.

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate, and thank you for tuning in to the third episode in our book proposals series. This week, we’re tackling the subject most authors dread most: their platform! We share what to include in your platform section, how to think about platform, and why this section really isn’t as scary as it sounds. Then we cover how you’re going to use your platform in the promotion section of your proposal.

Don’t miss your chance to be part of our next cohort: The Book Deal Blueprint, starting January 21! Learn more here.

This is the second episode in our four-part series all about book proposals! This week, we’re talking about how to position your book in the market – that is, how to effectively set expectations for how your book will perform by comparing and contrasting it to other books like it. We talk about how to use comp titles, writing unique selling points, and whether to include your past publications, especially if they’re self-published.

Don’t miss your chance to be part of our next cohort: The Book Deal Blueprint, starting January 21! Learn more here.

We’re starting a new series all about book proposals! We’ve talked around book proposals quite a bit on this show, but for the first time we’re going to dive deep. In this episode, Ariel interviews Liz, book proposal writer extraordinaire about why writers need book proposals, what a book proposal is, and how to get started on all of the essential pieces.

Don’t miss your chance to be part of our next cohort: The Book Deal Blueprint, starting January 21! Learn more here.

In our fourth and final episode of our self-efficacy series, we’re talking about the fourth way that Albert Bandura found to build our self-efficacy: by reducing the stress we feel around the goal we’re trying to accomplish. Writing a book can be stressful! Between imposter syndrome, self-doubt, and fear, it’s easy to get worked up around what you’re trying to do. In this episode, we talk about how to de-stress your writing so that you feel motivated and excited to return to your task and meet your goal.

It’s easier to believe you can when someone you trust believes for you. We’re in the middle of our series on building our self-efficacy to write a book, with input from the research of Albert Bandura. This week, we’re talking about the third way to build our self-efficacy (our belief in our own ability to accomplish a goal): verbal persuasion – that is, people actually telling us we can do it. But not just anyone can say that any time. We’ll only believe them if it comes from someone we trust. Not only that, but it has to be personalized, realistic, and verifiable by our own experience. Tune in to hear us break down this third component as we build our confidence to write a book.

Continuing in our short series on self-efficacy, today we’re talking about learning from the success of people who are – or who were once – just like you. Liz calls these our “mentors from afar”: the people we admire whom we choose as our writing mentors. We can follow in their footsteps and carve a pathway through the wilderness of writing to end up a little closer to where they are now. Albert Bandura called these “vicarious experiences,” and they are the second way (after our own mastery experiences) that we build our self-efficacy.

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Thank you to our sponsor, Goldshlag Design! Work with Michelle to get beautiful graphics for entrepreneurial women with busy lives.

Here at Hungry Authors, we ask you to have a lot of “gumption.” It takes a lot of persistence, daring, and “confidence” to put your writing out into the world. But how do you get all of that gumption? Today, Liz and Ariel are starting a little series on building self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is a term championed by the late great Albert Bandura, who researched how people build up their belief in their own ability to achieve certain goals. He discovered that there are four primary ways we build what he called our “self-efficacy.” The first way is through mastery experiences, and that’s what we’re talking about today.

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Our writing is a gift – both to ourselves and others. That’s what Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew teaches, and we loved getting to explore these ideas in this week’s episode! In this wide-ranging conversation about spiritual memoir, we cover:

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Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew is the author of Swinging on the Garden Gate: A Memoir of Bisexuality & Spirit, now in its second edition; the novel Hannah, Delivered; a collection of personal essays, On the Threshold:  Home, Hardwood, and Holiness; the chapbook, A Map to Mercy, due out in 2025; and three books on writing: Writing the Sacred Journey:  The Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir; Living Revision: A Writer’s Craft as Spiritual Practice, winner of the silver Nautilus Award; and The Release: Finding Creativity and Freedom After the Writing is Done.  She is a founding member of The Eye of the Heart Center for Creative Contemplation, where she teaches writing as a transformational practice and hosts an online writing community.  She is a recipient of two Minnesota State Arts Board artists’ fellowships, the Loft Career Initiative Grant, and is a Minnesota Book Awards finalist.  She lives in Minneapolis with her wife, daughter, and two rambunctious cats.  You can learn more about Elizabeth at www.elizabethjarrettandrew.com and www.spiritualmemoir.com.

Nonfiction and fiction seem to exist in different worlds – but in this episode, we chat with fiction author and book coach Lauren Kay about all of the things they have in common! Like us, Lauren is a plotter, not a pantser, and she has built an incredible author community around her resources for fiction authors. She shares about: how and why she built an agency for helping aspiring fiction authors get published, how both nonfiction and fiction authors can think about platform for commercial success, how to develop characters for fiction, and the similarities between memoir and fiction. There’s lots to dig into this week!

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Lauren Kay is a Young Adult author, educator, and creator. Her debut Young Adult novel WE SHIP IT was published with HarperCollins in June 2023. Now, Lauren is dedicated to ending gatekeeping in publishing and helping aspiring writers achieve their publishing dreams. She provides writers with transparent and empathetic advice and support through weekly videos, free resources, curated communities, and 1-on-1 editing and coaching services.