Mom Writes Podcast

This week on MomWrites we welcome Crystal Duffy, author of the recent release "Twin to Twin: From High Risk Pregnancy to Happy Family". Twin to Twin covers her high risk pregnancy with her twin girls. Crystal tells us all about her harrowing journey through her pregnancy with blood clots, twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome, in-utero surgery, mono-mono twin risks, and her ultimate rise to author and patient advocate. Crystal feels her personal story has fueled her patient advocacy work, because no one knows you or your children's health better than you.

Twin to Twin: From High Risk Pregnancy to Happy Family was written while Crystal was raising preemie twins AND a toddler!

"I think I deserve a Pulitzer prize for having written a book with preemies that needed ongoing medical treatments as well as raising a toddler we were trying to potty train." - Crystal Duffy. WE TOTALLY AGREE, CRYSTAL!

She soon realized that if she wanted to write this book, she had to let go of multiple things - laundry, clutter, household stuff - which was all still going to be there after the book was finished. She maximized her time while the kids were sleeping and used weekends and late nights while writing. There were sacrifices, but Crystal says she felt amazing and proud she felt when the first shipment of her books arrived, and how happy and excited her kids were as well. The process of writing books is pretty removed from any physical product for most kids, but seeing the books in print really helped them understand what Crystal had accomplished.

Crystal is an Author Accelerator client and has listened to the #amwriting podcast with Jess and KJ, our co-podcasting nonfiction gurus. She went through the Blueprint program for her second book, and she's well into the process of writing book #2 with her coach. She assures Abby (and Mel) that writing a book IS (mostly!) easier the second time around! There are challenges from jumping genres from memoir to nonfiction and the process of weaving patient stories into research, but there are things you can do to make it easier.

1) Check in with yourself, and compile all your notes in one spot on a regular basis.

2) Outlining can be super useful for non-fiction. You still have to weave a tale, it's just with facts!

3) Writing your jacket cover, synopsis, and pitch beforehand can help you narrow your focus from an idea to a plan.

This final tip Crystal recommends to us from Damon Brown’s book Bring Your Worth (coming out in February – www.damonbrown.net and www.bringyourworth.com – try to focus on completing 3 work-related things per day. Whether that’s an important email, several pages on your book, or other important tasks, anything beyond that is a blessing because inevitably, several other things will come up that will need your attention.

Thanks for coming on the podcast, Crystal! Her book can be found on Amazon, Indiebound, Target, and wherever books are sold.

Since we are on a temporary hiatus while our editor catches up from his mysterious and zombie-like illness, it’s time for another encore episode. Another Mom Writes favorite. It goes to a place that’s deep and dark. We connect my middle grade novel about a girl and her father’s magic library to something more. Something Jennie said this episode has always stuck with me. That it doesn’t matter what you’re writing, it always goes dark.

In today’s episode:

Jennie and I chat about my daughter’s amazing male kindergarten teacher, “Mr. E,” while we wait for Mel to dial in.

We chat about the Pete the Cat empire, Mr. E’s Pete the Cat scavenger hunt, and Jennie makes a confession about Amazon.

Mel and I have a little mom competition over diapers. I talk about the Fort Worth Competitive Mom Circuit, and Jennie talks about the dreaded school car pool.

“All the people are just alone in their own little bubble” of SAMENESS.

I talk about going to see a medium, who I end up interviewing for the podcast (episode to come)! Jennie jokingly tries to edit my conversation as I tell the story. But I connect my visit to the medium with my writing as I tell the story about my best friend, Robyn, dying over a decade ago and how it has affected both my life and my writing. Jennie goes into full-blown therapist mode and reminds us that these deep WHYs are what we come to writing for. She also connects the book world I’ve written about in my story to the psychic realm, where characters go and can’t come back.

I write about the first moment my main character notices a boy in middle school. I had just attended a workshop where the instructor said not to write about bodily sensations, which only served to challenge me to go back and write about bodily sensations… Jennie translates “don’t write body sensations” to “don’t write bad crap!” She persuades me to read part of the “body sensations” scene I wrote, and we talk about why it works.

Massive amounts of information go through our heads really fast in the real world. Sometimes you have to figure out how to work in small connections in your writing, small important bits that your characters will process without belaboring them.

It’s Thursday. And who doesn’t like a good #TBT? Especially when your podcast editor is deathly ill and temporarily out-of-commission. So, let us present you with a #TBT episode of Mom Writes.

The Mom Guilt episode was our first “real” episode. I say “real” because not only were Melanie and I just starting our writing journey, but we were also starting our podcasting journey. This was pre- Jeremy Noessel (our fabulous and currently sick editor), so the audio was crappy. Crappy with a capital C. This is because I taught myself to edit a podcast using YouTube. This episode is definitely a snapshot of me— learning to write, learning to feel less guilty about chasing a dream, learning to edit podcasts.

Despite my questionable audio editing skills, I am unashamed of this episode. (Despite an ugly review saying our advice was good but audio quality “unlistenable.”) Let this episode be an encouragement to the rest of you struggling under the mantle of self-doubt. When we first released this episode- and all the other early ones- I would press “publish” and immediately question if it was good enough. I would suppress feelings like, “Ugh! My voice!” and “I wish I had said X instead” and “I wish I hadn’t over-shared.” I still pretty much feel this way, just to a lesser degree!

But here’s the thing. I kept hitting publish. We eventually quit interrupting each other so much. We eventually became more comfortable with each other and being recorded. We eventually had enough listeners to justify hiring an editor (who could edit out our chronic oversharing, of which we are still guilty).

The early episodes were GOOD ENOUGH. You can’t get better without being good enough first.

I just had a conversation about this with a writer in the Author Accelerator Membership Circle. I am hosting a beta reader speed dating event at the end of the month in our forum. She was worried that her jacket copy wasn’t ready. My answer was, “So what. Share it anyway.”

If you wait for things to be perfect, they will never see the light of day. So, that said, here’s our first #TBT Mom Writes episode all about MOM GUILT. Now, go forth and embrace your crappiness and rejoice!

Today Jennie, Mel and I talk about the issues we face as creative people and parents, how to fit writing into your busy life, and the value of doing “intangible” work.  

“The best way to guide children without coercion is to be ourselves.” -Madeleine L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet

Some things we cover in this episode:

Mom guilt -- how to lean in and accept that your creative endeavors matter to you.

How do you balance motherhood/parenthood and maintain a productive writing habit?

Sharing with your kids and your family what you’re doing -- tell them you’re writing and what you’re writing about.  

One remedy for Mom Guilt? Show don't tell- model hard work and creativity for your kids.

Your kids DO come first, but there is value in doing what matters to you.

The importance of making an active decision to give something else up in order to make time for your writing (laundry, dishes, etc).  

“At the end of the day, there is nothing more important for your kids than doing what you’re called to do.” -Jennie Nash

This week it’s our now-annual January reflection/resolution episode.

Melanie shares a great Emily McDowell quote. She paraphrases it to say that instead of looking back at the last year thinking it sucked, you should be congratulating yourself for being a survivor. Abby and Melanie look back at their successes, all while Melanie drinks from a coffee cup that says, “Disappointment Awaits.” We hope it’s not an omen!

In 2018 both Melanie and Abby finished the first drafts of their novels, and Melanie talks about having to “accept success.” The book-writing process is far from over but finishing the first draft is a huge success. Both Abby and Melanie want to make 2019 the year when they finish revisions and (at least for Mel) start the pitching process.

The holidays are exhausting, even with all the time off (or perhaps it’s because of all the “time off”). And getting back into the swing of writing is a challenge, especially when you’re tired. Melanie walked 19.5 miles (according to her phone) over the course of 4 days on vacation. And Abby did a lot of manual labor fixing fences and getting a 200 lb pig to the vet. Physical exhaustion overrode both of their brains this holiday season!

Word of the year. This year that seems to be a big trend, having a word of the year. Abby laughs that everyone’s words are “business sterile.” Her first gut reaction was to make the word community her word of the year. After all, she is the Manager of Community Engagement for Author Accelerator. But the word community wasn’t deep enough for her. You can be a part of a community at a surface level, but Abby really wanted something that reflected a deeper connection. So, she chose the word friendship. She points out that the friendships she’s developed in the writing community help keep her writing, help keep her motivated. If she ever decided to quit writing, she wouldn’t have the heart to tell Melanie!

While Abby points out that anyone with an internet connection can have an “online writing community” there’s a difference between a bunch of random strangers who write and actual writing friends. In 2018 Abby and Melanie joined a small group of writers who all have an Author Accelerator connection. They bonded over this shared experience and formed real friendships. So as part of Abby’s 2019, the Year of Friendship, she would like to continue to foster those strong writing friendships.

“The fear of disappointing others is a great motivator.” -Melanie Parish

Melanie does point out that the fear of disappointing our friends is pretty superficial. Real friends will still love you. And the level of their disappointment is greater in our minds than it is in all actuality. It’s more likely that we would disappoint ourselves. Yet fear of disappointing our writing friends and being kicked out of our super-fun writing group gives a great (even if made-up) external motivator!

Melanie’s word of the year is persevere. Melanie says writing is hard, and she can always find reasons in her life not to write. Whenever she sits down to write, she has anxiety over her work and often has to talk herself into writing something, even if it’s not perfect. She has to persevere and work her way through those feelings of self-doubt. Melanie says she is a “high-functioning person with mental issues” and she has to persevere to get shit done!

Abby and Mel talk about getting back into the swing after the holidays. Leading up to Christmas, it’s a hectic race. Then you have that odd few days between Christmas and New Year where, as Mel puts it, time doesn’t really exist. Discombobulated was the word for the end of 2018!

As they talk about getting back on track, Melanie confesses to identifying yet another huge plot hole in her book. So, it’s back to the grind for our two Mom Writes hosts, while they persevere through the first month of 2019.

In this episode:

This episode starts with Melanie’s car accident, after which she was so shaken that she couldn’t work the insurance app on her phone. She’s also surprised to learn that both Abby and Jennie have only ever been pulled over by a cop once. (And Melanie won’t divulge her driving record…) Jennie coins the phrase driving under the influence of children.

Besides the car accident, Melanie also starts a new job and has a death in the family, which goes to prove that life never stops.

Despite all the stressful things going on in Mel’s life, she met her deadline and wrote well. Jennie asks her how she did it, and her answer was, basically, I didn’t want to disappoint you. Jennie talks about how you have to be in the headspace to do this (by this, she means to write a book). You either do it or don’t do it-- no matter what else is going on-- because it’s easy to make excuses (no matter how valid) all day long.

“Everything else might be going to hell, but at least I keep writing.” -Melanie Parish

This time Melanie revised two chapters because she had some logic that wasn’t holding together. Jennie points out that Melanie was able to solve some of these big problems beautifully. Jennie says that some writers fear that a book coach is going to take over your story or mess with your story. But she points out that what she and Melanie did was identify where Melanie’s story wasn’t working and do a little brainstorming, but that Melanie’s fixes were NOT things that they had talked about. Our listeners were privy to these brainstorming sessions in previous episodes, yet Melanie talks about how she played off that brainstorming and came up with smart solutions to the logic problems that needed fixing.

Melanie points out that it took 3 or 4 revisions of this chapter to get it right. Each time she revised she was still unsatisfied with it. Jennie asked her how she knew when it was right. Melanie’s trick is to not look at it for a day, then reread it pretending she hasn’t ever read it before. She said when nothing stood out, she made the call to move on.

Melanie’s WIP is actually a rewrite of an earlier draft, which she started fresh on when she started working with Jennie. Melanie confesses that she pulled some of the material for this chapter from the original, original draft and incorporated it! Our writing friend Jocelyn Lindsay calls it “the Boneyard.” That’s all the stuff you throw away. Jocelyn never actually throws it away, she just moves it to the Boneyard to mine later when you need it. Jennie says that strategy involves discernment, which some writers have trouble with. Too often they try and stick with the original version and just retrofit it—WHICH DOESN’T WORK. You have to take the old and weigh it against the new. Will it pass the test? What do I need to do to tie it in?

Mel is also writing what Jennie calls “high action”: car chases, drama, blood, guns, possible murder, unconscious people, and… gravel skidding. But when your actual life is boring, sometimes you have to be creative with your research to make it believable on the page. Mel gets creative on a back road in the desert and confirms for Jennie what a skidding car with an open door on a gravel road would actually do.

Jennie spends a few minutes talking about writing physical scenes: sex scenes, action scenes, any scene where you zoom in close on the action of bodies in motion. Resorting to straight up descriptions of physical things is not good writing. Why does it all matter? What does it reveal about the characters and what they know or what they discover about how they feel?

It’s the final stretch in the race towards the holidays and the New Year, and we at Mom Writes are right there with you. It’s a challenge to find a way to get everything done: school projects, school parties, last-minute gifts because you realize you forgot Great Aunt Muriel, finding enough stamps to send the cards (heck, finding all the addresses to put on the cards)… PLUS all the regular stuff. Like laundry. And dinner.

And writing.

Do yourself a favor and breathe. Then give yourself the gift of grace. The good thing is, grace is free. And unlike Prime shipping, it’s instant. You can’t do it all, and kidding yourself that you can just leads to extra holiday stress.

Of course, I’m going to practice what I’m preaching. And this week the name of the game is prioritizing. Episode 74 of Mom Writes made the cut. But the show notes didn’t. Maybe 2019 will be a better year for show notes. (And maybe it won’t.) But just so you kinda know what you’re getting in to, here’s a small recap:

The first 10 minutes we spend chatting about my upcoming move and my disappointment that the sellers of our new house wouldn’t leave me their pig. All of this gets loosely connected to writing and two of our favorite writers: Lori Richmond and KJ Dell’Antonia. If you aren’t into the chit-chat, I suggest skipping ahead roughly 10 minutes!

Next, we dig into my assignment for the week. I was tasked with re-outlining my book(s) and revisiting the backstory to work on some logic holes. I did so by writing a single scene that’s crucial to my whole story and my whole world and then making a timeline to cover all the time in-between my crucial scene and the start of my novel. Note, my approach didn’t require character sketches or long, drawn-out explanations of anything. I made sure only to hit on details that were essential to my story.

Lastly, we mention another of our favorite people ever: Dan Blank! I had the idea to get Dan to come back on the show and talk about creative obsession. (We’ve already released that episode, by the way! It’s Episode 49: Creative Obsession with Dan Blank. So if you missed it, might I suggest giving it a listen sometime.)

First, some important news: Congrats to Abby, who was hired at Author Accelerator as Manager of Community Engagement! She's in charge of several upcoming retreats through Author Accelerator scheduled for 2019, so if you've ever dreamed of picking Jennie's brain for a weekend, stay tuned!

In this episode of Mom Writes, Abby and Jennie brainstorm her book into a series. Jennie has a saying that is--while simple--very effective: THINK BEFORE YOU WRITE. Now, we're not treating you like you're stupid. Of course, you think before you write! But we're talking PLAN. You don't have to make a super detailed outline with three different colors and various fonts or anything, but you do need to plan. Know where you're going and what your characters want and how they're going to get it (or not)!

"You've got to stop sometimes, step back, dig in and assess it." - Jennie Nash

Last time we talked about Abby's book she shared with us that she realized that she was not writing one book, but a series! She's had to understand that not only does each book have a an arc, but the whole series has an arc as well, and she's been doing some serious plotting and planning in the past couple of weeks, trying to figure out what to disclose to her readers, where to disclose it, and how best to wrap up one story while prepping the next.

Abby had this to say about plotting out her series this time: "I learned so much doing Blueprint the first time that while it wasn't easy, the process and how iterative it was, was not daunting to me."

The question is, how much of the series do you "bake in" to your first book before you write the following books? "Baking in" refers to the story building and world building you do - the why and the how of the plot and character motivations. What drives your characters to do what they do? What moves the story forward? You have to know these things in book one, so you can use these things when it comes to writing subsequent books in the series. Jennie gives Abby some homework so she can find out what her characters want, and what they know and when they know it.

"You can't really only figure out book one - you have to figure out some of those other big things too." - Jennie Nash

In this episode, we listen as Abby channels Jennie to use her writing powers for...good? Or at least, channels them in the process of house-selling! Writing skills are applicable to pretty much all aspects of life and you should bring them out as necessary, and Abby uses hers to write a response to a letter she got from a prospective buyer. 

Mel also unleashes the dark recesses of her brain and kills off a (sort of?) beloved character. RIP Harrison, he of the khaki pants. Jennie compared his ride to a roller-coaster. "It builds and builds and then wheee, hands up, here we go!" We delve into the nitty-gritty of Mel's chapter - she got the big picture stuff down but there were a lot of little things that need attention. We also go over some logistical details in the background - character motivations and decisions aren't ringing true, and Mel needs to go over it again to make sure everything makes sense. The readers need to know why her characters are doing what they're doing in order to move the story forward. 

One thing we cover is the use of "muttering" - Mel uses it a lot in this chapter. SO MUCH! Too much. But it's not because she can't find the right word - it's because she's using "muttering" as shorthand. You know what it means, but the reader has no idea. 

"This is a huge mistake people make, and it's not a thesaurus problem. If you want to convey something about the way people are talking to each other - SAY IT! It's kind of passive aggressive, for example, for a character to speak too softly to hear, or to turn their head away so the other person can't hear them talking. If it's important, put it in there - if it's not, get it out. If the way they're talking to each other doesn't serve the story, don't put it in there. I think you use it as shorthand sometimes." - Jennie Nash 

When you find yourself short-handing your writing like this, it's totally fine to go back and fix things after your first draft. The important thing is to not do it so much that you're only working halfway and find yourself with a first draft where the big stuff, the meaning and the why isn't there. 

Lastly, Jennie brings attention to something else Mel keeps doing - saying her protagonist "stood there wordlessly"  "had nothing to say", etc etc. We want our protagonist to speak, but if she can't, we need to know why. We need to know what's going on inside, so much that she cannot speak, and we need to see our protagonist putting things together, making decisions, making judgments. 

"One of the reasons you want good feedback on your work is because it's hard to see your own habits. It ultimately makes for a multi-layered, much richer story." - Jennie Nash

In the meantime, I did promise in the intro a link to the revision class that starts December 8th. And here it is: https://www.authoraccelerator.com/revision-sprint?utm_source=announcement_bar&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=revision_sprint

This week, Abby's thankful for a lot of things - a sound editor getting the episodes done every week, the fact that Mel writes the show notes (hi guys! WHEN I REMEMBER TO DO IT, which is most of the time but not all the time!), thankful to eek out time to write - and thankful for solid advice from Jennie on how to split up her story into one, two, three books? It's not the first time she's encountered these questions, and it won't be the last - but she's getting there.

Shoutout to Lori Richmond, and all the books Abby tells her to write: Andrew Jackson's duels, children’s chicken books, etc etc. It's a faux pas to tell a writer what they should write (not in a coaching context though!), but we love you, award-winning children's book author Lori Richmond, and you can write whatever you want. :) (But Mel would totally buy that Andrew Jackson book.)

In this episode, we also talk about appropriate middle-grades word count - 30-50k, by the way, but there are always exceptions. Abby wonders - if she goes way, way over on word count, is it better to turn her book into two, or three books? "What is going to serve my purpose and my readers' purpose in the long run? Is it better to write a series or squish it all into one?"

Jennie says that she's asking the wrong question - there are no "rules" about writing books. "It's always always always about what serves the story. You always have to have the end resolve the question that was brought up in the beginning. We WANT that resolution because we don't get that resolution in real life. We want that in a book." Jennie points out that even in a series, each book stands alone - it has too. Ask yourself, even if you're working on multiple books, "what is the thing I want to be resolved in book one?" The other books will have questions of their own, but each book has to present and solve a problem. children’s

Word count averages in a genre do deserve your attention, and you can't ignore it - but if the story warrants going longer, look into that, too. Excessive word count has to be earned, but don't let it dictate what you do.

P.S. We are also thankful for our friend Lori Richmond. So if you have any of her books, will you pretty please remember to go and review them?

Mel and Abby are smack dab in the middle of the stories, and today Mel and Jennie talk about "public service announcements" in your story - not a good thing, even if you're writing nonfiction. The good news is, it's a high-level problem - it means you know what your story is, and now you're working on the nuances of how to tell it.

In the middle of your story you need decisions and consequences and action at every turn - don't let your character stop idly for a smoothie (or whatever) unless it's moving the story and the characters forward. Make your reader decide whether or not to go to bed, or keep reading your story on a Sunday night at 10 pm!

Jennie tasks Mel with recognizing over-explanation in her story - "The thing you do want in there, always - you always want to have the character's reaction and response, and how they're making meaning of something. That's what we come for - the making of the meaning of every little thing...we do always need that."

Mel gets caught summarizing and not recognizing the difference between big-story meaning and line-by-line meaning. By the time you're in the middle of the story, the set-up is done - you don't need to remind us of where we are in the story, because if you've done your job the reader is already there! We're now onto individual reactions of plot developments: What does Character X think of this? What does Character Y think of what Character Z just did? What are they feeling, what do they do because of what happens? Why does it matter? When it works, characters making meaning of plot development doesn't sound explain-y - it flows, it snaps, and the reader doesn't notice - they just keep turning the pages.

We also talk about Chekov's gun - if the gun is on the mantle in the first act, it has to go off in the third! Don't introduce a great plot device and pay attention to it, and not use it later. Readers are smart, they pick up on things, and anticipate things - if you pique their interest in something, and are leaving breadcrumbs along the way, you've got to let them run into that cake later on.

Stay tuned next week, where Abby discovers that her two-tier outline is actually...two books in one.