Mom Writes Podcast

How your life goes, your writing goes – Jennie Nash

The past couple of weeks Abby’s been doubting her writing, and has been dealing with a lot of

heavy life questions in the meantime.

“All I can think of is, is it even good enough?” - Abby

She was relieved to get Kemlo’s feedback this week – the things she needs to work on is all

small stuff. It’s what she likes about having a book coach – knowing that she’s on the right

track, helping her with confidence in her moment of weakness. Kemlo, for her part, feels like

Abby put into her protagonist what she was wanting to feel for herself: confidence,

transformation, etc. The whole story of Bernadette is lighthearted and humorous, but deals

with some pretty big questions.

Kemlo has worked with around 80 writers at this point, and she hasn’t worked with anyone

who didn’t have some self doubt. The ones that went on (vs the ones that quit) had the

determination to not let that stop them from moving forward. Indeed, having no doubt is a

warning sign – overconfidence doesn’t lend itself well to revision.

This week, Abby’s protagonist takes control of her situation. The kids at school making fun of

her for her purple house? Go big or go home, Bernadette! Abby had this whole scheme written

out, with a purple dress and Bernadette’s social destruction, and it was really fun to write, but

then she asked herself – how does this serve the story? It didn’t. Abby put on her editor’s hat

and decided to wipe the whole chapter, and instead, Bernadette has an awakening, a plan, and

a powerful moment of decision. Sometimes you need to take a step back and ask yourself what

your scene is doing for your characters and your book as a whole, and it takes a certain amount

of bravery and faith in yourself and your characters to highlight the whole thing and press the

delete button.

In a recent Author Accelerator Coffee Talk - Have you ever read a book where something feels familiar because you lived a similar situation? One of the participants, a middle school librarian, says "Oh. I LIVE stories!" Abby liked it so much she put it on a t-shirt. You can find it here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PSVBG61

We talk habits today, and how we can better incorporate writing into our lives as habit, and finding and making the time to write. We want to make it as much of a habit as checking your email or brushing your teeth. Since moving to Florida and adjusting to a new school start time, Abby's struggled to find writing time now that her creative morning hour has been co-opted by all the before-school prep for the kids. Everyone has their preferred writing time, the time they're most productive - find yours. For the time being, Abby had to adjust her habits around the new school schedule and a new job. There are probably few among us, especially parents, who can keep a consistent writing time from year to year.

Mel's a nighttime writer - it's when she gets the most done. For a variety of reasons (sleep among them) it's not working as well anymore. She's going to introduce a walk after work to give her brain a break before sitting down again to write. She says that she needs to be more disciplined about her writing time - not the making time for it, but not being too precious about the time of day it falls into. Sometimes, you have to take what you can get.

Abby's plan is a little different - she's keeping her early morning writing time, but she's cutting out the things that waste her time after she wakes up. 1) no responding to email, no responding to texts until she gets her writing time in. No one is waiting for Abby's response to their email at 5:30 in the morning! 2) Taking on an alter ego - a writer's alter ego. Abby's husband Sean is the human version of Cliff Notes, and he related this story to her that he'd read about a football player that took on certain aspects, certain alter egos of successful football players before he went onto the field. Abby's alter ego is... Ernestina Potter! (A totally made-up personality, BTW.) What was her deal? How did she write? Was there anything she had that was unique to her, that Abby could use to put on her "writer's hat" when it's time to get down to business?

Kemlo and Mel talk psychopaths and sociopaths, and whether or not it's important to add in certain details about her protagonist. If her character gets hired to do a certain job in the story, and the story moves so fast she doesn't actually get a chance to do it...does she need to include it? What's the risk of leaving it in, and the workload involved in taking it out? The MomWrites team spools out the possibilities and give Mel a plethora of options to choose from.

If you've dropped the thread on something--a character development, a plot point, etc--how do you pick it back up again? Mel goes back to the very beginning and finds spots throughout the book that are the perfect places to add these in. A word, a few lines, a paragraph or two - it's different for every situation. According to Kemlo, if you've got something you want to add that spans over several scenes it would be good to add it into your outline first so that you can see potential issues before you put in the work.

Mel and Abby continue their discussion of Don Maass’ workshop and talk strategies on getting your deadlines done on 3 days of no sleep (or doing anything on no sleep, like finding your way around the Vegas airport at 12:30 AM..).

Trying to get your page count done while on “vacation” (or professional development) can be rough, but it’s important to accept what you can do and appreciate your own effort, and not get down on yourself about word count or page count.

“I didn’t beat myself up for it…so what, you wrote eight pages. That’s eight more than I had before!” – Abby

Making readers care – Don Maass says that when the protagonists care themselves, we care about the protagonists. In Abby’s story, her protagonist is in the middle of her journey – she had a goal and failed, she feels like she can’t make a friend and she abandoned the friend she had, and she doesn’t know who she is anymore. This is her “mirror moment” (James Scott Bell, her turning point. Now, she’s going to do the impossible, but it has to feel impossible first.

Kemlo points out that even though Abby had heard about this particular moment in the hero’s journey before, sometimes you need a bunch of different tools in your toolbox before something clicks – this particular moment in Don Maass’ workshop happened to be the moment it clicked for her.

Abby and Kemlo work on deepening Bernadette and Logan’s friendship – Logan’s actions need to be just vague enough for Bernadette to have some inner conflict, to wonder if he really is her friend. Abby wonders if this could be a take-charge moment for Bernadette, an opportunity for her to claim some agency over what happens to her. This is what Don Maass calls “static energy vs kinetic energy”. Static energy is just sitting back and letting things happen to you, and kinetic energy is standing up and taking charge of your fate. Even a small defiance along the way is better than no defiance at all.

Kemlo says that now Abby needs to bring it full circle. How do these events affect Bernadette? How do they make her change her plans, or not?

“Maybe I need to go back to the beginning of this chapter…where she realizes she’s a bad friend and she wants to change, but maybe now she starts with Logan. ‘This is the one kid that’s been nice to me, maybe that’s where I need to start’.” - Abby

Mel and Abby review their time at Donald Maass’ workshop (“The Emotional Craft of Fiction”) in Vegas. Sometimes you just need to learn with other writers! And spend a weekend in Vegas with your friends, even if you’re moms with an early bedtime. Shoutout to @donmaass - we had a great time!

It was also a great networking opportunity and a great way to meet fellow writers. Even Mel, who haaaaaates meeting new people, found the group small enough to feel comfortable introducing herself and talking about her work.

It always helps to go to things like this with your writer friends, too, if taking a workshop by yourself is intimidating. Turn it into a vacation!

Mel’s lesson for today: How Much Adverbs Suck and Why You Shouldn’t Use Them. Kemlo’s caveat for this is that you shouldn’t use them in place of a real emotion. Don’t stuff complex emotion into an adverb when you don’t have to. Sometimes even a stronger verb can solve this problem, i.e. “he was walking quickly” < “he strode” or “he stomped.”

If there’s not enough on the page to justify the use of your adverb or even your strong verb, the situation needs more work. If you’ve got a super early draft, it’s all right to use these adverbs sometimes, as long as you remember to go back and expound on/replace this emotion during revision.

“Adverbs are a placeholder for more coherent thoughts.” – Melanie

When Kemlo asks for a flashback or backstory during revision, she’s asking the author to show that the character is using something they’ve already experienced, or know, in order to figure out something else in the story and move it forward. It doesn’t have to be a long drawn out thing, either—a few words or a sentence is enough to make the story richer.

“When people find themselves in various situations, they don’t think linearly – their thoughts are bouncing all over the place. ‘This reminds me of xyz, or when we did this one thing, or this makes me think of a certain person’—that’s how people think. It’s a useful way to do callbacks to previous chapters or scenes.” - Melanie

Mel and Kemlo review her most recent chapter, where Mel redeems a scene that, on the first read (the rabbits, guys!), did not serve the story. Now it not only fits but excels in rounding out character development and amps up the suspense at the end of the scene.

When your scene starts up too slowly: Kemlo mentioned that Mel’s two first chapters didn’t move as quickly as they should. Mel wonders if it’s not telling the reader where her protagonist is in time or space, or if it’s too detailed. Kemlo says that no, it’s that there’s too much rumination and not enough action, and it would be helpful if things got to the point a little bit faster. When you start a scene, you want to hook the reader right away – don’t make them work too hard trying to figure out what’s going on, what your characters are doing/thinking/feeling, and where the scene is going.

In these scenes, Mel notes that there’s a lot of time and space problems as her characters move from room to room, and even she struggled during a re-read to determine what the hallways and rooms look like. If the scenes you’re writing are complex in this regard, it’s really helpful to have someone else read it at some point during the writing or initial editing process. Different readers have different levels of spatial awareness, and it’s important that your time-and-space elements make sense to everyone.

Later in the episode – true confessions of Mom Writes. Mel’s family had been sick for the past couple weeks, and as the only healthy person in the house, she struggled to take care of everyone and still somehow get some writing done. There were nights she was up until 1 am either working (at her actual job) or working on her edits. Thankfully, everyone’s better now and getting a lot more sleep.

“The great thing about revising as opposed to creating is that when you’re creating is that creating can be time consuming…I’m kind of precious about it, I have to be alone, listen to the right music, etc. With revising, everything is already there, you just have to fix it. It takes a little less time for me.” - Melanie

Listeners, is there something you really want to hear us talk about? Is there anything you want to hear more of? Do you have burning questions about writing and parenting (or pigs) that you need answers to? You can always email [email protected] and let us know!

During a Valentine’s Day cupcake party, Abby read more of her book to her daughter’s 3rd-grade class, and they treated her like a rockstar, guys. She realized that the first part of her Chapter 4 didn’t really hold their attention, and this got her attention. After reading Kemlo’s feedback on the later Chapters 9-10, she is going to go back and made Chapter 4 stronger with the same advice – little suggestions to highlight more of the why in her story. Why her main character feels she has to be normal, why it matters to her to fit in, why it matters to be more vanilla, and stand out less. Making that part stand out more is going to help her readers identify with her main character.

“The two powerful ‘why’ questions are why? And why now? Because sometimes people will know why in general, but you also have to know why in this particular moment.” – Kemlo Aki

Kemlo asks Abby some important questions on specificity – would Abby’s character Bernadette really not care about a locked section of her house? Would any kid not care? You’ve got to channel your inner kid when writing middle grades, get into that specificity of the character, and capture the way they’d really think about it.

Abby had this to say about coaching, and how her ideas about it have changed between drafting and revision:

“That’s the good thing about sending stuff to you – I know there’s no judgment there. I know I’m just trying to get it out of my head, and even if I know it’s not 100%...when I was first being coached, I felt like the whole goal was to make an “A” on my first draft. That’s really not the point, and feeling that stress is not helpful. What’s more, the point is not losing my momentum, getting it out, and getting Kemlo or Jennie’s eyes on this, and they’ll help me make it better…and then I’m going to get an A on it.” – Abby Mathews

Abby says that this chapter she’s working on, Chapter 10, is one of the only chapters she’s taken something from her rough draft and used it in the revision. She didn’t use a lot from the first half of her rough draft because she felt the second half ended up being stronger. She wasn’t 100% comfortable with it – somehow, the blank page felt more comfortable than trying to make what she already had fit into the story. She still ended up changing it enough and incorporating ideas from the original chapter but improving upon them in revision. Kemlo notes that now Abby’s figuring out what needs to happen to Bernadette and using plot and story to highlight her changes throughout the book.

“I feel like a vast majority of revising for me is staring at the words on the page and going… ‘You know, there are words there, and those words are probably ok! Can I just keep going?’” – Abby

After last week’s episode with Molly B. Burnham, Abby considers taking her advice: Write with abundance. It's like the idea behind brainstorming that the bigger list. You have the more to choose from, and the better your chances are of hitting on something big. Maybe THAT is how you discover what mouse burps sound like.

We hit on the idea of using your kids (or other people’s kids!) as a sounding board if you’re writing a middle grades book. Abby was invited to her daughter’s class to read a portion of her book during Read-A-Thon week. It went swimmingly and one of the little boys in her daughter’s class wanted to buy the rest of her book!

Get specific, get specific – it’s what Jennie Nash told us all the time while we were writing our first drafts. You can’t write to everyone’s preference, so you may as well write to a specific audience and do it well. And sometimes even when you do that…your book is beloved by people outside that genre as well (i.e., our favorite series to reference, JK Rowling’s Harry Potter) Abby’s writing to a specific age group, and she thought she was writing towards girls, but she’s finding that boys are interested in her story too!

Kemlo points out some logistical issues in Abby’s submission which are pretty easily worked out, and we get to hear some favorite lines in her submission. “No need to buckle a horse into a car!”

Kemlo also adds that “revision is for nuance”. It’s okay (expected!) if you don’t get all the good stuff in on your first draft, or even your second – subsequent drafts are where the real fun begins—they’re for adding in little callbacks or developing characters and sub-plots, refining foreshadowing and perfecting plot.

Shoutout to MomWrites listener and fellow-bookstore-talk-giver Monica Gokey! Monica is a producer and reporter on the OutLANDish podcast, but she's also a fantastic writer and was recently published in the Jen Mann's You Do You. Mel and Monica did a bookstore talk together in January - Monica did a fantastic job...and Mel didn't even die from her fear of both the public and public speaking. Do things that scare you, guys...

This week Mel reviews chapter eight, the first half of which she's deemed "a bunch of unfinished thoughts," and decides she wants another go at her character arcs - you can never know too much about your characters, what function they're serving, what their goals and motivations are in your story. A not so fun fact that we keep learning in this podcast: if you use characters as plot devices, we promise you, you will regret it. But if you've done this already, and you've got characters you haven't developed, you can still save them! Look at the scenes they're in, figure out what purpose they're serving, and trace it backward - find out THE WHY.

What's going on when you don't like your writing, but you can't quite put your finger on what's wrong? Usually, it's because something isn't on the page--and maybe you're giving, as Kemlo says, "the what without the why." Don't make your readers guess at what's going on--readers are less patient than you think, and they know a fraction of what you know about your story - in fact, and they only know what you tell them. You don't want your readers confused or guessing. You want them devouring the pages, taking in all you want them to learn about your characters and your story and racing to the next chapter.

When CPs or editors tell you to get specific about what's going on in your story, they don't mean go into detail about the descriptions of things or events, necessarily - what the mean (a lot of the time) are specifics about feelings. Specifics about the characters' internal worlds, the way they think, how they see the world. Our human brains flip through memories and theories and piece things together in real-time, so adding in those little bits of realism that suck us into the character's inner world helps us relate to what we're reading to on an intrinsic level. And sometimes it doesn't take a lot--a few sentences here, some nuance there--not every revision has you demolishing your pages and rebuilding from the ground up.

"That's the really satisfying part of revision for me--looking at something that's kind of 'meh,' and tweaking it just a little bit until it's 'whoa!'" - Melanie Parish

In this episode:

Welcome Molly Burnham, Author of the Teddy Mars series!

Thanks and welcome to Molly Burnham! We’re talking kids’ books, and funny kids’ books (& just funny books in general!), and how she (and you!) can get the humor to shine authentically through in your writing.

Can comedy give you power? According to Molly, yes. And comedy is all about power.

“Humor is based on a convergence. Humor is an interaction between people in some form, and power structures make the difference between what is funny and what is not funny.” – Molly B. Burnham

For instance, if you make a joke about someone, that’s you having power over them. But if you make a joke about you, that’s you having power over you. The elements of who has power, and when, controls what is and is not funny in any given situation.

To illustrate this, Molly gives the example of women in comedy – for centuries, women were not allowed on stage, comedy or otherwise. Men had the power, and they often made jokes at the expense of women. When women got on stage and started making fun

When you’re writing a book, especially one with humor, you have to know who has power in your book and how the power shifts between your characters and their environment. Molly’s protagonist Teddy undergoes a lot of physical comedy while trying to break world records, and the reason we can abide his suffering because he has power over himself and is choosing to try to break these world records. He also doesn’t have a fragile ego – emotional strength is huge power, and Teddy has it in spades.

It sounds like a lot of work, right? Molly says her books undergo a lot of revision and the humor comes out in later revisions. She advises writers to “create from abundance” – write more than you need, make lists, and improvise possibilities for scenes – all of this gives you more options and lets you ask the question: Where or how could this be better? Which possibility resonates with you?

The improv concept of “Yes, And –“ is another way to amp up the humor in your writing. How can you escalate a situation? Don’t say no, and don’t stop the action in your scene and let it come to a screeching halt.

Molly would like to also remind us that failure, kids, is part of the process. Sometimes she writes things she doesn’t like, and it feels like a waste – we’ve all been there, right? We’re going to write things that don’t jive for us for one reason or another. Getting into the right mindset after a failure is important and accepting that you’re going to have these days is essential.

The wonderful Teddy Mars books can be found at your local bookstore, library, indie supplier, or Amazon.

In this episode:

Shout-out to Paul Skidmore, author and filmmaker! Paul was laughing hysterically in Starbucks while reading Abby’s story, and that’s something that’ll make you feel awesome. If your story is enjoyable by people of all ages, you’re doing something right.

“Where the children’s story is simply the right form for what the author has to say, of course, readers who want to hear that will read the story or re-read it at any age. I never met the Wind in the Willows or the Bastible books until my late 20s, and I do not think I’ve enjoyed it any less on that account….the good ones last. A waltz that you can only like when you are waltzing is a bad waltz.” – C.S. Lewis

Do MG writers have to fight the idea that their work is less-than because they’re writing for kids? Absolutely, but they shouldn’t have to! It’s like saying you’re “just a mom”. Every single mom out there knows how hard it is – and every single writer knows how hard it is to write a book. Our MG readers, and upper MG readers, are full of questions, they’re between childhood and adulthood and they’re very impressionable – MG writers have a power and responsibility in helping these kids form opinions and ideas that they’ll carry with them for the rest of their lives. It’s important!

The only way you can write a story for everyone to enjoy is to pick a specific protagonist – you have to make them exactly who they are, their specific age and circumstances, and do a beautiful job writing them.

Deeper-level, meaningful writing appeals to all ages – there’s something for everyone to enjoy. In the rest of the episode, Kemlo and Abby dissect word choice and how some words are funnier than others, what works and what doesn’t, and what hits as “funny” or just weird.”One of the things that takes a book from appealing to a very limited audience to having more universal appeal is the work you do on the deeper meaning of the story.” -Kemlo

Mentioned in this episode:

Paul Skidmore can be found here: https://skidmore.parabolos.com/books/

And Molly B. Burnham can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Molly-B-Burnham/e/B00MJ9A0GE?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1569283168&sr=8-1