The Writing Coach

Welcome to The Writing Coach. On this podcast, I speak with the instructors, editors, coaches, and mentors who help writers and authors create their art, build their audience, and sell their work.

In episode #64 of The Writing Coach podcast, I speak with Jennie Nash.

Jennie has spent 30 years in the world of books. She is the author of seven books, one of the world’s top one-on-one writing coaches, and the co-founder of Author Accelerator, a company that matches authors with books coaches.

During our conversation, Jennie describes:

Why she finds offers of quick-fix solutions to writers craft so frustrating

What she learned from her writer father

The moment she decided to turn down a multi-book contract offer from a traditional publisher

Why a writing retreat once asked her to "tone down" her intensity

The reason writers need to get good at asking for what they want

How talent can often get in the way of storytelling

The non-linear nature of writing

And much more

Listen to the episode now:

The Writing Coach #64 Show Notes

Check out Jennie's website: http://jennienash.com/

Learn more about Author Accelerator: http://www.authoraccelerator.com/

Listen to episode 51 of The Writing Coach featuring Author Accelerator's managing editor, Laura Franzini.

Read Jennie's article, "Stop Waiting for a Miracle."

Jennie recommends watching this great video of Kurt Vonnegut discussing the shape of stories:

 

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Welcome to The Writing Coach. On this podcast, I speak with the instructors, editors, coaches, and mentors who help writers and authors create their art, build their audience, and sell their work.

In episode #63 of The Writing Coach podcast, I speak with Franciska Csongrady.

Franciska is in her third year of an English Literature degree at Oxford University in England. In addition to her studies, she tutors students from around the world looking to improve their English writing.

During our conversation, Franciska describes:

How growing up in Hungary, England, and Austria led to an interest in learning languages, including English, Hungarian, Spanish, German, and even some Latin

What it is like going to a school and walking the same halls that were once walked by the likes of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien

What she has learned from teaching English to students from all around the world

And much more

Listen to the episode now:

The Writing Coach #63 Show Notes

Connect with Franciska on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/franciska-csongrady/

Franciska's art on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/monacegoose/

The Writing Coach podcast is brought to you by:

Click here to learn more about Writer's Craft Academy

 

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Welcome to The Writing Coach. On this podcast, I speak with the instructors, editors, coaches, and mentors who help writers and authors create their art, build their audience, and sell their work.

In episode #62 of The Writing Coach podcast, I speak with writer, editor, and media manager Sarah Foil.

Sarah describes herself as a cliché: an introverted, caffeine-addicted, wine-obsessed writer in North Carolina with a husband, crazy dog and angry cat.

(Sounds like my kind of person!)

She has an MFA and served as the editor of the literary magazine Incunabula for several years before launching into the freelance world, where she now works with aspiring and first-time novelists as an editor and media manager.

During our conversation, Sarah describes:

Why, as a young girl, she realized she wanted to learn how to make dad's cry (with words)

The big takeaways from her MFA program

The common mistakes writer's make when submitting to editors, and why writers need to focus on the first page of their submission

Her approach to social media management and the tools she uses to preschedule her posts

And much more

Listen to the episode now:

The Writing Coach #62 Show Notes

Check out Sarah's website.

Follow Sarah on social media:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/SarahFoilWriter

Twitter: www.twitter.com/SarahFoil

Instagram: www.instagram.com/SarahFoil

Sarah recommends every writer and editor own a copy of The Elements of Style:

The Writing Coach podcast is brought to you by:

Click here to learn more about Writer's Craft Academy

 

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Welcome to The Writing Coach. On this podcast, I speak with the instructors, editors, coaches, and mentors who help writers and authors create their art, build their audience, and sell their work.

In episode #61 of The Writing Coach podcast, I speak with Audrey Hughey.

Audrey is the founder of The Write Services Social Media Management and creator of the Author Transformation Alliance. Her passion is inspiring and empowering authors to achieve their goals and dreams with effective and authentic marketing.

During our conversation, Audrey describes:

Why its important for authors to develop book marketing plans

How she uses a community to educate and empower authors

What she learned in the world of fitness that she carried over into book marketing

Her "no excuses" approach to achieving her goals

Why she created The 2018 Author's Journal

And much more

Listen to the episode now:

The Writing Coach #61 Show Notes

Visit Audrey's website.

Learn more about the Author Transformation Alliance.

Join Audrey's free writing group.

Grab your copy of The 2018 Author's Journal:

Get Audrey's free gift, The Writer's Weekly Planner.

The Writing Coach podcast is brought to you by:

Click here to learn more about Writer's Craft Academy

 

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Welcome to The Writing Coach. On this podcast, I speak with the instructors, editors, coaches, and mentors who help writers and authors create their art, build their audience, and sell their work.

A client of mine recently asked me what novels I would recommend for the purpose of demonstrating different aspects of writer's craft.

This episode answers that question by revealing 13 novels every writer should read!

Listen to the podcast now now or read the full transcript below.

Episode Transcript

Read the full transcript

Hello beloved listeners and welcome back to The Writing Coach podcast. I am your host Kevin T. Johns.

If this is your first time listening to the podcast, welcome. We love new listeners. This is episode ... oh boy, I always forget to check before we start recording. It's probably episode 59 or 60 or something, which means if you enjoy this episode there's another 58, 59 episodes out there that you can go check out where I chat with all sorts of amazing people. Shawn Coyne, Jenny Blake, Chandler Bolt. Everyone in the world of helping authors. Tons of great interviews in there with people like Jeff Goins. Everyone you want to hear me chat with, I chat with. Go back. Dig into those archives and check out some of those older episodes.

Normally, I interview someone else, but every once in a while, like actually the last few episodes, it's just me. This is going to be another one of them because of one of my one-on-one coaching clients ... I'm a writing coach guys. It's not just a title of a podcast. It's something I do professionally. One of my clients asked me a really great question. I gave it a lot of thought. I decided I was going to answer him in podcast format. Reza, you are probably listening to this. Thank you so much for asking such a great question. We are going to get to it in a minute.

Reza is one of my one-on-one clients. I have a couple other one-on-one clients who have come on board as of late. Peter if you are listening to this, and Attila -- welcome aboard guys. I can't wait to work with you to get your books written.

This episode is going to address a very specific question that Reza asked. Reza grew up in Iran and came to Canada, where I live ten, years ago. He's really been focusing on his English writing for the last ten years. He's always been very interested in non-fiction. That's the type of writing he does. He's writing a nonfiction self-help book. He said, "Kevin, if I did want to start exploring English fiction, what would be some great books  I could read that could help me understand writing better?"

I thought that was such a great question!

That's what we are going to get into in today's podcast. We are going to talk about 13 different books that I think every writer should read. Each of these books is going to demonstrate a different aspect of a writer's craft that I think is really important.

Before we get into that, I do want to say this is not a conversation about overturning the cannon of traditional English literature. This is a podcast episode about writer's craft. Alright? From the hundreds and hundreds of books I've read in my life, these were the books that came to mind as great examples, the best examples in different aspects of the craft of novel writing.

I will warn you, most of the authors I have chosen are white, heterosexual, American men. I'm not going to apologize for my bias. I like what I like, but I will acknowledge my biases. I'm a left-leaning, white, heterosexual, Canadian, male with a masters degree in English literature. All of my book choices are going to be biased by that position of privilege that I'm coming from. I do want to acknowledge that.

If you are listening to this and you are an Aboriginal person or you are a gay man or you are a woman for whom English is not your first language, by all means, create your own list of your favorite examples of different aspects of the writer's craft. These just happen to be the people who I resonate with, who I've read in my life, and who jump out at me as great examples of different aspects of writing.

With that politically correct public service announcement out of the way, let's dive into some great books that every single writer should read.

The Great Gatsby / Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Lightning in a Bottle

Right off the bat, we are going to kick it off with maybe the biggest of them all. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Why should you read this book? It's the great American novel. It is beautifully written. Brilliantly plotted. The characterization is crystal clear. There are surprising plot twists, but on top of all of that, it's one of those rare things in art. It's one of those things that every artist strives after: that magical piece of art where everything just works. Everything gels for where Fitzgerald was in his life. For the story that he chose to tell. Everything comes together in The Great Gatsby to work perfectly.

I'm going to throw a twist on this for you. I don't want you just to read The Great Gatsby. I also want you to read F. Scott Fitzgerald's follow up to The Great Gatsby, which is Tender is the Night. There's a reason for that.

In the exact same way that everything works in The Great Gatsby, just every aspect of it is sublime, nothing works in Tender is the Night. Tender is the Night is a disaster of a book. It's the follow-up to what I would probably argue is the greatest American English language novel of all time.

A lot of writers that I know, they do this thing where they compare themselves not just to the greatest writers of all time, but they look at the one masterpiece from the greatest writer of all time. If you are going to sit at home and say, "Oh my God, my novel is a piece of crap compared to The Great Gatsby." You know what? It probably is, but F. Scott Fitzgerald's follow-up was also a piece of crap in comparison to The Great Gatsby.

I really think it's important that as a writer you understand there is craft. There is technique. There's hard work. There's going pro. There is all of that, but there also is a magical element. Fitzgerald couldn't recreate it. None of us can. If we could all recreate it, we'd all have hit books year after year after year, but there is something magical that comes together in The Great Gatsby that is just the complete opposite in Tender is the Night.

Read both those books so that you can understand not just the genius of The Great Gatsby, but also was a fluke it was, arguably, compared to Fitzgerald's follow-up book.

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

Point of View

The next book that I want to recommend is The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger.

I picked this book because one of the biggest challenges I see aspiring novelists struggling with is point of view.

Point of view is such a tricky element of writing. A lot of first time novelists go into writing a book not even really understanding what it is or how it functions. They do a lot of head-hopping or they jump back and forth between third person or omniscient. They are not conscious of the role the point of view plays in narrative fiction.

The Catcher in the Rye is an absolutely wonderful example of an author capturing a character's point of view. Holden Caulfield is our main character in The Catcher in the Rye and everything we experience as readers in that book is filtered through Holden's point of view. There is not an omniscient narrator. Salinger didn't choose to have God up in the sky looking down on New York and narrating Holden's adventures. We are there inside Holden's head, experiencing the journey with him and the language that Salinger uses, it isn't Salinger's language. It's Holden's language. The way New York is described is the language Holden would use to describe New York, not J. D. Salinger.

That very important element of point of view is captured perfectly in The Catcher in the Rye.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

Attitude and Voice

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson is one of my favorite books. It's what I would point people to when they are talking about "voice" or "authorial voice."

People are often a little too obsessed with voice and what is their writerly voice. So you can look to the writing of Hunter S. Thompson for an example of writer whose voice is different from every other writer's. I can read a piece of writing from Hunter S. Thompson and know that it's Hunter S. Thompson without anyone telling me. There's very few writers that you could say that about.

I was conscious of following up The Catcher in the Rye with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas because J.D. Salinger was a writer for The New Yorker magazine. The New Yorker, to a certain extent, defined a certain style of writing and liberal intellectual approach to literature in New York City for a lot of the 20th century. I like to compare that to Hunter S. Thompson, who is this other voice.

Thompson is the outsider voice. He wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for Rolling Stone magazine. This was a Rock n' Roll journalist writing for a counter culture magazine. I think for all of the beauty and intelligence and wit that you are going to find in the work of Salinger, you are going to find energy and rage and just in your face energy and attitude coming out of Hunter S. Thompson's writing. I highly recommend checking it out.

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Poetic Brilliance

It's so hard to answer the question, "What's your favorite book of all time?" But when I have to settle on  a single book, it's Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf.

If you found out you had three days to live and you only had one book to read in those last three days of your life, I'd want you to read Mrs. Dalloway.

It captures everything. It takes all of existence and, in a narrative that takes place over a single day with just a handful of characters, somehow captures the psychological complexity of human existence within a book that

Welcome to The Writing Coach. On this podcast, I speak with the instructors, editors, coaches, and mentors who help writers and authors create their art, build their audience, and sell their work.

One year ago, I launched Writer's Craft Academy, my private membership site and group coaching program. In episode 59 of The Writing Coach, I celebrate the year's victories, as well as discuss some lessons learned. Listen now!

Episode Transcript

Read the full transcript

Hello, beloved listeners, and welcome back to The Writing Coach podcast.

Now as you guys know, on this show, normally I interview folks who work with writers to help them succeed, but today, it's going be just me. I'm going be the person who works with writers to help them succeed on today's show, because as I record this, it is the first of February, which means it's been one year since I launched Writer's Craft Academy.

Writer's Craft Academy is my private membership site and group coaching program. And as I said, I launched it one year ago. We now have 12 months under our belt, and I thought this would be a great opportunity to look back on how the year's gone, how everything has worked within the Academy and what hasn't worked as well.

Let's dive into it!

Video Training Library

First off, the notion of Writer's Craft Academy came to me for a couple of different reasons, but one was I noticed there's a major problem with online courses. I sold two online courses previously, one called The Novel Writer's Blueprint and one called Smash Fear and Write like a Pro. One of the things I noticed about The Novel Writer's Blueprint was that people were not finishing the course The more I thought about it, the more this kind of made sense, because the course was walking people through the entire project of writing a book, from initial idea creation all the way through to completed manuscript. And the reality was, most of the people who were taking the course were in the early stages of working on their book, which meant they didn't need the latter stages of the course yet.

Maybe eventually they were going to come back to it and finish the course, once they were at that latter stage in their manuscript drafting, but probably they wouldn't because we lose focus. How often do we say we're going to come back and finish a course, but then not end up doing it?

I mean that happens, right? I started thinking about maybe what writers need isn't this “module one, module two, module three” style single course that's going to walk people through what they need to learn, but rather this library of resources that are available when you need them.

You know in the training library there's a whole mini-course in there on revisions, but you don't have to feel compelled to watch it if you're at the idea creation stage of your writing.

And that's the other thing… as a writing coach, it almost seemed antithetical to be selling courses, because I don't want people taking courses. I want people working on their writing. As fun as it is to take a course, a lot of the time people use education as an excuse to not do the hard work of just sitting down and actually writing.

I liked this idea of having this training library there, so that when someone has a question, I can say, yes, go watch these three videos from our training library tonight. It'll specifically address your question and show you some examples, and then you can get back to your writing.

It also allows me to just create shorter videos for things that don't necessarily have to fit directly within the larger context of a course. I'm thinking, for example, I have a video on how to use Microsoft Styles in Microsoft Word, so that you can turn your chapter titles into hyperlinks, and then have Microsoft Word self-generate a table of contents for you. It's just a little bit easier way to organize a manuscript if you are writing in Microsoft Word. But I mean, that's not part of a course on how to write a book. It's just a video I knew some of my clients would find helpful. So the video training library allows me to have this place where even if I only have a two-minute video I want to create to show someone something, I can get that in there.

As the year went on the library grew and we now have over 50 training videos in there, which I think is a really, really great collection of resources available for The Writer's Craft Academy members. We also record our book club calls, and I think that has actually become a really interesting resource as well. So maybe I'll talk about that next.

Writer's Craft Book Club

I've run several different group coaching programs before, and I've sold different online courses before, but one of the new concepts that I added to Writer's Craft Academy when we launched a year ago was the idea of a monthly book club. Each month, in Writer's Craft Academy, we have a theme. So the theme might be Story Structure, or the theme might be Dialogue, or the theme might be Genre. Then we would have a writer's craft non-fiction book on that theme that we would all read over the month. And then we would all get together on an additional kind of bonus call at the end of the month and just talk about the book. And I think it's been one of my favorite parts of Writer's Craft Academy, having these calls.

It's so much fun, but it also having a group of people working through these writer's craft books together allows us to develop a shared vocabulary. One of the first books that we read was Shawn Coyne's book, The Story Grid, and we were actually lucky enough to have Shawn Coyne join us for our book club session, which was really extraordinary. But the point being, once we all read that book, I could talk about the “five commandments of story-telling,” and everyone in the group would know what we were talking about.

And the great thing is, as I said, we record all of our book club calls. And they go into the video training library as well, so that if someone joins Writer's Craft Academy today and wants to read The Story Grid, well, guess what? They can now go and also watch the book club discussion that we had based around that book, which I think is a really cool thing.

And obviously, as a writer, and as a writing teacher and an instructor, I love books about writing, so it's just so much fun to get to do it in a group environment. And I think it educates you, as well, when you are forced to talk about a book that you've read.

You have to articulate your learning, and sometimes if you just read a book alone, and you say, “Oh, that was great. We learned a lot,” but it doesn't get embedded, or it doesn't get absorbed into your daily life, if you don't put it into practice and start talking about it and verbalizing it with other people. I think having The Writer's Craft Academy book club is really helpful on a number of different levels.

Another thing that I love about the book club is that it shows the members that there is no one right way to write a book. I have a perspective from my experience. I have recommendations that I make to people, but I don't know the answer for everyone, and so when we read a different book about the craft every month, members get to see that perspective, and they get to see, oh, well, KM Weiland approaches writing from how Robert McKee approaches writing, which is different from how Natalie Goldberg approaches writing, which is how Shawn Coyne does. You really get to see this myriad of perspectives.

I think part of my role as a writing coach and as a writing instructor is not to tell my clients “this is the right way to do it,” but to introduce them to the possibilities that are out there, the different ways of approaching things, so that they can find the one that's right for them. So again, that's another reason why I think the book club has just been a real success and been a lot of fun.

Author Community

Next up is the community aspect of Writer's Craft Academy, which is probably my absolute favorite part. I think the resource library is great. I think the book club is so much fun, but our weekly group coaching calls are so beneficial on so many levels for our members, as well as our forum.

We have a private Facebook group, so while we meet every week for a group call, we also are able to continue to share information, and resources, and help each other out between coaching calls. Even if I wasn't interested in creating this private membership site and in this group coaching program, even if I was just focusing exclusively on my one-on-one clients, I think I would still include some sort of group component to my one-on-one coaching.

I have seen my one-on-one clients, who also participate in Writer's Craft Academy, get so much value out of it, out of being supported by others but also being able to share their frustrations, or celebrate their victories, or get differing perspectives, or bounce ideas off one another. We have about ... I think at the moment we have about 16 members in Writer's Craft Academy, so it's not one of these massive programs, where you have a thousand people involved and no one knows each other. We're a really tight-knit community, and so it feels more like friendship than it does any sort of coaching program. It just feels like a community and a safe place for aspiring authors where they can come together and get what they need.

And sometimes what they need is a kick in the butt and some accountability from me.

But other times, what they need is just to hear that other writers are going through the same struggles that they're going through. And other times, they just need a place where they can go online and say, “Hey guys, I finished chapter 22 this week. No one else in the world really knows what that means or what a success that is or how far I've come from when I was struggling with chapter two for six months back.” Writer's Craft Academy's community component is a place where wr

Welcome to The Writing Coach. On this podcast, I speak with the instructors, editors, coaches, and mentors who help writers and authors create their art, build their audience, and sell their work.

In episode #58 of The Writing Coach podcast, I say goodbye to my friend and collaborator, Catherine Brunelle.

The Writing Coach is brought to you by:

Click here to learn more about Writer's Craft Academy

Download the podcast here:

Welcome to The Writing Coach. On this podcast, I speak with the instructors, editors, coaches, and mentors who help writers and authors create their art, build their audience, and sell their work.

In episode #57 of The Writing Coach podcast, I speak with Alexa Bigwarfe.

Alexa is an author, a coach, publisher, and digital publishing strategist. She is currently putting together an online summit for writers and publishers featuring women only.

During our conversation, Alexa describes:

the role writing can play in dealing with grief and healing;

the challenges involved in being a mom of three and an author-entrepreneur;

the importance of identifying priorities (and why she doesn’t believe in balance);

the Sunday meeting she has with her husband each week;

why she is putting together the Women in Publishing summit later this year;

And much more.

Listen to the episode now!

The Writing Coach #57 Show Notes

Visit Alexa's website: Write Publish Sell.

Register to attend the Women in Publishing Summit here.

The Writing Coach is brought to you by:

Click here to learn more about Writer's Craft Academy

Download the podcast here:

Welcome to The Writing Coach. On this podcast, I speak with the instructors, editors, coaches, and mentors who help writers and authors create their art, build their audience, and sell their work.

In episode #56 of The Writing Coach podcast, I speak with Joanna Penn.

Joanna is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers under the name J.F. Penn. She also writes inspirational non-fiction for authors and is an award-winning creative entrepreneur and international professional speaker. Her site TheCreativePenn.com is regularly voted one of the top 10 sites for writers and self-publishers.

During our conversation Joanna describes:

Why she writes her books in American English despite being British;

The self-doubt she felt early in her writing career and how Dan Brown changed everything for her;

How she goes about scheduling and managing a busy career with multiple brands and products;

What being prolific means to her and how she consistently produces high-quality content;

And much more.

Listen to the episode now!

The Writing Coach #56 Show Notes

Check out all the helpful resources available at thecreativepenn.com.

Listen to The Creative Penn podcast.

Have a look at Joanna's Amazon page.

The Writing Coach is brought to you by:

Click here to learn more about Writer's Craft Academy

Download the podcast here:

Welcome to The Writing Coach. On this podcast, I speak with the instructors, editors, coaches, and mentors who help writers and authors create their art, build their audience, and sell their work.

In ep. #55 of The Writing Coach podcast, writing instructor Joan Dempsey, who previously appeared in episode 38, returns to the show to discuss the launch of her debut novel, This Is How It Begins. The book is political literary fiction exploring the clash between religious freedom and gay rights, and it's already getting rave reviews.

During our conversation Joan describes:

what it's like releasing a political novel in these incredibly turbulent political times;

if she feels pressured to follow her own writing instructional advice when writing her fiction;

the arduous querying process she went through for the book;

the surprising benefits she discovered from going with a hybrid publisher;

and lots more.

Listen to the episode now!

The Writing Coach #55 Show Notes

Check out the This Is How it Begins website here, or purchase your copy from Amazon now:

The Writing Coach is brought to you by:

Click here to learn more about Writer's Craft Academy

Download the podcast here: