#AmWriting

Hooks, tropes, high concept. Comps. The publishing world tosses those phrases around like juggling balls, and I for one (as usual it’s KJ here) had a hard time understanding them for ages, especially the idea of a hook. But now I get it. A hook, in short, is the thing that gets someone—agent, editor, reader, movie-goer, etc—to say, following a one or two sentence description of the book: SOLD. Fiction, non-fiction: same deal. So a hook COULD be high-concept. (What if a kid wished to be Big? What if you woke up and discovered your whole life was a TV show with you as the unwitting star?). It could also be a mix-and-match situation with a pair of comps or a single comp (Cujo, but a cat). Or it can steal from something high concept: The Princess Diaries, but with the Japanese royal family (Tokyo Ever After). Groundhog Day, but in Brooklyn with a girl in the ‘80’s whose dad is now sick (This Time Tomorrow). Sometimes the hook is right there in the title. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. Dial A for Aunties. The Gift of Failure.The thing about a hook is that it’s rarely the full story. It’s a “come for the X, stay for the Y situation”: you pick up the book because you love a good restaurant reality show family battle, but then it’s the small town story that keeps you reading. Or it’s just that there’s a lot more to the story—as Sarina says, the whole “but then what happens?” A hook does not make a book—and a lack of hook does not mean a bad book. It’s just a whole lot harder to tell you what a book without a hook is about, and therefore to sell it. It can be done. But I, for one, am not doing it again. Have you written a book with a hook—or without one? Wondering if you’ve got hold of a hook or a trope? Is there a particular hook (hello, “but in publishing”) that always gets you? We’re chatting in the comments—or head for the chat itself to see what else we’re talking about. You can also find us on Facebook.Books and Links from the Pod:The S**t No One Tells You About Writing PodcastA Very Merry Meet Cute, Julie Murphy & Sierra SimoneThe Bromance Book Club, Lyssa Kay AdamsIn a Holidaze, Christina LaurenBeach Read, Emily HenryPests: How Humans Create Animal Villains, Bethany BrookshireBeaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America, Leila PhilipListen, World: How the Intrepid Elsie Robinson Became America’s Most-Read Woman, Julia Scheeres & Allison GilbertThe Chain, Adrian McKintyThe Plot, Jean Hanff KorelitzKarin Slaughter’s Pieces of Her, Girl, ForgottenEpisode 71 Building a Relationship with Your Bookstore#AmReadingJess: Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America, Leila PhilipPests: How Humans Create Animal Villains, Bethany BrookshireGhosts of the Orphanage (March 2023), Christine KenneallyKJ: A Very Merry Bromance, Lyssa Kay AdamsAll I Want for Christmas, Maggie KnoxWitchmark, C.L. PolkSarina: Pieces of Her, Karin SlaughterThe Night Shift, Alex FinlayHEY NOVELISTS—Did you finish NaNoWriMo? Would you like to know what to do next with that pile of words you worked so hard to create? Here’s a group of Author Accelerator certified book coaches dedicated to walking you through the process of finishing your draft or tackling revision—and they have put together a host of free resources to get you started. Check out  www.nanonowwhat.com to learn more about these fantastic book coaches and how they can get you from NaNo success to a draft that’s ready to pitch or publish.Want to BE one of those book coaches? Our partners at Author Accelerator have super-fun BONUSES for anyone who signs up book coach training before the end of 2022. Learn more at bookcoaches.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Hi all, Jess here! I’ve been getting a lot of questions in the #AmWriting Facebook group and in my DM/emails about speaking, so I’m going to do a series of bonus episodes about the topic. There’s so much to talk about, but since so many of the questions are about speaking agencies (working with them, getting one, how much of a cut do they take, how do you know which ones are good), I thought I’d start there. I hope this episode flattens the learning curve for you! Show NotesMy agency, American Program Bureau and my personal landing page over on their website. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Sometimes you have to start with a memoir (that you never publish) to figure out who you are and where you’re going. Today’s guest has a nice impressive bio—but 8 years ago, she was just a writer staring at a screen and working on, as many of us do when we first start, a memoir. Emily Grosvenor is the editor of Oregon Home magazine, Willamette Week’s design publication Nester. She’s also written for The Atlantic, Salon, Good Housekeeping, and others. But ALSO like so many of us, she started as a generalist, freelancing from the familiar “write what you know” place. New place, children, parenthood, cooking, trying to navigate finding adult life or living with a partner? Write about it.But a funny thing happened on the way to that memoir: She realized she didn’t want to keep living in that space. And when the memoir didn’t sell, Emily found the opportunity to write about something she really wanted to explore—and figured out how she fit into the market. Links from the podFoundry Media Literary Agency “exploded”Sarah Susanka’s Your Not-So-Big LifeSeth Godin’s Purple CowPia somebody, Badass Your BrandBonus: Rachael Herron’s Fast-Draft Your Memoir in 45 Hours (because that might be the way you plow your way through what you need to write to find out what you want to write)Sign up for Emily’s Design Shift Newsletter HERE.(Our episode on email lists 151: #StartHereforEmailLists)Emily on Instagram @EmilyGrosvenorBook: Find Yourself at Home: A Conscious Approach to Shaping Your Space and Your Life#AmReadingEmily: Marie Kondo's Kurashi at HomeKJ: Start More than You Can Finish, Becky BladesHEY NOVELISTS—Did you finish NaNoWriMo? Would you like to know what to do next with that pile of words you worked so hard to create? Here’s a group of Author Accelerator certified book coaches dedicated to walking you through the process of finishing your draft or tackling revision—and they have put together a host of free resources to get you started.Check out  www.nanonowwhat.com to learn more about these fantastic book coaches and how they can get you from NaNo success to a draft that’s ready to pitch or publish.Want to BE one of those book coaches? Our partners at Author Accelerator have super-fun BONUSES for anyone who signs up book coach training before the end of 2022. Learn more at bookcoaches.com to find out if 2023 will be the year you launch a book coaching business or level up the one you already have. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Hey #AmWriters! Jess here. I recorded a bunch of videos to answer all of your questions about creating video for book marketing but in the end, I figured an entire episode needed to happen in order to really get into the topic. I started creating daily videos based on the content in The Addiction Inoculation because I wanted to the information out there, and if it sold some books or rustled up some speaking invitations, great. At the time I’m writing these show notes, I’m 63 videos deep, and yes, it’s a massive time suck. It takes a lot of work, and a lot of patience through plenty of mistakes but the experience has been a net gain for me overall in terms of education and exposure. I hope this flattens the learning curve for you, and please report back in the #AmWriting Facebook group if you have anything to add or advice to offer! Links The #AmWriting Facebook GroupJess on InstagramJess on TikTokJess on TwitterListeners, the team at Author Accelerator knows that all kinds of people can make good book coaches. It’s not necessarily people who have had massive success as writers themselves. It’s not necessarily people who have secured agents, book deals, degrees, or awards.It’s people who really could spend all day talking about books, who get excited by the idea of lifting up other writers, and who are ready to back up their passion for writing with skills, training, and hard work.If that might be you, join the Author Accelerator team for two days of exploration on November 30 and December 1, 2022, to find out if 2023 will be the year you launch a book coaching business or level up the one you already have. Head to bookcoaches.com/dreamjob to learn more. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

I know. I know. Long term listeners know what’s coming first but this first gift combo is an #AmWriting favorite for a good reason. The three of us own the same journal and nearly identical (save for the color of the elastic fastener and monogram) custom leather Fillion and we love them so much. Our favorite calendar/journal is, and has always been, the Leuchtturm1917 monthly planner with 136-page dotted notebook pages. We love everything about it - the monthly pages, the number of dotted pages, the weight of the paper, the pocket for stickers in the back - oh, it’s so good. Sarina keeps a very eager eye out each year and two of our favorite days are the “what are next year’s colors?” discovery day and the day Sarina hands over the new beauties in our color of choice. Sarina’s planner is a thing of beauty so here’s a pic of what her month usually looks like (stickers are for completing the day’s word goal):What’s a Fillion, you ask? Well, about ten years ago I bought a gorgeous tri-fold leather holder for a journal at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas and a very happy love affair was born. I actually met the woman who makes these lovelies, Lesha Shaver (pic below), owner of Little Mountain Bindery, and she’s currently making a custom leatherbound book for a lucky someone on my holiday list this year. There are tons of options for the Fillion, but ours is the XL trifold with our initials in Huxley font. You can fit two notebooks in there if you want, plus the optional magnetic pocket is great for stickers, ruler, stencils, that sort of thing. I’ve been giving this Fillion to people as a thank you gift for years (for example, everyone who has blurbed my books has one with their initials and their favorite color elastic cording). In plucking the proper url to link in this post I just discovered Lesha has created a deluxe Fillion box set and now my mouth is watering. Given that we have our journals, now we need to have a very serious conversation about pens. I have choices, of course, but Sarina has OPINIONS. Her current favorites are:* Uniball Jetstream retractable fine (.7mm) ballpoint pens in black.* Pentel EnerGel RTX medium point (.7mm) retractable liquid gel pens in assorted colors. * Pilot Frixion light pastel highlighter with erasable ink and chisel tip 3-pack.I happen to love my black Sharpie ultra fine point pens, but that’s just me. They do bleed through most journal pages, so I understand if you are offended.Here’s the thing about the Pilot Frixion pens: they erase using the heat generated by the friction of he eraser on the paper and it’s a perfect erase. I took Sarina’s Frixion pen obsession to a whole new level and bought the big 24 set. Looooook how pretty….If our pen choices don’t turn your crank, look around at one of our favorite sources for pens and other addictive office items, JetPens or MochiThings. I apologize in advance. Other fun things I’ve kept on a running list this year:Bulk blank notebooks with kraft paper covers (I keep the tiny ones, 10 for $24) in my pocket or wallet at all times because I’m 52 and starting to forget things. This adorable Kaweco fountain pen in smooth sage. It’s tiny and light, and I love it. I linked the medium nib but it comes in lots of versions. The ink is specific to this pen and comes in lots of colors, too. I am terrible with glasses. Mine get left all over the place (there are three pairs of glasses in my woods, right now, sitting on stumps or logs I can’t locate) and I scratch them far too quickly. That said, this soft but upright Tät Tat glasses (or whatever) case really helps. I keep it on my nightstand and consequently I’ve managed to hold on to at least one pair of unscratched prescription glasses. Mine’s grey-blue.Oh, and since people ask me all the time about my glasses, they are Warby Parker Ainsley in Marzipan Tortoise. Did you know Sarina made her own journal for romance readers? Yes, indeedy. The Kissing Books Journal by Heart Eyes Press. In fact, Sarina told me she even keeps a “Gifts for Readers and Writers” list on Amazon, so here’s that, too. Finally, since few of us need more stuff, don’t forget about memberships to The Authors Guild or PEN America. Members of The Authors Guild get access to legal services, web services, insurance discounts, all kinds of great webinars and events, and the opportunity to build your community of writer friends. This year, The Authors Guild helped advocate for writers and got Amazon to change its ebook return policy and was instrumental in getting ZLibrary taken down and its creators arrested and indicted for piracy. PEN America offers writer and reader memberships and both are vital to supporting their work advocating for for free speech, fighting censorship and book banning, and protecting writers from online abuse. NB: some of these items listed at Amazon have affiliate codes on them which means Sarina or I might make a few cents here or there from Amazon’s coffers. I tried to link to smaller retailers wherever possible, though! Happy holidays to all of you. We appreciate you all so very, very much. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Pain by Elsie RobinsonImagine discovering that one of the highest paid, most well known journalists in the world, whose voice dominated the Hearst media empire for more than 30 years, who wrote something like 9,000 published articles…has basically disappeared from living memory.That’s the story of Julia Scheer and Allison Gilbert’s biography: Listen World: How the Intrepid Elsie Robinson Became America’s Most-Read Woman. The story of this podcast is how Allison came to enlist Julia and finish the project, which came from the discovery of one of Robinson’s poems (and please note this was not a woman who was best known for her poems) in her mother’s papers thirty years ago.We talk about Elsie—whose writing secrets and mantras sound like things you could hear any day on the podcast—as well as the process of defining the project, finding a co-writer and shifting your own work, and even your own bio, in order to become the writer of a new kind of book.Links First, our new mantra: It is the Parked Profile, not the Divine Spark, which is the secret of success. (i.e.: Keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.)Elsie’s Writing Manifesto and Top 5 Quotes on Writing.A novelization of another famous women of the era: The Personal Librarian Fab reviews of Listen, World:Wall Street JournalNew York TimesWashington PostAllison’s colleague and co-author, Julia ScheeresAllison’s website#AmReadingAllison: Lab Girl, Hope JahrenThe Successful Woman, Dr. Joyce BrothersKJ: Out of the Clear Blue Sky, Kristan HigginsAlso mentioned—The Crappy Friends PodcastListeners, the team at Author Accelerator knows that all kinds of people can make good book coaches. It’s not necessarily people who have had massive success as writers themselves. It’s not necessarily people who have secured agents, book deals, degrees, or awards.It’s people who really could spend all day talking about books, who get excited by the idea of lifting up other writers, and who are ready to back up their passion for writing with skills, training, and hard work.If that might be you, join the Author Accelerator team for two days of exploration on November 30 and December 1, 2022, to find out if 2023 will be the year you launch a book coaching business or level up the one you already have. Head to bookcoaches.com/dreamjob to learn more. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Ever feel like some things are just outside your ken? I’m that way with literary magazines. And I’ve never found the right retreat or residency, or applied for a grant, and I know sometimes it’s just that I don’t think I belong in that world.But worlds don’t usually just reach out and drag you in. That’s a fave theme of ours around here—you can’t be published unless you write something, etc. If you want to be part of a literary world you have to find it and start looking around for a door. This podcast is ALL about finding doors. And knocking, and however you want to extend the metaphor—and it was great. As I’ve said before, you can tell a practical podcast by the number of links that end up in there, and there are a ton of useful links below. And let me add to all of it my favorite old school book on a similar topic, Making A Literary Life from Carolyn See. I hope this talk with Patrice inspires you to get OUT THERE.About our guest: Patrice Gopo is an award-winning essayist and the author of books for adults and children. Her essay collection, All the Colors We Will See, was Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Her debut picture book, All the Places We Call Home, was inspired by one of the essays in her collection. She’s the child of Jamaican immigrants, but she was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska—which gives her a pretty unique perspective on everything from racial identity formation and immigration to weather and life in the great outdoors. She’s had essays in a ton of publications, including Catapult, Charlotte Magazine, Creative Nonfiction, and AFAR Magazine, and her essay “That Autumn” received a notable mention in the Best American Essays 2020—which is HUGE. She’s also the recipient of a North Carolina Arts Council Artist Fellowship and a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award—and I’m telling you all these details because literary magazines, grants and residencies are exactly what we’re planning to talk about.Links from the PodLiterary MamaRelief: A Journal of Art and FaithPublisher’s Weekly Lit Mag DatabaseFunds for Writers databaseClifford Garstang Poets & Writers: Literary MagazinesLit Mag News!Creative NonFiction Classes (Patrice mentioned teacher Lisa Olen Harris) North Carolina Arts CouncilPatricia Gopo’s Grant Application TipsPatriceGopo.com Writing ResourcesSt. Nell’s Humor Writing ResidencyNational Endowment for the ArtsSustainable Arts Foundation#AmReadingPatrice: Nothing Special, Desiree CooperWhen Stars Are Scattered, Omar Mohamed and Victoria JamiesonThe Anti-Racist Writing Workshop, Felicia Rose ChavezKJ: A Rather Haunted Life (Ruth Franklin's biography of Shirley Jackson) Writers, I’ve got exciting news from Author Accelerator. Applications for Author Accelerator's new 2-year scholarship program for Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other people of color opens this month! The Author Accelerator team developed this scholarship as a way to amplify diverse voices and perspectives that are under-recognized in the publishing world.The newly launched Author Accelerator Book Coach Certification Scholarship provides one year of professional mentorship and feedback for up to three students of color as they complete the Book Coach Certification program and one subsequent year of career coaching and mentorship as they launch their business.  If you’re Interested in Applying,  the scholarship window opens November 15th and will close January 15, 2023. The program will kick off in March 2023.  To learn more, visit bookcoaches.com/equity. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Many of you have heard me (this is obviously KJ) whine about my revision in process. Well, I’m here to report that it’s done, and successfully. Below is a full description of the process, and in the episode you’ll hear me talking about it with Jennie Nash. I detail everything except the Peeps that fueled me, and I decided it was wrong to leave them out. So, in addition to a lot of butt-in-chair time and a surprising number of hours spend really just staring the at screen, I should own that I also ate a lot of Halloween peeps and most of a bag of fun-sized $100,000 bars. And I would have eaten the whole bag but someone else beat me too it, and they owe me big.Here it is in writing, THE LONG VERSION: How to do a substantial novel revision in 30 daysThe OverviewI had a long, rambling, completed draft of a book with a solid plot and decent thematic/internal story. The magic system was unclear and the romance undeveloped, and I had too many side-characters and too many scenes that weren’t doing more than one job. Because it’s a seasonal book, I couldn’t take my time with a revision without getting pushed another full year out. So we were shooting for publication in less than a year—and we needed to leave some time, tbh, for me to get this wrong and have to fix it again. Thus: 30 days to a revision that involved nearly a full rewrite, even though the characters, story and in particular the plot excitement of the ending would stay the same.What the hell did I sell?At the time, I thought I sold a solid, almost-ready 102K draft.  Looking back, I see I sold an idea (Grown-up Gilmore Girls meets Practical Magic with a stolen set of family Tarot cards with powers and a mission of their own) and a rambling, creaky proof-of-concept draft with a solid plot at its core and characters my editor liked and wanted to spend time with.What this was: Same basic plot, both inside and out. I’ve done revisions that required altering a major plot point or removing characters. This did not.Same characters.Same themes, but narrowed and clarified.A few thoughts on that—the draft I sold was, in my mind, intentionally “edit-able”. There comes a point in a draft when editing it is hard. When what you have is both very polished and tightly wound, the editor may be able to see what’s wrong, but pulling it out will be more painful for the writer, because you’ve locked down all the story elements to intertwine and all the language, etc. This wasn’t that—when I yanked out scenes, they were at least flabby or tangential. I didn’t have to feel too bad about it. And the story wasn’t quite locked in as well. So none of this was unexpected. I know this editor likes to edit and is really good at it.That said, it WAS a … third or fourth draft or fifth, I can’t remember. I’d done a lot of work on it. When I let go of it I thought it was pretty darn good. When I got it back I was like, OMG I can’t BELIEVE I gave this to anyone, it’s so long and there are scenes that don’t go anywhere and it takes forever to get to the point. And in many ways I had done too much writing work on a story that wasn’t ready to be written (although some of that is necessary for me to find the story).So a) I thought this was a lot better than it was and b) even after you sell a book, sometimes there is substantial work still to be done and that is fine, it doesn’t mean you’re terrible and the story is crap and the editor is staring at it and thinking, I cannot believe I bought this horrible piece of junk. (Or so I kept telling myself, over and over and over.) And c) apparently what you go out with can be (and will be) far, far from perfect. Even if you think it is.All that said, some editors don’t edit. I was talking with another writer at a party recently, a NYT best-seller who broke out on her seventh novel, and has written 2 more since, told me that she doesn’t get edited any more. That may be because of her skill and experience (and if so, I am so not there and can go back to feeling terrible about this draft) but I’ve heard the same from newer novelists. And debut novelists, although that situation is a little different, as our debuts are usually the product of a longer period of work and often working with paid editors or readers.I knew this editor and knew what to expect. If I was submitting to an unknown editor, I would submit something that—to me—was ready to go. Which, I should say, does not mean that it won’t get the same big editorial treatment, so it’s important to be ready for that and accept it. It also doesn’t mean it wouldn’t need it.The goal for this go-round.Major notes from my editor: it’s too long, and it drags. The magic system is unclear. The motivations of several major secondary characters who move the plot are unclear. The love story is an afterthought. There’s too much of one secondary character and not enough of 2 others. Too much internal monologue, too many conversations in parts that should be action. The deep backstory (i.e where the magic comes from) should be super-clear to me but mostly unseen by the reader.Minor notes: Some scenes don’t work hard enough. Magic should be more magical. The stakes are high, but make it more clear what they are. More descriptions of the cute town and shop.My editor suggested a fresh structure of the first half of the book that moved it more quickly, which was very helpful. There are two inciting incidents, and we moved things so one of them happens very very quickly (the return of the magic) and the other later, after the first had more time to develop (the magic goes badly).I had two calls with my editor, the first before she wrote her (10 page!) editorial letter and the second after I’d read it. I didn’t do any revision in between—I re-wrote the flap copy and worked on their author questionnaire (and if you’ve never done one of those, they’re quite long). We also wrote the tagline. Both of those—the flap copy and the tagline—were really helpful in reminding me what it was I was doing here, especially the tagline, which ended up on a post-it on my desktop: Flair is done with magic. But magic isn’t done with her.I needed to cut at least 10K words, make the magic, the plot and the motivations of the characters around it clear, bring the romance forward and take out a lot of action (and a few tertiary characters and events) that were obscuring the main story.An aside: I think we’re either writers who stuff too much into the story (and write long) or writers who get right to the point (and write short). Whichever you are, outlining a favorite book in your genre or one that really did whatever your goal is (page-turner, thought-provoking, slow burn) successfully for you can really help. How many additional characters and plotlines were there? Which did you remember at the end of the book? How many did you really love, or really contributed to the book’s success with you? Did they move the plot and the inner story or just one or the other?I did this during my revision and found it really helpful. Again. For me, outlining—or at least thinking about specific elements—of books I hope to be like on some level is always a good move.The numbersOriginal: 102K/330 pp 36 chaptersRevision: 83K/298 pp 30 chapters30 days/189.5 hours of butt-in-chair. This does not count anxiety dreams, walks to think through problems or time spent staring at other people and nodding while thinking about book.Longest day: 11 hours (I had 2 11 hour days and 5 10 hour days)What did that look like? 7-8 hours before dinner, with a substantial dinner stop that often included a walk or short bike ride, then back at it until 11 pm or so. I’m a natural night owl, so that’s not that hard for me.Shortest: 1.5 (I traveled 3x during the 30 days, so I knew in advance that there would be several days when I did very little.) The shortest “real” day—as in, I didn’t drive for 8 hours or spend a full day in family activity—was 6 hours. I’d consider that a normal day, and if I hadn’t been in a rush I would say that’s about ideal.Average: 6.3The mechanicsI made one big decision first thing: I decided not to work in the draft, even though it had (relatively few) line notes from my editor. Instead, I decided to return to Scrivener.The big advantage to Scrivener is the ability to move from chapter to chapter easily—as in, when you realize you’re quoting something said in an earlier chapter, it’s in the outline off to the side and easy to pop up and see, or if you realize you’ve forgotten something, ditto. That’s really tough in 300 pp in Word, or even if you pull out each chapter and work on them separately in Word. And the risk of choosing an old version is high for me.  This worked really well, and I would do it again on any revision where I didn’t need to be following line notes in Word. The ease of moving around a doc in Scrivener cannot be beat.I also decided not to pull out each chapter, put it in Scrivener and plan to revise it. Here’s why—there was a LOT in this draft that wasn’t going to make it into the final. At a minimum I needed to cut 10K/15pp. But truly, so much needed re-writing as much as revising—or maybe I should say, there was a lot of new material that needed to fit in. It would be easier to take what I needed from the old draft and add it to new stuff than to cut things, especially things I liked. Most of the scenes I needed had been written, but interspersed with scenes I did not. It was MUCH easier not to even look at those scenes again unless, say, I began writing a conversation and thought –they’ve done this before. Then I’d go dig it out.  Instead, I tackled it bit by bit, taking out the part I planned to work on and creating a Scrivener folder for it. I divided my book into about 6 sections—broadly, the beginning, the beginning of the middle, the midpoint scenes, the beginning of the end, the big action at the end and then the end. I planned for it all to end up in Scrivener and to compile it out from there.I often did the editing in Word by pulling out, say, three chapters that needed to become 2, dumping them into a fresh word doc (that way I got my editor’s comments, too), giving it a name and working in there by also opening a dumping ground word doc next to (on desktop) or behind (laptop) it. I’d pull out a huge chunk, put it in the dumping ground and then go snatch lines or paragraphs as needed. This also gave me confidence, because the original always remained whole. I could always go back and get something if I needed it.Those Word docs looked like this:I drafted new material in Scrivener. Once or twice, I duplicated a chapter so that I could try something and see if it worked but easily go back to a previous version, which Scrivener also makes easy. I did some smaller chapter revisions in Scrivener too, although often I did them in Word and then pasted the result into Scrivener.I created multiple outlines (about which more in the next section), and often—especially as I got closer to the end—included target word counts, and I really paid attention to those. I have a tendency to repeat things, especially in dialogue, and keeping an awareness of where I was in the scene/chapter in terms of middle and approaching end helped me move things faster.Why are my fingers not moving?Of that 189.5 hours, I spent approximately 103 staring at the screen, outlining, prewriting, staring, outlining again, and generally struggling.I loosely outlined my revision with my editor before I started. A few days in I crashed headlong into the first wall and pulled back to really outline. We’d focused mostly on plot, which was just great—but what I ran into was the question of why anyone did anything and then, what the reader knew and believed when and what they were wondering about.It seems so straightforward now, but on day four I wrote in my calendar (I keep a calendar record of what I actually did, as opposed to what I meant to do, often quite different): “struggling.” And struggle I did, for 9 days. I tried summarizing, I tried outlining, I tried fitting the story into various structures. I did a lot of prewriting of dialogue, which is dialogue with no punctuation and no tags or stage direction, which was one of the most useful things I did—just basically let the characters yell what they really thought at one another and then used it in various places. Here’s an example:Mocking her. None of those cards were for her, they never were.What came next, Nana taught her, was what you faced.The card that, for Flair, held the flash of premonition, the knowledge of what was coming.She pushed it away. She didn’t want it. She didn’t want the cards, not even these cookies, to exert their control. She didn’t want to know what would happen. She knew what she wasn’t going to let happen.He can’t take Lucie from me.The Hermit. Herself, alone.A figure on the ground, lucie’s frightened eyes, the five of cups. She hadn’t even made a five of cups. Death—we cannot outwit death and we cannot outwit change—that was not what lay ahead.They were just cookies.I made them.They’re mine.None of that. She reached out, seized on the Devil, that card of control, to push it away with all her might but found her grip tightening on it.Because of David. David needs to do what I want and leave my daughter alone.Whew. Harsh.Well, he’s an a*****e. She can’t go live with him.Agreed. But you know what I think.I know, enabling, blah blah. Well that’s done. I’m done with him. As long as he’s done with Lucie.Oh yeah that sounds like you’ve totally let him go in a healthy way.Flair picked up death and bit its head off.Oh, maybe we leave the nice cookies alone now, morticia. I think you’ve had enough.And then things went on well enough for a little over a week. And then I hit another wall and spent 2 days circling around, again, why one secondary character (the antagonist) would do what she does and how she would interact with my protagonist, in particular in one scene—what would she be offering and why would it work? That seemed to go on forever. Part of the problem was that I had two different elements of her motivation that I quite liked but I couldn’t keep them both, and I kept leaning in one direction, then the other, depending on what I was working on… honestly I can barely remember the details now, but that’s when I created the document labeled “pick a f*****g side”.Sometimes you just need to make a decision and write it that way. Sure, save your place so you can go back and all that. But sometimes you just have to CHOOSE.At about the same time I sent my agent what I had, and she didn’t like the first chapter and that… let’s just say I took that badly. I mean, she had like 35K words and she liked them all except the opening 3K. IT WAS FINE. And revising them later was really good. But I might have had a slightly unprofessional meltdown.A few quotes from that time: 10/8, 12 PM: Day of Panic. Why does anyone do anything? Why?10/9, 1 AM: Ugly ugly ugly10/9, 10 AM: Still staring at Loretta scene….10/9, 7 PM: Finally back on track!In which I actually revise actual words on actual pagesSo after about 30 hours of returning to outlining/prewriting/cursing mode, I found my way back in, moved a scene to earlier, revised some transitions and then… finally… chugged along to the end. Where I’d known all along that the action would remain the same, but the dialogue/internal dialogue would change a lot. (In part because, right at the most dramatic moment when life and death hang in the balance, I … had two people go have a heart-to-heart about their relationship. Twice.)But I knew it wouldn’t be hard to revise, and it wasn’t. It was such a relief to be there, too! And then I changed one part of the end dramatically, which oddly didn’t involve changing that much text, and then, instead of dropping straight out of the story and heading to a “one month later” style epilogue, I actually WROTE the end of the story, which I know will be way more satisfying for readers. The other was largely a choice made from exhaustion.Once I’d solved all the problems (that are going to be solved in this draft, anyway), it took 4 days to actually revise the rest of the book and get to the end, a glorious moment.Which was immediately followed by rewriting the first two chapters, and then it was on to my checklist.The yellow and the greenJennie Nash suggests a stoplight checklist for revisions—Red/Yellow/Green. I had such a list, at the beginning of this process. But I quickly realized that so much was red here that, for the most part, that was all I could do. I fixed some green things (changed the name of a character, physical descriptions, that kind of thing) as I went and had an awareness of some yellow (build up this relationship, tighten the dialogue) but I was very much concentrating on red. So I kept a running list of things I’d need to go back and revise for at the end. Here’s what that looked like:Play up can’t use magic without cards even more esp cynCraft enclave. Kansas League of Craftswomen/coven, build up trail’s importance againBakery has bright turquoise boxes with the logo stamped on them by herJosie is still an EMTCyn needs to know who Alice isMaybe Renee would call Flair Harwicke? Maybe she coached some ridiculous soccer team they were on once?Loretta lick lipAdd Jude pop rocksBack of the cards: On each was an elaborate medallion, a fleur de lis with an eye inside a triangle made of a floral vine,Loretta and Jude: The tough, genuinely ruthless spirit had also doted on him and raised him, supported his dreams, pushed him to be more, driven him relentlessly, had—along with Renee—turned him into who he was today, good and bad/or wtf IS the deal between him and Loretta and Renee? Because Renee didn’t tell him anything, bc she never gave him any credit.Josie’s sig other still in national guardSomeone needs to extinguish flames as well as start them. Maybe make point that it’s easiet to put out your own fire?BLACK MOON is big deal all overSome of those I ended up disregarding. Some were literally one line additions (green), others I needed to look at in nearly every chapter—which could be green (hair color, bakery boxes) or yellow (the relationship between two characters). I made a tidier checklist and then went back through most of the chapters in the book, line editing and addressing those issues.Anything I’d really worked on and didn’t want to touch again, I mostly left for the next round. Which I knew would come.How did it turn out?Well. Fabulously. Here’s this, from my editor:Wow! Amazing! I don’t think I’ve ever had a book improve so much from the first draft to the second. You have done incredible work. Brava! Standing ovation! You took all the different elements that had so much potential and you pulled them tightly together into a story that is constantly moving forward, has a solid internal logic, makes use of the fun magic that is dying to be used, but without making it kitschy, and that has a wonderful happy ending. I’m truly amazed by how far you have taken the book in just one draft. I’m also impressed by how much self-editing I can tell that you did. There are so many fewer instances of circular thinking, sentences where it’s difficult to parse the meaning, and using forty words when twenty would do. It’s hard to self-edit and you have done it and I’m very grateful.Do note that she managed to list all the things I usually do poorly (most particularly, “using 40 words where 20 would do”) and that she’s this excited because the last time I did a revision for her, I managed to actually make the book worse.So.Maybe I learned, maybe I didn’t. But this one goes in the win column!Listeners, the team at Author Accelerator knows that all kinds of people can make good book coaches. It’s not necessarily people who have had massive success as writers themselves. It’s not necessarily people who have secured agents, book deals, degrees, or awards.It’s people who really could spend all day talking about books, who get excited by the idea of lifting up other writers, and who are ready to back up their passion for writing with skills, training, and hard work.If that might be you, join the Author Accelerator team for two days of exploration on November 30 and December 1, 2022, to find out if 2023 will be the year you launch a book coaching business or level up the one you already have. Head to bookcoaches.com/dreamjob to learn more. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Sometimes your first book is a gateway. For me—KJ—it was Reading with Babies, Toddlers and Twos, a book I wrote in 2006 with Susan Straub. Susan was the expert and I was a rising writer with a lesser expertise riding on her coattails. We pitched the book before I had many bylines at all—but adding the words “is the author of the forthcoming book…” to my pitches opened a lot of doors. The book itself was shorter and much differently formatted than standard non-fiction.Many writers get started this way, with gift books, guides and other non-fiction books that follow existing formats or fit into existing series. (The fiction version would be work-for-hire chapter books or books within a fandom—and we’d love to talk about that if you have guest ideas.) Maria Teresa Hart is a writer and editor who works most often in food and travel, with a series of impressive bylines that range from the New York Times and The Atlantic to VICE and Business Insider, but she came on the pod to talk about the experience of writing a book for a publishing house within an existing series. Her book, Doll, is part of Bloomsbury’s Object Lessons series. We talk about how that happened, what it was like and how an experience like this can become an doorway into larger opportunities in publishing. LINKSMaria Teresa Hart’s book, DOLL, is a pop-culture feminist critique of doll history and culture, from Raggedy Ann to Barbie to android sex dolls. Find it HERE.Readers of Jane Friedman’s The Hot Sheet (if you’re not a subscriber, I recommend it, find it HERE) can read an interesting piece about work-for-hire in fiction fandoms in the 9/28/22 issue.High Heel, Summer BrennanObject Lessons Seriesobjectsobjectsobjects.comObject lessons essay series in The Atlantic Maria Teresa’s essay on Bidets33 1/3 series33 1/3 WEBSITEBarbie movieAmReadingMaria Teresa: The Witches of Willow Cove, Josh RobertsHow to Be Eaten, Maria AdelmannKJ: The Final Girl Support Group, Grady HendrixSmall Town, Big Magic by Hazel Beckhttps://www.mariateresahart.com, Twitter: /maritehart, IG: @mariathartDon’t forget that Author Accelerator is your one-stop for getting a coach on board to help you with your work, no matter where you are in the drafting game. Need a pro? Click here. And if you’ve considered becoming a book coach, here’s your link: Click here.Also…. you know we here at #AmWriting tend to think working with a book coach or developmental editor is the gold standard for getting help with your project. But that’s not always in the cards—and even if it is, doing as much as you can before bringing in help is often a smart approach. (Although throwing small amounts of $$ at things for years until you’ve spent as much as you would have if you’d just gone all in is not…. so if that resonates with you go find a book coach already!)The women of Pages & Platforms have created a course they call Story Path after years of going through this process on their own, and helping many clients fix their stories and finish their books. They saw how many people struggled with getting from a zero draft to a professional, working draft and made Story Path to help other writers get to “the end” faster. Here’s what you’ll get in the course:* You’ll have the tools you need to understand what type of story you’re telling and how to use it to satisfy readers* You’ll finally be able to have an objective means to evaluate important aspects of your story* You’ll map a plan to a complete professional draft that will have readers eager to turn the page* You’ll have the confidence to keep on the path!The developmental editors of Pages & Platforms provide 20 multimedia lessons, worksheets, exercises and quizzes to help you apply your knowledge to your work-in-progress, monthly live group coaching calls and 12 months of access to the course materials.Here’s some feedback from a real student when she first started (she’s now querying her completed novel!):“Already ‘Story Path’ has proven invaluable, and we’re barely halfway through the course! It’s given me (an aspiring novelist stalled on bringing my rough draft in for a landing) the tools, frameworks, and inspiration needed to confidently tackle both my ending and effective revision of a complete ‘professional draft.’ Hawley, Ramirez, and Campbell probably saved me from tons of angst and flailing around. I highly recommend this course!”—Carolyn Cowen, novelist This one is NOT FREE. But putting your $$ where your mouth is can be very very motivating. So if it sounds like it’s for you, get all the details and register HERE. We’re an affiliate, so we do make a little something if you decide to sign up —but please know that we only team up with people and businesses we trust! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

I (KJ here) adore Nanowrimo. Tell me it’s impossible to write a whole novel in a month, especially a month with Thanksgiving in it, and I will set out to prove you wrong. My first novel, The Chicken Sisters started as a NaNo project, as did Playing the Witch Card (which is probably coming out in Fall 2023).I… cannot NaNo this year (yes it’s a verb), because my next set of revisions, with an accompanying deadline, will be heading my way in the last week of October. But Jess can and will! So I offered Jess my favorite advice on a successful NaNoWritMo—the KJ version, at least. Here’s how I approached last year’s NaNoWriMo, and it worked pretty well in the end:My first novel clocks in at around 107K, my current WIP draft is at 99K. I favor long, convoluted sentences. I like to express things in sets of three—reasons the character is reacting as she is, emotions that are bombarding her, the ways her body responds— or even five: lists, smells, tastes, memories, expressions and as I have just demonstrated, I tend to use a lot of punctuation while I’m doing it.I do this from the very beginning. If I’m writing a scene, I write a whole scene. The people move, they eat, they smell and taste and feel, they think about their backstory: the whole shebang. Historically, that’s meant two things. First, when November 30 rolls around, I’ll have 50,000 words—but I’ll only have a draft of about half of my story.Second, I’ll have put in a lot of time writing those long sentences and and elaborate scenes. The terrible truth about my first drafts is that the writing tends to be pretty good. The dialogue flows, the action moves, there’s humor and pathos and feeling in the way the characters interact with one another.It’s the story that usually sucks.Getting to The End, not The MiddleI suspect that to some extent it will always be this way for me. I plot, then I write, then I discover that the plot doesn’t create room to bring the character to the place where she needs to be and I have to go back and do it all over again. But I also suspect I could do that initial finding my way to a character arc and plot that weave together in a way that satisfies the whole a lot more efficiently if I just wrote fewer words.Make a PlanTo do that, I need a plan that forces me out of my usual loquacious style, and here it is: I divide my 30 days and 50,000 words into a beginning (6 days, 10K) , a middle (18 days, 30K) and an end (6 days and 10K again). World-building and character riffing are fine as long as I stick to the schedule. Write Some, Pre-write Some or Just Say What HappensNext, I pay attention to time and word count. If I’m lingering and I need to move along, I throw down some plans and some prewriting. Conversation about the Halloween event here. Town history TK.  Some prescient line that recurs at end.So that’s my weird NaNoWriMo plan: write fewer words, but get more of the whole picture on the page, with the goal of finding my way to “the end” instead of “the middle”. I know (and you know) that it won’t really be the end. There will be much, much work ahead—but I’ll have a draft. It will be a terrible draft, as it should be, but it will help me do the work I find hardest: not writing the scenes but finding the story. If I’m lucky I’ll be putting flesh on the bones; if I’m not, I’ll be rebuilding a scaffolding, not taking down a whole house.And here, from the archives, is a NaNoWriMo Prep list I created a few years back. Here’s a fun calendar Sarina found:And a link to How to Do the Blueprint for a Book Challenge.A few useful past episodes:#NaWhateverWriMo, Episode 181#SupporterMini 1: #Prewriting#AmWritingJess: A Little Too Late, Sarina BowenMad Honey, Jodi Picoult & Jennifer Finney BoylanAll Good People Here, Ashley Flowers *for loving the audio versionKJ: We All Want Impossible Things, and What Can I Say?, Catherine Newman Reluctant Immortals, Gwendolyn KisteDon’t forget that Author Accelerator is your one-stop for getting a coach on board to help you with your work, no matter where you are in the drafting game. Need a pro? Click here. And if you’ve considered becoming a book coach, here’s your link: Click here.Also…. you know we here at #AmWriting tend to think working with a book coach or developmental editor is the gold standard for getting help with your project. But that’s not always in the cards—and even if it is, doing as much as you can on your own is always a smart approach. The developmental editors of Pages & Platforms, Anne Hawley and Rachelle Ramirez, want to share their top tips for editing your own work in a FREE webinar Monday 10/31/22.YOU WILL LEARN:* Why marketing categories or “genres” don’t help you write a good working story, and what does.* The three most common structural problems with novels and memoirs and how to start solving them.* The importance of good working scenes, and how to fix scenes that don’t work. Learn more HERE. We’re an affiliate, so we do make a little something if you decide to sign up for additional services. But this is FREE. And please know that we only team up with people and businesses we trust! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe