#AmWriting

The infamous how-to meets self-help meets memoir-with-a-dash-of-stunt genre. It may be awkwardly named, but we love it.This week’s guest didn’t realize she was laying the groundwork for her first book when she decided to write 50 thank you notes to the people, things and places that shaped her in honor of her 50th birthday—but of course she was When you can define a thing and the time frame and the reasons for doing it so clearly, what else can you do but inspire other people to do the same? But the road from I’m doing this thing to I’m publishing this book isn’t clear (although in this case it was lightning fast). This week, Nancy Davis Kho talks to us about what it took to make her book saleable, then write the damn thing and make it really really good.Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, did you catch the #WritersTopFive that popped into your inbox Monday? (And if it didn’t, HELLO, you need to subscribe to our free weekly #AmWriting emails!) That was just a little taste. We do those every week. I just scheduled Top Five Reference Books for All Novelists, and Three More for Special Occasions, and you don’t want to miss it. (You won’t believe the kinds of things that can be turned into an encyclopedias or dictionary.) We also recorded the first of many #MiniSupporter episodes that will slip right into the podcast feeds of #AmWriting supporters everywhere. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month. As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode. LINKS FROM THE PODCASTAya deLeon, author of the Justice Hustlers series.#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Nancy: The Good Lord Bird, James McBrideJess: Sense and Sensibility, narrated by Kate WinsletKJ: What Should I Read Next—the podcast from Anne Bogel, aka the Modern Mrs Darcy. (I’m obsessed with it. I’ve found so many great new reads!)#FaveIndieBookstoreA Great Good Place for Books, OaklandOur guest for this episode is Nancy Davis Kho, author of The Thank You Project and host of the Midlife Mixtape podcast. Find the book, the podcast and all things Nancy HERE.This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work done. Check out their FREE (and epic) upcoming summit on the Business of Book Coaching if you’re intrigued, or visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwriting for details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)KJ:                                        00:02                    Hey there listeners, it's KJ. What with Jess starting in on a new project lately, we've been talking a lot about nonfiction and research. If that's your kind of work, our sponsor, Author Accelerator can help and you don't have to go all in with full on book coaching if you're not ready. Check out their new four week long nonfiction framework program that will help you nail down your structure before you start to write, or after your writing and realizing, dang, this thing needs a backbone. Authors of self-help, how-to, and academic texts will find the shape of their books, create a working one page summary that helps reveal that shape at a glance, and develop a flexible table of contents to guide you through the drafting and revision process. You can find a lot more, including previews of much of the material, by going to authoraccelerator.com/nonfictionframework. Is it recording?Jess:                                     00:02                    Now it's recording.KJ:                                        00:02                    Yay.Jess:                                     00:02                    Go ahead.KJ:                                        01:00                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.Jess:                                     01:01                    Alright. Let's start over.KJ:                                        01:06                    Awkward pause, I'm going to rustle some papers. Now one, two, three. Hey, I am KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting the podcast about all things writing - nonfiction, fiction, book proposals, essays, not poetry. I made that joke a few weeks ago, but I just can't stop because I feel like it's not all the things. I am KJ Dell'Antonia, your rambling host, and this is the podcast about getting your work done.Jess:                                     01:45                    And I'm Jess Lahey. I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and a forthcoming book. It won't be till spring of 2021, a book on preventing substance abuse in kids and you can find me at the New York Times, and at the Atlantic, and at the Washington Post. And we have such a guest today. We have such a guest.KJ:                                        02:05                    I didn't really introduce myself.Jess:                                     02:06                    Go ahead, please go.KJ:                                        02:08                    I just introduced myself as your rambling host and I am so much more than that.Jess:                                     02:13                    You go, and then we'll let that weird person who no one even knows, we'll let her talk after. But KJ, you go first.KJ:                                        02:24                    I am KJ Dell'Antonia. I am the author of the novel The Chicken Sisters, which you can't buy yet, but you'll be able to next summer and believe me, you'll hear all about it. Also of How To Be a Happier Parent. I'm the former editor of the Motherlode blog at the New York Times, where I sometimes still contribute and I am working on novel number, whatever it is if you count the ones in the drawer and we don't know if it will be published, that's what I'm doing. So that's who I am and why you should (or should not) listen to me.Jess:                                     02:57                    We have a guest today who you should definitely listen to. Because she's hysterical, and wonderful, and funny, and has a book coming out that is fantastic and very near and dear to my heart. We are talking today to Nancy Davis Kho. She is a writer. She's written for Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Adirondack Life, The Rumpus, all these various places. She's in an anthology called Listen To Your Mother: What She Said Then, What We're Saying Now. And Listen To Your Mother, by the way, is hysterical if you've never come across it before. Nancy has a fantastic book coming out this month that is, as I said, so near and dear to my heart because it's about thanking people. And so, thank you Nancy, for being on the podcast today.Nancy:                                03:41                    I pretty much wrote a book in order to be on your podcast, just so you know.Jess:                                     03:46                    Nancy has her own podcast, one of my very favorites. It's the Midlife Mixtape podcast and if you are not already listening, you should. Because it's wonderful, and fantastic, and it makes me very happy every single time I listen to it.Nancy:                                04:03                    You guys are so nice. Can I call you every morning, Jess, and just have you say, 'You matter.'Jess:                                     04:09                    I love this book, not only because thank you notes are really important part of not only my personal life but my professional life, but because I feel like KJ and I have had a personal stake in the project because we've gotten to hear about the process of you writing this book, and pitching this book, and how it all came about. So we usually like to start by talking sort of about how you got started writing, KJ often likes to ask what the first thing you got paid to write was, and we'll go from there.Nancy:                                04:44                    Oh wow, I'll have to think about the answer to that question. Thank you so much for having me on the show. And also you guys have been such tremendous cheerleaders and sources of real pragmatic information. I have listened to so many of your episodes and just scribble down as I'm going because this podcast is so invaluable in helping people as they're going into various, you know, the first time you're doing this, the first time you're doing that, you guys have had guests on who've talked about that. So it's such a great resource and I really am honored to be on the show.Jess:                                     05:20                    And you're going to have to listen to some of the publicity episodes - like the marketing and publicity episodes.Nancy:                                05:26                    Jess, am I brand new? I've already listened. I started listening to them a second time, please. The one where you guys were talking about your book launch plans. I listen to podcasts oftentimes when I'm hiking and I can picture the stretch of the Oakland Hills where I was, where KJ was talking about how many rows were in the spreadsheet and I was like, 'I can't do all of this. God.' But it was good.KJ:                                        05:53                    You're just lucky Jess didn't talk about how many rows in her spreadsheet.Jess:                                     05:58                    Tell us about how you got started.Nancy:                                06:02                    My background is in international business. I studied that in college. I got a couple of degrees in that, I picked up a husband in an international business program. So it all worked out. And I spent about 17 years doing that and I loved it. But whenever anybody would ask me, 'If you could do anything, what would you want to do?' I would say, 'Oh, I'd like to be a writer.' Here's my reason: it seems portable, I think I could do that from anywhere. That was my basic feeling about it. But I did always love writing. And you know, I've been an avid reader. All of us, right? Anybody listening to this show, we've all been reading since we were in short pants. And nothing like a 40th birthday to give you a bit of an identity crisis. And I thought, 'My God, I'm going to turn 40. And I tell people I want to be a writer. I've never tried. Maybe I should try writing. That would be a thing I could do.' So I took a class the summer before I turned 40 and by the time I finished (it was a class in creative memoir or I think it was just personal essays) and by the time I finished the class, I'd had two things published. And I was like, 'You know what? I love this.' I loved getting the byline and I just loved the process of writing. So that is now 13 years ago in the rear view mirror. And I thought at the time, as you do when you're a beginner at anything, I was like, 'Hmm, what's the hardest thing that I'm not qualified to do? I know I will write a novel of historical fiction that deals with race issues from the standpoint of a white woman. That's what the world needs now.' So I commenced to spending six years researching and writing a novel that is composting very nicely in a drawer. I can see which drawer in my office it is sitting in right now. And that was hard work. I told my husband, 'I'm a writer now, I'm going to quit my corporate job. Neglecting to factor in that I had two small kids who needed (we live in the Bay area, everybody needs to work) So it was a bumpy time - the writing I loved, the researching I loved, like the whole writing part of it was great. It was trying to figure out how to balance the lifestyle with that that was challenging. And also just realizing how much I had to learn as a writer. And I think one of the messages I try to put on the podcast all the time, so the Midlife Mixtape Podcast is about the years between being hip and breaking one. And I started it because I wanted there to be a counter narrative to midlife being a crisis because what I found was that it wasn't an identity crisis to become a writer. It was like I was adding something to myself. I was doing something that made me happy. And now it didn't work right out of the gate. I didn't publish a novel when I was 41, but I was challenging myself, and learning new stuff, and eventually I ended up going back to corporate work and doing that part time. And that's kind of been my gig ever since. I have a day job, I work in digital content licensing. I really like it, I have mastery at it, I've been doing it for years and years. And then I have this creative side where I can do the writing. So I think as a writer, I just feel like I've been pragmatic in terms of forgiving myself for not being successful right away. And so, I spent six years getting better and better and still not having a novel that needed to see the light of day. And then when I finished with that, I got frustrated and I had started the blog, Midlife Mixtape, and I realized that what felt very comfortable to me was humor writing. It came to me naturally. I'm the youngest of three in a family of very funny people and you really have to bring your A game all the time in my family. So, for me that was a much easier voice to write in. I always say my goal is to sound like Erma Bombeck meets David Sedaris, you know, not mean spirited but funny, and kind of poignant. And so after a little while writing in that voice on Midlife Mixtape, I thought, 'I know I'll write a book about my midlife music crisis.' And I wasn't really having a midlife music crisis, to be honest. What had happened is, I went to a concert and a bouncer said to me, 'Are you just here to drop off your kids?' I mean, I've been an avid concert goer since I was 14 and that shook me. So I was like, 'Oh, maybe I am too old to go to a Vampire Weekend concert. Maybe I should try to find more midlife appropriate music.' But the truth was, I still kept going to shows like that. I started going to the symphony, I started going to heavy metal shows, I was trying all different kinds of stuff. But I felt like I was manufacturing the arc of my story a little bit. And I think that always kind of stuck with me that I was telling a funny story people could relate to, this memoir that I spent only three years writing that one. So I doubled my speed from which I had written the historical fiction novel. But there was something about that story that never connected, even for me, because I just felt like, okay. As this one writing mentor of mine said, 'What, you wanted to go to a concert, you kept going to concerts. There's not a lot of character change here, you know. Any good memoir needs that needs that arc.' And so I got to see a lot of fun shows and I wrote about those on the blog. But that book also came closer to what I wanted to write, but it still wasn't quite the right thing. So that one went into a drawer and that was now I guess about three years ago, four years ago.Jess:                                     11:55                    Well, and I have to say you're definitely learning your lessons. Because all of the things you're criticizing about the early work that stayed in the drawer is like the antithesis of what I found when I opened The Thank You Project. So keep going with your story, but I just want to say that like all of these realizations, you're having, you know, the sort of there being no trajectory, there being no personal connection. Like that's what The Thank You Project is about from the very first page, a very personal project that came out of a very important moment in your life. I think even if I didn't know you personally, I would be very connected with you as a writer from the first page of this book. So, those lessons were really important for you to learn. I think that's how we get there, as KJ and I both know, you got to write a lot of bad stuff.KJ:                                        12:48                    We never talk about this, but you and I both, Jess, have memoirs in drawers.Jess:                                     12:53                    Yup. Yeah we do.KJ:                                        12:54                    I mean that just, it just doesn't come up. Like we talk a lot about my novel in a drawer. But it rarely comes up that I have, I can't remember if I wrote the whole thing, but I definitely have a memoir proposal in the drawer. And you have a memoir proposal and I think pretty much the memoir.Jess:                                     13:10                    Oh no, I have the whole thing. I sold chunks of it as essays and and that was sort of the thing I got out of it.Nancy:                                13:22                    Well, and I think this is really my message to anybody who's listening, and feeling frustrated, and wondering why the project isn't working. Fast forward to spring of 2018, which is when the idea for this book, The Thank You Project, came along and I know we're going to talk about it, but my message is every misstep I took was actually getting me closer to this book that I feel so strongly about, I feel so proud of, I feel like I'm the right person to tell this story that's in this book. And all that other stuff, all those years I wasn't getting published. What was I doing? I was meeting great writers. I was reading books by great writers. I was very happily sharing the work of other writer friends and promoting them and I was getting better at my craft. I was building my network of support. And so now I'm hugely gratified, but you know, there's so many people trying to help me with this book and that's because I put in 12 years of work that didn't feel at the time like it was amounting to anything. But now it's all paying off. So anybody who's listening and feeling frustrated, I would just say, please don't give up. Because there's a reason, there's a path.Jess:                                     15:03                    Well what's funny is before I wrote the proposal, as KJ well knows, for the book I just finished, I actually went through the trouble of writing proposals for a bunch of books that weren't quite right and what they were was sort of circling around the topic, but also really important work for me to do to figure out, Oh okay, so this aspect of this topic fits in somewhere, but I'm not quite sure how. So that finally when that idea comes, you have some familiarity with the things that aren't particularly interesting, or working, or whatever. So when you have that moment, it's super exciting when you have that idea for, Oh this is the thing. In fact, I pulled off the road and I texted Sarina and KJ right away and said, 'This is it. This is the thing, I know this is the right thing.'Nancy:                                16:26                    Well, and that's how it felt. So the book is called The Thank You Project: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time. And what happened was I found an agent for that music memoir, it did not sell. And I really had a time where I thought maybe I'm not a writer, I know I'm good at writing these little blog posts and I get essays published, but maybe I don't have it in me to do a full length work. So I'm going to take this creative energy and I started the podcast and turns out I love podcasting; I'm a tech nerd at heart. A lot of the work I did the first 17 years of my career was in the software industry. So I love working, learning new technology, and everything. I was really struggling a little bit with this idea that maybe I'm not an author, I'm a writer, but not an author. I guess that's probably not an uncommon thing. And it occurred to me one day (and I was 49) it occurred to me that the reason my book didn't sell was because my character, myself in the memoir, wasn't unhappy. There wasn't a transition because she started off happy and she ended up happy. And I'm like, that's not a problem, that's something to be really grateful for. And this was at the end of 2015, and in 2016 I was going to turn 50. And I'm like, 'You know what, the thing I should do to honor and commemorate my 50th birthday is to thank the people that have made it possible for me to be where I am.' You know, my parents were alive, my husband's great, been married to him since forever, we've got two girls, you know, everything's fine. So I thought the way I want to celebrate my 50th year is I will write a letter every week, a thank you letter once a week, to somebody who has helped, or shaped, or inspired me up to this point in my life. And of course when you tell the universe that you're doing this because everything's going great, everything goes to s**t pretty darn quickly. So I started writing my letters and it was really great. I'd sit down every week and you know, write a letter to my nephew Tristan, or to my friend Kitty who lives in Australia. And it just was wonderful every week to sit down and think about this person who had been meaningful in my life and what lessons that I learned from them and how they'd help me.KJ:                                        18:44                    I'm going to interrupt, cause I know where you're going. At this point, this isn't a book?Nancy:                                18:49                    No, no. These are just letters.KJ:                                        18:51                    This is just something you're doing. So this is not like stunt journalism, in which you're, 'I don't know what I'll do. I'll write...' This is a genuine thing, right?Nancy:                                18:59                    I wasn't even an author at that point, anymore. I'd kind of tried it and not gotten through anything. So I was just writing thank you letters because that seemed like a good way to mark a period of my life. So halfway through the year, my dad gets diagnosed with cancer and he is gone in six weeks. We had no idea he was sick. My older daughter left for college a couple of weeks after the funeral and that was certainly not a sad thing, but it was a big adjustment to have your older kid to go off to school and she goes to school on the East coast. So she's far. And then it was the 2016 presidential election, so everybody's anxiety level was through the roof. And I realized the worse things got, the more I needed the thank you letters. Because it was just this moment every week where I could crowd out all this sadness, and this tension, and the worry, and I'd be like, 'Hmm, I'm gonna write a letter to the city of Oakland. Because you know what? It's not even just people who have shaped me, it's places I've lived. And then I had a period of writing letters to cities and then I started writing letters to dead authors. Like I love Jane Austen. I'm going to write her a letter, but I'm going to have to explain some things to her. And it got to be really fun. And anyway, I got to the end of the 50 letters, (took me longer than a year) printed them all out, bound them in a book, and flip through that book all the time. You know, you rifle through it and you go, 'Oh yeah, my Aunt Nooney is so nice to me.' You're having a bad day, read about what your Aunt Nooney did for you. You know, it'll cheer you up, it'll remind you that when you're in hardship, you've almost never been alone. That there's always people around you. So, just in and of its own self as a writing exercise, writing the thank you letters was really important. So now it's spring of 2018 and one of the people who got the letters, Ann Imig who is the editor of the Listen To Your Mother Anthology and the founder of that empire said, 'Nancy, that's your book. You need to tell people how to do this.' And I'm like, 'What? It's so straightforward. You write a thank you letter.' But then another friend of ours who knew that I had done it, sat me down and she's like, 'Okay, who did you write to? How long was the letter? What did you put in the letter? How did you organize it?' And I answered questions for her for like an hour. And I thought, 'Okay, maybe it's not as straightforward as I thought it was.' So I thought, you know, at this point, the podcast was cooking along, my day job's cooking along. My kids are, you know, I've got one in college, one in high school, nobody needs me around anymore. I got some free time. So I thought I'll just start writing a few chapters of this, just think about how I would write a book that explains to people how to do their own thank you project. And it poured out of me, I wrote that proposal so quickly. Why? Because I had two other book proposals that I'd already done. Yes, I wrote a book proposal for a fiction novel. Don't ask me, I know it's wrong. And now I know that. At the time when I was writing my historical fiction I didn't know. So, there's the reason I wrote two proposals because when I really needed one, I literally just could do a find replace, for the most part. So it was just kind of a proof of concept to myself that this could be something. And I wasn't going to get an agent, because agents hadn't sold my book before, so why would I bother? And then people like KJ, and Jess, and a couple other people said, 'You should talk to an agent.' So I started in April 2018, at the end of May 2018 I reached out to a few agents who I'd met in person and online, and three or four of them came back and said, 'I would love to see this proposal.' And I was like, 'Oh, that's weird.' And I got it out the door. And then the timeframe was I signed with our wonderful agent (we all have the same one, Laurie Abkemeier) who's been wonderful, signed with her in June, we worked on the proposal together in July, and I signed a deal with Running Press in the end of August. This is all last year. So I signed the deal with Running Press in August. My deadline was November 15th for the finished book.Jess:                                     23:16                    You had written parts of it -Yes? No?Nancy:                                23:19                    Well, I'd written the first three chapters that belonged in the proposal...Jess:                                     23:25                    So what had you been smoking to make you think that you could set a deadline that quickly? What was the thinking behind that?Nancy:                                23:33                    I knew how to write this book, I knew how to tell this story. I'd written the letters. I knew how impactful they could be. I really wanted other people to know. I am spiritual, I'm a church lady, I go to this Episcopal church. And I do think this is one of those cases where I was given a message to share because that's something I can do. I can tell like a funny, uplifting story. It's taken me 13 years, but I know how to do that. In the places where the other two books had been a struggle - I don't want to say I couldn't have told those stories, but this one just was easy for me. I just knew what I wanted to say, and I and I knew how to say it. And let's face it, I do use snippets of the letters and there were days that I needed the #AmWriting podcast, I'm like, 'Ooh, I need a burn chart. I need to know what my daily word count is. And there were days where I'm like, 'Well I'm talking about a letter to write to a doctor, maybe I'll include a snippet of the letter I wrote to my OB.' I just covered my word chart, like put in two paragraphs, and I'd be done, go get my coffee. So there was a little bit of source material in that I do include snippets of my letters to kind of get people started. But I didn't want it to just be my letters. I ended up interviewing a few people who had done something similar, so I've got some other people's examples. And then the thing that I loved about writing the book was that it gave me a chance to delve into the science of happiness and gratitude. Cause I didn't want it to just be, 'This is what I did, so you should try it.' I wanted to steep it in some quantitative research that talks about why gratitude letters are so magic. And you know, low and behold, during those 13 years when I was freelance writing, I interviewed a bunch of happiness researchers for various publications. So I had the Rolodex - does anybody listening know what a Rolodex is? I had the phone numbers, okay? So I called the researchers and I got to interview them and you know, again, that was not wasted time. All of that stuff is why I could do it in two and a half months.Jess:                                     25:50                    And it's why KJ, over and over again, insists that I'm not allowed to say, 'You know, boy, I got really lucky with Gift of Failure, right place, right time.' Well, no, it was a lot of work and it's that work that other people don't see.KJ:                                        26:04                    Preparation meeting opportunity.Jess:                                     26:06                    Yeah, exactly. There you go. There you go. The thing that I was really interested in - let's say you've got all of these letters, and you've got this idea about how you want to do this. In terms of organization, I really liked the way you organize the book and it was a little unexpected. I thought it was going to be like sequential, but you did a really interesting thing with the organization. I'm kinda wondering how you arrived at that particular sequence.Nancy:                                26:37                    Welcome to my brain, cause I do think it's sequential. I knew that I wanted the introduction because (I'm not gonna give away the whole introduction) but basically when my dad got his letter (I wrote to him and my mom first) and my dad was very cute and called me and he's like, 'Aww, Nance, I loved it. I put it in a frame and it's over my desk.' So I knew I wanted to start with the fact that my dad had this letter framed and sitting over his desk. And then I figured I would need to go through exactly all the questions that Melissa asked me on the porch that day. Like, 'Who did you write to? How did you...' So there's a first chapter that's all about how you can organize this. And I want to say at the outset, throughout this book, I say, 'But that's what I did, do what you want.' Like nobody is in charge of your pace, what you write, who you write to. And the amazing thing about gratitude letters (as I found out from the researchers) is that even just thinking about what you would put in a letter creates happiness benefits for you. So it's all about firing the neurons and getting the positive outlook kind of codified within your brain pan. That's how I would explain it. So writing it down is great, but even if you read this book, and just think about the things that I'm talking about, people will get benefits. But then, after that section, the whole rest of the book is, here's the kinds of people who you might want to think about writing. And I think some of the categories are obvious - from friends and family. Although less obvious, because do you ever write a thank you letter to your spouse, or to your kid, or to your parent? Probably not. You know, there's a whole category of people that we take for granted and so that's kind of where I start. And part of the reason is because it gets the juices flowing for when you're writing the thank you letters, you know, you have a lot of source material for those people. But as I went through my own process and I just kept coming back to this idea of, okay, who helped me, shaped me, inspired me. Well, one of the people who helped me was my German ex-boyfriend when I lived in Germany and didn't know how to file taxes. It didn't work out with him. But man, he made sure my taxes were done every year on time and properly, and I wouldn't have been able to stay in Germany if I'd screwed up, their bureaucracy is on it. Like I'm sure they would've found me and sent me back to America. So I wrote a letter to him and this is when I figured out that I could write letters and not send them. Nobody needed to know that I was doing this. So I could write a thank you letter to anybody. I could write it to my childhood bully; I was so sensitized to bullying because I had been a victim of it, that my kids from the minute they started school, we talked about bullying. What do you do if you see it? What do you do? How do you help somebody going through it? How do you make sure you're never the perpetrator? You know, I'm not sure I would have been so tuned into that if I hadn't known this person. Now, that was a letter I actually chose not to write. That was one where I was like, 'You know what, I don't want to spend any more time on her.' But you could. And so, it was fun to kind of expand and so I did that in writing my own letters. But in writing the book, what I loved was thinking about, 'Well, who's going to read this? Could be anybody.' So what other things, like what's outside of my world, that I should think about and prompt people to write about. Like, I've never been in the army, but I made sure to say like, 'You might want to write a letter to your drill instructor.' You know, there's so many kinds of people, and I just tried really hard in writing it to have as an inclusive tone as I could. And I had a few people read it who had very different experiences from me, and that's what I asked them to read for. I wanted to make sure that someone who wasn't heterosexual would also feel like this book spoke to them and somebody who wasn't white would also feel...So I was at a conference that I had the chance to hear Aya de Leon, do you guys know her? She's a Bay area writer and professor. She writes these really great crime capers with African-American heroines. And a lot of times her heroines are sex workers and she's really about like, they're very feminist, but they kind of they have a message that's a little bit hidden.Jess:                                     31:18                    I'm looking at the covers right now, they're so good. They're these women, sort of face forward at the camera, The Boss, and then another one called Side Chick Nation, and another one called Uptown Thief. They're fantastic covers, I love them. And really strong women with their shoulders back and sort of facing you like, yeah, bring it. I like it.Nancy:                                31:40                    Right. And she's really smart. And at this conference I went to, she was just saying, 'If you want to write diverse character well, have diverse friends.' I just thought that's so obvious. But as writers, if you want to reach out to a diverse audience, make sure you've got those people in your real life so that you can go to them. And that was, again, my 13 years of preparation. I knew who I could ask to read for different things. And so that was a part of the review process.Jess:                                     32:14                    One of the things that you said, you asked a lot of people who had experience outside of yours to help you, but the thing that you did really well in the book is to create these ideas about how you should think about the thank you notes. And one of the things you said was, 'Who or what has shaped me?' And that is such a personal question, but a question that is universal. Because as you said, it could be the ex-boyfriend that things didn't work out with. But everyone's got those people that you realize, Oh wow, I didn't actually thank that person. And it may not have been a particularly positive experience at the time, but that question alone right there, I think, makes the book nice and generalizes it for everyone. I love that question.Nancy:                                32:56                    Well, and I hope that given that it's coming out before we start another presidential election year, people are so isolated and people are so quick to judge now, and maybe we always were, but it just feels different. And part of what I think these letters can do is remind us the small ways that people in our lives have helped us. Even if we were on opposite sides of a divide now, they've made a difference for us. And just sending those letters (or even if you write and it's not possible for you to send it) even writing it to remind yourself of the humanity of the people on the receiving end, I think is really powerful. So I'm glad it's coming out when it does, I hope it is helpful for people next year. I'm just really excited for it to come out. Can I say one thing? Because of this audience, I think I can share this. The one thing that I wanted to mention is that the same week that I got the book deal, my mom was diagnosed with lymphoma. And my mom's 86, and she's in an assisted living place, and she's got dementia. And they initially gave my mom a two and a half month...I was going to say sentence. That's what it felt like, they said that's how much time she has left. And it was awful, because on the same week I got this amazing news, I got horrible news. And I'm not going to leave you in suspense, Mom's doing fine, we took her to a specialist a few weeks later who kind of said, 'It's not nearly as dire as the first guy said and here's a bunch of treatment options.' And so mom is hanging in, she still loves John Denver, we talk a lot about John Denver. No, but it was a real exercise in compartmentalization. That's why I bring it up, because I knew I had to get this book done, and my siblings are amazing. I would have probably said like, 'I can just not do the book.' and they would have never forgiven me. So they're like, 'Figure out what your schedule is, come home if you can, and you'll get it done.' So the shitty first draft was done in six weeks, and I flew to Rochester to visit with my mom, and spent a week with her, came back, and then I finished the book after that. And the whole time I just had to keep these two things separate, because I could not have finished the book otherwise. And when it was over, I completely fell apart for a little while. And the irony was, writing the thank you notes again, writing about thank you notes, I got to kind of use them a second time in just the same way that I had the first time I wrote the letters. You know, to kind of say, 'My mom's got an X-Ray today, and we don't know what it's going to find, but Hey, I'm writing about how funny it was that time I wrote a letter to so-and-so.' If you think of writers sitting in a cabin somewhere, and having all their diversions taken away, and there's nothing but good whiskey and the sound of this pounding surf, I think that's b******t. You know, you just have to write through what you have to write through. And I felt lucky to have the opportunity. Who's the biggest reader I know? My mom, you know, back when she could read, I was not going to let her down.Jess:                                     36:39                    Is she pretty stoked for you?Nancy:                                36:42                    She's pretty hilarious, my mother. She is stoked; she remembers that I have a book, that's landed somewhere, I don't think she knows what it's about. She's astonished that I told her I will bring her a book in person and hand deliver it to her. Well, she literally was the one who put the love of reading in me, so there you go.KJ:                                        37:06                    I mean we'd all like that cabin, but you know, both Jess and I had big deadlines this year, and we both also had big personal stuff that our families overall prefer that we left as as family. But yeah, it's part of being a pro, and it's also just part of like embracing that part of who we are. It's like, you know, I'm a writer, I'm a writer with the sick parent. I'm a writer with whatever other problem that you have. But I'm a writer and this is what I'm doing now, and then in three hours I'll be doing something else. And I think you're so right to shout that out, because I know frequently I will sit there with my personal problems and with my deadline and go, 'Other people don't have to deal with this.' But honestly, yes they do.Jess:                                     38:07                    Yeah. There were plenty of times going towards this deadline where I would hang up the phone having dealt with some of the personal stuff that was going on, and just take a couple of really deep breaths, maybe have a good cry, and then turn on my monitor, and get back to work.Nancy:                                38:21                    Did you both feel like the writing part was like safe haven? Because that's how I felt. And then I was writing from like five to seven in the morning, cause I still had the day job. But I was like jumping out of bed cause I knew the next two hours I'll be happy.KJ:                                        38:39                    Having the abiity to focus on it - like having spent, (you've been talking about putting in the work) having spent the past decade or more, turning stuff off, and turning to the keyboard or the paper or whatever, and saying, 'You know I got to get this.' So having that practice, the ability to just shut everything else down and focus on it, I've been so grateful - past-me for teaching present-me to do that. So thank you letter to her, I guess.Jess:                                     39:13                    It was also really nice for me occasionally to not feel guilty. You know, I feel like when other people need me or I'm supposed to be feeling a certain way about something, it's nice to have a pass to say, 'Nope, I can't do that. I can't spend emotional attention on that right now because this has to happen.' I have this deadline, so I get to turn that off for a minute and not feel guilty about feeling bad for someone else while I can focus on the words. And so for me, it was an incredible safe haven. It was license for me to focus on something else that really was about what I love doing. And if I hadn't had that, I think it would have been an even more challenging summer than it was. But this really gave me a way out of that.Nancy:                                40:02                    So the message is for writers, if you're having a terrible time, try writing, maybe that will cheer you up.Jess:                                     40:08                    Well, but we do have to move on to what we've been reading because we're running over, so let's talk about what we've been reading. Nancy, would you like to tell us?Nancy:                                40:33                    Yes. So I was visiting my mom two weeks ago, and even if she can't read anymore, she still demands that we do. And in the assisted living place, there's a giant bookcase outside her apartment, and she always makes me take a book when we go by, just take one. They don't care, just take one. So I grabbed one off the top. It was The Good Lord Bird by James McBride, which was a 2013 national book winner that I finally got to in 2019, it's been out for a while. Oh my gosh, I loved it so much. I actually just finished it last night. Ironically, one of the small characters in the book is the main character in my historical fiction novel in a drawer. So I think maybe that's why I avoided it. I didn't want to see him be alive in somebody else's book. But oh, it was fantastic. It was like Mark Twain on steroids. I loved it. It's all about John Brown and Harper's Ferry. I love abolitionist. You know, abolition is lit. And it's really, really well done. It's a fun story.Jess:                                     41:34                    Yeah, that shelf in the bookstore, it's the popular one, The Abolition Is Lit shelf. I have a whole shelf on fishing in New England in the 1850s or so. That's a whole section in my library cause I'm obsessed with the whole Gloucester, fishermen thing. That's a thing for me. I'm still reading away on some of the stuff that's on my Audible. But I will say, that I just found out and I had mentioned this before, that when I am writing stuff, I like to reread things that are comforting, and I had been relistening to a whole bunch of Jane Austen and I just found out that there is a recording of Sense and Sensibility with Kate Winslet. And so that is going to be a evening listen for me.KJ:                                        42:33                    We have recorded multiple episodes this week and I am out, but I have already shouted out the What Should I Read Next? Podcast, but I have to shout it out again. So it's What Should I Read Next? With Anne Bogle, who some might know as the Modern Mrs. Darcy, she's had a blog for a long time. So I listened to an episode of this podcast earlier this week and I ended up downloading samples of four different books and they only talked about like eight. Somebody goes on and says, 'These are the books I like and this is what I'd like to read next.' And it's just such an incredible joy. So, try the podcast and I guarantee that you will come away with something to read, even if I can't suggest anything at the moment. Yeah, it's a really good one.Jess:                                     43:34                    Alright, Nancy, do you have a bookstore you love?Nancy:                                43:38                    I very much have a bookstore I love, it's called A Great Good Place for Books, here in Oakland up in the Montclair neighborhood. And Kathleen Caldwel,l who owns it, is the neighborhood treasurer. Everybody's kid has worked at that bookstore at some point. And she pays them in books and it's just fantastic. In fact, Great Good Place is doing my launch party, which is on December 3rd, and she's just one of those people you walk in the door and she says, 'Oh, Nancy, I knew you were coming in this week, so I've put aside three books for you.' And my favorite story about her was the time I ordered Skippy Dies, it's very dark Irish boarding school, it's like a comedy tragedy. It's an amazing book. And she sold my husband a gift card for me for Christmas, cause that's what I get every Christmas. Andrew, if you're listening, I need a gift card. And I took it in and I said, 'Okay, I want to get Skippy Dies.' And she said, 'Well, I'm going to order you the three part version of the book.' And I said, 'I think it's just a novel. I've been reading reviews, it's one book.' And she goes, 'Oh, it's so much cooler when it comes in the case. So I'm going to get you this. And I know how much is on your gift card, you can afford it.' So I love Kathleen, she is always hustling for those authors. She brings in great, great authors for readings and yeah, so if you're in Oakland check out Great Good Place For Books.Jess:                                     45:08                    Alright, everyone needs to run right out and get The Thank You Project: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time by Nancy Davis Kho. It is going to make such a good gift, that's my plan (sorry, spoiler alert to everyone who's getting presents for me this year) that's what you're getting. So get excited to read this book, it's fantastic. So congratulations on your long path to publication and thank you so much for being on the podcast today.Nancy:                                45:35                    Thank you guys so much for having me. And everybody out there - keep writing, you're on the path, you're doing it.Jess:                                     45:39                    And in order to do that, everyone has to keep their butt in the chair and their head in the game. This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid. 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

We wanted to talk holiday writing—as in, writing ABOUT holidays, not writing during the holidays. So we went strolling through the holly-bedecked halls of the Internet—because, #dominantculture, holiday books as they appear without a more specific web search means Christmas books and specifically, the 250 page equivalent of a bonbon of a Lifetime Christmas movie. We found Natalie Cox, author of the debut romcom Mutts and Mistletoe. And then we found that Natalie Cox is also Betsy Tobin, author of five other novels, co-owner of a bookshop in North London and just generally appearing to live an authorial dream life. So of course we invited her on to talk about not just holiday writing, but switching genres, the real meaning of “debut” and whether or not owning a bookstore in London is as much fun as it sounds like it would be. Links from the episode (which was itself as much fun as it sounds like it would be) follow.As for writing DURING the holidays, if you’re a supporter, you can check out the Top 5 Hacks for Holiday Writing—and if you’re not, why not? Give yourself a little holiday giftie and us a little holiday boost clicking the button below to support the podcast you love, get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice and occasional bonus #MiniSupporter podcasts for just $7 a month. As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode. To support the podcast and help it stay free, subscribe to our weekly #WritersTopFive email.LINKS FROM THE PODCAST#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Betsy:Three Women, Lisa Taddeo KJ: Beside Herself, Elizabeth LaBanSarina: Reindeer Falls, Book 1: The Boss Who Stole Christmas, Jana AstonReindeer Falls, Book 2: If You Give a Jerk a Gingerbread, Jana AstonReindeer Falls, Book 3: The One Night Stand Before Christmas, Jana Aston#FaveIndieBookstoreINK@84 Our guest for this episode is Betsy Tobin, aka Natalie Cox. Find more about her at BetsyTobin.co.uk.This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)KJ:                                        00:02                    Hey there listeners, it's KJ. What with Jess starting in on a new project lately, we've been talking a lot about nonfiction and research. If that's your kind of work, our sponsor, Author Accelerator can help and you don't have to go all in with full on book coaching if you're not ready. Check out their new four week long nonfiction framework program that will help you nail down your structure before you start to write, or after your writing and realizing, dang, this thing needs a backbone. Authors of self-help, how-to, and academic texts will find the shape of their books, create a working one page summary that helps reveal that shape at a glance, and develop a flexible table of contents to guide you through the drafting and revision process. You can find a lot more, including previews of much of the material, by going to authoraccelerator.com/nonfictionframework. Is it recording?Jess:                                     01:00                    Now it's recording.KJ:                                        01:01                    Yay.Jess:                                     01:02                    Go ahead.KJ:                                        01:03                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone and try to remember what I'm supposed to be doing.Jess:                                     01:07                    Alright, let's start over.KJ:                                        01:08                    Awkward pause and I'm going to rustle some papers.Jess:                                     01:11                    Okay.KJ:                                        01:11                    Now, one, two, three. Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is our weekly podcast about writing all the things - fiction, nonfiction, book proposals, essays, pitches, and as we say every week, this is the podcast about getting the work done.Sarina:                                 01:40                    And I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of 30 plus romance novels. And you can find more of me at sarinabowen.com. I am KJ Dell'Antonia, author of a novel coming out next summer. Also of How To Be a Happier Parent, former lead editor of the Motherlode blog at the New York Times and all of the other things that I say every week. And our usual cohost, Jess Lahey, is missing this week. Sarina and I are soloing, but we have a guest. In fact, you could argue that we have three guests. We are going to talk today with Betsy Tobin, who is the author of five books of literary fiction/mystery/I'm not even quite sure how to describe it. Natalie Cox, the author of a new romcom, which is called Mutts and Mistletoe, it's a holiday theme and it is incredibly fun. And the co-owner of the Ink@84 bookstore bar cafe in North London. Conveniently, however, all of these guests are wrapped up into the same person. It's just going to make it much easier to ask questions.Sarina:                                 02:52                    Of course. So welcome, Betsy.Betsy:                                  02:54                    Gosh, with an intro like that it's going to be hard not to disappoint. I'll do my best. I'll do my best to be three people in one. Thank you very much. And also 30 books, my goodness. Respect, Sarina. That's amazing, respect.KJ:                                        03:08                    So I'm going to just own it all for our listeners (as we do every week) which is that originally we thought, you know what would be really fun? It'd be fun to talk to somebody who wrote a book with a holiday theme. Because have you ever written a book with a holiday theme?Sarina:                                 03:27                    Undeveloped, but barely.KJ:                                        03:29                    Right, but barely. I've written many an essay with the holiday theme, and many a gift guide with a holiday theme, many a freelance thing, but I've not done a book. So that was our original thought. So we, we sort of went looking around to see who would be interesting and came across Natalie Cox's debut romcom author of Mutts and Mistletoe. And reached out to her only to discover that she is scarcely a debut author at all. So while I hope to get to the use of the holiday and the trope and the fun that is all involved in that, we really want to start with, Betsy, get us to this point. Walk us through if you don't mind.Betsy:                                  04:17                    How did I start writing?KJ:                                        04:19                    Yeah, how did you start writing? Let's start there.Betsy:                                  04:23                    My very first foray into writing was that I took an evening class in journalism and the teacher told me that my style was too literary. And he really sort of slightly took the wind out of my sails. I was in my mid-twenties and I thought this might be a great career. So I went and did an autobiographical essay writing course and the very first exercise that that teacher set was to write a brief story about your life that incorporated a lie and try to make the juncture between the lie and the truth totally seamless. And I thought that was a really fantastic exercise.KJ:                                        05:19                    That is an interesting exercise. And one I've never heard.Betsy:                                  05:23                    Yeah. I mean, one that it would never have occurred to me to write fiction. And I didn't really grow up in a family where there were any kind of artists or people working in creative industries. We were kind of quite rational type people. And I thought I was going to have a career in a rational kind of occupation. And I don't think I would've had the courage to write fiction until he set this exercise. And immediately I just found it incredibly liberating, because you could make it all up. And to be honest, that was it, I mean I just never looked back from there. I started writing short fiction. I went and did an MFA. I did work briefly when I first moved to London as a reporter. Eventually I was really rubbish at it. I wasn't thick-skinned enough.Betsy:                                  06:13                    And I knew it was just a matter of time before I kind of was able to get myself in a position to write fiction. So that's kind of how it happened. I thought initially I would write plays and scripts. But I struggled early on with the pacing of longer format prose fiction. I wrote a lot of short stories and it was a mystery to me how you pace a novel and then suddenly I kind of cracked it in one go where I wrote something and I looked at it and I thought, 'Oh my goodness, this is not a short story. This is a novel.' And I remember, cause I left the first, like eight or nine pages lying on my desk and my husband kind of wandered by and read it and he sort of came to me and he said, 'You know, what is this?' And I said, 'I'm not sure, but I think it's a novel.' And he said, 'I think it's a novel, too.' And that was my first book, Bone House, which did very well. It sold in the U.S., and the UK, and abroad, and was optioned for film.KJ:                                        07:13                    And that was what, about 2008?Betsy:                                  07:16                    Gosh, no, it was published in more like 2000.KJ:                                        07:23                    I was on Amazon and saw probably what is the latest edition.Betsy:                                  07:27                    That could be, yeah. And I kind of never looked back from there. It did well. I mean it wasn't a bestseller. I've never had what I would say was a huge rating success. I've had critical successes. That book was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize, unfortunately up against Zadie Smith, who has since gone on to glittering careers.Betsy:                                  07:50                    But yeah, it kind of put me on the map as a writer. It got me an agent. I wrote another historical novel after that. Then I wrote a third book was mythic/historical. I kind of turned to myth and I looked at the Norse body of literature.KJ:                                        08:11                    How much time is it taking?Betsy:                                  08:12                    So for literary fiction, I would say three years for me. That's definitely what it takes for me to write a novel. And you need about a year where the idea is bubbling along and gestating. And also those novels were very heavily researched, all of them actually. So it took quite a long time to be able to start writing. Although research is something that I use all the way through the writing process. I'm a great fan of using it as a kickstarter for creativity. Anytime somebody comes to me saying they've got writer's block that's probably my single biggest tip is just, you know, plunge yourself into some research on the background of what you're writing. And it's those tiny details that you uncover that will kickstart your creativity and get you going again. So yeah, I eventually wrote five novels.KJ:                                        09:08                    And the fifth one was a bit of a departure too...Betsy:                                  09:11                    That was a comic novel. It was the first thing I'd written based on my own kind of personal history a little bit...KJ:                                        09:22                    So that one is called Things We Couldn't Explain.Betsy:                                  09:26                    That one's called Things We Couldn't Explain. When I first started writing in the UK, I'd only lived over here for about five years and I didn't feel comfortable writing about contemporary Britain. And equally, I was starting to feel a little bit out of touch with the U.S. So I ended up setting my first novel in the distant past. And I felt like that was a middle ground where my readership and I would be on the same sort of footing. We'd all be kind of equally unfamiliar with the terrain.KJ:                                        10:00                    I had never thought of that. Although, you know, Sarina sets her books kind of around here and somewhere else that she's lived. And the novel that I've got coming out is set where I grew up and I'm just now doing one for living around here. And I've lived here for about 10 years and I had the same thought. Can I really? You know, I ended up writing about a newcomer to the area because that felt better. People don't really talk about that, how hard it is.Betsy:                                  10:27                    You have to feel comfortable in the skin of your novel. And then the setting is the skin. And if you're not comfortable sitting in the skin of it, you just won't approach it with confidence. I wrote a lot about identity and displacement in my literary fiction for years. That was kind of a theme that just cropped up over, and over, and over. My fourth novel, Crimson China, was about illegal Chinese migrants living in the UK and I think it is because I was a displaced person. And so I was struggling with that sense of identity and belonging and what happens to your sense of identity when you're taken out of the place of your birth and taken away from your family, and your friends, and the culture that you know. So that was a really big theme for me. And the novel that is set in Ohio was the only thing I'd ever written that was really tapped into my own background. So it was quite close to my heart, actually. So this segues deeply into the holiday issue, because that fifth novel came out in November. And the publisher I was with at the time was very, very big on digital publishing. It was sort of the heyday of digital and digital has come off the boil a bit since then in more recent years. But at the time, she was convinced that there was a lot of money to be made with eBooks. She did a lot of other much, much more commercial fiction and I watched her commercial fiction authors soar right past me in the digital charts that November, December, particularly with the holiday books. While my book kind of languished somewhere in the high tens of thousands in the rankings.KJ:                                        12:23                    Tell me when this was.Betsy:                                  12:25                    This would have been probably about five, six years ago.KJ:                                        12:32                    Right. I think Things We Couldn't Explain was 2014. So you already have sort of a fun commercial read, but it's just not doing what you hoped it would do.Betsy:                                  12:47                    No, and what I would say is My first impulse for writing a holiday book was envy. I absolutely, you know, had envy of watching all of these holiday books, many of which frankly, I read some, I wasn't very impressed. My daughter and I were big fans of romcom. She's in her kind of mid twenties. We looked at each other and we said, 'We could do this, we could do so much better.' And of course it's not, it's deceptively difficult to get it right. And we were far too overconfident, but that said, we did sit down and we came up with a concept which was the doggy, the canine rom-com concept. And we set out to do it and I wrote it. She helped me with some of the plotting. She's a great sort of reality check for me as a writer. She sees through the holes in everything, really - plot, character, theme. So I use her as a sounding board a lot for my writing.KJ:                                        13:52                    How old is your daughter?Betsy:                                  13:52                    She's in her mid twenties nowKJ:                                        13:57                    As is the main character in Mutts and Mistletoe.Betsy:                                  14:00                    Yes, exactly. So yeah, so we sat down to that and then I wrote about 50 pages of it. And then I got very interested in the idea of opening the bookshop and I shelved that book and really for the next three years did nothing but find and open the shop, which really sucked up kinda 200% of my energy. And when the shop was up and running for I would say two and a half years probably, I was ready to go back to writing. And I went back to this 50 pages that I had written, which really I had just done on a lark. It was nothing more than a lark. And I honestly thought I would probably self-publish it myself, digitally only. And I mentioned it to my agent. I have a wonderful UK agent who I'm very loyal to, I've been with from the beginning. And she said, 'Show it to me.' And I knew she didn't really handle that sort of material normally, but I sent it to her and the agency read it, they all loved it. They were like, 'You must write this.' So I did. I wrote that over the next say year, it probably didn't take me more than about another six to nine months to finish. And that was how Mutts was born. It's done really well, it won romantic comedy of the year here in the UK, and it's sold all over really, all over Europe, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, Russia. I never dreamed that it would be as successful as it's been.Betsy:                                  15:57                    You know, literary fiction is incredibly laborious. You agonize over every word, every sentence, every phrasing. You know, Mutts and Mistletoe, you're basically trying to get all the elements that you normally tackle as a writer - story, character, setting. But you're basically also just trying to make it really funny. And so it's just such a laugh, you know, I just giggle all the way through writing this stuff. And you look at every page and you think, how can I make this more funny and what would be funnier, and that's really the challenge is kind of just keeping the jokes coming. I don't think you have a joke in every paragraph, but you just have to put your funny hat on and just wear it while you're writing. And it's a joy to be honest, compared to the other form.KJ:                                        16:56                    But you also have a really strong structure.Betsy:                                  17:02                    I think you have to absolutely. You have to adhere, with all writing. You have to play by the rules. I mean, there's meta fiction and some writers can bend the rules, but for most readers we need to have the elements. You have to have your ducks in line, you have to have a strong story, you have to have a strong starting proposition with a protagonist that has a problem or a need, and they're gonna they have to have an arc. All the rules adhere, there's no bending of the rules for any of this stuff. You can't take shortcuts. And I know this because I've tried to do things in a more freestyle manner and where it all just didn't work because you didn't follow the rules. And I think even a seasoned writer can fall at that hurdle if you don't pay attention. I think character is totally the single biggest driver of making compelling read. I think characters drive all good stories. And yeah, you have to have a kind of structure, ideally a kind of three act structure, and you have to have a character who learns or grows or changes. I'm a great believer in happy endings. You know, I think audiences want those.KJ:                                        18:43                    Well, you have those things very cleanly. Many writers have those things but have a lot of noise around them. And in your case, I think you found them very cleanly and it made me wonder if you had a structure that you sort of wrote around or if that just came naturally to you.Betsy:                                  19:05                    I'm not a great one for planning out all the story in advance, I guess the phrase a pants writer.Sarina:                                 19:17                    Oh yes, we use that phrase.Betsy:                                  19:19                    I think I probably am a pants writer. It's not necessarily something I recommend. What I would say is that as much as I'm somebody who doesn't plan everything in advance, I'm utterly meticulous about writing and rewriting. And to be honest, most of my published work, most pages have been edited a hundred times.KJ:                                        19:51                    Wow.Sarina:                                 19:51                    Wow.Betsy:                                  19:52                    Yeah. And I know that sounds obsessive, but that's the sort of writer I am.KJ:                                        19:57                    No, it sounds great. I'm a noisy writer to use the metaphor or whatever that I was just using, which is there tends to be a lot of stuff around my bones and I need to have less stuff around my bones. And it's kinda reassuring to hear that you're peeling stuff away as opposed to never putting it down, which certainly sounds like a simpler way to do it to me. But unfortunately I can't get there.Betsy:                                  20:19                    I mean, I think it means that you won't produce work as fast if you're that fastidious. And I think in commercial fiction the industry demands a certain pace of writers. And I think I'm not able to meet that pace. I'm sure my publishers would say that. But that's just me. I'm afraid I just can't not do it the way I want to do it. And I'm not prepared to put a sentence out until it's perfect.Sarina:                                 20:47                    One thing you said about characters really stuck with me. Because a few minutes ago you were saying you have to really turn on the funny and you know, be funny on every page if you're writing a comedy. But that's so much harder if you don't have a character who can give that to you through all of her flaws and misperceptions of the world, then you just have to spontaneously be funny. Whereas if you have a character who is really set in her ways, then the comedy is easier to find because it's...Betsy:                                  21:20                    Absolutely, it has to be character driven. All the comedy has to be character driven and situation driven. It's not like you're making jokes leap off the page in and of themselves. You're pulling the comic material out of your characters and what's happening to them. It's like you're birthing it.Sarina:                                 21:38                    I had a couple of questions for you about this book specifically. So one is, did you ever just get sick of Christmas, you know, when you were editing the hundredth time in August or whatever where you're just like, 'Ugh'?Betsy:                                  21:54                    I dunno, I mean, I think one of the things - my character is this kind of Scrooge-like character and part of her journey is that she has to learn to love Christmas. So I was able to kind of feed both sides of that debate. It's a book that serves both Christmas lovers and Christmas haters, I think. For that reason. So it was quite amusing to kind of look at the dark side of the holidays. It amused me anyway. To be honest, Christmas became a setting, right? So, yes, it has fantastic comic potential. It has all these iconic tropes and symbols. But really what it was, was a setting and that's how you have to approach it was that you're going to set your novel in a biscuit factory. There's going to be all kinds of comedy that flows from the shop floor. In that way, Christmas was the biscuit factory setting for this. There are writers who make their career out of holiday books. Gosh, more power to them. They're the ones that you should probably be putting that question to are the ones that are writing them year, after year, after year. I'm not writing a holiday book at the moment. I wouldn't rule one out again though, cause I didn't even plumb all the depths of the comic possibilities for Christmas with that first one. I think it's rich terrain for comedy, so I could see me going back to it.Sarina:                                 23:34                    So then my other question involves just a really practical thing about about writing a holiday book. So my first published book, practically another lifetime ago, is a winter-themed cookbook and it is very winter-themed. The sales for that book (it's 10 years old now) they look like a sign wave on the author portal. They peak right at Christmas and then they bucket in July. And I'm just curious if fiction is expected to do the same thing or not.Betsy:                                  24:12                    It absolutely does the same thing. But that's the other beauty of writing seasonal stuff is that there's a readily identifiable market for it, which is why publishers love it. And you know, your cookbook might have died a very quick death decades ago or years ago, had you not had that seasonal hook that brings it back and makes it relevant again in the marketplace each year. I'm a great believer in, you know, I don't believe the world owes us a living as writers. And I think we have to write stuff that people want to read. So I'm sort of quite business minded as a writer. And and I think you need to do the publisher's job for them a little bit when you want to sell a prospective title because you have to be able to identify what the market's going to be. So yeah, I think whereas novels, (and I know this because I'm a book seller) the shelf life of a hardback is something like six weeks to three months. And after that they get sent back. And the shelf life of a paperback is 18 months. And after that, you know, unless you're a bestseller, or a prize winner, or an evergreen your book will be gone. And you know, that's just the reality. Whereas seasonal titles, actually, I think there is an upswing year after year for the best ones.KJ:                                        25:49                    So, wait. Do you put them in a box in the shop and put them aside or do you send them back and then get some new ones?Betsy:                                  25:56                    We send them back when we get new ones. We're ruthless.KJ:                                        26:00                    Isn't that funny - you're both the author who's like, 'No, hold on to my book and the bookseller who's like, 'Nope, sorry.'Betsy:                                  26:08                    It's awful. Authors don't want to know how much gets sent back. I don't know if the retail industry works quite the same way in the U.S. but books are one of the only areas of retail that are full sale or return or at least partial sale or return. You know, that doesn't happen in the clothing industry, right? The stores don't get to send the merchandise back if it doesn't sell. And so yeah, we are ruthless about culling titles that languish on our shelves.KJ:                                        26:42                    Do you think that's part of why you're going back in for another romcom or do you think it has more to do with sort of where you are in life and what you want to write or is it some combination therein and that it would be hard to tease out?Betsy:                                  26:55                    I think it has to do with the fact that I have a two book deal with Orion in the UK and I'm contracted to produce another one. Also, I have the pressure of my agents saying to me, 'Gosh, we have these 12 foreign publishers...', So I was under pressure, both because I'm legally obliged to write one for Orion, but in fact Orion gave me the opportunity to segue into more comic literary fiction last year. And it was really my agent who said, 'Gosh, you know, we've got these 12 publishers queued up.' Mutts is only coming out for the first time in all those markets cause it took a year to translate it. So they're the ones that are going to come knocking on our door in January or February saying, 'Oh, what about the next one?'KJ:                                        27:52                    When was the decision made to write Mutts under a new name?Betsy:                                  27:56                    Do you mean Natalie?KJ:                                        28:00                    Yeah.Betsy:                                  28:01                    Right, sorry. Okay. At the point of sale for publication, the agents, I said to them, 'What about my brand?' And they said, 'We'll sell you as a debut.' And that is what goes on in the industry. I don't know that it's the best thing. I don't know necessarily that it did me any favors as an author, but publishers of course are always looking for debuts. There's an absolute mystique in the industry about making the next big discovery. So it's easier for agents to sell debuts. So I was sold as a debut romcom writer with the caveat that it was a pseudonym for someone who had written in another genre. So publishers at the point of bidding were told that I was an existing writer.Betsy:                                  29:02                    They weren't told who I was, but I was sold as a debut. Does that make sense?KJ:                                        29:10                    Yes, it does. It's a crazy system.Betsy:                                  29:12                    It is crazy indeed. So now I have fiendish social media cause I have social media under Betsy, and I have social media under Natalie, and I also do all the social media for the bookshop. So I'm constantly toggling between Facebook and Instagram and Twitter on all three accounts and kind of posting the wrong thing from the wrong account and getting into trouble. So that's what ended up with, I don't know how desirable it is for me as a writer. One thing I would say is that this has a different title in Britain than it does in the U.S. and that is something I will never repeat again because that was even more of a nightmare publishing two...KJ:                                        29:56                    What is it called in Britain?Betsy:                                  29:57                    So in Britain, we have a really famous dog charity rescue charity, a nationwide adoption center called The Dog's Trust. And their motto is 'Dogs are for life, not just for Christmas.' It's very, very famous. It's a famous enough charity that pretty much everyone knows that line dogs life. And so my editor from day one was determined to call it Not Just for Christmas. And of course it's not a title that works at all well in the U.S., it doesn't play in America. It's not a title I wanted particularly, but it certainly works very well in this territory. I I was worried about it elsewhere and I was worried about the idea of books going out with different titles. The same book going out and it was a bit of a problem, I had kind of angry readers saying...KJ:                                        30:56                    I have as a reader, bought the same book twice.Betsy:                                  30:58                    Yes, exactly.KJ:                                        31:00                    Because I liked it so much one of the times and I thought, 'Oh, it's a different one.'Betsy:                                  31:05                    Yeah. I had irate readers kind of emailing me saying 'Who would do that?' And it didn't help that Amazon in the U.S. had both editions up. Anyway, it was a nightmare. So that's how I ended up as Natalie Cox. Gosh, Natalie was the name of my old dog, so that was a nod towards her. And Natalie's three syllables and I knew I needed a really short three letter surname for the cover. So it was either Dicks or Cox. Fox was taken. I actually did try Fox. My publisher said there was some other writer publishing under that name. So yeah, that's how I ended up with Natalie Cox.KJ:                                        32:02                    And the next one will be Natalie Cox.Betsy:                                  32:03                    Yes, this is a romcom under Natalie Cox, absolutely. And it also involves a very large dog. It's a similar kind of book, similar voice, similar tone. It's about a woman who's fed up with her life, she's got a list of problems, and she just wants to run away from it all until someone steals her identity. And then she wants her life back.KJ:                                        32:28                    Oh, that's good.Betsy:                                  32:34                    So I'm busily beavering away at that at the moment. I'm hoping to deliver that in the spring. So we will see. I do like dogs, I'm a big dog fan. I definitely discovered that almost like Christmas, there's almost an identifiable readership of people who want books about dogs.KJ:                                        32:54                    There absolutely is.Sarina:                                 32:55                    Yes, that is true. In fact, in 2017, one of my publishers said, 'These are the pitches we want next from you. It has to be dogs, or Alaska, or cowboys.'Betsy:                                  33:08                    Oh my God, that is hilarious. All three of those are great!KJ:                                        33:13                    An Alaskan cowboy dog would just walk us straight.Betsy:                                  33:19                    Oh, I would love to write any of those, that sounds fantastic. So did you write that? Did you write that book back then?Sarina:                                 33:37                    No, I didn't because I just didn't want to. And it was also said to me like this, 'This is what Walmart wants.'Betsy:                                  33:47                    Oh wow. Okay.Sarina:                                 33:48                    And I thought, you know what...I didn't want to plan my life that way.Betsy:                                  33:54                    No, and I agree. While I did make that comment about not writing in a vacuum and understanding what the market is for your books, I don't think you should let the tail wag the dog.KJ:                                        34:06                    Well, there's a difference.Sarina:                                 34:07                    Yeah. There's a difference between having an eye on it and letting it run your life. Also, you mentioned digital and so that made me curious. And as a bookseller, I bet this is something you keep an eye on, but is the digital sales ratio of your romcom higher than your literary fiction?Betsy:                                  34:29                    Well, I haven't looked at the figures, but broadly I would say yes. I mean, the thing about digital is we have pretty good understanding of what digital reading habits are now. And they do tend to be in certain genres - so mystery and commercial women's fiction, particularly romance, romance and mystery I'd say are probably two of the biggest consumers of digital. And you know, these are people who are super fans, they're veracious readers, they're constantly looking for new sources of supply, they need to source their books cheaply because they're reading so much. So gosh, what was the question?Sarina:                                 35:18                    I was just curious. So I'm very familiar with this concept because I'm about 98% digital. Or actually, if I put audio in there it wouldn't be 98 it would be more like 85. But also where is the line? So I have friends who do sort of book club women's fiction who are running at about 50/50 digital. And I was just sort of thinking that your book also looks like that midpoint between something that would be strictly a romance and a commercial women's fiction.Betsy:                                  35:55                    Well, what I would say in the U.S. for the Natalie Cox book, is that they have not pushed it digitally at all and they've priced it very, very high because I think they really want to shift paper copies. And so I've looked at my digital numbers and they're incredibly low. I would say below 5%. I mean I think that this title has legs digitally and I assume that they will eventually tap into that and market it digitally and price it to sell digitally. But at the moment they're still not doing that. In fact, I can't see from here what the digital prices in the U.S. are.KJ:                                        36:38                    It's $14.99 I think. It's quite high. And I just want to say it was super fun, I had a totally fun evening read. And I honestly wouldn't have done it if I did not also want to read it.Betsy:                                  37:31                    You totally could've winged it.KJ:                                        37:44                    But I wanted to read it.Betsy:                                  37:46                    Thank you. You will be my one digital sale in America this week. Next week, when I look at my sales figures it will literally say two copies sold and you'll be one of them. I think Putnam really wants...they've got a lot of physical copies out there and they want people to buy those. And that's why it's been priced the way it has. I assume that in years to come that part of their marketing plan...KJ:                                        38:12                    You know the worst part? I could've gotten the British edition for $3.99.Betsy:                                  38:18                    No, you're not allowed to.KJ:                                        38:20                    I could, I could do it right now. I have buy with one click.Betsy:                                  38:25                    But I thought they weren't allowed to. So there's copyright constraints that prevent you from buying digitally.KJ:                                        38:34                    It's priced in pounds.Betsy:                                  38:37                    Kindle should throw it out.KJ:                                        38:39                    Oh, you know what? I'm on the UK site cause I went to it from your website.Sarina:                                 38:46                    So when your new book comes out and there's doing the still the whole paper push maybe you can get them to do a BookBub deal.Betsy:                                  38:58                    Yeah, absolutely. I'm certainly about to press my UK publisher on a BookBub deal because unlike the U.S. they aren't bringing out another edition. They're not pushing it into shops this Christmas. And it absolutely should be. They should be marketing it more aggressively in the UK. The U.S., I've just looked, they've got like 40,000 paper copies out in shops.KJ:                                        39:21                    And the kind of amazing thing is that because I knew we were interviewing you and I've been in one airport bookstores and one non-airport bookstore looking at the holiday. And to be honest, I didn't see it. It wasn't on the holiday.Betsy:                                  39:35                    Well that is disappointing. This is the ultra mass market addition though, so those are only certain types of outlets I assume in the U.S.KJ:                                        39:44                    I was primarily in airport bookstores. I was in one indie bookstore, the one owned by Ann Patchett, actually. Speaking of author bookstores.Betsy:                                  39:53                    She came and signed copies at my shop.KJ:                                        39:56                    Well, darn it, she needs to be stocking your book.Betsy:                                  39:59                    So last year, with the trade paperback, that was a book that definitely was in Barnes and Noble and some of the independents. This year, with this new mass market edition I don't know which outlets stock these kinds of books that are priced at this very low price point, $7.99, I was very impressed with that. I assume it's more supermarkets, Walmart, that sort of thing.KJ:                                        40:30                    The airports had a few, but they were big name.Sarina:                                 40:34                    Also, American airport bookstores hate romance. There's nothing with even a whiff of romance in airport bookstores.Betsy:                                  40:42                    And to be honest, I would not have expected to be in the U.S. airport, actually. That's sad, but I can live with that. There are 40,000 copies out there but they're not in airports, but that's okay. I'm okay with that. Maybe my people aren't travelers, you know, maybe they're not travelers.KJ:                                        41:12                    I have one last question, but it might be a long one. I'm sure it's one that many of our listeners are wondering, 'Wait, wait, do I want to run a bookstore?' Sarina and I are always reminding each other that we don't, in fact, want to run a bookstore. So tell us.Betsy:                                  41:30                    Well, what do I say about running a bookstore? It's a little bit like owning a dog. I always liked owning a dog to having a perpetual toddler, you know, one that never grows up. With that level of commitment, and responsibility, and supervision. And I think running a small business, a customer facing business, it's open seven days a week, trading 70 hours. Yeah, it's the same sort of thing. It's like having a perpetual toddler. It's a lot of work. It's very full on, I have a business partner. We don't staff the shop, but we run it, we manage it ourselves from our laptops, mostly remotely. Although I certainly am in the shop. If I'm in London, I'm in the shop most days at least for a couple of hours to sort of oversee things. And it's terrific fun. I can't undersell that.KJ:                                        42:19                    That's not what we wanted to hear.Betsy:                                  42:20                    I mean it is absolutely incredibly fun, but like any small businesses, it is a lot of hard work. And we are very much a DIY business. We do everything ourself. We do all our bookkeeping, we do all our social media, we do our website, we curate by hand. You know, we're very hands-on for two people who aren't physically there all the time. But I travel a fair amount and so I can run the business from my laptop pretty much wherever I go. And it works and our customers love it and they're incredibly grateful that we're there. So they're happy to support us and are happy to pay full cover price. We never discount anything, we're ruthless about that. I just turned away a customer this afternoon for a book by someone I really, really dislike. When he asked why we didn't have it I said, 'Because we didn't buy it in, because we hate him.' And I said, 'I can order it for you, but can I just sell you something else?' It's done. So I talked him into buying something else. I said, 'His ex wife's book is out next year and it's much worth the wait for that.' He's an odious you would think. That's what you get to do when you run a bookshop. That's a terrible thing, I shouldn't be saying this.Sarina:                                 43:40                    It's hilarious.KJ:                                        43:41                    It's hilarious. Yes, we're all over this bookshop.Betsy:                                  43:46                    In fairness, that customer did look down and he spotted a slim volume by Niche and he said, 'Well, if that's your standard then you shouldn't be stocking this either.' Absolutely, we get to choose. It's really fun owning the shop and it's incredibly gratifying and it's lovely not to be just facing a keyboard all day.KJ:                                        44:14                    And now you make it sound fun. That's terrible, we didn't need that. Well, this is a great segue into what we've been reading. So have you read anything good lately?Betsy:                                  44:25                    So I have just read this book and I'm going to forget the author. U.S. book called Three Women by Lisa Taddeo. So this book, my 28-year-old son, his girlfriend loaned me her copy. It was a bit of a sleeper success for us in the bookshop. It was published here by Bloomsbury, I'm not sure who published it in the U.S. and we didn't really clock it initially on our radar in the shop until it started to kind of sell. I had all these kind of mid-30-year-old women coming in and sort of slyly purchasing it. It's about women and sex and it's a stunning piece of really in depth report where she surveyed hundreds of women and then chose three and followed them for literally years and moved to their home towns and told the story of their sexual history. And when my son's girlfriend loaned it to me, she said, 'Don't read it on the Metro.' And it's very, very explicit. It's incredibly gripping. And the stories are all true and it's beautifully written. It's written like a thriller. She cuts between the three stories very cleverly. And I thought it was a remarkable piece of work, actually. So yeah, definitely recommend it. And a lot of food for thought in terms of sexuality.KJ:                                        46:17                    How about you, Sarina?Sarina:                                 46:18                    Well, I wanted to keep with the holiday theme and I am acquainted with this author named Jana Aston, who writes what is very much an of-the-moment romance in the contemporary space right now. She writes kind of like billionaires and young women and it's very snappy and also kind of romcom, but also probably quite dirty. She came out with three holiday novellas right now and they are brilliantly packaged. And I'm reading the first one right now. It's called The Boss Who Stole Christmas.Betsy:                                  46:57                    And I bet they're racing up the Kindle charts.Sarina:                                 47:00                    Yes. And I have to tell you the title of the second book because it makes my heart pitter-patter. It is so funny. It is called If You Give a Jerk a Gingerbread. Isn't that impressive? And so I'm having a great time reading book one and I can't wait to get to the jerk with the gingerbread.KJ:                                        47:20                    Well, as I've said multiple times, did really enjoy Mutts and Mistletoe. Super fun. Although you need to look for the paperback, not necessarily the Kindle edition. They probably won't let me loan it to you. I also read Beside Herself by Elizabeth Labon. Elizabeth Labon is a Philly author who writes really, really place-centric commercial women's fiction. And I love the cover of this book. It's a coffee cup, like sort of spilling as it topples over. And it's the story of a woman whose husband has an affair and who still loves him but wants to get back at him. And it's a happy ending, romcom, very much fun read, especially if you're a Philly person. And yeah, I enjoyed it. I've enjoyed her previous books. So yeah, it was fun. I think it's a good time of year. You know, I have a stack right now that is a combination of sort of more serious stuff and really, really light stuff because this is just such a rich time of year for book shopping.Betsy:                                  48:25                    Absolutely. And I think over the Christmas holidays, frankly, everybody wants the literary equivalent of a malteser way. I mean, you know, really, that feeds aside for all of us. And you know, there's room for all those books on our shelves.KJ:                                        48:44                    Well, thank you so much for coming. This has been incredibly fun. We thought it would be fun when it was just going to be holiday, but when it turned into let's talk about owning a bookstore and writing multiple books in multiple genres. We got super excited, so thank you.Betsy:                                  49:00                    Fantastic. Thank you so much for having me.Sarina:                                 49:02                    And until next week, everyone, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.Jess:                                     49:14                    This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid. 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

Here’s one way to learn how to write books that work in audio: narrate over 700 of them, like our guest this week, Tanya Eby. If that sounds a little daunting, listen in instead for the condensed version.Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, we sent out our first supporter-only #MiniSupporter episode this week: #Prewriting. Those will be short and sporadic bursts of advice and inspiration from one of us, and thanks to the magic of Substack, supporters of #AmWriting will see those drop into a special feed in their podcast apps whenever we’ve got one ready. We’d love to add you to that list if you’re not already on it. Support the podcast you love, get bonus #MiniSupporter episodes AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month. As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode. LINKS FROM THE PODCAST#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Jess: Olive Kitteredge, Elizabeth StroutKJ: Ninth House, Leigh BardugoSarina: Never Have I Ever, Joshilyn JacksonTanya: The Chestnut Man, Soren Sveistrup#FaveIndieBookstoreSchuler Books in Grand Rapids, MichiganOur guest for this episode is Tanya Eby, the Audie Award Winning narrator of over 700 audio books. Her production company, Blunder Woman Productions, is currently nominated for two Society Arts Awards. Find more about Tanya here.This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)KJ:                                        00:01                    Hey writers, it's KJ and if you're listening in real time, there's a pretty good chance you might be in the middle of NaNoWriMo right now, or giving up on it, or flailing around and wishing you'd never started it. If your National Novel Writing Month isn't exactly passing by in a haze of inspired typing, it's well worth taking a break from churning outwards to make sure your book has a strong enough spine to support the story you want to tell. Our sponsor, Author Accelerator has a tool that might help - the Inside Outline. And I have a NaNoWriMo secret. It's not all about the word count. 30,000 words are better than 50,000 if you're going to have to throw half of those 50,000 words away. So, if you're feeling the least bit stuck, try applying the Inside Outline to what you've already written and to the scenes to come. It might be exactly what you need to get over the finish line. #AmWriting listeners have exclusive access to a free download that describes what the outline is, why it works, and how to do it free. You can find it at authoraccelerator.com/amwriting. Is it recording?Jess:                                     01:12                    Now it's recording.KJ:                                        01:14                    Yay.Jess:                                     01:14                    Go ahead.KJ:                                        01:15                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.Jess:                                     01:19                    Alright, let's start over.KJ:                                        01:21                    Awkward pause, I'm going to rustle some papers.Jess:                                     01:24                    Okay.KJ:                                        01:24                    Now one, two, three.KJ:                                        01:32                    Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting, the weekly podcast about writing all the things - fiction, nonfiction, every genre, every possible permutation of writing that we can possibly come up with, (especially if it begins with a P, which seems to be where I'm going today) pitches, proposals. See I told you, and as you know, this is, above all else, the podcast about sitting down and getting your work done.Jess:                                     02:03                    I'm Jess Lahey. I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and you can find my work at the New York Times and The Atlantic. And I just finished the first draft of my forthcoming book in 2021 The Addiction Inoculation about preventing substance abuse in kids.Sarina:                                 02:17                    And this is Sarina Bowen. I'm the author of more than 30 romance novels, with a new one coming out in just a few days, called Man Cuffed, and more about that in a minute.KJ:                                        02:29                    And I am KJ Dell'Antonia, author of How To Be a Happier Parent as well as a novel coming out next year, The Chicken Sisters, former editor of the Motherlode blog at the New York Times, and feeling a bit like a slacker with this just same book, you know, coming out all the time. I'm working, I'm going to have another one soon, I hope.Jess:                                     02:55                    Well, just wait. I mean, my book's not coming out until 2021 so just imagine how sick of it we're going to be by the time it finally comes out, it feels like it's forever away.KJ:                                        03:03                    Yes, we have a guest today. Sarina, I'm going to tell you, 'Take it away.'Sarina:                                 03:11                    We do have a guest today and it's a friend of mine. We're welcoming to the show, Tanya Eby, who is the Audie award-winning narrator of over 700 audio books. Wow. I mean, come on, 700. Her production company, which is adorably titled Blunder Woman Productions, is currently nominated for two society arts awards, as well. And Tanya is here today to talk mostly about the booming market for audio books. But I just have to slide in there and say that Tanya and I also have a USA today bestselling series of romance novels together. They are The Man Hands books. Which everything Tanya does is funny, so I'm going to tell you the titles are: Man Hands, Man Card, Boy Toy, and our new one, Man Cuffed. Welcome, Tanya.Tanya:                                 04:06                    Hey, that was such a cool introduction. Thank you.Sarina:                                 04:10                    You are welcome.Jess:                                     04:12                    The series you two write together that Sarina was just talking about just makes me laugh out loud. I love that series. And it's also really fun to read Sarina with various authors. I love reading Sarina in all the different forms and I'm so excited to hear about audio books. Mainly because number one, I'm a huge, huge audio book fan since I had a head injury a couple of years ago. For me, I have limited on the page time, and so audio books are my preferred way to sort of get at the fun reading. But also, I was on one of my audio book apps, scrolling through trying to make sure I knew which books you've narrated that I've read, and it's like page one of 62 and I'm scrolling through. So I'm glad Sarina said how many because that was going to be a long morning for me scrolling through every single thing you've ever done.Tanya:                                 05:08                    Yeah, I've been doing this for a while now.Jess:                                     05:11                    Well I have a ton of questions, but I know that Sarina has some stuff that she wants to talk to you about first. So I'm going to defer to Sarina.Sarina:                                 05:19                    I was pulling together my thoughts about this and I would like to say that Tanya has been basically a full-time audio book narrator and producer since before it was cool.Jess:                                     05:33                    Which means officially it's cool now. It's very, very cool.Sarina:                                 05:38                    Because some of these numbers I was just finding about the growth of the audio book industry are pretty crazy. So the industry has had, according to the Audio Publisher's Association, which I believe Tanya has just finished a stint on the board. They say they've had seven years of double digit growth. With the last date available 2018 of course, cause we're not quite done with this one. And that in 2018, according to the APA, it was almost a billion dollar industry, which of course means that it was over a billion dollar industry because professional associations that cover publishing can never actually capture all that revenue because there's too many independent publishers. And also because the only people who really know how many audio downloads there are, are Amazon and they're not saying.Tanya:                                 06:36                    Right, but it's a lot.Sarina:                                 06:37                    It's a lot. And 2018 revenue was up 24 and a half percent over 2017, which is a big fat growth number. And I'm, you know, a cynical economist so that when people tell me that something is growing really fast, I kind of sometimes discount that because if a thing is growing really fast, but it's a really tiny thing, then you know, that's interesting, but it's not life changing. And in publishing we love to grasp onto whatever is growing because, you know, it's a tricky industry and wild growth is not something people think about when they think about publishing. But now after seven years of double digit growth, I have to say that it really seems like they're not fooling around this time. And so, I'm a believer now. And just to prove it to myself, I looked up my own audio revenue on my early 2018 release because I thought that that was like the best one to look at to figure out what it was. And 12% of all the copies of my early 2018 release were sold in audio, which means that the revenue proportion is even greater than 12%, because I'm earning slightly more on every audio copy than other formats, including e-book and paperback. So, wow. I'm a believer.Jess:                                     08:12                    I'm so jealous of you being able to look up that information. I mean, when it comes (as you mentioned before) Amazon's not telling and it's almost impossible for me to know. But what's really nice for me when I go to a book signing, go to a book event, more and more frequently people are asking me if the book's available on audio or I listened to you in my car. And I want to talk about that in a little bit - to the sort of the relationship that you build with the voice that you listen to in your car. But more and more people are saying to me, 'Oh, I listened to it on audio and I love that format.' And that wasn't something, even five years ago, that wasn't something I was hearing.Tanya:                                 08:51                    Well, I think that the industry really changed and exploded when we had the technology to support it. So when I started, I was still on tape. This is how long ago I was recording and then it moved to mostly CDs, but then we've had this huge, you know explosion since smartphones and then Audible coming in and now people can access it everywhere, where you couldn't before. And people have discovered how much fun it is to listen. For me, it's like a movie in my mind and it's been constantly growing, which has been great.Jess:                                     09:31                    From the teacher perspective, there have been a bunch of articles in the past couple of years on you know, is listening to audio books "reading", does it count, you know, that kind of thing. And there've been a couple of articles saying, 'Absolutely, yes, it does count.'Speaker 4:                          09:48                    We do process the the words we read slightly differently, but I know from a teaching perspective, if I have to teach a text, especially a text that's really dense, I always listen and read because I get different things from a text when I listen than when I read, and it's a very important part of my preparation. So I think that's added to it.Tanya:                                 10:07                    Yeah. It actually lights up the same parts of the brain as reading does, which is really cool. And I actually got started with audio books - my first experience - I was trying to understand Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and I was like 16 years old and I couldn't make sense of it. So I started to read it out loud and suddenly like the whole book just came to life for me. So, yeah I agree.Jess:                                     10:33                    There's this really cool passage I used to teach in seventh grade, I would teach Great Expectations. There are a few passages that I had to read out loud because the way Dickens structured the sentences lent itself to the same - there's a scene where they're racing through the marshes and the sentence just bounds, and bounds, and bounds forward the same way that Joe is bounding, and bounding, and bounding through the marsh. And so it's a way of showing students that you can use language not only to appeal to the eye and to sort of sound good in your head, but to sound good from an oral perspective as well. So that's one of my favorite parts about reading out loud and who doesn't want to be read to?Tanya:                                 11:15                    It's so nice, isn't it? It's really comforting, I love it.Jess:                                     11:19                    So can we talk nuts and bolts?Tanya:                                 11:21                    What do you want to know?Jess:                                     11:23                    I want to know practical stuff. Like how do you get hired? And Sarina talks about this every once in a while, but how does an author (and often it has nothing to do with the author unless you're at Lucky like Sarina and you're so good at the self pub thing) but how do you get hired for a book in the first place?Tanya:                                 11:40                    So I think the most important thing to realize about narrators is that we are all freelancers. So we may work through a publisher, but we don't work with just that publisher. And you can basically contact us and most of us can produce audio for you or we can work with whichever publishing house you want to work with. So how I get hired is publishing houses sometimes will cast and I've been in the business long enough that they know me and they simply send me an email and say, 'Are you interested?' Or I might audition or I have authors who contact me or I might audition for pieces that authors post online through ACX or find a way or some of those services. So there's multiple ways to reach a narrator.Jess:                                     12:31                    You hear about like actors going after certain roles, have there been certain audio books that you've really gone after because you wanted to be a part of them?Tanya:                                 12:38                    Yes. And it did not work. And I'm still intensely bitter. No, I'm not. But this was before I started my publishing company and I realized that I might've seemed a little creepy because I was just a narrator saying like, 'Hire me.' And that made people uncomfortable. But now that I have a production company, they take me a little more seriously and I have been able to get some really great roles that way.Jess:                                     13:07                    Cool. So in terms of - and these are just the things that I tend to be fascinated by - so when I read my own audio book for my for my book for Harper Collins, I got a flat fee as the author. So they said, here's the amount of money you get. Go away, go read the book. But I also understand from Sarina that audio narrators can get paid in terms of a finished, by the minute....Tanya:                                 13:35                    We are paid what's called per finished hour. So if your book is 10 hours long, we are paid 10 hours worth of work. We call it per finished hour because each hour to record takes about two hours or more for us to produce it. So doing it by the per finished hour simplifies things. And I think there are A list actors who their pay scale is much different, but for most of us it's a per finished hour.Jess:                                     14:07                    There's so many things that go into why it takes so much longer in the finished product.Tanya:                                 14:14                    And I think they don't realize that for every hour of audio book you listen to, it's taken about 10 hours to produce and there can be a team of like 20 people working on that audio book. So we've got directors, we have engineers, proofers, people who listen for mistakes or tummy grumbles or things like that, you have people doing research, you have the narrator who reads the book first and does a bunch of research and yeah, I mean it's huge what goes into it.Jess:                                     14:46                    What's your favorite kind of book to narrate? Do you have a favorite kind?Tanya:                                 14:51                    Well, I mean, I love stories. We all love stories that have great characters. I've been enjoying narrating nonfiction lately, but I like heartwarming stories. But then I also have this dark side where there are times where I love true crime and I love those gritty mysteries. So for me, one of the fun parts about being a narrator is I get to narrate across genres. So once I'd been doing romances for a while, I might get a nonfiction title thrown in and it keeps me really interested.Jess:                                     15:24                    One of the things that I've sort of been really curious about (mainly because it's something that I don't know that I could do) is there are those times that I'm listening to a book and I realize that it is a woman reading the book to me. and yet I get lost in the male voice that that narrator is able to create for me. And I forget that I'm listening to just one narrator. And I'm sort of curious as to how you arrive on that and just sort of what the tricks are about doing that. Cause I don't really get it. It's almost like one of those TV or movie illusions that it's best not to think about. But I'm really curious about how you do that.Tanya:                                 16:02                    Yeah, I mean that's the magic of audio books - that you can have one performer create all these characters. What helps is if we have good writing to start with. So that gives us some clues as to what the characters are. If you have like an evil character, is he gritty? Is he is he smarmy? Is he manipulative, cocky? Like those kinds of adjectives help us choose voices. And for me I've been listening to lots and lots of people talk and I kind of like quietly mimic them to capture voices. And what's interesting is that not all males have this deep masculine voice. Some of them have higher pitched voice and the same goes with women, we're not all Sopranos. So kind of making choices that suit the character, as if you were dressing the character, what would this character wear is kind of how I get into it.Jess:                                     16:57                    That's so cool. One of the things Sarina and I were talking about recently is often Sarina's books, for example, Good Boy that you read along with (obviously you weren't in the same room together) but with Teddy Hamilton in the male character. The thing though in a lot of books is that even from the female perspective, you have to speak in the male voice. And so do you ever get to hear, for example, Teddy Hamilton's performance before you do yours or is it just sort of put together at the end?Tanya:                                 17:27                    When you're doing a dual read like that (when you have two people narrating) with each one doing a point of view chapter. What I do is I'll talk to my co-narrator and we post files that we'll listen to (of each other) where we make character choices and so I can listen to it and kind of get the groove. Now Teddy, I know well enough and I've listened to him a lot and spent time with him, that it was easy to fall into that groove of how he narrates.Jess:                                     18:03                    He's one of my favorites, he's one of my very favorite narrators.Tanya:                                 18:07                    And he's an awesome person, too, which is always great.Jess:                                     18:11                    That is so cool. Sarina, did you want to jump in? I feel like taking over this interview.Sarina:                                 18:18                    Oh no, it's all good. I thought it would be fun to ask Tanya though - Like, which words in a manuscript do you not like?Tanya:                                 18:27                    So...clasping - like, she clasped her breasts or something - is really hard. Sexting, texting - those words destroy me.Jess:                                     18:41                    I told Sarina at one point I had them, I used to work as a political speech writer and I wrote an inaugural speech for someone. And at a certain point we just had to ditch an entire sentence no matter, he loved the sentence, I love the sentence, but it was not coming out of his mouth the right way. It was not going to happen.Tanya:                                 19:03                    Yeah. Sometimes it doesn't. Or you get a character. The famous one is Jack, we love that name. But whenever you have a character, Jack asked, you have to be careful. And fantasy books, character names are difficult because they'll create languages and people think they know how it's pronounced. And then a narrator will make a choice and they make the wrong choice, it's tricky.Sarina:                                 19:29                    So what happens - what happens if you're reading a fantasy novel and they gave you the pronunciation for like everything except this one word and you read that one word. What happens?Tanya:                                 19:38                    So two things. Either they like it so much, they're okay with it. Or you have to record 156 fixes of every time you said that name. I've had it go both ways. And I had one where I said Viola and it was Viola. Because I guess Viola is more popular in the South.Jess:                                     20:02                    And there's nothing that pulls me out of a book faster. I was listening to an audio book a while ago and they mispronounced a really well-known street name in Los Angeles and that was it. Like it was over for me.Tanya:                                 20:17                    Proofers should catch that, but they don't. You know, it's a team and we don't always. But something for writers to know - if one of your pieces are being produced, you can supply some of those pronunciations to your audio book team and they will love you for it.Jess:                                     20:36                    Oh, that's a great tip.Tanya:                                 20:38                    Yeah. Just knowing like if you have some names that are super important, let your narrator know.Jess:                                     20:43                    That's especially important, I guess for us nonfiction writers that were there tend to be researchers' names Dr. So and so in there. That would be really helpful. That never (well I guess because I read my own book) but that never would've occurred to me. And you're right, that would be really, really helpful. It's a great tip.Sarina:                                 20:59                    Can I just say that I have not always been good at this? At giving people the information they need. Except when we were going to record Him, which is I believe my bestselling audio book ever, I did manage to tell the narrating team that Jamie was from San Rafael, California. And I said, 'You don't say Rafael, even though it's spelled that way.' People from Northern California say San Rafael. And I got notes from grateful listeners like 'Thank you for saying San Rafael.' And I'm like, 'Okay. I guess that one thing that I thought to do.' So, the other thing that we should mention, so some of our listeners are authors with published books who may not have an audio edition. So you know, there must be some people listening to think how do I get one?Tanya:                                 22:02                    Well the first thing they need to know is to look at their contract (if they have one) and see if they own the audio rights. Or if they're self-published, they do own the audio rights. And that can make you go into two different paths. So there's lots of paths to get your book into audio. You can request that your publisher consider publishing in audio and if they don't, if you can have the rights back and you can do it yourself. If you own the rights, you can do it yourself or you can hire a company like my production company, Blunder Woman Productions, and we can produce it for you. So there are lots of different avenues, but the most important question is do you have the rights?Sarina:                                 22:45                    Right. And I actually I had a contract with a publisher that I no longer have a contract with, let's say in 2014. And one of the things that my agent did with that contract is that this particular publisher keeps rights like that. They keep audio and they were keeping translation as well, and she couldn't talk them out of keeping those things. But she did put in that if they hadn't exercised the audio rights by a certain date that we got it back.Tanya:                                 23:22                    Right. And that's so great, especially because as audio books have become more popular, more and more publishers are holding onto those rights. So having that clause is extremely helpful. You can also put in a clause that you have some input with the narrator. Sometimes publishers will cast it for you. But if you have that information in there, they can give you choices to choose from. And that's really helpful sometimes for writers.Sarina:                                 23:49                    Yeah. In fact, I have a different contract with Penguin (who always keeps their audio rights), but in this case I was perfectly happy about it because they publish those audio books immediately with the publication of the other books. So here's where it also gets weird if you're an author and you can't quite figure out what's happening. So let's just say you have books with Penguin or Harper or Simon and Schuster. Sometimes your publisher will make them themselves. Like, you know, the book will be from Harper Audio, but sometimes your publisher will sell off those rights to an audio book publisher, such as Blackstone, Tenter, Brilliance. You know, there's a bunch like this. And then those people will make the book. And in this case, I had no rights at all (except of course to earn money when someone else did this work for me) but I was still asked by Blackstone, my opinion about who I wanted to narrate and they sent me audition tapes and it was just terrific.Tanya:                                 25:01                    So nice. So sometimes they will sell those rights to other companies. Sometimes those other companies will just produce it for them. Because not every publishing house can produce as many books as they want to.Jess:                                     25:16                    What's also been cool is to see some of the audio books from before audio really became as popular as it is now and the quality has changed, that a lot of a lot of stuff is being reproduced. And it's really, really nice because it can be updated and you can stay on top of it and they can look uniform. And Stephen King's work comes to mind. They've reengineered a whole bunch of his books and it's been great.Tanya:                                 25:44                    Well, and it's also interesting because in the last 10 years there's been a shift. Audio book started as reading for the blind. And narrators were instructed just to read the words with no emotion, no characterization, but there's been a real shift now, where those books are being performed. So like you had mentioned earlier with vocal characterization, we do accents, so we really act it out now. So that can also be a huge difference from a book that was released 10 years ago.Sarina:                                 26:11                    I'll bet. And another new thing is the popularity of certain narrators. And this is another technology thing. So now that we all carry our audio books around in our pockets and we buy them or rent them from various audio book platforms, you can often search by narrator. So if you have a favorite and you click on their name all of their stuff comes up, which makes the whole recommending machine hum in a different direction than I'm sure it used to in the olden days.Tanya:                                 26:51                    Right. If you're casting your own audio book, it's a good way to find narrators by listening to those little clips and seeing who do you click with? Because I also want to mention something really important for writers - that the audio book is never going to sound the way that it sounds in your head. So it's an interpretation by an actor and that's really important to remember that, that there's many ways to perform a piece and sometimes you gotta let go a little bit.Sarina:                                 27:18                    Yeah. My way of doing this is, I have to say, I never listen to my own books in audio and people will say, 'Oh, this one is so wonderful.' And I'm like, 'That's amazing. I'm glad. I'm so happy to hear it.' But I will never have actually heard it. I've only listened to a couple. The fact that the cadence isn't the same in my head as I heard it is just, I can't deal.Jess:                                     27:44                    You guys want to hear something horrifying. I was at a talk recently and someone came to the book signing and said, 'Oh, I was in a real hurry to get this listened to before, I wanted to get it all done before you came. So I listened to you. I started at 1.5 times, then I went up to 1.7, and then I listened to the very end at 2.0 and I tried it just to sort of see what that was like. I don't know how people do that, it scrambles my brain. It's the worst, but some people swear by it. They're like, 'That's how I get through books quickly is to go at one and a half speed.'Tanya:                                 28:18                    When narrators hear that, it's like we've been drained by a vampire, like all the blood leaves our face. And we're like, 'That's great.'Jess:                                     28:30                    There is something really (and I said this at the beginning that I wanted to come back to it) There's something really magical about having spent so much time in someone else's existence. You know, like I've been in someone's car, or they'd be listening to me on the way to work, and they're like, 'I feel like I know you.' And that is the same way I feel about the audio narrators that I listen to. Like Davina Porter, you know, I've listened to her voice so much that she's familiar to me and soothing and it's a reason that I relisten to those books when I'm feeling anxious because I have a relationship with that voice and I feel really privileged to be in that place.Tanya:                                 29:14                    What's interesting about that, to hear you say that is that many of us when we sit down in the booth, like right now I'm in my basement in my booth, it's dark and I have to sit down and remember that I'm going to tell you a story and I want to pull you in and I want to have a conversation with you. So it's like, it's really intimate. And that's good to hear that that works for you.Jess:                                     29:36                    Yeah, my producer at Vermont Public Radio taught me the coolest trick, and this of course doesn't work when you're totally by yourself, I suppose. But one of the things that she taught me to do is to catch her eye at moments where I felt it was really, really important to connect. And there's something about just looking at another human being when I'm in the booth that really does something to your voice. And especially right at the end of something and that's when I always try to catch her eye and sort of emote in a particular way. That was a really helpful trick she gave me and it helps me connect with whoever out there is listening. It's really a fun, amazing thing to get to do is to be in someone else's head, to be in someone else's ears, I think. So, speaking of reading audio books, listening to audio books, and reading, can we talk a little bit about what we've been listening to and reading? And for me it has been listening to, but I would love to hear what you guys have been reading this week.KJ:                                        30:33                    I have a really good one. I think Sarina mentioned this one on the podcast before, but I just want to shout out to Leigh Bardugo's Ninth House, which was a really, really fun fantasy read, which I personally finished over Halloween, but it's perfect for any dark and dreary fall season, or heck a beach read. Really, anything you could possibly come up with. Fun, paranormal, lots of suspense, great characters, a real page turner for me. I had a great time with it.Sarina:                                 31:06                    I'm so happy you liked it.Jess:                                     31:08                    Yeah. You two have been talking about that one for a long time. I got to catch up and read that one, too.Sarina:                                 31:12                    Do it.Jess:                                     31:12                    Sarina, what do you have?Sarina:                                 31:14                    Yesterday I read Never Have I Ever by Joshilyn Jackson, which you guys had an episode about, actually. And her writing is so beautiful and it sent me into a little spiral of trying to define what it means to have an unreliable narrator. And after I figure that out I'll get back to you.Jess:                                     31:35                    And reliable narrator meaning we just can't trust everything they're telling us, which I would think would put the author in a very tricky place. So I'm excited to hear more about that. I decided to re download and listen to Olive Kitteredge again because I'm going to listen to the new book Olive, again, I think is what it's called by Elizabeth Strout. And I have to say all Olive Kitteredge is even better than I remembered. It's just a beautiful, beautiful book. And the audio version of it is fantastic. It's a great book. Plus it puts me in Maine and I get in that Maine headspace and that's always good, too.Tanya:                                 32:12                    Well, I have something I'm reading. Because I narrate a lot of romance I like to read dark things for pleasure. So this is called The Chestnut Man and it's by Soren Sveistrup. It's about a serial killer, so it's pretty dark, but I'm really enjoying it.Jess:                                     32:30                    I'm totally into those books and I've got a lot of travel coming up so will be downloading that one, too. And Tanya, do you have a bookstore for us to talk about this week?Tanya:                                 32:40                    Sure. I live in Grand Rapids, Michigan and there's a great bookstore called Schuler Books. They have two locations and it's cozy and they have coffee and they also highlight a lot of local writers, which is always great to see.Jess:                                     32:57                    I'm sort of excited. I get to go to Nashville next week or later this week, which means I get to visit Parnassus. I'm so excited, it's going to be so much fun. Alright, I think that's it for today. And Sarina, would you like to take us out today?Sarina:                                 33:11                    Okay, everybody. Then, until next week, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.Jess:                                     33:29                    This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid. This is a public episode. 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Every nonfiction book starts out as a glimmer of an idea. A topic. An area of interest or expertise. But you can’t just pitch a book about beekeeping, kids. You need to know a whole lot more. Is it a beekeeping memoir? A beekeeping how-to? A meditation about the relationship between bees and humanity?In this episode, we dish about how to answer those questions, because—spoiler—that’s exactly how Jess, who just finished the draft of her second nonfiction book, has been spending her time. Well, not thinking about beekeeping, or at least, I don’t think so. She’s pretty cagey about what, exactly, she’s researching—but that’s a good thing, because this episode is about the first steps that lead to an eventual proposal and, ultimately a book, no matter what the topic. Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, a preview of the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, November 11, 2019: Top 5 Steps to Setting Up Your Author Presence on Amazon (Plus a Couple More for Extra Credit). Not joined that club yet? You’ll want to get on that. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month. As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode. To support the podcast and help it stay free, subscribe to our weekly #WritersTopFive email.LINKS FROM THE PODCASTThe Art of the Book Proposal: From Focused Idea to Finished Product, Eric MaiselThe Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers, Betsy LernerModern Love Series on AmazonModern Love Column, New York Times#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Jess: Jess has been all in this week! Katherine Center’s Things You Save in a Fire, How to Walk Away and the bridge story between those two novels, The Girl in the Plane, plus Happiness for Beginners, The Lost Husband, and Get Lucky.Also, Ali Wong’s Dear Girls, Ronan Farrow’s Catch and Kill, and Sarina Bowen’s Moonlighter!Sarina: The Virgin Gift, Lauren Blakely#FaveIndieBookstoreOctavia Books, New Orleans.This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. AND—they’ve got a new program for new nonfiction projects! Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.The image in our podcast illustration is by William Iven on Unsplash.Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)Hello listeners! If you’re in with us every week, you’re what I like to call “people of the book.’ And some of us book people discover somewhere along the way that not only we writers, we’re people with a gift for encouraging other writers. For some of us, that comes out in small ways, but for others it’s a calling and an opportunity to build a career doing work you love. Our sponsor, Author Accelerator, provides book coaching to authors (like me) but also needs and trains book coaches. If that’s got your ears perked up, head to https://www.authoraccelerator.com and click on “become a book coach.” Is it recording?Jess00:01Now it's recording. Go ahead. KJ00:45This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing. Jess00:49All right, let's start over. KJ00:51Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Jess00:54Okay.KJ00:54Now one, two, three. Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting the podcast about all things writing - nonfiction, fiction, proposals, essays, pitches, and as we say each and every week. This is the podcast about sitting down and getting your work done. Jess01:22I'm Jess Lahey. I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and a completed manuscript for book two, The Addiction Innoculation. And you can find my stuff in the New York Times and the Atlantic and various other places. KJ01:35Carry on, Sarina.Sarina01:40Hi, I'm Sarina Bowen. I'm the author of 30 plus romance novels and my last one was called Moonlighter and it just hit the USA Today.Best Sellers List. KJ01:51 I am KJ Dell'Antonia, the author of How To Be a Happier Parent, the former editor of the Motherlode blog at the New York Times and the author of a forthcoming novel that you'll hear all about as it comes out next summer. And yeah, wows all around. It's been it's been a good week. I think things are going pretty well for all of us. Jess02:18All of us. I think so, too. I'm finally recovered from getting the last book done and it's amazing how much stuff a person can push off until after. And like after meant after November 1st and so now my inbox is full of things with like all different color flags stuck in it, like deal with this after November 1st, deal with this after November 1st. And it's amazing how much stuff I actually piled on to deal with after November 1st and it's November 1st and I'm dealing with it. Welcome to after, I'm in the after mode now. And it's crazy. It's really good though. It was really freeing to be able to say, 'Just later', but later is now here. So anyway, but Sarina the thing that I wanted to mention is a huge congratulations because this is a new book in a new series for you, right?Sarina03:13Yeah. It's a spinoff because that's how I like to start series by spinning them off from existing characters. But it's definitely something new. I hadn't written a suspense plot really before. And yeah, it was hard and I really enjoyed it and I thought readers would follow me there, but of course I really wasn't sure.KJ03:35And they did.Jess03:35You can never be sure, but readers are fickles and they did. And it's really, really good. I was actually on my list of books I read, even though KJ pointed out that no one's going to trust me when I say anything about either The Chicken Sisters or any of your books. But I did love it and I love the fact that you're willing to push yourself to try lots of different things. And I think I even texted you earlier about a couple of the things that you've done that have made you nervous. When you first think, 'Should I write this?' And then you write it. And I'm always amazed how a) brave you are to write about stuff like a pregnant protagonist, which sounds crazy in romance. I mean, you would think that would never work, and it does, and it's fantastic. And I just, I love the fact that you're willing to push yourself because it would be so easy to say, 'I'm just going to write about single, heterosexual, white people because that's sort of the comfort zone. And yet you don't, you write about all kinds of things and I think that's really cool. Sarina04:36Well, thank you. The truth is though if I only wrote about people like me, we'd have a lot of books about people who don't leave home very much. Jess05:03My suspense for today is if the leftover Halloween candy is still gonna be here when everybody gets home later on today. Yeah. Can we point out today is (the day we're recording) November 1st since I already blew it and mentioned that. So that means it's the first day of NaNoWriMo. Are we gonna talk at all about that reality?KJ05:32Sure, I will. But before we do, we do have a topic for today. We have a plan - today we're going to be talking - Jess, name it.Jess05:43We are going to be talking about new projects. Because during my recovery from finishing the last book, I had no intention to have a new idea, but I did. So we'll talk about that in just a minute.KJ05:58This is going to be like the how to start, what to do before you start, that kind of thing. But meanwhile, since some of us are starting... Jess06:04Specifically non nonfiction. So my thing today is going to be about what you do when suddenly you have an idea for a new nonfiction, which requires a lot of organization from day one, so that you don't get yourself in the weeds and off on the wrong foot. But let's talk about November 1st - NaNo. What's happening people?KJ06:25The timing actually turned out to be really good for me. So everybody knows I've been working on what we'll just call novel two for the sake of ignoring the one in the drawer. Oh my gosh, my mother. Apparently I gave her my first novel, which I wrote 15 years ago and I got a text from her recently, 'Do you remember Mud Season? I was just reading.' I was like, 'No, don't read that.' I was listening to a podcast with Grant Faulkner, who is the person who heads up NaNoWriMo right now, although he is not the founder. And he specifically and sort of narrowly described the goal, which I had forgotten, which is to write 50,000 words of a novel. And I thought, 'Oh, well, okay.' So I pulled out the words that I have already written of what we're calling book two. I tossed aside all the words that I wrote around various other outlines and concepts that sort of need massive reworking. This is just the chunk that I really have and it's 30,000 words. So you know what I need to have a book? 50,000 words. So, I started today, I'm shooting to write 50,000 words of my novel in November. It is not a cold draft, but I think we all make our own NaNo rules, but I'm sort of enjoying the fact that I'm really kind of hewing a little more closely to the NaNoWriMo rhythm than I thought I was going to be.Jess08:06I'm sure there are NaNo purists who are saying, 'Oh no, you must start something new on day one.' But we don't roll that way.Sarina08:14That was never the rules, sorry.Jess08:22I think NaNo is a great time to (as we said last time around) just to take a hold of the productivity that's in the air, the sort of writing Juju that's floating around in November and do with it what you will.KJ08:34So I already nailed my 1600, I believe I wrote 1618 today. I'm feeling good. Jess08:55So in November are your stickers the value for the words that you like? How are you stickering? For those of you who are new to the podcast, we have this thing we do call stickering. Sarina and KJ and I text each other the word sticker when we get our sticker for the day. And it is literally a sticker that goes into our calendar. In fact, Sarina gave me some llamas for this month, which was great timing because I didn't have any stickers for this month. And it is literally a sticker that is of your own definition. Right now (as we're gonna get into in a minute) mine are research stickers this month. But it can be anything you want. And it means, 'Yay me. I did it.'KJ09:36Yes, my stickers this month (which are coffee pot or coffee cups. Super cute little pile of stickers.) will be for 1612 words. Or, like if I decide, I may end up having to decide not to write on Thanksgiving cause we're having a family dinner somewhere that involves traveling. So I may up some word counts in order to allow for some days off. I think the thing that's going to be different for me - sometimes I just want to just want to get to my words. And so when I write things that I delete sometimes I just leave the words in the word count until I'm done writing. Not this time, because the goal is to actually finish this draft. The words have to be words. That kind of varies. Sometimes they can be outlining words or they can be pre-writing words or they can be other kinds of words. But this month, hear me now, they have to be actual wordsJess10:44And Sarina, what's happening with you?Sarina10:46Well, I have a book that needs 25,000 words, but they have to be perfect by the end of the month so I can't do NaNo. I have to finish this project, and then make it beautiful, and that's just how it is.KJ11:01Well, I'll be representing you.Jess11:04You still use stickers during that process though, right? Sarina11:07Yup, absolutely.Jess11:09And during that process, are your stickers for editing, for writing, do you change it up day to day, whatever your goals are?Sarina11:16Well, they'll be writing for 1200 words. And then if I run out of book, then I'll revisit.Jess11:24Okay, sounds good. So I guess this leads us into the announcement that I have to make, which is, I already said on the podcast that I was going to be working on that novel, which sounded great when we were talking about it. It really, really did. And then I spent a lot of time rereading what I had. And thinking about what I really wanted to do and thinking about what KJ had said about what do you write in your head? And I just don't love writing fiction. I just don't, it's not what gets me excited to sit down. And you know, when in On Writing, when Stephen King talks about the fact that he threw away the opening chapters of Carrie because it was really hard, that's not what this is. I really don't think I'm just saying I don't want to do it cause it's hard. It just doesn't feed me. It just doesn't get me excited and make me want to go to work every day. And frankly, what happened was, and I have to be super, super cagey about this because I haven't even talked with my agent about it, but I had an idea for the next book after the addiction book. And I am so excited, at least right now for this crazy, in-depth research phase. I've said this before, what Mary Roach, author of Guts and a bunch of other cool books, calls her three month research flail. Where she jumps into the research and figures out what her book is. And so that's what I'm doing. I'm starting a new proposal for a new nonfiction book and that's what our topic is going to be about today. So, sorry to pull the rug out from under my NaNo plans, but they changed.KJ13:05I think that's really cool. And I don't know about Sarina, but I personally had no plans to actually require you to write fiction. You're okay. You be you. Jess13:18And that book is just still sitting there. I still have an internal relationship with those characters and I don't know if it'll ever get written. But Jenny Nash, if you're listening, that's not what I'm working on this month. But frankly, whenever I get this excited about something new, I'm all over it. Our official topic for today is what to do when you have an idea for a nonfiction book and you're starting to wrap your brain around a topic and think about a proposal. So, the very first thing I did was I took the book proposal for the addiction book, which is the long form. I think we talked at one point about the fact that if you are going to go back to your same editor that you've had at a publisher with a new book idea, you may not necessarily have to write the mammoth (in my case, I think it was 70 or 80 page book proposal that includes everything from the marketing stuff, and comparable titles that are out there, and who you are) that's for a publisher that doesn't know anything about you necessarily. But with the addiction book (simply because it's a difficult topic and we weren't 100% sure that my editor was going to be fully on board) my agent and I went out with a full, finished book proposal to my editor so that if she didn't want it, we could go out to everybody, right away. It would be done, locked down, in perfect shape. We didn't have to do that, my editor wanted it. But I also found that while it's a ton of work, it is such a great process to have to go through with a book. And, KJ, as you know from working on the stuff with Jenny for The Chicken Sisters, you have to be able to tell people really quickly what your book is about. You have to hone your ideas about what the chapters are going to be about. And that whole process for me is really, really helpful. So, while it's maybe, possibly more than I need to do right now, it's really good for my thinking. I don't know how you feel about that in terms of when you do nonfiction book proposals or your outlines, I guess.Sarina15:35Yeah. Well, the thing is, if I were proposing even like a series of novels to an editor that I already knew, I don't think I'd even want to start the project if I hadn't done that. Like I can't imagine committing to something without that level of ... cause it's just so much work, it's like more than a year of your life. And I think I would want to do all of that. And in the end it would not be wasted.KJ16:04Well, we've talked about the risks of promising to write a book that isn't what you want to write. This prevents that. Jess16:12It also helps me gauge the competition on the market. You know, I have to go out there. I've already started buying books and trips to bookstores. In fact, I was just in Sacramento and I came across a bookstore there called Beers Books. And it is a combination new and used bookstore. And I went bonkers. My suitcase was full of books coming back from Sacramento. It was great. And so buying books is sort of the first part of that process for me, figuring out what's out there in the market. And so I might as well gather that information since that's a piece of the book proposal I'm going to have to put together anyway and realizing what's already out there. Am I competing with something else that's better? Or am I the best person? Why am I the right person to work on this thing? And the answer may come back that I'm not. And that's all valuable information. So yeah, I don't have any problem working on the book proposal in-depth before anyone sees it. KJ17:15So, step one...Jess17:16Step one for me. So I went back to that old book proposal that's in good shape and essentially renamed it, did a save as, went through, left the headers in, took out the text for the old book. And I don't even know what the title for this new book is, but I have a placeholder and now I've sort of focused my thinking by looking at the book proposal to know what do I need to think about? Okay, well I'm going to have to think about what the chapters might be. I'm going to have to think about the competing title stuff. So the book proposal itself gives me a really good way to do that. If you don't already have a book proposal for a previous book we have some suggestions that we'll put in the show notes and I can't come up with them right off the top of my head. But KJ, I know you have one of the books that we happen to love for nonfiction book proposals.KJ18:07I believe it's the Art of the Book Proposal. Yes, that'll be in the show notes. Incidentally, just to toss it out there, head over to amwritingpodcast.com and sign up and you'll get the show notes in your inbox every time. So anytime we say this you can just be like, 'Oh sure, those are in my inbox.' And you can pop in there and look and that would be very handy.Jess18:33That book is really helpful, too. As is Betsy Lerner's book, The Forest for the Trees, gives you sort of good ways to think about the hard questions. Am I the right person to write this? Is this something I want to spend the next couple of years of my life on? You know, that kind of stuff. So number one, start thinking in terms of an outline for the skeleton of the book proposal.KJ18:57Wait, just to go back, one of the fun things in The Art of the Book Proposal that I think we almost do without realizing it is sort of thinking about all the different possible approaches to a topic. And I wondered, are you doing that? So you know, there's this sort of, 'I could write a how to about this. I could write a memoir about this. I could write a big picture research book about this.' Is that part of it or was it super clear that if I'm going to tackle this topic it's going to be like this.Jess19:27It has not been super clear for a couple of reasons that I'll talk about later on. But the idea of, is this a Gift of Failure type book? And I also had a really narrow focus at first, but lots of conversations with my husband (who's my best sounding board for this kind of stuff) has broadened the focus a little bit. So trying to get at what this thing is...yeah, that book does a really good job of breaking that down and helping you look at all of the different possibilities that you may not have thought of yet. And the nice thing about also getting your hands on a lot of other books that might be in your comparable title section is that they probably do it lots of different ways, too, and makes you sort of say, 'Oh, look at how that person did it, that's really interesting, maybe I can borrow from that. Or I think I might avoid this way because I don't think it works as well.' So yeah, that's also part of the honing process for me. What is it going to look like? And that's been an ongoing process. So number one, look at the book proposal, come up with your ideas of approach, come up with your ideas of how you're going to have to think about it when you read the research. Number two, get the books that are the research. You know, if you can't afford to buy the books, go to the library. Interlibrary loan can be invaluable if you're near a university. That's been invaluable for me because a bigger library is always better. Simply because there could even be things that are out of print that are really helpful. And in my case there were two books that are out of print that have been really, really helpful in helping me shape my thinking on this. Number three sounds really simple. But for me this is always really, really a big deal. I made a new email folder in at my email app on my computer. (I use the mail app that's on my Apple computer.) And having a folder that has the subject of the book is really great because I bounce a lot of ideas off of my husband. I bounced a couple of ideas off of some people I know in this field. All of those emails go into that email folder so that if I'm ever looking for the emails having to do with this topic, they're all there. And in fact that's what I'm doing right now, with the addiction book, I'm going back through that folder and I am figuring out what I might have forgotten, I might have left out. So once you have your email folder, once you've got all your books, once you're working on the proposal stuff, I also create a new Scrivener doc. A new Scrivener doc for me just gets my brain in the right place, especially since with Scrivener you can create a new folder for each chapter. You can move them around. So Scrivener really helps me shape my thinking, it's been invaluable for me as a tool. And then honestly, I just start trying to think like an emerging expert in the topic. I start following people on Twitter that might be a part of this topic. I start looking for the big people in the field and wondering, 'Are these people who might someday want to blurb this book?' Just little things - we're talking about a book that if it even gets written isn't going to be out there for like three or four years, but you have to start (at least I do) putting myself in the headspace of someone who's trying to become an expert in this topic. And as you well know, Sarina, this means that I am going to over-research everything. I am going to do a deep dive into the history of the topic, but that for me is what gets me out of bed in the morning. And it's what changed my mind about what I'm working on this month. And it's just fun. It's so much fun. I think it's the reason I love journalism so much - is the idea that it's my job to suddenly become an expert in a topic, and then write about it, and translate it for someone who doesn't necessarily want to go and do all the research that I love doing. And that's just really fun for me. Sarina23:37Well, I'm intimidated on your behalf. Jess23:41It's so much fun. We should clarify for the listeners that we are without KJ. She lost power at her house, which is something that we actually battle with. Sarina and KJ both lost power this morning due to a windstorm. I'm still good at the moment, although it's very windy here. It sounds like trucks are roaring by my house, but we're just going to carry on without KJ. I think that's really about it for me. Right now it's all about headspace. It's all about immersing myself in the topic and being excited. And my poor husband is going to be hearing a lot about this topic. And that's fine cause it's actually a topic he's really interested in, too. So for us, that's fun. That's life in the geeky, Lahey household. And actually, believe it or not, my younger son (who is still at home with us) is interested in the topic, too. So it's led to some really interesting conversations and it's also been fun to watch him get excited about a book that he probably will not have any part in. In terms of showing up in the book, because he's definitely in Gift of Failure, and he's definitely in the addiction book. And I think he's just about done being a part of my work. And of course he's been in lots of New York Times articles. There are pictures of him in the New York Times, which he's cool with and he's fine with all that, but I think he's excited that I'm working on something that may not include him as a potential topic. So there we are. One thing that was also really fun and this sounds like a really nothing sort of to-do list task. But I cleaned my office. And for me I used to do that as part of the process, at the end of every single chapter I finished in the addiction book, I would clean up because things would just get disastrous in here. There'd be piles of books and piles of research. And it was a really cleansing experience to put the research away from let's say the chapter on peers and peer influence and move on to the chapter on education on prevention programs in schools. Because I would then put away all those books, put away all those articles, and take out a whole new stack of stuff. And it was sort of a mind cleansing thing. And so the same thing has happened. I still have all my research out for the addiction book because I'm deep into edits now. And actually speaking of which, I'm working on edits right now because I'm going to have a meeting with my editor on the 20th of November, in which I have to have my arms around all the edits. So all those papers and articles and everything are still all around me. It's just that I'm making space for the new books on the new topic. It has its own bookshelf, I have a bookshelf dedicated to this topic. It's still only fills one shelf, but I'm sure that will change with time. But, it's really fun. It's a mental shift and that mental shift is really fun and exciting. And yeah, I'm back to being excited to go to work every morning and having a vacation between the two was really good.Sarina26:49That's terrific. You just reminded me of that internet meme of the guy and the girl walking down the street holding hands and he's looking over his shoulder at the other hot girl. Cause that's how it feels when you have to finish up the last bits of one project, but your head is already looking at another one.Jess27:11This was a first for me, actually. But you do this all the time, where you're writing one book and editing the last. This is new for me, but I hadn't really even thought about that as that's something that you have to do all the time.Sarina27:25Yeah, I do. If you spread it out a little bit, it's actually kind of nice. Because then you can be super picky on one topic and sort of expansive on the other one.Jess27:35Oh, that's a really good way of thinking about it. Speaking of which (that meme about the guy looking back) I watched the new series Modern Love on Amazon. You know, adapted from the Modern Love columns from the New York Times and there is a shot that is a direct call out to that meme in one of the episodes. And by the way, the Modern Love adaptation for Amazon is fantastic, way better than I ever thought it would be. But it was so funny to see the shot and say, 'Wait a second, that's that meme right there. I can see it.'. Sarina28:08So I heard that you had a new bookstore for us. Jess28:13I do. Tt's a bookstore I had visited once in New Orleans and I saw Anya Kamenetz from NPR, the education editor at NPR, she had a book event there for her book that was coming out (this was years ago). And it's Octavia Books in New Orleans and they sold books for my recent event down in New Orleans. But it's a tremendous bookstore. Curation is fantastic, people are so nice. And it's a quaint bookstore in the middle of a lovely little neighborhood in New Orleans. So another one of those bookstores where you walk in and you just sort of feel at home. So can't recommend that one more heartily. But speaking of bookstores, have you been reading anything interesting?Sarina28:58I just read a really sexy novella that my friend Lauren Blakely finished.Jess29:09You don't see a lot of novellas these days.Sarina29:12Oh, because of the holidays?Jess29:14No, these days in general. Novellas are tricky. As you well know, you wrote one.Sarina29:18Yeah, novellas are not my chosen length. But this book, it's going to do amazing. She did an amazing job on it and it's called The Virgin Gift. And it isn't out yet, but this was one fun moment where I helped somebody with something when I wasn't expecting to. Lauren Blakely writes so many wonderful books all the time, without any difficulty. But she happened to ask me a question about plot, just that came up in conversation, and it was one of those moments when solving someone else's problem is just so much easier than solving your own. And I was so happy to come up with this tiny little idea that helped her finish her book because it's so satisfying to solve that kind of problem. And then you know, your own plot problem will just grate on you for days, and days, and days and then once in awhile you can mention it to another person and get the idea you need just just by accident. So that was super fun. And then this week I got to read it and see how it all turned out.Sarina30:31That's really cool. Being a part of someone's book from the beginning is always so exciting. It's like when I get to read your books and I realize, 'Oh wait, I remember hearing about that six months ago.' I love that. Jess30:42I have read so many books, mainly because I was on vacation after having finished my book and I've been flying a lot, which means audio books. So you people had been recommending Katherine Center's books. Specifically Things You Save In a Fire. And so I I downloaded Things You Save In a Fire and loved it. And then I very quickly downloaded How To Walk Away, Happiness for Beginners, and The Lost Husband. And I have gone through all of them and it's always interesting to read an author's work out of order because she's evolved as a writer, as we all do. Her Things You Save In a Fire is her newest, and Lost Husband is years ago, and I'm now listening to a book of hers called Get Lucky. And it's interesting to read her evolution as a writer and she's delightful. She's just delightful. She's good, the humor is fantastic, the romance is fantastic, the suspense is fantastic, the secrets, there's lots of secrets. It's just delightful stuff. Sarina31:56I can't believe that you're two books ahead of me now. I've only read two of those four and I'm going to do a little video about Things You Save In a Fire because I love it so much.Jess32:05Oh, good. So, Get this. I also listened to Ali Wong's book, Dear Girls, which is so raunchy and so funny. It's letters to her daughter about her life. And if you've ever watched Ali Wong's comedy, either Baby Cobra or the other one that I can't remember at the moment. You know, she's raunchy, she's dirty, she's hysterical. And Dear Girls does not disappoint. It's really, really funny. Although, how you write a book to your daughters that they can't possibly listen to until they're in their twenties, I just don't even know. And listening to still more Harlan Coben. But then I also listened to Ronan Farrow's Catch and Kill. Which was fascinating, really fascinating. And it was more than I thought it was going to be in terms of content. So anyway, it's been amazing reading. But thank you so much for the Katherine Center recommendation. Because she's not my normal turf reading wise and I have been sad every time I finished her books. And do we have time to really, really quickly mention the bridge thing? So on her website, you pointed out that she wrote a short story to bridge two of her novels. And have you read it yet? Sarina33:19I have not. So you can't spoil it. Jess33:21No, no, no I'm not going to spoil it.Sarina33:22But it is a genius idea. Jess33:26How clever is that? And here's what she does. There's stuff in that bridge story that I would have been like, 'Oh no, save that for the novels. That's the good stuff.' And she doesn't, that story stands on its own as a really lovely piece of writing that gets to own its own turf within the universe of those two novels. And so, I loved it. It was included at the end of the audio. She reads it actually, Katherine Center reads it, at the end of How To Walk Away, I think. And loved it. So good. And that idea is great. And her website, as we've been saying, is super colorful and wonderful and yeah, she's delightful. Sarina34:47Keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game. Until next week. Jess34:53This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid. 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

Writers need a page, a profile and a whole lot of patience and persistence to even feel like we’re close to getting Facebook “right.”The question first appeared, as these things do, in the #AmWriting Facebook group. A book is coming! I’m on Facebook (obviously), but do I need an author page in addition to my profile? Why—and what should I do with one once I’ve got one? Our answer is yes, but of course it doesn’t stop there. In this episode, we talk the ins and outs of Facebook for writers of all kinds, with a primer on the basics and then a few ninja-level tips from Sarina.Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, a preview of the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, November 4, 2019: Top 5 Things You Don’t Need to Be a “Real” Writer. We’d love your support, and we hope you’ll love our Top 5s. Join in for actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month. As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode. To support the podcast and help it stay free, subscribe to our weekly #WritersTopFive email.LINKS FROM THE PODCASTThe #AmWriting Facebook GroupGrown and Flown on FacebookRon Lieber’s Author Facebook PageSarina’s Facebook PageSarendipity (Sarina’s Facebook Fan Group)Jess’s Facebook PageKJ’s Facebook Page, which she didn’t even remember existed but will now tend as directed by Sarina.ManyChat#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Jess: Home, Run Away, Harlan Coben (also mentioned, Tell No One)KJ: Kitchens of the Great Midwest, J. Ryan StradalSarina: Ninth House, Leigh Bardugo#FaveIndieBookstoreGibson’s, Concord NHThis episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.The image in our podcast illustration is by NeONBRAND on Unsplash.Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)KJ:                                        00:01                    Hello listeners, KJ here. If you’re in with us every week, you’re what I like to call “people of the book.’ And some of us book people discover somewhere along the way that not only we writers, we’re people with a gift for encouraging other writers. For some of us, that comes out in small ways, but for others it’s a calling and an opportunity to build a career doing work you love. Our sponsor, Author Accelerator, provides book coaching to authors (like me) but also needs and trains book coaches. If that’s got your ears perked up, head to https://www.authoraccelerator.com and click on “become a book coach.” Is it recording?Jess:                                     00:02                    Now it's recording, go ahead.KJ:                                        00:45                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.Jess:                                     00:45                    Alright, let's start over.KJ:                                        00:45                    Awkward pause, I'm going to rustle some papers.Jess:                                     00:45                    Okay.KJ:                                        00:54                    Now one, two, three. Hey all, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is your podcast, your weekly podcast, our podcast, about writing all the things. Fiction, nonfiction, pitches, proposals, essays you know what? All the things, except poetry. None of us do that. But we did have a poet on once. I dunno, I just was thinking that the other day like, wait a minute, it's not quite all the things. Alright, back to the regularly scheduled introduction. #AmWriting is the podcast about sitting down and getting your work, whatever it is, done.Jess:                                     01:40                    KJ, before I introduce myself, speaking of the intro changing up, we got an email this week from someone who said, 'Wait, you changed the pattern at the beginning of the episode and I don't know what to do with that.' It was very, very funny.KJ:                                        01:54                    I love that people go back and listen to all the episodes. It brings me incredible joy.Jess:                                     01:58                    Yes, it does. I am Jess Lahey, I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and a forthcoming book about preventing substance abuse in kids. And I write at various places including the New York Times, Washington Post and the Atlantic.Sarina:                                 02:13                    And I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of 30 plus contemporary romance novels. And you can find more of me at sarinabowen.com.KJ:                                        02:22                    And I am KJ Dell'Antonia, a novelist and also the author of the nonfiction book How to Be a Happier Parent, first novel will be out next summer, more to come I hope. You'll sometimes still find my work at the New York Times and in a variety of other places. So that's it, that's who we are. We know some things and today our plan is to talk about what we know about Facebook. But before we do, I just want to thank everyone who has gone in and subscribed to our weekly emails that come out every week about the podcast. That is a new thing that we're doing and I love that people are finding it useful. Every week we send you little something about what the episode is, all the links, and a way to see a transcript, which is pretty cool. And also huge shout out and thanks to those of you who have signed up to support the podcast and get our weekly top fives for writers. It's huge, we feel so grateful and excited that you guys want to support us, and want to be a part of it, and want to get our top fives, which we're having a great time doing. So you know, thanks to everyone for that. And if you're looking to do either of those things, head over to amwritingpodcast.com and you'll find all the links there.Jess:                                     03:42                    Alright, let's do it. You said our topic is Facebook. What do you mean about this Facebook thing?KJ:                                        03:54                    Well, it's a great place to put up pictures of your kids and offend all your relatives on your political views. But as a writer, people have questions like, 'Should you have an author page and a personal page? Should you do everything from your personal page? How has this evolved over the years? And I have wrestled with it. Sarina has come to some pretty good terms with it and I'll just also throw out there that back in 2013 when I started with the Times, they actually said to me, 'We do not want to create a Facebook page for the Motherlode blog, which doesn't exist anymore anyway. So just use your own. It was one of the best gifts that they gave me. I don't think it was actually the right choice for them, but well, and here and today I'm sitting here with no author page, but the AmWriting page and everything I do professionally ends up on my personal page and I'm not sure that's where I should be.Jess:                                     05:01                    I'm a mess. Sarina, you go cause you've got a whole thing. You use it beautifully.Sarina:                                 05:07                    Well, thank you. But we have to talk about vocabulary for a second. Because people have a profile, not a page. And we just want to be careful to use that vocabulary correctly because if listeners go and try to untangle our suggestions, they might run into a little trouble. So every person, like the way that we would define a person has the right under the Facebook terms of service, to have one profile. So, if you use a pseudonym for your writing, you may find yourself in the awkward position of trying to fake it to Facebook that you can have two profiles. And yeah, so that's a good time. But the profile is the main way that most people look at Facebook, you login with your profile. Now a page, you can have as many pages as you want. A page is meant to be representing something that's not a person. Like a brand or a business or it can be a person, like a personality. So I have a profile under Sarina White Bowen, it's three words. And then I have a Sarina Bowen page. And pages and profiles have different things that they can do, they're not identical in their functionality. And that's why we get into these tricky discussions because the way that pages and profiles behave is not identical and that's where some of the weird fun comes in.Jess:                                     06:54                    Well and honestly that's where most of my apathy/confusion lies. Mainly because for me, my profile, Jessica Lahey. Actually, I think my profile is Jessica Potts Lahey because my maiden name is Potts. So that's my personal profile, the thing I originally signed up for Facebook with. That has long since gone out the window as a private, personal thing. Like I get 30 friend requests a day and I accept some and don't. But most of them are people I don't even know. I've just long since given up the ghost on that. But it is how I keep in touch with childhood friends and high school acquaintances and things like that. Then I also have a page as Jessica Lahey and that was something my publisher wanted and it was important to them. But see, here's the problem - if you're accepting any old person out there to your profile, and I'm posting things to my page and to my profile and honestly, there's a lot of overlap between the two. I wish I'd been more strategic about this from the beginning. And I somehow had a profile that was really just personal stuff and then shuttled everyone else over to my page, like put up kind of some kind of like, 'No, I will not friend you, but here's my page.' I wish I'd been more strategic about that, but I didn't and so now I have a mess. I have, two things, neither of which is personal, and both kind of get duplicate posts.Sarina:                                 08:28                    Well, I could make you feel better by telling you that we're all in the same mess, honestly. Because Facebook has treated the two things differently over time. So, it used to be that in the glory days of 2010 you could make a page and even if you'd gotten this right from the very first day...Jess:                                     08:53                    If I could have seen the future...Sarina:                                 08:55                    Well, that's the thing. You would have still not been able to do it exactly right because the behavior that would have been optimized at the time would have changed. So back in the glory days, you could've made that page that you were just talking about and kept your profile private and you could have posted the things you were writing and thinking about it on this page and people would see it and they would interact with you and your page would grow, and grow, and grow. And you might have like 30,000 followers. However, Facebook has very much become a pay to play platform and now they would want you to pay every time you put up a post on your page that you wanted more than say 5% of your followers to see. So the fact that when you share meaningful things on your profile, at least there's some chance that the people who are connected to you will see it. So it's not entirely clear to me that you wouldn't be a very sad owner of a highly followed page by this point. But everybody who relies upon Facebook to push content into the world has been increasingly unhappy with their results because it's not just that Facebook wants your money (and they absolutely do want it), but also just the number of pages in the world grew at such an exponential rate that they can't actually show everybody all the stuff that they're following anymore. Like if you liked your dentist's office in 2013, then you know, the odds of you actually seeing a post from the dentist are really bad. Like the pages who you might actually see are the people who have been out there working it so hard since the very beginning, with a nice pace of content release, and a good interaction that...it's very few pages that are still getting that kind of play. You mentioned that you get a lot of friend requests. Facebook actually caps the number of friends you can have at 5,000.Jess:                                     11:05                    Early on I think it was like 2000 or something. But yeah, it's definitely 5,000. I'm getting close and that worries me. Because what if someone I really want to follow, that's why I don't accept all of them or even real people...KJ:                                        11:19                    People don't know you didn't accept them. And probably most of their goals is just to follow you, which is what happens if someone puts in a friend request and you say no, they end up following you.Jess:                                     11:32                    That's right. Yeah, I forgot about that.KJ:                                        11:35                    At least you've got that going for you.Sarina:                                 11:36                    So, another factor is that now Messenger is tied in with the people you're friends with on Facebook. So I have stopped accepting friend requests completely, unless of course I met the person.KJ:                                        11:51                    Unless it's your friend.Sarina:                                 11:53                    Or, but I got some friend requests after that retreat we went to in Maine and I accepted those. But I don't accept random requests anymore because I've discovered it's just a way for readers to bug me. Like when is such and such a thing coming out and you know, there just aren't enough hours in the day for me to do a good job answering those messages.Jess:                                     12:16                    Actually, I'm so glad you said that because that has been a source of anxiety and frustration for me in that the number of direct messages I'm getting via various apps has gone through the roof and it's a lot of people asking very personal questions about their own children. I got one the other day and she sent me this long, long, long message about what she's going through with her child. And she wrote the word please and she sent a picture of herself with her child.KJ:                                        12:48                    I wish you could auto reply from Messenger. Because if you had that that said, 'I'm sorry, I can't...' I suppose you could just type one. Okay, we're going to get back to how everyone should use Facebook in a second, but just to solve this particular problem with which I am somewhat familiar, type something up, and imagine yourself as your assistant. 'I'm sorry, Mrs. Lahey can't respond to all.' And you know you're gonna feel like a jerk, but Mrs. Lahey can't respond personally to everyone and that leaves you the freedom to do it. To take a step back, we have people on our Facebook group page, which is a whole other thing, and is a great tool for various kinds of authors, particularly I think in nonfiction. Someone was saying, 'Here I am and my first book is coming out and should I create an author page?' And there are reasons to say yes to that, I think.Sarina:                                 14:07                    Yes, there are. One of the reasons you might need an author page is if you want to advertise something, you can't advertise from a profile, you have to advertise from a page. So, the main reason that the Sarina Bowen author page continues to grow a following is because of paid advertising. And when you use paid advertising you collect likes sort of by accident. So you should never run the kind of ad that just gets likes because that's pointless. But if you have something to advertise like 'Look, this is my new book. Here is the link at Apple books.' Then that is something I advertise and the page does grow its following that way. So I would say that if you have even a 20% chance of ever wanting to advertise something, you should set up that author page. But then you should not obsess about how many followers it has. You should post only often enough so that it looks like the lights are on. And you don't need to worry about it. It needs to be set up so that there's somewhere people can find this kind of information, like the link to join your newsletter, and the link for your own personal webpage. So you need to be listed there because a lot of people will use Facebook as like a global directory. So you need to be find-able, but you do not need to obsess about how many people are following you there. So you can really put it as one of those things on your Sunday promo calendar where you're like, 'Oh, time to stop by the neighborhood of my Facebook page and maybe update something. You know, a book I'm reading or an article I put out this week.'Jess:                                     16:05                    I use it for my speaking calendar, too. Like you know, 'Oh I'm going to be in the next week or month or whatever I'm going to be in so-and-so.' One thing I would like to add is that so early on in my promotion plan for Gift of Failure, my publisher very much wanted me to have a Facebook page because one of the things they did during my pub week was that I added my publisher as an administrator to my Facebook page and they posted a couple of ads. So that was wonderful and helpful.KJ:                                        16:37                    That's really nice. I have not heard of a publisher doing that, which just means I haven't heard of it. I advertised my book personally a couple of times. But I actually did it from the #AmWriting page, I think, because we have a page and I don't remember if I have a page.Jess:                                     17:00                    I think they did two or three ads just during pub week itself. And that was nice. They wanted to know as part of my original, the fact that I had one was what interested them. So I don't think they actually care that much about my followers. Who knows. Anyway, I want to make sure that was in there.KJ:                                        17:22                    When you pay to place a Facebook ad from your page, that has nothing to do with how many followers your page has. It goes to that subset of people that you hopefully carefully create within the Facebook ad maker.Sarina:                                 17:40                    That's right. The ad engine is a vast thing. There are entire podcasts about the Facebook ad engine. So, we won't cover that today but it does give you access to basically everyone on Facebook and Instagram.Jess:                                     17:58                    And you can target very carefully and all that sort of thing?Sarina:                                 18:00                    Yes, sort of carefully. But yes.Jess:                                     18:03                    Okay. Anything else here?Sarina:                                 18:06                    I do have a page and I do have a group, cause you mentioned groups, and groups are lovely and for a couple of reasons. One is that they gel with what Mark Zuckerberg claims to be his new idea for what Facebook should be, which is groups of like-minded people talking to each other. So I actually have a fan group on Facebook.Jess:                                     18:41                    I belong and I love it. I love your fan group and it is so much fun to go in there and look at what's being posted. I love your fan group.Sarina:                                 18:51                    It's called Sarendipity and I'm deeply uncomfortable with the idea of having a fandom. I don't like to use the word fan, I'm not saying that I don't use it, but I don't really want to be that person. It's kind of like there's always a party that I'm hosting and I have to show up, you know. But what happens is that people tend to go there to talk about things that come up in my books and it really takes the pressure off of me. So in May, I had this book where one of the characters, who was known as lobster shorts, that was his avatar on an app. And one of the central conceits of the book is that the other person in the book doesn't know that lobster shorts is really his neighbor. So they have this whole conversation and I swear there are still people posting various lobster clothing in my group, you know, five months later I'm still seeing, look at this lobster shirt I found. So that's super fun because then the discussion doesn't have to be about whether or not you liked the book or what I'm having for lunch. It's like a commonality. This thing that we've all found funny and here's a little more of it. So my group is full of posts about apples because of one of my series.Jess:                                     20:21                    Your group also, I have to say, there was one thread that was posted by one of your fans and it was a question and it was, 'How did you discover Sarina Bowen?' And it was one of the most and incredibly fascinating look at how readers find authors. Some of them were, 'I discovered her through Elle Kennedy, I was an Elle Kennedy reader.' Some were, 'Amazon recommended Sarina because I read X'. It was fascinating and it was a wealth of information about how people stumble upon new authors. I loved reading that thread.Sarina:                                 20:56                    You're right, that was fascinating. But you also said that I didn't post it. There are lots of authors who do ask that question, who are able to ask questions about themselves without wanting to jump off something high. And, but I can't, it's just not me to do that. There's also other romance authors who posts like Towel Tuesday. And so on Tuesday there'll be some photo of a guy in a towel and the other romance readers are like, 'Ooh, good one.'KJ:                                        21:23                    I thought it was going to be the author and a towel. That's brave.Sarina:                                 21:29                    Well now you're really scaring me. That's not me either. And I really struggle with what is my role in that group. And there are so many ways to do it. And if you are a person, as an author, who is comfortable hosting that kind of party all the time, then the group is probably your greatest asset.KJ:                                        21:54                    Alternatively, if you are a person who, as an author, wants to generally answer those kinds of questions that Jess is getting by Messenger, who has a nonfiction platform, which is self-help or that kind of thing you could create... Yeah. Ron Lieber does it really well, that's what you were going to say.Jess:                                     22:26                    No, I was going to say Grown and Flown, Lisa Heffernan and Mary Dell Harrington, they do that incredibly well. They use those questions as fodder for posts on their massive, massive group for Grown and Flown.KJ:                                        22:42                    Right, but they started out as a group and a blog and only later became a book. I guess what I'm saying is if you are Lori Gottlieb, or you, or Ron Lieber, you could use Facebook to start a group in which people discuss the topic of your book. But, I think that there would be a pretty high maintenance requirement there. I mean, at a certain point it would probably become somewhat self sustaining, but for a while I feel like it would be really demanding that you find and put up questions, and respond to things, and keep track. I think that'd be a pretty big time investment, but it might be a worthwhile one.Jess:                                     23:30                    It would be a big investment.KJ:                                        23:31                    I'm not suggesting you do it, this is a general. Let me just say, I don't think that's you, you need to write books. But there might be people for whom it would be a great strategy. For example, the author of Quiet, Susan Cain has said, 'I thought about writing another book and then I realized, no, my mission is to keep talking about this one.' She does it in a different forum. But if that's where you are, if your mission for the next few years is to talk about the topic of your nonfiction probably. Then that could be good.Jess:                                     24:15                    As a speaker, I have to say, reader questions are incredible fodder for either articles, new chapters, blog posts, things to talk about on stage. I have this sort of wealth of stories and many of them came from readers who wrote me, or posted, or messaged, or whatever and said, 'Here's what's going on and here's how I've used the things you wrote about.' So that can be an incredibly valuable thing and if you want to mine that for all it's worth, a little bit of effort could pay off big time.KJ:                                        24:47                    Right. All right, so we got the basics. You've probably already got your profile. Certainly there's no one in our Facebook group asking questions about how to use Facebook that doesn't already have a profile. You're gonna need a page, but you don't need to do anything more there besides keep the lights on. You could contemplate a group, you need to think about how you use Messenger, and what else? What am I missing in terms of the basics?Sarina:                                 25:14                    Well, we definitely covered the basics, but I could give you a couple of ninja level things. So my page has an auto-responder that is hosted by a service called ManyChat. So if you go to the Sarina Bowen page and you hit the button there to send a message, you will immediately get a reply from a bot and it says something like, 'Hello. And then insert first name of person. Thank you for reaching out. The best place to find information about upcoming Sarina Bowen books is this link right here.'Jess:                                     26:09                    Brilliant.KJ:                                        26:13                    That's for Messenger messages or postsSarina:                                 26:17                    Messenger, but it's Messenger to the page, not the profile. So it also says, 'And if you are a man who just wants to chat or show me your photo, you will not like my response.'KJ:                                        26:35                    Even if you're wearing a towel. Especially if you're wearing a towel.Jess:                                     26:39                    I do like that when I get messages like that, like gross, disgusting, stuff like that. Often for example, in Instagram it will shield it from your view. And so in order to see whatever picture someone has sent you, you have to actually click on it. And I have decided not to click on a few things that I receive via the messaging part of Instagram.Sarina:                                 27:05                    Weirdly, the what to blur out trigger is really strange, though. Because I click on them all the time and it's usually like just a photo of a book on a table and it's like my book, you know. So that's one thing that you can hook up. Now, this is the ninja super top secret thing is that also ManyChat, will collect the identities of everyone who ever messages you.Jess:                                     27:34                    To what end, Sarina? To what end?Sarina:                                 27:40                    I will tell you. A page can also always message whomever has messaged the page before. So if you run a contest where to enter the contest, you send the page a message, then ManyChat can retain that list of hundreds of people and then randomly messaged them when you decide. So I could right now just blanket message, all the whatever thousand people who've ever messaged my page before with, 'Hey, guess what? I have a new book.'.Jess:                                     28:16                    Oh my gosh, you're so brilliant.Sarina:                                 28:17                    I don't actually use it, though. Because I find that people are very confused about whether I'm messaging them personally this way. Like it's not common enough a thing to break down that wall. And I don't actually want people to think that I'm messaging them. So, it's not a useful tool for me, but it does exist. And the other Ninja level thing is about the page itself and how nobody sees them anymore. So I do keep track. My page has either 14 or 17,000 followers. I can't remember right now. And the average post is seen by like 1200 people. So it's less than 10%. But if I didn't do certain things, then it would drop even further because the Facebook algorithm looks carefully at each post to decide if it's going to love you or not. So if you're always posting Amazon links then it hates that. But if you're always posting to your own website, it hates that less. And if you're posting text with no links or pictures at all, it loves that because that seems really genuine to Facebook. Like if you just have a haiku to share or something.Jess:                                     29:53                    Is that why people started doing that thing where they started posting in the first comment instead of in the post itself?Sarina:                                 29:59                    The link? Yeah, the link in the comments. Yeah. I'm not sure. I think Facebook caught onto that immediately, though.KJ:                                        30:05                    So, interesting, completely random side note, Facebook doesn't want you to sell animals anymore. And of course Facebook is actually the largest place to advertise horses. So our barn manager, I just turned her on to go ahead and put a picture, but you put the link or you put the ad in the comments. Because if you put an ad they throw it off and it's got to do with puppy mills and that kind of thing, which I'm totally supportive of. But Facebook killed all the sites upon which people once sold horses and they have not yet been replaced with anything. And it's a problem. But, that does still work to some extent I think. The link in the comments.Sarina:                                 30:57                    Okay, well this is how I handle it. A page can also have what are called top fans. That is Facebook's word for it. So if you turn this feature on to your page, you might have to have a certain number of followers, I don't know what it is. You turn on the top fan badge and then Facebook will actually track for you who it considers to be your top fans. I believe I have, I don't know, a couple hundred of them. And top fan badges are earned by commenting on things and liking things. So I actually run a giveaway like once a month we pick a random top fan and they get to have a prize of their choosing and the prizes are a signed book shipped anywhere, an item from the Sarina Bowen swag store, or a bad, but flattering poem in your honor.Jess:                                     31:56                    While we're on the topic and because I have helped you with some of this in the past and I have had to deal with it myself, when you run these sorts of things and you say shipped anywhere, just keep in mind how much it costs to ship to Australia. Just keep it in mind. Just think about it when you do it.KJ:                                        32:14                    There's a reason people do U.S. only and apologies to those who can't participate, but whoa.Sarina:                                 32:23                    Yeah, one book to Australia is $22.50 and yesterday I shipped a box to France for $57 50. Ouch., right?KJ:                                        32:35                    Groups have a similar thing to the top fan, which is the conversation starters.Jess:                                     32:40                    Yeah, I love that. And there's also like a visual storyteller. We have it in our group and, according to our group, I'm an administrator, but I'm also a visual storyteller because I post a lot of pictures to our group.KJ:                                        32:53                    Well, no prizes for you. I'm sorry.Sarina:                                 32:55                    Well, the point of giving prizes to top fans is to give an incentive to comment. If you were to go look at my page right now (and I have no idea what the last thing we posted), but you'll see like 'Can't wait' and just people chiming in and the chiming in tells the Facebook algorithm that that piece of content is valuable or interesting. So Facebook will give it a little more love. I mean there are days when it feels like my entire job is to try to outwit the Facebook algorithm and not everybody needs to think like this or operate like this, but it's quite the rabbit hole.Jess:                                     33:37                    Well, and we've talked about this in the past, is that certain social media platforms are great for certain things. And for me it's Twitter and for you it's Facebook. And we've talked about this in the past and partially it's a self-perpetuating thing. But when Sarina goes on my webpage (which I let her do from time to time and look at where my traffic's coming from) you know, mine's coming from Twitter and hers overwhelmingly comes from Facebook. So if you know that the genre that you write in is Facebook oriented, then this is really helpful information. For me, I'm trying to figure out how to best use Facebook. And it may be different for nonfiction authors, but I think when you know that that's where your fans are it's worth spending a little bit extra time and effort, as you do, to engage that audience. It's all about decision making.Sarina:                                 34:27                    And in order to remove some of the emotion from it. So yesterday I got very depressed because I have a book launch coming up and I realized just how much I hate launching. Like it's a kind of a popularity contest that I don't really want to enter. I don't enjoy that week of share me, share me, love me, buy me. So one of the ways that I get around this is that every two months I take note of where the growth in my social media following is happening. So I'll just note the totals of how many followers are on the page, how many people in the group, how many on Instagram, how many on BookBub and how many on my newsletter list. Not because I'm obsessed with the totals, but because I want to know which thing is growing the fastest?KJ:                                        35:23                    Where should you invest your time?Sarina:                                 35:25                    Right? Where is the heat? So that I don't obsess about my Facebook page if that's not obsessable this week.KJ:                                        35:34                    Well, my loose take on what Facebook is good for is nonfiction of the kind that I have written and that Jess writes, parenting stuff, family oriented stuff, self-help style stuff. Basically, probably nonfiction with more of a female audience. I don't know what I mean, Facebook is definitely both genders. Does it skew female? Do we know?Jess:                                     36:07                    I don't know, but I do know that parenting stuff, at least from my perspective, does incredibly well on Facebook. And then the added bonus is that some of the outfits I write for like the New York Times and the Atlantic and Washington Post have very active Facebook pages. And when they post my stuff to Facebook, holy moly, the shares for those articles go through the roof. And then of course other Facebook pages pick up those articles. And I'm very lucky in that some of my more evergreen content the Atlantic will repost from time to time, thus revitalizing an article I wrote four years ago, which is lovely. Yeah. So from that perspective it's really useful.KJ:                                        36:47                    Well, I often think of it is Twitter for serious nonfiction, Facebook for lighter nonfiction, Instagram for fiction. But I think that is just a gross, gross oversimplification as evidenced by the fact that Sarina makes a really good use of Facebook. And Facebook's ads for fiction, especially independently published fiction, are kind of I think without parallel. And there's no barrier to entry like there is on Instagram. You can't advertise on Instagram. You can't even link on Instagram. You can't advertise either, can you? Am I right, Sarina?Sarina:                                 37:23                    You could advertise on Instagram.KJ:                                        37:25                    Oh you can still advertise, okay. Alright, fine. Well, this is good. Okay.Jess:                                     37:31                    This is really helpful.KJ:                                        37:32                    We've laid out some useful basics, given me some ideas. I hope we've given some of the rest of you guys ideas. Oh my gosh. Books.Jess:                                     37:56                    Yeah, do we want to talk about what we've been reading? I have a new author that I've recently discovered that's fun to read. You know there are certain really popular authors that are sort of are in the periphery of your awareness and yet you never actually listened to them. I finally listened to a Harlan Coben book recently. So I listened to Harlan Coben because a narrator that I really, really enjoy - Steven Weber, he played one half of the duo on the show Wings in the 80s, and he's still out there doing some great stuff. He's an audio book narrator and I happen to love his audio narration voice. You can click not only on authors in a lot of apps, but you can click on the narrator, too. So if you really like a narrator, try other things they've narrated. And that's what I did. And I've been listening to a Harlan Coben book. I listened to one called Home that was kind of interesting, but now I'm listening to one called Run Away (it's two separate words). I think it's his newest one. The opening was so beautifully done - and what's really fun about Harlan Coben is that he's funny without trying to be comic. Like he's just a witty writer and it's really fun in a way that I don't get to read a lot. And so he's highly prolific. There's tons out there. He has series. He has stand alones and so it's nice to have a new author to be able to dip into and learn new things from. So that's Harlan Coben Run Away so far I'm loving it. Home was really, really interesting. I like that one, too.Sarina:                                 39:32                    Well, Jess, I love Harlan Coben. And there's a lot to learn there, also. One of his novels (my favorite one) was made into a movie in French.Jess:                                     39:49                    What's the book?Sarina:                                 39:51                    I'm trying to figure that out right now. Tell No One. It's a wonderful novel.Jess:                                     39:56                    I actually originally heard about him because Stephen King talks about him a lot. I think they're buds or something or he just really likes his work, but I just never occurred to me to listen to any of his books or read any of his books. But I'm glad I am.Sarina:                                 40:13                    Yeah. So Tell No One, it's a great read and it's a lovely movie where they've changed in New York to Paris and you know, enjoy. The book I'm reading is Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. It's a wonderful novel that is actually fantasy. I'm probably mis-genre-ing this novel right now. There's magic in it, but I swear this book it's probably going to do great, but it's like written just for me. It takes place in New Haven and on the Yale campus and it supposes that the secret societies are actually each the holder of a special kind of magic. It's hilarious and I have so many questions about - they basically didn't bother changing the names of anything. They just went for it. And I'm fascinated.KJ:                                        41:17                    I love that. And yeah, there was just something on our Facebook page someone going, 'Should I use a real town? Should I slightly change the town?' And I think that is always an interesting question because we're all sort of asking ourselves, 'Well, do I have permission to use all the names of the secret societies at Yale? Do I need permission? Is there a secret society that will come after me if I failed to ask permission?' Yeah, that's really cool. It sounds like a fun book, too. Oh, mine. So two weeks ago, I think, I shouted out The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J. Ryan Stradal. And I also (because I loved The Lager Queen so much) grabbed his first book, which is Kitchens of the Great Midwest and similarly, it's a lot of fun.KJ:                                        42:08                    It's smart fiction. It's very, very readable. And this is a fun example of something else we were talking about two weeks ago, which is following an author throughout their career. Now, J. Ryan Stradal (who is a man, at least based on his author picture) only has two books. And Kitchens of the Great Midwest is the first one and The Lager Queen is the second one. And Kitchens of the Great Midwest is good, I really enjoyed it. Lager Queen is better in a lot of technical, and also just sort of reader grabbing kinds of ways, and that is just fun to see. It's fun to watch people evolve, but they're both really fun books.Jess:                                     42:49                    Cool, excellent.KJ:                                        42:52                    Bookstore? I know we have a favorite Indie because we talked about it.Jess:                                     42:52                    Yes, we do. We did. We would like to talk about Gibsons. Gibsons is a bookstore in New Hampshire, in Concord, New Hampshire. And for me, it holds a place in my heart because it was one of the places I first spoke about Gift of Failure to an audience (unfortunately it was pouring rain that night) to an audience of I believe four. Two people who had come for the book talk and one person who was trying to get out of the rain and had no idea what they were doing there and a staff member of the bookstore. So despite that, is a fantastic bookstore. I love it there. They have great curation. I think, Sarina, you talked about really enjoying that bookstore, too.Sarina:                                 43:37                    I also did an event. For my, the women's fiction novel failure that we don't talk about anymore.Jess:                                     43:46                    And did you have more than four people?Sarina:                                 43:47                    I had 12. Well, for debut fiction it wasn't bad at all. It was a lovely, engaged audience. And the staff is so lovely and I've been to other's events there as well and they always just do a fabulous job.Jess:                                     44:32                    I have to get back to writing. And so until next week, everybody, keep your butts in the chair and your head in the game. This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid. 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

Novelist Abbi Waxman makes us laugh talking process and inspiration almost as much as we do when reading her books, with emphasis on using settings you know and love.Our transcription assistant reports that this was “her favorite episode ever.” It’s definitely a contender—Abbi Waxman is funny and candid about the challenges of creating characters and worlds that are engrossingly real yet also comical—and about her next novel, the first one not fully set in her California ‘hood. Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, you don’t want to miss the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, October 28, 2019: Top 5 Goodreads Secrets for Authors. It’s a good one! If you haven’t yet plunked down a tiny chunk of cash to support the podcast, maybe now is the time. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month. As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode. LINKS FROM THE PODCAST#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Abbi: A Miss Silver Mystery: Lonesome Road (#3), Patricia WentworthJess: Home, Run Away, Harlan CobenKJ: Confessions of a Bookseller, Shaun BythellThree Things You Need to Know about Rockets: A Real-Life Scottish Romance, Jessica A. FoxThe Gyrth Chalice Mystery, Margery Allingham#FaveIndieBookstoreChevalier’s Books Los Angeles, CA — if you’ve read Nina Hill, this is the real life bookstore she works in, and we love that. Our guest for this episode is Abbi Waxman. Abbi is the author of:The Bookish Life of Nina HillOther People’s HousesThe Garden of Small BeginningsThis episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful—and, this time around, Jess is “New Speaker.” We don’t know why. AI is mysterious.)KJ:                                        00:01                    Hey writers—you all know we love our sponsor, Author Accelerator, which offers intense book coaching to help writers keep their butts in the chair and their heads in the game and finish what we start. But what if you’re not ready for full on coaching? What if you’re still trying to figure out where your story or memoir is going, and you need help? In that case, Author Accelerator has something new: the four-week Inside Outline Coaching program, which will help you quickly and efficiently visualize your entire story, spot the holes and places where your characters have lost momentum and ensure that you’re working forward with a structure that will support the story you want to tell. I love this tool, and working with someone to stick to it and get it right is going to save you a lot of time and a lot of typing. Find out more at https://www.authoraccelerator.com/insideoutline.New Speaker:                    00:01                    Go ahead.KJ:                                        00:01                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.New Speaker:                    00:01                    All right, let's start over.KJ:                                        00:01                    Awkward pause, I'm going to rustle some papers.New Speaker:                    00:01                    Okay.KJ:                                        00:01                    Now one, two, three. Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. The podcast about writing, which is pretty much why we named it that. We are a podcast about writing all things - fictional, non-fictional, proposals, pitches, writing emails in the quest to get an agent, and I've run out of my list, but it's one I give you guys weekly and as I hope you know, we are the podcast about sitting down and getting your work done.New Speaker:                    01:50                    And I'm Jess Lahey. I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and a book I just turned in on preventing substance abuse in kids. And you can find me at the New York Times, and the Atlantic, and the Washington Post .KJ:                                        02:03                    You're killing it. This actually is your due date and I'm so delighted.New Speaker:                    02:08                    I'm a little bit giddy today.KJ:                                        02:11                    You should be. I am KJ Dell'Antonia, author of a novel coming out next year, The Chicken Sisters, and of How To Be a Happier Parent, former editor of the Motherlode blog at the New York Times, where I'm still a reasonably regular contributor, and at the moment working on novel number two. And I am delighted to say that we have a guest today. So before I introduce her, since she's sitting there silently, I will just say, 'Hi Abby.'Abbi:                                    02:39                    I wasn't sure if I should be making little chicken noises in the background. It's probably a good idea for me to sit excitedly until prompted.KJ:                                        02:55                    Abbi is the author of three novels, all of which I've totally enjoyed and I believe have recommended at one point or another on the podcast. They are - I'll go in backwards order - her most recent novel is The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, preceded by Other People's Houses. And then, gosh, there ought to be another word for this - preceded by The Garden of Small Beginnings. I would call them comic, commercial fiction, with plenty of snark and a little tiny touch of the darkness of life, and our huge fun. And we're so glad to have you.Abbi:                                    03:36                    It is my pleasure to be here.KJ:                                        03:38                    Thank you.New Speaker:                    03:41                    I have to say, she's been so excited to talk to you. So the fact that she's just overflowing with questions...KJ:                                        03:52                    I've really enjoyed The Bookish Life of Nina Hill. And I want to go back and talk about - I guess what we like to do when we have a guest is go just a little bit back into your career. A lot of our listeners are somewhere sort of mid-career, a lot of them are just getting started, and everybody wants to know things like - how did you get started? I know that you were in advertising, so I think my question is what's the first thing you wrote that wasn't advertising that you got paid for?Abbi:                                    04:27                    So yeah, I worked in advertising for a long time. But I always knew that I wanted to write books, ultimately. But that's because that's what I saw growing up. My mother was a murder mystery writer. My biological dad was also in advertising. My stepfather was not a writer, so this is just what I saw grown ups doing a lot of the time and certainly that's what I thought mothers did. So, I had a career, I had my own agency for a while ,and then I decided I wanted to quit that, write books, and have children. Which those two things are inextricably linked in my head. The problem being, of course, having children is a hundred percent contra-indicated if what you're trying to do is actually get work done. So it took me a very long time to write my first novel and then subsequent ones were much quicker because I didn't have three kids under five in the house. But while I had those three small kids and I wasn't being super successful at finishing my own work, I got hired to ghost write a novel for a celebrity, who shall remain nameless.KJ:                                        05:36                    And that's always such a bummer, but we know that's the way it works.Abbi:                                    05:39                    That's the way it works. So I wrote a novel, a piece of fiction for this person and my name wasn't on the cover, but it was on the check and that's all I really actually care about. So that was good. Not that all I care about is money, far be it for me to suggest I am just venal in that way, but I do enjoy making money for my work. Because I did it for free for so long that it is still very pleasant to get paid for it.KJ:                                        06:08                    I'm impressed that it was a whole novel.Abbi:                                    06:11                    Well, before I wrote that one, I had written several novels that were too crap to see the light of day. So finishing a novel was a sort of a barrier I'd already cracked. Finishing a good novel was one that you could argue I haven't yet cracked, but which I'm working on.KJ:                                        06:29                    We will not argue that. How did you convince a celebrity and a publishing company that you could do the novel for the celebrity?Abbi:                                    06:40                    You know, it's a mystery, to this day. So I have a friend whose name is Hillary Liftin, who is a very successful ghost writer of both (she writes fiction herself and she writes nonfiction books with celebrities) and she's written dozens of them and she's really, really good at it. And she recommended me to an agent who approached her about writing this piece of fiction. And she said, 'No, no, but you should have my friend Abbi do it.' I don't even remember writing a proposal. So I had to go and meet - there's actually a good story attached to this, but I don't know if I can tell it without revealing it. So I went to meet with this celebrity, along with several other writers (not at the same time, although that would have been hilarious), but one after the other. And she had us meet her at Chateau Marmont in Hollywood, which is just just right there. I was so happy to even be doing this because it was so ludicrous. It is so incredibly Hollywood and I was just like, it's ridiculous. So I show up wearing my jeans, my Target T-shirt, and the one cool jacket that I possessed and could still fit into. Cause I worked hard on gaining weight after I had my kids and I was very successful at it. And so I squeezed into these clothes, I go in, the first thing she says to me (she's tiny, tiny little celebrity as they all are all) 'Oh, I love your T-shirt.' And I said, 'I got it at Target.' So literally that was my opening - I got it at Target, which you think would be enough to end the whole thing. And so she arrived. She walks in just before I get there, I see her walk in and she literally asks whatever you call the person at Chateau Marmont who's in charge of helping celebrities deal with their lives, She's like, 'I need breakfast cereal.' And he sent someone out to shop for breakfast cereal for her so that she could have (I nearly swore) Captain Crunch at like 11 o'clock on a whatever day it at the Chateau.New Speaker:                    08:57                    That's really impressive. I actually was going to tell you the last time I got a compliment from a celebrity, I actually said, 'I got it at a garage sale.' And it was about an article of clothing, so I can actually one up on that one. Yeah, it came out of my mouth and I said, 'Oh, that, that wasn't what I meant to say.'Abbi:                                    09:19                    But at the same time, you know, I don't know, do celebrities shop at Target? I'm sure they do, everybody shops at Target, everybody shops at garage sales. I would feel much worse saying, 'Yes, it's Gucci.' Like that would not fly. So, you know, it is what it is. So anyways, so she interviewed me and a load of other people, and the funny part is that I didn't hear anything for weeks. So I was like, 'Okay, whatever.' Then I get a call that she had told her manager who was sitting there that she wanted this other person whose name I won't say, but she got on the phone with this other writer and then 15 minutes into the conversation she suddenly goes, 'Oh wait, I have to go.' and hung up on this other writer. Because it turned out she didn't want that writer, she wanted me, but she had mixed us up. I imagine she said, 'The English one.' But this other writer was also English. So this poor woman (who it turns out also knows Hilary Liftin, my friend) was like, 'Yeah, it was the weirdest thing. We were talking and all of a sudden she's like, 'Sorry, my shoes are on fire.' and hung up on me and I never heard another word because of course she didn't have the balls to actually say, 'Oh my God, I've made a terrible mistake. I do apologize.'KJ:                                        11:06                    Celebrities, they're just like us, only ruder.Abbi:                                    11:20                    So then I met with her, we talked about her ideas for the book, and then I wrote it in six weeks. So there you go.KJ:                                        11:28                    And from there - straight into your own novels or were there any pit stops along the way?Abbi:                                    11:34                    I started doing a second novel for her and she wasn't happy with what I had done, and I had already done quite a bit, so my agent was like, 'Okay, well she'll start over, but of course it will cost you more money.' And she's like, 'Well, I don't want to pay any more money.' And I said, 'Then I don't want to write any more words.' And so that's how that happened. And so then The Garden of Small Beginnings got written and that agent and I came to a parting of the ways, cause we had a different point of views on what should happen with the book. And then I actually put that book away for a year or two and tried to write screenplays and get involved with TV, had minor, minor encouragement in that direction, which then didn't come to pass. And so I was like blow this, I'm going back to writing books where the only a*****e I have to deal with this is myself. And so that's what I did. And then I got a new agent, a wonderful agent who agreed with me about the book. And the rest is history.KJ:                                        12:39                    Same agent, all three books?Abbi:                                    12:40                    Same agent, all three books, and the fourth which I just handed in and two more that I'm on the hook for. So I have two more to go.KJ:                                        12:48                    When's the fourth one coming out?Abbi:                                    12:49                    Presumably next spring/summer.KJ:                                        12:52                    Ah, excellent, we shall be together.Abbi:                                    12:55                    Well at the moment, I still think it's a piece of s**t. So that is always what happens. I'm like, 'This is it. My career is over. Every time.'KJ:                                        13:07                    You don't feel like you're getting better? So I read them in this order: first, The Garden of Small Beginnings (because I read that one I suspect right around when it came out), then, The Bookish Life of Nina Hill (obviously sometime later), then back to Other People's Houses. I mean, they were all extremely fun and there's something in particular I want to ask you about, but I would say you're definitely building skill. You're not feeling that?Abbi:                                    13:36                    No, I do feel that. I feel like every time I write something it's better than what I've written before. But what I'm not building in is necessarily confidence about it once when it's too close. So when I had it in Nina, I was like, 'It's a piece of crap.' And then by the time it came out and I went back and looked at it again, I was like, 'Oh. No, it's all right. It's all right.' And there were even bits, you know, when you read something that you're like, 'Wow, that's really good. I have no idea who wrote that part because I don't remember writing that part.' You know, there are more of those each time. So that I guess is good. But I find that the gap between what it's going to be in my head and what it ends up on paper, that doesn't seem to get a great deal smaller. I'm always a little bit like, 'That was not what I was really going for and part of the time it's because I'm not capable of doing what I think I can do. And part of it is just that the writing process itself changes the nature of the idea. Right? Like different things come out on paper and you follow that direction and it's not quite what you had in mind originally, but you know, it's still better than ice fishing.'.New Speaker:                    14:44                    It's the same for nonfiction. Nonfiction works the same, I always quote Mary Roach. You know, I usually have an idea about something I'd like to research and possibly write about. And then Mary Roach refers to this period of time as a 'research flail' that she flails about in the research for a couple of months and then figures out what the book might be and that gap is always really hard for me cause you have to take that leap of faith that words will end up on the page on the other side. So definitely, nonfiction and fiction seem to have that similarity to them.Abbi:                                    15:19                    Yeah. I mean I think any large project, even if it's not writing, like you build a house, or you have a child and you have this idea of what it's going to be. But then the actual everyday practicalities of creating something change the nature of the finished product itself.New Speaker:                    15:38                    Yeah, absolutely.Abbi:                                    15:52                    You know, the book itself (this is going to sound ridiculous), but the book itself has sort of an influence, you know what I mean? Like it takes on a life of its own and the characters do what the characters do. And so you just have to sort of trail along.KJ:                                        16:19                    So what is your process around that? Sarina who isn't with us today and I, and now Jess, who's gonna go in for some fiction next, have been talking a lot about what we plan ahead of time, what we don't plan ahead of time. It seems to vary a little bit. What's your process look like?Abbi:                                    16:40                    It's cracked.KJ:                                        16:41                    You'd recommend it then?Abbi:                                    16:44                    I am writing a book about it now because it really needs to be down on paper. No, it's terrible. My process is that I have an idea about, that's usually a character idea or a situation. So for example, the book I just wrote that I just finished, which at the moment is called Mothers, Daughters, and Unexpected Outcomes, which is a title that was sort of arrived at by a huge number of people.KJ:                                        17:12                    Oh, good. Titling by committee.Abbi:                                    17:14                    But I'm sure it's a great title. It's gonna be great. Anyway, the point is - that book was inspired by my real life experience that I know we all share, of that moment where you realize that the child you've been raising for the past 13, 14 years has suddenly turned into a totally different person and all the skills that you've gathered raising that child up until that point are completely useless. So you have to sort of come up with a whole new way of trying to relate to this person, who is now a different person, and who you respect and love, but who is deeply freaking irritating and annoying and bumptious and narcissistic and...KJ:                                        17:57                    And knows where all your buttons are. And still hesitates not to press them.Abbi:                                    18:03                    No, leans on them in fact. So that's what this book is about. So my process was, I want to write about the period I'm in right now. And the situation I set up was the woman and her teenage daughter are taking a college tour. So that was the structure of the book. I'm going to take them away from home, they're going to be on their own together with another group of parents taking this group college tour up the East coast. So that gave me my structure and then I just have at it. So what usually happens is, I write the first 10 - 15,000 words in a froth of excitement and confidence. Then I come up against whatever the floor in my original idea was and flail around flailing big, an excellent word for the process. Flail around and freak out and panic and that panic period lasts usually a week or two. Then I write everything. I've got down so far on index cards and stick them up on a noticeboard and stare at them for a while. Then I decided to work out what the next 10,000 words are going to do. I work that out, I write those, then I panic. Do it again, rinse and repeat. So that's basically my processes. Write a chunk, freak out, write it down, look at it, try and come up with what the next bit is going to be, write that, it changes, panic. It's lurching, it's sort of like the progress of a drunk person trying to get home. I lurched from lamppost to lamppost and then eventually I get there. It's good, right? You like it, right? You feel inspired, right?KJ:                                        19:38                    Yeah. I think you should patent it because it works really well.Abbi:                                    19:42                    The panicky lamppost process.KJ:                                        19:45                    So, it sounds like you start from an emotion. Like a mental place where your people are, kind of. But one of the things that really strikes me about your books is that your people are always very much in a really defined physical place. And I don't mean like, I know that the bookstore has blue walls. I mean, it's almost like workplace fiction. Like The Garden of Small Beginnings had this very strong, not just gardened theme, but this sort of teaching, the placement of the garden and the thing the person was doing. And then Other People's Houses had that neighborhood setting. And it was a really distinct California neighborhood. And then The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, same sort of city bookstore.Abbi:                                    20:36                    Same neighborhood. All three of the first three books are all set in the same neighborhood.KJ:                                        20:40                    Yeah. I thought so, but it's not the neighborhood so much as they all have such a really strong setting for the action. And I wondered when that comes into play. Well, and you're leaving that too, if they're all heading out.Abbi:                                    21:04                    Oh no, that's why this next one is a piece of crap. So, here's the thing. I struggle with structure. I feel like that's my weakness as a writer. I think I'm good at characters, I like writing dialogue, but I really struggle with plot and structure. And so in order to try and help myself, you will notice I always create this structure, this sort of artificial structure that I then lean on. So, in The Garden of Small Beginnings, she was taking a gardening course. I was able to break up the book by these lessons, right? So it sort of gives me a calendar and a structure to cling to. And then I separated each section. So each lesson, each class, was sort of a break, and then there would be another set of action as a result. The second one, Other People's Houses, she had to take the kids to school every day, right? So she was carpooling these kids to school and the sort of going from house to house gave me the structure I wanted. And then Nina, she had a planner, right? The action of the book takes place over a number of weeks during the summer. And so that gives me the structure and so then I can sort of cling and we're back to lampposts again. Then I can cling to the structure and move the story along sort of forcibly. And that's just my anxious cheater's way of giving the book some kind of structure because I feel like my plots aren't strong enough. Very little happens in my books, like they are not plot-driven because I'm not really interested in that. I love reading it, and I admire it in other writers, but I'm not very good at it myself. And I'm much more interested in the action that's going on between your ears as you drive your kids to school each day than I am in how you actually got to school because that's what's interesting to me.KJ:                                        23:00                    That is funny that you would say that because I would say the same thing about what I write. And I've always felt it as sort of a flaw, but I would not have said it about your work as a reader. I see your point, nothing blows up. Although in Other People's Houses, it kind of does. That one's got a pretty clear plot high point. I feel like that whole plot driven structure thing is a very masculine way of looking at book structure.New Speaker:                    23:41                    Right. I agree.KJ:                                        23:43                    It's very external.Abbi:                                    23:44                    It is very external, and I'm not interested in external stuff. I'm much more interested in relationships between people, conversations that you have in the normal course of the day, the small conversations you have with strangers, and the gap between what you're thinking and what you're saying, and also the gap between what you are presenting and what is really going on. The gap between your inside and your outside. That's what interests me as a person, as a human being. And so that's what I tend to write about. And then I tried to write about kids and dogs because I like kids and dogs.KJ:                                        24:18                    Now how about the funny? Your books are funny. Especially Nina Hill. I mean, I think I laughed out loud multiple times at the end as they're sort of lurching around. It had that fun, tastic, caper feel. Do you feel that when you're writing it, do you plan it? How do you make that happen? Come on, give us the secret.Abbi:                                    24:57                    Well, as you can tell from talking to me, I am just naturally a laugh riot and a charismatic maelstrom of humor. And so, it just comes out that way. No, I just can't take everything very seriously. And so when I'm writing I just can't take it seriously. I've tried writing serious books and I fail. I could just can't do it because I think most things are funny. Most things are ridiculous. Life is just a series of ridiculous predicaments. And so that's what I tend to write about.KJ:                                        25:34                    And you do it very well.Abbi:                                    25:36                    That's very kind of you to say.KJ:                                        25:39                    So you were talking earlier about novels in the drawer. I think all of us would love to know how many it took you to get to the point where you could get one out.Abbi:                                    25:50                    Okay. So I wrote two complete novels that were s**t. And I also wrote probably three movie screenplays that were crap and a TV pilot that nearly got made. So that I guess was marginally better. And which is now going to be the basis of the book I'm writing next. Yeah, so several. The very first one I wrote, I literally threw away. Like, I don't have it anymore. It was written 17 years ago when I was pregnant with my first child and it was pretty poor. And so I threw that one away completely. The second one I kept in a drawer. Well, not really a drawer but you know a folder on the desktop. And I tend to keep everything because I have many, many starts as well. As I said before, I seem to be able to write 12 to 15,000 words.KJ:                                        26:52                    I was going to ask you how many of those sort of frothy beginnings - cause that's the hard part for a lot of writers is getting paid. So many people have like a really polished first three chapters or a lot of really enthusiastic bursty first three chapters. But it's, it's sitting down and going, okay, I'm gonna make this work. Do you have anything to say about the first time you managed to bring that off? Did someone lock you in a room?Abbi:                                    27:25                    I was pregnant and bored and this was before the internet was really as interesting as it is now. So I didn't really have much to do. It was after September 11th I was pregnant with Julia, my eldest. We were in New York when September 11th happened. And then we went and lived with a friend in Berkeley for six weeks. And it was during that period of time that I finished the first piece of crap. I don't know, I think that's where being a professional comes in. Is that you can't just write the parts that are fun and easy. You have to just keep writing. I write every day. Often I say I write every day, I want to write every day, and I set out to write every day. But because of life, often I end up taking someone to the dentist or picking up groceries. So life trumps my work in a way that I think sometimes is something that women suffer from more than men. Not because of any inherent sexism, God forbid that there was any suggestion that there is any institutionalized sexism at work. It does appear to be a kind of expectation, that apparently I've bought into, that if some little child needs to go to the doctor, it's me that does it. So, work gets trumped all the time. But less and less as my kids get older and less and less as I get more bolshy. And so, I go and work every day, ideally. And you just keep plugging along.KJ:                                        29:02                    But you were able to tell yourself this is what professionals do. It sounds like - before anyone was telling you that with a paycheck.Abbi:                                    29:10                    Oh yeah.KJ:                                        29:10                    That's hard for a lot of people.Abbi:                                    29:11                    Bear in mind, I worked as a writer in advertising. So I was getting paid to write for decade and a half. So putting words on paper and getting a paycheck was something that I'd always done. And so I treated it that way. And advertising is also a great training for writers because you get used to throwing your work away and you get used to starting over. Like over and over and over and over again. And usually you work relatively hard on something and then someone will s**t all over it and you're like, 'Okay.' And you tear it up and start over. And after a while, that becomes just part of the process, and that's why it's such good training. Like journalism, like any career where you're basically selling words and other people, who haven't written them, have power to buy or sell them. So yeah, you get used to not caring so much and at the same time caring a lot. I don't know if that makes any sense, but you know what I mean? Being professional about it.KJ:                                        30:15                    So we have a new question that I'm trying out on people. It's kind of a silly one, but what do you write in your head? I think all of us as writers wander around, sort of writing in our head constantly. What do you write in your head - when you're in the shower, or when you're lost in thought, or when you're driving kids to school? What are you writing in your head?Abbi:                                    30:38                    At the moment? To be completely honest, I'm writing my eldest daughter's personal statement for her college applications.KJ:                                        30:46                    That's an awesome answer.Abbi:                                    30:48                    That is absolutely what I am writing and rewriting over and over again, which is unfortunate because I'm not actually the one who's writing the personal statements. Yeah. I have written bullet points for my child's personal statement many, many times on the way to the grocery store.KJ:                                        31:13                    And I'm sure she's disregarded every single one.Abbi:                                    31:16                    Oh, she's thrilled. She loves it when I come home and I burst into her room and I say, (well, after I've said what the hell happened in here?) Then I say, I've had some ideas for your personal statement and she sits up in bed and she, tugs out at least one of her ear bud things and says, 'Get out of my room.' Yup. Every time.KJ:                                        31:41                    That's beautiful. It's really touching.Abbi:                                    31:43                    It's a bonding moment. It's happened a lot lately. You know what it is, I don't even know that I'm writing as I'm driving around, but I'm always thinking about the book and sometimes I get an emotional feeling that I'm then trying to sort of get on paper. And so I'm always very happy when I'm driving around because I feel like I'm working, but I'm not actually producing anything.KJ:                                        32:12                    Yeah, I write some amazing stuff on long drives, you wouldn't believe it. Yeah, it's good. It's really good. Then recently I tried turning on the notes app in my phone and (our friend Sarina, who has actually managed to do this successfully) I dictated a few of the great words that were in my head and I think that ended as we can all predict, which is that I did not even bother sending them...Jess:                    32:39                    I have my children email me or text me. Like if I have a kid in the car with me, I'm like, 'Oh my gosh, I just had an idea. I need you to email me with the words.' and I'll come up with some random string of words. And they look at me like, who are you?, What is it you do with your life? It's always really revealing.Abbi:                                    32:59                    My children are amazed I've lived as long as I have. They're so perplexed that somehow I have managed to make it to nearly 50 when I'm clearly barely capable of getting through the day. You know, it's part of this mysterious force that keeps them moving forward. It's like we must find out what she is actually doing with her life.KJ:                                        33:25                    We don't want them to have an answer. That's all. That's my theory, anyway. I'm hopefully just gonna remain a mystery to them for long enough that none of them writes a book about me.Abbi:                                    33:37                    Oh, I'll be dead long before I hope.KJ:                                        33:43                    Well, speaking of books we always like to let the guest go first. So let's do #AmReading. Have you read anything good lately or that you would recommend?Abbi:                                    33:54                    When I'm writing, I can't read the genre that I'm writing. So I don't ever read fiction when I'm writing because I'm worried that I will steal from it or I'm just will become so despondent that this other person is doing it so much better that I will be unable to continue. So, my favorite genre is murder mysteries, which is what I grew up reading, cause that's what my mother did. And so when I am left to my own devices, I will go back and read golden age mysteries, like Agatha Christie, Patricia Wentworth, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, etc. I am reading a Miss Silver mystery, which is Patricia Wentworth. And I couldn't be happier, I just go back over and over. Nero Wolfe, which is actually an American guy writer. I love those books and I've read them all 50 times and I will read them all 50 times more.KJ:                                        34:59                    I have shelves and shelves and shelves. Which Patricia Wentworth are you savoring at the moment?Abbi:                                    35:05                    I believe this one I'm reading is called Lonesome Road. I'm also terrible in general at titles. But they're all good and I love the Nero Wolfe mysteries. I think they're perfect. Just constructionist perfect.KJ:                                        35:36                    So fun and such a great place to just go back and refresh and cleanse. There are some great people writing murder mysteries now, but I just tend to go back and reread them. It sounds like you do too.Abbi:                                    35:52                    All the time. All the time. And I'll try not to, like right now I'm not reading Nero Wolfe's because I've read them so many times that I'm trying to forget some of it. But the problem is as soon as you start the book, you're like, no, I remember exactly. But it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter.KJ:                                        36:09                    I think it actually frees your mind up to sort of churn around in the background.Abbi:                                    36:13                    Yeah. And I just appreciate it, the writing is so good. Agatha Christie, you know, there's a reason that she is a success. Her plots are so perfect, her characterization is so deft, and they're so satisfyingly pleasing to read, that it's just a joy. So that is what I am always reading, a mystery of some kind or another. And that's what I would love to write. But I don't. Unfortunately I've been semi-successful writing this other genre and my publisher is not interested in me writing mysteries.KJ:                                        36:47                    I have one in a drawer in which a guy at law school is killed in a parking lot and he bears a lot of resemblance to a guy I went to...yeah. It can never come out of the drawer.Abbi:                                    37:08                    Well, the thing is, so I wrote a mystery - and my publisher probably doesn't want me to talk about this, but whatever - I wrote a mystery that I loved, and has a set of characters that I adore, and they don't want to publish it. And so that's fine. I'm actually going to rewrite it as not a mystery for my next book because I love the characters so much. And that's fine. I've discovered that I'm totally comfortable with that. I just want to write about these characters. So that's really where I'm at. The whole genre thing is somewhat perplexing to me. So, I did a lot of promotion for Nina around it being a romance, which it's funny because to me it's not at all a romance. I mean it is, but it's the weakest part of the book. That is not what's important. So I just felt like a bit of a fraud.KJ:                                        38:06                    It's just really hard to tell. We spend a lot of time talking about this too, and I've just followed the women's fiction hashtag on Instagram and discovered a lot of new authors that way. And I think if we had Sarina here, one of the definitions that she's once offered me is that in women's fiction, one person can get their guy, but there has to be another plot. And if there's a best friend, they don't get their guy. But if it's romance, then everybody gets their guy. I'm probably misquoting her terribly, but you know.Abbi:                                    38:39                    I get it. I call what I do domestic fictio,n because it's about people's domestic life.KJ:                                        38:48                    I write what I like to read. Yeah, it's what's interesting. One more thing...Abbi:                                    38:56                    What are you guys reading?KJ:                                        38:57                    Oh that's right. We get to say what we're reading. Jess, go ahead. Cause I am drifting off.New Speaker:                    39:02                    I've decided to do an experiment. So, as I mentioned, I've been reading Harlan Coben because I had never read Harlan Coben before. And I realized (especially recently) we've been talking about popular authors that have a bazillion best-sellers whose books I've never read. So I'm going to try a little experiment and try to read a book by a whole bunch of really, really popular, successful bestselling authors that I just don't even think to pick up because they've got books A through Z or W actually I guess is where she ended up. But you know, books by people that I have never picked up before and who have lots of them out there. Cause who knows, maybe I'll like one of them. I do know that I'm loving Harlan Coben still. So that's been fun for me.KJ:                                        39:49                    And I have been rereading Confessions of a Bookseller by Sean Bythell, which we've talked about before. In part because I met a friend for a drink and she handed me a grocery shopping bag and said, 'George (her husband) wanted to give you this back.' And there it was - my copy - and I was in need of something soothing and fun. And in the process of reading it I got to noodling around because he writes a great deal about his girlfriend, who I think is his then-girlfriend, but I'm a little hazy. And, and the fact that she has written a book about the town in which the bookstore is. So for whatever reason, I never looked that up at the time. But now I have looked it up. And so the person who is Ana in his book and is his girlfriend had written the very popular Three Things You Need To Know About Rockets: A Real-Life Scottish Fairy Tale about her leaving her LA life, an ambitious Hollywood filmmaker, and going to this small town in Scotland and meeting this bookstore owner, and falling in love. I think the book has a happy ending, I'm not sure the life piece of it does, but I know they're trying to get it made into a movie. And now I've sort of rabbit trailed off into buying that book and following everyone on all the social media so I can find out what really happens, which honestly I probably would be just as happy if I just left it all between the covers of the first book. But that's what I'm doing.New Speaker:                    41:19                    That sounds like a delightful endeavor.KJ:                                        41:22                    And Confessions of a Bookseller is super fun.Jess:                                     41:27                    And speaking of booksellers, actually, do we have a bookstore to talk about this week? Ms Abbi?Abbi:                                    41:34                    Yes. So this is easy because the bookstore in Nina Hill is a real bookstore. And so in the book it's called Nights. And in real life it's called Chevalier's, which is French for night cause it's a very, very thin disguise. And it's on Larchmont Boulevard and it's a real independent bookstore, really run by a woman named Liz and staffed by a number of very smart and fabulous young women, much like Nina Hill. And I love it. I go there all the time. I always launch my books there. It's a really great store.KJ:                                        42:08                    Oh, you're like one of the people with the kids in the reading group.Abbi:                                    42:11                    Yes.KJ:                                        42:12                    You're a side character in your own book.Abbi:                                    42:15                    Yes. I'm not only the hero of my own life, I am also the supporting cast.KJ:                                        42:21                    What did they do? What did they think?Abbi:                                    42:25                    They liked it, they were amused. Or they're doing a very good job of pretending that they're amused, but yes, they like it. Liz says that she's nothing like the character Liz, but she is. It's a great store and has a wonderful selection of books. And Liz is one of those people who has the gift of, if I say to her, 'I really enjoyed X', she will say, 'Oh then you will really enjoy Y' and she's 100% correct. So that's a great skill.KJ:                                        42:55                    I need her in my life, that is an amazing skill. My novel to come is centered around two fried chicken restaurants in a single small town in my book named Chicken Mimi's and Chicken Annie's. No it's not Chicken Annie's, that's the real one. There's a small town in Kansas with two fried chicken restaurants called Chicken Mary's and Chicken Annie's and I do not know what Chicken Mary's and Chicken Annie's are going to think of having become Chicken Mimi's and Chicken Franny's.Abbi:                                    43:34                    I hope you at least get some free chicken out of it.KJ:                                        43:38                    If I were in this small town in Kansas where haven't been in decades, I think I could make that happen. Well, thank you so much. We have utterly, wholeheartedly enjoyed, it's been, as you said, a laugh riot. Actually, it really has been. This has been really great and we thank you so much for coming.Abbi:                                    44:15                    It's my pleasure. I look forward to coming back sometime.Jess:                                     44:19                    Well and if people want to find you out there on the social internets, where will people find you? Where would you like to people to go?Abbi:                                    44:26                    They can find me on Instagram. Cause I don't do Twitter.KJ:                                        44:39                    We'll find it. We'll link it in the show notes, which I will remind listeners you can get in your inbox every week by going to amwritingpodcast.com and signing up and there they will be every time we have an episode, it will pop in. There'll be a short paragraph usually from me rambling on about what it is that we talked about. And then you get all the show notes, all the links, everything you could possibly ask for.Jess:                                     45:09                    Alright. Until next week, everyone, keep your butts in the chair and your head in the game. This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid. 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

Maybe you’re drafting a novel, maybe you’re not. Either way, we vote for seizing on the community energy generated by NaNo and getting some work done.The magic of NaNoWriMo isn’t in the number of words or the length of time or even the month of November. It’s in the community seizing this time—when we could so easily heave a giant sigh and say oh, well, November, it’s practically December, might as well give up—and instead bestowing upon it this extra energy, turning it into a holiday of our very own. We’re all for writing a 50K word novel (and there’s much advice in this episode on prepping for just that) but we’re also in favor of creating your own National Whatever Write Month. Pick your poison, name your deadline and join us in taking back November. Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, a preview of the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, October 21, 2019: Top 5 Ways to Tame the Internet Distraction Beast. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month.As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode.To support the podcast and help it stay free, subscribe to our weekly #WritersTopFive email.LINKS FROM THE PODCASTJunior NaNoWriMoJennie Nash method for finding your thru line and your roadmap for writing useful words (because we’ve all written our way to finding the story, and we don’t particularly recommend it): The Inside Outline Download (formerly known as the Two-Tier, but don’t worry, this is it.)Character development resources:Episode 180 #CharacterEnneagramRabbitHoleThe Emotional Wound Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Psychological Trauma, Angela Ackerman & Becca PuglisiTake Off Your Pants!: Outline Your Books for Faster, Better Writing, Libbie Hawker FabulaDeck.comEpisode 75: #NovelPreparations#AmReading (Watching, Listening)KJ: The Lager Queen of Minnesota, J. Ryan StradalJess: Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity, Peggy Orenstein Ready or Not: Preparing Our Kids to Thrive in an Uncertain and Rapidly Changing World, Madeline Levine#FaveIndieBookstorePrint: A Bookstore, Portland, Maine, which does not look like this in October but soon will. Sigh.This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.The image in our podcast illustration is by chmyphotography on Unsplash.KJ:                                        00:02                    Writing people, this episode of #AmWriting is about setting yourself up for NaNoWriMo success no matter what spin you’re putting on it. We love NaNoWriMo because it takes a month when it’s easy to slack off—hello, holiday season!—and turns it into a month when much of the writing community is settling in to push harder, whether it’s the classic draft your novel NaNo, or whether you’re creating a book proposal, editing an existing work, drafting a memoir or applying yourself fresh to anything else. If you’re going for classic write-a-draft-of-your-novel in a month NaNoWriMo, you’ll want to sign up for Author Accelerators’s free 7 day jump-start-your-book email series. Truly, the five exercises they send you, from a one-sentence logline to your back-of-the-book copy, and the advice on getting those done really helps to set you up for success. I go back to those exercises again and again to see what I’ve promised the reader, and what I’ve promised myself. Sign up at https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwriting. Is it recording?Jess:                                     01:16                    Now it's recording.KJ:                                        01:17                    Yay.Jess:                                     01:18                    Go ahead.KJ:                                        01:18                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.Jess:                                     01:23                    Alright, let's start over.KJ:                                        01:23                    Awkward pause, I'm going to rustle some papers.Jess:                                     01:26                    Okay.KJ:                                        01:27                    Now one, two, three. Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. #AmWritingHashtag is our podcast, it is your podcast about writing all the things - fiction, nonfiction, proposals, emails, pitches, and in short, this is the podcast about sitting down and getting your work done.Jess:                                     01:57                    I'm Jess Lahey. I am one of your co-hosts. I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and a new book coming out in 2021 about preventing substance abuse in kids and just finishing up, packing up, and turning it into a package for my deadline. Yay.Sarina:                                 02:18                    And I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of 30-odd romance novels and the latest one is called Moonlighter.KJ:                                        02:25                    I am, as previously stated, KJ Dell'Antonia, author of How To Be a Happier Parent as well as a novel coming out in June of next year. Cannot wait to share a cover with everybody, but that is still a little bit away. And I want to remind everyone that if you want to hear a little bit more from us, you can sign up for our weekly emails in which we will basically shoot you out the podcast, along with all of the links, and a little bit of a transcript, and everything you could possibly need to know about every episode. So, you can sign up for that at amwritingpodcast.com.Jess:                                     03:06                    And the place where you find all the good things,KJ:                                        03:09                    All the good things.Jess:                                     03:11                    What are we talking about today?KJ:                                        03:12                    Oh, we are talking about like the super obvious, elephant in the room topic for all writers in October, which is are you doing NaNoWriMo? And if so, how?Jess:                                     03:24                    And what?KJ:                                        03:26                    Yeah, and what? Exactly. So you guys know I love NaNo, but I've only managed to do it, like straight up NaNo once, which was in 2017 and it's actually eventually the draft that turned into the novel that's coming out next year. So, every other year I've sort of taken November and that energy that is just afoot in the writing community and thrown my own style at it. Like, I did some variation of something or another for my How To Be a Happier Parent book. And this year, I'm figuring out, I'm drafting, so it's gonna be National Novel Writing Month for me. But it's not the whole novel, I mean I've already written part of it. It would be silly to abandon that. So, my topic for today for us is sort of Nah, whatever, WriMo. National whatever write month. Cause I think it's so cool. November is a month you could easily just toss, right? Cause it's November, holidays are on the way. There's no way you can do a lot of writing this month, right? And once you've tossed November, December just might as well, yeah, we'll just start again in January. And come on. If you do this right, if you let the community encourage you, by January, you could have a whole book or you can have nothing. Those are your choices, whole book or nothing.Jess:                                     04:50                    NaNoWriMo has always been a really sentimental time for me because this is something I did with my students from very early on when NaNoWriMo first started. And it was a process that I started before the month began and we would go through this whole process of why it's fun to let go, what are the parameters for this essay, and how does it need to look in all the various drafts, and just start to write. And some of my fondest memories of teaching are there was a morning when one of my students came in. It was like day two of NaNoWriMo and she came into school and she looked at me and her eyes were just huge and she said, 'I felt like I fell into a book. Like I was a part of it and I've never experienced that before.' And I think for kids, especially, we tend to tell them, 'You have to write, and here's your rubric, and it has to look like this, and don't forget that the topic statements have to support the thesis statement, blah, blah blah. And for students to see that first experience of them falling into a book and becoming a part of it, as they just sort of let it pour out of them - that's always been what November has been about for me. Whether it's experiencing it myself or just sort of checking in every once in awhile with the vibe, like through Twitter or everyone talking about it online. There's just a really cool vibe about November and NaNoWriMo. It's great, I really love it.KJ:                                        06:17                    Of course, ironically, one of the things we're about to tell listeners is don't just sit down and start writing.Jess:                                     06:23                    Yeah, and I'm talking about kids. I mean, we went through a whole planning process actually with the kids. NaNoWriMo, and I don't know if they still do it, but there's a junior version of it and they have a whole workbook that prepares kids for it. You actually plan your characters, there's worksheets, it's really well done. If it still exists, we'll put it in the show notes because it's a really great resource for kids. And of course, kids aren't writing 50,000 words. They're setting their own goal. And when we did it, there was also a community online where you could register your class and the kids would log their progress every day and they'd have these little meters, and sometimes they'd get into competitions with each other and they'd come in and they'd say, 'I saw that you logged another 3000 words yesterday. Yay, you.' It was a really great process that NaNoWriMo actually was pretty thoughtful about, in terms of preparing kids. So, no, it was not just sitting down and writing, even for my students.KJ:                                        07:18                    I'm pretty sure that's still there. Sarina, have you ever used NaNoWriMo to put together a book? I mean, it's write at your speed, right?Sarina:                                 07:25                    Yeah, I have actually. The first time I completed it was for a novel that is currently in a drawer. You know, this one really probably deserves to come out, but I've been a little busy. But the weird thing about this is that I wrote this piece of women's fiction and I was kind of down on women's fiction because my one attempt had failed, but I wrote this NaNo piece and I like it. But there was a couple of characters in there, like a father and a daughter who had been estranged for 17 years. And so on like December 4th, I was sitting in my child's violin class as one does, like not paying attention. And I thought, you know, that dad and that girl, that's a really good story. So that idea, sitting there after writing 50,000 words became my book The Accidentals.Jess:                                     08:25                    One of my favorite books of yours. I love that book. I love that relationship. I love those characters.Sarina:                                 08:31                    Well, thank you. And so that's both a fun little story, but also a cautionary tale about maybe I could've gotten to that story first and understood its power if I had been a little more thoughtful about my NaNo project.KJ:                                        08:49                    That is kind of why we are doing this today, as opposed to on October 31st. Which is just to take some time and give a little thought to what can you do with this community push this month? You know, if you wanna write 1600 words, how can you make it a good 1600 words, that is a useful 1600 words. And on the other hand, if you wanna just use the energy, then I think what matters is just to try to just push yourself a little more. Cause that's kinda what NaNo is about. I mean, we have the thousand words a day that I'm doing right now. And I know, Sarina, you're trying to do 1200, but I'm just coming back at a thousand words strong. But 1600 is a lot more, so I feel like whatever project you're working on, or whatever thing you're working on, now's a really good time to take a look at it and go, 'Well, how can I just give that just a little bit more? How can I put together like a group of people that encourage me to just really get to something I can call an end in November?Jess:                                     10:06                    One thing I would love to do today, if it's at all possible, is to talk about - I'm in a weird position where I can't do a ton of advanced planning because I think this project finishing up this book and a work/vacation trip that I have right after it's due, will put me up into the end of the month. So I have a couple of possible things that I would be willing to share on the podcast that I could possibly work on. And I would love to sort of, if we have time today, to brainstorm what might make the most sense.KJ:                                        10:40                    Ooh, what should Jess do next? This is a great topic, I love this. Alright, well let's start there and then we'll talk about trying to set ourselves up right. What do you got?Jess:                                     10:54                    Me? The Jess stuff? Oh, I get to go first? Okay. So I have three things. I have a YA novel that I started a long time ago, actually during NaNoWriMo. I have a first chapter that I love and characters that I love, and some things I've thought about over time and Sarina's actually even read an early version of this chapter and I feel like I need to finish that book for myself. I feel like I need to see that through, it's a very sort of personal thing for me and I have no idea what will become of it. But I think that will be something I regret if I don't finish. So I have that. And then I also have these essays sitting there that are really important also that I would like to continue working on to some eventual possible essay collection. And then I have an idea for another research-based book and that I'm totally not ready to talk about yet, but that I'm sort of excited about doing the proposal process of working out my ideas for that proposal.KJ:                                        12:02                    And what you have also is the possibility of your edits dropping on you at any time and somewhat randomly.Jess:                                     12:09                    But here's the thing, right? Because of, and we've talked about this a little bit, my original publication date was going to be next fall. The election is pushing that until the spring of the following year. So my official pub date is now in spring of 2021 and edits - I have plenty of time. I think for my sanity on this project, I would like to get a little bit of mental distance from the book. And November might be a fantastic gap in which to do that. In fact, I heard from my editor that she might not even get to look at the rest of the book until the end of November, anyway. So that gives me a really nice buffer to put this book away and do what Stephen King talks about, which is that put it in a drawer until it starts to feel a little bit like an artifact and you can look at it a little more objectively.KJ:                                        13:02                    Oh, I love that you're going to get that time.Jess:                                     13:04                    I'm really excited about that, too. So I think it might be wise for me to not work on edits for just a little bit, just a short period of time, just enough time to work on something else and focus on just that one thing.KJ:                                        13:16                    Okay, we like this plan.Jess:                                     13:18                    So thoughts? So we have those three things. Book proposal, essays, novel. The problem with the novel thing is I don't have time to plan really before I'd have to start on that.Sarina:                                 13:32                    Well of course, I want you to write the novel. But it's not just that I really like YA novels and I enjoyed reading the beginning of it, but also because I honestly feel that novels lend themselves more constructively to this kind of attention.Jess:                                     13:52                    That's true.Sarina:                                 13:53                    I feel that essays may be a little more challenging. Although, you could use the ability to move from one to another in a helpful way, like if you get stuck on one essay. I can just picture myself flipping around a lot, though.Jess:                                     14:13                    Well, and you have heard me say that these essays, these sort of creative nonfiction, is where I really get a buzz. So I do really enjoy and get to do a deep dive in when I'm in. So, there's that.KJ:                                        14:24                    I guess a nice thing about NaNo for what we're talking about, is that the specific idea of NaNoWriMo is you've come out of the month with a 50,000 word novel draft. But it's not a daily goal. I described it as a daily goal, but if you're gonna get to 50,000 words, you've got to write 1,600, well 1200 words a day. But you don't have to. So you're saying, well I don't have time to plan. Well first of all, you've got some stuff written, so you've got some things in your head. You know, you could sit down and create an inside outline, you could do some work (even in the beginning of November) and maybe what you say is 'Well mine NaNo for this book, because I've already got X, is another 30,000 words plus the outline or...Jess:                                     15:20                    I'm glad you said that because I was thinking in terms of its old name (the name Jenny used to call that outline and I couldn't remember the new name, so I'm really glad you said it) I was actually thinking that spending deep time on that inside outline might be just the perfect way to start the month and then jump in. I don't know. I wish Jenny was on this. I thought about that. Oh, well. I will do some more thinking about it. I think I know what Jenny's answer would be - Jenny's answer would be spend very careful time on your inside outline before you willy nilly go off writing your novel, because as you found out, you can spend a lot of time and words and effort writing something that isn't right. And why do that if you can spend some time really organizing it on the front end first?KJ:                                        16:13                    Very true, but you also want to take advantage of the energy of having the project. So I think if you go into it with your defined version of what you want it to look like and if it is both realistic and yet a push, that's ideal.Sarina:                                 16:34                    You could also structure this in a way that accommodates your need to spend time doing some side writing for this book. So you could count those words, you could count the words that you spend on your outline. And when I outline and I was doing this last night, actually. I had a horrible long day of returning emails and so much conflict and just the worst Monday ever. And then I went to take a kid to a music lesson. I guess that's a theme today. And I was walking around the track at the Lebanon High School in the dark with my phone recording me talking about what had to happen next in this book. And I swear to God, I've written like seven outlines for this book already, but I really just needed to walk around that track in circles and say, 'And then this happens, and then this happens, and then that happens.' And then I got home and sort of blurted all of this outline stuff out of the application, which is called Otter.ai, into a document. And there were 2,000...KJ:                                        17:42                    Side note - supporters can find Otter.ai in an upcoming top five for writers, top five resources for dictating your work. Just throwing that out there.Sarina:                                 17:54                    Good footnote. But, so what sometimes happens when I get 2,000 words of outline is that when I'm tapping away, trying to give myself all of the good stuff that I've been thinking about, I accidentally write partial scenes.Jess:                                     18:12                    Oh, interesting.KJ:                                        18:13                    Yeah, or just lines. I totally agree with you. Cause I'll be like, 'And he says dah dah, dah. And she says dah, dah, dah, dah. And then they did...' And the dah, dah, dahs do make it into the book.Sarina:                                 18:27                    Yes. So there's no reason to sort of hold your outline hostage. You can be outlining and writing a novel in the same hour.Jess:                                     18:39                    You're so smart. No, I love this, this is really great. Especially since one of the byproducts of having kept my butt in the chair and being a good little writer doobie is that I am so remarkably out of shape. And so one of the tasks for me in November is taking more walks,, doing more hiking and getting out more. And so using something like my phone to dictate some and do what you're talking about actually would be a really good way to keep that going.KJ:                                        19:10                    I feel like this is practically a take back November movement. It's like y'all are claiming that November is the time when we're supposed to start holiday shopping, and marinating things, and putting pie dough in pie dough containers. November is actually, especially the first part, a really great time of when things tend to - like the fall routine tends to be set, whether it's your personal routine, or a work routine, or a family routine. And it tends to just kind of keep going. There aren't concerts and all of the early fall stuff has fallen away and so early November can be super productive. And then you take that energy and you just get up early, and ignore your whole family, and make it keep going through that beginning of the holidays.Jess:                                     20:12                    I do have to say that there won't be a lot of ignoring my family simply because I already did that. In this last month, my husband has been the grocery getter, the laundry doer, the dog taker carer of her. I mean, they've done everything and I have been so absent. And so one of the things I'm really looking forward to in November is spending more time with my family, getting to know my family again. It'll be lovely, they've grown since I saw them last. I think this is really helpful actually. I think I have sort of a mental game plan and I think it's the novel, and I think it's doing what Sarina's talking about with the outlining, and sort of thinking about scenes. I've changed some of the characters. Actually one of them I changed at Sarina's behest. I have a friendship that is now I think more of a romance and so that's a great idea. I'm happy with that. That sounds like a great plan for November.KJ:                                        21:10                    Well, so Sarina, I love that you're pulling together pieces for a new novel. It's kind of where I am, but I think you're more strongly there. So let's talk about what we can put together now in October, if we're on top of it or at the beginning of November, whatever works, to try to help make the words that we're going to write in November actual usable words instead of just the words that you have to sort of you know, vomit past in order to get to the real book.Sarina:                                 21:41                    Okay. Well, you know that we love to talk about resources. And at the top of our resources list, of course, we're gonna put Jennie Nash's outlining as one of our gold standard ways to get into writing a book. So that goes right at the top of the page.KJ:                                        21:59                    And we also have last week's discussion of character enneagrams. So if anybody missed that go back, because this is one of the ways we're thinking about our characters anew and afresh. So that's another good one. I'll put that on the list.Sarina:                                 22:16                    So this is an outline right here and Roman numeral one is the Jennie Nash method of understanding the point of your book and finding the through line so that the things that happen are connected by cause and effect. And then Roman numeral two is different kinds of character-based plotting. So enneagrams is a great resource, so that's letter a. Letter b is perhaps something like the emotional wounds thesaurus that we talk about sometimes; understanding what's driving your characters and what stuff in their icky background is scaring them. Which also leads into that book I talked about a couple episodes, which is now getting some play in our Facebook group. Like a couple people have said they're reading Take Off Your Pants, which is about character-based plot outlining. And then of course we have to reserve a Roman numeral at the bottom of this outline for classic plot, hero-based plotting. I've said before that it's slightly frustrating to me that that hero-based plotting is tricky in romance. But we do have a resource to share. We were sent this deck of cards called the Fabula Deck and I believe there's 28 of them at fabuladeck.com. Oh, it's 40 cards, sorry. And the first ones in the deck are my favorite. So it's the hero's steps. So card number one literally says 'The ordinary world. Who is the hero? What is his world like at the beginning?' And if you're plotting something like high fantasy or Star Wars or something with a defined hero going on a journey or an adventure, this would be just invaluable. And step number two is the call to action. And step number three is anxiety of the call. And so these cards are just like little roadmap.KJ:                                        24:25                    Is it a 40 step road map or is it like the first 10 cards are a roadmap and the next ones are...Sarina:                                 24:32                    Well there's 14 hero steps, which is a nice structure. And then there's character cards and some readers' steps. So there's a few different frameworks in the deck.KJ:                                        24:45                    Wait a minute. I need us to take a step back and just talk about like what is this deck? Is this like that spinny plot wheel that somebody came up with in you know, the 1800's or you know, spin the wheel and figure out what your next step a stranger arrives next at you. You know...Sarina:                                 25:04                    Well, I think it's more like a Joseph Campbell hero's journey. Actually on their website they use a cute example where they've plotted The Matrix movie against the first few cards in the deck. So, for the ordinary world card, the first step of the hero's journey, their sticky note says, 'A hacker doubts his reality.' And then card number two, which is the call to action, is that he follows the white rabbit and they kind of demonstrate the way that a lot of classical action stories that we've come to enjoy, follow this path in the way that they've laid it out.KJ:                                        25:53                    It's just a fun structural way I guess to have the cards out there. That's kind of a fun twist.Sarina:                                 26:01                    It is a fun twist.Jess:                                     26:02                    The whole Joseph Campbell thing is something my students used to love to do. It was one of our favorite things as we'd plot out like Star Wars, The Matrix, The Lion King according to all the different parts with the Joseph Campbell stuff. It's super fun. I love that stuff.KJ:                                        26:17                    Well isn't it funny how movies lend themselves so much better to this? It's because when you really look at a movie, they're so bald because all of the stuff that takes words in a novel comes into your brain in a different way in a movie. You know, the description of the person's office, and the description of what the person looks like, and the description of the person's movement. I mean when you peel all that back, you're left with post it notes that say things like, 'Hacker doubts his reality.' It's kind of amazing. And that's kind of going back to the Inside Outline, right? You're trying to get just those post it notes and for some reason it's so hard, like I feel like I need 20 post it notes.Jess:                                     27:04                    One of the things we would also do is the kids would come in and I would ask them to sort of just start shouting out some of their favorite books, or series, or whatever. And then the challenge would be, can we plot this book? You know, isn't this interesting how we can - and then they would get this look in their eye, like all of a sudden order had been established in their universe. And it was really sort of satisfying to be able to say, 'Oh my gosh, look at this. This thing has a trajectory with these common plot points or common milestones and we can do that with this book and we can do it with this book.' It's just this really nice moment when they go, 'Oh, look at the universe make sense all of a sudden.' It was great.KJ:                                        27:46                    So what else is in the cards? Like what is in the cards for us?Sarina:                                 27:53                    Well, you're going to have to flip through all of the hero's steps, but we get to a death, which does not need to be literal at a resurrection. And then the cards also give you a few other ways to look at your story, like how the reader is experiencing it. So I actually find the first half of the deck to be the most useful with the hero's journey. Because if you're going to cut out a card, or if you don't know what goes on that card, then it's a hole that you need to acknowledge and confront.KJ:                                        28:33                    Yeah. So if you're getting ready for your NaNo and you can lay out those cards or some version of those cards, you can find a lot of different sort of stories structure...it's kind of all over the place. It's that book The Idea that I've talked about before, there's lots of places to see the hero's journey stretched out, but it sounds like this is a super fun and practical way to do it. But anyway, if you don't have that death or the hero resists the journey kind of thing then yeah, you're missing something. There's something that people need to see happen that hasn't happened. And you can fulfill these expectations in a bazillion different ways, but if you don't fulfill them, you tend to sort of end up with people going, 'Wait a minute,' or maybe just not reading at all. I have a terrible time with it, though, I have to say. With the journey plotting. I do remember like writing down in huge letters (because you were talking about how something needs to die. Like that's kind of the - well, there's all kinds of names for that, the all is lost moment is my favorite) And I wrote in capital letters about my new book, that a person metaphorically dies. And I was like, 'Oh yeah, yeah, I found it.' But I don't know. I guess I just get caught up in all that stuff I was saying you don't even see in a movie. It's really hard to just lay down the post its and be like, 'This happens, and then this happens, and then this happens.' And it's harder than it thinks.Jess:                                     30:43                    Plenty of people would argue that if you're coming at it from the perspective of, I need to have all these plot points in my book, then you're going about it backwards and you're losing the freshness or the lifeblood of your novel. I mean, it's not like Virgil went out and said, 'Okay, gotta go get me some Joseph Campbell before I can write the Aeneid.'KJ:                                        31:06                    I'm really not Virgil and yeah, I get you, but I think that what at least tends to happen for me is that I have a giant messy thing in my head with all of those things in it. And what I am doing is more in and along the...gosh, can we just reference...we should just call this the podcast in which we reference Stephen King's On Writing constantly, but...Jess:                                     31:31                    Well, we do it all the time.KJ:                                        31:32                    Yeah, exactly. We'll just change the name of the podcast. No the part where you're excavating the dinosaur, right? So it's finding it, I'm digging for the post its. It's not like I'm artificially creating the post its. It's that they're buried in a pile of other paper, and magazine clippings, and pictures of people, and cards, and goodness knows what.KJ:                                        31:57                    So yeah, I have a hard time digging out the important post it I think is what I'm saying. So even going back and revising my book that's coming out next year, there were definitely moments of like, 'I know this thing is in here, like this turning point, but I really need to peel away the 16 descriptions of what the character is doing and whose hand she's holding or whatever in that minute so that people can see that.' So, you know, do it ahead of time and I guess we think we're hoping we'll be ahead of the game, right?Jess:                                     32:30                    Right.Sarina:                                 32:30                    Yeah. And I will acknowledge that some of my best books have the best dark moments for sure.Speaker 4:                          32:42                    So, even though I sort of fight it the way that you're describing, it's totally worthwhile to continue prodding yourself mercilessly...KJ:                                        32:53                    Until you find that really dark moment. Yeah.Sarina:                                 32:56                    Right. And I will say that, you know how I like to fill up the extra spots in my sticker calendar with quotes? I had one in September that I wrote down because I think it's true with a but at the end. So it's an E.L. Doctorow quote like this, '"Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."KJ:                                        33:24                    But.Sarina:                                 33:25                    But, I acknowledge that the wisdom here (and he's right), but I have written a lot of novels just looking at the headlights and I'm squinty and tired. And I have really given myself the task of making 2020 the year of the outline because when I have recently had better outlines, I just feel better about my life.KJ:                                        33:50                    Well, and to kind of stretch poor E.L. Doctorow's metaphor out, you do need to know where you're going. I mean, yeah, it's like driving at night, but it's best to drive at night with the idea that you're going to get to Concord, as opposed to the thought that you're just going to go out and drive at night. So we're just trying to find a few points on the map here because goodness knows that I am perpetually lost.Sarina:                                 34:22                    The last time we drove at night we almost killed a bunny.KJ:                                        34:30                    Yeah. So you want to be careful with that stuff. It's dangerous, that's what I'm saying. Alright, well I think this is our way of saying let's all figure out what our own NaWhateverWriMo is, what's yours going to be Sarina? What's your goal for set for November? I know you've got one.Speaker 4:                          34:49                    Yeah. So my issue with actually ever doing NaNoWriMo is that I can't give wholly one month to one project reliably. So I'll be putting the finishing touches on one thing, and then getting back to some other things, so it's going to be a mixed bag. But I'm going to finish up a novel called Heartland in my True North series. And that is my big goal for the next five weeks for sure.KJ:                                        35:16                    Yeah, that's mine basically too. Except I think I should probably not call my novel Heartland cause that would just be weird. So I'm trying to finish up the novel that I am working on, which has lots, and lots, and lots of bits written but definitely needs a full....If I can get it done by the end of November, I better get it done by the end of November. It's exactly the kind of goal I'm talking about. It's a push. It's a stretch. But, I can do it. So that's going to be fun. And I probably do need 50,000 words, although we all know that my problem is more words, too many words, not too few words. In fact, today's goal was: 'Write the thousand words and then delete enough words to get the chapter I was working on back below 3000 words.' Cause that's my new rule, no chapters over 3000 words. So it was like, 'Yes to a thousand words. No, we're just going to delete, but it all counted.' We've given Jess her task.Jess:                                     36:22                    Yeah. Well, and it's going to be really weird jumping back into that because for awhile there I was on that I'm going to let myself pull a Diana Gabaldon, which apparently she does not always write in a linear fashion. She'll just write whatever strikes her when she picks up in the morning and then she'll have these random scenes that she then has to string together. So I did that for a while, so I don't even know what's in that file now. It's going to be so weird. It's going to be crazy.KJ:                                        36:53                    Alright. Well, anybody read anything worthy of note?Jess:                                     37:02                    Well, my thing though is (I'm going to do something really obnoxious and I'm going to apologize ahead of time) but I have these advanced copies of books that have been sitting on the side of my desk and I've been begging for extra time on them, but I've been asked to read them for various reasons. And so I'm taking them with me on vacation next week. And I started two of them. And I'm not only do I have (spoiler here) I have KJ's book and Sarina's next book on my iPad. I get to read those and I am so excited. I was saying, I feel like such a wealthy person going off with these two books on my iPad.KJ:                                        37:40                    Nobody is going to believe anything you say about either of these books. It's like having our mothers say they're wonderful.Jess:                                     37:48                    Absolutely not. But I also have three advanced copies by three authors I really like. And one of them is Peggy Orenstein. She wrote this fantastic book called Girls and Sex and her new book Boys and Sex is coming out in January. And I have been skimming through it and I already love it. I have an advanced copy of Madeline Levine's new book. Madeline Levine wrote Price of Privilege and Teach Your Children Well and her new book is called Ready Or Not, and I'm really excited to read that. And then I have another book by Christine Carter who wrote a book called The Sweet Spot. And I know her because we did a talk one time together in California about middle school and her new book is called The New Adolescence: Raising Happy and Successful Teens in an Age of Anxiety and Distraction. And so I have five books to take on vacation with me that I'm excited to read. So this is going to be a big reading week for me. I'm so, so excited. And two of these, like I said, I've already started to dive into and I already like. But I haven't touched your book or Sarina's book, I'm keeping those for vacation.KJ:                                        38:57                    Well, I read one book. I don't have a stack, I only have one, but I really liked it. I finished The Lager Queen of Minnesota. Sarina, I bought this at Print when we were in Portland. Remember I was sort of wandering around with this stack of books and I was like, 'Yeah, I don't want any of these.' And then all of a sudden I was like, 'But I'm going to go back for that one. I've been eyeing that one.' The author is J. Ryan Stradal and I loved this book. It's really good. It's got a lot of different points of view and Oh, when we were talking about enneagram and I was like, 'Oh, there's this character in it that's a total, I think it was six, but I don't remember.' Anyway, lots of different points of view. A really good story, people that you really want to hear more from. Some of them you don't get to hear more from, because it's got all these points of view, but it comes full circle in this really cool, unexpected, yet satisfying way. And we all know that's exactly what you want. So this is definitely a recommend for me. It's also a lovely cross between literary and commercial. It sits right on that line that I like, which is smart, but commercial, I don't know where people have mentally filed it, but I enjoyed it. I also wanted to throw out there that I bought a book by Jojo Moyes (who is great, like you know Me Before You, and all that) so I bought a book that I was like, 'This looks different, and it feels different, and I bet this is one of her really early books.' And it was, it's The Peacock Emporium or something like that. And when I finally managed to look at the pub date, cause I just didn't when I bought it, it's 2004. And I don't think I'm going to be able to finish it because there's a really long windup before the pitch is all I'm saying. I'm like a quarter of the way through the book and I don't think these are even the main characters yet. But you can kind of see where she's going. And it's fun to read an earlier book by somebody who has gotten so good at it.Jess:                                     41:22                    This was a conversation I had with my kids last night. My son was listening to some music and he said, 'Oh my gosh, I've been listening to the same musician for the longest time and I can just see the trajectory.' And I said, 'That's what's really fun for me when I find an author I like, and then going back and reading some of their early works.' Or following someone like David Sedaris and seeing the bridge between some of his early stuff and then what we both agreed was his best book, which is Calypso (his most recent one). I love seeing that progress. It's really cool.KJ:                                        41:54                    Yeah, it's fun and it's just encouraging because I definitely feel like I'm growing from book to book and I know you guys do, too. So it's nice to see it. It's nice to see it out in the wild.Jess:                                     42:06                    Since you mentioned it, I want to make sure we give a proper shout out to Print. Those of you who have been listening for a long time might remember we were there once. We recorded our interview with Richard Russo at Print. It was not the quietest background ever, but it is a fantastic bookstore. And the reason we were there interviewing is that Richard Russo's daughter is the owner of Print Bookstore and it is a beautiful, wonderful, bookstore that I adore in Portland.KJ:                                        42:38                    So let's call that the Fave Indie Bookstore for the week. Alright, that's our week.Jess:                                     42:55                    We have a game plan, people. We have a game plan for November.KJ:                                        43:01                    Said it at the beginning of the episode, saying it again now. Head over to amwritingpodcast.com, sign up to get our emails. We also do supporter emails every week, top five for writers. There's one, I think it actually already rolled out, that's top five reasons to do your own NaNoWriMo, which has got some of what we talked in this episode and a bunch of other stuff cause I just wrote it. Yeah, so head over, sign up for that. You'll get emails whenever we drop an episode. You have the option of getting the top fives, which are fantastic. Some great stuff coming up. And that is it. And of course, as always, if you're having fun with us, review us, help other people to find us. We love that. We want to talk to as many of our fellow writers as we possibly can.Jess:                                     43:52                    And until next week, everyone, keep your button, the chair and your head in the game. This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid. 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

Shortcut to finding our characters’ worst flaws and deepest fears? Yes, thank you.All Sarina had to do was say “protagonist character analysis” and we were off. Enneagrams, for those who have never heard of them [raises hand high] are descriptions of character types intended for “journeys of self-discovery.” But when it comes to knowing more about your protagonist (and love interest and antagonist and their mother and all the people) they’re pure solid gold, especially if you go romping down the rabbit hole of reading what people in various types (there are 9, with a “wing” in one direction or another) think of themselves and their relationships. Suddenly, you can think about how your character would play fantasy football, or interview for a job. But the best part is diving deep into how your character behaves at her/his/their very worst, and very best, along with what they most fear and what they believe they want. It’s like real butter on movie popcorn, people.Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, a preview of the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, October 14, 2019: Top 5 Resources for Dictating Your Work. Not joined that club yet? You’ll want to get on that. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month. As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode. To support the podcast and help it stay free, subscribe to our weekly #WritersTopFive email.LINKS FROM THE PODCASTThe Enneagram Institute (length type descriptions and relationships between the types under the “LEARN” tab).Free Enneagram test (there are many; this is the one KJ talked about, chosen largely at random for brevity and for being free) from eclecticenergies.com.Enneagram and Coffee on Instagram.#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Jess:  The Butterfly Girl and an essay “The Green River Killer and Me” by Rene Denfeld and Demi Moore’s memoir, Inside OutKJ: The Great Believers, Rebecca MakkaiSarina: The Play, Elle Kennedy#FaveIndieBookstorePrairie Path Books, Wheaton ILThis episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.The image in our podcast illustration this week is from enneagramandcoffee on Instagram, and I asked permission to use it, although I confess that I’m posting it pre-reply. But I feel good about our odds. Plus, fun follow for everyone!Getting Ready to NaNoWriMo?Every episode of #AmWriting is sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. One key to that is the INSIDE OUTLINE, a tried and tested tool developed by Jennie Nash that can help you start a book, to help you rescue one that isn’t working, and to guide a revision.Author Accelerator is hosting a webinar about the Inside Outline just in time for NaNoWriMo prep on Monday, October 14 at Noon Pacific/2 PM Central/3 PM Eastern.Register even if you can’t attend live, as a replay will be sent to everyone who has registered.REGISTER FOR THE WEBINAR NOWTranscript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)KJ:                                        00:01                    Hey Book people, before today’s episode of #AmWriting, I want to tell you about something new from our sponsor, Author Accelerator. No matter where you are in your own work, you’ve probably found yourself working with other writers on theirs. If that time spent encouraging, editing and helping someone else turned out to be pure joy for you, you might want to consider becoming a book coach yourself. Author Accelerator provides book coaching to authors (like me) but also needs and trains book coaches. If that’s got your ears perked up, head to https://www.authoraccelerator.com and click on “become a book coach.” Is it recording?Jess:                                     00:01                    Go ahead.KJ:                                        00:01                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.Jess:                                     00:01                    All right, let's start over.KJ:                                        00:01                    Awkward pause, I'm going to rustle some papers.Jess:                                     00:01                    Okay.KJ:                                        00:01                    Now one, two, three. Hey I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. We are the podcast about all things, writing short things, long things, fictional things, non-fictional things, memoirs things. And as I say, every single week in a variety of different ways, this is the podcast about sitting down and getting your work done.Jess:                                     01:23                    And I'm Jess Lahey. I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and a forthcoming book on preventing substance abuse in kids that is due in seven days. And you can find my writing at various places including the Washington Post and the New York Times.Sarina:                                 01:41                    I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of more than 30 romance novels and you can find me at sarinabowen.com.KJ:                                        01:49                    And I am KJ Dell'Antonia author of How To Be a Happier Parent and have a novel that will be coming out next summer. And the former editor of the New York Times' Motherlode blog. For the most part at the moment you can find me sitting in front of my laptop writing a new novel. And I'm going to just own that Sarina and I are snuggled up in our small town library, gazing out at there are a lot of really pretty trees, but these that we can see are not super spectacular and that, I forgot my microphone. So we might sound a little echoey.Jess:                                     02:24                    And from my perspective, I'm looking out on the woods behind my house and there are a couple of red leaves out there, but it's Vermont and it's just starting to get that orangy glow to it. It's really pretty. What was crazy is this week I went from Vermont - where I was wearing a sweatshirt - and I traveled to Charlotte, North Carolina where it was oppressively hot, it was like 95 degrees. And then I went New York where it was cold again and then back here. So it's just been a really interesting week of summer and getting into fall. So, I'm ready for fall. I'm happy about it.KJ:                                        03:09                    And now this is the podcast about all things weather, and enough of that. I am so excited about our topic today because this is going to be super fun. We're going to talk Enneagrams, which is a rabbit hole that Sarina went down one day. And then quickly texted to me and I immediately dove right in after her. But let me just say before you all go, 'Wait a minute, wait a minute'. We're not talking about our own Enneagrams, although we might. We're going to talk about doing it for characters, because it's so cool. But before we do, what is an Enneagram for those of us who don't know, which was actually mostly all of us until we started this. You can do the defining.Sarina:                                 04:07                    Oh good. The Enneagram, which seems to have had most of its big talk in the 60s with psychiatrists. Working in psychiatry in the 1960's and 70's is a framework for explaining various human psychological profiles, personality typing.KJ:                                        04:34                    It is not the one where you get I,D, J, H, Q, B, Y. This is the one where you get a number.Sarina:                                 04:42                    So there's nine numbers in a shape. And you were referring to the Myers-Briggs system personality typing, which I'm honestly not a huge fan of. Partly because it was forced upon me by my corporate overlords in my previous work life.Sarina:                                 05:03                    But the Enneagram is, as we'll discuss, uniquely useful for writers. Because both personality type systems have a lot to do with preferences and how you prefer to handle things and how you see the world. The Enneagram I quickly discovered is also really focused on character flaws. Like your super power is also your greatest weakness, right?KJ:                                        05:28                    Which is so perfect for creating both main characters and secondary characters. I mean, that's exactly what you need to know. What does this person fear? And what do they want? And that's what these nine types are. And also, I mean partly because there are nine and then they sort of spread out. There's like, the enthusiastic who leans towards the challenger or leans towards the loyalist. You get a lot of different - this is not cookie cutter, it's got a lot to it.Sarina:                                 06:03                    Right. And if you get a book about Enneagrams and you take a look, you'll see some discussion of the wings, which is a theory with the Enneagram that each of the nine types also has a secondary type, which is the adjacent number.KJ:                                        06:38                    So 27 possibilities, but all of which have a lot of range within them and happily you don't have to get a book on this, you can just hit our friend uncle Google.KJ:                                        06:52                    Right. And there's some nice reliable sources for information.Sarina:                                 06:57                    And our favorite is the Enneagram Institute. I was pointed there (I'd like to give a shout out to author Nana Malone) who is the first person who ever said the word Enneagram to me. And I had to go look it up and Nana Malone is a romance writer and now I need to go read everything she's written because she has a wonderfully nuanced understanding of how this all works for character typing. And she really sort of walked me through how she looks at it and I was immediately hooked.KJ:                                        07:27                    We're enchanted, in part because one of the things I like about this (besides that it helps you) we all start with a character and we have this sort of mental picture, and I think we often start from something kind of flat. You often start with a stereotype. So you're often like, 'Well, my person is a real type A, or my person is a real introvert. Like you kinda just start with one word and then you build from there. And after you've spent a little time building, then you can dig into these Enneagrams and you'll find the one that fits the person that you're creating. And then you can sort of start reading a little more and go, 'Oh yeah, totally.' We're in the Enneagram Institute right now and we're looking at the peacemaker. So peacemakers are accepting, and trusting, and stable. And you could see that could be a character, but then you know, you can go like really sort of down into it and they have a universal temptation to ignore the disturbing aspects of life and seek peace and comfort. They numb out. You can see how you can really use this to create someone.Sarina:                                 08:51                    So everybody's biggest super power is also their biggest weakness. And even though we like the sound of that as fiction writers, this really shows you how to do it.KJ:                                        09:03                    I'm just looking at nine here. It even tells you exactly what it is that nine is. We're not proposing you just grab this and like stick it into a book cold. But if you have a character who's a nine, their want is for everything to be peaceful and pleasant and can't we all just get along? But their need, which is right here on the bottom of the list of description of nine, is to remember that the only way out is through and you can't just brush your troubles under the carpet. And there you go. I mean, that's practically a plot right there.Sarina:                                 09:40                    It is. And they all are. Maybe we should just dive in and give a few examples. I'm writing a nine right now. Well, nine is, as you said, that the peacemaker or the peaceful mediator. And most any gram resources will tell you what is that person's greatest fear? And nine's fear being shut out. And they fear being overlooked. They fear losing connection with others and all kinds of conflict, tension, and discord. So, what they're longing for is that their presence really matters. And their desire is for inner stability and peace of mind, because of those basic fears. And so you can see that their weakness then would be to hide from the stuff that isn't quite hitting their peacemaker senses. So, you could remain in an idealistic place psychologically and not cope with the things going on around you.KJ:                                        10:51                    So this person needs to sort of break through that desire to keep everything idealistic and feeling like it's all safe and calm and get to a point where they actually feel secure.Sarina:                                 11:07                    So let's contrast the nine with a seven.KJ:                                        11:09                    That's perfect because I'm writing a seven.Sarina:                                 11:11                    Me too.KJ:                                        11:12                    Oh, excellent.Sarina:                                 11:14                    Well, my seven is a party boy.KJ:                                        11:16                    My seven is a failed child actress.Sarina:                                 11:21                    Well, this number is usually called the enthusiast. And their basic desire is to be happy and satisfied, fulfilled and engaged. So sevens hate boredom and they're easily bored. And I was listening to a podcast with Ian Cron who has what is probably the most popular Enneagram book out there. And it has a bright yellow cover, The Road Back To You, I think. And he was very clear about how sevens leave a wake of unfinished projects behind them because of their attention span. And there's always something more interesting to be doing. And I really particularly liked his descriptive appeal about all of these. And there's one, I don't think it started like this in the 60's and 70's, but a lot of the writings about Enneagrams now are from a faith-based kind of Christian perspective. I don't read much faith-based stuff, but he had a really light touch that that made me want to seek out his book anyway. Even if even if the Christian angle is not what's interesting to me about it. So the seven and the nine don't look at the world the same way, even though they're in the same world together sometimes and have to have to sort through that. And in each case you're handed weaknesses. And so if you look at the Enneagram Institute site, it will actually tell you what a romantic pairing.KJ:                                        13:05                    We can just look that up right now. Relationships types, we've got a seven and a nine here and I'll just go under seven and hit the nine. And we can see what each type brings to the relationship.Sarina:                                 13:21                    They bring a good mix of similar and opposite qualities. Fundamentally, they're both positive outlook types who are optimistic, upbeat, and prefer to avoid conflicts.KJ:                                        13:33                    There's gotta be a but here.Sarina:                                 13:34                    Oh, there's absolutely always a but. That's why we like Enneagrams. So sevens are more active and self-assertive than nines. They tend to take initiatives and to make the plans and have multiple interests and they bring the fun and sparkle and the party atmosphere. Well nines bring a sense of steadiness and support so you can see how that might build.KJ:                                        13:56                    And that's one of the things sevens want is somebody to take care of them. One of the seven's weaknesses that I've found that I'm exploiting in my person is that they want to feel like somebody else. They would like to seed the decision making to someone else. So that they can just sort of party along, having a good time and you know, getting a chance to try everything and do everything and experience everything, but not necessarily have to make any hard choices. So here are the potential trouble spots for that possible relationship between the seven and the nine. Sevens are more equipped to talk about whatever's bothering them. But they often feel they cannot help themselves and honesty demands they tell the nine how unhappy they are with them.Sarina:                                 14:54                    That's a good scene.KJ:                                        14:55                    One of the sunniest and most carefree couples can become one of the most hopelessly tortured if they become unwilling or unable to really talk with each other. Why do I have a feeling that is going to happen to the poor seven and nine?Sarina:                                 15:10                    But that's also like the classic Harry Potter and Dumbledore problem, right? Just knock on his office door, Harry.KJ:                                        15:17                    That's every book. I mean, it's not a good book unless you're shouting, 'Just tell them. Just tell people, just tell everyone what's wrong. Just tell them the truth.'.Sarina:                                 15:28                    You know what, though? You make a good point because that is in every book, but it's not always good in every book. So you have to earn it.KJ:                                        15:36                    And it has to be different and the person has to have a really good reason for not telling the truth. So you have to understand why they're not going to. And if they don't, if you're sitting there reading along going, 'Oh, come on. Like you know, this character would just tell her boss everything or whatever, then that's it.' You're not going to keep going. So, Enneagrams can help you to find the reasons that your character is not telling the deep dark secret. Not telling the deep, dark secret is not revealing everything about themselves or whatever. And then you can also head out and have a look. So one of the things I think is fun about the Enneagram is that it's a great way to find some things about your character that would be true to this person that you have created, that are also quirky. And a funny way to do that if you just want to sort of wander through the world of quirks of different things is to (I mean there's probably a lot of places to do this) but we happened to have found the Instagram account for Enneagrams and Coffee. It's lovely, it's really funny. So, for example there's a post here where she says, 'I need someone who for each Enneagram type. So sevens need someone who doesn't stop on my ideas and nine needs someone who asks them really good questions and genuinely listened to the answers. Sometimes these are funny, sometimes they're not. But the reason I loved it is you can come up with a bizarre quirk that your person always does. So walking down the sidewalk sevens are dance walking. And you could use that. And what you get is sort of quirks that are gonna be consistent with a personality type that maybe you are not, but you know people that are like this, you can feel it. You can sort of get their three-dimensionals. For example, when they play fantasy football they're the one that's always trying to trade. Or whatever. That might not occur to you, but it might be perfect for your person. And it's just fun.Sarina:                                 18:04                    I liked the fantasy football one, too. I read that one. We should do a few more types because it makes our examples better. So type one is the reformer, the moral perfectionist. And I have to say, that I think I might be this type.KJ:                                        18:21                    We will put a link to a quiz you can take that is free. And frankly the link was chosen entirely because I Googled free Enneagram test and this one was free and kind of long and seemed good. So we'll put a link and you can figure out your own because of course that's fun. Alright, so type one, possibly Sarina.Sarina:                                 18:43                    You really like rule following. I don't like to make the rules, but I like to make sure that everyone else is following them. Number two, the helper, the supportive advisor. So the number twos are the people who are making sure that there's somebody working in the soup kitchen on Christmas Eve and they really, really love helping other people and it really feeds them.KJ:                                        19:11                    But they also like to be appreciated for their doing of this. I'll talk about this in a later episode if I'm not quite done with it, but I just read The Logger Queen of Minnesota and loved it. And there's a total two, like one of the main characters and there is just two, two, two. They're always doing exactly that, but their inner thought is always, 'You know, basically maybe when I'm dead everyone will appreciate how much I did.'.Sarina:                                 19:39                    And number three is the achiever. So that's the person in the CEO office burning the midnight oil, you know, making sure he's on top of the heap. And I think, in my earlier life I was more of a three before I found my inner one.KJ:                                        19:58                    I've got a three in my next book. I've got a broken down, beaten up, three. In the book I'm writing.Sarina:                                 20:07                    Okay. So four is the romantic individualist. So the who's the Harry Potter character?KJ:                                        20:13                    Luna Lovegood.Sarina:                                 20:13                    Writing the poetry, gazing at the moon, singing a song, interpretive dance.KJ:                                        20:22                    I remember some fun stuff I liked about this one. Also empathy, they see themselves as uniquely talented, special, one of a kind, but also uniquely disadvantaged or flawed. So you see this in a lot of characters where they feel like they're super special and they're different from everyone else. And one of the things that they often have to discover, which I'm sure I could find if I sort of scroll down here, is that other people also share their needs, or share their interests, or are willing to sort of be part of them. My longings can never be fulfilled because I now realize that I'm attached to the longing itself and not to this best specific result. So that's what the four needs is to figure out how to be attached to something besides this sort of dream of themselves as special.Sarina:                                 21:25                    Type five, the investigative thinker. And that's supposed to be the most analytical personality type. And also tending toward introvert.KJ:                                        21:37                    So it's a little obvious, but if you were writing in the mystery genre, you probably at least would want to hit this so you could figure out whether your person had this or didn't have this. And if your main character doesn't, there's probably someone in your plot that does. I could see that.Sarina:                                 21:54                    So five is like Sherlock Holmes.KJ:                                        21:57                    Yeah. I'm looking at this - so perceptive and innovative, sure. But also secretive and isolated. I mean, that's a thousand detective story heroes. But they're all interesting and deep and it's not like a two dimensional thing. Alright. Six the loyalist. What do you have on the loyalist?Sarina:                                 22:19                    You know, I haven't done enough that I understand this one so well. But, sixes know how to be on a team, but they're a bit anxious. Like they're Woody Allen, making all of my anxieties, wearing them on the outside.KJ:                                        22:38                    The cool thing about the Enneagram Institutes, their key motivations are they want to have security, they want to feel supported by others, to test the attitudes of others towards them, and to fight against their anxieties and securities. I mean, once again, I could write a dozen plots in that. Oh, this one gives George Costanza. Okay, so now we know what a six is. A six is George Costanza. Do you like me? Do you really like me? I don't think you like me. I'm just going to be really awful until I see whether or not you like me. But I'm also going to be completely loyal to you at all times. That's a six, I like a six. Then, just to keep sort of going with what we can do character wise here, if you scroll down to the bottom of this extremely useful free site, they talk about how at their best the six is self affirming, and trusting of others, and independent, belief in themselves leads to true courage. Okay, that's where your six gets to at the end of your book, right? But at the beginning, your six is ... let's don't go all the way down to hysterical. I guess this is probably where they drop down to.Sarina:                                 23:55                    Yeah, that's the darkest moment.KJ:                                        23:58                    The darkest moment for the level six - they're self destructive and suicidal. They're on skid row.Sarina:                                 24:05                    Okay, well that's pretty dark. Not in a comedy, maybe.KJ:                                        24:09                    Yeah, maybe in a comedy you only go to level seven.Sarina:                                 24:12                    But you do bring up a good point, which is that Enneagram writers like to talk about, what an unhealthy version of each one of these things looks like. And my friend Nana Malone was saying that she looks at these unhealthiest levels, like what's the worst version of that character's self? And then she sort of looks at that to be the dark moment of her novel. And tries to make those things pan out each time.KJ:                                        24:44                    And it's really cool reading this stuff about the six. You can see them sort of deteriorating. You know, to compensate for their insecurities they become sarcastic and belligerent, blaming others for their problems. And then they just sort of keep sinking lower. But then hopefully they come back around and end up believing in themselves and finding their true courage. I'm not sure that ever happened for poor George Costanza yet.Sarina:                                 25:08                    The series ended before he got there.KJ:                                        25:10                    We can hope that he found himself in a prison cell.Sarina:                                 25:13                    The only one we haven't mentioned is number eight.KJ:                                        25:16                    Okay, well conveniently enough, number eight is the one I dropped into.Sarina:                                 25:23                    Really? So tell me about eight, because I don't think I understand this one.KJ:                                        25:26                    Eights are challengers, rebels. Yeah, that would be me. And the quirky thing about eight, the thing that kept popping up everywhere is that eights also wants to try everything. So eights are ordering everything in the restaurant because they don't want to miss out on everything. So that's an eight characteristic. Decisive, willful, prefers other people to do what they want. That might be me. Yeah, I was sort of in between. I was like, 'Am I seven or am I eight?' But I tested out as an eight.Sarina:                                 26:02                    So the fear here is of being controlled, like letting someone else make all their decisions.KJ:                                        26:08                    To be in control of their own life, says the unemployable, freelance writer. So that would be me. Yeah, I didn't spend a ton of time on it, but apparently I could rebuild a city, run a household, wage war, make peace. I have all kinds of things within my Enneagram. It's a rabbit hole, we can't deny it. But man, it's a useful rabbit hole. When you're thinking about your character and trying to create someone who is three-dimensional and whole, who isn't either too perfect or too flawed. You can't read this and go, 'Okay, well I'm just going to apply this Willy nilly.' You have to go, 'Well, okay, what would somebody in my character's situation who has these fears, that has these desires, what might they do? You know, what might they have done at some moment in their past? What would be affecting what they do now?' It's hugely fun.Sarina:                                 27:15                    So it's been really useful for me on the book that I need to finish next, in a couple of months or whatever. But I have to say that I have discovered a big question in my head about how this all fits together because when you use the Enneagram as your character basis, it almost, but not accurately... So here's a moment where once I learned more about it, I'll find my answer. But the other way we build characters is to look at their big emotional wound and to understand how this thing that happened earlier in life is shaping all of their decisions and their outlooks now, which is somewhat in conflict with the idea that you're born seeing the world a certain way. So yeah, I mean if you want to go with that character background that you know, he witnessed a horrible accident or you know, some big thing in his or her past made that person be the way they are right now, there's a little bit of struggle there. And between that framework for making your character arc and this sort of innate diversion.KJ:                                        28:33                    I think that when it comes to creating character, I can probably work with either way. You need to have the emotional wound or the moment in their background or the lengthy experience. You know, there are a lot of options there. It doesn't have to be a single event that gives them whatever misbelief that they're sort of traveling through life with, right? But I feel like I personally can take the Enneagram and either start it there, it doesn't bother me, I'm cool. They don't have to have been born with it. I find that I can't make a person - like basically the minute I start to make a person and I want to give the person a name, I have to know who their parents are and sometimes even who their parents are. Not like in depth, but I can't even name you unless I know what your mother and father would have named you.Sarina:                                 29:30                    Well that's really healthy as a fiction writer because you will save yourself time, I think. Because I actually kind of take the opposite approach whereas that I usually know some dramatic thing that's going to happen at the 50% point. And so the beginning part of my characterization sounds like I'm holding a Barbie doll and a Ken doll, one in each hand. And the dialogue that's coming is just as bad as it sounds like it would be. And I have to sort of bumble through that a while until I figure out what they're really saying to each other. So, if I knew who their parents and grandparents were, the first draft of chapter one would be a lot better.KJ:                                        30:11                    Maybe. Sometimes you get lots and lots of pages on who their parents and grandparents are that you really, really don't need. But yeah, I can't even give them a name until I know where the name would've come from. And then to know that, sometimes I have to know why the parents' names were what they were. I guess I think names are really important. I could probably find a naming rabbit hole, I've found them all.Sarina:                                 30:37                    I've bought baby books when my kids were already teenagers, just for this purpose. Seriously, there's a lot of baby books in the world.KJ:                                        30:45                    I just Google, you know, common surnames or common first names for people with X descent and that kind of thing.Sarina:                                 30:54                    And I'm sure you've discovered this social security naming database. So in case our listeners don't know, this U.S. Social Security database publishes the most popular 100 names for girls or boys for every birth year, going back a good amount.KJ:                                        31:14                    Right. Which is great because if you need to bring somebody's grandmother or great aunt into the story, you don't want to name them Madison. That'd be wrong.Sarina:                                 31:24                    So you would go back and you would look at the database for the year of 1939 and see that Sally who was the number 17 or whatever.KJ:                                        31:37                    Character creation is so fun. I felt like I could just create characters all day, but darn it, then they have to go and do something and I have to be mean and make terrible things happen to them. And I have to have them make terrible choices. And that is where the glorious thing about this Enneagram is that man, does it give you the reasons that your characters make really, really, really terrible choices. And contrary to all appearances Jess is still here.Jess:                                     32:08                    I'm still here. No, I was going to say, recently I'd noticed a Sarina posting things to her Sarina Facebook group that she's been doing mean things to characters lately and I've been wondering about what kind of evil stuffs been going on over in Sarina's writing world.KJ:                                        32:26                    You got to do mean things. I think I put it up somewhere - woke up, did mean things to character. I don't remember what it was.Sarina:                                 32:35                    I feel like I haven't always been very good at that.KJ:                                        32:38                    Yeah, it's a weakness of mine, too. Like, why don't they just make all the great choices and the whole book will just be the happy middle.Sarina:                                 32:47                    Well plus, honestly, I let readers' angst into my head. Like, I'm writing a book about two characters that my readers have already met and I know that they're not gonna want me to make him make bad choices. Like I can the already hear the, 'Don't make him do that.' And those voices are kind of hard to shut off sometimes.KJ:                                        33:13                    Yeah I have to just have the voice that's like, 'Oh, you know that's just too hard. That's just too much. That's too awful. Nobody wants to read about that.' But yeah, we do. We absolutely do. That's exactly what we want to read about. And speaking about what we want to read about - should we talk about what we have been reading about?Sarina:                                 33:31                    Absolutely.KJ:                                        33:32                    Alright.Jess:                                     33:33                    Who's going first?KJ:                                        33:35                    You go first cause we haven't heard from you for awhile.Jess:                                     33:38                    Okay. So because I've been traveling this week and I've been doing a lot of audio book listening and I listened to some really interesting things. I also want to talk about the fact that Renee Denfeld's book The Butterfly Girl came out this past week. She also published (and I know I've talked about her before) She wrote The Enchanted, she wrote The Child Finder and The Butterfly Girl is the next book in a sequence with the same protagonist that was in The Child Finder. But what's so interesting about Renee is that she's just decided, I have never seen her do this before, she just wrote something, memoiry for crimereads.com. It was an essay called The Green River Killer and Me because Renee was a teen runaway, she lived on the streets. She grew up in a very unsafe situation. And so the stuff that she writes about, these kids on the streets that get lost and sort of lost in the system and lost in the world, she's lived that. And so it was really fascinating. I've been so engrossed in Renee Denfeld's fiction, to suddenly read this piece of memoir from her. It was such a gift and it's a beautiful piece of writing. Crimereads.com. The Green River Killer and Me. But then I have something really fun. I decided to do something a little bit light for this trip. And so I listened to Demi Moore's memoir called Inside Out. And you know when there are those memoirs where you feel like you're hearing a little too much. Like, I don't think I should be hearing this. She spills everything and I got a little uncomfortable. And it was also really weird cause I read it right after it came out, which is when they were looking for like Ashton Kutcher for his response to what she accuses him of in the book. And so in real time I could see on Twitter how people were responding to this book. If you're looking for a juicy, sort of scoopy memoir, this is the one for you. And you know, I also didn't realize she'd been through some of the stuff that she's been through. But it also made me a little uncomfortable.KJ:                                        35:59                    Yeah, the best memoirs walk that line. And the other ones slide a little bit in either direction, which doesn't make them not necessarily good reads.Jess:                                     36:07                    Well there were moments where I was like, 'Oh, this is probably best for the therapist, not me and the entire world.'KJ:                                        36:15                    That's the problem with being Demi Moore is that nobody stops you. You know, your editor's like 'Hey, why don't you sit on this part for a little while and we'll come back to it.' You know? Whereas her editor is like, 'Oh, Demi it's great.'Jess:                                     36:37                    Well, and she worked with a ghost and I believe it was with Harper. So that's the kind of conversation I would love to be a fly on the wall for. You know, as much as I loved what I heard about investigative reporting in She Said with Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor and I got to see all that behind the scenes stuff, what I want is a behind the scenes. Here's what it's like when a celebrity and a ghost writer sit down and work on something together. I would love to be a fly on the wall to that, I think would be fascinating.KJ:                                        37:08                    Yeah, me too. Agreed. We have to find that person. If you're out there, we'll interview you completely anonymously. We promise. So I have a question for you. So if you're traveling and you're listening to this memoir, what are you doing while you listen? Are you walking through the airport?Jess:                                     37:28                    Oh yeah. I'm walking through the airport, I'm in the car on the way to the hotel. I don't sleep very well when I travel in hotels and I'm trying to catch up on sleep a lot. So often in the air I have noise canceling headphones on the airplane and if I'm too tired to work, then I just listen to a book. I take a lot of walks when I'm traveling because I've been sitting on planes so much and then I'm listening. So, yeah, I do a lot of listening when I'm just sort of going from place to place.KJ:                                        38:02                    Cool. Yeah, that's a lot of listening cause that's a lot of hours.Jess:                                     38:05                    Well and you know things like before I go on stage, you know I have to do the whole getting ready and I do make-up, which is something I don't normally do, and I do my hair and during all of that I'm listening. So there's a lot more listening that goes on when I'm on the road.KJ:                                        38:18                    That makes total sense. I just like to picture you. I think your life traveling around speaking is as interesting to some of the rest of us as you know, this idea of the ghost writer sitting and talking to Demi Moore, it's just different. So, details.Jess:                                     38:34                    What's also fun about the audio book thing for me when I'm at home is like if I'm vacuuming, then I use my noise canceling headphones when I vacuum so that I can hear the book. Or if I'm out working in the woods than I had just have little earbuds in. So I'm almost always listening to a book if I'm doing like housework or yard work, that kind of thing, too. So anyway,Sarina:                                 38:53                    I am reading The Chase by Elle Kennedy, which is her new one. And Elle Kennedy is one of my collaborators and she is just super fun, super great dialogue, good time. She writes these romance series that take place in college, but they're never in a bubble world. Like there's a real world with grumpy coaches, and goofy teammates, and it's just a good time.KJ:                                        39:22                    That's fun, yeah, that's what I need. Well, I want to concede that the book that I read this week was actually a little unlike me and oddly, this is a good time. So I finally read The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai and it was a big book last year and it just came out in paperback. I actually met Rebecca at a book festival, but more relevantly, I've heard her on a couple of podcasts. And what's interesting, The Great Believers is a book about the 80's AIDS epidemic, as well as having a part that happens in either 2016 or 2017. It's kind of relevant, it's historical fiction that you don't think of as historical fiction. If I say historical fiction to you, you're like, 'Oh, bodice rippers, people riding horses, prairies, stage coaches, whatever. But this is as much historical fiction as that because she took Chicago where the AIDS epidemic hit hard and put her characters into the world of everything that was happening right then and it's really well done. But even more importantly for me, it's actually a super positive, hopeful read in which the people in it are joyful, real seeming people having happy lives, often up to the point when they're not because you know, AIDS. I read another book that was in the literary fiction category this past couple of weeks and I ended up sort of hate reading it. Because I got why the story was getting everybody's attention and I got what it was about it that made it sort of good literary fiction, but I really hated the people, all of them. You would not want to be in a room with anyone who had been in that book. The Great Believers is not like that. You would want to be in the room with everyone in it and yet it's this really deep, emotional story. So anyway, highly recommend. Not that other people have not already recommended it, but it's a good one.Jess:                                     41:31                    Tim just finished it too so you and Tim can talk about that one sometime. He liked it too. As an HIV doc, it was one that had been recommended to him about 15 times.KJ:                                        41:44                    I am not in any way an HIV doc. So don't be scared off, you don't have to be an HIV doc to enjoy this book. But yeah, that is what he does. So that doesn't surprise me, but it's just a good book. I can see why it was top 20 for a lot of people in the year that it came out.Jess:                                     42:03                    Am I doing a bookstore? I get to do a bookstore that the people were so kind. They were the booksellers at one of my events. I was recently in Illinois and Prairie Path Books came out and did my book sales for me and they were just really great. We got talking about other kinds of books that they carry and the book seller was making recommendations to me. I'm just always so grateful when a book seller comes out and works at one of my events and sells books for me. And they're always just excited to meet the authors and talk to them about their books. And I'm always grateful. So I wanted to give Prairie Path Books in Wheaton, Illinois a shout-out.KJ:                                        42:44                    Excellent. Well, we love them all, all the bookstores. I want all the books. I want all the bookstores.KJ:                                        42:53                    Well before we shut ourselves down, a reminder that we've got our new thing. You can sign up for our weekly emails and every week when we drop a new podcast we'll send you an email with a little something about what the episode is about. You can click and listen right there, although you can always listen in your podcast app, and you can also click through and find a transcript along with all of the show notes. But all the links, everything you might need to know for an episode, is in the email. And we are also inviting everybody to support us. So, if you love the podcast, if we're doing something for you, if we've helped you out in your writing at all and you want to take a little time to head into our website and give us some financial support, we'd love it. I'm really rambling cause this is hard, it's weird to do this. Let me just lay it out, but we created this really great thing that we love called Writer's Top Fives. And if you're a supporter of the podcast, then every week you get a top five and we have done top five questions you should ask your character. We've done top five reasons you should be on Instagram, top five things you're going to get out of NaNoWriMoat. We've had a good time with it...Sarina:                                 44:24                    And we have so many coming up.KJ:                                        44:25                    We have so many coming up and they are great. And I just totally ran out of steam on my promotion there. That's okay.Jess:                                     44:33                    I wanted to mention to you guys that we got a lovely note from one of our listeners who actually has hearing issues. She's not completely deaf, but partially deaf and she wanted to thank us for our transcripts. She said it's been really nice to be able to go back and look at the transcripts and see what she missed.KJ:                                        44:49                    That's wonderful. And we've also been seeing it in the Facebook group, people saying, 'Where are the show notes for episode 10?' So it's lovely to know that people are going back and looking at the show notes, that they're not sort of just sitting there in some sort of metaphorical bottle of canary cage on the internet. So I love that. Go look for our show notes.Jess:                                     45:11                    Alright, well and till next week everyone. And by the way, when we come back next week, I will either be done with my book or deceased. Until next week, everyone, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game. This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid. 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

Not writing what your inner parent says you “should” be writing? How to get over it.Fellow writers, KJ here. I have gathered you here today to discuss the moment last week when I sat down on my bed, surveying a pile of literary fiction, some of which I liked and some of which I most emphatically did not, and asked myself, as I have many times on other topics—should I be writing something other than what I am writing? Should I be good at something other than that which I am good at? This week, I lay it out there: sometimes I feel ashamed that I don’t write something more … serious. Then Sarina slaps me around a little, and Jess declares that even writers of serious stuff (I give her that title) sometimes feel like they’re not using their time wisely.Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, a preview of the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, October 7, 2019: Top Five Reasons to Embrace NaWhateverWriMo. It’s a good one! And I happen to know the next one’s on dictation tools and is even better. Not joined that club yet? You’ll want to get on that. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month.As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode.Keep scrolling—there’s some cool free stuff from Author Accelerator, below.LINKS FROM THE PODCASTThe Snobs and Me(essay) Jennifer WeinerFrom Uber Driving to Huge Book Deal(Adrian McKinty and The Chain)#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Jess: The Chain, Adrian McKinty, Pride and Prejudiceread by [Rosamund Pike] and Sense and Sensibilityread by [Emma Thompson]KJ AND Sarina: Things You Save In a Fire, Katherine Center#FaveIndieBookstoreThe Flying Pig, Shelburne VTFind more about Jess here, Sarina hereand about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.COOL OPPORTUNITIES FROM OUR SPONSOR:Every episode of #AmWriting is sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE—and they have two free webinars coming up. Details:CHARACTER CLINICAuthor Accelerator is excited to team up with Writers Helping Writers to showcase the NEW Character Builder tool in the One Stop for Writers software.Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi from One Stop for Writers and Author Accelerator coach Julie Artz will be co-hosting a free Character Clinic webinar on Tuesday, October 8 at 11 AM Pacific. During the event Julie, will be coaching a writer through the character work they have done using the Character Builder.We encourage everyone to register for the event even if you cannot attend live, as a replay will be sent to everyone who has registered.REGISTER FOR THE WEBINAR NOWTHE INSIDE OUTLINE Jennie Nash developed the Inside Outline in her work as a book coach, and it has been tested in the trenches by hundreds of writers. It can be used to help you start a book, to help you rescue one that isn’t working, and to guide a revision.We're hosting another webinar about this life-changing writing tool on Monday, October 14 at Noon Pacific/2 PM Central/3 PM Eastern.We encourage everyone to register for the event even if you cannot attend live, as a replay will be sent to everyone who has registered.REGISTER FOR THE WEBINAR NOWThe image in our podcast illustration is by Markus Spiske on Unsplash.Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)KJ:                                        00:01                    Hey there listeners, KJ here. In this episode, you’ll hear both me and Sarina give a shout-out to Author Accelerator’s Inside-Outlining process. The Inside-Outline is a took that helps you make sure your book has a strong enough spine to support the story you want to tell. It forces you to spot the holes in your character’s arc and your story logic before you throw 50 thousand words on the page—without being the kind of outline that feels limiting to writers who prefer to see where the story takes you. #AmWriting listeners have exclusive access to a free download that describes what the outline is, why it works and how to do it—and if you’re writing fiction or memoir, I highly encourage you to grab it. Use it before you write, while you’re writing or even as you’re doing final revisions to give your story the momentum that keeps readers turning pages. Only at https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwriting. Is it recording?Jess:                                     00:01                    Now it's recording. Go ahead.KJ:                                        00:01                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.Jess:                                     00:01                    All right, let's start over.KJ:                                        00:01                    Awkward pause, I'm going to rustle some papers.Jess:                                     00:01                    Okay.KJ:                                        00:01                    Now one, two, three. I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is the weekly podcast about writing all the things, be they fiction, nonfiction, proposals, pitches, essays, freelance work. This is the podcast about sitting down and getting your writing done.Jess:                                     01:40                    I'm Jess Lahey and I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and a book I'm just finishing, it's due so soon, on preventing childhood substance abuse and you can also find me at the Washington Post and The Atlantic and the New York Times and places like that.Sarina:                                 01:55                    And I'm Sarina Bowen. I'm the author of 30 odd, contemporary romance novels and you can find me at sarinabowen.com.KJ:                                        02:02                    They're not all odd. Sorry, I just had to, some of them, though. I am KJ Dell'Antonia, I always hit the softballs, and I am the author of How To Be a Happier Parent, the former editor of the New York Times' Motherlode blog, you can still find me as a contributor there. And I'm the author of a novel, The Chicken Sisters, which will be out next summer. That's who we are and we are downright giddy with joy today for Jess who is on the downhill slide, the good downhill slide.Jess:                                     02:49                    I'm just so discombobulated. So here's where I am. The day that we're recording this, I'm 14 days out from my book deadline. I am going to make it. I'm in the stretch, I'm in that place where nothing else happens. I haven't left the house in days. I am barely getting dressed in the morning. Yesterday I wrote for 14 hours straight, literally all I stopped to do a couple of times was let the dogs out and grab something that I'd already prepared and stuck in the refrigerator and microwave that. So, I'm in a crazy space, but there's something a little fun about being in that full deep dive. Like this is all I think about and my family's being really lovely. They're cooking for me, they're doing the laundry. I've got a lot of support, so that's great.KJ:                                        03:46                    Is this what the last deadline felt like, too? I do not remember.Jess:                                     03:50                    Well, here's the thing, I was talking to someone about that just recently. Writing a book is like having children, you forget a lot of the worst parts because you know, we'd never have children again if we remembered it all. And honestly, I handed in Gift of Failure a whole day early. I was very proud of myself. I don't remember it being this bonkers.KJ:                                        04:14                    I don't remember it being this bonkers for you. But I do remember all the bad parts about having children, but I'm not sure I remember the bad parts about you having children.Jess:                                     04:25                    Well keep in mind also, I learned a lot from doing Gift of Failure. So a lot of the editing that I had to do after the fact I'm now doing before the fact. It's really funny, every time I compile a chapter in Scrivener and then put it into Word for submitting to our agent and then later on to the editor, I've got this huge list of 'Have you done this?', 'Have you done that?' So when I finish a chapter, it takes me like two hours to go through all of my lists. Like search for all recurrences of the word that, and then remove like 50% of them. Have you used a hyphen the right way? How many commas are there? You know, that kind of crazy stuff that just saves Lori from having to remind me that I overuse the word that. So, yeah, there's a lot of my launch codes that have to be run before I submit. I don't remember it being this bonkers.KJ:                                        05:31                    This is your experience of finishing this book. Who knows? Like last time, maybe not quite like this. Next time, who knows?Jess:                                     05:39                    It's interesting. I did learn a lot last time and I feel better about what I'm producing this time simply because last time I didn't know. I was like, I had no idea if my editor was going to come back and say this is great or this is ridiculously bad. Because I had nothing, I had never done it before, I had nothing to judge it against. So this is really a different experience for me in a good way. In that number one, she's seen chapters as we go along and I've already gotten feedback on those chapters and oh my gosh, she loves it and that makes me so happy. But she's also been able to give me feedback and I've been able to change direction. So like the chapter I handed in last night is different from the previous three chapters because she'd given me feedback on those previous three chapters, which I'll go back and fix later. But I'm able to make course corrections midway, which has been really great. It has helped me eliminate a lot of work on the other end. So yeah, it's different. The answer to your question is I think it's different.KJ:                                        06:44                    I'm just probably different every, it's probably different every time up to a point. And now we turn to the author of some 30 odd books, Sarina. Is it different every time, up until it suddenly isn't different or is it still different every time?Sarina:                                 07:00                    You know, I am trying to make it less the same every time. Because you and I, KJ, have spent a lot of time lately thinking about outlining. And I'm trying to shift my whole game towards becoming a better outliner so that I don't have a repeat experience, which is 'freak out about the ending on every single book'.Jess:                                     07:26                    Well, but one thing I wanted to ask you about is you just recently had basically what I'm going through right now except with editing. And that seemed pretty intense for you. Does that stay the same or has that changed and does it depend on whether you're working with a coauthor?Sarina:                                 07:41                    Well, I shot myself in the foot a little bit and set up a month where I had to do edits on two books in the same month. And that that was just either bad luck or bad planning, take your pick. But I find it quite exhausting to have to make everything perfect on two books in a row where you don't give yourself the fun part of drafting and inventing in between to break up the tedium of perfection.Jess:                                     08:09                    Oh, that's a good point.KJ:                                        08:12                    When I was doing the big edit of my novel, I couldn't draft. I thought it was going to be able to. If you go back about eight podcasts, I'm like, 'I'm going to do both. I'm going to edit a little every day and I'll write a little every day. And that lasted a week. Mostly because the editing was just more intense. Drafting is fun, sometimes. Editing is fun, sometimes. Making things perfect, maybe not so much.Jess:                                     08:46                    Well, the 14 hours I spent yesterday were sort of a combination of the two. Mainly it was editing, which can be really tedious and all that stuff. But yesterday I did get to have one of those moments where it got a little buzzy and I was like, 'Oh, I like that.' I got to have those, even in the editing process. In fact, I changed how the chapter ended and I had one of those sort of moments where it feels like the minor chord changes to a major chord and there's that big breath you can take at the end and you're like, 'Ah, it works.' It was really a nice moment. And that happened in editing, so that was really fun.KJ:                                        09:29                    I just don't think I have ever had an experience of writing that feels like what I hear you reflecting. So part of me is sitting thinking should I be writing for 14 hours a day? That's not something that's up. I mean, I've had a full time writing job that sometimes took that, but I wouldn't have been writing the whole time. I would've been writing and editing and screaming and coding and frantically going through the comments and all the other things. The intensity with which you are writing right now is not something that I have ever experienced.Jess:                                     10:06                    Okay. Here's the thing, though. It's not about the intensity and it's not about the amount of time. The only, and this is really helpful information for me, the only times I have gotten this really serious - it's like a runner's high kind of thing. It's a writer's high. And the times I get it, reliably, are when I'm writing creative nonfiction. It happened when I wrote for Creative Nonfiction. That piece 'I've Taught Monsters'. It's happening in this book and the good news is that my editor is encouraging me to write more that way and less like a research paper, which is great cause I get less of it when I write that sort of sciency kind of stuff. But it's nice to know that there is this genre that gives me writer's high and it's the stuff I like to read the most. So, it's kind of like knowing what your sweet spot is. So for me it's a genre.KJ:                                        10:56                    That is the perfect segue into the topic, which I have gathered us here today to discuss. Which is - what we write, how much we choose that, and how much it chooses us, and how we feel about it. Which is a very complicated way of saying that I had a crisis of confidence last week in which I sort of sat down on the bed, convinced that the fact that I do not and will not and never going to write literary fiction, basically meant that I had wasted my entire education.Sarina:                                 11:36                    Well, I have a crisis of confidence pretty much every day at noon schedule.KJ:                                        11:56                    I wouldn't call it a crisis of confidence, though. I like the book that I wrote, and I like How To Be a Happier Parent, and I like the work that I do, and I like the experience that I have doing it. But I have frequently had the experience of feeling like I should be doing something else. When I spent years writing about parenting for the New York Times, it was the gutter of New York Times writing when I was doing it. And it may be that the experience has changed, but you know, it wasn't something really important like sports. It wasn't finance, it wasn't politics, although it frequently was finance, and it frequently was politics. I just would often feel like, you know, a smart person should be doing something else. And I'm having a little bit of that same feeling, you know, contemplating my undeniably fun romp of a book, which I enjoyed writing and is exactly the kind of thing that I like to read. But, then I just sort of think you go to the bookstore right now and everything is sort of really deep, and dark, and meaningful, and apocalyptic.Sarina:                                 13:31                    Sorry, I have some things to say. Well, first of all, my ghetto is located down the alleyway, you know, past a flap of tattered burlap, from your ghetto. Because romance writers are very accustomed to being in a ghetto that is ghetto-ier than everyone else's. And in fact, I remember this hilarious essay that Jennifer Wiener wrote for the New York Times a couple of years ago about going to the Princeton reunion as a commercial fiction author. And I remember tweeting to her, 'Well, you know, I sometimes roll up to the Yale reunion as a writer of occasionally erotic romance. And so, my ghetto mocks your ghetto. But, the funny thing is that Jennifer Wiener, I love her so much, and her favorite book of mine is a work of gay romance. So, she totally gets it. It was just a funny moment. And romance authors are very much accustomed to this idea of you're not a real author even if you're making six figures because there's a guys chest on the cover of your book. And we all have days where that doesn't seem fair or you get the weird look from the mom at the soccer game. But I always tell people who are struggling with this, that when you write some amazing line of dialogue, or that thing that happened in chapter two comes back as the perfect call out in chapter nine, it doesn't matter what you're writing that in, you feel just as good about it either way. When it works, it works.Jess:                                     15:36                    In the end, you're a storyteller. I mean the whole point of being a writer is to express yourself in stories. And frankly, you have told me on this podcast that there are awards for literary stuff that are out there that automatically mean they're books that you're not going to like. And you don't want to be trying to write that stuff because it would stink. Because you don't like writing it, you don't even like reading.KJ:                                        16:13                    I feel fine, I'm super excited about my book. In some ways, I'm more excited about it than I was about the nonfiction. It's funny how I think we all do this to ourselves. How I think we all have a should. And do you have a should at all?Jess:                                     17:10                    For me, because the stuff I really like to write about has to do with children's welfare, and ways prisons could be better and help kids. I really do love writing that stuff. The problem with that stuff is not a lot of people care, even though it's about kids. You know, as soon as you start talking about prisons or something, people are like, 'Yeah, yeah, whatever.' I get upset that I don't write that stuff more, because I feel like I should. Because that feels like if I were really doing my job and using the bullhorn that I have, because I'm lucky enough to have an audience, I need to be writing stuff that's more worthy. And so that can be really tough, cause sometimes I just want to write an essay about fishing with my dad. So yeah, I feel that, too. Should I be using these words to help kids be better or do I get to just enjoy writing?KJ:                                        18:11                    I had an idea for a new question we should ask everyone that comes on the podcast - 'What do you write when you write in your head?' You know what I mean? James Thurber used to tell, a possibly apocryphal story, about how his wife would walk up to him at parties and say, 'James, stop writing'.Jess:                                     18:33                    It's definitely creative nonfiction. I just thought about it and yeah, that's what I'm writing in my head.KJ:                                        18:40                    Are you writing essays or are you writing like opinions? Sarina, what do you write when you write in your head?Sarina:                                 18:49                    Well, I always am happy to admit that I'm a little bit trapped in romance at the moment. Because I have a platform and the bigger it gets, the harder it is for me to find tons of enthusiasm for striking out in a new direction.KJ:                                        19:06                    And you're kind of good at it.Sarina:                                 19:08                    Well, thank you.Jess:                                     19:09                    She's also incredibly good at YA, too. My favorite book of your happens to be a YA novel.Sarina:                                 19:18                    I actually love YA and I would like to write more of it. The Accidentals was a really good time for me to write. But the thing about YA though is that I don't love where the market for it is right now. So very objectively, I am not sorry that I'm not trying to sell something into that space right now. I might next year, perhaps. But not because I think the market will be any better next year. I don't love the direction of the young adult market and what's happening with it. So even though I feel suited to write it, even potentially better suited than I am to romance, that would be a really tough decision to make.Jess:                                     20:06                    KJ, what do you write in your head?KJ:                                        20:11                    I'm not necessarily sure that the question reflects like what we've written, I think it also reflects what we are accustomed to write. I write essays in my head. Sometimes they're angry, ranty essays. Sometimes they turn into actual essays, and sometimes they turn into actual angry, ranty essays. I recently penned an epic called 'Why Salad Is Just Too Hard'.Jess:                                     20:47                    I'm not going to talk about the details, but on the personal side, besides writing this book, there's a lot that's going on right now in my life. There's a lot I want to remember about what's going on in my life right now. There has been some funny and tragic and weird things that have happened. And it's been really frustrating for me not to have the extra time to sit down and write a lot of that down, so I've had to just jot down notes. But that's the stuff I've been writing in my head because I need to process that stuff. And the way I process is by writing creative nonfiction essays about it in my head. So, it's really weird. It's sort of like I'm constantly sorting through the weirdness of my life in terms of creative nonfiction essays. It's very bizarre.Sarina:                                 21:49                    So you're saying you have an inner David Sedaris?Jess:                                     21:52                    Yeah, I guess I have thought about it that way and also feeling bad that I don't have time to do what the crazy manic thing he does everyday. Obsessively writing notes and then transcribing those notes, because ideally that's what I would be doing right now if I had time, because so much is happening in my personal life right now that I'm afraid I'm gonna forget. If this was a perfect world, I would have two hours a day to process my notes into writing that I would then do something with eventually down the line. But I don't have time.KJ:                                        22:25                    I feel like you can only mentally do that if your day job is bartending or something. It's like if you're writing all day then to sit down and also write...Jess:                                     22:40                    I'm out of words, this happened during Gift of Failure, too. Although, during Gift of Failure somehow I was writing a column every two weeks, too. I don't know how that worked, I honestly have no memory of it, I've blocked it out. Since we're talking about people who have had a crisis of confidence, I have a cool story. It's about a book I read recently. So, there was this article in The Guardian that just just killed me it was so good. It was written by Alison Flood. It was in The Guardian recently and is about an author named Adrian McKinty. And Adrian McKinty has been in the media recently because he has a book called The Chain that was really a fun listen and I really liked it. And I was curious about what this guy's all about because it turns out he's written a bunch of mysteries in the past. He's been an author for a long time, he's written a lot of stuff, stuff that got critical acclaim, but just no one else read it apparently. So there's this article in The Guardian and it's called 'From Uber Driving to Huge Book Deal: Adrian McKinty's Life-Changing Phone Call'. Get this, so Adrian McKinty has decided to give up, he's decided I can't support my family as an author, he's Uber driving, he's working a couple of jobs just to make ends meet. Even though his books have gotten great reviews and critical acclaim, he's giving up. So he had mentioned this to Don Winslow, huge author Don Winslow, at a conference. This freaks Don Winslow out because Don Winslow has been through something like this, a similar situation, and he doesn't want Adrian McKinty to give up. So Don Winslow tells his agent Shane Salerno that Adrian McKinty is giving up writing. And Shane Salerno calls Adrian McKinty and says, 'Don tells me you've given up writing and I just don't think you should do that. Have you thought about writing a book set in the U.S.?' So Adrian McKinty has had an idea for a book and he writes 30 pages of it, like bangs out 30 pages of this book that he'd been thinking about. And at around three in the morning, he hands it in and at 4:15, the phone rings. And here's what Shane Salerno,agent to Don Winslow says, 'Forget bartending. Forget driving a bloody Uber.' Salerno said, 'You're writing this book.'. And he's like, 'No, I can't. I can't support my family.' He gets an offer of some short-term financial support from Shane Salerno. He's like, 'You need some money, just to get by so you can write this thing? I'll help.' Anyway, he writes the book, he gets a huge book deal for it, and then an even huger film deal. He got a six figure deal for The Chain and a seven figure deal for The Chain as a film. So yeah, he didn't quit. It's a crazy story. It's just nuts. Well, what was cool about it is that he had this idea for these two - it's sort of like when Stephen King talks about how he got the idea for Carrie - it was these two ideas that didn't work on their own, but when they came together, bang, there's a plot. So he had this thing kind of marinating in there, but he pushed back pretty hard. He's like, 'Nope, I'm done. No, really.' And there's also a nice moment when he gets the film deal, McKinty says to Salerno, 'I said, mate, you should have told me to sit down first. Can you say it all again really slowly as if you're talking to an idiot?' So anyway, it was a cool story. You might not love it, it's a people in peril sort of story, but a very cool idea. This is not a spoiler because it's right there on the book, but essentially your kid gets kidnapped and the only way your kid gets returned is if you kidnap another kid. and so on, and so on, and so on. So anyway, it's gonna make a killer movie. It's just compulsively read. I listened and it was a great listen. So anyway, cool story.KJ:                                        27:45                    So are we on what we're reading?Jess:                                     27:48                    Well, I don't know. Would we like to talk about what happened with the New York Times book lists?KJ:                                        27:52                    Oh yeah, that's right. Speaking of ghettos and having your ghetto sort of semi-recognized, but not really.Jess:                                     28:00                    Yeah, The Times is changing their lists. Who would like to take this one? Sarina?Sarina:                                 28:27                    My response was that this isn't even news. Because what they've expanded is that they brought back something they cut more than a year ago, which was the mass market paperback list used to be a weekly list and they also cut graphic novels at exactly the same time. So, bringing it back as a monthly is a non-event, especially because what sells in mass market paperback is a lot of romance and genre fiction.Jess:                                     29:00                    So Sarina, for our listeners who may not be as familiar, I would say, 'Sarina, why aren't you super excited about that? Mass market means romance. Why aren't you excited?'Sarina:                                 29:11                    Because the romance market keeps moving further and further away from mass market fiction. So they cut it at the moment when it could have made a difference and now it's just not interesting.Jess:                                     29:23                    For anyone who may not know, what does mass market mean?KJ:                                        29:26                    They actually haven't changed it on their website, the lists still look the same.Sarina:                                 29:32                    Right. It says the new lists don't even hit print until the end of October. So mass market is those rack sized books that they have at the grocery store. The market for those fundamentally changed a few years ago when the distribution company that was handling most of them stopped doing their business. And then publishers began to move away from mass market paperback and into the trade size, which is the slightly larger paperback you mostly see on tables if you go to a bookstore. So mass market gets two kinds of releases. They get some romance releases, just straight up. It'll be like e-book and that. Or, if you have a mega best seller then you might also get a pocket sized release after your regular paperback release. So by adding this, it's a really strange decision because there aren't that many books that come out in mass market anymore and the romance ones are selling most of their copies in e-book form. So when I read this change I thought, 'Oh the New York Times is trying to make a nod toward romance without having to touch anything that's independently published.' They basically are holding up a sign that says 'Self-published do not apply.'Jess:                                     30:59                    Here's a question, though. They do have an e-book list, so that wouldn't include self-published books then, is what you're saying?Sarina:                                 31:10                    Well, the e-book, it's called combined fiction. That's the list they have. They don't have an e-book bestseller list anymore that's just for e-books. Because it would have lots and lots of self-published things on it. And they didn't like that, so they got rid of it.KJ:                                        31:29                    Yeah, I was going to say there is no e-book list.Sarina:                                 31:35                    Nope, there was, but there isn't any more.KJ:                                        31:39                    Speaking of ghettos and not recognized. And I will also just note that they pulled their parenting list at the same time and they didn't even restore that one. They're not even pretending that if you don't manage to make advice and how-to (which some people do) you're just not.Jess:                                     31:59                    That's going to affect how publishers market books, too. You know, is my next book a parenting book? Is it an advice or how-to? Well, if I'm a smart publisher and I want it to make the list, I'm gonna make sure I push it as an advice or how-to. If I go into a bookstore looking for Gift of Failure it's never in the advice or how-to, it's in the parenting section. But if I were releasing that now, I would say, 'Well, we need to really push this as an advice or how-to.KJ:                                        32:30                    I don't think, and I could be totally misinformed here, but I think advice, how-to, and miscellaneous incorporates all the other. So it does incorporate parenting and now it'll have to incorporate sports and science, too.Jess:                                     33:15                    Since I already talked about The Chain, can I also just mention really quickly since we're going to talk about what we're reading? So when I'm in this crazy place like I am right now with this book. It's been really hard for me to find moments to calm down and relax. And I have been relistening to Jane Austen, but specifically, I had been listening to Rosamund Pike read Pride and Prejudice, who had played the sister Jane in one of the film versions of it. But now I'm listening to Sense and Sensibility read by the actress Juliet Stevenson and it's really lovely. And the nice thing about it is my mind can wander, because I already know the stories by heart. It's like when your kids are really, really little and they love having the same story read over and over and over again. I think that's soothing on some very primal level for me, so that's what I've been listening to.KJ:                                        34:25                    Yeah, definitely relistening is really good for that. I've been relistening to something that I have listened to twice already, partly just for that. Some of the reasons I had to listen to it was that one of my children was compelled to memorize the Declaration of International Human Rights or something along those lines. And said child required both an audience and to do that out loud, but did not actually require you to listen. So, earbuds, that's what I have to say about that particular experience. I do have some books, but Sarina, you want to go?Sarina:                                 35:13                    Yeah, I just bought a hardcover copy of Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center. Because not only did KJ like this book, but she told me that I would love it.KJ:                                        35:25                    That was the one I was sitting here before the podcast going, 'I know I read something I really liked recently. What did I read?' That was what it was! Found it. Now I have to change mine.Jess:                                     35:44                    What is Things You Save in a Fire? Is it nonfiction? Is it fiction? What's happening?KJ:                                        35:48                    It is flat out romance that has been marketed as commercial women's fiction and it is that, as well. But I see nothing about the story that violates the genre rules of romance. It is not one of those things where there are two people and only one of them gets her... We've talked about this before, the line is interesting and strange. And this one is a clear, fun, rollicking trip to the H E A. That would be the happily ever after.Jess:                                     36:22                    So it's not going to give me any guidance about what I should save if my house catches on fire.KJ:                                        36:27                    No, how-to and miscellaneous it is not.Jess:                                     36:32                    Alright, sorry. KJ, what have you been reading?KJ:                                        36:36                    That's it, I read that, I really liked it, it was really good. She has an amazing Instagram feed, too. Her name is Katherine Center and she is an artist, as well as a writer. So she paints on the books, which is killer. And as a doodler, I'm thinking I'm going to doodle on my books. I'm going to doodle chickens on my books for Instagram and I cannot wait to do it.Jess:                                     37:00                    Oh, that's a really cool idea. I like it. I can't wait. I have a cool bookstore for this week. When we first moved to Vermont, of course I had to go looking for all the independent bookstores in the area. And I've talked about some of them, but I have not talked about this lovely little one. There is a little town near us called Shelburne that has the sweetest little town center, there's a gorgeous museum that has all these old buildings from all over Vermont and New England that have been restored. And across the street from that is this little little village, it's really cute. And in that village is a lovely little bookstore called The Flying Pig Bookstore. It is small, but it is lovely, and they really know their books. And I have been trying to order my books through there because I can ride my bike to it, which is nice. I have a little basket on the front of my bike and so I have this very romantic vision of riding to my local bookstore and picking up my books and putting them in the basket of my bike. These are the kinds of things I live for at the moment, so I highly recommend it.Sarina:                                 38:09                    Sounds great, I think you should take us there when we see you next.Jess:                                     40:10                    Alright. Are we good, people? Have we done our job this week?KJ:                                        40:16                    And let me just say that if you agree and think that we have done our job, we hope you'll head over to amwritingpodcast.com and sign up for our weekly email. You get a transcript of all the things about riding around with your dog in the car and possibly some more useful things as well. And if you really love the podcast and crave more useful things, you can sign up for our writer top fives at the same place. That's a subscription service, supports the podcast, which is and always will be free. Also enables you to get our writer top five lists every Monday. Coming up, we've got top five reasons you should do NaNoWriMo, we've had top five questions you should ask your fictional character, top five reasons you should be on Instagram, we got top five ways to make your reader laugh.Jess:                                     41:15                    The burnchart one was great. And I can say that because I have nothing to do with them, because as I may have already mentioned, I have no other time to do anything but write this book. So this is all you two and I am so impressed with what you guys have done with these top five. They've been fantastic. I've enjoyed them as a reader that has nothing to do with them at the moment, but I will.KJ:                                        41:36                    All right, so head over to amwriting podcast.com. Check us out, support us, subscribe to us, and of course as always, subscribe to us and rate us should you care to on iTunes or wherever you listen to your podcast.Jess:                                     41:59                    This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid. 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

More words, better words, in less time? Sometimes. In this episode, finding your own path to write faster.If only we could write as fast as we type! You could set your clock by our book production, right? Not so. This week we’re exploring how to write faster with Sarina in the lead. Finding your own patterns, prewriting and avoiding that “stuck” feeling by finding tangible ways to explore your characters and book without doing battle with words dominate our conversation as we riff on ways to up our daily word counts without ending up with something that’s destined for the cutting room floor file. Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, a preview of the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, September 30, 2019: Top Five Reasons to Be on Instagram. Not joined that club yet? You’ll want to get on that. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month. As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode. To support the podcast and help it stay free, subscribe to our weekly #WritersTopFive email.LINKS FROM THE PODCAST2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love, Rachel Aaron#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Jess: She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement Jodi Kantor, Meghan TwoheyKJ: Podcasts for book recommendations: What Should I Read Next? with Anne Bogel and Get Booked, from BookRiotSarina: 100 Deadly Skills: The SEAL Operative’s Guide to Eluding Pursuers, Evading Capture, and Surviving Any Dangerous Situation, Clint Emerson#FaveIndieBookstore NEWSJenny Lawson, author of You Are Here, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, and Furiously Happy, will be opening Nowhere Books in San Antonio with the former GM of Book People. We love it when a new indie is born. This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.The image in our podcast illustration is by Jordan on Unsplash.Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)KJ:                                        00:01                    Hey writers, are you whispering to yourself that this might just be your year to make NaNoWriMo happen? Or maybe planning to do it again? Then, do yourself a favor and invest in Author Accelerator's Inside Outline coaching now, so that you've got a structure to free you up to use those 30 days in November to write something that really works. It is no fun to 'win' NaNoWriMo with 56,000 words and then realize 35,000 of them don't serve your story at all. Trust me, I speak from experience. The Inside Outline really works. Find out more at authoraccelerator.com/insideoutline.Jess:                                     00:36                    Go ahead.KJ:                                        00:36                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.Jess:                                     00:36                    All right, let's start over.KJ:                                        00:36                    Awkward pause, I'm going to rustle some papers.Jess:                                     00:36                    Okay.KJ:                                        00:36                    Now one, two, three. I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is the podcast, your podcast we hope, about writing all the things, short things, long things, fiction, nonfiction, genre, new and creative genre, proposals, pitches, emails to potential agents. This is the podcast about sitting down and getting your work done.Jess:                                     01:26                    And I'm Jess Lahey. I am the author of the Gift of Failure and an upcoming book about substance abuse in kids. And I think I'm on like day 31 until my deadline, so I'm completely insane. You can also find my most recent work that I'm super excited about The Smarter Living Guide to How to Help Your Kids Succeed in School This Year, which was super fun to write. And my first foray into the guides at the New York Times.Sarina:                                 01:53                    I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of several USA today bestselling romance novels and my newest one will be called Moonlighter coming on October 22.KJ:                                        02:04                    And I am KJ Dell'Antonia. I am the former lead editor of the New York Times Motherlode blog, the author of the book How to Be a Happier Parent and of a novel forthcoming from GP Putnam and Sons next summer about which you'll just be hearing so much later. And now that we are providing (by email) show notes every week, I'm going to invite everybody, first of all, to head over to our website and sign up so you can get the show notes and consider supporting us by signing up for the #Writer'sTopFive emails. But the real reason that I wanted to bring that up, is that every time Jess introduces herself on the artificial intelligence transcript app that we use to start out before our lovely assistant Marisa goes through and makes it all much, much, much better it says, I'm just lucky. I thought that was glorious. All right, we have a great topic today. Sarina, kick us off.Sarina:                                 03:16                    Today we're talking about writing faster, which of course you know is an art and a science. Jess laughs because she's up against her deadline, but the truth is...Jess:                                     03:29                    Jess laughs cause she's losing her mind. And KJ texted yesterday something about the fact that you just can't get as much done in a day as you think that you can get done in a day. And that's my life right now.KJ:                                        03:44                    Before we talk about writing faster, which I think is doable and there are strategies and I can't wait to hear them. I just want to say that I'm having two struggles this week. And one is that - I just can't do as much in a day as I think I can. You'd think I'd know that by now, but I don't. And the other is that I also can't make all the people happy. So yeah, apparently I have learned nothing in my life because I'm still trying.Jess:                                     04:15                    Well your book was not called How to Make Everybody Happy, it's just how to be a happier parent. So how are we going to write faster? Someone give me the keys to this car. How do we write faster?Sarina:                                 04:59                    I came about this topic listening to lots of fiction authors (because that's mostly who I'm talking to during a week) talk about how to write faster. And every once in awhile, a so-called friend of mine will post, 'I wrote 11,000 words today.' And I will feel nothing but rage, because I have never once written 11,000 words in a day and never will and that's fine. But it really got me thinking about why is my pace, my pace? And what does it mean about my habits that has brought me here? And is there any way for me to increase that pace? So my average pace, like on a longterm basis, is about 1200 words a day. And that is up from about a thousand words a day. And so some people would look at my pace and say that I was flying, right, because 1200 words a day, you can on average write four books a year. But to someone else, that pace is like turtle pace and what the heck is wrong with me? So, this discussion is really more about writing faster for you and not becoming a speed demon. Because I don't actually want to write 11,000 words in a day. But anyway, more on that in a second.KJ:                                        06:22                    I was listening to someone else on a different podcast, say exactly that same thing - about the people that can write 11,000 words in a day or whatever. And what that person said is, 'I probably, maybe could write 11,000 words in a day. However, the final 9,000 of them I would just have to throw away the next day. So, the gain would be zero. And that was her process.Jess:                                     06:50                    I actually had a really good experience this week. I got more written in a day than I had in a long time. And ironically, our listeners will be just tickled to hear it was while I was traveling. But I figured out why - it wasn't just that I was trapped on an airplane for a cross-country trip (which part of that obviously it had to do with it). But I realized that my laptop, (normally when I write at home, my laptop is plugged into a monitor that mirrors my laptop) so that I've got this nice big monitor and I can have multiple documents up at once. Which is great because my laptop keyboard stinks. But what I realized was that the fact that my laptop computer keyboard was broken, freed me up from editing as I wrote. So what I did was I was just typing, typing, typing, knowing full well that the edit was going to be a heavy one. But all I was doing was getting the chapter structure out. And I wrote 5,000 words that day on planes and was it messy? Absolutely. But something about being freed from that impulse to edit as I went was really good for me. And that's not something I had tried recently.Sarina:                                 08:10                    I have so many thoughts. The first one is I want to find you a bluetooth keyboard and ship it to you FedEx. So a couple of years ago, my father (foolishly, I might add) challenged me to a typing competition. He was laboring under the delusion that he was faster at typing than I was. So we had to settle it of course, as one does. And I clocked out at 95 words a minute. Beating him handily. I don't remember how badly and to save his feelings will not say right now. So if I told you a minute ago that my average pace is about 1200 words a day and if you put those two things together, it might lead you to believe that I can work for 12.63 minutes a day and be finished. But of course, I don't work for 12.63 minutes a day. And so, that led me to ask myself, what am I doing with all of that other time? So you just made a point that some of your time is spent fixing the B. And it made me want the following: (which I do not have) a tool that if I were just going to sit down and write for a couple of hours and then if I could look back at a video of what that page looked like as I went, I am 100% sure that I will type a thing and fix it, and type a thing and fix it, and type a thing and fix it. Because when I'm in the document and I'm composing chapter seven or whatever, and I'm looking at chapter seven and I'm writing it and there's dialogue and there's speech tags and all this stuff, I am constantly tweaking. Like, 'Oh look, there's two paragraphs that both start with the word I, let's change it.' And I just used that word two paragraphs ago, let's fix it. And that is my method. I am a fix-it-as-you-go kind of writer, because I just detest having a giant, horrible, messy chapter that I have to go back and rip to shreds for two days after I've written it. So at first, in my little quest for how to write faster, I listened to a lot of good advice about how to dictate things. And I tried, and I failed so spectacularly, because it turns out that the first way that something comes out of my mouth is never the way that I want it to. And that my process as an author, did not lend itself to dictation. Because sure I can dictate a lot faster than I can type, but I don't actually want that output. And what comes out of my mouth on the first round is not what I want to see on the page when I'm done. So I spent all this time trying to figure out why I couldn't get a dictated product that I was happy with. And it turned out, software wasn't my problem, the equipment wasn't my problem, the fact that Dragon stopped supporting the Mackintosh product was not my problem. None of it was my problem, except that I don't ever use the first thing that comes out.Jess:                                     11:50                    You write more dialogue, I don't tend to write dialogue. But do you find that dictation is helpful for dialogue?Sarina:                                 11:58                    You know, there's something that's more helpful for it. And that's this - the first part of writing quickly or learning to improve your pace is to understand what's holding you back. So, there might be people who don't type 95 words a minute and who are paralyzed by the blank page and who actually need that moving dictation. The eyes off the page to get that work out faster. In order to solve the question of how do I personally increase my pace you have to find out which personality type you are in terms of how it gets onto the page. So I just articulated mine to you right now, but a year ago I could not do that because I didn't actually know what was holding me back. So, then I set about trying lots of other things that weren't dictation based. So there's this book that I discussed with KJ once called 2k to 10k (and of course we'll put the link for that in the show notes.) And this author has a very analytical mind. I can't remember how quickly she wants our 10k to come. I don't even remember if she was advocating for a one day 10k or not, but it doesn't really matter. Because she was using similar analytics to figure out what her process was. So in her book, one of the things she says you should try is to make a nice journal of how your writing is going. So, if you sit down at 8:00 AM for 90 minutes, you should write down what time of day it is and what day of the week it is and how many words you got. And then you should do the same thing every single time you write and then you will see a pattern. I believe she thought she was the best in the morning, but that turned out to be wrong, she was most efficient at night. So, by analyzing your own ability to get words on the page, you can learn a lot about how to not waste your time. Which seems obvious in review, but was really meaningful to me when I figured that out. And then another thing she does in this book is actually the tool and technique that saved me, which she calls pre-writing. And this is where all the acceleration happened for me. She gave it a name, pre-writing, for something that I was sometimes already doing. Which is - I'll have a day where I'm finishing up a scene, and it's a great scene, and I love how it came out, and I will turn the page because it's done and I'll still have time and I'll still have energy left and I won't know exactly what happens next. Like my outline might be good, I might know the next bit of conflict is that my characters are going to have an argument about a thing and I already know what's at stake, but I don't know maybe where they're having it or what other little thing needs to happen first or just the really granular bits. Like how does that chapter start and how do they get into the argument in the first place? So this is where pre-writing is really important for me. So I close out that document, because that's the document where I'm gonna change every sentence that I write, and I open up my notebook, and I just start short-handing what's gonna happen. Like we start the scene here, and there's the problem, and here's the solution, and wait, we get into an argument. Oh wait, it's about the dog, the dog does it. There's this discovery on the page that's so free.Jess:                                     15:42                    Wait, can I ask you a question though, because I thought, (especially since you tend to co-write) weren't you guys doing that as part of your planning process for the book anyway? Or was that something that you were doing on your individual chapters without sort of talking that much to each other since you had like a big, overarching outline?Sarina:                                 16:03                    Right, that's exactly it. You know what happens next conflict wise, but you don't know how the scene unfolds.KJ:                                        16:10                    Yeah, I do something like this, too. What it looks like is something like, okay they're in the car, maybe they're in a coffee shop, then I sort of drudge along, just hit return and start again, yeah they're at the bookstore. You know, he comes around, oh, nonfiction section, perfect. I mean it literally looks like that. And then the next day when I go to that it also percolates in your head and sort of starts to turn into a scene, or it does for me.Sarina:                                 16:49                    Yup, and also dialogue, as well. When you just start blurting out onto the page the things that they're going to say to each other, you don't have to write the blocking. So you can quickly get to the heart of what is accomplished via that dialogue, like what plot is unfolding as people interact. And you don't have to worry about being consistent with body language, or that everybody blinks too much, or everybody's staring at each other too much, or all these little things that you find later that are too overwhelming. It's just the dialogue lines, no punctuation, no nothing. And that's when you figure out what's really happening in the scene. And then you take this God-awful, ugly piece of note taking you just did and then you go into your little perfectionist document and you write the scene in a way that pleases you. I'm just far more likely to fix fewer things when I do it that way because I'm excited that I've just solved the problem of what's happening.KJ:                                        17:58                    I think I could write faster if I could also write shorter. I could write less if I was more disciplined about what you just said. Which is what do they need to say to each other, why is this here, why does this need to be here? Because you know, frequently I'll have those two people in the bookstore or whatever, and there's all kinds of clever things they could see,or talk about, or do. And if I would just focus on why they need to be there and if I only wrote in one clever thing, then later on I wouldn't have to take out five clever things and that would speed me up overall.Sarina:                                 18:39                    Yeah. And that's where organization comes into play, because you can stash those clever things someplace else. Like, if you really like your note taking system, if you're comfortable with it, then you can just sticky-note it somewhere that 'Hey, this funny joke, that book we saw on the shelf, actually maybe plays into a theme that you're trying to develop.' So those little clever things can get set aside to percolate later.KJ:                                        19:13                    That's sort of a different question of working faster, I guess. Right now we're just trying to talk about getting more words on the page while you're drafting. But getting the right words on the page is good, too.Sarina:                                 19:26                    And then that whole idea about time of day, I haven't had much luck identifying a particular time of day that I'm better at getting words onto the page. However, I have noticed that the time of day that I get them out to the page has a very direct result on how I feel about everything. So, if I'm able to produce work in the morning, then I'm invincible. And if I sort of avoid it all day and end up writing it at 10:30 at night, then I'm just like on the treadmill and it hurts. So, that's another part of habits and how you get those words out and when. So sometimes I will even do the pre-writing step the night before. Like I'm feeling okay about the work for that day and I kind of know what's happening and let me just sit down and spew it into this notebook and then I will open it up in the morning and everything is less terrifying.Jess:                                     20:29                    That's what I think would help me the most. Yesterday I wrote for 14 or 16 hours, but it was obscene. And the thing that kept me from stopping is that I know that getting back into the flow is my problem. So I need something to help me. So that when I sit down in the morning, or after a break or whatever, I'm not like, 'Okay, what was I doing? Where am I? What am I doing next?' And sometimes I'll highlight things in the document and then just write really quickly, 'Here's what you were thinking about next.' And that can help me overcome that little hump, but it's also just a mental roadblock. When you have a document that's as big as a book, it's really hard to sort of wrap your brain around sitting down and diving back in. But after about 15 minutes or so, you're like, 'Oh, okay, I'm back in. This is good.' But I would love to eliminate that 15 minutes at the beginning.Sarina:                                 21:24                    Totally. For me, sometimes it's not 15 minutes, it's like three hours. And part of the reason for the three hours is that we're always convincing ourselves of something. I think writers are so guilty of this. Like in order to dig a ditch, you don't have to go back outside in the morning and convince yourself why that ditch should be dug. You know, the shovel is right there. But, with authorship there's a lot of doubt that comes into the equation and some of that doubt is necessary. So I like to think of it as like an in-breath and an out-breath. There are days when you just need to shut your inner critic off and just get that scene onto the page because that is what we're doing today. And then, maybe the next day you actually have to reverse the process and you have to invite your inner critic to the table and re-look at that scene that you did yesterday and make sure you're still going in the right direction. And so that requires a lot of emotional control of your inner critic. And my inner critic is not so easily manipulated as that some days.Jess:                                     22:31                    Well, I'm in that place with the book where I have these wild vacillations between like, 'I've totally got this, it's going to be so easy, I'm on the downhill slope.' And then not even seconds later, the enormity of what a book is will hit me and I'm like, 'I don't know that I'm doing anymore.' It's this crazy emotional place and it's so funny to me that I can vacillate so quickly between the two, but there we are.KJ:                                        23:14                    One was one of the hosts of Marginally was saying that she had read Wendell Berry. He had written that every day of farming, he would wake up, and lay in bed dreading like, and then he'd get out there and 15 minutes later he'd be like, 'Oh yeah, because I love it.' And you know (as someone with this small farm) recognizing that everybody has that 15 minutes. I mean, I think ditch ditch diggers do,too. You know, they know why they have to dig the ditch, but they're still like, 'Oh geez, not the ditch again, the same ditch, why didn't I finish that ditch yesterday?' You know, I think everybody's like that. And then you get out there and you're like, 'Alright, you know, I'm in the flow, I can see the progress, the ditch is getting deeper or whatever. Ditch digging might not be the best comparison. Anyway, I think we all have that feeling of get the butt in the chair and getting things going.Jess:                                     25:10                    The good part about this part in the process is I can overcome that, 'Oh my gosh, I have no idea what I'm doing.' If I just take a breath and sit back and go, 'What are you talking about? You've got this, you're fine.' But there were times with my first book when I couldn't break out of that. So that's good, that's getting better.KJ:                                        26:42                    Well as long as we're just talking about trying to get the work done as opposed to getting it faster. I also had a moment this week where somebody else was trying to get me to do something and that person was in a hurry and needed this urgently. My fresh morning time had already been taken up by a doctor's appointment, so my day was already not going great and I was gonna concede. You know, I was going to do this thing. And then I was just like, 'Wait, wait.' And I was being angry at the person in my head and I said, 'Who is doing this to you? You or that other person?' And I had to admit it was me. While they wanted me to do that at 10 rather than 11, they weren't necessarily going to know. So, I firmly put my little butt in the chair and did my own work for that first hour and a half and then I did the thing that the other person was asking of me.Jess:                                     27:51                    I achieved something elusive earlier this week. I was having a really good day of writing and I achieved the elusive writer's high. I've never experienced runner's high, even after years of distance running that's never something I ever got to. But I did have writer's high the other day it was really lovely. And I put on some music and I kind of danced in my chair a little bit while I wrote. It was lovely. It exists.Sarina:                                 28:16                    Well, let's spend another moment on the day when you can't find your writer's high. I have days when I just don't feel close enough to my characters or my topic. And sometimes those are the nights when I won't read anything before I go to sleep. So, instead of being tense about it - there's this funny part from Cheers (and I'm totally dating myself), where Norman, the interior decorator, would tell people, 'I've programmed myself to dream about your space.' And I love that line so much and I actually feel like I can turn that on a little bit with fiction. Where I will go for a walk, or I'll take a drive, or everyone knows how wonderful the shower is for writing thoughts, but I will just think about my characters in an unforced way. Or I will look for pictures on Pinterest of the coffee shop, or the attic bedroom, or the resort where they might be staying. I'll just do something that's tangential to figuring out the scene without actually worrying about what happens next in the scene. So we're not stuck, we're marinating. You're honoring the cogitation that has to happen before you're actually ready to go on. And yeah, it's true, I won't be getting any words on the page at that time, but I'm also not going to take flight from the problem. So, if you can find a way to allow yourself to think about your topic without actually saying 'What happens, what happens next?' then sometimes wonderful things happen that way.KJ:                                        30:10                    I love that. We're not stuck, we're marinating. You're also just finding other ways to keep your butt in the chair, right?Sarina:                                 30:19                    Yeah, or even out of the chair.KJ:                                        30:21                    Or you know, keeping your head in the game, then. Something, come on, do something.Sarina:                                 30:25                    Yeah, definitely head in the game. Once I drew a picture of the floor plan of the bar owner in my story. I didn't actually need the floor plan. I just drew it because it kept me thinking about him in a way that was not confrontational to what chapter 11 was going to do.KJ:                                        30:50                    I love the idea of you like having these confrontational, mental... And you're so right, sometimes you just can't get them, you can't figure out why they would do what it is that you need them to do, or what they would do instead that still makes things move. And it is a confrontation.Sarina:                                 31:14                    Yup. And some books are faster than others, obviously. People who think that my writing pace is fast, should remember that I'm writing books in essentially two series, where the world building has been established in previous books and some of the characters are already known. I just wrote an email 10 minutes ago to my assistant asking her to go through six books and pull out every reference to the youngest brother in this family. And then to go deep diving for mentions of the deceased father, because he's going to become important. And I will just reread every line about those people. So that falls under the category of what cannot be rushed. So, it's amazing that there are people who can write 11,000 words in a day, but I would still posit that on novel that I want to read again and again has some parts that have to take a pause after those 11,000 words. Because reviewing your own work for theme and motif is something you can't rush, basically. I always need to go back and find like, 'Oh, look how many times I mentioned lost sheep.' So, being lost is a theme of this book, and the sheep is the motif, and where have I underutilized this image and what was I thinking? That kind of thing, it's lovely to write fast, but if you give yourself permission to have to go back and think about all these things, then you'll end up with something that you're really happy with whenever you do finally write the end.KJ:                                        33:03                    So I think when I talk about write faster, I would just like to get another couple hundred solid words a day. I would like to spend a little less time hovering over the keyboard and a little more time with my fingers moving. But not 11,000 words.Jess:                                     33:27                    I think a good marriage for me in a day is a little bit of time spent smoothing out stuff I've already written and just pounding out new stuff. But I can't do both for really long periods of time because it's different, mentally taxing tasks for me. You know, getting a ton of words on the page is tiring in one way. And editing stuff I've already written is tiring in a different way. And for some reason for me, if I do a little bit of both, I can last longer.KJ:                                        33:58                    I will just sort of point out to myself, that I've done NaNoWriMo. I have won NaNoWriMo and I'll just bask in the glory of that for a minute. And it is the book that eventually became The Chicken Sisters. So, I can write 1600 words in a day. I typically don't, but I could. So some of write faster might also be make more space. I was getting up early on days when, in a normal month, I might not get up early. I was pushing things aside that I might not have pushed aside. So, making the space - I guess that's not writing faster, that's just writing more.Jess:                                     34:45                    Well, there's a really fun activity that I used to do with my students for NaNoWriMo when I gave them space to do NaNoWriMo in November, obviously. There's a little workbook that they used to produce and I'm not entirely sure that they still do. And there's a big page at the beginning of the workbook and it's got a big picture of basically what looks like your no button, KJ. It's like a big like stop button. And you're supposed to pretend to hit it, because that's your inner editor. You're supposed to silence your inner editor and so we would actually do it for fun. We would put the page on the desk, and we'd all slam the desk and say, 'That's it.' Our inner editor, we've just shut it off, so that we can move forward without having to worry about going back and make everything perfect. And that allowed the students to let go of that perfectionism a little bit and just allow the words to flow more and to become part of the process, instead of part of the editor. So that was a fun thing.KJ:                                        35:41                    You touched on this, but do you separate your editing days and your writing days or your editing blocks and you're writing blocks? I've been in a deep editing space, cause I just turned in essentially the final edit of The Chicken Sisters and I'm having a hard time. In fact, instead of getting into deep writing on my new project (for a lot of reasons), but including the fact that I'm in editing mode, I'm going back over the probably first third to a half of the book that I already have, and making it match where I know I'm going. Whereas in in the past, when I've written things I have not gone back. I've just gone forward the way I knew I was going, and then gone back and fixed it. So how do you manage that editing versus writing space?Sarina:                                 36:35                    I go back a lot. I really am a big fan of going back to the beginning, and printing it out, and reading it, and scribbling in the margins, and then doing an edit even before I've hit the 50% Mark. And Elle Kennedy doesn't like to do that. She likes to write the whole thing and then go back and fix it, but I feel too out of control. It's like there's dishes in the sink kind of feeling. One way that that benefits me is that I just printed out a book that I had just finished and I had exactly four days to do the final revision and the result was totally as expected, which is that that first 25% did not require very much of me because I had already been there so many times. The second 25% was okay, the third 25% was a disaster, and the last quarter was great because I had already figured all my stuff out. And I was able to write the last quarter of the book, even if I hadn't fixed the 50 to 75% part yet, I knew what was there and it was all fresh.KJ:                                        37:45                    I think it's just too soon for me. I'm only on my second hopefully publishable novel (I've got some tucked away). So it's too soon for me to sort of say, 'Oh, this is how I do it.' But, some part of me doesn't want to spend too much time going back and polishing the first 25% because at least in the first book there were things that I needed to go back and change. I don't think you're polishing anyway. It's somewhere between polishing it and revising. I want to revise to get the plot consistent, and the character development consistent, and the things that I know are happening consistent, but I don't want to spend too much time on it because there's a pretty decent chance that somewhere the final third of the book, something will happen that will cause me to go 'Oh, yeah. I really got to go back and and insert this, that, or the other, or pull out this, that, or the other, because that has changed. So it's an interesting balance.Sarina:                                 38:50                    I still take that risk. I'll polish the heck out of things even if they're gonna get changed.KJ:                                        38:57                    You have permission. Well this was, I am going to write faster, or better, or more, or something.Jess:                                     39:08                    I always just benefit from hearing how strategic Sarina is in her thinking about her writing.KJ:                                        39:14                    I think it's just good to take some time and think strategically. So I love that. But let's switch gears, who's been reading?Jess:                                     39:23                    Actually, can I go first on the book? Because that's exactly what the book I've been listening to is about. So, I had very high expectations for Jodi Kantor and Meghan Twohey's book 'She Said'. And oh my gosh, it's so much better than even I thought it would be. And here's why I love it so much. Of course, I love the background stuff, you know part of the story of this is that they had to get to people like Ashley Judd and Gwyneth Paltrow without going through agents and publicists, the people who it's their job to protect these people. So they had to do a lot of that and there were things I was looking forward to reading in this book. For writers, this book is a masterclass in investigative journalism. And I'm not talking about like sweeping ideas, I'm talking about nuts and bolts. Here's how they kept this document secret in the New York Times system, where they keep work in progress. Here's how Megan Twohey handled someone who's answer on the telephone said one thing, but clearly meant another. It's brilliant. And they really take you into the room, they take you into the page one room, they take you into the meetings where they were. I'm talking about the tiny, minute details that could either make the story credible or make the story fall apart. And I learned a ton and I also just got that juicy behind-the-scenes dishing on the guts of investigative journalism. And I was just blown away by the book. Absolutely blown away by the book. And if you get a chance and you see it in the store, turn it over and look at the blurbs on the back. Cause frankly, that's one of the coolest things I've ever seen. Instead of having blurbs on the back, they have quotes from women about the Weinstein case, or Trump, or whoever. And it's attributed to She Said. It's so brilliant, it's just a fantastic book. Kudos to them, I'm so impressed. They just deserve for this book to be a runaway bestseller.Sarina:                                 41:38                    Sounds amazing.Jess:                                     41:39                    Yeah, it's just so good. Sarina, what have you been reading?Sarina:                                 41:45                    Well, I'm still in an editing hellscape of my own creation, but I have been flipping through this hilarious research book. Which is not meant to be hilarious, but it's called the 100 Deadly Skills by Clint Emerson, retired Navy SEAL. And it's the subtitle is The SEAL Operatives Guide to Eluding Pursuers, Evading Capture, and Surviving Any Dangerous Situation. And he is not kidding.Jess:                                     42:14                    This is like the last book I can picture you reading. I'm so intrigued.Sarina:                                 42:19                    I know, but it's for fiction naturally. So now I know how to bar myself in a hotel room.KJ:                                        42:43                    That's awesome, I love it. Well, I have not been reading. I actually have started something I'm excited about, but I'm gonna finish it before talking about it. So what I have to offer everyone instead, (and I'm actually really excited about this) I have found two fantastic new podcast, specifically for book recommendations. I can't believe I did not know about these, and maybe you guys did, but I am absolutely in love with, What Should I Read Next with Anne Bogle, who's also known as the Modern Mrs. Darcy. I want to be a guest on this podcast so bad, you guys. What she does is she has one guest and she asks them what they've enjoyed lately, what is not for them, and what kind of reads they want to to have on their bedside table, and then she gives them three recommendations after having this sort of glorious 40 minute long talk about what they like about books, and what they don't like about books. I love it, it's such fun to listen to. And on a similar note, I also came across the Get Booked podcast from Book Riot and this is two hosts and they don't have a guest. Instead, people write them in and they say something like, 'I have a really hard time finding the right thing to read on a plane. I need it to be distracting like maybe with dragons, but I really hate it when it involves, you know, the gender politics, what can I read...' These questions are so specific and then they launch into their book recommendations and it's so much fun to listen to.Jess:                                     44:21                    That's cool. That's how I use Twitter when I've got a student that has very specific interests, and a very specific reading level, and is a reluctant. I go to Twitter and I say, 'Okay, fifth grade reading level, basketball, a kid who's from central America, Go.' And then you know, I get all these cool recommendations. I love that.KJ:                                        44:41                    I believe, Jess, you said you have bookstore news. So instead of a fave indie bookstore this week, we're going to lay out some indie bookstore news for people.Jess:                                     45:05                    It's very cool. This is newly public news from Jenny Lawson. She wrote Furiously Happy and Let's Pretend This Never Happened and a fantastic coloring book for people when they're anxious. Anyway, she's just wonderful and she is opening a new bookstore in San Antonio. She signed her lease just recently. It's going to be called Nowhere Bookshop and she has secured the former head of the CEO of The Book People Bookshop in Austin, which is a fantastic bookshop, as the general manager of her bookshop. That will be opening goodness knows when, but either later this year or early next year. So that is huge news. San Antonio is going to have a new bookstore, and I believe also a bar, but don't quote me on that. It's gonna be a combination bookshop and other things. And that's just really exciting, especially since I have a date at a speaking engagement in San Antonio coming up. So I'm praying that she gets it done in time.KJ:                                        46:10                    Alright, well let's call it guys. We got places to be, we got words to write.Jess:                                     46:29                    Absolutely. Alright, everyone, until next week, keep your butts in the chair and your head in the game. This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid. 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