#amwriting With Jess & Kj

The structure of a book is only inevitable in hindsight.  Non-writers don’t usually notice structure unless it leaps out at them—reverse chronology, say, or an epistolary narrative. But structural choices loom huge for non-fiction writers and are no less important for memoir and fiction (although straight chronological is the white-shirt-and-blue-jeans of structure—relatable, easy to execute and nearly always appropriate). Will there be alternating timelines or POVs? A prologue? Who’s telling this story, and why, and how? When does it start and when does it end? If you’ve done the exercises up until now, you know why you’re writing and who you’re writing for. You’ve thought about the market–where your readers are and what they want. You’ve drafted some back of the book copy in the hopes of reaching those readers–and to remind yourself of the promise you’re making to them. And you’ve thought about the change that propels readers through a book, which is a sneaky way into thinking about theme. This is where

I want to believe I can change. Show me how. The “arc of change” is famous in fiction, and it’s much the same in memoir–but there’s a change and shift in non-fiction too. Change is what pulls the reader from the beginning to the end of every narrative book. Without the promise of change, your reader feels like they’re going nowhere, and they won’t come along for your ride.  In fiction and memoir, the change comes to the protagonist (and offers the reader the promise that they, too, are capable of change. In non-fiction, change may come to the narrator, to a real-life figure, or be offered to the reader, but it has to be there. It isn’t enough that the advice is sound or that a story is true. We still need to feel that journey from one way of being to another.  This is the fifth episode in the 10-part Blueprint for a Book Series. Start with Step 1, do the work (we’ll give you an assignment every week), and in 10 weeks, you’ll have a solid foundation for a first draft or revision of your project that

How do we make our ideal reader say Oh—THIS is the book for me? In our first two episodes, we dug down into why we write and how to share that why with the reader. In the last episode, we hung a quick right and got really practical about that reader and how to reach her–in other words, we talked about the market and why it’s important to understand where your book will sit on the shelf if you want the right readers to find it. In this episode, we’re going to talk about what happens when one of those potential readers picks your book up off that shelf–and turns it over. That means we’re talking jacket copy! You might have heard writing advice that basically says, quit daydreaming about what your cover will look like before you’ve written your book–but we’re not talking about the cover art. Jacket copy is important and drafting it now will help you find your story. It’s the promise you make to the reader–so the sooner you write it, the harder you can focus on keeping it–or changing it. Plus, it’s useful i

In the first two Blueprint steps, we went high level, talking about your why and your point, and why those are key things to consider in writing the book you want to write–that will reach the readers you want to reach. In this episode, we get practical. Because while you need a why and a point to reach readers, you also need to know something about those readers–where they hang, what they’re looking for, and how you can become a part of it. In other words, it’s time to talk about the market. This is the third episode in the 10-part Blueprint for a Book Series. Start with Step 1, do the work (we’ll give you an assignment every week), and in 10 weeks, you’ll have a solid foundation for a first draft or revision of your project that will help you push through to “the end”. For the details on the challenge, and to sign up for weekly encouragement, bonuses and the chance to win a blueprint critique, head to authoraccelerator.com/amwritingblueprintchallenge.  YOUR ASSIGNMENT There are several things to do

I’m writing this book because I want people to read it. Step 2 in the Blueprint for a book challenge only sounds easy. In Step 1, we talked about your why. For Step 2, we invite you to find your point – which is what you want your reader to feel or know or do when they are done. It’s not the same thing! If you want to get all AP English on this, we’re talking about the theme. Or from the non-fiction perspective, maybe you want to consider this your thesis—but they really come down to the same thing. Every book is, at heart, an argument for something – for a belief, a way of life, a vision of the future, a way to solve a problem, a way to make a friend, a way to lose your soul. Finding your argument (and this is something you will probably revisit, hone and clarify along the way) will help you find your book. This is the second episode in the 10-part Blueprint for a Book Series. Start with Step 1, do the work (we’ll give you an assignment every week), and in 10 weeks, you’ll have a solid foundation for

We sit down to write because we have something to say. It’s beginning! This Episode marks the beginning of the 10-part Blueprint for a Book Series. Start here, do the work (we’ll give you an assignment every week)—and in 10 weeks, you’ll have a solid foundation for a first draft or revision of your project that will help you push through to “the end”. For the details on the challenge, and to sign up for weekly encouragement, bonuses, and the chance to win a blueprint critique, head to authoraccelerator.com/amwritingblueprintchallenge.  Start with why. That’s the title of one of Jennie Nash’s favorite books and TED talks: Simon Sinek’s Start with Why, and it’s what a good book coach will always bring you back to if you get ahead of yourself. Why are you writing this? Fiction, memoir, non-fiction: we always have a reason. There is something we want to say, and someone we want to hear it. Knowing what that is gives your writing power. Readers feel it when something raw and real lies underneath your wor

It’s the things-that-aren’t in the episode edition of your weekly #AmWriting email! First off, about 60 seconds in, I mention (this is KJ, it’s nearly always KJ) a podcast I like. But then I flake off to look up the name… and forget to ever mention it again. It’s the Crappy Friends Podcast with Kristan Higgins and Joss Dey. And it’s FICTION GOLD. Every week, a couple of people write in with stories of awful friends and angsty dilemmas and towns that are too-small-for-the-both-of-us and there is a novel in every question and a whole lot of shadenfreudy entertainment in the answers provided by best friends Kristan and Joss. It’s a fun, I’m just here for the hang situation. Want more? Sarina just texted me that she forgot to tell y’all her BIGGEST achievement so far this year: she writes first thing. I’m going to take credit for this one. I’m a big fan of eat-the-frog first (I exercise first thing, then write, for the same reasons) although I can’t remember what I said that finally got her to actually do i

This episode is for you if: you’re starting, re-starting or sparking a freelance career with a focus on something you’re passionate about OR you’ve ever thought the heck with this, I’m striking out on my own.  Sometimes the best way to find a publication that reaches the readers you want is to start one. That might mean starting a Substack or a podcast—hello out there, Burnt Toast, one of the best examples I can think of of doing exactly that.* Or it might mean doing something both a little bigger and a little more old school. When Valerie Kathawala decided to write about her passion, wine, she had to start from scratch—as in, she took a job at a local wine store. She stocked shelves, studied labels and wrote the in-house wine magazine, which led to bylines at other small publications and built up from there. For her it was wine, but I was so excited to talk about how to build up a freelance career now, as opposed to 20 years ago. (I think y’all know us well enough by now to know this is not an episode

It’s hard to start. It’s hard to finish. It’s hard to choose. Sometimes writers (especially those who have had to step back from a professional journalism job for family or other reasons) have all the ideas and in some sense, all the time to execute them, and the result isn’t wild productivity, but a frustrating spinning of wheels—because if everything is possible, how do you choose? What if you choose wrong? Everything looks like a shiny opportunity, but when you write the first few sentences, it turns out the shiny thing was just a gum wrapper. It blows, and it can go on for a long time (and even forever)—because when you’re used to externally imposed topic and deadlines, it’s hard to shift into creating your own—and putting in the time you need to finish them and turn them into something real. KJ talks to former CBC national reporter and occasional freelancer Alison Myers about harnessing your strengths and the way you work best to get things done instead of starting and stopping a million things. Here’

Oh yeah we’ve been there. Heck, we are there. Pigeonholed. Safe in our little bunker. Maybe just a tiny bit typecast. Jumping genres can be exciting, scary, nerve-wracking. But it can be done. Everybody gravitates to one genre or another when we get started. Maybe nonfiction feels a little less threatening—or maybe it feels too hard and fiction is your starting place of choice. Maybe you’ve been writing rom-coms but are sure you have a thriller in you, or the other way around. Are you giving up everything you’ve learned, or everything you’ve gained if you’re published? That would be no and maybe kinda but not necessarily in a bad way, in that order.  This week we’re tackling the question of genre-hopping, in part because Sarina’s going thriller, KJ’s tackling magical realism and Jess is drafting fiction, and in part because listener and thriller writer Aggie Thompson sent us this plaintive missive:  I am a thriller writer, published by Forge/Macmillan, and my debut -- I DON’T FORGIVE YOU -- came

I don’t think we’ve ever talked about middle grade on #AmWriting, which was why I was so delighted to talk to Jamie Sumner, author of Roll With It, One Kid’s Trash, Tune It Out and the forthcoming, literally any day now The Summer of June, which you should order for your kid’s beach bag right now. (And if you happen to be in Nashville, scroll down for a link to an event next week.) Jamie and KJ talk about the mechanics of writing and pitching middle grade fiction, touch on the horrors of your first edit letter (and what you absolutely must not do when you get it) and then dive deep into what really makes this genre and its readers special—and it’s not what you think. Hard topics with hope, depth that’s distractible, and the limits of characters with temporarily limited agency who are all about finding ways to control their own destiny—but who, by the end of the book, are probably physically in much the same place as where they began. That means the endings are necessarily open-ended—which young readers app

Some of us, which might be all of us, have spent a decent amount of time writhing in the throes of writer envy lately. Can’t IMAGINE what we’re talking about? Never opened Facebook to see news of yet another Netflix deal, or celebrated a friend’s fantastic New York Times review while just a little bit kind of secretly asking yourself where yours was? Well, bully for you. Go listen to another podcast this week. Meanwhile, we’re owning all the envy—and if you think being successful in any way dials that green monster button down, think again. There’s always a higher bar to reach. What does help? Age, wisdom, beauty (ok I just threw that one in) and a couple of other ideas we put out there at the end of the episode. Come hang. Links from the pod Colleen Hoover The Bookworm Box Sulphur Springs  Ryan Holiday Bookstore  Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus Mary Laura Philpott Episode 312, Essays That Start Light, Then Hit Hard Emily Henry’s Beach Read Michael Lewis Nora Goes Off Scri

Jess here. On this week’s episode, I talk with New York Times bestselling author Kristen Green about her first book, Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County: A Family, a Virginia Town, a Civil Rights Battle and her new book, The Devil’s Half-Acre: The Untold Story of How One Woman Liberated the South’s Most Notorious Slave Jail.  We go into the process of writing a research-intensive historical nonfiction book, particularly when that book requires the author to investigate and implicate her own family in the darker parts of the story.  We also discuss the birth of The Devil’s Half Acre, a tale that involves a lot of challenges including parting ways with one agent and finding another. More than anything else, we discuss the need for authors to believe in themselves and their story.  COMING JULY 1: It’s the #AmWriting Blueprint for a Book Challenge! 10 episodes, 10 guests, 10 weeks to you being ready to write your best novel, memoir or non-fiction book this fall. There will be homework. T

Shownotes up front—but scroll down, there’s an announcement! Mia P. Manansala (she/her) is a writer and book coach from Chicago who loves books, baking, and bad-ass women. She uses humor (and murder) to explore aspects of the Filipino diaspora, queerness, and her millennial love for pop culture. She is the author of 2 books so far in the Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery series: Arsenic and Adobo and Homicide and Halo-Halo.  I was excited to talk to Mia because I read my way through hundreds of cozies well into my early adulthood, and I thought I knew the genre pretty well—but in coming back to it recently, I could see that things have changed. Just like in romance, there’s far more of an effort to balance reality with the deeply unlikely yet also deeply satisfying elements of the genre that are the reasons we come: Protagonists we love, puzzles to solve and justice to serve and peace to restore—until the next book! Links from the Pod Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder, Joanne Fluke #AmReading Mia:

Jess here. A.J. Jacobs has long been my inspiration for both writing and writerly mentorship, so I was thrilled when his forthcoming book, The Puzzler: One Man’s Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, from Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life landed on my doorstep. I adore A.J.’s work and this book might be a new favorite. We talk about the book, yes, but we also discuss where the ideas come from, how to stay curious and the effect that curiosity has on the writing, and the work of crafting proposals that resemble the final book.  Links: A.J. Jacobs: https://ajjacobs.com Kevin Roose: https://www.kevinroose.com The Unlikely Disciple World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship Great Vermont Corn Maze KJ here—and I am now a certified Author Accelerator book coach! If you’ve been listening for a while, you know I spent five years as an editor with The New York Times—but I still had a lot to learn about helping writers through the process of taking a book from idea to manuscript, and

Fave return guest alert! We talked to Mary Laura Philpott in episode 71–#YouandYourBookstore, back when she was a Parnassus Books guru. And then in Episode 150: #NeverReady, when MLP (as we like to call her) launched her first book of essays, I Miss You When I Blink, into the world—and then again, for episode 163 #BookTourReality. And now she’s back with a new book of essays: Bomb Shelter: Love, Time and other Explosives. (Read an excerpt here. And here. And then go order the book here.) The difference? Blink was, as MLP says, a book of essays that, together, became a memoir. Bomb Shelter is a memoir that took on the form of a book of essays—essays that went deeper than those shared in Bomb Shelter, that cut so much closer to the heart and were so much harder to write, and to share.  Links from the Pod: marylauraphilpott.com Mary Laura’s newsletter Bomb Shelter #AmReading MLP: The Arc, Tory Henwood Hoen The Mutual Friend, Carter Bays Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting, Clare

Where should your energy go? KJ here, and in this episode Jess and I catch up on what’s worth it and what isn’t when it comes to travel, the importance of getting over any (non-pandemic-related) hesitation around taking the time for conferences and work events and also, in our usual digressive fashion, covers, paperback launches and boots. Links from the Pod Sana, a rehab in Stowe Vermont For info on the Sana Scholarship Fund Oliver Burkeman 4 Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus The Harvey Foundation KJ’s boots on Instagram #AmReading  KJ: How to Stop Time, Matt Haig Jess: Explorer Booksellers, Aspen Colorado The Bookworm, Edwards Colorado Boulder Bookstore, Boulder Colorado Trailblazer, Dorothy Butler Gilliam KJ here—and I am now a certified Author Accelerator book coach! If you’ve been listening for a while, you know I spent five years as an editor with The New York Times—but I still had a lot to learn abo

New York Times investigative journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey broke the story of Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assaults in 2017 and harassment and won a Pulitzer Prize for their efforts. Their book about the Weinstein investigation, She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement, came out in 2019 and the film version will be out this November.  Now, Jodi and Megan offer the lessons of their investigation - the process involved and the rules that governed its publication - to student journalists so they may be inspired and informed. I (Jess) got to talk to Jodi Kantor about the book they created for those young journalists, Chasing the Truth: A Young Journalist’s Guide to Investigative Reporting. Links from the Pod: #AmWriting Facebook group KJ here—and I am now a certified Author Accelerator book coach! If you’ve been listening for a while, you know I spent five years as an editor with The New York Times—but I still had a lot to learn about helping writers thro

Like all great stories, The Vortex: A True Story of History’s Deadliest Storm, an Unspeakable War, and Liberation was born out of writerly curiosity and a deceptively simple question: Why would India build a wall around Bangladesh?  I (Jess) spoke with co-authors Scott Carney and Jason Miklian about their collaboration and the work involved in answering this question.  I’ve known Scott for a while, as I became a fan of his work about a decade ago when I read The Red Market: On the Trail of the World’s Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers, and Child Traffickers and later became one of those crazy cold plunge people after reading his books, What Doesn’t Kill Us and The Wedge. I’m new to Jason Miklian, though, and thoroughly enjoyed getting to know this venerable academic, writer, photographer, researcher, breakbeat DJ, and world record holder (for the fastest drive across North America). In this episode, we talk about choosing narrative structure, finding your subjects, discovering the most relev

Urban fantasy. Paranormal romance. Historicals. Plus the occasional billionaire, and now a rom-com, complete with a cute graphic cover that tells you exactly who you’ll be rooting for and what to expect. What do all of these things have in common, besides being written by todays’ guest, Seressia Glass? Two things. First, they’re all—as she says on her website— tales of overcoming the odds to achieve love and acceptance–universal desires for everyone no matter who or what they are. Second? They’re all books readers want. Books, in other words, that will sell. I heard Seressia say briefly on another podcast that she and her agent had strategized about exactly that. On the pod, we dive more deeply into the balance between writing what you love, and writing what people will read. We also talk about super-agent Jenny Bent (travel back in time to listen to her on Episode 24 of the pod), Marlon James, the brilliance of Seressia’s pinned tweet and more. Links from the Pod: 7 Figure Fiction The “b