#amwriting With Jess & Kj

Abby Kincer is a reader and a bookstagrammer, a fun person, an enthusiastic consumer of bookish socks and t-shirts, a user of filters, a wearer of glasses, a possessor of many tote bags and—that’s what I know about her! Because her Instagram is bookstagram through and through, and that’s why she’s here. We asked Abby everything we ever wanted to know about bookstagramming, from how she got started to how she chooses books to how she prefers to interact with authors (kinda not much!).  Abby on: Instagram: @bookmarkedbya Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/90454496-abby-kincer #AmReading: (none for KJ) Abby: The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan “I loved it and I wanted to throw it out the window.” The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton The People We Keep by Allison Larkin Sarina: The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides The Other Woman by Sandie Jones I just finished Author Accelerator’s book coaching course and submitted my materials—and l

Crew, Anne Le Tissier is a listener with a question: What should I have on my website—and how can I get there without breaking the bank? She’s also the author of six traditionally published inspirational titles, some out of print, a speaker and the creator of a rather genius non-blog blog idea that I may just have to steal for myself. We critique her website and offer ideas for making it more professional without learning to code or spending big bucks—because there are some absolute must-haves, more than a few must-nots, and one important question to answer. Listen—and then go poke around on your own site! Links from the Pod AnneLeTissier.com Authors Guild Squarespace Blogspot Mailchimp Mailerlite Flodesk Newsletter Ninja #AmReading Anne: Word by Word: A Daily Spiritual Practice by Marilyn McEntyre KJ: The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman Sarina: Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica Twitter: @AnneLeTiss IG @AnneLeTissier I just finished Author Accelerat

Y’all, it’s an uber-informative, down in the trenches episode about writing memoir when it feels like your topic is on the lighter side—but of course, no truly successful memoir ever stays on the surface. Cate Doty is the author of Mergers and Acquisitions: Or, Everything I Know About Love I Learned on the Wedding Pages. She is a writer and former editor at The New York Times, where she covered the news of food, weddings, business, New York, and more.  To write Mergers and Acquisitions, Cate had to look at what was in some ways an obvious story—I fell in love at the NYT while working on the Wedding pages!—to the real story of growing up in an iconic newsroom and learning about what makes relationships get as far as the wedding pages—and then get past that one day. She had to find ways to dig into her past, and to write about real people she still loves and respects (and a few she doesn’t). And she had to accept that writing about the NYT probably means you’re not working there again. And then she had to

Here’s the deal: Jess and I (KJ here) have been rolling with different energies lately. She’s letting the spirit move her. Being inspired. Putting time into other creative projects and inviting that to feed her soul. I’m stepping over other projects, telling the spirit I’m not home right now and keeping the spotlight in one place. In this episode, we talk about when you can—and can’t—go with the flow. How we handle it when other ideas beckon, but a deadline demands our attention. What we do between projects and why. And why KJ puts a meal plan on the fridge every week, while Jess asks “what do we feel like eating?”—but that does NOT mean Jess can’t make a plan and stick to it, or that KJ never follows the muse. (Although, re: dinner: I don’t CARE what you feel like eating. This is what we’re having.) As always, if you’ve got a pressing writerly question you’d like us to answer or that you might be willing to work through on the show, email us: amwriting@substack.com.  Links from the Pod: Special

Your first book, we’ve all found, is usually something you’ve been mulling for a while. You second might be the same—so the question, how do you get you ideas, seems both confusing—I don’t know—and unnecessary—I have lots. Nonfiction, essays—when we first get started we’re bursting at the seams. What to write next isn’t a problem—until it is. Or until you find yourself wanting to think about ideas differently—about what you want to write or say, but also how you’d like it to be received and by who. In this episode, we talk ideas from scrawled capture (where and how) to evaluation and expansion. Do we wait for the time to be right for an idea, or run with it and hope for the best? Who do we turn to when we’re not certain what we have or what to do with it? And when do we decide to settle down with one for a few weeks or months or years, and why?  Links from the pod Episode 299: How to Sell Any Book to Any Publisher with Sue Shapiro Episode 301: Do Morning Pages Work? KJ Charles: How to Write a

Here’s Katherine Center, author of soon-to-be 9 bittersweet comic novels that have been described as “the best medicine for human souls,” on her relatively late-in life discover of romance novels: “I felt like I’d discovered chocolate cake after a lifetime of eating boneless skinless chicken breasts.” We dig deep into the process of figuring out what you love in a book and how to find it in your own work, from analyzing other books to the importance of the reading journal, and then we get into the craft of writing books that satisfy the readerly urges you share, embracing unifying tropes, finding the compelling hook and how to ground a story that seems to big to be true by creating real characters with relatable problems in familiar settings. I took some serious notes here, people. I’m going to have to listen again! #AmReading Katherine Center : Something Wilder, Christina Lauren (Also mentioned The Unhoneymooners) Book Lovers, Emily Henry Sarina: The Long Game, Rachel Reid (sequel

KJ here. Sarina wanted to try Morning Pages, the most famous ritual from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way—a book that, tbh, has never, ever floated my boat, just as my resistance to morning pages—in my mind, a variation on journaling, which I have also never liked—has been strong. But Sarina wanted to try it. So we did, she in a fairly systematic way and me in what I still have to concede was more than a little half-assed. And now, having recorded the podcast, and kinda-sorta-promised to try this again later, I write these show notes still unconvinced. I already do creative things. I don’t think I need to free up my creativity. Is there really anything WRONG with only wanting to do the thing if it makes a thing—something someone might read, in the case of writing, but in other arts as well? That’s how I am. I’ll knit a hat, but I’m not just gonna sit here and knit. I like to draw but I like to share what I drew. And there’s no better art than making beautiful, tasty cookies and cakes. I get it. Perhaps

300 is a lot of episodes, and we have recorded them. Things we’ve learned—the most famous guests aren’t necessarily the one that have the most to teach us—UNLESS you ask the right questions. WOTY Recap: Jess: Evaluate KJ: Play Sarina: WIP Links from the Pod Everyday Calendar, by Simone Giertz (there is no link on MOMA, sorry!) It was actually an opera singer who got stuck in the closet. Here’s a This American Life Opera about it. It’s a TOTALLY WORTH IT rabbit hole down which I am sending you. “Hustle” episode: How to Get Work as a Freelancer Bomb Shelter by Mary Laura Philpott Rachael Herron’s Annual Money Episode The free NFT book dude #whatpublishingpaidme Reading with Babies Toddlers and Twos ARTIFACT, 30 Seconds to Mars Tanya Eby #AmReading Jess: Sarina’s latest, The Best Men The Latinist by Mark Prins—read the print version Superhot Wing Man on YouTube Sarina: The Other Man by Farhad J. Dadyburjor KJ: All the Feels by Olivia Dade Je

How, HOW has it taken us this long to bring you the amazing Sue Shapiro? Sue teaches what is unquestionably THE class on publishing personal essays—her motto is “Instant Gratification takes too long” and her students’ success record is astounding. She’s the author , co-author or editor of 16 books in genres ranging from memoir to middle-grade and including self-help and fiction. She’s a poet, an essayist and a teacher of such generosity and enthusiasm that I could probably just stop talking right now and let her go and you’d still end this podcast going man, I learned so much! Her latest book is The Book Bible: Sell Your Manuscript—No Matter What Genre—Without Going Broke or Insane, and there is no one more qualified to write it.  The Book Bible should be taught in the first session of every writing program or MFA. It’s a how-to on getting published, but also a primer on the industry as a whole—an industry every writer should understand, ideally early in their career. We talk about learning hard lessons, t

“Just a little jaunt to Ireland to research my next book.” If that sounds like a dream to you, we asked Sarah Stewart Taylor—author of The Mountains Wild, A Distant Grave and the forthcoming The Drowning Sea, all set in Ireland and the somewhat-less-glamorous Long Island—to explain how she made that dream a reality, even before she sold the first of her books. We talk about why research travel matters, when and why Sarah chooses to use real neighborhoods or locations in her fiction, how she spends her time (hint—you have to suck it up and be a tourist) and why it’s so important to “get extra”.  #AmReading Sarah: Matrix by Lauren Groff Ilaria Tuti - Flowers Over the Inferno, The Sleeping Nymph Jess: Once there Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy Go Tell the Bees that I am Gone by Diana Gabaldon Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult KJ: Louise Erdrich, The Sentence Also mentioned: narrator Davina Porter Class with KJ! I’m teaching a 4 week long online class I call “Cry Harder: Takin

Alison Zak has just been “jolted from being a writer to being an author” with the interest in her non-fiction book proposals—but with that interest came questions about… The dreaded platform problem!  That was the subject line of the reader email that caught our attention, and the problem is follows: you’ve got a great non-fiction proposal—but a relatively small existing “platform”. What is a platform, you ask? Well, it could be an offline community, a reputation, an academic or business space that you’re prominent in, or your reach as a professional writer in other’s spaces (i.e. the NYT, ESPN, McSweeney’s—but it’s more probably a question of online reach. As in, followers on email, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or for a blog or podcast. Numbers are important, but intensity and engagement matter too, as do being an active part of the community you want to reach, even if it’s led by others. We talk building platform and how to explain the platform you have to publishers who might think only numbers matter.

Words of the Year from 2021/New words for 2022 Jess: 2021: Organize 2022: Evaluate KJ: 2021: Flow 2022: Play Sarina: 2021 Generous 2022: TBD Links from the Pod: Oh. What. Fun. by Chandler Baker Jetpens Scrivener Hoopla Libby/Overdrive Last week y’all heard me—KJ—rave about the coaching certification I’m working towards with our sponsor Author Accelerator. I have learned so much—about my own work, and how to help others’ with theirs. I spent five years editing others’ work at the New York Times, and I’m a good editor—but no one ever taught me how to help other writers feel excited about those edits before. (At the Times we kind of went in for the “my way or the highway” approach, with a solid dose of “if you can’t take the heat get out of the kitchen”.) And I’ve never understood story as well as I do now. If that all makes you intrigued to set some goals around starting up a book coaching career of your own, learn more at bookcoaches.com or sign up with our affiliate code

What did we notice evolving in the industry? What worked and what didn’t in our own writing lives? Here’s our take. We’d love to hear yours—check in via the #AmWriting Facebook group. Links from the pod Findaway Voices acquired by Spotify Penguin Random House/Simon Schuster merger Storytell acquired Audiobooks.com The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris Reading Apps like Radish The Shrink Next Door Our best lessons from 2021: KJ: You only need one plot. Sarina: Write the flap copy first. Jess: My best writing comes from what I’m immersed in and I need the freedom to write about those things. (Blog post: Look at the Sky, Grown and Flown: Parenting Creative Children.) Y’all heard me—KJ—rave about the coaching certification I’m working towards with our sponsor Author Accelerator. I have learned so much—about my own work, and how to help others’ with theirs. I spent five years editing others’ work at the New York Times, and I’m a good editor—but no one ever taugh

Who doesn’t want a craft book that’s fun to read and will help you plan your fiction (or memoir), write that fiction, revise that fiction and then sell that fiction? This week we talked to Theodora Taylor, author of more than 50 novels and one brilliant book about writing that made Sarina and I (KJ) go SQUEEEE and then text back and forth frantically for a couple of hours. It’s all about the “Universal Fantasies” that give our story-loving brains the things we need when we read—and how to spot those in your own writing to help you tell people what you’re all about, use them in drafting and revising and just generally make sure they’re everywhere in everything you write—literary, commercial, genre, short stories, novellas—everything.  We read Harry Potter for Hogwarts fun and the hero’s journey—but we also are in it for the universal fantasies of “crushed underdog proves self to loathsome family” and “ordinary person turns out to be special” and “loyal friends can be better than family” and so on—and the th

Ever want to know “how she did it”? This episode is our little version of How I Built This, in which we ask Zibby Owens—whose name you surely know by now—about how she turned a desire to be part of the world of books into a one-woman mini book empire. Zibby Owens is the host of Moms Don’t Have Time to Read, a daily podcast featuring interviews with authors that has over 900 episodes. She’s also a Bookstagrammer with 16K followers, the host of a second podcast—Moms Don’t Have Time to Have Sex—the editor of two anthologies, Moms Don’t Have Time To and Moms Don’t Have Time to Have Kids—KJ contributed to that last one—and now the CEO of Zibby Books, a new publishing home for fiction and memoir. She’s a regular contributor to Good Morning America, she’s been called “America’s Top Bookfluencer” and she has two books coming soon: Princess Charming, a picture book, and Booked, a memoir. She’s also got four kids, and they’re kids—elementary and middle school age, not a bunch of independent high schoolers wandering

Can a marriage survive nearly a quarter century of co-writing? I (Jess) present exhibit A on the side of yes, absolutely: illustrator Robbi Behr and writer Matthew Swanson. Robbi and Matthew met in college, have been partners in life and publishing ever since, and they (along with their four kids) are about to embark on their greatest adventure yet.  Robbi and Matthew have written over seventy books, initially with their own publishing house, and now with Random House (Knopf). Matthew writes the text, and Robbi creates the illustrations for their delightful picture and middle grade books. One of their favorite parts of being author/illustrators, however, is the part where they get to meet kids and talk about their work and the creative process.  Next year, the whole family will board a refurbished school bus and travel across the country to speak at Title I schools in all fifty states, giving away 25,000 copies of their books as they go.  Here’s a video about the adventure.  It’s an audacious, ma

Our guest on this episode has a problem—a good problem, yes. An enviable problem even. One that she herself is delighted to have: she’s sold a non-fiction book on proposal. And now she has to write it. 60,000 words, researched, organized and ready for the editor while also fitting in her day job, raising 3 kids with her partner and all of the other curveballs life likes to throw you. In this “coaching call” episode, Jess and I (it’s KJ writing, as it often is) help long-time listener Emily Edlynn figure out how much time to spend in what areas: book structure, research, interviewing, drafting, editing—and then how to set yourself up to allow for getting a major project like this completed on time. (We all know how KJ loves a good burn chart - check out episode 175: #HowtoUseaBurnChart). We talk about motivating yourself, strategies for staying on track or picking back up after the unexpected happens. (You can read Emily’s email to us at the bottom of the shownotes.) Most of us spend more time working

Hi all! Jess here. I met performer and voice educator Cate Frazier-Neely through a mutual friend earlier this year, at a Sungazer concert. I was at the concert because my son is a massive fan of Sungazer bassist and YouTuber Adam Neely and Cate was there because she’s Adam Neely’s mom. When the topic of conversation turned away from my son’s hero worship of her son and toward writing and publishing (doesn’t it always?) she revealed she’d made ALL THE MISTAKES when self-publishing her first book, and, of course, I sensed an opportunity for an episode. As this is a podcast all about flattening the learning curve for writers, I asked her to come on and tell us all the ugly details about publishing her book so we could learn from her mistakes.  Links from the Pod Cate Frazier-Neely: https://www.catefnstudios.com Episode 185: #AudioExplosion with Tanya Eby Meditations to Feed Christmas by Cate Frazier-Neely The Authors Guild We had such a great time chatting we didn’t even get a chance to

Why can’t I finish my novel? KJ here, and when I saw that heartfelt cry in our Facebook Group, I knew we had to answer. Because finishing is hard, y’all. It’s harder than starting. It’s harder than showing up to the page. There comes a moment in so many projects when the wheels are spinning but the Matchbox car just isn’t going anywhere. Ophir Lehavy is a coach herself, working with students to help them find ways to get their work done and feel more successful about it—so she knew the benefits of having someone else try to help you tease out the things that are getting in your way. There are many reasons for feeling stuck or stymied, but they often boil down to two things: feeling unable to take time away from other things, or being able to take the time—but not knowing what to do next.  We talk about both, and drill down hard on moving from one stage of a project to another, when the rhythm and goal have changed and you can’t simply keep doing what you’re doing—and come up with strategies to get O

How do I find a writing group and what if they’re mean?  That’s a question we get asked a lot, and we always encourage writers to reach out in our Facebook group or boldly throw it out there anywhere else online that you hang out and see what happens. You don’t even have to trade pages to be a writing group. You look for the kind of support and camaraderie you need.  But if you’ve ever thought of hying yourself off to your local version of Grub Street or our local spot for in-person writer-ness, The Writer’s Center to find your people—or possibly starting an in-person writer-connection-thing of your own, then you’ll want to listen to my conversation with Joni Cole, founder of said Writer’s Center and the author of Toxic Feedback: Helping Writers Survive and Thrive, Good Naked, and the This Day series, which collects diary entries from women all across the United States on a single day, and the host of the podcast Author, Can I Ask You. Joni and I talk starting writing groups, running them, keeping it po