Podcast appearances and mentions of kj dell antonia

KJ Dell'Antonia is the author of the viral New York Times essay Why I Didn't Answer Your Email. She is the former editor of the NY Times' Motherlode blog and the author of the book How to Be a Happier Parent. Her debut novel, The Chicken Sisters, is a NYT best seller, a selection in Reese Witherspoon's book club. It is a humorous exploration of the same themes she focuses on in her journalism: the importance of finding joy in our families, the challenge of figuring out what makes us happy and the need to value the people in front of us more than the ones in our phones and laptops, every single time. You can find all things KJ Dell'Antonia at her website.

KJ Dell'Antonia KJ Dell'Antonia Talks About Getting A Book Deal, and her New York Times Bestseller, The Chicken Sisters, A Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick.        In this exciting episode of the Holistic Wealth podcast, our very special guest is KJ Dell'Antonia,... The post KJ Dell Antonia Talks About Getting A Book Deal, and her New York Times Bestseller, The Chicken Sisters, A Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick. appeared first on .

Three generations. Two chicken shacks. One recipe for disaster.  Can you say page turner?    The Chicken Sisters was an instant New York Times bestseller after it became the December 2020 pick for Reese Witherspoon’s book club! Oh me oh my...I thoroughly enjoyed this chat with KJ Dell’Antonio.  Take a listen. 

Connect with KJ on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or her website. KJ's book recommendations: Loverboy by Sarina Bowen The Other Bennett Sister by Janice Hadlow Shop all our authors' books and book recommendations on our Bookshop.org page! -- Our February book of the month is THE BODY IS NOT AN APOLOGY by Sonya Renee Taylor. We donate 5% of all our sales to a different feminist organization each month. Our January spotlight organization is Rights4Girls. Get $5 off your Feminist Book Club Box with the code PODCAST at feministbookclub.com/shop.   --   Website: http://www.feministbookclub.com Instagram: @feministbookclubbox Twitter: @fmnstbookclub Facebook: /feministbookclubbox Pinterest: feministbookclub Goodreads: Renee // Feminist Book Club Box and Podcast Email newsletter: http://bit.ly/FBCemailupdates Bookshop.org shop: Feminist Book Club Bookshop -- This podcast is produced on the native land of the Dakota and Sioux peoples.   Logo and web design by Shatterboxx  Editing support from Phalin Oliver Original music by @iam.onyxrose

Welcome to Episode 58 - How KJ Dell’Antonia WritesThis is a special episode with KJ Dell'Antonia. KJ is a faculty for HappyWriter, a podcaster herself, a friend of the show, and I think we share a bunch of personality traits. This was a fun episode for me. KJ and I discuss some of the lessons she's learned in 2020, how to manage guilt and writing, and so much more.Make sure you check out KJs debut novel, The Chicken Sisters, which was a Reese's Bookclub Pick.I want to take a second to thank KJ for her time. And now, without any furher ado, here is the interview with KJ Dell’Antonia.Support the show (http://www.howwriterswrite.com)

They’re driving you crazy. The yelling. The screaming. And you are thinking to yourself- this can’t be normal. This can’t be okay. How am I supposed to deal with the fighting?   Before you grab that glass of wine or hide in the closet to stress eat, we have something to share with you. In many cases, it’s okay to let not only let them argue, but conflict can be healthy.    Today we speak with KJ Dell’Antonia. She’s the author of the books “How to Be a Happier Parent: Raising a Family, Having a Life, and Loving (Almost) Every Minute” and the novel “The Chicken Sisters”, as well as the former editor and lead writer of the Motherlode blog at the NYT and the co-host of the #AmWriting Podcast. KJ helps people recognize that our happiness is more about how we ourselves behave and react, not about our circumstances. Resources We Shared: The Sibling Adventure Pack The Motherlode Blog #AMWriting Podcast KJ Dell’Antonia How to Be a Happier Parent: Raising a Family, Having a Life, and Loving (Almost) Every Minute The Chicken Sisters Dr. Sheryl’s Podcouch Download the Transcripts HERE The best mom is a happy mom. To better take care of you, download our No Guilt Mom mindset here .  These reminders will help you second guess less, and feel more confidence every day in your parenting.

Former teacher and NYT best-selling author, Jess Lahey discusses her book and the research that supports the best way to motivate learning so children can truly excel. Turns out that our parenting, while good-intentioned, can interfere instead of enhance our children’s success.  Learn why and what to do about it!     You can follow Jess here:  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-lahey-b815a366/ Twitter: @jesslahey FB: https://www.facebook.com/jessicapottslahey IG: @teacherlahey YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFJ5jb98nTWRKRPm1JS0i_g/featured And listen in on her own podcast #AmWriting, co-hosted with bestselling authors KJ Dell’Antonia and Sarina Bowen: https://amwriting.substack.com/ KJ: https://kjdellantonia.com/ Sarina: https://sarinabowen.com/ You can buy her book here And pre-order her latest book due for release in April 2021 here:  The Addiction Inoculation: https://www.jessicalahey.com/the-addiction-inoculation

How's your creativity these days? A lot of us are finding it tough to focus and tap into the creative parts of our brain.2020 is a creativity killer for a lot of us. But, it doesn't have to be that way.Author KJ Dell'Antonia is having one of her best years yet as a writer despite the pandemic.KJ is a host of the popular writing podcast, #AmWriting, and is the former editor of The New York Times' Motherlode blog. Her parenting book "How to be a Happier Parent" is a staple for new parents.Her fiction debut, "The Chicken Sisters," landed in bookstores this week. And Reese Witherspoon just named it her December book club pick. Witherspoon's literary blessing is like gold in the book world.How does KJ spark her own creativity each day? She sets a timer. Yes, a timer.On this Dying to Ask:How to use KJ's timer method to spark your own creativity for a big projectLearn other techniques to eliminate distraction and give your brain the freedom to createAnd what it's like to try to get a book noticed in the world when you can't travel and do book signings 

I had such a great discussion with KJ Dell'Antonia for this episode. KJ is the former editor of the New York Times' Motherlode blog, and the author of “How to Be a Happier Parent.” I mean, who wouldn't want to try to be happier in their role as a parent? And to my widowed parent listeners, especially: I figure we can use all the hints and tips we can get, now that we are doing this parenting job by ourselves. Some topics KJ and I discuss include: Why she decided to write this book; Some of her favorite mantras for parenting; Why family dinner is important, and what can be difficult about it; Why ‘discipline' is one of the least-liked parenting jobs, and how to think differently about it; Chores, how to think about them, and tips for parents; Why you'll be a happier parent if you embrace “fair doesn't mean equal;” and Her new novel, “The Chicken Sisters,” in which one of the protagonists is a widowed parent of teens. I hope you enjoy my discussion with KJ Dell'Antonia. -=-=-=-=- Thank you sponsors & partners: Audible - Get a FREE audiobook and 30-day free trial: www.audibletrial.com/widowedparent BetterHelp - Talk with a licensed, professional therapist online. Get 10% off your first month: betterhelp.com/widowedparent Blue Apron - Special offers for listeners of the podcast: jennylisk.com/blueapron Support the show: Patreon, Merch, and More -=-=-=-=-

Before contemplating how to be a happier parent, we should think back to when we decided to become parents. We probably envisioned the fun of playing with our children, laughter and conversations around the dinner table and pride and joy in watching our children grow and learn. But, for many of us, we find those images replaced by days of rushed meals (or just a snack bar in the car), hectic drives from one sports event or music lesson to another and exhausted family members spending more time with their tech devices than with each other.   Writer KJ Dell’Antonia, former editor of the New York Times Motherlode blog, wanted to find out what had happened to happiness and what it would take for parents to find the joy they longed for. As she explains in her lively discussion with Marti & Erin on how to be a happier parent, KJ learned that joy comes with small changes – not by doing more, but by doing things differently. And she learned that when parents are happier, kids are too!   WHAT WILL IT TAKE FOR YOU TO BE A HAPPIER PARENT? When are you happiest in your life as a parent? When are you least happy – and maybe sad, angry or resentful? What small changes could you make in your daily life to try to create more genuine happiness for you and your children?   WANT TO LEARN MORE? ❉ KJ Dell-Antonia's Blog: Check out Dell'Antonia's book reviews & recommendations ❉ When Parents Disagree about the Best Way to Raise Their Children tip sheet by Marti Erickson ❉ Encouragement: The Power Tool of Parenting tip sheet from St. David’s Center ❉ Loosening the Reins When Children Become Teens and Young Adults tip sheet by Marti Erickson ❉ Recognizing & Managing Parental Stress tip sheet from St. David’s Center

Modern parenting is high stakes, leaving parents terrified of failure in their parenting and in their children. But it turns out that the overprotective behaviors driven by our fears undermine our children’s—and our own—successes throughout life. Join Yael for a conversation with best-selling author, teacher, podcaster, and parent Jessica Lahey for a thought-provoking conversation about how parents can learn to relate to failure differently for themselves and their children. And why we should.  Listen and Learn: How overprotective parenting can undermine competence, independence, academic potential, and emotional healthWhy failure gets a bad rap and how to reframe itHow autonomy, competence, and relatedness can help our kids learn to learn betterThe importance of intrinsic motivation and how to help children build itWhat external motivators are and why they are problematicHow to “parent in place” with greater ease (what we can do less of and what we can focus on while our children are learning at home)Why it’s important to focus on process over product About Jessica Lahey: Jessica Lahey Jessica Lahey is a teacher, writer, and mom. Over twenty years, she’s taught every grade from sixth to twelfth in both public and private schools. She writes about education, parenting, and child welfare for The Atlantic, Vermont Public Radio, The Washington Post and the New York Times and is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed. She is a member of the Amazon Studios Thought Leader Board and wrote the educational curriculum for Amazon Kids’ The Stinky and Dirty Show. Jessica earned a B.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Massachusetts and a J.D. with a concentration in juvenile and education law from the University of North Carolina School of Law. She lives in Vermont with her husband and two sons. Her second book, The Addiction Inoculation: Raising Healthy Kids in a Culture of Dependence, will be released in April 2021. Resources from Jess: Jessica’s WebsiteThe Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed, by Jessica Lahey #AmWriting Podcast with Jessica Lahey, KJ Dell’Antonia, and Sarina BowenParenting in Place Masterclass From The Atlantic, Why back-to-school night made me feel like a bad mom, by Jessica Lahey  Other Resources: Yael’s essay in Rick Hanson’s Wise Brain Bulletin, How to Be a Happier Parent Under Quarantine Jessica's bibliography containing the books referenced during this episode (and many others Jess refers to in various speaking engagements and writing).The Stinky and Dirty Show on Amazon Prime 78. The Self-Driven Child with Dr. William Stixrud141. Educating Our Kids at Home with Julie Bogart

We love our kids, but do we love our role as parents? We strive for our kids to be successful, but do we feel successful as parents? According to New York Times columnist and author KJ Dell’Antonia, the two go hand-in-hand and you can’t have one without the other. By experiencing joy – real happiness, […] The post Successful (and Happy) Parenting | 2018 Session appeared first on The Conferences for Women.

KJ Dell’Antonia is the author of the viral New York Times essay Why I Didn’t Answer Your Email, the former editor of the Times’ Motherlode blog, the co-host of the #AmWriting podcast and the author of the book How to Be a Happier Parent. Her debut novel, The Chicken Sisters, is a timely, humorous exploration of the same themes she focuses on in her journalism: the importance of finding joy in our families, the challenge of figuring out what makes us happy and the need to value the people in front of us more than the ones in our phones and laptops, every single time.How Do You Write Podcast: Explore the processes of working writers with bestselling author Rachael Herron. Want tips on how to write the book you long to finish? Here you'll gain insight from other writers on how to get in the chair, tricks to stay in it, and inspiration to get your own words flowing. Join Rachael's Slack channel, Onward Writers. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dr. Dan welcomes esteemed author and journalist KJ Dell'Antonia to the podcast to discuss her parenting, her writing career and her newest book, a debut novel THE CHICKEN SISTERS and how to find happiness in everyday parenting experiences.  KJ is also the author HOW TO BE A HAPPIER PARENT and the writer of the viral New York Times parenting essay “Why I Didn’t Answer Your Email.”   KJ Dell’Antonia is also the former editor of the NYTimes’ Motherlode blog and a co-host of the #AmWriting podcast. Through her writing, KJ focuses on the societal, policy and personal factors that make finding family happiness is more relevant today than ever before. Weaving together KJ’s writing career with Dr. Dan’s expertise, KJ and Dr. Dan discuss many parenting topics in this episode including: The four things that happy parents do well and how you can do them, too  How important it is to change your “parenting narrative” so that you can improve your family’s happiness How to put sports and activities in their proper place so these things fit around your family and adult lives, and not the other way around How to structure your time in the kitchen so that it can become a happiness ritual for you and your kids Finding that balance between the big dreams and the day to day joys, and making choices that make us happy KJ’s new novel Episode 92 wraps up with KJ’s Parent Footprint moment where she explains how a broken leg helped her learn one of her biggest parenting lessons. For more information visit: https://kjdellantonia.com/ Watch this free video to learn more about Dr. Dan and Parent Footprint Awareness Training®.

We have trouble believing you haven’t already heard of our guest this week, Susan Wiggs, but just in case—she’s the author of many many novels, a multiple #1 New York Times bestseller and an overall amazing storyteller. Her current novel, The Lost and Found Bookshop, is on sale now and her most recent bestseller, The Oysterville Sewing Circle, is just out in paperback.We talk crafting a story, starting from the emotional journey versus the physical plot, building a character, choosing a setting and our collective addiction to writing books, and Susan reveals that she does indeed read fiction while she’s writing fiction—and it’s a good thing, too, because her reading list is long indeed. Links from the PodWriting the Blockbuster Novel by Albert ZuckermanThis American Life, Promised Land (the “I Wish” song episode)#AmReading (all Susan, and you’ll see why)Aging in Place by Aaron D MurphyBeing Mortal by Atul GawandeOn Ocean Boulevard by Mary Alice MonroeHouse Lessons by Erica BauermeisterUntamed by Glennon DoyleThe Splendid and the Vile by Erik LarsonSabrina and Corina by Kali Fajardo-AnstineThe Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins ReidThanks to everyone who supports the podcast financially. To join that team, click the button below:But it’s all good. The pod is free as it always has and always will be. 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 every time there’s a new episode.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:00 Hey, fellow writers this week we've got an outright amazing conversation with Susan Wiggs. Many, many times bestselling author of many, many novels, who really knows how to construct a story. And when getting the work done doesn't just take talent and dedication, but an understanding of the craft of creating a story. If you'd like to work with someone who understands that craft, head over to Author Accelerator and look into finding the right book coach for your work, or if craft is your jam, learn more about becoming a book coach yourself at authoraccelerator.com. Is it recording? Jess Lahey 0:36 Now it's recording.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:39 This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone and try to remember what I'm supposed to be doing. Jess Lahey 0:43 Alright, let's start over. KJ Dell'Antonia 0:44 Awkward pause. I'm gonna rustle some papers. Okay, now one, two, three. Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia. And this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is the podcast, the weekly podcast, about writing all things, fiction, nonfiction, short things, long things, pitches, proposals, everything you have to write before anybody lets you write anything. And in short, this is the podcast about sitting down and getting that work done.Sarina Bowen 1:16 And this is Sarina Bowen. I'm the author of 35 romance novels. You can always find more about me at sarinabowen.com.KJ Dell'Antonia 1:26 And I am KJ Dell'Antonia, the author of the novel The Chicken Sisters, and also the book How to Be a Happier Parent, former editor of the New York Times' Motherlode blog, and still sometimes a contributor there. And we are so excited to welcome our guest this week. This is the first guest we've ever had that has rivaled Sarina in prolificness. We're so excited to welcome Susan Wiggs. She is the author of (I think I counted 37 but as soon as I let her talk, I'm gonna check) novels, multiple number one New York Times' bestseller and an overall amazing storyteller. When you pick up a Susan Wiggs book, you know that you're getting a fully built world and a story that's going to grab you and hold you tight and that you're going to be sorry when it lets you go. Her current novel is The Lost and Found Bookstore. And she's also got another novel just out in paperback - The Oysterville Sewing Circle. That one's just out right now. Am I right?Susan Wiggs 2:29 That's correct. It's just out in a paperback, the book club edition just came out.KJ Dell'Antonia 2:35 Ooh, cool. I love the whole book club edition and this edition.Susan Wiggs 2:41 I just love book clubs in general. So yeah, thank you so much for having me. This is such a thrill to talk to somebody who's not a fictional character.KJ Dell'Antonia 2:51 Yeah, we don't do much of that right now either. They're either fictional characters or they live in our house, that's all we got. So yeah, we are really excited - so, how many books is it before I even get started? Susan Wiggs 3:02 Oh, I knew you're gonna ask me that. And you know what? To be honest, I don't have a count. But I can tell you my first book was published in 1987. Huntington Zebra books, and I've published a book or two every year since. And so I've stopped doing the math. I just write my next book.KJ Dell'Antonia 3:27 But we will ask, you just because our listeners always want to know. How did you get started? Tell us how that first 1987 book happened, travel back in time with us.Susan Wiggs 3:40 You know what, you always remember your first time and I'll just leave it at that. I'll leave that to your imagination. But honestly, I was a young teacher just out of graduate school. I got myself through graduate school by reading really big, thick, romance novels, you know, the real bodice rippers all through the 80's. And so yeah, I had such a taste for them, and such an affection for them and a love for the form that I just wrote one. And I had no idea what I was doing. I wrote it on a typewriter. I didn't know about any writer's associations. I knew Writer's Digest, I was a subscriber to Writer's Digest, I always knew that I wanted to write and so I wrote a book called Texas Wildflower and I wrote it on a typewriter. It was this huge, unwieldy pile of pages. I was very proud of it, but I didn't know what to do with it. And so somehow, I wormed my way onto an editor's desk at Kensington Books, which had and probably still prints Zebra, Pinnacle, various ones like that and they're still up and going, and the editor's name was Wendy McCurdy, and she's still in the business. I believe she may be back at Kensington now. Anyway, she was delightful. You know, very young, probably as young as I was at the time, editor who called me up in the middle of a very busy life. I had a toddler, and dogs, and a house, and a teaching job. And I was very overwhelmed. And she called me in the middle of all that and said, 'We like your book, and we want to publish it.' And I was just floored. Yes, I was stunned. I didn't have an agent. And so I just said, 'Yes, where do I sign?' And so it's interesting that we would be talking about this right now because one of the things that I did because I didn't have a literary agent, I didn't really know how to negotiate any sort of contract. And one of the biggest blunders that I made that is turning out to be kind of a very funny and happy accident was I gave them the copyright back then. And I think now copyrights revert to the author if the book is out of print and unavailable for, I believe, three to five years. And I think I signed my name to something to say it was out of print and unavailable, but they had 16 years to reprint it. And in those 16 years, my books became rather popular. And so they never wanted to revert the rights to me because I would always say the book's not out, it's very old, don't you want to revert the rights to me? Because that way, the author controls his rights and creative control over that property and you know, you can resell it and things like that, but no, they kept hanging on to it. And so I'm sitting here, it is 2020 and I'm looking at a royalty check dated May 26, 2020 for that book, for Texas Wildflower that was first published in April 1987. Because they keep reissuing it, they still have it in print, they reissued it numerous times in different packaging. And as my books have evolved, the very original cover (you can probably find it on my website susanwiggs.com) was a very, very in your face bodice ripper cover. I just loved it, I thought was really cool. But as my books have become more mainstream and evolved into general fiction, or mainstream fiction, the covers look very upmarket now and rather sophisticated. It's basically the same book - at one point I did go in and do some light editorial work, and, you know, cringing the whole time because obviously after you know, 50 something books, I'm not that same writer that wrote Texas Wildflower - and so I had some rookie moments in that book, many of them, and yet readers still, they're drawn to something about that book. So, you know, it's still in print. So thank you, Kensington Books for keeping me alive on your list.KJ Dell'Antonia 5:40 That's a great story. And I love that it is still out there. And the cover thing is really funny because we have talked to a lot of authors and we've seen that same evolution many times. And I know Sarina and I are both really fascinated by cover art and why publishers and authors pick one style over the other and the new trend towards the sort of drawings instead of actual pictures of people.Susan Wiggs 8:48 All authors are obsessed with cover art. You know, even before I was published, I was designing the cover in my head, and I'm terrible at it, but I'm always gratified when I see the way that my books go out into the market because usually it's spot on, there have been some turkeys in my repertoire - no fault of mine or the publisher, sometimes they just don't turn out well, but the new book, The Lost and Found Bookshop, did you guys get a copy of it? Or the advanced reading copies? KJ Dell'Antonia 9:23 Yes, and I really, really love it. But do you know what, my copy doesn't have a cover. So I haven't seen it.Sarina Bowen 9:32 It's beautiful, though. I love the cover. Susan Wiggs 9:35 Well, the journey - that cover went through so many iterations. And the reason is that they try to build and this is a really great thing about publishers, if they're committed to an author, they really try to build you as a brand. And so you don't want each cover to be so unique that it doesn't even look like it could be by the same author. And so I had a rather good hit with The Oysterville Sewing Circle last year, and one of the big pieces and one reason that that book really struck a chord was it had an incredibly striking cover. It was like stark white with this blood red spool of thread on the front with a sharp pin sticking through it. And they wanted to build on that. But I wrote about a bookshop, so there's no sharp needles or anything. And so we really struggled with what this new book should look like so that it kind of accesses the spirit of the previous book, but also is inviting and beautiful enough to attract new readers as well. So I hope this cover does it. It hasn't hit the shelves yet, so I guess we'll see.Sarina Bowen 10:43 It's very beautiful.KJ Dell'Antonia 10:45 Yeah, I agree. And I can see how it looks with The Oysterville Sewing Circle, I've just pulled it up. Sarina Bowen 10:52 It's a lovely analogy to that other book but I also noticed that your that Oysterville has a new cover, too. Which is also very beautiful, and sometimes publishers do that. If they don't like a cover, but sometimes they do it just to catch the eye of people who didn't grab it the first time.Susan Wiggs 11:12 Yes, there's been three iterations of the Oysterville cover. The first one with a big spool of thread was the hardcover. And then there was a mass market paperback that came out in January. And because of the timer in the pandemic time, it was widely available only in essential markets like Walmart, the places that could stay open during the pandemic. And so it sold like wildfire. In March, it was the number four New York Times' paperback. And so there was this little paperback edition of it and then they decided for this summer to do a premium paperback, they're called trade size paperback, and it's a bigger edition and they add extra content in the back. I think there's a reading group guide, and article, and a recipe, and some other materials back there to give reading groups something to chew on. And then they decided, let's use a new image on this cover and the one that they did on that edition was actually a rejected hardcover look, you know, they they tried several looks, and they knew it was a pretty look, but they wanted to go out in trade paperback with that one. So no effort is ever wasted. That's what I am finding out. Yeah, my agent calls it four bites at the apple because the fourth bite is the audio book. And audio books are quite a big category these days and there was a slump during pandemic but as things are opening and people are going back to work and commuting again, there's an upturn in audio sales.Sarina Bowen 12:12 Mm hmm. Yes, I definitely felt that audio slump in April.KJ Dell'Antonia 13:04 I want to say, You have so many books under your belt and you were talking about how that first one is very, very different from the writer that you are now and we wanted to talk about how you go about now, structuring a new story. Because your stories are so - I've only read your later stuff, so I didn't read the earlier stuff. Your stories now are so tight, and they really don't have a lot of extraneous stuff, and I really would love to hear where you start from and I guess we'll start with that. Where do you start when you're looking to start a new book?Susan Wiggs 13:54 That's one of those things that probably didn't change a lot from the very beginning. What inspires us, you know, something has to grab you, and it's almost visceral. And for example, in The Lost and Found Bookshop, it was a very stark moment that I had. I was speaking with some elderly people that lived at my mother's assisted living place, and I'm in charge of my mom's elder care, she now lives with me. And so I do a lot of speaking with groups like that. And one question that I love to ask older people is, what if you got to have a do over, you know, what if you got to make a different decision in your life? And so, somebody said something like, 'I would have been a meteorologist, but women weren't allowed to do that back then.' And I thought, wow, you know, I want to write about somebody who does get that opportunity. You know, she does get to walk away from her very steady, predictable, corporate job and life. Unfortunately, what drives her to that point is very tragic, but she does get there. And suddenly she gets to make a new blueprint for her life. And so I was very inspired by that. And I realized that with every book, even from that very, very first one, it's a moment of profound change in a character's life, whether it's a decision that she has to make or some situation that's forced on her. And so I'm most fascinated by that. And it's always, you know, my characters, there's a lot of variety. They come from all walks of life, but she's usually the smartest person in the book, but she doesn't know it. That's the one thing I would say they have in common, but from there, the process has become not a routine for me, but definitely a journey that has familiar signposts, you know, I have to know my character and I get to know her in ways that come to me subconsciously or I consciously research her world. I build her world around her, what did she do? What does she fear? What was her family of origin? Like that's huge for me, because I believe that people, as adults are the sum of their family of origin, good, bad, indifferent, or usually a mixture of everything. And I sort of build the character, psychologically and physically, that way. And at that point, I kind of have a sketch. It's usually written down in sketchy notes, and then I figure out what does she want, what is her utmost desire? And I try to figure out what that is and then find ways for her to not be able to have that. I know, it's kind of mean, but that's where the story comes from. Because people read for the struggle, I do, you know, somebody wants something, you know, Dorothy wants to get back to Kansas or Luke Skywalker wants to destroy the Death Star. Whatever, the main character has to want something that is profoundly important to them. Whether it's you know, to revive a failing bookstore and look after her elderly granddad, or to create a women's support group for domestic violence survivors, which is The Oysterville Sewing Circle. There has to be a really powerful want that I believe I relate to and readers might relate to and once I have that, I'm off to the races. I sort of pick the setting, and I populate her world, and I create a plot, and I write an outline. And I say outline, it's really just a 5-10 page present-tense narrative that I then pitch to my literary agent and my editor, sometimes separately, sometimes, simultaneously and they usually have some feedback for me. I have a writing group that I meet with regularly here on the West Coast up in Puget Sound, which is where I'm broadcasting from. And through that process, I get a roadmap for my book and then I kind of disappear with my pen and paper for about six months and I do write with pen and paper it's kind of old school but it keeps the distractions at bay while I'm drafting the story.KJ Dell'Antonia 18:41 Wow, I want to come back to drafting with pen and paper. But Sarina and I often talk about (I'm only on like novel number two in terms of anything I'm going to try to sell) but...Susan Wiggs 18:53 Then you are light years ahead of 99% of everybody else, believe me.KJ Dell'Antonia 18:58 And I don't discount my treatment I'm super excited, my debut is coming out this summer, everything is going great. And I'm just literally, like, painful minutes away from giving the draft of the second book to my agent so we can figure out if maybe we can go out with it before the first one comes out. Susan Wiggs 19:23 You know, every writer is convinced that all the other writers have the answer. And we always want to pick each other's brain.KJ Dell'Antonia 19:29 Yes, it's easier for everyone else. Susan Wiggs 19:30 I want to hear how everybody else does it because I'm doing something wrong because I'm so stuck right now.KJ Dell'Antonia 19:36 Well, we often talk about whether you start from the emotional story or the plot story and it sounds like for you, it's almost always the emotional story.Susan Wiggs 19:46 Yes, because I have to have some sort of connection. Otherwise, I'm just writing a work report. And there's also something that really resonated with me, it was on that one of the very first podcasts of history This American Life, probably familiar with it, with Ira Glass. I don't remember the the specific episode but he talked about something called the wish song that appears in every Disney animated musical. The main character looks out at the landscape whether it's in the little French town for Beauty and the Beast or in the wishing well for Snow White or whatever and they sing a song, and the song expresses their wish. And so I don't give my character a wish song but I look for that deeply held emotional and sentimental desire, you know, the yearning that the characters expresses. And when you build the story around the character, then her emotional journey is really the plot. She has to do something she has to be in a world in a situation but her emotional journey is really where I go to get my deepest pieces of the story.KJ Dell'Antonia 21:39 And then when you're trying to take that emotional journey and marry it to a physical journey. Do you generally know where you're going from the beginning? Is it hard to figure out what physical journey will best tell that emotional story? I'm sure you're really good at by now...Susan Wiggs 22:00 Well i don't know but I do know that it's the fun part for me because I love to explore different settings. There are some writers who go back to the same setting again and again and it really works for them and they get known for being a writer of a certain region or something like that. For me, I love to travel and I'm such a fan of world travel. So I love to find what will bring out the deepest aspects of this character. Is it a city, is it a beach, is a lake, is it somewhere out in the countryside? What time period is it and so I have all these different explorations that I do where I find the perfect pairing. Because some of my stories, like The Oysterville Sewing Circle, it could take place anywhere in the world. It's a woman on a career path, who has a big complicated life situation, and she ends up forming a group for domestic violence survivors, but I ended up setting it in the most remote town in the most remote piece of beach on the Washington coast called Oysterville, because I felt like that was a metaphor for you know, this woman going out on a limb. And on the other hand, The Lost and Found Bookshop, I wanted a bookshop on like the cutest vintage street in San Francisco. Usually my setting is a place that I would love to be, a place I would love to visit. Some of my favorite books are books that make me want to go there, want to be there. So I've got a stack on my desk right now - I've got Ocean Boulevard, and there's a beach picture, and I've got hello summer, and there's another beach. We've got a theme going here. So the setting is something that I hope will play up aspects of the story and character in a metaphorical way. And so that's one of the things and then the other thing that I love playing with is, as a writer, we get to live so many different lives, we get to have so many different jobs. And so every main character I've ever written has a job that I fantasize about. She's a photographer, she's a dancer, she's a writer. Well, I don't fantasize about that, I know the grim reality of that, but I've always wanted to be a bookseller. And so The Lost and Found Bookshop was gratifying for me to write about that. But we're very lucky because we get to experience these things vicariously through our research and through the people that we write about. So it keeps it very exciting and fresh. We don't go back to the same job day in and day out.Sarina Bowen 25:08 Right. And a bookseller is an interesting observer of humanity in terms of who comes in to look at what. That's a really durable archetype, which is amazing.KJ Dell'Antonia 25:24 Hey, listeners, KJ here, before Susan tells you what she's been reading, let me tell you, that's a lot. Let's talk about what you're writing, or rather where you're writing, Sarina and I have been loving our new Dabble Writer software. I've already raved about how intuitive it is, and how much we love the plotting tool. But since this episode is about beach reads, and I hope you're finding a way to indulge in a summer getaway, I want to tell you that another cool feature of dabble is that you can use it anywhere and on any device. Online, offline, PC, Mac, Chromebook, Mobile, they all work and they're always synched up. So the edits you jotted into your phone yesterday are right there on your desktop today. We really think you'll like it and we'd love to hear what you think. So check it out with a free trial at dabblewriter.com and then get in touch.Sarina Bowen 26:25 But I wanted to take you back a second to the Disney wish song because that was really interesting to me. I'm actually not a big Disney watcher, as my kids are a little older now but, I hadn't really realized that before. And I love that you start from the character's wish. I find when I start, and I'm wondering how you get past this, but sometimes does that wish feel a little bit thin to you until you really dig in. It's like the chicken and an egg of character conflict.Susan Wiggs 27:03 Absolutely, totally. And I'm always so envious when I open a book, and the character has this life or death problem or situation, because my books are really personal and they're kind of intimate and they're very much about a woman's desires in her everyday life and she's not out saving the world or vanquishing bad guys or something like that. And so my stories - until I really dig into them - feel a little every day, a little mundane. And so I'm very sensitive about that and it possibly makes me work harder, all the harder on the aspects that are really going to bring the story to life for the reader and really going to get the reader involved and behind the character. And with The Lost and Found Bookshop, one of the things that the publisher did is they sent out a lot of advance reading copies to working booksellers, or actually furloughed booksellers because of the time that we're in, and the feedback that they got was so extraordinary that they ended up making a deck of quote cards with feedback from these booksellers. And it was really extraordinary to see how they experienced this book and what their feedback was. And so even though it was a woman who doesn't consider herself anything special, she was really special to these readers. So I'm really hopeful that when the book goes out into the world and is not my baby anymore, the readers will relate to that.Sarina Bowen 28:51 That's wonderful. And as you point out, those of us who write emotional journeys, you know, some days doesn't it seem super tempting to just kidnap your heroine on the first page?Susan Wiggs 29:02 Yeah, it does really and you know, have her like swept away by pirates or something just to get the action going, when instead she's got to give a presentation at work and it sucks and, you know, something like that. Actually, that's interesting that you brought that up because my original opening scene of The Lost and Found Bookshop was pretty much exactly that. She had a work situation at her corporate job and it does not go well. And it's very important to her. But I was concerned that the readers might not hook right into her because she's a little challenged by the situation and she's not a warm, fuzzy person in that moment. And that's a little risky to do, because you want your reader to like your protagonist right from the start. And so, I was apprehensive about doing that. So what I did is I added and this is something I sometimes do, I sometimes don't, I added a prologue. And the prologue put her in the most emotionally stressful situation I could find for her at that moment, so there's like just a one page prologue, it's really quick, but it's like, everything that I wanted the reader to know about this character, so that when they turn the page, and there she is in her work meeting, and she's sweating and nervous and that sort of thing, they can relate to her in a different way. So that was actually a writing craft moves that I made, you know, a lot of writing is inspiration and it's art and it's talent. But a good other segment of it is just knowing how to manipulate your craft and steer your craft towards the best experience for the reader.Sarina Bowen 30:59 It's been Powerful to realize at some point in your development as an author that you have got the spotlight in two hands and you can point it wherever you want.Susan Wiggs 31:10 It is and hopefully we know what to do with that spotlight. That's generally what revisions are for, right?KJ Dell'Antonia 31:19 Yeah. I sometimes find myself just thinking, I don't know, it felt kind of like this last time and it kind of worked last time. So I'm just hoping it's working now.Susan Wiggs 31:32 Yes. And it's hard when you're deep in the weeds of your draft of your novel, it's really, really hard to have the perspective that ultimately the reader is going to have and sometimes you just have to forge ahead on faith. KJ Dell'Antonia 31:48 So when you are lost in those weeds do you find yourself going back to that 5-10 page narrative that you mentioned at the beginning? Susan Wiggs 31:56 Um, no, what I usually do is go pull weeds in my garden or hike with the dogs or something, and try to walk away from it for a bit. And then I also do more research, a lot of times I'm stuck at a spot in the book, and I just need to read more about the situation, you know, whether it's more articles about elder care or more articles about this Spanish American War, which has a very weird, kind of interesting little spotlight in the book. So sometimes I just do more research. There's a very good book, there's so many good writing books, but one of them that was quite instructive to me a million years ago, it was called Writing the Blockbuster Novel by Al Zuckerman. He was (maybe still is) a big agent in New York, and he was Ken Follett's agent and he talks about when you get blocked the first thing you should do is go back and do more research into your setting, and your situation, and into the character's job. And I don't know that that resolves it every time for me, but it's very helpful.KJ Dell'Antonia 33:11 I love books like that. I love books that at least just tell me something to do when I'm stuck, anything, just just give me something I can get my fingers into.Susan Wiggs 33:24 Yeah, I'm a writing book junkie. I have probably 16 linear feet of books on writing and I have my favorites but there's always something that I can glean from most of these. I don't always work through them cover to cover but I love browsing through them, that's always inspiring to me as well.KJ Dell'Antonia 33:48 I love hearing that because I am so there. I love stuff like Save the Cat Writes a Novel and Write Your novel in 90 days and it doesn't have to be great. I don't know, I like dipping out and finding a roadmap from time to time, I think.Susan Wiggs 34:06 Yeah. It goes back to writers being convinced that every other writer has a secret and they're hiding it from us. KJ Dell'Antonia 34:14 I do have the secrets to how other people can write them that turn out to be the problem. Well, this is a great time to shift into talking about what we have been reading. In every episode, we like to just shout out something that we've been enjoying lately. And so I hope you've had some time to read and have something in mind that's been keeping you entertained when you're not writing right now?Susan Wiggs 34:46 Absolutely. I'm always reading and I've always got a couple of books going - one on the nightstand and one in the living room and one wherever I happen to be. And right now some of my books reflect where I am in my life. I think I mentioned that my mom has moved here, she's 90, she's a bit high maintenance right now. So I'm reading. Let's see, I've got a stack here. I'm reading Aging in Place by Aaron D. Murphy. Not very interesting, except when you need it. But the other one that I just love, and I've read it before, but I'm rereading Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. Medicine and What Matters in the End. And then for light hearted reading, I have the new Mary Kay Andrews, Hello, Summer, was just published. And a good friend of mine, Mary Alice Monroe has a new book out called On Ocean Boulevard. And it's like the ultimate summer read. It looks like I haven't started it yet, but I'm looking forward to that one. I have a book here that is a memoir. Because one of the things that my husband does, he does a lot of things, he's a designer, but one thing that he's been doing is he's been renovating old houses. And he's not really a flipper because he renovates them beautifully and then sells them or rents them. But anyway, I'm very preoccupied with old houses these days. So I found this book House Lessons by Erica Baumeister, who's written some of my favorite books. She wrote a book called The School of Essential Ingredients that I loved. And this is a memoir of restoring an old house called House Lessons: Renovating a Life.Sarina Bowen 36:58 And then for my birthday my husband got me Untamed by Glennon Doyle, amazing, amazing memoir about a woman's very extraordinary journey.KJ Dell'Antonia 37:15 I'm in the middle of that one might now myself.Sarina Bowen 37:18 She's a wonderful writer and then I bought well because Father's Day is coming up and and Jerry is not my father, but his sons are probably going to forget. So I bought him the new Eric Larsen, The Splendid and the Vile, which is a history of Churchill during World War Two. And I just love Eric's books and Eric's a good friend of mine and so I tease him I say that he's everybody's father's favorite writer. You could always count on somebody's dad liking an Eric Larson book, just like you can always count on somebody's mom liking a Susan Wiggs book. And then two more on my nightstand. This one is a collection of stories called Sabrina and Kareena, there was a there's a lot of controversy about a big book that was out earlier this year called American Dirt. And it focused some attention on Latino writers or Latin ex-writers. And so I decided that I did not have enough on my shelf and so a bookseller recommended Sabrina and Kareena by Kali Fajardo-Anstine. But it won the National Book Award and the stories are just lovely. I love them. And then finally, I just started this morning over coffee The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid and If you haven't heard of her, you will soon because her book, which was called Daisy Jones and The Six is about to be a very big series on, I think Amazon Prime, or maybe Netflix, and quite, quite the big hit. And I adored that book as well. So I know I'm gonna like this new one. And you wonder with all these books that I'm reading, do I have time to write? No, I don't. Do I have a deadline? Yes, I do.KJ Dell'Antonia 39:26 We fully understand.Sarina Bowen 39:29 But you know what, reading books keeps the craft alive. As a writer, you read a book differently than just a reader. And I say just a reader with a lot of respect, but it's kind of like my husband's an apparel designer. And he can look at any garment and see what it took to make that garment and he knows a lot of technical things about it that the casual person wouldn't even know and I think the same can be said, of writing and it is a little harder for me and probably you guys to, to really get into a book. Just because we're also noticing things that are not supposed to be noticeable.KJ Dell'Antonia 40:14 Every so often I'll be like, Oh, I bet that was a major subplot at some point, there's a reason that that dog is a German Shepherd or whatever, you know, and but now there's not and you can go in and out of that mode, right? Well, so it I think rather than say anything that I'm reading, just because we have a great list here, I'm gonna just ask you one last question, which is - do you read fiction while you're writing it?Susan Wiggs 40:49 Always? Yes, I do.KJ Dell'Antonia 40:52 We do, too! So many people don't - or say they don't. Susan Wiggs 40:56 Um, I would probably go through withdrawal symptoms if I couldn't read fiction, and so for some reason, it's not a problem for me personally to distinguish what I'm writing from what I'm reading. And you know that I don't know if that's true for everybody. But it doesn't seem to be a problem for me. Maybe it's telling that one of my first things that I remember writing for publication was when I was in seventh grade, they decided to publish a book report that I had written in the newspaper because I was supposed to do a book report on Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. And I was so destroyed by the ending of that book that I rewrote the whole ending of the book, and that was my book report. So my seventh grade teacher thought that it was interesting enough that you know, she published it in the newspaper. So that was one of my first publishing credits. I was rewriting John Steinbeck. So, I don't know maybe you need maybe you need that level of arrogance to kind of push your way into publishing.KJ Dell'Antonia 42:06 I think that you predicted your own future. Well, we have to respect your time but we are so grateful that you came and did this. I think this was a fantastic conversation about writing. I enjoyed it so much. Thank you.Susan Wiggs 42:21 Thank you so much. I'd love talking shop with you guys. You're amazing.KJ Dell'Antonia 42:25 It's great. So for our listeners, you're definitely going to want to look for The Lost and Found Bookshop and also maybe take a look at The Oysterville Sewing Circle. So, Sarina you want to take us out with our with our always final saying?Sarina Bowen 42:56 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. Get access to private episodes at amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

The tiny town of Merinac, Kansas -- the setting of KJ Dell’Antonia’s new novel, “The Chicken Sisters” -- is a fictional place. But anyone familiar with a two-lane stretch of road in southeast Kansas will immediately recognize it: This is “Chicken Dinner Road” -- home of Chicken Annie’s and Chicken Mary’s, two restaurants that sit about 300 feet apart and have been the center of a fried chicken debate for 70 years.

Tricia Elam Walker--novelist, essayist, playwright, picture book author, and assistant professor of creative writing at Howard University--and KJ Dell’Antonia--novelist, essayist, nonfiction book author, cohost of the #amwriting podcast, and former editor of The New York Times’ Motherlode blog--are no strangers to writing across literary genres. In this episode, they join Eve and Julie to discuss their writing processes and how they’ve navigated the shift from writing everything from essays to novels and plays. Find us on Twitter (@bookdreamspod) and Instagram (@bookdreamspodcast), or email us at contact@bookdreamspodcast.com.

The tiny town of Merinac, Kansas -- the setting of KJ Dell’Antonia’s new novel, “The Chicken Sisters” -- is a fictional place. But anyone familiar with a two-lane stretch of road in southeast Kansas will immediately recognize it: This is “Chicken Dinner Road” -- home of Chicken Annie’s and Chicken Mary’s, two restaurants that sit about 300 feet apart and have been the center of a fried chicken debate for 70 years.

This episode springs from a question asked in the #AmWriting Facebook group (if you’re not in it, you should be): Sarina has talked about her decision to be independently published, but we’ve never heard from Jess and KJ about why they go the traditional route.We discuss the three things you should think about when making the Indie/Traditional call, why you need to think hard about airport bookstores and finding the print ratio—and the good and bad reasons for making this choice.#AmReading Sarina: Boyfriend Material by Alexis HallKJ: The Exit Strategy by Lainey CameronJess: The Mountains Wild by Sarah Stewart Taylor(listen to the #AmWriting episode with Sarah here)As we say every week—we’re so proud to be sponsored by Author Accelerator and Dabble. If you’re wondering—why Dabble and not Scrivener? For us, it’s that plotting tool and the intuitive way it works, but others have weighed in—check that out here with a little Dabble v. Scrivener scoop.And if listening to all of our conversations about book coaching has made you think, hey—that’s the career for me—then you’ll want to head to Author Accelerator’s BookCoaches.com to see how you can make that happen. Here’s what we don’t always say: Man we love recording the podcast. But every hour spent on it is an hour not writing! Our production costs are now covered by our lovely (and carefully chosen) sponsors, but our time in pulling it all together is supported by you, our listeners. We’d love it if you joined that team (if you’re not already on it!) Supporters get weekly #WriterTopFives like The Top Five (Free) Ways to Get Your Shiny New Book Cover in Front of People’s Eyeballs or #Minisodes like Don't Make the Same Mistakes Twice—and thanks to the magic of substack, those minisodes drop right into your pod-player once you’re set up. Want in? Click the button. KJ Dell'Antonia 0:00 Writers, it's KJ. The #AmWriting podcast is excited to tell you about our new sponsor, Dabble Writing software. We invited Dabble to join the #AmWriting team because we are in love with the plotting tools and intuitive interface. And I want to tell you something else I love about it, what they call the focus fade. I barely even noticed when it first started to happen, but any details that are open in the sidebars of your Dabble document fade away automatically as you write, leaving you with nothing but a beautiful clear space to work in until you need them and send your cursor in that direction, then they're back in a flash. It makes for a great distraction-free writing environment. Find out more and do a free trial at dabblewriter.com. Is it recording?Jess Lahey 0:47 Now it's recording.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:50 This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone trying to remember what I'm supposed to be doing.Jess Lahey 0:54 Alright, let's start over.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:55 Awkward pause. I'm gonna rustle some papers. Okay, now one, two, three.Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia. And this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is the podcast about writing all the things, fiction, nonfiction, books, essays, pitches, proposals long form, short form. In short, this is the podcast about sitting down and getting your work done.Jess Lahey 1:25 Hi, I'm Jess Lahey, and I am the author of The Gift of Failure and the upcoming The Addiction Inoculation, which will be out in April of 2021. And you can find my work in lots of places, including the Atlantic, The New York Times, and Washington Post. Sarina Bowen 1:39 And I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of 35 romance novels. You can always find my work at sarinabowen.com or wherever e-books are sold. KJ Dell'Antonia 1:52 I am KJ Dell'Antonia. I'm the author of the novel, The Chicken Sisters, which you heard it here first is now not coming out until December at the earliest. But that's okay. Really, totally fine, whatever. I'm also the author of How to Be a Happier Parent, the former editor of the New York Times' Motherlode blog, still sometimes a contributor there. And I'm just wrapping up a revision of a draft of my next (hopefully) novel. So that's what I'm doing. And I should say that I am not recording where I normally record because, you know, I lost the the officemate battle of of the the work at home universe.Jess Lahey 2:45 I know we have a topic today, but before we get to the topic, I just wanted to say, KJ mentioned that she just finished a draft. And it has struck me that I knew from the beginning from a long time ago that your deadline for that first draft of the next book was June 1. And it has been a crazy, crazy time. This was a self-imposed deadline. No one made you do this by this by this June 1 thing, and yet you hit it and I just I don't know if I'd had a chance to tell you this before but I was just so impressed that given everything that's going on and the fact that it was a self-imposed deadline, that you made itKJ Dell'Antonia 3:52 Well thank you. It probably should be said that it was not the first deadline. I was looking back at my bullet journal and noticing that in April, it had draft to Karen (that's my agent) as a goal. So it took at least an extra month beyond what I was hoping. But, I did get it done. I did get a draft to her. She's made some comments, which were extremely helpful. And I have done the hardest part of the revisions and I expect to have the revisions back to her this weekend. And then we shall see if it's time to try to sell it or time for me to just take another pass. Jess Lahey 4:37 It's exciting. It is super exciting.KJ Dell'Antonia 4:39 It is. I'm feeling really good about it. But you know, ask me tomorrow.Jess Lahey 4:43 Who wants to announce our topic today?KJ Dell'Antonia 5:02 We have an actual topic. This is how people know we're not a scripted podcast, we could be because we could have like this really smooth flow could be like, and Jess will say, and I can tell podcasts that are like that. And it isn't that I don't love them. It's that I'm too lazy, I think.Jess Lahey 5:19 They're very time intensive and I have to say from the beginning we knew what we wanted out of a podcast. This is what we wanted. So welcome to our world. KJ Dell'Antonia 5:29 Well, somebody asked on the Facebook group, I think and if you're not in our Facebook group, you totally should be. Someone said, 'We've heard Sarina discuss her decision to go indie, but we've never heard Jess and KJ, talk about their decision to go traditional.' And also, Sarina has been traditionally published in the past as well. So, we thought we'd just talked about that.Jess Lahey 6:00 There are very specific reasons, but it also challenges sort of the status quo, which, you know, get five years ago even, when Sarina started this, you know why you would choose to go traditional isn't a question anyone asked just because there wasn't the landscape that there is now. And we wouldn't have had our amazing role model of Sarina Bowen to look at at the time. But I mean, you're so good at it. The nice thing about having you as a friend is I don't ever say she makes it look easy, you do make it look easy, but I know how much work you put into this. And it's a mind boggling amount of work to do self publishing well, and to do it the way you do it. So that's part of the equation for me, but I love the fact that we can even ask this question now of, you know, why do you go traditional versus self publishing because a couple of years ago it would have been a really clear cut decision.Sarina Bowen 7:02 That's true. I mean, I knew people in 2014, 2013, who were turning down traditional contracts for self publishing. But that was a super rare thing to do. And those people, you know, had extraordinary circumstances and extraordinary insight that, you know, most of us didn't have. And if you go back 10 years, the traditional route was always the right choice. And now the landscape has changed so much that it is sometimes the right choice. But now there's a more interesting decision matrix associated with with who goes traditional and who does not.Jess Lahey 7:51 Well, and I remember, about 10 years ago, there was some story of a woman who had a I can't remember what her name is now, but she had, I think, a fantasy series that she had self published. And the big success story was that she was able to get a three book deal with traditional publishing so she no longer had to slum it over in self publishing. And that was seen as a huge success story. But that's not the case these days. I mean, there are a lot (especially in fantasy or romance) that would look at that and say, 'Well, why would I go over to traditional publishing if I have the platform, and she was very successful, which was the reason she got the deal in traditional publishing.Sarina Bowen 8:33 I do remember that story. And honestly, the reason that it was such a big story is because the numbers attached to it, I believe she had a seven figure deal on that book.Jess Lahey 8:47 Yeah. Well, I brought up the fantasy and romance thing. And Sarina, could you address why I brought those two categories up?Sarina Bowen 8:55 Absolutely. So I have identified sort of three major ways of thinking about an author's approach to self versus traditional. And I feel like the one that you're referencing has to do with gatekeeper's audiences. So romance and fantasy readers tend to select their books right on their phones from the Amazon store or from the Apple books app. And they're not really using gatekeepers for book recommendations. Maybe they're even using Goodreads for this or some sort of crowd-sourced decision making process about how to pick their next genre fiction read. And so it's those places where readers have stopped looking at who the publisher of a book is, where independently published books have been so successful. So one of the first questions you're going to ask yourself when you think about this question is, am I in a gatekeeper genre or niche. So if school librarians would be primary in spreading the word about your book, then you know maybe self-publishing is not for you. If you are in an area of publishing where trade reviews are going to really matter, then traditional publishing is the way to go if you want that starred review from Publishers Weekly because you have an informed decision about how that is going to help your book get seen then yes. So also, if you want to be in a big box store, if your book really is perfect for the end cap at Target, and you know you fit right there. Well, the only way to get into that big box store on the end cap at Target is to be published by a pretty big publisher. So that's a tricky bargain, as it turns out, because I had a traditionally published book with Penguin more than 10 years ago. And it did not get picked up by Target. They told me it was seen as too East Coast. So, I missed the end cap at Target based on the topic in a way that I couldn't really have foreseen. But you have to be fairly far along in your decision making before you'll learn if if that was gonna work out for you. So you know that's difficult. But and the last bit of this is award dominated sectors. Like if you write poetry, or short stories are your mode of expression, then awards and shiny stickers on covers are going to matter to who and how many people see your book. And so that's another gatekeeper audience.Jess Lahey 12:13 Well, and then there's this in between space too, that's really interesting. Like, I still write in education. And there's an in between space of these sort of independent publishers within education. So there's sort of traditional publishing and then there are these like smaller independent publishing, which are kind of self-pub, but not really. Or started out as self-pub and then they became something bigger. And then there's self-pub, self-pub, which is what you have been doing. And I think that that's a really good point that understanding who your audience is going to be, who your intended audience is, really will help you determine if self-pub or traditional pub is the right place for you. And for me, I was writing a book that was really meant for a sort of general audience, it was nonfiction. To do nonfiction in the self-pub world is really hard. I haven't seen a ton of examples that have done really well. And I get sent a lot of self-published books in the education. KJ Dell'Antonia 13:16 I think it's extremely platform dependent. Jess Lahey 13:20 Yeah, that's true. KJ Dell'Antonia 13:21 So if you are Marie Forleo, you've got this massive audience. And I would say that if you had been wanting to self publish your second book, you would have approached the first book.... You would have had to really intensify your email address gathering and your speaking to that audience directly. Like you could probably have set yourself up better to do that. But you would have needed to think about it like from the minute that your book took off, which of course it totally did. You will have needed to be going okay, I mean, how am I gonna collect these people? How am I gonna put them into a pie that is my pie and not the publisher's pie.Sarina Bowen 14:06 You know, there's one kind of nonfiction that actually does really well with self-pub, but it's probably invisible to you. And that is highly prescriptive books.Jess Lahey 14:22 I thought you were gonna say highly prescriptive business books because I was gonna say, those I have seen and that have been very, very successful self-pub.KJ Dell'Antonia 14:33 I was gonna guess that, because if it's like How to Raise Sheep on a New Zealand Sheepholder's Farm When You Are Actually from Norway, you know ten people might buy it, but you're gonna find those ten people.Sarina Bowen 14:49 Yeah, and I'm sure there's people just raking in the money on highly prescriptive nonfiction that is very trend based. But as a writer, that's not really interesting to me. But let's just say you were a CrossFit guy, like at the moment when CrossFit got really big, and all you wanted to do was write about this niche, new little method for working out to like minded individuals, that could have been an amazing self-pub project just based on finding those people in a place where a traditional publisher might have looked at you and said, cross what?Jess Lahey 15:36 Yeah, but then you need people in that field, in that industry, in that hobby, interest, whatever, talking about your book a lot and recommending it to other people within that. Sarina Bowen 15:49 Because I think if it's a very prescriptive thing that people are searching for on Google, then you don't, but if you wanted to write a book about the guy who started CrossFit, then that's different.Jess Lahey 16:07 That's a good point.Sarina Bowen 16:08 Yeah. So one way to look at this decision is to think about an airport bookstore. And everything in an airport bookstore is in a print-centric market, basically. And a lot of people haven't stared quite as hard at airport bookstores as I have, but there's very specific stuff in there.Jess Lahey 16:31 Oh, I stare really hard. And I've wondered a lot about that rack that sits at the edge of the store halfway out in the terminal aisle, that's very prescriptive, either books about faith or books about business. Like I've never heard of any of these books. And they're like, over a quarter of a million copies sold. I've always wondered about those.Sarina Bowen 16:55 They're prescriptive about your mind, but not about like how to rebuild your car. You know what I mean? Like they're practical in like a meta sense, like the big expansive thoughts you want to think about when you're sitting on that plane. And sometimes the decision of who should publish your book is complicated by the author not allowing herself to be honest about whether her book would fit on that shelf. And that's where all the difficulty comes from.Jess Lahey 17:36 Well, the airport bookstore is frustrating to me simply because when you look at what's for sale in many of the smaller ones, it's really only the books that are on bestseller lists in the top, you know, 10 positions.Sarina Bowen 17:48 Yeah, and there's no genre fiction in an airport bookstore, even though people read genre fiction on planes and the reason for that is that you have to think about like how print-centric is your market. So, if you are writing in a very print-centric niche, then traditional publishing will always be a better deal for you but there are different reasons to be print-centric. Like if your desired reader is 12 years old. That's a very print-centric reader in any genre. If you're writing a cookbook, or a workbook, or something where it's actually useful to have this thing on the counter in front of you, again, print-centric. Older readers, like mysteries with older characters in a demographic that has been slower to adopt e-books, also print-centric. And sometimes the only way to find this information is to ask an author who writes in a genre like yours - what is your print ratio. And I'm always surprised that authors don't know their print ratio. Like, the Penguin Random House portal makes this very easy to see. If you log in and look at your numbers. I can tell you that Rookie Move in its first year of publication was 84% e-books and 16% print. And when I saw those numbers, I said, Oh, geez, I should have self-published these books. Because the math just works out that way. But if I had been writing in market women's fiction for Penguin, instead, it might have said 55% print, 45% e-book, and then that would have been a totally different decision matrix. KJ Dell'Antonia 19:41 I want to talk for a minute about a couple of author reasons for doing both, for example, Gretchen Rubin, obviously, a hugely popular traditionally author of books about how people find happiness. She self-published a book that was basically all of her emails (I could get I could be getting what it is wrong, but essentially everything she had emailed to her subscriber list every year because people kept asking her for it. And very few of us have that kind of audience, but I thought that was sort of an interesting one. And then there's another author and I'm looking for her name. So she's a romance writer, and she's British, and her romances are traditionally published, but her books about riding horses, which fall into that sort of sporty, prescriptive category that Sarina was talking about, are self published. So I think that's interesting. Yeah, I mean, they're really fun, but you know, I've read them for a very specific reason, which is that I have an interest, it's exactly what you're talking about. If you're passionate about training your horse in a non-aggressive way, then you're tend towards wanting to read everything you can by people who have already done that, and you don't care how it was published.Sarina Bowen 21:27 Well, if you think about, if I were to write a book about horse training, and I could say to myself, you know, that's not an airport bookstore book.KJ Dell'Antonia 21:44 Tanya Kindersley and her horse books are in KU, you but I don't think her romances are. Yeah, that's not a book for an airport bookstore because that's just not what you're thinking about when you're getting on a plane.Sarina Bowen 22:00 So I also, I tried to make a list of good reasons to go traditional and bad reasons to go traditional and good reasons to go independent and bad reasons. And of course, the way this works is that the bad reasons are much more fun. Okay, so let's start with bad reasons to self publish your book. Bad Reason number one - I'm tired of querying agents, and I'm feeling very impatient.KJ Dell'Antonia 22:34 Oh, yeah, that's a very bad reason. Jess Lahey 22:39 Well, the impatient one is a big one, like, Oh, this would go so much faster if I could just push it out there now, I wouldn't have to wait for a year and a half or whatever to get my book out. That's a biggie.Sarina Bowen 22:49 It's true. And we are all impatient. I mean, I'm just as impatient as the next guy. So that's, that's a bad reason. Another bad reason is I haven't been honest with myself about the quality of this piece or its market readiness. And when people look down on self published books, they're really looking at that. Jess Lahey 23:12 Like I said, I get sent a lot of them and they just needed an editor. They just needed to go through another editing process. They needed a better spell check. You know, that kind of thing. And then that's what leads people to say, oh, self published books stink. I'm not going to read them. And that's simply because there are a lot out there from people who were impatient just pushed them out early.Sarina Bowen 23:37 And even the people that say I'm never reading a self published book have probably read one and didn't know it? Because if it's done right, you know it you don't even notice. KJ Dell'Antonia 23:49 Yeah, if I find myself going, Oh, who published this? That's a bad sign. I never ask that about something that's really good.Sarina Bowen 23:59 Sure. Well, my last bad reason to independently publish was I have unreasonable expectations about the discoverability of my book. So, sometimes people just want to write that book that's half horse training, half memoir. And the reason they haven't found a place for it with a traditional publisher is that they keep getting rejections that sounds like this. 'Well, this is fascinating. We're not sure how to sell it.' It's so tempting to write your story and then say, oh, anyone would read this. Anyone could enjoy it. But the truth is, that same person is super picky about their own reading, right? And so it's it's so hard to really be tough on yourself and say, 'Well, actually, not everyone is going to want to read this.' And it belongs to a highly specific audience. And so if you end up with a beautiful book that you're proud of, but it's really hard to define that audience, well then your next trick is you have to get busy defining it, whether that helps your traditional publisher or your eventual self publishing.Jess Lahey 25:22 And sometimes that can happen by looking at other books (if you can find them) other books that are out there that have sold within that audience, because occasionally what will happen is in a proposal, like in both of my proposals, I've put competing titles in there and my agent Laurie has come back and said, yeah, we need to explain why you included this book because it only sold 800 copies. And so if you're trying to say that there's room in this market, because, look, there's this other book, but it did really poorly. You need to differentiate your book and explain why more people would want to buy it than that book. Sarina Bowen 26:04 So bad reasons to go traditional. Are you ready? Oh, okay, well, bad reason number one. My agent will be upset with me if I don't accept this deal. Bad reason number two, I'm afraid to ask my publisher or my agent to break out the math for is this a good deal for me. Bad Reason number three, there's a stigma attached to self publishing.Jess Lahey 26:54 But don't you also think you have to say there's a stigma attached to self publishing in this category. Sarina Bowen 27:03 I actually have the asterisk and I was about to say that, unless you're trying to reach an audience that is sensitive to that stigma. Bad reason number four, this deal stinks but they'll pay me more next time. And that one's tricky, of course. Because if you're offered no advance, which happens a lot lately, then your publisher has no skin in the game. And that's a really tough decision.Jess Lahey 27:34 Yeah, not good for when it comes to marketing, because there's no impetus to invest in the marketing and publicity for that book.Sarina Bowen 27:43 Yep. And the last bad reason to go traditional is I need a publisher's validation. Who doesn't want to be wanted?Jess Lahey 27:55 Well, and it's tough because, you know, when writers get together and talk, they ask who each other's publisher is and you know, it's still a loaded conversation.KJ Dell'Antonia 28:05 In our genres they do. In Sarina's genre I think they probably don't. You're probably already kind of vaguely aware, right.Sarina Bowen 28:14 Yeah, but in romance, where it's we're like the canary in the coal mine market for independent publishing. And when I meet an author who has a long string of traditionally published titles, what I think about that author is, she must be awesome at writing. Because if you're not, you're going to be dropped on your head by your publisher pretty fast, right? But when I meet somebody who is very successful at self publishing, I think she must be a great writer, and she definitely knows a lot about the market because self publishing your work forces you to learn a ton about what readers want and how they make decisions. Whereas in traditional publishing, it might suit your life better to be published by someone who isn't you, but you will not learn as much. You just simply can't. Because a lot of those decisions are made out of your viewpoint.Jess Lahey 29:16 Yeah, and it's a lot of work to do all that stuff and to learn all that stuff. I mean, it's a lot of work. I guess the other thing you have to think about along those lines is you have to do a lot of work that does take away from your writing time. And if you hate it, I mean, that's the other thing. You really like the business stuff and you like analyzing markets and you like figuring those things out. I don't know that I want to do any of that. And so that's another part of the decision, too. Is is what do you like doing about this and what do you hate doing about this and is it going to drive you crazy and make you sad to have to do that work? You know, the background stuff, the marketing, and the business, and all of that stuff.Sarina Bowen 30:04 Definitely. And with regard to romance, because we've already established that that's a perfectly good market to independently publish in. After I started doing it myself, I flipped quickly to well, everyone should do this, because I saw the ways in which that it allowed me to cut the line and build a readership faster than traditionally published romance authors were able to do because their publisher held on to all the information, like who's reading the book, and what's their email address. So I was able to more quickly build a readership that really belong to me. But then as the the work of self publishing ate my life in an increasingly aggressive way, I softened on my stance of you know, what might work for me might really not work for someone else. If I had a day job at the Pentagon, like one of my colleagues does, then self publishing would just be like having a third job. Everybody has to make her own decision.Jess Lahey 31:13 Yeah, like I love the PR and marketing stuff, but some of the things that you do and are so good at and love because that's the money stuff and the numbers, you love that stuff. And it's just not my not my bag. KJ Dell'Antonia 31:30 I definitely did not think about self publishing the novel that I sold exactly because I didn't really, I always intended to go out with it. Because my position was just so good for going out as a traditionally published author and getting a decent advance. But what I sort of always had in the back of my mind was if this career as a traditionally public hopefully book a year, author of women's fiction doesn't work out the way that I want it to, I have your model of doing it. But what you do is different and I know that. Like I would have to be able to write books more quickly and develop the audience. If I wanted to do it like that, I would do it like that. I don't know if that makes any sense. I mean, because, because I love what you do. But I didn't think it was quite what I wanted to do right now. And I don't know that I could either. Your success is pretty astonishing. Sarina Bowen 33:04 I know what you mean. And the word astonishing comes to me sometimes too, when I do consider the luck involved, and timing, and all kinds of things like that.Jess Lahey 33:16 Well, the word astonishing comes into it for me, mostly because from when I first started looking at whether I was going to get traditionally published, I could put my arms around that, I knew what that looked like. And we call it traditional publishing because it's traditional, but until Sarina started doing it, I had no idea what that looked like. It wasn't something I could even envision because I didn't know what was involved and when you can't envision something, it seems completely overwhelming. But now that I've been watching Sarina do this, it is something I can get my arms around and it's much more of an option to me mentally if there isn't all of this sort of mystery out there about what's involved. So I think very few writers have someone to look to that have done this and can break it down for you and show you exactly what it is and exactly how it works. And I think that's part of why people tend to think about traditional publishing first is simply because it's traditional, and you can look and there are a million books out there on how to do it. But I have to assume there are a lot of self-pub books about how to do self publishing. And if you start googling them, you will find them and they are very niche books, as you said about giving very practical advice about how to do a very specific thing.KJ Dell'Antonia 34:41 You know, there are books that if I wrote them, I would totally sell. If I wrote that natural horse training memoir, or a dog training memoir, or something like that, I would totally self publish that. I'd be doing it for a different reason and a different audience. Jess Lahey 35:09 Well, and the other thing is, it has to do with knowing who the people in the landscape are again, too. Like, one of the things that Sarina had to do is figure out who's who in the romance publishing world. And now you know who's who in the natural horsemanship world and knowing those who those people are and who to reach out to and who to advertise to and do your PR with. That's another big hurdle that makes it more comprehensible to you that you would do the self-pub thing.Alright. Sarina, you were the one who had the wonderful list, have we hit everything that you wanted to talk about?Sarina Bowen 36:02 We have pretty much and I would just like to leave it with this idea. And that's that every author who's contemplating publishing at all, should really do their level best to define their own audience. So that could be something like the audience for this book is nursing students, or ComicCon attendees, or fans of James Patterson, just the more granular and precise you can be about defining the audience for your work, the easier it is to convince a publisher to take you on or to just figure out how you're going to sell the darn thing if you publish it yourself. Jess Lahey 36:46 And we've talked about this in book proposal writing, too, that saying, oh, everyone will want to read this book is like the first big mistake. So yeah, that granular look is important for traditional publishing, too. So you're gonna have to think about that no matter what.Sarina Bowen 37:00 That's right, some of these decisions and self honesty exercises are going to be undertaken no matter what decision you make. Jess Lahey 37:11 I love that you called it self honesty decision. That was really good. I like that because that's what it is, you know, that's absolutely what it is getting real about who's gonna read your book.KJ Dell'Antonia 37:23 Fellow writers, before we get into what we've been reading, let me flag for you the big message of this episode. If you're going to indie pub, you better be honest with yourself about what you've written. If you've got some doubts about your ability to do that, and who doesn't, a book coach might be the answer, both to help you assess what you've done, the strengths and the weaknesses, and to figure out what else if anything you might want to do before grabbing one of those self publishing how-to books we talked about and getting out into the market. Author Accelerator book coaches know their stuff when it comes to both traditional and indie publishing to find one that's right for you head to authoraccelerator.com.Jess Lahey 38:07 Speaking about reading books, let's do that part. Let's talk about what we've been reading because oh my gosh, I've been reading such good stuff.Sarina Bowen 38:15 I've got one. I am reading Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall, who is a man. And he is always hilarious and I recommend him wholeheartedly.Jess Lahey 38:31 Ooh, that sounds like fun. What do you got KJ? KJ Dell'Antonia 38:33 I also have a fun one. I have just finished The Exit Strategy by Lainey Cameron. It is a super fast moving story of two really go-getter women in Silicon Valley, which always fascinates me in and of itself, who discover that they are both - one is married to and the other is engaged to the same really, really rotten con artist. So it's got overtones. I mean, it's not like he's having an affair, it's like full on con artist stuff. So they're sort of race to get away from him and out from under him and they have to work together on something, it's just super fast, and entertaining, and kind of a juicy read, and I really enjoyed it. So that's The Exit Strategy from Lainey Cameron, and it just came out last week I think.Jess Lahey 39:32 But speaking of listening to things because that's how I've been doing just about everything lately because I've been outside a lot. I have been listening to Sara Stewart Taylor's The Mountains Wild and it just came out this week, the week we're recording, and actually we'll link to it in the show notes, but we did interview Sara Stewart Taylor early on in the process, we interviewed her about mystery writing, because that's what she does. And she's really good at it. And she has a whole bunch of books that I have read of hers. But this Mountains Wild book is really special. And the reason I want to talk about the audio version is that when you do an audio book and you need to find a narrator that can do other languages, lots of accents, I'm assuming it's a really tough get and the woman who narrates Sara's book is fantastic. She gets the Gaelic, she does the Dublin accent, the Northern Ireland accent, the Long Island accent, and she does male, and female and there's no moment where I'm saying, Oh, this isn't a full cast of characters, this is one person pretending to be lots of people and it's really, really good. Sarah's writing is beautiful. And the audio narration is spectacular. And so congratulations, Sara Stuart Taylor on the release of your book. This is what's fun about this podcast, I think is having this long view like, you know, we interview them early on when they first got their book deal, and then come back to them when the book is actually out. So anyway, I'm proud of Sara. It's really good. Alright. I think that's it for this week.KJ Dell'Antonia 41:28 I think that's it for this week. I want to remind everyone to sign up for our weekly email with the shownotes because that is also how you will get all the book recommendations with their links, as well as links to our fantastic sponsors, and links to our Facebook group and links to everything that we talk about. Plus, it's your little announcement that there's a fat new episode waiting for you in your podcast player. And if you want to go one step further, you can support the podcast financially. And as a result, get weekly mini episodes or writer top fives that are super good and super fun. And those mini episodes also drop right into your podcast player once you support the podcast, which is a fun little trick that our friends at Substack have figured out.Jess Lahey 42:22 In fact, I'm recording one today. I love recording those little mini episodes. They're really fun. And if you want to, actually, we mentioned that today's topic came straight out of our #AmWriting Facebook group and we keep really tight reins on. There's no mean stuff and people are nice and supportive and it's moderated and it's just a bunch of writers supporting each other and it's a really fun place to hang out. And if you ask any questions there who knows it may be a topic on a future show.KJ Dell'Antonia 42:54 This is true and you can find all of those links at amwriting podcast.com. Jess Lahey 43:01 All right, everyone. This is it, until next week, 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. Get access to private episodes at amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Episode 47   Guest Interview with KJ Dell’Antonia – author of How to be a Happier Parent   KJ Dell’Antonia is the author of the viral New York Times essay Why I Didn’t Answer Your Email, the former editor of the Times’ Motherlode blog and the author of the book How to Be a Happier Parent. Her debut novel, The Chicken Sisters, is a timely, humorous exploration of the same themes she focuses on in her journalism: the importance of finding joy in our families, the challenge of figuring out what makes us happy and the need to value the people in front of us more than the ones in our phones and laptops, every single time.   How to be a Happier Parent is an encouraging guide to helping parents find more happiness in their day-to-day family life, from the former lead editor of the New York Times Motherlode blog.   KJ’s links:   Website: kjdellantonia.com Instagram and the #BooksThatWon’tBumYouOut series: @kjda https://www.instagram.com/kjda/?hl=en Twitter: @KJDellAntonia https://twitter.com/KJDellAntonia Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kjdellantonia   To find out more about Samantha or to join her – Website – https://www.samanthadayconsulting.com/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/samanthadaysleepconsulting/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/samanthadaysleepconsulting/

Reader and author KJ Dell’Antonia picked up a lot of the wrong books during a difficult time in her life, and those experiences changed her perspective on a hotly debated literary topic: trigger warnings. She talks with Anne about that shift, moving beyond bedtime reading, covert audiobook operations, and how mystery novels could save your local bookstore... Content warning — in this episode, KJ and Anne talk about cancer, specifically breast cancer. It’s not the whole episode, and the conversation doesn’t go into detail, but we want you to be aware before diving in.Click over to the podcast website for a list of books mentioned in this episode: http://whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com/240Anne had the pleasure of joining KJ and her cohost Jess Lahey recently on their podcast #AmWritingKJ’s new novel The Chicken Sisters comes out on July 28.KJ's website: kjdellantonia.comReaders, right now our Patreon community is a veritable celebration of summer reading. We’ve shared some wonderful bonus episodes recently, on topics like fantastic new romance novels, absorbing summer nonfiction, and our publicly-available episode covering spectacular books by Black authors. Our latest bonus episode is a casual home library chat with Anne and her husband Will about what summer reading is like for each of them this year.Become a patron now to gain access to a huge archive of bonus episodes, and join Brenna and Anne during our upcoming livestream on July 2nd: patreon.com/whatshouldireadnextThanks to today's sponsors: Whether you’re looking to boost your energy levels, support your immune system or address gut health, now’s the perfect time to try Athletic Greens for yourself. WSIRN listeners can get 20 FREE daily travel packs with your first purchase at AthleticGreens.com/readnext.The Great Courses Plus is like a full college catalog, all available on any device, at any time. There’s something for everyone, spanning major areas of study like Literature, Business, and History, as well as hobbies like Yoga and Chess. Best of all, The Great Courses Plus is offering WSIRN listeners an entire month of unlimited access for FREE at TheGreatCoursesPlus.com/readnext!

This week, the How to Launch a Book series continues with everyone’s favorite: book launching on social media. Twitter. Instagram. Canva. PicMonkey. Crello. Pinterest. Linked In. Head blowing up yet? We talk about planning your launch social media, how to use social media and image-creating apps to share and promote and why you shouldn’t feel one bit like you’re talking about your book too much when you’re launching it into the world.We also fall apart a bit, here and there, because these are falling apart times, and we feel it.#AmReadingKJ: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia OwensJess: The Secret History by Donna TarttHow to Be an AntiRacist by Ibram X KendiMiddlesex by Jeffrey EugenidesSarina: Pale Rider Laura SpinneyDon’t forget to check in with our sponsor, Author Accelerator. They’ve got a special book coaching class happening in June on coaching historical fiction, which I would love to be a fly on the wall for—as well as introductory and master classes on book coaching, and, as always, the ability to match you with just the right book coach to help you move your work forward.As for us—we send out a MiniSode or a Writer Top Five every Monday to our supporters. Your support pays for the production and transcription of the podcast, and is the reason why, this week, you don’t also hear my conversation with the child who walked in while we’re recording. Also why there’s music and a fun opening. Because we hired a professional, because it’s good to do these things right. So thanks for chipping in—and if you’d like to join us, click the button.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:01 Hey writers, it's KJ. This week we are continuing our book launch series and Sarina is schooling me on getting all my social media ready for a fiction launch. At our sponsor, Author Accelerator, they're offering some different schooling this month, June of 2020 with classes in book coaching. There are introductory classes, master classes, and (this fascinates me) a special class this month on coaching historical fiction. I love that they're getting so specific, and I would love to listen in on that one. If you're intrigued find out more at authoraccelerator.com. Is it recording?Jess Lahey 0:40 Now it's recording. KJ Dell'Antonia 0:43 This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone and try to remember what I'm supposed to be doing.Jess Lahey 0:47 Alright, let's start over.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:48 Awkward pause. I'm gonna rustle some papers. Okay, now one, two, three. Hi, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting, the podcast about writing all the things, short things, long things, fiction, nonfiction, essays, book proposals, pitches. In short, this is, as I say every week, the podcast about settling down and getting your writing work done.Jess Lahey 1:18 This is Jess Lahey I am the author of The Gift of Failure and the forthcoming The Addiction Inoculation. And you can find my work at the New York Times, and the Washington Post, and The Atlantic, and various other spots.Sarina Bowen 1:29 I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of 35 romance novels and the most recent one is called Sure Shot.KJ Dell'Antonia 1:35 I am KJ Dell'Antonia, author of the novel The Chickens Sisters coming out July of 2020 and the book How to Be a Happier Parent out in paperback now, as well as the former editor of the Motherlode blog and column at the New York Times where I am still a contributor. That's who we are. And this week, we're continuing our how to launch a book series, in which we sort of try to cover all the different arenas of things that you can get ready for before your book launches. We've done Amazon, Bookbub, and Goodreads. We've done websites. And now we're going to turn our attention to social media.Sarina Bowen 2:22 That beast called social media.Jess Lahey 2:24 Such a powerful tool sometimes. Well, and I know for a fact that when I talk to authors who are sort of contemplating the social media sort of for the first time in a professional context, they're just so overwhelmed. They're like, do I have to do all of it? So Sarina, do we have to do all of it? Do we have to do Pinterest, and Instagram, and Facebook, and do we have to be good at all of it? Because that's the thing that seems to overwhelm authors.Sarina Bowen 2:52 Absolutely. You will find it overwhelming because it is overwhelming and you don't have to do it all. You absolutely have my permission not to do all of it. So, of course, everybody has their favorites. So you really need to ask yourself two questions. And Jess, you've been super articulate about this, too. Like, the two questions really are, which platform is your favorite or which platform makes you hate it the least? And the corollary question, which is almost as important, which platform is your people?Jess Lahey 3:45 Yeah, where's your audience?Sarina Bowen 3:47 Yeah. And you and I have discovered that our answers to this question are like 180 degrees different, whereas you talk to educators all the time on Twitter, and my audience is really on Facebook and Instagram.Jess Lahey 4:04 Yep. How did you figure that out? I mean, for me, it was fairly obvious from the get go because I think I started learning about personal learning networks and realizing, oh, that's where all the teachers were. And I was using it for teaching. But then, of course, when I started writing something that was about teaching, it was sort of a natural fit for me. But did you have to go looking and sort of figuring out where all those people were for you?Sarina Bowen 4:28 I really did have to pay attention because there are a lot of authors on Twitter. But at one point, somebody said to me, Twitter is where I go to talk to other authors. But I reached my readers on Facebook and I thought, okay, well, that feels a little bit familiar. But I'm a really analytical person and I like data. So of course, I've been using all of these sites, at least partly, for kind of a long time. And I realized that my Squarespace website (and every website does this in some capacity, you just have to find it, but it has really good data about this) it's called traffic sources is the page that I look at. And under social media in the last 30 days, you can see, or maybe I'm at seven days here. But over some period of recent time, I have gotten 816 clicks from Facebook, 158 clicks from Goodreads, and 78 clicks from Twitter, and 18 clicks from Pinterest. So that tells a really clear story immediately about what's working. And of course, we post fewer links on Instagram and my Instagram shows up on this other page because I use a program for this and I'm getting like 200 off Instagram.Jess Lahey 5:54 Wait, what do you mean when you say that your Instagram is showing up on another page and use an app for that?Sarina Bowen 6:01 Well, let's let's just dive right into Instagram because lots of authors love it. So anyway, what I was trying to say is that you, you can be given permission to cut one of these out if you can see in hard numbers where people are finding you. And of course, a lot of the links that I post on social media do not lead back to my website. So this is just a little subset. But I still find it quite telling and it gave me permission to walk away from Twitter without really looking back and I actually changed my account there. It says now that it's a Sarina Bowen update account infrequently monitored, because I'm not part of the conversation. And it basically says, this is a promo account, you know, do with that what you will, I don't expect to have a grand, wonderful following there, because I have chosen not to pursue it.Jess Lahey 6:57 You know, it's really interesting. I have a column up in TweetDeck - one for you and one for KJ, because I like to keep tabs on what people are saying about my peeps. And occasionally I'll find stuff before you guys see it. But what I often see are cross posts from Goodreads with a tweet saying what percentage they are through him via Goodreads. And it's really clear that people are letting Goodreads cross post to Twitter for them. And that's the majority of what I see from readers regarding your books, which was a really interesting realization to me that it's sort of not that the readers are necessarily there, but that they're letting Goodreads cross post for them.Sarina Bowen 7:39 Yeah. And can we just back up to the part where you said you have a column on TweetDeck, but that column is a special thing. That's a search column, right?Jess Lahey 7:48 Right, right. Meaning I have a search column with quotes around your full name and a column for you on @SarinaBowenUpdates or whatever your handle is. Just because I like to just know what's happening with my people. Sarina Bowen 8:05 That's amazing. Jess Lahey 8:08 It's fun, I like to see what people are reading of your stuff. And you know, it's always fun to report back that when people are saying nice things.Sarina Bowen 8:15 You know what, at one point I had a column like that. But I found that I didn't always want to know all the things that were showing up there. Jess Lahey 8:26 That's probably true. I've seen some things that I didn't necessarily want to see. But that's also how I found out about that thing where I was my one of my essays was on the SAT, because people weren't tagging my handle on Twitter, they were just saying mean things, and making memes about me using my name and sometimes misspelling it, but either way, that's how I found out that I was on the SAT and that all the high schoolers in the country hated me that year.Sarina Bowen 9:05 We're still on Twitter, so let's let's finish Twitter because I want to know something that I'm not good at on Twitter because like I said, I don't use it that much. But how do you use hashtags to find your audience?Jess Lahey 9:19 Well, it depends. I use hashtags on Twitter for education stuff, simply because they're chats that happen, like more chats than I can even tell you. If you do a Google search on education hashtag Twitter chats you will get this table that has hundreds of Twitter chats. So occasionally, I'll use them for things like you know, I need a particular book for kid a particular age and then I'll hashtag a couple of reading or teaching literacy hashtags, but I actually don't use hashtags very often on Twitter. It's not so much my jam.KJ Dell'Antonia 10:03 It's not like Instagram, there's not a lot of room for them. You just use a hashtag, unless you're joking.Jess Lahey 10:10 There are exceptions, though. I mean, like if a big education conference is going on, I'll throw up a column for that education conference and follow people at that conference so that I can see what's going on, and find out what people are talking about, and things like that. But for the most part, yeah, I don't really use hashtags. I don't use hashtags the way people use hashtags in Instagram. It seems to be a bigger deal in Instagram than it is on Twitter, at least for me, that may not be the case for everyone. But definitely for me, hashtags are not as much a thing on Twitter.KJ Dell'Antonia 10:42 I think that the reason to use them on Twitter tends to be because your being part of a conversation is around a hashtag. So it's often political, but not always. I mean, that's why. Whereas on Instagram, because people rarely reshare because Instagram makes it hard, I will follow certain hashtags. And then from those hashtags, I might find new accounts to follow. Because for example, I'm actively looking to follow people who write about the kinds of books that I write. So I follow a hashtag for that. I don't do that in Twitter for a lot of reasons. One of which is that I just don't go on Twitter anymore.Jess Lahey 11:30 I absolutely just misspoke though. Because in looking for this new audience for the new book, I actually do have a list around people in recovery and then I also do have a column for hashtag recovery or hashtag sobriety or hashtag sober so that I misspoke. Because I don't know the audience as well in the recovery world as I do in the education world, I do occasionally go mining and looking around just to see who's who, who's talking about what, who's reputable, who's not, sort of who's in the conversation, and those hashtags can occasionally help me access that.KJ Dell'Antonia 12:09 And I think the thing for Twitter is that if you're a nonfiction author, especially, but it probably works in fiction as well, is that you can end up in a conversation with an expert that you might want to reach or a fellow author that you might want to reach because if they're putting out a tweet, and you reply to it, it's just different, then they might tweet back. And because they're actually actively on there, well depending on whether or not they've scheduled their tweets, but usually the kind of thing you'd reply to isn't that, so there's an opportunity for connection there that's a little bit different, but I don't know. It's sort of more general. It's not a lot to do with launching your book. Jess Lahey 12:57 Well, for me though, the one thing I do though is if I find someone who's in my demographic squarely, someone who I really am interested in following on Twitter, and who I think really follow some interesting people, whether it's recovery or education, I will go through who they follow and sort of say, oh, look, there's some people I don't follow and follow those people. So that can be really useful too, if you're new to a field. Going and looking. For example, if you were really interested in like COVID stuff, and PPE, there's this woman, Dr. Megan Ranney, who's out there in the media a lot and Megan would be a great person to go follow and then look at who she follows because she probably follows a really reputable group of people within that field. So that's a really great thing to do, too. For example, if you were writing your first novel, and it happened to be a women's fiction novel, go look to see who like Jennifer Wiener or KJ Dell'Antonia or Jodi Picoult, who do they follow? And obviously, there might be some interesting people for you to follow in there as well. So that's been really useful for me.KJ Dell'Antonia 14:05 But to specifically bring us back to book launches, I will say one thing that I did on Twitter with my nonfiction book launch, and I think Jess may have done some of the same thing, is to tweet everyone I quote in the book. So when I was launching my nonfiction, I prepared in advance a bunch of tweets that were like, 'Thanks for your help with How to Be a Happier Parent, Jessica Lahey, it's out now.' They were a little better than that and I had those all revved up and ready to go and either scheduled or not, so that's a way to let people that were helpful to you know, so that hopefully they will share. So that's one way to use Twitter. And another way is to ask other people to tweet for you.Jess Lahey 14:50 Right. And, you know, our groups of friends can be relied on to really boost us if we need them. But it's been really fun watching for a friend. Like when Catherine Newman's book was first up on Amazon, and you know, it'll be out by the time this podcast goes up. She did that. She said, I want to thank @JessLahey for supporting me in this book by blurbing it and blah, blah, blah. And that sort of reminds me, oh, yeah, I really support this book I want to help. So you're right, that's a really good way to do it as well.KJ Dell'Antonia 15:25 Right. And so then another thing that you can do within Twitter is to create tweets about the book that people that are on your email list could send out. And if you go to share link generator, you can write a tweet that then you can create a link and you can put it in an email, you can put it in a blog post, you can put it on almost anywhere and say click to tweet. And if someone clicks that, then their tweet pops up, it's editable. So what I do with that, is I send it out to a bunch of people that I know, but maybe my email list, maybe my launch team, maybe just 20 people that I have collected, and I say, it would be awesome for me if you would tweet about the book. Here, I've made it easy. Click here, and you get an editable tweet about the book with all the links. And the person clicks. And it says, 'Hey, I'm so excited to welcome KJ's new book, The Chicken Sisters into the world.', and they can change that too. You know, 'I've read this and I love it' or 'I hated this I never want to hear from this author ever again'. You know, they can change it to anything that they want. But it's already there. And it has the links and it makes life so much easier. And I always kind of boggle at people who don't. People who just send me an email and say would you mind tweeting about the book? To do that I have to go find the link, and then I have to think of something to say, and I have to go on Twitter, I mean, there's like four steps in there. Whereas with share link generator, you can make it a one click deal. It also works for Facebook, but we're not on Facebook yet.Jess Lahey 17:09 All right, are we done with Twitter?Sarina Bowen 17:11 I would like to propose one last thought on Twitter that's actually applicable to all of the platforms we're discussing today. Which is that by the time any author gets to her launch day, she feels as though she has been talking about nothing except her book since the beginning of time. And she is a little bit sick of herself and the whole topic. But I would just like to say that Twitter specifically has a sort of short half life of each tweet. And even if you feel you've been discussing your book way too much, launch day is not the moment to change your behavior. Like it's the one day when everyone will forgive you for talking about your book launch a whole lot. So you know, hang tight and put out yet another tweet about your book on that launch day because that is your moment. And not that many people will see that tweet, even if you are sick of yourself.KJ Dell'Antonia 18:14 And to save yourself the agony of spending your launch day writing 10 different tweets about your book. Write him ahead of time. I mean, then you've got them. I've got a Google spreadsheet going in which I'm just dumping possible posts or make the images that you're going to use have them all ready and just know what you're going to put out there so that you don't have to generate it while you're sort of feeling that 'Oh my God, I've been talking about this forever.'Jess Lahey 18:54 This week coming I believe is my copy edited manuscript and I have scheduled for when that has to go back in and then I'll have another date coming when I'll hopefully get my galley proofs. And my plan is to go to those looking at my copy edits with a highlighter so that I can highlight a few tweetable, Instagram-able, quotable things that I can make Canva cards for from the get go. Because I'm probably not gonna want to go through the manuscript to the fine tooth comb again, after I do it for all these edit things. So why not do both at the same time?KJ Dell'Antonia 19:30 I did that with the novel as well.Jess Lahey 19:34 So smart...KJ Dell'Antonia 19:35 Sarina, you do something a little different. You do sort of the 'Here's what you can expect to find', which I always think is really fun, which I am also doing now.Sarina Bowen 19:49 Well, Jess mentioned Canva cards, and let's just spend a minute on Canva, because it's a really useful tool of mine. Canva is a graphic design program at least that's what it calls itself. And there are many there's one called Crello there's several versions of this beast, PicMonkey, lots of places where you can use templates and make cute designs fairly easily even if you're not a Photoshop human. But what I love about Canva specifically, and I actually have the paid version of it, is not only is it good at designing stuff, but it will save it for you for later. So when I'm feeling it in terms of promoting my book, and I'm not sick of myself on a particular day, I can go into Canva and mess around with things like quotes from the book, or thank you for your support, or anything that has to do with that design. And you can actually make pages each Canva document, you can just duplicate the thing you made, and delete the quote and put in a new one. So it's really good at sort of holding your design brain in one spot.KJ Dell'Antonia 21:10 And you can resize it for something else. So you can duplicate it and then resize it into Twitter size, or Facebook size, or LinkedIn size, or Instagram story size, instead of Instagram post size.Sarina Bowen 21:25 Right. I think the resizing is part of the paid portion, or at least it used to be, but that was definitely something that I enjoyed getting after I became a whatever it's called pro member. It's not very expensive either. It's like, the whole year costs $200 or something like that. So Canva is definitely a great tool for when you're switching from Twitter to Facebook or you want to play around with a checklist. Those checklists you were just talking about that I make are also wonderful in Canva. And another thing I do if you have chapters in the book that you're launching, and those chapters have titles, I like to make countdown chapter titles because as you hurtle through that month towards your book launch, it's great to be newsy. And so I will make let's say, chapter eight of my book is called, 'Is that really a duck?' I will make a Canva card that says in eight days I will bring you chapter eight, 'Is that really a duck?' And then the next day, I'll have one to post that says, in seven days, I can bring you chapter seven, 'The duck went fishing', and on and on because I've taken the trouble to give my chapters funny titles or informational ones, and it just gives you something newsy to put out into the world as you count down to your terrifying book launch.KJ Dell'Antonia 23:04 I did that with nonfiction, too. I did it with How To Be a Happier Parent and it was fun and it was helpful and it was just it just felt like something to say. And I made little cards, and it kept me busy, and gave me something to say. Jess Lahey 23:25 I just want to underline this whole planning ahead thing, because if you are waiting until the very end to think about doing these things, you're going to just be so overwhelmed. So the clear message here is be thinking about text, tidbits, strategies, things you want to do ahead of time so that you're not overwhelming yourself the week of pub date.Sarina Bowen 23:45 Definitely.Jess Lahey 23:46 Because that would be insane.KJ Dell'Antonia 23:48 And let's talk a little about the goal of all of this. It's not going to sell millions of books, you're only probably reaching... So when you ask other people to share on social media, you're reaching their followers and when you're sharing you're mostly reaching your own followers and some retweets. But I think something important to remember is that people need to see the book more than once, usually before they head over and click and buy. And sometimes they don't even remember where they saw it or how they saw it, it just becomes familiar because you've posted a lot of imagery around it. But you haven't made it annoying, you've made it fun, you've made it entertaining. So when people see that title, when they're surfing a book site, or hopefully in a bookstore, it makes them go 'Oh yeah, I've been thinking about that one.' Jess Lahey 24:44 I definitely hear that a lot that you know, we've talked about this before, that it's the repetition and sometimes it's the second, third, or fourth time that someone says 'Oh yeah, that book that I meant to buy the first time I heard about it, but didn't.' KJ Dell'Antonia 24:57 So to some extent, that all means that if you don't do it during launch week is just an excuse to do it. If you don't do it during launch week, fine, the next week do something different, create a bunch of things, and start putting your book out there. We don't need to panic if we don't get it all out there on launch day.Jess Lahey 25:24 You know, what's so interesting about the social media thing too, is that there have been all kinds of attempts, there was that thunderclap thing that was a couple years ago where you'd ask people a favor to all tweet and post something to social media the same exact time and I don't think that that had any kind of effect and it was a huge amount of effort. And it sounded like you were getting something done, but I don't know that it actually had any major effect. So when we talk about these things that you're supposed to do on social media or that you could do on social media, we're not saying that you have to do all of these things and they're going to have a major impact on book sales. But every little bit, you know, can help. And as we always like to say, we don't want to get six months out from book release and say to ourselves, 'Oh, I could have done that other thing. I wanted to be able to say, we did all the things that were under our control that we could do to help our book do well on launch day. But that thunderclap thing was very weird, I think anyway.Sarina Bowen 26:26 It was an attempt to make virality happen where it wasn't destined to.Jess Lahey 26:33 Exactly, to force a lot of noise all at the same time in the hopes that it would catch fire. And I don't know, I just mixed metaphors. But I don't know that that was a particularly effective thing to do. And I like to be sparing and what I ask other people to do to help me out and being a part of something like that wasn't something I was particularly interested in.Sarina Bowen 26:54 Right. I don't think I once participated, but it was an interesting experiment.Jess Lahey 27:00 Alright, anything else that you want to add to this discussion about Twitter or Instagram?KJ Dell'Antonia 27:07 We didn't do Instagram...Sarina Bowen 27:09 We should do Instagram, which is growing faster than the other services that we've been talking about. Jess Lahey 27:17 Sorry, in my head I kind of thought we had sort of done Instagram because in my head I associate Canva with Instagram, so mentally I had gone there. So my apologies. Sarina, Instagram. Sarina Bowen 27:59 Instagram is a platform where sharing doesn't really happen very often. So you kind of have this one moment to put something visual and beautiful in front of people and hope that it sticks with them. But discovery on Instagram also works a little differently than it does on other platforms, which is that hashtags really matter on Instagram. So, before you are launching your book, you want to figure out what hashtags people are using who are looking at books like yours and I have a little collection of these I keep it handy.Jess Lahey 28:42 There's a lot of them for authors and writers and books on Instagram. There's a ton of them, so good for you having a list.Sarina Bowen 28:50 Well, I have several lists, honestly. So if I'm talking about my own book that's coming, I will use bookaddict, booknerd, bookworm, booklove, booklover, contemporaryromance, romancereads, IGreads, oneclick, alwaysreading, you get the idea. There's a lot of these.KJ Dell'Antonia 29:08 And let me guess that you have a list that is pastable. Sarina Bowen 29:11 Oh, yes.KJ Dell'Antonia 29:12 So where do you keep that? Sarina Bowen 29:14 I happen to keep it in notes, that little yellow app on all things Apple that is just really handy. But you could use Google Keep for this, you could use any program that you keep handy. KJ Dell'Antonia 29:26 I use Evernote and I have thought about using Keystrokes. Because since Instagram really requires that you use the phone. You know, you can't post to Instagram except on a phone. So if you go (in an iPhone, at least) into general, and you go to keyboard, you go to text replacement. You can make a series of letters and put them all in there and then when you type that series of letters they will all pop up. Sarina Bowen 31:00 KJ taught me this nifty trick because actually I use it on Instagram too, which is that I have thank you and some longer phrases for thank you spelled out in German, French, Italian, and Portuguese, because Instagram is a really international platform. And at least half the tags that people are using for me on Instagram are in German, honestly. God bless German instagramers. So I have three different German phrases saved in those Keystrokes that I apply when somebody takes some beautiful picture of my German book and tags me in the post so that I can be thankful without writing danka, danka, danka, danka all day long.Jess Lahey 31:50 Yeah, that's really brilliant. And I'm actually going to need your help because I got tagged in a couple of things that I needed a Portuguese thank you for and I didn't have it. So that's really smart and really thoughtful. Sarina Bowen 32:06 So, that whole keystroke thing and being made to create stuff on your phone is kind of a drag. Thanks, Instagram, you can actually hack your way around this by installing a Chrome plug-in that fools your Instagram into thinking you're on a mobile device when you're not...But my current setup is that I probably have the picture on my phone anyway because I use an iPad to create a lot of imagery, and then I type whatever I want onto my notes on a laptop, and then I just open it on my phone, and copy and paste, or I rely on Bluetooth to copy from one device and paste into another. Because I am never, ever composing an Instagram caption on my phone, my thumb's are not that good at typing, it's just not happening. So there are several ways to keep your Instagram feed looking good. And you don't need to do that. Like you don't need to become obsessive about the beauty of your Instagram feed. But, there are moments when I want to kind of work hard on this. So I have an app called Preview that I use to look at what the grid will look like before I post and some people use one called Planoly. And there's also Later which is a posting to Instagram app. And if you change your Instagram to a business account, you will be allowed to schedule via some of these third party things so that it could post automatically. I don't actually do that, I don't need to post Instagram so often that scheduling is super helpful for me. But I know that a lot of people like to do it that way.Jess Lahey 34:13 But if you want to see a beautiful Instagram account, go check out Sarina Bowen's Instagram account. The gold standard seems to be what some book bloggers and some romance readers in particular seem to do for the authors that they love, and the people who create these gorgeous Instagram posts for you just blow me away. I'm amazed by the kind of artful creations that your readers create, and that you create for your books. They're really beautiful.Sarina Bowen 34:45 They blow me away, too. KJ Dell'Antonia 34:47 Well, you can use those when someone else makes a beautiful image of your book or just makes an image of your book because my goodness, thank you very much. You can do a couple of things. You can post it to your story, which is only polite I think and quite common, but you can also use an app that will allow you to repost and in this case I use Repost. And if you're using an app like that, then when somebody else posts about the book, you can take their post and use it in your feed. Thus, you know, adding to your number of images that you have without you're having to create an image which is really cool. And there's the opportunity to sort of say, you know, thanks bookstagrammar for writing this lovely thing about my book, and then you can share the lovely thing.Jess Lahey 35:38 What's always weird is when someone thanks me for posting something beautiful they made about my book to my story, and I'm always like, 'Oh my gosh, thank you. This is the most beautiful thing ever. And it's such an incredible honor to be able to repost that.' So it's a wonderful, it's also just a great way to sort of connect with readers. I love it.Sarina Bowen 35:56 Repost and those apps also will copy the entire caption that the other person wrote...KJ Dell'Antonia 36:04 Including the hashtags.Sarina Bowen 36:07 Yeah, exactly. So that not only are you assured an easy way of giving credit to the person who created that thing, but it's very easy to share. So because we never want to get into trouble and have any creator think that we've stolen their work for our own. KJ Dell'Antonia 36:28 Yeah, that's the nice thing about using the app instead of screenshotting it, is that it makes it very clear where you got it. And it's just socially acceptable.Sarina Bowen 36:38 Yep. My other trick for working ahead on Instagram is that I don't commonly have more than a small handful of paperback arcs to give away ahead of the launch. So I went to Moo and I made a bunch of these beautiful five by seven postcards. Like I'll do like 150 five by seven postcards of the book cover. And I will mail them all over the world because like I said, Instagramers are very international. And then I will see those postcards pop up all over Instagram during launch as well. And they cost a lot less than a paperback arc and it's honestly really about the shipping, I can put $1.15 stamp on one of these cards and send it all the way to Australia, whereas shipping a book to Australia costs $25. KJ Dell'Antonia 37:38 And that sort of gets around you know, if you want to be sharing arcs, they can be digital, but there is something that people can take a picture of, which is really nice. People love having something to take a picture. I love having something to take a picture of. I don't do LinkedIn, but I have some friends that do it really well. And so I'm just gonna ask them when my book comes out will you post this on LinkedIn, please? But if you are a business writer, you probably should be.Sarina Bowen 38:22 Definitely.Jess Lahey 38:24 Absolutely. The business world is very much about LinkedIn. And you know, I will post things there but I actually don't see a ton of interaction with the stuff that I post there. So it's often an afterthought for me. Alright. Can we talk about what we've been reading? Pretty pretty, please. Sarina Bowen 38:53 Absolutely. Has anyone been able to read?KJ Dell'Antonia 39:00 I will note before we talk about what we've been reading that we didn't talk about Facebook.Jess Lahey 39:05 I think that's a whole long discussion in itself. I mean, that's just me, mainly because I hear Sarina talking about the stuff that she does there. And she's on a whole other level with Facebook and I sort of have the feeling that that's its own episode in and of itself.KJ Dell'Antonia 39:23 Okey dokey. There we go. Stay tuned. We got one more book launch thing to go. Jess Lahey 39:34 KJ you have been doing a beautiful, beautiful job, by the way, speaking of Instagram of talking about what you've been reading, and you've really done a great job of doing these capsule reviews of books, and you've sort of set a standard, I think, for me anyway for understanding how to do a really quick review of a book. So I just wanted to tell you that I have been appreciating those a lot.KJ Dell'Antonia 39:56 Why thank you, I'm actually planning to up that game. So, I've been creating a whole list of books that I want to make sure get shared. This is partly just the the whole let's help make book book launches still work. So I've got a whole great list of books that I want to share with people that are either books that I recommend and here's why, or books that I have had an arc of, or books that I'm super anxious to read. And I've been putting together ways to do that. So yeah, I've been having fun. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Why stick to any one genre? Our guest this week is Catherine Newman: memoirist, middle grade novelist, etiquette columnist and now the author of How to Be a Person: 65 Highly Useful, Super-Important Things to Learn Before You’re Grown-Up. While she’s at it, she writes a cooking blog, co-authored a book on crafts for kids and edits ChopChop, a kids cooking magazine. And she pens frequent funny essays for everything from O to the New York Times to the Cup of Jo website. In other words, she’s putting a pastiche of writing together and making it work with an insouciant disregard for any and all advice about self-branding or owning an niche or sticking to one topic or identity.In fact, I’d argue that “insouciant disregard” might just BE her brand. This episode also includes the immortal words “I’ve never had to kill anything during the podcast before,” uttered by Jess—so that’s a reason to listen right there. But there are plenty of others—this is a real nitty gritty episode on building a career and getting things done.#AmReadingKJ: Henna Artist by Alka JoshiRecipes for a Beautiful Life by Rebecca BarryJess: Sure Shot by Sarina BowenAnimal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara KingsolverMissing You by Harlan CobenCatherine: Know My Name by Chanel MillerSea Wife by Amity GaigeThe Chicken Sisters by KJ Dell’AntoniaThanks to everyone who supports the podcast financially. To join that team, click the button below:But it’s all good. The pod is free as it always has and always will be. 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 every time there’s a new episode.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:00 Hey writers KJ here. Usually I write down what I'm going to tell you in our pre episode, promotional blurb, whatever you want to call this, and I will say right away that of course we are, as always sponsored by our friends at Author Accelerator, who we love. This week, instead of writing down some great reasons why we love them I just wanted to take a minute to read to you from the email that I got from Jenny Nash this week. This is her weekly email that goes out to anyone who's on the Author Accelerator list, or read every single one of those and I cannot say that about almost any other weekly email I get, there a couple. Anyway, Jenny writes, "I was speaking with a writer this week who could see the light at the end of the tunnel on her novel. She was almost done and she was terrified. She could feel herself panicking and turning to other shiny new ideas. Anything that wasn't this almost done idea. Being done would mean that her work could be rejected. Being done would mean that her work could be judged. Being done would mean that her limitations and weaknesses as a writer would be on display for everyone to see. Being done would mean that whatever she had on the page was as good as she was able to do. Even if it wasn't anywhere close to the perfect story in her mind. Being done would mean that she would be exposed." I could really, really relate to that. And I think I'm not the only one. A lot of us start to let things go the minute we get anywhere close to the finish line, because the finish line is scary. And if that's the place where you are maybe now is the moment when you want to reach out and see about working with a writing coach. You might not need much a few weeks, a little bit of a push, a little bit of help, just to take that thing that you're working on, and get it through to not the almost best you can do (which you know allows a lot of room for imagining other things) but the actual best you could do and then make a real decision about what it is you'd like to do with it. If you're game for that, you should head over to authoraccelerator.com and click your way through to all the great places because we love them and there's also a lot of other good stuff there. While I'm here I also want to say that this episode includes a couple of small swear words here and there and also some weird commentary on vaginas. Because this is one of our dearest friends we're interviewing this week and we got a little bit weird. So letting you know that so if you have tiny ears around that you are concerned about? Honestly, it's no big on this one. I don't think that it will bother you, but I wanted to give you a heads up. Alright. Enjoy it. This is a great episode. Is it recording?Jess Lahey 2:51 Now it's recording. KJ Dell'Antonia 2:53 This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone trying to remember what I'm supposed to be doing.Jess Lahey 2:57 Alright, let's start over.KJ Dell'Antonia 2:58 Awkward pause. I'm gonna rustle some papers. Okay, now one, two, three.Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia. And this is #AmWriting. The podcast about writing all things, from fiction, to nonfiction, pitches, proposals, emails, essays. This is the podcast about sitting down and getting your writing work done. Jess Lahey 3:27 I'm Jess Lahey, I'm the author of The Gift of Failure and the forthcoming book The Addiction Inoculation, Raising Healthy Kids in a Culture of Dependence, who the subtitles are always so tricky, and you can find my work on the old interwebs at The Atlantic and the New York Times and The Washington Post and lots of other places.KJ Dell'Antonia 3:58 I am KJ Dell'Antonia, the author of the novel The Chicken Sisters coming out on July 1 of this year, which is 2020. For those of you listening in the future, when I hope things are not what they are now, but that is not what we are going to talk about today. We have a guest, our guest is Catherine Newman, who we've actually been trying to record with Catherine since like since like our 10th episode. But wait, I want to tell you about Catherine, she is a memoirist, a middle grade novelist, and etiquette columnist and now the author of How to Be a Person: 66 Highly Useful, Super Important Things to Learn Before You're Grown Up.Jess Lahey 4:57 It's actually 65, but I think that we should invent a 66 while we're here.KJ Dell'Antonia 5:22 Okay, no, I wasn't done. I wasn't done - because while she's at it, Catherine writes a cooking blog, she co-authored a book on crafts for kids, and she edits Chop Chop, a kid's cooking magazine, which I didn't even know till I just recently read her bio because I never read the bios of my friends because I'm supposed to know all this stuff, but I didn't. And she pens frequent funny essays for everything from O to The New York Times to The Cup of Joe website. In other words, she's putting a pastiche of writing together and making it work with an insouciance disregard for any and all advice about self branding, or owning a niche, or sticking to one topic or an identity, and in fact, I would argue that insouciance disregard might just be Catherine Newman's brand.Catherine Newman 6:10 Oh, my God, that's it. I just feel like that's the mic drop. I'm so happy. I also feel like you just fully explained all the problems I have. It's my insouciance disregard.Well, I loved your intro. My intro really would have been you know, this is Catherine Newman for me is the writer that, not only a person I adore and know personally, but as a writer she's the one who always figures out the new way to say the thing I have been feeling and yet felt so cliched that I never wrote it down. She always has some new amazing way to state it and then I'm like, 'Oh my gosh, how has no one ever said it that way before?' and it's so true and perfect and beautiful. And you know, for a lot of writers that write about parenting and this whole racket that we call life, often if they have a favorite piece, I often will say let me guess was it by Catherine Newman because her pieces just rank as people's favorites.Jess Lahey 8:00 We love your stuff. But you guys, you and KJ have a much longer relationship than you and I do, Catherine. So KJ, tell them where you guys met.KJ Dell'Antonia 8:09 I don't know where we met. I know that Catherine wrote for me at Motherlode but it must have been Wonder Time. The late great that says that it's not the greatest like the more I say the name now that it's gone, the dumber it sounds, but it really was. Yeah, okay. Soft sigh of regret. And while we're having soft sighs of regret for demises of magazines, I hear Family Circle just tanked. I mean, I know that was like in the fall, but... Catherine Newman 8:49 I know I always feel like I'm there on that tiny little island of sinking magazines.Jess Lahey 8:57 I'm just about to send out an email today saying Hi, want me to write anything? Anything you got - I'll write that thing.KJ Dell'Antonia 9:40 Great. Okay, so here we are, finally, at last.So okay. 65 (not 66) Highly Useful, Super Important Things to Learn Before You're Grown Up. Why that after a resume that includes two parenting memoirs, one crafting book, and one middle grade novel that was my middle grader at the time absolute total favorite, he even reviewed it for Parenting magazine. Yeah, he still looks back on that with fondness because he has a hard time finding books that he likes. Anyway. And so from there you thought I know, the best thing and the easiest thing for me to market next would clearly be a book of useful things to learn before you're grown up. I don't think that's really how you did it.Catherine Newman 10:37 Yeah, no, no, I know. Isn't that crazy? Really, the dirty truth is that I pitched it as a much worse book. I wanted a book, I went to the library to look for a book, I don't know if you ever end up writing this way where it's like, oh, this thing doesn't exist that I assumed existed. But I went to the library to get a book for Bertie, because I wanted her to do more helpful stuff in the house, but she didn't know how to do it. And she didn't want to be taught how to do it by anybody. So this is, second child has been wanting to do it by herself since she was two. And it's really hard with a person like that, who doesn't want to be shown how to do something and then you ask them like, 'Hey, can you clean the bathroom?' And she's like, 'I don't know how to do that.' But then if you try to show her she's pissed. So for Bertie it worked, so I went to the library to get I assumed like DK had made one of those like photo illustrated guides to chores, you know...KJ Dell'Antonia 11:52 I might need that, there are things I don't really know how to do. Truth. Catherine Newman 11:57 So I went to get that book from the library, like I walked in confidently, talked to the librarian and they were like, 'Yeah, we don't have a book like that.' So I was working with Story at the time (the publisher)and who I love and my editor there is an old person from Family Fun who I used to write all this fun stuff with. KJ Dell'Antonia 12:22 That was also a fun place to write.Catherine Newman 12:25 Oh my God, so fun. So she and I had worked on a piece that I think killed me called Chores Fun. So I pitched her the book Chores Fun and I wanted it to be photo illustrated, step by step, DK style. And she was interested, but needless to say that got higher up over there and they were like, 'No...'KJ Dell'Antonia 12:50 And me, I want that book. I would buy 500 copies of that book. Catherine Newman 12:58 So they then said, you know, can you expand it so it's not just that? And so the other thing I really had wanted to write was, I want to say etiquette, but I don't mean in the like uptight, sort of like how to talk to the Queen of England sons, just the like how to communicate sense of etiquette, like how to be a person who needs to communicate with other people. I had wanted to write a book about that, too. And so we sort of merged those. And the book for me is primarily that but then we broke it down a little so it seems like it's many more topics than communicating and like cleaning a bathroom. So there's some stuff about cooking, and some stuff about money, and some stuff about just general skills like you know, changing batteries and that's how it came to be. And so I have found both of my kids with galleys of the book open to learn whatever it is they need to do. Bernie has used the book to tie a necktie and swears it works. And when I had asked them to clean all the bathrooms at Thanksgiving, I went in and the book was like, propped up on the counter in the bathroom.Jess Lahey 14:16 Oh my gosh, that's so brilliant. KJ Dell'Antonia 14:17 I had not thought of that. We've been cleaning bathrooms like crazy around here and yeah, I discovered that one child claimed to have been taught to wipe the toilet with a Clorox wipe and then flush it. And when I tell you that we're on septic I can also tell you that that ended extremely badly with men in the basement and saws. Oh, God, yeah, that's not how to clean a toilet. And I really didn't tell her that either.Catherine Newman 14:47 No, I can imagine.KJ Dell'Antonia 14:49 Anyway, I have now taught this skill, but I feel that it needs refreshing so I'm gonna prop that up. Jess Lahey 14:57 I'm gonna do the same thing. There's that forgetting of things that technically they should know. And as we've talked about a bajillion times for me - that one was laundry and we solved that with the dry erase markers on the washer and dryer with all of the instructions and the bathroom one seems to be the next frontier that we have to handle around here.KJ Dell'Antonia 15:22 Well, the truth is that in this moment, any of us who did have someone who sometimes cleaned for us whether that was frequent or infrequent, don't have that. Anyway, most of us are, even if there's stuff that maybe we didn't have to do before, or we were teaching our kids to do it but they didn't necessarily have to do it I could kind of poke at it and that was fine because the person who really could do it was gonna be there in two weeks. So now it's like yeah, this is how you clean the toilet. Jess Lahey 16:17 Here's the nice thing about this book also is that there are so many times when you show a kid how to do it and you're being a little overly controlling or they're like no one else does that, no one cleans behind the toilet seat, Mom, you can show them a book and say, 'Look, this is how an arbiter of how these things should be done is actually doing things. KJ Dell'Antonia 16:55 So what has it been, like getting out there to share this book that is, in many ways, so different than from what you've done before?Catherine Newman 17:18 I could ask you the same. You know, it's funny. The funny thing for me is that my first two books were so intimate that actually, it was really like trial by fire in terms of publishing. So when people would blur together sort of criticizing the book with criticizing me as a parent or even just me as a person, because the memoir genre kind of invites that and it was really little nerve racking, honestly. And so then after that there was fiction, which is so delightful because it's fiction. And there was a book I did with my friend Nicole, that craft book, which is so delightful, because a) it's a craft book, so no one's gonna, like take my character apart over it and b) it was with a friend. So you know, it's like how I used to love co-teaching when I was teaching, like it's so dreamy to have a partner in something because you're not stranded. So this is none of those. This is not a memoir. It's not fiction. I don't have a partner in it, but it doesn't feel dangerous to me. It just feels like oh, kids need to know how to do stuff. And I feel pretty good about it being useful. So I don't have like weird shame, you know the memoirs for me, I promoted them with shame. I mean, I had blathered on and on about all my deepest fears about parenting and my kids and then I had to go sell it and it was so humiliating and I just am feeling a delightful absence of shame around this book. So I don't know if that's what you asked or how I ended up there. So I'm feeling pretty happy. I feel like it's coming out. I actually weirdly feel like the timing for my book is good because lots of kids are home. Jess Lahey 19:46 I'm in total agreement with you on that one. Catherine Newman 19:50 And I feel like lots of parents genuinely need help. So it doesn't even feel artificial. You know, sometimes you have to teach your kids stuff even though it'd be much easier just to do it. I know you both know that because You both have talked to me about that, but I feel like this moment where I can say hey, I am well to welcome someone make dinner you know it doesn't feel like a learning avenue it's just real life and the kids are in it with us and they're old enough to see it, it doesn't feel contentious and so I guess I feel like this is actually not a bad moment for a book like that. You know, I'm so glad I don't have some book coming out about I don't even know. I think we're lucky like KJ I weirdly feel like this about your book too, that your book even though it's fiction, and it's like this total romance, it's so perfect because it offers something that people need in this moment, like I needed to read about these feuding fried chicken places. And it was like this ace in the hole for me that I knew I could just relax and read it and it was so that it was like the most incredibly pleasurable comforting diversion. So anyway, I feel like it would just be terrible to be coming out with a book that was like entering the workforce or you know, something that was like so not the moment for it...KJ Dell'Antonia 22:06 Thank you for saying lovely things about The Chicken Sisters, I'm super excited to share it. And I am kind of with you, I had a lot of angst around How To Be a Happier Parent because I kept going, it's happier, and not better, either. I felt like, you know, who was I to talk and to say those things and so I felt a lot of stress around that, that I don't feel. You know, it's a fun novel. That's what it's supposed to be. And it is that and it's got pretty yellow cover, and I am looking forward to everyone being able to buy it.Catherine Newman 22:54 No one's hoping to solve a problem with it, except maybe just wanting to be diverted. You won't fail, you know...KJ Dell'Antonia 23:17 Did you find people pushing you to do something else that was more in line with what you've done before? You know does your agent say like 'Well, could you just write another memoir? Or a collection of essays perhaps.'Catherine Newman 23:51 The funny thing is I'm a terrible pitcher. Like I really like for people to come to me and be like, 'You know what we need?' And I'm like, 'Sure, you know, because I am, as I have said for 20 years, I'm just a writing tramp. I will write whatever, as long as it doesn't like conflict with my politics, you know, but I've written you know, whatever copy to say that the tampons not gonna fall out of your body without ever using the word tampon or body. I mean, give me whatever and I will write it. Like I even like being assigned weird stuff because then it's like doing a crossword puzzle. You know, it doesn't ask that much of you emotionally. But, all of that is to say that I am not dying to publish another book of essays or another memoir and maybe at some point, I will. I mean, I have a lot of interest in all of us doing an anthology about like menopause. That would be really, really funny. But, I feel like something collaborative that was like more a collaborative essay project. And I feel the same way about writing about older kids. I would love to do it collaboratively. But I definitely don't want to write a whole book about it. My guess is if I do another book after this, it'll be an adult novel. Adult novel always sounds like it's porn... I have an adult novel I want to write that I've been sort of writing and it's that thing where now I don't know how to write it because I'm starting to lose track of the world before the pandemic, even though I lived in it for 50 years. So I don't know, that's always lingering around as a thing I want to write and then, you know, I want to write another book in this genre for Story for sure. And I wouldn't be surprised if that something happened, I don't know if it would be a follow up, or we would have to see, I guess.Jess Lahey 27:25 So for writers that are wishing they can cobble together this Higgledy Piggledy, a little writing here, a little writing there a little of this genre. How I mean, I know it's impossible to say, I'm assuming you're not going to say, Oh, yes, I had this all written out. 10 years ago. This is exactly the path I have designed for myself.Catherine Newman 27:44 You mean when I was getting a PhD for 10 years, but I then went on to not use? Yeah, that really wasn't the plan. Jess Lahey 27:52 Yeah, that was while I was at law school, learning how to be a juvenile attorney. So you know, for those writers who look to us to have some sort of takeaway about how to create a life around writing for themselves? I mean, do you have anything you could share for us in terms of how you've managed to cobble together this really interesting career?Catherine Newman 28:15 Well, thank you for calling it both Higgledy Piggledy and interesting because I think of it really as both of those. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, nothing that you haven't heard on this podcast before. I feel like the old improv yes and advice I do think about, I say no to nothing. Again, only if it conflicts with my politics. So I've never been proud and I continue not to be, I will write most things and I will work on most projects and I will give it away if it's a worthy cause. I'm more than happy to write something for someone doing something that's important. So I ended up with tons of relationships and I know you're both the same that for both of you that sort of one of the treasures of your writing and publishing life is these ongoing really well nurtured relationships and I don't I do it as well as you guys, truly. But that said, I do maintain relationships with everyone I've ever written for and they end up who knows where like, you write the shitty Kotex copy and then that person goes to O Magazine, I just feel all the time like people move around so much. And as long as I make myself easy to work with, and available, then I feel like I get a lot of assignments just because those two things turn out to be, I think marketable skills weirdly.Jess Lahey 30:10 I find it shocking that you say you're not as good at it because we had never met, I admired your writing so much, and you agreed to have coffee with me never having met me before when I happened to be in your town. So I disagree that you are not very good at cultivating these relationships and you know, whenever I talk about your writing, people talk about the fact that they really admire you as a writer, so I think that you do a really good job of that.Catherine Newman 30:42 Well, thank you. I loved the idea too, that you like called me out of the blue. I totally was already stalking you. KJ Dell'Antonia 30:58 Catherine, I think you have a gig right now that a lot of writers would both kill for and also feel like well hey I could do that, I could weigh in on etiquette issue real simple and getting a column is kind of the gold standard of what people want that's hard to achieve and I get a lot of questions about it and I'm not at all helpful. So I would like to give you the opportunity to be not at all helpful - like how did it happen?Catherine Newman 31:36 Oh my god, it was so like a one thing and another and it was exactly the thing of an editor I'd worked with somewhere unglamorous ended up at Real Simple. And then I wrote something for her there and their etiquette columnist was leaving, they asked me to audition which was so nerve racking. so I The question was something like my cousin without talking to us named her twins after my twins like what would you do?So I it was just luck but a lot of my luckiest things (seemingly luckiest things) come from having said yes to really outrageous things either low paying things or things that I wrote for a good cause. I would just say for me, I think almost everything good in my career has come from a certain openness and willingness. You know, it's like when my kids were little and they were writing thank you notes for shitty presents, you know that they didn't like and weren't happy to get and I would say there's always something true you can say that's gonna be real, like someone gave you a gift that in and of itself is something to be thankful for and you can express that. That sounds so corny, but whatever. That's how I am. And I think like almost any opportunity I'm given to write I do feel like there's an opportunity to make some kind of meaning out of it, if that makes sense. Either to take pleasure in the writing or to say something funny or to get a little philosophy into it or a little politics into it. And so I guess I think of even the weirdest stuff as an opportunity, which I think is a head game I play with myself because I'm never going to be successful enough to not need to keep writing all this stuff all the time. You know, I am just constantly writing and that feeling I have of everything being a little bit of an opportunity, you know, we're all writers, because we're curious about the world, I feel like at bottom, that's probably the main thing we all have in common. And you can always express that, you know what I mean? Even if it's something that feels sort of random. So that's a long way to say that I think every writing gig is an opportunity. I mean, unless somewhere wealthy is grossly under paying you then don't do that. Like they can't do that. That's wrong. But I just mean, you know, some of the stuff that isn't like a perfect fit or isn't high profiler isn't very glamorous, those things have always led to other things for me, almost, almost inevitably, in a way that I feel like is karmic in the true sense of what you put out into the world comes back to you.KJ Dell'Antonia 34:51 We talk about things in that category a lot because we make a practice of getting annoyed with each other whenever we say I got lucky because yes, we have been lucky but yeah, fortune favors the well prepared. You know, Dax Shepard can't ask you on his podcast and Kristen Bell can't share your book unless you have written it and perhaps presented it to her. Yes, some things land and some things don't. But if you don't throw any paper airplanes up ain't nothing gonna hit.Catherine Newman 36:05 I feel like it's partly luck and partly this other gendered thing, which is I am a pleaser and I have really mixed feelings about that because on the one hand like I have raised Bertie to not be a pleaser...KJ Dell'Antonia 36:25 You wrote about that for me at Motherlode and it's such a hysterical piece and it made people so delighted and so angry at the same time.Catherine Newman 36:32 Yeah, but I am such a pleaser and that has served me really well in my career. And I never as a feminist, I always have really mixed feelings about it because some of it feels really gendered to me that I'm friendly. Let me say as a side note to my own comment that I was just making. I think one of the beauties of freelancing is that you can't take any of your relationships for granted and you shouldn't anyway, I mean, I really feel that right. If you're in a workplace, you should always be nurturing your relationships and taking care of everybody in that way. But freelancing, no one ever has to hire you again. It reminds me a little bit, if you will, of waiting tables, which I was excellent at. Where you're always gonna do best if you were your sort of best self if what you put out is the best version of yourself it's gonna bring you the best work and connect you to the best people. And the truth is, it actually makes my life good because I mostly have positive interactions and that's so much better for me than getting into bed at night and be like Oh God, I had the worst interaction with somebody. So if something's kind of weird I'll like die about it. And I just feel like freelancing I mostly have to be somebody that people would want to hire. You know, I know I keep sounding like such a w***e. But there it is.KJ Dell'Antonia 38:21 That's kind of how it works some of the time. So Catherine, what have you been reading?Catherine Newman 39:59 So truly The Chicken Sisters was my segue back into reading but I wanted to mention a book that actually I was reading right before that, which was (I don't know if you've talked about it on the podcast), but the Chanel Miller book, Know My Name. I admired it so much. I just love her and I love her as an illustrator and I just love everything about her. And as a memoir, I thought the gift of being able to write about something so terrible, with so much love and optimism just blew me away. Like, it's everything I ever sort of wanted to be as a writer. And that book just killed me. I thought it was so incredibly good. I almost wanted to read it again to study it.Jess Lahey 41:32 I didn't know she was a writer, so I was a little nervous. And then I was so blown away, especially towards the second half. I found there were a few moments in the first half where I wasn't totally with her, but then it just picked up steam in terms of it felt to me almost that she got to be a better writer during the process of writing it and at the end of it I went off for a walk in the woods by myself because I had to sort of just process that book. It was exquisite. It was so well doneCatherine Newman 41:59 I had honestly just the exact same. I read it because I felt like this kind of moral obligation as a feminist not to turn away from the story, was so I felt like I should read this book. I picked it up with a dread of obligation. And then it's just sang, it was so beautiful. So that book and Bertie read it after and was crazy about it. And so that book, I have other books, but I want to hear what you're reading, too. Jess Lahey 42:47 KJ, you want to go next?KJ Dell'Antonia 42:57 I've started some books. Okay. I'm going to tell you that I'm rereading a book, because I can tell you with confidence that I love this book and I have enjoyed it. I think this is a multiple read. I've read this many times because it's just soothing and kind of wonderful. And I think I've talked about it on the podcast. Catherine Newman 43:15 Can I guess? Is it I Capture the Castle?KJ Dell'Antonia 43:19 No, but I do like that. No, not at all. It's a memoir, and it's called Recipes for a Beautiful Life by Rebecca Berry. She wrote it in like 2008 or it takes place in like 2008 so it's got a lot of the the economy crash in there as she and her family are moving. We all know I'll read anything in which a family moves to a small town in a rural place and makes a new life for themselves. Anyway, I have really enjoyed that. So that is what I can guarantee for you. I have started The Henna Artist and I really like it so far. I'm gonna mangle her name so I'm going to look it up for the show notes. At chapter three I'm really liking it, but we all know how that could go, but I don't think it will.Jess Lahey 44:22 Well I have to start with I listened to the audio of Sarina Bowen's newest book Sure Shot and I got to talk about it with her because she did some really interesting things in there and we were talking a little bit. We were talking about authors who are gardeners and they plant seeds for new things and Sarina just did an exquisite job in this book. I love her books from just a listening to the story perspective but I also love watching her go and sort of planting the seeds for the books that will follow in the series because she writes books in a series and this is one of the Brooklyn Bruisers hockey books and I just from a technical perspective adored listening to Sure Shot her new hockey romance. But it's funny KJ that you said the thing about small town and comfort and making a life in a small town thing because my comfort listen this past couple of weeks on and off has been Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver because I've been prepping my gardens, I've spent so much time not writing as much but doing a ton of gardening and so listening to Barbara Kingsolver while I do that has been has been just wonderful. And the last thing I just finished last night was another Harlan Coben, this one was called Missing You and it was really clever. And we have to try to get Harlan Coben on the show because he does this thing that Sarina had told me about that he's known for, which is the the climax at the end of the book, except it's got two peaks, not one. Like you think you've hit the climax and you have the answers and then he hits you again, with a second sort of twist climax. And it's so it's his thing. He does it over and over and over again. And he's so good at it. The guy plots a book like nobody's business, so I'm dying to talk to him. So if anyone out there knows Harlan Coben, I would love to talk to him about how he plots his books. But anyway, so that's been what I've been listening to and it's been all listening. A little bit of reading books in hand but mostly listening because I've been out in the garden. Catherine Newman 47:25 Can I mention one other book? I just so what I just read is my friend Amity Gage's book, Sea Wife. And it's not at all comforting at all takes place on a sailboat. And it's a young family, a married couple and kids on this sailboat and it's a kind of a thriller and kind of a mystery. And I feel like it's one of the best books I've ever read about parenting even though it's a novel, and I tore through it but it's very breathless and like terrifying so...KJ Dell'Antonia 48:10 Well that has its place at the moment, too. Because then you forget where you are. Catherine Newman 48:15 I was really caught up in it and it's also just incredibly lyrical. Like some of the sentences I would read twice just because it was so gorgeous. So I'm recommending that as a total escape-like thriller.Jess Lahey 48:54 I went yesterday, I have to say I went yesterday to pick up a book from the Vermont Bookshop in Middlebury, Vermont, and there was no one at the shop but they had this beautiful cart outside the door with everyone's orders labeled and covered with some plastic and it was just the most delightful way to get out and and go 'shopping' even though I couldn't shop it worked really nicely. Booksellers are working so hard to make that work. Catherine, thank you for being so patient with us while we worked out the details of how we were going to have you on the show. It shouldn't have taken us this long, but we're very happy that you were patient with us.Catherine Newman 49:48 Oh my gosh, my pleasure. Talking to you is a highlight of my week and life.Jess Lahey 49:55 Well, and I'm going to recommend that people go ahead and preorder How to Be a Person...KJ Dell'Antonia 50:03 They won't have to preorder it will be out by the time this is out.Jess Lahey 50:07 It's just such a delightful book. It's such a fun read, I'm going to be giving it as like part of a baby gift. I'm going to have copies around to give to people constantly. I have a neighbor I'm giving it to as a gift. So I'm so excited to have just multiple copies around the house.Catherine Newman 50:26 You guys are so supportive I could cry. Jess Lahey 50:33 Oh Catherine, where can people find you if they want to find out more about your higgledy piggledy career?Catherine Newman 51:06 CatherineNewman writer.com I think.Jess Lahey 51:44 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. Get access to private episodes at amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

If you – like us – are prone to parental guilt, struggle with pandemic parenting, and wonder if it’s possible to satisfy your own soul while raising kiddos then this is the episode for you! Dive in and join Yael for a candid discussion with KJ Dell’Antonia, former editor of The New York Times Motherlode Blog and author of How to Be a Happier Parent: Raising a Family, Having a Life and Loving (Almost) Every Minute. KJ offers practical advice for pandemic parenting, on mindset shifts to increase parenting satisfaction, and in raising happy, healthy, capable, and resilient kids. Listen and Learn Why happier parents make for happier kidsWhy you can be happy – even when your children aren’t4 things happy parents do wellHow to find success with kids and chores How to approach screen time                            Why not accommodate your kid’s every whim                              About KJ Dell’Antonia DJ Dell'Antonia KJ Dell’Antonia is the author of How to Be a Happier Parent: Raising a Family, Having a Life and Loving (Almost) Every Minute and a regular contributor to the New York Times, where she covers the personal and policy aspects of parenthood. Her research, interviews and reporting on the topic are geared towards helping all of us figure out “how it’s done” in the bits of family life we find most challenging. KJ is the former editor of The New York Times’ Motherlode blog and co-host of the #AmWriting podcast. An attorney and former prosecutor, KJ is a graduate of Kansas State University and the University of Chicago Law School. She lives in Lyme, New Hampshire with her husband and four children. Resources Diana's free resource "My Summer Map for Kids"How to Be a Happier Parent: Raising a Family, Having a Life and Loving (Almost) Every Minute by KJ Dell’Antonia“Why I Won’t Sacrifice My Sanity to My Kid’s Online Schooling” WBUR April 27, 2020 Commentary by KJ Dell’Antonia“What Happened to American Childhood?” The Atlantic April 17, 2020 Article by Kate Julian“Turn Your Demanding Child Into a Productive Co-Worker” New York Times April 30, 2020 Article by Michaeleen Doucleffkjdellantonia.comInstagram and the #BooksThatWon’tBumYouOut seriesTwitter: @KJDellAntoniaFacebookKJ’s irregular emails about creative family life: http://followkj#AmWriting PodcastThe Chicken Sisters by KJ Dell’Antonia (released June 30, 2020) 141. Educating Our Kids at Home with Julie Bogart75. Mindful-Self Compassion with Dr. Christopher Germer 113. Self-Compassion for Parents with Dr. Susan Pollak24. Choosing Both: Straddling Meaningful Career and Parenthood with Dr. Yael Schonbrun

In this fun episode, Sarah & Laura chat a bit about their summer reading plans, and then they REALLY get into book talk with author KJ Dell'Antonia! KJ's latest release is a novel The Chicken Sisters, and along with that she recommends and describes a slew of other titles, many with instantly attention-grabbing themes and features. There is a reading recommendation for everyone in this episode, as KJ shares favorite and up and coming beach reads, literary fiction picks, thrillers, non-fiction, and more! In the Q&A, a reader with one 10 month old writes in with a tricky dilemma. She wants more children, but her partner wants her to choose between advancing in her career and growing the family.  

On this episode, Carly and Jade talk with KJ Dell’Antonia, author of “How To Be A Happier Parent,” about exactly what it takes to be “happier” now. Is it ok to not answer an email from a friend for weeks? We’ll get the answer. Plus, what are your Memorial Day plans? Follow KJ on Instagram: @KJDA   Follow Jade on Instagram: @JadeLizRoper Follow Carly on Instagram: @CarlyWad Follow Reviver Jewelry: @ReviverJewlery Visit Reviver Jewelry's Website Listen to Carly’s Album “Dream Train”   Please support our sponsors: 1-800-Contacts BrickHouse MyBillie.com/Mommies Literati.com/mommies Homer

We're here today with Jennie Nash, book coach and founder/CEO of Author Accelerator. Jennie has spent more than 30 years in the publishing industry. With 9 books under her belt, and more than a decade coaching bestselling authors like Lisa Cron and KJ Dell'Antonia, she definitely knows what she's talking about from both sides of the desk. Jennie's latest book, Read Books All Day and Get Paid For It, about the book coaching industry, came out in January. She sat down with us this week to talk book coaching -- why you should get one, when to know you're ready, and how she works with her clients -- and we also ended up getting a little mini-coaching ourselves. We hope you love listening as much as we loved talking to Jennie! You can find Jennie online at jennienash.com or authoraccelerator.com. If you're interested in what's probably her most famous tool, the Inside Outline, head to authoraccelerator.com/marginally. As always, we'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review us in your podcast app, as this helps other listeners find the show.  Visit our website, marginallypodcast.com, for complete show notes and to get in touch. Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcast. Meghan's occasionally on Twitter @meghanembee, and Olivia’s @roamingolivia Theme music is "It's Time" by Scaricá Ricascá 

We loved this fun, helpful conversation about HAPPINESS with KJ Dell’Antonia, author of How to Be a Happier Parent and the upcoming novel The Chicken Sisters. We’re discussing how happiness does -- and doesn’t -- look different these days, where we’re lowering expectations,, surviving vs thriving, finding silver linings and little spots of joy, and above all, reminding ourselves that NO it’s not selfish to want to be happy right now. Happier parents = happier families. Right?  Thanks to our sponsor Breyers CarbSmart, delicious treats with just 3-5 net grams carbs per serving. Listen for an exclusive discount offer!  Join us on Facebook, follow us on social media @coolmompicks, and HEY! We’re even offering up tips, hacks, and humor on TikTok now @coolmompicks.  Thanks again for subscribing, listening, and your wonderful, funny ratings and reviews which make us happy too!

One thing that KJ Dell'Antonia has learned over her years of researching families: we all want to have more joy in parenting. She says that we need to do less to experience more happiness day to day. Is there a better way to simplify parenting than that? This episode is full of actionable and easy to implement tips for all of us to be better—and happier—parents.For show notes, visit: www.momswhoknowpodcast.comWhat One Little Thing are you going to do differently because of what you’ve heard today? Let me know! www.instagram.com/momswhoknowpodcast or www.facebook.com/momswhoknowpodcastgroupDid you leave a review? Get your thank you gift here: http://bit.ly/simplethankyouVisit Kj at www.kjdellantonia.comToday's episode is sponsored by Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls Podcast, a fairytale podcast for kids about extraordinary women from all over the world. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Back in December 2019, we set #WriterGoals for 2020.We had no idea. This week, we go back in and revisit—which goals still stand? Which do we have to let go, and which just don’t feel right any more? Was there any point in setting these goals in the first place?In the end, we decide (not very cheerfully, it has to be admitted) that while our goals are necessarily changing, they’re always worth setting and revisiting. We’ll all be settling down to think differently about what we hope for in what’s left of 2020. Are you revising your 2020 goals, or sticking to plan A? Head over to the #AmWriting Facebook group and tell us about it.#AmReadingKJ: Undercover Bromance by Lyssa Kay AdamsThe Body in the Garden by Katharine SchellmanSarina: The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady HendrixJess: Audible Original: David Sedaris, Themes and VariationsRat by Stephen King (found in the If It Bleeds novella collection)Hey—now is a great time to check out our sponsor, Author Accelerator, where you can launch a career as a book coach or get paired with the right coach to get your project moving. And if you’d like to support the creation of #AmWriting, we’d appreciate your help! Supporters get weekly Minisodes or Writer Top Fives—and our undying gratitude. Want in? Click the button. KJ (00:01):Hey everyone. KJ. Here we are talking writer goals again this week. It's our midyear review - pandemic style. If you're setting your own goals for the rest of 2020 our sponsor Author Accelerator can help you start a new side gig as a book coach or match you with a coach who can help you work through challenges both on the page and in the calendar for getting your current project done. Find out more at authoraccelerator.com/amwriting. Is It recording?Jess (00:33):Now it's recording. Go ahead.KJ (00:35):This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.Jess (00:39):Alright, let's start over.KJ (00:40):Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay. Now one, two, three. Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is the podcast about writing all the things, short things, long things, fiction, nonfiction, essays, pitches, proposals, and as we say every week, this is the podcast about sitting down and getting your work done.Jess (01:11):I'm Jess Lahey. I'm the author of The Gift of Failure and a forthcoming book about preventing substance abuse in kids called The Addiction Inoculation. And you can find my writing at places like the Atlantic and the New York Times and the Washington Post.Sarina (01:25):And I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of some romance novels. My most recent USA Today bestseller was Heartland, which came out in early 2020.KJ (01:35):And I am KJ Dell'Antonia, the author of the novel, The Chicken Sisters, which is coming out in June of this year as well as How To Be a Happier Parent already long out in hardback, but coming out in paperback this summer. And actually that's still happening, which I'm pretty pleased about. And the former editor of the Motherlode blog at the New York Times where I am still a reasonably regular contributor. And that's who we are. And where we are is in our houses, which is actually where we all are. But you know, it bears mentioning on this the 9th of May, 2020. Yeah.Jess (02:15):Which contributes to our topic today. You want to tell everybody what we want to talk about today?KJ (02:22):Oh sure. So we're gonna revisit our goals. Every year around this time we like to take a little mid-year review. We usually do it in June, so I guess we're doing it a touch early, but it has occurred to us that perhaps some of our goals are not going to be the same for the rest of the year. So it seemed like it was a good time to sit down and take a look at what we thought we were going to achieve, what we have achieved and what we're still hoping to achieve. So we've all got them lined up right here in front of us and away we go.Jess (02:56):Who wants to go first?Sarina (02:57):I would love to open.Jess (03:00):Oh, please do.Sarina (03:02):Well, you know, we all are fans of Dan Blank who has been a guest on this podcast and also has his own terrific podcast as well. And Dan Blank's podcast is called The Creative Shift. So he sends out a weekly newsletter that is pure gold and you should subscribe.KJ (03:26):It really is, it's one of the best ones I know of.Sarina (03:29):So, two Fridays ago, he sent one out that began with sharing a New Yorker cartoon that really speaks to what it's like to be a writer right now. And it's a picture of a guy in a rowboat in the middle of a choppy body of water. And you can see there's a shark, and there's a ship sinking behind him, and there's lightning, and it's raining. And the caption says, 'This is it - the time to finish your novel.' And I love it desperately because, you know, remember back in March when we were all like, Hey, what are we going to accomplish while we're stuck at home? Or how about when the three of us (and I'm so happy we did this, I wouldn't change a thing), but we sat and recorded an episode in December right before our office party where we go out together for lunch and we very cheerfully made a list of goals for 2020. Not having any clue that 2020 would shape up to be quite unlike most of the other years that we've sat around planning things together. So I think we should revisit those goals and see what is capable on here. And what have we learned about goal making from our lists.Jess (04:54):I was going to say the first thing I've learned is to be flexible, and to shift, and to adjust to your surroundings. Cause clearly that's the theme of the day. Alright. So what'd you have on there, Ms. Sarina?Sarina (05:10):Well, you know, many of my goals could really stand up in terms of getting the same things done. Especially where I had goals about helping other people, and helping other authors, and helping other women. And those things are all still true and I've been trying to do more of that. But of course I had some goals about like how much I was going to accomplish in terms of writing. And, you know, I'm not teaching anybody to read right now because my kids are old enough to handle this stuff by themselves. But, I didn't count account for my own potential anxiety and the difficulties of making career decisions when the whole world seems to be shifting. So goal I'm having the most trouble with is the one where I was writing an entire book to give to my agent to sell in a new genre for me and that suddenly feels insurmountable even though my work day could look the same because I don't know if that part of publishing is going to be there for me when I'm done. And that's like a mental obstacle to doing that.Jess (06:19):You mean the YA genre?Sarina (06:21):Yeah. Well, you know, unfortunately I have a lot of knowledge of economics and I'm watching businesses fail around me. And I have like a mental block about writing into a publishing world that might not exist when I'm done.Jess (06:42):Yeah, I hear that. Absolutely.KJ (06:47):I am still plowing through, my top number one goal was to finish a book that has now got a different title than it had in my list of goals, but that is fine. Who knows what the title is going to be, but that was my top number one goal was to finish it, and then hopefully get it out, and pitch it to editors. And that is still my top goal despite the obvious changes in the publishing market. I'm not struggling with that as much, but it's probably because I don't have the alternative that you have. Like you could put your time into stuff that you can independently publish and you know you will be there, and readers will be there, and digital book sales will be there. So, it's different, you've got a different choice there.Sarina (07:42):I was just going to say that the fact that most of my publishing is digital is such a blessing and I just don't discount it at all. And also my fear about that other project is not entirely rational, but part of me is in that rowboat with the guy in the thunder storm. And I'm not sure what to do about that. Like how to disembark.Jess (08:09):Well, it was interesting, someone asked a question in the #AmWriting Facebook group this week about this question and said, 'You know, what's everyone doing? Like are we pitching? Are we querying? Are agents picking up new clients? And are people buying books?' And so I went ahead and asked our agent and I said, 'I don't have to quote you or anything.' And she said, 'Hell yes, people are buying.' She said, she's had a couple of auctions. She said, you can totally quote me that people are buying, people are looking, that things are still chugging along in book sale world. I think a lot of people are scared about releasing right now, which is a really scary, new world sort of situation. But people are still buying books. People are still picking up new writers. So there was that sort of gut check of, Oh, there is some normalcy happening out there and our agent is not the kind of person to be you know, to be blindly optimistic. She's the kind of person to give it to you like it is.KJ (09:18):Yeah. Or even worse than it is. My fiction agent says the same thing and my editor says she's acquiring. So people are acquiring of course, whether they're like whistling Dixie and a thunderstorm is another question. But, they're trying, everybody wants to keep going. And I would like to have a book to sell them. I would very much like to have a book to sell them. What I am finding is that the speed at which I can complete this is totally different than it used to be. Even when I'm sitting down to work, I can't work as fast. Both because I think my focus is off and because my house is full of people. People everywhere, everywhere I look, there's another person and they eat. They just won't stop eating.Jess (10:25):Yeah. I'm the place of, Oh my gosh, dinner really does happen every single day. Like everyone's on their own for breakfast and lunch. But that dinner thing, that's our sort of reconnect with each other. We're still doing dinner. Dinner is important to us. And because I have big eaters, they tend to start asking at like 4:45. I'll get these texts. So what's the thought for dinner? So dinner happens every day, shockingly. And that's actually been, if anything, a positive for our family. So having something, you know, to eat evening and sit down and even if it's just like last night I threw together a soup. It's been a good thing, but it is shocking to me how much they can eat. But on the other hand, like our grocery bills are freaking me out. But on the other hand we are not eating out at all. So we don't even do takeout. But KJ, did you finish? Can I start talking about mine? Because mine go in a weird direction.KJ (11:26):Well I didn't. I mean, the goal of finishing that book is the only one that stays the same. I have essay goals on here and I am just not feeling the essays right now cause it feels like the only essays I can write would be about this. And I don't want to write about this. I really don't. I know a lot of people do, but I really, really, really, really, really don't. So you know, I had humor on here. I wanted to do some of that. Does it have to be covid humor? I don't know. So there's that. My promotion goals around The Chicken Sisters, the ones that are on here are still the same because... Podcast goals. Yeah. Well the shift is in how, but I didn't really write how into my goals.Jess (12:20):No, I mean the real fact for you is that some of the things that you were counting on, some of them in there are not happening.KJ (12:28):So, no, but it's not like everybody else is out there hawking their books face to face and I'm not, so I am not as bothered by that as as I might be. You know, the advantage to it (as an introvert who's not super into travel) I really wanted to do these things, but not doing them is okay too. In some ways.Jess (12:57):Can I just offer another silver lining to this though, is that it's unbelievable to me how generous other writers are being with each other right now. I know you and I have both bought a bunch of books that we may or may not ever read just because we're supporting our fellow authors out there. And I think it's a fantastic thing. And I mentioned in another podcast that I'm a new devotee of this long form podcast and on that they're talking to a lot of writers right now who are trying to release books during this and they're talking about the generosity of other authors. So that's been really lovely to see. So hopefully some of that will kick in for you too, KJ.KJ (13:37):I think it will. I feel pretty good and I'm having a really good time. One thing I'm having a good time with is that when this all started someone mentioned to me that the warehouse might not be able to send out advanced copies anymore. And I went, 'Oh, so wait, they're just sitting there? So would they just put them in a box and send them to me?' So they did. I basically have all the remaining advanced reader copies. And so I'm sending the Good Reads giveaway winner copies and I'm sending all the bookstagrammers and I ultimately spent a lot of time sort of going, which would be the very best bookstagrammers. And last week I was just like, you know, I'm just going to send these to the bookstagrammers that I follow and that follow me and that are sort of in my universe and that'll be happy and excited to get it. And I've been doing that and it feels really fun. So that's entertaining.Jess (14:40):That's a very cool thing. Plus, you know, there's the whole decorating of them. But Sarina, you had something you wanted to mention to KJ.Sarina (14:46):I did because when she was talking about essays, it made me realize that how much of the news I'm reading is all focused on the same thing. So that means that relevancy is suddenly like a little bit of a wrench in our goals because you could still write essays, you still have the time, and you still have the voice, but the relevancy of the things that you were probably going to work on is just gone. And I'm struggling with some relevancy, too. It takes a whole lot of optimism to write romance and you know, I'm a little bit stuck on that. And even just literally, I looked at the epilogue of one of my hockey books and I had my team winning the cup in June of 2020 and guess what? There isn't even going to be a cup in June of 2020 and it never occurred to me. Like I try not to paint myself into a corner. I do it all the time anyway, but it never in my wildest dreams occurred to me that there would not be a champion.Jess (15:53):It takes an extra layer of imagination, too. I mean, you're already constructing new worlds for your books and now suddenly you're having to like construct a whole world for your own world so that you can construct those. I mean, you have to have a certain level of optimism. You have to have a certain level of ability to envision a world in which your characters are not going through this, not touching each other thing. And I mean, look at that. You are trying to write about people who are so much touching each other in a world where no one's allowed to touch each other. I mean, it's a really weird thing.Sarina (16:25):It is. And I saw a really funny tweet from a narrator who was doing a book and he, without naming the book said, 'You know, this book really confused me. I was telling my friend because it not a lot happens. There's not a lot of conflict. They go to Ikea and buy some furniture and I was just waiting for the conflict.' And the friend said to this narrator, 'Dude, what you just described is like science fiction at this point.'Jess (16:56):That's true. That's absolutely true. Yeah. Alright, well I wanted to talk about the fact that so I actually did finish the edits on my manuscript. That was my number one goal, finish the edits on the manuscript and you know, it wasn't anything like Gift of Failure but there was still some heavy lifting to do. And I got them done. I'm looking at the date actually I got them done well before the date that I was hoping to get them done by. And the reason I wanted to get them done by that date was that I wanted to have a new proposal or at least the shortened version to show my agent cause she has no idea still what I'm thinking about. And I wanted to have that to her by April 15th and of course that was smack in the middle of just trying to wrap my head around all of this stuff. And you know, for me also personally, it's been anxiety provoking. Like I can sit here in my house, in the woods. I was telling my husband, this is a really weird paradoxical thing. I don't go out very often, obviously, but when I do go out, I get pretty depressed because here in my home I can ignore it and I can kind of forget about it for short periods of time. But going out in the world has been just scary and weird and anyway, so the worst of this stuff has come right at a time when I was hoping to get a new proposal done. And so what I've decided to do is give myself a break and I'm doing a lot of my research through audio. And while I'm listening, I keep a notebook near me, but I am outside. Because for the first time since I started a speaking career that runs on an academic schedule, I've never been home in time to get really good gardens ready for the growing season. And I definitely never got gardens in my new house. And I've always felt a little adrift without my gardens. So I've been giving myself a big fat break. And I leave the house as soon as I'm done with my stuff in the morning and I go outside and I don't come in until I have to get that infernal daily dinner thing going again. I walk in at the end of the day and I look at my husband and I say, 'I am just so happy outside.' And the other thing was because of all this anxiety, I wasn't sleeping very well and just exhausting myself during the day outside, and just being sore, and tired, and drained has been much better for my sleep. So I'm giving myself a big fat break right now, in terms of the writing part. Definitely still researching, loving listening to all the audio, but giving myself a big fat break, thinking of it as a little vacation has been really important to me. And I have gardens now. I have the bare bones gardens down and it makes me so happy and I finally feel like this house is mine again. You know, it finally is a place where I live. And and that's been fantastic. So yeah. And then the rest of my goals were things like, so finish the edits, got those done on time, finish the new proposal, totally didn't happen on time. But that was my own internal schedule and that's okay. And then back with you on the essay thing, cause I had complete five essays for collection by the end of the year. I've definitely thought about them. And for me that's a big thing cause I do a lot of the thinking, the writing internally first, and then I just of get it down. But yeah, I'm not writing about covid and these essays are about things that are so unrelated to that. And so it's just been close to impossible to get that essay writing done. But I'm feeling better now and I feel like that's going to come back online really soon. Our friend Mary Laura Philpott has sold a new essay collection and I happen to know that she's trying to get down to work on that. And so, I'm sort of mentally trying to partner with Mary Laura and be thinking about those essays. Spanish was a big one and I haven't done that. I just absolutely 100% failed at that. We had some goals around Spanish that were going to culminate with some big Spanish speaking for a trip that got canceled. Well and now my thoughts have shifted also to things like I'm starting to freak out about some of the spring speaking events. You know, a big source of my anxiety around an inability to stay focused for a few minutes at a time has to do with money stuff because my non-writing income went poof. And that's the majority of my income. So that's been challenging. And my husband works for a hospital that just announced that all of the top level people will all take pay cuts. And so my husband's taking a pay cut in the midst of this as well. And then if anyone's been following my social media, they know we just spent the equivalent of a small used car on our dog who almost died. So that's a stressful thing, too. And yet we're so fortunate, I'm not scared about paying our rent, but I am just anxious. If I had to rewrite my goals now, it would be do more of what's making me feel really good right now. And that's making me feel really good right now.KJ (22:42):Well that's a good question. Are we going to rewrite our goals? I think it might be worth sitting down and doing. Because one of the other reason that some of this stuff happened - I've got some goals here around the podcast, and the email list, and marketing with other podcasts. There's no reason I can't do those things other than that I've got about three hours of brain power in me every day and I use it up on writing the book and then I just have so much less steam than I used to have. I don't know. I guess it's the anxiety, I guess it's that. But you know, I used to be able to sort of write in the morning and then go back to do all the other stuff in the afternoon. And it's also all the household stuff. It's all this stuff, all this stuff. And some of these are just like we were saying, I just don't necessarily want to focus on that as much anymore.Jess (23:37):Okay, well then put a line through it. I'm putting a line through the Spanish one. I'm letting myself off the hook for that. You know what, I was just looking at number five, which was one email a month for my email list. And my email list has gone up a lot this year because of some high visibility podcasting I've done. But I'm really glad we're doing this today because that is a good kick in the pants for me. But you know what I've done that's been also really wonderful. I think I'm just missing teaching so much that I've been doing this thing on Twitter where I teach about rhetorical devices and I do a long thread and you could see the smile on my face while I'm doing them. It makes me so happy. I'm like pulling all these books off the shelves and it's teaching and I'm having so much fun. So I'm going to keep doing that. And you know, doing more of that I think would be really super fun for me. So I may even stick that in instead.KJ (24:37):That is so funny because I said one of the things we could talk about today is changing our approach to social media. And you said, 'Oh, I didn't change anything.' I was like, 'Yes, you did.' That's what I was thinking of. You know, we're filling in some gaps of things that we used to do in real life with social media. And I feel like that is one for you. And if you could or wanted a new teaching job, you certainly couldn't get it now. So you have found that. I've been connecting a lot more on Instagram. I've been going back into Twitter, which I had been out of for literally years. Trying to find ways to use Facebook that don't involve getting sucked in. And actually I'm on Instagram way too much. I need to stop. But also feeling like it really is providing a connection and a place to talk about books and things that are important to me. Like these are the conversations I might normally be having, like at a hockey game or in line at the grocery store or at the bookstore over coffee or whatever. And now they're taking place online in different ways. So that was what I was thinking of, but I was also thinking about you. How about you, Sarina, have you changed your social media at all?Sarina (25:54):Well yeah, but it's not all sunny around here. I've had to take some breaks, some like multi-day breaks from social media just because it feeds my anxiety when I can see people sort of emoting about the same things that I'm worried about. I have to walk away because sometimes it just amplifies all the things I'm worried about. So I think taking some steps back has really helped me. And plus I don't want to amplify my own...I feel very brittle right now and I don't really want to be brittle on social media, so I've just had to sort of back away.Jess (26:37):It's funny you say that because now thinking back, just about every time you text that you're freaking out about something, it's because you saw something on social media that just triggered you. So I think that's fantastic.Sarina (26:47):I mean, I'm more caught up on news right now than I've ever been in my entire life, but it's not such a great thing because the reason I can't walk away from Washington Post and the New York Times is that I'm looking for someone to tell me what's going to happen. And of course they can't really do that, but that's why I keep going back. So I've had to kind of step away from that, too. Not because news is bad, but because it can't serve what I'm really searching for.Jess (27:22):Didn't you say that you were on Google for something and you realize that there was a commonly searched for question on Google, which was what's going to happen? I don't think Google can even do that.Sarina (27:42):I love to see what other people are searching on Google. And I will stop and screenshot them if they're particularly wonderful.Jess (27:52):Oh, can I tell you something really cool? At Google headquarters in California I got to speak there after Gift of Failure came out and they took me through and I got a really cool tour and one of the things they have as a staircase and on the riser for each step of the staircase are the most Googled things so you can watch in real time on the staircase as all the things that people are Googling changes. And it was really cool while I was there looking at other stuff. They also have this room you can stand in and it screens all around you like floor to ceiling screens all around you and you can enter any search term you want. It could be you, for example. So I entered Jessica Lahey to see sort of what the world sees when they look at me across all platforms. And it allows you to see like does your website match up? You know, do you have a brand that has unifying themes, blah blah blah. And it was just really interesting to see how does my website match up with what's going on on Twitter and what's going on on all these different platforms. It was really kind of cool. That was kind of fun. But I'm sorry I totally took things off the rails because you were talking about what's going to happen and no one being able to tell you that.Sarina (29:07):Yep. And they still can't so it doesn't really matter.Jess (29:09):Well what has been interesting is from, and I know you're looking a lot at a lot of this through an economic lens, cause that's who you are. But my son is studying economics and can you imagine - this is when my kid is getting his introduction to the world of economics, like this is such a weird and bizarre time and he has a summer job that is (and I don't think I'm allowed to say where it is yet because I don't think anything's been signed) but it's at the epicenter of what's going on economically. And so we've been talking about it a lot, but from a very academic perspective, which has been interesting. I guess it allows me to sort of set it over there and have a bit of a reserve around it. But I mean it's not like it's good news. It's just academic instead of about like our personal economic situation. Can I interject one tiny thing? Can you all look at your word? I have them all in front of me right now. How are you feeling about your words?Sarina (30:18):I still like my word.KJ (30:18):I hate my words.Jess (30:23):Okay. Well my word was practice and I'm actually still feeling good about that because it's a good reminder to me that it's not about having these huge breakthroughs. It's about the daily practice of either thinking about structuring, blah, blah, blah. So I'm still happy with that. Sarina, your word was, do you remember?Sarina (30:39):Abundance.Jess (30:40):How are you feeling about that?Sarina (30:41):Well, honestly, I should still tape it up into every room I walk through because the truth is it's pretty abundant around here. Ebooks are still performing. My life is fine. It's just a little more anxious than it used to be.KJ (30:59):And my word was magic and I'm not feeling very magical right now. Although honestly, I am up and down every day. I don't want to be Pollyanna about this. Nobody is happy about what is happening, but I suppose it is a little magical that my family has not killed each other in the 67 days that we have been largely cooped up together. That is kind of magical. And I was thinking that I might put some magic in a next book draft, after this one. I don't know, maybe that will happen. Yeah, magic did not turn out to be a super helpful for this time.Jess (32:11):Speaking of magical thinking and inhabiting fantasy lands that don't exist. Should we talk a little bit about what we've been reading? Alright. Sarina you want to lead off again since you went first last time?Sarina (32:24):Well, I'm reading something that KJ gave me. The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix. This was a book that spotted before KJ bought it and I thought, I'm just happy that book exists. The writing is terrific. His writing game is super strong from the first paragraph of the prologue and I am intrigued.Jess (32:58):Oh, good. Cool. What about you KJ?KJ (33:01):Well, I'm reading a book, Sarina gave me. I am reading Undercover Bromance by Alyssa Kay Adams. We need to book club on this one, Sarina. We need to have a discussion, but like her previous book in this series, The Bromance Book Club. It is fun, satisfying, fast paced, and distracting. And that's about everything I ask of a book right now. And I also am reading The Body in the Garden by Catherine Schellman. This is a historical mystery and I have not read very much in the mystery genre for many, many years. And it's kind of fun to see that in a same way that historical romances have taken a real turn for having a modern way of thinking within the historical romance as opposed to trying to keep people thinking as they might have in the time. This mystery also sort of falls into that category. It has a modern attitude within a historical time and space and that makes it fun. And that's by Catherine Schellman. So again, fun, distracting, light. Just what we need.Jess (34:16):Yeah, I I have a book I want to talk about today cause there's something really interesting in it and it's not something that you guys normally read is two things. Number one for the audio listeners out there David Sedaris released an Audible original. It's not a huge deal. Don't get too excited. It's only 30 minutes long. It's called Themes and Variations, but it's essentially him just riffing about the people he talks to on book tour and the things they talk about. I think it was like $1.89 or something like that. But I got so excited when I saw it and I've already listened to it three times just because I needed a little David Sedaris back in my life. But the thing I went and listened to is I saw that there was a new Stephen King coming out and a former guest on our podcast, Ruth Franklin, wrote the review of Stephen King's new book in the New York Times and it's a wonderful review. She's such a great writer. I was like, 'Okay, well if she has a nice things to say, I'll get it.' And it's a collection of novellas and short stories and I'm not going to talk about all of them. I want to talk about just one and there's one called The Rat and I'm not going to do any spoilers here, but if you are a writer who has ever felt blocked in your writing, this story is a truly delightful, dark, dastardly view into the writer's head when they're trying to wrestle with their demons and why they can't get the words on the page.Speaker 3 (36:26):And I was working out in the woods while I was listening to it and there was a giant smile on my face. I was cackling. I'm like, this is so mean. And it's similar to when he channels the writer in Misery, when anytime he's ever talked about sort of what it's like for him to write and to go through that trap door into his basement. And all of that good stuff is in there. All of that stuff from On Writing that we love so much about his reading, about his process that's all in there, channeled through this writer in this story called The Rat. And it's delightful. It really truly is. It would be worth getting the book if you can afford to do it. It would be worth getting the book just to listen to this story really quick. I mean, I've also been comfort listening and I was scrolling through my Audible books that I've been listening to and they've all been books about sort of overcoming hardship. I realized I relistened to Jenny Finney Boylan's She's Not There. And I relistened to Diana Niad's Find a Way, which is about swimming from Florida to Cuba.KJ (37:40):I think you're the only person who's still listening. Audio has just dropped cause nobody's in their cars, nobody is commuting.Jess (39:02):I'm glad we did this cause I actually feel refocused in a couple of different ways and I'm feel good about drawing a line through one of my goals and just saying nope. By the way, go check out the #AmWriting Facebook group if you want some interesting reading about how other writers are handling this time, because that's what really most of the conversation is about right now. Like, how do you handle stuff? Are people still pitching here? What do you think about this? It's a really reassuring and supportive place to be, but until next time, 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. Get access to private episodes at amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Just in time for Mother’s Day and recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Dan interviews health journalist and author Amy Klein about her new book THE TRYING GAME: Get Through Fertility Treatment and Get Pregnant Without Losing Your Mind.   Amy Klein wrote the “Fertility Diary” column for The New York Times’s Motherlode blog for three years. Her former NYTimes editor KJ Dell’Antonia recently wrote, “Amy Klein’s writing on fertility is candid, warm, and honest. She pulls no punches, and the result isn’t just informative—it’s empowering. If you’re struggling to create the family you imagined, Amy’s is the voice you want in your head, and your heart.”    Today, Amy writes frequently about health and fertility for publications such as Newsweek, Slate, The Washington Post, and other national media.   When Amy Klein wrote THE TRYING GAME, she never dreamed it would be published during a pandemic.  Now more than ever, Amy’s personal story as well as her advice about struggling with infertility and the challenges of treatment will hopefully change the conversation about infertility in 2020 and move it forward.   Today’s episode opens with Amy sharing how she finally became a mother after nine rounds of IVF, four miscarriages, three acupuncturists, two rabbis and one reproductive immunologist. Amy wrote THE TRYING GAME because it is the book she wishes she’d had when she was trying (and trying and trying) to get and stay pregnant.   Every year “National Infertility Awareness Week” shines a light on the many individuals and couples struggling with infertility.  As Amy’s book reveals every single story is emotional, even harrowing.  During today’s episode, Dr. Dan and Amy Klein discuss relevant topics and explore key chapters from THE TRYING GAME including:   Why young women need to take control of their fertility early How do I deal with Mother’s Day envy? Baby jealousy - it’s a real thing online and in real life How to talk to other people with infertility Keeping your marriage intact during infertility The importance of accepting your all of feelings - this is hard What motherhood is like after infertility and miscarriage   Amy shares a very honest and personal Parent Footprint Moment at the end of the show about being a daughter and a mother.  It will inspire listeners today and on Mother’s Day.   Empowering, compassionate, and down-to-earth, The Trying Game: Get Through Fertility Treatment and Get Pregnant Without Losing Your Mind shows you what to expect when you’re not expecting with heart, humor, and humanity when you need it the most.  For more information about Amy Klein and her book visit:  http://thetryinggamebook.com/ Watch this free video to learn more about Dr. Dan and Parent Footprint Awareness Training®.

Many parents who are with their kids 24-7 are starting to wonder how to make this extra family time work. KJ Dell’Antonia, former lead editor of The New York Times Motherlode blog, joins host Krys Boyd to provide strategies for moms and dads who must now be both parent and teacher. Her book is “How to Be a Happier Parent: Raising a Family, Having a Life and Loving (Almost) Every Minute.”

Our guest this week is Jessica Lahey. Jess writes about education, parenting, and child welfare for The Atlantic, The Washington Post and the New York Times. She’s the author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed. She co-hosts the popular #AmWriting podcast with KJ Dell’Antonia and Sarina Bowen. She lives in Vermont with her husband and two sons, and her second book, The Addiction Inoculation: Raising Healthy Kids in a Culture of Dependence will be released in April of 2021. You can find her on Twitter @jesslahey and on Instagram @teacherlahey. For show notes visit: https://kk.org/cooltools/jessica-lahey-teacher-and-author

In this episode, we talk to two of the three co-hosts of the #amwriting podcast. (We are huge fans of that podcast, in case you haven't noticed.) We talk with them about the benefits of having a friendship that is just about writing, about the incredible gift of being able to be open with close friends, and about the relief of finding someone to take writing seriously with. KJ Dell'Antonia wrote and edited the Motherlode blog for the New York Times from 2011 until 2016 and was a contributing editor to the Well Family section from 2016-2017. She is also the author of the author of How to Be a Happier Parent and the forthcoming novel The Chicken Sisters, which will be released June 30th 2020. (KJ was a guest on Marginally in Episode 40.) Jessica Lahey is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed. Her second book, The Addiction Inoculation: Raising Healthy Kids in a Culture of Dependence, will be released in April 2021. (Jess was a guest in Episode 36 as well.) *** As always, we'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review us in your podcast app, as this helps other listeners find the show.  Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcast. Meghan's occasionally on Twitter @meghanembee, and Olivia’s @roamingolivia Theme music is "It's Time" by Scaricá Ricascá.  Have a question you'd like us to try to answer, or a topic you'd love to have us cover? Interested in being a guest? Contact us here.  Thanks for listening, and get to work! If you like Marginally, you should check out #amwriting, with Jess and KJ, where two much more experienced writers talk through their processes with each other and celebrated guests.

Hey listeners! It’s been a mad mad mad week here (all of you in the future, check the date), and I bet there too. Result: there are no shownotes for this episode. We’re talking about revamping my website to get it in gear for my forthcoming second book. Here’s the image we mention—the before—and for the after (which is still in progress), head over to my site and see what you think. Any questions, shoot me an email (kjdellantonia@gmail.com or reply to this.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 (00:00):Hey #AmWriting listeners, this is KJ and this is my seventh time attempting to record this pre-episode discussion of something really cool that's being authored by Author Accelerator, our sponsor. I think you all know that I loved working with Jennie Nash on revising my manuscript for The Chicken Sisters. Well, if you'd be interested in working in a small group with Jennie, she is offering a Rock Your Revision small intensive workshop for fiction writers ready to revise manuscripts this summer, July 16th - 19th of 2020 in Santa Barbara, California. If that interests you, if it sounds like something you'll be ready for, if it sounds like something that having it scheduled might make you get ready for (and I think that will work) head on over to author accelerator.com click on the retreats and summits link, and then scroll on down to Rock Your Revision to learn more. Is it recording now?Jess (01:05):Now it's recording.KJ (01:06):Yay.Jess (01:06):Go ahead.KJ (01:08):This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I'm supposed to be doing.Jess (01:12):Alright, let's start over.KJ (01:13):Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay. Now one, two, three. Hi, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #Am writing the podcast about writing all the things and getting them out into the world. And that's all I'm going to say about that this week.Sarina (01:37):Really? Well, I'm Sarina Bowen and I write long things, primarily genre fiction and I've written 30-odd romances and my newest one is called Sure Shot. If I ever finish it.KJ (01:50):I can't wait for it. Okay. I am KJ Dell'Antonia, the dithering other voice on the other end of the microphone. I am the author of the novel, The Chicken Sisters coming out this summer and the book How To Be a Happier Parent as well as the former editor of the New York Times' Motherlode blog. And those are the things that I do and it's just me and Sarina today.Sarina (02:23):It is. We're here to work on KJ's launch sequence.KJ (02:26):Yes. And if we sound a little odd, we are (as we often are) working in our local libraries. So, yes. Sarina, as we all know, has many, many, many past identities and for all I know is also cat woman when we're not together. But one of those past identities is helping people, specifically authors, with their websites. So that's our plan today. We're going to go over my website and talk about how I can shift it from being a website, primarily designed for a parenting author to a website designed for an author in general. And the way we're going to do this (if you want to take a look) by the time you hear this, I will have changed it. So we're going to take a lot of screenshots. So if you'd like to see what we're talking about and we will describe it cause you're probably in your car. But if you do want to just head over to the show notes at amwritingpodcast.com and there will be pictures, screenshots of this website as it is today before the dramatic changes that I'm going to make to it. I mean, it's a good website somebody made it for me and I can change it and you know, there's nothing wrong with it other than that there is absolutely no mention of my nove,l at all whatsoever.Sarina (03:55):Right.KJ (03:56):Because that's the first thing that's wrong with it. Check.Sarina (03:59):So I usually get involved with an author's website at about this same point. Sometimes I'll get calls earlier before people have cover art for their book and those people have been told that they must have an author website and start building their platform and blah, blah blah, but they don't have a book cover. And that is fine. Like, it's great to be invested in handling your book launch, but if you really do your website before you have cover art, you're wasting your money because it, you know, it would be disappointing to do a website all in purple and to find that your book cover is bright yellow. So, you know, I gently dissuade people from spending their hard earned cash early on, but you're ready to go because you have your cover art.KJ (04:50):I do.Sarina (04:51):And I have to say that I have seen some smashingly beautiful author websites over time, just so original and stunning that angels weep.KJ (05:03):That's not really what I'm going for.Sarina (05:04):Well, that's not really what I go for either. I mean, I think that the most important, pretty much the only important thing is that your website do two things. One is that it helps readers bond with your book before they're ready to click that one-click button. So that means that they're familiar with the cover art. So when your page loads at kjdellantonia.com we should see the new cover art immediately. That's pretty much step one. And the second thing is that most readers, I mean they can learn about us anywhere, right? Like social media, Amazon, Barnesandnoble.com, there's so many places. But if they actually take the trouble to find their way all the way to your website, it's probably because they have a question. So we're going to anticipate that question and try to answer it within one to two clicks, two being the absolute maximum. So if you can do those two things, you're doing so, so well.KJ (06:10):Excellent. And one of the reasons I'm leaping on this is that I searched another author somebody that I know because I knew that they had a new book coming out, and I couldn't remember the name, and I needed to know for various reasons. And I went to their website and it wasn't there. And that's exactly what someone could do for me. Although let me just say that author's book is coming out before me. Okay. So that person had better just get on it.Sarina (06:40):And this is sometimes difficult, like not everybody likes noodling with websites. Like I love it, honestly.KJ (06:46):I'm happy to crawl around in there, too. I just want to have a mission.Sarina (06:51):Right. And for some people this is like the hardest partKJ (06:55):And if it is the hardest part, hire someone. You don't have to do this yourself.Sarina (07:01):It doesn't have to be fancy.KJ (07:02):It doesn't. Or you like Squarespace, right?Sarina (07:06):I love Squarespace. But there are even easier things to do. Like did you know that if you join the Author's Guild for approximately $200 a year, you get a free website from them and they will help you set it up?KJ (07:18):I did not.Sarina (07:19):Yeah. And you won't have as much control over it as I like to have over mine. But if you just hate websites, that is not a bad option.KJ (07:27):You know, we don't need blogs anymore. You know, your website is probably (correct me if I'm wrong) a largely static entity.Sarina (07:38):Well, mine is not actually.KJ (07:40):No, I know yours isn't. Because you are a person who puts out many, many books a year. So if you're that, then you're working with a website with probably shopping, and possibly merch, and some other things. I, on the other hand, am a one book every couple of years author at the moment, although I'd like to speed that up. And so I am not really needing to use my website to inform you of immediate developments.Sarina (08:10):Right. So I would like to add a third thing to our little to do list, though. Because I don't want to burden everyone and say that you have to do a million things on your author website. But honestly, this third thing could save your career, which is that you must have a way for people to sign up for your newsletter that is both easy without being irritating.KJ (08:29):That's a challenge.Sarina (08:31):Yeah. Well, I mean, we're all quite used to popups now. There are obnoxious ones and less obnoxious ones. And anyway, I'll leave that to our readers to decide.KJ (08:41):I turned my pop-up off because it was outdated and I could not figure it out. So normally I have a pop-up.Sarina (08:49):I turned my off as well because I didn't like the conversion rate of it. Like I thought, wow, I'm irritating 97 people for every three that type their email address in. But, instead I have many other very useful solicitations for email addresses.KJ (09:10):If you want to sign up for my email, you can go to followkj.com and there you will find my website sign up.Sarina (09:16):That's great.KJ (09:17):I think so, I'm pretty pleased with it. Wait, you'll laugh, I have to show it to Sarina. Because I changed it very on the fly recently I had to come up with an image very quickly and...Sarina (09:34):Oh, you know, that is funny. And I saw this the other day. I don't remember why, but I looked at it.KJ (09:39):It's a Playmobile character barfing into a tiny little Playmobile toliet.Sarina (09:42):Yes, we're going to have to work on this, KJ.KJ (09:44):I know, but I figured it would get attention.Sarina (09:48):It does, but your book cover needs to be right there.KJ (09:49):Let's start with the website and then we'll do the signup in a minute.Sarina (10:00):So right now, KJ's website has a bunch of wonderful parenting pictures on it, which suited her last book perfectly.KJ (10:07):And they're all in a sort of a red - pink theme.Sarina (10:10):Yes. I would quibble with the way that your cover art is not above the fold here. I will just tell you a couple of things about this challenge. So, websites as we design them on a screen are usually horizontal. Books are vertical. This is the main challenge of my life, aside from plotting novels. So KJ also just opened the website on her phone because this is something that I beg people to do and they don't usually listen. But more than half of your website visitors will be on their phones. And that is really hard for authors to figure out when they're struggling to get their hands around their website in the first place, that the phone part is almost more important. You know, people will come and say, 'Could you move my name a half an inch to the right?' And I usually let fly that line from The Matrix. Because most modern web building tools, i(ncluding Squarespace and the better templates at WordPress) now build a website on the fly for every single visitor based on the dimensions of their screen. So there is no one website, you can't design it like a movie poster anymore, you have to make something responsive. And that's why I use Squarespace because they're very good at that. And obviously lots of WordPress themes are too, I just am not as familiar.KJ (11:37):Mine is a WordPress theme, so we're not going to mess with the backend. I'm going to go and do that on my own. We're just going to talk about what it looks like and what it ought to look like. So step one...Sarina (11:48):You have a banner on yours with your name kind of in the middle instead of here above the main navigation. For displaying cover art I actually think that's a little trickier, but you can probably find a way around it or you can just move your name to the top. I know it's boring but it works. Okay? And then your main navigation is terrific. You have a home, you have the book which is going to have to change to books at the top and one of those books will be your new one. You have share the book, which is a great idea, you have blog, the podcast, resources, about KJ Dell'Antonia, and media, which are all great. So I actually wonder if about KJ Dell'Antonia and media couldn't become one thing if you wanted them to be. There's nothing wrong with there being two. So people get tunnel vision and let's say somebody wants to book you on The Today Show for your new book. So one of these things should say contact, because people get tunnel vision and I'm sure your contact information is here. But I've been like half asleep, needing coffee, and not spotting it on a website, and you really don't want that to happen to you. So, contact should always be one of those things. And also, if you did dispense with your pop-up and you're leaving that that way, then the thing on the far right should be subscribe. And that can hop right to that page you showed me a second ago, the follow KJ page, but it should be there. Yeah, so we're doing great. Now, if you scroll down on KJ's front page you do get her most recent book before this new one. Oh, okay, I would've put the bio links right here, but you have them fairly close. So that's all good. And then you could also have, instead of this got a book club thing (not that there's anything wrong with it) an email signup here, as well. So I would like to have one up in the main nav and then here on the scrolly scrolly front page. So the reason that websites got scrolly scrolly is because of phones.KJ (14:01):Let's have a look at it scrolling on my phone. So on the website you see things laid out, like you see the book cover and then to the right you see the text about the book. On the mobile, you see the book cover and then you scroll down and you see the text about the book, and then you scroll down and you'll see the by the book in a vertical list.Sarina (14:25):So the buttons are horizontal on the laptop and they're vertical on the phone. And that's because you have a properly responsive website. Now, there are some authors who had their websites built more than 10 years ago, and the site still looks good when you pull it up on the computer. But if you pull it up on the phone, it's quite broken. And here's the reason that's not good. Google will punish you. They promote (in their search rankings) sites that perform on a mobile device and they sort of demote sites that don't. And you don't want to be demoted by Google. You know that old joke like, where's the best place to hide a dead body? On the seventh page of the Google search result. Okay, so don't be that dead body.KJ (15:21):So, but it's okay to have the scrolly scrolly first page is what I'm hearing. So the fact that if you just keep scrolling, you just get stuff, after stuff, after stuff is fine. It's just that maybe the stuff is not in the right order.Sarina (15:38):Well, your stuff was in a decent order. It's like the New York Times - you know, above the fold, below the fold. So here's the thing, when I'm helping an author with a website, I send a questionnaire. And these are the questions on the questionnaire. Which author websites in your own genre do you like best? Cause that's not a bad place to get inspiration; to take a shortcut to figure out what other people are doing. Right?KJ (16:06):That's how we made our podcast. There's a podcast, it's called Hurry Slowly. I love her and I love the design of her website. And I basically was just like, this really looks great. I'm going to make ours look pretty much just like this and it is. Thank you very much, Jocelyn Keighley.Sarina (16:26):Then the second question, the colors on your site will be chosen to compliment your cover art, but please tell me what colors do you not like and what are you hoping to see? And so with you, you have a lot of colors between your two books, but they compliment each other and that's just where you know we would go.KJ (16:41):Yeah, we're going to lose the pink-iness of this theme and shift it.Sarina (16:47):And shift it to highlight the yellow. And then it will look right. So then, one of the hardest decisions is what do you want your visitors to see first when they arrive on your site. In other words, the most valuable real estate should be allocated to which of the following? And these four choices cover almost everybody. So choice one - your newest cover art and a blurb quote, which is never a bad choice. So maybe you have that cover because you want readers to bond with it immediately. And you have a very short blurb quote, like the best little bit of something that somebody said. And then a button that says 'Read more' so you can put that person right onto that book's page. So that's always a good decision if you have a book coming out. Then choice two - a view of all of your covers, like an art gallery. Like if you have an extensive backlist and you want readers of your most recent book. Cause what if someone arrives on your site with a question, what else did she write? So that's the one click thing. And in your case we would have it in a dropdown menu probably cause the art gallery doesn't really work for you. So choice three - your newest blog post. So this is usually not the right choice for my clients, but it could be if you are a very active blogger and your blogging was related to the book you were trying to sell. Then that might work. And the last choice I have here - is a book representing each of your various series.KJ (18:18):And that's what yours looks like.Sarina (18:20):Yes. And the websites that have the most content on them are the biggest challenge. Because when we have that question - what question did the person arrive with? The more books you have, the more varied that question could be. Like what's next and this or that series, which audio book did I not listen to? You know, the questions get more complicated with the more books someone has in their catalog.KJ (18:44):Yeah. I don't think that there are that many questions you're going to come to my website looking for an answer to. I guess a peculiarity of my website is that I have these resources. And they are parenting resources. You can get holiday survival guides, you can get an ebook about homework, you can get the 10 mantras for happier parents. I mean, I have quite a few of them. Most fiction readers aren't going to be here coming after these things. But my parenting book is also coming out in paperback. So some people will be coming out for them and sometimes I will be talking about them, so it's a little more complicated.Sarina (19:28):I wonder if your website shouldn't have two book covers sort of facing each other on the front of it. With The Chicken Sisters on the left and The Happier Parent on the right. And it's basically like, people make a grand choice the minute they arrive at your website because they're probably there for what topic. And then you would sort of move the person on to the page that deals with that and your resources might be down at the scrolly scrolly bottom of the parenting book.KJ (19:56):And right now the resources require you to add your email and they might as well continue to require you give your email. That seems like a good idea although in terms of my personal ability to adjust this website, hopefully I can pull it off. I've done them. Somebody else did this one. I don't have the money to have them go back in and fix it. I might get somebody else. But see on this page your name is at the top, not in the middle. So you just need to duplicate a page like this. You're right. So what I can do is abandon the current - just to get a little bit into the weeds, but you might be in my position too - is abandon the current. So right now, when you go to kjdellantonia.com it's actually not pointing to what's called home here. It's pointing to the book. So I can pick anywhere. So you can pick anywhere for you know, u.com to point to. I mean home is probably not a necessary piece of it. Okay. Like you said, I can do some redesigning here.Sarina (21:14):And you know, as you move through the process of pre-launch, to the book launch, to after the launch, your needs change a little bit. I am accustomed to people who come back once a year to have their website gussied up for their new book. One thing I would like to mention for any listeners who are considering paying to have a website done is please don't hire someone who wants you to pay them on a monthly basis forever. This used to be the way it was done. And there are still some people out there who are paying for a website which is static and they're just paying to have it hosted cause they're stuck. And you don't have to do that. You can pay someone to design a thing and to set up the hosting for you, but then you have to have the keys, you know?KJ (22:10):So part of your design process, and it was part of mine, should be the person walking you through the most basic changes that you might want to make on your website. So, to change the pictures, to change the pop-up, to change where the homepage points, you should know how to do those small things. And I do, it's more that I think they used something called Bakery Builder to build this. And it's not my more familiar thing. I can do it. And I will say, you can find that, just ask around. Ask your author friends for who has designed their website but do ask around, because I also have a friend who's been working on designing her website with her web designer for let's see, since August. Yeah. The person is really slow and she called me fairly recently and was like, 'Is this normal?' And I was like, 'No, absolutely not.' Of course, this friend also draws a picture of what she wants it to look like and then sends that to the web designer. So the web designer may also be a little frustrated. There may be fault on both sides, but I don't think so. I think it just should not be taking anywhere near this long. It's crazy. Somebody should be able to get you rolling fairly quickly.Sarina (23:39):And also just to have the ability to say when it will be done.KJ (23:45):Alright. What's next?Sarina (23:47):Well, if you really like working with your website, there are so many things you can do to help guide your author destiny using your own website. For example, you can give away a free book in exchange for an email signup. So the parts of my website that you can see when you just navigate to Sarinabowen.com is like just the tip of that iceberg because I have lots of other hidden content there that is serving special purposes for me. And the more comfortable you are touching your own website and making pages, the more fun you can have with that. So during launch week, I usually have a contest where people enter it by sharing the book. Now, not every reader of my books is interested in entering the giveaway and sharing the cover, and that's fine. But for that core of people who is really interested in helping me promote it (for whatever reason) I have a contest on a hidden page in my website where you enter the link of where you shared it, and you put in your name, and the winner gets a $25 gift card or something. So there's all kinds of things you can run off of your own website that are more controllable than social media. And if you think about Facebook, which we all basically have to use when we promote a book, it's ugly and you can't make a post do what you want. You can't make it have a button. It's just not a friendly, friendly place in the world. And when you become a little more comfortable with using your own site, you suddenly figure out how much you can do.KJ (25:34):I think a lot of people who have a website don't realize that you can have pages on your website that aren't immediately visible to every visitor to your website. And it's not that they're hidden. It's not that someone who typed you know, KJDellantonia.com/potatocakes wouldn't get to the potato cakes page, but who's gonna do that? And it's not in your menu. So you can have, you can have a hundred potato cake pages or whatever. And I think even I forget that sometimes.Sarina (26:13):So if you're doing an event in Chicago, you could have kjdellantonia.com/chicago if there was something, a resource there that you wanted those people to have.KJ (26:20):And if you want to, you can buy you can buy a special URL. Like you can create a page within your own website. So it's kjdellantonia.com/potato cakes. But instead you buy the website you know, potato lovers.com and then you just point it, you don't create a website for potatocakelovers.com. You just point it to that page on your website. So there's all kinds of playful things. So for example, this follow KJ link, I just own that and I just point it to different things. Right now it's actually pointed to the Flodesk, which is the email software that I used to create my emails. But it used to be pointed to a page within my website. And before that it was pointed to a Mailchimp page. I can point that wherever I want to.Sarina (27:08):Right. And you actually bring up a really good point, which is it's usually better to point your signup at your own website. Like you have this capacity to point at different places which protects you. But I have a friend who can never leave MailChimp because she has the MailChimp signup link in the back of a 40 book backlist. So she's stuck there at their new higher prices because she can't go and change. She literally can't, because the people that bought that book before now and they read it and click on that link are going to her old spot.KJ (27:50):Yeah, no she's stuck. I remember you telling me about that cause I had kind of fallen into that cause I pointed something that I couldn't unpoint because I forgot things.Sarina (28:01):So I use a service called Genius Links and it's a page short linker, but you can change the destination link of absolutely anything.KJ (28:13):That is very nice because you can't do that with tinyurl.com.Sarina (28:17):Right. So Genius Links is great. There are probably others. I believe smartURL allows you to change the ultimate destination. But the other thing that Genius does (it does several things well, actually) it also points people to the Amazon store of their geographical location. So I can make one Amazon link, but it's a Genius link and if that person is in France, it will take them to Amazon.Fr. And the other thing it does (it pays for itself) is that if you have affiliate accounts at Amazon, Apple, Google, Kobo, (those are the ones that come to mind) you put that information into Genius and it just adds it to every single link. And that is very helpful to me as well. Yeah, not Kobo actually. But anyway, there's lots of ways. So, I just got a check from Apple Affiliates for 500 bucks, which I'm sure paid for my entire year's worth of Genius linking. So it's not just this added expense, but it can actually put money in your pocket.KJ (29:30):So, what's next? Should we look at anything else on my thing specifically?Sarina (29:36):I think your work is cut out for you in a way that is quite doable. You're gonna change some colors around.KJ (29:45):I'm going to just have fewer things up here at the top, I think. There's already some chickens so I'm partly set.Sarina (29:52):You're going to get both of those books on the front page and probably lose some more personal pictures because they won't make as much sense to your novel.KJ (30:02):So I'm just going to abandon some of these pages. I'm just going to make a new page - a new landing page.Sarina (30:12):Just like if you were going to redo chapter four of your work in progress, you wouldn't delete chapter four, you copy it, and tinker until we're satisfied. So this will be the same.KJ (30:23):Yup. That's my plan. Any other thoughts for people as they embark on either changing or creating their own websites?Sarina (30:32):I would look into the Authors Guild if you're really hesitant to play with websites. I would look into Squarespace if you're slightly more adventurous. I dislike WordPress with the fire of a thousand suns, so I can't in good conscience recommend it. Although lots of people like it, I'm not a fan of Wix. Usually the platforms that have a free option look kind of...I don't know, but I don't like them. But one free option that is, you know at least more user friendly is Blogger. Like you can still make a website at Google and it is what it is, but if you need a landing spot and you have no funds to devote to that at this point then there are ways to make happen.KJ (31:26):I'm trying to think if there's anything else we should say about websites before we move on. You should have one.Sarina (31:35):You should have one. It won't sell your book, though. It's great to be find-able and to help you answer questions.KJ (31:45):I wanted to talk about the whole, should I have a blog page? Not me personally, but as a general rule. If a blog feels like a like a mandatory additional task to you, then my thought for you is no, you don't really need to. Cause there's nothing worse than clicking on someone's blog page and seeing three entries from 2016.Sarina (32:11):Right. Well the other thing is you can call it news. And you can just put something there three times a year when you have news. Like, here's my new cover. And the nice thing about having that there is that it's also then you can put the link to that news on Facebook instead of typing the news into Facebook.KJ (32:33):And the other nice thing is that typically if you use the blog software of whatever you are creating, that is designed to be easily updatable. So if you use that for your news, it's designed so that you could just pop in and be like, 'I'll be in Chicago.' And that's it. You don't have to sort of change something that feels more set on your page. So there's reasons to use that software, but maybe not to call it blog.Sarina (33:03):Yeah. It used to be, like 15 years ago. Every agent would say you have to blog. But that's just not true anymore. People consume their news differently.KJ (33:39):The first decision is going to be to go in here, put the two book covers up and close off everything else while I revise it. Basically I'm going to just do that. So if anyone comes in the meantime, there are two book covers, there are links to the books and I'm playing around in the background.Sarina (33:58):Right. And when you link your book, you should do a few vendors. Cause nobody wants to live in a world where Amazon is the only store. No. And we do have that new one.KJ (34:12):What's it called again? I can't remember.Sarina (34:17):Is it BookShop?KJ (34:17):Maybe...Sarina (34:18):We're going to find this and put it in the show notes.KJ (34:20):Yeah, because it's important. Yeah, we've been linking to Indiebound, but it's changing. The booksellers association is creating a new way for authors to link to an Indie supporting platform, which can help you sell books. Cause I will say Indiebound affiliate linking is agonizingly painful (as the person who does it). And also, you listeners typically don't end up buying the book that way. And I get it. But I could see why you're not buying it on Indiebound, but we don't want to link to Amazon because while we're all buying stuff from Amazon, we don't want them to rule the world.Sarina (35:17):So bookshop.org is the new storefront and it's new, new, new, like it just launched within the last four weeks. And they're going to take some of the friction of buying from Indiebound away. So give bookshop.org a look and they also have an affiliate program, but every book that is purchased on here kicks profit into a fund, which is divided among the member bookstores, which is most independent bookstores.KJ (35:48):And the cool thing that they're doing is helping those independent bookstores set up their own websites. So this doesn't really apply to us, but it's kind of neat. I'm pleased, I'm delighted that it's out there.Sarina (35:59):After I read about it, I thought, Oh my goodness, this should not have taken so long.KJ (36:06):Now we got to figure out what we've been reading.Sarina (36:08):Oh, I know. I'm ready. Well, yesterday I opened an envelope and discovered a copy of Chasing Cassandra by Lisa Kleypas inside, which means that at some point I pre-ordered it and I never preorder anything, but I love this author so much and she has a new novel about once a year, which is just about right because if she had more of them, I would never get anything done because she is my queen. She is a romance author, her series is set in the Victorian era, actually in England. But she's so skillful with characters and just so amazing with dialogue that I have to take a few deep breaths after I finish her book and go look at my poor excuse for a book afterwards.KJ (36:59):I think everybody has somebody that is like that. So I have just finished Minor Dramas and Other Catastrophes by Kathleen West. I don't think I've mentioned it on the podcast yet, but I loved it. If you liked The Gifted School, if you have liked books by Tom Perrotta, basically if books set in hothouse schools (public, not boarding schools, that's a different genre) but books set in a hothouse schools full of crazy parents are something that you enjoy (and I do) then this is one for you. It's a really fun story of a dedicated teacher who's a little bit too too intense about teaching her students about the social evils of the world and how the parents around her react to that. It just fun, it's a weekend read, it's entertaining, it's smart, the characters are great. I think you'll enjoy it. So that's Minor Dramas and Other Catastrophes from Kathleen West. Alright, that is our podcast, but before we shut down, let me please remind you to head out to Facebook if you can stand it and join our Facebook group where we don't talk about any of the things that you avoid Facebook for. Instead, we talk about all things writing related, and writerly questions, and just about anything you can get it answered. If you want to find the show notes and the screenshots from the website that we're talking about that's amwritingpodcast.com, which is also where you can find links to support the podcast if you'd like to with a small donation and supporters of the podcast get (pretty much weekly) top fives and small mini podcasts, five minute long shorts, little bits of advice from one of us to all of you that drop right into your podcast player once you get it set up, you don't have to go somewhere special to listen. I think that's cool. That's it. Now you can take us out.Sarina (39:35):Until next week, 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. Get access to private episodes at amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

And you thought our shelves full of self help books were just to manage our own issues! Nope, there’s another use for them. Our guest this week, Kathleen Smith, is a therapist and writer and the author of Everything Isn't Terrible, a helpful and humorous guide to shedding our anxious habits and building a more solid sense of self in our increasingly anxiety-inducing world. It’s very useful, and we’re valiantly attempting to tame our own anxieties—but that’s not (much of) what we talk about. Instead, we’re focused on what’s really important—and within our control: Creating believable, dysfunctional characters and then helping them to grow and change.We talk about romance dynamics: the pursuer and the pursued, the over-functioner and the slacker—and how important it is that a couple be at a similar level of maturity (or, more likely, immaturity) to be believable. From there, it’s headlong into siblings, birth order and circumstance, family coping mechanisms and some of the ways to develop deeper conflict within our work. It’s such a great conversation. Episode links and a transcript follow. Thanks for being with us! If you love the podcast, tell a friend. Right now. Just drop everything and go sit someone down and make them listen. And if you love the podcast, you can support it! There are perks. #SupporterMini episodes. #WriterTopFives. LINKS FROM THE PODCASTGenograms: Assessment and Intervention Family Constellation, Walter Toman#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Kathleen: Bringing Down the Duke, Evie DunmoreKJ: Ex Libris, Anne FadimanThe Uncommon Reader: A Novella, Alan BennettSarina: 19 Love Songs, David LevithanOur guest for this episode is Kathleen Smith, author of Everything Isn't Terrible: Conquer Your Insecurities, Interrupt Your Anxiety, and Finally Calm Down. For more: Website - KathleenSmith.net Twitter - @fangirltherapy Instagram - @kathleensmithwritesFree Anxiety Newsletter - https://theanxiousoverachiever.substack.com/This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator—training book coaches and matching coaches and writers. Find out more: https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwriting.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 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 are we writers, we're people with a gift for encouraging other writers. Maybe that comes out in small ways for you, but for some of you 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. And if that's got your ears perked up, head to authoraccelerator.com and click on become a book coach. Is it recording? Now. It's recording.Jess (00:44):Now it's recording.KJ (00:44):Yay!Jess (00:44):Go ahead.KJ (00:46):This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone, trying to remember what I'm supposed to be doing.Jess (00:50):Alright, let's start over.KJ (00:51):Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay. Now one, two, three. Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is the podcast about writing all the things - short things, long things, fictional things, non-fictional things, something in between kinds of things, which I don't know that we really recommend, it depends on where you're writing for. But in any case, as regular listeners know and any new listeners are about to find out, this is the podcast about figuring out how to sit down and get your work done.Sarina (01:30):I'm Sarina Bowen. I only write long things and fictional things. I'm the author of 30-odd romance novels and my newest one is called Heartland. You can find all about it at sarinabowen.com.KJ (01:46):I feel like the things that we write are feeling particularly long this week. I don't know about you, but I feel like I only write really long things that somehow don't have enough words. Yeah, but they sure feel long to me. I am KJ Dell'Antonia. I am the author of my first novel, my debut novel, is The Chicken Sisters coming out in June of 2020 and I'm also the former lead editor and columnist for the New York Times of the Motherlode and the author of How To Be a Happier Parent, which is out in hardback now and will be out in paperback this summer.KJ (02:20):And I am delighted to say that we have a guest today. This is going to be a really fun, if somewhat fictionally focused episode. Today we are joined by Kathleen Smith, a therapist and writer and the author of Everything Isn't Terrible: A Helpful and (I can vouch for this) Humorous Guide to Shedding Our Anxious Habits and Building a More Solid Sense of Self in Our Increasingly Anxiety Inducing World, which is brilliant. And we love it. And we are working away at our own anxieties. But we've actually asked Kathleen here today to talk about the anxieties we have more control over - the anxieties of our fictional characters. In other words, we're going to talk about creating believable, dysfunctional characters and families and then helping them to grow, and change, and get better. Welcome.Kathleen (03:12):I'm so excited to talk about this topic with you guys. Thanks for having me.KJ (03:16):Thanks for suggesting it and coming. We think this is fantastic. It's so funny because as I read, Everything Isn't Terrible and I have been, I sort of flick between, Oh wait, I need this. Oh wait, my character needs this. Oh wait, I do this with my mother. Oh wait, does my character? I think I need to read it twice, once in each guise. So how did you think of the idea of using a therapeutic formula, a therapeutic lens to view fictional characters?Kathleen (03:54):First of all, I'm a huge fan girl and I love reading books and watching TV shows with complex families. Right? You know, everyone these days is obsessed with succession, right? Or the crown or these sort of glamorous, dysfunctional families. But as a therapist, I'm a firm believer that everyone's family is just as interesting. You know, if you'd sorta take a dive in and look at the rich sort of emotional history of a family. So I love seeing it in real life and I love seeing it in fiction, too, especially when it's done really well.Sarina (04:30):Which fictional families in print have you enjoyed recently? I was so curious about this.Kathleen (04:36):Yeah. Well one thing I'm reading right now is I'm rereading Emma because you know, the new movie is coming out. So it's interesting to see some of the family dynamics in that. And you know, sibling position. And I think Jane Austen in particular does such a wonderful job bringing out those differences and the dynamics of people. So that's one thing I'm enjoying right now.KJ (05:00):You used another Jane Austen example with us, which was just sort of to get right deep into it, you were talking about how spouses tend to be at the same level of emotional maturity, even though they might express it differently. And you gave the example of the Bennetts in Pride and Prejudice. And that just made me laugh because I've read Pride and Prejudice many times, but also multiple recreations of it, recently. That happens to be a trope that I love and yes, absolutely. I'd never thought of it that way, but they're both equally awful. It's just that one of them is awful in a more appealing kind of way.Kathleen (05:41):Absolutely. You know, and I think we like to think that we're more mature than our spouses, but at least the theory I was trained in, that is not the case. We tend to be attracted to people who are at the same level of emotional maturity. So I think that's important to think about when you're creating characters, and a marriage, or in a relationship. What that kind of reciprocity is and how that sort of fits together. Like just you said though, one person might be seen as the problematic one, right? But that's often not the case.KJ (06:12):We are going to think of this firmly from a fictional perspective and yeah, let's dig into that. So we've got maybe we've got two romantic leads and we're seeing one of them as the problem, you know, one of them is not returning phone calls or is not living up to expectations, but it's important that they both have sort of equal level of flaws is what I'm hearing you saying.Kathleen (06:40):Yeah. I mean you could have, and this is such a classic relationship thing, you could have one person who's the distant one, right. And then one person who is sort of the anxious pursuer and we interpret one as necessarily having the problem, but they're both caught up in this sort of anxious dance of trying to relate to one another. Or trying to get away from the anxiety. Or another classic example is like one person is an over functioner, right? And they take on all the responsibility and do everything and the other person is seen sort of as a slacker, right? Or the lazy one, but they're just responding to the other person's behavior. So, it's definitely a two person dance.Sarina (07:20):This also makes me think of a trope that I see in romance all the time that I'm not a huge great fan of, which is the crazy ex. Sometimes you get sort of cheap conflict in a romantic plot arc because somebody has a crazy ex, but it's really hard to write a good crazy ex without painting your hero or heroine as kind of an idiot for staying with that person in the first place.KJ (07:48):Oh, good point. Yeah.Kathleen (07:51):It doesn't make any sense to have them be sort of at different levels of functioning. They probably wouldn't have been together in the first place if that were the case.Sarina (07:59):Yeah. I mean, you can always make a case for somebody experiencing a lot of growth since they originally got together with that person. But yeah, it's hard. One time I was writing a book three with my collaborators and we already knew from books one and two who the hero and heroine of book three were. And this romance had a lot of potential already. But we realized as we were sitting down to plot it, that both characters came from really wonderful, stable families and we sort of looked at each other and went, 'Oh, we're in so much trouble.'KJ (08:39):Yeah. Let's talk about how that family background matters. I mean, why can't we create a book around two people from wonderful, stable homes who've been supported, and loved, and had only good experiences all of their lives? Besides because they don't exist.Kathleen (08:56):Well, you know, in my book I use that well-known Mary Carr quote that a dysfunctional family is any family with two people in it. Right? Or it's something like that. So I don't know if such a thing exists, first of all. You know, there's always some amount of anxiety and dysfunction in any family, but you know, it's much more interesting and it's much more rich to sort of go back a generation or two and ask yourself what are the processes that work here, you know, is this a family that avoids each other in distances and that's how they deal with everything. Is this a family that cuts people off the second they disagree with them or do something scandalous? Or is this a family who's all in each other's business and is constantly doing things for people that they can do for themselves? You know, it's interesting to think about what some of those patterns might be and then all of a sudden you have kind of set the stage for your character to kind of emerge from that. And that can influence then how they are in their romantic relationships, or in their work, or with their own family. So just by doing that sort of homework ahead of time, you have such a great jumping off point for creating conflict and plot.Sarina (10:08):Sometimes it feels like it's really hard to do that ahead of time and you have to kind of wade in first.Kathleen (10:14):Yeah, I mean I think that's why it's useful to know your own family really well, first of all. It can be an inspiration or other people's to kind of get you curious about that. But you know, just taking the time to kind of draw that out and draw a little diagram or just some, some facts can be really useful.KJ (10:34):Well, you suggested four different sort of family patterns, let's talk about those and how we might be able to use them in fiction.Kathleen (10:42):The first one is distance. That's sort of the most obvious things that we do as humans when we're nervous, or upset, or stressed, right? Like we just get out of there as quickly as possible. But there's also emotional distance, right? So as a family, only talking about the weather, or sports, or very superficial things as a way of managing sort of the underlying anxiety. And then the second one is conflict, which is a little weird because at first glance you don't think, well, conflict doesn't manage anxiety, right? Like doesn't that cause anxiety? But if I'm convinced that someone is wrong all the time, then that calms me down a little bit. It's actually adaptive. So a lot of families use conflict and sort of focus on one person as the problem. To calm them down. And I think that's so useful in fiction because it sort of helps you see that just the person who is identified as having the problem isn't the only player here. Right? Everyone is contributing to that in their own way. And you want me to keep going?KJ (11:49):No, I'm thinking about that. The conflict one. I think it kind of goes back to what we're talking about in a romantic relationship where from a fictional point of view, you can draw a picture that looks like one person is the problem. And what is going to evolve is that the people who are making that person the problem are also the problem.Kathleen (12:16):Exactly. Everyone is contributing. Right? And I think that's a good point is you can't look at a person sort of and tell how mature they actually are. Because you know, everyone is sort of propping up other people and so one person in a family might be doing really well and they might have a stable job and seem like a healthy person, but it's because they're directing all their attention onto fixing a kid. Right? Or a sibling or a parent. It all sort of gets diverted to this one per person who gets identified as the problem. So that's what's so great about humans is we're just such tricky, complex creatures you can't necessarily take at face value, how mature a person is and how they're going to act in crisis people who are actually much less mature than we think we are.KJ (13:10):And how does that dynamic play out on the other side, the person who is sort of constantly being fixed?Kathleen (13:16):Yeah, I mean it's sort of - we're getting into Jess territory with her writing about parents focusing on kids. But you know, the idea is that if you tell a person that there's something wrong with them or there's something to be anxious about, they start to believe it. So it's useful for them to fall into that role and to play that role to kind of keep things stable. But that doesn't mean that they won't have problems, you know, they might develop more of the symptoms or more of the problems because everyone in that family is anxiously focused on them.KJ (13:50):So what I'm hearing is that it's worth, like everyone in the story is invested in keeping the status quo, even if the status quo is crappy.Kathleen (14:00):Yes. And that's such a great plot turning point as well, because if that person gets sober, or starts doing better, or acts differently, it throws everybody off. You think that they want the person to get better, but then they start doing things differently, and it changes the whole system. It changes all of the dynamics. And so that's such an interesting thing to play around with when, okay, what if the person who is seen as the problem child or the problem spouse starts doing better? That is a great sort of turning point for shaking things up because people don't like it. They will push back, you know? And it's just really fascinating to see or to read about.KJ (14:45):Okay. So that was two dysfunctional family tropes. What else you got?Kathleen (14:50):Yeah, well, the other one is very classic. It's overfunctioning and underfunctioning. And so this plays out a lot in marriages especially, but can also with parents and kids, or with siblings. You know, who is the person who is becoming over responsible in times of stress, right? They are doing things for others that they could do for themselves. You know, and who was the underfunctioner, they're letting the other person take on that responsibility and that sort of ends up - you know, the underfunctioner is often a person who might develop substance abuse problems or other issues because they're sort of in that one down position. And so, you know, based on your sibling position, right? Like, so if your mother was an overfunctioner and her mother was an overfunctioner, you know, you're really gonna get it, right? If you're the first born, that's probably going to be your role. Or if you had a parent who was always overfunctioning for you, you might be a little bit less capable. And so that's kind of an interesting thing to play around with. And if you're looking at a family, you're creating and saying, okay, who are the overfunctioners here and how did they get in the way of everyone else growing up a little bit?KJ (16:07):Does it work like horoscopes where overfunctioners are more likely to be drawn in relationships to slackers or are they drawn to other overfunctioners or could it just be anything?Speaker 4 (16:22):Oh no. Yeah, it's reciprocal. Right? So it's the two people participating in the dynamic.KJ (16:29):So you might have an overfunctioner within their family and they're drawn to someone who's an underfunctioner within their family?Kathleen (16:36):Well if you're talking to a romantic relationship?KJ (16:39):Yeah, I was talking about a romantic relationship.Kathleen (16:40):Definitely, that works a lot. Two overfunctioners are probably gonna butt heads a lot. So you could still write that in a romance. Absolutely. But it would be an added challenge because both people are trying to care for each other, and help each other, and that causes issues.Sarina (16:56):That sounds fun to me actually. Like the butting heads is often a really terrific romantic conflict.Kathleen (17:05):Absolutely. And if we're going to talk about siblings later too, that's another thing. If you have two oldest children, they're probably gonna be that way. So it's an interesting dynamic. But yeah. So if we want to move on, the fourth one is triangles. And everyone knows about triangles, right? It's human nature when two people are tense to pull in a third person or to focus on a third person to calm things down. So it's not just a love triangle. It's sort of the ways that we use other people to calm down our relationship with another person. And those are fun if you're drawing a family diagram to sit down and ask yourself, what are the triangles in this family? Is it two siblings against parent? Is it a parent who's using a sibling to talk to another sibling? You know, is it two parents and a child? The example I love to give - it's from television, but you know, everybody's pretty familiar I think with the show Everybody loves Raymond, it's been awhile since it was on, but I think most people are familiar with it - and there's this classic triangle in it between the mother-in-law Marie, the son Raymond, and the wife Deborah. And everyone thinks that the conflict is between Debra and Marie, right? The mother-in-law and the daughter. But you know, Ray is actually (whether he realizes it or not) is actually quite manipulative because he is able to stay out of the conflict by putting it on the two of them. But, you know, his stance is, Oh, this issue is between you guys. But he's actually contributing to it by being a part of the triangle and by saying he has nothing to do with it. And so it's so interesting to kind of play around with and see how these dynamics with three people could be interesting because - the idea is that when two people are getting along, the third person feels like they're left out and they'll try and butt in and cause conflict. But if two people are having a fight, the third person doesn't really want to be involved in it. The safe place is kind of on the outside. So that's just another fun family dynamic or relationship.KJ (19:20):Or you might have a third person who is trying to fix it. Or a third person who's trying to make it worse.Kathleen (19:26):Yeah, absolutely.KJ (19:27):Yeah, I think it's neat. This is an interesting thing to think of from official perspective because I feel like we often sort of have a conflict, or a plot point, or something that's happening and we've only looked at the point of view of maybe the two main players and to always think, well who's the third player here? That's a different approach.Kathleen (19:49):Yeah, absolutely. And who's maybe trying to give them advice or calm things down. And it can be a positive thing. It's not necessarily negative, but there's usually always more than two people involved when there's conflict.KJ (20:03):So it sounds like from there we should start, you know, taking a look at the siblings in our people's relationships, even if we weren't thinking of a sibling as a big player in a plot. It sounds like we better know who the siblings are and how they play out.Kathleen (20:19):Yeah. And that's one of the most interesting questions you can ask is what is the person's position in their family? And how does that inform how they are in all other relationships? You know, sibling position is definitely a part of it. There's actually this other cool book I would recommend to listeners. This guy named Walter Toman in the 60s did this huge study where he interviewed people about their sibling positions and he wrote this book about what other people they would match well with in a romantic relationship, and who they'd be friends with, and who they'd get into fights with, and sort of what their careers would be. You know, it's such a cool resource. The only issue is it was written in the 60s, right? So it's only talking about straight couples and women aren't assumed to have careers. So you kind of have to take that into account when you're reading it, but it's almost like kind of reading a horoscope in a way. It's just so interesting to me because I love reading them to people to see if their spouse or other people in their life match with it based on this description.KJ (21:28):So what is the book?Kathleen (21:29):It's called Family Constellations.KJ (21:32):It sounds very horoscope.Kathleen (21:35):It does, right? But it's interesting, you know, the idea is that oldest and youngest tend to pair well together. You know, oldest and oldest tend to butt heads a little bit. And youngest and youngest kinda just faff about and don't know what to do a lot. So and obviously there's a lots of exceptions and lots of happy marriages despite these things, but it can play a role, you know, and so it's interesting to read these and think about whether they could be useful when you're creating characters. And yeah, it's just an interesting resource I would recommend to people. But it's not just your sibling position, it's what was happening in your family around the time you were born. So, on a serious note, say like a woman had had a stillbirth or multiple miscarriages right before the birth of a child, that child is probably going to get a little bit more of an anxious focus when they're born. Because of all the things, or if there's just been a death in the family, right? There's just more anxiety in the air. And so they might have a little bit of a harder time kind of growing up and being an individual because that is sort of one extra challenge that they have. Or is it a younger sibling and the parents are a lot older and so they're just kind of doing whatever and are more sort of Laissez Faire in their parenting. Or is it six boys and one girl? How was that girl treated differently in the family and how is her role different? And it's not just the sibling position, it's your parents' sibling positions. I mentioned this earlier, like if this is the oldest of an oldest of an oldest, right? They're really gonna like to be in charge and they're probably going to be an overfunctioner. And it's just interesting to kind of play around with it and think about those positions.Sarina (23:32):You know who I feel is really good at writing these relationships is a novelist, Kristin Higgins. She uses siblings a lot, and she does this wonderful thing where she is able to use all of this family position stuff. And then at the end of the books, avert it, so that the sister that you weren't expecting to really be there in the clinch, is the one who makes the difference.Kathleen (24:02):That's really interesting.Sarina (24:03):Yeah. But she does it in a very believable way. So it's not as if she's throwing away those tendencies, but rather, you know, the exception proves the rule kind of manipulation. It's pretty neat.KJ (24:16):Well, that's kind of the point of what we're trying to do here is to see where our characters start out and then pull them to a different place. Right? So we want the character who maybe without sort of saying it in so many words, but who looks at their distancing relationship with their family and goes, okay, I'm going to stop hiding, I'm going to stop not talking. I'm gonna change and grow. And yeah, it's the relationships with the other people around them, but ultimately, it's that protagonists, you know, where they start and where they end that matters for the story.Kathleen (24:58):Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's a good question to ask. If you're thinking about, okay, how do I create a disruption too - is anytime someone is doing the opposite of what they would normally do to calm things down, that's when you get the shakeup, that's when you get the initial pushback, right? Like it might help things in the long run, but temporarily it's going to increase the anxiety and maybe increase the conflict a little bit. So that's a wonderful question to ask is what does my character normally do in stressful situations or when they are anxious and can I create a situation where they do the opposite and what is everyone's response to that? How does everyone sort of turn on that moment? And I think that's an interesting way to kind of play around with creating a little bit of conflict in a family.Sarina (25:48):Yeah, you went into this in your book, Everything Isn't Terrible, I can't remember which example, but when somebody finally started having more productive responses to the two less functional people in their family it freaked everybody out and made everything harder immediately, even though it was the right course of action and eventually got there. But you're right, that's a nice plot drama.KJ (26:19):So something else you also mentioned was drawing this out and you use the word genograms and you triangles. And I think we're getting this picture of family trees and geometry. And how might that work? What can we draw?Kathleen (26:36):Well, you know sometimes it's called a family diagram. Sometimes it's called a genogram, but basically it's sort of a family tree that has the facts, but also has the sort of emotional processes. I recommended one book, it's called Genograms by Monica McGoldrick. It's the one that's sort of used when people take a family therapy class in grad school. But you know, you can come up with your own symbols. It doesn't have to be the same technique, but you know, if you're drawing conflict, drawing little lightning bolts, right? Or if there's cutoff, you draw a line and then another line that's perpendicular to show that gap, right? There's lots of different ways that you can do it, but it's sort of mapping the emotional history as well. Looking at the triangles, you know, drawing just a triangle between three people. And sort of looking at how that, but also the facts of the family, can kind of inform you as to how people act. Because I think that's useful to write down, you know, when do people die? What else was happening at the same time? When were people born? When did people get married? You know, did a bunch of people get married after the death of a parent? Like you see that a lot of times in families. Or are there missing relatives or branches of a family tree that are sort of just big question marks? There's something about being able to see that on paper drawn out that really just adds another layer of complexity to thinking about the family. And I think it's such a useful tool to have as a writer. And maybe if people are inspired they can do it with their own family. But you don't know what you don't know until you draw it out. And I think it's useful to see what facts are missing. You know, do you not know about people's careers, or their education level, or illnesses, or substance use issues, or where people lived, when they immigrated. Those are all useful facts to know.KJ (28:45):Right. And you can get a long way in fiction without knowing everything about your person. And you can also get a long way down a rabbit hole by trying to write out everything about the person. But you know, every time I create someone, and this is going to be more true for Sarina because she's done it more, it's amazing how much I need to be able to go back and go, okay, wait a minute. I mean, I can't even name them until I know who their parents are. So right away, you're thrown right into it.Kathleen (29:27):Absolutely. And I think, you know, you don't have to have all of the information for every character, but I think if a character is missing information about themselves, that's important too. That shapes who you are also. So it's not just what they know and what's available to them and what, you know, as the writer, it's what's unknown as well and how that influences people.KJ (29:47):Do you sometimes see authors sort of failing to take this stuff into account? Like are you reading along and you're like, wait a minute... You don't have to name names. I'm just curious.Kathleen (29:58):I think the example that Sarina gave about the crazy ex was such a good one, because I think what I see the most is just this incredible mish-mash and sort of lopsidedness of maturity and functioning, when we don't operate that way as humans. You see this a lot in literature, someone has a really terrible parent and then they're this just this angel, right? Like we paint things as heroes and villains. And it's much more complex than that. And so I think doing some of this thinking keeps you from falling into the trap of good person, bad person, victim, hero, villain, right? Not that there aren't terrible people, but I think it just adds so much more to the story when you're able to see the interaction between people and when you see the family as the unit and not just the individual. It helps you make people much more relatable, even if they're maybe not the greatest person in that story, but they're not just a straight up villain.KJ (31:09):Right. You have to know where all that stuff comes from.Sarina (31:12):I think my downfall is sort of the opposite way. Like I write really cerebral characters who can usually find the right way and then I turn on the news and I'm like, wow.KJ (31:22):Plus it's a problem because you don't want - and I do this all the time too - I'm like, and then they calmly and rationally resolved the problem. Because to some extent I guess you're writing what you would like to see happen, but it doesn't work. We need them to not calmly and rationally resolve the problem.Kathleen (31:51):Well I think the only other thing I would add, and you know I talk a lot about this in the book, is that I think it's important to remember that people do what they do to calm things down to the best of their ability. People aren't just randomly throwing in bombs to shake things up necessarily. And we know we've evolved that way for a reason, and it might seem very strange, or upsetting, or annoying to you, but if you can see it as sort of an adaptive thing that that person does to deal with things the best that they know how, I think it allows you to be a little bit more empathetic towards that character and add a little bit more to that character than to someone who's just dropping in to wreak havoc. They're actually doing what they have been programmed to do as a human to try and get through a challenge.KJ (32:40):It's just important that it be wrong.Sarina (32:43):Yeah. That sounds like a fun way to write a drama llama sibling.Kathleen (32:47):Yeah, absolutely. You know, how has this become a person's way of dealing with the chaos?KJ (32:55):There's gotta be a reason why they are the way that they are. Well that is so helpful. And it is a different way to think about it and also a chance to broaden and deepen what we're creating in our fiction. And I I don't think we should miss those. So this was really good. I like it. This is fun, and smart, and a great way to sort of create the dysfunctional family that you can manipulate as opposed to living in the dysfunctional family that you're kind of stuck with. Well, this is the part where we like to talk about the dysfunctional families that we're reading about, or functional, or whatever. And I forgot to warn you, but I know that you listen all the time, so hopefully you knew that we were going to ask you if you'd been reading anything good lately.Kathleen (33:57):Yeah, I actually have. Since my book has come out, I'm just letting myself read only romance because that is just like a gift to me and it's something I don't do a whole lot. So I've just really been enjoying reading tons of romance. And one that I've really enjoyed recently is Bringing Down the Duke by Evie Dunmore. I don't know if you guys have heard of that one. It's part of her series she's writing called A League of Extraordinary Women and it's about women revolved around the suffrage cause in the U.K. And so it's just a really fun, great romance. And I recommend it.Sarina (34:33):You know, I haven't read her yet, but that book is getting a lot of chatter among my friends, so it's definitely on my list.KJ (34:39):I too had heard it. I think I heard it probably on Book Riot, which is a source of many, many book recommendations for me. Do not listen to the Book Riot podcast unless you have a large budget of disposable income to just go and buy all the books because that's what happens to me every single time. How about you Sarina? You read anything good lately?Sarina (35:04):I have a brand new book I'm about to start called 19 Love Songs by David Levithan. And David Levithan is a wonderful YA author who I have read, you know, pretty much everything he's written and this is a special anthology coming out right now, which is Valentine's day-ish because he is so wonderful that he's written some extra stories so I can't wait for 19 Love Songs.KJ (35:35):I'm just looking through what I've been reading lately and I've been reading a lot, like I have big stacks and then of course the minute I get on the spot and I'm trying to figure out what it is that I read and what I enjoyed, I can't, so I'm in the middle of something that I love, but I'm going to wait and talk about it when I finish. And I'm going to tell you all if you have not heard about it, I'm going to give you a pair of fun, fun books that I read. One was Ex-Libras: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman and it's just a bunch of essays about reading. And the delight of that was that I had it on my Kindle and I went to dinner by myself and foolishly grabbed only one book off of the stack of books that I had by the bed. And then the other thing that just reminds me of it is a book, I don't think I've mentioned it before, it's called The Uncommon Reader. And it's a novella by Alan Bennett. And it is the story of what happens when the Queen of England begins to take a passionate interest in reading. And it is hysterical, and beautiful, and wonderful, and very short. So I recommend it. And that's it. I guess that's our show today.Sarina (37:12):KJ, are you going to give a book away?KJ (37:15):I am, yes. Right now. Right now. What I wanted to say to everyone, I'm helpfully holding this up to the microphone so I hope you can all see the adorable copy. We're going to give away a copy of Everything Isn't Terrible by Kathleen Smith and you can read it for your own life and conquer your own insecurities, and not interrupt your own anxiety, and finally calm down, or you can pretend that you only need it for fictional reasons and try to figure out ways to get your characters to conquer their insecurities. We're doing both and we would love to give this away. And what I thought we would do is we will pull a name from our list of subscribers to the show notes. So if you are on our subscribers, if you get the podcast in your email every week, you are already entered. And if you don't then you should go to amwritingpodcast.com and sign up to get the show notes every week. And they are more than shownotes. It's always what we thought of the episode, and all the links, and all the books, and usually some bonus lunacy just because none of us is capable of writing anything straight up anymore. So that's the idea. Sign up. Maybe you'll get to win the book. Alright. I want to thank you, Kathleen. This was great and this was really fun. Where can people find you on all the social media and in all the places?Kathleen (38:40):Yeah, the main place is my website, Kathleensmith.net. I write a weekly newsletter called The Anxious Overachiever about my own efforts on myself and my work with clients that people might be interested in. Or they can catch me on Twitter at fangirltherapy.KJ (38:55):And the book again is Everything Isn't Terrible: Conquer Your Insecurities, Interrupt Your Anxiety, and Finally Calm Down by Dr. Kathleen Smith. Grab it. It is fun. And like I said, we can all just pretend that we're buying it for purely fictional reasons. That's our show this week. Yay. Alright, you want to take us out, Sarina?Sarina (39:18):I will and thank you both. And until next week 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. Get access to private episodes at amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

It’s our 200th episode! In all that time, we’ve never missed a week and never regretted our choice to spend 40 minutes (ish) together—and with you. We love doing the podcast, so this week we thought we’d answer a few podcast-y questions we get a lot: should you start a podcast? Can a podcast help promote a book? Is there gold in them thare podcast hills? We talk about all that and more—but here’s one thing you won’t find in the episode, in part because it seems so obvious now that we never think about it. The smartest thing we did, when we decided we were going for this podcast thing, was this:We made it about writing.That was not, back in 2016, an obvious choice. Jess had just written a best-selling book on parenting. I was the editor of the New York Times’ parenting section. Sarina wasn’t on board yet, and it was just the two of us. The obvious thing to create would have been a podcast about family life. And we would be so, so sick of doing it by now. Or at least I would. (This is KJ writing.) If you are going to start a podcast, either make it about something you love, and have always loved, and can reasonably figure you will continue to love—or make it so broad that it can encompass your changing interests and experiences. Very very few people really want to spend a lifetime talking about, just to offer a parenting example, breastfeeding. Some absolutely do, and if you are one of them, you know it. But for the rest of us, that’s an interest with an expiration date. Don’t start a podcast with an expiration date.(Note—that’s advice with an asterisk. Some podcasts are meant to end. They follow a single story, or offer a series of interviews around a single topic, and that’s it. We talk more about that in the episode.)To bookmark the best choice we made, I offer some of the worst advice I was ever offered, from a PR advisor who, reviewing my “platform” before the launch of How to Be a Happier Parent, put her finger on the podcast and said, that. That doesn’t match. That has to go.I didn’t listen. Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, if you like the podcast, and this not-even-IN the podcast email, please forward it to a friend and suggest that friend might want to take a listen. And if you’re that friend and would like the backstory for the podcast to drop into your inbox every week, click here.Finally—we could use your help for those next 200 episodes. If you love #AmWriting (and if you’ve read this far, you know you do), kick in if you can. Support us, and get a weekly #WriterTopFive full of actionable advice you can use, access to all the past #WriterTopFives and even the occasional mini podcast. LINKS FROM THE PODCASTThe Tanya Eby #AmWriting episodeMagic Lessons, the Big Magic podcastDani ShapiroChasing Cosby: The Downfall of America’s Dad, Nicole Weisensee EganStoryBites Sarina’s podcast#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Jess: Epic, Sarina Bowen, Audio from Pride and PrejudiceKJ: Bunny: A Novel, Mona AwadSarina: 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 (00:00):It's episode 200! Hey fellow writers, it's KJ here at the beginning of episode 200 of #AmWriting. Alright, pat on the back for us. So I have to tell you, normally I write out my promos for our wonderful sponsor, Author Accelerator. So normally what you get is me reading something timely and happy about what Author Accelerator is doing at whatever moment of the week that we're doing our podcast. And I love doing that. But this week for episode 200, you're just getting my off the cuff, impromptu, completely drawn out of the air thoughts about why Author Accelerator is the right sponsor for us and how much I love them. If you need book coaching, if you want to be a book coach, Author Accelerator is undoubtedly the place to go. But even more than that, there is so much great stuff out there on their website. There's the stuff for creating an Inside Outline. And I tell you, I have finally nailed down the Inside Outline, I think. For mostly, oh, okay, I have, I have. For my work in progress, finally. But that is a process that has really helped me out. They've got a whole arc of emails that you can sign up for where you get five projects to work on for your novel. You know, why are you writing it, writing the back of the book copy, that stuff stays useful throughout the process. Author Accelerator has been a wonderful sponsor and they are really a wonderful source of everything you could (well, I mean, not everything, like they're not a source of agents and, okay, I have flaked off here) but they're great. If you have never checked them out, if you have blipped past this promo at every opportunity, this time, this week, maybe just click over and see what's over there because really it's worth it. Is it recording now?Jess (02:31):Now it's recording.KJ (02:31):Yay.Jess (02:32):Go ahead.KJ (02:33):This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.Jess (02:37):Alright, let's start over.KJ (02:38):Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Now, one, two, three. Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. The podcast about writing so cleverly named so that you can probably figure that out. This is the podcast about writing anything and everything - long things, short things, fiction, nonfiction, essays, memoirs, proposals, pitches. This is the podcast for writers who are struggling, or succeeding, at getting their work done.Jess (03:16):I'm Jess Lahey. I'm the author of The Gift of Failure and the forthcoming book, The Addiction Inoculation out in 2021 and you can find my work at jessicalahey.com.Sarina (03:26):I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of 30-odd romance novels. My latest one is called Heartland, and I'm flogging another release in the spring called Sure Shot, which is kicking my butt right now.Jess (03:38):That's the first time I've heard you say the title. That's exciting. I love it. This is like, I get little bits of information sometimes when we podcast. I love that.KJ (03:47):I am KJ Dell'Antonia. I am the author of How To Be a Happier Parent as well as my debut novel, The Chicken Sisters coming out in June of 2020, the former editor of the New York Times' Motherlode blog, a contributor to multiple places, although not super recently.Jess (04:14):As you say that thing about not having submitted super recently. I've been having a bit of a crisis about that and maybe we'll talk about that.KJ (04:21):Maybe we should because that's definitely on my list.Jess (04:26):But this is a special episode.KJ (04:27):It's a very special episode.Jess (04:28):What is it, KJ?KJ (04:29):Well, everyone, this is the episode where we learned that Jess and I are secretly identical, separated at birth. No, no. It's a very special episode because it's our 200th episode.Jess (04:46):Yeah, this is the 200th episode. And I made cupcakes for the 100th episode, but that was when we lived close to each other and it was easier for me to transport cupcakes. Today, I'm actually traveling through town on my way out of town for a speaking engagement and we realized it gave us the ability to all be in the same room together, which is just more fun than Skyping, I have to say.KJ (05:10):It's so much more fun. It may sound a little different but it's got so much going for it.Jess (05:16):We're at the library, so it's a little echoey in here, but we're doing our best.Sarina (05:19):We have all of our matching notebook planners open on the table.Jess (05:26):Oh and we also have something super special I have to call out. So, KJ gave us some pretty cool presents recently. She gave us this beautiful Corksikle cup in bright yellow with a #AmWriting logo on it. And it's really special.KJ (05:49):I do have one and we could totally give it away in honor of our 200th episode. We totally could. We've done some giving away lately. So you know, somebody going to have to go to the post office at some point. So, alright. It'll be someone randomly drawn from the people who get our show notes. That's what we're going to do. So if you're on our show notes email by, let's call it a week after you hear these words, we'll draw a name. You could win a #AmWriting commemorative cup.Jess (06:36):200th episode. We have a lot of stuff to talk about today.KJ (06:45):We have a lot of stuff to talk about today.Jess (06:47):You've got your lips pursed, Sarina, like you have something that you would like to start with.Sarina (06:51):Do I? I thought we should talk about why a podcast?Jess (06:55):I think that's a great idea. Especially since, you know, you've been brought in somewhere between 100 and 200, partly because people love the episodes that you're on so much and it felt like you were spiritually a part of the podcast anyway. But KJ, why did we start this podcast in the first place? I started it mainly because I wanted to, and then you said we're doing this, but why a podcast?KJ (07:20):I think we started this podcast for what I think is a very good reason to start a podcast, which is that we wanted to spend an hour together once a week talking about this thing that we both do and love. So that was our primary goal. And because we, especially me, I listen to and love podcasts, love the format, and then it became a way to form a community around the podcast. So, we weren't looking to sell a book, we weren't looking to build an empire. When people talk to me about starting a podcast, I'm always like, you should do it if it's something you really, really, really want to do, if you think it's going to do something for you...Jess (08:13):If it's another task to add to your to do list, like 'Oh crap, I have to record podcast again today.' I don't think it's a good idea.Sarina (08:21):Well, you mentioned the community aspect of it and writing can be so very solitary. If you had a job where you spent your time literally in a crowded room full of other people, you might not lean towards doing a podcast about that. But it is so solitary and writers have always had to form their own groups in order to have somebody to talk to you. I mean, you could be lucky enough to have done this in Paris in 1920 or whatever, but you know, here we are at the library.Jess (09:00):Frankly that's what the salons often were, anyway, was talking about the writing. And it was a different era, but it's very much in the same spirit, which is get together and talk about what it's like to write, and how hard it is to write sometimes, and how great it is to write sometimes. And every single time, especially for me, I love getting notes about the podcast. I love getting notes about sort of things that have been particularly helpful to people, but in the #AmWriting Facebook group, especially recently, we've had a couple of people that have had successes. We've had a couple of people share what's been helpful for them. And that group, as an extension of this podcast is another huge reason (not only the only reason at this point that I stay on Facebook), but the reason that I feel like it's worth it. That there are writers supporting writers and frankly, I'm a hermit up where I live now and it's been hard. I had to move away from you two. And I don't have a lot of friends up there and there are days I don't leave my house. And so having a place to talk about this stuff is increasingly important for me. I know that was a downer. I sound like I'm sad, but partly it's in response to like, you know, today I have to go out for the next 48 hours and be extremely extroverted, and social, and on. And it's a huge relief to be able to be a hermit for a little while here and there, but if I didn't have this outlet to talk about the writing stuff, I don't know where I would get it.KJ (10:33):Well and I love that we really are like you just said, helping people to develop their own careers. I mean, we've done things, we have learned some stuff. I'm so proud of us. We have been together as a trio since before any of us had done anything of any particular writerly successful note. And I think that's awesome. And one of our upcoming guests, Kathleen Smith, the author of Everything Isn't Terrible (which is a title I love) wrote me and said that she started a weekly email sort of in preparation for her book. She has 10,000 people on her email now. And she said, I would never have started it if it hadn't been for you guys really pushing. That's where she started really, and here's how to do it, and here's what to do, and here's the mechanism.Sarina (11:33):Giving advice to other writers - for one thing, you always learn something when you're doing it. I don't really critique a lot of other people's fiction, but sometimes I do. And there's always this moment of terror if you read it and you don't instantly fall in love and it's not perfect, you know, which is pretty much everything ever. And I have this moment of fear like, 'Oh my God, what am I going to say? This needs work. Holy cow.' And then you sort of relax into it and you find the moment where you find the heat and you figure out, 'Oh, here, this is what it's really about. This is the strong thing.' And when I say this, this person is going to realize that this is the focus point. And also, every single time I close, whatever it is, when I'm done, I walk away and I immediately realize how I've made one of those exact same mistakes in my own work. So when we come together and we discuss how to do a thing, that's never just me telling, it's always me thinking deeply about oh right.KJ (12:39):People come into the Facebook group and they say things that they have learned or they send us an email and they say things that they have learned and it's amazing. And we get to invite people that we admire, and respect, and would love to talk to, to come and talk to us about writing. And that is a huge, huge buzz.Jess (13:02):I think one of the things that's been really helpful for me is having this podcast on my brain all the time. So like Sarina said, instead of just reading and saying something like, 'Oh, I hate this', I read something and I say, 'Why don't I like this?' So for example, yesterday I was reading a book that I have in hard copy and I have an audio. And I'd started it in hard copy and it was fine. It was okay. And then I was listening to it in audio yesterday and had to shut it off. And I realized what was happening was the author (and I don't know if it was just because I got halfway through and the author turned in this direction or because it was the author's actual voice on audio) became extremely preachy. She became 'I am the expert. You will do what I say you, I know more than you. I am going to tell you how to do things.' And I realized for me it was an incredibly important moment realizing not just that I didn't like it and it wasn't that I didn't like her, it was that I didn't like the style with which she was delivering what could otherwise be really useful information. And so I backed up and I said, 'If I wasn't listening to this voice that I have come to find annoying and a tone I was coming to find annoying, would this information had been helpful to me?' And I realized, yeah, actually this is really interesting information. So that's important takeaway for me. It's that dissection process that we talk about a lot. And since starting the podcast I think I have become a lot more analytical and critical, not critical, but thoughtful about why I don't like something and why I do like something and what makes something really come alive for me and what makes something fall flat. And I think for my writing, selfishly, I think that's really important. I know very specifically now when I do my audio for this next book what landmine to avoid very specifically is don't be preachy or don't use that tone that turned me off.KJ (14:59):So I feel like one of the questions that we get as podcasters is, 'Oh, I like podcasts. Should I start a podcast?'Jess (15:08):Or, 'I have a book coming out. Should I start a podcast? Will that help me sell my book?'Sarina (15:15):And we have listeners who are probably thinking about this. So we should address them.KJ (15:19):And then the first thing to say is 'No, there are not too many podcasts in the world. Go for it. There will be podcasts that are started tomorrow that will turn into huge podcasts. You can't start it any sooner. If you really want to do this, do it and don't let us talk you out of it. If we can't talk you out of it, then you probably really want to do it.' But if you're saying to yourself, 'I have a book coming out, I hear that these things called podcasts are good.' This person's probably not listening to us because our listeners love podcasts. But you know, if it's not a format that you love, and adore, and really want to contribute to, I would say you're probably not going to be very successful at it.Jess (15:58):No, I completely agree., I would hate doing this if it was a chore as opposed to something that I love. And I think that would come across. I think that the good feedback we get tends to circle around - it's clear that you just enjoy talking to each other.KJ (16:12):You know, it's not a money maker.Jess (16:18):It's not a moneymaker, says the woman who ran the numbers and realized we had some $10,000 in during our first hundred 150 episodes.KJ (16:25):Yeah. But thank you to our sponsor. Thank you to our sponsor, Author Accelerator. Thank you to our supporters. We are totally breaking even now, if you don't count the time that we put into it, but we do it for a lot of reasons.Jess (16:43):That's funny you say that because we got a note from or a post, I can't remember, from someone saying that this week's writer top five email was worth the cost of supporting the podcast.KJ (16:57):It was a good one.Jess (16:58):It was great because this week's writer top fives is about things to flag in your writer contract and your publishing contracts that are really essential that can really result in some big problems if you ignore them.Sarina (17:13):And we talk about the grant of rights, and the option clause, and things like that that you need a name for and a vocabulary for.Jess (17:22):That's when things really start to blow my mind when I start to think about where I was seven years ago and how much I didn't know and how much I continue to learn about. And I was thinking about this because the London book fair is coming up in March and I would love to be a fly on the wall there because one of the big purposes of the London book fair is foreign rights. And foreign rights still feels to me like one of those things I'm only starting to understand. And so I'm actually kind of looking forward to learning more about foreign rights so that we could actually talk about this in some kind of intelligible, reasonable way at some point in the future. But it's amazing to me that we're at a point where Sarina is talking about these rights, that it's really important to preserve and why they're important to preserve. Because that was stuff I knew nothing about seven years ago.KJ (18:19):Well. So one of the things (as podcasts) that we're seeing is people starting podcasts in support of frequently bestselling books or books that they are hoping is going to be a bestseller. And we are seeing content creation companies seeking out authors and saying, so, you know, Elizabeth Gilbert did not say, 'Gee, I think I would like to make a podcast.' and then make a podcast. I don't remember what company supported that, but it was a company that supported it. Dani Shapiro, who's doing her podcast right now.Jess (18:50):I love family secrets.KJ (18:52):Same thing. I don't know where it started, I don't know Dani Shapiro, but a content creating company wanted that. I have another friend who has a book coming out who tried really hard to create something around that and worked with a content creation company, and came up with sample episodes, and came up with something, and is now at the point where - it costs so much to produce what they wanted to produce that they can't get anyone to produce it because it was interview-based. But if the book becomes a bestseller, then they have got this that they're sitting on. So we are seeing our peers sort of creating these either limited run podcasts or it's almost like a different format.Jess (19:45):I mean I think it's interesting to me that currently one of the podcasts I'm listening to is Chasing Cosby, which is basically is the book in podcast form. But I don't care, because it's a completely different thing for me. The book, I liked, it's about Bill Cosby and the trial and this one particular woman, her last name is Isensee who writes for the Los Angeles Times and was the one who reported this thing. And now the podcast is interviews with the actual people. You can hear the audio from phone calls. It's a very different experience.KJ (20:21):Isn't that basically what the audio book of Malcolm Gladwell's latest book was?Jess (20:25):So Malcolm Gladwell did something really different, which was really interesting. I don't happen to be a fan of this particular book, this particular podcast. Instead of just reading the book out loud, he turned it into a podcast format and included excerpts from interviews and things like that. And Chasing Cosby isn't just the book, but the fact that it's a compelling story. I'm all in, even though I already read the book, I'm okay with the fact that I already kind of know some of this information. I like it in this new format.Sarina (20:57):So we're seeing a lot of play with the medium and audio versus podcasting versus writing. But I just want to point out that to me, starting a podcast to support your book is not magic. Because to me, it almost feels like you have a double discoverability problem. Well, when anyone publishes a book in any method, you need discoverability for your book. And that is accomplished in all the ways that we talk about every week, right? You could advertise, the algorithms help you, you can have a newsletter, et cetera, et cetera. All that stuff we obsess about all the time. So podcasting, on the one hand is a way to find people interested in your topic in a different spot. But, it's not magic. Like, if we started tomorrow, a brand new podcast, we would be starting from zero and we would have to go find that audience. So if you have this book that's coming out and you're asking yourself, what can I do? I'm not sure that the right answer is always start a podcast and then go try to find listeners for it. At the same time when I'm trying to find people to buy my book.Jess (22:10):Especially if it's a very obscure topic, because then you're really having to work against the fact that people are like, well, I'm not really interested in learning about whatever the topic might be.Sarina (22:23):Well, we could spend a minute talking about my podcast failure, I guessKJ (22:32):It wasn't a failure, you just chose not to continue it. And I think for a very good reason, the number of podcasts that were started and has been chosen not to continue is long. And actually includes Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic, which I think they conceived of as a limited run, but I think that they were maybe thinking about doing it again. I'm just thinking it was like a lot of work for her to find these people. If anybody's listened to it, she finds creative people and they interview, they're terrific. But that was like a whole 'nother job. It's possible Elizabeth Gilbert thought, 'You know, I'd like to just stick to my primary job, which is writing.' And I feel like that's more where you were.Sarina (23:15):Yeah, so the idea was started for the right reasons, which is that I wanted to spend an hour a week talking to Tanya about audio books.KJ (23:23):That's Tanya Eby, who's been a guest on this podcast.Sarina (23:26):That's right. So Tanya Eby is an award-winning narrator of like 800 audio books. And she and I also did some writing together. So we were sort of looking at the market for audio books and we just love it. So we had a brand new format, which is that we would play first chapter of an audio book that was new. And then she and I would discuss what we found in there, like what was the style of the narration, and how did it support the story, and what did the chapter do for us in terms of readers and listeners. And it was really fun. We had it professionally produced. So each episode cost us about $70, let's just say. And we did about four to five episodes a month. We launched on Thursdays. And because the market for audio books is growing at double digits a year, the market seemed obvious to me. There were a lot of people interested in fiction in audio, and the podcast world is also big. So we launched this thing and we pulled in from our reader audiences a bunch of listeners, and our numbers went up a little bit every week. And it was all good, right? Except it costs money to produce, it costs time to produce. And the numbers just weren't where I wanted them to be. We were making, I don't know, 700 to a thousand people happy every week with their listen. But the growth rate just wasn't satisfying. And I felt I'm spending so much energy trying to give this wonderful thing away for free and I should be spending that energy writing my next book instead. And because the economics don't stress me out for writing another book and they stress me out a little bit for the podcast. And so eventually we let it go after we made you know, nine months worth of episodes and it was a good time. And I liked spending the time on it. But discoverability was a problem.KJ (25:30):Yeah. And it's hard. I mean there are a lot of podcasts. It is hard to get any form of traction. So if the goal is getting attention, like you said, you're gonna have the same problem with the podcast that you do with your book.Sarina (25:51):Right. It's also quite difficult to measure what people are taking away from podcasts.KJ (25:58):It's really hard to measure analytics. It's hard for me to measure our analytics. You would think it would be super obvious, but for various reasons having to do with all the different ways that people get their podcasts, and what Apple wants to tell us, and what Google wants to tell us, and the fact that for some reason some podcast players are pulling from Audio Boom and some of them are pulling from SubStack. And this is all very technical. I can't even tell you how many people are listening to us every week. But how many is really challenging.Jess (26:37):On that note, my brain suddenly went to Oh my gosh, I'm paralyzed now. How many people are listening to us? I often have to do this where I just sort of assume it's the three of us talking together.Sarina (26:52):Well, I have to say one time I was listening to a podcast that you guys had recorded in my car with my now 14 year old, but he was maybe 11 at the time, and you guys were speaking and we were listening and then the episode ended with the lovely music and I shut it off and my child turned to me and said, 'Do they have other listeners besides you?'.Jess (27:48):What's been fun recently is I figured out (this is a sort of a tangent), but I realized if you go to, for example, iTunes and you're looking at podcasts, some podcasts will list their guests. And iTunes seems to link - I was looking at either Tim Ferriss or the Rich Roll podcast and I went into the podcast episode itself, and the guest was linked and suddenly I could click on the guest and it showed me all the podcasts that that person has been on. And that was really, really interesting.KJ (28:19):That makes me wonder if I need to go back and do something.That makes me wonder if you've just created more work for me.Jess (28:26):Well, since I created it then maybe it has to be my job. That's also been really interesting, sort of this outgrowth of figuring out who's going to do what. Especially when Sarina came on board, especially when we added the weekly top fives, because you know, I just want to be sure the work is evenly distributed. And having three of us has been nice because then we can sort of make sure that it's all getting done.KJ (28:51):So before we go on to what we're reading, let me just throw out there, listeners, if you do love the podcast, if you do want to support us, it'd be great for you to support us via the whole support thing. But pop over and leave a review on iTunes, or even better tell someone, tell a friend that you know is a writer to check us out and go and listen to the podcast. We don't do anything to spread the word about the podcast. Other than that we tweet it when we have it every week and we put it on our various social media. So we don't advertise it or do anything along those lines. But we'd love to have more listeners. So if you can find us some, that's great. And of course, you can absolutely support us by going to amwritingpodcast.com and clicking on the support button or just subscribe to the weekly show notes so you can get us riffing on our various episodes. And that's great, too. Oh, and plus then you'll be entered to win the commemorative #AmWriting travel mug.Jess (30:03):Also check out the #AmWriting Facebook page. The fun thing there is that we do we keep an eye on what's being posted there, so that it's really a supportive place and there is no mean stuff going on there and there's not any excessive self-promotion.KJ (30:20):If you have a question you put up there and people can answer. But we also might do a whole podcast around it. That's totally been more than once that we've done that.Jess (30:29):Yeah, we get great questions from there because that's the real stuff people are dealing with. The real stuff that gets people stuck. The nice thing is it's becoming this self perpetuating answer machine because now if we've ever podcast about something, or if someone has expertise in a particular area, when someone in the group asks the question, suddenly there's 40 comments offering really great answers. Can I bring up really, really quickly - I have a quick question for Sarina and she can be very helpful to me in answering this question. So Sarina, you have a new short story that is out and I want to talk about, I'm really curious actually why you choose to do either the shorter pieces that you had a novella and what those do for you and how that's different for you in promotion and marketing than a novel. I like to watch you as you roll things out and this is a new thing that is really interesting to me.Sarina (31:29):Well, the item that you're thinking about this week is called Epic. And that's part of a co-written series with my collaborator Elle Kennedy.Jess (31:39):From the Him and Us series. And it's short. I love how you call it. It's book 2.5 of the Him and Us series.Sarina (31:48):Well, so all of this is a little bit tricky because we wrote a short thing because we didn't want to write a third book about the same couple.Jess (31:57):Even though we love them, their nickname is Westmead.Sarina (32:00):This is the problem is that sometimes the book you need to write is not the book that your audience wants. And if I did write a book three about Westmead, there would be a bunch of people that wouldn't want to read about them being sad.Jess (32:14):Well, that's the thing. So you're telling me that just because there's market demand for a particular book that maybe the author shouldn't write it.Sarina (32:22):Sometimes the author is tired. But we wrote this short item and we put it in a free holiday anthology. And the goal there was just exposure and new readers. So that's fun, but with low expectations. And then I thought, you know, short audio is finding a spot and I thought we could produce it for not very much money, even though we have amazing fabulous narrators.Jess (32:47):You have the narrators from the original two books and they're wonderful.Sarina (32:49):Right. And we pay them full price but it's a short piece, right? So it just couldn't cost that much. And I had some new ways of potentially marketing that, but then we asked one of our agents to just show it to Audible and Audible ended up buying it.Jess (33:07):That's really exciting.Sarina (33:08):So then that part was out of our hands and you know, it's nice when Audible buys a thing because then you don't have to produce it.Jess (33:15):Do you think they bought it because they looked at the sales from Him and Us and said, 'Oh wowzers.'Sarina (33:21):Those two books actually performed very, very well for Audible studios, who created those audio books. After it came out of that free anthology, just publishing it as a 99 cent ebook, and a slim little paperback for fun, for the super fans who wanted that third thing in print.Jess (33:43):It's not only fun because it's those two characters that people have come to love, but a lot of the other characters that people really love show up in there. Like Blake shows up, and there's jokes about Blake and his fear of sheep, and it's really fun to get a little dose of all that.Sarina (33:57):Well, the other thing I had fun with is this slim little paperback. When you're doing something that's really just for joy, you you have more license there. So I put in all the foreign covers that these books have gotten, like there's pages for what does the book look like in German, what does it look like in Italian, just for giggles. And also there's a line at the end of chapter one of the first book - My weakness is him. - and I put every translation in there. So that was just a little fun thing. It is not a moneymaker and that's just the way it is.Jess (34:35):But the fun things are why we do this and every once in a while it's important to have that as a touch point and it made me really happy, I have to say. In fact, I read it out loud, I read the original story out loud in the car to my husband because the main point of tension in the short story is so well done. And my husband, he adores you, he could care less about this story, about Westmead. But I read the story to him in the car and he thought it was delightful. I didn't read the racy bits.Sarina (35:10):There aren't really racy bits, but okay.Jess (35:13):Anyway, thank you for mentioning that. Mainly because I'm just fascinated when you go off and do something that seems a little scary and different and it's inspiring to me. So anyway.Sarina (35:22):Well thank you.Jess (35:23):What do you want to talk about that you've been reading?KJ (35:28):I read something really weird and kind of a departure for me, but definitely a fun book. It's called Bunny and the author is Mona Awad. And the cover is amazing; it's like a pink graffitied bunny and it is this very strange story of a creative writing master's program and the people within it, who also have a strange power that involves bunnies and it's strange. I just can't, everything would be a spoiler. Other than to say that a dark comedy is putting it lightly. It's pretty, pretty heavy on the dark, but also definitely, definitely funny, and worth the look, especially if you like books about graduate programs. If that's one of your tropes (and it is absolutely one of mine, sort of university life) this is a totally different twist on it.Jess (36:37):Okay. Alright. I'm actually reading a book that I can't talk about because I'm reviewing it, but I am so excited to be able to tell you about it because it's so fantastic. But this week for me, I'm having trouble finishing my edits. I'm at that place where they're almost done and I left the hardest ones to the end. So every one is painful, mainly because every single time I have to do an edit, I have to get back in the headspace of the chapter where the edit exists. Because I keep having this impulse to say things that I've actually already said in the chapter. I repeat myself. It's hard to get in that head space. So for me, this week has been so much about comfort listens. So not only did I listen to Epic of Sarina's, I actually went back into my Audible library and just redownloaded all of my Jane Austen, honestly. This week I relistened to Sense and Sensibility. Juliet Stevenson, the actress, has done a couple of Jane Austen's including Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility and she's great reader. But Rosamund Pike, an actress that I really, really like who was in Pride and Prejudice. She plays Jane the eldest sister. She reads Pride and Prejudice on Audible and she's fantastic. And then I realized as a spin off to that, that I think I'm going to go buy Howard's End by Ian Forrester cause that's also one of my favorites. And I haven't listened to in a long time. So this is a comfort listen kind of week for me. It's been a stressful and just difficult week, in terms of the work. The work has been hard and so I want the listening and the reading to be easy. Sarina's got a lot of nodding going on because Sarina's been working hard writing this week and not reading a lot, right?Sarina (38:31):That's right.Jess (38:36):Happy 200, everybody. I'm so happy you joined us, Sarina. It wasn't quite complete without you.KJ (38:54):Alright, well here's to another hundred.Jess (38:56):Here's to another hundred. And I promise I'll make cupcakes. 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. Get access to private episodes at amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Our guest today, Dan Blank, sure seems like a man who loves his work. On his own podcast, the Creative Shift, he’s a warm and engaged interviewer. In his emails, he’s genuine and engaged. Is he selling his book and his services as an advisor to authors developing their platform and launching their work into the world? Sure, but it never feels like he’s selling. It feels like he’s sharing.Wouldn’t we all like to feel like that, and have our readers see us that way? We were hoping Dan would share his magic sauce and we’d all go skipping off towards easy street down a rainbow path, but it turns out there’s some work involved here. So instead, we talked about process, from the way you manage your personal trolls to the way you manage your emails, and then we talked—buzzword alert—authenticity, and finding the things you genuinely want to share with the people who are a match for your work. (You can download Dan’s free guide, 5 Ways to Immediately Connect with Readers, here.)Episode links and a transcript follow, and that’s it for shownotes, because man has it been a couple of weeks. It’s been February for at least a year, right? And I thought January felt long. A few things you can do to help us out or get more #AmWriting:Review us in your podcast app.Join the #AmWriting Facebook GroupSupport us with a little cash, and get periodic #SupporterMini episodes (next week: #OutlineShortcut) and weekly #WritersTopFives every Monday that isn’t an unexpected school holiday that kicks my ass. FanFaves include Top Five Details to Flag in Your Publishing Contract and Top Five Ways to Win at Newsletter Subject Lines. 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)KJ: Such a Fun Age, Kiley ReidHow Could She: A Novel, Lauren MechlingRed, White, & Royal Blue: A Novel, Casey McQuistonSarina: The Starless Sea: A Novel, Erin MorgensternDan: Churchill: Walking with Destiny by Andrew RobertsBonus: Clementine, The Life of Mrs. Winston ChurchillOur guest for this episode is Dan Blank, and you can find more about him at We Grow Media.This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. 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 (00:00):Hey 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 are we writers, we're people with a gift for encouraging other writers. Maybe that comes out in small ways for you, but for some of you, 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. And if that's got your ears perked up, head to authoraccelerator.com and click on become a book coach. Is it recording?Jess (00:41):Now it's recording.KJ (00:43):Yay.Jess (00:43):Go ahead.KJ (00:44):This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.Jess (00:48):Alright, let's start over.KJ (00:48):Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Now, one, two, three. I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is our podcast about writing all the things - fiction, nonfiction, essays, book proposals, all the things that I list every week because this is the podcast about sitting down and getting your writing work, whatever that is, done.Sarina (01:20):And I'm Sarina Bowen. I'm the author of 30-odd romance novels and my new one is called Heartland. You can find more about me at sarinabowen.com.KJ (01:31):I'm excited for Heartland. I was just crawling all over your website today for no apparent reason. Anyway, I am KJ Dell'Antonia. I am the author of The Chicken Sisters, a novel coming out in June of 2020, as well as How To Be a Happier Parent, which is out in hardback now and in paperback this summer. And I am excited to say that we have a guest today. So let me just introduce him. Our guest is Dan Blank. He's so many things that I don't know what to put first, so don't judge me by how I rank these. But he is the host of The Creative Shift podcast, the author of Be the Gateway: A Practical Guide to Sharing Your Creative Work and Engaging an Audience, the creator and wunderkind behind the We Grow Media Organization, and a man with a true passion for what he likes to call a human centered approach to reaching your audience. And I would have to say that Dan has a human centered approach to everything. So, welcome Dan.Dan (02:32):Thank you for the lovely introduction. I appreciate that.KJ (02:36):You're welcome. A couple of weeks to go. We recorded an episode on what we do all day and you don't have to convince either of us that the most important thing that we do is create. But we both struggle to put that first sometimes because of all the other stuff that feels pressing. And all that other stuff is mostly about marketing, and promoting ourselves and our work, and getting it out in the world and communicating with our editors or agents or audio book recorders or cover designers - just so much stuff. So we are hoping to have kind of a two-part conversation with you: if getting the work out in the world is the second most important thing, how do we do that better and smarter instead of just chasing shiny new opportunities and how can we get it done? And full disclosure here, before I stop talking, I think that you love connecting your work with people or at least it feels that way to me. And Sarina and I both would like to feel that way. So I have dubbed this #HowToLovePromotingYourWork. And that's not a challenge or anything. I did not ask you a question. How can we start? What should be my first question?Dan (03:59):To me, it always starts with clarity. And I totally agree with you, that for a writer it begins with their craft. It begins with what they create, why they create it, and of course their ability to do so. And then from that, it's about the idea of connecting it with people. I find that a lot of people absolutely do what you say, they struggle to create because of all the other important things in life. And sometimes it is distracting. Like going on a co-host website for no reason and just spending time there, which I do all the time. But a lot of times it's critically important things like kids, and job, and to feeding your family, and that sort of thing. So when I think of the idea of productivity and getting writing done, a lot of what I think about is that battle for clarity. Of knowing what is the most important thing, and knowing it in your bones, and having made decisions around it. And I think if you don't have that first, then it's very difficult to start weighing things in your day. Of like, well I should volunteer for that, I should do this, maybe let me just check that out, and someone told me about that book let me check that out, or let me get back to email. So the place I like to start is talking about clarity, but I'm not sure if that's starting too far back for you.Sarina (05:23):I would love to jump in and tell you that you're already saying some things to me that really resonate. Because my relationship to productivity and to my clarity of purpose has changed so much over the last five years and not in a healthy way. And I'm sort of struggling to go back to where I was. Well, I started writing romance novels out of frustration about five years ago, because the things that I had been working on were not working, not finding a market. And so I wrote the first couple just out of joy and just for fun. And I accidentally became a romance novelist because the moment that my first romance came out, then I found success. So everything started to work for me. But the problem is now that my relationship to that work has changed so much because of reader expectations. And now my inbox is full of people who want things from me. Whereas, when I first started writing these stories, they were just for me. I mean, I had the hope that somebody would read them, but now I literally get messages every day from people who are demanding that I do a particular thing next. And it's really messed me up a little bit. You know, when I sit down in front of my computer in the morning now, I have all those voices in my head and they want certain things to happen in my fictional worlds and they want certain books next. But I'm on deadline on this other one. And you know, cry me a river, right? Because I have an engaged audience, but sometimes it's too loud.Dan (07:19):Yeah. I mean, KJ knows this about me. I work in a small studio here in New Jersey and on one of the walls is nothing but photos of artists, and writers, and musicians who inspire me. And I pick photos of them when they are either very young, before they've had success, or when they're sort of in that moment of risk. And I stare at them all day. And you talking about that thing that a lot of people have, which is I don't want to write to an audience, but I want to feel that my life is filled with an audience. And how to navigate that is a tricky thing. And as I look at that wall right now, I think of how all of these other creators had to deal with that, too. You come out with a successful album, or painting, or show, or performance, or book and you're immediately thrilled at the success and then saddled with that success. And you're also talking about not just in your head, you're talking about, it's like infiltrating your day through email, and probably through private messages, and things like that.Sarina (08:20):Yeah.Dan (08:24):Now we will get to the crying. I mean the first thing I think about that, is the ability to compartmentalize it. And sometimes that is a system you create. So you have a virtual assistant who is actually in your inbox and moves things to different places so that you're not always confronting them at a bad moment. That's one way to do it. Another way to do it is to sort of reframe feedback from readers almost in a community marketing role. So you're expecting this. And the way I like to think about that is to have a process. Because if we think about anyone, JK Rowling, anyone who has a big fan base, and all day long fans come up and tell them about their life there's a real emotional baggage to that. Let alone if they're saying, why don't you do this, why don't you do that? If it's reframed as this is a marketing role, this is a reader connection role, this is a me being there for people role. In a background way that might be a way to compartmentalize it in your mind, but then the service that you're doing of engaging with them, it's a whole different thing. You have a process by which to process that. And again, I think KJ knows this from from my work, but I have this little thing I call creativity cave trolls and it's basically anything that distracts you, takes you off of your clarity. And I imagine that this is one of those cave trolls for you. And the whole concept behind it is not that you want to kill the troll, the troll will always be there. It's sort of this dumb, lumbering thing that will always be a part of your life. And the way that you manage that is that you build a system to manage it. You're always going to get these emails so let's plan for those emails and let's find a way to process them. Again, it could be hiring someone, it could be flagging them in your inbox, and you deal with them only on Mondays from 4:00 to 8:00 PM. Or you have a script that you use, something where if you know they're going to come and take you off track, we find a way to process them. And then hopefully that would give you more mind space to create and then fewer things to take you way off the rails.KJ (10:40):And I think that we all struggle with that inbox full of demand. Whether it's reader demand, like Sarina gets, or editor demand, or school volunteer demand, or just all the things. My inbox right now is full of direct messages from social media and many of them there were, 'Yeah, I sure I would love to be on your podcast, actually.' But they all require sort of a processing time that is very real and that's so annoying. Why can I not just process them in the amount of time that it takes to read them? That's a little crazy, but it's just like, why does it take me 40 minutes to crank through three emails?Dan (11:35):Can I really dig into email? Is that okay? Cause I'm so passionate about this. Okay, so I know this is another thing KJ and I've talked about in the past, which is my philosophy that your inbox is not a to do list. And the problem I think a lot of people have with email is they ask for it to do too many things. And it's one channel. So a number of ways to even think about what you just said. And that's to: one, turn off the notifications. If they're going to go to Instagram, or going to go to Twitter, let them go to Instagram and Twitter. Don't also have them pop into email because then that's a bottleneck for everything. Another way to kind of lighten the load is to think about having different inboxes for different purposes. So one thing that I do is I have almost every newsletter that I get (and I get a ton of newsletters cause I kind of study them) I have an email inbox (a Gmail account) just for newsletters. So the email that I use every day gets almost no newsletters. And I unsubscribe from everything. You know, if I buy something from Guitar Center and they accidentally put me on their newsletter list, I actively unsubscribe from things, I actively route things to different inboxes. And the idea is the fewer things I have to even look at and sort through, the more clarity I have to manage the things that are there. So that's sort of the first thing I would say with email and the second thing is, again to sort of have a process to process the inbox. So I'm one of those really, really, really annoying people who's basically always at inbox zero. And that's because I'm always offloading things from email. So the super quick version of what I do is I don't consider my inbox my inbox. I use Apple mail and they have like a flag folder and Gmail has a star folder. So right then and there when I open up email and they all pop in in the morning, I don't really read them, I flag emails that I have to look at. So everything I don't flag just goes into the endless archive. I don't worry about deleting them, I don't move them into folders and pretend that I'm like a librarian of my inbox cause that takes a lot of time and decision making power. Then I just go to my flagged folder and there are just the 16 emails I flagged let's say that day. And from what I do then is I try to process what I can quickly. Like if I can just do a one word or a one line reply back, I do that. And for anything more, if it's client saying, 'Oh, can we do it out here and I'm gonna add this to our agenda', I move it out of email, I put it in the folder I have for that client. I move it into another working process, I don't keep it in the inbox. And for things I can't process right away either I leave it in there until later in the day or I email that person and say, 'Thanks, I'm going to get back to you within 48 hours on this.' So I always take action on it and where I can't take action, I at least set an expectation that I see you and you will hear back from me at a certain time. And that sort of has worked wonders for my inbox. It's been a very long time since I've ever worried about email because that system works for me. So I typically end the day with a totally empty flags folder.Sarina (15:05):Huh. I love how analytical that is because it seems like maybe I could manage that as I'm analytical about most everything, but I also hear you sort of saying that I should just get over my anger at some of the things that people email me.Dan (15:24):Yeah, I mean I think that there's such a power, there's such an energy that it takes and I like the idea of how do we flip that? How do we have a script that we can send to these people? How do we have a thing in your website that says how you deal with it?Sarina (15:39):Oh, I have the thing, it's just that people don't pay attention. It says in beautiful pink letters right above my contact form. Like, 'Due to the volume of questions Sarina cannot respond to questions about publication plans, audio plans, paperback dates, et cetera. Between the newsletter and upcoming releases we have you covered. Thank you for understanding.' And every day I get an email that just says, when is the audio book coming out? Or something like that. But it's partly this, I've had to cross this little personal rubicon where pretty much before last year I really believed that everyone who reached out to me with a question deserved an answer, and promptly. Because that person's about to throw down $15 for my audio book. And then I just had to come to a place of, 'Well, I won't ever produce another thing again if I'm always answering that question.'KJ (16:38):It's not a bad problem to have.Sarina (16:41):I saw it as a problem.KJ (16:42):I know you do.Sarina (16:44):Well, I actually don't respond anymore to that particular question and I definitely do not respond anymore to, 'Is there ever going to be another book about so-and-so?' Because, like I've said, I've reached this place where I can't actually reply to everything or I won't finish the writing goal of the day, but it feels bad not to tell that invested person that I can't answer your email. Except it says right over the contact form basically click here to see all the public plans. Like, if you're curious about a thing, here is the page for that. So yeah, I'm a little stuck.KJ (17:38):I know you have a virtual assistant, they could just weed those for you and have a canned response that says what the pink letters say, only friendly, not that pink letters aren't friendly. And then you would know like, okay those people all got an answer that basically said nothing, but I didn't have to do it. When I was getting my New York Times emails, I had somebody do that for some of the years, depending on the years, just, you know, volume of submissions, blah blah blah. Because I did feel like everyone deserved at least a basically automated response. It's hard, cause arguably everyone doesn't deserve a response. It's sort of like the social media direct messages for me. And that's an interesting one, Dan. Cause I don't actually ever go on this particular platform, but I have such a large following there that I don't want to shut it down. That's why the Twitter dm's come and my assistant handles most of them, but these were all things she couldn't handle. Somebody who was cleaning it out, but I don't know. I mean you've probably thought of that and there may be reasons that you haven't done it, or haven't done it yet.Sarina (18:55):Well, I have somebody on some of these platforms. But of course Facebook makes it difficult.KJ (19:04):Yeah, Facebook won't let you.Sarina (19:05):Yeah. Like if I share with my Canadian assistant, my login, then Facebook will flag me as not a real human.KJ (19:16):Really, Facebook messages are like the bane of my...that should have an audit. You should be able to have an automated response that basically says, 'I don't do Facebook messages.' or you should be able to turn it off.Sarina (19:28):Well, Instagram is actually even worse because they pile all of the actual messages in with so-and-so reacted to your story or whatever.KJ (19:38):Yes, that's a new thing that people can like make a little clapping sound under your story, which is fine. That's delightful, clap for my story. But now it's in my dm's and yeah.Sarina (19:49):Well, at the risk that I've just spent the last 10 minutes sounding like a horrible human who doesn't like having invested readers, I did listen to your podcast, Dan, when you were helping someone who was a nonfiction author, develop a more authentic relationship with her Facebook following and she was, I believe, a client of yours. And her topic was something very accessible, but also sort of serious, which was divorced, I believe. And you said the word authentic enough times when I was listening to it that I thought, 'Okay, okay.' So this is another lesson I need to take from you. And basically after I listened to that episode, I cut out a bunch of the things I was doing on social media that didn't feel authentic to me. And I basically came home and I wrote a list of when do I feel the most authentic in my social media communication. And then I just hammer that list lately. Like those are the things we're doing now because I feel the best about them. And I was left wanting to hear how that might change when you're dealing with people who write fiction though, because obviously somebody who counsels others who are going through a divorce has a very one-to-one relationship with helping that person. And since all marketing is sort of problem solving, but the problem I'm solving for you is just that you have something to read this weekend and you didn't before, so it's a more tenuous relationship with that follower. And I just wondered - you must have thought of this and I was curious about it.Dan (21:46):Yeah, I was thinking of this and I think it was maybe in Jennie Nash's newsletter this morning. She referenced like a Harry Potter podcast whose tagline was something like, 'We don't read for escape, we read to become more human or to more fully, you know, be a part of life.' And whenever I think of like a novelist, or even a memoir writer, I think of that. Which is, to me, it's not just about escape, it's about connecting to something within someone, a worldview, part of their identity, a theme, a possibility in life. And I think about how for a novelist that can be a part of what they share. And I also think a lot about the duality here, which is the author is not the work. You know, the work is the work and the person behind it is the person. Yet as a fan of a book, or a fan of a theme, or a story, or something like that, we can get engaged with the person behind it. And that's why we love seeing cat photos or dog photos of an author who doesn't write about cats or dogs. And we have little in jokes that aren't part of the book, they're a part of that. And I think about sometimes there's a crossover. There are things that novelists can share that is about the identity and about the worldview. So if you pick just big obvious themes about love, or friendship, or duality, or commitments, or whatever, you can think of lots of little things that one can share that they align with, the reader aligns with, and also kind of fits with stories. But I also think it is about being what you want to see in the world. The word authentic I think is a very challenging one, cause we like to think it's just what we want to do. It's like who we are. But authentic, you've got to be careful with that, too. Like what is authentic? If we were being authentic, we'd all be wearing pajamas right now. You know, we'd be in big comfy chairs, there'd be ice cream surrounding us, that's very authentic to how we'd like to be. But we're all probably wearing more regular clothing, we're sitting in a desk chair, we're sitting up cause we're on a podcast. And I think that we get to filter how we're authentic online. And I think that with this question or what you're sharing here and I'm thinking about, and even your other one, I think a lot about Bruce Springsteen. Partly because I'm from New Jersey and partly because the few times I've been actually right next to him, I'm surrounded by mobs of fans, and behind them are fans, behind them are fans, behind them are fans. And here's someone like you, who doesn't have enough time to get to everyone and he's had to find a way to be okay with that. And he is (to me) the great construct of an image of authenticity. He has an authenticity he's showing you that is true, but it's also a filter of what's authentic.Sarina (24:52):Yeah, well sometimes my readers help figure out these themes for me.Dan (24:59):Oh wow.Sarina (25:01):So well, yeah. So, of course I write in series and my series tend to have certain themes running through them. One of them is hockey, one of them is Vermont. So people will post in my Facebook group, news stories all the time that remind them of little things that have happened in those books. Like this past weekend, a goalie made a goal for his team by basically flipping the puck all the way down the entire length of the ice and scoring. So, when things happen that are newsy, those things will turn up in my reader group. And so people help me identify what are those external, internal. Like the blend of what people take away from fiction and put there. And for example, I had a book three books ago where a character's avatar was Lobster Shorts because of his picture. And he was known as Lobster Shorts for the entire book and people have been posting lobster printed clothing items since the day that book came out. So sometimes I get a leg up on what it is that people are charmed by or taking away from the stories, but sometimes it's mysterious to me and I have to sort of blunder my way through the conversation to figure out what's resonating and what's not.KJ (26:38):Well, I was looking at some notes from our interview with Marika Flatt a couple of weeks ago. And she had had this thing on her website about finding the theme of your work. Like the huge theme, not the individual theme for books. And I had was writing down sort of samples for me and samples for you. And I had written something like that your theme is romance can be hard but fun or something like that. Like, you know, it's complicated, but there's a joy in it and a humor in it. And to me, that's what comes across in your social media and that's what's authentic about your writing and your connection - is that there is always the humor. I mean, joy may not be the right word, cause sometimes it's kind of a snarky humor. But yeah, finding the funny in tough situations, to me, that's part of your brand.Sarina (27:38):Well that's the thing is it's great when people help you figure out what your brand is. But from where I sit, I'm looking at other romance authors and I see so much that's really not me. Like some romance authors, they're part of their brand or their family is part of their brand. And I'm more private than that, I don't share that much. It's possibly because I'm older and more circumspective, didn't grow up in a sharing culture, but I do struggle with that, too.KJ (28:13):What, with what you're not?Sarina (28:15):Well, just that I'm reluctant to share things that other people might share.Dan (28:19):One thing I look at a lot online is people that seem to be sharing so much as I really try to see, well where are their boundaries? And I'll notice things where someone has a big following and they're sharing their family, sharing their home, and their spouse, and their kids. And on that, well where are their boundaries? And if I look for them, I often see them where it's like, oh, they do share their kids, but it's never more than once a week. It's not always, but often a profile view, or it's at home and they never mention where they live, or the school, they mention them by nickname, they share their home, but it's only in a certain way. It's one thing I like to think a lot about is the agency that everyone needs to choose what and how they share online. Because I agree with you. Everyone needs to have their own boundary and it's a different place for everyone. And I like to think of it as an opportunity to define - you know, I'm going to share this interesting part of myself, whether people care about it or not, because who I am. And I'll share a little bit of this other thing, but only so far. And I think of that even in the offline world with polite conversation with how people talk and introduce themselves and how they're open and they're open to a certain degree so that they can get along and feel human, but then they protect the things that they feel should not be for public consumption either.KJ (29:43):So Dan, one of the things that I have done because of you and that I respect about you, is that you are really big on finding pretty much exactly what it is that we're talking about here. That authentic thing that we want to share or sort of the flip side of that is the audience that we want to reach. And by that you don't mean, you know women aged 18 to 35 living in big cities. You know, you mean who are we and who are we trying to reach? And you have some sort of ways to help people get at that. Can you talk about how we can figure out what our theme and our audience is if we're struggling with it?Dan (30:35):Yeah, there's a lot to take into there. I think in general, you wanna allow your audience to surprise you in a positive way. And I think sometimes we put up these rules about what we're not, and that closes us off to what we are or what we can be. So, one easy place to begin with this, and I'm not sure if this is too simple, but a lot of writers I speak to, they don't know where they fit in the marketplace. They don't know who their comparable books or comparable authors are. And they feel disconnected from social media because they feel they started too late. Is a conversation there a little too far back or is that okay?KJ (31:17):No, that's a good place to start. And let me just say that everyone feels like they started too late on social media.Sarina (31:25):That's true.Dan (31:25):Yeah. It's funny, this is something that I'm working into my next book and it was a part of the mastermind I run. Which is a couple of weeks in, I used to do a little video saying, 'Oh you're not behind.' And I noticed everyone loved that and I started moving it up and now I actually share that video the day before we start the mastermind. Because I found that even on day one, hour one, people now come in feeling behind from a lot of things in life and it already sort of makes their experience of things so much more difficult cause it's like showing up to a beautiful retreat and on day one you walk in and you already think everyone else knows what they're doing. They're dressed better than I am. They know where to go. Like it's sort of casts a shadow on the whole thing. So in terms of what you're about, I guess there's two main ways I think about it. One is internal and one is external. The internal way is I have a lot of different exercises I go through with people to get real clarity about what do you care about, what would you fight for, what would you rather spend time on more than anything else. So I have a process called clarity cards and it's really this idea of looking at not just what you create, but your whole life and thinking what matters to me. And some of that is task-driven. It's you know, your family, your health. But some of it is I've had so many people go through this and there's a lot on there that is about their fiction, and about their memoir, and about their nonfiction work. And what they're doing is getting really clear of this is who I am, this is what I believe, this is what I write about, but this is also why I spend my time there.KJ (33:02):Can you give us an example, without sort of calling out a person? Like what would be one of those themes that might pop up on these cards?Dan (33:12):I'll use myself as an example, cause it's the easiest thing to do with no preparation. You know, for myself, I am an introverted germaphobe who is scared of going out and doesn't travel cause I'm scared to fly. Yet I have this business where I work with writers and it's typically more in the marketing end of things. So, what that means when I look at that (and I tried to describe that really pathetically) so when you look at the themes that I care about, well because I genuinely care about people who create, it's writers and it's not just writers, it's people who create. Because I feel like if you're doing that, you are advancing our culture and you are taking a risk that other people are not. So you are my people. So one, I'm already defining it there. It's not just I help writers with marketing. It's the deeper why of why do I spend all my time? Why is my wife an artist? Why have all my friends growing up been artists and writers, photographers and performers all day now? I'm at 10 years of this company and all I do is talk to writers and creators. So it's that drive part of it. It's not just I help writers market things. It's the deeper why there. Then, I look at how you started this conversation, which is if we're not creating, nothing else can happen. So what I think a lot about is the creative process and like the photos on the wall here, I meditate on this idea of having clarity of what you create and embracing, of going all in. And when I look at stories of writers, or performers, or creators, I look at the ways where they did have to isolate themselves. They had to sacrifice, they had to have the world laugh at them, laugh at their idea, and persist anyway, and only later did they see what the genius was. Also because I believe in the creative process, I mean I'm working a few blocks from where I live. I have a very small life geographically and other things I kind of said tongue in cheek before (Oh, I don't like to fly. I don't like to go out.) well that's allowed me to embrace this idea of having a life that's dedicated to my family. I'm either with them or I'm here working with writers. So in a way that's a very small life. And what it means is that I've had to say no to a lot of things because I want to embrace those two things as fully as I can. So to summarize, if you look at my Instagram, or my newsletter, or my podcast, you see those themes coming up. It's who I am and that gives me a lot of latitude to not just say, 'This is the marketing for writers podcast where we teach you how to sell, sell, sell.' Which, sure, it's part of what I do, but it's maybe paper thin when you think about all the things holding that up and all the things that I love talking to writers about. And that's what I think gives me, you said this very generously earlier, which is like you seem to love what you do. And I do. And that's why I love what I do, because I've just explored - if I don't like to go out, and I don't like to fly, and I do this job marketing with writers, like how is that the thing that fuels me? And I wake up super excited to do this work.KJ (36:31):It is so hard to take the time to work through that thought process. But it's really, I think, important and rewarding and also a great thing to think about at the start of a new year and a new decade. Going back and revisiting if we feel like we've already done it, to go back and try to find those themes and find that clarity. I'm loving this as a general thought. So to bring it all back home to this question of, okay, how can we love marketing our work? I can answer that for you, but I want you to answer it.Dan (37:13):If you know why you create, if you make creating a priority in your life, which does mean a lot of decision making and turning down other potential obligations, and you believe that the work that you are creating has a purpose and that can be a lower case P, it can be an uppercase P for you, that this work can and will connect with someone, and you care about this for all whatever deep reasons you have, sharing that work is your ability to just communicate that, to just say, this is what I believe and why, and I'm sharing it with good intentions and not shoving it down your throat. As the idea of wanting to fill your life, not just with, I wrote these books and they're on a shelf at a store, but living the life of a writer is someone who fills their life with moments, and experiences, and other people who care about these themes, or these types of work, or the conversations you have. And I think that does look different for everyone. But in general, it's not just about how do we get it done. It's how do we build a life that feels fulfilling in what we create, how we share that with other people, how we connect with them, and how that comes back around. And I firmly believe that creative work is complete when someone else experiences it. Because half of that work is what you intended and half of that work is what the reader brings to it. And I think that that is utterly, totally, completely magical.KJ (38:50):I love that. And magic is my word of the year. So, now I'm especially delighted that we're sort of wrapping up on that note. So, to shift gears, I forgot to warn you, but I hope you remember that we ask everyone what they've been reading and loving of late and to give you a moment to regroup, Sarina will start. Ha ha, you're on the hotspot.Sarina (39:22):I am digging into The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern.KJ (39:27):Oh, I have that! Is it good?Sarina (39:28):You know, the beginning is great.KJ (39:31):I just finished Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid and I am currently reading a book called How Could She and I forget who the author is. And I'm having this really interesting experience that maybe even gets down to what we've been talking about, which is that I don't like the people in either of these books. I don't think you're meant to, if I'm not enjoying a book on some level, if I'm not getting something out of it, and if it's not well done, if it's not fulfilling, I don't finish. And I 100% finished Such a Fun Age and I'm gonna finish the one that I'm reading right now, but in both of them, they both really center around people with what I would call kind of a sour view of life.KJ (40:40):And in a lot of cases, a sour view of pretty good lives. Now Such a Fun Age has a lot of characters that are hugely demographically different. It's got themes of race, and class, and money. So not every character is sour about their privilege, but none of the people in these books feel very hopeful. And so I'm not having very much fun with them, even though I'm reading them. And I don't quite know what to make of that. They are more challenging than reading, you know Red, White, and Royal Blue, which is so, so totally on my bedside table and I'm super looking forward to. So I guess there's that, there's different themes. But yeah, it is this question of do you spend more time reading about characters that you would actually like to spend time with or characters that you maybe have a different life outlook and maybe you want to know more about? Maybe that's where I am with those. It isn't that I don't recommend, I wouldn't mention the book if I didn't like it. It's just, it's a different kind of liking. It's a weird kind of liking. Your turn.Dan (41:57):My turn. I'm 200 pages into the thousand page biography on Churchill called Churchill: Walking with Destiny by Andrew Roberts.KJ (42:08):And do we like this? Do we want to spend more time with Churchill?Dan (42:14):It's interesting really, for probably the reasons you just said, a very complex character, very complex era. And this is a newer biography and it seemed to be the one that balanced (by all the reviews I could read) a lot of different thoughts, recent things that have come out, new archives that were not available earlier. So it seemed to be a very recent, modern take on a very complex subject.KJ (42:46):I just heard about a book that was about Churchill's wife and it's new and I am trying to find it, but I am stymied by the fact that there are actual human beings named Anna Churchill, and I think her name was Ana. Just throwing that out there and I'll find it for the show notes that there's apparently an interesting - I actually don't even know if it's sort of a fictionalized version or if it's a biography, but that she was apparently a really, really interesting character. So you can follow up, if you need more Churchill. Alright. Well, this was great. We really appreciate it. Before we sign off, tell people where they can find you and what you've got going on right now.Dan (43:40):You can find me on my blog at wegrowmedia.com. The podcast is called The Creative Shift with Dan Blank. Social media @Danblank and I have a little Facebook group called The Reader Connection Project that I've been doing a lot of teachings recently on social media for writers. We have a thousand writers in there, you're welcome to join. And I do a lot of different programs on the idea of how to connect with your readers and all the different facets around that from marketing, to book launches, social media websites, and then even what we've talked about a lot here, which is productivity for writers. So you can check all that out. Thank you.KJ (44:26):I'm going to give a co-sign to the idea of signing up for your weekly email because it is really good, and really heartfelt, and an excellent example of the genre, which I guess wouldn't be surprising since you read a lot of them. Sarina, you want to take us out?Sarina (44:45):I will, right after I sign up for Dan Blank's weekly email. I would like to remind you all to 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. Get access to private episodes at amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

It started with a question in the #AmWriting Facebook group: How do you get it all done?And the answer was, of course—we don’t, no one does, we push things off until tomorrow or we put out fires all day and then frantically write until late in the evening or we drive our children around for hours while chastising ourselves for not making better choices. But really, you all said. Really truly when do you write? And how d you put it first? And what do you do when you don’t or can’t? This is us, three full time writers and also parents (all of teenagers), talking about the push and pull of looking like you’re at home and available when you’re not, and how the awful truth is that sometimes you are, and how we control what we can and scream hopelessly into the void at what we can’t. (That’s just who we are.) We realized we’re each good at some parts of this and not others, which means we can take a little inspiration. We can protect our time, do the important stuff first and cut ourselves a little slack. And we can always, always recognize that it’s what you do the day after you feel like you really lost momentum that matters most. Episode links and a transcript follow, and that’s pretty much it for this week. Of course, a #WriterTopFive will go out to supporters Monday, and the topic will be a total surprise (heck, it’s a surprise for me too) but we promise it will be practical advice you can use that we probably need too. If you’re a fan of the podcast—if we’re offering, say, two grande mochas worth of advice a month, please consider supporting us for actually less than that. $7 a month, and we promise we’re not coming for your coffee.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: The Wilderness Idiot: Lessons from an Accidental Adventurer, Ted AlvarezA Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father, Augusten BurroughsDry: A Memoir, Augusten BurroughsKJ: Toil and Trouble: A Memoir, Augusten BurroughsSarina: Great and Precious Things, Rebecca YarrosWe love our sponsor, Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE, and if we were being coached right now we would probably somehow be managing to pull off better time management, because time is money in more ways than one, and when you invest in your writing career, it’s a lot harder to make excuses. 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.Follow KJ on Instagram for her #BooksThatWon’tBumYouOut series: short reviews of books that won’t make you hate yourself and all humanity.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 KJ, who totally wants credit.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 fellow writers, KJ here as we launch into an episode that’s ostensibly about how we get all the things done. Spoiler alert, we don’t, and I’m having a really depressing winter on that front. BUT—I can tell you that one thing that can help you shift into really prioritizing your work is to invest in it, and to make a commitment to another person to work through challenges both on the page and in the calendar. Our sponsor, Author Accelerator, matches writers in both fiction and non-fiction with book coaches who can help you go from stuck to done no matter where you are in the process. Find out more at authoraccelerator.com/amwriting. Is it recording?Jess:                                     00:43                    Now it's recording.KJ:                                        00:44                    Yay.Jess:                                     00:45                    Go ahead.KJ:                                        00:46                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I'm supposed to be doing.Jess:                                     00:50                    Alright, let's start over.KJ:                                        00:51                    Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Now, one, two, three. Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is the podcast about writing all the things - fiction, nonfiction, pitches, proposals, really as I do say every week. This is the podcast about sitting down and getting your work done. And oh boy, today is it ever the podcast about sitting down and getting your work done!Jess:                                     01:28                    I'm Jess Lahey. I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and I write about kids, and I write about substance abuse, and I write about so many fun things at places like the New York Times, the Atlantic, and the Washington Post. And I'm currently editing my next book, which will be out in 2021.Sarina:                                 01:46                    And I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of 30-odd romance novels. And I have a deadline on March 10th, guys. So this is a great topic for me today.Jess:                                     01:56                    This is so timely because we all have various deadlines that we're working towards right now.KJ:                                        02:04                    Wait, I haven't introduced myself yet, people won't know who I am. I am KJ Dell'Antonia. I am the author of The Chicken Sisters, a novel coming out this summer and How to Be a Happier Parent, which is out in hardback now and will be out in paperback this summer. So big summer for me. Mostly at the moment you'll find me on Instagram, but I'm also a pretty regular contributor to the New York Times and a few other places.Jess:                                     02:30                    You've been getting some really fun book talks lately, Missy Instagram.KJ:                                        02:34                    I have been. It's my series called #BooksThatWon'tBumYouOut and it's all books that won't bum you out. Because I felt like I needed someone to recommend those books to me. And one of my things for the year is start the things you wish other people would do. So there we go.Jess:                                     02:52                    I love it, I absolutely love it. So we should talk about what our topic is for today and why it's our topic for today. Do you wanna talk about that, Sarina?Sarina:                                 03:00                    Well, what we really do all day is try to figure out where does the time go. And we all have children and other responsibilities besides writing.KJ:                                        03:14                    And someone asked us...Jess:                                     03:16                    Yes, someone asked about this in the Facebook group, too. Someone said, 'It's all nice and good when you talk about the broad strokes, but we want the nitty gritty, like how you're actually getting the work done with all the other things you have to do.'KJ:                                        03:31                    Right. And we had this great exchange in there in which we sort of all went back to, well, you know, when our kids were little, things were different. And I sort of ended that exchange thinking, well, and that's true when the kids were little it was harder. And yet as I look - I've actually been keeping track of my week and I'm realizing, okay, when the kids were little, I had a babysitter. So I had dedicated work time. And at the moment I have made the mistake of not, and my work time is looking super pitiful at the moment. So yeah. Let's dig into what we actually do all day and when we do it.Jess:                                     04:15                    Since you've been such a good Doobie and kept track of your time, why don't you go ahead and start?KJ:                                        04:19                    It's been really depressing, guys.Jess:                                     04:20                    You informed me on a text the other day that I was a 10 minute time-waster.KJ:                                        04:27                    You did, you did. You sucked my time away with a tempting text, that granted I should never have looked at. No, one of you start and I'm just gonna do a little ugly math.Jess:                                     04:42                    See, here's the thing. I feel really bad about this because my reality is different. We all have kids that overlap, but I only have two of them. One of them is in college and he's actually even away this semester. He studying away from his college so he's even further away than usual. And then I have a 16 year old kid who is so sort of self-directed and doesn't want much to do with me, except for this week he's been really sick. So this week has actually been a busier week than usual because I've had a lot of interviews, I've had a lot of obligations, phone calls. I've got a bunch of travel coming up and before I do that, I have these conference calls with the organizers. And so it's been a lot of that this week. And there's been a few things I've had to move around because I've had to pick him up from school when he's like 'I can't stay, I real feel horrible.' So this week has been, you know, dicier than usual. But for the most part, I'm sickeningly flexible because except for like these three dogs that get bummed out when I leave the house or when I move around the house. I have a ton of time to get my stuff done. So I'm not very helpful. But when I look at what I was doing when my kids were little, you know, again, it was really different. I didn't have a babysitter, but I did have friends that I traded with a lot. I had neighbors close by and my kids would run off to their house. But on a nitty gritty day to day basis, I'm just gonna make people mad. I sleep in, I'm not a good morning person. I get up and shuffle into my office, which is 10-12 steps from my bedroom. I sit down and I work until I'm done working. And then my 16 year old kid doesn't even come through the door until four o'clock in the afternoon when the bus gets home. And at that point he doesn't actually want a ton to do with me until dinner time. So there you go. I'm sorry.Sarina:                                 06:43                    You know what though, Jess...Jess:                                     06:45                    I feel bad that I'm not contributing.KJ:                                        06:47                    You should not feel bad.Sarina:                                 06:48                    No. First of all, you're not allowed to feel bad. But secondly, I actually do hate you, but not for the reasons that you think.Jess:                                     07:03                    Let me say one other thing, which is that, I am very, very lucky in that I work fast. And I credit a lot of that with working with KJ for the couple of years that I did the column at the New York Times because I didn't use to work so fast, but I'm much faster now. And so when I actually sit down and get focused, I work really, really fast and I think that's been one of the saving graces. Even when I was teaching full time, I'd get up crazy early, get home from school and then sit down to do the other work, which was not only the grading, but also the article writing. And when that happened I was working really fast. So I will add that caveat in that I'm a pretty fast writer.Sarina:                                 07:46                    Well also, the boundless energy whereby this week you're editing a book and also removing wallpaper from a room and then painting another one. Like I just want to like weep when I hear about this.Jess:                                     07:58                    That's my fun time. I mean, I've said it before, weeding or gardening and I can't do that in the winter here in Vermont. So I've been removing wallpaper and repainting a room that I promised I would repaint when we first moved in a year and a half ago. I'm finally getting to it. And that's how I relax.KJ:                                        08:13                    Is that your point of hatred, Sarina?Sarina:                                 08:16                    Sort of. I think it's the boundless energy, but it also might just be focus, because I have as many work hours as Jess does probably. I mean, today alone, my husband has made me two meals and a latte worthy of Italy.Jess:                                     08:51                    What KJ is trying to say is that sometimes having people in your space is difficult.Sarina:                                 08:55                    Yes, it's true. I also have a kid home from school today, so you know, good times, but it's not the hours that I'm fighting against so much, as getting my hands around the business itself all the time. I need to like silence everything and write a couple of hours a day, which is hard when my email inbox is like one of Dante's circles of hell and I literally every day don't know what to do first.Jess:                                     09:25                    That's something that mystifies me about your work flow - is you're getting so many words written, but you're also managing the business of self publishing your books, which blows my mind wide open. So I'm actually really curious and I know a lot about your schedule. I'm really curious as to how a daily workflow works for you.Sarina:                                 09:45                    Well, when it works, it's because I do those words first. And that's been really hard for me lately because of that inbox, and I know that if I look, there'll be some fires to put out in there or people who want answers and it's really hard for me to ignore that, as like a pleaser. As my personality type wants to get back to people right away. But if I do, it's just done. So I've actually had to make silly little rules for myself. Like when I'm drinking my Italian worthy cup of coffee in the morning, I can't look at my email right then. I just can't, because I'll get sucked in. And I'm like, 'Oh, it'll just take a second to answer her and then I'll start to wonder like, Oh, I wonder what the numbers looked like after that latest promotion.' And then I'll go look at them. And it's really hard because that's working as well. Like that's work and it arguably needs to be done. So I'm wrestling the writing and the business all the time. And what really does not get done is like painting a room or even maybe vacuuming it, because that's just got to go. Like when this topic came up, you know, how do you guys get it all done? I immediately thought of JK Rowling and her quote, 'You know, but you don't understand I live in squalor.'Jess:                                     11:10                    Well and you know, on the other hand, again I like vacuuming and so there are certain things that for me - well the reason I like painting, and the reason I like vacuuming, and the reason I like cleaning is that when I'm doing those things, I'm plugged into an audio book. Or, even better I'll drag my laptop into the room where I'm painting and I'll watch a television show, or a movie, which is like crazy luxury. So for me, that ability to turn my brain off and listen to something else while I'm actually getting something done for me is incredibly satisfying. And if you think about it, I was talking to someone about this this morning, I can point at that wall and say, 'Look, I did that. It is done.' Whereas with my edits, no one knows, it's this big morass of words and no one knows what was there and I can't point at anything. It can be tough cause my husband's a physician and he's out there saving people's lives, and my son's out there learning things, and I'm sitting here at home. So that's my thing is being able to point to something and say, 'Look, I cleaned that today.' at least makes me feel like I got something done. Especially when the edits aren't going well.KJ:                                        12:31                    Well maybe my reason for hating you will make you feel better because my reason for hating you is that you are so extremely good at protecting your time. And some of that has to do with the number of kids, and where we live, and the flexibility and stuff like that. But you don't let people dump 47 dentist appointments, and extra carpool, and I really want to get my hair red on the bottom can you drive me to Fairley and pick me up again three hours later. And also, the guy is coming to fix the heat in the bedroom and I feel like you're much better about, 'Yeah, no, sorry people, you can't do that today because I'm editing. And my whole week has basically gone to that/health stuff that I can't deal with.Jess:                                     13:25                    But partly that has to do with the kind of kid I have, too. I mean, I have a 16 year old who basically goes up to his cave time room and hangs out in there and does his stuff in there. And if on the rare occasion he needs a haircut it doesn't take three hours. So no, I get that. But I, on the other hand, I also don't have joiners and even when my kid was a joiner. You know, for example, when Benjamin did cross country, he would tell me which meets to go to cause he knew full well I was not going to all of them. And I think that's important. Then if I knew he said to me, you know, please come to this particular meet, you know that's important to him and then I showing up means something. But yeah, I guess you are right.KJ:                                        14:15                    Well, that's what I'm getting out of this. I really did, I wrote down my time from when I got up until when I sort of stopped working for the day. And Monday I didn't do because I forgot it was Monday, basically. I did work, but I forgot it was Monday cause it was that kind of week. We are recording this during Martin Luther King week. So I forgot Monday, Tuesday I had total writing town of an hour and 50 minutes and total work time of three and a half hours because two kids had dentist appointments and I went to the dentist and then one kid looked at the dentist and I think I'm going to barf and the dentist said, 'You sit over there and don't touch anything.' So I ended up even having to reschedule that kid's dentist appointment in a burst of true inefficiency cause to me if you don't take at least two people to the doctor or dentist at a time, you've completely blown it. I sort of came home and I did (I mean props to me, I'm going to take this one) I do write first. I write first almost no matter what, after the things that I have been unable...Jess:                                     15:24                    And you write outside the house, too.KJ:                                        15:26                    No, I do sometimes. Yeah.Jess:                                     15:29                    You're so good at that, though.KJ:                                        15:30                    So that's what I'm looking at is like, okay, I had an hour and 50 minutes of writing time and total work time of three and a half hours. Because carpool, because I made dinner, because I drove someone to hockey, because I took a Spanish lesson. What I'm looking at is what time in there could I have probably gotten back. And the answer is maybe the dentist appointment - and my partner does do a lot of those things. So it just depends. I need to speak up. Carpool I could work harder, because I ended up with carpool every day this week, so I could work harder to make that not happen so well. Cause Wednesday was much the same thing, except they were my doctor's appointments and I can't really do anything about that. I have issues, and I have to go, and then I'm depressed, and that doesn't help. But again, I did come home and I did right first.Jess:                                     16:31                    Actually I want to break in here cause I think listeners need to know something important. When you say carpool it's because - if I still lived where we live, where you live, I would be having to do a lot of that driving because where we live does not have a bus to take the kids to the high school. So there's this requirement of someone to go down a town away and pick up the children. And you know Finn has a bus he can take everyday now, but if I was still living there I would at least once a day have to jump in my car and carve an hour out of my day to go get children.KJ:                                        17:10                    But if I were meaner, I would make the children sometimes do other things. And I've been so much better about this this year, but I could be better still. Like you know, you could go to the library, or in one child's case there is a bus. It doesn't get the child all the way home, but instead of being an hour round trip, it would be a 20 minute round trip. But the child doesn't want to take the bus. And part of me is like, well, once I'm in the car for 20 minutes, I might as well pick all the other children up. And that's how I get stuck with carpool all the time. And then I have a sick kid and other people had sick kids and that stuck me with carpool all the time. This is not been a good week, but it is sort of forcing me to go, 'How am I contributing to this not being a good week?' And some of that is saying yes to things that I could either pack into all the same time or just say, 'I'm sorry. You're going to have to sit at the library for two hours until your dad's ready to come home.' I could do that. I could do it more. I do it some.Sarina:                                 18:20                    Well, I have found and it's a little lesson that I keep learning over and over again. That even when I think I'm paying attention to these details and getting my hands around this. Sometimes, in fact, usually, there's more attention I could be paying because the answer's in there somewhere. You know, I knew going into January that I needed to get words first and I wanted to get it, and then I was not getting it, and I would end up getting my sticker at like 10:30 at night, having sat down to work sort of at 7:30 in the morning. So obviously, lots of slippage going on there. And I really had to say, okay, why, why does this keep happening? It's not because we're not smart enough to get this job done. It's something is blowing us up every day. And it was me going into my inbox, just for something quick.KJ:                                        19:24                    Yeah, that's killer.Jess:                                     19:27                    It's Twitter for me.KJ:                                        19:28                    I agree. You can't do that. I am actually so resolute about this. So onto this morning, when I didn't have a doctor, or a dentist, or anything, and in theory I would have been back home and sitting at my desk at 8:15 ready to write. Except that when I went out at 7:30 to feed the mini ponies, we were startling one mini pony short of a pair. That's not normal. There should be two. So I sort of followed the evidence, and looked around, and fortunately there was not a mini pony laying and hurt anywhere. He had broken through the fence and burst down and headed down to our barn. So, I had to stop, take the child to school, and then I had to come back, repair the fence, strip the wires, rewire the fence, go down, get both the ponies again, because in the interval the other pony had gone down to the barn and put them back. So, at that point I kinda gave up on the week.Jess:                                     20:32                    I don't know, if you had been Sarina, you could've been dictating your book the entire time you were doing all this work. Cause it appears that Sarina's getting her words in through alternate means recently, which is also just infuriating to me. I mean inspirational, yet infuriating.Sarina:                                 20:52                    It doesn't really work quite like that, Missy.Jess:                                     20:56                    I'm just impressed by the whole process, cause it's something that I just haven't been able to do and I'm just impressed. That's all.Sarina:                                 21:14                    I don't actually dictate the prose of my book, much. Instead, when I need to work out what happens next in a book, like I do my pre-writing this way. You know, so I'm walking around Lebanon while someone's having a violin lesson saying like, 'And then he has to run into her in this place and it's awkward because of this thing and then...'. You know, but it's not words that I can save.Jess:                                     21:40                    I think actually what I enjoy most is the image of you all bundled up talking to yourself as you walk around high school track in another town, talking about the plot of your book. I enjoy that image very, very much.Sarina:                                 21:58                    Well, good. But it really helps.KJ:                                        22:03                    I mean cause one of the things I gain from sitting down and doing this thing where I sort of every half an hour wrote down what I did and how many words I ended up with - was that actually doesn't take me that long to get a fairly large amount of words. I wrote 2,700 words in two and a half hours today. But part of that is because I had pre-written, a little of it I pulled out of an old draft and was able to drop in. And this was all pictured. Like I knew what was going to happen. I knew what they were going to say to each other. I knew who the people were, I knew what I was doing. So I was both sort of heartened and disheartened by how little actual time it would probably take me to finish the draft. And yet how slowly I am accomplishing it.Sarina:                                 22:55                    You know what though, when I worked on Wall Street, we had a daily profit and loss. Everyday you would have a P and L and the boss would walk around at the end of the day, and look at everybody, and you would say up 25 grand or down 10 grand or up 50 grand. And then every few months you would have like a career day. You would be able to look at the boss and say, 'I made $700,000 today.' And then you would walk away after that and get your overpriced glass of wine or whatever and think, what if I just came to work on those days?KJ:                                        23:32                    What if I just wrote bestsellers?Sarina:                                 23:34                    Yeah, but that's the thing about your 2,700 words in two and a half hours. Like the stars and moon were in perfect alignment for you to get that. And that's why I look so carefully at what is my average take over time? Because you can't put that pressure on yourself all the time. Like just because your day theoretically has two and a half hours in, it doesn't mean you're going to end up with 2,700 keepers.Jess:                                     23:59                    What's been really noticeable about that, Sarina, is that this month I have worked every single day on my editing and there've been some days that I haven't worked a long, long time. I've been having some of those brain cramps that KJ talks about sometimes where she's like, 'Ow it hurts. I want to go do something else.' And I feel like I'm wrestling my brain to stay on the page, but just the fact that I worked every single day means I think I'm going to hit my deadline at the end of this month. Or at least I'm going to come within a couple of days if I go over. And I think that just comes down to the fact that even if I had a couple of really slow days or low work sticker days, that they're all there and that something got done every single day. And that's really helping me more than I thought it would. I thought, you know, Oh my God, this is going to be a grind. I'm going to have to sit down for six hours a day this month to get it done. And that hasn't been the case. I just have to sit down every day.Sarina:                                 24:58                    Yeah. And you have to forgive yourself when you can't. Like I'm finding myself in the odd position with the book that I'm working on now that I know a lot about how it ends, but it turns out that the beginning was a little bit mysterious to me. Which never happens, it's usually the opposite. And so I've been so frustrated with myself about not knowing how to get to that point in the future. And you can't rush that cogitation time. So I could tell you all my tricks for writing books in the passenger seat of the car while the kid is doing his karate. But it doesn't matter if I'm not ready to like spit out chapter four.KJ:                                        25:44                    Agreed.Jess:                                     25:45                    I have been noticing that you mentioned earlier that it's been harder for you to get your words done every day. And I have been noticing that your text with the word stickers coming in later in the day than it usually does.Sarina:                                 25:56                    Yeah. That's cause I'm spending the whole day thinking, 'But why are we doing this in chapter four?' And trying to move the steering wheel in ways that it doesn't want to move. But anyway, that happens. And when I know what I'm doing, then I really just have to sit there and let it happen. Like at the end of our podcast we talk about what books we've read and I won't have one today because I finally figured out some stuff about chapter four and I don't want to walk away.KJ:                                        26:27                    You're reading your own book, in your head.Jess:                                     26:29                    I'm actually about to have to do that again just to get the big picture because I'm at the point in editing where I'm trying to drop in a few pieces here and there and when I do that without going back through the whole book, I end up repeating myself. Like not even realizing that I already said that. Or you know, this feels so brilliant right now. Oh, that's because I already wrote this entire section and it was 20 pages ago. I think it's so hard for that reason, though. I think it's so hard to get back in any kind of flow because you're trying to dip into something that you wrote six months ago. And that's what's proving really mentally challenging for me. Cause I've now made that mistake a couple of times. Writing something that I realize is two paragraphs before. But what I'm actually doing right now is a fun thing (I say fun sarcastically). So in books by big publishers that are not academic books, you have to do this thing at the end called key phrase call-out where you go back and you find a little key phrase and then you go to the end and you give the little key phrase and then you give the reference for the key phrase. And that's what I'm in the middle of doing now. And there really isn't anything more boring than that. Very, very few things anyway.KJ:                                        27:51                    Wait, but that sounds like the kind of thing you would normally have sort of done at the same time.Jess:                                     27:58                    Yes. So I have traditional end notes because I was using that citation manager. Well that's the kind of thing where I can have a movie playing, or I can listen to the BBC's Pride and Prejudice for the 3,000th time while I'm doing that kind of thing. And that makes the process a little bit happier for me.KJ:                                        28:29                    I don't know if we've learned anything, because these fall into the category of, as Sarina said, lessons we just keep learning. But, I'm taking away that I need to protect my time and heck, at least I'm good at not looking at my emails and texts.Jess:                                     28:59                    Actually, KJ, I have to tell you. I actually was being interviewed for something yesterday and I referred to you and I referred to How To Be a Happier Parent because the person was asking me about how she was feeling like her time was just being stolen away from her and how much time her kids were spending in extracurriculars. And I said that one of the most meaningful action points from How To Be a Happier Parent was about talking to your kids about if you commit to this thing, here are the things you're not going to be able to do. And as you went through, I think when one of your kids was thinking about doing an extra sport or something like that. And I said, 'You know, that's one of the things that yes, we have to keep relearning this, but it's also important to talk this through with our kids. If we're going to say, you know, our kid wants to do another team sport, and you say, look, your parent works as a writer and your parent is going to have to drive you back and forth. So let's talk about the things that you won't be able to do with the time. And let's talk about the things that are going to be difficult for me to do with my time.' And I don't think that means we're selfish. I think that means that we're teaching our kids that it's important to value their time as well. And that was sort of the point I made to the journalist and when phrased that way, it's about teaching our kids to value our time, allowing ourselves the ability to sequester our most valuable bits of time for the work that we want to do the most. And that just means we're taking ourselves seriously as professionals. So that's my big takeaway. I'm giving everyone permission to tell their kids that they can't do another team sport because they have to be able to get the words written. There you go. Well and I also like Sarina's point about having small rules about the coffee. I happen to have small rules. My rule is the opposite of hers. I'm allowed to sit at my desk and have breakfast and my coffee while I look at Twitter, but as soon as my breakfast is gone, I have to shut down Twitter and get to work.KJ:                                        30:57                    Having these little practices is important. For me it's basically no phone till I take kids to school, because I just will get derailed so easily by a work text, or a work email, or something. Our mornings are so calibrated that five minutes later is a problem. So that's one and I didn't think about that anymore. And then no email until after I've got the words done. That's another one I don't think about anymore. And it's a little bit of a luxury. I don't have an editor. If there's something I really needed to check, I would, but I don't have to. So, I'm used to those I wasn't giving myself credit for those.Jess:                                     31:41                    One other small thing that also works for me is my rule generally is morning is for the words. So if I'm scheduling a dentist appointment, if I'm scheduling an interview, or one of those conference calls I was talking about I say I'm available anytime after noon and just the morning is not available. That's just for the words.KJ:                                        32:02                    Yeah. I just have to cut myself a little more slack this month, for whatever reason, for basically every appointment known to man. I apparently at some point last fall looked at it and said, 'Well, January would be good for that.' With the result that every week is like orthodontist, and hair, and dentist, and chiropractor, and I have all my followups. And that was not a question of choice. That was a question of timing. And just endless, endless stuff. Plus, it's hockey season. It's the only sport that two of the three children that are still at home play. Things will get better when it is no longer hockey season.Jess:                                     32:47                    That was my November, my book will be turned in. So November is just wide open, schedule all the things. And I paid, man, I paid in November. That was tough.KJ:                                        32:59                    That's a lesson I wish that I would learn. But yeah, I don't know. I mean they gotta do those things sometimes. It wouldn't be any better in February. I don't know if it's better to mash them all, but boy it is frustrating to look at a week and go wow, every single morning somebody has an appointment to do something at eight o'clock. Because that's when I make mine. Cause you can get them done, and then you can get them to school, and about half of them my partner takes. But sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.Jess:                                     33:33                    Alright. Sarina, you have anything to add before I move on to the reading stuff that you didn't do?Sarina:                                 33:41                    You know, I actually realized that I did read something. Should I kick off with that?Jess:                                     33:48                    Oh, sure, sure.Sarina:                                 33:49                    I read a beautiful novel named Great and Precious Things by Rebecca Yarros, which comes out in February. And she does angsty, emotional, military heroes in sort of a crossover between romance and women's fiction.Jess:                                     34:08                    Okay. That sounds really good, actually. I read something that I think I'm going to be lending probably to KJ I'm assuming. I picked it up at the Vermont bookshop in Middlebury, Vermont, and it's called The Wilderness Idiot: Lessons from an Accidental Adventurer. It's by Ted Alvarez. And Ted Alvarez is an editor for Backpacker Magazine. And it's really, really fun. They're sort of short pieces so you can dip in and out. And it's really, really funny. It's making me laugh a lot. I really liked it.KJ:                                        34:48                    Well, I read a book that I am going to be passing on to you, Jess. I read Toil and Trouble by Augustan Burrows. And it is so much fun. It's basically what if David Sedaris believed he was a witch and do I need to say anything more than that? Because it's awesome.Jess:                                     35:08                    So Augustan Boroughs, you know, I've been a fan of for a long time. I was just really worried because Wolf at the Table I didn't love, even though he wasn't trying to be particularly funny in that book because it was about his abusive dad. So I was concerned with Toil and Trouble; it sounded a little off the rails to me. Like Augustan Bouroughs is convinced he's a witch, but I'm so glad that you liked it because I wanted it to be good.KJ:                                        35:33                    I do like it and I don't care that Augusten Burroughs is convinced that he's a witch. I enjoy that about Augusten Burroughs. I appreciated that. Yeah, it totally works in this context, I think.Jess:                                     35:47                    Cause as far as I'm concerned, Augusten Burrough's book Dry is my favorite addiction memoir ever. I love that book so much. And I'm an Augusten Burroughs fan, so yeah.KJ:                                        36:02                    Alright, well that's our episode. What we really do all day and today we spent about an hour recording this. I spent the preceding hour prepping tomorrow's episode fully. That's the other thing about actually tracking what you do is you end up with little notes that say things like, 'Wrote Instagram story about pony escape, half an hour.' and then you are forced to realize that seems like nothing - it's not nothing.Jess:                                     36:39                    Well, I actually kept track of how much time it took me to get this one email address that I really needed to work, to work. And it took me over three and a half hours of my time to get an email address to work.KJ:                                        36:53                 

KJ Dell’Antonia, author of How to Be a Happier Parent, joins Andy for a look at how to get happier while parenting. It’s time for parents to stop thinking about their kids so much and get back to what makes them happy!

How do you become a science writer? What if you didn’t even think you liked science as a kid? What if, instead of “serious journalism”, you spent the first half of your career covering celebrities and royals, even becoming the London Bureau Chief for People magazine?Then you’re in perfect shape, at least if you’re our guest, Lydia Denworth. She tells us how she made that transition, going from People through Redbook to Scientific American using the dual powers of curiosity and ignorance (and more relevantly, the willingness to admit it). We also discuss getting grants for non-fiction research, pitching scientific topics and the literary aspect of science writing—and Friendship, which just happens to be both the topic and the title of Denworth’s latest book. Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, did you love last week’s #WritersTopFive: Top 5 Ways to Win at Newsletter Subject Lines? Because I did (and I’m winning.) This Monday: Top 5 Things to Do When Your WIP Feels Like It’s In Flames. 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)Jess: Open Season (Joe Gunther Mysteries #1), Archer MayorKJ: Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman (catch it on my #BooksThatWon’tBumYouOut series HERE)Lydia: The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission that Changed Our Understanding of Madness, Susannah Cahalan The Ruin, Dervla McTiernanBonus Book Rec for Lydia: The Mountains Wild, Sarah Stewart Taylor (because “those Irish really know how to do dark”).Our guest for this episode is Lydia Denworth.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.Follow KJ on Instagram for her #BooksThatWon’tBumYouOut series: short reviews of books that won’t make you hate yourself and all humanity.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 there listeners, it’s KJ. Our guest today is a science writer extraordinare, and we’ll be talking everything from grants to the literary and storytelling aspects of that form of nonfiction—but before we do, here’s something else for the nonfiction authors out there: If that’s the 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 you’re 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 reveals 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 https://www.authoraccelerator.com/nonfictionframework. Is it recording?Jess:                                     01:11                    Now it's recording.KJ:                                        01:13                    Yay!Jess:                                     01:13                    Go ahead.KJ:                                        01:14                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.Jess:                                     01:14                    Alright, let's start over.KJ:                                        01:14                    Awkward pause, I'm going to rustle some papers.Jess:                                     01:14                    Okay.KJ:                                        01:14                    Now one, two, three. Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is the podcast about writing all the things. Writing fiction, nonfiction, short fiction, long nonfiction, short nonfiction, I could probably go on like that forever. We are the podcast about writing pitches, proposals, essays, and essentially, as I say, every week, this is the podcast about sitting down and getting your writing work done.Jess:                                     02:00                    I'm Jess Lahey. I am the author of the Gift of Failure, How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed. And a forthcoming book about preventing substance abuse in kids. So I'm not so much writing this week as I'm deep, deep in the edits. You can find my work at the Atlantic, the New York Times, Washington Post, and at jessicalahey.com.KJ:                                        02:22                    I am KJ Dell'Antonia. I am the author of the forthcoming novel, The Chicken Sisters as well as How To Be a Happier Parent, which is out in hardback now. And will be coming in paperback soon to a bookstore near you and you can find me on Instagram at kjda and everywhere else at kjdellantonia and kjdellantonia.com.Jess:                                     02:48                    We have a guest today. We have a very patient guest. We've had to reschedule this guest an embarrassing number of times and I'm so excited that she's finally with us. And this is really timely because we've had some questions about exactly what this writer does in the #AmWriting Facebook group. So I would love to introduce to you Ms. Lydia Denworth. She is a science writer. She is a contributing editor to Scientific American, she writes the Brainwaves blog for Psychology Today, she's written three books, one called Toxic Truth on lead. A book that I really, really love called I Can Hear You Whisper. I keep it in the literacy section of my bookcase, actually, along with some other fun books, like Language at the Speed of Sight and her new book that will be coming out at the end of January on January 29th called Friendship. So this is a really appropriate and wonderful and exciting book to talk about on this podcast. Since of course I get to podcast with my best friends. So Lydia, welcome so much to the podcast.Lydia:                                  03:59                    I am so happy to be here. Thank you.Jess:                                     04:02                    Well and again, thank you so much for your patience. We've had a couple of recording dates fall through and so I'm just so glad you stuck with us through our timing snafus.Lydia:                                  04:12                    Not a problem at all.Jess:                                     04:15                    Well, we have burning questions. Not only ours, but some of our listeners, but we always love to start with the question of how you got started, how you got started writing and how you landed in the genre that you landed in.Lydia:                                  04:30                    And that in my case is a pretty interesting story because it is absolutely the case that science was the last thing I would have predicted that I would do. I was the person who took the bare minimum of science classes all through high school and college. And I was intimidated by it, I didn't think I was all that interested in it. I always wanted to be a writer and I wanted to be a nonfiction writer. So I was that kid who read the New Yorker and John McPhee and things like that when I was in high school and said, 'This is what I want to do.' But science did not come into it and I have had a relatively long career. And the first half of it was all general interest journalism, kind of. I worked for People magazine, if you can believe.Jess:                                     05:37                    Do you feel the need to go back and comment on the important social issues of our day?Lydia:                                  05:41                    I so do not, but at one point, I was a London Bureau Chief at the time that Princess Diana died for People magazine. So I have this whole past as a celebrity journalist and I worked for Newsweek for a bunch of years. And it was only when I was writing my first book, so about 15 years ago, after let's say a good 15 years in journalism, I that I really sort of became a science writer. And at that point I was doing - the way I describe it as I was freelancing and I was doing those social issue features that you would find in women's magazines, like Redbook and Good Housekeeping. So maybe it was sex harassment or lead poisoning. But I came to the issue of lead from a children's health perspective more than anything. I wrote a lot about education, Jess, you'll appreciate that. And you know, I did things like that and it was in writing that first book that I suddenly found that this, it's basically a dual biography of two of the men who were way out ahead of people understanding that lead was as harmful as it was. And then they got into this massive fight with industry over it and you know, their scientific careers were almost ruined, but they fought on, they are heroes, and they got lead taken out of all kinds of things. We know now with Flint that the story's not done. I first got into this because I was interested in a guy named Herb Needleman who was a psychiatrist and was looking at lead in kids' bodies, but the other guy was a geochemist at Cal Tech. And he was the one that understood that lead was all around the environment. And I started having to read his journal articles and oh my God, they were impenetrable to me.Jess:                                     07:42                    It's such an education, not only just being able to get through the language, but getting at the statistics. I mean, that's a big part of understanding whether you've been looking at something worth reading or citing.Lydia:                                  07:55                    Absolutely. And so, the long story short was that in working on that book, though, I found that I actually was better at all of that than I thought. And I happen to think, that to some extent, my lack of background in science has worked in my favor. I am not afraid to admit complete ignorance. I do it on a regular basis with really brilliant people. And so I just keep asking questions and I think that everybody has to do that as a reporter. But you're especially humbled when you're digging into something that you don't know anything about.Jess:                                     08:42                    Well, and your second book, you started writing about hearing because of your own personal experience. And that happens to be the area of nonfiction that I love - when it's sort of your own personal investment and personal experience that then turns into scientific exploration. So it's not just about intellectual curiosity, it's about emotional curiosity as well. And that's what really comes through in I Can Hear You Whisper because it is also partly your story.Lydia:                                  09:10                    Absolutely. So I had done this one book of popular science in the lead book, but then the question is always, you know, what are you going to do next? And here was my kid, my youngest son, Alex is is now 16, but he was just little then and and he is deaf and he uses a cochlear implant. And so I kind of felt like I had this story sitting there. But then the thing that I came to realize is that because he had this cochlear implant relatively early in the world of cochlear implants that I was essentially living a cutting edge science story. And in addition to the technology piece of it, I realized it was really a story about the brain because sound getting into the brain and what comes from that oral language and literacy. And I'm thrilled that the book is in your literacy section, by the way. That's just perfect. But you know, there was so much that I didn't know about deafness, and hearing, and sound, and reading and how it's all related until I had a kid. I mean, the first deaf kid I ever knew was my own son (in any meaningful way). So you're just starting over, and it was several years before I said, 'Oh wait, I think I really need to write about this.'.Jess:                                     10:37                    So your most recent book, the book that we're just really excited to talk about, this book Friendship. This came at a really, really good time for me. In the sense of one of the statistics that you quote is that the strengths of your friendships at around 50 predicts your health at 80. And I'm just about to turn 50 and I feel like I'm at a phase in my life where I have really strong friendships and so I am feeling good about my health at 80.KJ:                                        11:09                    Me too. I really loved that line.Jess:                                     11:09                    I really liked that.KJ:                                        11:11                    I think we're all at a moment when (and it may be sort of a cohort moment) but when everybody's looking around and just going, you know, what really matters to me is my people. Like my people, people. I mean some of those are digital people and that's cause some of those are real friendships, right? But lots of them are real people, or you know, real people that are like really right in front of you, and I just feel like this sort of decade or two of segwaying away from being able to touch the people you love when you're with them has sort of really changed our perspective in a great way and I think your book really informs that.Lydia:                                  11:54                    Yeah, I hope so. I mean, I do feel, and I'm hearing from people, that yes, my timing might be good here because everybody's thinking about this. People have seen the headlines that loneliness is a killer, which it is - as deadly as smoking. That's always been the story. But the flip side of what does friendship actually give us and how is it protective and how does it make us resilient? And the fact that there is a biology and an evolutionary story to friendship is the piece that most people do not know. And you know, this is a book of science. It's the science of friendship. But it is so personal and relevant to people's lives and what I hope they do is come away understanding why friendship and relationships are as important as diet and exercise for your health. And I'm not trying to add to people's burden for what they have to do. I think instead, I'm hoping to give them permission to go hang out with your friends. Your body will thank you.KJ:                                        13:01                    Well, I have questions about how you pitched the book because it has that dual identity, but let's not start there, right, Jess?Jess:                                     13:13                    I know KJ and I have some very specific questions about the way the book Friendship came about in terms of not just the pitch, but also the funding aspect. And I wasn't sure if that's where you wanted to start, KJ, but I'm dying to know about your funding.KJ:                                        13:31                    Which came first, Lydia?Jess:                                     13:31                    Lydia has funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and every nonfiction writer wants to know, Oh my gosh, how can I get money to do this project? Because research is expensive. In fact yesterday I was just thinking about this because someone texted me yesterday saying, 'If I don't get a book contract soon, I'm not going to be able to write this book because I'm out of money to put into the resources.' This is actually an AmWriting listener, so hopefully she's listening to this episode. And I texted back, 'I just dumped almost 200 bucks on a textbook that I must have in order to just make sure I'm really where I need to be with the research.' So how on earth did you get the funding and which came first - the contract for the book or the funding for the book?Lydia:                                  14:20                    The contract for the book came first. So I had a contract with Norton and I had an advance, but I will say it wasn't a stellar advance. My advances - so I've had three and they are all over the place and the middle one was by far the biggest. And so I was a little disappointed not to get more this time, but it also meant I had to get my butt in gear and get more money if I was going to do this. So fortunately the Sloan Foundation does do these grants for science writers, in particular. They are also (since a lot of this audience is female) people might be happy to know that they are looking to support female science writers and they are looking to support projects that are about women. In my case, this book is not specifically about women, but there happened to be quite a lot of female scientists featured in the book. They're kick ass, they're wonderful and they are all through the book. And so the combination of my being a female science writer and what I was writing about, they happily gave me a grant. The only thing I wish is that I had applied a little earlier. Since you all like to get into the nitty gritty of things, you have to make up a budget and there is a lag time from when you apply to when (should you be so fortunate as to get any money) when you start getting money. And so my budget, I originally had it for an entire calendar year that I was going to be writing the book. But I discovered that it couldn't start until, let's say I originally said January to December and then in fact, and I had like a monthly salary for myself in there, and then it turned out that they said, 'Well, our fiscal year is June, so you can't start till June 1st. So I basically had to lop off five months' worth of that money I was asking for, so had I known and gotten the application in even just a few months earlier, I probably could have made it from January to December and gotten myself more money. So let this be a reminder to not let this stuff linger.Jess:                                     16:43                    Well can you apply for funding before you have a book contract or did they require you to have the book contract before you apply?Lydia:                                  16:49                    You know, I can't remember exactly. I do believe that you can do it either way, but they did want a copy of my contract. So if you don't have a contract, I think there are some other requirements. I'm forgetting. it's been a little while since I did all that. And I will say, the reason I was aware of this in the first place was because I had met one of the people from the Sloan Foundation at at a party, at the World Science Festival here in New York several years earlier. And at that point my previous book I Can Hear You Whisper would have been perfect because they also are very interested in technology and the science of technology and things like that. But I didn't know about their grant program in time. Now in that book, I happen to have gotten a healthy advance, so that was okay. So the time around, I said, 'All right, I'm gonna write to him.' They added some money in order for me to be able to hire a science advisor who actually was one of the people who's featured in the book, but I paid him. It's Robert Seyfarth, it says so in the book so I can say, he's one of the leading primatologists in this work. And he would have read some of the book ahead of time anyway, but he read it all multiple times and was so in my corner and so helpful. And also so demanding and critical. I could see what it would be like to be their graduate students. So anyway, but it was so helpful and I wouldn't have done that if it hadn't been for the Sloan Foundation request. But it was really helpful.Jess:                                     18:49                    Maybe we'll include the link for applying for these kinds of grants in the show notes so the people can know exactly what we're talking about.KJ:                                        18:55                    I think the Kaiser Foundation does something similar, too. I know they do it for journalism.Lydia:                                  19:04                    I'll have a look and see. At one point I did find a link that had kind of a list of grants and fellowships that give you some money. I'll see if I can find it for you. But at the Sloan Foundation it is through the public interest piece cause it doesn't sort of jump out and say books right away. So just FYI to people. It does have to be pretty sciency for Sloan. but there are, as KJ just said, there are these other things like Kaiser that maybe if it's more health related and other things. You know, there's more out there than I think people realize.Jess:                                     19:41                    Absolutely. There's USC Annenberg School does it for health writing as well. There's just a bunch of great places to go. So, you have the money, you have the book contract, and so you get started on the research. The question I get most often from the nonfiction writers is (and the reason I talk about it so much) is about organization of research. And I have a multipart question having to do with this. But how do you organize your research?Lydia:                                  20:11                    Not as well as you, Jess. I look at what you do and I when you show pictures of your shelves, I think, Oh boy. That's something to aspire to. So one thing that I do is that I am still the kind of person who prints out everything. I just find it very, very hard. First of all, I would like to make sure I have the hard copy. And when I'm reading through complicated scientific work, I find it a lot easier to do it with a pencil in my hand and kind of marking it up. And I don't know, it helps me. Maybe I'm showing my age, I'm just over 50. I'm 53 now as of three weeks ago. I do plenty online, so I have piles of files. For this book. I filed everything according mostly to the individuals that were at the forefront of whatever piece of science it was I was writing about, or by subject, if that made sense. Like social media. I have a couple of files about the science of social media that were by subject. I think that the trick about research, cause I can go so deep, and there's always more to research. And so figuring out when to stop...Jess:                                     21:44                    That actually leads to my next question. Someone specifically asked, how do you know when it's time to stop and when it's time to start the writing? Because the research can go on forever, as you stated.Lydia:                                  22:01                    Yes. So for me it has been very important. There comes a point where I decide to start writing, in part to figure out whether I'm done with my research or not. Because there are holes sometimes that pop up when you start to actually write it and you think you might think you've got everything. So this book, people will see, mixes animal research and human research because there's been a lot of both in this subject and the animal research is actually where the big strides and understanding biology and evolution have taken place, in terms of social behavior. But I will say that I went to a whole bunch of conferences about monkeys and apes. And finally I was at one and I said, you know, Lydia, you've done enough, you know enough about monkeys, you have permission to stop on this front. And so that was just one piece of it. But I knew I was going like sort of too far down. But then writing helps me to discover. I mean by that point you may not have heaps of time to really go far on some new tangent. But for instance, the social media chapter, there was new work happening right up until the last second. And so I was changing that chapter quite a bit between having turned in my book and turning back in the first past proofs. Because there was new science and I had been to new conferences and been talking to new people.Jess:                                     23:37                    I actually just hit pause on editing a chapter because of that textbook I mentioned. And then three or four new studies and one meta study that just came out. And in order to make sure that what I'm writing about today and fingers crossed you know, when the book comes out is as up to date as possible. But it's really hard to say, well now I'm done. For me there tends to be this moment. I continue to do online classes, and webinars, and things like that. And there tends to be this moment where I'm listening to the webinar and I'm like, I know all this and that's when I know, okay, if I know this it's probably time for me to put a lid on researching this topic.Lydia:                                  24:22                    I think that is exactly right. And I have definitely had that experience, too. But I will also say that there are some pieces of it where, especially with science, where if you're feeling that your grasp is maybe not as strong as you'd like it to be, but sometimes you do just have to wade in. I mean, I do anyway. And see where it goes and see how... My problem in my writing often, is that I have a tendency to get into the weeds and then I have to cut all that out, but I've got to write it. I've got to write it. This is not relevant to the organization and research, but I do feel that an important thing about writing about science and even if you don't really write about science, if you adopt a little bit of a science writer's approach, you're really forced to think about whether your audience is with you. And whether you've given them enough handholding, and enough signposting so that they can follow along with the story, and what's important, and why, and what's not. And so then when I go back over what I've written, I'm usually trying to figure out, tracking along with someone who doesn't know it as well as I do and see, do they really need to know this?Jess:                                     25:50                    I was going to say, that's the question I constantly have. Which is when I was going through and I realized, oh my gosh, I have a chapter that's like 20,000 words. Does my reader really need to know how many casks of beer there were on that first ship that sails?KJ:                                        26:07                    That's our new standard for too much research is if you know the details of what was in the hold of the first ship that your topic involved. Yeah, that's it. We've got a black line there, people. This is good.Jess:                                     26:40                    The problem with me is I love those details. And in some places it paints an incredible picture, like your ability to say here's how many bananas might be useful, but for the most part it's really important to say, does my reader, does my listener need to know this thing in order to understand the broad concept? And that's usually my last pass edit when I'm cutting is, oh wait a second, these next four paragraphs are so irrelevant to anything.Lydia:                                  27:15                    Just for the record, I want to state that part of why I had that detail and part of my point in the story was that these monkeys were a source of fascination for everybody at the time and so much so that they were featured in the New York Times at the time that they were traveling and then in Life magazine. And so I was sort of making the point that the New York Times was so interested that they counted the amount of pounds of bananas. But you're still right. They still didn't need to know that.Jess:                                     27:47                    The line I often say is from On Writing where Tabitha King criticizes Stephen King for writing too much about these intervening years in this one character's life. And he's like, 'Yeah, but it's really important.' And she said, 'Yeah, but you don't have to bore me with it.'.Lydia:                                  28:02                    Exactly. You maybe need to know it, but your reader might not need to know it.Jess:                                     28:14                    KJ, did you want to jump in? I've been hogging the mic.KJ:                                        28:20                    No, it's been great. I'm riding along and taking notes.Jess:                                     28:25                    Excellent. Obviously for me, this book came along at a really great time for me because I love talking about adolescents, and relationships, and friendships. But what I was most interested in with your book right now is thinking about virtual friendships and in-person friendships. And you talk a little bit about how much time you need to spend in what you call sort of togetherness makes for a friend. And there's a quote in the book about the fact that it takes 50 hours of togetherness to make a friend and 200 hours to make a best friend. So what if we spend 50 hours, you know, chatting about stuff, maybe tweeting at each other, are we allowed to still be friends or do we have to have 50 hours of in-person time?Lydia:                                  29:14                    We can still be friends. But I will say that what's interesting about social media is that most people, their online life and their offline life sort of mirror each other. People talk all the time about how the word friend is devalued currency by Facebook and things like that. But the truth is, most people know who their real friends are, who their closest friends are. And we sort of all have concentric circles of people really close, and then a little further out, and a little further out. And I would argue that if you only have a relationship online, it's more likely to be in the outer reaches of your social circles, which is fine. That's an important place to be. Those relationships have all kinds of benefits. But most of us, our closest friends, we use social media as kind of an extra channel to deepen the relationship but not exclusively.Jess:                                     30:21                    I like thinking about it that way. And you also mention that quality is important over quantity, anyway. So the quality of those relationships and you also give me a license to sort of let go of some of those fraught relationships that may not be in my best interest because you talk about the fact that ambivalent or the sort of frenemy relationships are not necessarily good for our health in the same way that all positive relationships are.Lydia:                                  30:50                    They turn out to be actually bad for your health, which surprised the researchers. They thought maybe the good outweighs the bad. But no, biologically speaking, if when they look at your blood pressure and the aging in your cells and your immune system, they see that relationship... So, just to define our terms since we are talking about science writing. So an ambivalent relationship is one that makes you feel both good and bad. Like a frenemy, like you said. And also it's important to say that the people who've done this research had a pretty broad way of measuring that. If you weren't a hundred percent terrific all the time about this relationship or it wasn't 100% positive, then it was ambivalent. And the truth is that's like half our relationships though, have some negative to them.KJ:                                        31:43                    I was going to say, that's pretty broad.Lydia:                                  31:46                    It is pretty broad and they're still sort of perfecting. You know, this research is relatively new, but it's kind of pointing to an interesting and important idea though. Which is that yes, we don't actually have to maintain every relationship. Like some of your older friends where you have shared history but who now are actually quite draining. Maybe you don't have to stay friends with those people. I'm giving you permission there, too. But for the relationships where you can't or don't want to end the relationship or sort of really minimize the relationship, then you should be working on the quality of it. Because that is really the critical thing. The research is so clear that the quality of relationships matters most and matters more than whether it's a relative or not. So that's another thing I think I would just like to point out about friendship is that the science kind of blurs the lines that we've always clung to about the importance of family over friends and things like that. Friends tended to be dropped down to the bottom, but we actually use the word friend. Like if you say your spouse is your best friend, you're trying to convey something about the quality of your relationship. Right? And not everybody would say that about their spouse. Some do, some don't. And in fact there's a hilarious study that found that in Jacksonville, Florida, something like 60% of the people said that their spouse was their best friend. And in Mexico city it was like 0%, which I don't think tells us about...KJ:                                        33:29                    It has more to do with how we define it, more than anything else.Lydia:                                  33:32                    Exactly. Exactly. But you know, the point is let's at least think about this.KJ:                                        33:40                    I like that they both start with F. It's one category for me. You know, important time with friends or family, that's one thing. That's the F section. So I wanted to come back to this question of here you were as a writer with this idea that encompassed a really deep scientific piece, but also what I think we could call a service piece. You know, the idea of friendship and how it helps us. Exactly what we're getting into talking about right now. How did you structure the pitch for this book to include both of those things?Lydia:                                  34:24                    So I think of myself more as a literary science writer, for lack of a better phrase. And that is a thing compared to really self-helpy science. So I wouldn't exactly say that this book, (and I didn't pitch it as self-help), and yet, if you read this book, you will absolutely come away knowing that you should invest in your friendships and here's a bunch of ways to do it.KJ:                                        34:59                    I wondered if there was pressure to push it in that other direction.Lydia:                                  35:02                    So some, and this is a constant tight rope that I feel I walk as a science writer is because yes, most of what's out there and that has a really big audience is the stuff that is so super accessible that it doesn't include a lot of the details that I find really interesting and important. I will say this. To specifically answer your question, what I did was pitch this book as the kind of friendship book that has not yet been written because it would have serious science in it. And that is what is new, and interesting, and important to know. And it sort of informs everything that's in those self-help articles. And so I was positioning myself in my pitch and it helped that my previous two books were similar. You know, so I have a certain style of writing. And if you are (like I am) a contributing editor at Scientific American, people do expect you to be on the serious side of science, but still completely accessible. I mean that is the thing - no matter who you are, you have to write it as if anybody will understand it. I try hard, you know.KJ:                                        36:25                    Your scientific audience is not necessarily experts in everything.Lydia:                                  36:29                    No. And in fact, one of the things that's really interesting is this book covers so much ground and so much territory that some of the experts in it, when they read it then said, 'Oh, but I, I love how you wrote about my piece, but I didn't know anything about this other thing.' And I found that I was bringing them together, somewhat. Because I was talking to everyone across the board, you know, not in the little silos that people tend to work in. But, I just want to say though, that there's a real tension. So, you know, my agent would say, 'You really need to come up with a way to pitch this that will appeal to everybody.' But then for instance, the Sloan Foundation, their question was how sciency will this be? Because we are only really interested in it if it is in fact a science book. But you can write a science book that has all kinds of story in it. I mean, science is story. You know, it's figuring out how we know things, and there's a lot of plot twists, and intriguing problems, and it's the evolution of thought in some ways. So I ended up deciding that I have to be me. You know, you do you, right? Don't you guys say that? And that I was pitching it as not self-help, but yet in the overview of the proposal, it really did say that this book will put friendship at the center of our lives. It will show us these important things we need to know. And one of the things I say a lot is that is that we think we know all about friendship because it's familiar. But in fact there's a huge amount we don't know. And also we do not in fact prioritize it always quite to the extent that we think we do. And so those kind of larger statements that are in the proposal and that I talk about when I do publicity are very much about sort of trying to pull people in and tell them why this is relevant to their lives.Jess:                                     38:36                    I think one of the reasons that I loved - I mean I love this book - but I really loved I Can Hear You Whisper because there was this really personal element and that I love reading science books that are also part memoir and that's also a really difficult line to walk. In fact, the book I'm editing now turned out to be so much more memoir than I ever expected it to be. In fact, I was really scared of it becoming a memoir and yet all of a sudden now I'm at the other end after a couple of years and it is very much a memoir. So much so that we've amped up that side of it. But I think that's what makes the science personal. And I think that's what helps people say, 'Oh, Oh, so that's why it matters. That's why these numbers matter. That's why these statistics matter because they're about personal stories.' And I think you do a beautiful job of walking that line, which can be really hard to see sometimes.Lydia:                                  39:27                    It can. And thank you, I appreciate that. I will just point out (as a sort of craft example) that the introduction to this book starts on this island in Puerto Rico where people are studying monkeys and that's a pretty surprising place to start a book on friendship you might think. And yet, I think it's interesting because it's surprising, and it makes for a really great scene, and it also sort of signals that this is a new way of thinking about friendship. So I wrote all that with some other stuff about the big picture stuff in that intro. But I ended that chapter with me coming back from Puerto Rico and finding my then 17 year old son on the couch with his best friend where they were playing video games and it felt like they had never left from when I went to Puerto Rico to when I came back. It was as if they had never left. So there's a scene there in which I am doing the typical parent thing of don't you guys have anything better to do? And don't you ever get up off this couch and all that stuff. And then I suddenly realized, and this did really happen, I said, 'Oh wait, hang on a minute, Lydia. They look a lot like those monkeys you were just watching in that they are hanging out together, and they are laughing, and they're joking, and they're literally sitting in proximity on the couch, and maybe you are only seeing the video game as a parent and you are not seeing the visceral connection that is going on between these kids. And so I put that scene at the end of that first chapter or the introduction specifically to get at exactly what you're asking about. To show why and how this stuff is useful in thinking about our own lives and our own relationships and friendships.Jess:                                     41:20                    And that's great storytelling. I just, I love that. I am smiling from ear to ear. I mean, to me that's when you have those moments when you're writing. I talk about this all the time about that buzz, when you really feel like, oh my gosh, it's happening. The writing is coming together. And in those moments where you say, 'That's the story.' That's when my heart just flutters. I just get so excited.Lydia:                                  41:46                    Exactly. I tried to do that all through this book. I didn't really want to just sort of throw in a whole lot of random people that you only meet briefly. So I decided that the memoir part, I do have sort of myself, and my family, and my good friends kind of sprinkled through the book because that seemed like the most organic way to get at what's true about relationships. And I fully recognize that we are a little subsection, that doesn't make it a diverse thing. But that's not the point. The point is just to sort of provide those kinds of moments of recognition and resonance for readers.Jess:                                     42:31                    That's what it's all about. Speaking of which, cause we are getting to the end of our time. I hate making these jarring transitions cause I could talk about this book for ages because I love it so much and I love science writing so much, but we are running out of time and so I would love to talk about what you have been reading and what KJ and I have been reading. Do you have anything you'd like to shout out book wise?Lydia:                                  42:53                    I would love to. On the sciency front, I have been reading Susannah Cahalan's new book, The Great Pretender. Have you read it?Jess:                                     43:04                    I'm really excited because I loved Brain on Fire.Lydia:                                  43:06                    Yes. And this is such an interesting book because it really is about the history of psychiatry and mental health. But it's this totally great story about a study that was done years ago that kind of where they sent sane people into insane asylums essentially, and tried to reveal. You know, it was like the investigative journalism of science about what does it take to get out of an insane asylum?Jess:                                     43:38                    But that's why I haven't started reading it yet. Because frankly, I know about this experiment. In fact, we were looking at the book and my husband pointed to it and he said, 'Oh, I know that experiment.' And he was explaining it to me and I said, 'That is terrifying to me.' Like being a sane person in an insane asylum and then having to like prove that you're not insane, yet that makes you look insane. That whole concept freaks me out.Lydia:                                  44:05                    And then there's a real plot twist though in this whole book. But it turns out that that study is not everything that we thought it was. And so there's an extra

There are some people who believe that they are prepared to critique teachers’ performances because they went to elementary school themselves.  The confidence of what seemed to work for us as individuals fuels a lot of stress for teachers.  The same can be said about parenting.  Nothing saps the confidence of the uninitiated quite like the reality of actually becoming a parent.  KJ Dell’ Antonia however, tells parents to cut themselves some slack.  Dell’Antonia is a former New York Times reporter, editor and lead blogger of The Times’ “The Motherlode Blog,” and current Times contributor.  She is the author of the critically acclaimed book, “How to be a Happier Parent: Raising a Family, Having a Life, and Loving (Almost) Every Minute” and the forthcoming novel “The Chicken Sisters.”  Dell’Antonia is a graduate of Kansas State University, where she earned a bachelor of science degree in business and physical anthropology, and the University of Chicago Law School.  She lives in New Hampshire with her husband and four children.

Turns out you should judge a book by its cover, and readers do. Which means authors need to consider that (and not our own taste) when we think about our own covers. This week, we talk about the two things to consider whether you’re an indie working with cover artists or a trad with a publisher and an art department: reader expectations and those now-you-can’t-stop-seeing-the-flowers trends, and it turns into a bit of lesson in heading to the bookstore and making some cover judgments of your own.Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, have you heard that we recorded our first #SupporterMinis this month? #SupporterMinis are short bursts of advice or inspiration (or maybe commiseration) to punctuate your writing week, which appear in the podcast feeds of our supporters. Supporters also get weekly #WritersTopFives like Top Five Goodreads Secrets for Authors and Top Five Things You Don’t Need to Be a Real Writer. Support us and we’ll do everything we can to support you!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)Jess: Running with Sherman: The Donkey with the Heart of a Hero, Christopher McDougallKJ: Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts, Kate RacculiaMore Reading on Book CoversThe 78 Best Book Covers of 2019 from LitHub9 beautiful book cover design trends for 2019, 99designsThis 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.The image in our podcast illustration was compiled by the people at the magnificent LitHub, which you should bookmark and read constantly, and used in the article that’s linked in our shownotes: The 78 Best Book Covers of 2019. I note that I have not read one single one of these books. 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 fellow writers. The end of the year is a great time to look back at what filled you up in the past months and for many of us that's not just our writing, but the time we've spent helping others with their work. For some of us that's come 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. And they'll be hosting a free book coaching summit in January for anyone who wants to learn more. If that's got your ears perked up, head to authoraccelerator.com/summit. Is it recording?Jess:                                     00:43                    Now it's recording, go ahead.KJ:                                        00:44                    This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I'm supposed to be doing.Jess:                                     00:48                    Alright, let's start over.KJ:                                        00:49                    Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers.Jess:                                     00:52                    Okay.KJ:                                        00:52                    Now one, two, three. Hey, this is KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting, the weekly podcast about writing all the things, be they fiction, nonfiction, proposals, final drafts, pitches, essays, whatever it is that you are working on. We are the podcast about sitting down and getting the work done.Jess:                                     01:20                    I'm Jess Lahey, I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and a forthcoming book about preventing substance abuse in kids and I am deep in the land of editing right now and you can also find my work at the Atlantic and the New York Times and the Washington Post.Sarina:                                 01:33                    And I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of 30-odd romance novels and I am revising a book called Heartland, which will come out in the late winter and my revision is due on Monday.Jess:                                     01:49                    Ouch, but you're going to make it.KJ:                                        01:53                    I am KJ Dell'Antonia, the author of a novel coming out next summer, as well as How To Be a Happier Parent coming out in paperback next summer and former editor of the Motherlode blog at the New York Times, where I occasionally still contribute, and right now, not in fact in the land of editing, or revising, or anything along those lines. But I will own that my bold declarations regarding NaNoWriMo and trying to finish my current project, I did not. It is not quite the end of NaNoWriMo as we record, but I can guarantee to you that I did not write 50,000 words of a novel during November, but that's okay. I needed to do a lot of thinking, so I could not write. If I had written 50,000 words, it would not have been a good use of my time. Sometimes, it turns out that way.Jess:                                     02:45                    Well, I said I pulled the rug out from under my NaNoWriMo, anyway. So I've been doing something that was completely unplanned and has been going pretty well, actually. Oh, this is also fun news. I had a meeting with my editor - the same meeting that I had post sort of her taking a look at the first draft of Gift of Failure. And whereas the Gift of Failure meeting was vomit inducing, it was horrible. Some of you have heard this story, but basically suffice it to say it was a nightmare of a meeting with your editor, the very kind of meeting you hope you don't have. Although she's quite a lovely person. This meeting was its exact opposite. It was lovely, it was a love fest, everybody's happy. It was just really, really nice to have a positive meeting to offset the negative meeting that I had after Gift of Failure was turned in. One and one - is that what you say?KJ:                                        03:50                    I was going to look at a little more positively and say not many writers can have such a ringing guarantee that they have learned.Jess:                                     03:58                    Well, that's actually something that has been really interesting. I had a huge checklist of basically the what not to do stuff. And it was really nice cause during the meeting she said, 'I could tell that you were trying really hard to not do the things that you did last time.' And I'm like, 'Oh you have no idea. You have no idea how organized I was in my efforts to not make the same mistakes twice.' So that was a ringing endorsement of at least my anal retentive sort of attempts to to do better this time. To learn from my mistakes.KJ:                                        04:30                    Massive gold star. For learning all the things and we're going to talk about other things that we've learned today. We do have a topic and I'm really excited about it. Today's topic is cover art.Jess:                                     04:49                    I can fall so deep into this whole...like this topic, especially now since I'm at the point where I get to start sort of like really thinking about this. This can consume me for days.KJ:                                        05:01                    So we're going to talk about covers when you need to create your own cover. Covers when you're working with a publisher and they are presenting covers to you. Covers internationally. Covers, you know, what it is when you are working with a publisher, what you ought to be thinking about. So let's just start broadly like, what makes a good cover?Sarina:                                 05:24                    Well, I was thinking about this yesterday, as we were getting ready for this and I had a really good time thinking about it and making notes. And I thought that at the end of the day there were really two things that every author is supposed to think about. Two broad things - and they are, number one reader expectations, followed by (distantly) trends. So when I say reader expectations I mean that all of us, when we walk into a bookstore and we take that first glance at the table in front and maybe your eye comes to rest on a book, I don't know if until you're in this seat where you have to think about it, that you really realize how much information you're getting from that cover just at the first glance. About is that book fiction or nonfiction, is it literary, is it practical, is it a romance, is it for children? You know, you get a lot of information really quickly and, and when it's time for the gut wrenching question of what cover art is going to be on your book, you have to like back out a little and think with your analytical brain about what information you want readers to have.Jess:                                     06:44                    This is something that when Gift of Failure was in the process of getting its cover the first round of covers really were a clear statement that my publisher wasn't really sure what this book was. And so when we backed up, my agent and I did a really clear conversation about what exactly do you want this book to say about what's inside. And I knew little things, like I wanted people to be able to know what this book was from far away. Like I wanted someone on the other end of a subway car to say, 'Oh, I recognize that book.' But above and beyond that, if you think about what Gift of Failure is, it's a parenting book, but it's an education book. And so there were all these like how do you convey that through a cover design? And it's really a tricky thing. And looking forward to the next book, I don't even know where to start with that, but I love the fact that you have to somehow get all of these messages across graphically. And that's what's so exciting about a cover.Sarina:                                 07:49                    It is. And we should also say where Gift of Failure ended up as cover art because it's really telling; and it was such a great cover.Jess:                                     07:57                    Well, and it was a total redesign. And when my agent and I rejected the first set of covers and asked for a redesign, we found the image of a ladder with a broken rung. And then we're like, 'Oh, but what if the ladder was made out of pencils?' So that was kind of a joint effort between me and my agent. So while my agent said (you know, she neve,r hardly ever recommends that an author sort of say, 'Here, look, here's a cover design.') She was very into the idea of us giving them ideas, especially once it seemed like their artists were stuck.KJ:                                        08:34                    I want to jump on the word rejected. Cause you didn't, cause you couldn't. I have not read your contract, but I can almost guarantee you that that right is not in there.Jess:                                     08:48                    How about we gently suggested?KJ:                                        08:51                    But that is something to be aware of if you are in a situation where you're working with a publisher, you don't have control over the cover art. If the publisher said, 'No, no, what we really like for the book, the Gift of Failure is this shot of a Christmas tree with presents on it and gnomes hanging off of it and that's what we're going with. You really got nothing. So when you're in that situation to take like a sort of more diplomatic approach is very necessary. Because every new design really costs them money too, right?Sarina:                                 09:32                    Right. And in one case, my first novel was women's fiction for Penguin in 2011, basically. And when I first saw the cover, they hired an outside illustrator to make it and I was told upfront that that was sort of an expensive thing to do. And they said, 'Here is your cover.' And I freaked because the cover was a whole bunch of things that did not make sense for this book. It looked vintage to me and the book was straight up contemporary. It was super busy. And I have to tell you, it had comic sans as the font. In black and the rest of the cover was not dark colors. And I just lost my mind there for a minute. But after I freaked out to my agent (and you're allowed to do that) I...KJ:                                        10:31                    Yes. That's the person to freak out to.Jess:                                     10:33                    Yeah, absolutely.Sarina:                                 10:34                    Then I wrote, very carefully, a note about I didn't actually mention how much I loathed with every fiber of my being the imagery on this cover, but rather I explained why the readers we were looking for would not pick up that cover. That it looked too old, it looked too big. You know, because my opinion is not important to this equation, but reader opinion really is.Jess:                                     11:01                    That's a fantastic point.Sarina:                                 11:03                    Yeah. That's where you want to go with your angst. Is here's why this would be an error, you know, in a very analytical way.Jess:                                     11:12                    I had this really cool situation with my publisher where the CEO, President, whatever, my publisher was teaching a class on publishing at a college. And one of the books that he had offered up to the students to do some sample covers for, just to sort of get an idea of how marketing works, one of them was mine. And the student got in touch with me through my website to talk to me about the fact that she had chosen my book as the book that she was working on in this college class on publishing, which was really cool. So that meant that my publisher was thinking about my book, not only from the perspective of 'I'm the publisher of this book and we want people to buy it, but I'm teaching students about marketing using this book.' So it was a really cool opportunity to have lots of perspectives. But also, unique, not many people get that opportunity.KJ:                                        12:06                    That is very cool. My nonfiction, the How To Be a Happier Parent came back to us the first time with an image of like cartoon parents on a roller coaster with their children. About which there were many, many problems. Among them was that all the parents and children were white. And also being on a roller coaster does not make you a happier parent. I mean, it had its point. I could kind of see where they were coming from, but we did something similar where we went back to them with just talking about how we didn't think it represented the book and ultimately they asked me, 'Well, what do you like?' And this same process, just to jump ahead, it happened to me with the novel, you know, show us some pictures that you like, show us covers that you like, tell us what it is you like about this. They actually did that in the case of the novel before we even went into it. So, in the case of How To Be a Happier Parent, I actually gave them a magazine that I like, it's called Flow, and if anyone ever found Flow and also found the cover of How To Be a Happier Parent, it ended up kind of looking like an issue of Flow. It has a chalkboard, and a floral, it's very trendy to be honest. And I like the cover very much, but it's definitely of its time. And then for the novel this time around I went to the publisher's website and tried to pull covers from their website that I liked.Sarina:                                 13:45                    Yeah, that was actually really fun to just think about the novel cover with you, KJ.KJ:                                        13:51                    Yeah, we were all pulling things and it was really great.Sarina:                                 13:56                    It was super fun. And that's kind of where part two comes into this, which is what trends have to say about what should be on the cover of your book. So one is reader expectations. And with The Chicken Sisters, you know, this is a novel about sisters. It's not a spoiler to say that. So, it's contemporary, it has a family dynamic, there's an element of competition regarding the whole book is about a contest, right? You had all of those things to kind of juggle and play with. And then there's also the trends of what's on the cover of women's fiction right now.Jess:                                     14:43                    And not just what's on the cover, but what colors. Because it turns out, and I had no idea, obviously there are trends just like in fashion for colors and you can see what colors are trending when you go to your local bookstore.KJ:                                        14:56                    Oh, you totally can.Jess:                                     14:58                    It's really interesting. All of a sudden everyone decides teal is the color. Or everyone decides yellow is, it's really fascinating to watch.KJ:                                        15:06                    Let's hope yellow is the color of 2020 because that's what I ended up with. So The Chicken Sisters went through two cover drafts. So the first cover was very typical of commercial women's fiction. That's commercial, small, the tropes and chicken sisters, just to use the lingo. It's a small town, there's restaurants, there's foodiness, there's women, there's lots of conversation. That's not really a trope. Anyway, the first cover was a picture of two women sitting in a restaurant, talking. And there was nothing wrong with that. Like it was fine, but it didn't really leap.Sarina:                                 16:01                    It lacked conflict.KJ:                                        16:02                    It looked like a happy women's, commercial women's fiction book, which it is. But it didn't show that it's a dynamic story. And also, like yours, it looked a little vintage, and it's a very contemporary story. And so we went back and sort of went through it again and talked again about different covers. And the thing that they came back with when they decided to do a complete redesign is such a perfect icon. What they've got is two women's hands pulling at a wishbone, which you guys can see. We will put it up in the show notes, of course. It's all over my Instagram and will continue to be all over my Instagram for the next who knows how long.Jess:                                     16:55                    Here's a question - did you suggest the wishbone or did they come up with that?KJ:                                        16:58                    I did not, they came up with it.Jess:                                     16:59                    It's so good.KJ:                                        17:02                    It's really perfect.Jess:                                     17:04                    Because that first one, you're right, it really did look like two friends sitting down and having a cup of tea together. But this is perfect cause there's the conflict, there's the competition, there's the luck. All of that stuff, it's great.Sarina:                                 17:17                    It's amazing.KJ:                                        17:18                    And then I suggested (we made it super clear that they are different hands. You can tell by the fact that they've got different nail polish and they look a little different) and then it's got this background of sunflowers, which I love. And apparently floral backgrounds are super trendy, but I love them because the book is set in Kansas and sunflowers are very Kansas. I think what that communicates to readers is just, I don't know what the floral background communicates to readers to be honest. I like it, I pick them up.Sarina:                                 17:52                    It's just an it item. It's pretty like who doesn't want to look at sunflowers. And we should also say, KJ, that this whole cover art, so gorgeous, is illustrated because that is also a big trend right now. So, in the nineties I read lots of like chicklet novels that had illustrated covers like the Bridget Jones era. And then there was a while there after chicklet kind of had a big moment and then went away that that like illustrated was gone from book cover land because it was like you can't say anything serious underneath an illustrated cover.KJ:                                        18:34                    The pause here is me trying to remember what commercial women's fiction looked like in the...I guess it would...Sarina:                                 18:46                    Well, there's photos of like porch swings, and adirondack chairs, and women on beaches with big floppy hats. And all of that is still there. Like Elin Hildebrand has beach covers, but hers are starting to look more illustrated, too.KJ:                                        19:03                    They're starting to be illustrated pictures of women on beaches in big, floppy hats. And let me just say, I love a good women on a beach and a big floppy hat novel. So, you know, it's a good cover. If there were a beach and hats in my novel, I'd have been all over that.Jess:                                     19:19                    I have to say all of the books I was going to talk about today. I've done this fun reversal to you know, stuff I don't usually read, the sort of women's romcom stuff and it's all illustrated. You're totally right, I was just looking at the covers.Sarina:                                 19:33                    Yeah. And that's new. And it's also hitting the romance market pretty hard right now. So like four years ago you couldn't find a single romance novel with illustrations on the cover. It just didn't exist. And you know, everybody knows the history of romance covers with Fabio and like ripped shirts open and people. But a couple obviously screams romance. So people were used to seeing that. And then we hit the 50 Shades era and also self-publishing kind of ripped up all the rules because people didn't have photo shoots at their disposal, so...KJ:                                        20:11                    They were busily sort of begging their brothers to stand around shirtless and it just wasn't working for whatever reason. Come on, come on, it'd be great for your Instagram.Sarina:                                 20:23                    It became a stock photo market and there are certain stock photo models that when I see it that I just laugh because they're so overused. Like there's this one model that I call Creepy Eyed Santa Guy. I went for years without a photo of Creepy Eyed Santa Guy because there are a whole bunch of photos of him with a Santa hat on, but lots of photos of him without one. And then my check publisher actually used Creepy Eyed Santa Guy on one of my check editions. So now I do have that guy. But then 50 Shades of Gray came along and this author chose to put like cufflinks and a neck tie on her very stark covers.KJ:                                        21:09                    And it was self-published. So that was her choice.Jess:                                     21:11                    I think you mean handcuffs there, Buckaroo.KJ:                                        21:15                    Oh, that's true.Sarina:                                 21:17                    No, there were cufflinks.Jess:                                     21:19                    Oh, were there?Sarina:                                 21:20                    Yeah.Jess:                                     21:21                    I only remember the tie and the handcuffs. I don't remember the cufflinks, excellent.Sarina:                                 21:25                    No, there were like fine menswear stuff on and it. And it was moodily lit so it just looked like, you know, the guy took off his tie cause he had things to do. And that just ushered in what now in romance, people call object covers. And so now, if you see a book cover with a slip on it or just some piece of clothing moodily lit on a dark background, it tells you that that is going to be a very erotic book or have very erotic themes because that one author changed the way that romance novelists looked at cover potentials (in that sub-genre anyway) by her own success made it that way.KJ:                                        22:09                    Well there were so many things to sort of tease out of that and one of them was your international publisher. But I was thinking about the question of illustratation - You tried an illustrated cover lately? We're talking about reader expectations and I know that recently you had a moment when you felt like the cover that you chose did not meet your readers' expectations.Sarina:                                 22:38                    Oh yeah.Jess:                                     22:39                    We want to hear more about that.Sarina:                                 22:41                    Well, that was just last month and I was spinning off a character. So he was from my Brooklyn series and I had retired him from the hockey team in a book and I was spinning him off into a story about his family's very bizarre security company, like a cybersecurity thing. So I needed readers to know that that beloved character was getting a story and that they were connected. And my wonderful cover artist, she is so talented, made me exactly what I asked her for, which is something a bit trendy, with a bit of a blur to it, really interesting cover for this new series that had an element of suspense. She did exactly what I asked her to. It was gorgeous and the preorders for this book were terrible and I panicked and they just didn't improve and I thought, well, something's just wrong. Like readers really like this guy. They'll like this story, the blurb is good. Like I knew enough to know which things ought to be working and so I woke up six days before the launch - positive that the cover was a problem and I thought, okay, well I'm going to write my poor cover designer an email and say, 'Listen, I've made a big mistake. Do you have any time to help me?' And she said yes. And I bought a photograph from a photographer that day and I sent it over to her and we changed the cover so that you can tell that it's a spinoff from that other series by the typography.KJ:                                        24:23                    Right. Now it looks like it looks like the other series.Sarina:                                 24:27                    It does, except the background is dark instead of light and there's no sports imagery on it. But you can tell from the typography and the minute I showed it to people (another author who reads some of my stuff) said, 'Oh, it's a Brooklyn book.' And then I knew exactly at that moment that I was right and that book ended up doing great. It hit USA Today at number 89. It's performed in line, the audio is selling well. Like everything about it did what I had originally expected it to, but I had confused my readers and they did not know what to make of that new cover.Jess:                                     25:01                    Well and how brave of you. Well, and keep in mind not only how brave of you to make a change at the last second, but making a change at the last second involved a lot of moving parts that a, you couldn't necessarily have anticipated like weird moving parts that that we can go into in just a second. But the other thing is, in terms of expectations, it's okay if your readers expect this to be a Brooklyn Bruiser's novel because they'll pick up that it kinda sorta a little bit is, but it's a new entryway into a whole new series. So, you didn't have to worry too much about people getting confused by it being, but not being, a Brooklyn Bruiser's novel.Sarina:                                 25:43                    Right. Because that was true. It's just that I had lost them at like maybe it doesn't have anything to do with any of your other books and that was a mistake. Basically I was kind of tired of putting shirtless men on my covers and I wanted something artsy and interesting and it didn't work. Like my readers were not ready. Well, they just weren't there for me to say, 'Hey, my brand today looks different, you have to respect the brand that you've built.' And that's the mistake I made.KJ:                                        26:18                    Here's a question. Does the illustrated trend extend to Indie and if so, is it a pricey thing to do to have an illustrated cover?Sarina:                                 26:27                    You know, Indies are a little confused about it, because many of our cover artists are not illustrators. And so I have some friends that have found good illustrators to make this trend work for them. And then there is stock illustration, though. So a good cover artist isn't necessarily going to freehand everything. Like you can find illustration vectors that will contain the imagery that you're looking for and you can move it around however you wish.KJ:                                        27:04                    Even publishers use that stuff. There is a little bird on the cover of How To Be a Happier Parent that I really loved and wanted to use in other places. And we had a problem because they had licensed it and they had only licensed it for cover use. So we worked it out. But yeah, even publishers use stock illustrations.Sarina:                                 27:23                    Of course they do.Jess:                                     27:24                    And publishers will also outsource stuff. There was one of my international editions, the publisher in that country wanted to use the original art from Gift of Failure in the U.S. and apparently my publisher had outsourced that art to someone that didn't necessarily work under that for Harper Collins. And so that art was no longer available because that person, for whatever reason wasn't making it available. So there's all kinds of snags that you can run up against with illustrators and licensing and all that stuff.Sarina:                                 27:56                    Yeah, I bet that like almost half of U.S. traditionally published books have some element of licensed stock art on them. I see it all over the place.KJ:                                        28:11                    And now we will all see it all over the place.Jess:                                     28:15                    Well, I'm in that phase right now where I'm paying a lot of attention to covers because the cover for my next book is going to be really, really tricky. Because for me, I would love it if people would see this next book and identify it somehow with me, or my brand, or my preexisting cover art. How exactly you convey the title (which by the way we think is probably gonna stick) we probably think we're going to stick with the title of The Addiction Inoculation. We had a very specific conversation about this. And there are some worrisome images that you could use.KJ:                                        28:50                    We've spent some time coming up with the worst possible combination of pencils and The Addiction Inoculation. We've enjoyed it, but you know, it's probably time to give it a rest.Jess:                                     29:03                    Exactly. So what they end up with, so now I have tastes in covers and they may not necessarily be what's on trend right now. So it's going to be really interesting to see what they come up with. And I'm going to be brainstorming a lot about what possible covers could look like. In fact, I even got an email recently from someone who said, 'You know what, I was in a bookstore recently and I had this idea for you.' And believe me, those things are welcome. I love that.KJ:                                        29:30                    So Sarina, walk us through creating a cover. As an Indie published author. Like where do you start? Where are you getting this art? Where do you find that person?Sarina:                                 29:42                    You know, there are 10 or 15 cover artists that my friends and I all use and you can look at somebody's copyright page and see who did their design. So that's one place to start. Or you can even search book cover art.KJ:                                        30:03                    Yeah. If you search this people definitely pop up. But I personally wouldn't have any way of evaluating them. I guess I could look at their covers because we can judge them by their book covers.Sarina:                                 30:15                    And I honestly look at designer's websites all the time and I rarely find what I'm looking for cause I'm just super picky now. But the important thing is to find someone who understands the genre because without that key component, it doesn't matter how talented they are. In romance, if somebody showed me a cover without humans on it in some way, I would not be able to take that. And of course these things are really dependent upon the location as well. So all of my German books have flowers on them or other vegetation and they are so pretty. There are just gorgeous. But the first time I saw that flower cover, or actually it was a tree for a different book, I was a little panicked. Like people won't know this is a romance if there's no people on it, it's a tree. How is anyone gonna understand? But that was me just trapped inside my own stereotypical understanding of what I see at the bookstore when I look at a cover and Germans just don't need that, I guess.Jess:                                     31:30                    The cultural divide can also be really interesting. One of my prettiest covers, I have no idea how it would get any Gift of Failure kind of idea across, it's Korean and it's got this beautiful deer on it. But someone told me that it actually appeals quite well in Korea. So who knows what I know. And by the way, your German covers I think are some of the most beautiful covers out there. I love them so much.Sarina:                                 31:53                    Well, they were just geniuses with this because the first flower one came out I believe in March or April. And I began seeing it all over Instagram next to pictures of real flowers and it just photographed really well. And the season hit it just right. And yeah, it's pretty great.Jess:                                     32:41                    The interesting thing is there are some people who also try to hook their website art into their cover art and some people's website art ended up, I'm thinking about Gretchen Rubin's specifically, she worked with a designer who sort of helped to do branding for her all over the place. And that art from the branding company ended up also being her cover art. And so, you know, there's all kinds of convoluted ways this can happen. But some of the most recognizable art out there, I think Gretchen's art is incredibly recognizable from her happiness project. And that was the result of a partnership with a branding company. So anyway, there are lots of ways to to tackle this beast, I suppose.KJ:                                        33:28                    Yeah. And then when you get your cover art, I would guess as an Indie, you probably want to make sure that you have it licensed so that you can use it in every possible scenario. And if you're working with a publisher, you can ask can I have the elements of the... So for example, I asked for the sunflower background so that I could use it as a background for social media and for for some paper stuff that I wanted. So it doesn't have the cover image, it only has the sunflowers on it. You can take your own cover art, whether it is Indie or publisher driven, and you can you can take a screenshot of a tiny chunk of the color and then just Google, what color is this? And pop the screenshot in there and it'll give you the number. So you'll get this crazy six digit/letter number that signifies that color digitally. And you can go to Canva and make your brand palette with your colors and you should. And then you can use that for everything. You can ask your publisher what your font is and then you'll have to look, maybe Canva and other places have that font. I actually had to buy the font that they used on my title for like $7.99 or whatever. But I bought it and I bought the license so that I can use it on cards and things like that. A publisher might pay for that for you, but in this case the amount that it cost to buy the font was not worth it. And then once you've bought the font, you can upload it to Canva. There's a lot you can do with this stuff once you've got it in hand.Jess:                                     35:27                    I have these lovely book plates with pencils on them and and that's been a wonderful thing to have and it matches the book. I love it. We are running up against the end of our time, but I wanna make sure we have time to talk about what we've been reading, cause I've been reading a lot.KJ:                                        35:43                    Are we done with talking about covers?Jess:                                     35:45                    I don't know. I'm happy to go over and I assume our listeners are happy to go over, but, but there's definitely a lot to talk about and definitely a lot to talk about when it comes to cultural stuff.KJ:                                        36:00                    Yeah, we didn't talk about like trends in nonfiction and the sort of the big book cover, which is basically nothing but letters on either a background or a background image. Or I was reading some interesting stuff about how there's a new trend for like having the illustration kind of overlap the letters. So that's a neat thing. I don't know. It's just fun to see what's coming and then watch for it. It makes you look at covers differently, even while all the while you're using them in your mind to judge whether or not you would want to read the book. Because the truth is that we do judge a book by its cover.Jess:                 

This week, Mel reviews chapter 12, and she’s horrified – and not in a good way (that you might want to feel while writing something thriller-ish). She wasn’t happy with it at all.“Damn, that sucks!” – Mel, reading the rough draft of her Chapter 12Kemlo advised her not to think about it being “objectively good”, but about what she wants her readers to get out of this.Abby quoted Jennie, who was quoting KJ Dell Antonia, in regards to sending your manuscript to agents: “It’s got to be good enough to send out, but not so good I don’t want to change it.” It’s a good mindset to be in if you’re preparing for traditional publishing because it’s going to go through a lot of hands before it sees a bookstore, and changes will happen.Kemlo cited a writer who said recently that she never reads a book once it’s in print because she sees too many things she’d change, even after all the work of getting it published. You may never be happy with the final product, but that’s okay – focus on your personal best, your personal goals, and aim for that.Mel’s goals for this chapter were to shore up the internal workings of her protagonist. She thinks she’s improving incrementally overall both in this chapter and the revision, but she still misses stuff all the time. The scenes she’s working on in this chapter are very physical, and making sure everything flows is important – and that level is worked out. Now, she needs to go back and figure out what it means and why it matters to her protagonist.“There were a lot of places where you were showing her fear and agitation, but it’s how anyone would react. Of course, you’d be shocked and terrified, …but why does that matter to her, given her agenda?” – Kemlo AkiIt’s the magical, making-us-care quality that makes a book hard to put down, which makes it relatable, even if the characters’ lives are vastly different from our own. It’s a skill that takes a lot of trial and error to get right, and that’s revision in a nutshell.

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:   

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:                              

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. Get access to private episodes at amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

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. Get access to private episodes at 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:                 &#

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 real