#AmWriting

Jess here. Sarina and I discuss audiobook narration this week and explain how narrators get hired, paid, and dish some inside baseball on audiobook production. Transcript Below!Your subscription = good podcast karma. Sign up now to support the Podcast!SPONSORSHIP MESSAGEHey, listeners, did you know that we review first pages sent in by supporters every month on the pod? It’s just one more reason you should be supporting Hashtag AmWriting, which is always free for listeners and ad free too. Please note that we will never pitch you the latest in writer supplements or comfy clothes for lap-topping. The good news is we’re open for First Page submissions right now. If you’ve got a work in progress and you’d like to submit the first page for consideration for a Booklabs First Pages episode, just hit the support button in the show notes and you’ll get an email telling you all the details. Want to hear a Booklabs episode. Current ones are for supporters only but roll your pod player back to September 2024 and there they’ll be.EPISODE TRANSCRIPTIs it recording? Now it’s recording—yay. Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. I don’t remember what I’m supposed to be doing. All right, let’s start over. Awkward pause. I’m going to rustle some papers. Okay, now—one, two, three.Jess LaheyHey, welcome to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast. I’m your host, Jess Lahey, and this is the podcast about getting all the words done, writing all the things, writing, short things, long things, proposals, queries, poetry, all the things. But today, Jess and Sarina are bringing you the book nerdery stuff, the best stuff. This is The Publishing Nerd Corner. I love this new segment. I’m super excited about it, but first, my name is Jess Lahey. I am the author of The Gift of Failure and The Addiction Inoculation. You can find my journalism out there various places, including The New York Times. And you can find my newsletter at jesslahey.substack.com.Sarina BowenAnd I’m Sarina Bowen, the author of many contemporary novels. My new one is called Thrown for a Loop, and it drops on November 4, and it also will be published that same day as an audio book.Jess LaheyWhoo so...Sarina BowenAnd that is what...Jess LaheyYeah, we’re going to talk about audiobooks today, because Sarina knows so much about this—because she has to, like, hire her own narrator sometimes and stuff like that. All I know is, I narrated my own audiobook, and it was super fun, and I loved it. But we want to talk about all the aspects of how audiobooks work—all of it. There’s lots of fun stuff to talk about. Where would you like to start, Sarina?Sarina BowenThat is a good question. So, most of the time, if you are selling your book to a big publisher, audio rights will be included in your contract, and your publisher is therefore responsible for making the audiobook. You might be consulted about the choice of narrators, and that audio will magically appear finished on your publication date. But if you are a self-published author, then the existence or not of your audiobook is completely under your control. Audio has been the shining star of publishing for the last decade in that it is the growth story. I’m not sure how that has worked the last couple of years, but audio was one of the only areas of traditional publishing that demonstrated double-digit growth for much of the last decade. A lot of that has to do with the popularity and availability of streaming as a way that people listen to these books. Obviously, the technology shift made a huge difference, but so did things like cellular networks that work well and buffer easily. So...Jess LaheyCan I add one little, tiny thing? There’s been another reason that I think that audio has done so well, and that’s the acceptance within the education world—thanks to researchers like, for example, Dan Willingham and other people who study the brain and how we process and learn—that audiobooks are reading. From a processing perspective, from a learning perspective, listening to audiobooks is reading, and anyone who is telling you otherwise is not looking at the science. And so, this has been an incredible way—when you look at kids, for example, neurodivergent kids, dyslexic kids, kids who need another way to take in the information. It used to be that audio was like, “Oh no, that’s cheating,” and it is absolutely not cheating. So, I think that acceptance within the education world has been so great. And, you know, yes, it is a small part of the growth, but I do want to put that plug in there.Sarina BowenYeah. So, the way that, traditionally, audiobooks have been made is that a narrator goes into a booth and reads the book after having prepped it a bit in terms of maybe reading the whole book, maybe reading parts of the book, understanding what they’re going to bring to the table. If it’s fiction, then they’ll be looking to see what are the major voices, because audio narrators change their delivery to indicate voices. And one thing that’s interesting about the trend where we are in audio right now is that it’s very trendy for a nonfiction author to read their own work if they’re comfortable with it. That is widely done in nonfiction.Jess LaheyAnd it was one of my favorite parts of my process. And I have to say, nothing affected me more on an emotional level. I cried at the end of narrating both books. I had to pause at the very end—at the last couple, the last paragraph. It was such a moving experience for me to narrate my own book. And I have to say, it wasn’t a slam dunk that they were going to let me do that. I, you know, I worked really hard to be able to do that, because for some people, that’s just not their bag—it’s not something that comes naturally to them. But it was, for me anyway, my favorite part of the process.Sarina BowenYeah, so if you had written a novel, though, we wouldn’t be—Jess LaheyNo.Sarina Bowen—having that same conversation.Jess LaheyI’m not an actor. I don’t have the chops for that.Sarina BowenWell, a lot of authors of novels don’t understand this. It’s not that they don’t understand how their own book should sound and be delivered—it’s that what they don’t understand is that the way that novel audio sounds in 2025 is a specific trend in the way that readers want their books delivered. The books are very much acted. It wasn’t always this way. There were times when audio really sounded more like somebody just reading—and that’s okay. Like, there’s lots of room for style in terms of the way that audio fiction works. But right now, the trend in audio fiction is very much a performance. And one way that you can see this—and it continues to expand as a trend—is the trend toward something called duet audio, which means, for example, in romance, if there’s a male hero and a female heroine—and the way that most of my books work is that if the chapter is in the POV of a man, then the male narrator reads it. But of course, when he comes to a line of dialogue delivered in the heroine’s voice, he softens his tone a bit to indicate that she’s speaking, but he reads the whole chapter.Jess LaheyThey’re always amazing—that’s amazing to me when readers can do that. I mean, Davina Porter is the one that comes to mind—like, in the Outlander books, when she switches whose voice she’s reading. She switches whose voice—it’s down to the accent—and you don’t for a second think, “Oh, that’s the same person reading all of this.” And some of the narrators you use, Sarina, in your books—the same thing. My brain absolutely believes that I’m hearing a female voice versus a male voice. It’s a really incredible talent.Sarina BowenYeah. In fact, if this is of interest to you, there is a book called Thank You for Listening by Julia Whelan.Jess LaheyIt’s so good!Sarina BowenWho is one of the few who’s been very successful as both an author and a narrator, and her book is a little bit of inside baseball about narrators. And it’s a delight.Jess LaheyIt’s fun. It’s really fun.Sarina BowenOkay, so what I was just describing, though—where he reads a chapter and then she reads a chapter—we refer to that as dual narration (D-U-A-L). But there’s a new trend called duet, whereby in the same book, he would read the chapter, but if there was a line of dialogue from a woman, the female narrator would read that line.Jess LaheyWhich is more similar to me in terms of how it feels with, like, ensemble narration. Like, for example, Lincoln in the Bardo had a full cast of many characters, and every part was someone different, and those actors would chime in with their parts. So, same—similar idea.Sarina BowenWell, sometimes, sometimes a “full cast” audiobook just means that there are lots of very short chapters or segments. But to have every single line of dialogue cut in is really different than just saying a book has a full cast.Jess LaheyThat’s true. Actually, that’s true.Sarina BowenSo the thing about duet specifically is that the engineering part of it—the post-production—is really expensive because the engineer has to cut together this script, and actually preparing the script is also a lot of work. So it’s a pretty big deal to make a duet book. It’s more expensive. The cost of making a one-POV narrator book or a dual book is between, let’s say, $300 and $600 per finished hour.Jess LaheyWhat do you mean by that, Sarina?Sarina BowenSo, if you look at Audible right now, you can see the lengths of all of my audiobooks down to the minute. So it might say eight hours and thirty minutes. That means the finished length of that book is eight hours and thirty minutes. And the cost of making that book will be 8.5 times some number between $300 and $600. But if I did that book as duet, then it might be $1,000.Jess LaheyOkay, all right.Sarina BowenSo, every audiobook I’ve ever made cost between, like, three grand and seven grand. And if I were doing duet, then I would be hitting numbers more like $10,000.Jess LaheyAnd make no mistake—there are sta

In this Write Big Session, Jennie and KJ dive into what it really means to “write big” when you’re deep in the messy middle of a novel. KJ shares how she’s tackling her new book by working backward from the ending—mapping out the emotional and plot arcs for each character to keep herself focused and out of the coffee-chat scenes she loves to write. Jennie cheers her on, unpacking how this kind of clarity, self-awareness, and trust in the reader is what turns a good book into a great one.TRANSCRIPT BELOW!THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST* The Correspondent* KJ’s Review of The CorrespondentSPONSORSHIP MESSAGEHey, this is Jennie Nash, and I wanted to invite you to check out my Substack newsletter, The Art & Business of Book Coaching. It’s totally free unless you choose to support me, and it’s secretly really great for writers. The reason is that book coaches are in the business of helping writers do their best work. So I’m always talking about writer mindset and things like helping a writer find their structure or find an agent or find their position in the marketplace. If you’re considering investing in having somebody help you, it’s a great way to get prepared to know who you might want to pick and what you might want to ask of them. You’ll get an inside peek at the way that the people who are in the business of helping writers think about writers, and so in that way, it can help you become a better writer just by tuning in. I have a lot of writers following me over there, so if you’re interested, come check it out you can find it at substack.com/@JennieNash. That’s substack.com/@JennieNash, and it’s J-E-N-N-I-E.EPISODE TRANSCRIPTJennie NashHi, I’m Jennie Nash, and you’re listening to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast. This is a Write Big Session, where I’m bringing you short episodes about the mindset shifts that help you stop playing small and write like it matters. Today I’m talking to KJ, and we’re going to be doing recurring episodes where we talk about her efforts to play big and write big in her new novel. Hi, KJ.KJ Dell’AntoniaHi! This is going to be so fun. Okay, so I’ll tell you what—yeah, I’ll tell you what I’ve been working on. What I’m thinking—like, my theory here is sort of avoid the muddly middle by writing the end, or kind of outlining to the end. So I have about 30,000 words. I’ve really established things. The main events have really started to happen, and I know kind of where they’re going, but I kind of hit a point where I wasn’t sure, like, what should happen next, in what order. And I know myself—I am very prone, at this point, to just flaking off into people having coffee and talking.Jennie NashYes, you are! You are really good at that.KJ Dell’AntoniaExactly. And they would be very entertaining and enjoyable scenes of people having coffee and—or doing whatever. But there is—I mean, I have five point-of-view characters, one main one, but—and all of them have lots of stuff going on in their lives, some of which has to do with this, and some of which doesn’t. Well, all of it does, but you don’t—it’s not all the core, either the core emotional plot or the core actual plot. So what I did was to start sketching out the stuff that happens next, and then I kind of have jumped ahead, and what I’m working on now—and I’d love your sort of feedback on this as an idea—is I wrote out, like, okay, here’s the emotional end for each of these characters. Here’s where they need to end up, and then here’s the plot end for each of these characters in, like, the happy ending, if there was an epilogue—which this is not really that kind of book kind of way—just so I know, like, this is where… And now I am focused on, okay, what should, like, the last scene of this be? I know what happens, but I’m trying to figure out, like, what would be the—what would be the last thing? And I may get this in the wrong order, but anyway, that’s where I am, and I’m going to build those backwards until I catch up to my middle, and I’m thinking that will keep me—keep my eye on the ball. What do you think?Jennie NashWell, I could not love this more for you. I really couldn’t, because I know what you’re trying to do, and I feel like you’re doing it, and we’re getting at this idea of what does it mean to write big, and you’re trying to solve for something that you just identified for us—that you have it, you tend to fall into—and you’re trying to not do that. And you’re trying to write a bigger, better book because of it, and it’s so interesting because it’s a super nuanced thing you’re talking about, but it’s also where the difference—that’s how you get from good to great—and you’re trying to get to great. So I just love this so much. And what I hear is that you’ve outlined this book, which I know is hard for you, and now you’re kind of using that outline to scaffold yourself to write an emotionally satisfying story. So I just—I love it as a tactic for writing big.KJ Dell’AntoniaBecause even if I go back to that outline, like, there are some things happening in these people’s personal lives that are deeply important to them—and, I think, important to the reader—but not in the sense that I need pages and pages of either discussion or introspection about them. It’s more that those are—that they really need to stay back, not background exactly, but in this intense moment of these people’s lives, those things are still in their heads. Like, they’re still going, you know, Wait, what just happened means that I am never going to get a resolution to this thing that I’m deeply worried about—but also I have to deal with this, with this death and this crisis. And so I was thinking that doing this would keep me focused on the emotionality of the crisis.Jennie NashYeah, because you’re really good at plot. You’re really good at plot, and the other component that—underlying what is—the emotion of this person is something you’ve had to work harder at. And what I love about that is that this is how you get really fully fleshed-out characters. Because, like, I have a friend who is going through a heartbreak, and every single thing she does right now is done through the lens of that heartbreak. So even if she says, “Hey, do you want to go on a whale-watching trip out to the islands this weekend?” it’s not just about let’s go on a whale-watching trip, right? It’s about—KJ Dell’AntoniaRight.Jennie NashBut she’s not going to say that when she asks me to go on the whale-watching trip. She’s not going to say, “Because, you know, I’m lonely and sad,” you know? So what you’re doing is giving your characters these rich lives. But that’s not the story.KJ Dell’AntoniaAnd also, I think it will help me to trust the readers—to pay attention to what matters about the rich lives. So, you know, to trust the reader to keep in their head that if someone has a passing, fleeting thought about one of those emotional—you know, one of those pieces of emotional background—that they will still either be wondering about it, if I haven’t revealed it yet, or, you know, recognize it for what it is. And I suspect that I’m going to forget some of them. As I go back through my outline, I’m like, Oh yeah, totally forgot she had this particular problem, and this is how this is going to be resolved. And that may mean that some of them don’t stay, although I think they will. I think it just means that I got—that, you know, ninety thousand words’ worth of story is a lot to keep in your head.Jennie NashSo when you sit down to write, how are you doing it differently? I mean, we know that you’re very good at productivity—doing the stickers, sitting down, doing the work—but how are you making yourself think in this different way this time?KJ Dell’AntoniaI am not drafting. I am staring. And I have two—oh, I have a Google Doc of about forty-six files at this point. Then—actually, no, I think it’s twenty-eight. So I have an outline that you are sometimes looking at, which has everything that I’ve written so far, and then a chunk of things that I know are coming up, where I could write those pretty quickly. The problem is… I would hit a wall at the end of them. So I want to come back and make sure that they’re what I want to—or at least what I think I want to—write. So I’m going into a sort of a secondary outline, and I’m writing things like—because a lot of what’s happening now is also that I am figuring out things that are happening now in the story that the reader won’t know till the end, because a lot of people did a lot of stuff—Jennie NashYeah.KJ Dell’Antonia—in this twenty-four-hour period, and some of it you may never know, but I need to know how and why—Jennie NashYeah.KJ Dell’Antonia…they did those things. So I’m kind of writing like, “What if he did this?” and, “Oh, you know, but—but wait, why? Why would he show up there at this moment?” and, like, resolving that and kind of coming up with all of that, even though that isn’t going to go in those pages. So I did—I worked on that this morning, and then I worked on—I wrote out the emotional ends for everyone. And now I’m just trying to—I’m thinking what I’ll kind of do is I’ll plot-outline backwards, and then I’ll emotion-outline backwards-forwards from there.Jennie NashYeah. Yeah.KJ Dell’AntoniaNo, no—well, backwards, I think, maybe because I know where they’re going to end. I don’t know whether—or I’ll sketch, I’ll sketch in the emotional bit. So what you—when you were looking at this, you could see that there’s a section of about seven lines that are pure plot.Jennie NashYeah. Yeah.KJ Dell’AntoniaBecause… that’s just me. I think, at this point, because this is a thriller and it’s complicated, I need to figure out—and then you and I—we had this great moment where, in one of those, I was like, I don’t know whose point of view the scene was from, and you said something very useful to me, which is, “Whose story would seeing this affect most?” And I knew—and I immediately knew the answer to that. So—Jennie NashI… I thought that you might.KJ De

In this #amwriting podcast episode, Jennie Nash talks about what it means to “play big” on the page. Using Ian McEwan’s choice to write his latest novel without research as an example, she shows how true impact comes when a writer fully owns their story and brings it to life with depth and intention. She encourages listeners to think about their own top five most powerful reads, notice what made those books unforgettable, and aim to create that same sense of bigness in their own writingTranscript Below!#AmWriting: A Groupstack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.SPONSORSHIP MESSAGEHey, it’s Jess Lahey. If you’ve been listening to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast for any length of time, you know that yes, I am a writer—but my true love, my deepest love, is combining writing with speaking. I get to go into schools, community organizations, nonprofits, and businesses, and do everything from lunch-and-learns to community reads to just teaching about the topics that I’m an expert in—from the topics in The Gift of Failure: engagement, learning, learning in the brain, cognitive development, getting kids motivated—and, yes, the topic of overparenting and what that does to kids’ learning. Two topics around The Addiction Inoculation are substance use prevention in kids, and—what I’ve been doing lately that’s the most fun for me, frankly—is combining the two. It makes the topic of substance use prevention more approachable, less scary, when we’re talking about it in the context of learning, motivation, self-efficacy, competence, and—yes—cognitive development. So if you have any interest in bringing me into your school, your nonprofit, your business—I would love to come. You can go to JessicaLahey.com. Look under the menu option “Speaking,” and go down to “Speaking Inquiry.” There’s also a lot of information on my website about what I do—there are videos there about how I do it. Please feel free to get in touch, and I hope I get to come to your community. If you put in the speaking inquiry that you are a Hashtag AmWriting listener, we can talk about a discount—so that can be one of the bonuses for being a loyal and long-term listener to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast.Hope to hear from you.EPISODE TRANSCRIPTHi, I’m Jennie Nash, and you’re listening to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast. This is a Write Big session, where I’m bringing you short episodes about the mindset shifts that help you stop playing small and write like it matters.Today we’re talking about how writing big shows up on the page—how you know when somebody else has done it, when a writer has really wrestled with their material, when they’ve really thought about what matters about it and why it matters, and how they want their readers to feel. They’ve done all the work of making the choices that deliver an experience to their reader. You can feel it—and you want it.Just before Ian McEwan’s new novel came out—which is called What We Can Know—I read an interview with him in The Wall Street Journal, and the interviewer, whose name is Jon Mooallem, asked McEwan this: “You seem to savor research for your books. To write about a brain surgeon, in Saturday, you observed brain surgeries. Here you’re writing about a future that’s so plausible-seeming and specific but diverges dramatically from all the well-worn dystopian tropes. How do you go about researching the future?” And McEwan answers, “I didn’t do any research for this novel.” The interviewer says, “Amazing—none?” And McEwan says, “I could have written it from a prison cell. I mean, there are factoids I looked up on the internet in 30 seconds, but as I approach 80, I’d rather revel in taking a walk through my own mind.”I don’t normally read dystopian fiction, but when I heard that answer, I went and pre-ordered the book. I’ve read some of McEwan’s other books and have adored them—especially Atonement. So he’s on my radar as a writer that I like to read, and a writer that is worth my time. But I pass up a lot of books by writers whose previous work I’ve liked, so it’s not a foregone conclusion that I would have read this one. But that idea—that he did no research for a sci-fi dystopian novel—and those words about how “I’d rather revel in taking a walk through my own mind”—that tells me that this is a book in which he’s playing big, and that’s a book that I want to read.It’s not that there’s anything wrong with research, obviously. People who are writing nonfiction are going to need to do a lot of research, and people writing historical fiction or maybe memoir, and people writing sci-fi or fantasy who are making up worlds that have new technologies or thinking about future systems of government or transportation or food delivery or any of that, are going to need to do research. It’s not that I’m knocking that. What I heard, though, was this idea of a writer who was just owning this story—who had it alive in their head and was bringing it to life on the page. And that’s what I always am looking for, and I suspect it’s what you’re looking for, too.If I were to ask you to reel off your all-time top favorite five books, I bet you would be able to. These books live in our minds because of the experience that they delivered to us. And sometimes it’s because they came at the exact right moment in our lives. A lot of people will reference a book like Charlotte’s Web, which maybe was one of the first books that they ever read—or one of the first times they understood what death is about. Or people will talk about Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, because they felt, for the first time, that this author was really speaking to them and got into their heads and their hearts. So there’s a huge part of this about where we are in our lives when we encounter a particular book and why it might hit us in that particular way. But if you really think about that list of five books, you’re going to understand that there’s something about those books where the author was playing big. They own their story in a very specific way.One of the books that would be on my top-five list would have to be the book Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey. This is a memoir that I read when I was a teenager. I think I pulled it off of the shelf of my dad’s study. It’s a story of this guy who spends a season in the wilderness. He is a ranger at Arches National Park, which is one of those beautiful parks out in the middle of the desert. It’s a red-rock landscape, and there are arches out there made out of that rock. It’s a very harsh environment, and he is out there greeting the people who dared to come visit this space. And the reason that book is on my list is that I read it more than forty-five years ago, and I can still remember exactly what it felt like to open that book and start reading. Edward Abbey writes in a very specific and unique and intense voice, and he has very big and controversial thoughts about comfort and wilderness and what people seek when they go out there. But for me, the reason that book stays on my top all-time list is because that was the book that helped me finally understand my father. And my father was a professor of environmental studies. He spent a lot of time out in the wilderness, in places that were harsh and uncomfortable, and he had a lot of very strong opinions, like Abbey. And he was a hard man to understand because of some of these things. And as a kid growing up and, you know, becoming a teenager, I didn’t understand him, and it was a struggle to understand him. And when I read this book, it was as if somebody handed me a whole new understanding. And I just thought, Oh, this is it. I get it. I get him now. And I can call up that feeling all these years later—of how amazing it was to have somebody see me and see my dad in a way that I hadn’t been able to see. So when I think about that experience, and I think about what it was like to be immersed in that book…To me, that is a memory of somebody who played big. I think it was one of the first times I encountered—certainly in an adult book—somebody who was writing big. That book just had a bigness about it, a sense that the author was holding nothing back.And what I mean about holding nothing back—I don’t mean that all good writing is just dumping your most private or vulnerable thoughts on the page, or forcing that kind of revelatory work on somebody. That’s not what I mean. I mean that there’s a sense of depth to it, a feeling of authority—of that author having come as close as you can get to bringing their vision to life. That’s what makes a reading experience unforgettable. And it’s worth noting here that we live in the time of AI, and AI can do a lot for a story. It can analyze your structure. It can flag plot holes. It can suggest fixes. There’s a whole lot that you can use it for if you so choose. People can decide whether they want to use these tools in their work or not.But the thing is that, no matter if you’re using those tools, AI can never touch this thing that we’re talking about. It can never do the work of the heart—of deciding why a story matters, or why a book matters, or why you’re willing to risk writing it or going all in on it. It can never connect with the reader who’s going to encounter that work on the other side, because it’s a machine.And this human work of connecting is what playing big is really about.Playing small is skating across the surface of an idea. It’s polishing words while avoiding the deep meaning. It’s leaning on formulas or tropes or trends or tools to do the heavy lifting of intention. The result may be polished, it may be clean, it may be publishable—it may even do well in the marketplace—but it lacks that sense of aliveness that only you can bring, that sense that this work mattered to the writer. So what I’d like you to do today is think about the top five books that you have read in your life and that you remember and that hit you with a stro

Hey all, Jess here. Sarina and I both love these episodes where we, two certified nerds, get to hang out with likeminded individuals and dish. This week, we are going to talk about one of Jess’ most niggling worries: what does it mean to a publisher and an author to “earn out” a book advance and what does it mean to both if that never happens?Transcript available below, but making good ones isn’t free—help support the Podcast below!Your subscription = good podcast karma.KJ Dell’AntoniaHey listeners. Did you know that we review first pages sent in by supporters every month on the pod? It’s just one more reason you should be supporting Hashtag AmWriting, which is always free for listeners—and ad free, too. Please note that we will never pitch you the latest in writer supplements or comfy clothes for lap-topping. The good news is we’re open for First Page submissions right now! If you’ve got a work-in-progress and you’d like to submit the First Page for consideration for a Booklab: First Pages episode, just hit the support button in the show note, and you’ll get an email telling you all the details. Want to hear a Booklab episode? Current ones are for supporters only but roll your pod player back to September 2024 and there they’ll be!Multiple SpeakersIs it recording? Now it’s recording—yay. Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. I don’t remember what I’m supposed to be doing. All right, let’s start over. Awkward pause. I’m going to rustle some papers. Okay, now—one, two, three.Jess LaheyHey—welcome to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast! This is a podcast about writing all the things—this is the podcast about writing short things, long things, you know. And specifically, where we’re going to focus these days is on a little episode we’re calling The Publishing Nerd Corner with Jess and Sarina. I’m Jess Lahey. I’m the author of The Gift of Failure and The Addiction Inoculation, and you can find my work at The Atlantic, at The New York Times, at The Washington Post, and at jesslahey.substack.com.Sarina BowenAnd I’m Sarina Bowen, the author of many contemporary novels. My new one is called Thrown for a Loop, and it drops on November 4th , and I am so excited. And today’s topic actually pertains to what happens when you have a book that’s publishing and everybody has all these big expectations. We’re going to cover one of them, which is earning out your advance—or not—and how to frame your thinking around this.Jess LaheyYeah, first. I mean, the way this Nerd Corner works is because Sarina tends to have more of the business acumen and the nerd acumen. I let her do a lot of teaching me. But one thing I would like to state at the very beginning of this—and apologies, I didn’t look up the stats; Sarina might know them—the number of books that actually earn out their advance if it’s nonfiction. For example, my book that we’re going to talk about today is nonfiction, and so I got a big advance based on a—and we’re going to talk about that. We’re going to talk numbers. It makes authors really nervous, but I think it’s important. The number of authors that actually earn out is really, really low—like, much lower than you expect. . So “earning out” can mean a couple of different things, and we’re going to talk about that today. But to set the scene, we’re going to use my book The Gift of Failure as the example for earning out. as the example for earning out. So I’ve sold a lot of books—like, this book was a success by any measure. It was on The New York Times bestseller list. I had Kristen Bell go on Instagram and say, “Buy this book, it’s so great,” and it sold out across the country. I am not complaining here; I am just saying that it makes me extremely nervous that technically I have not earned out my advance on The Gift of Failure. Again, to set the scene, The Gift of Failure was based originally—it came out of an article that went viral at The Atlantic on why parents need to let their children fail. There was a big auction for this book that lasted three whole days. It was very exciting, and the number kept going up and up and up. And I was freaking out, because now you’ve got huge expectations. I mean, I’m thrilled, but the expectations keep getting bigger and bigger. So where we ended up was Harper Books came back with the highest bid, and it was also for the editor that I was most excited to work with, Gail Winston, and it came in at $400,000, so that was wonderful. That was great. It was based on—I got five payments over five, essentially, five years, and I have not earned back that advance for my publisher. So, Sarina, what would you say to me—a writer who is stressed out because that means, you know, when they’re looking at purchasing other books like The Addiction Inoculation, I was able to sell to them, even though it’s a tough niche, that little—it’s a tough corner, that addiction corner—and they knew that this book was not going to sell as well. But on the strength of my sales of the addiction…excuse me, of The Gift of Failure, I was able to sell that book, but I hadn’t earned out. So why are they going to pay me to write another book if I hadn’t earned out?Sarina BowenIt’s such a great question. So the thing—the punch line of this episode—is we just want you to know that if you don’t earn out, you’re not a failure. And we don’t mean it in a nice way, like everybody gets a ribbon. We mean, like, you might not be a financial failure for the publisher, even though on your statement it says you still haven’t earned back your advance. And that’s because the advance that you’re paid is part of a profit-and-loss estimate that the publisher makes before they offer on a book. And just in case anybody is squishy about this—like, an advance means those royalty amounts in your contract, you’re getting paid an upfront amount, and then you have to, like, earn it back with those royalty amounts in your contract.Jess LaheyAnd for those who actually are not familiar with this at all, I don’t have to pay back the money if I don’t earn out. That’s not a thing.Sarina BowenRight. So the publisher said, “We like this book so much we are going to pay you $400,000, and we think that you will sell enough copies that we will be in the black on our P&L statement.” But they never show us the P&L statement. So let’s just say that they had a P&L statement that shows that they’re profitable on this book even if you only sell 70,000 copies—but you’ve sold over twice that amount. So when I worked on Wall Street, I was given a bonus every year, and the bonus made everybody feel like, “This is the amount of money that you’re worth.” But what it really was is “This is the amount of money we have to pay you so you won’t quit and go work for somebody else.” And an advance is exactly the same thing—it’s how much do we have to pay you to win, but also in a way that looks okay on our profit-and-loss estimate of what this book can do. And of course, you mentioned that we don’t have good data about how many books earn back their advances. And the truth is, even if you and I had done a deep dive prior to sitting down here today, we still wouldn’t know, because nobody publishes these numbers. And the only time that you get a glimpse of them is when some publishing executive is on the stand in a court case about, say, whether two Big Five publishers can merge.Jess LaheyGotcha.Sarina BowenAnd then, yeah. And then they tend to say various things—like, they’ll give a statistic, and then everybody in publishing will be, like, nailed to the transcript of this court case to see, like, how is everybody doing in there? Because, you know, nobody—nobody tells you. Nobody is obligated, even in a publicly traded company, to give these precise statistics about how often people earn out.So earning out has some pros and cons. Like, so you said that writing this book—because you sold it on proposal, and then you had to write it, and you had this big amount of money that you had to recoup—and that is so intimidating. And I’ve been in this same situation. I sold The Five Year Lie to HarperCollins two years before that book was published, and I still had to write the book, because that book was actually also sold on proposal.Jess LaheyWhich doesn’t happen very often, dear listener. Do—Sarina BowenThat’s rightJess Lahey—not think that you can sell your first fiction on proposal. That’s not how it works.Sarina BowenRight—that will never happen. But, um, this was my, like, 50th novel, and then you can sell on proposal. But anyway, I also had to write something in a new genre with my own expectations built in, and that’s scary. But the reason we need this fear—the value of this fear—is that both of our publishers were invested in our success. If I had been offered a low advance and I had taken this deal, then, um, sure, I would be less stressed out about the success of the book—but so would my publisher. The more skin they have in the game, the better they’re going to see your project through.Jess LaheyRight.Sarina BowenAnd that is valuable. So a little bit of our fear—or, okay, fine, a lot of it—is actually doing things for this calculation that we need, that we require.Jess LaheyAnd to decode that—what that can often mean is marketing budget. So The Gift of Failure had, you know, the amount that they’re willing to invest, including the number of hours my publicist at Harper is willing to invest in publicizing this book, comes down to how invested they are in the book. And given the number that I got, they’re pretty invested in this book. And, you know, I was pretty happy with some of the publicity stuff. And also, on top of that, you know, I requested bookmarks and postcards and all that sort of stuff, and I requested to have as many as they could afford in my marketing budget shipped to me. And honestly, for The Gift of Failure I’m just now finally running out of postcards, and I use a lot of those postcards still in my marketing. And they also have b

You kids I can’t even with Catherine Newman right now because I am a Wreck and a Sandwich myself at the moment but wow, she’s a good writer, so honest it’s like there’s no skull between her mind and the readers. We talk about what it means to use yourself and your world in your fiction and what it’s meant to Catherine to play as big as she possibly can and go bigger and deeper with every book.We ALSO talk about Catherine’s totally granular technique for planning and tracking and keeping her eye on the ball in every chapter while still pulling in all the other things while making sure that if it’s Friday night a teacher character doesn’t get up and go to teach the next morning and the blackberries never ripen in April, and let me tell you that I just went back and listened to that now and I am about to implement it because it’s brilliant.Ok, time to let you listen (although links to what Catherine and I are reading and loving are below). ALSO…Truth? We wanted to tuck the transcript away behind a paywall, but it turns out we can’t do that and still give you the episode… so, here it is. But we have to pay someone to make a good one, that you can read. And we still have to pay ourselves and all our people. BUT LOOK YOU GET ALL OF US. We’re not just one writer, we’re a whole bunch—a Groupstack, and yes we coined the term, and you get a lot of bang for your subscription. So, if you could kick in, we’d cheer.Please don’t make us try to sell you Quince clothing or gambling sites to support the pod.#AmReadingCatherine: A Truce That Is Not Peace by Miriam ToewsKJ: EPISODE TRANSCRIPTKJ Dell’AntoniaIt’s fall, y’all, and there’s got to be a T-shirt that says that, right? So it’s, you know, fresh notebooks, sharpened pencils, sharpened sense of ambition, excitement after the languid summer days, and, of course, the glory that is decorative gourd season. You can say that with all the swears that you like, but I’m not going to hear “falling leaves” and “Halloween,” which means it’s time for smoky, eerie, witchy reads, and I have just the thing for you—Playing the Witch Card. Expect a woman starting over again after her marriage collapses, hampered by her magic-obsessed daughter, her flaky mother, her enchanted ex, and a powerful witch who’s thrilled that she’s back in town—and not for a good reason. To keep her family together, Flair has to embrace the hereditary magic that’s done nothing but ruin her life in the past and make it her own. I was inspired by what I see as the real magic of tarot cards, which play a huge role in this book—and tea leaves and palm reading, and honestly, every form of oracle. They’re here to help us see and understand our own stories, which is pretty much what Flair figures out. And as someone for whom stories are everything, I love that. You can buy Playing the Witch Card everywhere, and I hope you will do exactly that—and love it too.Multiple SpeakersIs it recording? Now it’s recording, yay. Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. I don’t remember what I’m supposed to be doing. All right, let’s start over. Awkward pause. I’m going to rustle some papers. Okay, now—one, two, three.KJ Dell’AntoniaHey, kids, it’s KJ, and this is the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast—the place where we help you play big in your writing life, love the process, and finish what matters. Today on the pod, I’m talking with Catherine Newman. She is the author most recently of We All Want Impossible Things and Sandwich, and also, earlier in her career, Waiting for Birdy and Catastrophic Happiness, as well as two fabulous “how to be a person in the world” books for kids that, honestly, I think we could all benefit from. I’m considering just, you know, sending out copies. They are How to Be a Person and What Can I Say?—that one’s really useful. Okay, so now, just out, she has Wreck—which kind of comes after Sandwich, but you could read them separately. They’re both small, intense books. Wreck, like all of Catherine’s work, is inevitably about exactly what I just said—it’s how to be a person in the world. Which—I didn’t actually ask Catherine this; I’m recording my intro for y’all after talking to her—but she would not tell you she knows how to be a person in the world. But she is so fantastic about the part where we’re all figuring it out, and being aware that we’re all figuring it out. And that’s what all of her books are about. In the interview, which you’re going to love, she calls herself the queen of the slight plot element, which made me laugh really hard and also made me realize that I think Catherine Newman is the modern Anne Tyler. So tell me what you think in the comments on the show notes—which you’d better be getting. They are at...there’s no hashtag in our name—AmWritingPodcast.com—or search anywhere they will have the books that Catherine mentions, and also all of your chances to do all of the things, like have your First Page appear in a Booklab episode. Talk to us. Get in there. Tell us what you’re thinking about writing. Write along with us. Really just—just all the community stuff that we all so desperately want. Okay, here comes my interview with Catherine. I know—gosh, it was so fun to talk to you. You guys are going to love it. Catherine Newman, welcome to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast, where you’ve been at least once, maybe twice—I need to go and look. It’s so fun to have you back. I remember us walking in the woods before you had finished We All Want Impossible Things in 2021.Catherine NewmanI remember it too.KJ Dell’AntoniaWhich, actually, for three books, is not that long ago.Catherine NewmanHey, that’s true. I know... I remember your dog.KJ Dell’AntoniaHe’s here somewhere.Catherine NewmanYou had a young dog with you. It was the best. And you—you said so many things that I’ve thought about so much on that walk. But I don’t want to derail the thing you want to talk about.KJ Dell’AntoniaBut, but same—it was a great walk. We must do it again. All right, meanwhile—okay, so I already described in the introduction all the things you’ve ever written in the past and raved about you, so don’t—don’t worry about that. You’ve been—sorry you don’t get to hear the petting. But the question is, tell us—tell us a little bit about Wreck.Catherine NewmanYeah, so Wreck...KJ Dell’AntoniaI know, I know, it’s painful. Elevator pitch or whatever you want to say, because seriously, I did just tell everyone about them in the intro.Catherine NewmanI really need an elevator pitch. I feel like We All Want Impossible Things was like a woman whose best friend was dying while she, like, slept with everybody.KJ Dell’AntoniaYeah, it was joyful.Catherine NewmanThat was easy.KJ Dell’AntoniaAlso sad.Catherine NewmanSandwich was like Cape Cod for a week, reproductive mayhem, sandwich generation. Wreck is so weird because there’s these two sort of very slight plot elements. So it’s, you know, a woman in her mid-50s living in a house with her husband of many years, her daughter, who’s between college and grad school, and her dad, who was fairly recently widowed and in his 90s. And that’s mostly what the book is, but the little plots are that she has a rash—she notices that she has a rash—and it inaugurates this kind of diagnostic tornado. A slow and quiet tornado, but a tornado nonetheless, where she has to see a billion doctors. She has to constantly check her patient portal to see if she’s dying or not, and anyone who’s had—who’s been anything but healthy in the last 10 years will understand the patient portal.KJ Dell’AntoniaYes, I love the checker. I checked a patient portal from a hockey-rink parking lot, and that’s a mistake, just FYI.Catherine NewmanJust don’t...KJ Dell’AntoniaTo anyone considering it, don’t do it on a Friday night. Don’t do that.Catherine NewmanJust don’t even look. And then the other plot point is that there’s an accident—there’s a collision between a car and a train—and a schoolmate of her kids, like someone they went to high school with, is killed in this accident. And she becomes kind of weirdly obsessed with the accident. She looks at it online all the time. She stalks everyone’s...KJ Dell’AntoniaWhich so tracks for the character that you have created.Catherine NewmanDoesn’t it? And that’s it. And so the book sort of is those things unfolding in this parallel way—these uncertain things.KJ Dell’AntoniaSo when you wrote it, what—what was your intention for this? What did you want Wreck to be in your career and for your readers?Catherine NewmanWhat? It’s so funny to be asked questions about my career. I don’t know what I wanted it to be in my career, but maybe while I’m talking to you, I’ll figure that out.KJ Dell’AntoniaOkay.Catherine NewmanOr you can tell me. But for my readers—I do think we’re in this funny place where some of us are hungry to read about the experiences of other menopausal women who are taking care of aging parents, whose nests are emptying, who are in long marriages, who are, you know, doing the things of this age, including tracking weird illnesses. So I guess that—you know, I think, I feel like the thing that I love about writing—one of the things—is when people say to me, like, “Oh yeah, I feel the same way about that,” or they write me and they’re like, “Oh, I read this, and I felt so relieved that I wasn’t alone.” And I guess I have a lot of that hope—you know, that it speaks to someone, or someone’s been in their portal rummaging around and finding out horrible things about their health and Googling them. Like, that’s not a small part of the population who’s probably doing that. So I guess just that—you know, the handout, the “I’m with you on this” vibe.KJ Dell’AntoniaSo what do you love most about it?Catherine Newman(Laughing) I mean, that’s a funny and embarrassing question. I... you know, the father character is based very closely on my own father. Many of the things he says are verbatim lifted from conversations and texts with my dad. And I just love that characte

In this episode, Jennie digs into the sneaky ways writers “play small”—circling endlessly around an idea, polishing the same chapters, getting lost in research, or waiting for perfect timing instead of taking real action. With stories from her years as a book coach, including one writer who finally broke free from years of fear and went on to become a full-time author, Jennie shows how smallness hides behind busyness and perfectionism. She challenges you to spot where you’re holding back and take the courageous step toward playing big.Transcript Below!#AmWriting: A Groupstack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.SPONSORSHIP MESSAGEHey, this is Jennie Nash, and I wanted to invite you to check out my Substack newsletter, The Art & Business of Book Coaching. It’s totally free unless you choose to support me, and it’s secretly really great for writers. The reason is that book coaches are in the business of helping writers do their best work. So I’m always talking about writer mindset and things like helping a writer find their structure or find an agent or find their position in the marketplace. If you’re considering investing in having somebody help you, it’s a great way to get prepared to know who you might want to pick and what you might want to ask of them. You’ll get an inside peek at the way that the people who are in the business of helping writers think about writers, and so in that way, it can help you become a better writer just by tuning in. I have a lot of writers following me over there, so if you’re interested, come check it out you can find it at substack.com/@JennieNash. That’s substack.com/@JennieNash, and it’s J-E-N-N-I-E.EPISODE TRANSCRIPTHi, I’m Jennie Nash, and you’re listening to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast. This is a Write Big Session, where I’m bringing you short episodes about the mindset shifts that help you stop playing small and write like it matters.Today, we’re talking about playing small—and what exactly it is—because playing small is sneaky. Writers are not going around saying, “I want to hold myself back,” or, “I’m giving in to my fear,” or, “I’m making decisions to protect myself.” Instead, they tell themselves that they’re being realistic.Maybe they think that they need more training, or they need to take more courses, or they need to take more time. But as a book coach, I see the same patterns over and over again in writers playing small — and this is what it looks like.It’s this person, who I don’t see very often, but whenever I do see them—maybe once or twice a year—they always tell me that they’re circling around the idea of writing a book. It’s the same book that they’ve been circling around all these years, and they feel compelled to tell me that they’re still thinking about it—they’re still just about to do that someday, when they have time.The smallness comes in never even starting.I also think of the writer who polishes the same three chapters over and over again until they just shine brightly and there’s not one single, solitary thing wrong with them. But that writer never moves forward with their draft. They never actually get to the point where they’re going to finish, and then have to decide how to revise that book, or whether to take it out into the world, or even show it to anyone. They just noodle around with those same chapters in this endless loop of procrastination.So again, it’s not taking action.You also see this with nonfiction writers, or memoir writers, or sci-fi writers—where they focus incredibly deeply on their world-building or their research, and they have copious notes and spreadsheets and all kinds of information that they’re gathering so that, when they’re ready to write, they’ll have all this info—but they never actually get ready to write. They just stay stuck in the loop of research.Perhaps the most poignant story I have of a writer playing small comes from a conference that I went to many years ago. I met this writer who had been going to the same conference for about five years, and she was getting ready to pitch. She actually had come to me in a kind of speed-dating situation, where you worked with an expert to get your pitch ready before you went in to the agents to pitch, and I thought her pitch was really good. I thought her material was really good, and we worked on tweaking it a little bit.And then I said, you know, had she ever pitched before? Was this her first time? And she said, “No, I’ve been coming to this conference all these years, and I’ve been pitching every year.”And I said, “Well, what happened all those years?” And she said that each one of those years, she had agents request to send in her manuscript. She had this collection of agents who were waiting for her manuscript, and she had never sent it to them because she didn’t think that it was ready.She kept coming to the conference, kept going to these pitches, kept getting requests, and never sending the manuscript in. She thought that she would continue to work on it—to make it as good as it could be—before she took that leap and sent those pitches in.And surely my mouth hung open in shock, because this just seemed so sad to me—and a perfect example of playing small. And so, instead of working on her pitch, I used my time with her to work on her mindset and to help her try to find and tap into that bravery to, this year, actually do it—to actually send the work in. And maybe go back to those agents from years past and send it to them as well. Sometimes there’s a period of time when the agents will still welcome those pitches—or not.But the point was, it was time for her to get out there and pitch, without a doubt. And after that conference, she did, in fact, get more requests to submit—and she did submit—and now, all these years later, she’s a very successful writer. She’s actually working on her third series. She is a full-time writer. She’s made the leap to be that, which is a thing so many people want to be.It was just one moment of fear that she had to get over. And I said in the last episode that playing big rarely happens in one moment — but sometimes it does. Sometimes it’s literally just hitting the send key and saying, “Okay, I’m doing this. I’m putting it out there.” And that’s what this writer needed to do to make that shift from playing small to playing big.It’s very easy to just stay busy with our writing—to stay productive—and to never do the work that’s actually going to get us the thing we want. Playing small often looks like busyness or it looks like waiting for permission—waiting for more time, for perfect pages, for someone else to open the door and welcome us in.But this is just another form of hiding. Playing small means not stepping forward. It means not sending that pitch, not finishing the draft, not carving out the time to do the work, and constantly coming up with reasons why it’s not happening.So the reflection I want to leave you with today is to think about where you know you’re playing small—and where you know you need to shine the light of courage and bravery in order to make that shift and play big.The place where you’re playing small is probably glaringly obvious to you, so you probably know. And I would encourage you to write it down so you can look at it—maybe share it. Everything is better when it’s shared and brought into the light.And once you do that, you can take action toward making the shift and playing big. Until next time, stop playing small and write like it matters.NarratorThe Hashtag AmWriting Podcast is produced by Andrew Perrella. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output, because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.#AmWriting is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of the Write Big series, Jennie unpacks what it really means to “write big”—not chasing bestseller lists or movie deals, but making the bold internal shifts that bring your truest work to the page. Through stories of writers daring to name their ambition, rebuild drafts, honor personal truths, and even reimagine entire projects, Jennie shows how writing big looks different for everyone but always comes down to honesty, courage, and clarity.Transcript Below!#AmWriting: A Groupstack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.SPONSORSHIP MESSAGEHey, this is Jennie Nash, and I wanted to invite you to check out my Substack newsletter, The Art & Business of Book Coaching. It’s totally free unless you choose to support me, and it’s secretly really great for writers. The reason is that book coaches are in the business of helping writers do their best work. So I’m always talking about writer mindset and things like helping a writer find their structure or find an agent or find their position in the marketplace. If you’re considering investing in having somebody help you, it’s a great way to get prepared to know who you might want to pick and what you might want to ask of them. You’ll get an inside peek at the way that the people who are in the business of helping writers think about writers, and so in that way, it can help you become a better writer just by tuning in. I have a lot of writers following me over there, so if you’re interested, come check it out you can find it at substack.com/@JennieNash. That’s substack.com/@JennieNash, and it’s J-E-N-N-I-E.EPISODE TRANSCRIPTHi, I’m Jennie Nash, and you’re listening to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast. This is a Write Big Session—a short episode about the mindset shifts that help you stop playing small and write like it matters. Today we’re talking about what Write Big really means. A lot of writers think that writing big means chasing splashy goals like bestseller lists or big advances or movie deals, and sometimes it looks like that, but more often writing big is a subtle internal shift. It’s daring to face what isn’t working, listening to hard feedback, writing the thing you really want to write, and letting yourself own what you’re dreaming about.I think the best way to explain it is to tell a few stories.So in the last episode, I mentioned my client, Dr. Diana Hill. When I met Diana, she had a full draft of the book that she was writing, and it was her third book. She was about two months away from turning it in to her publisher. She asked if I would take a look at the manuscript to see if there was anything that I might be able to suggest to make the book better.We were new friends, and I thought it would be a kind thing to do, and so I said yes, but as soon as I started reading the manuscript, I thought, uh oh. It was good—it was fine—but there was nothing special about the pages. Diana had done the thing that a lot of academics do, which is point to all the other thinkers who had gone before them and written things or studied things. It was all just a little flat, but I could tell that the ideas in it were really big. And so I went back to Diana, and I said, “What’s your goal for this book? Where do you want it to sit on the shelf?” And what I mean by that question is: what other books are near it, what other books are like it, what other books are your ideal reader reading?And usually, when I ask people this, they talk about actual shelves in the bookstore and books that are on those shelves. But what Diana said was something I’d never heard anybody say before. She said, “I don’t want my book to be on the shelf. I want it to be on the front table.” That was her version of playing big—naming her ambition out loud and allowing it to shape her choices. Because when she told me that, I was then able to say, “I don’t think what you’ve written is going to be that book.” And then I said, “How much are you willing to risk to make it so?”She looked at me sort of horrified, because she was really close to actually being done with this book, and she said, “I’ll do anything that it takes.” And so we set about working together over those two months to basically rip the entire thing down to the studs—if we’re talking about house-building imagery. I have rarely seen somebody work as hard over such a long sustained period of time as Diana did to rebuild that book. She did anything that I suggested if she thought it was right, and she worked night and day to build it back up. I’m recording this the week before her book comes out, and so we have no idea how the book is going to be received in the marketplace. But what we do know is this: she played big. She gave that book everything that she had. She was willing to ask for help. She was willing to sacrifice time with her family and even time at her job. She’s a therapist, and she took a week off from seeing clients in order to go on a retreat and get this writing done. She also risked her ego, because she really put out there what she wanted. She wanted this book to be a big deal, and all of that is playing big.But playing big does not have to be tied to ambition.I once worked with an ad executive who came into a course that I was teaching at UCLA, and he wanted to write a memoir. He’d spent his whole career writing ad copy—short, little, catchy lines—and he was a really good wordsmith, but he was terrified of writing anything longer than about a paragraph.But he had this story that he was burning to tell, and the story had to do with a road trip that he took when he was 16 years old. At the time that he came into my class, he was retired and had gray hair, and he was thinking about this trip that had taken place way back in the day when America was really a different kind of country, and cars were new, and the roads that opened the country were new, and this idea that you could hit the road and go anywhere you wanted was new.And so he had this romantic image of what that trip was. But the trip had also haunted him for 50 years, because he took it with his buddy, another friend from Ohio, who he was going to school with. After that trip was over and they returned back home from California, that friend took his own life, and this ad executive had never stopped thinking about it, and never stopped thinking about his friend, and this vibrant time they had, and this aliveness that they felt, and this freedom that they enjoyed, and he wanted to capture that story for his 50th high school reunion.He didn’t have any intention of publishing it wider than that. He was going to print maybe 100 copies and take them to the reunion and hand them out to people, because the people in that room at that reunion were the only people who would have cared as much as he did about that friend and about that time. This was the audience that he wanted to please, but he really wanted to do this idea justice. He did not want to just write something down or write something that didn’t have depth, or, you know, have a sort of travel log of the places they went and the adventures that they had. He wanted to write something that was deeply meaningful to him and to that friend’s memory and to that audience.And working with him, I was struck that this was playing big too—just knowing what he wanted and being willing to do whatever it took to get it right. It was very hard for him to write that book, because, like I said, he was really good at writing little bits of words but not so good at writing whole scenes and chapters. He really had to teach himself how to do that and teach himself about narrative design and holding tension, and, as with any memoir, centering the reader and not just himself.Plus, he was digging up memories and wanting to get things right and wanting to get the spirit of the thing right. He worked so hard, and publishing that book and taking it to that reunion was a triumph for him. It was absolutely playing big.And then just a few weeks ago, I had an experience of a writer playing big. This is a friend of mine, Lisa B., and she had spent about three years noodling around with a nonfiction book, a biography that just wasn’t working. She is a journalist, and she adheres very closely to the truth—that matters a lot to her—and she was intrigued by this story, but she couldn’t get it to work, and it was really starting to grind at her. So she sat down with a brain trust of people, and I was part of that brain trust, and she asked us for some real feedback.It wasn’t about the pages. We actually didn’t read any pages or notes or anything that she had written. It was about her story and what it was going to be, and if maybe it was time to let it go. So she was arguing for what she loved about the story and explaining about what wasn’t working, and she was listening to our critiques and our curiosity and our prodding and really trying to understand what to do with this story that wasn’t working. Should she try to somehow make it work? Was there another wrinkle that she hadn’t seen to bring this whole thing to life? Or should she let it go?And we had this very rich and deep conversation, and then that night she had a sudden realization. She said it was kind of like a lightning-bolt strike, and she realized that the story was actually not about the person she thought it was about. It was about a minor character. And if she shifted the spotlight onto this other character, the whole book would work in the way that she envisioned it working, and it would mean writing it as a novel, which, for her, was something she had really fought against doing. It went against her adherence to the truth, and so she had to embrace this really big, scary thing in order to do this story justice.But what was so cool in listening to her talk about this revelation was that she was practically vibrating with excitement as she described what this book was going to be. She knew she had

Jennie kicks off the new Write Big series with a conversation about what it really means to stop playing small in your writing life. If you’ve ever felt the tug to bring more of yourself to the page—or wondered why your words aren’t landing the way you want—this episode will spark reflection and give you permission to choose courage, clarity, and creativity in your work.Transcript Below!#AmWriting: A Groupstack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.SPONSORSHIP MESSAGEHey, this is Jennie Nash, and I wanted to invite you to check out my Substack newsletter, The Art & Business of Book Coaching. It’s totally free unless you choose to support me, and it’s secretly really great for writers. The reason is that book coaches are in the business of helping writers do their best work. So I’m always talking about writer mindset and things like helping a writer find their structure or find an agent or find their position in the marketplace. If you’re considering investing in having somebody help you, it’s a great way to get prepared to know who you might want to pick and what you might want to ask of them. You’ll get an inside peek at the way that the people who are in the business of helping writers think about writers, and so in that way, it can help you become a better writer just by tuning in. I have a lot of writers following me over there, so if you’re interested, come check it out you can find it at substack.com/@JennieNash. That’s substack.com/@JennieNash, and it’s J-E-N-N-I-E.EPISODE TRANSCRIPTHi, I’m Jennie Nash, and you’re listening to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast, and today, we’re starting something new. It’s a special series here on Hashtag AmWriting where we explore what happens when writers hold back, play it safe, or hide in the shadows—and what changes when they step into their full creative power. I’m calling these the Write Big Sessions.I’ll be sharing solo reflections, interviewing different writers and industry professionals about the ways they play big, talking with KJ about these ideas, and offering the chance for you to reflect at key times of the year, all circling around one big question: How are you playing small in your writing life? And here’s the good news: you don’t have to keep doing that. You can choose to Write Big, with courage, clarity, and the power to bring your whole self to the page.Today I’m talking about why I’m obsessed with the whole concept of writing big, and why I’ve committed my whole career to helping writers do it.In April, I went on a wellness retreat in Costa Rica, which was being run by Dr. Diana Hill, one of my book coaching clients, and the author of the book Wise Effort. When we arrived, there were the usual introductions—where are you from? What do you do? What brought you here? One woman heard about my work with Diana and said, “Oh, that’s so crazy. I’m dying to write a book. I’d love to talk to you.”I smiled and said something polite, because this is something I hear all the time. I’m a book coach, and whenever anybody hears about what I do, they always say that either they or their sister or cousin or brother or neighbor or somebody is dying to write a book. They say that 82% of American adults want to write a book. And from my experience out in the world, I don’t doubt it.In the middle of the week, Diana guided us through a visualization exercise designed to help us reconnect with our values and desires, and it was intense. We had to write for 15 minutes about what we would do if we only had a year left to live. We then had to write about what we would do if we only had a month left to live, and then a week, and then a minute.After we did the writing exercises, we partnered up with whoever was sitting next to us to share what we had discovered, and my partner happened to be the woman who wanted to write the book. I shared with her that if I had a year left to live, I would absolutely be writing a book to try to capture everything that I’ve learned throughout my career. I’m just wired to teach and to inspire others, and it’s what I would do.If I only had a month left to live, I’d still have that on my list. I imagined a burst of creative energy at the end of my life to propel me through this creativity, and of course leave me time to be with my husband and my two kids. We would probably watch silly movies and play games and fight about it, and we would probably take walks, and I would tell them how much I’ve loved loving them.When I got down to one week left to live, and then one minute, writing reluctantly dropped off my list because I had to face the limits of time and my priorities of being with my family. But what was interesting is that the woman who literally told me she was dying to write a book did not include writing on any of her lists.And to be honest, this didn’t surprise me. So many people say they want to write a book, but they don’t want it to cost them anything. They don’t want to give up anything in order to do it. They’re not ready to Write Big.But I find that the writers who are ready to Write Big—the ones who are yearning to connect with their deepest creative desires and write something they love that their readers might love—those people are motivated to do whatever it takes, if only they knew what those things were.These writers are already probably spending time, effort, energy, and money writing their morning pages, clocking 1000 words a day, maybe turning out shitty first drafts and maybe even publishing. They’re doing work, but the books they’re writing are falling flat, failing to make an impact, and leaving them frustrated and desperate to figure out what’s missing in their creative life. They can’t quite figure out why they’re not writing something that feels as amazing to them as the writing that they love feels when they read it.Compounding this frustration is the glut of craft resources, productivity tips, and marketing strategies coming at us every day. It’s easy to get lulled into the belief that knowing how to write and publish is all it takes to fulfill your creative dreams. But I know better.In my work at Author Accelerator, where I train and certify people to be book coaches, mostly what we’re doing is helping people figure out how to help writers to Write Big. At the end of the day, what an excellent book coach does is help a writer step into their full creative power.And I want to be clear about what I mean by writing big. It’s not about hitting bestseller lists or being loud on the internet. It’s bringing your whole self to the page, choosing courage over comfort, and daring to be seen. It’s the difference between spending time on your writing—and committing your whole self to it.The ironic thing is that when writers decide to play big, the rewards of the marketplace often follow, because readers can tell when you’re playing small, holding back, dialing it in, or not really connecting with yourself or them.I sometimes think there are bigger problems in the world than helping writers make a shift in their relationship to their work. But then I’m reminded of what happens when writers bring their whole selves to the page. Hearts and minds get changed, people feel less alone, the world becomes more connected.So what I’ll be talking about in these Write Big Sessions is BIG! I’ll be keeping the episodes short on purpose, and I’ll usually end with a reflection or action step. I’m a book coach, after all—it’s what I do.For today, I would just ask you to think about what the concept of writing big has brought up for you, just hearing about it. What feelings or thoughts arise?Until next time, stop playing small, and write like it matters.NarratorThe Hashtag AmWriting Podcast is produced by Andrew Perrella. Our intro music, aptly titled, Unemployed Monday was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output, because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.#AmWriting is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Kate Rope’s new book, Strong as a Girl is not only well-written and thoroughly researched, it includes the voices of so many girls and young women. In this week’s episode, Jess talks with Kate about how she managed to secure interviews with these girls, get permission to use their voices, and manage the paperwork around all those releases. Find Kate via her website: Kate Rope, @kateropewriter on Instagram, and her Substack Strong as a HumanTranscript Below!Jess LaheyHey, it’s Jess Lahey. If you’ve been listening to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast for any length of time, you know that, yes, I am a writer, but my true love—my deepest love—is combining writing with speaking. I get to go into schools, into community organizations, into nonprofits, into businesses, and do everything from lunch and learns to community reads to just teaching about the topics that I’m an expert in, from the topics in The Gift of Failure, engagement, learning, learning in the brain, cognitive development, getting kids motivated, and yes, the topic of over-parenting and what that does to kids’ learning—two topics around The Addiction Inoculation, substance use prevention in kids, and what I’ve been doing lately that’s the most fun for me, frankly, is combining the two topics. It makes the topic of substance use prevention more approachable, less scary when we’re talking about it in the context of learning and motivation and self-efficacy and competence and, yes, cognitive development.So if you have any interest in bringing me into your school, to your nonprofit, to your business, I would love to come—you can go to jessicalahey.com, look under the menu option “Speaking,” and go down to “Speaking Inquiry.” There’s also a lot of information on my website about what I do. There are videos there about how I do it. Please feel free to get in touch, and I hope I get to come to your community. If you put in the speaking inquiry that you are a Hashtag AmWriting listener, we can talk about a discount, so that can be one of the bonuses for being a loyal and long-term listener to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast. Hope to hear from you.Multiple SpeakersIs it recording? Now it’s recording. Yay! Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. Try to remember what I’m supposed to be doing. All right, let’s start over. Awkward pause. I’m going to rustle some papers. Okay. Now, one, two, three.Jess LaheyHey, welcome to Hashtag AmWriting. This is the podcast about reading all the things—short things, long things, poetry, nonfiction, fiction, articles, queries, book proposals. This is the podcast about writing all the things, but more than anything else, this is the podcast about getting the writing done, getting the work of being a writer done. I’m Jess Lahey. I’m the author of The Gift of Failure and The Addiction Inoculation, and you can find my work at The Washington Post and The New York Times and The Atlantic and lots of other places.And today I have a guest—a guest I’m very, very excited about. So today I’m going to be talking with Kate Rope about a topic that I have wanted to cover for a while and have not had exactly the right person to cover the topic with. Kate Rope is a writer. She is a journalist, and she’s had articles at a lot of the same places that I have, actually—like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and things like that. She wrote a wonderful book called Strong like a Mother [Strong as a Mother], and her new book, Strong like a Girl [Strong as a Girl], is coming out in October—October 14, to be precise. And thank you so much, Kate, for coming on the podcast.Kate RopeOh, I’m so excited. It’s a dream come true. It’s—it’s literally like leveling up in my world.Jess LaheyOkay, so help me remember where we actually first met? It could have been through Jess Foundation people, because those people in common.Kate RopeNo, no, it was before then. I think I just sought you out for—for being a source for a couple of articles.Jess LaheyOh, okay.Kate RopeJust because of having read your The Gift of Failure.Jess LaheyNormally what I do—what I need, what our computers need now—is a function called “How do I know blah, blah, blah?” Because there are all these people that, like, we know them from online, or I know them because I’ve used them as a source somewhere for some article. So I got on my computer, and I looked in my little, you know, search terms, and I put your name in, and I was looking for, like, our earliest contact, and I couldn’t find it. But I think our computers need, like...Kate RopeI think it was a phone call.Jess LaheyHow—oh, okay, well, there you go.Kate RopeI think that’s why there’s no record of it.Jess LaheyWell, either way, I’m so glad we’re talking now. I love, love, love your new book. I’ve been fortunate enough to read an early version of it. It’s really lovely. You ended up with a beautiful cover—I can’t wait for everybody to see it. I will be posting a picture of it in the show notes. But I wanted to talk to you—and you actually came up with this independently—but this is this topic I’ve wanted to talk about for a long time: about interviewing kids specifically. Like, logistically, there are a lot of hurdles to get through when you interview kids There can be, I know, depending on, like, the when, the where, the why, and the how. But I wanted to talk a little bit about interviewing—how we interview kids, how we interview people in general, how we get permission, how we approach people. So since you had sort of this idea to begin with, I would love for you to start and talk a little bit about your book—how on earth you got access to the people you talked to in your book, and how that process went for you.Kate RopeSure. So it goes back to my first book. I will admit to having a bias—I do not like books that have case studies that open chapters, and so it’s like, “Sarah and her family could never get homework done,” and so it, you know, went for, you know, this is what they went through. And if you don’t relate to that particular story, you check out. So for my last—my last book, Strong as a Mother—I wanted to have the voices of all different kinds of moms and pregnant people, you know, sharing what their experience was, so that a reader could find some other person that had gone through what they had gone through. And so for that...Jess LaheyCan I hit pause? Can I hit pause for just one second? So my—and this is, I’m going to be talking to my Authority to Author person that I’ve been interviewing for a series that I’m doing on going from being an authority to being an author—and we talk a lot about this: like, what’s your framing narrative for the chapter? How do you create narrative? So I want to make sure at some point we talk about—so if you’re not a fan of sort of the case study approach, how do you go about thinking about creating a narrative to use to couch your data, so that it’s not just about data?Kate RopeYeah, I do have stories in there. So I might have, you know, a couple of paragraphs with a particular story that illustrates, you know, whatever we’re talking about in the chapter, but it doesn’t ground the whole chapter in one experience. So…Jess LaheyI like that.Kate RopeYeah, it’s trying to bring in different, different viewpoints. I tend to write very much, like, voice-forward. So I bring people in, and I talk about, you know, the research, but I don’t tend to be really clinical or academic. So I tend to kind of create the narrative. I bring the people’s stories in within the body of the text. But then what I did in Strong as a Mother was, at the end of each chapter, I had quotes from pregnant people and moms about whatever the topic was. So, let’s say it was a chapter on breastfeeding, or choosing how you’re going to feed your kid. I wanted the mom who said, “I never wanted to breastfeed. I went to the hospital; I put a sign on my door that said, ‘Do not bring a lactation consultant in here. I know what I’m doing. I’m doing formula.’”I wanted the woman who was like, “Breastfeeding is all I ever wanted to do in my whole life, and it just didn’t work, and I had to stop. And it was heartbreaking, but I got through it.” I wanted the woman who was like, “This was the one thing that worked out for me, and I loved it, and I did it till my child was four.” Because then, at the end of the chapter, you’ve read this whole chapter on making choices about feeding your child that feel good to you and that work for you—and adjusting if life makes it not possible to live out that particular choice. And then I wanted them to see people who had done it, and who’d gotten through it. So that’s the way I did Strong as a Mother. And it was funny—I had so many in the end, and the only ding I got in Publishers Weekly was that they wanted more. But we had to cut so many, because otherwise the book would have been, like 600 pages long.Jess LaheyWhich is interesting, because then I have to—I, you know, if I’m going to go with, as I did both in The Gift of Failure and The Addiction Inoculation, I chose one framing narrative. So I have to be really careful about, how can I make this framing narrative as general, as appealing to as many people as possible? Because it is going to be a very thin slice, no matter what you do. But how you generalize that for people who may be experiencing something different is—it’s a hard thing to do. So that’s a really interesting choice to have to make—to say, okay, I’m not going to focus it on this one story versus, I’m going to give lots of different ways to people. I like thinking about that.Kate RopeIt’s sort of like if…Jess LaheyBecause I get stuck in…Kate RopeYou went to a moms’ group…Jess LaheyThe way I do things…Kate RopeYeah, it’s—you had went to—then why do you go to a moms’ group early on when you have your baby? So that you don’t feel like a weirdo and somebody else is going through the same thing. So I kind of wanted this to be, like, three pages of a moms’ group for, you

THE SCAMS. They’re getting wilder and wilder, and harder and harder to spot up front or even before you hand over the cash, if the scammer is faking a service you’d have to pay for. We’re all getting these endlessly in non-writing life too, the ticket you didn’t get, the recruiter who isn’t one… I had a friend get a VERY real one that looked like it was from her town, about an existing work permit for work they were doing. The tell in that case was that it asked for a wire transfer, and in that town, you wander into town hall, hand them a check and also explain that you really paid that meter but you hit the wrong button for a car on ParkMobile.One important link we mention: https://wheregoes.com, where you can check any link you’re given to see where it really goes—and you should.Here’s Rachael’s episode where she reads you her whole scammy letter, and talks about getting so jaded that she almost didn’t open the email from her publicist telling her she’d hit the list: http://www.howdoyouwrite.net/episodes/i-hit-the-usa-today-bestseller-list-and-a-warningAnd to sign up for all Rachael’s writerly things (which are EXCELLENT), go to https://rachaelherron.com/write. Transcript Below!KJ Dell’AntoniaKids, I am here today with Rachael and with Sarina. And the reason that I asked Rachael to join us is that on one of the episodes of her podcast, Ink in Your Veins—link in the show notes—she read, in great detail, a letter from a scammer that she almost fell for. And man, I could see why. And right at that exact same moment, Sarina had been forwarding similar stuff, and even since we had that little conversation, the level of opportunities to fall for this stuff has gotten even greater. So this is us recording an episode to help you figure out which of those emails in your inbox are from scammers. You know, spoiler—“all of them”—and how to spot them, how to feel about them, and how not to fall into ye olde traps. So, Rachael, do you want to start? You don’t have to read the entirety of that letter. For that, y’all can go and listen to the episode of Rachael’s podcast. But just tell us a little bit about it. It was so specific.Rachael HerronIt sure was that was the —first of all, thanks for having me and the and the thing that really chapped my hide about it, as I said in that podcast, is that we do get, you know, as authors whose—I think that our emails should be out there, right? Readers should be able to get a hold of us and you know, a scouting film, film agent needs to know how to find us to give us lots of money. So our email should be out there. And we’ve always got always gotten scam emails, but this one the very first one I got, and since then, have, like you said, have gotten plenty more. Sorry, let me bring it up here. It was about my book, Eliza’s Home, which is actually, it’s not even a full novel—it’s a novella. And the person who wrote it was named Timmy. Just Timmy, may I point out. But he was the founder of “Lit Flare Book Marketing Agency”. And honestly, “Lit Flare Book Marketing Agency”—that sounds pretty great. I mean, that’s actually a good, good name. I would be surprised if that weren’t a real one. And what he did was, yes, he flattered the book. But more than that, he demonstrated that he understood publishing. He—he called me out in a good way. He complimented me for knowing the industry and for being a hybrid writer. And hybrid writer is not a word that anybody who is not inside baseball uses. You know, hybrid publishing is one thing. Hybrid writers are completely different thing. Hybrid writers are people who both self-publish and traditionally publish. He says, you know, and he knew all of the genres that I wrote, including under a pen name that I use. And he complimented that. He complimented the whole world of this book. He taught—and this is the thing—he talked about some things that I had never thought of. This is post-war fiction. It was basically a prequel novella set after World War II in this small town. And he talked about how you could market this novella to people who enjoy post-war fiction.KJ Dell’AntoniaSee—all you’re doing here is making me want to fall into this person’s web.Rachael HerronI immediately was struck by, “Well, this has to be—it has to be spam, right? It has to be.” But the more I read it, the more closely I read it, I was like, “This person really understands,” and this is not something that he could have found just by scraping Eliza’s Home and all of the information on Amazon, on the Kindle website, right? It wasn’t available. It wasn’t there. But what I think they’re doing—and correct me if you think I’m wrong—but I think that there’s just some, there’s somebody out there either teaching or disseminating this information on how to scrape everything. They basically went and scraped everything about me as a writer from everywhere, and then pitched it toward this book. And it did sound so good, and he did talk about marketing opportunities that I had not thought about. And I thought, “Oh, this person really must know what they—who—you know, they must really know what they’re doing.” So of course, then, because I have been around a while, I started researching. And I Googled his email—absolutely no hits. I looked up… did he have a website at that point? No, he didn’t have a website. “Lit Flare Book Marketing Agency” did have something online, but it was one of those, you know, temporary free sites that had just been built. So of course, it was bam. But the thing that got me so upset is that it’s going to trick people. He will absolutely have people fall for this. They will have people fall for this. “Have you? Have you? I want to hear about what Sarina’s gotten, and KJ, you must have gotten some of these by now.”Sarina BowenYeah.Rachael HerronWhat are you all seeing?Sarina BowenSo let’s take a step back and just let make sure everybody understands that we’re talking about an email that goes into depth about why your book is great and why it should be read by a wider audience. Rachael HerronYes.Sarina BowenAnd um, I have gotten several of these, and the first one was so horrifically specific to my actual book, except for one huge tell, which is that, um, which is that, um, it was all about, like, here’s the character, and he’s so wonderful, and you’ve got this setup, and it’s so great, and this world that you’ve built is fantastic. And more readers should know about this. It’s a tragedy that they don’t. They were passionate about this idea, and, and, but the thing that was, the problem is they’re like, and it only has two ratings on Goodreads. And the thing is, though, that that book doesn’t—didn’t come out for months. Look, it was a month’s forward in the future publication at that point. So I…Rachael HerronWow.Sarina BowenKnew right away that that person like looked like they were paying attention, but wasn’t really paying attention. So, you know, it says, “So my slightly psycho question: do we let Thrown for a Loop keep skating in circles with too few reviews, or do we blast it into the net where it belongs—loud, messy, and impossible to ignore?” And then there’s a string of emojis, like it’s just so over the top. And the thing is that for years, you could spot the low-rent pitches. You know, “I want to improve the SEO of your website,” by their horribleness—like by their bad grammar, by their insufficient detail. But now, what I think is happening, even though I haven’t tested this myself, is there are some AI search engines out where you can provide web links, and all you’d have to do is put a link to the NetGalley listing of this book, put a link to my author bio, and put a link to the Goodreads page for this book. And you could scrape so much information about what the book is about and why people might care. And you could scrape so much information about what the book is about and why people might care. And I think somebody has written a prompt that just, like, makes that email easy to write in, like, 15 seconds. It’s like—remember the olden days when there was no spam? And then people started figuring out, like, “Oh, wait, I could send the same message to a million people inside of one day.” And then that was a, you know, an idea that we had to teach our parents what spam was. Well, this is, like, the version 2.0 of that. It’s just—it’s going to be incredibly easy for people to write you emails where it sounds like they’re passionate and they know what they’re talking about, and they just don’t.KJ Dell’AntoniaAnd it—it kind of hurts. I—you know, Rachael recorded her podcast pretty soon, I think, after getting this. And, you know, they say lovely things, and then it’s just—it’s not even a little bit real. Like, it’s just great, and it almost—it’s almost painful. And I want to point out that this is—so this is one level of this: the wonderful marketing email you are getting that is specific to you that seems like a great person that’s really going to help you out. The person’s not real. The stuff’s not real. None of it’s real. Another level that I know Sarina has seen lately is basically anything that you have that is publicly available can turn into this. So can you talk a little bit about the trademark ones you’re seeing now?Sarina BowenOoh, absolutely. I filed a trademark for one of the aspects of my business, which is just, you know, everybody does it—no big deal. And my trademark attorney warned me that the minute we filed, I was going to get junk mail. And it looked so legitimate, because anytime you’re filing anything that is public record—so that’s like a trademark application, that is the filing for your LLC, of your business. If you do that—even just, uh, doing business as an as name—if you file that with your state, you will start to get spam that’s like, “You have to do the following: send in this fee.” And so that’s getting easier. Like, anything that can be automated can be automated to try to trip us up. So writer scams are just going to get big

Here’s this week’s episode, which we accidentally tucked behind the paywall in the first send. Friday #AmWriting is always free—but if you’re already a paid sub, thanks! And if not… maybe now’s the time?Every draft gets messy. Characters show up too early, reveals happen too late, and suddenly nothing’s where it “should” be. In this episode, Jennie and KJ talk how to tackle the chaos and keep your words flowing.Episode is free for all and romping through podplayers everywhere. Transcript is below—for paid subscribers only (because they cost $$ to make—thanks for helping us keep them coming!)(Hearing impaired? Shoot us a note and we’ll work it out.)Because Free Doesn’t Cover TranscriptsTRANSCRIPTKJ Dell’AntoniaI had written about 13,000 words-ish, and sort of vaguely call it the first five chapters, sort of. I have my loose, rickety Inside-Outline, which gets to the end and becomes almost an only emotion outline, because I’m not entirely sure I know what’s going to happen. I’m not entirely sure how. And, you know, we talked about that, so that’s fine. Like, I’m working—I’m working from that. I’m not working—it’s not like, and next I will write this. It’s more like, here’s the—what—whatever scene I write next, here’s why it has to happen, plot-wise, and here’s why it has to happen, emotion-wise. But it may not be exactly what I outlined. So I’m actually making an outline of what I actually wrote as I write it, which is kind of fun. But then as I’m—so as I’m doing that, and kind of comparing what I think is going to happen to what I’m writing, I realized, after I sent you a big chunk, which we’re partly excited about and partly not—and then it was—it was great—I realized that I needed something. Some things were out of order. Like, I started to write the thing that was the next up in my kind of vague plan, and then I was like, oh, wait. Like, I can’t have—this person can’t be doing this before—or they’re—like, I need—I need—anyway, so I’ve ended up—I went back, but I’m not revising. I’m actually sticking in new things already. So it’s like that 13,000 words is stretching out into, you know, probably 20,000 words as we approach. So I’m still in the world before the big death happens, because there were things... but also, in part, because it was getting too long. Like...Jennie NashYeah. Yeah.KJ Dell’AntoniaSo I needed things—so I needed to move some action. I was like, oh, well, now I’m supposed to have, like, five more things happen before the death. I can’t put another 10,000 words in here. Those things have to go back up. They have to start happening within what I’ve already done. So some of it was that as well.Jennie NashWell, it was super fun to read your pages, because I can just feel the wheels turning, I guess, or the engine of the whole thing. And there were parts of it that felt super assured and like, oh, this is going to be good. And you really know this character now, which is what you’ve been circling around—like, really, who is this and really what’s going on here? And that was so fun to see. It was like, oh, yeah, more of this. This is great. This is—this is going to be good. And then there were other parts, it was like, well, what’s happening here?KJ Dell’AntoniaYeah, well, that was one of the parts that was like this. That was—it was in the wrong place. It was like; I was trying to do too much sort of introductory throat clearing.Jennie NashSo, KJ, I want to stop and ask you a question about something you just said, because you whizzed by it and it’s—it’s like an incredible skill that you have. Where you said something was out of order. It wasn’t that the thing was—what you wrote was not good or not right for the book. It was that you determined it was in the wrong place. And there’s so much that goes into that, like it’s about thought, but it’s also about rhythm and pacing and feel. And I just feel like that’s something a lot of people don’t know how to do. Like, can you talk about that for a hot second?KJ Dell’AntoniaI can try. Some of this I learned from Sarina [Sarina Bowen], and from reading her thriller draft while she was still working on it, and talking about the process of paying attention to what the reader learns when—both from a thriller... this works—it’s not just from a thriller perspective, it’s also—I think we all have this urge to sort of, like, introduce—like you—when you read Save the Cat and you read all this, there’s—there’s an introductory period where you have to establish that you know your protagonist, everything is going wrong in their home life, their work life, and their emotional life. And the reason for that is—the you know—their emotional flaw. I’m probably mashing together a lot of different systems here. So you learn that, and then, you know, you want to write, like, 30,000 words of what’s wrong with your character and what’s going on—it’s all backstory. And then, you know, maybe you do that, and you realize there’s not enough action in it, and there’s not—you know, you do want the reader to know those things, but they need to know it more gradually. And then you start paying attention in the books that you’re reading to how little you maybe know before things happen, and how much fun it is to figure things out. Even silly things like, oh, you know, why—why are they not going back to their apartment all day? And it turns out to be because their ex was clearing their stuff out of there that day or something like that. But they don’t say that, because that’s not how they think about it. They just think, all right, can’t go back to the apartment, damn it, you know? And I just spilled coffee all over myself. Where am I going to take a shower? Better call this friend. And so your brain is like, wait, why can’t you go back? And so creating—building that—is really hard. And I think paying close attention as you read, and learning to pay attention even as you read for fun to what’s making it fun is kind of what has helped me build that. And again, then watching Sarina build her endings and be like, oh, I gave this up too soon—which is a different process. So I was more—I’m more in the “I took too long to tell you this,” or “I took too long to let this happen.” I worried too much about telling you everything before I let it happen. I’m at that stage—like at the beginning of the book. Things need to happen while you’re telling the reader things.Jennie NashWell, this is so good because what you’re really saying is that you’re not just writing your story—you’re thinking about the reader’s experience of being in your story. I mean, that’s the pro move, right? Is...KJ Dell’AntoniaI hope so.Jennie NashDoing both things at the same time—like, what—what is the reader going to know? What are they going to feel? What are they going to think? What’s—what’s your question—what’s going to be fun for them?KJ Dell’AntoniaYeah.Jennie NashSuch a good question.KJ Dell’AntoniaYeah. And this is a multi-protagonist book—or not multi—it’s not—it’s a multi-POV book with one protagonist. So that balance is also really interesting. And I’ve tried to pay attention to how other people do that. But that was part of it—was realizing that’s what that was. The mistake that I was making was—I had—there’s going to be five points of view, but, as I said, one protagonist. And so I had given you two of the other points of view, and one of them—um, Summer—was—was embroiled in the action. Like, I feel like that one in turn—but the other one was too introductory. It was too much this—and so I moved that to after Nate breaks his leg. That’s when we really meet her for the first time. And it’s just very—and it—so it makes things happen faster.Jennie NashThat’s so good. That’s so good.KJ Dell’AntoniaYeah, we don’t need—we don’t need an introduction to her, and we’re not really getting an introduction to any of these other characters other than through the protagonist. You just suddenly get their point of view. And that’s—I don’t know that. It feels modern, it feels fast. We’ll see...Jennie NashWell, and it’s—the other point of view, are there not to tell their own story...KJ Dell’AntoniaRight.Jennie NashBut that’s a structure, but that’s not your structure. They’re there to help—to tell the protagonist’s story.KJ Dell’AntoniaYeah, and to help—yeah, they have their own stories, but exactly—exactly. They’re there to tell—I mean, they’re there to help tell the protagonist’s story. But really, they’re also there... they’re there because they need to be there to tell the larger story.Jennie NashRight. Right.KJ Dell’AntoniaSo they’re there for the plot story, but the plot story all is also very intertwined with the protagonist’s story. So—but—but—yeah, so every time—but every time I go to them, it needs to be, why are we here? Like we can’t—I can’t ever just go to that other—that other point of view so we learn what’s going on with that point of view. That’s not why they’re there.Jennie NashRight.KJ Dell’AntoniaThey’re only there if it’s something about the mystery or something about the protagonist.Jennie NashThat’s good. That’s a good stress test.KJ Dell’AntoniaIt is, and—and it’s been—I mean, I’m glad I sort of sorted that out so quickly. I feel like in my initial draft of The Chicken Sisters, even though it didn’t have other points of view, it had some extraneous subplots that were just there for the subplot.Jennie NashYeah. Yeah. Well, you’re on your way. And some of the writing was—was like I said—I used the word assured. It was—I particularly love your writing about—I mean, this book has a lot of—the setting is important. There’s a natural spaces setting that we’re in a lot, and the way you write about that is really good and really puts us there. And it’s clear that you—that you’ve spent a lot of time in that space. You know, like literally walking through snow. That is not a thing I’ve spent a lot—a lot of time doing, and your writing about it really put me there, which was cool.KJ Dell’AntoniaAnd that is an in

Hey ho, welcome to the Publishing Nerd Corner, where we dive into the more technical aspects of authorship.Jess here. I love it when Sarina schools me on all things publishing nerdery, so we decided to make it official and create a whole new series. I have a long list of things I want her to explain for us, so stay tuned for more. In the meantime, our first Nerd Corner chat is a timely episode about the Anthropic case specifically and registering your copyright specifically. We’re going to discuss: * The benefits of registering your copyright with the United States Copyright Office. * The possibility of a settlement in the Anthropic lawsuit, and what that could mean for authors.* Why copyright registration will be part of any potential settlement.* How to register your copyright.* Did your publisher fulfill its obligation to register your copyright?For more information about the benefits of copyright registration, see the Copyright Alliance To register your copyright yourself, you’ll need Copyright.gov. You will also want to read the Authors Guild post about, “What Authors Need to Know About the Anthropic Settlement”Hit that “play” button and nerd out with us for fifteen minutes! Transcript below!EPISODE 466 - TRANSCRIPTJess LaheyHey, it's Jess Lahey. If you've been listening to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast for any length of time, you know that, yes, I am a writer, but my true love, my deepest love, is combining writing with speaking. I get to go into schools, into community organizations, into nonprofits, into businesses, and do everything from lunch-and-learns, to community reads, to just teaching about the topics that I'm an expert in. From the topics in The Gift of Failure, engagement, learning, learning in the brain, cognitive development, getting kids motivated, and yes, the topic of over parenting and what that does to kids learning, to topics around The Addiction Inoculation, substance use prevention in kids, and what I've been doing lately that's the most fun for me, frankly, is combining the two topics. It makes the topic of substance use prevention more approachable, less scary when we're talking about it in the context of learning and motivation and self-efficacy and competence and, yes, cognitive development. So if you have any interest in bringing me into your school, to your nonprofit, to your business, I would love to come. You can go to Jessicalahey.com. Look under the menu option “Speaking” and go down to “Speaking Inquiry.” There's also a lot of information on my website about what I do. There's videos there about how I do it. Please feel free to get in touch. And I hope I get to come to your community. If you put in the speaking inquiry that you are a Hashtag AmWriting listener, we can talk about a discount. So that can be one of the bonuses for being a loyal and long-term listener to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast. Hope to hear from you.Multiple SpeakersIs it recording? Now it's recording. Yay! Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. Try to remember what I'm supposed to be doing. All right, let's start over. Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay. Now, one, two, three.Jess LaheyHey, welcome to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast. I'm Jess Lahey, your host, along with another host today—this is going to be super fun. We are the podcast about writing: short things, long things, poetry, prose, book proposals, querying agents—we're basically the podcast about getting the work done. I am Jess Lahey. I'm the author of The Gift of Failure and The Addiction Inoculation. And you can find my journalism at The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic.Sarina BowenAnd I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of many contemporary novels, and also a council member on The Authors Guild. And it is in that spirit that we are bringing you a special episode today, which we're calling part of our Publishing Nerd Corner segment.Jess LaheyOur favorite stuff.Sarina BowenYeah, so publishing nerd stuff. Here we go, and the topic is pretty timely.Jess LaheyAnd juicy.Sarina BowenAnd juicy. We're talking about why authors copyright their work, what it means, and how it ties into everything going on with the Anthropic lawsuit and potential settlement.Jess LaheySo, backing up, could you tell us a little bit about the Anthropic lawsuit, and sort of what it was about, and why everybody's talking about it right now?Sarina BowenOf course. So, Anthropic is an AI LLM, Large Language Model Company, just like OpenAI is the same as ChatGPT. Anthropic are the people who make Claude, but all the AI big companies are being sued right now, including Meta, including Microsoft, or...Jess LaheyGoogle. Google.Sarina BowenYeah, sorry.Jess LaheyNot Microsoft.Sarina BowenAnd also the new one is there's a new lawsuit against Apple. So, basically, everybody who went out and made a big LLM model using stolen, pirated books and articles downloaded from the Internet is being sued variously by different organizations, and it looks like the Anthropic lawsuit might be resolved first.Jess LaheyOkay, so what are they being sued for?Sarina BowenThey're being sued for a couple of things. First is the wholesale piracy of lots of books downloaded off the internet, and second, for feeding all of those books into their models to teach them how to speak and compose.Jess LaheyA while ago, weren't some—I think some—internal memos around the whole Meta thing where, essentially, they acknowledged how much it would cost to purchase legally all of the things they needed to model, do their large LLMs, and they decided, “Wow, that would be a lot of money.”Sarina BowenRight.Jess Lahey“We'll just steal them.”Sarina BowenWe don't want to deal with copyright. Well, specifically, the most interesting internal memos that we've seen have been involved in the Meta case, which we're not really talking about tonight, but yeah, there are some big smoking guns out there. But I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about the practical nature of copyrighting your work, because there's a potential settlement on the table that's taking shape in terms of how authors will be paid some portion of a $1.5 billion settlement from this Anthropic suit, potentially, and whether or not you have a registered copyright on your book is going to matter. So, first of all, in this case, the judge did rule—well, we wanted him to rule—that using these books to train the model was not a fair use situation.Jess LaheyRight. They were trying to say, “No, no, this is just fair use.”Sarina BowenRight.Jess Lahey“We shouldn't have to pay anybody.”Sarina BowenAnd unfortunately, we don't have a ruling in favor of this concept yet, and The Authors Guild cares very much that it's not fair use and will continue to fight for that. But we instead were ruled in this case something that is actually quite powerful and important to the whole conversation, which is that the judge said that Anthropic downloading all of these titles—these millions of stolen books—from a piracy site was, in fact, illegal and that they are going to have to pay. So the ruling was against them. So now this is a class-action suit, and in a class-action suit, all of the parties in the class—you can opt out if you want to, like if you're an author who would rather sue them individually, you can still do that. But it looks like in defining the class of who is eligible to receive a payout; you're going to have to have a registered copyright. Your copyright will have had to have been registered within five years of publication, and also before they downloaded it.Jess LaheySo, to clarify, some of the questions I've seen floating around on the interwebs are about, “Oh, but there was that big list that was published by The Atlantic.” You could go to The Atlantic and just see, and “oh my gosh, I had six titles that were on that list. Does that mean that I'm going to get money for all of those titles?”Sarina BowenOkay, well, that is a great question. And actually, I need to stipulate real quick that I am not a lawyer.Jess LaheyRight.Sarina BowenYou're a lawyer, and almost certainly I'm going to make an error when I'm speaking on this tonight. I have spent a lot of time listening in meetings about these things, so I feel comfortable enough to discuss it with you tonight. But, um, but I'm going to make a mistake. So you need to check everything...Jess LaheyRight.Sarina Bowen…when you make your own legal decisions. So wait, what was the question?Jess LaheySo the question was about that big list at The Atlantic.Sarina BowenOh yeah!Jess LaheyThat was like, what, 5 million titles or so?Sarina BowenWell, that list was taken from a specific piracy site.Jess LaheyRight.Sarina BowenBut it doesn't know which titles the company actually downloaded, so only the company has that list. So, first of all, that database is sort of handy and interesting, but it is not definitive in terms of this list.Jess LaheySo do not count on looking at that list and saying, “Oh, I have six titles there, maybe I'll get a payout for all six titles.”Sarina BowenRight. So, um, but let's—we really need to talk about copyright registration because there's so much misinformation floating around out there. So it's true that if you sit down right now and write something, you already own the copyright for it. So that's powerful—sort of—right? Um, but the point of registering your copyright—and these benefits are right on the Copyright Alliance website. So we're going to link to the copyright website—but, um, one of the primary reasons why people register is because registration is a necessary prerequisite for bringing, for U.S. copyright owners, to bring a copyright infringement suit in federal court. And of course, this is a federal court action, but also because statutory damages and attorneys’ fees can only be sued for if you have a registered copyright. If you just own your copyright without registering it, you can sue for damages. The damages in t

Jess here. My guest this week is Jeff Selingo, an author and speaker I’ve admired for a long time. His work on college, college admissions and the transition to work and life in emerging adulthood are essential reads for anyone looking to understand what want and need in higher education and life. His books, There is Life After College, Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions and his forthcoming book, Dream School: Finding the College That’s Right for You are all essential reads for teens and emerging adults as well as parents of teens and emerging adults. I adore all three, but I wanted to talk with Jeff about a few aspects of his writing: how he created a speaking career, finds his topics, and how on earth he gets people to talk about topics that tend to be shrouded in secrecy behind very high walls (such as college admissions). Check out Jeff’s newsletter, Next, and Podcast, Future UKJ here, as you probably know, to tell you that if you're not listening to the Writing the Book episodes Jenny Nash and I have been doing, you should be. Jenny's working on her latest nonfiction, and I'm working on my next novel, and we're both trying to do something bigger and better than anything we've done before.We sit down weekly and dish about everything—from Jenny's proposal and the process of getting an agent to my extremely circular method of creating a story. We are brutally honest and open—even beyond what we are here. Truly, we probably say way too much. And for that reason, Writing the Book is subscriber-only.So I'm here saying: subscribe. That's a whole 'nother episode a week, and always a juicy one—plus all the other good subscriber stuff: the First Pages: BookLab, Jess’s From Author to Authority series, and whatever else we come up with. (It varies enough that it's hard to list it all.) Plus, of course, access whenever we run The Blueprint—which, I don’t know, might be soon.That's all I’ve got. So head to amwritingpodcast.com, get yourself signed up, and come listen to Writing the Book. Then talk to us. Tell us—tell us about your book writing and what's going on. We really want to hear from y’all.Thanks a lot. And Subscribe!Transcript below!EPISODE 465 - TRANSCRIPTKJ Dell'AntoniaHowdy, listeners—KJ here, as you probably know—to tell you that if you're not listening to the Writing the Book episodes Jennie Nash and I have been doing, you should be. Jennie is working on her latest nonfiction, and I'm working on my next novel, and we're both trying to do something bigger and better than anything we've done before. We sit down weekly and dish about everything from Jennie's proposal and the process of getting an agent to my extremely circular method of creating a story. We are brutally honest and open—even beyond what we are here. Truly, we probably say way too much, and for that reason, Writing the Books is subscriber-only. So I'm here saying: subscribe. That's a whole other episode a week, and always a juicy one—plus there's all the other good subscriber stuff: the First Page Booklab, Jess' From Author to Authority series, and whatever else we come up with, which kind of varies enough that it's hard to list out. Plus, of course, access to whenever we run the Blueprint, which—I don't know—it’s going to be soon. That’s all I got. So head to AmWritingpodcast.com, get yourself signed up and come listen to Writing the Book, and then talk to us. Tell us—tell us about your book writing and what’s going on. We really want to—we want to hear from y’all. Thanks a lot, and please subscribe.Multiple SpeakersIs it recording? Now it's recording. Yay! Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. Try to remember what I'm supposed to be doing. All right, let's start over. Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay. Now, one, two, three.Jess LaheyHey, it's Jess Lahey, and welcome to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast. This is a podcast about writing all the things—short things, long things, poetry, proposals, queries, nonfiction, fiction—all the stuff. In the end, this is the podcast about getting the work done. And in the beginning of this podcast, our goal was to flatten the learning curve for other writers. So I am super excited about who I have today. Oh—quick intro. I'm Jess Lahey. I'm the author of The Gift of Failure and The Addiction Inoculation, and you can find my work at The New York Times, The Atlantic and The Washington Post, as you can find the work of my guest there too. So my guest today is someone that I have looked up to for a long time, and someone I use as sort of a—to bounce things off of and to think about how I do my work and how to do my work better. Jeff Selingo, thank you so much for coming to on the show. Jeff is the author of a couple of books that I'm a huge—In fact, I can look over at my bookshelf right now and see all of his books on getting into college, why college is not the end point. He has a new book coming out that we’re going to be talking about—really; it’s coming out real as soon as this podcast comes out. And I’m just—I’m a huge fan, Jeff. Thank you so, so much for coming on the pod.Jeff SelingoJust the same here—and I'm a huge fan of this podcast as well. It’s on my regular rotation, so...Jess LaheyOh yay.Jeff SelingoI am thrilled, as always, to be here.Jess LaheyIt's—it’s changed over the years, and now that we have four different, you know, co-hosts, there’s sort of different takes on it. We’ve got, like, Sarina—the business side, and Jess—the nonfiction geek side, and KJ—the fiction side, and Jennie—the nuts-and-bolts editor side. So it’s been really fun for us to sort of split off. But what I wanted to talk to you about today are a couple of different things. Your book Who Gets In and Why is—um , on the podcast, we talk about dissecting other people’s work as a way... In fact, I was talking to my daughter about this yesterday. She’s writing a thesis—what she hopes will be one chapter in a book. And I was saying, you know, one of the things you can do is go dissect other books you think are really well constructed—books that are reaching the same, similar audience. And your book, Who Gets In and Why, I think, is essential reading for anyone who's writing interview based, and specifically nonfiction around attempting to get their arms around a process. And a process that—for you—what I’m really interested about in this book is a process that’s usually, you know, guarded and kind of secret. And no one wants to let you in for real on all the moving parts and how the decisions are made, because the college admissions process is—it’s an inexact recipe. It depends on where you are, it depends on the school, but everyone wants the secret. Like, Jeff, just get me the secrets of how to get in. So how do you approach people who are, in a sense, some ways, secret-keepers and guardians of the secret sauce—to mix metaphors? How do you get those people to agree to be a part of a book—not just to be interviewed, but to actually put themselves out there and to put the sausage-making out there in a book, which can be a huge leap of faith for any organization or human being?Jeff SelingoYeah, and I think it's definitely harder now than it was when I did Who Gets In and Why. I think it's harder than when, you know, other people have been inside the process—whether it's, you know, Fast Food Nation, with the, you know, the fast food industry, which is a book that I looked up to when I was writing, Who Gets In and Why. I think it’s—people just don’t trust writers and journalists as much as they used to. So I think that’s—a lot of this is really trust. First of all, you have to approach organizations that trust their own process. When people ask me, “Why these three schools?” You know, I approached 24 schools when I wrote, Who Gets In and Why, and three said yes. Twenty-one said no. And when I describe the people who said yes and why they said yes, they trusted their own process. And they also trusted me. But the first thing they did was trust their own process.. And so when I heard later on from people who had said no to me—and I would, you know, talk to them, you know, off the record about why they said no—there was always something about their process, their admissions process, that they didn’t trust. They were getting a new, like, software system, or they had new employees that they didn’t really quite know, or they were doing things—it’s not that they were doing things wrong, but that, you know, it was at the time when the Supreme Court was making a decision about affirmative action, and they didn’t quite know how that would play, and so they didn’t quite trust it—and then how that, obviously, would be used by me. So the first thing you have to do is think about organizations that really believe in themselves, because they’re going to be the ones that are going to talk about themselves externally. And then you just have to build trust between them and you. And that just takes—unfortunately, it takes time. And as a book author or a reporter, you don’t always have that on your side.Jess LaheySo when—were some of these cold? Like of the 24, were all of these cold? Were some of these colder? Did you have an in with some of these?Jeff SelingoI had an in with most of them, because I had been covering—I mean, that’s the other thing. You know, trust is built over time, and I had been covering higher ed for almost 25 years now. So it was just that they knew me, they knew of me, they knew of my work. I had other people vouch for me. So, you know, I had worked with other people in other admissions offices on other stories, and they knew people in some of these offices, so they would vouch for me. But at the end—so, you know, it ended up being Emory, Davidson and the University of Washington. It was really only Davidson where I knew somebody. Emory and University of Washington—I kind of knew people there that were the initial door opener. But beyond that, it was just spending t

Guests:* Rossana D’Antonio – Author of 26 Seconds: Grief and Blame in the Aftermath of Losing My Brother in a Plane Crash* Marty Ross-Dolen – Author of Always There, Always Gone: A Daughter’s Search for TruthTwo authors, Rossana D’Antonio and Marty Ross-Dolen, each faced the unimaginable loss of loved ones in separate plane crashes decades apart. Their grief led them to write powerful memoirs—Rossana’s 26 Seconds and Marty’s Always There, Always Gone—that explore truth, healing, and the lasting impact of tragedy. In an extraordinary coincidence, both books were released in the same week, a situation that could easily spark feelings of rivalry or jealousy between writers. Instead, their shared experience created a bond as they connected over loss, resilience, and the courage it takes to turn pain into story. This episode dives into that connection, exploring not only grief but also the unexpected solidarity found in telling similar stories side by side.Hey everyone, it's Jenny Nash. This episode happens to feature an Author Accelerator book coach. Author Accelerator is the company I founded more than 10 years ago to lead the emerging book coaching industry. If you've been curious about what it takes to become a successful book coach, which is to say, someone who makes money, meaning, and joy out of serving writers, I've just created a bunch of great content to help you learn more. You can access it all by going to bookcoaches.com/waitlist. We'll be enrolling a new cohort of students in our certification program in October, so now's a perfect time to learn more and start making plans for a whole new career.Transcript below!EPISODE 464 - TRANSCRIPTJennie NashHey everyone. It's Jennie Nash. This episode happens to feature an Author Accelerator book coach. Author Accelerator is the company I founded more than 10 years ago to lead the emerging book coaching industry. If you've been curious about what it takes to become a successful book coach, which is to say someone who makes money, meaning and joy out of serving writers. I've just created a bunch of great content to help you learn more. You can access it all by going to book bookcoaches.com/waitlist. That's bookcoaches.com/waitlist. We'll be enrolling a new cohort of students in our certification program in October, so now’s a perfect time to learn more and start making plans for a whole new career.Multiple SpeakersIs it recording? Now it's recording, yay. Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. I don't remember what I'm supposed to be doing. All right, let's start over. Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay, now—one, two, three.Jennie NashHey everyone. I'm Jennie Nash, and this is the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast, the place where we talk about writing all the things, short things, long things, fiction, nonfiction, pitches and proposals. Today I'm here to talk with two writers who I brought together because of a very interesting coincidence; each of these writers recently published a memoir about a plane crash. They each lost somebody that they love in a plane crash, and they wrote a story about their search for understanding and their search for healing and what it all means to their lives. These two books are really different stories, which I think is so interesting and says so much about the creative process. And what's remarkable is that these two books were published just one week apart, and these two writers became aware of each other's books and became friends. I happened to have a connection to each of these writers. At several points throughout her writing process, I coached Rossana D’Antonio including the very first time she came into a classroom to write about this story. Her book is called 26 Seconds: Grief and Blame in the Aftermath of Losing My Brother in a Plane Crash. Marty Ross-Dolen is the other author. Her book is called Always There, Always Gone: A Daughter's Search for Truth. Marty is a writer who came into my Author Accelerator book coach certification program to study how to become a book coach, and that's when I became aware of her and her story. In this conversation, Marty and Rossana come together with me to talk about grief, writing, jealousy and so many of the things that make memoir such a difficult and challenging genre to write and also such a satisfying one. I can't wait for you to listen. So let's get started. Welcome Rossana and Marty. I'm so excited to have you both here today to talk about this incredible topic. And before we get going, we are talking just days after there was a terrible plane crash in India in which a lot of people died and one man walked away, and there's a plane crash at the center of both of your books. And I just wanted to start by asking, how do you feel when this happens as it happens so many times, you know, are you okay as we sit here today? Or does this weigh on you? What is it? What is it like to sit here today? So maybe we'll start Rossana with you.Rossana D’AntonioOkay, well, thanks, Jennie, for inviting me on your podcast. It's really exciting to be here and to share, you know, this podcast with Marty. And, yeah, I mean, I, I agree with you. It's really, I mean, I think our memoirs—it's just so timely that they're out during this time because it's, you know, it's not just Air India. We've had several incidents within the last several years, actually, that have brought to light the strain in the aviation industry. It's been, it's been really interesting because, as it seems like there's not a day that goes by that there isn't something in the news with regards to plane crashes or plane incidents, near misses, whatever it may be. But as we experience each incident, and it becomes breaking news, and you know, we're witnessing it on live TV, it is, it is hard not to relive the experience. And I'm—I'll speak for myself—it is hard for me not to relive the experience. And in the book, I kind of talk about it because I say that it's kind of like we belong to this group that we never asked to be part of and this group is made of families of the victims of plane crashes. And, you know, the very first images that you see are of the grieving families and the pain and the grief that is stamped on their faces, the shock of it all. Plane crashes are so dramatic and so violent that it's hard not to get caught up in the whole story, and it's hard not to think of the families and want to comfort them, knowing that their hell is just starting, and all the things that they're going to have to go through, you know, with regards to the aftermath, the investigation, recovering their loved ones and their loved ones' belongings. So it is hard, but I try to, I try to focus on hoping that their recovery or their healing—the sooner they face the disaster, the tragedy—their healing can actually start.Jennie NashIt's got to be so hard. We'll, we'll return to all of these topics again. But Marty, you’re... what are your thoughts?Marty Ross-DolenI echo what Rossana says about how—first, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here with you. I echo, and I love being here with Rossana, and I echo what she says as well. When I see some sort of headline or announcement that an airplane accident has taken place, my heart sinks. My stomach sinks. I know that I'm going to be in it for a couple of days, if not longer, and nowadays, with social media and the immediacy of information—and for the first time, with this devastating Air India crash, and part of it is because there was a survivor—we have information that we've never had before about the experience of it, and somehow, what came across my news feed on social media as well were videos of the inside of the cabin just before the crash. I don't even know how these were available. I don't even know if they're real because of AI—it's... but then I see that because I can't not see it, and I'm stuck with that in my brain until it goes into that little pocket that contains all those things that we see over our lifetimes that we try never to think about again. So it's hard, it's really hard, and it's really hard to get on an airplane. But that's true for everyone. That's true for everyone, but because, as Rossana describes, we're members of this group, this club that we didn't sign on for, it's probably extra hard.Jennie NashYeah, I want to come back to that "get on an airplane" thing, but just so our listeners can know about the stories that I'm referring to here, we know that you both wrote books, and they're both memoirs, and they're very, very different experiences for the reader—vibes, purposes, feelings, all of those things—and yet they share this plane crash at the center. So I wanted to ask if you would each just give a summary of what your book is about—the title, what it's about—so our readers can know, our listeners can know, what we're talking about. Your readers, our listeners. Rossana, we're kind of in a pattern here, so why don't you go first?Rossana D’AntonioSure. Thanks, Jennie. So my story, my book, is 26 Seconds: Grief and Blame in the Aftermath of Losing My Brother in a Plane Crash. And it's the story of—well, the title says it all, right? So on May 30, 2008, TACA Flight 390 departed from El Salvador International Airport en route to Miami, Florida, with an interim stop in Honduras at one of the most notoriously dangerous airports in the world, Toncontín International Airport. The area was buffeted by Tropical Storm Alma at the time. So there was a lot of wind, a lot of rain, a lot of fog, and when TACA Flight 390 attempted to land on the airport's very short runway, it overshot the runway, crashed into an embankment, and killed five people—three in the plane, including my brother, the pilot, and two in a car that were crushed when the plane landed on them. The book is my search for the truth as to what truly happened on that day. I suspected my brother would be made a scapegoat. Seventy percent of airplane accidents are b

This week’s episode explores how to tap into your unique creative genius and align it with your values to become the writer you were meant to be. Jennie Nash and Dr. Diana Hill, a clinical psychologist, dive into the Wise Effort Method. Hear about Diana's journey of overcoming her book writing challenges and how Jennie guided her through unleashing her writing genius. They also discuss how to clear mental blocks, focus creative energy, and integrate daily rituals to enhance your writing process — and your life.In This Episode, We Explore:* How to identify and overcome your mental stories and obstacles in writing* Strategies to open up creatively and align your work with your values* Practical ways to harness and focus your unique genius energy* The importance of ritual and community in the writing processBooks MentionedWise Effort: How to Focus Your Genius Energy on What Matters MostIn the Absence of the Ordinary – by Francis WellerThinking of starting a book?Join the September 16th virtual writing workshop with Jennie and Diana: https://drdianahill.com/wise-effort-book-idea-lab This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Jess here! A while back, Sarina and KJ talked about how much they enjoyed Tess Gerritsen’s novel, The Spy Coast, and Sarina reassured KJ she’d enjoy book two of the series even more. I had never read a Tess Gerritsen novel, and while I’d heard her name before and vaguely understood she wrote thrillers, I was starting from square one when I downloaded the audio version of The Spy Coast. Now, I’m not an international spy thriller kind of gal. In the abstract, I understand the allure of books like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy or Six Days of the Condor. Spies! Intrigue! International [almost exclusively men] of mystery! But they have never really floated my proverbial boat. That said, I loved Tess Gerritsen’s spies and the world they inhabit. There’s a sense of place - nay, a downright LOVE of place - and a retiring, rural New England domesticity that spoke to this retiring, rural New England reader. Book two, The Summer Guests, is even more rooted in Maine, on its history and the social dynamics of its natives and its summer people. Once I tore through those first two books, I went back to Gerritsen’s first book, The Surgeon, one of Time Magazine’s top 100 thriller/mystery books of all time and the first in the Rizzoli & Isles series, consequently made into a long-running television series. Gerritsen has a fascinating career trajectory, lots to talk about regarding pantsing and plotting, where the ideas come from, and lots of other geeky details about the writing life. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did. Find Tess at Tessgerritsen.com, or on Bluesky, @TessGerritsen Transcript below!EPISODE 462 - TRANSCRIPTJennie NashHey everyone, it's Jennie Nash, founder and CEO of Author Accelerator, the company I started more than 10 years ago to lead the emerging book coaching industry. In October, we'll be enrolling a new cohort of certification students who will be going through programs in either fiction, nonfiction, or memoir, and learning the editorial, emotional, and entrepreneurial skills that you need to be a successful book coach. If you've been curious about book coaching and thinking that it might be something you want to do for your next career move, I'd love to teach you more about it, you can go to bookcoaches.com/waitlist to check out the free training I have—that's bookcoaches.com/waitlist. The training is all about how to make money, meaning, and joy out of serving writers. Fall is always a great time to start something new. So if you're feeling called to do this, go check out our training and see if this might be right for you. We'd love to have you join us.Multiple SpeakersIs it recording? Now it's recording, yay. Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. I don't remember what I'm supposed to be doing. All right, let's start over. Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay, now—one, two, three.Jess LaheyHey, this is Jess Lahey, and this is the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast. This is the podcast about writing all the things—short things, long things, poetry, prose, narrative nonfiction, fiction, creative nonfiction, queries, proposals. This is the podcast about writing all the things. More than anything else, this is the podcast about the writing life and about getting the work done. I am Jess Lahey. I'm the author of The Gift of Failure and The Addiction Inoculation. And you can find my journalism at The Atlantic and The Washington Post, and my bi-weekly (formerly bi-weekly) column at The New York Times, The Parent-Teacher Conference, ran for about three years I am joined today by Sarina Bowen, who has written 50-odd books. She has written lots and lots of romance, and her most recent addition to the world of publishing has been her thrillers, Dying to Meet You and The Five Year Lie. And she has a book coming out this fall called Thrown for a Loop. The reason I am recording this intro on my own—which, as you may know if you've been listening, is highly unusual for us—is because I know myself. And I know when I'm really excited to talk to someone on the podcast; I'm going to flub the intro. I'm going to forget something. I'm going to forget to introduce them altogether. So today, I'm doing that first, so I don't mess it up. A while ago on the podcast, you may have heard Sarina and KJ read some books by an author named Tess Gerritsen. I had heard of Tess Gerritsen, but I had never read any of her books. I just hadn't yet. I haven't read Nora Roberts yet. I haven't read—there are lots of authors I haven't read yet. And sometimes you don't even know where to start. So when Sarina and KJ recommended Tess Gerritsen's new series set in Maine—the first one being The Spy Coast and the second one being The Summer Guests—I figured I had a good place to start. And you know, as a New Englander, I love a good book about New England, and that was the start of my interest in Tess Gerritsen's work. I have gone back to the beginning and started with her book The Surgeon, which was her first book in the series that became the Rizzoli and Isles Series, as well as a television show. Tess Gerritsen has a—she's written through 33 books at this point. And as I now know, she has also directed a documentary called Magnificent Beast about pigs, which I listened to this morning while I was vacuuming the house. I loved it. She also—she has a lot to say about genre, about publishing, about second careers, about a writing place, and about process. So let's just jump right into it. I am so excited to introduce to you today, Tess Gerritsen. So from the perspective of what our listeners love—this podcast, the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast —is super geek. People who love the nuts and bolts and the dorky details of the writing life. Sarina has a past life in finance, and so she tends to be, like, our “no, but let's talk about the numbers” kind of person. I'm just the research super dork, which is why I spent my morning watching your documentary about pigs.Tess GerritsenOh my god! (Laughing)Jess LaheyMagnificent Beast. I—I've joked in the past that if I could, I would probably just research things in—in, you know, maybe there'll be a book out there, maybe there won't, but I would research things and—and just learn as much as I could. And so I loved—loved—your Magnificent Beast documentary. I thought it was fantastic. But one of the reasons that we wanted to talk to you, just from the very beginning, is that we feel like you do some pretty incredible world-building and relationship-building with your places and your characters. And so I just—I would love to start there, mainly with the idea of starting with the real nuts and bolts stuff, which is, like, what does an average writing day look like for you? And how do you, sort of—how do you set that up? What does it look like, if you have an average writing day? Maybe you don't.Tess GerritsenWell, it's hard to describe an average writing day, because every day is—there are days when you sit at your desk and you just, you know, pull your hair. And there are days when you get distracted by the news. And there are many days when I just do not want to write. But when I'm writing, the good days are when my characters are alive and talking to me. And it's—it's—you talked about world-building and character-building. That is really key to me. What are they saying to me? Can I hear their voices? And it sounds a little—a little crazy, because I am hearing voices. But it's those voices that really make characters come alive.Jess LaheyI—You have said in other interviews that you are very much—sorry to those of you who hate the terms—that you are very much a pantser. And you are sitting on this interview with a consummate plotter. Sarina is our consummate plotter. So could you talk a little bit about how those character—how those voices—influence, you know, the pantsing of the—of the book, and—and how that works for you?Tess GerritsenWell, I mean, it is weird that I am a pantser. And it's funny—I think that people who are plotters tend to be people who are in finance or in law, because they're used to having their ducks lined up, you know. They—they want everything set up ahead of time, and it makes them feel comfortable. And I think a large part of becoming a pantser is learning to be comfortable with unpredictability. Learning to just let things happen, and know you're going to take wrong turns, know you're going to end up in blind alleys—and yet just keep on forging ahead and change direction. So I suppose that what helps me become a pantser, as I said, is hearing a character's voice. If, for instance, when I wrote The Spy Coast, the first thing I heard about that book was Maggie Bird's voice. And she just said, “I'm not the woman I used to be.” And that's an opening there, right? Because you want to find out, Maggie, who did you used to be? And why do you sound so sad? So a lot of it was just—just getting into her head and letting her talk about what a day-to-day life is, which is, you know, raising chickens and collecting eggs and becoming—and being—a farmer. And then she does something surprising in that very first chapter. There's a fox that's killing her chickens, so she grabs her rifle and kills it with one shot. And that opens up another thing, like—how are you, a 62-year-old woman, able to take out a rifle and kill a fox with one shot? So it's—it's those things. It's those revelations of character. When they come out and they tell you something, or they show you they—they have a skill that you weren't aware of, you want to dig deeper and find out, you know, where did they get that skill?Sarina BowenAnd that is a really fun way to show it. I mean, you're talking today with two people who have also kept chickens.Multiple Speakers(All laughing)Jess LaheyAnd had foxes take their chickens, actually.Sarina BowenOh yes, because the two go together.Tess GerritsenYes.Sarina BowenBut yes, I admit I have never shot a fox, and maybe wouldn't.Jess LaheyI have yelled very loudly at a

Hey writers! Sarina here! I have never been quiet about how much I enjoy Karin Slaughter’s work. So when the opportunity arose for me to read her brand new book, We Are All Guilty Here, and then interview her about it, I raised my hand faster than an extra in a deodorant ad. The new book is a series starter with a kickass female heroine, and I could not have loved it more! Join as as I quiz Karin on: * How to write a sweeping series starter* Small towns as a setting. How small is too small?* The difference between a procedural and psychological suspense* Character development and much more! Karin is incredibly smart and such an important voice in suspense. You won’t want to miss this one!Other favorite’s of Karin’s that we discussed include:Pieces of Her The Grant County seriesHey, Jess here to talk to you about a series I have created just for supporters of the #AmWriting Podcast.I met an aspiring author and speaker who has an idea for a book that just knocked me over. I said, please, please write that book. This is someone who had an idea that has a place in the market. It's timely. She's the perfect person to write it, and I asked her, I begged her, if I could please mentor her through this process publicly on the podcast.So while we're not giving her full name and we're not giving the actual title of the book, because we don't want to hand those things away, I am coaching her through the entire process, from preparing her book proposal to querying an agent. I'm going through the whole thing with her. She knows nothing about the publishing industry, she knows very little about how one goes about writing a book—so essentially, this is as I mentioned before, from soup to nuts, From Authority to Author, and hopefully we'll get her there.But really, whether or not this book ends up selling, whether after this book she ends up having a speaking career, this is about the process of preparing to do that. I hope you’ll join us.This series is for supporters only, so if you are a free subscriber right now, consider upgrading. Remember, if you upgrade, you'll also get the ability to submit for our First Pages Booklab, and lots of other fun stuff that we put out just for supporters—So come join us. It's a lot of fun.Transcript below!EPISODE 461 - TRANSCRIPTJess LaheyHey, Jess here to talk to you about a new series I have created just for supporters of the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast. I met an aspiring author and speaker who has an idea for a book that just knocked me over. I said, please, please write that book. This is someone who had an idea that—it has a place in the market, it's timely, she's the perfect person to write it—and I asked her, I begged her, if I could please mentor her through this process publicly on the podcast. So while we're not giving her full name and we're not giving the actual title of the book, because we don't want to hand those things away, I am coaching her through the entire process, from preparing her book proposal to querying an agent. I'm going through the whole thing with her. She knows nothing about the publishing industry. She knows very little about how, you know, one goes about writing a book. And so she—essentially, this is, as I mentioned before, From Soup to Nuts, From Authority to Author, and hopefully we'll get her there. But really, whether or not this book ends up selling, whether this book—she ends up having a speaking career—this is about the process of preparing to do that. How do you write a book? How do you prepare to become a speaker on the back of that book? So I hope you join us. This is a series for supporters only, so if you are a free supporter—or if you're a free subscriber right now—consider upgrading. Remember, if you upgrade, you'll also get access to the ability to submit for our First Pages Booklab and lots of other fun stuff that we put out just for supporters. So come join us. It's a lot of fun.Multiple SpeakersIs it recording? Now it's recording, yay. Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. I don't remember what I'm supposed to be doing. All right, let's start over. Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay, now one, two, three.Sarina BowenHello, my name is Sarina Bowen, and you're listening to the AmWriting Podcast. This is the podcast about writing all the things—short things, long things, fictional things, non-fictional things, pitches and proposals—in short, this is the podcast about sitting down and getting the work done. I am alone today with an interview that I could not be more excited about. I don't know how I drew the long straw here, but today I have the pleasure of interviewing Karin Slaughter. She is the author of more than 20 instant New York Times best-selling novels, including the Edgar-nominated Cop Town and standalone novels The Good Daughter, Pretty Girls, and Girl Forgotten. That's actually an amazing one, by the way—go read it. She's published in 120 countries, with more than 40 million copies sold across the globe. She also has a number one Netflix series and another long-running series. She has hit all the bells and checked all the boxes in thriller land, and she is also just one of my favorite writers. So happy to be here. Welcome, Karin Slaughter.Karin SlaughterIt's my pleasure. Thank you.Sarina BowenWe're here to talk about your August release, which is called We Are All Guilty Here. I received this ARC a few months ago—actually read it immediately—because I love your suspense, and I also was really excited to see that it was clear as day on the release. So you owe me now that it's a series starter.Karin SlaughterIt is, yeah. It was a lot of fun planning it out.Sarina BowenOh, good, yeah. And I want to hear a little bit about that, but I'm just going to read the very short flap copy for We Are All Guilty Here so we all know what we're talking about.[Reads flap copy]The first thrilling mystery in the new North Falls series from Karin Slaughter. Welcome to North Falls—a small town where everyone knows everyone. Or so they think. Until the night of the fireworks, when two teenage girls vanish and the town ignites. For Officer Emmy Clifton, it’s personal. She turned away when her best friend's daughter needed help—and now she must bring her home. But as Emmy combs through the puzzle the girls left behind, she realizes she never really knew them. Nobody did. Every teenage girl has secrets. But who would kill for them? And what else is the town hiding?So, flap copy very much pitched as a thriller. Here is the problem here—you know, we're wanting the solution, but I would argue that your novels are always, always about bigger than the problem and its solution. So how did you conceive of this town, and what does North Falls mean to you as you were getting into it?Karin SlaughterWell, I mean, North Falls is a very small town inside of a larger county. So it's rural, but it's not tiny like my Grant County Series. And I think that I learned some lessons in Grant County—mainly, make it a larger town so there's more people you can kill, because at a certain point, why would anyone live in this tiny town? But also, I knew going into it that it was going to be a series. And so, you know, unlike Grant County and Will Trent—which I was hoping would be series, but I wasn’t sure, and I was at a different point in my writing life—you know, I'm pretty sure, 25 books in, that they're going to publish at least two or three more of my books. So I thought, let me set this up as a series, and let me do this world building that can carry on into several books, and let's make this town. You know, North Falls is the seat of the county, but it's also in a county called Clifton County. And the main narrator you meet is called Emmy Clifton, and she's a sheriff's deputy. Her father, Gerald Clifton, is the sheriff of this county. There are Cliftons everywhere—there are rich Cliftons and poor Cliftons—and so you have this family saga potential. But also, it gave me the opportunity to plant a lot of different seeds that will later grow into novels. So I was really happy about that, but I definitely structured the county in a way where there's plenty of space to tell stories.Sarina BowenRight. So I noticed, and when I read a book like this, I am reading it as a reader, but also as a writer.Karin SlaughterYes.Sarina BowenAnd so I really noticed how long the character count in this book is—by which I mean how many characters there really are, how many named characters. There's so many of them, and that felt really fearless to me, you know, like you weren't sitting there at your keyboard wondering if you were going to ask your reader to remember this other family member, but you just went for it. And is that something that you ever try to balance? Like, you're not taking it easy on us here, and ultimately, I loved every word of it. But do you ever worry about that? Like, do you let that voice from other books past into your brain to say, like, well, that one time…Karin SlaughterNot really. You know, I think a writer's job is to trust the reader, and it's certainly my job to tell a story that is gripping and that makes sense and that pulls them into the world. And so what I was thinking about as I was writing this was, I need to write these characters in such a way that you care about them; otherwise, you won't care what happens. And, you know, Emmy is in a pretty universal position for a lot of millennial women. She's in a marriage that's not a great marriage. She's trying to raise her son. Her parents are starting to get older—you know, they're failing a little bit—so she's noticing that. And in the middle of this, she has this horrific crime happen where these two girls are abducted. And because they are in this small town, she knows one of these girls, who's actually a stepdaughter of her best friend—her best friend since kindergarten—and so just that one thing happening blows her world apart. To me, that's what the hook is. Yo

How dare you? That’s the first question KJ asked Ally Carter, whose name is “synonymous with hilarious action and heart-pounding romance” (TRUE). Is KJ outraged? Hell no. It’s a legit question. Ally’s books are so so much fun, with wild action scenes befitting a Bond movie (or a Jason Bourne, OBVIOUSLY) and plots that trot the globe while dancing backwards in high heels and KJ really wants to know—how did Ally give herself permission to just go there? To write the dreamy, wild, sure it could happen but also we don’t even care because we’re so in it story that scares many of us (especially ex-journo KJ, who wastes far far too much time on such non dramatic questions as “but how would someone with that job pay for health insurance? and “technically, how much snow could that unit make in one night?). Also asked: how did you learn to write action so well? Do you take all kinds of crazy self defense classes? Or dissect movie fight scenes in slo-mo? Are you fun to watch a spy movie with, or terrible?I would have asked her if she used to BE a spy…but then she would have had to kill me.LINKSNational Spy MuseumThe Blonde Who Came In from the ColdThe Most Wonderful Crime of the YearThe Blonde IdentityAlly CarterAlly’s rec: Netflix: The ResidenceInstagram @theallycarter The newsletterHey everyone, it's Jenny Nash. This episode happens to feature an Author Accelerator book coach. Author Accelerator is the company I founded more than 10 years ago to lead the emerging book coaching industry. If you've been curious about what it takes to become a successful book coach, which is to say, someone who makes money, meaning, and joy out of serving writers, I've just created a bunch of great content to help you learn more. You can access it all by going to bookcoaches.com/waitlist. We'll be enrolling a new cohort of students in our certification program in October, so now's a perfect time to learn more and start making plans for a whole new career.Transcript below!EPISODE 460 - TRANSCRIPTJennie NashHey everyone, it's Jennie Nash, founder and CEO of Author Accelerator, the company I started more than 10 years ago to lead the emerging book coaching industry. In October, we'll be enrolling a new cohort of certification students who will be going through programs in either fiction, nonfiction, or memoir, and learning the editorial, emotional and entrepreneurial skills that you need to be a successful book coach. If you've been curious about book coaching and thinking that it might be something you want to do for your next career move, I'd love to teach you more about it, you can go to bookcoaches.com/waitlist to check out a free training I have—that's bookcoaches.com/waitlist. The training is all about how to make money, meaning and joy out of serving writers. Fall is always a great time to start something new. So if you're feeling called to do this, go check out our training and see if this might be right for you. We'd love to have you join us.Multiple SpeakersIs it recording? Now it's recording. Yay! Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. Try to remember what I'm supposed to be doing. All right, let's start over. Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay. Now, one, two, three.KJ Dell'AntoniaHey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia, and this is Hashtag AmWriting the weekly podcast about writing all the things—short things, long things, pitches, proposals, fiction, nonfiction. We're the podcast about getting things done. And I'm going to be solo this week because I am interviewing, and I'm so excited to interview one Ally Carter, whose name, I'm stealing this from her bio, because it was such a great line—is synonymous with hilarious action and heart-pounding romance. And as someone who's read much of it, I can vouch kids. So Ally's most recent big book that you've probably seen around was The Blonde Identity . Her current book that you're going to want to go straight out and grab is The Blonde Who Came In from the Cold, and her other book that she wrote just for me—because it was like exactly what I needed in a book in that moment and I really appreciate it. I'm glad other people got to read it, but it was really, for me— The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year those are her adult books. She's got a ton of young-adult books, also with heart pounding action and hilarious...wait, heart-pounding romance, hilarious action. I feel those are exchangeable. And even some middle grade if you've got some kids who might be reading in those lines. So Ally does all the things, and we're going to find out how, and immediately be able to do it ourselves. Ha! Ally, thanks for coming.Ally CarterThank you so much for having me, KJ. I appreciate it.KJ Dell'AntoniaWe are super excited.Ally CarterI also wrote The Most Wonderful Crime [The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year] just for me, because it's— that's like, I love a mystery, and I pick them up, and I'm like, this would be great. Where's the romance? And then I love a romance, and I pick it up, and I'm like, where's the mystery? And so that's, that's how Most Wonderful Crime [The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year ] came to be. It is two great genres better together.KJ Dell'AntoniaAlso, it's writers in a—like writers in a mansion, with secrets and surprise identities, and things people can do that no one knows they can do, which is my jam. Yeah, really enjoyed it.Ally CarterThank you.KJ Dell'AntoniaThank you for that. Not that I didn't I love The Blonde Identity. My daughter has it right now, and she's super excited, because I can give her The Blonde Who Came In from the Cold, early, because I might have gotten an early copy. So she'll be reading that on the beach next week after she finishes the first one.Ally CarterThat is some good cool mom points right there.KJ Dell'AntoniaWell, it is, yeah, and they're rare. But that is a great thing about your—I mean, my daughters are 21 and 19, so they're older, but I would have given the blonde books and The Most Wonderful Crime to, you know, a 16... ?... like, they're not—not that I don't actually give some pretty steamy stuff to my kids, but if you're not somebody who does that, they're steamy, but they're not—anyway...Ally CarterYeah, there are books that, like, grandma and mom and daughter can all read togetherKJ Dell'AntoniaYeah, I was just going to say I would give them to my mom too. Yeah. I mean, they're just super fun. Because sometimes the better test is not “Would I give it to my daughter?” It’s “Would I give it to my mom?”Ally CarterYou're exactly right. Agreed, agreed.KJ Dell'AntoniaSo my first question is this: how dare you?! Okay, and now you're like, wait, what?! No, seriously, like, your books are—the plots are so out there, and glorious, and outrageous, and the action scenes are wild, and they're sort of everything you fantasize about in a spy romance novel. And as a former journalist, I spend a lot of time sitting around staring at my plot thinking things like, yes, but how would this person have health insurance? And I feel like you've transcended that. So can you talk to me and all of us about how you've, you know, embraced this world of the wild, glorious, fun, and outrageous in your plotting?Ally CarterYou know, that's a—thank you. First of all, that's a lovely compliment. I really credit it toward, you know, how most things are in my life and my career—it was total accident and sheer dumb luck. So 20 years ago—I realized not long ago—like, literally 20 years ago this spring, I saw it. I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You. And I was, you know, big dumb kid, didn't know what I was doing, sheer dumb luck, had this amazing idea. And most of all, I had an amazing idea at a time when the YA [young adult] genre was just expanding exponentially—like the shelves of shelf space at Barnes and Noble was getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And so it was a big tent, and there was room for everybody. And so I was lucky in that I got in there. I was especially lucky because I had a brilliant editor named Donna Bray. And Donna could see, like the shift coming—like, she could see Twilight and the, like, the move to paranormal, and the move to, you know, moving away from contemporary fiction to genre fiction. And she was like, we have to get this out fast. And so we crashed it. And so I sold it in, like, April or May of 2005, and then I had to go to copy editing in October, and I had—I had 32 pages.KJ Dell'AntoniaSorry, (laughing)Ally CarterAnd a day job!KJ Dell'AntoniaOh, my goodness!Ally CarterSo I had the summer of absolute deadline. I would come home from my day job, I would eat a fast dinner, and I would write till midnight. But this was also back, like, before we really had smartphones in our pockets all the time—definitely pre, like, social media—and so that's what you did. And I'm like, man, if I did that every day, think about how much writing I would get done today.KJ Dell'AntoniaYeah.Ally CarterBut because I was so fast, the turnaround there was so fast, I didn't have time to, like, go down a rabbit hole of, well, exactly what type of nylon cord would they use to rappel into such and such—you know, I just got—I made it up, and I got away with it. And so I realized that, you know, I would—I did do a lot of research on actual tradecraft.KJ Dell'AntoniaRight.Ally CarterSo the things like the girl—there's a scene where the girls have to go through the boy’s garbage. And there's this—you know, there are scenes where they're, you know, planting bugs and those types of things. Those—I watched documentaries, I read a lot of, like, actual decommissioned, sort of old CIA handbooks and things.. The International Spy Museum has a wonderful reference section, and you can actually order...KJ Dell'AntoniaOh, that’s cool.Ally CarterOld, like, World War Two training manuals and things. It's really greatKJ Dell'AntoniaI did not know that.Ally CarterSo I did do that. What I did not do was I didn't worry about, like, the bran

Sarina’s second thriller is now out. It’s a twisty thriller with a single-mom protagonist and some deep, dark secrets. It’s called Dying to Meet You and it is creepy in the best possible way. In this episode, Jennie interviews Sarina about the new book, and about the difference between writing romance and writing thrillers. You may think that’s obvious, but Sarina has recently shifted into writing thrillers and she has such a nuanced understanding about what it all means. She gets into what defines a genre, how you have to honor your readers expectations, and the different ways you hold tension when telling a story. It’s a masterclass in genre.Books mentioned:Dying to Meet You, Sarina BowenSarina’s other thriller, The Five Year LieThe Guest List, Lucy Foley On a Quiet Street, Seraphina Nova Glass Rowan Gallagher is a devoted single mother and a talented architect with a high-profile commission restoring an historic mansion for the most powerful family in Maine. But inside, she’s a mess. She knows that stalking her ex’s avatar all over Portland on her phone isn’t the healthiest way to heal from their breakup. But she’s out of ice cream and she’s sick of romcoms.Watching his every move is both fascinating and infuriating. He’s dining out while she’s wallowing on the couch. The last straw comes when he parks in their favorite spot on the waterfront. In a weak moment, she leashes the dog and sets off to see who else is in his car.Instead of catching her ex in a kiss, Rowan becomes the first witness to his murder—and the primary suspect.Digital books at: Amazon | Nook | Apple Books | Kobo | Google Play | AudiblePhysical books at: Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indigo | More paperback links here!Transcript below!EPISODE 459 - TRANSCRIPTKJ Dell'AntoniaListeners who I know are also readers—have I got a summer book for you. If you haven't yet ordered Dying to Meet You, Sarina Bowen's latest thriller with just enough romance, you have to. So let me lay this out for you. Rowan Gallagher is a devoted single mother and a talented architect with a high-profile commission restoring a historic mansion for the most powerful family in Maine, but inside, she's a mess. She knows stalking her ex's avatar all over Portland on her phone isn't the healthiest way to heal from their breakup, but she's out of ice cream and she's sick of rom-coms. Watching his every move is both fascinating and infuriating. He's dining out while she's wallowing on the couch. The last straw comes when he parks in their favorite spot on the waterfront. In a weak moment, she leashes the dog and sets off to see who else is in his car. But instead of catching her ex in a kiss, Rowan becomes the first witness to his murder—and the primary suspect. But Rowan isn't the only one keeping secrets. As she digs for the truth, she discovers that the dead man was stalking her too, gathering intimate details about her job and her past. Struggling to clear her name, Rowan finds herself spiraling into the shadowy plot that killed him. Will she be the next to die? You're going to love this. I've had a sneak preview, and I think we all know that The Five Year Lie was among the very best reads and listens of last summer. Dying to Meet You is available in every format and anywhere that you buy books. And you could grab your copy—and you absolutely should—right now.Multiple SpeakersIs it recording? Now it's recording. Yay! Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. Try to remember what I'm supposed to be doing. All right, let's start over. Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay. Now, one, two, three.Jennie NashHey, writers, I'm Jennie Nash, and this is the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast, the place where we talk about writing all the things—short things, long things, fiction, non-fiction, pitches, and proposals. I'm here today to talk to our own Sarina Bowen. Her newest thriller, Dying to Meet You, just came out a few weeks ago, and I've been dying to talk to Sarina about the way she's been switching back and forth between romance and thriller. This is her second thriller. The last one came out last year. That one's called The Five Year Lie. And so we're just here to talk about genre, and romance, and thriller, and how Sarina does it—this back-and-forth kind of code switching between genres. So, welcome, Sarina.Sarina BowenThank you. It's always fun to talk about genre. It's my favorite thing.Jennie NashWell, I just was really struck when I was reading. I've been reading your romances for so long, and you have so many of them, and you're so good at them, and...Sarina BowenWell, thank you.Jennie NashAnd then here we have an entirely new genre that you have entered into in a really big way. And it's not—so this is not about, how do you come up with your idea, or how did you do it? Or—I mean, all those are great questions. We love those. And I've heard you talk about those other places. But what I want to try to get at here is this idea—really, what is genre? So when you think about that, you're sitting down to start one or this other. What do you think about, like, what are the things that—genre? What does the genre mean to you?Sarina BowenWell, I talk about this a lot when I am discussing my books, which is that I don't find that—that the thriller genre and that the romance genres are all that different. Like, each one of those things makes a promise to the reader and then must deliver it by the last page. It's just that the promise is slightly different between those two things. So in a romance, the reader is promised a satisfactory romantic conclusion to the book. And in a thriller, the reader is promised that whatever mess and confusion is established on page one, that it will be rectified and solved by the end of the book—that the chaos will become at least understanding, if not order. So the thing is that the job of the novelist is kind of the same in both situations, which is, we are going to take the main character on a journey, and she is going to learn some stuff before it's over—or it's not really a novel. Now, to be fair, not every novel is constructed like that and does both of those things. Like what—what makes it feel familiar to me in both cases is that I always write an empathetic main character, and not every author of suspense does this. So there are a lot of really popular suspense novels where you're not sure who to root for, and you don't really like any of the characters. And those books can be really exciting and really well written, and there's a total—a huge audience for that. But that is not what I do in suspense space, and that doesn't make me unique. Like, there are a lot of suspense authors who also operate this way. For example, Harlan Coben and Karin Slaughter write best-selling novels of suspense where you always know who to root for from the first chapter. Like, you are given a main character who is a likable human—a flawed person—but still, like, you know, somebody to root for, and you're rooting for that person until the end of the book. So it's not like this is just my special romance author's twist on it—like, it's a thing. It's just that there are other suspense authors who don't operate under that, you know, scenario. So that's one of the reasons why, to me, like, the job feels kind of similar to writing a romance and writing a suspense the way that I do it. It's just that when I'm writing a suspense, first of all, it takes a lot longer, because a suspense reader is really there to match wits with you, and you have to deliver on—on that experience of paying a lot of attention to where the camera is swinging, and to show them some truths that will turn out to be only half-truths, and to make it a really great ride. Like, the roller coaster of a suspense novel requires more engineering than the roller coaster of a romance, and it can be a lot less linear in construction. And, you know, there are complexities that a romance does not need to—to succeed. So yeah, it's not exactly the same job. But, you know, romance requires on a different level a lot of those same narrative tricks. Like, people love to say that romances are formulaic, and I always want to cry, because if that were true, then it would be so easy. And I—I would spend less time sweating at my keyboard if a romance was formulaic, because then I would know what to do. And it's almost harder to hold the tension when the reader knows you're going to get somewhere satisfying. So, you—you know, you have to make sure that couple has some real issues to work through, and that's hard.Jennie NashYeah, we're going to come back to so many things that you're saying because...Sarina BowenOkay.Jennie NashThis is—this is great. But I want to return to something you said at the very beginning, where you were explaining this, which is the promise to the reader, and this idea of a contract that the writer and the reader enter into. When—when a reader starts a book, there's this promise, there's this expectation, there's—And you—it sounds like what I heard from you, which I just think is so interesting, is a very deep respect for the writer—I mean, for the reader's experience. And is that something that you have as a human, or, you know, like, is it—is that just—does that just come from respect for the time somebody's going to spend and that sort of thing? Or is that respect of the genre?Sarina BowenOh, it's both. I mean, of course, we were all readers before we were writers, and I know what I find frustrating and unsatisfying in a book. So I want to deliver a reader experience that aligns with my most satisfying experiences in—in each genre. And it's such a work in progress. Like, over 10 years of delivering stories, my understanding of what really matters is constantly shifting.Jennie NashOoh, can you say more?Sarina BowenYeah. So—I have the things that I like as a reader. So of course, those are going to figure in heavily. Like, I love a good secret unv

Jess, Sarina, Jennie and Jess are all here to talk about taking a break from various angles: the mechanics angle, the guilt angle, the fear angle, the identity angle and inspiration angle. Mechanics. * Leave yourself notes about the project when you leave off, for example, “The next thing that needs to happen is this…” so when you come back, you know how to get back into the project. This is Sarina’s daily practice, but it really helps when she has to leave a project behind. This can be especially helpful when you have to go away for an unexpected emergency. * Jennie adds that the only way you can do this is if you have a place to keep and find those notes to yourself. In one of your 47 notebooks or in the document itself? Or, as Jess adds, on the side of the cardboard box you use for trash in your basement workshop that you almost recycle by accident. * Jennie also notes that you have to have intentionality, to know what you are writing so you can know what comes next, whether that’s in your outline, inside outline, or whatever. * Jennie has a little notebook she brings on vacation with her and she downloads those ideas into that just before going to sleep at night when she’s away. * These vacation inspiration moments are much like shower thoughts, part of the magic of our brain unhooking, getting into deep default mode network, and becoming its most creative. * Sarina mentioned an article about how walking makes you more creative, also a study in why tapping into the default mode network is so effective as a practice. Fear * The only way to get over this is to sit down and do it. Open the document. Just start. * Jennie points out that getting back into a manuscript when it’s disappeared feels horrifying but it’s much easier than it sounds and has happened to one of our frequent guests, Sarah Stewart Taylor, when her then-toddler created a password for the document that was not recoverable. She had to give in to the fact that her book was gone, and recreate it out of her memory. Guilt and Identity* It only took Jess until her fiftieth year to figure out that her process - of walking, gardening, beekeeping, musing - is a part of writing, and that’s cool. * Can you be a writer if you are not actively writing? Yes, if research, planning, thinking and otherwise cogitating is a part of your writing process. Get over it. The words have to land on the page eventually, of course, but if you are doing both, have grace for the not-actively-writing part of the writing process. #AmReadingTess Gerritsen’s series set in Maine (The Spy Coast and The Summer Guests) and, once she finished those two books, Jess went back to The Surgeon, where it all started for Tess Gerritsen. Stay tuned for our interview with her! Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary (Don’t watch the movie trailer if you plan to read the book!)Sarah Harman’s All the Other Mothers Hate MeAmy Tintera’s Listen for the LieRosemerry Wahtola Trommer The UnfoldingRichard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club (coming to Netflix in August!)Janelle Brown’s What Kind of Paradise Want to submit a first page to Booklab? Fill out the form HERE.Writers and readers, KJ here, if you love #AmWriting and I know you do, and I know you do, and especially if you love the regular segment at the end of most episodes where we talk about what we've been reading, you will also love my weekly #AmReading email. Is it about what I've been reading and loving? It is. And if you like what I write, you'll like what I read. But it is also about everything else. I've been #AmDoing: sleeping, buying clothes and returning them, launching a spelling bee habit, reading other people's weekly emails. Let's just say it's kind of the email about not getting the work done, which I mean that's important too, right? We can't work all the time. It's also free, and I think you'll really like it. So you can find it at kjdellantonia.com or kjda.substack.com or by clicking on my name on Substack, if you do that kind of thing.Come hang out with me. You won't be sorry.Transcript below!EPISODE 458 - TRANSCRIPTKJ Dell'AntoniaWriters and readers, KJ here. If you love Hashtag AmWriting, and I know you do, and especially if you love the regular segment at the end of most episodes where we talk about what we've been reading, you will also love my weekly Hashtag AmReading email. Is it about what I've been reading and loving? It is. And if you like what I write, you'll like what I read. But it is also about everything else. I've been ‘hashtag am-doing’, sleeping, buying clothes and returning them, launching a spelling bee habit, reading other people's weekly emails. Let's just say it's kind of the email about not getting the work done—which, I mean, that's important too, right? We can't work all the time. It's also free, and I think you'll really like it. So you can find it at KJdellantonia.com or kjda.substack.com or by clicking on my name on Substack, if you do that kind of thing or of course in the show notes for this podcast. Come hang out with me. You won't be sorry.Multiple SpeakersIs it recording? Now it's recording. Yay! Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. Try to remember what I'm supposed to be doing. All right, let's start over. Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay. Now, one, two, three.KJ Dell'AntoniaHey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia, and this is the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast, the weekly podcast, while writing all the things—short things, long things, pitches, proposals, fiction, nonfiction. And somebody told me they thought this was a recorded intro. And I just want you to know I do this live every time, which is why there's this, come on, there's more variety here, people, and you should know that. Anyway, here we are, all four of us, for we got a topic today. But before we do that, we should introduce ourselves in order of seniority, please.Jess LaheyI'm Jess Lahey. I am the author of The Gift of Failure and The Addiction Inoculation. And I laugh, because when you said seniority, all I could do was think of us in our little eave space in my old house, down the street from you, not knowing what the heck we were doing. But yeah, we've been doing this for a long time now. You can find my... you can find my journalism at The New York Times, at The Washington Post, at The Atlantic, and everything else at Jessicalahey.com.Sarina BowenI'm Sarina Bowen. I'm the author of many novels. My new one this fall is called Thrown for a Loop, and it will be everywhere that books are sold, which is very exciting to me, and all about me at Sarinabowen.com.Jennie NashI am the newest of the co-hosts, and so happy to be among this group of incredibly smart and prolific and awesome women, and I'm the founder and CEO of Author Accelerator, which is a company on a mission to lead the emerging book coaching industry. And you can find us at bookcoaches.com or authoraccelerator.com.KJ Dell'AntoniaI'm KJ Dell'Antonia. I'm the author of three novels, the latest of which is Playing the Witch Card, and the most televised of which is The Chicken Sisters—Season Two coming soon to a Hallmark network near you. And I'm also the former editor and lead writer of The Motherlode, making me our... well, and Jennie too, like the crossover. I've done too many different kinds of writing—probably should have stayed in my lane. Oh well. And our plan today—as we're recording, it is summer. And a pretty frequent thing that happens in the summer is that you need to put your project down for a little while, because you have house guests, because you're going on the kind of vacation that does not involve working, because you just need a break or you're sick. That's not really a summer thing, but it definitely happens. Anyway, we wanted to talk about how, you know, what—what do you do to make that work better?Jess LaheyI think a lot about being a parent and needing to take a break too. And you know, this is something I talk a lot about with, you know, other writers who are sort of struggling, especially since I read a lot about parenting—who are struggling to—with that guilt of, you know, like, I feel like I owe my time to the words, and I feel like I owe my time to the children. And finding a way to take a break from the words and not feel guilty about not being with the words can be really, really hard, especially when you're going gung-ho on something. So I want to make sure that we figure out a way to have a break without guilt. That's like the big question I get a lot—is, how do you, you know, either from the parenting or the writing side?KJ Dell'AntoniaAnd I was thinking about it more from a mechanics side.Jess LaheyYeah.KJ Dell'AntoniaHow do you put this thing aside for a week or two weeks or even a month? And know where you were?Jess LaheyRight.KJ Dell'AntoniaAnd come back and feel like it does not take you forever to dig in.Sarina BowenYeah. Um, so we've got the guilt question. We've got the mechanics of how to do it. And I would just like to add a layer, which is the fear factor.Jess LaheyYeah.Sarina BowenI have this thing where, when I walk away from a manuscript, I become afraid of it. So it seems scarier when I take a break. Like, even if it's not true—that I don't know where I am or that I become unmoored from the channel of that book and it seems intimidating to go back to.Jess LaheyCan I add one more layer as well? And that's the identity factor. You know, if I identify as a writer, what am I if I'm not actively writing something? And that messes my head up a lot. So I would love to add that added layer in as well and make sure we discuss that.Jennie NashWell, and I have something totally different from all of those, which is that I often find when I go on vacation, I am more inspired and motivated to work on my project than I was in my real life. It tends to light a fire under me. So then I'm faced with that choice of, you know, wanting to really lean into it. And, you know, just like a really small piece of that s