#AmWriting

Latest Episodes:

Episode 251 How to give your fun read a solid, poke-in-the-gut point with Anna North Feb 19, 2021

Show notes

It’s a freewheeling conversation about writing fiction that tells a great story—and makes you think about the world beyond the story, with January Reese’s Book Club pick Anna North.

Links from the pod:

Anna’s essay on the writing of Outlawed

#AmReading

Anna: In the Distance by Hernan Diaz

How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C. Pam Zhang

Jess: First Comes Like by Alisha Rai http://www.alisharai.com/

KJ: Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo

And—if you’re in the midst of a project and you with you had someone to help you balance story and that not-too-pokey-stick point, our sponsor, Author Accelerator, can help find the right coach for you—or help you become that coach for someone else. Find out more at bookcoaches.com/amwriting.

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

Episode 250: Growing Thick Skin: Handling #Haters, Commenters and Bad Reviews Feb 12, 2021

Show notes

Does this ever get easier? That’s the question we’re often asked by newer writers in the process of putting themselves out there and worried about how their work will be received. We were unanimous—yes, it does, and you don’t have to spend five years reading every single comment on your writing (and parenting, and intelligence, and everything else) from New York Times readers to get to the point where you can manage even the reviews you most dread without letting them keep you up at night.

We talk types of bad reviews, strategies for coping with them and how to arm yourself for everything your pub date can bring.

#AmReading

KJ: Cobble Hill by Cecily Von Ziegesar

Eliza Starts a Rumor by Jane L. Rosen

Sarina: Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style by Benjamin Dreyer

Jess: Studly Period by Sarina Bowen (on audio)

Victoria: The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire by Julia Baird

In this episode, we talk about how Jennie Nash from Author Accelerator makes you write both your most dreaded review—and your best one—and how knowing what you fear before your book is even written can help you handle whatever comes. If you’d like to work with a book coach like Jennie, head to AuthorAccelerator.com—and if you think your talents lie in helping other authors prevent the worst reviews they fear, you should consider becoming a book coach. You can learn more about that at bookcoaches.com/amwriting.

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

Episode 249: Turning Data into #Narrative with Ron Lieber Feb 05, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, we go seriously pro, talking to Ron Lieber, the Your Money columnist for the New York Times and the author of The Price You Pay for College and The Opposite of Spoiled. Ron shares his system for writing information and data-packed chapters—or columns—while making them relatable and digestible. Pro tip: it starts with “strip-mining” the brains of the top five experts you can find—and, as Ron says, being in the business of asking uncomfortable questions. Other great moments—waterproof shower crayons and how to highlight a tweet without interrupting the reading of your audio-book.

Find all things Ron here.

#AmReading

Ron: Unacceptable: Privilege, Deceit & the Making of the College Admissions Scandal by Melissa Korn and Jennifer Levitz

Who Gets in and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions by Jeffrey Selingo

The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness by Morgan Housel

Jess: Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them by Joshua Greene

KJ: The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel by Jodie Archer and Matthew L. Jockers

So, did you know Jennie Nash grossed over $400K as a book coach in 2020? If that makes your ears perk up—and I bet it did—and you’re intrigued by the idea of working with writers, helping people realize their dreams and making money doing it, head to bookcoaches.com/amwriting to learn more.

Jess is at it again, learning all the things. This week, the former Latin teacher revisited the story of Julia, the daughter of Caesar Augustus and the Celtic warrior queen, Boudicca in the course, “Warriors, Queens, and Intellectuals: 36 Great Women before 1400,” taught by Joyce E. Salisbury, Ph.D. She’s learning things and taking names. If you are interested in giving The Great Courses Plus a try, you can get a month free at thegreatcoursesplus.com/amwriting! Go forth, dear #AmWriters, and learn something new!

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

Episode 248 Mental #Chatter with Ethan Kross: Harnessing the voices in our heads for good Jan 29, 2021

Show notes

Our guest today, Ethan Kross, is one of the world’s leading experts on controlling the conscious mind. His new book, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters and How to Harness it, sits at that enviable intersection between academic and commercial nonfiction, and in a way that seems to be exactly where Ethan himself—who teaches in both the business school and the Psychology Department at the University of Michigan—sits, right there in the place where all kinds of things intersect, doing research into the ways our mysterious selves affect the ways we behave on the inside and on the outside.

We talked to Ethan about what we call “writer chatter”—those voices in our head that tell us we’re not good enough, smart enough, anything enough to write the things we want to write, and then we branched off into his experience transitioning from academic writing to writing for a wider audience and what his inner voices had to say about that. In the end, Ethan reminded us that we don’t want to live without our inner voices—we need them in many ways—but we do want to shift those voices to our most positive “station.” His tips for doing that—using treasured objects and lucky charms, reminders of the ways we’ve been down this road before and encouraging the power of our own optimism—are going to help us get our inner chatterboxes on the right track.

#AmReading

Ethan: A Promised Land by Barack Obama

Eat a Peach by David Chang

Sarina: A Rogue of One’s Own by Evie Dunmore

KJ: Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

We hope you’ve heard Jess waxing rhapsodic about learning all the things over at The Great Courses Plus. Goodness knows what she’s learning about today….small business accounting? The Pacific Theater in WWII? Anything’s possible, because…Jess. If you’d like to learn something new today, you can get a free month of The Great Courses Plus at thegreatcoursesplus.com/amwriting.

And I—KJ—spent an hour on Zoom this week with a pack of excited alums from Author Accelerator’s book coaching course, and it was so much fun to hear a little about their plans and talk about the ways being coached has helped me—immeasurably—with my fiction. If becoming a book coach has been niggling around the corners of your brain, poking you and demanding that you give it some thought, head to bookcoaches.com/amwriting to learn more.

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

Episode 247: #Writing All Over the Map with Jacob Sager Weinstein Jan 22, 2021

Show notes

This week Jess talks to Jacob Sager Weinstein, a writer who has done just about everything. He started out with highbrow aspirations, as he learned his craft from none other than Toni Morrison and Joyce Carol Oates, and has worked as a journalist, screenwriter, comedy writer as well as a fiction and nonfiction author. In his travels from Princeton to HBO to the sewers of London (really!) Jacob has learned the art of the pivot as well as the secret to finding joy in just about every kind of writing project. His newest book is How to Remember Everything: Tips & Tricks to Becoming a Memory Master and Jess, the worst number rememberer on the planet, can attest that the memory tricks on pages 64-67 are brilliant and work beautifully.

Links from the pod

Jacob’s webpage

The Hyacinth Series

How to Remember Everything

#AmReading

Jess: The Mission: How a Disciple of Carl Sagan, an Ex-Motocross Race, a Texas Tea Party Congressman, the Worlds Worst Typewriter Saleswoman, California Mountain People, and an Anonymous NASA Functionary Went to War with Mars, Survived an Insurgency at Saturn, Traded Blows with Washington, and Stole a Ride on an Alabama Moon Rocket to Send a Space Robot to Jupiter in Search of the Second Garden of Eden at the Bottom of an Alien Ocean Inside of an Ice World Called Europa by David W. Brown

Jacob: All the Beverly Cleary. And by all of it, he means all of it.

And—love us, love our sponsors! If you’ve been dreaming of a book coaching career, you know you want the guidance of Jennie Nash and the crew at AuthorAccelerator. You’ll find everything you need at bookcoaches.com/amwriting.

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

Episode 246: Historical #Fiction the Only Way I Know How with Beverly Jenkins Jan 15, 2021

Show notes

Beverly Jenkins is best-selling, award-winning, and still having fun with all she does—in other words, all the things we writers aspire to when we sit down at the desk. But when she first got started, she “didn’t have a clue”—and that might have freed her to do exactly what she wanted to do.

We talk keeping history accurate but still making it entertaining, the joy of placing characters in a particular moment in time, bookshelf placement (“African American Literature”? “Men’s Health”?) and the pleasures of changing up your process for every new book.

Am Reading

Beverly: Shadows in Death by J.D. Robb

Battle Ground by Jim Butcher

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

The Blood Heir by Ilona Andrews “If I could only have one author for the whole rest of my life it would be Ilona Andrews.”

Sarina:

My Last Duchess by Eloisa James

Dark Witch by Nora Roberts

KJ: Wandering in Strange Lands by Morgan Jerkins

Wild Rain by Beverly Jenkins

Beverly thought KJ definitely needed to watch the Love Between the Cover documentary

KJ’s Brain Fart: While J.D. Robb is and always will be the great Nora Roberts, I have been enjoying the Writers, Ink podcast with J. Thorn and J.D. Barker lately. Barker writes thrillers, most recently with James Patterson.

Our guest today LOVES TWITTER. Find her there in “Romancelandia” at authorMsBev

And she hangs out on no less than three Facebook pages!

But somehow she’s still getting her work done. #jealous.

Hey readers! We can’t stop talking about our new sponsor The Great Courses. While Jess has been a fan for literally years, the rest of the #AmWriting crew are working to get caught up on all the great goodness they have to offer. You can find out more about them at https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/amwriting.

And - as we move into 2021 working towards achieving new goals: if you find yourself asking ‘Is this the year I launch my own book coaching business?’, you know we cannot recommend Author Accelerator enough! Their book coaching course is everything you need to get started. Find out more at bookcoaches.com/amwriting.

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

Episode 245: #Pitching with Passion with Lisa Levenstein Jan 08, 2021

Show notes

Hey kids, we’re getting back to basics this week with a down-n-dirty episode on pitching, focused on opinion pages everywhere. We’re talking to Lisa Levenstein, an academic, historian and feminist (and the Director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program and Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina Greensboro) with two books under her belt: A Movement Without Marches: African American Women and the Politics of Poverty in Postwar Philadelphia and They Didn’t See Us Coming: The Hidden History of Feminism in the Nineties. Lisa took that expertise and those books and turned them into a growing career writing passionate freelance pieces of a kind that really appeal to editors—blending current issues with her special historic perspective on women’s issues.

We talked about everything from subject lines to finding your topic to using one piece as a steppingstone to break into another market, and it was fabulous. Enjoy!

Links from the pod

Lisa’s piece on child care in WashPo.

Lisa herself

#AmReading

Lisa: Big Friendship How We Keep Each Other Close by Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman

Sarina: What Happens In Paradise by Elin Hilderbrand

KJ: The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters by Balli Kaur Jaswal

Have you checked out our new sponsor? Thanks to The Great Courses for coming on board. Jess has been a fan for literally years, while Sarina and KJ are planning to catch up. Find out more at https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/amwriting.

And—is this the year you launch your own book coaching business? You know how much we love Author Accelerator, and their book coaching course is everything you need to get started. Find out more at bookcoaches.com/amwriting.

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

Episode 244: Setting Writer #Goals for 2021 Jan 01, 2021

Show notes

Last year’s words: Abundance. Practice. Magic. This year? Generous, Organize, Flow. It’s only now, writing these shownotes, that I see a pretty pattern… which is more that one of us chooses words she wants to embody, one chooses words she wants to shape her actions and the other seems to be counting on the muse in what may be a dubious way. Who’s who? It might surprise you.

Welcome to our 2020 year in review/2021 goals episode. We’d love to hear your plans for the year—and how last year went. Come visit us on Facebook and share!

#AmReading / #AmListening

Jess: Come Out Come Out podcast

Scent of the Missing: Love and Partnership with a Search-And-Rescue Dog by Susannah Charleson

KJ: Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know by Alexandra Horowitz

Better than Before by Gretchen Rubin

Deep Work by Cal Newport

Niksen: Embracing the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing by Olga Mecking

Frontier Follies by Ree Drummond

Sarina: The Search by Nora Roberts

The Shepherd, the Angel, and Walter the Christmas Miracle Dog by Dave Barry (Out of Print)

Blindsided by Victoria Denault from Sarina’s new imprint Heart Eyes Press

We’ve got a new sponsor! Thanks to The Great Courses for coming on board. Jess has been a fan for literally years, while Sarina and KJ are planning to catch up. Find out more at https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/amwriting.

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

Episode 243: #Fact-based Fiction and Fiction from Facts with Mark Olshaker Dec 25, 2020

Show notes

A little #AmWriting behind the scenes: as we headed into this recording, Jess texted KJ:

Here’s the lowdown on Mark: I have been a fan of Mark Olshaker’s writing since I first encountered it in 1995. He may be best known for his work with former FBI Special Agent John Douglas, his writing partner since 1995, who pioneered the behavioral crimes unit at the FBI and inspired the Jack Crawford character in Silence of the Lambs. Together they have written many books including Mindhunter, about the role of behavioral profiling in catching violent criminals. His work with Douglas has landed him on the bestseller lists, but he has also written five novels and his nonfiction and documentary work covers subjects as wide-ranging emerging infectious disease, forensic emergency medicine, bioterror, the Lindburgh baby, and victims’ rights. He is also an Emmy-award winning filmmaker, as if that’s not enough AND, in a topic near and dear to my heart, he wrote, produced, and directed the film Discovering Hamlet, about one of my favorite productions of Hamlet directed by Dereck Jacobi and starring Kenneth Branagh. He follows Branagh and Jacobi from first read-throughs to opening night in 1988 and it’s now my life goal to see this film. Mark began his career as a journalist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Wall Street Journal, NYT, WaPo, and USA Today and I am SO very excited to talk with him today!

The result was every bit as fun as you’d imagine. We talked about finding the real story behind Silence of the Lambs, the “other kinds of detectives”—epidemiologists—and drawing a story based on taking a fact and running with it. Mark quotes Tom Clancy: “The difference between fiction and non-fiction is that fiction has to make sense.” Plus, our guest eviscerates Henry James.

Links from the pod:

Mind of a Killer PBS episode.

The Killer’s Shadow and The Killer Across the Table

MindhuntersInc.com

#AmReading

Mark’s favorite crime fiction: George Pelecanos, Laura Lippman, Ian McEwan

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren

KJ: Plain Bad Heroines Emily M. Danforth

Jess: Writings on an Ethical Life by Peter Singer

The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow

Great Books by David Denby

As we say every week—we’re so proud to be sponsored by Author Accelerator and Dabble. If you’re wondering—why Dabble and not Scrivener? For us, it’s that plotting tool and the intuitive way it works, but others have weighed in—check that out here with a little Dabble v. Scrivener scoop.

And if listening to all of our conversations about book coaching has made you think, hey—that’s the career for me—then you’ll want to head to Author Accelerator’s BookCoaches.com to see how you can make that happen.

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

Episode 242 Finding All the Voices: Writing Reflective #Nonfiction with Julie Lythcott-Haims Dec 18, 2020

Show notes

Writing nonfiction outside the memoir space usually means finding sources and stories that are not your own. Narrative, self-help, history, economics, social sciences, nature—no matter what your topic, this form of writing requires reporting, just as many freelance assignments do. So where do you go when you’re looking for sources? Often, your own backyard—and for lots of us, that can mean we inadvertently only talk to people who share our perspective, and sometimes our privilege.

Nobody knows that better than Julie Lythcott-Haims. For all her books, and most particularly for her latest, Julie has made it a point to draw from sources that reflect the diversity of our larger national experience. We talked about finding those sources, owning the need to seek out specific points of view and how you know when you’ve got it right.

Links from the Pod

Ed Yong’s article in the Atlantic about what he’s learned as he’s worked to diversify his sources: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/i-spent-two-years-trying-to-fix-the-gender-imbalance-in-my-stories/552404/

Adrienne LaFrance on gender bias in her own reporting: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/02/gender-diversity-journalism/463023/

Our Minisode on diversity in sources for non-fiction work, from light-hearted articles on favorite baby food flavors to seriously researched pieces for high-profile outlets. BIPOC, non-binary and women are outweighed by white men when it comes to who gets quoted in the news, whether the voice is adding an expert perspective or just a little local color. In it, we suggest the following:

SheSource

Informed Voices

NPR’s Source of the Week and how to use it.

Columbia University’s list of female, non-binary and BIPOC experts on the media

HARO

#AmReading

Julie: The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation by Anna Malaika Tubbs

Jess: Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition by Patricia Churchland

KJ: Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth

Sarina and KJ have news!

The Chicken Sisters is out tomorrow, 12/1. Today’s the last day to pre-order! Signed copies here, Bookshop.org here, Amazon here—and if you order from your local indie and fill out this form, I’ll mail you a signed bookplate.

Sarina's novel Bittersweet, the first in her USA Today bestselling series, is currently free at all vendors. Farmers make the Earth move. Amazon: https://geni.us/FreeBittersweet

Apple: http://geni.us/BsIbooks

B&N: http://geni.us/bsbreach

Kobo: http://geni.us/bskreach

Google: http://geni.us/bsgreach

Book-gift shopping? Grab KJ’s 12 Days of Books to Give (and Get) list here for everything you need for your Austen-loving brother, your thriller-hound mom and the friend who craves a cozy escape.

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

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