#AmWriting

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 Come s Like by Alisha Rai http://www.alisharai.com...

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 w...

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—...

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 th...

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...

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 parti...

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 Witho...

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 yea...

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 charact...

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 inad...

Whew! This week, Sarina and KJ (that’s me writing as it usually is) both launched books—Sarina came out with Loverboy, second in KJ’d favorite Sarina series, The Company, while KJ FINALLY and after many many months got to see The Chicken Sisters come out into the world. Notice the different verbs there? That’s because our launches come from very different places, and we talk about that—as well as,...

Who wouldn’t want a step-by-step process for revision? In her book Intuitive Editing , this week’s guest, developmental editor Tiffany Yates Martin, lays out an approach that will help keep you organized, although sadly there is no magic wand involved. We talked to her about the big picture questions she asks before diving into someone else’s work: Is the main story question clear? Do the characte...

Gang, it’s a #AmWriting Bonus episode that I think you’re going to love: Shiny Thing Syndrome. Jennie Nash and I I originally planned to get together to discuss whether I (it’s KJ here) might want to do some book coaching in 2021, but we ended up talking way more broadly about finding your why, career priorities, money and passion and fame and all the reasons we think we want to do something versu...

It’s the gifts episode! Here are the links you’re looking for: KJ: Redbubble ❄️ Stamp blocks ❄️ Stamp blanks and stencils ❄️ Frixion Pens ❄️ Leuchterm planner Jess: Sarina’s Socks ❄️ Half Broke by Ginger Gaffney (for K J, but Jess loved it, too!) ❄️ Fillion planner cover by Little Mountain Bindery ❄️ Jess’s favorite sticky tabs ❄️ Pens by Schneider ❄️ Sarina’s stamp with the kinda-sorta True North...

Every writer craves that high concept idea that leads to the breakout book, or in this case breakout series. For Lyssa Kay Adams, it came from that joke women often make about wishing their male partners read romance—and a moment in 2016 when she “just wanted to live in a world full of men who get it.” She created The Bromance Book Club , about a group of men who read romance to understand their r...

It’s a new #AmWriting episode! There’s a style of creative nonfiction in which a gifted writer tells someone else’s story. The story of a house being built, or a life in the wilderness—or, in the case of Lauren Sandler, the story of a young single mother in search of housing during her first year of motherhood. Lauren’s subject—a smart, driven young woman caught up in the system because of her own...

MADNESS! We don’t know how, but somehow this went live without audio at midnight. So here it is again for you subscribers, with —the actual podcast episode. We don’t have a lot of repeat guests, but Seth Godin can come on the podcast any time he wants. Seth is a fountain of wisdom about writing, pitching, selling, and building your audience, and his new book, The Practice: Shipping Creative Work ,...

Campers, this week we’re talking about a topic near and dear to all our hearts, but most particularly Sarina, whose productivity levels are epic and who is always looking for something that will help her ramp up. We talk hardware and software that makes the writing process easier, or at least more varied; handwriting-to-text, voice-to-text, AI, editing software, citation software and throw in a fe...

Have you ever, while banging out a document of any kind in Word or Pages or whatever, thought to yourself “Dang, this would be so much easier if ______.” Every writer has been there, but only a few rare souls actually go on to “I am going to make something that does that, darn it.” Jacob Wright is that rare soul. Once upon a time, while drafting his own experiments in fiction, he pitched Scrivener...

When I (Jess here) interviewed Lacy Crawford about her new memoir Notes on a Silencing , we discussed the complex and often contradictory goals of publishers’ legal departments and fact checkers at periodicals such as Condé Nast/Vanity Fair, where Lacy’s first serial excerpt was published. An article on nonfiction book fact checking (or the lack thereof) published in Esquire (by Emma Copley Eisenb...

A book of essays. A memoir that’s truly a family history and an American history. And—soon—a novel. Morgan Jerkins talks starting a writing career as a millennial, the privileges necessary to survive (financially) in New York City while pursuing a writing career and fighting the urge to let other people decide whether to take your work seriously. We cover so much ground in this interview, from #pu...

It’s KJ, and I don’t know about you, but I’ve noticed that about 99 percent of the time when I sit down at my laptop, I seem to be doing it solo. Where is this muse of which other writers speak? Sure, I often get in the flow. I can click merrily along at the keys—but inevitably, I hit a spot where the flow jams up in my brain and I don’t know what’s next and I really, really just want to get up an...

It’s an age-old question: how do you build a platform big enough so publishers take notice? This week we interview Dara Kurtz, author of one self-published book and one traditionally published book. She shares her considerable, deliberate efforts to build her online readership for her site, Crazy Perfect Life , and translate fans of her website and Facebook group content into purchasers for her se...

It’s—a podcast episode! With Jennie Nash, so you already know you’re going to love it and I don’t need to say any more. Sarina and I had a great time talking nitty gritty book coaching details with Jennie from a different perspective—what if you want to BE a book coach? But don’t worry if that’s not of interest—this episode will still inspire you to take a professional approach to your work, whate...

It’s a madcap, free-ranging episode where we go from figuring out how to get your important work done (and quit doom-scrolling through your phone) to embracing that same phone for its best use: nourishing conversations with the people you love and then launch into some fantastic tips for interviewing experts (or podcast guests!) that you won’t want to miss. Links from the pod and the scoop on our...