#AmWriting

We love being edited. We love editors. But truth: sometimes being edited is hard. Sometimes you need to interpret things differently, ask questions or push back. In this episode, we talk about how to do that, what makes a good editor and how to find one, how to be edited in your freelance work and—my favorite—why you can’t say your editor is wrong.  #AmReading Jess: Turning Pointe: How a New Gener...

Emma Gannon is a best-selling author, a podcaster, a journalist, writer of fiction and non-fiction and just general woman-about-town, as known for her writing about the new world of work as she soon will be for her fiction. Her debut novel, Olive , centers on a journalist who loves her career and the many other things that fill her world, friends, fun, family—and is in the process of owning her se...

Our guest today is a wildly successful food writer who’s fresh off an appearance on Fresh Air—and who never “should” have written a cookbook at all. (Read on for a recipe.) Here’s her bio, in her own words: I grew up a Palestinian in Israel. I went to an American missionary school and by the grace of whatever gods were looking down on me and sheer grit, I came to UPenn for undergrad, where I strug...

Plotting and pantsing, loving your genre, voice, self-doubt… what didn’t we talk about with Mhairi McFarlane? And she has such a lovely Scottish accent to do it in, too. We know you’ll love this episode.  #AmReading Mhairi: The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary (aka El Piso Para Dos in KJ’s Spanish version) Sweet Sorrow by David Nicholls Sarina: The Price You Pay for College by Ron Lieber (from episode Tu...

Working on an essay collection? Dreaming of becoming a literary agent? We were all over the map with Kristin Van Ogtrop, agent at InkWell Management, author of the essay collection Did I Say That Out Loud: Midlife Indignities and How to Survive Them and former editor of Real Simple Magazine (which KJ mistakenly attributed to Conde Nast but is really part of the Time Inc. empire). Midlifers, essayi...

We love answering your questions! If we missed yours, head over to the Facebook group or reply to this episode and we’ll try to get there next time.  Links from the pod: early episodes on How to Get an Agent , Planning your work , Keeping Organized , and Getting Unstuck Semikolon sticky notes Evernote Best online writing classes: Rachael Herron , Better Faster Academy , Grub Street , New School ,...

Writing is hard. In this episode, we talk imposter syndrome, editing, the right headspace for reading your own stuff, why you might need a “nice” agent, reading your work aloud to friends, recording audiobooks in the closet, being years late on a deadline, sending your editor proof of life and the deep inner conviction that people only buy your book because they feel sorry for you. #ohyeah. #AmRea...

Who wouldn’t want to write better and faster? I can’t even imagine. Our guest this week is Becca Syme, creator of the Better Faster Academy, author of Dear Writer You Need to Quit as well as other books in the Quit series and the author of the MatchBaker series of cozy mysteries (with such glorious titles as “ Vangie Vale and the Murdered Macaron ”). Her superpower is helping writers find what the...

It’s part one of… who knows? As we answer questions from our email and our Facebook group (if you’re not part of that, jump in HERE ). We answered questions about working with experts, talking about WIPS (nonfiction and fiction, both), sucking up to influencers, being told your platform sucks, Goodreads etiquette and the always popular can you make a living writing (yes, but not quickly or easily)...

Nalini Singh is a romance writer. Or, she was a romance writer until she decided she wanted to write a thriller. Jess and Sarina had so much fun talking about genre hopping and writing the books that speak to you. There’s no requirement that we stay in our lanes, Nalini reminded us. We also took some time to lament our dearly missed in-person writers conferences and Nalini gushed about the joy of...

Jess’s new book, The Addiction Inoculation , launches April 6th, and we talk about all the things she’s done to set herself up for feeling like she’s done everything in her power to make this launch a good one. We discuss the differences between launching fiction and non-fiction, first book vs. second book, non-covid v. covid, when to hire a publicist, turning a book into a speaking career and (as...

Today's guest, Olga Mecking, is a freelance journalist who’s enjoyed exactly the version of success many freelancers dream about. She went from publishing her own work on her blog to pitching outside publications, gradually reaching bigger and bigger audiences until her article The Case for Doing Nothing in the New York Times became a breakout success and led to a book contract for her new book Ni...

Alisha Rai writes fun, joyful contemporary romances about smart, mature people who still struggle to find love. And by mature, we don’t mean old—I mean, these characters make good choices and try to understand themselves and other people, but it’s still not easy. We talk about those character choices, but before we dig in, we discuss Alisha’s decision to set her current book, First Comes Like, in...

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.co...

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 part...

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 Withou...

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 ye...

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 charact...