#AmWriting

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...

Not everybody wants an author hanging around their office all day. Our guest is a best-selling education writer Jeff Selingo, already an expert on college and higher education who took that one step further for his latest: Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions . Jeff managed to embed himself in three admissions offices to write this book, a feat that will boggle the mind of anyone...

It’s the topic every author seems to love to hate: self-promotion. Sharing our work on social media, pitching ourselves to podcasts and reaching out to friends and colleagues to ask them to boost us up in various ways can feel hard—but it shouldn’t. It’s part of the deal—and the people around you don’t mind. In fact, they want to know when you have a new book or article out, especially if you’re a...

Lauren Ho is the author of the debut novel Last Tang Standing , which is getting HUGE buzz. It’s been called Bridget Jones meets Crazy Rich Asians, and it does deliver on that promise. Lauren is our very first guest to join us from Singapore, and it’s very late at night there but she managed to hold her own. We talk lawyers-turned-writers, selling a book from outside the US and UK, Goodreads revie...

Our guest this week is children’s fiction and YA author Julie Berry, and here’s why: she gave a talk at a conference about visualizing and imagery that Sarina has “been thinking about for 7 years.” That should tell you how much gold there is in this episode—all kinds of useful stuff about how we use images and senses to spark our own creativity and build a connection with our readers in every genr...

We’ve got a great interview for you today with a freelance journalist who does a different kind of work than any of us ever have—out in the field reporting on his favorite subject: reality adventure TV on trips rife with travel and danger and expense reports. I think you’ll love it. We talk about finding your topic and making that topic, well, topical by looking for what’s happening within the wor...

Write every day. Don’t read fiction while you’re writing fiction. My way or the highway. In a burst of frustration, we’re reminding ourselves—and you—that there’s no one way to get this job done, and if your way is counter to what some of the greats might tell you (we’re looking at you, Stephen King, even though we love you), that doesn’t mean it won’t work. A few links from the episode: Minisode:...

Hey campers—I hate reading you all a canned intro to our authors every time, so I’m winging it with our guest, Sonali Dev . I’m a fan of hers, so I feel like I know all the things. She’s the author of four straight-up romances, but her last-book-but one is the start of a series written in homage to Jane Austen, as is her latest, both set among the members of a politically ambitious Indian family i...