#amwriting With Jess & Kj

Crew, we love us some Becca Syme over here. We will listen to any podcast she’s on, sometimes twice. We (okay, me) watch her YouTube channel while we work out. We read her email newsletter religiously. Because she gets writers and writers. She gets that while we may all be trying to do what looks like the same thing, we all do that thing differently and what works for one of us doesn’t work for all of us.  So obviously we were super-excited to get to talk to her, and we’re delighted to re-share this very very inspirational interview with you as we head to the end of 2023. 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 they do best—their strengths—and do more of that

Writers, if you're paying attention at all, you've heard from Zibby Owens in the past 2 years. She's the host of the Moms Don't Have Time to Read Podcast and the creator of Zibby Media, which at this point includes a magazine, a publishing house that's having a great month with, among other books, The Last Love Note, which KJ highly recommends and an LA-based bookstore. In 2022, Jess talked with Zibby about how she launched her literary life--and as that life gets bigger and bigger, we thought it was time to share her story again.  Ever want to know “how she did it”? This episode is our little version of How I Built This, in which we ask Zibby Owens—whose name you surely know by now—about how she turned a desire to be part of the world of books into a one-woman mini book empire. Zibby Owens is the host of Moms Don’t Have Time to Read, a daily podcast featuring interviews with authors that has over 900 episodes. She’s also a Bookstagrammer with 16K followers, the host of a second podcast—Moms Don’t Have Time

Hey writers—I’m in a funny phase of novel drafting right now where I’m really only doing the prewriting—which is an odd style of drafting wherein, for me, I basically write only dialogue and statements of movement and the very most important bits of inner dialogue. (As in, no one is opening car doors or setting down their coffee cups, and there are also no quotation marks, and they could be anywhere as far as setting is concerned.) Writing this way keeps my eyes on the prize—basically it’s what do I need to know to really write this scene, which kind of tricks me into what does the reader really need to know. I’ll add some of the set dressing later, but I find that when I write this way, the end result is tighter and cleaner. Here’s an example I found that ultimately became Chapter 3 of Playing the Witch Card. It’s actually pretty accurate: Flair is desperately shutting door on what she’s done, locking up wildly as if she could lock it inside, back door, Josie never comes to front, running from a ghost,

Ok, we probably don’t feel as cheery as that little subtitle sounded after we’ve been away from a project for a while. Most of the things that yank us away from our work unexpectedly aren’t good things. (There must be exceptions?) In my case, I got sick, and then I overdid and got sicker, and the result is a project I haven’t touched in a week. Which is SO not that bad or that long—sometimes things happen and it’s a month or more before we can get back into the work—but it made me think about what I do when I’m forced to stop and re-start.  Forgive yourself. Might you have been able to do better? Maybe. Would a real writer have managed to work through whatever it was? Maybe. And maybe, if you’d really had to, you would have. Or maybe not—sometimes even people with deadlines and editors and fans clamoring need to put their work aside for a while, because sometimes you just cannot. Or sometimes you do anyway, and maybe, as I once did, you turn in an article during one of the worst weeks of your life thus f

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Jess here, with detailed answers to the questions raised in the #AmWriting Facebook group about finding, contracting, and working with a speaking agent.  I have tried both going it alone and managing my own speaking career and working with an agent on an exclusive basis. Both paths can work, both require a big investment of time, and both have their own obstacles.  Keep the questions coming in the FB group or by email, and we will keep answering them!  My landing page at the American Program Bureau website If the idea of being a book coach niggles at you every time you hear anything about our sponsor, Author Accelerator, I have good news: they’ve fully revised and updated both the fiction and non-fiction book coach certification program. With more than 100 hours of training, videos, case studies, and worksheets, Author Accelerator’s program teaches you the key editorial skills, client-management strategies, and tools needed to help writers reach their goals and to help you start a thriving book coaching bus

I’m a fan of NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month, in which the plan is to write 50,000 words of a novel in November. It’s about 1666 words a day, a little more if you take off for Thanksgiving, and it’s do-able to get to 50K words. But realistically, most people’s result, even if they “win” isn’t a draft of a novel. It’s usually the rambling draft of the first half or two-thirds at best. Because even if your preferred method of writing is to “pants” (As opposed to plot), getting a novel draft to actually END is perhaps the most difficult part. Even the “murky middle” is easier to draft than those concluding scenes.  But NaNoWriMo can—and has, for many people—end in an actual draft that becomes a novel. There’s something about the energy of the month and the challenge of imposing those 1666 words on days that are already full of countless things that really works for many of us. The Chicken Sisters began (after years of noodling) as a NaNoWriMo project in 2018, and plenty of other authors also attribute th

Hello #AmWriters! Jess here. I have been getting a lot of messages via the #AmWriting Facebook group and email about details that can make or break a speaking engagement. I like having a podcast episode to point these people to, so here’s the podcast episode I wish I’d had before I received my first invitation to speak.  We talk negotiation, fees, contracts (while remembering that while I went to law school I remember precious little so this is not legal advice), problem-solving, bad hotels, great hotels, flights, and reimbursement. Plus a lot more.  As always, I hope this is useful to you, and happy speaking!  If the idea of being a book coach niggles at you every time you hear anything about our sponsor, Author Accelerator, I have good news: they’ve fully revised and updated both the fiction and non-fiction book coach certification program. With more than 100 hours of training, videos, case studies, and worksheets, Author Accelerator’s program teaches you the key editorial skills, client-management st

I’ve been wanting to talk cookbook writing with Gesine Bullock-Prado for some time now, and was thrilled to get the chance to sit in her home and baking school in what was once Freegrace Tavern, built in 1794. Portraits of Freegrace and Jerusha hang in the entryway, overseeing (and judging?) all visitors to the house (pic below). You can find Gesine at her website, where you will also find information about her baking school, Sugar Glider Kitchen. Warning: her classes sell out almost immediately, so you’d better sign up for her emails and have good reflexes. Of course you can find My Vermont Table at all the usual places, but please choose your local independent bookseller if you can. If your fall could use a little witchy reading fun, you should hop online or over to your favorite bookstore and order a copy of KJ’s latest, Playing the Witch Card. Think grown-up Gilmore Girls meets Practical Magic, with a family deck of troublesome Tarot cards stalking a new generation. You’ve listened to KJ talk about g

Jess here! Jamie Sumner and I talked over the summer about her middle grade books, mainly because I’m a fan. She does not shy away from difficult topics - substance use disorder, financial insecurity, physical disability, autism, and anxiety. She’s been on the show before (here’s her first interview) but I had to have her on to talk about her new book, Maid for It, out September 5, 2023. Jamie’s website: https://jamie-sumner.com #AmReading Jamie: The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid Jess: The Fires of Vesuvius by Mary Beard Pompeii by Robert Harris If your fall could use a little witchy reading fun, you should hop online or over to your favorite bookstore and order a copy of KJ’s latest, Playing the Witch Card. Think grown-up Gilmore Girls meets Practical Magic, with a family deck of troublesome Tarot cards stalking a new generation. You’ve listened to KJ talk about getting the work done—now go check out the result, and pick up a copy for a friend, too. Guaranteed fa

Sarina’s on the struggle bus. Jess is back to non-fiction and killing it on TikTok. KJ’s in book launch mode and also killing it on TikTok. Want to help share Playing the Witch Card with the world? Everything you need is here (and this is also something every author should do, every time). Also, BUY MY BOOK. (This is KJ, can you tell?) You’ll like it. I promise. So will your mother, daughter, sister, partner and next door neighbor.  Bookshop.org Amazon Barnes&Noble Still North Books and Bar #AmReading KJ: Mistborn, Brandon Sanderson (for more about my Barnes and Noble visit, check out my free #AmReading weekly email of book recs—and subscribe! #AmReading i know I'm not supposed to love this place but TL;DR: you need to shop in a big bookstore sometimes or you’ll never stumble across anything new and SOME OF YOU HAVE NOT YET PRE-ORDERED Playing the Witch Card so DO. Signed Copies Barnes&Noble Amazon… Read more 8 days ago · 5 likes · 2 comments · KJ Jess: Think Again, Adam Grant That’s it for t

Hi #AmWriters! Jess here to talk about what I’ve been up to this summer and hoping some of it proves helpful for you. That’s why we started this podcast years ago - to flatten the learning curve for other writers.  Here I am, almost a decade out from the publication of The Gift of Failure and I have this new book, The Addiction Inoculation, on a topic that can be scary to some people (substance use disorder! eeeek!) as you know, I’m always looking for ways to get books in the hands of new readers, get information into the heads of people who need to know it, and keep my speaking career afloat. This summer, I did a massive marketing re-invention because the speaking engagements that have been going particularly well are not about one book or the other, but both. I’ve been using The Gift of Failure as a Trojan Horse to get the Addiction Inoculation substance use prevention content out to audience members who need to hear it but who might be reluctant to attend a talk advertised solely as ABOUT SUBSTANCE USE PR

Hi all! Jess here! Welcome to a new season! We are back with our usual #AmWriting content and I’m incredibly excited about this episode.  Seven years ago, I was speaking in the school library of a small elementary school in California - the entire event was a favor for a friend - and met a reader named Kirsten Jones. I love small events because I get to spend so much time talking with the audience members at the book signing. One of the last people to get her book signed was Kirsten, a former NCAA athlete and aspiring writer. She had this idea, she said, a Gift of Failure but for the parents of athletes. YES, I said. Write the book. We need this book. Please let me know how I can be of help to you so this book can be in the world.  Seven years later, here we are. Raising Empowered Athletes was born August 8, 2023.  In this episode, Jess and Kirsten talk about the journey from a beautiful, scary, secret idea whispered to another writer at a book event to publication day and everything in between.  Links

In our Idea Factory wrap-up, Jennie and I talk about the ways ideas need to change and evolve throughout the writing process—while you develop them and even in between drafts. Don’t let the idea take charge—the writer has to keep running the show. Good news for memoir writers! Y’all probably know how much I love Jennie Nash’s Blueprint books. They really are the closest thing I’ve found to a guide for getting through draft after draft. I start with them, and I go back to them when I’m stuck. The Blueprints keep me on track and help me write the book I set out to write for the readers I hope to reach. Her newest, Blueprint for a Memoir: How to Write a Memoir for the Marketplace is out now! I think this Blueprint is Jennie’s best yet, with insights into story-telling that I’ll be using in all my work. Get your copy now! Want to read the first chapter of Playing the Witch Card? Then subscribe to KJ’s #AmReading email and be the first to get a sneak peek at her latest! #AmReading

That first non-fiction book may seem easy—it’s your THING, the thing you know—but you still have to hone it down. Is it advice, information, the story of how you learned what you know? Inspirational, confrontational, aspirational? And then comes the next book. And the next. And it still always comes back to the idea. Good news for memoir writers! Y’all probably know how much I love Jennie Nash’s Blueprint books. They really are the closest thing I’ve found to a guide for getting through draft after draft. I start with them, and I go back to them when I’m stuck. The Blueprints keep me on track and help me write the book I set out to write for the readers I hope to reach. Her newest, Blueprint for a Memoir: How to Write a Memoir for the Marketplace is out now! I think this Blueprint is Jennie’s best yet, with insights into story-telling that I’ll be using in all my work. Get your copy now! Are you following Sarina on Instagram? It’s full of writing inspiration with stickers and trees tracking her goals (no

You’ve no doubt heard people say of non-fiction books “that should have been an article”. Not every idea can sustain an entire book or story. Many things that feel like ideas are really set-ups: what if there was a school for dragon riders? Yes, absolutely, cool, but the who and the what happens and the why do we care never go away. In this episode, we talk about turning the flicker of an idea into a full light bulb, and rescuing an idea that didn’t turn out to be quite enough. Good news for memoir writers! Y’all probably know how much I love Jennie Nash’s Blueprint books. They really are the closest thing I’ve found to a guide for getting through draft after draft. I start with them, and I go back to them when I’m stuck. The Blueprints keep me on track and help me write the book I set out to write for the readers I hope to reach. Her newest, Blueprint for a Memoir: How to Write a Memoir for the Marketplace is out now! I think this Blueprint is Jennie’s best yet, with insights into story-telling that I’ll

Part two of the memoir conversation: yes you do need an idea for a memoir. Gotta narrow things down, figure out what you want to share and why and most of all, why anyone would want to read it. There’s a difference between a memoir, and a memoir that the market will embrace—and we tell you how to find it. Good news for memoir writers! Y’all probably know how much I love Jennie Nash’s Blueprint books. They really are the closest thing I’ve found to a guide for getting through draft after draft. I start with them, and I go back to them when I’m stuck. The Blueprints keep me on track and help me write the book I set out to write for the readers I hope to reach. Her newest, Blueprint for a Memoir: How to Write a Memoir for the Marketplace is out now! I think this Blueprint is Jennie’s best yet, with insights into story-telling that I’ll be using in all my work.  Get your copy now! Hey you! Are you following KJ on TikTok? YES, KJ. Please do so now. It's here!

But wait, isn’t a memoir a book about my life? What do you mean, I need an idea? We mean, you need an idea. Because your whole life is… really not book material. But one thematic chunk of it? One recurring event, one series of catastrophes, one relationship, one moment that changed everything?  Now you’re talking—and so are we, to the amazing Rachael Herron, host of the How Do You Write Podcast, author of Fast Draft Your Memoir and leader of a recurring, very hard to get into multi-week class of the same name. We talk about what does and doesn’t serve as memoir material and how to get from a vague glimmer of an idea to something that will carry you (and your reader) through chapter after chapter, and we quote a line from Cami Osmond: In memoir there’s the what and the so what.  Go where the sparkle is. A few assorted links from the pod: The Art of the Book Proposal, Eric Maisel Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert Broken, Furiously Happy, Jenny Lawson The Art of Memoir, Mary Karr Devotion, Inheritance, H

This is the third in our 2023 Summer Idea Factory series. Jennie Nash is back, and this time, she and I are talking about the process of testing out ideas, talking through them, and spending enough time with them to figure out if they’ll sustain you through an entire book—and if you want them to.  Good news for memoir writers! Y’all probably know how much I love Jennie Nash’s Blueprint books. They really are the closest thing I’ve found to a guide for getting through draft after draft. I start with them, and I go back to them when I’m stuck. The Blueprints keep me on track and help me write the book I set out to write for the readers I hope to reach. Her newest, Blueprint for a Memoir: How to Write a Memoir for the Marketplace Is coming August 1, 2023. If you’re seeing this in July 2023, there’s a fantastic event available only to those who pre-order: a live—or recorded—deep dive into the four key steps of memoir writing, with a chance for Jennie Nash to select you for a live Hot Seat coaching session to re

THIS IS MY FAVORITE THING EVER. Jennie Nash and I (KJ here) are talking ideas this summer: getting them, keeping them, taking them from baby spark idea to big-enough-to-hold-a draft idea. In this episode, I lay out my favorite technique for forcing myself to do two things: thing of something beyond the single spark I’m attached to at any given moment and take all of the sparks I can generate and push them harder until they get to a point where they might just stand on their own. I hope you like it as much as I do. If you play the airport game, I’d love to hear about it! Just reply to this email and tell me how it went.  Good news for memoir writers! Y’all probably know how much I love Jennie Nash’s Blueprint books. They really are the closest thing I’ve found to a guide for getting through draft after draft. I start with them, and I go back to them when I’m stuck. The Blueprints keep me on track and help me write the book I set out to write for the readers I hope to reach. Her newest, Blueprint for a Memoi