#amwriting With Jess & Kj

The burn chart mindset, whole book project management, and a how-to for finding a progress tracker that works for you.

Writing through chronic illness and other challenges, with Karen Locke Kolp.

Funny thing—writers for popular pubs tend to see literary magazines as an unsurmountable challenge (I know I do) and vice versa. Danielle Ofri, though, straddles both worlds as the Editor-in-Chief of the Bellevue Literary Review and a regular contributor to the New York Times and Slate as well as journals like The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine, making her the perfect person to talk to about that crossover, as well as the crossover between a career with confidentiality at its core, and one where telling the whole truth is key.  #AmReading (Watching, Listening) Danielle: Ragtime E.L. Doctorow and Little King, Salmon Rushdie's short story excerpt in the New Yorker from his book, Quichotte. KJ: Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, Cal Newport #FaveIndieBookstore The Strand again! We don't mind repeating a good one. Our guest for this episode is Danielle Ofri, the author of What Patients Say, What Doctors Hear; Singular Intimacies ; Incidental Findings;

Big dreams, and how to achieve them. (Jess likes to be told she can do it. KJ prefers to be told she can't.) #AmReading (and watching)  Other People's Houses, Abbi Waxman Jess: The Butterfly Girl: A Novel, Rene Denfeld A Discovery of Witches (book one of the All Souls Trilogy), Deborah Harkness   (and the miniseries) #FaveIndieBookstore Northshire Books, Manchester VT and Saratoga Springs This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwriting for details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s 2-tier outline template. Find more about Jess here, and about KJ here. If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.

The risks and benefits of writing about religion in any genre, with author Phoebe Farag Mikhail. Phoebe's publisher: Paraclete Press A few other notes from the episode:  Phoebe's book: Putting Joy into Practice: Seven Ways to Lift Your Spirit from the Early Church https://paracletepress.com/collections/new-releases/products/putting-joy-into-practice Phoebe's blog: Being in Community (beingincommunity.com) Instagram & Twitter: @pkfarag    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/phoebefaragmikhailauthor/  andhttps://www.facebook.com/beingincommunity/ Phoeble also mentioned her essay in Talking Writing Magazine about "bridge people":https://talkingwriting.com/agreeing-other-side-can-be-revolutionary She chronicled her path to writing after becoming a mom in this essay as well: http://redtri.com/having-children-was-the-best-thing-i-did-for-my-career/ #AmReading KJ: Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, Sendhil Mullainathan Phoebe: The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Po

Tracking your why, your how, your money and your time with Katherine Reynolds Lewis. A few assorted links, comments and tools Toggl time tracker  The 3Ps: Pay, Prestige and Personal Passion Katherine's Excel Spreadsheet: Katherine's Press Club slide show and her checklist for new clients. #AmReading: KJ: City of Girls: A Novel, Elizabeth Gilbert Katherine: Middle School Matters: The 10 Key Skills Kids Need to Thrive in Middle School and Beyond - And How Parents Can Help, Phyllis Fagell Code Like a Girl: Rad Tech Projects and Practical Tips, Miriam Peskowitz Searching for Sylvie Lee: A Novel, Jean Kwok #FaveIndieBookstore(s): Politics and Prose Bookstore, Washington, D.C. East City Bookshop, Washington, D.C. Solid State Books, Washington, D.C. Bard's Alley, Vienna, VA Katherine: KatherineRLewis.com  Twitter Instagram  Facebook This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Vis

Jess is going gangbusters on her summer writing, and KJ may be struggling, but they’re both plowing through some serious recs for  your summer reading list from them and from members of the #AmWriting Facebook group. #AmReading KJ: Rules for Visiting: A Novel, Jessica Francis Kane Honestly We Meant Well: A Novel, Grant Ginder What You Don't Know About Charlie Outlaw, Leah Stewart The Gifted School: A Novel, Bruce Holsinger City of Girls: A Novel, Elizabeth Gilbert Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, David Epstein The Sentence is Death: A Novel, Anthony Horowitz Bowling Avenue, Ann Shayne The Library of Lost and Found, Phaedra Patrick Jeeves and the King of Clubs: A Novel in Homage to P.G. Wodehouse, Ben Schott There's a Word for That, Sloane Tanen Mostly Dead Things, Kristen Arnett The Bride Test, Helen Hoang Everything Is Just Fine, Brett Paesel The Late Bloomers' Club: A Novel, Louise Miller After the End, Clare Mackintos

As the wheel of fortune spins, Jess gives us the blow by blow of this week’s celebrity endorsement - spoiler alert...it wasn’t entirely luck! When someone with 10 million followers on Instagram shares a pic of herself reading your book—things happen. And they happened for Jess. But there's a little secret history there. Sure, lightning struck, the stars aligned and everything fell together. But if Jess hadn't done the groundwork, it probably never would have happened. #AmReading Jess: Archaeology From Space: How the Future Shapes Our Past by Sarah Parcak, @indyfromspace www.sarahparcak.com KJ: City of Girls, Elizabeth Glibert #FaveIndieBookstore The Vermont Bookstore in MIddlebury Vermont

Book Coach Jennie Nash returns to tackle some effective strategies for revising; it can be a tortuous process, but it can also be where some of the fun happens! Jennie mentioned Susan Bell's The Artful Edit: On the Practice of Editing Yourself. #AmReading KJ: Bowling Avenue, Ann Shayne Jess: In Pain: A Bioethicist's Personal Struggle with Opioids, Travis Rieder and Red, White & Royal Blue Casey McQuiston Jennie: Daisy Jones & the Six, Taylor Jenkins Reid #FaveIndieBookstore Chaucer's Bookstore, Santa Barbara  This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwriting for details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s 2-tier outline template. Find more about Jess here, and about KJ here. If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.

Tips for getting the work done when the season shifts around you.

Sometimes, the internet turns against you. What to do, what not to do, how to ride it out and remember--the loudest voices aren't necessarily the most numerous.  Over the course of our careers, both Jess and I have endured some PR storms. We share some of the gory details, but more importantly, advice from PR pros and from our experiences on how to handle it when you go a little bit viral in the worst way. We heard from PR experts Ophir Lehavy and Carol Blymire. Ophir pointed us to a crisis control article, and Jess called out (in the good way) a couple of books that are useful when you're at the eye of the storm: Shame Nation: The Global Epidemic of Online Hate, from Sue Scheff and So You've Been Publicly Shamed, Jon Ronson. #AmReading KJ adored Ben Schott's P. G. Wodehouse homage, Jeeves and the King of Clubs. Jess is treasuring The Truffle Underground: A Tale of Mystery, Mayhem, and Manipulation in the Shadowy Market of the World's Most Expensive Fungus, Ryan Jacobs and Michelangelo and the Po

Subscription services like Kindle Unlimited and Audible do make books—some books—cheaper for readers, but what do they do for authors—and what are readers missing? (with Sarina Bowen) A few highlights from this episode:  If you take something expensive—good content—and you pay people reasonably to create it, it’s tough to make this work. What we're often seeing as consumers are loss leaders for big media. Amazon doesn't have to make money from Kindle Unlimited.  One you might not have heard of: Scribd. So far, it's reasonable for authors and for readers (although their "unlimited" may really mean "unlimited unless you're a superuser, in which case maybe not").  The takeaway for writers: limit yourself to Kindle Unlimited with great caution. The takeaway for readers: Unlimited is still limited--to what's there and available. Relying on suggestions and highlights from various services is probably limiting what you see, and maybe what you read.  #AmReading Sarina is seeking "great books with

Mary Laura Philpott tells all. It's glorious. It's embarrassing. Nobody told you you'd be sitting on a barstool in front of a crowd in a short skirt. Mary Laura Philpott is the author of I Miss You When I Blink, a book with the most awesome subtitle ever: Essays. That's it. Here's a little something she wrote on subtitles and why we love to hate them, from LitHub.  We've been following her book launch (check back to Episode 150, #NeverReady) and now, her triumphant tour. Or maybe not so much and certainly not all the time.  Links to some of the fantastic Indies who hosted Mary Laura: Whistlestop Bookshop Books Are Magic M. Judson Bookseller Word Bookstore in Brooklyn and New Jersey Malaprops Bookstore in Asheville, NC The Snail on the Wall Huntsville, AL Politics and Prose Washington, DC Books and Books, Florida #AmReading City of Girls, Elizabeth Gilbert #FaveIndieBookstore And finally, no interview with Mary Laura would be complete without a shoutout to

Remember those goals you set with Jess and KJ back in January? Neither did they, but they dug them out and sort out how the year’s going so far. In Episode 140, we set our 2019 goals. (Listen here). Now, at 2019's halfway mark, it's time to check in on those--and we'd love to hear how you're doing on your goals in the #AmWriting Facebook group. Halfway here? More? En route? Revising the endgame? We get it all.  Jess, in particular, gets moving the goal posts--and in fact, the whole point of a check in is to consider doing just that. Goals aren't there to help you fail, they're there to help you move towards them--and if a goal is unreachable this year, it's time to set a goal you can achieve that moves you in the right direction. For Jess, that's a new, revised book deadline. I'm reporting a big fat checkmark on one goal--finding a publisher for my novel (hello, Episode 147). The Chicken Sisters will be out in the summer of 2020, and the new goal I'm slotting in there is to finish my revisions on time

We welcome Shane Burcaw. You thought writing was hard? Try doing it with no muscles. Shane Burcaw is the author of three books: Laughing at My Nightmare, the picture book Not So Different: What You Really Want to Ask About Having a Disability, and his new book, Strangers Assume My Girlfriend is My Nurse. Shane and his girlfriend, Hannah Aylward, host the YouTube channel, Squirmy and Grubs, with nearly 400k subscribers. Their YouTube channel reads: “Once upon a time, a boy with no muscles fell madly in love with a beautiful girl who had plenty of muscles to spare. The townsfolk gasped with horror at the sight of their disgusting interabled relationship, but they didn’t care.” Kirkus calls Strangers Assume My Girlfriend Is My Nurse, "An accessible, smart-assed, and unexpectedly tender exploration of life, love, and disability." We talked about the how of writing for Shane, (which included a shout out to the Remote Mouse App) but even more about the why--and why Jess's students in particular (along with m

Parkland author Dave Cullen on everything you ever wanted to know about pitching and writing a topical nonfiction book at top speed (and going broke doing it). We talked to Dave Cullen, about writing Parkland: Birth of a Movement, in ten months while he was 3 years overdue on his current book.  "I'm just not gonna tell Gail," he said of his editor when he took the first assignment from Vanity Fair--but there was something going on with the Parkland students that grabbed him, and he--with the help of his agent, Betsy Lerner--grabbed it.  "I just had to." He describes the process of writing the book, how the length, plan and due dates evolved--and how he almost went broke doing it.  #FaveIndieBookstore Dave's #FaveIndieBookstore is Books & Books in Miami Beach, FL. "It was the only store I specifically asked to visit on my tour." #AmReading A Manual for Cleaning Women, Lucia Berlin  Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Letham This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the boo

Story expert Lisa Cron joins Jess and KJ to dig into the mechanics of a good book, including the difference between plot and story, and looking beyond “what happened” to “why did it happen”. To talk to Lisa Cron is--unless you've already read Story Genius or Wired for Story--to possibly flip everything you thought you knew about story--fiction, nonfiction, short, long, whatever--onto its head. Story, she points out, isn't plot. It isn't what happens, and then what happens next, and then what happens next. It's the why behind those happenings. It's not, well, a spaceship just landed on the green in front of the library, and I'll either a) rush towards it or b) head for my car. It's WHY I do those things. It's not just what I do next, but what it is about me, now the main character in this rather stressful tale that may end with us all being the entrees on some giant interstellar menu, that makes me make the no doubt terrible choices that I make (good choices make bad books). And that's my backstory. Whi

Jess and KJ extemporize on the power of stickers - where the only thing that matters is getting into the work, and getting the words out. And some bonus advice to authors on what not to do. Kj here, with a confession: I've been lying to myself Letting myself off the hook.  Not keeping my butt in the chair and my head in the game. I mean, sure, I had lots of excuses. I've been traveling or doing intense farm stuff since April 12. That's almost a month with--count them--only two days of being entirely home without travel or a major, all-day farm commitment. So okay then. Some of those days I called it. I knew I wouldn't get anything done on my next book, and I didn't. Some of those days I had a reasonable plan. Open the file. Stay with the work. That's all. But SOME days... some days I futzed around. I kept moving the needle. I let myself quit because "I'm really not focusing" or "this isn't getting anywhere" and although I had time to do something, and plans to do something, I didn't manage to

Podcasting from Mom 2.0 Conference with podcaster, journalist and author, Nicole Blades. She tells us about the pros and cons of skipping an agent, using rejection as fuel, and the joys of the writer community. Nicole Blades is a Podcaster (Hey, Sis! Podcast), Author of Have You Met Nora?, The Thunder Beneath Us, & Earth's Waters --and this is a glorious episode, recorded live and in person at Mom 2.0, in which we really capture the joy of writing, of finding your novel, of getting to do what we do.  We also get into Tall Poppies, the writer's sharing group (I'm not sure what to call it) started by Ann Garvin, which also includes the Bloom   website. I've been seeing this crew ALL OVER Insta this week, sharing each other's books like crazy, and I love it. It's a formalizing of the writer's community we all love and dream of and hopefully have (and we DO--it's called the #AmWriting Facebook group, and while we may not formalize the sharing of each other's work, we sure do do it).  And I say, as I

It's hard enough to start a subscriber email. But what if--like freelance writer Lyz Lenz, who has two books coming out in the next twelve months--you asked your fans to pay for it? It's so crazy, it might just work. Hello from the Mom 2.0 conference, where Jess and I just did a panel on Launching a Speaking Career. More on that in an upcoming episode--but meanwhile, this one's a real thought-provoker. Most of us struggle with what's a good use of our time in our writing careers. We've talked a lot about the value of an email subscriber list when it comes to selling books and sharing your work--but what if the email is your work, or becomes a way to share your work?  Journalist Lyz Lenz uses Substack to share a largely subscriber-only email with a group of readers/fans whose financial support has helped to carry her through the ups and downs of a freelance career.  Other links mentioned in the episode:  Lyz Lenz's Contently Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture, Roxane Gay Ann Friedman