#amwriting With Jess & Kj

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

Writers, I have IDEAS. Usually a lot of them. 99% of them go nowhere. You can feel me bubbling over with ideas in every episode and even in the title of many episodes. There is so much I always want to say. Like me, Jennie Nash is an idea cannon. So between us, we come up with a lot of plans. This is all to say that first: this episode, and the 7 “Idea Factory” episodes that follow, are the result of one such idea. At the beginning of this year, I (It’s KJ here) was deciding on what to do for what I hope will be my fourth novel, and Jennie and I got to talking, as we often do, about the difference between a “spark” and an actual, full on IDEA. In this episode, we talk about what makes a full idea and why it’s so fantastic, in memoir, fiction and non-fiction, to have that idea in hand before you start writing a book—or why, when you hit a wall in drafting, the answer often involves going back and figuring out what that idea was in the first place.  It’s the first of 8 Idea Factory Episodes that will take us

I did a call with a writer this week who really is just getting started, with a few short stories finished and dreams of the future, and after we talked at probably unnecessary length about the fundamental truth that writing is hard and you have to actually DO it, not just think about it and plan for it, so annoying, she asked me how I start a new project*.  This episode is my answer, pretty much—because I’ve just done exactly that. My first outline document for the book I’m working on is dated 2/15; I opened a scrivener doc in March, there were 3 chapters in early April and I’m heading to the finish line on the first draft as I write (which would be quite fast for me so please do note that it’s a very very very first draft).  So I have just started. Here’s how. And here are links to last year’s Blueprint for a Book series, in which Jennie Nash and I talked about all the stages of starting all the things: Find Your Why: Blueprint for a Book Step 1 What's Your Point? Blueprint for a Book Step 2 Who Will

Two years ago, Jennie Nash and I (this is KJ) got into a debate about what was the best, most helpful book for a writer’s bookshelf. Almost instantly we realized that we couldn’t choose just one (although if we could, I suspect it’s Save the Cat Writes a Novel for me and Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit for Jennie, but even as I write that I’m having second thoughts in favor of Big Magic but I’m just SO ANNOYED with her right now because of the whole take-back-my-book thing) and, yeah.  Anyway. It’s summer reading time, and to my summer reading list I’ve added a few books about writing, starting with Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being and, yes. Twyla Tharp’s book (it’s taken me this long to get over my resistance but JENNIE IS ALWAYS RIGHT about these things) and adding, for a practical note, Save the Cat Strikes Back by Blake Snyder and The Trope Thesaurus from Jennifer Hilt. (Want my non-professional summer reading list? Subscribe to #AmReading.)  If you’re looking to add to your own profession

The book is The Society of Shameand one of the many, many ways you can tell it’s satire is that it keeps making people who don’t get it mad. Satire is fiction, hopped up on humor and then amped up by all the things that seem like they couldn't quite happen and yet you know they might. (Another commonality of good satire? The most outrageous bits are often the ones that come straight from the headlines.  The author is Jane Roper, who is also the author of a memoir, Double Time: How I Survived–and Mostly Thrived–Through the First Three Years of Mothering Twins, another novel, Eden Lake, numerous personal essays and humor pieces, and a very eclectic Substack, Jane’s Calamity.  She MAY be the first graduate of the famous Iowa Writer’s Workshop to appear on the pod, and we talk about that, as well as the parenting memoir ghetto. But mostly we’re focused on satire—what it is, how it’s really playing with fire, and why it still needs heart.  A few other satires mentioned: Dietland, Sarai Walker The Startup Wife

Howdy from KJ’s office, where I’m trapped because outside these doors, an angry child lies in wait, ready to tell me all I’ve done wrong as a parent over lo these many years. Good thing I had Jess and Sarina to keep me company while we talk about marketing, selling, navigating the socials, blurbing and asking for blurbs and reading blurbs and oh, still writing the whole time. Links from the pod: The Flying Pig The Chain, Adrian McKinty On Good Authority, Anna David The Eragon series, Christopher Paolini Good As Gold, Sarina Bowen Jess’s daily videos  I’m not linking the dumb lounge chair I’m sorry. #AmReading Jess: On Good Authority, Anna David KJ: Yellowface, R.F. Kuang (The Plot, Who Is Maud Dixon, The Writing Retreat) (note—I wrote more about this in the #AmReading Substack HERE —link also below.) Sarina: We All Want Impossible Things, Catherine Newman Ghosts of the Orphanage, Christine Keneally #AmReading If you love writers behaving badly Give me ALL the writers behaving badly. Stealing, p

SO. Virginia’s Substack—here it is right here—which also features a podcast, went from 700 people to 4500 people to 28K subscribers. BEFORE her new book, Fat Talk, hit the NYT best-seller list. Wouldn’t you like to hear how? We’ve got you covered. Replicating her success? Well, that’s never the way it works. But everything we learn helps.  Links from the pod: FAT TALK: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture @v_solesmith on Instagram, Twitter and TikTok The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image, and Guilt in America #AmReading Virginia: Momfluenced, Sara Petersen More Than You’ll Ever Know, Katie Gutierrez How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water, Angie Cruz KJ: Dear Committee Members, Julie Schumacher If you love a good writing retreat—especially one that comes with good solid coaching and the chance to meet others who are working on similar projects—here’s one to check out. This fall, three Author Accelerator certified book coaches are offering Mainely Memoir, a retreat for women writers in historic

How do I find a writing group and what if they’re mean? That’s a question we get asked a lot, and we always encourage writers to reach out in our Facebook group or boldly throw it out there anywhere else online that you hang out and see what happens. You don’t even have to trade pages to be a writing group. You look for the kind of support and camaraderie you need. But if you’ve ever thought of hying yourself off to your local version of Grub Street or our local spot for in-person writer-ness, The Writer’s Center to find your people—or possibly starting an in-person writer-connection-thing of your own, then you’ll want to listen to my conversation with Joni Cole, founder of said Writer’s Center and the author of Toxic Feedback: Helping Writers Survive and Thrive—which is just freshly out in a revised version, which is why we’re bringing this convo back to you now! This new version has half a dozen new chapters, plus new interviews with famous authors who share their own feedback stories--from the inspiring

Jess here. I know, I KNOW. I’ve been meaning to get to this for ages but who has time to just sit and watch videos about software? Not me. However, last week Sarina told me about some of her Scrivener tricks and I realized it’s time. I put my butt in the chair and scrolled through ALL of the Scrivener YouTube videos (for Mac) and searched on #scrivener #scrivenertips and a few other hashtags on TikTok, and I have to admit, I learned a lot. I’m no guru, but I’ve solved some problems I was having with the app. I hope my time spent learning this stuff can flatten your learning curve so you can get on with the words!  Links: Scrivener Scrivener on YouTube Are you itching for a career change but struggling to figure out that next chapter? By now, you’ve probably heard us talk about book coaching—how much we love being coached, and how much I loved my coach training.  Book coaches help writers bring their dreams to life through support, feedback, project management, and accountability at each step of the book w

Jess here. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I know how my brain works, which is to say it doesn’t, unless a hard and fast deadline looms large in my calendar. I’ve been known to tell my agent or editor to expect chapters on a given day, or I plan to have a completed book proposal to her by X date three weeks hence, but this spring, I’ve decided to call in my writer reinforcements.  I summoned KJ and Sarina to a study room in the Howe Library in Hanover, NH on a very rainy day in late April because I needed their help. I needed them to hold me to dates and words and pages, and without being prompted, they pulled out their planners and dutifully asked me what dates to circle in brightly colored ink. I now have deadlines, and actual human beings to bug me about them, for various stages of my novel-in-progress, and I will not - can not - let them down.  This, dear listeners, is what accountability buddies are for.  Come along for the ride and, as a bonus, learn about all kinds of Scrivener tools and tricks I pl

Dana Bowman is the author How to Be Perfect Like Me and Bottled Up: A Mom’s Guide to Early Recovery. She was the 2016 recipient of the Kansas Notable Book Award, making her the only podcast guest to share that distinction with me. What else do we share? The experience of feeling a level of exhaustion with the goals we’ve set for ourselves and the need to find our way back into the work.  Links from the Pod Clifton Strengths The highly competitive Kansas Notable Book Award! Jon Acuff Becky Blades episode #347, Start More than You Can Finish: Redefining failure #AmReading Dana: Vacationland, Meg Mitchell Moore Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control, Katherine Morgan Schafler Four Tendencies, Gretchen Rubin KJ: The Society of Shame, Jane Roper Mentioned: Life in Five Senses, Gretchen Rubin Are you itching for a career change but struggling to figure out that next chapter? By now, you’ve probably heard us talk about book coaching—how much we love bein

Jess here! This week, I’m coming to you from somewhere in Indiana, tired but happy. Getting out on the road and speaking to students, teachers, and communities is both exhausting and incredibly invigorating, and this week I got to speak to a classroom of student writers, kids who are just learning about the basics of researching, writing, and even podcasting. There’s nothing I love more.  When I’m in these classrooms, and especially when I’m talking to kids looking to change the world by writing for their school papers as they dream about breaking big stories like the Harvey Weinstein saga, I always recommend Jodi Kantor and Meghan Twohey’s essential text, Chasing the Truth: A Young Journalist’s Guide to Investigative Reporting.  Enjoy!  New York Times investigative journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey broke the story of Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assaults in 2017 and harassment and won a Pulitzer Prize for their efforts. Their book about the Weinstein investigation, She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harass

As a former member of the “write drunk, edit sober” club, I thought it might be interesting to look at the research on alcohol, weed, stimulants and their effect on creativity so we can figure out what’s working for us, what’s not, and weigh the pros and cons of intoxication for inspiration. I cite a few studies in this episode and, for the #AmReading segment, share a few of my favorite books on the topic of writing and intoxication.  A fun article about the Delphic Oracle in the New York Times Research Cited: “Alcohol Benefits the Creative Process: being moderately intoxicated gets people to think ‘outside the box.’” “Cannabis Use Does Not Increase Actual Creativity but Biases Evaluations of Creativity” Heng, Y. T., Barnes, C. M., & Yam, K. C. (2023). Journal of Applied Psychology, 108(4), 635–646.  "Neurocognitive, Autonomic, and Mood Effects of Adderall: A Pilot Study of Healthy College Students" Weyandt, Lisa L., Tara L. White, Bergljot Gyda Gudmundsdottir, Adam Z. Nitenson, Emma S. Rathkey, Kel

Actually, there is no action without anxiety. We all feel it, and we’re all driven by it—and almost no one is completely at peace with it. Morra Aarons-Mele, author of The Anxious Achiever and Hiding in the Bathroom: How to Get Out There (When You’d Rather Stay Home), has been working for years to normalize those feelings and the spectrum on which they appear to bring mental health struggles out into the open and encourage people to rethink the relationship between their mental health and their success. We talk about harnessing every degree of anxiety and finding ways to keep going—and even go better—when things get hard. LINKS FROM THE POD The Anxious Achiever Hiding in the Bathroom: How to Get Out There (When You’d Rather Stay Home) The Anxious Achiever Podcast Morra Aarons-Mele Using tropes and genres like a pro: Ep 334 with Alexis Hall #AmReading Morra: Robertson Davies The Deptford Trilogy, The Cornish Trilogy Which sent us onto a tangent that included: Peter Orner, author of Still No Word From

We’ll admit it. We like our writerly gear. We get a little rush from visiting our favorite Vermont stationery store together. (In fact, we just did this last week.) But in all seriousness, we spend a lot of time on this job, so it’s good to figure out what works for us. Today Sarina takes us through her novel-writing tech stack. She covers hardware, software and the “why” behind the tools she chooses.  Links for some of Sarina’s tech:  Scrivener Keychron K series Keyboard Inexpensive ergonomic mouse Campus binders with removable pages and extra paper Remarkable 2 Otter.ai app What’s in your tech stack? Let us know in the Facebook group! If you love a good writing retreat—especially one that comes with good solid coaching and the chance to meet others who are working on similar projects—here’s one to check out. This fall, three Author Accelerator certified book coaches are offering Mainely Memoir, a retreat for women writers in historic Biddeford, Maine, held over three days in the gorgeous Maine wo

Becoming an expert takes years of work and many of you have asked how you can take that expertise out for a spin in the media. I don’t blame you. From the moment the my first Atlantic article, “Why Parents Need to Let Their Children Fail” went viral in 2013, I was eager to get on television and radio so I could talk about my work, stir up interest in my topics, and hopefully maximize my chances of selling a book on the topic. One decade and two books later, I still pitch producers all the time about a range of topics, and I’ve learned some things.  Sit back, relax, and let’s talk pitching, prepping your topic, and securing media spots on television and radio so you can become one of those go-to experts producers seek out over and over again.  If you love a good writing retreat—especially one that comes with good solid coaching and the chance to meet others who are working on similar projects—here’s one to check out. This fall, three Author Accelerator certified book coaches are offering Mainely Memoir, a re

Jess here, because I hate outlining. Hate it. It sounds boring and feels like an assignment, writing stripped of all flow and joy. I asked KJ and Sarina to help me with this problematic mindset, because my novel in progress clearly needs a solid outline and yet every time I go back to work on it, I feel irritated, frustrated and blocked.  Thank goodness for my accountability buddies, because they came through for me in this episode. In fact, the moment we logged off the Zoom call, I got back to work, refreshed, refocused, and engaged in the process of storytelling.  Resources Jennie Nash and Author Accelerator Save the Cat Writes a Novel #AmReading Jess: I’ve been watching Daisy Jones and the Six on Amazon Prime and re-listening to the audiobook, which features Jennifer Beals as Daisy. I needed more Taylor Jenkins Reid, so I finally downloaded the audio of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, which I’m really enjoying. (Also mentioned: Carrie Soto Is Back, Malibu Rising) KJ: Amy Poppel’s The Sweet Spot